Only Dead Fish

This Week's Favourite Fraggl Links

A bit late due to travel but here are my favourite links from this past week, curated by Fraggl:

• Nicely put: The great fragmentation or why we're all weirdos now
• This makes sense - the future of passwords is no passwords
• One of the fascinating Superflux projects talked about at this week's Firestarters by Anab Jain: Open Informant
• Nice anti-road rage work here (above) by TFL and M & C Saatchi

And of-course you can sign up to Fraggl here.

This Week's Favourite Fraggl Links

Here's my favourite links from this week, curated by Fraggl:

• A fascinating look inside the creative process (above) of screenwriter Dustin Lance Black ("Milk" and "J. Edgar")
• Some good data here illustrating 5 key things about how younger generations consume media
• I like the idea behind this book - three business school professors travel the back roads of America in search of innovation
• The peculiar physics of a ball of crumpled paper - a lot more interesting than it sounds

And of-course you can sign up to Fraggl here.

Post Of The Month - June 2014 - The Winner

Happy to announce that the winner of this month's vote is James Caig with his post on The Lives of Others. Something of a split vote this month so a close run thing but well done James - you join the hall of fame. Thanks everyone for taking part and don't forget to bookmark nominations for next month's vote.

Post Of The Month - June 2014 - The Vote

Thanks for the nominations. So our vote this month is between:

The Lives of Others by James Caig

Interesting versus Right - Revisited by Richard Huntingdon

Client Feedback on the Creation of the Earth by Mike Lacher

People, Not Data from Tim Solomon

A Return to Form in Media by John Batelle

And you can vote below:

Post Of The Month - June 2014 - Nominations

Time to open up nominations for great posts that you have read, and that were posted in June, in our vote for Post Of the Month. I have a short starting list below as usual, but please do add to these by nominating direct or in the comments below. So my starting list is:

The Lives of Others by James Caig

Interesting versus Right - Revisited by Richard Huntingdon

Client Feedback on the Creation of the Earth by Mike Lacher

People, Not Data from Tim Solomon

Please do add to these with your own nominations.

With Great Data Comes Great Responsibility

I got back from holiday yesterday in time to witness the kerfuffle about Facebook's psychological newsfeed experiment (HT to this Quartz piece for the title to this post) which was a timely reminder of the sensitivities around the power that reach and data enable. 

The reality of-course is that most people have no idea about the amount of data that Facebook hold on them, has access to, and can utilise. Or realise that their newsfeed is algorythmically curated and not simply a chronological list of posts from their friends and connections. 

Beyond just the actively input information and activity signals it tracks, Facebook knows a lot about you. Using cookies, Facebook tracks your browsing history and what other sites you visit, even when you're not logged in. It now allows advertisers to target ads on Facebook based on users web-browsing. You can also plug-in third party data that you hold on users in order to target them on the platform. Or you can utilise someone else's third party data (perhaps from data vendors like Datalogix, Acxiom, Epsilon) to identify segments of users. The Facebook mobile app takes account of what other apps you have installed on your phone. It has developed sophisticated facial recognition capabilities that enable it to recognise users in pictures. It can track your location and notify you when friends are nearby. It will soon be able to track what your watching and listening to.

It should be said that Facebook are far from being the only company to do this, or to develop targeting products based on more sophisticated collection and re-application of data. Everyone's at it. Analytics tools enable all kinds of companies to hold all kinds of information about user activity (check out what Buzzfeed knows about you for example). Some organisations even specialise in enabling retailers to find their customers online to enable them to marry offline behaviour with a customised online experience. 

It is inevitable that the future of media and content placement (and therefore a significant part of the future of marketing) will incorporate more of this kind of data collection and re-application. IDC say that whilst a significant proportion (34% and rising) of data in the 'digital universe' might be described as useful, only 7% of data is tagged and less than 1% of it is analysed. Those proportions will inevitably rise and yet, according to a Carnegie Mellon study, reading all of the privacy policies an average Internet user encounters in a year would take 76 work days.

So, like the post title suggests, the point is that the power that data enables has to be wielded with care. I'm sure most companies would say that they are already doing that, but it's a fine line and one that is very easy to slip away from.

This Week's Favourite Fraggl Links

This week I spoke at Econsultancy's Future of Digital Marketing conference about Fraggl - you can see the slides here. And here are my favourite Fraggl links from this week:

• Another good set of slides from John Willshire on his theme of Making Things People Want. And here's Tim Leake with an interesting take on client/agency relationships and what it means for creativity (presented at Cannes this week)
• A fascinating piece on introversion as one of the most misunderstood dimensions of personality. And at what age do we hit peak embarrassment? Now you know
• A compelling take down of the use of technology in delivering govt services in the US, and a plea for building with more  empathy (perhaps they could do with some GDS)
• And a rare peak inside 'Amazon’s massive wish fulfilment machine'

And of-course you can sign up to Fraggl here.

This Week's Favourite Fraggl Links

Here's my favourites from this week, curated by Fraggl:

• Google's World Cup microsite showing how countries are feeling about their upcoming fixtures based on search terms. And here's Streetview imagery inside all 12 stadiums in Brazil. And here's the 12 best 2014 World Cup ads
• This Felix Salmon interview with Buzzfeed's Jonah Peretti is worth the time
• Andy Nairn tells the story behind the Paddy Power rainforest stunt
• And a fascinating map (above) revealing where Silicon Valley gets it's talent from.

And of-course you can sign up to Fraggl here.

This Week's Favourite Fraggl Links

Here are my favourite links from this week, curated by Fraggl:

• "Each year, Mary Meeker unveils her fascinating Internet Trends presentation. And each year, her insights are inestimable and eagerly awaited. But each year, I have a problem with her slides. As a presentation designer, I find them rough and busy. To the point it makes them hard to understand. So this year, here’s my humble attempt at redesigning them!" Well done that man
• Mixby. An app that uses beacons to unlock content and museums and events. Rather cool.
• A wonderful, wide-ranging interview with (Ogilvy Vice-Chairman) Rory Sutherland on branding, behavioural economics and much else besides
• What causes the smell of new and old books? Now you know.

And of-course you can sign up to Fraggl here.

Post Of The Month - May 2014 - The Winner

Delighted to say that the winner of this month's Post of the Month vote is Phil Adams, with his excellent piece on the many voices of planning. So well done to Phil. His post is entered into the hall of fame. Thanks as always to everyone for taking part.