Steven Levy
Jul 29, 2010
One sunny spring day in 2004, Dennis Crowley was running down Waverly Street dressed in yellow, avoiding ghosts. Crowley, then a 27-year-old grad student in New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, was participating in a class project called Pac-Manhattan, which used the streets of Greenwich Village for a grueling physical version of the classic arcade game. He was Pac-Man, and—despite a support team that was logging his movements, tracking ghosts, and directing him to power pills—people dressed as Pac-Man spooks eventually cornered him near Fifth Avenue. The New York Times described the experience as “a kind of tableau of digital convergence with the physical world.”
Apr 9, 2010
Ever since Facebook moved beyond the college campus and Twitter joined the social media matrix, brands have been trying to figure out what to do with them.
Generally speaking, brands are using social networks in a relatively systematic way:
1) Create an account; 2) Run ads; 3) Collect fans; 4) Provide news, offers and promotions; 5) Repeat.
But the lines of the digital world and real world are blurring, and businesses should start thinking about how they can take their social media initiatives to the next level. This means looking at new ways to mobilize your social media audiences to take action in the real world.
Davis Thinking
