MindComet

YouTube is not a failure

An interesting article piece of pundrity appeared recently in Time Magazine entitled "The 10 Biggest Tech Failures of the Last Decade". Included are some not so surprising "failures" and one that has sparked quite the stir in the blogosphere. Technology pundit Douglas McIntyre has decided to declare YouTube a failure.

His reason? The inability of YouTube to effectively monetize the platform. While this is true, I don't think this justifies its inclusion into his list.

Doesn't YouTube deserve some credit for being a disruptive, game changing technology? It is, and forever will be, THE seminal video sharing site that paved the way for an american video sharing culture. They gave us that "first hit" and now we're hooked. In a recent blog post by eMarketer, they report that 72% of US internet users watch video clips monthly. That makes it bigger than blogging or social networking.

Simply put, YouTube has forever altered our culture and the way we communicate.

Note: It's my opinion that Douglas McIntyre intentionally included YouTube for the purposes of sparking a debate and ultimately driving traffic to his article and site 24/7 WALL ST.

Read More & View Comments

Posted by Jeremy Hilton on May. 28, 2009

Connecting with users on Twitter

Sorry for the lack of posts. The wife and I took a two week road trip and I failed (again) to pre-author posts for release during my absence.

While catching up on the 1000+ posts in my reader, I came across an interesting post by Scott Hepburn that touched on Twitter’s problem retaining new users. In my opinion, the problem with new user retention is a lack of imagination on their part. I’ve said it before, and I’ll keep on saying it, the power of Twitter is in your imagination! You must learn to leverage it for your needs.

Twitter is merely a tool. If you take the time to understand it and use your imagination when leveraging it, it can be an extremely powerful tool.

A good start for leveraging Twitter, is to connect with other Twitter users with similar interests. So how do you do that? Twitter search.

Twitter search is the perfect tool as it allows you to search peoples tweets for keywords. First thing you’ll want to do is identify what keywords you want to search for. These keywords should be relevant to subjects that you Twitter about. Why? You’re trying to plant the seeds for community here. You want to approach people who will have a high probability of finding your tweets interesting and will be likely to retweet your updates and engage you in online conversation.

For example: I love food and all things culinary. A recent experience at Lola in Cleveland has me obsessed with pork belly. So I decided to do a search for people Twittering about “Pork Belly“.

Next step is to read through these tweets and based on their content, identify users who might be interested in what you have to say.

Here are my search results with the target users highlighted.

Follow these people, hopefully they’ll follow you back. Do this exercise on a regular basis and you’ll soon find yourself with thousands of targeted and valuable followers.

Read More & View Comments

Posted by Jeremy Hilton on May. 22, 2009

MindComet launches Ride the Flying Ray

Are you headed to SeaWorld this summer? Want to know how to get some free stuff when your there? Keep reading…

MindComet recently launched Ride The Flying Ray, a social media promotional site for SeaWorld’s new flying coaster, Manta. To our knowledge, this is the first use of social media to launch a major attraction.

What does it entail?

There are a total of six activities centered around Manta.

Manta Quiz - This activity consists of five manta related questions. Users are encouraged to find the correct answers to all of them. Most of the answers are available by research through Google, however, to get all of the answers, users will need to follow the Twitter user @RealShamu.

Submit to Flickr - Users can complete this activity by taking a picture of themselves holding a “I Heart Manta” sign and submitting to Flickr.

Fill your row - Promotional sites are all about getting the word out. The Manta coaster has four seats to a row. Users can “fill their row” by inviting inviting friends to participate and converting at least three.

Submit To YouTube - Users create a video about Manta and post it to YouTube. Easy Cheesy!

Make a Manta Mask - We created a cut-out Manta Mask that users can download and wear, photograph themselves in and submit to Flickr.

Follow and Tweet - Users are encouraged to follow the @RealShamu user and send a tweet telling @RealShamu why their excited about Manta.

So, what’s at stake?

Successfully complete any two of the six activities, and users will receive a coupon for a free Manta photo.

Complete all six, and user will be awarded a front of the line pass for Manta! Woot!

Read More & View Comments

Posted by Jeremy Hilton on May. 01, 2009