Europeans increasingly heart the mobile web
Posted Thursday, June 12, 2008 at 10:52am in PR General, Technology | 1 Comment
Us Europeans are using our our mobile phones to access the internet than ever before, according to a news article by the BBC. A survey by the GSM Association (GSMA) found that users accessing the mobile web increased by 75% from April 2007 to April 2008.
The article states, “Over the same period the numbers of 3G users doubled and the average price of data roaming services fell by 25%. The GSMA said there were now 112 million users of third generation (3G) mobile services in Europe - about 22.5% of all mobile users. By comparison 18.4% of US and Canadian mobile users are on 3G networks.”
As I’ve mentioned before, I continue to see ephinany moments as my Facebook friends discover they can update their Facebook statuses from their mobile phones. Sky-high data charges on users’ bills is beginning to become less of a worry as consumers become more educated and, of course, as carriers lower their charges.
This is obviously great news to the UK carriers who paid over £22 billion ($43 billion USD) in a bidding war for the 3G license. And is also a sign that PR and marketers should be experimenting and looking for new ways to harness this increasing trend. The newspaper industry seems to be capitalising by using mobile news sites as delivery mechanisms and new applications like Instapaper (very simple, yet very effective; a God send) are introduced.
The Long Tail of Obama’s online fundraising
Posted Monday, May 26, 2008 at 3:04pm in PR General, Technology | 6 Comments
The Guardian’s sister Sunday newspaper, The Observer, yesterday ran a piece by Andrew Sullivan titled, “Barack Obama is master of the new Facebook politics” which details the fundraising antics of both Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton, as they both continue to battle out to take leadership of the US Democrat Party.
Perhaps surprisingly, the amount of money raised by Obama ($38m) was considerably more than that of Clinton ($6m) who, given who her husband is and was, has the biggest name in the Party. The reason behind this is because Obama has taken to a new democratic way of fundraising which follows the notion of The Long Tail theory.
The article quotes Peter Leyden of the New Politics Institute, who says, “Hillary built the best campaign that has ever been done in Democratic politics on the old model – she raised more money than anyone before her, she locked down all the party stalwarts, she assembled an all-star team of consultants and she really mastered this top-down, command-and-control type of outfit.”
What Clinton hasn’t done, however, is use the power of online ‘micro fundraising’ like Obama has by building online social spaces (using well-known social media sites) where the young can interact and donate money (no matter how small) to Obama’s campaign. Because of this, last month’s fundraising sum of $31m was donated all online and, more interestingly, 94 percent of it came from sums of $200 or less.
Clinton, on the other hand, relies on the old method where supporters have to persuade friends and colleagues to contribute the maximum donation allowance of $2,300, which may prove to be much more difficult in these economically turbulent times.
Expect similar initiatives taking place in the UK and elsewhere soon.
List of mobile news sites
Posted Monday, April 21, 2008 at 5:10pm in Media, Technology | 9 Comments
The mobile web is increasingly becoming a part of our lives and how we find, communicate and absorb information. One only has to look at his or her friends’ status updates to realise that Facebook is receiving an increase of updates via mobile devices. Plus the occasional epiphany update which often goes something along the lines of, “Jon has updated his Facebook status on his mobile!! How clever is that!?!?” (or words to that effect) illustrates the increasing usage of the mobile web as it transcends from early adopter phase to mainstream.
Data prices are becoming cheaper and over here in Europe the EU is beginning to take action against the carriers that charge extortionate mobile web roaming charges when consumers use the phones in other EU countries. Mobile speeds are increasing and mobile browsers are improving at a fast rate. With this in mind, here’s a list of mobile news sites to be saved straight into your phone’s browser favourites. (Note: A couple of the links link to the publication’s page where you have to input your mobile number to be sent a text of a link to the site.)
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The Envelope (from the LA Times) |
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The Australian (Australia) |
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Sydney Morning Herald (Australia) |
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Globe and Mail (Canada) |
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Toronto Star (Canada) |
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International Herald Tribune (France) |
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Le Monde (France) |
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Der Spiegel (German) |
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Gazzetta Dello Sport (Italy) |
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Times of India (India) |
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Moscow Times (Russia) |
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Mail & Guardian (South Africa) |
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Manila Bulletin (Philippines) |
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Adage (Media) |
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E-consultancy (Media) |
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Gawker (Media) |
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Holy Moly (Humor) |
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The Onion (Humor) |
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BBC Weather (Weather) |
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Foreca (Weather) |
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National Weather Service (Weather) |
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The Weather Channel (Weather) |
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Facebook: the lobbying boiling pot (Part II)
Posted Sunday, April 20, 2008 at 7:24pm in PR General, Technology | 6 Comments
In February I wrote about how organisations and individuals are increasingly using Facebook as a platform to lobby against commercial companies and associations. Users of the platform are setting up Facebook Groups to assemble like-minded individuals and fellow protesters to fight their cause. The most notable example being UK student organisation, the National Union of Students (NUS), against HSBC in a bid which successfully stopped the bank from introducing new charges to fresh graduates.
BARRIERS TO ENTRY ARE LOW, EXPECT MORE TO FOLLOW
As predicted, and given the ease of setting up a Facebook Group, one might expect that the use of the social networking platform for lobbying and protesting purposes would not end there. And it hasn’t according to the Economist which reports on a group of “Canadian grannies and other small investors” who successfully used the site to force a number of financial firms into repaying millions of dollars in doomed investments in asset backed-commercial paper which were marketed as safe. In much the same way as the NUS example, campaigners set up a Facebook Group to “trade information, provide mutual support and plot strategy.”
“AN AMAZING TOOL” THAT WORKS BOTH WAYS
A significant point to note is the response by the group’s administrator who explains that Facebook played a huge part in the initiative as it brought together “people who would never have met in real life, from pig farmers and retired loggers to MBA students and pastors.”
Not only did the Facebook Group help the campaigners but it also helped the lawyer who developed the reimbursement solution “because it helped him understand the concerns of small investors and gave him a way to talk to them.”
CAVEAT
The writing’s on the wall. Facebook is proving to be a successful platform for anyone (stress: anyone) to take action against perceived wrong doings of big business, provided that the cause is worthy of a fight and the ‘crowd’ is big enough. It’s safe to say that we’ll see more examples like this as time goes by. But, as shown above, an anti-corporate Facebook Group can be useful to both parties as it can provide the ‘accused’ with details and insights of the complaints and concerns.
A few ideas to improve Twitter
Posted Wednesday, March 19, 2008 at 9:27am in Blogging, Technology | 12 Comments
It’s been almost four months since I began participating in the…um, Twittersphere (shoot me now) and needless to say I’m pretty hooked like the majority of its members judging by its continuous growth. It really is a great tool. I used to think it wasn’t a viable means of connecting with new people but how wrong I was.
That said, it really is quite minimalist in its features and let’s be honest, there’s not much to it. I appreciate that one of the reasons people like using Twitter is because it is simple by design. However, personally, I think it can be improved to make that tweeting experience all the better. Here are a few random ideas:
TEXT EDITOR
To help you emphasise the points you’re trying to make in your tweets wouldn’t it be great if you could add bold and italics to the text? For example, say someone posed the question: “What did you have for dinner today?” I could reply, “A splendid coq au vin was served and it tasted beautiful!”
Because I eat foods like coq au vin every night, of course.
Okay, the example I’ve given here isn’t great but hopefully you get my point. One thing I’ve noticed through blogging and writing other drivel online for the past few years is Americans love using itallics. They love them. No really they love them. This idea should get a thumbs up from some of them.
HYPERLINKS
Trying to explain one’s self in 140 characters is sometimes quite hard; particularly when you’re discussing complex and descriptive issues such as Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. Often you might want to include a link to backup your argument and prove your notion which, by the time you’ve converted said link to TinyURL, you’ve used around 25 characters. Bummer!
With this in mind, wouldn’t it be far easier to create links in your already written text? That way you have more characters to play with and you’re also giving fellow tweeters more of an idea of the content of the link they are clicking on. Everyone’s a winner, baby, that’s the truth.
IMAGES & VIDEO
A picture paints a thousand words and you might say a video paints a million. If Twitter provided an unintrusive method for users to include images or embedded video into tweets then it would A. Save users time by not having to click out to another webpage and B. provide more context to their tweets.
Obviously nobody wants to see huge YouTube videos in people’s tweets; they would take up far too much of the user’s screen real estate and it would just look cluttered. However, if there was a way in which a small link could be provided and, should a user want to view the video, it would expand and play in the Twitter page itself after it was clicked then definitely a benefit in my opinion.
TWEET-TO-TWEET
If you use Facebook (and let’s be honest who doesn’t?) then you’ll know that the Wall-to-Wall facility comes in useful as it allows you to read conversations between two of your friends. One thing that annoys me about Twitter is sometimes you one only see one side of a conversation and, if you’re a nosey inquisitive person like myself, often results in clicking multiple links to discover the full topic of conversation.
What would be great if Twitter provided a means to view discussions by conversing members in a chronicle order cancelling out non-related tweets in the process. In a Tweet-to-Tweet type stylie.
What do you think? One or two useful ideas for the evolution of Twitter or just dumb thoughts that could potentially ruin it?