eModeration's Social Media Round-Up #4: Social Life

Welcome to our round-up of all that's new, controversial or just plain weird on the social media scene in the last few days.

It's come to our attention that these round-ups are perhaps a leetle long for our loyal, yet time-starved readers. With this in mind, we have divided it into two easily-digestible chunks: Social Life (here), and Social Business (there). Still a bit long, perhaps, but we didn't want to lose any of that good stuff. And what else are you going to read on your web book when nature calls?

THE HEADLINES...

The social media beach was afroth with anticipation this week, as excitement over Google Wave’s beta roll-out reached Point Break. Mashable provided a vital ‘how to’ for the lucky 100,000 who’d received an invite for the real-time tool, which combines elements of email, IM and wiki-style editing. Only Robert Scoble refused to get his swimming trunks on, warning that "all this real time noise [is] an attention dump and will kill your productivity”.

And there were more Google-y eyes this week, as commentators peered into the future to assess the impact of Google Sidewiki, the sidebar which allows any user to leave permanent comments on any web-page. Vizion Interactive reminded brands to claim their Sidewiki space in order to grab the top spot on the bar. And AdAge cautioned " Don't Say We Didn't Warn You", urging brands to make sure the really interesting conversation goes on on the page itself - diminishing Sidewiki's potential.

The US secret service was mobilized after a Facebook Poll asked ‘Should Obama be killed?”. Users were offered a choice of "Yes", "No", "Maybe" and "If he cuts my health care" – and 750 of them had already cast their votes before Facebook pulled the poll. The culprit turned out to be a teen (bet that was a fun family pow-wow: Mom, Dad, Junior - and six guys in shades) but the incident raised questions over whether Facebook should increase its policing of user-generated content.

Rupert Murdoch’s NewsCorp is thundering towards the second phase of its shift to paid-for content – despite the fact that 74% of readers would flee to Free if their news outlet started charging. Nevertheless, 70% of trad media outlets plan a paid-for future – and it emerged that Time magazine was canvassing support for a "Hulu for magazines”, a digital shopfront which would deliver to multiple devices, and which could provide advertisers with a tantalizingly affluent and highly targeted audience.

THE LOWDOWN…

The British legal system got hip to the hop last week when a high court judge this week ordered that an injunction be served via Twitter. The forward-looking cease-and-desist went out via DM to an anonymous Twitter user, who’s accused of impersonating a conservative blogger.

Facebook, on the other hand, was momentarily looking backwards - the social network has added Latin to its recently-launched crowd-sourcing translation tool. “OMG! Abutebaris modo subjunctivo denuo!”

Tech is frustrating – but not that frustrating. A Cincinnati iPhone owner took his device to an Apple store, declaring himself so fed up he could shoot the damn thing. He then proceeded to draw an actual 9mm handgun to make sure everyone fully grasped his point. Crazy times.

Not so bright, them racists. A Sheriff’s deputy has resigned after she and some colleagues burned a fellow officer in effigy in her back garden, made racist references to the KKK as they did so, then uploaded the video to Facebook.

SOCIAL POLITICS …

The Conservatives had high hopes for the Friday launch of their whizz-bang Obama-style campaigns site. But the day ended with a whimper, as the site collapsed under the weight of traffic.

Meanwhile, Gordon Brown’s social media rep could do with some love. He scored a weakling 42.59, which auditors translate as ‘plenty noise, little enthusiasm’. His sentiment score was lower than the BNP’s Nick Griffin, and overall he trailed bouncy ex-PR Dave Cameron by an alarming 20 points.

Must be awkward at the breakfast table – the PM’s wife Sarah Brown is currently Miss Popularity, having overtaken the redoubtable Stephen Fry on Twitter with a healthy constituency of 774,00 followers.

All parties would do well to consider to this global survey, which revealed that Britain's broadband service is as sluggish as … well, a slug. Rated 31^st of 66, it was beaten by both Bulgaria and Latvia, and deemed ‘not fit for the future’ - in dismal contrast to that of South Korea, who recently committed to breakneck speeds of up to 1 gigabit per second by 2012.

ON FACEBOOK…

Apart from death-threats to the US President (see above), in other respects it was a fairly plodding week. A Russian investor is looking to boost its stake by up to $100m, paying considerably more for shares from existing shareholders than is being offered elsewhere.

And the social network, which has thus far remained relatively untouched by viral malware, took action to close a series of fake accounts, which asked users to download a video before infecting them with malware.

ON TWITTER…

Twitter’s back-and-forth over the small matter of advertising might be resolved sooner, rather than later. An Interpret survey just revealed that Twitter users were twice as likely to click on ads, to visit company profiles, and to review products online than non-Twitterers.

In the UK, Twitter overtook MySpace to grab fourth place in the UK’s top social networking sites. But the microblogging service shouldn’t rest on its laurels – it might be staring at a growth ceiling. Despite last week’s massive injection of $100m capital, there’s been a ‘significant’ slump in new users: looks like a resistance point been reached.

Elsewhere on Twitter…

Geolocation goes live: Twitter has begun attaching a latitude and a longitude to users’ tweets, in the first stage of a site-wide rollout.

Pulling an outside idea in-house, Twitter is now testing Lists – which will allow users to create custom lists of, for example, writers-of-cracking-news-roundups (just sayin'). Others can then follow with one click.

And in London, it’s now possible to hail a taxi via Twitter. @greentomatocars – the green bit refers to their fleet of Toyota Priuses - claims to be the first private hire service in the UK to take 140-character bookings via Twitter to all destinations. Except perhaps here.

GOOGLE NEWS..

A busy week for the mega-engine, who upped their game considerably in the battle for real-time search supremacy. They muscled in on Yelp’s territory last week with the launch of Place Pages, which aggregate reviews, maps and business details for local businesses onto a separate page. This week, it’s more bad news for Yelp, as Google rolls out Local Search for Mobile – previously Yelp’s strong point.

In another competitive move, Google announced the launch of trending graphs, which show how each result’s popularity has shifted over time. They’ve also added forum posts and discussions to their listings, acknowledging the rocketing influence of social media.
Google were rewarded with the news that their stats were up, suggesting that users may already be tiring of newly-launched search rival Bing, and are now trickling back.

That's all folks! (But look out for part two: 'Social Business'...)