When people are the message

Ben McConnell & Jackie Huba

Books: Citizen Marketers: When People are The Message

Who are the citizen marketers?

Who are the citizen marketers and what does their work look like? Here's a list of all the sites, people and brands mentioned or profiled in the book.

Introduction

  • The George Masters iPod "ad" that illustrated the early potential of citizen marketer content to spread quickly via social media.
  • Metafilter: The tightly knit community where word of Masters' ad spread quickly.
  • Gary Stein: His blog that mentioned the Masters ad is no longer online, but here's his new blog.
  • Dell Hell: Jeff Jarvis and a compilation of his "Dell Hell" posts.

Chapter 1: The 4 F's

Filters:

  • HackingNetflix.com: The citizen marketer site that's all about Netflix (and sometimes Blockbuster).
  • Steve Rubel: His comments about Netflix not comprehending the gift of a citizen marketer site like HackingNetflix.
  • iLounge.com : A citizen marketer site dedicated to all things iPod.
  • StarbucksGossip.com : Jim Romenesko's site for the latest news and discussion about Starbuck, "America's favorite drug dealer."
  • Treonauts.com: A citizen marketer blog dedicated to the Palm Treo PDA.
  • WatchMacTV.com: A citizen marketer site that catalogs Apple TV advertising and the company's video efforts.

Fanatics:

  • FreeFiona.com: A citizen marketer site that rallied fans of musician Fiona Apple to band together and lobby Sony to release Apple's "Extraordinary Machine" album.
  • McChronicles.com: A citizen marketer blogger dedicated to all things McDonalds, including a good number of store reviews.
  • Barqsman.com: A citizen marketer blog dedicated to keeping the Barq's Root Beer brand alive.
  • thedisneyblog.com: A citizen marketer blogger who is a third-generation Disney fan.
  • HBONoMo.com: A citizen marketer-created petition whose signers threatened to cancel to their HBO subscriptions if the network canceled the show "Deadwood."
  • SaveDeadwood.net: Another citizen marketer-created site dedicated to saving their favorite HBO show, "Deadwood."

Facilitators:

  • TivoCommunity.com:   A self-organized community of fans for the digital video recorder TiVo.
  • Mini2.com: A self-organized community of fans of the Mini Cooper automobile.

Firecrackers:

  • Milk and Cereal video: The original amateur video that featured G. Love and Special Sauce's song "Milk and Cereal"
  • Milk and Cereal copycat videos: Watch the meme spread as hundreds of people copy the video and upload it to YouTube.
  • Bowiechick "Breakup" video: Videoblogger Melody Oliveria adds special effects to her video about a recent breakup that leads to many questions in the comments of how she did the effects.
  • Bowiechick "Demo" video: Oliveria answers the questions about the special effects in her "breakup" video by demonstrating the software features of her webcam.
  • AOL cancellation call: Blogger Vincent Ferrari appears on NBC's "Today" show to discuss his attempt to cancel his AOL Internet service.

Chapter 2: The 1 Percenters

  • Wikipedia: The user-created online encyclopedia.
  • Yahoo Groups: Online discussion groups that anyone can start on any subject.
  • Quickbooks Community: Intuit's online community for users of its Quickbooks software.
  • ProductWiki: Collaborative product information website created by a community of volunteers.
  • Channel 9: A community site for developers that use Microsoft tools and technology.
  • Discovery Educator Network: Discovery Education's online community of educators who share ideas, teaching resources and connect with educators from around the world.
  • Digg.com: An social bookmarking website that is made up of news stories submitted by users and promoted to the front page through a user-based ranking system.
  • Reddit.com: Another social bookmarking news website that is made up of news stories submitted by users and promoted to the front page through a user-based ranking system.
  • Del.icio.us: A social bookmarking web service for storing, sharing, and discovering web bookmarks.
  • Netscape: The Netscape website was redesigned to be a social news aggregator, similar to Digg.com.
  • Flickr: A photo-sharing website and community.

Chapter 3: The Democratization of Everything

  • Six Apart: The company behind MovableType, Typepad and LiveJournal.
  • ChicagoCrime.org: A mashup of Google Maps and Chicago crime data developed by Adrian Holovaty.
  • "Brokeback to the Future": A popular video mashup on YouTube that uses footage from "Back to the Future" to create a "Brokeback Mountain" storyline.
  • The democratization of broadband: Report on worldwide DSL adoption rates (PDF)
  • "Shining" mashup video: A clever mashup of Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece film "The Shining" that reimagines the psychological thriller and horror film as a feel-good family film.
  • Treocentral.com: A self-organized community of Treo fans that closely watches Palm for anything about its smartphone, as well as the myriad accessories that accompany it. Similar in nature to the aforementioned Treonauts.

Chapter 4: Everyone is a Publisher; Everyone is a Broadcaster

  • Justin Hall: Sometimes called "the first blogger," he started an online journal in 1994 that chronicled his life. He has, except for a brief period in 2005, largely lived his life online. His current blog is here.
  • LiveJournal: One of the early blogging services.
  • FastLane blog: An early leader in big-company blogging, GM's blog often features the writing of company vice chairman and auto legend Bob Lutz.
  • Southwest Airlines blog: The company blog of Southwest Airlines. It features an array of writers, from flight attendants to customer support reps to company executives.
  • Sun blog: Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz is a dedicated blogger and writes regularly about the company's work and larger technology issues.
  • HP blogs: An index of blogs written by employees and executives of HP.
  • MovableType: Blogging software launched in September 2001 by husband and wife team Ben and Mena Trott.
  • Typepad: The hosted version of MovableType.
  • Microsoft Live Spaces: The hosted blogging service from Microsoft.
  • Myspace: The social networking phenomenon that has more than 100 million accounts.
  • Technorati: The NASDAQ of blogs.
  • Blogjects: A term coined by Julian Bleecker that describes what happens when non-human objects start blogging, like pigeons in parts of California. The link is to his paper, "A Manifesto for Networked Objects -- Cohabiting with Pigeons, Arphids and Aibos in the Internet of Things."
  • PregTASTIC Pregnancy Podcast
  • Baby Talk Radio podcast
  • Keith and the Girl podcast
  • Real Deadwood Podcast
  • Meandering Mouse podcast
  • NPR podcasts
  • Orbitz podcast
  • TravelCommons podcast
  • Energy Smart News podcast
  • Fitness Business Radio podcast
  • Rocketboom: The daily video blog by a New York production team that helped fuel interest in videoblogging.
  • Feedburner: A company that freely manages and distributes the feeds from bloggers to their individual subscribers.
  • YouTube: The video-sharing site that famously started above a pizza parlor and became an Internet and cultural sensation in less than a year. It was purchased for $1.65 billion by Google in October 2006.
  • Google Video: The search giant's version of YouTube before it acquired YouTube.
  • Cyworld

Chapter 5: Hobbies and Altruism

  • SaveSurge.org A citizen marketer site dedicated to resurrecting a beverage made by Coca-Cola.
  • VaultKicks.org: A citizen marketer site dedicated to a beverage made by Coca-Cola that has similarities to the deceased soda above.
  • Winter and the Starbucks quest: A Starbucks enthusiast aims to visit every one of the chain's stores in the world
  • Moleskinerie: The citizen marketer blog dedicated to the elegant little notebook.
  • McNuggets video: An infectious "ad" done by two friends. Total production cost? $1. (For the McNuggets.)

Chapter 6: The Power of One

  • iPod Dirty Secret video: The Niestat brothers created and released their protest video against the iPod's onerous battery replacement cost before social media had taken root, but it still created substantial buzz nonetheless.
  • Comcast sleeping technician video: Brian Finkelstein's video was an embarrassment for Comcast and touched a nerve for everyone who's had to suffer through missed appointments and unresponsive customer service.
  • Target fan blog: A citizen marketer blog dedicated to the hip products at retailer Target.
  • Eepybird video: The Diet Coke and Mentos video that put the chemical reaction buzz over the top, Vegas-style.
  • DietCoke and Mentos homemade videos: YouTube is the home to what is probably hundreds, if not thousands of videos showing people doing their own take on the Diet Coke and Mentos explosion.

Chapter 7 : How to Democratize Your Business

Conclusion

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