Lots of excitement among Chelsea fans today as John Terry possibly revealed that his friend and team mate Frank Lampard is leaving the Premier League club. The  fact that Lampard is leaving is no surprise to football fans, as speculation about his future has been rife, but how the apparent confirmation from inside the West London club came is more note worthy.

We never think of news breaking on Instagram and we haven’t seen it used like that very much to date. What we have seen in recent months is Instagram achieve its ‘big citizen-journalism moment‘ as it became a key social channel during Superstorm Sandy in the US. Read More »

Are tangible photographs on the way back? Polaroid seems to think so. The firm was once the king of popular photography, with its instant camera achieving iconic status, and arguably helped the rise of Instagram. While the photo app has gone onto achieve great success Polaroid is a shadow of its former self. Instagram was bought for $1bn by Facebook while Polaroid has twice gone into bankruptcy and only emerging from that in 2010 as a new business.

Its latest idea is an odd one, something of an anachronism even, and seems to perfectly highlight its failure to convert its business in the digital age. It plans to open as many as ten ten Polaroid retail stores in 2013 whose sole purpose will be to print all those Polaroid looking Instagram pictures you have taken on your iPhone or Android smartphone.

Read More »

As Google fights ever harder to crack social media, it seems it might be playing a little bit dirty. The Wall Street Journal reports it is forcing people who use Google services, from  YouTube to Zagat, to sign up for Google+.

For example, those wishing to post reviews on Google owned services are required to sign in to Google+. Additionally, Google+ profiles are now appearing more and more in search. It all all allows Google to blend more data about a user together, remember you have to use your real name on Google+, giving them a more powerful sell to advertisers.

Read More »

As consumers we’re used to logical.  We pick up documents and read from left-to-right and from top-to-bottom.  We start a film at the beginning and eventually we get to the end, and we wouldn’t listen to a song in reverse.  But the internet is different, and 2012 saw us embrace this difference and recognise how we stumble around from item to item within a vast digital landscape.

Purposeless browsing doesn’t seem logical. In fact, it seems like a step backward. After all, we were ‘surfing the web’ back in the late 1990s, and that was pretty purposeless. Read More »

The past 12 months has seen content marketing become a big hitter in the marketing discipline stakes and there are plenty of lessons marketers need to learn for the year ahead to make the most of the growing medium. 2012 has been a great year for content marketing, one that has seen it established as a key discipline as brands look to create a genuine rapport with their target audience. And there are big names leading the charge; the likes of Coca-Cola and Red Bull both embed content strategy as an integral part of their overall marketing strategy.

Read More »

Bloggers are inspired by what they see and do, so it’s no surprise that many of them want easy-to-use apps that will allow them to work on their blogs while they are on the go. The reasons for doing this vary from wanting to be the first one to publish a story to wanting to keep their friends, family and followers up to date on their daily activities as they happen. Luckily, there are many apps that allow bloggers to post, edit and upload all their content from anywhere they wander. But with over one million apps out there, which ones are best suited for blogging?

Many bloggers rely on WordPress for an easy, efficient and aesthetically pleasing way to post. It is no surprise that the free WordPress mobile app for BlackBerry allows users to easily edit, upload and update posts and media. Bloggers can also read, approve and reply to comments. With its range of features, well-known interface and ease of use, WordPress is one of the best apps for mobile bloggers. Read More »