I recently looked at Social Media Sharing Trends 2009 the conclusions were rather interesting: - The top channels of sharing include, em...

I recently looked at Social Media Sharing Trends 2009 the conclusions were rather interesting:
- The top channels of sharing include, email, instant messenger, social networking sites
- Email and IM continue to be the most popular mediums of sharing
- Facebook rules the sharing in the social networking channel
- Twitter is growing in popularity but is still just 5% among social networks.
- Only 2% of shares happen over Bookmarking sites.
- In the Email channel, Yahoo Mail is the most preferred, followed by MSN.
- Google’s services like Google Bookmarking, Google Talk, and Gmail, are lagging in their respective channels when it comes to shared content
- LinkedIn, as a networking site, ranks the lowest when it comes to social media

I went to watch England take on Argentina in the rugby this weekend with a bunch of mates at Twickenham and experienced a new low for Engl...

I went to watch England take on Argentina in the rugby this weekend with a bunch of mates at Twickenham and experienced a new low for English rugby - I am not referring to the standard of play - it was pretty dreadful but I have seen worse - but rather to the woeful attempt to "launch" the comeback of the English purple shirts.
When we sat down there was a card left on every seat which announced the return of the shirts worn by the famous amateur teams of the 70's and 80's and asked everyone to hold up the card after the National Anthems to spell out "wear it proud" - everyone duly obeyed and to all we could see was the Nike "swoosh" at the South and North stand. The response from the crowd around me was one of immediate disdain resulting in ripped up card or cards being thrown in the pitch.
I was told after that the stand I was in did spell out "wear it proud" but by then the damage was done - in the days of transparency and respect for the consumer this sort of stunt really shouldn't happen and has resulted in far more negative publicity than could ever have been achieved by the exercise.
Brands really should consider very carefully how they approach this sort of activity and Nike really should know better !

I don't currently bank with First Direct but have been alerted to their superior service by a number of friends and colleagues so I ...


I don't currently bank with First Direct but have been alerted to their superior service by a number of friends and colleagues so I thought I would check out the site. They claim that "we don't shy away from feedback so we would love to know what you are thinking" and they do seem to live this principle - I expected to see mostly positive comments but there were also some negatives - mainly around interest rates and some customer service issues.
The site is really interesting and addresses most of the cynicism I had about their being just another bank - I really like the "live feelings" which shows floating "+" and "-" with the claim that 72.9% of responses are positive, 7.71% are neutral and 15% are negative and the ability to expand and play and group these symbols BUT no ability to click through and read the comments - maybe they were worried about people naturally always looking for negatives ?
Similarly the "live feeds" section allows you to "expand and play" and you can see the words that people are using BUT again you can't click through to see the posts and that brings the credibility into question.
I think this is where they are missing a trick - to be truly transparent you need to follow through the promise. Recently we ran a forum for one of our Clients Imedeen where we received more credit from the community for overtly showing negative posts than for the positive posts - I guess people want to challenge brands in social media and found glitches in their supposed transparency.
So in the round First Direct do "get it" - this is even backed up with their £100 if you like us and £200 if you don't with seemingly no strings - and are miles ahead of other banks and indeed other so called socially media literate companies but I would really like to have seen them being upfront about the negatives and then posting a response outlining how they are going to address the negatives.

I have read a lot about the forthcoming launch of Google Wave and although not fortunate enough to be sent an invite I have read a numbe...


I have read a lot about the forthcoming launch of Google Wave and although not fortunate enough to be sent an invite I have read a number of independent blogs (unsurprisingly Google overloads their first 4-5 pages with Google referenced material!). The blog opinions seem to vary - from "it is like a new mobile phone with no one to call or text" to the fact that poeple believe it will become a "conference staple" and replace Twitter - the main conclusion seems to be in the words of web worker daily "It still has way too much geek cred to dismiss outright." I looked on the site and found a confusing and long intro video so it was hugely refreshing to see that they have also produced a very entertaining video on You Tube to explain it better. It uses the famous scene from Pulp Fiction where Samuel L Jackson uses, in the words of wikipedia , " a baleful "biblical" pronouncement".
It is not only entertaning and memorable but also works well to explain something that is complicated and detailed. Watch it here and see what you think.

There was a lot of furore this weekend when in a moment of doubt and introspection Stephen Fry self proclaimed "British Actor, Write...

There was a lot of furore this weekend when in a moment of doubt and introspection Stephen Fry self proclaimed "British Actor, Writer, Lord of Dance, Prince of Swimwear & Blogger" threatened to walk away from Twitter because of "aggression and unkindness". this was followed by Katie Price who broke down in no-more-than-140-character sections, telling her "haters" to just attack her and get it off their chest (her words).
It seems that now that Twitter has reached the mainstream it is the must use method of communication for a "celebrity" to stay in the public eye but they are all unprepared to deal with the backlash which Mr Fry's 938k followers exacted on him.
The same principle is true for brands - few have found a useful way to use Twitter a good example being Habitat's fateful foray and some have made a huge success of it such as Zappos with their 1.5m followers they have successfully used social networks such as Twitter to build a very successful business.
We have recently completed a project for one of our Clients that involved an analysis of a number of Twitter based campaigns including T Mobile, Walkers, Dell and Skittles and the overriding conclusion was that people are pretty fickle - the most successful way to build followers was a prize draw or competition - indeed Moonfruit came top where by simply giving away 10 laptops and asking people to mention #moonfruit they generated 55k Tweets and a buzz of up 15k mentions per day, it also accounted for a significant sales boost.
I guess the challenge for brands is how they can grab hold of the zeitgeist and integrate themselves in a productive and intrusive way into the conversation - right now the biggest topic is unseen prequels where "People are tweeting made-up titles for nonexistent prequels to different movies" - there are approx 1,000 tweets per minute right now ranging from "Batman and Robin The Curious Years" to "The Devil Wears Primark" - I wonder how a brand like can integrate itself into this - prize for the most innovative / make the actual movie ?
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