new media monthly

Friday was the final day of Thinking Digital and there were some more great talks. Here are some of my highlights…

Matt Mason – Pirated music, software and films are prolifically available and popular opinion understandably posits that they are detrimental to the sales of the licensed products – which is what made Matt Mason’s talk one of the highlights of the whole conference. Matt cited the innovative nature of pirating and hacking digital media as a means by which the products can gain added value. Remixes stoke interest and can ultimately act as free marketing. He referenced a lack of evidence pointing to lost revenues due to pirated media and suggested that we’re living in a world of 19th century intellectual property laws.

Ben Hammersley – I was looking forward to Ben’s talk given his position as the Deputy Editor of Wired UK and he didn’t disappoint. The talk gave a illuminating insight into ‘post digital’ culture and the value of focusing on content rather than audience. Arguing that big traffic figures are pointless if they don’t include the people you want to speak to, he advocated making content, “for you and your friends,” because good content will draw an audience regardless – and furthermore people will pay for good content.

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Wow… Day Two of the Thinking Digital conference yesterday when the conference proper began – we learnt about everything from the start of the universe to what makes a good perfume. Here are my highlights…

We kicked of with Paul Miller from SchoolOfEverything.com. Paul referenced last year’s opening speaker Ray Kurzwell, who many will know as an advocate of the Singularity concept – the idea that one day we will become one with technology. Paul is less inclined to this line of thought, leaning more towards the ideas of using technology to organise and change the world. He used Social Innovation Camp as an example, which collects ideas for social websites, picks the best and then gathers programmers together to build the winning idea. It’s definitely worth checking out and they’ve got a call-out for ideas at the moment if you’re feeling creative.

Mike Southon provided another fascinating talk focusing on what it takes for entrepreneurs to succeed in businesses, this time illustrated via the analogy of the Beatles(!) He used the phrase “embrace and enhance” (borrowed from Microsoft) to allude to the idea of taking other peoples idea and improving them to use as a saleable product or service. He also closed on the Beatles’ lyric “The love you take is equal to the love you take” – a tip for all start-up businesses.

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I traveled up to Gateshead/Newcastle yesterday for Thinking Digital – a conference focusing on “technology, ideas and our future.” It promises to be a fascinating few days – about which I’m childlishly excited..! The conference is in its second year and received rave reviews for its first, 12 months ago.

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LONDON – Two former creatives are launching a user-generated advertising platform that enables brands to allow consumers to co-create and star in their ads.

Called ThisAd, the start-up is the brainchild of the former Publicis creative team Ben Carey and Henrik Delehag, and launches with a campaign for the political party Libertas.

The campaign will run on MySpace and other social networking sites, and will allow any user to customise ads for the party using a variety of specially created templates.

Users will be encouraged to enter their messages in support of Libertas, or use the ads to vent their frustrations towards the other political parties.

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A new round of funding for budding media professionals has been unveiled to coincide with the launch of this year’s Digital City project.

The Digital City Project forms part of the Institute of Digital Innovation, based within the University of Teeside and helps budding media graduates, students and professionals develop their own digital media and technology projects.

Jim TerKeurst, Director of the IDI, said:

“Innovation is at the heart of global business, and these themes working together will make the Institute of Digital Innovation a terrific resource for the digital and creative industries in the North East.”

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Wrangles over domain squatting are nothing new, but opening up top level domains raises some interesting issues of ownership. Who should decide who has the right to a certain domain, and will they really add much to the navigation and identity of the web?

Is ICANN the best organisation to oversee the next era of web domains? Photograph: veni markovski/Some rights reserved

The Future Laboratory and the domain registrar Gandi.net asked 1,000 people what they thought of the liberalisation of web domains – 65% of people said they think it will litter the internet with pointless domain names, 60% didn’t think it would improve their internet experience ad 46% think it will make things too complicated.

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According to Hitwise UK, on its launch date of 3 June Bing received 10.8% of all UK search engine traffic, ahead of both Yahoo and Ask. The search engine was also the eighth most visited site in the UK on 2 June, ahead of all BBC properties.

Traffic to the site since has declined — on 6 June 2009 it accounted for 3.1% of search engine traffic — but it remains above Yahoo and Ask. Average time spent on Bing has also increased to 8.5 minutes, despite the decrease in traffic.

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