Multimedia-Fashion

"Google announced that Google+ has 40 million users today. Woo-hoo! That's nearly half what Twitter claims, right? And while it's below Facebook's 800 million, Google's getting there, right? Wrong. The number simply can't be compared to Facebook and Twitter."

"How many real connections do Twitter users have? Not just silent following, not retweeting, not a stray @ message to someone, but a real back-and-forth conversation. How many people can you maintain that kind of contact with online before you get overwhelmed? The answer, on average, was roughly 150."

"Pinterest is a place where we can demonstrate: 'If it weren't for all those mundane things that I do that I post on Facebook, this is what I would be doing and consuming. Here is my real self"

"After the social networking sand settled with Facebook on top over the last half decade, the social behemoth seemed untouchable. Twitter, far behind in second place, wasn't a direct competitor for a while, since it focused on public conversation and Facebook mostly targeted private, friends-only conversations. Google+ entered the picture and managed to shake things up a bit, making both networks question their own identities, adding new features left and right to try to be everything to everyone. Here we are, at the Social Network Identity Crisis of 2012, and it isn't pretty."

"What works for one business might not work for another, and Facebook, Google Plus, and Twitter each have their pros and cons. As a result, many businesses create pages on all three sites, thinking that "more is better". However, I don't think that's always advisable, especially for small businesses. This is primarily because many businesses tend to create and then abandon their social media profiles."

Our industry is afflicted with shiny object syndrome, a focus on the new tools, without thinking about the content that will drive it. As we mature and the tools make it easier to share information, companies need to be extra sensitive to the content that will be shared, both that's created by the brand, and the customer.

"Enter mobile visual search (MVS). With MVS, you simply point at a product or logo and shoot a picture with your smartphone's built-in camera. Within seconds, the MVS application will provide product or company information, or even the option to make a purchase right then and there on your mobile device. "

I was talking with industry peer Michael Brito (former Intel and now at Edelman) about the maturity of the space at Cisco's social media week yesterday, and we both agree this space is just heating up.

If you've passed through Waterloo station today, the likelihood is that you've already spotted the giant M&S Valentine's Day billboard. Hopefully, you will have experienced Katya - the model on the billboard - come to life by downloading a Smartphone app called 'Aurasma Lite', and received a little extra Valentine's Day inspiration whilst making your commute!

"Watch "A Day Made of Glass" and take a look at Corning's vision for the future with specialty glass at the heart of it."

PlaceWhisper is designed to be a platform that puts you in control of creating your own located content experiences to share with others. There's a huge range of possibilities for what you could create, and over the next couple of weeks we're going to take a look at some examples of what you could create and share with your friends and the world using PlaceWhisper. First up - a personal guide to where you live.

"Social media can be a great way of increasing brand awareness, customer engagement and long term loyalty and generating a short term boost in sales, but it's also a potential minefield and in the worst case, a bottomless pit into which you endlessly shovel money with nothing much to show for it."

"Companies and organisations in their marketing audit should be assigning value to their social online properties and here is a core concept and some ideas to consider."

"Levi Strauss's partnership with Facebook has translated into brand value. Over the past Thanksgiving holiday weekend, more than half of all visitor traffic to levi.com came from the company's Facebook page, which now gets more than 1 million visits every month. Today, it has more than 6.2 million "Likes" or followers on its Facebook page, Peck says, adding: "We understand the power and influence that friends and family can have." "

"So what does matter? What should you be measuring? How do you establish influence without focusing on the influence numbers? Ask yourself this one question… "Are you relevant to your audience?""

Social media efforts are in full swing, too-they have been for the past month.  But is all the chatter effective? Does it matter how many people you reach if you don't reach the right people?

"Before preparing to tackle the wide array of topics, questions and issues that your customers will pose, it's important for the social media team to understand the different types of complaints and work out how to respond to each."

"If This Then That" Put the internet to work for you.

This semester, I have been asked to be a guest speaker in the "FASH325 Multimedia Fashion Presentations" course, one section taught by Sharron Lennon and the other by Brenda Shaffer. This post is a placeholder for materials and links related to this special appearance, that, I hope, can be of general interest to readers of this blog.

Home base for Mathieu's presentation. Slides and links.

"When you're new to someone's home, you conduct yourself in a respectable manner. If you see that people take their shoes off before going upstairs, you ask if you should take your shoes off (at least I do). You basically conduct yourself in a way that's respectful of the other person's space."