Greenpeace appears to have stirred the wrath of some car enthusiasts in the process of taking Volkswagen to task over its deletion of negative comments on Facebook as part of its long running Star Wars themed campaign targeting the car firm.

The environmental charity is mobilising supporters and encouraging them to question Volkswagen’s environmental policies on social media channels – particularly the carmaker’s own Facebook pages. When VW did not respond to these comments and then deleted them, Greenpeace declared it to be a ‘social media fail’.

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Facebook insights. Dear oh dear. I’ve got to come out and say it – I’ve found their new and “improved” suite of analytics entirely perplexing, lacking in usefulness and extremely complex to explain, aggregate and apply to the real world.

I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one in the industry who has been using the old Insights page to report back successes to clients. I’ve been living in hope that they’ll never switch it off , but the time has come – the old insights page is still an option, but it’s not recording new data. I haven’t felt this down since I said goodbye to my Bebo account…

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Google has started the year by encouraging us to take more notice of our friends while simultaneously upsetting some of its other <cough> ‘friends’.

The launch of Search Plus Your World on Tuesday makes sense of some of the moves we’ve seen over the past few months, notably the creation of the Google+ network and encrypted search via SSL connections. Read More »

Chris Hughes, one of Mark Zuckerberg’s roommates who helped found Facebook, is reported to be interested in buying US left-of-centre magazine The New Republic after it was reported earlier this week that the almost 100-year old title is looking for investors.

Hughes is said to be worth around $700m on the back of co-founding Facebook, but this foray into liberal politics is not something that has come out of the blue as new tech money looks to spend. Read More »

2012 is going to be the year when smart brand marketing truly embraces the power of converging digital and physical activity.

The ‘internet of things’ is becoming an increasingly common part of our life; everyday products now have web connectivity, shopping experiences are getting social media components built in and anything other than a smart phone now looks distinctly archaic. Read More »

Nominations today open for this year’s Social Brands 100. Brands have until February 10^th to have their name put forward for the chance to be included in what will be an authoritative report ranking those brands that are succeeding in the social age.

First launched by social brand agency Headstream in 2011, last year’s report put Dell, Nike, Starbucks, giffgaff, and Best Buy UK at the top. With such a busy year in social media behind us there are bound to be changes this time around. Read More »