Do you have the attention span of a spider monkey that’s drunk five cappuccinos?

I was delving into the issue of shortening attention spans recently, and one essay in particular caught my eye. Written by Douglas Rushkoff , media analyst and documentary writer, it was entitled ‘The internet makes me think in the present tense.’

Rushkoff argues that ‘the internet pushes us all towards the immediate. The now. Every inquiry is to be answered right away’. Then he states: ‘Once the internet changed from a resource at my desk into an appendage chirping from my pocket… the value of depth was replaced by that of immediacy masquerading as relevancy’. Read More »

While many airlines are great on social media, with Delta, KLM and British Airways all scoring well others are terrible. Qantas proved itself a case in point at the weekend after it grounded all flights in its dispute with staff.

As customers turned to social media to find out what was going on they weren’t getting much out of the airline’s official channels which were attacked for being corporate and wooden. Read More »

A jokester purporting to be an intern with Shippam’s Paste has been tweeting a string of bizarre and downright hilarious posts about the brand’s meat spreads, while also poking a bit of fun at the business of digital marketing and social media engagement as a whole.

The Twitter account, which has been confirmed as a fake by Shippam’s PR, stars the naïve and endearing intern ‘Ben,’ who’s been tasked with engaging customers while hawking the brand’s crab paste. Read More »

Big changes at the Independent today, which last week celebrated the first birthday of its ‘i’ newspaper, as it unveils a new website with an international paywall, which we recently reported was under consideration, as well as a paid for iPad app.

The Independent’s UK site remains free, but users accesing from the US and Canada will have to pay. Read More »

It’s more than a week since Google announced it will be encrypting searches made by logged-in users, but the debate about what this means for natural search rumbles (rather loudly) on. Read More »

There’s been a lot of talk in the last few weeks about The X Factor’s viewing figures this year compared to last.

Gary Barlow has talked both on The Xtra Factor and in the media about wanting to continue to improve week on week, and is quoted as saying that Simon Cowell has set a target of 10% increase each week. Read More »

Hi everybody.

I’m Rich. I work at 10 Yetis PR Agency. (‘Hiiii Rich’, you say in a soothingly choral sort of way).

And I’m an addict. (You clap empathetically, looking at me with a knowing approval and compassionately tearful gleam in your eye).

It all started out as a pastime. A bit of fun to while away the time with friends. I don’t need to use it, I’d tell myself. I do it because I want to. I was in control. And then, over time, things changed. I started using it at all hours of the day. I’d wake up and use it. I’d use while at work. I’d do it instead of spending time with my family. I’d do it as my family continued to live their lives around me, disapproving of my developing dependence. Then, as I found out about more and more different types – as other addicts eulogised – I’d have to try them. I needed to.

My addiction developed. Read More »

Amusing viral video looking at how different media outlets come up with their Occupy Wall Street headlines.

I particularly like the Huffington Post one: “what did the New York Times go with? Just repost that but in a bigger font.”

The Fox News one is also good  “Obama ruins economy, inspires shanty towns”. That’s Fox telling it like it is. Read More »

Great video here that someone has created following the whole Klout kerfuffle early this week that led some wags to start tweeting under the #OccupyKlout hashtag, which is at least more amusing than the people protesting about the price of tents outside St Paul’s.

All this because the San Francisco based Klout made some changes to the way it calculates online page that resulted in many users ending up with a lower Klout score. Oh the shame. This made people unhappy and many were tweeting about it. Read More »

This is cool. It is billed as the world’s first unique first person shooter simulator that turns gaming into reality as you move, aim, fire and yet also get shot within a 360-degree immersive environment.

Using a pre-release copy of Battlefield 3, which is out today, the geam from the Channel 5′s Gadget Show went beyond the call of duty… Read More »