World Markets Simplified

Express yourself after dying, reveal secrets and truths.Create messages for world as it might end in 2012.

DeadSocial is a free tool that allows us to create scheduled messages. These are only distributed across our social networks after we die.

This allows us all to say our final goodbyes on our own terms and for us to extend our digital legacy using the social web.

"The concept, though a bit shocking, makes sense for many people who wish to share their final thoughts post-mortem". (The Next Web)

"A message from a loved one after a fatal accident could help in the grieving process" (Forbes)

"DeadSocial helps you contact friends and family from beyond the grave" (Huffington Post)

"A way to tweet from beyond the grave" (The Wall Street Journal)

The website invokes the spirits of Amy Winehouse and Steve Jobs.


Would Jobs have revealed more about Apple TV? Tim Cook sure didn't say much this week. Of course, there's already a Facebook page purporting to represent Steve Jobs, though its latest entry is a Portuguese language video against a Brazilian hydroelectric plant. Siri, is this really what Steve cares about? Actually, I would prefer to hear Jobs' thoughts on those awkward Zooey Deschanel-Siri ads. #Fail

But I digress...

“Why should we stop creating content when we die?” Dead Social creator James Norris tells Forbes.Maybe because we're dead?

For the moment, Dead Social is free. Each new user has to designate someone to notify the site once the user dies. This will activate all those posthumous messages. The site is hoping to sign on a few celebrities to give it a higher profile.

So let's think about this. Sending your spouse regular messages like, "I love you" after you die sounds like a sweet idea. Is it? Long term? What if he or she moves on and remarries? Do you really want to constantly remind loved ones about the past?

Perhaps a better use for Dead Social is to use it as the Zombie weapon it is. Haunt everyone who ever wronged you, owes you money, or called you fat. Tell them, finally, how you really feel.

Just think .... "John, you were a cheap turd who still owes me $50." Look, you can even make stuff up. "OJ killed me." What's he gonna do...sue you? Though there may be hell to pay when you both meet up on the other side.

Yesterday, searches for “Shanghai Composite” were blocked from China’s most-used microblogging service after the stock index’s drop on the 23rd anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown corresponded to the date of the event.China strictly prohibits references to the crackdown, in which hundreds of protesters were killed by troops, as part of the government’s censorship of websites, newspapers and television that bars criticism of the ruling Communist Party. This year, authorities are also trying to ensure a smooth leadership transition scheduled for later in 2012 and seeking stability after the suspension of Politburo member Bo Xilai.

The benchmark Shanghai Composite Index dropped by 64.89 (SHCOMP) points yesterday, matching the date on which Chinese authorities crushed student-led protests on June 4, 1989. Queries for “Shanghai Composite” on Sina Corp.’s Twitter-like Weibo service returned a message that said results can’t be displayed “in accordance with relevant laws, regulations and policies.”

“It’s difficult to orchestrate but the coincidence is just mind-boggling,” Willy Wo-Lap Lam, an adjunct professor of history at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, said in a phone interview yesterday.

Queries for “Shanghai Composite” on the website of Baidu Inc. (BIDU), China’s most-used Internet search engine, returned results that showed the index’s decline. Other websites including Sina’s financial news portal and that of China Finance Online Co. also carried stock market reports with the index’s drop in points.

“We didn’t see anything abnormal in the market,” said Chen Ji, spokesman for the Shanghai Stock Exchange. “We don’t have any further comment.”

Weibo Scrutiny

Sina’s Weibo service, with more than 300 million registered users, has been subject to increased scrutiny. The company, along with rival Tencent Holdings Ltd. (700), were ordered to disable the comment function on their microblog services for 72 hours in March after authorities detained six people accused of spreading rumors of a coup attempt in Beijing.

Cathy Peng, a Beijing-based spokeswoman for Sina, didn’t immediately answer calls to her office after normal work hours.

In December, China began requiring microblog users in cities including Beijing, Guangzhou and Shenzhen to register their real names. That rule will be expanded to other regions, Wang Chen, minister of the State Council Information Office, said in January.

About 44 per cent of respondents said the botched market debut has made them less favourable toward Facebook, according to the survey conducted from May 31 to June 4. The poll included 1,032 Americans, 21 per cent of whom had no Facebook account.

Facebook's 900 million users make it among the most popular online destinations, challenging entrenched Internet players such as Google Inc and Yahoo Inc. But not everyone is convinced that the company has figured out how to translate that popularity into a business that can justify its lofty valuation.

Shares of Facebook closed on Monday's regular trading session down 3 per cent at $26.90. Facebook did not have an immediate comment on the survey.

While the survey did not ask how other forms of advertising affected purchasing behaviour, a February study by research firm eMarketer suggests that Facebook fared worse than email or direct-mail marketing in terms of influencing consumers' purchasing decisions.

"It shows that Facebook has work to do in terms of making its advertising more effective and more relevant to people," eMarketer analyst Debra Williamson said.

Those concerns were exacerbated last month when General Motors Co, the third largest advertiser in the United States, said it would stop paid-advertising on Facebook.

Measuring the effectiveness of advertising can be tricky, particularly for brand marketing in which the goal is to influence future purchases rather than generate immediate sales.

And the success of an ad campaign must be considered in relation to the product, said Steve Hasker, president of Global Media Products and Advertiser Solutions at Nielsen.

"If you are advertising Porsche motor cars and you can get 20 per cent of people to make a purchase, that's an astonishingly high conversion rate," said Hasker.

"If you are selling instant noodles, maybe it's not," he said.

Wanting engagement
About two out of five people polled by Reuters and Ipsos Public Affairs said they used Facebook every day. Nearly half of the Facebook users polled spent about the same amount of time on the social network as six months ago.

The survey provides a look at the trends considered vital to Facebook's future at a time when the company has faced a harsh reception on Wall Street.

Facebook's $16 billion IPO, one the world's largest, made the US company founded by Mark Zuckerberg the first to debut on markets with a capitalisation of more than $100 billion.

Its coming out-party, which culminated years of breakneck growth for the social and business phenomenon, was marred by trading glitches on the Nasdaq exchange. A decision to call certain financial analysts ahead of the IPO and caution them about weakness in its business during the second quarter has triggered several lawsuits against Facebook and its underwriters.

Forty-six per cent of survey respondents said the Facebook IPO had made them less favourable towards investing in the stock market in general.

While Facebook generated $3.7 billion in revenue in 2011, mostly from ads on its website, sales growth is slowing.

Consumers' increasing use of smartphones to access Facebook has been a drag on the company's revenue. It offers only limited advertising on the mobile version of its site, and analysts say the company has yet to figure out the ideal way to make money from mobile users.

Facebook competes for online ads with Google, the world's No 1 Web search engine, which generated roughly $38 billion in revenue in 2011. Google's search ads, which appear alongside the company's search results, are considered among the most effective means of marketing.

The most frequent Facebook users are aged 18 to 34, according to the Reuters/Ipsos survey, with 60 per cent of that group being daily users. Among people aged 55 years and above, 29 per cent said they were daily users.

Of the 34 per cent spending less time on the social network, their chief reason was that the site was "boring," "not relevant" or "not useful," while privacy concerns ranked third.

The survey has a "credibility interval" of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

At its press event in L.A. today, amongst other trailers and announcements, Microsoft previewed Halo 4, the latest entry in the sci-fi action series starring military superhero Master Chief.

Leading into the gameplay demo of Master Chief coming to aid a downed spacecraft, the company screened a live action trailer that focused on the ship and the marines aboard. "We begin like the story of the Titanic, a very uplifting commissioning of this new starship the UNSC Infinity," says Xbox Global Group MarCom Manager Ryan Cameron. "We then juxtapose that hope and promise with the terror of it being ripped out of the sky by the new threat that is in Halo 4."

The two-and-a-half-minute trailer is titled "The Commissioning" and was created out of McCann Erickson agency twofifteenmccann and 343 Industries, the Microsoft group behind the Halo franchise. The spot was filmed in Bucharest, Romania by director Nicolai Fuglsig, known for his award-winning Bravia commerical featuring balls bouncing down the streets of San Francisco. The trailer was scored by Neil Davidge, of the band Massive Attack, who also created the music for the Halo 4 game. Even Mark Rolston, the actor who does the voice of Captain Del Rio in the game, actually gets a turn in front of a camera for the trailer. "Everything is completely seamless between the live action work and the gameplay," says Cameron.

This live action trailer is just the start. In October, leading up to the November 6 release of the game, Microsoft will also launch Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn, a live action web series of five 15-minute episodes focusing on the Marines of UNSC Infinity. Though today’s short and the web series share common elements, different teams worked on the films. "Because it’s a world that people always want to see more of, Halo lends itself to live action execution," says Halo 4's executive producer Kiki Wolfkill.

Microsoft has used live action trailers in the past for the Halo series, from a veteran talking about the war in Halo 3, to a commercial directed by Rupert Sanders (Snow White and the Huntsman) showing the life of a Spartan supersoldier for Halo 3: ODST, to the short film from director Neill Blomkamp (District 9 and the upcoming Elysium) as a test for a Halomovie that never made it past planning. So how did the XBox team approach this latest live-action short to differentiate it? Wolfkill says, "It’s less a conscious decision of 'What are the things we need to do better?' so much as 'What is really the exact story that we want to tell?' "

Using a live-action short that leads directly into an action-packed sequence in the game does seem to ramp up the visceral quality of theHalo 4 portion of Microsoft’s event. Wolfkill says, "[Viewers] will experience the same confusion, shock, and awe that the characters in the live action trailer, and as well as the gameplay, are going to experience."

Below is the Halo 4 game play sequence also released at E3.