generator

To some YouTube fans, the Web's iconic video-sharing site may appear to be losing its soul.

Two years ago, YouTube executives disdained anything but the most unobtrusive forms of advertising (no prerolls for them), and even promised to pioneer new ad formats. At the same time, YouTube refused to license rights to TV shows and feature films. Instead, the company bet big on the creative force of the masses to draw huge audiences and eventually advertising dollars. But things didn't turn out that way.

In the past week YouTube has announced it will auction off search terms as … Read more

I was interviewed by BrandWeek the other day for a story on the recent hype around “Design Thinking” in marketing. They were looking for a skeptic and found me. First of all, it is worth noting that the term “design thinking” is of course a clever marketing buzzword. It’s ironic that marketers themselves embrace it as the next big thing as it doesn’t create a new marketing paradigm so much as it proves that marketers are prone to being persuaded by their very own tricks. “Design Thinking” has become a brand, and brands are all the more powerful … Read more

(Credit: Plan Spark)

Now that the exhaustively inspirational Pop!Tech 2008  is over, it’s worthwhile taking a look at what’s next, in other words, at the conference's theme for 2009. The organizers’ choice is pretty telling and may be indicative of a larger shift among not only the elite thinkers gathering at Pop!Tech, but also broader public opinion. Succeeding this year’s theme “Scarcity and Abundance” will be “America Reimagined,” a “top-to-bottom look at America’s opportunities, its challenges, and its future” that promises to explore what it means to be a “superpower in the … Read more

YouTube has spent years trying to figure out how to monetize its mostly amateur-quality, user-created content.

The company has turned to pre-roll and post-roll ads, but Google CEO Eric Schmidt acknowledges that the "perfect ad product for YouTube has not been invented yet."

Perhaps Google is looking to the wrong inventors.

Traditional "Madison Avenue" advertising has failed YouTube. I agree with the sentiment expressed recently on the Marcom Professional blog:

In my opinion, one of the reasons that videos spread is the homemade quality....People are advertised to thousands of times a day. We see countless … Read more

Imagine seeing an ad on Facebook for a retailer like American Apparel or Target, and clicking a button to pass a 15-percent-off discount code to someone on your friends list. For advertisers looking to tap into the power of social networks, it sounds tantalizing.

That's the thinking behind "Engagement Ads," the new "experimental" advertising technology that social network Facebook unveiled last week. With the new program, members of Facebook can leave comments on participating ads, add the brands to their list of "fan pages," and use them to send friends virtual gifts. For … Read more

When I can hear a teenager's headphones through the din of a NYC subway car, I know he's on his way.

If I'm sitting a good 10 feet away from him and can still hear the screech of his headphones, I know the kid is killing his ears. Sure, I'm sometimes tempted to say something, but I never do. He's not really bothering anybody. And if he wants to be stone deaf by the time he's 30, well, it's his life.

But does he know that day by day he's doing irreparable … Read more

Want a cool looking background for your site or favorite nanoblogging service like Jaiku, Pownce, or Twitter? Check out BgPatterns, a site that's not unlike the Web 2.0 stripe generator in that it lets you put together really slick looking repeating backgrounds with a simple builder.

To make one you just pick out what kind of pattern you want, and choose the colors. It'll blend all the elements together and give you a simple JPEG file you can use wherever. Advanced users who want a little more control can tweak things like scale, image rotation, and opacity … Read more

Money talks especially when news of the economy tanking is constant. So, with this thinking in mind, I scuttled the idea of giving my 1st generation iPhone to my grandpa. It's dreadful to think of (1) the hassle and how long it would have taken to go into an AT&T store to swap his Nokia, invariably, AT&T will something screw up, it's just a question of how badly they do; and, (2) how much more adding a 2nd iPhone data plan would be. It just didn't make economic sense to get him an … Read more

Microsoft offered up a few more details on Tuesday about its upcoming online video game marketplace for aspiring game developers.

Originally announced in February, Microsoft will allow user-generated games to be sold on its Xbox Live service this fall. On Tuesday, the company said it will let the developers keep up to 70 percent of the revenue generated by their games.

The scenario is similar to Apple's App Store, which sells applications for the iPhone created by developers that pay a fee to put their creations for sale in the online store.

Game developers will have to pay $99 … Read more