Grown Up Thinking

With a single evolutionary change to its search engine, Google has facilitated a major shift in user experience for finding, exploring, and purchasing music online.

The search giant has tapped leading social music platforms Pandora, iMeem, Lala, Rhapsody, and the recent MySpace acquisition, iLike, to provide intelligent music-related search results and legal downloads through the Google Music Search.

Search Google for an artist, album, song, or string of lyrics and you’ll be greeted with full-length previews of the music streamed from Lala.com or MySpace Music.

Google search results for "david bowie"

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McDonald’s Picadilly Circus

In a brilliant marketing strategy which integrates both on and offline tactics, McDonald’s Piccadilly Circus ad is the billboard of the moment. Tourists pose in front of the ad, which flashes various products that they can take pictures with to create funny souvenirs (think Leaning Tower of Pisa-ish). The pictures are then uploaded by users to Flickr, Facebook, YouTube, etc., as well as fan created pages. Surprisingly, McDonald’s comprehensive Facebook Page, has a small fan base and not as much interaction as you might expect. This simple, yet effective spin on traditional outdoor advertising is a sure-fire way to help develop that community of devoted burger lovers.

In yet another chapter of recession-morphed retail, Rent the Runway is proving you’re either in or out…of the mailbox, that is. For most people, $3,000 couture dresses are simply out of the budget. Rent the Runway is striving to change that by offering high-end, in-season fashions as easily accessible as your Netflix queue. A bold new twist on Cinderella’s fairy godmother, that priceless Proenza Schouler gown can now arrive just in time for the ball directly to your front door! The $50-$200 price tag includes a return envelope and dry cleaning is even included.

Time will ultimately tell how the newbie service pans out. The New York Times reported on some of the potential shortfalls, namely keeping up-to-date with the current fashions. (Is that last season? The HORROR!) But ultimately, I think this is a sweet valuable service for chicas who want to live like a frugalista princess until the stroke of midnight…or until the UPS guy shows up, I guess.

The masses have spoken, yet Facebook won’t deliver what we want. Thankfully, some awesome developer somewhere has given into our demands. The “Dislike” button is finally available!! Slow clap!

Now, you can install a Firefox plugin that gives your Facebook account access to the big ol’ thumbs DOWN, allowing you to boldly express your disdain for your ex-boyfriend’s new relationship status, or your roommate’s announcement that she just accidentally knocked your toothbrush into the toilet. So LOL, right? “Dislike”!!!

The only catch? Your friends need to have installed the plug-in themselves to see your “thumbs down”, which could perhaps turn into an incentive for Facebook to finally add their own. Why are they holding out on us, anyway?

A standard “Dislike” button would have come in serious handy this morning while oodles of my Facebook friends were touting the Yankees’ World Series win.  While I now consider myself a New Yorker, I was born on the North Shore of Boston and grew up in Connecticut where you’re raised either Yanks or Sox. I would have LOVED to put my big “Dislike” stamp across all of Facebook today. (Me, bitter? Noooo. I just have a tough time sympathizing with a 9-year wait for a World Series win, when my team once waited 86.)

Armed with this new tool, there’s a scary chance my online persona could go from witty to wicked (and not in the “Big Papi is a wicked good hittuh!” sense.)

Use wisely, friends! Or, um, whichever friends I still have next week.

I grew up with a mouse and keyboard in my hand. Sure, I played Oregon Trail, competed with my brother and sister in computer games, and hung out every night on AIM. I grew up with technology as it was becoming social.

The power of social technologies has amplified the power of consumers. In the digital age, every individual has the opportunity to be an influencer. The ‘publish’ button has given us the power (and the responsibility) to be citizen watchdogs. While this capability has always existed through traditional in-person word of mouth, it is amplified by the power of social technologies. Little did we know the drastic change that was happening while we stared at our shining screens worried about our Ox mid-game on the Trail.

Needless to say, Generation Y has been at the heart of this change, and the Net Generation is not far behind.

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Many companies have long been trying to come up with a way to give people back relevant answers that truly solve the question being posed. Of course there are the search engines, some like (ask.com) even starting out trying to answer search queries posed as actual questions. Other services like Cha Cha have explored ways to use actual people to answer questions, in Cha Cha’s case, a network of paid reps.

The idea of getting an answer to any question  in a matter of minutes or even seconds has always been an dream and as Google has shown, there is certainly money to be had for efficiently answering people’s queries. Now, a startup may actually have found away to make this dream a reality. After recently discovering Aardvark, I may already qualify as an addict. I’ve asked 10 questions over the past few days, ranging from new restaurants in the East Village to the season’s best TV shows to where to find the best UX talent, and in almost all cases gotten extremely helpful answers back.

What’s best is Aardvark is completely crowdsourced and not just by random people. Aardvark uses Facebook Connect to tap into your network and their respective networks to find the best people to answer each question based on their interests, subjects they have added and questions they previously answered. Right in the heart of where social networking, search and crowdsourcing all meet, Aaardvark just might have hit the next gold mine.