Buzz - A partial failure, but I did learn a few new tricks!

It all started well, I actually set up my Google Alerts and Netvibes pages within a few days of the challenge beginning. My problem though was the brands I had chosen to monitor. I started with The New Covent Garden Food Co. After all, I like soup. There were a few obvious competitors; Heinze, Holland and Barret, and other search terms; soup, organic food etc. I thought I would be laughing.

So I checked back a week later to find that my feed from the BBC had found nothing of any relevance. Lots of info on Covent Garden Market, but not much on the food company.

A bit of a problem. So I had a quick look at the blogs that I was tracking, and soup in June doesn't seem to be much of a hot topic either. I had a bit more of a hunt around and decided that there was enough time to change brands. So I set up a second set of Google Alerts and a new Netvibes page. This time for Carlsberg. There is always someone giving their two pence worth about the amount we like to drink or underage drinking.

But the same thing happened again.

The feed with the brand name in told me that they were thinking of buying Scottish and Newcastle, and they sponsor the Football Association of Ireland Cup, and it was a pulsating game.

I was bit miffed. Surely it wasn't the brands I had chosen. Neither of them are massive names, but the Danish can't bare to see Carlsberg leave so there must be someone writing about it.

There were two problems with the way that I had approached it. Firstly, I had focused on too few sources of information. The sources are partly limited to those you can get a live feed from. For example, there were far more articles on the Times Online about Carlsberg than the BBC. But they don't offer a feed. Netvibes brings a host of information sources into one place, but it also means that you rely on those that you can get feeds from. Those that don't, I ignored.


My second mistake was in the terms of search that I used. Basic brand names are a start. But really, if you are writing an article on salt levels in food or underage drinking, you are not that likely to mention all the guilty brands. If I had widen these to include things like healthy food, salt in food, obesity, binge drinking etc then I would certainly have had more joy. Especially with the blogs. Most that were turned up searching for Carlsberg were pics of people drinking it, or 'If Carlsberg did...' ideas.

Also, had I not left the final part of the challenge until now, I would have been able to write something on the information I eventually found. As it is I am let for the 11.55 from St Pancras to Nottingham.

Ebay. In league with the devil

Ok, so not exactly. But it does facilitate some pretty dubious activity.

I have a particular pet hate. People who buy gig tickets with no intention of going in the full knowledge that they can sell them for a profit on Ebay. It's ticket touting. I bet the majority of people who do it wouldn't stand in the rain in Brixton shouting "Fratellis tickets. Buy or sell. Buy or sell Fratellis tickets". But they are happy to do the same thing from behind a computer. It even happened for Live8. A free charity concert with tickets going for as much as £1,000.

It isn't just gig or sports tickets though. There have been several incidents recently that have caught the eye. Both H&M and TopShop have created ranges by Stella McCartney and Kate Moss that have caused pandemonium in store. But within minutes of the items going on sale and, and the fistfights that ensued, the items were on Ebay selling for huge profits.

It’s only illegal for football tickets in case they fall into the hands of hooligans and some people argue that it is just showing a bit of entrepreneurial spirit. After all, if people are willing to pay over £100 more than the retail price for a pair of tickets to see the Killers, or five times more for a dress 'designed' by Kate Moss then it's their prerogative.

So who's responsibility is it? There have been calls for a while now to make ticket touting illegal and they are thinking of doing this specifically for the 2012 Olympics. But why not for all events? It has been something that people have been calling for for a while to little effect.

Is it the responsibility of the event organisers and ticketing companies? The organisers of the Glastonbury festival have taken it upon themselves to print tickets with photos on. But this has meant registering months before the lottery draw for tickets, which is months before the festival. No a realistic option for tickets to most events.

Adventures on Ebay

Here's what I ended up with in my adventures on ebay.



A pair of NHS crutches at a bargin price of £4 with a frivolous £6.50 being spent on postage. An alarmingly high cost when you discover the state the packaging was in when it arrived.



Rather amusingly however, it does look like I have been sent a shotgun in the post.

Tonight Mathew, I'm going to be...

Well that was a pain, creating the new online me. The pressure of thinking of an ID.

It had to be funny, can’t be seen as the boring one.
It has to be unique, can’t be seen as the boring one.
What does it say about me, can’t let on that I’m the boring one.

And then you have to choose a picture. Not draw one or create one from scratch. Pick one from Google images. That’s what it’s for, jobs like this.

I consider myself to have almost all of a finger on the pulse. I am just about the age where I can say ‘I’m down with the kids’ and not look too far off. So why is it that as soon as I started, I felt like my Dad trying to dance? I regularly go on message boards, forums and leave opinions on sites without a problem but this is a whole new ball game.

But that’s because I’m me. I have email addresses as me. Log in names that clearly state who I am. And I post under pretty much the same name as on my birth certificate.

There must be more people like me. People who find it embarrassing or difficult to think of an original and interesting ID. So I had a bit of a look around and I reckon there are two groups of people who look at online ID in completely different ways.

The first group are like me. They have one ID. They don’t have the time or the inclination to set up lots of different user names, IDs, avtars. Or maybe they’re trying to create a consistent online ID so they only need one. One that makes them instantly recognisable. Maybe they need this for professional reasons. Maybe its because they're having conversations across lots of forums where it's important for them to be recognised. Maybe it’s just harder to forget one name and password.

The second are most definitely not like me. They create usernames and IDs like they’re going out of fashion. They forget their Myspace login so are just as likely to set up a new account as they are find the password. It’s all a bit of a game. You have to find a whole new bunch of people to be friends with. They abandon their profiles like a snake shedding its skin, constantly reinventing themselves.

Danah Boyd, an observer of network behaviour noted “many teens are content (if not happy) to start over with most of their accounts” as an online profile is “not seen as something to build an extensive identity around, but something to talk to friends in the moment”.

So if these people are so promiscuous surely it’s pretty hard to find out who they are. How can you reach someone who constantly changes their ID? Trying to track paedophiles online, for example, becomes even more difficult when ID can be changed at the drop of a hat. And if you change your ID so regularly, site stats are a pretty poor measure of success. Second Life for instance quote over 2m users when only 36k of those are paid subscribers and well over 1m haven’t logged on for more than 60 days. Are these people who aren’t logging on just abandoning their profiles and starting again? Or are there users with multiple ID?

Maybe I am just too forgetful to remember more than one set of details. Maybe I can’t be bothered. But it seems that those who have been brought up with the Internet are using it in ways that many of us just don’t get (yet).

Anyway, why do I feel the pressure to make my ID interesting when no one knows who I am?