Sparks went off when MasterCard’s Worldwide CMO Larry Flanagan realized that when you provide value to consumers you’ll have their attention.
Larry’s realization seems to align with a previous post I did that talks about how that’s exactly what MasterCard hasn’t been doing.
I have to admit the demo of the Priceless Picks iPhone app caught my eye. But after playing with it I realized that it’s just more of the same fluffy, 3D, useless crap - the user reviews seem to agree.
I continue to be disappointed with how MasterCard fails to bring to life one of the most icon brand platforms in recent history. Truly priceless indeed.
When doing some financial research recently, I came across a bank that I had never heard of before: Ally Bank.
I was impressed with how frank and human the language on their site was. I was even more impressed with the interest rates and terms they had for their banking products.
Thinking that this was too good to be true, I decided to do some digging. Turns out Ally is the newly-rebranded GMAC. GMAC as in General Motors, as in the bank that’s received two government bailouts.
I also then made the connection to the sponsor of one of my regular podcasts, NPR’s Planet Money. Well, the other shoe finally dropped, and Planet Money decided to do a program on GMAC last week as they’ve gone back to the government for a third bailout.
Kudos to the team for tackling the tough issue of critically reporting on a major sponsor.
I was lucky enough to stumble into a huge gallery installation of Jacques Villeglé‘s work a few years ago. Villeglé, who began making art in 1947, creates his collages by gluing layers of posters together, then ripping of sections to reveal what’s underneath.
A few weeks ago FriendFeed co-founder Paul Buchheit responded to the public’s concern about where things are going with FriendFeed.
There was a lot of chatter about the future of FriendFeed this weekend. The short answer is that the team is working on a couple of longer-term projects that will help bring FriendFeedy goodness to the larger world. Transformation is not the end. Consider this the chrysalis stage — if all goes well, a beautiful butterfly will emerge :-D
I, for one, am interested in seeing where they are taking the service.
After the initial hype died down a lot of the talk has been around FF living in the shadow of Twitter and (now owner) Facebook in terms of the size of its user-base. I have to agree there. I’ve been on the service for almost two years now and only have about a dozen connections - most of which don’t use it.
When FF first came onto the scene it was praised for the bevy of features it brought that other services were lacking. One service frequently mentioned was threaded conversations. I agree that this feature is great, but at the end of the day it’s dependent on people wanting to house their conversations on the service. While in theory the idea of a single place to host and thread your conversations is a good one, you need the community to support it. And a service that is primarily a feed is really not a community. For example, when I post a link to one of my blog entries on my Facebook page I frequently get comments on Facebook rather than on my blog.
But the biggest problem for me with FriendFeed is the user experience. While I don’t have many friends my feed is totally overwhelming. If you think you have a hard enough time keeping up with your Twitter feed, imagine that plus one-to-many-more services that your connection has plugged in to their feed - anything from Facebook, Flickr, Google Reader, Netflix, Posterous, last.fm, Tumblr, Vimeo .... the list goes on. You absolutely need a simple, smart, intuitive UI to bring meaning to this open tap. Currently they just let you segment your feeds - and that’s far from enough.
There is however one great use that I’ve found for FriendFeed - Groups. At work we’ve created a few Groups to share links and have conversations on various topics. It’s a snap to add an article to a Group - and because the group is small and focused it’s the natural place to thread your discussions. It’s been very successful.
What do you think? Would I see the light if I had more users? Am I using it wrong?
Or maybe this is a moot discussion, as the newly transformed FacebookFriendFeed will live up to the early predictions of Silicon Valley pundits and “represent the next big thing in social media”?
These have to be some of the most meticulously created steampunk leather and metal creations I have ever seen. The influences of The Brothers Quay, Tim Burton, Edward Gory, and Jean-Pierre Jeunut are certainly present.
