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A new Facebook app, Circle of Support, provides a rare support community for people living with metastatic breast cancer (MBC).
This secure Facebook community allows people suffering from MBC to share their struggles and receive support from their friends and family. Recent research by Genentech, the company that created the app, shows many MBC patients feel their needs are not met and others around them do not understand what they are experiencing.
“The Facebook app was designed as a part of this overarching program to provide additional support for people with MBC,” Susan Willson, a spokeswoman for Genentech. “As a company, we felt there was more we could be doing outside of the lab to support people with the disease. We wanted to match the innovation inside the lab with innovation outside of the lab.”
With the new Facebook app, an individual living with MBC can select Facebook friends who they would like to invite to join their support network. The patient can chose suggested support activity ideas — such as weekly phone calls, movie outings, prepared meals or going for a manicure — that friends and family can see they are seeking and subsequently provide.
MBC, an advanced form of the disease with no cure, means the cancer has spread from the breasts to other parts of the body. Patients with MBC often do not relate to the movement behind the Pink Ribbon and Breast Cancer Awareness Month, because they have no shot at survival. More than 155,000 people in the U.S. are living with the aggressive cancer.
“It was an area that really needed a light shined on it,” Willson says. “The great survivor stories come from women living with a different experience.”
Genentech’s embrace of Facebook is unusual among pharmaceutical companies. Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca shut down their Facebook pages last year, when Facebook began requiring pharma brands to allow open comments. Others, such as Janssen UK’s Psoriasis 360 page, have shut down because they require too much maintenance.
Do you think Circles of Support taps an unmet need for patients with MBC?
This is the famous Microsoft Garage. It actually has two giant garage doors. It's also a place were Microsoft encourages free-from, grassroots invention.
Microsoft The Garage Visitors Wall
Note Steve Ballmer's signature on the far left.
Microsoft Video Wall
Microsoft runs some of the future tech demo video it created in a continuous loop on this wall.
Microsoft Research Model Room
Right after I took this picture, one Microsoft PR person worried that, perhaps, I was photographing secret stuff. Microsoft Research General Manager Kevin Schofield reminder her that it was unlikely they'd have it all there behind glass if that was the case.
Microsoft's Beamatron Device
Beamtron Skeletal Tracking
Microsoft Sense of Humor
My favorite sign from the trip.
Microsoft Cafe Room View
Microsoft's Bellevue offices offers amazing views. This is from the cafe.
Microsoft Cafe Room View 2
Microsoft Cafe Room View 3
Microsoft Campus Bicylces
Everywhere you look on Microsoft's Redmond, WA, campus, there are bicycles and places to store them.
Microsoft Commissioned Art
You see art all over the place on the Microsoft Campus
Microsoft Campus Jam
Microsoft is planning a big outdoor event for employees.
Microsoft Campus Shuttle Connect
Want to get around the sprawling campus? Take one of these buses.
Microsoft Ping Pong and Foosball
Never saw anyone playing on these, but elsewhere I did see a pool game in progress.
Microsoft Surface Sighting
This woman sat right in front of the Microsoft Surface 2 device, but chose to use her laptop, instead. Perhaps she thought it was just a table.
Microsoft Surface at Microsoft
I tried out another Microsoft Surface setup.
Microsoft Windows 7 Nerdomat
Your guess is as good as mine.
Play Xbox 360 with Kinect at Microsoft
Waiting for a meeting Microsoft? You can kill some time with one of these Xbox 360 kiosks.
Scale Model of a Microsoft Windows Store-Windows Mobilization Flagship Envrioment - 1-18 scale
Look, it's a tiny, little Windows store, built to 1/18th scale
Windows Flagship Store Model Up Close
The Wave art at Microsoft
This piece of art was commissioned for Microsoft's Entertainment and Devices building
Don't Ride the Wave
Apparently, some enterprising Microsofties were taking this "wave" a little too literally.
Microsoft Plant Wall
These vines were growing right up a wall.
Microsoft Logo on Wall
Sometimes I think I know how Microsoft feels. It’s the older, more well-established guy living and working amongst a bunch of scruffy, young startup types who have big ideas, take huge risks and are the embodiment of cool.
When I asked people on Twitter to describe Microsoft and four other tech companies (Google, Apple, Facebook and Twitter) with just one word, Apple and Twitter were lavished with terms like Innovative, Sexy, Informative, Superior, Fun and even Innocent. Microsoft didn’t fare as well. Old was a common theme, as was Stodgy, Boring, and even Dying.
Some of this is fair. Microsoft has been around since the ’70s while Facebook and Twitter launched after the start of the new millennium, so it is old by current startup standards (Instagram and Pinterest are just a couple of years old). Perhaps Microsoft did rest for too long on its dominant OS market share (Microsofties are only too willing to admit past mistakes). Apple, though, is just as old as Microsoft, and has been through its share of trouble (it barely survived the 1990s). Yet, it’s seen as Ground Breaking and Chic.
I get it — maybe Microsoft is not cool, but I’m not so sure it’s stodgy, and it’s definitely not dying.
More Like Facebook Than You Think
Walking the halls of Microsoft’s sprawling campus (many buildings, multiple locations), you’re struck not by an uptight atmosphere, but by how similar it is to other tech companies. The walls are covered in art, meeting notes and interface ideas (they have a lot of marker-friendly walls). Virtually every building has a vast commons area where co-workers hang out and hash out ideas. There are ping-pong and even pool tables (though I rarely saw anyone using them). There are bicycles everywhere, electric car ports and Microsoft minivan transportation. I saw in-house coffee shops and, while there’s no free lunch, all the drinks are free.
The Microsoft you don’t know, however, is nowhere more in evidence than in Microsoft Research. It’s a 20-year-old group where some of Microsoft’s most interesting — dare we say edgiest — ideas percolate and sometimes come to fruition. No, it’s not where the company builds Windows 8, but it could be the place where some of Windows 8’s biggest innovations begin. It was not the birthplace of Xbox 360, but Kinect had its germination there.
Edgy for Microsoft does not necessarily mean black hair, torn clothing and nose rings. It’s more about the bleeding edge of technology, stuff (like Microsoft Surface 2.0) that makes us mere mortals say, “wow.” Microsoft Research’s 850 Ph.D. researchers (300 in Redmond and the rest spread around the world), are working on some amazing innovations. Take for example, the Beamatron, an augmented reality mash-up of Kinect, a computer running a gaming physics engine, a projector and a theatrical motorized light system. It uses Kinect to create a 3D map of the room, including objects and people in it, and then renders and projects objects (cars, presentations) that appear to interact with the real-world room. I drove a virtual car around the room and used the Beamatron to “hold” a PowerPoint presentation in my hand and then transfer it from one hand to another as if it was a ball.
That doesn’t sound particularly like “yesterday’s” technology.
24 year Microsoft vet and Microsoft Research General Manager Kevin Schofield told me Microsoft Research is also focused, at least in part, on “solving big problems” like the HIV virus.
Cutting Edge
Medical Research would seem an odd fit for Microsoft, but the research group is filled with all kinds of experts, including a couple of MDs. One of them is also a computer scientist and became fascinated with how doctors make crucial decisions in high-pressure situations when they have incomplete information (think emergency room visits). This led to work in machine learning (Microsoft Research does a lot of work in this area), which uses what’s known to figure out the unknown. Spam filters work this way. They can look at email and if the word “Viagra” is in it, decide with some degree of certainty that it’s spam. Now, that research is being applied to HIV vaccine research.
The HIV virus is known for its tendency to mutate, which makes it hard for people to develop an immunity. A spam-like filter can find the known in the unknown — in this case the core, recognizable virus.
I asked Schofield, who began his carrier at Microsoft in the OS group, if Microsoft founder and former CEO Bill Gates used the legendary Bell Labs as a model for Microsoft Research. “At a 30,000 foot level,” Schofield said, “Bell Labs was the model, but on the ground it was more Carnegie Mellon.” There are, apparently, two styles of research lab: The Xerox Parc model, where you isolate research from the business and the other model, where you basically have business fund and drive research. Both approaches can hinder tech transfer. The second method, in particular, said Schofield, tends to guide research too strongly so that most of the work is spent delivering product enhancements. Schofield said Microsoft took the middle road.
Microsoft Research’s building is right in the heart of the campus, but the work is not guided solely by business imperatives. The best way to understand how Microsoft Research really works is to understand Schofield’s approach to tech transfer. It’s not, he said, a Rube Goldberg process where you “turn the crank and a product pops out…. It’s not a machine process, it’s a social process.”
Schofield went throughout Microsoft, finding the product managers with the best social and communication skills. He then paired them up with Microsoft Research team members. Product managers talk about the problems they’re struggling with. It’s not unusual for a Microsoft Researcher to realize the company already has a solution, likely developed for something else or simply because someone wanted to try it.
Choose Your Project
This serendipitous tech transfer is one of the reasons researchers pick and pursue their own projects. Yet, even as these researchers do work on oddball innovations such as Beamatron, wearable Kinect sensors (to project a map in front of you of where you need to go), HIV Spam filters, and new cinemagraph techniques, they’re not working in a vacuum. Even back in the early days, Bill Gates would wander the halls, and there would be “random Bill sightings.” Later, when Gates had to spend more time on bigger picture projects, he and current CEO Steve Ballmer would have regular meetings with Microsoft Research. The yearly TechFest is designed to showcase 15 or so key demos from Microsoft Research, and to spark more conversations.
Like any true research facility, Microsoft Research has its share of duds. I asked Schofield if there was a room where Microsoft Research keeps its failed experiments. “Failures would be a big room,” Schofield said, laughing. But he also counts some of those failures among Microsoft Research’s successes.
“You build a blob of what’s possible and what’s not possible outside. The blog keeps expanding out as you figure out how to do more and more, but knowing where the fence is is a useful thing. So we learn a lot from failures.”
Does all this experimentation, trial and error and the creation new and sometimes important discoveries make Microsoft younger and sexier? Maybe, maybe not, but it’s hard to deny that you might want to add one more word to describe the tech giant: relevant.
How does Microsoft Research and the work it’s doing change your perception of this venerable tech giant? Let me know in the comments.
The UFC 145 combat contest happens Saturday night — and is one of the mixed martial arts company’s most-hyped fights since it was founded in the early 1990s.
But the company wouldn’t be where it is today without having aggressively adopted social media over the past several years. Platforms such as Twitter and Facebook helped the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) — as both the company and its signature events are known — transform itself from violent sideshow to relatively mainstream entertainment.
In an illustration of the UFC’s disproportional strength on social media the company’s president, Dana White, has more than 2 million Twitter followers — far outpacing the commissioners of other sports leagues with more widespread recognition. For instance, Roger Goodell, commissioner of the National Football League, has about 250,000 followers. Sepp Blatter, president of world soccer’s governing body, claims approximately 240,000.
Some of its fighters rival NBA stars in Twitter followers, and the company as a whole counts nearly 3 million more Facebook “likes” than the NFL.
How has the UFC achieved such social media success? “It’s because we’re real,” Kristin Adams, the UFC’s social media manager, told in an email. “These other sports put together these rules and fines and penalties to scare their athletes.”
In 2011, the UFC instituted a Twitter bonus program, offering quarterly cash rewards to the fighters who most effectively added followers, tweeted creatively and engaged fans.
“We want to reach people where they want to spend time and our fans love it,” Adams wrote.
For UFC 145 in Atlanta, the company has bought its first Promoted Trend on Twitter, which Adams says will help as the UFC tries to expand beyond its core fans base. In another move that appears targeted at new demographics, the UFC recently launched a Pinterest page as well, with boards themed around inspirational shots, party pictures and healthy living.
Adams says that, just as social media helped the UFC rise from obscurity over the past several years, digital networks will remain essential to its success in the future.
“Social media is very important to us moving forward,” she wrote in an email. “You can reach anyone, anywhere in the world and we have fans everywhere. The more we grow and go international, the more people we’re going to want to connect with and keep up-to-date on the cool stuff going on with UFC.”
Which professional sports companies do you think are best at using social media? Let us know in the comments.
To promote UFC 145, the company produced the infographic below. Scroll down and click the link to see some more of its social media stats.
Click the LINK to open the infograph (Zoom the picture for clarity)
A new Facebook app, Circle of Support, provides a rare support community for people living with metastatic breast cancer (MBC).
Edgy for Microsoft does not necessarily mean black hair, torn clothing and nose rings. It’s more about the bleeding edge of technology, stuff (like Microsoft Surface 2.0) that makes us mere mortals say, “wow.” Microsoft Research’s 850 Ph.D. researchers (300 in Redmond and the rest spread around the world), are working on some amazing innovations. Take for example, the Beamatron, an augmented reality mash-up of Kinect, a computer running a gaming physics engine, a projector and a theatrical motorized light system. It uses Kinect to create a 3D map of the room, including objects and people in it, and then renders and projects objects (cars, presentations) that appear to interact with the real-world room. I drove a virtual car around the room and used the Beamatron to “hold” a PowerPoint presentation in my hand and then transfer it from one hand to another as if it was a ball.
