An on-site social media wall will bring together the largest crowd-sourced insight into London Fashion Week, featuring Fashion Week images from Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Positioned in the BFC Courtyard Show Space, the wall will create a visual insight into the whole London Fashion Week experience from catwalk looks, front row and backstage insights, celebrity sightings, events and street style. Everyone can get involved by sharing their Fashion Week experiences on social media simply by including the official #LFW hashtag in posts, which will then be displayed on the wall for the duration of the event.

Instead, if you want to follow very closely the London Fashion Week, here you are a special list: the Tweet Elite suggested by The Sylist. @HenryHolland (designer, 252.070 followers) to follow for witty man-abouttown observations and pics of his many famous friends at the after-party of his LFW show. @CaraDelevingne (model, 1.0420.474 follower) for irreverent backstage updates and crazy snaps from all of the shows – as the model of the moment, Cara is sure to be absolutely everywhere.  @DerekBlasberg (fashion editor and writer, 134.136 followers): sharp analysis of the collections – expect humour and razor-sharp fashion knowledge. @OscarPrgirl (Pr, 241.083 followers): a humorous take on the world of fashion PR from an insider’s point of view. Plus, a plethora of envy-inducing Oscar de la Renta outfits.  @NaomiCampbell (model, now tv producer 202.209 followers): the veteran supermodel’s unique brand of endless wisdom which she hashtags as #omiquotes. @Charlie_Porter  (fashion writer, 6.780 followers): fashion-based musings that can be as funny as they are self deprecating. @ManRepeller (blogger, 158.367 followers): endless outfit inspiration thanks to the multitude of selfies this blogger and street-style star uploads as she goes from show to show. @Kegrand (stylist and editor, 23.372 followers): backstage snippets from the shows this stylist extraordinaire will be pulling together, including Louis Vuitton. (A.A. )

L'articolo London Fashion Week: Who Follows Who sembra essere il primo su Alessandro Allocca.

That’s the new idea about Foodstagram. A simple phenomenon? I don’t know… Instagram reported that users uploaded around 200 photos per second from 10am to 2pm  during the last Thanksgiving Day, with around 10 million images bearing some kind of food tag; at least once a month, 52% of mobile users take photos with their phones and 19% upload their photos on the web. The question is: Why do people share food pictures? First of all, because they have a food diary on their own timeline and this way they continue their own Foodstagram activity, it started for pleasure and now it became a periodic appointment. Secondly for documenting self-creation, on special days or special events, commenting or critiquing a brand, food type or a restaurant, or because a plate is an amazing and artistic creation, that’s another motivation.

“The photograph itself, even an artily manipulated one, has become so cheap and ubiquitous that it’s no longer of much value. But the experience of sharing it is, and that’s what Facebook is in the business of encouraging us to do,” wrote The New York Times art critic Karen Rosenberg. “It’s no coincidence that still life of  food are among the most-shared photos on Instagram, along with babies, puppies and sunsets.”

Don’t forget another question: People have always had a strong relationship with food. “Tell me what you eat,” said Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, the 19th-century French lawyer, politician and gastronome, “and I will tell you what you are”. Tell me, or if you wish, send me any pictures about your dishes via email, Social Medias or your website. The meal is ready! (A.A.)

L'articolo TO EACH SOCIAL MEDIA, ITS DISH sembra essere il primo su Alessandro Allocca.

Oreo is just one example of what is happening nowadays on the web, and in particular on Facebook. Oreo, like Coca-Cola, Nutella and other famous food & drink brands, are using social networks for a great advantage, but with a minimal investment. But if this way to success is so simple, why aren’t all companies using it?

It is because Facebook and social networks in general are not always the perfect places to make a successful advertising campaign, say internet analysts.. Each company needs their campaign but doesn’t necessarily need their social network. This is partly because social networks are not like TV, radio or magazine where the audience cannot interact. On social networks, and especially Facebook, the audience is active and that is not always the best for the company. There’s a big difference if you are a petrol company or a yummy biscuit company. Therein lies the issue: what does it mean to have a “Likeable” brand?

“It means that you are a brand that is well-liked by your users” – wrote Dave Kerpen in his book “Likeable”- “Ways that this trust is built up can be though a number of ways including, but not reserved to, engaging your audience with relevant updates and news, listening to them and taking their input or recommendations/concerns, connecting with them through all of the above, providing a service and giving excellent customer to consumer relations”.

Oreo is a perfect example: “They’re encouraging people to share their opinions” – wrote the internet analyst Dave Kerpen – “not just telling them to like Oreo’s online content-yet, almost 34 milion people have liked the company on facebook”.

Yes! Perfect! But the question is still the same: do you dunk or not dunk? (A.A.)

L'articolo To dunk or not to dunk! The successful of an ADV campaign sembra essere il primo su Alessandro Allocca.

“Blue is the richest color for me I can see all of blue.”

Not highly scientific right? Well, although in the case of Facebook, that isn’t the case, there are some amazing examples of how colors actually affect our purchasing decisions.

After all, the visual sense is the strongest developed one in most human beings. It’s only natural that 90% of an assessment for trying out a product is made by color alone.

So how do colors really affect us and what is the science of colors in marketing really? As we are also trying to make lots of improvements to our product at Buffer, this was a key part to learn more about. Let’s dig into some of the latest, most interesting research on it.

First: Can you recognize the online brands just based on color?

Before we dive into the research, here are some awesome experiments that show you how powerful color alone really is. Based on just the colors of the buttons, can you guess which company belongs to each of them:

Example 1 (easy):

Example 2 (easy):

Example 3 (medium):

Example 4 (hard):

These awesome examples from Youtube designer Marc Hemeon, I think show the real power of colors more than any study could.

How many were you able to guess? (All the answers are at the bottom of this post!)

Which colors trigger which feeling for us?

Being completely conscious about what color triggers us to think in which way isn’t always obvious. The Logo Company has come up with an amazing breakdown which colors are best for which companies and why. Here are 4 great examples:

Black:

Green:

Blue:

Especially if we also take a look at what the major brands out there are using, a lot of their color choices become a lot more obvious. Clearly, everyone of these companies is seeking to trigger a very specific emtion:

On top of that, especially when we want to buy something, the colors can play a major role. Analytics company KISSmetrics created an amazing infographic on the science of how colors affect our purchases.

Especially the role of “Green” stands out to me as the most relaxing color we can use to make buying easier. We didn’t intentionally choose this as the main color for Buffer actually, it seems to have worked very well so far though.

At second look, I also realized how frequently black is used for luxury products. It’s of course always obvious in hindsight. Here is the full infographic:

How to improve your marketing with better use of colors:

This all might be fairly entertaining, but what are some actual things we can apply today to our website or app? The answer comes yet again from some great research done by the good folks over at KISSmetrics.

If you are building an app that mainly targets Women, here is KISSmetrics best advice for you:

• Women love: Blue, Purple and Green
• Women hate: Orange, Brown and Gray

In case your app is strictly targeting men, the rules of the game are slightly different. Here it goes:

• Men love: Blue, Green and Black
• Men hate: Brown, Orange and Purple

In another amazing experiment Performable (now HubSpot) wanted to find out whether simply changing the color of a button would make a difference to conversion rates.

They started out with the simple hypothesis of choosing between 2 colors (green and red) and trying guess what would happen.

For green, their intuition was this:

“Green connotes ideas like “natural” and “environment,” and given its wide use in traffic lights, suggests the idea of “Go” or forward movement.”

For red, their thinking went like this:

“The color red, on the other hand, is often thought to communicate excitement, passion, blood, and warning. It is also used as the color for stopping at traffic lights. Red is also known to be eye-catching.”

So, clearly an A/B test between green and red would result in green, the more friendly color to win. At least that was their guess. Here is how their experiment looked like:

So how did that experiment turn out? The answer was more surprising than I had expected:

The red button outperformed the green button by 21%

What’s most important to consider is that nothing else was changed at all:

21% more people clicked on the red button than on the green button. Everything else on the pages was the same, so it was only the button color that made this difference.

This definitely made me wonder. If we were to read all the research before this experiment and ask every researcher which version they would guess would perform better, I’m sure green would be the answer in nearly all cases. Not so much.

At my company Buffer, we’ve also conducted dozens of experiments to improve our conversion rates through changes of colors. Whilst the results weren’t as clear, we still saw a huge change. One hypothesis is that for a social media sharing tool, there is less of a barrier to signup, which makes the differences less significant.

Despite all the studies, generalizations are extremely hard to make. Whatever change you make, treat it first as a hypothesis, and see an the actual experiment what works for you. Personally, I’m always very prone to go with opinion based on what I read or research I’ve come across. Yet, data always beats opinion, no matter what.

Quick last fact: Why are hyperlinks blue?

This is something that always interested me and is actually a fun story. It’s to give the best contrast between blue and the original grey of websites:

Here is the full explanation:

“Tim Berners-Lee, the main inventor of the web, is believed to be the man who first made hyperlinks blue. Mosaic, a very early web browser, displayed webpages with a (ugly) gray background and black text. The darkest color available at the time that was not the same as the black text was that blue color. Therefore, to make links stand apart from plain text, but still be readable, the color blue was selected.”

I think it is extremely fascinating that simply changing something as small as the color, can completely chance the outcome of something. What have been your findings in terms of colors and marketing? I’d love your ideas on this.

Solution to the riddle: Example 1: Facebook, Example 2: Google, Example 3: Flickr, Example 4: LinkedIn

(from http://blog.bufferapp.com/the-science-of-colors-in-marketing-why-is-facebook-blue)

L'articolo Why are Social Network (and Facebook first of all) blue? sembra essere il primo su Alessandro Allocca.

The news outlet made the announcement on its website this morning. In the post, Tanya Cordrey, Guardian News and Media’s chief digital officer, said: “Our audience is no longer primarily in the UK. Every month, our online content is accessed from almost every country around the world. In fact, UK users now represent just a third of our total audience.”

Audited circulation figures released yesterday show the Guardian had a global readership of almost 82 million, with 30 million of those readers in the UK. In the post Cordrey adds that “we’re ready to take the next step on our bold digital journey”. She says it “may be a small URL change” but it reflects the title’s evolution to “a leading global news and media brand”.

She adds: “Over the coming months ahead of the move, our in-house digital team, working closely with the team at Yoast.com, will be working on this ambitious and challenging project. The Guardian websites involve millions of URLs and around 15 years’ worth of content, so it will take some time.” The Guardian launched its US news operation in 2011, and is currently setting up a newsroom in Australia. (from www.journalism.co.uk)

L'articolo The Guardian to change domain to theguardian.com sembra essere il primo su Alessandro Allocca.

When Twitter recently posted a job listing for a “head of news and journalism,” it sparked a rash of posts and commentary about how the company was becoming a media entity — until Twitter staffer Mark Luckie tossed cold water on that idea with an interview in which he pooh-poohed the notion that Twitter had any plans to be a media company. But Luckie’s response misses the point completely, which is that in every way that really matters, Twitter already is a powerful media entity. Depending on how you see the future of media, that is both good and bad.

There’s no question that some of the reaction to the company’s job posting has strained the bounds of credulity: media gadfly and failed media entrepreneur Michael Wolff, for example, wrote about how the person who became Twitter’s head of news and journalism would have a job “more important than Jeff Zucker’s at CNN,” one that would be like “running a network news division in the 1970s or 80s, the biggest job that there has ever been in news.” (from www.paidcontent.org)

L'articolo Twitter doesn’t have to hire journalists to be a powerful media competitor sembra essere il primo su Alessandro Allocca.

“Over the last couple of years with the different scandals they’ve had politically and with the nuclear disaster, people have lost faith in a lot of the traditional news channels and politicians,” Jimmy Maymann, chief executive of the Huffington Post, told Journalism.co.uk. “It feels like a time when people really want to have a voice.”

Maymann said the new site will give a generation who “want to be heard” a chance to be part of the conversation by offering a platform for participation.

Yoichi Nishimura, digital division director at Asahi Shimbun and representative director of HuffPost Japan, agreed. “We have been seeking an opportunity to establish a new type of constructive online opinion forum,” Nishimura told Journalism.co.uk. “We think the Huffington Post is one of the leading companies in the world that operates it successfully.”

Editorially, the partnership will be led by Shigeki Matsuura as editor-in-chief, who helped launch the Japanese edition of Wired and political blogging site BLOGOS as well as managing GREE News, part of mobile company GREE.

With almost 90 per cent of smartphone users accessing the internet on a daily basis in Japan, the mobile market is particularly important, said Maymann.  “It is really a mobile-first market, we talk about it in a lot of other markets but it’s nothing compared to what it is there,” he said. “So that’s something we’ve had to take into account when we created and adapted the platform for the Japanese edition.”

Maymann added that while print readership remains high, due to the over-50 demographic, the online readership for news organisations is relatively low at 7 or 8 million unique monthly visitors.  He said that “it’s almost as if they have lost the readership” of people under 50. “There’s a huge gap and that generation from 22 all the way up to almost 50 is quite experienced at using new technologies, accessing them via mobile and using the social features; so from that perspective it also feels like we have something that would potentially appeal to a broad audience.”

As such, Nishimura is “convinced” that the partnership will be successful, hoping HuffPost Japan will reach 50 million unique monthly visitors.

“We believe that blogging and social media will let more and more people have voices and join the process of news reporting. We welcome such a change,” he said.  Last week the Huffington Post announced it is to launch a German edition in conjunction with Tomorrow Focus AG. Other European editions include partnerships with Le Monde in France, El Pais in Spain and Gruppo Espresso in Italy.  The Huffington Post UK launched in July 2011 and was the first Huffington Post launch outside North America. (from www.jorunalism.co.uk)

L'articolo Huffington Post launches Japanese edition sembra essere il primo su Alessandro Allocca.

The feature is currently being rolled out, and all Facebook pages will get the option by 10 July, as will all individual accounts where the person has more than 10,000 followers. In a similar way to a Reddit AMA (ask me anything), a person or page can take questions in real-time.

The Q&A feature was announced on 25 March, and has since been used by Arianna Huffington, ABC News anchor Diane Sawyer, and CBS News senior correspondent and former FBI spokesman John Miller, who did a live Facebook Q&A about the investigation into the Boston marathon bombings.

The new feature was flagged up by Vadim Lavrusik, journalism programme manager at Facebook, at news:rewired, Journalism.co.uk’s digital journalism conference, on 19 April (a video of the session is here).

Lavrusik explained that Facebook page managers can opt in to the new feature in the settings.

In an announcement post on the Facebook for journalists group page, Lavrusik said by using the Q&A feature, “you and your readers will have the ability to reply directly to comments left on your page content and start conversation threads, which will make it easier for you to interact directly with individual readers and keep relevant conversations connected”.

As with Reddit AMA’s, the most engaging and active conversations are surfaced to the top.

The feature will initially be available on desktop but there are plans to “make it available in the Graph API and mobile in the future”, Lavrusik writes.

He also explains how the comments are organised: “Conversation threads are re-ordered by relevance to viewers, and may appear differently to each person based on their connections.”

He said the algorithm does this by looking at various elements: positive feedback, based on “the total number of ‘likes’ and replies in a conversation thread, which includes ‘likes’ or replies by the page owner”; connections, where “conversations with comments left by friends may appear at the top”; and negative feedback, “the total number of spam reports in a thread, as well as marks-as-spam made by the page owner”. (from www.journalism.co.uk)

L'articolo How journalists are using Facebook’s new live Q&A feature sembra essere il primo su Alessandro Allocca.

At a conference in Europe this week I tried on a pair lent to me by an individual briefly. Since Google has threatened to take back the Glass if they are used by someone other than the owner I won’t be naming them. Suffice it to say the experience was quite odd. For starters you are staring straight into clear space, despite feeling like you are wearing glasses. But then there is this small screen hovering slightly above your line of sight and slightly to the right. So you can’t flick your eye up directly, but up and slightly to the right. It’s not a natural movement, which implies Google Glass may need to be personally adjusted to the individual. A friend – who wears contact lenses – who tried out the Glass for a full 10 minutes complained of an hour-long headache afterwards from having to look up at the screen. Next up is using your voice out loud to do various commands like “Take a picture.” If you have someone standing in front of you, this is extremely odd. Suddenly they are cut out of the conversation and you’re talking to the Glass. This is very unlike being able to check something on your smartphone while you are chatting casually to someone. The latter feels quite normal, but performing similar operations while wearing Google Glass would seem out-right rude in front of someone.

Ultimately this suggests to me that Google Glass will be incapable of being used socially. OK, people in the tech world may use it socially and wander around with them on at conferences Googling each other. But it’s my belief that ‘normal’ people will not. In part this was suggested by Andrew Keen onstage at the Next Web conference in Amsterdam. His point that there is “no permission” given when the person in front of you is brandishing Google Glass. He’s right, and I can see most people asking the person to remove their Glass before conducting a civil conversation. You just don’t see that happening when two people with smartphones start talking. Where I can see Google Glass working is in activities where you require both hands to be free. Skiing down a mountain filming, using the Glass like you would a GoPro camera, for instance. And in industrial applications – building and manufacturing, yes, I can see this would work very well: “Show House Plans” for instance, would be a great command for a building app. And you can see the Police suddenly thinking of a few useful applications.

But not in every day interactions, just walking around. But the technology itself? Well, if it does disappear inside normal glasses perhaps it has a chance. But once again, interrupting a conversation with someone to interrogate it? We’ll have to rethink thousands of years of human interaction, and that’s unlikely to happen any time soon. So Google Glass for me will be this era’s Segway: hyped as a game changer but ultimately used by warehouse workers and mall cops. (from www.techcrunch.com)

L'articolo Eric Schmidt is right: using Google Glass is weird. Here’s my experience sembra essere il primo su Alessandro Allocca.

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