Creative idea + Technology = Dynamic Architecture

After thousands of years in which buildings were static, David Fisher’s Dynamic Skyscraper is an important step ahead towards Future Architecture.  The Rotating Tower brings three main futuristic aspects, three revolutions.

The first revolutionary aspect is related to the shape of the building, which changes continuously.  It is “Architecture as Part of the Environment”, adjusting to the sun and the wind, to the view and to our momentary requirements.
Each floor, in fact, can rotate separately, changing every second the shape of the building.  You can therefore wake up with the sun rising into your bedroom and enjoy the sunset over the ocean at dinner time. The Rotating Skyscraper takes on shapes imposed by time and life, never appearing the same in any two given moments.  It is the first building to have four dimensions: Designed by TIME, shaped by LIFE.

The second revolution that the Dynamic Skyscraper brings is the method of construction. To this futuristic design solution, David Fisher has added another unique innovation:  Prefabrication.  It is in fact the first building produced in a factory, giving construction a new industrial approach.  The entire building, aside from the concrete core, is made of prefabricated units which arrive to the construction site completely finished, including flooring, water piping, air conditioning and all finishes. These units, made of steel, aluminium, carbon fibre and other high quality modern materials, are installed “mechanically” on site, offering luxury finishing, very fast construction time, usage of a limited number of workers, thus reducing site risks and enabling cost savings.  The building, made of single separate floors, is structurally sound and flexible at the same time, being of very high seismic resistance.

The third revolution is born from combining technology and luxury with environment.  The skyscraper’s wind turbines, positioned horizontally between each floor, and solar ink on its many roofs will produce energy making the tower the first self-powered building.  Thus the Rotating Tower, a unique architectural solution, becomes also a “power station” producing green energy for the city.

Source: www.DynamicArchitecture.com

Is Print DEAD? [InfoGraphic]

Is The Printing Industry Being Crushed By The Internet?

Source: www.Sketchee.com

8 Facts About Facebook’s $33 Billion Valuation [InfoGraphic]

Did you know Facebook’s recent valuation is estimated at a whopping $33 Billion? Here’s an interesting Infographic by AllFacebook.com to put things into perspective:

Source: www.AllFacebook.com

Social Media For Insurance Professionals: VIDEO

Am super EXCITED!!!, as after hours of to-ing & fro-ing, writing the video scripts, browsing for the ‘right’ music, giving my video guy a hard time ;-) …etc, finally, the short VIDEO for our Social Media For Insurance Professionals book is ready!!!…must say, I like the end result

We would like to thank Mari Smith, Matthew Sapaula, Rod Drury, Barry Read and Melissa Cibelli for their kind words of appreciation.

And thanks to Erik Qualman for all the cool stats.

Statistics source: www.Socialnomics.com

Social Media Ad Spending [InfoGraphic]

Social Media Ad spending is on the rise and I guess, rightly so! Check out this interesting InfoGraphic by Flowtown:

Source: www.Flowtown.com

StumbleUpon: Did You Know? [INFOGRAPHIC]

Social Bookmarking has come a long way and the following StumbleUpon InfoGraphic may surprise you to say the least and will make you start “stumbling”:

Source: www.Penn-Olson.com & www.BlueGlass.com

FACEBOOK FACTS: You Probably Didn’t Know About

Some interesting stats & facts about Facebook:

Better Facebook: Free Script To Make Your Facebook Experience Better

Better Facebook is a FREE user script that plugs into your browser and adds a lot of great enhancements to your existing Facebook account.

Here’s just some of its 75 features:

• 1) Tabbed News Feeds
• 2) Advanced Feed Filters
• 3) Hide Posts You’ve Already Read
• 4) Highlight New Comments
• 5) Static Header And Left Column
• 6) Quick Links To Your Pages, Events, Groups, Apps, and Friends
• 7) Friend Tracker – Notification Of Un-Friends
• 8) Show Group Activity
• 9) Show Friend Activity
• 10) Expand Similar Posts
• 11) Character Counter In Status Updates
• 12) Enhanced Left-Column Navigation
• 13) Automatically Retrieve Older Posts
• 14) Pin Notifications
• 15) Custom CSS/Skins
• 16) Reclaim Privacy
• 17) Hide Annoying “Update Your Email Address” Notification
• 18) Highlight specific posts

Website: http://betterfacebook.net/

Craigs-List Stats: Did You Know?

Here’s some interesting, fascinating and SHOCKING stats about CraigsList you probably didn’t know about:

BIG BROTHER: Do You Know Who’s Watching YOU?

These stats are interesting as well as scary in a way:

Source: Wordstream.com

How the INTERNET works – InfoGraphic

Another awesome infographic by Online Schools:

Social Media For Professionals: VIDEO

Am super EXCITED!!!, as after hours of to-ing & fro-ing, writing the video scripts, browsing for the ‘right’ music, giving my video guy a hard time ;-) …etc, finally, the short VIDEO for our Social Media For Professionals book is ready!!!…must say, I like the end result…would lurvve to have your feedback too:

We would like to thank Mari Smith, Matthew Sapaula, Rod Drury, Barry Read and Melissa Cibelli for their kind words of appreciation.

And thanks to Erik Qualman for all the cool stats.

Statistics source: www.Socialnomics.com

FLOCK – The Social Browser

I’d stumbled upon this new “social browser” a while back, but didn’t quite get to installing and using it, but now that I did, must say, am impressed.

FLOCK’s tagline: Built for Facebook & Twitter

Here’s an excerpt from their website:

Flock is faster, simpler, and more friendly. Literally. It’s the only sleek, modern web browser with the built-in ability to keep you up-to-date with your Facebook and Twitter friends.

Share web pages, photos, and video. Update your status and make comments—from anywhere on the web!

Check out their COOL video:

If you haven’t already, I encourage you to give FLOCK a try…you’ll be GLAD :-D

Top 10 lists of interesting trivia information

RGRBZY8QGMQW

Geography

Countries

Vacations

Automobiles

Business & Consumerism

Miscellaneous

Social Media For Professionals: Book Foreword by Mari Smith

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn…you’ve been hearing about these online social networking sites on a daily basis and may be wondering:

Social Media is a fundamental shift in how we function on the planet on both a personal and professional basis. As Socialnomics author Erik Qualman states, “Social media touches every facet of business and is more a function of good business ethics.”

The widespread adoption of social media, which began making mainstream traction in 2007, is the largest paradigm shift in how professionals approach their potential clients… and how consumers approach businesses. We’re literally getting to the point where, if your prospects cannot find you on Facebook or Twitter at minimum, you may as well not exist in their eyes.

Yet so many businesses are still stuck using “old media” because they simply don’t fully understand the power of new media, nor how to effectively integrate it into their overall marketing plans.

If we look at old media – traditional marketing – it’s interruptive; we’re constantly interrupted while watching TV, listening to radio or even while driving. In fact, “old style” internet marketing with pop-ups, pop-under’s, forced opting in, and big flashing banner ads is also interruptive and generally not effective any longer.

By contrast, new media marketing involves and encourages participation by both the professionals and their target audience. Old media is flat, one-way; there’s no interaction. The message is typically designed and delivered with zero input from prospects or clients. Whereas social media is two-way – multi-way, even.

Companies like Starbucks and Best Buy are leading the way in engagement through social media marketing. Nike, Vitamin Water and Threadless are great examples of “crowd-sourcing” – having your target market actually help you co-create products!

Together, we are literally reinventing and redefining communication and how we market and sell our products and services.

Social media is the dynamic new marketing phenomenon that has changed the business landscape and it is absolutely here to stay. Successful social media marketing puts the focus directly on your prospects and customers; the emphasis is on building relationships in creative ways.

A few stats of two of the most popular social networking sites:

Facebook:

• Over 480 million active members.
• Predicted to be over 600 million by 2011… or sooner.
• The 2nd most trafficked website in the world – second only to Google. Facebook has, on a few occasions, ousted Google and taken the #1 spot. [Source: Alexa.com]
• The largest photo-sharing platform. Two billion photos are uploaded per month.
• More than 50% of Facebook users in the U.S. are over 35 years old. [Source: ComScore].

Twitter:

• Popular social network, news source and viral marketing tool.
• Grew by over 1900% in 2008 to 2009.
• Over 100 million members.
• Politicians, brands, big companies and celebrities now embracing Twitter.

These numbers and stats are staggering. If you’re not active on the top social networks, you risk being left way behind and you’re may well be losing business on a daily basis. You simply must get active now, at least on social media giants like Facebook and Twitter.

But there’s a right way and a wrong way to approach social media marketing. If you do it wrong, you could risk your reputation, and potentially do more harm than good. I’ve certainly come across a number of horror stories out there – some by renowned companies too, who just didn’t “get” social media!

I’m delighted to introduce you to my friends Ash and Brad – their book will help walk you through the crazy morass of conflicting information and easily put you on the right path to social media success.

Mari Smith
- www.MariSmith.com
– Social Media Speaker, Trainer and Consultant.
– Author, Facebook Marketing: An Hour A Day (Sybex, May 2010)
– Dubbed the “Pied Piper of the Online World” by FastCompany.com.

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CLICK HERE to find out how YOU too, can leverage the power of
Social Media, to build credibility, generate leads for free
and increase revenues in 60 days or less!

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The Social Network: Movie Trailer

YES, a movie based on the FACEBOOK story:

– Eisenberg will play Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg;
– Timberlake will play Sean Parker, the Napster co-founder who became Facebook’s founding president; and
– Andrew Garfield will play Eduardo Saverin, the Facebook co-founder who fell out with Zuckerberg over money.

UK Prime Minister in discussion with the Facebook Founder

Talk about the ‘impact’ of Facebook, check out this interesting video between David Cameron (UK PM) and Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook founder) on how to engage/encourage ideas from people to get the country out of debt…is this a good idea? What do you think?

The Venus Project: Designing the Future Cities

Because of my architectural background, I’ve always been interested in everything ‘design’…from furniture design to houses, commercial buildings to multiplexes to urban design to even design of cities…and, lucky for me, since graduating in 1995, I’ve been involved with various types of projects, small, big and the mega!

‘Futuristic’ being one of my five strengths, as per the Strengths Finder by the respected Gallup Organization, this VENUS PROJECT has caught my attention.

BTW, if you’re wondering, my other strengths are:-
> Intellection, Learner, Analytical & Focus :o)

Check out these interesting videos on the VENUS PROJECT and please share your views by leaving your comments below the videos.

PART 1:

PART 2:

So, what do you think?

The Modern Day Version of A-B-C

This is quite interesting :o)

Social Media For Insurance Professionals: Book Foreword by Matthew Sapaula

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one MOST RESPONSIVE to change” says the biologist Charles Darwin.

This is probably the only thing I will agree with him on, yet it well-describes the financial services industry undergoing reform and especially, change.

Insurance professionals and financial advisors alike must be able to continually market and brand their services, in a highly ethical and compliant manner, to continue helping clients reach the goal of financial security, freedom and control.

Phonebooks, billboards, newspaper ads, direct mail, seminars, radio and TV advertising are not only extremely expensive but also, have lost their draw and effectiveness. These continue to be the most costly methods to test your message in your target market and it’s doubtful whether they engage in your call-to-action.

Although still important, spending hours upon hours of continuing education and obtaining multiple financial designations does not have the same impact during these times, unless you are constantly communicating your ongoing value proposition or unique competitive difference. Simply having alphabet soup splattered on your business card does not get your phone to ring any faster than the agent of the future who updates his status on Social Media platforms like Facebook and Twitter.

Financial planners and insurance professionals have been reduced in the perception of many as commodities and people to be avoided…sad, but true!

This is an age where people expect information at the speed of light, on-demand and assume you are ready to deliver. If not, your competitors always are.

Hopefully, Finance and Insurance Professionals can look back upon their education and employ, not only the skills learned in math class, but also their English class as well. Being able to write and effectively communicate years of serving families with wisdom and experiences at a fifth grade level is a skill taking precedence in the Influence and Recommendation Age.

Somewhere along the line, we have zoomed past the Information Age. People are looking for the financial services professional that can organize the masses of news clutter that is out there…and tie current events along with financial solutions to make sense to them, their friends and peer group.

Today’s consumer is internet savvy and utilises social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube for not only entertainment but also, for researching answers to their personal problems and help make important buying decisions. Operating your practice in this day and age without establishing a footprint in these mediums is like running a business without a phone, email or address.

Don’t be invisible. What you do on a daily basis changes peoples’ lives for generations upon generations. Since you have this individual capability, you now have a responsibility to market your product, services and message in one of the most powerful ways combining the power of newspapers, radio and TV. And do you know what the cost is for you to use this potent platform?

Nothing…it is free.

The only cost is the time for you to upgrade your marketing skills, train your staff in using these social media platforms and without hesitation, begin a marketing transformation that gives the small guy a shot, and being as influential as the corporate titans.

Facebook, Twitter, blogs and video sharing sites have given us the capability to stay ahead of change and be the change that our communities and bottom line desperately need.

It’s the social media strategies that allowed us to become the #1 ranked Chicago-based independent financial services firm in Google, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. I also have been using these predictable strategies to help coach other financial, mortgage, legal, accounting and real estate professionals become the obvious choice in the eyes of their clients and community.

It took us almost two years of tweaking and testing to figure out what worked. But thanks to Ash and Brad, your business can now change in months.

To your success,

Matthew Sapaula
Chartered Financial Consultant
Financial Strategist, Speaker, Chicago Talk Radio Show Host, TV commentator.
www.MoneySmartRadio.com

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CLICK HERE to find out how YOU too, can leverage the power of
Social Media, to build credibility, generate leads for free
and increase revenues in 60 days or less!

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AT and T creative ads

AT & T ad campaign

40,310 Facebook Fans In 4 Days: Case study

An interesting case study article on AllFacebook.com, by Dennis Yu of BlitzLocal.com

When we took over the Facebook Fan page for Weekly World News , they had 3,244 fans. 4 days later, we had 40,310 fans– 10 times larger. We’re going explain exactly how we did it in this exclusive article for AllFacebook.com. In the coming days, we’ll demonstrate how fans translate into trackable revenue, how to perform analytics, integrating social widgets (Open Graph Protocol) with your site, and other aspects of effective Facebook marketing. But today we’re looking only at growing your fan base quickly.

The Background

A few weeks ago, Facebook made some massive changes– more of your personal data as publicly available, you could like something from a website (as opposed to only from Facebook), community pages launched to challenge Wikipedia, and so forth. But the biggest change in our mind was that “become a fan ” was changed to just “like”. The user doesn’t know what they’re liking– the cute saying, the underlying page, the website they’re on, or their friend’s remark.

It used to be that you could tell when clicking on an ad would take you to a fan page or to a website. The fan page would have the “become a fan” button, creating an in-line fan– meaning that they can become a fan without ever having to go to your page. At first we thought this was terrible, since we felt that users wouldn’t want to be yanked outside of Facebook. Therefore, the ads that send users to Facebook pages would have a higher CTR– and this, we reasoned, would be something Facebook would “like” (pun intended), too.

But it’s a funny thing how data often proves you wrong. The highest click-to-fan conversion rate we had achieved prior to the F8 change was 55%– that’s for an in-line fanning of the ad. After the switch to like, we saw conversion rates consistently in the 50-90% range. We tried a range of ads– here are a couple:

RULE #1: Ask users to like you in the ad.

Give them a reason why. In our case, Weekly World News has plenty of entertaining content about aliens, Michael Jackson, Elvis, you name it. We tried capitalizing the word “LIKE”, writing short versus long copy, testing dozens of images, and trying out different interest targets. Don’t make it complex– keep the language casual, as if a friend was telling you about something cool.

When you have a high click-through rate, Facebook rewards you by decreasing your CPC. As you test out hundreds of ad variations, you’ll inevitably find a couple winners. In this example, we got 631 fan for 95 cents. That’s not a typo. We had a CTR of 0.98% to get 770 clicks. Then 631 of those 770 clicks became fans from within the ad itself (what’s defined as an action).

This doesn’t count the fans we got from users who then clicked to our incentivized like page or the viral users that we got when friends of fans came in to participate on our wall, because they saw in their news feed that their friend just became a fan.

Warning: We saw spammers that were impersonating brands, just to drive likes to their page and then monetize via affiliate ads– explained here . Because there is no direct connection between the ad and underlying page, if you’re a spammer, this open the door to all kinds of tomfoolery.

RULE #2: Send users to your Facebook page.

Don’t send them to your website, which removes the ability to get a like from the ad. If you send them to your website, the like action now means they like the ad, not the page. It’s true that when you send traffic to your page that you no longer have control over the ad headline– it becomes the page name. However, the ability to get fans from the ad is well worth the loss of being able to choose a headline, since the choice of image and targeting are far more important in determining ad effectiveness.

So choose your page title carefully, since it will be your headline from now on.

RULE #3: Create an incentivized LIKE page.

Facebook allows you to show one thing to people who are fans and something else to those who aren’t. So you can say “click like to reveal the exclusive video”. This is a scratch off card, essentially– so use your imagination on what you can do here. What are your fans going to get by hitting the like button?

We found that incentivized like pages got 200-300% higher click to fan conversion rates than regular landing pages. Some people argue that Facebook is going to shut down this technique, because of the practice of incentivized invites from 2 years ago in the app world. Remember when you’d get points in a game for inviting friends or where the results of the “quiz” were revealed to you only when you invited 10 friends? Incentivized liking on your landing page is not the same thing– it doesn’t result in spamming other users.

RULE #4: Do NOT send users to your wall.

This is almost as dumb as sending your Google AdWords traffic to your homepage, as opposed to a PPC landing page. The Wall is the last dozen or so random things that you and your fans have said– it’s just not going to convert. Instead, change your default landing tab to be your incentivized like page. Most users will click “like” to see the special content and then head over to the wall anyway to see what others are saying and how many fans you have. For better or worse, Facebook users judge how trustworthy you are by how many fans you have and how many of their friends are also fans. So jack up your fan count.

You can test conversion rates from different areas of your fan page. In the example below, we had a 19% conversion rate from the wall, versus a 35% conversion rate from the custom tab, prior to supercharging the page with an incentivized like page.

RULE #5: Rotate your ads DAILY

For those folks who are PPC professionals, you’re probably used to the “set it and forget it”. We’ve found CTR to often fall by 50% within 24 hours. The smaller your target, the faster your ads burn out. Remember that Facebook doesn’t have frequency capping or the ability to placement target. So the burden is on you to watch your CTR, even if you’re bidding on a CPC. Just because you might be bidding on a CPC basis, don’t think that you can just ignore your CTR.

Do you have that annoying friend in real life who likes to talk only about his or her favorite subject? You know, the one who no matter what the subject of the conversation is– somehow it goes back to that particular topic? If you don’t keep your ads fresh on Facebook, you’re that very person.

Rule #6: Optimize primarily to cost per fan (CPF), not just CTR or CPC

Sometimes the ad with the highest CTR also converts the worst. Maybe you’re getting a bunch of irrelevant users in your targeting– children, singles, who knows– folks that may still click on your ads. Systematically root them out by multiplying ad variations like this:

If you’re trying to do this manually, good luck. We have our own software to do this, as do many other engineering-oriented companies. More important than blind multiplication, which can blindly increase your costs from having more cells to test– is being able to quickly prune the unsuccessful variations.

Rule #7: Separate into test and production campaigns

When you multiply ads into a single campaign, it’s easy for a single bad ad to hog up the entire budget. So when you have a group of ads that are performing, place them in a separate production campaign with a high budget, while you test in a low budget campaign. There are no ad groups in Facebook– just ads and campaigns.

Rule #8: Send updates regularly to fans

Most companies just use the wall to communicate, throwing away the massive power of email. Did you know there’s an option in Facebook to “Send an Update to Fans?” This sends a real email, so don’t abuse it. In fact, group this in with your current email marketing campaigns.

We find that a Facebook fan, incidentally, is worth twice as much as an email list subscriber. Why? Almost half of Facebook users log in every day, while email addresses are going dead from spam. Even Sheryl Sandberg is saying that email is dying. Think of building your fan base as a giant list builder with these social options for free.

You might not be a national brand like Weekly World News, nor might you have the kind of content that lends itself readily to social media. Whether you are a consumer packaged good, non-profit, or small business, many of these technique will work for you. You might not be able to drive 631 fans for under a dollar, but you can certainly do a LOT better with proper Facebook ads than you’re doing with Google alone.

If you’re a local business, you don’t want 40,000 fans. Perhaps just 500 of the RIGHT fans might be more than enough to supercharge your business. In our next article, we’ll cover how using Friends of Fans targeting is the most powerful feature in Facebook advertising and the proper and improper ways to use it.

Article source: AllFacebook.com

World’s First Social Payment System: www.PayWithATweet.com

Pay with a Tweet is a platform that lets content owners sell their goods in exchange for a single tweet rather than cash. Developed by German-American Innovative Thunder, Pay with a Tweet bills itself as “the first social payment system where people pay with the value of their social network.”

In other words, rather than paying with currency, purchasers of any kind of content tell their friends on Twitter about it instead. Interested content owners simply sign up with Pay with a Tweet, including the download URL, the tweet to be posted and a link to their company’s website.

Purchasers, then, follow a “forced viral” model to promote the product in question far and wide. Pay with a Tweet is currently available for testing on Innovative Thunder’s own book, “Oh My God What Happened and What Should I Do?”

Traditional advertising’s impact has been fading for some time now, but this is one of the first attempts we’ve seen to make social media’s value explicit. Content creators the world over: one to try out on your own latest work?

Website: www.paywithatweet.com

Article source: www.Springwise.com