Chris Poole gave a great key note presentation at SXSW talking about the evolution of the infamous meme making bulletin board 4chan - once described by The Guardian as “lunatic, juvenile… brilliant, ridiculous and alarming”.

4chan is one of the ugliest sites you will come across but it gets 12million users per month and has 1 million registers users. So what is the key to its popularity?

1. It is a simple concept. Upload an image and a comment and see if other people interact with your content.

2. Unlike social networks, users of the site are anonymous and have a freedom to play and express themselves in ways you just can’t on Facebook…hence some of the adult material uploaded but more significantly the large amount of art criticism on the board.

3. Only the most engaging content stays on the site meaning that people encourage others to play, comment on and adapt their content.

Poole’s next move is updating the 4chan concept by launching Canvas http://canv.as/. On Canv.as all users are given photoshop quality tools to encourage them to be more creative and it  also removes a lot of the barriers to mass participation associated with 4chan.

What struck me about the success of 4chan is how it has managed to create the perfect environment for innovation. A stripped back environment where ideas are more important than the creators and where those ideas can spread and grow without egos getting in the way. What I really like about the new Canvas concept is the potential it has to democratise crowd creativity and as someone who works in the field of innovation I find this very exciting.

On the 28th February Francesco will be presenting at the Refresh! Adventures in Social Media conference. The event hosted by Social Media Lab will be taking place in Milan and in Italian language, so for all our Italian speaking friends out there, here are the details:

La conferenza arriva alla fine di circa un paio d’anni di lavoro sui social media con il Social Media Lab e presenta una panoramica di alcune dei progetti piu’ interessanti emersi nel settore negli ultimi dodici mesi, dalle intelligenze artificiali sociali, a progetti di open innovation con Nokia, dalle applicazioni della realta’ aumentata nell’entertainment allo stato dei location media in italia.

Speakers:

• Alberto Abruzzese, Università IULM – saluti iniziali
• Francesco D’Orazio e Stefano Mizzella, Social Media Lab – introduzione al Social Media Lab
• Paolo Iabichino, Ogilvy > Invertising: opportunita’ e sfide del marketing relazionale
• David Bausola, PhilterPhactory, Weavrs > Replicanti come Ricercatori: Emergent Alter Egos from a Network of Social Behaviors
• Tommaso Sorchiotti, Osservatorio Foursquare > Lo stato della geo location in italia
• Federica Postiglione, Pazienti.org > Salute 2.0
• Francesco D’Orazio, Face > Supporting Emergent Behaviours in Mobile Design, Nokia Open Innovation Case Study
• Emanuele Quintarelli, Open Knowledge > Social Business
• Mauro Rubin, JoinPad – Realtà aumentata per il marketing

Info dettagliate sui relatori sono sul blog e verranno integrate man mano che ci avviciniamo all’evento.

http://www.socialmedialab.net/

Tomorrow we are delighted to be hosting the latest Cloud of Knowing meet up here at Midford Place.

Cloud of Knowing, or Cloud for short, is an open source project that anyone can get involved in. Here is what it is all about in their Cloud’s own words:

“In a nutshell we want to explore content analytics and the challenge this represents to market research. Embedded within the idea of market research is the notion that we should be asking people to give us their opinions and perceptions. At the same time research is becoming more ethnographic – we want to observe what people do even when this is at odds with what they say.”

Cloud 5, the latest in a series of meet ups between Cloud members, will be focusing on The Influence of Context. Mark Earls will be speaking on Individual Choices Vs. Social Choices and Head Clouder John Griffiths will be sharing his thoughts on Online Content as Contextual and Behavioural Data Trace. All very interesting and relevant stuff.

The meet-up will be taking place tomorrow at our Midford Place offices. If you would like more information please get in touch with Fran- Francesco@facegroup.co.uk

To find out more about the Cloud of Knowing CLICK HERE

In Warc’s words The Now & Next conference ‘addresses the full spectrum of online research techniques and looks ahead, examining the latest in social media and digital innovation. The conference will address how new and emerging tools such as web mining, mobile research and the power of ‘listening’ are offering brands the opportunity to lead the way using cost effective cutting-edge insights.’

Francesco will be talking about the evolution of online research, addressing three main topics:

• What are the key opportunities for online research in social media?
• Crowdsourcing communities: Listening and engaging with your customers
• Online conversations and engaged online market research communities

To find out more and book tickets from Warc Online Research: Now & Next CLICK HERE

There have been so many interesting developments this year it is hard trying to decide on the 5 most pertinent. In the end the decision came down to the 5 things that have created the most conversation in the Face office this year.

Here are Face’s Top 5 Developments of 2010:

Game Over?

This time last year FourSquare was dominating a lot of talk with their really cool and innovative use of badges and gaming mechanics. This sparked a flurry of gamification and it became the flavour of the month; 12 months on and there is an ongoing conversation about gamification and how it should be used.

Naturally FourSquare’s success led to a flood of apps and sites using games as a way of engaging users, some of them were fun and interesting, others just didn’t really make sense. People like playing games but there has to be an actual game to play for them to engage, you can’t just tag badges onto something and expect people to like it.

The conversation still continues about when games are, and aren’t, appropriate – something we’ll be keeping a very close eye on in 2011.

See: Is Gamification the Cure to Boredom

When Social Media Met Research

Social media research, real time research, social research, social media analysis, tracking… or however you might describe it has been one of the biggest research developments this year.

Measuring sentiment and online visibility has opened up new doors for companies allowing them to react quickly to the conversations taking place about them. This has led to a more adaptable way of doing things, allowing audiences to have a constructive input into how brands should interact.

There is a wider internal debate going on within the industry about the rules and regulations regarding SMR, something that will carry on into 2011. One thing is for sure though, real time research is here to stay and will continue to give brands valuable insight.

See: Social Media Monitoring: From Data to Insights

Digital Going Physical

So now that the internet has digitalised everything, what happens next? Well according to a lot of people, it’s all going to physicalise again. This means the internet and social media will be in all the objects around you, whether it is TV becoming more social, or your alarm clock waking you up with tweets, the digital world is going to be integrating into the physical world around us.

The wider conversation surrounding this topic revolves around whether people actually want to be constantly in touch with their digital lives. Are we at the stage where digital life is now fully integrated with the ‘real’ world or do we still want distance between the two?

See: Incedental Media: Devices Won’t Be Passive Anymore

Beautiful Stats

Infographics and data visualisation is something we have been banging on about for ages (and a lot in this top 5 series). However in 2010 the volume of brilliant visualisations has massively increased with some stunning infographics being produced over the 12 last months.

This rise in good looking data has been joined by Prezi’s popularity increase. Prezi is trying to take on PowerPoint in the presenting software world, a battle that a lot of people would like to see them win.

The increase in the use of infographics and visual storytelling has made the output of research a lot more interesting for audiences and long may it continue!

SEE: Why Researchers Should Be Using Infographics

The Socialisation of Brands

Up to now brands role within the social media universe has very much been a trial and error process. Initially brands used social media to try and encourage traffic to their own websites… However now with companies and agencies starting to understand how social media can create mutually beneficial relationships, brands are becoming fully social.

There are no set guidelines on how brands should interact and act within social media so it really is an open playing field. What we are seeing now (and will continue to see) is brands becoming confident using social media and start to create some interesting and exciting content, which will in turn create unique and lasting relationships with their audiences.

SEE: Wave.5 The Socialisation of Brands.

So there we are, the end of our top 5s for 2010. A top 5 of top 5s if you will.

Here’s to 2011 and another year of interesting and exciting developments!!!

Well… almost equally…

The following list is our Top 5 most viewed SlideShare presentations of 2010:

1) What Is Co-creation and Why Do It?

Saul’s presentation explaining what co-creation is and how to utilise its power was our most viewed presentation this year gaining over 2, 000 views. It is a great introduction in to the world of co-creation, so if you want to know exactly what we here at Face do give it a read!

2. Co-creating Insights

Second in our list is Philip and Beth from Coca-Cola’s presentation from this years MRS Annual Conference. It explores our ongoing work with Coca-Cola and how we have used co-creative techniques to find deeper, more meaningful insight.

3. Real Time Collaborative Methodologies in Market Research

Francesco and Sharmila’s presentation from our little trip to Oxford is up next on the list. Real Time Collaborative Methodologies in Market Research explores the web at the moment and how we, as a research agency, are plug into it.

4. Designing Relevance

In October Fran was joined on stage by Tom Crawford from Nokia to at the Esomar Online Research conference in Berlin. Their presentation Designing Relevance: How Open and Agile Research Methodologies Can Help Complex Organisations Stay Relevant focuses on the open innovation process we used to complete a recent project with Nokia.

5. Journey To The Centre Of The Crowd and Back Again

Crowdsourcing is a buzzword that has been flying round over the last few years, during that time its role has adapted and developed. This presentation revolves around crowdsourcing for new product development, how to do it and what the benefits are!

And finally…

9 Lives

We couldn’t really show our most popular presentations of this year without sharing Sharmila’s excellent 9 Lives Prezi presentation. 9 Lives is the output from a research project we undertook in June focusing on the shrinking 16-24 demographic. We commissioned nine young people to make films about what their lives are like in the year 2010… here is what they had to say:

Monday’s Top 5 will be focusing on the Face teams favourite moments on 2010… see you then!

Media surfaces: Incidental Media from Dentsu London on Vimeo.

In my previous blog post about Transmedia Storytelling I described how stories could (and should!) be told across different media and therefore be conceptualized. It’s all about the way you design your project, upstream, outside of any particular media’s framework, in order to then build it across different media.

Incidental Media is taking this idea a bit further. Like Jack Schulze mentions in this post, which echoes my previous reflection, the future should not be as cold and aggressive as it is in Minority Report but the integration of media in our live should be more organic and subtle.

I like the idea of incidental media, for 2 reasons:

1) Incidents & errors in patterns (or asymmetries) is a sign of organic life.

I like to joke that the perfect snowflake is a work of God and anything else perfectly symmetrical is alien!

If, as beings, we are on Team Asymmetrical (at least I am!), then it makes more sense to create a media that plays on the irregularities of life and perceptions. Q.E.D.

2) Like mentioned at the recent It’s Nice That I Like Future:content conference “After being digitalized things are going to find ways to physicalized again.”

To me, that’s a great postmodernist vision of the way we should be going back to the raw, physical medium and integrating them in the way we communicate ideas.

By using the Incidental Media approach, every surface and screen is involved in an ambient stream of information surrounding the user. As opposed to the traditional vision, “incidental screens” have a meaning outside the direct interaction with the user: like a clock that still shows the time even when it’s not looked at.

I really like this idea of empowering digital – or not – objects as part of the user’s journey.

Media surfaces: The Journey from Dentsu London on Vimeo.

In the near future, devices won’t be as passive as the way they currently are (think about the way you use your smartphone to organise your life). They will participate in our everyday life and interact with us.

The French company Violet launched the idea that all things are connected. They then brought the first internet rabbit to life: the Nabaztag. As a proud owner of a Nabaztag myself, my tasteful companion tells me about the weather, reads news & RSS feeds, informs me about my emails as well as having its own personality and interacting with things. Karotz, the new generation, is to be launch very soon in the UK and should add visual recognition to the rabbit skills… which I’m quite looking forward to!

Another really interesting aspect is (again I mentioned this in my Transmedia Storytelling blog) to mix media and bring sources and channels together, if not as a traditional media hubs, then as creative and interactive platforms.

The question that follows this is how to make the most of this abundant, constant and “incidental” flow of information and deal with the procrastinative and short-termed nature of human beings.

We are extremely happy to announce the launch of our brand new co-creation community The X Crowd!

The X Crowd is a place for people who live and breath technology to help tech brands design and create better products, ideas, experiences and communications. TXC joins Mindbubble and Headbox in our growing portfolio of targeted research and innovation community platforms.

The world is full of technology enthusiasts who not only have the creativity and opinions to help brands, but also the technical knowledge to understand how to bring their own wants and needs to life. This is why we have launched TXC, to harness to power of the online tech world and let consumers get closer to the brands they purchase.

Currently The X-Crowd is in private BETA but we will be going live with a full launch very soon.

Job had this to say about the launch:

The X-Crowd is set up to connect tech lovers with global technology brands to help create new tech products, develop websites, improve communications and test the latest gadgets.

As we see the benefits in using a fresh tech loving consumer community for our research and ideation work with Nokia, especially for better user experiences, we want to grow The X-Crowd on a global scale opening up a consumer-centric way of working to others.

We’ll be keeping you up to date with all the latest TXC news as it comes in, in the mean time why not check the blog which is live @ www.thexcrowd.com

Related Articles:

• Research Magazine on the Launch of The X Crowd
• NMA: Brands Invest in Online Co-Creation
• Esomar Online Research: Designing Relevance
• Face Communities