Fourth Story Media

Remember your childhood love of Choose Your Own Adventure books? Where you were the star of the story and could decide whether to stay and fight the ninja/dinosaur/spy, or run away screaming/fall in love/jump off a cliff?

Well now the format has been updated YouTube style.

Chad Villella, Matt Bettinelli-Olpin & Rob Polonsky (collectively known as CMR) have produced a series called The Timemachine about three 30-something office dudes (Chad, Matt & Rob) who are trying to make it to a 12:00 pm meeting. The trouble is that Rob has stumbled across a timemachine, and the three are now bouncing between multiple eras. Each webisode is a few minutes long with a choice at the end (”Do Chad and Matt get in the garbage can?” – “Get In” / “Not a Chance”). Clicking your answer propels you to the next mini episode in the series (which is surprisingly addictive).

According to BuzzFeed half a million viewers have started the journey, but only 100,000 have made it to the end.

Watch the first episode here!

(via Buzzfeed)

Think long term, think organic, think partnership. That’s the message Mobile Youth is promoting in their recent long post about successful youth marketing strategies.

Engaging youth is no longer about short term spiking (ie campaigns), but a focus on long term creation…make youth feel significant, make them feel they belong.

They define the practice as partnership marketing, and go on to break down three successful strategies for marketing to youth:

1. Customer Service: good customer service – aka real human contact – is key.
2. Value Communication: Show that you care. Youth increasingly seek out companies and brands that display a set of core values similar to their own world view.
3. Event Creation: Not just sponsoring events from afar, but actually actively creating events lies at the heart of the most savvy of youth brands. Red Bull, Jones Soda, Boost Mobile (see above video) and Nike are all died-in-the-wool event creators.

(via Mobile Youth)

On the heels of Forbes’ proclamation that Hipsters (or “walking dollar bills”) will save the economy, Burger King is promoting its latest hipster-kid candy – Burger King Studio.

Part art gallery, park think-tank, with a dash of mad scientist’s experiments thrown in for good measure.

The physical studio (replete with skate park) is in Chicago, while the online studio has a blog with emerging artist interviews and profiles, and a store where users can customize sneakers and tees.

In a similar vein, Urban Outfitters announced last week that they are opening Space 15 Twenty this Friday, November 21st, in Los Angeles. Trendcentral is describing the space as “Part shopping mall, part gallery, part event space, part community gathering spot:”

Not just a hipster mall, the retail space will also serve as a community gathering place. Surrounding each retailer is a courtyard which will be utilized for both commerce and performances. Space 15 Twenty will be supporting local art schools, museums, radio stations, and businesses, including Art Center, MOCA, KCRW and Amoeba Records, and will be highlighting content from these sources. The courtyard space will also host flea markets and live events such as concerts, art shows, and film series. In addition, a permanent gallery space will host difference collections ranging from fashion and photography to paintings and independently-published books.

UPDATE: Kitsune Noir has posted a bunch of pictures from the just opened Space 15 Twenty!

Following Lisa Holton’s recent presentation at the InCT 2008 conference in Utrecht, a number of international blogs and magazines have picked up the story of The Amanda Project and Fourth Story Media.

• Frank Watching has a long rundown of the Lisa’s entire InCT presentation (in Dutch)
• Beat Internacional is featuring The Amanda Project trailer (in Catalan)
• InCT Magazine has a lengthy article about Lisa & the creation of Fourth Story Media (in Dutch)

I had the honor and privilege last week of speaking at a cross-media conference for Dutch publishers.  The conference was run by inCT, a magazine, website and publishing company focusing on technology innovation within the publishing industry.

It was a blast.

For starters, the conference was held in Utrecht, which should translate into “heaven.”   Not only is it filled with cobblestone streets, picaresque canals, divine cafes and a community that bikes everywhere, but this is the statue in the center of the village.

The conference featured a variety of cross-media projects including a documentary filmmaker who was using Google Earth to extend the film’s exploration of the history of the Netherlands, and an executive from MTV Europe who discussed a TV/online property for kids.

I met some wonderful people, all exploring interesting ways to merge print and online media.  Piero Stanco, who runs Kluitman, a successful children’s publishing company based in The Netherlands, particularly impressed me.

Unlike many other children’s publishers who create sites for multiple users, Kluitman decided to devote most of its site to children. As a result, it is chock full of great games, activities, and book-related information for kids. Piero is a true visionary; I look forward to watching how he evolves his Internet business.

One of the most interesting people at the conference was David Huijzer, the man who ran it.  A dynamic entrepreneur, David is passionate about publishing, digital technology, and the great dialogue taking place between them.

I urge everyone to check out his site, brush up on your Dutch (or use google translate), and get inspired by David and his vision for a digital publishing future.

And if you are ever in the neighborhood, make a side trip to Utrecht—you won’t want to leave.

On Teens Today has a great post about The Mashup Syndrome:

Mashup Syndrome n. A disease often specific to millennials where they have the constant urge to take-apart, change and combine separate ideas into one.

From IKEA hacks to DIY fashion to Lipdubs to Video remixes to album sampling, teens love to interact with and redesign the content they consume.

So why not in publishing? Why not let kids help tell and retell the story?

(via Next Great Thing)

A few weeks ago, I wrote an article for Publishing Trends about my obsessive love for Google in general, and my somewhat tempered love for my new T-Mobile/Android phone.

For now, one of my favorite party trick apps is the barcode scanner. Hold the phone over a barcode and in a few seconds you get a picture of the product, user reviews, best online prices with links to buy, and local stores with directions on how to get there. It works less well with random items (it told me my US Weekly was a pair of Ralph Lauren boxer shorts, and that my Aquafina was Fuse water), but with books it’s a thing of beauty. Which made me wonder why Google didn’t bother optimizing Google Books for Android…

Teleread responded that it’s “time for Google to be thinking about a reflowable format like ePub,” and that FBReader is already gearing up for the GPhone.

Now Google’s Booksearch blog is noting that Barcode Scanner (one of the three main scanner apps – I downloaded ShopSavvy) allows you to instantly search the contents of books through Google Book Search as soon as you scan it.

For students, this could be an easy way to locate that critical passage that the professor was talking about in lecture. Or if you’re browsing through the shelves of a bookstore, you could use this application to easily determine whether a book contains the information you’re looking for.

So far I’ve mainly been using ShopSavvy to save my bookstore browsings to a wishlist (rather than writing the titles up the inside of my arm), but I’m interested to try this. However, with it I fear that my last real world search capabilities will finally die out.  Oh well.

Katalyst Media (Ashton Kutcher’s company responsible for shows like Beauty & the Geek and Punk’d) recently announced that their latest project, Blah Girls, will be distributed by MySpace TV. The short webisodes, that run anywhere from 45 seconds to 2 minutes, feature the adventures of three gossip queen teenagers – Tiffany, Britney and Krystle.

The shows are a little South Park, a little Powerpuff Girls, a little random YouTube meme. The first show I watched featured the trio crashing a sweet 16 party they weren’t invited to only to discover it was lame until a photo-real Miley Cyrus floated in on a unicorn to spice things up.

The webisodes have generated pretty paltry traffic so far on MySpace – garnering on average between 700 and 1,300 views – with the most popular hitting 16,000 +. For now the comments are fairly negative (with users especially slamming blatent product placement for companies like Vitamin Water).

It will be interesting to watch how the show grows. Although internet video is huge, made for web TV series from major producers – like Michael Eisner’s Prom Queen and The Burg – have yet to take off in any serious way.

Fred on the other hand…

(via Tech Crunch)

Rubicon Consulting recently conducted a broad survey of US web users and found that about 80% of user-generated content online is produced by about 9% of users. 65% are passive readers that contribute only about 20% of the content. And 9% are “pure lurkers” who never contribute any content.

The most frequent contributors?

• Younger than typical web users. Half of the web’s most frequent contributors are under age 22.
• More ethnically diverse
• More technically skilled
• More likely to be single
• More likely to work in technology, entertainment, or communication companies
• More likely to be Democrats

(via Media Post, registration req.)

The internet is all aflutter with today’s historic election:

• Almost 2 million people have declared they’ve voted on Facebook, and YPulse is reporting that as of this morning over 1.2 million of them have donated their Facebook status to one of the candidates
• Facebook is also providing polling location information to all of its users
• Twitter, along with Setfive Consulting, is parsing tweets to see if users are supporting one candidate over another, and live mapping the results
• Seth Godin comments that stories are what really matter
  
• The New York Times has some amazing graphics like “Your State of Mind on Election Day” and What to Watch for Tonight
• A number of sites are calling for voters to take pictures and videos of their voting experiences. For the Times, send your pictures as an attachment to caucuspix@gmail.com, or post them on Flickr with the tags “newyorktimes” and “electionday”

If you’re in New York, and looking for a place to watch the results come in tonight,  there are plenty of places to go.

Happy Election Day!