For me, trying to choose a favourite talk from Austin’s SXSW interactive festival this week would be like lining up a row of twelve pots of deliciously fruity yoghurt and stating that I was only allowed to have one.

Agony.

Anyway, whatever the talk, and no matter what its theme, there’s great potential for use within digital advertising. It was good stuff. If someone tells you they weren’t inspired by SXSW then maybe they’re looking for fully-formed answers on a plate, whereas half the fun of this industry is taking a raw possibility, be it a technology or channel, and trying to do something different with it. Read More »

Ever wondered where Foursquare was launched, where Twitter hit the big time or where you can hear keynotes from the likes of Jimmy Wales, Guy Kawasaki, Craig Newmark, Evan Williams or even Mr Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, himself – well Austin, Texas is where it is at in March as SXSW comes to town.

And next week we will throwing ourselves into the madness of SXSW Interactive as part of the UKTI Trade Mission along with 39 other companies from the UK and over 25,000 others from round the Globe. We will endeavour to bring you daily updates as to themes, new ideas and creative technologies on show along with the weird and wonderful from Austin. Read More »

Shona Harper

At London Social Media Week, I met solicitor Shona Harper, an expert in the legal side of social media for individuals and corporations, and we got to talking about some of the rather scary things that most of us pay little attention toward when using social media.

Whether it is uploading photos, that we then allow another entity to have control of, or granting access to our Facebook or Twitter account to a third party – we are, often unknowingly, giving away data, and, in certain instances, giving away certain privacy rights associated with that data. Admit it, when that long, boring box of detailed legal information pops up when you download an app or sign up to a website, you just hit “I Agree” and don’t actually read it, don’t you? While maybe there are a few things you should be paying attention toward. Read More »

Would you buy your social media influence?

If you are feeling lonely on Twitter, with only a handful of followers, or not feeling enough fans like you on Facebook, you could consider buying more friends. There are various services out there offering to get you thousands of fans with prices going up to $4,000 for 10,000 fans.

How much would you pay to increase your social network influence? And who would you buy? Read More »

The fallout from the AOL acquisition of Techcrunch continues as former writer, Sarah Lacy, launches a news site, called PandoDaily, which is being dubbed “TechCrunch 2.0 by some.

PandoDaily, which will focus almost exclusively on tech start-ups, launches today and is backed by a number of investors including TechCrunch founder Mike Arrington, who left the site he founded in September unhappy (but richer) after the earlier sale to AOL. Read More »

It’s an interesting contradiction that the further technology advances, the simpler and more instinctive it becomes to use.

Take the addictive interface functionality of an iPad or iPhone, for example. Watching people using it with simple, intuitive finger movements and hand gestures, it makes me wonder just how instinctive digital interactivity can become. (I mean, even cats are using it for Chrissakes. Such as these two cool customers, chillaxing with fish on an iPad, licking each other’s ears lazily and listening to rude music.) 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 »

New Look the band, not the high street shop, are Brooklyn based musicians who have just commissioned directing duo Tim & Joe to create the video for their latest single Nap on the bow.

The directors have used the Xbox Kinect to record the bands movement which gives an incredible 3D effect.  The introduction of the Kinect to the market has meant that this high-tech equipment is available to the masses making it possible for hackers to break the system and reap the benefits of such technology for creative purposes. Read More »

New ad for Samsung Galaxy S II shows urban scene kids with delusions of creative greatness (who are actually baristas, apparently) queuing for the latest iPhone. It goes on to show people outside the queue who already have a great phone with 4G and a big, bright screen. Read More »

I think everyone is being a bit mean to Google. Yeah, that’s right. I think the community of social media / digital analysts have been very rash in their assessment of Google+ and its social offering.

Google+ is the new kid in the playground and everyone knows they’ve got exceedingly rich parents; this is a back-foot start straight from the off. No one wants to focus on the functionality, no one wants to talk about where it fits and no one wants to let it find its feet. Read More »