GUESS’ original jeans kicked off a fashion legend 30 years ago—I’m not saying I was there for the debut, but any Gen Y has certainly been impacted by the legacy of GUESS’ iconic designs. For their 30th anniversary, GUESS is launching the One to Watch Global Blogger Search, an international open call for fashion-savvy content creators to become an official contributor to the GUESS Access Blog. Rather than speaking from inside the brand, GUESS is going risque just like their crop tops and asking consumers to be the voice of GUESS, giving brand ambassadors an opportunity to work their social media magic and collect the most votes. Although it has been three decades, American heritage brand GUESS hasn’t changed much—and neither has Claudia Schifffer, who starred in both the classic ads and is still smokin’ in today’s GUESS ads. The 80s are back! Did they ever leave?

What an amazing way to promote the upcoming international Social Media Week. 

Donuts put it all in perspective. 

(Source: instagr.am)

Diablo Cody’s new movie Young Adult had a limited release December 9th to so-so B.O. numbers and opened into 1,000 theaters on 12/16.  The movie is going to have a hard time staying afloat during these crazy holiday weeks, especially with no award buzz around it (unusual for a Jason Reitman film).  Good efforts have been put into their marketing campaign and recently my Facebook Sponsored Stories really wanted me to “Like” this film.  Their Facebook page has a few photos, some video, info about the story and a link to buy tickets.  Here’s where things get weird…

On Friday December 16th Diablo did an interview on NPR’s Morning Edition and managed to insult the very Facebook demo the film was counting on to fork over $15/ticket to support Young People.  This is a direct quote from the person I had deemed a Gen Y admirer and expert…

“I feel like I’m part of a generation of people who are stuck in the past and are really self-absorbed. I mean, we’re actually taking pictures of ourselves and posting them on Facebook, and keeping in touch with people that should have been out of our lives 15 years ago. Obsessing over who’s getting married, who’s having kids, who’s more successful. It’s like we’re recreating high school every single day using social media. And it’s weird.”

Ever regret blasting your ex on Facebook, or tweeting aspersions about your former boss? With the plethora of public platforms at our disposal, there’s hardly a modicum of discretion anymore.  Enter Omerta, a jewelry line that lets you tell people how you really feel in a subtle and stylish way.  Designer Anthony Dreyer embeds morse code into his necklaces and bracelets with diamonds, pearls and 14K gold beads.  .. / .-.. —- …- . / -.— —- ..-  means “I love you,” for instance.  Dreyer previously worked on these “secret message”  bracelets and necklaces for celebs and is offering them to the public for the first time.   The collection provides plenty of humorous sayings for your feisty self, including “Congratulations on becoming your father” and “You will do for now.”  

Now you don’t have to worry about scaring off your co-worker, too. 

Is social media really an effective promotional tool for TV? Maybe not, reveals a new study by Optimedia US and covered in the Wall Street Journal yesterday. It found that the top 5 new shows in terms of online buzz (buzz based on Twitter activity, Google search volume, ‘likes’ on Facebook, press mentions, and Klout score) didn’t even come close in terms of viewership. The hype surrounding the most-buzzed about top 5—X-Factor, Playboy Club (canceled), New Girl, Whitney, and Charlie’s Angels (canceled) —has proved to have a negative relationship with premiere audience rank. Maybe because a lot of those tweets and press are not-so-positive in their content?

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Filed Under: Happy Birthday, Mickey!

Mickey Mouse has turned 83, just in time for the launch of Disney’s new “Let the Memories Begin” campaign and on November 18th and 19th they are celebrating with an augmented reality experience for one and all in Times Square.  Interested persons are instructed to stand directly infront of a 60 ft tall screen that has been installed outside the Disney Store where their famous characters are projected.  The user, as well as the crowd, can engage in a live interaction with the projected character.  The user is then e-mailed photos from their experience which can then be posted to Facebook, Tumblr, etc.  Disney is doin’ it right with creating an interactive publicity stunt and user generated social media buzz.  Check out the installation this weekend and post your experience at #DisneyMemories.

Social media expert Deirdre Breakenridge interviewed a sixteen year old and a seventeen year old about the differences between Tumblr and Facebook and posted it unedited on her blog. 

FILED UNDER: FACEBOOK FORWARD

The new profile announcements from Facebook’s developer conference f8 marked a big step in both the development of the platform—the website’s biggest changes since 2007. By the end of 2011, the images you see above will be the new Facebook. 

Mark Zuckerberg’s keynote speech at f8 introduced a lot of new features with some of the worst, buzzwordy names I’ve ever heard. The bottom line? 

• Facebook aims to be your one-stop shop for all your web doings: listening to music, watching movies, video chats, catching up on the news. 


• The update brings much more of the data they’ve been collecting about you (your favorite songs, activities, movies, books, events you attend, so forth) to the surface, and highlights common interests between you and your friends. 


• Your profile will become a lot more visual. The new “Timeline” offers the ability to choose a “Cover Photo” in addition to your profile picture, a larger image that may give a sense of your overall interests and personality. The entire layout of the site is expanded and fills more of the browser window. Applications and “stories” (read: status updates) are given much more screen real estate, with lots more ability for customization. 

There’s a lot to digest here; these aren’t little tweaks to the site’s interface. For even more details, Slashgear.com has put together an excellent guide to all of these changes for the average Facebook user. If you want to start playing around with the new features now, you can sign up for Timeline Beta and be among the first with the new profile. A friend of mine was already granted access—you can check out his thoughts here. (Browse around on his blog if you have a second, there’s good fashion advice and true-life accounts of partying with Miley Cyrus on there, too.)

I’ll admit it—I’m stoked for THE OMG NEW FACEBOOK OMG. I like the aesthetics of it, the ability for a large cover image, how it allows for more customization. I trust in Facebook’s ability to not repeat the mistakes of Myspace past and let people go crazy with Blingees. I believe that when everyone gets the new profile, it will spark changes in online behavior with a concern for greater privacy controls because there’s so much more information available on the page. And I dream of the day that Facebook partners up with Visual.ly and offers me custom, auto-generated data visualizations based on the actions of myself and my friends.

As if I didn’t spend enough virtual time on Facebook, now I can hold and explore a tangible incarnation of my social media social life. For once, the intersection of digital and real worlds flips the other way. Like?

Our social media activity is instantly projected, and instantly forgotten. The appeal is that it’s all in the present, but when a massive portion of our socializing occurs online, our interactions are constantly “dissolving.” How do we preserve, or even remember, our increasingly meaningful social media activity? The answer is the Social Memories app, which enables you to automatically generate a beautifully designed, coffee table-worthy customizable book directly from Facebook status updates, photos, and more. Not just a collection of activity, the book unveils highlights, trends, and aggregate information that forms an insightful picture of what you were doing, thinking, or feeling at a certain point in time. Also, Social Memories reveals telling stats like “Most Active Friends,” “Friends’ Star Sign Distribution” (ok that doesn’t tell you much), and ”Most Commonly Used Word” in cool infographics of so that you can look back and be embarrassed that you used “FML” so much in 2009. 

It may be kind of a gimmicky neo-yearbook (note the sappy music in the video), but the selling point of “Give your Facebook activity new meaning” is appealing for the nostalgia factor of commemorating memories and events like weddings and births, and solidifies the increasing importance of social media in our daily lives. We have become accustomed to and demand instantaneous connectivity, but we also look for authenticity and permanence. This might appeal to older Facebook users who had social lives before the far-reaching networks of Facebook, but to those whose virtual and real social lives are one in the same, the novelty of tangible social media memories may just be seen as negating the whole point of it. Although one specific to my college years may be terrifying, it seems like just the right ironic, hilarious gift for grads. 

A new Burger King marketing campaign called “Status Trader”asks consumers to open up their Facebook profiles to promotions in exchange for free weekly eats. Burger King will post promotions and videos weekly onto participants walls, thereby inserting the brand at least somewhat organically into their friends’ feeds.  Personally, I would think it would be a tough sell for me to participate in this promotion as I wouldn’t want to annoying my friends over a Whopper—this is despite having a secret love for Whoppers. (Okay, not so secret. When I was in high school I was in an all-girl graffiti group and my tagging name was “Whopper.”) In a way this gets back to what I was talking about in my bitcoin post with people looking for new innovative ways to trade the new kinds of goods (like status) that are now out there.

Filed Under: Real Life Farmville

Why play Farmville when you can use the internet to help control a farm in real life?

MyFarm.org is a real, working farm in England that’s controlled by social voting. A membership to MyFarm costs 30₤ (about $50 USD) per year, and gives one access to farmer blogs, podcasts and live webcams. All major decisions on the farm, like what crops to plant and what animals to raise, are voted on by MyFarm members, then executed as dictated by majority opinion. The madmen people behind the project hope it will help people gain a better understanding of where food comes from and all the work that’s involved before it gets to your table.

If you’re interested in being a part of MyFarm, head on over to their website to register. There is a membership limit—only 10,000 people will be allowed to join—so get to clicking if you want in.