Perhaps this has been around for longer, but it’s a first for me. Alexa, an Amazon company, now lists the top 100 Portuguese sites. A few patterns emerge:

• Hi5 ranks nr 1

  Besides user base, i simply don’t get it why it got so popular around here, specially when it’s way behind Facebook or MySpace in terms of features. Well, at least they announced their support for OpenSocial, by the end of this month. Curious how Orkut is ahead of MySpace (Brazilian emigration might not be the only reason).

• Google domains

  Google.pt + google.com + YouTube + Blogger = all your base belongs to us.

• Travian is #10?!?!

  I always made fun of Travian as being WoW for dummies. In several trips to my hometown in the countryside, it amazed me the dozens of teenagers gathering around in the local cofee shop to play this online strategy game. Now i fully respect it, though i still haven’t figured out the whole etnography. Another contender is Hattrick, a football manager that’s killing productivity in Portuguese offices. (Hey boss, if you’re reading this, keep in mind I play neither of them).

• The ISP / media conglomerate pack

  Sapo, IOL, AEIOU do their best to take advantage of being a default start page. With agressive content agreements and new service launches they try to hold on to a good slice of the market.

• Sports

  Football, mostly. With 3 daily sports newspaper (odd, isn’t it?), no wonder the online versions of Record, A Bola and O Jogo rank in the top 30.

• Leechers

  Oh boy, where should i start? Emule, private servers, Usenet … As if it wasn’t enough illegal downloads, Portuguese leechers are coming to the web to use services like MegaUpload, RapidShare, BtNext or Mininova. You think that’s funny? You should try to get a Cable connection to work decently on peak traffic hours.

• Portuguese do it better

  Keeping this blog Safe-For-Work, you probably can figure out what is the subject in matter. Although it seems we have to see a lot of “instructional materials” to keep in shape, as 8 in 100 sites seem to point out.

• The birth of social media

  Besides Hi5 and Blogger, several user publishing plataforms are getting big enough to believe we’ll see a sustainable growth in social media tools in the near future. Wordpress.com, Flickr, Fotolog and Imeem (where’s last.fm ???) have some impressive figures, a promising sign for User Generated Content.

• Web 1.5

  My biggest disappointment was not founding a single decent “Web 2.0″ (there, i said it) portuguese service. From the great list at Bloguite, none is featured on Alexa’s top 100.

Alexa’s ranking system, while extremely biased by those who have their toolbar, is the best free choice we have until compete.com becomes less US centric.

But i guess it’s our own market’s fault, that keeps feeding a monopoly like the one that Marktest has with their closed metrics solution Netpanel. Ah, if only comScore was here ….

Last year, on the balance of the e-Mkt 2007 conference, there was hope in bringing forward our national digital marketing industry, perhaps by becoming part of of EIAA or creating local IAB offices. Maybe that was not a feasible solution, but the reality of having poor industry metrics is a huge problem that needs to be addressed.
Better yet, let’s all have a true conversation about it. Your turn.

Finally Common Craft published one of their most expected videos.

Now you can easily explain what’s Twitter all about. And follow me on Twitter, of course.

Youtube link to feed readers

Things have been quite busy lately here at the office (besides the moving and remodeling works). One of the things that lowered my usual rate of shared inspirations is Chevrolet Tattoo, a tactical website developed in the last month.

Last year i spent my reasonable share of time showcasing Papervision. Unfortunately, no suitable project or briefing came that was adequate to apply the framework. As you shouldn’t t use a new technology just because it’s there, the right amount of relevance to use Papervision came with a campaign for Matiz Tattoo.

The main objective was to showcase a catalog of vehicles, with 15 available patterns. With few resources available, the idea came: what if we used Papervision3D and allowed users to customize their own model online?

So, there you have it, my perfect excuse to use the Flash 3d framework on a online campaign (in Portuguese only):

Have fun and create your own Tattoo (Cria a tua Tatoo).

URL: http://www.chevrolettattoo.com/
Client: Chevrolet Portugal (GM)
Agency: Draftfcb Portugal
Interactive Team: Armando Alves, Bruno Duarte, Hugo Cervantes and Luis Castro.

It’s all over the news:

Microsoft Makes $44.6 Billion Bid for Yahoo

Microsoft said Friday that it would offer $44.6 billion for Yahoo, the ailing search giant. The surprise offer of $31 a share represents a 62 percent premium to Thursday’s clsoing share price. Yahoo shareholders could elect to receive either cash or stock.
(…)

“This proposal represents a compelling value realization event for your shareholders”, Steven A. Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief executive, said in a letter to Yahoo’s board sent Thursday.

My take? Now there’s no excuse for EU blocking on the Doubleclick acquisition by Google. Tough competition ahead.

Source:Pedro and Hugo

It’s not always about the visuals. Once in a while there comes a campaign that reminds us that we have more senses to be delighted. While audio advertising had his glory days with radio, it now is starting to fade, increasingly becoming an underrated medium.

The Internet is now offering a new stage for audio experiences, and following the previous post on Arcade Fire’s music video, we now have the latest work from Fantasy Interactive: Porsche Bloodlines, a countdown site for the new Cayenne GTS.

The site is largely based on the concept of the commercial (click video above to play), highlighting the remarkable sounds produced by the historic Porsche models. The 3 week project developed in Flash, has also inner sections including downloads, wallpapers an a audio challenge.

Enjoy the site. With headphones, please.

2008 is really shaping up with events in Portugal. After finding out that master designer Paula Scher from Pentagram, is scheduled to speak at ESAD the next 4th of May, today the gang from RIApt announced the first portuguese Flexcamp.

The conference about Adobe Flex and Adobe Air is heading to Portugal (at ISCTE) on the next February 19th, after a full year touring in the US.

Planned speakers:

• Serge Jespers, Adobe Systems
• Enrique Duvos, Adobe Systems
• Carlos Rovira, Flex and Flash integration
• João Fernandes, BlazeDS and LCDS
• João Saleiro, Connecting Flex to LAMP backend using AMFPHP

Register here.

Killing good ideas can harm your future.

Stone Fire

Stone Wheel

From the Neanderthal pals at Hamburg.

If you’re portuguese, we’re also having some serious fun at our offices

Video: Bill Gates Last Day CES Clip

If Microsoft is now Ballmer, then we already miss him.

Source: Carlos Andrade, via Prt.Sc

Here’s something quite appropriate for today: startaresolution.com. Inspire othe s with your new year’s resolution while getting help from the previous person, as a personal coach.

A holiday site by Rave Review. May your resolutions come true.

Source: The FWA