Cat + Man = Batman

How to be Batman with low cost?

1) Find black cat
2) Befriend a black cat
3) Put cat over your head.

You are now Batman! (For photos)

No cats hurt in making this photo.
Caution, be gentle or be prepared to be clawed.

Popularity of Transmedia

Transmedia is gaining popularity

There is even a TEDxTransmedia in 2013

Transmedia storytelling (also known as transmedia narrative or multiplatform storytelling) is the technique of telling a single story or story experience across multiple platforms and formats using current digital technologies. It is not to be confused with traditional cross-platform media franchises, sequels or adaptations. From a production standpoint, it involves creating content that engages an audience using various techniques to permeate their daily lives. In order to achieve this engagement, a transmedia production will develop stories across multiple forms of media in order to deliver unique pieces of content in each channel. Importantly, these pieces of content are not only linked together (overtly or subtly), but are in narrative synchronization with each other. (Wiki)

Transmedia storytelling from Robin Low

In terms of digital media, I feel that the understanding Transmedia and the trends is very important and definitely a must in any movie franchise. When telling a story of several parts, after launching a successful book, understanding Transmedia can develop a fan base, crowdsourcing fan fiction and co-creating a rich world where fan can identify with is more important than merchandizing and making money, giving parts of a story away.

Imagine "Lord of the Rings", "Star Wars" and "Harry Potter" if you sold the merchandizing after book 1, how much of your story and brand will you have lost.

-- Robin Low

Jean Claude Van Damme is making great commercials now.

Jean Claude Van Damme makes good commercials, is it a new calling for him?

-- Robin Low

Trust, reputation and collaborative online model

The Internet business is built for trust. From Amazon to Ebay, many online businesses enable strangers to meet and trust each other for transactions. It took a long time before people embraced the Internet, making it more open and collaborative. Making transaction online relies on a lot of trust. Trust that the buyer pays and the seller actually sells the right product and ships the products that are paid for. There are many checks and balances build in place to encourage honesty and simply do what is supposed.

Trust and reputation are two interrelated concepts. We can find trust at personal level. Reputation expresses an opinion resulting from collective opinions of community members. This evaluation may lead to risks such as penalty of innovative and minority ideas, problem described as “tyranny of the majority”. (http://www.gnuband.org/files/papers/trust_it_forward_Tyranny_of_the_Majority_or_Echo_Chambers_paolo_massa.pdf) If they give each user reputation scores that take only other similar users’ opinions into account, they run the risk of becoming “echo chambers” in which like-minded people reinforce each others’ views without being open to outside perspectives. 

On Twitter, Facebook and Wikipedia, perhaps, most of the webpages on the Internet, having an honor code is very important. On Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and the other social networking sites, you use your real profile so your friends, contacts, classmates and other acquaintances can find you and connect. Real accounts and profiles are important for online businesses to function as well. Today, more websites allow you to login using your Facebook profile and your real profile is important for many of the other services to function well. 

However, when people use fake profiles on Facebook, the whole fabric on what the Internet is built on is disrupted. Many people waste their time to maintain fake profiles just to spread hate and troll online. This behavior is very unproductive and serves absolutely no purpose -- sort of like the Nigerian Spam emails you get. Most of the people can see through the veil and ignore the trolls online that are just out to get a reaction and pick fights. 

Sadly, when a government is involved in Astroturfing and running fake accounts to "defend" their own opinions, it becomes a waste of taxpayers money. 

A property which characterizes the relationship between trust and reputation is reciprocity. The reciprocity is defined as the reciprocal exchange of assessment (favorable or not). Decrease any of these automatically conduct to the reverse effect. 

Like it or not, it is important that our society do not degrade to hate mongering and abuse, however controlling the medium, and being intolerant to bloggers critical about their policies, will only drive people to continue their conversations on other platforms and use fake IDs. 

In Singapore , although communication is more democratic today than what it was before, laws like defamation or contempt against critics are use used when the government could simply engage these parties in an debate to collaboratively find solutions to solve the problems.

Singaporeans are not stupid, they are very capable of finding solutions that work for them. There seems to be an open call for ideas, however, many good ideas are rejected by the government because it simply comes from the opposition. There are many views and opinions online, and just because they are different from the government’s view, it does not necessarily mean they are destructive, but instead it means they care about their country to comment. There are always the good, the bad and the ugly, online and in real life. Singaporeans today are better educated, and can think critically. 

To say that “satisfied people don’t go to the Internet, unhappy people do” feels like the Prime Minister has given up on engagement. It takes time to build trust and reputation but it is very easy to lose it. Sadly, there will only be more “unhappy people” as the future unveils more technology to keep more people connected – on the Internet.

-- Robin Low

Engagement and Relevance.

Many organizations, governments and companies want to get on to Social Media because they want to hear good things about their companies and perhaps get business with the help of word of mouth. However, it is important to know that even when businesses are planning and building social media programs and campaigns to try to gather more support, no matter how enthusiastic they are to create the best campaign, customers will always engage on their own time.

People go on social media to feel connected with friends and family. However, they are not going to "connect" with a brand or a business. Companies must strive to a higher purpose to design sharable experiences that deliver tangible value in return for the customers' "time, attention, endorsement and data."

Even when a customer gives a negative feedback, the feedback can be used as a learning case so other customers may not get the same negative experience. It does take time and effort to give feedback, positive or negative. For some customers, the situation can actually be saved, and resolving it transparently can win positive sentiments as well.

Take in the good and the bad.

Stay Relevant.

-- Robin Low

Social Media is the Reason Governing is Harder #Singapore

From Today Singapore where replies are disabled, showing how eager the government is listening to the citizens.

Previously, Singapore can ignore the coffee shop talks as they control and still control all forms of media. Ranked 149/179 on Press Freedom, Singapore has always struggled in winning views.

On Social Media, China, Vietnam, Sri Lanka have a lot of angry people online, and Singapore have their fair share. The fact that in many of these controlled countries with poor press freedom, views are very polarized and there are many hurtful remarks as many of these people use fake IDs.

In the US, you do get the occasional troll, however, there are a lot of constructive feedback as well.

I would say, the reasons why many people criticize about your government or your company is mostly because they do care. They want to share their views, and if you can actually share the reasoning behind your opinion, some may understand and you can win some over.

I must say the Prime Minister is trying to communicate, and I must be supportive of him trying. However, I do have some opinions to share.

Social Media being quick and real time, is actually a great opportunity for you to improve your government. If you truly want to engage, you will find that your actions and words, though gets analyzed by everyone, and critique by everyone, the bright side is that you can get instant feedback. To humanize is very important. If you reply transparently, share thoughts and confess to errors, people can see the human side and forgive. However, demonizing people who do not agree with you does not help at all.

On Social Media, we communicate. We do not wait for the best super-rationale, non-emotional and politically correct answer. It feels detached, scripted and formal. Proper engagement can gain trust and relevance. Policies can be crowd-sourced and co-created. If you want people to engage, you must listed to people, and take in both the good and bad. And most importantly, take actions that can regain the trust of citizens. (yes, even those on social media)

-- Robin Low

The Internet and Cats

If you are on social media, chances are, you probably have watched cat videos and browsed lots of cat images. Cat owners are creating their cat’s profiles, and sharing updates in character on Facebook. Cats have their own friends, wall posts, conversations and even relationships.

A local (Singapore) Cat, @Satsugai Cat has more than 5,000 friends on Facebook, 3,000 fans(https://www.facebook.com/catwisdom)  on Facebook and 20,000 followers on Twitter. (https://twitter.com/satsugaicat) Another cat, Duke Orange(https://twitter.com/dukeorange)  has more than 1,000 twitter followers and more than 1,000 friends. (https://www.facebook.com/dukeorange)  In the US, there are lots of famous cats, Sockington (https://www.facebook.com/sockington) has more than 10,000 fans and 1.3 million followers on Twitter. (https://twitter.com/sockington) Maru the Cat has more than 18 million viewers on a video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_AbfPXTKms) . Grumpy Cat has a lot of Memes, A coffee Drink (http://grumppuccino.net/) and a movie deal. (http://www.digitaltrends.com/social-media/grumpy-cat-signs-a-hollywood-movie-deal-still-not-impressed/) 

One might ask why people follow cats. I’ve looked at many cat Facebook profiles and cat Twitter accounts, many of them are humorous, some pretty serious, while others – creepy. The things shared on their posts are generally cat or pets related. 

So why are cats more popular?

There is a new dimension of self-expression with cats. These creative people share cat pictures with captions on LOLCats in Catspeak, a language with spelling and grammatical errors made to sound cute. (http://icanhas.cheezburger.com/ ) When someone finds the images with the captions intersting, they share it with their friends who share it with their friends as well. This happens so often that the guy who started the I Can Has Cheezburger network managed to build a multimillion dollar corporation out of silly cat pictures. 

The following are reasons are why cats are popular online.

People relate to cats.

In many ways, cats are very expressive and have a range of emotions which can be captioned. Many people on the Internet are introverts, and cats are seen as self-dependent introverts because they are more likely to spend time with themselves. 

Cats are cute

People like to share cute animals like dolphins, hamsters and puppies. And yes, cats are cute. To add to the cuteness, the behavior of young cats are often unpredictable and interesting, and they can be very creative to get what they want.

That’s how cat owners socialize

You can bring your dog out on a leash to a park, but you can’t with your cat. Perhaps the Internet is the way for cat owners to socialize. If they do not bother to bring their cats for walks, posting their cat photos and videos and commenting on others is the next best thing. They can do it at their own convenience.

Cats transcend culture

No matter what language you speak, cat videos can speak to you. Recently, in August 28, 2013, over 10,000 tickets were sold for Lil Bub and Friends (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yx6cY84XmwU)  at an event at the Internet Cat Video Festival. (http://www.walkerart.org/press/browse/press-releases/2013/walker-art-centers-internet-cat-video-festiva)

Cats are funny

Cats seem to be cute and self-possessed, but at the same time arrogant and self-pompous, making them perfect vehicles for Internet humor. Cats have a lot of dignity and somehow humans like to see them getting humiliated online.

Culture shift to own cats

Many people own cats because of their lifestyles. Geeks tend to own cats as cats don’t need walks and cats are pretty independent. Everything is good when food and water is provided and the litter box is not full. Cats are also gaining popularity as pets as people who own pets later in their lives tend to get cats and many household with cats tend to own more than one as well.

On the Internet, people can be interacting with friends and other pet lovers by commenting and sharing cat video or pictures, even when they are allergic to cats. Thus Internet cats become a social object to be shared and conversation point to help connect people. Perhaps people secretly want to be like cats as cats seem totally comfortable being exactly what they are and they live for the moment.