Hello, we are social. We’re a conversation agency with offices in London, Paris, Milan, Munich, Singapore, Sydney & São Paulo. We help brands to listen, understand and engage in conversations in social media.
We’re a new kind of agency, but conversations between people are nothing new. Neither is the idea that ‘markets are conversations’.
We’re already helping Heinz, HP, Unilever, Tesco, Orange, Eurostar, Kleenex, PayPal & Hotels.com.
If you’d like to chat about us helping you too, then give us a call on +44 20 3195 1700 or drop us an email.
Every wave of research tells us something new but each one has also shown that social media is deepening its reach month-by-month and year-by-year. GlobalWebIndex founder Tom Smith exclusively explains the implications of their latest research.
Social networking is the fastest-growing active social media behaviour online, increasing from 36% of global internet users in GWI.1 to 59% managing their profile on a monthly basis. This is followed by updating a micro-blog, which increased from 13% to 24% and uploading video, which increased from 21% to 27%.
The most social engaged internet market in the world is China where 84% of internet users contribute at least once a month to either social networking, blogging, video uploading, photo sharing, micro-blogging and forums. Next in line are Russia, Brazil and India, demonstrating how BRIC markets dominate the social landscape.
In the UK the figure is 64%, in the US 60% and in Germany 52%, demonstrating that even in less social markets, contributing online is still mainstream.
What this means for brands is that social networks have become a key brand contact point for nearly a third of consumers. In GWI.6, 59% of global internet users had visited a brand website in the last month, 29% had liked a product or brand and 24% had visited a branded social network profile. The preference for social brand interaction is more marked in emerging internet markets such as Indonesia and the Philippines, where 50% of users had visited a branded social network page in the last month.
Based on these statistics, it’s clear that social networking can now deliver mass reach for brands and the trend is most visible among younger internet users with 16-24s much more likely to “like” a brand or product than older age groups, for example. However micro-blogging remains a far more targeted social strategy with just 9% had retweeted a branded post and only 13% had opted to follow a brand on a micro-blog.
Consumers that interact with businesses in the social media space do expect something in return with future discounts, better customer service and personalised recommendations cited by all age groups as the leading motivations.
Such expectations are significantly higher in emerging markets with Argentina, Philippines and Brazil indexing highest across a range of areas, demonstrating how consumers in these markets are particularly open to building relationships with brands online.
But the growth of social media as a genre does not mean success for all platforms. Google+ is firmly in the growth phase but there are also concerns about Facebook with increasing evidence from the US, it’s first big market, that users are become less engaged.
Our data also shows the massive growth of Google+, which is already the world’s second biggest social network. Our data indicates that a massive 22% of social network users now have active profiles – peaking in India at 49%.
By contrast while the number of visits to Facebook continues to grow across all platforms but the world’s largest social network has reached saturation among active internet users in more and more markets, with user growth restricted to growth internet markets such as India, Indonesia and Brazil.
More importantly across three waves of research in 2011, Facebook users on a global basis have reduced the frequency of key Facebook activities including sending a digital present, searched for new contacts or sent message to friends.
GWI.6 data shows Facebook fatigue spreading in the US from the early adopters who we identified as disengaging in GWI.5. Declines in social networking activity such as messaging friends fell 12% over the six waves of research, searching for new contacts fell 17% and joining a group 19% among all Facebook users in the US.
Something to think about if you are considering investing in the world’s most hyped IPO.
Companies boosting digital marketing budgets
According to Econsultancy’s Marketing Budgets 2012 Report, companies are looking to boost budgets for their 2012 digital marketing strategies. The growth is fairly significant with 68% are increasing their digital budgets in 2012 compared to compared to 45% of companies increasing overall marketing budgets.
Corporate blogging declines as newer tools rule
A study on the usage of social media in Inc. 500 corporations shows fewer of them are using blogging, message/bulletin boards, online video, podcasting and MySpace and more are using Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and Foursquare.
The platform most utilized by the Inc. 500 is Facebook, with 74% of companies using it. Virtually tied at 73% is the adoption of the professional network, LinkedIn. The use of corporate blogs dropped to 37% from 50% in 2010, as this mature tool evolves into other forms or is replaced by communication through Facebook or Twitter.
Social media tools are seen as important for company goals. Ninety percent of responding executives report that social media tools are important for brand awareness and company reputation. Eighty-eight percent see these tools as important for generating web traffic while 81% find them important for lead generation. Seventy-three percent say that social media tools are important for customer support programs.
Colombia was measured as having the fastest user growth on Facebook and Brazil and Indonesia, alongside India, were marked as countries to watch. Looking to Europe, in one month alone Germany and Poland grew a respective 500k and 300k users and they’ve got even more room to grow. Japan have also had strong growth this month.
Facebook’s total ad revenue in 2011: $3.15 billion
Share of revenue attributed to advertising: 83%
Share of revenue that was advertising at the beginning of 2010: 99%
Percentage of sales in the U.S.: 56%
Amount of revenue sourced from Zynga: 12%
Facebook 2011 profit: $1 billion
Revenue generated from virtual goods: $557 million
Global monthly active users: 845 million
Daily likes and comments: 2.7 billion
Likely Facebook market valuation: $75 to $100 billion
Mr. Zuckerberg’s ownership stake: 28.2%
Mr. Zuckerberg’s voting power: 56.9%
Agencies: 89% Facebook, 39% Twitter, 18% Google+
There is no doubt that Facebook will play the dominant role in 2012. 89% of agencies plan to utilize the medium for their clients in the future, with 39% using Twitter, 36% wanting YouTube and 21% choosing Linkedin, and a surprisingly high 18% for Google+.
Facebook ‘likely to roll out mobile ads in weeks’
Given recent IPO filing admitting it was weak on mobile advertising, its unsurprising that its plan is to bring out mobile ads within the next couple of weeks in order to generate advertising revenues. January 2012 saw featured stories within users’ news feeds for the first time so it makes sense that mobile ads would be the next logical step forward. In December it claimed to have 425 million monthly active users using its mobile products, which is around half of its total monthly active users, and 21% growth from September’s 300 million figure.
In the period from September 1st to November 30th, 30% of Japanese accounts posted at least once, while in Brazil the number slipped to 25%. For both countries, the number is surprisingly low, meaning that at least 70% of those millions of accounts were dormant for at least 3 months, if not more. The country with the highest percentage of active accounts is the Netherlands, with 33% of the accounts posting in the 3 month period. The most active countries on Twitter include Spain, the US and Indonesia.
Twitter and LinkedIn’s revenues: an update
With the release of Facebook’s detailed figures, it worth comparing them to those of LinkedIn and Twitter. Where Facebook made $3,150,000,000, Twitter managed a paltry $139,500,000 – over 20 times less:
LinkedIn fared little better with $154,600,000:
Google+ passes 100 million users
Paul Allen has been doing his usual research into Google+ user figures, and according to him, the site has grown by more than 10% between January 19th and February 1st, passing 100 million users. If these growth rates continues, marketers will be unable to ignore Google+.
Pinterest drives incredible referral traffic According to Shareaholic, Pinterest drives more referral traffic than Google Plus, YouTube and LinkedIn combined, and is also showing impressive growth month-on-month:
Superbowl hits record for Tweets per second
Last night’s Superbowl broke a record for the most Tweets per second (TPS) for a sporting event. According to Twitter, the average TPS was 10,000, with the peak hit at 12,333 TPS. The way records like these keep on falling, we can only speculate what, say, the 2014 World Cup final will be like.
KLM launch ‘Meet and Seat’
KLM have launched Meet and Seat, a new social way of flying. Essentially, when checking in online, customers can link up their social profiles, so fellow passengers can see their interests and what they look like and choose to sit next to them accordingly. Clever.
Heineken launches Facebook app as part of wider Valentine’s push
Beer brand Heineken have launched a Facebook app as part of a wider push to make the brand appeal to younger men. The ‘Serenade’ app lets fans send one of 640 songs in 20 languages as a date invite to their Valentine. To determine what song is sent using the Serenade app, participants must answer five questions including, “who they would like to take on a date” and “why their chosen date should step out with them”. Ten out of ten.
Another hashtag campaign gone wrong
RIM, the makers of BlackBerry launched a social media campaign last week around a squad of cartoon characters called the Bold Team, together with the hashtag #BeBold. Just like the McDonalds fail of a few weeks ago, the negative sentiment towards RIM was taken up by the masses, with the hashtag abused to (somewhat) amusing effect…
Toyota spams Twitter around the Superbowl
The year is 2012. 2012. 2012, remember that. Because if in 2008 Toyota’s fail around this weekend’s Superbowl might have been forgivable, it’s not now. Essentially, they spammed everyone tweeting on hashtags around the Superbowl with tweets about winning a car. Before suspending the accounts when The Next Web pointed out how bad it was. And it really was very, very, very bad.
More than half of all UK MPs are now on Twitter
Of the 650 elected MPs of the British Parliament, 331 are now on Twitter, meaning more than 50% are using the micro-blogging site. A truly momentous occasion which will go down in history.
Facebook users’ views up in lights in Times Square
Meanwhile, on the other side of the pond, with the 2012 US Presidential Election now just months away, a new Facebook app has been launched which tracks users emotions towards certain issues and put thems up in lights. The app, called 2012 Matters: What Matters Most will poll users, with questions in their news feeds asking them which of two issues matters more — say, the economy or the environment. When a user answers the question, the result will show up on that user’s personal news feed and on friends’ news feeds. The friends also will be prompted to take the poll.
Once the app is installed, they can rank the three issues that are most important to them and opt in to having the results, including their Facebook profile photos, broadcast on the Reuters billboards, including in Times Square.
Shopping has always been a highly social experience, so it’s little surprise that retailers all over the world are exploring how they can best harness social media, both online and on the high street.
This is a topic I explored in the above presentation, which I gave at the Asia Pacific Retailers Convention in Singapore late last year.
It explores 3 key questions:
What exactly are social media?
Why are they relevant to (retail) marketing?
How can retailers in Asia harness social media?
We begin by examining the rationale for using social media, with some high-level numbers that demonstrate the scale and pervasiveness of social media in Asia and around the world. Tellingly, these numbers have changed even in the few weeks since I delivered this presentation, as we saw in our recent reports on Social, Digital and Mobile in Asia.
The second part of the presentation contains some great examples of how retailers like Uniqlo and Tesco have used social media to help with different objectives, from raising brand awareness and driving sustained loyalty to delivering one-to-one customer service.
We then take a quick look at some key trends that will shape the future of social media for retailers:
The importance of mobile devices, especially when it comes to ‘in-store social’;
The integration of social media into e-commerce, including trends like group buying and f-commerce;
The accountability offered by end-to-end social analytics – ‘from tweet to repeat’
Having demonstrated a clear rationale for retailers to use social media, the presentation concludes by setting out 8 simple steps that retailers can follow to get started in social media:
Define the business objectives you hope to achieve through social media activities;
Monitor and interpret your audience’s conversations in social media;
Understand your audience’s motivations for using social media, and what that means for your brand;
Identify how you can add value to your audience’s world;
Select the most appropriate social platforms for your audience and objectives;
Strategise your approach to each of these platforms:
Start off small, using a ‘test-and-learn’ approach;
Identify how you’d improve based on this experience, and start the process again
It goes without saying that different retail brands will have different needs, and even the same brand will need to adopt a different approach for different audiences and cultures, but this overall framework should help retail brands everywhere to start harnessing the power of social media.
Some useful research from InSites Consulting, who conducted a survey of 400 senior marketing managers in the US and the UK. Most importantly, it found a positive correlation between the extent of social media integration and the company’s financial results. The results are summarised nicely in this infographic:
The research also showed that technology, telecom and media companies are way ahead of the others where social media integration is concerned, with a quarter having integrated social media in their company processes. On the other end of the scale there are the financial and pharmaceutical sectors, with one in three only just starting their social media adventures.
Following our recent series of reports on Social, Digital, and Mobile in Asia, here’s our new overview of the digital landscape in other parts of the world:
The report presents the key data you need in order to understand how our digital lives are evolving around the globe, and also to make comparisons across regions.
Please note that the definition of Asia used in this report comprises additional countries compared to the definition we used in our recent SDMA series, so stats will vary.
Consumers respond better to shared content than paid advertising
General Electric teamed up with Buzzfeed to prove once and for all that shared content results in a better response from consumers than paid advertising placement. Digital advertising measurement firm, Vizu, exposed subjects to the ‘The GE Show’ video through both paid display ads and sharing from friends and found that, overall, those who watched the video via sharing “had a significantly bigger lift in positive attitudes toward GE – associating the brand with such things as creativity and innovation – than people exposed via paid placements.” Paul Marcum, director of global marketing and programming at GE, said that the study was a lesson on “the value of advocacy, and that absolutely will inform marketing decisions”.
Teens opting for Twitter as older generations ruin Facebook
Since the days of yore parents have been warning their kids about privacy and not sharing too much information online. And kids, characteristically, have not listened and have shared whatever they please with their friends and the friends of their friends. But now a funny thing has begun to happen. As parents begin to disregard their own advice and tentatively setup Facebook profiles of their own, the kids start to fear for their privacy, not from ‘pirates’ or fraudsters, but from their parents. As a result, a lot of teens are now migrating to Twitter in an effort to escape the prying eyes of the older generations. Of course, what is happening here is nothing new, as Alice Marwick, a post-doctoral researcher at Microsoft Research points out, “They just want someplace they can express themselves and talk with their friends without everyone watching”.
When it comes to Facebook brand pages: Local is better than Global
Socialbakers have done a bit of social media sleuthing and determined, once and for all, that local pages consistently result in higher levels of engagement than global pages. Citing both Xbox and BMW as examples, they show that the top local pages result in far higher (10 times higher in Xbox’s case!) levels of engagement than a centralised global page. The benefits of ‘going local’ include content and conversation being more relevant, fans sharing a common language and fans having more in common.
Timeline and Open Graph are coming to brand pages
Social marketers are readying themselves for the changes that are to come to Facebook brand pages in 2012, most notably, the introduction of Timeline and Open Graph. Carolyn Everson, VP of global marketing solutions at Facebook:
There’s a lot of speculation [about Timeline]. The goal has always been to have your personal experience on Facebook not be so different than the brand or page experience. And right now, it is different. You have Timeline and you have a page-brand profile. So we are absolutely moving in the direction to sync those up. We believe that brands want to be able to curate how they’re represented in a more visually pleasing way, and we’re in the midst of trying to figure out how best to do that.
and on Open Graph:
We don’t want a mad rush to have every brand suddenly think that the next thing we have to do is an Open Graph implementation. Because then you put stuff out there that people don’t care about, and that they don’t really share, and they turn it off. We’re working brand by brand, and frankly, industry by industry.
Timeline supported by just one in ten Facebook users
When it comes to users rather than brands, a survey of 4,000 of them has found that just 8% of users endorse Facebook’s Timeline feature. The survey also found that 51% of those asked were worried by the changes and just 8% said they would get used to them. Of course time will tell whether the changes are accepted in the long run. It tends to be the case that redesigns of this sort are met with uproar at first, then quiet consternation and finally accepted as the status quo and the whole cycle repeats itself ad infinitum. Unless, of course, you happen to be Digg.
Facebook’s ‘Subscribe’ feature proves a hit with journalists and page owners
Since November 2011, journalists have seen a 320% increase in Facebook subscribers. Twitter proved an early hit with journalists and they seem to be using Facebook’s ‘Subscribe’ feature in more or less the same way; keeping their readers informed and up to speed by sharing articles, photos, videos and asking questions of their subscribers. Facebook has also introduced the option for Facebook users to subscribe to page owners, opening up new communication channels between consumers, brand pages and the people that manage them.
Facebook beta new social plugin, ‘The Recommendation Bar’
Facebook have debuted a new social plugin that incorporates some of Facebook’s Open Graph features. Essentially, it boils down to a ‘Recommendation Bar’ that gives readers ‘Social Recommendations’ on similar content they are likely to enjoy or that their friends enjoyed, an ‘Omnipresent Like’ button to ensure that user’s ability to Like a page isn’t hampered by poor site design and the ability to switch on ‘Frictionless Sharing’.
Over 5 billion songs have been shared on Facebook since the f8 conference
Since September, over 5 billion songs have been shared as a result of Facebook’s ‘frictionless sharing’ feature, although the jury’s still out on whether or not frictionless sharing is a hit with users. Some critics say that it has reduced the sharing of content to a passive activity, others say it is intrusive. Even so, it is hard to argue with the numbers.
Twitter to roll out more of their fan-dangled brand pages to big spenders
The roll out of Twitter brand pages will continue from February 1st onwards, although only to brands that have already committed to spending at least $25,000 on its ad products. Twitter declined to comment on the ongoing roll out of the new brand pages or the advertising spend required to qualify for one, although they did say they are partnering with some individuals and charities for the roll out of its brand pages, one of which will be the American Red Cross.
Twitter analytics to be introduced in the coming months
Erica Anderson, Twitter’s manager for news and journalism, also announced that one of the new features that will be released in the coming months is an analytics service to help content creators track how their content is spreading across the Twitterverse.
Can the caged bird still tweet? Nope, apparently not
Twitter has also announced that it is now able to censoring tweets in certain countries, in order to comply with local laws. The announcement was met with some scepticism from commentators, not least because of the role Twitter played in many of the uprisings that took place last Spring, although Twitter have deflected some of the criticism by opting for full transparency when censoring tweets. In order to qualify for censorship, an ‘authorised entity’ would have to report the tweet or account, which would then be censored in that country, and in its place would be left a notice informing users that the tweet or account in question had been censored for legal reasons. The Thai government have been one of the first to welcome the decision. Hmm…
Facebook, Twitter and Myspace engineers fix Google’s social search results
“Don’t be Evil” was Google’s first unofficial motto. It referred to, among other things, objectivity and parity in the results it returned to users. But since the launch of Google’s social search features, a number of their competitors claim Google has been hoisted on its own petard, with Google’s new results seemingly favouring Google+ results over other networks, such as Twitter. As a result, a group of engineers fromFacebook, Twitter and Myspace have launched the “Don’t be Evil” bookmarklet, which let’s users view the new social search results without this bias. The results are quite impressive.
Google launch new ‘Ask a Friend’ feature
While we’re on the subject of social search, Google have also launched their ‘Ask a Friend’ feature, that essentially sits at the bottom of the search results and when clicked gives users the option to address their search query to their Google+ contacts instead of Google’s many search algorithms. Opening up this feature to include Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook might go some way placating those critics that believe Google is tipping the scales in its own favour.
The G+ name saga continues
It seems like people have been whining about Google+’s policy on nicknames and pseudonyms since before the platform was even launched, and last week they offered a tiny, if impractical concession. You can now add a nickname to appear between your existing names ie. George “The Destroyer” Terry, or to have your name appear in another script, ie., to use their examnple, “सौरभ शर्मा (Saurabh Sharma)”. They also let you set up profiles under other ‘established’ identities, but the process to have these alternate identities verified seems a little impractical. Something tells me they haven’t quite hit the nail on the head with this one.
Youtube also announced that 60 hours of video is now uploaded to Youtube every minute. This staggering statistic is made even more impressive by the fact that it has increased 25% since May last year.
Just when O2 thought it couldn’t get any worse…
As you’re probably aware, O2 got in a bit of hot water last week after it came to light that they had been sending copies of their customer’s numbers to every website that the user visited on their handset. As you’d expect, the Twitterverse flew totally off the handle and set upon the mobile service provider with all the rage it could muster. O2 fought valiantly, and seemed to be weathering the storm as best as could be expected – until they hit their daily tweet limit, which, if you didn’t know, is 250 direct messages and 1000 tweets/retweets/@messages. As more and more brands attempt to salvage their reputation from the jaws of ignominy in the midst of epic #fails through social media, this could become a serious issue, and one that Twitter might want to address.
Time Out to launch social TV guide Time Out will launch an interactive TV guide that will feature listings, links to more information about the shows, relevant Twitter and Facebook activity, ‘Watch now’ links to services such as 4OD, ITV Player and BBC iPlayer and the option to record listed programmes on their Sky+ or TiVo box.
FIFA Street to feature in-game social ‘Street Network’
EA have announced their plans to bring social to the FIFA Street series with new features that will allow users to create profiles, capture videos of their best tricks and goals. “The Street Network brings that real-world swagger into the game by enabling players to capture video of those moments and share them with everyone in their street network to see,” said producer, Sid Misra, “and providing friends with a way to compare each other throughout the game.”
Lego launch social media platform for fan
Called ReBrick, the Lego platform is essentially a content platform that allows fans to bookmark content elsewhere on the web and aggregate it on the site, creating a hub for all Lego-related user generated content on the web. A bookmark widget can be installed for easy bookmarking and links can be shared through social platforms. The cool thing about ReBrick is that rather than clearing out all of the existing fan-sites dedicated to Lego creations the world over, ReBrick works in tandem with them. The creators consulted fans throughout the development process and the site also provides links to other sites and forums online where fans can further indulge their love of Lego.
Kermit the Frog takes to Twitter to promote upcoming film
Disney made their way into the trending topics on Thursday when Kermit took over the @DisneyMoviesUK account and fielded questions from his fans as part of Disney’s marketing efforts around the premiere of the new Muppet movie. This isn’t the first time that a fictional character has cropped up on Twitter in order to promote the release of a new film or series, but come on, this is Kermit the Frog. Loads of people got in line to #AskKermit their question, including one Mr @StephenFry.
Orange launch film site based on the wisdom of crowds Orange have launched an aggregator called Orange Film Pulse which collates opinions from different online sources – Facebook, Twitter, blogs, online review sites, etc – in one place. You can also tweet directly from the site. It will be worth watching whether the site achieves any pick-up, considering Orange’s wider involvement in film.
House of Fraser targets students
This time, some of We Are Social’s own work – House of Fraser is embarking on a major marketing push to target students – people who might not have considered the brand before. It has partnered with the National Union of Students’ (NUS) Extra Card, to launch a vouchering app on the House of Fraser Facebook page (concepted and built by us) . The app enables students who “like” the brand on Facebook to receive a 10% discount when shopping on its site. It is also offering “flash discounts” via the social network to students.
Air China’s Facebook check-in campaign
To raise awareness of their services from Sweden, Air China partnered up with a number of popular Asian restaurants in Sweden and encouraged guests to check in on Facebook as they sat down to eat. Those with highest number of check ins (and calories, we assume) at the end of the week won a pair of free tickets to Asia. Although it may seem simple, this was a highly successful campaign, reaching over a million people.
Manchester City launch City Fan Cam During last Sunday’s match with Spurs, Man City captured a 360 degree ultra HD picture inside the Etihad Stadium, which after the match fans could access online – and then tag themselves before posting to Facebook or Twitter. This was impressive, if unoriginal. But what made it clever, was that they hid players like Balotelli and Nasri around the stadium with the fans, and challenged fans to find them. This meant the picture was interesting for more people than just those who were at the match. It also explains why Nasri went missing on the pitch.
Bayern Munich’s spectacular own goal
Bundesliga leaders Bayern Munich promised fans a new signing on Thursday – with the announcement via their Facebook Page. When Bayern revealed the signing ‘the new FCB star’ was actually just a marketing stunt designed to show how important fans are to the club. 5,000 angry comments later, Bayern were forced to apologise. Oh dear.
LA Fitness shamed by Twitter LA Fitness faced their own crisis last week – after a Guardian story about them trying to extract £360 from a pregnant woman who’s husband had lost his job went viral. In the end LA Fitness agreed to waive the fees, but it’s fair to say this marketing blunder will cost them far more than £360. Oh dear.
Snickers investigated by the ASA The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has launched an investigation into Snickers’ Twitter campaign where they recruited celebrities to post some very out-of-character tweets. The campaign is being investigated against two possible breaches of the Advertising Code: whether it should have been stated in the ‘teaser’ tweets that they were marketing communications; and whether the hashtag “#spon” in the final ‘reveal’ tweet made it clear enough that that tweets were sponsored.
Twitter users deported for joking about ‘destroying’ America
In a shocking but amusing story, two British tourists were deported from America before even getting out of the airport, after one tweeted that he planned to ‘destroy’ America. The police refused to believe that it was slang, and he didn’t actually plan to destroy either the nation, its people or its government. A story that seems funny now, but one that could become a common occurrence if the FBI’s plans to monitor social media come to fruition.
Facebook recently announced a new apps permission process, and it appears these changes are already live.
The changes appear to be designed to make apps more transparent to users, as this excerpt from the Facebook Developers blog highlights:
More Control & Clarity for Users Similar to the inline privacy controls people have when they post content, we are introducing a new, inline privacy setting that allows a user to control who can see their app activity on Facebook.
So what do these changes mean for marketers?
Here is a screen shot of the permissions dialogue for Schweppes’s new Unexpected Future app:
Interestingly, users now have the option to choose which of their friends and networks the app can share activity with – including the option to limit permissions to themselves (‘Only me’). It’s worth noting that the drop-down options also include user-defined lists.
Once the user has selected their sharing network, they are also given control over exactly what the app can do, and can choose to remove certain elements if they desire – note the grey ‘x’ to the right of each option in the screenshot below, which turns off specific functionality:
These changes have some quite fundamental consequences for branded apps, not least because they offer people the chance to totally remove the social element of an app (if they want to).
That may seem to go against the very purpose of a Facebook app, but Facebook state that:
By introducing new ways for people learn about an app and giving them more control over their data, we believe this update will benefit both users and developers.
Indeed, many users will likely welcome these developments, but if users regularly choose to limit visibility of their app-related activities, it may require a significant re-thinking of Facebook strategy amongst brands who rely heavily on apps for social amplification.
You can read more about the technical implications of these changes on the Facebook blog.
You may well be familiar with our “Get Well” Soup campaign for Heinz last year, which Ad Age crowned as one of the best social media campaigns of 2011. Heinz’s Facebook fans fell in love with it and it caused some consternation when the campaign came to an end.
Heinz have a deep commitment to their fans on Facebook and we’re happy to announce that they have responded by giving the fans what they wanted.
We asked fans which Heinz soup variety they’d like to be able to personalise and send as a gift (alongside the perennial favourites of Cream of Chicken and Cream of Tomato). Four varieties made the final vote, and in a close run contest, Potato and Leek was finally elected as the fan’s flavour of choice.
Fans are able to personalise a Heinz soup can with the ‘Get Well Soon’ message and the name of a friend or family member then purchase the can through the page.
Demand for the cans has been even higher than before, with over 1,000 cans purchased already – if you’d like one, whether for yourself or a friend or relative that needs cheering up, this time around you have until the end of February to snap one up.
rob_hyde: I want to hate this so much, but my soft spot for LA Arts and Crafts has got the better of me. Moby's architecture blog http://t.co/OJZfzb2w24 mins ago
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