Media Milestones of 2010

Following on from last year's list:


Jan – Google introduce the Nexus One phone

Feb – Facebook hits 400m members, and celebrates its 6th birthday
Feb – Google launches Buzz to general indifference
Feb – The Super Bowl was the most watched programme in US TV history
Feb – 690m Valentines gifts were given on Farmville

Mar – Facebook overtook Google to become the most visited website in the US
Mar – Facebook changes ‘Fan’ to ‘Like’
Mar – 24 hours of video were uploaded to YouTube each minute

Apr – iPad launched, 200,000 sold on the first day
Apr – iAds and Promoted tweets announced
Apr – Twitter 106 million accounts
Apr – Facebook allows other sites to integrate the ‘Like’ button, 50,000 do in the first week
Apr – Foursquare hits a million users

May – 94% of UK homes have digital TV
May – YouTube celebrates its fifth birthday; now serving 2bn video views a day
May – Global smartphone sales rose 49% year on year

Jun – iPhone 4 launched, suffers technical issues, but still sells 1,7 units in 3 days
Jun – The World Cup breaks internet traffic records (Akamai)

Jul – Old Spice ‘Responses’ campaign generates nearly 6m video views in 2 days
Jul – Facebook hits 500m users
Jul – Opera’s mobile brower serves a billion page views a day

Aug – Facebook launches the ‘Places’ mobile app

Sep – Google launches Instant Search
Sept – Halo: Reach generates $200m in revenue in the first 24 hours

Oct – Lady Gaga becomes the first musician to achieve 1 billion views on YouTube

Nov – Facebook launches ‘Deals’ in the US
Nov – new browser RockMet launches
Nov – 35 hours of video were uploaded to YouTube each minute

Dec – Word Lens mobile translation launches
Dec – Twitter announces 100m new accounts in 2010, and new investment values Twitter at $3.7bn

Dr Dre in Mafia Wars

Another great celebrity/gaming/monetisation/micropayments/sponsorship example...

It's now possible to buy Dr Dre endorsed virtual goods in Zynga's Mafia Wars, in this special 'Hustlin' Wit Dre' section of the game.

Full info on TechCrunch

11 Trends for 2011

As in previous years I've made some predictions for the year ahead.  

My blogger template doesn't really lend itself to long text posts, so the full post is on Posterous, but here are the headlines:

1 - Monetisation

2 - More advertising

3 - Partnerships & Sponsorships

4 - Targeting, data, algorithms & location

5 - Asian Influence

6 - Technology for self-improvement

7 - New companies

8 - Streaming rather than downloading

9 - Brands will be more 'human'

10 - The internet will become more automated

11 - Celebrity

Head over to Posterous to read it in full

PS - here is last year's list.  I don't think I did too badly...

Word Lens - automatic text translation on your mobile

Word Lens from Quest Visual is going to be a game-changing application.



Point your phone at some text, and it automatically translates it into English.  Useful for menus, signs, and so one.  Direct, word-for-word translation only (e.g. "Beach Closed - Recent Attack of Shark") but that's ok for short phrases.

So far it's just for Spanish and English, (& also iPhone only) but I'm guessing other languages will come soon.  Having spent a baffled week in Tokyo a few years ago, I can see that it'll be totally revolutionary.

Update - it seems to have been a successful launch - they've recouped their investment in download sales already

The Green Hornet on MythBusters

The Green Hornet film comes out early next year.  It's the latest cult comic book to make the transition to the big screen.

One very clever piece of promotion is this special episode of the Discovery Networks show MythBusters, looking at the 'science' of two of the stunts in the film.



I love this because I think it's the first time MythBusters has actually done something on a film pre-release.  It's a huge cult show, and has previously done specials on James Bond and McGyver, so it's perfect as a way of promoting a film to the target audience.

Also, staying with The Green Hornet, it's interesting to see them using a Tumblr site for their blog, and keeping the Tumblr url - 'tumblr' is clearly cool in 2010!

I haven't seen enough films this year

I don't recognize nearly enough of these!



List of the films here

Pinterest - Visual Inspiration

Pinterest is a new bookmarking tool that let's you save pictures in an attractive way.

I'm a very heavy user of Delicious, and one of the tags I use most in my personal life is the 'shopping' one - stuff that I want to buy for myself or others, when the time is right.

I've a feeling that Pinterest is going to take the place of Delicious in this area - plus I can browse other people's selections.  For example this list of 'gifts for man type people' or this one for kids.  It's easy to 're-pin' the things you like to your own boards.

See more at the Pinterest blog, and ask for an invite!

Gorillaz Advent Calendar

An interesting bit of promotion by Gorillaz - each day visitors to their site get a new 'gift' - for example a soundcheck video or a wallpapers.  The final gift will be a free album.  Free, that is, to members of their fan club.  Good way of driving loyalty!

Gifting visualised

I really like these visualisations by Finisterre, showing you what to buy at different stages of a relationship.

(Beanie for someone you fancy, sale stuff once you're married).

Much more unusual and inspiring that a lot of other ways clothes are promoted online.

New Car search visualiser in Bing with Silverlight

I like this visual search app from Bing, using Sliverlight.

Select the different criteria you are looking for, the make, MPG and so on, and it filters out the models that don't meet your requirements.

E.g. here I look for a passenger car...

By Volvo...

Have a play here

The difference a word makes

An interesting example from the Midem blog on the difference a single word can make to search ad effectiveness.

Neil Cartwright shared results from a recent campaign by his agency Media Junction.

It ads were to promote a series of concerts by an artist.  If the ad said 'Show' the ad had a click rate 5 times higher than if it said 'Tour' - People presumably buy into a show rather than a whole tour.

Clearly click through rates aren't the only measure of success, but it's a great example of the effect one small difference to copy can make.

More here

Save as WWF

WWF is a new file format.  It's like a pdf, but you can't print it, so it saves trees.



Very clever (although pretty maddening at times too, I imagine).  Very innovative thinking.

More here.

Starbucks' 12 days of sharing

Sort of like an advent calendar, but with only 12 windows.

Today, being World Aids Day, the sharing was for charity - 5 cents (US) from every cup of 'handcrafted' drink went to the global fund to help fight Aids in Africa.

I'll try to update this every day!