Posted September 9th, 2008 by Brad Wellman
Mike Rynchek
Spyder Trap Online Marketing
Today, the BioBusiness Alliance of Minnesota debuted its new online tool, BIOMAP, to encourage and drive innovation in Minnesota. BIOMAP, as quoted from the organization’s website, is an “interactive mapping tool, representing all of Minnesota’s bioscience industry, and was created by the BioBusiness Alliance of Minnesota as a way to create awareness of the state’s bioscience capabilities.”
BIOMAP achieves this goal by having a highly searchable database of Minnesota’s bioscience assets. The BIOMAP enables users to locate companies on an interactive map via geographic searches - such as by city, county, or legislative district - or through industry searches - such as medical devices, pharmaceuticals, animal health and renewable energy to name a few.
According to Jeremy Lenz, vice-president of operations for the BioBusiness Alliance, the hope is that by viewing data points on a map, people will start to see our companies and institutions not as isolated pockets of innovation, but rather in the larger context of Minnesota.
In the end, the vision to create a more cohesive network of Minnesota’s bioscience community has been achieved, thus fostering innovation not only in Minnesota, but ultimately to the rest of the country and to the world.
Read more about BIOMAP in the Star Tribune’s Patent Pending Blog here.
Learn more about the BioBusiness Alliance of Minnesota and the BIOMAP project by visiting their website.
Tags: BioBusiness Alliance of Minnesota, BIOMAP, Minneapolis Online Marketing, Star Tribune
Posted August 18th, 2008 by Mike Rynchek
Mike Rynchek
Spyder Trap Online Marketing
“Everything is based on the Burden of Interactivity,” Juan Antonio stated during the August, 13th MIMA event on video marketing. As interactive marketers, this is where the rubber meets the road. New and creative ways to attract and ultimately engage users with our online brand(s) is what we all strive to achieve and are held responsible for. Video marketing is one force pushing that boundary of interactivity as video viewing and sharing continues to become increasingly popular. This surge of online viewership is evident in the statistics discussed during the event. Ciceron CEO and MIMA presenter Andrew Eklund states that nearly 33.7 percent of males age 18-24 view a video at least once per day. Even more impressive is nearly 75 percent of people receive links to videos. Even large brands such as Minnesota based 3M are looking for new and creative ways to take advantage of this surge. For this they turn to video marketing creative firms such as Jake Nyberg’s Threevolts, who was responsible for 3M’s “Protect The Walls” campaign, a viral spoof on NBC’s The More You Know campaign.
As if video marketing isn’t cutting edge enough, video pioneers such as Christina Cordova are taking it one step further. She is working on an interactive product placement video that would allow users to interact with the video and actually click on the product. Chuck Olsen, a video journalist and MIMA presenter, is learning to embrace new video technologies that allow him to break news simply using his laptop web camera. Video bloggers and journalists are learning to take advantage of new technologies such as Qik. Qik is a piece of software that integrates into certain Nokia phones transforming your mobile phone into a streaming mobile phone camcorder.
As we all can appreciate, it is difficult to forecast/monetize the results of a particular viral video campaign. However, firms’ ROI expectations are still present. With the surge of video creation, viewing and sharing the “Burden of Interactivity” already felt by interactive marketers is rapidly shifting to video marketers. Firms such as 3M are becoming more understanding of the potential power of video marketing, but still strive to track and expect to achieve results. Video marketers such as Juan, Jake and Christina are facing the “Burden of Interactivity” head-on, and their solutions are changing the face of marketing as we know it.
Tags: MIMA, Minneapolis Interactive Marketing, Minneapolis Online Marketing, Viral Marketing
Posted August 6th, 2008 by Mike Rynchek
Mike Rynchek
Spyder Trap Online Marketing
Perhaps this post is meant to be a series instead of a single post as it contains many gray and debatable areas. Before the debate can even begin, people must first recognize the signs of social spamming, what it is and how this new phenomenon is being handled by social media sites. With that said lets get started!!
What is Social Spamming?
Communicating with others and sharing information has never been easier than at this very moment in time. Duh right? But at what point do these millions upon millions of messages per day become a bother, nuisance or ultimately considered “spam”? When does forwarding a message on Facebook, or adding constant self-promoting tweets on Twitter cross that boundary into Social Spamming territory? Martin Bowling (@martinbowling) a fellow Twitterer feels that social media spamming “isn’t about dropping an occasional link, it’s about constantly promoting your message & not giving back.” I would have to completely agree with Martin. Whether posting a friend on Facebook, commenting on a blog post such as this one or joining a Twitter conversation, social media is something that is to be shared, collaborated and enjoyed by all. There are no percentage points or thresholds that must be crossed, rather the common barometer that states you are now adding to the clutter rather than the conversation. When writing this post I was unable to find a true definition of social media spamming so here is my personal attempt: Social Spamming: The act of receiving or sending unwanted messages and pieces of information via a social media platform. Hmm… Not bad.
How is Social Spamming being controlled?
Social media sites such as Facebook and MySpace are quickly trying to crack down on social spamming, mostly in the form of reporting groups/users and deleting door-to-door messaging offenders (promoting your page or group by going to random pages and posting your link or message). Monitoring social media raises even a bigger question: Should social media sites control what people do within their environments? Does this go against everything that is so great and powerful with social media and the Internet in general? Another great example of cracking down on social spamming is Twitter. Perhaps allowing people to un-follow others is their less abrasive form of controlling social spamming; more-or-less giving the power to the people to self regulate what content they receive. Aaron Weiche (@AaronWeiche) of Five Technology and avid user of Twitter commented on social spamming via Twitter by stating, “Lots of gray area to consider. I’m following you, so I have a filter to un-follow. Audience, context, control, all factors.”
Where do we go from here? Not too sure right now, but I do know Social Spamming will without a doubt be a phrase that is used much more as time goes on. It will also be interesting to see how social media sites continue to control the amount and quality of content that is being displayed and how people react to this regulated environment.
Tags: Facebook, Flickr, Minneapolis Online Marketing, MySpace, Social Media, Social Spamming, Twitter, YouTube
