I’d like to continue on the theme of mass connectivity from my previous post, Connectivity equals productivity, a powerful reminder. I also want to pick up on some points Tim Flannery raised about our increasingly global civilisation in his recent keynote address, Innovation in a Changing Climate.

Firstly, let me summarise and paraphrase some of Flannery’s thinking. Flannery maintains that around ten thousand years ago, the first human beings came to settle in a village. At that time, humans lived as clans or families in eternal conflict with each other. Over time we have built larger and larger political and social units. Every step of the way we have been giving away a little more of our earlier autonomy; until today, where we have given birth to a civilisation at the heart of which lies many enormous cities.

Flannery asserts that this process has produced a species in which our interdependence is so great that hardly any of us can now live outside “the great hive”. Flannery points out that if we were cast out of our civilisation today, the great majority of us would perish within weeks. We would be like domestic rabbits in the wild.

Internet map image from The Opte Project

In that sense, we have forged a “power in common”, at the expense of us as individuals. He asserts that this sense of us as a group, as a global civilisation, has become the most precious thing in the world to us. In this way, we have changed ourselves. The only possible future we have is in common, at some level.

And what about that collective future? Flannery asserts that we have run most of the marathon already and the finishing line is now just a few steps ahead of us. The finishing line will consist of the creation of a global human civilisation. We are on the brink of that now. He asks, “do we have it within us to take the few extra steps?”. On a side note, for all you conspiracy theorists out there, no, that doesn’t mean a one world government, but rather some sort of collective global consciousness.

Of course, he is talking about this global civilisation in relation to collectively acting on climate change, which he says is a major roadblock in our way. He maintains that unless we address the issue of climate change this decade, it’s likely we will lose the opportunity to forge that global civilisation. He says that incompetent political systems may well have such an impact on us that we will be unable to proceed, and there will be increasing conflict over diminishing resources.

Connectivity and an emerging global civilisation.

Flannery didn’t mention connectivity, or the internet in this particular talk, but while listening to his words I couldn’t help thinking about this concept of the great human hive in relation to the mass connectivity that has been growing around the world. As well as the big trend towards urbanisation, we also have this trend towards worldwide connectivity. Recently that trend has been increasingly towards wireless connectivity.

Sure, we most certainly have a large digital divide, a gap between people with effective access to digital and information technology, and those with very limited or no access at all. However, the fact remains that we are more able to communicate with each other on a global scale than ever before.

So, the question is: are we on the brink of achieving a truly global civilisation, a sort of global consciousness aided by mass connectivity?

It seemed only fitting that I turned to “the crowd” for an answer. I posed some questions on Twitter and Facebook. Mostly, the answer was a resounding No. Only a couple of people said yes. Interestingly, they were both young people.

“The voices on the net say no.”

“Absolutely not, that’s impossible”

“It is further away than ever”

“Don’t mistake global communications with consciousness”

“The ‘civil’ part of the q. that has a problem. I don’t see a lot of civility going on. Connectivity cuts both ways”

“Religion, greed, and egotism. Those are things what will never go away or be put into a level of control that would allow global civilisation”

“No! Any travel to a two-thirds-of-world country exposes how many billions not on grid and completely ignored by global ‘thought’.”

“no – the same people who are excluded/voiceless locally are now excluded globally. It is a conversation between the rich.”

“Global Civilisation- possibly. Global Conscience – definitly not, people/countries are unique indentities and think differently”

“Sadly, absolutely not. The more info the more divisive are positions. look at the US. but still have hope for next generations”

“Global civilization yes, because for the first time ever we are growing a Gen Y that is connected across the  World.”

“I say YES YES YES! (but maybe cause I’m 24?)”

I think there are some good points there, especially the one about mistaking mass connectivity with consciousness, and taking into account the lack of connectivity in most of the world.

I don’t like to be pessimistic, so I’m going to end with my belief that, global civilisation and global consciousness or not, we can solve some of the humanity’s major problems, including climate change.

By the way, I say it’s humanity’s problem because the Earth will recover eventually from the excessive greenhouse gases we are pumping into the atmosphere, even if humans aren’t around when it does. We would take (and are already taking) a lot of other species with us too, and perhaps new ones would emerge later.

What are your thoughts on this global civilisation question? I’m interested to find out.

Technorati Tags: climate change, connectivity, digital divide, environment, globalisation, Tim Flannery, urbanizatiion

Further to my recent posts, Local businesses: to use Foursquare (yet) or not, that is the question’ and 10 examples of businesses in Australia already using Foursquare for marketing, it seems that Coca–Cola has now jumped in with its own contribution to Foursquare markeing. Enter, The Coke Machine Fairy.

I just noticed this a few minutes ago when I visited my local shopping centre, Broadway Shopping Mall. There was a “Nearby Special” banner on display as I checked-in.

It appears that Coke will be leaving “goodies” in Coke machines around Sydney on a daily basis. Instructions on how to play the game can be found here.

Technorati Tags: business, Coca-Cola, coke, Foursquare, marketing, mobile, Twitter

Well by now you’ve probably seen the trailer for the much anticipated, and apparently quite dark, movie about the founding of Facebook, The Social Network. Now comes a new spoof (there are others) of The Social Network trailer, complete with an excellent parody soundtrack.

The Twit Network trailer relentlessly lampoons Twitter’s flood of minutiae from people’s everyday lives. It begins with Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey having a conversation with a friend which goes “I need to create a way to blog that is as random and incoherent as writing on a bathroom wall”. “Why”. “Because normal blogging is tedious and dumb and leads to fully formed ideas”.  I’m sure you get the picture. It’s funny :)

The parody trailer also begs the question, if  The Social Network turns out to be a box office success, will we one day see a feature film about Twitter too?

On a side note, as you can see from the tweet below, which is a quote from the video trailer, Twitter Co-founder Biz Stone seems to think it’s funny too.

via Mashable

Technorati Tags: Biz Stone, Facebook, Jack Dorsey, movie, parody, The Social Network, trailer, Twitter, video

Apparently, if you are American, there’s a decent chance you are social networking right now. According to a new Neilsen survey, Americans now spend nearly a quarter of their online time social networking. This is a 43 percent increase from only a year ago.

According to the Neilsen survey, this makes social networking the most popular online activity in America. Online gaming came in second and good old email came in third.

If you’re in Australia, as I am, back in June it was revealed that we spend the most time social networking in the world. According to that previous survey, the U.S. and Italy came in second and third respectively.

Well I can say for certain that you’re definitely reading a blog right now, but do you also have Twitter or Facebook or some other form of social media at your fingertips too? There’s a good chance you do.

Technorati Tags: America, Australia, email, Neilson, online gaming, social media, social networking, stats

This is part 1 of a two part post about businesses in Australia using Foursquare. Part 2, ‘10 examples of businesses in Australia already using Foursquare for marketing’, can be found here.

Foursquare only arrived in Australia last November, just 8 months ago. Needless to say, it’s still fairly early days for the location-based service on these (digital) shores.

I’m not exactly sure how many Foursquare users there are in Australia right now, but according to one source, there are at least 60,000 in Sydney. It would be great to get a current, official number from the company (none has been forthcoming from the company by the time of this post). It has however been confirmed by Foursquare that they have passed 100 million checkins and have over 2 million users worldwide. This is not huge compared to the likes of Facebook, with now over 500 million users, or Twitter with well over 100 million, but as I said, it’s still early days.

I remember back when Twitter had about 2 million users and was a relatively small community locally. It’s taken about 4 years to go from zero to over 100 million users. It’s changed quite a bit, especially from a marketing standpoint!  With Foursquare, the second million users have been collected in just three months, and they have recently raised $20 million in funding for further development. However, Facebook has flagged that it will be launching a location feature soon, so it’ll be interesting to see how that impacts Foursquare’s fast growing user base.

Forrester has just come out with some research that suggests that Foursquare is still too small for major agencies and their clients to be bothered with, as even in the U.S. only 4% of adults online have ever used location-based mobile apps. Whereas, more than 11% of adults online have used Twitter and an estimated 28% of all internet users have signed up for Facebook.

Well it might be correct to say that in many cases, but I’m here to say that this certainly doesn’t mean it can’t or shouldn’t be used right now in certain circumstances, especially as Foursquare has the potential to be beneficial for many small and medium enterprises, as well at larger companies. I think it all depends on how and why you intend to use it, and how you approach using it.

For instance, if you are wanting to attract tech savvy early adopters (who are all using up-to-date mobile devices and using mobile data regularly) to your business or service , and there are plenty of businesses who would like to do that, why wouldn’t you think about giving it a go? Quite a few of these people are also likely to be heavy users of services such as Twitter and Facebook, which Foursquare checkins are often crossposted to. This group is also also more likely to write blogs.

Foursquare is also at the stage where, if you are a business using it to attract new customers and to reward loyal customers, you might actually get some welcome free media attention (traditional or otherwise) for taking the initiative. This certainly happened when Twitter started to catch on. Journalists take notice of local examples of wider tech and social media trends being used.

When Twitter eventually broke into mass pop culture, when celebrities started using it and talking about it, and it started being the talk of tv the talkshow circuit, some businesses and individuals who had been using it for quite a while benefited from already having experience with this new communications tool. They were one step ahead of the pack.

Could it be similar with Foursquare? Not sure but it’s certainly possible. Time will tell.

So, having said that, in my next post I’m going to take a look at what some businesses have been doing with Foursquare so far in Australia. Who are some of these initial experimenters and what have they been doing with it?

What are your thoughts on businesses using Foursquare at this stage?

Part 2, ‘10 examples of businesses in Australia already using Foursquare for marketing’.

Technorati Tags: apps, Australia, business, Facebook, Forrester, Foursquare, LBS, location, location-based, marketing, mobile, Twitter

Okay, I like this, it’s good marketing. It’s the kind of marketing people actually like, which is uncommon to say the least.

Following the hugely popular and entertaining Old Spice 30 sec commercial (which really proves that to be viral or contagious it just has to be good), the Old Spice Guy is currently replying to well known people on Twitter with funny, personalized videos. The videos are getting a big kick-along with the addition of a paid Old Spice Promoted Trending Topic.

So far the video replies are mostly to influential and popular people and blogs, such as Kevin Rose, Ashton Kutcher, Perez Hilton, The Huffington Post, Gizmodo, Alyssa Milano, Jason Calacanis and many others, even to Twitter cofounder Biz Stone. Needless to say, tweets and links to videos are being passed around Twitter at an incredible rate. They are of course being embedded in many blogs too, including this one.

This is one of the best paid campaigns I’ve seen so far on Twitter (and YouTube). The copywriter(s) involved must be having a a lot of fun writing the quick response videos too!

Technorati Tags: Ashton Kutcher, Biz Stone, business, Gizmodo, Huffington Post, Kevin Rose, marketing, Old Spice, Perez Hilton, social media, Trending, Twitter, viral, YouTube

It seems highly probable, if this recent report by ReadWriteWeb is correct. It’s only speculation at this stage as to what will be rolled out.

As RWW says, it could just be a measurement system for marketing promotions they will be running through their own @earlybird Twitter account. It could be an analytics tool for Twitter Search, now the world’s fastest growing search engine, but by my estimation currently not the best real-time search engine.

Whatever it is, if it’s an offering that can be used by individuals, organisations and companies outside of Twitter’s own walls, it’ll be most welcome (except perhaps by those who’ve been developing their own). What kind of tool would you like to see being offered by Twitter? What would be useful for you?

Technorati Tags: advertising, analytics, ReadWriteWeb, real-time, RWW, search, social media, Twitter, Twitter search

According to Twitter cofounder Biz Stone, Twitter now handles around 800 million search queries per day, or more than 24 billion per month. This is a massive 33% more than it said it was handling back in April.

To put that into some perspective, Google reaches around 88 billion per month, so it’s pretty impressive that Twitter has already moved well past a quarter of that. In addition, Bing only achieves around 4.1 billion and Yahoo around 9.4 billion per month.

So as well as being an information network (as Stone prefers to call it), it seems that Twitter is now the world’s fastest growing search engine. It’ll be very interesting to see how much revenue they manage to pull in with their new Promoted Tweets initiative on search. Although quite different, Google has certainly done fairly well out of search advertising!

via Fast Company

Technorati Tags: Bing, Biz Stone, Google, promoted tweets, search, social media, Twitter, Twitter search, Yahoo

There’s no doubt that traffic on Twitter and Facebook has been very heavy during the FIFA World Cup. Twitter even set a new record of 3,283 Tweets per second during the recent Japan vs Denmark game. That beat the previous record at the close of the LA Lakers’ win over the Boston Celtics in June. That’s some feat, considering that football (or soccer) isn’t the most popular sport in the U.S., and Twitter has a large U.S. user base.

I wonder if that record was surpassed again last night (Australian time) when England quite obviously scored a goal against traditional rivals Germany, but the referee didn’t pick it up? Everybody around the world watching on TV and those tweeting with each other certainly noticed. I know I tweeted about it. I’m sure there was also quite a bit of social media debate going on as to whether football should finally install video refereeing within the goal area!

Peter Blackshaw, an executive from TV and web monitoring firm Nielsen, has recently noted that social media activity during the World Cup is outpacing that seen during the Olympic Games, Super Bowl and Academy Awards, which is causing advertisers to want to get more involved. Indeed, according to Coca-Cola’s Carol Krus, Coca-Cola’s Promoted Trend on Twitter, which ran during World Cup matches and was only the second such trend, achieved 86 million impressions and an engagement rate of 6%, for whatever that’s worth.

The World Cup’s massive global TV audience in certainly a big factor in the success of the World Cup in social media. Not many people would be tweeting about it if they weren’t watching it on TV or via web video streams at the same time. Football is a spectator sport, perhaps the biggest in the world, and that’s being reflected in social media.

For the first time during a World Cup, fans have been able to swap views on favourite teams and games in real-time and in a big way, thanks to social media. During the last world Cup final in 2006 in France, the worldwide TV audience for the final game was estimated to be 715 million viewers, but Twitter was only just beginning and Facebook only had around 12 million users.

With this sort of probable TV number on the table, it’s no wonder Twitter decided to get involved with its own official World Cup pages and hashtags. Smart move, if only they could keep the service running during the peak traffic periods. Depending on which teams are in the final game of the World Cup, it’s shaping up to be a combined TV and social media blockbuster.

Twitter’s official World Cup 2010 pages

Technorati Tags: advertising, Coca-Cola, Facebook, tv, twitpic, Twitter, World Cup 2010

So it appears that Facebook is now blocking a new feature of Twitter’s Facebook app. The particular feature lets you find who out of your Facebook friends also has a Twitter account.

As you can see above, I got the message, “It appears that the connection between Facebook and Twitter isn’t working, we are working with Facebook to resolve this problem.”

TechCrunch is now reporting that the move may be unintentional, and that Twitter said “Facebook has notified us that they have blocked the update to our application, and we are working on a resolution with them.”

Well I certainly hope this block is unintentional. After all the criticism over Facebook’s lack of openness and constant erosion of trust, blocking a feature like this from one of its major competitors would be a really bad move, don’t you think?

As has been suggested, it might have been blocked automatically because it was getting too much traffic all at once and they had to pull the plug. That would make sense, considering the very impressive ongoing growth of Twitter.

Technorati Tags: Facebook, TechCrunch, Twitter