Social Media and Philanthropy

Social media has the power to entertain, engage, and connect both people and ideas. It is in that power that social media is also able to help businesses become more socially responsible.

The Home Depot Foundation for example, just launched a campaign on Facebook that allows users to vote where the company should spend its grant dollars and volunteer hours. It’s a program through Team Depot and Aprons in Action, and it will tap into Home Depot’s 250,000+ Facebook fans to give thousands of dollars to deserving organizations.

The reason I find this so ingenious is that it combines two things I support: social media and giving back. Not only is it a great way to give exposure to nonprofit organizations, it also spreads the responsibility of helping out to 250,000+ people.

What if more companies embraced the connection between social media and philanthropy? I find them to be a natural fit together. After all, the ethos of social media sites is predisposed to support humanitarianism. It’s a spirit of community, networking, individuality and impact. Combine that with the convenient, quick, easy and accessible platform of social media sites, and you have an audience willing to make a difference.

This Kindle Brought To You By...

Amazon has made an interesting move and announced a discounted version of their popular Kindle e-reader. Prospective e-reader owners can now take advantage of a 17% discount and purchase one for $114.

The catch? The discounted device, called Kindle With Special Offers, is ad-supported.

That's right. If you spring for this particular Wi-Fi-only Kindle you will have to overlook ads on the screensaver and home page.

Personally I'm not a fan of this move, primarily for three reasons:

• The advantage of an e-reader over a laptop or desktop computer is to have that immersive experience that's more akin to a physical book. Having ads on the device (even though they apparently aren't going to appear in the books themselves) could be seen as intrusive and deter potential buyers.
• The price is only $25 less than the ad-free Kindle, which is not all that much. Granted, a 17% discount is respectable, but $25 may be a small price to pay for a lot of e-reader fans. Bottom line is the price point needs to be lower, and TechCrunch actually wrote up a great piece about the impact a $99 Kindle would have had. 
• From an advertisers' standpoint, I wonder how effective the ads can be if they're only on the home screen and screen savers, where the users will be spending little time paying attention to what's on the screen. 

All in all, it's a questionable move that would have been better if the price point was more appealing. 

However, my guess is that most people would just pay the $25 for a reading experience that doesn't include advertising.

Adobe Photoshop Pictures a Future in Tablets

Adobe Photoshop has been a part of every designer or photographer's tool belt for years now. In fact, programs like Photoshop are the main reason I still keep my laptop close by (in case of a photo-editing emergency).

But as tablets become more and more commonplace, there's a noticeable lack of quality touch-friendly photo editing programs.

Sure, you have Photoshop Express or more niche programs like Instagram, but neither have the performance or utility to make it appealing in a more professional design setting.

Adobe is hoping to remedy that with their 4 latest releases. The first three are the trio of iOS apps that Adobe has released for the iPad and iPad 2. All three apps are meant to interact with the desktop version of Photoshop.

Adobe Color Lava for Photoshop lets you mix custom colors and swatches that instantly transfer to the desktop. Adobe Eazel for Photoshop is a paint-like programs that lets you "paint" on the iPad and transfer it to the desktop. Lastly, Adobe Nav for Photoshop is more of an organizational tool for heavy Photoshop users that lets you browse and keep track of up to 200 open Photoshop files as well as customize the Photoshop toolbar.

The fourth release is the launch of the Photoshop Touch SDK, allowing developers to create touch-based Photoshop apps for all platforms. This is great news for PC-based Android users that have the large developer community that they do, because this means we should start to see Android versions of these apps before long.

The most interesting part about all of this is the role that Adobe sees tablets playing. They seem to see tablets as complimentary devices to laptops or desktop computers rather than a replacement. It's a smart move, and could be the selling point to a tech-savvy designer community that likely has both types of devices.

YouTube Channeling Efforts to Push for Premium

The growth of online video has been well-documented here on Daily Axioms. And the top dog in the video yard, YouTube, seems to be putting more and more of its efforts behind premium curated content.

Case in point: Yesterday's report that suggests YouTube is working on creating channels to curate videos, most of which will feature professionally-produced content. The $100 million dollar project will aim to better position YouTube as more and more people use the Internet in their homes to view online content. 

This move should definitely appeal to Boxee, Roku and Internet-connected TV owners who have easy access to YouTube but have relied on more polished services like Hulu and Netflix.

Couple this report with today's report about YouTube working with potential partners for more live streaming options, and it's obvious where the online video giant wants to go with its image and position.

We'll have to wait for these changes to actually take place before we can judge them, but it does seem like a step in the right direction, especially for companies like Axiom that pride themselves on their video production.

Video Post: Is Twitter Tinkering With New Brand Pages?

A recent report from BrandRepublic suggests Twitter might be toying with the notion of developing separate brand pages. Is this stepping out of bounds of what Twitter has found to work in the realm of social media marketing? Steve dives into this story in today's Daily Axioms video post.