Search results matching tag 'Bebo'

Bebo to be slashed as part of AOL cuts

255762 — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 09:43:00 GMT

AOL-owned social networking site Bebo is to suffer as its parents cuts jobs and most strikingly it is freezes production of its groundbreaking web TV drama's, which were once going to be the future.

MediaGuardian reports that the social networking site will cut the team behind 'KateModern' and 'Sofia's Diary' and the 20 strong Bebo team in the UK will be cut right back.

The news follows the announcement earlier this week of 100 more job cuts at AOL as CEO Tim Armstrong seeks to turn the business around by slashing staff in an effort to reduce costs and turn AOL into a content driven digital business.

'Kate Modern', which ended last year, helped drive the early popularity of Bebo and spawned a number of imitators (including the BBC). While another of its web dramas 'Sofia's Diary' was sold to UK broadcaster Five marking the first time an online series made the transition to a major UK broadcaster.

The blow for Bebo follows reports at the start of this year that AOL was planning to sell Bebo, less than a year after it was acquired for $850m (£417m).

The rumours were rubbished at the time, but Bebo has fallen from prominence since AOL bought it and its valuation is thought to have plummeted. Some suggested it was worth as little as $200m (£140m).

With Armstrong's focus on turning AOL into a content driven company the question becomes is there a place for Bebo in the new Armstrong regime?

There remains a possibility that Armstrong could off load Bebo ahead of AOL's spin-off from parent Time Warner.

If an announcement is about to made it could come as AOL prepares for another round of job cuts, which could see as many as another 1,000 lose their jobs.

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Gordon Brown needs to consider his social media reputation

255762 — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 08:28:00 GMT

Following on from Friday's post on Labour's Twitter lead, research says that Gordon Brown has a lot of ground to make up with Britain's 30m online social network users as he looks to make his keynote speech at the Labour Party conference this week.

Of course, his social media reputation is not the only thing he and Labour needs (a fight back would be nice, but not the place).

Social media agency Yomego carried out a Social Media Reputation audit (a new service it is launching) of the Prime Minister's online reputation looking across the spectrum at Facebook, Bebo, Myspace, Twitter and YouTube alongside other social spaces such as blogs, comments, ratings, reviews and user-generated content.

While the party might have more MPs Twittering and engaging with social media, David Cameron's reputation in the world of Twitter, Facebook and the blogging community is ranked 20 points higher, which is of course ironic give what he thinks for instance of Twitter ("Too many twits might make a twat.") although he really should come clean about Facebook as well (I'm just sitting here drumming my fingers waiting for that one).

Out of a possible 100, the Prime Minister scores 42.59 in the audit, which measures the volume and newness of social media chatter and whether it is positive or negative.

To be honest the recent week's that Brown has been having that is almost better than expected. From here on out, and with his speech this week, the party and Brown have to get that higher.

According to Yomego, in Brown's case there was lots of noise, but opinion was almost universally unenthusiastic with his "sentiment" score lower than that achieved by British National Party leader Nick Griffin (seriously? I find that hard to believe, but that is what the agency says).

Tory leader David Cameron rated a score of 62.49 with the level of noise on social media networks achieving similar volume and recency to the PM, but the overall sentiment rating more than three times better than his Labour counterpart. Well the Tories are between 13 and 15 points ahead in the polls depending on who you look at so that is going to happen.

A ray of light for Brown comes from the Liberal Democrat who should be soaking up the anti Brown/Labour chatter, but while leader Nick Clegg scores a respectable 54.13 he is let down by a low noise rating. You mean no one is talking Clegg? Apparently he is not exactly inspiring the Lib Dems to new heights as the party's recent conference appeared to demonstrate (either that or Lib Dems don't chatter/make much noise in social media).

Steve Richards, MD of Yomego, says that the audits carried out so far have underlined how important it is for brands (political parties) to manage that social media noise and sentiment around them.

"The noise around your brand may be deafening but if that noise is overwhelmingly negative, its reputation will suffer real damage. Conversely, if positive sentiment about your brand is drowned out by your competitors, you won’t see the benefits.

"For politicians, with nearly 30m people in the UK alone regularly using a social network, social media reputation is an important barometer for measuring whether their message is getting through and how it’s being received. That’s particularly true as we enter the party conference season and all parties start gearing up for a general election next year."

Other stuff thrown up by the audit, but not strictly earth shattering (but here you are) are the high scores achieved by Barack Obama who scored 77.79 (shocker - he is the social media king, or president as he likes to be known) and French Premier Nicolas Sarkozy achieving 66.15. Does he Twitter? Do the French? I'm sure they do, but weirdly I don't think I have ever followed/been followed by someone from across the channel. The rest of Europe yes, France no.

I digress, um here's a bit of how they did the Social Media Reputation audit, which Yomego says is a first measurement system combining quantity and quality, with insight and will be officially launched at Mipcom 2009 (5th – 9th October).

The result is a total score out of 100, representing an average of the level and freshness of noise generated and the nature and recency of sentiment behind what’s being expressed.

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Friends Reunited to be sold at £160m loss?

2347496 — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 13:51:00 GMT

Poor old ITV. It dived into the world of social media just as the tide was turning. Now, according to the Mail on Sunday, it could be selling Friends Reunited for a paltry £15 million; that’s £160million less than it paid for it 4 years ago! FR was rather a one trick pony though, wasn’t it? Once you tracked down Biffer Bradock, shared reminiscences about Spotted Dick and dinner ladies it all kind of fizzled out; or, of course you had an affair with an old girlfriend/boyfriend! The real clincher was the rise of MySpace, Facebook and Bebo though – social media based very much in the here and now. But is this a salutary warning? How should we price these sites? Especially given that their life span may be as little as 5 years? How long before Facebook goes the same way? I’m already trying out Gather.com – the site that professes to not be about ‘…who you know or people from your past; it's about connecting with new people who share your interests and experiences today’.

Like Water for Broadband

1319935 — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 22:46:00 GMT

Today's the big day for Digital Britain. The consultations have produced a very long wish list. I expect Ben Bradshaw will read out his in Parliament this afternoon. In a ‘simultaneous broadcast’ (how quaint) Lord Carter will be presenting the outcomes of his investigations into the state of Britain as a digital nation at the RSA. So listen in to Parliament this afternoon.

Early reports indicate that a lot of people will be disappointed. In order of moan, the music industry will be upset that the government is unlikely to ‘criminalise’ filesharers. Fans of local news will have to put up with the fact that people don’t buy local papers any more. Court reporting from the Norwich assizes will be given over to Google. The Technology industry will think the government isn’t going far enough, especially in relation to developing a ‘next generation’ infrastructure.

The BBC will think it’s got off lightly, frankly. Ofcom will become busier. My mum won’t really care. Broadband is important to her, but not actually as important as water, or electricity, or chocolate, for that matter.

My wish list? 3 million more homes online. Phone boxes should become internet points (as opposed to condom dispensers). And creating a digital economy that supports British content production in a more intelligent way than previously, which actually comes from software rather than hardware, and from people rather than pipes.

I’d like to see a British Google, Digg or Microsoft. But somehow I don’t see that coming about as a result of policy thrash.

And the outcome? There'll be ideas for government policy that will either legislate for uncompetitiveness (Korea and Japan already have far more advanced internet infrastructures) and force media companies into accepting changing state for the future. There'll be liberal protectionism for the past (especially in salvaging lTN with BBC monies). It'll certainly be a long list of wishes. But as ancient Jinn will tell you, three's probably enough.

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The 'Jigsaw Effect’

2545594 — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 09:46:00 GMT

‘Hi! I’m TopKat and I just came third in the county’s under-14 cross-country.’

Looks innocuous enough, doesn’t it? Couldn’t possibly be dangerous for the child that posted it, could it? The sad truth, though, is that there is probably enough information in this one sentence for the wrong kind of person to identify the child that made the posting.All of us are sensitive of our duty of care to children and young adults.

Those of us running web sites, social networks, blogs and the like probably take what we think are sensible steps to ensure children are ‘safe’. No real names to be used! No addresses! No emails! We probably screen for ‘purple words’, we may also have the content of bulletin boards and chat-rooms moderated, just to be sure.The unfortunate fact though, is that however careful we are, however thorough, the very tools we so value on the internet can make it a potentially dangerous place.

Think about it from your own perspective. You know you shouldn’t, but how often do you use the same password? More important from the point of view of identifying you, how often do you use the same ID, even if it is a nickname?The reality is whilst most of us use the same password over and over, we have some protection because web sites take extraordinary steps to safeguard them, but we happily post our nicknames over blogs, bulletin boards and social networks.

Punch it in to Google and there is a good chance someone can find your unwitting web footprint. With a little detective work you’d be surprised how much those disparate and unrelated postings could tell someone about you.Same problem for TopKat! She, or he, probably uses that nickname on a number of their favourite web sites. And sports results are regularly posted to the web. Start sleuthing and you’d be amazed at what you can dig up.

The risk for children and young adults (and the rest of us) is the ‘jigsaw’ effect of data posted across the internet. So what to do? Regulation, both self-regulation and the statutory sort, clearly has a role, but short of shutting down the internet it is unlikely the risks can be eliminated. What we need to work towards is a situation where risks are reduced, and most important children and young adults are educated as to how to minimise the dangers to themselves.

The recent Byron Review makes a balanced assessment of the risks and the benefits for children of the internet, and sets-out some excellent recommendations. Taking as an analogy how we teach children to cross the road, Byron advocates educating children and young adults as to the potential risks of the web, with a view to achieving the following outcomes; an ability to manage (or find support in managing) the risks; and an ability to take ownership of their own online safety.

That said, Byron is quite clear that there is a responsibility on site owners and content providers to reduce the risks to children, and to encourage and promote safe behavior. So now may be the time to review how ‘safe’ your web site is. To ask the question ‘what more could I do?’, and to see what else you could be doing to help young children appreciate and manage the risks, but still enjoy, explore and grow with the internet.

Mark Wooding is MD of Soprano an agency that provides strategic consultancy, creative execution and build and implementation for all aspects of digital media. Mark is one of the UK’s web pioneers having established one of the first Internet Agencies – Nexus Multimedia. Mark has run BBDO’s Traffic agency, and helped found Proximity London and establish Proximity in the Middle East. He also ran Electronic Solutions and has consulted widely on user experience and e-marketing issues.

Digital Britain Conference the most important to be held this year says Gordon Brown.

1319935 — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 10:14:00 GMT

Fresh from the G20, so might be a bit of overclaim. Yet the ‘dodge-it-all’ bandwagon carries on apace, with #digitalbritain trending top on Twitter on Friday. Gordon gets digital, it says on the live feed twitter fail, lampooned so cruelly in the Telegraph. But the politicians aren’t saying very much really, other than now that the rest of the economy is fucked, it’s down to the digital economy to save the nation. Give or take an embarrassing email or two. Does that sound familiar to anyone in agency land?

I think there’s a problem defining the digital economy. Sly Bailey thinks it is EVIL. And is DESTROYING JOURNALISM, along with local councils whose efforts to publish Redbridge council newsletters should be BANNED. Lord Mandelson thinks it is the infrastructure and investment backbone the nation needs to prepare for the future. The Chinese government thinks it a means to take over the world. Will Hutton says the Long Tail is nonsense and we are slipping relentlessly towards a disturbing world of enormous monopolies. Lord Carter thinks it should spawn new business models. Lord knows how that’s going to happen whilst the majority of the consultative process takes place with the institutional behemoths of telecoms, media and technology.

And poor Stephen Fry – his ‘internet should be like driving’ analogy was rather shot down in flames, apposite given Mandelson’s efforts to bail out the flailing ‘British’ car industry. There is a serious debate to be had about digital skills, which lost its way on the day in the crossfire of opinion about how the education system doesn’t teach critical thinking anyway. Expecting teenagers to apply thoughtful analysis to web browsing habits is ignorant to the point of ridiculous. Note to self – distinguish between the development of creative and technical skills that school the talent that will keep the nation great from the general IT literacy and media literacy content of the national curriculum that will help the nation keep up.

Funnily enough, this digital conference diversity reflects the agency world quite well. Two schools of though are forming. Introducing, in the blue corner, the ‘old’. Without true expertise and effort to create new models of thinking, working and creating, this group will truck along into a state of blissful monopoly and lowest economic denominator of quality and nostalgia, until Google one day does swallow up WPP, Havas or indeed Trinity Mirror. And in the red corner, welcome the ‘new’ challengers who will reshape the way business is done, who seamlessly move between code and creativity in their arguments. What can we learn from the experiences of the digital agencies? There’s a decent body of people out there that really understand the digitisation of media, the democratization of content and on-demand business. Wouldn’t you rather hear from someone with ten years experience of articulating the value of user experience versus brand positioning, at the coalface of digital strategy?

Then there’s the third corner, the purply beige regulator, who looks at the ‘big picture’ of protecting the establishment whilst claiming to encourage innovation. As anyone involved in the start up scene will tell you, you don’t get much help with the latter from this government. Hats off to the founders of Bebo and Lastminute who’ve just set up an angel fund to support innovative businesses, identifying a real gap in the market for the micro-business community of new ideas. I’m an enormous fan of innovation, but short of the occasional social media start up, we aren’t seeing very much of it reported at the moment across Brand Republic. Yes, economic consolidation is a blunt instrument, bashing the experimental with the tried and tested.

Don’t take pioneer status for granted. Get involved in the Digital Britain debate. It’s more important than you think. For a start, you can follow the #unconference we’re putting together by searching #dbuc or @dbuc [ok, so you need to be on twitter for that]. Alternatively, contribute to the Fake Digital Britain report here, and test your digital literacy skills to the full. Beats writing to your MP.

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Facebook readies Twitter fight back

255762 — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 11:45:00 GMT

Facebook is waking up to the Twitter threat. Yes it’s a threat and the two are going to clash. Having proved it is no flash in the pan, Twitter is going to eat into the social networking site's traffic and Facebook is doing something about it.

Reports on a presentation that took place yesterday are saying that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg talked about making the site more "real time". Does that sound familiar? Sure it does, basically Zukerberg (who is apparently obsessed with Twitter) wants his own version on Facebook.

Facebook is going to revamp its status update, which was kind of fun and really kept us all quite busy until Twitter came along and then it kept us much less busy, which must be of a concern to Facebook.

Facebook wants its users to reengage with its central update feature to ward off the seemingly unstoppable march of Twitter.

It is a case of if you can't buy them then at least try to beat them.

Yesterday, I blogged about how Twitter investor Todd Chaffee sees real time search as the future of Twitter. He is sure this is where it is going to make its money. As this starts to happen, the threat level of Facebook rises significantly.

The real-time web appears to be the new future. The next step in 2.0.

Facebook's play to get on board the real-time web wagon (love the sound of the web wagon) will see it change the status prompt from "What are you doing right now?" to "What’s on your mind?".

Facebook also said that it is lifting the limit on friends. Like Twitter those really popular types (don't know any personally) and celebs can reach far beyond the present 5,000 limit and aim for the kinds of numbers achieved by the likes of Twitter god Stephen Fry who currently has a staggering 262,694 followers and rising.

It seems that all of this, as well as changes to Facebook pages, is designed to keep people on Facebook and in particular brands that are successfully turning to Twitter.

Will the Twitterization of Facebook work or is it too little too late? There are some out there saying it is too late and that the Facebook audience doesn't really get it.

On the plus side, unlike other Twitter rivals out there Facebook does have a very large audience to engage with. It also has on its side that we are at the early days of the real-time web giving it a window of opportunity to stake its claim and win its audience over.

At the moment Twitter seems to be dominated by social media commentators, digital workers, journalists and, oh yeah, celebrities, but as every day passes it is broadening its base as people other than early adopters wake up to the joys of the real-time web.

I think it has a very good shot at making it work. Very much like the explosion of social media with MySpace, Bebo, Facebook and LinkedIn, there is room for more than one player when it comes to the real time web.

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Bleak future for Friends Reunited?

255762 — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 12:04:00 GMT

As ITV considers unloading Friends Reunited for a knockdown price the future looks uncertain to bleak for the one time darling of the UK internet scene, which has long been superseded by more nimble rivals.

One of a number of things is going to happen to Friends Reunited: it will either shrivel into insignificance; it will be bought by someone without the ideas to continue it as a niche business that quietly ticks over; or it could be bought by someone bigger who can potentially grow it.

Given AOL's recent experience with Bebo the chances of the latter happening seems slim. Bebo was a much more powerful social media brand than Friends Reunited, but that too has suffered and underperformed.

Bebo's value is thought to have fallen by as much as 75% with AOL originally paying $850m and is now reported to be worth as little as $200m.

If similar maths were applied to ITV's Friends Reunited the £175m it paid for the site at the end of 2005 (which at the time represented a multiple of more than eight times its annual turnover) it would be worth as little as £40m. A figure that some think is not far off what it will be sold for.

Even when ITV bought Friends Reunited it had passed its heyday. In 2004/05 the national press was full of Friends Reunited stories. Marriages were falling apart and couples were divorcing as old school flames got back together courtesy of Friends Reunited.

That publicity brought massive growth in the same way we have since seen with Facebook and Twitter, but it has not come again as the strategy behind Friends Reunited failed to quickly adapt to a fast changing market. The next generation of users, after that rush of bored marrieds looking for affairs, didn't log on to Friends Reunited like their older relatives. No, instead they logged on to Facebook or MySpace and bypassed Friends Reunited altogether and pretty much sealing its fate.

To be fair MySpace and Facebook had on their sides global scale and a multifarious offering, which came from fact that their arrival kickstarted the explosion in social media. Facebook and MySpace defined that space.

It was at that moment Friends Reunited should have relaunched and ridden the wave, but it didn't (doesn't hindsight rock) and it wasn't until last summer that it did finally revamp, redesign and go free. I'm pretty sure it was all too little too late and its spin-off sites like dating/genes are bit part players in their markets.

As I look at it today, of the long list of suggested school/college friends on the site I am presented with, none of whom have filled in any details on their profiles indicating that while many people visit the site (at one point) fewer spend time on the site or return quickly. I don't click on any as there is nothing to see. I leave and I move on.

Add to that the fact that no one talks about Friends Reunited. It simply never comes up in conversation. I am not a huge Facebook user either, but I get new friends and invites as well as various bits of activity related to the site and my profile regularly. I am currently organising a stag weekend and everyone is on Facebook. It is the natural space to do that kind of activity. Friends Reunited simply doesn't enter into the conversation.

The arrival of Twitter is further bad news for Friends Reunited as the more social networking sites that people are actively engaged with the less time they have to spend on rival sites. A site that you might have visited once a week/month falls off the radar. Friends Reunited is off of the radar. That blip is gone.

If you are a Twitter user, say with a MySpace, Facebook and LinkedIn account; you maybe have MSN Messenger and Flickr to boot; with a Hotmail and Gmail account to manage as well; is there really time for Friends Reunited?

It is a tough sell. There isn't the space or time in your average social media users life for Friends Reunited. That appears to be one of the things that ITV, like AOL, has realised, which means the future could well be very bleak unless someone can come up with a radical strategy to reinvigorate the business.

Personally, I don't see it happening although niche survival remains an option.

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Wanted teachers for international/local students

2433659 — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 14:31:57 GMT

we are searching well experience teachers , tutors or professors for international /local students in all subjects . please register freely in our website http://find-guru.com/register.php or email your resume to info@find-guru.com

BNP membership list and Google mash-ups

255762 — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 12:08:00 GMT

The BNP membership list story is all over the national press today, but online there is another spin to the story as one blogger has taken the list and made a Google Maps mashup of the data.

The list was published after it was leaked on various websites and can now found on several including Bittorrent and Wkileaks and is the talk of the blogosphere as well as Twitter where there has also talk of creating a possible mashup using the membership data and postcodes before someone went off and did it.

The map created by Ben Charlton, owner of the site Spod.cx, shows with lovely red pins that BNP membership spreads pretty evenly across the UK.

Personally, I haven't checked it. According to a post on his site Charlton says that after finding a copy and checking it "for the obvious odd family members or people you know and think might be members, I thought it'd be cool to make a Google Maps mashup of the data".

He extracted the postcodes from the member list and converted them into latitude and longitude co-ordinates and plotted them on the map. Although he makes clear that he's not revealing any of the actual list data and if people want that they have to get it themselves. Likewise.

There is no doubt going to be loads more of this as this story runs and runs. It is already on dangerous ground not dissimilar to the Baby P case. In that instance people started Facebook groups targeting the family members of Baby P and defaced the Bebo page of the mother. This could easily happen again as people attack the members of this vile organisation online.

As others have already said this data should be taken down before this gets out of hand, which it quickly will powered by mob rule – never the greatest provider of fuel. The BNP should be debated and beaten at the ballot box.

There's an update on this the guy has now taken the map down. Seems like the right move, I know I linked to the post originally, which seemed fair enough as that was where the post originated allowing other people to take a look and make up their own minds.

Update

I have decided to take down the map. Many people have commented that the map does give a false impression of accuracy, despite my making this clear, and I'm tempted to agree. I do not want to single anybody out and by removing the accuracy from the map it is possible that it ends up incorrectly implying a property contains a BNP member. It has been suggested that an inaccurate map that doesn't make that clear is worse than publishing the list itself, and I think that's a reasonable comment.

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