ExactTarget have put together this infographic for Saturday’s Champions League final, which saw more than a million tweets sent as Chelsea went on to beat Bayern Munich on penalties.

On Twitter, and on the field, the man of the Match was Chelsea hero Didier Drogba. Read More »

UPDATE: Facebook shares failed to bounce back last night and ended up down by almost 11% or $4 on their $38 IPO price.

The Rupert Murodch-owned New York Post gave its view of the Facebook IPO with this Monday front cover as it dubbed investors “ZUCKERS!”.  Read More »

As YouTube celebrates it’s seventh birthday, The Verge have reported that a staggering seventy-two hours of video are uploaded to the the site every minute, a whole day’s worth of content more than a year ago. Owned by Google, YouTube has become embedded into the search process with videos hosted by it gaining prominence in the Google search algorithm, and therefore search results. Consequently, it has eliminated competition from the like of Vimeo, who offer an equally good, if not better, service, but do not have the groundswell in take up. Read More »

Remember how we scoffed at those hapless souls who put their bank details up on Facebook when the social network first became popular?  It now looks as though this was a misguided but ultimately accurate premonition of a future development in social media.

Whispers abound that Facebook is moving towards becoming the first social network to offer its customers banking services, and research and advisory company Gartner suggests that a social network, most likely Facebook, will rollout this service within the next two years.  Read More »

How complicated exactly is social media marketing? If you look beyond Facebook, Twitter and Google+ the sea of social media sites, tools and platforms makes for a dizzying sight as this infographic highlights.

Not only that but it has become seriously more busy in the the last year alone. You get a really good idea of that from this “Social media map of the world” we published back in 2010. Read More »

The Pakistani government yesterday blocked access Twitter after accusing it of being responsible for promoting what it said was a blasphemous cartoon contest on Facebook.

Pakistan has previously blocked Facebook and YouTube as well as hundreds of web pages over what it deems “sacrilegious content”. Much of that happened two years ago during the ‘Everybody Draw Mohammed Day!’ group on Facebook. Read More »

In the quest for content that users of brand social assets will appreciate and interact with, imagery continues to surface as a key driver of engagement.  All you need to do to understand this is consider your own social media behavior.  While you may check your social streams multiple times a day, the odds are good that you fly through these “social checks” at quite a high rate of speed.

It’s also likely you’re prioritising your focus first on who posted the content.  There are certain names you are more attuned to because historically, those names have brought you content you use or care about.  Second to that, it’s the image attached to a post that either makes you slow down or stop at least long enough to read the headline.  Other social users are no different from you, which is why imagery is without a doubt King Content’s queen. Read More »

Probably late in the day, but I recently stumbled across the quite brilliant Hailo taxi app co-founded by three cabbies in London.  For those not familiar with this app, it allows you to select a black cab in the near vicinity, indicating how many minutes it will take to reach you and gives the taxi details to look out for when it arrives.

After arriving at your destination you can then automatically pay with your credit or debit card as the fare on the meter is charged straight to your account. Without any additional mark-ups and a copy of the receipt emailed directly after the journey I found it to be a joy in its simplicity and effectiveness – especially when using it for the first time on a late, wet and windy night. And of course the cabbies win too as they find more passengers on the street, with the added benefit of avoiding traffic on the way through an alert system.

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