ITV gets social – The X Factor and beyond ...

eModeration has been kept really busy the past few weeks moderating the X Factor website and (at weekends) the X Factor Chat live comments feed. We talked to Ben Ayers, Online Engagement Manager at ITV about ITV’s social media policy in general, and the X Factor community in particular.

eModeration: We’ve been moderating ITV’s programme sites for a while now and we’re seeing the spread into other ways of communicating with viewers via social networks. What is the reasoning behind the direction that ITV is taking?

Ben: ITV is aiming at a proper dialogue with viewers, rather than the traditional one-way broadcast. We recognise that fans of our shows will be using spaces other than ITV.com to share their experiences and come together, and reaching out to them through the ‘holy trinity’ of Twitter, Facebook and YouTube is really working for us. Using social media, we’ve been able to create and nourish communities for most of the big ‘evergreen’ shows such as This Morning, Loose Women and Coronation Street. The viral effect of social media platforms has also encouraged astronomical growth of interest around shows such as The X Factor and I’m a Celebrity..., where we also engage actively with fans.

To continue the astronomical metaphor, if you liken the ITV.com programme websites to the sun, then Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are the planets orbiting that sun. We can provide the sites’ content to the communities via the social media, and get information back from the community that can help shape what we are doing and promote further engagement.

eModeration: Talking about The X Factor now, how successful has the social media engagement been so far?

Ben: Enormously so. A few stats for you: to date, we have 800,000 fans on Facebook (and we’re expecting about a million by the end of the show). We’ve got 36,000 fans on Twitter so far – and again, expecting that number to keep ramping up as the excitement mounts. During the shows, The X Factor and many of the contestants’ names are major trending topics on Twitter. Our X Factor YouTube channel has an incredible 76,000 subscribers at the moment. It’s simply not niche any more: the X Factor Chat comments have increased over ten-fold over seven weeks – we got about 15,000 comments in last week and published thousands of them.

eModeration: Any new tricks up your sleeve?

Ben: We’ve launched special ‘Twibbons’ for the show – they are like badges that fans can add to their Twitter or Facebook profile images to show all your friends who they’re backing to win the show. There’s also a Facebook app which allows fans to peg their allegiance to a contestant, become a fan and see who their friends are backing. This app sits on over 20,000 profiles and the Twibbons have about 5,000 users with Twitter Twibbons. We’ve worked out that the Twibbon activity has exposed the X Factor brand to around 400,000 Twitter users.

eModeration: How does the live web chat in ‘X Factor Chat’ differ from – for example – a Twitterfall, as used in the ITV.com FA Cup coverage?

Ben: Twitterfall sucks in comments from Twitter that have been tagged to a specific subject while the X Factor Chat is a chat client (Cover It Live) that lives on the X Factor website during the show. Like Twitterfall, the X Factor Chat is moderated, but it is also editorialised. We’re looking for really interesting comments that people watching the stream will enjoy. There’s also the chance to create polls for viewers on subjects ranging from contestants’ hairstyles to the judges’ decisions. The fact that there is a host means that the conversation can be guided and participants try really hard to come up with something original and enlightening, because the moderators are choosing comments which really add something to the discussion.

The challenge is to keep the pace of the comment stream steady so that users have a chance to read them before they whizz by! We’re learning all the time about what works and what doesn’t.

eModeration: How do the moderators select which comments to publish?

Ben: Well, firstly (as you know), the eModeration moderators are big fans of the show, so they’re really well informed about what’s going on. Apart from excluding anything which shouldn’t be put up in the public domain, and choosing comments which really add to the discussion, they’ll actively try to include a representative balance of views. We don’t exclude negative comments about any aspect of the show as long as they’re not offensive or repetitive.

eModeration: What are the things in the programme that elicit the most response from viewers?

Ben: The performances. Always. Well, and the judges’ opinions, of course – and actually, the guest performers always get a big reaction too. The show’s all about the live performances, and how viewers respond to (and vote on) them. With social media viewers can express how they feel about the acts beyond just voting – they can tell us, their friends and the world precisely what they think!

eModeration: Many thanks Ben, for taking the time to talk to us. And finally – who are you hoping will win?

Ben: I’m an Olly fan but I wouldn’t be too disappointed if Rachel won too. And then there’s John and Edward…

You can follow Ben on Twitter at @benayers and the X Factor at @thexfactor.

X Factor is on Saturday at 8pm, with the results show following on Sunday night at 8pm.

For more information on eModeration’s work for The X Factor, click here.

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eModeration Social Media Round-up #9

Welcome to eModeration's twice-weekly round-up of all that is intriguing, alarming or odd in the world of social media. Check back soon!


THE HEADLINES ...

THE LOWDOWN ...

ON FACEBOOK ...

ON TWITTER ...

IN OTHER NEWS ...

BRANDS GET SOCIAL ...

SOCIAL STATS ...

VIRTUAL AND GAMES ...




THE HEADLINES ...

Tweeting on company time is costing the British economy a gulp-worthy £1.38 billion – and quite possibly a great deal more, once the human capacity for infinite self-delusion is factored in. When surveyed, workers allege that their co-workers are spending up to an hour a day on social networks – but insist that their own figure is a (far less sackable) 40 minutes per week. Hmm.

Domain names may soon be written in non-Latin alphabets – opening up the net for billions around the world who currently navigate it in a script they cannot actually read. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) will make a decision this week.

There’s much to be said for the English way of doing things. Turn up late, make an arch comment, then somehow pull it off without appearing to even try. Tim Berners Lee, who astonishingly has managed to avoid social networking thus far, joined Twitter last week. After a laconic first post which read ‘confusing user interface’, he has managed to gather some 10,000 followers in four days.

GeoCities is going, going, gone. The service, which in 1995 introduced a generation to the internet, has finally closed down - causing a giant cloud of nostalgia for a time of dial-up connections and feng shui to waft across the web.


THE LOWDOWN ...

A Chinese MMO has got tough on players who see gender as a flexible concept. They’re banning male players who play as female characters – and insisting that all players prove their sex via webcam before signing up.

The ex-president of Sicily, who was forced to resign last year after being found guilty of aiding the Mafia, is demanding that Italian authorities investigate each and every one of the 4,609 negative comments which have been posted about him on a YouTube clip. The 1991 clip features Salvatore Cuffaro haranguing an anti-mafia magistrate, who was assassinated the following year.


ON FACEBOOK ...

Let no-one say that the ‘Book fears change. In the latest in a lengthening line of adjustments, Facebook launched their new-look home page this week. Predictably, users were dismayed (1.2 million have joined the succinctly-named Change Facebook Back to Normal group) but brands were delighted – ads are now much more prominent, helping them expand their reach across the network.

And in related news, Facebook is making changes to notifications and requests, making it harder for developers to reach new users without paid promotion. According to VentureBeat, Facebook may be trying to serve themselves a bigger slice of the enormous virtual goods pie that social game-makers like Zynga and Playfish have been cooking up.

They’ve also beefed up their sharing features, with a new button which shows how many time a piece of content has been ‘shared’ on Facebook. The move bolsters their growing position as a content hub for the web - 2 billion pieces of content are shared each week.

A figure which may well rocket northwards, if discussions with MySpace regarding a content-sharing alliance are successful. the mooted partnership would allow Facebook users to share MySpace music and video, via Facebook Connect.


ON TWITTER ...

The micro-blogging service has finally fixed its fatal flaw, according to Brian Solis. No longer will deleted tweets hang around in the search index, just waiting to be resuscitated at an inconvenient moment. Twitter-users with impulse-control issues will sleep easier tonight - now, if they remove a tweet manually, it’s gone for good.

News which will delight US football player Larry Johnson, who is possibly in a whole heap of trouble with his bosses following a Twitter face-off with a heckling fan which escalated into homophobic mud-slinging. When will we learn? Twitter + Work = Braaake!

Did someone mention impulse-control? Courtney Love, the famously outspoken rockstress, has failed in her attempt to squish a Twitter-based libel suit against her. The suit has been brought by a fashion designer, who alleges that Miss Love embarked upon “an obsessive and delusional crusade to terrorize and destroy” her.


IN OTHER NEWS ...

Google’s Social Search has had a limited launch - quick, get a Google account, scoot over to Google Labs and you can try it for yourself. Google’s Bing-battering USP is that it will group results specifically from your network – uncovering deeper connections than might presently be apparent.

The Apple-loving world is aquiver, as evidence emerges that a touch-screen Mac tablet may soon be launched. Fortuitously-released research from Retrevo shows that many Apple fans would pay $800 plus for a putative tablet - confirming their reputation for being perfectly content to re-mortgage the house (and indeed the spouse) to get their hands on the latest Apple offering,

Meanwhile, the explosive growth of Apple Apps passes another milestone: they’ve reached 100,000 approved apps - having grown by over 35,00 in under three months.

Samsung have opened up their games-app fund to individual developers, companies, and brands - with an alluring $250K on offer to develop the winning concepts, which will then be delivered through the Samsung App Store.

The expansion of online TV continues apace, with the launch this week of both Sky’s Xbox subscription and Last.fm ‘s free sponsored TV service, which will focus on live acts.

Brands must master multichannel marketing, and become entirely consumer-focused if they want to beat the recession, admonished a stern Forrester Research this week. "Consumers are focused on their needs; not on your channels," says their principal analyst.


BRANDS GET SOCIAL ...

Unilever wants to extend the crowd-sourcing scheme which they are currently running for Peperami, according to Brand Republic. The company wants to harness the power of the crowd across its hefty portfolio, which includes megabrands Lynx, Marmite and Persil.

Sportswear brand Russell Athletic has launched a funkily-retro viral which features an ‘80s-izer’. The site lets users upload photos to see themselves doing Jazzercise, break-dancing, or flexing their pecs on ‘Muscle Beach’.

Procter & Gamble has launched a Facebook campaign to promote Crest Whitestrips Advanced Seal. The campaign asks users to tell them whom they’d like to visit and why, for a chance to take the trip for free.

The RSPCA has launched a Twitter-based augmented reality campaign which protests against the use of wild animals in circuses. Uses can print out a wearable mask which appears on camera as an elephant’s head, and a campaign site encourages users to retweet, and to spread the word through Facebook and other sites.

Samsung is promoting its touch-phone Blue Earth by asking consumers to create an ad which emphasises its environmentally-friendly properties, and encourages people to ‘Blue the Earth'.

Marks & Spencer is encouraging users to support urgent action at the UN Climate Change Summit by contributing an individual patch to a humongous virtual patchwork quilt.


SOCIAL STATS ...

Comscore’s latest research shows that ads on social networking sites account for more than 1 in 4 display ad impressions, with telecoms companies leading the way with 7 percent of the total. And online ads are more effective on social networks than on portals, according to new research by eBay Advertising.

Weber Shandwick surveyed 1,021 UK consumers and found that 26% say online reviews have more influence on their buying decisions than family or friends.

Cone Inc.’s new study finds that a stonking 78% of new-media users interact with brands – a healthy 37% at least once a week. Crucially, they want brands to communicate not only via websites and email, but through social networks (30%) and online games (24%).


VIRTUAL AND GAMES ...

Virtual goods are big news, as ad-based games continue to languish in the doldrums.

Facebook game FarmVille has gone from nought to 56 million players - 21m of whom play daily - in the three short months since its launch. The Zynga game turned some $150m of sales this year.


That's all folks!

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eModeration Social Media Round-Up #8

Welcome to eModeration's digest of all that is intriguing, alarming or odd in the world of social media. This week we have capitulated to popular demand: we will now be posting bite-size morsels of nourishing news not once, but twice a week - so check back soon!


THE HEADLINES...

The Web 2.0 world was reeling this week, after Microsoft slapped it round the chops with a real-time search double-whammy.

Whammy one: Microsoft has inked deals with both Facebook and Twitter, allowing status updates to be integrated into the Bing Search engine.

Then, while the social world was rearranging its expression to read ‘not in the slightest bit surprised, saw it coming a mile off actually’, came whammy two: Google is about to do precisely the same thing.

The CIA has invested in social monitoring company Visible Technologies. Now the guy who manually checks through a zillion 'u comin 2 mai partee?’ posts in the hope of one which reads ‘the quick coyote has met the cunning fox’ can finally go home to his wife and kids.

A Tory govt would jack the 50p tax which the present govt say will bring rural broadband up to urban speeds - in apparent contrast to the speech David Cameron gave in January. Oh dear - there’s nothing Middle England likes more than a snipe bid on a pair of BNWT driving-gloves – and you can’t do that on a 1meg connection, you know.

Meanwhile Culture Secretary Ben Bradshaw confirmed that persistent file-sharers would not be ‘cut off willy-nilly’ – news which might reassure the British public, 70% of whom oppose an internet ban for file-sharers. Kudos also to Mr Bradshaw for a unilateral revival of ‘willy-nilly’ despite grave risk to his gubernatorial dignity.


THE LOWDOWN...

Some companies do find this Woman thing so hard, don’t they? At a Yahoo-hosted hack weekend for developers in Taiwan, company-hired lap-dancers provided the entertainment. Really, What Were They Thinking? (We’re going to have to agree on an acronym for that, aren’t we? I like DERBRAIN – you?)

Quick, come and see Bill Clinton through X-ray Specs! A twitter bug left the former prez accidentally exposing his tweets - click here for the twitillating details.

Twitter is now the platform of choice for Slebs who are up for a ruck. "Giving some celebrities Twitter is like giving a kid a loaded gun," says a PR firm chief. In the case of Perez Hilton, whose first tweet to Rumer Willis was “welcome to Twitter, Potatohead”, more like “a loaded gun and a kilo of Skittles”.


This is more like it. A gamer customized a Super Mario World level so that "Lisa will you marry me?" was spelled out in gold coins. See? Romance isn’t dead. It’s just not so good with, you know, face-to-face interaction these days.

According to Netimperative, 1 in 10 UK adults is ‘not interested in getting online’. Right... Got it... No, sorry, you’re going to have to run me through that again.


AND IN OTHER NEWS...

Interesting times for Yahoo. Though revenue dropped, net income is up by a whopping 225% due to fierce cost-cutting. What’s more, they’re launching a rival to the Huffington Post, which will use a combo of smart tech and smart humans to offer link excellence and tip-top writing.

Apple is still the people’s darling – the company saw a crunchy 47% rise in profits in the quarter to September - news of which bounced shares by 7.5% to an all-time high.

Amazon is also confounding the recession, with a Q3 profit surge of 68% year on year. Founder Jeff Bezos lays the laurels at the feet of Kindle, which is now at the heart of Amazon’s strategy.

Channel 4 is offering targeted ads around its YouTube programming; meanwhile speculation that Hulu may start charging for content next year is starting to look like concrete fact.

Microsoft and T-mobile now claim they have recovered most, if not all, of its Sidekick users' missing data.

Finally: when display ads do badly, it could simply be that they are pug ugly. Aesthetic failure is often to blame for limp performance, according to Dynamic Logic.

ON FACEBOOK...

The ‘Book’s deal with Bing, which will integrate status updates into search results, is expected to go live within two months. As the Telegraph points out, the thought of unseen millions reading “wooohooo - trolley’d!“ should give a sense of urgency to those who have yet to master Facebook’s privacy settings.

Facebook’s graph is so steep they need crampons: in the US, it now gets an astonishing 1 in every 4 page views. Market share is up 194% since last year, and there are now over 45 million updates a day.

It won’t come as a dreadful shock, then, to hear that MySpace’s new CEO has conceded defeat in its battle with the social colossus. Owen Van Natta says the company now aims to be a music hub.


ON TWITTER...

Twitter, meanwhile, appears untroubled by Facebook anxiety: CEO Evan Williams nonchalantly declared last week that “the world is big enough for Facebook and Twitter”.

Despite flat-lining stats, Williams was pretty chipper about a near-future revenue stream – and indicated that mobile is looking very alluring to the microblogging service, which last week celebrated its 5 billionth tweet.

Each one of which will now be accessible through Bing and Google: According to Venturebeat, Bing’s Twitter search will have tag clouds and organize results according to both age and popularity. Retweets will move an entry up, as will embedded links – the most popular of which will be sortable too.

GOOGLE...

It’s not yet entirely clear what Google’s Twitter/Facebook search will look like – but news of the deal tops a great week for the search powerhouse.

It reported an 8% revenue increase for Q3, and announced plans to spend heavily on long-term growth. The first pennies go on a six-nation roll-out of its enterprise-aimed ‘Gone Google’ marketing campaign.

Google is also dipping a toe into the smartphone market, with a branded Android phone of its own - and launching a music service, which according to Wired will offer streaming, and enhanced search.

ON YOUTUBE...

As if there weren’t enough real-time excitement turning our pretty heads, YouTube announced Comments Search, which will allow real time search of conversation topics on the network.

It’s also testing a new advertising model, which melds AdWords with YouTube videos and allows advertisers to target video ads via keywords.


BRANDS GET SOCIAL...

Run, kitty, run! Petco has launched a ‘Howl-O-Ween’ comp, which allows owners to upload photos and videos of their Halloween-bedecked pets.

Ask.com launches a Facebook-integrated microsite, which asks users to celebrate their greatest deal.

Cheez Doodles wants to expand its share of the teen-market, and is offering them the chance to “Rock the Cheez” by creating virtual bands online.

Honda’s ‘social experiment’ – its ‘Everybody Knows Somebody Who Loves a Honda’ Facebook page - has been a roaring success. The page, which allows owners to connect with Honda-lovin’ friends and strangers globally, has topped 2 million fans.

ArmyStrongStories.com, a blogging system that lets anyone in the service make a post, is letting soldiers’ voices be heard and driving recruitment for the US Army.

Ford’s latest wheeze is the Fusion 41 social media campaign, which is seeking 8 socially-savvy fans of the Ford Fusion to compete in a relay race - the winner gets their vehicle paid for.

Lonely Planet is testing an App which uses Google Wave to give independent-minded travelers recommendations and reviews, which they can transform into content-rich itineraries.

Coca-Cola has sent a team of young Happiness ambassadors to visit each of the 206 countries where Coke is sold, and share the secret of each nation’s happiness, via social media.

Procter & Gamble's marketing team is flushed with success: they've launched a search for 5 people who, for the not-at-all-bad salary of $10k for a month’s work, will man their ‘Charmin Restroom’ in Times Square.

Arsenal and Spain midfielder Fabregas took over Nike's Football Page on Facebook last Thursday, answering questions and posting behind-the-scenes photos.


UNDER THE GAVEL...

A judge in California has provisionally okay'd Facebook’s settlement of the class suit arising from its Beacon ad programme.

Another in New York has ruled that Facebook is protected by the Communications Decency Act, in a teenager’s defamation suit.

Iconix Brand Group has settled - to the tune of $250,000 – the FTC’s complaint that they illegally collected children’s data.

And two former Yale students have settled the suit they brought against anonymous posters whom they allege defamed them on law-grad site AutoAdmit. They weren’t able to sue the board itself, but managed to identify some 8 or 9 of the bloggers.

SOME SOCIAL STATS...

The numbers who post or read status updates on social sites has shot from 11% to 19% - that’s almost a fifth of us – in under a year, according to Pew’s new report.

63% of online mothers regularly use socnets, against 11% three years ago – and 44% look for recommendations – and complaints - before buying.

UK e-commerce growth slowed to a snail’s pace this year, up only 7.6% against last year’s 15%. US ad-spend figures were even less perky, with a predicted 2.9 % drop from last year – the first since 2002.


ON MOBILE...

The rate at which Africans are buying mobile phones is breaking world records with a rise of 550% in 5 years – changing lives across the planet.

Volkswagen is marketing their new GTI via an iPhone app, and nothing else. In 2006 they spent $60m introducing the marque – the new app will cost $500,000.

Out of the lab and into the market – smartphones will help grow augmented reality from a $6m to a $350m industry by 2014, says new research.

VIRTUAL AND GAMES...

Virtual goods sales in the US and Europe could expand by as much as 150% this year, with more growth to come, says Business Insider.

Pocoyo, the Spanish preschooler cartoon series, is launching a virtual world, with some free zones and premium content by subscription.

Civilization – one of the all-time Gamer Greats – will next year get a Facebook version, under the name Civilization Network.

Open virtual world Meez Nation is to integrate with the MySpace platform – reaching even further into its teen user base.


That's all folks!

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CEOP reports Increase in Child Abuse from Social Networking Sites

CEOP - the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre has released its annual Intelligence Report, covering the period between March 2008 and Feb 2009.

The summary reveals how the growth in social networking has impacted online child abuse: 22% of all online abuse reported between March 2008 and February 2009 took place in a social networking environment, compared with 11.4% the previous year, according to CEOP’s latest annual intelligence document.

Figures published in its 2008-2009 Strategic Overview reveal that CEOP received 5411 reports between 01/03/2008 and 28/02/2009, 2543 (47%) of which came from members of the public. 2868 (53%) came from other sources including industry, children’s charities and law enforcement agencies around the world. The document outlines the key trends and updates following analysis of these reports.

CEOP has seen a particular increase in the use of webcams and instant messaging technology to incite a child to perform or to witness a sexual act: 34% of grooming reports made by children under 18 incited a child to perform a sexual act; 20% incited a child to watch a sexual act.
On average, CEOP can expect to receive approximately 450 reports a month as a matter of course – or, in other words, 104 reports of online child sexual abuse per week every week, or one every 103 minutes every day of every year.

In addition, analysis of the reports demonstrates that the online andoffline worlds are truly converged: the ‘virtual’ environment is simply an extension of the real, physical world and that is as true for youngpeople as it is for offenders. Where there used to be separate online services such as email, photo sharing, gaming and chat – all these services are now rolled into one environment; further, the internet can be accessed from a range of devices. This means that children and young people are increasingly accessible to offenders: like them, they can access the internet 24/7 from any location.

“We are now seeing increasingly complex patterns of offending against children, involving a multitude of online environments and different technologies”, CEOP’s Chief Executive Jim Gamble said. “This means that it is more critical than ever to educate children about safe online behaviour. These basic principles need to become second nature to children from the very beginning of their online lives.”

CEOP’s Strategic Overview also highlights that offenders are moving away from buying child abuse images on commercial sites, preferring to use private peer-to-peer software to support paedophile networks and to share and create child abuse images to order.

To view the full report or get it in podcast form, follow this link http://www.ceop.police.uk/mediacentre/strat_overview.asp

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eModeration's Social Media Round-Up - The Social Brands & Legal #8

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. Such a lot of news this week that we've split it into three - look out for the Headline in post #6 and The Fab Four (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Google) in #7. And please feed back below on what you find interesting, or how we could best deliver it to you.

BRANDS GET SOCIAL…

Last week, some big brand marketers urged their compadres to loosen their white-knuckle grip on the wheel, and embrace the impact that user generated content is having on brand reputations. According to Will Harris, UK marketing director of Nokia: “Everything we used to believe in is all a blur now and the old skillsets of a marketer are, broadly speaking, irrelevant.”

Luckily, a slew of brands launched social media campaigns this week, and heading the pack is First Direct, with a campaign that aims at total transparency. They’ve opened a real-time site which aggregates all comments (whether positive or negative), highlights trending keywords, and even provides graphs so that users can analyse the stats.

It looked as though HSBC had done the same thing, until it was revealed to be an unofficial digital doodle by Twitterfall experts thruSITES, who were feeling 'a bit bored' a the time.

Lufthansa has created a cunning Twitter/Facebook app to support its ‘passion for precision’ slogan. The app sends status updates from travellers’ Twitter or Facebook accounts at take-off and landing, to promote the airline’s excellent on-time record.

You tweetin’ to me? Sony’s Crackle.com partnered with YouTube for a full-length screening of the cult classic Taxi Driver, which includes the audience’s real-time Twitter updates.

Audi is launching a branded virtual world and game on Sony PlayStation Home later this year - serendipitously supporting this report, which points out that German car brands dominate the social media landscape, while Japanese and U.S. luxury car brands have much to learn.

MySpace is offering their users the chance to see their inner thoughts writ large on more than 300 digital screens, in a team-up with outdoor-media owner Titan. The 3-week campaign is called "Step Up to the Mic", and will allow users to upload both images and messages to sites in the US, UK and Ireland.

MTV Europe’s Music Awards have partnered with teen-world Habbo Hotel to create a virtual ‘awards ceremony’ space. The branded area, where users can hang out backstage and compete for virtual awards, is already claiming 14m unique visitors per month.

Sony Ericsson’s virtual space-hopper flash mob has attracted more than 27,000 users to a dedicated microsite, where they can customise their own virtual hopper, right down to the height of its bounce.

SOCIAL STATS AND FACTS…

A sheaf of UK stats to shuffle through this week. Nearly twice as many UK internet users have a social networking profile than did two years ago – with three-quarters keeping their profiles private, compared to 48% back then. And 41% of web users look at a SocNet site daily, up from 30% in two years ago, according to Experian Hitwise.

Virgin finds that 29% of us feel liberated when we lose our mobile/internet signal in a social environment – but more than a third of us feel highly stressed.

And 75% of young adults feel that they couldn’t carry on if they didn’t have the net, says the charity YouthNet – with 45% happiest when they’re online, and four out of five using the web to get personal advice.

Generally, there's little enthusiasm for paying for content: only 11% of us do, with another 11% who might consider it - despite moves by news providers towards a subscription model.

UK ad spend dropped again – but the good news is, the downward trend might be bottoming out. Bellwether reports the lowest fall in 6 quarters, while online ad spend actually rose for the first time since 2008.

Across the pond, the average user now spends a supersized 68 hours online per month, according to new Nielsen data. Average number of pages is 2,700 – with 57 seconds spent on each page. A stonking 27% of under-35s check Facebook more than 10 times a day, while 64% tweet, text or check their newsfeeds at work, and 40% do so while driving, tssk tssk.

LEGAL AND REGULATION…

Three Texas residents, whose lawsuit against video chain Blockbuster for violation of privacy is currently pending, have launched a separate case against Facebook's behavioural programme Beacon. They allege the social network broke the law by sharing info about their movie rentals without written consent.

36-year-old Facebook user Shannon Jackson was arrested after she violated a protection order by poking another user, with whom she had previously been banned from "telephoning, contacting or otherwise communicating".

Following calls by the UK’s new information commissioner, Christopher Graham, for heavier penalties, jail sentences are to be introduced next year for the illicit gathering of confidential personal data, such as phone or medical records. The new rules target private investigators employed by newspapers to gather confidential personal info.

VIRTUAL AND GAMES...

Nokia is looking to invest in Virtual Worlds, according to the The Wall Street Journal. Their $350m venture arm is "particularly interested in investing in start-ups innovating in payments and transactions, analytics and advertising, and gaming and virtual worlds."

Social network Hi5, who’ve been languishing in the doldrums over the last year, have launched a full-tilt rush at the virtual goods market, with a new emphasis on gaming and the currency that supports it.

And small wonder. With a reported 11m Facebook members playing FarmVille daily, social gaming goes from strength to strength. And FarmVille’s maker Zynga is on the lookout for its next cash cow which, it turns out, might actually be a fish. According to Trademork, the developer registered ‘FishVille’ last week. I’m sure it will grow on us.

Speaking of fish (as we were), games giant Electronic Arts has shed a reported $250m on social-gaming company Playfish. Playfish have amply demonstrated that the social games-virtual goods combo is a strong one, with their 2009 revenue expected to hit $75m.

That's all folks!

eModeration's social media round-ups are compiled by our research consultant Kate Williams. If you want to follow Kate on Twitter, she's @emodkate.

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eModeration's Social Media Round-Up - The Fab Four #7

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. Such a lot of news this week that we've split it into three - look out for the Headlines in post #6 and more on Social Brands & Legal in #8 to follow. And please feed back below on what you find interesting, or how we could best deliver it to you.

ON FACEBOOK...

Threadsy, a site which aggregates users Facebook, Twitter and email, is developing an app which would allows its users to ‘abhor’ an item in their Facebook feed. Harrumph. As my dear grandmama used to say, if you ain't got nothing nice to say, go browse another webpage.

Other than that, it’s all about the numbers this week for Facebook.

In the UK, The ‘Book is cookin’ - it claims one in every seven page views, up 86.1%. And although Google grabbed the official ‘most visited’ title, Facebook was the clear moral victor, with each of their users racking up a higher number of pages per visit.

US stats are also looking good for the social giant. According to Experian, Facebook and MySpace are making like elevators, with the former’s share of social traffic zooming from 19.9% to 58.6% over the last year, while the latter’s plummets from 66.8 to 30.3 – a stomach-lurching 55% plunge towards oblivion.

The same stats expose Facebook rival Twitter’s vitals to be a somewhat undersized 1.84% of traffic. However, there’s no denying the microblogging service’s extended annual growth – up 1170% from 0.15% a year ago.

But both Twitter, and Facebook saw growth droop in June - to be expected during the summer months. But now the nights are drawing in, and the anticipated bump in traffic hasn’t materialized, with monthly unique visitors growing only marginally.

ON TWITTER…

The People’s Medium? Twice this week, Twitter users have wielded national influence. First against Trafigura, who had attempted to place a watertight legal gag around the Guardian newspaper, banning them from reporting details of the oil company‘s alleged waste-dumping in the Ivory Coast - or from reporting that they were banned from doing so... But with #trafigura topping trending topics, the company’s legal reps Carter-Ruck retreated, leaving the Guardian (and indeed anyone else) free to publish.

Then, following expressions of outrage from Tweetmeisters Derren Brown and Stephen Fry, Twitter users jammed the Press Complaints Commission’s website with a flood of protests at the Daily Mail’s Jan Moir. In her daily column she’d written that gay singer Stephen Gately’s death was “not, by any yardstick, a natural one” - before mass accusations of homophobia forced the Mail to edit the piece, while several top brands, including Nestle and M&S, asked for their ads to be withdrawn.

And there’s more…

Amid wide speculation that they were planning to allow short video clips to be uploaded from mobiles, Biz Stone growled his rebuttal to Mashable: “No video hosting. 140 characters of text including spaces. You know the drill.”

Having recently launched its translation programme, Twitter closed a deal with India’s largest mobile operator, potentially adding 110m users – many of whom will only ever experience a web connection via their phones - to its stats.

The microblogging service began a rollout of Lists, causing some to wonder whether they are moving towards an authority system.

And Twitter finally added limited reporting features last week: now users can designate certain accounts as Spam, alerting a “Trust and Safety” team to investigate further. The site also launched its own Twitter Wine – causing one of those momentary cognitive disjuncts that increasingly plague me. Then I twigged that it was all for a jolly good cause.

Finally, if you’re very keen to boost your own stats, you’ll agree these sassy nylons are jolly smart. But curses! They don’t tell potential followers what my Twitter handle is! And ‘@emodkate’, scrawled in black marker down my left thigh, will surely diminish their style quotient?

IT’S A GOOGLE WORLD…

Google UK is in the doghouse, having slid to a measly 13% share of the search giant’s global revenue.

But overall, it’s hard to imagine how things could go better for Google, who now account for 6% of all internet traffic, according to ReadWriteWeb.

The company hoisted a hefty £1bn profit in Q3, in their biggest Q-on-Q revenue growth in over a year. The news caused a spike in share price, and the NY Times hailed it as "the latest sign that the global economy may be on the mend."

And, following our speculation that the company is plotting to spread a thin layer of Google over the entire world, the search giant took further steps towards the title Planet’s Biggest Info-Provider. It announced the upcoming launch of Google Editions, its scheme to sell e-books online at last week’s Frankfurt Book Fair.

ON YOUTUBE…

Video consumption is still moving northwards, with a healthy 25% increase in total streams and time per viewer, according to Nielsen’s September figures.

Naturally, YouTube leads the way; hot on the heels of its expansion of video ads to the UK, the network announced that it had passed 1bn views per day last week, to general applause.

Some commentators, however, hinted that YouTube might do well to keep their heads down, following Google’s admission that they overpaid for YouTube by an eye-watering $1 billion; not to mention Credit Suisse’s prediction that the network is on track for a $470 million loss in 2009.

That's all folks!

eModeration's social media round-ups are compiled by our research consultant Kate Williams. If you want to follow Kate on Twitter, you don't have to check out her hosiery - she's @emodkate.

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eModeration's Social Media Round-Up - The Headlines #6

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. Such a lot of news this week that we've split it into three - look out for posts #7 (The Fab Four: Twitter, F acebook, YouTube and Google) and #8 (Social Brands and Legal) to follow. And please feed back below on what you find interesting, or how we could best deliver it to you.

THE HEADLINES...

How awkward. The IAB UK (the UK's Internet Advertising Bureau) was left shuffling its feet and perspiring slightly, as they admitted that their recently-announced Internet advertising figures were, um, wrong - by the small matter of £50m. Luckily the overall figure - which revealed, to industry-wide glee, that internet is now a bigger ad medium than TV - was unaffected.

After six long months, YouTube has finally inked a landmark deal to take Channel 4 content shortly after broadcast. Top pop TV, for example Skins and Peep Show, will now be available free of charge - and C4 has managed to cling to ad sales around the content.

More than 10 million UK adults have never used the Internet, according to a new report for Martha Lane Fox, the government’s Digital Inclusion Champion. 17 per cent of the population have never been online – and 4 million of those are already socially excluded.

It’s even worse for rural communities, warned Prince Charles, who are being left in the digital slow lane, unable to access the internet to connect with vital services or promote their struggling economies.

"Internet? What the Divvil’s that?", barked the Duke of Edinburgh, who acknowledged this week that he was baffled by technology in general and remote controls in particular, generally lying on the floor to operate the set instead.

And a rough old week for T–mobile, and anyone else with their their data in the clouds. The company faces sky-high legal bills after two separate class actions were filed in response to the 'catastrophic' loss of data faced by users of their Sidekick smartphones. The outage appears to have been caused by a server malfunction at Danger, a subsidiary of Microsoft, who now claim that 'the majority' of the lost data is recoverable.


THE LOWDOWN...

Gordon Brown faced the Wrath of Mum this week in a live web-chat on parenting site Mumsnet. Mumsnet members, who have a rep for being both straight-talking and politically-savvy, expressed their disappointment rather sharply – but the PM managed to avoid a stinging slap to the back of his knees.

Swing it, Daddio! The Conservatives, meanwhile, are hanging with Der Youth, having commissioned a 40-second ad on music-streaming service Spotify. Don’t tell, but had I been picking the Tory best-placed to connect with the young, I might have pretended not to see doughty Eric Pickles’ hand go up.

In a Backslash Backlash, the Father of the World Wide Web™ Sir Tim Berners-Lee has admitted that, had he his time again, he would go //-free.

Hoorah! those Facebook Fails just keep on coming. Maxi Sopo, a 26-year-old suspected of bank fraud, wanted all his friends to know what a grand old time he was having lying low in sunny Mexico. Unluckily, he’d already made the schoolboy error of adding a law-enforcement official to his list of friends.

Finland has declared fast Internet access a legal right. From July, Finnish telecom companies will be obliged to provide the nation’s 5.3 million citizens with at least 1 Mbps, with even faster speeds in the pipeline. “We think it’s something you cannot live without in modern society. Like banking services or water or electricity, you need Internet connection,” said an official.

All rather galling for Sweden, who actually broke their bit of the Internet last week. The .se domain was out for a whole hour on Monday, before they fixed it up with a rubber-band and some blu-tak, and managed to jump-start the motor.

I Tweet Dead People. Yes, it’s come to this - the first social media séance, or “Twéance” [baboom-tish], will take place on October 30th, when UK psychic Jancye Wallace will attempt to contact Dead Slebs via Twitter.

No need, I feel for ornamentation – this story speaks perfectly well for itself. The Glo Bible has high-resolution photos, virtual tours, interactive timelines and a slick, youthful publicity campaign featuring a soft-rock soundtrack - and is available in the UK for a very reasonable £59.99.

I’mma let you decide whether t’laugh or cry / When Miley Cyrus raps her Twitter goodbye.

And in spookily-related news, Hollywood execs are cracking down on movie-industry celebs who leak info through their Twitter and Facebook accounts. No idea why.


AND THE BEST OF THE REST…

The IAB (no, this time it's the US Interactive Advertising Bureau) got a bit shirty this week in response to Federal Trade Commission’s new guidelines on bloggers and brands. The new rules, it claims, stifle free speech by restricting online communication – “the cheapest, most widely accessible communications medium ever invented” - more harshly than they regulate trad forms of media.

PepsiCo hit a bum note, with an iPhone app which suggested pickup lines for use on a roster of female ‘types’. The lines – some of which were very questionable – prompted a storm of Twitter protests, to which Pepsi responded with a tweet apologizing for causing offence.

If a postal strike lasted 5-10 days, e-commerce companies would lose an estimated £220m. A report from Kelkoo reveals that a whopping 94% of shoppers would be unforgiving of e-tailers, if they failed to deliver.

LinkedIn is upwardly-mobile, recently adding 1m users in just 12 days and pushing total members to 50m. Fastest growth is in India, where they’ve now got nearly 3m users.

A massive click fraud operation, consisting of thousands of publisher sites, was shut down last week. Fake traffic to the sites was allegedly generated by a vast network of Chinese students.

Social news site Digg says their new ad format, which allows users to vote ads up or down just as they would other site content, has surpassed expectations. Those ads with the most Diggs are super-exposed, whilst the least popular eventually drop off the edge of the world.

That's all folks!

You can, if you wish, follow Kate on Twitter, where she is @emodkate.

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Building B2B Communities – an interview with Vanessa DiMauro

We’re really thrilled that Vanessa DiMauro agreed to answer some questions from us about the challenging topic of business-to-business communities.

Vanessa DiMauro is the CEO of Leader Networks, and a pioneer in business-to-business community building, with over fifteen years experience in creating successful online communities and networks. Vanessa takes the approach of a cultural anthropologist to help businesses effectively use social media to get closer to their customers, generate revenue, innovation and tangible ROI.

eModeration: Let’s start with the basics. What defines a B2B community? How fast are they growing - is it a slower take-up than the consumer communities?

Vanessa: B2B communities are communities of practice that are dedicated to bringing a clearly defined professional group together. Some focus on thought leaders within an organisation, others occur within a company to increase global collaboration, and still others are industry-specific. The emphasis is largely on knowledge sharing and networking within an industry or professional setting. Commonly, these communities are “gated” or have a threshold for membership. While many are free to join and can get quite large, they are focused on the advancement of information sharing, subject specific content, and professional collaboration. For example, within the legal community there is a B2B community called Martindale Connected created by LexisNexis Martindale-Hubbell to service legal practitioners. Another example is Palladium Group’s Execution Premium Community that brings together strategy practitioners within enterprise to share best practice. These are examples of password protected communities but there are also examples of B2B communities where the content is shared on the open web but the information exchange is private such as Integrative Practitioner – a community for holistic health care providers.

Recently there’s a significant rise of B2B communities, as the use of social media is becoming more widely adopted by enterprise. The policy field is starting to settle into some normative behaviours so more large organizations are looking to B2B communities for customer care, innovation, product and service ideas, and best practice identification. But, yes, they are definitely less common than consumer communities as right now social media is focused on the channel as a marketing tool, but there is so much more to social media application than just consumer marketing.

eModeration: What kind of global impact is the rise in B2B communities having?

Vanessa: We live in a global economy and B2B communities are helping companies accelerate their pace of reach and innovation on a number of different fronts. Take for example the Palladium community I mentioned earlier. With this community, more than ½ of the membership base is non-US, and there is a large Middle East footprint. The mere fact that there are so many global leaders sharing information and experiences in the same space serves as a trigger to thinking about business challenges differently. Also, the members’ peer network is no longer isolated to those people with whom they have regional contact and therefore can extend the platform of collaboration to reach the far corners of the world. From a business perspective, this has a huge impact on the global economy as decision-makers now have greater exposure to a wider range of ideas, services and peers without having to travel, with an enlarged diversity of perspective to those that are regional or country specific.

eModeration: What advantage can be gained from a business setting up its own community - and what are the perils?

Vanessa: There are many advantages that can be gained from a business setting up its own community – they can increase customer intimacy, accelerate new product ideas, generate revenue, surface trends that can be used to launch new service offerings, and most importantly, when built right, they can create a business ecosystem of trust so that the clients or affiliates keep the company top-of mind year round as a trusted source, and not just interact with them at the point of sale.

The most successful B2B online communities solve a difficult challenge – they accelerate a business process in ways that are either faster or better than done in an in-person setting. Because decision-makers, do not have the luxury of time, clear community strategy is a critical success factor with B2B online communities. Most of the communities Leader Networks advises on are new lines of business for a company and need to generate revenue as well as offer additional, clearly defined business benefits to the organization.

It is imperative that the community focuses deeply on servicing the needs of the members:,finding the right balance between supporting the goals and objectives of the business while simultaneously servicing the members to fill specific needs in their professional settings. Companies often forget this part about the understanding the member needs ,often believing they know what their prospective members want and need without asking them directly. But this is where the missteps often occur as they are usually incorrect. At Leader Networks, we conduct research to find out from the prospective members what business processes they need help with, what keeps them up at night, what the hardest part of their job is. Look for trends and then, and only then, map the tools or the features to solve the problems.

eModeration: What would you say are the fundamental differences between a consumer community and a B2B community, in terms of demographics, objectives, platforms and need for community management?

Vanessa: Most of our understanding about online communities comes from the consumer side as that is where the media tends to focus, so the B2B side of the community equation is often overlooked.

There are many core differences between a consumer community and a B2B community across all those parameters! The member base tends to be older so the design needs to be streamlined and offer fewer features and functions than for a younger audienceship. Because members tend to visit less frequently but for longer durations, the site refresh cycles need to be less rapid but more content-rich. In many cases, successful B2B communities serve as a trusted advisor to the members in terms of steering them to the information and people that they need to be aware of – so the role of the B2B content and community staffs are really to bubble up a limited amount of information that has high value to its audience ship.

And, most importantly, from a moderation perspective, it is an entirely different skill set. The most effective moderators serve the community members as a liaison between people and ideas. Their role is really to facilitate interactions on the site: connecting people with each other so that they can find likeminded peers, developing relationships with members so they can cultivate strong user generated content and help senior professionals succeed.

Especially when the B2B community membership contains very senior professionals, they will require a higher degree of tactical hand-holding to operate the site. But the content and ideas of the community will naturally be driven and directed by them, because they are the thought-leaders. Experts may have a hard time expressing the details of their thinking because they have come to rely on experience-based expert systems. They make decisions tacitly. One example I like to use is the difficulty experienced drivers often have when trying to teach someone how to drive. I just *know* how to do it, but some of the detailed steps elude me because I have done it so often. This is the same with professionals. So, effective moderation often helps experts break down their ideas through a series of questions and idea-exchanges to help them articulate their ideas to others effectively. When a B2B community can get experts to share best practice online, then everyone in the community benefits and time spent on that community is valuable to all.

I recently offered a presentation Social Media for Business: How is it different that offers an in depth look at this subject.

eModeration: Many thanks Vanessa for those insights into the specialism of B2B communities.

If you’ve found this interesting or want to ask questions, please leave comments below, or contact Vanessa directly via:

Vdimauro@leadernetworks.com
http://www.leadernetworks.com
http://twitter.com/vdimauro
http://www.linkedin/vdimauro
http://blog.leadernetworks.com/


About Leader Networks: Leader Networks is a research and consulting firm that helps clients create social strategies and professional online communities. They help their clients harness the power of new digital rules and tools to drive measurable business benefits, including increased revenue, productivity, and customer loyalty; decreased costs and cycle times; and the ability to engage business buyers as co-creators in the product/service development lifecycle.

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IWF Awareness Day 2009

Today, (Wednesday 14 October 2009) is the third Internet Watch Foundation Awareness Day, and eModeration (a founder member of the IWF) is marking the event by helping to publicise their crucial work.

Public reports help remove child sexual abuse images in UK and around the world

More people than ever are using its Hotline to report potentially illegal content on the internet and the UK is leading the way in removing child sexual abuse images.

Did you know that ....?

• IWF research shows nearly 1 in 20 UK adult internet users (or 1.5 million people) say they have been exposed to child sexual abuse images


• This research also indicates that over three quarters of those UK adult internet users who say they have stumbled across child sexual abuse images are unsure how to report them


• The majority of online child sexual abuse images identified by the IWF depict the most severe levels of sexual abuse - the abuse of child victims under 10 years old - and are made available on pay-per-view commercial websites


• Internet users should not deliberately seek out child sexual abuse images in order to report to the IWF


• The IWF an independent self-regulatory body, funded by the EU and the wider online industry, including partners such as eModeration


• It’s working. There were 5% more reports than the same period last year (27,000 reports) – but only 20% of these were confirmed by the IWF as images of child sexual abuse.


• Almost all of these images (over 99%) were traced to servers outside the UK


• When an image is hosted outside the UK, the IWF acts immediately to inform our partner Hotline and law enforcement agencies in the relevant country to get the images removed and those responsible investigated.


• It is extremely rare to trace child sexual abuse content to the UK. During the first three quarters of this year, the IWF has issued only 25 notices to companies in the UK about the abuse of their networks for the distribution of these images. Each notice was quickly complied with and every identified instance of online child sexual abuse content in the UK was removed within a day of notification.

Eve Salomon, IWF Chair, said:

“With the help of our Hotline, the UK has an excellent record in eradicating child sexual abuse images on the internet in partnership with 35 other Hotlines around the world and with the support of our 100 industry members. These websites are reducing in number globally and where they are sited in the UK, they are removed extremely quickly.
“If you stumble across child sexual abuse images, it’s crucial you report it to us. We are focussed on the swift removal of these images and helping the international effort to bring those responsible to justice and rescue children from sexual exploitation. Your reports to our Hotline really do make a difference.”

IWF Awareness Day is supported by many of the organisation’s 100 member companies and partners who unite to help publicise the UK Hotline and the importance of the IWF’s work. In 2008, Awareness Day led to increased reporting to the Hotline and an 18% increase in awareness of the IWF amongst UK internet users. The IWF hopes to increase that this year.

To report a website or for more information the about IWF, please visit http://www.iwf.org.uk/, and for further information about the IWF, contact Sarah Robertson, IWF, 01223 237700, 07929 553679, sarah@iwf.org.uk

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eModeration's Social Media Round-Up #5

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.

THE HEADLINES…

The blogosphere was abuzz this week after the US Federal Trade Commission ordered Celebs and Bloggers to ‘fess up if they’ve been paid to plug - or face a whopping $11,000 fine. Commentators were universally aghast - but it soon emerged that the FTC were less concerned with free cookie-cutters for mommy-bloggers, than with habitual dirty-dealers and paid user-reviews.

And, as a supremely Zen Louis Gray calmly pointed out, its unlikely to change the world: “good people will continue to be good, and bad people will continue to be bad.”

There were high hopes last week that Google Wave would provide an invigorating dip in the collaborative ocean - but by all accounts, an encounter with Wave is as likely to leave you winded on the beach, with your swimmies round your ankles. Not quite a wipeout - but not yet the answer to our real-time prayers. As one commentator said: “This will not kill Twitter, Facebook, Ning or [insert social network here].”

(But if you’re still desperate to give it a go, please don’t ask this guy if he’s got a spare invite. He really hasn’t.)

Twitter struggled manfully with the news that the US president had been awarded the Nobel peace prize, as users went Obama-rama. The microblogging service was simultaneously stretched by the shock news that Miley Cyrus had deleted her account - a moment which neatly illustrates Twitter’s encapsulation of the sublime, and the ridiculous.

Mass panic, after 30,000 email accounts were compromised in a phishing scam. Up to 21 million users of Hotmail, Gmail and Yahoo Mail accounts were warned they were at risk of fraud, after 10,000 passwords were grabbed by a fake website which was designed to look identical to Hotmail’s.

If you have been scammed, don’t be glum - you’re in excellent company. The BBC reports that America’s top G-Man was himself nearly taken in by an email from his bank, which wasn’t.

It all neatly confirmed the findings of this poll by moneysupermarket.com, which found that 13 per cent of us have had their online accounts hacked. Worse, 1 in 12 of us have considered hacking the account of a friend, colleague or loved one. For shame!


THE LOWDOWN…

70 per cent of employers will have codes of conduct for their employees’ virtual-world avatars by 2013, predicts IT research consultancy Gartner. It urges companies to impose dress codes on employees’ avatars, to avoid alarming customers (though if your client-facing staff want to wear bikinis to virtual meetings, you might also want to rethink your recruitment strategy).

More news from the coalface: it seems that over half of employers now block staff access to social sites. Only 10% of companies give employees a free rein, and the rest impose some kind of limit, for example ‘work stuff only’.

Yikes. According to a new Ofcom survey, one in three British schoolchildren thinks search engines like Google rank sites by ‘how true they are’. Which is more disheartening to grownups, I wonder? That news, or the fact that Electronic Arts just hired a 12 year old to script their latest TV commercial? Hmm, tough call.

Two men have been arrested for allegedly using Twitter to help G20 protesters to evade police. The pair were found in a motel, surrounded by contact-lists, a bank of laptops, and emergency-frequency radio scanners. Anarchists, huh? Always just that little bit more organized than you’d think.


FACEBOOK...

Facebook announced its own "Gross National Happiness" indicator, which analyzes the peaks and troughs of national sentiment via a mass survey of the emotional tone of their users updates. Key insights so far: Holidays: good; Death of much-loved public figures: bad.

Sadly, The ‘Book is not yet allowing continual access to the results, denying brands a looksie at data which might be useful when planning campaigns.

On the upside, brands were cheered by the news that Facebook provided the most loyal visitors to third-party sites, with 20% of Facebook-originated visitors returning three or four times in a week. This loyalty contrasted with a lukewarm 16% from Digg, and a turncoat 11% from Twitter.

The stats for social games on Facebook continue to accelerate - with app-maker Zynga on track to make $200 million this year. Zynga already broke records with FarmVille, and now its CafeWorld has gone stratospheric, with figures jumping from zero to 8.6 million in one wild week.


TWITTER...

Twitter co-founder Ev Williams displayed nerves of steel this week when he declared that he felt no pressure to come up with a revenue model for the yet-to-see-profit service. He wants to “create something that you want to see in the world" rather than slavishly following "some MBA brandishing a business plan"…

His glacial sang froid was contextualized a few days later, as it emerged that Twitter is already in talks with both Google and Microsoft to offer real-time tweets in search results. Which would quite probably provide a source of real and sustainable revenue.


Elsewhere on Twitter…

Twitter took two leaves out of Facebook’s, um, book this week. First, there was the launch of a third-party platform offering virtual gifts – not in themselves new, but the first time that brands have got on board. Developers AdNectar have already signed up Cadbury, Nestle and Malibu Rum (my kinda party).

And hot on the heels of Facebook’s crowdsourced translation project, Twitter announced plans do the same, expanding language options from the current English and Japanese (who knew?), to French, Italian, German, and Spanish.


GOOGLE...

Busy-busy for the search giant this week: armed with the news that a full 90% of UK searches are Google-powered, and that Bing’s market share is shrivelling, Google renewed its assault on the browser rivals IE and Firefox with the launch of Chrome-for-dummies on YouTube. They hope to persuade the public - many of whom don’t fully understand what a browser actually is - to switch to their shiny new offering.

Google then stepped up to the smartphone plate, with a new Adsense feature which allows advertisers to create ads specifically optimized for ‘high-end smartphones’.

Hmm. It all points to a Cunning Plan to Rule the World, as Charlene Li and Jeremiah Owyang point out. Instead of going head-to-head with Facebook and other destination SocNets, Google is gradually releasing social spores which will eventually connect to form a layer of Google across the entire social media universe.


BRANDS GET SOCIAL...

Coke Zero wins double points this week with the release of its Facial Profiler – upload a photo of yourself and their Facebook app will scan the web for your digital doppelganger.

But a grim week for poor old T-mobile, as the hashtag #Tmobilesucks rocketed to the top of Twitter trending topics.

A client who (swearily) tweeted his frustration at Crucial Paradigm’s tardy customer service was summarily sacked by the over-sensitive webhosting company. Unfortunately their somewhat disproportionate response was spotted by Laurel Papworth, whose post detailing the Fail has thus far been seen by a stonking 24,872 people, and counting.

ITV’s X-factor (an eModeration client, we feel duty-bound to disclose) went socialtastic this week with the launch of a swathe of social media features, including a Facebook app for each contestant and a Twitter ribbon, which users can add to their profile to show their support.

Intel have launched a two-day interactive campaign which allows customers to talk live to Intel experts through banner ads on targeted websites.

And top marks to Estee Lauder, for ingeniously blending RL with social media: they’ve been giving women free makeovers for their profile pics - the resulting photographs have company logos in the background.


SOCIAL STATS AND FACTS…

People who’ve seen a brand’s campaign on social media are 2.8 times more likely to search for that brand. What’s more, click through rates for this group are up by half.

Which might explain why 6 in 10 companies are planning a social media spend in the coming year – placing it second only to email in the Centre for Media Research’s study. Specifically, brands are investing heavily in online communities, despite the recession: another survey of 400 companies, including Fortune 100 enterprises, found that 94% were planning to continue their community spend. Worryingly though, a dismal 70% of companies have failed to use feedback from social media to improve their products, according to a PRWeek survey.


What’s more...

In a world where the visual volume dial is turned to ten, this data from MTV seems to show that audiences were more likely to remember subtlety and soft sells.

And the social web really is a woman's world, according to this chart, compiled by Information is Beautiful with data from Brian Solis.


MOBILE...

Damn – the world just got fatter. Manually typing a search query via keyboard used up – what, 5 calories? No longer, with the release of Microsoft’s new app, which allows Bing users to speak a search query or text message.

It’s not you, it’s them: if your iPhone-toting associates seem even less focused on your pearls of wisdom than usual, could be they’re orc-battling under the table. TibaME, the MMO for mobiles from CipSoft, are releasing an iPhone app next year.


AND IN VIRTUAL WORLDS…

Counsellors are warning that addiction to online games is on the up. They blame the rise on a combination of recession (more downtime) and an increasing tendency for games to be visually bewitching.

But, as Massively reports, the news is likely to fall on deaf ears – “gamers will argue almost endlessly over which games are the best, which ones were most important, what the proper way to play is... but one thing we almost universally agree on is that we are not addicted.”

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