Welcome
to eModeration’s round-up of all that is intriguing, alarming or odd in
the world of social media, compiled by Kate Williams (@emodkate).

In this update: the iPad has landed; socialized politics; and Tweeting padres.

THE HEADLINES …

The iPad has landed.

The world had awaited its arrival with the kind of feverish longing
usually observed in millinarial cults – and with so many articles and
posts that it seemed at one point that the web might get used up. So,
in an attempt to tell you all you need to know without contributing to
the general frenzy of wordage, here is a concise guide to some further
reading on the subject of the iPad.

Immediately following The Unveiling, Mashable offered the full skinny
on the specs to help us decide whether Apple’s little darling was, as
Mr Jobs suggests, “a magical and revolutionary device at an
unbelievable price”.

Five hours after its first mention, the word iPad had been Tweeted more than 100,000 times – as bloggers frantically posted their up-sums of the launch.

The Guardian, for example, wondered if the iPad could save newspapers, replace your TV, or run a Hoover round quickly before tackling the washing-up (I may be exaggerating.)

Then – inevitable after the vast user-generated hype – came the backlash.
The world realised that the iPad was fundamentally an iPod Touch with a
big screen, lacking the magical properties which they had anticipated.
No 3D interface, no OLED screen or Flash support – nor even a webcam, microphone or USB port.

Some speculated that Apple’s real target
was gaming – noting that dozens of top-drawer games could now be
downloaded from the App Store for a fraction of store-bought ones. But
Massively pointed out that, without multi-tasking or Flash, the iPad was never going to be a game-changer for gamers.

Meanwhile, anxious marketers and publishers huddled to ponder the iPad’s impact on advertising – with some speculating that it might smash the internet as we know it, by splintering it into dozens of fractured platforms.

Okay, I think that covers it. And breathe.

Despite what you may have read, some other events occurred this week.

YouTube announced that it would live stream Barack Obama’s State of the Union
address – and offered citizens the opportunity to question the Prez
through a Google Moderator series. The company said it showed how
“platforms like YouTube can be used to increase transparency in
government and access to world leaders.”

Meanwhile – if it wasn’t already clear that social media is changing
the business of politics hour by hour – the White House’s Facebook page
was stormed by protesters,
following a call by activist site “Rethink Afghanistan” to post
messages which asked the President “to provide a concrete exit strategy
for our troops in Afghanistan” in his address.

Over the pond, the election campaign got off to a nicely social start, when the Labour Party announced the launch of its first iPhone app
– a mobile version of the party’s virtual database featuring everything
that local activists need, searchable by postcode. On a roll, they also
launched a crowdsourcing campaign,
which flips Obama’s presidential slogan ‘Change you can believe in’
into ‘The Change We See’- a call for supportive citizens to upload
their snaps of new hospitals and schools built since Labour came to
power in 1997.

Meanwhile TalkTalk’s talk is fightin’ talk:
its CEO Charles Dunstone said that he would refuse to disconnect, or
even admonish, customers suspected of illegal file-sharing as demanded
by the Digital Economy Bill – even if the Bill passed into law.
Dunstone, who’s managed to gather 32,000 signatures opposing the
measures, said he would fight the government in court if necessary.

THE LOWDOWN …

Speaking of politics (as we were) Westminster insiders are glued to the Tweets of Sally Bercow
– wife of the Speaker of the House of Commons and prospective Labour
candidate. She began tweeting two weeks ago, and is already engendering
apoplexy amongst parliamentary traditionalists with her posts about ‘Mr
B’s’ politics, practical uses for Hansard (kids’ step-stool) and the
mouse in their Commons apartment.

And, if further proof were needed that social media spreads political
gaffery like wildfire, US political journalist Chris Matthews’ painful
attempt at a compliment to President Obama – “I forgot he was black
tonight for an hour” – became the Twitter backlash du jour, with YouTube hits aplenty.

Elsewhere, the Pope has called upon priests to embrace social media
in order to increase their congregations – though he warns that
“priests present in the world of digital communications should be less
notable for their media savvy than for their priestly heart.” If this
news brings to mind the potential plot of a lost episode of Father Ted,
then shame on you.

Sticking with immaculate conceptions and suchlike for a moment – The Sun’s headline ‘Woman Uses iPhone App to Get Pregnant‘ was a corker. Turns out, though, that the app in question was an ovulation predictor.

If you haven’t yet witnessed a true viral sensation, be sure to follow @SleepTalkinMan,
the Twitter presence of husband and wife bloggers Karen and Adam
Slavick-Lennard, whose updates consist of the extraordinary
somniloquies of the latter. By day, mild-mannered techie. By night,
absurdist Mr Hyde. Example: “You can’t be a pirate if you don’t have a
beard. I said so. MY boat, MY rules.”

IN OTHER NEWS …

Google is taking Social Search
out of Labs and rolling it out as a beta for English Google.com users.
The search giant’s real-time effort allows users to pull up any of
their friends’ photos and updates which happen to be relevant to their
search query.

The online ad industry has agreed on an icon
to tell web users that their behavioural data is targeting ads at them.
The industry – keen to avoid federal regulation – will also use phrases
like “Why did I get this ad?” or “Interest based ads”, which polled
well in a research study by the Future of Privacy Forum.

Elsewhere, a new study from Dynamic Logic reports that users find Facebook ads no more or less irritating that any other form of online ad. Not quite a wholehearted endorsement, then – still, could be worse.

Pepsi must be smarting. Having opted out of Superbowl TV ads this year,
choosing instead to put a chunk of its budget into social, they’ve left
the pitch free for Coke to demonstrate that the two forms can easily be
combined. Coke have cleverly incorporated social
into their Superbowl campaign – offering sneak peaks of one of the two
Superbowl ads to Facebook fans who send a Coke-branded virtual gift to
their friends.

More than a third of US, UK and Aussie Facebook users have donated to
the Haiti relief efforts in the 2 weeks following the disaster, a joint survey conducted by Facebook and The Nielsen Company reports.

Adidas is tapping augmented reality for
its latest promotion – rolling out a range of shoes which embed AR code
directly into the tongue of the trainer. Shoe-owners hold their
footwear in front of a webcam, and can then access an area on Adidas’
website which offers interactive games – all controlled by the shoe
itself. Crikey.

Yikes. Marks & Spencer has pulled alcohol ads
which appeared on pre-teen gaming site GirlGames1, after a
five-year-old user’s mother had been searching for champagne on the
M&S website.

Two weeks after Microsoft admitted that Internet Explorer had been the
entry point for the Google-aimed Chinese cyber-attacks, a company
called Core Security Technologies disclose that they’ve uncovered
another series of weak security links in the browser. Microsoft say they see no current risk to users, but have launched a full investigation.

Digg is being given a full makeover
– with the revamped site becoming a hub for real-time info, and an
added emphasis on what friends and influencers within a user’s wider
social circle are consuming.

Finally – ternz out th@ txtng iz gud 4 tweens. Coventry University
psychologists found that the more textisms a child used, the greater
their powers of verbal reasoning.

That’s all folks!

Kellogg in social media push for Krave

Campaign reports Kellogg has appointed CMW to handle a digital and social media campaign to promote the launch of its new cereal brand Krave. Krave is the first cereal launched by Kellogg in the UK that specifically targets the young adult market.

It is looking to engage the brand’s core audience of young adults through a high-profile social media campaign, the first time Kellogg has embarked on a social media campaign to support a brand in the UK.

Consumers Are Not Annoyed by Ads on Facebook

An Ad Age report saying users find ads on social networks no more annoying than any other ads on the web.

According to a study from research firm Dynamic Logic, consumers view brand messages on social-media sites as comparable to those in online video, and are only slightly more annoying to internet users than search or banner ads.

“While that’s better news for Facebook, which has been embraced by blue-chip marketers such as Procter & Gamble, it’s a bit of a backhanded compliment. Indeed, all web ads pale when stacked up to TV and print, which can claim twice the favorability among consumers, according to Dynamic Logic’s Ad Reactions 2009 study.”

Social Media Marketing: How Pepsi Got It Right

Mashable on Pepsi’s Mountain Dew division and its DEWmocracy campaign — a plan to launch a new Mountain Dew flavor with the public’s involvement at all levels of the process, and PepsiCo also just launched the Pepsi Refresh Project on January 13th. Rather than spending money on Super Bowl television ads this year, the company is spending $20 million on a social media campaign.

It quotes Jay Baer, founder of the social media strategy company Convince & Convert, saying that brands are realizing they need to market for the long haul. “I do think it’s a good move for Pepsi. I don’t know if every brand can pull it off,” he said.

Social media on Obama’s speech mirrored Americans’ frustration

CNN on how the tone of tweets on Twitter and posts on Facebook in reaction to President Obama’s State of the Union speech Wednesday night are in contrast to the optimistic comments on his speeches to Congress in September and during his inauguration.

It says social media users showed more frustration compared with the more hopeful tones in the past, with many saying they hoped the president’s rhetoric would lead to more action.

“Their frustrations with the lingering economic doldrums, high jobless rates and the battle over health care are reflected in Obama’s approval ratings. They have dropped from 76 percent to 49 percent since February. Social media comments echoed those sentiments.”

Baby boomer use of social media growing

SeattlePI on how the boomers are finally getting social media: “Early last year, I signed up for Facebook. Since I’m a blogger, I wanted to see what it was about. It was a surprising experience. I learn more about what my friends and relatives are doing through Facebook than I ever learned through e-mail, letters, or phone calls.”

Baby boomers’ social network use has grown steadily from 2007 to 2009. A recent studying shows that 30 percent of boomers maintained a profile on a social network in 2007 compared to 46 percent in 2009.

This is my first blog post for a few weeks, because I’ve been busy. I’ve actually been busier with pitches than I’ve been for more than a year. And quite evidently I am not alone. There’s something in the water I think.

It’s generally at this time of year that the pitches for the new year are well out of the way. We used to win our big accounts either just before Christmas or just before the other financial year starts in April. This year is different for us, and we’ve seen a surge in pitch work for eCRM actually happening in January. We think there’s a logical explanation for this, and it comes down to the great typographical recession debate that’s been going on for the past few months: is this a U, V or W-shaped recession?

If you are a marketer, then the past year of austerity has probably been quite trying. Selection for auditable marketing – eCRM and DM while a no brainer for some, has been held up by (respectively) lack of experience and expense. ECRM is cheap and responsive, works beautifully for retail and FMCG, and generates monetary returns, but very few companies have done it so in times of restriction and risk aversion new forays were rare. DM is proven and runs on the same principles as eCRM, but it’s extremely expensive and lumberingly slow (not to mention impossible to port directly to digital because it requires native digital community experience). The most logical path for marketers has therefore been difficult to take.

But a year without engaging consumers with either big budget media or small budget retention marketing is dangerous. Smaller nimbler brands can operate with startup mentality and gain a disproportionate step up. A year after budgets stopped, a year during which eCRM has proven itself with spectacular achievements for foresightful adopters, marketing budget holders are facing a situation where we’re either in recovery having reached the other side of the V or U, or at the very least on a temporary island in the middle of the W.

It’s time to re-engage with customers and at the very least reinvigorate relationships with them. If it’s the W then there’s a window of opportunity. If we’re out of recession (and personally I find it difficult to believe there won’t be a backwash from the debt that’s been stacked up to facilitate quantitative easing – let alone the poke in the eye that repairing the country’s potholes is about to deliver), then it’s time to spend. And clients are doing just that. Cautiously to be sure, and only on things that can be proven to work.

Marketers have been dabbling in eCRM. It’s now time to take the plunge. The worst that can happen is that it does turn out to be W-shaped, but brands will have reconnected with customers at a critical time to ensure they stay brand loyal during the next leg of hardship. The best that can happen is that the process of spinning up extraordinary loyalty early means a spectacular resurgence in sales.

You can follow me on Twitter here.

So following on my conversation with the Devil, I’ve modelled sane vs insane blog postings and comments derived from a viral campaign (or in fact anything that remotely generates conversation).  I’ve called this the “Bell Curve of insanity” as I reckon the sane vs insane ratio of blog comments about a viral follows a normal distribution model . . .

And if you missed the inspiration for this modeling, check out “the insane” Devil Worshipping comment one our campaigns recently inspired . . .

It is only hours later but already many blogs are saying the iPad is not all that it is cracked up to be. It is apparently a large iPod Touch or maybe it is more than that depending who you read. Whatever it is or not it seems a little too early to be pouring so much cold water on the launch.

People are saying some really nice things and voicing some disappointment. That was bound to happen. The hype was out of this world.

The tablet was going to save the publishing industry in terms of books, magazines and newspapers and now they don’t seem to think so, but they don’t know this for sure as it is all too early and no one has really seen the content. It is as if we had the speculation and then the launch and now the second wave of speculation like some endless carousel.

It is the content that will make or break the iPad. Okay, price as well, but we kind of already knew that. Apple does not do cheap, but it has also sold 250 million iPods; it is a $50 billion company and the biggest mobile app firm in the world. Nice numbers. What is certainly true is that the iPad is beautifully designed and great to use and you don’t get that cheaply. What you get cheap is a make-do bargain netbook PC and they do a certain job.

What they don’t do is even half of what an iPad can do even at this stage, but it is definitely a pricey luxury product and not the universal piece of tech that will quickly create a solid revenue stream for content providers.

People are saying it might take a year. Well that makes sense. If this is after all a device that will have a revolutionary impact (rather than being revolutionary par se) then it will take time for that content to be created and come forth and for that revolutionary change to take place with predictions of three to four million selling in the first year (let’s not forget the famous Slashdot comments writing of the iPod).

As for content. It seems almost like people have not had the time and maybe this was all rushed. People were under whelmed by the New York Times app. Clearly they wanted to be part of this, but the iPad seems more about what the paper will do with its paid content system and that isn’t arriving until 2011 and by then one imagines the app will have been better developed and finessed.

HERE’S WHAT THE BLOGS HAVE TO SAY — THE GOOD

It’s fast and beautiful
BusinessWeek The half-hour or so I spent playing with the iPad at its San Francisco unveiling yesterday was much too short a time to evaluate it authoritatively. What I can say is that it’s fast, beautiful and loaded with potential. I was struck by its speed and responsiveness. In the photo application, for instance, I could race through hundreds of photos in a blur.

Boy is it light
Wired.com The iPad’s really light and thin, weighing only 1.5 pounds and measuring half an inch thick. It was like holding a chubbier iPhone with a prettier face. You can tilt the iPad any direction, even upside down, and the screen will flip to display an upright image.

Great for browsing
Wired.com If you thought the iPhone’s browser was nice, you’ll love the tablet’s version of Safari. It’s been blown up and some of the buttons have been rearranged to better suit a larger screen.

It is just cheap enough
BusinessWeek “At that price, they’ll sell millions,” said Hakim Kriout, a portfolio manager at New York-based Grigsby & Associates, which owns Apple shares. “It’s very, very affordable for what it does. This is going to add a huge revenue stream for Apple.”

Ideal for that novel
Valleywag The silver lining for print media was in books. Jobs showed off an “iBook Store,” an iBook app for e-books, deals with five huge book publishers (Penguin, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Macmillian and Hachette) and a format based on the open ePub spec. Jobs even said that textbooks would be a big part of it.

Could repalce the netbook or e-book reader
Engadget Will it replace my laptop? Never. But it could certainly serve as an able replacement for a netbook or an e-book reader — especially since I think the choice between a $489 Kindle DX and a $499 iPad swings firmly in favor of Apple. Like mostly everyone else on staff, I think the right approach to the iPad is to wait and see; I think the difference for me is that I’m assuming we’ll eventually see something good.

AND THE NOT SO GOOD

Disappointing keyboard
PCWorld Like the rest of the OS, the touch keyboard is a larger version of the iPhone’s. But unlike on the iPhone, the keyboard has no letter magnification when you press a key, and I found I missed this visual cue immensely. And unsurprisingly, it lacks haptic feedback (part of Android phones). You get no physical or visual feedback when you press a key and that’s frustrating if you’re trying to pound out a long e-mail. The experience, oddly, is akin to typing on the native Android OS’ touch keyboard.

Not a new third category
Forrester The question has arisen lately. Is there room for a third category in the middle?” I was sitting on the edge of my seat, ready to hear Jobs demonstrate that new category of device. But he didn’t. Instead, what Apple debuted today was a very nice upgrade to the iPod Touch. Don’t get me wrong. I love the iPod Touch and I was this close to getting one for myself. Now that the iPad has arrived, I can finally get one, the new, big one. But it’s not a new category of device. It doesn’t really revolutionize the 5-6 hours of media we consume the way it could have. It doesn’t even send Amazon’s Kindle running to the hills. In fact, the competitor likely to take the biggest hit from the arrival of the iPad is Apple, in the form of fewer iPod Touches sold and fewer MacBook Airs sold.

No drag and drop
Mashable You won’t be able to drag and drop or share files with other computers like you can with your laptop on your home network. You won’t be able to download a program or music file from the web and play it on the spot. You won’t be able to use any application that doesn’t meet Apple’s strict approval guidelines. It’s closed computing at its most extreme.

Print media let down. No immediate wow content
Valleywag There was not one demo of an i-magazine, just a quick visit to Time.com, complete with a Flash media error (reportedly). No wired version of Wired, no singing verion of Rolling Stone, not even a video-enabled Sports Illustrated. That’s astonishing for such a sexy, high-resolution device that’s repeatedly been billed as a boon to magazine publishers.

Things were nearly as disappointing on the newspaper front. The Times did get five minutes to show off its own tablet app, but, as many others have noticed, it looked like a boring, warmed over version of the existing Times Reader. In fairness, the Times guys only had two or three weeks to work on the app.

A jack of some trades
Engadget What is was, however, was fairly underwhelming. Maybe underwhelming isn’t the right word. Unimaginative might be more accurate.

There’s no question that much of what the iPhone and iPod touch do translates nicely here, and there’s no question that some of the tweaks made to native iPad apps are impressive, but nothing I saw made me sit up and think, “Wow, I need this.”

Big and heavy ideal for three handed person
The New Republic The iPad is by no means a sure bet. It still, after all, is a tablet—fairly big and fairly heavy. Unlike an iPod or an iPhone, you can’t stick an iPad in your pocket or pocketbook. It also looks to be a cumbersome device. The iPad would be ideal for a three-handed person—two hands to hold it and another to manipulate its touchscreen—but most humans, alas, have only a pair of hands. And with a price that starts at $500 and rises to more than $800, the iPad is considerably more expensive than the Kindles and netbooks it will compete with.

The other  – The lingering questions
AllThingsD So, the iPad is more than just a giant iPod Touch or iPhone, even though it looks like one. But the question is, will that be enough to get consumers to shell out for it, and make it part of their daily lives? Or will it be a niche product, like Microsoft’s (MSFT) Tablet PC or Mr. Jobs’ own Apple TV?

Apple’s long awaited and endlessly speculated about tablet computer is called the iPad and CEO Steve Jobs has called it “a magical truly revolutionary product”.

The launch taking place live now in San Francisco comes ahead of a March 1st shipping date. The iPad has just under a 10 inch screen and is ultra thin like many of the rumours had speculated. There is nothing on the Apple site yet so difficult to work much out from this pic.

Jobs said: “Good morning and thank you all for coming today. We want to kick off 2010 with a magical truly revolutionary product today.”

Jobs said that everybody now used a laptop and or a smartphone and that the question was is there room for a third category of device in the middle that was better than both devices.Yes he’s talking about an e-reader or a new kind of e-reader in the form of the iPad, which is kind of reminiscent of those pads they used in Star Trek.

“We’ve got something better, and we’d like to show it to you today. It’s called the iPad.

Jobs said that what this device does was extraordinary allowing users to browse the web with it and manipulate the page with your fingers better he said than a laptop, “way better than a smartphone”, and a “dream to type on”.

The iPad had built in calendar, an address book for your contacts, a maps application and the iTunes Store allowing users to watch TV shows and movies.

“It’s so much more intimate than a laptop and so much more capable than a smartphone with this gorgeous, large display,” Jobs said.

One of the first applications developed for the iPad is one from the New York Times. Martin Nisenholtz, senior vice president, digital operations for The New York Times Company, is at the event talking about the application. Although this got the thumbs down from a Wired.com tweeter who said that the NY Times iPad app was “vastly disappointing. looks like the website with a fancy read later button”. Also there at the launch are MLB and EA Games.

Key iPad features

Apple iPad 0.5 inches thin,
Weighs 1.5 pounds
Display is 9.7 inch (almost 10 inches)
Multi-touch screen
Can run all iPhone apps
Uses Apple’1GHz A4 chip
Wi-Fi

Viral campaigns can generate a ton of weird comments and commentary for a brand.  However, being accused of being devil-worshippers tops them all!

Check out the full conspiracy comment here + see a snapshot below . . .

A quick bit of context: Delib is our sister agency and specialises in providing e-democracy software to government.  We helped them develop a viral campaign aimed at Civil servants in Washington who work in the Open Government scene.  All very niche.  So, as part of this Delib developed up a short documentary called “Open Gov the Movie”, and we seeded around gov + tech influencers.  It worked – we got the right people chatting and engaging . . . well mostly the right people – as evidently there’s a few vocal loonies out there who will always want their insane tuppence worth.

Possibly the scariest part is that Marco Ponce and his conspiracy blog was the 8th biggest (accidental) influencer of the campaign.  Am not sure what that says about the world out there, but I’m scared!

Welcome
to the second installment of eModeration’s weekly social media
round-up. Here you will find a note of all that is intriguing, alarming
or odd in the world of social media, compiled by Kate Williams
(@emodkate).

In this update: Dunbar’s Number; Seesmic jumpstarts Twitter’s stats; and how the Nexus One Nixes Bad Words.

ON FACEBOOK …

Hoorah! Those of you who feel mildly ashamed that your tally of
Facebook Friends isn’t quite what it should be can hold your heads high
once more. Professor Robin Dunbar is the scientist behind the
gloriously-named ‘Dunbar’s Number’ – the theory that the optimum number
in any human group is 150. Most recently he’s been applying his
considerable brain to the study of social networks, and reports that his theory holds true there too:
even if a person has 1500 Facebook friends, they cannot sustain a
meaningful relationship with more than a tenth of them. Go tell your
more popular associates to put that in their popes and smike it.

Brands pricked up their ears last week at the preliminary rollout of Facebook’s Post Insights,
which lets them check the number of hits and the quality of feedback on
individual posts. The fact that Facebook keeps its valuable metrics
firmly clutched to its bosom has long been a source of grumpiness for
brands – and the limited insights offered by this new feature is
unlikely to change that. Still, as Mashable notes, it’s better than a
slap round the head with a wet flannel.

Facebook also rolled out their version of a retweet
last week. Called a ‘Via’, it allows you to republish another user’s
posted links (though oddly not their status updates or photos). Your
friends will see the repost in their News Feeds, inching Facebook
closer to Twitter’s real-time offer.

And that’s the context in which this piece from the Telegraph analyzes
Facebook’s recent privacy changes. Despite Mark Zuckerberg’s recent
assertion that Facebook was responding reactively to a new social norm,
it’s perhaps more realistic to view the move as the latest attempt to
challenge Twitter in the real-time search arena. “When content is
public, Facebook wins”.

More on precisely how Facebook is winning is contained in this useful breakdown
of Facebook’s revenue streams – a handy guide from All Facebook to the
many and varied ways in which the ‘Book makes money, and might make
more in the future.

ON TWITTER …

Astronaut Timothy Creamer last week established an internet connection
from the International Space Station – and began tweeting live from space.
Previously, the crew had to email Houston with their tweets, who would
then post them to Twitter. The historic first direct post read: “We r
now LIVE tweeting from the International Space Station – the 1st live
tweet from Space! More soon, send your ?s”. Truly, a giant tweet for
mankind.

Back here on earth, things are hotting up for Twitter as they launch location-based trending topics.
With Facebook crowding in on Twitter’s lead in real-time, the
microblogging service appear to be shifting focus to location-aware
services, with a view to establishing a dominant position in all things
local. A full rollout is promised next week, although the roster of
locations is still pretty limited – 15 US cities and a smattering of
global metropoles. But location-sharing is set to be the Top Tech Trend
of 2010 (say it fast) – and for Twitter, there is much to play for.

Meanwhile, Twitter’s stuttering growth might get a jumpstart from Seesmic,
who’ve just launched a new app they’re calling Seesmic Look. The idea
is to hook in users who don’t have a whole lot to say themselves, but
are nevertheless interested in seeing what the various celebs, brands
and media outlets which crowd the microblogging service are chattering
about. The new interface hopes to present Twitter as an entertainment
experience – you judge its chances of success for yourselves, right
here.

Elsewhere Dick Costolo, Twitter’s COO, confirmed that the microblogging company won’t be making an initial public offering
(IPO) in 2010. Instead, he anticipates revenue growth from a new
advertising platform, commercial analytics features for brands – and
“at least” ten more distribution deals.

ON GOOGLE …

Hillary Clinton’s recent speech – which called on China to change its
policy of internet censorship and conduct a full investigation into the
recent attack on Google – has produced a grouchy response
from the Chinese foreign ministry. They say that the criticism is
“contrary to the facts and is harmful to China-US relations” and urge
the US to “cease using so-called internet freedom to make groundless
accusations against China.”

And in related and not entirely unpredictable news, Google announced that they were postponing the launch
of a web- and email-enabled smartphone which they’d been developing
with the mobile carrier China Unicom, amidst uncertainty as to whether
these Google services will be available there for very much longer.

No matter – Google has outrun the recession in spectacular style, with an astonishing 54% increase in profits
last year, bringing their total profit to $6.52bn (£4.02bn). They
promise massive investment this year to ensure that their domination of
the search space continues unhampered – a recent Bellwether marketing
report found that spend on search has increased by 11.5% in the last
quarter.

Finally – and a tad ironically given Google’s recent stand on
censorship – it emerged that the Nexus One’s speech-to-text function
stubbornly refuses to let you swear.
No matter how potty-mouthed the rant, the best the phone can muster is
a stream of ###s. Reassuringly, Google claim they do not wish to
curtail our cussing rights, but to prevent smatterings of Anglo-Saxon
vernacular from mistakenly appearing in users’ transcription – a strong
possibility given the relative newness of voice-recognition technology.

BRANDS GET SOCIAL …

Santander has developed a mobile and Facebook puzzle game
through which to push its rebrand of Abbey and Bradford & Bingley
building societies. The game also allows users to share their scores
via Facebook and Twitter, and is being distributed via a pre-existing
Santander Students Facebook Page which already has 24,000 fans.

Black & Decker marks its 100th birthday with a microsite which looks back on the history of the brand, as well as allowing employees and customers to share their Black & Decker-based memories.

The British Museum has partnered with the BBC to launch a digital museum of objects which relate the history of the world
. The site also allows the public to upload photos and stories of
objects which they believe expand our understanding of history.

Red Bull has expanded its space
in Sony’s PlayStation Home, with a Flugtag area which allows users to
fly some of the DIY aircraft built by crash enthusiasts over the past 2
decades – as well as an area which features the company’s Illume sports
competition.

Nestle’s Toll House virtual cookies campaign was a resounding success,
with 1.1m of the delightfully calorie-free virtual goods sent by
Facebook users. With each cookie sent, an interactive frame customized
with their photos appeared in users’ news feed. Friends could then
upload their own photos as the campaign widened.

SOCIAL STATS …

Nielsen Online report that global internet users spent an average of 5½ hours on social networking sites
last month – up by a stonking 82% on the previous year and expanding
numbers by a full 50%, from 211 million to 307 million. Surprisingly,
Australia takes the gold when it comes to time spent, putting in an
impressive 6 hours 52 minutes and comfortably trouncing the US with
6:09, and the UK with 6:08.

And the Retail Advertising and Marketing Association (RAMA) reports that women with children at home
are more likely to use Facebook (60.3%), MySpace (42.4%) and Twitter
(16.5%) than average adults (50.2%, 34.4%, 15.0%, respectively). What’s
more, a whopping 15.3% maintain their own blog (really?). The report warns that brands which fail to engage with mothers via social media are missing out.

Which sparkling stats explain why 66% of marketers plan to invest
in social media marketing over the coming year, according to Alterian’s
latest study. 36% of them will also be investing in monitoring and
analysis tools.

Meanwhile, digital agencies grew more than any other marketing sector in 2009, with the top 30 agencies reporting revenue growth of 18%, per a report from Kingston Smith WI.

ON MOBILE …

Revenue from mobile applications will explode over the next few years,
according to a new report from Gartner – up 60% from the $4.2 billion
spent in 2009, to $6.8 billion in 2010. By 2013, mobile apps will
produce nearly $30 billion in revenue – quadrupling 2010 figures.

The Labour Party is about to launch its first iPhone app,
which will allow supporters to access party events searchable by
postcode, and to rally support by canvassing potential voters by phone.

Finally, Apple has moved to squash one of the more extreme attempts to
garner info on their upcoming tablet, which is due to be revealed on
27th January. The Valleywag blog had offered a substantial reward
for pics and video (between $10,000 and $50,000 no less) of Apple’s
eagerly awaited touchscreen computer – but a recent lawyers’ letter to
the blog said “your company crossed the line by offering a bounty for
the theft of Apple’s trade secrets. Such an offer is illegal and Apple
insists that you immediately discontinue the scavenger Hunt.”

That’s all folks!

 Welcome
to eModeration’s round-up of all that is intriguing, alarming or odd in
the world of social media, compiled by Kate Williams (@emodkate).

In this update: baby-whispering the iPhone way; the end of free news; and Katie Price’s Twitter woes.

THE HEADLINES …

Amidst the many stories of desperation and despair in Haiti come some
reassuring ones of astonishing heroism, and others of great luck.
Included in the latter category is this one concerning US citizen Dan
Woolley, who believes his iPhone saved his life.
Dan was trapped in the rubble following the collapse of the Hotel
Montana, Port-au-Prince – but used a downloaded medical app to
self-diagnose and treat his injuries, and the iPhone’s camera to map
his location before moving to a safer place. Woolley was eventually
rescued 65 hours after the quake hit.

Bill Gates joined Twitter this week – and promptly hoovered up 100,000 followers
in eight hours, prompting comparisons to the near-vertical slant of
Oprah’s follower stats at the beginning of her Twitter career. So –
what prompted multi-billionaire Gates to finally jump in after such a
long and noble resistance to Twitter’s siren call? Ah – in
MicrosoftWorld, everything happens for a reason, and it soon emerged that Mr Gates had a website to promote.

Gosh, it’s tough being a politico in a digital world. The Conservatives
must be wondering quite why they dropped £500,000 on their recent ad
campaign, when MyDavidCameron.com can so swiftly subvert it with user-generated comedy.

In a case which pretty much defines the expression ‘taking a
sledgehammer to crack a nut’, Paul Chambers – who tweeted a jokey
threat to blow Doncaster’s Robin Hood airport ‘sky high’ if their
service didn’t improve – found himself arrested on terrorism charges
and questioned for seven long hours. He’s had his computer, iPhone and
laptop confiscated, and has been suspended from his job – a stark
reminder, if we needed it, of the need to be circumspect in what we put
Out There.

According to the Telegraph, Google is investigating the possibility that the recent hacks on their Chinese site were an inside job.
The attacks, which targeted the email accounts of human rights
activists, prompted the search giant to announce that they were closing
their Chinese operation – though Google declined to confirm that they
were investigating their own employees.

Elsewhere, Chinese mobile providers have been told to monitor their customers’ text messages for “illegal or unhealthy content” – and to suspend the service of those who use tripwire keywords.

Virgin Media has begun using Deep Packet Inspection to track down users
who are illegally downloading content. They’re not yet monitoring
individual users, but the technology can distinguish between the
downloading of family pics and a music album – and will identify the
artist and title if it finds the latter.

Meanwhile, Microsoft has agreed to entirely delete users’ IP addresses after six months, following pressure from privacy groups – till now they’d merely been ‘anonymising’ them.

THE LOWDOWN …

I’m uncertain how to break this to you – perhaps it’s best just to
blurt it out and get it over with: Katie Price (aka glamour model
Jordan) might be leaving Twitter.
A ‘close’ source says that, though KP has many kind messages “from true
fans who look up to her”, the haterz are getting her down. Deep breaths
now – stiff upper lip and all that.

Got a yen to retrain? Fancy a legal career? Got an iPhone? Got a thousand bucks? There’s an app for that.

If we were to write a list of things that it would be a very poor idea
to share on Facebook, a photo of one’s 6-month-old with an (albeit
unlit) cigarette in his mouth would be hovering somewhere in the top 5,
don’t you agree? Rebecca Davey of Southend was this week investigated
by Essex police for doing precisely that – but thankfully officers found that it was a case of not-fully-thinking-things-through, rather than anything more sinister.

Good lord – an iPhone app to help you decipher your baby’s cries.
Apparently all babies have five distinctive cries which tell us if they
are hungry, annoyed, tired, stressed or bored. Impressive – but I can’t
squash the thought that an app to translate years 13-to-18 would
rapidly gain more traction.

Meanwhile, US candy brand “Sweethearts” (the equivalent of Lovehearts
for we Brits) has begun printing a new message on its sweeties: “Tweet me”. Now why does that cause an involuntary shiver in my own maternal heart?

Warning to UK readers – although this ‘No Pants Subway Ride’ viral is very funny, I predict you will be mildly disappointed by its failure to live up to the promise of its title.

IN OTHER NEWS …

Britain is a dreadful laggard
in the global broadband speed stakes – ranking a measly 26th on the
world’s list with an average download speed of just 3.5 Mbps, according
to Akamia’s most recent ‘The State of the Internet’ report. South Korea
and Japan seize the international laurels with a whopping 14.6MB and
7.9MB respectively, whilst in Europe Sweden is king, with an average
speed of 5.7MB.

Campaigning children’s charity Beatbullying is to launch a cinema campaign to showcase its powerful anti-bullying ad,
after Clearcast, the regulators of TV commercials, deemed it too
graphic for TV. The M&C Saatchi ad, which features a girl sewing
her mouth shut and the strapline ‘You can speak out now’ – promotes the
website Cybermentors.org.uk, and will appear on YouTube, billboards and
in schools, as well as in the 12-rated cinema campaign.

All eyes are swivelled Applewards this week, after the great and the good of the tech world received an invite
to a 27th January ‘event’. Speculation that Apple is about to launch
their tablet reached fever pitch – Apple Insider shows us what it might look like, and the Guardian gives an excellent breakdown of what it might do.

Despite the President’s Massachussett woes, Obama’s social media team
continue to build upon their reputation as the hippest to the hop with a Whitehouse iPhone app, which will stream the President’s upcoming State of the Union address live to users.

YouTube has announced that it’s jumping aboard the indie Sundance filmfest to test the concept of YouTube rentals
out. The experiment will offer five of this year’s entries, and will
last only as long as the festival – though the video portal says it
will also offer a “small collection of rental videos … across different
industries, including health and education” once the Utah movie
showcase has ended.

Tweens and teens manage to squish a mammoth 11 hours of media content
into the not-inconsiderable 7 and a half hours a day that they spend
‘connected’. They do it by multi-tasking – and the figures don’t even
include time spent texting, or on the phone.

According to figures from The Anchor Intelligence network, one in every four ad clicks in the last quarter of 2009 was a click fraud attempt – up nearly 40% on the previous year.

The New York Times – America’s most popular online news source – today
announced that their content will no longer be free. With ad and print
sales dwindling, the illustrious newspaper company will soon put a ‘metered’ paywall
around its content – a decision which is widely seen as heralding the
end of free online journalism. The Guardian offers an explanation of
how the metered approach would work, here.

Finally, if proof were needed that virtual goods now sit at the very
heart of the social media mainstream, here is news from Engage Digital
Media that investment in 87 virtual goods-related companies topped $1.38 billion last year – doubling the previous years figures.

That’s all folks!

Long awaited changes at the top of McCann. Congrats are due to Nick Brien for being at the front of the jostling queue to take over from the immutable John Dooner, who has finally announced his retirement after 40 years in the business. 

Will Nick Brien ring the changes at McCann? Undoubtedly. As Dooner is famously and irreverently quoted, ‘we don’t stab you in the back, we stab you in the front.‘ As anyone who’s been in charge of a McCann agency around the world will tell you, that’s not entirely true. There’s reportedly more metaphorical stabbing going on than in the massacre sequences from La Reine Margot, as in every large network. So there’s some pretty good armour required to get to the top and managing the disparate empires across the group will represent a real challenge. The truth is probably more simple. As with all the networks, big client losses and client cutbacks have decimated the global position. And at impending results time, sweeteners are needed to turn the lemons into lemonade. New management is a tried and tested additive, and it’s actually a positive thing to see someone from within promoted.

It’s a sound choice. Clients right now are looking for flexibility and ideas, rather than just advertising distribution, and integrating Client business requirements across P&Ls is often more expensive than necessary, something that hasn’t escaped the notice of procurement people. In Nick’s case, the accusation of ‘distance’ from Clients, often levelled at ‘global’ people wouldn’t be true. He’s made some moves to bring new senior people, and he’s made good efforts to provide ROI intelligence around media. I liked the idea of appointing Matt Freeman (formerly CEO of Adweek’s agency of the year Tribal DDB). It’s a good message – more senior people really need to understand digital consumption and communication.

It also takes time to change these agency business models pertinent to shifts in consumer behaviour. Consumers are less influenced by advertising in the buying process, preferring instead to rely on the wisdom of their own crowds, friends and connections. This explains the ‘movements’ rather than ‘ad campaigns’ so favoured in speeches by social media gurus. ‘Brand conversation’ has entered the litany, as Forrester’s technographics ladder update this week refers, and the buying points are far more complex. Online retail is continuing to grow, and increasing access to mobile web is giving more people opportunity to see impartial reviews at the point of purchase. Joining all this up is no mean feat for the marketing department, let alone for the agencies. Success in this digital world (er, the normal world) requires an ability to walk the new hard yards of creativity, media and interactivity. It’ll be interesting to see whether globalised advertising supply can deliver convincingly here, without more detailed change in purpose, structure, capability and attitude.