Okay, so I’m not really an internet superstar, but I did recently make a video with friends that “went viral” (I guess I am kind of a big deal). It all started one night, sitting at home curled up with my cats, drinking wine and watching House Hunters on HGTV. I was chatting with one of my other single friends about the wildy popular “Shit Girls Say” video. My friend says, “We should make a ‘Shit Single Girls Say’ video” and we instantly start to rattle off all of the ridiculous/sad/pathetic things we’ve said to each other over the past two years. Then, a quick text to one of our funny male friends and it was set – we were making this happen!

We had a small “production meeting” soon after, picked out locations, wardrobe, and made shot lists.  We planned to meet at 8am on a SATURDAY morning. A SATURDAY morning during CHRISTMAS BREAK. That’s how excited we were about making this video.

The whole video took about 4 hours to shoot, and about 8 hours to go through the footage, trim it down, and fine-tune it. We uploaded it on a Monday night, posted links on Facebook and Twitter, asked people to share, then we waited.

Thanks to friends sharing the link, we reached a couple hundred hits within an hour or so. I quickly developed the habit of checking the view count every few hours and immediately when I woke up in the morning. On the 2nd morning I sent an email to my video making partners titled “30100 – that’s not a zip code”. We had already received over 30,000 hits in less than 48 hours. I submitted the link to popular sites like BuzzFeed and StumbleUpon. Someone (a stranger) posted it on Reddit. It was linked to on the Huffington Post, reblogged a couple thousand of times on Tumblr, and showed up on countless other blogs. It made #3 on Adult Swim’s Internet Treasures the week it came out. Random people were making animated gifs. We kept hearing things from our friends like “one of my friends from New York just posted it on Facebook!” and “Wait, YOU did this?!” Yep, we did. The view count kept climbing.  9 days after we uploaded the video, the video hit a million views. At the time I am writing this, 21 days after uploading, we are at 3.5 million views.

I’m not dropping all of these facts to brag (I mean it is pretty awesome), but to point out how powerful social media is. We made a hilarious video but a lot of people make hilarious videos and not all of them get millions of hits. It thankfully caught on, and now I’m set for LIFE!

…Not really.

Momtourage is now available in the App Store!  NBCU’s Momtourage.com is a resource for moms (and dads!) to share and learn parenting tips related to children ages 6-17.  Most recently, the site expanded to allow people to post questions and get crowd-sourced responses in real time and now we have built the companion iOS app.  Ever find yourself in a toy store buying a gift for a child and you’re not sure if 8 year old girls still like Dora? It’s Momtourage to the rescue!  Just post your question from your iPhone and get an answer from others who are alerted to your post.  Even better, take a look at other people’s questions and share your own parenting tips with them.  It’s free on the app store, so download it today!

Green is Universal and the Arbor Day Foundation recently partnered with Tuesday to launch the most successful Text for Trees online campaign to date. Text for Trees encourages people to plant real trees simply by clicking a button on their website or by texting “TREE” to 46833. An ambitious goal was set to reach one million trees planted during the month of December. To hit the target, we harnessed the power of social networking and created multiple sites and widgets, including a mobile optimized website, Facebook and Twitter integrations, and a real time display of the tree count. Launched to coincide with the November 30th tree lighting at Rockefeller Plaza, users quickly swarmed the site to start planting. Within two days of the launch, the site hit its goal and successfully contributed to the planting of one million trees. Thanks to all who participated in keeping our earth green during this holiday season!

Click here to read more about Text For Trees.

Have you ever had and idea and thought, “If only I had the money to make this happen…”? Well, thanks to social media, the internet, and an emerging company called Kickstarter, you may be able to turn your ideas into reality.
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A great benefit of living and working in and around Los Angeles is the steady exposure to great films, past and present. The American Film Institute (AFI) works to preserve that past and promote the films and filmmakers of today and tomorrow. One major showcase for achieving that goal is AFI Fest 2010, featured today on the official YouTube blog (post authored by Bob Jennings, Manager, AFI Social Media and Lane Kneedler, Associate Director of Programming). See More

While daily product deal websites like Woot have been thriving since 2004, it is the local daily deal websites like Groupon, Homerun and Living Social that have exploded on to the scene in 2010 with new ones like Kaloopa and Qponday launching each week. Shoppers can now find local deals on everything from restaurants to surf lessons and even teeth whitening.  More than just offering consumers a discount, these sites also offer shoppers a fresh take on local merchants and service providers in their neighborhoods that they might have otherwise overlooked. Shopping local daily deal websites is a great way to experience your city.

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Social Media is here to stay and will only continue to grow in its reach and influence.  Is your website social media ready? Being social media ready means making all your web and mobile content ready to be easily shared, posted, retweeted and so on. Integrating social media readiness into your marketing strategy is an inexpensive way to help distribute the content you work so hard to create. Let your great content work for you by adding Facebook “Like” buttons across key pages or share tools within your content. For instance, we enhanced NBCU Video On Demand to integrate share features across their Consumer Site. Now users can easily spread the word about their favorite On Demand movies like Vertigo, It’s Complicated or the documentary favorite Babies.

If you would like more information about how Tuesday can help make your site and promotions more social media ready, please contact Diana Scott (diana.scott@tuesday.com) 818-755-2241. Whether it is boosting your share features, creating games for people to play and share or integrating user generated content from your fan pages back to your site, we can help you.

One Team Tuesday summer adventure has stood out from the rest this year: Joe Breese, one of our Sr. Developers and Resident Adventurist, set out on an eight state solo motorcycle ride from LA to Minnesota. His plan was to meet up with childhood friends he connected with via Facebook for a long awaited reunion. Joe, aka #SoloMoto, hit eight states in 10 days, doing his damndest to stay off freeways and use back roads for travel, camping and getting real with nature. When Joe returned from beyond, I sat down with him to hear what he had to say about his adventure…

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There was a lot of controversy when I got my G1.  Everyone insisted I get the iPhone. Seeing that I didn’t want to change carriers I went against all of my friend’s recommendations and bought the Google Phone. I haven’t regretted the decision once!!!

Here are my top 10 favorite features:

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The iPhone 4. Does it even need an introduction? Probably not. If you didn’t know it was out or even know what it is, then you are living under a rock and I can’t help you. Humorously, some people had no idea why I, and hundreds others, were standing in line at the Grove on June 24th for over three hours to get the phone. Some guessed the new “Twilight” movie. Um, as if. (Quick, what movie is that from?)

Within the first three days of hitting the market, the new iPhone 4 sold more than 1.7 million units according to Apple’s press release. By now I’m sure it’s well over 2 million. That is “the most successful product launch in Apple’s history,” according to Apple CEO, Steve Jobs. And we’re talking about a phone that you can’t even make calls with your bare hands, apparently.

So what’s all the hype about? Is it worth it? Should you run, not walk, to your nearest Apple store? What follows is my humble opinion of the new iPhone 4. There won’t be a lot of tech talk or statements backed with copious amounts of testing. Just an honest opinion with commonplace observations.
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