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Social Media Digest: Facebook’s PinView, Star Wars Tweets and Dr Pepper High School

April 20th, 2012 by Ali Gritt

Welcome to this week’s round-up of our favourite social media news – don’t forget to let us know what you think about the stories below!

1. Pinterest is still hot property and there’s no shortage of accompanying apps which promise to enhance your pinning experience - just last week we told you about Pinstamatic, which lets you pin locations, music, quotes, calendar dates, Twitter profile links, sticky notes and websites. This week, it’s PinView. Rather than working alongside Pinterest itself, PinView is a Facebook application which lets you ‘Browse Facebook like you browse Pinterest’, capitalising on Pinterest’s simple – but hot – design. Co-developer Thomas Petersen told Mashable: “It’s popular because it allow you to quickly scan lots of pictures; that is the strength of this format. It’s not something Pinterest invented, but they found the proper use for it”. Clever stuff.

2. This is a nifty one! Microsoft has unveiled a Star Wars app which makes your Twitter and Facebook feeds appear like the movie’s ‘crawling’ title sequence. The app is being launched to mark the release of the Xbox 360’s ‘Kinect Star Wars’ game. It’s available for free on Windows Phones, iOS and Android – Stephen McGill, director of Xbox and entertainment for Microsoft UK, says: “We are literally putting ‘the Force’ directly into people’s phones”.

3. Mega-popular photography app Instagram is still new to Android and has taken off well – reaching five million downloads in less than a week – but the app may have hit its first speed bump as IT security company Sophos has issued a warning on its Naked Security blog that a fake Instagram app is infecting Android devices with Malware. The malicious app relies on sending background SMS messages to earn revenue for its creators. Sophos is advising users to be sure that they download the app from an official Android Marketplace and be wary of standalone app sites.

4. Pictionary-esque drawing game Draw Something has released an iOS and Android update just a few weeks after its creator, OMGPOP, was acquired by Zynga for $210 million. The update includes a variety of new features including the ability to save your drawing to your photo library (saving you from having to quickly screenshot the image to use for bragging rights – ‘hey, look at my cactus!’), comments, a ‘last line’ undo button and direct sharing to Facebook and Twitter. Interestingly, a few of us at Umpf HQ were initially hooked on the game but have recently lost interest and stats released this week suggest this is a popular trend. Did Zynga jump on board too early, or will the new updates encourage users to ready their drawing fingers?

5. Fruity soft drink brand Dr Pepper has released an interactive Facebook experience which lets users take a leading role in their own Dr Pepper advert. A ‘Best Day of High School’ microsite has been launched, allowing users to connect with their Facebook data and have a first person perspective through a day at an all-American high school which has been populated with images and info from your Facebook profile. Dr Pepper’s interactive Facebook experience is fun and light-hearted – similar but less frightful than the recent TakeThis Lollipop, The Swarm rollercoaster and Confused.com’s House of Horrors apps.

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Tagged: Android, dr pepper, Draw Something, Facebook, Instagram, iOS, Kinect, Mashable, microsoft, OMGPOP, Pinterest, PinView, Sophos, Star Wars, Xbox 360, Zynga

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Social Media Digest: KFC Fail, Twitter Trolls & Instagram Bought

April 13th, 2012 by Jon Priestley

Welcome back to our weekly instalment of all that’s newsworthy in the world of social media. Once again, there’s been lots going on this week, so put the kettle on, put your feet up and read what’s making the social sphere tick this week:

1. Biggest news this week has to be the purchase of Instagram by Facebook for $1Bn. Speculation is rife as to why Zuckerberg has reached into his deep pockets to buy the photo-filering app but one thing we do know is that it has made the small number of employees at Instagram very rich, very quickly!

2. Pinstamatic is one of a number of spin-off apps all aimed at helping users to make the most of Pinterest (which is still growing rapidly, last time we checked!). The Idea behind Pinstamatic is that it enables users to get more from Pinterest by adding so much more than photos. You can now add locations, music, quotes, calendar dates, Twitter profile links, sticky notes and websites. Check it out and let us know what you think!

3. Social media fail of the week – KFC Thailand has apologized for posting a Facebook message that urged people to rush home during Wednesday’s tsunami scare and order a bucket of KFC chicken. As people were being urged to evacuate from beaches, the company posted this message: “Let’s hurry home and follow the earthquake news. And don’t forget to order your favorite KFC menu.” Hundreds of angry commenters on Thai web boards denounced the company as insensitive and selfish.

4. Alexandra Burke was under police protection at her lip gloss launch on Wednesday after being subjected to threats on Twitter. An internet troll wrote a series of abusive and threatening messages leaving the singer fearing for her safety. Police officers arranged to meet the X Factor winner, 23, outside the Rose Club in central London, with her record company drafting in extra security.

5. Facebook has updated a tool that lets users look at some of the data the social network holds on them. The update gives people an “expanded archive” of their activity on Facebook letting them see friend requests and login locations. Facebook said other categories of data would be added in the future. Campaigners said the data shared did not go far enough and handed over only a “fraction” of the information European laws demand.

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Tagged: Facebook, Instagram, pinstamatic, Pinterest, Twitter

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Social Media Digest: Social Poo, Facebook Enemies & Blackberry Sale

March 30th, 2012 by Jon Priestley

What’s been happening in the world of social media over the past week, we hear you ask? Well, quite a lot (in short) and here are some of the top stories that we’ve cherry-picked for you in our latest Social Media Digest. Enjoy!

1. Whilst we’d never describe social media as a load of crap (for more reasons than we’d care to mention), some might dare to do so. In an interesting development you can now get your tweets printed on to a toilet roll. The new service is offered by an app called S***ter, whose slogan is: ‘Social media has never been so disposable.’ It explains: ‘S***ter will take one or more feeds from your Twitter account and turn it into four rolls of toilet paper, direct to your door.’ The app will print collected tweets from your choice of Twitter account, or your own newsfeed.

2. A new Facebook application allows users to add friends or pages to a list of enemies, but its creator believes the social network will soon shut it down. EnemyGraph, created by Professor Dean Terry from the Univeristy of Texas, focuses on the people, brands and things users don’t like, rather than the traditional ‘like’ model Facebook was built on.

3. A student sent to jail for posting racially offensive comments on Twitter about footballer Fabrice Muamba may be freed on Friday if he wins an appeal. Swansea University student Liam Stacey, 21, from Pontypridd, was sentenced to 56 days behind bars on Tuesday. A High Court judge in Swansea will hear the appeal against his sentence. Stacey admitted inciting racial hatred over remarks about the Bolton Wanderers player, who collapsed during a FA Cup tie against Tottenham Hotspur.

4. Barack Obama has joined Pinterest and shared his favourite chili recipe. The dish appears on his latest social networking sign-up, Pinterest – an online scrapbook and image-sharing site that is fast becoming the hottest place to be ’seen’ for the online community. On the page, which already has nearly 9,000 followers, pictures of Obama-themed cupcakes, Bo the Obamas’ dog and voter-friendly infographic fact sheets have been posted by the President’s campaign team.

5. The new chief executive of Research in Motion, the maker of Blackberry smartphones, signalled that he would be open to selling the company after it posted another catastrophic set of sales figures and plunged into the red. Revenues over the past three months, including the Christmas period when rival Apple sold millions of iPhones and iPads, were down 25 per cent, RIM said last night. The company – a pioneer in smartphones, particularly for business executives – announced a boardroom clear-out and a top-to-bottom review of its strategy, in an attempt to revive its fortunes.

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Tagged: blackberry, Facebook, Obama, Pinterest, RIM, Twitter

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PR Opportunity For Greggs Past Its Sell-By Date?

March 29th, 2012 by Adrian Johnson

When Labour leader Ed Miliband and Ed Balls stopped to buy sausage rolls at a Greggs shop this week, the pasty company’s PR eyes must have rolled, cartoon-style, to the $ sign.

It all follows the debate over heightened VAT rules on hot takeaway food which, you have to admit, tax or no tax, has been fun watching from the PR sidelines.

David Cameron tried to board the pasty bandwagon but couldn’t remember the last time he’d had one – I’ve tried that one, David, but my waistline suggests it was fairly recently. And fairly frequently.

Gaff aside, it must have delighted the West Cornwall Pasty Company who Cameron name-checked, saying he’d last had one of their pasties at Leeds train station (turns out the outlet had already shut when he’d claimed to have eaten it and the anecdote started to crumble).

The one thing I’m surprised at is that Greggs hasn’t been more proactive in all this. I haven’t seen any clever PR or social media piggybacking.

Surely they’d be trialling some pasties with politician’s faces on? Or what about limited edition staff aprons (here’s one, above right, Umpf has mocked up).

Top marks then to Morrisons’ PR team who negotiated a reader offer with The Sun today. Above the front-page simmering pasty-gate story is their “FREE (hot or cold) Sausage Roll” for all Sun readers.

Let’s make no bones about it, they will be paying for this, if not in placement fee to the paper, then in the cost of dishing out hundreds of thousands of sausage rolls.

But in my view, it’s astute thinking from their PR people and, at 65p, rams home their value message better than Greggs has done.

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Tagged: greggs, keep calm and pasty on, Morrisons, pasty-gate, PR

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Social Media Digest: Pinterest Copyright, Twitter’s 6th & Facebook’s Patents

March 23rd, 2012 by Jon Priestley

Welcome back to our run-down of all that’s hot in the world of social media. We’ve been busy scouring the web over the past week to bring you some of the most thought-provoking and informative stories, so sit back, relax and enjoy:

1. Google has announced the launch of a new tool called ‘Social Reports’ which aims to give users of its Analytics a “social value” report to see how social media contributes to conversions on their e-retail sites. Google says the tool will provide marketers with return-on-investment metrics that matter most to executives—conversions and bottom line revenue—rather than data points whose impact aren’t so clear, like the number of Likes retailers have on Facebook. Time will tell as to whether this will produce the ‘holy grail’ of ‘Social Media ROI’ or whether it will continue to be too hard to quantify.

2. Twitter celebrated its 6th birthday this week, with news that the platform now handles 340 million messages per day. Quite an increase from the initial few messages, which were mostly ‘Just setting up my twttr’. Twitter generates one billion tweets every three days, but things haven’t always been that busy. It took 3 years, 2 months, and 1 day to reach the first billion tweets, and around 18 months to sign up its first 500,000 accounts. Now, the microblogging platform allegedly signs up half a million new accounts per day. That’s the equivalent of the entire population of London signing up every fortnight.

3. Facebook has reportedly acquired 750 patents from IBM in the run-up to its IPO, presumably to protect itself from future patent-infringment litigation. The claims come from someone with insider knowledge at Bloomberg. The acquisition would vastly increase Facebook’s patent cache, which currently stands at “at least” 56, according to Bloomberg, with another 503 patent applications filed with the US Patent and Trademark Office.

4. Latest research from Adobe states that the impact of social media is undervalued by nearly 100 per cent. It’s a great stat, fresh from their latest digital index report, but it remains to be seen how accurately they arrived at the final figure. You can read the report here and make your minds up as to whether you feel this is a realistic sum. As with ROI, it can be hard to attribute value to social media activity.

5. Pinterest, the world’s fittest/strongest/most productive/best traffic referer site in the world is drawing every closer to a copyright showdown. The sharing platform, which is still growing faster than we could comprehend is caught it a difficult situation with regards potential revenue generation. The issue stems from whether or not Pinterest launches a business model in the hunt to generate more money. At that point, certain stock photo agencies, particularly Getty, would be very keen to make sure Pinterest used some sort of license for the images shared on its site. You can read more about the issues here, courtesy of Tech Crunch but only time will tell how long Pinterest can sustain growth without wanting to cash in and incur the wrath of image holders.

Twitter generates one billion tweets every three days, but it did not start like that. It took 3 years, 2 months, and 1 day to reach the first billion tweets, and around 18 months to sign up its first 500,000 accounts.

Source: The Inquirer (http://s.tt/17UCx)