If you are going to send an e-Christmas card do it properly..

I'm still wincing at the thought of the e-Card Publicis London sent last year, so much so that it pains me to link to it, be warned.  But if you are going to go with the chari-dee probable instant forget-ification route this year, or your admittedly reasonable excuse is snow and unreliable postal services, then you had better take a leaf out of the Rodgers & Hammerstein book, and at least do it with seasonal style.  Thanks Bill!

And whilst I on a seasonal theme I might as well post this Digital Xmas Nativity story which was doing the rounds last week:

Laughing my Christmas stockings off

Oh I do love a healthy dose of irreverence, especially from an industry that can excel at navelgazing and self-glorification at times.

Full marks for seasonal cheer to The Quiet Room for their priceless Santa Brand Guidelines document.  Well worth a look at the fine print :-)  (click to enlarge)

2010: finally the year of mobile..

It was a long time coming, but 2010 was finally the year when mobile was taken seriously.  I'm not going to vouch for the accuracy of any of the facts and figures here (must be true it's on the internet, non!?!) but here's a round up video that doesn't thankfully have Fat Boy Slim's Right Here Right Now soundtrack.

Timing is everything...

A few months ago I was writing about Pizza Express doing a great job with timely and relevant offers when the London Underground has been on strike, something they've continued to do a great job of, as the strikes have continued.

Today I woke up to a great example of unfortunate timing:  My Groupon London offer this morning? Discounted Heathrow Express tickets. 

 The principle is a good one given that London has already started emptying out for Christmas but as the view out my kitchen window right now is this....

And the headline on the newspaper this morning this......

One has to question the appeal.  Ooops. Unlucky.  The best made plans of mice and men...

2010 in YouTube videos

Hardly surprising given Google just published the year in search, that YouTube have published the year in video.




So in one morning, I've covered 2010 for Apple / apps, search, Twitter & YouTube.  Surely there'll be Facebook next?

UPDATE: Yep, sure enough here's the Facebook look at 2010

2010 in search, tweets, apps & trends

Google just released their search trend year in review video (note the not very subtle plugs for many of their services along the way) It is worth watching but be warned it's not going to leave you bouncing with joy about 2010.  It seems like it's been a lousy year for many people. Bring on 2011.  They also published the top searches per category. I'm sure Robert Pattinson will be delighted to have scraped in at #10 of the most searched for people, with Justin Bieber taking the #1 slot. 



Meanwhile, Twitter reported that the world sent 25 billion tweets this year (so far),and on average 95 million tweets are sent everyday.  Twitter also published charts of top topics tweeted about in 2010:  Unsurprisingly there's a strong correlation between the Google search rankings and the Tweet charts: iPad dominates in technology and yet again Justin Bieber tops the people charts. (Click here to read how they compiled the charts).

Apple also recently published their top apps of the year. You can check who is downloading what (music, films, podcasts apps) & where (by market) on iTunes charts. Well worth a play, if only for curiosity.

For 2010, Facebook dominates the free download charts and Angry Birds (game) the paid chart.

Crazy but true, this bonkers addictive game tops the paid app charts in UK, US, France, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal & Sweden and is in the top 5 in a further 7 countries: Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Netherlands, Luxemburg, Ireland and Germany. In Greece it's number 6, and the only place it doesn't make the Top10 from the published charts is Japan.

 
You can bet that the Angry Birds soft toys that Rovio are releasing in January will give a welcome boost to the usually quiet January toy market too.

And whilst I'm having a round-up morning, here's the ever brilliant Contagious round up of top trends of 2010.

Where's the traffic to your site coming from??

I know of far too many brands that build sites and then pay scant attention to their site analytics, and so have no idea what's performing, what's not, nor where their traffic is coming from. It means they can't analyse digital traffic driving activity properly (I call this the broken bridge problem), they can't tweak their site to optimise it for natural search because they are operating blind. #Fail.

Interesting to see today's chart of the day from Silicon Insider showing how much traffic is coming from social sites over search engines : The power of social influence? Or just the plain fact that people are spending a lot of time on Facebook, so whether it's by advertising or page activity, if the tab is always open, it's easy to search there too. (Albeit I should caveat for the UK at least, a search on Facebook offers up results via Bing rather than Google if there's no page / group results).

This is obviously a US example, but I suspect the UK picture is much the same.