Wingee Wide Web

Tescos new Facebook page is another example of corporate consumer companies looking towards social media as a tool to interact with their customers.

It’s becoming increasingly obvious to marketeers that consumers are quite happy to click on the ‘Like’ button on a website or Facebook page – a much easier task than convincing consumers to give away their email address to ‘Sign up for Newsletter’ on their corporate websites.

Visit the Tescos Facebook page here:
http://www.facebook.com/TescoGB?sk=app_152412024816199

This follows on from corporates moving their marketing to social tools and campaigns rather than focussing on their corporate websites. The alcholic drinks brand Smirnoff noticed that should they drop their corporate website, it would not affect their brand at all. However they were able to engage with their consumers through Facebook from their campaign pages. Consumers are willing to engage with campaigns, but not so willing to engage with corporates.

Facebook page tracker counts 600,000 branded pages and over 90% have less than 1000 fans…

Here’s a brilliant idea coming from Timothy Ferris, author of the Four Hour Work Week. Ebay can be used to test your concepts quickly. Tim uses Ebay to post pictures of the concepts and guages the interest from the market by looking at how many bids he receives and what prices people are willing to pay for this product. He cancels the auction just before it ends and pays a small fee to eBay for doing so, but gets a lot more valuable market research in the process.

Since playing Angry Birds on my friends iPhone I was genuinely jealous at not having games of that quality on the Blackberry. However once Rovio released Angry Birds for Android, and my resistance to purchasing an iPhone (I actually quite like the iPhone 4 as a phone, but I still think it’s overpriced, overhyped and overrated but it’s the closest product to me purchasing an apple product) I looked at letting my trusted Blackberry go and go back to a touch screen phone….

After much deliberation I opted for an HTC Desire. I’ve had it for 2 weeks now and I’m genuinely enjoying it. I think Android is great – being an open platform it’s so easily extensible however it does has its shortcomings. I couldn’t believe that the phone is lacking a voice dialing over bluetooth, something that i use a lot with my Blackberry I hadn’t even checked that it didn’t support it. Also, battery life is pretty appalling – I could go a whole weekend without charging my Blackberry and the Desire needs charging every night – it’s not a big deal but still such a shame. I want to use the phone – i don’t want to use the phone worrying that i could be running the battery down.

Typing on a screen still sucks. I don’t care what any iPhone fanboy tells me – typing on a screen sucks. To be honest i would’ve bought the HTC with the slideout keyboard had it had a faster processor. I still think the best keyboard I’ve ever used on a phone was on my Blackberry curve 8900 – I thought it was even better than the 9700 as it had a distinctive click feel, not the spongy feel of the 9700 keyboard.

I’ve been so frustrated that BB have taken so long in releasing BB 6 for the 9700 – I may revisit the 9700 when BB 6 comes out for it.

Overall I think that even without BB 6, it is a much more refined and useful phone – it does all the things you want from a phone well. Great signal, battery life, easy texting and typing, etc etc. but simply lacks the ability to do other things such as browsing and apps to be able to compete with iPhones and Androids.

I believe Android phones may not have Apples momentum I would put money on them winning out in the long run – all the Google apps are so brilliant and high quality. You don’t ever have the issue that iPhone users have when they say to me “Oh, Apple won’t let me do that…”. If Google continue to keep pace with iPhone it won’t be too long before they overtake… (in fact current sales figures show they are very close to doing that already)

So, after 15 years in Guildford I’ve now moved 10 mins out of town to Ash, a small village between Guildford and Aldershot. It’s a bit more rural but not far enough to get away from the chavs.

The past few months have been fairly hectic though. Prior to the move, I was spending most weekends and evenings packing. Then post move, I’ve spent most weekends and evenings unpacking, DIYing, and trying to find space to put everything.

Almost 2 months since moving in the house is much more comfortable to live in so all the hard work (and sweat) has paid off and now we can look forward to Junior arriving in October…

For those who don’t know, I support Manchester United – I have done since I can remember. (…and no I’ve never lived in Manchester). This season has got to be the most exciting that I can remember. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if this goes to the last day of the season and the we won’t find out whether it’s Chelsea or United that win it.

But with Chelsea (scum) 1 point in the lead as I write this it’s going to make the next few weekends very exciting!

However it’s also exciting for the teams down the bottom as there are still quite a few teams who are far from being in the clear.

Who do you think will win the league this year? Who do you think will go down?!

I’m sure almost everybody has a store that they will never go back to, or a brand they just don’t like. You know: when somebody says “I’ll never shop at <insert some store> again because they <insert bad experience here>” or “I hate Burberry, it’s for chavs and crap rappers”.

Sometimes the reasons can be completely petty, like these ones from me:

Samsung: Unfortunately I quite like their products. I’m a fan of products from Korea (I drive a Hyundai Coupe). However they’re the main sponsor for Chelsea football club and I support Man Utd. Therefore I have put a mental ban on myself buying Samsung products!

Apple: Firstly, I have to explain that I used to be massive fan and a user of Apple computers. My school was an Apple school, and my department at Uni was a Mac department. I went off them when they started becoming far too poncy and started putting ‘cool’ before quality.

They’ve got some things very right though – I can’t knock the usability of their products and I admire the way they’re strict about 3rd party apps.

I’m also mildly bitter about the fact that most App builders seem to bring out the iPhone app before any other platform…<grrr>

Dyson: I just don’t think their vacuum cleaners are as good as people make out! It annoyed me when they started to market their products as having “No loss of suction” – what exactly do they mean by that? My Vax which I’ve used for 6 years is as good as the day I got it, whilst I know of numerous people who have bought and replaced their Dysons in this time. For some reason they have a reputation of making good products. Although I hear they’ve sorted their manufacturing issues, I still won’t be buying a Dyson anytime soon…

Are there any brands that you refuse to buy? Or any stores you choose not to buy from?

It’s about time I started blogging…. look out world….