Swine flu: The dangerous power of Twitter

So far Twitter seems to be immune from criticism, it has been the site of opportunity and obsession that has revolutionized the web.
However, there is concern growing that Twitter could facilitate an unnecessary global panic about swine flu.
The New Foreign Policy website has highlighted that Twitter’s infinite reach and power could do more harm than good by introducing “too much noise into the process”.
As the outbreak spreads millions of ‘tweets’ are flooding the website as people share their fears and anxieties but even more alarming are the people claiming to know possible cures to treat swine flu.
People are fearful that the reach and volume of these messages will scaremonger the public with hear-say and folk law.
There is a genuine concern that these 'tweets' will result in dangerously misinforming its audience with potentially hazardous consequences.

World Digital Library

WDL allows you to enjoy and explore cultural treasures from around the world. Giving you access to artifacts such as maps, photographs, films and architectural drawings from different centuries from across the globe. The best thing is that you can view these primary materials for free on one site. It's a really useful resource not just for scholars but also for anyone looking to expand their inter-cultural knowledge.

WANTED ADS YOUNG TEAM OF THE YEAR 2009

Making cheesey great!

PHOTO COMPETITION

The photo competition is back, and so it seems is the sunshine!
So it only seems fit to make SUNSHINE this month's theme.

Usual rules apply - you must have taken the shot yourself and old photos can be submitted.

Closing date is 20th may, and we'll be handing out the prize on the 22nd.

Happy snapping!

An equation for April

Twitter confessional

“I pulled her over just because she drove a Mercedes SUV. And I had it towed. I love being a police officer”

“Every once in a while I’ll tell someone I was on MTV. What I don’t tell them is that the show I was on was Fat Camp 2”

In the same vein as Post Secret, the SecretTweet feed encourages people to share their guilty secrets in 140 characters. Entertaining and at times moving, it’s a bizarre form of therapy!

They claim they have enough confessions to publish 2,400 tweets a day. Fortunately they’re editing it down to the most interesting ones. I’ve entered my confession and I’ve been told there’s a queue of 643 SecretTweets before they even get to moderating mine.

So come on people, ‘Fess up.

Car wars

I love it when Brands interact. This inter-brand banter illustrates quick thinking, brilliant understanding of buzz and great humour.

Audi put up a billboard showing their new sexy 2009 Audi A4, which reads “Your Move, BMW.”

And sure enough, BMW responded with a larger billboard right across the road.

“Checkmate.”

I don't know if this shows brilliance on Audi's behalf, betting that BMW would respond and build a news story for them, or complete idiocy merely illustrating how second rate they are...

Thoughts?

booze britain...

Bombas Parr the weird jelly architects are doing an event in a bar in soho where you go in an inhale gin and tonic. Apparently the "walk-in mist of breathable gin" is produced using the same technology as Antony Gormley's 2007 'Blind Light' installation at the Hayward.

Mental.

Facebook dominates online networking

Since we're all stat-orific today, I'll share some more. Comscore has just annnounced Facebook is now the sixth most trafficked website in the world commanding

275 million unique users in February alone. That's a 175 per cent increase since this time last year.

Europe saw faster growth - a 314 per cent increase to nearly 100 million uus a month. The UK accounts for 22.66 million of these users.

Not only are people coming think and fast, they're also hugely engaged. 4.1 minutes average time spent up from 1.1 minute last year. Facebook now commands a third of all our social networking time. That's 30 per cent of time spent on social network sites including YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Bebo, Yahoo Answers, wordpress, blogger... I could go on. 30 per cent. On its own.

That is why it is so crucial for brands to engage in these spaces. The people are there. And they're engaged. And we have the opportunity to listen to them, to talk to them, to understand them better and to encourage them to spend time with us. And hopefully to encourage them to talk about us to their friends. Who will talk to their friends...

Tweetographics

For all you disbelievers out there, all you people who think Social Media is the land of the young, there are some pretty interesting stats out today about who exactly is using Twitter. Hold your breath, stats ahoy...

Worldwide visitors to Twitter approached 14 million in the US alone per month in February. User numbers doubled in the past two months.

35-54 year olds are 36 per cent more likely than average to visit Twitter, making them the highest indexing age group.

25-34 year olds are the second highest indexing demographic - 30 per cent more likely to visit.

18-24 year olds, the traditional social media early adopters, are actually 12 percent less likely than average to visit Twitter. Yes, that's LESS LIKELY.

Although it does make sense. Office-based, tech'ed up internet-mature people are using it to listen to their peers, do business and do the personal news broadcast. I have been watching the office and I've noticed an uptake in sign ups within these walls.

Roy - @roysy
Nimi - @NimiRaja
Dan - @daniellipman
Tim - @TimRogowski
Kathryn - @kathryn100
Emily - @emilydent

Consider yourself outed. Hope you're interesting!

Projector perfect

Pretty amazing projections. Would be amazing to see one of these shows. Can we use this somewhere?

JILLZ - "FRESH MEN" ADVERT

Dutch agency Pink and Poodle have launched a new TV ad campaign for Jillz cider. The 60 second TV ad, is reminiscent of a 90s boy band video, packed full of cheesy shots of topless hunks and sexual innuendos. The worst ad you've seen in a while or a stroke of marketing genius?

The Difference St Luke's made

The attached film has no voice-over, so it's slightly haunting and it also made me think...

There was a debate a while back on Scamp about St Luke’s contribution to ad history where several people put up a rigorous defence of the creative work. Looking around the industry right now I think St Luke’s may have had an effect on something beyond creative work - the ad agency as a place of work.

The various ambitions of St Luke’s impacted directly upon the nature of the workplace. We wanted to a flat hierarchy so there were no flash corner offices; we wanted to be co-creative so there were no department floors; we wanted to put clients at the centre of the business so each client had their own brand room; we wanted to collaborate with everyone so we had multi-disciplinary project teams; we were a co-operative and wanted everyone to have a say in the running of the company so the culture of the agency and the working environment was the responsibility of an elected staff group called The Quest and not the management. We summed our workplace philosophy up with the slogan Change The Way You Work, Change the Way You Think and to help us constantly change the way we worked we were early pioneers of hot-desking and remote working. The effect of so much innovation was a culture which was creative and chaotic and inspiring and confusing in equal measure but, above all else, it created a fun and exciting place to work, which is why we consistently won best workplace awards.

Looking around the industry there seems to be a type of agency where there reputation as a good place to work is as important as there work. If you look at the blogs and promo films for places like Karmarama, Love in Manchester and Iris, they all feel just a little bit like St Luke’s.

St Luke’s may not have quite achieved the launch ambition to be the “ad agency to end all ad agencies” by “changing the DNA of business” but maybe we did open the door for agencies to be something other than creative dictatorships or military-style organisations.

Phil

Spring has sprung

So we're slowly coming out the depths of winter. There's colour in the world again, a few smiles being exchanged with strangers and a more optimistic attitude in the air (echoed by the upturn in the ftse this morning?).

I took this photo of a cherry tree over the weekend. Has anyone else got some change of season scenes to share? (P.S. photography competition anyone?!!)

SHEEP MARKET

A collection of 10,000 illustrations of sheep created by workers on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. Each worker was paid $.02 to ‘draw a sheep facing left.’

It’s actually quite addictive, being able to view every single sheep being drawn from scratch…quite therapeutic as well.