SXSW Highlights
Posted on 26 March 2008 | 3 responses
The trip to Austin for the annual South by Southwest Interactive Festival was so much fun and educational.
As I stated before, I was most excited to see Facebook.com Founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, give his keynote talk. I wrote a post about my experience on my company’s blog called, The Infamous Mark Zuckerberg Keynote at SXSW. It was quite the keynote with a unique audience reaction.
I was also surprised to learn just how many people out there are using Twitter. If you are not familiar with Twitter, it is basically a mini-blog with 140 character posts similar to an IM away message. Without being a member of the site, I always thought it was a waste of time. However, seeing its incredible popularity by SXSW attendees of all ages, I think it might play a pivotal role in the future of communication. Check out my other LevelTen article, Is Twitter the Future of Communication?
I also learned in one panel called “The Female Takedown of Casual Gaming,” that more women are playing “casual” games than men. The term casual game, refers to desktop, mobile and internet based games; basically any game that is not played on a console unit. Females prefer to play games on computers and 62% of the PC casual only gamers are women. I had never considered myself a “casual gamer” before, but the fact that I was one of the women who purchased the 6th most popular game of 2007, Diner Dash by PlayFirst.com, made me realize that I fall into this category. Yes, I can admit this.
So the issue now with many of these companies that make casual games and market them to women like PlayFirst.com, is how to get more women designing, producing, and programming the games. At one point Pogo.com, whose users are 60-70% women, had absolutely no women working there. At PlayFirst.com, currently 26% of the designers and producers making the games are females but there are no female programmers.
Another interesting statistic for virtual worlds, is that half the avatars are women but it turns out that only 10% of the actual users are female. I never would have guessed that so many men like to play with female avatars, but I guess that is why games like Laura Croft Tomb Raider do so well. The attractive female character.
The panel believes that this female market is not just a trend. Females will continue to drive this casual gaming market especially as it becomes more social with chat boxes and forums integrated into the games.
Here are a few photos from the trip:
This was at Club de Ville.
Here I am hard at work, blogging and chatting with other participants in the SXSW Meebo chat rooms. (Photo taken by Stephanie Norsworthy)
This was the Lego play area, not only for kids.
Some of the LevelTen girls and myself.
Stephanie and I at the Google Party.
Beautiful downtown Austin (taken by Stephanie Norsworthy and edited by the creative Alice Noyes)
SXSW Interactive 2008
Posted on 5 March 2008 | 2 responses
This Friday, some fellow LevelTen employees and myself will make the trek down to our capital of Austin, Texas for the South by Southwest Interactive Festival. This 5 day event includes many educational panels and keynote speakers from industry innovators and leaders. In addition, there are nightly parties for those who are looking forward to experiencing Austin’s famous downtown nightlife.
I will be blogging about my experiences on the LevelTen Design blog and will hopefully learn some new things while I am there. The highlight of the trip for me will be to hear Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook.com’s Founder and CEO, give his keynote talk on Sunday. Check out the entire panel schedule on the SXSW website to see all the daily events.
And for those who are attending, check out this online scheduler to help you keep track of the events on each day. It has some great features and gives descriptions of each panel or event. I thought it was also easier than looking up all the panel descriptions on the SXSW website.
The Best of Google Maps Street Views
Posted on 28 February 2008 | 1 response
Downtown Dallas, Texas
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Beautiful Architecture in Downtown Dallas, Texas
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Do Super Bowl Commercials Work?
Posted on 5 February 2008 | 2 responses
Every year, advertisers spend millions of dollars to capture the attention of football fans nationwide. This year’s price tag was a whopping $2.7 million for 30-seconds of air time. But has Super Bowl advertising lost its flare? Has the general public become immune to advertisers efforts to shock and entertain them?
I believe Super Bowl advertising is on a downhill trend. We are bombarded by hundreds of advertising messages each and every day and while many people look forward to seeing the Super Bowl ads each year, I don’t believe the advertisers messages are making a real impact. Sure, they get headline news for one day after they air, but whether people remember the product they are trying to sell is key and is something isn’t always happening.
While I think some commercials may have missed the target (enough with the cavemen already) one commercial in particular did the best job getting the actual product benefit across. The Tide To Go “Screaming Stain” commercial not only showed the benefit of using the product at a crucial moment, but was also entertaining. That crazy screaming stain got quite a few laughs. Tide To Go has also create a mini site around this promotion which the chance to win prizes daily or become famous by creating your own spoof of the commercial. By the way, this was Tide’s first attempt at a Super Bowl commerical.
Check out Yahoo’s top five Super Bowl commercials and tell me what you think. Who did the best job of getting their product message across?
**Originally published on LevelTen Design Blog.
Who Owns Your Information?
Posted on 4 January 2008 | 1 response
A recent turn of events involving a blogger and Facebook, have brought about a very important question regarding the ownership of information that is available on social networking sites.
As reported by MediaPost, Wednesday night blogger Robert Scoble was kicked off of his own Facebook account for using a new feature of Plaxo to gather the names, e-mail addresses, and birthdays of his 5,000 Facebook friends. The ever popular social network claims that running this type of script to collect a large amount of data goes against the site’s Terms of Use. A recently created Facebook group that is campaigning to get Scoble’s account reinstated has more information on the matter.
While I understand that preventing scripts like this from running on Facebook is a necessary way to keep out spammers, I am left wondering why Facebook feels they have the right to stop you from collecting your friends’ information. If an individual creates a Facebook, MySpace or LinkedIn profile complete with their name, e-mail, sometimes address and phone, they are making the conscious decision to put that information in a public domain. I know you are probably saying to yourself that you have “privacy” settings, but your information is still in a public area (the world wide web=very public). But the real question that is likely to be debated heavily this year is when you put your information on a profile, does it become the property of the website/social network?
In my opinion, the answer is no. That’s the whole idea of the Web 2.0 era: websites with content generated by the users. It is the user’s content, not the network’s. Social networks would be blank pages without the information provided by the users. Facebook certainly shouldn’t think they have the right to own that information and do with it what they want. I know they do share some of the resonsibility to safeguard their member’s information, because otherwise people would be aprehensive about joining and creating that content. However, the information is not theirs, the do not own it and they cannot simply use it for their own advertising purposes (as it was recently thought they might).
So, what’s the moral of the story? Social networks need to respect the users who generate their content and realize it’s not their property, while users need to safeguard themselves and not put information on the web they don’t want the world to see.
**Article originally published on LevelTen Design Blog.
Blondes vs Brunettes: The Debate Continues
Posted on 18 December 2007 | 2 responses
When I first wrote my post titled Blondes vs Brunettes on my company’s blog, I never expected it to spark such a heated debate. I honestly never imagined I would get 74 responses! At the time, I also posted the same article on my personal site (this blog) and after adding Google Analytics, I was surprised to learn that most people found this website because of that one “Blondes vs Brunettes” article.
While I am pleased that it is a topic that gets people talking, I believe many people missed the main focus of my original article. From a marketing perspective, the ads run by Sunsilk that featured blonde haired women facing off against their brunette counterparts, really hit people on a personal level and made their commercials stand out from the average hair product ads. It seems as though these ads helped spark this recent activity on the web, which is a good marketing result for the product.
As a response to the 74 comments, the Sunsilk ads, and my article, were meant to be funny and not meant to be taken as seriously as some of the comments reflect. The ads were not meant to be offensive, and the idea that someone would sue over what these ads say is simply absurd. Of course everyone is going to have their own preference of which hair color they like on a woman, man, whoever. Hair color has nothing to do with brains, beauty or personality. And as far as implying that the actions of famous celebrities are a result of their hair color, ridiculous. I would never want to be put in the same category as some of the celebrities that share my hair color.
I hope that many of you were simply joking with the comments on my article, and that some people got the main point of my article: The campaign was a successful marketing tactic.
Life should never be taken that literally.
Pet Fish for Your Webpage
Posted on 26 October 2007 | 1 response
Introducing another cool Google Gadget: your very own pet fish. These cute little guys live in their own virtual tank that you never have to clean. By clicking your mouse, food will appear for the fish to eat, but don’t worry about overfeeding them because they won’t ever die. They will even follow your mouse around.
Take a look at my fish below (click on the water to feed them) and then go get your own.
Not sure what to name them…
Blog Action Day
Posted on 15 October 2007 | 1 response
As promised, today I am writing a post about the environment in honor of blog action day. It will be very interesting to see what kind of an impact will be made from thousands of bloggers all writing about the environment on the same day.
If you read my previous blog on Global Warming, you know that I am very passionate about energy conservation. Not because I share the same political views surrounding global warming, but because I think Americans are very wasteful with their energy. Whether it is keeping all of your electronics plugged in around the clock or leaving the lights on when you are not even at home, it is all very wasteful.
Remembering to unplug your phone chargers or laptops when not in use, can not only save you some money on your electric bill, but also help the environment. Especially turning off your heating and air conditioner when you are not home. According to wikipedia, space conditioning accounts for 44% of your household energy consumption. So in the summer, try using more fans and not blasting your AC at all hours of the day. A little conservation can go a long way if we all make positive changes together.
What Kind of Blogger Are You?
Posted on 9 October 2007 | 3 responses
A fun quiz to take to discover your “blogging” personality.
Here is mine:
Blog Action Day
Posted on 9 October 2007 | No responses
Next Monday, October 15, 2007, I will be participating in Blog Action Day. It is a day for all bloggers to give their opinions about one topic, the environment. Currently, there are over 8,000 participating blogs. All you have to do is write one post, how easy is that? So if you blog, I highly suggest joining the effort. You don’t have to agree with someone else’s opinion, just share your own. Check out their website for more information or to sign up your blog.
It will be interesting to see the impact so many blogs can have from discussing one topic in a single day.
This video has a great explanation: