Here’s a little nugget which could turn out to be something big. Google have announced their new Social Graph API.
In layman’s terms the social graph is the representation of me and my contacts, and how we relate to each other (the friends list on Facebook is a good example). Problem is, you build one set in Facebook, one in Myspace, another in Twitter, yawn, you get the picture. Google’s API will mean they’re all nicely tied together so you only need to build your contacts up once and any app can use them. (That’s a vast oversimplification but you get the idea).
I’m wondering what this means for Facebook. When you think about it, Facebook’s major USPs are
Everyone’s spent a buckets of time signing up to it and building their social graphs (admit it, that’s the most fun part!)
You can run applications on it.
You can send each other messages.
But what happens when any online application knows who your friends are? Why are we going to need Facebook any more? What about when your email program links to your social graph - why would I bother using Facebook’s crappy messaging function? As Pete Ashton was ranting today, It doesn’t even let us search messages! Grr.
And then there’s Opensocial. It’ll be interesting to see what happens over the next year or so.
If you’re to take one thing from this, buy your domain name now (e.g. antoniogould.com). In the future we’re all going to be defined by our URLs.
Impactt are one of the world’s leading ethical trade consultancies. They work with many of the world’s leading companies to improve labour standards and have been pushing things forward in this field for ten years. Looking at their client list is like taking a walk down the high street and they’re hugely respected in the industry as a company effecting real change for workers.
I’ve been working with the company’s team to develop a new web strategy; the first phase went online last week and you can see the results at impacttlimited.com
A few notes on the project:
My work is now primarily about strategy rather than straight builds so I’ve spent a great deal of time getting to know the company, the issues they’re working with and the team who run things. This has been fascinating, and also very good fun.
We started with the Global Microbrand principle (stay small and sell all over the world), and tweaked it for a social context (stay small and influence all over the world). It’s key that an innovative company like this are telling people what they’re doing both from a commercial and social point of view. If they can provoke a discussion both on their own site and elsewhere, that’s even better.
Impactt had been producing a printed newsletter full of stories on labour standards ("The Meteor"). We decided after some thought to move this over to a new, two-pronged strategy, and worked with the team to re-develop The Meteor as a blog and a live news feed.
With the help of Mark McGuinness we worked to map out the style, content and potential audience for the blog and coached the team as they made their first tentative footsteps into the blogosphere. It’s now up and running and I must say, they’re doing an excellent job.
I think it’s vital to avoid a technology led approach with these things. I have a pet phrase which goes something like "Giving someone a blog is like giving them a blank piece of paper. It doesn’t mean anything until they know what to write". The potential readership of Impactt’s blog is a group of people who have huge influence in this field so there’s a big opportunity here to really help make change happen globally.
The Live News Feed is a great feature which allows users to receive the latest news on labour standards daily or weekly. It has the double function of keeping clients, and everyone in the office up to date with the latest news, all filtered by one person.
Making this happen was an incredibly simple combination of delicious, Google Reader, Feedburner (all free) and a bit of training. This to me embodies the power of what can be done these days with free software.
I also worked together with the team at Rolled to build a brand new, fully content managed, accessible and (in my opinion) beatifully designed website. I’m really pleased with how this came out and initial feedback has been very good.
Moving into the future I’m keen to start looking at the company’s use of video and audio. There could well be a new podcast on labour standards coming your way soon!
I must extend a great thanks to the Impactt team for pulling together and really doing a great job of getting content together, no easy feat when you already have a full time job to do.
Incidentally, I’m not the only one with a pet saying about blogging. Mark McGuinness has one too: "A blog is for life, not just for Christmas".
Food for thought as we enter into the season of goodwill.
Since August I’ve been working as part of the New Media team at Maverick TV developing an idea for a major new project for Channel 4 Education. We’ve been looking at how to develop a web-based approach to supporting entrepreneurship amongst 14-19 year olds.
We’ve now been given the go ahead to start work on the first phase of the project and I’m going to be taking the creative director role. I’m excited about this project as it has the potential to be something really groundbreaking. The project also incorporates social media, entrepreneurship, education and social enterprise, all of which are areas of huge interest for me.
It’s at such early stages at the moment that it doesn’t even have a name yet - however I’ll post more here as the project continues.
3 professional, 3 community and 3 estate-led choirs
An audience of 3,000
1 aim: to sing Birmingham’s truths
On 28th October 2007, REALITY ESTATE will transform the Five Ways Estate, Shopping Centre and roundabout. Developed by Friction Arts and working alongside a roster of internationally renowned artists and the people of Ladywood, together they will ‘sing Birmingham’s truths’, accompanied by some of Birmingham’s best known choirs, to a backdrop of spectacular projections and lighting.
I’ve been working with producers Friction Arts for about six months now helping to embed web 2.0 approaches to the projects they run. It’s first stages at the moment, but the Reality Estate site is the first step, and a good one in the right direction in my opinion.
Here’s a quick run-down of the day, including a few interviews I did with some of those involved.
[12:00pm]
I’ve come down to the Spread Eagle Hotel in Midhurst West Sussex to catch the last part of the BBC Innovation Labs South 2007 project. We’ve had two West Midlands agencies in the running this week (383 Project and Persuaders Media) so on behalf of Digital Central I’ve come to see how they get on.
The Innovation Labs is a nationwide challenge set by the BBC. Each year they ask a number of companies to pitch, then if succesful further develop innovative ideas around communicating in new ways with their audience. If the ideas go down well, the companies may be commissioned for futher developmental work with a view to some being used by the BBC in the long term.
For more info on the project background it’s worth checking out the original brief.
The week by all accounts has been a very intense, focussed period of activity. Each group has been working through their ideas with help from a number of established mentors with a view to final presentations delivered today. I must say everyone seems very chipper even though no-one seems to have had any sleep!
I’ve come down to catch the last part of the presentations (which I’m watching right now) and to be here for the final decisions later today.
[12:30 pm]
The presentations are now finished. I caught the last five, including Persuaders Media whose pitch I must say I thought was very impressive. Their idea centres around a sports based game which aims to get young people to be more active and works both on virtual and actual level. I won’t try to describe it here as I won’t do it justice but I’m sure they’ll be putting more info up on their own site soon.
Nice to see Fitz providing a bit of musical accompaniment too.
[12:45 pm]
I just had a chat with John and Sukhi from 383 Project who pitched an idea around new, graphical ways of delivering content.
I also spoke to Matt Marsh from Firsthand Experience, a user research and design strategy consultancy. Matt was one of the mentors and I asked him for his thoughts on the week so far:
[16:00]
We’ve just had the final results.
First, the mentors gave their own awards – including “Best Use of Virtual Characters” for Persuaders Media and “Best Storytellers” for 383 Project.
The commissioners then went through each agency one by one with feedback and decisions on further commissions. Here’s how the West Midlands companies got on:
383 Project:
Although 383’s idea wasn’t given further funding, the feedback they received was one of the best I heard out of all the companies.
Some quotes from the commissioners:
“One of the best projects I’ve seen in the 4 weeks of doing this”
“You are people we can do business with”
“You have clear visual skill especially when working with 14-16 year olds”
The commissioners clearly felt that they wanted to work with 383 Project in the future so I imagine this will lead on to some really interesting stuff.
It’s worth remembering that from the BBC’s point of view the Innovation Labs is just as much about finding new talent than just the ideas that are developed - 383 did very well in this area.
Persuaders Media
The response to Persuaders Media’s project was exceptionally positive – the main problem being that the commissioners felt that the idea was “Too big for the BBC” (their own words!).
Also there was an issue raised in that BBC Sport doesn’t have an agenda to get kids to be more active.
In light of this Matt Locke felt that the idea would suit the 2012 Olympics New Media agenda better and so will be putting some time into helping the agency pitch directly to the 2012 New Media department.
Matt Marsh, in my interview with him felt that the Persuaders’ project was the best one he’d seen all day (full interview above).
I spoke to (a very tired) Stephen and Fitz from Persuaders Media after the project to get their reactions.
I think this is great news for both companies and fantastic to see West Midlands agencies doing so well in a national project like this.
I spent an enjoyable half-hour this afternoon interviewing Emily Renshaw-Smith from Current TV for the next show in the New Media 4Casts series for 4Talent. The show will look at the opportunities opened up by new technology for film and documentary makers. It’s been a really interesting one so far and we should be online within a couple of weeks or so.
Here’s the beef, taken from the email I originally received about the project:
“Current TV, which launched August 1, 2005, is the first national network created by, for and with an 18-34 year-old audience. The network shows young adults what’s going on in their world, in their voice. Current is also the first network in history whose programming is supplied in part by the very audience who watches it. It has developed the television industry’s leading model of “viewer created content” (VC2), which comprises roughly one-third of Current’s on-air broadcast, and allows the audience to submit short-form, nonfiction video “pods. Its award-winning programming ranges from the current trends in technology, fashion, music and videogames, to pressing issues such as the environment, relationships, parenting, finance, and politics. Current is available in 30 million U.S. Homes and will be launching in the UK and Ireland in March.”
“… We’re launching in 8+ million homes in the UK and Ireland in March. And we’re looking for filmmakers who can help us make an impact when we do. …”
They’re also running a competition - 1st prize is lunch with Al Gore. Not a bad contact to have in your address book I reckon. It’d be great to see a Midlands based filmmaker win this.
If you’re interested, get in touch using their website.
Here’s a very good example of how some parts of the TV industry still have their heads buried firmly in the sand when it comes to how online video is going to radically change their business.
“The Long Tail…is not an economic reality and it has almost no relevance to the economics of the television business”. A quote from Shelly Palmer, chairman of the national Advanced Media Technology Emmy Awards Committee
I’ve just been having a play with Brightcove, a system which allows anyone to set up their own online TV channel. It’s quite like YouTube but much more geared to content producers who want to charge for what they want to do and make a business out of it. It has other advantages over YouTube. I put together my own channel to test it out, and here are my initial thoughts:
Easy to sign up
Easy to use
Comes with its own offline software application (the PublishPod) which converts the video before you upload it, unlike the annoying YouTube process which forces you to do it yourself, degrading the quality.
It’s possible to set charges for each individual video. This is the first time I’ve seen this available in the UK, although I may be wrong.
The player skin looks better than the YouTube one
I’ll post more as I play with it. Here are the results - it took about 20 minutes in total from start to finish to set up the channel and upload this video.
The World Economic Forum are holding their Annual Meeting in a couple of weeks. The 2007 event is being held in Davos and features a pretty heavyweight of speakers including Mohammed Abbas, Mohammed El Baradei, Paul Wolfowitz and our own beloved PM.
Traditionally a fairly closed event, the WEF have decided to get communicating with the wider public. As well as webcasting many of the seminars they have also invited the public to submit video questions and responses.
In addition they will also be setting up a Davos Conversation page which will collate media related to the event from around the web.
Nice to see the world’s great and the good actually making an effort to listen to people for once (it doesn’t seem to happen very often, especially in the UK nowadays). Whether they actually will or not remains to be seen.
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