Tag Archives: instagram

Ten Stories We Have Enjoyed This Week

5th October 2016

Very sad events in Paris with the robbery of Kim Kardashian this week. Lots of talk about hotel security and bodyguards, but this piece from Vanity Fair suggests the real threat to celebrity security may be with social media –  ‘ In an age where stars…update their Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat accounts with their every move, how can celebrities stay safe when their brands depend in part on seeming accessible and available, leaving their whereabouts open to the public often in real time?‘

Tech players entrench power in the 2016 Interbrand ranking of the world’s most valuable brands. ‘Apple and Google have once again topped Interbrand’s list of the 100 most powerful brands – while Facebook and Amazon have seen their value grow fastest. Coca-Cola (was) the only one of the top five to see a value decline.’ ‘The top five is completed by Toyota; the car brand has leapfrogged IBM, which falls to sixth. Samsung, Amazon, Mercedes-Benz and GE round out the top ten. Looking at the results, Manfredi Rice from Interbrand, observed that all brands are tech brands now.‘

Google had a big event Monday with news across a lot of products. From @digg, here are the the best bits , including Google Assistant, Google Hardware, The Pixel (Google’s New Phone) , Home Products and Virtual Reality. 

Facebook launches Marketplace, in competition with Craigslist and Ebay; but runs into trouble almost at once, when some vendors are caught selling illegal items. ‘Facebook is betting big on Marketplace, considering it taking over a main spot in the navigation tab bar, replacing the Messenger shortcut in Facebook for iOS. That prime location could make Marketplace the digital version of impulse buys at the checkout counter.’ ‘Facebook continues its unending quest to eat the internet, creating its own versions of every popular activity on the web to absorb their engagement and profit potential. The more of the commerce experience it owns, the more it can earn indirectly through ads. It’s also working on a Shopping tab for buying from traditional retailers.‘

All happening in the US with the election, presidential and vice-presidential debates (the latter being last night) ; but this interview with Gary Johnson, the Libertarian Party presidential candidate, tops the lot. According to Gary, it’s good to not know stuff about other countries…..  (short video)

The Value of Boredom. ‘The human imagination, one of our great gifts as a species, relies on the default mode network—daydreaming. Technology lets us wander, but in someone else’s world, through an often confused and seemingly random collection of hyperlinks, advertisements disguised as content, content disguised as journalism.‘

The US is to give up control of the Internet’s ‘address book’ after years of debate. ‘Many key players and analysts suggest that the newly implemented governance model for Icann (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) will actually strengthen the ability of the global community to challenge contentious decisions and ensure that control of the global internet address book never falls into the wrong hands.‘

This is the story of Supreme New York , the most influential streetwear brand in the world. ‘You might have seen its white-on-red rectangular logo on Drake, Kanye West, or Tyler the Creator. Or noticed the lines that form outside its stores on Thursdays. Or caught a glimpse of a sticker on a city lamppost anywhere around the globe. Today, Supreme is the sacred sigil of young skateboarders as well as the go-to office wear of hipster ad execs and other would-be culture creators, all thanks to James Jebbia, the self-made millionaire many times over, who launched the company in 1994′.

Great piece from @rosieyakob on the abiding myth of the lone genius. ‘There is an alternative, in the 1970s, Brian Eno posited instead the idea of Scenius. “Scenius,” he said, “stands for the intelligence and the intuition of a whole cultural scene. It is the communal form of the concept of the genius.”

This prize winning animation lets you fly through 17th century London.

Ten Stories We Have Enjoyed This week

27th February 2016

1) Very rarely do we start with a photo caption competition (see picture above), but this was irresistible. Do have a go and you can also see some other,  rather amusing, suggestions here.

And on a (slightly) more serious note… Inside Mark Zuckerberg’s Big Bet  That Facebook Can Make VR Social.

2) Facebook moves beyond the ‘Like’ and rolls out ‘Reactions’ icons to all users – Like, is joined by  Love, HaHa, Wow, Sad and Angry.

3) Play Nice!! – How the internet is trying to design out toxic behaviour.  Has censorship become acceptable, now it is called ‘civil comment’?

4) The Independent was a newspaper killed by the Internet. ‘After almost 30 years of losing money, it was the cost of publishing a newspaper for so few daily readers – just 40,718 once free or discounted copies are stripped out – that had simply become unsustainable  in an age where so much information is free online.’

Interesting then that the UK’s latest newspaper is launching without a website – the key of course is Social – ‘Instead of a website, the paper, which will sell for 50p (56 cents),  will have a social media presence.’

And how journalists (online) are increasingly using editorial analytics to drive their editorial strategy – ‘This is important, because analytics can be about more than having a big screen with numbers that go up and down – and analytics should be about more than short-term optimisation of page views and unique users based on  tweaking of article placement, headlines, and pictures used.’

5) Interesting development in the adblocking saga –  Marketeers look to stop adblocking by offering free mobile data. (ht to @itsjimmyb)

6) Touched by the Devil. Explore Hieronymus Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights in an amazing, annotated Interactive.

7) Umberto Eco passed away this week, here is some of his valuable advice to other writers – ‘You are not Proust. Do not write long sentences. If they come into your head, write them, but then break them down’.

Perhaps best known for The Name of The Rose, here is everyone’s favourite Italian monk (Sean Connery) in the eponymous film, also featuring a young Christian Slater.

8) Instagram, the photo-sharing social media platform owned by Facebook, has reached more than 200,000 advertisers. It has a broad span,  with 75% of its advertisers, outside of the US.

9) Recognise this scenario? From The Washington Post – The baffling reason many millennials don’t eat cereal – ‘Almost 40 percent of the millennials surveyed by Mintel for its 2015 report said cereal was an inconvenient breakfast choice  because they had to clean up after eating it.’ Disclaimer – this doesn’t happen in my house… – plenty of millennial cereal eating and very little dishwashing!

10) Some great Hollywood focused data visualisations from @informationisbeautiful. This one looks at how factually correct some selected films are. Which is more of a true story –  The Kings Speech or The Wolf Of Wall St?

Ronaldo becomes the first person to pass  200 million followers on social media.

And finally, fancy a bit of an adrenaline rush?  Denny Hamlin Wins Closest Daytona 500 Ever With Insane Photo Finish.

Why Video won’t work on Instagram

29th June 2013

With Instagram launching their video product up against Twitter’s nascent ‘Vine’, there is plenty of ongoing debate concerning the continuing struggle between these two digital behemoths; as well as the importance of video – both to these protagonists and to the digital world in general.

Instagram are hoping to trump Vine’s six seconds, with a 15” capacity, along with a range of filters to help us beautify the content we post.

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