Monthly Archives: February 2011

Prepare for the ulitmate Rickroll – Rickroll the movie is on the way

Who hasn’t been Rickrolled? The subtle art of getting people to watch Rick Astley performing his 80s hit ‘Never gonna give you up’ on YouTube.

Well now prepare for the ultimate Rickroll. It is going to be turned into a movie that will bring together viral video stars of the internet in a film called ‘The Chronicles of Rick Roll’. Read More »

Will Greplin become ‘the search bar for your life’?

GreplinGreplin is a new tool which lets you search all the data held in your Facebook, Twitter, Dropbox, LinkedIn, Gmail, Google Docs and Calendar accounts. Other popular applications such as Google Reader, Basecamp and Evernote will be added shortly.

The usefulness of a personalised one-stop service like Greplin is immediately obvious – not least to serial start-up backer Sequoia Capital who have just offered $4million in funding. So is social search about to take off in 2011? Read More »

Sarah Palin uses fake Facebook account to ‘like’ herself

Celebrities seem to be incredibly inventive in finding new ways to have the phrase ‘social media blunder’ flung in their general direction, so congratulations to Sarah Palin for the latest — a fake Facebook account.

Lou Sarah likes Sarah Palin: amen!

The fake Facebook account was exposed by the Wonkette blog, which is claiming that it has been set up using Sarah Palin’s Gmail address.

Read More »

Facebook Advertising: four tips to make it work in 2011

The online display landscape is changing, and fast. Facebook and the Google Display Network have been at the forefront of a crucial shift in the market towards what is becoming fast referred to as the performance display market.

However, with the newness of Facebook Advertising and the introduction of social media into this mix, advertisers are only beginning to experiment with Facebook ads. Most are only now figuring out how to effectively run advertising programs on Facebook. Read More »

Admen go to digital school – this isn’t like adland in the 80s [Part V]

As we sit here in the calm open-plan Weapon 7 offices we survey the scene. What a nice bunch of happy people surround us, low-level ambient music wafts around the neat minimalist desks and enticing smell of freshly ground coffee permeates from the kitchen area.  An ocean of calm.

But back in the 80′s things couldn’t have been more different. Saatchi’s was a rabbit warren of scruffy offices inhabited by a colourful cast of creatives consisting of Prima Donnas, bullies and alcoholics. Read More »

Quora is being valued at more than $1bn. Seriously?

What do you make of Quora? We’ve all spent (a little) time on it, asked a few questions and followed a few like minded souls. Enough to get a reasonable feel for it. Personally I’m lukewarm on it.

But elsewhere, the feeling of some out there is that Quora is gold dust and than less than a year after becoming publicly available it is apparently worth more than $1bn. Really? Are you sure? Read More »

How not to make an agency promotional video by PHD

Media agency PHD Worldwide is coming in for something of a kicking on YouTube after it posted a promotional video.

It appears to have exacerbated the problem by deleting comments and is now trying to fire fight its response via Twitter. It is looking like a PR/social media disaster. Read More »

Cool response to £50m gift of mobile phone coverage on the Underground

Mobile phone with Tube mapHow do you feel about having mobile phone coverage on the Underground? Maybe you’re frustrated at having to lose your signal every time you take the Tube and wonder why London is so far behind Paris, Barcelona and Hong Kong in offering connectivity to its passengers.

Or maybe it’s bad enough being shoved up against some dullard’s sweaty armpit first thing in the morning without being forced to listen to a blow-by-blow account of the events leading up to his hangover.

With Chinese telecoms company Huawei close to sealing a £50 million deal to bring mobile phone coverage to the Underground ahead of the London 2012 this might soon become a reality. Read More »

Was Oreo’s bid to amass the most Facebook ‘likes’ nothing but a PR stunt?

If like me, you enjoy social media AND cookies, last week’s Oreo story can’t have escaped your attention.  Oreo, the world’s ‘favourite’ cookie attempted a world record on its Facebook page.

The premise was simple: amass the most number of ‘likes’ for a Facebook post within 24 hours, creating a huge raft of PR and thousands of new ‘fans’ in the process. Read More »

Porsche thanks its Facebook fans by printing a million of their names on a 911

Porsche: The Million Name Car

It’s generally accepted that it’s a good thing for brands to have a lot of fans on Facebook, but harder to know what one ought do once that fanbase has been developed. So readers might be interested to see what Porsche has done with theirs — created a neat online campaign thanking them all, and putting their names on a specially customised 911 GT3R Hybrid. Read More »