Interactive Buzz - April 4 '08

Word of the Week - Twitter
So, do you Twitter? I don't Twitter but I'm beginning to feel just a wee-bit of peer pressure to start. Friends of mine at a competing agency seem to Twitter on a regular basis. Wellllllll, if they're Twittering, I certainly should be, right? Even if I don't become a regular Twitterer, I should at least have an account and become "one" with Twittering. So, what the heck is Twittering? Basically, it's simple. It's just "Microblogging". Or like they explain on their site "Twitter is a service for friends, family and co-workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?" (NOTE: Twitter is actually a "brand" of the microblogging category. It just happens to be the most well known, so we're making a brand into a verb for the sake of this post.) Blogging is for deep, insightful thoughts, opinions or sharing of ones life. Microblogging is for posting short thoughts, musings and ponderings. You're limited to 140 characters per posting. So, why the $@%# would you want to Twitter or read other people's Twitters? See the video reference I've noted below.

Great Online Video Execution
From the same site mentioned above - this is one of the most clever video executions I've seen in a really long time. Go to Twitter.com and click on WATCH THE VIDEO. It's simple, quick and entertaining. Add that to the fact that it is useful and has some pretty solid content. After watching it, I actually understand the purpose behind Twittering.

3M enters the "Make your own video" craze
(Sigh) As if it hasn't been done 1-million and two times already, 3M has entered the craze of "create a video about our product, share it, you could win!" They have a Microsite about the promotion, banner ads to drive you here, and a networking area for video uploads/views on YouTube that they pre-populated with self-created videos. Today (4/3/08) is actually their "YouTube buyout" day. This means that their video is placed on the home page of YouTube for the entire day in hopes of folks noticing it. I honestly couldn't make it through 1 version of a consumer-created video. I tried watching 8 different ones and...It was just too painful to watch. I don't think there were more than 8 posted total so far and I'm not sure how many of them were "3M" lobbied videos and how many were organic uploads. Maybe none if they're just kicking off the campaign. I'll watch this for a couple weeks and see how many total views they get.