Right, it’s Friday and this is funny. Really funny I thought. It had me LOL, genuinely LOL - GLOL to be precise. Not quite ROTFL or even LMAOROTFL but GLOL none the less. See what you think. In a nutshell, man writes about a particularly crazy woman that bought his fridge. Funny entry gets picked up by the interwebs and ends up on the front page of Popurls. I read, agree and then perpetuate the cycle. Have a good weekend everyone. I think I need it and so do you.
Here’s a snippet:
3. Please call me only once with ALL your questions. I left for the day, and had 5 messages on my answering machine, the last one was at 11:30 pm. Frankly lady, you were sounding a bit too crazy by the end of the day. It’s a fridge. A small metal box that keeps shit cold. I don’t have the fridge’s family tree. For all I know the fridge’s was conceived by a slutty young Maytag that graced some hillbilly’s side porch. I don’t know the exact age of the fridge. I bought it a few years ago, I used it for a couple of months, ok, I lied, I used it a whole year. The fact is, you’re not buying a race horse, you’re buying a used fridge.
This looks pretty amazing. With stuff this good on the web, who needs crap British TV? More from Scoble here (he cried when he saw this). Just one of the TED talks available now online.
Jemima Kiss lists out the latest ABCes for the main newspapers. No surprises that the numbers are up year on year across the board, but as she points out, very interesting that more and more so lots of traffic is from outside the UK. More fuel for the fire in my mind which tells me that to try and split digital comms activity into US, UK and so on is getting even more ridiculous. We need to think about (and do!) things differently, fast.
“Even given meteoric online readership trends, January’s results from the ABCe are remarkable. The Mail Online’s unique user numbers increased 165% year on year to 17,903,172. In the same period, Telegraph.co.uk increased 65% to 12,348,706; Sun Online grew to 13,322,535, up 40% from January 2007, and Times Online increased 39% to 15,087,130. Guardian.co.uk remained the highest traffic website with 19,708,711, a rise of 26% year on year”
Almost forgot to say (and actually technically ‘today’ is now yesterday) but today is/was the first anniversary of middledigit.net. After a few attempts that went on to be abandoned, I’m really chuffed that it’s lasted this long and I now enjoy blogging so much and have really experienced the benefits of having a proper little home on the web. Even if it isn’t updated every single day . . .
Today has also been the first time I’ve blogged from my new office at home, which I’ve set up to start-up my new consultancy from and get even more involved with social media and the wonderful thing that is the web. Having worked at Cow, then Bite, I haven’t been able to resist sticking with the one syllable theme and have called my new company Shed. It’s new home will be here (currently forwarding onto middledigit.net) and I’m getting really rather excited about it all now.
So thanks to all of you for your support over the last 12 months and here’s to the next year of flipping it to old ways of thinking and a whole lot more more doing and less talking.
Just been sent this - a trio of geeks using a couple of iPhones and a Nintendo DS to make some tunes. With nice interfaces comes nice software. Can’t wait to see what’s in the pipeline and the implications for making music on the move. Below that is a another video of the ‘iAno’ in action that surfaced a few days ago. After Electroplankton, the continued success of Guitar Hero and Rock Band and stuff like the Tenori-On and lots of other stuff in development, the future looks very exciting indeed.
Marmite has just launched a Facebook group. Now it’s (nearly) always good to see brands getting stuck into things like Facebook and it’s even better to see it done really well - but today I was left a little bit disappointed.
You see, surely a better thing to have done would have been to have created two groups “We love Marmite’ and “We hate Marmite’? That way the two groups - each fuelled by the passion of the people in them - could have battled it out. As it stands (link to group here, actually it’s a Page but there we go) the love or hate aspect of the call to action gets a bit lost in the action. The official Page for Marmite could have been created for ‘true’ fans and used to fuel and update the battle for love or hate across both groups.
Also - I went to the main Marmite site today and there was no mention of the Facebook group anywhere (obvious) to be seen. Again - little bit sad to see that given the fact that they would have known the online coverage would be appearing.
Anyway, I actually love Marmite and am no hater, I just felt compelled to write this as I assumed that the second I read the headline, that’s what they would have done. Wonder why they didn’t or if anyone else has any other ideas? Or maybe I need to worry about something else.
Oh, disclosure - Facebook is a Bite client but then I think I’ve mentioned that a few times so you probably knew that.
Right now, there’s some Do The Green Thing people cooped up in a cold room waiting for people like you and me to go there and give them ‘hugs’. Using a live webcam and a simple chat and ‘big hug button’ interface, you can interact live and see what happens when you type things and press the button. One of those ideas that often comes up in brainstorms - do something live on the web with a webcam and chat - but never ever gets executed. So, really nice to see someone actually doing at and committing to doing it well. When I went in there activity was actually pretty high, judging by the amount of chat going on and they were definitely live because I asked them!
The whole point of the thing is to tie into this month’s Green Thing of using body warmth which you’ll find out all about if you go check out the site.
There’s also a Flash Hug on Valentine’s Day and an active Facebook group too. Here’s the details for the Flash Hug:
February’s Green Thing is: Use Body Warmth (and turn your heating down a bit or off for a bit).
Come to Soho Square* at 1.30pm on Valentine’s Day and be part of the world’s first Body Warmth Flash Hug.
The plan: turn the heating down or off for a bit in your homes or offices, come to Soho Square at lunchtime, hug some beautiful people (or some of the Green Thing team) then go back to your unheated homes and offices with a huge body warmth boost.
Really like the look and feel of Do The Green Thing and it’s great to see a continuous flow of good stuff coming from DTGT HQ. Now I (and you!) just need to go do it this month and every month.
Disclaimer - I know some of the people at DTGT as I used to work with them at Zopa
Some of you I think will know this already - given the efficiency of the technology PR grapevine - but as of mid-March I’m leaving Bite to set up on my own. After thinking about it for a while, I’ve finally decided that now is the time for me to go solo and become a freelance creative/digital consultant focusing on social media, online marketing and PR.
(UPDATE: Just read a piece in PR Week - ‘blog specialist’ is somewhat narrowing down what I actually do at Bite and will be doing in the future, plus the list of clients wasn’t wholly complete . . . but there you go, I should be flattered right?)
I’m currenty talking to Bite about the possibility of working on a freelance basis after my full time contract ends but we haven’t worked out the final details yet. I’ve really enjoyed more than three years at Bite and in that time I’ve worked on some amazing brands like Apple, Yahoo!, Tiger Beer, Zopa and most recently Facebook (particularly exciting after it was dubbed the most sought-after retainer of 2007!). My first event at Bite was the European launch of iTunes and it’s been an amazing ride for me along the way ever since then.
Now though I’m up for a change and am really excited about the future and working with lots more exciting people, companies and agencies - working out how to embrace this massive earth-changing thing we all know and love called the Internet.
Now I just need to think of a name and there’s one recurring theme that keeps on occupying my mind . . .
