OTOinsights

OTOlabs Takes Widgets WAY Beyond the Browser

In honor of this past Monday's official launch of PolyThink, the new cross-media messaging platform from OTOlabs, Technology Director Chris Pointon commissioned a set of very special widgets, developed for a decidedly non-traditional delivery system. Possibly the world's first Widget Cookies were unveiled at the company meeting today, with a delicious variety of functionalities to choose from.

While bandwidth and download times are not an issue with this new platform, several members of the office "Biggest Loser" competition were overheard grumbling about beltwidth and off-load time, which could be significant for the product. However, on the whole the reception was warm, and the widgets were downloaded hungrily by the assembled crowd.

As OTOi marketing services tastemaker Mike Lodge observed, "It's a refreshing change from Facebook: a widget that doesn't leave a bad taste in my mouth!"

For a more serious look at the advanced PolyThink platform from OTOlabs, head on over to their official site at http://www.polythink.com/

Facebook To Punish Stupid Apps

Very similar to Google's Quality Index, Facebook today announced that they will begin rolling out a system which rewards applications which appear to be more relevant to users, "based on a range of factors including the rates that users ignore, hide, and report notifications as spam".

Says Facebook:

"The new system aims to provide users with more compelling notifications and fewer notifications that they are likely to ignore or consider spam. We hope this change incentivizes developers to improve the quality of their notifications and encourage their users to send notifications to interested friends."

As someone to recently begin to use Facebook only a few months ago, I applaud this decision, as already the number of Feed updates and friends' applications requesting full control of my Profile seems more than a little out of control.

With a revamped system that promotes those apps that users actually use and punish the more spamlike apps which require -- as a very common example -- that you send the app to 10+ friends before the app will function, hopefully this will result in a social networking site that's far less cluttered with pure crap.

Now if only similar self-controls could begin to be implemented across all other channels, perhaps consumers could begin trusting marketers a little more than the "not at all" they're at right now.

Inspired Viral Video: Black Eyed Peas on Obama

Via Salon.com, I found a blurb about a viral video for the Obama campaign. I checked out the video, and I was quite impressed. The production qualities are high, which is what seemed to impress Salon. But that's not what got me excited enough to blog about it; what impressed me was how authentically YouTube this video was. This isn't some political hackery saying "me too!" to the Facebook generation. This video gets it.

One of the great, if not the greatest, creative strategies of online animations and videos is to take a work of mainstream culture and rework it, commenting on it, distorting it, and appropriating it. This is a dominant cultural logic of "hip" entertainment today.

The best examples of this strategy reveal and celebrate the voice of the remixer. In other words, the source voice is dominated by the viral video's producer/editor. It's not surprising that political campaigns, terrified of relinquishing control over their message, would be leery about fan-created videos. Certainly many inspiring online videos have been made about politicians, but they are commonly parodies (such as this one about Bush, or this one about John Edwards), or they are propaganda pieces.

But the Obama campaign has got to love how the Black Eyed Peas have reworked Obama's oratory into a video that can stand alongside their best work. This video neither parrots nor subverts Obama's message; it personalizes and extends it into the Black Eyed Peas own powerful idiom.

Jeffrey Bardzell, Ph.D.
Indiana University / Quantemo / t=zero