Social Media Round-up #30

Welcome to eModeration's round-up of all that is intriguing, alarming or odd in the world of social media, compiled by Kate Williams. For more social media snippets, follow her on @emodkate - or for general twittery, @KateVWilliams.

This week: Facebook's humour deficit; apocalypse and anomie with Chatroulette; and 'C' for 'Counter-Intuitive'.

Read on here ... 


 


THE HEADLINES ...

THE LOWDOWN ...

IN OTHER NEWS ...



THE HEADLINES ...

The social web is quite a-flutter with talk of Chatroulette – the apocalyptically-named video chat-site which arbitrarily pairs strangers for what might, one minute, be urbane oenophiliac debate; the next, naked frat-chat - according to the whim of each party.

If, like me, you are inclined to doom-mongering and despair, the site will seem the very definition of post-cultural atomisation and anomie. Nevertheless Chatroulette, created just three months ago by a Russian seventeen-year-old, is daily gaining thousands of users - and a considerable media profile.

The Conservatives appeared last week to have sleep-walked into a second viral nightmare: the strap-line of their latest campaign seemed to invite the kind of cheerfully-profane customisation which propelled mydavidcameron.com to instant virality in January. And sure enough, “#IvenevervotedTory” - followed by punchlines of varying hilarity - was within the hour a Twitter trending topic. But hold on just a Tory minute - another Conservative marketing #fail … or a cunning stroke of viral genius?

Meanwhile Brand Republic reports that, as the general election approaches, Labour is increasingly focused on social media. They’re using real-time social network monitoring to fine-tune their campaign, while candidates and campaign-organizers have been new-media-trained to within an inch of their lives.

Google’s social-media week, on the other hand, has been something of a Curate’s Egg.

Despite the scramble to fix Buzz’s most gaping privacy holes - namely the ‘auto-follow’ feature which allowed users to see who else their contacts were emailing - The Guardian reports that a privacy group has filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission. The group demand that Google make the entire service opt-in only - and they’re jolly cross that the onus is still on each user to block followers thrown up by Google’s revised ‘auto-suggest’ feature.

From another corner of the Googleverse comes an item to which the only reasonable response is a violent shake of the laptop to check it’s not broken. The search monster has announced that it has officially become an energy-provider. Yes! Just like British Gas and nPower. While it’s tempting to imagine that this story concerns the monetization of Buzz’s potentially-limitless supplies of hot air, I must reluctantly report that this is, in fact, a quite-difficult-to-understand story about Google’s plans to go carbon-neutral, by selling excess power back to the national grid.

And talking of renewable energy and vast internet behemoths, Facebook have sparked a storm of protest over plans to power a brand-new data-centre with old-skule coal. By Monday, following criticism of its power plans by Greenpeace in the Huffington Post, Change.org had harnessed a cool 5740 signatures urging The ‘Book to go green.

The Israeli Embassy lobbed a ball onto the social media court this week - with debatable success. In a whimsical play on the tennis-gear sported by the alleged Mossad assassins of a senior Hamas Commander in Dubai last week, the embassy tweeted "you heard it here first: Israeli tennis player carries out hit on #Dubai target". The tweet – which displays a remarkable (though perhaps unwarranted) confidence in the wisdom of combining Twitter, puns, and generally-frowned-upon death-squads – in fact links to a story about the Israeli team’s success in a recent Dubai tennis tournament.

Elsewhere, Facebook has been evincing a somewhat restricted capacity to take a joke. The Argentinian author of a satirical book on the world’s favourite social network found that his own Facebook profile – and a 30,000-strong fan page – had suddenly and mysteriously gone ‘pouf!’. Uproar in the South American press followed, but it seems that the profile was only restored when Venturebeat picked up the story, a full month later. The book’s promo video (mildly racy – we're talking Argentina, after all) can still be seen here, on YouTube.

The hack attacks at the heart of Google’s ongoing Chinese tribulations have been traced back to two educational facilities in mainland China, reports the New York Times. The Chinese authorities – who last week claimed already to have identified and shut down an entirely different set of hackers – have denied all knowledge. If you’re intrigued by the murky world of Chinese hackery, which differs substantially from its Western counterpart, the Wall Street Journal offers an absorbing snapshot.

The eminently-social Robin Hood Tax campaign – created by ‘Four Weddings’ director Richard Curtis, to promote a Tobin tax on all banking transactions – appeared to have suffered a setback last week, when ‘No’ votes whooshed dramatically from 1400 to 6000 in five minutes. Upon close examination however, it emerged that most of the Anti’s had come via the servers of monolithic investment institution Goldman Sachs: the silly-billies had failed to disguise their IP.

Online viewers of Tiger Woods’s ‘apology’ last week witnessed what may well prove to be a turning-point in YouTube’s history. The golfer’s much-mocked mea culpa - the cause of near-universal buttock-clenching, and widespread watching-from-between-fingers – was a strategic experiment in live streaming-video. The addition of the real-time service is thought by many to be the logical next-step for YouTube, as internet TV-enabled devices increasingly squeeze traditional cable and satellite.


THE LOWDOWN ...

Scene 1: Airline interior. In line with his employers’ questionable policy of forcing the wide-of-beam to buy two seats, a flight attendant escorts a humiliated passenger to the exit. Scene 2: Oh no! – the overweight passenger is revealed to be none other than Kevin Smith, alt-Hollywood director and proud owner of a Twitter-following approaching two million. “What are the chances, eh? What are the chances?”, as our beloved Harry Hill might say.

Poor Gordon Lightfoot. An Ottowan tweeter - perhaps realising that all Canadian news would be Olympics-themed for, like, ever - appears to have flipped, and completely invented the death of the Ontario-born singer-songwriter. The news tore through the Twittersphere, so you’ll no doubt be relieved to hear that the sonorously-timbred composer of ‘Sundown’ is alive and well, and consoling himself with the spike in his airplay.

After many, many years of research, engineers at Stanford University have produced electricity-generating fabrics which could act as chargers for mobile devices whilst their wearers are on the move. Had they asked, I might have mentioned that my wardrobe of bri-nylon garments produces similar results - but they didn’t. Ach, this relentless pursuit of progress.

In the latest - but, we’re quite certain, not the last - in our tactfully-named “File Under ‘C’ for Counter-Intuitive” series, Mattel is launching a dog collar which will post random Twitter updates whenever your canine companion makes a move. Heart-warming examples include “I bark because I miss you. There, I said it. Now hurry home.” No, nothing further, m’lud.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has announced that they’re developing their own virtual world for use both as a collaborative tool, and for training and simulation. To which we say, ‘Farmville not good enough for you, huh?’.


IN OTHER NEWS ...

Facebook and Paypal have announced the cessation of hostilities: in a move which is clearly designed with social gamers, and the 70% of Facebook users who live outside the US, in mind, users will now be able to purchase Facebook Credits using Paypal. Till now it had been thought that the ‘Book was pitching its Credits service in direct competition to its long-established rival.

Hulu’s streaming video service will be available on the iPad (hoorah!) for an undisclosed fee (boo!). CNET reports that the Hulu’s three main backers favour an arrangement where a paid mobile service supports a free desktop service – and surveys the bewildering array of tech and legal decisions required to make the plan a reality.

And in a further Hulu hoo-ha, The Telegraph reports that the UK launch-date is retreating once again (hiss!). This time the delay is due to a combination of management-upheaval at ITV, and the difficulty of agreeing terms with Channel 4 and Five, whereby Hulu would sell ad inventory round content.

Last week the BBC launched a roster of free apps which will allow mobile devices to access its news and sport services – to the dismay of the Newspaper Publishers Association, which immediately declared that the apps were counter-competitive.

Finally, Google CEO Eric Schmidt says a mammoth shift of ad revenue from the fixed web to mobile platforms is inevitable, reports Netimperative. Schmidt predicts something as game-changing as the transfer of ad-spend from print to the net, and stresses that marketers already know far more about mobile users: ”For a start, we know where they are.”



That’s all folks!