SEAN TINER

(Lauren Botha, Faces by Tiner) (Donny Deutsch, Faces by Tiner)

The 2009 Mark P. Tiner Education Foundation Board Meeting Last week The Mark P. Tiner Education Board met to select a financial needs scholarship recipient. Over 70 graduating high school seniors from throughout Orange County, CA applied for the scholarship. It's rewarding to continue my brother's memory forward and help a well deserving student pursue higher education. The board will present the scholarship next month.

Marcus Goodyear, an online editor for several magazines, recently wrote Viral Marketing: We Share What Defines Us , an exhaustive follow up to my recent post, Why Do Certain Websites Go Viral?

The Cavelier's Playoff Proposal converts with parodying Heinken's Walk in Fridge Commercial .

"The Fragile Earth Needs A Voice" -Green Peace Enjoy an interesting video created by Green Peace for Earth Day.

Enjoy Carousel , Adam Berg's short movie used to promote Philip's Cinema 21:9 Television, the world's first cinema proportion TV. Additionally, Philips created a microsite to promote the new TV and short film. The short film is inspired by Christopher Nolan's "The Dark Night," featuring swat officers battling robbers wearing ominous masks. Carousel is intended to be an endless loop; a literal "carousel" of cinematic creativity. As marketing campaigns are centered around promoting technology, instead of a brand name; focusing on creative engagement will continually drive successful marketing campaigns in the years ahead.

Last week, Ashton Kutcher made national headlines by challenging CNN to see who could be the first Twitter user to have one million followers. Kutcher punked social media and won the challenge by being the first Tweeter to reach one million followers. Shortly afterwards, Oprah had Evan Williams , the founder of Twitter, on her show. The exposure introduced Twitter to Oprah's legion of viewers who no doubt learned about the micro-blogging service for the first time. From March '08 to March '09, Twitter saw its traffic explode over 2500 percent (see chart below) . Earlier this year, fmylife .com .launched. The site lists short humorous entries about unfortunate circumstances. Anyone can anonymously contribute to the website. In 4 months, the site went from zero viewers in January to 1.8 million unique visitors in April (see chart below). The website has already secured a book deal with Random House Books and there is probably a movie deal somewhere in the works. Twi

This Thursday, don't be surprised to see your boss walking barefoot to the water cooler. To raise awareness about how one pair of shoes can impact a child's life, Tom's Shoes has created " One Day Without Shoes . " Participants are encouraged to go barefoot to help Tom's Shoes spread its benevolent message. Similar to Nike's Human Race , One Day Without Shoes globally spreads Tom's Shoes mission and uniquely connects its target audience. As marketing messages are frequently lost in the cloud of daily marketing messages, is there an idea your company or brand can rally a one day event around?

The Visa Black Card "And the black card don't got no max." - Jay Z Years ago, American Express launched the Centurion Card The prestigious card carries a $2500 annual fee and is awarded to American Express users who spend $250,000 annually. The card essentially has "got no max." New Bentley? No Problem. New Yacht? No Problem. Invitation for your cousin to attend a sleep over at Hannah Montana's home? Well, that may be a problem. American Express' Centurion Card paved the way for the recent launch of Visa's Black Card. Similar to the Centurion Card, Visa's Black Card is awarded to the top percentage of Visa Card users. However Visa Black Card users only pay a $500 annual fee and there is no exorbitant annual spending requirement. A Visa advertisement claims that the card is "the world's most prestigious and versatile card." It may be versatile. However, with Visa's goal to have 3 million users carry the card,

Yesterday, I volunteered at Fred Jordan Missions , a nonprofit community outreach in Los Angeles' Skid Row. It was rewarding to provide the needy with a warm meal, Box of Hope and some Easter cheer. To learn about ways to serve your community this spring and summer, visit volunteermatch.org .

The NBA playoffs will tip off soon! The players are ready, but is the official website? In an era where anyone can easily become a website developer due to template design and click & publish software, it is important for brands not to overlook search engine optimization strategy. One important design strategy is to include title tags in the images of the website. Title tags are not viewed by humans and only viewed by search engines when they crawl a website. For example, if you look at the bottom two images, you will notice two different perspectives of the same website. The first displays how the website is viewed by humans and the second shows how the website is viewed by a search engine. ( NBA.com ) ( NBA.com as viewed when crawled by a search engine) Ideally, the title headings, including "teams," players" "nba playoffs" and several others should be included in the title tags of the website. Including title tags helps position websites on keywords,

(The Dream (C) Tiner)

A week after April Fools' Day, Flutter: The New Twitter , a Slate V mockumentary, continues to create laughter across the cyber landscape. Flutter tweets fun at the persistent and rapid growth of social media websites. The satire depicts how users' attention spans are quickly decreasing and creating demand for the fusion of social media websites. As the amount of Twitters has skyrocketed from 4 million in November 2008 to 14 million today, the popular micro-blogging site continues to receive daily recognition in mainstream news. Everyday society is reminded about the site from DJs, television anchors and journalists who encourage the public to follow their tweets. If Twitter continues to grow at this viral pace, don't be surprised to see Evan Willams, founder of Twitter, nominated for Time's Person of The Year. After all in 2006, Time recognized You ( a.k.a YouTube) as the Person of the Year. Then again, maybe that's just flutterful thinking.

(Apple's 1985 Office Lemmings Commercial) In an era of Hybrids, Teslas and Go Green initiatives, business cards are starting to fall the way of the newspaper ...out of print and into environmentally friendly formats. Last month at South By Southwest , Contxts , a free electronic SMS business card service, took the conference by storm, well the service at least saved a few trees. Instead of exchanging business cards at networking events, attendees simply said text me at 50500. Attendees electronically received contact information, saved time and avoided the hassle of sorting through dozens of cards following the event. Contxts allows recipients to receive not only basic contact information, including address, email and occupation title, but the electronic business card can also display the social networks affiliated with the registrant. If you are want to show innovation in the workplace, avoid looking like a corporate lemming, or join the Go Green bandwagon and save a few trees,

Enjoy an amazing public mural created last year at the Festival of World Cultures .

(April 2009 Desktop, Fiji (C) Tiner (1200x800)) “You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land, there is no other life but this.” -Thoreau