Brilliant infographic on social media usage

Via chrisrutz.de and Litmanlive

Metpolice campaign uses youTube tabs - nice

Really like this very simple Metpolice knife crime ad. from last year.



The opportunity provided by tabs has really transformed YouTube videos into really simple interactive sites. With Boone Oakley being my favourite example.



Love it.

Is the iPhone about to go mainstream?

It was announced this week that the iPhone - beloved by gadget freaks, the twitterati and the cool kids - will be sold at Tesco prior to Christmas.

Despite what agencies might have been saying for the past couple of years, the penetration of iPhones in the UK is currently minimal. Despite the wealth of stories about the success of the iPhone app. store, the persistent celeb shots and the general hyperbole, the British public still haven't really taken to the iPhone as quickly as Apple would like. Although August's Admob report does report an increased penetration.

As with every market Tesco enters it's widely anticipated that the move will spark a price war that hasn't resulted since the announcements by Orange and Vodafone of their entry into the market. While the Orange deal was welcomed by the geeks for providing better 3G coverage, customer service and faster speeds - things O2 has been criticised for since their exclusive deal began - they didn't twin these advantages with competitve pricing.

Getting the iPhone onto Tesco shelves is the big prize and possibly hands the advantage back to O2, Tesco's operator partner. Tesco Mobile's customer base are already heavy data users so the market is primed to burst beyond the affluent middle classes, but to do that there must be a competitve pricing model. What the Tesco pricing model is will remain a question for the time being, but the iPhone could suddenly be this year's hottest present again.

Minority report and beyond...way beyond

This video doesn't really need much explaining. Awesome's a word I hate using mainly because there are few things outside natural phenomena that are actually awesome. However I'll make an exception with this.

Introducting Pranav Mistry and his sixth sense awesomeness.

Is peanut butter and chocolate really the perfect combination?

This morning Linked In and Twitter announced that they would be errrr... 'Linking In' with the introduction of Twitter updates into the Linked In status bar.

For some reason the two companies have decided to use a peanut butter and chocolate analogy that sounds slightly weird but hey that's silicon valley for you. Tubs of spreads are close to those guys hearts.



But what of the TwitterIn' combination? At first it seemed to me a rather unholy alliance, but on reflection it's probably an excellent combo with real obvious value for both parties.

Recently Twitter has definitely been striving to be perceived as more of a business tool than it had been previously. The recently added list feature proved this. By integrating with Linked In this seems like the perfect way to connect and demonstrate Twitter's utility to a huge community of social mediaites on Linked In that have failed to see the point of Twitter up until now.

On the flip side Linked In has suffered the opposite problem. It's been stuck in an enterprise user rut and isn't seen as particularly cool. Activity on Linked In can seem like it moves at a snails pace in comparison to other social platforms, but by integrating Twitter suddenly the platform becomes a realtime bonanza.

Time will tell what the impact will be, but this week's most unlikely alliance could definitely prove a winner.

Watch the Wave

Right so first up my invite from Graeme hasn't arrived yet, but then according to @Twephanie it's going to take some time to come through which means Graeme will have to keep on waving at himself for a little while.

However I'm going to start moaning about it already. One of the key features that the development team are pushing is the ability for correspondents to see each others typing in real time.

Cool you may think, but why. How many times have you written and rewritten an email response, or written in haste and thought again or written an email and then changed your mind. Many times I'd suspect and in most of those cases you probably wouldn't have wanted the intended recipient to have seen what you were writing so far not so good.

However my key issue with this functionality and something I posted about on Amelia's blog is it effectively replicates and promotes one of the worst aspects of human communication i.e. that of not listening to what i being said and therefore anticipating what is being said and responding. Online social communications are all about listening, they're about understanding and responding accordingly. Although our browsing behaviour has become increasingly snack like we don't want it to progress to poorly communicative anticipatory otherwise what's the point. Realtime communication while it sounds like the future and may well be, may not be a great leap forward.

Brands under fire, beware Google Sidewiki

Google quietly released a new social tool this week called Sidewiki . Sidewiki is an addition to the Google toolbar, so far, so innocuous. However this could possibly enable the most visible feedback online brands have yet to face.

The Google Sidewiki toolbar allows any user with a Google account to comment, on any page, on any site (and of course I though I'd have a crack with Natwest). It effectively means users have the ability to graffiti corporate sites. Google say they are monitoring comments and have provided a reporting tool if posts are deemed malicious, however if the criticism is constructive, instructive and therefore destructive then the implications are massive.



Over the course of this year there has been a greater and greater demand for brands to listen from consumers, technology companies, agencies, in fact too many voices to list. In a way it's been convenient for companies to ignore it. If it's all going off on Twitter, or Facebook or “some blog” then it's out of sight and therefore out of mind (of course this an absurdity). What Sidewiki does though is bring it to the doorstep and now anyone can graffiti all over your front door. Now it's already been declared dangerous and doomed to fail and simply a way of Google monetising the whole web, but this is a Google beta product and it'll inevitably change and over time integrate Google's other features. And in the meantime the comments are going to start cluttering up the doormat and they're going to be difficult to ignore.

This kind of interwoven peer to peer feedback is the future of the web. It's going to force companies to change the way they operate so once again with gusto. Start listening and start taking heed.

So Natwest can you get back to me on this one.