The Social Path

Going to BlogWorld? Don't miss 'Like It Or Spike It'

If you're one of the 4,000 digital savants coming out to BlogWorld in Las Vegas (Oct. 14-16), you might want to swing by my session, "Like It or Spike It: A Hard Look at Social Media Case Studies" at 1:30 p.m. Thursday.

I'll be co-presenting with Dave Peck, a veteran social media strategist currently working with the Xerox-funded project Meshin, described as "the first ever semantic Outlook sidebar." Be sure to check it out to learn more.

At BlogWorld, we'll be walking through several recent and relatively unknown case studies — so don't expect the same old stuff. There might be a little overlap with my recent presentation alongside Dan Shust at Internet Retailer, but much of it will be fresh and ripe for the nitpicking.

Hope to see you there. Even if you can't make it to our session, be sure to stop me in the hall and give me the secret Social Path handshake. Also, please take a moment to teach me the secret Social Path handshake.

David Griner is a social media strategist for Luckie and Company and contributing editor for Adweek’s blog, AdFreak.com. You can reach him by e-mail or on Twitter.

Why I still like Twitter.

For more than four years, Twitter has been chugging along as one of the most fascinating and misunderstood experiments in the history of human communication.

It can be quirky, daunting and questionably reliable. But Twitter can also be inspiring, informative and, at times, more powerful than all other social networks combined.

As you can see in the video above, Twitter has announced some pretty impressive changes to the way it lets you share and digest information. And while these improvements definitely help create a better user experience, they also highlight how Twitter has managed to offer and improve upon the same service year after year, while sites like Facebook continuously add, remove and redesign their features at dizzying speeds.

So in honor of "the new Twitter," I thought I'd share some thoughts on why this scrappy, two-sentence service remains the hub of my online life.  

Google Instant debuts, saving 1 million hours per day.

Big announcement from Google today as the search juggernaut reveals its new real-time results on Google.com. As you type, results appear automatically below the search bar, so you can more quickly find what you're looking for.

Google Instant is being rolled out as we speak, so in case it's still not working for you,  check out this video introduction:

According to The New York Times, Google has estimated that its new results will shave 2-6 seconds off each search. That's a cumulative 3.5 billion seconds — or nearly 1 million hours — saved per day.

I'll especially be curious to see how this new approach is incorporated into Web browsers and Google mobile apps. From the company's statements today, it sounds like we'll find out in the coming months.

So what do you think? Impressed with the new results? Find it too distracting?

And most importantly, got any ideas on how the world should use those 1 million salvaged hours each day?

David Griner is a social media strategist for Luckie and Company and contributing editor for Adweek’s blog, AdFreak.com. You can reach him by e-mail or on Twitter.

Arcade Fire launches HTML5 (oh, and a new album).

If you've felt a bit behind on understanding HTML5, an emerging new standard for Web content, here's a pretty cool way to see the features and potential for yourself.

Indie rock band The Arcade Fire has launched an interactive music video in partnership with Google Chrome to promote both the new album, "The Suburb," and the power of HTML5. The video illustrates techniques such as choreographed windows, interactive flocking, custom-rendered maps, real-time compositing, procedural drawing and 3D canvas rendering. I don't even know what those are, but I now know they are awesome.

Visit TheWildernessDowntown.com to experience the video, which involves some interesting viewer interaction. You'll probably want to try it in Google Chrome, though it theoretically works in Safari too.

Whatever your take on the song, you have to admit it's a pretty inventive concept and a great way for a lesser-known band to hitch its wagon to something so buzzworthy. Between this and Arcade Fire's live-streamed concert earlier this month on YouTube, they might just supplant OK Go as the official band of social media. 

Kammie Avant is a social media planner for Luckie & Company. You can contact her by e-mail or follow @KammieAvant on Twitter.