Social Media Round-up #18

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: Zuckerberg's privacy settings; social brands; and judicious Friending.

Next update: Friday. See you then!


ON FACEBOOK ...

ON TWITTER ...

BRANDS GET SOCIAL ...

ON YOUTUBE ...

VIRTUAL AND GAMES ...


ON FACEBOOK ...

Facebook’s road to global domination is littered with milestones – barely a week passes without us stubbing our toe on another one. A few weeks ago, 350 million global users –this week 100 million Stateside users, up from 98.1 million a mere week ago.

As suspected, Facebook’s new privacy settings aren’t quite as private as they might be, and Facebook’s been getting a bit of an earful from various security experts - some of whom point to its new search relationships with Google and Bing as possible smoking guns.

To head off a possible revolt, the social giant took a few baby-steps backwards and announced that it will, after all, be possible to prevent your friend list appearing automatically on your profile – though that info is still accessible by third party apps.

Meanwhile, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has done the decent thing and adopted Facebook’s default privacy settings on his own account. So if you’ve always wanted to know what a twenty-something billionaire gets up to in his downtime, now’s your chance. But you had to be quick - because oops, he's changed his settings to make some of them private again.

The Ethics Advisory Committee of the Florida Supreme Court has decreed that lawyers are not allowed to friend judges and so forth on Facebook and other social networks, lest the public assume undue influence. Blimey – that’s a pretty thin friends list they’re looking at there, if lawyers are not allowed to friend each other. It’s almost enough to make you feel sorry for the poor things. Almost.

When the world was abuzz with the possibility that teens were sloping away from Facebook for fear of being friended by their grannies, I confess I thought we were speaking figuratively. It appears not – users aged 65 and up have increased by over half in the last 2 years and now make up 8.2% of their total membership. What’s more, Facebooks’s growth for much of this year has been driven by females in this age group – it really is Gransnet.

Bad news for brands – new vox-pops by Brand Republic suggest that not many Brits understand why they should become a fan of a brand on Facebook. Citing the fundamental social purpose of the network, one said succinctly: "I don't really care about people's opinions on what flavour pasty they like from Greggs."


ON TWITTER ...

As you know, each member of the Twitter management team is contractually obliged to answer the question ‘is Google buying Twitter?’ at least twice a day, and they’ve gotten pretty good at batting it away. This time, however, co-founder Jack Dorsey’s response was an enigmatic “There have been no announcements.” He followed up with an even more non-commital “Twitter is focused on building a sustainable company,” leaving commentators furiously stroking their beards.

Meanwhile, the micro-blogging service’s stalled stats could be in for a boost – they’ve launched a new API which will allow users to sign up directly from third party apps. Some commentators are suggesting this might be the beginnings of a business plan.

A few days ago we reported that many brands were still failing to embrace Twitter as a customer service channel – but today comes news from the other end of the Twitter continuum. It seems that dissatisfied customers who DON’T tweet their grievance risk encountering worse customer service standards than ever, as companies cotton on to the fact that a poor review on Twitter and other social networks can lose them 30 additional customers, and therefore pour all their energies into social media.


ON YOUTUBE ...

YouTube CEO & co-founder Chad Hurley says that improved search was top of his Christmas list this year – it’s still too hard to find relevant content, he says, hinting at discovery tools which will make better use of users’ search history and viewing habits. Hurley also wants YouTube to become more social, and to encourage more users to create and share content via their mobiles – as well as moving towards an improved delivery system for TV-on-demand.

This coming Spring YouTube is launching ‘Sports Hub’ – a specially-created area of Google’s video-sharing site which will hold more than 2,000 videos from SportAccord, the representative of various global sporting institutions. Sports Hub will show a mixture of clips and long-form content, including matches, competitions, and behind-the-scenes material.


BRANDS GET SOCIAL ...

JetBlue, which is king of the skies on Twitter, wants to up its Facebook stats - rather less high-flying at barely 60,000 fans. Their All-You-Can-Jet Fan Sweepstakes offers the chance of winning unlimited free air travel for a year – but only to their Facebook fans.

Chase, the financial services conglomerate, has developed a unique Facebook app which has already reached over 844,000 monthly active users. The app, called Chase Community Giving, allows users to suggest ways that Chase should donate $5 million to charity.

Burger King is offering users the chance to send the gift of a dollar cheeseburger voucher to a friend. Users select from a variety of wry greetings, including "because an IM greeting wouldn't have been enough. And a fancy gift would've been too much" and "because I care deeply about someone who looks kinda like you."

Dell’s Twitter-led sales figures have just zoomed past $6.5 million, leaving other brands gawping. The figure is the combined sales from their @DellOutlet Twitter account, which now has almost 1.5m followers, and their other worldwide accounts.

Waitrose has launched an online forum to help their customers deal with “Christmas Affective Disorder”, which it announced, with a semi-raised eyebrow, troubles 50% of us. It plans to allay the anxiety we feel when faced with Christmas tasks like 'finding meat for those with dentures'.

Fox’s Avatar social media tidal wave continues its inexorable journey across 15 global markets, including the UK. Two YouTube 'power users' will be given LG phones to film the World Premiere red carpet from a fan’s perspective, and the following day an Avatar masthead will take over the YouTube homepage, which will also feature a trailer for the film.


VIRTUAL AND GAMES ...

The Dept of Transport has launched a children’s fantasy MMOG called Code of Everand – a Green Cross Code for the ‘Tensies. The game ingeniously teaches children the fundamentals of road safety - players must cross dangerous ‘spirit channels’, defeating monsters with a range of attacks and spells, while building their stash of Concentration Points.

Habbo, the virtual world for Teens, is offering brands a new measurement tool called Habble. The tool can track conversations and mentions, and cross-ref with other data to provide an in-depth picture of ad effectiveness.

A new study by sociologists at the Virtual Worlds Observatory has found that, amongst hardcore gamers, women trump men in terms of hours played. The researchers found that the top 10% of male players put in 48 hours a week which, while jaw-dropping, is nonetheless dwarfed by the 56 hours a week which the top 10% of female gamers racked up.

The discovery coincides with news that women accounted for 30% of all Modern Warfare players on the PC this year. Brands are also noting the fact that female gamers are more likely to buy branded clothing or book a holiday online, and are generally more at ease with spending larger amounts over the internet than other women, according to Marketing Week, whose in-depth analysis is well worth a look.

Metaversum, who’ve developed mirror-world platform ‘Twinity’, launched Virtual London in beta last week. Citizens of the alternate British capital will be able to buy and furnish apartments, as well as making real-world business deals.

And finally, if you’ve time for a little light cogitation in this busy festive week, here is Ypulse’s interview with Joe Hyrkin - Gaia Online’s Sales and Business Development supremo - in which he discusses his experience with engaging older teens.


That’s all folks!