Social Media Round-up #27

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: Now Facebook Is Six; ITN's German Celeb-Channel; and YouTube's rental predicament.


ON FACEBOOK ...

ON TWITTER ...

ON YOUTUBE ...

BRANDS GET SOCIAL ...

VIRTUAL AND GAMES ...

THINKING ...


ON FACEBOOK ...


As we briefly noted on Friday, it was Facebook’s 6th Birthday last week – and (after the piñata and the scary clown) it emerged that the little tike had scooted past the 400-million-user mark with barely a grazed knee.

And hasn't he grown! The 'Book now rivals Yahoo's position as the third largest web entity in the world, which would rank it second only to Google and Microsoft.

Monthly users now number more than 108 million – most of whom will now have seen the Book’s revamped homepage, comprising upscaled photo display, a far easier messaging facility and rationalized notifications – all messages, updates and alerts are now pulled together into the top navigation panel.

Most intriguingly though, the search pane has come right out of its shell – it’s bigger and better and – crucially - more social. Confirming its centrality to Facebook’s Bigger Picture, search now auto-completes the names of those with whom you share the most connections, and indexes items like Pages and Applications to two degrees – so your friends’ friends content is now indexed.

What’s more, Facebook’s new payment system, launched last week, is out of the gate like a skinny hound on a fat rabbit. Initial research suggests users are choosing Facebook’s payment service over alternatives, and the Book is clawing a whopping 30% from publishers – revenue from this first year alone looks set to rake in $125-250 million, if not more. Seems Facebook has Paypal locked in its sights.

And look! eMarketer calculates that ads will earn Facebook a stonking $605 million globally this year, a 39% hike on last year’s figures. And that’s before analytics - “Facebook is sitting on a gold mine of consumer information” according to their analyst.

It’s not all Polyanna-this and ‘bright future’-that, however. Last week it was Tim “Made By Many” Malbon’s turn to toll a son’rous bell for Facebook’s future: he detects hubris, and prophesies doom. “Facebook is gambling on owning the one social graph (the data about me, my contacts and what we all do) to rule them all,” he writes. “The problem is that they don’t.”


ON TWITTER ...

For the second week in a row, there is no meaningful Twitter News this week. Oh, hold on; there’s something scrunched up at the back here… okay, goddit: Ah yes, only 8% of US teens use Twitter, and only 1 in 10 school-age kids – shockingly low in the context of other social networks’ stats. Of this small cohort, the girls are marginally keener: 13% of 14-17 year old girls are microblogging.


ON YOUTUBE ...

ITN is solidifying its YouTube alliance with its first international offering - a German showbiz channel named Promi411. Good news indeed for fans of Claudia Schiffer and.. erm, The Hoff - but also for those of the broader global celebretariat: the channel will feature international celebrity news, packaged by a German producer based at ITN, with all revenue split between ITN and Google.

YouTube’s Great Sundance Rental Experiment – you’ll remember that users could rent festival entries at $3.99 a pop – has not been an unmitigated success: they made $10,709.16. From this (or indeed any) angle, the numbers aren’t great; nevertheless it might be worth casting your eye over this piece from Venturebeat, which suggest that YouTube rental might just prove itself yet.


BRANDS GET SOCIAL ...

Domino’s Pizza has sponsored a “Superfan” Facebook app which challenges their fans to recruit their own friends to Domino’s fan page, and doles out pizza-based treats to all, as stats rise.

Pringles is dusting off its "Can Creator" website, which it launched a couple of years ago to push cause-related campaigns. For each customized design submitted by the public, they’ll donate 50 cents to the US Winter Olympics team, to a maximum of $40k.

Honda Europe has launched ‘Live Every Litre’, a crowd-sourced campaign which asks users to pitch for funding to film their own extraordinary journeys. Hopefuls will be able to promote their entries via social networks from the campaign site, and the winners will be chosen by public vote, with additional input from an independent panel of bloggers. The campaign coincides with Honda’s sponsorship of Channel 4 documentaries.

Dunkin' Donuts recently completed its quirky ‘Twinter Games’ campaign: users tweeted entries to hashtags like "#3WordsAfterIcedCoffee" to win a fifty-buck gift card. Facebook fans uploaded photos of themselves cradling iced-coffees, to feature as ‘YeDDi of the Week’. (It’s an initial-based pun on the brand name, in case you’re reading this first thing before brain kicks in.)

Oh Lord, is it really Valentine’s Day already? [slumps] To keep our minds off the postman’s knock, Target is offering customers the chance to choose how it splits the $1million it’s pledged to 5 educational charities. Its Facebook app, “Super Love Sender” allows users to create interactive cards for their darlings, and to nominate one of the five organizations while doing so.

JetBlue is trying to boost its Facebook fan numbers, in order to match their million-plus Twitter followers. They’ve launched a sweepstake on Facebook – the self-explanatory ‘All You Can Jet’ campaign.

Visa’s Go World YouTube channel is having a makeover, and will platform six new Winter Olympics ads featuring US team athletes. Their Facebook page will also feature behind-the-scenes Olympic snippets, and athletes’ own photos and footage.

Benetton is hosting an online casting - those who think they could become the 2010 face of its brand can upload photos and video describing their style on YouTube, for an online casting. The finalists will be chosen by a public/panel combo, and will be whisked to NYC for an A/W 2010 fashion shoot.

American Greetings is asking its Twitter followers to answer daily questions in their ‘Follow the Love’ contest, for a chance to win cash gift-cards.

Sara Lee’s site offers an interactive tool which shows users the positive environmental impact of choosing the brand’s EarthGrains bread. To encourage fans towards its Facebook page, they’re also pledging $1 towards farmer outreach for each new fan.

Budweiser, to support its big Superbowl buy-in, ran a multi-layered Facebook campaign which asked fans to vote for the ad they wanted to see aired during the game.

Coke Zero is crowd-sourcing basketball fans, in the newly-launched ‘Dept of Fannovation’ section of their website. The brand wants fans to come up with creative ways to experience NCAA’s March Madness (bi-i-ig tournament, for those Brits who don’t know). The top 64 submissions will compete for $10,000 and game tickets, with the online fan community voting for the most intriguing ideas.


Jim Beam Bourbon is asking the friends and families of US servicemen and women to nominate them to win VIP event trip packages, through their Facebook Fan Page. It’s an extension of their relationship with Operation Homefront – which helps returning U.S. soldiers adjust.


VIRTUAL AND GAMES ...

Linden Lab is in the process of shutting down its barely-used Second Life forums, and replacing them with new discussion areas in its Clearspace blog/forum hybrid. The Labs announced that "the forums have become jammed with cruft over the years" - previously-released figures showed that as few as 700 of 18.1 million registered users had ever posted in the forums.

Sid Meier’s Civilization is coming Facebook, in what Mashable predicts may well be an excellent game/platform hook-up. The beta will be along ‘soon’ – the full game, not till next year.

What might be the implications of Google’s new StreetView patent on ad overlays? Dan Misener discusses the impact on real/virtual world advertising in this podcast.


THINKING ...

If you have pondering time this week, might we suggest the following?

A concise and to-the-point pep-talk from Aliza Freud to get your community-building juices pumping.

On which topic, Radian6’s recently published e-book Building and Sustaining Brand Communities looks as though it might be a rewarding read.


That’s all folks!