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The social London Olympics – to tweet or not to tweet

By on August 3, 2012 in Social Media

Can a social media strategy be too successful?  The plan was that the London Olympics (#London2012) were to be opened up and made more accessible via a number of social media channels.  The public was encouraged to interact and comment. On the first sporting Sunday of the games, the amount of Twitter traffic began to interfere with mobile networks – and even caused problems for the BBC’s coverage of the road cycling event.

Following concerns caused by highly visible empty seats, a new Twitter hashtag had emerged in the first 48 hours.  #filltheseats was used by Olympic attendees photographing empty seats at the venues as well as a way to collect creative ideas for how the seats could be filled.

Twitter was in the Olympic headlines again when the 18 year old Tom Daley received some hateful tweets (or, as a British tabloid alliteratively described the incident, ‘Tom twitter troll torment’) after he had failed to win a medal for Great Britain.  The offender was named, shamed and later arrested – an act which in itself caused some consternation on Twitter and elsewhere.

Of course, the appearance of Tim Berners-Lee, live tweeting from the Olympic opening ceremony, was a great (if apparently confusing for some) thumbs up for the great British inventor of the www and a whole segment of Danny Boyle’s eccentric vision was devoted to the power of social media to bring people together.  Hooray!

While there has been some debate of the US coverage of the Olympics (#NBCFail), the BBC has been busy, providing additional digital channels for each live event, and creating a website that uses semantic technologies to manage a huge amount of information, including a webpage for every single competing athlete.  Marydee Ojala describes their efforts here.

Tony Hirst, via his OUseful.info blog, lists some interesting Olympic data coverage.  The 10,000 words blog lists five interesting Olympic news projects from around the world including the rather wonderfully simple Guardian newspaper’s wasanolympicrecordsettoday.com.

For a much more informed response to the social Olympics than mine, Euan Semple has written this on his blog.

Meanwhile, for anyone looking for a ‘typically British’ online Olympic experience,  www.londonunderdogs.com celebrates the British love of the underdog by providing helpful tips for identifying and supporting those least likely to win a medal.  The website provides posters to print and carry to Olympic events, including the faint praise of ‘Well, at least you’re better than me’.  (Spotted by Sara Batts – thank you!).

Finally, if you are inspired by watching or listening to the Games, you might be interested in the BBC’s ‘athlete body match’ webpage.

Apparently I am body-matched with a (male) Jordanian marathon runner.

Lessons from a Virtual Bagel

By on July 18, 2012 in Post, Social Media

The BBC’s Technology Correspondent, Rory Cellan-Jones set up a Facebook page for his small business to test how people would interact with his ‘meaningless brand’. He then ran a targeted Facebook advert in a number of countries (Egypt, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Russia, UK, USA).

His Facebook page described no products and was designed to have ‘no interesting content’ yet Virtual Bagel had been ‘liked’ 1600 times in the first day.  Within four days this number had increased to 3,000, many of which were from clearly fake profiles.  Despite being ‘liked’ his Facebook page had a ‘close to zero’ engagement level.

The story, covered in detail by Cellan-Jones here, has been hotly debated.  Social media marketing experts have complained Virtual Bagel’s campaign was poorly targeted and that ‘chasing likes’ is no longer best practice.  As information professionals know only too well, it is the value of conversation and engagement – and any positive actions/activity that follow it – that are important.

Since publishing the story, Virtual Bagel has added just a few hundred additional likes, but the levels of engagement and activity have increased significantly.

Key messages

  • Likes alone are losing their value
  • Social spammers are a potential problem for Facebook’s advertisement driven revenue forecasts
  • Click-through rates were lower for the US and UK – the Facebook advert drove interest from other countries

And if this is not simply a story of social media spamming and the value of social media advertising, perhaps it’s also a story about information literacy.  How many people clicked ‘like’ either because they did not read past the brand name or they did not understand that what they read was utterly meaningless.

(Thanks @marydeeo)

Teens don’t tweet – so what do they do?

By on July 16, 2012 in Search, Social Media

Three years ago, the 15-year old Matthew Robson joined Morgan Stanley in London to gain some work experience. While there, he wrote a much publicised, (anecdotal) report on how teenagers were using social media.  His report highlighted the reluctance of teenagers to pay for content and the fact that they were not that interested in Twitter.

Twitter, it seemed, was for ‘old people’.

Now, new research seems to confirm what Matthew was saying.  Business Insider has published a report, The Secret Life of Teenagers Online, which explores gadget ownership, preferred communication methods and relationship building via social media.  It’s a fascinating report, well worth reading.

Key findings and messages:

  • 68% of teenagers text on a daily basis
  • Only 11% of teenagers use Twitter every day
  • 51% check a social website every day
  • They are mainly using social sites to check profiles, and write comments
  • Texting is their favoured way of communicating with each other
  • Only 30% of them are using email every day
  • Teenagers are undertaking activities their parents have no idea about, including:
    • Posting their phone numbers online
    • Visiting pornographic websites

[Teens search differently too.  If you are planning to attend Internet Librarian International this year, one of our presentations explores how teenagers’ searches are much more ‘image’ focused – and how this impacts us all as information professionals.]

The social, gamified workplace

By on July 11, 2012 in Social Media, Trends and Statistics

Employers of all sizes are looking for new ways to engage, motivate and reward their employees.  Employees are looking to receive regular feedback and to be recognised for their achievements.  And younger, ‘Gen Y’ staff in particular, want their workplaces to reflect their lifestyles.  They want work to be social and fun.

In 2011, Gartner highlighted the increased importance of gamification to innovative organisations, helping with the product/service development process and driving higher levels of engagement both internally and externally.  This week, Springwise described a new social network, MyCornerOffice, which gives employees a ‘virtual office’ in which they can display awards, share news updates, and collect points via a customised employee recognition programme.

In her recent guest blog post for Forbes.com Gen Y-er Katherine Heisler explains why gamification, when built into corporate culture and processes, can be so powerful.  The combination of technology with game mechanics encourages employees to ‘engage in desired behaviours’ – and in return they receive feedback, recognition and increased social activity.

Gamification will only increase in popularity and importance.  It benefits not only employee engagement and morale, but can deliver a true competitive edge to organisations as they seek to innovate, collaborate and build stronger connections with their customers and communities.

Twitter use trends in the US

By on June 6, 2012 in Social Media

The latest report from the Pew Internet Project looks at the patterns of Twitter use in the US.

Pew introduced a standalone Twitter question in November 2010 and the latest figures show that 15% of online adults are now Twitter users.  8% of them are using Twitter on a typical day (a figure which has quadrupled since late 2010).

Other key findings:

Smartphone users are particularly likely to be using Twitter

  • 20% of smartphone owners use Twitter
  • This may help explain the recent growth in Twitter use among young adults, who have largest increase in smartphone ownership

Some demographic groups stand out among their peers as having higher Twitter usage rates.

  • These include young adults, African Americans and urban and suburban residents

Twitter use on a typical day decreases with the respondents’ age

  • 20% of young adults (18-24) are Twitter users on a typical day
  • 11% of those aged 25-34 use Twitter
  • Only 1% of those aged over 65 are regular Twitter users.

In the humour for rumour

By on May 21, 2012 in Social Media

We all know that information (and rumours) spread quickly in social networks – but they can also be quickly denied and corrected too.  The Guardian newspaper in the UK explored how misinformation about the London riots spread via Twitter.  Comedian Graham Linehan deliberately started a Twitter rumour which, as he noted on his blog, soon spread and mutated.

Computer science researchers at Germany’s Saarland University say that they can now provide twelve pages of mathematical proof for this phenomenon.

Tobias Friedrich, Benjamin Doerr and Mahmoud Fouz say that their research suggests that information spreads much more quickly in social networks than in networks where everyone communicates with each other, or in randomly structured networks.  They say that the speed of spread is due to the combination of people with many contacts and people with a few contacts.  Those with few contacts (or new members) are likely to connect with highly connected individuals and this helps facilitate the speed of information flow.

I look forward to someone managing to explain the maths in 140 characters or less so I can spread it to my network!

(Thanks to Marydee Ojala for spotting the original story.)

 

Three’s a crowd

By on April 3, 2012 in Post, Social Media

Many new products and services which rely on harnessing the power of the crowd are being developed and launched.  Here’s a summary of three particularly interesting developments, as reported by Springwise.com.

CrowdIPR is a tool that relies on ‘the crowd’ to help businesses with their intellectual property research. Entrepreneurs can input information about their projects and users of the site can provide information or academic research about any similar products.  Those assisting may be rewarded with points or cash if their input is considered to be the most valuable.  Future planned developments for the service include the option to keep project ideas confidential by engaging only the most skilled research group on the site.

Meanwhile, in Spain, Spotfav has combined webcam technology with crowdsourcing to provide a ‘realtime’ weather reporting service.  Users can create a ‘spot’ for a destination and once a profile has been created, ‘fans’ can post weather reports – provided they are actually at the physical location.  The crowd can also nominate a site where they believe a webcam should be located.

Finally, in Portugal, MyFarm.com is providing ‘online farmers’ with an opportunity to control farming activity on a plot of land via the web.  The site uses gaming interfaces to help remote users plan their planting activities and provides technical advice for those with no farming experience.  Users also receive samples of their own produce.

‘Unfriend’ – social profile pruning on the rise

By on February 29, 2012 in Social Media

Online reputation management is increasingly important.  A report from the Pew Research Center suggests there is an increase in social media profile ‘pruning’ and editing.  Growing numbers are saying that they have deleted ‘friends’; untagged photographs and removed comments left by others.

The survey sampled 2,200 US adults, 63% of whom had social media profiles (up from 20% in 2006).  58% have set their profile as ‘private’ while 20% say their main profile is completely public.

Key findings

‘Unfriend’

  • 63% have deleted ‘friends’ (up from 56% in 2009).
  • Women (67%) are much more likely to do this than men (58%).
  • Younger people more likely to do this than older users

Editing

  • 44% have deleted comments made by others on their profile
  • 37% have removed their names from photos

Privacy settings

  • 67% of women restrict access to friends only compared with 48% of men
  • Men (26%) more likely to choose fully public profiles than women (14%)
  • 48% reported some level of difficulties in managing privacy controls; 30% say they have no difficulty.

Did I really post that?!

11% have posted content they regret.  Men and young people profess the most regret!

The kindness of strangers – marketing through recommendations

By on February 16, 2012 in Post, Social Media

When it comes to social media, personal recommendations are a valuable commodity.   The power of ‘like’, ‘share’, ‘retweet’ and +one is that these recommendations mean more when they come from others.  People outside the organisation can become our most powerful and influential advocates.

The challenge for information professionals is that there are so many social media tools around.  Which ones should we focus on?  Do we really need a presence on Facebook, in Google+, on Twitter, in the blogosphere, on LinkedIn etc.  The answer is that we must be active on any tool where relevant conversations are happening.

Sometimes relevant conversations can happen face to face.  Having heard about Pinterest first through a Facebook friend, and second at the recent NetIKX social media event, it was a real world conversation with Phil Bradley that alerted me to the value of this new social tool.   Pinterest provides social bookmarking with images.  Although still in beta form, information professionals should be alert to its potential – Pinterest is already driving more traffic to retail sites than Google+.

On Pinterest, users create folders for images, describing their contents using freetext tagging.  This is something which information professionals are very good at.   You can use Pinterest to search images and to find experts and interested people.  It is also an excellent marketing tool, and can draw people onto your website.  It has enormous potential to market what it is that we do to a wide audience.

So if someone invites you to join Pinterest, you should accept the invitation and explore its potential  as a potentially powerful marketing tool for library and information services.

A blog post about the decline of blogging

By on February 2, 2012 in Post, Social Media

For the last five years the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth’s Center for Marketing Research has been conducting a study about the use of social media in the 500 fastest growing organisations in the US (The Inc. 500.)  The first study, conducted in 2007, found that these companies were much more likely to have adopted blogs than those in the ‘traditional’ Fortune 500.

The latest findings show that the use of blogging in the Inc. 500 companies is declining for the first time. Blogging had declined to 37% from 50% in 2010.  Advertising, Marketing and Media companies were the most likely to maintain blogs (72%) and Government Services companies the least likely.

However, as blogging reaches maturity in these organisations, the use of other social media, including Facebook, Foursquare, LinkedIn, Mobile apps, texting, Twitter and YouTube, is growing.  74% of responding companies were using Facebook, and 73% using LinkedIn.

90% of respondents report that social media tools are important for maintaining company reputation and raising brand awareness.  Slightly fewer see the tools as vital for generating web traffic and lead generation.  73% say the tools are important for customer support programmes.

When asked if the use of social media has been successful for their business, the overwhelming response was that it had been.  Respondents mentioned raising brand awareness, networking, thought leadership and the tools’ ability to give the company a ‘personality’.

25% of respondents plan to maintain their organisation’s investment in social media, and 71% plan to increase it.

The report is data rich and interesting reading.  It shows that the use of social media in organisations is evolving, with some mature tools being dropped in favour of newer ones.  A recognition of their value in supporting networking, and new ways of communicating, means that many organisations are planning to increase their investment in social tools.