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Not dead, just different: Big media in a social media world.

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In a week when Newcastle Brown Ale admitted it was changing the recipe to please some Americans who don’t like the colour, it seems fitting that I was at the site where there famous ‘dog’ was once brewed.

The brewery has now been bulldozed after the familiar corporate merger/ acquisition/ sale process that seems to do for everything these days and a new science city building called ‘the core’ stands on the spot where millions of bottles of booze once rolled off the production line. Continue reading →

The tinker, tailor, soldier, spy of social media

George Smiley in the film version of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
George Smiley in the film version of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

There’s a bit somewhere in the middle of the George Smiley spy trilogy where the characters reach a point where they know their place in the world is facing huge change, an era of cold war and Empire is coming to an end, and while their methods seem increasingly outdated they carry on regardless for want of anything else to do.

As bizarre as this may sound these amazingly atmospheric set of novels provided a nice parallel for two social media events that I went along to last month. Continue reading →