One of the things I love to do is help people tell the story of their businesses or organizations online. Whether it’s through creating a social media strategy, building a new web site or crafting a customized micro site. Earlier this month Armadillo Studios was asked by The YMCA Calgary to help them bring to life their “2013 Annual Report”:http://annualreport.ymcacalgary.org/.

The project consisted of tying together the stories, marketing material, YouTube videos and important financial data of their year end report with a customized illustration by local artist Mark Murias to help showcase the organization’s vision for the upcoming year. Working together with the YMCA’s communications team we developed a very cool interactive _Where’s Waldo_ micro site leveraging HTML5 animations and some useful modal JQuery scripts to help create a unique experience for their passionate supporters.

When users arrive at the site they are greeted by a beautiful illustrative collage of the city and a series of clickable links that open up to personal testimonials of the YMCA’s impact, beautiful visualizations of the YMCA, videos of the executive team and links to important elements within the YMCA’s web site. As mentioned, the site has a wonderful and playful _Where’s Waldo_ vibe, where users can scour the illustration to find the click points. It’s great representation of the YMCA and how important it is to the community.

It was such a pleasure to work with the Communications team at The YMCA and to be part of this big milestone.

This post has been re-posted from Armadillo’s President’s personal web site as it touches upon a subject that we’re currently very interested in. We hope you enjoy this post and if you have any questions feel free to contact us at any time.

So it’s been a while since I’ve written or talked about the state of the Social Media sphere on the old c.t.overdrive. Frankly, in regards to the world of Social Media there really hasn’t been a change big enough to warrant a post and plus there are thousands, upon thousands, upon thousands of Social Media Experts writing about the latest social media gaff or trend.

But today I received my updated Twitter profile, which although incredibly snazzy looks eerily similar to something… but I can’t put my finger on it.

Oh yes, it looks incredibly similar to my Facebook profile.

Yes, it’s official the Twitterfication of Facebook and the Facebookification of Twitter are finally complete.

Now, to be honest the change in both Twitter and Facebook isn’t really that ground breaking. Both Twitter and Facebook have been working to incorporate the UX/UI benefits of their two successful offspring networks for quite sometime. For Twitter it’s been working to adopt ideas from Medium and Facebook with it’s ever popular Instagram. While these sorts of changes are technically dramatic given the scale of both networks, these alone are really just cosmetic and minor functionality changes to adapt to the changing design aesthetic and functionality demands of our internet usage. I wouldn’t say they’re ground breaking changes that warrant a blog post.

But in my opinion, this change really does signal something else. To me this solidifies the end of Social Media phase of the Internet’s evolution. Similar to how the explosion and dominance of Social Media killed the Web 2.0 phase, we have officially reached peak Social Media.

Let me put it this way, with the two largest Social Media golden childs (Twitter and Facebook) working to mimic their network’s UI and interactions after their competitor’s and spending more time focusing on becoming a key communication channels and personal data resources rather than on social innovation, where is the future of Social Media heading?

Think about it, when was the last time a new social network really disrupted the online social space? I would say we haven’t seen any real innovation in the realm of Social Media since Instagram and that is at least five years old. Does anyone think that there is a Social Media network like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram or even Foursquare that will revolutionize the way we use the internet in the same way?

Maybe, but I’m not seeing it right now.

Now don’t get me wrong, Humans and Society will always Innovate. It’s in our nature. And for me to say otherwise would make me sound like the guy who proclaimed that we should shut down the patent office because nothing will surpass the Fax machine. But right now with the way in which Start-ups, Entrepreneurs and Innovators are focusing their attention it doesn’t seem like we’ll ever see a time period of crazy innovation and evolution in the Social Media atmosphere like we did towards the end of the 2000s, when everything changed.

I guess what I’m getting at is a question that is asked of me a lot nowadays and that is What is the next big Facebook, Twitter, etc? To me I don’t think there is anything on the horizon. To me we’ve come to the end of the golden age of the Social Media phase.

Will there be something new in the future. I can almost guarantee it, but it won’t be a social network like we’re used to. That phase of the internet is over.

Oh, Hello! Welcome to the revamped Armadillo Studios Inc.

Some of you may have noticed the soft launch of the site in late November, but now that 2014 has crept upon us I felt it was time to make the new redesign official.

Yes, this new redesign is a massive change for the company and only the third switch up since I started this outfit way back in 2007. The new look is designed to showcase the evolution of Armadillo Studios from a broad and idealistic multi-contractor shop to a focused and specialized WordPress, Social Media and E-mail marketing outfit. The added benefit of this new redesign, is not only does Armadillo have a brand spanking new look, but also a more specialized business direction.

Armadillo Studios’ new mantra is to help Businesses. Non-profits and Political Organizations achieve their online goals through customized WordPress and NationBuilder web sites, grass roots based Social Media campaigns and personalized E-mail Marketing Campaigns. IF you haven’t noticed, it’s plastered all over the new site and branding. While I won’t pretend that these three areas of services are ground breaking by any stretch of the imagination, I do hope that by focusing on these three avenues, I can further improve upon the great service Armadillo Studios’ has been providing over the past few years.

And while you’re browsing around the site, you may also note that the new site better reflects Armadillo’s true structure. The site now acts as more of a professional portfolio site for myself and my two and a half compadres. You can read the new bios on the about page to find out more about Armadillo Studios or check out the long standing corporate blog for the most recent projects and articles.

Oh, and in addition to a brand new web site and redesign, I have also launched Armadillo’s first new email newsletter. This new monthly newsletter will focus on the latest web sites launches and blog posts. It’s a simple way to keep our clients, friends and unsuspecting family members up to date with the latest adventures.

I hope you enjoy the new vibe and I welcome any feedback you may have. Feel free to sign up for the newsletter below or follow armadillo on Facebook and Twitter. Over the next few weeks there will be even more changes to the site as the second phase of the redesign takes place. The first order of business is to add some mobile responsive magic and to also provide a new level of detail for Armadillo’s Services.

Thanks for taking the time to catch up with Armadiilo.

Cheers,

Connor Turner

The old Armadillo Blog has been rather quiet the past comple of months, as I put some of the finishing touches on a massive redesign of our web site and the finishing touches on a couple of campaign sites for the upcoming civic election in Calgary. In the meantime, I figured it would be good to do a dual post to catch-up with two really cool personal blog redesigns that were launched over the past two months for two incredibly smart entrepreneurs. Those sites of course are the redesign of “Leah Lawrence’s personal blog”:http://www.leahlawrence.ca/ and the redesign of Sarah Blue’s Get Mommy Some Gin. (Read More…)

This post has been re-posted from Armadillo’s President’s personal web site as it touches upon a subject that we’re currently very interested in. We hope you enjoy this post and if you have any questions feel free to contact us at any time.

Once again the Canadian Political world has been confronted with the always comical debate surrounding Political Ads. The recent spat over the infamous _In Over His Head_ Justin Trudeau spots and the nitty gritty provincial “battle in British Columbia”:http://blogs.canoe.ca/davidakin/bc-politics/bc-liberal-candidates-star-in-hard-hitting-anti-dix-attack-ad/ have resurrected this timeless argument. And yes, if you asked most Canadians they would tell you with no uncertainty that they despise this level of political dialogue, while secretly not wanting to admit that these tactics _can_ work like a charm. But low and behold, there is a new form of Political Attacks Ads that has quietly surfaced that is even more pathetic and lame.

That of course is the world of the dreadful _Political Attack Web Site_.

(Read More…)