UPDATE – Britain’s Advertising Standards Authority has said it has no plans to change the way it views user generated comments on social networks following the decision by the Advertising Standards Bureau in Australia (see comment below).

TUESDAY - A very significant ruling has been made by Australia’s advertising watchdog that effectively says that Facebook is an advertising medium and that as a consequence brands must vet the comments and posts of users appearing on their pages.

Brands that have previously had a light touch to vetting user comments could not be forced to be far more vigilante and ensure that sexist, racist or factually inaccurate posts are not made.

It could also prove to be a costly ruling for Australian brands using social media who might now have to closely monitor all user generated content. Read More »

Those much talked about Apple Genius ads, that seemed to imply that Apple customers are in fact too stupid for to use the products, have disappeared from Olympics.

The campaign, which features three different spots, were created by Apple’s ad agency TBWA/Media/Arts Lab, which says the plan all along was to run the ads for a short period of time during the Olympics.

It has nothing to do with the implication that Apple thinks that most consumers are too dumb to use its products and featuring a fairly annoying tech support nerd who lives in his Apple t-shirt. Read More »

Following an action packed Olympic weekend in which Team GB increased their medal haul, we’ve looked at how Facebook is fuelling the UK’s excitement around the Games.

Team GB’s fan page has grown rapidly from less than 100,000 fans on the eve of the games to almost three quarters of a million fans (705,000) in little over a week. Meanwhile, the longer established US Olympic Team page has grown only two per cent from 2.2 million since the games began.

Read More »

What may seem to be a small technical change to the way Open Graph works on third party sites, will affect how marketers communicate with their Facebook audience.

When Facebook introduced Open Graph in 2010, it marked a big change in the way brands could interact with their fans and build direct relationships with them through the social network. Rather than just piling up Likes on their main Facebook page – where surprisingly few fans ever visit again – brands could put the Like button on their own website next to a product.  Brands could then leverage the nearly 1 billion users on Facebook to get them to discover content on the brand website. Read More »

Google Glasses – AKA Project Glass – are one of those things that instantly get you excited about possibilities. As far as futuristic gadgets go, glasses that project the infinite wealth of media and information available online right in front of your eyes really do feel a bit like magic.

The glasses themselves won’t be available until next year, but we’ve seen some of the things they can do.

Google co-founder Sergey Brin just unveiled a feature being tested that takes automatic pictures at set intervals and automatically uploads them to Google servers. This means that the world, as seen through your eyes would not only be captured, but stored and – presumably if you tick the appropriate opt-in box or blink twice for yes – analysed. Read More »