Happened to know that Shortcovers(http://www.shortcovers.com/) which is owned by Canada’s biggest booksellers, Indigo Books&Music(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigo_Books_and_Music), is about to introduce electronic book application which can be used in iphone. Other than more than 50,000 books, Shortcovers will provide news, journals, instant messages and blog service.

Lots of companies are now trying to incorporate social media into their marketing campaign. Twitter as a very famous social media platform has become a important place for companies to do that.

Tracking Twitter(http://trackingtwitter.com/brands) is a website used to classify companies that have profiles in Twitter. It sorts all those brands by media, television, celebrities and electronic artists. Under these four big groups, it further classifies those brands for the purpose of bringing convenience to users. Further more, every brand’s latest tweets and followers will be demonstrated parrallel to each brand. As I see, this website could be a good place for companies to evaluate their online influence and for users to measure the popularity and credibility of those brands.

One of my friend introduced me a short film – SIGNS, which was really the best short film I’ve ever seen in Youtube. It is a simple short film about communication. I think this film sets up a great example for the multimedia story telling class. Here is the link to the film: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uy0HNWto0UY&eurl=http://home.xiaonei.com/Home.do  Hope you guys will enjoy it.

In the financial crisis, the industry which can not generate payoff while cost a lot to maintain the business will be influenced the most, of course in a bad way, such as the community and video in the social media business. Probably considering the financial crisis might be tempered by the end of 2009, according to the estimation of eMarketer, American Online vedio ads market are expected to grow in an exponential rate after the year 2010. I am looking forward to see if this trend will effect the dominant position of annoying TV ads in the future. Below is the chart.

Ted McConnell is a manager in P&G Corporation. Recently, He delivered some interesting thoughts on marketing issues based on social media tools:

1 ‘Who said this is media?’
He went on to apply a similar standard to the broader world of consumer-generated media. “I think when we call it ‘consumer-generated media,’ we’re being predatory,” he said. “Who said this is media? Media is something you can buy and sell. Media contains inventory. Media contains blank spaces. Consumers weren’t trying to generate media. They were trying to talk to somebody. So it just seems a bit arrogant. … We hijack their own conversations, their own thoughts and feelings, and try to monetize it.” While it’s not a company policy, but rather a personal preference, Mr. McConnell said, “I really don’t want to buy any more banner ads on Facebook.” That’s not to say Read more…

Today, when I was browsing through the weblog: http://asianfanaticfans.blogspot.com/2008/10/jay-chous-leaked-new-album-being-dealt.html, I found a very interesting news article that I think might worth our attention.

One of the latest album “Capricorn” of Jay Chou,  one of the most popular singers and musicians in Taiwan,  has been leaked online before its formal releasing. The record company, JVR Music, obviously got angry and announced that it was actually a case of piracy.  They are going to find out who did it and will sue this sneaky guy. Meanwhile, the record company is encouraging Jay’s fans to “boycott the thieving actions of those people, and respect the intellectual properties of artists and support original music”

This article got my attention because I was wondering who the record company is going to sue. The sneaky “rat” who leak out the album, or Jay Chou’s  hundreds of thousands fans who downloaded from each other’s blog, YouTube and Kugoo, and then spread the album further through social media platforms?

Who to blame?  It is really like a question of the sneaky “rat”, community and technologies, who should be sued?  It is up to you.