For fifteen years Oniracom has grown into a leading creative marketing agency in the Santa Barbara area, but the company success was not achieved overnight. The Oniracom brand originated at 1453 Jameson street in the city of Montecito, with a small team in a duplex. Gradually, the team started to feel congested as they expanded up to fourteen people and realized the need to relocate. Jacob Tell, Sean Campos, and Mike Wald saw this as an opportunity to immerse Oniracom into a larger community. The chosen current location of 720 East Haley in downtown Santa Barbara is a vital part of the Oniracom success. The new town allowed them to expand their client target to the many small businesses in the area by actively outreaching and physically connecting. Oniracom has grown its reputation within the community and its broad range of clients by taking that opportunity to relocate.

We’re all familiar with the obstacles that come with scheduling work meetings. It’s something so simple, yet at times seemingly impossible.

Google Calendar has introduced a new “Find a Time” feature exclusively for Google Apps and Androids.

What’s new with Facebook? As the company continues to improve, new technology is introduced. Facebook has announced chatbot and Live Chat. This has the potential to replace 1-800 numbers and other “Help” related outlets. Facebook is working with Live Chat developers who can potentially build contact buttons that directly message people for help on websites. Instead of having to email or call help stations, customers can interact with someone on Live Chat, which optimizes efficiency, timeliness, and customer satisfaction. Happy customers = Happy business.

Botlist. Didn’t you hear? It’s what all the newest phones are raging about!

Botlist is an app store for bots. That’s right, there’s now a centralized directory for all the bots you’ll ever need in one place, rather than from a variety of different apps and services. Compiling potential outlets that range vastly hopes to save time and room on your mobile devices.

Sick of cluttered news feeds and not knowing whether your posts are being seen? Facebook is developing a new way for businesses to reach their ideal customers. Recently, It was leaked that sometime in Q2 2016 the social media giant will allow business Pages to send advertisements via Messenger to customers who have previously contacted them.

Towards the end of January, Facebook introduced an organic targeting tool to help publishers reach the audience they want engaging with their content, and to analyze the type of people who actually end up reading it. There are three basic features in this new Audience Optimization tool.

Today’s marketing environment is a visual one. Pictures may be worth a thousand words, but video content is increasingly dominating the digital sphere. By 2018, 89% of internet traffic will be video. Statistics and strategic moves from social platforms indicate why this prediction seems plausible:

• Within the last year, Facebook users went from watching 1 billion videos every day to more than 8 billion.
• Twitter, which acquired Periscope in March 2015, now autoplays their live streaming videos within feeds.
• Spotify is introducing video content to its Android app starting May 2016.

“There’s not a minute to waste.” Uber is well aware of this concept, and has made quite the name for itself by taking advantage of that. How Uber manages to stay on top of its competition, however, is a constant struggle. Uber steadily tries to beat out neighboring competition like Lyft, taxi companies, and other alternative modes of transportation to keep their name on top. The solution? Customization.

The well-known Ride Request feature that we’re already familiar with just got much more personalized. Passengers can now stay updated with news and updates all with the convenience of Uber’s new service called “Uber Trip Experiences”, which delivers playlists, local news, and travel tips all to the palm of your hands. Although third party experts will control the flow of content, each ride’s personalization comes from Uber. “The time the content takes to consume will be synchronized with the estimated duration of the journey.”

When news broke last week of rock icon David Bowie succumbing to liver cancer at the age of 69, the Internet reacted quickly. Within 12 hours of the news, the hashtag #Bowie generated over a million tweets globally, and “35 million people had 100 million interactions about the singer on Facebook.” Perhaps the most relevant and intriguing statistics after any musician’s death in this digital age come from online music services like Apple Music and Spotify.

Peach, the new social media application has generated lots of buzz these past few weeks. So, what exactly is it? Dom Hofmann, the founder of Vine who also jumpstarted this app says it is simply “A space for friends.” Launched on January 7th, Peach is already ranked as the 8th most popular social networking app according to iTunes. The question, then, is: Will it stand a chance against the other giants of social networking apps?

Thank you for making Solutions for Dreamers Fridays a huge success!

The crowd, food, chat, live music & of course, s’mores were all a hit! Thank you to Playback Recording Studio, StartupSB, and Up Global Regional Summit for helping us put on the event.

Here’s to more SFD Friday Nights! Check out some photos of the night, below!

With our fast pace of business, 2014 already feels like history.  Here’s an impressive look back at our year.

Have you or your friends used Venmo, or any other money transferring app but feel neglected by the inability to send the recipient a seflie along with your money transference? Fear no more! We now have… Snapcash. Snapchat and Square are collaborating on this project where Square will handle the actual cash movements and Snapchat will host the social networking platform. The deal will also provide Square with access to Snapchat’s 100 million plus monthly active users according to Mashable.

To use the new feature, one must live United States, have a debit card, and be 18 years old. Snapcash will be made first available to Android users, and shortly after it will be brought to iOS users. When using Snapcash, one also creates a Square account where the actual money transference will take place. This new feature exhibits Snapchat’s ability to push past its original limitations of strictly existing as a chat application and now becoming a surprising new competitor to mobile payment companies such as PayPal. 

Snapchat has recently begun marketing and developing platforms for Snapcash, so draining your bank account might be even easier in the near future. Also, we love the video Snapchat made for the new feature. It’s crazy but that’s part of the reason why it’s amazing!

Read more about it on Snapchat’s blog.

Ello is a revolutionary social networking site unlike all the rest. Ello, is different from Twitter, Facebook, and other social networking giants in that it is completely add free. Ello’s manifesto reads, “We believe a social network can be a tool for empowerment. Not a tool to deceive, coerce, and manipulate — but a place to connect, create, and celebrate life. You are not a product. Ello. This is what makes Ello unique from its forefathers.  To generate revenue, Ello allows for users to customize their pages with special feature tools which may be purchased for a small price according to Ello these features are not necessary, but do provide some financial support to the company, as well as allowing for users to continue to create and uniquely customize their social networking experience.

Ello is set up as like a mash between Facebook, Pintrest and Twitter, in which users may generate statuses, post pictures and gifs, find friends and comment on posts. Started by a small group of programmers and artists, Ello has sprung up quickly with rapid popularity. There are as many as 35,000 requests to join the social networking site per hour according to The Guardian , and Ello’s head team is working rapidly to keep up with their growing popularity. The site however is not new; Ello was launched in March and was intended to be a small, invite- only community between friends. Interest was recently sparked by the LGBT communities’ migration to other social networking sites after Facebook launched their real name policy, prohibiting users from using names other than their legal names. As interest increased, Ello became more public, but one must still obtain an invite to join the site. Some have even begun selling Ello invites on eBay ranging from 5-150 dollars according to Mashable ,but it is still unclear whether or not Ello will be a fad, or is here to stay. 

Communist leaders in China have recently blocked and banned social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and now Instagram in light of the recent protests in Hong Kong. Protestors have been fighting for free elections, rather than being forced to choose from a predetermined ballot. These sites were shut down in order to prevent photos of the protests from flooding the Internet, in attempt to detain the conflicts going on within the city. Many living in mainland China are unaware of what is going on in Hong Kong due to strict government censorship. The hash tags and photo images of police attacking the protestors sparked government officials to block and prevent further media posting during this time in attempt to restrict access of information to other Chinese citizens. But this isn’t the first time China has censored Instagram, according to Stuff earlier this summer the Instagram app was removed from the android app store in china.” 
 
Social media has been extremely influential during recent political unrest around the world. Some examples include the use of social media to coordinate revolution during the Arab Spring according to Engadget.  Earlier in 2011, The Egyptian government restricted use of the Internet, SMS and other methods of communication in attempt to control the riots. In March,Turkey banned YouTube in order to prevent continued videos of government corruption from leaking to the public. At the time, Twitter was also banned, in attempt to presumably limit the spread of corruption videos and prevent informing Turkish citizens of such scandals. Activists in the Ukraine have been gaining attention by tweeting hash tags and photos encouraging thePresident to talk to the citizens and keep them informed. The movement was started by Maxim Savanevskij,according to Yahoo,who is encouraging the political figurehead to inform citizens of the reasons and motives behind the government’s actions. 
 
Censoring social media is just one example of Chinese government officials attempting to curtail awareness of the protests. Students and protesters have been creative when attempting to circumvent the communication cut offs. Using apps, such as FireChat, allows for protesters to communicate should the government cut off or restrict cellular data. This app allows people to communicate when there is no Wi-Fi or cellular data, and avoid firewalls. As of now Chinese government officials are attempting to contain the protest, and prevent the rest of China from knowing of the current turmoil through web restrictions. 

Ever since stepping into Topshop’s Las Vegas store several years ago, I have been in love with the UK brand. When I was in London this past year, I got the chance to go into several Topshop stores, including their flagship in Oxford Circus, and was amazed at how the brand has become basically a household name in the UK. They not only have innovative clothing at affordable prices, but they always have seemed on point with weaving technology seamlessly into their label and fashion shows.

This year at London Fashion Week (#LFW), they stood out above the others with their democratization of fashion by targeting the younger customer base with a social media takeover.

This morning at 10am PST, the whole world gathered for the unveiling of the highly anticipated iPhone 6 at the Apple Live event in Cupertino. However, Apple not only revealed the details of the next iPhone but also debuted their very first product in the world of wearable technology. The Apple Watch, described as “a smartwatch with inductive charging, a square face, sapphire glass, swappable bands, a heartbeat sensor and a rotating digital crown” by TechCrunch, is Apple’s sleekest new product proving their innovation in the advancement of technological development.

While Apple made it very clear that the watch is not simply an iPhone on your wrist (the watch is only compatible with iPhone 5 and 5s), the list of applications and functions available on the watch holds its own against its mobile counterpart. The design of the watch is classic Apple, with remarkably clean features and lines. All the watches use the innovative “digital crown”, aka the spinning thing on the side of the watch, to access the different interfaces and utilities.

A quick description of the aesthetic differences between the collections:
WATCH: The standard 38mm and 42mm watch faces with leather and stainless steel bands in a variety of loop designs and colors.
WATCH SPORT: Made to withstand sport-style use, these watch faces are made with a 60 percent stronger alloy case. This collection also includes a “sport band’ made of durable Fluoroelastomer in a variety of bright colors.
WATCH EDITION: This collection seems to be the high-end collection, with Rose and Yellow 18-karat Gold 38mm and 42mm watch faces and leather straps.

Instagram unveiled their newest venture in the app world this morning: Hyperlapse.

Hyperlapse is exactly what it sounds like: “a new app to capture high-quality time lapse videos even while in motion.” according to Instagram’s official press release.

Mike Krieger, Instagram’s co-founder and CTO told Wired that “this is an app that lets you be in the moment in a different way…we did that by taking a pretty complicated image processing idea, and reducing it to a single slider. That’s super Instagram-y.”

Hyperlapse is very much like taking an entire $15,000 setup and creating a cinematic-grade time-lapse video, with different speed options to create different “looks”, and image-stabilization, which is the key to it all. The product team behind the app are product designer Chris Connolly and software engineers Thomas Dimson and Alex Karpenko. Karpenko actually created the first image-stabilization technology for smartphone videos with Luma. This was added on to by Dimson, who after realizing that smartphones had the built-in technologies that could stabilize video footage. This developed into a prototype app, which was the start of Hyperlapse.

All you have to do is shoot a video, pick how fast you want it to speed up (the options range from 1x to 12x) and then save it to share with others. The interface is remarkably clean and very similar to Instagram, but the decision to develop it as a separate app stems from Hyperlapse being such a distinct idea that would be shrouded if it was simply added into the existing Instagram app.

Excited to try this out, and see how users get creative with this app!

Images leaked Tuesday by Android Police supposedly show the long-awaited joint effort of Google and Youtube. The new service, titled Youtube Music Key in the screenshots, will also mean changes for Google’s existing service: Google Play will reportedly become Google Play Music Key.

While i’m still not entirely seeing the appeal of yet another music subscription service, many of the features do seem interesting:
- A free trial month will be offered, and thereafter $9.99/month
- At least 20 million music tracks in the music library available to users
- Additional content such as concert footage, covers and remixes
- Offline playback of music videos and songs with audio-only option for background and screen-off listening

The most interesting claim in my opinion is the statement that all of this can be done “without an Internet connection” and the options for screen-off listening. However, i’m still unsure if this is enough to set it apart from the already existing services such as Spotify, Beats Music, and Google Play and draw users to pay for the service.

There is still not word on when any of this will be released or a predicted launch date, so we will have to wait and see how the final product develops and if it’s anything like the leaked images.

Earlier this year on April 9th, Facebook announced it would be moving its messages completely out of the app and into the standalone messenger app, thus forcing users to download the app in order to send and receive messages.

Over this past weekend, the changes began to ramp up speed when messages started disappearing from the Facebook app, making the only way to access your messages on mobile be through the Messenger app.

Today, Mashable published an article about the newest development in the Facebook Messenger app discussion: being able to retain your messages on the Facebook app without having to download the separate Messenger app. Turns out, if you simply start the download of the Messenger app but stop it before it’s installed, your messages will show up back in the main Facebook app.

While I have been an avid user of the Facebook Messenger app for as long as I have had an iPhone, I can understand the qualms users have over downloading the Messenger app, as well as the desire to keep everything into one app. Privacy issues remain rampant, and although this Huffington Post article lays out most of the questions and answers, users still have their doubts regarding security, especially now that they are being forced to download the separate app. While it doesn’t seem like there is any other choice at this point other than to download the Messenger app, this loophole is probably the last resort. Personally, I could see this new change coming, as Facebook’s claims over the past few years about the quality of the app versus in-app messaging (it is indeed faster) seemed to somewhat allude to this change. All in all, Facebook’s control over our lives does seem at times a bit forceful, but I don’t see any need to panic over privacy or security because of this requirement. Yet.

SoundCloud is deemed as one of the most popular among the many music platforms on the Internet today. According to reports posted in October 2013, the site had 250 million monthly active users. It was founded in 2007 by Alexander Ljung and Eric Wahlforss. SoundCloud continues to grow as an online music platform and Ljung even coined the company as a “YouTube for music”.  As an online music site SoundCloud allows users to upload audio tracks, repost, like, comment, and share any track. Users are also able to upload copyrighted music and share it with friends. Therefore, this has become a concern for SoundCloud and the company will be held liable for hosting the content.

SoundCloud plans to avoid getting sued by giving record labels a stake. According to sources who spoke with Mashable Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group are part of the negotiations. It is said that SoundCloud could give anywhere between 3% to 5% stakes to each label along with a cut of future revenue. Thus, SoundCloud would be able to avoid lawsuits over uploaded copyrighted music to the site. Read more about the issue here and stay updated on the company’s plans to remain a popular music platform, which provides free streaming to users!

In a world where there are so many different ways and outlets to communicate, one system has stood out above the others: EMOJIS.

These little pictographs you see on their separate keyboard on your iPhone or iPad are relatively new, appearing in the last couple years or so, with origins in late 1990s Japanese cell phone usage (which explains much of the appearance of some of the emojis). Emojis were encoded into Unicode Standard in 2010, with over 700 characters currently in existence.

Emojis are there when words don’t or can’t say enough, to provide a visual example to a message, and for all those moments in communication and life when you just want to include a cute little relevant emoji. With each younger, tech-savvier generation, emojis have permeated to the furthest depths of the internet: Twitter supports them in a remarkably clean 2D style (see this article), you can track the use of emoji on twitter in realtime on emojitracker.com and there’s even a Wikipedia-esque website dedicated to explaining different emoji, Emojipedia.

Facebook Pages are getting a redesign, yet again. The timeline on Facebook pages will now be a single column, much similar to the look of your general news feed on Facebook.

This redesign comes rather close to the Twitter redesign that has been flooding profiles within the past couple months. The new Twitter design also features a single column feed, with larger text/images.

The Facebook Pages Timeline now has a simpler design, less grid like and as Mashable states, “blurs the line between a personal account and a Pages account, which makes sense” (Mashable).

The new design also allows users to move sections around, being open to customization. And remember those nice little Custom Tab designs you had at the bottom of your cover photo? They’ve now moved to the left sidebar, which adds to the simple, more stripped down design that Facebook seems to be pushing towards.

What do you think? Is the grid like style or single column the way to go? Does it make a difference for Facebook? Let us know in the comments below!

Yesterday, all Twitter users gained access to their new web profile. The ability to personalize profiles, much like recent Facebook updates, is allowing for an increased creative and multi-media experience on this platform.

What’s new? Larger photos and profile headers are featured at the top of the page. Best Tweets, those more popular amongst followers, will appear larger in font size to promote positive reception. Pinned Tweets allow you to place your favorite Tweet at the top of your profile. Filtered Tweets are used while browsing, and you can choose to view Tweets alone, with photos or videos, or with replies. Also, the new “Following” list has boards of profiles with header photos and descriptions that resemble Pinterest formatting.

Overall, the new format makes editing and managing profiles more intuitive. Bigger photos and fonts are an effort to make Twitter more accessible and personalized in real time. The new twitter, the new you: check it out here.

Social media marketing has its challenges. At Oniracom, we navigate these challenges by employing a team of experts dedicated to providing the most engaging campaigns for clients. Our Community Management team works on behalf of clients to brainstorm and craft campaigns aimed at engaging the client’s audience in creative new ways. Our goal is to provide small and medium business owners with actionable advice for overcoming the challenges of social media marketing using the assets that are currently available.

Facebook has now acquired the fast-growing WhatsApp. For a grand value of $19 billion in stock and cash, Facebook bought out WhatsApp, which has many wondering what’s so special about the app? For starters, it’s one of the most used apps, with over 320 million active users on a daily basis. There are many new possibilities for Facebook after obtaining this app, but there hasn’t been much said on how these two will be integrated together, or how it will affect Facebook use. With this being the biggest acquisition in the social media industry, make sure to keep a lookout for any new updates on Facebook and WhatsApp!

Remember the hype of having a high Klout score? Though the buzz died down, Klout never gave up on its users.  It has recently come out with a new update that seems to be receiving very positive feedback. Klout’s new improvement allows users more opportunities to share content. It now has recommendations for articles that are suitable for your followers, which allows for more connection. The content you do decide to share on your various social media sites can be scheduled to appear on a specific time and date.

With this new service you can also see how many people share your content, which will consequently raise your Klout score. This new update appears to be a win-win for everyone. Users now have access to more content, while Klout now has free advertising from its users. Make sure to check out this new feature, which seems to be marking the rise of Klout—yet again. 

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Social media advertising and promotion seems to be ultimately inescapable in this day and age, but how much is your social media activity actually worth in cold hard cash?

With the most recent numbers from social media analytic teams, here is a breakdown of what your likes and tweets mean in revenue.

A single Facebook like (follower) has been valued by ChompOn at an average of $8.00. Each time someone likes your page, all of his/her friends are alerted and exposed to your page as well. Because of this exponential nature of Facebook promotion, the $8.00 value projected for each follower has the potential to skyrocket quickly. Interestingly enough, the estimated cost of a Facebook like is $1.07. A seemingly low cost in comparison to the value, acquiring a Facebook follower incurs only a minor set back due to the whopping $8.00 or more in potential profit.

With Twitter being the source of chatter surrounding the most popular current events, Facebook has now created a feature that allows their users to view what pages are currently trending. 

The new ‘Trending Pages’ feature is easy to navigate and provides a description of why the page is so popular, which helps you decide whether or not the topic would actually be interesting to you. 

Facebook wants to compete with Twitter for being the source of current news and events, and it seems that this new feature is receiving some heavy criticism for being too similar to Twitter’s features. Comparisons of Facebook and Twitter have now begun to critique which feature is better. This article on TechCrunch describes the pros of each social network.

With all the buzz surrounding Facebook’s new update, every user should check it out themselves to get a feel for the feature and it see if it actually could prove useful.

Celebrating its one-year anniversary today, Vine is moving forward as a mature social network. Vine is achieving this goal with their life-long partner Twitter who realized the potential to install the built-in video platform a year ago.

Colin Kroll, Vine’s GM and co-founder, expects more collaborations, cameos, and hardware hack innovations to continue appearing on the feed.

But how is Vine changing after one year of service? Kroll states, “This year, we’re really focused on making it easier to discover videos and find new accounts.”

This app integration has been keeping up the competitive creativity of Vine against its similar social platforms like Instagram Video, Snapchat, and Youtube. However, the six-second videos of Vine continue to breed a unique creativity and production amongst other mobile video players.

Advertisements, film trailers, and actors’ comedic skits have all utilized Vine to achieve publicity, discovery, and monetary gains. Their influence in the past year has impacted other social media platforms to keep up and add additional video options.

I was a bit confused this morning when I was about to post a picture on Instagram and was asked to either post to my followers or “direct.” Intrigued, I checked out the ‘direct’ option and realized that I could send a photo directly to one of my friends. What does this mean exactly? Well, to put it simply, it’s a private message. So the photo could only be viewed by them. Hm, sounds a bit like Snapchat, except without the automatic deletion of the photo. So what are the perks exactly?

With direct, you can choose a specific friend and type a direct message that goes only to them. They get to keep the photo and view it at any time. The fun part is, you can send direct messages up to 15 people, and according to TechCrunch, Instagram Direct also offers up suggested recipients (TechCrunch). Once you’ve sent an Instagram Direct, you can comment about the photo back and forth with who you’ve sent it to. You can also “Reply all” with another new photo or video.

This messaging feature adds a new form of engagement for the app, but I believe that most users will refrain from this feature, and will continue to use Snapchat or text messaging instead, since Instagram’s platform is mainly focused on all your followers and your main feed.

It’s interesting that through Instagram Direct, you must start the conversation with a photo message. Although the app is staying true to its roots, a fun and artsy Instagram photo should really be shared with all of your followers, don’t you think?

Read more details at TechCrunch here and watch the video preview below:

The New Noise Festival is back at it in Santa Barbara and we are stoked to see all of the amazing artists and panels that are organized for this weekend. It’s New Noise’s 5th anniversary, so they’ve of course given us a killer line-up that includes FMLYBND, Cayucas, and HAIM (yes, HAIM) at the Block Party on Saturday. The festival kicks off tomorrow with some great artists at various venues sprinkled around lovely Santa Barbara. Some artists on Thursday include Ghost Tiger, The White Buffalo, and Andrew W.K.

Our very own Mike Wald will also be moderating a panel at the conference on Friday called, “If Music Could Talk: Marketing Your Brand.” The conference is a great way to learn about the music and entertainment industries. Our staff is excited to sit in on these panels!

The festival will come to a close on Saturday with the Block Party on Mason Street. What better place to rock out to Dante Elephante, Grizfolk, FMLYBND, Cayucas, and HAIM than in the Funk Zone?

Check out the full festival schedule here, and get your tickets as there is a limited supply!

It seems like no chat conversation these days is complete without some crazy emoticons- emoji for iPhone has practically become a second habit, and now Facebook Chat has introduced stickers (basically large cartoon emoticons that embed into the chat conversation) on the web. We’ve compiled a list of some of our favorite Facebook Chat Stickers and appropriate times to use them, inspired by this Mashable article:

1. For when you want to pretend you work at the Bluth Banana Stand

2. For when you get food poisoning from a really bad seafood restaurant

3. For when you’re feeling ~FABULOUS~

4. For when you’re practicing for your big Shakespeare Broadway debut

Continue Reading→

Over the past few years, there has been huge leaps and bounds in the growth of the social networking site Pinterest. Clothing stores, Magazines, Designers, and practically every female who likes planning weddings and homemade gifts have taken to Pinterest as a place to store photos from their own computer or from their favorite websites. The visual bulletin board aesthetic lends itself easily for users to compartmentalize their images into different categories such as Recipes, Art, Interior Design, DIY, Fashion, etc.  

Unlike other photo-sharing websites, Pinterest has a “Pin It Button” that allows you to pin an image from any website. Once you click the button in your browser, it pulls images from the current webpage and allows you to pin it to your Pinterest profile. 

However, there are a few drawbacks on pinning directly to Pinterest: since you can only pin images, it’s hard to pin a quote, Twitter profile, or Website unless it is a single image. Also, it’s not possible to pin tracks directly from Spotify for the pinners that want to share music on their profiles. 

This is where Pinstamatic comes in: it’s a hip website that allows you to do all the above.

Continue reading→

Andrew Stockdale came to Oniracom to develop an album release campaign based around a google map and a custom SoundCloud player. The page boasts a stream of the entire new album along with an interactive photo stream of Instagram photos tagged with #KeepMoving.

Check out the full video walkthrough below!

VINE
Pros:

Cons:

Future:

INSTAGRAM
Pros:

Cons:

Future:

Also, this fun website plays two videos side by side (from Vine and Instagram respectively) and lets you pick which one you think is the best. Vine is currently winning the battle with 13657 votes, while Instagram has 11747 votes.

So who is the better video sharing app? Only time will tell, but we have millions on millions (literally) of both Vine and Instagram videos to look through in the meantime.

Flickr rolled out some new features and a hot new design that offers higher resolution, a news feed, and more.

Landing on the home page, you’ll already notice the brand new design, bigger images, and crisper resolutions. Flickr is giving all its users 1 terabyte (yes terabyte) of space. This makes way for bigger and better images.

Mashable explains that the “news feed” feature is a bit similar to the Instagram news feed. To see this feature in full, check out their video that takes you through the new Flickr here.

Sharing is now also easier on Flickr. Once you post, you can easily share to Facebook. Twitter, Tumblr and more.

Overall, the new design is much more progressive in the digital/social media realm and the endless amount of space and higher resolutions are sure to make all Flickr users happy.

There are days to be serious, but today is simply not one of those days. Spoiler alert! Today is April Fools Day, and what a glorious day it is for the Internet. Here are of my favorites in no particular order.

1. Google Nose

It’s become a bit of a tradition for Google to introduce some sort of pseudo-app every April Fools and this year’s edition comes in the form of Google Nose with the slogan “Smelling is believing.”

Had she not smelled her phone, I might have believed them.

2. Netflix Suggestions

Upon perusing the web for some other April Fools fun, it seemed that Netflix had performed the prank of all pranks. Netflix typically gives me ultra-specific categories, but today seems to be extra special on that front. Here is the suggestion from my own personal account:

Sadly I did not get anything about Nicolas Cage freak-outs as seen here.

We’ve finally done it. Each staff member chose their favorite apps that they can’t live without. Take a look at who chose what, and click on each app to see why they rock!

British mobile provider Three (UK) seems to have struck a bit of viral marketing gold in the recent #danceponydance campaign that hit Youtube this month. The premise of the advert? Silly stuff matters.  How do they convey this slogan? With a dancing Shetland Pony of course.

In the age of Tivo and DVR, advertisements have gotten creative, and I can’t say that I mind too much.  That being said, companies face a need to reach audiences at a startling speed that will rise above the many Youtube videos of cute sloths in slow motion, adorable children saying the darndest things and, ahem, other companies trying to rise above viral happy accidents. And let me just say, they are doing a terrific job doing so. 

Exhibit A: Shetland Ponies.

Our friend at Power Philms is a finalist in the Primus Music Video competition. Check out his animated video and *like* Primus on Facebook in order to vote for this awesome video!

Hold on to your hats everybody, Facebook is revolutionizing the newsfeed with the biggest facelift it’s endured since I was 19. (2009 if you must know)  Yep, as of today Mark Zuckerberg has announced that Facebook will redesign the holy grail of social media, the newsfeed.  The redesign that will soon infiltrate your own personal blue screen is adapting with the changing times of Internet sharing.  So what does that exactly entail? I will tell you.  And I will also tell you what I think about it, because let’s face it, I just want to be one of the cool kids.

One of the main changes, as pointed out in this Gizmodo Article is a much greater focus on visual/rich media than ever before.

There’s a lot of buzz going around about Twitter’s new iPhone app Vine.  It’s a social networking app that allows you to take a 6 second video and edit in-phone. Many believe that this is the next big thing in social sharing. There is much speculation as to what will make or break this app in the beginning stages of catching on (Mashable), but rather than being critical like I usually am, I’m going to focus on the positives.

This simple little idea allows anyone to create his or her own cinematic masterpiece… or videos of our very own Calia eating chocolate cream pie…

That’s what I like about this new app. The possibilities are endless. You can re-create your own version of the Harlem Shake sensation re-sweeping the nation as seen on illustrator / video animator Ian Padgham’s Twitter account @origiful [See it here]

By now I’m sure the majority of you are all too familiar with the Harlem Shake dance meme that has overtaken Gangnam Style as the latest viral sensation to hit the web.
I’ll admit, I too am guilty of spending a shameful amount of time watching these videos online…

While the Harlem Shake may have been burning through it’s 15 minutes mercilessly, there’s no denying that it marks one of the most popular and pervasive memes of 2013. Within just a span of a few weeks, it already boasts well over 170 million views from 40,000 different YouTube channels.

Between punching inflatable giraffes and underwater tabletop dancing, it’s hard to choose which Harlem Shake videos are the most creative. Thankfully, Mashable has compiled a comprehensive list of must-sees for viewers. Check it out here.

And for those of you hoping this meme couldn’t fade into obscurity any sooner, I’ve got bad news for you. A variation of the Harlem Shake, or rather, “Harlem Fake” has made its way to the Internet—but this time, viewers are greeted with a twist once the bass kicks in.

Here are a few clips of funny Harlem fake-outs:

Donatella Arpaia came to Oniracom to meet her brand goals by crafting a new custom website for her personal brand, branding her social networks, and providing her social content strategy & community management. Oniracom synthesized Donatella’s style and brand identity into a clean, convincing package of web properties.

Oniracom Portfolio | Donatella Arpaia (DonatellaArpaia.com) from Oniracom on Vimeo.

Click the image below to see her full website in action!

Instagram announced that the company currently has 90 million monthly active users, which is 10% up from December’s statistics. Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom told AllThingsD that “Instagram continues to see very strong growth around the world.”

Instagram also dropped a few more statistics on their press page stating that they have 40 million photos per day, 8500 likes per second and 1000 comments per second.

Dwight Yoakam came to Oniracom through Topspin and Warner Music Nashville for an interactive album release splash page. The splash page featured staggered promotions and contests leading up to the release of Dwight Yoakam’s album “3 Pears.”

Oniracom Portfolio | Dwight Yoakam (3Pears.DwightYoakam.com) from Oniracom on Vimeo.

We just recently finished a project for our client Buyvite which we are extremely proud of! The process included various elements such as, consulting, building storyboards, designing a unique inforgraphic, writing a script, recording voice overs, and animating and editing a video for Buyvite’s website. Our lead strategist Justin worked very hard on implementing and creating unique ideas, which is definitely conveyed in the finished product.

Justin explains the step by step process from consulting to the animation:

Social media has been without a doubt a very prominent factor in this year’s presidential election. Lab42 recently performed a study surveying 500+ American social media users who were ages 18 and over. They came up with a pretty interesting infographic that broke down who registered Democrats, Republicans, Independents, and others are voting for. The infographic by Lab42 looks at some other interesting statistics such as what percentage of social media users tune in to satirical news shows such as The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. Registered Democrats and Independents were each about 17% above what registered Republicans reported. Take a scroll through the full infographic below to see the rest of Lab42’s unique statistics of American social media users.

Oniracom will play host to StartupSB and an event entitled Startup Creativity. The event, organized and moderated by StartupSB, a 600+ member meetup group of startup entrepreneurs, will focus on inspiring creativity by highlighting creative local startup endeavors, the local Santa Barbara startup community and the upcoming Startup Weekend Santa Barbara.  Startup Weekend Santa Barbara will be held November 2, 3 and 4 at Citrix Online.

Startup Creativity will take place on October 25th at 6pm at our office (720 East Haley Street Santa Barbara, CA). Food will be supplied by one of our awesome clients Rusty’s Pizza, as well as libations from Telegraph Brewery. All of Santa Barbara’s favorites!

On October 25, you’ll hear from Jacob Tell and Mike Wald about their current creative projects that will be sure to excite the development community. You’ll also hear from CreatorUp, a Startup Weekend Santa Barbara #1 team, who will discuss their online web series school.

Our very own Justin Davis has been featured as Chill’s Curator of the Week! Chill is a social networking website that makes it easier for you to discover and share videos. You can post videos, follow other users, and more!

A few weeks ago, we launched our client CapoSonic’s awesome webpage, and now we have officially launched CapoSonic’s Kickstarter! Kickstarter is a funding platform for various types of projects. A funding goal is created with a deadline. If the project succeeds its goal, all “backers” who offered to contribute money are charged, if the project does not reach its goal, no one is charged. It’s up to YOU to give CapoSonic its kick start!

At this year’s Social Good Summit, Doctor Deepak Chopra discussed the inevitable power of social media, and why and how this technological accomplishment will be the next phase of humanity. Mashable featured a video of Dr. Chopra’s speech and discussion at their Social Good Summit. In his speech, he explains that social media has made humanity more connected than ever. He states, “At the most fundamental level, we are not just connected, we are inseparable.”

The xx’s new album campaign truly showcases the power of social networking! On September 3, (which is a week before their album “Coexist” releases) The xx, in collaboration with Internet Explorer, released a stream of their album. Within this stream, you can listen to Coexist in full as well as track your location and share the album with people around the world. What better way to spread your love for The xx and to “coexist”?

The web page features a world map which shows how the stream of The xx’s new album has been shared. The map has several curves shooting out from one end of the world to the next, which originated from someone either tweeting, emailing, or posting a status on Facebook. This campaign is a great way to encourage fans to share the album stream, bring awareness to the album release, and express what they think about the new album. However, I believe that the campaign could have been more interactive and involved.

What are you looking forward to most about Super Bowl XLVI? The game? The parties? The halftime show? As the most watched TV broadcast of the year, the Super Bowl brings much hype. Although the football game is the most obvious reason why people tune into the broadcast, many people tune in for other reasons, specifically the commercials.

Companies spend months strategizing, preparing, creating, and producing innovative and engaging commercials that will grab the viewer’s attention in hopes of promoting their product. In years past, the commercials were kept secret up until the moment they aired and were shown once during the live taping of the game, but last year some marketing officers went against the traditional approach and implemented a new plan of attack. As our society has become more and more engrossed into the world of social media, companies have discovered that combining their commercials with a social media overlay increases not only the awareness of their product, but also “gets the ball rolling” before the commercial airs live on TV.

We saw this article on Mashable and thought that it really encapsulated what a lot of our team and solutions bring to the table on behalf of our clients. Oniracom has been brainstorming and executing social media campaigns within the music and entertainment sector for years. We really enjoy when people take the time to learn a little more about what we do, and how we choose to integrate platforms and new disciplines on behalf of clients. We have an iPhone App coming soon that will help to communicate this; But until it’s released check out this sweet infographic by Voltier Creative (via Mashable).

This Summer has been jammed packed with fun and exciting new projects. One of our favorites has been getting to work with Doheny Days Music Festival 2011, which is finally happening THIS weekend in Dana Point, CA.

Earlier this year, Omega Events, the group behind Doheny Days, came to us to create a web presence for the revival of this festival that has a long standing history in the Southern California music scene after a 7 year hiatus. We enjoyed working closely with the team at Omega Events to define their overall branding including logo, colors, aesthetic and general vibe as illustrated on DohenyDays.com.

In addition to creating their website, Omega Events hired us to implement a strategic Marketing and Advertising Campaign during the summer, including online advertising, give-away contests and other creative marketing initiatives. We’re stoked on the success of this campaign and are loving the public’s response and excitement for Doheny Days. This first year back paves the road for a successful festival for years to come.

Want to know what to expect during Doheny Days? Here’s a little insight into the amazing two-day festival, which is sure to end the summer on the right note!

Every big brand started as an idea. A single person had to put pen to paper and begin figuring out what it was they wanted to accomplish with their brand. Creating strategy crucial to making any brand successful and in some cases it can be easily overlooked…

I always thought I was pretty on top of my music knowledge, and had a good grip on the various kinds of genres, top hits, and artists out there. But, as I have recently discovered, I thought way too highly of my knowledge of music. For some of you this may come as a shock, but until about three weeks ago, I had no idea who Fleet Foxes were, and had never heard their music. I was introduced to them by a friend because he could no longer stand the idea of having to drive to work with me again while listening to “my” music. He burned me a CD of songs he felt were “better” than mine and that was when my narrow and limited knowledge of music became very apparent. 

This idea of discovering new bands and artists started to intrigue me since I had been so stuck in my ways of only listening to my music, that I never really gave myself the chance to go out and explore. But, as I quickly learned, this exploring thing was not as easy as I thought. There are thousands of artists out there with multiple albums and I suddenly became very overwhelmed and defeated. This task was way larger than I anticipated and I was very close to giving up on my new project. Luckily, I was sent an article about an online site that makes the process of discovering new artists and bands a lot easier. GoRankem.com is “crowdsourcing the music discovery process. By aggregating the expertise of the existing fanbase for every artist, the prospective fans can more easily embrace a new artist or dive deeper into a catalog than they ever had before” (GoRankem). The site not only offers rankings on the artist’s best songs, but also provides interactive features between its members.

Marketing over social networks used to be easy. You would create a MySpace page, upload a few songs and a picture or two and let millions of users do the rest by virtually spreading the word. Fast forward to now – boy, has that changed. With a seemingly ever-expanding plethora of social networking sites all trying to appeal to as broad an audience as possible, marketing yourself over these platforms has moved from hobby to chore to nearly a full time job. The typical artist must manage and keep up-to-date their Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, website, and any other social media platforms they’ve chosen to market themselves over. Most artists will confess that constantly updating each and every one of their online marketing platforms takes much longer than they’d prefer. The process is arduous at best, and any artist will acknowledge their true desire to use that time creating music. Yet, in the modern age it’s an integral portion of anyone’s marketing strategy.

Enter Musedash, a new online application that lets musicians manage all their social network profiles from one main dashboard. From this dashboard, you can post content (be it status updates, links, news, or photos and videos) and choose to which networks you’d like the content to appear on. So you could simultaneously post a news article on your Facebook profile, your Facebook page, your Twitter, your MySpace, and any other applicable network – all with just one click. Musedash sets itself apart from competing services like Hootsuite and Ping.fm by catering specifically to musicians. And, recognizing that most musicians are not computer geeks in their spare time, creator Hilke Ros and the rest of the Musedash team have made user-friendliness a top priority. The result is a clean, simple and straightforward application designed to make social networking easier, not more complicated. Potentially, using Musedash to manage multiple social networks simultaneously could save valuable time and frustration, and would eliminate the possibility of mistakes or inconsistent information on different networks.

Late last month, the unveiling of Google+ prompted the world over reconsider the future of social media and online networking, and many began to wonder if The Goog’s latest product would boast enough innovative features to dethrone Facebook, king of the social networking realm. Speculation has run rampant as the search giant’s latest foray into new media gains momentum, much of which attempts to size up Google+ against Facebook. Many in the tech world are projecting whether or not + will be successful both in stealing existing social network users and attracting new ones. But here at Oniracom, my compadres and I have been interested in how Google+ will integrate into the larger scheme of social media marketing and brand growth strategies. While wishful thinking would allow Google+, Facebook and others to harmoniously coincide with each other in the virtual world, it is becoming ever-more clear (as is obvious with Facebook’s Skype contract retaliation) that there really may only be room for one. It’s impossible to know which network, if any, will prevail, but Google+ is making a strong attempt by promising features and upgrades not available on Facebook or other social networking sites.

Epitaph Records reached out to us to create a cool splash page for their band Falling In Reverse:

We developed a custom media player (built on SoundCould‘s API) that allows users to listen to 3 songs and then prompts them to enter an email address or sign on with Facebook to unlock the full album.

We invite you to check out   FallingInReverse.com!

Feel free to check out our latest project, Courtney O’Donnell’s new website: CourtneyODonnell.com

Courtney is at the beginning of her career, yet has already written more than 20 songs, taught herself to play the guitar and worked with major names in the music business. She released her first two original CD’s at the age of 11 and 14. Courtney has big things lined up for her, and there is no doubt that she will succeed. We are thrilled to be working with her.

Be sure to check out her website to learn more about Courtney and to see what cool features we included on her site!

CourtneyODonnell.com

Likester is “the global popularity engine,” here to help you understand what people like on Facebook. This includes anyone from your best friends to people you have never met that live across the world. The site is broken up into five major sections: My Likes, Friends, Everyone, Trending and Like List. With these tabs, you are able to sort through popular likes on Facebook in comparison to your own personal likes. Likester is potentially a great tool for social marketing; it can help any Facebook page increase their fan base!

“My Likes” provides an interface to easily view the items you personally like. Here you can sort you likes as entertainment, people, places and things. Likester displays how many of your friends like the same things as you, and how many total Facebook users like the same pages. When comparing your likes to others, you have the option of browsing according to the location of users. Additionally, you can manage your likes through Likester.

Groupon,a deal-of-the-day website that is localized to major geographic markets worldwide, is very much in the hot seat when it comes to quick and easy deals. Recently, “Google Offers” a service provided by Google wants to take part in this new craze. The company has now gone live with a signup for beta programs in Portland, Oregon, several cities in California, including Oakland/East Bay and San Francisco, as well as areas around New York City.

Groupon has been notorious for its awesome deals. However, I am definitely curious to see what Google has in store. Especially, since they promise “50% off or more at places you’ll love.”

Generally when we e-mail clients, we tend to have larger files, often times most e-mails can not send an attachment of more than 10MB size. This becomes gradually frustrating and can be very time consuming. Recently, we stumbled upon WeTransfer. It’s a new and easy way to send bigger files. It’s a simple and secure web service that allows us to send data up to 2GB! This is great for sending larger multiple files, such as videos, music tracks, photos, which we use quite a bit of. The best part is that it’s free, there is no registration prior to sending, and it can translate in eight different languages! I really like the simplicity of this service and how easy they’ve made it for anyone to utilize. Another thing I really like is that it can send files for up to twenty users in one go, this makes for convenient and effective sending!

Since Lupe Fiasco’s new album uses a giant QR code as its cover artwork to help promote his album in the mobile universe, we figure it’s time for a post on the Solutions for Dreamers Blog.  Here is the artwork posted to his official website:

Thanks to Jump Scan we have this killer INFO-GRAPHIC to share about who really is using QR codes (Quick Response codes).

Skype is planning to shift its gears towards the business perspective of video chatting, and is teaming up with Citrix, a worldwide company who offers online meetings with GoToMeeting. The new feature is expected to be available near the end of the year, and Skype hopes for this partnership to “help expand Skype’s business offerings by providing powerful collaboration features for businesses of all sizes to set up and hold meetings” (Skype, 2011). Along with video calls and conferencing, the new service will also include audio features with voice calling, as well as instant messaging, file sharing, and group video calling, which is a brand new element that Skype launched with their latest version, Skype 5.0.

The new conference calling product is a little different from their current free conference calling service. The free conference calling that Skype already offers only allows two users to video call online, instant message, file share, etc., while the new product is a paid version that is extended through Skype’s business service. Skype and Citrix are excited to bring this product to life and explain that, “Web and audio conferencing has been among the top requested features by our business users. This represents a significant step towards broadening our enterprise offerings, while adding features that will enable business people to collaborate even more efficiently and effectively.” (Skype, 2011). This new conference calling service makes it simpler for corporate businesses to hold meetings with one another and are able to connect anywhere and anytime, which increases productivity. Citrix also claims that GoToMeeting is extremely user-friendly, therefore prior training or knowledge of the program is not necessary. The exact price of how much the conference call feature is going to cost has not been established yet, and Skype plans to let users know of all costs closer to the release of the service.

Travel costs and difficult meeting arrangements are out the window with this brand new product. Collaborating with other businesses also becomes much more flexible and easy with this new technology. This was just a little preview, stay tuned for more news with Skype and their new conference calling product later this year!

Oniracom is proud to be working with the David Lynch Foundation Music on an innovative marketing campaign through PledgeMusic.

DLF Music brings together the world’s top & emerging recording artists to support the good works of the David Lynch Foundation’s stress-reducing, meditation-based educational programs.

Featured artists of our Pledge compilation include: Arrested Development, Au Revoir Simone, Ben Folds, Peter Gabriel, Mary Hopkin, Moby, Maroon 5, Neon Trees, Ozomatli, Heather Nova, Iggy Pop, Carmen Rizzo, Salman Ahmad, Slightly Stoopid, Dave Stewart, Andy Summers and Tom Waits.

When you Pledge for the 17-track compilation download, or any of the other unique items and experiences during this 6-week Pledge campaign, you gain access to Pledgers-only updates from participating DLF Music artists. Each week you will receive 2 or 3 of DLFMusic’s featured tracks … PLUS receive exclusive video, photo and blog updates, giving you an insider’s view into the artists lives and experiences.

Great Artists—Artists and musicians are standing up in support of The David Lynch Foundation by donating their creativity and music for a…
Great Cause—Download for Good and all profits from your support will benefit DLF’s educational outreach programs — all based on the theme, “Change Begins Within.”

Great Artists + Great Cause = Music That Changes the World

This is a guest editor reply to the Mashable Article: Why Social Media Is Bringing Back Our Grandparents’ Values [OP-ED]

On January 4 at 9:46 p.m., I posted this message to Facebook:

“Vegas tomorrow. Who’s in?”

I was preparing for my drive/pilgrimage to Las Vegas for CES. And, as one does, I alerted 500 of my closest Facebook friends of this fact. I didn’t even think much of it.

The next morning, before I settled into the long drive, I stopped in to my local coffee shop. Ashley, who works there and knows my kids’ names, asked, “Your usual?” And then added, “Heading off to Vegas, huh?” She’d seen my status update.

Some may find this intimacy alarming. I found it oddly comforting. I bet this is what it was like for my grandparents, in a time when communities were close-knit; when someone knew if you were going on a trip or noticed if you didn’t show up somewhere. But this is just one of many parallels between our behaviors today and those of our grandparents. Here are a few more ways I think that social media has bridged these generations, culturally speaking…. [Read Full Article]
- By Josh Rose

A Reply:

I wish I could accept this analogy to his grandparents experience, but I can’t.  It doesn’t work for the very reason he says it does.

Technology and social media have changed everything—in many ways for the better, and in a few ways for the worse. 

Modern life is no longer a community of caring individuals as it was 2-3 generations ago.  We delude ourselves that our tweets and Facebook status updates puts us “in greater touch” with those who really care about us, but I don’t think it is the same thing as human contact and never will be.  I’m certain it fills a need and a function, otherwise why would 500 million have Facebook accounts (I am not one of them). 

I don’t believe in a Norman Rockwell version of America or the World, and I don’t necessarily think life was better in 1930.  People were confined to roles and limited by their color, religion, gender, ethnicity or sexual orientation.  Life was harder and clearly more challenging.  But in some ways it was better.  Neighbors cared about each other.  Family included grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins all living within a few miles, a few blocks or next door.  People left their homes unlocked and room would be made at the dinner table for a hungry stranger.

Social media fulfills a need.  It informs; it shares; it even enlightens from time to time.  But let’s not delude ourselves into thinking that it brings us closer together in ways our grandparents would understand.

Darryl Tell

Again and again social networking has helped countless businesses gain vast promotion and exposure to their industry. Innately, this is nothing new. Current web finds have led me to discover that social networking can be used to help change the world. That’s right, with just a few clicks; You can help change the world for the better. Recently, I stumbled upon this awesome website called SocialVibe. Though the site has been launched since January 2007, over the course of time it has progressively developed. With over 1,750,000 members, it’s one of the leading social media sites used to connect with over forty different charities and non-profit organizations.

SocialVibe is a service that gives people an opportunity to use social media to make a real difference.  All you have to do is sign up, pick a cause, choose a sponsor and place your badge.  Once this is complete, you start earning points towards donations towards the charity of your choosing and various sponsor perks.

Now here’s a brilliant album release campaign. UK songstress Adele, grammy winning “Chasing Pavements” singer, is releasing 21 (XL, Columbia) the much anticipated follow up to her debut album, 19. To generate buzz and increase fan engagement with the record in the weeks leading up the it’s US release, team Adele has set up quite a creative splash page:

A huge shout out to social media guru & analyst Brian Solis and data visualization specialist JESS3 as they have again teamed up for this powerful info-graphic “The Twitterverse.”  In an attempt to decode the universe of services and apps leveraging Twitter, this info-graphic sections the apps into 19 rings.  How quickly will this become outdated?  That is dependent upon the innovators.

Feel free to click around on each icon to learn more about these Twitter applications:

Crowd fundraising—often referred to as crowd funding or crowd sourcing, is a method to raising money for new projects and/or businesses by inquiring micro donations from a large number of supporters and sponsors. Though this is currently becoming more and more popular, for years charities and non-profits have used this approach to gain public responsiveness. Nowadays, with the excessive shift in social media, crowd funding has developed into a sustainable fundraising mechanism for all new music, artists, films, creative ideas and projects, in addition to charities and nonprofit organizations.

There are a few drawbacks to this new web-based phenomena - the lack of quality, confidentiality, and the reliance of crowd sourcing. When you open the doors, anyone and anything can be posted on these sites without digression, which leads to inconsistency and trying to deal with matters out of your control. Another caution is to be careful not to give away competitive information. Intellectual property theft is a concern, so anyone who has an idea through a crowdsourcing platform has to be careful not to hand over a great idea on a public forum and never get credit for it.

Long gone are the days of records, tapes, and compact discs. But what is in store for music storage? Music streaming services are surfacing, making it possible to not only listen to music on computers, but also in cars, on TVs, throughout home sound systems, and on mobile devices. Countless services allow users to access thousands of albums and millions of songs instantly on the device of their choice. Users can create libraries of their favorite songs, listen to pre-made or personally created playlists, share songs with friends, purchase songs and so much more. While these services allow users to sync their created libraries and playlists, many music fanatics are looking for what’s next.

Facebook introduced the new profile to its users this past December, and hoped to upgrade all users from the old profile to the new profile early during the new year. Gradually reeling its users towards the new profile allowed users to sample the new profile before it officially became mandatory, which stirred up different types of discussions between almost all Facebook users. Not only did the new layout get users talking, but the new features such as exposing all users to individual friendships and connecting interests between them, caused much debate between whether the old profile or the new profile was viewed as “better.”

My favorite time of the year is here, it’s Festival Season!!  The Santa Barbara International Film Festival is taking place from January 27th to February 6th.

This years festival promises to be a little bit different with the addition of New Media.  They plan to update festival goers via Twitter and Facebook and even have a give-away or two.  Here is what they have to say:

SOCIAL MEDIA

This year SBIFF will undertake a massive social media campaign throughout the course of the festival. SBIFF will utilize both Facebook and Twitter in order to enhance the festival experience for festival attendees, filmmakers, and press.

• Both Facebook and Twitter will serve as valuable resources, providing up to the minute information on program changes and announcements. With these tools, festival attendees will be given many new ways to actively participate in events and activities. Throughout the 11 days, there will be many exciting opportunities to win film tickets, party passes, tribute tickets, and festival memorabilia. SBIFF also encourages everyone to share their favorite moments, films, and photos as the festival progresses, many of which may be reposted or tweeted.
• For filmmakers, these tools will be utilized to both promote their film at the festival, and also to network with other filmmakers and industry insiders in attendance.
• Members of the press should also take note as these tools will be used to make valuable announcements and highlight published coverage.

Now as much as this sounds like a great idea, it has been my experience from other festivals and conferences that the promise is never delivered.  Festival goers are promised to be given cutting edge to the minute updates but it is usually the main person running the festival who is in charge of updating, and he/she obviously gets too busy and does not have time to make any updates.  Or the responsibility gets handed down to a new intern who is way too excited to be there and also does no updating but is instead throwing up in some green room.

I hope that the film festival has taken this new role seriously and will be updating frequently, although im not sure since their Facebook page does not have a custom URL (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Santa-Barbara-International-Film-Festival/141996919640), the bio is from 2010, and they haven’t even created any events for their panels and award ceremonies.

For more information on the festival where I plan to spend a lot of time check out the links bellow

SBIFF Website
Twitter
Facebook

We all know the web was infiltrated by Facebook and Twitter last year.  Understanding WHY and HOW they were successful goes beyond examining their respective business models.  So let’s see WHO made the most impact on the web for Facebook and Twitter.

The infographic is from Digital Surgeons.

The obvious growing trend in 2011 for millions of TV viewers is to go online to see the shows (or clips) they want, when they want them.

Clicker makes finding shows and clips online quick and easy.  If you are looking for a past season of “The Simpsons,” want to stream a full length movie or want to discover a brand new web series, Clicker may be for you.

The Facebook integration for recommendations, trending and connecting with friends and staff is already in place and growing.  Decide which shows should be cancelled and have your voice heard!

We are super excited to be the technology providers of FanManager’s Street Team platform.  Here’s an excerpt from FanMail’s blog post:

Our clients are awesome and every one has interesting stories to tell.  Some of them, like FanManager, are really pushing the innovation needle to drive their business and communicate with their fans.

FanManager is about as cool as it gets: They offer creative, full-service solutions to artists and festivals. They manage musician’s on and off-line street teams, as well as work exchange programs for events.  FanManager hosts a very large community of street team members who accrue points for completing marketing tasks for their favorite artists. With these points, street-teamers can purchase merchandise, tickets and get VIP access.

The case study below is what happens when 3 great companies get together: Oniracom, FanManager and FanMail. Partnering, we help FanManger manage over 90,000 online and offline street team members, keep their data clean and actionable, provide custom profiles for each member and deep analytics for each FanManager client.

Super Geeky Goodness!

G. Love’s “Fixin To Die” album drops February 2011, and to build a buzz, Oniracom developed an Action for Media page where users get a free song from the album in exchange for one of three actions.  You can post a message about this campaign to Facebook, Twitter or sign up on G. Love’s Mailing List.

Former Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes has designed the site to “let users find, follow and support the causes important to them.”

Music licensing has become stricter and stricter due to the immense amount of untrustworthy and illegal music sharing stations there are across the net. Last.fm has provided their members with tons of free radio stations with limited listening, as well as offering subscriber-only radio stations such as the Loved Tracks Radio, Playlists, My Neighbourhood, and Personal Tag Radio Now that we all are familiar with and love on our handy dandy scrobblers. Unfortunately, beginning November 17th, Last.fm has been forced to omit some of these subscriber-only stations in order to direct their “energy on improving our most popular features, developing new and innovative stations, and offering the best music discovery service to our global audience,” says the members at Last.fm themselves.

Peter Tanham of Amp Music Marketing writes, “When we start working with any musician, two of the most important goals we start with are:

1.) Build a strong mailing list

2.) Build a popular Facebook page

Fans are going to be more comfortable interacting with the artist through these mediums, and they are also the ones that drive the most sales.”

Highlights from this article include:

The importance of Facebook Ads

Implementing effective Facebook Ads

1.) If You Like Those Guys…  it’s called a “power play,” pick musicians that are similar to your style and pay to be played to their fans.

2.) Building A Good Landing Page: make sure your Facebook ad redirects them to a customized landing page which will encourage them to click the “like” button with some incentive to hear or get your music. Make sure it is the most similar sounding music to the artist you referred to in the “power play.”

3.) Target Your Ads… and run multiple campaigns!

4.) Ask Questions. Encourage Clicks and Likes - (reference pseudo ad image on the left).

RCRD LBL, an ever expanding library of free mp3’s and artist profiles, has been helping musical artists promote their newest endeavors for free since its inception in 2007. It was started by Downtown Music and Peter Rojas (Gizmodo, Weblogs) and immediately revolutionized the way in which artists communicated with their fans. By this time, the media sharing practices of generation-y were already in full effect and while many major labels were focused on ways to combat their own fans, RCRD LBL was ready to give them exactly what they wanted: music.

By legally providing free mp3s it provided both a hub for fans of new music to come and discover artists and a place for emerging talent to promote their sound. Typically, an artist provides a single track at a time to the fan at no charge or membership, independent of any fine print or hitches. One of the key ways in which RCRD LBL promotes the thousands of artists on its roster is the simple yet effective mailing list they developed to provide new tracks nearly everyday. Usually coming in packs of two artists per email, RCRD LBL showcases new talent and marquee artists to fans who sign up online. Through their savvy choice of employees and tastemakers the company has proven to be not only a helpful tool for artists but a trendsetting engine as well.

To be featured on the daily mailing immediately draws the attention of thousands of prospective fans that would have never heard your songs before, it is a powerful tool which then can take on a momentum all its own through attention given by bloggers and other music publications (not to mention word of mouth!). With collaborating record labels like Fool’s Gold, Warp and Modular on board, RCRD LBL continues to turn heads in the direction of the best up and coming music. It has grown so successful in fact that the site facilitates over 1,000,000 downloads a month. These downloads come from across the globe and the ROI can be quite real. For instance, RCRD LBL was the first site to provide a free mp3 from a then unknown hip hop artist named Kid Cudi. The two tracks, “Day n Nite” and the Crookers remix of said track, became huge sensations with domestic downloads at over 2million. The Crookers remix went on to be a chart topper in 20 countries. This is but one example of the impact RCRD LBL can have and with an ever expanding roster of artists that doesn’t look to be changing anytime soon.

“What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the Master calls the butterfly.”- Lao Tzu

Some of the best strategic alliances are between a Critic and a Creative. The Critic drives the Creative to higher heights, the Creative gives the Critic his content for analysis and, really, the healing of a personal, and often collective, wound. In business, a culture’s wounds offer the largest sources for financial reward AND a positive giving-back: the essence of cause-related marketing.

It is said that the Creative invented the airplane, while the Critic invented the parachute. There are seasons for transcendence and seasons for grounding. In both actions, one needs the Critic and the Creative. Both are relentless beings made of the same stuff in important slices of their personalities. There is an old proverb about men sharpening one another like iron on iron.

Humanity has NO time left for people to figure out how profitable HUMANITY-SAVING VENTURES will be for their own Parea (Tribe) AND then shop those around. That is WHY we are seeing so much giving happening. Time is perceived by many as being short BUT for those who have found their tribe and their gift, these are the BEST DAYS to be alive. Everything is becoming visible before our eyes, everything is opening in the transparent eco-system of social networks.

And yet, as all of this revealing is going on, there seems to be a realization by many of what Carl Jung meant by the unconscious taking up far more of human experience than consciousness. Humanity is currently mapping its consciousness through the building of countless social networks and circles. This consciousness is a jumping off point for diving into the depths of the psyche…into the unconscious itself. And it is the complexes, archetypes and currents within an individual, communal and the collective unconscious that animate human thought, speech and action.

Identifying one’s archetypes and listening to the needs of those archetypes is just a first step in facilitating the design and assembly of useful social communities and tools. The next step involves a kind of deep sea exploration of what has not been spoken of and NEEDS speaking of in times such as these: the unconscious motivators/animators that, once brought into the light, no longer rule us and can be used by humans for solving the problems these self-same animators caused.

Look within to find the reason for what is without. And then ENGAGE!

Facebook event pages have been under construction for quite a while,  forcing our events to go everywhere that they are not supposed to be which has become rather frustrating for many people in the social media department. But, it appears that the Facebook gods have worked out the kinks and have successfuly launced a new version of Facebook events.

“At the MobileBeat 2010 conference in San Francisco, Eric Tseng said that Facebook “really sees mobile as the future,” and that we can expect to see Facebook’s “Like” buttons in mobile applications soon.

Tseng used geolocation as an example to illustrate the power of the mobile Open Graph. If you were to walk near a coffee shop and get a location-aware notification that there’s a happy hour going on there, you’ll probably be even more inclined to visit it if the notification comes bundled with recommendations from your Facebook friends.”

Thanks to Facebook who recently released their “Best Practices” guide for musicians.  Facebook attempts to teach musicians how best to connect music fans on their social network.

On page 3 of the PDF, they reference some tips on how to connect, and under point 2 “Create Content Worth Sharing” they show an example of Oniracom’s Lenny Kravitz photo-tagging campaign!

Oniracom is honored to be part of this official Best Practices Facebook guide.

There are rumors flying around like crazy that Google is planning to launch a social network that will rival Facebook in the very near future.  It all started when Digg founder Kevin Rose tweeted the message below:

At the moment both Google and Facebook are not commenting on this speculation.  It is worth noting though that Facebook is rumored to be dabbling in the search engine market for their own.  This is a clear move into Google’s territory.  Perhaps Google finds that fighting offense with offense is the way to go here. 

Also, a new social network launch from Google could not come at a better time given the recent user dissatisfaction with Facebook’s privacy settings. 

Other rumors are stating that Google Me would combine Google’s Buzz, Wave and Orkut social networking features into one social network to rule them all.  Not to mention - an instant user base of about 200 million people too. 

Of course, at the moment this is all hearsay.  However, this doesn’t stop us from wondering and asking the questions - will it succeed or will it fail? 

What do you guys think?

 

Blip.fm is a Social network founded in 2008, but just starting to pick up some good steam. The layout is nearly identical to Twitter, in that you have your “blips” that come in from all of your “favorite DJs” just as tweets come in from whom you’re following.

As the website itself will tell you:

A blip is a combination of 1) a song and 2) a short message that accompanies it. The way you create a blip is to first search for a song that you want to hear (or a song that you want your listeners to hear), then add a short message (under 150 characters), finally you submit it. Submitting a blip is also referred to as “blipping”, so from here on out, when you read “he blipped my favorite track” it means “he submitted a blip that had my favorite song attached”.

Video after the break

Since speaking at the Social Media Business Summit in London on March 18, I’ve been pondering the meaning of transparency and what this paradigm means to business and the social realm. The topic is HOT on the tongues of many as Facebook works out its kinks and philosophy in this area.

I’m convinced that humanity is entering a fantastic age, where undiscovered aspects of ourselves and the world appear the moment we imagine. And I firmly believe that our social networks offer us the means for this evolution to take place. And I believe that transparency plays a significant role in this growth process.

We have entered an age where fantastic job titles are possible, careers for Social Relationship Architects, Social Strategists, and Social Physicists, among others. These careers are for people who have training in existing disciplines AND who are able to think metaphorically, drawing lines across right and left hemispheres of thought, weaving new worlds of relationship. Many brands are using liquid metaphors and the overall ethos in business culture implies, and actually demands, porous, permeable forms.

We live in a time when our networks contain people who are super-relevant and specific to our dreams, aspirations and challenges. Goethe’s quote could not be more true at this time: “Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.” It takes a boldness composed of genius, power and magic to enter one’s social networks and begin creating and synthesizing relationships. It takes a willingness to ask questions, be awe-inspired and open to what your particular network has for you, for where you are right now. No other person has the same network that you have. No other person sees the world like you do. And no other person has the opportunities to contribute to this customized network than you…you are, after all, the one who built it and owns it. Corporations, communities, and the numerous other forms that humanity has created for progress MUST be more like the clear waters of the Mediterranean vs. the opaque waters of the Pacific.

Transparency is not something to be feared. It is the greatest opportunity to be exactly who you are meant to be, no shame, no fear: a wild animal out in the open, a tendril springing across the earth for all to see as you bloom and root into the soil of your community and offer your fruit. And, of course, as in the animal and plant kingdoms, there are associated dangers of competition and survival of the fittest. As human beings, our challenge is to balance all of the shades of experience: thought and heart, mind and body, civilization and “the wild”. And it is this very weaving of opposites, of varying shades, that creates the patchwork quilt of the human family and our social networks. Transparency offers benefits to progress that cannot be ignored. Learning implies freedom of movement and communication. Transparent environments offer us this.

My observation is that an alignment is taking place globally that is akin to a holographic puzzle coming into wholeness. Before, with Google, we looked and found. Now, with social networks like Facebook, we see in multi-colored, multi-dimensional space, what the community surrounding a keyword looks like…we see the faces, read the updates, hear the music and taste the journey that this key-phrase is taking. The paradigm of transparency is revealing the living nature of our languages and images. This is a good thing!

We have compiled a list of what we find to be the most interesting and informative music blogs on the web. The list amounts to 21 music blogs, but is divided into four categories; Music Blogs (general reviews of up-and-coming music), International Blogs (reviews up-and-coming music from specific countries and around the world), Entertainment Blogs (covers news and reviews of a variety of art forms), and Music Industry Blogs (covers the latest happenings of what is moving and shaking in the music industry).

Direct-to-Fan (D2F) marketing is essentially creating a relationship with your fans through a marketing outlet, fans help you and in return you help them. D2F marketing is a creative business model that allows artists to eliminate the need for a middle man by delivering music directly to fans.  Which means, artists keep a higher percentage of their own sales, compared to the current business model where major labels, distributors or even iTunes take 30% or more away from the artist! D2F is most easily identified by free content give-aways in exchange for a tweet, Facebook shout-out, or e-mail sign up, reference MattCosta.com.

However, D2F marketing is evolving to include custom storefronts and marketing analytics that enable you to better grasp your audience and sell directly from your website and various social profiles. After researching the following sites; Bandbox, Nimbit and Topspin, I have outlined a detailed explanation of the costs, benefits, similarities, and differences between each platform. 

Read More…

Last Friday I had a great opportunity to listen to Jay Matheson from Apple Computer speak at our local City College about personal branding.  As a small business owner, I never turn down these special moments to learn, no matter how versed I believe I may be in a particular field.  We can always learn more information, or see familiar information from new perspectives.  Please Read More…

The dominance of the web has changed the way people work, live and stay informed. For now, I’m going to leave aside a discussion about what the internet has done to the average person’s experience of life and the way people relate to others (though they are certainly worthy subjects for reflection and consideration).

What I want to share with you today are the tools we at Oniracom use to help us stay on top of the rapid shifts and changes which we encounter daily.  As a company that works primarily on websites and social media, every new application, every new site, every new contribution to the field of design, development and social networking has the potential to rearrange the way we go about business.  This means that it is a necessity to stay flexible, because you will encounter challenges and you will be expected understand the new developments and rise to the occasion (or risk being met by a client asking, “well they did that over their; are you not as capable?”).

So with all these changes and rapid sharing of information, what is the trick to staying on top without driving yourself crazy?

The solution is finding good tools that bring you the most relevant information and allow you to communicate easily and work efficiently.

Click Read More to See The Tools We Use on a Daily Basis and leave a comment about the tools that you use!

One of our summer 2009 interns, Karen Kiley, enjoyed her experience working at Oniracom and wrote up a nice post about her experience.  Karen is now back at the University of Limerick in Ireland.  We wish her the best with her career path.

This summer, I spent three months working as a social media intern with a company called Oniracom/Oniric Records. The company, based in Santa Barbara, California, creates online presences for a number of big name musicians. They also specialize in the websites and social media of some entertainment and environmental companies. The record label Oniric Records manage some local Santa Barbara acts.

Read: Karen’s Blog Post

One of Oniracom’s best ambassadors Kurty D speaks about CitySourced which he co-founded.  Please enjoy a ReadWriteWeb interview with Kurt about this new real time web application!

CitySourced provides a free, simple, and intuitive tool empowering citizens to identify civil issues (potholes, graffiti, trash, snow removal, etc.) and report them to city hall for quick resolution; an opportunity for government to use technology to save money and improve accountability to those they govern; and a positive, collaborative platform for real action.

New Noise Santa Barbara was a great success.  Being their first year, nobody was certain how heavily attended the concert component or conference component would be.  Both turned out to be a success!  People raved about Michael Franti’s Arlington Theatre performance, Jack Johnson’s film screening with last minute acoustic performance as well as many of the sold out club shows. 

The New Noise Panels were also well attended and talked and tweeted about all weekend.  I was asked to speak on two panels, “The Future Is Unwritten” and “The Green Musician.”  Below I’ve written a list of 5 items from each panel that I learned from other panelists.

What I learned from other panelists on “The Future is Unwritten:”

(click “Read More…” below)

What I learned from other panelists on “The Green Musician:”

(click “Read More…” below)