UK Social Media

The UK is a social media hub. How can we confidently say this? Watch the video below…(via Mark Wilson)

Is Twitter Multimedia a Response to Old Spice?

Blogs are a-flutter today after the sighting of the potential inclusion of multimedia into Twitter streams.

Putting the questions of photos and videos breaking Twitter’s servers every five seconds, it seems coincidental timing wise that this feature has popped up following the success of Old Spice guy.

Is it a response to the consumption of the Old Spice video content from the Twitter community?

Does it also present a business opportunity for Twitter to sell advertising space for images and videos in a similar way to promoted tweets?

An interesting move if followed through which could take Twitter into a new realm of content sharing possibilities for both consumers and brands.

Miio Review

Miio is the latest in the long line of social networks aiming to usurp Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr by taking their best elements and crashing them together into one place. And, what’s more, it does it pretty successfully.

There are five areas to get involved in: your main dashboard, the public timeline, finding other members, exploring groups and finding content by category.

The dashboard is your timeline which shows your updates, notifications and messages sent you an a clear stream. The key bit here is that on the left hand side there is a module containing links to each of the types of message – this updates in real time and indicates when you have something waiting unread.

As yet, this module doesn’t appear across the site consistently and this would certainly be a welcome addition.

The public timeline allows you to see what others are saying and to get involved in the conversation, the great thing with Miio is that you can set each individual update as public or keep it private in your own network – a neat touch.

Talking of updates, you can share pretty much anything: text, images, videos, links and more, in a very Tumblr-esque fashion. Content in your time line can be filtered according to the type of content you want to see. Nice.

The members section allows you to find and search for other users of the service – all the big tech players are there, from Boing Boing and Wired, to Read Write Web and Forbes.

There are very few groups set up at the moment, which is of course to be expected given the greenness of Miio, but it’s interesting that they are perceived as a key area for conversation to develop on the site, and is of course a feature that many Twitter users have been calling for.

Categories group messages by topic type, a great for finding like minded people who share your interests and again this is key. It helps to give users a starting point for conversation entry, a criticism of Twitter is that it can be difficult to fit into existing discussion – not with Miio.

The interface is clean and easy to navigate too which is always a good thing when it comes to young social network upstarts (think of Plurk, then think of the opposite of Plurk and you get Miio).

In all, it seems to be a positive and interesting offering which could ruffle feathers given time. The key will be whether it will attract a large amount of people quick enough to secure a suitable amount of venture capital funding to help the hard working developers grow the service.

World Cup Infographic

The boys and girls at Simply Zesty have pulled together an infographic about a whole bunch of world cup stats from this year’s tournament in South Africa.

Apparently, sponsors of the tournament have achieved 16% higher brand recall than normal on their in-game and ain-studio elements, not bad given the global audience for the final alone was 700 million people.

Red Dead Redemption – Not Quite A Review

Red Dead Redemption, Rockstar Games‘ latest blockbuster title, has sold 5.2 million copies to date and is widely accepted as one of the most important games in recent times, with an astonishing Metacritic score of 95%.

Based on the successful open world engine of GTA IV, the free roaming Western has captured gamers’ imaginations with an extensive non-linear timeline style and seemingly endless multiplayer offering.

Games are now more than ever reliant on a riveting story to back up the amazing graphic possibilities that the new generation of consoles has brought into mainstream entertainment.

It is this story-led approach that has captured the soul of the gaming public who have found themselves playing a character who they have empathy for in John Marston.

The game took more than 5 years to produce and it is a testament to the patience of the Rockstar team that they waited to get this game perfect.

And, now with a loyal following in tow, they have launched the next stage of their strategy to keep gamers hooked: a vast array of DLC.

This further development of the story allows even greater immersion in the game and of course keeps the dollars rolling in for Rockstar.

It rewards gamers who waited so long for the title to come out, encourages more hours on consoles and, vitally, shows that Rockstar know how to engage with a community and keep an audience stoked using the classic drip feed marketing play.

More companies could take a leaf out of their book and apply it to their own offerings to give their consumers a better and more engaging way of interacting with their products and brand. Judging by the respone of the RDR buying fans, it could work if it is applied in such an extensive manner – gaming is leading the way in direct consumer engagement, give them what they want. Easy.

GameCity: Evening of Play

On Tuesday 13 July at The Embassy of Japan, GameCity, the National Videogame Archive and BAFTA are hosting an evening of discussion about play and how it interacts with gaming.

The free, but invite only, evening includes appearances from:

Takahashi Keita, creator of the Katamari Damacy and Noby Noby Boy series of games for Namco Bandai Games, will be reveal his ideas about play and how it informs all his work, from videogames to designing a playground.

Mark Stephenson, designer with Media Molecule, will explore the value of play as a creative tool, as exemplified by their wildly innovative, BAFTA award-winning project, LittleBigPlanet.

Martin Hollis is best known as producer of the BAFTA-winning GoldenEye 007, one of the most critically acclaimed and influential videogames of all time. Most recently his company Zoonami produced Bonsai Barber, for Wii.

The concept of play is of course intrinsically part of gaming, and I think that it is vital that whilst we don’t lose touch with how titles such as Red Dead Redemption or Final Fantasy are shaping the story telling landscape, it’s key to their success that they are all about play.

GameCity also brings together people in a variety of different ways around gaming culture such as art exhibitions, director commentaries, playground building, live recreations of videogames, gigs, gong-shows, three World Records, arcade trails and club nights…

This demonstrates that as with all creative industries, there has to be an ongoing evolution of how people interact with games, online, offline, together or on their own, to make the end product as good as possible.

To apply for a seat, send an email to games(@)ld.mofa.go.jp with your:
Name
Organisation
Email address
Telephone number

WiFi leads growth in mobile TV, says study

Juniper Research today published a report, Tuning in to Mobile TV which suggests that by increasing the availability of free WiFi, it would boost mobile TV industry revenues to about $7 billion by 2015.

The report reckons that:

…mobile TV traffic over WiFi is expected to increase by 25x over the 2010-2015 period as streamed service penetration and usage levels – also fuelled by consumer smartphone adoption – rise sharply. However, the report notes that despite the capacity relief that WiFi offers to cellular networks, greater mobile TV usage will still place the 3G and 3.5G networks under stress.

What is of interest to me is whether we’ll really want to consume TV content on mobile/handheld devices which, by their nature, have small screens, when there is an obvious desire from gadget buyers to get something a little bit bigger (call it an iPad).

Whether it’s being beamed directly to your handset, or your streaming it over the Internet to your beloved piece of smartphone technology, TV will use a heck of a lot of bandwidth. The report suggests that new technologies being trialled by the likes of Vodafone and o2 may solve this particular issue however.

But is it really necessary? Do I really want to watch Eastenders on my mobile on the tube? Possibly. Do I think it’ll catch on?

No.

The main reason for my scepticism is that although mobile screens are getting better all the time, they just don’t have the size to provide you with the full TV watching experience – if you’re going to invest 30 minutes of your life to watch a sitcom, as opposed to a 3 minute YouTube clip, it’s got to be worthwhile.

Squinting to see Dot Cotton’s face on a three by four inch screen somehow just doesn’t appeal…

What do you think?

Spotify TV

Swedish music streaming service Spotify has launched it’s own app for TeliaSonera, providers of digital TV in Sweden and Finland.

This experiments sees the Spotify platform transposed for the Spotify Premium account holding viewing public, allowing them to listen to music through their tellyboxes.

The development is intriguing. It’s not the first time an Internet-based music streaming platform has converged with another medium – Last.fm and Xbox (disclosure: Edelman client) being the principle merging that comes to mind – and it won’t be the last.

Where this really gets interesting however is the potential for on-demand music videos through the Spotify platform.

Again, this is not a new trick; digital TV channels have been offering this for a while, but not with the same freedom and huge catalogue that a potential Spotify operation could bring.

Spotify have teased us with video recently with the Jimi Hendrix video stream and this further tickles the vehicle of visual content consumption.

Is there a desire to watch music videos in the same manner you’d listen to music online though? About $40bn was spent consuming music through subscription TV in 2009 according to BPI and Future Source data. That, of a $100bn industry is quite a chunk, suggests that there is a business opportunity there for someone.

Digital Economy Act Initial Obligations Code

A draft version of the Digital Economy Act Initial Obligations Code has been published by Ofcom, the UK’s communications regulator.

When a regulator tries to impose their rules on the Internet, there will always be a core group of people who try to subvert them and will find a way around any sort of legislation. This makes enforcement of these rules nigh on impossible, despite how difficult they will be to follow through with in the first place.

What does this code mean for brands?

Are they now in control of the data they are putting out to be shared? Will they now need to put a disclaimer on all the content they are publishing online to signify if they’re happy for their fans to share it?

It seems to me that if a user were to use an image without permission (even accidentally), a brand could try and enforce the copyright three strikes ruling.

This means that subcultures like 4chan or b3ta could see their communities under constant threat of Internet eviction as they look to re-mix logos, videos and adverts.

That level of control is not healthy for creativity and innovation because it restricts the freedom that the Internet gives the anonymous satirist.

Too much control will lead to tension and tension may lead to revolution.

How Ofcom deals with that potential threat will be key over the next 12 months.

Foursquare, Ferris Bueller and Facebook

I spotted an interesting use of Foursquare from the Chicago tourism office on PSFK, which demonstrates a neat use of the social location service.

Tourists are being offered the opportunity to unlock a Ferris Bueller badge by emulating experiences from the film.

Posted on their Facebook Page, Foursquare are offering people the chance to say how they’de recreate his day off and win a top notch prize.

This demonstrates several things:

A willingness of people to create content
Geo-location content is customisable
Facebook check-ins will be an important next step

If people are continuingly willing to make, suggest and share, this suggests UGC is definitely not dead and is still a valuable asset for brands who want to get their fans engaged.

By allowing people to play with location-based content, brands can make experiences even more personal ni a way that has so far been limited – couple that with the ongoing developments in augmented reality and you have a very powerful localised service brewing.

Facebook, as the most pervasive social network, has an opportunity to further connect people by locality and do it on their mobiles, to a greater extent than Gowalla or Foursquare because of the sheer size of its userbase. For brands who are already well versed in Facebook Pages, this presence can be further amplified beyond a static Facebook Page which you have to log onto to engage with, but a free roaming brand-by-location approach, something a standard brand page does not yet fulfil.

This could be exciting for brands as people who are out of Foursquare but comfortable on Facebook will find that location and their favourite companies want to engage with them more, and where they are.