The Fancy - Online Retail Made Social

Straight from the source, “Fancy is part store, blog, magazine and wish list”, from the outside prospective, it’s another to add to the list of Pinterest ‘Pin’-mposters. But don’t write it off too quickly, there is more behind this new social platform than just a copycat.

The Fancy is a Pinterest-style website which displays photos of items each individual user may like; in categories such as fashion, travel/accommodation, décor, gadgets… you get the idea. When you sign up the website initially asks you to choose some basic interests and it goes from there. There are a few major differences between The Fancy and Pinterest but above all the idea behind The Fancy is that you are creating a list of things you’d like to buy, rather than a collection of things you wish would define you (or is that just my take on Pinterest?). Once you click on a featured photo you are given options, and I don’t just mean how to categorize it. You can ‘buy it’, get ‘more info’, ‘sell it’, ‘show someone’, among a other options.

If it hasn’t come to your attention already then we’ll enlighten you with the hard facts. The Pinterest audience is 80% women. We welcome man-friendly social media in this agency; therefore, the buy power and variety of the actual items featured on The Fancy are much more our style. Personally, I very much appreciated the myriad of choices I get when I’m looking for a way to use up my extra bit of pumpkin (or insert left over ingredient here), but my males counterparts? Maybe not so interested.

The Fancy has something for everyone, stereotypes and preferences aside so we suggest you check it out and add one more social media platform to your daily list of time-wasters.

And just in case you’re not convinced The Fancy is an $18 million dollar start-up with investors such as Aston Kutcher, P Diddy, Kayne West and MTV Exec’s. Head to TheFancy.com to see what all the hype is about.

Facebook Timeline for brand pages

Facebook have now announced that it will be rolling out ‘Facebook Timeline’ for all users.

Loyal fans will see then change on the 29^th of February but luckily for the social networking obsessed at Wunderman, many of us have toyed around with it for quite some time now.

Users will be getting a 7-day grace period in which they can delete and hide all the content that they do not what to show. Once users have completed the changeover to Facebook timeline they will not be able to change back.

Wait a second, what exactly is a Facebook Timeline?

Facebook will be changing your wall, and instead of the standard one column on their ‘Wall’, users with the new Facebook Timeline will be presented with two columns. All previous information will also be sorted into chronological order allowing ‘Friends’ to visit any previously recorded events in their Facebook life.

Of course all events displayed on each user’s Facebook Timeline is completely controllable and users can even add or delete any previous event in their life.

Events are organised into five different categories – Work & Education, Family & Relationships, Home & Living, Health & Wellbeing, Travel & Experiences. Each of these is then subcategorised. If that’s not enough, users can customise their life event.

How will brand pages be affected?

Wunderman’s own Facebook insider has disclosed that ‘Facebook Timeline’ will be arriving for brand pages very soon but what exactly are the implications of this change?

At this time it is difficult to say with certainty what will happen but there are some pretty big clues:

• Visit the past in a single click – as mentioned above, Facebook Timeline allows users to go to any point in the page’s history. This means that users will have the ability to see any of their previous campaigns, posts and interactions on Facebook. Businesses may want to think about reviewing their Facebook interaction history, no matter how long that may be.
• · Life events – If the change also allows brand pages to add exact dates events, businesses may want to think about fully detailing their major events since they were first founded. Smaller businesses may even want to show when their employees joined – if employees agree that is.
• · Apps – One of the wonderful things about Facebook Timeline is that many apps show a ‘Recent Activity’ section. This is great for brands to showcase their activities on other social networks such as Pinterest.

Pin your interest on Pinterest

There are lots of social networks that come and go without the average Joe even batting an eyelid, but there is one in the vast digital frontier that is bound to pin down your interest.

Taken out of beta (testing) only 10 months ago, Pinterest has grown from strength to strength (Unique visitors increased by 429 percent in two months!). It is described as a ‘vision board-styled photo sharing website where users can create and manage theme-based image collections’.

Now we’ve all heard of an image sharing social networks before such as Flickr but Pinterest has segregated itself from the rest.

For starters Pinterest requires you to register your interest before you’re allowed to join, and all you have to do is to look at the initial interest generated by Google+ to see that Pinterest has the right formula.

After registering you are bound to feel slightly overwhelmed. You’re immediately presented with an abundance of images with 33 categories to choose from, and as the same as Twitter, the terminology seems alien.

Then again, that’s what is just so good about Pinterest. There are such a variety of images that it’s impossible to get bored and in a similar fashion to Retweeting, Pinterest gives users the option to ‘Repin’ onto their own custom boards.

Of course depending on how interesting your choice of photos in your board and the regularity of updates, people that are also interested can follow your board.

Wait a minute that’s only the picture section. Pinterest also allows people to ‘Repin’ Videos and Gifts.

Gifts are a simple concept where ‘Pins’ are given a price taken from the description. This is simply another form of a wishlist where people can directly link to the items that they desire.

Some big brands such as Martha Stewart, Better Homes & Gardens and the Travel Channel have already started creating a powerful presence that lets users repost or ‘Repin’ to their followers. With links to individual products and clear online branding, Pinterest is certainly one to watch.

Do you use Pinterest? What are your thoughts so far?

David Blaine's record for holding his breath

This is an interesting talk David Blaine gave at TedMed (a subsidiary of the world famous Ted talks). For those living under a rock, David Blaine is the magician who also performs feats of endurance such as freezing himself in a block of ice for 2 days and living in a glass box suspended under London's Tower Bridge without food for 44 days. While many are detractors or disbelievers in Blaine's feats of endurance (probably due to the association with his title of 'magician'), in this talk given to a room full of people from the medical profession, Blaine explains the process of how he actually achieves these feats.

It's 20mins, but worth the watch. While he doesn't start out as the best speaker you're likely to hear, he certainly builds up into a rousing seminar on dedication, perseverance and public relations.