Goozeberry: For the Mobile Future 2.0

Time mag’s 25th December edition has you as the Person of the Year. Yip – its us, all of us sad sacks that sit glued to the keyboard and mouse when the sun shines and we should be playing with our kids or dogs or both. Well done to us and our contribution to the contributed economy, the wisdom of us, the collective vision, the millions of citizen journo’s, videographers and closet soapboxers.

On a serious note however, this marks the recognition that things are a changing in the connected world. It hasn’t really made an impact where the real issues are like Iraq, Darfur and Zimbabwe – but maybe its power can be harnessed for more noble quests like these instead of the scramble for the top of the Digg pile. Although – it may be that exact scramble that can make the difference – make the words of the unheard heard.

Pete Cashmore at Mashable has a good post about it.

Oh, and remember that YouTube is already Invention of the Year.

Kudos to everyone that has ever done anything on the internet – coz this one goes out to you.

Technorati Tags: time, web2.0, youtube, mashable

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Kudos to Virgin America – some really great use of the internet to engage your customers and potential customers.

In a campaign called Name our Planes, Virgin invites the public to submit names for their new fleet of Virgin America planes. This is how they did it.

1. Create a timelapse video and put it up on YouTube. This shows that they had the vision and took the time and effort to install a video camera in a hangar and record a new plane being emblazened in Virgin’s livery.
   1. Its been up for about 2 months, has had 224k views, 60 comments and has been favourited 300 times.
   2. It blatantly directs traffic to the Name our Planes website – which is the ultimate goal.
   3. Its an interesting insight into how planes are painted/prepared.
2. Create a fantastic Flash site called NameourPlanes.com.
   1. It has a Digg Swarm feel to it that shows the relative popularity of the names that have been submitted.
   2. There have been nearly 12000 names being suggested. Testimony to user participation and people wanting to contribute in a creative way. And what better way than to say that you named one of Virgin America’s new planes!
   3. They collect details of interested and participating members of the public – for future marketing of course. Not a bad thing.
   4. They didn’t try to add too much Flash(y) functionality to the site – its just right.
3. Just received an email from Virgin America that pulls all of the above together:

‘If there’s one thing we love at Virgin America, it’s creativity. And guts. And by entering Name Our Planes, you just showed us both. So cheers to you for submitting your big idea. And good luck. Because if you win, your name will be etched on that baby forever. We’d say that’s cause for some serious bragging rights.’

We will undoubtedly be hearing and seeing more about this and this kind of campaign in the future.Technorati Tags: virgin america, nameourplanes, user participation, social media

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