Getting stuck in – sharing rich media content

In the true spirit of social media and online PR, I feel the need to share. A lot in fact - from video through to live Twitter feeds via blogs, emails, and so much more!

I never thought I’d find myself writing about embedded technology, but the ability to easily share such a wide and rich range of media (without having been trained how to code!) inspired me to write this.

Social media is all about sharing and collaboration, that’s not news. Many of us don’t even give a second thought to clicking a button on sites like YouTube to share something visual that has attracted our attention with friends visiting our Facebook, MySpace or Digg accounts.

Suddenly, a vast potential audience can share our selected videoclip, soundbite or image within seconds.

From a user’s point of view, it’s liberating. From a business perspective it’s a valuable marketing tool. Not only does it give straightforward access to an extended online audience, but it enables companies to make a connection with their target audience with content that is relevant to them in a form that they want. Also, enabling visitors to be walked through a process rather than having to read about it is invaluable – a picture tells a thousand words after all.

With the amount of information available to us online, how much more impact does something visual have? Who would rather read the transcript of an interview than watch it as good as live?

Video sharing – statistics to really know your audience

Aside from videos simply being more attention grabbing, companies also have the option to use video sharing sites to track insightful metrics such as:

Number of views

Viewing time

Demographics

Popularity

Traffic patterns

Tools enabling video measurement include: YouTube Insight & TubeMogul.

In a world full of constantly updating information, being able to stand out from the competition as well as track results is something to be valued – and shared!

So, in the spirit of sharing I hope you find this little nugget of interest:

Virtual worlds 2.0 – time for a Second Life upgrade?

I previously shared some thoughts about what the future might hold for Second Life (‘Second Life in need of fresh blood’), which sparked off an ongoing debate with another member of thebluedoor team (I promise not to divulge names, Jenifer!). Her concern is that Second Life is still extremely popular and has a long and useful time ahead of it. I don’t disagree, but I do believe that it is moving into the more mainstream phase of its existence.

Out of our discussions came the agreement that some developments from within Second Life are amazing and have a lot to offer the world at large, not just the more ‘techie’ amongst us. A prime example of this is the Virtual Guide Dog, helping visually impaired Second Life users to navigate the global community by reading signs and using text to speech technology.

In light of this, I was delighted to hear that two UK start-up virtual worlds, ‘Real Life’ and ‘Near Global’, have received financial backing from the CEO of one of the largest technology venture capitalists, Ariadne Capital.

My excitement is not because they provide competition to Second Life, but because they have a specific purpose.

Real Life and Near Global are regarded as ‘virtual worlds 2.0’ as they have a particular focus, with a real world application. Both of them are currently in development stage, but here is an overview of what they will be offering when they go live:

Real Life aims to train users for particular careers through job simulations. The main target audience will be school and college leavers, providing them with a virtual world in which they can try out potential careers as well as connect with recruiters.

Near Global builds 3D replicas of cities (‘Near London’ is scheduled to be built ready to visit later this year). Its aim is to sell real estate to brands, offering visitors an online environment for shopping through to education.

Both have a clear focus and the capacity for online training and knowledge share is phenomenal.

These virtual worlds 2.0 may not be a Second Life upgrade as such, but they certainly offer a much more focused approach and will definitely be worth a visit!

Will Microsoft devour Yahoo! and challenge the unstoppable Google?

In the world of search, Google has a 65% share of US traffic, Yahoo! with 19.5% and Microsoft trailing behind with only 8% (Guardian). The figures speak for themselves – so how can Microsoft hope to challenge the mighty Google in search?

Re-launching its search with the new Bing engine, designed to rival Google, does not seem to have done the trick, but perhaps that’s not what it was meant to do…

Maybe it was conceived to send other search companies a message.

Only a month after its launch we saw it taking some of the Yahoo! market share (Bloomberg). And it’s no coincidence that this week we see renewed talks between Microsoft and Yahoo! If talks succeed then maybe the resulting search engine can claw back market some of the market share.

Search companies make their money through advertising dollars and so far Bing hasn’t raised Microsoft’s search advertising revenue. In fact, it remains static at the 6% share it controlled before the launch (Eweek). That said, if Microsoft was to gain just one percent of the search share from Google, it would cost Google $220 million in revenue.

Rumour has it that Microsoft is about to announce poor fourth fiscal quarter results, following a drop in sales of personal computers bundled with its technology. Over the past fifteen years Windows operating systems have been the only option for many of us and now Google are starting to challenge that domination with its open source operating system Google Chrome OS.

It’s hardly surprising that Microsoft wants to regain some advertising revenue from Google but will it consume Yahoo! in the process? We’ll have to wait and see.

The science of search: has the Bing revolution begun?

It appears that Microsoft’s newly launched ‘decision engine’ Bing has generated some great interest with an ever increasing number of web users trying it out. Yesterday Microsoft released its own data on the state of Bing just one month after its official launch. It makes for interesting reading…

According to Microsoft’s own data, Bing has seen an 8% growth in unique users to bing.com in its debut month and based on their own polling Microsoft has also seen an increase in the number of people ‘likely to recommend’ Bing to their friends or colleagues.

With its appealing design, easy navigation and claims to be able to deliver more relevant results than its competitors, Bing is certainly creating waves. However, while Bing appears to be making strong in-roads into enhancing the search experience in the US, here in the UK the current Beta version doesn’t enjoy many of the tools that enhance the US search results.

While it is strong on image results – I personally love how you can search by image type – it needs more work to be a real competitor to Google right now. Although this looks set to change, in a recent article featured in MediaWeek Microsoft UK's head of search, Paul Stoddart commented: "We want to make sure Bing in Britain is the best Bing in Britain we could possibly have." One to watch it seems…

While Bing in the UK continues to develop its search capabilities, real time search is evolving rapidly. The uniqueness is its immediacy. Micro blogging sites such as Twitter are fast becoming the buzz in the world of search. Even Bing has begun to include certain key Twitter feeds into its search results. Like wise, following its recent re-design and the introduction of real-time search, FriendFeed now updates continuously as data comes in. You can search for anything on the site and see it instantly. Real-time search is also possible for advanced search options, including search terms that you can save and track through FriendFeed, and on its blog widget.

The significance of real time search is the possibilities it presents. The lack of delay between composition and publication of information means information hungry audiences are provided with up to the minute results which are more relevant than those provided by more traditional search engines such as Google.

In my opinion these are exciting times for the world of search. Competition is healthy, new entrants to the search market will result in new innovations and help regulate the bigger players.

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Digital networking: a review of Web 2.0 London events

The world of PR and Web 2.0 has been busy this week. Here are just some of the events that thebluedoor has attended:

Reboot Britain: the week started with a thought-provoking event organised by NESTA. Its specific purpose was to set out a vision of support Britain during these tough recessionary times (see our earlier blog for further details).


Telegraph Media Group / Mobile Platform: on Tuesday TMG launched its new mobile platform and vision for advertisers to develop exciting, interactive, content-based applications through it. Companies such as as TigerSpike and the IAB presented, with some excellent insights into the mobile industry, including:

• there are 1.5 billion TVs in the world, and 3.1 billion phones
• applications are currently a significant driver of internet traffic - 1 billion applications have been downloaded to-date, with 3,000 iPhone applications downloaded per minute
• 40% of iPhone users use their mobiles more than computers to browse the Internet generating 65% of web traffic
• there has been an increase of 36% of uptake of 3G phones year on year
• 13% of the UK population have a smart phone

Digital Lounge: this is a group with a strong mobile focus held its regular meeting in London on Tuesday. Scott Seaborn - Head of Mobile at Ogilvy - presented case-studies of work that the agency has implemented for clients such as IBM and Tango. One great example wove in technologies and platforms such as Google's Android phone and Twitter into an augmented reality application for use at Wimbledon. This showed users how long queues were for taxis or strawberries, plus status updates on tennis matches on individual courts.


Lewis PR / Social Media Summit: an event hosted at the company's media centre with speakers such as Will Cooper, Deputy News Editor of New Media Age, TechTarget's Bill Crowley, and Henry Clifford-Jones of LinkedIn. All shared interesting insights into how the PR industry is developing, plus some great 'did you knows' from LinkedIn, including:

• 1,000 new LinkedIn groups per day
• 1 new LinkedIn member per second
• 43 million global members, 11 million European Union members and 2.5 million member in the UK

TechCrunch / The Europas: THE award ceremony for Europe's Web 2.0 and mobile industry. This event appropriately ended the networking and knowledge gathering of our week where some interesting pieces of news were announced, including:

• TechCrunch Europe Top 100 index launched
• Bebo and Lastminute founders confirmed a new fund (see penultimate blog for further details)

The digital industry has certainly seen its significant casualties over the past year or so and more will surely come. However having been out and about in the business world over the last few days, optimism, creativity and innovation in the UK seems to remain high..... And, for the first time in a while, instead of saying "We must do something about this social media thing", businesses are starting to say "We are starting to embrace Web 2.0 and social media."

I hope that, unlike Baroness Vadera's comments in January this year, I am not wrong in thinking that there are indeed 'green shoots' re-appearing.

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TechCrunch: ' The Europas' - and the winners are.....

Last night TechCrunch (the blog bible for all things Web 2.0 and mobile), held The Europas - the publication's first-ever awards to recognise the brightest and the best in the industry. Over 250 people attended, with a stella cast directed by the editor Mike Butcher, including Robert Scoble and the Traveling Geeks, Brent Hoberman of MyDeco and Lastminute fame and Michael Birch of Bebo and BirthdayAlarm.

News of the night was that Hoberman and Birch have indeed partnered (the rumour broke earlier this year) to form a fund - PROfounders Capital and panel debate focused on why expansion of start-ups into Europe was so tough. (Although our cross-border eCommerce white paper - Borderless - was published way-back in October 2008, language was deemed to be a key factor, as Sarah Lacy on the panel pointed-out.)

So the winners were:
Grand Prix - Spotify
Best New Startup Summer 2008-2009 - Spotify (TweetDeck, my personal Twitter application favourite, was Highly Commended)
Best Investor - TAG The Accelerator Group
Best Startup Founders - Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon of Spotify
Best Mobile Application (EMEA) - Spinvox
Best Mobile Startup (EMEA) - Nimbuzz
Best Entertainment Application or Service - SoundCloud
Best European / Real World Gadget - Poken
Best Cleantech / Environmental Startup - AlertMe
Best Enterprise / B2B Startup - Huddle
Best Social Innovation (which benefits society EMEA) - Mendeley
Best Bootstrapped Startup (less than 3 years old) - Soup.io
Best Design - Songkick
Best Web Application or Service (EMEA) - Spotify

It was truly a fantastic evening. Spotify certainly swept the board, however there were some extremely deserving businesses in the Highly Commended categories. I'm personally hoping that the awards will be repeated next year to give well-deserved credit to the stars and future stars of this innovative and extremely exciting industry.

Reboot Britain

Yesterday I went to Reboot Britain, an event organised by NESTA - the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts.

The idea of Reboot Britain was born from NESTA’s report "Attacking the Recession" which was published earlier this year and outlines measures to support a more dynamic and resilient economy.

In his foreword to the Reboot Britain publication Jonathan Kestenbaum, CEO of NESTA tells us that Reboot Britain asks an important question of us in this digital age: given the unprecedented challenges we face, how can we best overcome them by harnessing the unique tools now at our disposal?

With this in mind I sat down to listen to the impressive line up of speakers on stage in the lecture theatre, and what a treat it was. Here are the highlights for me:

Gillian Tett - (Assistant Editor, Financial Times), talking about the banking crisis:
Innovation occurred in such small silos that no-one outside the system understood it and no one inside the system had the big picture.

Tony Ageh - (Controller of Archive Development, BBC) – Mining the Archives, a new Age of Opportunity:The BBC archives are about to get sexy. The BBC has 5 ½ miles of shelved archives and over 400,000 complete programmes. It would take over 120 years to convert these programmes into a digital format. Tony Ageh says the answer is to let people “have” the content; making this content freely available will create entirely new businesses. The media sector will reinvent itself through its archives.

Martha Lane-Fox – (Digital Inclusion Champion, Digital Britain) – Ending the Digital Divide: People being left behind are left behind in every sphere of their life. Let’s focus on getting the 6 million people who are most socially disadvantaged online; if we can do this, we can increase their confidence / motivation / skills / inspiration.

Charles Leadbeater – The Mutual Media Manifesto: Media is something we do with people, not to and for people. Renegades and pirates will be the ones to create the innovations of the future.

Alan Moore – (co-author of Communities Dominate Brands) - Straightline Thinking stops here, the true promise of the networked society: There is no more online or offline, there is only blended reality. Don’t talk about digital, talk about technology as co-operation.

These are just some of the great soundbites from the excellent presentations and although some left me with more tangible ideas than others, all were thought provoking and inspiring.

You can take a look at the Reboot Britain slide show below or download or follow the latest news and views on #rebootbritain.

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Tweetcamp London: a review

Last weekend over 100 people met up for the London TweetCamp, generously hosted by GumTree and sponsored by mymuseli, Sun Startup Essentials, Addlestones, PayPal and Yelp. Some were colleagues and friends in real life, but many were 'friends' and / or 'followers' who communicate online through Twitter.

TweetCamp provided an inclusive and welcoming place for people active and interested in Twitter to meet up, network and put faces to Twitter names. In true Bar Camp style, discussions were loosely guided and encompassed a range of subjects including: What people use Twitter for; The do's and don'ts of Twitter; Trends; and Business benefits.

For those reading this who don't know, Twitter prompts users to fill out a micro-blog posting using only 140 characters (this includes spaces and punctuation). Postings can be extended by the use of hyper-links to blogs. Conversations take place on Twitter either through private Direct Messages or in public. In order to talk to someone or get their attention, it is vital to the person's account name (Twitter handle) in the posting e.g.: '@toni_jane have you seen the Radian6 YouTube video?' By including Toni's handle in the Tweet, it enables the message to be searched more effectively and therefore discovered by Toni.

TweetCamp enabled free, unrestricted conversations to happen, online relationships could be explored face-to-face, and valuable insights shared. Interestingly though, at the end of the day when each participant was invited to contribute a summing-up comment, Tweet-speak prevailed.

One of the key aspects of the Twitter online community is that (in the main) people genuinely want to collaborate and be useful. And that was certainly true of the spirit of the day which would not have happened without the amazing and generous organisation by @farnhan, @cyberdees and @jonin60seconds, and brilliant facilitation by @benjaminellis.

So thank you all - and for me, Twitter has already become a more meaningful landscape having met some more of its inhabitants.

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