New York Times Compendium, Twitter Musical Chairs, YouTube Redesign

The Strategist picks the day’s most relevant and interesting stories about the world of content from around the web. Here’s what you should be reading today:

New York Times Compendium

The New York Times last week launched Compendium, a Pinterest-like tool that lets readers collect articles, parts of article, pictures, and videos online, according to Paid Content.

Developed by the NYT Research & Development Labs, after users sign in with their Twitter and Facebook accounts, they can “add the Compendium bookmarklet to their browser and then create a collection with a title, description and choice of format — standard, timeline or gallery.”

Then the users add the Times content to the collection, and when they click on the bookmarklet from a Times page, “a Pinterest-like box pops up with options to add the entire article, a quote, or images or video. You can share finished collections on Twitter or Facebook.”

Furniture Company Starts Games of Musical Chairs on Twitter

Blu Dot, a furniture company, has launched a microsite, musicalchairs.bludot.com, where users can participate in a virtual game of musical chairs by tweeting their entries, reports ClickZ. When the band Doppio stops playing their instruments, the images of chairs stop moving and users have to tweet out phrases and hash tags.

Winners get free chairs.

YouTube’s Redesign 

Last Thursday, YouTube launched a redesign that focuses on its channels, according to the New York Times.

Every time a user logs onto YouTube, he or she will be able to see the latest videos produced on the channels he or she is subscribed to. The goal of the new site is to “make YouTube a destination for entertainment, rather than someplace you visit when you receive a link or search for a certain video.”

Bank of America’s Aging App

According to Mashable, Merill Edge, which is part of Bank of America, has developed an app called Face Retirement, which shows people what they will look like in the future.

Its goal is to persuade people to save for the futures so they have money when they’re older.

Getting the Most Out of Facebook Engagement

Business2Community’s Selina Power writes about how companies can maximize Facebook engagement. 

She writes that brands should have a good looking cover photo, that they should thank fans on their pages, and that they should jump on a news trend and discuss it. In addition, brands need to monitor engagement and run competitions.

Content Curation Inspiration

Pawan Deshpande of Content Marketing Institute writes about where content marketers can find inspiration for curating content. They can look on news feeds, Google Alerts, social media sites, email newsletters, and forums.

If a company has a PR team, those employees will be scouring the web already for relevant content and should be tapped into for curation purposes as well. He says, “Ask them for a list of keywords and publications they are researching, and add them to your own list of potential sources of content.”

Personalizing Videos and Engagement

According to James Dohnert of ClickZ and a study by SundaySky, “a short-form video advertisement without personalization had a 50 percent consumer completion rate.”

But a longer video ad with consumer personalization was viewed for 2.5 times longer. The study also found that 48 percent of the top 50 retailers showcased videos on their websites, a 200 percent increase from 2011. Forty six percent of those same top 50 retailers feature more than 1,000 videos on their websites. Last year, that number was at 22 percent.