Facebook now has more than 200m users making it the 5th biggest nation in the world - if it were a nation. But the fact that it is not a nation shouldn’t mean that Mark zuckerberg shouldn’t be seen as a leader. Afterall, his site houses the messages, photos, events, friendships, relationships and habits of its inhabitants; and Zuckerberg controls how we interact with them. Zuckerberg has never been one to shy away from making contraflow decisions and sticking to them. However Facebook inhabitants are revolting. Is Zuck changing his leadership style?

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Spotify is about to release an API. That means Spotify is about to explode through the web, gaming, and PCs. But is it more than just “a magical version of iTunes in which you’ve already bought every song in the world“? And if so, is it brand friendly?

Yes. And yes.

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Earlier today I attended a WIRED seminar moderated by David Rowan, Editor of Wired UK, with Chris Anderson (Editor in Chief of Wired and author of The Long Tail). The seminar’s title was pretty promising. Anderson covers an astonishing array of new technologies and idea in each issue of Wired. But which out of them does he feel merits the title of the Next Big Disruptive Idea?

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Last week News Biscuit wrote a spoof article about a man who almost killed himself because of his Twitter addiction. Despite the spoof, at its core lies the incontrovertible addictive nature of Twitter.

Last year countless businesses banned Facebook access due to interminable employee distraction. Why are social networks so addictive? And why aren’t brands benefiting?

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We hosted the most recent mashup* Event a short while ago where we discussed the joys of the new open source mobile platforms - Apple’s iPhone, Google’s Android, and Symbian (pushed by Nokia). 100 industry developers, investors, entrepeneurs and ad men attended and contributed to the event but there was one recurring theme - privacy and security. Is this really the most important part in mobile development? Or should we be paying attention?

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Came across this wonderful quote from Eric Hoffer the other day while investigating the origins of play for a client brief:

“the pattern of unfinishedness should be the most pronounced in the authomous individual…the retention of youthful characteristics in adult life endows man with a perpetual playfulness so fruitful of insights and illuminations.” (Hoffer, 1952, p. 153)

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- Jonathan Macdonald points us to the Kodak’s new brand utility site Ski Guide 

- iPhone Gloves over at Mashable

- Jerimiah posts about the Air Force’s approach to responding to blog posts

- Guys over at Hyper Happen talk about the BBC’s rebood project

- Another one from Mashable about the future of Augmented Reality

Enjoy!

The economist have released this presentation about managing a client’s temptation to slash their marketing and advertising budgets in times of recession. This sort of response is not unusual for these unsettling times and as an argument it makes a lot of sense. But I’ve been thinking, not necessaily how we can persuade clients to maintain budget levels, but why clients feel they can make the cuts in the first place. They know the arguments better than anyone, they probably agree with the thinking, but yet they still cut them. Why?

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Plenty of brands have been experimenting with Crowdsourcing over the last 2 years…Best Buy asked people’s views on how they could improve Toshiba and HP laptops, enacting the changes through their Blue Label brand; while Dell and Starbucks both set up community platforms to source consumer’s thoughts on how to improve their services. But 2009 looks set to be the year the potential of the crowd is tested even further; rather than simply listening to the crowd a few brands are turning to the crowd to actually create their ware from scratch. 

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