It was a big week down at Starcom MediaVest towers; we had Twitter in to talk to us about their imminent UK launch (September.)

@AdamBain, the President of Global Revenue(speaking in the picture) and @TonyW the new GM for the UK held a few meetings throughout the morning.

They shared with us their vision for how Twitter fits into the fabric of everyday life, what the new ad ops are and how Twitter will continue to grow through being “baked” into the new iPhone (“out this fall”) amongst other things. Here are some fun facts from the session:

• It took 3 years and 2 days to get to their first billion tweets. This now takes just 5 days.
• Women tweet 30% more than men
• 50% of all Twitter activity is via a mobile
• 1 in 6 people will join Twitter and only ever experience it via a mobile

3D audio ad

At the cinema I still love to hear the full on Dolby Surround sound test at the beginning of the film. You know, the one where the helicopter flies around the room, police sirens etc, all showing off how good the sound system is. 3D audio isn’t anything new but it doesn’t get used a huge amount outside of major productions and is actually quite easy to do.

Here is a great example of it and a real inspiration for thinking a bit differently about communicating with our audiences especially as so much audio listening is coming from mobile phones and with headphones plugged in: http://bit.ly/3Daudio

iPlayer and PS3

For those that missed the news on Monday that the BBC has launched a dedicated version of iPlayer for the PS3, they have been on it via the PS3’s web capabilities since 2008, but this marks a great user upgrade. Collectively iPlayer is looking to become even more accessible and firmly establish itself in the living room and game consoles are a great place to start. Expect more SmartTV focus over the next few months, they are already delivering over 3m program requests via them a month.

Who’s actually using QR codes

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about some cool creative examples of QR codes that showed how you can break free from the traditional black on white box and make them look really interesting. Well here is a little follow up with, everyone’s favourite, an infographic looking at who actually scans them and other interesting tidbits to help you better understand their role.

http://bit.ly/QRinfrographic

Steve Jobs and Bill Gates interview

Finally, this is actually a really amazing interview. Probably the last time you will get both Bill Gates and Steve Jobs on the same panel. It was filmed at the allthingsD conference back in 2007 (jump ahead to 7 mins if you don’t want the trip down memory lane of their previous joint appearances).

Alternatively you can download the podcast version from iTunes.

It’s amazing for a number of reasons; back then the iPhone had just been announced and wasn’t yet on full release. The iPad had been developed but was still 3 years away from being admitted and released. Gates was doing philanthropy work outside of Microsoft and no longer ran the day to day operations so talks quite openly about what the company is up to and what he envisages for the future. It is quite long, but well worth listening to now that you know what has come out and how the two companies have fared over the period. Apple was for a brief moment this week the most valuable company in the world based on market valuation, overtaking Exxon Mobil. Beyond that it is just amazing to hear to absolute gods discussing their worlds.