Search results matching tags 'digital' and 'facebook'

Nine Top Digital Trends for 2010

2672735 — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 14:50:00 GMT

1: Facebook replaces personal email Question: Google has it, Hoover has it (in the UK anyway), TiVo had it, lost it and has somewhat got it back. Xerox had it, but nobody really cares anymore. So what is it? It’s when a brand name becomes the verb associated with its use. So rather than searching, you Google, or TiVo when digital recording a television show.

Arguably an even more powerful synonym is when a brand becomes a noun, such as Polaroid, for instant developed photograph, although that didn’t end so well. The newest one would seem to Facebook, although it has too meanings. ‘I Facebooked you’ could mean that you the person has added you as a Facebook friend or they sent you a private message though Facebook. The latter would seem to be of more interest as no-one has really owned this type of communication before. No brand ever became synonymous with email. To Hotmail or Gmail someone just never happened.

So the interesting and overlooked disruption of Facebook is its displacement of personal email as a communication tool. Completely permission based, no SPAM (yet), and no address book required - your friends are already on Facebook.

2: Open source software starts making proper money, thanks to the cloud There’s something starting to happen within the open source software world. Projects that were typically for the purview of programmers, or at least technophiles, are now available to the masses. An example is Beanstalk www.beanstalkapp.com a fully hosted, version controlled code repository that uses the Subversion open source project. The big deal is that to set up and maintain a Subversion repository can be a pain - plus you need a server if you want to give access to anyone. Beanstalk has created a subscription based service that, for a small fee, removes the hassle.

Services like this can only really exist with cloud computing infrastructure - so companies such as Beanstalk don’t have the huge upfront capital outlay for servers, they only pay for what their customers use. With the right skills any open source project can be commercialized in this manner.

3: Mobile Commerce - the promise that has never delivered, yet. As annoyingly tantalizing yet esoteric as the word ‘convergence’ has been over the last 10 years, mobile commerce has promised much but never delivered.

Mobile phones have delivered real benefits to societies world wide and in developing nations are used commonplace as devices for the transfer of money. However, until only very recently in the nations that invented and first adopted mobile technologies, has use of your most precious device been extended to payment for goods and services.

With the advanced browsers of iPhone and the Android platforms one could pay for goods through full e-commerce sites, but who really wants to fiddle around with a phone in one hand and a credit card in another? The game changer is the iPhone / iTunes platform. In-app purchases on the iPhone can tempt users to buy small items, upgrades, updates, etc, while iTunes holds their precious credit card information.

All, of course, is done in seamless fashion, enough to promote impulse purchases. Would seem like an easy task for this to be extended to other platforms with PayPal or Google Checkout. But we have been here before haven’t we?

4: Fewer registrations - one sign-in fits all I use a great application on the Mac platform that securely holds my login details for upwards of 50 different sites. It means that I don’t have to use the same password for each site and that I don’t have to search around for post-it notes (my 1998 method) to log into the site I joined a week ago. However, I’m starting to resent having to register for anything ever again. I don’t see why, to leave a particularly pithy comment on a blog or news site, I have to register all over again. I’m sure I’m not the only one and that’s why services like Facebook Connect and OpenID are particularly useful and will continue to be adopted at great speed through 2010.

Who knows where these might go? Perhaps next year I’ll be able to pay for something using my Facebook login.

5: Disruption vs. Continuity - Alternatives to the “Big Idea” As the significance of social networks continues to grow, businesses are investing more in community building as a marketing driver. According to the recent Tribalization of Business study released by Deloitte, 94% of businesses will continue or increase their investment in online communities and social media and, for the majority of these companies, their marketing function will drive this investment.

At the same time, as evidenced by Google’s recent release of “free floating” social tools, such as Google Waves and Sidewiki, there is an increasing shift towards online identity and social activity being an integrated part of the network as a whole, rather than concentrated within discrete platforms such as Facebook.

With the increasing emphasis on marketing and advertising through social networks and the increasing pervasiveness of social tools, marketing objectives come into conflict with advertising techniques.

While advertising has often sought to distinguish itself and stop the consumer in their tracks with a disruptive “big idea,” the emphasis is shifting toward persuasion through fitting organically into the consumer’s social sphere. It will always be the objective of marketing to provide creativity and novelty, but the way in will increasingly be one of persistence and continuity.

6: Self-Sufficiency – The Continuing Evolution of Web-Driven,Open Source DIY Culture Much has been said about the power and potential of collective intelligence. From solving complex problems through crowd-sourcing, to reconfiguring industries to be leaner and more innovative by harnessing the expertise of a network of independent suppliers, many of the breakthrough solutions of tomorrow appear to lie in more effectively pooling the resources and intelligence of our increasingly networked world.

On the other side of the equation, the power of pooled intelligence and networked resources have empowered individuals to take on more and more complex undertakings themselves. From drawing on the collective intelligence of blogs and university open courseware to educate themselves, to services like ponoko, spoonflower and cafe press that facilitate small-scale production, to offline resource pooling like pop-up retail and collective office spaces, individuals are discovering that it has never been easier to try doing it themselves.

While we find new ways to thrive in a still struggling economy, expect to see lasting changes coming from empowering individuals to work together to become more ever more self-sufficient.

7: Info-Art Where we once had pop-psychologists and pop-philosophers, we now appear to have pop-statisticians and pop-economists. The growing wealth of data and the access to rich and diverse data sources that are significant byproducts of information networks have made the art of data analysis a defining skill of our time. By the same token, the skill of elegantly visualizing that data has become a defining art of our time. The art of the infographic is becoming increasingly pervasive as people look more and more to the growing amount of data at our disposal for insight, and more refined as the interactions of that data becomes more complex.

With an ever increasing need for real-time analysis of a growing torrent of raw data, expect to see greater innovation spurred by more elegant ways of capturing and visualizing information by a growing number of info-artists.

8: Crowd Sourcing Across many industries and organizations, crowd sourcing will become a growing tool as part of elance outsourcing strategies. Organizations will mobilize the passionate special interest groups to not only carry a message but, even more importantly perhaps, to lead and take part in activities on their behalf.

Predictions for 2010 are not as rosy as we all hoped and budgets for just about everything continue to be cut, encouraging ‘creative’ thinking regarding getting things done and done well. From political canvassing to software development, from people journalism to environmental activism, we will see huge growth in crowd sourcing models provoked and led, largely, by digital social media strategies.

9: More Flash, Not Less Outside of the obvious brand sites, micro-sites and media sites (video, games, etc.) Flash has often been looked down upon if not completely discounted by techies and search engine optimizers alike. It seemed to face an uncertain future as a viable tool for serious websites and applications such as eCommerce tools and corporate websites.

As it is, Adobe’s rich media tool has enjoyed the grit and determination of its advocates and external development community. Several tricks, authoring tools and server side scripting workarounds have meant that Flash built websites no longer serve up a single, impenetrable page. They offer deep, searchable, indexable sites that will allow acute, detailed traffic and behavioral analytics and search engine optimization. As websites continue to increase in their importance as a company’s storefront, the demand for rich, brand-extending experiences will also increase. Further proliferation of (lightning speed) broadband will reduce download issues while the adoption of Flash on mobile devices will dramatically increase and fuel reach and the desire/need for highly usable, brand transporting, conversion oriented experiences

Facebook Connect Jealousy

2116546 — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 09:21:00 GMT

I talked about the greatness of Facebook Connect (for marketeers) a couple of posts ago, then this promo for a new video game is brought to my attention. Have a go on it, the video itself is alright (the 3D spinning pictures part annoys me as it's so obviously Flash) but it's the speed and simplicity allowed by Facebook Connect that really enhances the experience. We've used it in a few of our projects (www.areyoupopular.co.uk and www.waltswarning.com) but as we were fitting it within a narrative we had to ask users to make a picture selection etc.

I'm so jealous, always with the simple ideas and their success. Bit of a bummer I couldn't access it for a day when Facebook had problems with Connect though!

'Video game' is a bizarre term don't you think, or is that just me?

Facebook Confusion

2116546 — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 19:39:00 GMT

Let's get this out of the way first; I personally don't like Facebook. I see it as the downfall of society, people refer to it as a great social tool and improving their lives but I can't see that. Are people really more sociable than they used to be, isn't the pub or school supposed to be the place where you chat with mates, not through an evil online empire? Perhaps it's because I'm a 'digital immigrant' as opposed to a 'digital native' like the yoof is nowadays innit, but I just don't get it.

However, for evil marketeers (of which I consider myself) it's a godsend for personalised advertising. You can target people down to ridiculous detail and, especially useful for us at Ralph, you can bring personal information in to cool online promotions with incredible ease. Facebook Connect is a cyber-godsend. You can bring in photos from wherever you are - no more "but I don't have a picture of my friend on my hard drive at work, why would I", you can attempt the 'viral' effect by sending to all and everyone in a punters address list, and a whole lot more.

So there you go, I'm so confused about my feelings towards Facebook

Oh, and please could my (actual) friends share their photos on Flickr instead?

Thousands download Skyfire's new 1.0 version for smartphones

2292853 — Thu, 28 May 2009 11:30:00 GMT

This week the mobile browser Skyfire released it's long awaited 1.0 version, for use with smartphones, taking the company out of a hugely successful beta period that has seen 1 million people downoad the free service.

Skyfire is free to download at: www.get.skyfire.com

The service is currently available in the UK, USA and Canada, and runs on Windows Mobile (smartphones and PPC) and Nokia N and E Series (Symbian S60, 3rd Edition) phones. With its release yesterday, thousands of people lit up on fire with excitement for Skyfire and have been reporting their experiences on Twitter, with many tweeting that the service is the iPhone for other handsets. Skyfire is feeding the strong popularity and desire people have to get connected to the internet by their mobile phones, for instant access to social networking sites, viewing videos and reading their RSS feeds, among other features. Skyfire describes its service as bringing the full web experience to handsets, and it is the only mobile browser that supports Flash, Silverlight and Ajax, technologies that normally crash when attempting to access the internet from a handset.

Skyfire's 1.0 release means millions more people will be able to catch up on Facebook, Twitter and watch YouTube, BBC iPlayer from their mobile, and this rich-media content experience bodes well for brands who are increasingly using the mobile internet for advertising and marketing. The excitement for this new milestone in technology captured the attention of mainstream media and bloggers, who have given the service rave reviews. Here's what some have said:

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“You see, Skyfire isn't a 'proper' browser, more of a content viewer, with all the serious processing handled by the company's proxy servers, the pages then being 'rendered' onto your phone. Just like the Opera browser in fact, but with more whistles, bells and streaming video.” – T3’s David Walker

“The release brings with it a host of improvements, such as improved navigation, zooming and interaction and a faster launch, lower power consumption, and new search functionality. Also, while the new version of the browser starts up, you can begin typing URLs or search queries into the box at the top, saving time. The company is operating a closed alpha for the BlackBerry platform, so that'll likely be next for release.” –Pocket-lint.com’s Duncan Geere

“Their browser is fast and responsive, and Skyfire’s goal is to give a faithful representation of web pages that is equivalent to the desktop browsing experience. One important focus for Skyfire is in the area of video rendering… Skyfire’s approach is to introduce their own video-crunching servers between, say, YouTube and your Nokia N95. These servers take full Flash (Flash 10) and then video transcode the signal in real-time, giving a lower frame rate (8 frames per second), and a smaller screen rendering for mobile. The result is that the Skyfire browser can render an original YouTube page or Vimeo page, or even blogs with embedded video, so that you have access to the entire video catalogue, live on line.” –Martyn Davies, The Really Mobile Project

Watch The Phones Show hosted by AllAboutSymbian.com's Steve Litchfield, for an interview with Skyfire’s VP of Business Development Raj Singh, who offers extra insight to the browser’s features and hints of what’s to come.

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CNET was among the first outlets to announce the news yesterday, and just prior to Skyfire’s 1.0 launch, The New York Times named the browser as “App of the Week”.

My consultancy the Hai Media Group handled the UK/EU media outreach for Skyfire, teaming up with our fantastic US media partners VSC Consulting to orchestrate this highly successful PR 2.0 outreach programme.

Still finding more and more coverage results for Skyfire,

-Lisa

Fakester, Friendster or Fraudster -Tools for effective social networking

2111803 — Mon, 18 May 2009 10:07:00 GMT

Twitter has the badge of distinction of the first mass protest from members at a change it has implemented - thousands of people objecting to a change it has made in replies. At the same time it has been subjected to an amusingly wrathful blog post from rapper Kanye West, who is incensed that the service allows people to impersonate him.

This highlights a strength and weakness of the service. Seven years ago, Friendster was the social network that everyone was talking about. It made a virtue of the fact that it discouraged members from pretending to be someone they weren't. That meant no "Fakesters" --people pretending to be Homer Simpson or God or Harvard University or a dog. It also meant no "Fraudsters" -- people pretending to be someone else,such as Britney Spears or their cousin Billy. "The whole point of Friendster is that you're connected to somebody through mutual friends, not by virtue of the fact that you both like Reese's Peanut Butter Cups," Friendster founder Jonathan Abrams told the San Francisco Weekly at the time.

However, the "No Fakester" approach violated one of the Internet's central tenets -- anonymity -- best embodied by a Peter Steiner cartoon in the New Yorker from 1993 showing a dog in front of a computer screen with the caption, "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog." To many, the power of anonymity is not a luxury but a necessity, the essence of freedom.

By gathering online anonymously, people are free to find others who share their political views or their sexual orientation without fear of repercussion. As a result, many of Friendster's users revolted. They decried the "Fakester Genocide" on Facebook and vowed to start a "Fakester Revolution." They wrote a revolutionary document, the "Fakester Manifesto." The first declaration: "Identity is provisional. Who we are is whom we choose to be at any given moment, depending on personality, whim, temperament, or subjective need.

No other person or organization can abridge that right, as shape-shifting is inherent to human consciousness, and allows us to thrive and survive under greatly differing circumstances by becoming different people as need or desire arises. By assuming the mantle of the Other, it allows us, paradoxically, to complete ourselves. Every day is Halloween."

MySpace and Facebook subsequently took all of Friendsters users. Twitter is in an interesting situation of being praised by certain celebrities -- Stephen Fry and Ashton Kutcher most famously – for letting them bypass pesky journalists who are liable to twist their words, and speak directly to those who are interested in what they have to say (and then have the media report it later).

However, there is little barrier to fakesters setting up Twitter accounts and gaining vast numbers of followers before anyone can confirm that it is actually a phony account. Is this a major problem for the micro-blogging site? Not really -- Kanye West's somewhat frightening rant aside. James Kirkham, Managing Director of Holler www.hollerdigital.co.uk

Social media proves protest prowess

2371004 — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 11:42:00 GMT

Two days after criticising Facebook users for their pathetic protest attempts, the masses, rather emphatically, proved me wrong, creating a big enough stir to get CEO Mark Zuckerberg to stammer and stumble his way out of another privacy issue.

Egg on the face actually tastes pretty good, I should be wrong more often.

Anyways, earlier this week, Zuckerberg provoked a storm of controversy after releasing updated terms of service for the social networking site.

Under the new terms, a clause that allows users to permanently delete any uploaded content was removed, which critics claimed granted Facebook lifelong ownership rights to user photos, videos, written content and music, even if their profile had been deleted.

Within a day, a number of Facebook groups were launched to protest the changes and the story appeared across national newspapers, while bloggers fervently expressed their opposition to the new terms online.

Apparently, the one thing Facebook users are universally passionate about, is indeed Facebook. But I guess they proved that with Beacon two years ago.

A brief statement from Zuckerberg on Monday attempted to quell the storm asking for users to "trust" Facebook, with the analogy: "When a person shares something like a message with a friend, two copies of that information are created -- one in the person's sent messages box and the other in their friend's inbox.

"Even if the person deactivates their account, their friend still has a copy of that message. We think this is the right way for Facebook to work, and it is consistent with how other services like email work.

"One of the reasons we updated our terms was to make this more clear."

However yesterday, after Zuckerberg's statement drew even more criticism from users, the company decided to revert back to its old terms while it "resolves the issue that people have raised" promising the new terms "will be written clearly in a language everyone can understand".

The new finalised terms are expected to be released within a number of weeks and will be allowed to be scrutinised by Facebook users.

Being a semi-amateur photographer and a professional-hack-writer, it caused little concern in me, but really I could care less. All my good photographs are diverted into the less-cloistered Flickr, and as far as I know, my rights are protected. Similarly, with Livejournal, I reserve my right to remove any of the content I've loaded up there.

And I can see Z'berg's point, and frankly I don't understand why the furore was so large, and swift, impressive as it may be.

Professional photogs definitely have a reason to be angry, but the other 175m users with their stupid "night-out" albums, which, who are we kidding, is really just an excuse for girls to take pictures of themselves with two friends squished into their cheeks, not so much. Unless Facebook has plans for a super-PG Girls Gone Wild spinoff in the near future.

Users should realise that Facebook is a service, and a business, not just some namby-pamby social portal, and it reserves the right to stick it to you if it wants. If you don't like it, don't use it.

I've never been too fond of Facebook to begin with, all seemed a bit of a platform to show off your various wares and tales rather than a place to relax and connect with chums, isn't that what the pub is for, but of course not everyone is a bitter recluse like myself.

Undoubtedly this sets an eerie precedent for user rights and online copyright terms. While other social networking sites are shaking in their boots, I bet they're glad Facebook bit the bullet on this one (again).

The people have spoken, but who knew it would be so damned loud?

Has social media killed the protest?

2371004 — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 12:06:00 GMT

It's difficult to extol the power of protest without saintly praise of the godfather of grumble, Bob Dylan.

I remain a big fan of the man, despite his recent, bewildering shills, and the fact that 'Blown' in the Wind' is pretty tepid by today's standards, a song probably somehow more synonymous with the artist and the time than the infinitely superior 'Masters of War', but the truth remains the man could invoke a decent protest.

With his trademark warble and Martin dreadnought, Dylan -- and I shudder at the thought of using such a hackneyed phrase -- inspired a generation.

1963 was obviously a different time than 2009, one ripe with "change" (where have I heard that word before?) and "hope" (huh), but I daresay the problems facing the Love Generation® -- Vietnam, Watergate, feminism and civil rights -- in no way pale to the issues facing today's.

Afghanistan/Iraq, the Bush-hangover, global warming, obesity and the economy, where the hell are our protest songs? Or protests? Even a little unchannelled anger?

You don't have to look too far actually, just check out Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and the like.

Instead of swaying the masses with a few biting chords and with some hissing, angry lyrics, today's Lazy Generation® has the click of a mouse, and the well, that's about all. Oh sorry, I forgot, a smug feeling of unearned satisfaction.

Okay, Peta still does its thing, but it has become such a caricature of itself that I can't take it seriously anymore. And, protests do still occur, in most recent in memory the much-ballyhooed break-in and sit-in of the Stansted runway in December.

Things got pretty hairy in Athens a while back I guess, but I'm willing to bet those protesters didn't have broadband internet access.

Why risk your neck, enduring the cold, hard crack of the billy club and the steely temperament of a pair of handcuffs around your wrists, when you can inch that same supple wrist around a computer monitor and join the Facebook group '100,000 strong for orphaned Gaza puppies' and 'The John Sargeant was hosed petition!'

Is this what settles for action in today's generation? You can argue that these menial little groups and boycotts raise the profile for certain causes, but with our 24-hour news cycles, blogs, feeds, tweets, etc., I'm not sure how much higher the profile can be raised.

Being relatively media literate, I have a fair idea what's going on the world. I'm vaguely aware of the stupidest, smallest issues decaying the dustiest corners of the world.

So the question is: has social media killed the protest? Are we really this lazy, or has oversaturation numbed the senses?

The latest example brought to my attention, and likely soon to yours, is the New Zealand Internet Blackout against the Guilt Upon Accusation law -- a law calling for internet disconnection based on accusations of copyright infringement without trial or court sanctified evidence.

Yikes, serious stuff.

It is bullshit, obviously, don't get me started on this whole copyright infringement, RIAA, ISP fiasco we have on our hands.

But what's more concerning is the 'Blackout' part of the New Zealand cause. The directing website asks internet users to 'blackout' their profile photos, or avatars on various sites, including Twitter, MySpace and Facebook, until February 23.

That's it. They even provide the black avatar, all you have to do is right-click, and save-as.

Oh sorry, and your supposed to say "(your name) is blacked out: Stand up against "Guilt Upon Accusation" for New Zealand" on whatever social vice your networking with at the time.

Okay, now that's it. I've noticed a few of my Twitter followers have already complied, showing their support, likely, before taking another swig of their skinny lattes and changing pages to have a chuckle on Digg, forgetting about the issue altogether.

Really? That's what passes for a protest these days? I'm shocked. I'm appalled. I'm blogging.

It's a cause that I believe in, but really, this doesn't cut it. I can't imagine the shady heads-of-state, high in the cozy, ivory towers of New Zealand are going to be too badly shaken by such an act, a bunch of black pixels.

I understand the irony of complaining about a protest, saying it's not protest-y enough, but it's true. Get some guitars, some angry masses and go blockade some government institution, with the tear gas and the balaclavas, tear down some satellites, I don't know, just don't just click.

Where's Mr. Dylan when you need him? Besides idling his Cadillac Escalade in the parking lot of the Co-op while shopping for baby seal-skins and low efficiency lightbulbs.

What we need, and what New Zealand needs, is a new anti-hero, and by god, we aren't going to find him or her on Twitter or Facebook.

The digital candidates, who wins?

2371004 — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 15:28:00 GMT

How do the two US presidential candidates fare on the various social networking websites that take up so much of our valuable time? Glad you asked, luckily the Scottish-based social media company, Yomego has compiled a list:

MySpace On its Impact Channel, where young voters can watch the live debates between the candidates and get questions answered, McCain has 55,000+ friends to Obama's 700,000+ friends.

Winner = Obama

Facebook A partnership with ABC brings reporters' articles, videos and blog posts from the campaign trail and voters can pitch their views and compare them against those of the candidates. Here Obama has 2.1m supporters to McCain's 500,000+ supporters.

Winner = Obama

Second Life This site hosted a major music festival arranged by the Obama for President organisation in a drive to register hard to reach Americans.

Winner = Obama

Twitter Our new favourite microsite gathers public opinion about the presidential election, aggregating live ‘tweets' about the election, including thoughts, reactions and observations. Here Obama has 98,000+ followers to McCain's 2000+

Winner = Obama

YouTube Here the candidates every move is exposed, analysed, discussed and parodied. However, many successful clips are campaign-oriented, such as the ‘Yes We Can' music video (10 million views) and Sarah Palin's first ABC interview, which attracted as many online viewers as it did on TV

Winner = A draw!

Well, these results should be surprising to no one. If you need it hammered into your head just once more, the 2008 US Election will go down in history as the first political campaign to capitalise on the true power of digital communication. And as millions of Americans line up at the polls today to vote for their 44^th president, in a pure utopian digital world, Obama is slated win by a landslide.

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