Archive for February, 2010
What will Facebook do with its News Feed patent?
February 26th, 2010
This week Facebook was awarded the patent for the News Feed – a feature common to Facebook as well as other social networks such as Twitter and MySpace, and a number of social media apps and startups.
The patent refers to the method of displaying stories/news items relating to online activities to a predetermined set of viewers, and “assigning an order to the news items”. According to reports, the patent also covers the auto-generation of a user’s activity and the display of that to friends. That means the news updates you get when your friends upload videos and accept friend requests is covered by Facebook’s new patent.
It’s true that Facebook pioneered the News Feed technology back in 2006, and so on the face of it deserves to own the patent…but what does this mean for the rest of the social media industry? Facebook is currently the world’s largest social network, and so if it’s going down the road of seeking patents for its technology, this could really hamper innovation and progress within social media, and render networks such as Twitter useless.
It’s currently unclear what Facebook plans to do with this patent. It could take the hard line and pressure Twitter, MySpace, Google etc into taking down their News Feed features, or at the opposite end of the scale it could choose not to exercise its patent.
The reason why social media has evolved so quickly is all down to collaboration, the mashup of content and technology and the sharing of creativity. Patents are arguably not a good thing in this space, but what can we do to stop them?
At the moment this is primarily an industry story, but should Facebook choose to make use of the patent, it’s likely to reach the attention of a wider audience. Ultimately the power rests with individuals to stop Facebook from agressively patenting its technology – if the business becomes too commercial in its focus, it will lose popularity, and could suffer massively in terms of online PR.
Weekly Social Media sites, tools and posts round-up (26-02-2010)
February 26th, 2010
Welcome to another instalment of the ‘Weekly Social Media sites, tools and posts round-up’.
1. Social Media comparison is first up today. Simply type in two competing search terms and see who comes out on top. After running the report you get a whole heap of visual results to show you who is top dog. Check out Apple Vs Microsoft.
2. Google Fight is a fun little keyword search tool. Add your two keywords and let them fight to the death, watch the fight sequence to see who wins or has the most search results. OJ Simpson vs Hommer Simpson.
3. Manage Tweets is a new tool that gives you an easily detectable way to find out who you follow, who isn’t following you back and which inactive accounts you follow. Recommended.
4. Social connector for Outlook is Microsoft’s attempt to make email more social. Currently it only supports LinkedIn but there are more to follow soon including Facebook. For a more in-depth overview and installation instruction check out the How to Geek blog.
5. Flavors.me is a great idea, and here’s what they say: “Flavors.me allows anyone to create an elegant website using personal content from around the internet. Ideal for personal homepages, lifestreaming, splash and microsites, celebrity fan pages, commercial promotion, brand marketing – and everything in between”.
My Flavors.me page links from my Twitter profile – check it out here.
Social Media post of the week: The 39 Social Media Tools I’ll Use Today
SEO post of the week: 7 Must-Read SEO Articles For Every WordPress Blogger
More of the same social media sites and tools next week!
What will the internet-connected world look like in 2020? Pew knows..
February 25th, 2010
As you may have seen last week, The Pew Internet & American Life Project published the findings of its fourth ‘future of the Internet survey’ carried out between December 2nd, 2009 to January 11th, 2010.
If you’re not familiar with The Pew Internet & American Life Project, it focuses on surveying ‘web users and experts’ to help predict the future of the internet. The 895 respondents, 371 of whom were considered ‘experts’, were all opt-in, self-selecting and broken down as follows; scientists, business leaders, consultants, writers and technology developers, along with Internet users screened by the authors.
The respondents were asked to consider the future of the internet-connected world between now and 2020 and the likely innovations that will occur. The survey required them to assess different “tension pairs” – each pair offering two different 2020 scenarios with the same overall theme and opposite outcomes – and to select the one most likely choice of two statements, some of which are overviewed below.
The survey has its fans and its critics, and certainly shouldn’t be taken as gospel, but I think it offers an interesting insight into current thinking on future issues and theories, which are often used to fuel related ‘future of the Internet stories’ as has been the case in the last week.
So, now we’ve done the introductions and the disclaimers, what about the juicy stuff?
Well, the “Is Google Making us Stupid?” meme that famously sprouted up in 2008 via the cover of Atlantic magazine, originally attributed to technology scholar Nicholas Carr, features heavily. He argued that the ease of online searching and distractions of browsing through the web were possibly limiting his capacity to concentrate. This line of argument was not supported by the survey as 76 percent of respondents believe that the Internet will make people cleverer in the next 10 years, while also improving reading and writing abilities. For a full run down on this question, look here.
The graphic below, which was taken from the research, shows the distribution of responses to the paired statements. The first column covers the answers of 371 long-time experts who have regularly participated in these surveys. The second column covers the answers of all the respondents, including the 524 who were recruited by other experts or by their association with the Pew Internet Project.
You can see the full report here, with responses to the following questions:
Is the next wave of innovation in technology, gadgets, and applications pretty clear now?
84% of experts say most innovations come out of the blue and will not be predicted
Will the end-to-end principle of the internet still prevail in 10 years
64% of experts say yes
Will it be possible to be anonymous online or not by the end of the decade?
42 percent of the experts believe that in the next 10 years, anonymous online activities will “sharply decrease” due to the stricter Internet safety and identification system, but 55 percent of people believe it will still be easy to scan web pages anonymously.
Overall, the survey is a good guide, sure it doesn’t exactly offer a revolutionary window to the future, but it perhaps confirms a deeper change that many have previously suspected in the way the human mind and behaviour is reacting to the community approach of the web.
It could be argued that the web is returning us to our original human characteristics of community values and shared intelligence but on a much larger scale, with the bonus of this shared knowledge available 24/7, at least to those that have access.
It is this difference in terms of the way we gain and measure intelligence that should be the fundamental issue of the ‘Is Google making us stupid’ question, rather than trying to measure intelligence or learning in a traditional way, we need to consider the changed landscape and that future generations simply won’t be constrained by the memory-focused approach to intelligence that some still have.
Social Media case study examples
February 22nd, 2010
Here are some some of the more recent social media case studies that I have found useful in the last few weeks, as a belated 2009 review.
Here are some some of the more recent social media case studies that I have found useful in the last few weeks, as a belated 2009 review.While reading these case studies, one trend seemed to stick out in particular, related to the way in which they are presented. More often than not the case studies are visually-based and shared via via slideshare or YouTube with a small supporting blog post. This of course makes total sense as it gives the community another insight to your product and services, and because these destinations often rank highly in searches.
Social Media Case Study Round-Up from e Marketer (more recent)
30 UK Social Media case studies from the Spotlight Ideas blog.
Toyota_GB_iCrossing_case_study.pdf (application/pdf Object)
Don’t write TV off as a news medium yet
February 19th, 2010
I recently watched the film Frost/Nixon which is a dramatic retelling of the post-Watergate television interviews between British talk-show host David Frost and former president Richard Nixon.
As a quick bit of background for those who aren’t familiar with the Nixon Interviews, in 1977 (three years after his resignation), Nixon granted British journalist Sir David Frost an exclusive series of interviews for which he was paid $600,000. The interviews began on March 23, 1977 and lasted 12 days. They were taped for two hours a day, on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, for a total of 28 hours and 45 minutes. The interviews were were edited into four programs, each 90 minutes long.
The premiere episode drew 45 million viewers, the largest television audience for a political interview in history — a record which still stands today.
For those who haven’t seen the film, it is a brilliant demonstration of the power of TV as a news medium. No other media would have been able to capture the “cascade of candor”, as Frost termed it, when Nixon said the line: “Well, when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal”, effectively giving the US public the admission of guilt that they so desperately craved.
Today so much emphasis is placed on social media, that as an industry we need to be careful not to prematurely write-off media that can still be incredibly powerful for a person or brand. Very recently we secured an interview for a client of ours on Sky News, and the next day their phone did not stop ringing with new business enquiries. We mustn’t forget that audiences can still be reached via linear TV.
An interesting statistic is that average daily hours of television viewing rose to 3.94 hours in Q4 2009, driving 2009 figures to the highest since 2002, according to the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising’s latest Trends in Television Report. TV consumption is on the up, and remains to be taken seriously as a news channel.
Finally, I leave you with a great six minute video on how Richard Nixon turned the media into exaggerated fearmongers. It’s not completely relevant to the post, but well worth watching.
Weekly Social Media sites, tools and posts round-up (19-02-2010)
February 19th, 2010
Welcome to another installment of the ‘Weekly Social Media sites, tools and posts round-up’.
1. Google Buzz Button WordPress Plugin is first off the block today, originally designed by Mashable, now available for all you WordPress bloggers.
2. Twiclur is a highly customisable Twitter widget that can be used to Tweet results from from your TwitterUserName, #Topic or @TwitterUserNam.
3. BlogBooker allows you to create a free high-quality PDF book of your blog posts including your comments, but only if you use WordPress, Blogger or Live Journal.
4. Socialized Card is a page that has all your social/online identities. Great for something like Twitter where you can only add one link. View an example here.
5. Neat Chat is a very quick way of having a group chat – simply add a user name, click start and send the chatroom link around to the people you want in the group and off you go!
Social Media post of the week: Free social media monitoring tools list
SEO post of the week: 6 Best WordPress Plugins For SEO in 2010
More of the same social media sites and tools next week!
February 19th, 2010
At Liberate Media, just as at any other agency, we are regularly invited to pitch/meet/propose on a number of campaigns, and each year a percentage of those campaigns will be what we all unaffectionately refer to as ‘time wasters’, or perhaps if we were looking at it as a more sinister act, the thieves who invite you to pitch simply to hear your patter and steal your ideas. We’ve all been on the wrong end of this approach, no matter what business you are in, and sympathy certainly isn’t the purpose of this post.
So why bring it up? Well, as part of a business planning session we did at the beginning of the month I looked into 2009 new business successes/failures as a learning exercise, and I was pretty flabbergasted by the results and the amount of work we had put in with little or no return over the year. To be clear, by return I don’t mean purely winning the campaign or getting paid, I mean no result what so ever. Either the client mysteriously went quiet, said the budget had disappeared, the campaign was never awarded to anyone, or the real killer; we win and it never goes ahead.
Okay, last year was pretty terrible in terms of the economy, so the budget excuse maybe valid, but the opposite is also true, with little or no budget why would you call a pitch/meeting if you weren’t 100%. That makes me suspicious.
I haven’t quite come to the conclusion that 2009 was a back stabbing fest with companies turning agencies over for their ideas, but from our experience there was certainly more of these unexplained losses than usual.
‘You should have been more aware’ I hear you say, ‘the ones that are out to steal ideas are easy to spot’, and to some extent or other I agree. I used to pride myself in spotting the odd chancer who’s just looking for ideas, having been involved in PR pitching for coming up to 12 years I’ve seen quite a few examples, but either my radar is on the blink or last year was an exceptional year.
So, looking back at the outcomes of some of these pitches, many of which were with big brands, I see a whole host of outcomes, such as; ‘we’ve decided we’re not quite ready’, ‘one of our directors is on board but the other isn’t', ‘budget has gone/been pushed back’, ‘campaign has been put on hold or stopped’, the list goes on.
In fact doing a rough calculation of the campaigns in question, and looking at those that I know have gone ahead, only 10% that we were not successful in went to another agency, or went ahead in some guise. That means 90% are either still waiting or have fallen into the ‘unknown category’.
So what are we to do? I’m not considering the whole ‘charging for pitching/ideas’ argument that pops up every now and again, but would like to establish why the surge last year? Yes we can chalk a certain amount up to the economy, we have to take a fair hit for not spotting the time wasters, but that still leaves a good percentage with a motive as yet unknown. Am I being unkind in suggesting they did this deliberately, or is it something deeper?
Is there a part of this ‘unknown’ that felt, or were told, that social media/digital PR is something they needed to be involved in as part of their 2009 remit? And when they understood the situation, or when they realised the scale of the opportunity, discovered that they hadn’t budgeted or resourced sufficiently? Could it also be that some people needed to just investigate this area and bring in agencies to talk it through, well if discussion is the focus, fair enough, but please don’t hide behind the promise of a campaign if you want to talk. Education is part of what we all have to do, and most of us are happy to do it, but not to be duped into doing it.
So what has this review exercise taught me? Well, thinking practically, this tale should not just be one of woe, we’ve also had the great fortune to meet some brilliant new clients during 2009, many of which were won in an open and often quick process which has fostered a great relationship that has continued to this day. I hope that if the education barrier was an issue that we’ll see less of these problems in 2010 or at least more openness in discussing the problems.
Please let me know if you have any insight or experiences that you would like to share in this area, as i think there is more to be explained.
Weekly Social Media sites, tools and posts round-up (12-02-2010)
February 12th, 2010
Welcome to another installment of the ‘Weekly Social Media sites, tools and posts round-up’.
1. Type Tester is a neat tool that allows you to try out different text types, with various options such as size and spacing – great if you are a budding web designer.
2. Word It Out is a similar tool to the fantastic Wordle. You input your text into a box and it automatically creates a word cloud from your content that you can embed in your blog.
3. News Show Wizard is a Google tool that allows you to put a news widget on your site from pre-defined options including search impressions and style options.
4. Trends Buzz – what they say: “We are going to be yet another source of real time internet keyword snooping. In the first version we are going to gather hot topics from 6 different sources but there are more to come in the later stages”.
5. Sploder allows you to create you own Flash based platform or shooter game using a simple drag and drop system. Once the game is finished you can embed it into your own website.
Social Media post of the week: 25 Must Read Social Media Marketing Tips from big brands
SEO post of the week: Anatomy of a Hands-on SEO Site Audit – Part 1
More of the same social media sites and tools next week!
Bad news sells. Is social media changing this?
February 12th, 2010
This week I caught an interview with Alastair Campbell on ITV’s Loose Women, promoting his new book Maya. Within the interview Campbell (who formerly wrote for the Daily Mirror) suggested that social networking is inverting the core principle of newspaper journalism, i.e. bad news sells, and replacing it with a more balanced view of the world.
In my view he’s right. Traditionally we might have bought our favourite tabloid or broadsheet on the way to work, or selected the paper with the most grabbing front page headline. Pre-social media, we’d have been blissfully unaware of how our intake of news was being controlled by an editorial agenda that dictates bad news sells. Journalists are trained in how to tease out of any story an angle that conveys fear, sex, drama etc. A story that simply reports ‘good news’ would never get past any half-decent news editor.
Today however, ‘social’ media means that we have access to news that has not been written by journalists or broadcasters. Many high profile bloggers have no journalist training, and so take a much fresher, unbiased approach to news reporting.
Websites such as Delicious and Digg enable people to bookmark and share content from the highest profile blog through to the most obscure and niche. It’s human nature to want to share good news, and so with no motivation to ‘sell’, those consuming news through social sites are likely to be faced with more ‘good’ news that then would have been traditionally.
This is good news for brands and the PR industry as a whole. It makes it more possible for a brand to communicate its good news, and if it is liked by its community, the news will be shared. This doesn’t remove the need for a strong news hook, but that hook can now be a positive one.
You’re not the Messiah, you’re a very naughty PR/social media/digital/etc agency
February 12th, 2010
It seems 2010 has started very brightly for most, and I’m happy to say that’s certainly the case for us. I’ve heard lots of talk of interesting briefs, new campaigns and renewed enthusiasm. Let’s face it most of us were very glad to see the New Year arrive, and so far so good.
However, there are always some habits that die hard, always at least one thing that has to drag us back, and for me that’s the non-stop preaching that comes from some corners of our great and varied communications industry.
By preaching, I don’t mean thoughtful insight that is designed to build conversation and add to the communities’ learning. I mean thinly veiled sales patter disguised as thought leadership, or in some cases not disguised at all and simply an attack on other approaches to the issue of digital communications/social media/combined traditional and social media, call it what you will.
Sometimes I think we need an industry referee to step in and give people a dose of reality when they get their preach on…a character like Brian’s mother in the Monty Python movie; The life of Brian, whose famous line was the inspiration for the title of this post “He’s not the Messiah, he’s a very naughty boy!”
Here’s the clip:
Perhaps Brian’s mother could put a bit more reality and a bit less fiction into the issue. After all, the most frustrating element for me is that in many cases not only are these agency sermons misguided, the preachers themselves know it.
Allow me to give you an example; company A: is a social media agency, approaching social media from a technical stand point as they understand the way the web works from a development and build angle. They know all there is to know about building communities, linking and useful multimedia. Company B also calls itself a social media agency but its strength comes from understanding social media from a communications stand point. Company B knows all there is to know about conversation, influencers and their contacts in the traditional media help them to reach influencers quickly to build social conversation.
Company A knows Company B has skills they don’t, so Company A goes out and talks about how great their approach is and how silly company B is for not being able to do the amazing things company A can.
That’s the game you may say, but there are three main points that get right on my nerves about this situation:
1. Company A and company B know that to deliver a full campaign they require each other’s skills, and it’s even likely that they partner with each other on the quiet to achieve the desired results behind closed doors. Or if not each other, (as that would be silly), very similar agencies.
2. Company A and company B both know that certain campaigns require specific skill sets, but won’t say that, and even if a client comes to company A with a campaign more fitting of Company B, company A will say they can do it, take the campaign on and deliver it via a partner….like company B.
3. Company A and company B know that in the long term their little squabbles will be academic as brands will expect one agency to fulfil the complete lifecycle of communications, including build, social media consultancy, PR, search, you name it. We’re now in the territory of company C (PR) company D (Search) company E (Digital) and company F (Advertising) (all of whom have similar relationships as company A and Company B). Both Company A and company B are recruiting and partnering with other agencies to deliver these skill sets but try not to talk about skills too far outside of their area until they are ready to announce something/someone.
So what are we left with? A whole load of puff. All the different companies talking about how smart their approach is and how naive their competitors are, scrabbling around trying to make their company reflect skill sets from A-D, or even the full range, as quickly as possible as everyone knows that’s likely to be the end game, but we can’t admit it yet as it might put our company at a disadvantage.
As a side note, in my opinion company C (PR) has been the whipping boy of the last few years. And friends, I have a confession, I have whipped that company. I come from a traditional PR background, and I know how slow the industry has been to react, so when I started Liberate Media with my business partner Wendy we wanted to offer a different sort of PR agency that understood traditional yes, but also social media. In retrospect I feel I too have been a naughty boy.
But, the PR industry is getting there and there are some smart agencies with great people delivering measurable campaigns. As a whole there is still a long way to go, but there is a marked improvement.
So where am I going with this? Well the inter-relationships between the agencies are obvious, the skills required to deliver an integrated communications campaign are diverse, and there aren’t many agencies out there that can, hand-on-heart, say they can deliver it all in-house.
So, if your campaign is totally delivered via your agency skill set, that’s great, well done, happy days. But if it isn’t, don’t get frustrated and lash out at skills you need but don’t yet have. Why not try to practise what we as an industry preach to our clients and get back into the open discussion around the issue. That’s one of the things that made this industry great and I’m beginning to fear we’re all being swallowed up by a great gold rush.
I’m not saying there should be a big agency love-in, we all have businesses to run and yes, that is the game, but this short term focus on who has the right approach and who owns social media is doing no one any good, and as we all know isn’t very realistic. So, why don’t we just be honest about what we have today and what we are looking to tomorrow.
This is a subject we’ll be looking at in more depth over the coming months, so apologies if this has come across as a bit of a rant, or if I have started to preach. That was not my intention. I think the industry we all operate in is one of the most open and exciting to be in, but more recently this nagging one-upmanship has crept in, and although competition is healthy and welcome, in some cases I feel it’s no more than propaganda, and that’s a dangerous path to go down.