Have I got news for you

     The Internet has on the one hand brought people closer with softwares such as Skype or MSN Messenger where you can talk to someone on the other side of the world for free, however I find the increasing number of so called ‘social sites’ or online dating sites  rather worrying… People now find friends and partners of the Internet and I seriously wonder what has happened to traditional, old-fashioned courting…. But I particularly despise online dating sites for charging a fortune to poor insecure singletons…  If you work in central London, you might have been lucky enough to grab a copy of the new free London paper ‘London Lite’ (I love the dodgy spelling! – is that supposed to be trendy?!)  London Lite is hardly a broadsheet but it’ll certainly keep you entertained on the way back home – ‘news’,  gossip, fashion and beauty tips, where to go out, and of course the ever so important ‘dating and mating section’ (I kid you not!); check out the free londonlove.com offer!   

An environmental matter that’s come to my attention now, however, is the sheer volume of newspapers floating around
London at the moment. Freesheets in London have been commonplace for years, from the specialist titles aimed at backpackers  or Polish people (the strapline for which on its distribution boxes cheerily reads: “If you’re not Polish, don’t bother“) to the execrable ‘bits of the encyclopaedia paraphrased and sprinkled with industrial tribunal gossip’ that is Metro, but now London finds itself in the middle of a media war, which is taking many trees with it!

Media reporters have been scratching their crotches excitedly for weeks at the arrival of two rival freesheets launching within a week or so of each other. London Lite, scrawnier counterpart to the Evening Standard, itself a
London newspaper with incurable delusions of national grandeur, was first off the blocks, its bored distributors half-heartedly gesturing with a copy, barely bothering to urge you to take it. As a read goes, it’s OK if you like the Standard, Metro or the Daily Mail- three titles I don’t enjoy and do not read- and are more interested in Lindsay Lohan wearing four different outfits per day than in world events.

Cheeky upstart thelondonpaper (oh look, no capitals or spaces between words, woo! How unmistakably ‘now’!) has impressed me slightly more in content if not in distribution. Its employees are borderline psychotic and think nothing of jumping out in front of you to make sure you have a copy of these 50 pages of precisely nothing. I have become the target of approximately 30 of these wannabe adrenaline junkies, as well as spied them darting across impossibly busy roads, thrusting papers through barely open car windows or chucking piles of them on buses.

What both newspapers have in common is they claim to encourage content from readers (some sort of offline Web 2.0??), be it restaurant reviews, pithy comments on music releases or concerts or, every paper’s staple (no pun intended): an over-reactionary letters pages.

All of this newspaper floating around has reminded where paper comes from and I’m beginning to wonder how many freesheet launches it will take until we’ve ruin out of trees completely. Thank you very much Mr Murdoch!

Bridget Jones economy – how young singles shape city culture, lifestyle and economies

 

Ever wondered why Bridget Jones’s Diary spawned a phenomenon of chick-lit on the theme of single women? It might be because we are, increasingly a nation of singletons. Single-person households now account for 29% of all UK homes and half of Londoners aged between 20 and 59 are single. Census figures in the US also show that proportion of 20-24-year-old American women who have not married doubled from 36% to 73%. Worry not, this is a worldwide phenomenon!

Bridget may be a caricature, but only just. Her creator, Helen Fielding, has drawn someone much more human and recognizable than the elegant and wealthy young New York singles in the TV shows “Friends” and “Sex and the City”. Yet all three portray the people who now dominate and shape the rich world’s city life, not just in New York and London, but increasingly in Tokyo, Stockholm, Paris and Santiago: well-educated, single professionals in their 20s and 30s. Moralists fret about them; marketing folks court them; urban developers want to lure them. They are the main consumers and producers of the creative economy that revolves around advertising, publishing, entertainment and media. More than any other social group, they have time, money and a passion for spending on whatever is fashionable, frivolous and fun.
What explains the trend? The key seems to be the higher education of women. In most rich countries, more women than men now go to university; in particular, women make up more than half the students taking professional qualifications in subjects such as law and medicine. As new job opportunities unfold, they often earn as much as similarly qualified men. They find work is fun and it pays well, so they put off marriage; husbands and babies can wait.

Because young singles have so much disposable money and because they set so many trends, they are a market that many companies long to sell to.

The boyfriend-hunt is a big part of Bridget’s life. And so it is with real-life Bridgets, many of whom find the big cities to which they flock lonely places. In competitive New York, the problem is at its worst: the Machiavellian brutality of office politics makes it hard to form friendships with the folk at work. Besides, many young New Yorkers live alone in tiny apartments, and the only way to meet people is to go out.
Londoners, including myself, typically share, finding a flat through the pages of Loot, or online with gumtree.com, moveflat.com or spareroom.co.uk. In London, the third woman could expect to meet the friends of her flat-mates in front of the television in the living room, or scavenging in the fridge in the communal kitchen.

Finding Bridget a mate has produced all sorts of entrepreneurial solutions. Lots of them are on the Internet, allowing the hunt to continue through working hours.

But if online dating fails, try to come up with a few reasons why being single is OK. I had a brainstorming session with a few of my single friends and we came up with the following facts:

• You have more time to focus on your career
• Single women can use their sexuality to get the upper-hand in the office power struggles – and you can have fun doing it!
• You can spend your hard-earned cash on yourself rather than running a household filled with boyfriend/husband/screaming kids
• You can freely flirt and get random strangers to buy you drinks
• Singletons have more sex than their married counterparts (arguably!)
• Finally don’t forget that after all, you are ‘the girl next door’

In a nutshell, enjoy being single while you can!

The new hot Ipod Nano is out!

The new Ipod Nano is out! Just as a refresher, the new iPod Nano will be available in 2GB, 4GB, and 8GB versions and the prices have been slashed!  The 4GB version will come inumber of metallic colours, including pink, blue and green. The 8GB only comes in black – clever marketing I say.

The day Starbucks met Monopoly…

 

Starbucks in the
US seems to be battling a lot a negative publicity lately. Firstly for killing their Free Iced Coffee Offer a few days ago; a dissatisfied customer who was told her free drink voucher was worthless is launching a $114m (£60m) lawsuit against the coffee colossus. I love America!

Note to American readers: I am not being sarcastic; I actually want to move to
America!

Secondly, reports in the Times that a large Frappuccino with whipped cream has 650 calories, not to mention almost an entire day’s allowance of saturated fat! Mind you the definition of large greatly varies from one country to another… :)  

Do you remember playing a game of monopoly around Christmas time with your family when you were a kid? Monopoly is, quite simply, the most successful board game in history. More than 200 million Monopoly sets have been sold in over 80 countries and 26 languages over the last seven decades! What particularly amazes me is how Monopoly was commercialised thinking globally but nevertheless acting locally well before the concept was coined by David Brower; street names, question cards and player pieces were adapted for each country…

Well you won’t be disappointed! Instead of an old shoe, McDonald’s French Fries will be a player piece along with a Starbucks coffee cup, a Toyota Prius car, a Motorola RAZR phone and a New Balance running shoe. For some reason, I cannot help thinking that McDonald’s and Starbucks might land in hot waters… Feeling nostalgic of the 1950’s car, the old shoe or the iron?

Note to Parker Brothers: have you considered introducing the Ipod as a play piece? If it was to be included, it would certainly be my fav!

Ryanair puts fun back into flying

The airport operator, BAA lost £13m and suffered a drop in passenger growth after terror alerts in London last month. Security measures were drastically tightened across Europe and hand baggage restrictions were put into place.  

Let’s take a quick look extra security measures information provided by some of the major airlines in the UK:

 ·         British Airways·         Air France·         Alitalia·         EasyJet

·         Ryanair

I’m speechless and no it is NOT and hoax!!!

French (dis)Connection

 

The seemingly dyslexic advertising campaign for French Connection UK helped to sell more than half a million T-shirts at £20 (I did say French connection clothes are pricey, didn’t I?) a time and transform the retailer into an international name. Sex sells! Some of the slogans commonly seen on T-shirts include: ‘Too busy to FCUK’, ‘Cool as FCUK’, ‘Whre teh FCUK is my mney?’, ‘FCUK safely’ or ‘FCUK him fragrance’ 

But the slogan was too provocative for some. It was removed from Vancouver buses and New York taxis, and branded “obnoxious” by a British High Court judge. Beattie claimed, somewhat disingenuously, that he did not understand all the fuss, and neither do I!

However, back at the end of 2005, French Connection decided to cut back on the use of the controversial FCUK logo after consumers became tired of the slogan. Shame French Connection didn’t introduce another witty campaign sooner – that’s where they might have gone wrong…  

Fashion vs. Style 

In February 2006, French Connection launched the Fashion vs. Style campaign that replaced the previous FCUK advertising. The first advertisement features two girls in the role of ‘Fashion’ and ‘Style’ fighting and kissing at the end of the ad.

It was reported in the national press that this advert received between 121 and 127 complaints in the first week of being broadcast. I personally find this advert rather lenghty and I am not even sure how to interpret it - French Connection’s range is both stylish and fashionable?

I can totally understand why people would complain about needless violence however I just hope no one complained about the lesbian kiss. Would people complain about a woman and man kissing? I don’t think so…

Looking forward to reading your toughts on this  

All that glitters is not gold - thoughts on Web 2.0

As a blogger and member of so-called on-line communities, it made sense to give my opinion on Web 2.0. Some people seem to be overexcited with Web 2.0 offerings. I agree that networking and user-generated content is a brilliant idea but only as long as everything is under control.

But what is Web 2.0 all about? 

Web 2.0 is a phrase coined by O’Reilly Media in 2004 to refer to a supposed second-generation of Internet-based services that let people collaborate and share information online in new ways — such as social networking sites, wikis, communication tools, and folksonomies.

Essentially the key differences between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 are: 

Web 1.0	Web 2.0
Double-click	Google Adsense
Ofoto	Flickr
Akamai	BitTorrent
Mp3.com	Napster
Britannica online	Wikipedia
Personnal Websites	Blogging
evite	upcoming.org and EVDB
Domain name speculation	Search engine optimisation
Page views	Cost per click
Screen scraping	Web services
Publishing	Participation
Content management systems	Wikis
Stickiness	Syndication

1) Wikis

A wiki is a type of website that allows visitors to easily add, remove, or otherwise edit and change some available content, sometimes without the need for registration. Wiki means first such software to be called a wiki, WikiWikiWeb, is named after the “Wiki Wiki” line of Chance RT-52 buses in Honolulu International Airport, Hawaii. (”Wiki wiki” means “quick” or “hurry” in Hawai’ian, and also refers to a type of fish native to the islands). My favourite wiki application has to to be Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia. A wiki enables documents to be written collectively in a simple markup language using web-browser. A defining characteristic of wiki technology is the ease with which pages can be created and updated. Generally, there is no review before modifications are accepted. Most wikis are open to the general public without the need to register any user account. Sometimes session log-in is requested to acquire a “wiki-signature” cookie for autosigning edits. More private wiki servers require user authentication. Many edits, however, can be made in real-time, and appear almost instantaneously online. This can often lead to abuse of the system.

- in theory wikipedia is a beautiful thing. It certainly is useful - I regularly consult it to get a quick gloss on a subject.  - But at a factual level it’s unreliable, and the writing is often appalling. I wouldn’t depend on it as a source, and I certainly wouldn’t recommend it to a student writing a research paper. 

2) Online/virtual communities

Today, virtual community or online community can be used loosely for a variety of social groups interacting via the Internet.So far my experience of online communities include Flickr, myspace, Linked in, MSN Messenger and Skype.

+ Applications such as MSN Messenger or Skype are simply amazing and have revolutionized the way people communicate and stay in touch with friends and family.

- One of the things I particularly dislike about Skype is the fact that anyone can randomly send you a message as long as they are registered members. Another downside of Skype is the quality of the calls – my friends regularly complain that they cannot hear me properly, but then again it could be down to my Internet connection.

+ I recently started using Flickr and so far so good! It’s a great way to share photos with friends and random strangers alike. It has great features for photo storage as well as networking with like-minded people

= I use myspace to market my blog and pictures on Flickr however I do not see myself staying too long on the site – although I ‘met’ some great people from various countries on the site, I find it difficult to have a meaningful conversation with any of these folks. In addition there have some reports of myspace addiction. Let’s face it, myspace is rather addictive!  

3) Blogs

I wrote a post last month about blogs so I won’t be getting into too much detail on the topic. The quality of blogs is also debatable (and that’s including my own blog!!). Bloggers’ opinions are very subjective and cannot be blindly relied on. It’s good if a reader has enough brain to distinguish between real knowledge and nonsense. But we all know that generally people believe everything promoted by the Media. As a market researcher, it’ll certainly be interesting to see how blogs will be used in the context of qualitative research. 

To be continued…