Social Media Round-up #27

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

In this update: Now Facebook Is Six; ITN's German Celeb-Channel; and YouTube's rental predicament.


ON FACEBOOK ...

ON TWITTER ...

ON YOUTUBE ...

BRANDS GET SOCIAL ...

VIRTUAL AND GAMES ...

THINKING ...


ON FACEBOOK ...


As we briefly noted on Friday, it was Facebook’s 6th Birthday last week – and (after the piñata and the scary clown) it emerged that the little tike had scooted past the 400-million-user mark with barely a grazed knee.

And hasn't he grown! The 'Book now rivals Yahoo's position as the third largest web entity in the world, which would rank it second only to Google and Microsoft.

Monthly users now number more than 108 million – most of whom will now have seen the Book’s revamped homepage, comprising upscaled photo display, a far easier messaging facility and rationalized notifications – all messages, updates and alerts are now pulled together into the top navigation panel.

Most intriguingly though, the search pane has come right out of its shell – it’s bigger and better and – crucially - more social. Confirming its centrality to Facebook’s Bigger Picture, search now auto-completes the names of those with whom you share the most connections, and indexes items like Pages and Applications to two degrees – so your friends’ friends content is now indexed.

What’s more, Facebook’s new payment system, launched last week, is out of the gate like a skinny hound on a fat rabbit. Initial research suggests users are choosing Facebook’s payment service over alternatives, and the Book is clawing a whopping 30% from publishers – revenue from this first year alone looks set to rake in $125-250 million, if not more. Seems Facebook has Paypal locked in its sights.

And look! eMarketer calculates that ads will earn Facebook a stonking $605 million globally this year, a 39% hike on last year’s figures. And that’s before analytics - “Facebook is sitting on a gold mine of consumer information” according to their analyst.

It’s not all Polyanna-this and ‘bright future’-that, however. Last week it was Tim “Made By Many” Malbon’s turn to toll a son’rous bell for Facebook’s future: he detects hubris, and prophesies doom. “Facebook is gambling on owning the one social graph (the data about me, my contacts and what we all do) to rule them all,” he writes. “The problem is that they don’t.”


ON TWITTER ...

For the second week in a row, there is no meaningful Twitter News this week. Oh, hold on; there’s something scrunched up at the back here… okay, goddit: Ah yes, only 8% of US teens use Twitter, and only 1 in 10 school-age kids – shockingly low in the context of other social networks’ stats. Of this small cohort, the girls are marginally keener: 13% of 14-17 year old girls are microblogging.


ON YOUTUBE ...

ITN is solidifying its YouTube alliance with its first international offering - a German showbiz channel named Promi411. Good news indeed for fans of Claudia Schiffer and.. erm, The Hoff - but also for those of the broader global celebretariat: the channel will feature international celebrity news, packaged by a German producer based at ITN, with all revenue split between ITN and Google.

YouTube’s Great Sundance Rental Experiment – you’ll remember that users could rent festival entries at $3.99 a pop – has not been an unmitigated success: they made $10,709.16. From this (or indeed any) angle, the numbers aren’t great; nevertheless it might be worth casting your eye over this piece from Venturebeat, which suggest that YouTube rental might just prove itself yet.


BRANDS GET SOCIAL ...

Domino’s Pizza has sponsored a “Superfan” Facebook app which challenges their fans to recruit their own friends to Domino’s fan page, and doles out pizza-based treats to all, as stats rise.

Pringles is dusting off its "Can Creator" website, which it launched a couple of years ago to push cause-related campaigns. For each customized design submitted by the public, they’ll donate 50 cents to the US Winter Olympics team, to a maximum of $40k.

Honda Europe has launched ‘Live Every Litre’, a crowd-sourced campaign which asks users to pitch for funding to film their own extraordinary journeys. Hopefuls will be able to promote their entries via social networks from the campaign site, and the winners will be chosen by public vote, with additional input from an independent panel of bloggers. The campaign coincides with Honda’s sponsorship of Channel 4 documentaries.

Dunkin' Donuts recently completed its quirky ‘Twinter Games’ campaign: users tweeted entries to hashtags like "#3WordsAfterIcedCoffee" to win a fifty-buck gift card. Facebook fans uploaded photos of themselves cradling iced-coffees, to feature as ‘YeDDi of the Week’. (It’s an initial-based pun on the brand name, in case you’re reading this first thing before brain kicks in.)

Oh Lord, is it really Valentine’s Day already? [slumps] To keep our minds off the postman’s knock, Target is offering customers the chance to choose how it splits the $1million it’s pledged to 5 educational charities. Its Facebook app, “Super Love Sender” allows users to create interactive cards for their darlings, and to nominate one of the five organizations while doing so.

JetBlue is trying to boost its Facebook fan numbers, in order to match their million-plus Twitter followers. They’ve launched a sweepstake on Facebook – the self-explanatory ‘All You Can Jet’ campaign.

Visa’s Go World YouTube channel is having a makeover, and will platform six new Winter Olympics ads featuring US team athletes. Their Facebook page will also feature behind-the-scenes Olympic snippets, and athletes’ own photos and footage.

Benetton is hosting an online casting - those who think they could become the 2010 face of its brand can upload photos and video describing their style on YouTube, for an online casting. The finalists will be chosen by a public/panel combo, and will be whisked to NYC for an A/W 2010 fashion shoot.

American Greetings is asking its Twitter followers to answer daily questions in their ‘Follow the Love’ contest, for a chance to win cash gift-cards.

Sara Lee’s site offers an interactive tool which shows users the positive environmental impact of choosing the brand’s EarthGrains bread. To encourage fans towards its Facebook page, they’re also pledging $1 towards farmer outreach for each new fan.

Budweiser, to support its big Superbowl buy-in, ran a multi-layered Facebook campaign which asked fans to vote for the ad they wanted to see aired during the game.

Coke Zero is crowd-sourcing basketball fans, in the newly-launched ‘Dept of Fannovation’ section of their website. The brand wants fans to come up with creative ways to experience NCAA’s March Madness (bi-i-ig tournament, for those Brits who don’t know). The top 64 submissions will compete for $10,000 and game tickets, with the online fan community voting for the most intriguing ideas.


Jim Beam Bourbon is asking the friends and families of US servicemen and women to nominate them to win VIP event trip packages, through their Facebook Fan Page. It’s an extension of their relationship with Operation Homefront – which helps returning U.S. soldiers adjust.


VIRTUAL AND GAMES ...

Linden Lab is in the process of shutting down its barely-used Second Life forums, and replacing them with new discussion areas in its Clearspace blog/forum hybrid. The Labs announced that "the forums have become jammed with cruft over the years" - previously-released figures showed that as few as 700 of 18.1 million registered users had ever posted in the forums.

Sid Meier’s Civilization is coming Facebook, in what Mashable predicts may well be an excellent game/platform hook-up. The beta will be along ‘soon’ – the full game, not till next year.

What might be the implications of Google’s new StreetView patent on ad overlays? Dan Misener discusses the impact on real/virtual world advertising in this podcast.


THINKING ...

If you have pondering time this week, might we suggest the following?

A concise and to-the-point pep-talk from Aliza Freud to get your community-building juices pumping.

On which topic, Radian6’s recently published e-book Building and Sustaining Brand Communities looks as though it might be a rewarding read.


That’s all folks!

Read more...

Social Media Round-up #26

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

In this update: Do U Haiku?; Facebook in 'News' news; and Engadget's off-switch.

And do remember to check back later in the week, when we'll be casting a perky eye over Facebook, Twitter, and the most social brands.


THE HEADLINES ...

THE LOWDOWN ...

IN OTHER NEWS ...


THE HEADLINES ...

Hillary Clinton this week dispensed a blunt warning: the West urgently needs to develop its virtual defences against cyber terrorism. The US Secretary of State declared that tanks, bombers and missiles were “no longer sufficient” to protect cyber and energy networks - nor to neutralise ‘threats of terrorism and destructive ideologies.’

A Tory government would apply market-based thinking to deliver superfast broadband speeds of ‘up to 100 Mbps’, the Shadow Chancellor George Osborne said this week. He’d let private investors piggy-back BT’s ‘local loop monopoly’ to fund cabling upgrades – and would happily extend the current 3.5% levy on the license fee if private investment failed. But Labour critics crowed that the move would be cheering news for both Rupert Murdoch’s Sky, and The Carphone Warehouse – whose cofounder has donated £150,000 to Tory Party coffers.

Ach, they grow so fast! You look away for five minutes and the next thing you know, your little social network (bear with me) has grown into a strapping news portal! Facebook this week celebrated its 6th (I know!) birthday by crossing the 400m user mark, updating its look - and becoming a player in online news. Last week, 3.5% of visits to sites in the news and media category came from Facebook – up from just 1% this time last year, and comfortably outranking Google News to claim fourth place in the Big List of News Portals. (Intriguingly, Venturebeat here analyses the extent that Facebook could administer First Aid to newspapers.)

Elsewhere in the world of online news, a steely-jawed (bear with me again) Rupert Murdoch reiterated his attachment to paywalls – and simultaneously delivered a sideswipe at The Guardian’s Alan Rusbridger, who recently said that news-subscriptions were akin to “sleepwalking to oblivion”. Murdoch’s response: a John Wayne-esque “sounds like BS to me”.

Meanwhile, NewsCorp’s strategy is attracting renewed attention, after Star TV’s head honcho was bussed in to oversee News International’s online sites. Commentators are intrigued by the possibility that Mr Murdoch is contemplating an extra 50p a week on Sky subscriptions, to help pull off his putative paywall plans – and they cite magazine rival Newsday’s recently-averted paywall disaster, in which a laughable 35 initial subscribers to Newsday.com was translated into a respectable 1.5m users by bundling online news in with cable subscriptions.

Mega-tech site Engadget took action this week, after a mass Trollathon broke out on their comments pages, following their coverage of the iPad launch. After page upon page of abusive posts – many of which accused the site of being Apple stooges – Engadget’s weary editor Joshua Topolsky took action, and flicked the ‘comments’ switch to OFF. Whilst the strategy does not feature heavily in the book of social media best practice, it’s hard not to admire his grit (though we’d love you to come and have a word with us next time, Josh...)

THE LOWDOWN ...

Three elegiac cheers for Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz, who poignantly tweeted his resignation haiku this week: "Financial crisis / Stalled too many customers / CEO no more." Here at the Round-up we feel that Haiku – a form beloved of all rilly-deep (but also rilly time-poor) thinkers everywhere – should certainly be more widely employed; join us in agitating loudly for Twitter to formally adopt a five-seven-five syllable rhyme-scheme for its outage notices.

She’s in and out like a fiddler’s elbow, that Lily Allen. The Sun reports that the headstrong songstress has at last returned to Twitter, after an interruption of four whole months. "Hello, I'm back" was her re-opening gambit – and she promises "exciting news" to come. Out of chaos, comes order.

In confirmation that there’s nothing we Websters like more than a snifter of salacious tittle-tattle with our morning tea, Forbes magazine has crowned Perez Hilton King of the Web - news which cannot but conjure visions of Michael Arrington (2nd), Pete Cashmore (3rd), and those Twitter guys (4th) all doing brave smiles, whilst furiously penning Op Eds deploring the rise of Sleb-Web culture.

Facebook has rushed to nix the page belonging to notorious underworld boss Colin Gunn, after he used the network to make not-even-thinly-veiled threats against former associates. The gangster – who is currently serving a 35-year sentence for conspiracy to murder – managed to maintain a Facebook page despite rules which say prisoner’s access to the internet must be strictly supervised.

And in Incontrovertible Proof that the coming general election will be all about social media (well, maybe a bit about the Economy, and Tax, and other stuff), Labour MP Derek Wyatt has launched an iPhone app to let voters tell their local MP what they think. Currently, Mr Wyatt is the only member using the service – and he’s stepping down at the next election - but we’re quite sure more will be along presently.


IN OTHER NEWS ...

In an admirably imaginative collaboration, Childline has partnered with teen girls’ social net Stardoll to encourage young women to express their emotions, through a range of online tools. The move follows an earlier partnership during National Beat Bullying Week - a contest which attracted 250,000 votes. Read more here on the eModeration Blog.

In a comprehensive rundown of the social media habits of teens and young adults, the Pew Research Centre reports that 62% of US teens head online for news and current affairs – rising to a mammoth 77% during a major event like an election; a massive 86% of social networking teens post comments on friend’s pages; and teen blogging has dropped from 28% to 14%. For the full monty, Pew’s research is here.

Meanwhile, another study finds a link between excessive internet use and depression – but doesn’t say which comes first. Researchers from Leeds University found that small proportion of teenage web users could be classed as ‘addicts’ – and that this group were more likely to also suffer from depressive illness.

Speculation mounts that Amazon is planning to upgrade its e-reader Kindle with touch-screen tech, to go head to head with the iPad. The company this week acquired New York start-up Toucho, which has recently been working on an interpolated, pressure-based – and cheap – touch-screen capability.

In other Amazon news, the e-tail giant was this week forced to back down in its standoff with publisher Macmillan, and accede to the publisher’s demands for a higher cover price for bestseller and hardback releases. Macmillan’s titles – including the current Man Booker winner - were briefly removed from Amazon’s virtual shelves as the two tussled over a disputed price hike.

Skittles.com – whose social media makeover gained much industry attention last year for its inclusion of a live stream of Tweets on the brand, whether or not they were positive – has stepped back from a strategy of absolute transparency. The new site offers users a range of ‘offbeat’ shareable content including YouTube videos and quirky photos – but the ‘chatter’ stream has now gone.


That's all folks!

Read more...

Stardoll links up with Childline in How U Feelin? Campaign

Anyone who’s had a teenage daughter will understand how the onset of puberty and can change your lovely compliant lass into an angry or sullen, mistrustful, confused and rebellious stranger, seemingly unable to communicate with you. According to a recent ChildLine survey, the number of children saying they felt stressed most of the time was more than double as they reached their teens, from 12% of 11-13-year-olds to 27% of 14-16-year-olds.

We’ve written a lot about how teens and tweens online social networking is frankly scarey, with its dangers from pornography, predators and cyberbullying.  Refreshingly, there’s now  a case of a social network reaching out to its users and extending a medium for young teen girls to express their feelings.

Stardoll, the social network for teen and tween girls, has partnered with ChildLine to encourage them to share their feelings via a range of online services. Each user of the site will be given a virtual green telephone. When they click on it, it will link them to the ChildLine site.

The Childline site offers children tools to express their feelings through poems, pictures and emoticon-type ‘moodies’ to keep track of their feelings. Children can also contact ChildLine-qualified counsellors through phone, online chat, email and text.

A Moodi Wear Label competition will encourage users to respond to a weekly brief by creating a design based on an emotion. According to Ian MacArthur, NSPCC creative director and head of brand marketing, more than 227,042 girls reported how they felt in the first two weeks of the ‘moodies’ and How U Feelin? campaign on Stardoll and they expect to double that interaction in the coming weeks.

Read more...

eModeration partners with Yomego

I’m happy to say that we’re now officially the moderation and community management partners to the lovely people over at Yomego. Yomego is a specialist social media agency involved in designing and building all sorts of digital environments, and running social media campaigns for some pretty serious media brands like Endemol, ITV, MTV and Fremantle (oh, and my children’s especial favourite, the Mister Maker CBeebies website.  Try it – no seriously, it’s fun!). It’s a very smart agency, and one to watch (and they say some very nice things about us on their site).

We’ll be working with Yomego in 2010 by providing moderation and community management services for various virtual worlds and social networks. There are a couple that we’re particularly excited about  but we’re keeping under our hats at the moment - watch this space for more news ...

And on a side note: relationships like these are important.  These aren’t finder’s fee arrangements or thoughtless link ups akin to teenagers amassing Facebook ‘friends’.  We don’t have many partnerships on our roll because we truly like to develop good working practices with companies and people we trust and whose output and work practices match our own.

Partnering with Yomego in this way ensures that they can recommend us to their clients in confidence, and vice versa.  And of course for us, the earlier we’re consulted on a project, the better – we can use our experience to help develop moderation tools, guidelines and site terms, making the the experience of uploading and moderating user generated content better for everyone.

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Social Media Round Up #25

Ach. Like a hyperventilating claustrophobe stuck in a lift, the iPad pretty much sucked up all the social media air last week. So it is a somewhat foreshortened second installment to our weekly roundup which we now offer for your reading pleasure.

This week: Facebook’s IPO ‘No’; Google’s Chinese impersonator; and Twitter’s stuttering stats.


ON FACEBOOK ...

ON TWITTER ...

ON GOOGLE ...

ON YOUTUBE ...

BRANDS GET SOCIAL ...

UNDER THE GAVEL ...

SOCIAL STATS ...

VIRTUAL AND GAMES ...

THINKING ...



ON FACEBOOK ...

Facebook is going for gold with a mega-test of the Facebook Credits system on Farmville, the largest social game on the web. The system has previously been tested on much smaller games, but the rollout to Farmville shows that the ‘Book is getting serious about monetizing virtual goods. The Business Insider suggests that the social network will be charging developers a meaty 30% per transaction - leading some commentators to speculate that revenues from payments could exceed those from advertising.

Recent fiddling with privacy controls, and the addition of the option to answer comments directly via email, without even visiting the site, are all heading in one direction: Facebook is shifting focus from its traditional platform and homing in on its users’ streams, in an attempt at future-proofing. According to VP of Engineering Mike Schroepfer, “it is entirely possible that there will be no Facebook.com in the future.”

Nevertheless, two major investors this week confirmed that there was no IPO in Facebook’s tealeaves for 2010. Yuri Milner of DST said: “we don’t have to return money to investors, so we have unlimited patience.”


ON TWITTER ...

What Twitter news there was this week was all about the stats – and it was a curate’s egg, to be sure. The bad news: though they passed the 75m user mark in 2009, inactive accounts are higher than ever. Only 17 % of users sent even a single tweet last month – an all-time low, according to ClickZ. Twitter can take some comfort, though, in the fact that active users are more engaged than ever: they now average 300 followers apiece, up from 70 in July 2009, and can boast 420 updates each, compared with just 120 six months earlier.


ON GOOGLE ...

Google’s presence at the World Economic Forum in Davos only added to the growing sense that Google now resembles a sovereign nation – and one with considerable colonialist aspirations. The Guardian carries an interview with its gnomic CEO Eric Schmidt here, in which he hedges round both Google’s newspaper-menacing advances to display-advertising - and the possibility of a coming rapprochement with the Chinese authorities.

On which note - only weeks after their Chinese troubles first began, Google finds itself in competition with a home-grown counterfeit. The punningly-titled Chinese search engine Goojje (the final syllable plays on the Chinese word for ‘older sister’) appears to be snapping at Google’s heels – though confusingly, the upstart has made a public plea for the search giant to stay in China.


BRANDS GET SOCIAL ...

Osoyou.com relaunches this week: the fashion and shopping social network now offers new functionality which refines searches by brand, style, colour and price, and features a drag-and-drop shopping list.

Audi is mobilizing a squadron of environment-protecting “Green Police” for their latest campaign, which will include a dedicated YouTube channel and a Twitter page. Both platforms will feature updates from a campaign road trip, in which journos will motor from Audi headquarters in Virginia, to the Super Bowl in Miami.

Burger King is running a 41-city social media tour to find the best basketball players in each neighbourhood – as well as those who are "game-changers" in their urban community. They’ll post video clips to a dedicated website, where fans may vote for their favourite, or submit their own entries.

Breakthrough Breast Cancer is launching a celeb-backed campaign, called “Too Many Women”, which will attempt to harness the power of social networks to raise over £1million. The charity is searching for 201 ambassadors who will each be tasked with raising £500 - and recruiting nine friends to do the same. The numbers are intended to echo the one in nine women who will be diagnosed with breast cancer in their lifetime.

Procter & Gamble is to put Facebook at the heart of its marketing strategy for 2010. The company has opened a dedicated Silicon Valley office to work on marketing functionality with the site – but is lukewarm towards Twitter, which it sees merely as a broadcasting tool.


SOCIAL STATS ...

There was a huge hike in the number of Baby-Boomers using social networks last year: while Millennials’ stats stayed pretty consistent, social media adoption in the Boomer cohort jumped to 47% - up 15% from 2008, compared with a barely visible 1% rise the previous year.

Marketers are turning to social media at the expense of direct marketing: 51% of them are moving from a campaign-centric DM model to social media, with 40% planning to cut their DM budget by more than 20% to fund the move, according to Alterian.

Another Facebook mega-stat: unique mobile users leapt more than 600% in 2009. While Twitter’s stats saw an even bigger relative jump – a 2800% increase in just one year – Facebook was the overall winner on numbers, and is now the most popular mobile social network.

Online, UK shoppers were Europe’s big spenders last year – averaging a mammoth £1,102 per shopper, and accounting for almost a third of all European sales, according to the Centre for Retail Research.


UNDER THE GAVEL ...

Google Street View has won a partial victory in a case brought by a Pittsburgh couple, who alleged their privacy had been violated by when the Street View vehicle entered their ungated driveway and took shots of their pool and house. A judge disagreed, ruling that "no person of ordinary sensibilities would be shamed, humiliated, or have suffered mentally as a result” – but he did rule that the two can pursue a trespass claim against the company.

The first shots were fired in the Nokia-Apple Patent War last week, when the International Trade Commission began its investigation of Nokia’s claims that Apple is treading on its patents in pretty much each one of its products. The war, which recently saw Apple launch a counter-suit, promises to be one of attrition.

A Facebook user has withdrawn a suit which alleged that the company profited from Zynga’s so-called ‘scam ads’ – but she continues to push a class-action against the social-games developer itself. Some observers suggest that both companies are likely to be protected by the federal Communications Decency Act.


VIRTUAL AND GAMES ...

If you’re still thinking that the iPad could be a game-changer for gamers, take a look at this, from Massively, which tells you why lack of multi-tasking, Flash support and webcam suggests it won’t.

Last week Linden Lab announced the Feb 17th launch of Linden Home – its new offering for premium users of Second Life. The home hub, which comes with a free plot of land and a monthly wad of Linden dollars, is the company’s attempt at making Second Life less intimidating to new users.

And lastly, if virtual world communities are Your Thing, you could do much worse than examine this list of useful online resources relating to the same, kindly provided by the chaps at Massively.


THINKING ...

If you’re (whisper it) still struggling with your Facebook Fan Page, Social Media Examiner tells you why (350 million users; average daily session 25 minutes) and how. Just sayin’.

Venturebeat offers a succinct rationale for why the iPad will sell despite its aforementioned ‘missing’ functions, here.

And Michael Brito offers businesses this useful map to help them navigate the rough waters of real-time search – the latest challenge facing companies using the social web.

Last week we featured the story that Dunbar’s number – the theory that the optimum number of people in any given network is 150 - was also applicable to social media. This week, here’s Jacob Morgan to tell us why Dunbar’s Number is, in point of fact, irrelevant. Oh, do keep up!


That's all folks!

Read more...

Social Media Roundup #24

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

In this update: the iPad has landed; socialized politics; and Tweeting padres.

THE HEADLINES ...

THE LOWDOWN ...

IN OTHER NEWS ...


THE HEADLINES ...

The iPad has landed.

The world had awaited its arrival with the kind of feverish longing usually observed in millinarial cults – and with so many articles and posts that it seemed at one point that the web might get used up. So, in an attempt to tell you all you need to know without contributing to the general frenzy of wordage, here is a concise guide to some further reading on the subject of the iPad.

Immediately following The Unveiling, Mashable offered the full skinny on the specs to help us decide whether Apple’s little darling was, as Mr Jobs suggests, "a magical and revolutionary device at an unbelievable price".

Five hours after its first mention, the word iPad had been Tweeted more than 100,000 times – as bloggers frantically posted their up-sums of the launch.

The Guardian, for example, wondered if the iPad could save newspapers, replace your TV, or run a Hoover round quickly before tackling the washing-up (I may be exaggerating.)

Then – inevitable after the vast user-generated hype – came the backlash. The world realised that the iPad was fundamentally an iPod Touch with a big screen, lacking the magical properties which they had anticipated. No 3D interface, no OLED screen or Flash support – nor even a webcam, microphone or USB port.

Some speculated that Apple’s real target was gaming – noting that dozens of top-drawer games could now be downloaded from the App Store for a fraction of store-bought ones. But Massively pointed out that, without multi-tasking or Flash, the iPad was never going to be a game-changer for gamers.

Meanwhile, anxious marketers and publishers huddled to ponder the iPad’s impact on advertising – with some speculating that it might smash the internet as we know it, by splintering it into dozens of fractured platforms.

Okay, I think that covers it. And breathe.

Despite what you may have read, some other events occurred this week.

YouTube announced that it would live stream Barack Obama’s State of the Union address - and offered citizens the opportunity to question the Prez through a Google Moderator series. The company said it showed how “platforms like YouTube can be used to increase transparency in government and access to world leaders."

Meanwhile - if it wasn’t already clear that social media is changing the business of politics hour by hour – the White House’s Facebook page was stormed by protesters, following a call by activist site “Rethink Afghanistan” to post messages which asked the President “to provide a concrete exit strategy for our troops in Afghanistan” in his address.

Over the pond, the election campaign got off to a nicely social start, when the Labour Party announced the launch of its first iPhone app – a mobile version of the party’s virtual database featuring everything that local activists need, searchable by postcode. On a roll, they also launched a crowdsourcing campaign, which flips Obama’s presidential slogan ‘Change you can believe in’ into ‘The Change We See’- a call for supportive citizens to upload their snaps of new hospitals and schools built since Labour came to power in 1997.

Meanwhile TalkTalk’s talk is fightin' talk: its CEO Charles Dunstone said that he would refuse to disconnect, or even admonish, customers suspected of illegal file-sharing as demanded by the Digital Economy Bill – even if the Bill passed into law. Dunstone, who’s managed to gather 32,000 signatures opposing the measures, said he would fight the government in court if necessary.


THE LOWDOWN ...

Speaking of politics (as we were) Westminster insiders are glued to the Tweets of Sally Bercow – wife of the Speaker of the House of Commons and prospective Labour candidate. She began tweeting two weeks ago, and is already engendering apoplexy amongst parliamentary traditionalists with her posts about ‘Mr B’s’ politics, practical uses for Hansard (kids’ step-stool) and the mouse in their Commons apartment.

And, if further proof were needed that social media spreads political gaffery like wildfire, US political journalist Chris Matthews' painful attempt at a compliment to President Obama – “I forgot he was black tonight for an hour” – became the Twitter backlash du jour, with YouTube hits aplenty.

Elsewhere, the Pope has called upon priests to embrace social media in order to increase their congregations – though he warns that “priests present in the world of digital communications should be less notable for their media savvy than for their priestly heart.” If this news brings to mind the potential plot of a lost episode of Father Ted, then shame on you.

Sticking with immaculate conceptions and suchlike for a moment – The Sun’s headline 'Woman Uses iPhone App to Get Pregnant' was a corker. Turns out, though, that the app in question was an ovulation predictor.

If you haven’t yet witnessed a true viral sensation, be sure to follow @SleepTalkinMan, the Twitter presence of husband and wife bloggers Karen and Adam Slavick-Lennard, whose updates consist of the extraordinary somniloquies of the latter. By day, mild-mannered techie. By night, absurdist Mr Hyde. Example: "You can't be a pirate if you don't have a beard. I said so. MY boat, MY rules."


IN OTHER NEWS ...

Google is taking Social Search out of Labs and rolling it out as a beta for English Google.com users. The search giant’s real-time effort allows users to pull up any of their friends’ photos and updates which happen to be relevant to their search query.

The online ad industry has agreed on an icon to tell web users that their behavioural data is targeting ads at them. The industry – keen to avoid federal regulation – will also use phrases like "Why did I get this ad?" or "Interest based ads", which polled well in a research study by the Future of Privacy Forum.

Elsewhere, a new study from Dynamic Logic reports that users find Facebook ads no more or less irritating that any other form of online ad. Not quite a wholehearted endorsement, then - still, could be worse.

Pepsi must be smarting. Having opted out of Superbowl TV ads this year, choosing instead to put a chunk of its budget into social, they’ve left the pitch free for Coke to demonstrate that the two forms can easily be combined. Coke have cleverly incorporated social into their Superbowl campaign – offering sneak peaks of one of the two Superbowl ads to Facebook fans who send a Coke-branded virtual gift to their friends.

More than a third of US, UK and Aussie Facebook users have donated to the Haiti relief efforts in the 2 weeks following the disaster, a joint survey conducted by Facebook and The Nielsen Company reports.

Adidas is tapping augmented reality for its latest promotion – rolling out a range of shoes which embed AR code directly into the tongue of the trainer. Shoe-owners hold their footwear in front of a webcam, and can then access an area on Adidas' website which offers interactive games – all controlled by the shoe itself. Crikey.

Yikes. Marks & Spencer has pulled alcohol ads which appeared on pre-teen gaming site GirlGames1, after a five-year-old user’s mother had been searching for champagne on the M&S website.

Two weeks after Microsoft admitted that Internet Explorer had been the entry point for the Google-aimed Chinese cyber-attacks, a company called Core Security Technologies disclose that they’ve uncovered another series of weak security links in the browser. Microsoft say they see no current risk to users, but have launched a full investigation.

Digg is being given a full makeover – with the revamped site becoming a hub for real-time info, and an added emphasis on what friends and influencers within a user's wider social circle are consuming.

Finally – ternz out th@ txtng iz gud 4 tweens. Coventry University psychologists found that the more textisms a child used, the greater their powers of verbal reasoning.



That’s all folks!

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Social Media Roundup #23

Welcome to the second installment of eModeration's weekly social media round-up. Here you will find a note of all that is intriguing, alarming or odd in the world of social media, compiled by Kate Williams (@emodkate).

In this update: Dunbar's Number; Seesmic jumpstarts Twitter's stats; and how the Nexus One Nixes Bad Words.


ON FACEBOOK ...

ON TWITTER ...

ON GOOGLE ...

BRANDS GET SOCIAL ...

UNDER THE GAVEL ...

SOCIAL STATS ...

ON MOBILE ...



ON FACEBOOK ...

Hoorah! Those of you who feel mildly ashamed that your tally of Facebook Friends isn't quite what it should be can hold your heads high once more. Professor Robin Dunbar is the scientist behind the gloriously-named ‘Dunbar’s Number’ - the theory that the optimum number in any human group is 150. Most recently he’s been applying his considerable brain to the study of social networks, and reports that his theory holds true there too: even if a person has 1500 Facebook friends, they cannot sustain a meaningful relationship with more than a tenth of them. Go tell your more popular associates to put that in their popes and smike it.

Brands pricked up their ears last week at the preliminary rollout of Facebook’s Post Insights, which lets them check the number of hits and the quality of feedback on individual posts. The fact that Facebook keeps its valuable metrics firmly clutched to its bosom has long been a source of grumpiness for brands – and the limited insights offered by this new feature is unlikely to change that. Still, as Mashable notes, it’s better than a slap round the head with a wet flannel.

Facebook also rolled out their version of a retweet last week. Called a ‘Via’, it allows you to republish another user’s posted links (though oddly not their status updates or photos). Your friends will see the repost in their News Feeds, inching Facebook closer to Twitter’s real-time offer.

And that’s the context in which this piece from the Telegraph analyzes Facebook’s recent privacy changes. Despite Mark Zuckerberg’s recent assertion that Facebook was responding reactively to a new social norm, it’s perhaps more realistic to view the move as the latest attempt to challenge Twitter in the real-time search arena. “When content is public, Facebook wins”.

More on precisely how Facebook is winning is contained in this useful breakdown of Facebook’s revenue streams – a handy guide from All Facebook to the many and varied ways in which the ‘Book makes money, and might make more in the future.


ON TWITTER ...

Astronaut Timothy Creamer last week established an internet connection from the International Space Station - and began tweeting live from space. Previously, the crew had to email Houston with their tweets, who would then post them to Twitter. The historic first direct post read: "We r now LIVE tweeting from the International Space Station – the 1st live tweet from Space! :) More soon, send your ?s". Truly, a giant tweet for mankind.

Back here on earth, things are hotting up for Twitter as they launch location-based trending topics. With Facebook crowding in on Twitter’s lead in real-time, the microblogging service appear to be shifting focus to location-aware services, with a view to establishing a dominant position in all things local. A full rollout is promised next week, although the roster of locations is still pretty limited - 15 US cities and a smattering of global metropoles. But location-sharing is set to be the Top Tech Trend of 2010 (say it fast) – and for Twitter, there is much to play for.

Meanwhile, Twitter’s stuttering growth might get a jumpstart from Seesmic, who’ve just launched a new app they’re calling Seesmic Look. The idea is to hook in users who don’t have a whole lot to say themselves, but are nevertheless interested in seeing what the various celebs, brands and media outlets which crowd the microblogging service are chattering about. The new interface hopes to present Twitter as an entertainment experience – you judge its chances of success for yourselves, right here.

Elsewhere Dick Costolo, Twitter’s COO, confirmed that the microblogging company won’t be making an initial public offering (IPO) in 2010. Instead, he anticipates revenue growth from a new advertising platform, commercial analytics features for brands - and “at least” ten more distribution deals.


ON GOOGLE ...

Hillary Clinton’s recent speech - which called on China to change its policy of internet censorship and conduct a full investigation into the recent attack on Google - has produced a grouchy response from the Chinese foreign ministry. They say that the criticism is “contrary to the facts and is harmful to China-US relations” and urge the US to “cease using so-called internet freedom to make groundless accusations against China."

And in related and not entirely unpredictable news, Google announced that they were postponing the launch of a web- and email-enabled smartphone which they’d been developing with the mobile carrier China Unicom, amidst uncertainty as to whether these Google services will be available there for very much longer.

No matter - Google has outrun the recession in spectacular style, with an astonishing 54% increase in profits last year, bringing their total profit to $6.52bn (£4.02bn). They promise massive investment this year to ensure that their domination of the search space continues unhampered – a recent Bellwether marketing report found that spend on search has increased by 11.5% in the last quarter.

Finally – and a tad ironically given Google’s recent stand on censorship – it emerged that the Nexus One’s speech-to-text function stubbornly refuses to let you swear. No matter how potty-mouthed the rant, the best the phone can muster is a stream of ###s. Reassuringly, Google claim they do not wish to curtail our cussing rights, but to prevent smatterings of Anglo-Saxon vernacular from mistakenly appearing in users’ transcription – a strong possibility given the relative newness of voice-recognition technology.


BRANDS GET SOCIAL ...

Santander has developed a mobile and Facebook puzzle game through which to push its rebrand of Abbey and Bradford & Bingley building societies. The game also allows users to share their scores via Facebook and Twitter, and is being distributed via a pre-existing Santander Students Facebook Page which already has 24,000 fans.

Black & Decker marks its 100th birthday with a microsite which looks back on the history of the brand, as well as allowing employees and customers to share their Black & Decker-based memories.

The British Museum has partnered with the BBC to launch a digital museum of objects which relate the history of the world . The site also allows the public to upload photos and stories of objects which they believe expand our understanding of history.

Red Bull has expanded its space in Sony's PlayStation Home, with a Flugtag area which allows users to fly some of the DIY aircraft built by crash enthusiasts over the past 2 decades – as well as an area which features the company’s Illume sports competition.

Nestle’s Toll House virtual cookies campaign was a resounding success, with 1.1m of the delightfully calorie-free virtual goods sent by Facebook users. With each cookie sent, an interactive frame customized with their photos appeared in users’ news feed. Friends could then upload their own photos as the campaign widened.



SOCIAL STATS ...

Nielsen Online report that global internet users spent an average of 5½ hours on social networking sites last month – up by a stonking 82% on the previous year and expanding numbers by a full 50%, from 211 million to 307 million. Surprisingly, Australia takes the gold when it comes to time spent, putting in an impressive 6 hours 52 minutes and comfortably trouncing the US with 6:09, and the UK with 6:08.

And the Retail Advertising and Marketing Association (RAMA) reports that women with children at home are more likely to use Facebook (60.3%), MySpace (42.4%) and Twitter (16.5%) than average adults (50.2%, 34.4%, 15.0%, respectively). What’s more, a whopping 15.3% maintain their own blog (really?). The report warns that brands which fail to engage with mothers via social media are missing out.

Which sparkling stats explain why 66% of marketers plan to invest in social media marketing over the coming year, according to Alterian’s latest study. 36% of them will also be investing in monitoring and analysis tools.

Meanwhile, digital agencies grew more than any other marketing sector in 2009, with the top 30 agencies reporting revenue growth of 18%, per a report from Kingston Smith WI.


ON MOBILE ...

Revenue from mobile applications will explode over the next few years, according to a new report from Gartner – up 60% from the $4.2 billion spent in 2009, to $6.8 billion in 2010. By 2013, mobile apps will produce nearly $30 billion in revenue – quadrupling 2010 figures.

The Labour Party is about to launch its first iPhone app, which will allow supporters to access party events searchable by postcode, and to rally support by canvassing potential voters by phone.

Finally, Apple has moved to squash one of the more extreme attempts to garner info on their upcoming tablet, which is due to be revealed on 27th January. The Valleywag blog had offered a substantial reward for pics and video (between $10,000 and $50,000 no less) of Apple’s eagerly awaited touchscreen computer – but a recent lawyers’ letter to the blog said “your company crossed the line by offering a bounty for the theft of Apple's trade secrets. Such an offer is illegal and Apple insists that you immediately discontinue the scavenger Hunt."


That’s all folks!

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Social Media Round-up #22

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

In this update: baby-whispering the iPhone way; the end of free news; and Katie Price's Twitter woes.


THE HEADLINES ...

THE LOWDOWN ...

IN OTHER NEWS ...


THE HEADLINES ...

Amidst the many stories of desperation and despair in Haiti come some reassuring ones of astonishing heroism, and others of great luck. Included in the latter category is this one concerning US citizen Dan Woolley, who believes his iPhone saved his life. Dan was trapped in the rubble following the collapse of the Hotel Montana, Port-au-Prince – but used a downloaded medical app to self-diagnose and treat his injuries, and the iPhone’s camera to map his location before moving to a safer place. Woolley was eventually rescued 65 hours after the quake hit.

Bill Gates joined Twitter this week – and promptly hoovered up 100,000 followers in eight hours, prompting comparisons to the near-vertical slant of Oprah’s follower stats at the beginning of her Twitter career. So – what prompted multi-billionaire Gates to finally jump in after such a long and noble resistance to Twitter’s siren call? Ah - in MicrosoftWorld, everything happens for a reason, and it soon emerged that Mr Gates had a website to promote.

Gosh, it’s tough being a politico in a digital world. The Conservatives must be wondering quite why they dropped £500,000 on their recent ad campaign, when MyDavidCameron.com can so swiftly subvert it with user-generated comedy.

In a case which pretty much defines the expression ‘taking a sledgehammer to crack a nut’, Paul Chambers – who tweeted a jokey threat to blow Doncaster’s Robin Hood airport ‘sky high’ if their service didn’t improve – found himself arrested on terrorism charges and questioned for seven long hours. He’s had his computer, iPhone and laptop confiscated, and has been suspended from his job – a stark reminder, if we needed it, of the need to be circumspect in what we put Out There.

According to the Telegraph, Google is investigating the possibility that the recent hacks on their Chinese site were an inside job. The attacks, which targeted the email accounts of human rights activists, prompted the search giant to announce that they were closing their Chinese operation – though Google declined to confirm that they were investigating their own employees.

Elsewhere, Chinese mobile providers have been told to monitor their customers’ text messages for “illegal or unhealthy content” - and to suspend the service of those who use tripwire keywords.

Virgin Media has begun using Deep Packet Inspection to track down users who are illegally downloading content. They’re not yet monitoring individual users, but the technology can distinguish between the downloading of family pics and a music album – and will identify the artist and title if it finds the latter.

Meanwhile, Microsoft has agreed to entirely delete users’ IP addresses after six months, following pressure from privacy groups – till now they’d merely been ‘anonymising’ them.


THE LOWDOWN ...

I’m uncertain how to break this to you – perhaps it’s best just to blurt it out and get it over with: Katie Price (aka glamour model Jordan) might be leaving Twitter. A ‘close’ source says that, though KP has many kind messages “from true fans who look up to her”, the haterz are getting her down. Deep breaths now - stiff upper lip and all that.

Got a yen to retrain? Fancy a legal career? Got an iPhone? Got a thousand bucks? There’s an app for that.

If we were to write a list of things that it would be a very poor idea to share on Facebook, a photo of one’s 6-month-old with an (albeit unlit) cigarette in his mouth would be hovering somewhere in the top 5, don’t you agree? Rebecca Davey of Southend was this week investigated by Essex police for doing precisely that – but thankfully officers found that it was a case of not-fully-thinking-things-through, rather than anything more sinister.

Good lord – an iPhone app to help you decipher your baby’s cries. Apparently all babies have five distinctive cries which tell us if they are hungry, annoyed, tired, stressed or bored. Impressive – but I can’t squash the thought that an app to translate years 13-to-18 would rapidly gain more traction.

Meanwhile, US candy brand “Sweethearts” (the equivalent of Lovehearts for we Brits) has begun printing a new message on its sweeties: “Tweet me”. Now why does that cause an involuntary shiver in my own maternal heart?

Warning to UK readers – although this ‘No Pants Subway Ride’ viral is very funny, I predict you will be mildly disappointed by its failure to live up to the promise of its title.


IN OTHER NEWS ...

Britain is a dreadful laggard in the global broadband speed stakes – ranking a measly 26th on the world’s list with an average download speed of just 3.5 Mbps, according to Akamia’s most recent ‘The State of the Internet’ report. South Korea and Japan seize the international laurels with a whopping 14.6MB and 7.9MB respectively, whilst in Europe Sweden is king, with an average speed of 5.7MB.

Campaigning children’s charity Beatbullying is to launch a cinema campaign to showcase its powerful anti-bullying ad, after Clearcast, the regulators of TV commercials, deemed it too graphic for TV. The M&C Saatchi ad, which features a girl sewing her mouth shut and the strapline ‘You can speak out now’ – promotes the website Cybermentors.org.uk, and will appear on YouTube, billboards and in schools, as well as in the 12-rated cinema campaign.

All eyes are swivelled Applewards this week, after the great and the good of the tech world received an invite to a 27th January ‘event’. Speculation that Apple is about to launch their tablet reached fever pitch – Apple Insider shows us what it might look like, and the Guardian gives an excellent breakdown of what it might do.

Despite the President’s Massachussett woes, Obama’s social media team continue to build upon their reputation as the hippest to the hop with a Whitehouse iPhone app, which will stream the President’s upcoming State of the Union address live to users.

YouTube has announced that it’s jumping aboard the indie Sundance filmfest to test the concept of YouTube rentals out. The experiment will offer five of this year’s entries, and will last only as long as the festival – though the video portal says it will also offer a “small collection of rental videos … across different industries, including health and education” once the Utah movie showcase has ended.

Tweens and teens manage to squish a mammoth 11 hours of media content into the not-inconsiderable 7 and a half hours a day that they spend ‘connected’. They do it by multi-tasking – and the figures don’t even include time spent texting, or on the phone.

According to figures from The Anchor Intelligence network, one in every four ad clicks in the last quarter of 2009 was a click fraud attempt – up nearly 40% on the previous year.

The New York Times - America's most popular online news source – today announced that their content will no longer be free. With ad and print sales dwindling, the illustrious newspaper company will soon put a ‘metered’ paywall around its content – a decision which is widely seen as heralding the end of free online journalism. The Guardian offers an explanation of how the metered approach would work, here.

Finally, if proof were needed that virtual goods now sit at the very heart of the social media mainstream, here is news from Engage Digital Media that investment in 87 virtual goods-related companies topped $1.38 billion last year – doubling the previous years figures.

That's all folks!

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UCAS yougofurther Supports Internet Safety Day

Safer Internet Day is organised by Insafe each year in February (this year on Tuesday 9th) to promote safer and more responsible use of online technology and mobile phones, especially amongst children and young people across the world. The topic for 2010 is "Think B4 U post!".

I’ll no doubt be blogging on the subject a few more times before the day itself – but right now I just wanted to point up a great example of how a good community manager can use Safer Internet Day to raise safety awareness and encourage their communities to share their experiences and pool advice and information.

One of our longest standing clients is the higher education closed community yougofurther, and we work really closely with them on their safety guidelines and operational execution.    Together, we hatched a plan to promote Internet Safety Day, and they launched ‘Internet Safety Month’ this January.  Last week the editor Murry Toms posted an invitation to his community to blog their experiences of internet safety and cyberbullying – and offered an Apple Macbook for the best entry:

“It’s Safer Internet Month on yougo in January, and you’re all invited.

This is your chance to share your views and opinions on the thing that yougo considers the most important of all – online safety.

Between Giles Ursell, yougo’s Community Manager and resident UCAS expert, CEOP (Child Exploitation and Online Protection centre) and eModeration, our online moderation agency, we provide a safe and secure environment for UCAS applicants to meet up and chat about their experiences [...]

Have you a bad experience online? Are websites over-moderated? Is yougo a safe place to be? Should we do more to improve safety on yougo? Got any tips or advice for staying safe? Heard of CEOP? What do you think? Do you know who to contact if you suspect wrongdoing? Is it easy to report abuse? Is cyber-bullying on the up?”

As expected, the posts are coming flooding in, some with heart-rending stories of cyberbullying, some with great advice, loads with praise for how secure they feel on the excellent yougo site, and a few revealing a scary lack of knowledge about who abuse should be reported to, and who CEOP are (despite the prominent CEOP report button as the top of every yougo page).

This is a lovely example of good community management, how to engage your members, and a serious topic handled in a way that absolutely fits with the ethos of the site.  Murry has reached out to his community on a subject which touches them directly, and made this pan-European event into an opportunity for students to learn, teach and ask questions.  This is a chance for him to reassure his audience about the high level of moderation and safety of their own community, and start a debate rolling about other social networking sites. eModeration has been invited by the yougo team  to speak to the UCAS organisation at the end of the month about internet safety and social media, and we hope to be able to use some of the feedback from this competition in our talk.

About yougofurther: yougofurther.co.uk, supported by UCAS, is a student-only community website geared towards connecting applicants and students in higher education. Launched in April 2007, it currently boasts 450,000 members who have formed a niche community around the site's forums, groups, events, competitions and other activities.  Aside from the peer to peer interaction, student 'experts' such as UCAS, Lonely Planet, TARGET Jobs, the Rugby Football Union (RFU) and universities such as Oxford and Cambridge have hosted webchats to share their valuable knowledge with applicants and students.

eModeration supports the on-site moderation team at UCAS, working in tandem with the in-house team throughout the 24-hour cycle.  eModeration and UCAS work very closely together regarding the site's community development and guidelines.

"eModeration is a vital member of the yougofurther.co.uk team, ensuring the yougo is a safe and secure environment for applicants and students to connect with each other. Making the step up to university is daunting enough for young people, but the highly-skilled team at eModeration, through their professional and adaptable approach, have produced a compelling area for 16-24-year-olds to get to grips with the process. eModeration ensure those channels are made as accessible as possible."
 Murry Toms, Editor of yougofurther.co.uk.

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Social Media Round-up #21

Welcome to eModeration's round-up of all that is intriguing, alarming or odd in the world of social media, compiled by Kate Williams (@emodkate).  We had so much to say after our holiday break that this steaming helping of social networks and brands in social media is following hot on the heels of last Friday's industry appetizer #20 ...


In this update: Facebook's annus mirabilis; Twitter's job vacancies; and the most social brands of last year.



ON FACEBOOK ...

ON TWITTER ...

ON GOOGLE ...

ON YOUTUBE ...

BRANDS GET SOCIAL ...

SOCIAL STATS ...

ON MOBILE ...

UNDER THE GAVEL ...

VIRTUAL AND GAMES ...

THINKING ...


ON FACEBOOK ...

According to ComScore, Facebook was the beneficiary of 5.5% of US online time in November – a pretty impressive figure, to be sure. It was also the most-visited website on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, say Hitwise, as users rushed to compare presents (or possibly avoid Scary Uncle Pete).

No surprise, then, that Facebook’s ad figures have sprinted past those of MySpace a full year before they’d been predicted to do so – and look likely to reach $605 million globally this year. MySpace, meanwhile, is said to be staring at a 21% cliff-drop in revenue, according to eMarketer.

For a full and frank assessment of Facebook’s Annus Mirabilis (and more on predictions that Facebook could file for IPO in 2010, with revenues expected to rocket past $700 million) it’s well worth scooting over to Mashable, who offer in-depth analysis, here.

Elsewhere on Facebook:

The ‘Book now offers a cunning feature to combat persistent strangers or spammers who try to friend you. If you’ve rejected them in the past because you don’t know them, their friend request flags it up.

And recent Facebook privacy changes have had users scrambling to catch up – and if you’re a brand with a Fan Page, you should be scrambling too. You'll find a useful guide to taking charge of your page’s privacy settings, quick-sticks, here.


ON TWITTER ...

Along with ‘Did you keep the receipt?’, the question on everyone’s lips at the end of 2009 was ‘When will Twitter become profitable?’ – and the microblogging site was at last able to respond that they already were, to the tune of £25 million. The leap into profit, however, was entirely courtesy of its real-time search deals with Google and Microsoft – and commentators are iffy about whether the deals will be enough to sustain a revenue stream in 2010.

So the question remains a valid one – as does the increasingly beady focus on Twitter’s horizontal stats, which appear to have flat-lined. Worth bearing in mind, though, that it’s only the Stateside figures which have stagnated - Twitter’s global figures are doing just fine, with the 60m international user figure just announced, and growth looking healthy in both and Brazil and the UK (which now accounts for a 8.9% of tweets - a pretty twit-tastic tweet to population ratio.) Other reasons for Twitter’s apparent halt: figures don’t include those using apps like Seismic or Tweetdeck – and the fact that Twitter is generally considered to have not yet reached critical mass.

Upshot: if you think that you’ve got the answer to Twitter’s tricky revenue issues, the chaps over there are eager to hear from you. They’ve launched a recruitment drive specifically to address revenue generation, and are looking to recruit four new staff members “to work on cutting edge monetization projects"; and other new positions will also include a revenue element.

Elsewhere on Twitter:

Twitter and LinkedIn have hooked up - users can now update their LinkedIn status via Twitter, and vice versa...

The old way of retweeting – which allowed Twitter users add commentary to their RTs – is preferred by a ratio of 2 to 1...

Finally, the Telegraph reports that Twitter has banned 370 ‘obvious’ passwords. So if you are the type to have ‘password’ as your password, you will no longer be allowed to do so – though you are of course still free to respond to emails informing you that a considerable legacy awaits you, if you will only forward your bank account details by return.


ON GOOGLE ...

Google’s dominion over the world of search remains unchallenged, with both Yahoo and Bing wavering last month, according to Nielsen (in the latter’s case reversing an apparently temporary surge earlier in the year).

But the biggest news for Google was the release of its much-anticipated Nexus One. The Guardian put the iPhone competitor through its paces and concluded that, while it lacked the glamour of the iPhone (and its multi-touch screen) the Nexus One’s power was certainly impressive. The smartphone’s launch was, however, shadowed by reports of customer service and network issues, and sales remained limp - a mere week after its launch, Google had ominously moved to slash the price of the Nexus One upgrade.

Nevertheless, despite some launch wrinkles waiting to be ironed out (the version which will be available in the UK, for example, will have a multi-touch screen) Advertising Age suggested that the Nexus represents the final piece in an overarching strategy which will be a game-changer for Google - giving it “a hammer lock on the whole integrated process of consumer mobility.”


ON YOUTUBE ...

UN investigators believe they’ve cracked the mystery at the heart of a macabre YouTube hit, in which a recently-assassinated anti-government lawyer blamed his imminent death on the Guatemalan president. In a twist worthy of Hollywood, it seems the man, who was depressed about personal issues, actually arranged his own murder in order to frame the president.

A recent patent application by Google has set tongues waggling that YouTube is about to dip a toe into online gaming. The patent details a 'web-based system for generation of interactive games based on digital videos'. Translated, this seems to describe a level of interactivity that would allow users to change the outcome of the video being shown – “a video game, if you will,” as TechRadar points out.


BRANDS GET SOCIAL ...

The big news of the New Year was Pepsi’s decision to nix its SuperBowl budget and push $20 million into social media. Now Coca-Cola and Unilever have decided to move deeper into social media by using social networks to ‘break’ campaigns, as well as relying on their own campaign sites. For example, Coca-Cola has unveiled a new Glaceau Vitaminwater flavour called Connect – the result of a competition run on the brand’s Facebook site, which gave fans the opportunity to design the new flavour.

Good lord – is it really Easter already? Cadbury’s have launched www.cremeegg.co.uk, where fans are encouraged to hunt down various Creme eggs to be found roaming the internet, on sites including MSN, Yahoo and YouTube.

Lego has launched a campaign to celebrate what it calls those ‘click’ moments – when the solution to a Lego build problem suddenly pings into a user’s head. They’re offering an app which will ‘Lego-ize’ a photo - available from a hub site called LegoClick.com, from which users can also post descriptions of their own ‘lightbulb’ moments of creativity to the Lego Facebook page.

Stateside social media star-brand Best Buy is launching in the UK – and they’ve unveiled a British website and social media presence, to prepare their passage. Content through both these channels will eventually include videos, blogs and images from Best Buy’s bloggers – plus details of the 8,000 jobs that the brand hopes to create in their first five years in the UK.

Hoorah – a triumph for the mystery creators of the ‘bra colour’ Facebook meme, which saw thousands of Facebookers updating their status according to the colour of the bra they were wearing – successfully raising awareness of breast cancer.

Domino’s latest ad campaign trumpets the astonishing turnaround they’ve pulled off - by listening to their consumers. The daring ‘documentary’ – which features Domino’s staff taking on board many negative comments about the brand, and working to improve their product – was inspired in large part by monitoring consumer comments about the brand on social media channels.

Evian’s taking Roller Babies - their 45m-views YouTube hit – to Facebook, where they are already effortlessly gliding towards 200,000 fans.

Following the 2007 return, due to customer demand, of the Wispa bar, Cadbury’s is putting social media at the heart of its latest campaign. The brand is allowing fans to personalise its Wispa webpage, suggest ideas for the content, and vote on how they think the site should be developed.

Huggies wants proud parents to upload photos and video of their little darlings, in a new campaign called ‘Everyday Discoveries’ – the ten winning babies will star in a storybook illustrated by Disney artists.

Super-social brand Harley-Davidson called on fans to submit photos of themselves and their bikes – and has now used 10,000 images to create a giant mosaic of their logo.

Travelocity has launched another ‘Roaming Gnome’ campaign, in which the touring elf encourages consumers to vote for one of three of his trips on Travelocity’s social networking pages, as well as upload photos of their own winter trips.

Trident has used authentic, unsponsored tweets from happy chewers of their ‘Trident Layers’ gum in their latest campaign - which they’re calling ‘The People Have Tweeted’.

Home decoration specialist Umbra will be giving a dollar to each of its Facebook fans who successfully refer a friend to the brand’s fan page. The campaign will run until the pot collectively reaches $1000.

Equator Estate Coffee, who make artisanal coffees and teas, are experimenting with turning their Facebook page into an online store: the public will be able to make purchases without leaving the site.

Guiness have teamed up with Google Earth to launch a social media campaign in which users can invite their friends to help to create a virtual version of their part of the planet - until the entire globe is virtually represented. The winner will get a year’s supply of the iconic stout.

Nivea want consumers to "have more love, hugs and kisses in 2010" – and it’s asking them to upload a virtual hug or kiss to build the Nivea XOXO Chain. The skincare brand will donate $1 to the charity ‘Big Brothers Big Sisters’ for every each entry.

Visitors to NYC’s Times Square have been taking part in the latest campaign around Kodak’s huge digital display – an app that lets them upload their own photo to the mega-sign, and control when it appears.

Finally, to get you up and at 'em for the new decade, take a look at Vitrue’s Social Media Index, which tells you everything about which social brands generated the most consumer buzz through social media over the last year (clue: iPhone won.) And to top it off, here’s Netimperative’s list of the Top Ten online marketing campaigns of the previous ten years. The winner, most fittingly for the social decade, is the Mentos-Coke viral - despite the fact that neither brand was involved in the making of the ads


SOCIAL STATS ...

US internet users, who now number 80% of the adult population, spend 13 hours a week online – up from eight hours in 2003. What’s more, half of them have bought online in the last month, according to Harris Interactive.

Meanwhile, research by PostRelease and Synovate has revealed that one in five Americans contribute to an online forum - and those that do are more influential, both online and offline. The 20% who are active forum members are considerably more likely to recommend products, share links and advice, and help a friend make a buying decision.

What’s more, 26% of UK consumers place online recommendations higher than those of friends and family in importance, according to Weber Shandwick – and

SheSpeaks reports that 80% of female Internet users say they’ve fanned a product or brand on a social network in the last year, and 72% had found out about a new product there. A full 50% had made a purchase based on content they’d seen on a social network - a considerable leap from 2008 figures.

Unsurprisingly then, a survey by Bazaarvoice and The CMO Club found that a hefty 62% of chief marketing officers planned to hike their social media budgets next year. Industries polled including software, finance and insurance, travel and hospitality, media and publishing, consumer goods and retail – but over 50% of them were still uncertain about the precise ROI of social media, and 63% were still ‘undecided’ about the extent to which data from social media sites helps them learn about their brand and its customers.

UK broadband speeds grew 22% in 2009, perhaps adding to a cheering 15.5% jump in the UK’s online spending figures, according to SpendingPulse. And eBay predicts that by 2020, 1 in 5 UK pounds will be spent online - with some categories like electrical goods and books overtaking off-line sales.

Across the pond, comScore reports that the figures for holiday e-tail were up 5% year-on-year, hitting an astonishing $27 billion in online sales - a humongous $30 million of which was spent on virtual gift-giving during November and December, per PlaySpan.


ON MOBILE ...


Business users will be the target market for Google’s next Nexus smartphone – and the new version might even have an actual keyboard, according to Reuters.

Web analytics firm Compete report that nearly 2 in 5 smartphone users have used their devices to buy something unrelated to their mobile. Books, DVDs and video games in the lead - though a frustrated 8% who tried to buy via their handsets couldn’t get the site to load.

They were most likely to be making their purchases using an iPhone 3G, which is currently the most popular single phone with US users according to Nielsen.


UNDER THE GAVEL ...

Kodak has launched a US suit against Apple and Research in Motion, the makers of the Blackberry. They claim that the technology which both the iPhone and the Blackberry use to preview pictures, in fact infringes Kodak patents.

And a US federal appellate court has confirmed an earlier decision that review site ConsumerAffairs.com was immune from liability for posts by its users. The posts, which a New York car dealer claimed had defamed him, included comments about prices and fees.


VIRTUAL AND GAMES ...

Social gaming giant Zynga abandoned in-game ‘offers’ at the end of 2009, after a spate of accusations about scam ads signing players up for goods and services which they had not agreed to. Now they’ve announced that they’re bringing them back, albeit from a tightly controlled roster of eight advertisers.

Elsewhere, Korea has become the only country in which virtual currency is legally agreed to be equivalent to real-world cash - with sweeping implications for the online gaming industry, according to Massively.


THINKING ...

Finally, if one of your New Year’s Resolutions was to spend a little more time cogitating, why not dip into this smorgasbord of food-for-thought?

360 Degree Digital Influence offer this comprehensive exploration of crisis management in social media;

Last Exit examine the pros and cons of Crowdsourcing – here’s what to look out for when using an online community to develop a brand, product or campaign;

And Brian Solis ponders the story-so-far for Social Media, and looks at predictions that its coalescence with plain old ‘media’ is coming sooner rather than later.

That's all folks!

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