Taxes, unemployment, class warfare: The haves and have-nots have consumed much of the rhetoric in this year’s election cycle. Today’s political discourse would have many believe that most of the country is wildly divided, occupying opposite ends of a political spectrum with little to no overlap; however, the truth is very different. Most Americans are moderate, and though political ideologies may differ, we generally seek similar goals.

Throughout what has seemed like an endless procession of debates, a comment made by one candidate was particularly jarring as it highlighted a troubling trend: a growing gap between politicians and the people they represent.

Newt Gingrich recently said of the poor, “You have a very poor neighborhood. You have students that are required to go to school. They have no money, no habit of work… They have no habit of showing up on Monday and staying all day or the concept of  ’I do this and you give me cash,’ unless it’s illegal…What if you paid them in the afternoon to work…What if they became assistant janitors, and their job was to mop the floor and clean the bathroom?”

Forget for a moment the disregard for child labor laws, even the displaced workers (replaced by a cheaper child work force). His solution centers on the premise that there is an inherent flaw in the poor that is best fixed through imposed manual labor.

How is it that in a society more open and connected than ever before the gap between politicians and voting Americans has never felt larger? If politicians (not their staff members) actually used the Web, specifically social media sites, they’d begin to understand their constituents more intimately. It’s something that can easily be done everyday, not just during election cycles. President Obama’s recent Google+ Hangout – albeit during a campaign season – is a perfect example of a politician using social media to connect with his constituency.

Obama was recently challenged by the wife of an unemployed American semiconductor engineer on his visa program that allows highly skilled foreign workers to gain employment within the US. Obama, perplexed, insisted she send her husband’s resume so he could look into this matter further.

We watch politicians debate bills like SOPA and PIPA and believe these moments expose how far removed and out of touch they are with technology, the Web and social media. But the truth is, false statements, outrageous stereotypes and inane proposals expose their disconnect.

As a politician, it is your civic duty to be in touch. Rejecting the vessels that connect you to your constituency is a failure of responsibility as a candidate and elected official.

The comments made by Gingrich offend me not because they are representative of Republican values, because they aren’t. Rather, they offend me because it is yet another glaring example of a politician pontificating while ostensibly removed and out of touch with the real issues and the people he claims to represent.

http://perezhilton.com/2012-01-31-adele-turning-tables-live-performance-live-from-the-artists-den#.TygSyePHtpY

Over Christmas most of my friends were out of town  and while the streets may have been quiet and empty, the overall feeling was anything but. Thanks to my other friend…the Internets!

It’s times like this that being connected is nice. It allows you to have a greater appreciation for what social media can do for grandparents or friends whose lives have taken them to places remote and far away.  In NYC its easy to become spoiled and take for granted how close everything and everyone is.

Once Christmas had ended and everyone had landed back in New York, the second half of my annual ‘week off’ was to begin. I planned a ski trip to Vermont with a fairly large group of my closest friends. After having spent the last few New Years in NYC, I was ready to avoid the crowds and do something slightly more low-key.

With the expectation that I’d have to do some work over break, I brought my computer and all my gadgets. Even without the expectation of work, parting with these things can bring about a great deal of anxiety. I know… pathetic.

Upon arriving at our cabin, I realized that – much to my chagrin- we had no Wifi. Panic set in.  I calmed myself with the knowledge that I was with friends (and humans) and my reliance on my devices would be pushed aside by quality time with people I cared about. As I went about my week, in the beautiful mountains of Vermont – skiing, building fires, cooking food, playing board games etc. I found what I had originally viewed as a ‘disconnection’ became contrarily, refreshing. By week’s end, I hadn’t so much as glanced at my laptop.

It wasn’t until I got home and saw my Facebook wall, Tumblr blog, Instagram posts and tweets that I realized… I hadn’t disconnected at all. We talk about social media as though it’s a special thing that takes place in a vacuum. The truth is that social media doesn’t exist. ‘Social Media’ is a behavior, an attribute that we apply to forms of media, which have existed for a very long time.

The ubiquity of distribution and sharing by individuals has contributed to the erosion of this notion of ‘connected’ and ‘not connected’. In turn, the distinction between ‘media’ and ‘social media’ should erode as well.

If you are still relegating your social media team to some far away understaffed corner of your office in 2012, you’re doing something wrong. Your social teams of 2012 should be integrated and with the rest of your marketing department and have an equal voice at the table.

Social media is dead because it never actually existed. The truth is that your marketing departments needed to label something they didn’t understand. They stopped evolving and the new kids at the table needed a title. Assimilate your teams and let knowledge sharing trickle up and down. 2012 is going to be a fascinating year – start it off right.

New York – Dec. 2, 2011 – Glow Interactive, a leading New York-based interactive marketing, advertising and creative agency, today announced it has signed on as the agency of record to drive online marketing, public relations and digital content strategy for the fourth season of public television’s hit show, Live from the Artists Den. The digital campaign is being led by Glow Interactive’s Social Communications group and will kick off on December 2 to drive tune-in and viewer engagement in advance of the show’s season premiere on February 3, 2012 featuring multi-platinum artist Adele.

“For our new season, we’ve enhanced and expanded our social media and digital channels to allow us to more effectively interact with and entertain our audience outside of the actual broadcast,” said Mark Lieberman, Live from the Artists Den creator and executive producer. “Glow Interactive’s Social Communications group has worked with us on an outstanding campaign to make Live from the Artists Den more of a social television experience.”

The campaign focuses on utilizing digital and social media channels – such as Facebook, Twitter, third-party blogs, digital properties like Hulu, as well as music, general entertainment and lifestyle outlets – to increase user engagement, introduce the show to new fans outside of the traditional music scene and ultimately drive TV show tune-in. To do this, Glow Interactive is connecting writers and fans to the compelling stories and memorable music experiences of Live from the Artists Den through site and blog partnerships that leverage exclusive video footage for editorial placement; facilitate personal interviews with the artists and executives of the show; enable content distribution and social content activation; and drive social community growth via content and creative access.

“This is a major new initiative from previous seasons of Live from the Artists Den,” explained Howie Kleinberg, president of digital communications for Glow Interactive. “There is something inherently social about music, and the executives of the show recognize social media as a powerful way to interact and engage with their viewers on a more personal level than ever before. That’s what this campaign is about: bringing the musicians, the fans and the show all together through social media for an enhanced experience all around.”

The fourth season features Adele, The Fray, Death Cab for Cutie, Kid Rock, Iron and Wine and Amos Lee with special guests Calexico and premieres nationwide on public television beginning February 3, 2012 (check local listings at www.artistsden.com).

ABOUT GLOW INTERACTIVE:

Glow Interactive is an award-winning, digital marketing and creative agency based in New York City that is driving an online evolution that puts consumers first, ensuring they’re engaged, entertained, challenged and connected no matter the medium. Over the last decade, Glow has focused on using the latest design practices and technology to develop successful, dynamic interactive marketing and advertising campaigns, branding initiatives, games and viral applications. The company’s success is illustrated by its long list of Fortune 500 and 1000 clients, including USA Network, Toyota, Showtime, Canon, Discovery Channel, Avon, The History Channel, A&E, Condé Nast, Wendy’s, Microsoft and others. Divisions of Glow Interactive include Glow Productions, Glow Play and Glow Social.

For more information about Glow Interactive, please visit www.glowinteractive.com.

ABOUT ARTISTS DEN:
Since its launch on U.S. public television, “Live from the Artists Den” – created by Mark Lieberman – has become a three-time New York Emmy-nominated series, has expanded digitally to include Hulu, Pandora and Vevo and internationally, through Northstar Media, to include Germany, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Latin America. Past artists include Robert Plant, Ray Lamontagne, Elvis Costello, Ringo Starr, Tori Amos, Alanis Morissette, The Black Crowes, Ben Harper, Regina Spektor, Corinne Bailey Rae and David Gray. Interviews at each show are conducted by noted music critic Alan Light, the Artists Den’s Director of Programming.  Concert events take place throughout North America and are by invitation-only. Artists Den Records offers live concert CDs, DVDs and now digital episode downloads from its shows. For information, and to join Artists Den’s guest list, visit ArtistsDen.com

Press Contact:

Jamie Larson

Intersect Communications for Glow Interactive

PH: 512-296-9611

jamie@intersectcom.com

For many – if I may continue this analogy- what they see are the grand rapids… chaos, confusion and an overall sense of feeling overwhelmed. It is easy to get lost in all the noise.

For many companies (large and small), Facebook has been approached as a promotional platform; a marketplace for the exchanging of ideas and thought and less as a marketplace for an exchanging of goods.

If the Social Graph has taught us anything, it is that our connections matter. Our friends affect our actions, and we really value their opinions as they contribute to the shaping of our own.

When riding the grand rapids, those in the raft are looking at more than what’s directly in front of them, they’re looking down river in anticipation of what’s to come: calm water, rocks, waterfalls…

In the grand scheme of retail, e-commerce is still fairly new and continues to evolve. US e-commerce sales totaled $165.4 billion in 2010, up 14.8% from 2009. That is substantial growth in what has been a fairly stagnant economy. The introduction of online sales was extremely disruptive for the brick and mortar businesses who were disengaged from the web. For this reason, looking downstream is crucial (no matter your business).

The social experience will be equally disruptive for those who choose not to engage in the social web. The signs are pointing to a future in social shopping. Building your social footprint as a business is an investment in your future digital storefront. A recent study by Webtrends & Adgregate Markets found websites that are not engaging in e-commerce are losing traffic to their Facebook pages at startling rates. This is likely because they are not deriving value from their experience with these retailers online. For the retailer this is simply lost opportunity. The study also discovered commerce conversations on Facebook ranged from 2% to 4% matching traditional commerce websites. Consumers are beginning to show signs that the Facebook + retail intersection isn’t that far-fetched of an idea.

Be proactive ,anticipate your customers’ future expectations. Begin investing in your own social properties today, so you can turn your relationships into actions (sales) tomorrow. There are several retail platforms and services available today. Payvment (which has an Etsy plugin) currently sits atop them all. Other services include Storefront Social, BigCommerce SocialShop, Ecwid and more.

If the first phase of the social web was establishing connections, we are now moving into the next phase where we continue to converse and share, but behavior is extended further into movements like purchasing and selling.

Today’s Amazon.com might be tomorrow’s Facebook storefronts. The web will continue to evolve and change. As a business owner or boss, your choice is to change with it, attempt to anticipate the changes and learn…or atrophy and die (your business… not you).

After graduating high school I attended Syracuse University to study the music business. Over the next four years as I maneuvered between internships, booking shows and managing bands, I would watch the very industry I once glorified not merely implode, but leap off a bridge with a rock tied around its foot.

My freshman year of college would usher in massive changes to an industry largely stable for the prior 30 years. The proliferation of high-speed internet would bring about an era of media consumption in extreme volumes. The use of Peer2Peer networks would explode on campuses and record labels would see sales dive for the first time in a decade. The iPod was penetrating the market at unforeseen rates, redefining the music experience, and record labels were settling $75 million price fixing lawsuits while simultaneously vilifying their customers for downloading MP3’s they’d refuse to make legally available. By the end of the academic year, the iTunes Music Store had launched lending false hope that the worst was behind us.

Over the course of the next four years The Facebook appeared, record sales would fall off a cliff, labels would consolidate, and as the industry grew smaller it seemed that the only area of growth was in the sheer volume of music being shared and consumed.

After graduation day, sitting around with my friends peering off into the rubble that was the music business, a major label – the original end goal – was in fact the very last place I wanted to be. The internet had eaten the music business up and spit it out. I quickly realized the future of all media, not just music would be dictated by consumers and their interactions with technology. It’s for this reason I find myself at Glow, where I am able to leverage my understanding of the market place with the designers and developers who are constructing its walls.

Today, the music industry still has yet to recover. Record sales continue to decline, labels continue their layoffs and revenues are lower than ever. Bands have responded by incessant touring, saturating an already crowded market and the digital licensing world is in complete disarray. SoundExchange can’t seem to give away an estimated $9 million dollars in back royalties to musicians (and managers) who probably don’t even know it’s waiting for them. The industry is a hot mess. But the future of the business looks bright and here’s why.

New services, technology and digital platforms are constructing what will be the next iteration of the music business. As the pillars of this new music industry are put to soil, what will rise from the ashes is a robust business rich with content and revenue.

Today we consume all forms of content (video, articles, music and books) in higher volume. Our expectations are such that if we pay for it, we want it accessible whenever and where ever we may be. We want the ability to share it with our friends and experience it in groups. Until recently no legal model existed to support this behavior and arguably the technology wasn’t available. But consumer demand is what drives change.

iTunes addressed the demand for digital content but it did little to address the volume at which we were consuming.

How could I possibly afford to legally pay for the plethora of content I was exposed to online without going broke? Why would I spend that money if I couldn’t have it everywhere? My home, office, car, phone, in the park, on the subway…

Rdio, Spotify and MOG represent what has been the missing link in the digital revolution that devoured the music business. Since the introduction of the iPod nothing has transformed and redefined my music experience in such a pivotal way as Rdio.

I pay a monthly fee in exchange for access to nearly all the music I want, whenever and where ever I want it. It’s easy, organized, clean, headache free and most important… available EVERYWHERE.

In time, adoption of these services will increase, the pennies currently produced for participating artists will turn into dollars, and the $88 million distributed (in Q3) by SoundExchange for digital streams will grow to hundreds of millions.

In the not too distant future consumers will make purchases on Facebook as regularly as they do on Amazon. Managers and artists will begin taking control of their social properties, seeing them not merely as promotional platforms but as new revenue drivers and Donald Passman won’t issue a new edition of his famous book “All You Need to Know About the Music Business”, he’ll need to rewrite it from scratch.

No longer was our window into the great cloud of information pursued through the guise of a browser, but rather through our mobile devices and applications. We’d begun to experience the web, link to link, rather than browsing site to site.

This post does not seek to explore the nuances that define our web browsing experience. Rather we’re here to discuss games and the death of the console, as we know it.

Gaming, a term whose connotations once conjured the mental images of a scrawny 13 year old nerdy boy, socially sequestered to his room, surrounded by Star Wars figurines, is now a multi-billion dollar industry, whose participants average-in at 45 years of age.

Gaming has grown from an 8-bit experience on low-powered consoles to graphically rich computer experiences, only to return to low quality (near 8-bit) experiences, by way of casual gaming online.

Gaming, as it were called, has found refuge in not just our home entertainment systems and computers, but our advertisements, websites and social networks. Gaming and “game mechanics” have permeated and serve as a driving force in our (ad agencies + media dev companies) most successful efforts, whether they be advertisements, location based check-ins (Super Swam Badge you’re mine) or simple mobile applications.

Gaming has shed the stereotypes of its past and now welcomes women of all ages and people of all socioeconomic backgrounds. The advent of new devices such as iPads, iPhones and Androids have opened gaming to new generations, while reacquainting individuals pulled away by the forces of life.

To say the gaming industry has grown substantially in the past 30 years would be a bit of an understatement. It’s expected that the gaming industry will pull in revenues somewhere around $35 – $45 billion in the next few years. That’s more than twice the size of the music business at the height of CD sales.

When we consider that causal/social games are expected to account for nearly $11 billion of this growth by 2014, it’s important to take pause and consider what affect this has on the current gaming establishment.

The numbers paint a bleak story for traditional console gaming. Big publishing houses are spending movie size budgets ($50, $100 and even $150 million dollars) only to find the margins shrink and sales decline on these blockbuster games. Juxtapose that with a game like Angry Birds, where development costs were $140,000 and revenues have surpassed $70,000,000.

Nintendo, for the first time in 7 years posted a first half-year loss. Last year in the US, video game software, hardware and accessory sales were down 8%. Meanwhile, social gaming champions Zynga earned a valuation around $5.5 billion (just under Electronic Arts).

So what’s going on here? Well, it’s the medium and the message.

As technology improves the console gaming experience is being replicated on our mobile devices. Look no further than games like Dead Space and Infinity Blade; 38% of mobile gamers are established console gamers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXriafAKH3M&hd=1

Yet, as the medium shifts, so has the message. Games like Farmville, CityVille and ZyngaPoker collectively have approached 300 million active monthly users.  Gaming is no longer isolated to the guys. Women account for nearly 60% of causal and social gaming, all of which are finding homes on our computers and mobile devices.

To suggest the gaming industry isn’t aware of this shift would be an extremely naïve position. EA has spent nearly $400 million acquiring independent game publishers who are masters in this field.

However, what this signifies for brands, companies and anyone with a message, is that becoming a contributing member of the game development community is not something completely out of reach. Social, mobile and casual games are inexpensive yet effective means of distributing branded content and messaging.

Equally, individuals with a great idea and the will to execute will find soft and fertile ground to grow. When industries go through cataclysmic shifts such as this, the barrier to entry drops and the market becomes rife with opportunity. The question for brand managers and agencies is: Are you taking advantage of this growing opportunity and, perhaps more importantly, exposing it to your clients?

It’s not that I’m adverse to change, I love it and embrace it. But as of late I feel like Google is throwing a ton of shit at the wall hoping something sticks. Is this a take two on Google Wave?

I get it. Google is trying its damnedest to get into the social space in some meaningful way. But it didn’t work. Twitter? Maybe they should have just bought them. Google Buzz? You’re late to the party, I feel like I’ve seen you before, and I’m not keen on you crashing my inbox.

I have gone to great lengths to ensure that what I see in my Gmail inbox are things I want to see. My calendar is clean, my contacts organized, and I have filters setup so that the emails in my inbox are relevant. But now, the conversations that I’d have on facebook or twitter are bleeding into my sanctuary of order. I fear I may soon have no place to hide.

I expect that I will soon develop a filter and adapt to this new noise, but I am not a fan of having this distraction in my Gmail inbox. As much as I’d love to pretend I can follow twitter/facebook/reader/buzz intently while working, I know that even sometimes I too have to turn off the social media valve and focus on the task in front of me. Google buzz, just knocked down the door that separated my social media conversations and productivity.

I’m curious how I feel about this tomorrow. Update to follow.