For a charitable business, like StudioE9’s client and partner Blanket America, helping those in need isn’t just the right thing to do, but a brand position. Following the January earthquake in Haiti, StudioE9 recommended that Blanket America expand its domestic giving program to incorporate Haiti. After supplying 80,000 sheets through WorldVision it became clear that relief was not enough. Supplies would eventually dwindle. Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, needed sustainable development. Fast.

Social media proved a vehicle for unprecedented charitable outpouring immediately following the earthquake, so the challenge was to cultivate a similar interest in long term development. A mass consumer movement, driven by viral adoption, could potentially scale fast enough to meet the growing need. With this in mind, StudioE9 and Blanket America launched CHOOSE HAITI.
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StudioE9 receives mention for it’s role in helping Blanket America provide 1 Million blankets to people in need though the use of social media.

Excerpt from Adam Penenberg’s article in Fast Company.

“Blanket America creates a different mechanism for charity. For every item a user buys, another is given away to someone in need. Therefore each act of consumption is also social instead of anti-social. Demand and donation become synonymous. When someone targets their needs, they are also targeting someone else’s needs.”

Read more at Fast Company.

Publisher’s Weekly, 10/5/2009

Facebook may have 300 million users, but that doesn’t mean that these social digerati are easy to reach—which explains why advertising on the so-called social Web so far has largely been a dud. So when journalist Adam Penenberg approached StudioE9 to create an online marketing campaign for his new book, Viral Loop, we recognized a unique opportunity: we would design and implement a proof of concept for his book. In essence, set out to create a viral loop around Viral Loop.

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Autumn has been busy here at StudioE9 with the launch of several campaigns and web ventures. We look forward to writing about our recent adventures in the emerging media space as soon as we get a chance to catch our breath. In the meantime, please take a moment to read recent press coverage on one of our favorite campaigns, The Viral Loop.

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Last December 4, I woke up suddenly at 6am in my hotel room in Los Angeles with a really great idea for a wiki. A really fantastically great idea. I wouldn’t say that I was positive it would make me billions, but I figured the odds were at least fifty percent.

I should point out that I’m a magazine writer, not a computer person, and I hadn’t programmed a computer since high school, in the days when the most sophisticated way to store data was on a tape recorder. However, my idea seemed so self-evidently genius that the only worry nagging me was that someone had already thought of it.

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StudioE9’s client, Signal Patterns, talks about their new scientific-based social web application.

People are continuously looking for new ways to discover more about themselves and their friends.  At Signal Patterns, we are devoted to creating innovative, scientific-based social web applications that help to characterize and connect people in novel and meaningful ways.  Comprised of leading experts in personality psychology, psychometrics and cognitive neuroscience, our Science Team works closely with our developers to create surveys and models that cover a wide range of domains.  We offer users custom-tailored feedback that is engaging and interactive, as well as a way to search and connect with friends and like-minded individuals.  
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Is it necessary to generalize about anything anymore? Forget Google’s “don’t be evil.” That blank stare of data correlation as its own ends is the true ethic. Wired’s Chris Anderson got it right last month:

“Who knows why people do what they do? The point is they do it, and we can track and measure it with unprecedented fidelity. With enough data, the numbers speak for themselves.”

While third party Facebook developers, like RockYou, are responsive to the tastes of 14 year old volley ballers, the host companies (i.e.: Facebook) still favor plain vanilla. Although Facebook is a social network, its prioritizing of efficiency over self expression is Google-esque — but are these two things truly mutually exclusive?
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Users are spending a great deal of time within social platforms and communities, but unlike the landscape of ten years ago, stickiness doesn’t bring success or financial rewards.  While Facebook has doubled their growth in the last year, they’re still within 35MM unique in the US, and who could say how many of those unique are active… And while brands typically approach these platforms hoping to find virality, does today’s mounting clutter diminish their chances of creating meaningful connections? Finally, is there a pricing model that sets them up for success?
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Have you ever wondered how Web 2.0 stalwarts like Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Twitter and the rest grew so fast? They went viral, of course. To use their products induces you to spread them. (What’s the sense of being on Facebook or Twitter if none of your friends are?)

My forthcoming book, the VIRAL LOOP, looks at how many of today’s most successful companies are being built to facilitate viral growth. But don’t confuse all this with a viral marketing campaign, which may yield an impressive one-time cascade of online traffic. Viral loops by definition must be replicable and are engineered to grow at staggering rates—far beyond any viral ad or Mentos-Diet Coke video. Reproducibility, in turn, suggests anyone should be able test features of a viral loop.
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