CEOP: ‘Children and the role of technology in sexualisation, addiction and bullying’

I’m fresh back from CEOP’s conference: ‘Children and the role of technology in sexualisation, addiction and bullying’, held in central London yesterday. There was so much very interesting material from CEOP, Sony, ELSPA, Beatbullying and UKCCIS amongst other excellent speakers that I’m rather horrified to find I’ve taken about 20 pages of notes. (Why??? Did I think I was going to be tested later?) Much of the deliveries concerned subjects I was already aware of: but then, the target audience wasn’t social media professionals, but teachers, educators, and others working directly with children - and of course the police, who were naturally there in, er, force...

Helen Penn, Head of Education at CEOP set the topic off by racing us through a few decades of aspirational teenager images to prove her point that sexualisation of children is happening earlier and earlier, heavily aided by the advertising industry. Girl’s role models today (and we are primarily talking about girls rather than boys) are likely to be the Paris Hiltons and Katie Prices of this world, and they are encouraged to ape their overt sexuality. Magazines like Barbie, Total Girl & Disney Girl are read by a whopping 20% of six year old girls – not a problem, until you realise that one such magazine was instructing its readers in *pole dancing*, and they push their young readers to aspire to a teenage world, even urging their readers to develop crushes on much older celebrity males. And if that all sounds a bit reactionary, consider this: CEOP then see these really young girls in chat rooms, wiggling their virtual tushes as they been taught, and thinking it perfectly normal to have online & offline relationships with *much older men*. Paedophiles often justify their behaviour by saying that the abused children were ‘asking for it’. The trend towards younger and younger sexualisation just lends them the excuse.

It’s easy to forget how much children are influenced by what is shown to them, how they simply lack the filters that adults have acquired, how they have little idea of what is really inappropriate or inadvisable behaviour until it’s too late. Thanks to Helen for showing us this video - do have a look: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJF50kwwRJE (As a parent, I actually found it terrifying. I might have to play it to myself every day as a reminder to model good behaviour and try to keep my stress-induced traffic tantrums to myself ...)

The message is constantly dripping out to children and to abusers of children that no-one and nothing is innocent any more. Not for the first time, I am very happy to be the mother of sons, not daughters. Adolescence and young adulthood starts earlier and lasts longer. Primary schoolgirls hold their definition of self-worth in what the mirror reflects. Liz Dean, from The Brighton and Hove National Health Service who has conducted research into young people’s use of pornography, said that 50% of teens view porn twice a week or more – and that their idea of a normal body is so warped and distorted by pornographic ‘ideals’ that many can’t cope with the reality of their own, real, diverse bodies and body parts. Pro-ana (pro-eating disorder) groups are proliferating on the web: not illegal, so they can’t be pulled down, but poisonous to vulnerable young people’s image of themselves.

And then there’s the increasing trend of posting up provocative pictures of yourself, to attract a boyfriend on your Facebook profile or a teenage dating site: videos of first sexual encounters, sexting images sent to a boyfriend and passed on. These, as Izzy Neis says, are the ‘internet cement’: they’ll be on the web forever, to be seen by cyberbullies, future employers and paedophile networks. Even when they’ve switched on their social network privacy settings so that only friends can see pictures, the fact is that young people collect so-called ‘friends’ as a status symbol, and can easily have hundreds of potentially dubious strangers able to see everything they do in Facebook or Bebo.

The conference covered much more than just these issues: there was a great 100-mile-a-minute lecture by Mark Griffiths from the International Gaming Research Unit on whether or not the internet and playing online games can truly be addictive for young people (answer: there hasn’t really been enough research yet, but yes, possibly, for a few). Jason Debono took us through the set up and working of UKCCIS, Sarah Dyer of Beatbullying presented their Cybermentors programme which I’ve already mentioned here a few times, and Sony Computer Entertainment Europe – well, Sony had a bad day there. The very nice Phil Priston was nearly at the end of a well-presented slot of their community management and safety/moderation work when he was ambushed by the vociferous crowd, baying for blood, demanding to know why Sony release 18+ violent video games, when it’s entirely possibly they may end up being played by under 18’s. It’s a good point ... but not really one that Phil was able to answer in his role as Community Manager unfortunately.

Anyhow, thanks to all at CEOP for a really engaging - and occasionally alarming - day. It’s good to hear about so many who are doing what they can to keep the children safe, but it’s a scary world out there. If you want more information and resources on keeping children safe, visit CEOP’s ThinkUKnow portal.

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eModeration interviewed by Amy Jussel on 'Shaping Youth' Part One

In a splendid 'social-media-will-eat-itself' kind of way, the extract below is a Q&A with eModeration from online youth marketing expert Amy Jussel's excellent blog 'Shaping Youth'. We're rather proud (OK, very proud) that Amy came to do a lengthy interview with us, and here's what she's published as part 1:


In an effort to create outreach, understanding and turn a ‘rose in the fisted glove’ media management approach into a useful, productive shared energy that benefits all in terms of online behavior management, I’m going to launch into a multi-part series ‘behind the scenes’ with industry safety pros and online moderators.

Hopefully, it will give parents a feel for ‘who’s watching the kids,’ how the digital world works from the inside out, and why it matters to be savvy as a digizen regardless of how little or how often either kids or adults are hanging out online.

There are several moderation firms for hire that reveal the underbelly of the gaming industry and virtual world communities…from Metaverse ModSquad (great media literacy peek for parents here on their WeboSaurs “meet the people behind the magic” event to educate parents about what goes on in their community) to online tween community specialists like Izzy Neis currently working for Gazillion Entertainment…We’d like to hear from many and all…

For now, I’m starting with Tamara Littleton’s crew at eModeration as they’re massively experienced in this realm as one of the world’s most respected outsourced moderation and community management agencies, with offices in London, New York and Los Angeles.
Their tagline? “Protecting your users and brand 24/7″…They graciously agreed to wade through my lengthy, verbose Q & A to tackle some of our ‘crowd-sourced’ questions from the parent posse who are very eager for answers on ‘what to know’ BEFORE kids are ‘of age’ to engage.

We’ve only just begun to scratch the surface, so feel free to add your voice to this discussion to help parents and kids become savvy ‘digizens.’


Amy Jussel, Shaping Youth: Tell us what parents should know BEFORE allowing kids to enter multiplayer chats either in-game or on-console. (etiquette, data privacy, role-playing etc.)


eModeration: For younger children, turn off chat channels completely – particularly zone-wide public channels. Kids of six, say, can still have a great time in low-level games without chat. As they grow in confidence, skills, and as you get a feel for the lie of the land, you can consider removing safety features gradually. It’s always a good idea to keep a very close eye on the amount kids can interact with others….

You could think about letting your ‘tween’ whisper and trade with other players, depending on their maturity. You could also gradually remove blocks on guild and group membership invitations – but it’s a good plan to disable voice chat features, like Ventrilo and TeamSpeak, perhaps even for teens.

Some argue that it’s these kinds of interactions which ‘make’ the MMO experience, and that children who aren’t yet ready to use them might be best playing with a parent to guide them.
Alternatively, you could encourage your kid towards a single-player RPG (role playing game) and save the massive multiplayer online gaming experience (MMORPG) till they are older. Whether they know it or not, kids who are gamers are constructing a virtual reputation that might well come back to haunt them.

Other players take screen shots and post them on social networks; gaming companies keep chat-logs and records of your child’s game actions – but kids have real difficulty understanding that what they do in-game will stick around forever, let alone why that might cause them problems down the line.

If you can get this message across, you’ll be doing a great job.


Amy Jussel, Shaping Youth: Along those lines of things ‘sticking’… Studies show most kids are chatting among their known peers, not strangers, and are media literate about protecting their profiles, but LESS sophisticated about ‘real time’ gaffes ...How can we best instill media literacy to prevent items that can’t be ‘taken back’ either inside a ‘chat’ context online or a real time ’status update’? (For teens using social media parents are VERY concerned about mobile-social GPS safety, profile posting that’s regretted later; whereabouts, photos with too much information, etc. )


eModeration: This HAS to be all about education, and it’s not just down to moderators to teach young people. It should be a shared responsibility: teachers, publishers, children’s channels, moderators, government/private bodies, peers, family and careproviders… anyone working with children and anyone trying to make their money out of children’s access to the web or communication devices.

We all have role to play in teaching young people about the consequences of their actions. Izzy Neis has a great phrase to describe this… What you do on the web/across mobile devices is ‘invisible cement’… To quote from her blog:

“Whatever you do – it’s there… crusty and solid, just not necessarily obvious or visible to you or those around you. But TRUST… it’s there … everyone should start these conversation about “You and Your Rep in the Online World.” Sounds so dry and so suckish… but VERY necessary. …If YOU don’t start talking about it, who will? Go home. Teach your family how to protect themselves like Clark Kent & Superman. Explain the web’s notorious invisible cement, [...] the lack of giant invisible erasers.
Speak about Megan Meier (google her if you don’t know who that is), or about this kid labeled a PERV. Talk about the girls from Florida in that HORRIBLE Youtube fight. Speak about Vanessa Hutchinson and her forwarded pictures and the horrible fall out, and the embarrassment it caused her and her family.
…But more than anything…. TALK. I don’t care if you have a family of your own or not. Talk to your friends over drinks. Get discussion rolling. Everyone will benefit. Trust.…

Amy Jussel, Shaping Youth: How can we encourage and even incentivize kids to self-police their own online communities in addition to formal moderation methods?


eModeration: With, I think, a combination of education and direct incentives. A lot of social networks reward good behavior by giving the users something extra, a status symbol within the site of some kind (Habbo Hotel use badges).

First – via schools, parents and caregivers, cyber-mentorship and the site itself – we have to get the message out about privacy and what is/isn’t acceptable online behavior. Then the site should reassure users that they won’t be ’sneaking’ if they report another’s behavior. It can then reward users who have *correctly* flagged another user, or stepped in to guide someone else in the right way.

Educate, model good behavior and reward it appropriately. There’s a lot of good work being done in the whole area of positive moderation and reputations by the good people at Reputation Share…(editors’ note: Reputation Share is a partner org of eModeration)


Amy Jussel, Shaping Youth: If you had to name THREE core resources for virtual world/online communities, what/who would they be (assuming you were sending our readers there for ‘what to know before you go’ tips, etc.)


eModeration: Actually there are too many – so best to follow our blog … There are a lot of really good sites out there, providing a lot of educational resources, but what’s good for parents might not be suitable for teenagers or help professional workers…then there are cultural and regional differences too! Aside from Shaping Youth of course invaluable resources are CEOP (good for professional working in this sector, great schools resources, and training: they run the ThinkUKnow portal), VirtualWorldsNews – the place to go for industry news on this sector and Kzero a great research resource again for the industry. For sites with a safety angle I would say Beatbullying (peer-to-peer mentoring program, advice and online help), Get Safe Online, a public/private initiative, giving clear simple advice…In Europe - Insafe and in the US- FOSI, Connect Safely (guidance and help forums),The Safer Internet Alliance (public/private organization aimed at protecting vulnerable users from crime and abuse) And…well…I’m past three already, so again, best to just follow our eModeration blog…


More from the eModeration crew tomorrow on Amy's Shaping Youth blog. Thanks to Amy for the opportunity to pontificate!

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Social Media Round-up #14

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: President Obama's thumbs; Twillionaires; and 'intextication'.

Next week, eModeration is sending me on a social-skills course (day one: eating with implements) - so the next round-up will be on Friday the 4th December. See you then.


THE HEADLINES ...

THE LOWDOWN ...

IN OTHER NEWS ...

ON FACEBOOK ...

ON TWITTER ...

BRANDS GET SOCIAL ...

ON GOOGLE ...

ON YOUTUBE ...

ON MOBILE ...

VIRTUAL AND GAMES ...


THE HEADLINES ...

President Obama has revealed that his absence from Twitter is due to a lack of dexterity in the thumb department. He was asked by a group of Shanghai students if they should be able to use Twitter freely – and the thumb quip launched a careful response about freedom of speech: “I have a lot of critics in the United States who can say all kinds of things about me, I actually think that that makes our democracy stronger and it makes me a better leader because it forces me to hear opinions that I don’t want to hear.”

Stephen Fry this week claimed that Twitter celebs like himself can now opt out of the ‘pact with the devil’ which required them to open up their private lives to journalists, in return for press coverage of their work. Now, he says, Twillionaires like he and Britney can “reach their circulation just by typing into my keyboard.” Grave news indeed for Sleb magazines, which are already clinging on for dear life to the sinking ship of print.

Facebook came in for widespread and heavy criticism this week, for failing to follow Bebo’s lead in including a ‘Report’ button developed by the Child Exploitation and On-line Protection Centre. CEOP’s boss Jim Gamble urged the social networks to adopt the feature, which allows young users to log bullying, hate speech and sexually explicit content, and to contact trained advisers: “there is a responsibility, a duty of care, to the young and the vulnerable”, he said.

The scam offers scandal could spiral still further: a team of Sacramento lawyers is investigating complaints that unauthorized charges were made without users’ knowledge – and are considering class actions against Facebook, MySpace, Zynga, and Offerpal amongst others.

Yes, it’s that time of the decade already: as we inch painfully towards 2010, the Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences bestowed Webby Awards on the top 10 internet moments of the last 10 years. Amongst the chosen: Facebook, Twitter, and the iPhone, along with the birth of Wikipedia and the Iranian elections.

Channel 4’s landmark deal with YouTube went live this week, unleashing around 5000 videos – 80% of which are full lengths shows – upon a grateful nation. Peep Show and Gordon Ramsay's F Word are among the goodies, which Channel 4 is hoping will lure in fresh advertisers.

The Digital Economy Bill was amongst those trailed in The Queen’s Speech yesterday. The bill proposes that those caught in the illegal-download act would first be sent warning letters – but would lose their connections if they continued to break the law. No mention, though, of the hotly-disputed Broadband Tax, which now looks likely to be slotted into the Finance Bill, due in 2010.


THE LOWDOWN ...

Every now and again comes a piece of news to which the only response is a brief contemplation of the expression “it takes all sorts to make a world”, and here is just such a one: a French company has developed a set of bathroom scales which will tweet your weight to your followers.

Teens are risking their own lives, as well as others’, by texting while driving- and worse, the figures seem to show that they’re learning from their parents. A new report claims that people are well aware of the dangers of texting on the road – but their desire to stay connected to their networks is stronger than their desire to stay connected to the tarmac.

Which leads us neatly to the American Oxford Dictionary’s Word of the Year shortlist, which, in an example of terrifying cultural serendipity, this year contains the word ‘intexticated’: the condition of being distracted by texting while driving. Sadly it was pipped at the post by ‘unfriend’ - possibly more useful but not quite as clever.

UK Twitterers are confirmed lefties - the Citizen Smiths of the Interweb. The news comes from a joint poll by Prospect Magazine and YouGov, which found that the average Twitter user is under-35 and London-based – and somewhat to the left of the Labour Party.

Trying to sell your house? Facing a wall of indifference, despite your original features and your central location? Could be that potential vendors are put off by your slow broadband connection. ISPreview.co.uk's survey reveals that 75% of people won’t buy a house – even an adorable one - if the best broadband ISP speed it could achieve was just 1Mbps.


IN OTHER NEWS ...

Yelps of excitement here, as Bing is launched in the UK – with enhanced visual search, Twitter integration and an “instant answers” service for real-time news on football scores and suchlike. But should Google be perspiring slightly and watching its back – or has it nothing to fear from the young pretender? iCrossing reveals the Five Things You Need To Know about Bing.

Bebo, whose web TV slate includes KateModern, Sofia's Diary, and The Gap Year, has nixed all new commissions, following parent company AOL’s announcement that it would slash 100 jobs globally.

Despite Rupert Murdoch’s admission last week that his paywall plans were likely to be delayed, it’s been announced that Times Online will start charging for content in the spring. James Harding, editor of The Times, said the site would offer 24-hour passes, as well as subscriptions.

The European Interactive Advertising Association – which includes stalwarts like AOL, the BBC, and Condé Nast amongst its members – predicts that online advertising will laugh in the face of the recession next year, with a projected 7.6% year-on-year rise in Europe, and a further 15% increase predicted for 2011.

And if further proof were needed that it is customers who are now directing the brand message, 360i reports that 77% of social media search results are generated by individuals with no affiliation to the brand.


ON FACEBOOK ...

It’s good news for Facebook this week: it towers above the nearest competition in the British social network league, netting half of all visits in UK last month. Twitter languishes a distant fourth, with a contextually-microscopic 1.9% of UK visitors.

But wait! Whispers of coming gloom can be heard, as research by WPP Group’s Mindshare suggests that the crucial older teen and twentysomething demographic might be drumming its fingers and looking round for something new.

Sony is catching up with rivals Microsoft, which recently hooked Facebook and Twitter to their Xbox 360. New software for the PlayStation means that gamers can now link their PS3s to their Facebook accounts to share game-play updates with friends.


ON TWITTER ...

Despite the recent slowdown in Twitter’s growth, it can still produce stats that make us gasp: according to Pingdom the average number of Tweets per hour is 1.1 million; the daily figure is 27.3 million; and at this rate, we’re looking at 10 billion tweets a year.

The typical Twitter user is male, and in his late twenties/early thirties – and wants brands to listen and respond to his questions, finds new research from InSites. News which sits uneasily against this other study, which finds, amongst other interesting tidbits, that 76% of brands on Twitter are infrequent users - and only 9% use it as a customer-service channel.


BRANDS GET SOCIAL ...

Marmite has formed a secret society – the Marmarati – to develop an extra-strong version of the loveit/hateit yeast-based spread. Members were chosen because they expressed their love for the Unilever-owned brand on social networking sites, and fans will be able to win a sneak-pretaste of the new spread by uploading marmite-centric content.

Mydeco.com, which sells homewares and furniture, has inked a deal with Sony's PlayStation Home to sell iconic pieces of virtual furniture – for example, the famous Marilyn ‘Lips’ sofa – on the community-based network.

Maclaren, who produce children’s buggies, recently offered a voluntary product-recall on one million of its pushchairs, amid reports that children had lost fingers in their folding mechanisms. But it found itself at the wrong end of a sharp social-media stick when UK customers discovered that only US customers were included – and this week it was force to roll out the offer worldwide.

For this year's Los Angeles Design Challenge, Audi has tapped its Facebook community of famously partisan fans to help design a fantasy Youthmobile for release in the year 2030 – you can see some of the designs here. http://www.facebook.com/audi


ON GOOGLE ...

The tech world was agog this week, as rumours swirled that Google’s eagerly-awaited new Chrome operating system might be available for download as soon as next week, with Search Engine Journal suggesting that the traction being gained by Windows 7 might be motivating a hasty launch.

Eek. Californian developer Frank McCabe created a programming language in 2004, and named it Go. He published a research paper about it in 2004. And a book in 2007. All the more surprising, then, that Google has just called IT”s new language by the same name. McCabe says he doesn’t have a trademark and can’t afford a lawsuit, but is determined not to let the search giant steamroller his prior claim.

Meanwhile, the Swiss data protection organization says its complaints to Google about breaches of privacy in Street View have fallen on deaf ears. It alleges that the company has refused to fix insufficiently blurred faces and numberplates, which could lead to individuals being identified in ‘sensitive’ locations - outside hospitals, prisons and schools.

Google means business with its latest policy on scam and malware advertisers who use Adwords – it’s imposing a blanket policy of ‘guilty till proven innocent’ on all suspect ads, and a lifetime ban on confirmed scammers.

Social Search, Google’s snazzy new feature which allows users to combine search with social data, has gone down – and according to a baffled Mashable, will remain down till early next week. What, Mashable wonders, could have happened to Social Search that could possibly take that long to fix?


ON YOUTUBE ...

YouTube has launched a dedicated channel called YouTube Direct, specifically for citizen journalists to bring their work to a larger audience. The tool allows media companies to connect directly with user-reporters, and request and rebroadcast news clips.

The video-sharing site is also testing a new approach to making online ads relevant – allowing users to skip the ones that bore them – with the idea that they will then engage more deeply with the ones that they do in fact watch.


ON MOBILE ...

T-Mobile faces consumer wrath again this week after it emerged that one of their workers had been selling customers’ details to a rival company - a major breach of data protection regulation.

In the first mobile-Twitter deal, Orange have snagged an agreement with Twitter to let users upload photos by text, via Snapshot - a custom picture platform developed by Orange.

73% of marketing execs think mobile is the UK’s ‘most likely to expand’ medium, says the IAB, whose survey canvassed the opinions of 100 senior agency reps.


VIRTUAL AND GAMES ...

Hi-yah! Kung Fu Panda World – in development for the last 2 years and targeted at kids of 8-12 – is to be launched in early 2010. The world will feature high levels of parental control, and will offer both long-term and one-day subscriptions.

Despite a spot of bother with its in-game ads – which some have suggested are rather dastardly - social games company Zynga’s investors are clearly chomping at the bit. The upwardly-mobile games enterprise, whose biggest success is the Facebook mega-game Farmville - has just received a massive injection of cash: $15.1 million to be precise, bringing its total haul to over $54 million.

Quick work: Gravity Bear, who declared as a social games developer less than four weeks ago, has already unveiled Battle Punks, a Facebook app which it bills as a ‘3D social game. It’s due to launch in open beta before 2010.

Subscription revenues for Disney’s Club Penguin were up a cozy 4% last quarter, contributing to a overall increase in revenue for the company - despite an icy economy.


That's all folks!

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An immoderate reaction - the Kurt Greenbaum case

The most interesting thing to come into my mailbox this morning was my regular update from e-mint.

e-mint is the Yahoo group for Community Professionals, and a really interesting, knowledgeable, helpful bunch of people they are too. I heartily recommend you join them if you’re working within social media.

What has the e-minters in fine debating fettle today is the case of a Community Manager called Kurt Greenbaum who works on the St. Louis Post-Dispatch website STLtoday.com. You can read a more detailed version of events in Matthew Ingrams’ blog (the blogger and communities editor at The Globe and Mail in Toronto), but the story in a nutshell is this: a reader posted a comment onto an innocuous ‘water-cooler’ feature about food. The comment contained the still-unacceptable-just-about-everywhere ‘c’ word. It was quickly removed, reposted, and removed again. Nothing too odd about that: fairly standard immature user behaviour and counter-procedures. But what Kurt did next has the news and social media folk in a flurry. From his email notification of the comment posted he could tell it was from a local school. He then forwarded the local school the email, who tracked the anonymous poster from a combination of IP address and timestamp. The poster (who had used a false email address on his post) was a member of school staff who promptly resigned.

Kurt first seemed to be triumphant about the outcome in an avenging-angel kind of way, but then – having been on the receiving end of a torrent of criticism for overstepping the mark and misunderstanding his role – to some extend recanted and admitted he might have got things slightly wrong (though he still didn’t apologise for his actions).


e-minters, and indeed most opinions that I have seen on the story, have been united in their disapproval for Kurt’s actions. Whilst it’s true that he didn’t at the time of contacting the school know that it would result in the man losing his job, Kurt moved far outside the usual moderation remit by contacting the school and forwarding the email comment alert.

Why did he do this? I guess he was just having a bad day. Perhaps it was once too often that he’d had to deal with users re-posting obscenities, and felt justified when he saw it came from a school. He wanted to set an example, show people they couldn’t hide under a cloak of anonymity. And I do truly sympathise – moderating is an often thankless job, where you have to spend a lot of time staring at the wrong end of human behaviour. But I believe, that he did, truly, get it wrong in this case, and there were other options open to him: most of which have been pointed out by the hundreds of people commenting on this case.

Firstly: if you can’t cope with an occasional ‘c’ word, if it really upsets you so much –or indeed, want to protect your readers from sexist, racism, suicide and bomb threats et al – why don’t you pre-moderate *all* comments?

Secondly, the comment was anonymous: no-one looking at the site could tell it was from a school. Thus there was no need to protect the school’s reputation.


Thirdly, whilst it is true, as Kurt has written in his defence, that blocking the IP address would have potentially stopped the entire school from contributing to the news site, apparently it should have been possible on the Wordpress site to set that particular IP address to ‘pre-moderate’.

Fourthly, and finally, he has violated the privacy under which the reader was posting. Not over something which was time-critical and life-threatening: most moderators wouldn’t hesitate to pass on IP addresses to the authorities over issues such as child abuse, suicide threats, extreme bullying or threats of violence. But for a vulgarity? Unfortunately, Kurt’s behaviour, far from securing him the high ground, has simply put the ‘c’ into ‘community management’.

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Beatbullying publishes "Virtual Violence - Protecting Children from Cyberbullying"

You'll know (I hope) by now that today is the first day of Anti-Bullying Week, and to mark it, Beatbullying today publishes "Virtual Violence - Protecting Children from Cyberbullying". The report looks at the true extent of cyberbullying amongst young people in the UK and in particular, highlights the number of extreme cases where a young person is persistently and systematically cyberbullied.

Their latest research reveals that nearly one in three 11-16 year olds has been deliberately targeted, threatened or humiliated by an individual or group through the use of mobile phones or the internet. For a quarter of these the experience was ongoing, meaning that 1 in 13 children were persistently cyber bullied.

Persistent cyberbullying is bullying that is happening day in, day out, over a period of months or sometimes years. It is continuous cyberbullying by the same person or group. As expected, children who were persistently cyber bullied experienced a longer duration of bullying. Around a third of those persistently bullied said it lasted a year or more, or else was still going on. Another fifth said it had lasted months.

Cyberbullying and vulnerable groups

Their survey of over 2,000 secondary school pupils shows that cyberbullying is of increased concern for certain ‘high risk’ groups of children.

• Pupils with Special Educational Needs, (have a learning difficulty or disability) are 16% more likely to be persistently cyber bullied over a prolonged period of time.


• Pupils receiving Free School Meals, (an agreed universal indicator of increased deprivation, limited/ing social mobility, poverty and educational under-achievement) are 13% more likely to be persistently cyber bullied over a prolonged period of time.


• Pupils from white non-British ethnic backgrounds all reported a higher incidence of this intense form of cyberbullying.

You can download the whole survey here , and we really hope to be interviewing Beatbullying later this week about their work with young people in this area.

For more information, see also this great Radio 1 resource: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/bullyproof/

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eModeration's Social Round-up #13

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

This week: News Corp and Google; Twitter's wailing grumps; Britney's encounter with the Dark Side; and why Stephen Fry is like a giant St Bernard.


Check back soon!


THE HEADLINES ...

THE LOWDOWN ...

IN OTHER NEWS ...

ON FACEBOOK ...

ON TWITTER ...

ON GOOGLE ...

BRANDS GET SOCIAL ...

UNDER THE GAVEL ...

SOCIAL STATS ...

ON MOBILE ...

VIRTUAL AND GAMES ...

THINKING ...


THE HEADLINES ...

Rupert Murdoch plans to hide his content away so Google can’t see it. He told Sky News that he’ll prevent the search giant from indexing News Corp sites, to ensure that users pay up to view his news.

Many commentators pointed out inconsistencies in Murdoch’s interview, not least the vexed question of how readers would find the content if not through search engines – at least 25% of traffic comes via Google alone. All in all, the news was taken as the paid-content equivalent of Custer’s Last Stand.

But hold on, paid-content naysayers – is that the cavalry I hear? A new poll finds that ¾ of us would consider paying a 10p micropayment per article – with Jeremy Clarkson, Charlie Brooker and the redoubtable Richard Littlejohn being most likely to tempt us to splash the cash. So perhaps there’s life in the old paywall yet.

COI boss Mark Lund says that digital is the key to solving Britain’s social ills, by increasing trust and brokering a new relationship between citizen and government. “Digital is at the heart of behaviour change and to make the revolution we need."

The social gaming ads controversy continued, with Facebook banning Zynga’s FishVille before it had barely had a chance to wiggle a gill, blaming ‘deceptive ads’ for the red card. Now Zynga has decided to nix all cost-per-action ads till further notice.

Parents are obsessed about the perils which face children outside the home – but are far less clued up when it comes to the dangers of the internet, according to Prof Tanya Byron, who investigated the possible dangers posed to children by videogames and websites for the government. "An integral part of development is risk taking. Children are taking risks online because we live in a risk-averse culture."

Toyota is in a little hot water – having purloined some UGC photos for a crowd-sourced ad campaign, without asking the photographer his work first. The image, along with some others which the car company aggregated from Flickr, has now been removed – Digital Marketing offer advice for brands eager to avoid a crowd-sourcing headache here.


THE LOWDOWN ...

A Stephen Fry recommendation is the digital equivalent of an enormous St Bernard jumping up to lick your face. Flattering, but leaves you floundering on the floor, scrabbling for your glasses and a tissue. Fry, who also revealed that he now considers himself to be a ‘content provider’, says that he has to warn websites that he’s going to recommend them, or they crash within seconds.

From the sublime (Mr Fry), to the ridiculous. Poor Britney Spears has had her Twitter updates hacked, and, for a while there, was posting as a Lucifer-lovin’ Satanist who longs for the new world order. Which isn’t true, of course - unless pop music really is the work of the devil, as my old headmistress was fond of saying.

The Telegraph raised an eyebrow at the £3175 per year which the taxpayer coughs up for Lord Mandelson’s three Twitter accounts. Between them, @bisgovuk, @digitalbritain, and @BIS_Science have 9,894 followers. About 30p a follower on my calculations - cheap at half the price.

Hurrah – a story which contains Facebook, the Law, and a Young Person - and yet doesn’t end in a jail term. A judge has accepted that the Facebook update which 19-year-old Rodney Bradford posted at 11:49a.m. on October 17 gave him an alibi for the mugging charge he faced.

The first of the Twitcoms? The Twitter account of Justin Halpern, who passes on the world-weary, no-bull pronouncements of his 73-year-old dad (Example: "You look just like Stephen Hawking...Relax, I meant like a non-paralyzed version of him.”) has been snapped up by CBS, who will turn it into a comedy series [Advisory: red-blooded language].


IN OTHER NEWS ...

Bing UK is not yet up to scratch, according to sources close to Microsoft. The site has been in beta for four months, but isn’t yet fully relevant to us Brits, who are quickly turning back to Google. Microsoft is now hiring natives to create UK-centric search categories.

But it’s not all bad news for Microsoft – seems Microsoft sites harness 15 percent of worldwide online time – swiftly followed by Google and Yahoo, with Facebook bringing up the rear.

Enterprises are grasping Twitter to their bosom – business use is up a tweet-tastic 250%, from just six months ago. Facebook is also benefitting, with workplace use ballooning by 192%, despite the 20% of companies who block social sites.

The IAB has said that online media companies need to significantly raise their game if they want brands to really get behind internet advertising – at the moment, ad formats and creative simply aren’t making the grade, according to AdAge.

Hmm. We seem to be rather conflicted at the moment when it comes to research. Lightspeed says that ‘only’ 33% of consumers trust social nets to help them make purchasing decisions, compared with 68% who trust search, product reviews and comparison sites.

While Performics is pleased to find that (a separately-surveyed) third of us think social media is a good place to find out more about brands – and touts the fact that 25% have clicked directly to an online retailer or e-commerce merchant as evidence that, contrary to conventional wisdom, hard marketing may not be a social media no-no.

LinkedIn and Twitter have partnered up – their users can now publish Tweets on LinkedIn, and vice versa. In a simile which really only works if you are a fan of high-calorie nut-based confectionary, Biz Stone said the deal was “like bringing peanut butter and chocolate together to make the perfect combination."


ON FACEBOOK ...

A quiet few days at Facebook Towers – though brands will be quietly pleased about the launch of ‘Friends of Connections’, which will allow them to personalize ads to target the friends of their fans.

The ‘Book also launched a new set of guidelines for brand promotions, which contained a few significant changes concerning where promotions and competitions can live. Brands pondering their next Facebook foray could consult Fresh Influence’s ‘Five Things You Should Know‘ – a handy breakdown for brands to flick through.


ON TWITTER ...

Facebook must have been sniggering into their hands this week, as Twitter faced the same wails of disgruntlement that have been plaguing Facebook recently. The complaints concern the rollout of Twitter’s new Retweet feature, which makes it impossible for Retweeters to edit or add comments. Hubspot's Dan Zarella warned that these will “completely eviscerate most of the value out of Retweets" - but Ev Williams insisted that the feature was here to stay, and was deliberately designed to be super-simple so that tweets can be clearly attributed and traced.

The horizontality of Twitter’s stats is causing some comment in the Socialsphere, with mashable’s Stan Schroeder pointing out the oddness of Twitter's grinding halt, given its till-now explosive growth, and the media’s current obsession with its cultural importance. But, he expands, none of this will matter in the long run – Twitter is becoming ‘part of the net’s infrastructure. It doesn’t have to be popular, it merely needs to be there.’


ON GOOGLE ...

Google’s world domination plans are going swimmingly – it now intends to pimp the web, having been working quietly on a replacement for the HTTP protocol, which will make the internet infinitely faster.

Time for some Caffeine then. Google announced the launch of their latest incarnation, telling the waiting world portentously that “we believe Caffeine is ready for a wider audience. Soon, we will activate Caffeine more widely, beginning with one data centre’. Rather brings to mind Donald Pleasance, stroking a white Persian and pressing big buttons, no?

The search giant also launched a big upgrade to Latitude, adding location history and location-based alerts. The latter will let you know, via email or sms, when you’re near friends and connections. And took another step towards social with the introduction of a Twitteresque ‘Following’ feature to Google Wave. The follows can be temporarily removed from your inbox at the click of a button, to avoid social exhaustion.


BRANDS GET SOCIAL ...

Alfa Romeo is using Twitter to promote its MiTo model to a youthful, more urban audience. Users are challenged to spot one of 1300 MiTo-shaped stencils around major UK cities, and post a photo of it with the hashtag #MiToStencil when they do.


Burberry has used Facebook to launch a new site – called Artofthetrench.com – which encourages fans to submit images and comments on the brand’s iconic outerwear.

Tesco is bringing x-factor-style thrills to the nation with the launch of ‘performance pods’ outside some stores, where users can record an audition video to be entered into a competition run by talent search site 1Click2Frame.

Nikon is leveraging Ashton Kutcher’s Twitter presence to launch its Nikon Film Festival, a UGC contest which offers $100,000 for the best video. The festival, whose theme is ‘a day through your lens’, kicks off with Ashton’s own entry, in which he records a day he spent in Africa with wife Demi.

ASOS has relaunched its fashion-forward community, having consulted members on how to improve its features. Users will now get RSS feeds, emails to notify them when fellow members reply to their posts, and a spanky new look.

Disney follows other Hollywood studios in using Facebook and Twitter to drip-feed advance promotion for upcoming films, this week releasing two new posters for Tim Burton’s March-slated 3-D extravaganza Alice In Wonderland’.



UNDER THE GAVEL ...

The government has had to climb down from its April announcement of a new law to prevent more than 30,000 registered sex offenders from accessing social sites like Facebook, after it was ruled likely to restrict the right to privacy. The Home Office is seeking leave to appeal the Court of Appeal ruling.

Privacy campaigners are still determined to pursue Blockbuster for its participation in Facebook’s Beacon programme – they’re urging the court to reject an argument from the video chain that its ToS requires mandatory arbitration in any class action.


SOCIAL STATS ...

Almost 65% of consumers surveyed by Razorfish made first bought a brand because of a digital experience - via website, microsite, mobile coupon or email.

And there’ll be tumbleweed blowin’ down Oxford Street this December, if these figures are anything to go by: a new study finds that 93% of us plan to buy our gifts online this year, with a quarter buying more online than last year. What’s more, 17% of us are looking to social sites like Facebook for gift-buying, with 60% of that number looking for offers and discounts, and another 52% checking the wish-lists of friends and family.

A full 23% of the women surveyed by Q Interactive and Social Media World Forum visit social games like Farmville and Causes several times a day – and more than half have used virtual currency. Plus, they’re not averse to watching ads to get it – many more details here on MediaPost.

Looks like the younger women are, the more brand-social they are. Gen Y women make double the mentions of brands and products of their Gen X compadres, and are significantly more influenced by blogs, according to a study by PopSugar and Radar Research.

ON MOBILE ...

Last week Verizon sold an astonishing 100,000 Droids in a week. This week, Apple effortlessly trumps them with a jaw-dropping 30,000 iPhones sold by Orange in 1 day. Remember folks, that’s 30,000 of a smartphone which has already been freely available for a full 2 years.

News which neatly supports Nielsen’s prediction that the majority of mobiles will be smartphones by 2011 – just a couple of years away.

VIRTUAL AND GAMES ...

Massive and comScore have worked out a way to get detailed insight into how in-game ads work for gamers, building a picture of engagement for the first time.

Games developer Playfish has been caught by Electronic Arts, for a reported $400m. The purchase means that EA is now Facebook-forward, as well as leading the way in console, PC and mobile gaming.

Microsoft is pulling the plug on up to 1 million Xbox Live players who have illicitly modified their consoles to play pirated or other-region games.Twitter and Facebook Come to Xbox Live November 17 SAVE The rest of the ToS-obeying Xbox Live community will be enjoying a Twitter and Facebook dashboard from November 17th.

Habbo-creator Sulake have announced the launch of Bobba Bar, a series of virtual social venues for mobile users. Over-17s can make friends with and date other guests via an avatar which can be customized to a total of 1 billion combinations.


THINKING ...

If you’ve got any downtime over the next days, the following might get your brain-cells whizzing:

iMedia Connection looks further into ad networks and online reputation-protection for brands - and finds it not as straightforward as you’d think.

In case the worst-case scenario should arise, here are some steps to take in order to make your company’s crisis-plan ‘social-media compliant’.

Finally, if you are suffering from social media shellshock, you will appreciate this guide to reducing the noise, whilst remaining connected.


That's all folks!

Read more...

Rebecca Newton on FOSI 3rd Annual Conference, Washington, D.C.

The Family Online Safety Institute (FOSI) held its 3rd Annual conference in Washington, D.C. last week on November 4th and 5th. eModeration couldn't be there, so our good friend Rebecca Newton from Crisp kindly agreed to use our space to let us know what went on. You can see the official conference video here. Here's Rebecca's take on the conference:

The FOSI conference had over 400 registered attendees and 89 speakers, plus over 30 exhibitors set up booths (hence, lots of fun swag). It was, by my standards, a smashing success in every aspect.

FOSI, the clever vision of Stephen Balkam, is an international organization that “works to make the online world safer for kids and their families by identifying and promoting best practice, tools and methods in the field of online safety, that also respect free expression.” In other words (mine), let’s not over-regulate the internet or the people who use it. Let’s take an approach that people around the world can be responsible netizens. And let’s work together, globally, to figure out constructive, creative ways to deal with the small percentage of people who would abuse the net.

This post is about those speakers whom I found interesting, dedicated to the collective cause as opposed to their own self-promotion, and genuinely inspiring.

To be honest, I don’t get inspired much by speakers at conferences. There is the usual infomercial thing going on and then the count downs … titles like “5 Things You Should Know…” “The 2 Biggest Reasons People …” and the cute titles such as, “Using Your Fingers to Count 10 Reasons to Keep Your Customers in YOUR Hands” . Mercifully free of all this was danah boyd, a Social Media Researcher at Microsoft Research New England. I’ve been following danah’s research for a few years and was really looking forward to hearing her at FOSI 09. She embodies what listening to good, clear, educated, concise, passionate speakers is about. They make us think. They make us challenge our own belief systems and then we want to be them - until we get on to the next session.

danah discussed several points about youth and online safety. They included:

1. Teens play a big part in their safety online via their behavior choices.
2. Young people share their passwords with each other at significant rates (some of us in the Moderation business have been acutely aware of this for many many years..)
3. Access to problem content such as pornography – the number one correlation is that kids are seeking it out. A lot of kids are living in environments where parents or guardians are watching R and X rated films in front of their kids...
4. Youth Generated Problematic Content – simply making images disappear (via government control for example) is not going to cure the problem.

Kids who come from unsafe homes are engaging in attention-getting behavior online. Many of the at-risk kids online are taking care of their parents offline (because of drugs, alcohol, etc.). The people who read this blog for instance, are not the typical at-risk personality we’d find on the web. And we know that crime statistics show about 5% of the population commits crimes. That means 95% behave within the confines of the laws in their nation or state. We’ve found the same to be true online – 5-6% misbehave – yet the other 94-95% who behave just fine are often restricted from creating content, communication, learning and sharing because of the badly behaved 5%. (we’ll get to this subject again when we talk about the rock star, Tanya Byron).

“This is a community problem” according to danah boyd. I think many of us in the online community business agree. As danah pointed out, in physical environments we’ve moved to gated communities, we choose to live with people who are like us, we set up boundaries. This presents more of a challenge online, though it still occurs in the form of virtual communities. My takeaway from danah’s discussion was that we, the people who read blogs and live on twitter, are not typical young users online and therefore we forget we’re not really at-risk. It’s very important to understand that the at-risk youth online are also at-risk offline. It’s a community problem and not one that can be fixed via censorship. History has shown us censorship is ineffective. Mentors, communities of adults, are essential to help at-risk kids.

To read danah’s work, go to her blogs here and here.

The panel was a power panel with wonderful information and not too much self-promotion ... Carly Shuler (another Harvard grad) shared some interesting research. In particular, battling cancer in a video game has shown to have a positive effect upon young people battling their own cancer. And she pointed out a somewhat alarming fact – of the top 100 educational apps on iTunes (iTunes> apps > education) nearly half (47%) are targeted to pre-school children. PRE-SCHOOL CHILDREN – I just had to type that in caps. When asked “When should we start to address digital literacy?” Carly Shuler responded with “the 1st grade”, followed by the statement: ”Digital literacy is just as important as learning math.”

You can read more on Carly’s report at www. Joanganzcooneycenter.org. Joan Ganz Cooney founded the Sesame Workshop and CTW (Children’s Television Network)

Across the pond lives one Dr. Tanya Byron, the author of “The Byron Review” and many other publications. Tanya Byron is a noted child psychologist, a rock star in the academic psychology world. Tanya presented us with several formidable quotes.

First, Dr. Byron noted that “we’re raising our children in captivity.” I totally agree. She shared some scientific reasons as to why we’re not helping kids online by protecting them from every possible harm that could come their way. As she said “we used to fall over a lot” but we’re not letting our children fall over anymore. Consequently, they are not developing properly. And most importantly, she noted that kids can’t grow up properly if we base everything, every policy, every decision on “the most vulnerable child.” I don’t believe children can be creative under the restrictive guidelines some lawyers, legislators, and “concerned citizens” propose. Dr, Byron’s credo was, “let’s teach them how to be safe.” Linda Criddle has been carrying this banner for years. We teach them how to cross the street, let’s teach them how to be online safely. Dr. Byron’s pithy closing line referenced Elvis of Graceland, when she declared “A little less conversation, a little more action.”

My notable speakers list also includes:

Alec Ross, Senior Advisor for Innovation to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. I particularly liked his statement about government and the net when he said “Obama and Clinton want to know how can we empower rather than overpower in our administration.” It was most definitely an “amen” corner moment. The other “amen” or more appropriately “right on” moment was when Larry Magid stood up and pointed out that we’d been asking the same question for at least 40 years “How do we reach the parents?” I agree with Larry Magid; that’s not the question of the hour. The question is: how do we reach the kids and teach them to be responsible? We’ve been asking the “parent” question forever and nothing has changed.

The Attorney Generals Rob McKenna (WA.) and Patrick Lynch (R.I.) were informed, articulate and candid. General Patrick Lynch reminded us to “pick up the phone” and not wait to be contacted to help the cause. There was an excellent panel with physicians and psychiatrists regarding why kids behave as they do online.

I want to wrap up by pointing out what I believe is the most important factor in the two day conference. The conference wouldn’t have been possible without the sponsors, the FOSI staff (they did an outstanding job!) and all the participants and speakers. During these economic hard time, many people came together to share important information. It was not a dog and pony show, and for that I’m grateful. I am most impressed that Stephen Balkam had the vision and the determination 3+ years ago to turn an idea into a full-fledged, international organization of very smart people, sharing a common goal. Well done to him and those who have supported him and the FOSI family along the way. I look forward to next year’s conference and really do hope for “a little less conversation, a little more action”.

Rebecca Newton is the Head of Safety at Crisp, the leading provider of online child safety technology. After 16 years in survey research and computer application & design, she chucked it all to join the net culture. She has been an online community professional since 1994. Rebecca has also been a professional musician since 1976. She is the Chair person for Girls Rock NC, a non-profit organization that empowers young girls 7-17 through music. Rebecca likes children, dogs and most people, in that order. You can follow her at Twitter: @RebeccaNewton

Read more...

eModeration's Social Round-up #12

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

THE HEADLINES ...

THE LOWDOWN ...

IN OTHER NEWS ...

ON FACEBOOK ...

ON TWITTER ...

BRANDS GET SOCIAL ...

SOCIAL STATS ...

VIRTUAL AND GAMES ...

THINKING ...


THE HEADLINES ...

Good news! It turns out that using the Internet may not, after all, lead to alienation/sharp reduction in moral fibre/early grave (delete as applicable). A new study reveals that social media use is associated with real-life social benefits – for example, they find that blog-writers are more likely to confide in someone from a different race; photo-sharers more likely to discuss serious issues with someone of another political party; and – my very favourite – internet users in general are more likely than non-users to visit a café.

Once upon a time, when MySpace was the blushing belle of the ball and had princely suitors competing for its hand, it inked a $900 3-year deal with Google which allowed the search giant to become its sole search provider. But now the magic spell is broken: $100 million of that will not be going to MySpace after all, having been partly dependent on traffic levels.

What’s more, Rupert Murdoch’s plan to rebuild his business model by secreting news content behind a pay-wall won’t be coming-off as soon as he’d hoped. And plans to combine with other publishers would quite possibly breach competition regulations, according to the Guardian. Bad news indeed, as print earnings crash from $134 million to $25 million.

Google is attempting to allay users’ privacy worries with Dashboard, which provides a single-page view of all the different pieces of information which Google holds on them. Hmm, not sure myself. A smidgeon too close to that movie moment where we find that Nice-Neighbour-Guy‘s bedroom wall is covered in long-lens photos of the girl-next-door, and he’s got an axe in his wardrobe.


THE LOWDOWN ...

Three cheers for Walmart, for putting comments and reviews at the heart of their strategy. And a manly pat on the back for not realizing that their new range of coffins and urns would prove irresistible to a stream of clever-clogs commenters: “I picked one up to bury my cat in. Other than having room for about 100 cats, it worked well.”

Hyundai score a social media gold star for cheering up the crestfallen victim of possibly the worst piece of parking that any of us will ever see. CCTV footage of the squishing of Todd Jamison’s 2004 Hyundai Elantra went viral – you can watch it, and the cockle-warming video of his surprise gift from Hyundai, on Mashable.

The guy who invented the first mobile phone - which on the evidence of other tech firsts probably required a winch-and-pulley system to transport - is 80. And he isn’t all that impressed with how the mobile story unfolded, telling a privacy conference this week that “whenever you create a universal device that does all things for all people, it does not do anything well.”


IN OTHER NEWS ...

Online advertising revenue was the only cheerful note in ITV’s limp financial report this week. It leapt 8% to £27m for the nine months to 30 September, despite an overall group revenue plunge of 11% to £1.3bn.

A new social net, neatly-named Honk, uses existing social networks to gather opinions from friends and family about the cars each has owned – helping drivers decide their next ride.

US e-commerce has drooped again. According to Comscore, Q3 spending was down 2% year on year to $29.6bn - which means that for the first time, year-on-year revenue has declined two quarters in a row.

Online retailers aren’t taking the news lying down, however: many are planning to increase their social media presence in the run-up to the holiday season. 60.3% have upgraded their Facebook pages, and a similar number have tweaked their Twitter pages - while 40% have improved customer ratings and reviews.


ON FACEBOOK ...

As all eyes turned to Facebook in the evolving controversy surrounding scam offers in social games and apps, they announced on their blog that they were taking firm action to prevent advertisers and users from being suckered. According to Nick Gianos, of Facebook’s platform team, “this battle is not new - and it’s far from over.”

Twitter may be the dashing young pretender, but The ‘Book is still king of the social castle as far as consumer brands are concerned. According to Business.com’s new study, 83% of them have a presence on Facebook – but only 45% interact on Twitter.

And, when you look at those Social Scales, it’s hardly surprising. Facebook is putting on half a million users every day; the beefy giant now weighs in at a belt-busting 325 million users.


ON TWITTER ...

Which is not to say that Facebook shouldn’t keep a wary eye on Twitter's stats. While its own users are creaking up in age, from 26 to a dessicated 33, it looks as though Twitter’s users are finally getting younger. They average out at a comparatively youthful 31, with the 18-24 age group accounting for 37% of users, compared with 19% in December ’08.

Twitter is testing its new Retweet feature this week, hoping to enable information to spread even more quickly across the site. According to VentureBeat’s mockups, there’s a retweet button, and a tool for tracking a link or idea back to its source.

And while Twitter’s in the mood for a spring clean, they’re running the Hoover round trending topics. As the site’s ballooned, trending topics has become more and more unwieldy – but now Twitter promises we’ll begin to see more relevant results appearing.

And if you’re still Lost with Lists, @mashable is your friend. They’ve started some jolly useful ones, including one for social media (there’s a link to make suggestions of anyone they might have – ahem – missed...)


BRANDS GET SOCIAL ...

Car brand Infiniti has flipped its usual strategy and is breaking its new TV ads on Facebook and other social media sites, following its home page takeover last week on AOL, Yahoo and auto sites like Cars.com.

20th Century Fox are promoting Night at the Museum 2 with an augmented reality insert in the Times’ T2 section. Users are directed to a dedicated site, and when the insert is held up to a webcam, characters will appear to jump out of the screen.

Nestle’s Skinny Cow has shifted the hub of its marketing to its Facebook fanpage, launching a £2.5 million campaign to encourage women to share their cheekiest and sneakiest ways to say ‘Oh yes I can' to life's little indulgences.

Teen virtual world Habbo Hotel is supporting the release of vampire flick 'The Twilight Saga: New Moon' with alluring offers including film-related virtual goods, and the tantalising prospect of unscheduled chats with the film’s stars.

NBC Universal is adding social media features to its main Olympics website, NBCOlympics.com website in the runup to the 2010 Winter Olympics, incorporating Facebook Connect, which will let users to chat with their Facebook friends as they watch events.

Godiva chocolates are launching a virtual goods campaign to support their new range of desserts. Animated cakes and chocs open to reveal flash-based chocolatey-rich media , then offer the option of becoming a Fan, visiting the brand's website, or forwarding the treat to a friend.

Chick-fil-A’s Cows, who encourage us to eat more chicken (thus less beef) have been herding in traffic to its microsite, doubling visits in a week without promotion. And its Facebook page has just hit 1m fans – up from 20,000 fourteen months ago, when it was still run by a volunteer enthusiast.

ABC.com is using the premiere of the sci-fi remake V to launch ABC Social: Episode Commentary, which will allow Web viewers to comment live to their Facebook friends.


SOCIAL STATS ...

Twenty-something mothers are now the most social and device-dependent demographic, beating college students for the first time evah. Mr Youth’s new survey says Millennial Moms (b.1977-1996) are digital trendsetters (as well as being Mistresses of the Overshare ...)

Twitter users are enthusiastic followers-up of brand mentions. Nearly half of them use search engines to look up products they’ve heard about on the network, compared to 34% of other social network users, according to Performics’ new study.


VIRTUAL AND GAMES ...

In a marked failure of imagination – or a sensible ‘stick with what works’ business plan, we can’t quite decide – Zynga have launched their follow-up to Farmville. It’s about fish, and it’s called Fishville.


THINKING ...

If you’re interested in reaching teens, this is worth a once-over: MediaPost says there are three rules: think global, act local, go social.

And iMedia offers CMOs useful advice here about the tricky matter of brand protection in an online world.

Read more...

eModeration's Social Round-up #11

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

THE HEADLINES ...

THE LOWDOWN ...

IN OTHER NEWS ...

ON FACEBOOK ...

ON TWITTER ...

ON YOUTUBE ...

BRANDS GET SOCIAL ...

ON MOBILE ...

VIRTUAL GAMES ...

THINKING ...

THE HEADLINES ...

HM Customs and Revenue is clearly in a state of some denial about the extent to which their pet subject is a byword for catatonic boredom: they have allowed the Boss Of All The Taxmen to have a go at delivering their new YouTube ad, instead of getting a professional in. If you are currently experiencing the agonies of insomnia, I advise you save this treat till bedtime. The Telegraph serves up a list of HMRC’s competitors for the title ‘Most Boring Video on YouTube (at Number 1: 'watching paint dry') here.

It sounds like the punch-line to an (admittedly low-hilarity) Tech joke, but apparently not: the internet really could run out of addresses within two years, unless more companies migrate to a new naming protocol, warn experts.

Over at BoingBoing, they claim that the top secret global Ante-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement has been leaked – and that it’s blimmin’ bad news for us all. Amongst other things, ISPs might be forced to take proactive responsibility for pulling copyrighted material – which BoingBoing says would sound the death knell for YouTube, and much of Web 2.0.

One of the joys of remote working is being able to do so in your pyjamas (or, in my case, a maroon velvet smoking-jacket and spats.) Now Linden Labs has spoiled it all by launching Second Life Enterprise, where companies can do virtual business behind a firewall. My friends, pyjamas won’t cut it now.

Charles Dunstone, the increasingly vocal chief exec of TalkTalk, has castigated the government for the second time this month – this time over its plans for a broadband tax to fund the rollout of high-speed broadband to non-profitable rural areas. He warns that around 100,000 low-income households will be forced to give up their Internet connections because they will not be able to afford to pay the tax.

THE LOWDOWN ...

Twitter dejection appears to be catching. Following Stephen Fry’s attack of the dismals last weekend, Katie Price (aka Jordan, glamour model extraordinaire) has posted a series of overwrought tweets telling her ‘haters’ to do their worst, and saying that she feels she can do nothing right. Celebs and Twitter – an unhealthy combination, prone to increase self-loathing and thence end in tears?

It would be fair to say that Facebook's recent redesign has not gone down too well, and last week we reported that the group ‘Change Facebook Back to Normal’ has 1.4m rebels and rising. We hadn’t clocked, however, that the proto–revolutionary expertly fomenting this dissent is… a 14 year-old boy called Jonathan Woodlief, from North Carolina. Asked for a quote, the boy’s dad said "He's doing what on Facebook?" There goes the allowance.

IN OTHER NEWS ...

Crime and Security Minister David Hanson has confirmed that a number of suspects have been held this year by the police’s e-crime unit, in connection with cyber attacks on government depts. The minister declined to elaborate, citing national security – but did reveal that the (rather Gilliamesque) ''Office for Cyber Security'' had been established ''to monitor the health of cyber space and co-ordinate incident response''.

Is social networking destined for the same spam-bedevilled fate as email? The big networks need to do some urgent thinking, warns Graham Cluley of security firm Sophos, if they don’t wish users trust in the blossoming marketing platform to be crushed. Sophos found that 1 in 4 companies had been exposed to spam, phishing or malware via sites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace.

MSN, the wallflower at the social media party, is finally getting a makeover from Microsoft. The site’s dramatically-different design is now sleeker and more minimal – and focuses on video and importing key feeds like Twitter and Facebook.

Sharp intakes of breath from cable companies, with the announcement that Apple is having another go at Web TV – this time with an iTunes-based subscription service.

And amid growing concern that some social gaming app developers are scamming both users and advertisers, MySpace boss Owen Van Natta has announced a “zero tolerance for app scams” policy – particularly those which sign users up for a repeat transaction without telling them.

ON FACEBOOK ...

It’s been a sedate few days for Facebook and Twitter – a pleasant change after the giddy whirl of the last few weeks, during which announcements came at breakneck pace from both. As you catch your breath and mop your brow, we bring you The Buzz Bin’s Facebook Fan Page Best Practices, followed by Jason Falls on why Facebook mentions of your brand won’t show up on your monitoring service...

ON TWITTER ...

... and for Afters, we have Mashable’s Twitter Lists How-To, plus a wee peek at Peek, the handheld device for mobile tweeting which launched this week.

ON YOUTUBE ...

Google’s YouTube wants to convince media companies like Disney that it's better to sell advertising space around illegally-uploaded material, than to take it down. According to YouTube their ContentID system can identify material even if it’s been customized by users - they hope that this will reassure copyright-holders, who will then play along.

BRANDS GET SOCIAL ...

Sainsbury's has been slow off the Twitter mark – its @JSainsburysPlc has made 9 posts since its launch in March. Now, though, it’s taking a leaf out of its celeb spokesman Jamie Oliver’s book, and launching @sainsbury’s, through which they hope to inspire shoppers with recipe ideas.

Kodak has launched a branded YouTube channel, ForMom, which encourages mothers to upload content on various topics that will make other mum’s live a bit easier.

US cake brand Mrs. Freshley's has launched a Facebook search to find “the real Mrs. Freshley” – someone who embodies the spirit of the brand which, till now, has not had a fixed persona.

Sara Lee Deli had lassoed some new Twitter followers whilst helping the fight against hunger. On Monday they donated $1 per follower (to a max of $25K) to Share Our Strength, which fights childhood hunger in the US. Followers used hashtags and retweets to help the campaign go viral.

ON MOBILE ...

Finally. After iPhone’s 2 ½ years unchallenged at the top of the market, here comes a competitor to make Apple twitchy. Buzz is getting busy around Motorola’s Droid – here’s a peak at the latest of its super-stylish (if slightly baffling) commercials.

VIRTUAL AND GAMES ...

Linden Lab announced its Q3 figures this week – with user-to-user transactions jumping 54% year-on-year, to $150 million. Total user hours, however, rose by a meagre 13% year-on-year, which Linden ascribed to the introduction of their bot-banning policy. Monthly repeat logins for September 2009 peaked at 750,446 - a 23% increase year-on-year.

Bebo launched its Social Games Experience ecosystem this week. The site section includes developer tools and games, fronted by the Games Homepage, which allows users to access social games apps and communicate around them.

The Chinese authorities have told NetEase, which operates World of Warcraft in China, that the game is in "gross violation" of Chinese regulations and that they must stop new account registration immediately.

Kzero have updated their very useful Brands in Virtual Worlds slideshare – it now includes campaigns from Hush Puppies, NBA, and Skittles amongst many others - and you can give it a quick once over here.

THINKING ...

If, in this light news week, you found yourself with a spare two minutes, you could do much worse than cast your eye over David Armano’s sharp assessment of where social media might lead us in 2010.

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