Privacy issues aside, some wonder whether Street View has any purpose, while others fear that it will increase antisocial behaviours like crime (by making it easier to plan entry and escape routes), spying and stalking.

Well you ‘can’ use Street View for good. Finding a place to live in London is usually a real pain, but I found Street View invaluable last night as I was sifting through dozens of potential flats online.

It is important for me to feel safe in an area when I’m walking alone, so I used Street View to see what it would be like to walk from potential flats to the nearest public transport. It was user friendly and helped me decide which flats I was interested in viewing, especially when the online advert did not provide many images of the flat itself.

Surprisingly, there were quite a few streets that I couldn’t go down using Street View. I wouldn’t be surprised by this for a small city like Cambridge, but just outside of central London? This is undoubtedly due to Street View cars encountering a frustratingly one-way street and deciding to move on to the next one.

Despite my annoyance whenever the 22,369 miles of UK streets covered by the Street View cars ‘didn’t’ include the street that I wanted, I have to admit it’s reassuring that Google isn’t quite an all-seeing eye.

Facebook says it listens to it’s users, as it did with the recent terms of use controversy. But whether it will act on their feedback is another matter. Facebook are making further changes in response to user complaints, but has clearly stated it has no intention of reverting back to the previous design, as this is just “one step in the continued evolution of the site”. The new design was according to Facebook, tested with users, so kudos to them for sticking to their guns, but this is a risky approach; ignore users at your peril but ask for their feedback after a change has been made and then ignore it and you’re going to seriously upset some people.

It’s interesting to note the comparisons between the latest redesign and microblogging wunderkind Twitter, particularly “shift[ing] the main emphasis towards real-time conversations and updates as the entry point to Facebook.” As you may or may not know, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg recently (and unsuccessfully) tried to buy Twitter for around $500 million.

Like it or loathe it, Twitter is arguably the poster child for what Mark Goldhaber in 1997 called “the attention economy”, wherein he predicted the currency of the New Economy would not be money but attention. Unlike the information ecomony where content was the key commodity and advertising the money maker, the attention of users is now the golden ticket and content creators are likely to have to pay if they want to be heard.

Facebook did not create the attention economy but they were there at the birth, holding the video camera and handing out cigars. They brought something new to the market and championed the new internet business model: free technology, user-generated content and lots of advertising. But innovation has a shelf life and what we are seeing is companies like Twitter, taking one aspect of what Facebook did well (live status updates) and riffing on it. But how do they anticipate making money out of it? Details of their business model are only just becoming clear but it would seem traditional web advertising won’t be a big part of it. So what are the other options? Pay for popularity? (a web entrepeneur and Twitter “power user” offered to pay $250,000 to have his name included in the Suggested User list for the next 2 years), subscriptions and business accounts with additional features? (Twitter have just confirmed this for 2009), or product placements? (a German start-up called Magpie and Friends pays users to insert ads into their message streams.)

By attempting to match it with Twitter, Facebook are in danger of chasing their own tail: moving away from what they do best and placing too much focus on one feature. Mobile phone companies suffered a similar fate as they eschewed R&D for duplication of competitors’ new features, only to see a rank outsider, Apple, storm the party and subvert the heck out of their paradigm.

Capturing attention is one thing…holding it is another, particularly when attention spans are getting shorter, so to be successful in the Twitter world presumably requires constant and frequent updates. There are already rumours of certain celebrities hiring others to update Twitter for them, which raises the dystopian nightmare of PR companies no longer tell us what to think, but writing our thoughts for us.

You could argue that Insurance company Hiscox have their work cut out, as they predominately offer “extraordinary home insurance” that costs more than the average insurance deal, and comes with all the trimmings.

Therefore, it is interesting to see that the strategy they have fallen back on in their new brand advertising campaign, is one of customer centricity through use of plain English. Clearly when recession is resulting in a falling market, value can be added to brands by understanding and aligning yourself with customer desires and simplifying your products even in the financial services industry.

In one scene the lead character, Jamal, is seen at work in a Mumbai Call Centre (ostensibly for a mobile phone company) and for those who have never been to see a call centre, it was a highly enlightening experience. The main character Jamal, is a Chai-boy (tea-boy) in the call centre, and is seen taking tea into a daily training session where the call centre staff are being instructed in the day’s plot in Eastenders, thus ensuring they are able to converse with average Brits! A rather crude and clichéd scene, but amusing nonetheless.

Then, Jamal is seen helping out a friend by taking over his seat and answering a call. The call as you can imagine does not go well, the customer asks where she has called as she is calling from Kingussie in Scotland and he replies “ah….I am just down the road (he looks around the room for inspiration and spies a poster of Big Ben and Parliament Square)…at Loch Big Ben!”

Well, it’s played for laughs in the film, but there is a very real lesson here that we need to take heed of, our customers can sniff out a lie, and brands should be measuring the impact of the channels on the customer experience. I bet the call that Jamal hangs up on would not have been recorded, in a typical call centre, or highlighted as a negative customer experience for the customer in Kingussie. This focus on customers across cross-channels is essential in difficult economic times, the more customer-focused brands may do better than others!

This scenario however might become a thing of the past. Last week 17 leading mobile operators and manufacturers (including Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Motorola and LG) announced that they are committed to introducing a single universal charger for all new mobiles by the beginning of 2012. Interesting however, Apple and its hugely popular iPhone (which sports a unique charging mechanism) is not currently involved in this movement.

This move will have both fairly immediate and longer-term user benefits. Firstly, it will provide the ability to use the same charger for multiple items (e.g. work and personal mobile). Secondly, the charger will be better for the environment, since it is going to be significantly more energy efficient than current chargers. I suspect manufacturers hope this will counter the environmentally unfriendly image of the mobile phone industry.

The coming together of different manufacturers/brands to ultimately benefit the consumer is brilliant news,  particularly since it will undoubtedly have an impact on the accessories market.

Wouldn’t it be great if other product manufacturers take their lead? For example it would be really handy to have a universal laptop charger.

In a nutshell, the big change to the Facebook terms of use grants them the right to hang on to (and potentially “use”) archived copies of your stuff if you cancel your membership on the site. This “use” is defined in numerous ways in the fine print but one of the terms that seem to have the world’s collective panties in a bunch is “sublicence”: effectively Facebook can sell your content to a third party.

So what’s all the fuss about suddenly? Facebook can already sell your stuff right now if they want to…you gave them permission to do so when you signed up. The word “sublicence” appears in the old terms of use (hands up how many of you read it); the only real difference in the new version is that right exists after you leave. What I think annoys people is the idea that someone is able to make money off something they “own” which possesses no obvious commercial value, or which they lack the ability to monetize themselves. Frankly, the majority of us have little to worry about. The bulk of user content on Facebook is photos, and bad ones at that. I don’t want to see pictures of a hairy Irish guy in a PVC nurse outfit let alone PAY for the privelage (I’ll mention no names so their dignity remains intact).

Perhaps it comes down to a definition of ownership. Facebook have stated that they have never claimed ownership of their members’ content, but when you put your “property” into a big communal bucket you’re pretty much giving it away to the world and are clearly not seeking to make any money out of it, so why does that change if you’re no longer a member of the site? Once it’s out there it’s out there. In the words of Joe Garrelli from NewsRadio: “Getting something off the internet is like getting pee out of a pool.”

Other social networking sites have found ways to make money from user content, such as Flickr (where users’ photos can be sold to third parties and the user receives a royalty), and Threadless (essentially an enormous t-shirt design competition where artitsts submit their designs for the community to vote for and, ultimately, buy). Neither of these sites actually create anything, they merely provide the mechanism for users to submit and interact, and cream a percentage off the top. They have tapped into an enormous global market which effictively comes to them with little or no effort on their behalf. Both potentially make a lot of money, sure, but they are fostering and rewarding the creativity of people who ordinarily would have no means to commercialise their work.

Update: Facebook have reverted back to their old terms of use while they “resolve the issues that people have raised.” Facebook backtracks.

The Extreme Group CEO, Al Gosling said, “Extreme has a long history of both branding innovation and association with alpine adrenaline living, but its not very often we get to bring these both together onto the streets of London.”

Clearly a great piece of innovative thinking based on consumer understanding and a well taken opportunity and centred on that element of fun!

Quick quiz question? The most successful consumer electronics device in the last 10 years?
No prizes there….the ubiquitous iPod of course. The iPod launched in 2001 and in its first full year (2002) sold 378,000 units. But according to a leading analyst, Amazon sold 500,000 Kindles in its first full year of trading.
(Refer to image above)

What could be better than the planets two most customer-centric brands (Apple and Amazon) fighting it out for a share of the customer’s wallet?

Now it seems that Leapfrog, the educational toy company, have done the makers of the Blackberry (Research In Motion) a huge favour by introducing little people to the nuances of the Blackberry early in life

Yesterday’s novelty becomes today’s standard and the touch screen interface is no exception; the iPhone’s point of differentiation has essentially disappeared. Combining the touch interface with the very familiar Nokia UI and very competitive pricing could be a winner - although there are rumours that Apple is to debut an iPhone more in keeping with the frugal times we live in.

So, bizarrely, it could be the case that, while everyone was debating the eventual winner of the iPhone versus Google Android wrangle, the world’s largest mobile manufacturer can almost surreptitiously steal the show!