Posts Tagged 'social media'

Google ‘Search, Plus Your World’ Update

A presence on Google+ is now something brands should be considering more than ever. The network grew to 62 million users at the end of 2011, rumours spread that they had hit 90 million just last week with predictions that the figure will reach 400 million by the end of this year.

The recent Google updates have brought ‘social search’ to 2012 and it has been causing a bit of a stir. Google has now started to use social signals from your Google+ accounts to incorporate social data into personalised results page. The concerns raised are that Google is clearly biased to its own network over the social behemoths Facebook and Twitter which undoubtedly are a major source of valuable content and real-time data. This is not to say that integration of other social networks will not happen but for the time being it would seem Google+ is the place to be and brands should be prepared for this. Read more about the Search, plus Your World update here.

Facebook launches 60 new timeline apps

On Wednesday 18th Facebook unveiled its plans to give users more ways of sharing what they are doing with friends with the launch of its new timeline apps. Many big time brands have already jumped on-board with 60 new apps announced from the likes of TicketMaster, Pinterest, TripAdvisor, Spotify and Foursquare. As Facebook describe it in their latest post “you can now enhance your timeline with apps that help you tell your story, whether you love to cook, eat, travel, run, or review movies.” Using Facebook’s Open Graph platform any brand can create an app that will sit in the users’ timeline.
This a great opportunity for brands to increase touchpoints with new audiences since the app gives updates that will appear in their friends’ tickers and news feeds – success will boil down to creating  an app that users feel compelled to use every day and more crucially something they want to share with their friends and network.

What 2012 holds for Social Video

According to e-consultancy social video campaigns generated 820m views in 2009, 2.7bn views in 2010, and over 8bn views in 2011. They predict this figure will double again in 2012. What’s driving growth to social video? Device proliferation, the increasing number of people  watching social video on phone and tablet mobile devices; the normalisation of cross-platform consumption and social gaming are cited. Brands are also getting smarter around the advertising possibilities of branded content – the days of the pre-roll ad look numbered as pioneering brands get more creative. Think the Old Spice ‘The man your man could smell like’ series of viral hits, and Volkswagon’s ‘The Force’ ad which became the most shared ad of all time jumping from 100,000 to 1m views in just a few hours. Read on for social video predictions for 2012.

The darkest of days

#Daywithoutwikipedia became a trending topic on Twitter on Wednesday  18th sparked by their decision to blackout to the English version of the site for 24hours to protest against two pieces of US legislation, the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act. They weren’t alone – Reddit, WordPress, MoveOn.org, Mozilla joined them in the protest which spread to more than 10,000 websites. Many sites blacked out completely, others covered their logos in black including Google who posting this message next to the search bar “Tell Congress- please don’t censor the web”

To do justice to the implications of such legislation we’ll cover it more in another post (coming soon) but for now have cherry-picked quotes that give a flavour of what happened on Wednesday.

Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, on Twitter  “This is going to be wow, I hope Wikipedia will melt phone systems in Washington on Wednesday. Tell everyone you know!”

Wikipedia: “Wikipedians have chosen to black out the English Wikipedia for the first time ever, because we are concerned that SOPA and PIPA will severely inhibit people’s access to online information. This is not a problem that will solely affect people in the United States: it will affect everyone around the world.”

The “We the People” petition, authored by several White House staffers under the Obama administration: “While we are strongly committed to the vigorous enforcement of intellectual property rights, existing tools are not strong enough to root out the worst online pirates beyond our borders. That is why the Administration calls on all sides to work together to pass sound legislation this year that provides prosecutors and rights holders new legal tools to combat online piracy originating beyond U.S. borders while staying true to the principles outlined above in this response.”

And what was Twitter’s position on the blackout? CEO Dick Costolo wrote “that’s just silly. Closing a global business in reaction to single-issue national politics is foolish” Though did later concede that Twitter is among those opposing SOPA and PIPA (in case you were wondering 2.4 million SOPA-related tweets were sent between 12 a.m. and 4 p.m. on Wednesday 18th Twitter announced.)

Yesterday, I could almost hear the collective swoon across the country when people tuned in to David Beckham’s live interview on Google+ Hangouts. Beckham joins the line-up of celebrities  from Will.I.Am to the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu who have used Google+ Hangouts to connect with their fans in. These high-profile gatherings work wonders in drawing attention to the ‘coolness’ of some of its features, drumming up media attention and  pushing the social network ever closer to reaching mainstream status. Such endorsement goes some way to explaining how in a short space of time Google+ has amassed 90 million registered users (it took Facebook about 4 years to reach the same number).

Hangouts are a differentiator. Google+ hasn’t yet managed to shake off its comparisons to Facebook and Twitter and the similarities won’t go unnoticed. In many respects Google+ has done a great job of pulling out the best features of Facebook and Twitter and making them a little shiner. Such as the addition of ‘circles’ allowing you to group your network into different categories from friends to work colleague and family, then filtering the information you choose to share with them via your status. Even the humble hashtag has been given the Google treatment – start typing your hashtag into the status bar and Google will autocomplete.

Hangouts are different. Aside from the glitz of those high-profile endorsements, Hangouts are a genuinely useful and practical B2B tool. Here are just a few of the ways your company can start using Hangouts:

Online reputation management: A crisis can break out at any point and escalate at lightning speed across social media channels. Response is time-critical but how do your usual crisis management procedures stack up in periods such as the Christmas break – many offices are closed, employees on holiday and with family – how do you get all the key decision makers together? Hangouts allow live group chat with webcam support providing a productive new way for collaborating and making time-critical decisions. What’s more these sessions can be recorded and shared.

Integration with Google docs: In just a few clicks you can share your documents and authorize others in the hangout to edit them. The video element transforms what would have previously been a simple test-based chat to a rich live discussion.

Live demos and training: Google+ Hangouts with Extras allows you to share your screen with other people – perfect for live demo’s, training, presentations and tech support.

Sketch up: Designers, UX teams, content planners rejoice! It’s possible to sketch up ideas, illustrations, wireframes and pretty much anything you want in a real-time collaborative meeting.

Track participants: Post event follow-up is a breeze, Google+ gives you a list of everyone who attended a Hangout. Handily, it also provides a list of all those who didn’t, so you can invite them again. Push notifications can also be sent to your participant’s steams to keep the conversation ticking over post hangout.

Time to start hanging out?

No one can deny the impact social media has had on the world over the last couple of years. Facebook and Twitter are now the staple diet of over 40 million people in the UK, a figure that is not decreasing anytime soon. Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, took to the stage at the eG8 conference last year to explain why social gaming company Zynga is now worth more than EA. It’s because companies like Zynga and Playfish understand that people want to play games with their friends, so they develop games with social knitted into the core of their design, incorporating TV, films, music, books and news. “People listen to music with friends; you watch TV, read the news and discuss it with friends. These industries can be rebuilt from the ground up with social”, says Zuckerberg. We are now starting to see these industries thinking more socially and when you make these companies social, the opportunities are a lot broader than they are in their current form.

Leading by example there are many apps that broke through in 2011 on the forefront of social design. Spotify, the music streaming application, lets you share songs with friends via an inbox, posting playlists and sharing what you’re listening to, while Pinterest is an online pinboard to share your favourite photos, products, designs or anything that fascinates you. Yet another social platform, BranchOut acts as a recruitment app that lets you share and recommend jobs to your friends. The list goes on with Instagram, Path, Flipboard, GetGlue and so on…

Over the next year we’re going to see more industries tap into the social nature of humans by building social design into the principles of their hardware and software. The core of social design and development is that focus is placed on the people – the way they act and engage online in a more natural way through communicating, interacting and sharing with friends, friends of friends, friends of their friends and so on. Facebook tapped into this early with features such as the friend request, “accept” or “not now”, rather than the traditional “yes” or “no”, therefore psychologically you don’t feel as bad when you decline ‘that’ request from your cousin’s friend’s brother whom you’ve never met before.

This inherently mirrors the social needs of individuals, and 2012 will see this viewpoint move into not only industries such as FMCG, retail and media but education, hospitality, financial services, insurance, real estate and construction. What industry is fundamentally not social? If my friend Bryan had his kitchen fitted by a good plumber, or my friend Jimmi recommends a good accountant he uses, this has distinct value to me. The social sphere is going to directly influence many of the decisions I make and if software is designed to help me in this decision process, then I’m going to use it.

What are some of your favourite social apps?