Grounded In Reality

Watch for a refresh of StarWars.com tomorrow when Lucasfilm releases 250 clips from the six “Star Wars” movies for fans to mash up.  (Yes, this means that you’ll finally fulfill your wish of terminating Jar Jar.)

Given his reputation for protecting his intellectual property, embracing consumer-generated content is a big step forward for George Lucas—he previously sued a Maryland company for making “Star Wars”-like light sabers and sued rapper Dr. Dre for using the audio boom at the start of the “Star Wars” films in his album “2001.”

This is a perfect birthday gift for fans as the “Star Wars” saga turns 30 this year.  Additionally, StarWars.com will host and aggregate hundreds of videos—some previously unreleased and some already on fan sites such as AtomFilms.com—as part of the 30th anniversary celebrations.

Goodwill to the “Star Wars” fan base aside, this is yet another brilliant marketing move by Lucasfilm to breathe new life into the “Star Wars” brand and make it relevant to the next generation.

ps: The rumor mill has it that Lucas is thinking of a new “Star Wars” movie, set at the time of the Old Republic, when the Jedi regained control of the galaxy from the Sith Lords.  I hope he doesn’t direct it.

NBC Nightly News did an interesting story last night on real-life churches, synagogues and mosques that are establishing a presence in Second Life.  The question now: Is virtual religion real religion?  Many people find the religious experience in Second Life to be gratifying and powerful; opponents argue there’s no substitute for real, face-to-face connections.

Check out the latest social networking application called Fidg’t by Santa Monica-based PROTOMOBL. It brings together all your different social networking tags, profiles, friends’ lists and conversations. Similar to Trillion and Pidgin (formerly Gaim) that integrated different chat applications under one roof, Fidg’t makes it easy for users to control and manage their online social life.

The Fidg’t Visualizer is a cool application that needs to be downloaded and works with Macs, PCs and Linux platforms. There is a central magnet where you type your query or tag. There are white bubbles that represent individual users and networks. The magnet is then drawn towards groups and users who are discussing the tag.

The user interface looks protoplasmic and very edgy in an extraterrestrial way. Apart from its cool looks and fun features, most exciting to me is the fact that it could act as the ‘little black book’ for the media community. You now have access to a central nerve control station of people coming together, talking and sharing ideas. Sounds pretty cool to me!

 Check the video of the Fidgt presentation at Innovate! Europe 2007 fromYouTube… 

The raise of digital media has presented more opportunities for the digital media team to consult on both Web site content and technical (SEO) optimization. To that end, I believe that the new version of Google Analytics will further break down the IT and marketing silos; and both Webmaster and PR professional will be held to higher standards of what works and what doesn’t for online content.

I recommend your spending 5 minutes to watch this features overview video to appreciate how easy it is now for the executive to measure ROI.

Thereafter, send your client an e-mail to discuss embedding the Google Analytics script on their site.  Fair warning: Don’t get too obsessed checking those Web metrics.

Social technographics®–a coin termed by Charlene Li at Forrester Research in a new report about how companies should start thinking about their media campaigns by understanding their audiences rather than beginning by considering the different digital channels and technologies available.

Like all things PR: hello common sense! I mean in a social setting, surely, you wouldn’t talk about the same things, or even use the same language while speaking with your parents as you would with your friends, right? Then why do the same with a media campaign?

It’s interesting to see how the communication strategy roadmap is constantly morphing. In school I was taught, don’t start thinking with the execution. First, think about what you want to achieve and then about what you want to say in order to achive the goal. Now, with the exploding societal effect of Web 2.0, you first start thinking about who your niche audiences are, and then you decide what you want to say to them and finally the how you’d do it.

Just as Steve Rubel mentions, it’s fascinating to see how applicable and appropriate this breakdown of communication strategy can be for a PR professional. Advertising is all nice and entertaining like during the Super Bowl half-time. But, it’s not about engaging your preferred audiences in a conversation as only PR professionals are trained to do.

The tricky/challenging part of this approach however, is that there is no one “right” way of achieving and measuring success. Although personally, I think this, by itself, is a reward on the job! How exciting is it that with a smart and thought out new media campaign we can impact not only perception of our audiences, but also the way they interact and experience these brands!

This constantly changing social technographics® landscape pushes us to think differently not only of the message and the product but also helps us to factor in how our key audiences will use these messages.

A call to action is no longer as simple as “please respond to this email.” It’s more like please respond to this email, post it on your blog, then add a widget about it to your social networking page and then finally discuss it with your family over the dinner table! (or not!)

Happy explorations!

If you know me, I have probably told you that I think everyone should have one…and I do.  But this morning, as I go to read my morning paper (AKA my Google Homepage) it has this funny letter in front of it?  An i.  But why?

I did the ususal to find out what the creative decoration of ‘Google’ meant by scrolling across it — nothing.  So, I close out of my personalized page and go to the main page to scroll across it — nothing.  What next? Google’s blog, where of course, I find the answer:

For a while now, we Googlers have used a bit of shorthand to refer to the Personalized Homepage — a name that connotes interactivity, the Internet, and personalization all at once. Please meet iGoogle, the new name for the Google Personalized Homepage.

Not a fan.  The lowercase “i” is WAY overused.  More than ‘that’s hot’…more than ‘duh’, ’sych’ and ‘dude’ all combined.  IMHO, Unless you are in a deal with Apple and required to start your products with an “i”, then DON’T DO IT. (anyone else feel this strongly?)

– I digress –

There is some interesting news following the name change (if you can get past it).  You get more capabilities and they come in the form of a photo gadget, a “GoogleGram” greeting card-style gadget, a YouTube video channel gadget, and a free-form gadget.  Create your own.

The photo one should be popular, based on the popularity of photo slideshows on MySpace. This will definitely consume some of my time today, but it will have to wait until this afternoon.  In the mean time, someone else should send me a GoogleGram!

I’ve been exploring Twitter, and I came across an interesting application: twittering a TV premiere. During the premiere of FOX’s “Drive” last night, the executive producer and director, Grey Yaitanes, twittered his personal commentary.

There might be something to this for companies to use. If you have an interesting, high-profile person twittering the “inside scoop” on an event or product, people might just tune in.

End of a long week, and I read that researchers are proposing to erase the internet and start over?!?!   Wow.

The Internet May Eventually Be Scrapped

Associated Press writes:

A new network could run parallel with the current Internet and eventually replace it, or perhaps aspects of the research could go into a major overhaul of the existing architecture.

These clean-slate efforts are still in their early stages, though, and aren’t expected to bear fruit for another 10 or 15 years — assuming Congress comes through with funding.

I think we can all agree that we would be much happier without spammers and hackers, but the thought of the internet being ‘wiped clean’ and restructured just gives me an uneasy feeling.

 Anyone been following this?  Opinions?

Leo Laporte’s move to Jaiku from Twitter caused both the crash of the Jaiku server (he has more than 4,000 followers, a greater following than Robert Scoble), and put Jaiku on the nanoblogging map.  (I have not heard of Twitter prior to SXSW Interactive 2007, and only heard about Jaiku on TWiT when Leo made the move.)

I’ve been checking out both services, and my initial recommendation is Twitter over Jaiku.  Though I think Jaiku has some very nifty functionalities (it invokes Apple’s userability while Twitter reminds me of a functional PC), I find that for now Jaiku:

• - Lacks instant message (IM) integration / alerts;
• - For the U.S. audience, it is likely to have inconvenient down times since it is based in Helsinki; 
• - Certain American carriers are blocking Jaiku SMS alerts, a bug that the company is working through;
• - Though offering cool Growler and Quicksilver scripts for Mac users is applicable only to a niche Apple market

For my U.S.-centric clients, I would have to recommend Twitter, for now.  That said, the market is young and it is too risky to predict the future of either service—and that of emerging competitors.