France gifts every 18 year old with a newspaper subscription

Turning 18 in the UK means you can now legally do a lot of the stuff you’ve been doing since you were 12 (drinking, smoking, watching dirty films, etc) but France are going to mark this milestone with something a little more special, a newspaper subscription. Aside from this being a nice, if novel, gift from President Sarkozy, it’s also something that’s being put in place by the state to ensure the longevity of the press industry.

The majority of people turning 18 in western Europe will have grown up with the internet being a significant part of their daily lives so this feels a little like the state trying to get people to watch black and white TVs when there really isn’t any need. Especially as I assume most French newspapers will be online. I started to think this level of protectionism was silly and unnecessary, then I remembered RBS and Lloyds bank!

Source: Google

Deborah Meaden on Twitter having a go at Alistair Darling?

Something Tom showed me today which really made me chuckle. Hee hee har har type stuff. Apparently Deborah Meaden of Dragons Den fame is on Twitter. So is Alistair Darling. And it appears they don’t really get on…

@deborahmeaden Debs – Word to the wise, careful what you say about Sterling as the anti-terror bills are pretty wide-ranging if you get me
@AlistairDarling Alistair, I’m recession proof so no need worry about me.
@deborahmeaden If you say so.. You’re shorting Sterling? A contrarian indicator IMO. You know what they said about the shoe shine boy
@AlistairDarling Alistar, please don’t lecture me on business. I have done very well on shorting sterling, next you say buy blue chips.
@deborahmeaden Whatever babe I did try to warn you. Jack wants you to pop into the Ministry of Free Thinking tomorrow for ‘re-education’.
@AlistairDarling Alistair,please treat me with respect my name is not “Babe” Address me properly or not at all.

I’m tempted to ask an ex-colleague who happens to be Deborah sister if this twitter is the real deal but it’s blatently not, right?

Internet Population Is 1 Billion. Crikey!

Comscore have reported that there are now 1 billion people online. It also looks like the UK might, just maybe, overtake Germany in the online population table in the not too distant future. The most connected countries (internet population) are:

1. China: 179.7 million
2. United States: 163.3 million
3. Japan: 60.0 million
4. Germany: 37.0 million
5. United Kingdom: 36.7 million
6. France: 34.0 million
7. India: 32.1 million
8. Russia: 29.0 million
9. Brazil: 27.7 million
10. South Korea: 27.3 million
11. Canada: 21.8 million
12. Italy: 20.8 million
13. Spain: 17.9 million
14. Mexico: 12.5 million
15. Netherlands: 11.8 million

Interestingly but unsurprisingly, Asian Pacific represents the largest share of the internet population with Europe a big chunk behind:

• Asia Pacific: 416 million (41.3%)
• Europe: 283 million (28.0%)
• North America: 185 million (18.4%)
• Latin America: 75 million (7.4%)
• Middle East & Africa: 49 million (4.8%)

Source: Techcrunch

Speed Pitching at MyLongLunch

Yesterday I had the pleasure of attending a MyLongLunch event but unlike my previous visits to these events, I was actually presenting. If you don’t know what a MyLongLunch event is (and no, it’s not some sort of Ready Steady Cook thing) it’s a networking event for people working in the recruitment advertising industry and those who are trying to court them. Roughly 15 media publications (websites, newspapers, magazines) meet 15+ recruitment advertising agencies and get 10 minutes to talk about their business and what’s cool about it. It’s such a great idea as the media publications attending would never get the chance to pitch to this manay agencies in one day otherwise. The events take place in a pub, so though there’s a real and genuine opportunity to do business, the fact it’s in a relaxed atmosphere takes the edge off things.

Those representing the media rock up with laptops, handouts, bags, sweets, CDs, books, pens, memory cards, tins of mints – anything that might help the agency remember who they are on Friday morning – and set themselevs up at a table. The agencies are then all seated with a media representative who then has just 10 minutes to try and tell them why their publication is the perfect solution. I’ve never been speed dating but I imagine this is just what it’s like. We went representing Boring Student. Though the site hasn’t launched yet we felt that we had a very interesting propositiong for people attending this Graduate themed event. All of the other media there were very much focused at those alread in university or graduates but we were able to present a case that focused on people who don’t quite know whether University is even right for them. It presented lots of opportunity. The only problem was that 10 minutes never seemed to be enough. Jamie Leonard (@jamieasleonard), the MD of MyLongLunch and time keeper, always seemed to shout out just as we got to the interesting bit.

Aside from being a great chance to meet lots of new people it’s also a great way to hone your presentational skills. Meeting in excess of 15 different businesses in a few hours ment that by the end of it I found the presentation we started with was about 10% of the presentation we finsihed with.

If you get the chance to attend one of these events, do. www.mylonglunch.com/events

picture source: flickr – lwr

Europe is too slow to understand Social Networking

An interesting article by Melissa Bounoua in Forbes about how European CEOs don’t yet understand Twitter and what is can potentially bring to their brand. In the article, she writes:

“Most European companies haven’t even heard of Twitter, and some might think it’s a time waster.  British Telecom says it doesn’t have a Twitter account and doesn’t plan to open one. Nestle’s communications manager says using Twitter “just never came up within the group strategy.” “

American brands using Twitter effectively include Whole Foods (@wholefoods) who effectively used the tweeting platform to  tell people where they could get fresh water and generators during last year’s US Gulf Coast hurricane, General Motors (@GMBlog) using it to end rumours they were closing a car factory and Ford (@forddriveone) to make it clear they weren’t taking legal action to shut down fan sites. The article makes a point I totally agree with:

“In general, experts say Europeans don’t latch on to new social networking technologies as quickly as Americans.”

Obviously there are some exceptions, @richardbranson springs to mind, but there is still a lack of euro power on Twitter!

Source: Forbes

Very smart mobile app from lastminute

Lastminute have just launched a new application for the Android G1 phone and though I don’t have one of these devices (I’m an iPhone boy) I had to write about this one as it is just the sort of web app I get very excited by. It’s called nru (get it? near you!) and I’d love to play with it.

Something I didn’t realise is that the G1 has a built in compass. This, coupled with the accelerometers, GPS and wifi/3G connectivity creates an application that delivers a view of things to do around you; this could be restaurants, bars, coffee shops, cinemas. Arghh I already want to play with it!

The app give you a radar map, showing establishments that are close to you at the centre of the map and places further away located on the outer edge of the map. Using all the features of the G1, as you point the phone in different directions you’re presented with new information. Apparently the application gets most of it’s data from Qype and if you’re looking at restaurants, the latest offers an booking facility from lastminute.com is incorporated.

This video shows how the nru works: Lastminute.com nru phone application

Nice eh?

Property site gets £3.75m funding

Given all the gloom about the UK property market in 2009, it was interesting to read that Zoopla is getting £3.75m of funding.

Zoopla has been around for a year and is apparently the UK’s 5th most popular property site. It lets you get property values in your area and also get a realistic value for your own property. I’m not sure how many people have carried out transactions through the site but given the dramatic drop in property prices I can see how many people would become frequent visitors to see if next door is loosing value faster than you.

As estate agencts across the country close down, could this be a signal that we’re about to cut the middle man out? Not quite: Zoopla are about to launch premium estate agenct listings. Grr.

Source: Netimperitive

New Little Chef Designs & Menu

For anyone watching the Channel 4 program where super chef/scientist/geeky thing Heston Blumenthal takes on the dying and dreary Little Chef, this might be of interest. If you’re not watching it, this is nothing more than a few red pictures!

Source: Praline Via: CR Blog

MyLongLunch Officially Launched!

Today was a great day for everyone at Boring, Acknowledgement and MyLongLunch. The new site launched today and it really rocked. Do I just say rocked? Hmm. Anyway, historically the online operation (er.. that’ll be the site) hasn’t operated as well as the offline operation (that’ll be the events, then) but today has been an example of how the two sides of this successful business will become matched.

The site is aimed exclusively at professionals in the recruitment advertising industry (agencies and those working for media publications) and this is only guaranteed by the manual vetting of every single person who signed up for the site. This way, the site retains an air of true community spirit which you experience when attending one of the MyLongLunch events. Too often social networks become overwhelmed with people who, though very interested in the subject matter, can’t contribute and help develop the community.

It contains the stuff you’d expect: user profiles, company profiles, messaging, along with stuff you might be surprised to see: fan pages, blogging for every user and free job posting facilities.

It’s unique proposition is the ability to start a conversation online, move it offline and then bring it back online again. It’s a true online/offline community and everyone who worked on it and subsequently develops it with great content, profiles and pictures should be really proud to be part of it!

Register now for free at mylonglunch.com/register

Thanks, Qype!

Today I received a package in the post consisting of a bag of jelly beans and a long sleeve t-shirt. The sender wasn’t my mum or someone late for Christmas but Qype, the user driven content local listings and review site, as a thank you for submitting a certain number of reviews and contributing to the site.

I’ll confess that the jelly beans weren’t very tasty and I’ve given the t shirt away but it’s little ‘real world’ offers like this that can generate some warmth towards a website. And it got me talking about Qype – albeit to the person I offloaded the t shirt to. Though they’ve now taken this promotion down as I imagine it presents a dent to the bottom line so I am now thinking about ways to create a cheap real world connection to some of the Boring websites.