Nice idea for an ordinary product: Inside Google

Coming up for an original idea for a rather ordinary product like the cereal wheetabix isn’t always easy.

In this case, it’s a play on the fact that wheetabix as a breakfast gives you energy for the whole day. So they came up with a questions that is interesting for all of us: „What makes the worlds largest search engine work?“

Googleinside

The answer: a library lady who assembles all the information within 0.12 seconds (or so), you can take a peak behind the Google screen over here.

When you’re not typing search queries yourself, it seems like you can see queries of other people as live search. But somehow I don’t believe that…

Poptent – crowdsourcing video productions

Not sure, how new this site is, but poptent.net looks rather interesting. It’s a site for connecting brands with freelance videographers:

Poptent is the best place for independent and freelance videographers to build their portfolios, connect with companies and brands for commercial work. Here you will find the best and brightest up and coming creative minds in the business. Hire them. Collaborate with them. Join them. We’re building a crowdsourcing revolution and we want you to be a part of it. Become part of our community by clicking the JOIN NOW button.

It looks like some form of agency 2.0, and at the same time it raises the same debate that comes up when brands ask for creative submissions without guaranteeing a reward for every submission. Videocreators get the chance of having their video selected by a well known brand, yet they risk loosing their initial investment (time&money) if their video isn’t selected. And the brand gets a range of creations to choose from without having to pay for every single one.

Here is an example of a current project, asking for video content for snickers:

You know Snickers®, that unique, delicious, and substantial combination of peanuts, chocolate, caramel and nougat.
This assignment is to develop video content starring Snickers®. They are looking for either traditional ‘commercials’ or pass-along (viral) videos — original, authentic and entertaining Snickers® content which consumers will pass along, and use as inspiration for their own content creation.
Your challenge is to be creative, so don’t just follow the approach of previous Snickers® campaigns. You can either:
• Produce a fun, engaging traditional :30 second commercial
• Or produce a pass-along (viral) video of about :30 seconds in length …you choose
Your creative ‘bulls eye’ is males age 18-34. Snickers® has played a memorable role in ‘guy culture,’ with a long and celebrated history as the ‘go-to-bar’ for satisfying hunger.
You could earn $5,000 for each video they purchase or one of the $2000in guaranteed awards. Register below and read the Creative Brief for all the details and some more delicious inspiration.

$5.000 doesn’t sound like much to me, but I guess it depends on what they want to do with it.

Social media trends 2010

You know it’s getting closer to a years end, when people start forecasting trends for the following year. This time it’s really early. It’s only the beginning of November and the first selection of six trends is already online.

David Armano writes about these 6 trends:

  1. Social Media begins to look less social: as more people contribute ever more content on social networks, updates-fatigue sets in and people filter out other users for reduction of clutter. I agree, and I would like to add: social media will have less farmville and mafia wars…
  2. Corporations look to scale: companies leveraging social technology to better serve customers, e.g. Best Buys Twelpforce
  3. Social Business becomes social play: playful social (mobile) applications with a competitive component for users are used for (local) marketing.
  4. Your company will have a social media policy (and it might actually be enforced): the title says it all.
  5. Mobile becomes a social media lifeline: Due to the IT departments locking down  social sites, people will increasingly turn to their smartphones during (or instead of) coffee breaks.
  6. Sharing no longer means e-mail: Well, that is kind of obvious in times of facebook and twitter…