Google launches Realtime search page
Google launched their new Realtime Search homepage to add to the real-time search features already in place in the main Google search. The homepage allows people to search on particular terms geographically, to review conversations as they happened by altering timescales and to set up alerts for real-time conversation. They have also produced a video to show you how to get the most out of Realtime:

Social media across the generations
Older users have been noted as ‘especially enthusiastic’ about embracing new social networking tools over the last year, with social networking use amongst those over 50 in the US nearly doubling from 22% in April 2009 to 42% in May 2010. Uptake in those over 65 grew by 100% from 13% to 26% in the same period. At the other end of the spectrum, ‘tweeny bloggers’ are growing in number quickly as more take to their computers to write. The Independent reports that while only 2% of 8-11 year olds in the UK have a blog, almost 20% would like to start one, and that the trend is likely to continue with tweeny blogs becoming more and more popular.

Facebook’s growth (or lack of)
With the 500 million marker being passed a little while ago, there’s stats suggesting that Facebook could be close to reaching saturation here in the UK. Despite this, there’s plenty of growth elsewhere, with stats showing that Facebook is now the top social network in India and Arabic taking a clear lead as the fastest growing language on Facebook.

Organic Facebook page fan growth slows down
Robin wrote a great post on Facebook Places last week tying in lots of the best information on what it is and how it works. Well since then, Inside Facebook has noticed that the algorithm, which determines what users see in their news feed, must have changed to boost impressions of Facebook Places. It appears that pages have been given less weight in people’s news feeds and places are getting more, thus leading to a significant decrease in the amount of new likes per day which is shown in their graphs.

Foursquare fights for its place in the social space
With Facebook Places having launched in the US, and being just around the corner here, there’s speculation about the future of Foursquare. But fear not Foursquare fans (and brands) because, as well as reaching nearly 3 million users, there’s a heap of new bits and bobs coming soon. So keep your eyes peeled for potential improvements such as the integration of Facebook Places, a mobile-friendly site, photos, how close you are to being mayor, points 2.0, rewarding more than the mayor, better friend communication and a recommendation engine. In addition to offering more to it’s users, Dennis Crowley has said that Foursquare is in the process of building a self-serve tool for creating brand profiles – thus putting an end to the lengthy process of applying to Foursquare and having them manually created.

Nutella migrates fans from unofficial pages
Nutella have recently combined multiple fan-run Facebook pages from around the world into one official global page. Originally these pages were owned by extreme fans of the brand and were kept updated regularly, but since they’ve migrated fans from other pages into theirs there’s been barely any activity (in fact they’ve posted a message saying they’re on vacation for a while). Let’s hope their fans are prepared to wait…

Facebook ‘likes’ help with determining popularity of clothing…
Urban Outfitters has begun arranging the clothes on its website by the number of Facebook ‘likes’ each item has been given by its 312,000 Facebook fans. Visitors to the US website can choose to sort clothese by their Facebook popularity when they arrive on the page.

…or lack of clothing in Playboy’s case
Meanwhile, Playboy have started their search for a Miss Social, the girl most Playboy Facebook fans would like to see undressed in the next issue. Social Media Influence reports (with one of the best opening lines we’ve seen of late) however that the contest has not driven as much interest as may have been expected with such a hook.

Cat bin lady
When a security video was uploaded to YouTube of a Coventry woman throwing a cat into a wheelie bin, there was a huge public outcry which quickly manifest itself into death threats from individuals on several Facebook pages. Mary Bale was outed by 4chan members (b-tards) in a matter of hours and she was placed under police protection soon after her details appeared online. Interestingly, one of the pages which has attracted over 45,000 ‘likes’ has now dissipated the public anger by focusing on raising funds for the Coventry RSPCA.

Climate Camp get ridiculed for their middle-class demographic
We’ve all seen how social networks can be used to lobby people together to campaign for a particular cause, for example when Greenpeace boycotted Nestlé and their use of Palm oil in KitKats. But what about when it all backfires? Well last week Climate Camp tried using Twitter to publicise their protests at the Royal Bank of Scotland corporate HQ but it all went wrong when Twitter turned against them. It appears that they’ve cut down on using the #ClimateCamp hastag since it was swamped with ridiculing tweets such as this and this.

As a little excursion from our normal editorial line, here’s a social media friendly video, direct from France. Whether or not you like to the music (or the lyrics if you speak French), the Toxic Avenger’s “N’importe Comment” (i.e. “No Matter How”) features all of our Facebook habits IRL (In Real Life). From “Add as a Friend” to “Poke” and Danceroulette, a Chatroulette parody, welcome to a new virtual world…

You may have seen this infographic created by Davide Basile, which shows just how popular FriendFeed is here in Italy (and also other countries like Turkey and Japan).

The facile answer is that Metcalfe’s law took effect with FriendFeed here in Italy, as it did with Orkut in Brazil and India, and hi5 in Central America – there’s a big enough critical mass of users of the service in the country for other users in the same country to get value from it, and the effect is self re-enforcing.

However, there are clearly cultural factors at play – in Italy, FriendFeed has become an extension of the blogosphere, a place where you can share thoughts and content using more than just 140 characters (which is useful if you’re speaking Italian) – a community where you can find professionals, creatives, artists, blogstars or just normal people who want to engage, sometimes arguing but in the end adding value to the conversation.

If you’re just looking at certain data then FriendFeed is not a big deal, even in Italy, with Facebook being a much larger phenomenon. But if you’re searching for high-quality interactions and you want to listen, understand, gather insights or connect like minded people to produce ideas or crowdsource a project, then it is the right place.

Anyway, you shouldn’t just take my word for it. I asked Livefast, one of the most influential and controversial bloggers here in Italy and a FriendFeed rockstar, for his point of view. Here’s what he said:

I think Friendfeed became so (relatively) popular in Italy because it was adopted very early by the previously existing – very strong – community of local mainstream bloggers. This attracted (and still attracts) a number of their readers. The Italian friendfeedosphere (or whatever it’s called) resembles a lot the Italian blogosphere: same people, same main influencers, largely the same subjects dealt with and the same kind of snobbish attitude.

The reason why *I* prefer it to Facebook, however, is different. I like FriendFeed because my contacts there are all people that for some reason I chose: because I like them, because I dig what they say, because I love to argue with them, whatever. My contacts on Facebook, on the contrary, also include a large number of people that just “happened” to me: schoolmates, work acquaintances, relatives and so on, all people I don’t care discussing much with, I don’t like (anymore) the company of and, in general, I don’t wish to share much of my life and opinions with.

Of course, I’m aware I’m on the losing side. Facebook rules and will soon own the planet (for one thing, it already owns FriendFeed), however, and as long as it lasts, I’m going to enjoy every tiny bit of it.

Since we opened the doors of the We Are Social Sydney office earlier this year, we have been very, very busy. We have signed up a broad range of amazing clients who present their own unique opportunities for development of social strategy and immersion into the digital realm.  We’ve been quietly growing our team, but the time has come for us to cast the net wide and loud in search for some of the best innovative thinkers, strategists, community managers and all-around-awesome people to help us keep on bringing our vision to life.

If you live and breathe social media, have a strong digital, PR, marketing or communications background and can demonstrate these talents, we’d like to talk to you about joining our team. Ideally with the roles we have available you are cross-modal in experience, quick on your feet, a capable multitasker and have a voracious appetite for knowledge. The space we work in is changing fast, and the importance of not only keeping up, but staying ahead of the curve is mandatory. It’s why we love it. As has been said about us in the past -  We Are Social don’t just discuss how to put social strategy to work for a brand, we make it happen. You’ll need to show us that you can help us achieve that too.

We’re not promising an easy road to glory – we are historically picky when it comes to applicants, because it’s a combination of the right people, with the right mix of skills that allow us to deliver the successful overarching offering we do. We will challenge you to show us what you can bring to the table. You will have to walk the walk. The successful candidates will, however, be a part of an exciting, global team and will be offered the ability to carve their own career path within our organisation. Your skills will be refined with the help of the senior team and you’ll have the chance to inspire the people around you, as well as partnering with some of the best clients to work with in Australia.

If this sounds like it’s up your alley and you’d fit in a community management, or digital/social strategist role, we’d be keen to meet you. Drop us an email in confidence with your CV, your social media presences and some narrative on why you think We Are Social Sydney can’t live without you. We look forward to meeting you!

The Brand Science Institute conducted a study over the past 7 months on corporate social media projects, the focal point of which was a desire to understand why (most) social media projects tend to fail. They questioned 563 marketers representing 52 brands from some of the largest companies across 12 European countries. Here’s what they found:

Ofcom released its seventh annual communications market report last week. Its a goldmine of information about media consumption habits in the UK and is worth reading in full, the internet section in particular. In terms of social media usage, it reveals interesting data such as:

• Social networking (in blue) is an all day long activity, filling the gaps between traditional media:

• The data above illustrates the popularity of television in the evening, when over half (52%) of all media activities undertaken involves watching television on a TV set. In the morning, radio is more popular, but declines by the evening when TV is at its peak. Text communications (including social media usage) and voice communications both make up a fair proportion of media activity during the daytime and after the end of television peak time

• Computer, mobile phone and hand-held devices all have higher levels of use among younger age groups. Almost three-fifths (58%) of all 16-24 year old media engagement is through one of these devices, compared to 18% for people aged over 55. By contrast, use of the more established devices and media, such as TV sets, radio sets, and print, generally increases with age:

• Two-fifths of people’s time on a computer is spent communicating with other people: for all age groups, communication makes up a large proportion of activity done on a computer. For 16-24s, it peaks to over half their computer time. They are more likely to use social networking (23% of all computer activity) and instant messaging (14%)

• Almost all homes with computers are now connected to the internet. Most internet connections are now broadband, with many consumers enjoying a rich variety of content online:

• Nevertheless, home internet access varies significantly by age and socio-economic group: among 15-54 year olds internet take-up is above 80%, and peaks at 85% among 35-54 year olds, but falls for consumers aged 55 and older. Despite this, much of the growth in internet take-up appears to have taken place among older age groups. There is also a relationship between levels of home internet take-up and socio-economic group: nearly nine in ten ABs report having a broadband connection; this drops steadily to 80% of C1s, 71% of C2s and 54% of DEs:

• Over 60% of 15-34 year olds access social networking sites at home:

• What’s more, all demographics have seen an annual rise of at least ten percentage points in the number of people claiming to have social networking profiles

• Social networking now accounts for nearly a quarter (23%) of all time spent online. This has been driven by the growth of Facebook, whose reach rose by 31%, reaching a unique monthly audience of nearly 25 million in the year to May 2010:

• Facebook users also spend substantially more time on the site than users of other social networking sites. The average Facebook user spent 6 hours 30 minutes on the site in April 2010, an average of 13 minutes a day. Thus, while Google is the leading brand in terms of reach, Facebook leads in terms of average time spent per person. For most other sites the figure was around half an hour or less

• Social networking sites have also taken advantage of the growing popularity of the mobile internet and the increasing take-up of smartphones. Using mobile devices to access social networking sites is particularly popular among younger adults:

• Indeed, for 16-24s text messaging and social networking together make up 64% of all mobile phone use

• User-generated content sites are continuing to grow: YouTube remains the most popular video-sharing site, growing by 13% year-on-year to reach 17.5 million monthly unique users. What’s more, commenting on blogs saw a significant growth in take-up between 2007 and 2009, from 19% to 27%: not all users are willing to share content but there is a growing interest in interacting with the content providers

• We also notice a strong difference of habits depending on the age of users: the younger an internet user is, the more likely they are to have experience of a given social media activity. For example, while a quarter (26%) of 16-24 year olds claimed to have made a short video and uploaded it to a website, only 2% of people aged 55+ with internet access make the same claim. The exception to this rule appears to be contributing to collaborative websites such as Wikipedia; 25-34 year olds were as likely to have done this as 16-24 year-olds:

• Communications activities such as emailing, texting and social networking all command high attention and high importance scores from consumers, whereas traditional forms of media consumption, such as watching scheduled television on a TV set, listening to live radio on a radio set, and reading print media attract high importance scores from people, along with lower average attention scores

Click to view the entire report, or just the internet section.

43% of US companies will be blogging by 2012
eMarketer estimates that nowadays one in three companies have a public-facing blog used for marketing, a proportion that will rise to 43% by 2012. Blogs are considered an efficient way to drive site traffic (including through valuable SEO), generate sales and create brand awareness, as well as improving customer care.

Worldwide social network ad spending to hit $4.3 billion in 2011
According to new research by eMarketer, worldwide social network ad spending will rise 31% this year, to $3.3 billion, then up to almost $4.3 billion the following year.

In the US alone, it will reach $2.1 billion, with Facebook receiving half of all social network ad spending there.

Facebook Places: What you need to know
The big Facebook news of the week was the launch of Facebook Places. Robin spent some time over the weekend trying to pull together all the best information on Facebook Places into one place, which you can find here.

Facebook: the biggest relationship-marketing provider for many brands
Adage published today this eloquent illustration of the Top 10 of brands on Facebook regarding the number of fans:

For many marketers, their Facebook is fast becoming an essential tool for many CRM activites, becoming brands largest web presences, overtaking brand sites or e-mail newsletters. But whilst many brands are using their fan pages in similar ways to their former traditional “owned media” websites, pages are not owned by the marketers, growing their dependency on Facebook.

The flipside of the coin: Facebook attracting more and more spam
Spam is becoming more and more frequent on official brand fan pages. One month ago, Ferrero Rochers’s wall was overwhelmed with softcore porn messages, leading to negative reactions as the fan page has a relatively young audience. Allfacebook reported yesterday that porn spamming has invaded a wide variety of brand pages, including celebrity pages like Michael Jackson and Britney Spears and the luxury automotive brand Rolls Royce. This growing threat must be treated seriously by brands and considered in their social media strategy: as Brian Skepys notes, “failing to keep a close eye on Facebook wall conversation and failing to keep discussion relevant can be extremely dangerous for online brand presence”.

Facebook profile pages overtaken by real-time news feeds
A survey conducted by Read Write Web reveals that profile pages are losing their luster, whereas the emphasis is more and more put on the real-time feed. Indeed, it appears that most people rely on the news feed and rarely visit people’s profiles – if they do, they’re more likely to if that user is a close friend or a relative. It’s probably not enough to assume that Facebook profile pages are becoming totally irrelevant, but it shows that the way the media is consumed is evolving, being more centred on real-time information than personal data storage.

Some recent changes initiated by Facebook are clearly encouraging this switch. Last week, we saw the disappearance of the “application boxes”, where users could display information permanently to customize their profile. This week Facebook announced that it will be removing app tabs by autumn 2010 – eventually, only tabs devoted to Facebook’s in-house applications like Photos, Videos, Places and Notes will remain. In the same way, Facebook added auto-suggest to status updates, which means that from now on users won’t need to insert an @ to tag an item, enabling users to include groups, pages, and other connected items in status updates more quickly and easily.

Facebook a significant actor in online video
Facebook.com jumped one position on comScore’s US Online Video Rankings to capture the third spot with 46.6 million viewers. Yahoo! Sites remains ahead of the social network with 55.1 million viewers. Google Sites, owning Youtube.com, is unsurprisingly still ranked as the top online video content property with 143.2 million unique viewers.

And from now on, we can expect the social network to make some of its official announcements through its brand new streaming channel, Facebook Live. Launched last week, it incorporates the real-time Live Feed technology which facilitates interactions between the viewing audience and the speaker. Viewers will be able to submit their questions to a moderator and participate in live chats. Facebook Live also exists as an app that can be added to Facebook Pages. Indeed, the channel will not only be used by Facebook for its own PR but will also provide entertainment content – its first broadcast on August 13^th featured actress America Ferrera promoting her new film.

Facebook moving away from FBML
Changes are happening on the technical side too: Facebook announced that they are moving away from FBML toward iFrames, both for canvas applications as well as Facebook Page tabs. This is a quite a significant evolution as FBML has long been a core component of Facebook’s Platform. By the end of 2010 Facebook will no longer allow new FBML applications to be created, it is strongly recommended to developers to start using iFrames as soon as possible. While not yet completely deprecating the old REST API, Facebook is moving in that direction, opting to focus on OAuth 2.0, the Graph API, and the JavaScript SDK. To help developers during this transitive period, Facebook set up a new developer roadmap including a list of the REST API methods which will no longer be supported after the end of the year.

Google Buzz now has a ‘who to follow’ function
Google’s social networking platform Buzz is the latest network to offer the ‘who to follow’ feature. They announced earlier last week that users will be greeted with a suggestion box that contains a list of people who they should follow, based on people who you frequently email/chat with.

Levi’s launch social media project alongside their new apparel brand Denizen
The original denim creators Levi’s have launched a new made-for-China apparel brand Denizen, with ten unpaid bloggers recruited to represent the brand’s target audience, working within their own social networking spheres over a 100-day period, sharing experiences and thoughts – interestingly (and much in line with our own thinking), they are not linked to an official Denizen website.

TalkTalk launch X Factor social media campaign
Broadbrand supplier TalkTalk has launched a new social media campaign that enables fans of the X Factor to appear in the show’s ad breaks. The fans can create their own music video that could potentially be seen by millions worldwide via social networks, with every performance will appearing in the BrightStar video chart where members of the public can “like” the video using social media. The most popular videos will climb the charts and, each week, a new video will be selected and featured during the X Factor ad breaks.

Help select the Blog Action Day topic
Last October, 13,606 bloggers from 156 countries started a global conversation about climate change. Joining in on the conversation were dozens of the world’s leading nonprofits as well as influential voices ranging from British Prime Minister Gordon Brown to the White House. To make Blog Action Day 2010 an even bigger success this year, Changes.org need your help in answering the following question: What important issue do you think the world should talk about on October 15th? You can propose an idea or chose one of six potentials topics: Water, Human Trafficking, Women, Sustainable Food, Hunger or Oceans. The winning topic for Blog Action Day will be chosen in early September and the event itself will take place on October 15th.

Marketers find it challenging to stay up to date with social media
The Creative Group recently published the results of a May 2010 survey which found that 65% of US marketing executives consider it challenging to keep up with the changes in the social media landscape, with only 7% mentioning they use blogs to do so. Haven’t they heard of We Are Social’s Monday Mashup?

On Wednesday evening Facebook launched Facebook Places, an event of some significance. I spent some time over the weekend trying to pull together all the best information into one place, which I share below. I’ll also be regularly updating this post as things develop, so be sure to bookmark this post and check back often.

This video from Facebook is a good place to start getting your head around how it works from a users perspective (especially if you’re outside of the US, the only country with access to the service currently), as is Walter Mossberg’s early review. Inside Facebook have a good guided tour of the features and privacy settings and also bring news of how friends’ check-ins appear on your events page. However, Kunur Patel describes her friends’ initial reactions to being checked in by her when they were out for dinner, which implies the product is going to take some getting used to (update: All Facebook draws attention to a brewing Facebook Places backlash).

The Wall Street Journal points out how this opens up competition between Facebook and Google, specifically the Google Places product aimed at local businesses and Nick O’Neill paints a grim picture of what this means for Foursquare while Techcrunch tries to decipher what Foursquare themselves think.

What Marketers need to know
Inside Facebook has a great hands-on guide to how marketers and businesses can start using Facebook Places and Facebook themselves have put together a FAQ on Places for Advertisers. Michael Lazerow looks at what opportunities Places opens up in terms of app development, Debra Aho Williamson has done some thinking about the long term implications for marketers, Josh Constine looks at its potential to change how people find and use real-time information and Tom Cummings puts it all in context. However, in the short term, it looks like the introduction of Places has slowed natural Facebook page fan growth by over 50%.

Back in March I was asked to contribute to Contagious Magazine’s special report on Brand Communities, looking at social media from the perspective of international brands. Now the report has been released, they’ve been kind enough to let me reproduce my article in full below:

Just about wherever you are in the world, you can order a Coke. The most ubiquitous of brands has steadily built a truly global fan base for more than 120 years.

The difference between Coca-Cola’s introduction in 1886 and today is that now those fans are talking about the brand online too.

By now, anyone involved in marketing knows that there is value in engaging with these people. A brand community often includes the most devoted fans: core customers who are the most engaged, most loyal and very likely to infect others with their obsession.

These people often have an encyclopaedic knowledge of a product – even the whole category – and their ideas can contribute to the evolution and innovation of products or simply be a way to test new features, flavours or functionality. The most active community members may even help each other out with advice and support, building trust within the community. When these kinds of communities cross borders, they can act as a 24/7 global helpdesk.

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