Welcome to eModeration’s round-up of all that is intriguing, alarming
or odd in the world of social media, compiled by Kate Williams. For
more social media snippets, follow @emodkate – or for general twittery,
@KateVWilliams.

This week (a little bleary-eyed): The Social Election; Facebook’s fork
in the road; and Apple redux.

THE HEADLINES …

After the most closely-fought (and poorly-predicted) election since
1992, we Brits awoke today to a New Dawn. No, strike that – a Dawn of
Chaos, Confusion and Disarray.

It has, I’m sure you’ll agree, been a night – indeed a campaign – of delirious highs,
and pendulous
lows.

In the course of the country’s
first social
media election, The
Worm took its place beside the fabled Swingometer in political
lore, and social media was monitored to within an
inch of its life for clues to the nation’s intentions. There was rolling
sentiment analysis, streaming debate, and of course, obsessive
tweeting – as well as that rather awkward moment of electile
dysfunction when Labour’s Twitter Tsar Kerry McCarthy peaked
too early, and revealed the results of postal voting before she
should have.

Two of the three main parties launched last-minute social efforts,
hoping to sway the many voters who dithered till the bitter end. The
Conservative Party booked a well-padded
takeover of YouTube’s homepage, where users were treated to the
party’s final election broadcast, ‘A Contract between the Conservative
Party and you’, for the duration of the Big Day.

Labour, meanwhile, targeted its core supporters with a Facebook
viral – a smart rebuttal of Cameron’s ‘Big Society’ idea – in
which an exhausted mother of the future revealed what life might be like
if individuals became providers of vital public services. In the final
frames, the mother berates a friend on the phone, for causing the chaos
by not voting Labour – and the friend’s name appears, through some
cunning Facebook trickery, to be that of the viewer themselves. Clever
– but not clever enough, it appears, to swing it for Labour.

And what of Mumsnet – the parenting website whose users were so eagerly
courted by the three party leaders that this became known as the Mumsnet
Election? Well, until Monday, when Gordon Brown stopped by for a
quick chockie-bickie and a last-minute
webchat, the site had been firmly Cleggist; a poll conducted
immediately after the final Leader’s Debate gave the LibDems an enormous
42.5% of their vote. Meantime, Facebook had predicted remarkably
similarly: a poll of 463,000 users gave Nick Clegg a mammoth, but –
as it turns out – wildly
unrepresentative 42% of the vote.

On Election night, Twitter’s function as the new
town square was firmly established, as socialites of
every hue settled in for a night of outraged tweeting and the
neurotic analysis of exit-polls – activities which continued through the
early hours and into the new day.

Now, of course, it is over; Britain has, for now, a hung parliament.
Whether this is a moment for peals of gay hilarity, hiccups of
bewildered apprehension, or tears of bitter recrimination and regret
will depend on the particular cut of your political jib. Either way, it
has been a night to remember.

If you are still awake, and inexplicably keen to review the month’s
electoral events in even greater detail, BrandRepublic anatomises the
iconography of #GE2010, here.

ON FACEBOOK …

It’s quite possible that Facebook’s PR dept are reduced to biting each
other’s nails, their own being already gnawed to the quick, and beyond.
This week the site was forced to suspend
Facebook Chat for several hours, after it became clear that,
with a bit of not-particularly-sophisticated manipulation, users could
see the pending friend-requests of each of their connections, as well as
– gulp – their private
chat messages. Once again, the social behemoth’s privacy policies
were brought into painfully sharp focus, and once again, CEO Mark
Zuckerberg’s breezy assertion that privacy is no
longer a social norm hung awkwardly in the air.

In case you’ve been very determinedly Not Paying Attention, Facebook’s
latest raft of changes mean that users’ digital identities now follow
them around the web, like a floating
tail of bathroom tissue accidentally caught in their trousers. When
a user clicks the new ‘like’ button on a third-party web page, that
third party can access the user’s list of Facebook friends, favourite
activities and other content which the user has previously shared.
Meanwhile, data about each individual’s home town, education and hobbies
is linked to community pages on those topics.

Publishers are understandably
delighted. Within a week of its launch, 50,000 websites had
clutched the ‘like’ button to their collective bosom, and
Zuckerberg’s plucky prediction that he’d serve a
billion of them within the first 24 hours was quickly realised.

But the modifications have brought the site under the increasingly beady
scrutiny of privacy campaigners.

And, as ReadWriteWeb
points out, the tactics which the ‘Book have used to encourage
users to opt-in have verged upon the thumb-crushing: as well as making
it the whole process predictably serpentine – thus discouraging
individuals from getting to grips with their settings – users who
refuse to allow their info to be linked to Community pages find that
their profile page is suddenly, and alarmingly, blank.

Last week Four US senators wrote
personally to Zuckerberg, and they were rather grumpy, to put
it mildly, about recent developments. Yesterday, a gaggle of 15
consumer groups filed
a complaint against Facebook with the Federal Trade
Commission, alleging that the recent changes “violate user expectations,
diminish user privacy, and contradict Facebook’s own representations.”

Meanwhile, if you’re anxious to know which slippery snippets of your
personal info Facebook is enthusiastically scattering across the web,
this
simple tool may prove enlightening.

THE LOWDOWN …

The amount of digital data in the world is currently equivalent to that
which would be generated if everyone in the world tweeted constantly for
a century – indeed is expanding so rapidly that a new unit of data
measurement has had to be invented. A warm welcome, then, to the Zettabyte:
you are worth a staggering 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 individual
bytes, and though your name most closely resembles that of a
mid-range fast-food chain, I don’t doubt you will become a familiar
friend in the coming decade – during which the digital universe is
predicted to expand by a factor of 44.

Cupidtino is a dating
site for Apple fans, whom, the
site says, frequently share personality traits, professions,
aesthetics and love of technology – more than “enough reasons for two
people to meet and fall in love”. At first glance, this all seems rather
touching. Then comes the dawning realisation that the resulting progeny
will share a double genetic payload of pickiness, and that indefinable
air of smugness. Best hope it doesn’t catch on.

It need hardly be said that in the matter of child-rearing, Discipline
and Drudgery are my watchwords. No sentimentalist, I – though I confess I
swallowed hard at Boeing’s
response to the plane-obsessed 8 year-old who sent them a
design for a fantastical fire-fighting plane: “We do not accept
unsolicited ideas. Experience showed that most ideas had already been
considered by our engineers and that there can be unintended
consequences to simply accepting these ideas. The time, cost and risk
involved in processing them, therefore, were not justified by the
benefits gained.” Harsh, chaps, harsh.

Do you shy away from bluntness? Too busy avoiding offence to fully grasp
the rungs of the ladder of success? Don’t despair – those innovators at
GeekCulture have launched the Steve
Jobs Email Generator, guaranteed to have you firing off curt
responses like the Master – or your money back.

According to the
Telegraph, women are blaming smartphones and other ‘modern’
gadgets for their husbands’ apathy towards conjugal relations. With
uncharacteristic candour, that most respectable organ reports that
‘hand-held devices [are] particularly to blame.”

Meanwhile, another poll reveals that the under-25s are keen
multi-taskers in the boudoir – 10% of them think it’s quite the
thing to text during, erm, intimacy. As Mashable so
aptly puts it, there’s never been a better time to worry about the
future of civilization.

‘Controversial’ Venezuelan presidente Hugo
Chavez has joined Twitter, to muffled sniggers from the
international press, where he is widely held to be the most verbose of
global leaders. So far, @chavezcandanga is managing the 140 character
restriction – although his tweet-per-day rate is accelerating at a
rather ominous pace: this is, after all, the man whose weekly improvised
TV broadcast regularly exceeds seven hours.

Some readers may find this next report disturbing: new app In 20
Years reveals how you will look in – um – twenty years.
Please: Think Before You Click.

APPLE JUICE …

Gawd, these Apple scandals do drag on a bit, don’t they? This week, we
will attempt to buck the tide by presenting you with a handy redux of the
week’s developments in Apple’s lost-iPhone saga, consisting almost
entirely of links which will lead you, if you care to follow them, to
reams of additional info.

California’s Rapid
Enforcement Allied Computer Team raided the
home of Jason Chen, the Gizmodo editor who
apparently bought the ‘lost’ iPhone. Gizmodo owners Gawker Media threatened a
law suit, claiming that the
raid was illegal under laws
which shield journalists from revealing their sources; Time
magazine poo-pooed the claim, arguing that the public
interest had not been served by the theft – and Chen covered
his bases by hiring a criminal defence lawyer. Meanwhile, Wired
announced that they had tracked
down the culprit, who turned out to be a nice
college boy who did volunteer
work in his spare time, and was really
very sorry for all the trouble he’d caused.

I believe that about covers it.

In other Apple news, there has this week been much back, and not a
little forth, between Steve
Jobs and Adobe CEO Shantanu
Narayen, who have been tussling over whose fault it is that Adobe
crashes Apple’s OS. Now – following a complaint by Adobe – it
looks possible that the Federal Trade Commission will be weighing in,
with a formal
investigation into whether Apple’s Adobe ban for app developers
is anticompetitive.

The iPad’s sales stats are, if not quite vertical, then listing only
slightly:
1m iPads have been sold since its launch on 3 April - easily outpacing
the iPhone, which took what now feels like a tortoise-like 74 days
to reach that number. Now, all eyes are on the iPad 3G, an
estimated 300,000 of which flew
out during last weekend’s launch.

If you are not only unconvinced by the iPad. but actively ill-disposed
towards it, you will enjoy the following experiments, in which various
individuals – who perhaps define the thematically-linked expressions “more money than
sense”, and “too much time on their hands” – put their idle musings
on the robustness of Apple’s wundertablet to the test.

NEWSBYTES …

35% of British children – that’s over 4 million – still don’t
have easy access to the internet, meaning that they’re unable
to complete some of their homework, or access the social world of their
peers, a new report by Point Topic has found.

US Senators have urged Congress to review whether America’s privacy
law is sufficiently
robust to protect children from unscrupulous online marketers. The
Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) currently requires that
sites get parental approval before they gather info on under-13s – but some
senators are demanding that the age limit be raised to 18, and that
its remit be immediately extended to include geo-location data.

Meanwhile, the head teacher of a
New Jersey secondary school has called for parents to enforce
a ban on social networks, which he says are nothing more than a
platform for cyber-bullying. The school’s guidance counsellor claims
that 75% of her work now involves dealing with social network-related
worries.

Finally, 48%
of parents add their children as friends on Facebook – news
which, with luck, will be just the spur youngsters need to get to grips
with the social network’s byzantine privacy settings. Those same parents
might want to check if their offspring are signed up with Formspring.me,
the wildly popular new site where
users invite friends and strangers to ask them a question – any
question. Plenty of opportunities to stalk their offspring there.

A gruff Rupert Murdoch admitted that ‘big
mistakes’ had been made with MySpace, in an earnings call which
revealed yet another consecutive quarter of escalating losses. And
it’s time to gen up on Murdoch’s much-vaunted plan to gather other
media companies behind
a group paywall – we’ve been told to expect an announcement in
‘three to four weeks’.

YouTube has announced plans for a self-service
rental platform, through which moviemakers will be able to
upload and rent out their own streaming content, according to MediaPost.
But will anyone watch? asks VentureBeat,
nodding to YouTube’s dismal rental stats.

Google is breathing down Amazon’s neck, announcing
plans to turn Google Editions into a vendor of digital books.
It’s also invested $38.8m in two North
Dakota windfarms: always good to have a plan B, in case this
internet thingy doesn’t quite pan out.

That’s all folks!

Welcome
to eModeration’s round-up of all that is intriguing, alarming or odd in
the world of social media, compiled by Kate Williams. For more social
media snippets, follow @emodkate – or for general twittery,
@KateVWilliams.

This week (a little later than usual, due to an unpleasant encounter
with The Lurgy): is Facebook sucking out our brains?; Google fumbles
‘evil’; and more Apple fun.

The social world is still blinking anxiously as it attempts to digest
the full import of Facebook‘s recent announcements at F8 (the
annual, erm, FaceFest, during which the ‘Book traditionally tells
mortals what to expect during the coming year.)

What it all boils down to is
this: Facebook, within an unspecified period of time, will be
transitioning from being an element
of the web – albeit one with a fair amount of heft and a considerable
social girth – to actually, like, being
the web.

I know. There is so very much
to think about there that we thought the subject deserved a blog post
of its own – so if you wish to scare yourself silly reading about
the new, Matrix-like Facebook,read it here, for a digest of what, at times, has been
the rather indigestable coverage.

Talking of evil (and we might have been) – here is Google -
the original ‘do no evil’ guys – following up their phased
withdrawal from China by posting
what it called a ‘refresher’ to its censorship policies. The global
searchmeisters are simultaneously launching what they call a Government
Requests Tool, which will allow anyone to discover the extent to
which governments are using their legal systems to ask about their
citizens’ web activity, or to censor content legally
available elsewhere (Britain, by the way, ranks
third – only Brazil and the US were more active).

It’s all very admirable: it stakes out Google’s position on the human
rights map, and goes some way to answering those critics who
accused it of inconsistency in singling out China, in a fit of
libertarian evangelism.

Rather awkwardly, however, the announcement was made in the same week
that a group of 10 nations wrote an
open letter to Google CEO Eric Schmidt, expressing their serious
concerns about the company’s attitude to individuals’ rights to privacy
– most notably the “disappointing disregard for fundamental privacy
norms and laws” displayed during the rollout of Google Buzz.

Google Street View also came in for sustained criticism from
the privacy tsars – and then came under further fire from Germany’s
Federal Commissioner for Data Protection, who professed himself ‘appalled
and horrified’ to discover that the Street View car is scanning
private wireless networks and unique Mac (Media Access Control)
addresses, as it wends its merry way through Germany’s bergs. The
commissioner calls this ‘unlawfully collected personal data’ and urges
Google to delete it immediately.

This evil thing? It’s tricky, darnit.

APPLE JUICE …

For a famously controlling and security-conscious company to
lose one next-gen prototype device may be considered a misfortune.
To lose two – well, you can probably see where I’m going with
this.

Astonishingly, what appeared to be two iPod touch prototypes – fully camera’d-up, Touch-fans
– popped up on eBay at the end of last week, and were spotted by
and eagle-eyed 9to5Mac just before the auction was taken down.

Could be a hoax, for sure, but the pre-existence of an Apple patent
for an iPod Touch with camera – plus the fact that the latest Touch
3G was found to contain an
empty space for a camera – would suggest that Apple
really IS that careless.

Meanwhile, hapless Apple engineer Gray Powell, who lost the iPhone
prototype in a Bavarian-themed bar, has been contacted by those
wags at Lufthansa: they wrote offering him a free business-class
round-trip to Munich for an authentic Bier Keller experience – an offer
which we sincerely hope he doesn’t have the unexpected leisure to pursue
any time soon. Gray’s father told CNET that his son was ‘devastated’
by his mistake; it’s profoundly to be hoped that the fact that the poor
guy’s name is now in the public domain will protect him from a
precipitous P45.

And what of Gizmodo, the site which paid
$5000 for the ‘lost’ iPhone HD, and garnered publicity at least twenty
times that value in return, in the form of an extra
3.6 million eyeballs? Well, the New
York Times says California authorities are weighing up whether or
not to slam a felony charge on Nick Denton, boss of Gizmodo’s parent
company Gawker Media – and it now emerges that on Friday, officers from
California’s Rapid
Enforcement Allied Computer Team raided the house of Gizmodo editor
Jason Chen and sequestered computer equipment.

DailyFinance.com urges Apple to
launch a suit – according to them, the company has a super-tight civil
case that Gawker pilfered their trade secrets, inflicting
millions of dollars-worth of damage. And, with Apple’s Q2 figures revealing that
8.75 million iPhones were sold last quarter, it’s a fair bet they’ll be
taking that advice pretty seriously.

The whole sorry episode has had the unintended side-effect of shining a
very bright spotlight on Apple’s legendary secrecy, and the
ethics behind it. Apple thus far has kept an adamantine grip on its new
products, and vigorously pursued a strategy of strict control over
which members of the tech press are allowed advance access to them. And
– as Gizmodo say in
their own defence – ‘it’s impossible to argue that “access
journalism” has anything but a deleterious effect on the objectivity of
journalists.’

Sounds like it really is all
over between Adobe and Apple – in the tech equivalent of ‘collecting
their stuff’, Adobe have announced their intention to halt
development of their Flash-to-iPhone converter, and are calling on
their community of app developers to concentrate entirely on Android
devices from now on.

Meanwhile, in the continuing saga of AppleStore’s rejection of ‘adult’
apps, CEO Steve Jobs has fired off another of the quickfire
emails he’s lately been so fond of sending to correspondents. “We do
believe we have a moral responsibility to keep porn off the iPhone,”
he
told one. “Folks who want porn can buy and [sic] Android phone.“

The AppStore’s decision-making process recently came under
scrutiny when it emerged that an app by a Pullitzer-Prize winning
cartoonist had been rejected by the increasingly capricious tech
giant – on the very
questionable grounds that it contained “content that ridicules public
figures.” In another
of those emails, Jobs was forced to acknowledge that the rejection
had been a mistake – the app was subsequently accepted.

Anonymous reviews seem consistently to be in the news – and the Guardian
reports on a rather astonishing
literary whodunit within the notoriously back-stabby academic
community. Historian Dr Rachel Polonsky noticed that an
anonymous commenter on Amazon had slated her recent book – and that
other leading academics had suffered similar attacks. One of the
pseudonyms of the spiteful critic – orlando-birkbeck – led (perhaps
inevitably) to the door of Prof Orlando Figes, 50, a historian at
Birkbeck College, who responded with legal threats to both his
colleagues and the media. In a surprise twist, the professor’s
barrister wife at first came tearfully forwards to claim responsibility;
thence to the final denouement, in which the Professor did the manly
thing and acknowledged that the poison-pen writer was, in fact,
himself.

Ach, what would we have done without that most
enjoyable YouTube memes of the last year – the
re-subtitling of the film ‘Downfall’, which depicts
Hitler’s desperate final hours, so that the Fuhrer appears to be having a
hissy-fit about any old tripe. Now, though, the film’s grumpy
producers are using YouTube’s Content ID system, which permits a
copyright owner to immediately
disable any video that contains its copyrighted content, to remove
them all! Interestingly, YouTube
is advising that the parodists claim ‘fair use’, which would
immediately restore the videos and force the film’s producers to issue
an official DMCA takedown notice. With delightful predictability, some
wag has uploaded a Downfall parody
about the parody controversy. So clever,
these postmodernists.

Twitterista’s
are constitutionally
disinclined to trust the mainstream media, a fact confirmed last
week by the trending hashtag #nickcleggsfault, which predicted that a
panicked right-wing press would try to smear LibDem leader Nick Clegg,
following his surge in the polls. 
By midday on Wednesday it was the
second most-tweeted hashtag on Twitter, with ‘fake tan went wrong –
#nickcleggsfault’ and ‘dinosaurs extinct – #nickcleggsfault’ among the
sniggeriest – along with the inevitable ‘lost 4th-gen iPhone prototype -
#nickcleggsfault’.

And, in further weighty political news, ‘Poor’ George Osborne –
or rather, the hair of the same – became a trending topic this week: his
new brilliantined and Bunteresque ‘Do was the subject of much mockery
during the Chancellors’
Debate. The Shadow Chancellor’s decision to risk a ‘Lord Snooty’
was all the more puzzling since – as the
Guardian pointed out – it ‘can only add to the vague but
unshakeable sense of a man who has just had his jacket buttoned up by
his nanny.’

A month or so ago, Marmite launched a rather smart
social media campaign which pitted the imaginary Marmitophile Love
party against the Marmite-loathing
Hate party. The leader of the Hate party was oleaginous and a bit
thick – though I’m sure this had nothing to do with BNP leader Nick
Griffin’s conclusion that he was being parodied. Aaanyways, in a
revenge which can reasonably be described as ‘spectacularly childish’, a
floating Marmite jar was superimposed upon the BNP’s recent party
political broadcast, causing Unilever to initiate
injunction proceedings in order to protect the integrity of their
brand.

The Round-up was rather purse-lipped about the freak-show frisson which
accompanied Susan
Boyle’s sudden elevation – we felt that it reflected rather
poorly on our national culture. But it seems that a model has been
established, without which popular culture will grind to a halt. We
therefore present to you the dual viral delights of portly Lin Yu Chun
from Taiwan, who turns out to have a rather sweet voice, and who here
duets Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart” with William
Shatner.

See, this is the kind of grit
and vigour which you’d expect from an alliance between doughty
Britain and perseverant Australia. Brit Sean Murtagh and Aussie Natalie
Mead were unable to get back to the UK in time for their own wedding –
but were not ones to let the small matter of a volcanic eruption disrupt
their nuptuals. They invited their fellow stranded passengers to join
them in celebrating their wedding at Dubai’s airport, while their
official guests, assembled in the UK, watched the romantic union via
Skype. Tears? Good lord no – just a little ash in my eye, is all.

In related volcanic news: few would deny that here’s been a bit of
argy-bargy about the iPad’s usefulness, but no-one
has thus far suggested that ‘government of medium-sized Scandiwegian
country’ should be amongst
its functionalities. Nevertheless, Norwegian Prime Minister Jens
Stoltenberg, who was grounded last week by that pesky Icelandic
eruption, was reported by his press secretary to be “running the
Norwegian government from the United States via his new iPad.”


Still unconvinced that the iPad is a Good Thing? Gah – the global
supply of kitten/toddler/iPad interaction videos is running dry! Will
this great-grandma-gets-an-iPad
video do instead?

Apparently there are now 8.6 million robots in the world — or, as
IEEE.org
reports, more than one automaton for every person in Austria. As a
contextualising device, I confess that leaves me none the wiser – you?

New documents filed in a suit against Pennsylvania’s Lower Merrion
School District allege that cameras embedded in school laptops
took ‘thousands’
of unauthorized images of their pupils in their own homes. One
student says that his laptop took photos of him as he slept – and
according to court papers, one staff member described the images as a
window “into a little LMSD soap opera.”

More teens are texting, and they’re texting more often: new
research from Pew reports that 54% of American teenagers send
daily texts, up from 38% 18 months before. 72% of them text regularly
overall.

Meanwhile, a new study reveals that younger users care very much
about online
privacy; quite as much as we Oldies. Overall, 88% of us have
withheld information from business due to privacy concerns, with a
comparable figure of 82% for young adults. 84% of them feel that
permission should be gained from the subjects of a video or photo,
before it’s posted online – only 2% lower than the overall figure. And –
most pertinently for Facebook and other companies who have recently
been trumpeting the ‘end of privacy’ – 40% of 18-24s believe execs
should face prison for their company’s illegal use of personal info –
exactly matching the figure for 35-to-44-year-olds.

Microsoft
have been accused of encouraging
sexting with a promo video for its Kin phones – pitched as
social devices allowing easy sharing of content with friends – which
shows a teenage boy sending a photo of his bare torso to a female
friend. Critics say that the company is aiming the devices at 13-18
year olds – and recent research found that one in four in this age
group have admitted sending explicit images to their friends.

The Telegraph reports that Microsoft is under further fire,
following accusations that a Chinese factory which makes Xbox
components is using
teenagers as slave labour. They quote an investigation by the
US’s National Labour Committee, which found that the factory was paying
its young workers as little as 37p per hour for 15-hour shifts in
desperately crowded workshops. One space, measuring 105ft by 105ft,
contained nearly a thousand teenagers working in 86 degree heat -
the factory is alleged to have turned on the air-conditioning only when
foreign clients were visiting.

A new virus has infected the PCs of thousands of Japanese users
who have illegally downloaded sexually-explicit hentai, according to
the BBC. The malware takes a screenshot of the victim’s web history
and publishes it – before demanding a £10 fee to ‘settle your violation
of copyright law’ and remove the user’s surfing history.

The Conservative
Party has weighed in on the current controversy surrounding Facebook’s
refusal to install a ‘panic button’, which would connect young
users directly to the police if they felt at threat from paedophiles.
The party is threatening
to remove their advertising unless Facebook reconsiders – but
critics accuse the Tories of electioneering, pointing out that Facebook,
which is on-track
to make $1.1 Billion in 2010, is unlikely to be overly-worried by
their threats.

Rolling Stone
magazine has announced that it will be erecting a
Glasto-style paywall around all content beyond its homepage.
The iconic muso-mag will tax readers $3.95 for a month’s pass, or
$29.99 for an annual subscription. Elsewhere, Reuters announced that it
too is eyeing a limit to Free, and perhaps plans
to charge for “niche, high-value content”, according to Brand
Republic.

The Wall Street Journal has joined the New York Times in cuddling
up to Foursquare: it’s now providing them with editorial
snippets and restaurant reviews, as well as three new badges, each of
which come with a specific New York Challenge.

It was perhaps inevitable that News Corp would throw its hat into
the social gaming ring, and last week it planted
its flag with the acquisition of social game developer Irata
Labs. It seems there are no plans to fold the company into
MySpace – it will be grown as a standalone, to be put to work with
NewsCorp properties as required.

Meanwhile the L.A.Times reports that Hulu, the video-site
part-owned by NewsCorp, might be launching its subscription model
at $9.95
a month. But at least one
commentator has noted that the figure might not be quite the ticket
– being both too much for the average consumer to stomach for free TV,
and too little to make much of a dent in Hulu’s operating costs.

New research by moneysupermarket.com suggests that superfast
broadband will actively encourage
users to illegally download copyrighted content. Already,
nearly a fifth of internet users admit to doing so – and 35% will be
more inclined to, once superfast broadband is rolled out.

Yahoo
has splashed out on the Montenegran Me.me domain name for its
micro-blogging site Meme, calling the purchase “an essential
component of our online branding strategy.” Commentators
predict that a wider roll-out of the surprisingly underpublicized
Twitter rival is in the pipeline; Search
Engine Journal further notes that Yahoo’s fortunes appear to have
turned. Citing improved ad spend and increased earnings in Q1 2010, the
journal wonders what else the company might have up its sleeve.

New
research finds that a vast 6.8% of all the URLs accessed by
businesses belong to Facebook, with 10% of businesses’ bandwidth
eaten up by YouTube. “IT managers are right to be concerned about
the amount of social network use at work,” says Network Box’s Simon
Heron. Well, quite.

Meanwhile, Facebook is responsible for
nearly 50% of global hits to websites from social media, with Twitter
punching above its weight in generating nearly one in ten. StumbledUpon
sits in between, with just under 25%, according to StatCounter.

In the States, 145 million Internet users access social web
applications, between them generating nearly 500
billion impressions on each other. A new report by Forrester also
finds that a mahoosive 80% of those impressions are generated by 16% of
web users – and more than 60% of them come via Facebook.

And a new
report predicts that nearly half of global mobile users will be
using their devices to pay for both digital and physical goods by 2014.

Finally, ad
budgets are on the rise for the first time in ten consecutive
quarters, according to the latest Bellwether report.

Supermarket giant Asda, who recently signed up to Mumsnet’s
Let Girls Be Girls campaign, has consulted
Mumsnet users about whether one of their products was against
the spirit of the campaign, which calls on retailers not to sell
products which prematurely sexualise children.

As part of their
Live Positively campaign, Coca-Cola is teaming up with the
charity Ocean Conservancy to encourage their fans to ‘oceanize’
their Facebook profile image into a playful underwater photo.

And the brand has also kicked
off its World Cup celebration campaign with an ad which
stars former Cameroon star Roger Milla, famous for celebrating a goal
during Italy’s ’90 World Cup with enthusiastic on-pitch dancing. The
ads direct users to the brand’s YouTube channel, where they’re urged to
upload their own celebratory videos.

Meanwhile, PepsiCo and Microsoft’s World Cup campaign
features Lionel Messi and Frank Lampard, and an interactive game
called Football
Hero in which users can earn personalised video content, to be
distributed via their social media profiles.

Tesco
has launched its Race
For Life social networking site – the brand’s first. It gives
those brave souls who are participating in Cancer Research UK’s annual
fund-raising run a dedicated space to share their experiences with their
fellow-runners.

Shreddies
is crowdsourcing their
latest campaign – they need to find a new Knitting Nana to
be the face of their brand. Meanwhile, Unilever is asking the public to
create ads for some of its best-known brands, including Lynx, Ben
& Jerry’s, Dove and Vaseline.

Finally, Scholastic,
publishers of Horrible
Histories – the gruesome reading-matter of choice for
under-12s everywhere – are working with our social media agency partners
YoMego to build a
dedicated virtual world to support their range of titles, due to go live
in June 2011.

That’s
all folks!

Welcome to
eModeration’s round-up of all that is intriguing, alarming or odd in
the world of social media, compiled by Kate Williams. For more social
media snippets, follow @emodkate – or for general twittery,
@KateVWilliams.

This week: Prescott’s keyword combat; anonymous comments; and the truth
about Unvarnished.

THE HEADLINES …

And it’s all kicked off! The three party leaders finally entered
the ring last night, with the first truly social event of the
Social Media Election®. After a tense build-up of several months (and
what is certain to have been many long hours of media-training, not to
mention pots of touche-eclat), the three duked it out on ITV’s live
leaders’ debate – closely scrutinized by both the global media and a UK
TV audience of nearly 10 million.

The leaders’ performance anxieties can only have been enhanced by the
fact that a considerable number of those viewers were simultaneously
online, bashing a live stream of instant commentary on the putative PMs’
presentation skills into their steaming keyboards (*cough* disclosure
here: moderated by our very own selves).

Meanwhile ITV – with politicos Tweetminster – were generating a
real-time picture of public sentiment, via ‘The Worm of Like’, which
snaked alluringly across our screens. All in all, 200,000 of us joined
the live discussion on ITV.com, tweeting at a rate of 29.06 tweets per
second – with Nimble Nick Clegg emerging as the people’s victor,
according to at least three separate polls. Gripping stuff.

Labour’s John Prescott launched
a ploy to deplete the Tories’ famously over-flowing election
coffers earlier in the week, and it turned out to involve some close
paid-search combat. The Conservative party have for some time been
bidding on Labour-related keywords to enable their ads to appear at the
top of search results – leading the former Deputy Prime Minister to
issue this strategic tweet: 1.Google ‘Labour Party’ 2.Click on advert
saying ‘Labour have failed’ 3.You’ve just cost Ashcroft 50p. 4.Repeat.

While we naturally deplore any
attempt to Buck The System, this kind of wheeze might be just the
ticket when appealing to jack-happy, 4Chan-wielding youngsters in the
build-up to the election. Increasingly, it seems that social media is
indeed weaving
its magic spell, pulling in first-time voters who traditionally see
little point in voting: nearly half those polled say that online
political content has piqued their interest.

Meanwhile, the Electoral Commission is splashing
cash on Facebook – on Saturday, every visitor will be asked if
they’ve registered to vote. And since Monday, YouTube and Facebook users
have been directing text or video questions to the three
party leaders; on 28th April, David Cameron, Gordon Brown and Nick
Clegg will upload their considered responses to the five most popular
questions – yet more evidence that 2010 is indeed the year that politics
goes social.

Here, at last, is the grim
news that AOL is likely to let Bebo go. Much like the day I failed
my Grade Three piano, it’s terribly sad for all concerned – but not
entirely unexpected. As their letter to employees succinctly noted,
“social networking is a space with heavy competition, and where scale
defines success” – and on that basis alone AOL’s $850m social network
investment has looked shaky, pretty much from the get-go.

Nevertheless, the ripples of Bebo’s failure will spread far beyond the
immediate pall of its disappointed employees – the closure would leave a
gaping hole for brands who seek to reach a young demographic with
content-based advertising, and could potentially leave some with fan
communities that they can’t
migrate to alternative platforms.

Following pressure from child-safety campaigners, Facebook announced a
raft of new safety-measures, including a 24-hour UK police hotline,
a £5m awareness campaign, free ad space for safety groups, and a
re-designed system for flagging abuse. But the company stopped short of
implementing a button linking directly to CEOPs, the Child Exploitation
and Online Protection Centre, on each profile page – prompting a group
of 44 Police chiefs to sign
a letter urging Facebook to reconsider. The company insisted,
however, that such measures are not
the most effective way to prevent grooming and other online dangers
which face young people on the social network.

“Comments: their form and function” has been a topic much in the news
this week. An Ohio judge was revealed to be suing the
superbly-moniker’d Cleveland Plain
Dealer, whom she alleges unfairly
unmasked her as the sender of anonymous critical comments about a
local awyer. It then emerged that the Washington
Post, the New York Times,
and several other papers are currently
questioning whether commenters should be allowed to remain
anonymous at all, amid concerns that many news comments boards have
begun to resemble bar-room brawls. Finally, the Gawker
published stats which revealed that, once their sites began to
privilege the comments of ‘respected’ users over those of anonymous
posters, the quality – and quantity – of comments rose sharply. Some
interesting decisions ahead for both publishers, and brands.

By now we should all have the rubric ‘what happens in social media,
stays in social media’ tattooed on our inner wrists, and be tweeting
with due regard to posterity and its habit of biting us on the backside.
But just in case you are one who is not, here comes the chilling news
that Google has now made every
Tweet searchable – until now, a famously difficult trick to pull –
closely followed by the announcement that the US Library of Congress
will now be preserving
every tweet for All Eternity. People, discretion truly is the
better part of Twitter.

The Digital Economy Bill – minus the controversial broadband tax – was
ushered into law late last week, and illegal downloaders now face a
possible lifetime ban. Not without a fight from ISP Talk Talk,
however, who issued the following bellicose
statement: “if we are instructed to disconnect an account due to
alleged copyright infringement we will refuse to do so and tell the
rightsholders we’ll see them in court.”

THE LOWDOWN …

Be afraid, be very afraid – then squeeze out just a teeny bit more fear.
Reputation-scoring site Unvarnished
is coming, and things will never be the same. Billed as a site for
“community-contributed, business-focused assessments of professional
performance,” Unvarnished’s offer boils down to this: if you’re a
work-shy layabout who’s been rumbled by a co-worker; a boss whose
underling has revealed your incompetence; or a feckless lover whose
pride was knocked when your darling showed you the well-deserved door –
here is your revenge. Chill winds, indeed.

Yikes. Farmville has hit the headlines again, this time because a
12-year-old boy has cashed out his horrified mother’s
credit card in a two-week, £905 spree on virtual currency and
accessories for his farm. The bank is unsurprisingly unwilling to refund
the money, and so are Farmville developers Zynga, who, it’s safe to
say, didn’t score a valuation of $5
billion by giving in to namby-pamby complaints from the parents of
under-age users.

The world just became a fraction
more perplexing for those of us whose brains silently form the word
‘why?’ when we hear the fun-quotient of Foursquare being talked up.
Apparently, cheating on Foursquare
– that is, claiming badges without actually leaving your squalid
bedsitter – is so rife that the company has been forced to institute a
crack-down. I know – no words.

Following the IAB’s
announcement that it will be introducing a new qualification to
weed out the most bogus of self-proclaimed ‘social media experts’, here
is more good news: a LinkedIn survey reveals that the word ‘guru’ –
that most self-aggrandising of social-media titles – is on the decline.
Sadly, the same report finds that the quite-as-excruciating ‘ninja’ is
sharply
on the rise.

I love Tom Scott, and firmly believe you will love him too. The cheeky
sprite has just launched a new website called, with delightful
directness, Stupid Fight.
The site pits
any two Twitter celebs against one another, applies a sophisticated
set of linguistic algorithms to the last 100 people to @reply each one,
and – without fear or favour – determines whose fans are the most
stupid. A simple idea, but no less pleasing for it.

NEWSBYTES …

A headteacher who was due to take up her post at a British school has
been forced
to withdraw, after students organized a Facebook campaign to oppose
her appointment. The news prompted teachers’ unions to allege a “crisis
of adult authority”.

Elsewhere, an American teenager has filed harassment charges against his
own mother, whom he claims hacked his Facebook account before posting
personal info and defamatory comments. According to the New
York Daily News, the case could “challenge the rights of parents to
monitor their children online.”

Google is
backing Yahoo in its privacy tussle with the US Department of
Justice, who want broad-request access to the e-mail messages of its
users. A coalition backed by the search giant declares that “society
expects and relies on the privacy of e-mail messages just as it relies
on the privacy of the telephone system.”

Meanwhile another coalition – this time of European telecoms providers -
are challenging Google over the bandwidth consumed by YouTube,
according to the Financial
Times. The companies claim that the videosite should cough up a
share of its ad profits, part of their broader attempt to shift the
economic model of the internet to one where websites pay for the content
that their users consume.

IKEA this week became the latest to join the rapidly-expanding roster of
companies which have been brand-jacked
on Facebook. A fake IKEA fan-page tempted users with the prospect
of a $1000 voucher if they invited their entire roster of friends to
participate in a scam “for-one-day-only” lead-gen offer.

If you have ever lain awake, anxiously wondering just what a
Facebook fan is worth, then Vitrue has the answer you seek:
precisely $3.60. To put that figure into context, a little less than a
Grande Latte, but marginally more than a Royale with Cheese.

Beleaguered local review site Yelp this week adjusted
its terms, following a class-action suit alleging that companies
which advertised on the site had their unfavourable reviews removed.
Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman announced that the site would no longer allow
advertisers to position their most favourable review at the top of
their listing, in an attempt to face the criticisms head-on.

If they won the election, both Labour and the Conservatives would launch
sites where parents could report products and marketing which sexualise
children – despite
complaints from the ad industry that the idea was ‘ill-thought out’
and would ‘pull the rug out from under the ASA’, reports Marketing.

APPLE JUICE …

Brit Apple-fans, nurturing fond hopes of cradling an iPad in their
loving arms in a month’s time, watched in open-mouthed horror this week
as Apple’s sales stats climbed higher, and higher – and with them the
chances of Apple flunking its UK release date.

And alas, their
fears were realized – having reached an astonishing weekly peak of
500,000 units sold, the company announced it had taken the “difficult
decision to postpone the international launch of the iPad by one month”.
Oh dear, oh no – don’t cry. I can’t bear it when you cry.

This may cheer you: famously-controlling Apple CEO Steve Jobs has
confirmed that the company will hunt down anyone with the word ‘Pad’ in
their branding – and kill them. Well, I think he said kill. Aaany-ways,
the AppleStore is refusing
to renew any apps which contain the cute little suffix, and Steve
Jobs clearly implied that Apple owns the word ‘pad’ when he wrote to a
disgruntled app-developer, “it’s just common sense not to use another
company’s trademarks”. Bad news, Kotex. Run, run while there’s still
time.

Apple’s delayed UK launch gives us plenty of time to save for an outfit
to complement that swanky new iPad. And looksie, the world’s first iPad-compatible
vest is something of a bargain – even though ‘vest’ disappointingly
turns out to mean ‘gilet’, and not the sturdy woollen undergarment
rightly beloved of we doughty Brits.

Alternatively, if your desire to semaphore your social significance has
been stymied by the iPad’s UK postponement – how’s about this
little beauty? It’s a shirt which broadcasts, in real-time and to a
doubtless admiring audience, the number of unread emails currently in
your inbox. That’ll get your message across, loud and clear.

But if you’re still not quite
with the iPad programme – perhaps you harbour a stony cynicism in your
heart, which even YouTube videos of kittens
operating iPads can’t dispel – you might enjoy this little skit
which asks pertinently: Just what IS the iPad
revolutionizing?

The history of technology tends to resemble a very small island filled
with very tall skyscrapers – one can’t often stand far enough back to
see what’s what. But Guardian editor @arusbridger offers an intriguing
insight into how far back the roots of the iPad really stretch,
with his account of a 1994 encounter with new-media visionary Roger
Fidler and his tablet-prototype. Charmingly, Rusbridger’s
contemporaneous notes reads: “At present it consists only of an A4 block
of wood, with a ‘front page’ stuck on it: the technology for creating
Fidler’s ‘Flat Pad’ is, he estimates, still a couple of years off.”

ON TWITTER …

The Spring is sprung, the grass is riz – and Twitter has a whole nestful
of cute new business strategies to show off to an admiring world.

At last week’s Chirp conference, Biz Stone twirled a raft of impressive
stats: 106,000,000 registered users – about 60% of whom are based
outside the US – with a stonking 300,000 new users signing up every day.

Most impressively, Stone revealed that a mere quarter of Twitter’s
traffic comes from the site itself, with the remaining 75% (a
mind-boggling 3
billion calls per day) coming via third-party Twitter clients. The
stats go a long way to explaining the consistently underweight user
figures which have long puzzled observers.

They also contextualise two further Chirp announcements – Twitter’s
acquisition of the wildly popular Mac and iPhone app Tweetie
(which will now be renamed “Twitter for iPhone”), and the launch of an own-brand
URL shortener in direct competition with Bit.ly (till recently
Twitter’s default link-chopper) and similar apps.

Unsurprisingly, both snippets of news caused
considerable alarm amongst Twitter’s community of third-party
developers, who have been at the heart of Twitter’s rapidly-expanding
ecosystem, providing vital functionality while the Twitter team
concentrated on its core scaleability.

And while the company gamely tried to smoothe those developers’ ruffled
feathers – promising to be ‘sincere and honest in our communication
with you’ – it’s clear that the company feels it’s high time they
brought much of that profitable functionality inside the Twitter nest – a
strategy which drew admiring
commentary from many watchers.

And that’s not the only game-changing Twitter plan to hatch this week –
the company announced that it will soon be incorporating paid-for ‘promoted tweets’ –
which COO Dick Costolo insisted were positively,
definitely not the same thing as ads – into
its business structure.

The news met with a mixed response from Twitter users, who are
notoriously protective of Twitter’s anti-corporate feel. Predictably, UK
users were mostly grumpy, with 68% feeling aggrieved at the
prospect, according to a poll by Groupola. Stateside, a broader spread
of opinion was revealed by Crimson Hexagon, who found that while
42% feel that ads – sorry, ‘promoted tweets’ – will be no better than
spam, more than a quarter felt that the new strategy amounted to a
sensible business plan, with 31% as yet undecided.

For those brands who’re still a little confuddled as to quite how
Promoted Tweets will impact advertisers, Ad
Age counsels firmly: “you want to learn this product as soon as
possible.” Meanwhile Mashable
cleverly persuaded Virgin America – one of the companies to beta-test
the strategy – to share the skinny.

SOCIAL STATS …

38% of social networkers are most
likely to believe posts from their fellow consumers, according to
InSites Consulting. Second most credible were posts by brands
themselves, at 32% – and trailing by some lengths were those of
journalists (7%) and marketers (a measly 3%).

45% of UK consumers say they’ve never seen a single relevant
behavioural ad – and if they could, 52% say they’d like to opt
out.

A new study from Burson-Marsteller reveals that 79% of Fortune’s
Global 100 brands are already using social media. Twitter is the
most popular platform – 65% have a presence there.

90% of UK consumers searched for their latest purchase on
the net, according to a report from Likemind and Vision Critical –
and nearly half said they got better service online than instore.

That’s
all folks!

Welcome
to eModeration’s round-up of all that 
is
intriguing, alarming or odd in the world of social media, compiled by
Kate Williams. For more social media snippets, follow her on @emodkate -
or for general twittery, @KateVWilliams.

This week: iPad opening-night reviews; the Jobs-Schmidt kaffeeklatsch;
and Chicken Curry Crispy Pancakes

THE HEADLINES
…

After months of anxious anticipation, News International announced this
week that, from June, it
will charge TimesOnline readers £1 per day, or £2 per week. The
announcement was met with the kind of fatalistic acquiescence which more
usually accompanies the eventual arrival of a train which will be
taking you somewhere you’re not at all sure you want to go.
Stationmaster Rupert Murdoch – who last year barked gruffly that
‘quality journalism is not cheap’ – is now on track to route his other
news-engines The Sun and the News of the World through the big
paywall tunnel: the success, or otherwise, of his journey will be
closely followed by a
fretful industry.

If Britain votes the way it tweets, we can anticipate a slim Labour
victory or a hung parliament. So say the tweeps at political site Tweetminster,
who’ve analysed mentions and sentiment across the microblogging site in
an effort to predict the outcome of the general election. They’ll be
regularly taking Twitter’s temperature as the election draws closer,
focusing particularly carefully on the televised leaders debates.

Early this week China delivered a series of draconian domestic edicts,
which specified in chilly detail the precise tone with which Google’s
exit from China was to be discussed in the media and on the internet –
Mashable reproduces the memo, here.
And, for an intriguing portrait of China’s culture of censorship – one
in which up to 280,000 individuals are paid to ‘astroturf’, blanketing
the Net with comments which paint the authorities in a glowing light –
look no further than to Ars
Technica.

Ofcom revealed this week that many UK children
aged 8-12 already have social media profiles – despite the fact
that the lower age limit is 13. Research showed that a quarter of
children in that age-range had Facebook, MySpace or Bebo profiles last
year – and that 17% of their parents weren’t aware of the fact.

Meanwhile, the government’s internet safety adviser Prof Tanya Byron told
the BBC that children should be actively discouraged from using
social networks – and she warned that, though the UK leads the way in
keeping children out of danger on the Net, much more could be done to
engage with children themselves, and to improve industry standards for
newer technologies – particularly mobile phones.

Elsewhere, researchers at Newcastle University have developed
technology which they believe could help to trap paedophiles. The
software logs the speed and rhythm at which users type, and can
determine the users age, sex and even culture within 10 keystrokes.

A file-sharing case against a British teenager was dropped
this week, just two weeks before the trial was due to begin.
Michael Wyatt had been charged with copyright offences, following a
heavy-handed raid on his home by police and officials from
music-industry body, the BPI. Wyatt faced a possible 10 years in jail,
but his lawyers successfully argued that the matter should always have
been a civil, not a criminal, case.

Stateside, however, it seems the campaign against illegal file-sharing
is gaining a relentless momentum. The tap was abruptly
turned off at mammoth bit-torrent site Isohunt this week, when a US
court ordered that all copyright-infringing material must be
immediately taken down. But as Mashable
notes, while Isobar provides links to copyright-infringing
material, so does
Google. Is Isohunt’s search box any different than Google’s search
box, they ask?

Meanwhile, some 20,000
individual downloaders have been sued in a Washington court for
copyright violations, and a major Hollywood studio has advertised for
“IT literate” student interns to monitor their peers in suspected piracy
hotspots. The job ad prompted the somewhat partisan but reliably-amusing
Gizmodo to ask, “Are you an unloved member of digital society? Have
you been shunned by your (peer to) peers? Then Warner Bros. has just
the job for you, Judas.”

THE LOWDOWN …

This week, the wires were fairly buzzing
with the news that Apple chief Steve Jobs and Google boss Eric
Schmidt had been spotted chatting à deux, in a café in downtown Palo
Alto. Relations between the two have been chilly, borderline
frost-bitten, since Schmidt resigned from Apple’s board, and the
unlikelihood of the tête-à-tête unleashed a deal
of speculation that it was a set-up – yet another instance of
Apple’s historically brilliant image-management. This explanation goes
part-way to explaining the Two Capos’ air of studied casualness, but
leaves the critical question – ‘why on earth..?’ – hanging frustratingly
in the air.

The cosy kaffeeklatsch has nevertheless provided much ammunition for
weary chroniclers of the troubled Jobs-Schmidt relationship. TechCrunch
cogitates over which of many iconic cinematic face-offs the
encounter most resembles (I lean towards Bergman’s The Seventh Seal). Gizmodo,
meanwhile, hired ex-law enforcement official and ‘body linguistics
expert’ Janine Driver to confidently
explain that the two men trust one another a measly 33% – and that
one is scared of the other. Can you guess, my dearies, which one is
which? A hearty slap on the back to all those who deduce that Eric fears
Steve – a fact apparently evidenced by the hunching of his shoulders,
in futile hope of making himself a smaller target.

It is fair to say that the British political caste is not, at present,
held in high esteem by the average citizen. But if ever there were a
‘count your blessings’ moment, it is this
piece of news, which reveals that a Bulgarian politician has been
dismissed from a council committee for spending too much time on social
game Farmville – during committee meetings. Attempting to excuse
himself, but succeeding only in ramping-up the appalled hilarity by a
factor of ten, the politician claimed his fellow members were equally,
if not more guilty – because they had reached a higher level in the
game.

Great news for fans of ersatz
retro British ready-meals. Responding to a 4500 strong petition on
their Facebook Fanpage, Findus executives have agreed to reinstate
Chicken Curry Crispy Pancakes: too long absent, you’ll agree, from our
supermarket shelves.

Last week, an alarming Russian lounge singer ‘miming’ to a song called
Trololo. This week: an alarming cat repeats
the disquieting feat. I know: we spoil you.

NEWSBYTES …

Shriek! Three days to go before the launch of the iPad! And look, Mashable
gives us a handy guide to the reviews which are beginning to trickle
in. The Wall Street Journal apparently declares it is “pretty
close” to being a laptop killer, while the New York Times thinks
it’s “basically a gigantic
iPod touch.” One thing is certain: we can expect much, much more along these lines in the
coming week.

Two remodellings of the social media space to admire this week: 


The
Glee guys are holding an open casting for the next series on
MySpace – so if you are between the ages of 16 and 26, and possessed of
pizzazz, you may upload your audition from now until April 26.

And Republican Tim Pawlenty, the go-getting
Governor of Minnesota, has requisitioned a Facebook page, on which
he plans to conduct official town-hall meetings.

Our friends and clients at ITV, meanwhile, will soon be using the Pluck
social media platform to allow This
Morning viewers to interact with the programme’s content by leaving
their own online comments. The platform will also extend the social
reach of This Morning – and other shows like Loose Women, Coronation
Street, and the network’s 2010 World Cup footage – by bridging out to
users’ Twitter and Facebook profiles (Full disclosure: we’re delighted
to be breaking this new social media telly ground alongside them. )

79% of people who follow brands on Twitter become more likely to
recommend those brands to others after doing so, with 67% saying they
are more likely than before to buy the brand they’ve followed. Figures
for Facebook fans are respectively 60%, and 51%, according to new
research from Chadwick Martin Bailey.

Meanwhile, 2009 online display ad-spend dropped
4.4% on the previous year – the first time annual figures have
tumbled since 2001.

ON FACEBOOK
…

Roll up, roll up for another ride on Facebook’s
privacy merry-go-round! An update to the Facebook blog announces
that – in anticipation of the launch of its location-sharing feature –
the site has “added the concept of a ‘place’ that could refer to a Page,
such as one for a local restaurant” to it. Which left most of us none
the wiser.

But let’s face facts: there’s not a huge chance that The ‘Book will have
a dramatic change of heart when it comes to privacy – its strategies
are working out pretty well so far. New figures from Website Monitoring
find that 80,000 web sites are now running Facebook Connect, including
two-thirds of the Top 100 US web sites – with a whopping 60 million of
us engaging with external Connect apps each month. Facebook is becoming,
as Social
Media Influence notes, a ‘second Web’.

Meanwhile, the site has peremptorily junked
the concept of ‘Fans’, opting instead to have users ‘Like’ brands.
As Facebook cheerily points out, ‘people click “Like” almost two times
more than they click “Become a Fan”’ – leaving others
to point out that many users won’t realise that they are signing up for
brand updates to their newsfeed.

On which associated note, Facebook has contacted
the creator of Facebook Purity, a Greasemonkey script which removes
unwanted app notices – first to demand that he nix the word Facebook,
then to insist that he drop the whole damn thing. Which, since
Greasemonkey scripts live in users’ browsers – and has nothing to do
with Facebook – is what is technically known as ‘a flippin’ cheek’.

ON TWITTER …

A cracking week for Twitter, who twirled their new-look, dynamic
homepage, to gasps of admiration. Well, perhaps not gasps, but you
get my drift. The snazzy redesign for non-logged in users shifts focus
from Trending topics, which now scroll sideways across the top section
of the screen, to a rolling list of popular tweets by featured users –
Slebs, in other words. The Times called it ‘slightly
hypnotic’, and that’s got to be good.

What’s more, the site’s Tweets-per-day index now stands at 53 million,
up 30% from December, with March growth a more-than-respectable 14.6%.
TechCrunch have cunningly identified what they’re calling Twitter’s nine-month
bounce – a regular pattern of adoption in which new users tweet
merrily away for a while, then hit the Slough of Twitter Despond between
3 and 6 months, before finally hitting their air-punching peak after
they pass the 9-month hurdle. From that point, they’re hooked. No
wonder Biz Stone perkily
announced this week that “later this month (we’ll be) revealing
exactly how we plan to make a sustainable source of income.”

BRANDS GET
SOCIAL …

Coca-Cola is using the tagline ‘What’s the worst that could happen?’ to launch
its Dr Pepper brand into social media, challenging the public to
risk excruciating social embarrassment in the hope of winning ringtones
and cash prizes.

Love it or hate it, you’ve got to bow down to the scope of Marmite’s
ambition. This week sees the advertising and social media launch of two
new political parties on dedicated election site
www.marmitenewsnetwork.com. The Love Party tempts us to “Spread the
Love” by highlighting Marmite’s nutritional values and offering anger
management courses for Marmite haters. The Hate Party urges us “Stop the
Spread” of Marmite, suggesting designated “Marmite-eating” zones and a
compulsory label-change to “Tarmite”.

Tourism Australia is offering the public a chance to win a working
holiday in the Outback if they can through a ‘boomerang’
app far enough. The winner will be the Facebook user who throws the
virtual boomerang via as many Friends as possible before “catching” it
again.

Desperate Housewives star Teri Hatcher has partnered with
DisneyFamily.com to launch GetHatched.com, “A Chick’s Guide to Life.”
The site offers female-orientated
content on “solutions for the needs of all women”, and offers users
the chance to blog about the challenges of balancing their busy lives.

General Motors, recently given a rocky ride in the wake of its financial
rescue, has beefed up online
customer service with a team specifically charged with monitoring
social media noise, and engaging directly with customers on Facebook,
MySpace and Twitter.

Asda is leveraging the Mum
vote as the general election approaches. They’ve lined up the three
party leaders for web-chats with their customers, and are looking for a
team of Asda mummy-bloggers to share their thoughts on the political
issues that matter to them.

Upcoming blockbuster superhero movie Kick-Ass is being promoted via a
viral Facebook Connect game, which allows users to turn Facebook
photos of themselves or their friends into a self-designed super-being.

That’s
all folks!

 Welcome
to eModeration’s round-up of all that is intriguing, alarming or odd in
the world of social media, compiled by Kate Williams. For more social
media snippets, follow her on @emodkate – or for general twittery,
@KateVWilliams. 

This
week: This week: judges can Google; the Conservative’s Great Social
Media Adventure; and marketing on Chatroulette… in Lycra. Plus: we’d
still love your feedback on these updates: tweet Yay! or Boo! to
@emodkate. It’ll take ten seconds, promise. 

THE HEADLINES …

So: after months of tossing and turning; of agonized grimaces and broken
nights, Google has finally pulled the tooth that was ailing it, and quit
China: an April 10 pullout is mooted. In an effort to continue
offering uncensored results to its Chinese users (and not at all to
cling on to the revenue potential attached to 800 million Chinese
internet users – don’t be ridiculous), Google began redirecting
users to their uncensored Hong Kong site, announcing that they’d be
‘carefully monitoring access issues’.

Sure enough, the Chinese government began
disabling certain search results, and China’s national mobile
provider dropped
Google as its default search engine. Chinese netizens found
themselves back where they first began: censored. But to be perfectly
frank, they don’t seem all
that fussed. China’s increasingly affluent middle class have, till
now, been avid Googlers; but even amongst this key constituency there
was little sympathy for Google’s position, with many, according to the
Telegraph, feeling that the company had been disrespectful of local
mores, a feeling even
more pronounced amongst ‘mainstream’ Chinese. So when, for a short
while on Tuesday morning, Google’s corporate pages were displayed in
Chinese, many
cried ‘hack’ – despite Google’s protestations.

Meanwhile, Dell and Go Daddy want to join the
Leavin’ Train, with the latter telling a US Congress committee
hearing that the company no longer had the stomach for
domain-registrations in China, where new regulations now demand photo ID
from anyone registering a .cn domain.

But Westside, Google’s self-penned profile as ‘stout defender of
internet freedoms’ is increasingly under scrutiny. Co-founder Sergey
Brin’s Guardian interview, in which he positioned Google as Poster Corp.
for digital liberation whilst berating Microsoft for working within
China’s rules, got backs
a-bristling: several commentators pointed out that this was
Google’s own strategy until – ooh, three months ago?

Fred Teng in the
Huffington Post, meanwhile, calls for tolerance for China, whose
journey from feudal island to globally-connected digital nation has, he
points out, been laudably swift.

There’s not many matters in this world upon which we can all agree – but
the proposition ‘Nestle’s week has been a bit …meh’ might, I suspect,
be
one of them. Item: their Facebook page was targeted by Greenpeace.
Item: their response went from ‘placatory’ to ‘I’m deleting yo’
account’, then dashed back to ‘I never meant to hurt you’ – in what felt
like moments, with bystanders gazing on in open-mouthed horror. At
the time of going to press, Nestle’s Facebook page was best described as
a
sit-in – and this painful episode can’t fail to spotlight the huge
variation in the quality of brands’ moderation policies. Jake McKee has
some useful thoughts here
– upon which we were delighted to comment.

Brace yourselves – Facebook’s latest
privacy battle could have huge implications for all UGC platforms,
potentially shifting the responsibility for protecting personal privacy
away from users, and onto social networks. European regulators are
investigating whether the privacy of people whose photos and videos are
posted on social networks is being habitually breached.

There’s been a deal of huffing
and puffing about the upcoming ‘Social Media Election’, with BBC
journalists explaining Twitter to social slowpokes, and expounding
on how both parties are utilizing it to sway voters. Facebook launched a
new page called Democracy
UK, where its posting news of a political nature for all and
sundry to comment upon);
ITN hosted live
online debate during their budget special; and new
tools for tracking party-political
sentiment – like Yomego‘s,
pictured here – are being launched Left, Right and Centre.

The Tories were first out of the gate: it emerged
that they were outpacing Labour on Facebook by a ‘connection’ ratio
of two to one. Alas, their social success went straight to their
heads and, minded to build upon their initial victory, they launched a rather
snazzy Facebook campaign which incorporated a Twitter feed of the
hashtag #cashgordon. Alas, opponents discovered that the feed was entirely
unmoderated, and took the opportunity to bombard the site with an
awful lot of – how to put it? – brand-negative comments. Worse still,
they discovered that the site didn’t strip html, allowing those
less-than-positive reviews to really, you know, shine
out. The website was removed later that day.

Meanwhile, Gordon Brown has described ‘superfast’
broadband as the “electricity of the digital age”. Outlining
Labour’s plans, he promised ziptastic speeds for every citizen, as well
as a webpage through which to manage their interactions with local
government – a proposal which, according to the government, could slash
billions from the public service budget, and generate a quarter of a
million jobs. 

Best not to mention, then, the ongoing
brouhaha over the government’s plans for our digital future which,
it must be said, are not meeting with unqualified support.  

THE LOWDOWN … 

Following a tip-off from the FBI, French police
arrested the man responsible for hacking Barack
Obama’s Twitter account late last year – then released him, after
he claimed that, far from being a master-criminal, he’d simply guessed the
President’s password (His birthday? “ThePrezz”? or [gulp].. “password?”). All rather embarrassing
for the man they’re calling the first president of the digital age. 

Then, in an intriguing instance of plot-thickening, ReadWriteWeb
revealed unconfirmed reports that the hacker was the very same
bounder who leaked Twitter’s confidential business plans to TechCrunch,
who chose to publish them, despite a flurry of controversy. 

Truth is, there’s not much in digital life that can
truthfully be called ‘secure’ – this was the takeaway from the annual
Pwn2Own contest at the CanSecWest security show, which challenges
hackers (sorry, ‘security experts’) to break into a roster of everyday
devices and software. This year, the scallywags succeeded in hacking
into nearly every major browser (Safari, Firefox and IE8), as well as
stealing the entire SMS database of a non-jailbroken iPhone.


Eew. Director of Public Health Peter Kelly this
week claimed that the rise of social networking has produced an
alarming spike in reported cases of syphilis. Sites like Facebook,
he said, were “making it easier for people to meet up for casual sex,”
and several of the syphilis cases he’d seen “had met sexual partners
through these sites.” Facebook, understandably keen to quash the ‘ridiculous’
idea, pointed out that correlation is not quite the same as causation. Nevertheless – yikes. 

Ah, hindsight is always 20:20; foresight – not so
much. All the more impressive, then, is the
inspired guess made by Nik Tyler, who a year ago registered three
domain names: ipaddownload.com, ipaddownloads.com and ipaddownloads.net.
They are now on the market; a million bucks will snag all three. 

You have your lycra tiger-suit ready? And your scary
clown-mask? Good, then we’ll begin our ‘Marketing on Chatroulette’ 101,
as taught by Stage
Two Consulting. They advise marketing execs wishing to explore the
potential of the latest social craze to “have several masks/outfits
available in case the occasion arises.” Bless.

Facebook’s Gross
National Happiness Index has landed in the UK, revealing the
emotional ineptitude of the average Brit in all its glory – we are, it
seems, only really free with our emotions in the matter of family, TV
and the Weather. Disappointingly, the Index focuses on extremes of
emotion – happiness, or sadness – and so fails to track those
sentiments which, in my experience, are most frequently demonstrated by
we Brits: ‘mild annoyance’, ‘qualified enthusiasm’, and
‘schadenfreude’. 

This is genuinely rather impressive – Franklin Page, a
fleet-of-thumb employee of text-software company Swype, has beaten the
World Record for texting at speed: you can watch and marvel here.
Huzzah – the astonishing and bizarre viral clip of a Russian
lounge singer warbling something called ‘Trololo’ has been given
it’s own iPhone app! If you’ve not yet had the pleasure, do take a look:
you will be tickled pink, or horribly disturbed – one or t’other.  

NEWSBYTES … 

Online dating is now so mainstream an activity that
it’s now bigger than the online adult industry, and is worth a humungous
one billion dollars per year, according to this new
infographic from Online Schools.

A US federal appeals court has ruled
that a judge who is unsure about a matter of common knowledge may use
Google. Never again will a member of the bench be flummoxed by the name
of a popular beat combo.  

Analysts
are predicting that Apple will bite 40% of the tablet and e-reader
market this year, sending shares zooming. And the iPad is already
attracting high-end and big-name
advertisers to its apps, causing ripples of relief to bloom
throughout an anxious ad industry. The New York Times reporting that the
going rate is anywhere between $75,000 and $300,000, and adds that it’s already sold its first two
months of post-launch inventory. 

Schoolkids
in Japan will be using Nintendo DS’s in class before the end of the
year, the education authorities there having spotted the platforms
wealth of educational titles. 

Global web use continues its relentless
upward trajectory, with users on average spending 5.5 hours on
social networks last month – up more than two hours on the previous
year’s figures. 

New data
from Hitwise suggests that users who come to news sites via
Facebook are more loyal than those who are directed by Google news.

And finally, stop counting those Twitter stats. New
research finds very little correlation between Twitter counts and
actual influence – so there.  

That’s all folks!

 Welcome to eModeration’s round-up of
all that is intriguing, alarming or odd in the world of social media,
compiled by Kate Williams. For more social media snippets, follow her
on @emodkate – or for general twittery, @KateVWilliams.

This week: Nestle’s Facebook Furore; Evan Williams’ and Gaga; The Bing Thing in China; and social media in the loo.

Plus: we’d still like feedback on what you think of the updates: tweet
Yay! or Boo! to @emodkate. It’ll take ten seconds, promise.

THE HEADLINES …

After Twitter’s damp squib
(Squitter?) of a keynote at SXSW on Monday, CEO Evan Williams gamely
tried to claw back some goodwill from the grumbling hordes by
announcing that he would take ten questions from the Twittersphere. The
quality of the cross-examination varied wildly (“What’s your favourite
bourbon?”) – but the exchanges did throw up a few golden nuggets,
including an insight into the thinking behind new Twitter service
@anywhere; a definitive answer to the question “will Twitter be sold or
merged in the next 2 years?” (“No”); and a brief but tantalising
insight into the interior landscape of a thirty-something tech whizz
(“What am I thinking right now? Lady Gaga.”) Mashable catalogues the Qs and unpicks the As.

Amid growing speculation that Google is on the verge of quitting China, the company has received a letter
purporting to come from its Chinese advertising vendors. The note
demands to know whether the company is staying or going – and financial
compensation if the answer is “um, going.” Predictably, the origins of
the letter are murky, with Associated Press reporting claims that it
was signed by only one firm, who then fraudulently added the names of
26 others.

It seems Microsoft is listening intently to Google’s Chinese whispers:
chief research and strategy honcho Craig Mundie this week added his
voice to that of boss Bill Gates, who recently appeared to back Team
China by criticising Google’s behaviour in the PRC. Could this all be
[drumroll] .. a Bing Thing? The Wall Street Journal speculates that Microsoft is rubbing its hands at the big space in search, which will open up if Google leaves China.

Meanwhile, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey announced that the company’s developers are cracking on with a workaround
for users in China, where the microblogging service is blocked. In
response to Chinese artist and regime critic Ai Weiwei, who’d demanded
“a clear answer, yes or no?” to the question of whether Chinese users
would ever have a Chinese-language registration page, Dorsey responded
with a “Yes” – though he qualified that with a more wibbly “it’s just a
matter of time”, and admitted that he’d had no idea that the Chinese
authorities had blocked the site till three weeks earlier.

No-one could say Facebook’s trajectory hasn’t been stratospheric (well,
they could, but they’d be wrong). But – sticking with the Chinese theme
for just a moment longer – some new figures
throw Facebook’s success into sharp relief. Chinese internet megazord
Tencent, whose reach encompasses IM, social networks, and mobile, just
posted 2009 revenues of an astounding $1.8 billion: that’s three times
the Book’s estimated 2009 takings. What’s more – ponder this, Facebook
- over 75% of Tencent’s revenues came from virtual-goods related
services, according to Venturebeat.

Growing rumblings of dissent
over the Digital Economy Bill, which many feel is being rushed through
parliament with indecent haste. The bill, regarded as both draconian
and ill-conceived by entities as diverse as TalkTalk and the British
Library, has drawn the fire of online democracy group 38Degrees; their service lets individuals contact their MP to demand that the bill is properly debated, or abandoned.

THE LOWDOWN …

A scabrous new US tech-based comedy
series is being developed, you say? A “savage satire centring on a
fictional Silicon Valley CEO whose ego is a study in power and greed”?
Who on earth could it possibly
be based upon? The show is being developed by Twitter legend (SPOILER
ALERT) @FakeSteveJobs and Borat director Larry Charles, who declared,
with characteristic underplay, “we are attempting nothing less than a
modern Citizen Kane.”

Dude, those aren’t Friends, they’re Feds! If you are of a criminal bent
and active in the social media space, all may not be quite as it seems:
it emerged this week
that U.S. law enforcement agents have taken to social networking like
ducks to water and are actively using it to gather evidence.

Freaky times for the owners of over a hundred cars whose horns suddenly
began relentlessly honking – and wouldn’t stop till the batteries were
removed. Wired reports
that a disgruntled employee had hacked into the remote
vehicle-immobilisation system operated by a car dealership to nudge
recalcitrant hire-purchasers who fall behind with their payments. Which
is, in and of itself, a rather creeptastic infobyte, no?

When a company which is all about getting us connected warns that we’re in danger of developing some serious social media ‘issues’, you gotta sit up and listen.
A new survey by Retrevo found that we can barely take a break from
social sites to – erm, powder our noses or – ahem – nurture our
relationships. 48% of those surveyed checked their networks upon
waking, and 24% of under-25s are happy to receive messages whilst
(shall we say) clearing their inbox …

Much glee and retrospective smugness from those who couldn’t attend
SXSWi due to “previous engagements”, as a flurry of posts with titles
like ‘Why SXSW Sucks’
pinged round the blogosphere. Seems that this year, creatives,
start-ups and developers are being crowded out by yer actual social
media users – many of whom like to party while uncouthly ogling Tech
Slebs. As one commenter put it: “The web is no longer the domain of the
nerd, it’s the domain of the internet-enabled socialite as well.”

The Guardian reports a sudden brake
on what was all set to be the most expensive domain-name auction in
history: the owner of sex.com has been forced unexpectedly into
bankruptcy by a major creditor, and has pulled out at the last minute.

APPLE JUICE …

Squeal! Keen-eyed observers at Patently Apple report that the company has filed a patent on a social app for the iPhone.
The app is called iGroups, and lets users geo-connect, and exchange
info without throwing privacy to the wind. If you are au fait with this
sort of thing, you might wish to peruse the detailed patent docs here.

Meanwhile, conflicting estimates of the numbers of iPad pre-sales: though most predict buoyant stats, some question whether the high ‘first-hours’ figures were actually sustained. In the confusion, though, one intriguing snippet
caught our eye – despite predictions, wi-fi-only presales outscale the
(considerably) more expensive 3G option by 69% to 31%. Seems even
Apple’s famously well-cushioned demographic is feeling the pinch.

A new report by Flurry says that the iPhone is now dramatically outpacing
Facebook as an apps platform. The latter lags despondently, with a mere
60,000 – while Apple now boasts 140,000 different apps, and a
mind-boggling 58 new companies launching apps each day.

NEWSBYTES …

A bumpy end to a bumpy week for Nestle:  first it had YouTube take down Greenpeace’s viral,
which hauled the company over the coals for alleged destruction of the
Indonesian rainforest; Now, the argy-bargy has spread to its Facebook Fan Page,
where – to be frank – things are not going too well.  Whilst it’s
obviously the right thing to engage in conversation with your critics,
perhaps Nestle should provide some training for its community managers?
@blaisegv has helpfully provided them with excellent article from Lisa
Barone: When To Respond To Negative Reviews (and not).

And the mobile app market as a whole is expanding at an explosive rate, according to a new study
for app-developer GetJar. App downloads, which hovered at a fairly
impressive 7 billion in 2009, are predicted to shoot towards an almost
inconceivable 50 billion by 2012 – by which time the apps market will
worth a predicted $17.5 billion. Says GetJar CEO Ilja Laurs with grim
satisfaction: “Mobile devices will kill the desktop.”

Lots of hoo-ha
about a new set of Compete figures, which showed hefty drops in traffic
to all social networks last month – Twitter’s, for example, fell by
around 9%. After much goatee-scratching from industry analysts, a lone
commenter on the Guardian site pointed out that February was, like, a
shorter month than the others? By, erm, around 9%?

And brands who’re active on both Twitter and Facebook can give themselves a manly pat on the back:
seems we’re 51% more likely to buy from brands we follow on Facebook
(though possibly not Nestle – see above), rising to an impressive 67%
for those we follow on Twitter. We’re also 79% more likely to recommend
our Twitter brand-follows to a friend, versus 60% for Facebook.


On the other hand – and despite the constant stream of stories
heralding Twitter as the new News – it seems we’re considerably more
likely to get our info from Google and Facebook, according to these figures from Hitwise.

Big TV events like the Oscars and the Superbowl are generating more simul-surfing than ever: 14.5% of Superbowl users were online while viewing,
compared with 12.8% a year ago, while the number of Oscar fans who did
so was up from 8.7% to 13.3%. Facebook, Google and Yahoo were the most
popular destinations by a long chalk.

The possibility of tax breaks for games developers was hurriedly resuscitated this week: according to the Telegraph,
Minister for Digital Britain Stephen Timms announced to games companies
that he was “looking at the industry in a new way”. Fancy!

Earlier this week there were reports that Facebook was ‘considering’
installing a panic button to allow children to report suspicious
interactions on the site, following a ‘frank exchange of views’ during
a meeting with the Home Secretary Alan Johnson. But the social
networking giant subsequently announced
that it was ruling that option out, in favour of developing its own
existing safety structures – and that while the button might be
effective ‘for other sites’, it would not work on Facebook.

The US Federal Trade Commission declared that consumer privacy
was most definitely their business this week, with commissioner Pamela
Jones Harbour decrying Google’s “irresponsible conduct” during the Buzz
debacle as an example of corporate carelessness with personal privacy.
“Unlike a lot of tech products, consumer privacy cannot be run in
beta,” she said, adding that the FTC is perfectly prepared to step in
to prevent privacy laws being violated.

UNDER THE GAVEL …

A US judge has approved a controversial $9.5 million
settlement to a class action lawsuit against Facebook’s famously
privacy-busting Beacon system – despite complaints from campaigners.
The deal requires Facebook to establish a ‘Digital Trust Fund’ to
finance research into online privacy – but privacy protestors argue
that giving Facebook a seat on the board means the fund will be a mere
publicity-generating gimmick.

What promises to be the most excruciatingly serpentine copyright case
for – well, months – kicked off this week, as Viacom and YouTube set
out their cases in the suit that the former is bringing against the
latter. Essentially, Viacom claims that YouTube encouraged file-sharing
like Napster, and YouTube says they didn’t. That’s possibly all you
will need (or want) to know till the case is concluded – but there is
an excellent plain-English breakdown by Peter Kafka on All Things Digital, if you are inclined to investigate further.

That’s all folks!

 Welcome
to eModeration’s round-up of all that is intriguing, alarming or odd in
the world of social media, compiled by Kate Williams. For more social
media snippets, follow her on @emodkate – or for general twittery,
@KateVWilliams.

This week: Chaps, we need feedback! Twice-weekly we slave over a hot
keyboard without a clue what you, our beloved readers, think of our
round-ups – so waddya reckon? Are we too long, too short, or just
right? What about the news that we cover – is there an area we’re
missing that you’d like to hear more about? If you are an opinionated
type, and would care to share your thoughts with us, we would love to
hear from you: please do post comments below – or tweet me @emodkate.

ON GOOGLE …

Lawks – relations between Apple and Google have recently resembled an
imploding celebrity marriage: one knows one’s interest is prurient, but
somehow one can’t bear to look away. One minute they’re auctioning the
wedding photos in a gush of undying love; the next, Team Jobs and Team
Schmidt are briefing against one another amidst a frenzy of toxic
recrimination, allegations of dysfunction, and bilious regret.

Last month, Apple launched a patent-infringement
suit against HTC, the Taiwanese company whose phones run Google’s
Android operating system.  The move was widely read as the first thrust
in what will prove to be a sustained assault on Google itself – one
which Team Jobs will only abandon if Google makes an unlikely retreat
from what Apple clearly perceives as its core business: mobile device
technology.

This week, the New York Times revealed that the recent intensification of hostilities might have much to do with Google’s snatch-purchase of Ad Mob,
the mobile advertising network it bought in November for a hefty $750
million, while Apple dithered over the deal. The Times’ piece neatly
illuminates the two companies’ conflicting approaches to mobile
development – the one a ferociously-policed walled-garden, the other a
freewheelin’ realm of non-proprietary apps; and catalogues with
horrified glee the perceived slights and small betrayals which litter
the landscape in which the two tech titans now duke it out.

The Financial Times, meanwhile, reports that Google is (at last) ‘99% certain’
to pull out of China, having finalised a detailed plan for a phased
withdrawal.  Last week, the Chinese government insisted that it was not prepared to compromise in the matter of censorship – and issued a brusque warning
to Google’s business partners that it would not tolerate any divergence
from its censorship directives, regardless of what Google itself did. 
According to Business Insider,
while Google might be sorely tempted to ‘go unfiltered’ – forcing China
to close the service down (and providing an excuse for Google to go
public with the backstory) – they’re unlikely to do so. The company is
reportedly concerned that its PRC employees will suffer retaliatory
action, and intends to leave quickly, but quietly.

Finally, a government panel appeared to have Google locked in its sights when it called for a news tax
to be levied on news-regurgitators last week.  The ponderously-named
Commission of Inquiry into the Future of Civil Society warned that
British news is now controlled by a shrinking pool of media players,
and that a ‘Google Tax’ is required to foster a diversity of
news-providers. The idea of clipping Google’s wings – but without
offering grist to NewsCorp’s mill - is an intriguing and novel solution
to what is usually described in terms of a Murdoch/Google binary.

ON FACEBOOK …

A slow news week for Facebook, in comparison to the flurry of coverage
it received last week: first for failing to adopt a panic-button for
children, then for threatening to sue the Daily Mail over the ‘brand
damage’ caused by that papers’ allegation that children are at risk on
Facebook.

One tantalising story has emerged, however, to pique our curiosity:
it seems that Mark Zuckerberg could yet be prosecuted for using the
private Facebook login details of two journalists to hack into their
email account, way back in 2004.  Business Insider reports that the two
journalists were investigating allegations that Zuckerberg had ‘stolen’
crucial functionality from a fledgling social network which had hired
him to consult.  It further claims that at least one of the laws he
broke is still within its statute of limitations, meaning that
Zuckerberg is, in theory, at risk of a 5 year jail sentence.

ON TWITTER …

Yesterday at SXSW, Twitter CEO Evan Davies introduced the world to Twitter’s new baby chick:
@anywhere, a service which will allow users to access the microblogging
service from third party sites in much the same way as Connect does for
Facebook users. Initial partnerships were announced with a roster of
news sites and startups – including the Huffington Post, eBay, Digg and
the New York Times – as Williams demonstrated how @anywhere will enable
users to follow news columnists without logging in to Twitter, and to
send tweets from external news sites.

But while Williams’ @anywhere announcement was received with polite
interest, a subsequent keynote chat with Davies by interviewer Umair
Haque was very poorly received. 
The lightweight interview, in which Haque pitched a series of softball
questions at Williams, generated an excruciating flurry of distinctly
underwhelmed tweets: “the guy behind me is snoring” was one, followed
by “Umair’s career as an interviewer is toast”.  Fed up with Haque’s
failure to pin Davies down on anything of real interest – his thoughts
on Foursquare being a glaring f’rinstance – the audience was soon
shuffling awkwardly towards the doors.

Earlier, Evan Williams told the BBC
that Twitter will become ‘fundamental to government’, serving as a key
conduit through which global citizens will communicate with those who
govern on their behalf.

But it seems this cheering – though in the light of Google’s recent
Chinese woes, perhaps over-optimistic – news has yet to reach the
various UK local councils which have recently banned both members of
the public, accredited journalists, and in some cases, their very own
selves, from Tweeting public meetings. Twitter bans have been enforced
even when live reporting was clearly in the public interest – as when
the Manchester Evening News was prevented from reporting on Twitter the
proceedings of a highly-charged and controversial planning meeting. As The Next Web
points out, politicians are increasingly making use of Twitter to get
their message out to voters; but some have clearly yet to realise that
this social networking lark is, in fact, a two-way deal.

In other Twitter news:

Sigh – another round-up, another news story
claiming that only a micro-chunk of Twitter’s users are active.  But
perhaps not for much longer: Twitter’s recent roll-out of geolocation,
a dramatically smoother version of its mobile site, and the ‘leaked’
promise of more ‘nifty site features’ to come, seem to confirm that
Twitter is determined to snag back those of us who access its services
via external apps and clients.

The LA Times reports
that the makers of third-party apps like Brizzly and Tweetie are
anxiously scrambling for new arenas in which to concentrate their
efforts: they fear that Twitter has focused its now-considerable
resources on improving the functionality of its site, after years spent
simply keeping up with the demand for its service.

Finally, the microblogging site launched a new anti-phishing service
which will allow it to scan all links posted by users for malware, bank
scams, and other bad stuff.  The new service – which passes links
automatically through twt.tl,
a new Twitter-owned URL shortener – will initially be focused on direct
messages and email notifications, since this is where most fraudulent
activity takes place.

ON YOUTUBE …

YouTube is intent on squeezing its considerable bulk
into a whole new business territory, forcing pay-TV companies to budge
up as it stakes a claim to live sports-casting. The site is
aggressively pursuing ad revenue by streaming an entire season of the
explosively-popular short-form Indian Premier League cricket: Brylcreem
and Lebara Mobile have been snagged as sponsors in the UK. In contrast
with previous years, streaming of the championships will no longer be
blocked in countries where a TV deal is in place: YouTube’s deal
requires them simply to delay the stream by 5 minutes – and will offer
layers of interactivity –  choices of camera angles, action replay on
demand – that TV can’t yet match.

In related news, YouTube has announced that banner ads will now be appearing on its various mobile sites,
beginning with Japanese and US home, browser and search pages.  The
launch of the mobile sites resulted in a 160% increase in online video
streaming – and YouTube claims that it can now deliver one of the
mobile web’s biggest audiences.

BRANDS GET SOCIAL …

In a first for Microsoft, we hear Bing
is sponsoring weeknight showings of The Simpsons, in a three-month deal
worth a hefty £500,000.  It’s tempting to speculate that the deal will
see “Doh!” replaced by “Bing!” – but I fear that can only end in
disappointment.

British Airways – anxious to avoid the reputation-crushing chaos that
has ensued during previous bouts of industrial action – has gone on the
social media offensive. 
It’s using YouTube and Twitter to bombard customers with updates on the
strike situation – while simultaneously pushing its own case and
attempting to demolish that of Unite, the union with whom it is locked
in deadly combat.

Cadbury’s is tempting Creme Egg fans
with two free iPhone apps. ‘Scramble the Egg’ invites users to indulge
any urge they might harbour to shake a Creme Egg till it bursts; while
‘Egg Marks The Spot’ is a GPS-connected app which guides users to the
nearest landmark, then encourages them to take a photo, onto which will
be superimposed a Creme Egg.

The social media adventures of fashion goddess ASOS
are once again drawing admiring gasps: their ‘ASOS Follows Fashion’
Twitter aggregator gathers tweets from designers, photographers,
fashion journos and brands, the better to inform their discerning
fashion-forward followers.

Domino’s Pizza is the first brand to trial a new ‘Social Affiliate’ widget,
which allows anyone with a social network page to earn cash every time
a sale is generated via their web space, NetImperative reports. BL
Quantum, the agency which developed the tool, predicts brands will
benefit “by aligning with sites run by fans who are more likely to
drive a sale.”

Starbucks has launched a Foursquare promotion which will see coffee-lovin’ fans who visit their outlets rewarded with a Barista badge on the location-based mobile service.

Diesel is launching a campaign designed to mark out their space in social media. The initiative – an extension of the brand’s Be Stupid campaign – harnesses Twitter, FourSquare and Facebook.

UNDER THE GAVEL …

A high school student who asked a US court to reveal the identity of the sender of an allegedly libellous email
has had her application rejected. The anonymous email, which was sent
to the student’s school, alleged that she’d been drinking alcohol – in
contravention of a school pledge she’d taken. She petitioned to unmask
the email’s author, but the court ruled that Facebook pictures appeared
to confirm the allegations, and that therefore the sender could remain
anonymous.

More bad news for Yelp, the local review site, in the form of a second class-action suit alleging ‘extortion’. 
The plaintiffs claim that the company attempted to ‘extort’ money from
enterprises, by offering to bury bad reviews if the company bought ad
space. One individual claims Yelp removed 13 positive reviews after she
refused to take out advertising – but Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman says
the case is without merit, and that the reviews were removed because
the business-owner had solicited them from family and friends.

Finally, both Google and Facebook are being pursued through the courts
by Winksite, which alleges that Facebook Mobile and Google Buzz are infringing their patent
relating to how mobile phone users access content on social networks.
The company wants cash, and an immediate order to prevent the two
networks using their invention.

SOCIAL STATS …

Consumers are not terribly keen
on paywalls, it’s fairly safe to say: an enormous 81 percent say they’d
plump for online ads if that meant free content, according to Pew
Research’s latest poll.

E-commerce is still growing, both in the UK and across the water: predictions for the British market are for 10% compound growth over the next five years, with a remarkably similar figure of 11% suggested by Forrester
in the US.  While e-commerce generally managed to avoid the worst
ravages of the recession, it seems likely that the years of rampant
growth have passed.

E-tailers will be interested in Econsultancy’s new stats
on Twitter’s usefulness in driving sales: the company finds that, with
some notable exceptions,  few UK consumer-facing brands think Twitter
deserves its hype: it seems that 20% to 30% of UK brands’ followers
aren’t even potential customers, but other businesses, or spammers.

But, while Twitter’s usefulness may still be unproven, social media is still high on the agenda for most brands. Unica’s survey
of 155 marketers in the US and Europe fond that 70% of them are already
using some form of social media, or plan to do so in the coming year.

VIRTUAL AND GAMES …

Sony is launching a new interface
for PlayStation 3’s virtual world Home – giving faster load times and
allowing users to navigate through levels without walking through the
3-d environment.  Sony is clearly bullish about Home’s prospects – last
week they announced
that their stats had leapt from 5 to 12 million over the last year, and
that a healthy 85% of users who try the virtual world once will come
back for at least a second hit.

That’s all folks!

 Welcome
to eModeration’s round-up of all that is intriguing, alarming or odd in
the world of social media, compiled by Kate Williams. For more social
media snippets, follow her on @emodkate – or for general twittery,
@KateVWilliams.

This week: Facebook No to IPO; Twitter’s brand ambivalence; and Simon Cowell’s antisocial behaviour.

ON FACEBOOK …

The IPO question must be one that makes Mark Zuckerberg cry – just a
little, and on the inside – every time he’s asked it. It came up again in a Wall Street Journal interview last week and – again – the answer was “No IPO in 2-Oh-1-Oh.”

Intriguingly, however, the WSJ punted some rough insider estimates of
what Facebook might be worth when, as that organ anticipates, the
company goes public in 2011. Figures range from a bonny $35-40 billion,
right up to an overblown $59 billion – with one analyst suggesting that
2015 could see a market capitalization of $100 billion.

As the WSJ points out, the speculation is already ‘more than a parlor
game’: real money is, as we speak, changing hands on private share
exchanges, and prices are already topping $30 a share at times. Which
fact which might incline Facebook to act sooner rather than later,
before expectations run too high.

And investors’ appetite for a flotation may have been sharpened by
recent suggestions the company – which like many private enterprises
doesn’t care to comment on its revenues – may have harvested between
$600 and $700 million last year – with, according to Inside Facebook,
a possible $1.1 billion on the cards for 2010. Seems Mark Zuckerberg
can look forward to many further iterations of that pesky IPO question.

There was doubtless some foot-stamping – perhaps even drumming of fists
on floors – in the development community last week, following the news
that The ‘Book had ejected app news from Notifications. Well, here’s
something to staunch and soothe those hiccup-y sobs – application
invites are being moved to a yet-to-be-revealed part of the Inbox, from where users may well be able to share with their friends.

Is Facebook planning a web-wide payment system? Royal Pingdom
speculates that, were they to combine Connect and Facebook Credits
effectively, the company could grow an almost unstoppable interface
between users, and online retailers and services. It’s certainly the
case that, as Ad Age
puts it, Facebook is beginning to resemble a ‘giant, global shopping
mall’. Last week P&G’s Pampers became the latest e-commerce
talking-point – a ‘Shop Now’ tab on their page led, within an hour, to
a sell-out stampede on the special packs it was offering to fans.

Meanwhile, Facebook seems prepared to engage with the public sphere on what the Washington Post
calls a more ‘grown up’ footing. It’s hiring a further two
Washington-based public policy peeps – one to liaise with consumer
groups, the other with congressional, non-profit and tech groups – to
beef up its policy team. The ‘Book was criticized during a Senate Judiciary hearing last week for failing to take a firm enough stand against global censorship.

ON TWITTER …

Ah, 10 billion tweets! It’s onwards and upwards for Twitter: here, Brian Solis breaks down Hubspot’s recent State of the Twittersphere research, and paints a pretty cheery scene.

Brands, on the other hand, may be feeling rather less chirpy – this week Ad Age found that, when it comes to brand-mentions on Twitter,
the haterz may well outnumber the loverz. While sentiment on Twitter is
generally positive, brands tend not to do so well – two well-known
media brands included in their Top 10 Most Tweeted Brands certainly won’t be crowing about it, since the tweets that got them trending are overwhelmingly negative in sentiment. Social Media Insider
further notes that Monday’s trending #fails included big boys Apple,
Telstra and American Express – all for customer service issues – and
Jeremiah Owyang recently dismissed Twitter’s marketing future as being
that of a “utility-like infrastructure, but not a destination”.
Finally, The Buzz Bin asks portentously: Is Trust In Twitter Misplaced?

In a decision which will have had socially-minded observers sucking
their teeth and sniffing, Simon Cowell’s ‘American Idol’ has executed an abrupt about-turn
regarding its social media policy for contestants. The latest series
initially gave each of its 24 finalists individual Facebook, Twitter
and MySpace accounts – but on Thursday they hastily pulled the plug on
that strategy. Commentators speculate
that the producers realised – rather tardily – that the contestants’
follower stats might influence voting patterns – and perhaps undermine
the shows’ value by enabling the audience to predict the outcome. Now,
contestants can only interact with the public through one branded
profile across all three sites.

ON YOUTUBE …

This week YouTube gamely announced
a very worthwhile development – the rollout of auto-captioning. The
tech makes cunning use of some of Google’s speech-to-text algorithms to
provide instant subtitles to videos, thus opening up the service to
hearing-impaired users – but unfortunately, it seems there are a still
a few glitches to be ironed out: Mashable has some examples of the auto-caption #fails which are currently meme-ing their way around the web.

An ineffably-complex two-and-a-half-year mega-case, in which Universal
Music Group alleged that a mother who posted a YouTube video of her
toddler dancing to Prince’s “Let’s Go Crazy” had infringed their
copyright, has at last been resolved in said mother’s favour. If you
desire further details, arstechnica has them – but I warn that your powers of persistence and dogged determination will be sorely tested.

ON MOBILE …

If you have ever endured a fraught journey, pinned to your seat in
misery while a fellow passenger raucously and interminably anatomises
the previous night’s festivities for the benefit of an unseen
mobile-phone partner, then the following piece of news may well provoke
tears of gratitude. The Telegraph reports
that a German professor has developed a device which will allow mobile
phones to read lips – and bring ‘silent conversations’ a step closer to
reality.

Those of us who shell out for the first, wireless-only version of the
iPad won’t be able to access 3G networks through our iPhones, according
to Steve Jobs. He answered a query about whether it would be possible to tether iPhones to iPads with a simple, if curt, “No.”

Research2guidance predicts a mammoth explosion
in the numbers of us using smartphones – from 102 million last year, to
very nearly a billion in 2013. The survey further notes that only 10%
of Fortune 100 companies currently offer a branded smartphone app to
users. Elsewhere, however, O2 Media MD Shaun Gregory urged brands to resist app-frenzy, insisting that more traditional mobile messaging is still the most effective way to reach consumers.

BRANDS GET SOCIAL …

Unilever has used social media to successfully test and launch a brand new Marmite product
– Marmite XO, which is intriguingly (or alarmingly, depending on the
position you take) described as an ‘extra mature, extra strong’ variety
of the Love It/Hate It savoury spread.

Wal-Mart have bravely opened up their ambitious eco-strategy
to comment – and not only from the public, but from some of its
harshest critics. It’s invited some key pressure groups to help create
its environmental strategy, and hosted a Q&A on Treehugger.com, a
fierce critic thus far. Its YouTube channel and Facebook fan page also
invite users to speak their mind.

The COI has launched Guiding Lights, a social media-focused campaign for the DSCF which aims to inspire young people from all social backgrounds to build careers in teaching, the law, local government and health.

Nissan has unveiled a strong UGC element to the latest in its ‘Urbanproof’ series,
which promotes its Qushqai marque. Users will be invited to create
their own Nissan ads –with the winners getting a cinema and online
release late in 2010, just before the launch of the latest model.

Starbucks is offering its Facebook fans (which now number nigh-on 300,000) a free Fairtrade brownie, as part of its latest campaign to promote its Fairtrade offer.

Ford launches Phase 2 of its Fiesta social media campaign
this month. 40 ‘agents’, selected via social network nominations – have
been released in key markets to fulfill a set of online tasks (for
example, creating a Google map of local hotspots) and other local
challenges assigned by the car-maker – tweeting all the while.

Amtrak hopes to engage black consumers
with a new travel site which spotlights cities with large black
populations – including New Orleans, Atlanta, Philadelphia and Memphis.
Consumers are encouraged to sign up to share their own travel photos,
and chat with other users.

Nestle’s Skinny Cow,
which already has Facebook as its marketing hub, hopes its fans will
raise money for Marie Curie Cancer Care with a live draw. Fans can win
new outfits and generate cash – by tagging their names against items of
clothing posted on the brand’s Facebook Page.

VIRTUAL AND GAMES …

The social gaming steamroller shows no sign of braking: BBC Worldwide
is currently considering how to translate its top brands – Doctor Who
and Top Gear, f’rinstance – into social games, and Bebo has a shiny
news gaming section, as well as a dedicated games-chat section called Smack Talk.

Brands are blinking at the huge possibilities offered by this exploding
sector, with its apparently inbuilt virality and self-perpetuating
content – but many are rightly hesitating over how to get involved.
“The first rule is to ensure that companies integrate their brands as
seamlessly as possible into the game and don’t hijack the user’s gaming
experience,” says New Media Age in its comprehensive rundown
of the risks and opportunities. The article is paywalled, but if your
brand is teetering on the social-gaming brink, the pennies will be well
spent.

Farmville is, of course, the
social games giant whose every move is being closely studied by anyone
interested in the phenomenon. For a stimulating, if pessimistic,
account of social giant Farmville’s appeal, skitter over here to games
brainiac A. J. Patrick Liszkiewicz’s blog.

Elsewhere in social games: hi5, a leader in the market, has released a set of Facebook-compatible APIs, so that developers can more easily distribute their social games on the site.

Meanwhile, Massively reports
that free-to-play kid’s MMO World of Cars Online has entered open beta:
good news for small Cars fans who will now be able to design and race
their own vehicles to their heart content.

THINKING …

If you can spare a little time this week for community-thinking, a recent and thoughtful post by Matt Rhodes ponders the degree to which anonymity is desirable in an online community.

And our very own Rebecca Fitzgerald poses (and indeed answers) some interesting questions in her recent post on the eModeration blog, entitled Why brands should write Facebook Fan Page Guidelines .

That’s all folks!

Welcome
to eModeration’s round-up of all that is intriguing, alarming or odd in
the world of social media, compiled by Kate Williams. For more social
media snippets, follow her on @emodkate – or for general twittery,
@KateVWilliams.

This week: Revenge of the Zombie Slave Computers; human touchscreens; and robotic teachers.
 

THE HEADLINES …

In a considerable coup for cyber-law enforcement, Spanish investigators
have arrested the three alleged ringleaders of a massive botnet which
has, for at least a year, spread its monstrous tentacles across the
net, allowing criminals and hackers to penetrate up to 12.7m computers.
The botnet – known by the confusingly comely nickname ‘Mariposa’ – had
successfully invaded the ‘secure’ systems of more than half of the US
Fortune 100, and over 40 banks worldwide, harnessing them as slaves or
‘zombies’ through which to access numberless individual PCs.  The gang
– who appear to have relatively unsophisticated hacking skills – rented
out parts of the botnet to other cyber-gangsters, as well as selling
bank information harvested from infected computers. Following the
arrests, investigators were hit with a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack,
in apparent retaliation for the destruction of the hideous monster:
which final attack must henceforth be known as The Revenge of the
Zombie Slave Computers.

Still no sign, seven long weeks after Google’s Chinese flounce, that it
does actually plan on, like, leaving China. This Tuesday, the search
giant told a Senate hearing
that there is still no exit timetable, and indeed no official
resolution on withdrawal – though it insisted that it was ‘firm in its
decision’ no longer to allow censorship of its Chinese results.  Google
claims still to be investigating the ‘massive’ cyber-attack that
precipitated the breach – but intriguingly, Forbes reports
a claim by cybersecurity firm Damballa that, contrary to the picture
painted by Google, the attacks were unsophisticated assaults
orchestrated by out-of-date, ‘old school’ botnets, using ‘amateur’
techniques.

This week the Liberal Democrats in the House of Lords forced a last minute amendment
to the Digital Economy Bill – defeating the government, but leaving
critics anxious that they had done greater harm than good, according to
the Guardian.  Clause 17 – the hotly-disputed section of the bill which
threatened huge changes to British copyright law – now gives the High
Court the power to slam a takedown notice on sites accused of hosting
‘substantial’ amounts of copyrighted material.  So … that’ll be
YouTube, right?

Thus far, the Bill’s passage through the Lords is proving to be anything but stately: the government’s ‘three-strikes’ proposal, which could see Lord Mandelson
making decisions about how long offenders are to be barred from
broadband access – has come in for ferocious criticism in the second
chamber, with opponents citing an “extraordinary degree of lobbying”
from copyright-holding bodies.

Over in Europe, a German court
has decreed that an existing law which requires that telephone and
email traffic-data be stored for six months can’t stand. Lawmakers
ruled that data-storage systems were insufficiently secure – and that
it was still not yet clear what the law, which stems from a Europe-wide
directive, hoped to achieve.

Elsewhere, experts are predicting that Western cyber-security policies are catastrophically underpowered,
and might allow a future attack equivalent to “the next Pearl Harbour”.
 One former White House counter-terrorist warns in the Guardian that
“terabytes, petabytes of data have been stolen – and our firewalls
don’t stop it.”

Much chatter this week about Apple’s patent case against HTC, the first
manufacturer to use Google’s Android operating system in its phones –
with some commentators suggesting that the case could eventually impact many others, and others questioning whether software patents are worth the paper they’re written on.
Apple appears to be dishing out mobile patent-infringement suits like
sweeties presently – the one it launched against Nokia has just been
put on hold, while the International Trade Commission decides what’s what.

Several unanswered questions surround the HTC suite, the most pertinent
of which is “what do Apple want, precisely?” If you’ve missed the fun
and games thus far, then PCWorld is a good place to start.

Earlier in the week, Apple’s Patented, Astounding and Fantastical Rumour-Generator had been cranked up once again, with many (Mashable amongst them) prophesying a March 26th release of the iPad, as well as ‘predicted delivery shortfalls’ and a possible ‘short supply’ – news which will doubtless have generated a wedge of panicked pre-sales calls.

Turns out the pundits were out by a week: Apple today announced a US date of April 3rd – with us poor Brits forced to exercise patience until the end of that month. If you’ve not yet succumbed to the iPad’s siren call, this demo at Tech Digest may well have you joining the throng in late April.

And look, here comes Condé Nast
to boost Mac’s well-oiled PR-o-rama, with announcements that Wired, GQ,
Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and Glamour magazines will all be available
on the shiny new content-machine

Here’s a man who, it’s safe to say, will have a considerable interest
in how this iPad thing pans out: yes, it’s the particularly
paywall-positive Rupert Murdoch, who weighed in this week with the news
that the Wall Street Journal, his most successfully ring-fenced
property to date, is being tricked out as an iPad app for your
delectation and delight, even as we speak.
And speaking of News Corp, here comes the FT – another Murdoch jewel –
to tempt us with the news that we no longer have to commit to a monthly
subscription: henceforth a trifling micropayment of £2 will buy you a day’s worth of its charms.

Ah, content, content, content: it’s the issue that dominates the
digisphere, and it ain’t going away any time soon. It emerged this week
that Comedy Central was pulling both of its humungously popular Hulu
offerings – “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report”  - from the
popular video website. A bit of a worry for the many other blogging
sites which depended on Hulu’s embedded player to access Comedy
Central’s tip-top content – owners Viacom announced that it would be suing infringers – and almost certainly a taste of things to come for other content-grabbers.

Yikes. Respected online Brazilian newspaper Folha has carried out an
in-depth assessment of how well online-gaming companies organised their
Haiti donations – and, as Social Media Today
says -  it don’t look pretty. The report is particularly scathing about
Zynga’s ethics – specifically its insistence that donations not made
within a certain timeframe should revert to Zynga property Farmville.

THE LOWDOWN …

Yes, it’s come to this. Mobile phones are now so intrinsic to the
continuing success of humankind that researchers have decided to ditch
the human/phone distinction – so C20! – and just turn us all into
handsets. If you need to know how ‘skinput’ might transform my swarthy
forearm into a giant touchscreen, this video (via Mashable) will enlighten you.

On which mildly dystopian theme, a $44m Japanese-Korean project is well
on the way to removing humans from the education system, having
successfully tested out its alluring range of robot teachers
in schools. By 2013, robot educators are expected to be rolled out in
8,000 Korean kindergartens – but we predict that, without a serious
Taser upgrade, the teach-bots will flounder in British schools.

Britons are particularly guilty in the matter of buying tech which they then fail to master, reports the Telegraph
- and we waste a gargantuan £52 billion on gadgets which we don’t
actually use. The figures come from a recent survey by Sky HD, which
also reveals a tech-competency gender gap: only a quarter of men asking
for help when stumped, compared with nearly half the women.
Delightfully, the survey finds that ten per cent of IT experts have hit
a gadget in the hope of making it work – and while the figures don’t
reveal whether the hitters were male or female, I think we can hazard
an educated guess, don’t you?

It cannot truthfully be said I am of a sentimental bent – neither
kittens in cups, nor giggling YouTube babies have thus far succeeded in
penetrating my steely emotional carapace. But even my bitter,
unyielding heart momentarily softened at this viral video, which shows the moment that teen pop-sensation Justin Lieber made one small, sobbing girl’s dream come true.

And if this is a little saccharine for your taste, you might prefer the beefy goodness
of OK Go’s astonishing new video. Shot in one geeky take, using plenty
of repurposed junk, it contains all the ingredients you need for
instant virality.

IN OTHER NEWS …

Consumers are ‘grazing’
on online news, with few evincing loyalty to a specific news provider,
finds a new report from the Pew Research Centre. Only 1 in 5 claims to
stick to just one site – with the vast majority (a whopping 92%)
snacking on multiple sources, and nearly half visiting 4 to 6 platforms
a day.

A distinctly favourable reaction to the news that Twitter may well be
offering ads this summer – Lloyds and Virgin Media have already put
their hands up, and will take paid-for ads on the microblogging site if
Twitter goes ahead with its sponsored-listings plan, says Brand Republic.

The NSPCC has weighed in on the growing controversy over
the methods used to market products to children. The children’s charity
says companies must “give more thought” to how they sell to kids, and
contends that “the growing climate of sexualisation encourages a view
of girls as sex objects”.

WordPress has jumped into the real-time fray
- posts from any of its 10.5 million WordPress.com blogs will now have
a real-time presence in services like Google Reader, Bloglines and
Friendfeed.

Comscore reports a big old hike
in the numbers of us who access Twitter and Facebook via our mobiles. 
Facebook’s stats leapt a chunky 112% over the last year – while access
to Twitter went ballistic: a 347% rise on 2009.

And a separate survey by Neilsen makes the surprise find that teens account for a diminutive 7%
of mobile socnet use. Their parents are far more likely to be doing so,
at 36% – and there’s a gender split too:  55% of women beat the 45% of
men who use their phones to access social networks.

Microsoft appear to have struck oil
on the farm: after they ran an ad inside Farmville which offered
virtual currency in exchange for joining Bing’s Facebook Page, they
gained an astonishing 400,000 new fans in the space of just one day.

That’s all folks!

 Welcome
to eModeration’s round-up of all that is intriguing, alarming or odd in
the world of social media, compiled by Kate Williams. For more social
media snippets, follow her on @emodkate – or for general twittery,
@KateVWilliams.

This week: Apple’s sauce; Google’s woes; and Rickrollin’ the trollosphere.

THE HEADLINES …

Apple’s rotten week was neatly rounded off by the weekend’s revelation that at least eleven children
were found to be working in Apple-supplying factories last year. Though
the company was quick to announce that the fifteen-year-olds were no
longer employed (or were, at least, no longer underage), it was grim
news for the company: earlier in the week it had emerged that 62 Chinese factory-workers
had been contaminated (fatally, in one case) by the banned chemical
n-hexane, which can damage eyesight and cause muscular degeneration -
prompting the kind of ‘poison apple’ headlines which must long have
stalked its PR dept’s nightmares.

Meanwhile a commotion kicked off over the watering-down of Apple’s sauce:
last week many apps containing what the company described as ‘overtly
sexual content’ were axed without warning. Far less serious than
allegations of exploitative workforce practice of course – but
predictably contentious amongst those who cleave to a citizen’s right
to develop new ways to look at porn.  A rumour that the company was
reserving a special ‘explicit’ category for This Kind Of Thing brought them momentary comfort – but it was swiftly scotched, amidst much libertarian teeth-gnashing.

In fairness, many commentators were perplexed by the fact that the list
of banned apps included those of a swimsuit company (later re-instated)
but not those of Time Warner’s Sports Illustrated; Playboy’s
considerably racier apps were also retained. And while it’s hard to
overheat on behalf of porn–pedlars, Apple’s fumblings on this matter
highlighted its somewhat capricious stance towards developers in general, and to ‘adult’ content in particular.

The whole hoo-ha no doubt has much to do with Apple’s positioning of
the iPad as a ‘one-family, one iPad’ domestic entertainment platform –
though there was gloomy news for Apple on that front too: a survey by
AdMob revealed that only 1 in 6
iPhone owners had any thought of buying an iPad – plummeting to 1 in 17
Android phone fans.  Apple’s tart response would doubtless be a nod
towards this RBC/ChangeWave survey,
which according to All Things Digital shows that more of us are
planning to stump up for an iPad than were planning to buy the iPhone
before its launch. But neither that, nor the news that iTunes will soon
hit 10 billion downloads, will truly console all those Apple strategists who’ve been comfort-eating this week.

Apple’s wasn’t the only semanus horribilis; Team Google will have been
knocking back an extra-strength wheatgrass cocktail or three on Friday
night, following a grim week which began with the conviction in absentia
in Italy of three of their US execs, for the company’s failure to
remove a deeply-unpleasant video showing the taunting of an autistic
boy.  The New York Times points out
that the verdict may have much to do with a rolling assault on the
internet by Italy’s governing classes -  Italian president Silvio
Berlusconi controls a chunky wedge of its traditional media outlets,
and attempts to speed up the internet, for example, have met with
consistent administrative resistance. Nevertheless, the case has caused
ripples of alarm across the social web –  eModeration’s Tia Fisher has the moderation angle fully covered.

There was more bad news to come for Google.  The EU’s data protection mandarins ruled that Street View images should be junked
after six months – rather than twelve, as presently. Privacy tsars
further rebuked the search giant for failing to alert citizens of the
arrival of the Googlemobile in their ‘hood – and for not telling them
that they could officially opt out.

And for added wretchedness, it appears that the EU is pokin’ around Google’s crib, looking to smoke out evidence of anti-competitive practice.
Three complaints are being investigated – two, we note, from
Microsoft-associated organisations – pertaining to Google’s alleged
suppression of search results: Ciao, Foundem and French company
Ejustice.fr are the businesses in question. Google responded with
lightning-speed transparency, and the EU deny the search giant is under
formal investigation; but if one is an increasingly-omnipotent search
giant who seeks to reassure the world that a neutral and entirely
even-handed algorithm runs one’s business, any suggestion of human
partiality will be distinctly unwelcome.

YouTube footage which showed the daughter of a senior Russian apparatchik
mowing down two pedestrians – one of whom later died – has forced the
hand of the Russian judicial system. The CCTV footage further reveals
that Ms Shavenkova, whose mother is the head of the local electoral
commission, used her mobile immediately after the collision – but
failed to call an ambulance, and didn’t once glance at the horribly
injured pedestrians.  Now, months after the crime, Russian police have
moved to prosecute, reports the Telegraph.

A parliamentary committee has rubbished government plans
for a £6 tax to fund superfast broadband. The levy is, they say,
“regressive and poorly targeted” – and would result in the poor
supporting the internet access of the rich.

Meanwhile, Virgin Media proclaimed the rollout
of a super-speedy 100 mbs broadband service to 12.6 million homes – 24
times faster than the average UK speed of 4.1 mbs.  The Institute of
Practitioners in Advertising claimed this week that high-speed
broadband could pump a hefty £1.4bn into ecommerce revenues.

To the dismay of many, the American Psychiatric Association is considering the inclusion of ‘internet addiction’
in their bible, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental
Disorders. Critics worry that the classification will prove to be a
revenue-generating windfall to the unscrupulous  – but will achieve
little else.

The public, meanwhile, seem to be distinctly optimistic
about the possibilities that the internet offers humankind. According
to the Pew Research Centre, 76% feel that the internet will allow
people to become smarter and make better choices. And..

..as if by magic, here comes the social stats
for the campaign for a Robin Hood tax, whose Facebook page has now
garnered more 120,000 fans, with an average of 3,000 more joining
daily. According to Netimperative, that’s four times the number who’ve
fanned the three main UK political parties.

THE LOWDOWN …

Google’s week, which as we mention above has been a leetle bit tense, will not have been enhanced by reports that CEO Eric Schmidt has successfully silenced his ex-mistress
Kate Bohner, whose blog charted her ‘spiritual journey of recovery’
from addiction to sobriety.  Though the diary barely mentioned Mr
Schmidt, and did so only in complimentary terms, it seems that the
Google chief is only intermittently committed to the dictum that
‘information wants to be free’.

From the ridiculous, to the sublime:
Big Shout Goin’ Out to his His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, who joined
Twitter last week. Word to the rest of you: stop tweeting those kittay
photos and karma up – fast.

There will have been much biting of lips and blinking-back of tears in
adolescent bedrooms everywhere last week, as the news that YouTube had nixed the original “Rickrolling” video
swept through the trollosphere. Luckily the error, which centred on
uncertainty over copyright, was rectified within 24 hours – but for
Generation Hackboi, things will never be the same: they know, now, that
their world is one of chaotic and terrifying impermanence.

Finally, those Chatroulette stats in full: users are 71% male; 15% female; 14% ickiness. 


IN OTHER NEWS …

The Guardian reports
that global plans for a dedicated internet domain for pornography have
been revived, three years after they were abandoned amidst
international bickering. When the scheme – which is intended to help
users filter out adult material if they wish -  was first mooted, the
US opposed it on moral grounds; the International Centre for Dispute
Resolution has now ruled that the deal must be put back on the table.

Google added Facebook Pages
to its real-time search results this week, to complete a trifecta of
deals including those it has made with Twitter and MySpace. The news
coincides with Yahoo adding Twitter
to its results – the latter deal goes further than most, in that Yahoo
users will be able to send tweets directly from Yahoo’s various
properties.

The public is most likely to pay
for high-end online content –  in other words, the same stuff they pay
for offline:  films, music, games and some TV programmes. They’re least
likely to pay for user-generated content – and squished in the middle
and gasping for breath is newspaper content: expensive to produce, but
in the minds of many, readily available for nowt elsewhere.

A Muslim social network, where young Muslims can discuss and debate issues affecting them, was launched last week.
The site – developed by moderate Islamic organisation Radical Middle
Way – includes a multilingual facility which will let members from
around the world communicate with one another, and is supported by
government funding.

The AP reports
that a Wisconsin teenager has been sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment
for blackmailing his classmates into sex. Posing as a girl, he tricked
boys into sending him explicit photos, then threatened to make the
pictures public unless they had sex with him.

ON FACEBOOK …

So. You’ve been staring balefully at the bottle of ‘virtual champagne’
(can you drink it? No. So, not champagne in any meaningful sense, then)
which a Facebook friend sent you last birthday. Well, now is the time
to pop the cork and shake it all around in joyful abandon: Facebook has decreed that henceforth, “application news” won’t come through your notifications. You are free, free of clutter at last!

Here’s a snippet
from Mashable which might have social networks reaching for the Rescue
Remedy: US patent #7,669,123 – unearthed this week by All Facebook –
appears to have claimed the newsfeed on behalf of Facebook founder Mark
Zuckerberg and seven others. It’s not yet clear what, precisely, is
included in the patent, but in theory it could be very bad news for MySpace, Twitter, Google et al, who might be forced to heavily adapt or even remove their feeds.

Facebook is unquestionably the world’s top social hub for content
– nearly 50% of all the content shared via Gigya  – links, photos,
videos and more – are broadcast to the world via Facebook, versus 29%
which get a Tweet.

P’raps in a panic to skitter up to speed with location-based services –
till now, it has studiously ignored them – The ‘Book has been doing due
diligence checks, normally only performed mid-acquisition, on
location-centric social network Loopt. More from TechCrunch here.

Talking of Facebook, which you’ll agree we were – here is some smart thinking from Mashable, which is guaranteed to refine your Fan Page chops.

ON TWITTER …

Tenterhooks: Twitter is testing a hashtag-based ad model.
The service will be “explicitly clear that a sponsor paid for the ad”,
and what’s more will be “relevant and useful”. Coming soon, apparently.


The micro-blogging service is now processing 50 million tweets a day,
per The Telegraph, of which 20% – that’s 83 messages per second –
mention a product or brand, says Twitter’s Communications VP Sean Garrett.

To contextualise this news, we must turn to The Pareto Principle,
which (in case you aren’t au fait) is a cousin of the gloriously-named
Law of the Vital Few. The principle decrees that 20% of users make 80%
of the activity – but in Twitter’s case the split is even more extreme.
It seems a frankly measly 7% of users are responsible for a gargantuan
79% of Tweets. #justsayin’.

Finally, in a body-blow to those whose stance is still furiously Anglo-centric, seems barely half of all tweets are posted in English. Qui l’aurait pensé ?

UNDER THE GAVEL …

Virtual worlds are, like, virtual – this appears to be the conclusion to draw from the dismissal of the suit brought by a visually-impaired gamer
against Sony. Alexander Stern had claimed that games like Everquest
violated the American Disabilities Act – but a US court ruled that for
the act to apply, there had to be a connection between the service and
“an actual physical place.”

The deeply creepy case of the US high school which used school-issued laptops to spy on its students
in their own homes was wrapped up last week. After a ‘friend of the
court’ submission by the American Civil Liberties Union, a judge ruled
that the school must immediately disable software which allowed them
remotely to activate the laptops’ webcams. The case was brought after
the school attempted to discipline a student for allegedly taking and
dealing drugs, which it had filmed without his knowledge.

Xerox is claiming that Google Maps, Google Video, YouTube and Yahoo Shoppping infringe patents
on their user-review-based method of updating pages, in place since
2001. They further maintain that another Xerox-held patent dating back
to 2004 is currently being infringed by Google’s Adsense and Adwords
software, amongst others.

A class action suit has been filed against user-generated customer-review service Yelp, alleging that the company has attempted to extort money
from companies in return for ‘burying’ poor reviews. The primary
plaintiff alleges that Yelp refused to take down a defamatory review
unless he signed a contract to advertise his business on the service.

VIRTUAL AND GAMES …

Social games companies will be blinking rapidly at the news that
virtual goods ain’t quite the be-all we’d been recently led to
believe.  Seems tens of thousands of real-life bunches of flowers were sold during the Valentine’s season in Pet Society – producing a fragrant half of the game’s revenues.

FarmVille, the Facebook social game whose acreage seems to expand
daily, announced this week that it had surpassed an astonishing 80 million monthly active users, bringing its users to some 400 million users in total.

More than a half of social game-players players are female,
according to PopCap, which finds that the average player in the UK and
the US is a 43 year old woman. And they’re not, it seems, particularly
keen on the idea of paying for their fun – according to a study by Q Interactive, only 11% would definitely pay for their favourite game –  a further 17% said ‘maybe.’

That’s all folks!