Magazine

Leaders

Isn't it high time we got serious with the social media trolls?

We can't really go on like this. The alarming evolution of 'trolling' from pestering people online to the loss of life, has been eye-watering in its speed. The last week has seen a situation develop whereby a family whose daughter is missing, was...

Leaders

Shhhh. What did the Twitter Silence achieve?

Today I learned an inquest has been opened into the death of a young girl, bullied to suicide by users of social media. This dreadful story adds a terrible darkness to the storm surrounding the abusive use of the internet. And, as happened with...

Leaders

Use and abuse. Can we really make the internet a safer place?

Yesterday was 'Internet Safety Day'. Which pretty much proves the pointlessness of things having days dedicated to them. Unless the internet was substantially and provably safer for the entirety of 11th February 2014, or yesterday marked the point...

Leaders

Dancing Man: Shaming the internet trolls

Allow me to let you into a little secret: I’m not very thick skinned. And yet people often assume I am, partly because some of my blogs range from being moderately tongue in cheek to bordering on acerbic. One thing they never are, however, is...

Industry

Can Twitter clean up its act in the Elon Musk era?

The deal to acquire Twitter is done. Elon Musk has now completed his $44bn takeover of the social media company. But while many of us have been distracted by the ‘will he, won’t he?’ headlines over recent months, perhaps what we...

Inspiration

Appreciating the inclusive whimsy of Mason Griffiths

Sometimes, in this increasingly uncertain and conflicted world, all it takes is a little helping hand to get the ball rolling. Such is the case with the Salford-based artist Mason Griffiths, who left University a couple of years ago and found...

Inspiration

David Feldman's Series of Fortunate Events

How do you fight Holocaust denial to deliver the truth to young people? How do you crack a fantastic campaign for Netflix's A Series of Unfortunate Events? And just how do you keep your mind fresh and open to an endless stream of new...

Leaders

#techtuesday: Headphones that cool your ears, fake news flagging, emergency live streams and more

Emergency services can stream live video from your smartphone Air ambulances in Kent, Surrey and Sussex have been trialling a smartphone app that lets doctors and paramedics view livestreamed video from the scene of an emergency before they arrive...

Leaders

Walkers apologises after campaign is hijacked by Rolf Harris and Fred West

You should never trust the general public, at least not when presented with a potential trolling opportunity. Such is the case with the latest mismanaged move by Walkers, which, as part of its ongoing Champions League campaign, allowed users to...

Leaders

Does the Oculus Rift set the standard for VR in 2016?

In the interest of balance, Iv'e decided to cover the news currently rocking the tech world as more of a think piece taking a thorough look on both sides of the fence. First, however, the facts:- It seems like forever and a day that we’ve been...

Leaders

Your chance to flip the coin at this year’s Rugby World Cup

Whilst I won’t pretend to be a rugby fan (my dad’s always called it “Posh blokes chasing an egg” and in part I’m inclined to agree), I do understand the value of the sport as an advertising commodity, so it’s...

Leaders

Let Nyan Cat teach you about airplane safety

Internet memes are rarely seen as high culture. Indeed, they're rarely seen as even legitimate forms of entertainment, instead being little more than placeholders used by Facebook trolls with no original thoughts and little inclination to develop...

Leaders

The Power Of Crowdsourcing

The Internet is a prime place to gather people together. Sometimes you don’t necessarily need a group of trolls coming together to slam the Yeezy Boost, or unendingly comment on the blue-black-gold-white dress debate. You might wonder why these...

Leaders

Revenues are up at Twitter - so where now for the social network?

Whenever financial commentators comment on the fiscal possibilities of social media, the focus falls of Facebook. Understandable, I suppose. A fifth of the world's population has an account and the whole platform seems permanently balanced between...

Leaders

Lib Dems unveil 'digital bill of rights' proposal in light of recent hacks

It's been reported that the Liberal Democrat party will be pledging a crackdown on 'intimate' images of people being posted online without their consent as part of their pre-election manifesto. The move arrives just a week after Apple's iCloud was...

Leaders

Daley Male: why prejudice won't affect the Olympian boy-brand

Unless you’ve been asleep for the past week, you’ll be all too aware of Olympian Tom Daley’s announcement about his sexuality via a ‘selfie’ YouTube video. The reaction has been incredible - from the media and the public...

State of Grace. Beware - careless tweets cost careers.

Twitter can be a bear pit. As a repository for anything that crosses one's mind, it tends to attract rebuttals, rejections, replies and refutations like an old sweet attracts pocket fluff. However, with a bit of luck, a judicious following policy and...

Leaders

Our top Halloween highlights for branded content

Halloween is big business in ad land, more so now than ever before, so every brand and agency under the sun is taking advantage of the seasonal madness by bringing a (temporary) spooky edge to their creative advertising work. Here I'll be examining a...