Twit or Fit?

Remember hotornot.com? Apparently it was sold for $20 million not too long ago. Now hot on its heels is twitorfit.com!

The site uses your existing profile picture on twitter (you know, the tiny one people can’t see too well) and asks people to rate you from 1 (twit) to 10 (fit). It’s interesting to see this format still, potentially, has legs and as twitter becomes more mainstream and grows in popularity I guess it could join the ranks of other twitter add-on sites.

For the purposes of research, I’ve signed up so if you come across me – go easy on the 1s eh! twitorfit.com/boringwill!

2009 Social Media Predictions

Peter Kim today has produced a report with commentary from many people in the social media space about where they think social media will go in 2009. Here are some of the interesting points from it:

• “Although it is now cheaper to launch an initiative leveraging Web 2.0 technology – it requires qualified and passionate people to make them successful.” – David Armano
• “You may not always start the year as a leader, but you can certainly finish it that way.” – Rohit Bhargava
• “Doors are going to close all over the social web. Why? Because the money didn’t come the way people thought it would.” – Chris Brogan
• “The tipping point has not only *not* been reached, but could still tilt *away* from Social Media.” – Todd Defren
• “There’s a lot of fixing that needs to be done.” – Jason Falls
• “We’re going to develop a set of better metrics to help guide, direct and validate ‘commitment’.” – Joseph Jaffe
• “These will be cumulative events and interactions that will build brand loyalty for the companies that pay attention to them.” – Scott Monty
• “The recession will force revenue results out of social technologies.” – Jeremiah Owyang
• “Companies that focus on earning love will thrive during hard times, and kick ass when good times return.” – Andy Sernovitz
• “Suddenly, being Facebook friends with your mom will seem less ridiculous than following 4,000 strangers on Twitter.” – Greg Verdino

Personally I think it will be an interesting time. The rush we saw in 2008 for companies to be on a social networking site as a ‘me too’ factor will diminish, along with their willingness to spend lots of money without thinking about what they really want to achieve first. I also think it will get more personal with brands realising that it’s not about blogging as a corporation/business but using executives and staff to act as ‘faces’, blending personality with PR.

You can  download a pdf of the report here, or read the article in full at Peter Kim’s blog here.

Last.fm layoff 20% of workforce

Having got most of Acknowledgement and Boring staff onto Last.fm over the past few months, I was sad to learn earlier today that last.fm, the social network based around the music you and your friends listen to, is laying off 20% of their 90-ish strong workforce.

Last.fm was a favourite of mine as the software would just sit in the background tracking the music you listen to through media players, such as iTunes, or via the streaming service on the last.fm website. This tracking of music even had a verb: ‘scrobbling’.

After getting everyone to register and use the site religiously, we had a few weeks of fun creating an office chart and seeing how our music choices differed. The thing was, that’s where it ended. The level of engagement last.fm provides, though fun, doesn’t reward frequent users enough. Sure, it reccommends music you may never listened to before but if you’re anything like me, it’s pretty easy to exhaust these offerings and get bored of their suggestions.

It’s never nice to learn of people in the same industry as you losing their jobs, so as a mark of respect I’m going to use last.fm all day tomorrow. Even though I know it’s going to suggest Kylie, one too many times.

You know when a software project fails when…

Recently I answered a question on Linkedin which asked Finish this sentence. “I knew the software project was doomed when…”

I’d worked on a project back at AOL where the project named changed about three times in as many months so shared my quip. When I was contacted by the questioner to be told I was the top answer and made the first entry in her article on CIO.com, I was pretty pleased.

You can view mine and the 25 other answers, bound to resonate with anyone who’s worked on a software/large scale web project, here.

The late bird catches the worm?

As I mentioned before, though I’ve been working in digital for long enough to have the cheek to call myself a vetran, I only properly embraced the world of social media tools very recently.

Today marks another milestone. I’ve properly started twittering. I say properly because I have had a twitter account for quite some time, maybe 18 months, but never used the bloody thing as I couldn’t see the value. Now, I can see that if I tweet and check out other people’s tweets, I’m bound to learn lots and those who are silly enough to follow @boringwill might see how strange I really am.

It’s Just All Noise, Right?

“Blogs? Ha! What a bloody waste of time and webspace”

These are words that, in the past, I would proudly put my name to. I’ve never been convinced of the value of blogs. In fact, I’ve scoffed and spluttered an excessive amount when I hear that someone intends to embark on writing a blog -  the world could really do without more thought, opinion and comment. WordPress has i-dunno-how-many million blogs, blogger probably has a similar number; it’s just all noise! So the fact I am even typing this first post does make me feel a little bit strange. I’m a bit spooked.

I often have these turnaround moments. I think anyone who knows me well enough will be familiar with my firm stance on something, only to change my way of thinking. Indecisive? I’d rather call it, um.. progressive. So I spent a few minutes yesterday thinking about it, going through my bookmarks and checking out my RSS reader. I quckly came to the realisation that I’ve actually always avidly followed a number of blogs and RSS feeds, for example Google Blog, Springwise and I’ll admit that I do follow the Digital Spy celebrity news RSS feed with more interest than I’d like people to know. The thing about these examples is that they lack any sense of personality. So that must mean I am not a proper blog user. Phew.

I was wrong. Argh! I realised that  when I search for something, the answers would very often come from a blog. So I thought that I would start to make my contribution.

So now my stance has changed… “Blogs? Oh yes, they’re good aren’t they.. mmm yes”