Matrix Group International

Month: August 2012

  • Goodwill Donate Match Game Facebook App

    Goodwill Donate Match Game Facebook App

    Matrix Group developed a Facebook app for Goodwill Industries International as part of the organization’s Donate Movement. The interactive campaign demonstrates how supporters’ donations of clothes and everyday household items are transformed into funds that support the organization’s mission.

    In order to further expose the Donate Movement and expand its reach, Goodwill® sought to implement its popular Donate Match Game as a Facebook App. In order to help bring this vision to life, Matrix Group:

    • Adapted the original iOS game to comply with Facebook’s rules for apps.
    • Created Facebook-specific paths for users to publish their scores and thus gain exposure for the game and the Donate Movement.
    • Developed a registration form, which is automatically completed when the player finishes the game. The completed form allows users to enter a contest for a free laptop, provided by Family Circle Magazine.

    Play the game on your Facebook page.

  • Trinity Missions Website Redesign

    Trinity Missions Website Redesign

    Founded in Alabama in 1929 by Fr. Thomas Judge, C.M., Trinity Missions is dedicated to spreading the Gospel while responding to the needs of the poor, isolated and marginalized.  They provide ministry services to communities across the United States, Colombia, Puerto Rico, Costa Rica and Mexico.

    Trinity Missions wanted to merge its three original sites under one domain, www.trinitymissions.org, and showcase the impact of its work through volunteer stories. To support its members’ work, staff wanted to create a members’ portal with resources, directories and other valuable information. Finally, staff needed the ability to create and manage content in both English and Spanish.

    To help Trinity Missions make this vision into a reality, we:

    • Crafted a beautiful site that showcased the ways in which the congregation and its supporters have brought faith, food, and comfort to thousands in need.
    •  Implemented the site in WordPress.  
    • Installed a plugin to make it easier for staff to manage both the English and Spanish-language versions of the site.
    •  Created a new members’ section on the website.

    Visit the Trinity Missions Website.

  • Are the App Stores Devaluing Your Organization’s Products?

    Are the App Stores Devaluing Your Organization’s Products?

    Image of the App Store Icon My favorite handwriting curriculum company (Handwriting Without Tears) just released an app through the iTunes store. It’s called Wet Dry Try and it helps kids practice writing their upper case letters and numbers. The app is great. It responds nicely, it’s got a nice reward system and it teaches really great habits. The app costs $4.99.

    What I find interesting are some of the comments about how expensive the app is. One person said $4.99 was really expensive and he wished the app did more. In my mind, the app is a bargain. I paid $4.99 for a Blue’s Clues book that my 2 year old and I will read a dozen times (okay, maybe more, he loves Blue’s Clues). I paid $15 for a workbook we’ll use for a couple of weeks. My lunch today was nearly $6! We’ll use this handwriting app for months and if it teaches my little one good writing habits, it will be worth 100 times the $4.99 I paid!

    So I got to thinking. Most of the apps I see in the app store are free, $.99 or $1.99. So by comparison, the WetDryTry app at $4.99 seems expensive.

    But if I were to sell a book or software program at a brick and mortar bookstore or even Amazon.com, $4.99 would seem like nothing.

    So it’s all about context and comparison. This is what worries me about the app stores. When so many items are priced at $.99, how can my association clients possibly release publications and services at prices close to what they would charge in their normal stores?  Consider this: Keynote, Apple’s presentation software that competes with PowerPoint, is about $100 for the desktop version and $9.99 for the iPad version. Sure, the products do different things and I can’t do everything on the iPad version that I can in the desktop version. But the iPad version is feature-rich and amazing. Is Apple just trying to give Keynote away or are they making money on volume?

    I’ve decided that most organizations are much better off with a free or promotional strategy.

    •  Organization should opt for “free” appss that promote or showcase the organization, the membership and the industry. Examples might include a Find a Member app, a Code of Ethics app, or an industry news app.
    • Organizations should create apps that complement an existing product or service. For example, an association might create an app for their annual conference that complements the live experience of attending the meeting.
    • Companies that sell products or services can use an app to promote their offerings. For example, a kitchen and bath remodeler could create an app that shows what’s possible with tiles, counters, backsplashes, etc.
    • In the case of a company like Handwriting Without Tears, an app can introduce the company to a larger consumer audience and hopefully encourage more sales of its teaching and practice materials. For example, even though I think it’s cool that my child can “write” on a tablet, I still want to be sure he can actually write on a piece of paper.

    What about organizations that want to sell their publications through an app store? Today, I think they are better off selling an epub version through Amazon, or direct through their own stores.

    Are the app stores devaluing products and services? I think the jury is still out but I recommend that organizations think twice before putting their core products and services into apps that could lower their perceived value or lower perceived customer/membership value. What do YOU think?

  • FiveThirtyEight

    FiveThirtyEight

    538 is the place I go to for election coverage, poll numbers and predictions.

  • 80s Music Vids

    80s Music Vids

    If you’re a child a of the 80s, you will love this site, which features music videos from that decade. A Flock of Seagulls, anyone?

  • Social Media Gives Each Of Us Our Own Reality Show

    Social Media Gives Each Of Us Our Own Reality Show

    Remember The Truman Show, released in 1998? Truman Burbank thought he was an ordinary guy, but in reality, his whole life was one big reality show. It was a great story but a ridiculous premise.

    In 2003, MySpace was launched. All of a sudden, teenagers had a way to create personal web pages to share their profiles, photos, videos, artistic creations.

    In 2004, Facebook gave college students a way to broadcast their status so that their friends knew how to find them and know what they were up to. Over time, Facebook would open up, allow anyone to create an account, and allow us all to share status updates, photos, videos, interests, and our location.

    After a few years, critics, predicted that privacy would be the downfall of Facebook. Why would people want to share so much of their lives?

    Today, nearly 900 million people share the most intimate details of their lives on Facebook. Millions of people check-in from their current location every hour on Foursquare and other location-based networks. Over 100 million people tweet the details of their lives from Twitter: what they’re thinking, doing, eating, reading. The reality genre is the single, hottest genre on television.

    Just like Truman Burbank, social media has given each of us our very own reality show.

    Think about it. If you subscribe to a friend’s account on FriendFeed, you can see EVERYTHING she’s doing on the Web: what she’s tweeting, what she’s posting to Facebook, her blog posts, her photos on Flickr, her videos on YouTube. It’s sort of like stalking, only we encourage it and we admire those with the largest followers.

    We even title our social media reality shows. On most social networks, I’m jmpineda. I’m not a very big star. I only have 1,591 followers on Twitter, 302 connections on LinkedIn and 233 friends on Faceook. Meanwhile, a good friend has over 1,200 LinkedIn connections, over 10,000 Twitter followers, and nearly 800 Facebook friends. She’s got an amazing Klout score.

    The next time you pooh pooh the reality TV genre, ask yourself: Are you part of the craze with everything you’re posting and sharing on social media? What’s the name of YOUR social media show?

  • CityEats

    CityEats

    CityEats is a new website from The Food Network that lets you explore restaurants and make reservations. You are what you eat.

  • It’s All About Mobile and Social At The Olympics

    It’s All About Mobile and Social At The Olympics

    I love the Olympics. During the two weeks that they’re on, I’m up way too late and I spend too much time checking results during the day. I never miss opening and closing ceremonies and watching the swimmers and gymnasts just makes my day.

    Which is why I’m so happy that NBC and the IOC created mobile apps that let me watch all of the races in real-time or on demand. For the first time, I can watch events that don’t normally get any airtime (like tae kwon do) and I can get as much detail as my heart desires on specific athletes, races and sports.

    • I love, love, love NBC’s Live Extra app that lets me watch the events by sport and by day. I was able to get my son to bed with the promise that he could watch Michael Phelps the next morning on the iPad. These videos go beyond the 2 minute highlights on standard news sites. If I want to, I can watch 3 whole hours of swimming finals from each day. There are ads and wait times between races but you can see everything. Amazing. You can also watch Live Extra from your computer.
    • The NBC Olympics app on the iPad has results, news, photos and video highlights. This is where I go for results and short videos.
    • The London 2012 app is terrific. It will tell you everything going on in London this summer, where to go, and how to get there. You can coordinate meetups with friends and you even create a personal calendar. My friend Sue turned me on to this app and she hopes the city of London will keep this app long after the Olympics are over because it’s a great travel app for local and visitors alike.

    There have been all kinds of news stories about how the apps aren’t ready for prime time, NBC is delaying posting the videos, sometimes pages and videos are slow to load, yada, yada. Me, I expect there will be glitches and I’m just grateful that this year’s Olympics are so much more accessible.

    The Olympics aren’t just big on mobile devices, they’ve been HUGE on social media. Every morning, when I check my Twitter and Facebook pages, the people I follow are overwhelmingly talking about the Olympics.

    • I love this branded Twitter hashtag page for #Olympics.
    • I’m enjoying tweets from some of my favorite athletes, even some I never heard of!
    • I’m enjoying status updates from the NBC Olympics Facebook page. I’m tracking the events and results elsewhere but it’s fun to read  the comments. There are nearly 650 comments on the post about Michael Phelps winning his 19th medal!

    How about you? Are you watching the Olympics on your TV or some type of mobile device? Are you participating in the social media frenzy over the races, results and athletes?