Viral videos are pretty hit or miss, and not many brands can match the virality of independent series like My Drunk Kitchen or Awkward Black Girl. Still, the brands who try can end up winning big: Old Spice and Progressive are just two brands who’ve used humor, silliness and social media to achieve virtually instant name recognition. Videos that are useful or entertaining are the most shared, but there’s no real formula to making a viral video. That doesn’t mean, however, that brands won’t try–and some of them succeed.

For the first few seconds of Till Dance Do We Part it’s not hard to think this is a real show. It’s flashy and gaudy and just weird enough to be plausible: big audience, technically skilled dancers, and a judge who looks like a cross between Liberace, David Alan Grier and Prince. So, when the camera cuts to a female dancer smacking sidelong into a washing machine, the viewer’s surprised. We’ve just been tricked into watching a nearly pitch-perfect pastiche of reality show–and when the punch line comes, the viewer feels a little cheated. That’s what makes it compelling: for a split second, the viewer is left squinting at their laptop screen, not in on the joke.

But that doesn’t last long, and the punch line becomes genuinely funny. It shouldn’t be, because laughing at people who hurt themselves isn’t nice; but the slapstick element is a reminder of just how absurd the reality television industry has become. With the appearance of appliances comes the relief that a dance competition this crazy isn’t actually real. It’s what makes this video both entertaining and shareable. This month-old Sears commercial is proof that virality sometimes doesn’t happen. But Sears’ brand is recognizable enough that it doesn’t need an instantly measurable ROI, and this commercial will eventually become a gamble that pays off.

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The Rise In Popularity Of Instagram

With the increasing popularity of social media communication, here comes another application that’s been creating a huge buzz around the internet for a while now: the image uploading app. Instagram. Instagram is so popular that it has gained more than 4.5 million users in less than a year. Like Twitter, members can follow your posts but instead of words, you get to post photos and then your follower can “like” your photos and leave you comments, for whatever reason, many people are fascinated by this. But what’s even more amazing about Instagram is that even professional fashion photographers and Hollywood celebrities are getting hooked by its immense popularity. It has even caught the attention of the number one social media site: FaceBook.

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Photo sharing site Flickr has been on a roll in its support of mobile operating systems and their accompanying browsers. A Windows 7 App that fully integrates in to the OS and presents a clean interface was released recently. Shortly after Flickr turned its sights to iOS and released an iPad optimized version of the site.

The new iPad friendly addition is a change to the light box. When browsing the site on your iPad you’ll be able to access a full screen photo viewer and initiate a slideshow:

We’re happy to announce some big improvements to the photo light box for iPad users! The light box is a handy, full browser photo viewer available from any photo page. From a photo page on Flickr, simply tap on a photo to view it larger (if available) and on a clean, dark background.

While Flickr has a native iPhone App that taps in to the power of iOS and the hardware, no native iPad exists yet. Flickr may opt to focus on its site and continue improving it for iPad users instead of releasing an official App. As fellow Blog Herald author Darnell Clayton mused, Yahoo’s growing commitment to the service and expanding features to mobile devices hints Yahoo! doesn’t want to shutdown the service like it’s doing with Delicious.

A visual look at global brands and celebrities with the most social media presence and followers. Which companies have utilised social media with success and who has the biggest Twitter following, Lady Gaga or Justin Bieber?

Enjoy this great Infographic from our friends at Infographiclabs

Hey video game blogger! You have one day – 24 hours left – to enter for a chance to get flown to Los Angeles to cover the November 11 launch party for Ubisoft’s “Shaun White Snowboarding.”

The contest is being held by MTV Multiplayer which is celebrating its first birthday.

Who’s eligible?

- You must be video game blogger. Prove it by writing 250 words on why you should be chosen. Learn more here.

-You need to look to be between 18-30 years old (darn MTV. where’s the age discrimination lawsuit?)

- You must be a legal resident of the continental United States or District of Columbia (darn MTV. Where’s the lawsuit from Hawaiians and Alaskans?)

- You must be able to come to L.A. on or around the dates of November 10-12.

The deadline is 12pm ET October 28, 2008.

Good luck!

Yesterday, I brought up the issue of podcasts in What Makes Podcasts Fun To Listen To? The post asked what makes your favorite podcasts fun and successful in your eyes in format and structure.

Podcasts on blogs are growing in popularity. With portable media players, especially iPods, more affordable and accessible, people are downloading podcasts in addition to music. I’m finding podcasts on file sharing services and media marketplaces beyond iTunes. With the ease of adding multimedia to our blogs improving, it’s natural that we want to explore communication beyond the written word and still photographs.

Today, I want to know if you are podcasting on your blog, or if you are considering podcasting.

If you are podcasting, how is it working for you? Are you finding the experience successful? Is traffic and readership increasing? How are you podcasting? Alone or with a host? More than two hosts? How is that working for you?

What equipment and software are you using? How do you record interviews, edit the audio, convert the audio into various formats, and what is the easiest and hardest aspects of podcasting? We want to learn from you, so tell us how your podcasting efforts are working and how it’s evolved as you’ve learned along the way.

Are you considering adding a podcast to your blog? Why? Have you thought about the format, structure, how to handle the files with uploading, downloading, publicizing, and sharing? Will you add music? From where? Copyright free content, your own original music, or what?

Will your podcast feature just you or will you have more than one host? Considering adding interviews? How? What technology are you considering to add access for interviews and co-hosts? What programs are you considering for editing your recordings?

There are a lot of technical issues that confront bloggers who want to podcast, which keeps many from podcasting. Yet, there is a growing collection of technology that makes the process easier and faster.

Let’s talk about how podcasts work for blogs, or not, and how you can save time generating podcast recordings and publishing on your blog.

If you’re looking for content for your site but don’t want to create it yourself or pay money for it, there are a lot of options available to you. Whether you are looking for images, articles or multimedia, there are many sites on the Web that make available a library of work available for you to use.

If you know where to look for what you want and to make sure that your site complies with the licensing requirements put upon it, you’ll find that there are plenty of people eager have their work become a part of your blog.

To help with that, I have compiled a list of seven of my favorite sites for obtaining free, high-quality content for your site without any worries of copyright issues down the road.
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Last year, Virgin Mobile Australia decided to use Creative Commons-licensed images in an advertising campaign. The campaign, dubbed “Are You With Us Or What”, featured photographs taken from Flickr, which were overlayed with taglines and a plug for Virgin’s cell phone service.

While most of the photos were of car accidents, graveyards, Christmas decorations or other non-human subjects, one ad found itself at the center of a legal storm.

The ad in question featured Alison Chang flashing a peace sign. The photo, taken by Justin Wong, was licensed using Flickr’s “select a license” feature under a Creative Commons by attribution license, which allows commercial use.

The problem was that, while the photographer had allowed commercial use through his license (though he later claimed to be unclear about the terms), it only covered the copyright of the work itself. Chang nor her parents had signed a model release, meaning the use potentially violated her right to privacy.

The result is that her parents sued on her behalf in a case that is still ongoing.

So what went wrong and how can others avoid a similar misstep? The answer is actually fairly simple.
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The orphan works legislation, last seen in 2006, now has the attention of Congress again with two similar bills, one in the House and one in the Senate. These bills, should either of them pass, could have a drastic impact on copyright holders both within and outside of the United States.

But what should bloggers expect from this bill? How can Internet-based authors work to avoid having their work becoming “orphaned”?

The answer depends heavily on the kind of work you do and how much protection you want for it. However, what is clear is that at least some bloggers have a good reason to be concerned and should consider taking steps now to avoid a problem down the road. read more

JC Hutchins has been breaking rules even before he started his blog in an attempt to give away his science fiction novel, 7th Son, which publishers didn’t want, as a free podiobook, one of the first audio books published as a weekly series of podcasts. He has come up with a variety of interesting viral campaigns to promote his book, blog, podcasts, and writings, turning his unpublished book into the most popular podiobook series in history, and becoming a specialist in the true sense of social networking and marketing. His innovative online self-marketing techniques attracted St. Martin’s Press, and his book will finally be published in 2009.

Tapping the creativity of his fan-base, Hutchins is breaking rules again by asking people to become victims and make history.
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