A Tribute to Merton

Last Thursday I wrote about the internet's latest fad, Chat Roulette. I posted the awesome video of self taught piano player Merton with his improv piano sessions with random chatters. Just two days later in front of a live audience at Fillmore in Charlotte, North Carolina, Ben Folds Five performed a tribute to Merton...

Whose View 6 Months On

Back in September I wrote about WhoseView.ie. 6 months on I thought it would be nice to take another look at the site and see exactly what has happened in the last 180 or so days.

WhoseView.ie are now averaging 60k unique visitors a month and have reached 2,600 site members. The site has also surpassed 6,300 reviews with an average of 60 to 100 reviews posted every day. The guys have also been working tirelessly to optimise the site and have fixed over 300 different bugs and implement a host of new functionality driven directly by user experience feedback. Finally, WhoseView.ie has also been striving to increase its all Ireland offering with Galway and Cork now representing almost 25% of all reviews being posted.

An overview of site traffic

Recent Site Landmarks

• On Sept 25th we were shortlisted in 3 categories at the 2009 Irish Web Awards.
• On Oct 27th, we were shortlisted in 3 categories at the 2009 Golden Spider Awards.
• On Nov 1st, we rolled out our service to Galway, adding 4,000 businesses to the the existing 38,000 Dublin businesses listed on whoseview.ie
• On Nov 10th, we surpassed the 100,000 visitor since opening the site to the public on July 17th 2009.
• On Nov 19th, we won the Best Indigenous Website at the 2009 Golden Spider Awards.
• On Nov 20th, we signed a content partnership with Google to launch in Jan 2010.
• On Dec 18th, we signed up our 1000th member.
• On Dec 21st, our members have posted close to 2,500 category reviews and comments.
• On Dec 23rd, we launched our iPhone V1 app, allowing our members search and browse local businesses in Dublin and Galway while on the move.

To quickly recap, for those who aren't familiar with the site, WhoseView.ie is a review site based entirely on user generated review. You review whatever you want to review and you review it exactly as you want to. The most important thing is that WhoseView assures unedited reviews just as the member intended. This, coupled with the functionality of the site itself, makes it a real winner. The site is driven by a principle of user facilitation and user functionality. Members can use the site more like a social network. Add friends, comment on reviews and engage with people who have similar tastes/likes. In my mind this makes perfect sense. You actually get to communicate with other members and get can share your opinion - essential for a review service, and yet this is the first time someone has really done it.

Online PR With Damien Mulley

First I'd like to apologise for the lateness of this post - I don't really have any excuse. Back at the end of January I was lucky enough to be offered the chance to join a small group of individuals to participate in Damien Mulley's first Online PR Training Course. As would be expected with anything that Damien does, the initial session had over 80 requests to attend for the 30 places that he had to offer, so I was extremely delighted to be able to attend. The event would act as a sounding board and "staging environment" for Damien to put together a full publicly accessible version for Digital and Public Relation professionals.

For the session that I participated in there were 6 fundamental areas that Damien covered:

• 0. Basics of Online Comms
• 1. Developing a Communications Bible
• 2. Developing a Comms Philosophy
• 3. Working with: Blogs, Forums, Twitter etc.
• 4. Finding Tools – Who is talking about you online?
• 5. Crisis Communications

While this may seem like the lazy way out, and I hope you'll be convinced that it isn't, I decided that the best recap I could possibly write up on the event wouldn't surpass the excellent write up and video that Leo Fogarty wrote. So with that in mind, please have a look at Leo's recap and stay tuned to Mulley.ie for news of an upcoming course that you could take - I highly recommend it!

Chat Roulette

When it comes to fads, memes, virals and trends, the internet has given us some real crazy stuff over the last decade. In my humble opinion though, this may just be the craziest so far. Chat Roulette is a new internet fad that put you in touch with a random stranger for videochat. You can click "next" any time, or stay with the person that was randomly selected. Be warned, however, this is a realm of completely unfiltered, unmonitored human nature. Anything goes!

This could be as inoffensive as people in masks dancing around, Chinese users giving virtual high fives or a puppet psychotherapist who will sit with you for hours and help you solve all your problems.

Unfortunately you may also find yourself looking at a man holding up a sign that reads "Assroll?". To immediately become a naked man rolling over backwards. In many ways this is YouTube with a whole heap more nudity and exhibitionism.

There are people out there, however, who are doing some cool things with the service. The most famous is self thought piano player Merton with his
awesome improv piano sessions with random chatters...

---- Update ----

Unfortunately Merton's video was removed by YouTube “due to terms of use violation.” Thankfully he did an edit and got it back up...

Display Ads: Amnesty International

I saw this, and for the first time in a very long time I was stopped in my tracks by an online ad. This is just the most recent in a great line of online work that Amnesty have done. Serious hat tip!