Ireland is rapidly being recognised as a hub of innovation and creativity in the technology sector. This reputation is being built by its thriving university incubation centres who specialise in commercialisation and technology transfer. Recently SocialMedia.ie successfully completed an international feasibility study to support such a technology transfer project for TSSG, (Telecommunications Software and Systems Group) an affiliate of Waterford Institute of Technology. The study involved extensive primary research involving candidates in Ireland, UK and US.
Commercialisation Manager Tom Curran noted,
“We recently engaged SocialMedia on a consultancy project in the social technology space and are very happy with the results. In a very short amount of time, a comprehensive scoping exercise involving primary and secondary research across 3 markets was completed. The resulting analysis and report was very insightful and invaluable in helping us to determine the direction our project should take. Moreover, the team was a pleasure to work with. Kudos to Conor and Cian for a job very well done!”
SocialMedia.ie are currently in talks with other Irish Universities with a view to collaborating on research and technology transfer projects. If you or your organisation have any queries surrounding a research project that requires Social Media specialists you can contact our office here.
Online advertising spend increased in the first half of 2011 according to a new study by IAB and PricewaterhouseCoopers. Year on year, compared with 2010, online advertising spend is up by 20.5% to €65 million for the 6 month period.
Online advertising is now valued at 13 per cent – with strong growth observed in video and social media.
Online is now the third highest media advertising channel – outstripping spending in radio, outdoor, cinema and magazines, according to the study.
The study also found that improved and increased access to broadband in Ireland has driven growth in this sector. Fixed broadband access increased by eight per cent between the second quarter of 2010 and the same period in 2011, while mobile broadband access grew by 14.8 per cent in the same period.
The largest area in online spending is paid-search advertising at €27.2 million, which has seen a growth of 17 per cent year on year, and now represents 45 per cent of total online spending.
The top three categories to see investment in display ads are telecommunications, FMCG (fast-moving consumer goods) and entertainment/media (each with about 12% of spending).
Google is well known as a great place to work and the entire European HQ here in Dublin had a little fun recently when 2000 of them lined out in the streets to have their photo taken for their own streetview product as the car passed their offices (have a play with the actual street here). The stunt was carried out a couple of months ago and has made it’s way on to the live version of their maps and street view which means anybody who doesn’t know that their offices are there and just happens to be browsing will be met with over 2000 mad staff dressed in all sorts of weird outfits holding laptops in the air and promoting their own Google products. It’s a great insight in to the cool things that Google do though and even though it has only been picked up by a couple of Irish websites (first spotted here) you can be sure that it will start getting a lot of attention around the world and show what a great fun place Google is to work. There have of course been lots of negative reports around street view and plenty of privacy concerns but this is a little way of putting the fun back in to the project and some cheap PR for Google. What I love most about Google as a company is that although they are very serious about taking over the world with their search, social networking and mobile products they always know how to let their hair down and do something a little quirky!
This past week, I’ve been in the heart of Silicon Valley: Palo Alto, California. Within a half hour’s train journey, you can be at the offices of Apple, Facebook and Google, as well as dozens of start-ups who might be the next internet giant. There are two main reasons, I think, that California is the place people go to if they’re a tech start-up (nod to my older brothers, currently working on one). The first is the great pool of talent present here, and the second is the huge amount of investment and mentoring available to that talent. The main difference I notice between Ireland and Silicon Valley: driven people. A large percentage of the population of Palo Alto either working, having worked on, or is plotting a start-up. How could somewhere like Ireland (or anywhere else, for that matter) create its own Valley? Change our attitude, train the workforce and get start-ups working here.
Change our attitude
If you went up to someone on the street in Dublin and told them that it was possible for Ireland to be the next Silicon Valley, you’d get laughed at. However, I think it is possible. It’s very difficult, but ultimately doable. One of the biggest differences I’ve noticed between Ireland and the US (New York as well as California) is the vast difference in people’s moods. On the human pH scale of moods, it feels as if Ireland’s 1 and Palo Alto is 14. To me, recovery is closely linked to our attitude, and we’re going to stay in the current rut unless we manage to get ourselves into a more positive disposition.What I’m talking about it Silicon Valley is this… aura of productivity in the air. There’s this great sense of (possibly misplaced) urgency that drives people to try new things and innovate. That sort of attitude snowballs, because everyone feels they have to ‘keep up with the Joneses’ and also be productive, and it leads to a wonderfully creative and energetic atmosphere. Relatedly, we’re not going to become an attractive hub to start-ups if we don’t believe we can. If we proactively decide that becoming Silicon Valley 2.0 is an achievable goal (which it is), that’s half the battle. However, a can-do attitude is not going to do it alone, it goes hand-in-hand with…
An encouraging technology industry
At the time of writing, a deep interest in technology is seen as nerdy and uncool. Such a situation is unhelpful in attracting start-ups to this country, and, more importantly, attracting students to pursue careers in computer sciences.Ireland netted companies like Dell and Intel because it had an educated workforce. While an educated workforce does make them qualified to work somewhere like Dell or Intel, it doesn’t mean they’re willing or able to work on a start-up. We have a high percent of those who go onto third-level education, but how many of those could go work for a start-up? We need to get more kids interested in programming and computers. If we had a talented, computer-savvy workforce, we’d be much more attractive to start-ups. Ian Livingstone, President & CEO of Eidos Interactive (the company behind the Tomb Raider series of video games) recently said that computer science was the new Latin, the new lingua franca of innovative business. Ireland, as a country, needs to do more in this field if it wants to create its own Valley.
Get start-ups
At the moment, if you’re part of a technology start-up, California is the Mecca. We need to make it so that if you’re an innovator, Ireland is the place you want to be.
Paul Graham, Californian venture-capitalist.
This is achieved in a two-pronged approach. Firstly, we train the workforce in computer sciences and make it easy for them to get funding. Secondly, we encourage start-ups to come here.Paul Graham (venture-capitalist and founder of Y Combinator) suggested that a would-be start-up hub should entice 50 start-ups to relocate by offering them $1 million each. $50 million is a small amount in comparison to the benefit we could reap out if it. In fact, $50 million is only one-fortieth of what the Irish state loses to social welfare fraud each year. (Source: The Irish Times)
As Ireland recovers from the recession, we should try and get ourselves into the best possible position. The tech industry is one which is seeing growth (unlike, say, the building industry) and so what better industry for Ireland to become the leader in.
With a new football season approaching, the usual topics are being discussed. The transfer market and who’s going where for what price, pre-season friendlies, injury concerns and what the squad will be when they start their respective campaigns.
But another topic has been surfacing alongside these has been twitter and not for positive reasons. Over the past year or two, stories about what footballer tweeted what and clubs reactions have become a major part of football news with the focus placed further on what players tweet after a match and their reaction.
Also, Championship team, Leeds United, like other English teams such as QPR, have banned club’s players from using Twitter after their striker, Davide Somma, tweeted he would miss the next six months after suffering cruciate ligament damage. The reasoning for this was that such information should have gone through the proper channels before the news was made public.
Wolves manager, Mick McCarthy, has brought in a legal law firm to educate players about Twitter.
Professional teams can be similar to companies in which they have an image to upkeep yet while most companies can work in the background, the staff of football teams perform in the public eye. Many if not all of the professional English teams have twitter accounts promoting the club, their team, matches, causes and merchandise to name but a few.
On the other end of the spectrum, players like Wayne Rooney, Michael Owen, Cesc Fabregas, Jack Wilshere and Darren Bent have their own personal accounts, allowing fans a glimpse into their lives and discovering what makes them tick. Yet when the lines between professional and private conduct become blurred either intentionally or not, players have to be careful about what they say and who they affect.
Tweeting etiquette
A good place for players to learn how to conduct themselves for their club would be to look at the BBC and the guidelines it placed for staff in news. Basically its main rule of thumb is the phrase: “Don’t say anything stupid” and not to say anything that compromises your impartiality. While the latter might not strictly apply considering that players are going to side with the team they play for (in most cases), it’s useful to have such guidelines and draw a line for what can and can’t be said in public.
However in saying this, sports are charged by emotion and at the best of times, some won’t think twice about venting their frustrations online, sometimes landing them in hot water.
Ryan Babel was fined £10,000 by the FA for tweeting an inappropiate message depicting a referee in a Manchester Utd jersey.
Basically because you can tweet without any physical interaction, the idea of what you share with your followers on Twitter, you share with the world can be lost, resulting in such situations occurring. Because of Twitter’s immediate and snappy style, considering the weight of what you could be tweeting is easily lost after you hit the send button, although that presents another set of problems for players.
Tweeting abuse
While you can control what your players can and can’t say, this doesn’t apply to the general public. At matches alone, players can be subjected to verbal abuse by the opposition (or worse their own fans if they aren’t performing) while they are playing is difficult enough to handle.
Yet outside the pitch, Twitter can and has left players open to the kind of criticism that arguably wouldn’t be heard if the internet didn’t physically separate those writing and receiving the message.
Darron Gibson claimed to have closed his twitter account because it wasn't worth the hassle, although the abusive messages he received suggests differently.
One such example was Ireland and Manchester United player, Darron Gibson. Two hours after joining the site, Gibson had closed his account and left. The reason being the abuse he received by fans, the nicest insult he received was “the biggest compliment I can give you is that you are better than Carrick.” It was claimed that Gibson went off the site because he received so many notifications of people joining by SMS that he felt it wasn’t the hassle but nobody would be surprised if the comments affected him in some way.
Bolton captain Kevin Davies, having won fans for his honest approach and how he regularly interacted with his followers, tweeted back in May that he wasn’t going to update his account any longer saying that “[it] is partly due to abuse that nobody needs really.” He has left one response since then but his account is still active for when he decides to go back and brave the world of Twitter again.
Those who justify such comments will point out that they are paid professionals and should be able to handle criticism but criticism doesn’t mean comments that only aim to belittle or insult a person. No profession would allow statements like such to be said and how you approach such a problem fairly when such opinions can easily be spread online is difficult to say.
But maybe that’s part and parcel of such careers, public careers will always be open to public scrutiny regardless of whether it’s deserved or not. There will always be a certain faction who will
scream and shout abuse, either verbally or digitally, at other but everyone could focus more on how to handle such comments since chasing the people behind such statements would prove to be an impossible task.
When both the public and players themselves remember that their words could be interpreted as something more than just a throwaway comment, then navigating Twitter may become easier for all. But let’s just finish with opinionated Blackpool manager, Ian Holloway, who’s happy to give his thoughts on anything he asked, which includes Twitter and the Ryan Babel incident mentioned above.
OWJO is an e-commerce service, a portable online store letting people sell on any platform, such as Facebook, or any other website.
It has been in development by designer David Johnston since 2006, with €1.5m invested into the company.
The unique thing about OWJO, which distinguishes the service from everybody else, in that it allows customers to buy on Facebook without redirecting them away from fanpages and websites during the sale. No more clicking off to another website with OWJO. Also OWJO allows people to pay with Laser Card as well as with Credit Card. The service only earns money when sales are made and keeps the sales commission low, at 7pc.
As a result, OWJO has received a large variety of adopters. Irish sports store Elverys use it to sell on social networks. The radio station Phantom FM uses it too. The service was also used to sell unseen Thin Lizzy artwork from the creator’s Facebook account.
We love seeing examples of agencies who do their own marketing in a creative way and get the word out about themselves in a way that will appeal to their clients. Brando (another Irish agency yay!!) are doing that today with a creative campaign that basically sees them eating as many sweets as they possibly can directed by a creative Twitter campaign. It’s called #Tweetsweets and you can see their campaign website here. The idea is that anybody on Twitter can write to them and ask them to eat sweets and if things keep up at the current rate they are all going to be seriously sick and high on sugar.
Interactive Sweety Fun
You can follow all the action over here and it allows users to tweet out their requests, there are leader boards for both followers and the staff themselves and the interaction can also be viewed via a live video stream. This isn’t a complicated concept to set up but it does show real imagination and a great fun use of Twitter rather than brands who just try to hijack hashtags for competitions or to promote themselves. This is fun, interactive and quirky.
Everybody Is A Winner
I was actually alerted to the campaign when I got sent a little cute box of sweets myself this morning in the post which instantly put a smile on my face. Who doesn’t like getting sweets!! The team at Brando are winning because they get to eat sweets all day and have interaction with the public in a way that working for clients never provides and the general public have a fun little interactive to break up their day as they force people to eat sweets online.
I love seeing agencies running campaigns like this rather than taking out large corporate sponsorships or direct marketing because this shows an agency off in the best possible light doing what they do best. There is no doubt this will bring in new business because clients will want a bit of that creativity for themselves and it won’t have cost half as much as other big agencies use to market themselves. Well done to the guys in Brando for putting a smile on people’s faces for a couple of hours. We are all off to build the Simply Zesty “TweetBeer” campaign website. Best kept for a Friday evening.
In an article entitled Creating A Genius Cluster In Ireland Rich Moran points out that at key times in history geniuses seemed to come together in clusters. He outlines his interest at creating and being part of a genius cluster in Ireland.
In response to the interest aroused by this article New Tech Post created geniusclusters.com which points to a Facebook page set up to encourage the exchange of ideas and the creation of real businesses.
Ina O’ Murchu reports on the letter handed into the Irish Government to petition for the direct airline route from Ireland to Silicon Valley to be reinstated.
“Ian Dodson of WebKitchen is someone I've been working closely with for the past few years. Ian first impressed me, not just with his expert knowledge of his space but with his sound business insights..."
Contact Us|Sitemap|Policy|Back to Top Legal Information: Web Kitchen Limited | Registered Office: 93 Upper George Street, Dun Laoghaire, Co.Dublin, Ireland | Company Reg. No: 427135
Commercialisation Manager Tom Curran noted,
Google is well known as a great place to work and the entire European HQ here in Dublin had a little fun recently when 2000 of them lined out in the streets to have their photo taken for their own streetview product as the car passed their offices (
This past week, I’ve been in the heart of Silicon Valley: Palo Alto, California. Within a half hour’s train journey, you can be at the offices of Apple, Facebook and Google, as well as dozens of start-ups who might be the next internet giant. There are two main reasons, I think, that California is the place people go to if they’re a tech start-up (
We love seeing examples of agencies who do their own marketing in a creative way and get the word out about themselves in a way that will appeal to their clients. 
