In the meantime, check out the Creator Playbook, a streamlined, and very helpful guide to all creators looking to leverage the platform.  The second edition came out last week.

On a more pure social collaboration level, Stage 32, a new site for filmmakers, screenwriters, actors, crew, agents, etc., is quite live and active, with over 10,000 members in more than 120 countries.  While getting funding is part of what the site enables with networking, it’s also about casting, getting crew, finding directors and classes, and just getting advice.  We love the registration via Facebook and how easily it’s integrated there.

The founders of Stage 32 are in the filmmaker’s corner.  The two are Richard “RB” Botto, a screenwriter/actor/producer and Curt Blakeney, president of Edge Public Relations.  They’ve made it a very personal experience, with your home page containing all the things you have added and want to add, suggestions of networking, wall communications.

We’ll be watching in the months ahead to see how it grows, but it’s certainly active, with multiple projects being added at all hours.  Any social network is only as strong as the socializing it attracts, but the tools are here on Stage 32 for filmmakers to connect in meaningful ways — not just in a contest.

Last week I wrote about Levi’s Brazil stepping into the Instagram domain with a purely visual approach to marketing their products. The potential for brands on this rising iPhone community just got bigger with the addition of hashtags. This feature allows brands to find their community and interact with fans, creating more potential for marketing campaigns on the service. Apparently Instagram knows what’s up as they already have a few campaigns starting this week from Brisk Ice Tea, NPR and Charity: Water. If the results look promising, we could see a major brand invasion on the social network. Also, I wonder if Instagram will further follow Twitter’s lead by creating some version of the promoted hashtag/trending topic feature.

Hashtags also increase browsing abilities. Any time there’s a major event you can search hashtags for recent photos of people at the scene. CNN, for instance, could start a #CNN hashtag for people to offer up photos that might be helpful on the news…but only if they give me credit!

Hopefully this guy doesn’t go crazy over the next 7 days with crazy New Yorkers staring at him – and even more crushing would be if this stunt didn’t pay off at all. It’s hard to say if it will be successful or not, but it is an interesting project. Fabric softener is just a tough product to hype without adorable cuddly bears. So far however there are roughly 800 Facebook comments and several tweets a minute directed at the campaign since this started yesterday. We’ll see if it holds the public’s attention over the entire week.

Check the promo video below which is good for some laughs.

The video below explains how it all works and why they created this concept, but in short, locations partnering with WeSC will have a mat that will sense the RFID tags when they are stepped on and relay it to a server. The server not only checks you in on Twitter/Facebook, it could greatly change your social media engagement and opens a big door for retail marketers and ticketing as well. I also think the Flickr idea they propose is pretty neat too. We could see shoe companies earn some serious profits making promotional deals with stores, theaters, restaurants, etc. Watch the video below and see if it gets you thinking about crazy ideas…

With Instagram catching on everywhere, Levi’s Brazil (user name: levisbrasil) noticed a growing populating of users in their home country and decided to step into the game too. Sure, a lot of brands are deeply involved in various social media arenas, but we don’t hear much about what’s happening on Instagram – a still relatively new community of photo lovers. Turns out, it’s a great community for brands and media companies that can communicate their message effectively in a purely visual way. Rather than feeling forced to pump cheesy copy through a company’s Twitter or Facebook feed, companies on Instagram build a following through pictures…and nothing else.

There is quite a bit of potential with this simple concept. You don’t have to say anything or bug people with promotions. Even if you’re a terrible photographer, Instagram’s bad ass effects will make your photos look super hot. The only challenge is deciding what kind of images to show your audience. How will you communicate? How will you ignite a response?

via PSFK

MTV announced they’ve created a new awards show that focuses on digital content – namely music and social media – coming to your computers sometime this Spring. Yes, this awards show is web-only with the intention of bringing the social conversation into the spotlight. It’s still in the development stages, so there aren’t any clear categories yet, nor is there a date scheduled, but you can tell it’s going to be a spectacle one way or another.

Hopefully…hopefully, MTV gets smart with this idea and focuses on the actual people pioneering the digital music and social media world instead of on the garbage their current awards shows feature. I want to see awards for best viral campaign, best web-only music video or best music blogs, not best Twitter beef and cutest Facebook profile – or whatever terrible crap they could likely think of. We’ll see what happens, but I just don’t see them straying too far from a lot of the content their brand is already aligned with.

Read what MTV had to say.

Here’s another YouTube voice rising up. User damewse is so fed up with NASA’s failed attempts to connect with the American public that he’s putting out his own material using repurposed footage and the hypnotic combination of minimalist piano and Carl Sagan. It’s actually pretty humbling and encouraging stuff – although keep in mind it’s a concept borrowing some of the best video and narration ever produced. Here’s some of what he had to say:

“NASA is the most fascinating, adventurous, epic institution ever devised by human beings, and their media sucks. Seriously. None of their brilliant scientists appear to know how to connect with the social media crowd, which is now more important than ever. In fact, NASA is an institution whose funding directly depends on how the public views them.”

“In all of their brilliance, NASA seems to have forgotten to share their hopes and dreams in a way the public can relate to, leaving one of humanities grandest projects with terrible PR and massive funding cuts. I have a lot of ideas for a NASA marketing campaign, but I doubt they’d pay me even minimum wage to work for them. I literally have an MSWord document entitled NASAideas.doc full of ideas waiting to share. I thought maybe, just maybe someone might be able to work their magic for me on that.” (YouTube)

It’s amazing that through YouTube, we have the ability to challenge an institution like NASA to step it up where they’re definitely struggling. The view count after two days suggests this video is making some waves and maybe NASA should respond. What do you think? It has to be tough to get called out publicly like that. NASA’s not the quick-tongued cool guy. He’s more v-neck sweatery and introverted – and yet researching some of the most mind-boggling regions of our known universe with badass spaceships and high tech gadgetry housed in Bond-worthy laboratories (see examples below). This sounds like a dream job for PR and marketers. Some people would probably just do it in exchange for a ride in the no-gravity plane or a year’s access to the flight simulator.

Thoughts to get your brain stirring:
- I believe 88% of all people know about Facebook, but amazed Twitter is already at 87%.
- It’s surprising only 40% of people on Facebook follow a brand.
- It’s really surprising only 25% of people on Twitter follow a brand.
- Wait, do they count celebrities, publications, influencers as brands? I would.
- Activity on mobile devices is pretty believable.
- I’m amazed 49% of Facebook users that follow brands, follow brands they don’t buy.
- I can’t believe over half of Twitter users Tweet on a daily basis. Higher than I imagined.
- I thought we’d see more youth on Twitter by now.

Nowadays, putting together a dynamic and tech-savvy social meda campaign is one of the most effective ways to boost brand interest, and accomodate fun. Take some ad-vice, courtesy of advertising powerhouse Saatchi & Saatchi LA:

Everybody who’s been to college (or even high school) has had at least one experience with the plastic Dixie cups necessary for setting up a game of beer pong (also called Beirut).  Whether it was a Natty Ice overdose, or a crushing loss to a rival fraternity brother, many young adults become nostalgic at the sight of these red plastic cups while walking through the grocery store.

Saatchi & Saatchi LA capitalized on both of these ideas–the influence of  live social media marketing, and 20-something’s affinity for beer pong—and created a virtual game in which you can enter a queue to play a game of Nog Pong with a group of S&S employees.  Although you yourself can’t drink their eggnog, you can interact with the festive gang (decked out in holiday gear and filled with christmas cheer) via webcam: the employees throw Ping Pong balls across a table at a formation of eggnog filled cups, taking turns with you from the other side. Each cup that you  make (and they drink) donates more money to one of three nonprofit charities. The team even shouts your name and proceeds to comment on it, your aim, etc., while alternating techno music and christmas carols playing in the background.  Listening to their commentary is almost more entertaining than the game itself, in which you have to wait in a long queue to start playing.  I am currently #42 in line to play, 34 minutes away. If I get too impatient throughout the next half hour, I can still participate by talking (trash) to the  Saatchi players via their twitter @SaatchiLA.

Saatchi & Saatchi seem to have incorporated many important elements to a social media campaign to ensure its success: a live video stream that users can interact with, real-time twitter conversation, and a few new ideas that will hold the interest of young adults–virtual drinking, fierce competition, and the added holiday aspect of the campaign.

Once it was finally my turn, I made all of zero cups.  A piece of ad-vice I would give you Saatchi, is to make a clearer design for directions on how to shoot the ball, because the alloted 15 seconds isn’t enough time to figure it out.