Is a quote from ‘Anatomy of a Successful Social Network’, an article Knotty showed me. It makes for an interesting read, analysing current development trends of social networks amongst other things.

I liked the crack analogy, which is the reason why I decided the creation of my personal MySpace page would end at the registration screen. I also like amusing image names, when searching google for an image to illustrate this post I found ‘me chrissy and julie on crack.jpg’, too much information perhaps?

A Google Maps / BBC mash up allowing you to browse the last 12 hours worth of BBC news by location. Smart.

via backstage.

You’ll have to forgive me for another team Poke trumpet blowing post, but the good stuff keeps on coming!

This time I want to tell you about Zopa, a project I was working on this summer. The company was featured on the BBC news a few days back. Watch the BBC spot for an understanding of how it all works…

Our brief was to bring the community aspect of the site to the fore and demonstrate how people lending to other people is quite simply the best way to do money, aswell as refreshing the look and feel of their existing website inline with the branding the company had developed with North design.

We hope to have made Zopa a far more social experience by introducing an engaging flash environment populated with real Zopa lenders and borrowers, who have real data attached to them for users to interrogate and learn more about Zopa and its markets.

The characters you meet at Zopa were illustrated by Cookie. We are all really enjoying seeing the team at Zopa introducing the characters across the site, from paddling pool parties to characters lucky enough to be equipped with rocket packs!

More Zopa links:

Techcrunch, Style boost, Zopa vs. Prosper

I’m really pleased to tell you that the all new Topshop.com went live a few weeks back. It has been by far the largest project I have worked on to date, managing to keep alot of folk here at Poke and at Topshop HQ very busy over the last 12 months!

So what about the site then - Well whilst the shopping experience side of things is nothing ground breaking (a skinned e-commerce system provided by IBM ) - We hope to have layered on the ‘good stuff’ to inspire online shoppers.

Here is a quick over view…

To start with, the ever changing ‘Daily fix’ goes some way in presenting to the user a selection of the 200 new items delievered each week to the stores, and the ‘Style Blog’ announces all current and future happenings with brand. Both features having an RSS feed attached to allow users to keep up to date easily.

Constantly rotating, image rich editorial ‘Features’ have also been added, showcasing the latest ranges, designer collections and fashion trends. As you might expect in the ipod-tatsic planet we live in, a richer, slicker editorial experience is also avaliable for download in the weekly Topshop video podcast.

Would be good to hear what you guys think?

Here are some links I’ve been meaning to post over the last week or so, everything from wearing meat on your head to the construction of the interweb.

Ok first up is some real meat heads, check out the efforts of the meat head community gallery at ‘Hats of meat’.

Secondly, whilst putting together a leaving card for a Swedish colleague last week I was directed to the Swearsaurus (NSFW Ads), which is fairly hardcore granted - but as you imagine can be very amusing when looking for that perfect goodbye message in Swedish!

Have you been playing the highly addictive flash game Line Rider recently? Well here is a video demonstrating what I suspect to be untrue skills.

Lastly did you know that 95% of webdesign is typography?

I really like the illustration work Olaf hajek, especially the maps - They remind me of the maps you are given at theme parks, and also the tea towels your mum used to buy when you went on holiday to places like the Isle of wight!

Also on the map theme, Iain here pointed out the quality of Microsoft live local this morning, here’s a nice view of the Biscuit building.

Well sort of, it seems that nic and situl managed to get into creative arts magazine. I don’t buy it myself, but it was left on the coffee desk at work. Nic manages to get in on a couple of photos at AllOfUs and Situls in there for that swarm project he did for his degree at university.

Following my post at the start of the week about smart commerce interfaces, someone here pointed out the new clean and tidy, clever product filtering Nike store today.

Woooo!

I have been looking forward to the new site for the west London boutique group ‘Matches’ for a while, my wait is over, I recieved a courteous ’sorry its late, but now live’ notice this morning - although there was no complimentray voucher though

So what is the site like?

I read a preview of the site in a sunday newspaper supplement a few weeks back, and apparently what was going to be special about Matches online was its ‘larger than net-a porter and others’ range of exclusive designer wares - Well it certainly appears to all be there, 34 coat designers alone!

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My Hertiage’s amusing face recognition engine compares facial traits of your uploaded mugshot and spits out a bunch of celebrity matches with whom you bear resemblance to, apparently