Every now and then I see something that I think is worth sharing, and while it may not be anything to do with Digital Marketing or Marketing at all, I figure why not! Last May two Sumatran Tiger cubs were born at Dublin Zoo. Finally, following a nationwide competition that drew hundreds of entries, the cubs again find themselves in the spotlight with the announcement of their names. “Emas”, which is Indonesian for “Gold”, is the name that has been chosen for the male cub and “Wanita”, meaning “Woman”, for the female.
Gerry Creighton from Dublin Zoo said, ”Emas is a typical male. He’s boisterous and playful and loves to explore. We’ve got to know his manner now and we all agreed that “Gold” is perfect for him. He has a beautiful, vibrant rich gold coat with dark stripes contrasting it and he really is a winner in our eyes.”
Gerry continued; “We love the name Wanita and think it suits her down to the ground While Emas is a very strong male character, Wanita displays truly typical female traits. She has a really sweet nature, and is far more relaxed then her brother. She is really close to her mother and has shown classic feminine characteristics.”
Interestingly the cubs father, Kepala, has taken an active role in the cub’s upbringing which is quite unusual as male Sumatran Tigers are traditionally solitary creatures. In another unusual twist, the family enjoy sleeping together at night alongside each other.
Sumatran tigers are a critically endangered species with fewer than 400 alive in the wild. Dublin Zoo plays a significant role in the international breeding programme which is designed to ensure the survival of tigers in their natural habitat. As well as contributing to this breeding programme visitors to Dublin Zoo have the opportunity to support these critically endangered species by purchasing a Tiger adoption pack at Dublin Zoo gift shop.
The following video is an interview done by Darragh Doyle back in July with one of Dublin Zoo's keepers, Anita, about the cubs.
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Dublin Zoo Announces The Names Of Its Two Sumatran Tiger Cubs
Friday, October 16, 2009
Channel 4 on YouTube
Channel 4 have confirmed that they are in the final stages of signing a deal with YouTube to allow YouTube to host most of the channel 4's content in full. An initial deal has already seen Channel 4 securing the right to sell the advertising that appears around its content, in a profit=share arrangement with YouTube. Channel 4's chairman, Luke Johnson, spoke at last week's Association of Online Publishers Digital Publishing Summit saying that traditional broadcasters needed to 'seize opportunities' to profit from online video.
To date Channel 4 has attracted 25,500 subscribers and a total of 700,000 views to its main YouTube channel, but it also has several other channels including E4, T4 and Hollyoaks. It recent months however, Channel 4 has also been populating its website with a back catalogue of programmes, all of which have utilised pre-roll ads from Nina Ricci's Ricci Ricci and Nokia among others.
Channel 4 sources have indicated that their internal planning believes that the market is approaching a 'tipping point', and a greater number of people will watch its programming online than on TV. This is in direct correlation to a recent survey carried out in Ireland.
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Gary's Social Media Counter
A friend in work, Stephen, pointed me towards this post from Gary Hayes. Gary has used a series of industry stats (see below) to create a "real-time" Social Media counter. OK, we can all agree that this is based on statistics and obviously not an actual counter, but none the less I would say that if anything it's only getting less accurate by under-estimating figures as Social Media adoption grows.
Gary used the following data sources for the counter:
- 20 hours of video uploaded every minute onto YouTube (source YouTube blog Aug 09)
- Facebook 600k new members per day, and photos, videos per month, 700mill & 4 mill respectively (source Inside Facebook Feb 09)
- Twitter 18 million new users per year & 4 million tweets sent daily (source TechCrunch Apr 09)
- iPolicy UK – SMS messaging has a bright future (Aug 09)
- 900 000 blogs posts put up every day (source Technorati State of the Blogosphere 2008)
- YouTube daily, 96 million videos watched, $1mill bandwidth costs (source Comscore Jul 06 !)
- UPDATE: YouTube 1Billion watched per day SMH (2009)- counter updated!
- Second Life 250k virtual goods made daily, text messages 1250 per second (source Linden Lab release Sep 09)
- Money – $5.5 billion on virtual goods (casual & game worlds) even Facebooks gifts make $70 million annually (source Viximo Aug 09)
- Flickr has 73 million visitors a month who upload 700 million photos (source Yahoo Mar 09)
- Mobile social network subscribers – 92.5 million at the end of 2008, by end of 2013 rising to between 641.6-873.1 million or 132 mill annually (source Informa PDF)
- SMS – Over 2.3 trillion messages will be sent across major markets worldwide in 2008 (source Everysingleoneofus sms statistics)
He has also created two downloadable version of the counter (righ click and save as):
Gary can be found at the following places:
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Bloggers To Write Local News
The Guardian Newspaper has confirmed that it will be hiring Bloggers for its local news service. The announcement by the paper that it was looking to hire qualified bloggers who could cover "community news and report on local developments" is a strong indication of the publishers acceptance that "citizen reporters" hold a legitimate place in the news gathering process. The Guardian has said that it will commence with Leeds, Cardiff and Edinburgh, but that they are planning to launch similar local news projects across a number of locations.
Brand Republic reported Emily Bell, director of digital development at Guardian News & Media, as saying: "Guardian Local is a small-scale experimental approach to local newsgathering. We are focusing on three politically engaged cities and we expect to launch in early 2010."
The Guardian are not however the only publication going in this direction. The Guardian will join a growing list of national UK publishers who are looking to tap into the local market. The Mirror Group recently launched more than 100 hyper-local websites that serve specific UK postcodes, with user generated content, while Associated Northcliffe Digital launched a local project with 50 regional news sites allowing people to write and upload their own content.
"Guardian Local is a small-scale experimental approach to local newsgathering. We are focusing on three politically engaged cities and we expect to launch in early 2010," said Bell. Sarah Hartley, the Guardian Local launch editor said: "While researching developments at the grassroots of community journalism, I've been impressed by the range and depth of coverage from local websites and blogs. This experimental project reflects both the shifting nature of journalism and the reality on the ground."
The Guardian has stated that the Bloggers they are looking for will have journalistic qualifications.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
National Australia Bank: Little Wonders
I found this great video over on Digital? Marketing? Blog! (via AdWeek) of The National Australia Bank's latest tv commercial, "Little Wonders". The ad uses some really sweet tilt-shift filming. I just love the effect so much - really nice.
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