Three infographics here looking at social media reaction to the Margaret Thatcher’s semi state funeral yesterday, which lit up the Twittersphere. While the talked of protests turned out to be something of a damp squib, and few appeared to agreed with them, there were crowds of supporters and many more curious onlookers lining the streets of London leading to St Paul’s Cathedral as the military procession marched slowly by.

The first two infographics look at overall social media sentiment while the third looks at the reaction of national newspaper readers on Twitter. Read More »

The campaign pushing for the Sun newspaper to drop its topless Page 3 girl feature is targeting advertisers including Lego on social media. The toy brand is running a promotion in the paper from Saturday giving out tokens to encourage parents of small children to buy the newspaper and redeem the tokens for Lego toys. It is not the first campaign that the Danish toy firm has run with the Sun and nor is it the first time it has been targeted by the growing #NoMorePage3, which has racked up around 90,000 signatures.

Last time around the campaign targeted Lego’s half term promotion with a Lego figure of its own called Leanne, 22, from Legoland (pictured).

Read More »

A newspaper brand’s reach in the digital age has never been clearer following the second release of the National Readership Survey’s Print and Digital Data (NRS PADD) and some data crunchers at UM London.

To help make sense of the NRS PADD findings for the period July 2011 to June 2012, and to analyse the impact for UK advertisers, media agency UM has created a great infographic.

UPDATE: News International has finally confirmed that the paid for archive website for The Sun, which appeared online earlier this week, is not part of an effort to charge UK consumers for historic content from The Sun and News of the World.

I blogged on Tuesday that this could be the case as on the surface that is what it looked like. However, while the site is still there, it is said to be connected to News Corporation’s Australian arm and syndication efforts, including The Australian which launched a metered paywall in October. So no tabloid paywall for the UK any time soon, at least as far as News International is concerned. Read More »

I wrote earlier this year that News International was rethinking its anti-social media paywall policy with regards whether it would introduce a paywall for the Sun modelled on the one employed by The Times.

It had intially been reported that The Sun would follow in the footsteps of the News of the World, which saw its traffic plummet after its paywall went live, but that turned out to be the least of its problems. Read More »

Having beefed up its communications team Twitter is on the hunt for a PR agency and is said to be in talks with a mix of large and small agencies with offices in New York, Ad Age reports.

The move follows the appointment of Sean Garrett, Twitter’s VP of communications, who joined Twitter last year. He is overseeing the search. Read More »

There are two faces to social networks emerging in the few days since the riots in London began.

While sections of the media continue to point the blame at Twitter for fuelling the riots, with The Sun calling for Twitter rioters to be “nailed”, there is a much stronger trend that has emerged over night.

In opposition to looters using social networks community groups have taken back the initiative as the hashtag #riotcleanup becomes the UK’s number one Twitter trend as people started to come together to organise. Already more than 67,000 have joined social networking groups on Twitter and Facebook. It is already showing the signs of becoming a movement.

The Metropolitan Police are also using the web to publish pictures of rioters as are bloggers calling on people to identify those responsible.

UPDATE – A brilliant picture from Clapham below showing the power of the #Riotcleanup (see pic below).

It is also being reported that the Police in Glasgow have detained a 16 year old in Glasgow on suspicion of attempting to incite a riot by a message on Facebook.

Ebay has said it will cooperate fully with the investigating authorities to identify and remove any listings which are linked to criminal activity

Read More »

The Daily Mail and the Sun newspapers have pointed the blame in part at Twitter for fuelling the weekend riots and looting in Tottenham, Enfield, Brixton and elsewhere in London.

UPDATE – Blackberry has issued a statement (see below) on Twitter to say it is working with the authorities. Read More »

A day after Apple launched its new content subscription system Google is making its play for paid content with the launch of its Google One Pass micropayment system, which will allow people to buy content on any platform from a publisher signed up.

It is being launched this afternoon in Germany and the biggest name signed up so far is Axel Springer AG and Gruner + Jahr’s Stern (for all your diary scoops).   Read More »

With the news in Marketing today, that the Daily Mirror is set to charge readers for accessing online content, a tabloid paywall war is brewing. The Mirror’s plans will coincide with those of The Sun, which is expected to put its paywall up next year following sister title the News of the World whose paywall went live last week.

Read More »