Londons property boom & more news

Londons property boom

It’s hard to put the scale of London’s property boom into words, so here are some charts | Quartz – looking at these numbers makes me feel really uneasy. Londons property boom has been fuelled by external money and a massive increase in population. There are quality of life issues that won’t deter the absentee owners of Londons property boom; but will deter key staff. Then there is the distortion of the UK economy caused by Londons property boom.

Design

Jellyfish Tank Installation Opens After Store Hours – PSFK – this is so cool, I like the mix of forms. It’s like something out of a William Gibson novel

Innovation

StarHub encourages locals to donate unused talk time | Marketing Interactive – making a virtue out of the evils of telecoms bundling

Marketing

Are your Western Marketing Strategies Failing to Understand the Chinese Consumer? | LinkedIn – a lot of the time, yes

Media

Trust in Sponsored Content Runs Low | Marketing Charts – there are any number of reasons that this result could have occurred through poor survey design, however if it is true marketers, professional and amateur ‘media brands’ need to revise the way they do sponsored content to be more relevant and less salesy

For Taylor Swift, the Future of Music Is a Love Story – WSJ There are a few things I have witnessed becoming obsolete in the past few years, the first being autographs. I haven’t been asked for an autograph since the invention of the iPhone with a front-facing camera. The only memento “kids these days” want is a selfie. It’s part of the new currency, which seems to be “how many followers you have on Instagram.” 

Fan Power 
A friend of mine, who is an actress, told me that when the casting for her recent movie came down to two actresses, the casting director chose the actress with more Twitter followers. I see this becoming a trend in the music industry. – This then begs the question what would a record label bring to the table for an artist?

Online

A Chinese internet giant has an app to help students cheat on their homework | Quartz – firstly is this cheating when we live in an internet enabled age and the collaborative aspect is a handy contrast to an education system that teaches kids by rote. Secondly it seems like a great way for Baidu to burnish its knowledge search credentials. Lastly what a great potential platform for ad targeting little emperors and empresses

Your Selfie Idea Is Not Original. It’s shit. – Tumblr account says it so you don’t have to

Tencent’s WeChat offers personalized, real-world postcards in diversifying move | Shanghai Daily – interesting the ways in which Tencent is experimenting with integrating online and offline through baby steps

Just Like Facebook, Twitter’s New Impression Stats Suggest Few Followers See What’s Tweeted (Danny Sullivan/Marketing Land) – not terribly surprising given the stream of content

Retailing

Retail review: J. Crew | SCMP.com – interesting issue around retail planning (paywall). More related content here.

Web of no web

Samsung, Nest, ARM and others say Smart homes need more than WiFi and Bluetooth, propose Thread IP6 mesh network | 9to5Google – interesting to see how this fits with ZigBee low-power Bluetooth etc.

Wireless

China Mobile to quit WiFi rollout | The Register – didn’t make money