By Leticia Ferreira De Souza

Recently, Murilo, Manuel, and I went to the new linkNYC kiosks (links) on 8th Avenue, between 52nd and 58th streets. It is very interesting to see the development of the project and, especially in that location, it was nice to see how they are taking the paid phones out and installing links exactly on the same place.

New observations:

Experimentation with Content:

The content on most of the links consisted of messages like: “Connect to Internet on linkNYC”, or other messages from local government, including from the “If you see something, say something” campaign.

We also saw two “ads” targeting tourists, one a partnership between NYC tourism department and Dora, the Adventurer character, and the other advertising the “LOVE” sculpture (the sculpture being situated relatively close to the location of the link). Since the area is a very touristic region, this could indicate  some early experimentation with links featuring hyper-local content pertinent to a specific area. This differs from earlier observations we’ve made of links in the Lower East Side area, were advertising content was more of the national brand variety (The Gap, Citibank, etc).

For now, the content of these particular links, in this specific area, seems to be more focused on civic messaging, rather than on advertising. We will probably have to wait and see if this is a trend that will continue as the initiative develops, or if this is situational.