Whatever...

From NoMoPhobia to digital detox: how to survive without your technologies

By Morgane Leonard 

Ever heard of “Digital detox”? It’s the latest trend for switching off entirely when you’re on holiday.

Maybe we need it. Many studies have been published over the past year to show how addicted people have become to being constantly connected. From smartphones to tablets, whether the use is personal or professional, we find it more and more difficult to restrain ourselves from checking our Facebook or Twitter accounts every other minute. It’s getting to the point where we’re increasingly ignoring the people actually around us in favour of checking our phones for updates and notifications.

But what is it really about? There’s actually no such thing as a real medical addiction in this area – none proven to date at least – but there’s a clear tendency to turn the close relationship one has with technologies into a pathology which translates into verbal expressions such as: "addicted" to mobile, "binge watching” (like  binge drinking, but swap the booze for a box set), NoMoPhobia,(a phobia of having no mobile phone) or FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) which has grown out of the explosion in popularity of all forms of social media. It affects both professionals, who generally feel so connected to their job that they can’t help checking their emails in case something major happens, and our personal lives, as it’s now acceptable to share whatever you’re doing with the entire community.

As these habits spread, many people are now nostalgic of a time when technologies were not so omnipresent in our lives. There was a time when we could make an appointment with someone and honour it without confirming twenty times before. A time when we used to go on holidays and instead of posting a selfie or a Facebook status we actually sent handwritten postcards to friends and family.

In our highly materialistic world, people have changed their hierarchy of needs, and technologies now play an increasingly important role. Lately, we’ve seen a will to go back to the basics and really take time away from technologies. Most brands understand this new trend and use it skilfully. For instance, the Spa Hotel “Les Célestin Vichy” based in the French thermal city Vichy in Auvergne launched a Digital Detox program last spring which, for a mere €1480, helps you disconnect from your mobile phone for four entire days of thermal therapies. When you arrive at the spa, someone walks you to a safe in which all your devices will be locked for the duration of your stay, just like you would use a safety deposit box at a bank.

When you think about it, the digital detox idea may not be so bad once in a while, given how much digital information we’re bombarded with these days, but do we really need specialist services?  Is a homemade approach, whether by just reading books, or taking walks really so difficult to achieve?

#Enough #Already

 

By Richard Scarlett

While I realise that hashtag abuse is a well-trodden debate, I recently understood just how prevalent the little #s have become – and I’m not sure that I liked it. Having lunch with my mum a couple of weekends ago, she actually ended a sentence with “hashtag OMG”. I should probably point out at this stage that she has never used Twitter, nor is she a citizen of Facebook, which added to my confusion as to how she would even know what a hashtag was and why she felt confident enough to just tack it onto the end of a sentence without a second thought.

It turned out that she had seen this particular hashtag suggestion flash up on a TV show, remembered it and subsequently decided that it’d be an appropriate thing to verbalise. In a similar incident, I recently wrote #1 instead of ‘number one’ in a birthday card, prompting my seven-year-old nephew to ask me why I would hashtag the number one. The reason for both misunderstandings is simple – we use way too many hashtags, and not in the way that they were intended.

For organisations, hashtags can present very powerful vehicles for successful digital PR campaigns – or a one way ticket to an epic fail. Either way, we’re approaching a state of bombardment as it’s hard to go anywhere these days without seeing a business (or rather, their PR person) desperately trying to create the next big trending topic. In short, it feels a lot like forced fun – and I wonder how many people are consciously posting and sharing these company-sponsored hashtags. As we all know, most people prefer to create and share their own hashtags, and these tend to go viral much faster, whether they are born out of social media activism (#IfTheyGunnedMeDown, #BringBackOurGirls) or humour (#WhatJayZSaidToSolange, #FirstWorldProblems).

From a PR point of view, more organisations need to take this principle and run with it – because at the moment it seems that corporate hashtags are arriving late to a party that the cool kids have already left. Rather than obsessively hash-tagging every word in order to join at least one (no doubt overcrowded) conversation for a few days, social media campaigns need to be a tad more strategic and subtle – particularly as consumers become more PR savvy, sceptical and to some degree, indifferent. After all, the most impressive corporate campaigns are those that you fall for without even realising that there is a big brand behind them – Oscar selfie, anyone?

 

16 year-old Farah Baker – one of Gaza’s most powerful online voices

By Charlotte Martin

Palestinian teenager Farah Baker’s poignant account of an Israeli bombardment on her home has made her one of Gaza’s most powerful online voices, representing the many children living through the conflict.  Farah captured international attention after she live-tweeted throughout the attack last week, with pictures, audio clips and video footage.  Tweeting as @Farah_Gazan, the teen who says that she had 800 followers at the beginning of the conflict, now has more than 160,000. 

“This is in my area. I can’t stop crying. I might die tonight” read one of her tweets, which was shared thousands of times.  As was: “I’m 16yrs old and have witnessed 3 wars, as I see, this is the hardest one.”

In an interview with Sky News, Farah said she was compelled to tweet throughout the night by the belief that “someone should do something”, and that she wanted to set the record straight regarding what she called a war on civilians. 

While social media is being used by both sides, with #IsraelUnderFire and #GazaUnderAttack hashtags both in use and attempting to influence global opinion, Farah has certainly struck a chord with people around the world, with her open account of what it’s like to be an ordinary civilian living in a warzone.  When asked about the support she has received on Twitter, she said:  “They like me because I write the truth.”

Farah is a powerful reminder that, thanks to technology, you don’t have to be a world leader or a politician to get your message out there.  And she has prompted quite a response, with international press attention, including an #AskFarah Q&A with Sky News and an interview with American news channel NBC.  Meanwhile, as the conflict nears the end of its fourth week, political tension has grown in the UK with the resignation of Foreign Office minister, Baroness Warsi, who announced her decision to stand down in protest at the Government’s policy on the crisis, where else, but on Twitter.

TL;DR

By Aislinn Collins 

Apparently, the average user spends just 15 seconds reading content online and will read, at most, 28 percent of the words on the page.  In fact, this online skim reading phenomenon has caused serious concern amongst academics, who are fearful that the same thing is happening with ‘serious’ reading, in that we no longer read properly offline either.  Apparently this makes us more stupid (or, should I say stupider?) and so the slow reading movement arose – I’m hoping an explanation here isn’t required, otherwise they might be onto something.

I don’t think anyone has paid the slightest bit of attention though, if sites like BuzzFeed are anything to go by.  Starting its life as a viral lab – testing out various ways to make things go viral  – BuzzFeed has now expanded its remit and, a couple of years ago, started hiring journalists to cover slightly heavier subjects than ‘The 12 Cats Of The Zodiac’.  There are now sections covering everything from politics and tech, to ‘LOL’ and ‘WTF’.  While some of the more serious topics are covered in more traditional prose – ‘This Is The Other Privacy Scandal You Haven’t Heard About’ being one – the sombre coverage is interjected with critical political commentary such as, ‘Nick Clegg Really, Really Likes Apple Crumble And Thick Custard’. 

Whether serious or not, it is quick, informative and, crucially, easily shareable via social media.  It seems that others are now spotting the benefits of this viral style of reporting, in fact, ESI Media recently announced that it was launching i100 in order to take its newspaper ‘i’ into the digital realm.  In a statement, the editor of i, Oliver Duff, stated that it would focus on “...brevity, quality, dialogue with readers, value, and a determination to respond to the age of hyper-information”.  Other papers seem to be taking a similar approach as well, with the Evening Standard recently reporting on the Secret Cinema fiasco using screen grabbed tweets.

It is unlikely that these digital, millennial focussed outlets will completely overshadow the more traditional online news outlets.  It will, however, be interesting to see how many more begin to place a focus on ‘listicle’ style, fast-paced reporting, as well as how this affects the PR industry.  Will we, for example, one day in the future, say goodbye to the press release as we know it?  Only time will tell and while we’re waiting to find out, we can do something useful, like learn how to throw the best ever birthday party for a hedgehog.  Thank you BuzzFeed.

Architects of reality

By Tina Ambos

Each of us lives in our own world with its own rules, values and priorities, building our own reality. As a consequence, everybody who is unhappy can make themselves feel better by changing their world view.  At least this was the opinion of the communication scientist and psychotherapist Paul Watzlawick, who would have celebrated his 93^rd birthday today.  He is perhaps most famous for his quote “one cannot not communicate.” (Sound advice for all those brands that think, just because they don’t have a PR budget or employ an agency, they don’t “do PR”).

Watzlawick argued that, by architecting your own reality, your future becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.  More simply: by predicting what could happen to you, you can actually make it come true.  For instance, if your horoscope in today’s newspaper warns that you (and about 400 million other people with the same star sign) might fall out with a friend, you might be more inclined to start an argument.

It’s not just individuals who are influenced by self-fulfilling prophecies, entire nations can also be affected.  For example, the more a country feels threatened by its neighbour, the more it will arm itself.  In turn, its neighbour is more likely to take defensive measures, and so the situation escalates.  A similar thing happens when a shortage of a commodity is predicted (whether real or perceived).  People, will hoard that product, creating scarcity that may not have existed in the first place.

We’ve seen this happening in the tech industry, with China stockpiling the rare earth metals used in consumer tech devices.  It seems that, nearly a century after his birth, Watzlawick’s arguments still have relevance.

 

What’s in a name?

By Lindsey Challis

Naming a company must be difficult.  Like with a child, it becomes intrinsically connected to its owner, it can cause mockery, intrigue and even speculation, but how much of a brand’s success is built on the name itself?

There are hundreds of ways people decide a brand name and there are a number of basic requirements it needs to meet.  A name must work in different languages, be different from the competition, have a recognisable URL available and, in some cases, even have an available trademark.  After the basics are checked off, there is a whole world of different avenues a company can go down.  The length, for example, should you stick with something simple such as ‘Sony’ or would the more descriptive ‘Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering’ be better?  Does it pay to be clever?  One of my favourite brand names is an authentication client called Nok Nok Labs, chosen because the internet is constantly trying to determine ‘who’s there?’.  And, what about the golden letter ‘z’ which, according to name-maker Lexicon, resonates particularly well with consumers.

No matter how good the name, no matter how many boxes it ticks, in my opinion, a name can still fall flat on its face if there isn’t a solid brand behind it. 

A name can’t create an identity – in a person or in a company – and this is where the hard work starts.  Not only does a company need to decide on the type of identity it wants, but it needs to make a concerted effort to create this.  It’s about finding a concept that the whole company believes in and sticking to it, creating a tone that penetrates everything the company does, from articles to adverts.  It must become natural, part of the fabric of the company, if it’s going to work.

In fact, the ultimate success of brand name could be that it’s no longer about the words at all.  Who cares if Hotmail is a prettied-up version of HTML, if it’s the email service you trust and want to use?   And, I’d put money on the fact that when you hear IKEA, you don’t think of a Swedish village; or that when you hear Adobe, you don’t think of a creek.

That’s not to say, however, that there isn’t something so much more satisfactory in hearing the dispute of whether Yahoo! is named after the definition ‘rude, unsophisticated and uncouth’ or ‘Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle’, as opposed to Groupon’s Jedward-style morphing of group and coupon.

A social and technological tour de force

By Jonathan Mathias

Although Brasil 2014 has been the major sporting focus for the past month, July also plays host to the biggest annual sporting spectacle in the world – the Tour de France.  ‘La Grande Boucle’ is played out on a truly epic scale.  This year’s edition, the 101^st, features 198 riders from 34 countries competing to complete the 3,664km route in the fastest time.  Watched on TV by a staggering 3.5 billion people in 190 countries (allegedly), le Tour is hungrily consumed by fans in a growing number of ways.

Being more than 100 years old, the event is of course steeped in tradition – the yellow jersey being perhaps the most iconic emblem in sport.  What fascinates me is how the race manages to marry tradition with constant innovations in both technology and, perhaps to an even greater degree, media. 

This year has seen the arrival of on-bike cameras, which bring the viewer closer to the peloton than ever before, and teams are even sharing the power stats of some of their star riders.  

Unless you’re lucky enough to be at the roadside, TV is still the best way to witness the action unfold – a feat of broadcasting which I only recently discovered involves not one, but three helicopters and a plane.  Where it has come into its own in the past few years, though, is the unprecedented access that the teams provide via social media.  Every team has its own Facebook page and the majority of the riders are to be found on Twitter, which often provides more drama than the race itself.

The sport is set to become even more open to technological advancements, but it will perhaps be more interesting to see how media coverage of the event develops and to wonder what watching le Tour might be like in the years to come.

 

France, the pioneer of open data management

By Violaine Desmons

The French Government, often considered reluctant to innovation, recently announced the creation of a new job role within the French administration: the Chief Data Officer (CDO). As part of its policy to modernise the State and public administration, the Government has decided to bet it all on open data, as it will provide real strategic value for tomorrow’s economy.  Or at least that’s how the Secretary of State in charge of Digital, Axelle Lemaire, explained it, as she set out the need for a French CDO.

This news is quite surprising as it puts France at the top of the list of innovating countries when it comes to going digital.  Indeed, the CDO function is not even common in the private sector! It confirms that France is convinced by the potential of data management and the benefits associated with it. With Gartner forecasting that, by 2017, 25 percent of large companies will have a CDO, does this make France an early adopter? As the first European country to hire a CDO and manage data at the State level, I think we can say France is on the right path!

France’s CDO will have multiple responsibilities including having the authority to collect administrative data.  Although this is likely to be a long and difficult task, by collecting this data and making it available on the data.gouv portal, they’ll be fulfilling the objective of “sharing, improving and using public data”. The key advantage of having a CDO at this level is that the decision-making process will be centralised so a lot more efficient. Public services are one of crown jewels of France, however citizens are requesting more efficiency from the State, as well as a more relevant ways to use taxes. According to the Government, improved data collection and sharing will help craft more appropriate public services.

Developed in partnership with the open data community, the data.gouv platform allows people to download/upload data, but also to provide information on data utilisation and reutilisation. In addition to the data being collected from public institutions and administration, all general interest data – such as those from OpenStreetMap, a French openly licensed map of the world – can also be uploaded and accessed through the portal. This initiative of opening data is also a good way of putting citizens at the centre of Government decision making, as well as a huge opportunity to create value added services and, in turn, new business.

Is France taking its revenge of being categorised as part of “old Europe” as it hires the first ever European “State CDO”? We can’t be 100 percent sure, but it certainly seems to be the case…!

Wimbledon has a social makeover

By Hannah Townsend

There’s no doubt that this year is the most social Wimbledon ever. With enhanced mobile apps, SlamTracker and the introduction of The Wimbledon Social Command Centre, organisers are actively encouraging fans to post their Wimbledon comments and questions on Twitter. Whether it’s praising Federer’s volley, commenting on Nadal’s forearm or cheering on Murray, everyone is joining in and having their say on the famous tennis tournament. 

British patriotism is renowned for blossoming around big sporting events (remember the Olympics?) and social media is playing a big part in maintaining the spirit of last year’s success. In support of our reigning champ, a social campaign has been set up where fans can tweet using the hashtag #WelcomeBackAndy, in a bid to win a personalised, signed digital photo of the man himself. Other social campaigns and activities include a ‘Twitter Mirror’ for all those selfie lovers in the queue, live action replays on Twitter and real-time Q&As between fans on the big screens on Henman Hill. 

An interesting aspect from the growing use of social media at events such as Wimbledon is the insight it can provide. By analysing discussions, organisers can see which countries are the hottest tweeters, which players create the biggest social buzz and whether centre court games generate more conversations than the others. In short, it gives them a better understanding of how the tournament is perceived by tennis fans around the world. 

However, for those fans without tickets and who have no desire to queue for hours in the (slim) hope of gaining entry, Alexandra Willis, content and communications manager at Wimbledon, sums up the biggest reason why the increased social media presence is such a good thing: "Only half a million people get to come to Wimbledon, whereas we have a digital audience of over 20 million, so it’s about making our digital channels the next best thing to being here."

Technology wins the World Cup [beats England 4-3 on penalties]

By Mike Marquiss

It’s the World Cup and I, along with many others I’m sure, care about little else right now. Goodbye family and friends. Hello Gary Lineker, Thiery Henry and (unfortunately) Phil Neville. Guten tag penalty heartache and crushing defeat, good to see you again. As sad as that sounds, I really couldn’t be happier.

But let’s talk technology. After all, this is a technology blog and this World Cup is set to be the most technologically advanced ever – although that’s hardly saying much.

We’re only at the group stages but already I’m struck by technology’s role in the beautiful game. On-field, this is the first World Cup to make use of goal-line technology. Provided you didn’t have it explained to you by Jonathan Pearce, you’ll know that this nifty piece of kit helps the referee decide whether or not the ball has indeed crossed the line. Even if you don’t know much about football, you probably recognise that knowing if the ball has crossed the line and whether a goal should be awarded is a pretty important part of the game. There’s also vanishing spray, which is extremely low-tech (at best), but I still think it’s marvellous.

Moving away from the pitch, you’ll see technology’s role is equally pronounced this World Cup. For me, the tournament is a unique and powerful demonstration of how the internet has developed over the last four years and how far online communities have grown and changed in this time, as has the viewing experience. A case in point, watching an incredibly dull game such as Iran vs Nigeria is almost enjoyable provided you can follow the Twitter commentary and the creative arm-chair punditry of friends, celebs and (let’s be honest) total strangers too. I’m not sure I would’ve said the same four years ago and may have switched off.

Likewise the World Cup serves as a great internet barometer, highlighting the significant growth of sites like Reddit and Buzzfeed. For example, Reddit’s popular /r/soccer thread for the first match of this year's World Cup has ~3,500 upvotes and ~15,000 comments. To put this into perspective, the thread for the 2010 final managed just ~314 upvotes and ~1,400 comments. Similarly, Buzzfeed is now very much a go-to site for post-match content and analysis – a miraculous transformation for a website famous cat videos.

I for one can’t wait to see how technology will be used for the rest of the tournament and will make sure to revisit this blog in four years time, during the 2018 WC, to see how things have changed by then. Hover-board referees anyone?

[UPDATE] A German colleague, who shall remain nameless, emailed the Germany vs Portugal score on Monday afternoon, which I had recorded on Sky+. Ignore the enthusiasm above; I’m now boycotting all forms of technology until after the World Cup final on Sun 13 July.