A few weeks ago, I had an email from one of the community managers for Zomato, who had recently bought Urbanspoon. They were looking to have a quick catch up to talk to me about the take over and discuss what it could mean to me, as a blogger. I wouldn’t call myself a food blogger as I’m don’t have a full time food blog, but I do have my Michelin list ambition this year! I’d been using Urbanspoon as a link to my blogs for the reviews, as if I’m going to write them, let’s at least link to…
-
-
There’s no doubt there is a lot of harassment on Twitter. The pseudonymous nature of the open platform creates an environment where random bullying can be become the norm, especially in certain spheres. This isn’t the fault of Twitter, the reasons go far deeper into society than one platform, but it is a mirror into the worst human behaviour. Although Twitter does not demand ‘real’ names (like Facebook), it does offer Verification, which is seen as confirmation that the person behind the account is who you may think it is. It’s for people who attract impersonators, celebrities in various fields,…
-
Another session from Social Media Week London, this one social media, Wimbledon and their partnership with IBM. Alex Willis (Wimbledon) In 2011 the Wimbledon team set out a 3 year plan to improve their digital experience. At the time they had started to engage on social, with 300k FB fans and 150k Twitter followers. They had 2 websites (one for all year round and one for the championships), and used radio and video; they had an app same as site. But their channels were not connected. Their 3 year plan was about: Extending reach Ensuring everything on brand Extend channels…
-
It’s Social Media Week and I’ve managed to squeeze in enough time to head out to a few events in and around London. Given how many sessions at the Games I managed to get to, it was only fitting that the first session this week was to hear about the Olympics and how they worked on a digital platform. Alex Balfour was the Head of New Media for the London Olympics, starting with the team six years ago and this was a chance for him to talk about what happened, some of the challenges, wins and failures that the team…
-
I’ve been out and about the the few days…a Gamecamp was held at the weekend, then I went to a book reading and finally another installment London Bloggers Meeting Gamecamp 4 The fourth round of Gamecamp, it had, according to the numbers I totted up, 225 people passing through its doors, the largest ever. My involvement this time was less than in previous ones, (holidays and work getting in the way), but I spent most of the day on the door, so at least met (briefly) almost everyone who turned up. I did squeeze in a few sessions. The first…
-
founder of 4chan. founded in 2003 as an image sharing community, for Japanese comics.cartoons/anime. A chatroom with 20. Now 12m visitors monthly. no registration. no archive. ideas – it’s about survival of the fittest. what resonates, stays on the board. Community flows over a day; the culture changes. to start a topic you need to provide an image still to start a topic. But it is more than the random board, about 50 topics – photography, origame, adult stuff. Media think the audience is just young, white, males..but not completely accurate Last year, started to think about what could be…
-
At Zappos.com, Tony Hsieh has fostered a culture where extraordinary customer service is the norm. On Saturday, March 14, hear him talk about how good deeds can help you leverage the power of your audience to massively extend your brand. As a preview, you can read this story for a glimpse of a company that blazes its own trails, including paying its employees to quit. Survey…lots of hands up who have bought from Zappos. it’s normally 2-1 female to male. They do tours of the site..got someone from a major Music label….took him to the Customer Loyalty team. He got…
-
While many assert that "privacy is dead," the complex ways in which people try to control access and visibility suggest that it’s just very confused. Rather than throwing the baby out with the bath water, let’s discuss people’s understanding and experiences of privacy and find ways to 2.0-ify it. danah boyd Researcher, Microsoft ResearchJudith Donath MIT Media LaboratoryAlice Marwick PhD Candidate, New York UniversitySiva Vaidhyanathan Assoc Professor, University of Virginia db: out panel together to discuss privacy, a group of academics to discuss..we have different definitions of privacy.  There are different cultural views. People don’t ness view in many ‘official’…
-
This post has been sitting in draft for nearly 2 weeks now. It’s been added to and written about in different moods and moved around and pondered upon. It may not make cohesive sense but it’s time to bite the bullet and publish!!! Obviously, the blog post title, like the cake, is a lie. I do care about Twitter, having used the service almost daily for over 2 years but sometimes you just have to let things out. Fair warning, this is just a grumpy rant – not necessarily a coherent argument – about the tool, just my feelings about…
-
On the one hand, the Olympics are the most wonderful celebration of humanity, of striving to be the best, faster, higher, stronger as the motto says. On the other hand, I find them – the organisation behind the games – to be one of the most cynical and grasping of organisations, historically prone to corruption, pushing their weight around to control the image, the trademarks, the media rights, anything that generates money. This evening, I went along to the IET for a Pinkerton Lecture, on using social media to inspire change. Delivered by Alex Balfour, who is the Head of…
-
Aleks Krotoski talking about the social graph. [missed the start] A social psychologist, trying to examine connections Pathways can be mapped across friends and people. Mass friending…impact the data and how the network connects. there are certain relationships and strengths of relationships. You can technological measure strength but difficult as you get to semantics. Adding arrows to the graph starts adding information. You can add lots of information, but then it all gets mushy in the middle. Fuzzy and gooey and technologiest don’t like that. Then I come into the mix and go oooh psychology. So how do you measure…
-
Charlene Li about the changing of corporations and social media. Examples of the change: the HD DVD key and Digg. Jericho and the peanuts. Shaun Daly was a fan of Jericho drove the change – you had to have something physical that CBS could not ignore. They bought it back, and it’s doing OK. CBS had nothing to lose. New book – the Groundswell. A social trend in which people use tech to get things from each other, rather than traditional institutions like corporations. This has been going on for a while, we have been talking about the revolution for…
-
Anastasia Goodstein brings together a group of teenagers to talk about how they use mobile and the web. they are early adopters but the tech needs to meet core needs. This is atalk with a panel of teens from ages 12-17 What do you like? Goodreads.com, cos a social network site, plus reviews of books, purevolume.com, signed and unsigned bands, get a taste of a lot of stuff myspace and facebook, cos create own layout and put pictures, customise the design, to communicate with friends and family (sisters) myspace and facebook, more facebook cos it has addons – can make…
-
Do I believe what it says in the blogs? This time I hope so – Venture Beat is reporting that Clipmarks is being bought by Forbes. The New York-based startup lets you select text, photos or videos on web pages, then use Clipmark’s bookmarking feature to save the URL and your selected information to your Clipmarks folder. From there, you can share your “clips†with friends and colleagues and even search to find the most popular clips on the Clipmarks site. As Forbes people have popped up in the comments to the article stating that it is essentially true but…
-
Jen’s pointed out that you can never, ever leave Facebook. You can only deactivate and suspend your account and if you ever want to go back then you just login again. Whilst deactivated, you still can get the emails. I ‘deactivated’ my Facebook account. They do not offer a ‘delete account’ option. Click to enlarge the above picture to see what you’re faced with when trying to leave. If you haven’t already seen the video I linked to in the previous post, you should. I am not paranoid, but I am also not stupid*. There are very powerful people involved…
-
danah boyd has posted a thoughts-in-progress study on class divides in the US youth use of social networks, looking at the different behaviours and cultural expectations of users of Facebook and MySpace. Over the last six months, I’ve noticed an increasing number of press articles about how high school teens are leaving MySpace for Facebook. That’s only partially true. There is indeed a change taking place, but it’s not a shift so much as a fragmentation. Until recently, American teenagers were flocking to MySpace. The picture is now being blurred. Some teens are flocking to MySpace. And some teens are…
-
And I should shout out a bit more to Adam Tinworth, someone i shamelessly forgot to mention that I met at Blogher. I’d been reading Adams blog for a while, so when an English gentleman wondered up to the table where Ewan and I were sitting, there was a moment of name recognition when I suddenly realised who he was. We had a good time at the conference but for some reason I still have not blogged about it. I should have, as I owe him for the Cargo Cult metaphor which I’ve used quite a few times I described…
-
Via Adam Tinworth, I see that the Telegraph is launching a new service, called My Telegraph. Y My Telegraph allows any reader to create their own blog, store all the comments they make on other readers’ blogs and save articles to read later. Version one of the site, which you can see below, will be ready to go live soon. This is a different way to go than USAToday, which allow you to comment on stories and vote for them (but never against them). It’s targeted at non-bloggers and I think it’s a great way to get interaction with the…
-
Flickr have announced a ‘day in the life of’ project. On 5th May, take your photos, send them to the group, map them, comment on them. Join in the fun and you may get your image published and featured in Flickr Events. One of the things that Flickr is great at, one of its defining characteristics, is the community surrounding the application. And here’s yet a further example of how it embraces the people who enjoy the site and gets them to join in an event. Look at the responses to what else happens on 5 May, although no-one yet…
-
Jay Rosen (Newassigment.net) talking about Assignment Zero When Tim Berners-Lee designed the web, he created a platform for people to collaborate, so scientists could share data. It is a giant collaboration machine. but it has developed more as a broadcast media, print, tv, cable to web. so what are the consequences for journalism, investigative reporting, when we have falling costs to locate people, share info, collaborate. so like-minded people can find each other, collaborate and make stuff for value. see OSS, Wikipedia, others. So with NewAssignment.net what are the consequences for journalism, this is a research project; to spark innovation,…