An old college friend who avoids social networks addressed an intriguing problem recently:

“I’ve just decided what it is I don’t like about Social Networking… it’s the idea that it, when push comes to shove, my people can bury your people… Please, tell me I’m wrong, that the end result doesn’t allow those with the most connections to dominate society further for their own benefit at the expense of those with the fewest connections. Much like the rich vs. the poor struggles of yesteryear, only now we can rise above money – look, it’s purely about fame and how well you’re liked.”

As an indirect middle finger to bullies of the past who gained advantage by physical body size, bullies in the social networking world are often the geeks! One of the reasons people are racing to Google+ is that it’s easier and more natural to organize friend groups based on the way humans naturally organize themselves rather than feeling like you’re a database admin trying to maximize the efficiency of a friend database.  

Somewhere deep within Facebook are the tools and settings to make sure the people you care about show up before the “bullies.” Also, perceptions are skewed when Facebook’s algorithm tends to give people exposure simply for talking more rather than saying something you’d necessarily care about. Google+ Circles seem to move this in the right direction by making it easier and more intuitive to share certain info with specific groups.

I’m not 100% sold on Google generally, as it often behaves as one of the biggest bullies out there. I think all of this is perhaps the greatest social experiments we’ve ever witnessed, certainly the most public. And like all things, once our fascination with the technology wears off we can just get back to being people. Until then, I agree that human nature seems only to fight against the true potential of this technology: to bring us together and make people more efficient and benevolent. It unfortunately tends to provoke paranoia, greed, and ego as well.

Humans and other primates are intoxicated by celebrity. Social media has elevated many of us to a level of semi-celebrity, but still lends power to those with means and connections above the masses. I’m not sure this will ever change, as I do believe it’s part of our very nature, for better or worse. I share the dream of technology enabling collective good, but feel that we are quite far from fully realizing it.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Marketing, Social Media, Technology, Web

Emma, the EPS Astek sends all our emails out through, had a truly excellent round up of mobile-friendly-email design and programming guidelines.  Really great nuts and bolts stuff for all of us.  For the designers, things like recommended pixel sizes for links, fonts, email layout and landing pages widths and more.  For the programmers, actual code snippets for forcing certain behaviors to keep emails and landing pages sized for readability and interaction.

http://myemma.com/blog/2011/07/27/anna-yeamans-6-mobile-design-tips/

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Katie Hawkey Categories: How To, Marketing, Web

There’s not a lot of good that comes out of a recession – debt, foreclosures, decimation of retirement plans, etc., etc., etc. But one silver lining to every recession in American history is that moment when “…because that’s the way it’s always been done.” becomes “…well that’s what got us into this mess in the first place.” And when that philosophy finally shifts, when Americans really commit to finding new solutions, we can come up with really, really cool stuff.

Around mid-2009, I started hearing about this new focus in the technology world on “selling your by-products.” Manufacturers have been doing it for years, selling sawdust and fabric scraps. But now technology companies were starting to look at their work this way. And I don’t mean technology companies that manufacture products, I mean programmers. “What are the byproducts for programmers?” you might ask. Well in the case of the creators of Basecamp, 37 Signals, they count among their by-products a book, written from a foundation of the blog posts they wrote while building their product line, and a new programming language, Ruby on Rails. They wrote a great article on this idea that I still refer to today: http://37signals.com/svn/posts/1620-sell-your-by-products

But the tech world weren’t the only ones exploring innovative by-products. Around the same time this blog post started getting circled around the Internets. It’s an article about finding new ways for non-profit theatres to create reliable streams of revenue and it focuses on the “by-products” of theatre. What does that mean?

“…It means you sell memberships, not tickets. It means that if I pay you ten bucks a month, I get access. I can visit every rehearsal. I get a guaranteed ticket to every show you do. I get unlimited empty seat passes after I use my guaranteed ticket. When a guest artists comes to do a Suzuki workshop with your acting company, I get a chance to sign up too. For free. When you have some down time, your company members teach a class, and I get to come. For free. It means that instead of throwing your unused costumes and props in the dump, you throw a souvenir party. I get to come take home a souvenir. For free. Because I am a supporter, and that special-purpose prop is just more sawdust to you. Could you sell these things in other ways? Sure. You could do a prop auction. You could sell seats in a summer acting workshop. You can sell individual tickets. But I don’t think that’s the best way to sell the sawdust. Remember: we’re trying to stay away from simple transactions. We’re trying to concentrate our value into a long-term relationship. Don’t encourage your customers to track dollar-for-dollar what they get out of every transaction. Encourage them to understand that theater is a process. A process that costs money, but produces hundreds of wonderful results. Let them invest in the process, and then let them reap the results.”

The article goes on to encourage the use of technology to stream events, gather feedback from your members, allow that feedback to influence a production in progress, use your members as dramaturgs, focus groups, critics, and fans to not only build excitement for opening night, but to make the performance better and to build relationships with your audience that last all year round – not just the few days or weeks that you have a play running.

Pretty cool idea, right? And in the last couple years since that article there have even been performing arts companies embracing this new business model and are having success with it! But this idea can definitely use some more support. Specifically technical support…

…enter the Audience Engagement Platform:

http://www.youtube.com/v/2243Dwwqv4A

I’ve heard it described as “The Facebook for the Performing Arts” but I think it’s really a way for performing artists to sell their “sawdust.” It’s still in beta and by invite only, but if you can think of a performing arts company or individual that is forward thinking enough to really use this program, I’d encourage you to send them to this link to get in on the ground floor of this way-cool new platform!

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Katie Hawkey Categories: Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Web

The fashion label, Zophia, will be featuring the following signature red zipper’d QR code on the tags of its spring line:

We at Astek have been in major QR code discussions as of late, particularly where they lead and what the goal is of that funny little square of code. Being quite addicted to the fashion industry, I’ve seen other designers doing the “QR codes on clothing tags” route. They usually lead you to similar items in the collection, or to a the list of materials used to make the clothing, or to the designer’s website. With this planned code, when you scan it you see what the inspirations were for the line before seeing other items in the collection.

This is a very good example of thinking outside the box…in this case the QR box. What examples have you seen? What have you liked or not liked? Share in the comments below!

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Rachel Yeomans Categories: ePiphany Featured Story, Marketing, Social Media, Technology

We’re big fans of the Specialized Information Publishing Association (SIPA), an organization focused on the ever-changing needs of niche publishers, typically in the B2B space. As members and speakers, we’ve enjoyed getting to know the diverse groups involved, and I often learn as much as I teach at their seminars, since publishers are in the middle of a bone fide revolution.

Tom Lynch and I attended the national conference in Washington D.C. this month, and added “exhibitor” to our list of credentials. Astek’s growth has always been fueled by word of mouth from our happy customers (thanks!), but we felt it was important for us to add another layer of support for SIPA, as well as to get some extra exposure for Astek by having a booth that stood out and quickly became known as “Astek Lounge.”

I’m thrilled with how well our booth turned out, thanks largely to Vin at Vin Design, who is an expert in experiential design.

First things first. Tom and I headed over to IKEA to pick up some essentials. We were creating something very different from the blue table we were provided — a space that would invite people to come in and stay awhile. And it worked!

While we were giving away real apples (on the right), we decided to have a contest and give away another Apple in the form of a new iPad 2. People entered by scanning our QR code (on the left) to register for our ePiphany newsletter. This gave us an opportunity personally to help several SIPA members get their QR code readers installed and working on their smart phones, which proved most painful on Blackberries.

Check out Astek iPad winner Brad Forrister, of M. Lee Smith Publishers/Business & Legal Resources, basking in his new toy (green cover of course):

We had fun experimenting with colorizing QR codes, and used them on the table tents strewn throughout the lounge to make it easy to learn more about Webany CMS, ePiphany, and the people at Astek:

I gave a talk on mobile publishing to a standing room-only crowd. Every couple of years publishers are thrown for a new loop in technology: SEO, CMS, social media, and now mobile. We’re helping many publishers figure out how to go mobile, which is the fastest growing content consumption market.

SIPA is a very progressively-minded organization, and hired Astek to run Twitter for the whole conference. Rachel was putting in 12-hour days back in Chicago, but it was a raging success. Several members participated, both those at the show and ones who could not make it. We had two Twitter walls (one shown below with Kati and Anne), and hashtags for the conference and each seminar to facilitate macro and micro topical real-time conversations.

I tweeted the awards ceremony in real-time and Rachel picked up the broadcast to retweet through @sipaonline. It was a blast and really demonstrated the power of Twitter to the attendees. We’re racing with it, offering this service to all kinds of conference organizers. Twitter has come a long way since I first wrote about it in 2008, and the conference aspect has become the clearest way for me to explain its true potential to people.

We had a tiny bit of downtime in the booth, which Tom used to show me how to juggle apples:

At the end, we donated the IKEA furniture to the local Boys & Girls Club of America, who were as thrilled to get it as we were not to ship it home. Now that’s a win-win.

See you in Miami!

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Andy Swindler Categories: Entrepreneurship, ePiphany Featured Story, Fun, How To, Marketing, Technology

I wanted to make sure you designer types and font-iphiles all know about Google’s growing selection of free web fonts.  Google’s font library started with 18 fonts about a year ago and it’s been growing steadily. This service was mentioned to me separately by two designers in the last week so I thought it worth a mention on the Astekblog as well.

To date there are 155 fonts (+variations) available that are supported by Google and available for FREE download so you can use them in Adobe while creating your designs.  

Check it: http://www.google.com/webfonts

(Can I get a “Whoo hoo!”?)

Are you wondering why this is a big deal? Here’s the low down on web safe fonts and how Google is helping:

• For the last decade or so, there were only about a dozen fonts that were universally loaded on all computers that were considered “Web Safe”.  If you used a font that was not on the list on a website, then different people would see the text on your website rendered differently depending on what fonts they had on their computers.  
• Previous work-arounds created problems:
  • Changing unsafe fonts to images
    • Not readable by search engines 
    • A pain in the butt to update
    • Not a realistic option for websites driven by content management systems.
  • Embedding a Font for your site – allows you to use “live” text, but…
    • More programming time (expense)
    • Requires Javascript or other more advanced programming language
    • Slower page load times because people had to download the font
    • Often had to pay for rights to use fonts

Google has addressed pretty much all of these issues:

• Programming Issues: To use one of their fonts, you only have to add one line of HTML code to your style sheet which you can just copy and paste in.
• Cost: They are all free and open source (though they encourage a donation).  Google provides the fonts for free download so you can use them to design.  They are adding new fonts all the time (they started off with about 18 fonts a year or so ago).
• Load Time: According to Google: “If a page uses a google web font, then the font files have to be downloaded to the site visitor’s computer before they can be displayed initially. The font files are served compressed for a faster download. After that initial download, they will be cached in the browser. As the Google Font API becomes widely used, your visitors will be likely to already have the font you’re using in their browser cache when they visit your page.”
• Consistency across browsers: They’ve got this pretty much covered:
  • Google Chrome: version 4.249.4+
  • Mozilla Firefox: version: 3.5+
  • Apple Safari: version 3.1+
  • Opera: version 10.5+
  • Microsoft Internet Explorer: version 6+
  • Any browser excluded above is less than 1% of the current browser market: http://marketshare.hitslink.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qprid=2
  • Mobile operating systems, include:
    • Android 2.2+
    • iOS 4.2+ (iPhone, iPad, iPod) 

• More info at: http://code.google.com/apis/webfonts/faq.html

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Katie Hawkey Categories: Marketing, Technology, Web

It is a well-known (or perhaps not-so-well-known) fact that YouTube is the second most popular search engine behind Google. With that being said, whenever a brand or company wants to launch a social media campaign or initiative, it usually incorporates video. Some of the most successful company video presences I have come across online are as follows:

• Inside Zappos
• Wine Library TV
• Old Spice

I am of course leaving many out, but this is at least a decent snapshot. These three video channels showcase brands that have really established a voice through video representing their companies’ missions and goals.  Other companies have tried to gain notoriety in the video arena for one-off campaigns. Some examples include:

• JCPenney and the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising
• Kenmore Fashion
• Samsung Dance

And now we have…Perrier! To exude its Parisian mystique, the sparkling water company launched ‘teaser’ videos on its YouTube channel. The more views, the more videos that are unlocked. There’s also a prominently-placed thermometer next to the YouTube screen showing how ‘hot’ the Perrier Party is getting. The presence is also supported by a website that touts itself as a source on nightlife, along with a Twitter account. The Perrier Facebook page also has an application letting you ‘in to Le Club Perrier’. Please note, there are also several other Society Perrier Facebook pages that seem to support the website and Twitter account, but not specifically the Le Club Perrier campaign. It’s a bit confusing, but the primary focus should be the videos.

The campaign is based off of some TV spots that were launched earlier this month. The digital campaign will be featured in the U.S., France, Belgium and Canada, and run through the end of the summer. And yes, there is an incentive involved. “Le Club Perrier” is offering participants the chance to win a trip to New York with VIP access to the “Le Club Perrier” party in September at a local night club.

I’d love to show you a video here, but alas the channel doesn’t allow blog embedding. Click on the image above and you’ll be escorted to their YouTube page to join in the fun times! Bubbles up!

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Rachel Yeomans Categories: Marketing, Social Media

For those of us who work in social media and are asked to come up with these BIG ideas and these GRAND campaigns…we usually hit the same roadblock at about the same time of the planning process. You have this big idea and grand campaign, and it’s fabulous. It is planned to engage your existing customers, bring on new ones, and truly provide a unique and fun experience – pretty much what social media is meant to do!

Then…you run it by your PR and Legal team for approval. And you hear phrases like this:

• “You have to make sure that the link to the Terms & Conditions is only one click away from the message promoting the contest, so you need two links in your Tweet.”

• “You have to remove that photo from your Facebook Wall because we didn’t get written permission from the individual in the background to show them on Facebook.”

• “Once you select a winner you can not ask for their mailing information via email as that’s exchanging personal information and is illegal. You have to get their phone number and call them.”

• And so on, and so on.

Yes, these processes are tedious, and they can be extremely frustrating. However, they are there for a reason. Yes there are times I myself want to pull my hair out by making sure that this amazing contest has the appropriate Rules written to accompany them. It definitely seems to take the ‘fun’ out of social at times.

However, when you work for a company, for a brand, or for any professional entity, your business or even yourself have the potential to get sued for what is said on social media platforms. It has happened. And if it happens to you, you may not speak so quickly when bashing PR and Legal.

For example, if you post an image from Google Images on your company’s Facebook Page, that photographer can sue you for not paying them for the photo credit, for not giving them credit for the photo, or by misrepresenting the photo itself. And that’s just one little photo. For specific examples of social media cases that provided quite a bit of notoriety in the law, check out Glenn B. Manishin’s blog post on the 2010′s top four law cases in social media. A more recent case you may have heard about is the case of Ryan Giggs suing Twitter for breach of injunction.

The issue of legal issues within the realm of social media is quite timely to the point that GSMI just last week hosted a conference in Boston on social media risks and strategies. For latest updates from GSMI, check out their Twitter handle. One of their posts from last Friday may not surprise some of us:

Social media is a new industry meaning that everyone’s catching up to it including the industries that are using it and those who are fighting to protect themselves and others from it. So before you start bad-mouthing Legal and PR during your next campaign, think about what may happen if you received the court notice because you didn’t have them in the beginning.

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Rachel Yeomans Categories: ePiphany Featured Story, Marketing, Social Media

After recently attending SXSW Interactive in Austin, TX, and the CoreNet Global Midwest Summit in Chicago, I was struck by the major distinctions between the trade show floors and technology usage.

Leave it to a corporate real estate association (CoreNet) to know how to make incredibly inviting spaces that made me want to sit down and stay awhile, and even get a bit of work done. Placing lunch tables behind the trade show floor created multiple motivations to move through the space and discover new companies.

Leave is to the ultimate geek conference (#SXSWi) to treat the trade show floor in the most traditional, and in my opinion unappealing, format — rows upon rows of standard booths, with only a couple of premium players creating spacial environments. But even these were typically focused around a stage of some sort rather than a space inviting people to stay awhile.

On the technology side, I’ve never seen such focused and practical usage of cutting-edge technologies like Twitter and Foursquare as I did at SXSW. In this environment, it seemed strange not to look at a piece of technology regularly, whether at lunch or in a session. At CoreNet, a more traditional environment, I was the odd man out to have my phone visible during a session.

Next time I’ll get pictures!

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Andy Swindler Categories: Entrepreneurship, ePiphany Featured Story, General, How To, Marketing, Technology

While I’m a frequent traveler to Austin, TX, for music events and family, this was my first time at South By Southwest Interactive (#SXSWi). SXSW is divided into Interactive, Film, and Music festivals, each world-renowned for the quality of talent, content, and fun.

SXSWi is the height of Tech geekery, mostly focused around Web and mobile apps related to social media, such as Foursquare or Twitter. This is my crowd, for sure, and our social media guru Rachel Yeomans was even more plugged in than me due to her incessant and productive use of Twitter.

I dusted off my Twitter account just for the occasion. While I was one of the first people on it three years ago, I’ve found it difficult to keep up, which is a common issue for our clients to which I can relate! I’m glad I brought it out, though, as much of SXSW takes place on Twitter. This isn’t a surprise considering that Twitter essentially launched at SXSW years ago, but what did surprise me was the advanced and consistent use of hash tags to create interactive audience feedback for every session. Moderators would monitor the Twitter traffic for that session and involve the audience as they could.

Most of the big tech brands were present, as were most of the geek celebrities. A highlight for me was getting to meet a childhood geek hero, Guy Kawasaki, who was there supporting his new book, Enchantment. I fondly remember reading Guy’s column in MacUser magazine in the early 90s. As Chief Evangelist for the Mac when it was first released in 1984, he was there right at the beginning. Now he turns much of his attention to helping entrepreneurs, writing, speaking, and VC’ing. I got to meet him at his book signing, pictured below!

The learning, networking, funning, eating, and yes… drinking, all made for a dense and highly worthwhile experience, starting with legos. When we first arrived at the conference center, I found three huge tables full of legos, which immediately put me in a five-year-old state of mind. Perfect! No, we didn’t spend the whole time there, but it was a good way to get the juices flowing.

Me and my amazing creation…

And our friend Miguel Cano, from JSH&A, working on his own…

Presenter highlights included Chicago friend Jenni Prokopy (ChronicBabe) talking about building better health communities. An interview with publisher Tim O’Reilly gave us a glimpse into the future of digital. I learned about everything from social media metrics to text donations for nonprofits to web typography to mobile optimization to user experience process and more. I did make it one film event — a panel with Rainn Wilson for his new movie, Super. And somewhere in there we even made it to a couple of parties!

The food trucks are a highlight of Austin, particularly in the downtown area. Rachel, Miguel, and I walked until we found one with a short line — Turf N’ Surf Poboys. Yum…

Major sponsor and Foursquare competitor Gowalla was heavily represented, though I stuck to Foursquare personally. And vowel-challenged startup SCVNGR had everyone running around finding things for various types of rewards. All this served as real world preview of what is being largely hailed as the “next big thing” — the gamification of pretty much everything. What’s that? Well, it basically means that technologies with built-in game mechanics are more successful at getting people to actually use the technology. The best app in the world is useless if nobody uses it.

Foursquare, in my opinion, is the most successful example of merging game motivation with real-world advertising. While I’ve been using the mobile app for nearly two years, I’ve never seen such an intense concentration as I did at SXSW. People were checking in to everything, everywhere. Every room, event, party, and sometimes cars. I hit a new week record of 403 points! They released a big update to the app for SXSW, so it now tells you lots of good tidbits related to your own data, such as how long it’s been since you were at that location. This intrigues me since I purposefully choose not to broadcast my location to very many people.

The Foursquare people were everywhere as well. Forty of them came to SXSW, including co-founder Dennis Crowley, who I saw interviewed by Mashable SEO Pete Cashmore. In a particularly humbling moment for Dennis, an enormous print of his GAP ad was brought on stage and offered up to the audience member with the best question.

Dennis spoke about the future of Foursquare, and his vision to help you remember and find that coffee shop your friends were telling you to visit when you go to San Francisco, for instance. I also had a nice chat with Foursquare General Manager Evan Cohen after a smaller discussion he led with Lisa Bradner of Geomentum about the future of geo-related marketing and advertising.

Saving one of the most amazing moments for last, Rachel suggested we check out a live recording of The Nerdist with Chris Hardwick podcast at Esther’s Follies, a really fun local venue with lots of history. Fifteen minutes into the recording, Chris said it was time to bring out their special guest, who was none other than John Oliver from The Daily Show! Rach and I just about fell out of our chairs, as we’re both HUGE fans. We were treated to more than an hour of John hamming it up with the guys.

We’re looking forward to next year! Hope to see you there, too.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Entrepreneurship, ePiphany Featured Story, Fun, Gadget, Marketing, Social Media, Technology, Web