Two men from the north of England have been jailed for inciting people to riot by using Facebook. Jordan Blackshaw (left), 20, and Perry Sutcliffe-Keenan, 22, were jailed for four years each.

They clearly deserved something. Blackshaw created an event on Facebook called ‘Smash Down Northwich Town’ while Sutcliffe-Keenan set up a page called ‘Warrington Riots’. Not exactly subtle.

It is the toughest sentence handed down so far after last week’s riots in London, the Midlands and parts of the north of England. It seems wildly disproportionate. While they were being jailed looters in Manchester were also jailed with three men for between 16 months and two years. Read More »

The recent launch of Waitrose’s new website, which promised to enhance customer experience “dramatically”, has proven instead to have caused widespread anger and frustration, as shown on its online forum. The comments unveiled a number of common issues, one of the most prevalent being that the search function was “poor and random”. According to one user, a simple search for frozen food returned Cherie Blair’s book. Read More »

In the midst of what seems like a never-ending series of natural disasters, humanitarian crises and massive geopolitical events, a new project based in New York is tackling the issue of empathy and finding ways of making it more lasting…by giving people tattoos of trending topics from Twitter.

And there’s a twist: you don’t get to pick which one you get. Followers of the Social Tattoo Project vote for their favourite, for example #poverty or #haiti, and the volunteer has the hashtag etched onto their skin. Permanently.

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Visualize.me: you as an infographic

If you’re looking for jobs in social media/new media/any visually-oriented type industries, you might be interested in a start up company that transforms CVs into infographics.

Currently in private beta mode, Visualize.Me links up with LinkedIn to turn the information that you’ve carefully provided into an infographic of your career history. Your previous jobs and education are turned into a timeline; your skills a represented in pie-charts or other formations; and if you’ve notched up any recommendations from other LinkedIn users, they’re represented in quote boxes.

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We’ve already heard lots about Barack Obama’s use of social media: how the Obama team shook up its social media strategy in run up to 2012, launched the presidential re-election bid on YouTube and how Obama gave a crowdsourced YouTube interview.

The Obama team is continuing to push its social media wider and The White House is now on Foursquare. I’m guessing he’ll be the mayor of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in no time. Read More »

‘Why are your ears pointed, Mr Spock?’
‘To heat up butter popcorn, Captain.’

People will always be a bit interested when someone takes the very familiar, gives it a tweak, and makes you see it in a different way.

The appeal is probably due to the child-like excitement that comes when ‘What if…’ and ‘Why not!?’ prevail over sound reasons not to. It’s fun. It’s unexpected. It pushes the boundaries. It’s precarious, and there’s a bit of jeopardy involved. Throw some innovative technology into the mix and the result is an interesting trend for reinventing the familiar, using digital means. Read More »

Resonate: research questions value of 'heavy' social media users

People who use social media the most are less involved in the outside world and might not be as worthwhile targeting as marketers believe, new research indicates.

Resonate, which specializes in online audience targeting, has found that heavy social media users are less likely to be involved in politics; less likely to donate to charity; and less likely to do online shopping, not spending as much as other groups when they do.

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Great infographic on the world of Twitter from marketing and design agency Touch. It has a bundle of key Twitter statistics pulled together from the estimated 200 million Twitter accounts (though there are probably more) to the one billion tweets posted each week.

Interestingly it puts Twitter awareness at around 88%. Incredibly high, making it almost an uber brand. It also says that if you want that retweet the best time of day to post is 1700, but I’m tweeting this one early. Enjoy. Read More »

McDonald’s has leveraged social media to launch its new Chicken McGrill sandwich in a campaign entitled ‘Making it better, made for Singapore’ through Tribal DDB Singapore, alongside traditional media usage. Read More »