RFPs may suck, as Tom Searcy's new book proclaims, but Story Worldwide was recently asked in an RFP to write down Story's "vision for the future of social media" and I thought it was a really good question. Where exactly is all this going? What does it mean? Here's our take:

Story’s vision is that “social media” soon will be called just plain “media” and the world will accept that the power to publish or broadcast to large audiences has passed irrevocably from a select few to virtually everyone.

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Since May, visits to Facebook have increased 22%. The interesting thing to note is that the number of visits by 18-24 year old's to the site has actually fallen. The increase is a result of more visits by 25-44 year olds, suggesting mass adoption of the social media platform. Check out the Hitwise article for the full details.

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OK, here's the drill, this guy appears to have stolen Dave's camera, laptop and Nintendo DS and we're going to help track him down in a vigilante 2.0 style. If it doesn't work, blame Clay Shirky, if it works then Iain over at crackunit.com gets the credit.

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In his book Word-of-Mouth Marketing, Andy Sernovitz observed that “you can’t create a ‘viral’ anything”. Viral, he said, is just an adjective that describes what happens when something gets forwarded to a large number of people.

Again and again, top brands overlook this point and try to force their ideas to go viral (see the misguided Random Acts of Cheetos campaign, for example, which dramatically failed to capture the public’s imagination). Rarely do these in-your-face gimmicks achieve any degree of success, simply because consumers are naturally suspicious of any brand that appears to be orchestrating a viral campaign from head office.

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We’ve said it time and again – in the hands of a clued-up marketing team, social media can transform levels of brand engagement. Wade in without a clear plan, though, and you risk all kinds of problems.

So what possessed Neal’s Yard Remedies, purveyors of high-priced organic potions and cosmetics, to appear on the Guardian’s You Ask, They Answer feature without a plan for what to do if some of its critics turned up?

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Twitter has become hugely successful in the last year so it’s no surprise that even traditionally conservative industries like healthcare have started thinking about getting involved. A few weeks ago I read this post which takes a positive view of this development. Unfortunately, even though patients seem willing to embrace healthcare companies on Twitter, they apparently aren’t doing a good job of living up to expectations. So the question is: what can they do differently to be more successful?

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Through our work with LifeScan, I discovered Microsoft HealthVault, an online platform that allows you to store and manage all your health information in a single place. HealthVault is unapologetically commercial, working with doctors, pharmacies, insurance providers and medical devices manufacturers to make it easy for individuals to add information to their HealthVault account and to actively use that information to help manage their own conditions.

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I recently sent off for a DNA testing kit so I could trace my ancestory. A week or so later an impressive box arrived containing two decidedly unimpressive cotton buds. 

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Being born in 1979 always felt like being on the fringe, it was the fall of retro, death of the mustache (well not for for my dad, but he was never one for following trends) before fluoro was an accepted pantone and Bonnie Tyler was still holding out for a hero; the 80's was yet to be invented.

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On Sunday, The Observer re-published an article from the New York Times entitled the "International Paradox". The paradox in question being that online communities first build a global audience and then think of a way to monetarise that audience, which strikes me as a poor business plan rather than a paradox but what do I know?   

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I was one of five folks on a panel at Digital Hollywood in Santa Monica this week (4 May). The panel was titled "Advertising Next" and was about emerging platforms/new media, including social media and so on. The audience was the usual 150 or so digital marketing types. They were respectful and attentive. No food throwing at all.

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My mother-in-law to be has a saying, "somebody's always watching." She means it in a good way because she's a good person. She means that any good act you do will be recognised by somebody, somewhere. This notion fills me with foreboding, not because I am a bad person but because (very) occassionally I do something I wouldn't want my mother-in-law to find out about. As my friend's dad says, which I am minded to agree with, "honesty is the best policy but it's not always necessary to hit people over the head with the truth."  

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