May 17, 2013

The Week in Social: Cmdr. Hadfield’s legacy, Evil Google and #eurovision

Bowie’s in space. So farewell then, Commander Hadfield. After five months tweeting us stunning images of ourselves from space, the Canadian astronaut came back to Earth but not before uploading the first pop video from outer space: his goosebumps-inducing version of Space Oddity. For your services to science, education and the use of social media, we properly salute you.

Latakia, Syria - deceptively calm and beautiful, strife-torn on the shore on the sea. Peaceful from such a distance. http://t.co/SoWWZ5BU
—
Chris Hadfield (@Cmdr_Hadfield) January 02, 2013

Eurovision. If Twitter hashtags weighed anything, there would be some serious balancing issues on Tuesday and Thursday as the semifinals of the annual sneerathon/song contest took place in Malmo, Sweden. Just as the rest of the world is a bit baffled when America goes #superbowl crazy, now it’s payback time. Americans looking for an explanation of Eurovision should read this before the real deluge unfolds on Saturday. Could Cezar, the Romanian countertenor, snag it?

Good Google, Bad Google. There was no escaping Google this week (is there ever, you may ask). The company announced its music subscription service, the cumbersome-sounding Google Play Music All Access which will take on Spotify directly while stealing a march on Apple. Meanwhile, the company finds itself under intense scrutiny in the UK over allegations that all is not quite right in how they report their tax affairs. Margaret Hodge, chair of the public accounts committee told Google’s northern European boss “You are a company that says you ‘do no evil’. And I think that you do do evil.”

Seven Million UK Adults Have Never Used The Internet. Can you believe it?

See you in seven.

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Enda Guinan is a consultant and trainer offering advice on social media strategy and product delivery for individuals and small businesses. Get in touch to see how you can make the best use of your time and energy as you put together your social media plans.

May 10, 2013

The Week in Social: Braff and Kickstarter, the crap deluge and a year offline.

Thinking of escaping the impending crowdsourced embarrassing crap deluge? There’s no point.

Content is king supposedly. For years now, we’ve been making videos, music, blogs, whatever and getting these things out there. We may be doing this for fun, self-promotion or a genuine desire to inform, but our friends in the Marketing Dept want in. They have been getting all excited about ‘content marketing’ this last while (probably prompted by the changes in how Google ranks content online – basically, the good stuff will rise to the top). However, one agency reckons as the Marketing Dept scrabble to make great content, we’re about to be hit by a deluge… of crap.

A Year Offline. With this impending crap deluge, now might be a good time to take a year offline *gasp*. Paul Miller left the internet for a year: “I thought it was making me unproductive. I thought it lacked meaning. I thought it was ‘corrupting my soul’.” However, his 12 months did not result in any spiritual epiphanies and, perhaps not entirely unexpectedly, he concludes that “the internet isn’t an individual pursuit, it’s something we do with each other. The internet is where people are.”

Your internet past is ‘not embarrassing’. And if the internet is where people are and these people are creating content, then chances are some of that stuff will be ill-judged, embarrassing or even potentially damaging. I’ve sometimes thought about all of the comments, tweets, status updates, blog posts and so on that I’ve generated over the years and cringed a little. Kyle Wagner reckons we should just ‘get over it’ and “all that earnesty really betrays is that you’re a human being with human feelings”. Let’s see how that flies with the recruiters skulking around LinkedIn…

Stop giving your money to rich people on Kickstarter. Zack Braff has managed to raise over $2M to finance a film via crowd-sourcing service Kickstarter. Traditionally a community where artists/creatives/developers could tap their friends and interested parties for cash upfront to finance small projects, the tool is being used by established types. Time Warner managed to raise over $5M to greenlight a Veronica Mars film. Alan Jones writes regretfully that fans are saying “it’s OK for rich people to eliminate the factor of risk”. Meanwhile Cameron Brady-Turner reckons we should stop beating on Braff and even thank him for drawing attention to crowdsourced funding.

See you in seven.

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April 26, 2013

The Week in Social: Virgin Media get schooled, angry Facebook Moderator schools us and those New York ATM receipts

The pauper and the millionaire at the same ATM. An image of two receipts found at a New York ATM did the rounds this week and made us think about the type of wealth disparity that exists. One customer has a balance of over a million dollars while the other has insufficient funds. They are both litterers though.

Deceased man fails to pay Virgin Media bill. Every week another company has a painful learning experience connected with social media. When Virgin Media sent an automated bill that acknowledged that the customer was deceased but charged an additional fee anyway. Jim Bowden, the man’s son-in-law, took to Facebook with a very witty, highly sharable response. Social networking expert, Dr Lisa Harris told the BBC that ‘companies need to realise that people have more power than they used to’. Virgin Media have since cancelled the bill, apologised and made a charitable donation.

Facebook Moderator: ‘You should be ashamed’ “Can you think up a human horror? I’ve probably seen it or a picture or video of something very similar.” We usually hear about Facebook moderators when they remove images of a mother breastfeeding or the photo of the elbow that looked like a breast. However, contain your outrage, because one Facebook moderator “really doesn’t give a shit” as they have far more important work to do. You might think twice about reporting your ‘offence’ once you’ve read this pretty frank blogpost about what really goes on. A must read.

Thomas Dolby’s The Invisible Lighthouse A treat for anyone in London next week as electronic music pioneer, Thomas Dolby, narrates and performs live to his short film as part of Ditto’s Campfire series. Tickets are free, but move fast.

And finally We leave you with news that a cat on a Roomba, dressed as a shark, has shambolically chased a duckling.

See you in seven.

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April 12, 2013

The Week in Social: The BBC’s Ding Dong, Lavender Cookies and why your doctor won’t tweet

One Billion Downloads… Incredibly, almost 4 million single music downloads are sold each week in the UK. On Monday, the Official Charts Company reported that the billionth single download was sold since legal downloads became available nine years ago. Adele’s ‘Someone Like You’ is the UK’s best selling download.

Ding Dong! Margaret Thatcher died on Monday kicking off another story about downloads. A Facebook campaign to get ‘Ding Dong! The Witch is Dead!’ from The Wizard of Oz to chart began to yield dividends with the track currently at no. 1 on the iTunes Songs Chart and likely to hit the official Top 3 on Sunday. The BBC are probably agonising over how to handle this reports the Atlantic Wire. This sort of thing would never happen in North Korea.

Won’t you help me, Dr Tweet? You want to access your doctors online but they don’t want to be there. Fear of litigation is the primary reason that the doctor won’t tweet, but one medic reckons it’s time to take the healing to social media.

Snapguide [iOS, free] reinvents the How To guide for the mobile age. The app and site give you a very simple way to create and share your own guides and my friend [decoreco]’s recipe for Lavender Shortbread Biscuits is proving a hit.

99% Invisible [podcast] The myth of America’s love affair with the automobile is revealed as a triumph of PR. The wonderfully-named Roman Mars looks at how in the 1920s the emerging automobile was reviled as a child-killing monster but the motor industry and its allies cleverly changed not only people’s attitudes but also how cities became constructed. 99% Invisible is like Radiolab’s slicker sibling. Subscribe here.

http://soundcloud.com/roman-mars/99-invisible-76-the-modern-moloch

See you in seven.

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April 5, 2013

The Week in Social: Class, Facebook Home and Digital Mischief

In the week that the mobile phone turned 40 (a fortnight after I did), we finally get word of a “Facebook phone”. Not actually a device though, Facebook Home is something between an operating system and an app on a Android phone. Basically, the phone uses Facebook as your way of being online. Wired is underwhelmed but acknowledge its appeal pointing out that for many people ‘Facebook is the Internet’ and ‘Facebook Home is going to be the best way for those people to experience the Internet on a phone’. Gizmodo looks at the positives.

Class has been very much on our minds in the UK this week. Iain Duncan Smith, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, defended cuts in welfare by claiming that he could live on £53 a week . At the time of writing over 430,000 signatories have called on IDS, who lives in an inherited £2M mansion, to put his money where his mouth is. The #IDS53 hashtag on Twitter reveals little faith in Mr Duncan Smith’s sincerity.

Meanwhile, the BBC invited us to find out which of the seven new social class categories we belong to. As with much of our discussion about class, the tool wasn’t taken terribly seriously (but clogged up our Facebook news feeds on Tuesday nonetheless). The Atlantic noted that the calculator is ‘distinctly British. Part of the questionnaire, for example, asks if you regularly ‘go to stately homes’. Answering yes instantly increases your cultural capital.”

Elsewhere on the BBC, Aleks Krotoski’s Digital Human series returned for a third run on April Fool’s Day. With the premise that there has never been ‘a greater engine of mischief’ than the Internet, the episode explores how mischief ‘performs many functions in our society; the individual can use it to find their place in the world, while it can also level the playing field between the powerful and powerless’. It’s well worth subscribing to the podcast.

See you in seven.

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March 8, 2013

The Week in Social: Bowie and Mila Kunis work it, Haiku Deck and Facebook (again)

More Bowie! The Next Day is almost upon us and Bowie has played us like a boss. Here are four things today’s bands can learn from the freaky bastard © Flight of the Conchords. Oh, and the album is rather good (if I may say so myself).

Facebook are at it again. Steel yourselves as over the next few weeks, Facebook hopes to make it easier to control the content appearing in the News Feed. Initial reactions draw comparisons with the Google+ layout and, encouragingly, one user says “I have to admit, for the first time Fb looks beautiful”. Gizmodo has an overview of the News Feed changes.

Instagram for Presentations? “80% of people use 5% of product features. Often, full-featured software gives people “too much rope with which to hang themselves,” explains Adam Tratt, co-founder of Haiku Deck (iOS, free). Mashable reckons it’s difficult to make an unattractive presentation with the app. Sounds like my kind of thing.

Here’s an example: http://www.haikudeck.com/p/bmzILgFNtm/launch-festival-2013

Mila Kunis seems like a hoot. First Jennifer Lawrence endears herself by taking on some rather silly questions and now Mila Kunis expertly rattles off the expected junket script in seconds when reminded that this interview has gone waaay off topic.

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Enda Guinan is a consultant and trainer offering advice on social media strategy and product delivery for individuals and small businesses. Get in touch to see how you can make the best use of your time and energy as you put together your social media plans.

March 1, 2013

The Week in Social: Accentuating the Positive

This week is about stealing positives from negatives.

People of Groupon, After four and a half intense and wonderful years as CEO of Groupon, I’ve decided that I’d like to spend more time with my family. Just kidding – I was fired today.

Things have been a bit shaky for daily-deals site, Groupon, of late. So, when their CEO and founder, Andrew Mason, got his marching orders this week, he posted his classy, witty goodbye online.

When microblogging (or lifestreaming) service, Posterous, announced it’s to shut down, a few accusing looks were aimed at its rival tumblr. Both platforms are extremely simple to use and it is this simplicity that has unexpectedly facilitated support groups for users with cancer:

“Your whole life feels like it’s at a standstill while you wait for a doctor to call, or test results to come in, or the chemo drip to finally stop,” [blogger Mandy Johnston] explains. And so the blog was catharsis.

In 2005, the world was supposedly listening to Mariah Carey’s ‘We Belong Together’ and Pussycat Dolls’ ‘Don’t Cha’ but in a parallel universe the real no. 1 was The Postal Service’s ‘Such Great Heights’ according to London startup last.fm. One of the first of the ‘web 2.0’ success stories, last.fm lets users keep a record and share listening stats. Spotify, Deezer et al may have stolen last.fm’s thunder, but there’s still a thrill to be had in geeking out with the stats. On Facebook, Leah Kardos (whose mesmerising Machines is out today) gives us the – joyful – perspective of the artist:

It’s hard to put into words. It’s because the highest compliment anyone can give my work is to want to listen to it closely. That’s the reason why we make things: to share them. On Last.fm just this minute I saw a girl in Slovakia was listening to my music repeatedly and I got that feeling again. How can these ideas and pieces that I cook up in my little room here in Bedford have reached her all the way over there? Out of all the beautiful and terrible music in the world, she doesn’t have to listen to mine and yet she does. And I feel humbled to have her ear for a short time and so thankful that I have the resources and circumstance to do what I do.

When a 70-year-old ex Royal Marine James McConnell passed away with no known family recently, the local vicar was concerned that no one would attend the man’s burial. Rev. Bob Mason prompted the Royal Marines Association to put out a call for support on Facebook. The results are… is it a bit dusty in here?

See you in seven.
Enda Guinan is a consultant and trainer offering advice on social media strategy and product delivery for individuals and small businesses. Get in touch to see how you can make the best use of your time and energy as you put together your social media plans.

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