we are: London

Last week, the World Bank announced that it was to free up 2,000 financial, business, health, economic and human development statistics that had mostly been available only to paying subscribers.

“It’s important to make the data and knowledge of the World Bank available to everyone,” World Bank President Robert B. Zoellick said. “Statistics tell the story of people in developing and emerging countries and can play an important part in helping to overcome poverty.”

This presents massive opportunities for developing countries, whose researchers will have access to useful and meaningful information that could well be integral to their future economic development. In the midst of the global financial crisis (yes, it’s still going on), access to this data has the scope to fit in well with the data ‘mash-up’ market that has grown since a number of governments’ recent initiatives (including the UK’s www.data.gov.uk) to free up data to the general public.

On a level closer-to-home, it’s exciting to have access to this level of detailed statistical information, as the ease with which it can be tracked, monitored and updated makes repurposing it not only more reliable in terms of reporting but also demonstrates that numbers and figures (when illustrated in an engaging way) have the ability to tell a story just as well as pictures and words.

Blog, Community, internet research, usability research data, Internet, research, world bank

The Deloitte Technology Fast 50 celebrates the 50 fastest growing technology companies in the UK based on  revenue growth. The awards began over a decade ago and this year we are:london are in a fantastic 18^th place (7^th in London)!

Our stable growth has set us apart from many companies during the economic downturn. We are constantly flourishing and proving ourselves as one of the most capable and competitive companies in the market.

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 I don’t ordinarily consider gossip-blogger Perez Hilton a source of social marketing insight but on this occasion he twittered a report by Sysomos - a US based organisation specialising in media monitoring - and its actually quite interesting.

 

Sysomos analysed more than 11.5 million Twitter accounts, indexing user profiles and looking at the frequency of status updates and behaviours over a period of time. There is plenty of data to mine through but some key findings of note include:

 

• 21% of all registered users have never even posted a Tweet;
• More than 50% of all updates are publishing using tools, mobile and Web-based, other than Twitter.com;
• 65% of Twitter users are under the age of 25 ; and
• Just 5% of users - or Power-Tweeters as we shall call them - account for a massive 75% of all activity.

Twitter has experienced explosive growth in recent months and this report is essential reading in helping to understand why.

 

Read the report here

 

Blog, Community, customer insight, e-commerce, internet research, market research insight, research, social networking, Twitter

How much can Twitter really do for a business? Should companies be looking at it as a commercial channel? Can you make money from Tweeting?

The answer is yes to all and I know because we tried it out recently through an experiment during Red Nose Day, @wearelondon.

Pay for punters

Our origianl idea was to raise money by donating for every Tweet we were sent instead of an email; email free Friday.

Some clients, Kevin, Christy, et al from NationalExpress were great at it, but others were a little slower. So I put out a message saying we would donate 10p for every Tweet.

This was re-Tweeted by a load of people, including Dave Gorman www.twitter.com/dave_gorman and off we went, loads of Tweets, lots of funnies as we asked for jokes.

Follow me and we’ll donate

Quickly word spread and hundreds of people were Tweeting us, so I raised the offer to donate 20p for everyone who followed us. Jemima Kiss kindly gave us a shout and we quickly went from 40 followers to 270.

In the end we donated over £500 to Red Nose Day and traffic to our site went up 1,000% which is a pretty good PPC investment for an even better cause.

So why didn’t more big companies do something similar? It’s was so quick and easy to do I can’t believe others did not do the same, but I guess it comes down to the same old thing. No matter how quick and easy the enabler it (Twitter) the process of a big business are way behind.

Skittles are there doing it now, not sure if it will work, but hey at least they are trying.

Want to know more, then call or email and we can give you the inside track on taking free and making it pay.

Blog, Community e-commerce, Internet, Twitter

Honey I shrunk the holiday snaps

Little city growing fast

Ever wanted to turn truly amazing photos into little, biddy National Express East Coast style photos?
No, neither had I till browsing Twitter and came across this great website http://tiltshiftmaker.com

No experience needed, no photoshop, no problem. Just upload a photo and check it out.

As a small warning, photos of your kids look strangely like dolls, you have been warned.

Lovely holiday in Gurnsey

We love things like this, it’s bringing a bit of creativity to every one’s home album, but more importantly it helps open people’s eyes to taking creative approaches to design solutions.

Let’s hope it does not start client’s thinking that their last photo shoot cost a lot more than it should. After all, it’s not about following, it’s about leading and there is no price for inspirational and pioneering thinkers.

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