Tuesday 31 March 2009

Friendfeed & Twitter

View my FriendFeed

While I was locked out of Twitter I noticed that the only way I could check on it was through Friendfeed. Which was interesting because somebody also noticed that and tried to change the password on it thus revealing just a little bit more than I knew before.

Moving on because the lesson learned was a good one that I want to write about and which links directly into Johanna's analogue experiment. I only really grasped this while 'offline'. I've not really cracked Friendfeed as a utility yet outside of that. I use it as an RSS aggregator I can pipe into some other places such as Facebook. Either way I could probably just get by on Friendfeed now I know its me-media footprint size which is huge, but you know how it is when trying anything new out; there's only so much time that we can get to explore them properly although I have in this case worked out what a useful tool it is for at least seeing what is going on when deprived of some other staple feeds. I might one day figure out the difference between that and my identi.ca

Or does anyone know the critical difference? Thanks to all of you who are open minded enough to check out Rejaw with me too and I'm also looking into HelloTxt which is all pretty tedious I'm sure but I've been doing the grunt work of signing up for stuff for so long now it's a chore I just get on with. As indeed I need to for my Myspace account which you're quite entitled to keep but may as well just change the email back and we can all just put it behind us. Some good came out of it too.

Monday 30 March 2009

Planning Wank



One of the notable disappointments of the plannersphere is the inability to engage with the larger subjects of the day. A herd like mentality (high five Mr Earls) seems to invariably ensue until a breakaway opinion is shared.

I mean really, was it only me who noticed that this economic turmoil would be the single most influential dynamic in our business before I blogged it?

Of course not, it's just that nobody wanted to point out the elephant in the room and this post is all about the elephant in the room.

Thanks btw to Neil who respects his own opinion as much as he welcomes others or I think we'd still be keeping quiet.
So, some months ago I came across a post on the use of a hotmail address which I found to be symptomatic of any London based planner who has yet to sharpen their skills abroad which is an assumption that what seems right in the UK is obviously a more progressive and thus substantial opinion than abroad - wrong. It's all over in London and this post one year down the line is my call on where the action is.

The writer (a friend of friends and thus a friend I might add) asserts that the use of a Hotmail address is either uncool or indicative of age. I'll let you read it but I'd like to state here that a hotmail address in China (the Leviathan of internet populations) is considered more prestigious than a QQ address which most are unaware of and the reason why I'm blogging about this topic.

Why put one's foot in the mouth without qualifying that one is just a local planner and the views expressed commensurate with that? The internet is after all a global media despite our cousins in America failing to understand that we don't all live in a U.S "state" when signing up to try stuff out. One of the perks of planning I might add.

The point is that clearly a snobbery of some kind (at the worst possible time) is intoxicating a large segment of the plannersphere, because while I use all my email address so that I can see who is doing what I use my hotmail address as the oldest and most well known leaving say my Gmail for business or Yahoo for the password options or whatever it is I used Yahoo for while trying to figure out what Yahoo 360 meant to social media some years ago. (Unilever Asia are you listening yet?)

No that isn't the point. The point is that when it comes to Microsoft the plannersphere is tainted. Seemingly jerking off to the latest Skittles work which admittedly punches above its weight and is thus to be welcomed.

When it comes to any discussion of Microsoft, the debate is already in the realms of "I use Apple and they haven't spoiled the world" so let's all break out into Kumbaya, in unison ; after we watch this Coca-cola hill top ad (which hasn't aged as well as we would hope).


Well the thing is Apple wouldn't exist if it wasn't for Microsoft (nor would Google) and as I've shared previously it's time to stop kicking the Grandaddy of Software for just existing (and who would pull it out of existence if their paycheck was not on time as most are?)

Microsoft is way off from perfect, and this post is being written on an Apple MacBook Air which frankly has weathered the single toughest beating I've dished out to a notebook and survived but that doesn't mean we shouldn't aquaint ourselves with some facts:

Microsoft is the de facto operating system of the world. It is as it is and we cannot unwind the clock. We probably need it, more than it needs us (Think about that).

Bitching about Microsoft is like bitching about an incontinent relative who was mopping our own urinary leaks long before reasonably sentient thoughts arrived.

Go to China and, Microsoft or Bill Gates is the ONLY thing that is openly admired about the U.S.
The responsibility of ensuring that the system doesn't freeze up after more than 30 years of solid performance is in itself considerable and while it's easy to see that less is more when considering operating systems, I don't know a single person who hasn't succumbed to feature creep when buying a technology for the first time. Why wouldn't the inventors have succumbed to that line of thinking too?

So people like Tom Rafferty who make a living through liberal pinko commie bashing Microsoft are just that. Blow hards who have never done anything as fundamentally important or profoundly life changing as Bill Gates and Microsoft. Who could deny that here is a man who didn't change the world?

So while it's fashionable to take the piss out of easy targets such as Hotmail ,like this joker over here I'd like to remind people that getting my first mail address outside of University which provided one that was all numbers and letters and @solent.ac.uk was when Hotmail first allowed me to talk to anyone else with an email address back in '95 through the revolutionary interface of what is now called The Cloud. It was brilliant back then and is still a brilliant idea right now.

I've been watching something. I seen how social media and the ability to share common interests or even share uncommon ones thus providing a learning platform is the single biggest revolution on the planet since Microsoft increased the market for computers from about five as IBM predicted (and is in the seven worst tech predictions of all time) to just about the entire planet.

Big organisational goal I might add.

I've watched as one memorable evening the Microsoft Live (call it 'we're not buying Facebook' statement if you will) has rolled out and quite hard work for me as one one who has thousands of emails scattered all over the show, took about an hour to consolidate what up till then was in my opinion a reasonably slow and poor blogging/messaging platform by Microsoft.


It isn't now, it's one of the best and most seamless integrated roll outs I've witnessed and here is a question to my peers in digital agencies, planners all over and anyone interested in what can only be classified as a revolution in communication. Why haven't any of you deemed it important to record that the largest adoption of or invitation to social media is occurring as we speak and is based on a platform that has been around for years?

Maybe it's the Asian numbers that are missing so here's some quick cut and paste to help me get to the final sentence before I pass out with faux rage and delicious tropical heat.

Windows Live reaches 142 million users a month in Asia Pacific and that number is about to get bigger. Microsoft and Windows is a large, healthy, growing, prestigious brand in Asia from a population that appreciates the sheer ability to connect through web cams to messengers but don't take my word for it here's a presentation from Geert who I met in LA last year and is responsible for that fab brand consumer ad we all loved so much.



There's more facts to appreciate what is going on with the QUIET launch of Windows Live.



If the Windows Live user community were its own country it would be the third largest in the world. 8.2 billion messages are sent via Messenger daily - that's 14 times the amount of snail mail sent via the US Postal Service on a daily basis and 17 times the number of comments posted daily on MySpace. Look even in the UK Microsoft Live fares unexpectedly well on the visitor stats as you can see over here.

So really my irritation is that because something is fashionable we, the planning community, seem to invest it with magical powers of efficacy that simply aren't there. Because we the planning community are by and large appreciators of Apple products we've lost the respect and the impartiality to judge what is unquestionably the de facto operating system of the world that churns out our payslips and which we are asymmetrically unprepared to talk about in the same way we are so keen to give Microsoft a good kicking at the first opportunity like their recent Global Advertising (On a local budget if you think about it) for pointing out what heaven forbid in this world of truth rejection is easily the hardest factoid in the universe.

MS is a cheaper operating system to run. Christ I'd like to have that in a brief. I'd send the creatives down to Four Bucks and get them to pay the agencies Macchiato coffees while explaining that this is what the cost of living means to most people in the real world.

So there you have it. Microsoft is huge, they're in business, they just rolled out some pretty awesome integrated social media shit and we the planning wank community pretty much ignored it preferring to waffle on like "let's not talk business or profit or communications efficacy" and continued with our specialist subject of "let's talk about what's hip" what's yoof or anything that has diminished our client's ability to believe in us. Because frankly they don't really and who could blame them, given the silence on something so large that just rolled out. Most planners probably don't even know because they're too sniffy to have a Hotmail address. Go figure that one out in ethnographic field studies.


My only real gripe with Microsoft is that somewhere back in the day, they changed the world and I believe they could do it again if they really really thought about it. Now that is awesomeness. My latest fave word.


I'll try to clean up this post later when I've cooled down from the rant. Formatting is all over the shop in Draft blogger but little I can do till they fix things.

Friday 27 March 2009

The Plot Thickens



This idea is beginning to unfold in a way that I appreciate very much. The transmedia influence is gathering steam if you can spot the link from yesterday's photography on Flickr that I posted about.

Thursday 26 March 2009

Is advertising dying?





I could quite easily both create or miss a million pound plus spent on advertising but stuff like this gets me thinking about how powerful a good idea using public space and then channeled into social media and shared with the right people can turn into something which frankly doesn't even needed to actually exist except as an idea.

It could be turned into a global media idea by a 14 year old student on a laptop, as George Parker highlights in Bob Garfield's Adage piece . You should read it because the parting shot is why we are "exquisitely, irretrievably fucked"

There is no commandment that thou shalt monetize media space. 

Although monetizing delivery is much much easier if we try and keep the mobile phone a pull not push media space. Keep an eye out for more of the above work going up on Flickr 

The future is looking awesome the sooner we let go of the past.

Lost In Translation?


I've discovered that Youtube is brilliant for explaining a lot of stuff when my Thai language skills run out. The songs are often known, the lyrics are easily available and most importantly the point is made memorably.

Sometimes we dance around a bit too.

What more could you ask for? This one is for Ann cfx

Wednesday 25 March 2009

The Storytelling Experiment

   



Marcus is starting a storytelling experiment today. There's more information at his blog over here. We've been having some fun on Plurck in the last few days, but I'm in no rush to replicate the Twitter experience. I'd like to keep it lazy and less noisy because that's the bit I'm enjoying most. I've yet to have a human being contact me from Twitter despite some of your best efforts so thanks again for all your support again.

Tuesday 24 March 2009

Twitter Not Human

 

If only I did get that email in the screen grab above, but I've been looping round that circuit for too long now and nothing gets resolved.

I'll put a hundred pounds into a charity of any reader's choosing if anyone can get a human being from twitter to contact me. The auto response isn't sophisticated enough to handle a stolen account with the default email reset. Only a human can solve the problem, but it's been nearly ten days now that I've been locked out.

It's not the account that feels cheated from me.. It's a free service and I can live without it as I do use Plurk and Jaiku and a bunch of others. It's the 800 or so people who wont know that it's not me Tweeting at some point about the ladyboy incident that Sam  had in Bangkok on his visit here, and which I have pledged not to ever mention again. 

OK well that's categorically not true but you get my drift. (Sam was the most popular person I've ever witnessed pay a visit to the City of Angels and I'm still getting broken heart phone calls  on the spare SIM from the fan club he whipped up on his visit. Quite remarkable it was to witness. Made me feel old too)

Sorry folks for any DM's that seem to be ignored  on my Twitter account, but I don't get them sent to me since the default email has been changed. It's out of my hands. Many of you have tried to help and I appreciate that very much. Really I do.

Update: Coincidentally I see Ian has posted about the need for humans  on websites over at his blog.

I'm hoping that today is going to be the day when a long overdue tattoo is put in place. More on that later I hope.

Saturday 14 March 2009

Are You Tooled Up?



I did bookmark this a day or so ago on delicious and subsequently discovered that Katie has done an excellent presentation which we can now share. It's great if only for further stimulating the debate on social media metrics but equally opens up the increasingly important conclusion that the elusive measurement methodology we seek, may well not be the cast iron approach we've been used to in the past with frequency and reach.

It should involve some common sense, creative problem solving and untried combinations of quantitative data, with in my mind, qualitative classification of engagement too.

I think one of the Tweets that Gavin or Katie gave out was something about social media measurement being as "easy or as difficult as you want". This sounds eminently sensible to a creative planner more interested in execution than spreadsheets of what are invariably inconclusive and contradictory data (That we often see nervous clients can never get enough off).

I've been mulling over an approach that any day now is threatening to materialize into a seminal (and wildly popular) post about the topic and which I've mentioned, here and here in the comments.

It might well include an unusual methodology for combining pre-billing and post communications efficacy measurement. Recombinant invoicing if you will.

This of course is a wild and probably foolhardy attempt at publicly committing myself to actually spilling some of the stuff that has been going on in my head apart from the the notion that scarcity of disposable income theoretically shreds the need to advertise in the ways we have been programmed to accept as the norm during the 20th and early 21st century.

In the mean time check out the presentation that Katie has done for us.



Friday 13 March 2009

Test Post Via Email/Mobile

Test Post via email.



http://www.charlesfrith.com 
+66 869 930 870
+44 792 344 8067

"The east shall shake the west awake
And ye shall have night for morn"

- James Joyce / "Finnegan's Wake"
 




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Tuesday 3 March 2009

With Heart



I've reached a conclusion on Prada but haven't drafted it yet. It will be completed shortly.