Or is it the biggest shift since the Industrial Revolution?

The authors of the following video clearly think it’s the latter and illustrate why. Welcome to the World of Socialnomics

It all starts with a Twitter quote by Google Analytics Evangelist, Avinash Kaushik, “Social media is like teen sex: Everyone wants to do it. No one actually knows how. When finally done, there is surprise it’s not better.”. An excellent introduction to a very good presentation by Marta Kagan that offers a whole update on Social Media today.

I can only advise you to have a read at this excellent presentation.

One little movie to launch the campaign:

One invitation to openly submit your idea’s through Twitter by using, the fairly long, #changehowwepay hashtag in your tweets, and one website, actually web page with a Twitter feed, to gather people’s ideas on how we will pay in the future.

Nicely done.

The base concept of this game is actually dead-classic, it’s a popularity contest like the “web-2.0-sphere” like it, but smartly based on the main topic of the promoted program, ie the daily life and challenges of the manager of a star. This is where one can see some originality in the concept: as a candidate, you have to do the maximum to get votes, not for yourself, but for a friend of yours you have chosen to “manage” up the celebrity ladder. Next to the obvious link with the topic, it shows a deeper use of the strength of social networks.

Once you have chosen your friend (and obtained his/her agreement), you just have to sell him/her to the crowd thanks to a page you’ll create about his/her achievements that you can illustrate with pictures, videos etc… The winners, ie the winning “star” and the manager, win a trip to Los Angeles where they’ll be able to see a personnalized billboard of the new star among many other things.

But don’t get too excited, this contest is only available to U.S. residents. Actually, even U.S. residents from Alaska and Hawaii are not entitled to participate: is the production so cost conscious on plane fares?

As any good buzz video never comes alone, this video is just there as part of a mini website around the “Evian Live Young” concept. This site, that reminds you how good it is to drink water, refers to everything around the movie, including this short making-of (also a must in today’s buzz video strategy).

To complete the scene, three Facebook profiles have been created in the name of the main characters:
- Anna, the salto queen;
- Tom, the king of roller;
- Vincent, the choregraph.

Three stars that actually don’t have the age to have a profile according to Facebook’s Terms and Conditions. I guess Facebook does make exceptions for virtual stars.

The Yellow Treehouse project that took over in October 2008 at the end of January 2009. Appointed to achieve this mission with the help of print, online or mobile directories, Tracey Collins built this restaurant in 66 days while keeping a daily update on the website.

The whole course was covered by a media campaign including television, billboards and bannering online.

The project, created by Colenso BBDO and AIM Proximity, is pretty creative and had some good response in the media (although one can imagine that it did not please every environmentalist), but the mini-site is behind it is -to me- a disaster in terms of usability and social media.

Entirely in Flash, including the navigation of the blog (sic), the site has a “hazardous” navigation and does not provide any flexible way to spread the video’s (you have to search for a well hidden YouTube channel) or pictures . There are the basic ’share’ buttons in gray in the footer of the page, but they do share the homepage regardless of on which page you are.

A missed opportunity there.

As a smile is always good, here is a movie that presents variations of vendor-client relationship in day-to-day situations. I’m the speeches may sound familiar to some developpers, graphists, or other business owners.

I love it when the guy asks the chef to show how he did.

Initially, they were to go to San Francisco to attend the Google I/O conference, a huge gathering of web developers, and to stay a week to visit the local start-ups. Then the idea just grew and other start-ups, developers and Belgian web enthusiasts were kindly invited to join the mission.

As I am writing this post, they are on a plane flying above the Atlantic. A nice delegation of ten guys:

• Laurent Eschenauer (@eschnou)
• Xavier Damman (@xdamman | Tweetag)
• Jean-Yves Huwart (@JeanYves| Entreprise Globale)
• Damien Van Achter (@davanac)
• Antoine Perdaens (@tlg | MicroPlaza)
• Jérôme Cordiez (@lovely_djay | Lovely Charts)
• Arnaud Coomans (@acoomans | Commentag)
• Rayes Lemmens (mylivepage)
• Sam Piroton (@sam_piroton | Les annonces)
• Frédéric Monet (@fmonet | CityPlug.com)

Their program will be made up of several interesting visit and events like:

• Some Tourism 2.0, visiting Stanford Campus, University Avenue, etc….
• A two-day “Startup tour” going through events such as Plug And Play PACT and the 140-Twitter Conference, but also with plans (or hopes) to visit the Googleplex.
• And obviously the two-day Google I/O Conference.

Also worth noticing, on Tuesday, May 26th, five of those participants will have the opportunity and challenge to present their product at the  SF NewTech gathering in SF.

The whole mission will be covered by many participants, among which the journalist Damien Van Achter, who will represent the RTBF Labs on which can read even more about the mission’s context (in French).

Thanks to that  same Damien, who offers us the nice widget hereunder, you can even follow them live from this page. Another way to follow them is to follow all the Tweets about the mission on Tweetag.

I wish those guys a very nice trip, but also some great ideas to import back from San Francisco.

What Wolfram|Alpha? Although it may look like a search engine characterized by its simple interface, Wolfram Alpha can more be defined as a knowledge base or an answer engine. This “Computational Knowledge Engine” as they call it has been developed by a team led by British mathematician Steven Wolfram.

The lon- term goal of the site is to make “all systematic knowledge immediately computable and accessible to everyone”. The site, which is very focussed on the “English-speaking knowledge” today, will not give you a list of web sites as a traditional search engine, but the answers to your questions in a structured form. A dream for every lazy student.

Multiple domains are covered, like for instance:

• Mathematics (obviously): from a simple number to a complex formula
• Statistics
• Physics
• Chemistry: Properties of elements, structure diagrams of molecules …
• Sciences, Technologies
• Past and present weather
• Geography, Economics, History …

WolframAlpha is in that sense closer to a Wikipedia than a Google, but it is characterized by breadth and simplicity (try typing your IP address or domain name for instance, it’s another experience than through the conventional whois sites) of the presentation of the results. Some graphics, forms, maps, and you have basic information in seconds. And I actually really mean a few seconds, because the site is pretty slow, which will certainly improve with time.

On the other hand, the site is already available in iPhone version and offers a whole collection of widgets that allows me among others things to invite you to give it a try below (if the site does not crash, which also happens). If yu don’t see a search box hereunder, just go to the site.

If you need some inspiration to test, visit the example page.

The concept’s goal is to combine the strengths of Web 2.0 with the structure of a traditional publisher. Truvo invites surfers to sign up to be able to share their opinions and discover the ideas of other surfers in their community, but on the basis of a quality database that has been pre-treated, enriched, and distilled by the team responsible for the edition of the Golden Pages in print and online.

The look is very different from the Golden Pages and leaves much room for exchange and community aspect. The navigation, while leaving room for a good search engine, is also much more focused on a tagging system  that, over time, will be enriched by the users under the leadership of Community Managers to ensure a qualitative growth. From the launch day, users will have the ability to add comments, scores, photos on most places and have the opportunity to create their own guides to be shared with the community.

This is for Truvo a first step before adding new features according to the needs of the surfers. Today, the site is in the final stages of its development phase and only available in private beta for a few users.

As I have some connections within Truvo , I have had the opportunity to play around the site and I can even offer you a first screenshot:

The public launch is planned for later in the summer, but people interested in Private Beta can register through the website. The number of access is limited, but there should be some available left. And don’t forget it’s a first beta .

In the meantime, you can also follow the developments on the blog of the Community Managers of Truvo and on the TruvoBelgium Twitter account.

Links:

• Truvolabs Private Beta
• Truvolabs blog
• TruvoBelgium on Twitter