Author Archive
Posted June 17th, 2008 by Char Lyn
Last month I posted about the Burma: It Can’t Wait campaign and was touched by all those who left comments. Due to people being in and out of the office, it’s taken longer than expected to post about the results of our comment campaign, but with good results. We will be donating the full $5000 we had offered to the U.S. Campaign for Burma, making each comment worth just over $40. Thank you to all those who commented!
The news out of Burma continues to prove the country’s need for responsible leadership and humanitarian aid, and many thousands of Burmese citizens are still in need. There are those who may question a donation to a political campaign in this time of human need, but until we can change the Burmese leadership into the hands of those elected by the people, the current government will continue to block the aid from making it to those who need it most.
For those who would like to donate directly to the relief effort, we also wanted to provide a quick list of humanitarian agencies that are already on the ground in Burma, making it slightly easier for them to get contributions to those who are in desperate need.
http://www.foundationburma.org/may-cyclone-message.pr3.5.7.08.php
http://hope-international.com/appeals/08_myanmar.html
http://www.ideorg.org/work/myanmar.php
http://www.psi.org/news/0508c.html
http://www.metta-myanmar.org/
http://www.cwasiafund.org/projects.php
http://www.worldconcern.org/NETCOMMUNITY/Page.aspx?&pid=397
http://www.opusa.org/whoweare/pressreleases/myanmarcyclone2.html
http://www.justgiving.com/burmarelief
Thanks to Hella Delicious for the link list and the moving video clip you left in your comment!
To read the original post, and all the comments, click here.
Posted May 15th, 2008 by Char Lyn
Read the update to this post here.
We’ve been busy here at DIG and haven’t had as much time to post as we’d like. We love this blog, but our client work comes first. While we don’t normally talk about our client work here, this month we have a rare exception. Occasionally we have a project that touches our hearts in a way that changes our lives and our attitudes. Burma: It Can’t Wait is one of those projects, and with the recent cyclone and the need to get aid to the citizens of Burma (also reported as Myanmar in the news), this campaign is even more important. If you want to learn more about the campaign, please take a look at the site or add the application to your Facebook profile and help us raise one million voices of support for Burma.
As part of our commitment to the people of Burma, Digital Influence Group will contribute $10 to the U.S. Campaign for Burma for each unique, non-spam comment or trackback to this post, up to $5,000 total. The deadline for commenting is May 31, 2008, because for Burma: It Can’t Wait.
Posted March 28th, 2008 by Char Lyn
In the world of social media, we often hear of the wisdom of the crowds—present a problem to the masses and they are likely to find the best solution. Today, Justin Wolfers suggests that rather than supplying wisdom, the masses may be crowding out the true wisdom of the experts in his Freakonomics post on the lack of academic commentary on the current state of the economy.
Crowding out: The wisdom of crowds is at its heyday and experts have lost market share in the public square. Everyone with a blog and ten minutes to spare is offering a view (including yours truly), and this is crowding out thoughtful discussion.
It seems everyone is talking about the current economic situation in the US and the world. And when everyone is talking, how do you as an individual identify the truly relevant information? Do you rely on the masses by getting your news from DIGG, Reddit or another aggregator with user rankings? Do you rely on some secret sauce coded algorithm such as Google’s page rank or Technorati’s blog rank that balances the crowds voice with hidden metrics? Or, do you rely on an influencer to tell you what is really happening?
The truth is, it’s easy for your message to get “crowded out” without the right influencers behind you. At DIG we emphasize a marriage of marketing and outreach to get a message to the masses so they can share it with the crowd. Then the crowd gets the chance to see the wisdom you share.
Posted January 10th, 2008 by Char Lyn
Last night at about 9 pm the Facebook app SuperWall had 3,090,929 “daily active users.” As I write this post, it has 3,551,493. That’s an increase of almost half a million users in less than 24 hours.
Why?
Some time in the last week or so, the SuperWall developers added a new feature: Forward (fast). Clicking this link at the bottom of a SuperWall post automatically posts the wall message onto the SuperWall of all of your friends.
A picture of a husky puppy dog has shown up on my SuperWall three times with the exact same message, “click forward….to see what happens!” Fortunately, I was warned by an office mate before clicking forward.
While this is will likely be a very successful campaign for increasing SuperWall installation and usage, it feels a little like a con. It’s to close to that bad type of virus that proliferates without the infector’s knowledge. The good viral campaigns are only passed with the infector’s full knowledge.
Previous Posts