A Sense of Community

eModeration's Social Media Round-up #14

2009-11-20T11:19:00Z

Welcome to eModeration's weekly round-up of all that is intriguing, alarming or odd in the world of social media, compiled by Kate Williams (@emodkate). This week: President Obama's thumbs; Twillionaires; and 'intextication'.

Next week, eModeration is sending me on a social-skills course (day one: eating with implements) - so the next round-up will be on Friday the 4th December. See you then.

THE HEADLINES ...

President Obama has revealed that his absence from Twitter is due to a lack of dexterity in the thumb department. He was asked by a group of Shanghai students if they should be able to use Twitter freely – and the thumb quip launched a careful response about freedom of speech: “I have a lot of critics in the United States who can say all kinds of things about me, I actually think that that makes our democracy stronger and it makes me a better leader because it forces me to hear opinions that I don’t want to hear.”

Stephen Fry this week claimed that Twitter celebs like himself can now opt out of the ‘pact with the devil’ which required them to open up their private lives to journalists, in return for press coverage of their work. Now, he says, Twillionaires like he and Britney can “reach their circulation just by typing into my keyboard.” Grave news indeed for Sleb magazines, which are already clinging on for dear life to the sinking ship of print.

Facebook came in for widespread and heavy criticism this week, for failing to follow Bebo’s lead in including a ‘Report’ button developed by the Child Exploitation and On-line Protection Centre. CEOP’s boss Jim Gamble urged the social networks to adopt the feature, which allows young users to log bullying, hate speech and sexually explicit content, and to contact trained advisers: “there is a responsibility, a duty of care, to the young and the vulnerable”, he said.

The scam offers scandal could spiral still further: a team of Sacramento lawyers is investigating complaints that unauthorized charges were made without users’ knowledge – and are considering class actions against Facebook, MySpace, Zynga, and Offerpal amongst others.

Yes, it’s that time of the decade already: as we inch painfully towards 2010, the Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences bestowed Webby Awards on the top 10 internet moments of the last 10 years. Amongst the chosen: Facebook, Twitter, and the iPhone, along with the birth of Wikipedia and the Iranian elections.

Channel 4’s landmark deal with YouTube went live this week, unleashing around 5000 videos – 80% of which are full lengths shows – upon a grateful nation. Peep Show and Gordon Ramsay's F Word are among the goodies, which Channel 4 is hoping will lure in fresh advertisers.

The Digital Economy Bill was amongst those trailed in The Queen’s Speech yesterday. The bill proposes that those caught in the illegal-download act would first be sent warning letters – but would lose their connections if they continued to break the law. No mention, though, of the hotly-disputed Broadband Tax, which now looks likely to be slotted into the Finance Bill, due in 2010.

THE LOWDOWN ...

Every now and again comes a piece of news to which the only response is a brief contemplation of the expression “it takes all sorts to make a world”, and here is just such a one: a French company has developed a set of bathroom scales which will tweet your weight to your followers.

Teens are risking their own lives, as well as others’, by texting while driving- and worse, the figures seem to show that they’re learning from their parents. A new report claims that people are well aware of the dangers of texting on the road – but their desire to stay connected to their networks is stronger than their desire to stay connected to the tarmac.

Which leads us neatly to the American Oxford Dictionary’s Word of the Year shortlist, which, in an example of terrifying cultural serendipity, this year contains the word ‘intexticated’: the condition of being distracted by texting while driving. Sadly it was pipped at the post by ‘unfriend’ - possibly more useful but not quite as clever.

UK Twitterers are confirmed lefties - the Citizen Smiths of the Interweb. The news comes from a joint poll by Prospect Magazine and YouGov, which found that the average Twitter user is under-35 and London-based – and somewhat to the left of the Labour Party.

Trying to sell your house? Facing a wall of indifference, despite your original features and your central location? Could be that potential vendors are put off by your slow broadband connection. ISPreview.co.uk's survey reveals that 75% of people won’t buy a house – even an adorable one - if the best broadband ISP speed it could achieve was just 1Mbps.

IN OTHER NEWS ...

Yelps of excitement here, as Bing is launched in the UK – with enhanced visual search, Twitter integration and an “instant answers” service for real-time news on football scores and suchlike. But should Google be perspiring slightly and watching its back – or has it nothing to fear from the young pretender? iCrossing reveals the Five Things You Need To Know about Bing.

Bebo, whose web TV slate includes KateModern, Sofia's Diary, and The Gap Year, has nixed all new commissions, following parent company AOL’s announcement that it would slash 100 jobs globally.

Despite Rupert Murdoch’s admission last week that his paywall plans were likely to be delayed, it’s been announced that Times Online will start charging for content in the spring. James Harding, editor of The Times, said the site would offer 24-hour passes, as well as subscriptions.

The European Interactive Advertising Association – which includes stalwarts like AOL, the BBC, and Condé Nast amongst its members – predicts that online advertising will laugh in the face of the recession next year, with a projected 7.6% year-on-year rise in Europe, and a further 15% increase predicted for 2011.

And if further proof were needed that it is customers who are now directing the brand message, 360i reports that 77% of social media search results are generated by individuals with no affiliation to the brand.

ON FACEBOOK ...

It’s good news for Facebook this week: it towers above the nearest competition in the British social network league, netting half of all visits in UK last month. Twitter languishes a distant fourth, with a contextually-microscopic 1.9% of UK visitors.

But wait! Whispers of coming gloom can be heard, as research by WPP Group’s Mindshare suggests that the crucial older teen and twentysomething demographic might be drumming its fingers and looking round for something new.

Sony is catching up with rivals Microsoft, which recently hooked Facebook and Twitter to their Xbox 360. New software for the PlayStation means that gamers can now link their PS3s to their Facebook accounts to share game-play updates with friends.

ON TWITTER ...

Despite the recent slowdown in Twitter’s growth, it can still produce stats that make us gasp: according to Pingdom the average number of Tweets per hour is 1.1 million; the daily figure is 27.3 million; and at this rate, we’re looking at 10 billion tweets a year.

The typical Twitter user is male, and in his late twenties/early thirties – and wants brands to listen and respond to his questions, finds new research from InSites. News which sits uneasily against this other study, which finds, amongst other interesting tidbits, that 76% of brands on Twitter are infrequent users - and only 9% use it as a customer-service channel.

BRANDS GET SOCIAL ...

Marmite has formed a secret society – the Marmarati – to develop an extra-strong version of the loveit/hateit yeast-based spread. Members were chosen because they expressed their love for the Unilever-owned brand on social networking sites, and fans will be able to win a sneak-pretaste of the new spread by uploading marmite-centric content.

Mydeco.com, which sells homewares and furniture, has inked a deal with Sony's PlayStation Home to sell iconic pieces of virtual furniture – for example, the famous Marilyn ‘Lips’ sofa – on the community-based network.

Maclaren, who produce children’s buggies, recently offered a voluntary product-recall on one million of its pushchairs, amid reports that children had lost fingers in their folding mechanisms. But it found itself at the wrong end of a sharp social-media stick when UK customers discovered that only US customers were included – and this week it was force to roll out the offer worldwide.

For this year's Los Angeles Design Challenge, Audi has tapped its Facebook community of famously partisan fans to help design a fantasy Youthmobile for release in the year 2030 – you can see some of the designs here. http://www.facebook.com/audi

ON GOOGLE ...

The tech world was agog this week, as rumours swirled that Google’s eagerly-awaited new Chrome operating system might be available for download as soon as next week, with Search Engine Journal suggesting that the traction being gained by Windows 7 might be motivating a hasty launch.

Eek. Californian developer Frank McCabe created a programming language in 2004, and named it Go. He published a research paper about it in 2004. And a book in 2007. All the more surprising, then, that Google has just called IT”s new language by the same name. McCabe says he doesn’t have a trademark and can’t afford a lawsuit, but is determined not to let the search giant steamroller his prior claim.

Meanwhile, the Swiss data protection organization says its complaints to Google about breaches of privacy in Street View have fallen on deaf ears. It alleges that the company has refused to fix insufficiently blurred faces and numberplates, which could lead to individuals being identified in ‘sensitive’ locations - outside hospitals, prisons and schools.

Google means business with its latest policy on scam and malware advertisers who use Adwords – it’s imposing a blanket policy of ‘guilty till proven innocent’ on all suspect ads, and a lifetime ban on confirmed scammers.

Social Search, Google’s snazzy new feature which allows users to combine search with social data, has gone down – and according to a baffled Mashable, will remain down till early next week. What, Mashable wonders, could have happened to Social Search that could possibly take that long to fix?

ON YOUTUBE ...

YouTube has launched a dedicated channel called YouTube Direct, specifically for citizen journalists to bring their work to a larger audience. The tool allows media companies to connect directly with user-reporters, and request and rebroadcast news clips.

The video-sharing site is also testing a new approach to making online ads relevant – allowing users to skip the ones that bore them – with the idea that they will then engage more deeply with the ones that they do in fact watch.

ON MOBILE ...

T-Mobile faces consumer wrath again this week after it emerged that one of their workers had been selling customers’ details to a rival company - a major breach of data protection regulation.

In the first mobile-Twitter deal, Orange have snagged an agreement with Twitter to let users upload photos by text, via Snapshot - a custom picture platform developed by Orange.

73% of marketing execs think mobile is the UK’s ‘most likely to expand’ medium, says the IAB, whose survey canvassed the opinions of 100 senior agency reps.

VIRTUAL AND GAMES ...

Hi-yah! Kung Fu Panda World – in development for the last 2 years and targeted at kids of 8-12 – is to be launched in early 2010. The world will feature high levels of parental control, and will offer both long-term and one-day subscriptions.

Despite a spot of bother with its in-game ads – which some have suggested are rather dastardly - social games company Zynga’s investors are clearly chomping at the bit. The upwardly-mobile games enterprise, whose biggest success is the Facebook mega-game Farmville - has just received a massive injection of cash: $15.1 million to be precise, bringing its total haul to over $54 million.

Quick work: Gravity Bear, who declared as a social games developer less than four weeks ago, has already unveiled Battle Punks, a Facebook app which it bills as a ‘3D social game. It’s due to launch in open beta before 2010.

Subscription revenues for Disney’s Club Penguin were up a cozy 4% last quarter, contributing to a overall increase in revenue for the company - despite an icy economy.

That's all folks!

eModeration's Social Round-up #13

2009-11-14T16:25:00Z

Welcome to eModeration's twice-weekly round-up of all that is intriguing, alarming or odd in the world of social media, compiled by Kate Williams (@emodkate).

This week: News Corp and Google; Twitter's wailing grumps; Britney's encounter with the Dark Side; and why Stephen Fry is like a giant St Bernard.

Check back soon!

THE HEADLINES ...

Rupert Murdoch plans to hide his content away so Google can’t see it. He told Sky News that he’ll prevent the search giant from indexing News Corp sites, to ensure that users pay up to view his news.

Many commentators pointed out inconsistencies in Murdoch’s interview, not least the vexed question of how readers would find the content if not through search engines – at least 25% of traffic comes via Google alone. All in all, the news was taken as the paid-content equivalent of Custer’s Last Stand.

But hold on, paid-content naysayers – is that the cavalry I hear? A new poll finds that ¾ of us would consider paying a 10p micropayment per article – with Jeremy Clarkson, Charlie Brooker and the redoubtable Richard Littlejohn being most likely to tempt us to splash the cash. So perhaps there’s life in the old paywall yet.

COI boss Mark Lund says that digital is the key to solving Britain’s social ills, by increasing trust and brokering a new relationship between citizen and government. “Digital is at the heart of behaviour change and to make the revolution we need."

The social gaming ads controversy continued, with Facebook banning Zynga’s FishVille before it had barely had a chance to wiggle a gill, blaming ‘deceptive ads’ for the red card. Now Zynga has decided to nix all cost-per-action ads till further notice.

Parents are obsessed about the perils which face children outside the home – but are far less clued up when it comes to the dangers of the internet, according to Prof Tanya Byron, who investigated the possible dangers posed to children by videogames and websites for the government. "An integral part of development is risk taking. Children are taking risks online because we live in a risk-averse culture."

Toyota is in a little hot water – having purloined some UGC photos for a crowd-sourced ad campaign, without asking the photographer his work first. The image, along with some others which the car company aggregated from Flickr, has now been removed – Digital Marketing offer advice for brands eager to avoid a crowd-sourcing headache here.

THE LOWDOWN ...

A Stephen Fry recommendation is the digital equivalent of an enormous St Bernard jumping up to lick your face. Flattering, but leaves you floundering on the floor, scrabbling for your glasses and a tissue. Fry, who also revealed that he now considers himself to be a ‘content provider’, says that he has to warn websites that he’s going to recommend them, or they crash within seconds.

From the sublime (Mr Fry), to the ridiculous. Poor Britney Spears has had her Twitter updates hacked, and, for a while there, was posting as a Lucifer-lovin’ Satanist who longs for the new world order. Which isn’t true, of course - unless pop music really is the work of the devil, as my old headmistress was fond of saying.

The Telegraph raised an eyebrow at the £3175 per year which the taxpayer coughs up for Lord Mandelson’s three Twitter accounts. Between them, @bisgovuk, @digitalbritain, and @BIS_Science have 9,894 followers. About 30p a follower on my calculations - cheap at half the price.

Hurrah – a story which contains Facebook, the Law, and a Young Person - and yet doesn’t end in a jail term. A judge has accepted that the Facebook update which 19-year-old Rodney Bradford posted at 11:49a.m. on October 17 gave him an alibi for the mugging charge he faced.

The first of the Twitcoms? The Twitter account of Justin Halpern, who passes on the world-weary, no-bull pronouncements of his 73-year-old dad (Example: "You look just like Stephen Hawking...Relax, I meant like a non-paralyzed version of him.”) has been snapped up by CBS, who will turn it into a comedy series [Advisory: red-blooded language].

IN OTHER NEWS ...

Bing UK is not yet up to scratch, according to sources close to Microsoft. The site has been in beta for four months, but isn’t yet fully relevant to us Brits, who are quickly turning back to Google. Microsoft is now hiring natives to create UK-centric search categories.

But it’s not all bad news for Microsoft – seems Microsoft sites harness 15 percent of worldwide online time – swiftly followed by Google and Yahoo, with Facebook bringing up the rear.

Enterprises are grasping Twitter to their bosom – business use is up a tweet-tastic 250%, from just six months ago. Facebook is also benefitting, with workplace use ballooning by 192%, despite the 20% of companies who block social sites.

The IAB has said that online media companies need to significantly raise their game if they want brands to really get behind internet advertising – at the moment, ad formats and creative simply aren’t making the grade, according to AdAge.

Hmm. We seem to be rather conflicted at the moment when it comes to research. Lightspeed says that ‘only’ 33% of consumers trust social nets to help them make purchasing decisions, compared with 68% who trust search, product reviews and comparison sites.

While Performics is pleased to find that (a separately-surveyed) third of us think social media is a good place to find out more about brands – and touts the fact that 25% have clicked directly to an online retailer or e-commerce merchant as evidence that, contrary to conventional wisdom, hard marketing may not be a social media no-no.

LinkedIn and Twitter have partnered up – their users can now publish Tweets on LinkedIn, and vice versa. In a simile which really only works if you are a fan of high-calorie nut-based confectionary, Biz Stone said the deal was “like bringing peanut butter and chocolate together to make the perfect combination."

ON FACEBOOK ...

A quiet few days at Facebook Towers – though brands will be quietly pleased about the launch of ‘Friends of Connections’, which will allow them to personalize ads to target the friends of their fans.

The ‘Book also launched a new set of guidelines for brand promotions, which contained a few significant changes concerning where promotions and competitions can live. Brands pondering their next Facebook foray could consult Fresh Influence’s ‘Five Things You Should Know‘ – a handy breakdown for brands to flick through.

ON TWITTER ...

Facebook must have been sniggering into their hands this week, as Twitter faced the same wails of disgruntlement that have been plaguing Facebook recently. The complaints concern the rollout of Twitter’s new Retweet feature, which makes it impossible for Retweeters to edit or add comments. Hubspot's Dan Zarella warned that these will “completely eviscerate most of the value out of Retweets" - but Ev Williams insisted that the feature was here to stay, and was deliberately designed to be super-simple so that tweets can be clearly attributed and traced.

The horizontality of Twitter’s stats is causing some comment in the Socialsphere, with mashable’s Stan Schroeder pointing out the oddness of Twitter's grinding halt, given its till-now explosive growth, and the media’s current obsession with its cultural importance. But, he expands, none of this will matter in the long run – Twitter is becoming ‘part of the net’s infrastructure. It doesn’t have to be popular, it merely needs to be there.’

ON GOOGLE ...

Google’s world domination plans are going swimmingly – it now intends to pimp the web, having been working quietly on a replacement for the HTTP protocol, which will make the internet infinitely faster.

Time for some Caffeine then. Google announced the launch of their latest incarnation, telling the waiting world portentously that “we believe Caffeine is ready for a wider audience. Soon, we will activate Caffeine more widely, beginning with one data centre’. Rather brings to mind Donald Pleasance, stroking a white Persian and pressing big buttons, no?

The search giant also launched a big upgrade to Latitude, adding location history and location-based alerts. The latter will let you know, via email or sms, when you’re near friends and connections. And took another step towards social with the introduction of a Twitteresque ‘Following’ feature to Google Wave. The follows can be temporarily removed from your inbox at the click of a button, to avoid social exhaustion.

BRANDS GET SOCIAL ...

Alfa Romeo is using Twitter to promote its MiTo model to a youthful, more urban audience. Users are challenged to spot one of 1300 MiTo-shaped stencils around major UK cities, and post a photo of it with the hashtag #MiToStencil when they do.  

Burberry has used Facebook to launch a new site – called Artofthetrench.com – which encourages fans to submit images and comments on the brand’s iconic outerwear.

Tesco is bringing x-factor-style thrills to the nation with the launch of ‘performance pods’ outside some stores, where users can record an audition video to be entered into a competition run by talent search site 1Click2Frame.

Nikon is leveraging Ashton Kutcher’s Twitter presence to launch its Nikon Film Festival, a UGC contest which offers $100,000 for the best video. The festival, whose theme is ‘a day through your lens’, kicks off with Ashton’s own entry, in which he records a day he spent in Africa with wife Demi.

ASOS has relaunched its fashion-forward community, having consulted members on how to improve its features. Users will now get RSS feeds, emails to notify them when fellow members reply to their posts, and a spanky new look.

Disney follows other Hollywood studios in using Facebook and Twitter to drip-feed advance promotion for upcoming films, this week releasing two new posters for Tim Burton’s March-slated 3-D extravaganza Alice In Wonderland’. 

UNDER THE GAVEL ...

The government has had to climb down from its April announcement of a new law to prevent more than 30,000 registered sex offenders from accessing social sites like Facebook, after it was ruled likely to restrict the right to privacy. The Home Office is seeking leave to appeal the Court of Appeal ruling.

Privacy campaigners are still determined to pursue Blockbuster for its participation in Facebook’s Beacon programme – they’re urging the court to reject an argument from the video chain that its ToS requires mandatory arbitration in any class action.

SOCIAL STATS ...

Almost 65% of consumers surveyed by Razorfish made first bought a brand because of a digital experience - via website, microsite, mobile coupon or email.

And there’ll be tumbleweed blowin’ down Oxford Street this December, if these figures are anything to go by: a new study finds that 93% of us plan to buy our gifts online this year, with a quarter buying more online than last year. What’s more, 17% of us are looking to social sites like Facebook for gift-buying, with 60% of that number looking for offers and discounts, and another 52% checking the wish-lists of friends and family.

A full 23% of the women surveyed by Q Interactive and Social Media World Forum visit social games like Farmville and Causes several times a day – and more than half have used virtual currency. Plus, they’re not averse to watching ads to get it – many more details here on MediaPost.

Looks like the younger women are, the more brand-social they are. Gen Y women make double the mentions of brands and products of their Gen X compadres, and are significantly more influenced by blogs, according to a study by PopSugar and Radar Research.

ON MOBILE ...

Last week Verizon sold an astonishing 100,000 Droids in a week. This week, Apple effortlessly trumps them with a jaw-dropping 30,000 iPhones sold by Orange in 1 day. Remember folks, that’s 30,000 of a smartphone which has already been freely available for a full 2 years.

News which neatly supports Nielsen’s prediction that the majority of mobiles will be smartphones by 2011 – just a couple of years away.

VIRTUAL AND GAMES ...

Massive and comScore have worked out a way to get detailed insight into how in-game ads work for gamers, building a picture of engagement for the first time.

Games developer Playfish has been caught by Electronic Arts, for a reported $400m. The purchase means that EA is now Facebook-forward, as well as leading the way in console, PC and mobile gaming.

Microsoft is pulling the plug on up to 1 million Xbox Live players who have illicitly modified their consoles to play pirated or other-region games.Twitter and Facebook Come to Xbox Live November 17 SAVE The rest of the ToS-obeying Xbox Live community will be enjoying a Twitter and Facebook dashboard from November 17th.

Habbo-creator Sulake have announced the launch of Bobba Bar, a series of virtual social venues for mobile users. Over-17s can make friends with and date other guests via an avatar which can be customized to a total of 1 billion combinations.

THINKING ...

If you’ve got any downtime over the next days, the following might get your brain-cells whizzing:

iMedia Connection looks further into ad networks and online reputation-protection for brands - and finds it not as straightforward as you’d think.

In case the worst-case scenario should arise, here are some steps to take in order to make your company’s crisis-plan ‘social-media compliant’.

Finally, if you are suffering from social media shellshock, you will appreciate this guide to reducing the noise, whilst remaining connected.

That's all folks!

eModeration's Social Round-up #12

2009-11-09T15:10:00Z

Welcome to eModeration's twice-weekly round-up of all that is intriguing, alarming or odd in the world of social media, compiled by Kate Williams (@emodkate). Check back soon!

THE HEADLINES ...

Good news! It turns out that using the Internet may not, after all, lead to alienation/sharp reduction in moral fibre/early grave (delete as applicable). A new study reveals that social media use is associated with real-life social benefits – for example, they find that blog-writers are more likely to confide in someone from a different race; photo-sharers more likely to discuss serious issues with someone of another political party; and – my very favourite – internet users in general are more likely than non-users to visit a café.

Once upon a time, when MySpace was the blushing belle of the ball and had princely suitors competing for its hand, it inked a $900 3-year deal with Google which allowed the search giant to become its sole search provider. But now the magic spell is broken: $100 million of that will not be going to MySpace after all, having been partly dependent on traffic levels. What’s more, Rupert Murdoch’s plan to rebuild his business model by secreting news content behind a pay-wall won’t be coming-off as soon as he’d hoped. And plans to combine with other publishers would quite possibly breach competition regulations, according to the Guardian. Bad news indeed, as print earnings crash from $134 million to $25 million.

Google is attempting to allay users’ privacy worries with Dashboard, which provides a single-page view of all the different pieces of information which Google holds on them. Hmm, not sure myself. A smidgeon too close to that movie moment where we find that Nice-Neighbour-Guy‘s bedroom wall is covered in long-lens photos of the girl-next-door, and he’s got an axe in his wardrobe.

THE LOWDOWN ...

Three cheers for Walmart, for putting comments and reviews at the heart of their strategy. And a manly pat on the back for not realizing that their new range of coffins and urns would prove irresistible to a stream of clever-clogs commenters: “I picked one up to bury my cat in. Other than having room for about 100 cats, it worked well.”

Hyundai score a social media gold star for cheering up the crestfallen victim of possibly the worst piece of parking that any of us will ever see. CCTV footage of the squishing of Todd Jamison’s 2004 Hyundai Elantra went viral – you can watch it, and the cockle-warming video of his surprise gift from Hyundai, on Mashable.

The guy who invented the first mobile phone - which on the evidence of other tech firsts probably required a winch-and-pulley system to transport - is 80. And he isn’t all that impressed with how the mobile story unfolded, telling a privacy conference this week that “whenever you create a universal device that does all things for all people, it does not do anything well.”

IN OTHER NEWS ...

Online advertising revenue was the only cheerful note in ITV’s limp financial report this week. It leapt 8% to £27m for the nine months to 30 September, despite an overall group revenue plunge of 11% to £1.3bn.

A new social net, neatly-named Honk, uses existing social networks to gather opinions from friends and family about the cars each has owned – helping drivers decide their next ride.

US e-commerce has drooped again. According to Comscore, Q3 spending was down 2% year on year to $29.6bn - which means that for the first time, year-on-year revenue has declined two quarters in a row.

Online retailers aren’t taking the news lying down, however: many are planning to increase their social media presence in the run-up to the holiday season. 60.3% have upgraded their Facebook pages, and a similar number have tweaked their Twitter pages - while 40% have improved customer ratings and reviews.

ON FACEBOOK ...

As all eyes turned to Facebook in the evolving controversy surrounding scam offers in social games and apps, they announced on their blog that they were taking firm action to prevent advertisers and users from being suckered. According to Nick Gianos, of Facebook’s platform team, “this battle is not new - and it’s far from over.”

Twitter may be the dashing young pretender, but The ‘Book is still king of the social castle as far as consumer brands are concerned. According to Business.com’s new study, 83% of them have a presence on Facebook – but only 45% interact on Twitter.

And, when you look at those Social Scales, it’s hardly surprising. Facebook is putting on half a million users every day; the beefy giant now weighs in at a belt-busting 325 million users.

ON TWITTER ...

Which is not to say that Facebook shouldn’t keep a wary eye on Twitter's stats. While its own users are creaking up in age, from 26 to a dessicated 33, it looks as though Twitter’s users are finally getting younger. They average out at a comparatively youthful 31, with the 18-24 age group accounting for 37% of users, compared with 19% in December ’08.

Twitter is testing its new Retweet feature this week, hoping to enable information to spread even more quickly across the site. According to VentureBeat’s mockups, there’s a retweet button, and a tool for tracking a link or idea back to its source.

And while Twitter’s in the mood for a spring clean, they’re running the Hoover round trending topics. As the site’s ballooned, trending topics has become more and more unwieldy – but now Twitter promises we’ll begin to see more relevant results appearing.

And if you’re still Lost with Lists, @mashable is your friend. They’ve started some jolly useful ones, including one for social media (there’s a link to make suggestions of anyone they might have – ahem – missed...)

BRANDS GET SOCIAL ...

Car brand Infiniti has flipped its usual strategy and is breaking its new TV ads on Facebook and other social media sites, following its home page takeover last week on AOL, Yahoo and auto sites like Cars.com.

20th Century Fox are promoting Night at the Museum 2 with an augmented reality insert in the Times’ T2 section. Users are directed to a dedicated site, and when the insert is held up to a webcam, characters will appear to jump out of the screen.

Nestle’s Skinny Cow has shifted the hub of its marketing to its Facebook fanpage, launching a £2.5 million campaign to encourage women to share their cheekiest and sneakiest ways to say ‘Oh yes I can' to life's little indulgences.

Teen virtual world Habbo Hotel is supporting the release of vampire flick 'The Twilight Saga: New Moon' with alluring offers including film-related virtual goods, and the tantalising prospect of unscheduled chats with the film’s stars.

NBC Universal is adding social media features to its main Olympics website, NBCOlympics.com website in the runup to the 2010 Winter Olympics, incorporating Facebook Connect, which will let users to chat with their Facebook friends as they watch events.

Godiva chocolates are launching a virtual goods campaign to support their new range of desserts. Animated cakes and chocs open to reveal flash-based chocolatey-rich media , then offer the option of becoming a Fan, visiting the brand's website, or forwarding the treat to a friend.

Chick-fil-A’s Cows, who encourage us to eat more chicken (thus less beef) have been herding in traffic to its microsite, doubling visits in a week without promotion. And its Facebook page has just hit 1m fans – up from 20,000 fourteen months ago, when it was still run by a volunteer enthusiast.

ABC.com is using the premiere of the sci-fi remake V to launch ABC Social: Episode Commentary, which will allow Web viewers to comment live to their Facebook friends.

SOCIAL STATS ...

Twenty-something mothers are now the most social and device-dependent demographic, beating college students for the first time evah. Mr Youth’s new survey says Millennial Moms (b.1977-1996) are digital trendsetters (as well as being Mistresses of the Overshare ...)

Twitter users are enthusiastic followers-up of brand mentions. Nearly half of them use search engines to look up products they’ve heard about on the network, compared to 34% of other social network users, according to Performics’ new study.

VIRTUAL AND GAMES ...

In a marked failure of imagination – or a sensible ‘stick with what works’ business plan, we can’t quite decide – Zynga have launched their follow-up to Farmville. It’s about fish, and it’s called Fishville.

THINKING ...

If you’re interested in reaching teens, this is worth a once-over: MediaPost says there are three rules: think global, act local, go social.

And iMedia offers CMOs useful advice here about the tricky matter of brand protection in an online world.

eModeration's Social Round-Up #11

2009-11-05T12:34:00Z

THE HEADLINES ...

HM Customs and Revenue is clearly in a state of some denial about the extent to which their pet subject is a byword for catatonic boredom: they have allowed the Boss Of All The Taxmen to have a go at delivering their new YouTube ad, instead of getting a professional in. If you are currently experiencing the agonies of insomnia, I advise you save this treat till bedtime. The Telegraph serves up a list of HMRC’s competitors for the title ‘Most Boring Video on YouTube (at Number 1: 'watching paint dry') here.

It sounds like the punch-line to an (admittedly low-hilarity) Tech joke, but apparently not: the internet really could run out of addresses within two years, unless more companies migrate to a new naming protocol, warn experts.

Over at BoingBoing, they claim that the top secret global Ante-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement has been leaked – and that it’s blimmin’ bad news for us all. Amongst other things, ISPs might be forced to take proactive responsibility for pulling copyrighted material – which BoingBoing says would sound the death knell for YouTube, and much of Web 2.0.

One of the joys of remote working is being able to do so in your pyjamas (or, in my case, a maroon velvet smoking-jacket and spats.) Now Linden Labs has spoiled it all by launching Second Life Enterprise, where companies can do virtual business behind a firewall. My friends, pyjamas won’t cut it now.

Charles Dunstone, the increasingly vocal chief exec of TalkTalk, has castigated the government for the second time this month – this time over its plans for a broadband tax to fund the rollout of high-speed broadband to non-profitable rural areas. He warns that around 100,000 low-income households will be forced to give up their Internet connections because they will not be able to afford to pay the tax.

THE LOWDOWN ...

Twitter dejection appears to be catching. Following Stephen Fry’s attack of the dismals last weekend, Katie Price (aka Jordan, glamour model extraordinaire) has posted a series of overwrought tweets telling her ‘haters’ to do their worst, and saying that she feels she can do nothing right. Celebs and Twitter – an unhealthy combination, prone to increase self-loathing and thence end in tears?

It would be fair to say that Facebook's recent redesign has not gone down too well, and last week we reported that the group ‘Change Facebook Back to Normal’ has 1.4m rebels and rising. We hadn’t clocked, however, that the proto–revolutionary expertly fomenting this dissent is… a 14 year-old boy called Jonathan Woodlief, from North Carolina. Asked for a quote, the boy’s dad said "He's doing what on Facebook?" There goes the allowance.

IN OTHER NEWS ...

Crime and Security Minister David Hanson has confirmed that a number of suspects have been held this year by the police’s e-crime unit, in connection with cyber attacks on government depts. The minister declined to elaborate, citing national security – but did reveal that the (rather Gilliamesque) ''Office for Cyber Security'' had been established ''to monitor the health of cyber space and co-ordinate incident response''.

Is social networking destined for the same spam-bedevilled fate as email? The big networks need to do some urgent thinking, warns Graham Cluley of security firm Sophos, if they don’t wish users trust in the blossoming marketing platform to be crushed. Sophos found that 1 in 4 companies had been exposed to spam, phishing or malware via sites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace.

MSN, the wallflower at the social media party, is finally getting a makeover from Microsoft. The site’s dramatically-different design is now sleeker and more minimal – and focuses on video and importing key feeds like Twitter and Facebook.

Sharp intakes of breath from cable companies, with the announcement that Apple is having another go at Web TV – this time with an iTunes-based subscription service.

And amid growing concern that some social gaming app developers are scamming both users and advertisers, MySpace boss Owen Van Natta has announced a “zero tolerance for app scams” policy – particularly those which sign users up for a repeat transaction without telling them.

ON FACEBOOK ...

It’s been a sedate few days for Facebook and Twitter – a pleasant change after the giddy whirl of the last few weeks, during which announcements came at breakneck pace from both. As you catch your breath and mop your brow, we bring you The Buzz Bin’s Facebook Fan Page Best Practices, followed by Jason Falls on why Facebook mentions of your brand won’t show up on your monitoring service...

ON TWITTER ...

... and for Afters, we have Mashable’s Twitter Lists How-To, plus a wee peek at Peek, the handheld device for mobile tweeting which launched this week.

ON YOUTUBE ...

Google’s YouTube wants to convince media companies like Disney that it's better to sell advertising space around illegally-uploaded material, than to take it down. According to YouTube their ContentID system can identify material even if it’s been customized by users - they hope that this will reassure copyright-holders, who will then play along.

BRANDS GET SOCIAL ...

Sainsbury's has been slow off the Twitter mark – its @JSainsburysPlc has made 9 posts since its launch in March. Now, though, it’s taking a leaf out of its celeb spokesman Jamie Oliver’s book, and launching @sainsbury’s, through which they hope to inspire shoppers with recipe ideas.

Kodak has launched a branded YouTube channel, ForMom, which encourages mothers to upload content on various topics that will make other mum’s live a bit easier.

US cake brand Mrs. Freshley's has launched a Facebook search to find “the real Mrs. Freshley” – someone who embodies the spirit of the brand which, till now, has not had a fixed persona.

Sara Lee Deli had lassoed some new Twitter followers whilst helping the fight against hunger. On Monday they donated $1 per follower (to a max of $25K) to Share Our Strength, which fights childhood hunger in the US. Followers used hashtags and retweets to help the campaign go viral.

ON MOBILE ...

Finally. After iPhone’s 2 ½ years unchallenged at the top of the market, here comes a competitor to make Apple twitchy. Buzz is getting busy around Motorola’s Droid – here’s a peak at the latest of its super-stylish (if slightly baffling) commercials.

VIRTUAL AND GAMES ...

Linden Lab announced its Q3 figures this week – with user-to-user transactions jumping 54% year-on-year, to $150 million. Total user hours, however, rose by a meagre 13% year-on-year, which Linden ascribed to the introduction of their bot-banning policy. Monthly repeat logins for September 2009 peaked at 750,446 - a 23% increase year-on-year.

Bebo launched its Social Games Experience ecosystem this week. The site section includes developer tools and games, fronted by the Games Homepage, which allows users to access social games apps and communicate around them.

The Chinese authorities have told NetEase, which operates World of Warcraft in China, that the game is in "gross violation" of Chinese regulations and that they must stop new account registration immediately.

Kzero have updated their very useful Brands in Virtual Worlds slideshare – it now includes campaigns from Hush Puppies, NBA, and Skittles amongst many others - and you can give it a quick once over here.

THINKING ...

If, in this light news week, you found yourself with a spare two minutes, you could do much worse than cast your eye over David Armano’s sharp assessment of where social media might lead us in 2010.

eModeration's Social Round-up #10

2009-11-02T12:07:00Z

Welcome to eModeration's twice-weekly round-up of all that is intriguing, alarming or odd in the world of social media, compiled by Kate Williams (@emodkate). Check back soon!

THE HEADLINES ...

Really, What Were They Thinking?® An attempt at a viral campaign by Swedish telecoms company Tele2 has misfired rather spectacularly, resulting in the loss of the company’s contract with the Latvian government. Tele2 staged a fake meteorite-landing in Latvia - and not just a leetle, baby meteorite, but one which resulted in a 10m crater and the scrambling of the emergency services. The company claim they carried out the hoax, which they uploaded to YouTube as part of the campaign, "to draw attention away from Latvia's economic crisis and toward something else more interesting". An unmitigated success then, I’d say.

The Labour government has “failed to care” that the British video games industry is falling behind that of other countries, said Shadow Culture Minister Ed Vaizey this week. A Conservative government would actively consider tax breaks for games-makers.

Facebook’s piggy-bank is fit to split, after the social network was awarded a fantastical £429 million against arch-spammer Sanford Wallace. ‘Spamford’, who hacked into Facebook accounts and sent unsolicited messages which appeared to come from the accounts’ owners, was recently at the wrong end of a $230 million judgement in a case brought by MySpace. So Facebook might have to wait awhile - Wallace has already filed for bankruptcy.

The European Commission this week fired a warning shot across Britain’s bows, ruling that they had failed to comply with rules which protect users’ confidentiality from targeted ad providers like Phorm. Prosecution is next on their to-do list, if the government fails to act.

Facebook has teamed up with Stanford University to encourage online friendships between those at the heart of global ideological conflict. It’s providing a daily document of conversations across the various divides worldwide: At the time of writing, for example, there have been 5,296 Israel-Palestine conversations in the last 24 hours.

TalkTalk, the ISP owned by the Carphone Warehouse, is absolutely livid at Lord Mandelson’s proposals to cut the internet connection of persistent file-sharers. It’s comparing them to a ‘kangaroo court’, and is rounding up sympathetic consumers to try and stop the proposals becoming law.

THE LOWDOWN ...

Stephen Fry was feeling “more sheepish than a sheep” yesterday, having withdrawn his threat to quit Twitter following an unfriendly remark. Fry, who’s done more than most to popularize the service in the UK, said that he had been feeling depressed, hence was more susceptible to ‘aggression and unkindness”. He was doubtless feeling perkier, following the outpourings of Twitter love with which many of his 920,000 followers responded.

No Whey! Mai employer onz mai updates? Blog posts, Twitter DMs- yes, even that photo of your dog, wearing horns and a defeated expression, which you uploaded for Halloween – all might be owned by your company, according to Jeremiah Owyang.

A palm/forehead moment for US football player Larry Johnson, whose homophobic rant against an antsy fan (detailed earlier this week) is going to cost him $213,000 in lost earnings.

Oh, this is bad... well, good – in a bad kind of a way. You know? BNP leader Nick Griffin’s virtual cheek is surely smarting, after twenty million slaps were delivered by the British public. The designers of SlapNickGriffin.co.uk say that, in the days following his controversial appearance on Question Time, the average user administered 181 slaps to the Far Right politician.

Poor Senate Candidate Marco Rubio. To be a victim of a phishing attack is unfortunate – to be a victim of a hack which makes unauthorized posts from your account trumpeting your love of a colon-cleansing product – well, we feel your pain, big guy.

These Wink Glasses, made by Japanese manufacturer Masunaga, are cleverly designed to mist up in one lens if you forget to blink, thus avoiding 'dry eye', an opthalmic condition which afflicts video gamers and others screen-starers. I, for one, think these are jolly smart; they will round off my Autumn Look perfectly.

IN OTHER NEWS ...

The pay gap between men and women working in social media is becoming less of a gap and more of a gaping chasm, according to new research from Forum One. Men, $86,644. Women, $75,624.

Companies in the financial sector, who are increasingly using Facebook and other social sites to interact with their customers, are probably breaking statutory regulations. Financial institutions are required to keep strict records of their business communications – not possible on most social networks.

18% of search is now delivered by social media, which has become the information-hub which Google used to be. The Statusphere – the streams of other users’ info from which we pick and choose according to our needs – is our new gateway to insight.

Under-35s welcome brands on social networks – kinda. Webtrends finds that 85% of them are broadly happy to see brands, but half said they would leave if the site became too commercial, and 39% think there’s already too many ads on social networks.

ON FACEBOOK ...

Facebook made a slew of changes across its system last week – and that’s on top of the recent transformation of its news updates. Many of them will affect brands’ strategies – some for the better, but others, not so much. Luckily here are Inside Facebook and Venturebeat to get you up to speed, pronto.

Facebook is running out of world to conquer – so it’s trying to get its less active users to interact more frequently by recommending old friends to reconnect with. Unfortunately, some of these recommendations turned out to be ex-lovers - and others were people who had (there’s no good way to say this) died. Facebook has now fixed the problem – in the case of the latter group (and the latter group only), with the launch of Memorial Pages.

After a disastrous change to its Terms of Service earlier this year, and the modifications which were recently forced upon it by the Canadian government, Facebook is holding its breath during the launch of its spanking-new Privacy Policy. It’s taken care to ensure the terms are rewritten in plain language, and is allowing users the opportunity to comment and vote upon it.

ON TWITTER ...

Twitter lists were this week rolled out to the next tranche of lucky users, causing little ripples of thrilled-ness (‘thripples’?) across the service. On the whole, reaction was broadly favourable – Matt Rhodes breaks it down.

ON GOOGLE ...

Blimey. Here’s Google’s account of the world in 2015: a web dominated by Chinese content; users who jump from app to app without blinking; broadband sprinting well past 100mb; and melting distinctions between TV, radio and Web-distributed content.

If you, on the other hand, are still struggling with the basics of Google Wave – never fear. Mashable released their Complete Guide, and they link to an even more in-depth User Guide by Trapani and Pash.

Meanwhile , the Web 2.0 world continued to digest the implications of Google’s Social Search. Brands need to think fast to adapt to a world in which we’ll increasingly lean on recommendations and reviews from within our own social circle - as Jeremiah Owyang details here.

Elsewhere, Google’s plans for world domination continue apace. This week, it knocks Satnav into a cocked hat and deposits it in a drawer marked ‘20th Century – for Archive”, with the launch of Google Maps Navigation, which turns your mobile into an expert navigator.

BRANDS GET SOCIAL ...

Volvo is launching an integrated campaign which aims at a younger market by highlighting the role of its new XC60 in the new vampire flick Twilight. They’re offering a car to the first person to solve a series of puzzles on a microsite, with players encouraged to exchange hints via Volvo pages on social networks.
 
PlanetCazmo, a virtual world for tweens and teens, ran a free in-world Halloween gig featuring the band Weezer, who appeared in avatar format. It’s the latest in a series of concerts which follow a recent deal with music promoter Tommy Mottola.

Grass Roots has launched The Campaign for Crap Jumpers, which warns that the nations most-reviled Christmas present is under threat of extinction, following the launch of their Bonusbond gift voucher. Users can upload shots of themselves wearing said article of clothing, or create pictures of themselves wearing a variety of disdained knitwear designs from a selection of templates.

Mashable have put together a Top Fifty of the strongest brands on Twitter right now – no huge surprises, but worth a glance nonetheless. Chanel, for example, was not on my radar – yours?

SOCIAL STATS ...

Nearly three-quarters of the top 500 internet retailers have a presence on at least one social network or social shopping website, with 57 percent either setting up a Facebook page or advertising on the site, according to eMarketer.

85% of shoppers will maintain or up their online Christmas spend – with a third shopping more than last year.

A full 72% of netizens don’t know about behavioural advertising – and 81% didn’t know they could opt out. When they were given more information about their opt-out rights and how the info was used, 74% were relaxed with it.

Purchasing decisions by young people are heavily influenced by a connection to social causes. This holds even for younger kids - 40% of tweens (ages 9 to 12) and 20% of younger kids (ages 6 to 10) have bought a cause-related item. 

ON MOBILE ...

Ads perform best on touchscreen phones, according to a report by Quattro Wireless. Rich media on mobile sites and within apps yielded high clickthrough rates – especially when viewed on a touchscreen device.

VIRTUAL AND GAMES ...

Virtual worlds continue to expand at a impressive rate – even if the graph isn’t quite as steep as it was last quarter. Registered accounts leapt by 92m to hit 671m in Q3 – a Q-on-Q increase of 15.9%.

Habbo and Stardoll’s accounts performed best of all, up 13m and 12m respectively – and their quarterly growth accounts for over 25% of total market growth.

GoPets, a site that encourages users to ‘raise’ 3D pets which can be customized and ‘walked’ to other users’ desktops, was sold to mega-veloper Zynga this week.

China has fallen for social farm games in a huge way. According to Five Minutes, the developer of the first and largest (and much-copied) social farm game Happy Farm, they’ve now rocketed past 23 million daily active users.

In fact, social games have exploded worldwide this year, bringing with it a huge expansion of the virtual goods industry. 12% of Americans have bought a virtual gift this year, and the market looks like it will stroll casually across the $1 billion line , with another 600 million jump in 2010.

And players aren’t only buying - 31% of them have sold goods too, indicating that virtual currency is gaining momentum, according to VentureBeat. But these figures, while striking, are inevitably overshadowed by the gargantuan Asian market, which is a stunning seven times bigger than its US counterpart.

At the The Virtual Goods Summit last week, Bill Grosso of Live Gamer talked to a rapt audience about how to manage these new virtual world economies – and prosper from them.

But over at TechCrunch a note of alarm was sounded, in this excellent piece on the ethics of monetizing virtual goods, and the scams that can underpin parts of the market.

THINKING ...

If you’re in the mood for a little light cogitation, there is an interesting article here about how successful brand communities operate.

And over at Netimperative, Tom Griffiths writes (thoughtfully) about how real-time communication is affecting the way we, erm, think.

That’s all folks!

eModeration Social Media Round-up #9

2009-10-29T11:17:00Z

Welcome to eModeration's twice-weekly round-up of all that is intriguing, alarming or odd in the world of social media in the past few days. Check back soon!

THE HEADLINES ...

Tweeting on company time is costing the British economy a gulp-worthy £1.38 billion – and quite possibly a great deal more, once the human capacity for infinite self-delusion is factored in. When surveyed, workers allege that their co-workers are spending up to an hour a day on social networks – but insist that their own figure is a (far less sackable) 40 minutes per week. Hmm.

Domain names may soon be written in non-Latin alphabets – opening up the net for billions around the world who currently navigate it in a script they cannot actually read. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) will make a decision this week.

There’s much to be said for the English way of doing things. Turn up late, make an arch comment, then somehow pull it off without appearing to even try. Tim Berners Lee, who astonishingly has managed to avoid social networking thus far, joined Twitter last week. After a laconic first post which read ‘confusing user interface’, he has managed to gather some 10,000 followers in four days.

GeoCities is going, going, gone. The service, which in 1995 introduced a generation to the internet, has finally closed down - causing a giant cloud of nostalgia for a time of dial-up connections and feng shui to waft across the web.

THE LOWDOWN ...

A Chinese MMO has got tough on players who see gender as a flexible concept. They’re banning male players who play as female characters – and insisting that all players prove their sex via webcam before signing up.

The ex-president of Sicily, who was forced to resign last year after being found guilty of aiding the Mafia, is demanding that Italian authorities investigate each and every one of the 4,609 negative comments which have been posted about him on a YouTube clip. The 1991 clip features Salvatore Cuffaro haranguing an anti-mafia magistrate, who was assassinated the following year.

ON FACEBOOK ...

Let no-one say that the ‘Book fears change. In the latest in a lengthening line of adjustments, Facebook launched their new-look home page this week. Predictably, users were dismayed (1.2 million have joined the succinctly-named Change Facebook Back to Normal group) but brands were delighted – ads are now much more prominent, helping them expand their reach across the network.

And in related news, Facebook is making changes to notifications and requests, making it harder for developers to reach new users without paid promotion. According to VentureBeat, Facebook may be trying to serve themselves a bigger slice of the enormous virtual goods pie that social game-makers like Zynga and Playfish have been cooking up.

They’ve also beefed up their sharing features, with a new button which shows how many time a piece of content has been ‘shared’ on Facebook. The move bolsters their growing position as a content hub for the web - 2 billion pieces of content are shared each week.

A figure which may well rocket northwards, if discussions with MySpace regarding a content-sharing alliance are successful. the mooted partnership would allow Facebook users to share MySpace music and video, via Facebook Connect.

ON TWITTER ...

The micro-blogging service has finally fixed its fatal flaw, according to Brian Solis. No longer will deleted tweets hang around in the search index, just waiting to be resuscitated at an inconvenient moment. Twitter-users with impulse-control issues will sleep easier tonight - now, if they remove a tweet manually, it’s gone for good.

News which will delight US football player Larry Johnson, who is possibly in a whole heap of trouble with his bosses following a Twitter face-off with a heckling fan which escalated into homophobic mud-slinging. When will we learn? Twitter + Work = Braaake!

Did someone mention impulse-control? Courtney Love, the famously outspoken rockstress, has failed in her attempt to squish a Twitter-based libel suit against her. The suit has been brought by a fashion designer, who alleges that Miss Love embarked upon “an obsessive and delusional crusade to terrorize and destroy” her.

IN OTHER NEWS ...

Google’s Social Search has had a limited launch - quick, get a Google account, scoot over to Google Labs and you can try it for yourself. Google’s Bing-battering USP is that it will group results specifically from your network – uncovering deeper connections than might presently be apparent.

The Apple-loving world is aquiver, as evidence emerges that a touch-screen Mac tablet may soon be launched. Fortuitously-released research from Retrevo shows that many Apple fans would pay $800 plus for a putative tablet - confirming their reputation for being perfectly content to re-mortgage the house (and indeed the spouse) to get their hands on the latest Apple offering,

Meanwhile, the explosive growth of Apple Apps passes another milestone: they’ve reached 100,000 approved apps - having grown by over 35,00 in under three months.

Samsung have opened up their games-app fund to individual developers, companies, and brands - with an alluring $250K on offer to develop the winning concepts, which will then be delivered through the Samsung App Store.

The expansion of online TV continues apace, with the launch this week of both Sky’s Xbox subscription and Last.fm ‘s free sponsored TV service, which will focus on live acts.

Brands must master multichannel marketing, and become entirely consumer-focused if they want to beat the recession, admonished a stern Forrester Research this week. "Consumers are focused on their needs; not on your channels," says their principal analyst.

BRANDS GET SOCIAL ...

Unilever wants to extend the crowd-sourcing scheme which they are currently running for Peperami, according to Brand Republic. The company wants to harness the power of the crowd across its hefty portfolio, which includes megabrands Lynx, Marmite and Persil.

Sportswear brand Russell Athletic has launched a funkily-retro viral which features an ‘80s-izer’. The site lets users upload photos to see themselves doing Jazzercise, break-dancing, or flexing their pecs on ‘Muscle Beach’.

Procter & Gamble has launched a Facebook campaign to promote Crest Whitestrips Advanced Seal. The campaign asks users to tell them whom they’d like to visit and why, for a chance to take the trip for free.

The RSPCA has launched a Twitter-based augmented reality campaign which protests against the use of wild animals in circuses. Uses can print out a wearable mask which appears on camera as an elephant’s head, and a campaign site encourages users to retweet, and to spread the word through Facebook and other sites.

Samsung is promoting its touch-phone Blue Earth by asking consumers to create an ad which emphasises its environmentally-friendly properties, and encourages people to ‘Blue the Earth'.

Marks & Spencer is encouraging users to support urgent action at the UN Climate Change Summit by contributing an individual patch to a humongous virtual patchwork quilt.

SOCIAL STATS ...

Comscore’s latest research shows that ads on social networking sites account for more than 1 in 4 display ad impressions, with telecoms companies leading the way with 7 percent of the total. And online ads are more effective on social networks than on portals, according to new research by eBay Advertising.

Weber Shandwick surveyed 1,021 UK consumers and found that 26% say online reviews have more influence on their buying decisions than family or friends.

Cone Inc.’s new study finds that a stonking 78% of new-media users interact with brands – a healthy 37% at least once a week. Crucially, they want brands to communicate not only via websites and email, but through social networks (30%) and online games (24%).

VIRTUAL AND GAMES ...

Virtual goods are big news, as ad-based games continue to languish in the doldrums.

Facebook game FarmVille has gone from nought to 56 million players - 21m of whom play daily - in the three short months since its launch. The Zynga game turned some $150m of sales this year.

That's all folks!

eModeration's Social Media Update 19 - 26 October

2009-10-27T12:15:00Z

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.

eModeration's Social Media Round-Up 10 - 17 Oct 09

2009-10-19T15:21:00Z

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.

THE LOWDOWN...

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.

eModeration's Social Media Round Up 5-10 Oct 09

2009-10-12T10:30:00Z

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.”

eModeration's Social Media Round-Up: 28 Sept - 4 Oct 09

2009-10-06T09:40:00Z

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 HEADLINES...

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.)

BRANDS ON SOCIAL...

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...

How to keep hold of existing members of your online community whilst continuing to attract new ones..

Naming and shaming? Massively thinks about naming and shaming people who behave badly - useful tool, or food for the drama llamas?

Inside the mind of an online community lurker Getting more lurkers active can be one of the most frustrating and challenging aspects of online community building..

Interaction in Advertising – New White Paper from eModeration

2009-10-05T10:32:00Z

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.

Engaging, not interrupting

- Online display advertising can be viewed as an ‘interruption method’ – stopping the user from doing something that s/he wants to do.

- Brands are starting to move towards engagement to deliver their messages: asking users to get involved in activity that they can enjoy, whilst at the same time helping to get the word out about the brand, and contributing to the campaign.

- Brands need a launch plan which will create a base of fans/early adopters as the basis of their community.

- To create interaction within the community a brand has to participate, listen to feedback and adapt to it if necessary.

- Brands need to consider what will happen with the community they have helped to create, once their campaign is over.

Who’s doing it, and how?

Five ways to engage consumers in ad campaigns:

Engage with people individually. By showing the individual what the company can do for them, the brand is taking the ‘background noise’ out of the campaign and highlighting its relevancy. Making people more likely to listen and participate. Such as the campaign by Vitaminwater, where passersby were addressed directly from giant screens “Hey you in the pink top yeah you taking my photo, say cheeese!”
Provide incentives for participation (for example the extremely successful campaign by fast food brand Chick Fil-A, which offered the first 250,00o participants a free chicken sandwich in reward for uploading photos of their faces - which then take part in a grandstand ‘chicken wave’.)
Involve the consumer in the creative process by asking them to hep you create an ad or develop a product – such Tourism Queensland’s “Best Job in the World” campaign.
Create a community that is the campaign. Pet owners came together to form the Cesar’s ‘I promise’ community.
Develop a community around an existing campaign. Brands that have developed an entertaining traditional television advert are starting to capitalise on the popularity of their creation by bringing its fans together with the creation of online communities – here, we need look no further than comparethemeerkat.com.

Brand reputation

- By opening up the brand and the campaign to input from the audience, brands are effectively handing over control of content and messages to users.

- This is correctly seen as a risky strategy. But the rewards are huge, and the risks largely mitigated by effective moderation and response.

- If brands are going to create online communities, they have a duty of care to the participants to protect them from harmful or malicious content by means of moderation.

Moderated, not censored

- Whilst interactive advertising does give brands insight into what the consumer really thinks about their product, the brand needs to respond to the feedback, and do so in the right way. Brands should not try to manipulate responses.

How should you approach interaction with consumers through advertising?

Advertisers should consider:

- What they are trying to achieve
- Who they are targeting
- How they will encourage people to participate
- If they have the right level/kind of incentives
- What success looks like to them
- Whether they are able to respond quickly
- If they are willing to listen to both positive and negative feedback
- Their approach to the moderation of user-generated content

In Summary

Advertising is a no longer about the brand trying to make the consumer hear their message; it’s about engaging the consumer in debate, finding out their opinions and responding to them.
Whilst this is something that some brands may find difficult, feeling it leaves their brand vulnerable to attack, the rewards in the form of engagement and loyalty can be huge. Engaging consumers has a positive financial impact. according to the Engagementdb Report, which states:

“... this landmark study has found that the most valuable brands in the world are experiencing a direct correlation between top financial performance and deep social media engagement. The relationship is apparent and significant: socially engaged companies are in fact more financially successful.”

The Interaction in Advertising white paper can be downloaded for free from the eModeration website. Do leave comments below to let us know what you think of it.

eModeration's Social Media Round-Up for 21- 27 Sept 09

2009-09-28T11:42:00Z

Welcome to the round-up compiled by eModeration's research consultant Kate Williams, of all that's new, controversial or just plain weird on the social media scene in the last few days.

THE HEADLINES...

The UK Govt is to rush a controversial broadband tax into law before the General Election. The tax, which levies 50p per month on everyone with a fixed-line telephone, was first mooted in Lord Carter's Digital Britain, and could raid £175m to 'make high speed networks nationally available.'

First Direct's new campaign will highlight both positive and negative comments made about the brand, and includes a microsite which will aggregate every brand mention on more than 5m social media sites. Don't worry, perhaps it's like free-running. It seems counter-intuitive now, but in a year's time I'm sure we'll all be doing it...

There was some anxiety this week - and not a little resentment - as social-heavyweight Seth Godin launched Squidoo, a service which aggregates all conversations around Brand X and funnels them onto one page. The resentment began to bubble when it emerged that Brand X would have to pay $400 per month for the privilege of responding to any negative comments.

Further audible gulps came with the announcement of Google's Sidewiki, a new tool which lets anyone comment on any web pages - including brand sites. One furious but anonymous commenter said "This service is like posting a whiteboard in front of my house, that I'm not allowed to erase, and giving a marker to anyone that walks by."

THE LOWDOWN...

Squeeeal! Justin Timberlake casting rumours confirmed! The Timble is to play Napster co-founder Sean Parker in the The Facebook Movie - and look, he speaks Mandarin too! A Renaissance man indeed.

A rookie Redskins linebacker tweeted that his team's fans were "fake" and "dim wits", before asking "who are you to say you know what’s best for the team and you work 9 to 5 at Mcdonalds?” Touché, you'll agree. Sadly, the account has now been deleted.

The developers of the dystopic MMO Fallen Earth say their players thought female characters should look "more feminine". Which, if the results are anything to go by, translates as 'considerably younger' and 'no stranger to the surgeon's knife'.

Using just their phone number, DateCheck rifles through your prospective paramour's online drawers, and alerts you to Sleaze factor (past sex offences) and Compatibility (their star sign). Conveniently, it also lets you know their Net Worth. Pragmatic - or creepy? You decide.

ON TWITTER...

The micro-blogging upstart drew astounded gasps this week when they announced that a new financing round had pumped £100 million into the 3 year old service. With characteristic reserve, Twitter called the injection 'significant' - but the rest of the world was less restrained, and valuations zoomed straight to $1bn. The news predictably put co-founder Biz Stone's revelation that Twitter won't, after all, carry ads this year into the shade.

Following legal rumblings from Ewan McGregor amongst others, Twitter is moving swiftly towards an account-validation system. Other slebs who've been stung include Britney, the Dalai Lama - and David Milliband, who it turns out didn't tweet "never has one soared so high and yet dived so low. RIP Michael" after all...

MySpace has rolled out a two-way Twitter synch allowing updates to appear in Twitter feeds, and vice versa. Fits neatly with the recent news that Twitter's teen share is looking pink and healthy.

Some fabulously odd Twitter stats to mull here: a deathwish-tastic 11% of Twitter users tweet while driving, double the number of Facebook-users who do so. (Tiresomely, the stat has a useful point to make: it highlights Twitters superior compatibility with mobile phones.)

Just under a quarter of Twitter users have posted Tweets which seemed at the time to be of a pithy or hilarious nature, but which they later bitterly regretted. And for every user who tweets on a daily basis, there's one who never has, or who no longer does. Finally, key concerns of Twitterers remain, if not Neanderthal, then basic: the top 5 most frequent recurs on Twitter are “working,” “home,” “work,” “lunch,” and “sleeping.”

AND ON FACEBOOK....

The weather was rather changeable for Twitter's rival, Facebook:

On the upside, they partnered with Nielsen to launch Brand Lift. The new platform will poll those who have and haven't seen specific ads, and compare the two groups - offering brand advertisers performance measurement. And a new home page unit of engagement will help brands target potential customers with a pop-out window to register for free samples.

But the social giant also announced the death of Beacon - the no-opt-out monitoring platform which noted when a user visited advertisers' sites, then auto-invited that user's friends to join him or her. Disgruntled Facebook users launched a class suit - the $9.5 million will now be going to a foundation dedicated to online privacy and security.

And there wasn't a huge amount of love for The 'Book swilling around the marketing blogosphere either. Chris Brogan was a bit meh about the risqué ads he's being served ("Call me a prude, but I find these ads offensive") and wondered why Facebook isn't more concerned about scratching its shiny.

And Social Media Playground pointed out that the new sample pop-outs might be a way of charging brands for what they've been doing free for a while. As Todd Deffren says, "here's the trouble with Facebook: it’s a proprietary network... the rules change pretty frequently... and there’s little the average Corporate Marketer can do about it."

BRANDS ON SOCIAL...

Woo-hoo for Cadbury's Wispa and CocaCola's vitaminwater: the two brands saw considerable fan gains on their Facebook pages this week, according to Inside Facebook.

Boo-hoo for Sara Lee, whose social media campaign failed to rise. One eMarketer analyst was succinct: "I'm a mom and I didn't see the point."

A new, mobile-only social network is being launched by Albion London. The O2-backed network's members will get rebates for participating in user-generated marketing campaigns, and voting on the company's business decisions.

And finally, if you're a brand who's courting the bookish, steer clear of social networks: less than 3% of readers find them useful.

SOME MORE SOCIAL STATS

WHOOSH! (that's the sound of social networking usage on Smartphones skyrocketing). Nielsen reports a rise of 187 percent to 18.3 million unique users in July 2009. That figure triples the 6.4m users of a year ago, and Socnets now account for 32% of all Smartphone activity. Nielsen also reports that nearly a third of all mobile video is viewed by 24-35 year olds.

I'll have what she's having: Science Daily reports that there are two intriguing tipping-points in the conformity of groups. Researchers discovered that, after one menu-item has been ordered by 30% of a group of diners, the tendency to go for something different weakens. But after 80-90% had chosen the same dish, the instinct to be different kicked in again.

Yikes! 84% of companies don't measure social media ROI and 40% didn't even know whether or not they had the tools to do so.

Even the ones that are measuring don't feel that they are doing enough. The full results of the survey are definitely worth a look.

TEENS...

To highlight some of the threats which face teenagers online, US communications net Verizon have teamed up with the Ad Council to create a campaign which will run across mobile, web and TV. The ads spotlight the various forms of digital dating abuse with the tagline 'Where do you draw your digital line?'.

The New Jersey School Boards Association recently published their policy regarding staff, students and social networking. The paper, which other bodies can use as a template, advises that 'teachers should be friendly, and not friends'.

The new gTrend Teen Report was launched this week, based on a nationwide survey of more than 1,000 American teen influencers. The reports authors say they have identified 15 new trends around teens’ relationship with technology.

ALL RISE...

The Pizza Kitchen in Knox County has embraced social media - perhaps a little too warmly. After falling out with their marketing company, its owner posted his disgust - and allegations of the theft of his email list - on both Facebook and Twitter. The marketing company in question have now filed a libel suit against the restaurant.

Amongst many interesting takeaways from a recent conference which pulled together the legal brains from 100 top companies: companies are most at risk when employees contribute company-specific information online but don't disclose that they're an employee. Plus, it's not a good plan to block employees' access to social media, since it drives workers to their mobiles instead.

PalTalk has launched scattergun lawsuits against six virtual world/MMO developers, including NCsoft and Sony, alleging infringement of their patents for real-time chat during gameplay.

ELSEWHERE IN VIRTUAL WORLDS...

Linden Lab released some stats which reveal that globally users have spent more than a billion hours in Second Life. User hours have grown 33% year-on-year to an impressive 126 million, and they've transacted the equivalent of more than $1 billion USD between themselves.

Dizzywood, a virtual world for kids aged 8-12, has nabbed a National Parenting Publications Award. Previous winners include Club Penguin, and the Word Girl PBS Website.

The 20 fastest-growing Facebook apps are social games - with Zynga scoring particularly well. FarmVille hit 46 million, and Mafia Wars 23 million - placing them at number 2 and 4 respectively.

That's all folks! Do let us know if you've found this of interest.

Social Media Round-Up - the latest news

2009-09-22T10:58:00Z

I wanted to share eModeration's (more-or-less) weekly round-up of the latest, greatest or simply weirdest in the social media scene with the Brand Republic audience. Hope you finding it engaging! More good stuff on our blog at http://blog.emoderation.com.

THE HEADLINES…

Facebook became embroiled in global politics this week, after pressure from some residents of the Golan Heights, a disputed region connecting Israel to Syria which was captured by Israel in 1967. Until a few weeks ago, if you lived in Katzrin, a town in the region, your profile said you lived in Syria. Now users can opt to live in Israel.

Social Media – it’s Chicken-Lickin’ Good. When British supermarket giant Asda discovered that an employee had posted a video of himself licking frozen poultry, it used the same platform to hit back. Their own YouTube post features four of his shocked co-workers' expressing their clearly heartfelt dismay – and has effectively headed off the Domino’s Effect.

In a case which is either evidence of a serious social media addiction, or of chronic dim-wittery, a burglar left a hefty clue to his identity when he checked his Facebook page whilst on a job, and failed to log out before scarpering with the loot. Doop.

Doop 2: Martha Lane Fox's Digital Inclusion office (target: get 6m of the digitally-excluded online, ASAP) was this week hit by a thief, who broke into its offices and stole some laptops. One down, 5,999,999 to go.

It's all over between me and George Clooney: when asked about Facebook, the star responded that he would “rather have a prostate exam on live tv by a guy with very cold hands”, than a Facebook page. That’s a pretty vivid picture you paint there, George, and now I can’t get it out of my head.

US start-up The Whuffie Bank now gives you tangible evidence of your online reputation (also check out our previous post on ReputationShare). The non-profit’s algorithm assigns Whuffies to your comments, posts and mentions by others - in other words, it’s Karma for Web 2.0. Go on – you know you want to.

ON FACEBOOK THIS WEEK…

A stunner of a week for what is now, definitively, our favourite place to waste time online, per Nielsen. The social behemoth reached a humungous 300 million registered users – putting the Great Twitter/Facebook Face-Off into some serious perspective.

Not only that, but CEO Mark Zuckerberg simultaneously revealed that the company was already cash-flow positive – a milestone which it had previously predicted for ‘sometime in 2010’.

Facebook’s special sauce turns out to be ‘self-serve ads’ – targeted ads which advertisers can create on-site, in minutes, to reach particular demographics. According to Facebook’s Chamath Palihapitiya “all channels are doing very well, but that channel is just crushing it" and has been accelerating every quarter since it was launched.

AND ON TWITTER…

A mixed bag this week: researchers analysed half a million Tweets, and discovered that an astounding 20% of them were about brands. That’s 600 thousand brand mentions per day – time to get sentiment-mapping, folks.

And e-Marketer predicts 18 million Twitter users (that’s those who tweet at least once a month) by the end of 2009. That’s an impressive 50% up on their predictions of earlier this year - but not quite enough to worry Facebook, 120m of whose users check in once a day.

In that context, Facebook’s claim that that Twitter ‘is in the rear-view mirror’ seems entirely feasible - particularly when Nielsen's latest figures show that 50-64-year-old users are twice those of 18-24s, with 22% vs. 11%.

And eyebrows were raised when it emerged that Twitter’s private investors had valued the company at a breath-taking $1bn. That’s quite a figure, for a company with no revenue in sight.

And this week’s best Twitter headline goes to… The Guardian, with ‘Avatar Loss Horror Afflicts Twittering Classes’. (It was a temporary glitch, we’re assured.)

BRANDS ON SOCIAL …

Home retailer Habitat has made a sheepish return to Twitter three months after its spamming disaster (it hijacked an Iranian election thread to promo its Sale) hit the headlines: “We're back. Sorry it took so long. This time we want to get it right.”

TGI Friday's campaign to get 500,000 Facebook fans signed up reached its goal far sooner than anticipated – leaving many fans too late for the promised free burger. As negative comments piled up on their fanpage, the brand narrowly averted a backlash by extending the offer to the first 1m signups.

And..

Vitaminwater is crowdsourcing its next flavour - Facebook members can download a shareable application which lets them vote for their choice among ten flavor proposals. Each of those proposals will have been chosen according to the amount each flavour is discussed in online conversations on Twitter and other social media. Voters can also specify the vitamin content, write the ad copy, and design the packaging – with $5000 for the winner.

SOCIAL NETWORKS GOING NORTH…

Former Bebo CEO Joanna Shields heads up a new venture with Elisabeth Murdoch, which will meld TV production and social media.

And Nokia has bought micro social-networking site Plum in the latest expansion of its social media ambitions.

AND GOING SOUTH…

HMV is folding GetCloser.com, its social discovery network which launched last July to help film and music fans access content and find each other.

And poorly BusinessWeek, whose bid deadline is fast approaching, was revealed last week to have spent a hefty $16m creating its social networking site, which is thought to have generated just $600,000 in revenue.

SOME SOCIAL STATS…

The best overall way to raise a brand’s reputation is via forums and social networks, according to new research by Trendstream: 36% of 16-24-year-olds and 20% of 55-64-year-olds said brands who did improved their opinion - by 29% on average.

But these new stats from E-Tailing suggest that brands are still rather, erm, conflicted about grasping the social media nettle. 34% were concerned that consumers would think they were “using outdated marketing/ merchandising techniques” if they didn’t do so - but a whopping 49% were also worried that social media meant that “people can trash my products in front of large audiences.”

A study has revealed that more than half of ad impressions and a terrifying 95% of clicks in online ad buys could be fraudulent. Radar Research’s Marissa Gluck called it "the dirty little secret of the online ad industry”.

Mediaweek reports that increased user time on social networks is stolen from email and IM. Adults spend slightly over 3 hours a month in online communities, whereas back in the mists of time (well, 2003) consumers spent most of their online time emailing and IMing.

But overall, Content is emphatically king: time spent on content sites averages seven hours, a healthy increase of 88% from 6 years ago. Meanwhile poor old e-commerce was 18.7% down, with consumers spending a monthly 2 hours, 40 minutes on e-commerce sites.

AND ELSEWHERE IN E-COMMERCE…

A study by McAfee found that the majority of online shoppers – 65% - wait a day or more to complete their purchase. Far from being shopping cart abandonment, this behaviour might simply be indicative of the cautious shopper.

And while that species will inevitably expand as the recession continues, eMarketer predicts that the number of online shoppers will rise from 26.9m to 31.8m by 2013 – that’s over half the UK population.

ON THE BOX…

Rumours abound that Hulu, the free online viewing service, is already beta-testing a subscription version. Precisely what the premium service will consist of – better content? Zero ads? – is unclear, but analyst Laura Martin warns Trad TV businesses to be afraid – be Very Afraid – of Hulu.

The BBC is opening up iPlayer to third parties. Announcing the move, the Beeb’s head of future media let slip that the most searched term on the iPlayer was ‘Coronation Street’, the jewel in the crown of rival network ITV.

AND IN THE OFFICE..

Twitter breaks could become a regular feature of worker’s days – with those who check their SocNets at other times subject to disciplinary procedures. It follows research suggesting British firms are losing millions of pounds to social networks each day. You can view the social media policies of large US companies here by the way.

MOBILE HOME…

Socks up, mobile sites! While 31% of phone users browse the Mobile Web, they give an extremely limp 52 out of 100 average rating to dedicated mobile sites.

Those very same users are also ‘extremely ad wary’, according to research from Chitika: mobile as a whole hit a measly 0.48% clickthrough rate - just over half of the average non-mobile rate, which hovered at 0.83%.

And of all measly clickthrough rates, iPhone users' were the most measly. Though they browse the net the most, they were even less likely to click through than other mobile users, with a paltry 0.30%.

Perhaps matters will be improved by Microsoft’s launch of behavioural targeting service, which collects user data across Microsoft properties - Hotmail, Bing, Xbox and other MS-owned websites.

LEGAL BRIEF…

Evony has filed libel suit against a blogger for causing ‘significant damage to the company’s brand.” Though Evony is US-based, and blogger Bruce Everiss resides in the UK, the suit has been filed in Australia where libel is easier to prove.

A federal judge in California has ruled that video-sharing site Veoh is protected from liability for hosting pirated clips uploaded by its users. The law “does not place the burden of ferreting out infringement on the service provider," the judge wrote.

A California Judge has bashed out a compromise order which may suit the current slew of requests to unmask anonymous commenters. She’s ordered that a commenter's IP address be disclosed to an independent investigator: only if it turns out to be a specific individual will the name be turned over.

An ex-Congressman who did successfully unmask an online commenter has had the resulting libel suit thrown out. The court ruled that the comments were a matter of public interest, and that the ex-Congressman had "failed to demonstrate that [his] action has a substantial basis in fact and law.”

France's lower house of parliament has approved a bill which could see pirates who ignore email and postal warnings get their internet connections cut for a year - and face €300,000 (£267,000) in fines.

Entrepreneur Kevin Alderman, who sells virtual erotic goods in Second Life, launched a suit against Linden Labs for allegedly allowing other virtual marketers to offer knock-offs of his "SexGen" beds and other products.

Social game-maker Playdom responded cuttingly to a suit by competitor Zynga, who apparently accused it of nefariously accessing a document which contains "non-public … know-how and best practices for developing successful and distinctive social games." Playdom replied that the lawsuit "comes as no surprise given Zynga's penchant for litigation", and that the company has “no interest in Zynga’s ‘secret sauce’". Ouch.

ELSEWHERE IN VIRTUAL WORLDS…

By the end of this year, Virtual Worlds will hit the 150 mark , according to Kzero’s figures – and the total is set to double by the end of 2010, driven largely by media companies launching IP-driven platforms for their toy, film and tv properties.

There’s little doubt that we are now a society which wants what it wants, when it wants it – and so of course microtransactions are big business. Here, Massively explains all, and argues that we’re witnessing a rapid and far-reaching shift in the culture of MMORPGs.

With new free-to-play MMO titles like Earth Eternal in development and other titles ported from from Asia at a rapid-fire rate, has the market become oversaturated with free-to-play?

TOOLS AND TECH…

Vivox has launched VoiceChat, an App which allows Facebook friends to chat while gaming. The developers followed 100,000 users and found that those used voice chat in their games were four times more likely to be playing a game five weeks later than those who didn’t.

Twitter heroes Seesmic have come to the rescue of both time-strapped Facebook brands and fans. Page admins can easily update their content – and fans can view all their Pages as distinct entities and engage with them more easily.

Our friends and partners Crisp, the online child protection specialist, have unveiled Automated Behaviour Management (ABM). Working in real-time, ABM allows NetModerator clients to automate responses to low-level rule infringements such as sharing phone numbers or profanity, stopping potentially serious offenders from taking root in the game.

Social review tool provider PowerReviews is launching BrandConnect, which features two elements: Listener and Megaphone. Listener asks users to review a product in far more detail than usual, and also carries out a 2-stage review-moderation programme. while Megaphone gives customers the option to syndicate their reviews to Facebook, Twitter, and their blogs.

Rookie social network Vreebit.com launched last week. The site “combines the best of top social networking sites with new organizational, e-commerce and promotional tools, changing the way people connect, communicate and organize their social and professional lives”

Centaur Media has launched Reputation Online, an ad-funded site aimed at PR firms, agencies and brands looking to better manage their image on the web.

BillMyParents has gone live: Teens and tweens can use BillMyParents to purchase virtual goods and virtual currency for game play upgrades inside Gala-Net’s gPotato online game portal and Artix Entertainment’s AdventureQuest Worlds’ virtual game worlds.

Khan & Warren vs Facebook – Round One

2009-09-15T10:59:00Z

According to the Guardian, Frank Warren and Amir Khan are threatening to sue Facebook over derogatory comments made about them on the social network.

Facebook allows any user to set up private or public groups. You can go onto Facebook right now and search for Johnny Depp, which will bring back 500 groups dedicated to the actor, but these user groups can just as easily be set up to deride people – like the recent example of the Dixons employees who set up a Facebook group and proceeded to make fun of Dixons customers.

Amir Khan and Frank Warren are not objecting to fan pages, but to abusive and racist comments posted on Facebook. Facebook has a policy of removing "abusive, vulgar, hateful or racially and ethnically objectionable" comments which violate its terms, but, as the Guardian points out, the sheer volume of content makes this a difficult task, relying on users to police comments themselves. It also states that this language would not be accepted in a newspaper.

The ease with which someone can set up a group or post a comment which is specifically designed to bully another person is frightening. Unlike Amir and Frank, most people who fall victim to this kind of behaviour do not have the financial means to threaten legal action unless the content is removed.

The newspaper analogy is an interesting one. The Daily Mail recently announced that it was not going to pre-moderate user comments, but rely on users to flag abusive content that the paper will then assess and remove if necessary. (In my view, by doing this, the paper risks its reputation by association with abusive user comment.) But the fact is that Facebook is not a newspaper: it is a ‘social utility’, and merely provides a conduit for individuals to publish their own material and thus could not be viewed as a ‘publisher’ in the same way as a newspaper. However, it does have also some responsibility for its content.

To be fair, the fact that it has a user policy at all means that it is going some way to realising this responsibility. Facebook terms state: “You will not post content that is hateful, threatening, pornographic, or that contains nudity or graphic or gratuitous violence.” But just having a policy is not enough. From a moral standpoint, you have to implement it, and relying on user reports obviously isn’t enough: if a group is set up specifically with the aim of abuse, members of that group are unlikely to report abusive content. I accept that it would be prohibitively expensive and against the whole set-up to pre-moderate the whole of Facebook’s content, and indeed, the legal defence under Section 1 of the UK’s defamation Act 1996, or the ‘European hosting defence’ would rely on material NOT being pre-moderated by the human eye. But the development of sophisticated filters means that it is now possible to automate moderation of abusive or illegal content, and set up a ‘warning’ system where potentially harmful content could be passed to a moderator to assess and take appropriate action. This would surely be construed as application of “duties of care, which can reasonably be expected .. in order to detect and prevent certain types of illegal activities”i rather than re-classifying Facebook as a publisher responsible for all content on its sites.

Khan and Warren are not complaining about an unfair remark, or a comment about their performance. They’re complaining about racist abuse, which is not only against Facebook's terms of use, but is both morally wrong and illegal. It is unclear at the time of writing what action Facebook will take to fulfil its legal obligation to take down the offending content following Khan and Warren’s complaints, but there is no doubt that it must do so. If it is Facebook’s policy to remove this kind of abuse, it must take steps to implement it.

_________________________________________

i) Recital 48 of European Directive on electronic commerce (2000/21/EC)

The problems of perceived anonymity when using online and mobile

2009-08-06T20:42:00Z

In our recent guide, How to Moderate Teens and Tweens, we examined the psychology of teenagers when they use online or on mobile platforms, and the perceived anonymity that gives rise to bolder behaviour.

Let’s face it, all of us have made choices as a teenager that we want to forget about, but what if we never had the option of forgetting? Yesterday’s research by Beatbullying highlighted the issues of ‘sexting’ and bullying by children and teenagers using mobile and social media.

At an age when these children are developing and learning about their own views, opinions, sexuality and personality - as well as dealing with emotional and peer pressure issues - the boldness and risk-taking that teenagers engage in these days can have lasting and sometimes extremely damaging consequences.

The Beatbullying survey showed that one in three teens have received offensive or distressing sexual images electronically. It also revealed that 23 per cent of these “sexts” came from a boyfriend or girlfriend.

One in three of these images were sent via an instant messenger service.

The immediacy of this technology, combined with the ability to capture the content, and the viral nature of the pictures involved, have a high potential for being spread from person-to-person until a decision to share something private with a trusted friend becomes the talking point of the classroom.

If you asked most of these teenagers if they would expose themselves to people in the school playground, they’d probably be appalled. The fact is, the teens involved are taking part in this activity in the privacy of their homes, and sending the results to a person they think they can trust via a technology that also makes them feel safe.

The only way we can tackle this issue is by engaging with teens in the environment that they feel confident in, which means that parents and teachers need to understand what they are dealing with. They need to realise what teens can do with computers and mobile phones, beyond sending text messages or researching their school homework, to enable them to communicate on the same level as the teens they are trying to protect.

There are a growing number of excellent resources in this area (and I’ll list just a few) where parents, teachers and carers can find help and advice. Aside from Beatbullying (a charity which provides mentorship to deal with on and offline bullying), good resources are Digizen, which promotes responsible digital citizenship, itself with a very useful resource hub on cyberbullying, and a useful new guide by McAfee, aimed at educating parents.