One application created such a storm when it hit Apple’s iPad last week that you could easily have missed the news that the BBC have finally released apps for the iPhone and iPad. So what app managed to create such a storm that even those without iPads were talking about it? Read More
Professional ‘funny man’ Keith Chegwin is facing the wrath of fellow comedians for tweeting one-liners that don’t appear to be all that original.
Simon Evans (you might have to Google him like I did) was the first to take umbrage after Chegwin, who has nearly 39,000 followers, tweeted: ‘My auntie Marge has been ill for so long we changed her name to “I can’t believe she’s not better.” This particular joke is said to belong to one Milton Jones (I had to Google him too). Evans responded, ‘Cheggers old chap, you are no doubt acting out of good intentions, but these jokes are written by professionals. It’s not really on to distribute them like this, without credit.’
Whenever you have a dominant player in the market, such as Facebook in social networking or Google in search engine marketing, every new start up or competitor gets the comparison. The world of social media loves to go looking for the next Facebook, and any start up which shows promise invariably gets branded with the label at some point.
But will there ever be another Facebook? I can think of a few reasons why there won’t:
Last week I was asked to cover the Leuka Mini Masters charity golf tournament.
The event, inspired by Mission Impossible 2 actor Dougray Scott, drew an incredible crowd including Hugh Grant, Tim Henman, Damian Lewis, Rob Brydon, Phil Glenister, Gianluca Vialli and Mark Nicholas, to name but a few.
Dougray and the organisers had asked Bing to sponsor it and I was asked to take a camera along and try and get some interviews. Read More
I first came across the idea of “government as a platform” when I was interviewing Tim O’Reilly earlier in the year about future visions of how government could be re-modelled for the digital age. Tim’s quickest way of explaining “gov as a platform” was using the iPhone as an analogy: i.e. just as the iPhone’s value has been optimised by opening up the iPhone platform to a legion apps, so government should do the same to optimise its value. Read More
Along with the new A-Team film, our annual staff rounders night and the phenomenally excellent ‘Mad Men’, email marketing has been a hot topic at the Stopgap Group office this week. Top ice cream brand Ben and Jerry’s has announced that it will be decreasing its email marketing communications in an effort to focus on customer communications within the Social Media space, which has divided opinions within our marketing microcosm, as well, it seems, as the wider industry.
Online registration for the London bicycle hire scheme starts this Friday, the bikes will appear on the street on July 30, so I’m wondering what we’re going to actually call the scheme.
Barclays Cycle Hire: how it will look
Barclays is the official sponsor, and Transport for London calls it Barclays Cycle Hire. I can’t see that catching on. I really can’t see myself explaining to a friend that I got the train to Charing Cross and then took a Barclays Cycle Hire bicycle to make the rest of the journey. Read More
I came across this presentation last week. One of the research guys at Google, Paul Adams, has put together his research on social – seeing how people use social media and how their networks differ on line and off line.
We all know that social media’s image has been tainted by issues such as personal data abuse, intrusive display advertising, and plagues of unsolicited demands from ‘friends’ to join mafia or pirate clans; but issues such as these have so irritated US consumers that they have rated Facebook as more annoying than many airlines, cable firms and even the IRS, according to research.
Google is revamping its image search feature and one of the changes will be the addition of a new ad format called Image Search Ads.
Google: how new image search will look
This is different to Google image ads, so don’t get confused now. Image Search ads feature on the Google Image Search results page and do not contain moving animations or appear anywhere else. What they do do is include a thumbnail image alongside lines of text as written by the brand or person who has bought the ad. Read More
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