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Wells Baum is a Futurist, Creator, and Music Explorer. Always connecting the dots on screen.
![all creatures [great and small] by allcreatures](http://24.media.tumblr.com/avatar_827f13ebf9f5_40.gif){kind=avatar}
Seen on the subway.
Okay?
Technology makes tracking the sale easier but the variety of platforms makes it difficult to track where the impulse occurs:
A marketing manual put out by Google likens today’s customer journey to a “flight plan”, a zig-zagging odyssey of apps, shops, social-media sites and online searches conducted on both fixed and mobile devices and unique to each shopper.
Facebook’s Graph Search was turned on for her and she was amazed at the people she could find. “Mutual friends in the double-digits and identical musical tastes and they like Lost In Translation?!” They would definitely hit it off if they had the opportunity to connect. Facebook gave her two options to do exactly that: Add Friend or Message. Did she do either? “Of course not! That would be so fucking creepy.”
It’s not even the creepy part that prevents this from happening; it’s the context. Facebook built itself as a friend network but Internet users like following people of interest more.
I subscribe to some brands on Facebook but never people. For that, I use Twitter, Tumblr, and Pinterest.
Permission marketing is more personal on Facebook. And that’s the problem. People want to hang out more, at least adopt a vicarious feeling of doing so, with those they aspire to be, not those who are their friends.
Tumblr, in many ways, is a visible manifestation of this new New York, one where startups combine technology with content (one of New York’s core industries) for a new world.
There’s content and then there’s the power of distribution.
Now that it’s become a city of great storytelling, it’s now time for New York to make a huge push on the latter: technology.
Facebook is still five times bigger than Twitter, the second of the world’s leading social networks, at least the Western ones.
Pinterest is looking mighty appetizing right about now. I bet Twitter takes a piece, if this is any indication.
(Chart via Alexis Madrigal)
Breaking: Yahoo’s board of directors has approved a $1.1 billion acquisition of Tumblr, according to reports by the Wall Street Journal.
I think Yahoo will give this acquisition the one it deserves. They do that by allowing Tumblr to operate as its own, as Facebook does with Instagram.
There’s no way Marissa Mayer allows another mismanagement gaffe as Yahoo did with Flickr. She’s cutting through big company woes.
BuzzFeed explores the different types of social networks (mainly Facebook and Twitter) and concludes that we’re headed right back to where we started, privacy and direct messaging, “AIM.”
Message-heavy services like Snapchat, Kik and Whatsapp — are more “social” and less “network” than what came before.
For the past few months, I’ve been sending more content I might have shared on Facebook or broadcasted or Twitter to my direct audience via iMessage where I know I’ll get a response.
The Internet is the new predator. The only way to encode data is to focus so we can make short-term attention stick in the long-term.
Many of us (including myself) are thinking like computers. Pay attention and “control your mind.”
And take a break now and again. Walk without a connection.
While searching for “world music” within Twitter one is most likely to find results about Justin Bieber’s “Around The World” track instead. A simple Google search for the same keywords brings up a variety of institutes, theaters, and World Music networks.
Pre-Internet, “World Music” fans mostly consisted of academic Westerners interested in the globe’s otherness. The music itself was essentially non-English and played with more natural, local instruments from Africa, the Caribbean, Eastern Europe, India, and the Middle East. Celtic and Russian choir music could also be classified as World Music.
World Music still sounds native, unfamiliar, and far less digitized than mainstream music: Pop, Rock, and Rap. It has its own category in the iTunes Music Store and hours of streaming on Pandora.
But today, world music either gets mixed into mainstream culture and reclassified or goes buried in the troves of mainstream music which dominate social media chatter.
Those non-Western countries that are highly connected have a greater chance to crossover.
South Korean Pop artist Psy for instance is a World Music artist whose viral video “Gagnam Style” earned him mainstream, Western Pop success. YouTube backed Psy, the same way mass radio Westernized Ricky Martin and Shakira.
Conversely, the digital divide prevents World music artists from successfully marketing themselves. Not everyone has Pro Tools, an iPhone and high speed connectivity. This is where World music becomes more of a world aid program than about the quality of the music itself.
Bob Marley, Fela Kuti, and the Buena Vista Club all demonstrated how commercialization strengthened their local culture. The problem today is that the Internet just wants to Westernize everything.
For World Music, the digital era simply means it either gets absorbed and recasted or converted into an outreach program, known as World music.
(I originally wrote this piece for Flaunt Magazine but they never got back to me.)
Pinterest is about the things people aspire to buy, the things they want. Instagram is people celebrating what they bought.
Pin desires, Instagram realities.
Kids aren’t leaving social networks. They’re redefining the word “social.” Rather, they’re actually using the word with the intent of its original meaning: making contact with other human beings. Communicating. Back-and-forth, fairly immediate dialogue. Most of it digitally. But most of it with the intent of a conversation where two (or more) people are exchanging information and emotion. Not posting it. Exchanging it.
Social, as in conversation, where every post gets a guaranteed response and relationships are built to last; not “social” as in mass distribution (Twitter/Facebook) where most posts go unheard because no one is paying attention.
It’s not that people born after 1980 are narcissists, it’s that young people are narcissists.
Young people want to be naked and famous.
He pointed out that there’s a lot of “reality” in the virtual, and a lot of “virtual” in our reality.
Internet fanatic Paul Miller went offline for a full year only to find out he lost day to day connection with friends and family. He also got really bored and resorted to old behaviors.
We live in a digital reality now. To ignore the Internet is to ignore basic communication.
There are clearly benefits to living offline: appreciation for nature, renewed focus, and intimacy. But those things can also get stale as they become the new normal.
The offline/online approach is ultimately about balance. The latter just may be a lot stronger. Pace yourself.
Native advertising is a means to an end – engagement. At the end of the day, content is the real movement empowering advertisers to engage with consumers on their own terms. And if you’re creating interesting, trustworthy content, blending in with the walls needn’t be your first consideration. As long as the experience you’ve provided adds value for the reader, native placements can be just one amplification tactic in part of an overall content strategy.
Native advertising is still naked even if it tries to blend in. The content should be enough to speak for itself. Finding the right sponsor to support great content in an integrated way is just icing on the cake.
It’s no surprise that hashtags increase your chances of likes and followers. But you’re also more likely to grow your followers by simply asking for likes/follows and reciprocating.
Instagram strategy: Quid pro quo.
