The arrival of Twitter has led to many talking about blogging dying as microblogging took over, but blogging platform WordPress is showing growth while Twitter slumps.

According to a report on Techcrunch, Twitter is seeing growth to Twitter.com slow (third party clients like TweetDeck are still going strong) as numbers fall by 100,000 to 58.3m unique visitors worldwide based on comScore estimates.

WordPress.com on the other hand gained 10m unique visitors to end the month at 151.8m suggesting that traditional blogging is far from dead

If you have ever struggle to find your favourite TV shows online a new service called Clicker has been launched to make that a whole lot easier.

According to the Wall Street Journal free website Clicker (where did I leave it again?) aims to be the “TV Guide for all full episodes available to watch on the web” whether you are looking for Gossip Girl, 30 Rock or Flash Forward or Fringe.

The site searches over 1,200 sources and indexes some 400,000 episodes from 7,000 shows. Clicker will then either take you straight to the content or allow you to watch it on its own site

Channel 4′s 4iP fund is to invest in one of North Ireland’s best known and influential political blogs Slugger O’Toole.

PaidContent reports that the C4 is continuing to investing in projects that “keep an eye on money and power”. The investment is a joint venture with media agency Northern Ireland Screen. No details as of yet if C4 has taken an equity stake.

Started by political journalist Mick Fealty in 2002 it now comprises a team of contributors.

Time Inc and Condé Nast are reported to be among a group of magazine publishers  who are working on a plan to jointly build an online newsstand for publications in multiple digital formats.

According to a report on The New York Times, the publishers will form a new company that is being described as an “iTunes for magazines”. Hearst and Meredith are also said to be involved and each will take an equity stake.

The paper says the new venture might be announced in early December. The deal would bring together magazines such as Cosmopolitan, Vogue, GQ and Esquire. It was recently revealed that Conde Nast was working on a digital version of Wired for Apple’s secret tablet computer.

Something that’s been discussed at length in the past, is the whole issue of agencies practicing what they preach in terms of social media.

So…it’s easy to rock up and recycle some stats and facts about
consumers taking control, being part of the conversation, blah,
blah…but do you have any credibility if you don’t have any 1st hand
experience of being in this space yourself?

Not surprisingly my answer is not really.   I wouldn’t go as far as saying that you need years of Internet experience, but some kind of hands-on, direct knowledge is crucial.

Unfortunately AdWeek has stats that show
that all too often what we do is window dressing – while 56% of agency
bosses say their company has a blog, 66% blog no more than once a
month.   Similarly 56% say they have a Twitter presence, but at the
same time 57% tweet once a month or less.

Part of the problem, from personal experience, is finding the right
way to use agency profiles so that it’s not a straight forward sales
pitch, and that it’s updated often enough.

At Cow our Twitter feed was until last month, used fairly infrequently, for the simple reason that the two people updating it – my fellow digital Cow, Louise Doherty, and myself - each had our own personal Twitter profiles and just naturally concentrated on those 1st, even if it concerned agency news.

The solution we came up with
was to give the feed to everyone in the agency on rotation where they
talk about things of interest to them, which personally I think makes
it less sales focused, as well as making it look more busy.   It also
puts more of a human stamp on our – corporate – social media profiles.

An example from Australia

On a much larger scale, McCanns in Australia and New Zealand, seems to have much the same in mind. 
Strategist Mark Pollard has a post up today on how the agency is
celebrating its 50th anniversary in Oz – and a key part involves a
complete website revamp – preview image above.

By the looks of things, the site will become primarily ‘social’, much like CP&B did the other month.   But there’s an added element in that McCann staffers have created new stuff specifically for it.

When the site goes live tomorrow, new content created by staff in
Auckland, Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney will go live, with an internal
incentive for the content that gets viewed the most.

According to Mark, “through the project we’re hoping people get
to experience the power – or perhaps lack of – of their own personal
networks, the role content plays in social and search, the
unpredictability of being online, how being transparent and authentic
is not to be feared, and so on.”

And so to rounds things off, maybe the secret in where some agencies go wrong can be found in the questions AdWeek asked.  Agencies bosses were asked about social media…yet these are
people who still by and large learned their craft in a traditional
marketing world.   Some of us are ‘digital immigrants’ in the sense
that we’ve made the effort to learn, while others are less active.

We tell our clients that consumers now have control over our
brands.  Perhaps the same applies to us.  Rather than adopting a top
down model in controlling our social media policies, the way for
agencies to become both authentic and effective is for everyone who is
part of our organisation to feed into them.

So, the time has come. Or rather, the untimely end has come. Revolution is taken off the stands, its feature article spiked.

It is, in my opinion, a huge shame. I’ve been involved in the magazine in one way or another – reader, writer, interviewee, critic, blogger – for a dozen years. I’ve seen it change and grow and mature since its earliest raison d’etre of providing a more client-friendly window on our industry than NMA’s then-trade newsletter view.

We, that is my friends and colleagues in the industry, even put up with the doldrum years of that one awful front-cover photoshop template and remained loyal. It’s a crying shame that ad revenues couldn’t support the title… but it’s also testament to the power of the digital revolution itself, which Revolution has so diligently reflected, that has led to the incorporation of marketing into the online. The digital universe, once so revolutionary, took over.

That the print edition is going is not so sad, except that it ends a vital period of reporting and advocacy that has now, quite inevitably and probably quite rightly, moved online. As with all changes like this though it leaves the hugely talented and engaging people behind it adrift. I hope that this talent doesn’t go wasted or diluted. Gareth Jones, Andy McCormick and the rest of the team deserve congratulations, as do their predecessors, for providing an important and valued perspective on our industry, one that has been accessible, informative and fun.

So, farewell then. Revolution is dead. Long live the revolution.

Welcome to
eModeration’s weekly round-up of all that is intriguing, alarming or odd in the
world of social media, compiled by Kate Williams
(@emodkate).
This week: President Obama’s thumbs;
Twillionaires; and ‘intextication’.

Next week, eModeration is sending me
on a social-skills course (day one: eating with implements) – so the next
round-up will be on Friday the 4th December. See you then.

THE HEADLINES
…

President Obama has revealed that his absence from
Twitter is due to a lack of dexterity in the thumb
department. He was asked by a group of Shanghai students if they should be
able to use Twitter freely – and the thumb quip launched a careful response
about freedom of speech: “I have a lot of critics in the United States who can
say all kinds of things about me, I actually think that that makes our democracy
stronger and it makes me a better leader because it forces me to hear opinions
that I don’t want to hear.”

Stephen Fry this week claimed that Twitter
celebs like himself can now opt out of the ‘pact
with the devil’ which required them to open up their private lives to
journalists, in return for press coverage of their work. Now, he says,
Twillionaires like he and Britney can “reach their circulation just by typing
into my keyboard.” Grave news indeed for Sleb magazines, which are already
clinging on for dear life to the sinking ship of print.

Facebook came in
for widespread and heavy
criticism this week, for failing to follow Bebo’s lead in including a
‘Report’ button developed by the Child Exploitation and On-line Protection
Centre. CEOP’s boss Jim Gamble urged the social networks to adopt the feature,
which allows young users to log bullying, hate speech and sexually explicit
content, and to contact trained advisers: “there is a responsibility, a duty of
care, to the young and the vulnerable”, he said.

The scam offers scandal
could spiral still further: a team
of Sacramento lawyers is investigating complaints that unauthorized charges
were made without users’ knowledge – and are considering class actions against
Facebook, MySpace, Zynga, and Offerpal amongst others.

Yes, it’s that
time of the decade already: as we inch painfully towards 2010, the Academy of
Digital Arts and Sciences bestowed Webby
Awards on the top 10 internet moments of the last 10 years. Amongst the
chosen: Facebook, Twitter, and the iPhone, along with the birth of Wikipedia and
the Iranian elections.

Channel 4’s landmark deal with YouTube went live
this week, unleashing around 5000 videos – 80% of which are full
lengths shows – upon a grateful nation. Peep Show and Gordon Ramsay’s F Word
are among the goodies, which Channel 4 is hoping will lure in fresh
advertisers.

The Digital
Economy Bill was amongst those trailed in The Queen’s Speech yesterday. The
bill proposes that those caught in the illegal-download act would first be sent
warning letters – but would lose their connections if they continued to break
the law. No mention, though, of the hotly-disputed Broadband Tax, which now
looks likely to be slotted into the Finance Bill, due in
2010.

THE LOWDOWN
…

Every now and again comes a piece of news to which the
only response is a brief contemplation of the expression “it takes all sorts to
make a world”, and here is just such a one: a French company has developed a set of bathroom scales
which will tweet your weight to your followers.

Teens are risking their
own lives, as well as others’, by texting
while driving- and worse, the figures seem to show that they’re learning
from their parents. A new report claims that people are well aware of the
dangers of texting on the road – but their desire to stay connected to their
networks is stronger than their desire to stay connected to the
tarmac.

Which leads us neatly to the American Oxford Dictionary’s Word
of the Year shortlist, which, in an example of terrifying cultural
serendipity, this year contains the word ‘intexticated’: the condition of being
distracted by texting while driving. Sadly it was pipped at the post by
‘unfriend’ – possibly more useful but not quite as clever.

UK Twitterers
are confirmed
lefties – the Citizen Smiths of the Interweb. The news comes from a joint
poll by Prospect Magazine and YouGov, which found that the average Twitter user
is under-35 and London-based – and somewhat to the left of the Labour
Party.

Trying to sell your house? Facing a wall of indifference, despite
your original features and your central location? Could be that potential
vendors are put off by your slow
broadband connection. ISPreview.co.uk’s survey reveals that 75% of people
won’t buy a house – even an adorable one – if the best broadband ISP speed it
could achieve was just 1Mbps.

IN OTHER NEWS
…

Yelps of excitement here, as Bing is launched
in the UK – with enhanced visual search, Twitter integration and an “instant
answers” service for real-time news on football scores and suchlike. But should
Google be perspiring slightly and watching its back – or has it nothing to fear
from the young pretender? iCrossing reveals the Five
Things You Need To Know about Bing.

Bebo, whose web TV slate includes
KateModern, Sofia’s Diary, and The Gap Year, has nixed
all new commissions, following parent company AOL’s announcement that it
would slash 100 jobs globally.

Despite Rupert Murdoch’s admission last
week that his paywall plans were likely to be delayed, it’s been announced that
Times Online will start charging
for content in the spring. James Harding, editor of The Times, said the site
would offer 24-hour passes, as well as subscriptions.

The European
Interactive Advertising Association – which includes stalwarts like AOL, the
BBC, and Condé Nast amongst its members – predicts that online advertising will
laugh
in the face of the recession next year, with a projected 7.6% year-on-year
rise in Europe, and a further 15% increase predicted for 2011.

And if
further proof were needed that it is customers who are now directing the brand
message, 360i reports that 77% of social media search results are generated
by individuals with no affiliation to the brand.

ON FACEBOOK …

It’s good news for Facebook
this week: it towers
above the nearest competition in the British social network league, netting
half of all visits in UK last month. Twitter languishes a distant fourth, with a
contextually-microscopic 1.9% of UK visitors.

But wait! Whispers
of coming gloom can be heard, as research by WPP Group’s Mindshare suggests
that the crucial older teen and twentysomething demographic might be drumming
its fingers and looking round for something new.

Sony is catching up with
rivals Microsoft, which recently hooked Facebook and Twitter to their Xbox 360.
New software for the PlayStation means that gamers can now link their PS3s to
their Facebook accounts to share
game-play updates with friends.

ON
TWITTER …

Despite the recent slowdown in Twitter’s growth,
it can still produce stats that make
us gasp: according to Pingdom the average number of Tweets per hour is 1.1
million; the daily figure is 27.3 million; and at this rate, we’re looking at 10
billion tweets a year.

The typical Twitter user is male, and in his late
twenties/early thirties – and wants brands to listen
and respond to his questions, finds new research from InSites. News which
sits uneasily against this
other study, which finds, amongst other interesting tidbits, that 76% of
brands on Twitter are infrequent users – and only 9% use it as a
customer-service channel.

BRANDS GET SOCIAL
…

Marmite has formed a secret society – the Marmarati – to
develop an extra-strong version of the loveit/hateit yeast-based spread. Members
were chosen because they expressed their love for the Unilever-owned brand
on social networking sites, and fans will be able to win a sneak-pretaste of the
new spread by uploading marmite-centric content.

Mydeco.com, which sells
homewares and furniture, has inked a deal with Sony’s PlayStation Home to sell
iconic pieces of virtual
furniture – for example, the famous Marilyn ‘Lips’ sofa – on the
community-based network.

Maclaren, who produce children’s buggies,
recently offered a voluntary product-recall on one million of its pushchairs,
amid reports that children had lost fingers in their folding mechanisms. But it
found itself at the wrong end of a sharp
social-media stick when UK customers discovered that only US customers were
included – and this week it was force to roll out the offer
worldwide.

For this year’s Los Angeles Design Challenge, Audi has tapped
its Facebook community of famously partisan fans to help design a fantasy Youthmobile for
release in the year 2030 – you can see some of the designs here.
http://www.facebook.com/audi

ON GOOGLE
…

The tech world was agog this week, as rumours
swirled that Google’s eagerly-awaited new Chrome operating system might be
available for download as soon as next week, with Search Engine Journal
suggesting that the traction being gained by Windows 7 might be motivating a
hasty launch.

Eek. Californian developer Frank McCabe created a
programming language in 2004, and named
it Go. He published a research paper about it in 2004. And a book in 2007.
All the more surprising, then, that Google has just called IT”s new language by
the same name. McCabe says he doesn’t have a trademark and can’t afford a
lawsuit, but is determined not to let the search giant steamroller his prior
claim.

Meanwhile, the Swiss data protection organization says its
complaints to Google about breaches of privacy in Street View have fallen
on deaf ears. It alleges that the company has refused to fix insufficiently
blurred faces and numberplates, which could lead to individuals being identified
in ‘sensitive’ locations – outside hospitals, prisons and schools.

Google
means business with its latest policy on scam
and malware advertisers who use Adwords – it’s imposing a blanket policy of
‘guilty till proven innocent’ on all suspect ads, and a lifetime ban on
confirmed scammers.

Social Search, Google’s snazzy new feature which
allows users to combine search with social data, has gone down – and according
to a baffled
Mashable, will remain down till early next week. What, Mashable wonders,
could have happened to Social Search that could possibly take that long to
fix?

ON YOUTUBE
…

YouTube has launched a dedicated channel called YouTube
Direct, specifically for citizen journalists to bring their work to a larger
audience. The tool allows media companies to connect
directly with user-reporters, and request and rebroadcast news
clips.

The video-sharing site is also testing a new approach to making
online ads relevant – allowing users to skip
the ones that bore them – with the idea that they will then engage more
deeply with the ones that they do in fact watch.

ON MOBILE …

T-Mobile faces consumer wrath
again this week after it emerged that one of their workers had been selling
customers’ details to a rival company – a major breach of data protection
regulation.

In the first mobile-Twitter deal, Orange have snagged an
agreement with Twitter to let users upload
photos by text, via Snapshot – a custom picture platform developed by
Orange.

73% of marketing execs think mobile is the UK’s ‘most
likely to expand’ medium, says the IAB, whose survey canvassed the opinions
of 100 senior agency reps.

VIRTUAL AND GAMES
…

Hi-yah! Kung
Fu Panda World – in development for the last 2 years and targeted at kids of
8-12 – is to be launched in early 2010. The world will feature high levels of
parental control, and will offer both long-term and one-day
subscriptions.

Despite a spot of bother with its in-game ads – which some
have suggested are rather dastardly – social games company Zynga’s investors are
clearly chomping at the bit. The upwardly-mobile games enterprise, whose biggest
success is the Facebook mega-game Farmville – has just received a massive
injection of cash: $15.1 million to be precise, bringing its total haul to
over $54 million.

Quick work: Gravity Bear, who declared as a social
games developer less than four weeks ago, has already unveiled Battle
Punks, a Facebook app which it bills as a ‘3D social game. It’s due to
launch in open beta before 2010.

Subscription revenues for Disney’s Club
Penguin were up a cozy 4% last quarter, contributing to a overall increase
in revenue for the company – despite an icy economy.


That’s all
folks!

This
week is 3D Week on Channel 4. They are running a series of programmes,
including a Derren Brown Special and Friday the 13th) in glorious
3-Dimensions.

Coupled with the fact that there is not a single
kid’s movie released at the moment that doesn’t have a 3D version
(Pixar’s recent ‘Up’, Disney’s new version of “A Christmas Carol”,
“Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs”, “Coraline” etc) 3D is making a
comeback and will dominate technology talk in 2010.

Things have
changed since the old lo-fi red/blue lenses. Modern 3D cinema uses new
polarised ‘clear’ lenses for a greater sense of realism and depth (plus
they are infinitely easier on the eyes). A real test of the power of 3D
will be this Christmas with the launch of James Cameron’s new film
‘Avatar’. This is Cameron’s first movie since ‘Titanic’ and promises to
take 3D to a new level. Reports from early previews suggest that this
pre-billing may not simply be hype and that the audience actually feels
transported into the set.

But 3D is not going to be confined to
the big screen. Recent 3D movies are also getting their release on
Blu-Ray and DVD and next year Sky launches Europe’s first 3D service
via it’s High Definition platform and showed some demonstrations at
this year’s Edinburgh Festival. The effect is, apparently, very
effective – and initial content will cover movies, entertainment and
sport.

So what’s next for marketeers? The advent of 3D TV
clearly suggests 3D advertising – not simply 3D versions of existing
ads, but rather creating bespoke, engaging experiences that drive
consumer cut through and maximise awareness. Such executions could live
both on broadcast TV, but also more interactively on the web in
glorious 3D.

But 3D took off in both the 1950s and 1980s, in both cases, being only a short term fads. Are things different now?

Certainly
the technology is much improved both in terms of the 3D effect itself
and the comfort levels of the glasses users need to wear. Home
entertainment manufacturers, such as Samsung and Sony, are also pushing
forward even more sophisticated technology for LED/LCD televisions that
limit the amount of blur seens in 3D movies. These more modern TVs use ‘active shutter glasses‘
that essentially synchronize with the picture from TV and allow the
left hand and right hand images from the screen to be alternately
received into the users left/right eye respectively thus giving the
impression of depth.

However, 3D will only truly become
mainstream when users no longer require any form of glasses (what is
often referred to as ‘autostereoscopic’ or ‘glassless’ 3D). This
technology is available today for digital signage and advertising but
requires 50 times the number of pixels than current high-def TVs.

With
the advent of ultra high-definition TVs around 2015 this may well be
possible, however until then 3D is still some way off from being the
standard viewing experience in the home.

I am frustrated. I am bored. I feel patronised. PC World is telling me My World is Pink (it has not been pink since I was 7) and I need a new laptop to match my outfit (it would never even occur to me to match my outfit with my technology). Samsung is asking me “What Colour is my Life?” (hello?) and Dell is telling me that technology is like candy (do me a favour).

I am a 35 year-old professional woman with my own home. I am educated, fairly tech literate and, most importantly, I have cash to spend. Plenty of cash to spend, on technology that will make my life easier, more creative and fun.

Out of every ten gadgets bought in the UK, four are now bought by women. And, before you ask, we are not talking about fridges and washing machines. No, these are high-end items such as HD TV’s, games consoles and smart phones. And there are more games being played by women than men between the ages of 25-34. I am not alone in feeling patronised or alienated by technology and consumer electronic brands.

I recently conducted some research for Forrester. This highlighted that one third of all British women do not feel connected to a single technology brand. Over half of all women walk out of shops because they cannot find what they are looking for. This missed opportunity is calculated at £0.6 billion. The technology industry is where the automotive industry was 20 years ago- nervous boys at the school dance who do not quite know what to do or say to women. They end up leading with two left feet.

So why do technology companies think that pinking up and dumbing down their marketing is the way to get professional, well educated women to part with their cash? Why do they treat young girls and women alike – as an afterthought? Why are companies not researching “what women really want” and getting advice from expert consultants?

How can we help technology companies understand what women want?

Many technology brands believe that the way to a woman’s purse is to make her feel “special”, and have aimed to achieve this by giving women their “own” space, site or product. Dell’s disastrous Della website, which handed out technological advice alongside recipe tips and fashion articles, was shut down within weeks. Carphone Warehouse, Dixons and Comet (Comet Angels) have all had their share of “initiatives” and women’s only days, all with the aim of helping women turn the telly on. All, one assumes, with a glass of Prosecco held in their manicured, nail-varnished hands.

No woman wants to be a target with an overt “female friendly” message. Being singled out as different is as off-putting today as it was when you were singled out at school. Nor do women want to be stereotyped or bamboozled by obscure jargon. It is ironic, given its widespread reputation for untarnished machismo, but the BBC’s Top Gear has democratised cars. It might be a legacy to make Jeremy Clarkson flinch, but he has helped to make cars accessible to women. Once purely the domain of men, the programme now has nearly as many female viewers as male, thanks largely to being both playful and light-hearted. It stands for unadulterated honesty and entertainment looking at how people in the real world think and relate to their cars.

In September this year, the Harvard Business Review stated that women now represent a bigger market opportunity than India and China combined. Technology brands must put an end to these clumsy marketing strategies and put money and time behind understanding how real women in the real world engage with technology.

Women are no longer the second sex. We are the more profitable sex.

Belinda Parmar is the founder of Lady Geek http://ladygeek.org.uk, which helps technology companies understand and sell to women. Belinda would love you to have your say on how technology companies are talking to women by filling out this short survey  Follow me on Twitter:   

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While the recession is keeping a fierce grip on the nation, and
with many people feeling fearful, or unable, to spend money on High Street goods this
holiday season, this economic situation could bring opportunity to transform
how we think about our role as consumers, and see some of us turn into
creators. 

Remember the punk rock DIY culture that emerged out of the 80s recession? Many people looked toward that time of
economic hardship, as also being a time of great art with the likes of Vivienne
Westwood showing how good fashion design could come from surprising places. What if
people struggling in these economic hard times could harness that punk rock
type of creative spirit and make something from what they have already, in the
form of skills, clothes, film, books, music or just in day-to-day business
life? This recession-led holiday season may be about the deconstruction of old
consumer ways and the rebirth of a new creator class.

Coming up 28 November is an opportunity to find out how to
tap into the power of creativity, and apply it to the consumer world, the
workplace and life. The Live to Create workshops, a series of one-day sessions to help people unleash creativity, are hosted by
Lucy Wills, who wears many professional hats as a successful vintage jewellery
designer, performer, creativity consultant, teacher and climate activist. She’s
teamed up with Erica Grigg, of Carbon Outreach,
to teach others how to apply creativity, and help people flip from being
consumers to creators.

Both women are fellows of the RSA and have hosted workshops
at business conferences in the UK and USA. Both are also active in the climate
change movement, with Wills performing as a mermaid at many rallies, and being
a visual symbol of the activist events. The Live to Create workshops are
geared toward professionals in all areas of business, who are seeking new
approaches to applying creativity in the workplace and in personal life.

My consultancy Hai Media Group is supporting the Live to
Create workshop series, because we feel passionately that people need help to
thrive creatively in the business world and in their personal lives.

Creating more, consuming less,

-Lisa