I’ve been lucky enough to write for Zath, a technology blog, and Two Footed Tackle on the plight of Leyton Orient over the past few weeks, so I just wanted to share both posts with you!
Leyton Orient’s Olympic Stadium worries are about more than just football
Mflow Review (Update) – New HTML5 Interface & Recommendation Credit System
Guest posts are always a good challenge, so I must extend my thanks to Simon and Gary for letting me contribute!
Last week it was announced that major record labels Sony and Universal, along with a bunch of indies, would permit the instant purchase of a single as soon as it had airplay, a method call On air/On sale.
On air/On sale is the result of piracy, changing consumer habits and a realisation that the industry needs to begin challenging and meeting both in a constructive and innovative manner.
A Sony survey revealed that 41.9% of music purchasers find it ‘quite annoying’ when they try to find a song they’ve heard on the radio, only to realise it isn’t available. *data from Music Week
A recent report called ‘Into The Future’ by the Future Business Research Group has revealed that 11% of the music buying population can be classed as ‘music obsessives’ who switch between licensed and unlicensed distribution services, but make up 31% of the total spend on music. *data from Music Week
It is this group that have been the catalyst for such change to occur.
It means that the artist will now be able to explore different marketing creatives to engage with their fans, fans get the music they want, when they want it and it may even encourage more people to purchase music, rather than downloading it illegally.
The next big challenge will be to finalise a distribution model that works for everybody, a task that could be a lot harder than it initially sounds given the vast array of deals already in existence.
For decades the model of ‘play the song on the radio for a month to build interest, then release it’ has dominated the music industry’s approach, treating fans as eager little mice waiting for their next meal. No longer.
West Ham and Tottenham Hostpur are both vying for rights to take over the Olympic Stadium in Stratford, in a bid to preserve a lasting legacy for the games.
But, the movement of either club to East London would not only rip them from their heartlands, but also threaten the existence of London’s second oldest football club, Leyton Orient.
The club this morning released an empassioned statement calling for neither club to move to a venue that is around a mile from Brisbane Road.
Orient are a club whose voice has not been heard throughout this shambolic affair, deemed, probably, not large or wealthy enough to grace the corridors of power with their influence. The shifting of a large club on to the door step of a smaller one, may indeed lead to their extinction, and with it, an effervescent community club that treasures the people who live and breathe it.
I have experienced this first hand. For the last couple of years the Dale Jacobs Trophy has taken place close-season – a match that takes places at Brisbane Road in memory of an Orient fan who sadly lost his life to cancer.
The club allows use of the pitch and corporate facilities with a game between the supporters’ trust and fans the highlight of the day, often featuring ex-pros, kind enough to give up their time to get involved.
The club make little money from this, but give a little something back to their community with this gesture.
If this happens at larger clubs, i’m certainly not aware of it.
To disrupt a community like this is socially wreckless. That the government is complicit in the decision over who should take over the stadium after 2012, with their ‘big society’ posturing, is a damning indictment that shows no change: money still talks, no matter what the cause.
I am not a Leyton Orient fan, the better half is and alerted me to this morning’s statement, but I can see, especially given the MK Dons debacle, how reliant a community can be on it’s football club.
Leyton Orient already have a small catchment area in which to try and gain support, do not let that become even smaller by moving one of the giants of English football just around the corner.
In time, I guess we will find out if English football has a conscience, or if it’s just a game of pound signs and egos.
Update: John Beech has a rules and regualationa perspective on his blog, via @kevinrye.
Zerply is a professional social network designed to make connecting with other like-minded individuals quick and easy.
It’s currently in beta, but I’ve been lucky enough to get my hands on an invite to have a play.
The initial information gathering process is simple enough, you enter your name, desired username, location and password.
Next, you enter a few tags to let everybody know your expertise, social media and writing for me then.
You then have the ability to upload your experience from LinkedIn or create new content manually, naturally importing the data from LinkedIn is easiest and saves you a heck of a lot of time.
Finally you get to choose your avatar and choose one of three themes to give your new profile a polished finish.
The interface is clean and intuitive and the new search function makes it easy to find people you’d like to connect with.
The tough thing for Zerply is that professional social networking is dominated by LinkedIn – but the approach Zerply are taking is an interesting solution to the challenge.
It’s a stripped down, minimalist take on a topic that is easy to saturate with numbers, names and gushing self-praise.
Zerply is almost like an online business card and could be very useful indeed.
You can visit my profile here.
They also have a blog and are, naturally, represented on Twitter.
After much consideration, I’ve finally setup a Seldom Seen Kid Facebook Page.
It is something I’d not put together until now because I have primarily used my own Facebook profile to share the content I publish on Seldom Seen Kid.
However, I felt that it was the right time to create a new Page for the blog – here’s my reasoning for doing so:
Exposure
By only sharing my blog content through a personal Facebook profile, I am limiting the number of potential viewers who may visit the blog via the social networking platform
Spam
There will be friends on Facebook who don’t give two hoots about what I write about professionally. Setting the page up means that those who want to get updates through Facebook can, and those who don’t, won’t.
Community
The new page gives me an opportunity to organically grow a community who I hope will use the Page to share things that they too find interesting.
Goals
I don’t tend to set myself goals for Seldom Seen Kid, views per post vary according to content and will of course be affected by SEO and potential audience. However, the Page allows me to set goals that will occur within a controlled environment of people who have opted in to receive my content, and identify what sort of content they want to read.
So, what would you like to see from the Page?
The Wellcome Collection is currently playing host to High Society, an exhibition about the influence on drugs in art and culture.
The exhibition includes hardware, software and propaganda in the battle against drug use, as well as looking into self-expression through art and video.
The aim of the show is to demonstrate the size of the drugs industry today, how it developed and what allowed it to evolve.
From health benefits, to the psychedelic 60′s and experiments during the Victorian era, the exhibition includes art looking at individual use, finances across the globe and imagery drawn by those under the influence.
Haunting illustrations, archaic books and (quite frankly) headache inducing videos all help to tell the story of how drug use has affected popular culture, resulting from the Victorian’s interest in what substances could do to change the mental state.
I highly recommend visiting the exhibition, it makes for a perfect Sunday afternoon education to understand from where the UK’s opinions about drugs developed from.
Facebook Infographics are produced pretty much weekly. However, here’s something produced by Online Schools.org which I thought worth sharing.
At Edelman recently, we shared our thoughts on what’s going to be hot for 2011. It’s well worth a read if you’ve got 20 minutes, put together by David Armano and Steve Rubel (not rebel).
According to eMarketer, social gaming will be worth $1bn over the next 12 months.
There will be two major drivers for this, in-game virtual goods purchases and advertising revenues.
The key points from the research are:
1) Nearly 62 million US internet users, or 27% of the online audience, will play at least one game on a social network monthly this year, up from 53 million in 2010
2) Ad spending will grow more quickly; in 2011, marketers will spend $192 million to advertise on social games, nearly a 60% increase over 2010
3) Rapid growth in ad spending will help its share of total revenues grow from 14.1% in 2010 to 20.5% in 2012
4) Only 6% of US social gamers spend money on virtual items but they will generate revenues of $653 million in the US throughout 2011
Last year, Popcap Games commissioned some research looking into who is actually playing social games – 55% of social gamers are female, with 38% saying they play social games every day.
But, what would be really interesting to understand is whether female gamers spend more than their male counterparts, and what stimulates their spending…
This is the 500th post I’ve published on Seldom Seen Kid since I started publishing stuff about the Internet in March 2008.
In that time, I’ve been lucky enough to have had in excess of 80,000 visits. I know that, by comparison, is not as big a deal as other blogs in this sphere, but I hope that I’ve made a little contribution and hope to continue doing so for a long time yet!
Here’s a bunch of people who keep making me think and want to continue writing…
Chris Brogan
Clay Shirky
Russell Davies
Simon Collister
Drew B
Stowe Boyd
And just some of the awesome people i’ve got to know along the way :)
Mel
Litman
Gary
Tiki Chris
Mauricio
Lolly
Siany
Jed
Ben Cotton
Cristiano
Anthony
Andy
Cate
Thank you, and here’s to the next 500!
