danwtmoon

UPDATE

So in the last 24 hours I made a conscious effort to use and fall in love with Foursquare... I didn't. I became a mayor and got some more badges.... Yay...

The thing is badges just aren't anywhere near the social currency of a card in Flook for example... My friend @reyes said it best:

"Finding myself learning more and more about London as I hunt out the perfect flook" - http://twitter.com/reyes/status/7786945085

Also theres this from @nicolariordan - "I've found some great hidden pubs and restaurant near me with it"

Flook cards are more analogous to the human conversation around location... I don't ever remember texting or calling people to "checkin" and if I did I'm pretty sure they'd respond "are you drunk and / or why do I care?"

And so today, despite me picking up another snazzy badge from Foursquare (http://foursquare. com/user/danwtmoon/badges/506207), I'm deleting the app and focusing on location browsing.

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Being going through an early spring clean across all areas of life recently... I've previously blogged about my app cleanup on iPhone taking me down to ~50 from ~120...

Since then I've been in the frame of mind of only retaining apps that I am actually using most, if not all, days for more value than just because I can...

Today Foursquare is under close scrutiny... I've previously had Brightkite, Rummble, Gowalla, Foursqaure and Flook all on my iPhone. today I have only Flook and Foursqaure.

Short background of the others history is that Rummble has a UI that causes me tears and is too buggy (shame as having met @andrewjscott, I know the guy is smart and passionate but unfortunately doesn't have an infinite army of developers to execute what on paper is a good product); Brightkite has gone the way of the dodo given I don't see value of pure checking in and so Gowalla / Foursquare killed it; Gowalla was preferred over 4sq until they went *everywhere*...

Flook has been omni-present on my iPhone since being on the beta.

So 4sq is under scrutiny today.. I'm going to take extra care to checkin everywhere and look for tips... At the end of the day if I feel better for it then it will stay... If not it goes and leaves on Flook. I found it interesting that @scobleizer seemed to praise 4sq becuase of tips... Well with 4sq, at least in LDN, there's very little tipping and if that's what floats your boat Robert then Flook is just the tip part of 4sq minus the novelty of checking in..

Flook FYI is under no threat at all. It's the perfect location app and the reason I state this as fact is that it has no hype.. You know what I mean? All the hyped products suffer because actually their biggest selling point was promise from the hype not the *actual* product.
Looking at my twitter stream I see people like @reyes flooking away and genuinely getting value of the awesome location browser. Do I see love for the novelty of checking in and being a mayor? No

So Flook rocks (if you have iPhone get from app store / http://flook.it and 4sq is under threat...
I'm checking out of checking in

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As most will know there is a little campaign called #ratm4xmas

It started, as far as I know, as a facebook group to get the classis Rage Against The Machine track "Killing In The Name" to be the UK Christmas number instead of the normal X-Factor routine.

Awesome.

Not only is the track a personal favourite of mine, the principles behind it rock.

For the last few years the Christmas number one has become a farce and has therefore lost any sense of the importance it once had for us Brits.

Although the track itself may not be the "people's choice", the campaign shows a large number of people would like some choice.

One can only hope this inspires other artists to perhaps re-connect with the idea of crafting an apt tune for Xmas so that the tradition of the Christmas number one is once again exciting and meaningful.

There's lots to be said with regards to the power of social media in the success of the #ratm4xmas campaign too. I'm sure in hindsight many experts will analyse and give insight on this area... My two cents is that it proves a point about social media connecting global niches.

Anyways another key point to raise is charity. All the £ made from the X-Factor goes to the "music" companies behind it.

Most, if not all, of the £ from the spike in revenues for Rage Against The Machine will go to homeless charity, Shelter.

So in summary if you'd like the UK chistmas number one to have meaning again I suggest buying "Killing In The Name" in order to inspire artists for next year and help a charity in the process.

Howevere if you like X-Factor to always be number and no £ going to charity then please do buy that single and implicitly be responsible for Tiny Tim's death ;)

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For those that know me, I am a big (RED) fan and have been since the launch a few years ago (I stumbled across it by being a U2 fan and as you may know Bono is the co-founder)

Over the years I've accumulated (RED) products which now appear in my daily life.

Shoes, clothes, music, iPhone apps and coffee. All of these utilities are (RED) for me.

Today Twitter has gone #red for World Aids Day. Good stuff. I've made my Facebook profile (RED) already and was hoping @joinred would give cause for similar activity, as they have, on Twitter.

With Twitter though, causes come and go. Vast numbers of tweets are sent out at the height of campaigns. I perceive a challenge with such campaigns though in that they're fairly ephemeral with no real long term wins.

With #red I hope this can be different. One of the reasons I've liked (RED) as a proposition is that it's easy.

We all buy Converse, GAP, Armani, Apple, Hallmark, Starbucks and use credit cards etc anyway. We're not bei asked to do something challenging.

It's simply a case of when you buy an Apple iPod Nano, buy the (RED) one and that's it. You've made a massive contribution to solving one of the worlds greatest problems.

This is my hope for Twitter (and Facebook) going #red today. That people don't just use the hashtag and think they've contributed. That when next in Starbucks they pick up the (RED) rewards card (5p from every purchase goes to (RED). If you're in need of a new warm jumper for December make it the (RED) one from GAP.

You're going to buy these things anyway. Make them #red.

Also, it's Christmas as we all know. Make it a Hallmark (RED) card you send. iTunes vouchers are available in (RED) variant.

It's as easy as tweeting #red to actually go (RED).

I really hope this campaign is lasting and not just a forgotten tweet.

PS As well as tweeting #red, do it from @dabr (http://dabr.co.uk) which as far as I know is the inky Twitter client today which has a (RED) skin :)

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I recall hearing the phrase "content is king" many a time in the past few years, especially when I was in heavy with mobile world.

Nearly always in context of Sales & Marketing I never paid too much attention at the time.

In recent years though I've got more involved / exposed by that side of things and have had hands in experience of delivering IPTV to consumers.

From this and other experiences I believe actually that the value of content which is at the heart of many heated debates such as online piracy, is in the context of it's consumption.

What I mean is, there is more value to me in having the nice box and artwork for my Godfather DVD set than if I just had the files.

With the latter the context of the content is that I am on a computer and have the opportunity to spend time watching something.

With the former it's an event. Likely planned. I get to have the box out. Feel the texture, review the artwork and sit back and enjoy the content.

Another example is music. I have no issues in volunteering I am a *massive* U2 fan. I have entire back catalogue, backed up on DVD, on iTunes. This is so that I can listen wherever, whenever through my iPhone / Mac.

However, these days I mainly listen through Spotify. The context of Spotify for me is that I get to have *my* radio station playing. That's of value to me so I'm a premium subscriber.

This is a whole different context to why I pay for individual music (which sums far more than I spend on Spotify) on iTunes.

A hot off the press example is my enjoyment of news content. A fan of the economist I used to be a print subscriber. Somehow that went as I largely read online.

In context of reading online, I felt the economist was analogous to reading BBC (although of a different editorial quality).

Now they have a pay wall. I won't be subscribing online. However I'm tempted to go back to print subscription as the content in context of me having the paper, seeing Kals cartoons in a different quality etc has a value to it.

The content is the same. The context of it's consumption is quite different.

This is also highlights the point about the future of TV etc.. As I said, I've worked with IPTV as part of a triple play operator.

In this area again it's the context of consumpion that sets the value. A video on YouTube is only different to a TV programme because of the context given to it. It's all video at the end of the day.

TV, IPTV, Satellite, iPlayer, YouTube, Vimeo etc it's all video. But the context given to it creates the value.

Vimeo vs YouTube is a great example of creating value out of the context of it's content.

So that's my rambling two cents on why context not content is king.

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So as far as I know there has been and continues to be a recession affecting a vast proportion of the global economy including home here in the UK.

This has meant challenging times and forcing companies to work with less capital and less revenue. All in all not great.

The hope is that things will pick up and sales will lift as demand comes back etc etc

This is apparently our current operating climate.

I say apparently as it seems those in the design / media / PR / web presence sectors (forgive my sweeping catch all but you get the idea of the ilk I'm referring to) seem to not need new business therefore one can only assume they're recession proof.

I come to this conclusion given that over the last six months or so I have probably met, on average, around two people in one of those sectors a week.

How many of them do you think went to any of my sites, pointed out their obvious medicority and suggested how they would make it better?!

Answer = 0

Maybe I'm just being dumb but if I was a web presence expert and I made a contact, one of the things at the top of my list would be... CHECK THEIR CURRENT WEB PRESENCE.

If it wasn't up to scratch in my opinion then I would be pitching for that contacts business.

But that hasn't happened so I can only assume, those in web / design / brand / PR etc just don't need the sales as they're recession proof.

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