Social Media Round-up #19

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

In this update: Guns 'n' Snowballs; Microsoft's faux pas ; and Yule 2.0.

This is the last update for 2009 - and all of us at eModeration wish you a very merry holiday. See you in 2010!

THE HEADLINES ...

THE LOWDOWN ...

IN OTHER NEWS ...

ON FACEBOOK ...

ON TWITTER ...

ON GOOGLE ...

ON YOUTUBE ...

BRANDS GET SOCIAL ...

SOCIAL STATS ...

ON MOBILE ...

VIRTUAL AND GAMES ...



THE HEADLINES ...

A coalititon of privacy groups have filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission against Facebook’s new privacy changes, which it alleges constitute ‘unfair and deceptive trade practices’. While Facebook harumph that it’s all a lot of fuss and bother about nothing, commentators mainly agree that the ‘Book’s midstream course-switch has been poorly-explained at best; at worst, occlusive. The real question is, as Peter Kafka points out, whether advertisers will start to mutter. He notes that Facebook’s Beacon programme was only pulled once marketers started asking awkward questions, and wonders whether history might repeat itself.

Over in China, Microsoft found itself in a rather awkward spot when it emerged that the resemblance their new platform Juku bore to start-up micro-blogging service Plurk was so heavy as to be what you and I might call ‘the same’. Embarrassingly for Microsoft, it was discovered that one of their Chinese developers had indeed lifted chunks of Plurk’s code, and the service was suspended indefinitely. The speed and directness with which they dealt with the crisis earned them mild praise – but nevertheless Plurk is ominously said to be considering its legal options.

Twitter found itself under attack last week by the mysteriously-named Iranian Cyber Army, who it appears hijacked the site via weak Twitter email security. The group managed to redirect users to their own site – but Twitterers were left confused as to the hackers’ message. In broken English, they appeared to harbour anti-American feeling - but used the image of a green flag, associated with those who oppose the current regime.

Meanwhile RockYou – the third most successful Facebook app, with more than 55 million monthly active users - suffered a serious hack attack which exposed 32 million customer usernames and passwords to identity theft. The breach is all the more serious because Rock You’s usernames and passwords – which were apparently displayed in plain text – are by default the same as the user’s email username and passwords. Worse still, RockYou appears to have taken a full 10 days to let them know of the risk to their online identities.


THE LOWDOWN ...

On Saturday, Washington DC’s Twitterers organized an impromptu street-corner snowball fight – what could be more seasonal or more jolly? Unfortunately, an undercover cop whose Hummer caught a couple of stray snowballs was not yet fully immersed in the festive spirit, and rather pooped the party by getting out of his vehicle and drawing his weapon on the dismayed funsters – inspiring the instantly viral chant of ‘Don’t bring a gun to a snowball fight!’

A 15-year-old boy, whose parents took away his Xbox system as punishment for an unspecified misdemeanour, called 911 to check that they were within their rights to do so. Police officers who arrived at his house confirmed that his parents are, in fact, the boss of him.

In what will be the last ‘What Were They Thinking?’ of 2009, three police officers have been disciplined after a group of inebriated young women ran amok in their police station. The officers, presumably perfectly capable of dealing with both fast-footed burglars and angry drunks, found themselves unaccountably unable to control the young women, who took photos of themselves in police uniforms posing in, ahem, a provocative manner – shots which later turned up on Facebook.

A producer from Uruguay who uploaded his short film – made for a total of £186 - onto YouTube has now been offered a £18.6m contract to make a Hollywood film. Just three days after the upload, Fede Alvarez’ inbox was bulging with enquiries from Hollywood; but if you are still clutching to your secret heart the fantasy that it could happen to you, were you only to launch your talent on the YouTube-viewing world - watch this, and let the dream go.

Chris Brown has had what is rapidly becoming known (well, in my head) as a Twissy Fit. You may or may not know that the singer recently released a comeback album, part of his attempt to rebuild his image after his violent assault on then-girlfriend Rihanna. In a series of increasingly bitter tweets, Brown claimed that retailers were blackballing his album – causing widespread mockery in the entertainment press, and the hurried deletion of the account in question.

Last week we had the murky ethics of lawyers ‘friending’ judges – this week it’s jurors whose questionable social media activities are in the dock. Jury-members in the mayor of Baltimore’s trial for gift-card embezzlement made contact with one another on Facebook – and now the mayor’s lawyers are examining whether this could constitute grounds for appeal.

If you wish your kiddywinks to enjoy a Christmas which is both magical and modern, upgrade your traditions to Yule 2.0 with Mashable’s list of ways to interact with Santa. There’s even an iPhone app in which the Big Guy tells them that, unless they shape up in the behaviour department, they can expect nowt but a lump of coal in their stocking.


IN OTHER NEWS ...

On Christmas Day, just after lunch, Barnardo’s is launching their hugely innovative Teens' Speech campaign online. For the last 2 months, Barnardo’s has been encouraging teenagers to upload videos in which they express their hopes - and fears – for the future. The project – which eModeration has been delighted to be part of – involved an open invitation to this much-maligned group to speak out on the issues which are important to them across multiple platforms including YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and the Barnardo’s website. The campaign also hopes to draw attention to the fact that what matters to teens should also matter to the rest of us - and it promises to be touching, insightful, and very honest.

Hot on the heels of last week’s revelation that Facebook’s demographic is increasingly Gran-shaped, comes the launch of a new service for granny-bloggers. The NanaBlogs helps Grans to explore social media, and to start their own blogs. The launch coincides with news that the older generation is embracing texting at last - 14% of those aged 45-plus are sending more than 30 text messages every week.

Two regulatory changes this week: first the Advertising Standards Authority’s remit was extended to include digital marketing – bringing brands’ websites under their control for the first time.

Then the Press Complaints Commission’s reach was extended to cover online-only publications – until recently those which had no offline presence were exempt.

An interesting week for online news content: the Guardian launched an iPhone app, which for a one-off fee of £2.39 allows users to customise Guardian content, making it much easier to view on a mobile device. And over the pond, the Huffington Post is offering sponsored tweets to advertisers, which will feature in the live Twitter feed on its site. It’s also offering ad placements within the comments section of its articles.

Meanwhile, a huge GfK Group study has found that only 13% of people in Europe and the USA would be prepared to pay for online content. Worse still, 42% of European and 21% of US consumers didn’t even want their content to be supported by ads - which would leave content-providers without any visible means of support whatsoever.


ON FACEBOOK ...

Aside from the growing privacy brouhaha detailed above, it’s been an uneventful week for the ‘Book.

They announced the heartening results of its recent demographic study, which show that the percentage of Black and Asian users are now approaching those found in the general US population. But the social giant also faced criticism for pointedly refusing to share the wider data-set with the public, which caused some to wonder whether other, less cheerful cultural trends were contained within.

Facebook also launched a developer consultant programme, to help confuzzled brands decide who to work with when building their Facebook presence. The initial roster of 14 companies include Context Optional and Wildfire, who have worked with brands such as Red Bull, Chase, MTV and Disney on social media launches.


ON TWITTER ...

A light news week also for Twitter: they launched in German, which joins Spanish, French and Italian as official Twitter-supported languages.

And, in a possible step towards a full commercial offer, Twitter began testing a new ‘Contributors’ feature. It lets businesses have accounts which can be used by several employees, each of whom would be identified by an individual by-line.

And finally, Twitter announced their top trending topics of the year: the results, which put Michael Jackson and Susan Boyle at number one and two respectively, were entirely predictable - but like too much gin in Auntie Vera’s holiday egg-nog, were no less enjoyable for that.


ON GOOGLE ...

Like Facebook, Google launched URL shorteners this week – and while Google’s is only available through its Toolbar and Feedburner, there’s nothing to say things will stay that way. Which must, as MediaPost points out, make uncomfortable reading for Bit.ly et al, as they watch Google pull out all stops to keep the traffic flowing through to search.

Elsewhere, ZDNet.com suggests that real-time search is not necessarily going to be the money-spinner that Google might be anticipating. They wonder if ‘real-time search moves too fast and is too unpredictable to monetize … In other words, you need a crystal ball to monetize a real-time stream of information.’

But most Google gossip this week concerned rumours of an imminent launch-date for their own-branded smartphone, based on the Android platform. Unlike other phones, this will be sold directly to consumers, who will themselves contract with a wireless network. Some commentators are urging those of you who initially snubbed the iPhone to view this as a second chance to get in at the off. But others warn that, at $500, the Droid is a risky prospect in a market where “all previous attempts to sell directly to the consumer in the U.S. have thus far have been an abject failure." Ho hum.


ON YOUTUBE ...

Following reports last month that YouTube was contemplating iTunes-style rentals for their growing offer of long-form TV content, Reuters reports that the video-sharing site is considering monthly subscriptions along a cable-tv provider model. Mashable posits that, one way or another, we’re looking at some kind of paid-content model for YouTube, since providers seem unwilling to settle for an entirely ad-supported model.

Ah, here she is again - Susan Boyle is top of the pops on YouTube’s most popular vids of the year. Pass the egg nog, Auntie!


BRANDS GET SOCIAL ...

Marshalls and T.J. Maxx have co-sponsored a festive YouTube Caroling Channel. It’s a contest site where singers can pick one of four customized songs to sing – including ‘Deck Yourself Out’ and “We Wish You a Better Way to Christmas Shop” - in hopes of winning a $5,000 gift-card Grand Prize.

Carl's Junior has hired Kim Kardashian to front a new multi-faceted digital campaign, the centrepiece of which is an augmented reality lunch date, in which fans can chat with the star over a virtual Carl's Jr. grilled chicken salad.

NBC is launching a fan-driven campaign to raise the social media profile of its show ‘Chuck’, which revolves around a geek who must save the world after his brain becomes accidentally encoded with government secrets. Fans who ‘share the greatness’ through Facebook and other SocNets have a chance at the Grand Prize of appearing in a Chuck episode.

Samsung is offering 10 teams of bloggers the chance to zip over to the Winter Games in Vancouver this February. The teams will face a selection of challenges, like visiting multiple sites around the city, collecting fan stories and covering the various events - all of which they’ll record on a Samsung Mythic mobile phone.


SOCIAL STATS ...

The number of reviews consulted by online shoppers was up by a mammoth 128% this year, according to a massive survey of UK shoppers carried out on November 30, the date which marks the unofficial start of the online Christmas shopping season.

Meanwhile, social media recommendations from strangers languish at seventh place as a means of discovering online video - verbal word of mouth (41%) and search (32%) are the top two.

Prompt Communications report that Facebook (96%) is now the most popular communication tool, followed by text (93%) and email (91%) – but consumers use text (37%) more frequently, with Facebook and the phone at 28%.

YuMe reports that under-14s have the highest click-through rate on pre-roll video ads, at 3.7%. Their parents - people over 35 – have the next highest at 1.9%, followed by 18 to 24s at 1.5%. More detailed stats on video ads can be found here.

A recent study from SheSpeaks finds that the number of US women who have at least one social networking profile has leapt by nearly half to 86% - up from 58% last year. The number logging in at least once a day is now up to a cracking 72%, from 53% in 2008.

eMarketer says US online ad spend figures will show a 4.6% decrease over last year – a sharp revision of the growth of 4.5% it initially predicted. The good news is that they reckon that the cycle has bottom out – for online advertising at least.


ON MOBILE ...

Smartphones are changing the social landscape, with over 450 million of us accessing the mobile internet in 2009. IDC’s research also predicts that this already huge number is set to double to 900 million by the end of 2013.

And Scandinavian operator TeliaSonera is leading the way, by offering the world’s first ‘4G’ mobile broadband to users in Norway and Sweden. They’ll now benefit from mobile download speeds an astonishing 10 times faster than the rest of us 3G slowcoaches.


VIRTUAL AND GAMES ...

Finally, here’s news that Sony is launching an MMO on PlayStation Home. The game, called Sodium One, is sci-fi themed, and is free-to-play for the first five levels. Thereafter, additional purchasable items will help you continue to advance.


That’s all till 2010, folks!

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eModeration: Farewell to 2009 (A Good Year)

This year has been incredibly exciting one for anyone involved in social media and virtual worlds. We’ve seen interest in this space explode through 2009, as brands start to realise fully the potential of online environments as a way of engaging consumers.

It’s been a great year for eModeration, too. Now operating from two US offices (New York and Los Angeles) and still headquartered in London, we’ve grown enormously. We now have getting towards one hundred staff and between them our amazingly patient and wonderful moderators and community managers offer our services in over fifty languages. It’s developed into a core specialism: for example, one of our projects (for Nokia) requires round-the-clock attention in twenty-four separate languages. You can see our current 24/7 language offering on our website.

We’ve worked on around 100 different projects for some fantastic brands and their agencies. These are from the UK and US predominantly, but we’re also starting to see activity from Asia and South America. Some of the highlights from our work this year include the FA Cup live Twitterfall, ITV’s X Factor and I’m a Celebrity communities; Hyundai’s awesome ‘Genesis’ UGC contest; the RadioShack ‘Netogether’ simulcast linking New York and San Francisco; Sprint’s Now Network Human Clock; NASCAR’s ‘Pit Wall’ , Orange Rock Corps; consultancy for some major new virtual worlds and children’s gaming sites and .. well, here’s a list of just some of the brands and agencies we’ve been working with recently.

Next year’s also shaping up to be a bumper year. We’ve expanded our international presence, particularly in the US and as I said, we’re expanding our portfolio of multilingual projects and will be working with some great new partners too. Another huge growth area for us has been our community management and consultancy work, as brands compete to engage and retain audiences in online environments.

There is much more awareness from brands around the impact of user-generated content on their online reputation, and a real understanding of their responsibility to keep users safe from abuse in those environments. As a member of the IWF and the moderation sub-group of the UK Council for Child Internet Safety, I’m delighted with how seriously big brands and social networks are taking this issue, and at the progress of initiatives to make online environments safe for kids. There’s still a long way to go, but at least there is a growing awareness of the issues, and a lot of great organisations (CEOP and Beatbullying in the UK for example and FOSI in the US) doing good work in this field.

All this adds up to a market that is changing fast, and growing in sophistication. To help brands and agencies navigate this change, we have been producing a series of white papers and guides covering online safety, virtual worlds and other interactive environments for teens and tweens, and the growing trend of user interaction within advertising campaigns. Look out for our new white paper ‘Moderating Social Networks’, due early in the New Year. We’re also blogging (including our now indispensable Social Media Round-Ups), tweeting and speaking at various industry events.

In February, I’ll be at Engage! 2010 New York (where I’ll be speaking on the issue of moderation in virtual worlds and MMOGs for children), so it would be great to hear from anyone who’s planning to attend and who would like to meet up with me there: just email me at tamara@emoderation.com, or follow me on my personal Twitter at @tlittleton.

In the meantime, I hope everyone has a very happy holiday and a peaceful and prosperous New Year. I’ll leave you with the eModeration Christmas Choir e-Card that will be going out to our friends and Clients this year. In case you hadn’t guessed it, I’m the one with the eyebrows (not sure what my designer is trying to tell me?!)...

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Children being Exposed to Explicit Content in Virtual Worlds

The US Federal Trade Commission issued a report last week looking at the incidence of sexually and violently explicit content in online virtual worlds. The comprehensive report, “Virtual Worlds and Kids: Mapping the Risks,” urges operators of virtual worlds to take a number of steps to keep explicit content away from children and teens, and recommends that parents familiarize themselves with the virtual worlds their kids visit.

The report analyzes how easily minors can access explicit content in virtual worlds, and the measures virtual world operators take to prevent minors from viewing it. According to the findings, although little explicit content appeared in child-oriented virtual worlds, a moderate to heavy amount appeared in virtual worlds that are designed for teens and adults.

A good digest of the report can be found on the FTC site, but the following stats give a big cause for concern:

Of the 14 children's virtual worlds studied (by design, open to children under age 13):

• seven contained no explicit content
• six contained a low amount of such content
• one contained a moderate amount

Almost all of the explicit content found in the child-oriented virtual worlds appeared in the form of text posted in chat rooms, on message boards, or in discussion forums. Chat which has not been removed by moderation, has not been prevented by either white or black lists, and has potentially been posted by over 13's thanks to lax age-screening techniques by the worlds concerned.

“It is far too easy for children and young teens to access explicit content in some of these virtual worlds,” said FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz. “The time is ripe for these companies to grow up and implement better practices to protect kids.”

Things get worse in sites aimed at teens. The Commission observed a greater amount of explicit content in worlds geared towards teens or adults. Twelve of the thirteen virtual worlds in this category contained explicit content, with:

• a heavy amount observed in five worlds
• a moderate amount in three worlds
• a low amount in four worlds.

Half the explicit content found in the teen- and adult-oriented virtual worlds was text-based, while the other half appeared as graphics, occasionally with accompanying audio.

The Commission’s report examined the methods virtual world operators use to prevent minors from accessing explicit content, and drew the cnclusion that much of it was simply inadequate.

The Commission makes five recommendations to virtual world operators to reduce the risk of youth exposure to explicit content:

1. Use more effective age-screening mechanisms to prevent children from registering in adult virtual worlds
2. Use or enhance age-segregation techniques to make sure that people interact only with others in their age group
3. Re-examine language filters to ensure that they detect and eliminate messages that violate rules of behavior in virtual worlds
4. Provide more guidance to community enforcers in virtual worlds so they are better able to review and rate virtual world content, report potential underage users, and report any users who appear to be violating rules of behavior
5. Employ a staff of specially trained moderators who are equipped to take swift action against rule violations.

The report recommends that parents and children become better educated about online virtual worlds, and affirms the FTC’s commitment to ensuring that parents have the informationthey need to make informed choices. A consumer alert: 'Virtual Worlds and Kids: Mapping the Risks' is available at www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/consumer/alerts/alt038.shtm.



Photo: Like father like Daughter. Andrew Stawarz (flickr)

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Social Media Round-up #18

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

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

Next update: Friday. See you then!


ON FACEBOOK ...

ON TWITTER ...

BRANDS GET SOCIAL ...

ON YOUTUBE ...

VIRTUAL AND GAMES ...


ON FACEBOOK ...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


ON TWITTER ...

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

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

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


ON YOUTUBE ...

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

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


BRANDS GET SOCIAL ...

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

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

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

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

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

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


VIRTUAL AND GAMES ...

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

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

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

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

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

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


That’s all folks!

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Social Media Round-Up #17

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

In this update: Google Goggles; Tiger Woods traffic; and America's gigantic info-portions.

Next update is on Monday, when we'll cast a beady eye over Facebook, Twitter, and much more - see you then!


THE HEADLINES ...

THE LOWDOWN ...

IN OTHER NEWS ...


THE HEADLINES ...

Blimey – the average American consumes a supersized portion of 34 gigabytes of content a day, according to a University of California study. Americans spend 11.8 hours on various media - often using multiple screens simultaneously – and are served a hefty dollop of 100,000 words every 24 hours.

No surprise, then, that IT experts and environmentalists are increasingly concerned about the rocketing energy spend (and resulting carbon emissions) produced by the explosion of social networking, streaming video, and other band-width heavy applications. Google has made and met its commitment to designing reduced energy consumption into its data centres – but much more needs to be done by the myriad media and info enterprises who inhabit the datasphere, experts say.

Elsewhere, much of this week’s news was Google-shaped: the search giant bestrode the headlines, as their deal with Facebook and Myspace completed a real-time search triumvirate (Twitter signed a while back). 40% of Googlers are looking for the latest news about a given search term – the deal means they’ll receive results from all the big social media sites as well as the usual list of results, effectively turning Google into a breaking news service. How time does fly – it seems only a few short months ago that Eric Schmidt, Google’s CEO, was languidly up-summing Twitter et al as “poor man’s email systems”.

On the thorny subject of online news, Google this week hinted that they’d found a "potential solution" to the ongoing questions over how news media should support themselves. Their ‘Living Stories’ tool claims to organise news as it develops within each story, summarizing and contextualizing it on one page, and highlighting new content to avoid repetition.

Google hopes to make the tools available to news organizations for their own use – but didn’t expand further on how this would satisfy Rupert Murdoch, whose vocal campaign against Google’s ‘theft’ of his news is creating its own headlines on a daily basis. Mr Murdoch, in any case, seems intransigent in the matter of paid content - News Corp this week hooked up with a consortium of magazine publishers to launch a joint online storefront for their titles.

Finally, Google launched Google Goggles – say it slooowly - a visual search tool which lets you search from your mobile by snapping a photo of ... well, anything on this list: landmarks, logos, artwork, products, businesses, contact info, books, barcodes and plain text. The very cool tool (not to be confused with Google Mail Goggles, an equally cool tool which prevents drunken e-mailing) will revolutionise information-gathering on the go.

You’ll notice, however, that Google doesn’t offer people on its list of searchables - following privacy concerns, Google has decided to blur out individual faces, so you can’t now get the skinny on someone by secretly snapping them.

Facebook, on the other hand, was causing Privacy advocates to suck their teeth this week when it emerged that the default setting of its Transition Tool – which asks members to review their privacy settings — is to make users’ updates entirely public. Campaigners fear “a major shift in privacy level for most of Facebook’s users, whether intentionally or inadvertently.”

Good luck with that one, chaps – it appears you may be swimming against the tide. A new study finds that Facebook users will gaily add total strangers as friends – releasing all their personal info in the process. According to CNET, 46 percent of users "blindly accepted" invitations from fake accounts, which had been set up by security firm Sophos for the study.

Got no Twitter love? List of followers languishing in the doldrums? Could be you’re using the wrong words. Social Media Today have done a little poking around with their text mining tools, and discovered that upbeat, ‘social’ words correlate to high follower counts, while negative or sweary words are associated with low popularity. “Thank you” seems to be a winner, as do ‘online’, ‘send’, ‘list’, ‘web’, ‘media’, and ‘join’. Meanwhile words associated with a very low following are : ‘sleep’, ‘hate’, ‘damn’, ‘feeling’, ‘homework’, ‘class’, ‘boring’, ‘stuck’. The only possible conclusion: if you’re stuck at home feeling hatey about doing boring homework for that damn class tomorrow - keep it to yourself.

A viral ad for eco-cleaner company Method has been pulled, following complaints that it appeared to condone sexual assault. The ad is a spoof on the idea of ‘talking bubbles’ - the kind you might see in a traditional bathroom-cleaner ad – but in this case the tone turns sinister, as the bubbles begin catcalling while the householder is forced to take a shower.

THE LOWDOWN ...

“God bless Tiger”, Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz exclaimed with refreshing honesty this week. You just can’t beat a good Sleb Scandal for drumming up traffic – which is why Yahoo is down on its knees thanking Tiger Woods with all its heart: the traffic coming in for Woods-related content has "made" Yahoo's quarter.

Poor old Kerry McCarthy MP, Labour's "new media campaigns spokeswoman", who struggled manfully last week under a deluge of surreal tweets, after comedian Ross Noble urged his Twitter followers to bombard her with silly questions. Most were indeed surreal (“If the Treaty of Lisbon were a cheese, what sort of cheese would it be?”) but the overall verdict was a resounding thumbs up for @KerryMP, for taking it all in excellent humour. Challenged to start a Mexican wave in parliament, for example, she responded: "We do it on the Labour benches when Nick Clegg is speaking. You just don't see it happening."

David Letterman – the famously Twitter-averse talk show host – this week caved in to popular demand and reluctantly entered the wonderful world of 140-character bulletins. Using a ‘Twitter machine’ (which looked remarkably like a laptop) and exuding concentration, he carefully crafted his first tweet: “Do you smell veal and peppers?”. Watch the segment on YouTube here.

Two post-grads at a Japanese university have developed a microwave which streams random YouTube videos to an integrated screen, while you wait for your ready-meal to be zapped - positing a world in which media is a constant in every corner of our lives. Damn, those two minutes spent staring into the gamma rays every night were kind of relaxing, in a hypnotic, brain-frying way.

Oh dear me. There are ‘low sales figures’, then there are “bafflingly low sales figures” – and then, quite a long way beyond that, there are iPhone’s Chinese sales figures. The handset, which is the darling of the West, has been available for a month now in China. They’ve sold precisely five.

Sexual health brand Durex is launching an online community for people to 'celebrate healthy sex lives'. So far, so Scandiwegian – we are all grown-ups here, after all. I confess, though, that the details are making my palms clammy: the site is called Ora!, with material by a company called Sticky Content ...

IN OTHER NEWS ...

Talking of branded communities, a recent study has shown that many major brands need to pull their community-strategy socks up sharpish. Only 36% of their communities had high levels of activity, and most brands tended to separate their communities from the rest of their social media initiatives - only 32% of the 135 communities were integrated with social networks. What’s more, few brands had sufficient systems in place for making use of the insights they gained from communities. Must try harder, I’d say.

To make matters worse, a separate study finds that brands are failing, and rather spectacularly, to take advantage of Twitter’s benefits. Nigh on three-quarters of the 500 Superbrands analysed by New Media Age had no presence whatsoever on the microblogging site.

Seems that teenagers are not, after all, the slaves to social media of popular imagination. At least in Europe, TV is still the main time-suck for teens, averaging out at 10.3 hours per week. Only 40% of them regularly use social networks, at an average of 9.1 hours.

First Google, now Yahoo, is embracing online ad transparency. It's launching an Ad Interest Manager tool which allows users to opt-in to interest-based ads, and to control their level of exposure.

Facebook and other networking sites are considering panic buttons to let children alert administrators if they’re exposed to inappropriate material. The button forms part of a new children’s safety initiative, drawn up by Prof. Tanya Byron, and unveiled by Gordon Brown this week. As part of the same ‘Click Clever, Click Safe’ initiative, lessons in internet safety will become compulsory for English primary schoolchildren from 2011. It’s hoped the slogan 'Zip it, Block it, Flag it' will become a ‘Green Cross Code’ for the age of new media.

Over in the States, meanwhile, LG has launched a novel public service ad which warns teens: Don’t Text Pics of Your Junk. Their Give it a Ponder campaign attempts to persuade teens to think before they text – in an cheeky, though unquestionably discombobulating, manner. Worth a look.

Groans all round in the gaming industry: Alistair Darling did not, after all, offer tax breaks for British developers in his pre-budget report, to the chagrin of those who’ve been pointing out that they bring more to the British economy than the subsidised film industry; and that British talent is increasingly being lost to (subsidised) competitor nations like Canada and South Korea.

It’s the time of year for predictions, and eMarketer's thoughts about what 2010 might hold in store are well worth casting your eye over: amongst other nuggets, they predict that social search will yield new opportunities and formats for advertisers – but will also raise the hackles of privacy campaigners.

That’s all folks!

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CyberBullying Tragedies and Internet Safety: Shaping Youth interviews eModeration (Part 3)

Thanks again to Amy Jussel for publishing Part 3 in her interview series with us on Dec 3rd. We're republishing a part of her blog here, but please see the post in full on Shaping Youth as we've had to omit a lot for space reasons ...

Amy Jussel, Shaping Youth: How does eModeration handle a serious breach of safety, such as grooming, predatory behavior, stalking, and that kind of thing?
Do you have tracking tools that are automated as well as human? Rely on human relationships with forensics/law enforcement people that can trackback and hunt down the internet service provider as a source or what?

eModeration: We have a serious incident escalation procedure for each project, which is drawn up with the client at the start of a contract. We have to be able to reach clients 24/7 in the event of a time-crucial incident such as a bomb or suicide threat – something where we need to be able to report an incident to the police with an IP address as quickly as possible.

All suicide or bomb threats are taken seriously; they have to be, and our moderators are trained as to what to doing terms of taking threads down, reporting to clients and management, sending evidence through to reporting bodies and following up. Not all serious incidents are time-crucial: for example uploading child abuse images, whilst extremely serious, isn’t time crucial in the same way.

We do what is necessary on the site in terms of take down; logging and reporting, then follow it up with the clients and the relevant authorities – in the UK this means the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP) (Amy’s note: also, ck out CEOP’s ThinkUKnow microsite which gives a helpful age/stage media literacy snapshot of basic ‘need to knows’ for teaching safety w/hands-on sources) and the Internet Watch Foundation (who work internationally as well), otherwise the Virtual Global Taskforce or (in the US) CyberTipline…

Obviously, because eModeration is a specialist firm, with workflows and protocol in place, we may be able to provide a greater degree of efficiency than an in-house team, including counseling for any moderators who might feel they need it post-incident…Many of our larger clients are also geared up for this type of escalation and have well-oiled systems too.

Amy Jussel, Shaping Youth: What about the more common ‘imposter profiles’ and security breaches like hacking or cyberbullying with inappropriate content?

eModeration: Breaches of security such as suspected hacking profiles fall into another category, and would be reported through to the client. We log all breaches of terms which result in moderation actions and report through to clients on an agreed basis. If a child was in immediate danger we would deal directly with the police to intervene immediately. Also, we’re a member of the IWF, who are the ones that would deal with UK ISPs in relation to any hosting of child abuse material…so we support CEOP and work with them to further their aims in every way.

Amy Jussel, Shaping Youth: What about ‘language barriers?’ If 21st century connectivity is about global reach and digital multi-culturalism, how can we keep kids safe yet let them explore multi-cultured learning as global citizens?

How do you even begin to ‘moderate’ that? (on Shaping Youth I get a lot of incoming comments and links I can’t moderate on a global scale, so I’ve ratched up my spam filters and taken a stern “when in doubt, delete’ approach). How do you moderate multilingual communities specifically?

eModeration: We provide moderation in over 30 languages, but ‘foreign language’ criteria are different for every client. Some projects are set up to be run in just one language – and hopefully the terms would state this – and we are instructed to delete any UGC not in that language. For others, there is a flexible approach to other languages, and we moderate them on an ad hoc basis. For a lot of recent clients though, we are set up to moderate in several different languages right from the start, providing the same service level for each. All our moderators are native or fluent in English, and we have a fantastic team of bi-lingual moderators some with several.

It’s not all about language though…it’s also about culture and nuance. For example, with some projects, we are using UK native moderators only because they need to understand deeply the social context of the young people posting. For other projects it’s vital we have moderators who are native speakers in Chinese for example rather than just bi-lingual so they can pick up on cultural issues as well.

Amy Jussel, Shaping Youth: So what exactly does a moderator ‘do?’ Can you explain the job of a ‘host’ moderator or highly visible moderator in a virtual world for kids?

eModeration: Well, here I can quote directly from our white paper on How to Encourage Participation and Player Loyalty in Virtual Worlds:

“Today, there are two types of moderators. The first and more traditional type is the silent moderator, who stays in the background blocking offensive material from participants, warning users, defusing confrontation and reacting to abusive or illegal behavior. ..The second and increasingly-popular type is the in-game moderator, who actively participates as a character or avatar on the site, helping other players engage with the various activities within the game. This type of moderator may also act as an in-game host – ie visible to the children – and can be compared to the host of a children’s party: the role is about encouraging children to explore and try new things and have as positive experience as possible, but stay safe and secure while doing so.”

Amy Jussel, Shaping Youth: So what happens if this ‘host’ devolves into a ‘peer’ (I’ve seen this on some sites where there are perceived ‘favorites’ and game play is impacted). Is it better to have moderators visible or invisible…and why?

eModeration: It’s very important for moderators to keep a certain level of detachment from the children and not become their friends, ensuring they remain impartial and act consistently. To this end, moderators should be clearly identifiable as such within the game so that a child can never confuse them with another player…often the moderator becomes an active character or “host” in the game.

Moderators can blend right in to the game itself, letting children know they are there without becoming over-bearing. This also deters children from wanting to chat to the moderator, which could distract them from the game itself. However, as Izzy Neis has observed:
“[Young people's moderations teams] have a tight rope to walk… keep the audience engaged/happy/online, while also maintaining community, individual safety and the feeling of fantastical freedom almost required in virtual sandboxes..” …”Youth want you there when they need you, otherwise, they don’t even want to see you – [you're the] elephant in the corner. A child’s behavior changes when an adult is noticably present – no matter how “good” the child is. Adults become role models, scape goats, wardens, security cameras, mayors, etc – adults become “the man”, and that issues a shift in social control.”

So, in-game moderation isn’t all win, by any means.

(Amy’s note: The avatar/viking visual is one of safety guru Izzy Neis’ many personas, you can see a whole bunch of ‘em on her site to give you a feel for the range and tonality within kids’ worlds in order to ‘blend’…)

Amy Jussel, Shaping Youth: What about automated filters as moderators…how does that all work? Can you explain the science behind “content analysis?” How sophisticated are these ‘engines’ within virtual communities? Are they sort of a ‘first tier strike’ safety measure to weed out crud like a spam filter, or are they more robust?

eModeration: Rather than using simply a blacklist or white list to restrict chat (safe chat dictionaries, etc.) intelligent content analysis engines such as Crisp’s Netmoderator TM not only detect inappropriate content but also the first warning signs of cyberbullying and predatory behavior. For example it can reveal when one correspondent is trying to make direct contact with another or when someone is revealing personal information which may compromise their future safety…

We all know sexual predatory behavior is purposefully subtle and long-term in nature. So the engine analyzes content and relationships over the long term, looks at speech which in isolation contains nothing untoward (and so would not be picked up by a blacklist), but whose patterns correspond to recognized grooming behaviour.

The Netmoderator TM engine then prioritizes these alerts, and can handle low-level code of conduct breaches automatically with the ABM (gagging/silencing, blocking/banning, etc according to client-defined workflows), alerting the moderators to the more serious threats.
This helps us a lot because it leaves the moderation staff freer to focus their energies on more potentially serious offenders – It also means that clients do not need to scale up their moderation resources at the same rate that their membership base grows…

Amy Jussel, Shaping Youth: Thanks for this, there are some amazing new resources for keeping kids safe…Appreciate your taking the time to explain the ‘back end’ behind the curtain, Tamara…

eModeration: ... and thank you Amy!

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MTV launches “a thin line” to empower youth to stop spread of digital abuse

Cyberbullying, sexting, textual harassment ... all forms of ‘digital abuse’: a definition used by MTV for their new youth education campaign. eModeration is really excited to be working on this project with our client MTV , who last week unveiled “A THIN LINE,” a new multi-year initiative to empower America’s youth to identify, respond to and stop the spread of digital abuse.

According to a new study released by MTV and The Associated Press, exploring the full scope of digital abuse, 50 percent of 14 – 24 year olds have been the target of some form of digital abuse, and 30 percent have sent or received nude photos of other young people on their cell phones or online. 51% say they have thought about the idea that things they post online could come back to hurt them; and only 25% have given at least some thought to the idea that what they post could get them in trouble with the police and 28% in trouble at school. Full survey findings are available at research.ATHINLINE.org.

MTV’s “A THIN LINE” will address digital abuse issues through a series of on-air, online and real world initiatives including integration in MTV’s top-rated programming, an MTV News special focused on Sexting, True Life: I have Digital Drama, thought-provoking PSAs, innovative online and mobile tools and the “Redraw the Line Challenge” -- which calls on young people to submit innovative digital antidotes to digital abuse. Today, MTV also launched www.ATHINLINE.org where young people can access information, resources and support on issues related to digital abuse. From the website’s research page:

“The campaign is built on the understanding that there's a "thin line" between what may begin as a harmless joke and something that could end up having a serious impact on you or someone else. We know no generation has ever had to deal with this, so we want to partner with you to help figure it out. On-air, online and on your cell, we hope to spark a conversation and deliver information that helps you draw your own digital line.”

The microsite features facts, links, videos, a quiz, and UGC (which we’ll be moderating) with forums and the Redraw the Line Challenge, a contest that asks young people to come up with a digital antidote to digital abuse — from new mobile or Web-based services to social games or viral content. The winning individual or team will receive a $10,000 prize and a chance to work with MTV to see their idea come to life. Entries are due by February 19, 2010.

MTV’s partners on “A THIN LINE” include a coalition of the foremost authorities on all facets of digital abuse, including Facebook, MySpace, The Family Violence Prevention Fund, WiredSafety, Anti-Defamation League, Blue Shield of California Foundation, loveisrespect.org, The National Teen Dating Abuse Helpline, National Network to End Domestic Violence, The Liz Claiborne Inc., DoSomething.org, Break the Cycle, Ruder Finn, Teenangels and PBS’ FRONTLINE. “A THIN LINE” kicked off on December 3rd in tandem with Liz Claiborne Inc.’s It’s Time To Talk Day, an annual day dedicated to ensuring that Americans speak-up and raise national attention around domestic violence including teen dating violence and intimate partner abuse.

"The safety of our users is paramount to us, and only by working together can we seek to educate young people about the dangers of digital abuse and
cyberbullying,” said Tim Sparapani, Director of Public Policy at Facebook. “We
applaud and support MTV for all of the work it has done to launch ‘A Thin Line,’
and are pleased to be a part of this important initiative which both empowers
and educates.”

For more information on MTV’s “A THIN LINE” campaign, or details on how to get involved, please visit AThinLine.org or head to the campaign’s Facebook, MySpace or Twitter pages.

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"Click Clever, Click Safe": internet safety lessons for UK Primary Schools

I just got my first (long-awaited) letter from the teenage girl whose education I sponsor in Uganda. Judging from the excellent English and beautiful handwriting, my money is being put to good use. But I was really alarmed that she included both her email address and her Yahoo password. Clearly internet safety is not on the curriculum in that part of Africa.

Which made the news today that lessons in using the internet safely are set to become a compulsory part of the curriculum for primary schoolchildren in England from 2011 all the more welcome.

The lessons are one element of a new government strategy being unveiled called "Click Clever, Click Safe". Children will also be encouraged to follow an online "Green Cross Code" and block and report inappropriate content. The "Zip it, Block it, Flag it" campaign is intended for use by schools, retailers and social networks, although it will be up to individual sites to choose how they use it. The campaign intends to encourage children to not give out personal information on the web, block unwanted messages on social networks and report any inappropriate behaviour to the appropriate bodies, which may include the website, teachers or even police.

Currently only secondary school pupils are taught about internet safety. Under the new proposals, online safety would be taught to all pupils from the age of five in England as part of their personal, social, health and economic education (PSHE), which includes drug awareness, bullying, sex education, healthy living and personal finance.

It is very true that more and more is being squeezed into an already over-crowded curriculum. This news therefore can’t be wholly good for over-stretched teachers, who it seems are being given responsibility for more and more of a child’s development.

However, these youngsters are already having lessons in IT skills, and the internet (and its dangers) will inevitably be a major part of their lives. I would argue that internet safety should be an integral part of those IT lessons, and furthermore that clear safety information is sent home in school bags (in translation where necessary) so that we can educate the parents. Reaching the parents of primary age children – many of whom will not be internet-savvy - is the hard part, but it is really where the government needs to focus its educational message in order to have the work of schools reinforced.

New research published today shows that 18 per cent of young people said they had come across harmful or inappropriate content online, with 33 per cent of children saying their parents don’t really know what they do on the internet. Soon parents will be able to access a one-stop shop website for internet safety advice hosted by the Child Exploitation and Online Protection centre (CEOP) – but first they have to know about it, and know why they need to educate themselves.

The "Click Clever, Click Safe" measures have been drawn up by the UK Council on Child Internet Safety (UKCCIS), a body set up following the Tanya Byron report, comprising 140 organisations, working to update a self-regulatory code of conduct governing online behaviour. eModeration’s CEO Tamara Littleton is on the subcommittee overseeing the revision of the Home Office moderation guidelines. It holds its first annual summit in London today and more information about its work can be found here. You can also follow today’s events via the @DcsfGovUk Twitter feed and you will also be able to see videos on YouTube and photos on Flickr post-event.

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Social Media Round-up #16

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

In this update: Facebook's 10-cent fans; Black Friday brands; and The Twoddler.

Next update: Friday. See you then!


ON FACEBOOK ...

ON TWITTER ...

BRANDS GET SOCIAL ...

ON GOOGLE ...

ON YOUTUBE ...

ON MOBILE ...

VIRTUAL AND GAMES ...


ON FACEBOOK ...


At the same time that Mark Zuckerberg announced a change to Facebook’s privacy options last week, he also let slip that that Facebook had tipped 350 million on the user scale.

Crikey. In August 2008 – that’s a mere 15 months ago – the ‘Book had 100 million users. That’s some rapid weight gain, sister (and in fact means that Facebook ranks just behind China and India in the ‘if-a-social-network-were-a-country’ game that I like to play with my little darlings on cold winter’s evenings like these).

The 'Inside Facebook' guys looked, well, inside Facebook this week, and in an all-round-enlightening analysis revealed that content-sharing has taken a massive leap, from 1 billion items per week, to 2 billion in September - and now 3.5 billion per week as of right now. But despite overall growth, status updates appear to be slowing down – it’s not clear whether or not this is due to Facebook’s recent redesign, or the cause of it.

The changeover – which split the feed into ‘News’, a rundown of the ‘most interesting’ stories of the day, and ‘Live’, which shows what’s going on at the time the user is logged in - is still inspiring disgruntlement. The 'CHANGE FACEBOOK BACK TO NORMAL!!' Facebook Group is now up to 1.2 million members.

They sound like quite a shouty lot, don’t they? Bagsy not me to tell them that there are more Facebook homepage changes on the way. Seems as though search might be the focus in this redesign – Mashable’s analysis breaks explains all.

Unsurprisingly, Facebook is not short of secret admirers – both Yahoo and Myspace have been trying to grab a little reflected glory this week, with the former announcing major Facebook integration, and the latter appearing to head the same way – beginning with allowing its users to use Facebook Connect to log in.

Ah, Synchronicity: hot on the heels of the news that 77% of Facebook Fan Pages have fewer than a 100 fans, comes word from a company called Viralee. It's the first to come out of the shadows and publicly announce that it's selling Facebook Fans for 10 cents a pop - and has sold over a million in the last week alone, as brands rush to boost their stats.

Which will all be as chaff in the wind to this lot: Yes it’s the cream of the crop, the tip of the top … The Big Money Facebook 50 lists the brands who are currently getting the best out of Facebook. The scores are a combo of fan numbers, page growth, fan engagement and creativity.

Psst! If your brand isn’t quite there yet, you might like to peruse these handy guides:

Inside Facebook: Top 9 Facebook Page Management Tools
Techipedia: How to Create the Perfect Facebook Fan Page
and iMediaConnection’s Upcoming Facebook Changes: 7 Things Brands Need To Know



ON TWITTER ...

Not a great beginning for the week: Twitter Lists (the shiny new and much-touted feature for organizing your Twitter feed) were taken out of action last week, as Twitter scrambled to work out what, precisely, was causing the site to crash. As VentureBeat succinctly put it: $155 million in venture capital later, and the site still goes down?

Then, following the announcement that Facebook had passed the 350m milestone, a UK Facebook exec pointed out witheringly that there are fewer active users on the whole of Twitter than there are on Facebook app Farmville. Ouch.

Hmm. It’s true there’s no denying that the stats are sliding for the microblogging site – new Nielsen data finds that Twitter traffic dropped a galumphing 27.8% in October, and comScore reveals that uniques are down by 8.1%.

But Twitter may not yet be quaking in their birdy-boots: the figures don’t include those who’ve migrated to mobile-friendly third party apps: 43% of total users, according to Crowd Science.

And of course Twitter can also console itself with the fact that, according to The Global Language Monitor, it is the most popular word in the whole English language - is that even possible?

Finally – and I’m unsure whether this is a great leap forward towards a seamless human/tech interface, or an indication of just how close we are to atomisation, alienation, and despair – allow me to introduce Twoddler, ‘The Baby Toy That Twitters’. 



ON GOOGLE ...

Earlier this week, Google appeared to cave in to News Corp’s demands that it stop providing access to paywalled websites. But Rupert Murdoch appeared to have gone a step too far when he accused them of content ‘theft’ across the board. “It's wrong to paint us as stealing content. We are like a virtual newsagent," a mildly-peeved director of Google UK Matt Brittin told a Commons Select Committee.


ON YOUTUBE ...

In what sounds suspiciously like one of those nails in trad TV’s coffin that people are always on about these days, rumours are flying that YouTube might be about to offer streaming TV shows just one day after they first air – and for an eminently affordable $1.99.

Meanwhile, over in the UK, Five has inked a deal to hand over more than 3,000 hours of programming to YouTube, who will stream them on-demand and free of charge. The deal includes Neighbours, Home And Away, The Hotel Inspector and The Gadget Show – some of Five’s most popular content.

And the video-sharing site is sharpening its offer to marketers, too – now advertisers can control where their ads appear, right down to choosing the individual video (useful if you know your target audience is also passionate about, say, Susan Boyle pre-makeover). If that’s a little too specific, keywords, demographics, and interest-based categories are also available.


BRANDS GET SOCIAL ...

The Alternative Queen's Speech: children’s charity Barnado’s is to broadcast a 'Teens' Speech' on Christmas Day - exclusively on MySpace (disclosure: moderated by eModeration). The user-generated stream features young people talking about the issues which matter to them most. Barnardo's will also encourage viewers to lobby their MPs, asking for vulnerable children to be remembered in each party's election manifesto.

Goretex, the outdoorsy all-weather brand, launched a new online community this week, called MyExperienceMore.com. The site offers hardy types a forum to communicate with one another, sharing their outdoor experiences via photos, videos and message boards.

Youth clothing brand Boy Meets Girl has teamed with virtual world Fashion Fantasy Game, offering members a free, virtual Boy Meets Girl “Coco Hoodie” to wear. The offer coincides with the mail-out of Bloomingdale’s holiday catalogue, which features the real-life version for $78.

Last week Fox teamed up with MTV.com and Facebook to bring a live webcast roundtable discussion of James Cameron’s Avatar – featuring the director and stars - with fans submitting their own questions via the official Avatar Facebook Page.

Britvic's spring water brand Drench revealed its hamster jazz viral online, before its official TV launch on Saturday. The hamster-dudes were apparently chosen after a nationwide search.

Sony Ericsson has launched the next phase of its “Spark Something” space-hopper campaign - users ‘inflate’ real-life space hoppers via Twitter, and watch the event unfold via a live video feed.


Ikea scored dix points with their Facebook photos of their new Malmo showroom - fans were then encouraged to go into the photos and tag products with their own names, for a chance at winning the item.

Clothing brand Esprit has launched an interactive installation in its flagship Regent Street store. A fairy godmother calls to customers from a mirror, which takes a photograph of the customer and superimposes it on a mannequin. Customers can then dress themselves in various virtual outfits and send images to Facebook and to a mobile campaign site.

Toys R Us whipped up Black Friday Frenzy by giving its Facebook fans a full preview of discounts, and exclusive access to “Mystery Deals” – making it the fastest growing brand on the social network.

And here’s Mashable’s look at how 5 other brands approached Black Friday (the traditional kick-off for holiday-season spending in the States) on Facebook - including Best Buy and Sears.

ON MOBILE ...

London Mayor Boris Johnson wants mobile companies to come up with platforms to let Olympic visitors to watch 3D video clips of the Games on their handsets. The blonde bombshell also wants micropayments via handsets – handy for paying for snacks and merchandise - to be ready in time for the Olympics.



SOCIAL STATS ...

Mobile and the internet are now essentials not extras, as far as we Brits are concerned. We spend nearly 3 days online per month, with another 7 hours spent on mobiles, and many of us would struggle to organise life without them, according to moneysupermarket.com.

Women like their networks to be truly social - Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and Bebo have a user base that’s 50%+ female. Whereas men like to save, organize and collect - networks like Reddit and Digg attract more male users.


UNDER THE GAVEL ...

Facebook’s Beacon nightmare grinds to a bitter close: there's a settlement on the table to the class-action suit, which was brought by users outraged at misuse of their personal data. But claimants will not be receiving personal compensation – Facebook will instead use $9.5 million to establish a non-profit organization to fund online privacy-related projects.

Talking of legal minefields - here’s a very generous white paper from law firm Reed Smith which takes brands through the possible pitfalls of using social networks - including those that might arise when running competitions, providing customer services, and making use of user-generated content.

A British man has been cautioned after he hacked the login details for users of RuneScape, and then stole their virtual characters and goods. The crime is on the rise globally - according to the Telegraph, a Chinese player of the online game Legends of Mir 3 was killed four years ago, after he sold a dragon sabre which didn’t belong to him.


VIRTUAL AND GAMES ...

Moshi Monsters, the free-to-play online pet-monster game has passed the golden 10 million registered player milestone, owners Mind Candy announced last week. CEO Michael Smith is thinking about intriguing new formats - including a print-on-demand service which would turn kids’ monsters into plush toys or trading cards – which in turn would connect back into the game.

And if that’s got you thinking, you’ll want to know more about virtual worlds for Kids, Tweens and Teens. Luckily Kzero have just produced this illuminating paper which breaks down three good reasons why branded worlds are set to be major growth areas in 2010.

Taking as their starting point teen virtual world IMVU’s $2m monthly sales, Kzero have also put some thought into the subject of virtual goods. With estimates putting Facebook’s virtual goods earnings at $40m, it’s worth a read.

Facebook, by the way, is currently weighing up how to monetize the vast rivers of virtual currency sloshing around third-party apps. They already have their own official currency – credits – but developers aren’t required to use them – yet.

50% of US women play online games - though they don’t self-identify as gamers – and 41% of them have bought virtual currency, with most avoiding offers for points. Keeping it in the family, nearly 60 million of their kids are gamers - with kids as young as 2 included in the stats. 12 to 14s rack up the most time online – an average of 10.6 hours weekly – which drops off between 15 and 17, the point at which stiffer competition for time and pocket-money kicks in.

FishVille continues its piscine journey to the top of the charts, with upwards of 20 million monthly active users and weekly growth of 4.68 million. It’s now the 8th largest app on Facebook - snapping at the heels of CrowdStar’s Happy Aquarium, which led the way in fish-based entertainment.

And flushed with success, Zynga have launched PetVille (if a theme ain’t broke…). So just what is it with social gaming? Here, PaidContent examine the reasons for the genre’s vertical trajectory over the last year - and for the relative success of startups over established developers. They cite three key factors: development, distribution and discovery.



That’s all folks!

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