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: Nestle’s Facebook Furore; Evan Williams’ and Gaga; The Bing Thing in China; and social media in the loo.

Plus: we’d still like feedback on what you think of the updates: tweet
Yay! or Boo! to @emodkate. It’ll take ten seconds, promise.

THE HEADLINES …

After Twitter’s damp squib
(Squitter?) of a keynote at SXSW on Monday, CEO Evan Williams gamely
tried to claw back some goodwill from the grumbling hordes by
announcing that he would take ten questions from the Twittersphere. The
quality of the cross-examination varied wildly (“What’s your favourite
bourbon?”) – but the exchanges did throw up a few golden nuggets,
including an insight into the thinking behind new Twitter service
@anywhere; a definitive answer to the question “will Twitter be sold or
merged in the next 2 years?” (“No”); and a brief but tantalising
insight into the interior landscape of a thirty-something tech whizz
(“What am I thinking right now? Lady Gaga.”) Mashable catalogues the Qs and unpicks the As.

Amid growing speculation that Google is on the verge of quitting China, the company has received a letter
purporting to come from its Chinese advertising vendors. The note
demands to know whether the company is staying or going – and financial
compensation if the answer is “um, going.” Predictably, the origins of
the letter are murky, with Associated Press reporting claims that it
was signed by only one firm, who then fraudulently added the names of
26 others.

It seems Microsoft is listening intently to Google’s Chinese whispers:
chief research and strategy honcho Craig Mundie this week added his
voice to that of boss Bill Gates, who recently appeared to back Team
China by criticising Google’s behaviour in the PRC. Could this all be
[drumroll] .. a Bing Thing? The Wall Street Journal speculates that Microsoft is rubbing its hands at the big space in search, which will open up if Google leaves China.

Meanwhile, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey announced that the company’s developers are cracking on with a workaround
for users in China, where the microblogging service is blocked. In
response to Chinese artist and regime critic Ai Weiwei, who’d demanded
“a clear answer, yes or no?” to the question of whether Chinese users
would ever have a Chinese-language registration page, Dorsey responded
with a “Yes” – though he qualified that with a more wibbly “it’s just a
matter of time”, and admitted that he’d had no idea that the Chinese
authorities had blocked the site till three weeks earlier.

No-one could say Facebook’s trajectory hasn’t been stratospheric (well,
they could, but they’d be wrong). But – sticking with the Chinese theme
for just a moment longer – some new figures
throw Facebook’s success into sharp relief. Chinese internet megazord
Tencent, whose reach encompasses IM, social networks, and mobile, just
posted 2009 revenues of an astounding $1.8 billion: that’s three times
the Book’s estimated 2009 takings. What’s more – ponder this, Facebook
- over 75% of Tencent’s revenues came from virtual-goods related
services, according to Venturebeat.

Growing rumblings of dissent
over the Digital Economy Bill, which many feel is being rushed through
parliament with indecent haste. The bill, regarded as both draconian
and ill-conceived by entities as diverse as TalkTalk and the British
Library, has drawn the fire of online democracy group 38Degrees; their service lets individuals contact their MP to demand that the bill is properly debated, or abandoned.

THE LOWDOWN …

A scabrous new US tech-based comedy
series is being developed, you say? A “savage satire centring on a
fictional Silicon Valley CEO whose ego is a study in power and greed”?
Who on earth could it possibly
be based upon? The show is being developed by Twitter legend (SPOILER
ALERT) @FakeSteveJobs and Borat director Larry Charles, who declared,
with characteristic underplay, “we are attempting nothing less than a
modern Citizen Kane.”

Dude, those aren’t Friends, they’re Feds! If you are of a criminal bent
and active in the social media space, all may not be quite as it seems:
it emerged this week
that U.S. law enforcement agents have taken to social networking like
ducks to water and are actively using it to gather evidence.

Freaky times for the owners of over a hundred cars whose horns suddenly
began relentlessly honking – and wouldn’t stop till the batteries were
removed. Wired reports
that a disgruntled employee had hacked into the remote
vehicle-immobilisation system operated by a car dealership to nudge
recalcitrant hire-purchasers who fall behind with their payments. Which
is, in and of itself, a rather creeptastic infobyte, no?

When a company which is all about getting us connected warns that we’re in danger of developing some serious social media ‘issues’, you gotta sit up and listen.
A new survey by Retrevo found that we can barely take a break from
social sites to – erm, powder our noses or – ahem – nurture our
relationships. 48% of those surveyed checked their networks upon
waking, and 24% of under-25s are happy to receive messages whilst
(shall we say) clearing their inbox …

Much glee and retrospective smugness from those who couldn’t attend
SXSWi due to “previous engagements”, as a flurry of posts with titles
like ‘Why SXSW Sucks’
pinged round the blogosphere. Seems that this year, creatives,
start-ups and developers are being crowded out by yer actual social
media users – many of whom like to party while uncouthly ogling Tech
Slebs. As one commenter put it: “The web is no longer the domain of the
nerd, it’s the domain of the internet-enabled socialite as well.”

The Guardian reports a sudden brake
on what was all set to be the most expensive domain-name auction in
history: the owner of sex.com has been forced unexpectedly into
bankruptcy by a major creditor, and has pulled out at the last minute.

APPLE JUICE …

Squeal! Keen-eyed observers at Patently Apple report that the company has filed a patent on a social app for the iPhone.
The app is called iGroups, and lets users geo-connect, and exchange
info without throwing privacy to the wind. If you are au fait with this
sort of thing, you might wish to peruse the detailed patent docs here.

Meanwhile, conflicting estimates of the numbers of iPad pre-sales: though most predict buoyant stats, some question whether the high ‘first-hours’ figures were actually sustained. In the confusion, though, one intriguing snippet
caught our eye – despite predictions, wi-fi-only presales outscale the
(considerably) more expensive 3G option by 69% to 31%. Seems even
Apple’s famously well-cushioned demographic is feeling the pinch.

A new report by Flurry says that the iPhone is now dramatically outpacing
Facebook as an apps platform. The latter lags despondently, with a mere
60,000 – while Apple now boasts 140,000 different apps, and a
mind-boggling 58 new companies launching apps each day.

NEWSBYTES …

A bumpy end to a bumpy week for Nestle:  first it had YouTube take down Greenpeace’s viral,
which hauled the company over the coals for alleged destruction of the
Indonesian rainforest; Now, the argy-bargy has spread to its Facebook Fan Page,
where – to be frank – things are not going too well.  Whilst it’s
obviously the right thing to engage in conversation with your critics,
perhaps Nestle should provide some training for its community managers?
@blaisegv has helpfully provided them with excellent article from Lisa
Barone: When To Respond To Negative Reviews (and not).

And the mobile app market as a whole is expanding at an explosive rate, according to a new study
for app-developer GetJar. App downloads, which hovered at a fairly
impressive 7 billion in 2009, are predicted to shoot towards an almost
inconceivable 50 billion by 2012 – by which time the apps market will
worth a predicted $17.5 billion. Says GetJar CEO Ilja Laurs with grim
satisfaction: “Mobile devices will kill the desktop.”

Lots of hoo-ha
about a new set of Compete figures, which showed hefty drops in traffic
to all social networks last month – Twitter’s, for example, fell by
around 9%. After much goatee-scratching from industry analysts, a lone
commenter on the Guardian site pointed out that February was, like, a
shorter month than the others? By, erm, around 9%?

And brands who’re active on both Twitter and Facebook can give themselves a manly pat on the back:
seems we’re 51% more likely to buy from brands we follow on Facebook
(though possibly not Nestle – see above), rising to an impressive 67%
for those we follow on Twitter. We’re also 79% more likely to recommend
our Twitter brand-follows to a friend, versus 60% for Facebook.


On the other hand – and despite the constant stream of stories
heralding Twitter as the new News – it seems we’re considerably more
likely to get our info from Google and Facebook, according to these figures from Hitwise.

Big TV events like the Oscars and the Superbowl are generating more simul-surfing than ever: 14.5% of Superbowl users were online while viewing,
compared with 12.8% a year ago, while the number of Oscar fans who did
so was up from 8.7% to 13.3%. Facebook, Google and Yahoo were the most
popular destinations by a long chalk.

The possibility of tax breaks for games developers was hurriedly resuscitated this week: according to the Telegraph,
Minister for Digital Britain Stephen Timms announced to games companies
that he was “looking at the industry in a new way”. Fancy!

Earlier this week there were reports that Facebook was ‘considering’
installing a panic button to allow children to report suspicious
interactions on the site, following a ‘frank exchange of views’ during
a meeting with the Home Secretary Alan Johnson. But the social
networking giant subsequently announced
that it was ruling that option out, in favour of developing its own
existing safety structures – and that while the button might be
effective ‘for other sites’, it would not work on Facebook.

The US Federal Trade Commission declared that consumer privacy
was most definitely their business this week, with commissioner Pamela
Jones Harbour decrying Google’s “irresponsible conduct” during the Buzz
debacle as an example of corporate carelessness with personal privacy.
“Unlike a lot of tech products, consumer privacy cannot be run in
beta,” she said, adding that the FTC is perfectly prepared to step in
to prevent privacy laws being violated.

UNDER THE GAVEL …

A US judge has approved a controversial $9.5 million
settlement to a class action lawsuit against Facebook’s famously
privacy-busting Beacon system – despite complaints from campaigners.
The deal requires Facebook to establish a ‘Digital Trust Fund’ to
finance research into online privacy – but privacy protestors argue
that giving Facebook a seat on the board means the fund will be a mere
publicity-generating gimmick.

What promises to be the most excruciatingly serpentine copyright case
for – well, months – kicked off this week, as Viacom and YouTube set
out their cases in the suit that the former is bringing against the
latter. Essentially, Viacom claims that YouTube encouraged file-sharing
like Napster, and YouTube says they didn’t. That’s possibly all you
will need (or want) to know till the case is concluded – but there is
an excellent plain-English breakdown by Peter Kafka on All Things Digital, if you are inclined to investigate further.

That’s all folks!

As a communication professional, I often think about mediums that are available to tell stories, usually involving digital media and other high-tech tools, but this week I visited the Victoria and Albert Museum to view a very old fashioned medium for telling stories — quilts. Being American, the patchwork fabric of quilts is something my mother has made over the years for our family, painstakingly piecing together bits of fabrics and spending hours putting needle to cloth to create intricate patterns, with every stitch attached with love and stories, and so the exhibition appeals to me.

In the first exhibition of its kind in the UK, Quilts 1700-2010 at the V&A, which runs until July 4, shows examples from 300 years of practice of the craft, displaying quilts from the luxurious palaces to the most humble bed covers. On view are quilts made for lovers, but also quilts made in wartime and quilts constructed by prisoners. The exhibit also includes modern quilts, including Tracey Emin’s To Meet My Past, a bed filled with a collage of quilts, created in 2002.

Observing the collection, along with blogger friend Helen Keegan who has a passion for sewing, we appreciated seeing the results of endless hours of work, and felt strongly that in a world that is always warp-speed, the act of quilting is a chance to let time stand still for awhile and reflect. There seems to be a movement bubbling, that shows people are increasingly seeing value in historic crafts. On BBC 2, Monty Don is celebrating and demonstrating traditional crafts in his programme Mastercrafts and the popular Make Lounge offers to teach crafts in workshops. Websites like Etsy and Craftster attract millions of visitors to buy and get craft items and tips, and the green movement promotes DIY methods to use craft techniques to create new, useful items such as clothes, on websites such as WeAllReuse.com.

The V&A’s Quilts exhibition is timely and on-trend for capturing the DIY mood that so many are feeling, and displaying the talent and work of our ancestors, along with the stories attached. Some of the stories these quilts tell:

-The Rjah Quilt (1841) origniates from Austraila and was created by women convicts aboard the ship HMS Rajah as they sailed from Woolwich to Van Diemen’s Land using sewing provisions donated by Elizabeth Fry’s social reform initiative.

-The HMP Wandsworth Quilt (2009) has been designed and created for the exhibition by the all-male quilting group in HMP Wandsworth.

-At the End of the Day by Natasha Kerr (2007) is an evocative tribute to the artist’s grandfather who was interned in WWII and released to carry out essential hospital work.

The Quilts exhibition includes a number of events that you can find out about here.

Considering quilting something,

-Lisa

I’ve been banging on for ages about how the
model of online advertising (where ads are served dynamically) will eventually apply to all
media, as the technology gradually enables it. And just like that, the future
according to Sky is here.

It’s called “Addressable” TV. Meaning Sky can send a personalised TV commercial to an individual subscriber.

Sky, as you’ll all know, has been
gradually collecting data for marketing purposes for many years. They’ve done, run, bought and collated more surveys than you can shake a stick at. From a data
geek perspective, it’s impressive. 
Now it’s possible to collect data from individual subscribers, build
profiles, and tailor messages to individual homes. What you watch, what you skip, what you favourite is grist
to the Sky data mill.

Jeremy Tester from Sky Media described the
plans at this Thinkbox seminar as a work in progress, but the vision is simple. Sooner rather than later,
TV ads will be personalised. And this is applicable to saved content too. Record a show to watch later, the theory goes, and ads can be served into that show
that are different to those output live. Amazing stuff.

But given the TV advertising model is so mass
audience driven, how quickly will advertisers take this personal
marketing approach to heart? It’s baffled the agency groups for years. I reckon media agencies will need to adopt new skills to take advantage of the addressable opportunities, specifically adopting more specialised database and analytics understanding into research teams.

The other point is that ads, no matter how personalised, still need to be engaging. (That old junk mail ‘addressable’ chestnut dear Mr MrS A nCn hasn’t gone away, despite my efforts to get off as many marketing databases as possible. It not actually personal, it’s insulting.) Because being personal also means thinking about being comfortable, and relevant, and ideally, fun. But then maybe that’s just me.

Follow me on twitter

Listening to Daniel Ek from Spotify today @ SXSW’s closing keynote was interesting.  Not so much interesting for what he said, but more for what he didn’t say and what the Twitter back chat was saying instead.

For the CEO of an immensely popular and *successful* tech start-up, Ek didn’t look 100% happy.  In fact, he looked 99% worried.  Even when the crowd whooped and clapped at the new Spotify product demo, and chat of new wonder-features, Ek and his bald head still frowned his Nordic frown.

And the underlying reason for this frown seems to be the Spotify business model, and its key dependency on music labels and publishers.  Spotify have done a pretty good and swift job of partnering the European music industry, however they’re having a much tougher task convincing the US industry to sign on the dotted line.

And I think the shrewder tougher talking US musos may be on to something, as whilst Spotify’s founder was ducking questions from the SXSW crowd about the details of revenue share, there was a strong amount of Twitter backchat about the real extent of Spotify’s  revenue opportunities.  The most interesting of which came from @castig who pointed out that Lady Gaga had been paid only $167 for 1 million plays of her tunes.

The Lady Gaga stat begs the question of is it really that beneficial for music labels to back Spotify.  And if music labels pull out then no matter how great Spotify’s app technology is, then Spotify will crumble – which is maybe explains why Ek looked so worried . . .

 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: Chaps, we need feedback! Twice-weekly we slave over a hot
keyboard without a clue what you, our beloved readers, think of our
round-ups – so waddya reckon? Are we too long, too short, or just
right? What about the news that we cover – is there an area we’re
missing that you’d like to hear more about? If you are an opinionated
type, and would care to share your thoughts with us, we would love to
hear from you: please do post comments below – or tweet me @emodkate.

ON GOOGLE …

Lawks – relations between Apple and Google have recently resembled an
imploding celebrity marriage: one knows one’s interest is prurient, but
somehow one can’t bear to look away. One minute they’re auctioning the
wedding photos in a gush of undying love; the next, Team Jobs and Team
Schmidt are briefing against one another amidst a frenzy of toxic
recrimination, allegations of dysfunction, and bilious regret.

Last month, Apple launched a patent-infringement
suit against HTC, the Taiwanese company whose phones run Google’s
Android operating system.  The move was widely read as the first thrust
in what will prove to be a sustained assault on Google itself – one
which Team Jobs will only abandon if Google makes an unlikely retreat
from what Apple clearly perceives as its core business: mobile device
technology.

This week, the New York Times revealed that the recent intensification of hostilities might have much to do with Google’s snatch-purchase of Ad Mob,
the mobile advertising network it bought in November for a hefty $750
million, while Apple dithered over the deal. The Times’ piece neatly
illuminates the two companies’ conflicting approaches to mobile
development – the one a ferociously-policed walled-garden, the other a
freewheelin’ realm of non-proprietary apps; and catalogues with
horrified glee the perceived slights and small betrayals which litter
the landscape in which the two tech titans now duke it out.

The Financial Times, meanwhile, reports that Google is (at last) ‘99% certain’
to pull out of China, having finalised a detailed plan for a phased
withdrawal.  Last week, the Chinese government insisted that it was not prepared to compromise in the matter of censorship – and issued a brusque warning
to Google’s business partners that it would not tolerate any divergence
from its censorship directives, regardless of what Google itself did. 
According to Business Insider,
while Google might be sorely tempted to ‘go unfiltered’ – forcing China
to close the service down (and providing an excuse for Google to go
public with the backstory) – they’re unlikely to do so. The company is
reportedly concerned that its PRC employees will suffer retaliatory
action, and intends to leave quickly, but quietly.

Finally, a government panel appeared to have Google locked in its sights when it called for a news tax
to be levied on news-regurgitators last week.  The ponderously-named
Commission of Inquiry into the Future of Civil Society warned that
British news is now controlled by a shrinking pool of media players,
and that a ‘Google Tax’ is required to foster a diversity of
news-providers. The idea of clipping Google’s wings – but without
offering grist to NewsCorp’s mill - is an intriguing and novel solution
to what is usually described in terms of a Murdoch/Google binary.

ON FACEBOOK …

A slow news week for Facebook, in comparison to the flurry of coverage
it received last week: first for failing to adopt a panic-button for
children, then for threatening to sue the Daily Mail over the ‘brand
damage’ caused by that papers’ allegation that children are at risk on
Facebook.

One tantalising story has emerged, however, to pique our curiosity:
it seems that Mark Zuckerberg could yet be prosecuted for using the
private Facebook login details of two journalists to hack into their
email account, way back in 2004.  Business Insider reports that the two
journalists were investigating allegations that Zuckerberg had ‘stolen’
crucial functionality from a fledgling social network which had hired
him to consult.  It further claims that at least one of the laws he
broke is still within its statute of limitations, meaning that
Zuckerberg is, in theory, at risk of a 5 year jail sentence.

ON TWITTER …

Yesterday at SXSW, Twitter CEO Evan Davies introduced the world to Twitter’s new baby chick:
@anywhere, a service which will allow users to access the microblogging
service from third party sites in much the same way as Connect does for
Facebook users. Initial partnerships were announced with a roster of
news sites and startups – including the Huffington Post, eBay, Digg and
the New York Times – as Williams demonstrated how @anywhere will enable
users to follow news columnists without logging in to Twitter, and to
send tweets from external news sites.

But while Williams’ @anywhere announcement was received with polite
interest, a subsequent keynote chat with Davies by interviewer Umair
Haque was very poorly received. 
The lightweight interview, in which Haque pitched a series of softball
questions at Williams, generated an excruciating flurry of distinctly
underwhelmed tweets: “the guy behind me is snoring” was one, followed
by “Umair’s career as an interviewer is toast”.  Fed up with Haque’s
failure to pin Davies down on anything of real interest – his thoughts
on Foursquare being a glaring f’rinstance – the audience was soon
shuffling awkwardly towards the doors.

Earlier, Evan Williams told the BBC
that Twitter will become ‘fundamental to government’, serving as a key
conduit through which global citizens will communicate with those who
govern on their behalf.

But it seems this cheering – though in the light of Google’s recent
Chinese woes, perhaps over-optimistic – news has yet to reach the
various UK local councils which have recently banned both members of
the public, accredited journalists, and in some cases, their very own
selves, from Tweeting public meetings. Twitter bans have been enforced
even when live reporting was clearly in the public interest – as when
the Manchester Evening News was prevented from reporting on Twitter the
proceedings of a highly-charged and controversial planning meeting. As The Next Web
points out, politicians are increasingly making use of Twitter to get
their message out to voters; but some have clearly yet to realise that
this social networking lark is, in fact, a two-way deal.

In other Twitter news:

Sigh – another round-up, another news story
claiming that only a micro-chunk of Twitter’s users are active.  But
perhaps not for much longer: Twitter’s recent roll-out of geolocation,
a dramatically smoother version of its mobile site, and the ‘leaked’
promise of more ‘nifty site features’ to come, seem to confirm that
Twitter is determined to snag back those of us who access its services
via external apps and clients.

The LA Times reports
that the makers of third-party apps like Brizzly and Tweetie are
anxiously scrambling for new arenas in which to concentrate their
efforts: they fear that Twitter has focused its now-considerable
resources on improving the functionality of its site, after years spent
simply keeping up with the demand for its service.

Finally, the microblogging site launched a new anti-phishing service
which will allow it to scan all links posted by users for malware, bank
scams, and other bad stuff.  The new service – which passes links
automatically through twt.tl,
a new Twitter-owned URL shortener – will initially be focused on direct
messages and email notifications, since this is where most fraudulent
activity takes place.

ON YOUTUBE …

YouTube is intent on squeezing its considerable bulk
into a whole new business territory, forcing pay-TV companies to budge
up as it stakes a claim to live sports-casting. The site is
aggressively pursuing ad revenue by streaming an entire season of the
explosively-popular short-form Indian Premier League cricket: Brylcreem
and Lebara Mobile have been snagged as sponsors in the UK. In contrast
with previous years, streaming of the championships will no longer be
blocked in countries where a TV deal is in place: YouTube’s deal
requires them simply to delay the stream by 5 minutes – and will offer
layers of interactivity –  choices of camera angles, action replay on
demand – that TV can’t yet match.

In related news, YouTube has announced that banner ads will now be appearing on its various mobile sites,
beginning with Japanese and US home, browser and search pages.  The
launch of the mobile sites resulted in a 160% increase in online video
streaming – and YouTube claims that it can now deliver one of the
mobile web’s biggest audiences.

BRANDS GET SOCIAL …

In a first for Microsoft, we hear Bing
is sponsoring weeknight showings of The Simpsons, in a three-month deal
worth a hefty £500,000.  It’s tempting to speculate that the deal will
see “Doh!” replaced by “Bing!” – but I fear that can only end in
disappointment.

British Airways – anxious to avoid the reputation-crushing chaos that
has ensued during previous bouts of industrial action – has gone on the
social media offensive. 
It’s using YouTube and Twitter to bombard customers with updates on the
strike situation – while simultaneously pushing its own case and
attempting to demolish that of Unite, the union with whom it is locked
in deadly combat.

Cadbury’s is tempting Creme Egg fans
with two free iPhone apps. ‘Scramble the Egg’ invites users to indulge
any urge they might harbour to shake a Creme Egg till it bursts; while
‘Egg Marks The Spot’ is a GPS-connected app which guides users to the
nearest landmark, then encourages them to take a photo, onto which will
be superimposed a Creme Egg.

The social media adventures of fashion goddess ASOS
are once again drawing admiring gasps: their ‘ASOS Follows Fashion’
Twitter aggregator gathers tweets from designers, photographers,
fashion journos and brands, the better to inform their discerning
fashion-forward followers.

Domino’s Pizza is the first brand to trial a new ‘Social Affiliate’ widget,
which allows anyone with a social network page to earn cash every time
a sale is generated via their web space, NetImperative reports. BL
Quantum, the agency which developed the tool, predicts brands will
benefit “by aligning with sites run by fans who are more likely to
drive a sale.”

Starbucks has launched a Foursquare promotion which will see coffee-lovin’ fans who visit their outlets rewarded with a Barista badge on the location-based mobile service.

Diesel is launching a campaign designed to mark out their space in social media. The initiative – an extension of the brand’s Be Stupid campaign – harnesses Twitter, FourSquare and Facebook.

UNDER THE GAVEL …

A high school student who asked a US court to reveal the identity of the sender of an allegedly libellous email
has had her application rejected. The anonymous email, which was sent
to the student’s school, alleged that she’d been drinking alcohol – in
contravention of a school pledge she’d taken. She petitioned to unmask
the email’s author, but the court ruled that Facebook pictures appeared
to confirm the allegations, and that therefore the sender could remain
anonymous.

More bad news for Yelp, the local review site, in the form of a second class-action suit alleging ‘extortion’. 
The plaintiffs claim that the company attempted to ‘extort’ money from
enterprises, by offering to bury bad reviews if the company bought ad
space. One individual claims Yelp removed 13 positive reviews after she
refused to take out advertising – but Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman says
the case is without merit, and that the reviews were removed because
the business-owner had solicited them from family and friends.

Finally, both Google and Facebook are being pursued through the courts
by Winksite, which alleges that Facebook Mobile and Google Buzz are infringing their patent
relating to how mobile phone users access content on social networks.
The company wants cash, and an immediate order to prevent the two
networks using their invention.

SOCIAL STATS …

Consumers are not terribly keen
on paywalls, it’s fairly safe to say: an enormous 81 percent say they’d
plump for online ads if that meant free content, according to Pew
Research’s latest poll.

E-commerce is still growing, both in the UK and across the water: predictions for the British market are for 10% compound growth over the next five years, with a remarkably similar figure of 11% suggested by Forrester
in the US.  While e-commerce generally managed to avoid the worst
ravages of the recession, it seems likely that the years of rampant
growth have passed.

E-tailers will be interested in Econsultancy’s new stats
on Twitter’s usefulness in driving sales: the company finds that, with
some notable exceptions,  few UK consumer-facing brands think Twitter
deserves its hype: it seems that 20% to 30% of UK brands’ followers
aren’t even potential customers, but other businesses, or spammers.

But, while Twitter’s usefulness may still be unproven, social media is still high on the agenda for most brands. Unica’s survey
of 155 marketers in the US and Europe fond that 70% of them are already
using some form of social media, or plan to do so in the coming year.

VIRTUAL AND GAMES …

Sony is launching a new interface
for PlayStation 3’s virtual world Home – giving faster load times and
allowing users to navigate through levels without walking through the
3-d environment.  Sony is clearly bullish about Home’s prospects – last
week they announced
that their stats had leapt from 5 to 12 million over the last year, and
that a healthy 85% of users who try the virtual world once will come
back for at least a second hit.

That’s all folks!

Not often I take issue with something someone has written about direct marketing (you, stop laughing at the back!), but the Direct Marketing Association’s outgoing Robert Keitch, in responding to an observation by a colleague, has set me off.

Charles Grant-Salmon, the chair of 4DM Group observed (in this article) that financial firms may be easing off on using direct mail, and that this may have been a factor in the demise of the (very) short-lived Blackburns DMS. Keitch, until today chief of membership and brand for the DMA, added that he felt that overcapacity wasn’t limited to the direct mail industry – indeed in a tweet by the DMA earlier today they implied that the web had a worse overcapacity problem.

What they ignore, in their entirely sunny, happy way, is that while overcapacity may well be a feature of each, one does not equate to the other. Overcapacity in the direct mail market is down to production cost, waste, time-to-market, and broadcast cost, not to mention inability to reach outlying segments for the same reasons.

Overcapacity in digital is down to exactly the opposite – its abundance is down to its miraculously low cost (imagine sending a million mailing packs, call it £500,000. That’s £1,000 in emails). It’s down to its demonstrable and comprehensively auditable effectiveness, and the number of players diving in with innovative ideas to service the rapidly growing market.

It is categorically not down to a lack of marketers desperate to get to grips with it. Direct mail’s in decline (though it has its brilliant uses – Mercedes has used DM beautifully). The dodos are dying – yet there’s an abundance of bue sky. Don’t fall into the trap of relating the two.

follow me on Twitter here

I’m not a 100% native geek (i.e. I had a fair amount of friends at school and don’t wear glasses), but I do get VERY excited when I experience geek – so I was in my element last night @ the Dorkbot event @SXSW.

If you’ve never heard of Dorkbot before, it’s a movement “doing strange things with electricity”.  And the stuff in question that was being demoed here was fricking awesome.

First up was a guy called Mikal Hart who’s invented the “Reverse Geocache box“.  I expect you know what one of these is – but if you don’t the shortened explanation (without geek) is a locked box with a bunch of geo-technology inside and a screen on the front, which will only open up if it’s taken to a specific location.  And based around this simple idea, Mikal created a game out of it called the “Reverse Geocache puzzle“, which rather than explain I’ll just direct you to a blog post about it.

Second up was Bre Pettis – a rather hyper-active Nooo Yorker, who’s obsessed by “making things”.  Bre’s latest invention is the “Makerbot“, a 3-D printing device that allows you to literally print stuff.  That’s right – you draw it, it prints it.  For example, Bre told a story about how a guy was due to referee at his son’s football match and realised he didn’t have a whistle – so, using Makerbot he printed out a whistle in a couple of hours.  That’s right – he actually printed out a working whistle.  Fricking awesome.

Arcattack played out the Dorkbot event with a flash and a bang – using a mixture of mind-bending technology and a couple of Tesla Coils to create a visual and audio experience which was a kinda like a musical electric storm.

@Rubber_Republic

Facebook is showing its juggernaut potential according to a piece in the Wall Street Journal which says revenues could hit as much as $2bn in 2010.

The long piece in the WSJ projects revenues in the range of $1.2 to $2bn. This is even more than the blog Inside Facebook was reporting. Earlier this week it had said “sources estimate the company could make between $1 billion and $1.1 billion in total revenue this year”.

 To put that in perspective Facebook made as much as $300m in 2008 and as much as $700m in 2009. There is a doubling affect taking place that can in part be put down to the growing success of its advertising programme that is seeing as many as 10 million users a day become brand fans and its new payments system that is predicted to make revenues of between $125m and $250m this year.

Those are big revenue numbers. Any of them. They are as big as the growing user numbers that have seen Facebook power past 400 million users and 100 million mobile users.

What does that all mean though? One thing it could immediately spell is that any IPO could be delayed. The 25-year old CEO Mark Zuckerberg clearly does not want to rush towards a corporate Nasdaq SEC like future. Clearly he is not all about the pay day.

He is quoted by the WSJ as saying: “We’re going to go public eventually, because that’s the contract that we have with our investors and our employees… we are definitely in no rush.”

With such large revenues on the horizon he clearly wants to hold off and grow Facebook as much as possible to increase his hand and that of his key staff when they do float the company.

The mention of the investors is interesting. It is clearly an issue. Facebook is founded on venture capital money and they will want their return. VC is not about philanthropy.

The Journal piece highlights how Zuckerberg is still very much involved and concerned with the strategic long term direction of Facebook. It calls him a “micromanager” and says he has cut down on his meeting (delegated to senior-level staffers) so he can think about Facebook’s broader strategic game plan.

He has already said in part what that game plan is: one billion users. That is another big number, but the speed it is adding users it could be there sooner rather than later. It took it six months to get it the 100 million users it needed to growth from 250 million to 350 million, but only two months to add another 50 million. That raises the prospect of Facebook of hitting 500 million users by June.

 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 No to IPO; Twitter’s brand ambivalence; and Simon Cowell’s antisocial behaviour.

ON FACEBOOK …

The IPO question must be one that makes Mark Zuckerberg cry – just a
little, and on the inside – every time he’s asked it. It came up again in a Wall Street Journal interview last week and – again – the answer was “No IPO in 2-Oh-1-Oh.”

Intriguingly, however, the WSJ punted some rough insider estimates of
what Facebook might be worth when, as that organ anticipates, the
company goes public in 2011. Figures range from a bonny $35-40 billion,
right up to an overblown $59 billion – with one analyst suggesting that
2015 could see a market capitalization of $100 billion.

As the WSJ points out, the speculation is already ‘more than a parlor
game’: real money is, as we speak, changing hands on private share
exchanges, and prices are already topping $30 a share at times. Which
fact which might incline Facebook to act sooner rather than later,
before expectations run too high.

And investors’ appetite for a flotation may have been sharpened by
recent suggestions the company – which like many private enterprises
doesn’t care to comment on its revenues – may have harvested between
$600 and $700 million last year – with, according to Inside Facebook,
a possible $1.1 billion on the cards for 2010. Seems Mark Zuckerberg
can look forward to many further iterations of that pesky IPO question.

There was doubtless some foot-stamping – perhaps even drumming of fists
on floors – in the development community last week, following the news
that The ‘Book had ejected app news from Notifications. Well, here’s
something to staunch and soothe those hiccup-y sobs – application
invites are being moved to a yet-to-be-revealed part of the Inbox, from where users may well be able to share with their friends.

Is Facebook planning a web-wide payment system? Royal Pingdom
speculates that, were they to combine Connect and Facebook Credits
effectively, the company could grow an almost unstoppable interface
between users, and online retailers and services. It’s certainly the
case that, as Ad Age
puts it, Facebook is beginning to resemble a ‘giant, global shopping
mall’. Last week P&G’s Pampers became the latest e-commerce
talking-point – a ‘Shop Now’ tab on their page led, within an hour, to
a sell-out stampede on the special packs it was offering to fans.

Meanwhile, Facebook seems prepared to engage with the public sphere on what the Washington Post
calls a more ‘grown up’ footing. It’s hiring a further two
Washington-based public policy peeps – one to liaise with consumer
groups, the other with congressional, non-profit and tech groups – to
beef up its policy team. The ‘Book was criticized during a Senate Judiciary hearing last week for failing to take a firm enough stand against global censorship.

ON TWITTER …

Ah, 10 billion tweets! It’s onwards and upwards for Twitter: here, Brian Solis breaks down Hubspot’s recent State of the Twittersphere research, and paints a pretty cheery scene.

Brands, on the other hand, may be feeling rather less chirpy – this week Ad Age found that, when it comes to brand-mentions on Twitter,
the haterz may well outnumber the loverz. While sentiment on Twitter is
generally positive, brands tend not to do so well – two well-known
media brands included in their Top 10 Most Tweeted Brands certainly won’t be crowing about it, since the tweets that got them trending are overwhelmingly negative in sentiment. Social Media Insider
further notes that Monday’s trending #fails included big boys Apple,
Telstra and American Express – all for customer service issues – and
Jeremiah Owyang recently dismissed Twitter’s marketing future as being
that of a “utility-like infrastructure, but not a destination”.
Finally, The Buzz Bin asks portentously: Is Trust In Twitter Misplaced?

In a decision which will have had socially-minded observers sucking
their teeth and sniffing, Simon Cowell’s ‘American Idol’ has executed an abrupt about-turn
regarding its social media policy for contestants. The latest series
initially gave each of its 24 finalists individual Facebook, Twitter
and MySpace accounts – but on Thursday they hastily pulled the plug on
that strategy. Commentators speculate
that the producers realised – rather tardily – that the contestants’
follower stats might influence voting patterns – and perhaps undermine
the shows’ value by enabling the audience to predict the outcome. Now,
contestants can only interact with the public through one branded
profile across all three sites.

ON YOUTUBE …

This week YouTube gamely announced
a very worthwhile development – the rollout of auto-captioning. The
tech makes cunning use of some of Google’s speech-to-text algorithms to
provide instant subtitles to videos, thus opening up the service to
hearing-impaired users – but unfortunately, it seems there are a still
a few glitches to be ironed out: Mashable has some examples of the auto-caption #fails which are currently meme-ing their way around the web.

An ineffably-complex two-and-a-half-year mega-case, in which Universal
Music Group alleged that a mother who posted a YouTube video of her
toddler dancing to Prince’s “Let’s Go Crazy” had infringed their
copyright, has at last been resolved in said mother’s favour. If you
desire further details, arstechnica has them – but I warn that your powers of persistence and dogged determination will be sorely tested.

ON MOBILE …

If you have ever endured a fraught journey, pinned to your seat in
misery while a fellow passenger raucously and interminably anatomises
the previous night’s festivities for the benefit of an unseen
mobile-phone partner, then the following piece of news may well provoke
tears of gratitude. The Telegraph reports
that a German professor has developed a device which will allow mobile
phones to read lips – and bring ‘silent conversations’ a step closer to
reality.

Those of us who shell out for the first, wireless-only version of the
iPad won’t be able to access 3G networks through our iPhones, according
to Steve Jobs. He answered a query about whether it would be possible to tether iPhones to iPads with a simple, if curt, “No.”

Research2guidance predicts a mammoth explosion
in the numbers of us using smartphones – from 102 million last year, to
very nearly a billion in 2013. The survey further notes that only 10%
of Fortune 100 companies currently offer a branded smartphone app to
users. Elsewhere, however, O2 Media MD Shaun Gregory urged brands to resist app-frenzy, insisting that more traditional mobile messaging is still the most effective way to reach consumers.

BRANDS GET SOCIAL …

Unilever has used social media to successfully test and launch a brand new Marmite product
– Marmite XO, which is intriguingly (or alarmingly, depending on the
position you take) described as an ‘extra mature, extra strong’ variety
of the Love It/Hate It savoury spread.

Wal-Mart have bravely opened up their ambitious eco-strategy
to comment – and not only from the public, but from some of its
harshest critics. It’s invited some key pressure groups to help create
its environmental strategy, and hosted a Q&A on Treehugger.com, a
fierce critic thus far. Its YouTube channel and Facebook fan page also
invite users to speak their mind.

The COI has launched Guiding Lights, a social media-focused campaign for the DSCF which aims to inspire young people from all social backgrounds to build careers in teaching, the law, local government and health.

Nissan has unveiled a strong UGC element to the latest in its ‘Urbanproof’ series,
which promotes its Qushqai marque. Users will be invited to create
their own Nissan ads –with the winners getting a cinema and online
release late in 2010, just before the launch of the latest model.

Starbucks is offering its Facebook fans (which now number nigh-on 300,000) a free Fairtrade brownie, as part of its latest campaign to promote its Fairtrade offer.

Ford launches Phase 2 of its Fiesta social media campaign
this month. 40 ‘agents’, selected via social network nominations – have
been released in key markets to fulfill a set of online tasks (for
example, creating a Google map of local hotspots) and other local
challenges assigned by the car-maker – tweeting all the while.

Amtrak hopes to engage black consumers
with a new travel site which spotlights cities with large black
populations – including New Orleans, Atlanta, Philadelphia and Memphis.
Consumers are encouraged to sign up to share their own travel photos,
and chat with other users.

Nestle’s Skinny Cow,
which already has Facebook as its marketing hub, hopes its fans will
raise money for Marie Curie Cancer Care with a live draw. Fans can win
new outfits and generate cash – by tagging their names against items of
clothing posted on the brand’s Facebook Page.

VIRTUAL AND GAMES …

The social gaming steamroller shows no sign of braking: BBC Worldwide
is currently considering how to translate its top brands – Doctor Who
and Top Gear, f’rinstance – into social games, and Bebo has a shiny
news gaming section, as well as a dedicated games-chat section called Smack Talk.

Brands are blinking at the huge possibilities offered by this exploding
sector, with its apparently inbuilt virality and self-perpetuating
content – but many are rightly hesitating over how to get involved.
“The first rule is to ensure that companies integrate their brands as
seamlessly as possible into the game and don’t hijack the user’s gaming
experience,” says New Media Age in its comprehensive rundown
of the risks and opportunities. The article is paywalled, but if your
brand is teetering on the social-gaming brink, the pennies will be well
spent.

Farmville is, of course, the
social games giant whose every move is being closely studied by anyone
interested in the phenomenon. For a stimulating, if pessimistic,
account of social giant Farmville’s appeal, skitter over here to games
brainiac A. J. Patrick Liszkiewicz’s blog.

Elsewhere in social games: hi5, a leader in the market, has released a set of Facebook-compatible APIs, so that developers can more easily distribute their social games on the site.

Meanwhile, Massively reports
that free-to-play kid’s MMO World of Cars Online has entered open beta:
good news for small Cars fans who will now be able to design and race
their own vehicles to their heart content.

THINKING …

If you can spare a little time this week for community-thinking, a recent and thoughtful post by Matt Rhodes ponders the degree to which anonymity is desirable in an online community.

And our very own Rebecca Fitzgerald poses (and indeed answers) some interesting questions in her recent post on the eModeration blog, entitled Why brands should write Facebook Fan Page Guidelines .

That’s all folks!