Peter Kerwood: Technologies of the week

Facebook cover photos 


I came across two great articles this week that show 50 great examples of how people and brands have used Facebook cover photos to create incredible designs. This one on boredpanda.com and this one on creativeguerrillamarketing.com.

Event ticketing platform Eventbrite hits $1 billion ticket sales 


Last week, six-year-old online ticketing platform Eventbrite reached ticket sales of $1 billion. The San Francisco-based company has seen spectacular growth in the last 18 months, more than doubling ticket sales to reach the $1 billion mark. Its ticket sales in the UK alone topped £16.5 million in 2011 and late last year the company opened an office in London. Offices in France and Spain were opened in March and last week the company opened offices in Germany and the Netherlands. What many event organisers don’t realise is if you are organising a free event the service is absolutely free to use. I’m using the platform for my annual summer party.

Eventbrite at the door


Eventbrite believes everyone can be an event organiser from someone selling tickets for a school disco, to organising a major conference or concert. Earlier this month, the company rolled out a full mobile box office with credit card swipe machine all designed for the iPad. This video explains everything brilliantly. 

Say Fromage


I love photo booths from Say Fromage and have used them at a number of my own events. Unlike other photo booths these guys have integrated ‘social’ brilliantly. You can now tweet photos direct from the booth or choose to post to Facebook, email them to a friend or simply print them out and enjoy them immediately. 

Discover your target audience with Percollate


I discovered Percollate last month. This web-based program helps marketers to target and engage influential followers by data mining Twitter users who follow a competitor brand. The service isn’t free, but they allow you a two week free trial so I’m going to give it at go.

Prezi the PowerPoint killer  

Prezi is a free, cloud-based presentation software system that could spell the end to the ‘death by Powerpoint’ we have all been subjected to! The zoomable whiteboard design makes presentations pop off the screen which helps to keep your audience’s attention for longer. The system is very simple to use and works brilliantly on the iPad. This video will show you how it works.

Klout for conferences

SponsorHub, an online marketplace for event sponsorships, unveiled a new feature last week called the SponsorHub Score. The company likens the score to Klout giving all events listed on their site a rating between 0 and 100 and measures social influence and audience demographics, providing a more intelligent value for brand marketers.

Join the world’s largest community for sharing presentations


The world’s largest community for sharing presentations, Slideshare allows you to upload PowerPoint and Keynote presentations and easily share them with others. The site has a vibrant educational and professional community, meaning uploads can be commended on, liked and downloaded. The site was recently voted amongst the world's top ten tools for education and e-learning. Slideshare also supports documents, PDFs, videos and webinars. Last week, it announced it was launching a plug-in that allows you to pin your presentations direct to Pinterest. I use Slideshare to upload my presentations. This is my latest. 

Aurasma discover, create and share amazing virtual content


Aurasma claims to be the world’s first visual browser. The free app allows you to discover, create and share amazing virtual content integrated into the real world. The technology recognises shapes, symbols and objects in the real world and understands them. It’s currently used by the fashion website for men – Mr Porter – who have integrated the technology into their newspaper.

The power of social media – Small business Saturday by American Express

I have to confess I have become a little obsessed with the Cannes Lions, or the Oscars of the international advertising industry, now in its 59th year. I’ve been tracking the winners and have been paying special interest to the entries that use social media as the main focus of the campaign. This award-winning campaign by American Express is terrific... 

In 2010, American Express created ‘Small Business Saturday’ a new shopping day immediately after Black Friday (America’s biggest shopping day of the year) to help small business win more customers.  But for 2011, American Express wanted to make this more than just a one off shopping day. This is how they did it. First they armed small business owners with everything they needed to carry the day which included a social marketing digital tool kit, a YouTube video maker so shopkeepers could make their own ads, a Facebook page builder and a way to launch online deals through Foursquare.

Next, they reached out to get the public and government officials on board. Even the Senate declared Small Business Saturday an official day. The results were incredible. Small business Saturday became a top trending topic on Twitter, got 2.7 million Likes on Facebook and 103 million Americans shopped small, including the US President. This video tells the full story.

Image courtesy of  http://creativeguerrillamarketing.com.