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Archive for the ‘Burning questions’ Category

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“Gaming influence”, or: How do you end up with 30,000 followers and 30,000 followees?

In Burning questions on December 20, 2009 at 9:11 pm

A source writes, telling me the answer to my question earlier tonight to @Mazi is less exciting than I imagined.

I’ve done a bit of digging, and it turns out that @Mazi, @Joe and @rhys_isterix are (or were) “community managers” for Sky (@Mazi) and MySpace (@Joe and @rhys_isterix) respectively. According my source, they each pimped their personal Twitter profiles to their respective (and very large) work communities. If you’ve ever had a MySpace profile, you’ll remember Tom, that “automatic friend” you had when you joined. Hardly surprising Tom had a lot of friends, was it? Read the rest of this entry »

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we are social… honest

In Burning questions on December 19, 2009 at 11:58 pm

“Social media experts” are always banging on about “authenticity” and “authentic conversations”. But how authentic are they really?

The mess around Eurostar this weekend reminded me of my favourite “conversation agency”, we are social (who list Eurostar as a client, and are apparently in charge of the brand’s social media strategy). Let’s leave aside the pisspoor job Eurostar and their representatives have done this weekend: Mike Butcher has taken them apart already.

But take a look at we are social’s primary Twitter feed:
Read the rest of this entry »

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Does any industry really need these parasitic trade shows?

In Burning questions on September 24, 2009 at 11:15 am

Imagine a world in which you’re charged £100 ($165) for two days’ worth of electricity.

Where a basic internet connection costs £300 ($500) for two days. (That’s even more expensive than the WiFi at the Charlotte Street Hotel in London, which costs an astonishing 30p/min – or £18/hr.).

Where you cough up £3,500 ($6,000) for a tiny booth, in the hope of securing a few leads for your fledgling business.

Welcome to the world of the trade show.

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A brief but terrifying glimpse into my subconscious

In Burning questions, Cries for help on September 3, 2009 at 7:56 pm

I often wake in the middle of the night, with what I imagine at the time to be a game-changingly insightful or brilliant train of thought suspended in mid-air in front of me. I’m immmediately gripped by panic, worried that I might lose it if I don’t get it down. So I flip open my MacBook and start typing furiously. When I’m done, I get back in to bed, and am usually asleep again within a few minutes.

I have about three hundred of these frantically-recorded night-time memos now. Here’s one of them. Read the rest of this entry »

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Does Angela Hewitt think Andrei Gavrilov is a shit pianist?

In Burning questions on August 16, 2009 at 1:14 am

My mate Damian Thompson recently had a go at the self-regarding concert pianist Angela Hewitt. He quoted extensively from Hewitt’s own blog, which lovingly records every compliment tossed in her direction by critics and fans (and adds a few of her own for good measure).

An outraged fan posted a complaint to Hewitt’s blog and was, in his own words, “enormously privileged” to receive a reply by email from Hewitt herself. He then pasted her reply in the comments section under Damian’s original post: Read the rest of this entry »