branding

After last week's successful Social Media Week London brainstorm - we're delighted to announce a SMWLDN Brainstorm Round 2 in preparation for next February's SMWLDN on Wed 7th Dec from 6pm - 8pm in Shoreditch or TechCity, if you're startup-minded (RSVP).

This time, the aim is to focus on how social media is affecting and impacting our day-to-day lives from the clothes we wear, the food we eat, the music we listen to, the games we play, the sport (some of us, ehem) do and our families.

You love Google.

It's one of those universal tools everyone has a soft spot for. I secretly imagine people who work at Yahoo use it when their boss isn't watching. Who couldn't adore a company who has an unofficial slogan "Don't be evil."

In April 2010 the search giant purchased "PlinkArt." PlinkArt was originally designed to identify works of art once you took a photo of it. The app was one of three winners of the Education/Reference category of the Google ADC2 (Android Developer Challenge 2). Google then purchased them and added the functionality to what we now know as "Google Goggles" - a visual search engine.

Square is a company that caught my eye just over a year ago. If you’re not familiar with it, you should be. It’s an iPhone / iPad app that lets you receive credit card payments. The start-up (if you can call a company which transfers more than $3 million per day a "start-up") has recently received investment from Richard Branson and is "looking into international expansion in 2012", this excites me greatly, here’s why...

This morning I woke up to several emails: new girls in my area wanting to talk on Match.com, TopMan.com are having another sale & Groupon offers me 40% off a weekend spa break. All 3 went straight into the Trash.

I know from past experience the “girls in my area” are either people I know or live too far away. Anything in the TopMan sale is there for a reason - usually because even the cast of Skins wouldn’t be seen dead in it. And Groupon clearly doesn’t know me from Adam.

They say in life you get one love. The “one” that you share your thoughts and feelings, your ups and downs and everything in between. For me, this is Twitter. Don’t sigh at me just yet, I’ve got a girlfriend – although she doesn’t Follow me.

People who know me even a tiny bit know I love Twitter much more than Facebook, I actually stopped using my personal Facebook completely 9 days ago.

Twitter is a beautifully simple platform (at the moment) that does one thing well – communications. I hope it stays that way while it tries to increase it's profits.

Just over a week ago, we (Neoco) were invited to speak at the Chinwag Insight: Facebook Marketing conference on 6th October 2011. We shared our predictions with delegates from around the country, explaining what Facebook’s latest and most radical changes to date (first announced at the f8 conference on 23rdSeptember) mean for marketers and business.

Other panelists that supported our talk included senior members from We Are Social, Wieden+Kennedy and 1000heads. Have look at some of the insight we shared at the conference looking at the opportunities and potential threats that face your brand when Facebook’s developments are rolled out to all users this month.