Blackberry's 'The Bold Team' has caused quite a stir

1. Twitterati 1, Blackberry 0: RIM (the company behind Blackberry) suffered yet another PR blunder this week after a rather embarrassing attempt at crowdsourcing user-generated publicity from Twitter, promoting the hashtag #BeBold. It all started on New Year’s Eve when RIM ran a campaign asking how folks planned to #BeBold in 2012. Based on some of their responses, RIM created four mascots in the form of cartoon superheroes, provoking global criticism and mockery from disgruntled tweeps usurping the #BeBold hashtag. As a recent convert to the church of Apple, I found @bpollard89’s tweet – ‘#BeBold, get an iPhone’ – the most amusing.

2. Pimp My Page – Twitter introduced a redesign in December, however this week the micro-blogging site announced that it would be launching enhanced profiles for brands. The initial branded pages included: American Express, Bing, Coca-Cola, Dell, Disney Pixar, Heineken, McDonald’s, and a few more. With Facebook’s IPO, Twitter will be under even more pressure to become more brand-centric.

3. End of his Korea – Park Jeonggeun, a 24 year old South Korea has been detained for a re-tweet yesterday from a devout Northern Korean about the late despot Kim Jong-Il, which included a satirical edited version of a North Korean propaganda poster. A noted critic of the North Korean regime, Park told Amnesty International “My intention was to lampoon North Korea’s leaders for a joke.” Nonetheless, South Korea officials claim his retweet is a violation of the National Security Law, under the grounds of committing “acts that benefit the enemy.” Park could face upto seven years in prison for his mockery. In a strange twist of foreign policy, North and South Korea are still technically at war with each other however surely imprisoning a citizen over free expression is comparable with the ideology they claim to oppose?

4. Twaped – On the subject of inability to identify humour on Twitter, Labour MP Tom Watson has been in the news this week after his intern jokingly tweeted: ‘I should log out of my Twitter so that my intern doesn’t twit-rape me…,’ similar to the social-prank known as ‘fraping’ on Facebook. The intern shortly posted an apology, however the Twitter-blunder caused an uproar of antagonistic commentators advocating her dismissal as well as many tweeps with a sense of humour orchestrating a campaign to #savetheintern. The media-savvy MP, who lead the charge against News Corp in 2011, was quick to respond on his blog, perhaps amusingly in parts: ‘though my account wasn’t technically ‘hacked’, yes, I do understand the irony of what happened.’ Regardless of certain peoples’ sensitivity to the vulgar word, Mr Watson was wise not to dismiss the intern and respond in a timely, professional manner.

Tiffany's crowd-sourced images depicting couples in true love

5. Love is in the air – Tiffany announced it was partnering with fashion blogger couple Scott Schuman and Garance Doré for an extension of its ‘What Makes Love True’ campaign. The couple is presented as the archetypical couple for the project ‘True Love in Pictures,’ which aims to create a gallery to represent real couples in love from Paris and New York. The project was celebrated at an event at the Tiffany & Co. flagship store in New York last week and from Monday people have been able to upload their own ‘moments of romance’. Users can post their love dovey photos to Twitter, Facebook or email to friends and family.

6. Bayern Munchkins – Prominent German football club Bayern Munich upset thousands of their fans this week in a failed social stunt. The club announced it had agreed to sign a ’spectacular name.’ The news spread like wildfire and soon became a top trend on Twitter. Fans were then instructed to like the Facebook page and accept an application invite to watch a live stream of the new superstar. But when the moment came to do the big reveal, fans logged in to find Nerlinger holding a piece of paper showing the profile picture of the Facebook user watching the video, accompanied by a message reading: ‘Dear fans, you probably already noticed, that we did not sign a new player. This app is for our fans to show the importance of you for our club.’ Within minutes, thousands of angry fans vented their frustration on Twitter and Facebook at the gimmicky stunt. Considering Bayern recently missed out on the signing o Monchengladbach and Marco Reus to rivals Dortmund, this was an insult to injury for many loyal fans.

1. McFail – McDonald’s suffered a Twitter blunder this week in a drive for positive user-generated word of mouth using a hashtag #McDstories, whichwas soon hijacked with the horror stories of disillusioned customers. One tweep commented “My brother finding a fake finger nail in his fries. #McDStories.” Some used the hashtag to simply mock the ‘Golden Arches:’ “#McDStories More than half a year since last McTerrible McFattening McMeal. I don’t McMiss the McFood McOne McBit.” In a bid to salvage the foiled initiative, McDonald’s promoted a more generic hashtag #LittleThings, however the twittersphere has so far used the tag for anything but Mcpraise.

2. Own Goal – Snicker’s launched their Twitter account a mere two weeks ago and have already found themselves mired in controversy.  It all began after footballer Rio Ferdinand tweeted “You’renot you when you’re hungry @snickersUk#hungry#spon” with a picture of himself posing with a Snicker’s chocolate bar. The tweets have provoked criticism from all directions, including one user who replied with “Do you really need the money that badly?” and another added: “I’m not on here to be advertised at”. Ian Botham, Amir Khan, Cher Lloyd and Katie Price have alsotweeted similar sentiments and promotional pictures. An Office of Fair Trading spokesman said: “Online advertising and mnot you when you’re hungry @snickersUk#hungry#spon” with a picture of himself posing with a Snicker’s chocolate bar. The tweets have provoked criticism from all directions, including one user who replied with “Do you really need the money that badly?” and another added: “I’m not on here to be advertised at”. Ian Botham, AmirKhan, Cher Lloyd and Katie Price have alsotweeted similar sentiments and promotional pictures. An Office of Fair Trading spokesman said: “Online advertising and marketing practices that do not disclose they include paid for promotions are deceptive under trading laws.”

3. Search No Evil – Facebook, Twitter & MySpace have formed analliance against Google byengineering a software add-on for browsers which counteracts the effect of Google’s alteration of its search results to favour its own Google+ social network with a piece of code named after the giant’s first unofficial strapline “Don’t be evil,” resonating Google’s philosophy that ‘you can make money without being evil.’ Twitter claims Google+ artificially inflates its natural position by pushing its own results, rather than the best ones. However Google’s chairman Eric Schmidt insisted that Facebook and Twitter did not allow sufficient access to their sites for Google to be able to integrate results from them intoits search and that Google+ was not being unfairly favoured. The “Don’t be evil” code can found at “Focus on the user.”

4. Social Capitalism – A study by Delloite has found that Facebook adds an estimated €15.3 billion value to the European economy, as well as supporting 35,200 UK jobs and contributing £2.2bn to the British onomy each year. At the DLD conference in Munich on Tuesday, Facebook COO Cheryl Sandburg noted the emergence of a £467m per annum ‘app economy,’ as many companies have centred their business models on building applications and games to capitalize on the millions of UK Facebookers. Delloite also estimates that the development of Facebook apps generates 7,500 jobs in the UK. Deloitte’s report also claims that lovers of the social monolith contribute £550 million to technology sales, which supports 8,800 jobs. Considering the adverse economic growth in the UK last quarter, this will undoubtedly increase the influence of the Facebook lobby.

5. Megaupset – One of the world’s leading sharing sites Megaupload has been shutdown this week due to a verdict of the US Grand Jury, which found the site owner Kim Dotcom guilty of copyright piracy equating to $500 million of lost revenue. The flamboyant Kim Dotcom has been charged with global criminal conspiracy to pirate illegal and lost a bid for bail yesterday, with the judge ruling he was a significant flight risk. He is appealing that decision ahead of attempts by American authorities to extradite him. Just days of the SOPA blackout controversy, Dotcom’s sentence illustrates the fine line between ‘sharing’ and internet piracy.

6. LA Fiasco – The gym group LA Fitness faced the wrath of the Twitterati yesterday when a couple from Essex complained about being locked into a 2-year contract despite falling pregnant and her husband being made redundant. Originally reported in The Guardian, the scandalous behaviour of the gym prompted a storm of criticism and began trending on Twitter with angry tweets directed at LA Fitness’s account on Wednesday. The group was forced to delete its own earlier tweet claiming  “We do not comment on individual cases,” and then began commenting quite a lot on this particular case, including an announcement that it would be waiving all outstanding fees charged to the couple – a testament to the transition of power that social media has brought about.

7. Twit or Miss? - Twitter announced that it will censor tweets in individual countries in a blog post yesterday. The new filtering technology coincides with the micro-blogging site’s ambitious agenda of expanding its user-base from 100 million to 1 billion. Reaching that goal will require expanding into more countries, which will mean Twitter will be more likely to have to comply to laws contrary to free-expression. Twitter will post a ‘censorship notice‘ whenever a tweet is removed, similar to what Google has been doing for years. If Twitter defies a law in a country where it has employees, those people could be arrested, this is why Twitter is unlikely to try to enter China, where its service is currently block. Although it’s worth thinking about whether the Arab Spring could have been as successful if regional censorship had been implemented prior to the protests movements.

1. Foursquare is rolling out its own search engine, called Explore, as the location-based social network looks to expand its audience. The firm descibed Explore as a product to add “an ‘interesting’ layer to the whole world, tailored just for you. In a statement, the firm explained how the search engine would be tailored to each user:

“Most real-world searches are one-size fits all. You search for pizza, and it gives you the same list of pizza places, whether you like deep dish or thin crust, whether you want a slice or a sit-down meal, or whether your friends would love it or hate it. But not with foursquare Explore, because you are your friends’ (along with 1,500,000,000 more from the foursquare community) help us personalize our recommendations for you. Ever you time you check in, we get better at finding places you’ll like.”

2. A study by Hitwise in December has shown that the UK accounted for 606 million Internet visits to YouTube. The study shows that video sharing sites, citing YouTube and BBC iPlayer as examples, received 936 million visits last month. This figure has been steadily increasing, and in October, we saw a 36% increase in visits to online video sites. But YouTube is clearly ahead of the pack. The site  is one of the fastest growing according to Hitwise’s data, and accounted for 65% of visits to video sharing sites in the UK in December 2011.

3. Facebook, following a year of whirlwind growth, overtook Orkut as Brazil’s most-popular social network in December. Orkut is a social network that Google launched in 2004. Its popularity in Brazil, where 60% of Orkut’s users are based, led to it being hosted and managed by Google Brazil from 2008 onwards. Facebook’s user base increased 192% during 2011, according to a comScore report released Tuesday. In December 2010, 12.4 million Brazilians visited Facebook.com. One year later, that number skyrocketed to 36 million Brazilians.

4. A lot of the web went ‘black’ yesterday in response to the US governments prospective anti-piracy laws. Sites like Wikipedia downed tools and stopped visitors from viewing pages in an attempt to raise awareness of what they believe will be dangerous legislation for freedom of speech and freedom of internet use. Google and Craiglist also draped their pages with protests about the legislation. The New York Times has an interesting round-up of the day’s events.

5. Facebook is adding a series of new applications to let users share such things as photos, travel or fashion. The online social network firm unveiled more than 60 new apps that users can share on their Facebook profiles, known as their Timeline. Users can already share the music they are listening to or news articles they are reading. But this latest development expands the number of apps significantly.

1. Google Sites accounted for 91.75% of all searches conducted in the UK in December 2011, up by 0.67% since November 2011, according to Experian Hitwise’s latest Search Engine and Social Analysis. Google was the only search engine that grew over the period, with Microsoft and Yahoo! Sites both falling by more than a quarter of a per cent.

2. A war of words broke out this week between Google and Twitter. It all started when it was announced that Google had added a new function called ‘Search, plus Your World’ that gives prominence to content from Google+ within search results. There are actually three new features – People and Pages, Personal Results and Profiles in Search. The functions will become available over the next few days to users signed-in and searching in English on Google.com…

3. …Fearing Google’s push to dominate, Twitter hit back, resoundly criticising Google, who in turn retailiated with a nice playground retort: “You Quit Us”. Time will tell how this argument will develop but we’re all ears here at Umpf Towers.

4. Facebook’s dominance of UK visits to social networking sites is getting diluted as the category diversifies, while YouTube is experiencing steep growth, according to new data from Experian Hitwise. Facebook’s share of total visits to social networks in December dropped from 58.5% in 2010 to 51.3% in 2011. James Murray, market research analyst at Experian Hitwise, said that Facebook is not losing visitors, but the market is diversifying “rapidly”. He said the number of visits to Facebook from Britons during the year remained static at the 1.3 billion mark. In reference to these latest stats, here is our infographic based on our research into social media usage in the UK (right).

5. Employers could face legal action for vetting job applicants through Facebook and TwitterEmployers could face legal action for vetting job. The use of social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook by employers to vet potential employees could see companies sued for discrimination new research has claimed. According to research conducted by psychology consultancy OPP, employers to check the social networking sites of potential employees could be breaking the law.

6.  After a slew of negative revelations over the last few days, Michelle Obama attempted to drum up some good publicity today using a true 21st-century tool – Twitter. The First Lady has finally joined the micro-blogging site, and collected thousands of followers in just a few hours on the site. But those hoping for juicy revelations may be disappointed – as her feed will be managed by her husband’s staff, and used mainly as a campaigning tool.

1. Charities have warned of the rising number of adopted children contacted by their birth parents via Facebook, leading to emotional and psychological distress. The popularity of social networking websites has seen an increase in breaches of guidelines against unplanned contact with hundreds of adopted children unexpectedly hearing from their natural families. In the worst cases, some young people taken into care in the 1990s have seen relationships with their adoptive families completely break down after hearing from their biological parents.

2.Instagram came of age this week with the world’s most powerful man, Mr President, launching his profile on the image-sharing platform (above). Whilst it’s unlikely the photos will shed light on covert behind-the-scenes meetings at the White House, Instagram will be rubbing their hands with glee as the platform gains its most influential endorser. Maybe 2012 will be the year when the app is made available to Android users. Only time will tell!

3. Labour MP Diane Abbott was in hot water over remarks she made following the Stephen Lawrence murder trial. The Shadow Health Minister has since apologised for any offence caused by comments she made on Twitter, after claims they were racist. She said she had not meant to generalise when she wrote: ”White people love playing ‘divide & rule’”. It was a response to criticism of media use of “black community leaders” after the Stephen Lawrence murder trial. Whether or not she’s in position this time next week remains to be seen.

4. Will the real Wendi Deng please stand up? Despite an official verified “tick” badge from the social networking service – now rescinded – a News International spokeswoman in London confirmed on Tuesday that the @Wendi_Deng Twitter account was fake, although the @rupertmurdoch account is genuine. Murdoch, the chairman and chief executive of News Corporation, joined Twitter on 31 December, with the fake Deng account launching the following day. She apparently chatted with celebrities including Gervais, tweeting “i think you look HOT ricky!!! (sssh dont tell @rupertmurdoch!)”, and Kim Kardashian (”kim!!! agreed! rupert and i set a lot of goals for ourselves all through last yr!”), but the account holder’s cover was blown on Tuesday when Twitter said it was not authentic.

5. A nasty bit of malware making the rounds on Facebook has reportedly made off with the usernames and passwords of more than 45,000 users. Most of those affected by the worm–called Ramnit–are from France and the United Kingdom, according to a bulletin issued by security researchers at Securlet. It is capable of infecting Windows executables, Microsoft Office, and HTML files, according to McAfee.

6. And finally…another gong for Umpf. We have been voted the Best Social Media Agency in Yorkshire by The Drum magazine. Its annual New Year’s Honours list ranks agencies which have ‘consistently produced top notch creative work and whose trophy cabinets are fit to burst’. A great way to start the year!

1. Facebook has begun rolling out functionality that allows Page owners and individual Facebook users to exchange private messages. Unlike on Twitter, where either party can initiate a direct message, Facebook is requiring that the individual initiate the conversation for now at least.

2. It appears no one is safe from hacking as singer Lady Gaga has been the latest victim of a targeted attack on her Twitter and Facebook accounts. Multiple messages, seemingly from the singer, offered “free iPad2’s to each one of you”. Attached links directed more than 100,000 of her followers to a site requesting personal details, possibly as part of a phishing scam. The 25-year-old, Twitter’s most followed user, later tweeted: “Phew. The hacking is over!”

3. Facebook has been told to stop its practice of indefinitely retaining data about which adverts its 500 million users outside the US click on, following a review by the Irish data protection commissioner of its non-US operations. It has also agreed to take immediate steps over data collected from third-party sites when people use their Facebook identity to log in to them. Until now, that data about people’s behaviour was passed back to Facebook and retained indefinitely. Following the review, Facebook can keep the data but it has to make it anonymous.

4. Every day more than 700,000 people sign up for a new Android device, Google’s Android chief, Andy Rubin, said this week. That works out to nearly 5 million new Android users every week, which is about the equivalent of an iPhone 4S opening weekend every seven days. Rubin also clarified that Google’s 700,000 activations per day includes new devices only and not resold ones. “We count each device only once,” Rubin said in a follow-up post on Google+.

5. Two NHS organisations have teamed for a Twitter campaign that will direct patients in London to the right services during the festive season. The 12-day ‘choose well’ tweeting initiative will begin on Christmas day, when both NHS London and NHS South West London – a strategic health authority and a primary care trust cluster – will tweet a rhyme about a seasonal ailment and the best place to get it treated during the holidays. People will be able to keep track of the tweets by following the hashtag #NHSXmas.

6. According to Twitter, the TV screening of the highly popular Anime Castle in the Sky in Japan earlier this month set a new record for the most tweets per second (TPS) on the service. The new high of 25,088 TPS smashes the previous record, which saw “nearly 9,000? tweets per second recorded following the announcement of Beyonce’s pregnancy.

7. Twitter received a $300 million investment from Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal (left) as it pushes through a redesign of its site to attract advertisers. Alwaleed, who leads the 2011 Arab Rich List, and his investment company agreed to buy a “strategic stake” in Twitter, Kingdom Holding said today. A strategic holding means more than 3 percent, Ahmed Halawani, a Kingdom Holding director, said in an interview. That would give the San Francisco-based company a valuation exceeding $10 billion.

8. Instagram has posted its first in a series of 2011 review posts, listing the top locations that people shared with their photos. The top 15 locations showed heavy usage on the West coast, California specifically, with top spots being Disneyland, AT&T Park, and airports in San Francisco and Los Angeles.

9. Paul Rayment, a PR manager based in Leeds, has come up with yet another interesting and unique use for Foursquare. He’s using the check-in service to map out the history of rappers. Starting out with Tupac Shakur (right), Rayment has documented the milestones in the rapper’s life, starting out with his performance at the Apollo Theatre. The tour then takes users through Tupac’s high school years, the location where he signed his record deal with Death Row Records, and of course, as is to be expected, passes through the site of the shooting that took Tupac’s life.

10. Last but not least, we’d personally like to thank all of you who’ve read, retweeted and enjoyed this blog over the past year – we’ll be back in 2012 to continue to keep you updated on all that’s hot in the world of social media. If 2012’s anything like 2011, there’ll be a lot to keep you in the loop about. Please take some time to view our Christmas Card and an update of our work this year.

All the team at Umpf

1. Google has announced that is has bought PostRank, the online social media analysts. A message on their homepage reads: “We’re proud of what we’ve accomplished, and we now look forward to working with Google’s team to build more useful tools for measuring engagement online, and we’ll be sure to share details on our progress in the coming months.” Whether this will lead to further analytics tools for the web remains to be seen.

2. Chinese search engine Baidu will reportedly spend nearly a half-billion dollars to bring small businesses online and, among other things, train 100,000 search marketing professionals in China. As reported by both NASDAQ and AMP, Baidu will make a $470 million investment in China’s online market between now and the end of 2015.

3. Mark Zuckerberg fell foul of his own social media platform this week when it was revealed that a glitch in the security systems meant his private photos became public property. Whilst the photos were limited to holding a live chicken, killing said chicken and eating said chicken’s remains, the world tuned in to see behind the veil and glimpse the private life of the man who has made all of ours public.

4. Twitter has unveiled a new look today, features of which will be rolled out over the coming weeks. The general idea is to grow revenue through advertising. “We have to provide the simplest and fastest way for people around the world to connect to everything they care about,” Twitter Chief Executive Dick Costolo said as he introduced the new version of the site at an event at the company’s future headquarters in San Francisco.

5. Apple has released its annual iTunes Rewind, a look back at the most popular content available in the App Store over the past year. This year, top honors went to photo-sharing app Instagram, which Apple named “iPhone App of the Year.” As Apple’s reigning favorite, the app will be featured prominently in the App Store and is likely to see a significant surge in downloads. Instagram lets you shoot photos, apply polaroid-like filters and share your creations on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and other popular social networks.

But how did we get here? What inspired the Ouch Map? How did we come to create it? Well, the answer is very simple; responding to a client’s needs with a creative and original idea.

When online health insurer, Health365.com, approached us to launch their brand across the UK, we worked with them to define some very specific objectives: drive traffic to the new site, using social media in particular to generate sales and to make health insurance (generally considered to be a dry subject) appealing and accessible to tech savvy 25 – 40 year olds.

As with every piece of work we execute for our clients, we keep objectives at the forefront of our minds when coming up with creative ideas.

In response, our solution was to launch the world’s first ‘Ouch Map’ a fun, interactive social media experiment that would map minor injuries and see which parts of the body Brits hurt most. We proposed the Ouch Map as an interactive and social media friendly way to monitor those minor in real-time using an interactive Twitter app and a glowing skeleton. We believed the Ouch Map would also enable Health365.com to achieve the primary objective of making online health insurance more interesting and accessible, whilst boosting site traffic and sales.

The beauty behind the Ouch Map and where it really stood out was that it would be a world first as well, not just in terms of functionality, but also in terms of data; whilst information on more serious accidents and injuries involving hospitals and GPs is more readily available, we recognised that less was known about the more frequent and often annoying bumps and bruises, grazes and scuffs that do not require medical assistance.

We devised the glowing skeleton as a suitable ‘map’ onto which twitter users’ data could be pictorially represented. The fantastic visuals and coding for the job were produced by Ben Marsh whose work speaks for itself. Those having an ‘ouch’ moment are able to use the hashtag #ouch365, indicating the part of the body and the scale of the pain experienced from 1 – 10. E.g. ‘#ouch365 grazed left knee 7’.

The injury was then logged real-time on the interactive human skeleton at www.health365.com/ouchmap with participants’ pain data being used to light up the bones of the human body in accordance with the level of pain experienced, with green being low-level pain and red being a severe ‘ouch moment’.

To fulfill Health365.com’s desire to build traffic and sales we decided that the Ouch Map should sit on the Health365.com website and be just one click away from the homepage, meaning the traffic from users of the Ouch Map was directed towards generating additional sales for the company as well.

As nice as we think the Ouch Map looks, this is primarily to serve the objectives that we devised with Health365.com. For us, the most important aspect of the Ouch Map’s success (and where certain social media campaigns fall short) is that it enabled Health365.com to hit and far exceed all of these objectives.

Since the Ouch Map launched and in the subsequent months, traffic to the Health365.com trebled with the monthly sales average of policies doubling over the same period. What’s more, targeting the 25 – 40 year old age bracket has been achieved through the Ouch Map, with the average age of Health365.com policy holders sitting within this demographic.

If you are interested in talking to us about our social media campaigns, you can read about more here and please get in touch by email. We’d love to talk to you. Who knows, yours could be the next award-winning social media campaign that we devise.

1. In news that will spark fears of another dotcom bubble, Facebook games producer Zynga has been valued at c.$7Bn. The company plans to raise $1bn (£630m) in its initial public offering, valuing the fledgling internet firm at the massive amount. The company behind popular Facebook games Farmville and Mafia Wars said in a regulatory filing on Friday that it intends to sell 115m shares – 14% of its common stock – at up to $10 each.

2. YouTube has revealed its biggest redesign in its history. The redesigned video site displays a single news feed in the centre of the homepage featuring videos that an individual’s friends have uploaded onto sister site Google+. There is a channel feed on the left hand side of screen encouraging users to ‘subscribe’ to their favourite YouTube channels and shows – which could mean a major boost to TV networks and individuals who have their own channels on the site. And there are big Facebook and Google+ ‘buttons’ also in the left hand column so users can easily share and see content from the video site through to their choice of social network.

3. Foursquare launched its ”Save to Foursquare” and “Follow on Foursquare” buttons on Wednesday in an effort by the New York company to get users to integrate what they do on the Web with what they do in the real world. The Save to Foursquare button is aimed at online publishers and can enable publications to relate stories and reviews to places listed in the Foursquare app.

4. Google has rolled-out a new feature for its Google+ service, allowing US and Canadian users to make phone calls from within its Hangouts space. Hangouts currently enable up to ten Google+ users to meet up and use voice and video chat to communicate. The new service now allows users to make external phone calls and host conference calls, even to people who aren’t signed up to Google+. Revealed by Google employee Jarkko Oikarinen, the inventor of the first Internet Relay Chat, the update is available via a plugin from the Hangouts with Extras page on the social and business networking site.

5. Facebook now has 1000 times the referrals of Google+. The amount of activity on Google+ is falling, according to the latest data from web monitoring firm NetApplications, with Facebook massively ahead of the competition. The data showed that Google+ was outpaced not only by Facebook, but also sites like YouTube, Reddit and LinkedIn. While Google+ is still relatively news to the social networking game, its data is no longer rising, but falling away.

1. Arabic is the fastest growing language on Twitter as of October 2011 and is now the eighth most used language on the popular social networking website, a study showed Thursday. The Paris-based Semiocast released an analysis on the language shares on Twitter, surveying 5.6 billion public messages gathered between July 1, 2010 and Oct. 31, 2011. “More than 2 million public messages were posted ever day on Twitter in Arabic, from about 30,000 in July 2010 [out of 5.6 billion tweets],” the study said.

2. Instagram now has 13 million users, just 13 months after it was launched and shows no sign of slowing down. The small company has just seven employees and grabbed another million users last month and now boasts well over 13 million application users, co-founder Kevin Systrom confirmed.

3. In what could be the first signs of the bursting dotcom 2 bubble, shares of LinkedIn fell 6.7% on Monday.The lockup expiration has been on investors’ minds, as four company insiders have already said they are cashing out in a second offering of stock. Meanwhile, LinkedIn is selling 1.3 million of its own shares in that offering. Those announcements don’t inspire confidence in a stock that’s been criticized for overvaluation since its IPO. LinkedIn shares are down almost 23% over the month, and 15% over the past week alone.

4. The number of people accessing social media websites and apps on their mobile phones has increased by 44 per cent in the past 12 months, new figures show. Providing an insight into the changing ways that consumers both interact with each other and use technology, the comScore study revealed that in the five leading European markets (France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK), 55.1 million people used their phones for social media. Figures also reveal that the rate of growth in the use of social networking on a daily basis has risen beyond the growth rate of first-time adoption.

Images kindly sourced from:

1. http://startupmeme.com/artwitter-the-twitter-in-arabic/

2. http://www.b2bsocialmediaguide.com/2011/11/02/linkedin-company-status-updates/

1. Virgin Atlantic is offering customers a ‘tweet bit’ service allowing them to get flight status updates via micro-blogging site Twitter.The @VAAInfo account takes customer queries about their flight and offers a response “within seconds” the airline said. Fergus Boyd, head of e-commerce, at Virgin Atlantic, said: “We now have over 50,000 Twitter followers worldwide and we know that many of them use the social network to keep abreast of travel news and updates.”

2. X Factor supremo Simon Cowell has finally joined Twitter – although so far he’s mainly just winding up Piers Morgan and rival judges Nicole Scherzinger, Paula Abdul and LA Reid. After dozens of spoof and fake accounts, Cowell finally gave in and joined the social networking site with the words: ‘It’s official, I know it’s taken a while. It’s really me! We’re live in 10 minutes. I’ll keep you posted. Lots of love #iamsimon’ Fans hoping Simon would continue his infamous caustic criticism online weren’t disappointed – having joined just in time for the X Factor USA live show, his second tweet provided the perfect opportunity to make a dig at his rival judges.

3. Foursquare has revamped its popular badge system in an effort to increase user engagement and encourage exploration. Starting Monday, Foursquare’s core 24 category badges will begin leveling up based on users’ checkins. A numerical icon now appears on the bottom right of badges such as “JetSetter,” “Wino” and “Great Outdoors”, indicating how often users have checked in to places related to those badges. “It’s rewarding exploration and awarding expertise,” says Foursquare Head of Product Alex Rainert. “It’s a platform to showcase tastemakers and get their content exposed.”

4. Despite the fact services and apps like Instagram, Twitpic and PicPlz are growing in popularity on our mobile devices, it seems that more users are uploading photos to the micro-blogging platform via Twitter’s own photo service instead. According to new research featured on ZDNet, Twitter’s fairly new photo sharing service, which is powered by Photobucket, is now the number one way users put their photos onto the social network.

5.  In a series of interviews with USAToday, Facebook has finally revealed  how it tracks users and non-users across the web, gathering huge amount  of data as it does so. ABCNews/USAToday said: “Facebook officials are now acknowledging that the social media giant has been able to create a running log of the web pages that each of its 800 million or so members has visited during the previous 90 days. Facebook also keeps close track of where millions more non-members of the social network go on the Web, after they visit a Facebook web page for any reason.”

Images kindly sourced from:

1. http://www.air-valid.co.uk/virgin-atlantic-airways/event.html

2. http://www.simplyzesty.com/mobile/foursquare/whats-foursquare-simple-guide-power-user/

3. http://nexus404.com/Blog/2011/10/03/is-facebook-tracking-user-actions-on-other-websites-facebook-patent-application-indicates-tracking-on-other-domains-what-about-our-privacy/

Fronted by Poppy, the virtual face of the Royal British Legion, the campaign has more than 10,000 Facebook and 11,000 Twitter followers and its own Legion Live portal hosting videos, blogs and images.

As well as being used as a platform to host content, the British Legion once again led the campaign for Twitter to fall silent for two minutes at 11am (#2minutesilence) this morning as a mark of respect for Remembrance Day.

Last year the British Legion saw its Remembrance Day iTunes single bring two minutes of silence to the charts. And in 2009 a mobile poppy app was launched featuring a virtual poppy which grows every day.

A number of other social media campaigns to honour veterans and communicate the First and Second World Wars have also been launched this year.

This week, The Imperial War Museum launched its Faces of the First World War campaign which today saw 100 previously unseen portraits of those who served in the First World War made public for the very first time via Flickr.

Photographs will continue to be uploaded every week day until the 100^th anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War in August 2014.

Elsewhere a Twitter account (@RealTimeWWII) is reporting the events of world war two as it happened, minute by minute, for the next six years. Being led by Oxford graduate, Alwyn Collinson (24), the account has more than 73,000 followers and is being translated into Russian, Portuguese and Spanish.

Finally, this year’s PR Week Digital and Social Media Award went to the RAF Benevolent Fund for a social media campaign chronicling the events of the Battle of Britain. Set up as an online newspaper featuring daily news, pictures and video footage, blogs and Twitter feeds were also created for a number of fictional characters.

The campaign amassed 2,000 Twitter followers, 16,000 Facebook fans and the 1940 Chronicle has been chosen to become part of the British Library’s digital archive of British documentary heritage.

1. The Guardian released details of the fifty most influential people in the media on Twitter. Following Portland’s ‘Newstweet Index’ Neal Mann (@fieldproducer), Sky Digital News Editor was top of the pile, with the likes of Ben Goldacre and Rory Cellan-Jones not far behind. You can read the entire list here. The list followed a study of more than 330,000 tweets.

2. Mozilla updated its popular Web browser to Firefox 8 this week. The new version comes less than six weeks after Firefox 7, and applies to the desktop editions of Firefox for Windows, Mac, and Linux, and the mobile Firefox for Android. Key features for the new desktop releases include Twitter search integration, on-demand tab group loading, and more WebGL graphics hardware acceleration support.

3. UK users of social media sites such as Facebook don’t want the hard sell from big brands, according to a survey. Almost two-thirds of Britons do not want to be bothered by big-name brands on Facebook, Twitter and other social networks, according to a survey.The survey of more than 72,000 internet users indicates that Britons are less susceptible to online marketing messages and corporate blogposts than web users in other countries. In the UK, 61% of internet users do not want to engage with brands on social networks, according to the research firm TNS, compared with 57% across other developed countries and a low of 45% in Latin America.

4.  Ashton Kutcher has handed his Twitter account over to his management. The 33-year-old actor did the unthinkable after scores of Twitter users blasted him for posting support for a football coach caught up in a child abuse scandal. On a long explanatory post on his blog, he wrote: ‘Up until today I have posted virtually everyone of my tweets on my own, but clearly the platform has become too big to be managed by a single individual. While I will continue to express myself through @Aplusk I’m going to turn the management of the feed over to my team at Katalyst Media to ensure the quality of it’s content.’

5. Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom, speaking at TechCrunch Disrupt in Beijing, hinted at a future addition to the popular image-sharing service that would include video posts. Systrom’s talk at the Disrupt event also included thoughts on international expansion for Instagram and how social media should be approached in places like China. But, the real gem was his backstage comments about video. “Our job and our vision is to allow you to tell the story of your life, and whatever tools that may be for video, we’ll end up making them,” he said. “I’m not sure if that includes filters for video or not, but we’ll definitely consider it.”

Images sourced from:

1. http://wallpaperstock.net/firefox-logo_wallpapers_13362_1600×1200_1.html

2. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0005110/

3. http://www.businessinsider.com/instagram-2010-11

1. Google has just announced that it has updated its search algorithm to promote the latest relevant results where it makes sense to do so. The company explains “Given the incredibly fast pace at which information moves in today’s world, the most recent information can be from the last week, day or even minute, and depending on the search terms, the algorithm needs to be able to figure out if a result from a week ago about a TV show is recent, or if a result from a week ago about breaking news is too old.” 35% of searches should be affected, Google says. These include, recent events or hot topics; regularly recurring events, and topics that are frequently updated.

2. Twitter has announced Twitter Stories, which is an online portfolio that Twitter will use to display stories about how single Tweets have affected its users. You can submit stories by mentioning mentioning @twitterstories or by using the hashtag #twitterstories, Twitter says to feel free to link to a photo or video and they will include those in the story. Twitter will then feature a selection of profiles every month. The site is already live with a nice selection of stories to check out:

3. Search engine Google is now indexing public comments made on websites that use Facebook, Disqus and other add-ons. The move means that all comments on any publicly visible website could show up in Google search results. Previously, search engines were unable to read comments because Facebook, Disqus and Intense Debate used programming that was not easy to read automatically. This meant that comments could play any part in a website’s search ranking. Now, however, the web tools that Google uses to trawl the web and index content are able to read comments that have been made using Facebook’s Connect add-in for other websites, as well as other equivalent services.

4. Just five companies control 64% of all online spending, with Google controls 46% in total. The others are Yahoo, Microsoft, Facebook and AOL. Here are the full results:

5. Following last week’s news that Klout had changed its algorithm for calculating social capital, there has been a groundswell of criticism against the site. CEO Fernandez responds to his critics here.

1. Millions lost sleep this week with news that Klout (the social capital calculator) was changing its algorithm. The company insisted that many scores would go up, but that didn’t stop a small amount of negative reaction hitting social media channels. You can read more about the changes here. Suffice to say, at Umpf Towers we’re not quaking in our boots, but we’ll be working extra hard to break the magic 70 over the next few weeks.

2. This week saw the launch of the world’s first Facebook inspired cooker – or the ‘Facecook’ – as manufacturer Belling are calling it. Put simply, Facebook users have the unique chance for their profile pictures to appear on a specially designed cooker. By liking Belling UK’s Facebook page and liking the Belling Cooker app your profile picture will appear on the cooker’s photo montage. After the closing date for entries has passed, all images will be printed on to a specially created, unique Belling Classic Range Cooker. The cooker will be exhibited at the BBC Good Food show, so head down if you want to have a look.

3. In a small corner of the Baltic Sea, a mere 100km from the Arctic Circle, Facebook has announced it will build a new server farm. The small town of Lulea has been chosen as the location, creating about 70 – 90 jobs in the local area. Sweden’s network of high speed broadband, plus the general cold weather (used to keep the servers below critical temperature) has been cited as two of the reasons why the town was chosen.

4. Traditional English words such as ‘balderdash’ and ‘cripes’ are dying out thanks to the texting generation, linguists have claimed. Some 73% of people believe texts and website Twitter have dramatically changed the use of English, with long words falling out of use. The trends were revealed in a poll of 2,000 adults for the launch of JP Davidson’s book Planet Word. The book is a tie-in to Stephen Fry’s BBC2 series of the same name, charting the history of language from early grunts to tweets. The author said: “Language is always evolving and great descriptive words are being lost – but others emerge.”

5. The UK government asked Google to take down 135 YouTube videos for reasons of national security in the first half of this year, states Google’s biannual Transparency Report, released yesterday. The report also shows that the German government asked for videos that included Nazi memorabilia to be removed, and that US police wanted videos taken down because they showed their officers in acts of brutality. UK content removal requests went up 71 per cent compared to the previous six month period, when the government made no requests at all for content to be taken down on grounds of national security.

6. This week’s video is how to post a company status update on Linkedin, following recent changes to the professional online network:

Recently we were provoked by the idea that the next revolution on the web would involve filtering.

Let us explain.

If you’re like most users of Twitter, you’ll have several hundred profiles you’re following. If some of those profiles are rather prolific, you’ll find that your Twitter stream is more like a torrent, with tweets appearing faster than you’re able to read them and a growing sense of frustration that you can’t read the ones that really interest you.

Perhaps the same is also true of your Facebook profile. It could be so crammed full of  ‘friends’ that your nearest and dearest are pushed to one side, overtaken by a tidal wave of Farmville requests, meaningless photos of drunken nights out and gushing comments about someone you’ve never met and their new pet tarantula.

And so we start filtering.

After all, it’s a natural process that happens every day, all around us.

We filter when we go to the supermarket and we’re faced with 250 different types of wafer-thin ham. Most of us (those on the Atkin’s diet aside) only buy one. Likewise, when it comes to buying a new home, we naturally filter what’s on offer; by location, bedrooms, garden etc.

Filtering is our way of not being overwhelmed by choice and it’s arguably one key development in the web over the coming years. The truth is, every day we’re bombarded with more information than we know what to do with. And our social media profiles are no exception. We will be forced to filter in light of the amount of information we just can’t process, nor want to deal with.

If Web 2.0 was about ‘opening up’ then Web 3.0 is most definitely about ’shutting up’. Shutting up the brands, profiles and people that simply don’t interest us and filtering the way we receive information online. Getting ‘behind the veil’ to really speak to consumers is going to become increasingly challenging for brands. Clever, creative and interactive social media campaigns will be needed.

But before you all run screaming for the hills, the good news is that Web 3.0 will be more about building brand advocacy; inspiring consumers to do a brand’s bidding on their behalf. Apple is a fantastic example of this. Yes, their advertising is spot on, but we’re really won over when our friends talk up the new iPhone4S, tell us about the latest iPad app, or wax lyrical about AppleTV.

Brand advocacy may be harder to develop, but the results and rewards make it the holy grail for marketers. We’ll leave you with a rather irritating song that just about sums up our point:

1. Bitly, the New York City startup best known for its URL shortening service, has released a real-time, reputation-monitoring tool to help brands track trending news about them and sentiment around social-media mentions. The company is also releasing a search product into private beta. Matt LeMay, platform manager at Bitly, first hinted at the new products with a short demo at the monthly NY Tech Meetup in New York City earlier this week. In the demo, Mr. LeMay showed a dashboard that included a chart tracking the sentiment of “Abercrombie” over a period of time.

2. Facebook could face a fine of up to €100,000 (£87,000) after an Austrian law student discovered the social networking site held 1,200 pages of personal data about him, much of which he had deleted. Max Schrems, 24, decided to ask Facebook for a copy of his data in June after attending a lecture by a Facebook executive while on an exchange programme at Santa Clara University in California. Schrems was shocked when he eventually received a CD from California containing messages and information he says he had deleted from his profile in the three years since he joined the site.

3. Google+ now counts 40million users, it has been confirmed today. The site, which featured in one of our blog posts this week, is moving foward with its plans for logged-in search to rival its web-nemesis Facebook. We’re sure that as the war between the internet’s biggest players hots up, there’ll be an increasing number of stats thrown around, but for the time being we think 40 million users in just a few months is pretty good going!

4. LINKEDIN has launched its online professional networking service in Japanese, the first Asian language platform for the rapidly growing company as it pushes to expand in the region. Mountain View, California-based LinkedIn also established a small Tokyo office, following the opening of its Asia-Pacific headquarters in Singapore in May. Arvind Rajan, head of LinkedIn’s Asia operations, described Japan as a key market for the company because of its technologically sophisticated workforce. LinkedIn hopes that the lessons learned in Japan will ultimately translate into new offerings for the rest of the world.

5.  Debt collectors are to be banned from hounding people through social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, a consumer watchdog said on Wednesday. The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) has updated its Debt Collection Guidance to reflect new methods of communication, to prevent people suffering the ’stress and embarrassment’ of having their money troubles made public. A spokesman for the OFT said that contacting debtors through social networking sites was a new take on the old method of placing a postcard through the door.

6. Lastly, here’s our ‘infographic’ for this week – the history of the iPhone (below):

CNET UK Presents: History of the iPhone, dedicated to the memory of Steve Jobs from Drew Stearne on Vimeo.

1. A great reason why we all need to be careful when we update our public social media profiles here: A primary school governing body has apologised to parents after a message appeared on Facebook, apparently posted by a teacher, which described locals as inbred. Excerpts from an online exchange were printed out and hung on fencing outside Westcott primary school in Hull. One said: “No wonder everyone is thick… inbreeding must damage brain development.” Another referred to seeing pupils queuing in a discount store. The online exchange, allegedly between teachers at the school, has now been taken down.

2. MPs have voted to allow the use of Twitter during Commons debates after parliamentary authorities moved to ban it in January.On Thursday, MPs voted by 206 votes to 63 against a move to block the use of Twitter. Speaking against Twitter, the Conservative MP Sir Alan Haselhurst said he appreciated his position might make him “a leading candidate for the dinosaur of the year award”. Luciana Berger, Labour MP for Liverpool Wavertree, spoke in favour of Twitter and said only two countries in Europe currently banned MPs from tweeting during proceedings and the UK should not join them. Those MPs concerned about losing the “decorum” in the chamber, Berger said, should consider those of their colleagues who sometimes have “a little snooze” in the house.

3. Foursquare on Wednesday rolled out Foursquare 4.0, a new version of its iPhone app. The updated app now includes Radar, a feature that reminds you to check into a place if you’re nearby. Radar builds on Foursquare’s lists feature, which debuted in August. Lists allow you to make crowd-sourced lists of places worth exploring, such as “Best Korean Food in Queens” or “Lower East Side Coffee Shops with Free W-Fi.”

4. UK indie-rockers, the Vaccines, recently released a new music video for their single “Wetsuit” — made almost entirely from photos fans submitted through Instagram, an iPhone app that lets you share photos. “We always talk about breaking down the barriers between the band and the fans,” said Justin Young, lead singer. “We like sharing music with them, meeting them, interacting with them, as most bands do. So this felt like the ultimate interaction. Instagram was suggested to give photos taken on people’s phone a nice warm feel.”

5. Our latest infographic (above) demonstrates why content is so important for search. Click on the image to go to a high res version.

1. The BBC is planning a news gatherer app that will let ‘citizen journalists’ file stories directly from their phones, which can be on the air within minutes. Theoretically, the ”news gatherer app” will be able to feed user-generated content into the BBC’s content-management system, which is then edited by editorial staff and aired within minutes of submission. The app is scheduled to launch using the HTML5-based web language to minimise reliance on specific handset operating systems, such as Apple iOS or Google’s Android, although a roadmap for the product is unclear.

2. Heinz has launched a new Facebook app that enables fans of the Heinz page to send personalized messages, such as ‘Get Well Soon’ to friends and family, all printed within the iconic branding of a Heinz soup tin. Of course, the added bonus is that the recipient gets to eat the contents of the tin, which, if chicken soup, is bound to make them feel better instantly!

3. Peoplebrowser have launched a new indexing service called Kred, which it hopes will challenge the supremacy of Klout and Peerindex. Peoplebrowsr says that brands aren’t as interested in influence as they’re interested in reach. Kred creates a collective reach for a range of different topics, sorted by communities. For example, your Twitter Bio data is used to define communities and then Peoplebrowsr calculates a combined influence and outreach level score for that community.

4. News this week that technological pioneer and figurehead/founder of Apple, Steve Jobs, had died was the leading story for many of the world’s media. That many people read of his death using their iPhone, iPad or Macbook is testament to his influence and how much Apple has shaped the way we interact with one another and the world around us.

5.  A survey has revealed that three out of every 10 teenagers have had their Facebook,Twitter or MySpace accounts hacked into – and almost half are left upset by the experience. Hackers have impersonated the people who own the profiles, or spy on them, by sifting through messages – and most of the time the victims know who has logged on as them. Interestingly, however, of those who have been impersonated and attacked a high number are not concerned by the breach of privacy, according to the research.

1.  Facebook unveiled big changes yesterday in California, including a  music service that lets you listen to your friends’ music ‘live’ – but so far, this seems to have largely succeeded in goading its 750 million users into a fury. Users have been infuriated by this week’s overhaul of the site – with some likening it to the disastrous update to news site Digg that led to a wave of protest and a spate of resignations. Dozens of Facebook groups have been set up to protest the changes – some with thousands of members.

2. Internet start-up company Julpan, which specializes in sifting important data from blogs and tweets, has been bought by Twitter. Julpan was founded last year by Ori Allon, the Israel-born computer scientist who created a highly-praised “Orion” search engine. Google bought the rights to Orion in 2006 and incorporated it into its technology. Allon worked at Google until leaving to start Julpan. Allon’s latest venture, based in New York, was devoted to insightfully determining in real time what people are sharing with social networking services and tools.

3. President Barack Obama is again turning to a social networking website to host a town hall meeting. The White House says Obama will be in the San Francisco Bay area city of Mountain View on Monday to answer questions. The White House announced the meeting on Tuesday. It did not disclose an exact time for the event but said it will be broadcast live on LinkedIn and the White House’s website.

4. According to a recent blog post from 1000Memories, the company estimates that Facebook currently houses over 140 billion photos uploaded by users, a figure that’s 10,000 times larger than all the photos housed by the Library of Congress. Based off a figure from a Facebook engineer earlier this year, the social network oversees more than 200 million photos uploaded per day, approximately 6 billion per month. Techcrunch also reported that Facebook users uploaded an estimated 750 million photos over the New Year’s holiday earlier this year.

5. We’ve released our Social Media Hall of Fame, which documents what we feel are 50 of the best social media campaigns from around the world. You can read more about them here, but if you think we’ve missed any out, please let us know by emailing social@umpf.co.uk.

It has been a really busy 12 months, which has seen social media continue to dominate the news agenda and become a bona fide source of news in its own right. Our files are literally full to bursting with great campaigns and stunts that have happened since last Autumn and we’re excited to share our latest hall of fame with you.

Whether you’re one of the world’s superbrands or a small, local supplier, clever social media campaigns can help raise product awareness, increase sales, drive footfall, add fans, improve SEO and online visibility, or just make people think ‘cool, I like that company’.

Some of the world’s best social media campaigns from the past 12 months are highlighted below. They are case studies that, for one reason or another, have made us think ‘great campaign’. In deciding what is/is not a relevant case study, our social media litmus test has been to ask if they involve either online social interaction, user participation or user-generated content.

The Social Media Campaign Hall of Fame is in no particular order and, as is the case with lists like this, there’ll be great campaigns you love that are not yet listed, and others you feel should not be included. This is not a list of the campaigns that have the most followers/biggest fan base/most views. It’s about doing creative, interesting campaigns. And, of course, that’s subjective.

If you have a suggestion for inclusion, email it to social@umpf.co.uk. And please do share your comments at the foot of the page.

Umpf

Definitely not the ‘Wurst’ Facebook App – Reinert Privat-Fleischerei

Reinert Privat-Fleischerei, the catchily-named German sausage manufacturer, decided to turn people’s Facebook profile photos into sausage. The company said; “In Germany, everyone knows the happy “Wurst-Face”. It’s the one extra piece of sausage children get for free at the butcher…We developed a generator, which turns the Facebook profile picture into a happy “Wurst-Face“.

Far from being viewed as a load of Baloney, people used the clever app and turned their faces to sausage in seconds, spreading the brand and its campaign virally over Facebook as friends quickly saw the meat-effect take hold.

Blink and you’ll miss yourself – Blink182 and AT&T

To celebrate their first new single in eight years, Blink 182 created a video sourced from fan-made YouTube videos that were made without crediting the band. Called “Blink-182 Film Festival You Didn’t Know You Entered”, it formed part of a new advertising campaign for AT&T. Blink 182 and AT&T scoured YouTube for videos in which the band’s music was used without credit and used the clips to create the ad hoc video for “Up All Night,” (their new single).

The video shows good humour in addressing what is essentially piracy and instead of punishing fans for celebrating Blink 182?s music, they took the amateur footage and used it for their own devices, while simultaneously rewarding die-hard fans.

Turkish Delight for Tweeters – Turkcell

Turkcell, a Turkish telecom company, showed innovation in this campaign, using some of the most common Twitter features. The campaign revolved around a series of games that were all run through Twitter, with post-it notes being removed from the outside of a box, at each stage for people to try and win the phone. Users had to try and get a celebrity to Retweet them as the very last clue to win the phone. The campaign generated nearly 60,000 Tweets in just three days of activity. We think that’s a great reception (and we’re not talking about Turkcell’s network).

Rapid-fire Response – Grand Rapids

When Newsweek posted an article that outlined ten US cities that were dying, Grand Rapids in Michigan responded with a world record LipDup video featuring 5,000 of its residents. The outraged group of residents, business groups and tourism bosses created the following video, miming to Don McLean’s American Pie, which was produced using $40,000 worth of donations from 29 local sponsors.

Uploaded to YouTube on 26 May 2011, almost 800,000 people viewed the video in just a few days. There were 100,000+ Facebook ‘likes’ and it was the 9th most watched clip on YouTube anywhere in the world on 28 May, coupled with 12,000 YouTube ‘likes’.

A Heavenly Lynx Effect – Lynx

Lynx, the saviour of many a sweaty-pitted youth, rolled out an experiential campaign featuring the Lynx Excite Angels, which used an augmented reality twist that saw people interacting directly with the angels via a digital video billboard.

As passers-by at London Victoria Station walked onto the Lynx “Markers”, the Excite Angels literally fell to earth in the digital billboard above and interacted with the lucky person on said marker.

This AR stunt featured as part of a social campaign called the “Lynx Excite Fallen Angel” which challenged users to visit Facebook and see if they are the one person on earth that could release an archangel.

VW Test Drive looked good on Paper

Volkswagen in Norway offered what it claimed was the world’s first test drive inside a print ad. The ad, placed in several Norwegian magazines, showed a long stretch of road, with both summer and winter versions. Readers were asked to download an app developed by Mobiento which meant you could ‘drive’ the car by hovering your iPhone over the printed road.

Where this idea really excelled was offering users the chance to test three different features of the vehicle (lane assist, adaptive lights and cruise control). Pretty smart idea and great execution, we think.

Beer-faced Cheek – Corona Light

Corona Light launched this campaign, targeted at young adults aged 21 to 29, working on the basis that when consumers ‘liked’ the Corona Light Page on Facebook, their photo would be included on a 150-foot digital billboard display at Times Square.

The billboard ran for a month with images from across the square posted to Facebook so participants can share photographic evidence of themselves in an ad at Times Square – and help spread the Corona Light brand message at the same time.

Within a few days of the campaign going live, 600 people had already taken part, with Corona Light’s Facebook page collecting a lot of Facebook ‘likes’ in the process; all handy for future marketing campaigns.

FCUKing Great YouTique – French Connection

French Connection opened what was arguably the world’s first YouTube store called the YouTique by French Connection last year. Capitalising on the trend around video-based fashion tips, the Youtique uses YouTube’s annotation feature to great effect.

Stylist Louise Roe hands out tips and tricks in a brand channel, before showing you how each outfit looks on a model, along with annotations on each item that take you seamlessly to product pages on the French Connection Online Store. Slick, well-designed but a pain for your bank balance.

Choo’s Treasure Hunt is a Shoe-in – Jimmy Choo

Jimmy Choo, world-renowned footwear brand, organised a real-time treasure hunt around London via Foursquare, courtesy of Fresh Networks. One pair of Jimmy Choo trainers checked in at various locations and those who followed the campaign, and were lucky enough to arrive at a venue before the trainers left, got to pick up a pair in the style and size of their choosing.

The sneakers checked in to uber-fashionable locations such as Lounge Lover and the Hummingbird Bakery. A great campaign, considering this was Jimmy Choo’s first foray into social media marketing. A marketing rep for the company said the campaign probably represented “the first time Foursquare has been used to check in an object (rather than a person) at locations.”

You can read more about the campaign here, courtesy of Fresh Network’s case study.

Tippex’s Campaign is a Whitewash

The clever people at Tippex devised a campaign on YouTube that went truly viral. Using a simple annotation function on a recorded video of a bear and a man in the woods, viewers could choose what happened next. With a number of pre-recorded endings and the novelty of being able to ‘change’ a YouTube video, the campaign was an instant hit and to this day, has had more than 17 million views. That’s equivalent to the entire population of The Netherlands (just in case you were wondering).

Sweet Tweets for Sweet Treats – Belling

When cooker manufacturer Belling decided to create the world’s shortest recipe book, they did it in an innovative way; using recipes crowdsourced over Twitter. The 50 shortlisted recipes were then compiled into a book, complete with illustrations from a variety of artists, which were themselves crowdsourced and voted for on Belilng’s Facebook page.

Belling printed and sold the book, with all proceeds going towards food charity Foodcycle, which collects surplus produce locally and prepares nutritious meals in unused professional kitchen spaces to distribute to those in need.

‘Sounds’ like a Great Campaign – British Library

The British Library came up with an innovative way of capturing life in the UK in 2010; by building the UK’s first ‘Soundmap’. Users were encouraged to record the sounds of their neighbourhood, using Audioboo and then upload them to the BM’s interactive Google map. The result is an ever-growing repository of sound data, showing generations to come what the UK sounded like in 2010-2011, all with specific geographical references.

Smiles Better – Unilever

Unilever worked with SapientNitro in London to create a smile-activated vending machine to spread some extra joy at Cannes in 2010. Globally, the Anglo-Dutch giant owns ice cream brands including Wall’s, Ben & Jerry’s and Klondike. Using facial recognition technology and AR, the machine tracked a customer’s smile and rated it on a ’smile-o-meter’. The user could then directly post their image to Facebook and select the ice-cream of their choice.

Levi’s Water Tank

On March 22, the planet celebrated World Water Day, and Levi’s used this to remind consumers about its commitment to save water and engage them in a new online activity, which raises awareness about vital drinking water issues. The WaterTank game, launched on Facebook, encourages users to ‘unlock’ clean water by taking up various challenges ranging from tweeting to answering water-related questions.

The key element of the interactive project is Levi’s Water<Less jeans, a collection of denim made using less water during the finishing process. Launched in January 2011, it is helping to save millions of litres of water. Through WaterTank, Levi’s is going to donate $250,000 to water.org to support its programs, which will fund at least 200 million litres of water to people in needy areas.

Every Dog has its Day – Pedigree

The 2010 Pedigree Adoption Drive focused on a hard-hitting message: one dog is put down every hour in the UK. Central to the campaign was a four-part film ‘Charlie’s story’; for every 25,000 views, a new chapter of the story was unlocked. For every view received, Pedigree donated £1. People rallied behind the idea and helped drive up viewing figures and spread the message. Successful re-homing stories were also celebrated on YouTube in the form of ‘Dogumentaries’ (we like this!).

The agency behind the campaign, Hypernaked, distributed branded refuse skips and ghost dog leads in five cities nationwide as a powerful reminder of the 107,000 dogs abandoned every year in the UK. The campaign received over 145,000 views on YouTube, and over 31,000 Likes on Facebook.

Toyota Swagger Wagon

One of the world’s largest car manufacturers decided to add some ‘West Coast’ to their social media presence by producing a YouTube video with more than a hint of irony. Toyota’s Sienna is a mini-van perfect for the middle class suburbs of America but the company put its tongue firmly in its cheek when it produced ‘Swagger Wagon’; a spoof rap video that has been viewed over 9 million times since it was uploaded last May. It is a full length rap video, performed by ‘mom’ and ‘dad’ of the Sienna Family, is full of great one-liners and will have you asking “Where my kids at?” for weeks to come. The Sienna Family raps about the joys of parenting, pretend tea parties, baking cupcakes, and the perks of owning a Toyota Sienna, AKA a Swagger Wagon, while their little daughter busts a move.

We’re Loving It – McDonald’s does Fourquare

McDonald’s increased foot traffic to stores by 33% in one day with a little Foursquare campaign that cost a mere $1,000. The fast food giant used Foursquare Day (April 16) as a hook to bring in more business. The company used 100 randomly awarded $5 and $10 giftcards as check-in bait to lure in potential diners.

The campaign worked in both digital and real world capacities. Patrons flocked to McDonald’s restaurants for the chance to win giftcards in exchange for checkins, and 600,000 follows and fans were generated for the brand on social media sites. More than 50 articles covering McDonald’s Foursquare special also appeared in the press.

Fiat Crowdsourced Car

Car manufacturer Fiat Brazil took crowdsourcing to the next level when it launched a campaign for people to create their next car. Using the online hub at www.fiatmio.cc, people were invited to submit design ideas for the car, whose name translates as My Fiat. The best were trialled by the Fiat design team, along with its own engineers’ ideas. More than 11,000 ideas were submitted by a registered community of almost 17,000 members. The design has now been released and can be viewed here.

Feeling Lucky? Try Uniqlo

Clothes retailer Uniqlo launched this unique campaign which saw its prices determined by customers themselves. Consumers were encouraged to Tweet about featured items they had seen on the Uniqlo website and in turn, the price of the product was reduced. The promotional site featured about 10 items, along with the price and by how much it had been discounted thus far. A special price was announced on September 9th for redemption and purchase on Uniqlo’s UK website. A neat campaign and one that helped to spread Uniqlo’s audience far wider than a traditional sale.

MTV’s Campaign is Music to our Ears

Working much like a conventional music chart, MTV Music Meter is a service that scans social networks for bands generating an increasing number of comments and is available for devices using Google Inc.’s Android software and Apple Inc.’s iPad and iPhone. Bands and songs are then placed in a chart depending on their relative popularity.

Dermot McCormack, who oversees digital operations at MTV Networks, said “Music Meter provides music videos and 30-second samples of tracks. Full songs can be purchased at the site and MTV is working with Rhapsody International Inc. to provide full tracks in the near future.”

Ken and Barbie reunited – Mattel

Mattel began its foray in the social media world with a campaign to try to reunite plastic power couple Ken and Barbie after the toymaker famously broke the dolls up in 2004. Ken attempted to woo back blonde-haired Barbie through campaigns on Facebook and on his Twitter profile. A video on Barbie’s YouTube channel showed Ken signing up for Match.com, only to find that Barbie is already listed there.

Through Foursquare Ken checked-in at locations including the famous Magnolia Bakery in Manhattan, where he customized a cupcake for Barbie. Fans voted on Barbie’s Facebook page as to whether she should take him back and in February the news we all hoped for came true; they were reunited.

BART

Commuters on the BART rapid transit system in San Francisco saw images of oil rig platforms, Lake Tahoe, and the little furry endangered pika at train stations last summer and using Foursquare helped to support these environmental causes. The ads were part of a new set of public service announcements by Earthjustice, an environmental nonprofit, which aims to attract new supporters using Foursquare’s ‘check-in’ function.

Realizing that the San Francisco Bay Area boasted the largest number of Foursquare users in the US, Earthjustice approached one of its younger major donors in the Bay Area with the proposal of donating $10 each time a commuter checked in at an Earthjustice poster on BART. They agreed and the rest is a piece of Foursquare history.

Fine Young Cannibals – Vegetarian Foundation

This guerrilla marketing campaign by Serviceplan for the Vegetarian Foundation in Germany centred on a mock cannibal restaurant that was preparing to open its doors in Berlin. First they advertised for various staff, including surgeons with an open mind, to start generating some buzz. When the restaurant called for people to donate body parts, the campaign went global, featuring on hundreds of news sites, Facebook, Twitter and even opinion videos on YouTube.

Most worrying of all is that within 24 hours, the 63 seats in the restaurant were booked with people willing to donate body parts. Just five days later the website had 120,000 visits and huge media interest. They seized the moment and called a press conference to tell the world about their views on vegetarianism. With a budget of just 5,000 euros it is said to have one thousand times that in media exposure and 50 million impressions worldwide.

No ‘Mickey Mouse’ campaign – Disney

Walt Disney Parks and Resorts used user-generated content at the centrepiece of its “Let the Memories Begin” campaign last September. Using photos and videos from families both visiting the park and children finding out they are going, the campaign gave the global brand a very personal feel.

Disney asked users to submit their own memories online using YouTube, Facebook, MySpace and DisneyParks.com/Memories. Beyond the advertising campaign, Disney incorporated family memories into its theme parks with its “Let the Memories Begin” nighttime experiences. At Disney World in Orlando, for example, guest photos were projected against the spires of Cinderella’s Castle.

Ouch Map – Health365.com

Health insurance is often viewed as a dry subject so to target a younger demographic, online health insurance provider Health365.com launched the world’s first ‘Ouch Map’; a way to map the minor injuries Brits were experiencing on a day to day basis.

Created by Umpf and programmed by UKSNowMap supremo Ben Marsh, the glowing skeleton lit up from green through to amber and red, based on the level of pain experienced, with live tweets containing the hashtag #ouch365 being scraped from Twitter to populated the site. The monthly sales average for Health365.com policies doubled when the map went live, with site traffic trebling over the same period. Who says insurance needs to be boring?

A crisp and clean campaign – Pringles

‘Crisp’ (note the inverted commas) manufacturer Pringles went to war against the ‘oversharers’; the people who tweet at least 300 times a day, update their Facebook profile when they’re on the loo and generally report the minutiae of their lives.

Using a dedicated microsite, Pringle encouraged users to download an ‘overshare’ button for their Facebook and Twitter profiles that enabled them to report friends and family who shared that little bit too much. The campaign took off with users being able to download the updates of their ‘oversharer’ friends into a spoof YouTube video that would then be emailed to them to shame them into changing.

What this has to do with crisps, aside from the brand association, remains to be seen, but it was a neat campaign that dealt humorously with an annoying habit.

Motoring Campaign – Local Motors

Local Motors has taken the concept of crowdsourcing and really developed it (and cars in the process). The company, which operates through using a collective of designers and engineers, offers the public the chance to have a truly bespoke car. Elements of the car are decided by the commissioner and the community, with final designs (which are copyrighted under the ‘Creative Commons’ protocol) then turned into reality in the company’s micro-factories which are located across the US. Watch out big manufacturers – car crowdsourcing could be the future of motoring.

If I ruled the world – Radio Shack

90-year-old business Radio Shack wanted its rebrand to go with a bang and so it ran the #ifihadsuperpowers campaign during December 2010. It was announced via a promoted tweet on its account. To be in with a chance to win one of several prizes, users had to follow @radioshack and upload a photo of themselves with their hand outstretched like the thumbnail above.

They were then asked to tweet this photo on Twitpic, along with what they would do if they had super powers, using the #ifihadsuperpowers hashtag. Radio Shack then spent time responding to each and every tweet with the hashtag, adding a mask and cape and transforming the Twitpic photos into Holiday Superheroes. They also randomly selected a handful of winners that would receive a prize. Some of the prizes included an e-reader, a Samsung Galaxy Tab, an AUVIO Portable Digital TV, aGarmin GPS and Radio Shack gift certificates.

12 days of sharing – Starbucks

Starbucks helped fans get into the Christmas spirit by launching its 12 Days of Sharing program. One offer each day from December 1 – December 12, 2010 was made available, with people signing up by sending a text message containing the text, “12Days” to 29943.

Following on from its 2009 program called “12 days of Wishing”, a variety of items were offered including mugs, VIA coffee and a bunch of tumblers. Whilst it used an old-school device of text, the response was positive. Perhaps this year they’ll use Foursquare or Gowalla to greater effect.

Hypermiling for Toyota

iCrossing UK ran a programme of social media activity for Toyota GB to help raise awareness of its iQ city car, based on a core blog (http://blog.toyota.co.uk) and a series of activities designed to create word-of-mouth referrals that drove traffic to the blog and generated interest in the car itself.

Simon and Mark set off on their Toyota iQ Hypermile attempt from Toyota_UK on Vimeo.

One of these activities was a bold experiment to drive the car to as many cities in the UK as possible on one tank of fuel. Two members of iCrossing’s Content & Media team undertook a ‘Hypermiling’ road trip in the iQ that was covered on social media. The hypermiling attempt reached over 105 million people worldwide, including 3.7 million people in the UK, as a result of coverage on high profile blogs, including Wired magazine, and led to a 200% uplift in traffic to the iQ blog.

Read Ayn Rand

Nick Newcomen went a little further than most literary fans when he spent a month driving more than 12,000 miles to inscribe his message “Read Ayn Rand” on a vast swathe of US land.

Using a GPS tracking device as a “pen”, Newcomen took about 10 days to complete each word, turning on his GPS logger when he wanted to write and turning it off between letters, videoing himself at landmarks along the route for documentation. He drove 12,328 miles in total, across 30 American states, inputting the data once he was finished into Google Earth to create the world’s largest book advertisement.

A Golden Radio Voice

This one has feel-good factor written all over it. Picture the scene; a down and out called Ted Williams has a ‘golden voice’ for radio and one day he is filmed (see clip below). Said clip is placed on YouTube and Ted goes ‘viral’ in the truest sense of the word. Following years of drug abuse and hardship, Ted is inundated with job offers and it looks like he might have turned his life around, thanks to a little help from a commuter and YouTube.

Moby Destroyed

Musician Moby took the album stream to a whole new level when he launched a microsite to premiere his new album, Destroyed, that ties in Soundcloud and Instagram. The site merges music and images into one interactive experience. Upon visiting the site, tracks from the disc begin playing.

The site also contained a map of the world littered with pins. When a visitor clicked on a pin Moby’s photos from around the world were displayed. Fans also added their own images to the map by snapping pictures on Instagram and adding the tag “#destroyed.”

V&A Decode

To mark its ‘Decode’ exhibition, the V&A commissioned Karsten Schmidt to design a digital identity using open source code. The museum then gave the general public the opportunity to recode Karsten’s work and create original artwork. Selected works were displayed on the London Underground. A great example of a museum using open source code and encouraging creativity through programming.

Expedia hands over Facebook page

Expedia Australia devised a new way of winning Facebook fans in February this year: offering a $10,000 (£6,200) cash prize to the person who did the best job of administrating the brand’s new Facebook page.

Inevitably, people wanting to enter started by ‘liking’ the page then competition entrants were asked what experience they have running online communities and what ideas they have for the page. The shortlisted candidates were judged, in part, by how many more likes they were able to generate for the page.

Save BBC 6 Music

In response to the BBC’s plans to shut BBC Radio 6 Music, a Facebook campaign was set up to try to save the station. The group managed to attract 180,000 members and pressure from this loyal following forced the corporation to change its mind and save the station, to much public rejoicing.

A ‘classic’ from Heineken

Heineken pulled out all the stops for this stunt which saw over 1,000 die-hard AC Milan fans sacrifice seeing the match for the sake of their partners’ or editors requests to go to a classical music and poetry recital. Willingly the men obliged, but picture the surprise when the orchestra struck up to begin playing the Champions League music and the curtains opened to reveal a cinema screen with the game playing.

A great way for Heineken to underline their affiliation with football and certainly some brownie-points earned for both the men and women. Viewers of Sky watched in their millions as the joke unfolded and 10 million saw coverage of the event the following day.

Sphere of Influence for Nokia

Global phone and telecommunications giant Nokia was having trouble making sure people were collaborating on a level playing field with its 50,000 employees across the world. Its solution was simple – create the ‘sphere’ – a social media platform that would enable any employee to interact with other employees for ideas generation and to make sure work wasn’t being replicated. The results – clearer thinking and better ideas.

Playboy Campaign

Most people know what the Playboy brand stands for and this latest campaign from Germany really caught certain people’s attention. An interactive video was personalized to include someone’s photo and name and included various scenes featuring the famous Playboy bunnies which was personalized to show the bunnies fighting over the recipient. At the end the recipient is sent their own personalized Playboy magazine (online version).

The campaign really took off, with 13 million people watching it and it is getting widespread media attention. Whilst we’ve not tried it ourselves, our ‘friend’ tells us the videos look very slick and not mass produced.

A campaign that won’t be forgotten – Post-It

This simple but heart-warming campaign comes from 3M, makers of Post-it notes. ‘Things we Forget’ shows what happens when Post-its are left to their fate in public places – each day, the ‘Post-it guy’ left an annotated Post-it note somewhere in Singapore with a proverb, wise saying or encouraging message somewhere in Singapore.

Soon, people were clamouring to see the next Post-it note and the campaign gained global prominence. Such was the appeal that its Facebook group counted nearly 38,000 fans and the Twitter stream had nearly 5,000 followers. Posters featuring some of the more popular notes are now available to buy via the blog.

The Heidies Take Over – Diesel

The Heidies hijacked Diesel.com on a quest to become famous and get their 15 MB of Fame, courtesy of agency Farfar from Sweden. Not only did they hijack the retailer’s website, they also stole the new and unreleased Diesel Intimate collection, kidnapped a Diesel employee named Juan, and held him captive in an undisclosed hotel room until their demands were met.

With six cameras in the hotel room and 24/7 live coverage viewers were able to watch the ridiculous, and sometimes scandalous, things that the Heidies did with Juan. The Heidies used MySpace to spread the word about their hijacking and shared videos on their YouTube channel and photographs on Flickr. Five days later after the hijacking, Diesel agreed to the Heidies demands for a professional fashion photographer.

Ink your colours the mast – The Social Tattoo Project

Nailing your colours to the mast is one thing, but this clever campaign from Social Tattoo Project saw people inking theirs to their backs. The project, based in New York, is tackling the issue of empathy and finding ways of making it more lasting by giving people tattoos of trending topics from Twitter.

However, the twist is that people don’t get to pick which trending topic they get. Followers of the Social Tattoo Project vote for their favourite, for example #poverty or #haiti, and the volunteer has the hashtag etched onto their skin. Permanently. A campaign with real longevity, we’d say.

Coke drink app

Coca-Cola rolled out a Facebook app in August 2011 that lets consumers mix their own Coke drink. The app is no online-only experiment, though: Real Coke vending machines that do the same thing are rolling out across the US to coincide with this campaign.

The Coca-Cola Freestyle app, created by digital marketing agency 360i, lets you mix a drink using 125 Coke beverages, including Coca-Cola, Sprite, Fanta and Powerade. After choosing each, you hold down a “push” button to fill a cup of your choosing. When you fill your cup, you can name it. There’s also a game designed for the iPhone and Android formats.

Boxing Clever for Help for Heroes – Lbi

Staff at LBi London were challenged to a charity boxing match at the Emirates Stadium by Execution Nobel, the agency’s local rivals. Following a few months of training they wanted to raise funds for Help For Heroes. Instead of spamming friends and colleagues with donation requests, they decided to do something a little more engaging and interactive.

In short, they sold ad space on the sweaty flesh of one of their boxers via bespoke Facebook landing page. The boxer’s body was divided into 69 ad sections. People could buy one of these ad spaces by tagging themselves in a body part/ad section, then posting a design to the wall and then donating at justgiving.com

On the eve of the fight using special body transfer printer paper, a team tattooed the Brawling Billboard’s body. During the fight they captured pictures and videos of the Billboard’s every move and immediately after the fight staff tagged each investor in the pictures and videos featuring their ads in action. Results were impressive, with £1600+ raised by Brawling Billboard in only 2 week and 500+ in attendance at The Brick Lane Brawl.

Rock on – Bury

Bury’s Rockstars from Democracy PR on Vimeo.

To mark the launch of Bury’s new shopping centre, The Rock, PR agency Democracy scattered 2,500 rocks featuring individual Facebook codes within a 15 minute drive time of Bury. Each rock was geo-tagged and redeeming a rock populated the news feed on the Rock’s Facebook page.

To support the opening, the people of Bury were filmed on a green screen, singing along to Nickelback’s song ‘Rock Star’ which was then superimposed on an ever-changing background of Bury landmarks.

Over the opening day and weekend, the Democracy PR team took hundreds of photos of people at the launch event and posted them to the Facebook photo gallery with a simple call to action – tag yourself to be in with a chance of winning. Nearly 10,000 people became fans of the Facebook page, with over 530 Twitter followers to boot.

Starbucks Card

Mobile application consultant Jonathan Stark purchased a Starbucks Card and registered it via the Starbucks Mobile App for iPhone which allows coffee lovers to pay for coffee and baked goods with their mobile device. He then took a screenshot of the barcode and let anyone on the web download it for their own use, also prompting them to donate to the card.

Over $4,000 was donated to the card for coffee lovers and almost 15,000 people followed the card on Twitter, as well as over 7,000 on Facebook. Unsurprisingly, Starbucks shut down the card, tating that it violated the “no sharing” clause in their TOS.

It was an interesting experiment as some added money to the card without even purchasing anything from Starbucks, whilst some simply used the card without giving back, but most took a drink or two and donated some money for others to enjoy. Some people even thanked Stark for renewing their faith in humanity.

Milky milky

Agency Kindred was tasked with encouraging more people to drink milk, following a 20-year-long decline in milk sales. Using the slogan ‘Make Mine Milk’ and a host of celebs (including Gordon Ramsey and Tess Daly sporting ‘milk tashes’), the campaign kicked off, with a Facebook group launched where people could pledge their allegiance to the white stuff.

Results included more than 48,000 fans on the Facebook page, with PR coverage exceeding 50 million and 500,000 views of the video content on YouTube.

Cordial Campaign is Berry Good – Ribena

During the summer of 2010, Brass Agency took Ribena into the world of social media with Tales from Ribena Farm: a campaign that exhibited how Ribena squash really is made from blackcurrants grown on British farms.

Social media channels including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr were used, along with a Ribena blog, a consumer database and an exclusive partnership with Mumsnet; the latter was used to recruit 12 families to win an exclusive weekend at a Ribena blackcurrant farm.

The whole day was filmed and four shorts were released, The Farmer’s Tale, The Robin’s Tale, The Berry’s Tale and A Kitchen Tale, across all social media platforms and within a dedicated hub on Mumsnet. A cute campaign and one that underlines the family values of the brand.

Sticks and Stones – Five Boroughs NHS Partnership

This campaign, called ‘Sticks and Stones’, is aimed at reducing stigma towards people with mental ill-health and learning disabilities in the five boroughs NHS partnership area (near Manchester and Liverpool). The partnership wanted to change perceptions by educating the public about the realities of mental ill-health and learning disabilities, and asking them to make a pledge not to use derogatory words and phrases to describe people with mental ill-health or learning disabilities.

So far, the target of 100K pledges has already been exceeded and the campaign continues to gain following both on and offline.

1. Facebook continues to refine the level of control granted to users over their News Feed. The social network’s newest feature, Subscriptions, functions similarly to the way you can follow people on Twitter, but with a few notable differences. The new subscriptions service adds another layer to Facebook’s relationship hierarchy, which already included Friends and saw Acquaintances introduced just a few days ago. It’s a move that a few voices across the web view as part of an arms race with Google Plus.

2. The Dachis Group is launching its Social Business Index (SBI), which covers over 26,000 brands from over 20,000 companies and over 100 million social accounts worldwide. Currently, Facebook, Google and News Corporation lead the list. The Social Business Index provides free insight to the public on how social a given company is, and how they compare to their industry, their competitors, as well as a best in class break down by company, subsidiary, geography, department and brand.

3. Foursquare looks set to come of age with rumours circulating the platform will soon announce its push notification API. Co-founder Dennis Crowley confirmed the news via Twitter, adding, “If you are building on the 4SQ API this is a big deal.”

4. Taking a page from Google Plus, Facebook is doing what most social-media industry watchers expected: giving members the ability to segregate their friends based on specific circles. Facebook calls it Friend Lists. Facebook has made it possible to create lists for years, but members have complained that it took too long to organize lists and keep them up to date.

5.  Facebook, Twitter and the maker of BlackBerry smartphones have firmly rejected suggestions from MPs that their services should be shut down during riots, arguing that public saftey would be threatened. But they admitted the Government already has powers to order a blackout with which they wiould be forced to comply. The firms were appearing before the Commons Home Affairs Committee, which is investigating the causes and responses to the riots in English cities last month.

6. Facebook has launched a ‘subscribe’ button which will allow people to ‘follow’ the public status updates of others, even if they are not friends with each other, in a similar fashion to Twitter. The new button is the latest in a series of additions to the site which have been launched this week – including a smart lists feature and Facebook’s new free instant messenger mobile app becoming available in the UK. The new button, which has started appearing on every Facebook user’s page next to the ‘message’ and ‘add friend’ tabs, allows people to subscribe to other people’s public updates which will then appear in their news feeds.

7. TweetDeck has updated its applications across all platforms and the death of Deck.ly will come as a result. Deck.ly is a platform that allowed users to automatically tweet things longer than 140 characters. Once done, the tweet would be archived onto the Deck.ly site, and a link would be provided in the tweet to read the longer-form prose.

8.Our latest inforgraphic (right) shows the effect of Facebook on relationships

9. Want to edit your videos with YouTube?  Here’s how:

1. Twitter has 100 million active users around the world, the social networking site’s chief executive has announced.
Dick Costolo, speaking at Twitter’s headquarters in San Francisco, said that more than half of the site’s 100 million active users log in each day. He said that 40 per cent of them simply read the site, without tweeting themselves. Twitter also revealed that it now generates more than five billion tweets every month, gets 400 million unique visitors every month and said that half of its active users are mobile users.

2. The Sims Social – Electronic Arts’ latest version of its bestselling avatar-based franchise — is growing faster than Farmville. A week after its release, Sims Social had 4.6 million players logging in every day, which made it the 10th most popular game on Facebook.

3. More than 50 per cent of all UK pensioners are now active on Facebook, according to research we conducted amongst 2,400 UK adults. You can read the key findings at our previous blog post and we liked the infographic Vapour produced for us so much, we’ve decided to include it in this week’s social media digest as well. Enjoy!

4. LinkedIn, the world’s largest professional network with more than 120 million members worldwide, today announced that members can now add a “Volunteer Experience and Causes” field to their LinkedIn Profile. The company also released data that reinforces volunteer work is a key piece of your professional identity. LinkedIn surveyed nearly two thousand professionals in the U.S. and found that 89 percent of these professionals have personally had experience volunteering, but only 45 percent of professionals include their volunteer experience on their resume.

5. Apple is reportedly very close to revealing the iPhone 5, and a photo posted on Flickr shows that the iPhone 5 will likely come with an 8-megapixel camera. PocketNow discovered a photo posted to the account of an Apple engineer that is marked as having been snapped using an iPhone 4. However, PocketNow took a closer look at the metadata which contained pieces of information suggesting that it was taken using an 8-megapixel camera.

There has been much talk in the press about how popular various social media platforms really are; how many people use Facebook in the UK? Does Twitter have more active accounts than Flickr? Is anyone over 40 interested in Foursquare?

To remove any lingering doubt as to the popularity and importance of social media platforms, we conducted research with Your Say Pays, where we asked nearly 2,400 UK adults which social media platforms they used and how often.

We then analysed the results to bring what we believe is the most up-to-date snapshot of social media usage in the UK.

If you like statistics, you can view them all here.

Our infographic, created by Vapour, helps visualise statistics; it outlines the gender and age differences in social media usage.

Women, our results revealed, were more likely to have active Facebook accounts but men were more likely to use LinkedIn and location-based platforms such as Foursquare to connect with others.

Age has an effect on social media usage, but our findings revealed that more than half of all pensionable UK adults were on Facebook, with more than a third also using YouTube on a regular basis; proof, if any were needed, that social media is not the preserve of the young. Marketers, take heed!

At Umpf, we value social media and we recognise its importance in the field of PR and communications in general. Read more about our social media campaigns.

We’ll leave you with the press release outlining our findings, but if you have any questions or you’d like to talk to us about how we could help you engage with potential and existing customers over social media contact us at social@umpf.co.uk It’s a growing audience and we’ve proved we can help brands increase their business through tailored, intelligent campaigns.

To embed this infographic into your website, simply copy the code below and paste it into your site:

Social Seniors; More than Half UK Pensioners Now on Facebook

* 37.4 million UK adults use Facebook regularly, 15.5 million on Twitter

* More men prefer Linkedin and YouTube than women

* LinkedIn bucks age trends with 20s/30s biggest users

* Northern Ireland lags behind as South East leads in social media usage

More than half (55 per cent) of the UK’s pensionable population use Facebook regularly, research findings revealed today, as the use of social media was now shown to be endemic in the UK.

PR and social media agency Umpf issued findings of its research, conducted amongst nearly 2,400 UK adults, which showed how distinct groups are now emerging in the UK’s social networking landscape.

Three-quarters (77 per cent) of the UK’s 48.6million-strong* adult population confirmed they had an active Facebook profile, equating to an estimated 37.4 million live accounts. Nearly one-third (32 per cent or 15.5 million) also claimed to use Twitter regularly.

Location based platforms, such as Foursquare, were used by 15 per cent of UK adults, equating to 7.2 million people, with a similar number also making use of photo-sharing platform Flickr (6.7 million) and professional network LinkedIn (7.9 million).

Men and women were found to favour different platforms, with nearly twice as many men than women having an active LinkedIn account; 22 per cent as opposed to 13 per cent. What’s more, of those with a profile, 28 per cent of men checked theirs at least once a day, compared with just 14 per cent of women.

Facebook, clearly emerging as the UK’s most popular social networking site, with 77 per cent of all UK residents having an active profile, was used by 80 per cent of women, but a significantly lower 72 per cent of men.

Divides emerged based on age as well, with nearly all (95 per cent) of 18 – 25s having an active Facebook profile, with this figure dropping significantly to 55 per cent of over 65s. LinkedIn bucked the trend of social media platforms being most popular amongst the 18 – 24 year old age bracket, however.

Nearly a quarter (23 per cent) of all 25 – 34-year-olds have an active Linked in profile, but just 14 per cent of under 24s, demonstrating the platform’s success in attracting more mature users keen to further their careers and connect on a professional level.

Whilst social media usage was distinctly lower amongst those of pensionable age, more than half actively used Facebook and more than two-thirds were regularly using and viewing YouTube.

The survey, which was conducted by polling agency Your Say Pays amongst 2,387 UK adults in July, asked how frequently respondents used a selection of social media platforms including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Flickr, YouTube and location based platforms such as Foursquare.

Geographically, the South West counted the highest percentages of residents using Facebook and Twitter across the UK, with those living in Northern Ireland having the lowest average usage of social media platforms. Just six per cent of those living in the region had an active Linkedin profile, contrasting with one in five of those in the South East.

However, Northern Ireland saw the highest percentages of those using YouTube, with three quarters of all those surveyed stating that they frequently used the video sharing site, as opposed to just 59 per cent of those in the South West. On average, the South East boasted the highest numbers of people using social media platforms.

Jon Priestley, of PR and Social Media agency Umpf, said: “Our research clearly shows how endemic social media use is in the UK, with clear adoption of platforms such as Facebook and Twitter amongst all age groups. With more than half of all over 65s using Facebook regularly, social media is clearly no longer the preserve of the tech-savvy under 30s.

“The social media landscape is changing rapidly and gender divides are starting to become apparent, with men clearly favouring YouTube and LinkedIn, but women opting to use Facebook as their chosen medium of communication.

“Our research clearly shows how geography is playing a key role in social media adoption, with distinct geographical areas beginning to favour different social media platforms to communicate with their networks.”

For more information and for full survey results, please visit www.umpf.co.uk

*Statistic for UK adult (over 18 years old) population – 48,646,000 (source – ONS, 10.08.11)

ENDS –

1. For our client, cooker manufacturer Belling, we have created the world’s shortest recipe book (see video below), using recipes crowdsourced over Twitter. The 50 shortlisted recipes have been compiled into a book, complete with illustrations from a variety of artists, which were themselves crowdsourced and voted for on Belling’s Facebook page. All proceeds  from the sale of the book will go to food charity Foodcycle, which collects surplus produce locally and prepares nutritious meals in unused professional kitchen spaces to distribute to those in need. You can buy your copy here.

2. Facebook has denied that it is phasing out the controversial Places feature on its mobile app due to fears over privacy. The social networking giant has announced a swathe of updates to give users tighter controls over who can view their profiles and photos. Places was previously a separate feature on the mobile app that allowed users to publish details of their exact location. This will now disappear, although Facebook told The Drum that it was not because the feature posed a security risk to users.

3. Not everyone gets to stay in the Big Brother house but you can, possibly, stay in an authentic replica of Del and Rodney Trotter’s Nelson Mandela House residence, in promotional celebration of the 30th anniversary of Only Fools & Horses. Those who want a chance of winning need Nelson Mandela House residencto become members of TV channel Gold’s Facebook page and try their luck. A nice campaign and with a stay only costing the 1981 price of £18, we’re sure people will be queueing up to say ‘Rodney, you plonker’

4. Some information about the next venture by Twitter founders Biz Stone and Evan Williams have emerged, and although detail is scant, it is very intriguing. Dubbed ‘Lift’ at the moment we hear that it is a prototype relating to how ‘technology can help unlock human potential, especially through the use of positive reinforcement’. At the moment, Lift is asking people to leave their email addresses if they’re interested, but warns ‘we’re a long way from opening the doors’.

5. Channel 4 is inviting web users to take part in what it claims is the world’s first interactive rap beatbox choir on YouTube. The broadcaster commissioned TV production company Fresh One and Leeds digital agency Numiko to create the online app as part of its Street Summer season. Visitors to the YouTube channel will find the track ‘We are the People’, which has been made completely by the human voice and comprises rapping, singing and beatboxing. They are then encouraged to pick one of the song’s 13 parts to learn and record. The best auditions will appear in a final film to be broadcast on Channel 4, thus bringing together the world’s first beatbox choir.

1. The phenomenon of Horsemaning looks likely to steal planking’s crown as the next internet picture-led craze. You’ll see from our own Umpf ‘Horsemane’ (right) that the concept is simple. Horsemaning takes its name from the Headless Horseman and gives the impression that the photo’s subject has been decapitated. One person hides their head as best they can, and another hides their body, creating a kind of optical illusion if it’s done right. You heard it here first, folks. It’s time to lose your head.

2. Social media has come under fire for its role in helping coordinate the efforts of looters in the UK over the past week.  Blackberry’s Messenger service, in particular, was singled out for its ‘closed circuit’ communications, enabling groups of looters to communicate off  the record and organise where they would next attack. Whilst platforms like Twitter and Facebook came under fire, the better side of social media was shown in groups like Riotcleanup which managed to amass nearly 88,000 followers on Twitter and coordinate a mass clean up of riot-hit areas.

3. Twitter has launched a new camera button which allows its users to post a photo within the body of a tweet, without needing to use a third party photo-sharing site. The site began rolling out the new tool on Wednesday night, which allows users to post a photo within the body of a tweet by clicking on the small camera icon below the tweet box.  The icon then takes users through to their files so they can browse them and upload the photo of their choice. All photos are being hosted by a third-party company called Photobucket.

4. Computer hacking group Anonymous has described a threat to “kill” Facebook over privacy concerns and the alleged use of user information by authoritarian regimes as a hoax. A warning purported to be from the loosely-affiliated group of international hacktivists was issued through YouTube last month. It said it would take down the social networking site in November. “Prepare for a day that will go down in history. November 5th, 2011,” the video warned. “Your medium of communication you all so dearly adore will be destroyed.” Only time will tell if this is a double bluff!

5. Rapidly growing Social Network Google+ is “well-positioned” to become second only to Facebook in the social networking world in the U.S. within the next 12 months, according to a survey by YouGov. With the momentum the new site is showing, it should quickly pass by struggling MySpace and microblogging site Twitter and LinkedIn. Google+ was unveiled at the end of June and quickly amassed millions of users, despite the fact that the social network is still in field trials and membership is invitation-only.

1. Parents-to-be can now add their unborn children to their Facebook profile as family members. Facebook members have been able to add other members of their family to their profile for some time but the new option allows the addition of an unborn child.  A spokesman for the social network said: “We develop new features, in part, by seeing how people use the service. For years, people have been using Facebook to share the joyous news of expecting a child and, a few months ago, we began testing a feature designed to make that process easier..”

2. More Twitter threats have been directed at Duncan Bannatyne, including one that read ‘dirty b****** we slaughter f****** Hollie Bannatyne’ – the Dragons’ Den tycoon’s 25-year-old daughter. The fresh Twitter threats prompted Bannatyne to post on his own page on the microblogging site: ‘Living in a nightmare’. Earlier this week, he put out a tweet – swiftly removed – offering £50,000 to anyone who broke the arms of ‘Yuri Vasilyev’ (which, some have pointed out, is the Russian equivalent of ‘John Smith’…) after he vowed to kidnap Hollie unless her dad handed over £35,000.

3. Twenty-five million users have signed up to Google+ from its launch date in June 28, reports the research firm, comScore. By comparison, Twitter took 30 years to amass this number of subscribers, and Facebook three years. Andrew Lipsman, comScore’s VP, industry analysis, is quick to assert that fastest does not equal the best. “Sometimes, that slow build can lead to a strong network effect that pays long-term dividends,” he added.

4.German data protection officials have requested that Facebook disable its facial recognition software and delete any previously stored data. Making facial-recognition technology opt-out might run afoul of European and German data protection laws, John Caspar, Hamburg’s commissioner for data protection and freedom of information, said in a Tuesday letter to Facebook. Caspar likened the facial-recognition software to the collection of biometric data. He said Facebook is likely sitting atop the world’s largest database of biometric information given that users have uploaded an estimated 75 billion photos to the social-networking site and tagged 450 million people.

5. Our latest infographic (right) is a comparison of the key functions of Facebook and Google+

1. Twitter introduced its most prominent advertising yet on Thursday by adding “promoted tweets” to users’ main timelines, a gambit aimed at generating greater revenues but that risks provoking members’ anger. Users will see tweets from companies and organisations that they follow appear near the top of the central stream of 140-character messages when they log in, even if they were posted hours or days previously.

2. A month since launch, a new report from Experian Hitwise shows that Google+ has hit a mid-summer traffic slump. According to Bloomberg, the report shows that the number of unique visitors to the site have been falling, as has individual time spend on the site. Google+ is making several tweaks to its social network regarding businesses and public figures, particularly after a small debacle over its policy requiring a user’s real name.

3. In an effort to keep pace with Google+ and its business unit, Facebook has announced a special unit to help businesses advertise with Facebook as well as maintain a presence on the social networking giant.

4. Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been ranked Number 1 in a list of the top 100 most powerful people in the media. The MediaGuardian100, which is published annually by British newspaper The Guardian, is compiled based on candidates’ cultural influence, economic clout and political power. Of Zuckerberg’s position, The Guardian writes: “Zuckerberg has been transformed from an awkward and unpromising geek into the world’s richest and most famous twentysomething, listened to by world leaders.”

5. Our latest infographic (right) shows how Facebook effects relationships.

1. Netmums, a popular online forum for mothers and Mumsnet’s biggest rival, has attracted more than 500 unpaid bloggers to write for the site in just over a fortnight. A further sign that parenting sites are becoming increasingly popular and powerful groups to be reckoned with, Netmums, a UK site founded in 2000, at roughly the same time of its better known rival Mumsnet, launched its new bloggers network on July 1 and has been inundated with both enthusiastic mums and dads wishing to write about their experiences ever since.

2. In a move reminiscent of one done by Facebook in 2009, Twitter is close to completing an $800 million funding deal that will include a second part in which around $400 million of the total will be used to cash out current investors and also employees. According to several sources close to the situation, the complex transaction could be completed within two weeks.

3. Google’s latest offering ‘ Google Plus’ is steadily gaining ground in the social networking space, so far dominated by Facebook , with the internet giant’s social network attracting about 20 million visitors in the initial three weeks and nearly half of these visitors hailing from US and India . According to estimates by research firm ComScore, Google Plus had 19.93 million unique visitors between June 29 and July 19 period.

4. Facebook should have access restricted to people older than 18, some Australian politicians say in response to concerns over online bullying that led teenagers to commit suicide. Australian top law enforcement officials, attending a two- day forum that began yesterday, discussed proposals from South Australia’s Attorney General John Rau that would require Facebook to verify the ages of people creating accounts or force the website to guarantee parents access to their children’s accounts.

5. Google announced in a blog post that the company will discontinue Google Labs – an online testing environment where users can play with prototypes. Bill Coughran, Google’s senior vice president for research and systems infrastructure, said the company has learned a lot by launching very early prototypes in the labs. But he added that the company’s “greater focus is crucial if we’re to make the most of the extraordinary opportunities ahead”. Perhaps the company is looking to invest more time and money in Google+ as it looks to capitalise on a successful first few weeks.

6. Facebook is the most hated of online social, search and news sites, according to the newly released annual e-business report by American Customer Satisfaction Index and Foresee Results, a customer experience analytics firm.

Here’s the new ratings:

Google 83
Bing.com 82
FoxNews.com 82
Ask.com 80
Yahoo! 79
MSN 78
Wikipedia.org 78
ABCNews.com 77
USAToday.com 76
AOL 75
CNN.com 74
MSNBC 74
YouTube.com 74
NYTimes.com 73
HuffingtonPost.com 69
Facebook.com 66

7. Our latest infographic (above) is a comparison of Google+ and Facebook.

1. Twitter has changed the restrictions on sending direct messages (DMs) to other profiles. Formerly, you wouldn’t be able to ‘DM’ someone unless you were friends, but now Twitter has removed this to enable anyone with a profile to DM anyone else. Whilst we can think of a few positive reasons why the restriction has been lifted, many may not be so keen.

2. Microsoft yesterday accidentally revealed a test version of a social search service it has codenamed Tulalip, Winrumours reports. The site appeared at socl.com for a short time, a domain owned by Microsoft. The project is still meant to be under wraps and it commits many grammar and design sins (so we’ve been told), but it’s interesting to see that the company is trying its hand at social endeavors.

3. It was revealed this week that activity on Foursquare would affect Klout scores, but people are still a little confused as to how activity on the location-based platform would feed into the Klout algorithm. “We are still figuring this out,” Klout CEO Joe Fernandez told Mashable. “Obviously things like tips that turn into to-dos are interesting as is the ripple effect of a checkin through a network. In the next few weeks we’ll be testing and perfecting the algorithm.”

4.  Google+ could be on the brink of reaching 10 million users after just two weeks, according to one researcher. Google has made several failed attempts to launch a social networking service in the past, but the initial response to Google+ suggests it will fare much better. Paul Allen, the founder of Ancestry.com, has estimated the number of users on the service and predicts that Google+ is about to welcome its 10-millionth member, if it hasn’t already.

5. The British Medical Association recently issued a new guidance advising doctors not to accept friend requests from former and current patients because of how doctors’ personal information could be perceived and shared. “The accessibility of content on social media however raises the possibility that patients may have unrestricted access to their doctor’s personal information and this can cause problems within the doctor-patient relationship,” doctors wrote in the BMA guidance.

6. Our infographic of the week is all about fcommerce (above).

1. Payment processing service PayPal suffered an embarrassing lapse of security on Wednesday when its Twitter account was hijacked, apparently by a disgruntled ex-customer keen to make his feelings regarding the company known. PayPal shot to fame as an easy way for individuals to accept credit card payments for goods and services without a traditional merchant account, allowing money to be sent and received with just an e-mail address. When eBay bought the firm back in 2002 for a whopping $1.5 billion in stock, it rapidly became the only way to pay for certain eBay auctions.

2.Wild parties organised on Facebook could be banned in Germany after a series of gatherings advertised on the website descended into violence. Authorities have called for parties promoted on the social networking site to be prohibited in advance if police believe they pose a threat to law and order. Last month 100 Hamburg police offers made 11 arrests when 1,600 people gatecrashed a 16-year-old girl’s birthday.

3. Google is to retire its Blogger & Picasa brands as the search giant looks to concentrate its marketing efforts on Google+ – according to reports on Mashable. Both products will remain available to consumers but will henceforth be known as “Google Blogs” and “Google Photos” respectively.

4.Twitter is raising hundreds of millions of dollars in new funding at a valuation as high as $7 billion, Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday. Citing a person familiar with the matter, the newspaper said it was unclear which investors were participating in the new round of financing for the short-messaging service. In December, Twitter received an injection of $200 million in funding from investors to help fuel its growth, reportedly giving the San Francisco-based company a valuation of $3.7 billion.

5.  A Queensland student says she owes her life to Facebook after barely escaping a house fire which set alight the mattress she was sleeping on. Hunter Matthews, 17, awoke to find her bedroom alight when a Facebook alert was sent to her iPhone at 1.34am on Tuesday. The schoolgirl was asleep when a nearby heater ignited clothing and the mattress she was sleeping on in her grandmother’s Toowoomba flat.

6. With recent disasters such as the Japanese earthquake and tsunami proving the worth of Twitter to get information out fast, this tongue-in-cheek fire notice (above) goes some way to show how quick people might be to use Twitter to inform others of an emergency.

1. Twitter on Thursday revealed that it is now handling 200 million tweets per day. That’s up from 2 million tweets per day in January 2009 and 65 million per day in June 2010, Twitter said in a blog post. “For perspective, every day, the world writes the equivalent of a 10 million-page book in Tweets or 8,163 copies of Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace,” the company wrote. “Reading this much text would take more than 31 years and stacking this many copies of War and Peace would reach the height of about 1,470 feet, nearly the ground-to-roof height of Taiwan’s Taipei 101, the second tallest building in the world.”

2. Music superstar and actor Justin Timberlake has signed on as a new partial owner of MySpace, along with Specific Media, which bought the service from Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Timberlake will play a significant role in the reboot of the website, developing a strategy for a new creative direction for MySpace.

3. It has only been around for a matter of days but new social networking platform Google+ has already run into a privacy issue. Google+ has a feature that lets you reshare what someone posts. By letting you reshare, the post goes beyond the circle or circles it was intended to be seen by. This loophole was first spotted by the Financial Times.

4. Ever wondered why some people get so many retweets and their content on Twitter goes further? Well, don’t say we never give you hints and tips; here’s a five point guide, courtesy of New Scientist on how to increase your retweets and spread your content far and wide.

5. There has been widespread speculation about whether we’re entering the second dot.com bubble. Our infographic (right) should give a bit more context.

1. Hertfordshire Police found themselves at the centre of a social media #fail last week after refusing to comment on a rumoured explosive devise at a Watford bank and calling for public calm. They then, however, went on to post updates on Twitter using #watfordbomb

2. Twittersphere has made it into the Oxford Dictionary Online as computing and social networking terms continue to dominate the English language. Other new inclusions are badware, social graph and network neutrality

3. Hot on the heels of Sony’s hacking crisis, this time Nintendo have been targeted by the same group, although no sensitive data was affected. Taking a ‘friendlier stance’ towards Nintendo, the group tweeted that they ‘mean no harm’

4. Is Groupon worth $20 billion? That is the top figure being touted as it takes its first steps towards becoming public

5. There is no stopping football’s newest convert to Twitter – @WayneRooney. This weekend he used the social networking site to announce his hair transplant – even posting a picture to show off the results

1. In a landmark ruling Twitter has been forced to hand over the personal details of some of its users.

2. Eric Schmidt of Google has admitted the company didn’t react quick enough to emergence of Facebook.

3. Apple’s Steve Jobs is expected to take centre stage at the Worldwide Developer Conference next week to profile Apple’s latest product, the iPlay, which will allow users to litsen to their entire music catalogue wherever they are.

4. Twitter has hit headlines after unveiling a raft of new features, including a new follow button which makes it easier for people to follow a user’s content. Mike McGrail explains more.

5. Sean Kingston has been the fastest rising search term in the UK on Google this week, following his accident on a jet ski.

Every week we’ll be bringing you the latest social media campaigns, news and views. You can watch the latest broadcast bulletin on our home page http://www.umpf.co.uk every week or catch up with previous episodes here.

Click for more on social media campaigns: http://www.umpf.co.uk/social-media

1. A new study commissioned by National Family Week has revealed the amount of technological effort parents expend keeping track of their children. Apparently an average parent sends 600 texts a year in an effort to find out just where their children are and also uses Facebook to try to track them down. The research also showed that they send 312 emails on average per year.

2. Leo Messi attracted a further 100,000 fans to his Facebook page following FC Barca’s win over Manchester United in Saturday’s UEFA Champions League Final.  The ‘world’s best player’ is no stranger to breaking records on Facebook when he gained seven million new fans seven hours after opening his Facebook account on April 6.

3. Twitter has been forced to hand over the details of users of its website in a landmark legal ruling. The case was brought by a council seeking to uncover the identity of a blogger who criticised officials and councillors. South Tyneside Council went to the U.S. courts to force Twitter to reveal the person behind the ‘Mr Monkey’ account.

4. Twitter is to launch its own photo-sharing service to compete with existing services such as Twitpic, Yfrog, Instagram and Flickr, according to multiple sources. The announcement is expected this week at the D9 conference in California, where the company’s chief executive Dick Costolo will be speaking on Wednesday. The service may be provided via the website twimg.com, which Twitter has owned since July 2010, according to Techcrunch, which first reported the plans.

5. Research by the Sunday Times appears to have disproved the theory that a disgruntled journalist started the Twitter storm which led to Ryan Giggs being named as the footballer at the centre of a privacy row. According to the Sunday Times, James Webley, 37, a digital marketing analyst at a high street bank posted the following Tweet: “So if Ryan Giggs wanted to cover up a hypothetical affair with Big Brother’s Imogen Thomas would that be a super-injunction or a regular one?”

6. Our latest infographic on the most popular Foursqaure badges (see above).

1. Twitter has bought UK-based Tweetdeck for a reported £25Million

2. Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg has confirmed that he wants to create a safe and educational website for under 13s.

3. The UK government has appointed a digital tsar with a £142,000 salary in an effort to save the country £6Million in web costs.

4. Following the superinjunction row, Twitter has confirmed that it will hand over the identities of those breaking injunctions to the authorities if it is legally required to do so. Steve Kuncewicz, media lawyer, explains more.

5. Superinjunction searches have dominated google searches this week in the UK, but with the onset of half term holidays, it’s no surprise that ‘Ash Cloud’ is this week’s top search term.

Every week we’ll be bringing you the latest social media campaigns, news and views. You can watch the latest broadcast bulletin on our home page http://www.umpf.co.uk every week or catch up with previous episodes here.

Click for more on social media campaigns: http://www.umpf.co.uk/social-media

1. Twitter has passed the 300 million registered account mark.  According to Twitter tracking site Twopcahrts Twitter is adding around 5.5 accounts per second and has already hit more than 301,331,151. The social media platform has been increasingly positioning itself as a credible news source and press stream over recent months, with the ‘Super-injunction’ scandal of two weeks ago pushing it further into mainstream media.

2. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in an interview last week he would like to create a safe and educational social networking environment for kids younger than 13. Whilst the remarks proved controversial, the fact remains that many under the age of 13 are already using social networking sites to connect with others.

3. Saudi authorities detained a female activist who uploaded a video of herself behind the wheel of a car on to YouTube, in a campaign to overturn a ban on female drivers in the deeply conservative kingdom. More than 600,000 people have now watched the video, a seemingly mundane scene where Manal al-Sharif, 32, is seen chatting to a female friend as she drives around the eastern city of Khobar.

4. An eight-year-old boy has clinched his dream job by becoming a toy tester.Not only will James Childs review each new Ben 10 toy before it goes on sale, he will be paid monthly in toys and will get to suggest his own ideas for new products. James, from Luton, landed the role after winning a competition where children had to write to manufacturer Bandai to say why they should get the job.

5. Linkedin announced this week that the professional social networking giant is now valued at $8.79 Billion, roughly 38 times sales figures reported in 2010, after it’s first day as a publicly traded company on May 18.Founder Reid Hoffman’s stake in the social networking site has now been valued at $1.7 Billion.

6. Our latest infographic (see above) shows social media by demographic.

1. Twitter has announced restrictions for third party applications

2. Sony Playstation’s network is hit by fresh security fears

3. Glasgow has been named host city of Global Social Media Week

4. Facebook has launched its own social coupon service — could this challenge Groupon? Paul Fabretti, Director of Digital Strategy, tells us more.

5. We outline the top ten rising Google searches in the UK this week.

Every week we’ll be bringing you the latest social media campaigns, news and views. You can watch the latest broadcast bulletin on our home page http://www.umpf.co.uk every week or catch up with previous episodes here.

Click for more on social media campaigns: http://www.umpf.co.uk/social-media

Social media has taken the world by storm over the past five years. Facebook has gone from dormitory-geek to global-chic in less time than it takes to, well, update your Facebook status.  Similarly, brands are fast recognising the value of promoting their goods and services on platforms such as Twitter, Quora and YouTube.

In light of the sheer explosion of social media, it seems perhaps justified that the value of these platforms has risen at a similarly rapid rate. After all, the growth in audience, advertising opportunities and routes to market make platforms like Linkedin more than just a place to connect and share. They are the advertising hoardings of the future, with brands large and small clamouring to have their voices heard and their value is intrinsically linked to the increase revenue they can generate for these companies.

Estimated values for social media platforms:

1. Facebook – $50Billion

2. Twitter – $10 Billion

3. Linkedin – $4.1 Billion

4. Quora  – $1 Billion

Whether or not Linkedin is really worth $4.1 Billion remains to be seen but one thing is sure, social media platforms represent big money and, regardless of whether the market adjustment arrives, brands will continue to see them as such.

If you are interested in seeing how social media can help you reach out to potential consumers, why not speak to us?  Email us on social@umpf.co.uk and we’ll get back to you.

1. News broke this week that Facebook had hired PR agency Burson-Marsteller to oversee a smear campaign against Google. Far from leaving the search giant running for the hills, the campaign back-fired and Facebook are now the ones looking at crisis management to minimise the damage caused.

2. Youtube has launched its ‘YouTube 100′ which aims to track the popularity of the top 100 user-generated and professional music videos across the site. The chart will also monitor user-uploaded videos and viral debuts and provide a “holistic” view of song popularity. J-Lo’s song ‘On the Floor’ topped the first chart.

3. A programming bug on Facebook’s website may have accidentally given advertisers and others access to a treasure trove of personal information, according to security researchers at Symantec. They posted deatils of the issue on Tuesday saying it may have affected nearly 100,000 Facebook applications for years now.

4. The iPad 2’s new camera doesn’t seem to be its most popular feature. According to Flickr’s camera usage statistics, the iPad 2′s camera is used by very few people — only 23 active daily users. And so far, 12,811 photos have been taken and uploaded to Flickr with the device. By comparison, the iPhone 4 has 4,402 daily active users; more than a million photos have been taken with the device.

5. Lady Gaga has become the first celebrity on Twitter to amass a following greater than 10 million. Gaga, who refers to her followers as “monsters” crossed the landmark threshold whilst in London recording a performance for Radio 1.

6. UK Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt has said that 90% of Britain will have superfast broadband with minimum speeds of 25Mbps by 2015. Speaking at a conference in London, Hunt said that broadband speeds of 2Mbps should be available across the country by 2015, adding that 90% of homes and business will have access to superfast broadband of 25Mbps or better.

7. From last week, Facebook users will be able to tag pages in their photos. Page tagged photos will adhere to a user’s privacy settings, and will only appear on a Page’s Photos tab if set to be visible to everyone. Initially, Facebook is only allowing Pages categorized as “Brands & Products” or “People” to be tagged, but it says it is “looking to expand this functionality to more Page categories over time.”

8. Are we obssessed with Facebook? check out the infographic (right) to see.

1. Microsoft has bought Skype in a deal worth $8.5Billion – the largest acquisition in Microsoft’s history.

2. Google has launched its ‘Chromebook’, enabling users to ditch paid-for Microsoft applications like Word and use online free versions instead.

3. Twitter has had its busiest day ever for UK traffic, with news that superinjunctions were being breached on the social media platform. Media lawyer Steve Kuncewicz explains more.

4. Google has reported a 5000% increase in searches using the words ‘Twitter’ and ‘injunction’. The search giant also reveals the top ten search terms for last week.

Every week we’ll be bringing you the latest social media campaigns, news and views. You can watch the latest broadcast bulletin on our home page http://www.umpf.co.uk every week or catch up with previous episodes here.

Click for more on social media campaigns: http://www.umpf.co.uk/social-media

1. Social media users boast double the amount of friends online as offline, according to the latest research. It found that whilst the average patron of a social networking site such as Facebook can boast 121 separate connections, the reality is that the individual is likely only to have 55 physical friends.

2. Facebook is driving an increasing amount of traffic to news sites but Google remains the top referring service, according to a study published today.The study examined the 25 most popular news websites in the United States, looking at how users get to the sites, how long they stay there, how deep they explore a site and where they go when they leave.

3. A Twitter user today made a mockery of the celebrity trend for using privacy injunctions to hide their identity. @superinjunction, who quickly attracted a following of 5,000, set up an account claiming to ‘out’ those behind the legal gagging orders. So many Twitter users began exchanging messages supposedly naming high-profile figures who have hidden their secrets that part of the site crashed.

4. Forget Silicon Valley in California, the governement has just announced a £1Million funding competition for investment in the British equivalent; Silicon Roundabout. The competition, Tech City Launchpad, started last Friday and was announced by David Bott, the Technology Strategy Board’s director of Innovation Programmes, at the inaugural Digital Shoreditch Festival.

5. YouTube’s livestream of the Royal Wedding was viewed more than 72 million times last Friday, the company has revealed. That’s a higher number than the number of people living in the UK. In fact, if royal wedding web viewers were to form a nation (perhaps one in which everyone wears fancy hats), it would be the 19th largest country in the world.

6. The latest research from Beyond suggests that privacy concerns are stalling the growth of social location apps, with the findings in this infographic (above). We’re not sure whether we agree with the findings, but it’s certainly food for thought.

1.  Facebook could be worth $100bn by spring next year, after 2011 profits ‘exceed expectations’, according to people close to the fastest growing social network. The company is understood to be on track to make more than $2bn in 2011, pre-tax and interest, after exceeding all expectations of advertising revenues set last year.

2. Two teenagers may face legal action over a royal wedding party organised through Facebook that left a council with a £25,000 clean-up bill. Glasgow City Council is speaking to lawyers after almost 6,000 attended the unauthorised event, leading to 22 arrests and 11 people being injured.

3. New mother Mariah Carey has taken to Twitter to stir up some guesses about her twin babies’ names. The proud pop diva, who gave birth to a girl and a boy on April 30 in LA, revealed that both names begin with the letter ‘M’ and is urging her followers to submit their theories. At Umpf we’re guessing ‘Matthew’ and ‘Megan’.

4. News of the death of Osama bin Laden prompted Twitter to receive record traffic on Sunday night as America’s most wanted was shot dead at a secret compound in Pakistan. Twitter peaked at 5,106 tweets per second Sunday night, and sustained an average rate of 3,440 tweets per second, the company said.

5. Social media ad spending will hit $8.3 billion in 2015, up from $2.1 billion last year, according to a new report. BIA/Kelsey, a media consultancy, predicts that display ads will retain the lion’s share of the business, but innovations like Twitter‘s Promoted Tweets will make inroads as well. By 2015, $7.7 billion of that $8.3 billion will be from display ads, the firm predicts, and most of that will belong to Facebook, though the report didn’t break out Facebook’s exact share.

6. Because we’re such fans of the lovely William and Kate/Princess Catherine/Duchess of Cambridge, we couldn’t resists sharing the following inforgraphic with you (right).

Wayne Rooney on Twitter

1. Facebook has this week enhanced its content sharing functionality with the launch of a ‘send’ button. More private than its ‘like’ counterpart, the new button will allow users to send content to a specified person or group, rather than being visible to all friends.

2. Footballers and Twitter have been hitting the headlines this week. A player from Berwick Rangers has been sacked after making negative comments about Neil Lennon being targeted by bombers. Described in an official statement as ‘a young footballer on an amateur contract with the club’, the player in question has had his contract terminated and since closed down his Twitter account.

3. Meanwhile, Manchester United’s Darren Gibson lasted just two hours on Twitter this weekend after abusive messages led him to close his account – @dgibbo28. Wayne Rooney fared better, joining the social networking site on Sunday as @Wazzaroon08, and quickly racking up around 240,000 followers.

4. West Midland’s Police tweeted through a day in court in the UK’s first tweet-a-thon last Tuesday. The initiative was launched to give the public “peace of mind that justice was being done”. Five West Midland’s Police press officers tweeted real time results from Birmingham Magistrates Court to show the range of offenders that police deal with on a day-to-day basis.

5. Widespread privacy fears were sparked after claims emerged that Apple’s iPhone is secretly keeping track of its users movements, saving the data to a secret file which is copied to the owners computer when synchronised. The file is said to contain details of latitude and longitude of the phone’s recorded coordinates along with a timestamp. Accessible by a simple programme, the details could easily be downloaded if the phone was stolen or accessed by a third party. Steve Jobs has since responsed.

6. The Royal wedding is mentioned online once every 10 seconds a study by Greenlight has revealed. Data showed an average 9,000 posts a day on the subject with online noise on the Royal Wedding rising 700% since March.

7. Facebook has launched a platform aimed at advertising, PR and media agencies. Described by US magazine Adage as a “first step in a give-and-take dialogue between Facebook and the creative advertising world”, Facebook Studio will be a stand-alone community for creatives to share ideas, comment on campaigns and learn how to build successful Facebook pages.

1. Presidential candidates for the 2012 elections in the US have embraced social media more than ever. Republican Tim Pawlenty disclosed his 2012 presidential aspirations on Facebook. Rival Mitt Romney did it with a tweet. President Barack Obama kicked off his re-election bid with a digital video emailed to the 13  million online backers who helped power his historic campaign in 2008.

2. Facebook is looking to cash in on user data.  Profiles, status updates and messages all include masses of voluntarily provided information. The social media site is using it to help advertisers find exactly who they want to reach. Privacy watchdogs are said to be concerned about this latest development.

3. Comedian Stephen Fry told a charity benefit concert than he would go to prison rather than allow the verdict to stand in Paul Chambers ‘Twitter joke’ appeal. Paul Chambers famously tweeted “—-! Robin Hood Airport is closed. You’ve got a week… otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!”

4. The FT reports that governments all over the world are increasingly restricting internet freedoms as penetration spreads and activists turn to the still-evolving medium, according to a comprehensive analysis of practices in 37 nations.The report, which is released today, found that some countries imposed their first political controls on internet content in the past two years, while those that had already restricted access redoubled their efforts with new tools and bureaucracies.

5. A great infographic (above) showing how journalists on twitter all follow one another.

Don’t forget – if you see anything that really impresses you, why not let us know by emailing on social@umpf.co.uk and perhaps your suggestion will make the cut next week.

Here’s the latest news in the world of social media from the last seven days. In this week’s Trending bulletin:

1. Google to spend over $10Million on creating original programming for YouTube
2. Obama turns to social media to help his re-election
3. The Daily Telegraph denies it will start charging for access
4. Twitter announces new resources to help the platform become a tool for journalists
5. James Franco, star of 172 hours, says social media is dead
6. BBC Radio 4 DJ James Naughtie is photographed at a Japanese love hotel. The photo goes viral and the Beeb complains

Every week we’ll be bringing you the latest social media campaigns, news and views. You can watch the latest broadcast bulletin on our home page http://www.umpf.co.uk every week or catch up with previous episodes here.

Click for more on social media campaigns: http://www.umpf.co.uk/social-media

Here’s our video round-up of social media news, campaigns and views in the last seven days. In this week’s Trending bulletin:

1. Times & Sunday Times paywall subscription “victory”
2. MySpace’s $100m price tag
3. Twitter’s Dorsey returns after 3 years out at mobile payment start-up Square
4. 50% of Tweets sent by “elite members” of 20,000 users
5. Radian6 bought by cloud computing firm SalesForce for $300m
6. Warren Buffet says don’t by social networking companies: Allan Barr, head of digital & social media at The Big Partnership, and Oliver Chesher, Head of Office at Admiral PR, give their views

Every week we’ll be bringing you the latest social media campaigns, news and views. You can watch the latest broadcast bulletin on our home page every week or catch up with previous videos on the Umpf YouTube channel.

Click for more on social media campaigns.

1. Debenhams has hit a landmark in sales through its app. The retailer, which operates more than 150 stores across the UK and internationally, has announced that since launching just five months ago, the app has earned the company £1 Million. The app is an integral part of Debenham’s multi-channel strategy aimed at boosting its revenue in the coming years.

2.  To celebrate World Water Day, Levi’s encouraged its fans to ‘unlock water’ through a variety of ways via a dedicated site -  pledging to use water more sustainably, inviting friends to play the WaterTank game, donating money to Water.org, tweeting a message with the #waterless hashtag, liking the Levi’s brand on Facebook, scanning a QR code and check-in to any Levi’s venue across the U.S., and watching the dedicated video online.

3. Far from being intimidated by the launch of Facebook Places, Foursquare announced that its users have doubled since the rival platform was brought to market. Dennis Crowley, Foursquare’s chief, has denied that the launch of ‘Places’ has negatively affected his service’s membership.

4. Former Social networking darling, Myspace, has seen its monthly unique visitor number fall by 10 million between January and February 2011, a 14 per cent reduction. 63 million people now visit Myspace on a monthly basis, leaving it trailing far behind Facebook.

5. Linkedin, the social media platform of choice for many business professionals, is celebrating following news that it now has more than 100 million members (see infographic right). The network, which is seen as a more ’serious’ alternative to the likes of Facebook, boasts 44 million users in the US alone.

Don’t forget – if you see anything that really impresses you, why not let us know by emailing on social@umpf.co.uk and perhaps your suggestion will make the cut next week.

Here’s our video round-up of social media news, campaigns and views in the last seven days. In this week’s Trending bulletin:

1. Plans to clamp down on file sharing could be delayed – BT and Talk Talk are challenging the courts
2. The majority of FTSE 100 companies are failing at social media
3. Twitter turns five – Manchester Confidential’s Mark Garner gives his opinions
4. BBC’s Social Media Editor leaves to join Johnston Press
5. The New York Times paywall starts next week, but there’s already a loophole: you can read NYT stories linked from Twitter and Facebook

Every week we’ll be bringing you the latest social media campaigns, news and views. You can watch the latest broadcast bulletin on our home page every week or catch up with previous videos on the Umpf YouTube channel.

Click for more on social media campaigns.

1. Those of us worried about compromising photos at the office party circulating forever on the internet need worry no longer.  Due to EU privacy law, we’ll all have the right to be ‘forgotten on line’. Whether or not our friends and family are able to forget is another matter altogether.

2. A man has been charged with polygamy following a defriending of his first wife on Facebook. Richard Leon Barton Jr defriended his Rhode Island-based first wife but failed to get a divorce before moving on to his second and posting photos of the ceremony on his Facebook profile. If found guilty his new marriage will be delcared void.

3. Such is the influence and importance of Facebook that it seems the US government is amassing a phantom army on Facebook to monitor, snoop and counter enemy propaganda. The project specs call for an ”online persona management service that will allow one U.S. serviceman or woman to control up to 10 separate identities based all over the world.”

4.China has shut down 130,000 internet cafes over the past six years as part of a crackdown to control the market. Around a third of China’s Internet population surfs the Web from Internet cafes. The Ministry of Culture said the number of Internet cafe users in China reached 163 million in 2010. The country’s total Internet population stands at 457 million users.

5. Finally, as you’ve never seen him before, it’s Steve Jobs made up entirely of the products which Apple has made over the years (above). You’ll need to click here to see a more detailed version.

Here’s our video round-up of social media news, campaigns and views in the last seven days. In this week’s Trending bulletin:

1. Twitter’s Biz Stone joins AOL board
2. The Daily – Rupert Murdoch’s iPad newspaper – is getting a British edition
3. SXSW report from STV’s Ewan Spence in Texas
4. Experian Hitwise data on the popularity of social networks
5. Who’s not going to Jess’s birthday in Australia?  More than 200,000 people respond to her hi-jacked party invite on Facebook

Every week we’ll be bringing you the latest social media campaigns, news and views. You can watch the latest broadcast bulletin on our home page every week or catch up with previous videos on the Umpf YouTube channel.

Click for more on social media campaigns.

1. Car maker Chrysler was forced to apologize after an employee of a contractor swore to the automaker’s 7,500 followers. The tweet read “I find it ironic that Detroit is known as the #motorcity and yet no one here knows how to f**king drive”. The contractor in question, New Media Strategies, has since been sacked by Chrysler.

2. A landmark law suit has led to the UK’s first person being ordered to pay damages for Twitter libel. In a watershed case, a Plaid councillor, Colin Elsbury, has been ordered to pay £60,000 in bills and £3,000 compensation to fellow councillor Eddie Talbot

3. In a ‘bid’ to raise more money for Comic Relief, a Twitter auction has been launched with a celebrity angle. Twit Relief is asking members of the public to bid for their chosen celebrity on ebay and if they win the bid, said celebrity will follow them on Twitter for 90 days, re-tweet their tweets and provide ‘extras’ such as private performances and Mulberry handbags.

4. Social media goes saintly with news that Pope John Paul II will have a Facebook page dedicated to his beatification which will take place on May 1 this year. This latest page is part of the Vatican’s push to use social media in increasing measure.

5. National Geographic shows us the world’s most typical face (above). The composite image shows the earth’s 7 billion inhabitants depicted by 7,000 humans, each one representing one million people.

1. Facebook says goodbye to the ‘Share’ button in favour of the ‘Like’ button

2. Malaysian airlines launches Facebook check-in and booking service

3. Foursquare gives Manchester the ‘World’s rudest city’ title

4. Facebook for dog lovers.  Yes, really.

5. Lucozade targets social media users via Spotify

6. Charlie Sheen sets new Twitter Guinness World Record

You can see our separate social media campaign video round-up on the Umpf YouTube channel.

Be sure to share any stories you think should be in next week’s round up by emailing social@umpf.co.uk

Umpf has teamed up with our friends over at The Drum to sponsor Trending: the social media video bulletin.

Trending is a weekly video covering the key social media stories you may have missed in the last seven days.

To watch the UK’s leading broadcast bulletin of social media campaigns, news and views, click on the Umpf home page and watch our Social Media TV channel in the right-hand corner – a new social media video bulletin will be streamed weekly.

Click for more on social media campaigns.

1. TED challenges the supremacy of 2011 hotshot Quora and launches its own platform for intelligent discussion

2. Foursquare will start to add recommendations next month

3. An age-old game gets a social media makeover (right); here’s Monopoly 2.0

4.The more Facebook friends you have, the more stressed you get

5. Tech brands dominate in the latest social media reputation table

6. Greplin opens the doors to us all – now you can search email, Facebook and Twitter data with one query

7. Porsche says ‘Thank You’ 1 million times with its latest paint job

A ruling by the Press Complaints Commissions (PCC) will enable British journalists to lift tweets from Twitter because the PCC says quoting these in print or online does not “constitute a privacy intrusion”. Whilst we could argue both sides comprehensively, it does raise the issue of how private, or indeed, how public, social media really is.

Facebook users also got a nasty shock when Youropenbook launched, showing how ‘private’ posts on Facebook walls and status updates could be read even by unsuspecting bosses. Likewise, we might all be a little more careful next time we have an outburst on Twitter following the PCC’s ruling.

Social networks are perceived to be more private than they are, due in part to the fact that they are based on relationships; friends, family and business connections. We assume they’re private because we use them to engage with our nearest and dearest, but that’s a dangerous assumption to make.

Regardless of whether the PCC’s ruling will pave the way for further ‘nationalisation’ of social media content, one thing is certain; social media is definitely more public than many of us would like to admit.

Twitter is often a popular choice for brands, but as more and more enter the Twitter-sphere we’re noticing how differently companies worldwide are reacting, responding and engaging in conversations in a comparison to the next – some doing it better than others.

Naturally, each of the brands will be trying to satisfy their own objectives for utilising a social media channel such as Twitter – objectives that are often associated with follower numbers or mentions.  However, are these objectives a good measurement of the extent of engagement their brand is achieving within a genuine target audience?  Or are they in fact just a host of numbers to show that a job is being done?

Many brands may measure their success on Twitter by the number of followers they have, something that can actually be counter-productive.  It’s easy to become obsessed with having follower numbers into the thousands or tens of thousands, but blindly following irrelevant people in the hope that some may follow you back is actually a method of spamming (we don’t like spamming- see previous blogs) and besides, it doesn’t really get anyone anywhere.  The key to Twitter from a brand’s perspective is to engage and interact with followers who are relevant to a business, enabling the brand to have conversations online and create a public community.

We also see people attributing the number of tweets they’ve posted as a sign of a successful Twitter account. This might actually signal that the brand is not really listening or engaging with their followers but is posting impersonal, untimely tweets- often about themselves or something their brand is doing.  It’s not a great way of achieving engagement and interaction that we’re looking for when communicating through social media.

On the contrary, numbers can often be useful where retweets or @ mentions are concerned.  Someone retweeting your post normally signals that you’ve said something interesting.  Similarly, if an @ mention is responding to something you’ve tweeted then you have successfully managed to engage with a follower and should continue to try and keep the conversation between them interesting and ongoing.

We’re well aware that the quality versus quantity argument is alive and well in the social media arena and despite there being ongoing criticism in the traditional PR remit (we won’t start on payment by results) there doesn’t seem to be any lessons learnt so far, and unfortunately we sense a similar fate for social media channels.  We’re not holding our breath for Twitter to be approached in a ‘best practice’ kind of way anytime soon, but we hope that brands will begin to realise that following any old ‘Tom, Dick or Harry’ is not strategic and is in fact just a numbers game.

This week, their football Tweets @NikeFootball (5,000+ Followers) started using a bit.ly vanity URL http://bit.ly/writehistorylive.  As you’ll see it takes you to an app on their Facebook Fan page (almost a third of a million fans).

If you’re new to URL shorteners such as bit.ly and is.gd (and there are hundreds of services out there), they take a long URL like http://www.facebook.com/nikefootball?v=app_10442206389&ref=ts (which eats up 61 of your 140-chracter Tweet) and shortens it to something like http://bit.ly/9HQmpy (20 characters). Both direct users to exactly the same place.

So rather than use a short bit.ly link, typically http://bit.ly/ [and then a randomly allocated  set of six alphanumeric characters with letters in upper and lower case], Nike has gone for a vanity title ‘writehistorylive’ to increase social media campaign recognition.

At the time of writing they’d had more than 6,500 clicks on their bit.ly vanity URL.  But see what happens when you click http://bit.ly/Writehistorylive or http://bit.ly/WriteHistoryLive.  The URL is subtly different – you probably wouldn’t even notice if it wasn’t pointed out – but the end result is, of course, not a Nike-endorsed site.  And imagine if there was some darker skulduggery eg http://bit.ly/writehistoryLive.

We’ve been advising clients recently on shortened vanity URLs.  One of our recommendations is, if you’re going to use a shortened vanity URL – as opposed to the shortened URL you’re allocated – ensure you secure any obvious alternative spellings, and the basic variations on capital letters.

Clearly, in Nike’s case there are millions of permutations in the use of upper and lower case with a long phrase such as writehistorylive (wRiTEhistorylive, WRITEhistoryliveE, etc etc ), but at least go for the basics: ALLCAPS, CapOnEachNewWord, alllowercase, Capfirstletter.

Of course, the counter argument is that the vanity shortened URL is typically only ever a social media link, so the reader will click straight through and, hence, there’s no need to worry.  But if a phrase is central to a campaign – as I would argue writehistorylive is (why create it in the first place?) – then there’s a credible argument to say the URL could be passed on verbally.

It’s probably only a matter of time before we see an intellectual property court case sparked by a shortened vanity URL.

NB: Neither bit.ly, is.gd, Nike (clearly!) nor Adidas are clients of Umpf and all example shortened vanity URLs have been created to demonstrate a point rather than to pass off a brand or marketing campaign.