There’s no doubt that blogging can help some celebrities establish a ‘brand’ for themselves. Lily Allen’s Myspace blog was a key factor in getting her talked about in the media before her music had made a mark on the charts. Her bitchy comments about the famous people she met on the promo trail were regularly [...]
Social Media - are you noisier than you think?
Nov 10 2008
Posted by Martin as Friendfeed, Internet, Twitter
In recent months it’s become apparent that a lot of people find themselves overwhelmed by too much information. Subscribe to too many RSS feeds and follow too many people of Twitter and FriendFeed and suddenly you find yourself struggling to keep up with what is mostly irrelevant nonsense. Louis Gray wrote a commonsense post on [...]
The online music retail market is slowly catching up with what its customers have wanted for years. While the iTunes Music Store leads sales with its relatively low-quality, DRM-encumbered files, many customers have for a long time been asking for an open subscription model. Under this scheme, you would pay a regular amount to gain [...]
While mainstream social networks like Facebook and Myspace get lots of attention there are lots more niche networks quietly going about their business. One of the most interesting is Odadeo, a social network aimed at fathers. While women have long found mutual support through online networks, mirroring the mainly female-centric parent support groups offline, there [...]
Lifting my veil at the Manchester Blog Awards
Oct 24 2008
Posted by Martin as Internet, Manchester, blogs
The Manchester Blog Awards took place this week and it led me to have to lift a veil of anonymity I’ve enjoyed for a year.
Of course, if any city in the UK was going to have an awards ceremony for blogs it would be Manchester. As the pioneering city that gave birth to the modern [...]
Back in 2005 Myspace became the most important tool for bands to get themselves noticed online. The huge mainstream uptake of the service meant there was a ready audience of potential fans for eager unsigned acts to tap into.
The good times didn’t last though. It didn’t take long for fatigue to set in amongst Myspace’s [...]
It’s only been possible for about a year and it’s still very much the preserve of the ‘early adopter set’, but streaming live video from your phone to the internet has huge potential. Just as web browsing and reading email on a mobile phone has become an everyday thing for many people, in a couple [...]
Nominated in the Manchester Blog Awards
Sep 30 2008
Posted by Martin as 14sandwiches, Internet, blogs
One of the benefits of living in Manchester is that it’s a city that nurtures creativity. From a legendary music scene to bold architecture like The Beetham Tower, it’s a city that recognises and celebrates its own natural creative lifeblood. Even bloggers get support here; there are occasional blogger meet-ups and there’s an annual Blog [...]
Facebook lifestreaming - gateway drug or competition killer?
Sep 22 2008
Posted by Martin as Internet
‘Early-adopters’, people like me who are compelled to sign up to every new web service that comes along, are annoyed. Why, we wonder, isn’t mainstream society jumping on the latest Social Media tools like Twitter and FriendFeed and using them as voraciously as us?
Every time I use Google Reader to share an interesting story with [...]
Last night saw the first meet-up for Manchester-based bloggers in a long time. Hosted by the Manchester Evening News, it was a chance for us to get a look around the offices of the main local newspaper in the area and see how they’re adapting to a world where many predict that “Heritage Media” will [...]
