The Curator's News Feed: April 13, 2012
Did you read about Facebook's purchase of Instagram this week? What about "Texts from Hillary"? So did we, and a few other memorable links. Read on.
Dick Tracy, Eat Your Heart Out, Mashable. Maybe it’s just my inner child still captivated by Q’s inventive 007 pens that explode and belts with built in grappling hooks, or high tech detectives like Inspector Gadget and his – well – gadgets, but I think this idea has legs. The Pebble, the first smart watch to work with iDevices, works as a watch, caller ID and message screen, music remote, etc. by tethering with your iPhone. This isn’t a new idea, but they were able to raise $500,000 in Kickstart pledges in a single day (five times their goal). Why is this particular device getting attention (and investors)? Certainly the fact that it works with iDevices helps, but it’s also because it’s simple. The e-paper display means the battery will last a week rather than a day and the price is completely approachable. I don’t know about you, but I’ll have my eye on these guys. – Matthew
Gotta Watch: Extreme ad stunts gone viral, CNN. CNN recently spotlighted some cool marketing campaign “stunts” that helped their causes go viral. These are some good ones for sure, but I’d love to hear others that people like and why. – Dan
Digital Tools Boost In-Store Service, Women’s Wear Daily. It’s interesting to watch the convergence of offline and online retailing, which seems to be an overall trend in the retail industry today. The two worlds are colliding and becoming much more seamless in our day to day lives. Brick and mortar retailers are implementing QR codes, Mobile Point of Sale systems, style apps, in-store displays offering augmented product information and other digital tools to provide a better, more engaging and personalized shopping experience. And it’s happening across the board from mass retailers like Kmart and Sears up to high end brands like Gucci and Neiman Marcus. – Julia
Why Instagram was Worth $1 Billion to Facebook, Mashable. I think this is probably what everyone is reading this week. But, what can you say other than ‘wow.’ So, why was Instagram worth $1 billion to Facebook? As this Mashable article points out, Instagram was beating Facebook at its own game, taking the mobile space by storm and leaving Facebook out of the mix. This won’t be the case moving forward with Facebook taking the reins with the ability to provide users with better a better image sharing experience on their mobile devices…including Android! Can’t wait to see where the company takes this. – Annie
Texts From Hillary, Tumblr. My favorite read this week was the “Texts from Hillary” Tumblr started by two friends in a bar just one week ago. The site uses an iconic photo of sunglasses-clad Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on a military plane, surrounded by staffers and briefing books, and mashes it with captions of imagined text conversations with other celebs and politicians. One example submitted on April 9 – Mark Zuckerberg: Guess what I just bought! Secretary Clinton: A shirt with a big boy collar? In one short week, the Tumblr generated 32 posts and 83,000 Facebook shares. The final submission came from Madame Secretary herself. – Ann Marie
How to Get More Likes on Facebook, The Oatmeal. No one brings the hammer like The Oatmeal (aka cartoonist/author/blogger/comedian Matthew Inman.) He has a way of calling out annoying social behavior – on and offline – that, though irreverent, is always spot on. In this comic, he pokes fun at people who beg for Facebook likes (we’ve ALL gotten those messages) and offers instead a lesson that any agency could live by: “Create things that are hilarious, sad, beautiful, interesting, inspiring or simply awesome.” – Lisa