Social media is great for talking about, well – social media. But as I'm sick of all the self-proclaimed social media experts, tweets and slideshare presentations with social media strategies, I don't think you can discount it as a passing trend. Social media IS important. But it's also an evolving concept, and trying to [...]

You've probably seen the twittering cat door, the twittering office chair and the twittering bakery. These lovely examples have one thing in common: they all use home-made devices that connect to Twitter. And while these application may seem like novelty, I do think they represent something something brilliant: off-the-shelf technology that allows anything to [...]

Instead of using social media to find new ways of basically selling chocolate bars to people (aka advertising), shouldn't the power of these wonderful tools be used for something good instead? 

Obama used social media to mobilise a whole generation of people. This proves that the infrastructure can provide a great deal of momentum that cannot [...]

Aspargus soufflé!

There are so many "experts" on social media right now that you can't even call it expertise anymore. A slideshare search gives you 5000 presentations on the topic. I shall conclude that the difficulty level of understanding social media is below that of making a decent soufflé. 

From Google analytics: you. 

It probably doesn't come as a surprise that most of The Planning Lab readers are Swedish. Roughly 60 percent are from Sweden, and half of you are from Stockholm. 

The other sizable visitor groups, roughly 30 percent, are from the US, Germany, Brazil, Singapore, UK and Australia – not surprising since these are [...]

Today the trial against the Pirate Bay begins. The four people that are on trial are facing damages of up to $14 million (115 MSEK). That's a lot of money. Or is it? 

Consider this: there are 25 million people using Pirate Bay. If every user would pay about 55 cents, the legal damages for Pirate [...]

Some decades ago, the Netherlands had big social problems with drugs. Stopping the drug trafficking seemed implausible in a small and border-less country. 

Compared to many other European countries that had an absolutist view on the legal status of drugs, the Dutch chose a pragmatic solution: tolerance of “soft drugs” to be able to fight trafficking [...]

After two years in the making, our website is finally up. I have only been involved in the project for the last months, but I can say: self-promo projects are no walk in the park. Quite the opposite. Strange, considering we as agencies can whip up a campaign or brand strategy in no time. 

If you [...]

Everything's linked: A visualisation of the blogosphere

The few years has seen a boom in trendspotting, most noticeable in the shape of blogs as they are the ultimate way for trendspotters to reach out with ‘new news’. But have trendspotting finally reached its peak? 

The sheer abundance of “source” trend blogs, boosted by other social media, and [...]