Powerful structures for product-driven organisations
An interesting comment on the last post came back to a topic which I seem to be asked, or ask myself, more and more often. If social media increasingly leads to closed groups, and tomorrow's media consumers are increasingly avoiding the mass media, what will happen to mass-participation media events, and don't we as a culture lose… Continue reading No one to hear you scream
There's been a fun discussion on Gaping Void the last couple of days in response to Hugh's post Social objects for beginners. In particular, Rachel Bellow weighed in with: 'Social objects are the particular manifestation of shared meaning, right? So that suggests there's a drive underlying all these manifestations... that the social object is not,… Continue reading Fun and games
There's an absolutely cracking article on Mashable about the various social network's monetisation strategy. The author points out that it takes an awful lot of personalisation to make up for hitting people with messages at the wrong time (and that entertainment doesn't translate to word of mouth). It's a very reasonable criticism, and it's… Continue reading Sense and sociability
A good day, yesterday for things fitting together and falling into place (to mix up the metaphors a little). The day started reading Amelia's amazing piece in the Spectator. However much you're in to new media there's no denying how cool it is to read people you know in august titles like that, especially when… Continue reading In my day
I was on the way home tonight, reading infantile inanity in Metro when I got this Twitter from the marvellous Russell Davies the russians who've vastly improved our local chip shop are now also hosting chess tournaments I think Russell remind us all that twittering is a skill not an obligation. Take your continuous… Continue reading Twitter thee not
In my favourite novel Cat's Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut invents the religion of Bokononism - a faith exclusive to the people on the Caribbean island of San Lorenzo. As well as a number of practices such as semi-ecstatic ritual involving the touching of feet ('boku-maru'), Vonnegut describes the idea of karass - A group of people… Continue reading What would Kurt say?
Mike Butcher picks up on the Brand Republic story about the future of social networks being in niche verticals. The most remarkable thing about the original article - about the Association of Tennis Professional (ATP) launching a 'social network' with 10Duke - is the lack of thought added to the piece by the journalist as she fairly… Continue reading New balls please
What's missing from every page of YourSpace except the home page? Give up? It's the logo stupid. Aside from the URL and a couple of subbranding elements (like the player), there is no MySpace branding. The site hands ownership properly to its users but has done a very neat trick through being recognisable just through… Continue reading No logo?
There's seems to have been a massive surge in Facebook popularity, amongst my contacts at least. Can this new contender catch up with the mighty MySpace? Currently Facebook is trailing by 20m users to MySpace's 180m and Live Space's 120m. If they can, it will be testament to their user-centred approach over MySpace's feature loading.… Continue reading Feeding the disease
I love the Economist so was slightly underwhelemed to read on Open that their crack team on Project Red Stripe, after several months of deliberation into the paper's future have come back with a social network solution. In their own words Our mission is to develop truly innovative services online. In the past three weeks, we've… Continue reading Stars and stripes
Leading product 