Doggelganger

Here's an awesome website promotion the adoption of dogs without a home. What's the best way to win someone over when adopting, finding a dog that looks just like them. :] This is what pedigee worked to do in their Doggelganger website. Here people have the option to either upload a picture of themselves or to take one live and have their facial features matched with a cute little pup who happens to look a lot like themselves. From there you're matched with a dog who's available for adoption and you even have the option to opt for adoption for the little guy. Not gonna lie, this website made my heart melt.

On a side note, please ignore my terrible appearance, it is due to it being finals week of my last week of college :D

But yeah, I tried different lighting and everything to see if I got a better match and it did help. So mess around with it, it's a lot of fun! Maybe you'll even find a little pup you'll fall in love with! :D hahah. If you'd like post your doggelganger for me to see! I'd love to take a look. :]

Stop-Motion

Not to be overly posting, but my goodness, this is wonderfully done! God knows if I get to go back to school I would totally go back for motion media or animation...or photography. Maybe I'll just do them all to get it over with. Here's an amazing example of stop motion photography.

Gulp. The world's largest stop-motion animation shot on a Nokia N8. from Nokia HD on Vimeo.

Heatonomy

Really interesting idea to literally show money being thrown out the windows. I wonder to myself though, were they really making the proper reach to the audience they intended, or were they too excited for free money? At least the point was put across through the PR and media coverage they were able to get.

Here's an explanation from ads of the world.

"Utility rates for heating and energy keep growing. Loosing warmth because of windows that are unadjusted to cold Russian winters, people waste money. REHAU windows save warmth and considerably save expenses for heating. Heating + enonomy = heatonomy. In our advertisement we decided to demonstrate how people waste money, literally throwing it out of their low-quality windows. In several big Russian cities every day during a week we were throwing real money out of the window of a billboard. There were stickers on the bank notes with stated amount of losses over a season. The promotion generated public excitement. More than 200 media (including the most popular TV channels, broadcasting stations, newspapers and web-sites) highlighted the event for free. On throwing 240 000 rubles (7000 $) we got free media for the amount that hundreds times exceeded expenditures for the audience over 40 million of Russians. The idea of heatonomy has spread all over the country."

For Those Who Like to Travel

The first example is one that has actually seemed to turn into a phenomena of it'd own, couch surfing. I only learned of it last quarter when one of my partners for a project explained to me how he was hosting a couch surfer that was coming to visit Savannah. The idea itself is interesting, members have the option of supplying information and pictures of themselves and of the sleeping accommodation they may offer, if any. More information provided by a member, and other members, improves the chances that someone will find the member trustworthy enough to be his host or "surfer." Members looking for accommodation can search for hosts using a few different qualities such as age, location, gender and activity level. The surfer is able to stay at the host's house without having to paying any money, except maybe for replacing the food they eat.

CouchSurfing provides travel guides and forums where the members are able to seek travel partners or advice. CouchSurfing's main focus is in "social networking" and members organizing activities like camping trips, meetings, and sporting events.

The website is already very successful and already has 3,072,679 members participating on the website. On the other hand I can't get past the fact of people lying about who they are and the possibilities of you not really knowing the person who's house you are going over. My partner had said he had had some sketchy people who he hosted for and there has even been raped when going into a strangers home. Not to mention that your home is supposed to be a safe place for yourself and your possessions, I may be paranoid but I would never want to leave someone I didn't know inside of my house where they're able to do as they wish.

I also found another website called TravBuddy that specializes in connecting travelers. The site allows users to find travel buddies planning to travel to the same places at the same times, to create travel based blogs, upload photos of their travels, and review bars, restaurants, hotels and various attractions on their traveled areas. The site has nearly 1,350,000 registered contributors and provided free access to over 65,000 blogs, 17,000 travel reviews, and 750,000 travel photos. I feel like this site is successful because it appeals to a very specific group of people who are passionate about traveling and will want to get opinions or reviews of places they will be going to. I don't see anything that can be a downfall of this website, except for the immediate well known dangers of any social networking site, and I feel like this site will only get more popular with time with it's usefulness and the word of mouth of the users.

In learning more about social media I found this article called "50 ways marketers can use social media to improve their marketing." Reading the list, there were some interesting suggestions that were made in how to optimize social media and how and when are the right times to use it.