Here is a nice little article on Mashable about the Google +1 button.  As you’ll see – it’s different than the Facebook Like button because it does not post the content directly to the user’s profile.  However – it will help in search as the more people that “plus one” something, especially people in a user’s network – the greater chance they’ll click on it.

See the link here for the full story.

And we can understand why! Our inboxes are bursting at the seams, we don’t have time, it’s not interactive, yada yada yada. And we agree! However, email marketing – now more than ever – has reason to wipe off the tears and soldier on!

Think about your email marketing not as a full story you’re giving your customer, but rather a quick tease to get them to go somewhere else. Where else? Depends on your business – if you’re a restaurant, the new spring menu. If you’re a store, your Facebook page to comment on that pictures you took at Fashion Week.

It’s easy to fall in the trap of thinking it’s either Email Marketing (bad) or Social Media (good). It’s not! Use both, my friends.

Email Marketing companies (including our favorite, which we use – MailChimp) have wised up to this fact, and are including more and more Social features. For example:

• Social Media Sign-Up Forms
• Auto-tweeting or Posting to Facebook of your email
• Ability to quickly and easily share the content of an email

And more. For a really interesting article on both how and how well Small to Mid-Sized Businesses are using Email Marketing, see this article, from one of our favorite sites, Marketing Profs.

Oh, and while you’re at it – we practice what we preach. Sign up for our weekly email newsletter here.

Happy reading, and happy sending -

Over the next couple of weeks, we will be rolling out our new Website product – it will incorporate a full Website, Social Networks and Mobile Site in an easy, intuitive package. It is so cool. Be on the lookout for some changes to multibrain.net as we release the full details.

Still, it’s fun to throw out some jaw-dropping numbers from time to time, isn’t it?

Last night, according to Twitter, during the last three minutes of the SuperBowl – there were 10,000 tweets – per second.

What were all those tweets about? Which Manning brother is better? Gisele’s outfit? We can’t tell you, but we can say that Twitter is the place to go to share opinions and to hear reactions to massive events all around the world.

See the source article on TechCrunch here.

Here‘s the original post from TechCrunch about the IPO.

And an interesting follow-up article is here – so many people wanted to check out the details the SEC website crashed!

Moneytime!

Spotify was around in Europe for quite a while, but only made it into the US (for copyright reasons) within the last year.

Spotify is social. Even if you don’t use Spotify, you may have seen it pop up in your Facebook – “Your Mom is listening to ‘Margaritaville’ by Jimmy Buffet.”

In addition to showing what listeners are enjoying in real time, you can create custom playlists to share with friends, or with the world.

Which brings me to a fun article on Mashable right now, sharing a New England Patriots’ pregame playlist for this Sunday’s Super Bowl.

Check out the article here, and sign up for Spotify here.

Happy listening -

And, since they’re one of the hottest nightclubs in the Los Angeles area, we get to use them as guinea pigs for tools for bars and nightclubs. Here’s one we helped them with a few months back: Stickam.

Stickam is a turnkey solution for streaming video on your Facebook business page.

There are so many fun uses for this – hotels can live-stream the view from the roof, retail stores can host a little fashion show, restaurants can show what it’s really like in the kitchen.

Remember: people love feeling like insiders! Let them in behind the scenes!

As always, have fun with it.

Here’s the info for getting started with Stickam: Getting Started on Stickam.

If you were on google today (and let’s be honest, you were) you probably saw an unobtrusive link to this page.

Google is introducing Search, plus Your World. The idea is simple:

You can now Google search not only public information (directions to the dentist, the capital of Malaysia), but also private information (Cabo Spring Break ’98) of your own (for example, your Picasa images) and your friends (shared through Google Plus).

How do you feel about this?

Google has a very fine tightrope to walk here, as they continue to turn up the heat in their competition with Facebook.

On the one hand, even though Facebook gets a lot of heat about privacy, let’s be honest: it is, and always has been, a site designed for sharing personal information.

Google cannot say the same – they need to be careful about how they change their role in the lives of their users.

That said, we’re all for simplicity and ease-of-use. So having one place to search for all types of information, personal and public, will be very useful.

In the last article we described what a QR CODE is and mentioned there are tons of fun new ways to customize them beyond the stock black and white.

QR Codes can be not only full color – they can also incorporate some amazing designs.

See this article in CNN Money on some great examples from big name brands (Ralph Lauren, Louis Vuitton and more).

We were so inspired by this we decided to do the same with our Multibrain QR Code. We’re still tweaking, but above is one of the variations we’re playing with.

What do you think? Leave a comment or email us.

Some people call them “3D Barcodes.” The official name is QR CODE and they are really, really cool — both for you as a consumer and for your business.

Here’s how it works:

• Download a QR READER to your smartphone. (Our favorite is RED LASER.)
• Open the application when you see a QR Code.
• Snap a photo of the QR Code
• Let the magic happen!

Yes, I know what you’re thinking right now: But Andy, just what kind of magic are you referring to?

Without ruining the surprise completely, QR Codes work like hyperlinks. As such, you can be directed to a website, a YouTube video, etc.

As you can imagine, the real world and business applications are very cool… a movie poster at a bus stop with a QR Code linking to a video of the trailer, etc.

Look out for more blog posts diving into some fun ways to use the codes and amazing and beautiful designs people are doing with QR Codes (turning them into art!)

Stay tuned