coffee and pie

Everyone seems to be giving Mark Zuckerberg a hard time at the moment.

Like most companies that become incredibly successful and powerful in a short space of time we praise its innovation, growth and guts but inevitably sooner or later the backlash begins.

Privacy online is something i’ve wanted to write about since I took the picture above – mainly because I couldn’t understand why someone would want a person to ‘Facebook’ them. ‘Google’ yes – this will return things you have done but Facebook? Facebook is for friends right, it’s about private relationships you share with a network of people you choose to? Well maybe not for everyone plus how many friend requests do we accept from people we barely know, or like.

Zuckerberg stated that sharing is becoming the norm, and if Facebook were starting up today it would of been an open network. This struck a chord with me and reminded me of the picture I took at Southbank. People have become more open – back when Zuckerberg was starting out his friends asked him

‘why would I want to put any information on the Internet at all? Why would I want to have a website?’

That almost feels like an obsolete question now. Yet I remember thinking those things before I set up my first MySpace account 5 years ago. Of course some people you speak to still question this but no change is ever agreed by every single person. However the fact that so many blog posts, tweets, photos and video diaries are uploaded each day proves Zuckerbergs point. We are becoming more open and the Web, tools and developments have allowed this to happen but we still need to produce the content in the first place and hit publish. We cannot have one without the other.

Back in 2007 at university Anthony Giddens reflexive project of the self featured heavily in my dissertation about Digital Natives and their use of the Web’s tools in the future. Facebook, blogging platforms and Twitter to name a few have provided easy to use tools that facilitate conversations. These conversations start relationships, connections and build your identity. Our online and offline identities are not really that different anymore. As technological advancements have progressed we have naturally adapted to them and this has transferred to a much linear identity both on and offline.

These tools allow us to construct our identity (even if we are not consciously aware that is what we are doing) just like we use stories, clothes, friends and jobs to say something about ourselves. It just so happens that online tools are much more open. And this openness is natural to ‘digital natives’ because they don’t know any different.

And so younger people are more open. You only have to look at the huge surge in personal blogs, video diaries and something like lookbook.nu. Some might call it over sharing – sometimes it is. However its something that has happened gradually over time. Facebook changing their privacy settings reflects the current Web and provides an opportunity for them to monetize and grow.

Of course there is strategic thinking behind this move. Facebook is a business it takes up a lot of Zuckerberg’s time of course he wants to monetize just like anyone else would. If you had a successful business wouldn’t you take all the steps to remain ahead of the market, make money and stay at the top of your game? Can we blame one person and one networking tool for the openness the Web has given us? And can we criticize that person for innovating constantly?

Maybe we should give individuals more credit – we can still control our settings and share what we want with who we like. If people are really that worried about certain information being shared just don’t say it. I hate people who flood my newsfeed with hourly updates on their day – but doesn’t that just highlight Zuckerberg’s statement that people are becoming more open and willing to share?

I love t-shirts and I love big words. Thus I love Wildfox. What I love even more is that I wanted half of those t-shirts about a month ago when browsing tumblr. (Although i think tumblr might be a little bit bad) this is brilliant marketing. Taking shots of your products that are tumblr, bookmarking material and watching them spread is pretty cool and definitely highlights you know how to engage with your customers.

When I got my iphone I decided taking out insurance with Carphone Warehouse’s Geek Squad was a good idea. I regretted this the moment I took mine in to be repaired and was handed a replacement Nokia handset. The thing had no wifi, no camera but I still had to pay the maximum monthly line rental whilst my iphone was sent off for 2-4 weeks. To add to my annoyance the Nokia was actually the second phone I was given my first (worse) replacement phone was broken.

After two and a half weeks I was missing my phone. I was sick of getting lost and desperate to take another picture of the sandwich I ate for lunch. The online tracker didn’t seem to be working so of course I turned to Twitter in this woeful time complaining that Carphone Warehouse are ’shit’.

I had no idea this would actually result in me getting my phone back a lot quicker than if I’d sat back and waited for the actual service I pay for. I talk clients all the time about using Twitter as a customer service tool but I’d never experienced it first hand.

I received a reply from @stuartcarphone the next day asking me to check the online tracker

Which of course I has been checking (I was still at stage one out of five) So @stuartcarphone asked me to email all my details.

Turns out the tracker was down and my phone actually was in the store even though I was supposed to receive email notification when it arrived. I think its great that Twitter is picking up on these things and I love that companies are willing to spend resource on this type of customer engagement. Its just odd that traditional forms of customer satisfaction are still being neglected.

Big thank you to @stuartcarphone and @becksatcarphone

Yahoo’s new advertising campaign kinda reminds me of this

Don’t get me wrong their new advert is a beautifully shot (although it could be for a mobile phone company, airline or any other brand, until the end frame) and their billboards are pretty eye catching (although I am biased to big words) but It seems to me at least that they missed the part where they tell us why we should be using Yahoo.

As far as I can tell, other than change their logo to purple plaster it all over flickr and buy every available billboard on the London underground the services they actually provide users are exactly the same.

Within this $100 Million budget it seems no one thought it was important to tell users what has (if anything) changed, improved or developed. Or how any of their services actually make it more about Y!ou

It’s all about You. Wow Yahoo thanks for sharing that worst kept secret. Surely spending $100 Million developing your tools would have been more beneficial way to penetrate the market share further. Or maybe even telling us why and demonstrating the usefulness of your tools.

I love magazines, photographs, images and big words. I have a wall covered in all of my favourites but because the web is a whole new resource of inspiration and I see so many images I love each day I never know what to do with them all. I have been testing out a range of ways to save these for my own purpose for ages. However whatever tool I use there still seems to be a fundamental problem with images online and the lack of credit for the original source.

I used to save my favourite images to a folder on my desktop, but this gets a little tedious, and has no real use for me as I rarely look at them afterwards. i’ve wanted to find a better more organised way to categorise and browse them so I’ve been using two image bookmarking tools, vi.sualize.us and Imgfave for a while now. Both offer slightly different functionality and have pros and cons.

Initially I thought vi.sualize.us would be my favourite because its usability and design mirrors delicious but the more I use Imgfave the more I like it because it allows you the look and feel of a blog without having to go through the hassle of setting one up.

I tried using a Tumblr blog before these bookmarking tools but I wanted a much quicker process. I love Tumblr because the blogs I subscribe to feed my addiction for glossy magazines on a daily basis. I like that it makes it so easy to reblog and add notes to an image, however this often credits the blogger and does not always lead you back to the images original source. (so frustrating) there is nothing worse than looking for the original artist and coming to a Photobucket sign up screen! I just wish people would state (whenever they can) who it is!

Imgfave offers some great additional tools too, it allows you to create collections; I’ve created a Fashion collection where I add all my favourite looks in one place for me to then browse really quickly. Plus there is a widget for your blog, really simple integration with Friendfeed and Facebook integration being developed.

However there is no search functionality or additional tagging so even though it credits where the image is being bookmarked from (similar to a reblog within Tumblr) you don’t have an option to edit this with the actual artist. I’m using vi.sualize.us too because it gives you the option to credit the artist. Sometimes if I manage to find the original artist of an image I have found in Tumblr I will bookmark it within vi.sualize.us and then add it to Imgfave.

But unlike taping my favourite images to my wall or my collection of neatly stacked magazines there’s no online version where all artists are being credited. I guess its still down to users making sure credit is given whenever possible. Hmm

Ashish Gupta – Spring/Summer 2010 collection More pictures here.

I WANT that Nike dress!

Lovely ad campaign from Dixons. Humorous, honest and really clever. It’s nice to see a brand embracing their public image instead of trying to radically change it (on the surface that is – I’ll save that whinge for another post).

I just hope the prices do back up the message.

I haven’t been blogging much recently. It’s been an odd, busy time and a reminder that you always need a bit of this…