jedhallam.com - Latest Comments

Re: Using mobile numbers as URIs

Eddie — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 23:37:50 -0000

@jonathanhopkins - I've been experiencing similar problems, what are you doing to help get you through this phase? Any suggestions would help.

Re: Using mobile numbers as URIs

Jed Hallam — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 04:26:18 -0000

Chipchase is incredible, I'm now eating up anything I can find by him. Thank you!

Re: Using mobile numbers as URIs

Jed Hallam — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 04:25:52 -0000

The exciting part of the next few years will be the battle we face to convince everyone that they no longer need a name... ;)

Re: Using mobile numbers as URIs

jonathanhopkins — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 19:02:59 -0000

Nice post. We're in that weird transitional phase at the moment I think - with way too many bits to the web and not enough glue. I know I've just registered (mymobilephonenumber).com just in case.

Re: Using mobile numbers as URIs

James Whatley — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 18:53:52 -0000

Inspired by Chipchase. I approve.

Re: Social media monitoring: absolutely pointless

Sam Brodie — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 17:48:05 -0000

Agreed. Scoutlabs and Radian 6. All rubbish! I'm impressed by an innovative French company called Linkfluence who do much same thing but ensure they every tweet, post or recommendation is viewed by one of their team of researches. Not only that they have there own proprietary crawlers and social media analysis technology resulting in a services that's more expensive but ultimately creates a value.

Re: Viral videos CAN be created

Daan Jansonius — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 06:19:14 -0000

Interesting discussion! Whilst I agree with Ramzi that content needs to be taken into account, the truth lies somewhere in the middle.

Yes, content is extremely important - people don't share shit content, right? Of course there is a lot of truth in this statement, but Stuart hit the nail on the head with his suggestion that people not only share content they themselves like but also content that a) they think others will like or b) will reflect well on them.

My favourite example of this is Mashable. They've build an incredible base of loyal readers and have done a tremendous job - but in more recent times some of the content has been of very debatable quality. Yet, most articles still receive dozens if not hundreds of retweets. Often without people even reading the article - "It's from Mashable, must be good - I'll retweet that".

Hands up if you've not been guilty of that behaviour - I certainly have!

Sometimes something becomes 'viral' (I prefer 'organic growth' or 'shareworthy content'' ) because it touched on the right nodes within the network, sometimes it's just a great piece of content people love sharing.

Re: Viral videos CAN be created

Jed Hallam — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 06:13:17 -0000

*digs around with a pen and paper*

Re: Viral videos CAN be created

Stuart Bruce — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 15:40:28 -0000

Jed, think I'm with Ramzi on this. No matter how influential/important/big a friend or whoever it is in my network(s) I'm not going to pass it on unless 1) I think it is really good 2) I think people I know will think it is good really. A third element that people are sometimes afraid to admit to it "will it make me look good if I pass it on". Those things are all to do with content, nothing to do with networks. How can you use "relationships and influence" to activate anything unless it's worth activating? It's classic public relations about creating something that is of 'value' or 'useful'.

Re: Viral videos CAN be created

Jed Hallam — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 13:40:19 -0000

Hey Kerry, thanks for commenting :)

Totally, totally agree - to predict a viral, we're talking BIG money, but to be able to predict removes a huge amount of risk which is a safe (albeit expensive) option.

Regarding network clumps (who needs elegance :)); it depends on how you build your network and what you base it on - if you're looking for people who knit, that's a different network to old school friends (although, arguably, there's a whole convergence culture going where networks become totally amalgamated - one for another blog post (or two!)) - so you chose the network (loosely) based on the content. That way there's relevance and it's more likely to spread - which is then when strength of weak ties should hopefully kick in.

As you say, Matt is likely to return from holiday, read this post and cry. I'm pretty sure I've squeezed a few round pegs into square holes here!

Re: Viral videos CAN be created

Jed Hallam — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 13:34:09 -0000

Well... *flexes fingers*

There is a school of thought (and some pretty advanced models) that suggest that content isn't as important as we think - if you can 'activate' the right number of the right nodes (using relationships and influence) then you can activate the bigger nodes (super influencers) who then spread the message to there networks (herd mentality kicks in here).

The difference between this and what viral companies do is that this is targeted at meaningful communities rather than faceless numbers.

Re: Viral videos CAN be created

Kerrymg — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 13:08:17 -0000

Am so falling for the bait here.

Viral's are unpredictable without a decent amount of seeding spend behind them. I'd also argue your figures, though would be happy to be proved wrong.

Our networks are clumps of ppl who tend to know each other. For example take my facebook social graph, the ppl on their tend to fall into school friends/uni friends/rugby friends/work colleagues/social media ppl and family. If I send a video to every person in every group, most of them will not pass it on as they will assume most ppl that they would send it to within their group will have already received it. Of course they may pass it on to friends outside of the group and from there it may pass on to other social clumps. The person you are after is not necessarily the most influential but the one with the most betweeness, the one who bridges the most clumps if you will.

Mat Morrison, from whom I have nicked most of the above knowledge, can explain this far more eloquently than I.

I'd also argue with method 2, that is not seeding (and I assume this is why you have used inverted commas'. that's uploading and the equivalent of sticking an ad in the phonebook hoping that someone will chance upon it by accident.

Re: Viral videos CAN be created

Ramzi — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 12:46:32 -0000

Mate - you've not taken content into the equation. I can make any video viral by going to a paid for seeding company like GoViral who will pay bloggers to post it and give a guaranteed number of views - but that doesn't make it viral, it makes it paid for advertising.

Network dynamics is indeed very important in determining the possibilities of something going viral, but possibilities aren't a certainty - so whether or not something goes 'viral' is always unpredictable. You talk about influencers and peers - but if the content is grade A bullshit, then none of these influencers or peers will be keen to share it.

Nice try though ;-)

Re: Is a public relations degree worth it?

Ethiobeauty89 — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 15:01:09 -0000

I want to get my degree in PR but I am really scared. I don't know if i will enjoy doing it for long time. I am sooo confused :(

Re: Why it’s worth your while to join up online and offline marketing

Jimjams — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 04:08:01 -0000

I don't know what you're on about but I'm sure you're right. When you talk all I hear is the gentle sea breeze and birds tweeting on the wind. I think I may love you.

Re: Moving pictures for your eyes

AndrewAllsop — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 19:47:34 -0000

Really enjoyed the tattoo and Clay Shirky videos, will watch the other two tomorrow. 50 minutes onwards of the Shirky video made me reevaluate how I felt about social networks.

Re: Moving pictures for your eyes

gedcarroll — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 19:34:48 -0000

Thanks Jed, interesting which ones you went after.

Re: Is a public relations degree worth it?

H Fowler — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 16:32:23 -0000

Great website by the way. PR to me is the art of communication, it doesn't matter if the company you represent is large or small, the one I represent at the moment is small with a small s! I love the psychology behind marketing. Trying to figure out what makes people tick, what they respond to. . ,The ideas are easy to come by-its the implmentation thats a challenge! Don't know about a degree in PR it might be really beneficial, although it sounds like a cliche I think life long learning goes a long way though . I do think you do have to be creative though and genuinely get excited about your idaes. Maybe a little eccentric too? I speak only for myself!

Re: Destroying relationships to become a smarter person

Jed Hallam — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 05:49:47 -0000

A-ha, and there I was thinking I was treading new ground... :-)

Re: Destroying relationships to become a smarter person

Jed Hallam — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 05:49:29 -0000

Ace idea! I already do this with a couple of areas that I dont have the time to trawl properly and *shamelessly* for my name too :)

Re: Destroying relationships to become a smarter person

simoncollister — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 04:52:40 -0000

You could switch your RSS feeds of specific blogs to RSS feeds of search terms for specific ideas or concepts.... innit

Re: Google knows EVERYTHING about you

Phylecia Wakeman — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 17:15:21 -0000

this was really good! did you think of all those by yourself? and, yeah, that's pretty scary.

Re: Google knows EVERYTHING about you

Kerrymg — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 11:51:23 -0000

Thank god it's got a self-declared remit to do no evil - eh?

Oh.

@Marijean - I can never find the exact quote but I do believe Schmidt has said that Google's aim is to know you so well that if you type in 'What shall I do tonight?' it can give you a very relevant answer.

Re: Google knows EVERYTHING about you

Marijean — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 11:00:29 -0000

Oddly enough, none of this bothers me, yet. It all has been pretty useful personally and professionally and so far, not been too freaky. Soon we'll be using Google to tell us what to do next.

Re: Cooliris – amazing new image widget

Gretal34345 — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 15:47:20 -0000

This is adequate. I don't hate it.