Pay Per Click Advertising and SEO » Social Networking

Digital media dominates Britons time

James Oliver — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 09:20:58 +0000

New research from Ofcom suggests that British people spend approximately fifty percent of their time employing the services of media and communications. New data compiled by the report revealed that residents of the UK undertake activities relating to media including watching television, using mobile phones and surfing the internet, for half of their waking lives.

In addition, the research revealed that people managed to obtain the equivalent of nine hours service per day from their digital devices, by resorting to multi-tasking to optimise the use of several gadgets simultaneously.

The survey questioned over one thousand adults in the UK, and was compiled with the assistance of industry sources. According to the results, traditional media such as television is still holding a strong position when compared with newer media sources such as the internet. Most people, according to the data, spend just under four hours per day watching television.

Peter Philips, a spokesperson from Ofcom remarked: “For the first time we have mapped the totality of communications use over one day.” According to those surveyed, adults aged between sixteen and twenty-four spend around seven hours watching television, listening to the radio, browsing online or communicating over mobiles. Young adults, apparently, are more likely to multitask by undertaking a number of social media activities concurrently.

Ofcom stated: “They are taking up more and more communications activities but fitting them into the same amount of time. It has untethered people from being in one particular place. TV still plays a central role in people’s lives. We are watching more than at any time in the last five years.”

Radio and television are still as important as they were, primarily because people are using these two devices in conjunction with browsing online and communicating over mobiles. Multi-tasking has ensured that the more traditional vehicles for entertainment are still enjoying popularity.

MTV goes digital

Jen — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 08:49:31 +0000

In order to honour the number of online enthusiasts in the MTV generation, the music channel has announced plans to launch a drama which is only available over the internet. Being Victor is MTV’s first foray in to the world of web-only drama.

The programme will focus upon Scottish teenagers, covering subjects including suicide and sexuality. It is produced by Shed Media and will commence airing in early September. The show will engage twitter and MySpace in the programme, using feeds from characters in the programme and links to bands which are aired in the show.

MTV’s director of Digital Media commented on the new format for the show: “Viewing habits are evolving. Our audiences watch TV online and on mobile devices on the go, therefore we want to provide them with dedicated and ground-breaking content for these platforms. The elements that make ‘Being Victor’ special are intrinsic to the fact that it is born online and will grow online to become whatever fans want to make it.”

The digital development producer at Shed Media Scotland commented: “Being Victor is a phenomenally exciting and ambitious project that treads new ground for drama online. It’s so much more than just an entertainment programme as the flexibility and interactivity of the digital platforms enable us to build layers of interest around the series. The show will remain without advertising for the moment.”

As the programme is aired, viewers will be able to interact with it through online chat forums and information posted on blogs for each of the characters in the show. At the moment, MTV’s UK website draws over two million visits each month, and this figure is thought to be set to rise once Being Victor takes off.

Promoted Trending Topics launched by Twitter

Andre — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 06:14:16 +0000

Last April, Twitter launched its first ad campaign facility, in the guise of Promoted Tweets. Tweeters are now accustomed to this facility, which provides advertising revenue in a different way to standard web advertising packages. Rather than flooding their platform with adverts, Twitter instead uses a more subtle method of generating revenue through promotional tweeting.

“Over the years, we’ve resisted introducing a traditional Web advertising model because we wanted to optimize for value before profit. The open exchange of information creates opportunities for individuals, organizations, and businesses alike. We recognized value in this exchange and planned to amplify it in a meaningful and relevant manner,” Twitter states.

In effect, Twitter is acknowledging that their facility is an ideal way of promoting specific products, but there are more effective ways of advertising with the site than simply presenting links to products. This week, Twitter commences the next phase of their advertising strategy, through the use of ‘Promoted Trending Topics’.

Promoting Trending Topics commence with a promotion for Disney Pixar’s latest film, Toy Story 3. The film is being advertised on the right hand toolbar of Twitter, and the ad is highlighted in yellow so it’s obvious that it is a Promoted Trending Topic. Clicking the link takes you to a search results page, which lets you see what people are tweeting about the new film.

Twitter has commented on the new advertising model: “As we have always said, we plan to test different advertising and promotional models in these early stages of our monetization efforts for both user and brand value. As part of this effort, we are testing trends clearly marked as “promoted” for an undefined period of time.”

So far, Promoted Trending Topics are not defined by location, but it’s easy to imagine that this will be the next step for Twitter’s advertising campaign – to establish topics of interest based upon the demographics, geography or interests of the Twitter user.

AOL sells Bebo site after just two years of ownership

Jen — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 06:38:07 +0000

Internet giants AOL have sold the social networking site Bebo after owning it for just two years. In a surprising move, the company has sold the site to small private investment company Criterion Capital Partners.

In 2008, AOL purchased Bebo for $850m (then £417m). Since then the site has struggled to compete with Facebook, which is the most popular online networking site globally. When Bebo was developed, it targeted a younger generation of surfers than Facebook, but since Facebook has evolved to be more inclusive for all users.

Criterion Capital Partners have not revealed how much they have paid for the site, although it is thought that it must have been sold for a fraction of the amount which AOL purchased it for. AOL have commented that they chose to sell Bebo as they were unable to provide the significant investment required to prevent it from failing as a business.
Technology experts are terming the decision by AOL to purchase Bebo disastrous. AOL have been criticized for making a poor decision, long after internet entrepreneurs should have learned from the initial mistakes made at the time of the dotcom crash.

Michael Birch, founder of Bebo, is thought to have walked away from the deal with AOL with $300m. This demonstrates that much online trading comes down to fortuitous timing.

It is not yet known what Criterion Capital’s plans for Bebo are, and they have not released any details about the future prospects for the site. Bebo’s headquarters are set to remain in San Francisco, and their will potentially be job losses as a result of the sale. Adam Levin, Criterion Capital’s managing partner, says there is plenty to be positive about; “The young, highly active user base, revenue history, presence in countries throughout the world and solid technical infrastructure make it an attractive media platform,” he said.

Big rise in time spent online by UK web users

Matt Thomas — Thu, 27 May 2010 09:00:30 +0000

Due to the unprecedented rise of such social networking behemoths as Facebook and Twitter it has been revealed that web users in the UK now spend an average of one full 24 hour day per month online, this is a massive 65 per cent increase from three years ago.

This is according to a brand new survey published by the UK Online Measurement company (UKOM), they found that your average web user in the UK spends a total of 22 hours and 15 minutes on the internet every month.

Unsurprisingly the highest percentage of the time (22.7 per cent) is spent on blogs and social networking sites, which have majorly shifted focus away from other online habits since 2007 – particularly instant messaging, (MSN and AIM) which now only accounts for just 4.9 per cent of time spent online, compared to 14 per cent three years ago.

This drop in instant messaging shows just how popular social networking sites have become as millions of users seem to have stopped using the previously ubiquitous instant messaging programs. Social networks such as Facebook and Twitter now hold a highly significant influence in many areas of contemporary life, they have even played a role in the recent General Election.

UKOM spokesperson Alex Burmaster stated that communication, networking and online games are still the most popular pastimes. “These are the pillars on which the internet is built,” he said.

E-mail was previously perceived as being an obvious victim to the rise of social networking but it has surprisingly grown from 6.5 per cent in 2007 to 7.2 per cent in 2010. Whilst online games take up 6.9 per cent of all time spent online in the UK, including on games consoles such as Microsoft’s Xbox Live service.

“Social networking is like an organism, feeding off itself and getting bigger,” Burmaster explained. “People are plugging more and more of their lives into it.”

The study by UKOM also revealed that adult sites only account for a modest proportion of internet use, with people actually spending more time visiting news sites (2.8 per cent) than seeking out pornography (2.7 per cent).

“It is a bit of a digital myth that everyone online visits adult sites,” Burmaster said.

“We divide the internet into 85 different sections so the fact that adult content is in the top 10 shows it is still one of the most heavily used sectors.”

Microsoft announce social media aggregator Spindex

James Oliver — Thu, 06 May 2010 09:00:26 +0000

Microsoft seem to have come to the realisation that there is no competing with Social Networking giants Facebook and Twitter so they have instead announce a tool that is able to aggregate all of a users social media activity into one place.

Named Spindex the service works in a similar way to products such as FriendFeed and runs with the slogan “Make sense of your social overload.”

The main aim is to show users all activity across each of the Social Networking sites that they are registered with thus avoiding the annoying task of having to log into each of your accounts individually.

Lili Cheng, General Manager of Microsoft Fuse Labs wrote:

“Spindex, which we’re making available in early technical preview form, aggregates your social streams (Facebook, Twitter, Bing, etc.), making it simple for you to find what’s new, see personalized trending topics, and generally make the most of the time you spend being social on the Web.”

Microsoft’s Fuse Labs is the company’s short term centre for innovation having recently launched a Bing-Twitter mash up to enable users to see where their friends are tweeting. They have been busy of late having released a product for Microsoft Office 2010 that can integrate social media into outlook and a tool to integrate documents completely into Facebook.

It would seem that Microsoft are subscribing to the age old prophecy ‘if you can’t beat them join them’ as they habitually team with Facebook and Twitter rather than competing directly against them.

A trip to the Spindex website gives a little more information as to what exactly the service does:

“Allows you to access and interact with your social networks, see trends from your friends, and see related info from Bing on literally everything you click on. Spindex proactively finds useful articles and information based on your interest in your friends’ messages and comments.”

It is only available as a technical preview to those at the web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco but should be on general release later in the year.

Social web calling for Spotify

Andy Russell — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 12:30:18 +0000

In a bid to lure people away from Apples ever growing iTunes music service Spotify have entered the social networking sphere. The company announced that it would be integrating its online music service with Facebook and Twitter.

The service was launched earlier this week and can be used by both free and premium account users of Spotify, the new feature will allow users to access their Facebook accounts from the Spotify site, a trend that appears to be growing quite rapidly this year.

The link with Facebook will allow users to share music and playlists to be shared with friends over the social networking site. Twitter users will have a similar experience as they will be able to share music through direct Spotify links that will appear as Tweets.

This is a bold and decisive move by Spotify as they attempt to dent Apple’s dominance of the music sharing market. There should be no reason why the two cannot co-exist as the Spotify service is quite different from that of iTunes.

Whereas iTunes concentrates on selling the tracks to the user at a price, Spotify have concentrated more on the access model of allowing the user to listen to whatever song they choose but without being able to own it as an mp3. Both have their uses and each will suit the different ways that people listen to music.

This announcement has conveniently come just after Facebook owner Mark Zuckerberg declared last week that Facebook are helping to push the web to move into an area of more social interaction.

Spotify’s new social feature hopes to add more premium users to the service. At present only 320,000 people pay the £9.99 subscription for the ad-free premium account, a figure that they hope will rise with the addition of Facebook and Twitter, never underestimate the power of social networking.

First signs of trouble for Wikipedia

James Oliver — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 17:13:15 +0000

For the last eight or so years Wikipedia has been a shining example of the positive side of the internet, not only due to its commitment to educating the world population for free but also as one of the best web 2.0 case studies imaginable. The site showed us exactly what is possible when people get user generated content right, spawning thousands of imitators in the process.

Now however, the site is experiencing the first bumps in its illustrious road and it’s all down to a lack of active editors, it seems the U in ‘UGC’ is starting to fail them. Research indicates that in the first quarter of this year 49’000 volunteers went dead, as in stopped actively contributing to the site.

This is obviously a big problem for Wikipedia – the site’s main strength is the willingness of its volunteers to get involved in the running of the site. Some however go one step further, talking about a new phase in the evolution of the internet as people move beyond user generated content. As always with vague statements like that, only time will tell.

UK Twitter Users revealed as Left Wing Londoners

James Oliver — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 17:37:44 +0000

According to a recent poll conducted by YouGov, the UK’s Twitter users are overwhelmingly London based and err towards the Liberal, or left wing political persuasion. They also, perhaps unsurprisingly, tend to be young, with 46 per cent of those surveyed, under the age of thirty-five.

Regular users of Twitter will not be surprised by these statistics, in fact the social network’s UK users have long had the reputation for left leaning comments. An example is the treatment regularly meted out to the more right-wing of the UK’s papers, particularly the Daily Mail which regularly receives torrents of derision and sarcasm on the micro-blogging site.

Twitter are unlikely to be too bothered about this news, considering the sign up rates and celebrity endorsements they currently enjoy. However, such a clear location and political bias in the people supplying the content does make you think twice about Twitter’s pretentions to being a rival to the Google search engine.

Photobucket valued at a mere $60 Million

James Oliver — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 09:26:44 +0000

As you may have heard, if you’ve been paying attention, MySpace/News Corp are currently in the process of trying to sell Photobucket, the video and image sharing service it acquired for $250 million dollars with an additional $50 million earnout in 2007. The buyer is a company called Ontela, who come with 40 million backing from Disney’s Steamboat Ventures arm. The deal with Ontela is thought to be at an advanced stage though sources close to both companies are putting the valuation at around $60 million, an 83% reduction from what MySpace paid.

If reports of the valuation are correct, then it’s one hell of an embarrassment for MySpace and its backer News Corp to have gotten a valuation so catastrophically wrong.

This kind of publicity is the last thing that MySpace needed. The social network is increasingly seen as losing out to the simpler more user friendly Facebook and the sheer publicity of Twitter, with many claiming that the only real USP it currently retains is customisability and some cache within the music business.

For the time being Ontela are not currently commenting on the story. Nor, unsurprisingly, are MySpace.

TwitterSpeak Legitimised by Dictionary Publisher

Matt Thomas — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 09:43:56 +0000

Today the influence of Twitter seems to have reached an exciting/depressing (delete as appropriate) new frontier, actual manipulation of the English language. Not content with simply dominating the celebrity pages, the social network is being credited with inspiring a huge percentage of the new words inducted into the new edition of the Collins English Dictionary this year.

The new words are made up not only of tech-speech like ‘woot’, ‘OMG’ and ‘noob’, but also of existing words or noises within language that have not needed to be written down until people started tweeting. We’re talking about words like ‘hmm’, ‘mwah’ and ‘meh’ that have been written down a lot as part of tweets thanks to a highly informal writing style of twitter that encourages people to write as they speak.

The publishers, Collins, claim that this year’s crop of new words shows ‘a preoccupation with digital culture music and climate change.’

3 Million English Articles on Wikipedia

Matt Thomas — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 12:48:24 +0000

Only eight years after its initial launch, online encyclopaedia, Wikipedia has reached three million English language articles. The piece that tipped them over the edge, a short piece about little known Norwegian film actress named Beate Eriksen, hit the site yesterday and took them to the magic number.

As impressive as the number of articles written in English is, it is not even a quarter of the whole number, the truly international website boasts more than 13 million articles written in over 200 different languages, by 10 million separate registered users, who have made an average of 32 edits.

The biggest non-english language on Wikipedia is German, which accounts for approximately 943,000 of the total number of articles, though it is closely followed by French, Polish and Chinese – a language that is surely set to grow in influence. As indeed will the site, especially considering that it grows by 1,300 articles every day.

Woman sacked after Facebook Tirade

Matt Thomas — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 09:00:12 +0000

A facebook post from a disgruntled worker known only as Lyndsey has led to her being dismissed from her job. The post, entitled ‘OMG I hate my job’ was doing the rounds all last week and even made it as far as the blogging site Digg, where it has reached an even bigger audience.

Lyndsey’s employer clearly felt that this was an indiscretion too many and replied to her unprofessional message by terminating her employment. The full response is definitely worth a look, though let me just give you the edited highlights to whet your appetite…

“Hi Lindsay, I guess you forgot about adding me on here?…You also seem to have forgotten that you have 2 weeks left on your 6 month trial period. Don’t bother coming in tomorrow. I’ll pop your P45 in the post, and you can come in whenever you like to pick up any stuff you’ve left here.”

It has been common knowledge for some time that employers routinely check out potential employees online and this case highlights the growing awareness that employers have when it comes to social networks.

Employees beware, you never know who’s watching you on Facebook.

British Military U-Turn on Facebook

James Oliver — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 09:00:32 +0000

It would appear that the British military is having some trouble making up its mind on the subject of social networking. Only a couple of months after the Sun and other publications reported that the top brass had banned facebook and other social media platforms at all military bases, it has emerged today that not only are they now allowing use of social networking sites, they are actually encouraging personnel to use them.

A thirteen page report of recommendations for serving personnel entitled ‘Online Engagement Guidelines’ has been circulated, which claims that, “Current and emerging internet technologies, such as simple self-publishing, sharing of user-generated content, and social networking, are of growing importance to Service and MoD civilian personnel in their personal and professional lives.”

The ‘professional lives’ part of that quote may have come as a surprise to a few people, given their stance until recently. The military seem to have finally come round to the fact that social networking sites can be great for PR for them as they add to a wider ubnderstanding of the duties of military personnel.