facebook

via gizmodo.com

This is the story of a wonderful idea. Something that had never been done before, a moment of change that shaped the Internet we know today. This is the story of Flickr. And how Yahoo bought it and murdered it and screwed itself out of relevance along the way.

Read the whole story on Gizmodo

Related articles

• Gary Marshall: Is Instagram’s future like Flickr’s? (techradar.com)
• Yahoo: The Worst Way Ever to Pick a Corporate Strategy (mobileopportunity.blogspot.com)
• 500px aims to kill Flickr with new $20 Plus plan (geek.com)
• How Yahoo can get its mojo back (tech.fortune.cnn.com)

Tweet

Invisible Children became Attention Economy millionaires in a matter of days. Here is how:

1. They Made it Personal

How does a young father from San Diego make a warlord famous? He starts by telling us about his own son. The story’s narrative does not open with photos or news reports of Joseph Kony‘s atrocities, nor with an introduction of the former child soldier named Jacob. The story begins in a delivery room of a hospital in the United States. Jason Russel takes the viewer along on HIS journey, not that of a Ugandan child or warlord.

2. They Knew Their Audience

Why did Russel make a film about himself? He did so because naive and impressionable youth are his audience. Kony 2012 is NOT a film for Africans. It is a film for American youth and the best way to capture their attention is by giving them a story to which they can relate. IC made editorial decisions that always put the audience above any concern for other viewers or policy complexity. Jason Mogus articulated this well in his post, Why your non-profit won’t make a Kony 2012:

IC knew who its audience was, simply, American youth. It speaks in their language, using their cultural heros and influencers. Everything in KONY 2012 from the visuals (Facebook, hip posters) to the tone (hopeful, not dour or depressing) to the emotional hooks (kids, the power of people to tip the world, social media) speaks directly to this audience. Maybe this is one reason why it annoyed so many “institutional experts” over 40!

3. They Were Bold and Controversial

IC’s goal was to, “Make Kony Famous,” and drive a young generation to human rights activism. What they needed was attention. IC was bound to upset many by being incredibly personal and driving messaging at one audience. This is the trade off in an age where information flows fast and free: use general messages that appeal on the surface to many, but deeply engage nobody; or, target your message to the point that it will alienate many audiences while enthralling your target.

We have moved to a media reality in which a small group of broadcasters no longer demand viewers’ attention, but viewers demand content made for them, when they want it. It seems counter-intuitive, but the way to ultimately reach millions is to focus all your attention on a few (See: Zuckerberg, Mark). IC has spent 9 years targeting young and hyper-connected idealists. Kony 2012 was the culmination of those efforts and it grabbed a passionate core audience who turned it into a viral sensation.To gain committed supporters in the New Media world, you must be prepared for some stone throwing.

4. They Made a Social Movie About Social Activism

Make a product within the medium where you want your supporters to take action. This is advice we give often. Want your activists to upload webcam videos? Then design a call to action on YouTube. Want them to make well-produced and artistic videos? Then target Vimeo and Blip.TV. Photo camapigning – Flickr; Trending Tweets – Twitter; Tell their friends – Facebook, and so on…

Oistein pointed out that IC in effect made a film about the power of social media. They drove their supporters to share the film by making the film within a Facebook timeline. The film even opens with clips of the Arab Spring and highlights social media’s power to drive change that the “Experts” said would never happen. The message is both subliminal and overt: We can change the world with social media.

5. They Already Won

One of the most interesting and confusing facts about Kony 2012 for me is that the call to action is, by definition, a call to inaction. IC does not want something new to happen, they want things to stay as they are — “Keep the military advisers in Central Africa.” There are two valuable lessons within this reality:

1. Activists should not obsess about getting 100 million people paying attention to their cause, because you rarely need that many people to make change. IC and many allies, including Enough and Amnesty International, had worked for years to drive more US interest in stopping the LRA and they succeeded. In fact, their efforts led to a UN supported mission (that ended tragically) and George W. Bush sending military support, all before Obama announced similar efforts in October, 2011.
2. Successful awareness campaigns call for specific action. IC has tipped their hand in past statements and videos that they are not simply about capturing Kony — they are about developing a “Never Again” generation of young people who use all the tools at their disposal, including social media, to stop atrocities. However, this is done by uniting around a single cause with a high degree of success. Large-scale awareness campaigns must heed this lesson. You do not get people to care by describing a generic issue, but by calling for specific action related to that issue. Some worry that these new activists will be disillusioned if Kony is not captured this year. More likely, military advisers will stay put and IC will claim further victory through the lack of withdrawal. “Stop Kony” is the rallying cry, but serves as the penultimate, not ultimate goal.

I’ve been involved in public awareness campaigns seeking to mobilize 100-500 million activists on issues of Poverty, Climate Change, Education, and the Food System. All have had far more resources and celebrity support than Kony 2012; none have had nearly the level of social media success. Discuss.

Related articles

• Lessons from the Oregon Ducks and #Kony2012 (futuremediachange.com)
• ‘Kony’ Video Prompts 100 Million Views and Some Criticism (prnewsonline.com)
• Opinion: Why Kony 2012 created the wrong buzz – CNN.com (worldwright.wordpress.com)
• Kony 2012 Director Responds To Critics (perezhilton.com)

Tweet

It is a shame that a social media platform about making positive change went down like a lead balloon, especially when you had very clever people behind it.   Read  FB Co-Founder Sells Jumo for $0 and a Job

For me, Jumo always had a bit of a ghost town feeling about it and if you add that to the initial restrictions in updating a NGO profile, it didn’t encourage me (and many others)  to go out of my way to put my organisations content on the site or to use it.

IHere are six lessons that I took away from Jumo’s fail.

1. Be very clear that the problem you are trying to solve exists.
Did the NGO sector actually want a specialised social media platform? If they did what did NGOs want from it?

2. Make sure you include your potential audiences and key users in the site design process.
Did the design and functionality work for NGOs or give reasons for their supporters to use Jumo over other sites like Care2 or change.org?

3. Be focused on who your target audience is and be knowledgeable about them.
Was Jumo ever clear if they were focused on only US market or a more international audience? Or, did they really understand why people support organisations or causes and what they like to do online?

4. Have more open, two-way conversation with the key drivers of content for your site.
Did Jumo have or seek a “Critical Friend”  via advisorary board of NGOs or from well respected people in the US and International  NGO or campaigning sectors?

5. Ask permission before you use organisations name and content.
It seemed that Jumo staff scraped/wrote content and set up profiles of NGOs for Jumo’s launch without asking permissions of those NGOs or checking if the information was correct.  Not a great way to get a key user base on side with your product.

6. Let Profile owners change/have control their content from the outset.
Organisations that found themselves with a profile on Jumo at the launch where not able to remove, add or update content and the process of contacting someone from Jumo was difficult. Again, not a great way to get a key user base on side with your product.

Do you agree with the lessons I took away form Jumo’s fail or  have anymore to add from Jumo’s and other social good start-ups.

Tweet

Some of the new up-with-Mubarak commentary at the Facebook page We Are All Khalid Said is classic concern-trolling: people wringing their hands over how Egypt’s dictator deserves better than calls for his downfall. Some is pure abuse, questioning the loyalties of the page’s administrator. And some are blatant attempts to disrupt the protests by claiming upcoming rallies have been canceled.

It’s hard not to see the trolling as part of a larger effort by Mubarak’s allies to win the propaganda battle surrounding Egypt’s unrest. They’re detaining and beating foreign journalists in order to control the information flow. On Thursday, they arrested online activists.

A sampling of pro-Mubarak posts on Thursday: “I’m sad that I was one of you,” Tamir Said hissed. Semsema Elamora called the admins “sons of bitches” and “garbage.” Moamen Bokhary inveighed, “God forgive him he spread fitna [division] and wants to burn the country, God is my refuge. We are all against him. Send it to each other so we can rid ourselves of him and his poisons.”

Bokhary didn’t specify whether he meant the administrator or the page’s namesake, an Alexandria blogger beaten to death by police. But the point is clear enough.

As online properties go, We Are All Khalid Said is a strategic target for the Mubarak regime. The #Jan25 dissident movement is about a lot more than internet tools, but there’s no denying that Facebook and Twitter helped the rallies coalesce. The Khalid Said page is the most important Facebook asset for the protesters. Six months old, it has garnered 464,000 Likes and counting.

[

Tweet

t-2862″ href=”http://futuremediachange.com/2010/10/will-the-revolution-be-tweeted-whatever-twitter-saves-lives/attachment/200909281402150110/”>

Manila – Police evacuate an elderly couple from a flooded section of suburban Pasig city east of Manila on 28 September 2009 © Jason Gutierrez/IRIN