Social Round-up #36

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: Nestle's Facebook Furore; Evan Williams' and Gaga; The Bing Thing in China; and social media in the loo.

Plus: we'd still like feedback on what you think of the updates: tweet Yay! or Boo! to @emodkate. It'll take ten seconds, promise.



THE HEADLINES ...

THE LOWDOWN ...

APPLE JUICE ...

NEWSBYTES ...

UNDER THE GAVEL ...


THE HEADLINES ...

After Twitter’s damp squib (Squitter?) of a keynote at SXSW on Monday, CEO Evan Williams gamely tried to claw back some goodwill from the grumbling hordes by announcing that he would take ten questions from the Twittersphere. The quality of the cross-examination varied wildly (“What’s your favourite bourbon?”) - but the exchanges did throw up a few golden nuggets, including an insight into the thinking behind new Twitter service @anywhere; a definitive answer to the question “will Twitter be sold or merged in the next 2 years?” (“No”); and a brief but tantalising insight into the interior landscape of a thirty-something tech whizz (“What am I thinking right now? Lady Gaga.”) Mashable catalogues the Qs and unpicks the As.

Amid growing speculation that Google is on the verge of quitting China, the company has received a letter purporting to come from its Chinese advertising vendors. The note demands to know whether the company is staying or going – and financial compensation if the answer is “um, going.” Predictably, the origins of the letter are murky, with Associated Press reporting claims that it was signed by only one firm, who then fraudulently added the names of 26 others.

It seems Microsoft is listening intently to Google’s Chinese whispers: chief research and strategy honcho Craig Mundie this week added his voice to that of boss Bill Gates, who recently appeared to back Team China by criticising Google’s behaviour in the PRC. Could this all be [drumroll] .. a Bing Thing? The Wall Street Journal speculates that Microsoft is rubbing its hands at the big space in search, which will open up if Google leaves China.

Meanwhile, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey announced that the company’s developers are cracking on with a workaround for users in China, where the microblogging service is blocked. In response to Chinese artist and regime critic Ai Weiwei, who’d demanded “a clear answer, yes or no?" to the question of whether Chinese users would ever have a Chinese-language registration page, Dorsey responded with a "Yes” - though he qualified that with a more wibbly “it's just a matter of time”, and admitted that he’d had no idea that the Chinese authorities had blocked the site till three weeks earlier.

No-one could say Facebook’s trajectory hasn’t been stratospheric (well, they could, but they’d be wrong). But - sticking with the Chinese theme for just a moment longer - some new figures throw Facebook’s success into sharp relief. Chinese internet megazord Tencent, whose reach encompasses IM, social networks, and mobile, just posted 2009 revenues of an astounding $1.8 billion: that’s three times the Book’s estimated 2009 takings. What’s more – ponder this, Facebook - over 75% of Tencent’s revenues came from virtual-goods related services, according to Venturebeat.

Growing rumblings of dissent over the Digital Economy Bill, which many feel is being rushed through parliament with indecent haste. The bill, regarded as both draconian and ill-conceived by entities as diverse as TalkTalk and the British Library, has drawn the fire of online democracy group 38Degrees; their service lets individuals contact their MP to demand that the bill is properly debated, or abandoned.


THE LOWDOWN ...


A scabrous new US tech-based comedy series is being developed, you say? A “savage satire centring on a fictional Silicon Valley CEO whose ego is a study in power and greed"? Who on earth could it possibly be based upon? The show is being developed by Twitter legend (SPOILER ALERT) @FakeSteveJobs and Borat director Larry Charles, who declared, with characteristic underplay, "we are attempting nothing less than a modern Citizen Kane."

Dude, those aren’t Friends, they’re Feds! If you are of a criminal bent and active in the social media space, all may not be quite as it seems: it emerged this week that U.S. law enforcement agents have taken to social networking like ducks to water and are actively using it to gather evidence.

Freaky times for the owners of over a hundred cars whose horns suddenly began relentlessly honking - and wouldn’t stop till the batteries were removed. Wired reports that a disgruntled employee had hacked into the remote vehicle-immobilisation system operated by a car dealership to nudge recalcitrant hire-purchasers who fall behind with their payments. Which is, in and of itself, a rather creeptastic infobyte, no?

When a company which is all about getting us connected warns that we’re in danger of developing some serious social media ‘issues’, you gotta sit up and listen. A new survey by Retrevo found that we can barely take a break from social sites to – erm, powder our noses or – ahem – nurture our relationships. 48% of those surveyed checked their networks upon waking, and 24% of under-25s are happy to receive messages whilst (shall we say) clearing their inbox ...

Much glee and retrospective smugness from those who couldn’t attend SXSWi due to “previous engagements”, as a flurry of posts with titles like ‘Why SXSW Sucks’ pinged round the blogosphere. Seems that this year, creatives, start-ups and developers are being crowded out by yer actual social media users - many of whom like to party while uncouthly ogling Tech Slebs. As one commenter put it: “The web is no longer the domain of the nerd, it’s the domain of the internet-enabled socialite as well.”

The Guardian reports a sudden brake on what was all set to be the most expensive domain-name auction in history: the owner of sex.com has been forced unexpectedly into bankruptcy by a major creditor, and has pulled out at the last minute.


APPLE JUICE ...


Squeal! Keen-eyed observers at Patently Apple report that the company has filed a patent on a social app for the iPhone. The app is called iGroups, and lets users geo-connect, and exchange info without throwing privacy to the wind. If you are au fait with this sort of thing, you might wish to peruse the detailed patent docs here.

Meanwhile, conflicting estimates of the numbers of iPad pre-sales: though most predict buoyant stats, some question whether the high ‘first-hours’ figures were actually sustained. In the confusion, though, one intriguing snippet caught our eye – despite predictions, wi-fi-only presales outscale the (considerably) more expensive 3G option by 69% to 31%. Seems even Apple’s famously well-cushioned demographic is feeling the pinch.

A new report by Flurry says that the iPhone is now dramatically outpacing Facebook as an apps platform. The latter lags despondently, with a mere 60,000 - while Apple now boasts 140,000 different apps, and a mind-boggling 58 new companies launching apps each day.


NEWSBYTES ...


A bumpy end to a bumpy week for Nestle:  first it had YouTube take down Greenpeace’s viral, which hauled the company over the coals for alleged destruction of the Indonesian rainforest; Now, the argy-bargy has spread to its Facebook Fan Page, where – to be frank – things are not going too well.  Whilst it's obviously the right thing to engage in conversation with your critics, perhaps Nestle should provide some training for its community managers? @blaisegv has helpfully provided them with excellent article from Lisa Barone: When To Respond To Negative Reviews (and not).

The mobile app market is expanding at an explosive rate, according to a new study for app-developer GetJar. App downloads, which hovered at a fairly impressive 7 billion in 2009, are predicted to shoot towards an almost inconceivable 50 billion by 2012 - by which time the apps market will worth a predicted $17.5 billion. Says GetJar CEO Ilja Laurs with grim satisfaction: “Mobile devices will kill the desktop.”

Lots of hoo-ha about a new set of Compete figures, which showed hefty drops in traffic to all social networks last month – Twitter’s, for example, fell by around 9%. After much goatee-scratching from industry analysts, a lone commenter on the Guardian site pointed out that February was, like, a shorter month than the others? By, erm, around 9%?

And brands who’re active on both Twitter and Facebook can give themselves a manly pat on the back: seems we’re 51% more likely to buy from brands we follow on Facebook (though possibly not Nestle - see above), rising to an impressive 67% for those we follow on Twitter. We’re also 79% more likely to recommend our Twitter brand-follows to a friend, versus 60% for Facebook.


On the other hand - and despite the constant stream of stories heralding Twitter as the new News - it seems we’re considerably more likely to get our info from Google and Facebook, according to these figures from Hitwise.

Big TV events like the Oscars and the Superbowl are generating more simul-surfing than ever: 14.5% of Superbowl users were online while viewing, compared with 12.8% a year ago, while the number of Oscar fans who did so was up from 8.7% to 13.3%. Facebook, Google and Yahoo were the most popular destinations by a long chalk.

The possibility of tax breaks for games developers was hurriedly resuscitated this week: according to the Telegraph, Minister for Digital Britain Stephen Timms announced to games companies that he was “looking at the industry in a new way”. Fancy!

Earlier this week there were reports that Facebook was ‘considering’ installing a panic button to allow children to report suspicious interactions on the site, following a ‘frank exchange of views’ during a meeting with the Home Secretary Alan Johnson. But the social networking giant subsequently announced that it was ruling that option out, in favour of developing its own existing safety structures – and that while the button might be effective ‘for other sites’, it would not work on Facebook.

The US Federal Trade Commission declared that consumer privacy was most definitely their business this week, with commissioner Pamela Jones Harbour decrying Google’s “irresponsible conduct” during the Buzz debacle as an example of corporate carelessness with personal privacy. “Unlike a lot of tech products, consumer privacy cannot be run in beta,” she said, adding that the FTC is perfectly prepared to step in to prevent privacy laws being violated.


UNDER THE GAVEL ...


A US judge has approved a controversial $9.5 million settlement to a class action lawsuit against Facebook’s famously privacy-busting Beacon system – despite complaints from campaigners. The deal requires Facebook to establish a ‘Digital Trust Fund’ to finance research into online privacy – but privacy protestors argue that giving Facebook a seat on the board means the fund will be a mere publicity-generating gimmick.

What promises to be the most excruciatingly serpentine copyright case for - well, months - kicked off this week, as Viacom and YouTube set out their cases in the suit that the former is bringing against the latter. Essentially, Viacom claims that YouTube encouraged file-sharing like Napster, and YouTube says they didn’t. That’s possibly all you will need (or want) to know till the case is concluded – but there is an excellent plain-English breakdown by Peter Kafka on All Things Digital, if you are inclined to investigate further.


That’s all folks!