All your face are belong to us...

If MySpace is Tesco, and Facebook is Sainsbury, does that make Bebo Morrisons?
Solid article about latest Nielsen Net Ratings figures for social networks here.

One thing that's struck me about the social networks is the brand loyalty and "switching" taking place as people find not only a social site that they like using, but that hooks them up with their friends and people they'd like to be associated with. There was some talk recently about the social divide of social sites, with MySpace being the more popular in terms of number but seemingly more down market and for the hoi poloi.

Have no comment to make as yet. Work to be done.

I'd like to teach the world to sing....

Nice ad placement on the Aint It Cool Website, advertising Coca Cola's music service. Simple rich media MPU in the far right (below the fold though, so I'd ask for some money back) with their top ten chart, "as voted for by you the listener". What's nice is that you can click on any of the tracks and it'll launch a neat little flash media player and play the full version of the track, then go on to play the rest of the chart.

You can add tracks to a favourites list, vote for tracks and help them climb up the chart, or change channels and listen to something else entirely (including brand endorsed podcasts).
Tracks are categorised by territory (nice brand echo there) and you can download a desktop version of the media player. Simple "send to a friend" mechanic spreads the love to your close ones.

Ooh, ooh, you can get the html for the player and embed it in your own website / myspace profile. The only thing missing is a link through to the coke website, which may be because its been cleverly hidden, is unneccesary, or is an oversight on an otherwise over enthusiastic creative team.

You can see the full web experience here (although I had trouble loading it in Firefox).

Good stuff.

Your mum!

Fact...mum's are neglecting their kids in favour of the internet. Dad's have been doing this for years, so I'm surprised its taken mothers so long to cotton on. If you can't beat them, join them, or something. Now, all we need is a Huggies campaign to put this research to good use.

EIAA report here

Credit to the Stream for bringing it to my attention.

Hi Fidelity

Record labels have cottoned on to the fact that the way we acquire and enjoy music has changed dramatically. In the days of the gramophone, music was very much a collective experience, exclusively for gatherings or family occassions, and rarely done in solitude (akin, so I hear, to whipping out a copy of Razzle on the Northern Line).

Whilst technology has offered vast improvements in terms of playback, both in quality and convenience, the combination of the MP3 player and the internet has taken the enjoyment of music into the personal realm, but the discussion and discovery of music into the wider online community. Look at the raft of community sites, and the recent acquisition of LastFM by entertainment stalwart CBS radio, and you'll quickly grasp that not buying music doesnt mean the revenue has dried up, it's just coming from a different source.

Anyway, some nice sites worthy of your attention.

MOG - US site, one year old, and a nice mix of proper community features, blogging, sharing of music (including full length tracks), and media. And it has a "magic button" (no, I'm still getting to grips with what it actually does). What's really nice is the way it populates your profile automatically, by whizzing through your music folder on your computer and posting it to your page.

Live Plasma - Interesting search engine, giving a visual map of bands / artists based on your search and helping you discover related music, music in films, etc etc. Works for films, actors and directors as well, all linking out to Amazon so you can buy the object of your desire.

Seeqpod - A search engine for music! Really simple. Does one thing very well. Search for a track or artist and it will search the web for tracks or video that match your search. Sign up and you can save your playlists and send recommendations or full lists to friends. Each search result includes a link out to related news, blog postings etc. Very nice. Very simple. Most of all, very useful and usable.

Happy listening!

Altogether now, one two three...

Been looking at the future of the music industry recently after a colleague of mine recommended to a major high street retailer that they should ditch selling records and turn their high profile stores into something akin to Nike town. The retailer in question, whilst offering a great way to lose £40 in a lunch break, have indeed taken a long time to "get with this web thing". For ages they refused to lower their prices, charging £14 or more for a chart album when their online rivals (no, not the good ship CDWOW) were selling the same UK product for £7 to £9. DVD's were no different (£24 versus £12) and only back catalog re-issues offering any kind of value (have you seen how many Tina Marie albums you can get for £40?).

The truth of the matter is that currently, digital sales account for approx 3% of total revenue compared to 87% of CD sales, so nobody's going for an early bath just yet. However, the nature of how we all discover and acquire (not always buy) music is evolving rapidly and within a few years the landscape will be considerably different.

There's a good article about the future of retail here from the BBC (who have been great at documenting this drama as it unfulrs (see next post).

If you tolerate this, then your children will be next.....

Kids tell companies what they want and companies are now listening.

Great piece to listen to here

I feel a Midwich Cuckoos moment coming on...

Take to the mattressess....

Good solid article of fear and warning from the FT here.

1-2-3-4

It's the death of the NME classifieds as we know it...

While we're at it, here's some more things to look at over the course of a poorly received monday. I hear the sequel, tuesday, is in planning stages as we speak. Hope they sort out the plot line cos I can't make head or tail of todays storyline.

The Hype Machine

Extra, extra, read all about it...

Quick one this, given the lateness of the hour and the volume of the work, but just want to drop a note to self about the new FT.com online campaign. Nice to see a tightly integrated concept worked out across B2C and B2B. Go to their media site for some nice reasons as to why you should advertise on FT.co. The main consumer facing campaign site is here and is very simple but very effective way to demonstrate what seperates FT from the rabble.

The microsite is equally good, with a simple cityscape used as a means to demonstrate their global news coverage. Live feeds into the site keep it all relevant and dynamic.

Internet made simple - lesson 7 "searching the internet"

Nice squidoo here

Whatever happened to....

...blue pepsi?

Cleaning up the community...

My one, and only, Ajax development was for a B2B client looking to replace their aging and user unfriendly customer systems with something far more easier to install and maintain. Our solution was cheaper, easier to maintain (despite the initial learning curve) and most importantly, offered the chance for a far better user experience. This is key, as it encourages use and therefore cuts down on users having to resort to phone, mail, veiled threats to get a relatively simple task done.

Here's a link to the latest "Click" on the Beeb. It's all about business adoption of Web 2.0 technologies, which to be honest has been very swift. I'll watch it and write some more later.

Can you guess what it is yet?

1Off is a new "guide" site offering both professional and user submitted reviews of the best of the nations urban districts. Want to know where to get the best kebab on a friday night (sw6, New Kings Road in case you were wandering), or who serves the finest Bloody Mary in Norwich (no, I don't know either).

All well and good, but it's also a site dedicated to the fineries of BMW's spanking new 1 Series, which brings me to my main point. I've sat in many a brainstorm where this very thing has been discussed as a means to bring about interaction with consumers outside of the usual banner - microsite - call to action. "We want something Web 2.0" is bandied about, and the natural assumption is to look for user generated content as a means to engagment. But does it work, and is it more effective than sponsorship / community advertising?

Landrover tried the same thing with their "Go Beyond" website, offering a platform for the adventurers amongst us to share our stories of derring do. The problem, however, is that it relies on people to be bothered to engage in these things in the first place, when they may already be talking about them elsewhere, either via their own blog, or on their numerous community pages (myspace / facebook / linked in).

Back to 1off, and it's not bad. These things always rely on critical mass, eg more real people contributing that paid for contributions, and there's certainly many more entries on the site than there was last week. Writers have the opportunity to become "ambassadors", which is a nice idea, but a horrible marketing term let loose in the consumer space. (If I hear one more reference to "brand ambassadors" I think I'll reach for my escape pod pronto).

I'll add to this post later, once I've done a bit more researching into how to successfully tackle integrating community sites into the marketing mix. In the meantime - discuss.

Be polite and play nicely...

I'll write this up properly later, but in short it's a call for a set of guidelines for bloggers to abide by. A response to an ongoing bout of flame wars and online bullying that may be hard to enforce but seems to be sorely needed.

Article here

Together we stand, divided we're nothing...

Not had time to go through this properly yet, but slashdot have highlighted a great article from Datamotion on the top ten open source innovators. If, like me, you have a penchant to drive up and down the M1/M6 every other weekend, you may have heard a brilliant program on Radio 4 as part of their excellent "In Business" series, looking at how open source was opening up new business models, where the application was just the beginning of the customer relationship, and not the be all and end all.

Hot or not...

Hyperhappen have referred to Social Meter in their latest posting. Nice little site that tells you now well your site is performing on a social scale via links. The higher the score, the greater your popularity.

I should know about these things, but to be honest I've got my days full right now. Hamleys on a wet monday, half term holidays, two kids asking if you'll shell out on things they want but don't really need. Brrrr.....

Where would we be without standards?

Quick post this, but important nonetheless. One pager offering a list of standard metrics for online media, so you can not only impress your friends, but also work out if your campaign has any way by which it can be measured like for like. Now, before you all scream out "isnt this obvious?", I should add that I've recently started working for an offline agency. Just the other day someone asked me to decipher a web log and explain the difference between a "visit" and a "unique visit".

Just found an even more comprehensive link here, so now there's no excuses...

The rule of thumb - if your mum don't know, then you should assume most people don't.

Million different channels and there's nothing on...

And here's another...

Gimme shelter....

Heard a great program on the ever venerable Radio 4 the other night that should be required listening for anyone working in marketing. "In Business" makes the fortnightly drive back from the north on a sunday night very bearable. The other week they had a program about the rise of "not for profit" organisations, and how lessons learnt from the business world were being adopted as a means to bring real social change not only overseas but in the poorer, disenfranchised areas of the UK. Download the program from the bbc website here or, better still, subscribe to the podcast and make it a part of your listening pleasure.

On a related matter, take a look at this round up of how .org's are adopting online as a means to enable them to better serve their goals. The number one choice, Kiva.org, uses microfinance as a means to gather donors together to sponsor business development in the developing world. Simple idea, very focussed, and by all means very effective.

See, it's not all about selling people things they don't really need! Back to the pet food then...

I remember when all this was just fields...

Great post and link from both Seth Gecko on a post from Chris Salic about an old back issue of Internet World (i'm tired now) with a round up of the best of the internet from 1994 and predictions for 1995.

The US was always a good five or so years ahead of the game with the internet and looking at the commercial possibilities from the get go. Free local calls made dial up access available to everyone, with most people paying a flat subscription fee every month for unlimited access, developing the channel to something akin to radio or tv. The success of early startups such as Craig's Lists also found a way to utilise the channel in a meaningful way to everyone (house hunting, dating, online gaming, news / content aggregation and spam / scams).

One prediction that jumped out at me was this one "There will be a concerted effort by the U.S. Congress to regulate content on the Internet." This never really transpired, but it pertinent now given recent rumblings from US government that they may impose tax legislation onto virtual currency, doing away with the "commerce without borders" ethos of the web as we've come to love and know it.