Tomorrow 1.59pm AEST: The most popular minute on a webpage ever?
Just wondering… since the graphical web kicked off in the early 90s, has there even been a single web page with likely to have this many people looking at it at exactly the same time?
Final seconds of a very popular Superbowl?
OJ’s verdict announcement?
A Jobs iAnnouncement?
The moments directly after the major events on September 11…?
I doubt it. There have been highly concentrated periods of interest on different sites over the years but I can’t think of anything quite like this from media metric point of view. I wonder if they’ll have a big advertiser bring this moment to the world? What would the value be for a page takeover for 20 million highly engaged people at one time? Even if they sold it for 15 mins it would have a big impact on Facebook’s annual revenue..
As Douglas Rushkoff notes, “This is more than 200 million users, already engaged, simultaneously scrambling in the greatest territory dash since the Oklahoma Territory’s land run of 1889.” (he also bemoans the increased visibility of your new Facebook name within Google.. but that’s probably the whole point..).
I’ll see you there. Just don’t grab “Mister Dobalina Mister Bob Dobalina” before I can.
UPDATE: ok.. apparently not: “FACEBOOK said more than three million people registered user names in the first 12 hours after the social networking site offered members the chance to claim a personalised internet address.”
… one of my faves from the recent E3 announcements. The other thing I’m quite looking forward to is Last.FM on Xbox 360 - endless intelligent/social music to the lounge.
The title of this article just caught my eye - “Agencies Should Be Defined by What They Know, Not What They Make“. It speaks to the way agencies are judged and, thus, how they operate, staff up and act. If an agency is set up and motivated by the need to produce something in a response to a client approach - that’s what they’ll recommend. If you have 10 people sitting out the back waiting to code up some PHP, there’s a good chance that the recommendation will be stacked with PHP. And the old chestnut, if you believe that your prospective clients need to see awards on your shelf then you will recommend a solution that wins those awards (and not always the effectiveness statues). I’ve always thought that the strategy and advice portion of the response to a problem should be separate to the fulfillment of the advice. How else do you ensure objectivity?
Of course the other side of this whether clients can see the value of this advice before it turns into something tangible. In my experience, many can, because they can see its relative neutrality. It’s a little like having a financial adviser that doesn’t take commissions. I wouldn’t have thought that any of this was rocket surgery but I can still hear the voice of the chairman of a Melbourne-based Ad icon telling me “You can’t charge for planning!”. I suppose if you see the creation of advertising as the answer to every business problem, that’s true…
Anyhow, the article at Ad Age focuses on different aspects of how agencies should operate to survive and even thrive - collaboration, social science, conversation etc. But I think he hits of the nail on the head with:
My conviction is that advertising agencies should become a community full of intellectually curious people.
Nice. Let’s get curious.
Turn off the lights. Plug in the big speakers. Play a short horror game.
ThePath——StoryTrailer from Tale of Tales on Vimeo.
Not easy but good to aspire to…
From Esther via a Hobart book shop.
What a stupidly good name.
“Internet sleuth superannuation reports that Namco has filed a new trademark for a game called God Eater. That’s about it, really. The trademark page does refer to it as a game “that may be accessed network-wide by network users via mobile phones and computers,” meaning it might be a downloadable title. We are decidedly not experts of trademark language though, so it’s anyone’s guess.”
From Joystiq.
Emmanuel Dakis: New Media Star
When the Satorialist hit Melbourne on the weekend, the fashionistas waited with baited breath to see where he would surface. Gertrude St? Brunswick St? Racecourse Rd?.. nope, Chapel St. Much to the chagrin of many of the site’s commenters, Scott Schuman headed down to Windsor to see what he could see. What he found was Mr. Emmanuel Dakis, Tailor. Locals will recognise Mr. Dakis from his wood panelled shop, his suits measured in degrees of dapper and his welcoming smile. We popped into the shop at lunchtime and thought we’d show him the photo on front of the Satorialist’s blog in case he hadn’t seen it. He hadn’t, and in fact, didn’t really know what the Satorialist was or where the photos were going to end up after Scott took them.
When we showed Mr Dakis to himself on my mobile, he nodded approvingly and began to tell us about the featured jacket. When his daughter came out from the back of the shop, she asked us what the site was about and we took her through it. I mentioned that the site has 120,000 people look at it every day and more than 3 million each month. Mr. Dakis smiled as his daughter translated this but only in way that suggested this was the audience him and his craft rightly deserved.
Just as Tourism Australia will fund the Satorialist’s trip to Oz to leverage his online influence, so too should the photographer’s subjects benefit from being content for a day. So here’s to you, Emmanual Dakis - tailor of 40 years experience for ladies and gents, invisible mending, leather work, alterations & repairs - and Chapel St, Windsor’s latest new media star!
We’re currently doing some work with InFrame.TV, an arts, design and culture video site. The talented and delightful Matt Hopper creates really interesting profile pieces around local talent that explore the creative process. They’re great short docos that are beginning to get global interest. Check out the feature on Ghost Patrol, a very likable Melbourne-based street artist:
Also look for taxidermists, botanists and collectors in InFrame’s swag of flicks.
I suspect I’m a bit late onto this but the Black Cab Sessions site is a really neat idea, perfectly executed. Raw, up close performances. No Pro Tools or auto tuning here.
The above pic is from Martha Wainright’s performance (which includes the lyric that titled her last album - “I know you’re married but I’ve got feelings too”). Also on the site are The Cool Kids, Fleet Foxes and Bon Iver.
AND Brian Wilson (WATCH!).
Awesome: Black Cab Sessions
Bobba: Pocketsize Virtual World
From Sulake, the makers of Habbo Hotel, comes a mini virtual world designed (mainly) for phones. Apparently there were more than a million beta testers so it’s been run through its paces at scale. Once we get a persistent world that successfully blends microtransactions and mobile downtime, it could get addictive…
See more (and sign up) at Bobbo.com
