As an infant, social media spurred conversations, enabling users across the world to share photos and links. As it progressed into toddler phase, brands jumped on board exploring ways to best communicate with customers. Evolving into a boisterous adolescent in 2011, social media contributed towards riots, social movements and political revolutions as its true power and force gains momentum to create change for individuals, brands, businesses and political regimes across the world.

2012 is the year when social media comes of age.

If it didn’t already, social media will infuence sales in 2012 – ROI will develop and become measurable where marketers continue to seek appropriate methods of accounting for budget spend. Attention currency remains vital in 2012 with brands seeking initiatives that will maximise time spent with the business. We run down Part 1 of the future of social media and creative technology for 2012.

Facebook becomes the media:
Social media became the medium of choice for citizen journalists. With the onslaught of daily updates about political crisis in Egypt and the Arab Springs, the immediacy of social media is forcing major media organisations to change the way they approach news. In the recent case of Indian student Subhash Bidve killed in Salford on Boxing Day, his father learnt of his death via Facebook before police had time to issue a formal statement, highlighting just how vital a role the media outlets play in how we receive and consume news stories today.

Video streaming services such as UStream and Bambuster allow citizen journalists to broadcast live video connected via Twitter or Facebook, used for the first time providing updates for the Occupy movement both in the St Paul’s occupation and Occupy Wall Street.

Often removing the need for a reporter on the ground, these services offer a window to the world, a pair of eyes and point of view in every city around the globe to broadcast from.

Social commerce:
Social shopping and the concept of fashion entrepreneurs will develop into 2012, with services such as ShopMyLabel offering commission based affiliate sales from users own personalised storefronts on Facebook. Expect to see bloggers making the transition from tastemakers to businesses, as they maximise on their following to sell accessories and DIY fashion to fans. Astraea jewellery by blogger Penelope Armstrong of Fashion Fade is sold via Facebook and Paypal as an ideal outlet to begin F-commerce.

Apps including The Fancy and Svpply bring together that aesthetically pleasing Etsy storefront to a social platform as product-sharing networks, where items are pinned and ‘fancied’ with seamless transactional links and clickthroughs, expect to see these apps become especially effective for generating exposure for smaller independent brands with great products.   Highly successful for image-led fashion and homewares brands such as Aubin and Wills and Burberry, expect to see tech savvy retailers experimenting with these platforms in 2012.

News aggregation servcies:
Slotting in nicely with curation of the Internet, aggregators such as Flipboard and Zine tap into 2012’s trend for content curation and discovery. As social media develops and users relationship with it matures, along with the number of friends and people following, it is becoming increasingly difficult to sort the wheat from the chaff on first glance at a feed. These services pull together content from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and Google Reader to visually bring to life content in personalised magazine-like formats.

Expect to see a rise in the use of list making services such as Listorious to order content. Despite Facebook Subscribe and groups, the average user does not have time to organise their feed. Aggregator services overcome this by pulling together the best of the web in a visually appealing way.

Gamification:
The term has been bandied about will come of age with intelligent, location-based applications that encourage mass participation with thought-out content that truly engages users. Applications such as SCVNGR will direct users around real-world maps via their device, performing challenges and tasks – either for fun or sponsored by a brand to win prizes.

Examples of this in action, connecting the online world with offline works especially well for reinventing activities such as going for a walk. Natural Lands Trust used SCVNGR recently to encourage kids to engage with the natural woodlands, plotting treasure trails, competitions and activities accessed via phones and tablets to encourage kids to get out more.

Augmented reality:
Image layering and gaming using smartphone cameras wil become more commonplace, as applications explore ways to innovate in tying AR layers to real world objects. Apps such as Stiktu allow users to create augmented reality image layers that tied to real world images so that whenever and wherever the original image is scanned, the attributed image will display.

Instagram and the Museum of London made waves in 2011 with StreetMuseum, expect to see more informational AR services used within art galleries and museums as personalised tours and exhibition experiences via mobile are shared with Facebook and Twitter. The trick here is how to weave augmented reality into branded communications – expect some hits and misses as the technology finds its feet in 2012.

Keep your eyes peeled for Part 2 of our Need to Know: Future of Social Media & Creative Tech 2012 series next week.

On first look, scavenger hunts may seem gimmicky but are in fact ideal for brands in terms of audience engagement. Especially good at capturing attention to raise brand profiles, scavenger hunts can present brands as pioneers in marketing via new technology, able to deliver top-notch content to tech-savvy users and creating a fair few column inches in the process.

Working in teams connected via social media, players use services such as SCVNGR as location based gaming platform, to pick up clues. Check out how it works here.

Various brands, from fabric softeners to cars, have executed scavenger campaigns to get customers talking and interacting with via mobile devices. After all, what better way to gain deep consumer engagement than with a game?

“What we’ve learned is that when brands launch, they can get people to engage with them for 9 to 21 minutes per play,” says Chris Mahl, senior vice president of marketing at SCVNGR. “They often pull their friends in, too.”

Partnered with Google Maps, SCVNGR has over 320 million places in its database with a challenge set at each destination. Brands have the opportunity to script their own challenges, for example “find something blue” or “eat the fish dish” to gain points which can be exchanged for money off vouchers or specialised services.

Starbucks and Lady Gaga – SRCH:

Starbucks teamed up with Lady Gaga for SRCH as a digital scavenger hunt filled with puzzles and challengers for participants to win prizes provided by Polaroid. Activating various time-delayed images and clue trails, the games were leaked via a QR code that took users to the clue landing page where the game kicked off.

Starbucks and Gaga received over 300k visits and 23k game registrations were made during the three week period the campaign ran. Considering the average time for the first person to crack the clue was 21 minutes, SRCH highlights the high levels of engagement and attention currency spent on the game.

Over 20k posts talked about the game across various social channels, continuing the hype, along with media coverage from Mashable, CNN, PSFK and USA Today, all with zero paid media support.

Cathay Pacific SCVNGR Sweeps:

Cathay Pacific injected a shot of fun into the usually tedious business of flying, by introducing games linked to specific flight routes and destinations. With the chance to win 10 trips to Hong Kong for the top scores, the SCVNGR game ran at Boston, San Fransico, New York and Chicago airports.

“Travel is about getting out, seeing and doing things, and living life,” said Dennis Owen, Cathay Pacific’s vice president, marketing, Americas. “We want people to get into that spirit for this sweepstakes.”

The Gateway to China challenge required players to snap a photo of themselves at the entrance to Chicago’s Chinatown and the Comfy Seat challenged players to snap themselves in the airline’s new business class  seat on display at Terminal 3 of Chicago O’Hare International Airport.

All photo challenges and activity could then be shared via Facebook and Twitter to maximise the reach of the campaign and so friends could see what the

Back to school with Topshop and SCVNGR:

As the first UK collaboration, Topshop used SCVNGR to launch their recent student lock-in campaign in university towns with a fashionably styled digital hunt around stores. Choosing the reward they want – either 20% off in store of £500 shopping spree – customers were challenged to complete tasks including snapping a picture of their favourite ‘back to college’ outfit and linking products to trends.

“We’re always looking for new and innovative ways to engage our customers,” said Mary Homer, Managing Director of Topshop. “Following the popularity of SCVNGR in the US we wanted to offer our student customers the ability to interact with our brand, on and off-line in a more fun and engaging way.”

Chrysler Dodge ‘Search engine for the real world’:

Under the campaign heading ‘Search engine for the real world’ Chrysler Dodge has people all over the US searching for three hidden cars this September to coincide with its pitch as the Dodge Journey being the most adventurous car on the market.

Linked to YouTube, players could watch 24/7 feeds of the cars on their travels in an attempt to track down their locations. When the cars were found, players got to keep them as a huge incentive to keep playing.

Dodge Journey | Search | Commercial

Lasting just 17 days, the hunt generated over 1million YouTube views and 300,000 people watched the live feed for an average of 25 minutes.

The verdict:

As an innovative and highly engaging form of marketing, scavenger hunts present an ideal way of linking digital content with real-world objects and places. As a call to action, the hunts and challenges offer a gaming edge that can be shared across social networks across the world to attract more players and attention for the brand. With SCVNGR leading the way, expect to see more UK based brands using the location based gaming platform to create original and engaging campaigns in 2012.

Top 10 Twitter tips to improve your reach

1) TweetDeck:

If you need to manage multiple Twitter accounts, regularly run keyword searches and track and monitor hashtags, TweetDeck is the ideal Twitter client to use. In desktop, web and mobile app formats, TweetDeck’s developers have community managers in mind, with all platforms covered for easily viewable results 24/7. With its black, white and yellow interface it also gains serious bonus points for looking like Nasa Control.

2) PeerIndex:

Mapping out the internet via a series of complicated algorithms, PeerIndex identifies opinion leaders and tastemakers across your networks. Return on influence is key for brands’ social media presence and this easy way of rating reputation gives you an indication of who to target with products or services to spread the word.

3) Twitter Grader:

Like many social measurement tools, Twitter Grader is a free tool that grades your usage behaviour and influence on the platform. As a quick indication of the type of user, Twitter Grader is the perfect at-a-glance tool generating keyword tag clouds and a health-check for your account.

4) Klout:

Sign in with your Twitter account and Klout will analyse your usage to produce a Klout score which can be compared to others’ in your network. Highlighting your most common topics of interest and the level of influence you have over your followers, Klout is an insightful way of comparing social media influence between users.

5) Alert Rank:

Used by PRs, SEOs and online marketers to identify authoritative buzz in their key sectors, Alert Rank is a time saving tool that highlights points of interest to follow up, so you never miss a story again. Jumping on breaking news, use Alert Rank to raise your authority and get your name heard using associated hashtags.

6) FYITag:

A one-stop-shop social media planner to schedule Tweets, links, Facebook messages and more via an easy to view calendar application. FYITag has the time-saving option to post to multiple sites from one social media dashboard.

7) FavStar:

Discover the best of Twitter with FavStar as a nifty tool that highlights favourite tweets as points of interest. Displaying personal favourites or favourites of selected tweeters, it acts as a quality control button generating key quotes, profound musings, quips and revelations from your followers.

8 ) Listorious:

Great for finding experts in a given field, Listorious scrapes all public Twitter lists and compiles them by their tagged keywords in an easily searchable  format. With the ability to ask each member on the list a question you can save key lists to your own Twitter account.

9) Twibes:

Grouping Twitter users together into tribes of tweeters or ‘twibes’  brands is useful for gaining an insight in what’s going on around that topic. Whether you join the conversation or listen to users, Twibes is as a vital tool that can easily tap into enthusiasts to build  solid relationships with users.

10) Mentionmapp:

Find out who  interacts with who by entering a username into Mentionmap. This nifty then creates an interactive mindmap of Twitter user mentions including hashtags to identify key influencers in that person’s network.

…And two more for luck. Not solely Twitter based but great for managing multiple social media networks.

11) Vocus:

Vocus is a huge media database of journalists, bloggers and key-industry contacts that can be utilised by your brand to monitor news and distribute press releases. With easily trackable features you can listen, measure and engage with content to see what is successful and where opportunities lie in the market. You have to pay, but give the test-drive a spin and see if you think it is worth the investment.

12) Sprout Social:

Indicating audience demographics, group trends,  buzz-words and taste-makers in each sector, Sprout Social presents tip-top analysis results in a visually pleasing way. The 30 day free trial may just sway you.

Capturing the zeitgeist of our generation – all footage was filmed on the 24^th of July 2010 – Life In a Day is a digital time capsule for the kids of the future to unearth via the internet, showing just what it was like to be around in the 21^st century.

Encouraging you to pick up a camera, the BBC2 project aims to portray life a little closer to home, inviting the people of Britain to film their lives over 24 hours. Record your thoughts, daily life, events and aspirations and upload to the Britain In a Day channel on YouTube. As a snapshot of time it shows as humans, just how weird, wonderful and ultimately different we are to each other.

Led by Ridley Scott as executive producer, the user-generated project comes as part of a digital curation drive by the BBC with a focus on archiving life as we know it. With a list of personalities including Stephen Fry, Ewan McGregor and Noel Clarke involved, the footage will be edited into a documentary premiered in cinemas and broadcast on BBC2 ahead of the London Olympics next year.

‘Four nations. 24 hours. 61 million perspectives’ is the tagline as the BBC pushes to celebrate, whether by ethnic background, religion or class, the diversity of Britain. This social project will make film history as part of a wider picture about what it means to be British, a topic under much discussion at the moment.

The BBC suggest considering the following questions when filming to make your entry truly personal:

What do you see when you look out of your window and how does this make you feel?

What do you like or dislike about the UK?

What makes  you happy and where are you happiest?

What are your vices and guilty pleasures?

What is the most important thing in your life at the moment?

Check the tutorials for dos and don’ts to get your creative juices flowing. Get involved on November 12^th by filming your day, no matter how amateur, and simply uploading to http://www.youtube.com/britaininaday.

What do you think of the project? What would you film to represent a day in your life? Is this type of curation the way forward in ensuring we preserve the memory of today for future generations? As usual , let us know by leaving a comment.

First off Siri is a he and an annoying semi British-American he at that. Although you can change the accent to the more soothing tones of a lady friend, even then you need to adopt a fair share of Americanisms and swot up on your US English to be able to communicate with Siri effectively.

Reviews said Siri had problems with accents and although I may drop the occasional T and have the charming trait of mispronouncing the odd word with a Saarf London twang,  I am by no stretch of the imagination a mumbling, ineloquent burbler. But yet very often Siri still has trouble deciphering what I’m saying as the below debacle illustrates.

A simple request to call my mum, Siri translate to the Americanism ‘mom’, realises I don’t have a contact under that name, then attempts to spout something about Italian when I try to tell it that my mother’s name is Mum.

Siri  favours the personal touch; it calls you by your name a LOT. Sometimes endearing, often annoying and slightly off-putting, your name usually appears with a “Sorry” preceding it indicating Siri’s inability to complete the requested task. Hmph.

Saying that, if you’ve ever fancied changing your name and couldn’t face the legal and administrative turmoil of the Deed Poll method, just tell Siri and it’ll call you whatever you like from then on in. Get creative with your new aliases, there’s definitely fun to be had on this one.

One of Siri’s main pains is its inability to access small businesses in the UK. If Siri could run my social life as well as my worklife, it’d be an absolute winner. But until Apple teams up with a listings provider in the UK to provide searches for businesses such as shops, galleries, eateries, drinking establishments – basically anywhere you’d actually would want to go – Siri remains slightly lacking. Although you can bypass this by instructing Siri to search for places via Google maps, it would be nice to have the full set of features US customers have. Come on Yell!

Siri, it turns out, is at early stages of development; contstantly learning. I did wonder in some situations whether it would be quicker to get a human, ie me, to do the job myself, but that’s no fun right? In fact New York based film maker Casey Neistat has done just that, pairing his real assistant off against Siri for some pretty entertaining viewing.

The verdict: Maybe I was expecting too much from, let’s face it, a voice recognition device, but bonding with Siri is like talking to an apologetic and very placid old gentleman permanently wearing a wry smile – interesting, a little inappropriate and with a long way to go before he’s completely clued up.

After our day of failed bonding, I realised Siri is good for organising the work side of things just less so for the actual fun stuff. Bummer. So last night when Siri and I were tucked up in bed, I thought I’d butter him up…

“I love you.” This is the profound reply Siri returned:

Don’t say I didn’t try.

For more giggles on Siri’s responses, check out shitsirisays.com

If you haven’t seen Tesco’s subway shop made up entirely of QR codes in South Korea, check out the video below.

Making the most of a captive audience of commuters waiting for the next train, Tesco invited passers-by to shop the store by scanning the code of the virtual shelf. Combining convenience with intuitive technology, items were added straight to the customers’ shopping bag and delivered to their home.

The Tesco campaign is a prime example of QR codes being used effectively. QR codes however are not a new phenomenon, where before a specialised reader was needed to scan the code, now the proliferation of smartphones have raised both accessibility and innovation for purpose, changing the way we interact with the additional content the QR code provides.

Likened to the symbols left on the side of buildings by homeless US migrant workers, QR codes have the potential to act as a key to unlock contents of a building. These travellers would use symbols as a secret visual language to communicate with others in the know. Fast forward 100 years and QR codes do the same for a digital generation.

Professor Golan Levin from Carnegie Mellon University has developed a piece of software and a range of over 100 messages to stencil QR codes on the sides of buildings and pavements around town. From service related messages; ‘25 minute wait’, ‘free wi-fi’ to sneaky tips and insider knowledge; ‘contraception available’, ‘unexpectedly good coffee’ and ‘dishonest scalpers here’, Levin’s concept is simple, deftly connecting the past with the now. Having previously been used for selling products, Levin liked the idea of repurposing the pixelated pics for social and community use. So I guess the question facing us now is how do you see the QR code evolving?

Google have yet to announce it, so it is still in the early stages. However we particularly like the new search icon, a little heart.

Looking out the windows of Neoco HQ, thunder seemed an appropriate search topic; check out the results page below to get an idea how it works:

So go give it a try, What do you love?

We all know the pecking order of the world’s leaders – based on how powerful their countries are.

But if recent events have shown anything, power doesn’t necessarily equal popular. So what if the world’s leaders were judged on their popularity instead? Well the guys over at GlobalPost decided to do just that. They looked at the global balance of power based on the popularity of the world’s sitting heads of state by measuring their Facebook friends, likes and Twitter followers.

We think the results are pretty interesting, and while unsurprisingly Obama still comes up on top (with 30 million likes and followers!), there are some notable inclusions on the list. Check out the interactive map below (edited to remove the Obama effect), and head over to the GlobalPost site for the regional breakdowns and other data.

If Ikea made sci-fi manuals…
Exactly what is says – a visual mash-up which re-imagines four classic sci-fi films and TV shows in the unique style of an Ikea DIY instruction pamphlet.
http://www.collegehumor.com/article/6500868/sci-fi-ikea-manual

Ikea: Bättre Sömn Åt Alla
Beautiful site design from Ikea.
http://vaggvisor.kampanj.ikea.se

My Anniversary Gift to Lisa
A love story via desktop folders. Gentlemen, the game has just been upped.

Tetris Sugar
Something to amuse yourself with while you’re waiting for the kettle to boil.
http://www.behance.net/gallery/Tetris-Sugar/888331

Abby Road Cam
For live streaming of obsessive Beatles fans annoying car drivers, 24/7.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/burnred/abbey-road-cam-281t