Design by Committee

Nokia's "Design by Community" initiative gets punters to vote on aspects of their ideal concept phone. It's an interesting exercise, but I suspect it may be doomed to mediocrity, or at least inconsistency.  It brings to mind the book Painting By Numbers, by Komar and Melamid, which tells the story of an experiment to create the perfect picture, purely by listening to what viewers wanted. The "ideal" painting was a preposterous mix of classic and new, rife with inconsistencies.

Facebook trumps Google

Facebook became the most visited website in the US last week. According to Experian Hitwise, Facebook had 7.07% of US visits in the week ending 13th March 2010, compared to Google's 7.03% of visits.

That 0.04% may seem trivial, but it's monumental. The Web has always connected both information and people. Human connections - not only social but informational - are now coming out on top.

Perpetual Love from Old Spice

Having attracted around 5m views on YouTube within a month, Old Spice goes from strength to strength. Now it's offering ways to woo your woman through continuous Twitter feeds at myperpetuallove.com.

If by any chance you haven't seen the man your man could smell like:

The Marmarati

Staying true to its "You either love it or you hate it" ethos, Marmite has always attracted devotion from ardent supporters. This is the latest installment.

To promote their extra strong XO variant they created a secret society, the Marmarati. Privileged "1st circle" members, who were active bloggers, got to test the product. Naturally they spread the word, building hype before the product launch.

It's one of the best examples of a social media "ambassador programme" that I've seen.

See marmarati.org.

Pepsi Refresh

I like what Pepsi did instead of blowing $20m on a Superbowl campaign. This campaign is massive. US citizens, businesses or not for profit organisations can submit ideas, rally support on Facebook and Twitter and get funding for a social project (see refresheverything.com).

The campaign has limitations: it only takes 1,000 submissions per month and it's not global. While this makes it more manageable for Pepsi, it makes it less inclusive. It also potentially limits how much they can promote the project in Bought media. Driving too much demand will lead to more dissatisfied customers.