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.

just dance 2

Just Dance 2 was launched with a bang as we all got down and got groovy in Soho with the team from Ubisoft. With support from both the 47,000+ loyal fans grooving together on Facebook and the veritable chorus line of bloggers we choreographed into action, Neoco helped the Wii game debut at #1 in the Wii chart (beating Wii Party and it’s Xfactor advertisng!) and #3 in the all-platform game charts over its first weekend.

Prior to the launch Neoco had been keeping the Facebook fans engaged using bespoke Facebook apps, a “Fan of the Week” loyalty program and regular content updates, including information about new songs for the game. Top fans were given free games and goodies to keep them dancing and Ubisoft have also taken the game on the road with the Just Dance Disco Bus student tour, visiting London, Sheffield, Manchester and Birmingham.

Our blogger outreach program has been working overtime to get in touch not only with gamers and music lovers but also parents and fitness fans as we get the message out. Everyone loves the game when they get their hands on it, so we’ve giving out plenty of review copies to make sure everyone gets to play.

Join the Facebook fun here

Couldn't find a good image to represent HTML5 so went for the 'Dramatic Gopher'

But here’s the rub. HTML5 is still under development, people are still arguing over whether there should be a space between “HTML” and “5″ or not, and any current implementations could possibly change in the future. HTML5 is expected to reach Candidate Recommendation sometime in 2012, and finally become a W3C Recommendation sometime in 2022!

Having said that many browsers are implementing lot’s of the proposed features of HTML5 such as canvas, the video element, and new semantic blocks such as <nav>, <footer> and <section>

And it is the video element we are interested in here. With the popularity of Apple’s iPhone and iPad devices, sites that use a lot of video are left with a problem. They are probably using Flash to display their video, and as you may well know Flash is not supported on these devices. HTML5 video is however.

There are a number of implementations of HTML5 video around on the web, some of the best are:
Projekktor (a free HTML5 video player) ()
Video JS (we used a version of this implemention using the Vimeo skin)
SublimeVideo by Jilion (not yet available but will be free for non-commercial use)

The problem now is that while HTML5 video is supported on The latest versions of safari/firefox/opera (and the BETA of IE9), it is not yet supported by internet explorer or older versions of those browsers. We also have the issue that the different browsers support different video formats.

I won’t go into details about the difference between video formats and containers, and which browsers support which formats (see the table on Wikipedia), suffice to say, if you wanted to support HTML5 in all available browsers, you could conceivably have to upload 4 versions of every video on your site – Ogg Theora, H.264, VP8(WebM) and Flash FLV as a fallback.

If you decide that this is the route you want to go down then Camen Design have a great post entitled Video for Everybody that you should check out. I would also recommend reading the excellent video on the web article on the Dive into HMTL5 site.

We decided on a different approach for one of our clients. We didn’t want to force them to upload 4 different files for every video on the site, and we were perfectly happy with playing video through flash on the main website. We just wanted to add support for their videos on Apple’s mobile devices, the iPhone and iPad, requiring that for every video we had a Flash FLV and an MP4 version. It was then a simple case of checking the useragent and serving the MP4 via the video element to apple mobile devices, and the flash version to everyone else.

One thing to remember is that the iPhone supports a maximum video resolution of 640×480, and videos over this size do not play (Arstechnica reckon you can get away with up to a 720×576 resolution, but i’ll leave that to you to play with)

Using this simple method we can ensure that video content is accessible for everyone viewing the site, including those using Apple’s mobile devices. And this accessibility is key for engaging audiences. With so many people using mobile devices to browse now, it’s important you capture the audience when they are interested – as chances are they will not be coming back on their PC to check out that video that didn’t load on their phone.

If we got together we could make brown babies

There is a tabletop game called Risk! I cannot quite remember all the territories but I think the most difficult to win with was the Russians. Fighting a war on so many fronts was a costly business and often the death of many a player. It’s seems clear that Google never played Risk! as their purchase of YouTube was much like buying the Russian territory in the game – a relentless battle on many fronts that drains resources. But if there was ever an organisation with a war chest big enough to to take the ‘risk’ then it would have to be Google. With some of the brightest minds pouring over the YouTube business looking for revenue models, they have done well to at least stem some of the flow if not plug it entirely. With that we’ve also seen an ascent (?) taking YouTube from ‘Poacher to Gamekeeper‘ and this continues with the (very discreet) launch of their new video rental service.

This is a HUGE piece of news due to the potential impact of this business model succeeding.

last seen wearing a T-shirt that read "I killed Blockbuster Video"

First, there is the competitive marketplace that already exists in this sector. Netflix is the major player here but there are many more like LoveFilm (UK) or the new Hulu service. The issue for those guys is the sheer size of YouTube’s audience which should steam roll them and mean it starts with a significant advantage.

Taking a bite out of Apple

Then there is the already existing rental service of iTunes. This is a big player too but Apple benefits from a large community of advocates (sometimes against reason) who will remain loyal. But this is not the biggest fear for Apple or potential ‘win’ for Google. That comes when we move to future technology. Let’s consider the YouTube rental service does well and picks up momentum. It would be very logical to build a YouTube Android phone…

take me to your iPhone

Android is already hotly tipped to take over the iPhone as the number one smartphone. There is no doubt it can win on units but what about the service. I’ve long said that Apple stands head and shoulders over it’s rivals because of the iTunes platform. It is more reliable, intuitive and ‘ingrained’ with the audience than any other store (including Ovi). But a YouTube Android phone changes that game. Imagine YouTube start serving all music (with optional videos) too. Now with an API on my phone (or dedicated handset) I could stream (on tether to my phone) a massive library of my music and video content. This becomes a major selling point for Google (and their partners like HTC) whilst really eating in to the iTunes dependency of some user. Consider, that I could then also easily share my playlists with friends or arrange to watch a movie at the same time (in different locations) and chat or skype too. There are a lot of possibilities here and it’s very exciting to see where things go.

argg, me hearties. I love's a good Googlin' on the high seas!

Finally, there is the irony element. Forget the potential here, let’s look at the service being a success and YouTube creating original content for their audience. Pretty much every online video service has done this at one point or another. You then have to consider the irony of YouTube creating original content which will be ripped and pirated by the audience and uploaded for free around the web – maybe even on another future YouTube. And is that the point when we recognise YouTube has finally come of age?

NB. I couldn’t put all this in and not mention Blockbuster Video. What has happened to them and where will this leave them?

"I used to be a somebody..."

Watch the sad Nestle employees as they see off this chocolate wonder…

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kozh2TPeebs]

…but what’s this? Has someone inserted a coin in the StreetFighter machine? Do we have a New Challenger? What is this unknown wonder called KitKat Chunky Caramel?

I went to the Warhol’s exhibition yesterday at the Southbank Centre and I truly loved it! I especially loved the letters and invites sent to him that he kept in his time capsule: fashionable gallery openings, letters from young boys – offering to be models and perhaps join his entourage of Warhol’s superstars – friends reminding him how fabulous he was. It doesn’t get any more diva than this!

Warhol and his work was camp as Christmas with all the excesses that may come with that festive period (not including food). I love the way he was able to market himself and make the Warhol experience so complete: paintings, drawings, films, composed photographs, TV, contact sheets, Polaroids, booth pictures, even cardboard boxes silkscreen on wood!

I am a great admirer of his talent to make people buy into his ‘iconicity’ whilst he was alive – I think I secretly wish i could have been able to be part of his entourage. I would have moved to NYC to make it happen if I had had the chance to live in his time and be included in his cliquey group.

The Hayward Gallery has organised a video competition coinciding with the Warhol exhibition – 15 Seconds Of Fame. Neoco has created the website and widget that showcases the best videos entered in the competition at www.15secs.tv. The curator of the Hayward Gallery will choose the winners and their videos will be showcased at the entrance of the Warhol exhibition.

The competition is open until the 2nd of January 2009 and anyone can submit their 15 second video. Best of luck to everyone who enters.

We’ve just won the pitch to create a new design for global website Contiki.com. Contiki are the worldwide leader in vacations for 18-35 year olds, and we are really looking forward to working on this fun and exciting project.

We are going to be implementing a community focused concept to the site, which we developed alongside Contiki’s internal team. The site will embrace the strong community that exists around the Contiki brand and facilitate its growth inline with the website and the brand as a whole. The site will be enhanced by a raft of 2.0 functionality including Twitter feeds, image and video sharing, social bookmarking and more.

As well as creating the design, we will also deliver the front end build, working closely with Contiki’s development team located on America’s West Coast.

As usual we’ll be sure to keep you posted when the site re-launches.

The possibilities are endless, and could open up a whole new set of opportunities for viral marketing. Check out the instructional video, or check out the example below:

[youtube=http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=CYlUcXs5xGQ&feature=iv]

New research by the IPA has shown that almost a third of people between the age of 15 to 25 have watched TV via the internet. And around 18% of people aged between 25 and 64 (a very broad ‘old people’ category or what?!) had too.

The IPA Touchpoints report surveyed over 5,000 people and also looked at mobile behaviour. It was found that 30% of 15 to 24 year olds watch video clips on their phones, with 13% of all mobile users doing so.

Jim Marshall, chairman of the IPA Media Futures Group, said, ” the young are still driving the take-up and use of digital media and new technology, however, the older age groups are also moving steadily towards greater adoption.” Personally, I would have thought that more than a third of 15 to 25 year olds would have watched TV online, but I suppose if this statistic was expressed as a number than a percentage it would seem greater.

Just as an extra update – overall broadband penetration now stands at 73% of all UK adults, with internet usage at an average of 45 minutes on weekdays and just over an hour at weekends.

TokBox, the web-based video chat tool is bringing video chat to Facebook via their TokBox Facebook application. TokBox’s current app is just like any other chat facility, but their new functionality takes them into a new league – enabling users to have a video chat within their Facebook chat.

TokBox’s web-based platform is a Flash-enabled browser plugin. It makes the video chat process really easy to use – there are not downloads or any difficult setups – as long as you have a working webcam or computer microphone, you are ready to go…

You just need to install the TokBox plugin for Facebook (which is only supported for Firefox at the moment). Underneath each of your friends’ names there will be a link which will give you the option to start a video chat with them. Then you just need to tell the app that you allow access to the webcam, and you’re off. As with all TokBox video chat conversations, you’ll see your screen on the left, and the screen of your friend on the right (so it will look like below…)

TokBox also allows you hold multiple video chats at once, with each chat in its own window (like standards chats).