An Bui, Spelled An With 1 N

I say this because I’ve added yet another social media application - Tumblr. Do I really need another? No, not really. But do I love me some Tumblr? Yes, yes really. Why?

I can send pictures from my phone to a special Tumblr email and get the pictures online easily. I can import tweets from Twitter. I can quickly post little quotes, and even regular blog posts.

Lately, social networking applications seem to be moving towards cross-posting functionality. I can Jott to my Twitter and have the tweet sent to my Tumblr. I’ve already written about Twhirl’s auto updates to Jaiku and Pownce. I’ve also used TwitterSync to sync my Facebook status messages and Twitter.

As I let myself get so super obnoxiously busy, this functionality is becoming more important for effectively managing social media use. Of course, much of the fun of social media is the social aspect. Join Whrrl, become part of my friend network, and let’s meet up for coffee, at one of the top shops in Seattle.

I had dinner the other night with one of Pelago’s talented developers. Pelago is the company that has brought us Whrrl, a geotargeted social networking online and mobile application that enables people to share real-world adventures and discover places, events, and people through the eyes of others in their social networks.

I reached out to Jason Crawford and asked him simply, Why Pelago? Why Whrrl?

Pelago and Whrrl offer Jason the following opportunities:

• A great product in the consumer space;
• Great people with whom to work;
• Interesting technological challenges;
• Personal career growth potential;
• Pelago’s strong future business opportunities.

Meeting Jason enabled me to put a face to the company. In addition to his reasons for joining Pelago, he shared with me the fact that Whrrl hasn’t changed all that much from the original product vision. I’m interested to see if this holds over time. Fred Wilson, of Union Square Ventures, discusses the number of companies in which he invested that underwent complete or partial transformations between the time they took venture capital and the time they exited the business. The numbers suggest that Pelago may transform, but at this time it’s too early to say.

The Pelago team constantly challenges itself to improve Whrrl by adding new cool features and added functionality to benefit Whrrl’s users. The user interface is intuitive and the map allows you to see clusters of social network validated points of interest. If your phone is on the list of phones that support Whrrl, you can go to m.whrrl.com/getit to download the mobile application. The Pelago team is working on bringing us additional cities and increasing the number of phones compatible with the mobile application.

Whrrl has been in public beta since 10/23/2007, so if you haven’t tried it, it’s not too late to join the party. RSVP to the “Whrrl Focus Group – wanna free drink?” through Facebook.

Join Whrrl. Add me as a friend, or become my fan. We can even find somewhere to get coffee in Seattle.

After spending all weekend with an amazing group of people building skillbit(tm), livetwittering, and otherwise concentrating on the experience, I got back to an interesting proposition from Chris Abraham, of Abraham and Harrison:

“…I have a client, Firebrand, that has an “all commercials all the time” product online and on cable every week night. They’re prepping for Super Bowl with something called “Road to Firebrand Monday” and I was hoping you might be someone or know someone who would like to have some blogger exclusives and/or cover the “Road” campaign….”

Sweet. Facebook is no longer a social media networking site - it hasn’t been since the ninjas, and werewolves, and vampires, oh my! It’s evolved into a social media platform with third party development of applications for Facebook. The above Facebook message in my inbox signals another phase in its evolution for my use - media conduit.

I checked out the videos and read the press release, parts of which are reproduced below. If you like commercials, it’s worth your time. Note the online video placements - the consumer generated media platforms and mainstream media content creators are getting it together! Social Media, meet Viral Marketing. Continuing to push the envelope will facilitate an ever-evolving advertising-slash-marketing-slash-public relations-slash media industry.

…

All-Star Campaign includes the Caveman, the St. Pauli Girl, the Crash Test Dummy,
Mr. Peanut, Bob’s Big Boy and Mr. Clean, among others.

New York (January 21, 2008) – Firebrand, the hottest spots from the coolest brands, on TV, web and mobile, will celebrate “the Holiest Day in Advertising,” with the launch of its first national holiday campaign, “The Road to Firebrand Monday.” The multi-million dollar media buy will include … online video placements on TVGuide.com, YouTube, MySpace and Facebook, among others.

The Road to Firebrand Monday campaign begins today with at least three new commercials– PreGame, KickOff and HalfTime – on-air and online over the next two weeks, driving viewers to tune into Firebrand, starting January 28th on ION TV (weeknights 11PM/10C). And all that week on TV, web and mobile, Firebrand will begin showcasing playlists related to the Super Bowl.

…All content is downloadable on mobile devices, iTunes and Firebrand.com. And that morning, Firebrand.com will have only the best of the previous day’s commercials ready for download, allowing viewers to share and rate them all, and to decide for themselves which spot wins the coveted “Firebrand Water Cooler” trophy.

“The Super Bowl has always been the holy grail of advertising and Firebrand celebrates that,” says Shari F. Leventhal, Chief Marketing Officer. “Most people watch the Super Bowl with hopes of seeing the best, most creative commercials the ad industry can serve up. The greatest commercials get to play every day at Firebrand. So the Firebrand Monday campaign is our way of saluting the best of these commercials, past and present, as well as the famous icons that make commercials so memorable, and in many cases, a part of pop culture.”

Viewers watching the Firebrand Monday commercials will be treated to a series of spots featuring a parody of some of the most popular commercial icons including Mr. Clean, Mr. Peanut and the Cavemen, among others. The icons are placed on a football backdrop, either behind the scenes getting psyched up for the game, in the locker room, or huddling conspiratorially on the field. No matter how you slice it, Firebrand delivers an entertaining tribute to what has become advertising’s greatest sporting event.

The fun continues for a week starting Firebrand Monday to the following Monday where every spot that is viewed, downloaded, emailed or embedded earns the viewer a chance to enter to win cash….

A few weeks ago, I grabbed the TwitterSync application. This application synchronizes your Facebook account status message with your Twitter account. Essentially:

[account name]+[Facebook status] = The answer to “What are you doing?”

Theoretically, TwitterSync serves a useful purpose – To simplify the management of social networking tools by automatic information population of two fields that address the same or similar question.

Sample Facebook status messages:

• An is happy to be at work!
• An is packing for vacation!
• An is getting coffee for her boss!
• An is meeting wonderful new people!

Take off the “An is” and voila – length appropriate copy bites, appropriate for tweets. Since Facebook recently removed the “is” from the user interface, you have:

• An resents being cold, wet, and hungry
• An enjoys blogging her face off
• An goes for an early morning run – happy New Year’s!

And so on and so forth.

This doesn’t necessarily answer the question posed by Twitter, nor do my Tweets make sense with my name in front of them. I use Twitter to communicate with others in the social networking/Web 2.0/social media space, find out what’s happening in the industry, see what others are writing, thinking and yes, doing.

For Twitter, I’ll drop tinyurls to things I think my followers might be interested in. I’ll tweet (microcomment) directly @ someone, in response to a question tweeted or comment made by someone else.

In actuality, TwitterSync doesn’t really work for me, because my Facebook and my Twitter serve different purposes for my followers and my social network. My Facebook is much more social in nature – I’m more informal. My Twitter, while informal, is much more oriented to providing value to others in the industry.

Do my Facebook Friends care about what my Twitter Followers care about? I think not. Let me know what you think in the comments, post to my Facebook Wall, or tweet@me (@anwith1n).