Spider Man 3 - Sony pictures new release has embraced the power of WOM.



When Honda released the power of dreams, showing the heritage and values that were deep within Honda but little recognised to the outside world it built a story. A story which upon reflection made us all think, ‘ Wow, these guys and girls stand for something ‘ whether it be the environment or the dedication to engineering excellence – they used the past in order to sell their future.

Today most film releases concentrate on the here and now, they hype and tease. Sure they build stories that may use the past ( how many times have we seen terror of the house many years ago , only now today to reek revenge on some unsuspecting teenagers who take the wrong turn ) but none really have the heritage of story of many classic characters such as Spider Man.

Sony has in most part done a great job of embracing the very beginnings of Spidey, delivering it all using the most modern parts of social networking.

Social Networking

Above and beyond screen savers which do very little in terms of Word of Mouth and the standard mobile content, they have pushed into the realms of MySpace and Blogging with Widgets and templates.

Knowing there connecting market will be more than happily switch all of their previous hard work in designing there own portals to take a piece of the Spidey brand wagon for the next two months is brilliant - this is an example of marketing technology at it's best.

They have not made the mistake of just providing just another blogging area on a branded site, but provided a place where people can find tools to takeaway and use which will promote and encourage the all powerful word of mouth – word of mouth that is not generated by the corporation, but Word of Mouth that is generated by people.

Memories

By embracing the very roots of Spider man and not neglecting the past ( the site covers all the previous Spider Man films ) and by using engaging interactive location maps of New York to good effect , they remind you why you enjoyed the old films so much. This also serves the purpose of reinforcing the new story line, reminding you of characters from the first film and also connecting you with the original Marvel comics, ensuring all fans are catered for.

This connection is a recognition that there is an ardent following out there going back many years.

Yes they have provided a blogging area on the site, but they have also given enough takeaway items for people to seed , share and talk about in there own social networks to ensure this is a very talked about film.

Sony pictures has used technology to recognise the past, while embraced the future

Confused ? - search moves forward

Instead on flipping to Google to check on facts or terminology used within this blog, double click any word to launch a nice plugin from AnswerTips.

Video search

There is no question video online is booming , Level 3 says 50 per cent to 60 per cent of the traffic across its IP backbone is video source ( http://www.digitmag.co.uk )

Using tools such as Google and YouTube to search for content brings up a problem – the manner in which the video is actually stored and indexed.

The problem

Nearly all search engines rely upon a combination of meta data ( the descriptions given to the clip by the content producer ) and also user generated tags – both of which can be lacking in information or as demonstrated on Youtube, be completely irrelevant when performed by user tagging ( you can tag anything with Paris Hilton ).

Voice recognition

Technology however comes to the rescue here in the form of Blinkx, a new San Francisco based operation using voice recognition techniques to index and most importantly give context to words within the videos based on when and how they appear.

Blinkx works but trawling the net for video content ( they have over 7 million hours of footage ) and using its voice recognition technology is able to provide far better searching capabilities than existing technologies.

Key benefits of the system

• Pulls from many sources giving users a wider scope of search
• Controls the user “portal”
• Amazon hook-in for purchasing options
• IMDB for reviews and information
• Personal channel creation
• Does not host content ( presently ) so does not suffer from IP issues

Advantage

Controlling the search across many sources of information will give Blinkx an advantage over companies such as Joost and the BBC who are concentrating on providing ‘ channels ‘ through their content portals.

There is no doubt the future of the net is video , this is the first real offering which will see Google needing to play catch-up in the search

When Google Got a sense of humor

New York to Paris - the long way

Technology can sometimes be all to clinical, removing us from the interaction and quirks that make us all human.

We all enjoy interaction , social websites popularity are proving the need for us to belong and share .

However you can all too often forget that behind many websites which provide us with answers to our questions 24x7 365 days a year, that there are a group of people who do actually have a sense of humor.

To see this in action , go to Google maps and ask for directions from New York to Paris - then get your swimming custom and the record book to hand .......

Triple play providers beware

The biggest non announcement in months

The largely unheard of partnership between NBC and NewsCorp recently to start serving video online through what many are calling ‘ NewTube ‘.

In terms of reach to the Internet community it will be a formidable player – with access to users through it’s network of portal providers ( MySpace ) and a approach to IP protection which suits advertisers and content owners alike, with advertising agreements with Cisco, Intel and Schweppes already in place.

The player

With attention spans becoming shorter and shorter the key is to ensure delivery of advertising is :

• on time
• contextually correct
• to the correct people

This is essential in order to maintain the premiums required to make the offering profitable.

YouTube , BBC’s iPlayer, iTunes Joost and NewTube

The control of the ‘ player ‘ is already becoming a crowded place in the online world with the above forming a few of the ever increasing tangle of software players on the market.

All of these players and other video serving portals will have to define and work on their delivery models, data and Technology in all if this is key. From the delivery and segmentation, to the response and interaction of both the adverts and programming alike.

There is no doubt over the months these will soon converge into a few (mainly based on content deals they are able to strike and the success or failure of the law suits being filed) it is Cable and Satellite who should be concerned.

Who is the next big Cable company?

For these companies who own no content ( even Sky is limited once you remove the Sports ) their quandary is the ever increasing number of PC’s and entertainment devices such as the Xbox360 and Playstation 3 making there way into peoples homes.

So is Microsoft lining itself up against the Virgins of the world to provide home entertainment through there console, the answer has to be yes.

While Branson goes for triple play ( TV, Broadband and Telephone ) all which is still delivered over a network into peoples homes which BT still owns, Microsoft is taking a stealth approach.

Broadband now enables all of these components to be delivered through exactly the same mechanism to not a grey box under the television , but a high powered PC with the ability to time shift programming, handle content on demand , provide interactive programming guides and occupy the gaming needs for the household.

The future is this

• Microsoft and Sony will push into the content delivery space within 12 months
• The PVR will be dead
• Cable TV network will be redundant
• Satellite network will be used for only the most far reaching corners of the globe

TV able console sales figures global http://www.vgchartz.com/

• Xbox360 - 9.68 million
• Playstation 3 - 3.16 million
  

Broadband UK from http://www.statistics.gov.uk

In 2006, 52 per cent of households in the EU-25 had Internet access at home. The UK was above the EU average, at 63 per cent, while the Netherlands had the highest proportion in the EU (80 per cent), followed by Denmark (79 per cent). Elsewhere in Europe, Iceland had a higher proportion of homes with Internet access, at 83 per cent. Greece had the lowest rate in the EU, at 23 per cent.