March 27, 2012
Pinterest has, in the last two months, surged in popularity and public profile in a way we can only ever remember the social-media daddies – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube – doing previously. But what is it?
Put simply, it’s an online pinboard for collating images. Users start a profile (you have to request an invite; it took them two days to send me one, but the speed seems to be variable) and then set up as many ‘boards’ as you want. Then you install a very easy bookmarklet, and thus can ‘pin’ any image you find and like from around the internet – except for certain sites, including Facebook, which have blocked Pinterest (more on this below). It’s addictive and exceedingly easy to use, and this great functionality partly explains why the site has so rapidly become popular, and vogue.
And in vogue it truly is. Numbers (US & UK) have been on an upwards curve since September, but they’ve really zoomed northwards from January, and suddenly everyone’s talking about Pinterest. A recent Sydney Morning Herald article reported “Pinterest declined to provide specific figures, but data from analytics firms indicates the company’s traffic has been rising exponentially. Nielsen reported that Pinterest had 16.1 million unique visitors in January in the United States alone, double the number it had in November.” In the UK numbers will be less, but must be rapidly going up.
But Pinterest has one big problem: it appears to be breaking copyright laws every second. As Don’t Panic explains, “people who pin photos they haven’t taken themselves or gained full consent to use are breaking copyright law, as well as the site’s terms of use. Weirdly though, Pinterest discourages people from just promoting their own work on the site. So where does that leave us? With a beautiful and visually rich site that could potentially get a lot of people sued.” Facebook is among the affronted, hence its blocking of Pinterest (though it’s also presumably for simpler, rivalrous reasons). The likelihood is that, with so many users, Pinterest will find a way out of the copyright jungle – but caution is to be advised.
Pinterest sure works well for travel. We’re not sure we agree with Tnooz that it suits travel-planning (we don’t think it’s used as proactively as that, instead more frivolously), but it definitely suits travel – the bucket-list ideal, the way an image is worth a thousand words, the fact that travel is so aspirational and exotic… In terms of client use, Pinterest provides a way to glossily and subtly promote a destination or holiday, rather than in overt, direct fashion. Promotions and competitons are wholly possible, too. We can advise on getting started, on content and style, and on a campaign approach on Pinterest.
Our Pinterest page: http://pinterest.com/travelpr
Tech talk: TimelapseFavoured by many filmmakers the world over, timelapse photography is an effective way of conveying the passage of time in a slick and stylish way. And, with modern developments in film and editing techniques, timelapse is now more exciting than ever.
So…what is it? You know when you’re watching something highbrow – a nature programme, climate-change documentary, The X Factor – and the narrator talks through the events which unfold over the course of a long day? To visually depict this, invariably the modern filmmaker will show us a timelapse sequence – super-sped-up footage filmed over 12 hours but played back in 30 seconds.
The result: a dew-speckled flower opens and closes; the sun rises and sets as ominous clouds scrape over the horizon; and 2,000 teenagers shuffle self-consciously in line, awaiting rejection from Simon Cowell.
Read the full article...
The advent of social foodia?The arrival of Foodie.fm sees two of our society’s biggest pastimes – food and social media – finally, happily meshed. ‘Social foodia’, or whatever cool name you can think of, is set to be one of 2012’s biggest trends.
The signs have been there for a while. Everybody understands social media’s popularity, while food’s utterly in vogue right now: new restaurants have never had more buzz, TV cookery shows are as prolific as ever, Jamie Oliver books regularly top the bestseller lists and culinary blogs have increasing prominence – some are now regularly picked up on the Evening Standard.
Following the advent of online grocery shops like Ocado, websites like Hubbubhave arrived, capitalising on the current love for independent shops, home-grown produce, healthy eating and supporting local businesses. Hubbub also offers recipes, and so now do most of the various supermarkets’ apps, with the potential to buy all products from a recipe – i.e. to online-shop via recipe, rather than the traditional fashion of sifting through products.
Read the full article...
TwitterWe’re brilliant at Twitter, with fast approaching 10,000 followers – pretty much double that of the next-best UK travel PR firm, and brilliant exposure for our clients. Whether an account is an extension of a brand’s personality, a networking platform or a customer service channel, Twitter is an essential communications tool.
FacebookShould I be on Facebook? Who’d want to ‘friend’ a company? I’ve already got a Flickr page and a YouTube channel – what’s the value of this?
YouTubeThe most popular video content sharing site in the world; create a ‘channel’ for your brand and upload videos of hot destinations and exciting activities. Embed videos in your website/blog for greater multimedia impact.
TumblrShorter than a blog, but longer than a tweet; Tumblr provides the perfect platform for sharing ideas, voicing opinions and disseminating medium-sized pieces of information.
FoursquareMark yourself on the social media map and encourage clients to ‘check-in’ to receive the latest updates and tailored special offers. FaceBook places offers a similar service which can be integrated into your FaceBook page.
Blogs and the blogging bloggers who blog themYou don’t have a blog!? What is this – 2002? A site without a blog is a site without a personality, and a soulless site is the last thing people are going to want to browse when planning their next holiday. Blogs are important – full stop. They can be put to multiple uses and benefit your brand far greater than you would think possible.
StorifyA clever new platform which allows users to spin narratives or plot timelines by curating tweets, Facebook updates and pictures – Flickr and Hipstamatic galleries – and YouTube videos into one manageable ‘story’. Storify is cutting edge social media and a thoroughly 21st century form of storytelling. Click here for a travel-related example.
InstagramEssentially Instagram is a photography app for iPhones, one which offers various filters to adapt your photography. The thing that separates it from other such apps is the community element: you sign up and add friends, and receive a daily feed of their photos with the chance to like and comment, as well as link to Facebook, Twitter and Flickr. Because of that, numbers are spiralling. As Instagram is a phone-only app, you need an affiliated site like Followgram to translate your profile into a webpage – a ‘vanity page’. Travel brands desirous of some cool points are advised create accounts and vanity pages, and perhaps run competitions – all things we can advise on.
PinterestPut simply, it’s an online pinboard for collating images. Users start a profile and then set up as many ‘boards’ as they want. Users install a very easy bookmarklet, and thus can ‘pin’ any image they find from around the internet – except for certain sites, including Facebook, which has blocked Pinterest. It’s addictive and exceedingly easy to use, and this great functionality partly explains why the site has so rapidly become popular, and vogue.