SCHEDit wants to answer the question “what is going on tonight?” in the same way that Twitter answers the question “what is happening?” — with a customizable, interest-based platform that transcends personal preference.
Here’s how it works: Users log into a new events site on Boston.com with their Facebook accounts. They set up a profile and choose specific venues and people who they want to follow. Their newsfeeds are then populated with events that those venues are hosting and that those people have said they’ll attend.
Theoretically, they can stop bopping from venue site to venue site or browsing multiple publications when they want to find out what is going on. Instead, they simply log into their customized events feed.
Because SCHEDit asks users to create profiles and publicly RSVP to events, the system can also provide a snapshot of what the crowd at each event will look like: the profiles of the people who have RSVPed and their gender ratio.
Another startup, Hotlist, has taken a similar crowd-forecasting approach to its planning app. SCHEDit is different in that it focuses on events rather than venues in general. It’s also hoping to hijack the event planning crowd from publications such as Boston.com rather than build its own from scratch.
But what’s in it for Boston.com? The short answer is advertising revenue. Venues can pay to be promoted either on a trending widget or on event pages that attract relevant crowd members. SHEDit shares revenue from that advertising.
There’s also potential for the app to attract readers to the site.
“It adds a layer of involvement for Boston.com that we haven’t tapped into yet,” explains Boston.com VP of Digital Products Jeff Moriarty. “We cover a small number of events [editorially], but there’s a lot that happens in-between.”‘
SCHEDit founder Omar Tellez imagines the app could link event planning on a variety of publication websites, with users using the same profile on each one. The limiting factor at this point is venue participation. SHEDit and Boston.com have created 200 profiles using public data, but they hope that the venues themselves will claim and manage them.
So far there are about ten venues, including Harvard University and the New England Acquarium, that have done so. Before SCHEDit can scale, many more venues will need to hit the “claim venue” buttons on their profiles.
Super Bowl commercials have long been an American institution, but only recently have marketing agencies and companies alike been able to determine their reach and effect on potential consumers.
While many Bostonians will be much more interested in what happens on the field on Sunday night, those who are less interested in the game will have a chance to watch a different kind of battle take place, as Mullen and Radian6 are again teaming up with Boston.com to host BrandBowl 2012.
The concept of BrandBowl is simple: determine how well Super Bowl ads perform and are received by the audience by gauging sentiment on Twitter. Last year, over 300,000 tweets were accounted for, and some of the big winners were Chrysler, Doritos, Volkswagen and Pepsi Max. Cars.com, Hyundai and BMW came in last.
“Advertising is social, and given that Twitter’s active user base continues to grow and that armchair advertising critics are an expanding population in social media, we expect to get some outstanding data this year,” said Edward Boches, chief innovation officer at Mullen. “The most savvy brands are recognizing the power of social media and are releasing their commercials before the Super Bowl to build the buzz online, and orchestrating elaborate social media campaigns to maximize the impact of their multi-million dollar investments.”
The two Boston-based companies have teamed up on the event for a few years now, and will introduce a few new features this year that make BrandBowl more personalized than in years before. Some of those features include:
“Head-to-head” statistical breakdowns between brands (not sure how this will work for the joint Old Spice-Bounce spot)
A “featured tweet” section that highlights funny and insightful tweets from participants
Location and gender specific data about tweets
A streamlined Brand Bowl mobile experience so users can more easily see the live rankings and Tweet their votes
Even though participating is easy, anyone who tried to access Twitter during the waning minutes of the Patriots’ 23-20 win over Baltimore in the AFC Championship will probably express some reservations as to just how easy it will be to post anything to Twitter during the Super Bowl.
For those who can get their tweets out, participating in BrandBowl is simple. Just reference a specific commercial or tweet with the hashtag #brandbowl and your voice will be accounted for. Tweets as well as the commercials themselves will be livestreamed on Boston.com, allowing those who are really into the game to see what everyone’s saying about the ads.
Here’s a (slightly outdated, but still perfectly relevant) video on how BrandBowl works:
And here are some of 2011′s best ads, according to BrandBowl:
The announcement takes place just days before Huffington Post celebrates its first anniversary since its acquisition by AOL. AOL purchased The Huffington Post on Feb. 2, 2011 for $315 million and made HuffPo‘s front woman, Arianna Huffington, the president and editor-in-chief of the newly formed Huffington Post Media Group.
At a press event previewing the Streaming Network, Huffington celebrated the results from its first year under the AOL banner.
Some notable figures:
The Huffington Post received 36.2 million unique visitors and 6 million comments in Jan. 2012
In 2011, 44 new verticals were launched in the Huffington Post Media Group
Three international editions launched in 2011 (Canada, U.K., France)
Page views across HPMG in Dec. 2011 reached 1.2 billion
For 2012, Huffington Post Media Group is investing in video in a big way.
Live Video News with a Social Twist
Huffington tapped Roy Sekoff, a founding editor of The Huffington Post to run The Huffington Post Streaming Network. Sekoff showed off a concept demo of the network.
The plan is to launch the channel in early summer with 12 hours of live content five days a week. The content will repeat overnight.
The Huffington Post Streaming Network will produce content in New York City and in Los Angeles. New York will serve as the live hub for eight hours of the day, L.A. for four. In early 2013, Sekoff says that the plan is to aggressively increase live content to 16 hours a day.
Viewers can tune in live via the web, mobile devices and tablets as well as connected TVs and set-top boxes. Support for multiple screens and devices will be a core part of The Huffington Post Streaming Network.
So what type of content will The Huffington Post Streaming Network feature? This is where it gets interesting. Content from The Huffington Post Media Group, which include Huffington Post and its many properties as well as sites like Engadget and Tech Crunch will feed the live video content. In other words, the goal is to make The Huffington Post Streaming Network a live video extension of the web properties.
Rather than having a set schedule of programming (like The Engadget Hour), the network will focus on the stories that are most timely and that the online audience wants to see. This will allow breaking news and topics to be discussed in real time.
A staff of 100 individuals, including on-air talent and back-end support, will do much of the heavy lifting. However, many reporters and editors at Huffington Post will make on-air appearances as well. Think TMZ‘s TV show, but more serious. The goal seems to be to bring readers and viewers inside the process.
Huffington remarked that “people don’t want to be told the news, they want to have a conversation about the news.” As a result, viewers and readers will be a big part of the experience and contribute to the content. Using video services like Skype, Huffington Post Streaming Network will bring in readers and commenters to be part of the on-air conversation.
One of my favorite parts of the concept reel was a segment called “Defend Your Comment” — where two commenters are brought in via Skype to defend the comments left on articles on Huffington Post properties. I think this is brilliant — and, assuming it can work from a logistical point-of-view, represents the real promise of merging web news and live video.
Viewers can also engage directly with the site, sharing segments or live feeds on social networks and clicking on headlines within the player itself to open up stories. Verbal and on-screen call-outs to chatter taking place on Facebook and Twitter are also part of the network’s DNA.
Video On Demand
While live content will stream for 12 hours a day, editors will work to create clips from the best parts of that content for viewing on demand. These clips will be viewable within the main Huffington Post Streaming Network experience and also served on other AOL and Huffington Post websites.
This is one of the reasons Sekoff isn’t focusing on a set network schedule. Sekoff said that he doesn’t think web viewers want to tune in for specific content at a specific time, instead preferring to time-shift what they want.
Sekoff also said that by not having strict program schedules, segments can last as long as the audience and production team see fit. It will also allow for more agility when covering breaking stories.
This is all true, of course, but part of the reason live television and news radio tend to operate on a schedule (even if the schedule is loosely defined, such as CNN‘s blocks of live newsroom programming in the morning and afternoon) is because that schedule is what helps attract mass audiences.
It also suggests that from a monetization angle, The Huffington Post Streaming Network will put equal emphasis on live and video-on-demand viewers. I asked Sekoff this question directly and his answer was that “we value both equally, but in different ways.”
Eschewing scheduled programming blocks doesn’t mean, Sekoff stressed, that regular segment types, like the aforementioned “Defend Your Comment” won’t exist. Those segments will exist and will be tagged so that viewers and fans can watch them at will.
I’m not (completely) convinced that a more structured (yet technically unscheduled) approach won’t end up winning out in the end. My own experiences with live audio broadcasting have reinforced how much people enjoy a schedule, even for online content.
The Question of Advertising
The biggest hurdle The Huffington Post Streaming Network will face may not be filling sixty hours of live news a week, but advertising.
Advertising on web video is growing consistently, but the rates still don’t match what producers see on broadcast or cable. This is in spite of the fact that advertising on web video can get advertisers much better metrics on engagement and target ads to much more specific demographics.
The Huffington Post Streaming Network will be taking a two-pronged approach to advertising. The first will be to serve pre-roll ads on video-on-demand clips. The second will be to work with a group of close advertising partners to organically integrate into the live experience.
The goal will be to work with five or six partners at launch and to create integrated sponsorships. This could mean a sponsored segment or Twitter crawl or other on-air mentions. Still, the company stressed that they want the experience to be additive and vow that these partnerships will not undermine the integrity of the news content itself.
5min, a company AOL acquired in Sep. 2010 will handle the ad-ops and video transmission aspects of The Huffington Post Streaming Network.
This Is Disruption
While he didn’t dismiss the potential to syndicate some content to other sources, Sekoff clearly stated that his goal is “not going to become a cable network,” further remarking “what’s the point of doing this if it just becomes the same old thing.”
In my experience, that’s actually a rare attitude for web content creators. Whether they are willing to admit it or not, the goal for most online content producers is to transition from the web to a more traditional distribution channel. Successful podcasters want to be on radio; successful web celebrities want to be on television.
The fact that this doesn’t appear to be the goal for The Huffington Post Streaming Network is what makes this concept so disruptive. One gets the sense that it doesn’t want to be the status quo, it wants to reinvent what the status quo is.
Still, success is not guaranteed. Producing live content is challenging enough without the added challenges of supporting different devices and platforms. Moreover, the live content ecosystem on the web is really starting to heat up.
YouTube is embracing original programming in a big way in 2011 and is building out better support for live content. The Wall Street Journal is expanding its online video content and even wire service Reuters is getting into the game.
Traditional cable news services, including CNN, Fox News and CNBC are also increasing live video output on their sites, with CNN and Fox both embracing TV Everywhere initiatives.
Most importantly, The Huffington Post Streaming Network will have to convince HuffPo readers to become viewers, something that might be easier said than done.
In the meantime, we’ll be tuning in to watch it unfold. Let us know what you think about the concept of live online news networks in the comments.
This is a video of a little robot whose wheels fold in half to form crude legsso it can go where no wheeled robot has gone before. Good for you. Of course, you wouldn't have to build robots with wheels that transform into legs if you'd just strap f***ing jetpacks on them already. "You've doomed us all, GW!" Yeaaaaaah, I plan on going skydiving this weekend, so I've kinda stopped caring. "Why?!" Have you seen my parachute? "That's a bookbag." *wink*
Hit the jump for a video of the least impressive Transformer ever (kidding, that honor belongs to Wheelie).
from Geekologie - Gadgets, Gizmos, and Awesome http://www.geekologie.com/2012/02/transform-and-walk-out-robots-wheels-tur.php
Pop quiz: What’s an example of a permanent, mechanical way of joining metals? What about a temporary non-mechanical one? If you’re stumped, don’t worry – I was too. Last night I went to Greentown Labs, Boston’s premier cleantech incubator, for EnergyBar, their regular networking event. But I went early to attend the first ever session of Cleantech Prototyping Academy, where Greentown’s metalworking expert Ethan Labowitz was tutoring a group of students on the finer points of creating a prototype. The session was immediately followed by the much larger EnergyBar event, and together they served as a reminder of the critical role that Greentown plays in Boston’s cleantech scene.
Food, Drinks, and LOTS of Cleantech Innovators
I’ve been to some good events at Greentown before, but last night there was literally a line out the door to get into EnergyBar. I even got a “Can you get us in” email from someone in line who was scared the event would hit capacity. There was no formal program; just food, beer, and networking. The crowd was a nice balance between entrepreneurs, investors, nonprofit, and even government (yes, web people: in cleantech government is a key part of the scene.)
The MIT Clean Energy Prize is a well known, student run annual business plan competition, and Greentown is a partner. So in addition to the usual networking, last night’s EnergyBar identified Prize applicants as well as individuals seeking to enter and in need of team members. Although there was no formal announcement, the evening allowed Prize competitors to meet one another and connect to the broader community. The submission deadline for the competition is March 2, and the grand prize is $200,000.
Training Engineers to Build Better Prototypes
Ethan Labowitz, Boston Institute for Clean Energy Prototyping (BICEP)
Prototyping new cleantech products is a critical stage for a lot of the startups at Greentown, and the Cleantech Prototyping Academy was designed to help teach engineers the unique needs of startups. “They’re really interested in saving money and saving time, and getting to market really quickly,” Labowitz told me. “We have design for manufacturing – those are courses that are taught at engineeering schools – and those are great. If you’re making a million of something.”
Compared to manufacturing, prototyping is fast, dirty, and relatively expensive. For startups, mistakes in prototyping can be costly, and young engineers often have a hard time conveying specifications for parts to the shops that will build them, according to Labowitz.
“A lot of the time I’ll see a drawing where the engineer has written out the speicficacions for what this part should be but they’ve failed to include a precise descriptoin of exactly what they’re looking for,” he said. They don’t even know the language sometimes to use to specify that part. We’re trying to make that expertise accessible to younger engineers.”
For now, the Academy is a classroom session, but Labowitz hopes to eventually take it to the shop.
Bringing Web and Cleantech Together
Hearing Labowitz explain the difference between soldering and brazing (temperature) was a forceful reminder of the differences between cleantech innovation and web innovation. The products that he’s focused on don’t get built on a laptop in a Starbucks. And yet the overlap between cleantech and the web are larger than many realize.
Last month, developers in New York gathered for the second Cleanweb Hackathon, and last night I heard rumors that a Boston Cleanweb Hackathon is being planned for May. It’s sorely needed, as the two communities don’t talk to each other nearly enough. They’re different in many obvious ways. But there’s still plenty of room for learning and collaboration.
Avocados are amazing things—they're delicious on their own, but they also have a lot of healthy fats, dietary fibers, and vitamins, and despite their high caloric value, they're remarkably easy to prepare. If you have an avocado that's too firm to use for something else, or you're just in the mood for something new and healthy for breakfast, slice it in half, remove the pit, and carve out a little space in the center. Crack an egg where the pit was, and bake. In a few minutes, you'll have a delicious, protein and vitamin-packed breakfast treat that's rich enough to keep you going all morning. More »
Flying these days is an uncomfortable, difficult process, but if you're lucky enough to snag a flight with on-board Wi-Fi, or individual monitors in the back of every seat so you can watch TV or listen to music while you're in the air, it can be a bit easier. Flight search and booking site CheapAir updated its search engine this morning to help you find flights that offer those kinds of perks so you don't have to guess before you book. More »
Martha Stewart is looking into producing web-only video programming, the TV personality and business magnate suggested on stage at AllThingsD‘s media conference Tuesday.
Stewart’s company, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, is looking for new outlets for Stewart’s daytime show now that her contract with the Hallmark Channel is coming to an end. The New York Timesreported that the channel did not wish to renew the series, which runs its last episode in May, because of low ratings and high studio costs.
Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia President and COO Lisa Gersh, who joined Stewart on stage, said that the company is now considering all of the places Stewart’s programming could live beyond TV. MSLO is already distributing video through marthastewart.com, its mobile apps and on online video platforms like YouTube.
Because Stewart has a robust ecommerce business — one that spans books, magazines, office supplies and even pet furniture — it’s possible Stewart could forgo TV in favor of a profitable web series supported by a mix of online advertising and ecommerce.
“Is a web-only presence really sustainable?” AllThingsD‘s Walt Mossberg asked.
“If the web presence is about selling products, about merging retail and media, it could,” said Stewart. “That’s the beauty of our business.”
Twitter has started rolling out its enhanced brand pages to more advertisers.
The social networking site — which announced in December that it would be introducing Facebook-style brand pages for companies to customize and highlight content — has extended the platform to National Public Radio, NBC News, Volkswagen, The Huffington Post, Al Jazeera, Anobii and others, the company told Mashable.
“Enhanced profile pages will continue to roll out to advertising partners, as well as other select partners, charities, media organizations and individuals,” Twitter said in a statement.
The latest brands are the first to get the design since it was made available to certain partners when it launched. Among the first 21 brands invited to test out the new platform included HP, Intel, Coca Cola, Dell, Disney, JetBlue, Nike and Paramount Pictures.
Although brands with enhanced profile pages will have access to uploading banners and promoting tweets at the top of their Twitter timeline, it’s up to account owners to use and make the most of the functionality.
Some companies are already making the most of their brand pages. In fact, launch partners HP and Intel hosted the first-ever live stream of a concert on Twitter with electronic music master Tiësto during the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show in January.
“HP came to us with the idea and we couldn’t be more excited to hear how the company and Intel will be using their Twitter brand pages to reach out to the public and become destination sites,” said Rob Pietsch, Twitter’s director of West Coast sales. “It’s a first for us, and we expect in the future that more companies will integrate streaming video into their pages.”
Twitter’s expanded brand pages are expected to change the way fans interact with businesses on the site.
Bostonians are known for their stubborn pride in everything from sports to movie stars to coffee (see: this video), so it’s only fitting that the latest crowdsourcing effort making social media waves builds off that super-intense Boston pride. Last night, Boston-based Digitas launched a social media campaign called “You Gotta Try Boston,” with the ultimate goal of convincing Top Chef to film Season 10 in the hub. In the short time since its kickoff, Boston’s Top Chef fans have voiced their opinions loud and clear across Twitter and Facebook as to why our city is so great.
We grabbed some time with Rob Rizzo, the Executive Creative Director of Digitas Boston and Detroit, to discuss the viral campaign.
1) What’s the inspiration behind the hashtag?
For a while now, Digitas has been working with the Mayor’s Office and some great people in the Downtown Boston Business Improvement District (BID) to help get the word out about all the offerings in our neighborhood. There are so many great stores, shops, pubs and restaurants a short walk from our office — everybody has their personal “You Gotta Try” favorites. It might be the cupcakes at Cakeology, a new appetizer or drink at Scholars, or a favorite jewelry store, boutique — anything! So the hashtag is just an easy device to brag about a favorite find in the neighborhood. But it goes beyond Downtown Crossing to the entire city. And beyond.
2) How quickly did it take off?
We just launched it last night, but we’re already seeing a lot of enthusiasm from Boston, particularly in the culinary and hospitality communities.
3) With all the other reality shows out there, why did you target Top Chef?
Top Chef came about when one of our foodie friends mentioned they were about to wrap up Season 9. We wondered why in a city like Boston, with so many great places to try, Top Chef hasn’t tried Boston. So, we thought: why not get people sharing their personal favorites? We want the producers of Top Chef to be inspired by the passion around dining and drinking and bring the show to our city.
From seafood to celebri-chefs to an abundance of student interns, check out this Storify of why Top Chef needs to come to Boston.