It must be pretty uncomfortable at Facebook Towers at the moment. The share price halving in four months must have been worry enough. But potentially more damaging from a long-term business perspective are the recent revelations about “fake profiles”.

Rory Cellan-Jones’s excellent investigative piece  is a good place to start. The BBC’s technology correspondent didn’t bother with rumour and conjecture but instead created a commercial account for “virtual bagels” himself. His report was alarming enough for Facebook, but seems to have been just the iceberg of a wider problem which Facebook seem to have acknowledged themselves by purging vast swathes of fake accounts after reports that over 8% of profiles were fake. Read More »

This idea could potentially shake up the US mobile market and save consumers hundreds of dollars each year.

A start-up called FreedomPop, which is backed by a founder of Skype, is set to launch a wireless only data service. No calls or texts, just the data.

The experiment in low-cost wireless pricing comes as the average smartphone bills continue to rise and will do so further with faster 4G services. Read More »

Tesco chief executive Philip Clarke announced last week that he’s launching his very own blog in order to rebuild trust in the brand, which is set to announce its first global profits drop for 20 years next month.

Clarke’s first post details a commitment to making Tesco ‘better understood’ – by bringing to the fore the human element and the various stories from all levels of the organisation. He concludes by saying that “the best blogs kick off a conversation, not a monologue, so we’re in the market for your feedback, ideas, corrections, criticisms, and bouquets.”

Yet curiously, Tesco have decided against comment boxes, preferring ‘social media buttons’ at the end of each post. Read More »

Interesting move here from magazine publisher Time Inc to sell a little piece of its Twitter real estate that I can easily see being replicated by others.

It has begun selling the background wallpaper of its Twitter page for People Style Watch.

The background image, which usually features something from the magazine for the People spin off title if anything at all, is running an ad from Jergens Daily Moisture. Read More »

A while back I wrote a piece on whether clients should be worried about Facebook pages having a future as fans left the good ship Facebook and rushed to Google +.

Twelve months later and I think it’s safe to conclude that Google + is not presenting a threat to Facebook.

Moreover when a ‘social media’ force runs a mainstream media advert there’s something that just makes you wonder whether they’ve got their strategy right, and whether their product is sticking. All the other social media tools I use have relied solely on word of mouth. Anyone ever seen a Twitter ad? Read More »