It says a lot that, in a country as civilised as the UK, a few upstanding members of society are allowed put together some numbers - albeit with a lot of impressive statistical and in-depth research having been carried out - to make money on the weather. Paddy Power is currently offering odds of 3.75 that it's going to be a White Christmas at London, Heathrow.
Now I'm not wanting a discussion the merits and sins of the gambling industry in the UK, particularly over something as twisted as putting odds on snow. The issue up for discussion is how the flippin' heck the idea of a White Christmas has translated itself into a marketing event.
There are a lot of obvious answers when it's put that simply. "Everyone loves the romance of it", "It looks so much prettier", "It's how it should be". And I'd agree to all those ideas, so long as they come from a country that's actually capable of having the wet, cold white stuff precipitate from the sky and land on ground cold enough to allow it to mount up. The 25th December falls very nicely in the middle of the northern hemisphere's winter. If you're far north enough to get a bit snowy in December, then yeah, hoping that the magic of a frosty white icing is laid out for you on the celebration of the birth of Christ, is a nice image to 'hope' for. I wouldn't ever go so far as putting money on it, or ever think that my Christmas were ruined if it didn't snow on the 25th. I doubt it ruins the occasion for many if it doesn't snow on Christmas day - you'd hope everyone was too busy doing the other things that Christmas is about to bother logging onto Twitter and venting off something along the lines of "No sNOw;omg fk off wthr, uve ruined my 25th.bk 2 bed."
Europe and the USA have manufactured their own little holiday package and sold it to the world as 'Christmas', and the only colour you can have it in is white. Such is the significance of that White Christmas dream, that it has tainted the way that many other nations celebrate the event. A look at the streets of many ex/existing British colonies, such as Singapore or Australia, and Father Christmas wears fur, there are reindeer at every other street corner, and decorations are usually some variant of the icicle/snow flake variety. And don't forget the Christmas tree. I was in Singapore's Ikea today, and saw several families leaving with their little green trees - a piece of foliage which has probably done more air miles than most individuals of the working classes of Asia - along with obligatory tinsel, stars, snow flakes and fake snow. It was a comfy 39 degrees celsius outside.
Now it's very easy to poke fun at the way Christmas has been translated into a global marketing sensation, and not really that interesting either - it makes a lot of sense, if people from countries closely connected to Christian dominated super powers sign up to participate in the same festivities/holidays as the home land.
The really bizarre facet of the world of marketing that this brings into light though, is the single mindedness with which many retailers sell their goods. I'm out in Singapore getting some experience with a media group. One day, we were brainstorming some ideas for the next 12 issues of 2011. Pretty tough - draining your mind of its creative juices in one go, trying to think of all of the seasonal activities that lie in those 12 months and thus need to be linked into the editorial. Even worse, I'm a Brit born and bred, and other than a brief period in the Yemen whilst I was still pooing into my comfy pants and struggling with solid foods (best just say that I was a baby, as that description can also be applied to many elderly) I've grown up in an environment that has four very clear seasons.
Big woop. So what? Well, when you start trying to think about how the year shapes up in a country that doesn't have seasons, other than wet and dry, it becomes quite hard trying to bracket the year into manageable chunks. And rather than overcoming that issue, the market groups based in the fluctuating scenes far away enough from the equator have seen fit not to bother trying to address their equatorial markets any differently.
Putting it simply, no matter how hot it is in Singapore, when the winter fashion season of New York, Paris and London kicks in, all the retailers of Singapore rush in the latest ranges. Winter clothes. In a country that barely spends any time bellow 30 degrees, day or night. Right, well that wont work... what? You mean, it does? People buy coats? And scarves? But, everyone wears flip-flops! Why do people want a bobble hat?!
Lucky enough for the lazy, lazy marketers of the Western (more importantly, North Western) powers, the markets of the equatorial countries have no other option other than to bring in the same lines as the rest of the world gets. And the poor sods still buy it. I wonder how many Singaporeans will rush downstairs on Christmas day, feeling cheated that they haven't been able to gamble on the weather conditions, rip open the crisply wrapped presents under their utterly confused little tree, and find themselves a prized new matching set of gloves and scarf. Apparently, enough of them do to allow the stubborn bastards at TopShop and Prada to keep sending them over here...
Oh, and when did Facebook decide to change its notification sounds? Leave it alone Faceboys!
Saturday, 27 November 2010
Wednesday, 10 November 2010
The Suicide of Facebook
Can Facebook die? For a short answer, skip to the last paragraph. Do it now. If that bit interests you, then please, feel free to read on.
For many people, the internet has a very basic traffic. Google is the hub of searches. Hotmail or Gmail is the home of connections. There might be a few favourite sites which are browsed to maintain interests. And then there's the social network, of which increasingly there exist four pillars:
Anyone over the age of 13 keen to give themselves a 'virtual identity' (yes, that phrase makes me sick in my mouth as well) has witnessed a cataclysmic rise and fall of several internet giants.
Bebo rattled along with some nice little options to add wallpapers and photos and various cool things, and allowed you to judge other people for their collections of tat – in short, it wasn't anything vast, and further more, had no edge to maintain its popularity.
MySpace was seemingly invincible when it started out, all fresh faced and moody. It offers a complete and total freedom of creativity, allowing anyone with a mild knowledge of coding to make their page look however they want it to, have whatever gizmos or feeds slapped on to the side of it, or reduce it to a cool minimalist profile. If anything, the room of freedom given to the average teenager was almost too much. The louder, geekier, computer smart kids could make impressive pages, but after a while I swear almost every other person I knew who used that site enjoyed bands like My Chemical Romance or Bullet for my Valentine, and had a profile picture they'd taken of a reflection of themselves in their bathroom/bedroom mirror. Usually with some eyeliner on. Or a moody pout. Or a shit hair cut.
MySpace then sold out. So many people used it, they couldn't ignore the potential for the money making it offered. Adverts littered it. Corporations had their own pages on it. (Facebook is heading this way, but with a restricted freedom for the money makers. For the moment, it remains about the people, rather than the cash they have.) Various offers could be emailed to you. Soon, your wall could end up looking like a spam bin. If you reduced the freedom of those who could look at your page and write on it, you removed a crucial aspect of having that page – someone cool might look at you and think "Hey, they're cool. I like their mirror. Lol". As soon as the adds got involved and we told them to piss off, MySpace became SomoneElsesSpace. It now seemingly thrives on unsigned music artists using it to publicise their tunes, as well as a die hard core of emo, indie and designer kids who don't like change.
And then there's Facebook. A site which we can all agree, along with Google, has changed the way the internet is used. It might not change the way you use it, in which case you're probably already bored by this stage. That's fine. Stop reading. If you know that you use it at least three times a week, then you know it's made an impact. Chances are, you use it three times a day. Just flick over it occasionally. See what's what. And that's only a mild use. Some are addicted to it. Some (like me) leave it on in the background. I can never admit to 'stalking' people on Facebook, I'm far too selfish. I leave it open in case someone interesting pops up who I can chat to or a massive event I'd not heard of is being discussed in status updates. I don't have a smart phone, otherwise I'd probably use Twitter for that. Thankfully, I don't.
Facebook chat has also seemingly killed off MSN. Do you remember MSN? It's cute little noises to let you know people were chatting to you? Occasional pointless group chats? What MSN offered originally, Facebook have bastardised and Skype has commercialised (eBay bought the group for a staggeringly large amount of money a while back. I'm not going to even discuss eBay now, as that's a wholly different use of the internet for connecting people).
Facebook also provides a hugely important service for me in the shape of its photo bank. I don't own a camera, and as such, don't actually own any photos. Other people have photos of me, and thus, via Facebook, I now have my own photos. I don't own them. I don't know who does legally own anything that you put up on Facebook.
But we know all this. These are the reasons we love Facebook, and left MySpace and Bebo and the rest to cry in the corners of the internet (which is shaped like a big square, if you didn't know. Google and Facebook own the middle of the square, and Microsoft and Apple have opposite sides, from which they glare at each other. Apple's is a better looking side, but Microsoft's does have Windows. Sorry). My question is then, what would kill off our love of Facebook?
And then, when I logged on about two weeks ago, Facebook itself provided me with the answer. A new button had appeared at the bottom of people's comments where previously 'See wall to wall' used to live quite happily. It reads:
Why though? Why this new feature? If you've seen the film Social Network (you should, it's great) then you might recall a point at which Mark Zuckerberg states that he never wants Facebook to be 'finished'. It'll remain like fashion, constantly updating itself and changing. Not necessarily improving, just renewing its look every now and again.
But this addition of the stalking encourager seems to me to be a very different direction to that which Facebook had originally maintained. Personally, I believe this is Facebook indulging in its own guilty pleasures. It's not about connecting people any more, but rather, reducing privacy. To reduce a friendship to a page of summary doesn't make you feel warm and gooey inside – it's there to compare and contrast people's internet 'relationships'.
Facebook is beginning to reveal the vast web of information it holds over everyone with this new function. There's a growing popularity of 'Facebook Suicides' being chatted about in other corners of the web (the remaining three that Bebo and MySpace aren't in) to ditch your Facebook account, or 'commit Facebook suicide' (sickening term, but it's the one used) and thus, become a more exclusive member of society for doing so. Renewing your internet presence with a Blog or WebDiary etc, means that people who want to find out about you have to care enough to bother leaving the comfort of Facebook to find you. 'Ooooh. People could find out about me beyond a 'See Friendship' button or name search and hence I can find out who really wants to find out about me? That sounds exclusive/mysterious/better.'
Hence, it is the emphasis on making stalking people easier, coupled with the exclusivity of not being stalkable, which may kill Facebook. It will spread the traffic, if it catches on. If Facebook doesn't find a new way of keeping the too-cool-for-school kids happy with their desires to be hard to find – in other words, unless Facebook realises that some people find privacy a cool thing – then traffic will slowly seep a way from their page. People will stop paying for adds. A new site will emerge. New trends will be picked up. The other three pillars of the social network (Updates, Photos, Blogs) might become more successful if people decide that separating their virtual lives into different pools actually increases the number of contacts they can have. Applications which hold various different internet identities together on a single page, like the iGoogle homepage, may become the main way we think about the internet. We wont even visit websites or use the web address bar, but instead turn to Apps for these various new homes of our internet lives. A company or two might throw together their own offerings, and before we know it, Facebook will have killed itself.
I hope it doesn't happen. I just think it might.
For many people, the internet has a very basic traffic. Google is the hub of searches. Hotmail or Gmail is the home of connections. There might be a few favourite sites which are browsed to maintain interests. And then there's the social network, of which increasingly there exist four pillars:
- Updating (Twitter, RSS feeds)
- Photo management (Photobucket, Flickr)
- Blogs (Blogger, Wordpress)
- Social Site (Facebook, MySpace)
Anyone over the age of 13 keen to give themselves a 'virtual identity' (yes, that phrase makes me sick in my mouth as well) has witnessed a cataclysmic rise and fall of several internet giants.
Bebo rattled along with some nice little options to add wallpapers and photos and various cool things, and allowed you to judge other people for their collections of tat – in short, it wasn't anything vast, and further more, had no edge to maintain its popularity.
MySpace was seemingly invincible when it started out, all fresh faced and moody. It offers a complete and total freedom of creativity, allowing anyone with a mild knowledge of coding to make their page look however they want it to, have whatever gizmos or feeds slapped on to the side of it, or reduce it to a cool minimalist profile. If anything, the room of freedom given to the average teenager was almost too much. The louder, geekier, computer smart kids could make impressive pages, but after a while I swear almost every other person I knew who used that site enjoyed bands like My Chemical Romance or Bullet for my Valentine, and had a profile picture they'd taken of a reflection of themselves in their bathroom/bedroom mirror. Usually with some eyeliner on. Or a moody pout. Or a shit hair cut.
MySpace then sold out. So many people used it, they couldn't ignore the potential for the money making it offered. Adverts littered it. Corporations had their own pages on it. (Facebook is heading this way, but with a restricted freedom for the money makers. For the moment, it remains about the people, rather than the cash they have.) Various offers could be emailed to you. Soon, your wall could end up looking like a spam bin. If you reduced the freedom of those who could look at your page and write on it, you removed a crucial aspect of having that page – someone cool might look at you and think "Hey, they're cool. I like their mirror. Lol". As soon as the adds got involved and we told them to piss off, MySpace became SomoneElsesSpace. It now seemingly thrives on unsigned music artists using it to publicise their tunes, as well as a die hard core of emo, indie and designer kids who don't like change.
And then there's Facebook. A site which we can all agree, along with Google, has changed the way the internet is used. It might not change the way you use it, in which case you're probably already bored by this stage. That's fine. Stop reading. If you know that you use it at least three times a week, then you know it's made an impact. Chances are, you use it three times a day. Just flick over it occasionally. See what's what. And that's only a mild use. Some are addicted to it. Some (like me) leave it on in the background. I can never admit to 'stalking' people on Facebook, I'm far too selfish. I leave it open in case someone interesting pops up who I can chat to or a massive event I'd not heard of is being discussed in status updates. I don't have a smart phone, otherwise I'd probably use Twitter for that. Thankfully, I don't.
Facebook chat has also seemingly killed off MSN. Do you remember MSN? It's cute little noises to let you know people were chatting to you? Occasional pointless group chats? What MSN offered originally, Facebook have bastardised and Skype has commercialised (eBay bought the group for a staggeringly large amount of money a while back. I'm not going to even discuss eBay now, as that's a wholly different use of the internet for connecting people).
Facebook also provides a hugely important service for me in the shape of its photo bank. I don't own a camera, and as such, don't actually own any photos. Other people have photos of me, and thus, via Facebook, I now have my own photos. I don't own them. I don't know who does legally own anything that you put up on Facebook.
But we know all this. These are the reasons we love Facebook, and left MySpace and Bebo and the rest to cry in the corners of the internet (which is shaped like a big square, if you didn't know. Google and Facebook own the middle of the square, and Microsoft and Apple have opposite sides, from which they glare at each other. Apple's is a better looking side, but Microsoft's does have Windows. Sorry). My question is then, what would kill off our love of Facebook?
And then, when I logged on about two weeks ago, Facebook itself provided me with the answer. A new button had appeared at the bottom of people's comments where previously 'See wall to wall' used to live quite happily. It reads:
See FriendshipGo to your Facebook page now (yes, you've got one) and look for it, if you haven't already. Experience your friendship with an individual become reduced to a page of summary. And then sit in utter horror as you realise that this function allows you to view other people's friendships. Not just yours with other friends, but your friends with their friends. Stalking on Facebook is now far more than a way to kill time. It's become openly encouraged.
Why though? Why this new feature? If you've seen the film Social Network (you should, it's great) then you might recall a point at which Mark Zuckerberg states that he never wants Facebook to be 'finished'. It'll remain like fashion, constantly updating itself and changing. Not necessarily improving, just renewing its look every now and again.
But this addition of the stalking encourager seems to me to be a very different direction to that which Facebook had originally maintained. Personally, I believe this is Facebook indulging in its own guilty pleasures. It's not about connecting people any more, but rather, reducing privacy. To reduce a friendship to a page of summary doesn't make you feel warm and gooey inside – it's there to compare and contrast people's internet 'relationships'.
Facebook is beginning to reveal the vast web of information it holds over everyone with this new function. There's a growing popularity of 'Facebook Suicides' being chatted about in other corners of the web (the remaining three that Bebo and MySpace aren't in) to ditch your Facebook account, or 'commit Facebook suicide' (sickening term, but it's the one used) and thus, become a more exclusive member of society for doing so. Renewing your internet presence with a Blog or WebDiary etc, means that people who want to find out about you have to care enough to bother leaving the comfort of Facebook to find you. 'Ooooh. People could find out about me beyond a 'See Friendship' button or name search and hence I can find out who really wants to find out about me? That sounds exclusive/mysterious/better.'
Hence, it is the emphasis on making stalking people easier, coupled with the exclusivity of not being stalkable, which may kill Facebook. It will spread the traffic, if it catches on. If Facebook doesn't find a new way of keeping the too-cool-for-school kids happy with their desires to be hard to find – in other words, unless Facebook realises that some people find privacy a cool thing – then traffic will slowly seep a way from their page. People will stop paying for adds. A new site will emerge. New trends will be picked up. The other three pillars of the social network (Updates, Photos, Blogs) might become more successful if people decide that separating their virtual lives into different pools actually increases the number of contacts they can have. Applications which hold various different internet identities together on a single page, like the iGoogle homepage, may become the main way we think about the internet. We wont even visit websites or use the web address bar, but instead turn to Apps for these various new homes of our internet lives. A company or two might throw together their own offerings, and before we know it, Facebook will have killed itself.
I hope it doesn't happen. I just think it might.
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