A Sense of Community

Tia Fisher

 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.”