What real value does that add to the community?

You could argue that if a brand is “social” or “fun” then they have the right to ask such a question. Imagine a Facebook/ Twitter where many more brands enter into this kind of conversation. Imagine the news feed mess? I think that in some cases it has been forgotten that although we may loosely “own” the page/profile we setup, engagement is “earned”.

Q: Why do consumers/customers/fans like or follow us in the first place?

A: Because as brands we give them some sort of reward for doing so. Whether that is through association, exclusives, information, content, competitions, free things… they are all rewards.

Engagement is pointless, unless some form of value is being added. We can get 100 people on our page of 1 million to tell us what they did at the weekend, great… but why?

We all have one of those friends, the friends that just speak for the sake of speaking (I can name a few but I won’t). Brands need to be carful that they are not seen as one of “those” friends. Reason being, you tend to stop listening to them as they don’t have too much to add to a conversation, apart from the sound of their own voice.

Brands, do you want to be seen as the annoying over chatty friend, or the friend you go to for advice as what you say is valued?

Image from Flickr user Spectrious – http://www.flickr.com/photos/25015845@N07/2759818789/sizes/z/in/photostream/

No related posts.

No related posts.

inter // states from Samuel Cockedey on Vimeo.

No related posts.

No related posts.

With the rise of geo-bassed services enabling users to tell friends where they are and what they are doing, ‘The Internet’ is now driving people together socially rather than creating more basement loving individuals. At the end of the day humans are social. The June Trend Watching briefing was a piece on ‘Mass Mingling’, which detailed how and why technology was bringing people together.

On Saturday I went to ‘The Creators Project‘ which was an exhibition of technology/art/films/music/installations/panel discussions. Joachim Sauter from Art+Com was speaking at the event and had quite a few interesting things to say about technology in space. His company recently created the concept behing the new BMW ad (which was actually created for a museum installation not an ad, but was ‘used’ by their ad agency). One of the many things I took from his talk was ‘How can technology become part of a real space and add to it, not become an eyesore’. All of his work was there to add value in some way, to help tell a story, not technology for the sake of.

Mobile internet is a massive force behind this shift and spillage, for instance out of the 400 million (500 this week apparently) 100 million people are accessing Facebook through their mobile. The iPhone and other smartphone devices have contributed to the massive growth, feeding the habit of the hyper connected.

This natural spillage from the screen to reality is opening up more and more opportunities for brands to communicate with people. Uploaded 10 months ago by OneDotZero, this video shows an interactive mobile piece that was created for Nokia. Chris Allen who was also a panelist at The Creators Project spoke about a piece of work that he has just finished named ‘LDN24‘. This is another good example of how digital can be integrated into the real world. This piece pulls in live stats, tweets and info from live database sources.

Digital is in the real world… it is not separate… it is part of it. Integrated. Not a silo. How can we use digital and technology to add some value, to connect with our audience?

No related posts.

No related posts.

JESS3 / The State of The Internet from JESS3 on Vimeo.

No related posts.

So what is all the fuss about? What is new about this iPhone?

A summary if what has been announced:

1. New Design – 9.33mm thick. 24% thinner than iPhone 3GS. Micro sim tray. Front facing camera. Camera and LED Flash on the back. Antennas integrated into steel structure. Scratch resistant glass.

2. Display – Retina display which has 326 pixels per inch. 3.5 inch screen.

3. Chip & Specs – New A4 chip designed and made by a Apple. Battery is bigger, with up to 6 hours 3G browsing and 10 hours Wi-Fi. 10 Hours video, 40 hours music and 300 hours standby. Up to 32GB of storage.

4. Data Speed – Quad band HSPDA/HSUPA. 7.2mbps down. 5.8 up. 802.11n

5. 3-Axis Gyro – Pitch and roll. New motion APIs

6. Camera – 5 Megapixel camera. Record HD video at 720p and 30fps. iMovie for iPhone

7. iPhone OS 4 – Renamed to iOS 4

8. iBooks – Same features that are available on the iPhone.

9. iAds – “You will be able to add iAds to your app in an afternoon” said Steve Jobs. Advertisers get 60% of the revenue. Clients already include: Citi, Unilever, AT&T, Chanel, GE, Liberty Mutual, State Farm, Geico, Campbell’s, Sears, JC Penny, Target, Best Buy, Direct TV, TBS, Disney. iAds will be online from 1st July.

10. FaceTime – Videochat app for the iPhone 4… only for iPhone 4 to iPhone 4 calls. Also only enabled over Wi-fi to start with, 3G coming next year if they are ale to broker a deal with the networks.

What do you think is the most interesting new feature? Last night on Twitter there was already talk about how the video conferencing feature was going to revolutionise the porn industry… errmmmm Is that the first thought people have? Really? I think you may be missing a few points…

If you want the watch the whole thing… check out the keynote on YouTube.

Source of much information The Apple Blog

No related posts.

In the last 24 hours it has gone a bit nuts and it is a trending topic in the UK. This initiative has been supported by every1followme, who is trying to raise money for charity via sponsorship. A brief explanation to why…

I felt this could be a good exercise to raise money for charity & do good for the world, on the 28th of Jan 2010, I created a twitter list called ‘sponsored by‘ allowing corporate companies to sponsor me & get added to the list forever, this is very valuable to companies etc as the list is featured on this website & my twitter page & all tweets from these companies are shown on the list, all money raised from sponsors will be given to a charity or a number of charities. After I complete my goal gain 1 million followers, we will have a vote & you will decide the charity, not me! I think that’s the right thing to do, it ensures that my task does good for humanity aswell as someone winning the $5000

An idea that really harnesses an attitude of Twitter users… we have #FollowFriday, which sees users sending out tweets to encourage their followers to follow other worthy users. Without taking anything away from this initiative as it is for a good cause, it does highlight a specific social need held by many. The need to be popular. The more people that follow you the more your opinion matters. This ties very much into my last post about STATUSPHERE, particularly connectivity.

No related posts.

For the months of May/June the briefing is focused around ‘Staus’, that thing we want/have/need to demonstrate success. Their briefing states this is moving away from material objects to include acquired skills, eco-credentials, generosity, connectivity… Their definition of Statusphere is:

STATUSPHERE | As consumers are starting to recognize and respect fellow consumers who stray off the beaten consuming-more-than-thou-path, ‘new’ status can be about acquired skills, about eco-credentials, about generosity, about connectivity… All of this makes for a far more diversified ‘STATUSPHERE’ than most brands and organizations have traditionally catered to. Time to really figure out how and where your customers are now finding their status fix.

Broadly speaking it shows the shift in attitudes away from expensive objects to more diverse ways people are looking to gain status, which link closely to current cultural trends.We can see this quite evidently in specific cultural tribes in fashion and music to name a specific example.

No related posts.