Topshop Teams Up With Google For London Fashion Week
February 13th, 2013 by Tech StaffUK high street clothing staple Topshop has teamed up with Google+ for this season’s London Fashion Week. According to The Next Web, the theme for the fashion outlet this time around is to re-imagine the future of the fashion show. While the online activity of the Topshop Google London Fashion Week collaboration will be engaging, the actual event will be taking place at The Tanks at the Tate Modern in London, England.
Those who are not able to snag tickets for the catwalk can naturally tune in online. Not only will the runway be on show, but model profiles, the work of makeup artists, designer fittings and celebrity arrivals will be accessible.
The Topshop Google London Fashion Week collaboration makes fashion accessible to anyone with an internet connection. Topshop has already been setting up for its show on Google+ with content around the making of the event complete with model diaries and product design. Fans of the stream can also try for tickets to see the event and on February 17, exclusive content will be posted along with material onYouTube.
Interestingly this year Topshop Google London Fashion Week collaboration is also adding ‘Model Cam’. It’s pretty much as it sounds. The model diaries provide a narrative of the ‘Road to the runway’ and followers can read up on the experiences of Cara Delevigne, Jourdan Dunn, Rosie Tapner and Ashleigh Good who will be updating their activities from first fittings to the bright lights of the catwalk.
Topshop Google London Fashion Week (Oxford Circus)
A Google+ photo booth has been installed where users can try on outfits and create a moving image on a catwalk which will be uploaded in an interactive digital shop window and appear on the company’s Google+ page. It’s only at Topshop’s flagship store on Oxford street for now, but hopefully the Google+ booth will make it’s way to American locations soon. Until then, enjoy London Fashion Week from the comfort of your laptop or online with live streaming on DivasandDorks.com soon.
Are you looking forward to more fashion being accessible via technology? What brand are you looking forward to connecting with in a unique way online soon?
Still Think That Google+ Isn’t Worth The Effort?
May 31st, 2012 by Tech StaffThink Google+ is a joke? Here’s 20 reasons you might want to reconsider… This infographic highlights other interesting Google+ stats, including that nearly 70% of its members are female. Meanwhile, the top Google+ users on the site based on the number of followers is Britney Spears (2.67 million), Snoop Dogg (2.33 million), Google CEO Larry Page (2.24 million), Ashley Tisdale (2.04 million) and Hugh Jackman (1.96 million) check out a few other good reasons to make the effort on Google+ below…
Is Keeping Up Social Media Hard Work?
August 5th, 2011 by Christen“In the Sharepocalypse hundreds (if not thousands) of online friends share content with us across various social networks, culminating in massive information overload. Our lives will become more fragmented, we will lose productivity, and we’ll perpetually be playing catch up.” via Mashable.com
Why is it so hard keeping up with social media?
A long, long time ago the internet was such a simpler time hosting such things as chatrooms, then came along sites like BlackPlanet and MySpace making connecting via the internet so exciting, cool and fun. When Facebook was born (exclusively for college co-eds) I wasn’t at all interested in it…in fact, I was sort of like a stubborn old lady who dare not venture into the unknown. Somehow, curiousity killed the cat and viola, my Facebook profile was born. Somewhere between updating Facebook statuses, tweeting, tumbling, YouTubing, GPlusing it out and being “graded” by Klout – things got out of control and it’s no longer remained innocent social sharing, it became hard work.
Why else do you think large corporations hire social media specialists specifically with the task of engaging consumers/fans? It’s no easy task or joyride – I’m sure of it!
“The Sharepocalypse causes (and is caused by) social overload — an evolution of information overload. Because the distinctions between each social network are not entirely clear, we feel obligated to maniacally juggle different apps and social networks just to keep up and be heard everywhere.”
I’m juggling…what about you?
It’s been about a year now and we’ve been connected via Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, Klout and more… If you’re like me – and believe that keeping up with social media is hard work, let’s talk about it! Let me know what apps, habits or tendencies you have to make it a little easier to bear…please and thank you 
Google+ Virtual Concert
July 22nd, 2011 by Christen
Pushing the limits of Google’s new technology, singer/songwriter Daria Musk performed a 6.5 hour Google+ Hangout concert that became a worldwide phenomenon, ultimately reaching thousands of viewers around the globe, from Norway to Australia to Argentina. With the support of Google, whose Director of Engineering, Chee Chew, attended the Hangout and provided technical assistance throughout the concert, Daria performed all night for fans who created an etiquette of staying for a few songs before leaving the Hangout so that fans-in-waiting could jump in.
Overcome by the response from fans around the world and the media (the story has been picked up by CNN, Reuters and other international information outlets), Daria now prepares for round two, scheduling a second performance that she has described to her fans as a “Gl+bal G+thering of G+niuses” for thisSaturday, July 23, at 7 p.m. ET, under the direction of Google’s top engineers. Her innovative idea to give live concerts to online viewers has Google updating their newly launched Google+ Hangout technology, so that the young artist’s performances circle the globe many times over.
“Google’s new Hangout technology is a real game-changer for the music industry,” said Sean Wolfington, owner of Tier 10 Marketing, which pioneered the digital marketing strategy for Grammy Award-winning musician Shakira. Since the concert, Wolfington’s marketing and public relations agency now also represents Musk (www.Tier10Marketing.com). “Traditionally the record labels dictated which artists get exposure; however, this cutting edge technology introduces a whole new platform that talented artists like Daria can leverage to take control of their exposure.”
As a result of her virtual concert, +DariaMusk has landed on the list of “Interesting People to Circle on Google+” on BusinessInsider.com, which writes: “Musk is growing a grassroots following on Google+, and gives free concerts via Hangouts (Google+’s cool mass video chat feature). Add her if you like music.”
From a technology perspective, Daria’s concert changed how Google+ Hangouts are used and perceived. Post concert, Chew posted, “just had the privilege of attending the first known pro level Hangout jam session.”
“We, at Google+, are passionate about bringing people together,” said Chew to his Google+ network earlier this month. “For us on hangouts it’s about really connecting small groups together face to face (to face to face), bringing people together from around the world in a new way. We all have a human need to connect and communicate.”
Are you still looking for you Google+ INVITE? Click HERE.
Which Superstar Will Become The Next Virtual Concert Newsmaker? Beyonce? Lady Gaga? We’ll see…
Are You Satisfied With Facebook?
July 21st, 2011 by Christen
The social media market is primed for a new player that allows users to connect with friends, according to the 2011 American Customer Satisfaction Index(ACSI) E-Business Report, produced in partnership with customer experience analytics firm ForeSee Results. Despite a small improvement this year, Facebook (+3% to 66) is the lowest-scoring site, not only in the social media category, but of all measured companies in this report. The survey was conducted last month, before the widespread introduction of Facebook’s biggest competitor, Google+, but Facebook’s low score indicates that Google+ could easily pounce and gain market share if they can provide a superior customer experience.
“We don’t know yet how Google+ will fare, but what we do know is that Google is one of the highest-scoring companies in the ACSI and Facebook is one of the lowest,” said Larry Freed, president and CEO of ForeSee Results. “An existing dominance of market share like Facebook has is no longer a safety net for a company that is not providing a superior customer experience.”
Facebook is just one story emerging from today’s report. The ACSI E-Business Report covers three categories of e-business: social media, portals and search engines, and online news. This is the twelfth annual report of its kind, allowing companies and analysts to track the performance of these organizations over time by a critical metric: customer satisfaction.
Social Media: Wikipedia (+1% to 78) takes the top spot, while YouTube (+1% to 74) comes in a distant second. MySpace drops from this year’s Index because there were not enough users to create a statistically significant sample. Overall, social media is one of the lowest-scoring industries measured by the ACSI—only airlines, newspapers, and subscription television services score lower.
Search Engines and Portals: Google leads the search engine and portals category (up 4% to 83), but Bing follows closely, jumping an impressive 7% in one year to 82. Anything over 80 is generally considered an excellent score. Bing has grown in market share over the last year and makes up roughly 17% of the search engine market, up from 9% last year.
“While Google+ is the challenger to Facebook’s established dominance in the social media sphere, in the search engine wars, Google is king and Bing is hoping to be a contender,” added Freed. “Last year, Google’s customer satisfaction score was three points higher than Bing’s. This year, that gap narrows to one point. Bing is showing it can challenge Google in terms of revenue, market share, and the customer experience.”
For more analysis and complete historical scores, please visit www.theacsi.org or www.ForeSeeResults.com.
Who Runs Google+….DIVAS!!!
July 15th, 2011 by Christen
As I recover from my Eastcoast/Westcoast time hiatus…I came across an interesting social media tidbit via Mashable that I think my divas would be interested in…We all know that you’re into the fashion and social media thing and that many of you are early adapters (and adopters) to the latest and greatest gadgets and social media trends.
Check out this interesting tidbit from the Google+ stats trackers: Three quarters (or more) of Google+ users are male.
SocialStatistics, a third-party site that gathers data from select profiles, pegs the percentage of male users at 86.8%, whileFindPeopleOnPlus, which curates information from about a million users, says men constitute 73.7% of Google+.
With around 60% of users identifying themselves as web developers or software engineers, that paints a fairly stereotypical picture of Google+’s userbase: nerdy guys who have deep understandings of technology and who don’t mind killing some time setting up Circles of friends.
It’s true that the early adopters of any new technology are usually male. But Google+ will have to appeal to a mainstream audience if it’s to reach mass adoption anytime soon. Consider the gender breakdown for Google+’s biggest competitor, Facebook. The social network is close to a 50-50 split between men and women. And some of Facebook’s most addicted, most enthusiastic users are women.
So in order to even out the playing field a bit! We’re handing out some Google+ invites to “DIVAS ONLY” (sorry Divos.) If you’re interested in receiving an invite and changing the shift in social media usage – shoot us an email at info (at) divasanddorks (dot) com and we’ll get you squared away to check out all the latest and greatest that Google + has to offer.
See my ugly face? (FB vs. Google+)
July 8th, 2011 by ChristenAnd by ugly, I mean UGLY!
I’m reminded of a printing pal of min in Charlotte, North Carolina by the name of Chris. As one of the original Greek inhabitants of the city of Charlotte he’s experienced an extraordinary life – from cooking for Marilyn Monroe during the war, meeting the POTUS & owning/operating the eldest printing company in Charlotte – Speedee Prints. As a peculiar and wildly sarcastic man, Chris would light up everytime I entered his business for printing services and would greet me with a line that I’ll never forget…
“Is that, that ugly girl Christen again?”
I’d laugh and say, yes its me.
He’d respond..“You know why I call you ugly right?”
“I figure that you’ve been called pretty all your life… If I’d call you ugly, you’d never forget me for as long as you live!”
Which in fact, is actually true. So true, that once I began drafting this story about the pros/cons of face-to-face chatting – I immediately thought to myself – “Is it really THAT important to see my ugly face during online chatting?”
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With the launch of Google+ last week and this week’s “huge” Facebook announcement offering Skype video conferencing – I’m starting to wonder if face-to-face chatting is even all that exclusive anymore. Just earlier this week, Mashable announce the discovery that the friendliest MySpace friend ever (Tom) has been saying all along – MySpace was the first to offer Skype conferencing to friends over seven years ago.
See, video conferencing isn’t anything new. Has it advanced over the years? Yes. Will it continue to advance? Yes. Does that secure Facebook’s reign at the top forever? Yes, well um first let’s weigh the pros/cons of Google+ Hangout vs Facebook/Skype.
Facebook Chat
Facebook chat powered by Skype is simple to use – but first you have to download the plugin www.facebook.com/videocalling
Making a video call is easy. Select your friends (in the lower right-hand corner of your Facebook page) who are currently available on Facebook chat. Double-click a name, and you’ll see there’s a new icon at the top of the chat screen — a small video camera. Click it to send an invitation for that person to participate in a video chat. They’ll receive a pop-up notification to a video chat, and if they don’t have the plugin installed, they’ll be prompted to install it.
…and BOOM. YOU’RE CHATTING!
PROS: Fairly simple to use.
CONS: Audio / Video quality lags (A LOT) | You can chat one person at a time. | There’s no “chat-waiting” (if a person is chatting with someone else, you’ll have to leave a message.
GOOGLE+ (Hangout)
Google+ Hangout is more fully featured than Facebook Video Calling — to begin with, it’s designed primarily for group chats rather than one-on-one talks — but, possibly because it’s a beta, it’s still got a few wrinkles to iron out.
As with Facebook, if you haven’t used Hangout before, you’ll be prompted to install a plug-in the first time you click on the “Start a hangout” button. Once it’s installed, you’re ready to go. Creating a Hangout is as simple as pressing the Start a hangout button on the right side of your main stream page (in Google+, your stream is the comments and notifications you get from everyone else). A separate video window then opens — this is your “hangout.”
The Hangout pop-out window is larger than the one that appears for Facebook Video Calling. You see a large video of the person to whom you’re talking in the main part of the screen. Across the bottom of the screen, there are thumbnails of everyone in the chat, including you. Google+ offers a number of interesting features with Hangout. You can text chat while you video chat, and you can also mute your audio and video. And if you’re tired to talking to each other, you can watch a video: Hangout also has a YouTube button that gives all participants the ability to watch the same YouTube video.
Since this is still limited to only a few users, I’ll just lay out the pros/cons here and will wait to hear about your experience with Google+.
PROS: Chat with more than one person simultaneously. | Share video and watch it simultaneously. | Text online while chatting.
CONS: Video lag was unbearable. | There are still alot of kinks to work out | Pixelated / blurry video | You can’t choose who you listen to (the main screen shifts alot if everyone speaks at once.)
Facebook’s video chat (at this moment) is more reliable and requires fewer system resources. (Believe it or not it has higher-quality video and audio.) On the other hand, Google+ Hangout is a more fully featured application, clearly designed for group video chat. Those who have made it into Google+ may find that some bugs need to be worked out, but in the long run, Google+ could prove to be the “Facebook killer” that everyone is hyping it up to be…and you could see my ugly face coming soon to a computer screen near you
Watch the Throne: Google+ VS Facebook
June 30th, 2011 by ChristenUnless you’ve been under a rock, within the past 24 hours you’ve heard about the MySpace acquisition (with an unlikely stakeholder named Justin Timberlake) and Google+ launch — all gunning after the Facebook throne.
Here’s the skinny…GOOGLE (aka the world’s largest search engine company) has officially taken it’s first step to become a major force in social networking. Google stepped into the social media ring on Tuesday to drop a NEW social networking service called the Google+ project. The service called Google+ will let people share their lives and do the kinds of things they already do on Facebook such as post status updates, photos and links. Its focus is on sharing with small groups like your homeboys, homegirls, co-workers, college roommates or hiking friends — instead of with all of a user’s friends or the entire Web. It also offers group text messaging and video chat. *taps microphone* Um, Facebook – You just gonna let them punk you huh?
DID YOU GET AN INVITE YET?
The service, will initially be available only to a select group of Google users who will soon be able to invite others, let people share and discuss status updates, photos and links. If you didn’t get your invite yet, don’t feel bad. (I’m sure it was lost in the mail…)
Google may need to re-think the complexity of this one…with four different features that give you different ways of communications, this thing may get too confusing and backfire BIG TIME!
1. Huddle aka Group Chats: (not just for Blackberry users anymore..)
Texting is great, but not when you’re trying get six different people to decide on a movie. Huddle takes care of it by turning all those different conversations into one simple group chat, so everyone gets on the same page long before thumbs get sore. Imagine you are at a party with 5 of your friends and you ONLY want to send texts about where you are or what you are seeing to those 5 friends. With HUDDLE you can do just that…it’s for Android 2.0+ phones, iPhone 4.0+ phones and SMS.
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2. GOOGLE CIRCLES: You share different things with different people. But sharing the right stuff with the right people shouldn’t be a hassle. Circles makes it easy to put your friends from Saturday night in one circle, your parents in another, and your boss in a circle by himself, just like real life. There’s no limit to the number of circles you can create.
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3. GOOGLE SPARKS: Tips On What To Share. Sparks basically looks for videos and articles it thinks you’ll like, so when you’re free, there’s always something to watch, read, and share.
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4. Hangouts: Group Video Chat - With Hangouts, up to 10 people at a time can all interact through video. As one participant speaks, the main image automatically changed to that person. You can also play video that everyone watches.
…and of course there are other additives and extras that Google will throw in the mix for good measure so we’ll see how this pans out. Personally, I would be a fan of the Hangouts option – as a member of an extremely large family scattered across the US, this would be a great tool (and seems pretty easy) to communicate with some serious face time while thousands of miles away.
Do you think Google+ will initiate the demise of Facebook? Will it live up to it’s birthname of “The Facebook Killer”?
