The 5th annual Internet Week hits New York this week with an all star list of speakers from Mountain View to Madison Avenue. This is no SXSW but still one of the closest events the Big Apple has to offer to the millions in these industries. Notable keynote speakers are Oakland Athletics General Manager Billy Beane, David Karp of Tumblr, David Carr of the New York Times, Buzzfeed CEO Jonah Peretti , and Mashable founder & CEO Pete Cashmore.

Events, classes, panels will be held all over Manhattan during the 8 days touching on Advertising, Entertainment, Fashion, Mobile, Social Media, Start-Ups and technology. You can bet this will be a time where new ventures, features and products will launch and attendees will have a first look.

Staying on top of Internet Week NY 2012:

1.Watch the Livestream events all week long - http://new.livestream.com/iwny

2.Google Alerts – A great way to get an email digest or RSS feed of all the hottest events can be set up in less than two minutes - http://www.google.com/alerts

3.Twitter Profiles – Every major speaker and connected company will be there giving their insider perspective on the day’s events. Be sure to follow them before you get there to learn what to watch out for. Some of the key ones include:

◦                     @InternetWeek - https://twitter.com/#!/internetweek

◦                     @CreatorsProject - https://twitter.com/#!/creatorsproject

◦                     @MediaPost - https://twitter.com/#!/mediapost

◦                     @ShortyAwards - https://twitter.com/#!/SHORTYAWARDS

4.Curation Tools – With millions of tweets, posts and photos uploaded a day it’s hard to know what’s worth reading. These sites can help figure out what should have been above the fold.

◦                     Twitter Search allows you to look with a place, person or exact phrase in mind. You can even exclude words to get better results. - https://twitter.com/#!/search-advanced

◦                     Zite is a personalized magazine on your tablet or smartphone that learns while you read. Highlight topics of interest and push our irrelevant ones - http://zite.com/

◦                     Favstar.fm helps bubble up tweets from your favorite people through lists and historical data - http://favstar.fm

5.Hashtags – You can be sure the almighty hashtag will be placed on tweets, blogs, videos and photos to help organize the week of events. Each event will typically flash up a phrase after a pound sign to indicate people will be talking under this label.

◦                     Under your Twitter profile bookmark the most important ones like #IWNY and #internetweek.

◦                     Webstagram allows you to explore Instagram photos easily and quickly right on your desktop or tablet. - http://web.stagram.com/

◦                     Create a column dedicated to just this event on TweetDeck (http://tweetdeck.com/) or HootSuite (http://hootsuite.com/)

6.Check the schedule and sort by day, type, category and location - https://www.internetweekny.com/schedule

Sign up for the newsletter based on interest - http://internetweekny.com/newsletters/new

Regular “HQ Passes” cost $65 but are $60 with a tweet. https://internetweekny.com/orders See you there!

To help realize the 20′ by 30′ foot installation which was assembled at Brooklyn’s DUMBO waterfront district by a 20-person construction team, BBDO used pre-existing technology such as Soft Kinetic camera tech and paired it with one-of-a-kind content.

A powerful social media presence is fuelled by great content.

More and more brands are realizing this, and as they do, the more content they have to create. And then comes the realization that they are becoming full fledged publishers. But transforming a brand into a publisher is easier said than done.

Percolate, a new startup in the marketplace, has developed unique technology and services to solve this problem. They deliver the best technology and processes, enabling brands to create and distribute quality content, at social scale.

This week, the Digital Lab, featured guest speaker James Gross, co-founder of Percolate, stopped by to talk about the massive opportunity to help brands everywhere with their transition towards becoming publishers. During his session, James shared in-depth perspective on how the company helps brands like GE and American Express become leading always-on content publishers.

James also explained the difference and need for the two types of content that publishers in the social space need to have a strategy for: stock and flow. Flow is the continuous and dynamic stream of microcontent that keep consumers engaged throughout the day while stock is the deeper, more substantive and thought leadership-oriented content that often offers richer perspectives and insights that makes a brand an authority. Both are essential to be a successful publisher in the digital space.

While South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi), the ultimate event for all things related to social media and digital innovation, ended a little while ago, the themes it addressed are more important than ever and have a direct impact for how brands everywhere connect, engage and transact with the end consumer into the future.

In this quarter’s issue of Digital Lab’s e-magazine Decoder, the major topics, themes and technologies related to the future of consumer engagement, as defined by SXSWi, are recapped and dissected. And everything from transmedia storytelling and ambient discovery to mobile payments and Pinterest is fair game.

In addition, this issue will bring you the latest series of Digital Lab TV interviews from the key innovators and rule breakers who were present at SXSWi. And, as is always the case, the latest batch of great creative work, award recognitions and new business wins from across the BBDO and Proximity global networks will be shared as well.

While this year’s SXSWi is history, the event has no equal in providing a unique look into one thing: the future. Prepare now for what’s to come by reading (and sharing) this quarter’s issue of Decoder today.

This initial study revealed that digital engagement is still in its (relative) infancy when it comes to the beauty industry and that across all of the key life stages there is clear opportunity to grow usage of digital and social engagement to meet the needs of women.

Our newest thought piece in the series, Talking Beauty (below), summarizes the findings of an observational documentary-based research study which sought to understand how the beauty industry might best approach growing its digital engagement with women.

However, in order to find the right answer to the question, this study explored what beauty really means to different generations of women overall. It sought to understand the core of the thoughts and feelings women have about the beauty industry and their own personal beauty. Taking this approach has revealed insights which place a new light on the opportunity which is open to the beauty industry.

To fully understand the breadth of opportunity that lies at the intersection of digital innovation and the beauty industry, please download and share both The Influence of Digital in the Beauty Industry and Talking Beauty, authored by Scott Hendry and Claire Croft of Proximity London respectively for the Digital Lab. Enjoy.

Talking Beauty

The website, which, according to Forbes, is now the third most popular social network behind Twitter, is a user-curated service that allows users to “pin” images they like to create their own boards. Easy-to-use and with a visually pleasing interface that features high-quality photos, Pinterest is becoming more popular each day.

Pinterest’s traffic rose by half just between this last January and February, the LATimes reports. And its users are predominantly women, and the site has been an especially big hit in the South and Midwest. As a result, Pinterest is proving to be a major driver of traffic to retail websites and online publications, referring sometimes more visitors than even Facebook, according to a study by RJMetrics. The study also found that Etsy.com, the online retailer of homemade goods, was the most popular host of Pinterest images.

Many brands have already caught on, creating their own Pinterest pages to engage users. While most are focused around apparel and food, such as highly-followed ModCloth and Whole Foods, more unexpected names such as General Electric have proved themselves to be compatible with the website’s design.

In turn, consumers are recognizing brands’ growing presence on the site. Mashable recently reported on a study by Pinreach that evaluated the effect of brands affixing price tags to their images. It found that products with their prices displayed were a great deal less likely to be “repinned” by users. However, the study did not find a major difference when users posted images with prices displayed. Users, then, are definitely conscious of brands’ presence on the site and know advertising when they see it, even though they are not averse to buying products they see on the aggregation tool.

With 104 million unique visits last month, according to Experian, and a design that heavily features products, Pinterest has created an exceptional mine of resources for marketers, allowing them an even closer look into what interests online consumers than information gleaned from search engines.  Users create profiles tailored to their own interests, giving marketers a great deal of insight into what would catch their attention and perhaps opening the way for increasingly effective online advertising for more brands.

Facebook’s recent introduction of the Timeline functionality for brands represents the single most important shift in how brands will continue to connect and engage with their consumers within the context of social media into the foreseeable future. This guide, prepared by the SocialWork practice of BBDO and Proximity for Digital Lab, outlines, step-by-step, the preparations brands need to make to take full advantage of this new means of expression and engagement on the world’s preeminent social platform.  It covers the areas of design, content, community management, media and overall imperatives as it relates to the new Timeline Era we’re living in.

Timeline for Brands

At first, Timeline was only available to individual users, but, as of this month, Timeline is rolling out to companies and brands. This marks the most important new feature set Facebook has presented to brands in recent memory, significantly changing the way that they approach social engagement with their audiences moving forward.

David Jones and Darrin Patey of BBDO Proximity’s SocialWork team have analyzed the potential impact of Facebook’s Timeline and have summarized the strategic insights, creative implications and technical considerations for brands in a new Digital Lab white paper titled “Facebook’s Timeline Era.”

Please read and share  “Facebook’s Timeline Era” to understand how one of the biggest shifts Facebook has ever made will affect your social marketing efforts moving forward.

Facebook’s Timeline Era

Download this on your iPad or Mobile

Well, the answer is pretty clear. Dads have already taken to the spotlight and been handed the mic, literally, at the “Not Your Mommy’s Blog: The Evolution of Dad Blogs” panel at SXSWi. Dads speaking on content, monetization and marketing isn’t something new. Dads have been writing, creating blogs and building a community for a couple years now, but this panel proves that these men aren’t publishing to be publishing. They want to be heard, they want to tell their story and they want you to know that men matter.

Barefoot Proximity’s own Craig Heimbuch, moderated this panel and posed a great question to his fellow panelists: “Who is doing it right?” Without hesitation, each person rattled off a few of his and her favorite blogs, some referencing mom blogs, other giving credit to the dads, but a common theme that resonated from one blog to the next was authenticity. The people who are doing it right, no matter male or female, all write from their own perspective. They have developed their own brand, not by sugar coating parenthood but by telling you like it is.

This authenticity and honest perspective that these dad bloggers are bringing to the table is a valuable lesson for marketers. You can’t look at parenthood through a one-sex lens, and you can’t put a place card labeling parents as just “mom” or “dad.” Dads may tell their story through the lens of fatherhood, but they are first and foremost—men, inviting people in to their lives, one blog post at a time.

Panelists: Aj Jacobs, Editor-At-Large – Esquire Magazine; Catherine Connors, Her Bad Mother; Craig Heimbuch, Barefoot Proximity; Danielle Wiley, Principal – Sway Group LLC; Jason Avant, Founder/Managing Editor – DadCentric.

Man of the House blog

The “It’s Not News, It’s Business” panel at SXSWi covered this topic of news and user-generated content, confronting the real question—how can you make money and form a business based on the written word? It wasn’t an easy subject to cover. With the fate of traditional newspapers in question and journalism constantly evolving, it’s extremely difficult to nail down one answer of how to make content work. It’s no longer a question of how to make good content; it’s about how to make content work for you, ultimately making money.

This panel didn’t attempt to sugar coat the topic. There is no right or wrong way to monetize. In this digital age where any one can be a content producer and where users consume content at a rapid rate, content has to be produced seamlessly. Voice and tone are essential for engagement and also important to keep readers coming back, long after your “breaking news” was published.

The bottom line when it comes to approaching content is that you have to combine efforts on all fronts of production. Designing, writing, editing and testing are just a few of the ways good content can become more than just words you read on any blog or website. Journalists have to create stories that not only serve the public but that can also grow beyond writing. Know who you are speaking to and think creatively about products, events and partnerships that can coexist with and for this content.

A clear example of this can be seen at GOOD Magazine. Not only did this website make its mark in online content, but it also extended its reach and message by creating GOOD corps—where they work with other businesses and brands to create social responsibility strategies and messaging for a cause. Not everyone can align with their efforts, but whether it involves creating apps, or an e-reader feature that can help share content on a greater scale, its all about how the big idea expands from a single story.

Through this panel of established journalists and designers, it’s clear that this evolution with online content hasn’t stopped evolving, and although businesses and writers need to write, think and work smarter—good content will still make its mark, not only on its readers but also for those creating it.

Panelists: Ann Friedman, Executive Editor-GOOD MAGAZINE; Colin Raney, Design Director-IDEO; Justin Ferrell, Director of Digital, Mobile & New Product Design-The Washington Post; Justin Ellis, Assistant Editor-Nieman Journalism Lab.

Good Magazine