Ping

I watched a live stream of the apple conference last night and was fully expecting, as was the rest of the tech world, the updates to the ipod range and apple tv. What I was not expecting was Ping, Apple's own music social media platform. I have read plenty of reviews and so far, the response has been pretty underwhelming but will pass judgement once I have had the chance to have a play.

In terms of what this means for the other social media platforms such as MySpace, Last.fm and Spotify, it's pretty big. These other services are often used in conjunction with iTunes and Apple have surprised everyone by taking on this market. I use last.fm to track what I am listening to and to also see what my friends are listening to. The ability to do this within iTunes is certainly an interesting proposition and I cannot wait to try it out!

The Wilderness Down Town

Wow.

That was the only thing going through my mind as I watched this sensational new music video by Arcade Fire. You really have to watch it for yourself to truly appreciate how spectacular the whole experience is. I know I sound like I am gushing but it simply has to be watched here.

The video was created in partnership with Google and is part of the Chrome Experiments project. This aims to showcase the latest browser based experiments using open standards such as HTML5, Canvas and SVG.

The user watching the video actually becomes part of the story after entering in their childhood address. Google maps and Street View is then used as part of the story and you can see where you once lived and this evolves through the video as trees grow and birds fly across the screen. The various tools used are explained here.

This video is a fantastic use of new and emerging technology and has created a truly engaging experience for the user. You feel like a part of the video and contribute through your address and then writing a message to the younger you. There are additional features to increase its reach such as sharing your video and sending your postcard "downtown." Explained on the website, this means it could end up as part of the visuals for the next Arcade Fire tour or be sent to another user.

This really is a game changer in terms of music videos and expect to see a lot more like this in the future!

Lady Gaga has more friends than you do...

...well, I would assume that in the real world she is pretty damn lonely but according to Famecount,she now tops the lists for the most followers on Twitter with a staggering 5,720,931 and also the most Facebook fans of any living person with 16,372,106.

Those are some pretty incredible numbers and the Facebook Fan Page in particular will provide some pretty incredible insights into all of her fans. Being able to potentially contact 16 million fans with a simple status update could go viral in an instant!


Photo source: Wikipedia

This blog will finally have some direction!

Obviously this blog has lacked any posts for a long time. I lacked direction and didn't want to simply repost random social media news articles like every other blog out there. I wasn't really sure what I could write about and what I could really give an opinion on. Then i started thinking about all the things I like and how I could combine them to create some kind of meaningful blog. I then had that eureka moment when taking photo's at the Hevy Music festival in Kent a few weeks ago. Why not focus on bands in social media? I love music, I love gigs and I am fascinated by the way that bands become popular so why not look at all things music in the world of social media?

Bands embracing social media

Now I have seen it all...Frank Turner advertising gig tickets on Facebook!

Brands on Twitter...get ready for a good critiquing!

It's cool to be on Twitter don't you know, your nan might not be tweeting yet but you can bet that a lot of high street stores/supermarkets/big brands are all trying to get in on the action and join the "uber cool" new found land. Well, uber cool might not be true but marketing/pr gurus will have decided that they MUST be on Twitter and have dived in without any objectives set or any real purpose, other than to show face in this new landscape.

We have two lucky contenders today whose Twitter presence and practice will be examined but I am generally quite nice so I usually just have nice things to say. Unless you do something wrong, then i will be quite unpleasant.

First up we have the Carphone Warehouse. http://twitter.com/carphoneware
CPW once had a bad reputation, cowboys and hard sellers often resulting with angry customers. Twitter is a great place to vent your anger and so it only seems natural that CPW should have a presence here to actually feedback on the criticism. I was very anti CPW but i have to say that their Twitter account is pretty good. They reply to any mention of their name with what appears to be a lot of happy customers. They also share relavent news articles and improvements to their service. You don't feel like they are just on Twitter for the sake of being on Twitter but that it actually adds value for their customers.

Second up today is Magners Cider. http://twitter.com/magnersuk
Magners use their social media channels as a way of associating itself with comedy as well as plugging its product. They run lots of competitions and post up links to events they have sponsored. They reply to lots of tweets and often tweet some entertaining content. They blend the art of plugging their product and making the content interesting enough to keep following them and winning their competitions feels very achievable.

Short and sweet.

IAB SMC Practitioner Programme

First session this morning at the IAB headquarters. Wonderful bacon sandwiches to start...

Full write up to come but a great first session and corporate twitter accounts beware, a critique will be coming your way soon!


http://www.iabuk.net/en/1/socialmediacertificate070610.mxs



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