Social Media, Digital Marketing & PR Agency

Regent Street decorated for the Royal Wedding

We’re a day early this week because of that rather large and totally British event tomorrow. In fact we’re not totally sure if anybody is going to be reading this at all as so few people seem to be in the office this week, but as nothing stops the digital world’s relentless march forward to the future, here goes.

The new White iPhone 4 is being launched this week after rather a delay which means that the much awaited iPhone 5 probably won’t appear until the Autumn or even next year. The White iPhone is said to be highly significant for the Chinese market where all things white are highly desirable, and in a country where there are now nearly 900 million mobile phone users. Apple can look forward to high volume sales (nothing new there then).

This week also saw the launch (although not for sale yet) of the new Sony tablet, which is available in two versions, one with a split screen. Quite nice seems to be the verdict, but the iPad 2 still seems to be the gold standard that the other manufacturers just can’t quite seem to get close to.

In other news, YouTube founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen have bought the bookmarking site Delicious, although we’re not quite sure why yet as no further details have been releases. Users have been asked to allow the transfer of their data and bookmarks along with Delicious to AVOS, Hurley’s and Chen’s new company.

Apple has assured their users that their tracking bug had nothing to do with actually tracking people but sourcing wi-fi hotspots. Right….

And as been seen many times before, Twitter and other social media sites have come into their own during natural disasters and as a record number of tornados are ripping across the US, Twitter is helping people to keep safe and stay in touch.

Now we know that there are a large number of you that are left cold by all things Royal Wedding, but at TMMC towers, we like a good wedding and as it’s our column, we are going to mention a few topical news items. The Telegraph is launching itself into the event with gusto and linking up with Color, an iPhone app to allow live streaming of the event via everyone’s photos – lovely!

However, none of those photos will be coming from any of those invited to the wedding as tweeting has been banned at the Abbey and the Americans are apparently more obsessed by our Royal Wedding on social media than the Brits although interestingly a Trendrr spokesperson says that the data has been difficult to track and doesn’t include, for instance, mentions of Kate’s ring, because tweets with the keywords “#Kate” and “ring” don’t necessarily refer to Kate Middleton, meaning that actual discussion related to the event is undoubtedly much greater – and we would hazard a guess more British in origin.

And we hope that you love the shot of Regent Street as much as we do.  Whatever you’re doing tomorrow, have a fantastic time.  We’re disappearing soon with rather a lot of champagne.

Content is one of our favourite subjects and it’s been hitting the headlines with a vengeance in recent months.  We’ve always said that having a good presence online is largely down to good quality, fresh content.  And it would seem that Google thinks so too – their latest change to their search algorithm, codenamed Panda, is rewarding original content, and punishing so-called content farms.

There has been a lot of hand-wringing from organisations complaining that their web rankings  have been affected,  with even such lofty organisations such as Yahoo and The Huffington Post being accused of being ‘content farms’.  This article for example was cited as ‘the greatest example of SEO whoring of all-time’ .

And on the subject of The Huffington Post which was recently acquired by AOL for a whopping $315Million, they are being taken to court by a group of bloggers who say that they contributed significant amounts of content to the site which meant that the site attracted the valuation that it did. Arianna Huffington is strongly refuting the claim that she treated bloggers like slaves and said that they were glad to be given a platform to air their views. We are watching with interest to see how this turns out.

But it brings into the spotlight once again the subject of content, what it’s worth and who is going to be paid for it.  Bloggers have become highly influential in all kinds of areas, and in many cases, their views are respected more than their paid ‘media’ counterparts. However, with so many bloggers producing good content (largely for free), traditional media often struggling to remain commercially viable and the public seemingly reluctant to pay, what does the future hold?

We feel that The Huffington Post lawsuit will be a landmark case and it will be a close call as to who wins, but in the meantime, the case is clear: if you want good Google rankings and a positive digital footprint, good content is the way to go.

Why don’t you talk to us about it?

Google creates a doodle for Chaplin's birthday

Usually in Something for the Weekend, we take a breezy trip around the tech and digital worlds letting you know about all the lovely things that been happening and the new shiny toys that have been launched. This week by contrast, it’s all about things shutting down and or things not going very well – still interesting stuff though.

We are still reeling from the news that  Cisco has announced that it will no longer be selling the ever popular Flip camera. Loved by journos, bloggers and PR peeps to make good quality ‘You Tube’ ready sound-bites, the Flip has fallen victim to the Wall Street gods who think that, well it just doesn’t quite fit in.

More downbeat news about MySpace, although the Newscorp PR folk have been doing a fine job trying to put a positive spin on the social network, which is haemorrhaging money and users with equal speed. And talk is increasing of how email is another one of those things that is on the wane. Teenagers have shunned it in favour of Facebook and now business people are looking more to social networks too, while over at the IPM’s (Institute of Promotional Marketing) LinkedIn Group there’s recently been an ongoing discussion about the resurgence of Direct Mail for promotions, which may again be because of the downturn in email. We think the sheer amount of spam is probably another element in the mix  – as reported in Biz Report at the start of the month, spam levels are down to 79%, as opposed to 81%, but they don’t think it’ll last and 2% is, after all, just a drip in the ocean.

And sad news that an Egyptian blogger has been sentenced to prison – we reported on the positive element that social media has played in Egypt, so not good.

And there are lots of losers this week after the infamous Google Panda algorithm kicked in, with  a number of  UK sites feeling the pain, although it was not bad news for everyone. And on the subject of Google, they have reported increased revenues, but earnings fell short of Wall Street expectations. Perhaps Wall Street should have been more realistic in their expectations, given the current economic climate.

However, there was one shiny new toy launched this week – the Blackberry Playbook. However, continuing this week’s rather downbeat theme, the consensus seems to be, that well, it’s just not as good as the iPad 2 …

We have found a cheery note to end on though. Those peeps over at Google have excelled themselves again and produced a special animated Doodle to celebrate Google Charlie Chaplin’s 122th birthday. Made in the style of a Chaplin movie, this ‘short’ is fantastic – well done Google!

If you’re off on your Easter hols, have a fab time x

Well it’s Friday again and to make a change from our usual round–up of digital, social media and tech news, we thought that we’d take a spin around our favourite April Fool’s stories.

Actually this is still ‘work-related’ because as Marketing Week reports, big brands are getting involved and embracing April Fool’s day with gusto and household names are putting a lot of effort (and spend) into making us all laugh. Presumably somebody clever has worked out that laughter equals positive ROI for the brand –and if somebody knows about any relevant research perhaps they could let us know!

OK, so in particular order, we have Ryanair with their child-free flights (although that’s not such a bad idea…), Lingerie Please and their airbag bra and ebuyer with their 3D glasses.

LinkedIn got in on the act with everyone logging on to LinkedIn today being encouraged to make friends with celebrities such as Sherlock Holmes and Robin Hood, and YouTube put all its videos back to what it would have looked like around 1911, complete with grainy, sepia video footage, no audio tracks (save for piano accompaniment), and title cards in place of the site’s normal comments. Google got foolish as well as and introduced Gmail Motion, whereby you can finally control Gmail with your body…

The Guardian did a fantastic piece  on the Royal Wedding, The Express made us laugh with their piece on silver surfing and we loved this very intelligent and funny article from Communicate Magazine about product placement by MPs.

Goat urine jelly was the story of choice for Time Out and The Sun keep up their reputation for fantastic headlines with their Planet of the Apps story.

But our Award for the Best April Fool’s story has to go to New Scientist magazine for their article about a certain universal activity calming restless leg syndrome…..

Hope you’ve had a good laugh and have a lovely weekend!