I need an IKEA kitchen from 2040, now.

IKEA has a dream. And as it turns out, that dream is my dream too – Self-cleaning kitchen counters no less!!

According to a recent study, our collective dream of a future kitchen will be able to do all sorts of freaky and highly advanced things like reading our moods and suggesting recipes. It’s not surprising that people want their future kitchen to do all the work for them too. No doubt we’ll be just as lazy, if not more so in the future.

IKEA’s also concerned about environmental issues, so maybe they can come up with a way to turn food scraps into the energy that powers the retractable shelves – wouldn’t that be cool?

Apparently the dream of a self-cleaning kitchen is 30 years away from a reality though, which is way too long in my opinion. By the time I get my 3D food printer and holographic display on the oven, I could have grown children. Or even grandchildren.

I love it anyway though, and here are some things that would make me love it more:

• A refrigerator that will crowd-source what goes in it.
• A gizmo to alert me when I’ve had too much cake.
• A way for the kitchen to make me a romantic dinner (including candles and roses) all on it’s own.

What would you want it to do?

via: Pocket-lint.com

Subject matter variation between blogs & traditional press

Good news for technology clients – blogs and Twitter are great for technology as a topic. Flowtown have put together a beautiful infographic based on the results of a study by the Pew Research Center.
Some interesting points coming out of this are that blogs seem to write a lot more about technology than traditional news sources, and Twitter responds much more to technology than topics like the economy and the weather.
Unsurprising, giving the technological nature of the medium but this research certainly indicates which angle to take when doing outreach for a new campaign.

The Sex and the City and the Brands

As Sex and the City is out in cinemas at midnight, we thought it would be a good time to see what brand tie-ins are generating the most buzz in social media.

In the US, the brands that dominate the buzz around Sex and the City 2 are primarily HP and Apple, as people discuss Carrie’s Macbook being replaced by an HP in a big product placement deal. Apple and HP are each mentioned in 4% of SATC2 posts.

Carrie Bradshaw made Manolo Blahniks, Macs and pink Cosmopolitans, all synonymous with householdmusts. So to see Skyy Vodka, Mercedes Benz, Moet Champagne, and Swarovski in the lineup of marketing partners fits, just like her Blahniks. But HP? brand-girl.com

Official brands Skyy vodka, Möet & Chandon champagne and Lipton teas, are all receiving relatively low levels of mentions in SATC2 buzz, only being mentioned in a combined 2% of posts. One blogger promotes the vodka in a SATC2 post:



Have a SKYY Vodka pre-movie cocktail with your SATC-crazed crew; Pat Field (the darling stylist behind the girls envelop pushing looks) created the starry nightscape design of the bottle. Cosmo anyone? thefashionistas.org

In the UK, Apple and HP are only appearing in 1.7% of SATC2 posts, while Debenhams, which has a retail partnership with the film, is mentioned in nearly 7% of SATC2 posts. One tweeter has noticed the adverts:

Müller, which has been noticed for its SATC2 adverts, is only mentioned 1.8% of the time, likely due to its perhaps irrelevance to the film, as mentioned in this tweet:

Bye Bye Bebo?

With the recent news of AOL’s plans to sell or scrap Bebo, we thought it timely to have a look at how they’ve been doing lately. While Facebook has been lapping up new users, Bebo has been on a steady decline, along with Myspace, as the two become closer and closer competitors.

Bebo has a higher percentage of 15-24s using the site than Myspace has, yet unlike Myspace, Bebo is losing their female audience more quickly than their male audience.

One of Bebo’s particular talents is captivating the Scottish and Northern Irish, and perhaps they have a future as a niche northern destination.

Despite the massive decline, Bebo is still bigger than Twitter and Myspace, with 4.77 million monthly unique users in the UK.

It’s not over yet.

Michelle Yeadon is a trainee social media planner with team Jam

Polls say Joe McElderry to win the X Factor

As we saw last weekend, buzz isn’t enough to predict the winner – there’s something good going for each of the contestants, so which one is the best prediction?

Olly Murs has had the most buzz since 10 October and during the week leading up to this weekend’s final.

Source: Brandwatch

Stacey Solomon has the most fans on Facebook.

Source: Sum of Facebook pages with 100 or more fans

Joe is winning in the polls.

Forums on the Daily Mail, Digital Spy, Entertainment.stv.tv, PopSugar, StudentRoom and UnRealityTV forums all agree that Joe will win.

StudentRoom forums

Entertainment.stv.tv

DigitalSpy forums

So what’s the best predictor of who will win?

Buzz gave some indication of who would be voted off earlier on, but now that it’s down to the last three, buzz isn’t reliable enough. Stacey has a lot of Facebook fans, but it could just be her personality giving her fans. Polls are the closest to the actual vote, so I’m willing to bet that Joe will win this weekend.

Who do you think will win?

X Factor’s Stacey to go home tonight

One thing is clear, and it’s that Danyl Johnson and Olly Murs are the only contenders for winner of The X Factor.

Joe McElderry and Stacey Solomon’s buzz doesn’t compare, but which one will go home tonight?

Joe has had the least buzz overall despite his many fans. Stacey has generated more mentions overall, but yesterday she didn’t too well.

A score based on yesterday’s mentions and sentiment reveals that it’s the end of the line for Stacey:

It’s time for the boys to battle it out!

What’s the buzz about X Factor?

After last night’s stunning X Factor performances, it’s time to make some predictions for tonight – based on what everyone is saying online.

(Click to see a larger image).

Over time, Danyl Johnson has had consistent buzz, with a higher than average number of mentions. Of the remaining five, Joe McElderry has had the least amount of buzz.

I’ll make a bold prediction: I think we’ll see Joe McElderry or Lloyd Daniels go home tonight on X Factor. If I’m wrong, I’ll try again.

How to deal with a social media PR crisis

There always seems to be a celebrity tweeting about a brand they’re unhappy with – two weeks ago it was Rob Brydon with O2, and since then, Perez Hilton has been informing more than 13.5 million people about how T-Mobile and Danger and Microsoft have all failed.

But what’ s a company to do in a situation like this?

1. @reply to any celebrities talking about it (but only if they’re not overly angry)

You can generally tell what overly angry is based on word choice. The two examples above put Perez Hilton on the list of people to ignore. Chances are, if you respond to Perez Hilton and tell him you’re working on it and you’re very sorry, it will add more fuel to the fire.

2. @reply to all the customers with questions.

Be proactive about it; it’s okay to respond even if they haven’t tweeted directly at you. If you don’t know the answer, try to find it, and if you can’t, be honest.

3. Issue statements and updates as often as possible.

You might have nothing to say, but that’s okay. Just assure everyone that you’re still working on it.

4. If you can’t solve the problem right away, start giving away free stuff.

Free merchandise, gift certificates, contract releases, upgrades. Plan it out. If this problem persists longer, how big should the giveaways be? Pay attention to what your customers are saying and if they think it’s enough.

5. Make sure that when the problem is resolved, they are happier than before the problem started.

This might mean a free upgrade or extra services for extended period of time. Make people who ditched the brand think twice about it. Solve a problem well, and your customers will be more loyal to your brand and less likely to jump ship.

T-Mobile is doing rather well in this situation by using all of the above tools so far, but we’ll have to see if in a month’s time Perez Hilton is wishing he had been more patient.

Social Media Rule: Learn lessons from others

It doesn’t seem so long ago that I posted a blog about tweeting being banned in the world of sport. In fact, it wasn’t long ago at all. It was two weeks ago.

Now, two weeks later, yet another sport organisation, the National Football League (American -  a trend?), decides tweeting and other social networking will not be allowed before, during or after American football games. This policy applies to players, coaches, league officials and the media attending games. Really? The media too?

Policies like this (while their intent is easily understood) are very difficult, if not impossible, to enforce and generally make people upset.

Social media is taking over – it’s unstoppable! Learn a lesson from these sport organisations and try to use tweeting and social networking to your brand’s advantage rather than fighting against it.

(via socialmediatoday.com)

No Tweeting allowed

The Southeastern Conference’s  (American college sports organisation) ticket policy was basically a ban against communicating to anyone outside the game. No game updates, no photos and no video were allowed to be posted to the Internet while at a game. The SEC wanted to be the sole Tweeter.

Of course, this is absurd. It’s unenforceable, and everyone will hate you. Plenty of concerts and sporting events do not allow cameras, but to really prevent all visual content that would mean not allowing mobiles, but everyone will hate you.

Naturally, everyone hated SEC. They hated it all over the Internet, which results in a worse problem for the organisation than they started with.

They noticed and have responded with a revised ticket policy, which allows you to Tweet and take photos now. No video seems like a reasonable request, but they’ll have a fun time enforcing it.

(via govolsxtra.com)