eModeration’s Social Media Round-Up #30
Welcome to eModeration’s round-up of all that is intriguing,
alarming or odd in the world of social media, compiled by Kate
Williams. For more social media snippets, follow her on @emodkate – or
for general twittery, @KateVWilliams.
This week: Facebook’s humour deficit; apocalypse and anomie with Chatroulette; and ‘C’ for ‘Counter-Intuitive’.
The social web is quite a-flutter with talk of Chatroulette
– the apocalyptically-named video chat-site which arbitrarily pairs
strangers for what might, one minute, be urbane oenophiliac debate; the
next, naked frat-chat – according to the whim of each party.
If, like me, you are inclined to doom-mongering and despair, the site
will seem the very definition of post-cultural atomisation and anomie.
Nevertheless Chatroulette, created just three months ago by a Russian
seventeen-year-old, is daily gaining thousands of users – and a
considerable media profile.
The Conservatives appeared last week to have sleep-walked into a second viral nightmare: the strap-line of their latest campaign seemed to invite the kind of cheerfully-profane customisation which propelled mydavidcameron.com
to instant virality in January. And sure enough, “#IvenevervotedTory” -
followed by punchlines of varying hilarity – was within the hour a
Twitter trending topic. But hold on just a Tory minute – another Conservative marketing #fail … or a cunning stroke of viral genius?
Meanwhile Brand Republic reports
that, as the general election approaches, Labour is increasingly
focused on social media. They’re using real-time social network
monitoring to fine-tune their campaign, while candidates and
campaign-organizers have been new-media-trained to within an inch of
their lives.
Google’s social-media week, on the other hand, has been something of a Curate’s Egg.
Despite the scramble to fix
Buzz’s most gaping privacy holes – namely the ‘auto-follow’ feature
which allowed users to see who else their contacts were emailing – The Guardian
reports that a privacy group has filed a complaint with the Federal
Trade Commission. The group demand that Google make the entire service
opt-in only – and they’re jolly cross that the onus is still on each
user to block followers thrown up by Google’s revised ‘auto-suggest’
feature.
From another corner of the Googleverse comes an item to which the only
reasonable response is a violent shake of the laptop to check it’s not
broken. The search monster has announced that it has officially become an energy-provider.
Yes! Just like British Gas and nPower. While it’s tempting to imagine
that this story concerns the monetization of Buzz’s
potentially-limitless supplies of hot air, I must reluctantly report
that this is, in fact, a quite-difficult-to-understand story about
Google’s plans to go carbon-neutral, by selling excess power back to
the national grid.
And talking of renewable energy and vast internet behemoths, Facebook
have sparked a storm of protest over plans to power a brand-new
data-centre with old-skule coal. By Monday, following criticism of its
power plans by Greenpeace in the Huffington Post, Change.org had harnessed a cool 5740 signatures urging The ‘Book to go green.
The Israeli Embassy lobbed a ball onto the social media court this week – with debatable success.
In a whimsical play on the tennis-gear sported by the alleged Mossad
assassins of a senior Hamas Commander in Dubai last week, the embassy
tweeted “you heard it here first: Israeli tennis player carries out hit
on #Dubai target”. The tweet – which displays a remarkable (though
perhaps unwarranted) confidence in the wisdom of combining Twitter,
puns, and generally frowned-upon death-squads – in fact links to a
story about the Israeli team’s success in a recent Dubai tennis
tournament.
Elsewhere, Facebook has been evincing a somewhat restricted capacity
to take a joke. The Argentinian author of a satirical book on the
world’s favourite social network found that his own Facebook profile –
and a 30,000-strong fan page – had suddenly and mysteriously gone
‘pouf!’. Uproar in the South American press followed, but it seems that
the profile was only restored when Venturebeat picked up the story, a
full month later. The book’s promo video (mildly racy – we’re talking
Argentina, after all) can still be seen here, on YouTube.
The hack attacks at the heart of Google’s ongoing Chinese tribulations have been traced back to two educational facilities
in mainland China, reports the New York Times. The Chinese authorities
– who last week claimed already to have identified and shut down an
entirely different set of hackers – have denied all knowledge. If
you’re intrigued by the murky world of Chinese hackery, which differs
substantially from its Western counterpart, the Wall Street Journal offers an absorbing snapshot.
The eminently-social Robin Hood Tax
campaign – created by ‘Four Weddings’ director Richard Curtis, to
promote a Tobin tax on all banking transactions – appeared to have
suffered a setback last week, when ‘No’ votes whooshed dramatically
from 1400 to 6000 in five minutes. Upon close examination however, it
emerged that most of the Anti’s had come via the servers of monolithic
investment institution Goldman Sachs: the silly-billies had failed to
disguise their IP.
Online viewers of Tiger Woods’s ‘apology’ last week witnessed what may well prove to be a turning-point
in YouTube’s history. The golfer’s much-mocked mea culpa – the cause of
near-universal buttock-clenching, and widespread
watching-from-between-fingers – was a strategic experiment in live streaming-video.
The addition of the real-time service is thought by many to be the
logical next-step for YouTube, as internet TV-enabled devices
increasingly squeeze traditional cable and satellite.
Scene 1: Airline interior. In line with his employers’ questionable
policy of forcing the wide-of-beam to buy two seats, a flight attendant
escorts a humiliated passenger to the exit. Scene 2: Oh no! – the
overweight passenger is revealed to be none other than Kevin Smith,
alt-Hollywood director and proud owner of a Twitter-following
approaching two million. “What are the chances, eh? What are the
chances?”, as our beloved Harry Hill might say.
Poor Gordon Lightfoot. An Ottowan tweeter – perhaps realising that all Canadian news would be Olympics-themed for, like, ever – appears to have flipped, and completely invented
the death of the Ontario-born singer-songwriter. The news tore through
the Twittersphere, so you’ll no doubt be relieved to hear that the
sonorously-timbred composer of ‘Sundown’ is alive and well, and
consoling himself with the spike in his airplay.
After many, many years of research, engineers at Stanford University have produced electricity-generating fabrics
which could act as chargers for mobile devices whilst their wearers are
on the move. Had they asked, I might have mentioned that my wardrobe of
bri-nylon garments produces similar results – but they didn’t. Ach,
this relentless pursuit of progress.
In the latest – but, we’re quite certain, not the last – in our
tactfully-named “File Under ‘C’ for Counter-Intuitive” series, Mattel
is launching a dog collar
which will post random Twitter updates whenever your canine companion
makes a move. Heart-warming examples include “I bark because I miss
you. There, I said it. Now hurry home.” No, nothing further, m’lud.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has announced that they’re developing their own virtual world
for use both as a collaborative tool, and for training and simulation.
To which we say, ‘Farmville not good enough for you, huh?’.
Facebook and Paypal have announced the cessation of hostilities:
in a move which is clearly designed with social gamers, and the 70% of
Facebook users who live outside the US, in mind, users will now be able
to purchase Facebook Credits using Paypal. Till now it had been thought
that the ‘Book was pitching its Credits service in direct competition
to its long-established rival.
Hulu’s streaming video service will be available on the iPad (hoorah!) for an undisclosed fee (boo!). CNET reports
that the Hulu’s three main backers favour an arrangement where a paid
mobile service supports a free desktop service – and surveys the
bewildering array of tech and legal decisions required to make the plan
a reality.
And in a further Hulu hoo-ha, The Telegraph
reports that the UK launch-date is retreating once again (hiss!). This
time the delay is due to a combination of management-upheaval at ITV,
and the difficulty of agreeing terms with Channel 4 and Five, whereby
Hulu would sell ad inventory round content.
Last week the BBC launched a roster of free apps which will allow
mobile devices to access its news and sport services – to the dismay of
the Newspaper Publishers Association, which immediately declared that
the apps were counter-competitive.
Finally, Google CEO Eric Schmidt says a mammoth shift of ad revenue
from the fixed web to mobile platforms is inevitable, reports
Netimperative. Schmidt predicts something as game-changing as the
transfer of ad-spend from print to the net, and stresses that marketers
already know far more about mobile users: ”For a start, we know where
they are.”
That’s all folks!
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