swarm theory

Social Design

admin — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 17:12:27 +0000

A new social media site called Polyvore allows users to create product design sets from their favorite brands. The user grabs an image from a site, and then pastes it into their Polyvore interface, allowing them to create designs that are customized to their personal expressions. The usability is very similar to Kaboodle - a popular social shopping site. The sets are fun and interactive to use - but also provide brand managers and product designers with an extremely valuable tool to gain consumer insight on use and design.

Twitter Troubles

admin — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 11:58:59 +0000

Twitter is all the buzz these days and I am doing my best to jump on the bandwagon - but the system keeps letting me down. I’ve read that they just secured some additional VC funds to scale up to meet the demand and popularity - but how many users will they lose in the meantime? Regardless of how big I grow my following, the system still dumps it all and moves me back to day one. I will give it another week then i’m outta there.

Social Commerce

admin — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 02:17:53 +0000

I’ve been pretty geeked on widgets and other web 2.o tools for quite a while - mostly due their power to provide greater depth and brand reach within social media channels. However, there are a couple of companies that have figured out ways to monetize widget use and distribution by integrating internet retailer stores/products into a widget - resulting in “mini-stores” - that can be shared through any social media channel.

The big leaders right now are ToldYa! and Nooked. Check out their sites for examples.