Frontiering Talk

Guinness book of records has just gone social, by adding an online community to their web site.

This will allow record holders, or those who "want to be", as well as fans to share videos, photos, audio and stories. Visitors can also create their own profile page including blog entries.

The site will allow discussion around actual record attempts ahead of the annual book publication. 

The community section is powered by KickApps and Guiness hopes the site will help to identify new record breaking talent.

Here’s an example of a photo submitted by John Evans who in his words says "Hello, I have been on more Guinness prometime and in the Guinness book in the last 14 years than any other record holder. Go onto Guinness videos and then strongest to see two videos of me car balancing and keg balancing."

Whilst it isn’t evident yet, Guiness could build this community by running online community powered contests.  I’d also like to see them allow members the ability to embed their content in other social networks.

Fixpicture is a pretty cool online picture editor that runs in Flash or HTML.

Like Picnik it allows you to upload pictures, resize and add effects and will appeal to the growing audience of consumers who what a simple, easy to use free picture editor.

ChallengeOptimus is a mobile phone company based in Portugal wanting to target young people within a big music festival.  So they came up with a plan to create a unique viewing platform service provided by ten big men.  The service called "broad shoulders" was greatly accepted by the young people in the festival and word quickly spread across the festival.  More people used the "Broad Shoulders" service to get a better view of the concert, search for a lost friend in the crowd.

Why did this work ?
The "Broad Shoulders" service was unique, free, fun, and provided a benefit to people.  It’s no wonder word quickly spread about the service across the festival and ChallengeOptimus’s brand health would have received a boost in the process.

So when you are thinking of reaching a particular audience, think of providing something that is unique and of such benefit that your audience can’t help but spread the word.

In the UK Honda has launched a mini-site in support of its new campaign dubbed "The Joy of Problems".

The site features a nice Tetris inspired layout and a jigsaw that users are called to help solving.

Perspective: I like the idea that consumers can work together to solve an online puzzle, however there is currently little incentive to invite my friends to this.  For example, will the online collaboration of solving this puzzle reveal something of importance?

Cool Tool: Blurb * Lulu

tags: books, ftalk

Mattel and Hasbro who the worldwide rights to the Scrabble game are suing the creators of Scrabulous, one of Facebook’s most popular applications for copyright infringement.

Scrabulous attracts over 600,000 daily users and nets the 20-something Indian brothers who created the application, $25,000 worth of advertising each month.  So Hasbro has asked Facebook to take down Scrabulous.

This is where Legal deparments don’t understand social networks.

• The Scrabulous fans are passionate about the game and are not happy about Hasbro’s heavy handedness.
• Already, there are over 55,000 members in a Save Scrabulous Facebook Group that are talking of a boycott of all Mattel and Hasbro products.

So what should Hasbro and Matel do instead ?

• Consider buying Scrabulous and use the passionate fans to evangelise scrabble as a learning game.
• Hire the Scrabulous creators to develop online versions for other social networks.
• Sponsor competitions of the online game.
• Allow fans to create personalised scrabble games which they can design online.

Monkey See is a new site containing a collection of "how to" videos ranging from Parenting, Pets, Auto & Mechanical

There is even a video series on how to carve a pumpkin.

Perspective: I think this site exemplifies the growing demands for videos in online content, as well as the emergence of niche content sites (in this case "How to").

His New York City apartment had to be fumigated. All of his friends have tiny studio apartments. Hotels in New York are insanely expensive. Left with few living options, Mark thought it would be fun and make an interesting video to move into an IKEA store where he’d live and sleep for a week. Never in a million years did he think IKEA would go for it, but miraculously they have a agreed.

Mark moved in early morning Monday January 7th to the IKEA in Paramus, New Jersey and will stay for the week through Saturday January 12th. Every day people can watch a video recap of his day. He will be living in IKEA 24/7 and eating all his meals in the restaurant (he may order Domino’s take out once or twice). Thankfully they have a shower for him in the back offices.

He has a website to record his week in Ikea

http://marklivesinikea.com/

Perspective: This is a great initiative by Mark, but also by Ikea who will gain lots of free publicity from Mark’s live recording of his experience.

Domino’s have created a very flash "pizza builder" which not only provides excellent visuals, but allows you to custom make and then order your creation.

Perspective:  I like this site because it is both engaging, and relevant to the product that Dominos are selling.  It should also provide an excellent source of information that Dominos can use when coming up with new pizza creations.  Perhaps they could even allow consumers to name and vote for their favourite toppings.

NapAds is a pretty cool business that allows advertisers to distribute messages in the form of napkins across it’s network consisting of bars and nightclubs.

The NapAds are provided to the bars for free in exchange for allowing NapAds.com to place NapAds inside their venue. Any print campaign can be  duplicated on to a standard beverage napkin.

Perspective: This is a good medium to reach the often hard to reach demographics.  I think raw drawings would work well,  as many of these places are dark.

8hands - Brings Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Flickr and all your favorite social networks to your Desktop

tags: ftalk, social-network