Social Media Round-up #20

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: The end of privacy, 'Avatar' melancholy, and a spot of Bing bother.

Happy New Year!

THE HEADLINES ...

THE LOWDOWN ...

IN OTHER NEWS ...



THE HEADLINES ...

In response to the catastrophic Haiti earthquake, Google has pledged $1 million to on-the-ground agencies – as well as encouraging others to donate by providing a satellite view of the devastation through Google Earth, and hosting video from Haiti on YouTube. The Mac and iPhone development community have also got together to donate a day’s worth of sales to Haitian aid organizations, so do get app-ing.

Baidu – the search engine which beats Google into a cocked hat in China – became the latest victim of the mysterious Iranian Cyber Army this week. The hacker group, whose previous attack saw Twitter taken offline for an hour in December, managed to effect a denial of service (DOS) assault on the search giant. Traffic was redirected to a message from the ICA – a considerable coup for the hackers.

This was also the week in which Google announced that it will no longer censor search results on its Chinese site, as China’s government demands. The turnaround is Google’s response to a spate of complex cyber-attacks, which it believes were attempts to gather information on Chinese human rights activists – plus a slew of increasingly draconian attempts to curtail its citizens’ free speech on the Net.

China has responded implacably to Google’s about-turn. Doing business in China, they say, means working within the law – and Chinese law means censorship. Commentators believe that Google’s stand is ultimately unlikely to be tolerated by the regime – and entirely predictably, news of Google’s stand has itself been heavily censored by the Chinese authorities.

Elsewhere, Google has snagged a patent which could allow it to carry real-time ads on buildings and billboards in Street View. Cunning new software recognises poster sites – and can spritz them up with new ads once the old ones are past their sell-by date.

Tory leader David Cameron this week warned marketers that they faced new legislation to prevent “premature sexualisation" and "excessive commercialisation", unless they pulled their socks up in the way they engage with children. Kids, he said, “are being sold the idea that the path to happiness lies through excessive consumption”. But a leading academic warned that digital marketing for children is, in fact, “almost impossible” to police.

Meanwhile Gordon Brown announced a £300m campaign which will see 270,000 low-income families given free computers and broadband access. The Home Access project will attempt to narrow the digital divide by ensuring young people can access the net at home, to support their education.

Facebook’s 25-year-old founder Mark Zuckerberg this week suggested that society has undergone such a dramatic transformation over the last half-decade that privacy is no longer a social norm. His words coincided with a warning from UK academics, that people who post intimate details about their lives are destroying the legal concept of ‘a reasonable expectation of privacy’, effectively reducing the rights of us all.

Meanwhile, Facebook have instituted the Facebook Community Council – an app which attempts to deal with the thorny issue of offensive content and user complaints. The app allows council members – drawn from the Facebook community – to flag content with a variety of descriptions, including Nudity, Drugs, Attacking, and Violence. If a particular item attracts several identical tags, Facebook will swing into action, often in the form of a takedown.

Google has attracted the beady and unblinking eye of the estate of Philip K Dick, the author whose book “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” was brought to the screen as “Bladerunner”. The estate alleges that the name of Google’s latest phone is suspiciously close to that of Dick’s Nexus-6 cyborgs, the robot humanoids which feature in his dystopia. The search giant shrugs off the claim - but Dick’s daughter says that, in the context of the name of Google’s ‘Android’ operating system, the allusion is clear.

Hewlett Packard faced public outrage when evidence emerged which appeared to show that its facial recognition software can only recognise white faces. The flaw came to light when two friends – Desi, who’s black, and Wanda, who’s white – uploaded to YouTube a video which seemed to show the software ignoring Desi’s face – whilst working just perfectly for Wanda. “Hewlett-Packard computers are racist”, concluded Desi – sending HP leaping into action with swift assurances that they were immediately investigating the glitch.


THE LOWDOWN ...

For all those of you who begin this brave new decade feeling mildly resentful about your working environment – perhaps the coffee is weak, or your manager a tad demanding - I present this little snippet, which purports to feature an ex-Microsoft employee recounting his sacking by CEO Steve Ballmer for not saying ‘Bing!’ in a sufficiently perky tone. I faithfully promise you will feel infinitely better after viewing it (strong language alert!)

Fans of virtual-world mega-grosser 'Avatar' are suffering from a particularly postmodern tristesse. CNN reports that internet-users are flocking to dedicated online forums to express their dismay, in the company of similarly-suffering cineastes, at the fact that their ‘real’ online lives aren't as thrilling as the film suggest they should be.

If you are similarly inclined, with a natural inclination towards doom and grump, best avoid this new iPhone app: it tells you, categorically and undeniably, each time someone de-friends you on Facebook. No good will come of it, you mark my words.

Ah, here is the first ‘What Were They Thinking?'® of 2010! The Outside Advertising Association and ad agency (Beta) were last week forced to pull a controversial poster campaign, whose slogan was “Career women make bad mothers”. The campaign hoped to prove that outdoor ads could drive consumers online – but backfired after infuriated mothers on parenting site Mumsnet launched a co-ordinated campaign against it. The ads were withdrawn – but not before ad company Transport Media announced they were pulling their business from the OAA, deploring the “infuriatingly sexist” campaign.

The long arm of the law has finally tapped the shoulder of a British prison escapee who has been taunting the police via Facebook for the best part of four months. The man had absconded from an open prison, and posted regular updates – on the steak he was eating, and his plans for New Year, for example – garnering a whopping 40,000 fans in the process.

The life of a social-media-roundup writer is indeed a jaded one, and it’s rare to encounter a story which does more than raise a weary eye-brow. But this little snippet had me peering over my pince-nez in shock: according to Mashable, the adventurous chap whose ‘glasses’ tattoo session went viral was being sponsored by RayBan.

Research from the frankly-named DivorceOnline finds that social networking sites like Facebook and Bebo are increasingly figuring in marital breakdown, according to the Telegraph. Lawyers claim that the huge popularity of SocNets is tempting users to be unfaithful – and also providing suspicious spouses with an easily-sleuthable record of flirting – or worse. One firm suggest that almost one in five clients cited Facebook in their petition.

If, as predicted, the nation is again snowed in next week, you’ll need something to occupy your time. Here, then, are instructions for connecting a laser tripwire to a webcam, so that it can tweet pictures of any burglars that should come calling. Now I like to think that I’m a doughty friend to fearless experiment, but I fear a laser-tripwire-tweeting-burglar-alarm-thingy is an innovation without which I might learn to live.


IN OTHER NEWS ...

The BBC is beginning the hack-back of its websites a year earlier than previously announced by Director General Mark Thompson. It currently produces ‘millions’ of pages – many of which go well beyond its core output – and websites relating to entertainment, music and celebrities could all face big cuts.

France continues its quest to regulate the internet, with a new tax which would levy a charge on internet companies whenever a French user clicked on an ad. They wish to put a stop to what they call "enrichment without any limit or compensation" - Google alone has annual French revenues of £720 million.

In what can only be seen as the throwing-down of a giant paywall gauntlet, News International has told news-aggregator NewsNow.co.uk that it may no longer link to any Times Online content, and has inserted a robots.txt file to prevent search engines crawling its pages. The news comes hot on the heels of the announcement that FT.com subscription revenues look set to overtake ad income this year. Meanwhile, Google announced that content from Associated Press – among the most boisterous of news-aggregation critics - will no longer be available on its news platform. Interesting times indeed.

Guerilla internet site 4chan last week threatened to bombard YouTube with pornography, in response to the removal of the cultishly popular account of Lukeywes1234. The eight-year-old regularly uploaded his own version of Super Mario Bros and Star Wars, as well as intriguing clips of himself fighting with tinfoil on his head while being directed by his grandmother. His - erm - colourful and frank language was one element of his wide appeal, and he eventually attracted 15,000 subscribers, including many 4chan users. Last May, 4chan started a similar campaign after YouTube initiated a mass deletion of illegal music.

A new survey by Robert Half Technology finds that businesses still think of social networks as a productivity-slashing time-suck - and that they’re as worried as ever that employees will leak sensitive info. The net result is that 54 percent of them are blocking access to all social networks.

The State of Facebook for Business report by Hubspot shows that brand- and product-oriented pages represent 39% of all Facebook pages – the largest single category, by some margin.

AdNectar, which markets social media campaigns, this week announced that it’s served 2 billion virtual goods from its platform – including 1 million Malibu Rum branded drinks in less than 2 weeks, and a million Nestle Toll House cookies during the brand’s “Bake Some Love” campaign.

But for a real sense of the extent to which virtual goods and currency have become part of the digital landscape, look no further than last week’s news that a player of the MMORPG Entropia has dropped 330,000 real-life dollars purchasing a (virtual) in-game space station called the Crystal Palace. The investor – who met his real-life partner whilst in-world – hopes to recoup the cash (which could certainly buy him a bijoux dwelling in most global metropoles) by taxing each virtual transaction that takes place on his turf. Commentators wryly point out that the economy of Entropia is no more or less virtual than the one we’re all worrying about on earth.

Finally, The Observer predicts that the 2010 election will be won - and
lost - in social media. It points out that during the last election in 2005, Facebook was in its infancy, while Twitter had yet to twinkle in founder Biz Stone’s eye. Political bloggers, so influential today, were still below the radar - and the internet barely figured as a tool in campaigners’ armoury. This election will mark a turning point – for while the issues remain largely the same, the means by which all parties engage the public will be barely recognizable.


That's all folks!