All this week we’re out in Mayrhofen, Austria, producing a real-time stream of news content for the official Snowbombing festival iPhone app by Eristoff – Vodka from the Land of the Wolf.
If you’ve got an iPhone or iPod Touch, download it for free while the event is taking place and let us know what you think. You’ll find news, gossip and interviews direct from the week-long festival, which sees artists like The Enemy, Editors, 2ManyDJs, De La Soul, Fatboy Slim, Vitalic, Doves and Friendly Fires playing to 6000 fancy dressed loons high up the Tyrolean alps.
Live Feeds
The app makes use of Alchemy Content’s specialist experience of developing and running mobile applications that go beyond the gimmicks; providing a useful, always up-to-date information service that’s constantly available in a user’s pocket.
Live feeds of high-quality custom content give people a reason to refer to the branded application repeatedly throughout their time at the event. For Snowbombing, we’ve devised an additional Eristoff Secrets feed, offering exclusive calls to action on things like VIP party access, ticket competitions and insider tips for getting the most from the resort.
Intense Usage
Mobile apps based around intense periods of usage, like major events or holiday locations work particularly well, so the Eristoff Snowbombing app is an ideal use of the technology and Alchemy Content’s editorial and project management services. See our Clubber’s Guide to Ibiza app for more.
GPS maps pinpointing and recommending local businesses, a fully searchable events schedule including artist profiles, plus user generated community feeds from YouTube, Flickr and Twitter all add to the application being an essential download for anyone – whether out at Snowbombing or not – with an interest in the artists or wanting an interactive guide to the best of Mayrhofen’s après ski.
Mobile apps are all the rage, right? Yet the reality of the situation is that the majority of people don’t use them, yet. Apps are spectacularly useful when they make life easier – quickly, regularly, efficiently – but for owners of the more popular handsets, this simply isn’t the experience. Just finding and downloading them can often be too much hassle for starters. And the minefield of data plan charges and different operating systems are enough to scare off most people anyway.
Therefore it was good to see a consortium of seven mobile phone manufacturers and networks coming together to announce a new standard system for apps at the Mobile World Congress last week.
As far as we’re concerned this kind of initiative can’t happen fast enough. The average person has no interest in why the technology can’t deliver them a good media experience on their phone, but as soon as it does, they are going to wonder how they ever did without it. In the meantime we’re in the frustrating position where an amazing range of new content, tools and services are only really available to those who own an iPhone.
Despite all the buzz about mobile apps, designing a service that can be enjoyed across all the mobile platforms is still fraught with barriers and expenses. Mobile will only really take off when the focus changes from ‘how’ services are delivered to ‘what’ goes onto them, from the technical to the editorial.
Apple run a restrictive, closed system in an era when pretty much everyone else is working to principles of compatibility, yet theirs remains the platform of choice because they have streamlined the whole experience. Google’s more open, Android system is slowly gaining ground, but it will take a lot more cooperation to bring the overall mobile app/online experience up to the level that people will want to use it on all handsets.
We’re on the right path, but the progress of mobile media has been far too slow. Protectionism still reigns. Now Apple have generated all the interest, perhaps this latest announcement of cooperation will bring forward mobile media’s ‘broadband moment’ of mass adoption, and kickstart the technology/content revolution that is currently only enjoyed by a lucky minority of phone users…
Forget the latest social media trends, communications fads and all those lofty opinions on the future of Twitter. The one thing that has emerged as a modern essential (one I believe we will soon consider on a par with having a phone number, or a listed postal or email address), is the status update.
It makes perfect sense in an age dominated by information, that we all provide a short ‘headline’ about what we are up to as part of our contemporary suite of work and social tools. We’re fast approaching a time when not to have a status update of some sort will feel as socially awkward as not having a mobile became in the late 1990s. And for businesses, it will be unthinkable.
It’s interesting to see the mobile operators and device manufacturers rushing into this space now (see the Vodaphone video below). The range of options they offer shows that this isn’t exclusively about Twitter, Facebook or any other brand. It’s also not about celebrity, or society’s obsession with self-importance, or an invasion of privacy, or a time consuming distraction. It’s a maturing of how we all use real-time social media in a way that isn’t overwhelming. It’s a practical method of communicating now we are all so instantly, permanently connected. An inevitable evolution of communication, no less. Ok, so it’s one that hasn’t featured in much sci-fi so makes us feel odd about our ideas of the future, but is ultimately very human.
Train Your Brain
The headline feed, whether this be news, marketing messages, blog posts or a public SMS from a friend’s mobile are the ultimate way to cope with and condense a torrent of real time information. Excellent free tools like Tweetdeck and Hootsuite help us to make sense of this as the feeds themselves become a flood. The mobile app and the personal website become important again as aggregators of particular feeds.
Our brains need to get to grips with this new way of receiving information, and its rapid advance is causing plenty of friction and resistance… of course. But the technology is guiding the way. Limiting the text characters (originally down to the basic restrictions of SMS) forces us to be brief and trains our minds to express ourselves in the concise way necessary today.
As society becomes more comfortable with sending and consuming information in this way, as yet unthought-of possibilities become apparent, both good and bad. Witness last week’s #trafigura and #janmoir outrage incidents (Twitter mobs could become a real problem, even if they can be mobilized for good), or the innovative #beatcancer charity drive. The best advice can only be that we all embrace the coming of the status update and train ourselves to be savvy as its cultural importance grows. What’s clear is that the pace of change isn’t going to stop, so those who remain resistant put themselves at an increasing disadvantage.
Such topics are to be discussed from a brand perspective at Media140 London on 26th October, a one-day conference on the impact of real-time media. Alchemy Content will be there, and we have a discount code for £40 off the ticket price for the first five people to buy a Media140 ticket using our exclusive promo code: E8NZAHJH. That makes it a very affordable £95.
Video for Vodaphone’s new 360 service, that is heavily geared towards the importance of status updates…
Seeing as Miami’s Winter Music Conference is now in full swing, we’ve been monitoring social media activity around the annual orgy of electronica. (Ok, so it’s a poor second to actually being out there. Poolside. In the sunshine. But it’s as close as we’re getting this time).
While there’s unquestionably more content than ever in terms of regular blogging, live streams (check out the new Awdio), pics and tweets going up ‘as it happens’, tracking this coverage down is a real hit and miss affair.
The experience highlights the shortcommings of Google when it comes to real-time and current events searching. Twitter search is better for catching links to live/fresh content, however the results are dominated by people saying ‘wishing I was at WMC’ as opposed to actual relevant media from out there.
Huge events like WMC really lend themselves to all kinds of digital media experimentation. When we reach a point where all the material can be easily found in one place everyone will benefit.
The Kyte player above is a project we worked on at Ministry of Sound during WMC 2008. I thought more people would be onto this kind of ‘live from my mobile’ footage this year, but phone livecasting is yet to capture the collective imagination (so far…) and they are all probably too busy enjoying their poolside strawberry daquiris right now anyway.
The inauguration of President Obama this week was groundbreaking for loads of very well documented reasons. The mainstream media have done a good job of highlighting the role that web technologies played in the historic election victory. Yet I thought some of the most exciting uses of social media were on display on inauguration day itself.
CNN’s hook up with Facebook looked like a good interactive idea, although when we checked out the ceremony at cnn.com the site could only stretch to congratulating us for having ‘made it’, but didn’t have enough capacity to actually show us the live stream. Thankfully the guys at Obama fave UStream had things completely under control for trouble-free laptop viewing of the historic fudging of the oath.
If ever there was a time for Twitter to go down it was this and although we did notice some sluggishness, it proved to be the most valuable resource for hearing the true ’voice of the people’, particularly via the excellent http://obama.twistori.com. Did 46% of Americans really vote for McCain? They’re being very quiet indeed.
Check out the Kyte player above for web tech evangelist Robert Scoble roaming around the amazing operation at Al Gore’s Current TV. Is this the future of live event journalism? It certainly looks like they may be onto something with those banks of people monitoring the vast public dialogue. That’s where the scoops come from today.
Will the UK - we’re told this week that Twitter penetration is surprisingly higher here than in the States - embrace such media innovation around our own election time?
