New Freelander ad is certainly not new!

I have written recently about the Olympus Pen Story, which I thought was a beautifully constructed short film.  Subsequently, someone kindly pointed out on this blog that it had been copied from an earlier Japanese film which was remarkably similar.  Now, I see that the latest Freelander ad looks like another very close copy of the same film, though with far less invention or charm in my opinion.

While I see that Olympus have now referenced the creator of "A wolf loves pork", Mr Taijin Takeuc, I am curious to see if Freelander and Rainey Kelly Campbell Roalfe/Y&R acknowledge Mr Taijin Takeuc.  I hope that Freelander and Olympus are making an appropriate donation to support his work, as I am sure they do to their "creative" agencies. 

An old debate I am sure, but at what point does inspiration become plagiarism?

Is Google search evolving fast enough?

The latest iteration of Google search, http://www2.sandbox.google.com/, is now available for general testing.  The speed with which suggested search terms are returned is genuinely impressive, but are google now being held back by their approach to treating all information equally?  I would find the results so much more useful if they were categorised in some way, identifying those results which were created by individuals in social spaces for example, as in many instances, that is what I am now looking for.  It would be great to see the results grouped around social content, as they do for images for example, and then able to filter by type, for example reviews, microblogs, or bookmarks.

I often find myelf adapting the search terms I am using to try and identify user generated content (add "review" or "blog" to search term for example).  So Google, it would be greate if you could help me out here, and use this amazing technology you are now demonstrating to bring back more than just suggested search terms, but content types and maybe indications of influence as well.

Thanks,

Ross

Does it matter if 24% of tweets are created by bots?

This is just one of the interesting statistics held in the recent report, Inside Twitter by Sysomos, which goes into some serious detail about this most loved and hated darling of the social media set.  There are more women twitters than men, 50% of twitterers have less than 6 followers, and Tuesday is the most active day for tweets are just a few of the facts in the report.

Regardless of this, there is a genuine question about how all of this activity is converting into revenue, and how long will it be before Twitter is replaced with the new microblogging kid on the block.  For me, both these questions are largely irrelevant as the important change is not Twitter itself, but the realisation of the value in listening and sharing small things. 

For me, I only began to understand the relevance of Twitter once I realised that it is not about what you say (or tweet), but about who you are following.  Once you begin to find tweets that interest you and stimulate your thinking, then very quickly you begin to extend your range of people you follow, and all of a sudden, it is an indispensable input to your day.  The ability to surround yourself with other people's thinking massively accelerates your ability to sort relecant from irrelevant content - it gives you focus!

So, whether Twitter continues its meteoric growth, or whether it begins to plateau and fall from grace in the style of Myspace, the essence of Twitter will live on for a very long time. 

Follow me on www.twitter.com/rosstmw if you agree!