“May joy and good fellowship reign, and in this manner, may the Olympic Torch pursue its way through ages, increasing friendly understanding among nations, for the good of a humanity always more enthusiastic, more courageous and more pure.” Pierre de Coubertin “There's no reason to be the richest man in the cemetery. You can't do any business from there.” Harland David “Colonel” Sanders, founder of the KFC restaurant chain. An article on the London Business School’s website argues ... [More]

Whether you like it or not, fashion is something everybody has to deal with. And this is not a new thing. Even the most unexpected characters had a soft spot for la mode: Friedrich Engels (co-author of The Communist Manifesto with Karl Marx) was always impeccably dressed, with a hipster-like quiff and bushy beard combo, and even Albert Einstein, with his signature “out of bed” hair, bow tie and matted woolen jumper can be considered one of the fathers of the “Geek chic” style – although he didn’t use to carry... [More]

Here’s a  vintage postcard from Spain, when the climate was great, the food rich and cheap, and the people happy and carefree. Nowadays, the climate is still amazing, the food still beautiful and inexpensive; the people, though, are not in a very “fiesta fiesta!” mood anymore. BBC News wrote, a few days ago: ‘The country has the highest unemployment rate in the European Union and it is expected to rise further this year.’ ‘”The figures are terrible for everyone and terrible for the governm... [More]

'Cats and monkeys; monkeys and cats; all human life is there.' Henry James 'Cats are intended to teach us that not everything in nature has a purpose.' Garrison Keillor Animal loving communities are all over the Internet. Cats are usually the stars, but also dogs are enjoying their online VIP (Very Important Pet) moment. According to an article published on The Telegraph a few months ago, ‘More than half of pet owners post about their animals on social networks and one in ten pets has their own profile.&rsq... [More]

Turbines that look sexy? Engines that make you feel naughty? Welcome to the lascivious world of General Electric. The equation goes like this: Duchampian approach + everyday object + decontextualisation + recontestualisation + a vintage effect obtained with an Instagram filter = a new way to look at a washing machine. ‘The spectator experiences the phenomenon of transmutation; through the change from inert matter into a work of art, an actual transubstantiation has taken place...All in all, the creative act is not performed by t... [More]

Now that Instagram belongs to the all-swallowing beast called Facebook, thousands of users are boycotting the photo sharing program, frantically looking for a substitute, a palliative able to relieve the pain and distress. Enters Boobstagram. Even if it looks like the name says it all, there is more to it; it is about photos of boobs taken with Instagram, yep, but for a cause. The French website explains the reason for this parade of intimate portraits: ‘showing her breasts to the Internet is good, showing them to her doctor is ... [More]

Facebook bought Instagram for $1 billion. Everybody knows it. A river of “oh, no!”, “meh” and “OMG” flooded Twitter and blogs and forums and threads all over the world in the last two days, describing the atmosphere. Just over a month ago, we asked ‘What is the biggest threat to Facebook? The Apocalypse? Google and Twitter and Chuck Norris and Godzilla together against the common enemy? Nope. According to Business Insider, the real menace is Instagram, ‘the out-of-nowhere startup that allow... [More]

Everyone of us has been in a relationship in which, whatever one says, the other is going to say the opposite. It is not very pleasant, and it often ends with one of the partners running down the stairs with his/her collection of rare Studio One records, expressing unfriendly opinions and thoughs in a rather loud voice. This is what seems to happen between Vodafone and its Facebook "fans". As you can see from the following images, there is no need to explain what has gone wrong, as virtually every post receives a sarcastic / aggre... [More]

Looks like 2012 will be a great year for Geminis, Olympic Games enthusiasts, and for the ones who do not believe in the Mayan prophecy. And for fashion eCommerce, too. eMarketing recently reported some very good news, when it comes to fashion eCommerce, claiming that ‘apparel and accessories category—a product type for which shoppers’ desire to touch, feel and try on items before making a purchase was long seen as a deterrent to online sales—is now climbing faster than any other ecommerce product segment.’ &ls... [More]

What is Fancy? If you know the answer, jump to the infographic "Pinterest Vs Fancy" or straight to the part about weird things you can buy on Fancy. If you don’t know what Fancy is, here’s a medley of info about the social photo sharing website / eCommerce. What is it? The Next Web called Fancy ‘the evolution of Amazon.’ ‘The site is a collection of fashion, photography, graphic design images, furniture and quirky items.’ In another article, they write: ‘Fancy is a vis... [More]

‘Talent borrows, genius steals.’ Oscar Wilde. The gentle art of copying. It all began seven years ago with Yupoo, the weird-named Flickr clone founded in China; since then, the idea of clone evolved, following the latest trends in the fields of social networks, platforms and technology. Now, after the huge success of Pinterest, the same guys behind Flickr’s evil twin created Huaban, and many other copycats appeared overnight. VentureBeat’s Jason Lim argues that ‘Cloning or copycatting ideas, companies... [More]

What is the biggest thread to Facebook? The Apocalypse? Google and Twitter and Chuck Norris and Godzilla together against the common enemy? Nope. According to Business Insider, the real menace is Instagram, ‘the out-of-nowhere startup that allows people to do what they like to do on Facebook easier and faster.’ For a simple reason: Facebook’s blindspot, argues the website, ‘is that it is not the easiest way to share photos of your friends and family over your phone. It's too slow.’ Morgan Stanley&#... [More]

‘Mastery passes often for egotism.’ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe    Many mistakes have been made in history. Just two of the most extraordinary cases: It took 177 years to build the Tower of Pisa, but it started to lean just a few years after construction began, as it was built on unstable soil.   In 1961, Decca Records auditioned The Beatles and decided they wouldn’t sell a record. They signed instead Little Tony, an Italian-born Sammarinese pop star and actor. ... [More]

A few days ago I was talking to a friend about the potential of Pinterest. I was in a “Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125 mood”, going from Allegro to Maestoso, glorifying the role of inspiration in this (often visionless) world, singing the praises of visual content and colours and mood boards like a young and inspired Pavarotti, thrilled by the future of “social”. My friend pulled a bored/ not impressed/ thinking-about-the-laundry kind of face, then said ‘Don’t know what you&... [More]

‘A stiff apology is a second insult... The injured party does not want to be compensated because he has been wronged; he wants to be healed because he has been hurt.’ Gilbert K. Chesterton ‘No apologies, nah suckers I’m not sorry You can all sue me, y’all could be the case of me No apologies, y’all feelin’ the force of me No remorse for me, like there was no recourse for me.’ Eminem, “No Apologies” Chesterton and Eminem, finally together; a strange couple indeed, a ... [More]

‘The Devil wears Prada, but the people wear plimsolls’, reads a sign outside Blackman’s, an old footwear store on Cheshire Street, East London. How can luxury brands meet the plimsolls aficionados? They go social, relax a bit and try to engage, embracing the philosophy of “Less is More”. At the beginning, the company gave the impression that they were not interested in the social arena, while everybody else was there. Then, suddenly, this week they declared guerre nucleaire. And, judging from the start, it... [More]

Do you remember Baywatch? Gorgeous ladies running in slow motion, humble heroes with abs of steel and bulletproof hairdos, yes, that’s the one. It was entertaining, even funny at times, and it featured everybody’s idol, David Hasselhoff. But it was faker that fake. Too much of everything. So we went back to a simpler life, with real problems and real kids (supposedly), and came up with Dawson’s Creek. Still fake, but closer to reality. Every ten years, more or less, we need to go back to the tabula rasa, to start everyth... [More]

In Italy, if you expect too much they say you want ‘a full cask and a drunk wife’. You cannot have it both ways, according to popular wisdom. That is not true in the case of crowdsourcing, though. Recently, everybody has been talking about Yayoi Kusama’s installation at the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art, based on a elementary, genius intuition: build a domestic environment inside the gallery, then let the kids use it as a canvas, putting thousands of stickers everywhere – sofa, table, chairs, piano and walls. T... [More]

Social media is often a tricky matter for brands, especially when it comes to companies producing and/or promoting alcoholic beverages; rules and guidelines are getting way stricter, as we read just recently on Marketing Magazine, September 2011: ’The European Forum for Responsible Drinking has formed a partnership with the Distilled Spirits Council of the US to devise a set of self-regulatory guidelines for advertising on social-media sites. The guidelines include restricting Facebook users aged under 18 from accessing official alcohol b... [More]

Kim Jong Il, the Dear Leader, is dead. Twitter, as usual, broke the news. Then, the rest of the web was flooded with memes, news, jokes, serious analysis of the situation and facetious points of view. Videos of a nation mourning in a way that reminded of over-the-top, oversaturated, over exaggerated Godzilla movies (the Dear Leader’s favourite flicks) went viral, as well as the ultimate masterpiece of the Tumblrsphere - Kim Jong Il Looking at Things, a collection of pictures of the Dear Leader, well, looking at things. The Internet a... [More]