“Just Wow.”

That’s the name of the blog post that was the inspiration for this week’s Viral Video. The blog post was hugely viral in the gaming and PR/Marketing communities, for good reason: it was a perfect storm of funny, appalling, and just plain crazy.

But wait–there’s more! Once the wrath of Teh Interwebs was invoked, people went digging into the antagonist’s alleged penchant for steroids and domestic violence, his previous PR gaffes, and his impersonation of others in the name of damage control. Eventually, he apologized with ill grace, both to the customer and to the owner of penny arcade.

Not that that will help him at this point.

(warning: there is a bit of swearing in the video)

Are you ready to supercharge your company’s story telling strategy? Creating viral buzz for your startup, is easier than you think if you know the industry’s inside secrets. So clean off your whiteboard, grab a marker and get ready to go “backstage” to learn the Top 5 Buzz Tips from Seattle’s tech media elite.

On October 13^th, the MIT Enterprise Forum Northwest hosted the program, “Pitch, Don’t Spin – How to Create Buzz Around your Start-up” featuring a panel of five seasoned news experts: John Cook, Co-founder, GeekWire, Brier Dudley, Technology Columnist, Seattle Times, Leslie Helm, Editor, Seattle Business Magazine, Mike Davidson, Vice President, Social News, msnbc.com and CEO, Newsvine and Curt Woodward, Senior Editor, Xconomy.

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With the rise of online video sites such as YouTube, Vimeo and Viddler, the almighty video view count has become increasingly more important as a way of ranking success. Success of not only the producer, but also those paid to promote or “syndicate” online videos. While some of us might be uploading videos we think will quickly become the next YouTube sensation, we shouldn’t be disappointed when we only get 100 views and others with similar videos have thousands – they’re likely paying for them.

Online video syndication services have been around for several years and are helping many businesses, advertising agencies and producers transition from paid television ads to paid online video ads. While many of these services provide legitimate ways of attracting consumers to the videos, others have developed ways of short-cutting the process to quickly increase view counts and other forms of engagement.

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A little over two years ago (in the midst of the “Great Recession”) I finished my BA from the University of Washington Bothell. The degree was in Interdisciplinary Studies with an emphasis in Society, Ethics, and Human Behavior. I looked around for work and I was prepared to except almost any kind of job, but I soon found out how hard it is to get any job at all these days. But with a degree in Interdisciplinary Studies, I kept thinking, who wouldn’t want to hire me?

Not only was I competing against others right out of college who had degrees people wouldn’t laugh at, but I was competing with others who had been in the workforce for years and had recently been forced to find new jobs because of the recession.

After sending out resumes, cover letters, and continual rejections, I realized that it was time for a new approach. I started to think that if I couldn’t get someone else to hire me I could just hire myself.
Well, it made sense at the time.

I set up Evan West Media, as a a sole proprietorship. I was able to get modest work doing digital media consulting for local bars, restaurants, and even with the City of Everett. I found most of my work through word–of–mouth. Luckily for me I had a fiancé (now wife) with a stable job and health benefits.

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Recently I attended a presentation that many of us have probably seen in some form by now: “Marketing to Millennials.” The Millennial was described as an entirely new breed, sprung from the forehead of Facebook: innately social, tech-savvy, confident. This was reinforced by a stock photo of a young guy with a messenger bag, fiddling with his iPhone while standing astride a single-speed bike.
“Generations,” concurs Pew Research, “have personalities.” If this is true, Millennials lucked into some desirable traits. The other generations in the presentation I saw were defined against the sterling Millennial standard as progressively grumpier and more technophobic by age: Generation X? Cautious. Boomers? Suspicious. The Silent Generation (silent to whom?) of course downright curmudgeonly, rattling their  analog canes defiantly at the 21st Century digital tsunami.

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Earlier this year, Corey posted about Qwiki, a startup whose investors include Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin, Groupon co-founders Brad Keywell and Eric Lefkofsky, and YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim.

Qwiki has opened its alpha release to the public since January. With its stated objective to “deliver information in a format that’s quintessentially human – via storytelling instead of search”, Qwiki has generated great interest, even hyped by media as the “next Google.”

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Yesterday, residents all across Seattle participated in the 2011 Night Out in an effort to stay better connected with their neighbors and neighborhood. Night Out is billed as a national event but citizens in Seattle are among the few that put any real effort into making it successful. Although knowledge of Night Out is growing across the city, while driving around yesterday evening, certain block parties looked anemic with fewer than five or six participants. Depending on where you were, participation from neighbors appeared minimal, but in other neighborhoods, Night Out was a total success.

I scratched my head trying to figure out what could account for the differences — aside from the person to person relations block to block — and then realized the neighborhoods with strong hyper-local blog coverage of Night Out had the most participation. Capitol Hill Seattle Blog and Central District news got the word out early and strong. Rainier Valley Post did the same thing as did the Phinney Wood blog, West Seattle Blog and others. The stronger the push and readership was on neighborhood blogs, the more successful each neighborhood Night Out was.

When talking with Amber Campbell of the Rainier Valley Post, she fully agreed.

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Surprise surprise, it’s not all cake and roses for the hippest music streaming site around right now.

Last month, European digital music site Spotify arrived in the U.S. and has already made a large splash among early adopters. If you haven’t heard of it yet, Spotify allows users access to more than 15 million songs for free. Their ability to do this is supported mainly by audio and banner advertisements although the main goal is to get users to trade up for paid subscriptions. There’s a $5 per month computer-only version sans advertisements or a $10 per month package that can be used on mobile devices. If you are just tinkering around with it, there are a ton of upsides to Spotify.

Up until recently, the only drawbacks of the service seemed to be figuring out the interface or the pesky audio advertisements. However, over the last seven days, Spotify has come under fire for several reasons including a patent-infringement lawsuit filed against them several days ago and more recent news that they were caught using an indestructible cookie for the sake of tracking their users. I won’t be pedestrian and say that if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is, but it shouldn’t be shocking that Spotify has dirt on its shoes. It is a little surprising, however, that the dirt was discovered this early into its U.S. tenure.

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