One Half Amazing!

So here’s a crazy prediction for your Thursday morning.  Last week, Facebook officially announced their Facebook Live app which is their own little way of showing off all the hipsters that roll through their offices and as a way of updating users about the behind-the-scenes doings at Facebook in all its live-streaming glory.   You can go and check it out here.

I could be reading way too much into this, but I’m going to be interested in seeing how this evolves.  This could be the beginning of Facebook’s take into live user-streaming video content.  Instead of having all their users leave the site to record their “hauler” videos on YouTube and UStream, Facebook Live could allow them to record and interact with their friends and fans directly on Facebook’s site.  It could go even deeper to take on such services like Hulu and actually stream live TV right to the web.  That would be cool.

Just my 2 cents.  Am I taking this prediction too far?  Let me know in the comments below.

37Signals founder and author of Rework Jason Fried has created a video about his management style when it comes to communication management. He explains the benefits of using passive communication tools such as web chat and IMing rather than constantly calling or knocking on people’s doors. This could be some good tips if you are a company manager. via Pulse2

Stay curious my friends.

‘curiosity’ from Nic Askew on Vimeo.

Mark Robertson of ReelSEO caught up with YouTube’s Matthew Liu to get some insight on best practices for optimizing your videos. Here’s what he had to say.

Content

• Creative should be engaging and compelling enough for users to comment, rate and ultimately share.
• Shorter videos (2-3 min) perform better than longer (~10 min) videos.
• Learn from your video Insights.  If your viewers are engaged better than other videos, you’re going to be rewarded in search rankings.

Community

• Clear and concise tags, description and title.  Use complete sentences when you can.  Tags should be relevant, don’t try to play off of popular terms if your video isn’t related to that particular subject.
• Keep embeds on, the more links or times your video is embedded on outside pages, the better ranking you’ll get.
• Videos with more ratings, comments and views typically get better rankings.
• Use annotations to link multiple videos together.  Don’t forget to add date and location to your video’s description.

Found a YouTube tip that’s helped you achieve better rankings? Share it in the comments below.

Campaigns like this one from Element Skateboards give me hope for the future of marketing. They pieced elements (no pun intended) of the online world, video, real-life events and the passion of their audience and created a truly simple and elegant campaign. Take notes from the video below.

A campaign for Element Skateboards where skaters can challenge each other to claim spots.

Facebook let it all hang out to a select group of members to test their new search interface.  The system would allow members to search their news feed for recent updates, photos, links, videos and notes being shared on friends’ profiles and fan Pages. Users who have made their profile and content available to anyone will also be searchable.

SEOMoz yammers it up during Whiteboard Friday to talk about visualization.  I think visualization is one of those new and sexy fields that you’ll hear more and more about in the near future.

SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday – Visualization from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.

12seconds is updating their iPhone app to take advantage of the new OS 3.0.  The app, which should be available soon, will allow you to send short video messages directly to your friends via twitter.

Back ‘dat thing up and pick up some great tips about landing page design through CopyBlogger’s Landing Page Makeover.  Their most recent tutorial covers CarsHelpingAmerica.org.

If you’re a fan of Indie Rock, I highly recommend The Veils – Sun Gangs. Rock out this weekend.