By Will McInnes

MeasurementCamp, 8th April morning, Soho, London

People of the digital frontier, filthy rag-bedraggling peasants that ye be, get your Twitterdicted bee-hinds to:

Tuesday April 8th, 10 am - 12 pm

The Coach & Horses
29 Greek Street
W1D 5DH

Assembled there will be the mighty and the wise of this thing they call digital social media mumble mumble muble, and there will be plotting, discussion, back-slapping and a few of those American sports coach bum slaps that are acceptable between non-lovers.

Seriously though.
Be there.
The list of interested parties alone is frankly interesting enough to make me feel fizzy in my tummy and upper leg regions.

Bulleted review of Sauze d'Oulx as a snowboarding resort

I believe in ratings and reviews so I gotta do Sauze a favour and review it for the rest of the interweb's population in case they want to book a holiday and need a reliably unreliable normal person's view.

Here it is...

• Sauze d'Oulx is pronounced 'Sow-zee Dooo'
• Massive ski area, once you link up with Sestrierre and potentially beyond
• Very few blue, tons of red runs, very few black, and a few dedicated nursery slopes complete with travelators for the lazy, weak learners
• Good for learners in that lots of room, reasonable tuition and no particular snobbiness on the slopes (unlike Les Arcs, France, where I learnt/wiped innocent skiers out at random with rugby-like grand-piano aplomb)
• Reasonable board park at Sestrierre but no travelator or drag lift
• In mid-March, really nicely unpopulated pistes, with very few queues at lifts and almost empty runs towards the end of the day
• Lift attendants are as surly, useless and negative as in France - total bastards
• Lifts are mainly good, modern and fast, but there are a few very ropey metal jobs that feel enjoyably precarious

• Good apres ski: lots of bars; good friendly bar staff; happy hours
• Equally, good restaurants and broad enough mix of accomodation that it doesn't feel like a go-ka-ray-zee party town where a quiet week would be impossible
• Disappointing mix of nationalities - mainly British, Irish and Italian on the slopes, and just the Brits and Paddies out on the town - needed some bonkers Austrians
• Italian Sambuca is rougher than that served in the UK but seems to achieve broadly the same results, particularly once into double figures
• Even basic Italian food is 100x better than English - the Minestrone, Pizza and Ravioli may all looks the same but are each a taste sensation in their own right, which is seriously eye-opening into all of those resentful comments over the years from European mates about the crapness of what us English expect from food served

• Even the crappy cheap takeway pizza place, the guy was kneading the dough on demand to each order...
• Tons of kids, especially Italian young families - looked great for families and I'd definitely take mine there
• Reasonable transfer time from Turin - 1.5 hrs ish
• We went with Directski.com booked last minute - no unnecessary embellishments or frills in the service, but the rep was very very good and everything worked just fine - oh, and the lady that helped us organise it in their call centre was also lovely, so I guess that worked out well too

All in all, definitely go there unless you're advanced level and expect loads of black runs and boardpark galore.

Ciao bella, tutti frutti, molto bravo, scusi, cinque birra, uova, i promesi sposi.

"Don't mention the economy"

Image: frankfarm

We had a discussion about recession, downturn and the likely affects on digital agencies a while ago when the sub-prime thing kicked off.

The consensus then was that we'd all be OK :)

The real-world ramifications of those early signs of a changing economy, back then, are now starting to bite.

And I'm now thinking that a 'it won't affect us' or a 'let's not talk ourselves into a downturn' is a non-view, an irresponsible burying-head-in sand and for me personally would be an avoidance of a responsibility that I have as an employer of great people.

From today's FT: 'Dollar plunges to record low'

The dollar plummeted to record lows and the price of gold touched $1,000 on Thursday as retail sales figures confirmed that the US is in recession and concern intensified about spreading distress in the hedge fund sector.

At our board meeting in forty minutes time I am going to suggest that we as a company take a view, and plan for it.

That view will be flexible, it will evolve according to what we see and feel and hear, and we will not allow it to stifle our growth if smart growth (vs. bloat) is possible and sensible.

That view will inform our decision making around people, clients, services we offer, investments we make and whatever happens we definitely won't stop 'marketing'.

Lastly, that view will also affect my personal planning. I've been tempted in recent times by the lure of consumer credit - all friendly and fluffy and 'take it, no please take it' in good times, and somewhat darker, I'd guess, when their (the lenders) situations worsen. I plan to get my financial house in order. And if it never materialises, great. But if it does, I'll be ready.

I better go buy some tinned food and bottled water too, and maybe build an air raid shelter in me back garden.

MeasurementCamp 'activist' list so far

These are the people that have declared themselves up for the first meeting to start working on open source standards for measuring social media:

• Craig Hepburn, STA Travel
• Will McInnes, Nixon McInnes
• Giles Palmer, Brandwatch (from Magpie)
• Michelle Goodall, E-consultancy
• Daljit Bhurji, PR & Social Media Consultant
• Jonathan Hopkins, Bite/Shed/middledigit.net
• Tom Hume, Future Platforms
• Tim Hoang, Rainier PR / New Media Knowledge
• Jenny Brown (jenny-bee.net)
• Jez Nicholson, NCsoft
• Helen Lawrence, Dare Digital
• Ged Carroll, Waggener Edstrom Worldwide
• Kelvin Newman SiteVisibility
• Alex Stacey FATdrop
• Dan Thornton, Bauer Consumer Media
• Mark Rogers, Market Sentinel
• Chris Reed, Fishburn Hedges
• Nathan Gilliatt, Social Target
• Rob Dobson

Frankly I'm in awe at the breadth and quality of people keen to get stuck in.

We have clients, agencies, specialist buzz monitoring firms, mobile, music, PR, SEO, and internal communications represented.

A date and venue will now quickly follow - Sam Michel from Chinwag has something in mind.

It will never be too late to join in - head to the wiki and edit the page there: http://measurementcamp.wikidot.com/

First impressions of the O2 XDA Orbit 2

Disclosure: O2 is a client of mine. In a different capacity I am on the receiving end of a blogger outreach programme run by VCCP, one of their roster agencies, where they send out pre-release phones/devices for people to play with and keep. This is the second phone I've been sent - first time was the Coccoon which I never got round to writing about (oops) but I can say sincerely that my wife LOVES it and says she gets lots of positive comments about it, so there you go.

So first impressions of the O2 XDA Orbit 2.

Love the packaging - this is the kind of feel O2 needs to evoke in people if its own-label devices are to live up to the brand promise and the position that O2 wants to take in the marketplace. Packaging shouldn't mean anything, but we're not rational people really, and any Apple fanboi will tell you that great packaging does matter: it's the fullness of design and experience applied across every touchpoint.

Love the user-friendly instructions and stickers.
There is so much ground to be gained in consumer tech by being easy to use. Although it may not be the cool brand amongst the young people, I personally believe Nokia owes so much of its position to having always offered the most intuitive, usable menu systems. In the USA there is much re-balancing of the Apple iPhone see-saw towards tried and tested Blackberries which super-users can bang out message on much easier (their words, not mine) than on the swish haptic iPhone interface.
So simple instructions and on-device in-location stickers that make it clear what I need to do using PICTURES (!) is great - I don't read the manul, I'm afraid it's just that simple.

Size-wise, I think this device is reasonable enough for the market: it's not staggeringly thin and small, but it's certainly not chunky - check this pic which highlights the lack of thickness:

BBC iPlayer and Apple Inc. - brand frenemies or just enemies?

The BBC is a powerful brand with fantastic heritage and global distribution.  Fair enuff.

Even so, to take the name iPlayer for their incredibly important and well executed on demand service was a bold, BOLD move considering that Apple is the cult aspirational consumer technology brand [1] and has established the style of the i[insertproductname] in its brand architecture.

I just find that really interesting and wonder what the view was from Jobs' Cupertino HQ, a famously controlling organisation led by a famously controlling man, well willing to use the strong arm of the law in its dealings.

 

It would be wonderful to have been a fly on the wall as the naming discussions opened up. I can well imagine the smiles on the faces of the BBC people as they played with the idea of going head to head. Perhaps they even spoke with Apple - it's certainly not impossible, the Beeb having an incredible ecosystem of global partners in its various supply chains and dealings.

Just an interesting contrast, this: The Beeb, not for profit, generally loved in a kind of benign and slightly straightlaced way and held in high regard around the world, vs. Apple, intercosmic kings of branding and foaming consumer tech desire, and unofficial owners of the letter i...

[1] Yes, Superbrands says Google is the top brand but in my option it's not an aspirational brand - it's a brand I love and believe in (and trust is such a key word for Google going forward) but it's not aspirational like Apple is in that Californian, luxury big ticket way. Oh no. Different territory entirely.

Twitter: 11 Pointless Personal Observations

1. Represents something important culturally - the asynchronousness, the lean feature-ness, the humanity of it actually, it's wonderful - we will look back at Twitter as the first whiff of an essence that sticks around for a long time
2. Most enjoyable online social network I have ever belonged to, no question
3. Most addictive web service I have ever used - I neeeeed it, not so much in terms of output, but input, to scrolly-scrolly and read the updates
4. 50% of my consumption reading-wise of Twitter is on my N95 using the m.twitter.com mobile site - lean, mean and good-to-go
5. I never used to care when it was down, I was really chilled out about it, now all of a sudden I find it as infuriating as others did way back when the bad juu juus started - it took time, but eventually I flipped too (but what is the justification? I pay nothing, I give nothing, yet I demand...)
6. When I read the Twitter tech/scaling updates I feel for those guys - it seems like they are in a world of pain, and it doesn't seem to end - I have a horrible feeling that there is a dark heart to Twitter's technology woes and that soon some very ruthless decisions will need to be made
7. How cool that Evan Williams started blogger and now twitter - that's going down in history type contributions as an entrepreneur, not bad going..!
8. I have truly formed and developed real relationships with lovely, interesting people I haven't yet or may never meet in the real world - in that respect it's much more like a forum than a Facebook
9. A-listers don't work for me in Twitter - too noisy, too newsy, too me-me-me - my favourite people in Twitter belong to Brighton or to the social media (inc. tech PR, enterprise software etc) melting pot, my real world communities
10. That said, I see nice decent people that I follow successfully engaging with A-listers internationally via Twitter - it has a unusually level feeling to it and a sense of accessibility and informality that is wonderful; if you want to make new and valuable contacts it's definitely there to be had
11. Originally my Twitter time destroyed my RSS consumption - that's bounced back now

Notes from FT Digital Media & Broadcasting conference 2008

Ashley Highfield, Head of Future Media and Technology, BBC

• iPlayer is, of course, proving long-tail.
• Growing all time, with recent peak of 660k uses last weekend, due to Six Nations rugby
• 1/8th quality of BBC Freeview in terms of picture quality
• Took 3 years due to work across whole supply chain
• Virgin Media launching BBC iPlayer march 31st – and BBC wants roll out across playforms from there, inc cable tv players, apple platform,
• Project Kangaroo – BBC, ITV, C4 – to monetise and expire content.
• BBC has 1.3 m hours of archives, yet less than 1% avail on iPlayer - huge opportunity...
• 16 – 24 yo is fast moving audience segment in terms of consumption, migrating online but decreasing engagement from 10 hrs tv watching to 1 hr online engagement so that’s the challenge – not the numbers but the volume of consumption.
• BBC currently handles 3m inbound items of user-generated content per day: sms, comments, photos etc. (Holy moly!!!!)
• Figures show that iPlayer isn’t (yet) cannabilising audiences but in fact adding audiences that would have otherwise missed the content, also feel better to host themselves than have someone else cannabilise it (e.g. bittorrent)
• Biggest strategic issue: disintermediation and controlling the brand ‘credit’ when content goes through others channels.

Rona Fairhead, CEO, Financial Times Group
•    Ongoing shift in revenues:
•    2000 – 72% print, 28% online –
•    2008 – 43% vs 57%
•    Future trends:
•    Continued growth but polarised btw mass and super niche
•    Greater interaction with customers
•    New skills in their workforce to innovate and attract hottest talent

Great question to this first panel from Julie Meyer, who was then still in the audience, on what is your Achilles heel?
Answer from BBC: a cross-platform consistent form of measurement  in a multimedia world…(sounds like a similar thing to our measuring social media movement to me!)

Dr Robert Cailliau, co-developer of the World Wide Web

This guy was fantastic. Humble, funny, sweet, and so absolutely on the money when it came to the ethos of the web. I didn't expect that (I don't know why), and was delighted to get it.

•    ‘The web succeeded because it was like a virus’ - and so has every web service since, ebay, google, skype, craigslist. Simple, but easy to overlook.
•    On free wifi: ‘They don’t charge you for the lift, right, and I’m certain the lift costs more to maintain than the wifi...' cue laughter from the audience
•    On banner advertising: ‘I hate these things that move around’ cue more laughter, even though by day 2 it was clear that they were all intent on advertising-supported being their biz model

Habbo hotel

•    “Habbo Hotel users sell more items of furniture to one another than Ikea does worldwide in the real world” – 3i guy

Ron Galloway

This guy is very interesting. From Georgia, USA, he has the southern drawl and all of the misconceptions that can bring with it (which he plays on!) but has been a day trader, a filmmaker, a political activist of sorts - the kind of breadth that makes for interesting perspectives.

His talk was relating the technology prowess of Wal-mart with tagging and the shifting relationships between content, databases, value and sales.

I only wrote down a few fun facts as I was listening and enjoying Ron's talk:

• Walmart annual shrinkage would be 600th biggest company in usa by turnover which demonstrates not so much a problem with dishonesty but the sheer scale of the operation ('shrinkage' is the retailing term for inventory which is stolen by your own staff)
• According to Wal-mart's sophisticated data mining and analysis, before hurricanes people buy beer and strawberry poptarts...

Nova Spivack, Radar Networks

This was one of the most educational talks of the two days for me personally because I know little about the semantic web and this got me started on the topic.

• ‘The semantic graph’ connects everything.
• Interesting point about pendulum swinging between back-end and front-end innovation each decade – Web 2.0 is about UI (user interface - AJAX, nice usable front-ends); Web 3.0 is about the database, the infrastructure of the web.
• A lot of this inputting of data to build the semantic graph will be inputted via speech rather than typing which does have implications for privacy, but NASA has a technology that recognises whispers!
• Tagging is lightweight semantics.
• Natural language search allows natural questions and conversational interactions to occur -> Semantic search will recognise the relationships between data, and therefore in the questions that you pose of it -> Reasoning will involve logic, where the system takes into account pertinent variables to provide logical answers.
• Italy is bizarrely strongly represented in semantic web development.

Blake Chandlee, Facebook

I thought Blake was one of the most convincing representatives at the 2 day conference which is high praise in a way, when you consider that we saw people from Microsoft, Yahoo, Mozilla, AOL, MTV, Orange, NBC etc etc. Straight talking, knew his stuff, wasn't afraid to be assertive - I thought he came across well and I'm glad that we've got someone like that heading things up in the UK because it's a style that works here. I picked up some nice little stats and anecdotes to take away with me, which are here.

• Facebook developed an app to crowdsource the translation of the site into non-English languages
• 50% of Facebook users visit daily
• Average Facebook user has 115 friends
• A key concept is to enable ‘social actions’ in a ‘frictionless’ environment
• Facebook is the 2nd biggest source of traffic for TripAdvisor, the bulk of which it was inferred comes from Cities I’ve Visited app.
• Mindshare is running a campaign solely advertising to the Starcom network on Facebook – its main competitor - which is getting a ‘very high response rate’!

Moray MacLennan, Chairman, Europe, M&C Saatchi

• When you put 50% of your budget into search, you’re depleting your marketing budget by half. It’s not marketing, it’s ‘distribution’.

A fantastically valid, and interesting point. Indeed. I wonder what a search expert would say to that? Please comment if you have a come-back or further thought!

Hamish Pringle, IPA

"We know from the IPA Effectiveness awards that the average winning case uses 4 different marketing channels." - useful stat

Interesting concepts and themes I picked up across the 2 days:

• Total media value – cross platform content, where some channels subsidise strategically valuable other channels
• Micropayments for accessing content as complementary payment type to subscription - paying by the article, per itunes, rather than by the period
• “Luxury content” – Julie Meyer.
• Business model innovations other than advertising-supported.
• Always stepping up a layer: so phase 1 is web content businesses, stepping up a layer is becoming an aggregator; phase 1 is ecommerce biz, stepping up a layer is being an affiliate; what is stepping up from being an agency? What is stepping up from being twitter?
• Super-affiliates are the Wal-mart of the web. This will grow...
• Variables of social media properties, as looked for by financiers: eyeballs; network scale; lock-in; global reach; 'quality'.

Remaining challenges for media cos:

• Cannabalisation – they’re all worried about this and don’t know how this will emerge – my thoughts on this are: “eat yourself alive first or ultimately let others devour you”
• Ad-supported cornflakes syndrome – overwhelmingly they believe in ad-supported models, so do they realise that too many chase too few ad dollars?
• Peak attention – is a concept they don’t seem to be thinking about…
• Owning the relationship with the consumer vs reach via disintermediation and piracy - this seems like a damn hard one to solve

In summary:

• Big media cos still don't know what to do, but they definitely know what the challenges are now and are clearly working on finding solutions
• However, they're not (ahem) thinking outside the box - it's still advertising-supported everything, and it's still locked down command-and-control thinking - we needed Umair on the stage doing his 'decay' thing
• The event was attended by a good level of people but the networking side of things was tame
• The location and general slickness of the event was true to the FT brand - top-end stuff
• I went to find out where the entertainment and media orgs were up to so I'd give it a 7/10, but had I been going to learn it woulda been a 4/10 (but to be fair and decent this event isn't aimed at me, so it's a pointless score really!).