Social Media is not just about young(er) people
Our parents use it too! Jeremiah Owyang has published an interesting article about research looking at how baby boomers (adults aged 40 to 60 years) use social media. He raises the interesting point that with the election of a president who uses social media a lot and the fact social networks allow elderly parents to keep in touch with their children, we can expect social media usage amongst this demographic to increase much further.

link

YouTube becomes more Social

YouTube has added social features to its API. The expanded API includes YouTube activities like favouriting, uploading, and commenting on videos, which the company hopes will lead to a system of external applications that include “the obvious social network / feed aggregator integrations, to notification apps, to novel data views”.

link

How not to ‘do’ social media

Ryanair, one of Europe’s biggest low-fare airlines has rather unwittingly sparked a mini-storm in the blogosphere with their treatment of a blogger who tried to bring to their attention a glitch on their web-booking system. Instead of thanking the blogger, Ryanair first insulted the blogger and then every other blogger by stating that “lunatic bloggers can keep the blogosphere”. When so many companies are rushing to embrace social media its interesting to see one that does not seem to realise how influential it is (see the 140 comments already posted under the article)

link

More social media highlights…

Tweets, Twestivals and now Tweet-ups

Twitter continues to add to the English language. Hot on the heels of ‘Tweets’, and ‘Twestivals’, we now have ‘tweet-ups’

link

And a twatoo?

As mentioned in previous digests, 2009 is going to be the year of Twitter. One fan clearly wants Twitter to be around forever.

link

French Town Changing Name to Improve Ranks in Google

Finally, the town of Eu in France has taken the decision to change its name to improve its search ranking on Google, given that EU will return a lot of information about the European Union . Voting on the new name will begin soon; let’s hope somebody gives them the name of a good SEO company before that.

link

Thx Aaron

Bolt (Disney) remains at number one for the second week, it made £3,006,050 over the weekend.
The new entries this week are Confessions Of A Shopaholic (Disney) at number two, Push (Icon) at number seven and Gran Torino (Warner) at number 11.
Full Chart attached

Films out this week

Class, The (15)Artificial Eye Curzons Mayfair & Soho, Gate, Renoir & Key Cities (D)
Franklyn (15) (D)Contender Films London & Key Cities
Gun Crazy (PG) (R/I)bfi Distribution BFI Southbank & Key Cities
International, The (15) (D)Sony Pictures Nationwide
New In Town (12A)Entertainment Nationwide
Obscene (D)Revolver Entertainment ICA Cinema
Unborn, The (15)Universal Vue West End & Nationwide

Saturday 28 February 2009

Peter Beard: Scrapbooks From Africa And Beyond (D)Revolver Entertainment ICA Cinema
Universe Of Keith Haring, The (D)Revolver Entertainment ICA Cinema

Film news

The Independent Spirit Award Winners

Oscar Winners

Watts, Pinto join Woody Allen film

This week Bola is watching…

Observe and Report

Funny People

"Upcoming Movies" -presentation from the Oscars

Judd Apatow's Pineapple Express Oscars Comedy Short

Thx
Bola

We’re putting on a movie night screening ‘Eagle Eye’ in the downstairs canteen area on the 2nd March.

‘Shia LaBeouf reteams with "Disturbia" director D.J. Caruso playing a young slacker whose twin brother has died mysteriously. This is also linked to a woman (Michelle Monaghan) who finds that her child is missing. Soon the two strangers realize that they have been framed as terrorists. Forced to become members of a cell that has plans to carry out a political assassination, they must work together to extricate themselves while being led by a mysterious voice.’

full trailer

Why come?
Because it’s a nice lil get together we are organising + it’s free (credit crunch night!)....go on…

Hope you can make it.
x

Hi All,
This week’s update is dominated by the rights and wrongs of Facebook.

Facebook in the news for the right and wrong reasons

Facebook has been grabbing all the headlines this week following its decision to first claim ownership of all pictures and content uploaded on Facebook and then retracting it because of an angry backlash from users.

More here

However, it was not all bad for Facebook with news this week that the site now has 175mm users with 600k new users everyday. The fastest growing demographic is “Women over 55, up 175.3% in the last 120 days.

More here

Facebook also launched its first social widget for use outside of Facebook's own site today: the Comments Box. The Comments Box is a comments widget that was built on top of Facebook Connect, and that will allow bloggers and publishers to easily implement a Facebook Connect enabled commenting system on their sites.

More here

More social media highlights…

The Growth of UGC

More than 82 million people in the US created content online during 2008, a number expected to grow to nearly 115 million by 2013 according to numbers released by eMarketer.

The bulk of content creators are simply social networking users that do things like post photos or links, but there’s also a quickly-growing number of people participating in more involved activities like blogging or uploading their own videos.

More here

Thanks and have a great weekend.

Aaron

‘Twitterati: It won’t be long before we have a flood of singers, sporting heroes and stars of the screen, sharing stuff on the microblog of the moment.’
Source: PR media blog

Whether you like it or not, you just can’t seem to escape twitter these days… In this post, I’d like to simply point out that one of our very own has officially made it into the ‘twitterati’ world. Yup!

Who?
Ms. Caroline Barker, our New Business Director has been voted by digitcool, as a ‘…who’s who of influential media folk on Twitter.’ Not bad eh? Yup we live and breathe social media here in this office;)

It’s rather a high profile list including the Head of Digital at Geronimo, Managing Director of Digital at Iris Nation, CEO and founder of Dopplr, Co-founder of Twitter, Communications and co founder of AKQA, Head of Digital Strategy at VCCP, Head of Social Media at Ford, Head of Innovation at Profero…

Full list and article

Happy tweeting!

Last night, Caroline and I went to the opening of our newly hired PR agency Idea Generation’s latest exhibit titled ‘Root Ginger’.

It was a photographic exhibit focussed on people with ginger hair – A study of hair by Jenny Wicks.

‘Human nature is to judge, make snap decisions about people. We do it subconsciously; we can’t help ourselves. Red hair conjures up a plethora of stereotypical labels, Irish, Scottish, fiery, pasty, unattractive, beautiful, pre_Raphaelite…is it mockery, learned behaviour, social conditioning or just a bit of fun? It is after all just hair.’ Jenny Wicks

It was packed with loads of people, a free flowing bar and the night even included a minor celeb spot (see below). We had never seen so many red hair people in the same space before! We definitely were a minority;)

The photographs were beautifully done and there definitely was a sense of empowerment from the red heads. Very cool indeed and kinda secretly made me wish I had red hair too;)

I’d definitely recommend for you to check it out if you have the time (On top of the actual exhibit, it’s a very cool space and where Idea Generation’s office are based too), are around the area. It’s free and open for 3 weeks.
more details

View from the balcony

One of our favourite portraits

A few more

Caroline’s celeb spot in the top RHS, Max Branning (real name Jake Wood) from Eastenders with his family – all ginger by the way

Oh yes and my celeb spot. Ok so he’s not a famous name, but reckon he was a dead looka-likey for the 118 guys. He even had a red sports jacket on. Nice.

____

Bolt(Disney) goes straight to number one, making £5,457,438 over the weekend.
Other new entries are, Hotel For Dogs (Paramount) at number five, Friday The 13th (Paramount) at number six, Notorious (Twentieth Century Fox) at number seven, Pink Panther 2 (Sony) at number eight & Billu Barber (Eros) at number 13. full chart

Films Out On Friday

Confessions Of A Shopaholic (PG) (D)Walt Disney, Vue West End & Nationwide (Previews from 18 February)
Gran Torino (15) (D)Warner Bros. Vue West End, Nationwide from 27 February
Push (12A) (D)Icon London & Nationwide
Che Part Two (15) (D)Optimum Releasing C'World Wandsworth, Odeon Covent Gdn, Vue Shepherd's Bush & N'wide
Anvil! The Story Of Anvil (15) (D)The WorksCurzon Soho & Key Cities
20th Century Boys (15) 4Digital Asia ICA Cinema & Key Cities
Cadillac Records (D)Sony Pictures Odeon Panton St, C'Worlds Enfield, Feltham, Wandsworth & Nationwide

Film News

Clark to direct aliens vs. Jane Austen pic (oh dear) varietynews

Peru film wins Berlin Golden Bear - bbcnews

This Week Bola is watching...

Transformers 2 teaser - http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1809943432/video/12063123
Angels and Demons – full trailer - angelsanddemons

Inglourious Basterds Teaser - inglouriousbasterds

The Descent 2 - descent2

Full trailer for LVK on the website - lesbianvampirekillers

Thx Bola

This afternoon, I’ve come across a company called Curb (which have to admit, 1st got my attention at it reminded me of Larry David). However...
Their USP is that they are a ‘natural agency’ focussed on ‘natural advertising’ – intriguing…

They’ve very recently created a natural campaign together for KIA.

‘The work involves Kia messages and art being spray cleaned into 750 dirty pavement sites across five major UK cities; London, Manchester, Leeds, Bristol and Birmingham. Each ad is spray cleaned using only natural rainwater and directs pedestrians to a microsite, shapeyoursoul.com
Source: brand republic

So what else do Curb do? Well they’ve got 6 types of natural advertising which I think is pretty cool:

1) Clean ad
(what they’ve done for KIA above)

2) Logrow
Horticulturalists are used to create brand name/messages with high quality grass

3) Sand brand
Using sand sculptures to answer briefs – of course its all environmentally friendly

4) Snow tag
Just like logrow – but in the snow ‘…is the ultimate media for targeted winter advertising’

5) Solar art
Uses 3 key elements - The power of the sun's rays, a magnifying glass and the skill of the artist who is able to burn the most intricate patterns, portraits and logos into wood.

6) H2 show
Using water to create images and logos….

If you're interested, find out more via their website: curb

Thx

Looking at it from one perspective, a call from the UK on Friday afternoon requiring Lyns to return home immediately could be a continuation of the curse of Friday 13th. Put another way, while she sits in the Virgin Lounge with a G&T, Joe is standing in a still soggy Centennial Park, probably in a very pink stripy plastic poncho and wondering for the umpteenth time just why he forgot to pack his own waterproofs.
Arriving onsite at 8am (in the pouring rain) it was a case of all hands to the pump to finish the Sound Lounge, and overcome by a Man of Production moment (contact Chris Manganelli for the Momo Men of Production Calendar if you’re brave enough), a drill was seized, a hammer grasped and our very own Head of Events finally had a chance to cast activation strategy considerations aside momentarily and get his hands dirty again in the final push to the finish. Not sure I’ll be asking him to sort my dodgy boiler out anytime soon though.

Gates opened at noon, and despite the rain, the crowds started trickling in.

The brand ambassadors are briefed and armed with the very sexy Nokia 5800, the SMS communications to the Mobile Festival Guide users are up and running as planned, the Sound Lounge is ready to welcome all, and as Joe put it at 12.05, “Only God can help us now”.

Well, God, and umbrella and a kick ass project team of course.

“Come to Sydney” the client said.
“Anything you say, Chief” we said.

And it made sense at the time. A little February action in the Southern Hemisphere would not only give us some great learnings for future Festival activation, but also (and let’s be honest here) provide a welcome respite from those winter blues.

Now, we’re probably both a little too cynical to pay any heed to superstition, but Friday 13th well and truly bit us on the arse. Joe’s as happy as a pig in the proverbial on a festival site, but as a girl who’s rather accustomed to life in the Formula 1 Paddock (plentiful in shelter, champagne and concrete flooring in equal measure) Lyns was more than a little perturbed to find herself huddling under a brolly in a downpour of biblical proportions, wearing a hi vis vest (not to mention flat shoes) and trying to direct an equally sodden client to the appropriate gate in a sizeable perimeter fence.

It wasn’t all bad - the One Partners team were making good progress with the Sound Lounge build and Texan Ernie (or Bert as he affectionately became known) had the free Nokia WiFi network up and running in fairly short order. Amazing though both were at their jobs, they couldn’t stop the rain and travelling back to London in Noah’s Ark between a pair of copulating hippopotamus (hippopotami? Hippopotamuses?) seemed an entirely reasonable means of conveyance.

Meeting the client for an end of day beer at The Establishment (which that evening boasted an eclectic clientele of wall to wall suits, three Team Nokia drowned rats and Fat Boy Slim, in town to headline at GVF the following day) provided a chance to ponder where the master plan all went so wrong. As with all good post mortems, (albeit before the event even started in this case) the Client left with a clear brief – in this case to study seasonal weather patterns, freak or otherwise, before committing to the next gig!

GoogleGoogle launched its new social media blog last week and on Wednesday they announced their latest social feature: Google Social bar. This is part of Google’s Friend Connect service, launched in May 2008 with the sole purpose simplifying the connection between social and non-social websites.

The Google Social Bar allows you to add social features to your website by just cutting and pasting so no more difficult programming!!
For more details:
google social bar
you tube link

Bebo relaunch
Bebo is often criticised for its lack of innovation. Faced with dwindling registration numbers and a reputation as the social network site for young people, Bebo is planning a major re-launch aimed at becoming more attractive to adult users.
More at:
read write web

More social media highlights…

Why are Mobile Phone Social Networks so popular?
Last week we argued that Facebook faced serious competition from mobile social networks. So why is this? Well as we mentioned there are lots of cool applications now such as Google’s Latitude which simply offered more functionality and networking options that the more stationary PC based social networks. For more details as to why mobile social networking is booming read here:

More at: social media today

More Twitter
We have been going about it but 2009 is going to be the year of twitter! , Its managing one of the largest social media charity events ever:
twestival

In the UK the site is now one of the most popular in the UK
tech crunch

This is mainly down to the highly publicised tweets of Jonathan Ross and Stephen Fry (now the third most popular Twitter in the world after Barack Obama and CNN).
Jonathan Ross

Stephen Fry

Not to be outdone, Greenroom at Momentum likes to Tweet too:
greenroom@momentum tweet

If you would like to recommend to clients how best to use Twitter, this article is a good introduction:
Introducing twitter to clients

Thx Aaron

Vital Statistics:

New favourite Momentum office of the week:
Sydney

Old favourite Momentum office of the week:
New York

Presentation of the Week
Brand Ambassador Briefing, and possibly the most efficient training process ever witnessed, delivered by One Partners

Regrettable Purchase of the week:
Vast quantities of waterproof clothing for use onsite.  Not sun hats L

Bar of the week:
Floor 32 at the Intercontinental. Panoramic views of Sydney Harbour, complimentary cocktails every evening and an Afternoon Tea trolley stacked with finger sandwiches and macaroons.

Sunday afternoon sunbathing spot of the week:
Shelly Beach, Manly

Media Mogul of the week:
Rupert Murdoch on the next table at Café Sydney

Random Evening of the week
Virgin Mobile Anti Valentines night at the Slip Inn

Only in Australia story of the week:
Shark attacks surfer in Bondi
(and a naval diver in Woolloomooloo)

We are happy to announce that Neil, our Social Media Strategist at EI at greenroom@momentum will be on the panel at the prestigious social networking world forum which takes place on the 9th and 10th March 2009 in London.
‘The Social Networking World Forum is the perfect event for professionals to learn and discuss the future development of social media.The two day conference and exhibition will provide a focused platform for the global social media industry. The conference aims to address core issues such as monetization, future technologies/services, engaging social groups with brands and how businesses can get the most out of social and business networks.’‘

Other brands speaking at this forum include: Myspace, Bebo, Friends Reunited, MTV, Honda, General Motors, Sky, Yahoo, O2, BMW, British Airways, Linked In, Cadburys, Revolution Magazine and our very own Coca Cola client.

Neil will 1 of 4 representatives on a panel discussing the topic of ‘Using applications to reach new audiences’. He’ll be particularly highlighting the push and pull of social media, how to create successful marketing campaigns and how applications are key to the new rules of digital.

Neil’s impressive bio appears on the forum’s website.

Click here for full biography

On top of Neil speaking at the forum, he'll be joined by the rest of the EI team who'll be attending for learning and networking purposes.

We’ll no doubt keep you posted on this one. More to come…

Thx

Two things to clear up.

Firstly, we are NOT on holiday. Secondly, it’s raining in Sydney and has been for three days.

We’re down here to pilot Nokia’s new phygital approach to activating at music festivals, and if you want to run a festival pilot as early as possible in the year, it’s going to require a trip to the Southern Hemisphere and in this case, to Good Vibrations in Sydney. It’s a very tough job...

Having arrived on Saturday after a really rather pleasant journey – thanks to the ever accommodating Virgin hosties – we acclimatised with a slightly jetlagged amble around circular quay and a debate about just how many Australians are actually left in Sydney. Four days on, we’ve still only found about five. Apparently, the Pommy Mafia are taking over, and even more bizarrely we seem to know a healthy proportion of them from London. No shortage of drinking buddies then.

Yesterday (Tuesday) we survived an encounter with a particularly cantankerous cab driver to visit our Momentum Australia brethren in their lovely new office (at an address aforementioned cab driver denied existed) over in Pyrmont in the west of the city overlooking the harbour. Had delicious Thai at a local restaurant with Momentum’s MD Gus, described by Tim Lawler as Sid James and by himself as Daniel Craig’s older brother (both equally applicable depending on strength of beer goggles). Big thanks to all at Momo Sydney for giving us a home for the afternoon – we will be back to abuse your hospitality later.

This morning was taken up by Joe’s visit to the still desolate festival site in Centennial Park – there’s a lot of work to do between now and Saturday, but everything’s apparently on schedule. Lyns may even find some time to hunt down a pair of shoes to match the brand new high visibility vest Joe’s insisting she wears onsite...

Afdhel, our intrepid Nokia client arrived today, straight from TED in Long Beach, with which Nokia are also partnering. Apparently he shared his flight with a particularly vocal child and so is likely to win the award for Best Jet Lag. Ouch.

More from the Holbrook/Russell Roadshow tomorrow.

x

The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button (Warner Bros) is the new number one, making £2,213,495 over the weekend.
The other new entries are, He's Just Not That Into You (Entertainment) at number two, The Secret Of Moonacre (Warner Bros) at number seven & Vicky Cristina Barcelona (Optimum) at number 11.

Full Chart - Top 15

Films Out This Friday

Billu Barber ErosC'Worlds Feltham, Ilford, Sheaftesbury Ave, Odeon Greenwich & Key Cities
Bolt (PG)Walt Disney Odeon Whiteleys, Vue Fulham, Rio Dalston, Ritzy & Nationwide
Friday The 13th (18)Paramount Nationwide
Fuck ICA Films ICA Cinema (Key Cities from March)
Hotel For Dogs (U)Paramount London & Nationwide (Previews 7th & 8th February)
King Of The Hill (15) Optimum Releasing ICA Cinema only
NO, NO, NO Notorious (15) (D)20th Century Fox Vue West End & Nationwide
Pink Panther 2, The (PG) (D)Sony Pictures London & Nationwide
Three Monkeys (15) (D)New Wave Films Apollo Piccadilly Circus, NFT, Renoir & Key Cities
Under The Sea 3D (D)Imax CorporationBFI Imax, Imax Cinemas Greenwich & Wimbledon

Film News

Bafta Winners

What Bola watching this week…

Infestation

Triangle

New trailer for our PR campaign

Dragonball Evolution

xBola

Hi Everyone,
We at EI like to keep a tab on new developments in Technology and Social Media. Below are details of some the most interesting things happening this week.

Thanks and have a great weekend!

Aaron
___

Facebook is now 5

Facebook is celebrating its fifth birthday this week. In five short years, the social network has gone "from a pet college project to a global communications platform," With 150 million worldwide users (about 1 in 5 Internet users), Facebook is now the Web's No. 1 social network, beating out MySpace (130 million users) for top spot.

The question is, will we still all be using Facebook five years from now?

Is the future of social networks mobile?

This week has seen the launch of two mobile networking innovative which may threaten the more stationary Facebook and MySpace.

Match2Blue, a mobile social network was launched this week. One of its coolest features is that matches your profile (location, interests, age) with other similar people and suggests friends, a bit like how iTunes Genius and LastFm recommends artists based on the music you like.

match2blue

Furthermore, with the launch of Google Latitude, mobile social networking is becoming an even more attractive proposition. With Latitude, not only can you see your friends' locations on a map, but you can also be in touch directly via SMS, Google Talk, Gmail, or by updating your status message; you can even upload a new profile photo on the fly.

Critics complain that the application means that people can now be spied upon but if you do not want to share your location, you simply turn the application off!

Read more here

One analyst however argues that location based social networking is not a threat to Facebook and MySpace

View article

More social media highlights

- Spotify to stream online Games?
Spotify is a Sweden-based proprietary music streaming program, which allows listening to specific music without delay via browsing artists, albums or created playlists.
Spotify

The company is now looking at extending its service to the streaming of online games which we think is pretty exciting. The below article explains how this would be achieved.
View article

- What was America thinking and doing during the Superbowl?

Now you can find out thanks to Twitter. The New York Times created a mash-up application using time lapsed tweets to track what people were twittering about during the Superbowl.

To view

Slumdog Millionaire (Pathe) is still at number one, the other new entries this week are, Revolutionary Road (Paramount) at number three and Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist (Sony) at number 10. Top 15 Films
**Films Out this Friday**

Bolt (3D) (PG) Walt Disney Vue West End & Nationwide
Curious Case Of Benjamin Button, The (12A) (D)Warner Bros. Vue West End & Nationwide
Doubt (15) (D)Walt Disney Odeon West End & Nationwide
Good, The Bad, The Weird, The (15)Icon Cineworld Shaftesbury Ave., & Key Cities
He's Just Not That Into You (12A) (D)Entertainment Empire Leicester Square & Nationwide
Punisher War Zone (18) (D)Sony PicturesLondon & Nationwide
Secret Of Moonacre, The (U) (D)Warner Bros.Vue West End & Nationwide
Time Crimes (15)Optimum Releasing ICA Cinema only
Vicky Cristina Barcelona (12A)Optimum Releasing Clapham Picturehouse, Screen On Baker St (Nationwide fm 13 Feb 09)
Who Killed Nancy? (D)Soda PicturesLondon venues (tbc) & Key Cities

**Film News**

Gilliam to get Bafta fellowship - View full article

Narnia franchise continues voyage - View full article

**This Week Bola is watching...**

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen Super Bowl Trailer! - View trailer

The Damned United - View trailer

See you next week!
x Bola