Most importantly for companies and brands, it does reiterate the fact that Facebook is massively influential and they must engage with their customers there.

Twitter meanwhile has come in for a bit of a bashing from a group of academics saying that a lot of tweets aren’t worth reading, and that we should follow their golden rules. Well they may be good academics, but they ain’t marketers, so if you need Twitter advice, you know where we are!  Meanwhile, another study has found that Twitter is just as addictive as cigarettes and alcohol which we think is pretty spot-on, and and shows why Twitter is extremely important and useful for business and social commerce so long as you use it properly.

The Google privacy story is still rumbling on, with the EU asking them to delay the changes to their privacy policy which are due to take effect on the 1^st March – we look forward to hearing what Google has to say about this.  And France has also slapped a fine on them for using unfair completion with its Google maps product.  Maybe this all points to Google just getting uncomfortably large and powerful?

The Huffington Post, now it has AOL behind it, has the mighty CNN et al in its sights.  It  aims to revolutionize rolling news by introducing an online service called the Huffington Post Streaming Network (HPSN). This is another example of how ‘old world media’ is being turned upside-down and companies and their marketers need to take note…

New (well ish) kid on the block, Pinterest is making waves, with more and more people and brands starting to use it.  It’s so easy to use and it’s already gaining such a lot of traction that we are now advising our B2C clients to use it as another channel.  You still need an invitation to join, so if you would like to join, drop us a line at hello@themediamarketingco.com

And in other news, the new ‘budget’ Nokia is getting rave reviews so maybe it will signal a return to the mainstream for this once dominant brandl; Blackberry is claiming to be the leading smartphone brand in the UK in 2011, but the experts think that RIM may’ve done something ‘clever’ with the figures to come to that conclusion…

and if you’re out and about in London, look out for the new hi-tech wi-fi recycling bins which will tell us about the weather, the Stock Market and public transport – marvellous!

And finally, with a little story to warm the cockles of your heart (because let’s face it, the weather won’t be doing it this week), ‘cats wearing a slice of bread’ is the new internet phenomenon. We’ve been trying to persuade our office pets to partake, but they’re not co-operating!

Have a lovely weekend and keep warm!

Take this piece of news from Google, for example: they are going to merge data from across their platforms (YouTube, Google+ . Gmail, Google Maps, Google search  and Android mobile) into a single profile that can be used to alter the person’s search results and target them with advertising and services Google are saying that they do have measures in place to help individuals ‘opt out’, although they couldn’t specific and frankly, from a business perceptive it doesn’t actually make much sense to make it easy to do so. This has interesting repercussions for businesses marketing online -watch this space for a more comprehensive look at that.

It has also been reported this week that in the future businesses would be able to charge more for products that people have liked on social media  Would you charge your fans more for something they have liked, or is this a crazy idea?

Still on Google and the way they are skewing search results to favour logged in Google+ users, the engineers at Facebook, Twitter and MySpace have come with a browser add-on ‘Don’t be evil’, which shows what the original organic Google search should look like. Interesting how much the search results are being skewed and it’s bound to have huge repercussions for SEO and digital marketing going forward – lots more to come on this story we think.

McDonalds have been all over the press this week for their Twitter fail when a hash tag on a jolly promotional campaign backfired and was hijacked by disgruntled customers moaning about all manner of customer service issues.  Also, a barrister lost his job for tweeting insults about professional rivals and an MP learned his lesson by leaving his Twitter account logged in, only for an intern (and you know what we think about Twitter and interns) to make a series of inappropriate tweets.

Hardly a week goes by without Apple in the headlines and this week is no exception as they announced better than expected profits and are now officially the world’s largest company.  Sadly Nokia couldn’t post good results, in fact they reported a €954m fourth-quarter loss and a 31% decline in sales – however, they are positive that they can turn things around with new products this year.  And after the catastrophic Blackberry outage last year, RIM has given into shareholder pressure and appointed a new CEO who thinks he can restore confidence and prosperity.

The good news for all smart phone manufacturers is that the web economy in the G20 countries is due to double in 2016 to a whopping to £2.7 trillion.  In Google’s survey, the noted that 200 million new people per year are logging onto the internet, but the majority of those will do so from a mobile device, not a computer with a fixed line.  You have been warned!

Meanwhile in privacy issues the EU have said that people have ‘the right to be ‘forgotten’ if they should wish and Facebook and others (including all internet and company databases) will have to delete data that they hold if someone requests it, while over in the States the FBI plans to monitor social media channels for suspicious goings on.

And after the uproar last week about the proposed SOPA and PIPA bills, that have been dropped (probably), along comes ACTA which some reckon could be even more dangerous.  And Twitter has said that they have the technology to selectively censor tweets, country-by-country which is causing concern in some quarters, especially as Twitter has been so instrumental in helping ‘the people’ in world events like the Arab Spring.

And in the week that the Facebook’s timeline has become mandatory, our friends over at Mashable have put together a lovely gallery of the best Timeline covers. Enjoy!

Have a good weekend.

This week has to be the busiest week ever for big tech stories, you know the ones, the ones that make it into other sections of newspapers or even into the main headlines, so without further ado, here we go.

The proposed internet privacy/piracy Bills, Sopa and Pipa, that are under discussion in the US have caused the digital world to rise up in strong protest, with the most visible signs being Wikipedia being taken offline and Google blacking out its logo.  Countless other companies and individuals have registered their disgust to the legislation, which if made into law, would change the internet for ever.  The action certainly seems to have had a great effect with President Obama and US senators back-trackingon support for it. But until this issue is resolved, then the digital world vows to keep fighting.  And as a reminder that the US authorities are getting serious with copyright infringements online, it has shut Megaupload.com, a major internet content hosting website, and charged its founders and several employees.  ”Mega Conspiracy” (as they have been dubbed) has been accused of ‘robbing’ $500 million from copyright holders and generating over $175 million in proceeds from subscriptions and advertising.  Drawing the line between piracy and censorship seems to be as controversial as ever and this one will run and run.

Over with Apple, they held the much anticipated launch yesterday of iBooks 2.0, the app which promises to change text books for ever and in the process make a significant impact on education.  This has to be one of the exciting announcements that Apple has made in a while and we can’t wait to see how it will actually start to be used.

After all the hullaballoo last week about Google incorporating Google+ into its search algorithm (although how many people are actually using it frequently is still a point of discussion), there has been a slew of Google news this week – some good and some not so good. Despite being named the best place to work in America by Fortune magazine and making more than $10bn in the final quarter of 2011, the results failed to impress analysts who had been expecting more from the search giant. The shares tumbled in hours after trading, finally losing 10% of their value in total.

However, Google are still a company very much at the forefront of digital, and they have now incorporated train times into its Google maps (how brilliant is that!) and launched a film festival on YouTube (Google Inc.-owned). This will play out online and will send ten finalists to the Venice Film Festival with Scott Free Productions, run by Ridley and Tony Scott, involved in the judging.  Nice one Google!

And the folk over at Facebook haven’t been sitting on their laurels either with the announcement of sixty new apps for Timeline – so now virtually every facet of your life – music, cooking, cars, film etc etc – can be shared with your friends.

One sad bit of news this week is that Kodak has filed for bankruptcy.  The iconic photographic brand really failed to get to grips with the onslaught of digital and has paid the ultimate price. A little bit of history in the making and some lessons to be learnt.

And in other news , Communist Party officials in China are being equipped with a super-dooper pad computer housed in a luxury leather case and costing a whopping 9,999 yuan (£1,000), which is twice the price of Apple’s most expensive iPad – still I guess that they can afford it…perhaps we should simply console ourselves with the rather fab gadget Raspberry Pi, which went on sale this week at a rather more affordable $25.

Retail figures just out show that online sales soared in the run-up to Christmas (no surprise there then)  and to finish, IBM has unveiled the world’s smallest map: The map measures a miniscule 22 by 11 micrometers or put another way, 1,000 maps would fit on just one grain of salt.  Amazing stuff but more excitingly, this huge jump forward in Nano  technology will make its way into all kinds of digital applications in the not too distant future.

Have a good weekend everyone!

The other big news this week is the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) which has seen all eyes turned to Las Vegas to catch up with the hundreds of new launches.  Our lucky tech journo pals who actually get to go there, have been doing sterling work by giving the edited highlights from this massive show.   There have been new phones, pads, laptops – you name it, it was at CES.   There was even a  Swiss army knife with a built-in flash drive!

One notable absentee from CES (as usual) is Apple, who seem to generate attention 24/7 with new products and just other things, like sneak unofficial reviews of the iPad 3 which may or not be true and near riots in China as the iPhone 4S is launched. Most importantly, Apple has announced (officially) that there will be ‘an education announcement’ in New York next week which is rumoured to be about them entering the digital textbook market – more news on this next week.

MySpace (remember them?) are still limping along, although recent figures show how they are shedding users at an incredible rate, and we are still waiting for the Justin Timberlake effect.  Exactly what is he going to do with it?

Tesco make a rare appearance in the digital news after posting poor Christmas results and having a whopping £4 billion wiped off its share value – this has resulted in many predicting that the modern shopper, armed with the internet and their smart phone, will no longer slavishly trudge to the massive supermarket for the weekly shop, and that we are beginning to adopt new shopping habits.  These include a diverse mix of online supermarket  shopping, targeted buying of special offers, niche goods from small suppliers (online and high street) and a good dollop of Freecycle inspired recycling.  This is another story that we will be following as the year unfolds.

And to finish, there are some lovely new iPad apps to look at including an online version of the Lonely Planet magazine with lots of extra photography so if you are planning your escape from the cold and grey, then this will be a good place to start.  See you next week.

We got ours when it was first available and WE LOVE it, so looking forward to everyone having one. From a business point of view it makes it easier for stories to stick around for longer on people’s walls for longer, especially if the story has generated comments.

This week the new Twitter look was finally unveiled, and it looks like they have Facebook and Google+ in their sights. We love it, especially now they have also introduced Brand Pages as well.

Following from our last Something for the Weekend about the increasing variety of nicely-done brand apps on Facebook, M&S is the latest big brand to introduce one – this one is Pass the Parcel, which cleverly requires sharing to enable you to keep entering and hopefully win one of a selection of prizes.

EasyJet has entered the mobile arena with a ‘Speedy Booking’ app, which enables consumers to search and book fares through their smartphones. It’s free to download for iPhones and Android, and we’ll certainly be making good use of that here in the office!

Starbucks are reporting that 1 in 4 of their transitions are being done via their app that allows mobile payments. In the nine weeks after it was released, there were 3 million transactions and another 6 million in the following nine weeks, says Adam Brotman, SVP and general manager of Starbucks.

The European Commission has backed the ‘right to be forgotten’ data reform in a move that could have serious ramifications for brands as according to a Financial Times report, the proposals currently include fines of up to 5% of global turnover for businesses breaching rules, a deadline of 24-hours for notifying data protection authorities and affected parties, and for a requirement for all companies with more than 250 employees to dedicate staff to data protection issues.

The UK data protection watchdog, the Information Commissioner’s Office, has expressed the view that the new framework “should not introduce a stand-alone “right to be forgotten”, which could mislead individuals and falsely raise their expectations, and be impossible to implement and enforce in practice”.

Interestingly the UK data protection watchdog, the Information Commissioner’s Office, has expressed the view that the new framework “should not introduce a stand-alone “right to be forgotten”, which could mislead individuals and falsely raise their expectations, and be impossible to implement and enforce in practice”.

In Oregon, USA, Crystal Cox, a financial blogger, has been fined $2.5 million by a judge because she ‘isn’t a journalist” and therefore not entitled to the protection afforded to journalists. This is an argument that has rumbled on for year in the States, but the consensus had appeared to have been largely settled — on the side of the bloggers. Attorney Bruce E. H. Johnson, who wrote the media shield laws in next-door Washington State, told Seattle Weekly that those laws would have protected Cox had her case been tried in Washington.

Seems there is an increasingly fine balance that has to be maintained in the online space not just by bloggers and journalists, but also by brands and their agencies. H&M have been slapped by ASA for using computer generated models to showcase their clothes on their website, which give an unrealistic impression of the female body, while Groupon have suffered another two ASA rulings over their misleading ads.

And finally … brands are increasingly making an appearance on the bespoke nail scene (yes, as in fingernails), with well-known brands increasingly being sported on the tips of well-groomed hands, as some women choose to very publically show their support for some of their favourite brands from Starbucks and Skittles, Subway and Burger King, to Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and YouTube!

Which just goes to show that the recent concerns voiced recently by Emily Maitlis about whether choosing to ‘like’ a brand on Facebook should equal advertising your support to friends… seems Zuckerberg must have already seen women sporting branded nails, so knew what he was on safe ground!

Superfly has launched a more personal way for regular flyers searching for the most cost effective flights, by taking into account their loyalty rewards.

Amazon announced this week that, for the first time since they started selling books online, its digital books have outsold its paper books this year. Interestingly student text books have been lagging behind generally, but have finally taken a big leap digital-side, with sales of textbooks widely reported as doubling this semester on last Spring.

Hello wallet is the newest iPhone app launched for consumers to make it easier to keep track of what they are spending and whether they can afford the purchase or not. This launch reflects the growing trend of the mobile wallet, which is definitely the next big thing for businesses to be aware of, with Paypal, Google, Visa and American Express all jumping on board so far.

Brand-wise, Domino’s has found a new way to utilise the digital space, with a new app that allows customers to create a pizza on their iPads before ordering it in reality. Meanwhile, struggling high street retailer HMV has announced a new online rental service as it continues to try and get to grips with digital retailing. Users will be able to choose from hundreds of movies from more than 30 distributors, with rentals costing £3.75, though with YouTube and Google already in the space, plus Freeview and LoveFilm, we predict it’s going to be a tough battle.

Old Spice is at it again, merging creativity on online brand promotion in a very tongue-in-cheek video release of a ‘bear holder’ for Old Spice deodorant (yes, you CAN buy it apparently), which has already got over 43 thousand views on YouTube, while Unilever’s Lynx brand has had a double ban for their separate outdoor and internet campaigns after the advertising watchdog upheld complaints that they objectified women and were inappropriately located where they could be seen by children. Shame, because we ADORED their augmented angel reality campaign, which is perhaps the most creative integrated social campaign of 2011.

On Facebook, Nivea is launching a social Christmas campaign this week to encourage people to send personalised gifts to their Facebook friends, Thorntons have launched a Christmas app, offering fans facts, fun and the chance to win a Christmas Hamper, and Baileys are running a personalised Cup Cake giveaway … all nice to have, and we are noticing that retail brands are embracing the digital relationship with their customers much more enthusiastically and with a surer touch than they did in 2010.

Over on Twitter, Samsung ran a gloriously simple yet effective campaign this week to show off the capabilities of their new Galaxy Note handset. Called Create My Tweet the brand asked Twitter users to suggest ideas for artwork by tweeting @samsungmobile with their 140 character message and the hashtag #createmytweet.

Renowned illustrators Steven Wilson, Rose Stallard, Danny Sangra and Natasha Law will then turn some of their requests into real artwork using the design applications on the Galaxy Note – we’re waiting to see if any of ours get chosen! For more information and inspiration for your own campaign, see their Facebook page.

And finally… there’s a new action figure on the block… yes it’s Mashable’s very own founder, Pete Cashmore! And while he may not be ending up in any of our Christmas stockings, it does go show you what immense reward might await you if you ever choose to start a blog for business…

Big, serious stories dominate the digital news this week and none more so than the ‘scary SOPA bill’   SOPA is the Stop Online Piracy Act and along with the Protect IP Act, they are trying to prevent piracy and copyright infringement.  The problem is though, that it is widely felt that they will also endanger innovation and will allow the entertainment industry to censor sites they feel “engage in, enable or facilitate” infringement.

There are fears that it could be so restrictive that it could change the whole nature of the internet, and you know it must be serious if Google and Facebook bury the hatchet and join forces to oppose it.  This is definitely a story that we will be talking about again.

And there’s lots of Google news again this week, following on from the launch of the Google + pages aimed at businesses last week.   This time, they have had a bit razzmatazz launch of their music service which is going to be pitched against iTunes.  But it’s received a bit of a muted reception with some feeling that it is a missed opportunity.  However, there are all those lovely Android phones for it to be used on, so we won’t write it off just yet.  Although a new survey out from Experian Hitwise says that Google + is beginning to perform better in the US but in the UK, Britons seem confused by it.

It’s still early days though and none of these stats include mobile usage and differentiate between accounts opened and actual usage.  With many marketers looking to Google + as another way to promote brands, this is another story that we will be keeping our beady eye on.

Blackberry has also been in ‘music launch’ mode this week with them offering a music sharing service via their proprietary BBM messaging service, so beloved of the ‘yoof’.  Whilst analysts are still busy sucking their teeth about Blackberry and announcing that the end of the world is nigh, Blackberry has hit back with some new product launches and some impressive expansion figures since last year.  Ah, but that was before the outage wasn’t it….we shall see.

There’s a lot of interesting news out this week about ‘millennials’,that generation of people coming through who seem to have slightly different attitudes to social sharing to their parents.  Whilst there is evidence that  some people are getting weary of handing over their data, millennials are happy to do so if they feel engaged in a relationship with the brand.  More to come on this in a blog – fascinating stuff about the future

Taking a quick spin round the other news:  there has been a sharp rise in the number of Britons who are now online (where have you been) but that’s good news for us marketers as it means there is an ever growing audience to market at; Paypal has launched a Facebook app which allows you to send money and e-cards to FB friends without charge – very interesting we feel, and another area that has great potential  for the future; scientists have come with a way of waterproofing smartphones which is fantastic as a staggering number of phones are dropped down toilets and into cups of coffee each year, creating complete chaos; and big leaps are being made in battery technology with them due to be charged much quicker and last for much longer which is brilliant news as  we are asking our smartphones to do so much, and with M-commerce being one of the fastest growing areas of tech, we feel that this is a very important development; if you were in receipt of explicit spam this week via Facebook then it was your browser to blame, and not Facebook, apparently..

And to round off this week, we had to mention the splendid 89 year old Baroness Trumpington who became a bit of a sensation on Twitter after making a rude hand gesture to a colleague in the House of Lords.

Happy weekends everyone!

Children at the Sari Weaving village. http://www.flickr.com/photos/scadcharity/5937335156/in/set-72157627113902397

Flickr is a great resource and is very useful for visually rich businesses, which charities tend to be, whether that is because of their subject matter or what people are doing to raise money to help.

As such it should be treated as an integral part of your social good organisation’s social media strategy and activity, helping to inform, educate and drive the emotional responses that lead to donations or involvement. As an additional extra, adding it in to the mix will help your search rankings if done correctly.

Like everything, however, it has to be used correctly to get the maximum benefit online, whether for business, charities, or Social Enterprise organisations.

Here are a few top tips to help you leverage the potential of Flickr for your business, social enterprise, charity or not for profits organisation:

1. Content – Use original content that are relevant to your message and goals, achievements and organisation, such as photos of what you are achieving, charitable activities, behind-the-scenes images and historical photos.

2. Tag it – Make sure that every image or video is properly titled, with descriptions and metatags, for maximum SEO potential. Flickr makes it easy to edit this information for a batch of photos as well as allowing you to doing it singly. Just unloading the image and leaving on the camera’s image name eg IMG_0001.jpg is wasting an opportunity to improve your organisation’s online profile and also looks very unprofessional.

3. Do More With Less – Don’t have more than one Flickr account for your organisation unless there is a really compelling reason to do so, as it dilutes the search potential and well increasing confusion, but do file your images and videos in Groups within that one account complete with a description that incorporates your keywords.

4. Groups – Share your images or videos in relevant Flickr Groups, and get involved in Group discussions as well as outreaching to other Group members’ shared images and video. If you want to create your own group that reflects your organisations interests Flickr allows you to create official Sponsored Groups, such as Kellogg’s Moments of Motherhood Group where users share motherhood-related images: http://www.flickr.com/groups/momentsofmotherhood/

5. Relationships – Just as in any other social network, building relationships is important. Outreach to other Flickr members in your sphere by favouriting their content and/or commenting on their pictures or video. This helps build links and a community around your shared purpose or interest.

6. Go Pro – a Pro account increases the amount of content you can upload per month, and gives you access to increased analytics, which is always helpful. Posting smaller sized images will also help you retain control of how and where they are used.

7. Share – Regularly share your Flickr content on other social networks, such as Tumblr, Facebook and Twitter to maximise the social links surrounding your organisation/brand online.

8. Be Savvy – Don’t just use Flickr for your photographs as it is open source; do think about only uploading minimal sized images so that their reuse is restricted; make sure the ones you do upload there are actually hosted elsewhere, such as on your company’s website, as Flickr’s terms and conditions state: “pages on other web sites that display content hosted on flickr.com must provide a link from each photo or video back to its page on Flickr. This provides a way to get more information about the content and the photographer.”

At The Media Marketing Co we work with many Social Enterprises, Charities and Not for Profits Organisations to help them raise their profiles and increase donations. If you would like further information contact claire@themediamarketingco.com.

In a ‘Digital Life’s survey of 72,000 people in 60 countries, Britons have said that they want brands to stay off social media as most did not listen to what consumers want. However the same number said that they liked to engage when they were offered promotions and discounts, which sends a strong message to brands to get their act together and engage with consumers via social media properly, rather than just fiddling around or acting without a proper strategy, which “risks alienating customers and impacting business growth” according to Stephen Yap, Group Director, Technology, TNS UK.

Mobile usage and M Commerce are becoming the most rapidly emerging trend for businesses to take note of, and a cross-industry group of retailers, network operators and trade bodies, led by eBay, has just called on the government to aid consumer take-up of m-commerce by prioritising network improvements in a ‘Mobile Manifesto’.

In other mobile news, the mobile phone market is booming in Africa;  Apple have come up with a rapid fix for their new operating system which was attracting lots of negative press last week; the UK is going to have the best broadband in Europe (allegedly) within the next few years; Blackberry makers RIM have suffered a huge loss in subscribers after their recent outage disaster and LinkedIn has launched a dashboard for groups which will make things a lot easier to cope with.

There’s a lot ‘silver surfer’ activity this week including news that older mobile users are switching to smartphones and this age group is one of the fastest growing users of the devices. And with the recent news that Google is thinking of moving into TV, and tablet technology allowing ‘Pad Dads’ to watch more and more TV on a mobile device content producers should take heed of this new survey which says that a huge proportion of older people can’t hear what is being said because of recording techniques.

There’s been a fair amount of Google + news this week, with the announcement that you can set up Google + pages for businesses.  We have set up ours  but were rather surprised to see just how unintuitive it is and that you can’t have multiple admins – it seems their senior executive was right after all saying that Google + was not a ‘social’ network, even though it’s what they told us it was a few months ago… We have suspected all along Google+ is more of a search network, and so are advising all our clients that they need to be in the space as it is likely to prove more businessy than the other social networks – see Specsavers ‘hangout’ with Gok Wan for an early example of how brands might use it in the future.

And at the risk of this column becoming like Groundhog Day, we have another Facebook privacy story today, this time with Facebook probably having to agree with privacy regulators to regular audits.

Lest we forget, it is Armistice Day and this event has been marked by Twitter with its own Remembrance Day Service. What a lovely move by Twitter and a fabulous example of how technology can be used for the greater good.

Have a nice weekend.

Facebook privacy  is once again making the headlines as apparently Facebook users are struggling with the privacy changes  which is maybe not surprising as they have changed them eight times in two years.

And there was also the rather disturbing news that a whopping 600,000 Facebook accounts are hacked every day.

Over on Planet Apple, there have been a few grumblings about the battery life on the new iPhone 4S and Apple have had to fess up this week that there is actually a bug. In fact, anyone who has upgraded their existing iPhone to iOS 5 could be experiencing a problem, and while they are obviously going to fix this, it might take a few weeks… While in a report out this week it was revealed that Android phones are more likely to break (that is a hardware failure) than Apple or Blackberry.

There has been a slew of positive Google news this week headed up by ‘do a barrel roll’  trending on Twitter, which is a clever trick which people have had fun using, and best enjoyed on Firefox and Chrome apparently, and those lovely folks over at Mashable have revealed a whole host of other Google goodies that you can play with in a dull moment.

More seriously, Google are contemplating offering  paid cable-TV services to consumers, a move that could unleash a new wave of competition within the traditional TV business.  This is a very interesting development and one which we will be watching in the coming months.

So rounding off this week with a couple of lighthearted stories:  hackers accidentally broke into a French rugby club website, when their intended target was actually the German Stock Exchange. The website, which usually only gets 700 hits each day was visited 80,000 times as a result of the attack. And some bright spark at Vsauce, a YouTube channel, has worked out that the weight of all the electrons in motion that make up the internet at any one moment is equivalent to 50 grams which is apparently the weight of a strawberry (although rather a large one we feel!)

So on that mind-boggling note, here’s wishing you a lovely weekend, complete with lots of fireworks!