LBi London

Merry GIFmas

Posted by Simon Gill December 24th, 2011

What’s the last thing you need a Christmas? Probably lots of things if you think about it, but how about a silly animated GIF for starters. step forward the GIFshop.

Our seasonal stupidity comes in the form of a GIFshop – a place to obtain some of the fairest animated creations this side of ruler bar. You can tweet it, like it, +1 it or even embed it. And if you really like it make a small donation to the charity its supporting. Visitors are also invited to submit their own gifs too.

We’ll match the donations (up to a total of £2000) and announce the winning GIF with much fanfare of course.

Because this Christmas it really is better to GIF than receive.

We also invited a few of the capital’s finest Creative Directors to submit – with all but one strangely declining to get involved – bar humbug. So many thanks to Ed Robinson and Rob at The Viral Factory for providing a few gems.

The whole project was concocted from a blended mixture of suggested ideas from our 5 UK offices to hopefully put a smile on people’s faces. A big shout out to the team that turned it quickly around.

It would seem the animated GIF meme was going strong this festive season with TBWA New York giving the World holidaygifgiver.com with added Chrimbo jumper, and Skittles providing their GIF rap (GifRapTheRainbow.com) courtesy of BBDO Toronto.

So as the line goes this Christmas this really is the GIF that keeps on giving.

Tags: animated, charity, Christmas, GIF, shop

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A year of Windows Phone

Posted by Riaz Ahmed December 23rd, 2011

I have been using Windows Phone for well over a year now both for personal use and business use and have been impressed by what it has on offer from an ever-improving operating system, a very nice user experience to a maturing phone ecosystem. There has already been much said of Windows Phone and I would say that most of its been positive. Much to my surprise though, market share has dropped to 1.5% compared to 2.5% last year. Putting that stat to one side for now, 2011 has been quite significant for Windows Phone as it’s seen a major update to the software, thousands of apps being published, a variety of newer handsets, huge support for developers/designers and a considerable partnership with Nokia, all of which has put it in a good position to push on in 2012 and gain an increase in market share.
 

Here are some of my highlights of Windows Phone:

User Interface
I just love the new UI in Windows Phone! The Phone team at Microsoft introduced a completely redesigned UI called Metro. Metro has been given a big thumbs up by the creative and user experience community through its use of simple, clean, tiled interface that does a good job of presenting lots of dynamic real-time content consistently on mobile/tablet devices, desktop LCD’s or television screens.
 

Metro is now being used as the UI on Microsoft’s highly anticipated new operating system Windows 8 and is already on its way to xBox. The picture below from winrumors.com shows Metro UI on Windows 8, Windows Phone and xBox Live.

Let’s get Social
A major new functionality, introduced by the mango software update, is the social network integration. This bring in social integration capabilities with Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Windows Live and xBox Live.
I absolutely love this feature as my phone contacts list now has the likes of Charlie Sheen, Robin Van Persie, Richard Branson alongside my LBi colleagues and my mum
 

Apps and Marketplace
Let’s face it, a decent smartphone isn’t really decent unless it has the ability to discover, find and download applications…. and lots of them! There are now over 45,000 apps on the Windows Phone ‘app store’ otherwise known as Marketplace.

With the recent Mango update as mentioned earlier, the IE mobile browser got upgraded and now supports HTML5. That means Windows Phone now joins the other major phone players in the market for running websites that have been developed in HTML5.

Developers, Developers, Developers
The thousands of apps available to download across Apple App Store, Windows Phone Marketplace, Android Market, wouldn’t be possible without skilling up mobile application developers. Over the last 18 months Microsoft has made quite a large investment in the developer community by providing dev tools, learning kits, training and running developer courses and events globally.

Earlier this year, LBi was selected as the exclusive London digital agency partner to host the London Windows Phone Camps at our Truman Brewery offices. These dev camps have been very successful with the last camp reaching record numbers.

The Nokia partnership
2011 has seen a partnership between Microsoft and Nokia and the emergence of new Nokia smartphones running Windows Phone operating system. This was a very good move by both companies and exactly what they needed to compete with Google and Apple. The recent London launch of the Nokia Lumia phone shows just how serious Nokia are of the partnership and importance of gaining a market share in the smartphone race.

Well there you go, some of my highlights of Windows Phone in 2011. Windows Phone must be doing something right because just the other day I talked about some of the above with mates who are big time iPhone and Android fans and even they were impressed saying how Windows Phone had really caught up with the competition.

I think so too.

Thanks for reading and have an amazing 2012!

Riaz  (@TheRealRiaz)

Follow me…..    

Tags: Android, apple, Google, iPhone, Metro, Microsoft, mobile, Nokia, Technology, UI, Windows, Windows 8, Windows Phone, xbox

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In review: The best of the best of 2011

Posted by Nick Bean December 23rd, 2011

Yes, it’s that time of year again. The season of giving, sharing and presenting what has happened over the last calendar year in various  amusing and strange ways. “What are you talking about?” I imagine you crying as you read this. Over the last few weeks my inbox and Twitter stream have been filled with “Top 10s” and “Best of 2011s”. Some are quite interesting, some thought provoking, some witty and some are down-right dull.

Here’s my pick – a best of the best ofs.

Google’s Zeitgeist

2011 was a big year for Google. Not only did the world’s number one search engine continue its domination of that market, it rolled out its new social platform, Google+ and +1, its social bookmarking/recommendation system. However, Google remains a search engine to most and Zeitgeist is a compilation of the fastest rising search terms for 2011. Apple has made a big impact with iPhone 5 (which turned out to become the mere iPhone 4S), iPad 2 and the late Steve Jobs all making the list. Late Jackass Star Ryan Dunn makes it to number three; Google+ pops in at number two, and number one? How could it be anything else.

YouTube’s Most Viewed Videos of 2011

YouTube’s Trend blog recently published its list of the most viewed videos of 2011. Amongst cute animals, Nyan Cat and talking babies, we see music being a key driver to video popularity, with four entries reaching the top ten. Most interestingly, there was only one brand created video. Volkswagen’s “The Force” video was already a major internet sensation before it hit the air during the Super Bowl half time show and generated over 1 million views in the first 24 hours. As for number one it’s a Black day for music.

The Guardian’s – 2011 In Lego

This pictorial look at the year’s event may well be a very cunning product advertorial, but it captures the imagination, recalling key moments of 2011 through the medium of Danish plastic. With creative types sourced from Flickr, News-In-Lego makes my list due to ingenuity and nostalgia. Lovely stuff.

Twitter- What’s the Trend 2011

In early December, What’s The Trend published its Top 10 trending topics on Twitter. The list is available through Mashable and highlights the top 10 hash tagged topics throughout 2011. Analysis of the terms suggests that like, YouTube, music was a key motivator, with Britney Spears, The Jonas Brothers and Lady Gaga all featuring alongside eventual winner Justin Bieber. The interesting revelation from this may well be that, political events that claimed to have been driven by social activity, such as the Arab Spring, do not make the overall top 10.

BBC Magazine- 2011: The Year where a lot happened

The BBC’s look back at the year  is interesting and informative as it gives a good indication of the events which captured the attention of the site’s users. This is demonstrated by an infographic showing relative traffic levels to its news site during the calendar year. The events that most affected traffic to the site were the Japanese Earthquake, the royal Wedding and the London riots, the latter of which generated 15.9 million unique browsers.

So what?

One thing is certain, 2011 was a year of change. We can read what we want into these different best ofs/statistics and make judgements about the way people are using technology and their interests. Socially, politically and technologically we have all been a part of it through the way we have interacted online.

At LBi, we too are trying to change things a little, which is why we set up our GIF shop allowing the sharing of shiny home-made GIFs for a donation to one of our three selected charities (we’ll even match any donation up to £2000!). Please have a gander, choose the GIF of your liking and share away.

Hope you enjoyed our best of 2011. Stay tuned next week when we’ll bring you our own take on predictions for 2012.

Have a happy Christmas and a happy New Year!

@nickobeano

Tags: 2011, 2011 trends, best of, Google Zietgeist, twitter, year in review, YouTube

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Weekly Social Media Update

Posted by Jamie Pither December 15th, 2011

#NewnewTwitter

The mainstream micro – blogging service Twitter has launched a complete redesign of the site (you may have noticed) for both desktop and mobile. Not only is there a redesign but Twitter has introduced some major new features too – there’s now more focus on rich media, real time discovery and the opportunity for brands and advertisers.

The new Twitter design features four main categories, ‘home’, ‘connect’, ‘discover’ and ‘me’. The ‘discover’ tab is the biggest new addition, this will help users to discover the latest trending stories, with more of an emphasis on the content that drives the trending topics.

Brand pages

After much speculation Twitter has improved its platform for marketers, giving brands and advertisers the chance to create more of a unique branded offering through ‘brand pages’. Available to a selected number of partnered brands at the moment, the new brand pages include the ability to create your own banner at the top of the page. You can also favourite a tweet to the top of your timeline, so that you can show off selected content to visitors.

The introduction of brand pages will help to position Twitter into direct competition with Facebook’s brand pages as it becomes more of a media rich hub for on-page engagement. This may result in a shift where we see users spending more of their time on Twitter.

Google Currents

Google has recently released Google Currents, an application that lets you explore online publications and other rich web content in one neat visual place. The search engine giant has partnered with over 150 publications including Forbes and The Huffington Post to offer users full-length articles optimised specifically for the app.

Users can add their own RSS, video and photo feeds and public Google+ streams that they’re following. The app will place all this content into a well-designed layout that you can then scroll through online and offline – so when you’re out and about you don’t need to rely on picking up a network connection.

Google Currents is also offering publishers, (of any shape or size) the opportunity to design and customise their own web content specifically for the app – this part of the app is called Google Currents Producer.

Google Currents has positioned itself as an app that works alongside Google+ which leaves open the possibility that there might be plans for further integration with Google’s overall search experience. Unlike its notable rival Flipboard (who have dominated mobile content aggregation on iOS), Google Currents is available on both iOS and Android. Keep an eye out for when the app becomes available in the UK.

Facebook trial brand page messaging

Facebook have begun trialling a private messaging system that lets brand pages and fans communicate, much like the messaging system in place for Facebook profile pages. The private messaging system for brands does have some key differences including:

• At the moment brand pages can only reply to messages that have been sent to them.
• Brand pages can reply privately to individual comments that a fan has made on the brands wall.
• Users messaging a brand do not have to be a fan of the page. This could have a few implications for brands:
  • The messaging system may well become another response channel to manage – presenting a potential resource issue.
  • Brands will have to think carefully about how to prioritise communication between fans and non-fans, if it’s part of its Facebook strategy.

Overall the new messaging system could be seen as a significant plus for brands, as it allows them to deal with customer service queries in a private setting that does not affect the public reputation of the brand – unless you’re brand still has an open wall policy that is. Keep an eye out for this introduction as Facebook are testing the product in quieter markets before hopefully rolling it out to the masses.

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