We've found Wally and he's just round the corner !

Google officially launched Streetview last week to much controversy and general public indignation about privacy with numerous stories from reports of images showing a man being arrested in North London, another going into a Soho sex shop and one throwing up on the pavement in Shoreditch and that the UK Google Chief's house has been deliberately not included. On the flip side this has been regaled as a revolutionary developments that it offers in real World mapping - after all when was the last time you were lost and the map made no sense and you wished for a proper look at where you were ? The storeies and conspiracy theories will continue BUT the most important development for us was that Richard in the office found Wally just down the road on Putney High Street - some things never change !

Are you a NOOB or a GURU?

I read an article yesterday that really struck a chord talking about web 2.0 / social media and different people's levels of knowledge and how they view others from this perspective. The essence of the article was, in the words of Joel Postman "Some social media “experts” and veterans look down on social media “noobs,” aka newbies, or newcomers. (The word “noob” comes from l33tspeak, an early hacker “language” now popular among some social networkers.)"
This is something that everyone who knows a little about social media has (I am sure) been guilty of but is absolutely against the principles of social media - after all the clue is in the name "social" - namely that no one knows everything about everything and the point of web 2.0 is about sharing, passing on and commenting on information.
I found this particularly pertinent on a personal level when I recently undertook a search for information on new Asics Kayano trainers and wanted to know if I should get the 14's or 15;s and all the info online proved very useful (the 14's are best btw) and I am currently looking at multi room wireless audio system that is less than 4 figures and social media is proving a hugely valuable resource- on a professional level we recently won a pitch for Racing UK and getting under the skin of the racegoer/ watcher was key to success - social media was invaluable in gaining this understanding (indeed part of the challenge is now setting up their own social community) and for another pitch for a large financial services firm where the challenge was to present how social media could be used to help sell their product in to a new target group understanding the social media profile of these targets was key to the response.

So I guess the point is that we are all gurus in some areas and Noobs in others and the web is there for us to learn from others and social media means there are plenty of teachers out there!