Communication Agency

Communication agencies have to be able to hadle PR because PR is a part of communication. There were advertising agencies and PR agencies, but now we have to think about clients' whole communication. We can't be a advertising agency or a PR agency any more. We have to be a communication agency. If advertsing is not required to achieve their purpose, we have to make a plan without advertising.

Media agencies muscle in - RP Week
http://www.prweek.com/uk/news/903849/

Volvo has set alarm bells ringing among PR agencies by selecting a media buying shop to handle its entire social media strategy.

MindShare was selected as the agency to handle Volvo's social media strategy and digital PR in UK. This seems natural as stated above.

Best iPhone Free Apps

Radar iPhone App

This is the list about what free apps for iPhone I am/was frequently using.

1. Radar
   Radar is a mobile photo sharing service. You can upload photos, explore photos, comment on photos, and also sync with Twitter. When you post a photo publicly, the link to the photo appears in your Twitter timeline like this.


2. Brightkite
   Recently I don't use Brightkite, but this app is great. It seems that Brightkite users increased after iPhone native app was released.


3. LinkedIn
   This is an app for a LinkedIn user.


4. Facebook
   This is an app for a Facebook user.


5. MySpace
   This is an app for a MySpace user.

For a web servicer, to make an iPhone app for the service is important to get more users. On the Apple's ecosystem, Apple and web servicers can get win-win outcomes.

Best iPhone Paid Apps

Current home screen

My friend who bought iPhone recently asked me what iPhone apps are good to use, so I'm writing what my best iPhone apps are. First, I'll write about paid apps in this post.

1. Saisuke
   Saisuke enables us to sync with Google Calendar. With Saisuke, I can view and esit my schedules. I've also tried out CalenGoo which is Google Calendar app for iPhone too, but Saisuke is still good for me in terms of operability.


2. SimplyTweet
   I've tried out many Twitter clients, and I felt that SimplyTweet is apposite for me. It's very simple and eye-friendly. I loved Hahlo before, but it demands logging in at frequent intervals recently. So I stopped using Hahlo a while ago.


3. Metal Gear Solid Touch
   This is a game app. I don't often play games on iPhone, but beatiful graphics on this app is really great.


4. Mobile Fotos
   This is an app for uploading and exploring photos on Flickr. Sample photo which uploaded with this app is here.


5. Photo Rotate
   This app lets us correct the rotation of photos taken with iPhone, so we can view it correctly

Giant of Search and Portal in Japan

Compared to Yahoo! US, Yahoo! Japan is very strong. Yahoo! Japan's share of searches is 52% in Japan , while Yahoo!'s share of searches is 20% in US.

Source：Nielsen Online NetView(Japanese)

Source: comScore Releases April 2009 U.S. Search Engine Rankings
In terms of reach, Yahoo! Japan is dominant in Japan. Yahoo! Japan has 83.5% of reach in Japan, while Yahoo! in US has 61.9% of reach there.
Yahoo! Japan

Yahoo!

Source: Google Ad Planner

Tokyo BarCamp 2009

Tokyo BarCamp 2009 was a great event, affording an opportunity to all participants to think about the future of the web.
Every session I joined was good. When I joined a discussion, I thought I wanted to know about a man who was speaking at the time. If I could know his latest tweet, photo, and blog post, the discussion would be more interesting. I think Augmented Reality(AR) has possibilities in this regard. Unfortunately, I couldn't join a session about AR. Is there any sessions about AR today? I wanna talk about this with tech geeks!
There were many discussions about Japanese web services. "Why could Mixi get a number-one social networking service?" "Why does Rakuten keep frumpy design?" They were very interesting.
These topics seem to be related to Japanese national character. Japanese tends to think of the web as the virtual world, not as continuation of the actual world. Kanji characters also have an influence on them, because Kanji characters are ideographs.
At the time between sessions, I talked with a participant about Japanese web services as follows: Some people having used Mixi migrate over to Ameblo, because they are tired of the relationship there. There are some clusters which people live in. (e.g. Mixi, Zenryaku Profile, Web 2.0, 2ch + Nico Video)
I would like to participate the next Tokyo Barcamp!