This post is provided by our partner the Future Foundation, the leading consumer futures business.

Social media is addictive: as soon as we engage with it, it starts dominating our communication habits. Indeed, as part of the quantitative and qualitative research which we undertake in 21 markets across the globe for our nVision Global service, we found that – in every single country – the majority of people using social media were doing so on a daily basis.

In the past, many commentators viewed this as a sign that it would emerge as a direct competitor to traditional media – and television in particular – in terms of time use. In reality though, our other activities have not been cannibalised; rather, our viewing habits have evolved to incorporate this new channel. Read More »

The way we are watching TV has fundamental changed in two ways over the last couple of years. We no longer watch programming on an actual TV; instead we are increasingly watching shows on streaming sites like the BBC iPlayer or on DVR’s. The second major change is the way we interact with our peers as we watch, posting our thoughts or looking up info on our phones, tablets, etc. Read More »

We have reached an interesting point in the development of iPad magazines. Companies that had initially been hugely enthusiastic about the format, like Conde Nast, are having second thoughts and slowing down their adoption of the platform. Other publishers remain very cynical.

At the same time companies like Future Publishing are citing the iPad as one of the key reasons for significant growth of its digital division. Read More »

Screen shot: Penguin's On The Road iPad app

Penguin has announced a new iPad app for Jack Kerouac’s classic On The Road, hot on the heels of Faber & Faber’s release of an all-singing, all-dancing The Waste Land app. Book apps are getting a lot of attention, and here’s why I think they will be here to stay even after the novelty factor has worn off.

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The iPad has done for tablets what the iPhone did for smart phones.

They have not only completely revolutionised what now seem like dinosaur-era devices but they have also created a market consisting of exciting new consumer experiences and opportunities for brands well beyond the previous industry standard.

The similarity between the devices ends there – unless, of course, you take the Dom Joly (Trigger Happy TV) approach to phone size with your beloved iPad. Read More »

How many people do you know that use an Apple iPhone, an iPad or iTouch? Probably quite a few. Figures estimate that there are now 130 million users of the Apple iOS platform (15 million iPads alone) that powers all these formats.

As a result advertisers have to create campaigns that work across all these new devices, but there’s a significant problem. Read More »

Only weeks into the life of New Corporation’s iPad only title The Daily its editor, Jesse Angelo, has sent a memo to his editorial team telling them that they need to go beyond “scraping the web and the wires”.

What he wants to see is them out on the ground doing some reporting and finding more “compelling” stories. You would think that this is the kind of thing that would have been set out in the vision for The Daily from the start. Apparently not. Read More »

Image: 9to5Mac

It’s one of the biggest questions of our times: Shall I get an iPad now or wait for the next generation device come out?’

Whispers that the iPad 2 might be released next week could remove that stress-inducing dilemma.

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Is it that time already? Yesterday, Gartner said that mobile application revenue will nearly triple in 2011, to $15.1bn ($5.2bn last year) and much of that growth will come from 18 billion app downloads 60,000 of which are designed for the Apple iPad, which has seen sales beat expectations.

The iPad, almost a year old now, had racked up sales of almost 15 million (14.8 million by the end of 2010) and about 7.33 million of those sales came in December. That growth is set to rocket this year as this infographic shows. Read More »

AOL is pushing forward its content strategy with the launch of an iPad only magazine called Editions.

Ahead of the launch it has released this amusing off beat video giving a hint of what we might expect from “Editions.” Read More »