Now that Youtube has gained acceptance across the world as video sharing site, it’s no surprise that companies are creating tools to assist content producers in establishing their own video collections.
Magnify is one such tool. You can browse the existing channels by category, or create your own in a few simple steps. The resulting site contains all the social sharing features that you need to allow your audience to comment and rate your videos as well as placing a widget of your collection on their own blogs, such as I have done above with the Creative Robot collection.What surprises me is the lack of brands in the collection of Video Categories. The notable exception seems to be Absolut with over 1400 videos in their channel. So what are you waiting for, starting a video channel for your brand / category has never been easier. In fact to show you how easy, i have just created a Gourmet Food channel.
Cleanscores is a new site which links Google maps with the cleanliness of a restaurant rating.
It’s currently reviewing restaurants in LA and San Francisco and is indicative of a trend towards empowering consumers to rate products and services. I expect to see more and more consumable items being both reviewed and commented online, providing assistance to would-be purchasers.
This is quite an interesting video on what features pre-schoolers would incorporate into a “Magic Phone”.
Perspective: Ok, much of the suggestions are silly, perhaps even impossible, but that’s the whole idea. Kids don’t have the normal reality boundaries that we have as adults, and make a great source for creative thinking. Have you asked your kids what features they would build into your next product?
SpinVox which offers technology to convert audio to text, will soon be offering users of facebook the option to dial a number and then dictate updates which are then converted to text and posted to your profile.
Perspective: I first trialled text to voice technology in the mid 90’s as a potential solution for busy on the road sales reps to connect with email conversations. The technology has improved since then, and Spinvox seems to have found several applications for it’s tool. For instance, Lawyers use the tool to enable them to “read” their audio to text converted voice mails in court. Transcribing of podcasts might be another application. It will be interesting to see the take up of SpinVox facebook service.
Magazine publisher CondéNet, who purchased the application “What are you wearing?” earlier this year, has found success linking the application to Facebook reports Media Week.
The application allows you to tell your network of friends what brands of clothes you are wearing. Already, 90,000 users have added it to their facebook accounts and it is growing at 1,000 per day. Today’s most popular brand is Zara, which the following people are wearing.
Within the application there is a banner advertisement which is currently advertises the Guess brand’s Club G via the CondéNet owned Flip social network.
CondéNet has also released a spin-off application known as What are you wearing for Halloween.
Perspective: Currently Facebook are allowing applications to run their own ads, and this creates enormous opportunity for brands to leverage the social network to reach consumers. This could be by creating an application related to the brand essence, or by sponsoring an application. People are using their facebook accounts to express things about who they are and what they like, so it makes sense to provide tools that aid this expression. If you are looking for ideas for your brand, start by checking out some of the best Facebook Applications.
