Zappos lives up to its reputation for customer service
Over the past few years, online retailer Zappos has been highlighted alongside the likes of Ford, Dell or Comcast fairly regularly as a ‘go to’ case study for their use of social media for customer support. And it’s easy to see why with this example.

A pricing bug on a Zappos sister site called 6pm.com gave customers the ability to purchase any product online for no more than $49.99. The mistake was eventually caught 6 hours after it went live, but not before customers had taken advantage of the pricing bug to the tune of approximately $1.6m.

Balancing the backlash that might ensue online against the cost of eating the loss, Director of Brand Marketing Aaron Magness explained on the Zappos Blog that they would honour all purchases.

As Econsultancy’s Patricio Robles put it: “Zappos… clearly understands that its reputation is worth far more than $1.6m and that sometimes eating a loss is the smart thing to do. Interestingly, one might even suggest that Zappos will only boost its reputation and customer loyalty with this move.”

Independent blocks anonymous comments
The Independent dealt a blow to trolls everywhere by only allowing people to post comments if they sign in using their Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, Open ID or Disqus accounts. Editor Martin King explained the move with the following:

Websites have been encouraging cowardice. They allow users to hide behind virtual anonymity to make hasty, ill-researched and often intemperate comments regardless of any consideration for personal hurt or corporate damage.

Well said. While this might not be able to stop individuals posting under a pseudonym using, say, a Disqus account, it is nonetheless a step in the right direction to try and deter those who seek only to defame or abuse in comments sections across the web.

BBC iPlayer adds Twitter and Facebook to socialise TV
The BBC’s video on demand service, iPlayer, is launching iPlayer Beta at the end of June, allowing users to link their Twitter, Facebook and Windows Live Messenger accounts to their ‘BBC ID.’

Users will more easily be able to share what they’re watching over social networks, while viewers using Windows Messenger can sync viewing with friends and chat about the show in realtime.

Buy lettuce, get virtual currency
Social gaming company Zynga and Green Giant have teamed up to offer purchasers of Green Giant vegetable products free virtual currency that can be used in Farmville.

At first glance, the promotion seems like a very good fit. Zynga will be able to easily track redemptions to determine if the promotion is a success, while Green Giant can (hopefully) get more people eating their ’5 a day.’ More importantly though, “the promotion highlights just how prominent virtual currency and games like Farmville have become in the mainstream.”

BP beaten in social media stakes by fake tweets
BP has had something of a mess on its hands lately in social media in the form of a tongue-and-cheek account:  @BPGlobalPR. The account has swelled to over 97,000 followers, eclipsing BP’s official @BP_America account by some 88,000, and claimed to be the oil giant’s official voice throughout the ecological crisis in the Gulf, while delivering a healthy dose of satire.

The anonymous Tweeter has since penned an editorial in the Guardian, been unmasked by Wired magazine and even given a book deal. There is also a T-Shirt range with proceeds going to benefit the Gulf Restoration Network. Long may it continue.

Dr Pepper rolls out Facebook status takeover for teens
Coca-Cola has launched a Facebook app for Dr. Pepper which gives consumers the chance to win £1,000 if they allow Dr Pepper to take control of their status update.

The app ties into their ‘What’s the Worst that Could Happen?’ creative, and chooses updates at random with varying degrees of embarrassment such as ‘what’s wrong with peeing in the shower?’ or ‘never heard of it described as “cute” before.’

Domino’s UK Rewards Foursquare Mayors, Yahoo acquires ‘Asian Foursquare’
Domino’s UK is starting a nationwide Foursquare promotion that rewards mayors with free pizza once a week, a deal similar to the one Starbucks announced not too long ago. Additionally, every Foursquare user will receive a free side dish when spending over £10.

In other location-based news, Yahoo has acquired Koprol which has been described affectionately by TechCrunch as the ‘Asian Foursquare.’

Google Moderator on YouTube enables real-time feedback from your audience
YouTube has integrated the use of Google Moderator into every single YouTube channel. Google Moderator is a social platform that allows users to solicit ideas, ask questions, and have their community vote for the best comments in real-time. Crucially, it also allows users channel owners the ability to remove any content that their audience has flagged as inappropriate.

Twitter passes 15 billion tweet mark
After reaching 10 billion tweets at the beginning of March, Twitter has now announced that it has delivered its 15 billionth tweet:

It took Twitter almost a year to hit five billion, but only four months to hit 10 billion. By adding another five billion tweets in three months it is now growing at more than one billion tweets a month, which means it should hit 20 billion before the summer is out.

Assuming we even get a summer in London this year…

Facebook unveils Open Graph protocol
At last week’s f8 developer’s conference, Facebook unveiled the next stage of their platform’s evolution, the Open Graph protocol. Described as “Web 3.0”, “winning the Internet”, “advancing the semantic web” or “a great crusade of colonization” depending on which pundit you’ve been reading.

As Stefano detailed so well here last week, the Open Graph effectively extends Facebook to any page on the web. Up until now external tools on a website typically extended to social bookmarking or sharing via services like Buzz, but by accessing Facebook’s vast collection of social interaction data, you can find out who else in your friend group likes the site, and what else they read and like on the site, thus turning Facebook into a mediator of information all over the web.

Already we’re seeing interesting implementations of the protocol come up, such as likebutton.me – a site that tracks what your friends have been liking on popular sites such as YouTube, CNN and Techcrunch. And we wouldn’t want We Are Social’s fans to miss out on the action either – which is why you can now find Facebook like buttons on the bottom of all our posts (including this one).

Every time Facebook releases a new feature there is an inevitable privacy backlash, usually the domain of a few choice experts, but it’s interesting to note that this is extending into the wider Facebook audience as well. A survey out today details how Facebook users are increasingly aware of the privacy implications of the site, with 77% (of an admittedly small sample) having used the site’s privacy tools to customise their privacy options. Could the new Open Graph become hamstrung as more users become privacy aware and opt-out?

It’s not just Facebook

While Facebook makes it all about conquering the web, location-based services are having a flying start in conquering meatspace. This week saw Foursquare hit a million users just over a year since it launched (even Arnold Schwarzenegger is on it). It took Twitter two years to do the same, and as sure as night follows day, this has meant Foursquare becoming the latest startup to be christened “the new Twitter” (seriously guys, can we get this decided once and for all, so the rest of us can get back to enjoying ourselves?).

Pointless analogies aside, the growth of Foursquare and its competitor Gowalla come under more and more scrutiny. This infographic from Mashable shows an interesting trend – Foursquare has far outpaced Gowalla in the popularity stakes since SXSW in terms of mentions, but the feedback on Gowalla is more positive and less negative. As the two continue to slug it out we could be witnessing one of the best case studies possible in whether sheer numbers or member affection is key to a vibrant and profitable social network.

Blogging – for the young and self-expressive
With all the talk of Web 3.0 it can be easy to dismiss blogging as “so 2004″. Yet new research from eMarketer show that the biggest age group amongst those who blog is 18-25; 40.4% of those who write a blog compared to 28.1% from the much larger 26-42 age group. More tellingly, the reasons given were primarily for self-expression rather than making money:

Bloggers of all ages polled by BlogHer and iVillage overwhelmingly blogged for pleasure, with self-expression the No. 1 reason, followed by “fun.” One-half of bloggers wanted to give advice, and fewer than one-third hoped to earn money with their efforts.

A lesson there for anybody wishing to engage with bloggers – understand what drives them to write and engage with their topic rather than consider them as the same as paid-for writers.

#socialmediasfault
As the election campaign in the UK grinds on, the past week saw an interesting divergence in how old and social media have been treating the leaders. After what most commentators have regarded as a strong performance in the new TV debates, the Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg has been heavily criticised in the mainstream press – so much so even Conservative bloggers such as Iain Dale voiced their concern. Twitter had different ideas, though. The hashtag, #nickcleggsfault, coined off-handedly by Justin McKeating, spread like wildfire as Twitterers all over the UK came up with ever-more sarcastic and nonsensical things to “blame” on Nick Clegg as a parody of the media backlash. While it’s clear this election won’t just be won on social media, it’s a clear sign of the disconnect between the traditional and new media – and this is an issue that will last long beyond the election.

Tuenti switches on local for a location-based future
Spanish social networking site Tuenti, often referred to as the Facebook of Spain, has introduced a location-based feature called Tuenti Places (reads “Tuenti Sitios” in Spanish) allowing users to “add any local place, interact with it, share it with friends, upload images and write reviews.” Each Tuenti place (e.g. bars, clubs, restaurants) will have it’s own unique space for user interaction so unlike Facebook pages, there won’t be any duplicates.

According to TechCrunch, this is a very different strategy from the likes of Gowalla, Yelp, Foursquare or Spain’s 11870 who’ve built a community on top of local:

Tuenti first built a massive and incredibly segmented community and now they’re introducing local, which in itself is social by nature, but they can build in local by crowdsourcing their 8 million active users who are already sharing places…. Overnight Tuenti promises to get thousands of very dynamic local business pages and will shortly introduce new features such as Foursquare-like check-ins.

With everyone expecting Facebook to introduce location very soon, it will be interesting to see how Tuenti’s location-based feature fares.

Middle-aged travellers leading travel social media revolution
The Social Travel Report by independent media agency Total Media, claims that the holiday industry is facing a social media revolution and that middle age travellers are shaping consumer views of the best hotels and holiday destinations. Based on a sample of 1,375 people, the report found what many people have long suspected:

Holiday reviews written by strangers on independent websites such as TripAdvisor, search results on Google and word-of-mouth advice from family and colleagues are more influential than brochures, advertising, media reviews and advice from travel agents.

Some of the highlights:

• Almost half of travellers over 45 are using websites to recommend or warn fellow travellers by posting a review
• 25% of British travellers say that online reviews by strangers help determine their travel plans
• Almost 70% of consumers use the internet to book their holidays
• Expedia was the leading online resource for consumers planning long trips (more than five nights) with 25%, followed by Tripadvisor and lastminute.com with 22%

The Social Media Bubble
Last week Umair Haque, Director of the Havas Media Lab, advanced a hypothesis in the Harvard Business Review:

Despite all the excitement surrounding social media, the Internet isn’t connecting us as much as we think it is. It’s largely home to weak, artificial connections, what I call thin relationships.

It makes for an interesting read, and he goes supports his hypothesis by arguing that hate, exclusion and disempowerment are flourishing online, whereas there is no greater trust or a rise in value of relationships.

This created quite a stir, and invited about 188 comments from readers and almost 50 blogs in response.  Two noteworthy blog posts responses came from Bud Caddell over on What Consumes Me and a lengthy post on Stowe Boyd and the /messengers.

In all, Umair’s argument about the devaluation of relationships because of social media is fairly grand one not necessarily supported empirically anywhere within his post.  That said, it’s certainly refreshing (and desirable) to have the social media industry’s thinking about online relationships tested every now and again.

Today’s Monday Mashup coming at you with the help of Melina Hägglund. Let’s get to it.

Hot off the press: Twitter announces @anywhere platform
In his keynote at the South by Southwest festival in Austin today, Evan William (@ev) has announced a new platform, called @Anywhere:

The service will add a range of functionality, such as allowing users to login to third-party websites using their Twitter account – similar to Facebook Connect – and to follow a columnist on Twitter, for example, by clicking on their byline.

Over on the official Twitter blog, they describe the move as adding the Twitter experience anywhere on the web:

Soon, sites many of us visit every day will be able to recreate these open, engaging interactions providing a new layer of value for visitors without sending them to Twitter.com… Rather than implementing APIs, site owners need only drop in a few lines of javascript. This new set of frameworks is called @anywhere.

Twitter will be launching @anywhere with several major websites, including Amazon, AdAge, Bing, Citysearch, Digg, eBay, The Huffington Post, Meebo, MSNBC.com, The New York Times, Salesforce.com, Yahoo!, and YouTube.

CNN says Facebook is its biggest rival
Although Fox News is currently beating CNN as the most-watched cable news network in the US, CNN’s president Jonathan Klein considers its main challengers not to be rival TV news stations, but social networks like Facebook and Twitter. Speaking at the 2010 Media Summit in New York, Klein said:

I’m more worried about the 500m people on Facebook versus the 2m on Fox. The people you’re friends with on Facebook or the people you follow on Twitter are trusted sources of information. Well, we want to be the most trusted name in news. That’s a challenge and we have to rise to that challenge.

Though the average number of primetime viewers has shrunk for CNN over the years, they maintain a very strong online presence.

With recent data from Hitwise showing that Facebook is the fourth-biggest source of US traffic to news sites (behind Google, MSN and Yahoo!), it’s easy its easy to see why Facebook might be keeping CNN up at night.

Twitter, Facebook and Geolocation
The big thing at SXSW this year has been geolocation, and sure enough, Twitter rolled out their geolocation function on twitter.com ahead of this year’s conference. While it’s been possible to access geolocation through Twitter’s API since November last year, only now is it being integrated into Twitter.com for tweets tagged with a location. That said, the integration doesn’t appear to have lasted too long, and it looks like Twitter has just turned off the location functionality. Hopefully we will see it back up again soon.

Meanwhile, Facebook seems to be moving in the same direction. An anonymous source said to be involved in their geolocation project claims that the functionality will be launched at f8, Facebooks’ yearly developer conference.  An update to Facebook’s privacy policy late last year, seems to support this claim:

When you share your location with others or add a location to something you post, we treat that like any other content you post.

According to the source, Facebook is not out to compete with services like Foursquare or Gowalla, but with Google in the fight for small-business advertising. As ever, we’ll be watching this closely.

Facebook vs. The Daily Mail
“The Daily Mail and Facebook are at war, with new media accused of failing to protect children – and old media in the dock for shoddy journalism”. So read the opening paragraph written by Rory Cellan-Jones of the BBC where he recapped a high profile battle between one of Britain’s most influential daily newspapers and the world’s most popular social network.

Last week The Daily Mail featured a ‘ghosted’ article by a child-protection expert Mark Williams-Thomas with the headline “I posed as a girl of 14 on Facebook. What followed will sicken you.” In the article, it was claimed that Williams-Thomas attracted sexually motivated messages from series of men when he posed as a teenager on Facebook.

The only problem, however, was that this experiment was not actually conducted on Facebook at all but another unnamed social networking site.

The Daily Mail has since amended the web article, and made a rare concession by printing an apology on page 4 of the paper. It remains to be seen whether Facebook will take legal action for the “false and defamatory statements in the article”, which it had threatened to do when this story first broke.

Sky creates first head of social media position
In a move that demonstrates its social media savvy, Britain’s biggest spender on digital advertsing, Sky, has announced that it is seeking its first head of social media in its marketing team.

The lucky person who steps into the job will be responsible for all social media activity in its brand marketing department and encouraging audience engagement. A Sky spokesman said: “The aim of this position is to offer an in-house specialist to develop digital strategies alongside above-the-line planning”.

It’s time for We Are Social’s Monday Mashup, our pick of some of the web’s finest social media developments.

PleaseRobMe.com reveals dangers of social networks
If you’re a heavy user of Foursquare and Twitter, you might want to take notice of PleaseRobMe.com. The website made the headlines by highlighting in real-time the whereabouts of people who checked in on Foursquare and shared their location on the web via Twitter. The goal of the three Dutch developers who set up the site was to highlight the dangers of publicly telling others your location on the Internet because it “ leaves one place you’re definitely not… home.”

The goal of this website is to raise some awareness on this issue and have people think about how they use services like Foursquare, Brightkite, Google Buzz etc. Because all this site is, is a dressed up Twitter search page. Everybody can get this information.

Facebook become America’s second most popular website, beating Yahoo!
Compete.com revealed that Facebook had surpassed Yahoo as America’s second most popular website.  Facebook drew nearly 134 Million unique visitors in January 2010, compared to Yahoo’s 132 Million visitors.

While traffic figures are important, the blog notes that the real story is around user engagement and on this front Facebook wins hands down:

Check out how monthly Attention (time spent on Facebook.com as a percentage of all time spent online each month) ramps over the past year for Facebook, while both Yahoo and Google show a decrease. In January, 11.6% of all time spent online was spent on Facebook (compared to 4.25% for Yahoo and 4.1% for Google).

The recent launch of Google Buzz is no doubt aimed at eating into the amount of time that users spend on Facebook, but time will tell if Google can be successful here.

MySpace real-time search goes live on Google
MySpace announced on their blog that Google search now picks up publicly available updates from MySpace users in real-time.

… when you search for anything on Google, as part of your search results you will see live updates from MySpace users, including news, photos, and blog posts that they have chosen to publically publish. Further, all of these updates will be ranked to reflect the freshest, most relevant results, making it easier to find the latest information on anything you’re searching for on Google, including the music and artists you enjoy most.

MySpace now joins Twitter as one of the services that are now live in Google’s real-time search, announced last year.

Outlook gets social with LinkedIn, Facebook, and MySpace
Microsoft announced a number of major developments for Outlook, including a public beta of LinkedIn for Outlook and partnerships with both Facebook and MySpace. The highlights of LinkedIn for Outlook include:

• The ability to connect to your LinkedIn account directly from within your Inbox, and add connections
• The ability to view status updates and photos from connections next to an e-mail message they have sent
• The ability to receive automatic updates to Outlook contact information directly from LinkedIn
• The ability to synchronise mobile contact information with information from LinkedIn

Meanwhile, the Facebook and MySpace partnerships for Outlook 2010 will enable users to more easily connect co-workers and colleagues, as well as friends and family within their Outlook Inbox.

The LinkedIn public beta is available now, and Facebook for Outlook and MySpace for Outlook will be available later this year as the official release of Office 2010 approaches.

Update: a more nuanced look Foursquare from Charles Arthur, Russell Davies and John Willshire, an interesting experiement from Harvard using Foursquare and one from Bravo on a seemingly much larger scale, and here in the UK, news from Marketing of Debenhams and Domino’s Pizza use of Foursquare.

Update 2: Ten Foursquare marketing campaigns.