April 2014

The staff decided to get a little funny for this month’s playlist. Here’s a compilation of spoof and parody songs that tickle our fancies!

Jacob:
After much deliberation I have finally selected my favorite Weird Al song (of the moment), which is actually an original composition, as opposed to a straight parody which is he most known for. “Genius in France” is an incredibly intricate homage to the one and only Frank Zappa, and even features his son Dweezil Zappa. Ironically the song is written about a person rejected in the world, but accepted in France.

Sean:
Rage of Thrones by Axis of Awesome

Keir:
I had like 12, but decided to show mercy and only subject you to 3:

The Beatles: “You Know My Name (Look Up the Number)”
Silly B-side of “Let it Be”

Frank Zappa: “Valley Girl”
‘80s classic starring his daughter Moon Zappa.

Pixies: “La La Love You”
Throwaway goof-off from the “Doolittle” album.

Haaris:
“Eat It” by Weird Al
“What Does My Girl Say” SNL spoofing “What Does the Fox Say”

Mike:
No huge favorites, but this made me laugh:

Tracy:
The Muppets - Bohemian Rhapsody

Drew:
Amish Paradise was a pretty big part of my formative years. When the actually coolio song comes on I still find myself singing the weird Al ones. Plus it created beef with Coolio what other spoof artists has beef wit Coolio?

Calia:
The only thing that comes to mind is this:

Ever wonder what new or noteworthy music is circulating around the Twitter world?

Twitter’s recent partnership with Billboard includes a real-time chart to track real-time music conversation found on Twitter. This tool monitors Twitter data including: mentions of artists, albums, and songs that are discussed over the network. 

Billboard has been a credible source for music industry news and Twitter is a successful global platform for real-time conversation. So, their multi-year partnership will be an anticipated step up for both platforms to enhance and demonstrate it’s strengths regarding music.

According to Billboard, this exciting partnership will extend their value proposition into social media conversation that Twitter effectively harnesses and drives.

In addition, music artists who actively share songs and engage with their audience on Twitter will now be able to gain more attention from fans, other musicians, and industry decision-makers in real-time, while also creating a buzz on Billboard’s music charts (Billboard).

This chart will be found on billboard.com. It will reflect the top music hits discussed over a period of time and at the moment via Twitter. It will also include a weekly in-tweet video round up of the week in music (Twitter Blog).

@Billboard and @TwitterMusic will share its data from the real-time chart on its accounts.

Be on the lookout for the exclusive Billboard Twitter Real-Time Charts!

The Earth Day celebration at Alameda park this past weekend was a huge success. Boasting an extensive array of exhibitors and vendors, some highlights include the eco-marketplace, green car show, local food vendors, and a morning yoga session, among many others. Focused on celebrating Santa Barbara’s “local roots,” this year’s Earth Day Festival hosted a farm-to-table dinner in the park Saturday evening, and emphasized the way in which our local efforts can “make a global impact.” Over 300 volunteers came out to make this weekend’s festivities possible for the 37,000+ attendees who enjoyed the celebration in the park. We partnered with Earth Day official host, Community Environmental Council, to build the live Earth Day site, and develop the 2014 festival’s five initiatives: Ditch Plastic (#ditchplastic), Go Solar (#gosolar), Eat Local (#eatlocal), Drive Less (#driveless), and Choose Electric (#chooseelectirc). Oniracom’s Storywall platform, which displayed and auto-updated live stats on community member pledges to festival initiatives and photo feeds from attendees, was a huge success on all the screens across the Social Media Lounge. The Lounge, which was shared by LoaTree, also featured a photo booth and information on pledging to do our part to make the earth a cleaner, healthier place.

Check out the photos from the event below and be sure to look out for our Storywall platform at the SB Bowl soon!

All photos taken by Tad Wagner

Brynn Elliott is a singer/songwriter from Atlanta, GA who just released her debut EP titled ‘Notions of Love.’ We designed her logo and complete web presence to fully match her personality and aesthetic. She’s headed on tour with Tyler Ward this summer, be sure to check her out!

Desktop View:

Mobile View:

Each month, StartupSB hosts local meetups for entrepreneurs, businesses, non-profits, and anyone interested in the startup world. Oniracom is extremely excited for StartupSB’s upcoming event at Ontraport in two weeks. The event will start at 6pm on May 1. Grab some food and drinks, and enjoy the company of an amazing panel of entrepreneurs and experts who will share tips and tricks on marketing your startup. Speakers at the event will include Landon Ray, Sean Malarkey, Jim Sterne, Stef Miller, and Micah Lamar.

Have any questions in mind? StartupSB is now taking marketing related questions for the panel in advance. You can submit your questions at: http://www.startupsb.com/questions/

In addition to the panel discussion, there will be a variety of appetizers, wine, beer, and Rusty’s pizza for guests to enjoy. Not to mention, Ontraport’s beautiful office space also overlooks the American Riviera. To partake in the panel and free food, guests can RSVP for the event for $15 before April 30, and for $20 on the day of the event and at the door.

We hope to see you there!

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.

On February 25 of this year St. Vincent released her fourth album, St. Vincent. Critically acclaimed upon its release, what makes this album so significant from a marketing standpoint is the immense success of its sales immediately following its release. In its very first week on the shelves, St. Vincent sold 29,506 albums - a significant increase from the first week sales of her last album Strange Mercy. While no single factor can take credit for the overwhelming success of St. Vincent, the digital marketing campaign headed by The Found Group deserves some special attention for the methods they used in this campaign.

The Found Group, a company that provides “integrated digital marketing campaigns…for the music industry” utilized their own web tool, found.ee to target and retarget pools of potential customers and fans. A currently exclusive service, found.ee uses a shortlink to track how fans have interacted with their advertisements and what content from an artist a fan has viewed. They then program these links so that fans will be redirected to new content and advertisements instead of the same repetitive content over and over again.

Facebook is expanding its ad reach by planning a mobile-ad network to help marketers target ads on other services.  This experiment is a major opportunity for Facebook to sell ads on other people’s apps. It is set to be announced at Facebook’s F8 conference in San Francisco on April 30th.

The social-media company states in a blog post, “Our aim is to demonstrate even greater reach with the same power of Facebook targeting for advertisers both on and off Facebook”. In their current test the company will be working directly with a limited few advertisers and publishers.

The user won’t be able to notice any differences in third-party apps, and advertisers will be getting the benefit of Facebook’s ads on mobile apps. Facebook also wins through its ad targeting from its billion-plus users even when they’re aren’t scrolling through Facebook’s own properties.

However, Facebook will also be competing with Google’s existing AdMob mobile network, Twitter’s MoPub ad network, and other small companies, such as Millennial Media. (re/code)

We’re looking forward to see how this pans out in the advertising world and how mobile users of Facebook will be affected.

What happens when there are gaps in Internet security? The relationship between the user and the server is at risk of losing encryption. Encryption protects our privacy, passwords, business emails, credit card numbers, and basically all of the information we have given through webpages.

The Heartbleed bug threatens this security by leaving gaps in the OpenSSL software. This flaw exposes Internet memory and allows it to be read by anyone—without being detected. This bug has been in use since December 2011, and software packages have used this flawed version of OpenSSL on websites, apps, and other services since May 2012. This month, the Heartbleed Bug was first detected by a member of Google’s security team and by the software firm Condenomincon. This is good news because researchers located the problem before hackers did.

All sites that use OpenSSL software, like Yahoo, Airbnb, NASA, amongst others, are at risk. The bad news is that there is only so much you can do to recover or change what has already been exposed. For now, this OpenSSL flaw is the responsibility of Internet companies as they update their servers and take security actions. Companies have been sending warning emails to users, implementing patches to fix Heartbleed vulnerability on their severs, and making the decision to apply for new digital SSL certificates.

What can you do? First, check websites of use and read through this list to see if a provider you use has been affected and if they have updated to fix Heartbleed. You can also change your passwords and watch activity on sensitive online bank or email accounts as precautions.

While changes are progressing to fix the Heartbleed bug, it is still highly catastrophic because memory has already been compromised, and it is a difficult technical process to fix the gaps.

Yahoo Inc. is looking to start four short Web series including 10 episode comedies. The CEO of Yahoo, Marissa Mayer has it rumored for the shows to be announced at an event in New York by April 28th. 

According to the Wall Street Journal, Yahoo plans on offering high-quality video programming and high-price video ads to compete with other online TV streaming services, such as, Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, and even Google’s YouTube.

Mayer has high hopes for the company by spending more money (budgets ranging from $700,000 to a few million dollars) and working with famous stars and directors to produce an engaging, viral online TV show. However, in order for Yahoo’s Web originals to become a hit the company relies on ad-sales to support the shows WSJ.

Yahoo has a competitive market for top-quality TV series, therefore, their ambitious online video strategy could help turn around Yahoo’s presence amongst other original video programming rivals.