Media spend will shift to developers

Earlier this month, Tim Kendall, Director of Monetization at Facebook, did the rounds of events and interviews talking about the changes to the advertising platform over the next year. There were a number of exciting changes he talked about (and I've heard more from sources close to the company). The most interesting for me, however, is the next generation social ads he talked about with allfacebook.com that will allow application owners to pay to promote particular newsfeed items to a users friends. 

From a user perspective, this makes sense; you'd rather hear that your friend has actually taken a relevant action, than just see a 'related' advert (which is what current social ads do); after all, this is the reason the newsfeed is so popular in the first place. From the application owners point of view, this is a much better and more effective way of increasing the growth of the application than by just doing a normal advert. 

From the developers point of view, this is even better: it gives control of the media spend to the developer, rather than a media house. This is especially important for agency-style development houses building branded applications, as it gives them a cut of a much larger spend than purely the development. As more and more companies shift their online activity into social networks, this could be quite a dramatic shift in the industry. 

The iPhone: revolutionised my content creation and consumption

Revolutionised is a strong word, but it really has. Before I had an 

iPhone, I would rarely if ever carry a seperate camera or iPod, so I'd 

never take photos and never get the chance to listen to all the 

podcasts I download. My rss feeds would pile up well into the 

thousands until I'd get a free weekend to dive through them all. Now, 

I have a camera, an iPod, and a feedreader app all in my phone. I also 

have a New York Times application and a link direct to the BBC news 

website, google and wikipedia, Twitter and the ability to upload my 

photos to Facebook as soon as they're taken.

The ability to access the Internet in full at 3g speeds makes a huge 

difference, and I no longer fret if I'm out and about without my 

laptop. Even better, with Google maps and gps finding my way around 

the maze of London is a lot easier.

As iPhones and their equivalents become the norm we're going to see 

some big changes in the way people use their phones; this is the 

equivalent of the switch to broadband. The benefits are so huge, there 

will be widespread adoption within a few years.

(written on my iPhone whilst on the tube up to Notting Hill, catching 

the end of the carnival)

Police State: an Orwellian experience in Waterloo

From Wikipedia: 

George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four describes Britain under a socialist totalitarian régime that continuously invokes (and helps to create) a perpetual war. This perpetual war is used as a pretext for subjecting the people to mass surveillance and invasive police searches. The state destroys not only the literal freedom after action and thought meant by expressions like "freedom of thought", but also literal freedom of thought.

From Qik: 

Facebook gives opt-out for social ads

I was exploring the new privacy settings for Facebook this morning when I noticed that they've given an opt-out for social ads. There's been a lot of attention in the news recently on Yahoo and Google giving opt-out from targeted ads, so this is on a similar vein. Personally, I have nothing against targeted ads, but having your photo appear next to an advert to a friend is an extra step that although useful from a marketers viewpoint, really does require an opt-out at minimum.

From Facebook, go to Settings>Privacy>Newsfeed and wall>Social Ads to find the setting.