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!

 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’s humour deficit; apocalypse and anomie with Chatroulette; and ‘C’ for ‘Counter-Intuitive’.

THE HEADLINES …

The social web is quite a-flutter with talk of Chatroulette
– the apocalyptically-named video chat-site which arbitrarily pairs
strangers for what might, one minute, be urbane oenophiliac debate; the
next, naked frat-chat – according to the whim of each party.

If, like me, you are inclined to doom-mongering and despair, the site
will seem the very definition of post-cultural atomisation and anomie.
Nevertheless Chatroulette, created just three months ago by a Russian
seventeen-year-old, is daily gaining thousands of users – and a
considerable media profile.

The Conservatives appeared last week to have sleep-walked into a second viral nightmare: the strap-line of their latest campaign seemed to invite the kind of cheerfully-profane customisation which propelled mydavidcameron.com
to instant virality in January. And sure enough, “#IvenevervotedTory” -
followed by punchlines of varying hilarity – was within the hour a
Twitter trending topic. But hold on just a Tory minute – another Conservative marketing #fail … or a cunning stroke of viral genius?

Meanwhile Brand Republic reports
that, as the general election approaches, Labour is increasingly
focused on social media. They’re using real-time social network
monitoring to fine-tune their campaign, while candidates and
campaign-organizers have been new-media-trained to within an inch of
their lives.

Google’s social-media week, on the other hand, has been something of a Curate’s Egg.

Despite the scramble to fix
Buzz’s most gaping privacy holes – namely the ‘auto-follow’ feature
which allowed users to see who else their contacts were emailing – The Guardian
reports that a privacy group has filed a complaint with the Federal
Trade Commission. The group demand that Google make the entire service
opt-in only – and they’re jolly cross that the onus is still on each
user to block followers thrown up by Google’s revised ‘auto-suggest’
feature.

From another corner of the Googleverse comes an item to which the only
reasonable response is a violent shake of the laptop to check it’s not
broken. The search monster has announced that it has officially become an energy-provider.
Yes! Just like British Gas and nPower. While it’s tempting to imagine
that this story concerns the monetization of Buzz’s
potentially-limitless supplies of hot air, I must reluctantly report
that this is, in fact, a quite-difficult-to-understand story about
Google’s plans to go carbon-neutral, by selling excess power back to
the national grid.

And talking of renewable energy and vast internet behemoths, Facebook
have sparked a storm of protest over plans to power a brand-new
data-centre with old-skule coal. By Monday, following criticism of its
power plans by Greenpeace in the Huffington Post, Change.org had harnessed a cool 5740 signatures urging The ‘Book to go green.

The Israeli Embassy lobbed a ball onto the social media court this week – with debatable success.
In a whimsical play on the tennis-gear sported by the alleged Mossad
assassins of a senior Hamas Commander in Dubai last week, the embassy
tweeted “you heard it here first: Israeli tennis player carries out hit
on #Dubai target”. The tweet – which displays a remarkable (though
perhaps unwarranted) confidence in the wisdom of combining Twitter,
puns, and generally frowned-upon death-squads – in fact links to a
story about the Israeli team’s success in a recent Dubai tennis
tournament.

Elsewhere, Facebook has been evincing a somewhat restricted capacity
to take a joke. The Argentinian author of a satirical book on the
world’s favourite social network found that his own Facebook profile –
and a 30,000-strong fan page – had suddenly and mysteriously gone
‘pouf!’. Uproar in the South American press followed, but it seems that
the profile was only restored when Venturebeat picked up the story, a
full month later. The book’s promo video (mildly racy – we’re talking
Argentina, after all) can still be seen here, on YouTube.

The hack attacks at the heart of Google’s ongoing Chinese tribulations have been traced back to two educational facilities
in mainland China, reports the New York Times. The Chinese authorities
– who last week claimed already to have identified and shut down an
entirely different set of hackers – have denied all knowledge. If
you’re intrigued by the murky world of Chinese hackery, which differs
substantially from its Western counterpart, the Wall Street Journal offers an absorbing snapshot.

The eminently-social Robin Hood Tax
campaign – created by ‘Four Weddings’ director Richard Curtis, to
promote a Tobin tax on all banking transactions – appeared to have
suffered a setback last week, when ‘No’ votes whooshed dramatically
from 1400 to 6000 in five minutes. Upon close examination however, it
emerged that most of the Anti’s had come via the servers of monolithic
investment institution Goldman Sachs: the silly-billies had failed to
disguise their IP.

Online viewers of Tiger Woods’s ‘apology’ last week witnessed what may well prove to be a turning-point
in YouTube’s history. The golfer’s much-mocked mea culpa – the cause of
near-universal buttock-clenching, and widespread
watching-from-between-fingers – was a strategic experiment in live streaming-video.
The addition of the real-time service is thought by many to be the
logical next-step for YouTube, as internet TV-enabled devices
increasingly squeeze traditional cable and satellite.

THE LOWDOWN …

Scene 1: Airline interior. In line with his employers’ questionable
policy of forcing the wide-of-beam to buy two seats, a flight attendant
escorts a humiliated passenger to the exit. Scene 2: Oh no! – the
overweight passenger is revealed to be none other than Kevin Smith,
alt-Hollywood director and proud owner of a Twitter-following
approaching two million. “What are the chances, eh? What are the
chances?”, as our beloved Harry Hill might say.

Poor Gordon Lightfoot. An Ottowan tweeter – perhaps realising that all Canadian news would be Olympics-themed for, like, ever – appears to have flipped, and completely invented
the death of the Ontario-born singer-songwriter. The news tore through
the Twittersphere, so you’ll no doubt be relieved to hear that the
sonorously-timbred composer of ‘Sundown’ is alive and well, and
consoling himself with the spike in his airplay.

After many, many years of research, engineers at Stanford University have produced electricity-generating fabrics
which could act as chargers for mobile devices whilst their wearers are
on the move. Had they asked, I might have mentioned that my wardrobe of
bri-nylon garments produces similar results – but they didn’t. Ach,
this relentless pursuit of progress.

In the latest – but, we’re quite certain, not the last – in our
tactfully-named “File Under ‘C’ for Counter-Intuitive” series, Mattel
is launching a dog collar
which will post random Twitter updates whenever your canine companion
makes a move. Heart-warming examples include “I bark because I miss
you. There, I said it. Now hurry home.” No, nothing further, m’lud.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has announced that they’re developing their own virtual world
for use both as a collaborative tool, and for training and simulation.
To which we say, ‘Farmville not good enough for you, huh?’.

IN OTHER NEWS …

Facebook and Paypal have announced the cessation of hostilities:
in a move which is clearly designed with social gamers, and the 70% of
Facebook users who live outside the US, in mind, users will now be able
to purchase Facebook Credits using Paypal. Till now it had been thought
that the ‘Book was pitching its Credits service in direct competition
to its long-established rival.

Hulu’s streaming video service will be available on the iPad (hoorah!) for an undisclosed fee (boo!). CNET reports
that the Hulu’s three main backers favour an arrangement where a paid
mobile service supports a free desktop service – and surveys the
bewildering array of tech and legal decisions required to make the plan
a reality.

And in a further Hulu hoo-ha, The Telegraph
reports that the UK launch-date is retreating once again (hiss!). This
time the delay is due to a combination of management-upheaval at ITV,
and the difficulty of agreeing terms with Channel 4 and Five, whereby
Hulu would sell ad inventory round content.

Last week the BBC launched a roster of free apps which will allow
mobile devices to access its news and sport services – to the dismay of
the Newspaper Publishers Association, which immediately declared that
the apps were counter-competitive.

Finally, Google CEO Eric Schmidt says a mammoth shift of ad revenue
from the fixed web to mobile platforms is inevitable, reports
Netimperative. Schmidt predicts something as game-changing as the
transfer of ad-spend from print to the net, and stresses that marketers
already know far more about mobile users: ”For a start, we know where
they are.”

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. In this update: we’re still Buzzing; those Bing Maps chaps; and Facebook’s five billion bits.

ON GOOGLE …

Less than a week since the launch of Google Buzz, and already if feels like forever (but in a good way).

There’ve been tears, and joy, and tears of joy; and massive privacy
holes, and the lightening-speed tightening of same: truly, a
rollercoaster of emotion for us all this week. But in case you didn’t
make the height restriction, here’s a speedy up-sum of the vertiginous
highs and lurching lows.

Tuesday: Buzz appears, causing mild bafflement in both analysts and public. Wednesday: Competitors get snarky. Thursday: Huge privacy issues are revealed. Friday: Huge privacy issues are fixed. Saturday: Stats show Buzz is a Facebook-and-Twitter-rivalling game-changer with over 160,000 Buzz posts and comments per hour.

If you require a little more detail, Mashable’s analysis of Google’s ‘nuclear bomb’ is well worth a look – they also usefully reprise Ari Milner’s tips on how to turn Buzz into your ‘social command centre’.

While the social media world was all a-Buzz this week, the launch was by no means Google’s only news:

Ay Caramba! At least six music blogs were deleted from Google’s Blogger
and Blogspot services – entirely without warning – for
copyright-releated TOS violations. Their owners received notification
after Google had already removed the blogs – in some cases destroying
‘years’ of archives in the process – but many insist they operate with
the permission of record labels and artists, reports the Guardian.

In a somewhat inscrutable update on Google’s ongoing Chinese conundrum, co-founder Sergey Brin said that the company wants uncensored search results
“within the Chinese system”. Though he postulated that such a thing
might come to pass “maybe in a year or two”, Brin acknowledged that “a
lot of people might think I am naive – and that might be true.”

Sparking futurist visions of a technology which truly melts geo-cultural borders, the Times reports
that Google is developing mobile software which would allow two people
to converse in real-time, though neither spoke the other’s language.
The software would combine Google Translate, and its voice-recognition
system – but won’t be available for several years.

Meanwhile, Google announced the launch of Google Maps Lab,
which will allow users to test new features as they’re developed.
Commentators speculate that Google is feeling some Microsoft heat,
following the recent stream of new features rolled out for the
Silverlight-powered version of Bing Maps: this week saw the launch of their Streetside Photos app, which matches geo-tagged Flickr images with their real-world locations.

ON FACEBOOK …

Though Buzz is doubtless giving Facebook HQ a tension headache, they
needn’t panic quite yet: last week The ‘Book announced they’d zipped
past the 400 million user post without a backwards glance, and this
week new stats reveal that over 100 million of us are using the site via our mobile phones – a near 100% rise over six months, and a vindication of the simplified design of their mobile site.

Elsewhere in the Facebook compound, the chaps in the Dept for the
Immediate and Continuing Expansion of Social Games must be jolly
pleased: according to TBI Research, the head of an (un-named) social
gaming companies says that Facebook’s new payment platform has seen sales of virtual goods jump by 25%.
This is enough to absorb the considerably higher commissions which
Facebook charges (30%, versus 10% by competing payment services).

And last month, five billion pieces of content were whistling through the cybersphere
courtesy of Facebook users – a 500% leap on mid-2009. After launching
its ‘Share’ buttons and – of course – Facebook Connect, the social
giant is shapeshifting before our very eyes, and looks set to become as
much of a content portal as a social networking space.

Unsurprisingly, brands are increasingly focusing on social networks as
a means of ‘fishing where the fishes are’ (as Coca-Cola’s social-media
team neatly puts it.) eModeration’s most recent white paper covers the
notoriously tricksy topic of how to deal with user-generated content on
these rapidly-evolving and markedly varied platforms – if your brand is
keen to dive in, but perplexed by what’s required, it’s well worth a look.

ON TWITTER …

There’s been a bit of a hoo-ha recently about whether or not Twitter stats have truly stalled. This, from Royal Pingdom, seems to come down firmly in the No camp: new figures reveal that a mind-boggling 1.2 billion tweets were sent last month.

What’s more, January 12th was Twitter’s biggest day yet
“across all metrics that matter” according to an understandably
smug-sounding CEO Evan Williams. The figures neatly coincide with the
news that Twitter is hiring Ali Rowghani – till now, Pixar’s financial
capitane – as chief financial officer: a wake-up call to those who
think that Twitter has anything but profitability in its sights.

ON YOUTUBE …

Crikey, those birthdays just keep on coming, don’t they? No sooner have
we surreptitiously pricked the balloons left over from Facebook’s
sixth, than YouTube announces its fifth birthday. To celebrate, new Nielsen research
reveals that, while overall US online video growth has slowed to 5.2%
year on year (down from 16% the previous year), Youtube is far and away
the biggest online video property with 113.6 million unique viewers
last month – up 6.7% on December.

Coincidentally, the Wall Street Journal
reports that Veoh, one of YouTube’s initial competitors way back in
2005, filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy this week. YouTube done good (or
at least, done clever).

BRANDS GET SOCIAL …

Nokia has given fans the chance to shoot and cut their own video for
Noisettes’ new single ‘Saturday Night’: 80 of them have used their
Nokia N95 and 5800 handsets to film the band performing, and have uploaded their footage to a dedicated microsite where other fans can view and edit it.

Pizza Hut took advantage of Valentine’s Day to pull Twitter users in – they asked them to tweet their smoothest pick-up lines, followed by the hashtag #iluvPH. Free “chocolate-topped dessert sticks” (good lord!) went to the most creative entries.

To coincide with Fairtrade Fortnight, Tate & Lyle have launched a
website to promote their Fairtrade products, which include Divine
chocolate, Café Direct coffee and Traidcraft raisins. The website
allows users to make their own virtual cakes,
and share cake-based content across social networks: the creator of the
most delicious-sounding recipe will have their cake whisked up for them
for real – by The Ritz, no less.

Mars has partnered with the Daily Mirror to challenge four Snickers fans
to a series of tasks, each of which will be shown as webisodes on the
Mirror’s website. The campaign – titled ‘More Nuts’ and featuring tasks
like the not-very-gruelling-sounding ‘kicking and catching footballs’ -
will also be aired on Facebook and YouTube.

Aids project (Red) has launched a campaign called ‘Get Pucke(Red) Up’, which allows Facebook users to send lip-smackingly audible kisses
to their friends. The initiative offers six different kissing styles,
from the ‘Platonic Peck’ to the more emphatic ‘Can’t Get Enough’, and
highlights the various real-world gifts which (Red) hopes users will
buy to support their work in the developing world.

Dennis Publishing, which numbers techie titles Mac User, Computer
Shopper and online-mag Gizmo amongst its publications, has launched a
new consumer technology review site. Expertreviews.co.uk offers – well, expert reviews, as well as user-generated ones aggregated from previous buyers by Reevoo.

ON MOBILE …

54.5 million smartphones were sold in the US in Q4 of 2009 – a giant leap of 39% on the previous year’s figures. According to comScore,
much of this continuing growth is Apple-shaped: the iPhone increased
its market share from 24.1% to 25.3% on the previous quarter. Google’s
Android doubled its share from 2.5% to 5.2%, but the leading operating
system by some considerable way is still Blackberry’s RIM, with a
whopping 41.6% of the market.

On both iPhone and Android phones, social networking is by far the most popular activity.
Socnet apps were used at double the rate of news applications, and four
times the rate of mobile games, according to Flurry – though users tend
to consume news in longer chunks than they devote to social media, at
an average of ten minutes per session.

Meanwhile, UK firm Synchronica has developed an affordable smartphone
which could be life-changing for users in the developing world, where
monthly incomes would barely scratch the price of a regular smartphone.
One of Synchronica’s models offers a basic push-email and messaging
service, the other a full HTML Web browser, and access to social
networking sites.

Finally, when US teens aren’t in school or asleep, they send a thumb-numbing average of 10 texts an hour, according to new Nielsen figures – that’s 3,146 texts a month, compared to less than 500 for all mobile users combined.

THINKING …

If you have any time left over from the giddy social whirl this week, may we recommend the following?

Two books, one detailing the rise and rise of Facebook, the other the
rise and – well, who knows? – of MySpace, are reviewed in fascinating
detail in the New York Review of Books this month.

And here, Brian Solis charts the process by which brands are becoming their media, and explains why success depends on the quality of the content they provide.

For more social
media snippets, follow Kate on @emodkate – or for general twittery,
@KateVWilliams. 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.

In this update: Will Buzz fly? MySpace gets WD40; and Beaker’s Ballad.

THE HEADLINES …

A proud week for Google, as it presented to the world its latest social media baby:
the sweetly-named Google Buzz. Google is clearly very, very keen to
socialize its offer, and, as a follow-up to its recent launch of Social
Search, it’s effectively turned Gmail into a social network – in the
process delivering what Mashable is calling a “hybrid of Foursquare, Twitter, Facebook and Yelp.”

Gmail is already the third largest email provider globally – and now
lets users post updates, including YouTube video and Flickr photos, as
well as aggregating other services to enable users to hear their own social circle
above the digital din. Comments on users’ updates will go straight to
their inbox, and friends’ updates will be ranked according to whether
other users have ‘liked’ them or not – so far, so Google.

Both Microsoft (who you’ll recall has a considerable chunk invested in Facebook) and Yahoo were predictably scathing,
with Microsoft sniffing that “busy people don’t want another social
network” and Yahoo needily insisting they’d launched “Yahoo Buzz” years ago. More worrying for Google, though, is its previous form in the social space – if the words Orkut and Jaiku mean nothing to you, the point is made.

Observers call our attention to the fact that Buzz’s Twitter
integration is only half-hearted, and – worse – that the search giant
has not invited the Facebook fairy to the feast: as Mashable continues,
Buzz won’t fly
without Facebook connectivity. Finally, in what is now a rite of
passage for any aspirant social network (though admittedly rarely
before the poor wee thing is a week old) a ‘Huge Privacy Flaw’ has been
identified by Business Insider.

Over at MySpace’s office, it seems the revolving door
has had an enthusiastic application of WD40: Owen Van Natta, announced
as CEO last April, is out after less than a year at the helm.
Commentators had noted that his simultaneous appointment
with Mike Jones and Jason Hirschhorn amounted to leadership in
triplicate – and parent company News Corp, who last week reported
digital earnings down by some $32million, clearly agrees.

The Digital Economy Bill is insufficiently clear on the detail of its
‘three-strikes’ rule for illegal file-sharers, according to the Joint Select Committee on Human Rights.
The government hasn’t shown how they plan to cut the broadband of
illegal down-loaders without affecting other members of the household,
and may therefore be violating human rights law. The committee was also
troubled by the “over-broad” powers that the bill would give the
authorities.

Meanwhile, in news which will have privacy hawks a-squawk, the FBI has said
it wants ISPs to hold information on every IP address, domain and
website that individuals visit – for two long years. The Feds insist
this is a simple matter of updating the rights they already have over
telephone networks – now largely superceded by the internet – and that
new powers would cover only points of contact, rather than actual
content. Nevertheless, any attempt at legislation is likely to spark a
ferocious response from the US’s hefty privacy lobby.

The Australian government this week suffered a co-ordinated hacktivist attack,
in protest at its plans to lay a comprehensive filter across the
Aussies’ bit of the internet. Hackers papered the PM’s home page with
pornography, and crashed the Australian parliamentary website for
nearly an hour, to express their opposition to the filter.

In an intriguing twist to Google’s Chinese saga,
government authorities claim to have nixed a popular ‘how-to’ site for
cyber-hackers, which they say was responsible for ‘thousands’ of
attacks. Google had responded to the recent hack of activists’ emails
with a refusal to censor its Chinese results – it’s not yet clear if
the government’s announcement is an attempt at a rapprochement.

The Iranian government imposed an info-blockade
on its citizens in the run-up to this week’s anniversary of the Iranian
revolution, during which opposition forces were calling for protestors
to take to the streets. The US State Dept did not mince its words: “It
is clear that the Iranian government fears its own people.”

THE LOWDOWN …

Last week the Facebook page of Colin Gunn – who is serving a 35-year
sentence for conspiracy to murder – was taken down, after police
revealed that he’d been using it to intimidate his old associates. This week the Times reports that Jack Straw has asked Facebook to pull the pages of a further 30 prisoners who’ve been harassing victims and their families via social media.

Young People in ‘Not As Thorough As They Might Be’ Shocker! The Telegraph reports
that, in comparison with older users, youngsters are more likely to
‘flit around’ the net, and less likely to thoroughly research a topic
in depth. They conclude that the internet is rewiring teen’s brains –
though a quick flick through our own school exercise books might have
set them right.

Am I living in a box? Why yes, I am!
‘Controversial’ media personality Tim Shaw will soon be spending 30
days locked alone in a box, unaware of his location, live-streaming
every second to an awestruck world. Since its aims are charitable, it
seems impolite to point out that this box-thing was rather tedious when
that Blaine chap did something similar several years ago. So instead we
will tell you that the person who correctly deduces Tim Shaw’s location
via daily web clues and Google Map references will win £30K and unlock
the box. If no-one does he stays for the full 30 days. In a box.

If you have ever idly wondered whether it’s possible to update an 80s
puppet-based phenomenon for a social media age, we have the answer you
seek: the Muppets present “Beaker’s Ballad,” which is well on its way to becoming a soaraway internet sensation.

With big eyes and comparatively small head, 14-year-old Rebecca Flint from The Isle of Man bears an uncanny resemblance
to a Japanese anime character. Now, in a peculiarly post-modern
variation on the Cinderella fable, she has become a Japanese YouTube
sensation. Videos of Rebecca dancing to J-pop in her bedroom while
dressed as a giant cartoon character have already had 8 million hits –
and now canny promoters have renamed her Beckii Cruel and released a
DVD, which looks set to go straight to number one in the Japanese
charts.

If you are approaching Valentine’s Day with some trepidation – perhaps
anticipating your beloved’s baleful glances across the restaurant
table, as you surreptitiously check Twitter beneath it – then the
following news will be useful. Herbert and Zelmyra Fisher, the world’s longest-married couple, will spend V-day on Twitter, responding to your questions on the secret of sustaining romance. (@longestmarried).

As their entry to a competition by Fireworks Popcorn, Dave Britt and Justin Goeres have created Popcorn Tweets.
Software combs Twitter for the hashtag #popcorn, then launches a
Heath-Robinson-with-robotics contraption which cooks …some popcorn.
Like me, you may be struggling to spot precisely which gap in the
market these fellows are seeking to plug – but it behoves us to
remember that the history of digital innovation is strewn with
successes which met initially with scepticism.

IN OTHER NEWS …

Google has warned the creators of lookey-likey Chinese search engine Goojje
that their logo, which is indeed very similar to the one we all know
and love, infringes their trademark rights, and must therefore go.

The most popular ad shown during the US Super Bowl – traditionally a Big Deal in the Stateside ad industry – was user-generated.
The Doritos ‘Underdog’ ad, which won competition-winner Joshua Svoboda
$600,000 for an initial outlay of $200, prompted the New York Times to
warn: “Be afraid, Madison Avenue. Be very afraid.”

Edelman’s 2010 Trust Barometer
reveals some surprising findings in the matter of whom we trust online.
According to its latest research, those who believe that their friends
and peers will give reliable information about any given brand has
dropped by nearly half, from 45% two years ago, to only 25% now.

Here’s rather crushing news for Apple – the percentage of consumers who
have heard of the iPad, but are not interested in buying one, has
doubled since its launch – from 26% to a crunchy 52%. Retrovo expresses
the stats in a pretty graphic here.

Commentators have long predicted that the coming election will be
fought on two key battle-grounds: at the school gates, and in social
media. Now both Labour and the Conservatives are running ads on parenting website Mumsnet, which has hosted webchats with all three party leaders. Here, The Telegraph explores how social media is changing the terrain of politics.

New research from the Advertising Association show that UK online advertising spend grew by 4.2% during 2009
– one of only two sectors to do so in the grimmest ad recession since
their quarterly survey began in 1982. The internet’s gain was press
advertising’s loss – it fell by an identical 4.2 percentage points.

Finally, Tuesday was Safer Internet Day,
with a host of launches aimed at keeping kids safe online. CEOP
targeted 5-7 year olds (80% of whom are estimated by Ofcom to use the
net) with a cartoon
aimed at teaching them about trust and what content to put online. The
UK Council for Child Internet Safety (UKCCIS) launched a three-step
campaign called Zip It, Block It, Flag It –including press ads to encourage parents to tell kids to “zip it” when it comes to keeping their passwords private. And Microsoft launched a version of IE8
which allows kids to report worrying websites and to get advice on
cyber-bullying – part of the ‘Click Clever, Click Safe’ campaign which
was launched in December. eModeration’s Tia Fisher gives her thoughtful take on SID2010 here.


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 (@emodkate).

In this update: Now Facebook Is Six; ITN’s German Celeb-Channel; and YouTube’s rental predicament.

ON FACEBOOK …

As we briefly noted on Friday, it was Facebook’s 6th Birthday
last week – and (after the piñata and the scary clown) it emerged that
the little tike had scooted past the 400-million-user mark with barely
a grazed knee.

And hasn’t he grown! The ‘Book now rivals Yahoo’s position as the third largest web entity in the world, which would rank it second only to Google and Microsoft.

Monthly users now number more than 108 million – most of whom will now have seen the Book’s revamped homepage,
comprising upscaled photo display, a far easier messaging facility and
rationalized notifications – all messages, updates and alerts are now
pulled together into the top navigation panel.

Most intriguingly though, the search pane has come right out of its
shell – it’s bigger and better and – crucially – more social.
Confirming its centrality
to Facebook’s Bigger Picture, search now auto-completes the names of
those with whom you share the most connections, and indexes items like
Pages and Applications to two degrees – so your friends’ friends
content is now indexed.

What’s more, Facebook’s new payment system, launched last week, is out of the gate like a skinny hound on a fat rabbit.
Initial research suggests users are choosing Facebook’s payment service
over alternatives, and the Book is clawing a whopping 30% from
publishers – revenue from this first year alone looks set to rake in
$125-250 million, if not more. Seems Facebook has Paypal locked in its
sights.

And look! eMarketer calculates
that ads will earn Facebook a stonking $605 million globally this year,
a 39% hike on last year’s figures. And that’s before analytics -
“Facebook is sitting on a gold mine of consumer information” according
to their analyst.

It’s not all Polyanna-this and ‘bright future’-that, however. Last week it was Tim “Made By Many” Malbon’s turn to toll a son’rous bell
for Facebook’s future: he detects hubris, and prophesies doom.
“Facebook is gambling on owning the one social graph (the data about
me, my contacts and what we all do) to rule them all,” he writes. “The
problem is that they don’t.”

ON TWITTER …

For the second week in a row, there is no meaningful Twitter News this
week. Oh, hold on; there’s something scrunched up at the back here…
okay, goddit: Ah yes, only 8% of US teens use Twitter,
and only 1 in 10 school-age kids – shockingly low in the context of
other social networks’ stats. Of this small cohort, the girls are
marginally keener: 13% of 14-17 year old girls are microblogging.

ON YOUTUBE …

ITN is solidifying its YouTube alliance with its first international offering – a German showbiz channel named Promi411. Good news indeed for fans of Claudia Schiffer and.. erm, The Hoff
- but also for those of the broader global celebretariat: the channel
will feature international celebrity news, packaged by a German
producer based at ITN, with all revenue split between ITN and Google.

YouTube’s Great Sundance Rental Experiment – you’ll remember that users
could rent festival entries at $3.99 a pop – has not been an
unmitigated success: they made $10,709.16. From this (or indeed any)
angle, the numbers aren’t great; nevertheless it might be worth casting
your eye over this piece from Venturebeat, which suggest that YouTube rental might just prove itself yet.

BRANDS GET SOCIAL …

Domino’s Pizza has sponsored a “Superfan” Facebook app
which challenges their fans to recruit their own friends to Domino’s
fan page, and doles out pizza-based treats to all, as stats rise.

Pringles is dusting off its “Can Creator”
website, which it launched a couple of years ago to push cause-related
campaigns. For each customized design submitted by the public, they’ll
donate 50 cents to the US Winter Olympics team, to a maximum of $40k.

Honda Europe has launched ‘Live Every Litre’,
a crowd-sourced campaign which asks users to pitch for funding to film
their own extraordinary journeys. Hopefuls will be able to promote
their entries via social networks from the campaign site, and the
winners will be chosen by public vote, with additional input from an
independent panel of bloggers. The campaign coincides with Honda’s
sponsorship of Channel 4 documentaries.

Dunkin’ Donuts recently completed its quirky ‘Twinter Games’
campaign: users tweeted entries to hashtags like
“#3WordsAfterIcedCoffee” to win a fifty-buck gift card. Facebook fans
uploaded photos of themselves cradling iced-coffees, to feature as
‘YeDDi of the Week’. (It’s an initial-based pun on the brand name, in
case you’re reading this first thing before brain kicks in.)

Oh Lord, is it really Valentine’s Day already? [slumps] To keep our
minds off the postman’s knock, Target is offering customers the chance
to choose how it splits the $1million it’s pledged to 5 educational
charities. Its Facebook app, “Super Love Sender” allows users to create interactive cards for their darlings, and to nominate one of the five organizations while doing so.

JetBlue is trying to boost its Facebook fan numbers, in order to match
their million-plus Twitter followers. They’ve launched a sweepstake on
Facebook – the self-explanatory ‘All You Can Jet’ campaign.

Visa’s Go World YouTube channel is having a makeover,
and will platform six new Winter Olympics ads featuring US team
athletes. Their Facebook page will also feature behind-the-scenes
Olympic snippets, and athletes’ own photos and footage.

Benetton is hosting an online casting
- those who think they could become the 2010 face of its brand can
upload photos and video describing their style on YouTube, for an
online casting. The finalists will be chosen by a public/panel combo,
and will be whisked to NYC for an A/W 2010 fashion shoot.

American Greetings is asking its Twitter followers to answer daily questions in their ‘Follow the Love’ contest, for a chance to win cash gift-cards.

Sara Lee’s site offers an interactive tool which shows users the positive environmental impact
of choosing the brand’s EarthGrains bread. To encourage fans towards
its Facebook page, they’re also pledging $1 towards farmer outreach for
each new fan.

Budweiser, to support its big Superbowl buy-in, ran a multi-layered Facebook campaign which asked fans to vote for the ad they wanted to see aired during the game.

Coke Zero is crowd-sourcing basketball fans,
in the newly-launched ‘Dept of Fannovation’ section of their website.
The brand wants fans to come up with creative ways to experience NCAA’s
March Madness (bi-i-ig tournament, for those Brits who don’t know). The
top 64 submissions will compete for $10,000 and game tickets, with the
online fan community voting for the most intriguing ideas.


Jim Beam Bourbon is asking the friends and families of US servicemen and women
to nominate them to win VIP event trip packages, through their Facebook
Fan Page. It’s an extension of their relationship with Operation
Homefront – which helps returning U.S. soldiers adjust.

VIRTUAL AND GAMES …

Linden Lab is in the process of shutting down its barely-used Second Life forums,
and replacing them with new discussion areas in its Clearspace
blog/forum hybrid. The Labs announced that “the forums have become
jammed with cruft over the years” – previously-released figures showed
that as few as 700 of 18.1 million registered users had ever posted in
the forums.

Sid Meier’s Civilization is coming Facebook,
in what Mashable predicts may well be an excellent game/platform
hook-up. The beta will be along ‘soon’ – the full game, not till next
year.

What might be the implications of Google’s new StreetView patent on ad
overlays? Dan Misener discusses the impact on real/virtual world
advertising in this podcast.

THINKING …

If you have pondering time this week, might we suggest the following?

A concise and to-the-point pep-talk from Aliza Freud to get your community-building juices pumping.

On which topic, Radian6’s recently published e-book Building and Sustaining Brand Communities looks as though it might be a rewarding read.

That’s all folks!