Wednesday, May 03, 2006

The Engagement Alliance's first event

It’s happening on June 21st here in London, and you are all invited. We’ve got fantastic speakers from - amongst others - Skype, the Guardian, and Hitwise coming along on the day to help people make sense of the MySpace phenomenon and what it means for their businesses. For all the details, check out the official website for What MySpace Means: Lessons for Every Brand.

I’m going to leave this post on top for a couple of days. If you’re not reading this site through RSS, please scroll down for updates. Thanks!

Tuesday, May 02, 2006

Digital TV broadcasts to mobile arrive in Europe

Nine months after the first digital TV broadcasts to mobile phones started in Korea, now Three/Hutchison, the 3G mobile operator in Italy, has started the full broadcasts on the DVB-H technology. The story was reported by our friends at the3GPortal on Friday.

Initially Three/Hutchison do not offer the full channel selection, and have only 500 of the new handsets (which include the “set-top box” digital tuner built into the 3G mobile phone) to get the first customers viewing. But Hutchison promises to have all major Italian broadcast channels on by June, and aim to sign up a million 3G TV viewers by end of this year.

For those who are now remarkably confused (didn’t we have TV viewing on our 3G phones already?), this is a new technology and new type of viewing. Previously on mobile phones you could either watch video clips (download a clip, then watch it) or select a “streaming service” - which would at times cut out and be fuzzy etc. But now following the concept from Korea, the Italian mobile operator has launched handsets which have full 3G telecoms and data capacity - AND a separate digital tuner. The TV signals will be broadcast over the airwaves. This allows a much better - and more cost-effective TV viewing experience on the mobile phone (or other viewing device, such as the flat panel viewer on a backseat of an automobile etc). Of course it means that anyone offering this type of service also needs to own a TV broadcasting license, as Three/Hutchison does in Italy.

Again another variant on the “Y of Convergence” that Alan Moore and I talk about in our book, of how telecoms, the internet and media are merging.

Monday, May 01, 2006

Social media is changing us - and the world - for the better

You know, one blog post isn’t enough to cover all the ways in which that title is true. But for now:

Certain people seemed to be very concerned with blogging and social media being ‘overhyped’. I think the only problem is inappropriate hype ("Blogging will bring our politicians into touch with the People!").

I don’t think people have actually grasped the extent to which social media is changing, and will continue to change, humanity.

"Social media is changing us - and the world - for the better" continued...

Sample blogs for Southwest Airlines

I previously blogged about the Southwest Airlines blog, which many have found disappointing. Here’s an example of the network in action: Brian Oberkirch has created five sample blogs for Southwest, showing them how much better it could be done.

Disappointingly, especially from one who is trying to sell his services as a social media consultant, Brian hasn’t categorised these on his blog, which makes linking to them a pain. Ease of linking is hugely important if you want to spread information across the network. Here they are, anyway:

Sample 1
Sample 2
Sample 3
Sample 4
Sample 5

Link via Shel Israel

Gigableat: Does anyone here speak marketing?

From the ultra-cool gadget ecommerce site Woot, part of their pitch for a Toshiba Gigabeat MP3 player.  I presume it’s meant to be fiction, but it sure rings true:

Toshiba Executive:  ... So why are we drowning in unsold Gigabeats?

Toshiba Marketing Guy: Short answer: degenerating market literacy and unprecedented regimentation of key demographic segments produced a minor but detectable chill in positioning-repositioning flexibility.

Toshiba Executive: What are you talking about?

Toshiba Marketing Guy: Short answer: absent a compelling narrative for redeployment, household decision-makers maintain high levels of functional certitude toward aggrandizing top-down calls to action.

Toshiba Executive: I don’t know what any of that means. And you know, I’m starting to think you don’t even know what any of that means.

Toshiba Marketing Guy: Uhh, scalable co-branding? Destabilized convergence of action items? Synergy?

Toshiba Executive: You’re fired.