Author Archive

Twitter – surviving the backlash

Tuesday, September 1st, 2009

The last few weeks have seen naysayers becoming increasingly vocal in denying the usefulness of Twitter and asking whether it will ever become a viable revenue generator. For example recent articles in the Guardian and the Telegraph deny the impact of Twitter on building real communities and providing a useful tool for businesses.

Proving that strong communities can be formed online, and that Twitter does indeed mobilise the masses, one loyal Twitter user comedy writer Graham Linehan, responded to these accusations by asking his 26,973 followers what Twitter has done for them. The community responded in force with stories of how Twitter has impacted on their lives, both in business and by creating a network. A selection of these are:

…I saved time on research, hassle-free customer services, connection to interesting people, and a free book. All last week (via @somerandomnerd)

… I now write for a film news website. I’ve attended premieres and press conferences also I’ve had the opportunity to interact with a huge range of people whose work I enjoy, and thank them for it. (via @montimer)

Twitter…gave me a direct line to my local council, who got planners to review the traffic sitch outside my kid’s school (@sladey66)

On Twitter, I ask and answer questions related to my work – saving me having to read up on things not central to my job (@brenstrong)

I have been housebound thru illness for ages. Twitter has made me feel part of the world and not so isolated (via @Ita99)

Developments at Twitter are also putting to rest the fear that it will not be able to make money. The company has announced plans to start rolling out commercial accounts by the end of this year. This added service is expected to offer methods of measuring impact of Twitter feeds for businesses, such as detailed analytics of activity that is generated by tweets. (Before Twitter users panic, the service will remain as normal for all users but a ‘commercial layer’ will be added for those who wish to subscribe.)

Tags: micro blogging, social media, twitter
Posted in Microblogging | No Comments »

Everyday Adventures – New videos for UK parents

Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009

Over the last 6 months, we’ve been working on a video project which aims to tell parents from a range of backgrounds about some of the real life stories and circumstances that people in their positions find themselves in.

“Everyday Adventures” tells the stories of ordinary families from around the UK as they face these and other challenges. There’s a mix of real life and animation films, packed with useful information on: registering your child’s birth; parental rights; benefits you may be eligible for; and the availability of extended services in schools. Also included are links to organisations that can provide further help and support to mums and dads in all areas of family life.

To reflect the multicultural nature of UK families, the videos are available in English, Polish, Somali, Bengali and Guajurati. We’ve created MySpace and YouTube pages for the videos so you can check them out and let us know what you think. Our favourite is Wayne’s story

Tags: everyday adventures, myspace, parenting, Video, youtube
Posted in Client News, Video | No Comments »

The web on your tellybox – an update.

Monday, April 20th, 2009

Adapted by the author from an original post at social Probiotic

A few months ago I wrote a piece on my own blog about internet content making its way to the TV screen. Not in a Media Center box kind of way, but a way that is done from the point of view of the television industry. It’s now time for the other big event of the braodcasting calendar, NAB in Las Vegas, which unfortunately, I’ll not be attending. There was however, a chance to see some of the things that will be on display there at the IPTV World Forum in London last month. Once again, for a show that is about using internet technology, there was disappointingly little about internet content to see. But here’s a run down of what some of the TV tech companies are doing with social media.

Accedo: This is more of an update from what they showed me at IBC, essentially, they’ve taken on the ‘app’ model for Facebook and Twitter so that you can view a cutdown version of these applications as a sidebar during your normal TV watching. In the same way that online applications such as thwirl and digsby recognise that some things need to be kept in the background while you’re focusing on your main task, Accedo will sit completely unassumingly until you want to share what you’re doing with your network. It also integrates with your EPG, so that just using the coloured remote buttons, you can update what you’re watching. Neat, look:

SeaChange: as a company I’ve done some work with before, I was curious to know what this middleware provider was up to in the world of web content. They’re showing off Affinity, a social networking engine for video-on-demand, essentially a tool that allows you to make and take recommendations for stuff in a VOD library, the idea being that people will discover pay-per-view content that they might not normally find (= extra revenue for operator). The problem I have with this is that it seems that the recommendations are done via collaborative filtering (i.e. you share what you like with your friends and vice versa), which means that the solution is only good when your friends like the same stuff as you AND they happen to have an Affinity enabled TV service. If it was linked to a social network’s API, there would be a lot more value from this and it wouldn’t necessitate the latter point.

Ericcson: Yes they do TV, in fact, they were showing last.fm on TV – not the actual videos, but essentially, it’s an ‘app’ built for playing music through your TV when you get very bored of adverts for ringtones on VH1. I’m not entirely sure where it sits in the network because they don’t seem to be talking about it in any of their literature or website, which is a shame. I liked the demo though, it looks pretty slick and my TV has better sound quality than my PC, so I’m all for taking this particular service to the living room in another way (I currently use the last.fm app on my iPod quite frequently for that type of thing. Pic below:

CompleteTV: Now I have to say I’m more than a little disappointed with these guys. Despite having a fairly nice booth at IPTVWF, and splashing the YouTube Logo across it a couple of times, looking at their site, I fail to see how that was any more than lip service to online media making its way to the TV in any genuine form. Fear of content producers… perhaps. Now, that might sound harsh, but here’s the thing… CompleteTV makes boxes – not a great start… boxes for the consumer (even worse, since most of this stuff will migrate to the network in 3-4 years), which, with the whole wealth of social media goodness out there can do all this: “browse the internet and act as an email/instant messaging client”. Wow. I’m hugely underwhelmed.

Finally I wanted to quote a great article from the March/April issue of Future Media, in which Jonathan Webdale has interviewed Anthony Rose, one of the big cheeses behind the iPlayer, who said that “2007 was the year the BBC chose what you watched, 2008 was the year viewers chose what they watched and 2009 would be the year your friends choose what you watch.” As long as it’s not the rest of the Shiny Red team choosing, I’m keen to see how it goes.

Tags: future media, nab, social media, tv
Posted in Social Networking, Video, Web 2.0 | No Comments »

Twitter for newbies

Wednesday, March 18th, 2009

UK Internet traffic to Twitter ““ the popular microblogging service – has increased 10-fold over past last 12 months. With celebrities like Philip Schofield talking about the site on This Morning, and Jonathan Ross chatting about it with Stephen Fry on his show, growth is set to continue for the short term. For PR, Twitter is an incredibly powerful tool and respected bloggers in the US have gone as far as saying “Get into Twitter or get outta PR“.

So you join the trendsetters”¦ what next? Someone’s following you? Help! What should I say? Here’s Shiny Red’s top five do’s and don’ts for using Twitter as a communications professional:

Follow journalists ““ from tech, to national and broadcast press, there are a whole bunch using Twitter to gather information for stories, being able to respond to their request is helping them out. There’s a good list here.
Follow team-mates and clients ““ being able to throw your client an off-the-cuff message, even if it’s unrelated to work, shows that you’re plugged into their concerns
Keep your profile open ““ while you can keep your updates private, this goes against the flow in social media and will stunt the growth of your network. It also makes replying to people easier which is a key part of using the site.
Reciprocate most followers ““ if someone is following you it means they are interested in what you have to say. Unless the account is simply a spam feed, there’s no harm in following their updates… you can always unfollow them later.
Make use of Twitter tools ““ It’s not just about the page, you can also search for tweets about your campaigns or interests; or expand your network using add-ons like Mr Tweet.

Don’t

Forget it’s a public forum ““ While you might hate certain jobs your’ doing for a client, one US PR got into serious trouble for badmouthing his client’s home town.
Be afraid to talk about work ““ If you’ve got a great story, why not share it with your followers? If they like it, they will pass it on as well. But don’t use it simply as a promotional tool ““ that’s not what it is.
Worry about how many followers you have ““ Ideally your network should grow organically, so don’t go off and follow 3,000 people just in the hope that if they return the favour you’ll look popular.
Be annoying ““ sure, mix personal and business, but don’t end up posting the minutiae of life or being known for always having the last word.
Give up ““ Plenty of people “don’t get” Twitter first off… I was one of them, but if you keep going, you will find a way that it suits you and your working style.

Tags: list, tips, twitter
Posted in Microblogging | No Comments »

Facebook’s fresh privacy fracas

Monday, February 16th, 2009

You hereby grant Facebook an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, worldwide license to use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, scan, reformat, modify, edit, adapt, create derivative works and distribute, any user content you post on or in connection with the Facebook Service.

That’s paraphrased directly from Facebook’s new terms and conditions, which ““ as you can imagine ““ has caused not a small amount of discussion in the world of social media. From expelled students and Royal breakups to its over-intrusive Beacon platform, Facebook has been courting controversy rather more than it might like to admit over the last 12 months. On top of this, the social network has yet to answer questions around data portability in a convincing way. While reception to its interoperability platform “Connect” was positive, their spokesperson at Le Web in Paris was rightly called out by Michael Arrington for paying little more than lip service to the idea of open standards in social media. At its core, Facebook remains a walled garden and that’s unlikely to change any time soon.

These new T&Cs don’t help its cause one bit, but while those “in the know” will tut and shake their heads in despair, it’s unlikely that the average Facebook user will notice any difference at first ““ so why should they care? Well why not compare this attitude with Flickr’s “if it’s not public, it’s all yours” content policy ““ which, incidentally, terminates should you remove it from the site unlike the new FB small-print.

It seems that in the world of social media there’s an ideological debate going on where companies on the statist Left want to control and take ownership of content, while the open-source Right takes a more libertarian approach to it all. Of course there’s a balance to be struck, but this recent development only strengthens the argument of those who shy away from social media for fear details about their lives being controlled by or falling into the wrong hands. But perhaps the social network should be more concerned about the “what-if” factor… as an established consumer brand around the world, if FB trips itself up through misuse of the new “agreement” any time soon, you can expect the backlash to go beyond the online media set to its core audience of (so-far) contented everyday users.

UPDATE (18/02/09): Facebook has since reverted to its old ToS, see the blog post here. The company has “decided to take a new approach” towards developing its terms. We will keep watching for more developments.

Tags: data portability, facebook, legal, privacy
Posted in Social Networking | 1 Comment »

2008 – Our most read stories

Monday, December 15th, 2008

Well it’s getting towards the end of the year, so I thought I’d take a look to see what we’ve covered here at Shiny Red in 2008. It’s been a big year for global politics, economy and culture, and we were there for the elections (and these), the Olympics as well as the less serious end of social media.

The work we’ve been doing has been varied as well – from education and finance, to FMCG, travel, consumer technology, and healthcare – so many industries are now taking a much more positive and in depth look at how they interact with their audiences online.

So it’s no surprise that our top ten most read stories this year is as varied as our team and work is here. Spanning FDA reports, Guardian gap year bloggers, Burlesque meetups, and - of course – social media’s success story of 2008: Twitter. So here it is, we’ve had a great year and will be posting more wrap-up stories all this week.

Posted in Link | 1 Comment »

Le Web Paris (Day 2): Shiny Red live blog

Wednesday, December 10th, 2008

After waiting in the freezing streets of Paris for a post-Myspace party taxi last night, I’m not sure another day in the ex-morgue is what the doctor ordered. Here’s a warning for anyone with colleagues at Le Web, they’re likely to return with a rather nasty cold. Today’s programme has speakers from the French government, Creative Commons, and Publicis, as well as Web 2.0 stars Robert Scoble and Kara Swisher. I’ll also be checking out the “Deep Discussion” stage, where topics include social advertising and mobile social networks. Check back here for updates.

09.15am – Eric Besson, the French internet minister has brought his blueprint for the digital economy along to the event… on a USB stick – and printed out for the non-digitalised economy. France is at 95% access and the blueprint talks about fibre-optic roll-out to boost this towards 100% at super high speeds.

09.26am – Questions from the floor cover language barrier, tax infrastructure, online advertising. HIghest earners can reduce their tax by investing in start-ups.

09.39am – Right – this should be interesting. spokespeople from Google, Microsoft, Facebook, MySpace and OpenID all cram into a cosy panel on “getting along”.

10.07am – Nothing hugely surprising… Open Source is great for developers but essentially not mainstream enough or a complete solution; Google is good for open and open is (mostly) good for Google; Facebook is realising that it has to be seen to open up; MS is the newer, warm and cuddly company, and MySpace is all over the Open Stack – but realistically, it has to be given that Facebook is so dominant. It’s open vs quasi-open on the couches.

10.34am – Moved to the “Deep Discussion” stage for a couple of panels on social advertising. With 2009 set to be tough for these guys, we’re focusing on what makes money now rather than the “Love” theme.

10.46am – All panellists are finding search campaigns a struggle since it’s all done on the profile and the person rather than anything search based. Meebo spokesperson talks about not trying to force search into your offering in an unnatural way. Lots of chat about ads driving buzz or conversation from advertising, but there’s a risk that brands will slap metrics on that as well.

11.27am – Mobile Social Network panel. itsmy.com – a company without an online version of its social network – has 2.5million subscribers. Big with older demographic, also cabbies and truck drivers 46% of users haven’t used a social network before, and 60% 16% don’t have email addresses – also claims more ARPU than Facebook, one to watch I think.

11.36am – Ewan Spence from Wubud saying that it’s not about the number of friends you have or about trying to compete with existing social networks, it’s about full access to all features on your most personal device.

11.46am – Role of the operator being brought into question – pipe or portal? Mobile SN folk say they should be pipes and be happy!

12.07pm – Back to the main stage with Maurice Levy from Publicis which he calls “a start-up”. Also says that US has a natural advantage for start-ups due to language. Growing is difficult, and US giants pave the way… we shouldn’t be worried about it. Also gives out his own email address and invites people to pitch him their business plans.

13.06pm – WiFi connections have failed again, so few people could blog about Google’s Marissa Mayer or actually find out where anyone else is – Twitter and Skype are the tools of contact du jour.

LUNCH BREAK

13.46 – I’m out of here in just over two hours, so the rest of the content will be written up in proper posts later on this week. Thanks for watching/reading.

Posted in Events and Conferences | 1 Comment »

Le Web Paris (Day 1): Shiny Red live blog

Tuesday, December 9th, 2008

Today marks the start of one of Europe’s largest internet and social media conferences: Le Web Paris. I’ll be attending the main sessions and reporting back on what’s being said by some of the industry’s big names. Check back here later today to get soundbites and headlines from the day’s discussions.

7.45am – It’s a big morning to get through, with spokespeople from Microsoft, Google, Harvard University and Myspace all before 10.30!

9.00am – Found a seat and the wi-fi, wondering how long before the multitude of connections cause it to fall over.

9.10am – The Le Meurs take the stage to the sound of “All you need is love” – 1700 people registered this year. explaining the venue and the programme.

9.22am – Steve Gillmor interviewing Dan’l Lewin from Microsoft about BizSpark – its new initiative for sub 3-year start-ups. The approach is to support open source for interoperability, but Lewin says that BizSpark is a partnership and a choice that you make… “we provide more help”. Also in line for Azure stuff announced earlier this year.

9.43am – Loic Le Meur talking to Nikesh Arora at Google. “There is a lower appetite for risk in certain businesses in Europe than there is in the US”. Arora says that the next big internet sensation is “two guys in a garage”. 10 years ago, no-one was scared of Google. The guys in the garage are the ones to watch. However, European cultural differences, especially languages can have a negative impact.

10.26 – WiFi is shaky throughout the conference, but Harvard Uni’s David Weinberger produces the session of the morning so far on leadership. “The only way to reduce the scarcity of leadership is to embrace abundance of connections so that leadership becomes a property of the network.”

10.28 – Michael Arrington of TechCrunch interviewing Amit Kapur, COO MySpace – mostly about MySpace Music. Kapur has announced the launch of a MySpace toolbar. Unsure if it’ll be much use to people using FireFox extensions or Flock. Music in the toolbar? Now there’s a thought.

10.45 – Ok coffee break.

11.56 – After a far from rousing version of Frere Jacques led by Itay Talgam, DNA tracking start-up 23AndMe founder Linda Avey sits down for a chat with Cedric Ingrand of LCI-TV. Personalised DNA reports just from spitting into a tube. Not sure where the “Love” theme comes in.

12.21 – Helen Fisher, anthropologist responsible for bits of Match.com is on stage talking about the work of the brain and chemicals in falling in love. Apparently a tendancy for adultery is evolved – not sure that works as a valid defense.

12.36 – It’s snowing, and very cold inside. According to my client at Pfizer, the venue used to be a morgue.

12.43 – More from Dr Fisher… personality types very similar to the colour tests we use at Red’s HR – nice to know that human resources can be applied to love.

13.07 – Dr Fisher’s talk produces the most questions so far… the “colours” thing is fascinating to all. Something we can expect a bunch of blog posts about – since bloggers are “mostly red and yellow”.

LUNCH

Posted in Events and Conferences | No Comments »

Beers & burgers oil the online music conversation

Monday, December 8th, 2008

Working with We7 and new start-up PureSolo gives us here at Shiny Red a number of opportunities to engage with the digital music scene.
Since even before Napster (in its then shady incarnation) rocked the boat in 1999, labels, management and ““ less so ““ artists have been scratching their heads and discussing how to make the marriage of music and the internet a happy one.

While content owners are still often accused of being protectionist and unwilling to take risks with emerging media, one place where the conversation focuses on exciting things people are doing with the “music” part of the “music business” is OpenMusicMedia. Last week, around 25 people from well known and less famous start-ups and music media professionals met upstairs in a pub not far from Old St tube station.

Previous OMM events have had speakers and agendas, on this occasion, the organisers, Dave and Jonas used the meetup as an opportunity for networking on an informal basis, where conversation flowed as well as the continental lagers.

At this time of year, there are social and new media events to be at every night of the week, and since it’s impossible to be at all of them, we’d give OMM a big thumbs up and certainly recommend making it one to watch in 2009.

Posted in Events and Conferences, Music | No Comments »