UM publishes Wave 5 Social Media Tracker: The Socialisation of Brands

This week, Universal McCann EMEA research team published its Wave 5 Social Media Tracker.   Over the past five years, UM have researched attitudes towards and usage of social media, each time enlarging its universe.  This latest report covers 37,600 active internet users in 54 countries and presents a truly global snapshot of social media today.

Wave 5 focusses on The Socialisation of Brands:

"It’s essential for brands to understand why and where different groups of consumers participate in this new world. It’s not merely a question of identifying the best places to target – the classic media planning/buying approach – but truly knowing what motivates them to be part of it.
"Understand that and brands can create campaigns, messages and communities that consumers want to be part of, spreading the message far and wide much more effectively than simply buying banners and buttons in these spaces."

Some of the trends revealed in 2010:

Social networking has risen spectacularly: nearly 3 quarters of the active internet universe claim to have ever managed a profile on a social network. And although penetration remains highest amongst 16-24 yrs olds, it is the 25-34 yr olds who show the greatest increase in social network usage.

"If the current trends continues, a social networking profile will become as fundamental part of our daily lives as our telephone number."

Activities on Social Networks: users are now doing more things with - for example - their Facebook profiles - than they used to. A ready made audience combined with increased site functionality means that they are, for example, sharing videos, organising groups and events, sharing photos and dating. In fact, use of photo and video sharing specialist platforms is growing at a much slower rate then before - presumably due to the increased facility of these activities through social networking profiles.

Blogging and microblogging Blogs are becoming less about personal experience (that activity having migrated to the social networks) and more about specialist subjects - news, music, travel etc.  Microblogging (Twitter) has of course seen a huge rise, more than doubling the proportion of active users in the past year.  Interestingly, the research shows a higher increase amongst women than men.

Mobile access.  Thanks to the availability of an increasing range of smart phones, flat rate data charges, and apps, access to social media has never been easier.  This is reflected in the vastly increased number of visits to social networks via mobile. Smartphone owners (who are incidentally, older, better educated, more influential and wealthier than their not-smart (dumbphone?) counterparts) visit their social network profile on average 3.5 times a day, 18% more often than the average social network user.

Brand communities

But the message that the report really wants to broadcast is the relationship between consumers and brands in the social media space.  Whilst visits to brand websites are actually on the decline in percentage terms, the proportion who have afficliated themselves to a brand (by 'liking' for example) or joined a brand group has increased markedly. As the UM report concludes, clearly just having the brands present in a space socially relevant to the them means that consumers are more than willing to engage with brands.  Globally, nearly half of the active internet universe claims to have joined a brand community at some point.

Different categories, different audiences, different needs

Across categories, the level of desire for engagement (beyond purely transactional) is high.  Such 'engagements' include a range of interactions, from getting access to advance news of products to being able to access decision makers and influence product development.   More than 70% of active internet users said that they wanted such an interaction across most categories.

The report analyses the differing requirements for social media between product categories and across territories: for example, in Latin America brand communities are more likely to be driven by the desire to associate themselves with something (to support a cause or even something they think is cool). In Asia they are more likely to join if it was recommended to them by their peers and in the Middle East it is about feeling part of a like-minded community.  Contrast what users want from a movie category (fun) with what they want from health (learning).  And the level of interaction required varies by the kind of participation the user is having also: a user who is simply 'interested' in a category has different needs from one creating content and collaborating within it.

Wave 5 concludes that  there are four steps to identifying the right social media experience for brands:

• Understand the social landscape of the category
• Identify where the consumer fits in this landscape
• Identify the social needs of the consumer in the category
• Map them to social media platforms that can best deliver them

It's a fascinating piece of research, and recommended reading at eModeration this week.  For more information, watch the videos and download the report here.  Or, if you have any questions about the research or future Wave projects please contact the UM EMEA research team:

Glen Parker
Research Director EMEA
Glen.Parker@umww.com

Lindsey Thomas
Research Executive EMEA
Lindsey.Thomas@umww.com

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Health in Social Media: Physicians, heal thyselves.

by Janice Pearson, moderator and community manager at eModeration.  

  

During a lethal threat the chance to be enaged (or to help) is a huge mood boster, infinitely better than "I'm helpless/there's nothing I can do."

@ePatientDave, Empowered Patient

Most of us know the value of social media for patients. People living with disabilities and illness have been using various forms of it – email/web groups, forums and chats - since the text-based internet days. Now we can add blogs, Twitter, Facebook and myriad other social media to that list. A recent BBC article cited a great example of a young woman with cystic fibrosis (CF). Social media was a boon to her since it was the only way she could meet others with CF, because meeting in person risked cross-infection.

This obvious use of the internet to socialise and support has changed the face of living with a health problem forever. However, it goes further. Imagine you have been diagnosed with a life-threatening illness and are placed on a waiting list to see a specialist. Imagine the various investigations and time passing .... For Dave deBronkart, who has become a leading light in participatory medicine, social media was the difference between death and life. Given only months to live by his doctor and then waiting to be passed on to more care, he decided to take things into his own hands. He began chatting with other patients online and quickly found information that his doctor had not known about.

What to do after you think your time is up, in other words. Doctors simply don't have the time to read everything that crosses their desk, whereas their patients have a vested interest in reading everything they can, as quickly as they can, and zoning in on the specifics of what ails them. Dave was fortunate. He was able to get the ear of sympathetic doctors and he turned his prognosis around.

"I suspect that the future relationship between providers and
industry will revert to involve more trust and, ironically,
more of a personal connection despite the digital medium. As
the world goes virtual the hunger for real connection will
grow. And those who reach us in some personal way will hold
market advantage over those who don't."

Doctor_V, MD, Digital Thinker

While it is easy to understand what motivates patients to become e-patients, it's somewhat more complex when it comes to the role of healthcare providers online. Bryan Vartabedian  is a self-named Digital Thinker, a paediatric gastroenterologist at Texas Children's Hospital/Baylor College of Medicine.  He confesses that doctors are guilty of "anemic digital adoption." There are several reasons for this; according to Bryan, and these include:  1) physicians naturally have issues with transparency/image 2) they haven’t got time (it takes two to five years for doctors to read about and implement new practices) and 3) they have concerns over liability and privacy.

While doctors have seemingly valid reasons for not wanting to be online and dive into social media, there is every reason for them to be there. We can take autism and vaccine as our example and look at the loud online buzz. If only a handful of the thousands of paediatricians across the globe provided reliable content, how much better informed the public would be. Patients, doctors, nurses and healthcare facilities need to get online and do it often. They need to stop wanting anonymity if they take the plunge: "Go and be real so that your voice can be credible." says Bryan. Healthcare practioners also need to stop worrying about what their patients are reading, and look towards providing the material themselves.  Bryan tells a poignant story of breaking some news to the parents of a little girl. One or two sentences into his phone call, the parent interrupted saying: "You don't need to go any further, doctor. Just spell 'eosinopil' if you would."

Doctors need to stop talking about making patients part of their own healthcare decisions and deliver the goods.  Doctors already buy smart phones. They need to be encouraged to use them and win audiences. Engaging people with reliable and provocative information, with a good mix of the instructional and personal, goes a long way to helping all of us live healthier lives. It's called Health 2.0 and it's time to switch!

Virtual doctor visits (over Skype and webcam), online access of medical records for both doctor and patient, smart phone and Twitter notifications of emergency room waits... all of these already exist,although only amongst the most innovative, such as the Mayo Clinic, which even has its own Center for Social Media. Phil Baumann is a registered nurse with a background in enterprise accounting and treasury operations. He blogs about how technologies influence us and is the founder of Health Is Social. He believes that the marriage of hardware and software has revolutionised medicine and envisions in our future things like an inhaler for an asthmatic that would include GPS technology - alerting the asthmatic when he approaches a high pollution/pollen area. Health, he says, is innately social. "We believe, at its heart, that health is a social process. Emerging technologies like social and digital media are giving patients, doctors and nurses new ways of communicating and collaborating." We can't argue with that.

As for the need for community management and moderation in all of this, I have (perhaps oddly) said nothing on the matter so far. It seems self-explanatory. Those of us who manage and moderate communities know that the rules aren't really any different – every community has its own set but they're quite similar. We do, however, tend to be mindful of litigation, current research and the users' need to vent, even against each other. It's a privilege to be witness to intimate battles and courageous journeys. We can be the newsgivers, the ears, the voice and the broadcasters. We're a patient lot (!) and we know that we can be the vital liaison between the caregivers, the patient and the public.


A few links that you may find useful:
E-Patients
Social media health trends (Mashable)
To follow health in social media on Twitter, search #hcsm

Janice Pearson is a senior member of the moderation staff and is a member of the community management team at eModeration. She is educated in pregnancy, childbirth and women’s health issues. Janice has been published numerous times in North American magazines and online in the fields of technology and women's health.

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Launch of European award for quality online content for children

eModeration, as you'd expect, is always interested in promoting safer content for children using the internet, and we'd like to help promote this latest European initiative from The Safer Internet Programme.
   

The Safer Internet Programme supports the creation of positive content for children. Besides setting up a focus group on positive content and publishing guidelines (see link below), the European Commission launched a European competition for best children’s online content. The competition is organised in cooperation with the INSAFE network and is the first of its kind. It aims to showcase quality content targeting 6-12 year olds, which already exists online, and to encourage the production of new content with a positive impact on children. The first prize winners in the two categories (young people and adults) will be competing on a European level for the European Award, which will be handed out in June 2011. 

The competition details can be found here, and the guidelines on producing online content for children and young people competition are here.

The Safer Internet Centres, present in 30 European countries, develop information/awareness raising material and organize information sessions for children, parents and teachers. They also receive reports on illegal content found on the Internet and give advice on how to stay safe online. The Centres have also set up youth panels who are consulted on safer Internet issues and information material. The awareness centres and the helplines are organized in a pan-European network called INSAFE.

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Giddy Social Whirl: Here is the News

This week, we present a bespoke selection of newsy fripperies which you may have missed on account of that other stuff you were doing.

We like to think we’re doing our bit for the Big Society, and that this is the 'Tensies equivalent of reading the newspaper to the infirm. Post-digital social-media fun, but with a retro, pre-realtime vibe. Light, and shade, my friends, light and shade.


I dunno. Do the emergency services really get social media? More pertinently, do we want them to?


This week, Greater Manchester Police tweeted every 999 call they received for 24-hours, in the hope of bringing to our attention the breadth of their offer at a time of public service cuts.

Super idea, and only slightly marred by the fact that the particular 24 hours they picked were dull to the power of Bergerac. Not only did not much happen, but so much of it didn’t happen that everyone’s Twitterfeed was jammed with ‘Call 424: report of loose dogs on a road in Blackley’ and similar, for much of the day.

The initiative spawned the inevitable spoof account, but oddly, the fake account lacked the combination of the ersatz and the banal which gave the authentic one its meagre spice. Contrast, for example the fakers' ‘Call 56: Complaint that "its not like the old days"’ with the GMPs “Call 3026: Suspicious man wearing cape in Bolton - police attended and no sign of man.”

Ach, it’s a tricky one. On the one hand, these kind of social media stunts need preparation, and forethought – they can’t just be rustled up out of nowhere when a day turns out to be jam-packed with heart-racing crime. You pick a day, you gotta stick to it. On the other hand, “Call 241: problems with a customer at a cafe in Manchester.”

Now, we all know that candour and sincerity should be the watchwords of any brand wishing to engage the public through social media. But chaps, that public is sensation-seeking, and accustomed both to high-octane thrills and social media vernacular; you need to gussy up your game.

With this in mind, let’s try that ‘man wearing cape in Bolton’ tweet again:

“SQUEAL, Batman! BATMAN is in Bolton! Big shout goin’ out to the Caped Crusader! #OMGtheDarkKnight”. You could probably skip the ‘no sign of man’ bit.

Or, if your social media team lacks the confidence for real-time translation, couldn’t you have waited until a day when the interesting stuff did happen, then back-tweet it? Oh, don’t look at me like that - who would know? You’re the police, aren’t you? You ARE the news.


*****

Which brings us neatly to the other end of the ‘law-enforcement does social media’ scale. Meet Toronto Police Constable Adam Josephs, better known to the internet as ‘Officer Bubbles’, because he threatened to arrest a bubble-blowing G20 protestor for assault if one single bubble touched his person.

Now before we dismiss the man as seven kinds of egomaniacal loon, let’s just pause to imagine where, on a one-to-ballistic scale of annoying, a bubble-attack would sit. I think pr-e-tty high, don’t you?

That, after all, is its raison-d’etre - the whole point, from a protestor’s point of view, is to say through the medium of bubbles, “Hey, The Man! I can get these bubbles in your FACE and you can do NOTHING! Nothing at all! If you do anything but smile community-mindedly, you will look a fool on YouTube. Because they’re bubbles! And not weapons!”

It’s about as aggressively passive as passive-aggressive gets. So although it’s my general habit to be on the peace-and-love side of things, I’m not, at this stage, unsympathetic to his plight.

But then, dear friends, Officer Bubbles takes a sharp turn to the wrong on the road-map of social-media success.

Some time later, he discovers that the protestors have (predictably) posted the footage of the bubble-off to YouTube; he registers that (again, predictably) he looks a little foolish up there – and that the footage has inspired a series of (now, sadly, defunct) cartoons which imply he might be over-protective of his own dignity.

What can he do to prove to the world that these criticisms are unfounded? Well, he could ignore, ignore, ignore – or he could engage his critics in a calm, respectful discussion. Or, he could file a $1.2 million defamation lawsuit seeking to compel Google to reveal the identity of the parody cartoon's creator. And the identities of the 24 people who left comments on it. I think you can see where I’m going with this.

Social media and the police – d’you know, I’m unconvinced.

****

Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose.

You may remember that, when it first took up the reins of power, the government was quite firm on civil liberties and the ‘surveillance state’ – indeed, the text of their pre-nup deal contained a promise to ‘end the blanket storage of internet and email records’.

But that was then and this, my dears, is now: the Telegraph reports that, hidden deep in the clammy folds of the Strategic Defence Review (which, if you are anything like me, you are unlikely to peruse in detail, if at all) is the sort of u-turn more usually accompanied by the smell of scorched tarmac and the sound of blues-and-twos. It seems that the government will later this year announce measures requiring all communications providers to store identifying details of emails sent and websites visited - for at least a year.

Hmm. Regardless of where you stand on the digital liberties debate - that, you’ll agree, was a turn on a sixpence.

****


Gosh I love the Swedes; they gave us Bjorn, Benny, Frida and Agnetha - ooh, and Wallander! And, apart from the odd lapse, they've generally led the world in that equality thing we like. Plus – for those of you of an aesthetic bent (not a euphemism) – they host some cracking modernist masterpieces.

Best of all, the Swedes tirelessly promote their brand of pragmatic liberalism - a super quality in a country, and one exemplified by this ‘and finally’ story, in which a man’s laptop is stolen by A Thief (despite their brilliance, the Swedes have not yet managed to abolish theft.)

In Sweden, this is how street-crime works. You are a backpack-wearing professor (remember, it’s Sweden we’re talking about). You put down your backpack momentarily – perhaps to choose, and pay for, a Wallander paperback - and someone opens it and nicks your laptop. Ten years of research is pouf gone. You withdraw to your apartment and bash your head against your midcentury-modern desk; you begin to understand why Wallander has such difficulty trusting humanity.

But wait! A week later, an envelope containing a memory stick arrives in the post: it contains your Life’s Work – which has taken the thief 2 hours or thereabouts to download from the laptop he stole from you.

There are many things to love in this story – the professor, the backpack, the memory stick - but two points stand out. The first is that the thief has a conscience. He is concerned that the owner of the laptop will be disproportionately affected by the loss of the information contained therein. The second is that his conscience is both relative, and rationalist. He will spend 2 hours downloading that info – but he won’t actually return the laptop. He’s a thief after all, and by definition, thieves steal things, and don’t give them back.

It’s crime. But it’s crime à la Suède. Superb.



A bientôt, mes amis!


For more social media snippets, follow @emodkate - or for more general twittery, @KateVWilliams.







 

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Moderating images on social media sites: what should brands do?

 Brands which invite images in their user generated campaigns require specific moderation guidelines.  

Brands are increasingly involving consumer-created content in their marketing campaigns: for example Sprint's Human Clock 'Now' campaign, for which eModeration screened over 35,000 user-created videos which appeared on YouTube's home page.

The content created by participants during these campaigns is usually hosted on a branded website.  Doritos King of Ads and Domino’s Pizza’s Show us Your Pizza campaigns are good examples of user involvement: Doritos wanted to find the best ad, which would then be broadcast on TV; and Domino’s wanted customers to send in pictures of their Domino’s pizzas, the most mouth-watering of which would win $500. There are lots more good examples in our Interaction in Advertising white paper.

These campaigns are based on user-generated images – photos, videos, designs – which require a different kind of moderation from text-based campaigns where, for example, users might post comments to a branded Facebook page.

Images are often forgotten in the moderation debate. But there are some tricky issues that face brands who open their online space to user-created pictures and videos.

What to look for and how to respond

Copyright violation - With the disclaimer that we are not lawyers, and therefore we’re not going to offer detailed legal advice on the copyright issue, we would say that this is one of the areas our clients are very keen to police.  A good post on the issue of copyright violation was published over on Rich Baker’s blog, which confirms that if a user were to upload a picture or video which contained material still under copyright, the publisher (i.e. the brand having control over the website) could be liable. As the post points out, having moderators in place to check the content prior to publication would greatly reduce the chance of copyrighted material getting published.

Brands need to tread carefully with copyright. It is possible to be overzealous and create a storm of bad publicity by being too dictatorial about what is and is not permitted. The Nestle Facebook logo debacle is one example of a brand getting it wrong. Contrast that with the recent Greenpeace competition to design a new BP logo which has received quite a bit of coverage with little, if any, response from BP - which clearly has other priorities at the moment.

Privacy and safety issues - Teens and Tweens are particularly vulnerable (and often naïve) when communicating online. Children will often try to upload pictures that contain identifying details (such as a house, or road name, or school gates), without understanding the risks that could pose. A branded site that is used by children should be particularly careful that no personally identifiable information is published, as part of the brand’s duty of care to the user.

Obscene images, footage, logos or avatars - Of course, these must never make it onto the branded website. When one of Starbucks site users included a swastika in their profile picture, people debated whether the brand should act against the user or allow them freedom of speech. It’s important to remember that the user is being invited onto your corporate property. Your rules apply. A brand will be associated with the content displayed on its property, and it’s the right and responsibility of the brand to protect itself and rule abiding users.

Brands need to be particularly vigilant about offensive material being loaded onto their sites when targeting children. Child created content (CCC) is becoming big business. For example, 1,000 films created by children were submitted to the CBBC’s Me and My Movie website in 2009.

Of course, there’s some great filtering technology out there that can be used effectively as a sophisticated triage to flag up the images most likely to be inappropriate. Pixel-matching software picks up images or video which matches with blacklists of content previously blocked by moderators, or probably pornographic content. This significantly increases the speed and accuracy of moderation.

‘Off-topic’ or spammy images - If left unchecked, some users may deliberately and continuously post off-topic images in an attempt to irritate fellow users (trolling). This creates  bad feeling in the community and sours people’s experience of the brand.

So, how can brands avoid these issues?

Have clear guidelines – provide obvious signposts to community or competition guidelines and encourage users to follow them by enforcing them. If a user contravenes these guidelines, then the brand is within its rights to warn the user, and remove the offensive image (or block the user completely, depending on the seriousness of the breach).

Know what’s possible on social networks - a full list of actions that brands can take to moderate imaged uploaded to social networks can be found in our free guide on Moderation in Social Networks. Here’s a summary of what you can and can’t do with images:
-    YouTube: brands can pre or post moderate video responses, but can’t moderate avatars or usernames of friends - just reject them if their images, avatar or username is unsuitable.
-    MySpace: brands can pre or post moderate both videos and images uploaded to the brand’s page.
-    Facebook: brands can only post-moderate content, including photos. Some apps such as ‘Graffiti’ can be hard to remove, and Facebook is notoriously difficult to moderate without third party tools.

Limit avatar choice – branded sites aimed at children may decide to provide a list of avatars that children can choose from, or a way that they can build their own cartoon image with provided components. This removes the risk of users uploading anything offensive or inappropriate.

Moderate, using appropriate moderation tools for the anticipated volume of UGC.  Brands should ideally pre-moderate content rather than risk published content causing offense, harm, brand damage or a costly court case.  At the very least a brand should provide a robust report and take down procedure so that offensive material can be flagged by users. Keep in mind though, that websites targeting children, tweens and teens should be pre-moderated if at all possible, to protect these vulnerable users.

(This article was first published on mad.co.uk on 12th Oct 2010)

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The Giddy Social Whirl: Google's Cars

Each week, Kate Williams ponders the world of tech and social media. This week, she spots a flaw in Google's plan for driverless cars.


This week, Google announced they had been secretly building and testing cars which drive themselves. I know! It’s very exciting.

According to their blog, "Our automated cars use video cameras, radar sensors and a laser range finder to 'see' other traffic, as well as detailed maps which we collect using manually driven vehicles to navigate the road ahead."

Google has acknowledged that the technology is somewhat ‘ahead of the law’, in the sense of 'totally illegal'. But they insist that, when the Future comes, drivers will be legally responsible for their vehicles, being at all times poised to take back control in the event of an emergency.

Now, I’m no candyass Luddite, clinging grimly to the times’ behind. I consider myself as future-friendly as the next woman, and sincerely hope that I live to see jet-packs in Halfords.

But Google’s suggestion that drivers, once accustomed to automated driving, will do anything more constructive than gazing vacantly out of the window at the nose-picking habits of other drivers strikes me as somewhat Panglossian.

Does one sit by the dishwasher, alert and vigilant, waiting to seize control of the washing-up if the automated process should fail? One does not. One goes and does something else - it's rather the point.

Drivers will certainly perceive this technology as permission to pluck their eyebrows or moustaches, and to send and receive text messages – something which I observed, from my vantage point in Row H of a motor-coach the other day, a terrifying number of us already do.

I won’t dwell on my reasons for hurtling down the M11 in such a vehicle (destination: “Spiderland - a World of Spiders”; co-passengers: 30 under-5s). I see no sense in spreading my pain around.

But I can confirm that there are an astonishing number of people prepared to put their own lives, and those of the rest of us, at risk - by focusing on their smartphones rather than the countless tons of metal barrelling at speed and perhaps towards oblivion down the motorway.

These people clearly already believe they have a vehicle which drives itself. And for that reason alone, Google’s team of car-boffins (I imagine them as crosses between Richard Hammond and Dr. Cockroach - part hamster, part insect) are to be applauded.

But why stop at automated driving? There are countless other car-related tasks which could usefully be relinquished to technology. The silencing of small children with brutal if empty threats, for e.g. - or getting the hairy dust off the lipstick you dropped, when forced to brake sharply.

Indeed, I have high hopes that I will shortly be in the money, as soon as Google buy my patented Insult-o-matic system (“Relax – we already spoke your mind!”) which, through a series of Heath-Robinsonesque winches and pulleys, and a giant cantilevered middle finger, expresses your opinion of any given BMW driver’s overtaking skills, at the flick of a switch.

Just waiting for the call, people - just waiting for the call.



A bientôt, mes amis!


For more social media snippets, follow @emodkate - or for more general twittery, @KateVWilliams.

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The Giddy Social Whirl: Facebook and privacy.. again.

Each week, Kate Williams ponders the world of social media. Today, Zuckerberg lets her down.

My friends, it’s a story of hope betrayed.

As you may remember, I recently made a fragile (and generously unilateral) peace with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. It felt good. Privately, I indulged a gorgeous reverie, in which he and I played a festive game of football across no-man’s land. There was mist; there were cellos.

People, hostilities are RESUMED.

This week saw the emergence of two separate stories concerning Facebook’s recklessness with its users’ info. In both of them, Zuckerberg - an odd little half-smile playing about his lips - cradles the fragile privacy of the world in his hands, then dashes it to the floor with an insane laugh. I'm speaking figuratively.

The first centres on Groups, a new way to herd together people with whom you’re happy to share, say, your holiday pix, and touted by Facebook as being all about privacy. Damn! Turns out any member can invite new members – no way to veto which friend-of-a-friend gets an eyeful of your babbles.

The second involves a sync feature in Facebook's iPhone and Android apps, which uploads the names and numbers on your phone to Facebook's Phonebook (check yours out) and automatically cross-references them with other users. The app now issues a warning – it didn’t previously – but the Guardian, amongst others, reports that numbers they don’t actually possess have somehow ended up in their Phonebook. How did they get there? No idea.

Facebook insists that only you can view your Phonebook; friends - or worse, friends of friends - can’t access it. But phone numbers are not just cold data. They feel far more connected to our corporeal lives; and we rank them pretty damn high in the information hierarchy. Given Facebook’s woeful track record in this area, how many of your work contacts do you think would happy with you uploading theirs? How many would feel you had taken liberties with their privacy?

I ask, because it seems pretty clear that our idea of what is private has already undergone a profound shift.

Ten years ago, I made a documentary series about surveillance, the final part of which attempted, to a portentous soundtrack of sinister electronic beeping, to imagine The Future.

Secretly, even my fevered mind could see that the scenarios it envisaged were wildly overwrought: lives lived inside a transparent online bubble, every banality uploaded as it occurs, as text or image; nothing unsaid or undone for the sake of some squeamishness about privacy.

But here we are, and here it is. Our lack of squeam is quite remarkable. Turns out The Future is public.

The lives we live seem designed to be seen, as much as to be lived. Social media has over-sharing at its core, and it’s axiomatic that a fair old chunk of our entertainment is predicated on prodding the tenderest parts of real people’s real lives.

But hold on. Our increasingly-exposed existence doesn’t necessarily signal the death of privacy - famously declared by Zuckerberg, during an earlier brouhaha.

For those of us beyond the first flush, this public life is typically nothing more than the mere performance of transparency. We display, for hipness’ sake, a life which is apparently unfiltered, but we still hold the core of ourselves under lock and key.

As for our personal info, we guard it more jealously than ever. Most adults would no more upload their mobile number to the net than they would wear their jeans with the waistband hovering round their upper thighs.

But what about The Youth? Zuckerberg’s world-ruling plan would be a lot easier to pull off if those pesky kids could be persuaded to just, you know, drop this privacy thing - and a brief, statistically-insignificant poll of Twitter reveals that, yes, 99.9% of young people are way less uptight about it than their elders.

They behave online with a terrifying recklessness, confessing all to Facebook - apparently unable to conceive a future in which they won’t want to be seen in their keks, cradling 25l of budget cider. But here’s the thing.

When it comes to hard information, they’re no more free and easy than the rest of us. A Pew Research Centre study found that teens rarely post information on public profiles that they think would allow strangers to actually locate them in real life. No full name – and definitely no mobile number.

So there, Mark Zuckerberg - put that in your pope and smike it. I suspect you believe that, sooner rather than later, we will shrug our shoulders and accept that our info is a fair price for connection to what will, by then, be an essential utility. Maybe so - but we’re not there yet. For now, Privacy – or at least the kind that your data-scavenging platform would like to see melt away – is where it’s at.


A bientôt, mes amis!


For more social media snippets, follow @emodkate - or for more general twittery, @KateVWilliams.

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UK united in battle against child sexual abuse images on internet

Today (7th October 2010) is the fourth national Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) awareness day. This year major UK internet companies are joining together with government departments, charities and police bodies to promote the IWF and its confidential online reporting service. eModeration supports and works in partnership with the IWF in its battle against child abuse images on the internet.

IWF is marking the day by launching its new website designed to make it even easier for the public to report suspicious content on the web and providing up-to-date information about their work and how they operate: www.iwf.org.uk. The website receives around 400,000 visits a year and has dealt with over 35,000 reports so far this year.

The Internet Watch Foundation is an independent industry body and since 1996 has operated the UK Hotline for the public to report criminal online content. Reports can be submitted anonymously and each one is assessed and tracked by a specialist team of analysts. Action is taken to remove and disrupt criminal web content, particularly images of child sexual abuse. IWF provides details of websites depicting child sexual abuse to police forces and Hotlines around the world for investigation leading to the removal thousands of images from the internet.

Eve Salomon, IWF Chair, said: “It is crucial that everyone knows they can report child sexual abuse images to us and have confidence that we will work to get them removed and investigated, wherever they originate in the world. It’s fantastic to see our member companies joining forces and getting behind this initiative by publicising our Hotline to their customers. Fighting child sexual abuse is something that unites us all and a report to the IWF could rescue a child from suffering.”

This month also sees IWF’s industry members working together to enhance the self-regulatory and accountability structures around the blocking initiative which prevents accidental exposure to child sexual abuse images. This is an important milestone and marks the launch of a testing and transparency programme for the blocking solutions of IWF member companies taking the IWF list of child sexual abuse web pages. The number of companies which choose to receive this list continues to grow with over 70 internet services providers, search and content providers, mobile operators and filtering companies around the world now taking steps to protect their customers in this way.

The IWF publishes a list on its website of companies taking this list and testing their systems for effective deployment of a blocking solution. Therefore the public can see which companies are doing their best to effectively prevent their customers being exposed to child sexual abuse content.

For further information on this testing programme see IWF’s website.

For an idea of the impact of the IWF's work, take a look at their commercial below ....

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The Social Network - what's it like to be Zuckerberg then?

Each week, Kate Williams ponders the world of social media. Today, she admires Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's steely resolve.

As the old saying says, before you judge a man, walk a mile in his shoes. After that, who cares? He’s a mile away, and you’ve got his shoes.

Of course, persuading the person you wish to get all judgey on to agree to the swap - easier said than done.

Take Zuckerberg. Man’s come in for a heck of a lot of criticism over the last year or so, and boy has it been fun. But lately I’m noting a countervailing and persistent voice in the blogosphere. A voice which says, Hey Mrs Negative! Don’t criticize, until you’ve walked a mile.

It’s a drear cliché, but it invariably pulls me up short - because I would actually like to walk a mile in the Zucker’s shoes. I’ve a sneaking suspicion they’d be a perfect fit - I acknowledge this doesn’t say good things about either of us.

But I’d happily bear weeping blisters, even bloody toes, if that’s what it took to experience a day’s worth of the dizzying power wielded by the Zucker; 24 hours to do pretty much whatever I wanted, without giving too much tedious thought to the consequences - well, it would be a gas.

Yes, the weight of responsibility of being the downy-cheeked CEO of one of the world’s most-closely-observed companies would give me pause. Yes, the knowledge that I held the fragile privacy of countless users in my hands (whoops!) would weigh heavy.

On the other hand, there would be the money; and I feel sure that, somehow, I would hobble onwards, supported only by a pair of ruby-tipped crutches with filigree detail.

But this week, and for the next month or so, I think I’d have to pass. For Friday was opening night for The Social Network – the film based loosely (exactly) on the birth of Facebook. Or THE Facebook as the script has it, in the name of historical accuracy - can’t put my finger on why that’s so droll but damn, isn’t it?

If I were the Zucker, the existence of such a film would in itself be enough to have me bab me skivvies. But the rumour last week was that, far from lying low till it all blew over like any normal whatever-it-takes success-monster, Markie Zee had attended a preview screening - in person, and without a burnt-cork moustache.

Now I don’t know about you, but if true, I call that cojones. Squeezing past the knees of a packed row (sorry… sorry…), knowing the creative team behind the main feature have applied their massed talents to making you look like a needy, yet cut-throat, jerk – that, my friends, takes the guts of a lionheart.

If you are man enough to sit with a selection of hostile strangers, while an actor nails the you-ness of you - from the top of your pathological drive to succeed, to the bottom of your comically-protrusive lower lip - then you deserve respect. (Although we should also spare a thought for Zuck’s fellow cinema-goers. Jeez, if the man’s presence in the next row wouldn’t suck the joyful schadenfreude from their evening, I don’t know what would.)

So, while I remain sceptical about the very concept of a tense thriller based on a tech start-up (despite some irksomely enthusiastic reviews); while I very much doubt it will fly with the masses, however blinky-blink with glee the geeks and lawyers are; while I snort with derision at our hero’s attempt to curry favour by donating a large wedge to charity, then pimping it on Oprah - today, I declare a temporary cessation in hostilities.

Today, Mark Zuckerberg, I salute you.



A bientôt, mes amis!


For more social media snippets, do follow @emodkate - or for general twittery, @KateVWilliams.

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Roundtable on Communities of Purpose (8) - Share and Help

Following our white paper on the issues brands face when managing a ‘community of purpose', here is the very last of the conversations which didn't make it into the white paper.


eModeration: What are the best ways of encouraging people to share experiences and help each other? How do you check that they’re giving each other the right information, or do you step back and let them get on with it? What are the best ways to intervene if mis-information is being shared?

Ashley Cooksley: Sharing experiences and helping other members is the essence of most online communities. This should be encouraged by your community manager and your experienced members. Often times it’s important to not intervene even if you think the information a member is sharing may be inaccurate. However, if you feel that the information shared could be harmful, this may be in violation of your Terms and Conditions, and may need to be removed from the site. If so, it’s good practice to contact the member privately and let them know the content was removed and why.

It’s also important for the site to clearly state that information given by members may not be representative of the site. This will likely be stated within the Terms and Conditions, and may need to written into the House Rules.



Leah Williams: We put a strong emphasis on sharing experiences and helping each other. It’s the raison d’être of the site. The people who use the site get so much value out of it that they can see the benefit of contributing.

Our community guidelines are designed to keep the atmosphere friendly and supportive. Feelings often run high on the site and we do sometimes have to step in to remind people to keep things nice. In fact our first guideline is ‘Be kind to each other’. It’s particularly important because people are sharing such intimate medical and emotional experiences with each other. They can feel very exposed and vulnerable so ‘vigorous disagreement’ can sometimes slide into (or be seen as sliding into) personal attack.

There is a difficult balance to be struck between making sure people are sharing accurate information and shutting down open discussions. If, for example, people are sharing information about treatments or diet, and we wade in and post Breast Cancer Care’s position, that could have the effect of shutting down the whole discussion. If there is a discussion that we have concerns about, we refer it to our clinical team at Breast Cancer Care, to assess whether we need to intervene. Usually other users will join in the discussion and often post what we would have posted so people are getting a balanced view without us needing to intervene. If we do need to, a member of the clinical team will draft a response and we will post it on their behalf, so people know it has come from our team of nurses.

Because the forum sits within our broader Breast Cancer Care website, people have easy access to the information we produce about relevant issues, and it is easy to refer people to the accurate information we have already produced.

Patrick o’Keefe: The funny thing about a support community is that it not only attracts people who want to receive support, but also those who want to give it. Those tend to be the same people in many cases, as well.

Appreciation is a powerful thing. The people that do help others, do your best to make sure they are appreciated. If someone makes a great post, but no one has replied, you can thank them for making it and for sharing that information. People who are truly appreciated will be more likely to stay on your community. That sounds like it should be evident, but it is very powerful.

When it comes to incorrect information, let’s break them down into three types of incorrect information.

The first type is incorrect information that you yourself know is incorrect, but you feel that the member who mentioned it did so in good faith and there is no serious, immediate danger in them offering it. In such a case, you might simply respond to the thread to clear up the bad information and provide good information with appropriate links. You do this without making the other member feel bad. In doing so, you are setting a good example for members to follow – members who see bad information and spot it on their own.

Which brings us to the second type – incorrect information that you don’t know is incorrect, but that a member does. This is also information offered in good faith without an immediate danger surrounding it. In this case, there isn’t much you can necessarily do, unless you have some hint that it’s incorrect, research it and find that it is. In this case, you hope that members will sort it out and another member will post the correct information. You can’t be everywhere or know everything.

The third type is information that you feel may be offered in bad faith or that may constitute a clear, immediate danger to any member who follows it. You may wish to remove this content and, depending on whether or not you feel the member who posted it was trying to harm someone, ban them from your site or take some other action. At the very least, you want to tell them the information is wrong and that they should not spread it, for the sake of being responsible.

This is the type of content that you want to encourage members to report to you and your staff. You could do this with a clear report posts feature and you could send a note to any members who replied to the information, telling them it was bad info and if they see it again, to please report it rather than responding to it.

You could also decide to inform any other the members that are involved in that particular thread and tell them about the previous post having dangerous information. Perhaps a better idea would be to build a community resource – an FAQ, a sticky thread, whatever – that explains the dangerous thoughts or ideas and why they are bad and can be hurtful. This will vary by subject as you might not want to give people any ideas, but when it comes to thinks like dieting, knowledge is power.

Alison Michalk: We have strict rules that no professional, legal or medical advice is to be given on the boards. Clearly this requires monitoring as the essence of our community is based on Mums seeking advice from others. We've been careful to cultivate this awareness across the boards to the extent that most members will preface their post with ‘I'm not a doctor but my personal experience is...’

Our moderators often remind members that in all cases people should seek professional advice, as we have no way of knowing the full extent of their personal circumstances. We politely remind other members that offering advice without knowing the full circumstances may be detrimental to the member seeking advice.

Over the years our community has become particularly savvy in regards to mis-information and we've fostered a community that openly calls for links and evidence to back up claims made by members.

Our thanks go to the community managers that we spoke to and who took the time to share their experiences with us:

 Leah Williams, Community and Social Media Manager at Breast Cancer Care; Patrick O’Keefe, owner of iFroggy Network and author of "Managing Online Forums"; Alison Michalk, Director of Quiip and ex-community manager for Essential Baby at Fairfax Digital Australia; Blaise Grimes-Viort, recently appointed Head of Social Media and engagement at WebJam, and Vanessa DiMauro, CEO of LeaderNetworks.

Links to the other posts in this series:
Part 1) How do you engage with a community, as opposed to just informing a community?
Part 2) What is the value of that community once someone has reached their goal?
Part 3) How do you make an information-based site relevant to newbies as well as to those who’ve been using the site for a long time?
Part 4) How do you encourage experienced members to help out new members?
Part 5) How do you keep members motivated (for example in a weight loss site)?
Part 6) What are the best ways to lay out the terms of the site to make it clear to all members what the site is trying to achieve? Part 7) Do you recruit community ambassadors, to keep the site alive and growing?

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