RAAK

Bots to 'nudge' us?

It is well established now that part of the impetus behind the Kony2012 campaign was so-called attention philantropy (and Tweet bombing) tactics. If you can't focus attention yourself, attempt to motivate attention priviledged people (like celebrities) to do it for you. A study we published a while ago showed that bots can get people to connect, and now a very interesting blog post takes that proposition one step further and asks if we can create bots for civic engagement?

Pinning for print

House Beautiful Magazine is a neat fit for the aspirational world that is Pinterest, except of course – it's in print. Well, now they have launched an app that allows you to scan images in the mag and pin to your board using your smartphone. Would be interesting to see what kind of take up they get.

Facebook ads ain’t for everybody

Econsultancy has an interesting article that reckons Facebook advertising does not suit each and every brand (as we told you last week) – citing the example of a packaging company that does very well from Google Adwords but does horribly on Facebook. Quelle surprise! For some time brand advertisiers have been moaning about Google and its keyword direct response search model as "not suited for them". Guess what, most of these advertisers would do swimmingly well on Facebook. The sweet spot in Facebook advertising, however, lies in getting a brand-effect and clicks (direct response). For example, if you are a fashion brand with an online retail offering.

Mobile is eating Facebook's lunch

It's not that Facebook is not popular on mobile. It’s just that Facebook is not the gatekeeper to money-making games like Farmville on mobile, neither can it serve as many ads per page. Thus as more of its users migrate to mobile, its revenue drops. This is of course a problem for most ad supported websites, including Google, argues Mark Cuban in a provocative blogpost.

YouTube becomes ProTube

YouTube does not stand unaffected by the current shift to mobile. New stats show that we are watching fewer videos on YouTube. However, we are also watching longer videos and subsequently spending more time on the site. At the same time Instagram-like mobile video sharing apps, like Viddy, are growing like weeds. RWW argues that in response YouTube is turning to pro-production values, but not in the way TV is doing today. It is banking on elite amateurs producing ever better shows using its ever increasing array of tools. Other services in this space includes OnTheAir, which is explicitly catering for micro-celebrities like bloggers managing their own live broadcasts.

"Oops – I'm delayed"

Kudos to Chiltern Railways for showing how most services can use social media to show customers reasons for maintenance and how it's progressing. For the first time, commuters were able to see the works and milestones achieved in near real time. In other train related news, each Tube Line in London now has its own Twitter account.

From an Industrial to a Maker economy?

One of the smarter tech commentators out there, Om Malik, this week interviewed Perry Chen, founder of Kickstarter. Chen's company now boasts 23,000 succesfully funded projects, including a pickle factory in Chicago that uses Bloody Mary marinade (!) and now is using Kickstarter to expand. Read more why Chen thinks we are at a very significant moment for human creativity.

Creatives of the week – Daniel Jones & Peter Gregson

Twitter data visualisations: been there, done that. But how about a data 'audification'? What would Twitter-chatter sound like? The Listening Machine is an application that turns the Twitter behaviour of 500 people into sounds. Whenever one of these people sends a Tweet, the app analyzes the message in terms of sound and meaning and then creates music based on those parameters.