Shocking.
Two months since my last post proper. There’s no excuse for it.
But there is a good reason for it, though. It’s all because of Twitter. It’s Twitter that made me stop blogging and twittering.

See, it was through a simple Tweet that we found out that MTV and the European Union were trying to build a social-network-type-website to support their joint campaign, raising awareness about the upcoming European Elections.
And because my social-media pal Zuluzulu-slash-wildebees and me had been saying that ‘09 was gonna be the year of collaborations, that our skills were finally going to converge, we wrote an overnight proposal built around existing social media tools like Twitter, Qik and Facebook Connect. 
And we won the pitch.
So this is what took me so long: Can You Hear Me, Europe. 

We worked our socks off (turnaround time: 1 month, in 23 languages), but it’s been a great project and we learnt a lot. Most importantly: people have been using the website in a pretty good way. And, good for us, the site has been getting mentions on BBC, Brand Republic , Politica2.0,… 

It’s been fun. So much that we’re now thinking of a company name and a positioning plan. So we can truly start collaborating.

Here’s a great idea that breathes new life into the struggling format of the tv commercial. Get your audience to make it.
Not some competition where you ask people to create the whole film. That has been done before and generally only appeals to the more hardcore creatives. But get the public to submit small bits and pieces, so everyone can easily participate and the result is a collaborative effort. 

Belgian mobile provider Proximus are making a stop-motion tv commercial based on photos that people have uploaded. Not just any pictures; people get clear guidelines. Currently they’re running an animated storyboard as a tv ad, pointing people to a website where they can upload their pictures to match specific frames of the storyboard.

Genius! Lots of fun! Immediate result for the people who participate! A very well executed website. Very little brand pushing going on there. 
And if they succeed, they’ll get the world record for most locations/actors/directors in a tv spot.

I was checking it over the weekend and people have already gone out of their way to shoot great stills. Check out the scene where people ‘fly’ around the little park. Someone had some fun with that. 

The only thing I’m missing is some form of identifying the names/locations of the people that are submitting. And maybe leave comments. That would have turned it even more into a social event.

I was chatting with my friend ZuluZulu the other day about digital media (he’s a bit of an old school new media dude; you know the ones; they were programming CD-ROMS when I was still impressed by Word and survived the dotcom-crash) and got talking about Joost, the much-hyped, long-forgotten Future of TV. The application that was going to change the way we watched tv. Or content, I should say. 
Whatever happened to them, we wondered? And shouldn’t they be doing something with a browser (it was the day that Google released Chrome), incorporate their software into a more user-friendly website. 

Well, speak of the devil etc etc. Turns out that Joost is no longer focusing on letting you download a software application, but are integrating their p2p technology into a website and the browser, thus bringing it closer to the likes of YouTube.
It looks pretty nice and seems to focus a lot on community (something they’ve been talking about for ages), but there’s still the million dollar question. Or two. While ZuluZulu is worried the ISPs may get a bit iffy, my main issue is still content.
I talked to Joost more than 2 years ago about sourcing (more left-of-centre) content for them and while at the time they were very close to signing some big players, it must be going slower than they expected. Admittedly, they are getting deals with the CNNs and the Warners of this world and there’s some decent stuff in their catalogue, but we’re not yet seeing the top raters like The Wire or an international sports event. Which I think they may need to get that all-important ‘critical mass’.

Let’s see how much more money the owners want to throw at it. They have a lot (remember they sold Skype and Kazaa), but I hope it does well, because I always thought Joost was going to make a difference. 

More info and pictures at Techcrunch. 

But where has this gone since then? A few weeks ago, a friend who works in business consultancy pointed me to Jacques Bughin, a media consultant his company uses a lot. And his thoughts on the whole mobile thing just seem ancient right now. Where are the ‘mobisodes’ from yesteryear? Where are those music videos created specifically for mobile viewing? Is anyone still watching?
The figures from the BBC seem to suggest the audience is switching off. But is that because of crap content? Or tedious technology?

On a content-level mobile tv is quite often a cut-down version of existing programs. I can imagine people logging on when it’s exclusive content though. I remember the UK network 3 getting an exclusive premiere on a Robbie Williams video and I’m sure that did very well.

But I personally think technology is inadequately developed (yet) to get a major impact. I just tried accessing some video footage from the Albarn & Hewlett produced opening titles for the BBC Olympics coverage. And gave up. Too slow, too messy interface,… And with mobile phones moving more and more towards computers (IPhone et al), wouldn’t people expect to watch things ‘online’, i.e. decent quality at decent speeds? Or not watch at all. 

I’m sure there are good examples of mobile video, but I don’t know them. And I definitely think it’s an interesting aspect of the media. So if anyone has any suggestions on good blogs/websites about mobile communication, then do let me know.