we are social

A great infographic from Socialbakers, pulling together all the latest stats on Facebook’s mobile usage:

One billion people use social media
According to a report from the ITU, there’s now over one billion people using social media worldwide. More interestingly, mobile is fast becoming the main way that the majority of people are using Facebook.

Use of geo-social apps grow
It’s well known that smartphone use is rising, but one of the interesting questions for a while has been whether the rising number of smartphones will see more people using geo-social apps like Foursquare.

Judging by the latest research from Pew, the answer is yes. In the last nine months, use of geo-social apps has risen by 50% to 18% of all US smartphone users. In terms of market penetration, it’s actually still quite low but it’s the next twelve months which are key for these apps. If they don’t break through now, they never will.

Over half of UK youth using Twitter
A quarterly survey of 540 young people across the UK found that 53% used Twitter in April compared to 42% at the end of 2011. It’s worth emphasising the relatively small sample size, as these figures seem markedly higher than other studies we’ve seen. It’s easier to believe their daily use figures:

Social TV becomes priority for TV channels
After 193% growth year-on-year of ‘social viewing’, TV channels are starting to view social viewing as a way to re-build live audiences. Bravo now plan social interactions in the initial concept stages, alongside other elements of the production.

Facebook changes apps ecosystem
Facebook is replacing the current Apps and Games dashboard with a new App Center feature that they will roll out over the next few weeks. The new feature will sort apps by categories and user ratings.

It’s an interesting change from a year ago, when Facebook relied on algorithmic discovery of new apps – but popularity is still incredibly important, as the best-rated apps will fly to the top of the Center. The by-product of this is that once again, ratings will be important, and developers will have a clear metric to measure their work by.

They’ve also launched a beta version of a paid app programme where users would pay to use an app – different from the previous model, where users would pay for in-app extras. In theory, it will mean there’s more fun games on Facebook.

Facebook trials new ad unit, proposes changes to Privacy Policy and Groups
Facebook is also testing out a new ad unit, where individual users could pay anything from zero to $2 to have their posts promoted and stay at the top of the News Feed. Although generally this seems like a bad idea, it could have its uses – for example, letting all your friends know you’ve become a father or similar. Nonetheless, the point of Facebook’s algorithm is that it shows up users’ most important posts in the News Feed, so this ad unit is almost an admission of failure by Facebook. It will be interesting to see whether it progresses beyond its current trial.

Forbes suggested that another bit of news this week from Facebook could make them drive considerably more revenue than users paying to highlight posts: proposed changes to their Privacy Policy would allow them to target ads based on the information Facebook has about you, off-site. Expect rumours of a Facebook powered ad-network to persist, until they actually launch one.

Facebook introduces file-sharing for all groups
In a smaller update – but one that could make their usage grow considerably, especially for collaboration purposes – Facebook has (as we predicted) introduced file-sharing capabilities for all Groups.

Facebook Timeline is good for engagement, Reach Generator has slow uptake
In good news for brands, a new study has revealed that Timeline has helped to increase the lifetime of the average post by an hour and a half, and has also boosted engagement by 13%.

According to Marketing Week, Facebook’s Reach Generator is having a slow uptake, with many brands not seeing the point of the cost.

As Robin Grant, Global MD of We Are Social says in the article:

Reach Generator is a “blunt instrument” which promotes every post for a monthly fee, which can be inefficient compared to promoting just the more important stories.

Facebook finds itself faced with a media agency landscape that just isn’t geared up to take a conversational approach to marketing – it’s as if media agencies woke up to find that their media plans are based on Newtonian physics in a world where quantum theory reigns.

Quite.

Twitter comes under fire over verification process, buys RestEngine
Digital Trends carried a fascinating story about how they lost their verified tick on Twitter, solely because they stopped advertising with Twitter. It reflects very badly on Twitter – stop buying adverts and you’re suddenly cast out as a pariah. It removes any doubt that the relationship between Twitter and businesses was anything more than transactional.

Twitter’s focus on growing engagement on the site was highlighted last week when it purchased email marketer RestEngine, which Tencrunch postulates they’ll use to make their tweet digest emails more relevant. Theoretically, the digests will tempt more lapsed users to return to the site, and thereby boost engagement.

Google+ releases new iPhone app
Google has released a new iPhone app for Google+ which is designed to be more beautiful and make the stream more immersive. According to Google, the new app will create ‘a carousel of beloved memories’ and if you believe that, you’re less of a cynic than me.

One of the more salient comments I’ve heard recently was about how Google+ wasn’t a stand-alone offering, but is part of the ‘Google product’. There’s definitely some truth in this – from now on, users will be able to respond to Google+ comments directly through their Gmail notifications.

Engagement grows for brands on Google+
According to a new report, engagement with brands on Google+ is up 112% in the last three months but that’s mainly for the top 20 brands; brands who have been circled less aren’t seeing nearly the same engagement or rate of growth.

One brand which is successful on Google+ – far more than on other social media platforms – is Cadbury, and their Head of Digital gave an interesting interview explaining their strategy.

Bing make search more social
Bing has re-designed its search engine to make it more social, with the help of a new sidebar which includes four components:

• An “ask friends” feature that lets users post a question to Facebook
• A list of “friends who might know” about the topic of a user’s query. This pulls information from users’ Facebook profiles to make suggestions based on what friends Like, photos they’ve added, where they’ve lived, work history, where they went to school and more.
• Suggestions of experts, enthusiasts and other “people who know” about a topic based on their public activity and authority on networks like Twitter, Quora, Foursquare, Google+ and others.
• An activity feed of real-time posts and queries, from which users can answer their friends questions and Like posts. This activity will simultaneously appear on Bing and Facebook.

This is very impressive stuff. Although, just like Google+, no-one actually uses Bing, so it’s hard to tell what difference this will make.

According to CNet, Facebook supremo Mark Zuckerberg gave the engineers a lot of guidance in building this, repeatedly telling them:

Don’t try to do social by building social on the side. Build it into the experience.

I’m sure I’ve said that before…

Foursquare look to merge check-ins with coupons
Foursquare has thus far failed to drive significant revenue – but then again, it hasn’t really tried that hard to do so. Now it’s planning to through offering coupons for check-ins. The idea is that they’ll charge venues a small fee for issuing the coupons and through this, make a lot of money.

Foursquare check-ins finally link up with Facebook properly
Foursquare has also finally introduced a link-up so that Foursquare check-ins are posted to the Facebook Timeline Map. Overdue.

The Wall Street Journal is using Facebook to cover Facebook
After Facebook Timeline launched, there was a lot of reporting about how it wouldn’t help media organisations, despite social being ‘their saviour’.

Well, the Wall Street Journal is starting to disprove the comments about Timeline, launching a Facebook Page to cover Facebook’s IPO and using Timeline to tell Facebook’s story. It’s a nice idea, but as with similar ‘projects’, it’s hit the stumbling block of a lack of fans. As of today, the page has 980 fans, compared to 490,000 for the main newspaper Page. Even considering that people might read the Timeline without liking the Page, it’s basically a really good bit of journalism which isn’t being seen by anyone. They might as well have built a Facebook App…

Uniqlo launch wake up app
Uniqlo have launched a social wake up app, which changes the music it plays depending on the weather – and then shares the time, weather and temperature at the time users stopped the alarm to Facebook or Twitter.

Domino’s bring pizza ordering to Facebook
Domino’s have launched an app which allows customers in Australia and New Zealand to order their pizza directly through Facebook. It remains to be seen whether Facebook will take a slice of the revenue from each order and whether topping it all off will be some free dips.

Pay with miles run instead of money
Nike have been running a really nice campaign in Mexico: rather than paying for a new pair of trainers with money, you can bid for them with miles you’ve run in your Nike+ enabled trainers. Nifty. You might even call it a sweatshop.

Ford teams up with PeerIndex
Ford have teamed up with PeerIndex for a massive influencer campaign, where they’ll send 1,000 social media users various ‘perks’ including a hologram of their new car, the B-Max.

Cathay Pacific’s Klout perk
Cathay Pacific have launched a cool perk using Klout scores: anyone in the international terminal at San Francisco International Airport with a Klout score of 40 or higher will be allowed into the airline’s lounge, which is normally limited to Cathay’s first class and business class passengers. Flying.

Made In Chelsea star in trouble for plugging freebies on Twitter
Made In Chelsea star Rosie Fortescue (yep, me neither) could be in breach of strict Consumer Protection Regulations for repeatedly plugging products on Twitter she’d received for free, without disclosing she’d received them for free.

Twitter resists demands to release Occupy tweets
Twitter is contesting a US court order ordering it to hand over the message history of one of its users, on the basis that tweets are owned by individual users, rather than the company. It’s a great way of championing freedom of speech – Twitter, I applaud you.

With WiFi problems and the need to let all of the impressions sink in, here’s a delayed recap of NEXT Berlin, and as I predicted, there were some clear highlights…

After an enthusiastic introudction from Matthias Schrader, the organiser of NEXT – Mr. René Obermann, CEO of Deutsche Telekom, took the stage.

Mr. Obermann delivered a speech about the current state of the digital infrastructure in Germany and the latest developments at Deutsche Telekom. One of  the highlights was the announcement of Telekom’s very own digital incubator, hub:raum. Located in Berlin (the up and coming centre of digital creativity in Germany) it will support up to 15 new projects each year. In addition to the knowledge of Telekom experts and their infrastructure, the startups who get to be part of the incubator will also have the chance of seed financing of up to €300,000. The idea behind it: to open Deutsche Telekom to external innovation and new business ideas.

While this is certainly great news, his comments about the “regulatory regime” keeping the Deutsche Telekom from investing into the infrastructure were, frankly, slightly unnerving. Both sides of this debate, the government and Deutsche Telekom, are both to blame for a noticeable number of blank spots on the German map, where digital is anything but a commodity (Germany ranks 16th in the Networked Readiness Index 2012).

To move on to less serious and more entertaining talks. One of these was the session held by two guys from Greenkern and Goodstein & Partners who introduced the campaign they worked on for Volkswagen China (together – as the rightly noticed and stated – with a hell of a lot of partners): Putting people back into the people’s car!

Let’s start with an introductory look at the campaign:

The main idea: they took the brand’s name seriously and decided to not only make cars for the people (which is the direct translation of “Volkswagen”) but began to make cars with the people, by building the biggest open innovation platform in China – zaoche.cn. If you ever worked on open innovation you know that the motivational and communicational difficulties far outweigh the technical challenges. Here are some insights from the campaign that should help you tackle these difficulties:

#1 Participation needs easy access: The Platform has to work for everyone. Not only for geeks.
With over 120.000 ideas submitted by the participants of the project, it seems like the guys tackled that problem. Easy access is only part of the solution though. The project owners quickly found out that

#2 Participation needs push: Open innovation is not advertising, but needs campaigning.
And if you want to move into an authentic conversation that boosts the buzz (while at the same time keeping the media budget in reasonable borders), you’ll soon find out that

#3 Participation needs followers: Opinion leaders boost the buzz.
Something that only happens if your engagement – and the subsequent engagement of the opinion leaders – has a solid foundation.

#4 Participation needs fertile ground: Engagement grows from strong social media roots.
If you have any doubts about the strong digital and social roots of the Chinese netizens, you should talk to my colleague Simon Kemp from our Singapore office – he will be more than happy to guide you and your brand successfully through the jungle of Chinese social media platforms. If fertile ground is the solid foundation for such a campaign, you won’t get far without insight number 5:

#5 Participation needs interest: Create relevant content
It’s an ongoing mantra of ours that without relevancy for the users, social engagement is (best case) just going to cease, once you stop pushing or (worst case) backfire at you and create a shitstorm.

One more insight before I leave you with another video that truly shows how seriously they have taken this approach (and how closely they have acknowledged the fact that China is different also) is this one:

#6 Participation needs motivation: User acknowledgement keeps the wheel spinning.
And here is how they did it …

Thanks guys for that marvellous case study – for me having worked on something similar for BMW, these were great insights…

Our latest research shows that the number of social network users is still growing rapidly across Asia, with platforms in South and Southeast Asian nations seeing the largest gains since our most recent Social, Digital and Mobile in Asia report just a few months ago:

China’s Qzone still dominates the Asian landscape with 531 million registered users, but its compatriot, Sina Weibo, has been attracting the most attention in recent months.

With 27 million (9%) of the platform’s 300 million users checking in every day, and more than 100 million posts every 24 hours, it’s clear that Sina Weibo is one of the most active platforms in Asia.

Similarly, Tencent’s Weibo offering also claims around 300 million users, and is definitely up there in the world’s most important social networks.

Meanwhile, Facebook has added more than 20 million users across Asia in the past 6 months, and now claims more than 192 million users across the 24 SDMA markets.

Although it has now been nudged back into 3rd place on the global Facebook user rankings by Brazil, India has still added more than 7 million Facebook users in 2012, and its 46 million users account for more than 5% of the worldwide total.

Interestingly, despite being blocked in most of China, Facebook now counts more than half a million users on the mainland, in addition to the 15.5 million users across Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau.

Twitter also continues to be hugely popular across the region: it’s now the number one platform in Japan, with Japanese the second most used language on Twitter worldwide.

Twitter has maintained its popularity in Indonesia too, although Facebook is still the Southeast Asian country’s most popular platform.

Tom Smith, founder of GlobalWebIndex, exclusively talks us through their latest reasearch into mobile internet usage around the world.

For many brands, mobile marketing is an exciting prospect but largely under invested, particularly considering the rapid growth of adoption and usage.

Everyone knows that mobile is important, but incorporating it into an overall marketing strategy has been daunting and frequently it has been bolted on the end with a small budget and utilised in a tactical sense.  One barrier is that mobile is still seen as a separate “media” type, but as our research shows consumers are increasingly spreading their internet behaviour across multiple platforms, with the mobile device increasingly at the core. This follows on from Robin’s post on ‘How we use our mobile devices’ that suggests PC, mobile and tablets are going to be interchangeable when accessing the internet. For this reason you cannot look at “The Internet” and “The mobile” separately, they are integrated and linked.

At the Mobile Marketing Association’s Brand and Agency Briefing in London, we discussed our latest set of research that shows that consumers don’t see the distinctions between devices in the same way brands and marketers do and suggests that we need a radical rethink in how we approach mobile:

The briefing gave us a chance to highlight some of the most important insights that coming out of our research at the moment which include:

1. Mobile internet usage continues to grow rapidly, spearheading a multi-platform post PC world and in many markets mobile activities such as news and social networking are reaching parity with PC
2. Emerging internet markets are leading the way, as shown by China and Indonesia, and increasingly being driven by high end smart phones as the huge sales of the iPhone in China demonstrate.
3. There are key internet activities that are becoming device agnostic – this includes social media. It isn’t the device that dictates how people behave online anymore. People’s activities are driving the decision to which device fits the purpose. Certain internet activities have a much higher level of cross-device usage than others; micro-bloggers, for example, are nearly twice as likely to be using PCs, smartphones, and tablets to tweet. Other activities, such as uploading photos and using mapping services, users are much more likely to use mobile phones rather than tablets. These differences are less driven by the device function and more a reflection of the specific consumer segment, their interests and lifestyle
4. Due to growing device agnostic behaviour it’s more important than ever to understand your target audience, as the device is no longer a barrier. Our research shows that specific target segments replicate behaviour across devices. This means understanding your consumer and their needs and interests is more important than ever to delivering great strategy and ideas

In summary, it’s no longer right to look at “Mobile” as a separate platform. We need to plan and build a strategy across multiple platforms.

Participation inequality: 1/9/90 rule no longer applies?
After carrying out an in-depth investigation into how the UK online population uses digital media, the BBC has developed a new model of digital participation: The Participation Choice. Going against accepted models, specifically the 1/9/90 rule, it suggests that participation is now the norm, claiming that 77% of the online population in the UK is now active ‘in some way’. For those wanting to know more (as well as those who remain unconvinced) a presentation on the research should be available later this week on the BBC Internet blog.

The impact of Twitter (it’s bigger than you think)
Some research from Edison suggests that Twitter is managing to reach beyond the one in ten Americans who actively use the service. The research reveals that more than four or ten Americans hear or read about tweets almost everyday in the media. With numbers that large the importance of Twitter as a broadcast network is evident, both for brands seeking to get their message out there as well as those seeking to combat any potential social media crises.

Poor social media customer service? You just lost a sale!
A new report from American Express exploring consumer attitudes and preferences towards consumer services confirms the value of social media as a customer service tool. It found that of those who use social media to make customer service queries, 83% had chosen not to make a purchase because of a poor customer service experience. The report also found that while consumers who use social media for customer service are the most vocal in both their praise and criticism, like their offline counterparts they are much more likely to share a negative experience, telling an average of 53 other people about it.

Brazil now 2nd largest country on Facebook
Brazil has overtaken India to gain the position of Facebook’s second largest country. With over 46 million users and penetration of around 23%, now would be a good time to think about your social media strategy in Brazil – our São Paulo office is here to help.

Facebook popular with mobile users
While most already expect mobile will play an important part in Facebook’s future fortunes, research from comScore underscores how important it is in Facebook’s present: in March, US mobile visitors spent an average of 7.35 hours on their mobile site and/or app, putting Facebook way ahead of Twitter and Foursquare.

Global social media report reveals top industries on Facebook
Socialbakers has published a report on the top 10 performing industries on Facebook and brands within each. Auto and alcohol brands came out on top for both engagement and fan growth.

Facebook finally sets a date for its IPO
Facebook shares will float on the US stock market on Friday the 18th of May, according to sources in Silicon Valley,  following a Zuckerberg-helmed roadshow that kicked off yesterday in New York. It had been expected that the founder would not attend the roadshow, instead being led by COO Sheryl Sandberg and CFO David Ebersman, but he did and initial reports suggest he came across as ‘likeable and affable’.

Another milestone for Facebook’s Instagram: 50 million users
CNet claim that Intstagram has now reached 50 million users and is adding 5 million users per week. Growth doesn’t look like it will slowing down any time soon either, with news that since allowing users to post to Sina Weibo, 100,000 Instagram photos have been shared on the network.

Facebook adds Instagam-lite functionality for feature phones
Facebook hasn’t forgotten about those of you without a smartphone, updating their Facebook for Every Phone app to provide simple photo filter options so everyone can join in the vintage-feel-fun.

Facebook makes another mobile acquisition: Glancee
In what’s arguably a blow for Foursquare, and definitely one for direct competitor and SXSW darling Highlight, Facebook has acquired location app Glancee. While Facebook has been typically quiet on its plans for the app, it fits in well with the company’s location strategy of going beyond simple check-ins toward allowing users to share their past, present and future locations.

Facebook releases mobile app data
The Facebook developer blog last week revealed the traffic it drives to mobile apps, sending 160 million visitors to mobile apps just last month (an increase of 100m since late February). The impact of integrating Facebook functionality is revealed further by looking at the top grossing apps for mobile, 7 of the top ten iOS and 6 of the top 10 Android apps are integrated with the platform. Facebook suggest that features like Single Sign On and Open Graph have been responsible for the phenomenal growth of apps such as iOS video sharing app Viddy, which now has more than 16 million users.

Open Graph is ‘steroids for start-ups’. Or is it?
More evidence of the impact of Facebook’s Open Graph, with the latest study looking at how Facebook helped accelerate growth for apps such as Pinterest, Viddy and Socialcam. Inside Facebook has also delved further into Viddy and Socialcam’s techniques, which seem to be pretty successful.

The risks associated with this kind of super-speed growth, and dependence on the Facebook platform, are becoming evident too, with Pinterest’s recent sharp drop in active users being put down to Facebook disabling the auto-publish function and today’s furore over the Washington Post’s and the Guardian’s decline in traffic from their social reader apps, which Martin Belam has expertly dissected.

Facebook’s new ‘action links’
Also of interest to brands, Facebook has reintroduced ‘action links’, the customisable links which provide a way for users to engage with apps more easily, increasing the viral potential of each story. Foursquare is one of the first to take advantage of the new functionality, adding a “save this place” link to check-in stories. Clicking on an action link will share a story on users Timelines. Previously, users could Like or comment on an activity or click to visit the app, but there weren’t app-specific calls to action that functioned this way.

The social (engineering) network?
Facebook’s desire to get users to share their organ donor status has come under the spotlight this week. Although some are clearly happy to sign-up  (by the end of it’s first day 100,000 users had registered) it does raise questions over Mark Zuckerberg’s vision for Facebook and if it will continue as a platform that connects individuals or becomes one that seeks to influence them.

Twitter personalises discovering stories
Twitter will roll out  a redesign with increased personalisation of the Discover tab in the coming weeks. It will use additional signals, such as tweets that are popular among people you follow, to select stories to display. The new design will also show who tweeted about particular stories, adding a social context to them.

Google+ Hangouts On Air now available to users worldwide
Originally only available to selected broadcasters Google+ has now made its Hangouts On Air feature available to all users. If you have something to say to the world you will be able to broadcast live publicly from Google+, YouTube or a website, see viewing figures, and record and share your broadcast.

Pinterest drives more sales than Facebook
On the other hand, Pinterest’s reputation as a driver of sales continues to grow. According to jewelry retailer Bottica, Pinterest drives 10% of its sales compared to 7% from Facebook. More importantly, those customers spend twice that of Facebook users. It goes to show that people perhaps really do use Pinterest to discover new products.

Foursquare partners with OpenTable to offer dinner reservations
Foursquare have launched a function to actually make a dinner reservation through their app using OpenTable. OpenTable, an online reservations service is currently available in over 15,000 places across the US, handy for users and another incentive for restaurant owners to maintain their Foursquare presence.

LinkedIn claims B2B top-spot, acquires SlideShare
LinkedIn is the place to be for B2B conversions according to research from HubSpot. In 2011, LinkedIn generated a visitor-to-lead conversion rate of 2.60%, on average four times higher than Twitter (0.67%) and seven times higher than Facebook (0.39%). It’s also growing faster than these two rivals but recently fell behind in monthly user activity

More importantly, LinkedIn confirmed last week that it had acquired professional content sharing community SlideShare for around $120 million. In March, SlideShare had 29 million unique visitors and the site currently has 7.4 million presentations uploaded. SlideShare CEO Rashmi Sinha made an important point: he perceives LinkedIn as a genuine social network, rather than just a collection of online CVs.

Man City vs Man Utd scores a million tweets
The popularity of sporting events on Twitter continues: after the record-breaking tweet total generated by the Barcelona-Chelsea game, data from Sysomos suggests that the Manchester City vs Manchester United football match received over 1 million mentions on Twitter.

Budweiser run Zeebox dual-screen campaign for FA Cup Final
In more football news, Budweiser ran a dual-screen campaign together with Zeebox to allow users to interact with Saturday’s FA Cup Final. Most interestingly, viewers could also play a Be The Ref social game within the app, which let them enact the part of the referee or dispute decisions, and share their decisions with other friends via the app’s Facebook integration.

Nutella go nuts over Facebook
Nutella claims that it’s Facebook ads outperformed TV in a recent campaign. Ferrero attributed 15% of sales from their Christmas campaign to Facebook, and it was also the channel that gave the highest return on investment. It’s fair to say that social media helped them spread their story.

Der Big Mäc: McDonalds Germany crowdsource burger
In celebration of it’s 40th anniversary in Germany McDonalds will create its first crowdsourced burger. Part of the ‘Mein Burger’ campaign fans were asked to create their own burger using an online burger-builder, name it and put it to the public vote. After 5 million votes were cast on over 100,000 burgers, the winner emerged as the ‘Pretzelnator’. According to McDonalds (and somewhat implausibly, considering the number of votes), 1 in 4 Germans took part in the campaign:

Baskin Robbins launches Foursquare promotion for Men In Black 3
Despite the first Men In Black movie being released over 10 years ago, marketers are hoping to cash in on the franchises success a third time around. One of the more interesting promotions comes in the form of a Foursquare check-in competition from Baskin Robbins, which is supported by a mobile site where consumers can register and also add Facebook check-ins or share their entries. Check-ins on either platform enter the user into a sweepstakes as well as earning them achievement badges they can share across Facebook and Twitter.

National Trust: a great British day out
The National Trust are launching a campaign that asks Facebook users to design a ‘Great British Day Out’. Aimed at targeting a younger audience, the Facebook app allows users to select a National Trust destination, choose a theme for their trip and invite friends. Facebook users can vote for the top 20 days out with the winner eventually being decided by the National Trust.

Republicans expand social media efforts with ‘Social Victory Centre’

The Republican National Committee digital team has created the ‘Social Victory Centre’ app, the first of its kind in the political sector. Working on the principle that politics is inherently social, they hope that the app will amplify natural sharing activities such as recommending articles. The app also features a ‘phone from home’ ability that allows those in non-contentious states to make calls on behalf of the RNC to attempt to persuade voters in battleground states.

Following on from their UK report, Socialbakers have just released their top Facebook Pages in the US April 2012 report. The report delivers the rankings of the most popular, engaging and responsive US brand and media pages on Facebook:

Socialbakers have just released their top Facebook Pages in the UK April 2012 report. The report delivers the rankings of the most popular, engaging and responsive UK brand and media pages on Facebook:

Tonight I’m off to to Berlin as an official blogger taking part at NEXT Berlin 2012 – the leading European conference for the digital industry. Two days of exciting talks and intensive networking, meeting existing and potential clients, partners and the press – this is the kind of event we crave for, and the second major digital event in Berlin in less than a week (re:publica being the first).

NEXT’s speaker line-up is impressive: Tuesday morning’s keynote by René Obermann, the CEO of Deutsche Telekom, followed by three parallel session streams: Creative, Technology and Start-ups. This is complemented by a stream of workshops (discussing, for example, the agency-model in the post-digital world) and a so-called Arena-stream: Here, speakers proposed and voted for by the NEXT community will be featured. While the Arena and workshop stream continue on the second day of the conference, the Creative, Technology and Start-ups streams will be replaced by Fashion, Mobile and Experience.

As always, that adds up to: Too much to experience, not enough time. So here is our totally subjective recommendations of the top three sessions you should not miss at NEXT Berlin:

DNA of the Post Digital Agency – Redefining the genetic code for the creative industry
Our friend Tim Malbon, co-founder of Made by Many, the product innovation & service design company, leads a panel on the ongoing discussion of how the creative industry needs to adapt to tackle future challenges. As he was just named one of Revolution Magazine’s ‘Future 50′, we expect this session to be as controversial as focussed on productive discussion of this topic of industry-wide relevance. We might go ahead and challenge him with our thoughts on this – stay tuned on twitter via #wearenext and check back here for coverage and insights.

People Power: From Social Marketing to Social Business
Will Sansom, writer and consultant at Contagious Magazine, takes another deep look at this current topic of hot debate. We have been covering current developments in this area in our “Social Business Notes” series on this blog and look forward on what Sansom has to say about social, moving from a focus on marketing to a business-wide perspective, influencing the whole value chain.

Authenticity and Trust on the Internet
Chris Heathcote of anti-mega.com is talking about what constitutes and is the basis for any (but especially digital) business in the social age. Authenticity and Trust (in the digital world) being the most relevant soft-factors of success, but as hard to produce as to measure, have been an ongoing topic of the intellectual as well as the business debate in the last years – ranging from rather skeptic positions (e.g. Sherry Turkle) to very optimistic evaluations (e.g. the Edelman Trust Barometer). It will be exciting to see what Chris has to add.

To sum it up: Two days of conference, hundreds of sessions – and we will be there to connect, network and experience. If you’d like to follow our impressions, our twitter stream #wearenext will help you out. If – for whatever reason – you’d like to meet up for a coffee (or a beer) contact me either via twitter, send me a mail or give me a call on +49 160 96434379.

Hope to see you at NEXT Berlin!