Building Your Own Social Netowrk

A lot of people have been speculating (including myself) that social networks are going to become more niche targeted, and this new service Ning (http://www.ning.com) seems to pave the way. Ning offers a (free?) platform to build your own customized social network.

http://www.ning.com/about/about-us.html

Check out the network someone built for the ever popular Penguins site.

This is the main network

http://pengspace.ning.com

And here is one user:

http://pengspace.ning.com/profile/CODY5575

Notice that he is part of the PengSpace network and does not actually have his own page. He does however belong to mulitple networks, which takes the myspace model and flips it upside down on it's head. Also within PengSpace there are individual groups (similar to myspace) created as well.

Here is another that CW network created for One Tree Hill.

http://othvip1.ning.com/

It will be interesting to see how these personal social netowrks grow over the year and what effect it will have on major sites like facebook and myspace.

BMW Coupe and Convertible Experience Sites

Automotive sites have been getting more and more complex over time and these two micro/experience sites are great examples of what Flash can do to help someone really experience a product or brand. BMW has achieved this greatly in their latest experience sites to help you explore and learn more about the new 2007 BMW 3 series Coupe. The site feature super crisp 1024 width video of the car spinning that is later interactive. It feature great motion control camera work that will whisk you into the cabin of the car when you choose to learn about the interior. If you look closely you can see you how they swap in a high res still image after the movement stops, which is a great idea. They have shot the original video in Hi-def to so this and have such a clean image. All the detailed sections are chalk full of video or images to tell you more. Some of these sections even have interactive demos, such as the adaptive steering headlights.
The site also features a path navigation system that is unique but could be confusing to some. Upon clicking "Expand" it will expand the navigation to reveal how far in the site you have traveled and where you can go. Although quite cool and innovative, it fails to show the deeper levels you can reach within the site until you actually get there. Case in point: Until I click on the engine link I do not realize there are two more links below it, describing the 2 types of engines they offer. I think a simple solution for this would have been to show the full site structure, but grey out the areas you have not visited lately so at least you they are there. Also the other features such Ambient lighting are buried 2 levels down under the new sophisticated details sub-nav. Its a cool idea but one that limits the nav too much when the sites main goal should be to let users find everything quickly and efficiently. Also a bit shocking but they need to fix the lack of audio controls. Although ambient music is cool even the best audio loop after 30 times gets a bit old.

In terms of design though the designers did a great job creating a simple and very elegant site. Subtle gradients and design elements are well placed and uses nice clean boxes for layout.

http://content.bmwusa.com/microsite/3coupe2007/E92_landing.html

Rating: 9


The sister site which promotes the hard top convertible version of the 3 series is well done as well but lacks the sophistication of the first. What is cool is the almost full width video introduction which then transitions to the car driving on the screen giving the feel of motion as the wheels spin and the road reflectors wish by. What is really quite surprising is the lack of video showing this amazing top going down. When you go into the section Versatility (which is also is a bit vague) the only option presented is to view a slide show. Really in today's bandwidth and the fact the site has an intro video that shows it, and full video showcasing the engine, this is unacceptable. This section should have had not only video but video with a POV you can change and view at any angle to really drive the selling point of how great this new feature is.

http://content.bmwusa.com/microsite/3convertible2007

Rating: 7

Geico Caveman's Crib

Today we look at Caveman's Crib http://www.cavemanscrib.com/
This was launched quite a few months ago so it is not a new site.

The interaction of this site is very good. The site is another type where you can explore photo-realistic worlds by pseudo camera moves and has great alpha channeled video clips. The site opens inviting you into the crib of the caveman from the Geico commercials, there is a nice video intro where he tells you to make yourself at home while he gets ready. The user is then left to explore the pad out. They designers did a nice job of adding about 4-5 clips of video to keep it random when you interact with objects that annoy the caveman. Some of the great examples are the big screen TV where if you click on it, it flips around the channels showing some Geico commercial and the ending screen which helps enforce the brand. Probably one of the favorite things you can do is flush the toilet while in the bathroom, while the caveman is taking a shower.
The funniest video reactions come from the bugging him while in the shower.
The Geico tie-in is pretty thick but effective, after all it is a website advertising for them. There really is no payoff to the site though, so I found myself quiting out after about 5 min the first time.

Rating: 8

IBM Blade Center

Today I'm going to veer off the entertainment a bit and discuss an interesting campaign I stumbled on for IBM. What caught my eye was the banner add which featured a full video in a 300x250 ad with no branding whatsoever. Just the tag/url ibm.com/outwithcables
When you visit the site you see a much longer version of the video which really plays up that this ball of cables is almost alien-like, and in my opinion the video is too long, especially since i saw it already in the ad. What caught my eye was the call to action to "Watch Very Short Demos with Ned." This is done in a fun 1950's style instructional video format. I liked and disliked the content in this area however. The first video was kind of funny, it showed how to reduce power costs and featured a box fan in lower corner, the tech slides the blade into the server and turns the fan off. Simple and to the point and mildly humorous. There is another one where an It manager asks if they upgraded the infrastructure and then he simply plugs in the blade which is also quite humorous. There are probably about 20 some videos in there which promote the features of the product. Where the piece fails a bit i think is the payoff of these videos. With the exception of the two mentioned, the rest are mild variations of the tech plugging in the blades. If they had been more creative and come up with some more minor variations it would encourage users to explore them all and spend more time on the site. The overall concept of 15 second videos to showcase how simple the product is to use is great, the execution could have used a bit more finesse.

http://www.ibm.com/outwithcables

Rating: 8

Moment of Silence...

No entry today as a kind of moment of silence for the students at Virginia Tech.

I will say this though, I give great kudos to the online programming team at abc.com. while watching the live coverage, they said they are going to take a break and come back with more coverage. I was bracing myself to be bombarded with senseless advertising spots. Instead i was pleasantly surprised that they ran very touching PSA's about being a big brother and spending time with family and loved ones. Bravo ABC, nice to see the news has a heart.

Bud Light Apology Bot

Followed a cute 300x250 banner ad for the Bud Light apology bot which brought me to a great use of the VeriTalk engine at http://www.budlightapologybot.com. This is a great concept and fits very well with the technology of veritalk which offers prescripted messages from recorded voices. VeriTalk is most known for the phone call you could send to your friends from Samuel L Jackson in the film Snakes on a Plane. However I think they should have made it sound more robotic a bit. It sounds like they ran a voice modulator filter over a human voice as oppose to using a true computer synthesized voice which I think would have driven the point home more. However the execution and design and simplicity of use or incredibly well done and the excuses and reasons are incredible funny and will get the friends receiving them to send new responses back to the original person who sent the message. Will be interesting to see how many uses if VeriTalk we will see over the coming year.

http://www.budlightapologybot.com

Rating: 9.0

Kickin' it Old School

Found a great site today for Kickin' it Old School. This site epitomizes good design in entertainment sites. The second you load the site the preloader has a silhouette of someone break dancing and the music is 80's classic 'Freakshow on the Dance Floor.' It has a great call out for news on the homepage which looks dynamic so it will be easy to update. However I would like to see a trailer there as well to encourage people to see the film. Afterall the site is supposed to sell you on buyin a ticket to see the film. The navigation is brilliant, made up of classic 80's imagery with text so you know what it leads to just in case you don't recognize that things the View Master that leads to the gallery. The transitions are great, big sweeping pen scribbles, classic of the 80's graphic design. The gallery shows the images as Polaroids, which is a bit odd since they used the View Master on the front. Maybe they should have used a Polaroid camera as a nav item, but then again, perhaps the legal team shut that idea down. The music is controlled by a boom box sitting in the corner and download is represented by old school computer. They are following the trends seen on other sites and offer a down-loadable widget which plays the trailer and allows you to select one of 5 characters you would like to display. However at this time there is no method of downloading it... Other than that my only complaint has to be on the video page. It seems someone cut some corners (or maybe just pathed it wrong) because the large trailer option just plays a scaled up medium version. (The video bug has since been corrected as of the latest update of this entry.) The tickets section is a little vague as it displays a sub menu behind it to visit one of the three ticketing sites, however the links blend it a bit too much with the graphics. Overall though a really well designed site.

Update (5/1/07):

Two new sections have been added to this site since review. First is the poster generator. This could be the most innovative way I have seen to mask user submitted photos. Its a bit confusing at first because it shows an outline that your picture will fit in but offers no masking guides like most sites do. The second step then allows you to paint a live dynamic mask complete with brush stroke size options. The only think they are lacking here (and would have been easy to add) is a reverse, so instead of only painting out the image, you could paint parts of it back in, the exact same way you paint masks in Photoshop. Still though being that is Flash and not Photoshop its quite robust in masking.

Another great addition to the site is groundbreaking contest called the Green Screen Challenge where the user is encouraged to download the footage from the film and mix it up with their own backgrounds. These types of contests are actually getting to be more popular rather quickly, as there is another one for the band Modest Mouse http://www.modsetmousemusic.com/video is being promoted by Apple. It will be interesting to see what the users create. This is a really great showing the leap of faith advertisers are more comfortable with the consumer completing more difficult tasks. Such as cutting together there own trailer for Disturbia.

http://www.kickinitmovie.com/

Rating: 9.5