An wonderful set, a beautiful talk, a nice journey again, by Louis Vuitton.

In previous articles we studied the evolution of the Internet Society.  Our theory is that an internet tool, when it first appears, is like the cast of a TV show; its personality isn’t very well defined at first.  But as time goes by and viewers start watching the show, the characters’ personalities take on new proportions (have you ever compared the first episodes of Friends to the final ones? Joey undergoes a constant ‘dumbing down’ process as the series progresses.)

As more users watch what’s happening on Twitter, it’s character is taking on new proportions.  For example, Twitter has recently released a feature in which you can follow lists. Sure, this is something avid users have been wanting for a while and is indeed a valuable add-on, but what’s most revealing is how this small functionality basically defines a little better what Twitter is exactly for – Twitter as an aggregator of links related to common interests for a user (a.k.a. the Internet Yellow Pages).

Lists basically allow a user to gather their followed users into, well lists. These lists can be followed individually or you can add all the users to the regular timeline as you always had on Twitter. But the most interesting thing is that you can share your lists and a user can choose to follow the exact same list. It means you are no longer following a person – you are following a theme or a topic. Which leads us to the point – what if users stop following other users because they have relevant content and start following a list where what matters is what the list as a whole broadcasts and not the individual valor of the broadcaster himself? Twitter becoming less a “What are you doing?” and more a “What is your group doing?”. You can probably still measure the interest rating of a user by his following/followers ratio, but now you have a new metric – how many list are you part of? What are those lists about? Why are you part of the list? And are you an active member of the list or are you there for aggregation purposes?

Sure, Twitter lists are useful. But what strikes us as an interesting study is the shift from the human islands of Twitterland to Content Continents built by the content the users generate. After all, we live in a Content Society.  And in this realm, Twitter just took one more step from plain generalist micro-blogging into a fully defined Social Network that can be set completely apart from all the others by focusing not on apps, photos or moods, but by content sharing in its purest form.

Bucking this rule is “Flora”, a new fragrance by Gucci.  It’s commercial is arguably one of the most beautiful produced in a long time…

See Flora by Gucci in HD

The Italian agency REM, and particularly the creative director Riccardo Ruini, deserve credit for hiring Chris Cunningham for the job. Recognized as one of the most creative video makers, Chris has created the perfect visual piece which enhances the product while transporting the viewer to a perfect universe.  What makes the ad exceptional is it’s balance between the visual, musical (a Donna Summer’s classic song remixed by Cunningham) and sensual appeal of Flora’s universe. The result is a majestic aesthetic representing the ideal perfume.

Ricardo Ruini, who developed the concept for the commercial with the director, explains the evolution of the spot:

Foremost in our minds was a desire to avoid the heroine being perceived as passive or dreamy. We wanted to portray the female as an active character who brings to life in an active way the Flora personality by controlling the nature around her. We also felt it was important to demonstrate a movement of the female from mademoiselle to empowered woman; a woman initially delicate and feminine transforming into someone stronger and more powerful.

Will Flora start a new trend (sensibility) in perfume advertising or will the abstract prevail?

PS: for a greater appreciation of the spot, don’t hesitate to see the making of.

An application programming interface (API) is an interface that a software program implements in order to allow other software to interact with it; much in the same way that software might implement a user interface in order to allow humans to interact with it.

Flickr Mosaic: Crayonbox, constructed with Flickr API. Released under a CCommons license by krazydad

Like digital bridges, API’s request standartized information from public (and sometimes private) web services. From USA Spending to Fedex tracking, from Flickr to Google Maps, the interest for APIs has been traditionally confined to B2B/ERP and the Social Web. But lately the concept is extending beyond these areas: with developers creating exciting and unexpected uses with the new data available, and with consumer brands and the ad industry starting to let go of their closed silos, in essence “letting one thousand flowers bloom“.  A good consumer brand example of this trend is the UK grocery chain Tesco, who announced a new API at TechForTesco and invited developers to tinker with its data, search for nutrition facts or send ‘ideas’ to the customer’s ‘ideas inbox’.

Web development frameworks have long been using these large building blocks to enable rapid development by a larger interested audience. They not only ignite the engine of innovation, sometimes stalled by internal corporate politics, but also allow brands to have a comfortable degree of control. With new data sets available, we could start thinking of new kinds of mashups, such as business data built directly into communication solutions, CRM programs feeding custom content or display ads with real-time data, as mentioned in the beginning.

Before a brand dips into this space, it’s challenge is to question which data set respects legal and privacy issues, while at the same time being interesting enough for developers and consumers to act upon.   What they shouldn’t be asking is if an API is useful (it’s useful when the data is right).

If you’d like to know more about what’s being done with such web services, I highly recommend checking out the website Programmable Web.  It’s a useful resource with over 1500 APIs that have been used in thousands of mashups.

I keep saying that the sexy job in the next 10 years will be statisticians.  And I’m not kidding. -  Hal Varian, chief economist at Google

If I had Hal’s kind of money, I would bet millions that he’s right.  So how do we as communicators and marketers get in on the action?  We start by making the numbers we communicate gripping…

According to Dan and Chip Heath (authors of Made to Stick),

A gripping statistic is one that aids a decision or shapes an opinion.  For a stat to do either of those, it must be dragged within the everyday.

The most illustrative examples of this definition that I’ve come across recently are the work of a young graphic designer by the name of Toby Ng Kwong To.  For example,…

Had Toby lazily put the millions that have computers versus the billions that don’t, his infographic would not be effective; nor would we be moved, as the Heath brothers indicate, to form an opinion or make a decision.  But since we all live in a village of some kind, we can imagine the disparity, formulate a strong opinion and maybe even make a decision to get involved.

Although it may not be our calling to provide the remaining 93 in the village a computer, it is without question our job to make statistics ‘grip’.  Otherwise, as Google’s chief economist predicts, someone else will, and they’ll look sexier than us for doing it.

Really, only 7 have computers?  I bet you’ll remember that tomorrow…

Well thousands of people are…

I Just Made Love shows on the map of the world places where people just made love in real time. What massive social change drives people to be ready to share that level of privacy? Interesting…

British politicians are more than capable of making themselves look stupid but when ‘Speechbreaker’ is so much fun, it’s hard to resist giving a helping hand. Created by Lean Mean Fighting Machine for the Liberal Democrats, it allows you to remix speeches by David Cameron and Gordon Brown and post the results on YouTube. It has a simple, user-friendly design and is so easy to use that you can post things like this within a couple of minutes:

When you get to the Nick Clegg section, you only have the choice of a few words – ‘Choose’, ‘the’, ‘Liberal’, ‘Democrats’ – and some applause.

I like the way LMFM have looked at this brief from a different angle and that they (and the client) have been brave enough to go with a solution that doesn’t actually generate any content for the Lib Dems. Instead, they have reminded everyone of the nonsense that they have heard from the other political parties and shown them who not to vote for while making the Lib Dems seem young and challenging.*

*Although I have to say that, for me, the inclusion of the ‘C’ word wasn’t necessary and its inevitable overuse kills the fun (or maybe I’m just getting old?!)

In the past, Samsung’s tried several types of video direction, like the future of packaging or even alien intervention. This time, they’re using an old-school visual technique, called the one shot representation (inspired by theatre).  By shooting in only one sequence the entire day’s action, the character and his phone are always front and center; the entire focus is on the product.  It’s an old trick that works very well for representing all the things you can do with your phone. By the way, this style of video direction recalls the work of Michel Gondry, as in the famous videoclip for Bjôrk, Bachelorette.

The future is what happens between objects and people.

Nothing better to validate this concept than Cisco’s vision about “how the changing room is really changing”:

More about Cisco innovations and Borderless Networks here.

While not as fun as the videos, the Future Humanity Institute at Oxford has 31 laws of Fun. Some of the laws are bizarre, but so is sometimes the business of fun. Enjoy.