Happy Slapping 2.0 - Sex, honour, shame, and blackmail in an online world

I was in two minds about writing this post but I felt it was worth sharing.

If you've known me for any length of time or read much of what I write and talk about here and elsewhere, you'll know that I'm vocal in the gender debate in the mobile industry and beyond. I want to see more women in senior level jobs in our sector, more women at board level, more female investors (and to become an investor, you have to have worked your way to the top to earn the money or you've inherited it), and more women join our industry in all types of job from coding and programming to data science to marketing and ops and more (and not just in token sales roles to appeal to the male tech buyers thanks very much). 

Aside from the financial gains a company gets from having more balanced teams at every level, you may wonder why I'm so vocal on this issue. Google it. You'll find plenty evidence and solid research to support this if you don't believe me.

It's because of this: The shaming of women around the world for no reason at all except that they're women; The fact that there are still child brides; FGM; And rape culture in all strata of society. The everyday sexism I, and others experience at home and in the workplace is trivial in comparison to these issues but they are part of the same global problem. It's a continuum.

This article, 'Sex, honour, shame and blackmail in an online world', brought it home to me as to how much work there is still to much to do to change entrenched attitudes and make the world a safer and lovelier place to be for all people, of whatever creed, colour or gender. 

There is much in the article that is truly horrific. But this particular paragraph really shocked me. It had never occurred to me that this would be a 'thing'. This is happening in Agra. The home of the magnificent and awe-inspiring Taj Mahal - a monument to undying love - seen as the most romantic building on the planet. 

"In August 2016, the Times of India found that hundreds - perhaps thousands - of video clips of rape were being sold in shops across the northern state of Uttar Pradesh every day. One shopkeeper in Agra told the newspaper: "Porn is passé. These real-life crimes are the rage." Another, according to the same report, was overheard telling customers that they might even know the girl in the "latest, hottest" video."

I doubt this stuff is restricted to Agra or even India either. It's happy slapping gone to the extreme (that's if you're old enough to remember that). That doesn't make it better or worse. And you might say that technology is to blame as it makes distribution easy and cheap. Despicable scenes of war and terrorism have been distributed on phones for more than 10 years. But it goes much deeper than that. It's about changing attitudes whether it's the everyday sexism experienced in a business environment or on a political podium or the dreadful crimes that women across the world are victim to.

I know these things are not easy to fix and change won't happen overnight. Poverty is playing its part in this as much as culture and tradition and wrong-headed ideas about the role of women in society and what we're good for. But change it must.

2013 is the year of Glastonbury Mobile

Well, at least according to the BBC, and the monster coverage they’re planning of Glastonbury Festival, they believe this will be the first Glastonbury that will be viewed more on mobile than any other device. It will be no mean feat to cover the festival and to deliver the content to the right people at the right time on whatever device they choose. Having delivered on the Olympics last year, this should be more straightforward – well apart from the conditions – there’s no newly-built, state-of-the-art media centre at the festival. Nevertheless, it’s still a big job.

As for the punters, like myself, who make the annual pilgrimage to the Pilton Pop Party, I wonder if there will be much improvement to mobile communications or to the festival experience via mobile? The app has never been much use to me – what we need is a really good map (where’s the Google maps version of the site?) and the mobile version of the marvellous Glasto Clashfinder. But instead, we get features that the sponsors think are a good idea but are of little use to us paying customers. Maybe this year will be different now that we have EE and their proposed investment in improved coverage for 2G, 3G and 4G…? (More on that here.)  Hey, the app sounds like it will be better too (I live in hope).

Any anyway, it’s almost impossible to see your mobile screen in the sun, or in the rain for that matter. You can’t hear your phone ring and even if you could, you can’t hear what anyone is saying. Battery life is still rubbish and mobile signal is flaky and SMS, probably the most useful feature, can be delayed by hours or even days! I will probably be leaving my fancy Android smartphone at home anyway and revert to my trusty N95 and bits of paper. I don’t want to lose a good phone in the mud as

Still, bring it on, I say. Find me dancing in my wellies to Portishead, Kenny Rogers and The Rolling Stones!

What will bring the money in for telcos?

Well, that’s what I was discussing yesterday at Telecom TV during a live panel session with Camille Mendler from Yankee Group, Edmond Osstyn from Alcatel-Lucent, Ian Scales and Robert Coren from Telecom TV with some extra questions and feedback from the live web audience. It was a lively session and lots of fun to do. We talked about the implications, issues and opportunities for mobile network operators with regards to mobile marketing, strategic partnerships and application stores; where and how would they make the money, what can be done, and what are the challenges they face. Anyway, if you’d like to take a look, you can see it here http://alu1.telecomtv.com/webinar/ondemand/?v=81

Technorati Tags: mobile network operators,mno,mobile,mobile marketing,mobile advertising,application stores,app store

It’s Monday, there must be some (mobile) stuff going on

It’s Monday night and normally at this time, I would be concluding our Mobile Monday session in anticipation of chat and mingling at the bar afterwards. However, due to an inordinate amount of snow (there’s over a foot of it in my garden in South West London) and a distinct lack of public transport available, we’ve had to postpone tonight’s event until next week. So rather than deprive you of your mobile fix entirely, I thought I’d share a few things I’ve been reading about mobile-wise of late.

Long form video content appeals which surprises those who are still fixated on the ‘snacking’ element of mobile entertainment. Of course there is still a case for ‘snacking’ on mobile, but much mobile internet usage, especially since the advent of the iphone, is actually at home and complementing other media usage. There’s more discussion about there being more than one mobile context here.

If mobile entertainment, video or otherwise, is your bag, then you could do worse than head to London to see Ralph Simon in action at E.Factor’s event on 23rd February. It’s free for members to attend and £28 for non-members.

Tonight, we *had* planned to talk about the role of widgets in the future of the mobile web. Instead, you’ll have to make do with Vodafone Betavine’s widget competition. Betavine, a Vodafone Group R&D lab, is offering mobile developers a chance to win £20,000 in a new mobile widget competition. The competition opens today and runs until 30th April. The rules are very simple and seems like a great opportunity to me.

Opera claims that 9 out of 10 mobile internet users are male. I think this research is somewhat skewed. Research I’ve been looking at shows that smartphone usage, including the iphone, is heavily male skewed which probably explains the figures that Opera is reporting. Overall, however, the mobile internet is older and more female than you might expect. At least that’s what the nice people at m:metrics shared with me recently.

And last but not least…

Despite the snow, my friend, Oli Barrett, made a valiant effort at the crack of dawn to launch his Make Your Mark With a Tenner competition. Possibly not the best day of the year to choose to launch your new campaign, but nevertheless, it’s got picked up on by The Telegraph. It’s a really simple premise, 25,000 kids will get given a tenner and a month to go and make money with it. Oli explains it all here.

Technorati Tags: mobile,opera,opera mini,statistics,report,video,entertainment,mobile content,links,linkage

A little bit of social media history happened today

The more time I spend on this planet, the more I'm fascinated by human behaviour, the more I enjoy seeing the norms being challenged, the more I'm interested in how real people engage with and use technology. And I got a cup of that this morning.

There was a social media coup this morning over at Thomson Reuters in London. The Prime Minister was coming in for a press conference to discuss the measures the Government is taking to ease our current UK and global financial situation. Of course the usual suspects were there - kosher journos from The Guardian, Telegraph, City AM, BBC et al. But in amongst them were two of our own - Mike Atherton and Christian Payne aka Sizemore and Documentally. Both of them are regulars at the Tuttle Club. Both are very experienced in writing, filming, photography, blogging, vlogging, lifesstreaming and other bits of social media. But they're not journalists. They're not political analysts. They're just ordinary folk like you and me who happen to have an interest in this social media mullarkey. And they were there, in the front row, courtesy of Thomson Reuters, live streaming the event, with live chat on the side via Qik and Twitter.



You might say, 'so what?'. And I suspect you wouldn't be alone. Well the 'so what' element for me is that the powers that be recognised alternative media. They realise that blog distribution helps them reach the parts that other media doesn't. It means that I actually listened in to the press conference live. And it was even better because I could see the live chat going on alongside on Qik and Twitter. It was also fun to see how excited Mike and Christian were to be involved.

It makes this stuff real for normal folk. It's not about the City's suited and booted. It's not about having a press pass. It's not about being a political analyst or being in the inner circle. It's about being there, from the comfort of your own home, with your friends (and a lot of my friends were twittering about it and I expect are also blogging it as I write and you read).

Ok, so a lot of the questions were above my head (I was suffering from Continuous Partial Attention as usual - but that's another story) but it did mean I could tune in very easily. It didn't need fancy cameras (I watched a lot of it from Christian's Qik channel which was from his mobile phone I hasten to add), and it didn't need the BBC to broadcast it either. Thomson Reuters own video was much better quality in terms of production values but the Qik was definitely good enough for me.

It was also good to know that Downing Street's PR team was paying attention too. A friend who works with them told me the team was watching with interest.

I guess the interesting thing now is to see how this activity has galvanised the community in some way. Yes, of course conversations are important and news coverage seems to specifically encourage conversations. But conversations are just part of the story. As they say, talk is cheap. I would add that community is what you really want to galvanise. And I felt a little bit of that today. The community where I hang out were tuning in and chatting about what the Prime Minister was actually saying and doing our work at the same time and chatting with each other (you see, it's that Continuous Partial Attention thing again - I wonder if that means the PM should use shorter words and sentences or something?). And it felt really good to be part of it.

Well done Ilicco, Christian and Mike. Your community is proud of you.

More about it here and here.

A couple of viral campaigns with a touch of mobile

I've stumbled across a couple of nice viral campaigns, both with a hint of mobile video about them, via Alfie and Tom respectively.

The first is an exclusive McFly video of 'Baby's coming Back' with the band appearing on customised mobile phones. It's a really imaginative use of mobile video and put a smile on my face. I also signed up to the JoinUp campaign at http://www.sendmyfriend.org/mcfly/ where they're campaigning for education for all children globally. Once you've signed up, you can download your own arms and accessories for your mobile phone. And I hope, in time, we'll see some similar treatments of other music videos and/or some spoofs. Looks like it's pretty simple to do. Never mind the DRM ;)


The second example is a campaign for the Royal Navy called 'Get the Message'. Again using mobile video, here you can choose a method of delivery for your message ranging from a Diver to Helicopter Pilot, then you can choose to send the message to your friend's email address or mobile phone and then you can insert a short message. If you've chosen mobile (I sent one to myself), then you get sent a wap push message telling you that you have a confidential message waiting for you and a link to a wapsite to collect it. The link loads very quickly and you see a video and at the end, your message appears and is customised with your precise message. Very cool. You can see my test example here.



As you can see, my words aren't the most imaginative in the world, but you get the idea. The icing on the cake with this campaign would be to make it very easy to save and embed the video to leave a message with a mate on myspace for example. Instead I had to sideload my video from my phone to youtube and get the link from there. Nevertheless, it's a very nice campaign and an effective use of mobile video as part of a mobile marketing campaign.