Google paranoia

I am amused by the amount of google conspiracy theory videos :-)
Here are only two (thanks Ben)

Free or paid?

I found a bunch of threads on twitter among Romanian entrepreneurs who discuss the potential impossibility to make money out of services like twitter or youtube. This made me think of this cool video showcasing Chris Anderson's upcoming book. It discusses the way we should and can deal with situations in which something we produce becomes so easy to disseminate that it's value literally drops to zero...

watch it here

IMTO conference in Iasi

I will be there in two weeks or so.

Conference on the Myths of technology and the legendary ways in which people use it ... :-). I'm also thiking of doing something like a 'communicators coffee evening' [hard to believe that if I call it planner's coffee a lot of people will show up]. So come see the conference because it will be smashing, look at the line up, and also drop by for the coffee thingie. Details soon.

Twitt review

I have previously said some things about myspace and facebook [the myspace review was probably on my deleted blog]. It's time for some thoughts on twitter.
Content
I have been using it for a while now but only got into it in the past couple of weeks with my post volume soaring to approx 400. Initially, I found it an easy way to release frustration about daily events and also jot down some ideas I might use for the blog later on. Soon, I realized that my follower list was growing and also that they posted replies to my twitts. Currently my daily usage of twitter includes all of the above - frustration outlet, blog notes - but also a lot of what seems to be indirect ym-ing with people I barely know, all of which happens in face of all those following us.
Followers
I find it amusing also to review who is following me because it makes me think the blogosphere is truly a small place in Romania. There are 3 categories: tech people, bloggers and communication people, all Romanian, plus the random American [I have five by now] probably stumbled on my profile by accident or attracted by the pic [no explanation, truly, for one resident of Miami, spending most of his time tanning and making gourmet foods for his friends who also seems to follow only girls with really teenage looking profile pics :-]
Turn-offs
It seems to be addictive - the more followers you get the more you feel like you need to update more [similar to blog]. It gives a sense of voyeurism paralleled only by checking out people's photos on facebook.
What it does
If you want to get into more conversations than you have at work, with your peers, online on your blog, on ym, twitter is a great idea. I assume that you can make actual use of it, if you restrict your followed profiles to only those people whose twitts can add information and you never check the Replies section. You will also get great fun from twitter if you like to argue, flirt, annoy, smack and bitch, all of the above in the very public face of your followers.

Twitter is for addicts of the information super fast highway or for shameless mental streakers.

Limerick to blogger - making a point

I rant without meaning, rss, link, misspell
Am a self centered asshole, put facts in a nutshell
I twitt, and pownce and facebook a bit
Bite back to comments and use the word shit
But love me forever: I'M A BLOGGER, WHAT THE HELL?!

check my twitter to understand why... :-)

Storytelling

I am a humanities graduate and one thing we like is reading and listening to stories. Sometimes it's very much about how to tell it and less about what you tell with us and that is why when I read about this thingie here, a club called The Moth in NY where people tell stories, I though "yes!".

I think that a lot of what we are missing in Bucharest right now is a place where people take pleasure in telling stories in a nice way as opposed to telling facts in a short and concise way. We spend a lot of time searching for brevity when in fact nuance and the real quality stuff comes from when you take the time to describe and really include people in your world. So yes, this would be the anti-twitter meeting, a meeting of people who like from time to time to write wonderful posts with lots of details that make for a pleasant reading. A meeting of the storytellers as opposed to the factmongers.

I think Dragos Roua is a great example of this kind of rhetoric, so is Serban Alexandrescu and so is Catalin Stefanescu. Know someone else? Wouldn't this be nice? :)

Conspirators at the Czech Center

Design trends

as spotted by Design Conspirators Ben and Kingsley
1. Web 2.0 [okay, this is not a real one but it's done in 2.0 style]













2. Decorative













3. The new ugly [ugly nouveau ??]


















4. Charts

Doing new business

I have recently become more involved in doing new business because, well, I have to and it seems to me that the entire comms industry in Romania is based on a network of acquaintances. The normal way to get new business is to know someone who knows someone who needs something. Then the person you know says to the other person "hey, I know someone who can do this"...you go, do a credentials presentation and you're in.
The good thing about this is that for new businesses it's an easy way in into an industry where there's a lot of money being kicked back for account securization (you pay people money to give you the account and keep it with you despite you doing lousy work).
The bad thing about this is mismatching: often the wrong agency gets matched with the wrong account because someone knew someone.
Not a lot of people talk about pre-pitch screening and very few appoint agencies directly based on a competency and portfolio review. All of these should be the job of brand managers and they would also act as incentives for agencies to develop a coherent track record of performance.
Until then, do you know someone who knows someone?

Cool things

I like The Onion [a political and not only satire newspaper in the US] mostly because of its personals space. And I like the personals space for three reasons:
1. I like the quirky and individualistic profile pages
2. I discover new interesting books among what the profilees read
3. I think it's a neat business model
[okay, fine, I also like to check out the men but hey, I am only human]
Theirs is really a smart way to capitalize on brand equity without doing irrelevant things online like so --> you expect your readers to be of a certain kind. you expect they also are aware they are of a special kind and would be interested in meeting people like themselves. so you let them, by setting up a personals space. BUT to preserve exclusivity you raise barriers: a demanding profile page [if you're smart enough to read The Onion you'll be able to handle the page] and a credit-based contact method - you can only contact the person you like if you have credits which you buy with real money...
Naturally no one minds this because they know that they will meet someone with the same likings, a similar mindframe and a sense of humor. I think at least a couple of sites in Romania might benefit from a similar approach :-)

follow-up on telecom insights

Local telecom Cosmote (challenger, price wars, 3rd place) has just announced unique 10 cents/min pricing in all mobile networks available to prepaid users. Details here in Ro.
The catch is that you have to have one extra-option activated which means that the money they lose from interconnection they will make up from the extra options. I think it's a fair deal especially since what it does it it virtually eliminates secondary or tertiary SIMs and makes Cosmote the sole carrier for young adults (the regular users of prepaid)
I wonder how the big two [Vodafone and Orange] are going to respond to this?

How to make something interesting

We get asked to do virals a lot. And we seldom deliver because usually we get asked to be "on brand" and place a logo at the end and do just ONE thing. Truth of the mater is that, today, virals are like games that you engage the consumer in, so sometimes you need to build more than one thing.
The funnest 'game' I got involved in recently is this post by a careless Romanian blogger. As Romania is hosting a NATO summit and tension is high [as is security level] he made a joke about renting space for snipers on his balcony. The fun stuff is that all the people who joined the prank played along and if you click on the names of those who replied you will be taken to a fake CIA page (real one is cia.gov BTW), a fake AlQaeda page and even an AlQaeda manual :-)

Everyone played along and this made it interesting...because virals need to be engaging and interesting :-)