09 Jan Heineken QR Codes, Chicago Snow, Klout Raises $30 million, London Olympics | Topics That Are Igniting
Heineken Turns People Into QR Codes at Open’er Festival
A case study was just released for Heineken’s U-Code promotion at their 2011 Open’er Festival in Poland. Heineken wanted to create an easy way for attendees to interact with each other at the 4 day festival. Concertgoers could enter a booth and print QR Codes which upon being scanned would reveal their own personal message. The stickers proved to be a very popular icebreaker during the festival as Heineken printed over 5000 of them, 200% more than their original goal.
Snow Shoveling Becomes Social in Chicago
To make the otherwise laborious task of shoveling snow a bit more bearable, the City of Chicago has launched the interactive city website ChicagoShovels.org where users can:
- Adopt their patch of sidewalk online and brag about how clean it is on Facebook
- See where city snow plows are during and after a storm, following little plow icons on a city map
- Sign up for Snow Corps, which lets volunteers contact the city to find out who needs help shoveling their sidewalks
- Check on the weather on the site or download “winter apps,” which include maps of banned parking areas during a storm
- Find out where the city “relocated” their car during a storm
Klout Raises $30 Million in Funding
Klout raised an impressive third round of funding led by Kleiner Perkins with the start of 2012. The social media influence ranking startup is estimated to have raised $30 million with the help of a host of venture capital firms. CEO Joe Fernandez wrote in a blog post that the funding will go towards engineering and infrastructure. In the near future, Klout is planning to add Posterous, bit.ly, Quora, Yelp, Livefyre, Disqus and other services and is in the process of building scoring models for seven more services including YouTube, Blogger, Tumblr, Instagram, WordPress.com, Flickr and Last.fm.
London 2012 sets Social Media Restrictions
Locog Communications, organizers at this year’s London Olympics, have set out some strict social media rules for the 70,000 volunteers (also known as Games Makers).
In a “what to do and what not to do” section, it warns volunteers:
- not to appear in your local paper about being a Games Maker or visiting a school without seeking permission
- not to disclose their location
- not to post a picture or video of backstage areas closed to the public
- not to disclose breaking news about an athlete
- not to tell their social network about a visiting VIP (e.g. an athlete, celebrity, or dignitary)
- not to get involved in detailed discussion about the Games online
However, are allowed to retweet or pass on official London 2012 postings. Locog Communications is in the process of recruiting and training the 70,000 volunteers who will help to run the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympic Games and 30,000 of them had been notified by the end of 2011.
