ThingLink partnered with The Washington Post for coverage of the 2013 White House Correspondents Dinner in Washington D.C.
Post reporters used a pre-release version of ThingLink Mobile to enhance their live coverage of the event. Images appeared in social channels and “The Grid”, The Post’s live experience platform.
Read more at Journalism.co.uk
ThingLink, the most popular interactive image platform for publishers, brands, agencies and consumers, today added interactive image sharing to Facebook Timeline. Now when publishers share ThingLink interactive images to Facebook, viewers can “touch” them to experience the content inside the image — without leaving Timeline.
ThingLink’s proprietary, patent-pending web-based solution allows publishers to create, tag and share any image, in any environment, quickly and easily. ThingLink allows content producers to better understand how their images are being used by consumers on the different social media platforms, both in terms of interactions with the image as well as a wide range of social behaviors.
Publishers and individuals can now use ThingLink to transform static images on Facebook Timeline into a discovery experience — with music and video players, social links and brand content that appear inside an image when it is “touched.” Rich media tags from services like Youtube, Vimeo, Instagram, Imgur, Flickr, and Twitter are supported from the beginning, and support for custom third-party tags will be added in the coming weeks.
“Images are becoming forums for conversation and discovery that include sharing, touching, commenting, and remixing rich media content created by others,” said CEO Ulla Engeström. “ThingLink is now enabling a new kind of discovery experience on Facebook Timeline that evokes emotion and brings moments to life in ways that drive higher engagement.”
Founded in 2010, ThingLink is the leading interactive image platform with over 130,000 publishers. ThingLink’s enterprise level account for publishers, agencies and brands offers such key features as group account management and the ability to create and launch custom image apps and icons that enhance engagement. ThingLink also offers advanced metrics for measuring image performance across social channels like Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr, enabling valuable, new insights into consumer engagement.
For more information visit ThingLink.com and ThingLinkPress.com.
How to share your images to Facebook Timeline?
CopyPaste a ThingLink url to your timeline. See examples from MSF, Huffington Post France, and Giorgio Armani.
Looking forward to seeing our friends at SxSW Interactive next week.
Stop by at Booth 511 and chat it up with our CMO Neil Vineberg.
And if you’re into hearing great bands the place to be is SonyCity at the Hanger Lounge and the Six Lounge (318/319 Colorado at 4th) from March 13-16. Check the calendar for March 13th in the images below.
Big congrats to our friends at Wind-up Records (!!) who are hosting their 15th Anniversary party on March 14th at Empire Control Room. And check out The Lone Bellow (see image below) performing all over Austin.
Touch and discover the images. Have fun and see you there!
Students can create digital projects with images, music, videos, and websites to win an iPad Mini or annual subscription to one of Rosen Digital’s online databases
We have joined with Rosen Digital for the first ThingLink Interactive Image Contest. It’s our way of celebrating students, teachers and all the ways that learning can be fun.
Susan Oxnevad, Instructional Technology Facilitator and educator for 26 years said: ”ThingLink is one of my favorite and most frequently used tools because it supports active student participation and requires users to construct knowledge as they create. The tool can be very useful for designing and implementing the types of deep learning experiences required by the Common Core and it is also an effective way to help students develop digital literacy skills.”
Eligibility: All students K-12 are eligible to enter. Teachers and parents may enter an image on a student’s behalf.
Submission Deadline: Images may be submitted through May 1, 2013. Enter images at ThingLinkContest.com.
Winners will be announced on May 15, 2013.
Categories: There are 10 categories:
Students can enter in as many categories as they wish. All entries are viewable at ThingLink.com.
Voting: Friends and family can vote on their favorite images by using “touch” icon on a ThingLink image. The most “touches” counts for a portion of the score. A team of educational advisors will review entries and determine winners.
Prizes: One iPad mini will be awarded to the top winner in each category. The winning school in each category will also receive one Rosen Database subscription for a year (Teen Health and Wellness, Digital Literacy, Financial Literacy or the Power Knowledge Science Suite). Certificates will be awarded to second and third place winners in each category.
No Comments »A study released today by Digitas, a digitally-led, global integrated brand agency, and Brandwatch, a social media monitoring and analytics company, analyzed over 1.6 million social mentions of Valentine’s Day taking place on news and general media sites, blogs, forums, Facebook, and Twitter from November 2012 – February 2013. The findings reveal that more than 45,000 conversations mention travel for the holiday, suggesting that Americans are considering Valentine’s Day a time to vacation away from home and no longer celebrating as just a single day affair.
Couples, Families and Friends Are Taking Off to Other Places for the Holiday
Thirty percent of all travel-related mentions referenced traveling by air, while 37% mentioned traveling by car. Of these two groups, the majority of conversations about air travel were about couples, while groups of friends dominated the conversations about road trips.
Domestic Travel Ranks #1, But Don’t Rule Out Travel Abroad
Our study shows that 70% of people discussing Valentine’s Day travel are considering visits to domestic destinations— the top five being: 1) New York, 2) San Francisco, 3) Chicago, 4) Las Vegas, and 5) Los Angeles.
While traveling within the US leads in conversations, a surprising 30% are discussing trips abroad to international destinations. The study shows that when Americans think “Valentine’s Romance,” their top five international destinations are: 1)Paris, 2) London, 3) Barcelona, 4) Sydney and 5) Vancouver.
Valentine’s Day Celebrations Will Include Plans to be Outdoors
It also appears Americans are preparing for an active Valentine’s Day. Amongst popular activities for vacationing, 42% are looking to relax at the spa as their primary Valentine’s Day activity. Of the remaining, 33% want sun and beach destinations, 21% are hitting the slopes and 4% are wine tasting.
Despite Interest in Outdoor Activities, Hotel Spa Packages Hit It Big Online
Hotels with spas have been advertising heavily online, and our study shows that their online investments are paying off—and not just to the couples celebrating Valentine’s Day. Singles want hotels with spas as well, and for every four mentions interested in a relaxing destination, either by singles or by a couple, at least one included a reference to a coupon or deal.
This infographic was annotated using ThingLink to give you an enhanced viewing experience.
ThingLink allows you to create interactive images enriched with video, sounds, music and more. Now you can also share them on Edmodo to teach, inspire and entertain students as well as teachers. With only a few clicks, you can embed live interactive images on Edmodo for everyone to engage with and learn from. Here are our step by step instructions and you can also watch the video or click through the slide set below.
Here goes:
1. Sign up for ThingLink. It only takes a minute and you can do it with your Facebook, Twitter or email account.
2. Make an interactive image of your own or pick one from the thousands of images that have already been created with ThingLink by using our search function.
3. Click on Share image in the top left corner of any image and select Edmodo. You will see an embed script. Click on “Copy to clipboard”.
4. Log in to your Edmodo account. Create a new post and add a link to it.
5. Paste in the iframe code to the field that says http://or<embed>
6. Give the attachment a title and click Attach
7. Fill in the empty fields and click Send
8. Your live interactive image will now show up in your posts and it can be opened and closed by clicking the attachment icon.
There are lots of interactive images on ThingLink that you can use for your lessons. Check out these resources:
Discover a treasure trove of innovative ideas and support for using interactive graphics for teaching and learning at the ThingLink Toolkit for Teachers.
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Graduated and interested in teaching English abroad? ThingLink and AIESEC UK have partnered in a campaign where you can win a trip to your dream destination within the AIESEC network.
All you have to do is:
- Tag an image of your dream destination on thinglink.com
- Let us know why this is your dream destination (see examples below)
- Share the image on Twitter and Facebook with #AIESECGRADTEACH
Here are some examples:
Read more about the competition at AIESEC UK.
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PS. Even if you’re not thinking of teaching English, but like tagging images, feel free to share an image of your all time favorite travel destination and we will feature it on this blog!
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This week we released our ThingLink Twitter Card, which allows anyone to browse the live tags in ThingLink interactive images inside a Tweet at Twitter.com.
You can now create an image on ThingLink with in-image links to video and sound players, share it on Twitter, touch the image and interact with the links without having to leave Twitter. This innovation opens up for new opportunities for personal expression as well as marketing opportunities for businesses and brands.
ThingLink and Twitter – How to set it up
Now if you haven’t already signed up for ThingLink, do it now. We’ll wait, it only takes 30 seconds.
Then upload or import an image and tag it with any of our supported rich media tags, which you can see in the presentation below:
Share the interactive image on Twitter by clicking “Share” or “Tweet” on top of the image or right clicking the image and selecting “Share image”.
Any user seeing the tweet can now browse the live tags on Twitter without having to leave the image. Click “View Media” and the interactive image opens up. The image is also viewable by clicking the date/time stamp on the Tweet and the status update version of the Tweet will appear with the image and interactivity.
The image must be shared from ThingLink.com to be viewable inside Twitter. We also suggest that you set up your own channel on ThingLink to allow for people to easily find other interactive images that you’ve created.
NOTE: Twitter is still testing Twitter Cards with certain users/sessions. The ThingLink-Twitter integration works on ThingLink.com, Twitter’s mobile client and Tweetdeck’s web version. Hopefully it will work on third party clients in the future.
Tips & Tricks
Twitter will scale down any image that you share from ThingLink.com to 280 or 560 pixels on mobile and 435 pixels on desktop. That means that any messages in the image should be written in larger text and be more prominent for users to quickly see them. It also means that it’s better to use vertical images since the height of the image is not restricted.
BONUS!
We’ve implemented another fun feature for the Twitter Card. If there are Twitter tags in the image, we will detect them and automatically mention the users when you share the image on Twitter. That way the users in the image will be notified of it whenever the image is shared by you or anyone else. Check out this Twitter example below:
Visit ThingLink now to create your own account!
Read more about ThingLink and Twitter @ Mashable and TheNextWeb.
Read What ThingLink’s Interactive Tweets Mean for Brands @ SimplyZesty.
5 Comments »Interview with Ava Ryerson, ‘stache media
‘stache media has been using ThingLink for artists like Slightly Stoopid, Kate Earl, Ryan Leslie, RNDM, Santana, Steve Vai, Paloma Faith, and many others. CMO Neil Vineberg recently sat down with Ava Ryerson to discuss fan engagement and ThingLink.
Q: How are you using ThingLink?
We are using ThingLink as a tool for our media partners and artists. ThingLink images give media partners added value, interesting content and something cool for their site. It’s also great for fans to engage with artists’ content in different ways.
Fans don’t have to leave an image to engage with content because all the magic happens within the image. Fans also don’t have to enter their email address to discover, click on and play content. It’s very low commitment with high engagement.
Q: What kind of content are you putting into photos?
We put music tracks, videos, social links, and anything we think will be fun for the fan really. If there’s a special or exclusive sound byte from the artist that you can only find within the ThingLinked image, that’s something that we also try to use as well.
Q: What do you find to be the most effective and popular content for engaging fans? I think people want to hear or view content, so audio and video players are most effective. If there’s a personal message from the artist, that is super valuable to the fan. ‘stache media is part of RED Distribution so we partner with retailers all the time. Depending on the campaign and the artist, we’ll tag the image with Target or an independent retailer for pre-orders. A lot of the time we are tagging images with retailers like iTunes, Amazon, Best Buy, and FYE. For the band RNDM, we tagged Newbury Comics who had a special pre-order package for the album.
Q: What kind of engagement are you seeing, and how does ThingLink engagement differ from other media platforms? We work with a wide variety of genres so it depends on the artist. Our highest engagement came from a Jason Aldean Billboard magazine cover that actually lived on the Billboard website, country blogs and radio station sites. We’ve been sharing image performance with artists and it makes them want to get more involved as well. ThingLink is an interesting tool for the artists because images can also live on their Facebook page or band site and its just another way for them to reach their fans, so they dig it. 
Q: Does it always start with a great image?
Yes, the image has to be compelling. It’s a way for us to get the album cover out or an interesting press photo of the artist.
Q: What about the new ThingLink?
It’s important for us to have all of our artist images available within one area where people can find our artists and media tools. I think the new social integration is great , we see new fans engaging and discovering images. I love the fact that I get notifications when I have new followers and when people are commenting on images.
We’re working with Kate Earl on Downtown Records; her album cover is very compelling and beautiful and the video for One Woman Army plays within the image. It’s awesome to see fans discovering her album and video through ThingLink. The layout is interesting as well…very similar to a Pinterest or Tumblr. There are tiles of the images and its easy to digest for viewers. Also stoked on ThingLink going Mobile!
Check out the ‘stache media channel on ThingLink.
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