THINGLE: Wikipedia meets Pinterest!

thingle.com

First there was Pinterest, then there was Gentlemint and the battle of social photo sharing began (see: Pinterest vs Gentlemint). But now a new site has entered the arena! Thingle.com is being sold as “Wikipedia meets Pinterest”, and it was launched earlier this year. The site was created by the Zurich-Swiss/New York start-up Thingle with an aim to create “the most exciting and useful social web platform on the web”. However, this is a rather bold ambition that would involve overthrowing the mighty Facebook and Twitter. 

A Thingle

So what’s Thingle? At first glance its basically Pinterest! Thingle lets you organise and share images and videos representing things that you are passionate about. Sound familiar? Once a user has created or shared an object it becomes known as a Thingle, not a Pin, and these objects can be arranged into Collections, not Boards. In fact if you are an avid ‘Pinner’ you should pick up Thingle easily.

So what’s different? Thingle’s selling point is that it focuses on real world objects i.e. things you can touch, visit, taste, experience, travel to, buy or rent. This is the Wikipedia-like side of the site that sets Thingle apart from Pinterest. Thingle is attempting to implement this by encouraging users to give more information. When creating a Thingle users can add additional images from every angle, include links and add tags. Users can also later add to their Thingle by commenting and editing.

Can Thingle succeed? Its still early days for Thingle and the company faces a tough challenge trying to win market share from other social networks. Thingle’s main competitor is clearly Pinterest and I personally would say that Thingle’s stunning visual and user friendly environment trumps that of Pinterest. However, Pinterest has had a 3 year head start!

Thingle’s Facebook page already has over 62K likes which proves that the company is effectively raising brand awareness and Thingle was named as a Swiss TOP 100 Startups winner for 2012. From over 200,000 young companies, the 100 most innovative and promising Swiss startups were picked by top startup experts. Thingle claims that the beta version of the site is constantly improving and they have tons of useful features in the pipeline. Watch this space...


If you're impressed with Thingle.com you can nominate them for The Crunchies 2012, Best International Startup by clicking here.

PINTEREST vs GENTLEMINT - A Battle of the Sexes?

Pinterest vs Gentlemint

Pinterest is a pinboard-style social photo sharing website and its one of the latest social media networks to take off. In February 2012 it was found to have attracted 10 million unique visitors and in May 2012 it became the third most popular social media networking site behind Facebook and Twitter but ahead of Google+, Tumblr and LinkedIn!

Pinterest allows users to create theme based image collections such as hobbies, interests,  info-graphics etc. Users browse the pins of others to look for inspiration or just to explore. Pinterest then allows its users to like the image or re-pin it to a wall of their own. When a user pins an image the social network allows them to attach a hyperlink and as such, many are using Pinterest as a platform to drive traffic to sites and blogs. 

Pinterest

Whilst Pinterest’s user interface shows no sign of being targeted towards one sex over another, in 2012 it was reported that 83% of US users were women. This user demographic is evident upon selecting the ‘Popular’ tab where you are likely to be met with craft ideas, clothing, nail art, recipes, images of cute pets/babies etc. Indeed, shopping inspiration has become such a predominant pin trend that Pinterest has introduced a ‘Gifts‘ section allowing users to search purchasable products by price, following a price tag applied by the Pinner.   

Gentlemint

So what about men? In response to the female-dominated Pinterest, Glen Stansberry and Brian McKinney, two US entrepreneurs, developed a testosterone fuelled alternative in 2011. Gentlemint is a Pinterest-inspired site for “manly men”. Whilst Gentlemint has a similar model to Pinterest it offers more male-targeted content including cars, facial hair, motorbikes, firearms, sports, power tools and weirdly, bacon. Indeed, to like an image users must first click on a mustache icon to reveal a like button! Ironically, however, as Gentlemint is G-rated you are more likely to find for example, bikini photos on Pinterest then on Gentlemint.

Whilst Gentlemint is not nearly as popular as Pinterest both sites will continue to grow as more and more people start using them and contribute towards the networks’ content. Both are encouraging brands to post on their sites and customers are faced with a new way of interacting with a brand through ‘pinning’ or ‘minting’ goods. Personally, in the battle between Pinterest and Gentlemint I believe Pinterest will be victorious. Pinterest’s development began in 2009, two years before Gentlemint’s, and as such they were able to capture the market. Also, women are the predominant users of social media in general and a male-targeted network is unlikely to present a large threat. 

It will be interesting to follow both sites progression into 2013 and how both compete against other competitors with photo-sharing based models such as Facebook and Twitter’s publishing platforms Instagram and Medium respectively.

The UK's having a 4G!

What are you talking about?
This week saw the launch of a 4G network in the UK! EE, formerly Everything Everywhere (a joint venture between T-mobile and Orange), was the mobile network operator and internet service provider behind the launch, on 30 October 2012, of their 4GEE service.

What is it?
It is the 4th generation of mobile phone mobile communications standards, hence 4G. As the successor of 3G it can provide a higher internet data transfer rate. But what does this mean to me, right? This means browsing on your phone is faster and you can consume high bandwidth services such as the use of video and video conferencing when out and about. You can stream music, films and HD TV! 4G will also allow you to upload huge files to websites quickly and it will also speed up downloads, uploads and emails.

Where is it?
As per my map above, EE's 4G is now available in 11 cities; Bristol, Birmingham, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool, London, Manchester, Sheffield and Southampton. EE also plans to introduce 4G in Belfast, Derby, Hull, Newcastle and Nottingham by COP 2012. But if you don't live in these 16 cities have no fear as apparently EE are planning for the service to cover around 98% of the UK by 2014! In some areas 4G has been found to stretch outside of the city limits but to be sure your area is covered you can use EE's useful Coverage Checker.

How fast are we talking?

4G will be faster then its predecessor 3G. That much is certain. But there are huge debates over how much faster 4G will be following EE's initial marketing efforts claiming it was up to 10 times faster. Having read a few articles it seems to me that the correct answer is...we don't know. There are several factors which will effect 4G's performance and EE now correctly list these on their website, though they havent promoted this of course. These factors include what device you are using, how close you are to a 4G mast and, and more importantly, how many people are on the network. Initially there will be few 4G users but as we near 2014, and a 98% coverage, the performance of 4G is likely to be less as more users sign-up. That said, EE claims that the average 4G download speeds will be between 8 and 10 megabits per second (Mbps) and the average upload speeds will be between 5 and 6 Mbit/s. I recently ran a speed test in Cardiff, Wales using 3G on my iPhone 4 and the results showed a download speed of 1.84Mbps and an upload speed of 0.79Mbps. So if I was to switch to 4G i'd be looking at speeds around 5 times faster then what i'm currently used to!

How can I get 4G?
4G is currently only available to EE customers after the network 'won' the 4G auction process by communications regulator Ofcom. The other UK networks including Vodafone, O2 and 3, who had threatened legal action against Ofcom, will have to wait until spring next year to offer their 4G services.

Elsewhere, only a certain number of phones are currently compatible with 4G and basically any phone bought before September 2012 will not be compatible. Indeed, anyone who bought a Samsung Galaxy S3 just before the upgraded 4G compatible LTE version was released in September would have been quite annoyed. Other compatible phones include the iPhone 5, the Samsung Galaxy Note II LTE, the Nokia Lumia 920, the Nokia Lumia 820, The HTC One XL, the Huawei Ascend P1 LTE.

To fund one of EE's 4G pricing plans you will need to set aside a minimum of £36 which will get you a mere 500mb of data. If your looking for 8GB you're talking £56/month! The problem being that whilst 500mb would have suitably seen you through the month on 3G, 4G is faster and enables the use of high bandwidth services. Thus you smash your 500mb allowance and incur extra charges!

So you're on the fence?
Yes. Like all new technology that is rushed out to gain a foothold in a market there is and will be problems with 4G. EE have been criticised for their pricing plans and many 4G users are claiming that the speeds have been 'oversold'. Elsewhere, there are technological problems in that the service puts greater strain on a phone's battery. Also, a major issue was announced by the government earlier this year that 4G may interfere with the Freeview TV signal next year when it transfers to a different spectrum. So it will be interesting to track 4G's developments, especially when the other networks release their 4G services next year.

LADvertising, advertising to the modern man

Dictionary.com defines Advertising as "the act or practice of calling public attention to one's product, service, need, etc". But in my first post I'd like to introduce to you the concept of Ladvertising.

A Lad is known to be a familiar or affectionate term of address for a man or chap. So essentially Ladvertising is the act or practice of calling lad attention to one's product, service, need, etc. It is also known, though not by many, as Chappealing or the art of appealing to a chap.

What many marketers do not know is that Ladvertising accounts for around 50% of today's marketing activities! And the masters of said activities include many global brands including Lynx, Fosters, Old Spice and WKD, amongst many others.

You see, Ladvertising is a common art that is overlooked. And those individuals or teams, that are able to shape and sculpt the appeal of a product or service, to develop a desire within a lad, should be recognised.

The exciting concept of Ladvertising encompasses many debates like what are the most effective Ladvertising techniques, what are the challenges Ladvertisers face and is Ladvertising the future of marketing!? But I'll avoid getting carried away and I will leave such topics open for use in course work, dissertations and probably doctorate theses!

Below are some classic Ladvertising efforts... from Lads!