Posts Tagged 'Broadband'

Social media lessens the burn of volcanic catastrophe

A million Britons stranded, Miley Cyrus’s London premiere cancelled, a conjunctivitis outbreak, Tesco can’t import any mango’s and Iceland’s Mt Eyjafallajökull could keep spewing indefinitely. But fear not, because social media is saving the day. Facebook, Twitter and the like have proved to be useful tools against Mother Nature’s latest spanner in the works. The Facebook group, When Volcanoes Erupt: A Survival Guide for Stranded Travelers, had 1,609 members at last count, and is helping stranded travelers find lift shares and places to stay. The hashtags #getmehome and #ashtags are enabling users across the Twittersphere to form connections with others affected by the eruption or simply find more information and keep on top of the latest developments. Skype has seen increased volumes in voice and video calling over the last week as travelers and business folk turn to video conferencing, as well as a stranded bride and groom who were able to share their wedding vows online. Toyota managed to exploit the volcano for some great publicity for their ‘indestructible’ Hilux pickup truck and Information Is Beautiful demonstrated the positive side of the eruption with a beautiful graph comparing the CO2 emissions caused by Eyjafallajökull compared with those saved by European planes being grounded. If you’re currently reading this as one of the many stranded folk then download one of Lonely Planet’s phone applications, temporarily free as part of their volcano relief effort.

The business case for mobile apps

We’re amidst the apps gold rush, with more than 2.5 billion mobile apps downloaded last year alone. But as more and more brands cotton on to the business potential of apps, so increases the complexity around how best to monetise them. Ocado, the online groceries retailer, has become the latest pin-up when it comes to getting it right, citing £15m in revenues generated through its iphone app since February this year – which equates to 5% of total orders.  We feel that the overall user experience can be largely attributed to the apps success. Ocado didn’t just jump on the bandwagon and push an app for apps sake out the door. They spent time understanding how their customers use the service and purchase their products and took this knowledge to create a simple and seamless experience with ease of use at its core. So will the Ocado’s latest launch, a voice-activated app for the Android marketplace store, continue to improve the experience? We’ll keep you posted. And in the meantime, check out our microsite for more interesting mobile stats.

Facebook Community Pages- for the community or the advertiser?

On Monday, Facebook announced they are launching community pages with the intention of connecting users to others who share similar interests and experiences. On the Facebook Blog came the following announcement “On each Community Page, you’ll be able to learn more about a topic or an experience—whether it’s cooking or learning a new language—and see what your friends and others in the Facebook community are saying about this topic.” They add “Now, certain parts of your profile, including your current city, hometown, education and work, and likes and interests, will contain “connections.” Instead of just boring text, these connections are actually Pages, so your profile will become immediately more connected to the places, things and experiences that matter to you.” So what does this mean for advertisers? As NMA reports “Ads will appear on the pages but brands won’t be able to choose to appear there specifically, tallying with the site’s policy of only allowing advertisers to target users’ interests rather than specific areas of the site.” It does mean, however, that advertisers have more insight about where users are congregating across key verticals and can serve advertising directly into that channel. We had a chat with our Head of Search, Tim Giles, who tells us “While Search is trying to predict buying behaviour based on what people type into a search engine the community pages are trying to predict buying behaviour based on the groups and associations people make.”

Happy 10th Birthday to UK Broadband!

Thank goodness for broadband, since its launch in the UK 10 years ago its revolutionized the way we live and work. Such a milestone warrants the mother of all birthday parties, and who could have done it better than the ‘Speed of Light’ installations commissioned by Virgin Media? The Bargehouse at the Oxo Tower on South Bank, which is handily round the corner from our offices, is home to the installation. United Visual Artists, a London based art and design practice, were commissioned to create the installation that would invoke in the viewer a sense of the “magic” involved in fibre optic communication. We weren’t disappointed. As well as the entrancing collection of light beams (148 lasers, no less) and noises covering four floors of industrial space, its especially fun to have a play with the light display which, as you enter, asks probing questions which you answer into a microphone. Your voice then travels through fibre optic cables to trigger more light craziness throughout the building. Why not check out some of our footage on FlickR.