Challenge Buzz

Firstly for all those random visitors to this site, this is not a bizarre reality concept starring Buzz Lightyear but a serious attempt at eaves dropping on a particular brand in an attempt to identify what is being discussed on the subject making use of a myriad of online eaves dropping tools.

My chosen brand as should be evident already was Nokia, chosen primarily based upon my telephony experience and leaning towards the technological aspects of this Cyberchase course. In hindsight, I would have selected a less digitally prevalent brand to monitor, however just click below to find out more.

So how were we going to go about monitoring the 'Buzz' about Nokia over the coming weeks. First call was obviously our friendly neighborhood internet God (not big brother honest), Google and their Google Alert service. Having already been a user of this service, it was set up immediately and the daily feeds providing links to both news articles and blog pages are usually good, however the volume can be high and to be of use you need to develop the habit of scanning these articles daily before the backlog overwhelms.

Another potentially useful tool but in my opinion more relevant to identifying historical key dates relating to a particular search is Google Trends. This service can be used to plot; the search or news reference volumes of any specified key words going as far back as December 2004, it may not seem a long time now, but Google have been ahead of the game in keeping and tracking data. In my search to identify anything relevant to the current exercise it didn't prove useful as I was focusing on current 'buzz' not what was being discussed 2 years ago.

Given our new found embrace of 'The Blog', this seemed like the ideal destination to find out what people were really thinking and discussing about the brand Nokia so it was with the help of another useful online search engine that the Blogger world would be investigated, Blogpulse our window into the Blogosphere. The 107485 results this initially provided most of which were foreign language pages which did mean the time spent browsing was long and made much use of the 'back' button. But nothing worth doing is easy or free, and it did ultimately lead me to a glimmer of protest amongst, admittedly not just Nokia, but mobile users generally and I shall come to that shortly.

Firstly a couple more windows into the online world I peered through found myself nosing about more podcast and you tube videos courtesy of Everyzing and the world of message forums through Boardreader. Now my experience of the many many message forums that re out there covering almost every subject known to man varies from being a place for people just to moan and let out their frustrations to the occasional site supported by the helpful and friendly, lifes extremes as always can be found everywhere.

Anyway, having chosen a brand name absolutely prevalent across the world wide web, most links from everywhere and anywhere were buying and selling related. I did come across a few references to a service I had not heard of and that was answering a demand for something missing from the mobile market since the lovely interchangeable fascias Nokia used to provide. And that is personalisation. Our mobiles are still a status symbol and the manufacturers do cater for varying tastes and styles across the model ranges but nothing is truly personalised and we humans do like to be an individual and stand out from the crowd. So although not an incredible insight into the brand Nokia it is some advice they could heed and strengthen their brand before small services like the following grab the market. The first place I came across the service was via a google alert linking to a blog dedicated to the Nokia E-series and a gallery of personalised E-series phones can be see by clicking here

The primary modification provider many have referenced is company known as Gmask. Unfortunately not available in the UK or Europe yet, I'm sure we will see more of this in the near future, in fact it is already present in the clothing sector and Nike have introduced a similar ability to personalise within the trainer market, so if your after some unique footwear just click here.

For a glimpse of what Nokia are currently envisioning as the future of their mobile range the following is an interesting collage of clips released by them.