Since the rise of WiFi, FaceTime and the tablet computer, digital interaction has leaked into all aspects of everyday life, making it a case of upgrade or go home. If you believe anything you read online, you’ll think that there is such a thing as the ‘tech generation’, a group consisting of technological geniuses between the ages of 0 and 25. This, of course, is the only age group capable of operating anything with a touch screen and the only one obsessed with keeping up with the never-ending waves of upgrades and add-ons. According to the Telegraph online, 80% of under 25s feel ‘lost’ without technology and many use it in all aspects of their lives, including the diagnosis of illnesses. The New York Times, however well-meaning, has also been drawn into this idea by offering advice to older readers on how to use mind-blowing pieces of tech such as the tablet computer. Apart from being more than slightly patronising, this is also wholly unnecessary, and we’ll see why shortly. The widespread misconception that all people under the age of 25 are technological geniuses has also featured in a range of recent films, such as The Social Network. This spectacularly titled epic features several college nerds who solve the problem of their social ineptness by developing the most annoying aspect of the Internet to date: Facebook. There’s also the marginally more interesting Cosmopolis, in which Robert Pattinson tries and fails to shake off his vampire reputation by playing with computers in a limousine for a really long time.

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All of this seems to suggest that only one age group are using technology and that they all use it in the same way, for the same purpose. As this is clearly not right, we thought we’d try and shed some light on what is actually going on in our technological lives by doing a little survey. We wanted to find out whether people over 25 had heard of the Internet, if they owned a phone and if they preferred the automobile to the horse and carriage, so we asked them a few questions and this is what they said:

We love iPhones more than you

The iPhone was the clear favourite of respondents over the age of 30, which suggests that they’re just as up to date with smartphones as their younger counterparts. The under 30s actually preferred Samsung’s products to Apple’s, probably because it’s less mainstream and they knew Apple before it was famous. The over 30s even said they’d had their smartphones for longer than some of the under 30s, some of whom had only bought one in the last 6 months. By contrast, all respondents over 40 had owned theirs for at least 2 years.

We actually use our phones to speak to people

The 5 phone functions used most often by people aged 19-30 are: messaging and emailing, the Internet, social networking, photography and music. Whether or not this is surprising, it is undeniably ridiculous. We have entered a time in which some people are more likely to use their phones to take photographs with than to talk with. A special mention must also be made for the person in this age group who stated that they would set their phones to vibrate and watch them battle to the death, on a daily basis. As a sane contrast to this, those above 40 use their phones for voice calling more than anything else and those aged 31-40 prefer messaging and emailing, the Internet and voice calling. Even respondents aged 16-18, who are best known for staying in their rooms and not speaking to anyone, listed voice calling as the most common use of their phones. After all, it is a phone; the clue is in the name.

We buy rubbish online too

Impulse buying has become so much easier since the creation of the app, and thanks to Amazon and E-bay ill-advised purchases are just a few taps away. Looking at the trends of people shopping online it is quite hard to distinguish a true pattern, as almost everyone in each age group shops online at some point. Respondents from our survey aged 31 – 40 shop online the most, with a large proportion saying that they do so on a weekly basis. Comparing our research to that found on the internet, we have a similar trend, as supposedly 85% of web users shop online in some form, with 27% of the world’s consumers shopping via the Internet. With the web becoming more and more accessible to more and more people, a total of 74% of the world’s population now have access to it, making us more interconnected and giving us the feeling of a shrinking world, as any product may be just a few clicks away, but could come from half way around the globe for next day delivery. This is clearly an opportunity that appeals to all age groups, as the majority of respondents said that they shopped online every month at least.

We are not scared of tablets

The touch-screen function of tablet computers has been described as ‘intuitive’ and ‘natural’, an idea that combines nicely with their name to give the impression of a piece of tech so accessible that cave men probably used them. Although their Star Trek-like technology has made them the envy of every pseudo-sci-fi hipster around, they have also become hugely popular with older consumers and every respondent in our survey over 40 said that they owned one. Perhaps less surprisingly, people aged 16-18 are most likely to own a games console, whilst those aged 19-30 are most likely to own an MP3/4 player and those aged 31-40 prefer laptops. Unfortunately, an element of stereotyping does enter our findings at this stage, as the 19-30 age bracket own an average of 3-4 pieces of tech, not including a smartphone, whereas all other age groups only own an average of 2. Some respondents in this bracket also said that they use their phones for over 10 hours every day. Presumably not for talking, though.

We had tech before you were born

When asked what piece of tech they first owned, our respondents came up with a wonderfully nostalgic spectrum (reference intended) of responses. The sheer bulkiness of some of these can only truly be expressed through images, so we’ve decided to round up this post with a mini-gallery of tech from yonder year. We’ll start off with the oldest pieces of tech and work our way up to the glorious 90s:

The BBC Computer

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The cassette player

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The ZX Spectrum

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The CD Walkman

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The Gameboy

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The Nokia 3310

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The Playstation 1

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The Tamagotchi

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References:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/internet/9643082/Four-out-of-five-young-people-feel-lost-without-internet.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/03/business/retirementspecial/03Tech.html?_r=0

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/10/09/youth_age/

Let’s start by clarifying that there are no guns on this list. Not functioning ones, anyway. Thanks to self-proclaimed anarchist Cody Wilson, who is of the opinion that every U.S citizen should be able to make their own gun, everyone on Earth with access to a newspaper knows about the horrors of 3D printers. In actual fact, they’ve been around since 1984, when Charles Hull used stereolithography to build layers of plastic into a pre-designed object. It doesn’t sound too exciting when you put it like that. Since then, they’ve been implemented mainly through industry, with some tech-geeks investing in their own machines to make slightly deformed Daleks and Storm Troopers. But now that the world- or the web- is convinced that the 3D printer will ultimately bring about the end of days, we thought we’d take a look at other potentially dangerous products currently in the 3D pipeline.

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The Robots

This is quite an obvious one, probably due to the human urge to get someone- or something- else to do the things that we don’t want to do. Current 3D printed robots include humanoids that are probably designed just to scare your friends, self-assembling robots that don’t seem to do anything after they assemble and spiderbots that jump about looking like something from The Matrix. These don’t seem very impressive, admittedly, but they are set to go all futuristic on us. NASA has claimed that giant spider robots could 3D print a lunar base, so at the moment we’re looking at a future in which we have huge spiderbots on the moon. If that doesn’t sound like the start of a sci-fi horror film, just think of the implications of mass-produced self-assembling armour, as seen in Iron Man 3.

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The Body Parts

When we say that you can 3D print body parts, we don’t mean that you can grow another leg if you misplace one of your existing ones. But we do mean that you can make prosthetic limbs, replacement joints and kneecaps, skulls and fully-working bionic ears. That all sounds great, because no one is going to try and replace their own kneecap, and just think of all the cool designs for prosthetic limbs. But surely it’s only a matter of time until someone gets bored and makes additional limbs for themselves, and then what you’ve got is a new breed of super-humans who are able to unlock their car door whilst carrying 8 bags-for-life, taking a swig of their Frappuccino and tweeting about it. Or moonlight as an eight-legged super villain, making use of the spiderbots to jump out at unsuspecting students. Almost nothing good can come of that.

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The Buildings

Some people say that it was only a matter of time before someone thought of 3D printed buildings, because obviously when a new machine comes along the immediate instinct is to make a giant version that makes giant versions of everything else, including your Malibu Barbie Dreamhouse. The man who did think of this was Enrico Dini, who claims that it takes a quarter of the time traditional building techniques take. Of course, by traditional building he means trusting people, who most often have brains and sometimes have common sense, to build structures that millions of other people spend the majority of their lives in. It seems now that he is suggesting we throw that one out of the window and put all our good faith in machines, presumably because he didn’t see Terminator. While we’re at it, we might as well put all aeroplanes on auto-pilot and have some police-bots go on patrol for us.

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The Dead

When someone dies, be it a loved one or an idolised celebrity, it’s nice to remember them the way they were when they were alive and still moving about, right? Well now it seems there’s no need for that anymore because you can 3D print a sculpture of their head from their skeleton. This all started when archaeologists found the supposedly evil Richard III buried under a car park in Leicester and decided to settle the debate about his personality by using a 3D printer to reconstruct his face. It turned out that he wasn’t as ugly as history and Shakespeare had made him out to be, so academics concluded that he couldn’t have been evil after all because everyone knows that only ugly people are evil. Despite looking like a reject from Madam Tussaud’s, the model is almost certainly accurate, except for the ears and slight smile, which designers entirely made up. Whilst this idea might appeal to those mourning the deceased, we’re not sure if there can ever be anything half as dangerous to society as a slightly smiling bust of Michael Jackson on your mantelpiece.

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The Revolver iPhone Dock

Turns out that gun enthusiasts haven’t been using 3D printers just to make guns, they’ve also been using them to make things that look like guns but are actually slightly bizarre iPhone accessories. A particularly startling one is the revolver dock, into which you insert your phone as though it were the barrel of the gun. There’s a window for your USB cable, in case you want to charge your gun/phone, but that seems to be about all it does. There is a trigger that looks as though it could do something interesting, but as far as we can tell it doesn’t, it’s just a phone case that looks like a gun. If that is indeed all it is, is it really worth being strip-searched at an airport or tackled in a shopping centre for? Looks like this one’s here to test just how enthusiastic you are about guns.

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The Foetus

We’re not sure if this is more or less scary than having a model of your dead relative/celebrity idol, but it means that instead of just having a blurring picture of your beautifully developing foetus you can have a 3D printed paperweight. Surprisingly, this has become quite popular in Japan, where expectant parents can pay just under $1000 to have designers create a model of their MRI scan. This seems quite harmless, even though it’s unlikely that the child is going to feel anything other than fear and nausea when they find that model in their parents’ attic in 20 years. But then we return to the human urge to make everything giant, and suddenly the world is filled with 100 foot tall womb monuments. Never underestimate the power of the biological clock.

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The Vehicles

Recently there’s been a bit of a buzz around self-driving cars and their potential dangers. After all, we all know what happens to the lesser humans who blindly trust satnavs to lead them over road works, rivers and cliffs. What if the self-driving car was hacked, went haywire or spontaneously decided to self-destruct? It seems that the general public don’t trust machines with their personal safety, so you’d think that 3D printing modes of transport like cars and boats would be out of the question. Sadly that isn’t the case though, as committed environmentalists and boat lovers WOOF have shown by 3D printing a vessel from recycled milk jugs. The effectiveness of this can be seen clearly in the picture below, in which a member of the team attempts to race against a raft made of milk cartons, but is ultimately being submerged in the water. We’re not sure if this shows the dangers of 3D printing or the dangers of letting environmentalists design vehicles, but either way, we’d rather swim.

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The Sex Toys

Using 3D printers to create sex toys is a no-brainer when you give a techno-geek a decent supply of silicone and access to an unlimited array of product designs. What else are they going to make? Best case scenario you end up with thousands of sleeker, cheaper toys. Worst case scenario you end up with a vibrator in the shape of Justin Bieber’s head. Unfortunately, we ended up with the worst case scenario. The good side of this is that it doesn’t actually look anything like Justin Bieber. The scary side of this is that the person that designed it originally made one in the shape of Sigmund Freud, but then changed their plans when they were informed that Freud wasn’t particularly sexy. Also available, for reasons entirely unknown, are a collection of adult toys modelled from line graphs representing the vote approval rating of a variety of political candidates. All that’s really left to say about this is that it looks like a large chess set, which can only mean a horrifically painful trip to A&E for anyone involved.

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References:

http://singularityhub.com/2011/06/27/3d-printers-are-taking-off-but-one-in-every-home-maybe-in-another-10-years/

http://www.complex.com/tech/2012/09/the-10-craziest-3d-printed-creations-so-far/grand-old-party-sex-toys

http://www.makerlove.com/Free-3D-Sex-Toys/Justin-Bieber-Sex-Toy/index.html

http://www.gizmag.com/3d-printed-objects-list/21693/

http://www.livescience.com/34566-weirdest-3d-printed-objects.html

http://www.livescience.com/26959-richard-iii-friendly-face.html

http://io9.com/watch-this-robotic-worm-assemble-itself-oh-and-it-was-498809514

http://gizmodo.com/5993948/print-an-interactive-robot-on-the-3d-printer-you-totally-have

http://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/qa-with-ivan-owen-robohand-creator/

http://blog.makezine.com/2013/05/30/large-format-3d-printing/

http://www.cellphonebeat.com/ruger-revolver-iphone-4-dock-gun-shaped-iphone-dock.html

Red Hot Sunglasses

Over the past year, Mediaworks’ partnership with fashion forward retailers, Red Hot Sunglasses has seen the brand go from strength to strength.

Not only has the online sunglasses boutique recently welcomed a range of exciting new brands including Burberry, Alain Mikli and Tiffany & Co. to their already impressive selection, but they will soon be moving to a bigger and better premises, due to their unprecedented growth and success this year.

Red Hot’s managing director, Phil Blackett, commented:

2013 looks set to be a great year for Red Hot Sunglasses. We’ve already welcomed a whole range of new high fashion brands who we’re really excited to be working with and further expansion is on the cards.

The Mediaworks team have been working hard to optimise Red Hot Sunglasses web content and new brand pages so that the thousands of style-conscious shoppers headed online for their sunglasses this summer will head to straight to Red Hot and their newly expanded collection of high end, designer products.

Phil added:

Working with Mediaworks has helped us to increase our website traffic and improve conversion rates. We can’t wait to continue on our SEO journey in the coming months.

We will be striving to keep Red Hot Sunglasses ahead of their competition in the coming summer months and achieve top rankings as the business continues to expand.

Now that the ninth series of The Apprentice is upon us, it’s starting to become apparent that all of these bossy, relentlessly self-positive entrepreneurs have a few things in common. Perhaps it’s the way the BBC mess with the colour contrast to make their eyes look horrifyingly blue, or perhaps it’s the fact that they all love themselves to the point of distraction. Either way, we’ve taken a look at the eight apprentice winners so far to see what we need to be like to win The Apprentice.

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#5: Be from London

Being from the South might do for this one, as 7/8 winners of the show are from Southern England. All are from England, so if you’re Scottish, Irish or Welsh you can probably forget it. One winner, series two’s Michelle Dewberry, dared to be from Hull, but quickly moved to London when she realised her mistake. Being a Cockney through and through himself, Lord Sugar clearly feels more comfortable working with people whose accents he can actually understand.

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#4: Be willing to change your career path

Only two winners still work in the same area of business as they did before they entered The Apprentice. These are the most recent winners, the unfortunately named Ricky Martin and beloved inventor Tom Pellereau. All other candidates now work in roles that contrast highly with their previous experience, one such example being Yasmina Siadatan, who used to be a restaurateur but now runs a start-up business with James Caan. The trend seems to be that, unless you’re lucky enough to have something that the Lord of Sugar wants, you must be prepared to do something entirely different to what your experience shows you are good at. Even if that means giving up freelance Professional Wrestling, as poor Ricky had to.

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#3: Play the social media game

This might be a bit of a no-brainer, but winners of The Apprentice almost always have over a thousand Twitter followers. The only exception to this rule has been Yasmina, who only starting tweeting in May 2013 and has 207 followers. The winner with the most followers, no prizes for guessing, is Tom, who has 105,057. What is surprising is that Stella English, who was recently involved in a high-profile lawsuit with the Lord himself, only has 1,929 followers. It can only be assumed that her followers got so bored with the insignificance of the case that they couldn’t take it anymore and simply had to ‘unfollow’. As Tom might be said to be the most successful winner and Stella the least successful, it could be that an inability to hold onto your Twitter followers indicates and inability to hold onto your title. And by title, of course, we mean ‘overpaid lackey’. Nice one, Stella.

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#2: Look the part

This one starts off as simple as it appears. If you’re a man, wear suits. All of the winners wore very pricey-looking suits, with ties that weren’t boring but weren’t likely to get them confused with a Lib Dem MP or, similarly, a clown. If you’re a woman, wear dresses that are smart but could be construed as sexy if photographed correctly. High heels are a must, but don’t worry too much about hair colour, unless it’s red. Appearance gets a bit more complex when you see that only one winner, Tim Campbell, does not have a full head of hair. So if you’re balding, think about getting some of that spray-on hair. This brings us to the issue of age, which might be a bit more difficult to manipulate. All winners of The Apprentice have been between the ages of 26 and 31, giving a six year window to any Lord Sugar wannabees. The only consolation for anyone falling outside of this bracket is that the youngest candidate on the show was actually only 20 years old and the eldest was 39. So the game might not be over yet if you fall outside of the golden six year bracket.

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#1: Disconnect mouth from brain

Perhaps the most vital characteristic of all winners of the show is their ability to say ridiculous things at inopportune moments. Despite being completely assured that they are the best brains in the business, they have an uncanny knack for sounding like utter simpletons. One of the most adept at this is last year’s winner Ricky Martin, who came up with gems such as “I’m like a shark, right at the top of the food chain” and “By day I’m a business superstar. By night, I’m a professional wrestler”. Whilst the latter of these was obviously, and quite worryingly, true, we can’t clarify the former. Other strange insights came from Tim Campbell, who observed that “You have to earn your stripes here. So far, I’ve got half a stripe”, and Tom Pellereau, who innocently asked “where might we find a 10-inch bell in central London?”.

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References:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Apprentice_%28UK_TV_series%29

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Apprentice_%28UK%29

LinkedIn Tim Campbell

LinkedIn Michelle Dewberry

LinkedIn Lee McQueen

LinkedIn Yasmina Siadatan

LinkedIn Tom Pellereau

LinkedIn Ricky Martin

https://twitter.com/inventor_tom

https://twitter.com/RickyMartin247

https://twitter.com/Stella_English

https://twitter.com/MichelleDewbs

https://twitter.com/TC_MBE

https://twitter.com/simonambrose

https://twitter.com/LeeMcQueen

https://twitter.com/yas_siadatan

Whilst browsing through lists of ‘Top 20 SEOs in the World’ and ‘Top Ten SEO Leaders’, it becomes apparent that there is something distinctly lacking here: who exactly are the sexiest people in SEO? All that seems to have been written on this vital topic are a few joke competition articles and a blog that depicted the sexy SEO man of the month- but gave up in October 2006. So, thanks to the most reliable data from LinkedIn and Twitter, here is a definitive guide to the hottest SEO men from around the world.

10: Stephan Spencer

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Stephan founded NetConcepts in the 1990s, invented SEO technology GravityStream and recently published his second book, Google Power Search. If that doesn’t get your SEO motor running, he also contributes to The Huffington Post and Searchlight, as well as his own very extensive and enthusiastic blog. He speaks French, plays racquetball and enjoys stargazing at his home in Madison, Wisconsin.

SEO Rating: 7/10
Sexy Rating: 5/10
Quote: “If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion – the Dalai Lama.”

9: Brett Tabke

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As a rather charismatic Texan, Brett hosts professional search engine promotion discussions through his companies Pubcon and Webmaster World. Whilst smiling isn’t his strong point and he spends most of his time being very serious about web marketing, he has raised thousands of dollars for various charities in the past few years. And everyone loves a strong, silent type.

SEO Rating: 7/10
Sexy Rating: 6/10
Quote: “Justin Bieber looks alot like he just stepped off the set of “Ice Ice Baby”.”

8: Lee Odden

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Lee is the CEO of TopRank Online Marketing and a sought after digital marketing industry speaker. He has presented keynote speeches for pretty much every conference going and frequently travels to New York, San Francisco, Hong Kong and London. He has already been ranked in the Top 15 Social Media thought leaders, Top 10 SEO Bloggers and Top Ten Twitter Power list, so his appearance on this list should be a nice addition to his digital trophy cabinet. And look at that beard.

SEO Rating: 8/10
Sexy Rating: 7/10
Quote: “My fave desert: Creme Brûlée & Cappuccino.”

7: John Battelle

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John launched Wired in the 1990s and more recently founded Federated Media Publishing. At 47, he is aging spectacularly and his 225,000 Twitter followers attest to his continuing popularity. His second book is scheduled for publication this year, after The Search became an international bestseller in 2005. He was born and still lives in California, plays the drums and enjoys mountain biking and yoga. What a combination.

SEO Rating: 9/10
Sexy Rating: 7/10
Quote: “When in doubt, get a shoe shine.”

6: Matteo Monari

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Matteo is Italian, he lives in Rome and is the co-founder of BizUp internet marketing. If that isn’t enough reason for him to feature on this list, just look at that smile. He also speaks French and English, is a research student at KTH Institute of Technology and has co-authored several papers on web-based learning. And he loves Star Wars. But really it’s all about the smile.

SEO Rating: 7/10
Sexy Rating: 8/10
Quote: “You can finally buy a REAL second hand Star Destroyer.” [Tweeted 8 times.]

5: Clemént Jerusalmy

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Clemént is a Senior SEO Manager at Betsson AB, Sweden, with a keen interest in snowboarding, football and competitive golf. Originally from France, he has worked on several gambling sites and is apparently a pleasure to work with. And he looks extremely good in sunglasses. Needless to say, his French heritage bumps him up to an impressive place in this line up.

SEO Rating: 7/10
Sexy Rating: 8/10
Quote: “A small detail??? baguette ain´t a small detail.”

4: Rand Fishkin

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A University dropout who loves yellow shoes and wanted to be a dog when he was a child, Rand isn’t exactly the conventional heartthrob. He is the CEO of SEOmoz, currently lives in Seattle and was named on PSBJ’s 40 Under 40 list. The combination of expertly sculpted beard and effortless chic suits makes him a no brainer for our sexy SEO countdown.

SEO Rating: 9/10
Sexy Rating: 8/10
Quote: “Sometimes you just gotta play toy guitar with shoeless buskers on Portobello Road.”

3: Richard Rosenblatt

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Best known as the chairman of Myspace.com, which he sold for $580 million, Richard was named as runner up to Steve Jobs in Fortune Magazine’s “50 Smartest People in Tech”. In 2006 he founded Demand Media, which runs eHow, LIVESTRONG and Cracked.com, and claims to spend 18-20 hours each day working. A 40-year-old with the hair of a 20-year-old, he lives in Pacific Palisades, California and likes to eat out at local restaurant Sugarfish. We know where our next holiday destination will be then…

SEO Rating: 9/10
Sexy Rating: 8/10
Quote: “sunday night…earnings and chardonnay? Mixing it up…with a white wine!”

2: Frederic Chanut

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Frederic, a Frenchman who loves wine and the sea (swoon), is the managing director of Sydney-based firm In Marketing We Trust. He also speaks English, German and Russian, and claims to be addicted to coffee. That’s fine though. Did we mention that he’s French?

SEO Rating: 8/10
Sexy Rating: 9/10
Quote: “Fear is not to be mocked but mistaken for a floating stuffed Xmas turkey. Fear > Food Coma.”

1: Cansin Mert

Source: Cansin Mert

Cansin is head of Social Media and Digital Operations at Pure New Media and lives with his wife in Istanbul, Turkey. He focuses on building businesses from start-up and has published several articles on online marketing. And if he hasn’t been inundated with offers of modelling contracts somewhere down the line it would be completely and unimaginably shocking. With a bone structure like that, how could he not be the sexiest man in SEO?

SEO Rating: 9/10
Sexy Rating: 10/10
Quote: “The most important thing in life is not to get what you want.”

References:

https://twitter.com/InMktgWeTrust

https://twitter.com/Matteo_Monari/

http://www.toprankblog.com/lee-odden/

http://www.linkedin.com/in/fredericchanut

https://twitter.com/cansinmert

http://clementjerusalmy.com/

https://twitter.com/CJerusalmy

https://twitter.com/johnbattelle

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Battelle

https://twitter.com/btabke

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/the-non-profits-brett-tabke-pubcon-contribute-to/44841/

http://www.stuntdubl.com/2013/02/05/brett-tabke/

https://twitter.com/sspencer

https://twitter.com/demandrichard

http://csqmag.com/issues/2011Q4/2011-Q4-vis-rosenblatt.html

https://twitter.com/randfish

http://www.inbound.co.uk/blog/10-little-known-facts-about-rand-fishkin-seo-king/#sthash.7A4cdhfe.dpbs

http://www.seomoz.org/team/randfish

http://www.linkedin.com/in/leeodden

https://twitter.com/leeodden

http://www.sunsetseo.com/10-seos-id-love-to-work-with/

http://www.seobook.com/top-10-seos

http://www.linkedin.com/in/cansinmert

With this month’s stats showing that Facebook now has 1.11 billion users and Twitter 500 million, it’s easy to see why an increasingly wide range of religious organisations are turning to social media to make new contacts and build their public profiles.

Obviously this one isn’t serious. Source.

Although it’s too early to say whether these networks have changed the way in which people practice religion, faith related pages and posts are now undeniably a key feature of the majority of social media sites. Here’s a quick look at how the most popular sites are becoming involved in religious activity.

Facebook

Over 43 million Facebook users are fans of at least one page that is categorised as religious, and 31% of users in the U.S list a religion in their profile. At this very basic level it’s possible to see that members of religious groups are using Facebook and are incorporating their religious beliefs into their online activity. It goes further than that though. The ‘Jesus Daily’ Facebook page, created by a North Carolina diet doctor, has over 18 million likes and frequently posts religious imagery and quotations.

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Hundreds of thousands of users like these posts and at times it has had more comments than the official Justin Bieber page. Enough said.

Twitter

Several religious pages have become prolific on Twitter recently, including Huffington Post Religion (@HuffPostRelig), Twitter Religion (@twitterreligion) and Pope Francis (@Pintifex). The first two of these offer news and comments relating to a variety of faiths in a reasonably light and impartial tone. They have 110,000 and 313,000 followers respectively and are obviously branches of larger user accounts. Pope Francis has almost 2.5 million followers, which may not seem many when considering that Catholicism has 1.2 billion members worldwide, but is impressive upon seeing that he only follows 8 other users. And they’re all multi-lingual versions of himself. In total, the 9 versions of Pope Francis have over 6 million followers, which is the same as Ed Sheeran, Jessie J and Tom Hanks. And he’s only been the Pope for 2 months.

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YouTube

It isn’t YouTube precisely that is the topic of discussion here, although there are of course many religious YouTube channels. It is in fact religious versions of YouTube that have come to our attention, in particular GodTube and JewTube.

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Although perhaps oddly named, both of these sites have become religious media hotspots by taking videos about X Factor, cute animals and pretty much anything else and posting them alongside religious messages. GodTube also features ‘devotionals’ and ‘newsletters’ pages, on which users can post stories about their everyday lives that are religiously significant in some way. Whilst this may seem clever, JewTube has in fact been the subject of a lawsuit due to its apparent over-similarity to YouTube. The only real problem is the logo, which is almost an exact copy of YouTube’s unrecognisable trademark, except that it’s blue. Anyone mistaking the site for the original would be set straight within seconds, as JewTube as far fewer videos, ads and tabs. In short, it looks nothing like it.

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Blogging

Of course religious bloggers have emerged worldwide since social media became a daily essential, but a rather specific and unexpected blogging network has recently appeared, and it’s definitely worth a look. The bloggers in question are Mormons, who you’d probably imagine to look a bit like this:

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You’d be forgiven for this, especially as the teachings of this particular group state that women must cover their shoulders and legs, and modesty and chastity are prized in the community. It might be somewhat surprising then to learn that this is a fashion blogging network: a Mormon fashion blogging network. One of the main sites, dubbed ‘Clothed Much’, lists links to 66 Mormon fashion blogs and states that it is ‘a modest fashion and style blog’. This is actually very informative, letting the general public know that Mormons can actually look like this:

Source.

The majority of the blogs don’t even mention Mormons at all on their main pages, but when you click on the ‘about’ tabs many will direct you to http://mormon.org/. The Mormon religion is central to these blogs and has inspired such genius slogans as ‘Modest is Hottest’, showing how seamlessly religion and social media can be combined.

References:

http://expandedramblings.com/index.php/resource-how-many-people-use-the-top-social-media/

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/05/technology/jesus-daily-on-facebook-nurtures-highly-active-fans.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1368025233-02VZ32VTq1stTbk0jh0DZg

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rabbi-jason-miller/social-media-and-religion_b_949686.html

https://twitter.com/twitterreligion

https://twitter.com/HuffPostRelig

https://twitter.com/Pontifex

https://www.facebook.com/JesusDaily

http://www.clothedmuch.com/p/mormon-fashion-bloggers.html

http://www.ldsliving.com/tag/Fashion

http://www.godtube.com/newsletters/

http://jewtube.com/

http://venturebeat.com/2007/09/18/religious-social-networks-on-the-rise/

http://ipost.christianpost.com/news/religious-social-networking-sites-10043/

http://mormon.org/

http://friendorfollow.com/twitter/most-followers/

Joining the team we have two new copywriters who will be taking on the job of optimising client’s websites with engaging copy and writing high-quality articles and blog posts. Lee Dover joins the copywriting team from his position as motoring editor with Axonn Media in Leeds. After graduating from Sunderland University in 2010 with a Ba Hons in Journalism, he worked his way up the ranks from content writer to content editor, then into the specialised role of motoring editor.

Our second new copywriter, Maya Verber, comes to us from Northumbria University where she has been working as a region, engagement and partnerships assistant since graduating from Newcastle University last summer with a BA Hons in Philosophical Studies. While at university she angled her degree towards communications and the media and gained copywriting and editing experience with the Royal College of Nursing.

Simon Laing joins our online PR team and brings with him his fluency in Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian and Catalan. Previous to his appointment with Mediaworks, he has worked as a translator and in international sales in various sectors including engineering and media. He has also trained and worked as a teacher of English as a foreign language, both here and in Spain.

He said: “I’m really looking forward to making the role my own and hopefully bringing something new to the company to help continue with its success.”

Specialising in Pay per Click (PPC) marketing, we have John Cave joining our SEO team to build our PPC channel and service the growing demand for our PPC services. Prior to his new position, John worked as an online marketing manager within the travel industry but has also worked across other industries such as finance, law, e-commerce and utilities demonstrating success across the board.

And last but certainly not least, we welcome Marc Russell to Mediaworks as our head of operations. Marc has spent the last seven years as programme manager for digital agency, TH_NK contributing to the growth from being a North East based agency with local clients, to a national agency with multi-national clients. Before TH_NK, Marc worked for eight years as a project manager for Nissan Europe delivering information systems across 13 major European sales markets.

Speaking about his new role, Marc said: “I have joined Mediaworks with the aim to streamline the company’s current operations, and support the company in continued growth and expansion.”

The Jessops Group was previously made-up of two sides to the business; Jessops Photo and Jessops.com but now both divisions have been bought by CEWE and Peter Jones respectively – and BOTH are reinstating their contracts with Mediaworks.

After working with the Jessops brand over the last 12 months, we’re glad that our hard work and successful campaign performance has meant Mediaworks have been re-confirmed as the SEO partner for both companies. Like a phoenix from the ashes, Jessops has risen again!

Jessops’ core camera and photography accessories range has been launched back into the online and high street retail community thanks to a joint venture between Peter Jones and Hilco. The Dragons Den investor appointed Simon Joseph as Associate Director of eCommerce at Jessops to propel the brand into further online success.

Although Jessops.com will form the main source of income for the photography retailer, Jessops are also reopening 30+ high street stores around the UK which will save up to 500 jobs.

Meanwhile, photo-finishing company CEWE who are responsible for managing photo services for the likes of Argos, WHSmith and Superdrug, have taken-over the brand of Jessops Photo. They will continue to offer the photo book service along with a number of personalised homeware and photo gift options.

Here at Mediaworks, we are really pleased to have Jessops and Jessops Photo back on board, and can’t wait to increase quality web traffic and help both brands achieve the potential of their SEO campaigns.

The general rules of creating a meme like Hadouken is that your main protagonist adopts a ‘street fighter’ pose and 1 or more individuals react to this by being thrown through the air. This is all captured on camera and Tadaaa ‘Hadouken’.

To create your Hadouken meme photo in your office you will need:

1. A camera set to -pre-capture
2. A camera tripod
3. A bunch of Volunteers
4. Basic Photoshop / Fireworks skills
5. Lighting (i.e: shooting in dark probably not the best)
6. A boss that allows you time to do this in work
7. Some smaller objects that can be thrown into the air to create an effect

You do not need an expensive camera, I shot these on an old Olympus Sp-55OUZ

Ideally it will have pre-capture or Manual settings

The camera settings i used for the SEO team shoot

Always run a tester session. We ran this 3 days before the real shoot and it made me understand when we should get the money shot and how to get it. The Gif is purely for the amusement of readers

The day of the shoot, I got the teams together and we planned the staged photos. The idea is to make it look as realistic as possible, so staging things like a door behind them propped open and paper thrown around to look as if a massive magic attack has just happened and been captured on film.

Add a lightening PNG http://s488.photobucket.com/user/KimiVengenz/media/Textures/Lightning-psd7258.png.html

Here is how it was done.. I set up the shot. Opened doors. Told guys to jump on 1,2,3 JUMP and Katherine was asked to stay very still. Pre-capture / continuous shot set on camera and started shooting from 2 of the count-down. Touching toes in jump, gets the best height and overall look.

So, next i wanted to capture the Copywriters team. The idea was to mix it with office furniture. I must admit that this was not as impressive as it does not get the movement needed to create the overall atmosphere of the Hadouken attack. the Gif is funny though!

You can over-do the lighting additions.. oohherrrr

Gif of how it is done

Then it was the Online -PR team’s turn. My first thought was to do a double Hadouken with Peter and Ping in the center.

But it quickly became apparent that a focus on one attacker was the best course of action. We used papers and the open doors on this to show movement.

Gif of how it is done, this is at normal speed.

But i still felt that it needed more, so we decided to switch angles and shoot if from the perspective of the attacker – in this case Ping.

Then of course we had to get the SEO team involved and I was of course expecting big things from these guys.

Final Fantasy special

Of course Brett the owner of Mediaworks had to get in on it with a bit of Vadering. Here is how he deals with Johnny’s 12 month review

I hope you have enjoyed our little how to create a meme session. Please add links to your own Hadouken shoots.

We all have old mobile phone cases that we have no idea what to do with. Apple keep changing the bloody size of their phones making your old case useless every few weeks. But lets face it, when you get a new phone a new case is a must have.

So… with it being April and most of the country/world is covered in snow when last year it was blazing sunshine, and many of us are wanting to kick the living crap out of anyone who says “lovely day isn’t it”.. I thought… why not take our frustrations out on old mobile phone cases? .. you know you want to.

The rules of how to get your ‘destroy a phone case suggestion’ chosen

Of course destroying something could also mean altering its use, like this case that has been turned into a camera stand http://unleashthephones.com/2010/11/28/make-your-own-cell-phone-tripod/ creative eh?

So I want your suggestions on how to destroy a mobile phone case OR alter it – and the 10 best i will do and send you the videos of their deaths or rebirths.

How to enter:

Write a short blog post -

Title – something like – Destroy your old mobile phone case

How – How you would like the case destroyed and any preference on the he type of case

Link – To this post so i will know you have posted it – http://www.mediaworks.co.uk/top-10-ways-to-destroy-your-old-mobile-phone-case-vote-now/

Choosing – I will then choose the top 10 suggestions. If you try and make it something I can actually do, then your choice will have more of a chance

Action - I will carry out your wishes and send you a video of the deed

What are you waiting for!!