Every country adopts its own currency: Yuan for China, Yen for Japan, Real in Brazil, Ruble in Russia etc etc,  and the same is equal for particular groups of countries such as the Dollar for the United States of America and the Euro for European Union. But, if we used one common worldwide currency for our shopping on the Internet, how would the future of the currency exchange be? The answer could be ‘more simple’ but it’s easier said than done. First of all because there are many international interests between banks and credit card companies and secondly because each country or group of countries has its own interests to safeguard its own currency.

Meanwhile, there’s someone who is trying to change the economic system on the Internet with the Bitcoin. ‘Bitcoins are an anonymous, decentralized, peer-to-peer digital currency’ – how economic consultants explain the new coin. ‘In contrast to older forms of electronic money – they say -  no company controls Bitcoin, nor ever could: all the rules about how it works are embedded into the very operation of trade, including the rate of inflation and how to verify transactions.’

Why is  Bitcon “anonymous”? Because it doesn’t use a central system but it uses many databases around the Internet-sphere, like few banks branches but with no employees, and it uses a cryptographic system to preserve the data so that every owner can spend their own money.

Now, the question is: can Bitcoin become a worldwide Internet currency? Anticipating  the answer, in Vancouver, Canada, has opened the first ATM Machine which changes local money, Canadian dollars in Bitcoins: the kiosk works by scanning the hands to confirm the identify of the customer, because credit cards don’t exist in the Bitcoin-world  and moving their funds from their online wallet to their smart phone or new Bitcoin account. The costumer will be able to spend his Bitcoin on the Internet-sphere. What are the real benefits of this new system? First of all the customer can buy everything in every country of the world without changing the currency because of the knowledge that many Bitcoin can be used without paying any fees, because there aren’t international fees for the transaction from one currency to another and because it’s a closed system just for the Internet. The Internet has always been known as a virtual world but increasingly it’s becoming more and more a real part and central part of our lives. (A.A.)

L'articolo The Internet With One Currency. Bitcoin Says: Why No! sembra essere il primo su Alessandro Allocca.

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.

“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)

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“We are all collectively figuring out what the best experience is with Glass,” Google’s Senior Developer Advocate Timothy Jordan said during the event.

Jordan talked a bit about best practices for creating apps for Glass, before showing off some new ones launching today that the company has been working with to enhance the experience.

Here’s a rundown of the new apps headed to Glass:

Facebook: The Facebook app lets you share photos from Glass with friends on the social network.

Google+: Much of Google+’s functionality will be available on Glass, including the ability to initiate Hangouts.

CNN: CNN’s app lets you subscribe to different topics, and pick the frequency in which you see those stories.

CNN’s app is particularly interesting because it lets you customize what types of news are sent to your Glass, as well as the time that those updates come. So, you could have updates only come during the work day, or turn off notifications times where you’re typically busy (or sleeping). (from www.mashable.com)

L'articolo Google Glass gets Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr Apps 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.