Latest Posts

Twitter passes the 500 million user mark

Twitter has just passed the 500 million user mark, as predicted back in January, just shy of its sixth birthday. It has achieved amazing growth over the last year or so as it has become an indispensable feature of the media and entertainment landscape around the world.

There have been a lot of Twitter landmarks along the way stretching back to the 2008 presidential election through to the Arab Spring and the death of Osama Bin Laden. Read More »

TV or viral? Why not both? Why restrict great campaigns to the online space?

I’ve been wondering if a fixation with viral is preventing brands from getting the coverage their campaigns deserve?

There used to be something really cool, edgy and subversive about viral marketing. Like someone telling a secret online that suddenly ignited and spread like wildfire to the four corners of the Earth – boom! And there’s nothing quite like content sharing on this scale to take a brand global. Read More »

Sunday Times puts Marie Colvin’s final report from Syria outside paywall

Interesting move by The Sunday Times today. It reacted to the outpouring of tweets following the death of war correspondent Marie Colvin in Syria by putting her final report for the paper outside of its paywall.

There was a mass of tweets this morning as the tragic news broke of the death of the long time and highly respected Times journalist who was killed in the besieged city of Homs along with photographer Remi Ochlik after a shell hit the house they were sheltering in. Read More »

Google is preparing to launch Terminator glasses

What does the future look like? It might look a little different viewed through these Google glasses, or Google Goggles if you like, which come with a heads up display not unlike that most of us will be familiar with from films like The Terminator.

According to the 9to5 Google blog the glasses are real and they are in at the late prototype stage and look not unlike a pair of Oakley Thump MP3 sunglasses featured here. Read More »

2012: Rise of the social apps

The app for the J.J abrams movie Super 8 turned iPhones into super 8 film camerasIt goes without saying that social and digital media are now one of the main business channels available to us as marketers.  But one of the questions we are all asking is how do we use these platforms to not only gain trust from our fans but to convert them into advocates?

In the last year usage of social media has sky rocketed. In fact it is estimated that one in every nine people in the world is using Facebook, with the average user spending 15 hours and 33 minutes a month on the site. Twitter has also seen massive growth and now averages 190 million tweets per day. Read More »

Brit Awards – Who is generating the most online buzz? [infographic]

UPDATE: So now we know the winners how do they compare to the pre-awards buzz? Interesting to see that Adele who scored poorly in terms of social chatter storm to yet more gong success.

Coldplay though was right on the money. A lot of soial buzz and the award to match. Read More »

Padded numbers via the Social Media Experts

Back again, and still angry with Social Media experts and the way they pad numbers and make out thats a measure of success. Does my head in. So…

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It’s a ZyngaVille world, and we’re all just living in it

Yes, we are all on Facebook. We all on Facebook so much so that I regularly communicate with my mother, sisters, cousins and even grandfather that way. For a lot of my friends and far-flung family, having an email address is almost silly now, as we interact regularly through status updates and photo comments. (For everything else, we have BBM, but that is another story).

With what seems like a zillion connections and not very much time, I’ve optimised my news feed to weed out those pesky Facebook game requests. It was Mafia Wars and Farmville requests, but now it seems to be all Cityville and updates on everyone’s Words with Friends scores. It sometimes feels like I am the only one not playing, but some of our recent research has shown that just over a quarter of those who use Facebook from a computer in the UK are playing Facebook games. While it isn’t everyone, it’s still a huge number of people.
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The ultimate guide to Pinterest

You must have already read lots of posts about Pinterest, but add this to the list. A great Slideshare from Micheal Litman. It does pretty much what it says on the tin: everything you wanted to know about Pinterest.

Included here are answer to questions such as how the idea came about, useful statistics; facts and demographics; what are people pinning; which brands are using it; and how to get started. Read More »

Google+ brand pages growing faster than those on Twitter

While no one looks like catching Facebook any time soon in terms of the size of support brands enjoy on that social network there is an interesting battle being waged for second place and at the moment Google+ growing significantly faster than its 140 character rival.

Fans are signing up in greater number to follow brands on Google+ than they are on Twitter, according to a report by Social Bakers. Read More »