mediaczar

Worst.

Way to go. And I think a lot of the stuff these days can be prototyped rather than planned. Look at things like Twitterfeed — funded by Betaworks.

Would you like an intro to Simon Oliver — guy behind Rolando (if you don’t already know him)He’s really pushing the boundaries of cottage-industry game development — and making money. So the iPhone’s one way.The other is to take a look at things that Zynga is doing. Don’t think there’s a lot of room for anyone in the console market… could be wrong.

Ditto. Thx James. Reinstalling legodriver.pkg was key.

Yep. Those of us who grew up during the tail end of the Cold War are more used to the idea of hiding things; the game, I suppose, for us and prior generations was “how to keep stuff private.”

Because everyone around us was playing the game equally well, social proof effectively told us that “you’re the only weirdo; for God’s sake pretend harder.”

Don’t know how much this is a bad thing. Understand how it could lead to neuroses etc, but also see it as a useful social unifying force.

Yep. Those of us who grew up during the tail end of the Cold War are more used to the idea of hiding things; the game, I suppose, for us and prior generations was "how to keep stuff private." Because everyone around us was playing the game equally well, social proof effectively told us that "you’re the only weirdo; for God’s sake pretend harder."Don’t know how much this is a bad thing. Understand how it could lead to neuroses etc, but also see it as a useful social unifying force.

first

Pleased that what you took away from my presentation was a healthy dose of scepticism re: identifying “influencers”. You’ve only to read some of Duncan Watts’s papers (I recommend the one on Big Seed Marketing) to realise that the way we’ve worked in the past (”influencer marketing”) is increasingly collapsing under the pressure of social media. I’d argue that it hasn’t totally gone away — but simply overlaying an old-world model on a new-world phenomenon probably isn’t going to solve the problem.

There are (very roughly speaking) two things that we need to look at when we are investigating how things spread: the network or substrate in which they spread, and the content that is being spread. There’s a good deal of research into the latter part (although I’ve rather focussed in the past on the former, I still maintain a keen interest here.)

The “London Twitter Festival Ends in Chaos as Crowd Clashes With Facebook Enthusiasts” works for a variety of reasons (some of which are explored in a post by my colleague, Chris Nee. But there were plenty of “interesting posts” written that day that didn’t make it.

Y’know, it’s probably not social media they need to address. Making their PointsTracker iPhone capable so that users can shop/dine out would be a better way into the audience. Instead, it seems, they clamp down on points calculators as breach of their copyright. Hmm.

God – Jeff Dachis, eh? And you’re quoting meaningless buzzword-studded drivel, eh? Do hope you’ve seen Wired’s fabulous Brattitude Adjustment article from 2000? http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.09/razorfish.html

Dave

First of all — thank you for your kind comments about Andover. It’s not often that people are nice about Andover. It will do wonders for our confidence.

Secondly — how can we tell that you’re not secretly using your blog, Twitter, and celebrity status to jump the queue?

Let’s say someone at Apple reads this post, and thinks — that Dave Gorman, he may be no Stephen Fry, but he speaks to a good bit of our demographic, and they seem to like him.

Also — they might think — he’s younger than Stephen Fry, which means it’s probably worth cultivating a relationship with him for that sad day in the distant future when it’s time to put the national treasure back in the vault.

And so they decide to courier you a laptop so that you stop saying mildly upsetting things like "I hate Apple."

What would you do then? And what would WE (as your audience) think about that?

It’s worth noting that while the life-expectancy of a laptop is most accurately measured in lengths of string, most people seem to agree that even if you treat it really well and never take it anywhere, you’ll still have to replace it in year 4.

Oh – and I’ve got a Mac Book Air going spare at the moment, so if you want it for cheap, ping me on @mediaczar

Surely it doesn’t matter who follows you on Twitter? Assuming that none of you has protected your updates (in which case, you have carte blanche to refuse to vet all your followers) then a “follow” is the structural equivalent of an RSS feed subscription.

The fact that I may follow Charles Arthur (Guardian Tech editor/@charlesarthur) on Twitter says little or nothing about Mr Arthur, but might reveal something about me (interests in journalism, tech journalism, and UK tech journalism – possibly with a slight liberal bias.)

If Mr Arthur reciprocated my link (which he doesn’t) one might be able to make a few more useful guesses about the nature of our relationship. These “bivalent” relationships form the core of a lot of our research — under what circumstances do they form, for example?

Now, having said all that, I do suspect that by looking at clique- and faction-forming behaviour (something I’ve been doing with networks of US Congress Twitter accounts) you might begin to say that “you can tell a man by the nature of his followers.”

So — we might (for example) be able to make certain guesses about popular accounts like @schofe based on the age/gender/location of his followers – certainly when compared to accounts like @tonyhawk.

We might even be able to do textual/content analysis on the tweets of their respective fan bases…

But this is wild speculation. Oops

Excellent stuff. Agree that any serious play from the PR agencies needs to play to their existing strengths as well as move into the new areas. Think that it’s relatively easy to say (in 2009) where we need to be moving towards. Think it’s relatively difficult (still) to say exactly how we should be moving there.

I’m not convinced that there’s an awful lot of room for an “online only” PR agency. I recognize that (a) you could probably cite your stream of business to prove me wrong and (b) it’s just a label.

But I do see how creating “online only” PR agencies could — in the short term at least — be a really smart way of grabbing the niche. But right now, of course, you’re seeing that niche get wider. And as this happens, big agencies are going to be able to cram their bulk in.

@Bob — thanks for the big-up on the HP campaign — and apologies about the ghastly URL. There is a shorter one (http://hp.com/listen2u) but the vagaries of corporate server structures can sometimes… well… you know.

[I work for Porter Novelli]

Excellent stuff. Agree that any serious play from the PR agencies needs to play to their existing strengths as well as move into the new areas. Think that it’s relatively easy to say (in 2009) where we need to be moving towards. Think it’s relatively difficult (still) to say exactly how we should be moving there.

I’m not convinced that there’s an awful lot of room for an “online only” PR agency. I recognize that (a) you could probably cite your stream of business to prove me wrong and (b) it’s just a label.

But I do see how creating “online only” PR agencies could — in the short term at least — be a really smart way of grabbing the niche. But right now, of course, you’re seeing that niche get wider. And as this happens, big agencies are going to be able to cram their bulk in.

@Bob — thanks for the big-up on the HP campaign — and apologies about the ghastly URL. There is a shorter one (http://hp.com/listen2u) but the vagaries of corporate server structures can sometimes… well… you know.

[I work for Porter Novelli]

I’m just beginning to get into FriendFeed. Like the way that it lets me organize twitter people into groups (along same lines as Seesmic Desktop or Tweetdeck) but also that there’s more threaded conversation. And stuff. Can see us using FriendFeed URLs to organize and centralize lots of disparate activity going on elsewhere, too (Facebook Pages, SlideShare, Flickr accounts and groups, YouTube/Vimeo, Scribd etc.)

I’m just beginning to get into FriendFeed. Like the way that it lets me organize twitter people into groups (along same lines as Seesmic Desktop or Tweetdeck) but also that there’s more threaded conversation. And stuff. Can see us using FriendFeed URLs to organize and centralize lots of disparate activity going on elsewhere, too (Facebook Pages, SlideShare, Flickr accounts and groups, YouTube/Vimeo, Scribd etc.)

Late thought: Of course, the point is that the user should control their account. Not you…

Late thought: Of course, the point is that the user should control their account. Not you…

Yeah — but many agencies make money from people who sell toothpaste and shampoo. What do we tell them? "Make cultier toothpaste!" "Make BLACK toothpaste!" But they never listen.

I’m slightly disappointed by the whole "convert all text to pictures" approach. I can download responses as a PDF, but NOT as usable text — sort of see what they’re doing, but it’s a bit… well… you know.