Seasonal Greetings to all

Posted by luke on Dec 22, 2008 in blog | 0 comments

We’re taking a break now till the new year, have a great festive season and we’ll see you in January!

is technology changing politics?

Posted by luke on Dec 15, 2008 in off topic | 0 comments

Following on from the Obama blog the other day and having finished 2 books by Patrick Dixon in the last week or so – I’ve been thinking a lot about the future of politics. (Yes, I’m aware I need to get out more)

As the pace of change increases people seem to be looking for things that make them feel like they can make a difference in this uncertain world.

On twitter today, from 10-11am David Cameron was giving a new conference at Reuters, you could ask a question by using the #askdc hashtag*- mine was: “Do you think that the strength of single issue politics has made the current political party system useless?”

*hashtag – the # character and a short sequence of characters that acts, like a tag allowing you to easily group tweets from a variety of people on one subject. It allows you to create a conversation for a specific theme or event i.e. conferences often use tags like #myconf09. You can then search and see replies to that specific hashtag, which is a lot easier than wading through pages with relevant words that might not be related to that specific idea. you can use twitter search to find #tags or hashtags.org.

Technology enables single issue politics.

Take the Baby P example – the issue prompted people to sign up to facebook groups (2000+ I believe in one local group related to baby P) and generally soak up the media “outrage” (I hate using quotes but I do feel these were heavily stoked by sensationalist reporting) without actually doing much.

Of the 2000+ people who joined the dorset march for baby p facebook group, around 20 people showed up to the actual protest. Is this mobilisation of the masses? Hardly.

You often hear people say that more people vote on a big brother final than in a general elections (Not true btw: 2.7million vs about 18million) – this is possibly true for younger age groups where it is ESTIMATED that more young people aged 18-34 voted on BB than in the last election.

All of these things do add up, technology has created a world where issues are picked up and shared at such a pace, it must be almost impossible for politicians to keep up.

Voter apathy is caused by the politicians responses to these single issues rarely differing and the perception (and reality) that most political discussion is just shallow point scoring on detail and scandal.

Would it not be better to enable the masses to vote on single issues in some central way and just have MPs as representatives of their local area only and not as an illusion of some political ideal?

Or would this be creating a state by mob rule, based on sensationalised news bites?

UPDATED: X factor voting – 16.5million votes cast across the series – be interesting to know how many voters that was.

Bomo Startup-meetup is on

Posted by luke on Dec 12, 2008 in blog | 2 comments

One of the projects I’m involved with at the moment is startup-meetup, kind of like the London OpenCoffee but with a slightly wider scope.

“A place, virtual and real, where people with great ideas, amazing technologies, new startups and ventures, marketing flair and an interest in investment can meet, share and build – meeting on the third Thursday of every month at Blend in Christchurch, Dorset”

Join the startup-meetup group.

This is NOT another of the usual Dorset networking events, if you’re looking for clients or to make a sales pitch for your services, this IS NOT the group for you.

Startup-meetup is a place to go and discuss your new venture, to meet people who might help you to grow and perhaps gain some investment for your project.

For more details join the group or drop me a line.

Are you keeping up with where your target market is to be found?

Posted by tom on Dec 8, 2008 in off topic | 1 comment

A good friend of mine Neil posted on his blog at www.neilcocker.co.uk today about Bebo, and its development since its aquisition by AOL.  His point was that since the takeover (all $850m of it), it has failed to grow at all, in terms of members, and he wondered exactly what AOL were doing with it.  I was reminded of a similar situation closer to home- around 2000, friendsreunited was the UK’s social network darling; everyone I know was on it, and in fact there was a time when it was constantly in the news for various controversies, usually to do with romantic flames being rekindled, or exes getting revenge.  It too was initially started by a small team, and acquired by a corporate for a large amount of money (ITV bought it for £120m in 2005).  The effect on that site has been even more marked, at least anecdotally.  While the likes of Facebook and Bebo developed the social networking paradigm to cater to an increasingly sophisticated and global audience, friendsreunited trailed behind, and although their traffic has increased to record levels since a recent relaunch which included many of the features expected by users of web 2.0 social networking sites (link), I cannot but help wonder how it could have been if ITV had moved faster.  I’m convinced that it is the nature of ownership of the likes of Facebook, and the initial husband and wife team at friendsreunited that drives their success, and this passion and ability to move fast are lost on the huge corporates.

What I think this means for business is that you have to be ahead of the curve.  However much your marketing department think they know online, and understand SN, there’s always something around the corner that is bigger and better, and the guerilla nature of these new sites means that only those with their fingers at the bleeding edge can identify exactly where your efforts, and most importantly your spend should be going.  Sites like friendsreunited and Bebo still have their place in an integrated SN campaign.  But where will they be in a year’s time?  More importantly, will Facebook still be #1 in a year’s time?  Or is there a niche up and coming SN that will reward insider knowledge with a higher return on investment, and a more credible campaign?

change IS coming to America thanks to IntenseDebate

Posted by luke on Dec 5, 2008 in internet news | 0 comments

When a website adds the feature to allow comments to websites, it’s not really news.

When change.gov adds comments, its interesting… when they use the IntenseDebate system as their comment system it is exciting.

IntenseDebate uses threaded comments and user profiles, with community ranking to ensure that quality comments are most prominent as well as telling you what a commenter’s reputation is next to each comment.

I have to take my hat off to Obama and his team for really embracing democracy in this way, enabling a real conversation where anyone can add their thoughts and by truly embracing community to manage those comments. Good work.

There is plenty of ongoing discussion about how to moderate comments on blogs and the legal issues around who is liable etc.  IntenseDebate doesn’t solve/answer all of those issues, but it does represent a great step forward – not only that, it supports OpenID and a number of other cool “2.0″ type features.

If you’d like to read more on change.gov’s use of this technology, see also techPresident’s excellent article.