It was one year ago today that I saw this video of Marlow and Frances Cowan playing the piano in the atrium of the Gonda building at Mayo Clinic:
I embedded it on our Sharing Mayo Clinic blog, posted that link to Facebook, and Tweeted it. A year later, it has led to many media stories, including their appearance on Good Morning America, as well as a return concert by the Cowans. The total viewership on YouTube has gone from 1,005 a year ago to 6,978,263 as of this moment.
And earlier this week the Cowans were featured on the largest TV network in Japan, NHK. You can see the segment if you skip ahead to the 1:20 mark in the video below. (And if you get what is funny about the cat video, please clue me in via the comments below).
A couple of changes made or announced this week suggest that “Like” and the associated thumb icons will become the standard for ratings.
First, Facebook announced that it will no longer be using the “Become a Fan” lingo for users to indicate affinity for Pages. Instead of becoming a Fan of Mayo Clinic on Facebook, for instance, over the next few weeks you will be offered a chance to “Like” Mayo Clinic.
Advertising Age has a good analysis of the implications. I think the article’s conclusion about what it means for organizations is right: it’s one thing to say you “like” an organization, and another to say you’re a “fan.” So we may see what Facebook now calls “connections” but they will be less of an indication of intensity of feeling.
Which leads to yesterday’s significant change on YouTube. Among the other elements rolled out in the site refresh is a move away from the five-star rating to a simple thumbs up or thumbs down.
Google explains that as it analyzed what ratings were actually used, the curve was pretty heavily weighted to the five-star end:
So they decided to just go with the “Like” or thumbs-down option. People who want to express themselves further can use the video comments, or if they want to indicate a stronger “Like” they can make a video a Favorite.
So, for instance, in this video of our famous piano duo from Ankeny, Iowa:
That’s the headline I was envisioning when I saw this on the Google home page this morning:
I thought it was the way Google had chosen to announce the city selected for its super-fast fiber community project. And with the mania and hoopla surrounding this contest, I could envision city managers taking one look at their search screens this morning and heading to the window for a leap.
If they waited about 30 seconds, though, some additional links were added to the screen:
Which took you to this post on the Google Blog explaining what it was all about. Or at least calming the panic among city officials whose fiber fantasies had been crushed.
Google has a long tradition of April Fools jokes; given the timing relating to the Google Fiber contest, this is probably on of its better efforts.
As Mayo Clinic (specifically our Center for Innovation) hosted its first event today in Second Life, it also was the first time I have attended a Second Life event. You can read about the event here on our Mayo Clinic News Blog, and I also have uploaded some screen shots to our Mayo Clinic Facebook Page.
If you haven’t experienced Second Life, here’s a brief video snippet from today’s presentation to give you a feel:
Second Life has a different value proposition as compared to the social media tools I have more strongly advocated. For instance, for an educational event like today’s lecture, it provides a neat way for people from all over the world to be virtually in the same room. I thought it was neat that we had room monitors available to help newbies like me figure out the controls.
Second Life is not a way to reach a large audience. There were several dozen people (or their avatars) in this event today, which I think made it quite successful. But it does seem like a good way to have more in-depth interactions than may be possible through Twitter chats, for instance. And for discussions of sensitive subjects and medical conditions, the anonymity of an avatar offers some value.
Back in 2007 there was a lot of hype about Second Life, and many organizations rushed in to have a presence there. I’m glad Mayo Clinic is exploring this through our Center for Innovation, and seeing what uses make sense for us.
I wrote a post about Second Life back in 2007 that was misunderstood as trashing Second Life, when that wasn’t my intent at all. My point was that organizations that had been considering spending on Second Life should think Facebook first. I think that’s proven to be wise advice: at the time Facebook had 40 million monthly active users, and since then has grown to 400 million.
But I still think Second Life is worth exploring, and as I said, I’m glad we have some people at Mayo Clinic who are seriously experimenting with it. I personally will probably not be a super frequent visitor because I have a lot of other things going on, but I’m keeping an open mind.
How about you? Have you visited Second Life? What do you think of it? How do you see it being applied?
Debbie Weil’s book on corporate blogging was one of the first I read as I was exploring social media and applying it at Mayo Clinic.
I’m honored that our work was featured so prominently in a Social Media 101 presentation she gave yesterday in Washington, D.C. She mentioned it via Twitter today, so I thought it would be good to share here:
Debbie has a lot of solid material the presentation. Her discussion of our Mayo Clinic experience is on slides 12-17, and I particularly like her Twitter tutorial that starts on slide 30. If you want to get her book, the link is below. Or you can get the updated Kindle version of the book here.
