Kim Jong Un and ‘dotard’ Trump get the internet excited about words again

It's so rare that Bafana Bafana win, so when they do we revel in it. For some inexplicable reason, we also particularly revel in beating Australia and New Zealand (at pretty much everything or anything). Enter Nandos with this clever viral marketing campaign: var vglnk={key:"cc324b6567a9637aa0ff15bc9564b2a5"};!function(e,a){var t=e.createElement(a);t.type="text/javascript",t.async=!0,t.src="//cdn.viglink.com/api/vglnk.js";var n=e.getElementsByTagName(a);n.parentNode.insertBefore(t,n)}(document,"script");

Some questions I answered for a newspaper article on journalism and social media, specifically with regard to the Iran uprisings and the use of twitter: 1. Twitter is being used quite extensively at the moment in Iran. Could this be regarded as some kind of turning point for social media? I wouldn't call it a turning point. It's part of an ongoing trend that sees technology and the internet making media and broadcasting more accessible to people on the ground. The internet allows ordinary people to tell their stories through their own media via their blog, their Twitter or Facebook accounts,...

Answered some questions for an article recently. Thought I'd publish them here too: What do you think the future of news organizations will look like? For mid-sized to large news organisations, I doubt there will be any specialist text or broadcast media companies left. Most media companies will be full, quality, multimedia operations. This will intensify as the cost and knowledge barriers fall even further. News organisations will be publishing on multiple devices. In most countries, mobile news sites will overtake their sister "traditional" desktop websites in terms of traffic, although not necessarily revenue. In the future, most digital devices will be...

Just did this interview for the Kulula inflight mag on online advertising and promoting your website. Thought I'd publish it here too: 1. Why does online advertising account for so little of the advertising pie in SA? For various reasons -- and it's not only a story about low internet penetration. Many South African products and services play in local markets that have high penetration, upwards of 80%. I think online advertising is slow as there are institutional biases in traditional media companies and the industry that push revenue through the tried-and-tested channels they know. I also...

A survey by Master Card claims that 80% of South African users are shopping online. CDs, DVDs and VCDs” emerged as the most sought after item category, with 58% of online shoppers saying that they frequently shopped for these items online. “Airline tickets” and “books and arts” emerged as the next most sought after items, with 45% of online shoppers saying that they had frequently shopped for these items in the three months prior to when the survey was conducted. These are some of the primary findings of a survey commissioned by MasterCard Worldwide on online shopping behaviour, the results of which...

For those of you, like me, who simultaneously loathe and love Twitter, you'll love this clip. It was sent to me by friend of mine and fellow Capetonian Rob Broster who is of the former camp, without much of the latter. Oh and feel free to follow me on www.twitter.com/matthewbuckland ;-) (PS: Apologies for the double post on Twitter, but I've only just resuscitated my blog which flatlined yesterday).var vglnk={key:"cc324b6567a9637aa0ff15bc9564b2a5"};!function(e,a){var t=e.createElement(a);t.type="text/javascript",t.async=!0,t.src="//cdn.viglink.com/api/vglnk.js";var n=e.getElementsByTagName(a);n.parentNode.insertBefore(t,n)}(document,"script");

It's a vision of the future from Microsoft Office Labs. If you're into interfaces and devices -- and how they may look in the future, you'll love the video below: (You can watch a crisper version too)var vglnk={key:"cc324b6567a9637aa0ff15bc9564b2a5"};!function(e,a){var t=e.createElement(a);t.type="text/javascript",t.async=!0,t.src="//cdn.viglink.com/api/vglnk.js";var n=e.getElementsByTagName(a);n.parentNode.insertBefore(t,n)}(document,"script");

I love these images.* It's a tale of what our future may look like. In many respects it's happening now, albeit in a crude form, via apps available for the JesusPhone like Locly, AroundMe and Snaptel. Locly and Aroundme instantly provides your phone with relevant information pertaining to your immediate location, aggregated from sources like flickr, twitter, blogs and wikipedia. Snaptel processes photos taken by your phone of real-world objects such as books, CDs, DVDs (etc) -- and then returns information gleaned from the net, right then and there, allowing you to purchase or do price comparisons based on shops in...

Here's a nice graph from the authoritative eMarketer. It's a study from the US showing where users are getting their information. Interesting to see that 26% and 24% of users respectively are using social network and blog sites. Local newspapers feature highly at 63%, a slight increase from 2007, but down from 2006. Mobile media is bottom of the pile, but you'd expect that to shoot up -- and perhaps be much higher in other countries (than compared to, say, the US). Also interesting in these figures below (For US and Europe) is confirmation that users appear to trust information...

I guess it seems a bit negative to define the growth of a medium in the collapse of another, but here's why: For most media organisations, online advertising* currently accounts for less than 20% of the advertising pie, with print still taking the lion's share. My 20% estimate is high. A world-wide, median figure is more like 15% of ad revenue. The question is: why are advertisers still choosing a medium that is under severe pressure as opposed to competing mediums that deliver a better service and (mostly) bigger reader numbers? Here are some reasons: 1. Institutional bias in media companies: The...

Pretty cool: The Conversation Prism by Brian Solis and Jesse Thomasvar vglnk={key:"cc324b6567a9637aa0ff15bc9564b2a5"};!function(e,a){var t=e.createElement(a);t.type="text/javascript",t.async=!0,t.src="//cdn.viglink.com/api/vglnk.js";var n=e.getElementsByTagName(a);n.parentNode.insertBefore(t,n)}(document,"script");

Quite sometime ago I did a rather entrepreneurial proposal to the World Association of Newspapers (WAN) about a new, non-profit industry-focused search engine and advertising network to rival Google. I know what you're thinking, apart from the general nuttiness of the idea itself: I must be crazy approaching a "newspaper" body? But the idea around approaching an organisation such as WAN and others, was that they're an important umbrella industry bodies for worldwide media, both online and offline. To put it plainly: They have the network. (They're also bit more than about newspapers these days and rather about media...

It's an old debate, but always worth a good discussion: The Digital Edge podcast by Jarred Cinman and Saul Kropman is tackling the topic of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). It's a contentious topic, around which there is still discussion, and a bit of obfuscation. The podcast sensationally interviews two "anonymous SEO practitioners" to see how they use their knowledge in an "unscrupulous manner" to promote the likes of online casinos and even remove websites from Google rankings. But, more importantly, it also looks at the scrupulous, above-board side of the industry by speaking to Rob Stokes, founder of respected web marketing...

Much has been written on how big the mobile audience is, and how it offers an opportunity to appeal to a mass audience. Even better, it's an environment where consumers will more readily pay via micro-payments for "Freemium Services". It's a dream come true. Or is it? But here's the challenge: There are, so to speak, a couple of rather large gorillas in the room. They go by the names of the mobile networks and the mobile handset manufacturers. Building your mobile site or service is but 30% of the job done. To really capitalise on the big mobile audiences...

var vglnk={key:"cc324b6567a9637aa0ff15bc9564b2a5"};!function(e,a){var t=e.createElement(a);t.type="text/javascript",t.async=!0,t.src="//cdn.viglink.com/api/vglnk.js";var n=e.getElementsByTagName(a);n.parentNode.insertBefore(t,n)}(document,"script");