Tech Week in Review 7-16-2010

Old Spice Shows New Media How It’s Done

Pretty much everyone knows who the Old Spice Guy is. The first commercial had everyone from your best friend to your grandmother ending sentences with “I’m on a horse!” Who knew this ready to like manly man would step out of your TV screen and start responding to you on Twitter and Facebook? The Old Spice marketing team churned out over 65 custom video responses to questions asked on the Internet. The marketing campaign was a smash, totally changing the image of Old Spice from an old man’s after-shave to anyone’s favorite bath time treat.

Apple’s “Surprise” Press Conference

Apple has announced a press conference for today, Friday, July 16, at 10 a.m. Pacific Time. Presumably, they will address the iPhone 4 antennae debacle, but who knows where things may go from there. Many blogs have speculated on what will actually happen during the conference. Some say they will not address the issue at all, while others say they may give everyone a credit towards a free case. Bottom line is that Apple needs to do something major to save their image of perfection and user satisfaction.

Google Games Secretly Underway

According to TechCrunch, Google has secretly donated between $100 and $200 million dollars to Zynga. The plan is to use Zynga as a base for a new project called Google Games. Even as they lose a bit of market share to Bing and Yahoo, Google is still making things happen from the sidelines. The reason this partnership with Zynga is so important is because it helps Google gain access to a large social graph of users. These games attract a large amount of users and have a viral quality to them that makes the investment worthwhile.

Posterous Goes at WordPress with New Import Feature

Posterous has it’s target set on WordPress with a new import feature that will make switching from WordPress to Posterous extremely easy. If WordPress is just too much power for you to deal with, Posterous is a great alternative. The problem is that many people are already fully invested in WordPress. Posterous now takes away the hassle and makes the switch a cinch. This is actually part of a larger campaign for Posterous to develop import tools for 15 services in 15 days, which has already brought the lawyers out.