Interesting one here. Google has bought social media management firm Wildfire Interactive as part of its efforts to boost its social media.

Google has reportedly paid $250m for the firm and co-founders Victoria Ransom, who blogs here, and Alain Chuard will join the search giant.

The four year old Wildfire employs more than 400 staff and works with a range of brands including the likes of Virgin, Unilver, Cirque du Soleil, Gilt Group, Spotify American Express and Air New Zealand. Read More »

 As the world’s first social Olympics is in full swing, it is fair to say that Twitter has been the social media platform, which is grabbing the most headlines, for the right and wrong reasons.

These include its impressive opening ceremony traffic figures, athletes being banned from the games over racist comments, a 17-year old being arrested over abusive tweets to Tom Daley, its apology over the Guy Adams fiasco, to the tongue-in-cheek empty seat Twitter account.

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The American presidential candidates have stepped up the online campaign in the last couple of days. Both incumbent President Obama and his Republican challenger Mitt Romney have chosen to launch mobile apps, although they do very different things.

While Obama has continued on from the 2008 and build a fully fledged campaigning app, Romney is using his to simply announce his Vice Presidential running mate.

The Obama app is called “Obama for America”, and includes a variety of tools to make campaigning easier. For examples users can look up local polling station information, or find out street and residency information to go canvassing. The app is also fully integrated with social media, as users can post Obama news to Facebook and Twitter, as well as invited friends to campaign events through the app. Read More »

Facebook has become one of the key channels for supporters to connect and engage with their national Olympic team. Facebook has listed 58 National Olympic team Fan Pages from major nations like the USA to smaller times including Bhutan and the Bahamas.

So which countries are currently topping the tables for most fans?

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It’s been a good week for Twitter outrage, but a bad week for the people at the centre. Diver Tom Daley has been on the receiving end of some vicious tweeting; a journalist for the Independent was chucked off Twitter for criticising NBC over shoddy Olympics coverage (though since reinstated), and a 17 year-old has been picked up from a guesthouse, arrested  and given a harassment warning as the presumed sender of the abusive tweets to Daley.

Perhaps it seems odd to include the alleged perpetrator of the abusive tweets in the ‘bad week’ round up. But I’m not the only person wondering if arrest seems a little extreme. Read More »

The National Readership Survey has developed a series of infographics, the first of which we have here, detailing the readership of newspapers and magazines on tablets and e-readers.

It is no secret that these platforms are developing at an incredibly fast rate, and that media brands are increasingly being consumed on these digital devices.  In fact, over the last year, readership on tablets and e-readers has doubled.  Read More »

It was a storm in a Twitter cup. Guy Adams the Independent journalist who had his account suspended, after publishing the email address of an NBC executive, has had his Twitter account reinstated.

In a blog post reminding users about its private information policy and its Terms of Service Twitter admitted that the team working with NBC on its Olympics coverage did over step the mark and pro-actively flagged Adams’ tweet to NBC and told the broadcaster how to make a complaint.

For that part of the story Twitter held its hands up and apologised admitting “that we did mess up”. It went further, to reassure Twitter users, and said that “this behaviour was not acceptable and undermines the trust we users have in us”. Read More »