Hashtagart Turns Twitter Profile Pics Into Beautiful Mosaic Art

Hashtagart creates elaborate mosaic art out of Twitter users' profile pictures:"Hashtagart has proprietary technology and a suite of apps that make it fun for consumers to spread a brand's message. Consumers are no longer advertised to, they BECOME the advertisement, and they have fun connecting with the brand."

The images above are 11am and 5pm  screengrabs from a new Dark Knight movie teaser done with hashtagart's Mosaic app. Check out their other projects for Roku, Window Phone 7, and MSNBC 2010 election coverage.

WSJ's Article About Spying on Internet Users Spies on Internet Users

The very first article in the Wall Street Journal's year-long series on online user tracking places at least 23 "pieces of tracking technology" from at least 10 servers, as identified by the Ghostery browser plug-in.

"One of the fastest-growing businesses on the Internet, a Wall Street Journal investigation has found, is the business of spying on Internet users," the first installment reads. One of the servers whose code lives on the article page on WSJ.com is from Bizo, an ad targeting company whose pitch is: "Powered by bizographic data on over 85 million people, the Bizo platform enables marketers, agencies, publishers, and ad networks to understand the "bizographic" makeup of site visitors, and precisely target and engage business professionals online."

The author mentions that "the Journal also tested its own site, WSJ.com".  Since she doesn't share what the study found on wsj.com specifically, I thought I would.

Money Can't Buy You Love, But "Likes" Are $2 Apiece

As far back as 2007, Facebook's terms of service prohibited using one's profile for ad purposes (such as embedding affiliate widgets, for example): "You agree not to use the Service or the Site to upload, post, transmit, share or otherwise make available any unsolicited or unauthorized advertising."

The TOS have since been updated, but their current version has a similar language: "You will not use your personal profile for your own commercial gain (such as selling your status update to an advertiser)."

Would "liking" Walmart's profile in its Crowdsaver campaign qualify as "selling your status to advertiser" and could getting a deal on a product be interpreted as "commercial gain"?  Tricky.

And it doesn't seem like the TOS is stopping a growing army of entrepreneurial individuals from mediating the relationship between people seeking online fame and people looking to make a buck. I easily found half a dozen services that are prepared to pay you for a range of Facebook feed-related activities, from posting  status updates to "liking" stuff.

Here, someone who seems to be an affiliate is promoting one such service with an ad on Craigslist.

The service -- a Facebook app -- promises that "from the moment you connect to this app, you can start receiving money when you SHARE videos. Simply keep on sharing videos with your facebook friends, just as usual. The only difference: You get to receive money."

A page on MyLikes says the service has 221,236 publishers (that is, Facebook or Twitter users) with an aggregate audience of 310,785,405, and has generate 43,023,415 clicks for its advertisers. The company has a write-up in the Crunchbase. Its Twitter account has over 31K followers. You can "Like" stuff on the go, too, using their Android and iOS apps. (The service is Twitter-centric, but it allows users to post their "likes" on Facebook even though it doesn't pay for any Facebook-originated clicks.)

PaidStatus offers access to "promotion-ready Facebook users". And at a $.85 CPM, it sounds like a good deal, too: "As at October 2010, direct exposure to 1,000 Facebook users works out at just 85 cents!"

VideoLikes specializes in promoting videos via "liking".

This Is Your Brain On Apple

A BBC Secrets of the Brands documentary looks into how one Apple fan's brain reacts to the brand's iconography. Turns out "the Apple products are triggering the same bits of [Brooks'] brain as religious imagery triggers in a person of faith."

Back in 2004, Douglas Atkin in his The Culting of Brands (aff link) drew similar parallels between religious cults and brands that enjoy very enthusiastic following, Apple in particular; I posted about the book here.

Mailbag

From the mailbox:

- Matt sent in this variation of a captcha ad where you have to click on the ad for it to reveal the security squiggle.  Why annoy your user once if you can do it twice?

- Buy cheap wooden furniture, not. Or else.

- People using Polyvore put together collections inspired by the royal wedding.

- Jared is hacking advertising.

- These Minis are actual cars.

Sofa-Shaped Popcorn Bags Sell Sofas

Sofa-shaped popcorn bags promote a sofa event at a department store in Brazil to the tune of a 17% increase in sofa sales, according to Ogilvy Brasil, the agency behind the stunt. Don't think I've seen popcorn bags used as an ad medium before. Very nice.

Make Your Own Facebook Book

Can't get around to writing that memoir of yours?  My Social Memories is an application by Deutsche Post DHL that rolls two years of your Facebook life into an 18-page printed book for about $30 plus shipping (I paid only shipping for mine thanks to a coupon included with the press release). Mine won't be particularly thrilling, I am afraid, but the app does a few neat things like calculating and laying out friend stats. It's not without its share of glitches: it put my hometown as Germany (not by a long shot) and it chokes on non-Latin characters. One genius move -- even though you can't embed the slideshow of the book, it does export a few pages as stills that it then places in your photo gallery as an album and posts it on your wall.

A French telecom did something similar last year, and you can order photobooks and posters of your friends' profile pics elsewhere.

The iPad and the Return of Tummy TV

One of my first iPad impressions last year was how different it felt to hold moving images in your hands: "Watching HD videos on the iPad gives a strange sensation you don’t get from TV or laptop, a feeling of proximity, almost intimacy." Adam Lisagor, in a much longer post, shared a similar feeling:

"The iPad is for the nightstand. And for the sofa, and for the places between where you stand in line and where you sit at your desk. That’s why every iPad poster and billboard features it on a lap or a knee. They’ve stopped short of showing it on a chest in bed, but that’s where mine gets its most use."

"To my mind, holding a 10” screen a foot from my face in a dark room is more immersive than staring blankly at a 40” screen twelve feet away."

"iPad. It’s TV for your chest™."

Which reminded me of an 1965 ad from Bernbach's book for the new 5-inch TV sets by Sony that had become known, likely thanks to Bernbach, as tummy TVs ("so that your wife can sleep, we also include a personal ear plug").

-- image credits: 1, 2. Also from the same Sony series: Pee Wee Tee Vee and The Walkie-Watchie

Branded Music Visualization Plug-In for Land Rover

I last wrote about branded WinAmp visualizations five years ago and haven't heard much since until today when I saw the Land Rover team released a visualization plug-in for Windows Media Player.
-- via

As Seen on Google

A site is using its top Google SERP rank as a seal of approval:  Google Ranks DynaSpy.com #1 for "Spy Camera"
-- banner on dynaspy.com  home page