When you find a great new infographic to share with the team
This is me!
Source: 99problemsbutapitchaintone
Geeks vs Hipsters...it's on!
Love this graphic! Disappointed that my movie and music taste is so undeniably hipster though…
Interesting statistics on the distribution of religions across the world - scarily low number of atheists!
WANT ♥
Paula Bertolini at the Matthew Williamson Fall/Winter 2012 RTW show.
Photograph by Marcio Madeira
Source: followingthebutterfly
Is social media the cause of slacktivism?
by me, on the Johnson King blog
As a PR, utilising the power of social media to my clients’ advantage is all part and parcel of my job role. I regularly witness first-hand the rewards that can be reaped both for organisations and their customers when a social media campaign is well executed. Out of work, I’m also a social media fanatic – ok, by fanatic I really mean addict – and I imagine you wouldn’t often run into someone who’s a bigger advocate of social media than I am.
So I don’t criticise social media lightly. It’s just that recently, I’ve been more hesitant to associate as heavily with the ‘social media culture’ that has taken hold of our society. My main gripe is how social media has bred a spectacular escalation in slacktivism – the support of an issue or social cause which one has little or no understanding of, and “that has little or no practical effect other than to make the person doing it feel satisfaction”. This phenomenon’s rise can be single-handedly attributed to the proliferation of social networks, where people can simply click a ‘Like’ or a ‘Share’ button, change their profile picture, or post a status to show they are ‘supporting a cause’.
A perfect case in point is the recent ‘KONY 2012’ video that went viral – so viral, in fact, that it has already been deemed “the most successful viral video of all time” with 100 million views in 10 days. The video, put out by an American charity, aims to raise awareness of Ugandan warlord Joseph Kony’s horrific crimes, and ultimately to encourage policy-makers to make greater efforts to “stop” Kony. Within hours of its release, I’d already seen it posted on pretty much every social media platform I frequent. Very quickly, more and more people on my friend and follower feeds started sharing the video and posting statuses about getting behind the cause – then suddenly, KONY 2012 was trending on Twitter – then celebrities on Twitter started linking to the video – and we all know that once celebs are involved, there’s no turning back. It was like everyone on social networks had been gripped by a frenzy to bring down this evil warlord through ‘Like’ing and ‘Share’ing alone.
A day or two later, critics of the video began to surface, and the charity was accused of having suspicious financial records, oversimplifying social and political issues and using emotional manipulation in the clip. Even the people the video was purporting to save did not react kindly upon viewing it. These criticisms started circulating through social media, and again, suddenly everyone was gripped by a frenzy to attack the charity – many of which, on my feeds anyway, were the very same people who a day ago had declared their undying support to the KONY 2012 campaign. To me, the KONY 2012 video did not just reveal the horrific crimes of a Ugandan warlord, but proved how many people mindlessly ‘get behind’ a cause without putting any thought into – because all they is have to do is click a button or two.
This isn’t the first time that slacktivism has been brought to the limelight. We’ve blogged beforeabout how the Breast Cancer Facebook status campaigns – while not relating to breast cancer in any way – were undeniable in creating buzz and awareness around the disease. However, I can’t help but wonder whether making a status on a social cause allows people feel like they’ve ‘done their part’ and no longer have to make a donation.
Social media has even made it possible for other ‘social networking’ sites to ‘go viral’, and another recent viral phenomenon is social network come ‘online pin board’ Pinterest. It is now the fastest stand-alone site to reach ten million visitors in a month, and the entire site is based on social photo-sharing (most of photos which are not taken by the submitter). While admittedly, I do like going on the site once in a while, this great article by Brian Donovan on Thought Catalogsummarises my thoughts on Pinterest – in short, “it’s literally the least amount of information that can be put in front of you and still make you feel like you’re looking at something”.
I truly think that Pinterest illustrates how to make something so popular so quickly in the context of our modern-day time-starved lives – “there’s nothing to understand [on Pinterest]. You just log on and let the pictures wash over as they fly through the air. It’s brilliant in both its simplicity and wildly low estimation of our intellectual demands”. Perhaps other not-so-successful social networks such as the long-forgotten Quora disappeared from the public eye because it required actual thought processes.
All in all, while I’m growing wary of the ‘power of social media’, I’m not going to be checking out of any social networks any time soon. However, I truly hope that as our reliance on social media continues to grow, people start to think before they click, and if they do click, then it doesn’t stop them from actively doing something in support of what they’re clicking.
Google+ may have lost me £100
by me, on the Johnson King blog
Here at Johnson King, we take our tech very seriously – so seriously that it looks like I owe my colleague Ben (@BnRbrts) a £100 meal because of a tech-related bet I seem to have already lost.
When Google+ was released back in June, I was certain it was going to be a revolutionary success, while Ben was sure it would never take Facebook’s social media crown. After a lengthy and very heated debate, we decided to settle it – if Facebook remained the dominating force in the social network space, then I’d owe him a £100 dinner. But if Google+ makes a dent on Facebook’s industry domination, then he’d owe the dinner to me (we’d both just been promoted at this point so were feeling particularly rich!).
The release of Google+ drummed up an unprecedented level of hype in the social media world, and with what critics deemed as ‘killer’ features, such as Circles, Hangouts and Sparks, to me it looked like Google couldn’t go wrong. The other big ‘winning’ factor for me was that Google+ was really just a project, and the company is very keen on getting it right for their users – generally the biggest complaint about Facebook is that, due to its many years of market monopoly, it implements whatever changes it wants regardless of user feedback.
There was only one downside I could see – which Ben insisted would be an impossible barrier to break through, but which I was sure would be fixed with time – and this was the fact that everyone and all their friends were already on Facebook and would be reluctant to join another social network.
Unfortunately, as time went on, Google+ seemed to lose its momentum. As Google+ was invite-only for a longer period of time than expected, the only people that seemed to be joining Google+ were the tech-inclined. The only things people seemed to be posting on Google+ were about Google+ itself. Reports started coming in about how it was a flop, and even a Google engineer called Google+ a ‘complete failure’. Then came the news that Google was pulling the plug on its other social media ventures, Google Buzz and Google Wave. Many took this as a sign of things to come for Google+. Had I lost my bet?
To me this in no way signifies the end of Google+. Call me a Google fangirl, but I really do think Google will be pulling something out of its sleeve soon to drive momentum behind the service. Just because we’re not hearing about it 24/7 anymore, doesn’t mean it’s not being used – and recently, Britney Spears overtook Google’s CEO as the most-followed on Google+, which must be an indication that its userbase has grown from just the very tech-savvy to a wider audience of social networkers. Google+ adverts have popped up around London and on TV, which I never saw for Buzz or Wave. Usually advert-shy, the only other Google adverts have been for Chrome, and look how well Chrome is doing. Admittedly, Facebook’s never had to physically advertise anywhere – but it does have a seven-year head start and before Google+, was the only service of its kind available.
So for now, I refuse to accept that I’ve lost this bet. To me, it looks like Google’s just getting started with Google+, and at this point I’d say Ben and I are still even. What do you think – is Google+ the Facebook killer?
First there was the telephone, which was supposed to reduce demand for communication in person. The same was said of faxes and then email. In the late 1990s, when dot-com fever was at its peak, many technology enthusiasts predicted that cities would soon become obsolete, since we no longer needed to share sidewalks and cafes. Cheap bandwidth would mean the end of expensive office space. But the data show that the opposite has occurred: Cities and face-to-face interaction have become even more valuable. As Edward Glaeser, an economist at Harvard, notes in his recent book “The Triumph of the City,” business travel has dramatically increased since the invention of email. Attendance at business conferences has spiked since the invention of video-conferencing. Businesses still pay hefty rents to be downtown.
Cyber warfare – from sci-fi fantasy to an imminent reality
by me, on the Johnson King blog
Over the past couple of weeks, nations and corporations alike have been hit by an unrelenting wave of high-profile, internationally prevalent security breaches, causing some of the world’s most powerful country leaders and CEOs to seriously reconsider their foreign policies and corporate strategies. It therefore comes as no surprise that cyber warfare has never been more of an impending threat than now.
Only last week, US officials announced plans to treat cyber attacks as ‘acts of war’ which may provoke real world military responses. So when it emerged that hackers who stole hundreds of login details from Google’s Gmail system originated from China, the world waited for reaction from the US Government with baited breath.
One cannot help but draw similarities to conflicts past, as a “war of words” between these two international giants escalated over the past week. While the US simply stated it was “looking into” the Gmail security breath, the Chinese government categorically denied any involvement with the attacks. It has also been reportedthat US Defence Secretary Robert Gates announced “we are not trying to hold China down”, and that only last month, a top Chinese general declared that China has no intention to match US military power.
Yet hostility again arose this week when a Chinese government newspaper opined that the allegations were motivated by the “vicious intent of sparking new disputes concerning Internet security between China and the US”. This recent to-ing and fro-ing is no doubt reminiscent of Cold War exchanges, especially now that the US government is moving to classify cyber warfare as real world acts of aggression.
The recent antics of “hacktivist” groups like Anonymous and LulzSec, who target corporations, organisations and governments worldwide, have also attracted the attention of intergovernmental military organisation NATO, which has indicated that“the [Anonymous] groups will be infiltrated and perpetrators persecuted”. LulzSec reached the heights of notoriety when it repeatedly attacked Sony’s websites and swiftly moved on to Nintendo and other organisations it took offence with, while Anonymous most recently hacked Iranian government servers.
It’s hard to tell whether there is a degree of fear mongering occurring in the media at the moment surrounding the threat of real world conflicts resulting from cyber activity, and it remains to be seen how and when – or if at all – any hacking attacks translate into real world warfare. Indeed, I think I speak for everyone when I say that I sure hope it remains nothing more than a cyber cold war – but it seems very clear that we have a reached a new chapter of the world of cyber warfare.
PR Fail: Facebook’s not so stealth moves
by me, on the Johnson King blog
The score is in: Google 1 – 0 Facebook.
In a scandalous turn of events, it’s been reported that Facebook hired top PR firm Burson-Marsteller to launch a smear campaign against its bitter tech rival Google. Leaked emails, which came to light on Wednesday, indicated that the global PR agency contacted well known internet security blogger Christopher Soghoian (among others), asking him to write scaremongering stories about Google’s privacy policies.
In exchange, Burson-Marsteller offered to assist in the drafting and placing of these articles on influential sites, such as USA Today and the Washington Post – butFacebook’s cover was blown when Soghoian then published the emails online. The correspondence also highlighted the blogger’s view that the company was in fact exaggerating concerns over the privacy threats and ‘making a mountain out of a molehill’.
Fortunately for Google, this has all come to light just before the expected launch of its own social network, Social Circles, at its developer conference which kicked off earlier this week. As a result, the anticipation and buzz surrounding Google’s latest venture in the social networking arena has reached an all-time high.
This spat follows a string of various accusations that large tech players have been throwing at each other, ranging from Google accusing Microsoft’s Bing of copying its search results, to Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs apparently accusing Google’s Android of privacy violations when the iPhone was under fire for privacy issues.
This latest instalment is far from good PR for the tech PR sector, and as the rivalry between the giants continues to grow, we can only hope that the tactics they employ don’t get much dirtier than this.
The ‘Industry’ in four panels
Image courtesy of Neutron, LLC
As you may have heard, we trade in Lulz
“We are Anonymous.
We are legion.
We do not forgive.
We do not forget.
Expect us.”
Is your internet being censored?
“Some of the most commonly censored content are pornography, social networks and political blogs, which in light of the recent Egyptian uprising makes sense for governments looking to protect their regimes.”
Here’s a ‘heat-map’ of the globe by Yuxi You charting the countries with the most online freedom (like Africa) to those with “pervasive censorship” (like China).
The smartphone future
“Pretty soon, in a year or two, with the phones many of you have already and the tablets, you will never forget anything. Starting soon it will be possible to remember the hotels you went to, the pictures you took, the friends you met, because computer memories last forever.”
- Eric Schmidt, Google
I don’t care how many royal arseholes have sat in this chair!
