Tag: Consumer Technology

In December 2009 Facebook made a few adjustments to its formal policy on competitions and promotions which you no doubt will have heard about. The net result was that promotions on Facebook can’t hold: Photo contests which require profile photo manipulation Status updates which require posting updates for entry Only contest entries once a user has become a fan of your page A couple of my clients have been liaising directly with Facebook over this and we have found out that you can actually hold a competition on your page if you support it will £5,000 worth of Facebook advertising. ... Read more

Those of you that read my blog regularly will know I have been working on a couple of exciting internet projects during the last six months in my quest to become the next Steve Jobs (Joke obviously). One of these said projects is TheFashionPixie.com which I wrote about way back in December. The idea behind TheFashionPixie is people send in details of the latest retail sales they have either seen on the high street, or in their local independent stores, and they are collated in one online community. We then share all of this useful fashion based information with the ... Read more

This weekend I really witnessed the power of Twitter and social media and it surprised me for the first time in a long time. On Saturday I was busy at home cutting the grass and doing my fatherly duties, when my mother turned up at our house with two beautiful and friendly dogs. She found them roaming the streets on one of Harrogate’s busiest roads. My mum had a good look around for the owners but couldn’t find anyone who knew who they belonged too and sadly they didn’t have any collars on either. So she brought them to our ... Read more

I am an administrator on quite a few Facebook fan pages. I use the platform with some of my clients depending on whether the platform fits the client’s communications strategy. There are good things and bad things about Facebook. A good thing is it is constantly improving and looking to make its experience better. A bad thing is it often doesn’t communicate its changes well with its users, which often results in groups springing up displaying their hatred of its latest version. I always wonder why it doesn’t supply a simple two-minute video explaining its new features like so many ... Read more

It is no surprise to any of us that the housing market, although picking up a bit in recent months, is still suffering from the dreaded R word. Many first time buyers have been struggling to get mortgages from banks and even long term property owners are finding it costly to sell. Well things might be on the up as some clever little chaps (which I met recently) have come up with a new concept on private property sales and buying or renting for that matter. Bethemiddleman.com does exactly what it says on the tin, it allows the user to ... Read more

The most exciting DJ product to enter the world of DJing in the last ten years was arguably the Pioneer CDJ 1000, well now Pioneer has launched its younger brother with more bells and whistles than ever. These new turntables have a mind blowing array of features and software. I had two CDJ 1000 MK 2’s and I have played extensively on the MK 3s, so I can’t wait to get my hands on these. Duncan one of my good friends over on the Rising Music blog comments: “With one these decks coming in at roughly the price of two ... Read more

Are you looking to build up your Facebook friends or overall fan base on one of your pages? If you are, you will be pleased to hear that you don’t have to work hard on building better relationships with people anymore because you can now buy friends instead. Yes you heard me correctly, according to Advertising Age you can buy them in groups of thousands – how wrong is that? So you can now go out and buy yourself, or your client, some friends to become fans of your pages. Advertising Age reports: “The folks at online ad firm uSocial ... Read more

So last night Google announced that it is launching a new operating system to rival Microsoft. Google started life as a simple search engine focused on the quality of search results, with minimal advertising on its home page, and it grew its user base through good old word-of-mouth. Today it is a monster brand which has expanded into a plethora of web based areas which help most office based workers do their jobs. Google’s statement reads: “Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS. We’re designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up ... Read more

Working in the magical world of social media, we are regularly looking to create accounts for clients across various social platforms and often – it is a well known client – we find that a particular account has been already taken by a cyber squatter. To ensure a client’s identities are easier and quicker to find you need to identify a common username across multiple social media sites. I have been using a tool which does this called namechk. Basically it’s a service which allows you to type a username and check for its availability. Brian Solis has also referred ... Read more

I received an outreach approach this morning about a new search engine which has been launched to rival the likes of Google. Oparla, which pays users to search, claims to use social media technology to provide a more accurate search. Visitors can rank sites, comment on results and message other users asking for advice. The release states: “Oparla will reward one user every day with a cash bonus of up to £1000. The lottery like system will be based on account holders signing in and using the search engine to find web pages and images online. Oparla’s interface uses a ... Read more