“During the week of April 4, 1964, The Beatles held twelve positions on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, including the top five positions. Neither feat has been been matched by any artist to date.

Since you’re surely wondering, here are those 12 singles and their chart positions that week:

“Can’t Buy Me Love” (1)
“Twist and Shout” (2)
“She Loves You” (3)
“I Want to Hold Your Hand” (4)
“Please Please Me” (5)
“I Saw Her Standing There” (31)
“From Me to You” (41)
“Do You Want to Know a Secret” (46)
“All My Loving” (58)
“You Can’t Do That” (65)
“Roll Over Beethoven” (68)
“Thank You Girl” (79)

The following week, two additional songs made the chart (“Love Me Do” and “There’s a Place”), giving The Beatles FOURTEEN singles in the Hot 100! They also held the top two slots on the album charts that week. “

Somebody please give the people at McCann Erickson Bangkok an award right away. This idea is more than funny, it’s simply brilliant. By taking the meaning of extra time to a whole new level, Durex is promoting its Performa series in a unique way. The Durex Performa condom helps men to control their climax, in a way it gives them some extra time. A sign that announces extra time in soccer matches addresses the target group perfectly.

Under 25’s swap remote controls for iPhones as ‘Social TV’ trend takes over

Under 25’s swap remote controls for iPhones as ‘Social TV’ trend takes over

72% comment on programmes via social networks as they watch them

How young people watch television is rapidly changing according to a new study of UK mobile internet users below the age of 25.

80% of those surveyed use a mobile device to communicate with friends while watching TV with 72% using Twitter, Facebook or mobile applications to actively comment on shows as they are watching them.

These are the findings of a study conducted by Digital Clarity (www.digital-clarity.com), a specialist digital marketing agency which polled over 1300 people under 25 from a cross section of the UK.

The trend known as ‘Social TV’ is popular with young people as it allows them to instantly comment on their favourite shows to friends in different locations via the web or mobile phone.

In the US, a joint Nielsen and Yahoo study late last year found that the trend is already well established with over 86% of mobile internet users choosing to communicate with each other in real-time during broadcasts. Now ‘second screening’ as it is referred to in the States has become common place in the UK too.

Rather than social networks and television competing for attention it seems that young people are happy to embrace both and use one to enhance their enjoyment of the other.

The UK study found that 34% described the trend as ‘fun’, 32% said it made television ‘more interesting’ with 42% mentioning the ‘community’ aspect of ‘Social TV’.

One survey respondent, Ashleigh Foulser, 18 a student in Bournemouth said, “I love being able to keep in touch with my mates while I’m at college. They are in different towns to me but it’s like having them round to watch TV. We share a lot of jokes and if I comment on something funny or stupid I get replies almost immediately.”

The survey discovered that the most common way to communicate is to use Twitter (72%) Facebook was next popular (56%) and mobile applications (34%). 62% of Social TV users like a combination of all three.

Certain shows such as X-Factor, Skins, Glee, as well as soaps Coronation Street and Eastenders are particularly popular in the UK generating very high Twitter traffic and Facebook messages as they are broadcast.

Reggie James, founder of Digital Clarity explains, “Up until 12 months ago, TV
was struggling to reach the younger market as more and more channels were becoming available. Social TV has changed this completely by turning programmes into online events where you have to watch them as they happen”.

The significance of ‘Social TV’ is not lost on the television networks who have found themselves with whole new marketplace and a different pitch for advertisers.

Last month, a US HBO channel reran the Howard Stern film ‘Private Parts’. Stern was watching simultaneously and started add a live commentary to the action resulting in sky high ratings far higher than could have been forecast breathing new life into a 14 year old movie.

“The audience have already taken their seats and are ready to join the conversation”, concludes James, “it’s now up to the TV companies to tap into this huge and lucrative market.”

Drawing from costly signaling theory, we predicted that luxury consumption enhances status and produces benefits in social interactions. Across seven experiments, displays of luxury — manipulated through brand labels on clothes — elicited different kinds of preferential treatment, which even resulted in financial benefits to people who engaged in conspicuous consumption. Furthermore, we tested preconditions in which the beneficial consequences of conspicuous consumption may arise and determined the proximate mechanisms underlying them. The present data suggest that luxury consumption can be a profitable social strategy because conspicuous displays of luxury qualify as a costly signaling trait that elicits status-dependent favorable treatment in human social interactions.

Source: “Social benefits of luxury brands as costly signals of wealth and status” from Evolution and Human Behavior

Pressure to consistently perform stronger than ever.

I wish I’d thought of this.

From the author:

_This proposal aims to connect street users, arts and science, linking them to under-laying spaces and their own realities. The installation was enjoyed during two weekends in January 2011 by the tourists, neighbours of La Rambla and citizens of Barcelona, a city that faces a trade-off between identity and gentrification, economic sustainability and economic growth.
_This shapes through a technological ritual where the audience is released from established roles in a perspective exchange: spectator-performer, artist-tourist, observer-object.
_The user becomes the producer as well as the consumer through a system that invites him/her to perform as a human statue, with a free personal souvenir as a reward: a small figure of him/herself printed three-dimensionally from a volumetric reconstruction of the person generated by the use of three structured light scanners (kinect).
_The project mimics the informal artistic context of this popular street, human sculptures and craftsmen, bringing diverse realities and enabling greater empathy between the agents that cohabit in the public space.