NetGains Marketing

Samsung's's polarizing Galaxy Note phone-tablet hybrid is surpassing sales expectations, with 5 million sold worldwide since its debut in Europe five months ago. Keep in mind, expectations were low for a tablet that's not really a tablet and certainly not an iPad. But its campaign is making some serious waves, premiering big on Ad Age's Viral Video Chart.

The company's "Elephant Plays with Galaxy Note" spot racked up more than 2 milllion views this past week, making it No. 4 on the chart, according to data provided by Visible Measures. It stars an elephant named Peter using his trunk to operate many of the phone's features, such as playing the digital xylophone and guitar, swiping through the touch-screen photo library and even using the phone's controversial stylus to illustrate the idea that "bigger is better."

In fact, that's a point that is central to the positioning of the Galaxy Note in the ever-diversifying tablet market. Many critics say the device is still somewhere between a very small tablet and a very big smartphone, but this ad underscores that it is definitely the latter and promotes the experiential benefits of a much larger smartphone screen.

This is not Samsung's's only spot to make this week's chart -- the No. 10 spot belongs to "Galaxy Nexus Calling All" -- which highlights the smartphone's facial-recognition security capabilities -- with 573,000 views, a 29% decline since last week. Finally reaching the top spot is Rovio's "Angry Birds in Space" campaign, which dethroned Invisible Children's "KONY 2012" spot with just shy of 10 million views in its third week on the chart.

Source:  http://adage.com/article/the-viral-video-chart/viral-video-chart-hit-samsung/233939/

After watching this video, it helped to build my interest in this phone. 

The new Olympic Athletes Hub connects Olympians with fans through social media.

(Credit: International Olympic Committee)

There may be 100 days to go until the start of the Summer Olympics, but the London Games just got a lot closer.

Today, the International Olympic Committee launched The Hub, a new social-media portal to give fans a way to connect with their favorite sports and athletes and to give the Olympians themselves a way to build their social profiles in the months before the event.

For starters, The Hub will feature a searchable database of many current and former athletes' Facebook and Twitter accounts -- something the IOC hopes will allow athletes to increase their number of followers, and ideally, raise their "influence or celebrity." For fans, the portal will be a one-stop shop for tracking down their favorite competitors' tweets and get an easy glimpse into their preparations and their thoughts on the upcoming Olympics.

Jumping on one of the hottest bandwagons around, the IOC has also built a number of so-called "gamification" elements into The Hub. Among them are incentives to follow as many Olympians as possible: the more athletes you follow, the more points you earn, and the more features you can unlock. Among the goodies that are available are training tip videos from past Olympic medalists such as Romanian gymnast Nadia Comaneci, American swimmer Mark Spitz, English figure skaters Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean. Fans can also earn virtual "medals" from past Olympics and some actual prizes that will be unveiled as the London Games approach.

Once the competitions actually begin, The Hub will be home to real-time results, updates from athletes, and live text chats.

On the surface, these features seem fairly rudimentary given the state of social media today. But the IOC is positioning The Hub as the fulcrum of the "first social media Olympics." The organization says that more than 1,000 athletes have already signed up to be part of The Hub and that the number is likely to grow over the next 100 days. Still, there's no word on who will loft a virtual torch and get the Games going online.

Source:  http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57415543-93/olympics-launches-social-portal-linking-athletes-fans/?tag=txt;title

Danielle Girodat

"As an organization, we've been chasing this beast since 1997," Baden told Bloomberg. "Ultimately, everything happens through your eyes, and the closer we can bring it to your eyes, the quicker the consumer is going to adopt the platform."

Sourced:  http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57415141-93/oakley-eyeing-google-glass-rival/?tag=mncol;txt

Danielle Girodat

Google Earth helped Saroo Brierley find the village he left as a child, right down to the waterfall he used to play in as a child.
(Credit: Screenshot by Steven Musil/CNET)
Sometimes Google Earth can help you find your way home after decades of not knowing where home is.
That is what apparently happened for an Indian man who was separated from his family as a 5-year-old. Saroo Brierley tells BBC magazine that he was accompanying his older brother on a train trip in 1986 when he fell asleep and awoke 14 hours later in the notorious slum of Calcutta. Without his brother.
At first, he lived on the streets, joining legions of children begging for their livelihood. Brierley would eventually be taken in by an orphanage and adopted by a couple in Australia.
"I accepted that I was lost and that I could not find my way back home, so I thought it was great that I was going to Australia," he told the magazine
But as he grew older, the desire to know where he came from also grew. With vivid memories of -- but not the name -- of the town he was born, he started searching the Internet for clues. Brierley multiplied the 14 hours he knew he had been on the train by the average speed of trains in India to determine how far he traveled that night. He then drew a circle around Calcutta based on that radius and eventually determined that Khandwa was the town he was looking for.
"When I found it, I zoomed down and bang, it just came up," he said. "I navigated it all the way from the waterfall where I used to play."
He would eventually make his way to Khandwa and locate a familiar house. His family had moved but he remembered their names. With the help of passers-by, Brierley was taken to the house where is mother lived.
At first he did not recognize his mother, who was stunned into silence by his reappearance. She took him by the hand into her house.
"She had a bit of trouble grasping that her son, after 25 years, had just reappeared like a ghost."
His older brother was not as fortunate; his body was found on the railroad tracks a few months after Brierley disappeared.
Source: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57414337-93/man-uses-google-earth-to-find-long-lost-mother/?tag=txt;title
Danielle Girodat