Remember the Hotelicopter? Well, after all the japery that got quite a lot of people going, the real one has launched today – and it’s a lastminute.com meets comparethemarket.com holiday and travel search engine thingy. Fail.
Weird thing about this is, they’ve conjured up a gimmick that got a massive amount of traffic through to their website on and around April 1st – but fucked it right up by running a weeklong countdown before the real service launched today. No-one’s looking at the URL anymore, because there’s no giant flying hotel to gawp at – so the whole thing feels a bit pointless. Why didn’t it launch ON April 1st?
I’m utterly floored by this one, and so upsettingly jealous. Skittles have just knocked their old website off the face of the earth and replaced it with…..other people’s websites!
Oh yes. Skittles.com is now nothing more than an on-top widget that provides the navigation, and all the content is hosted on social platforms. Products? That’s on wikipedia. Chatter? Over to Twitter with you! Media? Youtube and Flickr. All under the latest moniker, Transplant the Rainbow – it’s true Skittles tongue in cheek, abstract style and I’m absolutely in love with it.
Apparently Twitter and Facebook did a bit of a naughty round the back of the bikesheds, because Facebook’s just popped out a dirty hybrid sprog that looks an awful lot like it’s father. I like it though, so there – interesting to see what it does to Twitter in the UK since it’s just hit a crucial tipping point in uptake, since tweets are a bit crippled over here without the SMS awesomeness that accompanies the US version.
However – since I spent a good hour watching Twitterfall as Lord Jackson’s almighty tickets went on presale Wednesday morning, and getting caught up in the hype to the tune of a large wallet shaped dent (MJ tickets anyone?) – I finally get why twitter is brilliant. It can throw tweets around the world without worrying about privacy simply because there’s virtually no other personal information attached to Twitter profiles, and from that, we get brilliant social trend trackers like Twistori. Facebook might have managed to apply the ideals to the Wall (and it makes sense to do so, however blatent a ripoff it may be), but that’s from within a closed network of friends - Twitter has the added benefit of stranger-factor, and that’s half the joy. I’ve not got any personal data at risk on Twitter so I’m not bothered when Mr Mystery starts following me – if anything, it just encourages me to be more entertaining with my tweets. If the same bloke appeared on Facebook I’d be naturally more apprehensive.
So, sod that last bit actually. I’m starting to convince myself that all the updates to Facebook are going to do is raise even more curiosity over at Camp Twitter, get people used to the utter pointless brilliance of it, and get them on there too. So there. Again.
Watch in HD on youtube here. Then feel free to find out more about it, because I’m too busy watching it on repeat to find out what the cackstorm ‘Electrabel’ is. Mon Suspecté une rebrand.
..with a tiny interesting side point about the power of social influence within internet culture, but psh. Stephen Fry – is there anything he can’t do?
I came across this after clicking on a completely wank but baffling banner ad about a USB fish offering driving tips – and was absolutely blown away by it. Eco:Drive allows any usb stick to function as a sort of black box for your Fiat – recording driving data and running it back through your computer (with a really nice looking Air program – multiplatform!), allowing you to analyse your driving from an ‘eco’ perspective and whatnot, with a quaint little social element called EcoVille to boot. But what really got me was the driving tips – not only does it tell you how to improve, it does it using data from your last drive so you can visualise what you’re doing wrong and how to improve on it.
If only the Fiat 500 wasn’t such a dog on the outside, I’d be sold by this.
Apparently that totally bizarro Bond Sony HD ad that’s been running recently is completely in keeping with Quantum of Solace – it was dead nicely shot and that, but I didn’t have a shitting clue what was going on in the cinema either. One for a rewatch methinks!
Remember the Hotelicopter? Well, after all the japery that got quite a lot of people going, the real one has launched today – and it’s a lastminute.com meets comparethemarket.com holiday and travel search engine thingy. Fail.
