The Social Network Timeline

These days when you talk to someone about social networks, they think of Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare. And if you talk to a digital marketer, they will tell you of how best to monetize them and why social networks are such a new thing.

Internet veterans, the snobs that they are, will know that social networks and internet-based social media has a long illustrious history that began immediately when the Internet was born. After all, the public Internet was born out of human's desire to be more social.

When we finally got connected to the Internet in 1994, it didn't take me long before I got onto IRC, and off shot of BBS, one of the world's first truly global social networks. Back then we didn't have marketers and self-loathing social media consultants telling us why it was important to sell our personal brands, and we would talk about anything. There were no numbers to sell, no artificial metric to live by. It was raw. It was good.

Nokia Lumia Experience House Soho

The first I heard of Nokia Experience House in Soho was when barely a week after Nokia World in November, I received an email from Nokia UK asking me to drop by their new temporary office to collect a Lumia 800 review unit. This was one of the few moments when a manufacturer offered to meet in person before handing out review units. Most of the time, PR agencies would rather post units to reviewers, which is fine and all especially if you do not live or work in London. But the lack of face to face communication isn't something I particularly enjoy.

The concept of a temporary pop up office set up for tech journalist is certainly intriguing at least from my perspective. There is little doubt that Nokia House was born from a marketing point of view, and there is a good post by my friend Benjamin Fox about the popup office (or Experience House as Nokia calls it) from a digital marketing POV here. But enough waffle, let me tell you tell you a story about the Nokia Lumia Experience House in Soho. Despite the mention of the Lumia 800, this has nothing to do about the phone and more of my experience from a freelance mobile reviewer/blogger's point of view and why holding intimate one-to-one meetup is important to me.

 

Nokia has been aggressive in making the media gets accessed to Lumia 800 units as quickly as possible, and were very keen to hand them out in person for whatever reason they have. This provides them with the unique opportunity to demonstrate Windows Phone to the many journalists who has yet to experience it, as well as invite visitors to learn the design journey of the Lumia 800. I was joined by three other fellow reviewers on my first visit, one who was the famously outspoken IT columnist Andrew Orlowski (incidentally, Orlowski has been a critic of Nokia's strategy for many years but has been very positive of the Lumia 800 in his review on The Register).

The four of us were ushered to the first floor of the House where a number of demo Lumia 800 were set up with laptops and accessories in stow. We were guided to each demo sections where we were demonstrated each key features of Windows Phone 7, from the social networking side to Microsoft Office integration to SkyDrive, their cloud-based service. Also on demonstration is Nokia Music, an exclusive Nokia app for purchasing and streaming music. I was told that as Nokia House was only a popup event space, it will be gone by Christmas, but we were welcomed to drop by and visit at any time.

While I was impressed by my short visit to the House, the thought of revisiting never occurred to me. That was until two weeks later when my Lumia was 'recalled' to undergo a firmware upgrade. In this visit the ground floor was redecorated and features a more opened space reception where I sat watching columnists from a well known fashion magazine (the title escapes me) receiving one-to-one demonstrations from Nokia training staffs. The unusually warm November sun poured in from Greek Street, giving the reception a nice cosy and intimate feel.

When Nokia extended the lease through the new year, I made several more visits. With each revisit I noticed tiny changes, mainly to the furnishing. The first floor is now furnished with pictures of Nokia House guests and occupants. The reception has been turned into an office for their social media team. The office of course was always opened for the media to use. On my visit to photograph the white Lumia 800, I actually edited the photographs, wrote the post and published from the very office. It was also difficult not to eavesdrop on their discussion a few feet away for a new Facebook competition. The transparency was comforting and at no point did I feel pressurised to pack up and move on.

Last Thursday I received an email from Claire of Nokia Press informing me that Nokia House would close on the 29 February. This came a surprise to me as a couple of weeks ago Mark, the communications chief, excitedly said to me that would be extending the Greek Street HQ up to summer. Obviously the landlord of the building thought differently. So on Friday I decided to pay what may be my final visit to the House, to take pictures for this blog post, but mainly say goodbye and thank the people who ran the House. It was a pleasure to meet Emma again and discuss post her Nokia House gig. It was a shame Mark wasn't in, but I did bump into him later nearby outside.

Very few mobile brands goes the extra mile, though I can always rely on Three UK, Sony Ericsson and indeed Nokia to do so. I have to stress that their forward approach and invitations to parties does not equate to me giving favourable reviews and vice versa. I blogged and tweeted some pretty nasty stuff in the past about all of these brands, and will continue to do so whenever they merit such feedback, like, you know, whenever they release awful products.

Nokia has made countless of bad decisions in the past couple of years, and even continue to do so, so it is nice to see them doing something right for once. I do admit, from a mobile's perspective Nokia isn't a brand that connects to me emotionally (very few brands do anyway). Unlike many mobile enthusiasts I have met, my first, and in fact my next five, phones wasn't a Nokia. Still there is a fascinating history and rich heritage behind the Finnish brand I respect and can't help admire even if I am no fan of all their products. And it wasn't difficult to appreciate the hard work and care that they obviously put into this Experience House.

So thanks to Mark, Emma, Vicki, Matt and others who has always made me feel at home. It is a shame that when the inevitable Windows 8 tablet is announced soon, there will be no Nokia House to look forward to having our hands-on in. I hope Nokia and the other manufacturers will learn something out of this little experiment. After all being social does exist outside that of Twitter and email.

You are not a number

Ever noticed how by being online you are slowly being turned into yet another number? The rise of so-called social media metric services by Klout, Kred and Peer Index has slowly been ruining my experience on Twitter. And not because people using them would tweet button their Kred+ or Klout+ onto Twitter, which is already annoying enough.

I refer to of course to the number game. The age old belief that huge follower number equals that of influence is still popular and while it is true to a certain degree, it is easy to game Twitter and up your numbers artificially. I won't go into details, but one method is through boosting their Kred, Klout and Peer Index number by tweeting endlessly about stuff they obviously have no clue about thus boosting their respective social media metric thingy. Gullible people would then be fooled into thinking that these people are worth following because hei, they have a big score next to their name so they are experts.

This, of course, is bullshit.

So why should I give a shit? Well because some of these people are good Twitter users who has turned evil. They have value I do not want to miss hence why I was following in the first place, but they also dilute their value with nonsense. They would set up some auto tweet some random stuff service so their Klout number would not fall. Stuff like what I am going to tell you next.

I had the misfortune to once read an advice RTed into my timeline. This advice was so ridiculous and stupid in epic proportion you can actually tell that it was crafted by a so called Social Media Guru/Expert/Specialist TM. It went something like this:

"If you want people to RT your tweets then you better start to RT theirs"

I could not remember who it was who retweeted it, nor the person who originally tweeted that but I hope they are reading this: you retweet because you saw a tweet you want to share, not because you want another twitter user to reciprocate. Advice like this ruin my Twitter experience because I do not know if a retweet that just entered my timeline is there because of the user's genuine desire to share, or because they want to game Twitter.

You can follow me on Twitter. But do not worry as I will not be expecting you to RT my miserable tweets to your followers.

Firefox do the dance

As seen at the Firefox 4 launch (after) party yesterday evening at The Star of Kings in Camden, London. :D

Nokia Gaming Night at WOMWorld/Nokia

On Thursday WOMWorld/Nokia hosted a gaming night at their 1000heads Soho HQ. It clashed with London Bloggers Meetup, which put me in a position where I had to choose. In the end I decided to go to the gaming night, but not before stopping by at the Long Acre pub to say hello to a couple of other friends and bloggers first. Based on the updates on twitter, it seems that the London Bloggers Meetup was a success, but enough about that...

This was the second gaming night hosted at 1000heads. The first one was held last summer and was a success. However I felt that it became more of a networking event rather than gaming focused. Despite having a N64, SNES, Wii and Xbox 360, people preferred to gather together whilst having pizza. Which was fine as many of us were meeting for the first time. Still it was a good first event and Lauren did well organising it.

More Angry Birds toys = win!

Second time around, the event has become a bit more gaming focused. The traditional consoles were gone, instead three Nokia N8 smartphones were set up, each running a different mobile game and were then output to three separate HDTVs via HDMI out. The games were Fruit Ninja, I Must Run and SpeedX. With Fruit Ninja, users simulate a samurai sword to slice fruits thrown around the screen. It is one of the more enjoyable mobile gaming, and that's because it is one of the few mobile games that is actually optimised for touchscreen gaming.

AR.Drone in action

SpeedX is a racing game, but you don't race anything. Instead it's a 3D tunnel game (similar to Flux Challenge, except without all the opponents - and textures). It plays a bit like WipEout's Zone mode and Flux Challenge. It's a game of speed, and quick reflexes. It uses the N8's accelerometer to steer, which isn't the most accurate method of controlling a video game.

Finally I Must Run is a side scrolling action running game. There isn't much to the gameplay (the character runs automatically). You will still be tested on reaction skills as your character will run into obstacles that require you to jump, slide or punch.

RC car competition with a N8

There were three Nokia N8 phones up for grab based for whoever could get the highest score in each of the games. The competition was simultaneously conducted online via twitter. Two of the games were won by twitter users via the online competition while one was won by Zayd, who attended the Nokia Gaming Night event.

Other fun stuff includes a small competition involving a scale RC racing car where whoever could drive the car around quickest would win a BeeWi Bluetooth Mini Cooper RC car. Also on show was a AR.Drone. People took turns controlling the drone using a N8. Needless to say, it wasn't easy to control a RC Quadrotor using touchscreen and accelerometer as this video below so aptly demonstrates.

There was also a generous raffle of, guess what?? Angry Birds plushies! You might have thought I would be bored of Angry Birds toys by now, but you can never have enough, even despite the hundreds (exaggerated) or so hidden in my loft.

Many thanks to Hugo, Paul, Rhiannon and Klara from WOMWorld/Nokia and 1000heads for having us. We had a great evening.

Aloft & Music Dealers: Artist Spotlight

On Wednesday I will be attending a new artists evening event at The Vinyl Factory, Soho, London. The event, appropriately called Artist Spotlight, is a collaboration by Aloft, the new hotel brand by Starwood  Hotels; and music licensing company, Music Dealers. The event aims to promote new music talent and also to celebrate the launch of the Aloft hotels in London later this year.

Artists featured will include Jay James Picton, local Camden band Bones and Tiger Love, who recently supported Yelle. Check out the video of Jay James Picton below. I have not heard of him before, but his brand of acoustic soul sounds great.

#LeStudio52 gaming night - a success!

On 1 April we held our first ever public gaming night at #LeStudio52 in Shoreditch. The social gaming event was organised by Abul (@adonisdemon). We had three different screens running on two Xbox 360 and one PS3, all running various games including WipEout HD, Black Ops, Super Street Fighter IV, Red Dead Redemption and Blur. Two competitions were held, with two copies of Dragon Age 2 up for grabs, courtesy of The Average Gamer.

Congrats again to Abul for a successful gaming night (and winning the Super Street Fighter IV match). Also congrats to Yacin for winning the Blur competition.

For a full account of what happened during the gaming night, head over to #LeStudio52 website and read the post by Abul. 

I have also posted pictures from the event on Facebook. You can find them here.

#LDNTwestival 2011: an evening of social fun for charity

Last Thursday we attended the #LDNTwestival the London event that forms part of Twestival, a single day consisting of a global movement which uses social media to organise local community events in support of a local cause or charity. A list of official events can be found here.

This year's #LDNTwestival was held at The Cape in the City of London and supports the Centrepoint charity. Centrepoint's main mission is to tackle homelessness among young people. The event was organised by volunteers and 100% of the money raised from ticket and raffle sales went to Centrepoint. The total amount raised was US$8,969.84 as of 30 March 2011.

Some of the raffle prices were pretty cool. Included were three months of burritos by Chilango, a vintage vodka, Nintendo Wii, Soda Stream, a Financial Times subscription and ten limited edition Angry Birds slingshot toys courtesy of #LeStudio52. We bought £10 worth of raffle tickets, but alas didn't win anything. Still all the monies goes directly to Centrepoint, so it wasn't a lost cause.

Funniest moment of the evening was when Nick of The Average Gamer won an Angry Bird. We joked about how those who already had the birds would probably win one, and Nick did! Lucky Voice were there organising karaoke. Check out the fabulous Heather Taylor rocking it out in this photo set of the evening by yours truly.

Sky lanterns gathering

Hi all,

Two months ago I witnessed sky lanterns floating across the sky in St Albans. They were launched not simultaneously, but within 10-20 seconds of each other. It was a pretty sight, but it wasn't anything special. It didn't feel epic.

Then it hit me. Why not organise a gathering of people and launch hundreds of these together? You know, do it properly like what these people do in Asia every year. I pulled out my phone, opened up the notepad and keyed in three words "Sky lantern flashmob".

As with many ideas, I soon forgot about it. Weeks passed, and we did another flashmob. You may remember reading about it, or even attending it. It was Angry Birds Day, officially sanctioned by Rovio Mobile. We learnt a lot from organising it.

On a recent founders meetup at our little studio hideout in Shoreditch, we were bouncing around ideas when I remembered that I had what I thought was a cool idea from a couple of months ago. I picked up my phone and navigated to my notes apps, and there it was "Sky lantern flashmob".

To cut a short story shorter, we decided that the 'flashmob' (I use the term flashmob loosely) would be on Saturday 5 February to coincide with the beginning of Chinese New Year.



If you've seen the new HSBC advert with the hundreds of sky lanterns floating to the heavens - that is exactly the general idea on what we are attempting to achieve, but in London.

We've been thinking hard about where we could hold such a gathering. My first thought was the Millennium Bridge. It is an iconic bridge in London, and would be a magnificent backdrop to the event. But the proximity of buildings around does concern me. We do not want to be responsible for causing the third Great Fire of London!

We've identified Primrose Hill as being suitable for launching sky lanterns, but if you have any suggestions on alternative locations please let us know below.

Due to the nature of sky lanterns, we can only launch them when there is no to little wind and definitely not when it is raining. If the weather does not suit us, we will have to postpone it to another date.

What you will need to do:

- RSVP here or on Facebook
- Get a couple of (if possible wire-free) sky lanterns. You can get this at most places now. I've seen them on sale at Cotswolds, Tesco, Hawkin's Bazaar, Amazon, play.com, Firebox.com etc.
- Bring matches, fire lighters etc.
- Have fun

Jon

http://about.me/jonchoo
http://www.lestudio52.com

Spooky Swarm birthday!

I'll be celebrating my 30th birthday tomorrow at Camino bar on Pentoville Road near King's Cross, London. Jennifer has been planning this for the past couple of weeks. Today Foursquare announced the availability of a limited edtion Spooky Swarm badge, only available during the Halloween weekend - that is from today until 31 October 2010.

Jennifer contacted Chris, the organiser of the #SuperSwarmLDN event early this month and looked at how we can tage advantage of the gathering of a handful of Foursquare savvy people into an event that can unlock the Spooky Swarm badge.

If you are planning on coming, please sign up on Plancast page and check in at Camino from 7pm! Cheers!

The Commuter

Yesterday I was invited to the premiere of The Commuter at Aqua Nueve in Soho, London. The short film stars Dev Patel, Pamela Anderson, Ed Westwick and Charles Dance, and is directed by the McHenry Brothers. The premiere was attended by Charles Dance, Pamela Anderson, Peta's Dan Matthews and Jermaine Jackson.
What sets this seven and a half minute film is that it is shot entirely using Nokia N8 smartphones. The film looks incredible. Unfortunately I was supposed to interview the McHenry Brothers, but due to the crowd was unable to do so! Well, anyway the film has now gone live. Check it out:



Update: I just found out that parts of the film was shot in St. Albans where I live. Indeed the first scenes are filmed in a street where I walked by almost daily.

Super Swarming London

Yay, we did it! We unlocked the highly elusive Super Swarm badge at Jewel bar in Soho, London yesterday. Many thanks to Chris Pearson who originally came up with the movement to get 250 Foursquare users checking in at a location in London. The Swarm badge was unlocked around 6pm and the Super Swarm badge just after 7pm. By the end of the evening, over 320 geo-location savvy people have checked in!

A couple of us (the 'original' Foursquare crew ^_^) later went to have dinner at Rosa's London, the venue of the first Foursquare meetup a couple of months ago where we attempted (but failed) to unlock the Swarm badge (we did get Player Please!). But before that we decided to attempt at unlocking another badge - the A-list. Want it? Follow TV Logo on Foursquare and check in at two gay bars. Simples.

Cheers to Chris (@cpchannel) and the team at @superswarm: Sam (@saml24), Bernie (@berniejmicthell), Rhea (@rheaj), Rebecca (@unicornRW), Steve (@gxconnect) etc. for organing the event and Jewel bar (@piccadillyjewel) for being great hosts.

We really wanted that A-list badge...

Special shout out to Richard (@richgregory), Sarah (@pumpkininho), Abul (@adonisdemon), Jennifer (@hardij), Amir (@benjezzy), Andy (@4andy1982), Rhea (@rheaj), Kate (@katemerle), Sacha (@sachab), Lee (@lstacey), Nicole (@nkuderer), David (@davidjlowe), Chris (@mahadewa), Yanick (@ycholet) and Sonia (@eastendlass - read her account on yesterday's event this great blog post) for being great companions.

Finally, check out the great photographs from last night's event as captured by Paul Clarke (@paul_clarke)

HTC Legend, Broken Social Scene & Gumtree

Attended a Gumtree meetup this evening at their Richmond UK headquarters. Had a good time, met some interesting people and had more than enough share of cocktails. Basically the event detailed their plans for the new Gumtree's website including future features being planned (here's a beta version of it).



Returned home to find that HTC has finally delivered the review unit of their HTC Legend. I'm not a fan of Android UI, so we will see if HTC's custom UI can do wonders (they did a good job masking Windows Mobile UI deficiency). Still at least it can do multitasking and wallpapers properly, I heard. The hardware is very very nice though (not so the capacitive screen). In any case my review will be published at FoneArena, so wait for it.



Finally, something a bit more important than a smartphone or classified website: my tickets for Broken Social Scene has arrived! The only problem - having to wait until June! Still only less than a month before their new album Forgiveness Rock Record is released!!