Garter says that microblogging is in the period of technology trigger which is defined as “The first phase of a hype cycle is the “technology trigger” or breakthrough, product launch or other event that generates significant press and interest.”  I agree with this to a certain extent but over the past few months with the Death of Michael Jackson and Iranian Twitter drama, it seems to have skipped straight to the slope of enlightenment (Although the press may have stopped covering the technology, some businesses continue through the “slope of enlightenment” and experiment to understand the benefits and practical application of the technology.)  CNN, Sky News and lots of user media sources now use Twitter to broadcast news, receive news and questions/thoughts from guests and even my aunt is on Twitter.  A little twitter bird once told me that one major newspaper, projects a giant tweetdeck onto a wall and decides on tomorrow’s news by the most trending topics.

In the hypergrowth that defines social media, it doesn’t take long for something to become obselete and new forms to come in.  I fell out of blogging due to the time it takes to aggregate thoughts and my lack of niche i.e. lack of ability to add value.  In my blogging days, I used to enjoy receiving numerous comments and getting tons of hits but wordpress did alot of the SEO for me.  I was also a power user on Digg so received a plethora of hits that way.  I decided to get back into blogging because it’s good for the research work I’ll be doing into social media and from a disgusting PR perspective i.e. it’s pointless being a social media guy without a social media presence.

I’ve been fairly slow to blog since I set up this site but today Eirepreneur picked up on a hastily written blog post I wrote.  He kindly commented and RT’ed and I received loads of hits and three comments within an hour so I was well happy and am a bit buzzed about it all. Imagine if I posted more and put in more effort :).

The point of this post is Blogging still has value but only if you have something interesting to say and something to add. The majority of Bloggers say “O look at me, I’m mad, I have an iPhone, I know what Twitter is, I’m web savvy,” i.e. I’m an individual just like everyone else *Yawn*  I’ve subscribed via RSS to a lot of blogs in my time but these are the only ones which have remained that I read.  We’re talking of a list of 300 down to about 10.  These blogs all have a niche and add some sort of value to readers.  Hence, they are win.  These include:

Nialler9 – Amazing music blog.  Description here

Twenty Major - Lulz Factory – Satirical Look at Irish society?

Web 2.0 Ireland – Does exactly what it says on the tin and does it very well.

There’s been considerable online buzz for Gangstar online the past few days and if you haven’t heard it’s the iPhone’s GTA 3+ equivalent.  (Link to Gangstar developer here and review here.)

I NEVER buy applications EVER but decided to purchase this one as a treat due to my love of GTA.  As Murphy’s Law would have it, the first thing I ever buy from App Store goes tits up on me.

The thing about the game is that it is stalls alot.  You turn a corner, it stalls.  You get into a car, it stalls. Well, at least for my beautiful, jailbreakless iPhone and judging by iTunes reviews, Twitter and general internet buzz, it’s stalling for others too.  It was very frustrating and I got no feedback from Gamesloft at all.

Solution to the problem:

• Before you play, restart your iPhone.  This frees up memory and makes it easier for the game to run.  I tried force quitting all applications with no luck.  Restarting your iPhone is a fairly obvious solution I know, but who turns off their iPhone? I don’t think it’s every been off since I got it, just a few restarts.

If that doesn’t work solely, (and it didn’t for me) then I recommend using the iPhone flight mode feature which will turn off all mobile services and WiFi, thus allowing more free memory space for Gangstar to run.  Make sure you turn it back on though when you’re finished or you won’t receive calls, sms etc.

The game is a lot less challenging than GTA in terms of missions and they storyline is a bit drab.  Also, after about 5 minutes into it, you realise that it’s like you’ve taken a step back in time and not in a good Marty McFly way. Gangstar has nothing new to offer except chronic pins and needles.

Social Networks are a funny old thing that tend to be segregated by geography, age, gender, interests etc. etc.  Perhaps, the biggest factor in choosing a social network platform is your friends and family as they’re the people you’ll want to link with.  The next factors will probably be the stage you’re at in life; if you are an emo, you may be on myspace, college student or graduate on facebook and professionals might be on LinkedIn etc. (I have yet to see an Emo on LinkedIn :P)

Social Media user bases are hard to come by and most certainly exaggerated when disclosed by the platform in question as they want to attract as many advertising clients as possible.  Facebook professes to have over 250 million active users, Twitter won’t release their user base but I have heard between 6 and 24 million which is astounding to stay the least from a comparison point of view.  If hypergrowth is the distinguishing characteristic of social networks, do we measure by that metric instead of overall users?  For the moment, we’ll let it be.  All you need to know for this post, is that social media and social networks are buzzing right now.

Bebo was the predominant social network in Ireland a few years ago and it swept the country by storm.  Lots of people lost their social network virginity on the platform but the majority of users have grown up and moved onto the mammoth that is Facebook, or so I thought.  For a recent project, I was looking at Bebo and to my surprise, people were still using it despite it being a haven for spam and the whole platform being heuristically vom-worthy.

I decided to take a look at the statistics for Bebo and found that:

• It’s traffic ranked peaked in late 2008 and has been falling significantly since 2009.
• The time the average user spends on the website has dropped significantly over the past three months (from 17.1 minutes to 14.6 minutes.)
• Pageviews per user has also decreased significantly, dropping from 24 to 19.7 over the space of three months and even more significantly over the past year.

Not Good.

If we compare Bebo, Twitter and Facebook in terms of daily traffic rank trend since 2008, we also see that Facebook is growing steadily, twitter is growing the fastest and Bebo is slowly dwindling off.

After looking at Bebo and a plethora of profiles in my address book and onwards, I’ve concluded or it’s my humble opinion that Facebook Killed The Bebo Star.  All that remains on Bebo is ghost profiles of teenagers who have grown up and went to college or traveled the world and made new friends who weren’t on Facebook forcing them to move platform.  The people who still actively use Bebo i.e. teens and pre teens add to it’s heuristic vom-worthiness by using language such as this:

Shakespeare must be spinning in his grave.

It’ll be interesting to see how AOL manage and maintain Bebo over the coming years and indeed whether they’ll keep it or not.  The one thing about social networks is that there are relatively high switching costs, i.e. the longer you spend on a social network linking with friends, uploading photos, tagging etc. the less likely you will change platforms.  It didn’t really matter in the case of the switch from Facebook to Bebo because Facebook is arguably a superior platform but what are the odds that users will swarm back to Bebo as Facebook gets used more?  Slim to none.  The key defining factor for Bebo’s future and it’s success will be if the number of people between 13-18 year is greater than 18-35 year olds.

It’s also interesting to note that as Facebook becomes ubiquitous and it’s current users (fastest growing demogrpahic is 35+) start to have children, will Facebook become uncool i.e. my Mom and Dad are on Facebook, it must be lame, I’m going to go to SocialNetwork2015 instead?

This post is inspired by a homeless guy who sat next to me on the public bus the whole journey from Cork to Dublin today.  Ugh.  The list are in order of my preference of how I would travel from Dub to Cork and vice versa.

1. Train – most expensive option, yield management pricing, duration is three hours.  It’s clean, there’s usually a trolley dolly serving crisps and tea and there are bathrooms which speak.  The only time I’ve ever had hassle on the train was when there was a crowd returning from a match and it all got a bit rowdy.  It’s generally no hassle and no drama.

2. Ryanair – can be cheaper than the train, cost of getting to and from each airport will probably make it the same as train though, yield management pricing and the duration is thirty minutes.  Lots of business classy type people going on day tips, usual trolley dolly type service.  (For those that don’t know Ryanair is the equivalent of SouthWest airlines over here in terms of business model and are similar in every way apart from customer service.  Ryanair have little to no customer service.)  In general, the more ahead of time you book the flight the cheaper it will be.

3. Drive – New motorway means no boithrins (small roads) and it takes about three to four hours depending on the traffic.

4. Aircoach – Spacious buses, 22euro for an adult, stops a few times on the way down but I’d consider it direct (in comparison to the next guy,) and apparently some buses have WiFi.  If you can’t afford train, ryanair or drive, this is the option. Also, if you’re taller than 5′8″, this is the one for you.

5. Bus Eireann Route 8 - I have experienced so much drama on this bus.  It comes in about 2 or 3 euro cheaper than the Aircoach, (so 20ish) but the extra money is worth paying on the aircoach.  As it’s the public service, you get all types of people coming on.  One day, a Chinese dude kept shouting at his laptop and the driver nearly removed him, we’ve left a few people behind at break time and today they let on a stinking homeless guy and the driver watched as he harassed the whole bus.  The Irish could handle him but the poor Spanish and Italian student’s didn’t know what to make of it.  There’s no room on the bus and it stops loads of times on the way up and down and if you’re making good time, ahead of schedule you’ll have to wait at each town to cater for all passengers.

Just writing this to inform anyone who want to travels this journey. If you want more information contact me via e-mail or on Twitter.

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The remainder of the video is here:

Click here to view the embedded video.

(this finale is probably the best part, it’s chopped off in Google Video, seek the whole thing online and you shall find.)

There was another documentary that was being filmed around the time of the infamous Martin Bashir documentary back in 2002 (the one which diminished his career further and landed him in court again.)  Louis Theroux is an amazing documentarist, whose most viewed venture is the time he spent with the Phelps family.  The above documentary never made it big because Bashir/ITV paid more money to that trickster Uri Geller.  If Louis were allowed to interview Jackson, the outcome would have been a lot fairer as he seemed like a genuine fan.  Listen to Geller lie through his teeth, saying that he’s afraid the interviewer will take advantage of Michael Jackson.

In this documentary, Theroux goes in search of an interview with Jackson.  Highlights include:

• Interview with Terry George – An entrepreneur who claims Jackson tried to have phone sex with him when they were teenagers.  The tape of Jackson & George talking is my favourite part.
• Brief appearance of Oliver.
• Uri Geller tell Louis Theroux (from a Jewish background) how Jewish weddings work!
• Clips of E Casanova (terrible Jackson impersonator) & lots of interaction with his daft manager Majestic Magnificent, seriously dodgy character.
• Jackomania in London & Germany.

Perhaps, the most scary thing that happens in the documentary is the interview with Michael’s father, Joe Jackson.  This is definitely the route into understanding Michael in his later years.  It tells more than any interview with Michael ever would.  Can you imagine having to deal with Joe Jackson as a child?   He isn’t one bit remorseful for his actions when The Jacksons were younger and is only interested in his own success. He hints at the fact that Michael enjoyed gaining financially by telling tales of abuse at the hands of his father. Watch his reaction when Louis insinuates that Michael might be a homosexual in the youtube clip.

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http://fireglo.eu/2009/08/08/emoji-on-iphone/ is my earlier post about it.

Looks like Stephen Fry has found out how to be even cooler.

One of my favourite bands at the moment, as proved by my last.fm profile are ‘The Cribs.’  It’s kind of hard to describe their music or fit it into a specific genre but whatever magic they created in the past, they’re adding to it by introducing Sir Johnny Marr to the line-up.

I’ve deliberately stayed away from their new music because I want to be able to enjoy it when I have the free time.  I’ll link ye anyways in case ye can’t wait.  There is the first single, Cheat On Me (youtube)  & We Were Aborted (youtube).  The new album is titled ‘Ignore the Ignorant’ and set to be released on September 7th 2009.  The Cribs also play Dublin on September 21st and I really hope to be able to go as I want to see Marr before I die (I saw the other good Smith last year.)  More information on the gig at ticketmaster here.  See other tour dates on The Cribs homepage here.

Enter Buzzword; enter everyone jumping on the bandwagon,  Enter Twitter. The Maccabees don’t really get it (sorry, too commercial), Calvin Harris is a tad annoying and the Futureheads absolutely rock at it (all members of the band post and not focused on selling their music.)  The Cribs could also be a bit less commerical but I’m not bothered ‘cos I love them so much. >.<

The Cribs seem to have really grasped the concept of user generated media/content, or else some smart person at iLike (their software developer) convinced them this was the way to go.  Either way The Cribs loyal fan base are doing alot of promotional work for them (and alot of them probably don’t know they are.)

Like Skittles before them, this application features a “Twitter and Fan Wall” which displays:

• All of the band’s tweets from their official Twitter account.
• A Twitter search going for the string “The Cribs” which shows all mentions of the band in the Twittoverse.
• A fan wall which displays photos that their fans have taken and messages from them.

Imagine a non Cribs fan stumbling upon this application and seeing what a dedicated fan base they have and after taking a look at some of their videos.  What are the chances they’ll click the little banner  at the bottom to download the song from iTunes? Well, alot higher than if the application weren’t there.  This handy little application is building up a nice little fan network for the group.

And what about being indie?

Well… there’s no major record label here chucking money into music videos and 100ft statues of The Cribs floating down the Thames.  Also, since iTunes killed the record shop star, it’s only apt that The Cribs provide a link to iTunes.  If Twitter had been around in the time of The Smiths, I’m sure this is a route they would have chosen.  Be Safe.

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Emoji icons are popular in Japanese mobile phones so Apple built them into the iPhone for over there and left out all us westerners.  A few crafty buggers found out ways to unlock all of this, (with jailbreak or no jailbreak) and a few crafty beggers have decided to charge to unlock these awesome emoticons.  Don’t Pay!

This is the method which unlocked me: http://limitededitioniphone.com/emoji-activate-on-221-and-30-free/ (to the author: not worthy, not worthy.)  No menacing, bricking, jailbreaking, teabagging etc.

These can add a bit of colour to texting other buddies with iPhones or IM’ing them.

Over the summer I’ve been working on a project to finish my masters, concerning social media.  If you asked me to define social media off the top of my head or from personal experience I would have said Digg or Twitter but wouldn’t have known why as such.  I searched and I searched for academic literature concerning social media but there’s very little so I had to go to every academic’s nightmare i.e. Wikipedia.  Who better than to cite for a definition of social media than one of the leaders in the area?

Social media is online content created by people using highly accessible and scalable publishing technologies. Social media is a shift in how people discover, read and share news, information and content; it’s a fusion of sociology and technology, transforming monologues (one to many) into dialogues (many to many) and is the democratization of information, transforming people from content readers into publishers. Social media has become extremely popular because it allows people to connect in the online world to form relationships for personal, political and business use. Businesses also refer to social media as user-generated content (UGC) or consumer-generated media (CGM).

So this got me to thinking about what social media means to me.  It all boils down to the fact that it’s a replacement for traditional media i.e. TV, newspapers & radio.  For some people it’s complementary to these things but realistically why wait for your favorite music video to come on The Box when you find it in a second on YouTube?  Also, why wait to watch what corporations deem news on TV when you can find out what genuinely reflects the topics on the masses mind i.e. Twitter or Digg?

The only time social media can be a pain in the arse is the age old problem of spam which affects all the major platforms.  There can also be a situation of being a bit too involved like myself and suffering major withdrawal symptoms after being away from the internet for a huge period of time like 4 hours.  Also, the fact that web 2.0 gives a voice to everyone is a bit offputting because some people just shouldn’t be allowed to talk :P.

The thing which struck me as being unusual though is how business are suckers for this.  It’s clearly a recessionary thing, i.e. the internet is viral, everyone is on it and we’re talking cents about getting our products and services out there and this thing called Twitter will do the work for us. eh no…..  The fact of the matter is it’s web 2.0, IT’S MADE TO BE EASY.  YOU’RE NOT COMPUTER PROGRAMMING OR DOING ANYTHING WHICH REQUIRES MORE THAN FIVE MINUTES INVESTIGATION OR A QUICK GOOGLE SEARCH. I’m sorry.  Perhaps, the true masterminds and genius’ behind it all are not the Zuckerbergs, Roses or the coders but the ones that charge money for stating the obvious.  They go into business and tell them what Twitter is & what Wordpress is and charge a significant amount for doing so.  Twitter & Facebook will save you money and attract more customers but the price you pay for quick shot consultancy will nearly match the money you save. Rant over.

Moral of the post = Social Media is here, my mother (58) uses it and so do YOU.

GamesFree MonkeyJump

At the moment, #1 in iTunes Ireland is a collection of games called “GamesFree” (link to iTunes) developed by a company called DS Effects.  The games are tripe and presumably the application only obtained it’s App Store position by having “Free” in the title.

The thing that bothers me about this application  is that it tries to access my location.  Is there any particular reason for this?
The only obvious answers (besides espionage) are an updated version of the application containing targeted advertising or for acquiring marketing information.  Thank God for Apple being careful and making sure applications get the user’s permissions before accessing their location.  Can you imagine how many suckers clicked the above? Data Protection Act? Hellooooo.

On the other end of the spectrum is an application titled GRINDR (informally endorsed by Sir Stephen Fry) whose functionality is based around GPS.  The application, tailored to gays uses the iPhone’s location services to find users in another user’s vicinty for the purposes of dating, mating etc. The thing about this application (arguably the most popular iPhone application of it’s kind) is that it can be relatively dangerous if you’re relatively stupid.

On one hand if kids ignore the standard 18+ type warnings and post a picture of themselves up they’re likely to see a whole lot of things they may not want to :). I’ll let you figure that one out for yourself.  Also, GRINDR is not a replacement for meeting people on the internet as the user may meet the person in a less public place than they normally would have. i.e. why bother traveling into town if the other user is only 1,000 feet away?

My advice for GPS & iPhone:

• Don’t allow applications access to your location unless it’s core to the application’s functionality.
• GRINDR, or other dating applications can be fun but the same rules apply when meeting people online. (good advice here)