DigitalAgency

A brief encounter with @vodafoneliveguy :

@vodafoneliveguy kicked off his UK-wide tour today in a rainy, but welcoming Edinburgh.

I set up a meeting via Twitter, and had coffee with him in that centre of the Edinburgh Social Media universe, Centotre, to see what I could wheedle, wangle and, (something else that starts with 'w' but I can't think of right now), out of him.

First things first; he looks just like he does in the photos.

He wasn't in disguise, as I'd earlier thought.

And he was in turns; polite, evasive, charming, secretive, funny and mysterious. (At first he'd only give me his name, rank and Netbook serial number!)

But as we chatted he eagerly fired up and demo'ed the Dell Inspiron Mini 9 Netbook, which I have to admit was very cool.

It's got the technology of one of those usb mobile broadband dongles built in, so you don't need an, er, usb mobile broadband dongle plugged in.

It genuinely is a classy bit of kit, and with the demise of the 12" Mac PowerBook, attractively portable to this wrinkly old Apple die-hard.

He also showed me the gps gizmo which automatically talks to his Vodafone handset and plots his location on GoogleMaps. ('Beam me up Scotty': Appropriate enough as we are in Edinburgh.)

Tomorrow he'll be over in Glasgow, and will then continue his journey south. His full itinerary is here:

While I think on, I must stress that I have no official connection with this concept, but in the interests of full disclosure I do know, have met and like enormously the digital agency that came up with the idea.

A few weeks ago on one of my regular trips to 'swinging' London, (to buy some new flares, tank-tops and cuban-heeled boots), I met up with a lovely bloke called Flo Heiss, Creative Director of the digital agency Dare. And although we didn't discuss LiveGuy during our chat about social media, I did consequently email a (hair-brained) suggestion or two, unbidden, to Flo about the project.

However, the ideas weren't used, mainly because of technical reasons; i.e. they were rubbish.

But as I knew @vodafoneliveguy was in Edinburgh today I sent him a direct tweet offering to buy him coffee and have a chat, as I wanted to blog about the idea. This being the case, I felt it would then be a bit spivvy to try and get a Netbook out of it, and so kept my hat firmly out of the freebie ring.

You can follow @vodafoneliveguy on Twitter, FaceBook, YouTube and Picassa.

I hope it goes really well, and I wish everyone who joins in the search for him best of luck.

But I would suggest you try something other than the inviting him for coffee route.

Been there, done that, didn't get the Netbook ;-

Update On Google iPhone Voice Recognition App: Look For It On Monday:

Google have built a really nice voice-recognition app for the iPhone.

Thanks to Techcrunch for heads up. Follow link below for their story.

Update On Google iPhone Voice Recognition App: Look For It On Monday

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Senior Citizen Choir sing Eminem, Black Eyed Peas, Outkast etc:

Thanks to GarethK via Twitter.

Whopper FreakOut:

Whopper FreakOut:

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(Test of repost, using 'ShareThis' bookmarklet in FireFox. Pretty useful add-on.)

GMail. Now with video chat:

The one name we all have to impress. Google:

(Click search box above to see if Google likes me.)

 

MotherNewYork. CNN ad. Brilliant.

I used to be a copywriter.

I used to paper my bedroom wall with great ads from the Sunday Times.

I used to try and write like David Abbott, Tony Brignull, Mike Lescarbeau, Tom McElligott and Ed McCabe.

(And failed of course.) (And if you don't know who these guys are, Google them now. No, on second thoughts, if you don't know who they are, forget it, you're not actually that interested in copywriting.)

I used to think in this era dominated by the internets, that the days of classic, wonderful, scarily powerful writing had long gone.

(And then I saw this ad for today, from MotherNewYork.)

And realised they haven't.

God bless America.

And God bless MNY.

BigMouthMedia's Social Work:

I was a bit grumpy yesterday.

To cheer myself up I had a really good cull of my subscriptions to online newsletters, raggedy feeds, and followers/rubbishy mailers/pokers/and shabby app pushers on some of my social networks etc. (Always makes me feel a bit better, a bit less inundated, a bit 'lighter'.)

One of the newsletters I hit unsubscribe to was from Search specialists BigMouthMedia.

(No offence to the quality and regularity of the newsletter, more a realisation that I'm increasingly time poor and rarely get round to reading many email newsletters nowadays. (And as someone so sagely said recently, "If stuff is really important, it finds me anyways, through some channel or other".)

Soon after hitting 'unsubscribe' in my mail reader, I got a really nice email back from BMM's Head of Search; Andrew Girdwood.

Not only was this response a terrific social gesture, un-automated, personal and lighting-fast, but it also let me know that I could, as alternative, follow BMM on Twitter.

Which I did immediately.

If only more online brands were as switched on, pro-active and social as BigMouthMedia.

Whereas my experience has been that too many vendors of online solutions, (including ad agencies, digital agencies, social media 'experts' etc) are increasingly being infiltrated by spivvy chancers jumping on a currently convenient social bandwagon. Names and details withheld. But in the dark watches of the night, you know who you are.

(Oh dear, I must still have a bit of the grumps lingering from yesterday. Better wrap it here.)

Creationism:

I've been having a conversation on another site recently about user participation on/in social networks.

Discussing how many people actively contribute or passively observe, with a particular interest in the proportion/percentage who upload original content, or mainly contribute via comments/uploading existing work, or are happy to simply lurk/read only?

And why, you may ask, do I ask?.

Well, there's nothing inherently wrong with any of these activities, (and I hasten to add, this isn’t a rant or finger-pointing exercise). Rather, it's a genuine inquiry into user involvement here.

In the early days of most SN's, there seemed to be a surge of enthusiasm to create, contribute and upload here. (Early adopter syndrome?)

However the traffic seems to ultimately degenerate into the; ‘Member A is friends with Member B’, or Member A joins Group C,' or 'here's another mindless music/lookylike/cute cat picture widget that I have figured out how to embed', variety.

All well and good, if that's what floats your boat, but it does seem to confirm the 1/9/90 principle I've been reading about recently. (Also known as the 1% rule.)

It postulates, (oh dear, dipping into the new meeja, stripey Paul Smith shirt, lexicon again), that 1/9/90 % of social media users split into create/contribute/lurk camps.

Much of the theory comes from research covering social spaces like YouTube and the much-respected Jakob Nielsen.

(I’ve personally always taken JN’s pronouncements with a large pinch of salt, but amongst the sodium you can often find a few gems.)

And more importantly, he does adopt a killer look. See below. One which I am sincerely considering emulating:

But I digress, again, and steer myself back to the question, 'Do enough people contribute enough original content on social networks?

Or is the majority happy to let a small, often unpaid percentage, carry most of the creative weight? 

 

Footnote,

Perhaps it’s ROT thing for some?

In addition to Return On Investment, we now live in the era of ROT, Return On Time.

With a whole bunch of social 'outlets' to express ourselves in words, pictures, films and bookmarks: Writing a comment here and there, or cutting together a little movie, posting a tweet, embedding stuff in Google Maps etc, not only takes time to generate for the benefit of others social spaces, but it also consumes/steals time and content from some of our other, perhaps more ‘mainstream’ social channels.

For example, I’m posting less on my business blog, and it’s suffering because I now divert time in my day to a new, business-focussed social network in my neck of the woods. (Willing, and happily of course.)

And where I fall along the 1/9/90 continiuum could be to do with the fact that I’ve got far too much time on my hands, (but my diary, wife and local publican says otherwise), it maybe that most people on social networks are too busy earning a living to contribute more.

I’d be interested in your reaction, your views, and opinions in how we can encourage more creationists.

And if indeed we need to.

Or if we're content to recycle and repackage existing content. (Which in itself is no bad thing, if it’s work unseen by the community before.)

My guess is it’s a combo of both new and old.

With a bit more of an emphasis and boost to the new.

Cake:

Someone on a social network I spend a fair amount of time on, reminded me yesterday of a brilliant spoof on Brass Eye a few years back.

The Cake film if you haven't seen it, is utterly, utterly wonderful.

Any script that can get Rolf Harris to say: "Joss Ackland's Spunky Backpack", or Noel Edmonds to say "It stimulates part of the brain called 'Shatner's Bassoon'." get my attention, vote and fandom.

Have a look here:
(And weep. With laughter, or in frustration and envy at such brilliance.)