Author Archives: Jennifer Whitehead

Facebook users claim they will quit site over ‘too much advertising’

Facebook: users say they'll leave, but will they follow through?

Facebook users in the UK and America are saying that they will quit Facebook if they are subjected to “too much advertising”.

The news comes ahead of an expected announcement by Facebook of a mobile advertising platform this week. Read more »

New Orange film site is based on the wisdom of crowds

Orange Film Pulse: wisdom of crowds

Mobile phone network Orange is taking another step in its bid to ‘own’ film marketing by collating all the opinions about new films from Twitter, Facebook, film blogs and so on, and putting it all in one place.

Orange Film Pulse uses tweets, Facebook comments, blogs and even reviews from actual film critics to generate a score out of 100 for every film, using a special algorithm. Read more »

Top 40 brands on Facebook, Twitter and Google+

Coca-Cola is the biggest brand on Facebook, but Whole Foods is the biggest brand on Twitter according to a new piece of research by analytics firm Socialbakers.

The research confirms what Socialbakers has already found previously, which is that for different social networks there’s a different dynamic to the way fans engage.

Greenpeace stirs wrath of car drivers in social media battle with VW

Greenpeace appears to have stirred the wrath of some car enthusiasts in the process of taking Volkswagen to task over its deletion of negative comments on Facebook as part of its long running Star Wars themed campaign targeting the car firm.

The environmental charity is mobilising supporters and encouraging them to question Volkswagen’s environmental policies on social media channels – particularly the carmaker’s own Facebook pages. When VW did not respond to these comments and then deleted them, Greenpeace declared it to be a ‘social media fail’.

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Microsoft issues $100 Windows Phone Challenge to all smartphone users

Microsoft: Take the Windows Phone challenge

If you’re in the market for a new smartphone and not a blinkered Apple fanboy, you’ll no doubt be considering investing in one of the new Windows phones we’re hearing so much about.

Even if you’re not looking to buy, you might still be interested in following a neat bit of Microsoft marketing taking place in Las Vegas, where the Consumer Electronics Show is going on.

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London Olympics volunteers told not to share on social media

The 70,000-strong army of volunteers who will be helping the London 2012 Olympic Games to run smoothly have been told that they mustn’t mention details of their location, their role or any backstage information about athletes, celebrities or “dignitaries” on social media.

Considering the nature of social media on sites like Twitter and Facebook is to share precisely that information the London Olympics organisers appear to be issuing rather optimistic social media guidelines for volunteers. Read more »

What inspires a Belgian most? Manchester City to find out via Twitter

Vincent Kompany: inspire him on Twitter

The football world has a chequered history when it comes to social media, from Joey Barton’s rants on Twitter to Rio Ferdinand’s eloquent rebuttal of Sepp Blatter’s “there’s no racism in football”.

Now Manchester City is taking its chances on Twitter with a competition it is running ahead of Sunday’s FA Cup clash with Manchester United.

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Shoe brand lets influential tweeters knock down prices for everyone

Miista: Cheaper with a Tweet campaign

Like me, you might’ve thought that the purpose of Klout was to generate mystified tweets from people confused as to why an algorithm has deemed them to be influential about subjects they’ve never mentioned on Twitter.

In fact, being influential on Klout can get you a load of freebies, and now (until January 13 or stocks run out) it can also help everyone get a discount on some shoes, thanks to a new social media campaign. Read more »

How does Twitter drive the mainstream news agenda?

Blackberry outage: a perfect Twitter stormThere’ve been several round-ups of the year in Twitter, but here’s another piece of research looking at how much Twitter drove the mainstream news agenda in 2011.

We’re familiar now with the habit of mainstream news reporting on ‘Twitter storms’ – either a story making the news because a lot of people are tweeting about it, or sometimes even making the fact that people are tweeting about it the story itself. Now the concept of the ‘Twitter storm’ has been taken to its logical conclusion by being given its own Beaufort scale. Sort of. Read more »

Homebase gets on board with social, with two new Twitter feeds

Homebase: finally on Twitter

UK do-it-yourself retailer Homebase has joined Twitter this week – following in the footsteps of its rival B&Q, which has been a long-time tweeter, with over 7,000 followers.

Homebase appears to be following the John Lewis tweeting route, setting up a branded, promotional account, @homebase_uk, as well as a trouble-shooting, customer-service oriented feed, @homebase_help.

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