Creating a movement, a viral video, and more – The Monday Sept 27th Roundup

Why do people search for stuff like “the formula for a successful viral video”? In my last link of the day (which I haven’t posted thanks to a login-wall) people were asking about that, and it always blows me away that any reasonably intelligent person would ask a question like that. If your video was concocted from a formula wouldn’t that make it, I dunno, formulaic? Then again, the roller blading babies did go viral, so maybe that speaks to peoples insane interest in the uninteresting.

On a less ranty note we’ve got a roundup this week filled with great content such as: how to create a movement in under 3 minutes; Gmail’s drag and drop file uploading; and the effects (or lack thereof) of Google Instant on advertising campaigns.

• We start the week with some good news: SEORoundtable reporting on a thread at Web Masters World where advertisers are saying that Google Instant has not impacted their advertising campaigns.
• Click Equations has 6 tips for better PPC Analysis, including setting internal benchmarks, testing potential ads, and more.

• Ajaxian, always one to post cool bits of coding know-how, had an explanation last week about how Gmails drag and drop file attachment works.
• Oh god, two “x ways” posts this week. This time it’s 3 tips for a Faster Website.

• The Omniture blog has a post on Time Based Analysis, watching when visitors return, to then find out what brought them back.
• With all this talk about Evercookie there’s been a lot of hullaballoo about cookie privacy, which has prompted Stephan Hammel to post about Peterson’s WAA code of ethics. While I agree that the cookie fear is overblown, a code of ethics isn’t going to do much to stop people who are gathering personally identifiable information.

• Thanks to 52 weeks of UX, I was forwarded to the Rocket Surgery Made Easy companion site. Very cool for people reading the book and looking for some extra info.
• Six Revisions says the secret to creating a great user interface is “speaking the language” of your user. By which they mean using design elements that your users recognize. Ok, so maybe that’s not so revolutionary, but it does provide some nice advice .

• Our first misc link is one of my favourite TED talks yet: how to start a movement in under 3 minutes.
  
• The next was going to be an AdvertisingAge article on viral videos, but now they’re put their login-wall in my way so no more links to it. Instead I’ll say that Old Spice appears to have finally gotten it right with their last advertising campaign, prompting some people to ask if they have “found the formula” for successful viral videos. The answer is No. Old Spice has been creating somewhat-viral style videos for ages, from having Bruce Campbell speak riddles while walking by the best painting in the world, or play Hungry Like a Wolf on a piano, to having Neil Patrick Harris explain how hes a real fake doctor, and more. However they’ve also (and still do) produced loads of failures. And so if you want Old Spice’s formula, I can tell you it: keep trying. Creating a great viral video means creating a lot of duds.