Fake Twitter Account PRISM Is A Hit On Social

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Not only has the U.S. government been tracking your email and cell phone metadata, but, by the looks of it, it’s been tweeting about it.

Just kidding. @PRISM_NSA is indeed a fake account. But it is certainly a clever one, one that is able to find a surveillance tie-in for timely topics as wide-ranging as open-source software, Father’s Day, gun control, online dating algorithms and the chronic challenge of getting anyone to read one’s blog.

The account has more than 15,000 followers and continues to grow. As for who’s behind it, you’ll have to ask the NSA. Enjoy some of the latest tweets below!

Source: Social Times

 

Xbox One Loses Interest In China

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Gamers everywhere watched the press conferences at E3 with bated breath last monday, as Microsoft and Sony duked it out in front of millions of people to see which console would come out the victor in the next generation. According to Chinese gamers, who live in a country where consoles are illegal, it was a no-contest victory for Sony. While consoles are illegal there, they aren’t exactly hard to come across, but some of Microsoft’s policies make it hard to warrant buying the Xbox One.

The requirement to connect to the Internet once every 24 hours makes it incredibly difficult to allow players in China to even play single player games, as Microsoft won’t have servers in China. This essentially kills off the market in China. The PS4 will use the same disc based system that is par for the course on consoles, and won’t require a connection to the server to use, giving Sony a distinct advantage. In addition, the PS4 is $100 cheaper than the Xbox One. Combined with the difficulty of getting online, that makes the PS4 an early frontrunner in the war for the living room in China.

Although consoles are technically illegal in China, they are easy to acquire. Estimates are that the Xbox 360 alone has sold 2-3 million units in China; not bad for something that’s illegal to sell. It’s not clear if China will ever lift the ban on consoles, but certainly console makers would love to see that market open up to them.

 

Source: Techinasia

Vine Ads Generate Interest In Six Seconds Or Less

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Regal Entertainment Group, who is in charge of movie theaters across the nation, has taken to Vine to start getting people to theaters. Vine is an app and website where users upload 6 second videos which can be watched by people following the specific profiles, working as a Twitter for video essentially. Vine has become a way to get quick messages associated with a product out on a wide scale.

Earlier this year, Bethesda Softworks used Vine in their campaigns for upcoming games The Evil Within and Wolfenstein: The New Order. Prior to the game’s announcements, the quick six-second videos were a way of teasing their new projects to the public, generating interest and buzz around it without directly giving any information about the nature of the projects. That is where the appeal of Vine comes from — in six seconds a company is able to tell a story about their product while leaving it to the viewer to look for more information themselves, the same way Twitter tells a story in 140 characters or less. Vine has caught on, and is quickly becoming a new way companies are generating interest for their products.

Games are a natural subject of Vine marketing efforts, since most games feature terrific video content. Cutting down a brand message into a mere six seconds requires creativity and cleverness. Time for game marketers to show how creative they can be!

 

Source: AdWeek

Heyzap Ad Network Now Over 800 Games

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According to mobile ad developer Heyzap, their ads are now featured in well over 800 games, and that number is increasing steadily. To show how steady their growth is, only three months ago they were featured in 350 games. They have grown to be featured in over 100 percent more games than they were in March, and they are still growing. The overall number of impressions they have is growing with the number of publishers using their ad interface, according to founder Jude Gomila.

The advertising Heyzap offers moves beyond just showing another game in between sessions of Words With Friends (big publishers like Zynga and DeNA use Heyzap). Heyzap tries to recommend games that users would want to play based on collected data shared on Heyzap’s social platform. Users are shown games that are not only paid to be promoted, but that gamers would want to play based on their gaming habits. The number of games being added to their library of games, in addition to their ability to market to people likely to play marketed games makes them a powerful tool for getting a game discovered.

Gomila’s not shy about offering his opinion of mobile advertising. “We think most mobile ads suck,” Gomila said. Heyzap is bent on helping marketers change that state of affairs.

Source: TechCrunch

Beyond: Two Souls E3 Trailer Shows The Military Might Of Ellen Page

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The newest trailer for Quantic Dream’s Beyond: Two Souls shows off the power that the studio is known for. After their mysterious reveal for the game at last year’s E3, this year’s trailer shows off more of the story of the game, including more appearances by the game’s stars Willem Dafoe and Ellen Page. The game is set to come out this October exclusively for PS3.

 

Apps Should Be Optimized For iOS 7

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While Apple isn’t making it a requirement to update apps that were available for iOS 6 to be optimized for iOS 7, the difference in look between versions will be abundantly clear. A number of features of the operating system have been altered in the change to version 7, and these changes will clearly be reflected in apps that are upgraded to meet the specifications of the new operating system.

The difference between an optimized app and an un-optimized app will be comparable to having a non-Retina app running on the Retina display, according to app developer Entropy Labs. In other words, an un-optimized app will look clunky. For games this won’t be as much of an issue since usually much of the interface for games is down within the game’s style. Still, the app icon may be an issue, and developers will want to look at some of Apple’s apps for design cues. Before the release of iOS 7 sometime this fall developers should make sure their apps are ready both design-wise and functionally.

Game developers will want to add support for game controllers (where applicable) through Apple’s new controller API. With some 1500 new APIs introduced by Apple for iOS7, it will take some time to determine which ones developers need to use in a particular app. It’s going to be a busy summer for app developers.

 

The Division Trailer Shows Shows How Black Friday Ends the World

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The reveal trailer for Tom Clancy’s The Division tells a what-if story based on a real-life military operation called Dark Winter. What if our world’s infrastructure was shut down one piece at a time because of a disease What would it take to put it back together The Division hopes to answer these questions in RPG form upon its (unannounced, but probably 2014) release.

 

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Dragon Age Inquisition E3 Trailer Shows How War Ravages Ferelden

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The newest iteration of Bioware’s Dragon Age franchise has finally been revealed in a trailer released during EA’s E3 press conference. The trailer shows off the desolation and destruction that comes with a world torn apart by war between nations and a new enemy. It all culminates in the return of a familiar face in the form of the mage Morrigan who was an integral character in the first game.

Gillette’s Clever Man Of Steel Marketing Tie-In

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Gillette has adroitly seized on one aspect of the new Man of Steel movie as the basis for an interesting marketing campaign on YouTube. Early in the movie, we see Clark Kent sporting a beard, but later on when he dons the iconic uniform Superman is clean-shaven. How does he get that way if his beard is as invulnerable as his body?

Gillette has short videos offering the opinions of celebrities like the Mythbusters (Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage), Bill Nye, director Kevin Smith and actress Mayim Bialik. You are asked to vote on your favorite theory, and engage with the conversation in multiple ways.

This would be an excellent template for marketing a game in an interesting way, engaging users with some core aspect of the game. Gillette has tied the mystery to the key benefit of the company’s product, and game marketers would be wise to do the same. Check out the Gillette site here. {link no longer active}

Twitter Shows Tweet Analytics To Users

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Twitter has opened up extensive analytics to all users of their site to see exactly how much reach each tweet gets in terms of favorites, retweets, and replies. In addition, this allows users to sort tweets by popularity, showing only the most popular tweets, or all tweets done to show what is popular among your followers.

This opens up a range of possibilities for new twitter marketers, including showing exactly what campaigns are reaching a lot of people, and which tweets are floundering and letting marketers adjust accordingly. In addition, this could also work in conjunction with Twitter’s ad platform, showing exaclty how effective advertising through twitter can be in the form of likes, retweets and replies.

Game marketers will no doubt welcome the arrival of more information, and this should encourage greater usage of tweets as a marketing medium. We’ve already seen some Twitter-based game efforts; perhaps an integration of a Twitter game with another game might be a creative marketing tool. Twitter’s analytics makes such an undertaking much more useful as a source of marketing data.

 

Source: TechCrunch