The MoPR Blog

Welcome back. We hope you enjoyed the holidays. We certainly did. We’d like to thank you for reading our posts from 2008 and look forward to bringing you more industry tidbits throughout 2009. Be sure to subscribe to our feed if you don’t want to miss any posts. Here’s the URL for your feed reader: or scroll down to the very bottom of this page and click on Entries (RSS).

Marketing execs “sick” of Web 2.0? Perhaps they drank too much of it in 2008, but a new survey by Anderson Analytics conducted for the Marketing Executives Networking Group (MENG), claims marketing executives are going back to basics this year, putting renewed focus on satisfying and retaining customers and investing in research and insights, but are “sick” of hearing about Web 2.0 and related buzzwords such as “blogs” and “social networking” compared with last year’s survey. However, marketers still admit they don’t know enough about it. This lack of understanding was evident in results from a November 2008 MENG social media study showing 67% of marketing executives consider themselves beginners when it comes to using social media for marketing purposes.

It’s really a shame to see this lack of understanding translate into a negative feeling towards an area of marketing which carries so much potential. Let’s hope these marketers get over their burned-out attitudes quickly enough to realize these Web 2.0 technologies are more than buzz words, and that when used effectively can make a real and tangible difference to a company’s marketing efforts – especially in the areas of satisfying and retaining customers.

Mobile Broadband to Exceed 140 Million U.S. Subscribers in 2013. So says a new report from Parks Associates.

“By 2013, there will be over 140 million U.S. consumers paying for mobile broadband, which will extend video, communication, networking, and support services to all sorts of devices,” said Kurt Scherf, vice president, principal analyst, Parks Associates.

Parks Associates also forecasts 4.5 billion mobile phone users worldwide by 2013, with many people using these devices as gateways for entertainment services, community information, and social networking. The increasing importance of the mobile phone will affect other product and service sectors. For example, over 100 million femtocells will be shipped worldwide in 2013, cumulatively serving over 300 million subscribers.

Broadband deserves some government help. The federal government should create a national broadband strategy, create incentives and support efforts to boost broadband demand in order to increase broadband access, according to a new report released by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation.
Learning the right lessons and emulating the right policies will “enable the United States to improve our broadband performance faster than in the absence of proactive policies,” the report claims.

The report also argues that it is time to move the “broadband policy debate beyond the free market fundamentalism on the right and the digital populism on the left and begin to craft pragmatic, realistic public policies” that focus on the primary goal of getting as many American households using high-speed broadband networks to engage in online activities, including education, health care, work, and commerce.

Spammers and scammers discover Twitter. Hooray. If you’re on Twitter you’ve probably noticed an increase of followers that look like spam. It’s not your imagination that names like @dof74s or @prongirl are starting to appear in your stream.

And if you think spammers are bad, it gets worse. Scammers have also discovered Twitter as was the case when several high profile Twitter users were hacked recently via the Direct Message (DM) function by being lured into entering their log-in information into a spoofed screen.

Here are some guidelines we personally follow when using Twitter to help cut down on the spam.

No. 1: Be real. If you follow us and use the Twitter-supplied avatar we won’t follow you. By using a real image you’re proving you’re a real person or are at least making an effort.
No. 2: Be interesting. If you start following us and your previous Tweets are nothing but self-promoting (spam), we won’t follow you.
No. 3: List your location. It’s interesting to follow back users in our own backyard as well as those in other cities and countries. By leaving out your location you might as well add “Spam Robot Planet” as your location.
No. 4: Follow and be followed. Have approximately the same amount of followers as those you follow. If you’re following 2,000 people and only get followed by 10 that’s a pretty good sign you’re a spammer.

As far as getting hacked, never enter information into a spoofed screen – you can usually tell by looking at the URL or if you click on a link and you’re already logged in and are asked to log in, again. But, you knew that, right?

I’m a big fan of new video service, Animoto (http://animoto.com) – an online video application that lets users create their own professionally produced videos using photos and music, masterfully combined by Animoto to produce a unique piece of art. Leveraging Animoto’s own patent-pending technology and high-end motion design, each video is a fully customized orchestration of user-selected images and music. Produced in a widescreen format, Animoto videos have the visual energy of a music video and the emotional impact of a movie trailer. And because they are completely personalized, the impact is even more inspiring.

Upload photos – select music – out comes your own music video!

Animoto Productions was formed by a group of techies and film/tv producers – including veterans of the entertainment industry that have produced shows for MTV, Comedy Central and ABC.

At the heart of Animoto is its “Cinematic Artificial Intelligence” technology that “thinks like an actual director and editor.” It basically analyzes and combines user-selected images and music with the same sophisticated post-production skills & techniques that are used in television and film. And while I fancy myself a creative photographer – this service blows away my abilities when it comes to compiling the photos and organizing them to music. Not to mention – it’s totally automated (in other words – there is very little room for user error).

I tried out the service earlier this year by creating a video short using some photos of my oldest son’s 9th birthday party. His party had a Hollywood theme, complete with red carpet and the party guests dressed to the nines, so the photos were perfect for a slick video slideshow. I uploaded a dozen pictures, selected a rockin’ tune from the Animoto library, and BAM! — Animoto’s video engine analyzed the photos, set them to music, and spit out a professional looking video featuring my photos. My son thought I was a technology genius when I showed him the finished result. His exact quote was, “Dude. That rocks. I’m a movie star.” You can check out that video sample here: http://animoto.com/play/c6eb0f8f69ecf2974f2816cb938efee5

This week I revisited the service to create this video from some of the photos of the MoPR mini-offsite at the Spa at Caesars’ Palace in Las Vegas during CTIA 2008. Check it out here: http://animoto.com/play/E4CuI0xBOvJYW560oRIcWw

Part of what’s fun with Animoto is seeing how it produces fully-customized videos depending on what music you choose. They give you the choice of pulling songs from your personal music library or using one of the songs from their library – so the options are unlimited. Try a mellow song. Then remix your video using a more upbeat song. You’ll get two very different productions. In my personal tests of the service I did find that I preferred the use of horizontal photos to vertically-oriented photos. Given the widescreen format, the horizontal pictures just look better.

If creating the professional looking video with so little user effort isn’t impressive enough on its own, Animoto takes it a step further, allowing users to post the videos to a number of social networking sites, YouTube or even their own blogs or websites using the provided code and simple instructions.

Posting your new video to Facebook from the Animoto site is literally two clicks. And speaking of Facebook, Animoto has a neat Facebook application you can download from the link at the bottom of their homepage: www.Animoto.com, or from inside Facebook in the video application section. With the Animoto Facebook app you can automatically create videos from the photos you have saved in your Facebook albums. The Facebook application has all of the same functionality that you have from the Animoto site, so for those of you who are managing your photos and sharing them using Facebook, this is a great solution for you.

I noticed this week that Animoto is presenting at one of MoPR’s favorite conferences – Under the Radar. Animoto will be participating in Under the Radar’s Social Media and Entertainment themed event June 3rd in Mountain View, CA. I’m going to stick my neck out with a prediction that Animoto wins one of the coveted judges’ choice or audience choice awards at the event (perhaps even both). I know if I was in the voting audience, they would have a very strong chance of getting my vote. The other companies in their category best bring their A-Game!

I think there is a natural progression for the Animoto application to move to the mobile platform; especially with the prevalence of mobile phones with high-quality cameras. I would love to see the company work with Apple to add the app to the iPhone platform. Imagine taking pictures with the iPhone camera, then having the option in the ‘save as’ list to tag the photos for Animoto video creation. Then from the iPhone screen you could open Animoto, select which pictures you wanted included in your new video, pick a song from your iTunes library on your phone, name it, and hit “create my video.” Your videos could be stored on the iPhone, sent automatically to your blog and/or social networking profile pages, or emailed to friends to share.

With the popularity of user generated content sites soaring, Animoto should look to partner with some of the video sites and popular events to showcase user created videos made up of user photos from a particular event. For example, conferences could offer a page showing all of the videos created by users with conference photos. High schools and colleges could add pages to their websites with videos created by students, and sports teams could show off their talents by showcasing collections of videos made up of action shots of athletes in motion promoting the team.

Animoto’s software works flawlessly, is ultra simple to use, and provides real value. The free service is perfect for the casual user and the professional service – which lets you create unlimited full-length videos that you can download and save to your own computer – is a bargain and worth every cent of the $30 annual fee.

BONUS: If you are ready to give the service a try for yourself, here is a special reader discount code that will save you $5 off of the annual service fee: klyrtgvh