Facebook dropped roughly $123 billion in share value / market capitalisation after disappointing earnings for Q2 this year were revealed. Much of this has to do with the new GDPR regulations - which restrict what Facebook can legitimately do for advertisers and sponsors, but also there seems to be a noticeable backlash following revelations that Facebook sold on customers’ privacy details and contact lists to various suspect parties - including groups of supposed Russian Hacker types.

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Only those living off the grid will have failed to have noticed the impact that Pokémon Go has made in these last few weeks. It has pretty much single-handedly restored the validity of Augmented Reality and brought Nintendo back to a leadership position it’s not experienced since the launch of the Wii - 10 years ago.

It is far from the first good quality Augmented Reality App, there have been a number of quite decent Zombie Run style games, treasure hunts, problem solvers ...

It is an accepted trend that all the growth in news consumption has been on mobile devices. Whether you’re checking a specific Newspaper or News Media Site or Aggregator App, part of the experience is likely to be quite similar. I refer here to the usually vertical scrolling of a linear news feed, and then the swiping right or left to next or previous articles once you have selected an article to read.

Some of these apps / experiences are simply based on news summary - listing ...

Within a week of Google announcing that you would be able to order food delivery from search results, Twitter announces a collaboration with Domino’s - where customers can order Pizza by tweeting a specific pizza emoji. It’s not quite as dazzling as it sounds, as it really only allows frequent customers to re-order their standard / default order. Compared to going through the usual 5-6 step checkout though it’s one slick shortcut.

Google’s service is a ...

NOTE - this blog post will be updated throughout the year, particularly the Album Release Schedule ...

2014 was an excellent year for music all in. Not much rock really, but plenty to get excited about. There are not as many big releases forthcoming in 2015, which seems destined to be the year of the blockbuster movie. Nevertheless there are lots of minor music industry intrigues happening - especially Apple’s imminent launch of iTunes Streaming. There are also a number of new ...

Two years ago I wrote an article about how GEMA, the German performance rights organisation had targeted Google’s YouTube video platform in terms of how it dealt with the public posting of music videos not personally sanctioned by GEMA. GEMA’s contention was that the 24 hour take-down rule was insufficient, and that Google / YouTube should be made to pay penalties for illegally displaying those videos at all, as it was gaining advertising royalties while those videos were played ...

Readers of my blog will know that I am quite the armchair festival fan - avidly following at least Coachella and Glastonbury via live-streaming every year and from the comfort of my lounge. I believe at some stage in the near future, we will be able to view the entire 4-day spectacle via a festival attendee proxy, and be able to witness the whole immersive nature of these events via virtual reality headsets such as Oculus Rift. It would simply be a matter of selecting your POV Avatar Proxy and ...

From previous blog posts you will know that I’m a huge music fan and sometime armchair festival attendee. The two big annual music festivals are of course Coachella (covered by YouTube) and Glastonbury (covered by BBC). These are very different events in many ways and Glastonbury has far more scale and complexity than Coachella. That said, this year’s Coachella coverage by YouTube was a high water mark as you can read in my [previous post].

I love the way that YouTube had ...

The last vestiges of more traditional advertising - pre-roll video ads, native advertising and TV sponsorship idents etc. are all coming under threat of extinction. Anything which is deemed intrusive or interruptive will no longer be tolerated by target audiences. Brand owners instead need to rely on more subtle ways of brand advocacy like product placement and celebrity / personality endorsements.

A classic example of the new paradigm is TV Show ’Made in Chelsea’ which now...