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The Stars Come Out at PlayBite LA

By Casi Kneebone

As previously posted, Monday night was the inaugural PlayBite LA event, held in conjunction with the opening night of the Digital Hollywood conference. Other Bite-hosted PlayBite events, which bring together local media and influencers and cutting edge technology companies, have taken place around the world in London, New York and San Francisco, and I’m happy to say our kick-off event in Hollywood held up to the gold standard that had been set. In keeping with the mission for the LA office of focusing on companies at the intersection of technology and entertainment, our event theme was “Aligning the Stars of Digital Media” and the stars certainly came out to play!

With seven exhibitors on hand, running the gamut from online video to social networks to digital music, including AMD, Gaia Online, Lycos, muvee, PriceGrabber.com, SocialVibe and Sonos, the media on hand had quite a bit to see, do, touch, and play with.  Speaking of media, the turnout was great too – with more than 20 press from a variety of publications ranging from the BBC, The Economist, Mashable, The Washington Post, Home Media Magazine, Nikkei, The Huffington Post, and lots of other digital entertainment and local LA outlets like Contentinople and LAist.  The feedback from exhibitors and media alike was overwhelmingly positive, and without a doubt, I’d call it a success.

A few photos from the event are up on our Flickr page, and be on the lookout for video interviews with the exhibitors at the event, to be posted in the coming days and weeks.

Hacking = Helping

By Matt McLernon

Consumers have been modding (ie. modifying or hacking) products since the beginning of, well, products. Modding is evident in everything from iPhone hacks to crack cocaine (just finished reading Gang Leader for a Day) to microloans in developing countries. With the collective knowledge of the Internet, and with companies becoming increasingly more open to consumer modification (e.g. open source), this DIY attitude has been leading a revolution of how companies produce and market products, as well as what defines a customer.

A recent MediaPost blog referenced a white paper that defined today’s new customer, also known as the (obligatory) “Customer 2.0”. The most interesting part of the study was a finding that “Customers Own Brands,” and I found an extremely interesting example of this through a TED Talks video with Nintendo Wii modder Johnny Lee. In his home “lab”, Johnny manipulated the IR sensor of the Wii to not only create a digital whiteboard that companies, schools, and other groups with no IT budgets could make for less than $100, but he also turned the Wii set-up on its head (actually on his own head) and uncovered a 3D-interactive application that could become a paradigm shift in home gaming.

The lesson of the story is that when you allow your customers more access than just buying and using your products, you enable them to take ownership in the greater environment of your brand, and the media, online, and face-to-face discussions that help build it. While this may be for better or for worse, it enables the company to achieve the two way symmetrical model we’ve been pushing since the days of James Grunig.

Have an example of a great hack to include?

PlayBite Goes Hollywood

By Casi Kneebone

With our newest office - in LA - now in full swing, we figured it was time for a party, Bite-style. Over the past eight years Bite offices around the world have hosted ‘PlayBite’ events that bring together top-tier media and influencers with leading consumer technology and new media companies, both clients and non-clients alike, to mingle, network, and showoff their wares, all in one place. PlayBite got its start in London but the events have been replicated and imported to San Francisco and New York too.

Now it’s our turn, and on Monday, May 5, Bite Los Angeles will host the first PlayBite LA here in Hollywood from 5:00-7:30 p.m., on the opening night of the Digital Hollywood conference, at Trastevere Restaurant in the Hollywood and Highland complex. Given the focus of the LA office on the red hot intersection of technology and entertainment, we hand-picked exhibitors to participate that fit with our event theme of “Aligning the Stars of Digital Media,” including:

AMD: A global provider of innovative processing solutions in the computing, graphics and consumer electronics markets. The AMD LIVE! Explorer offers an immersive, 3D approach to browsing a PC’s complete digital media library. The ATI TV Wonder high-def personal video recorder for the PC is the perfect product for the media and home entertainment enthusiast.

Gaia Online: The online hangout where millions of teens come every month to make friends, play games, customize their avatars, cars and homes, watch movies in Gaia Cinemas, and participate in the world's most active online community. Gaia provides a fun, social environment that inspires individuality and creativity.

Lycos: An Internet pioneer and top provider of social publishing, media and search services, including Lycos Cinema, the first social viewing experience online, combining synchronous full-length movie viewing with real-time chat.

muvee: Allows people to create and share professional-quality instant home movies out of unedited video, digital pictures and music.

PriceGrabber.com: A leading comparison shopping web site that helps 26 million unique users per month find the right product, at the right price, from the right merchant. PriceGrabber.com includes comprehensive product/merchant reviews, BottomLinePrice (Shipping+Tax), seasonal how-to-buy guides, eco-friendly products (ShopGreen) and price alerts.

SocialVibe: Allows people to use social media for social good. By recognizing the power of individuals online, SocialVibe is helping convert media dollars into charitable donations and changing the way brands participate in social media.

Sonos: A developer of wireless multi-room music systems for the home. The Sonos Multi-Room Music System lets you play any song, in any room and control it all wirelessly—from the palm of your hand.

If you’ll be in LA on Monday, May 5 and are interested in attending, please contact me, Casi Kneebone, at 310-601-7132, casi.kneebone [at] bitepr.com, or leave a comment below.

We’ll be sure to post pictures after the event.

Pssst...today is RSS Awareness Day, pass it on

By Trevor Jonas

Well, believe it or not, today is May 1st. For most, this date is known as May Day, but for those of us social media geeks, today is RSS Awareness Day.

Now we've written about the benefits and lack of adoption of RSS on several previous occasions, so we're not going to go down that road again. Instead, here are a few good posts explaining what RSS is and why it's cool.

Mashable (one of my personal favorites)
The Next Web
Common Craft blog

I'd encourage you to SUBSCRIBE to these blogs' RSS feeds (as well as ours!) if you find the content useful. Happy RSS Awareness Day.

Thoughts on SNCR's New Communications Forum 2008

By Trevor Jonas

This past week I spent some time up in Sonoma at the New Communications Forum 2008. For those of you longtime readers, you'll recall we attended the inaugural event way back in 2004 and that actually inspired us to launch this little ole blog in early 2005. Overall, this year's event was decent, it was nice to meet many of the folks who, until now, have only been 'virtual' colleagues and much of the content was solid.

So what changed at the conference between our first visit in 2005 and this year?

Well, for starters, not a single person was Twittering from the event back in '05, whereas nearly everyone at every session we attended (including the keynotes) had their laptops open tweeting away, ourselves included. There's clearly tons of value in Twitter around events--in fact, the Web 2.0 Expo was happening at the same time and I feel like, based on who we're following, I was able to get a good sense for what was happening there without even being in San Francisco.

In terms of the actual content, a lot of it was surprisingly still focused around blogs and blogging (yawn). We were certainly hoping there would be more on the myriad other social media channels and tools out there.

As expected, the most heated session we attended was "Perspectives on the Social Media Release" with Todd Defren of SHIFT and Maggie Fox of the Social Media Group. Things got interesting when representatives from BusinessWire and PRWEB were put on the defensive by questions around their business model and the general need for their services with the rise of RSS and personal publishing platforms. I certainly wasn't all that impressed with the response of the wire services to such questions, nor have I been wowed by their ability to easily enable PR professionals to issue SMR's using their services. I say watch this space, it's only going to get more interesting in the coming months.

Anyway, you can check out a lot of the discussions from the event here.

Rolling on the floor, laughing in Boston

By Matt McLernon

I remember the early days, where I would check my friends’ 31337 Geocities pages after my keyboarding class. Some of those pages would use a couple designs they made in class, maybe a funny story they wrote in their spare time. That was about the end of it.

These days, sites like ICanHasCheezburger, Fark, and Homestar Runner have evolved from fun sites for your spare time to full-blown businesses and cultural icons. They’ve also helped perpetuate the growth of the “meme” concept, a single unit of cultural information that gets transmitted, which is a defining element of the Web. A meme can range anything from a thought about religion to a failed backflip attempt, and memes have become major drivers for media, entertainment and (still) the bulk of my free time. Even more, the content of memes have become the fodder for nanoculture marketing you’ll find both on the web and IRL (courtesy of Pirate’s Dilemma).

These sites have formed active communities, and many of these communities are descending upon Boston this Friday at Saturday at ROFLCon. I’ll be with the message-laiden t-shirt-clad masses, learning about how these sites are changing, defining and educating culture.

Like did you know that Superman wears Chuck Norris pajamas? More to come!

Walking the Talk – Sustainability at Bite

By Sean Gibson

This month – and particularly this week – we saw the major media driving discussions about “green” issues, which reflect the increasing interest of businesspeople, policymakers and the general public in the subject. April always sees a big uptick in activity given Earth Day. This year continues the trend, with TIME, Newsweek, local weeklies and even Sonny Bono’s old faithful, The Desert Sun, talking about what we can do on the environmental front. Increasingly, we are seeing more critical evaluation of the upsurge in – and authenticity of – sustainability initiatives in business (and elsewhere).

Bite Communications is well-versed in this area, having launched a Cleantech Practice in 2006 to help businesses build credible communications programs. To date our work on behalf of clients has been in the areas of energy efficiency, solar, carbon offsets, recycled materials, botanical pesticides, and general sustainable business practices – in the form of corporate, product and internal communications programs. Our work with our clients is making an impact.

As we’ve worked with clients to ensure they don’t fall into the greenwashing trap, Bite has been walking the talk in its own operations. In Q1 2008, Bite officially launched its own global sustainability strategy for the company, which formalized and organized our global efforts under one umbrella program called BiteGreen.

In brief:

Bite is committed to building sustainable and thriving businesses. BiteGreen is a global sustainability strategy for the company, its employees and its partners. Through multiple programs across Bite’s many global offices, BiteGreen fosters sustainable workplaces.

The primary benefit of this internal program is the reduction of Bite’s environmental impact in the communities we serve. Bite has dozens of programs that link back to BiteGreen, including efforts in Water , Plants, Food, Recycling, Transportation, Efficiency, and, of course, IT.

The company has also developed global environmental and procurement policies to formalize our standard practices. And to recognize that sustainability is integral to Bite’s brand, we added a core value of “thrive.” At Bite, thrive represents the energy, health, and creativity that is generated in a sustainable workplace.

While Bite has an overall framework for BiteGreen, each of our offices is encouraged to continue to develop programs that reflect the local community and employee interest so that the program is flexible and can grow organically. For instance, San Francisco is a certified Green Business and London has its own wind turbine and is taking steps toward ISO 14001. Nearly all offices have recycling programs, switched from bottled water to filtered tap water, and have green IT strategies.

Bite appreciates that there are tangential benefits of formalizing our sustainability efforts, which include building brand equity, driving lead generation and increasing employee morale. The program also reinforces across the company a shift in our overall decision making process toward more sustainable practices. And having a clear internal communications program around sustainability has generated additional energy at Bite.

We encourage our clients, vendors, partners, friends and the communities that we serve in to engage with Bite as it pursues sustainable business practices – and what better way than on our blog?

Do you have an InfoSec?

By Michael Standen

As another trade show passes, it’s rather apparent that the marketing spend is getting tighter. Surely this is not another victim of the credit crunch?

Well maybe not. After attending InfoSec 2008 it was obvious to see that the exhibition doesn’t hold the same importance as it did five years ago. Relegated to just the Great Hall, even this doesn’t make it look that great. Stand sizes are a fraction of what they once were and exhibitors are staying away in their droves. But this shouldn’t be a cause for worry – well unless you’re Reed Exhibitions. The decline in importance of InfoSec – as well as many other trade shows – doesn’t mean that the marketing and PR spend is in trouble.

Security spend is on the increase, and its importance grows on a daily basis. But the marketing teams are making their budget work smarter. Why spend £50k on a stand when you can spend a fraction of that on a targeted online campaign? And why wait for the show to announce the latest product, when your competitors have theirs ready for download? The decline of InfoSec doesn’t spell trouble ahead for the security market, it just means stand envy and free Glacier mints should become a thing of the past.

AT&T's stealthy takeover

By Hamish Macphail

Has anyone else noticed the quiet revolution going on in AT&T's world of wired and wireless communications?

SBC was acquired and re-branded into AT&T Yahoo!  Cingular was acquired by AT&T and re-branded AT&T Mobile.  Last year AT&T scored a major coup with the exclusive iPhone deal with Apple.  Now AT&T has replaced T-Mobile as the WiFi provider to Starbucks, and as from February anyone with a high speed AT&T DSL line at home can use Starbucks WiFi for free in any of their 7,000 US locations. 

That Starbucks deal seems like a big deal to me - but for how many of you is this the first you've heard of it?  How many of you have logged onto Starbucks Wifi with your home AT&T user ID?  (I have - it works).

I'm even writing this from the airport lounge at SFO logged into T-Mobile WiFi for free as a roaming Boingo customer (even though I've never signed up with Boingo), using my home AT&T DSL user ID. This is cool.

AT&T are gradually, and stealthily, building up market dominance across wireless and wired connectivity by providing what customers want, across the board.

There are now a lot of compelling reasons to be an AT&T customer for all your voice and data comms access in the USA, and no doubt it's not going to stop here.  Are we heading for a monopolistic situation, or are there serious competitors out there?  If there are, they're going to have to stitch together wired and wireless + hardware in the same way AT&T have realized will be too persuasive to ignore, even if they don't shout it from the rooftops.

They're no dummies, those AT&T guys.

Just when you thought there was a social network for everything...

By Kristin Maverick

Picture this. You're one of the lucky few that own a Segway. You can roll around your neighborhood, looking uber-chic (or uber-geek depending on who you ask!). But, what if you want to connect with other Segway users? Chat about your latest Segway adventures?

Well, now you can.

Segway, the two-wheeled, self-balancing, electric transportation device has created Segway Social to do such thing.The site is targeted at current Segway owners to share stories and photos as well as a way to target potential new customers interested in the device.

This got me thinking about other social networks that could be formed around our favorite gadgets or everyday items.

Here are some company social networks that would be interesting:

• Discman (for the retro user interested in discussing life before the iPod)
• Twinkies (for all the dessert lovers)
• iRobot Roomba (the vacuum that does the work for you)

What is one company social network yet to be formed that you'd join??