Social Media Roundup #24

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 iPad has landed; socialized politics; and Tweeting padres.

THE HEADLINES ...

THE LOWDOWN ...

IN OTHER NEWS ...


THE HEADLINES ...

The iPad has landed.

The world had awaited its arrival with the kind of feverish longing usually observed in millinarial cults – and with so many articles and posts that it seemed at one point that the web might get used up. So, in an attempt to tell you all you need to know without contributing to the general frenzy of wordage, here is a concise guide to some further reading on the subject of the iPad.

Immediately following The Unveiling, Mashable offered the full skinny on the specs to help us decide whether Apple’s little darling was, as Mr Jobs suggests, "a magical and revolutionary device at an unbelievable price".

Five hours after its first mention, the word iPad had been Tweeted more than 100,000 times – as bloggers frantically posted their up-sums of the launch.

The Guardian, for example, wondered if the iPad could save newspapers, replace your TV, or run a Hoover round quickly before tackling the washing-up (I may be exaggerating.)

Then – inevitable after the vast user-generated hype – came the backlash. The world realised that the iPad was fundamentally an iPod Touch with a big screen, lacking the magical properties which they had anticipated. No 3D interface, no OLED screen or Flash support – nor even a webcam, microphone or USB port.

Some speculated that Apple’s real target was gaming – noting that dozens of top-drawer games could now be downloaded from the App Store for a fraction of store-bought ones. But Massively pointed out that, without multi-tasking or Flash, the iPad was never going to be a game-changer for gamers.

Meanwhile, anxious marketers and publishers huddled to ponder the iPad’s impact on advertising – with some speculating that it might smash the internet as we know it, by splintering it into dozens of fractured platforms.

Okay, I think that covers it. And breathe.

Despite what you may have read, some other events occurred this week.

YouTube announced that it would live stream Barack Obama’s State of the Union address - and offered citizens the opportunity to question the Prez through a Google Moderator series. The company said it showed how “platforms like YouTube can be used to increase transparency in government and access to world leaders."

Meanwhile - if it wasn’t already clear that social media is changing the business of politics hour by hour – the White House’s Facebook page was stormed by protesters, following a call by activist site “Rethink Afghanistan” to post messages which asked the President “to provide a concrete exit strategy for our troops in Afghanistan” in his address.

Over the pond, the election campaign got off to a nicely social start, when the Labour Party announced the launch of its first iPhone app – a mobile version of the party’s virtual database featuring everything that local activists need, searchable by postcode. On a roll, they also launched a crowdsourcing campaign, which flips Obama’s presidential slogan ‘Change you can believe in’ into ‘The Change We See’- a call for supportive citizens to upload their snaps of new hospitals and schools built since Labour came to power in 1997.

Meanwhile TalkTalk’s talk is fightin' talk: its CEO Charles Dunstone said that he would refuse to disconnect, or even admonish, customers suspected of illegal file-sharing as demanded by the Digital Economy Bill – even if the Bill passed into law. Dunstone, who’s managed to gather 32,000 signatures opposing the measures, said he would fight the government in court if necessary.


THE LOWDOWN ...

Speaking of politics (as we were) Westminster insiders are glued to the Tweets of Sally Bercow – wife of the Speaker of the House of Commons and prospective Labour candidate. She began tweeting two weeks ago, and is already engendering apoplexy amongst parliamentary traditionalists with her posts about ‘Mr B’s’ politics, practical uses for Hansard (kids’ step-stool) and the mouse in their Commons apartment.

And, if further proof were needed that social media spreads political gaffery like wildfire, US political journalist Chris Matthews' painful attempt at a compliment to President Obama – “I forgot he was black tonight for an hour” – became the Twitter backlash du jour, with YouTube hits aplenty.

Elsewhere, the Pope has called upon priests to embrace social media in order to increase their congregations – though he warns that “priests present in the world of digital communications should be less notable for their media savvy than for their priestly heart.” If this news brings to mind the potential plot of a lost episode of Father Ted, then shame on you.

Sticking with immaculate conceptions and suchlike for a moment – The Sun’s headline 'Woman Uses iPhone App to Get Pregnant' was a corker. Turns out, though, that the app in question was an ovulation predictor.

If you haven’t yet witnessed a true viral sensation, be sure to follow @SleepTalkinMan, the Twitter presence of husband and wife bloggers Karen and Adam Slavick-Lennard, whose updates consist of the extraordinary somniloquies of the latter. By day, mild-mannered techie. By night, absurdist Mr Hyde. Example: "You can't be a pirate if you don't have a beard. I said so. MY boat, MY rules."


IN OTHER NEWS ...

Google is taking Social Search out of Labs and rolling it out as a beta for English Google.com users. The search giant’s real-time effort allows users to pull up any of their friends’ photos and updates which happen to be relevant to their search query.

The online ad industry has agreed on an icon to tell web users that their behavioural data is targeting ads at them. The industry – keen to avoid federal regulation – will also use phrases like "Why did I get this ad?" or "Interest based ads", which polled well in a research study by the Future of Privacy Forum.

Elsewhere, a new study from Dynamic Logic reports that users find Facebook ads no more or less irritating that any other form of online ad. Not quite a wholehearted endorsement, then - still, could be worse.

Pepsi must be smarting. Having opted out of Superbowl TV ads this year, choosing instead to put a chunk of its budget into social, they’ve left the pitch free for Coke to demonstrate that the two forms can easily be combined. Coke have cleverly incorporated social into their Superbowl campaign – offering sneak peaks of one of the two Superbowl ads to Facebook fans who send a Coke-branded virtual gift to their friends.

More than a third of US, UK and Aussie Facebook users have donated to the Haiti relief efforts in the 2 weeks following the disaster, a joint survey conducted by Facebook and The Nielsen Company reports.

Adidas is tapping augmented reality for its latest promotion – rolling out a range of shoes which embed AR code directly into the tongue of the trainer. Shoe-owners hold their footwear in front of a webcam, and can then access an area on Adidas' website which offers interactive games – all controlled by the shoe itself. Crikey.

Yikes. Marks & Spencer has pulled alcohol ads which appeared on pre-teen gaming site GirlGames1, after a five-year-old user’s mother had been searching for champagne on the M&S website.

Two weeks after Microsoft admitted that Internet Explorer had been the entry point for the Google-aimed Chinese cyber-attacks, a company called Core Security Technologies disclose that they’ve uncovered another series of weak security links in the browser. Microsoft say they see no current risk to users, but have launched a full investigation.

Digg is being given a full makeover – with the revamped site becoming a hub for real-time info, and an added emphasis on what friends and influencers within a user's wider social circle are consuming.

Finally – ternz out th@ txtng iz gud 4 tweens. Coventry University psychologists found that the more textisms a child used, the greater their powers of verbal reasoning.



That’s all folks!