Daily Archives: 18 August, 2011

First flash mobs, then revolutions, now riots. Social media evolves

From the early days of social media, the medium has been evolving with how it is used for gathering groups of people together. Mobs may have ignited by word-of-mouth and phone calls in the past, but over the last decade, we’ve seen the medium become the infrastructure of how mass spontaneous events are organized.

When Facebook started out, its groups and pages invited people to promote events to members, and invite friends to attend. At first it was just friend’s parties with BBQs and birthday parties, and many band’s gigs. People were starting to use Facebook more than existing options like Evite. Read More »

Why I think Groupon is set to fail

groupon set to failI’ve been saying this for a while, to anybody who will listen. I have a major issue with Groupon. Or should I say, with the furore around Groupon and the ludicrous valuation placed on it by both Google, and their predicted IPO.   Read More »

HTML5 and the death of the App Store

The updated Linked in iPhone app

For obvious reasons Google has long-trumpeted the notion that brands should create a mobile optimised site first before developing a costly iPhone app.

While Google now offers a free way of doing so with its recently launched Mobilize tool, brands are looking to create more sophisticated mobile sites as they start to realise that the only way isn’t necessarily Apple. Read More »

CityJet shows how to Tweet in style with Depardieu response

CityJet: droll response

All respect for whoever runs job CityJet’s Twitter feed, and their rather elegant response to the news that French actor Gerard Depardieu has trouble holding things in.

Depardieu was on one of CityJet’s flights earlier this week when, according to another passenger, he announced to everyone in hearing distance that ‘I need a piss’.

Read More »

Blogs help Los Angeles Times achieve record traffic levels

This won’t come as a surprise to some, but a good blogging community can dramatically help boost traffic as a piece on Nieman Journalism Lab about the Los Angeles Times website highlights.

In the last few months the latimes.com has seen record traffic numbers and it is putting that down to its growth in use of breaking news blogs. Read More »

Google and Facebook attempt to re-define social media for business

When it comes to using social media as a business tool, it’s important to make a clear distinction between business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B), since this distinction will be vital for seeing the wood from the trees.

Facebook, in the context of its new “Facebook for Business” launch, is a B2C social engagement tool, as it aims to provide businesses with an easy way to connect with their consumers directly. LinkedIn, by comparison, is clearly a B2B tool, as it uses online social interaction to help businesspeople connect with other businesspeople. Read More »