Posts Tagged ‘Playboy’

In the same week that Playboy Enterprises announced that it would go private, it also announced that the ad for Playboy Fragrance for Men by Coty in the January issue of Playboy will be very public.

Playboy will incorporate mobile image-recognition technology from Mobius into the ad, allowing readers who snap photos of any of the 12 2010 Playboy Playmates and send them to Playboy@agm.tw to gain access to exclusive premium photos and videos, as well as the ability to purchase Coty’s line of Playboy Fragrance for Men via a secure mobile connection.

Mobius said its self-learning mobile image-recognition system determines the capabilities of the device that sent the image and returns content best-suited for that particular device — smart-phone users will receive high-quality, optimized video and still images, while those using feature phones will receive video and images at file sizes and resolutions that are in line with the capabilities of their devices.

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Join Baratunde Thurston (left), The Onion’s Director of Digital and author of How to Be Black, for an entertaining look at creative social media campaigns in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting February 16. Other speakers include Morin Oluwole (Facebook), Tim Devane (bitly), and SocialTimes' writer Devon Glenn.   Register now.

Once in a while, celebrity news reminds us just how gossip-y Twitter can be. This week, Hugh Hefner got engaged to one of his Playmates, Crystal Harris, and the news came out on Twitter. Of course, gossip web sites have been spreading news like this for ages, but when tweets are involved, there’s a kind [...]

Playboy is putting the “hard” in hard drive, teaming up with Bondi Digital Publishing to release a 250-gigabyte hard drive containing every issue of the magazine from 1953-2010, totaling more than 650 issues and over 100,000 pages.

The universal-serial-bus-powered hard drive sells for $299.95, and it is compatible with Macs and PCs. The device measures three inches by five inches and contains 200 GB of extra storage space.

Playboy said in a statement:

Why would you let more than 650 of your favorite Playmates celebrate the holidays in a damp garage, stashed under your bed, or crowded together in the basement, when you can bring them all together beneath the mistletoe this year?

And Bondi co-founder Murat Aktar added:

This is the first time that Playboy, one of the most influential brands on the globe, has offered its entire archive in one place. We’re proud to partner with Playboy to bring more than five decades of thought-provoking articles, celebrity interviews, and stunning photography to the consumer in a whole new way.

Want to become a rockstar? Perhaps you want to pose nude in Playboy. Whatever your dreams and aspirations are, social media can help you get there. In the past few days, I’ve received multiple press releases surrounding individuals becoming the next star. Recently, Jason Calacanis held the Mahalo Daily VLOG Idol competition.

Last week Alicia Keys decided to outsource the search for her backup singer to MySpace. You can go check out her MySpace page for details. Playboy also announced last week that they have outsourced the search for their 55th playmate via YouTube. I took a look at the responses so far and they are pretty entertaining.

Outsourcing the search for talent to social media can be a big gamble. Jason Calacanis for instance received a number of submissions via YouTube but none of them were selected. Instead they decided to do in house auditions. After 1 month and over 62,000 views of the Playboy Playmate search, there have been only 4 responses. My guess is that Playboy will have to look for a new source for their search.

While I think social media can be a good source for finding talent, the best talent search still requires in person auditions. Just listen to the top performers on MySpace karaoke and you’ll quickly notice that it is still difficult to judge the quality of their singing due to effects and the quality of the microphone the singers choose. There are very few examples of people that have made the jump from social media from prime time successfully. Do you know of any successful examples?