Archive : November 2010

We noticed an iPhone app called Fast Society being mentioned on Twitter the other day. It did look interesting but we weren't quite sure how people were reacting to it (we later found out it was launched back in September, and that it has recently been featured in the New York Times and Business Insider.) So I got in touch with Matthew Rosenberg, one of the co-founders, to ask him a few questions. I think it's interesting that they are so focussed about their target audience. Would that change if they become as big as Facebook, who went from Harvard-only to Ivy League-only to everyone in the world?

Matthew was extremely forthcoming - here's what he had to say:

I’ve been thinking about the relationship between inspiration, innovation and collaboration lately, because of a number of related research articles I’ve been reading, in conjunction with things I’ve heard people say, and I thought it would be useful to articulate my thoughts in a blog post.

These are the slides from my talk at the APA International Content Summit 2010 yesterday. The gist of the talk follows, tidied up and with quite a few new thoughts thrown in. The numbers refer to the slides.

2. The panel topic was ‘The future of advertising: is the traditional model dead?’

And so I said ‘NO, it’s not’. FMCG companies especially, but everybody else too, are still throwing millions into traditional advertising on TV and in print and outdoors. It ain’t dead yet and probably never will be.

But advertising is losing its dominant place at the centre of communication between brands and customers; its influence is waning and it’s under attack: there’s a big shift happening and awareness of this is moving mainstream. This talk asks: Why? And what does the new model look like?

Last week I attended an event at NESTA about the powers and possibilities of big data, where Hans Peter Brondmo (Head of Social Software at Nokia), Haakon Overli (Managing Partner of Dawn Capital), Max Jolly (Director of Media Solutions at dunnhumby) and Megan Smith (General Manager of google.org and Vice-President of New Business Development) spoke about issues such as privacy (Nokia), investing in big data (Dawn Capital), using data to transform the way a business works (dunnhumby works with Tesco on their Clubcard), and channelling data for social good (google.org).

A news program has opinions, news items (which might contain locations, types of events etc), issues, methods of finding out more. A news story itself might be part of a bigger feature, which has related stories, or they may be stories that are part of a larger story. 

First things first, this post is going to out me. Despite working at a digital agency, one that calls itself a "social technology" company no less, I don't know a whole lot about coding. In fact until last Thursday's Internet Week event Coding for Dummies hosted by BBH Labs and Google, I didn't know my <p> tag from my padding. Luckily for me, it turns out I'm not alone...

There's a bit in the original film Karate Kid, when Daniel, almost crippled by blows to his leg, assumes the iconic Crane Kick stance and kicks his opponents chin in and knocks him out cold. Brilliant. 

That's basically what Facebook's could do to Google in two really sweet moves. Admittedly, performing those two moves could take a couple of years to pull off, but bear with me for a moment.

I recently attended an ICA debate called Paywalls, Ebooks and the Death of Print. It wasn’t so much a debate about whether print was dying, but a discussion about how the institution of news could be saved, and who should save it.

The usual suspects here are industry, technology and philanthropy. But on this occasion, panelist André Schiffrin brought another contender to the table: government. Whoah now. Government?