Jure Cuhalev » Meme

OK Go – This Too Shall Pass – How to Create A Viral YouTube Video

Jure Cuhalev — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 07:45:47 +0000

OK Go recently released video for their song This Too Shall Pass, of their new album, Of the Blue Colour of the Sky, and it shows that they really understand viral web video and that their target demographic consumes their content on YouTube and Facebook.

First, check out their video, if you haven’t yet. It’s really worth watching, even if you don’t like their music. Analysis after the jump:

As you’ve seen it’s a Rube Goldberg inspired music video that is doing everything it can to keep your attention. It starts with a shock view of singer that looks like he just slaughtered a cow and as that grabs your attentions it gives you an interesting machine to observe as you watch the video. If they kept your attention for 30s you’ve probably managed to be enthusiastic enough about it to instant message it to your friends as well shared it on Facebook etc.

Based on their recent open letter, this is exactly what brings money today to a band – YouTube advertisements and the only way to actually make serious money on YouTube, besides having 500 videos that you released over last 2 years is to go viral with a well thought our video.

This brings to a completely new problem: what sells of the internet is porn, but if you can’t show that, kittens and lolcats will do. So the best tactic for an indie band that would like to get a lot of views would be to get some cute girls and somehow embed fuzzy kittens and puppies into their video. This way you’ll have a few bonus points in terms of views and maybe you’ll be able to achieve tipping point that will allow you to skyrocket the number of your views.

Did you spot any other details in the video that would contribute towards virality and sharing?

What I Tweet about

Jure Cuhalev — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 22:43:37 +0000

There’s an interesting meme going around with the topic of creating a word cloud of your Tweets. Idea is to use Tweetdumpr to generate CSV file of your most recent Tweets and then use Wordle to generate a pretty picture. Give it a try. [via UsableWorld]

It’s really too bad that Worlde doesn’t provide an API, these memes could be automated to make the process even easier for bloggers and everyone.

The process itself could be improved by adding some kill words but it’s not bad even in the raw form.

My Twitter stream on Wordle

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Typealayzer – What’s personality of your writing?

Jure Cuhalev — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 20:20:47 +0000

Randomly poking into the mess of Intertubes, I’ve discovered a little gem. It’s a service called Typealyzer that takes a look at your blog writing styles, and based on that decides what kind of personality is hidden in the writing. While service is for English and Swedish blogs only, it’s still a fun little meme that can go around.

According to their test, my blog is written by ISTJ (Introversion, Sensing, Thinking, Judging) - The Duty Fulfillers

ISTJ - The Duty Fulfillers

No related posts.

London Meme

Jure Cuhalev — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 07:45:25 +0000

Image via Wikipedia

Playing it forward from Carmen here are my answers to the latest contagious meme:

1. Top three non-work websites :

Metafilter
Flickr::interesting
Planets of all sorts (kiberpipa, livecd, debian, etc.)

2. Three favourite cocktails

Gin and tonic
Mojito
anything with Blue curacao liqueur

3. Top three karaoke songs:

I shall pass this on to James, Brendan and Donald.

(It say’s London meme, so I’m trying to keep it “local”)

Meme(me)

Jure Cuhalev — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 13:20:18 +0000

Meme(me)

Take a picture of yourself right now.
Don’t change your clothes, don’t fix your hair… just take a picture.
Post that picture with NO editing.
Post these instructions with your picture.

(as seen on Rey Bango’s Blog)

Session notes: Tara Hunt – Happiness as business model

Jure Cuhalev — Wed, 21 May 2008 16:54:45 +0000

These are the notes from Tara’s Wednesdays Workshop at the Thinking Digital conference. Iâ€™ve also included her SlideShare slides. Theyâ€™re mostly here so Iâ€™ll be able to search my blog later for these fascinating ideas.

| View | Upload your own

Adam Smith – The Wealth of Nations, the invisible hand is not invisible anymore. The Web 2.0 is driving the fact that anybody can be a publisher, the customers are your custmers and your custmers are having conversations online. Different technologies help us with raising our voices.
We get to have a voice while hanging out with friends.
Econimics is trying to figure out how the conversations are working. Homo-economicus concept vs. Homo-Feelgoodnomicous – you just canâ€™t build prediction models for him. The key to making him feel good, is happiness.

Why does happiness matter to business? 7 reasons for that:
1. Happy customers talk to more people about their positive experience
2. Unhappy people talk to the most people about their negative experiences
3. Happy customers are also repeat customers
4. Happy customers will pay more for an awesome experience
5. Happy customers are loyal
6. Happy customers will drive your marketing for you
7. Happy employees are more productive, create and loyal

Happiness is lots of stuff to lots of people. There are four pillars to happiness:
1. Autonomy
2. Competence
3. Relatedness
4. Self-esteem

Wine-library TV – very positive guy, where he has a very high set-point for confidence levels and happiness.

Image from Flickr

So, the question is – what works against the happiness?
- Fear (ignorance, misinformation, insecurity, etc.)
- Confusion (paradox of choice (Barry, book), noise ratio, lack of clear information, etc.)
- Loneliness (isolation, distrust of others, fear of rejection, etc.)
- Lack of control
- Struggle for survival

Maslows hierarchy of needs. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow’s_hierarchy_of_needs

The Axis of Misery:
- Can rental companies (happy: zipcar.com)
- Airlines (happy: southwest)
- Telcos (happy: skype)
they are very consistent in making their customers feel bad.

Business idea: the bar is set amazingly low, so there are lots of opportunities to make this a happy experience and earn money in the process.
Happiness pattern in these happy companies: no hidden costs, being upfront about the costs and making customers feel like they matter.

Being aware of basic principles of happiness, being agents for them and be aware of them when building tools/companies/services.

Autonomy:
1. Give people tools to personalize their experiences
2. Building tools that democratize previously inaccessible industries
3. Offer clear and attractive choices
4. Be open and transparent
5. Donâ€™t lock people in

Competence:
1. Create flow â€¦ simple entry point to more complex systems
2. Allow ways for mentors to interact with newbies (create rewards)
3. Build consecutive levels of achievement into the experience
4. Plant â€˜easter eggsâ€™
5. Donâ€™t talk down to your customer

Achieving flow:
- Skills acquired along the way
- Clear goals
- Feedback provided along the way
- User control
- Facilitate concentration and involvement by making the activity as distinct as possible from so-called reality

Relatedness:
1. Build in multiple ways for customers to interact
2. Have many collaborative experiences
3. Create simple ways for customers to share with a friend
4. Design for generosity
5. Create online/offline meeting experiences

Interesting books mentioned:
â€œThe Flow stateâ€

â€œWhy we Loveâ€

â€œOnce youâ€™re lucky, twice youâ€™re goodâ€

â€œThe stumbling on happinessâ€

“Stumbling on happiness” (economics + psychology)

“Martin Seligman – Positive psychology”; why are we looking at the bad stuff, not what makes us happy

Lessons learned

I also posed a question, weather the presented case studies (moleskin, flickr, etc.) are anomalies or actually achievable by others. The answer to this was that itâ€™s â€œall in the personalitiesâ€. Iâ€™m not sure if this is a good or bad news, but it seems to be achievable if we decide to change in this direction.

Bubble video

Jure Cuhalev — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 17:14:40 +0000

These three months that I worked intesively with Zemanta felt a lot similiar to what, I imagined, in pre-.com crash times was. Shipping your core team to distant, yet cool place; provide insane amounts of yaffa cakes and cedevita, accompanied with either great in-house cooking or take-aways. The whole thing is then well rounded with some (for now) quiet hyping and talking to different potential investors and users at different conferences and trade shows.

Because of all this, and my overall tendency to like all Web 2.0-ish, I found the following music video from Richter Scales especially funny; at the same time I’m also hoping that we can sustain this hype for a while since I really think that the tech that it’s currently in the labs should be shown to the world and not lost due to “bubble” bursting.

Why OpenOffice.org

Jure Cuhalev — Wed, 03 May 2006 23:37:42 +0000

Social dysfunction meme

Jure Cuhalev — Thu, 12 Jan 2006 10:59:35 +0000

Your Social Dysfunction:
Happy

You’re a happy person – you have a good amount of self-esteem, and are socially healthy. While this isn’t a social dysfunction per se, you’re definitely not normal. Consider yourself lucky: you walk that fine line between ‘normal’ and being outright narcissistic. You’re rare – which is something else to be happy about.

Take this quiz at QuizGalaxy.com

Please note that we aren’t, nor do we claim to be, psychologists. This quiz is for fun and entertainment only. Try not to freak out about your results.

Birthday date meme

Jure Cuhalev — Tue, 22 Nov 2005 00:00:19 +0000

Your Birthdate: March 12

You’re a dynamic, charismatic person who’s possibly headed for fame.
You tend to charm strangers easily. And you usually can get what you want from them.
Verbally talented, you tend to persuade people with your speaking and writing.
You are affectionate and loving, but it’s hard for you to commit to any one relationship.

Your strength: Your charm

Your weakness: Your extreme manipulation tactics

Your power color: Indigo

Your power symbol: Four leaf clover

Your power month: December

What Does Your Birth Date Mean?

Jure Cuhalev » Meme

OK Go – This Too Shall Pass – How to Create A Viral YouTube Video

What I Tweet about

Typealayzer – What’s personality of your writing?

Related articles by Zemanta

London Meme

Related articles by Zemanta

Meme(me)

Session notes: Tara Hunt – Happiness as business model

Bubble video

Why OpenOffice.org

Social dysfunction meme

Birthday date meme