Modernista’s Website via Ian Schafer

Wonder how much more traffic Campfire‘ll get by jumping into the conversation about Modernista’s new naked website (not Naked’s site — which is way too flash) – via Ian Schafer’s blog (He runs Deep Focus)?

Technorati Tags: Advertising Agencies, Celebrity, Media, Social Media, Social Networks, Viral Marketing, Web 3.0

PSFK Conference New York this Thursday

I’m speaking on the following panel tomorrow at PSFK Conference New York:

Tomorrow’s TV

How has digital changed the delivery, content, sponsorship and future of television? Florian Peters leads a panel of industry experts that includes Mike Hudack (Blip.TV), David Cohn (Vice TV), and Mike Monello (Campfire) discuss the opportunities and challenges.

They’ve put together a great lineup of speakers and panels, so drop me a line if you are planing to attend.

Nine Inch Nails Self Starter Pays Off

Earlier this month Trent Reznor self released “Ghosts I – IV” on his website. For five bucks you can get all 36 tracks straight from the band, downloadable with no pesky DRM. He’s finally able to do this since breaking with his record label and striking out on his own.

So how did it work out? Well according to Wired he made US$ 1.6 million off 800,000 downloads in the first week alone. Not too shabby. This is despite the album being widely available on BitTorrent sites that Trent uploaded some of the tracks to himself.

Says Reznor, ““Now that we’re no longer constrained by a record label, we’ve decided to personally upload Ghosts I, the first of the four volumes, to various torrent sites, because we believe BitTorrent is a revolutionary digital distribution method, and we believe in finding ways to utilize new technologies instead of fighting them.”

The next step for the album is having fans create videos to go with the songs. These will be posted on Youtube with the best ones presented in a ‘virtual film festival’ presided over by Trent and some others fine folks.

Here’s one of the first submissions to Youtube for the film festival.

SXSW 2008: Mark Zuckerberg keynote leads to audience revolt!

Photo from deneyterrio’s flickr stream

Wow. Yesterday’s audience revolt on the Social Media Metrics panel doesn’t have anything on what happened at today’s SXSW Keynote interview between Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Business Week reporter Sarah Lacy. I’ll post video once it surfaces, but in the meantime Vallywag has a decent rundown of the content while Teresa Valdez Klein has a perceptive take on what really went wrong.

SXSW 2008: I found Bigfoot, but Social Media Metrics are still a mystery.

This is a fantastic conference. Everywhere you go you meet smart, inspired thinkers from diverse backgrounds. The panels have been generally excellent, but this afternoon’s Social Media Metrics panel took a dive when the moderator didn’t um… join the conversation. About 30 minutes in, the discussion, advertised as intermediate level, was still covering the same old “you need to be engaging social media” ground when someone from the audience stood up and asked the panelists to get onto the metrics portion of the program. The moderator responded “we’ll get to that in a little bit,” and this was after trying to push his question off to the end. How very old-media.

The audience soon turned on the panel, and the energy in the large room turned dark. I had no idea what was going on until just now, reading through the back channel meebo chat log. From here on out, I’m bringing my laptop to everything.

Later this evening, I schooled Jeremiah in foosball before ducking into the World Premiere of Not Your Typical Bigfoot Movie. The organizers wrongly placed it in their midnight section, but this isn’t a goofy cult oddity. Bigfoot is a touching character study of two best friends who are passionate about Bigfoot research and crave legitimacy for their work. It’s a fantastic documentary and worth seeking out at your local film festival. Check out the trailer below.

Tomorrow I plan on more panels, meetings, and BBQ!

SXSW 2008: Official Schwag Bag Comparison

This week Jeremiah and I are reporting live from the SXSW Interactive+Film+Music Festival, and while everyone else is reporting on all the amazing panels, parties, and hoopla, we’re here to report what you REALLY want to know. First up — an in-depth comparison of all THREE (!) SXSW Schwag bags.

SXSW = long line!

I’m standing in one of the longest lines ever to pick up my badge. Seriously, I’m thinking world record worthy. But they have free WiFi so it’s not a total loss, because I just figured out how to post from my iPhone. Look for live updates all week, and photos once I figure that out.

If you are in Austin, drop us an email and let’s get together. Beers might be on me, but Jeremiah’s covering top shelf well drinks!

SXSW?

Mike and I are headed down to Austin on Friday for the Interactive portion of SXSW. Anybody else going? Maybe you want to grab a beer? Mike’s buying!

If you’re up for it, send me an email: jrosen@campfirenyc.com. We’ll set it up.

See you there!