E! Launches the Celebrity Addictionary

The world of celebrity lexicon just got a bit richer.  We’re psyched to announce our newest Addictionary with E! Entertainment.  You can see it here: Celebrity Addictionary

The crew at E! did a fab job in creating a beautiful design, and the editors there are very clever with wordplay.  Here’s their first post on E! Online in it’s entirety:

What do you call a celebrity who’s famous for nothing more than dating other reality-show stars? Or a romance between costars that heats up just before the movie premieres? Or a dumpy actor who manages to play an attractive romantic lead in all his films?

Merriam-Webster isn’t going to help you. E! Online, however, has all the answers (and questions) in our new Celebrity Addictionary, your definitive source for the words you need that don’t exist yet. You can create new terms, request definitions for things that don’t have them or just pop off with other smart, star-savvy users. It’s fun, it’s free and it won’t give you an STD (when used properly, that is!).

And the best part? You get to take part in creating new words, coining new phrases and making the definitions work the way you want. Try it out and see what you think. It’s fun!

Take that last example above: Is that dumpy actor a schlubrity? A (c)hunk? A Vaughn-screen lover? You tell us.

Look, stars are always starting trends, whether it’s choosing weird names for their children or injecting Botox into ever new and different body cavities. Isn’t it time you turned the tables

Vaughn-screen lover is hilarious.

What’s your celebrity-related word?  Add it!

SpectrumDNA welcomes Anthony Stonefield and Michael Dowling to its Board of Directors!

“Both Michael and Anthony are best-in-class in their respective arenas. I’m ecstatic they chose to become SpectrumDNA Directors,” says SpectrumDNA CEO, Jim Banister. “Michael’s counsel in measurement and consumer research is inestimably valuable in our work with media companies and advertisers/brands; and Anthony’s experience and network in the mobile content arena is unsurpassed. Both of them provide SpectrumDNA an advantage as we commercialize the union of the web and mobile wireless industries.”

More on Anthony Stonefield:

Listed as “one of the top 50 mobile content executives” (Mobile Entertainment Magazine), Stonefield has spent 15 years as a serial entrepreneur, productizing applications for networked media development, distribution and marketing. Stonefield and his team pioneered downloadable song distribution (in cooperation with AT&T/Bell Labs) in 1995 and popularized ringtones worldwide in 2000, fueling today’s $8 billion ringtone market.

Stonefield’s current venture, eMotive Communications, Inc., focuses on developing and marketing solutions to expand and sustain the mobile media industry. Prior to founding eMotive, Stonefield founded and ran Moviso LLC which he sold to Vivendi Universal in 2002 and again to InfoSpace in 2003. Moviso generated over $500 million in revenue, helping double InfoSpace’s stock price by driving five consecutive quarters of record net revenue.

Stonefield executive produced the worldwide mobile program for the LIVE 8 event and the world’s first celebrity-based mobile video show. With broad, frontline expertise in interactive media applications and market strategies, he serves on the boards of innovative mobile companies. He has co-authored patents in the media telecom area, is an advisor to venture funds and industry analysts, and has served as an expert panelist on digital entertainment and telephony on five continents.

More on Michael Dowling:

Michael Dowling is the Chief Executive Officer of Interpret, LLC, an innovative consumer research company that helps companies to bridge the gap between traditional and new media. With nearly 20 years of experience, Dowling has spent his career building new businesses in the entertainment, media and interactive industries.

Prior to founding Interpret, Dowling led the Nielsen Company’s growth into emerging industries, such as video games, wireless and broadband. During his tenure, Dowling oversaw strategic planning and led the efforts to consolidate seven separate companies covering the film, video, music and book industries. In the process, Dowling identified an untapped market for VNU, and in 2003, launched the video game unit, Nielsen Interactive Entertainment. A pioneer in new media and measurement, Dowling is widely acknowledged as a thought leader in the in-game advertising industry, working with publishers, console manufacturers and in-game technology companies to establish in-game as a viable alternative to traditional media. Before joining Nielsen, Dowling co-founded and served as President & COO of iFUSE, a youth-oriented media company that provided integrated marketing solutions to major advertisers, such as Evian, Nike, Fox, Warner Bros., and Altoids. Dowling also served as President of Dali Media, a software development company, which built an infrastructure to support massively distributed artificial intelligence for MMOGs.

The Milken Institute ranks Utah’s technology industry as #1 in the country for dynamism and concentration, a measure of entreprenuerism.

SpectrumDNA was recently named by the Omniture-backed Silicon Slopes initiative as a standout in Startups to Watch; and we’re pleased to announce that Utah Business Magazine has just placed SpectrumDNA as #8 on the list of state’s High Tech 20.

See the article here.

Or check out the PDF here:

Them there are Brave New Words, partner.  Put your money where your mouth is!

NBC’s hit television program “The Office” launches The Office Addictionary.

NBC decided their audience has something to say, and they gave them an Addictionary to say it!

What’s your office-related word?  Know what Blackberry Jam is?  How about spambushed?  Feed your Office Addictionary!

We are proud to announce that the eminent former Warner Bros., HBO and Yahoo! executive, Jim Moloshok, has joined our Board of Directors.

Jim Moloshok is the Executive Chairman of GoFish, a leading Internet video and youth entertainment network. Throughout his career, Mr. Moloshok has excelled at the intersection of entertainment, marketing and technology for some of the world’s biggest media companies including Yahoo!, Warner Bros. and HBO; and was named by TV Week as one of the ‘Top Ten Internet Executives You Can’t Afford To Ignore.’

As President of Digital Initiatives for Home Box Office, Mr. Moloshok was responsible for exploring new opportunities for the company, focusing on innovative content and fast-changing technology. Before joining HBO, Mr. Moloshok was SVP, Entertainment and Content Relationships at Yahoo! building partnerships with movie studios, TV networks and producers. Prior to joining Yahoo!, Mr. Moloshok was President of Warner Bros. Online and President and CEO of Entertaindom.com, an original entertainment destination for Time Warner. Under Mr. Moloshok’s leadership, Warner Bros. was named by Variety as the ‘Most Aggressive of All Studios on the Web,’ and in its debut month, the independent Entertaindom eclipsed other more established entertainment sites. Warner Bros. Online was the first studio site to accept advertising and evolve into an online business with its own sales and marketing team separate from any other sales efforts of the company.

“Moloshok taught me much of what I know about the media industry while we worked together at Warner Bros. Online”, says SpectrumDNA CEO Jim Banister, “I have yet to come across a person with greater strategic vision and insight into the marketing and advertising industries, who also possesses an extraordinary sense for practical and engaging applications of content and technology. He’s a super-valuable resource for SpectrumDNA.”

Seth Levenson, former Sales Executive for MySpace.com and Atom Films/Shockwave.com joins SpectrumDNA as Vice President, Product Marketing.

Seth brings over 20 years of media sales and marketing experience to the job. Prior to moving to Park City, Seth served as VP, Strategic Sales at MySpace.com, and VP, Sales & Business Development, for AtomFilms and Shockwave.com in San Francisco.

Seth had been operating his own sales consulting business from his dream home here in Park City, UT, where we discovered him and decided he was a PLU.  He was referred to us by MTV Network’s President of Global Digital Media, Mika Salmi. Given Mika is #4 on the 2008 Hollywood Reporter’s Digital Power 50 list, successfully sold Atom Films/Shockwave.com to Viacom, and had Seth as his head of sales for five years, we were all ears!

Our CEO Jim Banister was an original board member for AtomFilms when Mika founded it in 1998. Mika brought Seth on as an early key hire at AtomFilms, where Seth remained head of sales through the merger with Shockwave.com in 2001 and beyond.  Seth went on to work for the budding MySpace.com as VP Strategic Sales, prior to it’s sale to Fox Interactive Media.

Previously, Seth was Director of Advertising for ESPN.com and the Disney Internet Group in Seattle, and CondeNet in New York. Early in his career, Seth held various marketing and sales positions for print media, including Gourmet, USA Today, U.S.News & World Report and The Atlantic Monthly. He has also developed and sold innovative, cross-media advertising and branded content programs for major advertisers, such as The Ford Motor Company, General Motors, Intel, Sony, and Volkswagen.

We are thrilled to have Seth’s experience, talent and vision to drive product marketing and sales. His digital savvy and experience in advertising sales and branded entertainment make him the perfect addition to our growing team.

Welcome aboard, Seth!   (More on Seth >>)

The Tennis Addictionary Challenges tennis fans to NAME THYSELF!

Do you have the creative stuff to go five sets with the rest of the tennis community and come out on top?

… and then some.

Through our inaugural partnerships with the Comedy Central, the Tennis Channel, and our large cadre of loyal Addictionary users, we took everything we’ve learned over the last few months and incorporated it into a markedly new version of the Addictionary engine.

Now, you might say “As an agile-adaptive studio, aren’t you *always* iterating and evolving the Addictionary and your other enginets?” I’d say “Right you are, skippy!”  However, sometimes there are changes of significance to the guts and the UX (user-experience) that need tending.  In this case, six weeks worth.  Still pretty quick, and we did *a-lot* in that month in a half.

We were fortunate to be able to entice user-experience design guru Brian Veloso of Revyver, who’d sworn off client work in order to focus on cool projects of his own, to take on the challenge and complement our Spectrum team.  Predictably, he rocked.  Take a look:

Of course, you can *see* all the changes to the engine in the before-and-after screen grabs, but you can experience it first-hand, if you like:  check out http://addictionary.org or http://politicaladdictionary.com

What were our criteria for the changes, you ask?

1. People
2. Portability
3. Customizability (<- is that a word?)

People

We felt like folks weren’t getting enough credit for their cleverness.  The Addictionary is about word-play creativity, competition and community, after all.  So we decided to let them express themselves a bit more around their creations– their words, there-ought-be-a-word challenges, contest entries, etc.  That includes avatars, easier commenting, improved profile pages and more

Portability

We further modularized both the function and content of the Addictionary.

We already had RSS feeds, and a number of widgets for Word of the Day, There-Oughta-Be-a-Word, and others… but we re-engineered the Addictionary to make pretty much *everything* atomizable.  That is, both function and content can be pushed (via syndication, sponsored widgets, etc) or pulled (by users onto their blogs, myspace pages, etc).

Customize-ability

We completely separated the CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) from the guts of the engine.  For the layfolk, that means it is now much easier for us to “re-skin” the engine to look-and-feel like our partners’ sites, making embedding of the Addictionary as a feature/function of another community super straight-forward.

People-oriented + Portable + Customizable = Advertiser-friendly

All this adds up to the result that our partners can offer advertisers a whole new level of coolness.  That is, the Addictionary allows advertisers to contextually lace their product/brand/message throughout the application and content.  The can create custom function modules (like branded word games), next gen widetry that integrates their message in a engaging IAB-standard-sized ad unit that can be themed and programmed *ongoing*, and totally re-skin the overall Addictionary application around an event and product launch.

Are you running a content/community site where there is a distinct vernacular, lingo or lexicon?  Moms, golfers, travellers, celebrity watchers, foodies, action sports or pretty much any niche lifestyle, industry or hobby? Or perhaps you’re a products or services company looking to engage a community of same?

The Addictionary is a lightning rod for that community– an engine of engagement to harness word-play that’s already occuring online and offline.  More on the Addictionary here.

Or ping Seth Levenson here at SpectrumDNA if you have questions on how you can set up your own Addictionary.

Gartner Validates SpectrumDNA’s “Enginetworking” Model With It’s Report on ‘Generation V’

Gartner group recently came out with a report that provides some valuable insight into online audiences, and how they differ substantially from other media audiences.  In the process, they endorsed SpectrumDNA’s model for creating programming for web and wireless social media.

They describe Generation V in this way:

The online behavior, attitudes and interests of people from all walks of life are blending together online, cutting across generations and traditional demographics and giving rise to a new online group called “Generation Virtual” (Generation V). Unlike previous generations, Generation V is not defined by age, gender, social class or geography. Instead, it is based on achievement, accomplishments and an increasing preference for the use of digital media channels to discover information, build knowledge and share insights.

They go on to describe the breakdown of behavior in online audiences:

Marketers will ultimately need a separate marketing strategy to reach this generation, according to Gartner. Within the Generation V community, Gartner defines four levels of engagement - creators, contributors, opportunists, and lurkers - related to the extent to which customers engage with other customers and the level of engagement that businesses and other organizations must have to enable them.

And provide a bit more detail on their findings about these Generation V segments:

• Up to 3% will be creators, providing original content. They can be advocates that promote products and services.
• Between 3% and 10% will be contributors who add to the conversation, but don’t initiate it. They can recommend products and services as customers move through a buying process, looking for purchasing advice.
• Between 10% and 20% will be opportunists, who can further contributions regarding purchasing decisions. Opportunists can add value to a conversation that’s taking place while walking through a considered purchase.
• Approximately 80% will be lurkers, essentially spectators, who reap the rewards of online community input but absorb only what is being communicated. They can still implicitly contribute and indirectly validate value from the rest of the community. All users start out as lurkers.

What’s striking about the report isn’t that Gartner coined another “gen” term or terms like “creators” and “contributors” (those have been around for some time).  What’s striking is how they actually put numbers to the internal algorithms shared by those of us who’ve been working in social media for some time.  The “1-in-50 users are creators” kind of numbers are intuitively correct, and they’ve substantiated an approach to creating web/wireless applications that is eerily parallel to that which SpectrumDNA developed in its “enginetworking” approach.

Gartner is right-on when it says:

To address the different needs of these groups, marketing organizations need to segment and support all four engagement levels in the community…

But then stumbles a bit:

…. with appropriate technology and establish goals with plans for determining return on investment (ROI).

And then they’re back on track again:

Companies should plan to segment all four levels in the community - each has significant business value. Differentiation exists between sectors and industries. Marketers with strong brands attract more creators. Certain industries, such as insurance, draw more lurkers.

Let’s drill into where Gartner stumbles:  “… segment and support all four engagement levels in the community with appropriate technology…”  Engaging audiences of any kind has *never* been about technology.  It’s about technique.  Advising organizations to essentially buy a technology and think that’s going to activate any one of those user-types is wrong-headed.  It’s like telling a television network that cameras and editing systems and HD television and remote controls are going to attract and engage a television audience.  It’s about technique, not technology.  Craigslist.org does pretty darn good with circa-1994 hyperlink technology.

Too many companies are buying “social networking platforms”– essentially the social media equivalent of stages, props, set pieces… the elements necessary to “put on a play.”  And more often than not, more than they need. What they need is the methodology for engaging humans in a potentially resonant experience.  An engine of engagement is a software application that attracts and compels audiences based on what they can do, not what it can do.

SpectrumDNA’s enginetworking approach creates a relationship between the organization and that audience Gartner calls Generation V– that community it intends to engage around a theme, a behavior, a hobby or an industry– and takes into account all four behaviors Gartner cites. And we determine that intended relationship and those intended roles *before* technology is chosen and or purchased, or software code is written.  And when we do build those engines, we build them with intention to iterate and evolve to optimize them for the community.

See examples of those “engines” we’ve created and offer as software-as-a-service, or ping us if you have a community-engagement desire or goal and we’ll show you how to build an engine-of-engagement instead of a website.