All of a Twitter

Whilst I don't intend TIGS to become an ongoing catalog of mainstream media mentions of twitter, this article in the most mainstream of British media - The Sunday Express - is not only a reflection of how the UK media has become interested in tweet toot but also quotes me at the end so, well, you know...I hate to waste words and that.

Faris Yakob, chief technology strategist at advertising agency McCann Erickson in New York and all-round “Digital Ninja” says:

“I find Twitter fascinating because it allows new kinds of conversations in real time. It means you can ask a question and people will fire the answer back in seconds.”

He speculates that Twitter appears to be pushing up Dunbar’s Number, the theoretical limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain a group relationship.

“It definitely makes you feel more connected, even in this hyperconnected world,” says Yakob, who was involved in organising the New York gathering for Twestival, a worldwide festival in aid of charity: water, which provides clean drinking water to developing countries.

“This kind of collective action seems much more possible when you have this continual partial presence of the people you interact with on Twitter,” he says.

Communication in the virtual world can lead to interaction in the physical one, too. So if you’re not on Twitter yet then it poses the inevitable question: what are you doing?

Twitter on The Daily Show

The socialisation of media continues...

We shouldn't confuse our desire for novelty with the conflation new = good, nor think that just because everyone has now heard about twitter we should be looking for the next new thing.

There is a lag between awareness and adoption, between our geeky obsessions and reality finding actual uses that normalise these behaviors beyond the echo chamber.

Let's hope this will help twitter cross the chasm, not jump the shark.

[Thanks Craig]

Valentine's Day

Happy V Day!

Out of Power

A nice chap called Gareth sent me this - running tomorrow in the UK - which I have posted because:

1. It's inauguration day and it felt like I needed something, now I live over here.
2. We should never forget the power of culturally relevant timely current events based communication
3. The whole having different power chargers thing for every single thing I own REALLY ANNOYS ME.

I'm with Martha Stewart on this - it's wasteful and frustrating and a function of how companies are structured not how I live.

Best thing Nokia ever did [ok apart from the NaviKey interface] was have the same lead for every phone.

At least until the N-Series. 

Remember how kettle leads would work on everything? That was great. I still use one as a UK adaptor for my Mac power cable.

So I'm glad Philips are trying to sort that out.

[Update: Dave sent me this equally timely opportunistic Veet ad about Bush.

Anyone seen any more?]

[Update: Looking forward rather than back, Pepsi are asking how the new President can 'refresh' the USA.]

Notable Quotables

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: conversation age)

From the Age of Conversation 2, which you should buy to help the kids and learn about talking to people.

Also - in other news of significance today:

This is our moment.

This is our time, to put our people back to work and open doors of opportunity for our kids; to restore prosperity and promote the cause of peace; to reclaim the American dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth, that, out of many, we are one; that while we breathe, we hope. And where we are met with cynicism and doubts and those who tell us that we can't, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes, we can.

Gosh it was good.

[And, now I come to read it again, hauntingly reminiscent of that stirring scene in The Goonies when Sean Astin makes an impassioned plea for them to stay underground and find One Eyed Willy's treasure.] 

[Now I come to read that again, One Eyed Willy suddenly sounds like there was a joke there I didn't get as a kid.]

Go Vote

Nice piece from Grey New York I saw yesterday in Soho.

This race should not be about race.

That's it. Stop reading and go vote please. 

Unless you are not a US citizen, in which case, please carry on.

Electioneering

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own.

According to the internets, and motivequest's reading of them, Obama is going to win, which is a weight off my mind.

One of the things that I've noticed this time around is how active everybody seems to be. Generation X apathy gives way to millennial hacktivism.

If we ran it asks what the world would be like if Gen Y was in charge.

We just live here is a site for resident non-voting aliens like myself to show their opinion.

Whywevote wants to know why you choose who you do.

The rest of the world want's their say as well.

WhatDoWeDoNow wants to make sure things happen in the first 100 days.

And Coldcut have waged in with this revolutionary cutup.

Here's hoping all this activity translates into record turnouts at the polls.

[Thanks to the various people who have sent me all these]

Vote Hour

The lovely dudes at Google just let me know about this voting initiative called Vote Hour they have put together.

It's based on the insight that the number one reason people don't vote is because they were too busy.

So they are recruiting CEOs to make videos to encourage their employees to vote.

If you want the CEO of your company to sit among very distinguished company while helping get everyone to the booths, get them to upload a video.

And if you need to know where to vote, Google can help with that too.

Binary Beverage

So the Carling iPint from BMB is currently one of the most downloaded free applications on the App Store. It's top ten in the USA and I don't think you can even buy Carling here. Maybe this will get the brand to expand into new markets, as the Gorilla did for Cadbury.

[Yes I got the new iPhone. Yes I did queue up. I really, really didn't want to.

I didn't enjoy it. I spent hours in the Apple Store. I read an entire book in the queue.

I tried to enjoy it as a piece of immersive ethnography. I tried to think of it as a means of gaining some insight into how Apple manages to create demand, truly create demand, by listening in to conversations.

People mainly were just concerned that they would run out, and would endlessly ask staff if this was the case.

Ultimately it was just a painful experience that I wish erased from my memory. I wish I hadn't dropped my old iPhone in water the Friday the new one came out.

Look, I don't want to talk about it.]

It's being described as the future of advertising.

I do think mobiles are important for what we do, I do think that we should be thinking about making stuff that's right for phones, not thinking of them as a pipe to push TV or banner ads through, and I do think that things that use the accelerometers as the interface engine are awesome.

I also agree with Ian that a sprinkling of geotility would make this application amazing, but that it's already very cool, probably the best ad for an iPhone that has been done, that people coo when they see it, and that people in pubs all over the land are going to be playing with it and showing it to their friends and that.

[Don't blame Ian for the neologism, that monstrosity is my fault.]

But let me pose you, dear reader, a hypothetical question.

Let's say you had been asked to be a judge for the Campaign Big Awards, for the Digital category.

Let's say that iPint had been entered, as the world's first interactive pint of lager, and that the judging criteria stipulated that originality was considered important, that new ideas or vitally refreshed variants of earlier ideas should be rewarded, because freshness in creativity is self evident.

Let's then say you saw the video above, for the iBeer application, that had been around for about a year.

What would you do?

[UPDATE: BMB and Molson Coors are being sued for 12.5M English Pounds. Apparently they contacted the iBeer creators, couldn't get a deal sorted, and then did it anyway.]

I've Lost My Backpack

I seem to have lost my lovely Crumpler bag somewhere in New York - anyone seen it?

I miss it.

I worry that its out there somewhere, lonely and confused, with nothing by fragments of my clothing to keep its insides warm.

Admittedly, it's a long shot - but wouldn't it be awesome if it found its way home thanks to the socialmediadistributedinterweb?

I can't wait until they come equipped with GPS trackers.