Living in a digital world

Chinese cartoon cybercops warn of illegal internet content

Officials in China have announced that, starting this weekend, the cartoon police officers shown above will appear on the country’s 13 most popular web sites to warn users to avoid unapproved websites and encourage them to report anyone not abiding by the country’s censorship rules. Their beat will apparently extend to all websites registered in China by the end of the year.

According to a report in the Telegraph, “They will be on the watch for websites that incite secession, promote superstition, gambling and fraud”.

While this latest initiative is being promoted as a reassuring presence for web users, elsewhere in the world it is being seen as just another attempt to restrict internet use and remind Chinese internet users (of which there are an estimated 137 million – second only to the US, who they are on track to exceed within the next two years) that they are being watched.

August 31, 2007 Posted by Bryan | Uncategorized | Leave a Comment

Liverpool most popular Premier League club on the net

Online news for football fans. A report from online intelligence service Hitwise has revealed Liverpool to be the most popular Premier League club – for the second year running – based on share of UK Internet visits to the top 20 club websites in the week before the start of the new season.

As seen in the summary table above, Manchester United took the number two slot followed by Arsenal – while Chelsea didn’t even make the top ten.

August 29, 2007 Posted by Bryan | Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Blogging goes green – through Blog Action Day

Last week saw the launch of Blog Action Day, an international initiative aiming to unite thousands of blogging voices and have them talk about one specific issue on one specific day – with the aim being to further global awareness of that issue and so contribute to bringing about positive change.

The inaugural Blog Action Day is scheduled for October 15th 2007, and the issue that its organisers are asking bloggers from around the world to focus on is the environment. As well as dedicating that day’s posts to reporting on issues relating to the environment, bloggers who make money from their sites are also being asked to donate the day’s earnings to environmental charities.

We’ve added this blog and the nonprofit fundraising and marketing blog I also write (Giving in a digital world) to the 1,300-plus already registered (not bad for under a week!), and will be seeking-out relevant fundraising topics to blog about come the day.

If you author a blog – on any subject at all – then do take a look at their site and consider adding your voice to this innovative global initiative.

August 20, 2007 Posted by Bryan | Uncategorized | Leave a Comment

Facebook app sells for $3million – or perhaps it doesn’t!

There was a flurry of excitement amongst Facebook watchers at the end of last week following a post on the Inside Facebook blog on Thursday, announcing “the first major successful exit of a Facebook application since the platform launched just under three months ago” (you can read about the launch here if you missed it).

Apparently ‘Where I’ve Been’, the most used travel application on Facebook with 2.4m users (making it 21st in the most users ranking) had sold to travel company TripAdvisor for a nice $3million – making the $60k paid for the app ‘Favourite Peeps’ in June look like small change and, presumably, raising the hopes of ambitious app developers worldwide.

However, it seems that Facebook broke the news too soon – as its blog posting was subsequently updated with a concise comment from a TripAdvisor spokesperson simply saying “This is untrue. Beyond that, we do not have any comment.”. Craig Ulliott, the developer behind ‘Where I’ve Been’ also denied the news in a statement added as a comment to a blog posting on techcrunch.com.

So, Facebook seems to have been somewhat premature in announcing the first multi-million dollar app sale. However, the story does highlight the fact that Facebook apps with multiple millions of active users worldwide are clearly perceived to have a very real business value – the question is just how this value can best be quantified in these new digital boom times.

Commentators on this and earlier app sales have typically used a $/user metric – with ‘Favourite Peeps’ going for 4.6cents/user and ‘Where I’ve Been’, had the valuation been true, achieving $1.25. However, given the diverse nature of Facebook apps out there and the resulting diverse levels of user engagement and commercial value this seems a very weak metric on which to base anything much. The true value of any such asset surely has to be related to the level of consumer engagement it achieves, as it is only this which can be leveraged to deliver subsequent value.

If measuring engagement is your type of thing (and it should be whether you’re an online marketer or an aspiring millionaire Facebook App developer) then you’ll find some useful and thought-provoking commentary in this blog post by Dave McClure.

August 19, 2007 Posted by Bryan | Uncategorized | Leave a Comment

Heinz: Somethings never change

Youtube is a great place to see ads from around the world. Here’s a rather nice one from the other side of the world, Australia for Heinz baked beans.

Advertising Agency: DDB Melbourne, Australia
Creative Director: Michael Faudet
Creatives: Michael Davey and John Akritidis
Agency Producer: Naomi Ingleton
Director: Steve Saussey
Producer: Katrina Maw
Production Company: Film Construction
Editor: Nigel Kari kari, Digital Pictures, Melbourne
Casting: Lesley Burgess
DOP: Daniel Ardilley

August 19, 2007 Posted by chriscoulson | Uncategorized | Leave a Comment

Warning: user generated ads can damage your brand

It must have seemed like a cool idea at the time. Last year Chevrolet hooked up with the US apprentice show and ran banner ads allowing users to remix their own TV commercial for the Chevy Tahoe. The results weren’t quite what they expected. Environmental activists and culture jammers jumped at the opportunity to have a pop at the gas-guzzling 4×4.

You can watch more of the unfortunate, brand-damaging, user-gen ads here. It’s interesting that comments from users defending the ads are often attacked by other posters as potentially being the work of Chevy’s employees.

Read more about this disastrous and ill-conceived campaign here.

August 16, 2007 Posted by riksta | Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Facebook for iPhone

What happens when you combine two of silicon valleys hottest properties – Facebook for iPhone of course. You can see how it works through your normal browser here:

http://iphone.facebook.com

August 15, 2007 Posted by robertjenkins | Uncategorized | Leave a Comment

Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us

 This is a great little video produced by the university of Kansas that illustrates the evolution of the web. It explains how we got to web 2.0 and why it’s different from what came before. Well worth watching:

August 15, 2007 Posted by robertjenkins | Uncategorized | Leave a Comment

Mash-ups, floods and user-gen content

This summe’s bad weather has prompted some helpful souls to create an interesting API mash-up (Flood 2.0) bringing together data from Google maps, news sources, BBC radio reports, flickr flood photos and youtube flood video footage. The result is a really interesting example of how free content can be put to purposeful use. And shows how the nature of maps is rapidly changing.

August 13, 2007 Posted by riksta | Uncategorized | Leave a Comment

Air New Zealand – lovely art direction

Some really nice art direction in this New Zealand Airlines ‘home sweet home’ campaign. The idea is that kiwi’s living at home can send messages to their friends and family who are in Australia. The messages appear on site, but also on a moveable billboard that’s travelling around the country.

It’s a nice idea and very clever. The brand captures the data of people who it knows may have a reason for flying to Australia and can then truly personalise the promotional messages it sends to them (eg ‘hey x, why not fly over to Sydney to visit your brother y’. But the really great thing about the campaign is the care that’s been taken over the look and feel. The felt art direction is carried through to the tiniest elements. The stitching around the browser window is lovely and the whole design just feels so tactile and charming.

August 10, 2007 Posted by riksta | Uncategorized | Leave a Comment