Social Media Round-up #15

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

This week: 'cyberdisinhibition'; the Digital Economy Bill; and REO Speedwagon.

Check back on Monday, when we'll be casting a beady eye over the goings-on at Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and beyond - see you then.


THE HEADLINES ...

THE LOWDOWN ...

IN OTHER NEWS ...



THE HEADLINES ...

Smell the distinctive aroma of burning rubber? Catch the sound of screeching tyres? Yes, it’s Google making a rather sharp U-turn, as it announces that it will, after all, allow publishers to restrict how many stories a reader can access per day.

The news came hot on the heels of the Fair Syndication Consortium’s announcement that over the last 30 days, Google was responsible for more than half of the ‘unlicensed copies’ of newspaper content on the web - and is bound to please Google-sceptic Rupert Murdoch, whose paywall plans, he recently admitted, were moving more slowly than anticipated.

Not everyone was thrilled, however: enter the redoubtable Arianna Huffington – whose Huffington Post was born as a response to the last great paywall experiment – to deride the idea of exclusivity as a “ridiculous notion”, and to accuse Mr Murdoch of "a fundamental lack of understanding of the web and how it works."

The Digital Economy Bill is not, currently, Top of the Pops with... well, with anyone, it seems. Google, Facebook, Yahoo and eBay have made their feelings quite clear in a letter to Business Secretary Lord Mandelson, whose Clause 17 – introduced at the 11th hour – is rather murky on copyright and gives, according to the letter, "any future secretary of state unprecedented and sweeping powers to...increase monitoring of user data even where no illegal practice has taken place."

Quick, someone call for Stephen Fry! Ah, you already did. Everyone’s favourite digital uncle has also been expressing his dislike of the bill, urging his followers to sign Talk Talk’s petition against the disconnection of illegal file sharers from the internet 'without fair trial'.

Elsewhere there’s been a lot of grumbling about the mixed messages sent out by the Bill on the matter of open and closed wi-fi networks – with some observers claiming that the bill will kill any notion of a wi-fi Britain. It emerged last week that a pub-owner had been fined £8,000 after a customer downloaded copyright material over the venue’s open wi-fi network - and critics say that if the Digital Economy Bill becomes law, this will be an increasingly frequent occurrence.

The aforementioned Digital Economy Bill is not the only bee in Stephen Fry’s bonnet this week – business networking site Plaxo was on the receiving end of some sharp tweets, when he realized that 'any casual passer-by' could access his mobile number and home address. Fry terminated his account with a ‘Grrrr’.

Don’t look now, Facebook, but the scandal of scammy ads in social gaming doesn’t seem to want to die. The social giant is now being pursued by the spectre of a class action suit, as third-party provider Zynga – the super-successful games developer, whose Fishville is currently king of the social games hill – is accused of signing users up for recurring payments without their consent.

3,500 convicted sex offenders have been locked out of Facebook and Myspace, after New York State set up a registry which requires them to declare their social networking details. According to a statement from the attorney general’s office, "The law sets mandatory restrictions on a sex offender’s access to the Internet where the offender’s victim was a minor, the Internet was used to commit the offense or they are among the highest-level offenders".


THE LOWDOWN ...

Good Heavens: REO Speedwagon! If you’re under 40, you will be blinking in incomprehension at the mention of this 80s power-ballad-belting band with big hair – but nevertheless, the soft-rocksters are launching a social game to promote their Christmas album. And in what must surely be the very definition of ‘the triumph of hope over experience’, the game costs $8 to play.

You wait all year for a piece of news involving 80s rock gods – and then two come along at once! Serial litigant Eric Estavillo – you may remember his attempt to sue Sony for limiting his right to a social life when they kicked him off Resistance: Fall of Man – has launched another, somewhat speculative suit against World of Warcraft, which he claims is (amongst other things) making him too sad. And amid a roster of prospective expert witnesses, we have Depeche Mode songwriter Martin Gore, whom Estavillo is calling entirely on the basis that “he himself has been known to be sad, lonely, and alienated, as can be seen in the songs he writes."

This is sweet – well, kinda. Dana Hanna’s wedding video records the moment that he pauses, mid-ceremony, to update his Facebook relationship status to 'married' and send a tweet announcing that he and his beloved were now Man and Wife. A touching desire to shout his love from the rooftops - or a raging and potentially relationship-destroying addiction to social media? You Decide.

Stephen Fry might currently be blowing hot and cold on Twitter, but he should thank his luckies that his Followers don’t include members of the Original Young Gangsters - or indeed any of the New York gangs who have taken to taunting one another via Twitter. It seems they’ve been organizing their Harlem-based street – erm, activities through the micro-blogging service - now that’s a Twitter List you really don’t want to be on.

Ouch, and thrice ouch. Two senior managers at a US TV station have allegedly been suspended, after a live Twitter feed, juxtaposed next to photos of the stations star anchors, seemed to accuse the three presenters of a serious sexual assault. On a very, very big billboard.

The Medical Defence Union offers clear-cut advice to doctors who are considering social media: Don’t. They warn that even a polite refusal of a patient’s request for a date could cross the ethical line – not to mention the general risk to patient confidentiality and their professional reputation involved in using social networks.

Ahh! Even those of us who are not celebrating Christmas will have our cockles warmed by this Advent Calendar from 24ways. Each day a new techie-targeted treasure from the likes of Dan Rubin and Jeffrey Zeldman. Magical indeed.


IN OTHER NEWS ...

If your brand’s Facebook Page leaves you feeling a little underpowered in the fan department – don’t despair, you are not alone. A new study finds that, of 600,000 Facebook fan pages, over a third had under a 100 fans, and over three-quarters had less than a thousand. Only an elite 4%, the study found, had more than the golden 10,000 – and 0.047% of pages had more than a million fans.

If more proof were needed that listening is no longer an optional extra, new research from LexisNexis finds that 60% of us have been turned off a purchase after reading negative comments online, half of us complain ourselves if we’re unhappy with a product or service – and two-thirds had not heard from the company itself after sharing bad feedback.

It seems that generally, we’re experiencing a wave of ‘cyberdisinhibition’ – a separate study confirms not only that many feel less inhibited in an anonymous online environment, but that 20% of us are more likely to 'lash out' at companies or brands when feeling aggrieved – a full 25% of men had done so.

‘Cyberdisinhibition’ is an excellent word, and one which seems accurately to describe the probable state of mind of Sarah Henderson, daughter of erstwhile General Motors chief Fritz Henderson, upon hearing that her father had been sacked by the US car giant. Her forthright expressions of dismay (involving lots of CAPS and lots of ***) were swiftly removed from GM’s Facebook page – but not before eagle-eyed industry blog Jalopnik had nabbed a screen shot.

Sponsored Celeb Tweets are generating big bucks – with the likes of Kim Kardashian earning up to $10,000 a month for a single tweet. Well-regarded bloggers are earning $3000 a month for multiple tweets – and now Amazon has announced that it will recompense lesser mortals if they refer buyers to the site via Twitter.

US retailers are grasping Twitter to their collective bosom in the run-up to the holiday season – combining previously separate outreach functions, including advertising, customer service, and news – into one catch-all medium. 59% of online retailers say they plan to use Twitter more heavily this Christmas.

The figures coincide with a strong start to the holidays for e-commerce: Black Friday – the traditional starting-gun for U.S. holiday shopping – saw an 11% rise online, against an underwhelming kick-off for retailers generally, while 75% of the UK’s online retailers reported increased figures compared on last year, and 85% expected more growth in 2010.


That's all folks!