A special launch in support of peace

A fair point or an insult to your average shopper’s intelligence?

Comscore now rates Twitter as the third most popular social network after Facebook and MySpace. It should be in its own (microblogging) category but whatever.

I came across this great Twitter tool today – monitter. Monitter allows you to view activity on Twitter in real time, which can be quite amazing to watch. Social media skeptics should take a look at this. Its kind of exciting to watch people express their personal view on a topic be it Greys Anatomy, HP or the weather.

There are a lot of tools out there and this post provides a rundown on eight of them.  Welcome to the world of analytwits.

They were supported by Seekae, a group from Sydney and Seekae were brilliant. You can check them out at MySpace.

Can’t wait to see them again…

Pivot were great too!

The conference kicked off with two keynotes in the morning and then split into three tracks.

The presentations that I saw were very case study driven, which is nearly always the case with these types of conferences. Agencies and clients were happy to talk about the revolution that ‘is occurring’ or ‘has occurred’ and to report back on successful campaigns and projects but few were willing to tackle some of the more challenging topics and issues facing the industry. I saw four members of one panel swerve the question of: What is influence and how can it be measured?

This is a topic that I plan to come back to.

Fox Interactive Media announced ‘four new initiatives‘ to ensure that it ‘enables marketers in their fight to be more efficient and relevant’.

One of the four initiatives – MySpace Lifestages’ will allow marketers to target Australians in a range of lifestages, including:

• When a MySpace user has graduated from Uni
• Is engaged to be married
• Is Pregnant
• Has given birth
• Has lost a job
• Has entered a new job
• Has had a birthday

MySpace will provide marketers with access to this data in real-time (its based on the users’ self expressed interests on their public MySpace profiles’.

Some facts about MySpace Australia:

• More than 2.4million uniqe Australian visitors in Jan 2009 – according to Nielson Online
• Australians spents 2.3million hours on MySpace during Jan 2009
• 65% of MySpace Australia users are 18 years or over

The theme of brands engaging with consumers via existing social networks was a dominant one during day one of Ad:tech and its clear that huge value lies in the access that these social networks have to user data. Further, the value held in this data is the key to successful monetisation of social networks. The ability of social networks to harness information and present it in ways that are useful to marketing people will determine the future of social networking.

Users have – in the most part unwittingly – accepted this process by agreeing to the End User License Agreement, which is an essential step when signing up or becoming a member of a social network but one wonders how consumers will react in the long run when it becomes apparent to them that brands have access to this information and are using it to target them with offers and promotions. The onus is on the marketing industry to do this in a way that is truly engaging, entertaining or useful.

There were examples of some creative and engaging campaigns today.

I think there is an inherent danger for today’s popular social networks – the pressure to successfully monetize will increase over time (accelerating from now) resulting in them making more and more information available to marketers and potentially alienating their members. This may create the opportunity for new social networks to come in with promises not to share personal information with marketers.

Of course, there are other methods of monetizing social networks. This post by Laurel Papworth provides a comprehensive run down while Robert Andrews at The Guardian predicts a tough 2009.

Some more thoughts on day 1 from Ben Shepherd at Talking Digital here.

More from me from Ad:tech tomorrow.

Metronomy - cool UK band

A friend tipped me off about this band. Hailing from ‘London via Brighton (by way of Devon)’, Metronomy combine the sounds of New Order, Brian Eno, Pulp, electro and synth beats into a very original and engaging sound. 

I first played the album while assembling an outdoor table for my balcony - the instructions weren’t very clear and the table is still wonky. This music – which is kind of fractious and random at times – wasn’t helping me stay calm during the surprisingly challenging assembly (three components) process but I have since grown to love it. I think these guys appeared in the Sydney Festival recently - sorry to have missed them.

The album ends on a playful instrumental ditty and its the icing on the cake. Cool name too.

Going to see the legend who is Neil Young on Satuday at the Entertainment Centre in Sydney and can’t wait. He is supported by My Morning Jacket.

St. Malo, France (unrelated to the post)

Velvet Blues recently blogged on the trend towards shorter posts in the blogosphere. I can relate to this trend having not written a jot for more than a month. I just know that my legions of fans have been waiting with baited breath for the next installment – AND HERE IT IS.

I had a month off over Xmas and New Year, which included a week camping, a week in Byron and some quality time with my brother who was visiting from the UK.

I am keen to get the blog up and running and maybe shorted observational posts is the way forward. I often think about posts but struggle to find the time to extract them from my head. It didn’t help that the iBurst network went down (as a result of Commander’s bankruptcy), taking my Chilli Internet access with it. The offered me a discounted 24 month contract with 3 but my instincts told me that that would be pretty lame. So I moved over to ADSL with Telstra, which I am happy with so far.

I just learnt that Telstra acquired the iBurst’s wireless spectrum. Telstra is expected to wrap it up in cotton wool and hide it away to prevent any competitive activity – nice.

So here are some of the random thoughts that I thought would make nice topics for blog posts:

• Music habits are changing – bands are coming and going very quickly as a result of the Web and iPOD phenomenon. Mass audience band loyalty/ affinity is a thing of the past (no ‘r’). The big mega bands are in decline, the future of music will be dominated by fly by nights – one hit wonders if you like that can pick up a small niche audience quickly and then fade from view for the next hot thing. This story tends to contradict my synopsis however…
• ‘My following is bigger than yours’ discussions are boring! I’ve been witness to almost relentless toing and froing from prominent personalities on Twitter about the size of their followings. It’s what you do with it guys.
• I think it would be interesting to have a blog in Australia on the topic of the media landscape.
• Its interesting to see celebrities jumping on to Twitter (Stephen Fry, Jonathon Woss, Paris, Britney (yes we are on first name terms)). I get a lot of value from Twitter. I think my follows have reached a critical mass.
• I thought a lot about a post on potential business models for Twitter. That one might actually happen.
• Social media monitoring tools have come a long way in the last 12 months (we’ve trialled loads) but there are still some big holes. This is an exciting area.

So there you go – some very succint posts. Watch this space.

Oh, and this blog needs a re-vamp. A friend described it as ‘cluttered’ – it’s been bugging me because he’s right. I work in PR so its all about style over substance *joke.

I got into DJ Shadow during the last 12 months – having downloaded (and paid for) his Endtroducing, Private Press and The Outsider albums but this was a different experience.

The gig started with a slightly wordy introduction from Shadow, which lead into an ‘instructional video‘. The video explained that the DJs would be using 45s or 7 inch records and paid tribute to this format.

The set was eclectic, nerdy and complex spanning obscure tunes from yesteryear, rock ‘classics’ (such as Eye of the Tiger), Hip Hop, the Foo Fighters, The Doors and World music. Rather than get the crowd dancing, the objective seemed to be to show off what they could do with 45s. You can get a feel for it here, this isn’t the exact same mix though. Don’t get me wrong, there was a lot of dancing but there was also a lot of static energy while the crowd took the music in or just tried to make sense of the direction.

It wasn’t exactly what I was expecting so there was an element of personal disappointment and at times I felt that the performance verged on the self indulgent. However, it was an interesting display, I really enjoyed the experience and I can appreciate the skill and passion that went into it. The music afficionados and DJs in the crowd loved it.

At the end of the set, the two of them came around to the front of the stage wearing mini decks that hung from their necks, each spinning a record. They proceeded to scratch away with these strange devices, further evidence – if it were needed – of the fact that they are taking the art form into new directions but one wondered if they were getting more out of this than the audience.

At times, during the night the visuals – which were awesome throughout – took us back to the 50s and I felt quite nostalgic. There was a massive appreciation for music in general coming from the stage.

Luna Park is a great setting for a gig and the Big Top venue was awesome. Better than The Enmore and roughly the same capacity, I would have thought.

Here’s how DJ Shadow describe the Hard Sell:

“We want to play something to make everyone smile… and then send them running for the exits!”

More reviews here and here by people who know what they are talking about.