Troubled music retailer HMV caused a stir on Twitter yesterday as employees used the brand’s official Twitter feed to live-blog mass redundancies taking place at the high street chain. Using the hashtag #hmvXFactorFiring, @HMVtweets claimed that staff were being fired by the HR department. The news was then confirmed by the administrator. Deloitte said that 190 people have been made redundant at the brand’s head office and distribution centres.

The Tweets were quickly deleted, but not before they were widely shared. The feed also claimed that the “marketing director” was asking “How do I shut down Twitter?”. Read more »

Social media consultancy Sociagility has published a report on the comparative social media performance of the 25 main London 2012 Olympics sponsors that has found those that performed best used social to focus on engagement not just brand awareness.

Among the key findings were that there was a significant number of brands did not appear to engage with social media at all – or only sporadically. While for some, it appeared that social media activation was undertaken in isolation or as an afterthought – or as merely an amplifier for advertising campaigns.

Given the emphasis placed on the “social Olympics” that is hugely surprising and a missed opportunity for those brands that took this approach. It serves as a reminder that some brands still don’t get social media. Read more »

We wrote back in May about how digital agency Tribal DDB Israel was launching on Instagram….and only on Instagram.

They’ve taken that a bit further now and are using hashtags to let people view their office, work and agency culture.

Read more »

Yesterday we heard that Facebook users will quit the social network over ‘too many ads, ahead of its mobile ad launch, and today we hear Twitter is to extend its Promoted Tweets ads to Twitter iPhone and Android apps.

Initially, a small number of users will see Promoted Tweets near the top of their timelines from brands they already follow as Twitter pushes its ad strategy across all platforms.

This infographic picks up on that and suggests that not only are consumers getting tired of being inundated with digital ads, but that as many as two thirds of consumers say they are turned off by unwanted ads on their smartphones. Read more »

Two weeks after Pay Pal’s Scott Thompson took the reigns at Yahoo, the ailing internet company’s co-founder Jerry Yang has announced his resignation. Analysts and investors who have viewed Yang as an obstacle to the corporation’s sale of its Asian assets are upbeat about his departure, writes Emily Tan. Read more »

A discussion arose recently about a memo sent to journalists working on a group of newspapers just outside Detroit of what was expected of them in the age of digital journalism and social media. The memo details an extraordinary list of requirements that is well beyond being achievable for most stories or pieces of content.

UPDATE -This story has just taken a little turn. HSBC says that the brief to agencies to come up with this plan was a “mock brief”.

But considering the brie was 35 pages long who spends that much time on coming up with a mock brief in such detail? Read more »

A week after The New York Times announced figures to that shows its paywall is working its longtime digital chief Martin Nisenholtz has announced his retirement.

Nisenholtz, a former ad man who spent 16 years at the paper, launched its paywall, as well as insisting that social media was crucial to its success, and leaves the paper in a strong place, but with issues to deal with. Read more »

Last night Twitter hosted a dinner for what was essentially a bunch of celebrities mostly you imagine to impress the boss CEO, Dick Costolo, who was over in the UK to press the flesh and meet the odd government minister and discuss ideas about possibly banning social media users should we have any more riots.

What was interesting about the gathered Top Tweeters was that as you can see in the picture (click to enlarge) they were largely celebrities including the likes of Jimmy Carr, Charlie Brooker, Sarah Brown, Stephen Fry, Phillip Schofield and Davina McCall among others. Read more »

Sean Garrett, Twitter’s VP of communications, is leaving the company and, of course, he announced the news to the outside world via Twitter although no reason was given for his exit.

The announcement came today through a series of tweets by Garrett in which he mentioned that his two years at Twitter were the favorite of his career, and that he was finally going to take more than a two week break between jobs. Read more »