The Internet is a Homebrew Medium - by @alrobertson

When I was a student, I made some homebrew. Somewhat unsurprisingly, Chateau Al – as I named it – wasn’t the best tasting bitter the world had yet seen. But, on the plus side, it was cheap, plentiful, and it kicked like the Terminator’s robot mule.

Oddly enough, it was actually quite difficult to persuade people to drink it. In fact, I turned up at a couple of parties with several bottles, and ended up finishing them all myself, so it was in fact true to say that I couldn’t give it away.

But I did have a couple of mates who had enough faith in Chateau Al to get stuck in. We had two or three fantastic nights, followed by a couple of rather grim mornings (the hangovers were savage), and then my short career as a brewer came to an end.

So what’s that got to do with social media? Well, the other day I was chatting to a journalist friend, who was complaining about the low quality of most online content. He sees his livelihood being sucked into something amorphous called ‘the web’ – but when he looks at the web, most of what he sees is rubbish. WTF?

As we talked, it struck me that Chateau Al – and all those myriad other strange homebrews that people produce (believe me, I’ve tried some odd ones. The chilli pepper ouzo was a particular nadir) – are really the beer equivalent of most of the content that happens online. That’s because the internet is a homebrew medium.

Chateau Al wasn’t in any way a professionally brewed beer. As it turned out, its most important role wasn’t to be nice to drink, but rather to act as a social object. It became the key driver for a shared experience that brought me, and Nigel and (I think – it’s all rather hazy) Justin, and a couple of others, together for a few fun nights.

Likewise, online media. Most of it doesn’t exist to be viewed by everyone; to create gossip as enticing as that of Perez Hilton or Popbitch, or dramas as enjoyable as ‘The Guild’ or the mighty ‘Clear Skies’ and ‘Clear Skies 2’, or music as wonderful as Kutiman’s stunning Youtube mashups – or, come to that, content as professionally crafted as that which my old media friend puts together.

It exists to give focus to experiences shared by small, tightly knit groups of friends. Although it’s accessible to many (like my homebrew), it has relevance to and meaning for very few – and that meaning comes not from the content itself, badly shot or recorded and lo fi as it is, but from the social networks that it helps shape and reinforce.

By Al Robertson (@alrobertson)

http://allumination.wordpress.com/
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Orwellian Pub-topia and The Allure of Scalability


I was struck by an analogy I read today where someone likened a brand having a social media strategy to a brand having a pub strategy. In principle, the analogy is okay but the main problem I have with it is about scalability. It would be fine if the analogy were referring to a pub in which hundreds of thousands of people went and that pub sold lots of advertising which was tailored somehow to each patron and the conversations that happened in the pub were written down and analysed by the landlord for targeting purposes and those conversations were read by subsequent patrons and the pubs were giving away free beer because they hadn't worked out how to make money out of the millions of people hanging out in their pub and, well, you get the idea.

The thing that marketers find so deliciously irresistible about all this social media stuff is the allure of scalable. Social media scales, pubs don't, not good pubs. There is a pub in Manchester on Deansgate St. called The Moon Under Water. I have a vague feeling that it's the largest pub in Europe. As a 16 year-old boy, hooked on Embassy No. 1's, it felt like what I imagined the inside of the Titanic was like, full of wooden corridors, everything tied down. And it was one of the only places in Manchester we could be guaranteed to get served at our age. It's a Wetherspoons pub and, like all Wetherspoons pubs, it's principles are based on an essay by George Orwell in which he described the perfect pub. The essay, in fact, is where this pub derived it's name. And Wetherspoons really do follow his essay to the letter. The only problem being that The Moon Under Water is not a very good pub. It's dark and full of slutty-looking under-aged girls being ogled by cantankerous old men that prop up the bar at their usual positions, demanding conversation from the heavily made-up young chavs behind the bar. The slightly sticky carpets, the glistening gel in the hair of the spotty floor manager, the cheap frozen ready meals and the ornate pseudo-Victorian embroidery on the polo shirts. It's all as depressing as it's flat weak larger. The problem is that Orwell's very admirable principles simply don't scale very well. A really good boozer is intimate, warm, welcoming, quality and full of the kind of people you want to be around. If you ever try to scale that it falls apart. By scaling you are relinquishing the humanity, the personal touch and with it, the impression that you actually care. And that's kind of the case with social media, you follow your friends, you choose your settings and you create your own little niche. There may be 250m people on Facebook but there's only 20 of those people you actually give a toss about. But what marketers are really failing to understand is that a social network as an opportunity is very difficult to scale. Maybe it's not such a crap analogy after all. So, what's your pub strategy? I know mine.

By Mike Laurie

Tiger Attack!

In fairness the lager was free so it would have been rude to say no. We were at a charming exhibition at Ketchum PR by Tom Frost


http://www.artmarketillustration.com/artists.php?artist=5&name=tom,frost

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This painting is called "breakthrough" by Jemma Grundon.

It is the first painting I have ever bought. I feel a little reckless and foolish for buying art at the onset of a recession and hope I won't live to regret it. I'm suspicious I wont.

But I think it's incredible, it's a really sad painting to me but everyone else says it's hopeful.

I also bought a print which will be my next blog and I've found the whole experience quite addictive, I want to get more and make my house a mini gallery! I really can't afford to. But I feel like I've started something and it's exciting.

The Artist Formerly Known as Prints

I've bought TheArtistFormerlyKnownasPrints.com/.co.uk

I've no idea what to do with it.

But I love it.

I think it's born of spending too much time with Andy, but in a good way.

But let's not bring him into it, I think he's having a great time as it is