21 February, 2010
New Media Age reports that brands and agencies commit more and more to Facebook as a viable direct response advertising channel, threatening Google’s share of ad spend. In the UK, brands like O2, Virgin Media and Vodafone are ramping up spend on Facebook as it proves to be a valuable channel for direct response advertising, while agencies say spend is shifting away from other channels like… paid search.
Opening up to media agencies
Last year, Facebook opened its site to creative agencies, giving them Read on…
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17 February, 2010
I’ve been discussing this with a couple of people before, but only today did I find hard data to prove it: Twitter is now officially no longer a reservation for the middle aged.
Youngsters catching up.
According to comScore Twitter showed growth Read on…
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26 November, 2009
Nielsen’s VideoCensus reports indicate that the battle for the leading positions in online video is on, and the category is still growing fast: Year-over-year, unique viewers, total streams, streams per viewer and time per viewer are all up significantly, led by a 41 percent growth in total streams (US data).
Winners and losers
The loser of the last months: Read on…
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13 November, 2009
This week, UK gaming industry publisher MCV has broken the news that in November 2010 the Xbox add-on known as “Natal” (the black thing lower in the picture) will be released. According to MCW 5 million Natal units wil ship globally and there will be at least 14 games supported by the hardware.
Why you should care
Simply put, Natal enables you to talk to your TV, and it will recognize what you say. Also, you will be able to have it interpret motions you make. Don’t think Wii, think Minority Report. It can even see you smile or frown, and react accordingly. Natal is actually a set of very sensitive depth-vision cameras that do facial recognition and voice recognition as well. This is some extremely complicated technology in a low-cost device. What that means is demonstrated in this must-see video.
14 games ready for launch.
After the unveiling of Natal, Activision Read on…
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3 October, 2009
By now the first happy few have had the chance to begin testing Google Wave, the service presented by Google as “the email of the future.”
Mediapost gathered some early reactions from infulencers that were the first to test the service:
Blogger Robert Scoble has already deleted his account: “This service is way overhyped and as people start to use it they will realize it brings the worst of email and IM together: unproductivity. The first thing you notice is that you can see Read on…
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30 August, 2009
I Twitter a lot more than I blog these days, and when I blog, it often is related to Twitter. I guess it’s a trend.
Kids
And I swear, if I read any more posts about how Twitter is a failure because “only white middle aged men that work in media” use Twitter, and no teenagers do, I will scream. Where exactly was it written that a product needs to be supported by kids to be deemed “a success”? But I digress.
Middle aged men
For all those white middle aged men that also Read on…
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9 August, 2009
Internet enabled TV sales are growing rapidly according to reports from Quixel Research (US data). Meaning TV sets that have inbuilt network connectivity via WiFi or network cable. Of course, this means you could be Twittering from your TV set :) Other features range from the ability to display simple RSS feeds and dedicated services to advanced on-screen Widgets for access to Weather, Stock quotes, Youtube etc. The TV sets usually are able to play video files that sit on a Media Center PC or Home Server in the home network as well.
Rapid increase in sales and revenue
In the second quarter of 2009, the revenue from televisions that have built in Internet capabilities grew 40% to over 1 billion US dollars. In terms of unit sales, shipments Read on…
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27 June, 2009
Nielsen published the report “How Teens Use Media” this week, a report on the “myths and realities of teen media trends ”. It’s a good read, showing that the American Teenager is more conservative in his (or her) media choice than some fast-talking online media experts would have you believe.
Dad knows best
Some of the most interesting points from the research are around the choice of medium, but the media consulted still are pretty much in line with parental choice. In the end “teens” is the word we use for a part of the demographic that is just about to start making their own unique choices, but are in fact still mostly following the lead of their parents.
Report Highlights:
- For TV, American teens today actually watch Read on…
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13 June, 2009
This week Dell blogged that it has generated more than 2 million U.S. Dollars in revenue from their Twitter account @DellOutlet. This means that they are up one million since late last year, which was the first time they disclosed some information about Twitter-generated sales.
Growth
Looking at the growth rate it stands to reason that the Twitter related sales on Dell’s sites will probably amount to over 3 million dollars in software, hardware and services in the calendar year 2009. Funny thing is that according to Dell, much of the growing interest in this Dell Twitter account growth was actually not driven by Dell marketing, but by Read on…
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3 May, 2009
Jan-Jaap, a friend (check out his blog here), recently sent me a mail. Basically people told him he should Twitter, but he didn’t understand what he could use Twitter for.
Since I use Twitter, and have been doing so for a while, he asked me what he could get out if it. And because I get that question a lot, I thought I’d post the answer here. I’ll revisit it if new reasons come up, too :)
I use Twitter…
- Because some fun and interesting people that I know professionally also use Twitter, and this way I can follow them.
- Because I noticed that some bloggers that I follow, Twitter a lot these days - and blog a lot less.
- Because I noticed that the quality of Read on…
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1 May, 2009
A quick copypaste of an interesting news item from the UK: Volvo has restructured its marketing budget to focus more on natural search and social media in a bid to reinforce its ‘Life is better lived together’ brand positioning.
The Swedish car brand has appointed Mindshare to manage its search optimisation, social media and online PR accounts full-time, having previously worked with the media agency on a project-by-project basis, including its Volvo C30 campaign.
Last year Volvo spent £19.75m on advertising, excluding paid search. Of this, internet accounted for just 3%, or £695,500
Anita Fox, Volvo UK’s head of marketing communications, said that now, while the company has Read on…
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25 March, 2009
In the UK, Microsoft signed a deal to create ExecTweets. This is an interesting topical experience based on Twitter, a specialist site aimed at helping users to find and follow ‘top business executives’ on Twitter.
ExecTweets is a commercial venture, with as its’ goal: ‘aggregate the tweets of top business execs and empower the community to surface the most insightful, business-related tweets.‘
Some leaders that have signed to be followed include Adam Brown, director of digital communications for Coca-Cola and Richard Branson, world famous adventurer and Director of Virgin in his spare time. They will share Read on…
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11 December, 2008
In Belgium, my team is building a new homepage for MSN. The image after the link is not final, but a design study. I think they have done a great job concepting this so far. It is more of an evolution than a revolution though, since this page might be the fore-last or the last in a line of pretty traditional portal pages.
International Diversity
Many people don’t realise it, but an MSN homepage is actually quite different from Read on…
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9 November, 2008
Many people starting their own business in creative professions don’t need to have a fixed work location and just need their laptop as a production facility. In a world where ideas and concepts are currency, this way of working enables a lifestyle that offers a lot of freedom. In principle you can work from all over the world - following seasons, party’s or the hottest events - going wherever you want :)
However, to have a choice of interesting projects to work on, it is important that you make sure people find you easily in the one place you can always be found - the web. Here is a short “how to” post with some tips and advice for people that are just embracing this lifestyle and don’t have that much online experience - yet. I wrote this for a friend originally, but thought it might benefit others, so here you go :)
Get Linked
Start out with creating a Read on…
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24 September, 2008
Internet geeks like fashion too. It’s just not about clothes, but about technology. Joost was really in fashion 18 months ago, when they launched a flashy full-screen video program that you had to download to see their “Internet TV” shows. Distribution would be helped by the peer-to-peer exchange of video data between users, theoretically offering great viewing quality. There would be social stuff. Almost everyone loved it and there was a run on beta invitations.
But a year later, people were being layed off as a new ex-Cisco hotshot was flown in to lead the company. He focused on getting the technical side of the Joost platform right, and hired more engineers. I’ll show you why that was wrong in a second. The result Read on…
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1 August, 2008
Delicious has launched the long-awaited new version of their service. I am really happy to see that is has become a lot faster, the search is much improved, they finally replaced that infuriating name del.icio.us by just Delicious and they have done ..er.. ‘work’ on the design. Great stuff, but I still have issues using it. Why?
Delicious what?
Delicious is a social bookmarking website (which was Read on…
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22 July, 2008
Returning from holiday, I found that Last.fm has launched a revamped website. Last.fm is a site I have been using a lot over the last years. It is a social music service that analyzes the digital music you play on your computers and MP3 players, then gives you recommendations based on your taste for new artists, it suggests new friends on Last.fm and it allows you to play music you own on any computer, streamed from their website.
The new look and feel is less cluttered, cleaner and there are some new features aimed at making it easier to find music.
New on Last.fm
For me, the best news is that Read on…
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29 March, 2008
A lot of people have been preparing for and waiting on this day, which is an attempt to harness the power of social media and a network of individuals to stick it to the man and promote the Age of Conversation - a remarkable book with many authors, each giving a very personal view on the topic of conversation - in the information age. Making the world of communication a better place, really. You can read more about the book here in a previous article on Copypaste, but today is all about the Social Media Bum Rush.
What’s a Bum Rush, then?
I know it sounds a bit silly, but in this case a Bum
Read on…
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27 March, 2008
Yahoo! has confirmed it will join Google’s OpenSocial, a common set of APIs to allow developers to build applications across the web. In doing so, Yahoo! joins social networks like MySpace, Hi5 and Bebo as part of the Google-led alliance.
Wade Chambers, VP platforms at Yahoo!: “Yahoo! believes in Read on…
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