It’ll come as no surprise to hear that social media has drastically changed the way people gain fame and gain income. Aside from the thousands of middle aged twitter users offering up their ‘wealth maximising e-book‘, entrepreneurial creative types are harnessing their video cameras and taking to YouTube to shift some units.
Increasingly YouTube is being used as the platform to launch viral songs that tap into a pre-existing meme. A video about double rainbows has since generated over 9m views and dozens of musical remixes. A tripped out post-dentistry kid has been mashed up to a breakbeat dynamo.
More often than not, these remix tracks are made by random coat-tail-riders eager to harness the meme, appear in the YouTube suggestions, get loads of views, revenue share by allowing ads next to their videos and make a buck.
Rare is the talent that can come up with the meme zeitgeist, remix it something that’s bloody funny and sell off the back of it.
The darlings of Sloane square, and creators of the YouTube video ‘gap yah’ Unexpected items are back with a trance remix of their hit clip, also available on iTunes.
I watched it, and then I, like, chundered EVERYWHERE!
“Parkour…for those who can’t be arsed”. So says the opening statement on the lying down game’s Facebook page which boasts nearly 100,000 members. The lying down game has been going on for a while, but has only just started to be noticed by the wider community. To play, you need to have your hands flat against your sides and your toes pointing at the ground; “As if you were standing, but vertically challenged. FACE DOWN!!!”
During the recent World Cup, the game got some very good publicity from John Terry having a go during one of England’s matches. Playing the game can be very addictive and I regularly see the same person playing the game in the area where I live.
Due to curiosity, I tried the game myself, and I can easily say that it was the most fun I have had in a long time. So my advice would be to try it yourself and to get your friends playing as well.
Harry Henderson joined Jam for a few days work experience – and penned this post.
You’ve got to hand it to Google, they definitely don’t rest on their laurels. They’ve given us google maps, streetview, location-sensitive mobile information, a free email system and access to a ludicrously fast search engine. All for free.
YouTube has clearly been woven into the same cloth since it joined the Google mothership, being innovative through streaming live concerts and creating a virtual orchestras.
They haven’t stopped there, the latest project is called ‘Life in A Day‘ and naturally, it’s quite ambitious.
“Life In A Day is a historic global experiment to create the world’s largest user-generated feature film: a documentary, shot in a single day, by you. On July 24, you have 24 hours to capture a glimpse of your life on camera. The most compelling and distinctive footage will be edited into an experimental documentary film, executive produced by Ridley Scott and directed by Kevin Macdonald.”
Pretty cool huh. Will be very interesting to see what the final product is like, and what proportion of submissions feature kittens or nudity. I feel sorry for whoever has to sort through the rushes…
Before even typing a word, this post has taken me about half an hour. I’ll call this initial process ‘research and testing’ – I’m not sure management will be convinced though. they’ll call it ‘playing video games at work’.
I’m happy to split the difference. It’s been a very enjoyable half hour.
eBoy has made a name for himself through creating witty pixelated landscapes which symbolise the modern digital age. Delighfully retro, they tap into the nostalgia of simpler, lower-rez PC graphics. Images that many of us grew up whiling away the hours in front of – a time when 8-bits was all we needed.
FixPix works like all the best iPhone apps do, by being something that couldn’t possibly exist on another platform, iPad aside. Using the accelerometer you arrange layers to fix the three dimensional image, restoring perspective and in the process revealing some bizarre graphical mishaps.
Simple, visual, funny and new. Well worth staying a little late after work for.
… things can get a little strange when you get it wrong…
Jam has had a crazy few years, we’ve grown from a handful of geeky kids who know a bit too much about Facebook, to a mini-empire of 20+. Now we’re part of Engine, it looks like things are about to ramp up yet again.
Want in?
We currently have a few vacancies for social media planners available.
Fresh out of uni and want to get paid for thinking about Twitter, Foursquare and Facebook? – get in touch.
Currently a Social Media account manager at another agency and want a change of scene? – get in touch.
Got some time under your belt as a digital planner / media guy/ account manager and want to do some more social stuff? – get in touch.
You’d need to have a passion for where social media is going and most importantly what that means for our clients.
What’s a day in the life like over here? A bit of planning, lots of ideas, inane emails about cats, trips to the pub and loads of tea rounds.
iHobo is an odd premise to say the least – You watch over after a homeless young person who sits on your iPhone for three days like an adult human tamagotchi. In the process you’ll find out what challenges homeless people face daily, and how you can at least try to help.
As you can see from these screenshots, he sometimes will just wander off – leaving you to wait, and muse on those homeless people that exist all the time, 24/7 – but you never pass in the street.
The app is clearly dividing audiences, and generating some interesting discussion in the reviews about the issues of homelessness, and what point exactly is being made (along with some bugs).
It’s a good showcase of how the low barrier to entry for mobile apps is generating some exciting new work, not just for the gaming and commerce sectors. Along with the usual ‘share’ functionality, you can also donate to Depaul UK straight from your iPhone, a nice touch to make a tangible difference.
Admitedly, there’s not a huge depth to it; you can only give the guy a sleeping bag, money or food depending on his current state. iHobo does make a salient point though – if you neglect the homeless, he gets into serious problems.
As a social media planner, I log into Facebook every day to research, plan, manage and moderate on behalf of clients.
As a person living in London in 2010, I use Facebook every evening to easily keep in touch with a core group of my friends, and passively keep up to speed with a few hundred other people-who-I-no-longer-physically-see. In return for these stalking rights I reciprocally allow this outer group access to my updates.
Being a social media practitioner and a web savvy individual, I know how to tweak the Facebook security settings to prevent Google and the 400m+ other Facebook users from seeing my holiday snaps and inane status updates.
I definitely know about the settings on Twitter. There is only one. ‘Protect my tweets’.
Well, I thought I knew all about the Facebook security settings – until I saw this infographic on the New York Times. It shows how ludicrously complex Facebook settings actually are.
While 50 settings and over 170 options does give precise control over security, it does increase the chance for error – particularly when you consider that 4.6m of its users are 55+. I guess increased complexity comes hand in hand with managing such a large and open web platform.
We like good ideas. We love them when they’re for a good cause too. Treehouse, talk about autism, and talktalk have banded together to create what they’re dubbing the world’s first virtual talkathon.
At its core, the campaign is essentially an exercise in incentivised sharing. We’re used to seeing companies encouraging their fans and friends to share their message, usually with a competition mechanic attached; the most famous example being #moonfruit on twitter. Heck, we’ve run a few of those competitions in our time too.
What makes this so good though (about from the raising-cash-for-charity part) is that it’s wrapped up in a very slick and interactive interface, aggregating all those involved in a picture mural.
Tapping into Facebook, email and twitter means that sharing content is about as easy as it gets and, the payoff is also pretty high: trading 1 of your tweets for 1 of talktalk’s pounds for autism. So, unlike a competition mechanic, your tweet is guaranteed to work (albeit not for you).
Head on over, share a factoid about autism and raise some cash.
Well, what an incredibly disorientating, sad yet ultimately extremely exciting week we’ve just had.
If you’ve been following the trade press you might have caught wind of our old parent company i-level swiftly being placed into administration and then liquidation; all between Tuesday evening and Friday morning.
As fate might have it, Jam have been welcomed into the offices of Engine, just around the corner on Great Portland St .
We’re all still here. All 20-or-so of us. We’ve kept the team together, a 100% retention rate showing that we actually get along pretty well and enjoy doing what we’ve been doing.
A recent article in campaign sums up the core points of what’s gone on quite neatly:
LONDON – Engine has acquired Jam, the social media unit of i-level, the digital agency that was placed into administration yesterday.
Jam, which was the fastest growing part of I-Level, creates social media campaigns for clients including Renault, Comet, Orange and Next.
Alex Miller, the agency’s managing director will join Engine as part of the deal, along with head of strategy Jamie Kenny, director Richard Costa-d’sa and the 20-strong Jam team.
The Engine group spans a range of disciplines and includes ad agency WCRS, direct agency Partners Andrews Aldridge and digital agency Altogether Digital.
Miller said: “Engine is a business that puts social media at the heart of its integrated thinking. The swift transfer ensures that there is absolutely no gap in Jam’s delivery to our clients and, in fact, we are now able to offer them a stronger and broader service than ever before.”
Peter Scott, the chairman and joint chief executive of Engine, said: “Jam has created some of the best social media campaigns of recent years. Its client service will continue seamlessly now that the team are part of Engine.”
We’re all really excited about this new opportunity and the scope to continue to do great work for our existing clients and work with some new ones from across the wider Engine group.
In the meantime, bear with us as we set about revising spreadingjam.com and setting into our new office space next to WCRS – otherwise, it’s business; but bigger and better than usual.
If you’re one of the 27.5m people who, like me, saw Avatar in the cinema, hopefully you took the opportunity to see it in 3D.
If you did, like me, you were probably blown away by the 3D technology and the immersive effect of the visuals – perhaps followed by a bout of post Avatar ‘blues’.
On Wednesday, Samsung officially launched their 3D TV offering in the UK. By the afternoon, all the stock in John Lewis had been cleared out by uber-keen early adopters. Being the first manufacturer to market is a fairly big deal.
i-level have been working on the UK digital strategy for this launch, with the mega TV ad officially aired during the half time break of the Champions league semi-final last night.
With such a generation-defining launch, Samsung were able to capitalise on increased buzz through releasing the ad early on the internet through a YouTube takeover.
Samsung are also exclusively showing it on the Xbox live platform
For the last two weeks i-level and Samsung have been building the excitement through a teaser campaign across the AOL network and YouTube pre-rolls that pointed users towards landing pages displaying a countdown timer. This has been supported by 10” TV adverts and a large search presence.
We’re really excited to have worked with Samsung in launch on YouTube and Xbox. Furthermore, including copy directing users to YouTube in all of their Press ads is a significant shift for the brand who traditionally launch their adverts on TV in the first instance.
