Toxic Avenger. N’importe comment.

August 27th, 2010 • View Comments Allgemein
Tags: Music, Prediction, Social, Tech, Trends, visual, World

Toxic Avenger‘s new video ‘N’importe comment’ carries the social graph to the extreme. It’s an almost scary vision what you can see in the video below…but I think we are not so far away from it. Thanks to thestrategyweb for the video.

HTML5. A Great Intro to What is New.

August 23rd, 2010 • View Comments Tech
Tags: Agencies, Blast Radius, Cool, Development, flash, HTML5, Prediction, Presentation, Tech, Tools, Trends, visual

When you start a new job it is always extremely interesting to find out about your coworkers after a while. Who is this guy across the table actually? And what did he or she do before we actually started collaborating?
One of my new colleagues who really surprised me is Bobby van der Sluis.

Bobby is Technical Experience Director here at Blast Radius, Amsterdam and a veteran of Flash Development. He is author of UFO and co-author of SWFObject 2 (along with a lot of other projects), which are both well-known open source JavaScript libraries for detecting the Adobe Flash Player and embedding Flash content in web pages. In addition to that he does publish articles at A list apart quite often and speaks at conferences. Oooh….and he is also a very nice guy – a fact that should not go unnoticed here as well.

Anyway, last week Bobby held a very insightful presentation about Flash HTML5 and his personal perspectives on its progress. It is interesting to watch Flash veterans such as Bobby to reinvent their job profiles and start developing on a similar  different platform.

Here is Bobby’s presentation. Check out his blog as well and follow him on Slideshare.

OMFG. Brands and Social Media in China.

August 11th, 2010 • View Comments Brands, Social, Underway
Tags: Brands, Business, China, Prediction, Presentation, Report, Social, Social Influence Marketing, Strategy, Trends, Truth, We like, World

Sometimes when you do research on tech adaption worldwide you get the impression it is completely enough to look at figures from the U.S. Take for example the excellent ‘State of the Blogosphere 2009‘ report by technorati. It presents all the charts and diagrams you need if you research statistics on blog usage….but if you dig a little bit deeper you find out that it’s actually nothing but a study about the American blogosphere.

This is particularly interesting if you take a serious look at the figures. China for example has surpassed the U.S. in social media usage last year. According to Netpop almost every Chinese online user is part of a social network. There are three times more bloggers per online user in China compared to the U.S. No major study will explain an average European or American strategist what these people do, what they talk about and how to engage them. By the way, we are talking about 1.6 billion Chinese and billions of Asians that I did not even consider in this calculation.

Check out this deck by Ogilvy One Shanghai (via Giles) about the connected Chinese digital landscape which is absolutely stunning. And afterwards do me a favor and answer one question: Is it actually possible to understand and lead the complexity of this world from a desk in Frankfurt, Paris, Amsterdam or London and to make the right decisions? How can we build cross cultural knowledge which is so important to get away from our subjective western perspective?

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PSFK. The Future of Retail.

Juni 3rd, 2010 • View Comments Retail, Social Business, Tech, Trends
Tags: Business, Creativity, Experimental, Future, Ideas, Prediction, PSFK, Report, Retail, Social Business Design, Strategy, Trends, World

As the world intertwines the web and reality, retail becomes one of the most crucial sectors to stage new marketing experiences for customers. Notorious PSFK has just staged its deck about ‘The future of Retail‘. The free 80 page analysis highlights how new technologies and senses play a crucial role in shaping shopping experiences. The trends identified within this document and the examples used to bring them to life are inspired by innovation from around the globe. And as usual it comes with a handy guide what is going to be hot in tomorrow’s retail experiences. PSFK, I love your decks.

Update. The ‘Social Media Revolution’ Strikes Back.

Mai 9th, 2010 • View Comments Social, Social Business, Trends
Tags: Cool, Creativity, Diagram, diagrams, Figures, Funny, Future, Media, Prediction, Social, Social Influence Marketing, Social Media, Social Networks, Tools, Trends, visual, World

I love good info visualizations. But I hate social media info graphics. There are just too many of it. Nevertheless I like this little movie. It is called “Social Media Revolution 2″ and it is an update to its very successful predecessor which flooded twitter half a year ago. Now with updated statistics and images. Created by author Erik Qualman and based on the #1 Best Selling book Socialnomics. Enjoy.

Collaborative Movies. Under the Iron Sky needs your help, Frankfurt.

Mai 5th, 2010 • View Comments Movies, We like
Tags: Cinema, Cool, Creativity, Experimental, Finland, Frankfurt, Iron Sky, Movie, Participatory Cinema, Social Business Design, Trends, World

In 1945 the Nazis fled to the moon. In 2018 they are coming back – this is the plot of one of the most exciting movie productions right at the moment, ‘Iron Sky’. The Finnish feature-length comedy science fiction film, directed by Timo Vuorensola and produced by Samuli Torssonen, will be in cincemas in 2011. And it is far more than just an ordinary movie production.

‘Under the Iron Sky’ is one of the most promising new movies of participatory cinema – projects in which producers have invited everyone interested in joining in with their ideas and creativity. Cinema enthusiasts can also attach media to their shots.

‘Iron Sky’ is not the first collaborative movie. Its predecessor ‘Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning‘ was one of the most successful Finnish movies ever (with a Creative Commons License). Currently at least three more major collaborative movies are being produced (e.g. ‘A Swarm of Angels‘). And these productions have grown to a serious size by now. With a well known international cast (Udo Kier plays the evil German again) and major, professional shoots. If you are as interested in the project as I am, subscribe to the team’s blog, Facebook page or follow them on twitter.

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Mobile Browsers. Worldwide Market Share.

Mai 3rd, 2010 • View Comments Business, Mobile, Trends
Tags: Browser, Business, Diagram, Mobile, Trends, World

Thank the guys from icrossing.co.uk and Visual Loop for this handy, little overview chart about the mobile browser market share. Personally I would have enjoyed more detailed information about the browser market share in North Korea right now. But you cannot get anything you want at once…

Check out the big map here.

Playful Cities. How Smart Tech Alters Urban Living.

Mai 3rd, 2010 • View Comments Location
Tags: Cool, Creativity, Experimental, Ideas, Lifestyle, Location, People, Presentation, RP10, Trends, Underway, Urban, World

Two weeks ago I returned from one of Germany’s best digital conferences – re:publica 2010 in Berlin. One of the sessions I liked most dealt with Playful Cities. And it was hosted by two friends of mine. Johannes and Igor gave a great overview about some exciting location-based tools beyond Gowalla and Foursquare. Tools that make our cities more worth living. Check out the nice projects they listed here and follow their talk. And maybe they might even prepare a Playful Cities Conference later that year.

Social Currency. Where Brands meet Dynamic Context.

Mai 2nd, 2010 • View Comments Brands, Social, Social Business, Strategy
Tags: Adaptation Marketing, Brands, Business, Report, Reports, Research, Social, Social Business Design, Social Currency, Strategy, Study, Trends, Vivaldi, World

One of the really good studies about brands and their social environments has just been published jointly by NYC think tank Vivaldi Partners and Professor Johann Füller (University Innsbruck) in cooperation with Lightspeed Research.

The report ‘Social Currency’ asks what a brand’s social currency is, and what it takes to build and nurture it. And, the report indeed brings a couple of crucial things across – it defines the buzzy term Social Currency and attributes success metrics for brands here.

Defining Social Currency

So what is Social Currency and why is it important? From the report’s perspective it is the contextual sum of experiences users can have in relation and interaction with a brand. And a brand’s social currency is bound to a dynamic process that we call reality.

Social Currency is the extent to which people share the brand or information about the brand as part of their everyday social life at home or at work. (…) It is neither a product feature, nor a communications or PR campaign that is completely managed by any one company. From this perspective, social currency is a far more delicate asset to build, nurture and maintain than is brand equity.

Social currency represents a shared asset of consumers and company-owned brands. It originates from interaction between customers and consumers. And it is the material a brand’s success will be fundamentally influenced by…

1. Across categories and brands, 53% of consumers’ brand loyalty can be explained by social currency
2. Users of brands with high social currency show a significantly higher willingness to pay a price premium (correlation=0.73)

The study’s explanatory strength does not only lie in these results – it is remarkable as it tries to define what social currency is made of. Since the research assumes that social currency is crucial for brands to create customer loyalty it consequently also reveals its components. No, a brand does not necessarily have to access all levers – this varies in regard to which industry and brand is involved…

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Semi-Annoying Memes. Song Lyrics on Threadless Shirts.

April 30th, 2010 • View Comments Trends
Tags: Experimental, Fashion, Funny, Ideas, Lifestyle, Memes, Music, threadless, Trends, visual, World

Time for some new ideas kind of new ideas modifications of existing stuff to make it feel new. All of us got pretty annoyed lately by wallpaper-sized infographics staging statistics from ‘How many died in WWII’ to ‘How many people use twitter?’ So now after we get sick of these the evolution goes on – Band lyrics infographic shirts.

And as davaidavai loves social effects we want to stage this new trending topic before it is completely annoying…in about three days.

This one is still pretty fresh on threadless – currently it is only a submission. So if you ever want to buy it, go there and vote for it. You remember the song, don’t you?

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