Rapid Fire – Wednesday, March 05

“The report, from research firm Interpret, estimates that 145 million U.S. residents aged 12 to 65 played casual games in 2007. That’s almost two-thirds of the roughly 222 million people in that age range. And just because they’re casual games doesn’t mean they’re played casually — the report estimates players spent an average of 5.1 hours per week on casual games in the fourth quarter of ’07. That’s nearly 740 million man hours spent playing casual games per week, outpacing activities like magazine and newspaper reading.”

“As Henry Chesbrough lays out in his groundbreaking book, Open Innovation1, “Competitive advantage now often comes from leveraging the discoveries of others.” Chesbrough’s argument rightly focuses on the fact that “not all of the smart people in your industry work for you.” Too much invention and innovation take place outside of your walls to ignore it. Much of it comes from smaller, entrepreneurial startups funded by venture capitalists that aim to leverage breakthrough technologies and ideas, and business models to disrupt established categories and markets.”

“Although some of these contests have created great click rates and a descent response, I often find myself looking at the contest graveyard and thinking, “What now?” What ever happened to the woman who won the shampoo commercial or the guy who wrote the best new commercial jingle? Did they go off to become brand advocates and loyal customers? Or famous directors and songwriters? Truth is, no one really knows…or cares to find out. The brand’s ROI is most likely equal to the participant’s gain: at best, 15 minutes of fame.

We need to move away from a contest mindset toward a program mindset. We must stop creating one-hit wonders. We must create video content that people will want to engage with over a long time. Content that motivates people to respond with their own content. Content that results in ongoing collaboration and conversation, rather than winners and losers.”

Cool new site launching officially at SXSW that allows you to create your own Web comics. Very impressive interface that’s a lot of fun to use and creates a pretty decent product. I’ll be interested to see if they launch new design styles and elements over time. Could be very powerful. Hopefully I can meet the team in Austin!

Wow, this is amazing. I love the Internets. Those tubes just keep on delivering fantastic, off-beat content.

Chris Anderson, coiner of terms and propagator of concepts such as The Long Tail, takes a stab at a follow-up.

From the wonderful folks at Wired: “Fiery explosions, beautiful reactions, and hilarious music videos are great reasons to be excited about chemistry. Here are some of our favorites.”