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Welcome to eModeration's digest of all that is intriguing, alarming or odd in the world of social media. We'll be posting bite-size morsels of nourishing news not once, but twice a week - so check back soon!
THE HEADLINES...
The Web 2.0 world was reeling this week, after Microsoft slapped it round the chops with a real-time search double-whammy.
Whammy one: Microsoft has inked deals with both Facebook and Twitter, allowing status updates to be integrated into the Bing Search engine.
Then, while the social world was rearranging its expression to read ‘not in the slightest bit surprised, saw it coming a mile off actually’, came whammy two: Google is about to do precisely the same thing.
The CIA has invested in social monitoring company Visible Technologies. Now the guy who manually checks through a zillion 'u comin 2 mai partee?’ posts in the hope of one which reads ‘the quick coyote has met the cunning fox’ can finally go home to his wife and kids.
A Tory govt would jack the 50p tax which the present govt say will bring rural broadband up to urban speeds - in apparent contrast to the speech David Cameron gave in January. Oh dear - there’s nothing Middle England likes more than a snipe bid on a pair of BNWT driving-gloves – and you can’t do that on a 1meg connection, you know.
Meanwhile Culture Secretary Ben Bradshaw confirmed that persistent file-sharers would not be ‘cut off willy-nilly’ – news which might reassure the British public, 70% of whom oppose an internet ban for file-sharers. Kudos also to Mr Bradshaw for a unilateral revival of ‘willy-nilly’ despite grave risk to his gubernatorial dignity.
THE LOWDOWN...
Some companies do find this Woman thing so hard, don’t they? At a Yahoo-hosted hack weekend for developers in Taiwan, company-hired lap-dancers provided the entertainment. Really, What Were They Thinking? (We’re going to have to agree on an acronym for that, aren’t we? I like DERBRAIN – you?)
Quick, come and see Bill Clinton through X-ray Specs! A twitter bug left the former prez accidentally exposing his tweets - click here for the twitillating details.
Twitter is now the platform of choice for Slebs who are up for a ruck. "Giving some celebrities Twitter is like giving a kid a loaded gun," says a PR firm chief. In the case of Perez Hilton, whose first tweet to Rumer Willis was “welcome to Twitter, Potatohead”, more like “a loaded gun and a kilo of Skittles”.
This is more like it. A gamer customized a Super Mario World level so that "Lisa will you marry me?" was spelled out in gold coins. See? Romance isn’t dead. It’s just not so good with, you know, face-to-face interaction these days.
According to Netimperative, 1 in 10 UK adults is ‘not interested in getting online’. Right... Got it... No, sorry, you’re going to have to run me through that again.
AND IN OTHER NEWS...
Interesting times for Yahoo. Though revenue dropped, net income is up by a whopping 225% due to fierce cost-cutting. What’s more, they’re launching a rival to the Huffington Post, which will use a combo of smart tech and smart humans to offer link excellence and tip-top writing.
Apple is still the people’s darling – the company saw a crunchy 47% rise in profits in the quarter to September - news of which bounced shares by 7.5% to an all-time high.
Amazon is also confounding the recession, with a Q3 profit surge of 68% year on year. Founder Jeff Bezos lays the laurels at the feet of Kindle, which is now at the heart of Amazon’s strategy.
Channel 4 is offering targeted ads around its YouTube programming; meanwhile speculation that Hulu may start charging for content next year is starting to look like concrete fact.
Microsoft and T-mobile now claim they have recovered most, if not all, of its Sidekick users' missing data. Finally: when display ads do badly, it could simply be that they are pug ugly. Aesthetic failure is often to blame for limp performance, according to Dynamic Logic.
ON FACEBOOK...
The ‘Book’s deal with Bing, which will integrate status updates into search results, is expected to go live within two months. As the Telegraph points out, the thought of unseen millions reading “wooohooo - trolley’d!“ should give a sense of urgency to those who have yet to master Facebook’s privacy settings.
Facebook’s graph is so steep they need crampons: in the US, it now gets an astonishing 1 in every 4 page views. Market share is up 194% since last year, and there are now over 45 million updates a day.
It won’t come as a dreadful shock, then, to hear that MySpace’s new CEO has conceded defeat in its battle with the social colossus. Owen Van Natta says the company now aims to be a music hub.
ON TWITTER...
Twitter, meanwhile, appears untroubled by Facebook anxiety: CEO Evan Williams nonchalantly declared last week that “the world is big enough for Facebook and Twitter”. Despite flat-lining stats, Williams was pretty chipper about a near-future revenue stream – and indicated that mobile is looking very alluring to the microblogging service, which last week celebrated its 5 billionth tweet.
Each one of which will now be accessible through Bing and Google: According to Venturebeat, Bing’s Twitter search will have tag clouds and organize results according to both age and popularity. Retweets will move an entry up, as will embedded links – the most popular of which will be sortable too.
GOOGLE...
It’s not yet entirely clear what Google’s Twitter/Facebook search will look like – but news of the deal tops a great week for the search powerhouse.
It reported an 8% revenue increase for Q3, and announced plans to spend heavily on long-term growth. The first pennies go on a six-nation roll-out of its enterprise-aimed ‘Gone Google’ marketing campaign.
Google is also dipping a toe into the smartphone market, with a branded Android phone of its own - and launching a music service, which according to Wired will offer streaming, and enhanced search.
ON YOUTUBE...
As if there weren’t enough real-time excitement turning our pretty heads, YouTube announced Comments Search, which will allow real time search of conversation topics on the network.
It’s also testing a new advertising model, which melds AdWords with YouTube videos and allows advertisers to target video ads via keywords.
BRANDS GET SOCIAL...
Run, kitty, run! Petco has launched a ‘Howl-O-Ween’ comp, which allows owners to upload photos and videos of their Halloween-bedecked pets.
Ask.com launches a Facebook-integrated microsite, which asks users to celebrate their greatest deal.
Cheez Doodles wants to expand its share of the teen-market, and is offering them the chance to “Rock the Cheez” by creating virtual bands online.
Honda’s ‘social experiment’ – its ‘Everybody Knows Somebody Who Loves a Honda’ Facebook page - has been a roaring success. The page, which allows owners to connect with Honda-lovin’ friends and strangers globally, has topped 2 million fans.
ArmyStrongStories.com, a blogging system that lets anyone in the service make a post, is letting soldiers’ voices be heard and driving recruitment for the US Army.
Ford’s latest wheeze is the Fusion 41 social media campaign, which is seeking 8 socially-savvy fans of the Ford Fusion to compete in a relay race - the winner gets their vehicle paid for.
Lonely Planet is testing an App which uses Google Wave to give independent-minded travelers recommendations and reviews, which they can transform into content-rich itineraries.
Coca-Cola has sent a team of young Happiness ambassadors to visit each of the 206 countries where Coke is sold, and share the secret of each nation’s happiness, via social media.
Procter & Gamble's marketing team is flushed with success: they've launched a search for 5 people who, for the not-at-all-bad salary of $10k for a month’s work, will man their ‘Charmin Restroom’ in Times Square.
Arsenal and Spain midfielder Fabregas took over Nike's Football Page on Facebook last Thursday, answering questions and posting behind-the-scenes photos.
UNDER THE GAVEL...
A judge in California has provisionally okay'd Facebook’s settlement of the class suit arising from its Beacon ad programme.
Another in New York has ruled that Facebook is protected by the Communications Decency Act, in a teenager’s defamation suit.
conix Brand Group has settled - to the tune of $250,000 – the FTC’s complaint that they illegally collected children’s data.
And two former Yale students have settled the suit they brought against anonymous posters whom they allege defamed them on law-grad site AutoAdmit. They weren’t able to sue the board itself, but managed to identify some 8 or 9 of the bloggers.
SOME SOCIAL STATS...
The numbers who post or read status updates on social sites has shot from 11% to 19% - that’s almost a fifth of us – in under a year, according to Pew’s new report.
63% of online mothers regularly use socnets, against 11% three years ago – and 44% look for recommendations – and complaints - before buying.
UK e-commerce growth slowed to a snail’s pace this year, up only 7.6% against last year’s 15%.
US ad-spend figures were even less perky, with a predicted 2.9 % drop from last year – the first since 2002.
ON MOBILE...
The rate at which Africans are buying mobile phones is breaking world records with a rise of 550% in 5 years – changing lives across the planet.
Volkswagen is marketing their new GTI via an iPhone app, and nothing else. In 2006 they spent $60m introducing the marque – the new app will cost $500,000.
Out of the lab and into the market – smartphones will help grow augmented reality from a $6m to a $350m industry by 2014, says new research.
VIRTUAL AND GAMES...
Virtual goods sales in the US and Europe could expand by as much as 150% this year, with more growth to come, says Business Insider.
Pocoyo, the Spanish preschooler cartoon series, is launching a virtual world, with some free zones and premium content by subscription.
Civilization – one of the all-time Gamer Greats – will next year get a Facebook version, under the name Civilization Network.
Open virtual world Meez Nation is to integrate with the MySpace platform – reaching even further into its teen user base.
That's all folks!
These social media updates are painstakingly put together by our research consultant Kate Williams. If you'd like to listen at the horse's month (so to speak), she's @emodkate on Twitter.
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Here's eModeration's round-up of what struck us most over the past week or so. Compiled by our research consultant, Kate Williams. She's @emodkate if you want to tag along on Twitter.
THE HEADLINES... After six long months, YouTube has finally inked a landmark deal to take Channel 4 content shortly after broadcast. Top pop TV, for example Skins and Peep Show, will now be available free of charge - and C4 has managed to cling to ad sales around the content.More than 10 million UK adults have never used the Internet, according to a new report for Martha Lane Fox, the government’s Digital Inclusion Champion. 17 per cent of the population have never been online – and 4 million of those are already socially excluded. "Internet? What the Divvil’s that?", barked the Duke of Edinburgh, who acknowledged this week that he was baffled by technology in general and remote controls in particular, generally lying on the floor to operate the set instead.And a rough old week for T–mobile, and anyone else with their their data in the clouds. The company faces sky-high legal bills after two separate class actions were filed in response to the 'catastrophic' loss of data faced by users of their Sidekick smartphones. The outage appears to have been caused by a server malfunction at Danger, a subsidiary of Microsoft, who now claim that 'the majority' of the lost data is recoverable.
Gordon Brown faced the Wrath of Mum this week in a live web-chat on parenting site Mumsnet. Mumsnet members, who have a rep for being both straight-talking and politically-savvy, expressed their disappointment rather sharply – but the PM managed to avoid a stinging slap to the back of his knees. Swing it, Daddio! The Conservatives, meanwhile, are hanging with Der Youth, having commissioned a 40-second ad on music-streaming service Spotify. Don’t tell, but had I been picking the Tory best-placed to connect with the young, I might have pretended not to see doughty Eric Pickles’ hand go up.In a Backslash Backlash, the Father of the World Wide Web™ Sir Tim Berners-Lee has admitted that, had he his time again, he would go //-free. Hoorah! those Facebook Fails just keep on coming. Maxi Sopo, a 26-year-old suspected of bank fraud, wanted all his friends to know what a grand old time he was having lying low in sunny Mexico. Unluckily, he’d already made the schoolboy error of adding a law-enforcement official to his list of friends.Finland has declared fast Internet access a legal right. From July, Finnish telecom companies will be obliged to provide the nation’s 5.3 million citizens with at least 1 Mbps, with even faster speeds in the pipeline. “We think it’s something you cannot live without in modern society. Like banking services or water or electricity, you need Internet connection,” said an official.All rather galling for Sweden, who actually broke their bit of the Internet last week. The .se domain was out for a whole hour on Monday, before they fixed it up with a rubber-band and some blu-tak, and managed to jump-start the motor. I Tweet Dead People. Yes, it’s come to this - the first social media séance, or “Twéance” [baboom-tish], will take place on October 30th, when UK psychic Jancye Wallace will attempt to contact Dead Slebs via Twitter. No need, I feel for ornamentation – this story speaks perfectly well for itself. The Glo Bible has high-resolution photos, virtual tours, interactive timelines and a slick, youthful publicity campaign featuring a soft-rock soundtrack - and is available in the UK for a very reasonable £59.99.I’mma let you decide whether t’laugh or cry / When Miley Cyrus raps her Twitter goodbye. And in spookily-related news, Hollywood execs are cracking down on movie-industry celebs who leak info through their Twitter and Facebook accounts. No idea why.Finland has declared fast Internet access a legal right. From July, Finnish telecom companies will be obliged to provide the nation’s 5.3 million citizens with at least 1 Mbps, with even faster speeds in the pipeline. “We think it’s something you cannot live without in modern society. Like banking services or water or electricity, you need Internet connection,” said an official. The IAB (that's the US Interactive Advertising Bureau) got a bit shirty this week in response to Federal Trade Commission’s new guidelines on bloggers and brands. The new rules, it claims, stifle free speech by restricting online communication – “the cheapest, most widely accessible communications medium ever invented” - more harshly than they regulate trad forms of media. Social news site Digg says their new ad format, which allows users to vote ads up or down just as they would other site content, has surpassed expectations. Those ads with the most Diggs are super-exposed, whilst the least popular eventually drop off the edge of the world. ON FACEBOOK... Hoorah! those Facebook Fails just keep on coming. Maxi Sopo, a 26-year-old suspected of bank fraud, wanted all his friends to know what a grand old time he was having lying low in sunny Mexico. Unluckily, he’d already made the schoolboy error of adding a law-enforcement official to his list of friends.Threadsy, a site which aggregates users Facebook, Twitter and email, is developing an app which would allows its users to ‘abhor’ an item in their Facebook feed. Harrumph. As my dear grandmama used to say, if you ain't got nothing nice to say, shut up and browse elsewhere ...Other than that, it’s all about the numbers this week for Facebook. In the UK, The ‘Book is cookin’ - it claims one in every seven page views, up 86.1%. And although Google grabbed the official ‘most visited’ title, Facebook was the clear moral victor, with each of their users racking up a higher number of pages per visit. US stats are also looking good for the social giant. According to Experian, Facebook and MySpace are making like elevators, with the former’s share of social traffic zooming from 19.9% to 58.6% over the last year, while the latter’s plummets from 66.8% to 30.3% – a stomach-lurching 55% plunge towards oblivion.ON TWITTER… The People’s Medium? Twice this week, Twitter users have wielded national influence. First against Trafigura, who had attempted to place a watertight legal gag around the Guardian newspaper, banning them from reporting details of the oil company‘s alleged waste-dumping in the Ivory Coast. But with #trafigura topping trending topics, the company’s legal reps Carter-Ruck retreated, leaving the Guardian (and indeed anyone else) free to publish.Then, following expressions of outrage from Tweetmeisters Derren Brown and Stephen Fry, Twitter users jammed the Press Complaints Commission’s website with a flood of protests at the Daily Mail’s Jan Moir. In her daily column she’d written that gay singer Stephen Gately’s death was “not, by any yardstick, a natural one”. Mass accusations of homophobia forced the Mail to edit the piece, while several top brands, including Nestle and M&S, asked for their ads to be withdrawn.Having recently launched its translation programme, Twitter closed a deal with India’s largest mobile operator, potentially adding 110m users – many of whom will only ever experience a web connection via their phones - to its stats. And Twitter finally added limited reporting features last week: now users can designate certain accounts as Spam, alerting a “Trust and Safety” team to investigate further.
BRANDS GET SOCIAL… Last week, some big brand marketers urged their compadres to loosen their white-knuckle grip on the wheel, and embrace the impact that user generated content is having on brand reputations. Luckily, a slew of brands launched social media campaigns this week, and heading the pack is First Direct, with a campaign that aims at total transparency. They’ve opened a real-time site which aggregates all comments (whether positive or negative), highlights trending keywords, and even provides graphs so that users can analyse the stats.Lufthansa has created a cunning Twitter/Facebook app to support its ‘passion for precision’ slogan. The app sends status updates from travellers’ Twitter or Facebook accounts at take-off and landing, to promote the airline’s excellent on-time record.You tweetin’ to me? Sony’s Crackle.com partnered with YouTube for a full-length screening of the cult classic Taxi Driver, which includes the audience’s real-time Twitter updates.Audi is launching a branded virtual world and game on Sony PlayStation Home later this year - serendipitously supporting this report, which points out that German car brands dominate the social media landscape, while Japanese and U.S. luxury car brands have much to learn.MySpace is offering their users the chance to see their inner thoughts writ large on more than 300 digital screens, in a team-up with outdoor-media owner Titan. The 3-week campaign is called "Step Up to the Mic", and will allow users to upload both images and messages to sites in the US, UK and Ireland.MTV Europe’s Music Awards have partnered with teen-world Habbo Hotel to create a virtual ‘awards ceremony’ space. The branded area, where users can hang out backstage and compete for virtual awards, is already claiming 14m unique visitors per month.Sony Ericsson’s virtual space-hopper flash mob has attracted more than 27,000 users to a dedicated microsite, where they can customise their own virtual hopper, right down to the height of its bounce.SOCIAL STATS AND FACTS… A sheaf of UK stats to shuffle through this week. Nearly twice as many UK internet users have a social networking profile than did two years ago – with three-quarters keeping their profiles private, compared to 48% back then. And 41% of web users look at a SocNet site daily, up from 30% in two years ago, according to Experian Hitwise.Virgin finds that 29% of us feel liberated when we lose our mobile/internet signal in a social environment – but more than a third of us feel highly stressed. UK ad spend dropped again – but the good news is, the downward trend might be bottoming out. Bellwether reports the lowest fall in 6 quarters, while online ad spend actually rose for the first time since 2008.
VIRTUAL AND GAMES... With a reported 11m Facebook members playing FarmVille daily, social gaming goes from strength to strength. And FarmVille’s maker Zynga is on the lookout for its next cash cow which, it turns out, might actually be a fish. According to Trademork, the developer registered ‘FishVille’ last week. I’m sure it will grow on us.Speaking of fish (as we were), games giant Electronic Arts has shed a reported $250m on social-gaming company Playfish. Playfish have amply demonstrated that the social games-virtual goods combo is a strong one, with their 2009 revenue expected to hit $75m.
eModeration is a community management and moderation agency, and we do these blogs 'cos we're very interested in all things social media. If you like what you read and want some more, just pop over to our other blog.
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Welcome to our round-up of all that's new, controversial or just plain weird on the social media scene in the last few days.THE HEADLINES…The blogosphere was abuzz this week after the US Federal Trade Commission ordered Celebs and Bloggers to ‘fess up if they’ve been paid to plug - or face a whopping $11,000 fine. Commentators were universally aghast - but it soon emerged that the FTC were less concerned with free cookie-cutters for mommy-bloggers, than with habitual dirty-dealers and paid user-reviews.And, as a supremely Zen Louis Gray calmly pointed out, its unlikely to change the world: “good people will continue to be good, and bad people will continue to be bad.”There were high hopes last week that Google Wave would provide an invigorating dip in the collaborative ocean - but by all accounts, an encounter with Wave is as likely to leave you winded on the beach, with your swimmies round your ankles. Not quite a wipeout - but not yet the answer to our real-time prayers. As one commentator said: “This will not kill Twitter, Facebook, Ning or [insert social network here].”(But if you’re still desperate to give it a go, please don’t ask this guy if he’s got a spare invite. He really hasn’t.)Twitter struggled manfully with the news that the US president had been awarded the Nobel peace prize, as users went Obama-rama. The microblogging service was simultaneously stretched by the shock news that Miley Cyrus had deleted her account - a moment which neatly illustrates Twitter’s encapsulation of the sublime, and the ridiculous.Mass panic, after 30,000 email accounts were compromised in a phishing scam. Up to 21 million users of Hotmail, Gmail and Yahoo Mail accounts were warned they were at risk of fraud, after 10,000 passwords were grabbed by a fake website which was designed to look identical to Hotmail’s.If you have been scammed, don’t be glum - you’re in excellent company. The BBC reports that America’s top G-Man was himself nearly taken in by an email from his bank, which wasn’t.It all neatly confirmed the findings of this poll by moneysupermarket.com, which found that 13 per cent of us have had their online accounts hacked. Worse, 1 in 12 of us have considered hacking the account of a friend, colleague or loved one. For shame!THE LOWDOWN…70 per cent of employers will have codes of conduct for their employees’ virtual-world avatars by 2013, predicts IT research consultancy Gartner. It urges companies to impose dress codes on employees’ avatars, to avoid alarming customers (though if your client-facing staff want to wear bikinis to virtual meetings, you might also want to rethink your recruitment strategy).More news from the coalface: it seems that over half of employers now block staff access to social sites. Only 10% of companies give employees a free rein, and the rest impose some kind of limit, for example ‘work stuff only’.Yikes. According to a new Ofcom survey, one in three British schoolchildren thinks search engines like Google rank sites by ‘how true they are’. Which is more disheartening to grownups, I wonder? That news, or the fact that Electronic Arts just hired a 12 year old to script their latest TV commercial? Hmm, tough call.Two men have been arrested for allegedly using Twitter to help G20 protesters to evade police. The pair were found in a motel, surrounded by contact-lists, a bank of laptops, and emergency-frequency radio scanners. Anarchists, huh? Always just that little bit more organized than you’d think.FACEBOOK...Facebook announced its own "Gross National Happiness" indicator, which analyzes the peaks and troughs of national sentiment via a mass survey of the emotional tone of their users updates. Key insights so far: Holidays: good; Death of much-loved public figures: bad.Sadly, The ‘Book is not yet allowing continual access to the results, denying brands a looksie at data which might be useful when planning campaigns.On the upside, brands were cheered by the news that Facebook provided the most loyal visitors to third-party sites, with 20% of Facebook-originated visitors returning three or four times in a week. This loyalty contrasted with a lukewarm 16% from Digg, and a turncoat 11% from Twitter.The stats for social games on Facebook continue to accelerate - with app-maker Zynga on track to make $200 million this year. Zynga already broke records with FarmVille, and now its CafeWorld has gone stratospheric, with figures jumping from zero to 8.6 million in one wild week.TWITTER...Twitter co-founder Ev Williams displayed nerves of steel this week when he declared that he felt no pressure to come up with a revenue model for the yet-to-see-profit service. He wants to “create something that you want to see in the world" rather than slavishly following "some MBA brandishing a business plan"…His glacial sang froid was contextualized a few days later, as it emerged that Twitter is already in talks with both Google and Microsoft to offer real-time tweets in search results. Which would quite probably provide a source of real and sustainable revenue.Elsewhere on Twitter…Twitter took two leaves out of Facebook’s, um, book this week. First, there was the launch of a third-party platform offering virtual gifts – not in themselves new, but the first time that brands have got on board. Developers AdNectar have already signed up Cadbury, Nestle and Malibu Rum (my kinda party).And hot on the heels of Facebook’s crowdsourced translation project, Twitter announced plans do the same, expanding language options from the current English and Japanese (who knew?), to French, Italian, German, and Spanish.GOOGLE...Busy-busy for the search giant this week: armed with the news that a full 90% of UK searches are Google-powered, and that Bing’s market share is shrivelling, Google renewed its assault on the browser rivals IE and Firefox with the launch of Chrome-for-dummies on YouTube. They hope to persuade the public - many of whom don’t fully understand what a browser actually is - to switch to their shiny new offering.Google then stepped up to the smartphone plate, with a new Adsense feature which allows advertisers to create ads specifically optimized for ‘high-end smartphones’.Hmm. It all points to a Cunning Plan to Rule the World, as Charlene Li and Jeremiah Owyang point out. Instead of going head-to-head with Facebook and other destination SocNets, Google is gradually releasing social spores which will eventually connect to form a layer of Google across the entire social media universe.BRANDS GET SOCIAL...Coke Zero wins double points this week with the release of its Facial Profiler – upload a photo of yourself and their Facebook app will scan the web for your digital doppelganger.But a grim week for poor old T-mobile, as the hashtag #Tmobilesucks rocketed to the top of Twitter trending topics.A client who (swearily) tweeted his frustration at Crucial Paradigm’s tardy customer service was summarily sacked by the over-sensitive webhosting company. Unfortunately their somewhat disproportionate response was spotted by Laurel Papworth, whose post detailing the Fail has thus far been seen by a stonking 24,872 people, and counting.ITV’s X-factor (an eModeration client, we feel duty-bound to disclose) went socialtastic this week with the launch of a swathe of social media features, including a Facebook app for each contestant and a Twitter ribbon, which users can add to their profile to show their support.Intel have launched a two-day interactive campaign which allows customers to talk live to Intel experts through banner ads on targeted websites.And top marks to Estee Lauder, for ingeniously blending RL with social media: they’ve been giving women free makeovers for their profile pics - the resulting photographs have company logos in the background.SOCIAL STATS AND FACTS…People who’ve seen a brand’s campaign on social media are 2.8 times more likely to search for that brand. What’s more, click through rates for this group are up by half.Which might explain why 6 in 10 companies are planning a social media spend in the coming year – placing it second only to email in the Centre for Media Research’s study. Specifically, brands are investing heavily in online communities, despite the recession: another survey of 400 companies, including Fortune 100 enterprises, found that 94% were planning to continue their community spend. Worryingly though, a dismal 70% of companies have failed to use feedback from social media to improve their products, according to a PRWeek survey.What’s more...In a world where the visual volume dial is turned to ten, this data from MTV seems to show that audiences were more likely to remember subtlety and soft sells.And the social web really is a woman's world, according to this chart, compiled by Information is Beautiful with data from Brian Solis.MOBILE...Damn – the world just got fatter. Manually typing a search query via keyboard used up – what, 5 calories? No longer, with the release of Microsoft’s new app, which allows Bing users to speak a search query or text message.It’s not you, it’s them: if your iPhone-toting associates seem even less focused on your pearls of wisdom than usual, could be they’re orc-battling under the table. TibaME, the MMO for mobiles from CipSoft, are releasing an iPhone app next year.AND IN VIRTUAL WORLDS…Counsellors are warning that addiction to online games is on the up. They blame the rise on a combination of recession (more downtime) and an increasing tendency for games to be visually bewitching.But, as Massively reports, the news is likely to fall on deaf ears – “gamers will argue almost endlessly over which games are the best, which ones were most important, what the proper way to play is... but one thing we almost universally agree on is that we are not addicted.”
Welcome to eModeration's social media/community roundup of last week's events, compiled by our Research Consultant Kate Williams. All the good stuff you missed on Twitter, and the newsletters you were too busy to open!
The social media beach was afroth with anticipation this week, as excitement over Google Wave’s beta roll-out reached Point Break. Mashable provided a vital ‘how to’ for the lucky 100,000 who’d received an invite for the real-time tool, which combines elements of email, IM and wiki-style editing. Only Robert Scoble refused to get his swimming trunks on, warning that "all this real time noise [is] an attention dump and will kill your productivity”.
And there were more Google-y eyes this week, as commentators peered into the future to assess the impact of Google Sidewiki, the sidebar which allows any user to leave permanent comments on any web-page. Vizion Interactive reminded brands to claim their Sidewiki space in order to grab the top spot on the bar. And AdAge urged brands to make sure the really interesting conversation goes on on the page itself - diminishing Sidewiki's potential.
The US secret service was mobilized after a Facebook Poll asked "Should Obama be killed?”. Users were offered a choice of "Yes", "No", "Maybe" and "If he cuts my health care". The culprit turned out to be a teen (bet that was a fun family pow-wow: Mom, Dad, Junior - and six guys in shades) but the incident raised questions over whether Facebook should increase its policing of user-generated content.
ON TWITTER…
Twitter’s back-and-forth over the small matter of advertising might be resolved sooner, rather than later. An Interpret survey just revealed that Twitter users were twice as likely to click on ads, to visit company profiles, and to review products online than non-Twitterers.
But the microblogging service shouldn’t rest on its laurels – it might be staring at a growth ceiling. Despite last week’s massive injection of $100m capital, there’s been a ‘significant’ slump in new users: looks like a resistance point been reached.
SOME SOCIAL STATS…
Smug smiles in online marketing circles this week, as UK internet ad spend made history by knocking TV sales into the proverbial cocked hat. But it wasn’t all unmitigated hilarity – the overall market plummeted 16.6%, and 60% of the internet spend went to search, for which we can probably read ‘Google’.
Americans have tripled the time they spend on social networks to 17% of all their internet time, according to Nielsen. What’s more, US users are likely to be more affluent, and more urban, than average – and to place social networking at the centre of their lives, higher than game-play, TV, and reading.
Advertisers have been quick to act – the spend on top social networks and blogs rocketed by 119% to $108m in August. And according to eMarketer, nearly all online retailers will soon have Facebook Fan Pages, and 91% will be using Twitter by 2011.
This despite the fact that ads on social media are achieving lower click-through than other ads – although it’s not all bad news: engagement is higher, with users more likely to use ad’s interactive features (but see our recently published White Paper for the full lowdown on interactive advertising.)
Asda is harnessing social media to take a giant leap towards transparency, with the launch of a 'new era of democratic consumerism'. The supermarket giant is placing webcams in factories and offices, launching a new blog called Aisle Spy, and tapping its 18,000-strong online community to crowdsource product launches.
Nokia this week took aim at Google Maps, and introduced Good Things via its Ovi ecosystem: the new interactive map feature allows users to let others know about the local things they love.
And cinema chain Cineworld is promoting Disney Pixar’s new release ‘Up’, encouraging users to compete to get the most digital balloons ‘attached’ to their home, on Google Maps.
AND VIRTUAL…
Electronic Arts launched the long-awaited Littlest Pet Shop Online, a girltastic world of virtual pets and customization. Key features include parental consent–based access to the game, anonymity of child accounts, and “safe chat” – meaning only approved words can be typed.
And Massively launches MMO Family, a resource for "leveling a gaming-specced family". Offering tips on balancing gaming with family life to finding age-appropriate niches for every family member, MMO Family is written by the mother in an all-gamer family that’s growing up on MMOs.
COMMUNITY MANAGEMENT SNIPPETS...
We’ve just published our latest white paper, Interaction in Advertising, which is summarised below. The paper examines how advertising is evolving from a one-way communicative process (the advertiser telling the consumer what they should be thinking), to a more collaborative, engaging format where brand and consumer communicate with an open dialogue.The paper discusses examples of campaigns that are putting interaction in advertising into practice and highlights the risks and benefits of the developing trend.Included in the paper:From ‘interactive’ to ‘interaction’
- Brands are switching from paid display advertising to promoting themselves through branded online communities, virtual worlds/games and social media - Advertising campaigns are evolving into an interaction between brand and consumer, rather than the traditional one-sided communication.
Opening the dialogue
- Engagement is all about basic human behaviour. People don’t want to be talked at. They want to interact, share opinions, be heard.- Advertisers are naturally gravitating to where their audience can be found, in communities and social networks. But the way that they engage has to change. It’s not enough to buy buttons on Facebook: research by Uvizz has shown how poorly people respond to this. They don’t want to interact with advertisers on social networks, but with friends.
Tia Fisher
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Member since: 24 Apr 2009
Last login: 20 Nov 2009
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