Orange Film Pulse: wisdom of crowds

Mobile phone network Orange is taking another step in its bid to ‘own’ film marketing by collating all the opinions about new films from Twitter, Facebook, film blogs and so on, and putting it all in one place.

Orange Film Pulse uses tweets, Facebook comments, blogs and even reviews from actual film critics to generate a score out of 100 for every film, using a special algorithm. Read More »

There has been a lot of talk lately about the much vaunted ‘second screen’. It amazes me there can be so much discussion about engaging people through it, when many can’t even decide what ‘it’ is. Is it the TV, or is it the laptop/smartphone? For me, this question can’t get much simpler. The TV is a passive device. Read More »

In Las Vegas for the Consumer Electronics Show, I managed to get 5 minutes with WPP CEO, Sir Martin Sorrell, and asked him how digital advertising budgets were shaping up for 2012, and where marketers should be focussing their efforts. Read More »

Microsoft: Take the Windows Phone challenge

If you’re in the market for a new smartphone and not a blinkered Apple fanboy, you’ll no doubt be considering investing in one of the new Windows phones we’re hearing so much about.

Even if you’re not looking to buy, you might still be interested in following a neat bit of Microsoft marketing taking place in Las Vegas, where the Consumer Electronics Show is going on.

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According to Gartner’s latest figures issued earlier this month, Smartphone sales reached 115m units worldwide and account for 26% of all mobile phone sales.  It goes without saying that if your customers are adopting smartphones and spending increasing amounts of time in the digital world, then you should be too.

Unfortunately many brands racing ahead with the digital revolution are stumbling across a big obstacle along the way to their goal: a limited knowledge of how their customers are connecting to them, their services and one another through these mobile devices. Read More »

It is the big hole in Facebook. Mobile is the fastest growing way that many access social media, even more so in 2012 as cheap smartphones become ever more available, but the social network has until now had no way of making money out of those millions of mobile connections.

That will apparently change in March, according to a Bloomberg report, as Facebook considers putting its Sponsored Stories ads onto mobile versions of Facebook for the first time. Read More »

My alarm clock woke me up today 30 minutes earlier than usual. It was a bit of shock. But then I realised that it had linked to the traffic road reports and found out there were traffic jams on my usual route to work; so it knew I’d need longer to get to work. When I got in my car, it drove me a different way than usual as it had communicated with the road infrastructure and found an unusual amount of potholes in the roads and didn’t want to get damaged. As I entered the staff car park at work my coffee pot automatically turned on in my office. It knew I’d need a cup of strong coffee after my early wake up call. I met Bob in reception and congratulated him on the golf trophy he had won. I didn’t know anything about Bob’s performance until I received details of it through my contact lens. My emails had started downloading by the time I got to my desk, the spam had been automatically removed and the obvious replies to emails had been made. In fact, my job was done, so I drank my coffee and called Bob to see if he wanted a game of golf. Read More »

Yesterday, it was being reported that Facebook was buying also ran location-based social sharing service Gowalla.

It has now emerged that the one time rival to Foursquare will be closed by Facebook once the deal is done. Read More »

You won’t need your wallet to go shopping on UK high streets in 2016, according to a new report by PayPal.

Yup, in four year’s time, UK shoppers will be able to use their mobile phones to pay for things with digital money rather than cash or cards.

If fact, it’s already being done. The report follows the launch of Pizza Express’s iPhone app, which allows diners in the UK to pay their bill at their table using their smartphone. Read More »

While rumours of the “official” Facebook phone have been in the wind for years, the tech industry seems convinced it is being built by HTC. But can this new entry, codenamed “Buffy”, be a success?