Tom Ewing

I do a bunch of different things online: it’s tangled enough that an extended bio page seems sensible.

POP!

Freaky Trigger – the site you’re on – is my main writing outlet. It started in 1999 as a webzine for pop music commentary and is now a site for blogging about wider culture. I’m the “publisher” of FT but it’s always been the work of many hands: the main thing I write for it is Popular, my review of the UK’s #1 singles in order. I’m also a keen participant in the various FT offshoots – club nights, the radio, etc. – as detailed in the site’s “About” page.

I also write about music for Pitchfork – I have a column there and contribute occasional reviews.

I have a fortnightly column on music for the Guardian newspaper, which starts in January 2010.

I’m doing an MP3 blog project called It Took Seconds, the nature of which hopefully becomes obvious when you visit it.

I regularly review singles for The Singles Jukebox.

I help run the Poptimists community on LiveJournal, where activity is sporadic but sometimes very rewarding.

My pop writing has appeared in a few books: three volumes of the Da Capo Best Music Writing series; The Pitchfork 500; and Zero Books’ The Resistible Demise Of Michael Jackson.

ROCK! SOCIAL MEDIA!

I also have a day job – luckily for me a very interesting one: I do social media stuff for Kantar Operations, which is part of Kantar, which is the market research wing of WPP.

Most of the stuff I do for that is secret, but I do run a market research/social media blog on Tumblr, called Blackbeard Blog, which I use as a kind of ideas lab for my job. If it isn’t occasionally interesting to non-researchers then I’m doing it wrong. I also have an occasional blog on the Market Research Society site, called Only Connect, also about social media.

I am a fairly regular attendee at research industry conferences. The next one is the MRS Research 10 event in London on March 23rd, where I’m on a panel on online communities. This paper, on the same topic, won an award a couple of years ago.

PRESENCE

I have a personal Tumblr, which is for links, occasional songs, notes, unformed ideas and things which don’t feel like they “fit” anywhere else.

And I have a Twitter account, with content skewing towards pop, social media and market research topics. I generally try and make sure people only interested in one won’t be too bored by the others.

I’m on Facebook and LinkedIn too but barely use them, and I started the wonderful I Love Music community in 2000 but I’m too busy for more than infrequent lurking there now.

Offline I’m in my mid-late 30s, I live just south of London, I’m married with 2 young sons. My brother is the awesome Al Ewing, who writes Judge Dredd and other stuff for 2000AD.

If you want to talk to me about pop, research, social media, or ask me to write or present stuff, please do get in touch. (the.ewings@gmail.com works best)

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