Google is a genius… they really are, they get people to do things for them for free, because they are such neat/cool/interesting/fun/strange/unique things to do!

Let’s take for example their picture tagging ‘game’. I don’t know if this game is still around but I used it a number of months ago. The entire concept of this game was to write tags for pictures that were shown on the screen. Here’s how it worked. You were partnered up with some other random googler and shown pictures. You would type in words that you thought represented the picture (tags) as did your partner. Once you and your partner both typed in the same word, you moved onto the next picture. The more pictures you got through the higher your score… what do you do with the score? NOTHING! The top five or so scores were posted on the games front page, but that’s it. What did Google get from this? EVERYTHING! Not only did Google get people to use their service, but they got them to do the dirty work for them. Sure you can program web-bots to dig through sites and come up with tags that represent the sites content, but try doing that with a picture. How can you program something to look at a picture and decide a tag? Conclusion… Google is a genius.

And now I come across something new… http://mail.google.com/mvideo.
So this is a very neat concept that is a great advertising method for Google. What you do with this concept is you print out a PDF provided by Google that looks like an oversided envelope with a giant red ‘M’ (Gmail logo…). Then once you print it out, you make a less than 10 second video clip of the ‘M-velope’ entering from the left side of the screen and exiting the right side of the screen. From this Google will compile their favorites and make a little movie of the travels of this M-velope.

How cool of an idea is that! Seriously!

I watched the beginning of their compilation, where the M-velope starts at the Googleplex… its fun, check it out, really!

Here’s my thoughts…
Everyone wants to be a little more than they currently are. A little more famous, have a little more money… ya know? So people will happily advertise Google with the hopes that their video might make the final cut. Google is a genius… I know that I am already trying to come up with the best 10-second video clip idea!

Happy Friday!
Happy Birthday Sean!
Happy Birthday Joanna!

PS… Thanks to all who read, this is post number 100!