For the Love of Baseball

Out on a client shoot this afternoon, Axiom Productions Videographer Dave Sniadak was able to take a break and shoot some behind the scenes footage at the beloved Target Field. Enjoy!

Axiom Productions at Target Field from Axiom Socialmedia on Vimeo.

A Bloody Good Idea

It’s no secret that we here at Axiom are passionate about donating blood. Just take a look at our Flickr Photos from June 3rd’s team donation. It takes just thirty minutes, and each donation can save up to three lives. 

Imagine our excitement when the American Red Cross announced the new Give Blood Countdown application for Facebook. According to the release:

You can self-report your donation appointments, add a countdown to your profile and receive reminders when you become eligible again. You can also invite friends to participate.

So instead of spending your Friday virtually expanding your family in Mafia Wars or adding a new barn on Farmville, check out the new Give Blood Countdown application and start recruiting friends to join something that really matters.

Following Follow Friday

If you’ve spent any time on Twitter, undoubtedly you’ve seen these #FF or #FollowFriday memes that have users suggesting their favorite Tweeps to follow. It carries the same feelings of the once-envied MySpace Top Eight, but without the exclusivity of limits.

Always nice to get picked, it seems that the more recommendations one receives the more they’re willing to give. Which ends up with a tweet of links. No rationale on why you should follow them, just one link in a tweet alongside several others. Perhaps even one link in a list of tweets with even more links. So what’s the point?

Earlier today there was some speculation about @TwitterShoutOut, a Twitter account that looked to be the first steps of an official Twitter recommending service. What I can only imagine would evolve into a more official (not to mention beneficial) recommending system, @TwitterShoutOut is alleged to provide users with the ability to recommend other users to their followers while giving reason and rationale for their online endorsement.

Unfortunately this rumor was dispelled a few hours ago, with an official Twitter rep admitting that although @TwitterShoutOut is a Twitter-official account, it’s for internal purposes only. So Twitter employees can virtually high-five each other all day long, but the rest of us are forced to hold our endorsements in until Friday, only to then explode with a list of links.

Do you think there’s any benefit to being included in a Follow Friday link list? Do you take other recommendations on who to follow if accompanied with #FF or #FollowFriday? Would you use an official Twitter Endorsement Service, if they were to develop one?

Twitter Looks to Put a Cork in Illiteracy

Twitter has been largely responsible for the unwillingness of many people to read anything longer than 140 characters. That's why I'm not that surprised that the microblogging site is partnering with Room to Read, a non-profit from San Francisco-based that promotes literacy around the world.

But what does surprise me is Twitter's approach. They are selling bottles of wine for $20, with sales benefiting Room to Read. The wine is a Pinot Noir called Fledgling, and is set to be bottled at the end of the month.

Is it a good cause? Definitely.

Do I like wine? Sure, I've made that clear before.

But is selling wine a good fit brand-wise for a social networking giant that has nothing to do wine? That's where they lose me.

While I'm by no means denouncing anything that raises money for a worthy cause, this promotion raises some eyebrows if you look at it from a public relations brand management standpoint. And although I do like the name of the wine, a clever name does not a great campaign make.

However, I'm sure Twitter will be able to utilize it's success and size to put a cork in world illiteracy.

How Much Privacy Can We Expect Online?

Earlier this week, a security researcher/blogger created a program that hacked 170 million Facebook profiles and organized them into a downloadable file. Ron Bowes, the blogger who hacked the data, claimed the readily-available information is "a scary privacy issue," because if certain privacy settings are not enabled, anyone can access someone's photos, friends and other profile information using their name and profile URL.

But was the information really "hacked," when it's already available in other online search engines? The profile names and URL's were taken from the site's public directory, which users can opt out of by adjusting their privacy settings.

All the discussion that surrounds Facebook and privacy seems counterproductive, especially in this case. Social networking is intended to facilitate sharing of information, and those who don't want their profiles accessible via search engine can adjust their privacy settings accordingly.

However, some would argue, being found by friends on the site is, well, the point of subscribing. To those people, I would say, that we almost always trade privacy for convenience. Take online bill pay for example. In exchange for the convenience of not having to write a check every month, we give up some privacy by allowing companies access to our banking information. Facebook is no different: in exchange for the convenience of connecting with friends online, we trade the privacy of having our names/photos publicly searchable.

Not that I don't also understand the perspective of Facebook users who don't want grandma or potential employers to access photos of them pounding tequila shots. But should those photos be posted online anyway, regardless of your privacy settings? Content posted on social networking sites will essentially live on the internet for years to come, and users should stop tinkering with their privacy settings and ask themselves if they want their content to exist in the sphere of public information that is the internet.

Those who gripe about privacy on Facebook, should stop complaining and unsubscribe.