28 Feb 2011

I love infographics but there is more than a grain of truth in this satire (h/t @felixsalmon)

19 Feb 2011

Twitter fail-whale as art: the Mubarak resignation edition

19 Feb 2011

INFOGRAPHIC: US music industry is down nearly two-thirds on its peak

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An original chart from Bain suggested the music biz was down 40% on its late '90s peak but further digging by Business Insider suggests its much, much worse.

17 Feb 2011

Infographic of the Day: Watch Egypt's Twitter Uprising Bloom [Video] | Co.Design

17 Feb 2011

Infographic of the Day: Watch Egypt's Twitter Uprising Bloom [Video] | Co.Design

30 Jan 2011

Rachel Botsman: The case for collaborative consumption

A TEDX talk from last May in which Rachel Botsman sets out her mission to make sharing hip.

Key points:

Technology is enabling trust between strangers. Social networks and real-time technology have wired us up to share and taken us back to earlier forms of bartering based on face-to-face contact.

Crucial to this are new trust systems. The 'millenials' are growing up sharing much of what they experience. They are moving us from a culture of 'me' and 'hyper-consumption' to an economy of 'we'.

'Collaborative consumption' isn't just about online sharing via things like Flickr and YouTube but is beginning to happen in the real world via much greater activity with commuter car-sharing and in agriculture and micro-banking.

Three models for what's going on in 'Collaborative Consumption':

1, Redistribution markets -- reduce, reuse, recycle, repair, redistribute to extend the lifestyle of physical things

2. Collaborative lifestyles -- LandShare (Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's market for sharing land that is not being used with those who want smallholdings

3. Product service systems -- pay for the benefit of a product without ownership. Particularly powerful when there is a lot of 'idle time'. Power drills are used typically for 12-13 minutes during their entire lifetime. Libraries and launderettes are old-fashioned examples.

Car usage is a good example of how fast things are changing. The typical car lies idle for 23 hours a day. Within eight years we have gone from outright ownership to car sharing (zipcar) to ride sharing (zimride) and now to P2P car rental (DriveMyCar).

The engine behind all this is new systems of trust. In the old ownership world trust didn't matter -- the only important thing was your credit rating.

Now we are signalling with our sharing activity how trustworthy we are.

Reputation capital is set to become as important if not more important than a credit rating.

24 Jan 2011

INFOGRAPHIC Inside the Mind of a Community Manager via @getsatisfaction

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A bit of humour to mark Community Managers Day but painfully accurate for anyone who has ever had to do some community management. My favourite: 'Empath' -- "Keeps track of vibrations from the Community, Twitter, Facebook and other sources to sense the slightest disturbances in the company-customer continuum."

24 Jan 2011

Infographic: Restricting Social Media at Work – How Does it Affect Productivity? via @socialcast

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The majority of corporations restrict use of social media at work but studies show it increases productivity and creativitiy.

22 Jan 2011

Superb cartoon from Martin Rowson capturing Andy Coulson's resignation in today's #guardian

14 Jan 2011

Really good summary of Social media hits and misses from Custom Communications

A useful reminder of the topsy, turvy nature of social networking

Mark Jones's Space

I'm a journalist based in London working for Reuters News. Any opinions expressed here are my own.