Social Marketing & Digital Agency

Facebook has finally started to roll out their new Timeline, initially in New Zealand, but there are increasing reports of it hitting Europe and other places.

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!

1 in 10 pets have social media profile

After the extraordinary #NOTW events of last week, we’re getting back to our bread and butter business of what’s happening in the world of digital. This week seems to be dominated by stats and the promise of sparkly product launches in the Autumn.

So here we go.  The first mind boggling stat of the week is that Twitter now has One Million Apps based on its platform. One million!

But it’s fair to say that ‘Western Twitter’  can’t hold a candle to ‘Eastern Twitter’ with the Chinese equivalent, Weibo, now boasting  140 million users and 50 million active monthly users and growing fast.

In fact, global Twitter and Flickr  activity has been charted in some amazing images this week by Eric Fischer and there are quite a lot of blue dots (Twitter activity) in China – fascinating stuff.

Google came out with a whole raft of numbers this week. All of these were announced on Google+ by CEO Larry Page and impressive figures they were too – earnings up 32% in the second quarter hitting a massive $9 billion. Google + seems to be starting well, although it ran out of disc space last weekend and started spamming.

We have to say that we are still a little bit lukewarm about Google+ but maybe that’s a girl thing, as it seems to be most popular with the boys. However, we see it as a potentially fatal flaw because WOMEN buy stuff (85% of all brand purchases are made by women), so if you want to attract people to sell to you need to attract WOMEN… Is it just that we are women, or is this just really simple to understand? It will be interesting to see how that one plays out Google-side…

On the subject of shopping! Foursquare is to offer daily deals a la Groupon and LivingSocial et al, which is another indication of the rise of social shopping. This has been one of the major trends of this year, and as we move towards the all important Q4 for retail, it will be interesting to see what impact social and mobile shopping has on the bottom line.

Product announcements are increasing again (revving up for Christmas no doubt – Christmas press releases are coming thick and fast now), with Amazon is hoping to throw a spanner in the works for Samsung and others with the announcement that they are going to be launching a tablet (to go alongside their Kindle).   Analysts believe that this could become the one serious competitor to the iPad. And RIM has announced that they will be launching seven, yes, seven, new smartphones in the coming months.

To round off this week, we have two lovely social stories to share. The first is the amazing news that a Japanese company has just a released a very special (and free) Twitter client for the iPad in the App Store. “Breath Bird” lets people who can’t use their fingers and have problems speaking, to post to Twitter by breathing into the iPad’s mic. How brilliant and wonderful!

And finally, we have an excuse to publish a picture of the gorgeous Maneki Neko who was begat by our beloved Lara, the lucky white office cat – apparently one in ten pets now has a social media profile. Not our pets, of course… although Albadore, the office dog, is suddenly looking a bit sheepish…

Have a lovely weekend all, fingers crossed it stays sunny

As a follow on to our blog last week about how online shopping is beginning to pose a real threat to the High Street , today we are looking at rash of new data generated by the new shopping trends and habits that have emerged over the first six months of 2011.  As with all areas of digital, the pace of change is rapid and fierce and those that don’t take notice of the stats will undoubtedly get their fingers burned.

One of the interesting new surveys is from econsultancy who last month surveyed 2000 shoppers in both the UK and the US to compare how the approaches to multi-channel shopping varied between the two countries.

Although there are differences (hardly surprising) there are a number of similarities in how the sophisticated consumer is playing the ‘multi-channel’ game to ensure that they optimise their shopping experience in terms of value-for-money, convenience and just being able to buy the best product that meets their needs.

People are using general information online to make informed choices about shopping, whether it’s online or in a store.  And they expect to be able to interchange the two experiences, by for example, returning a product bought online to a physical shop.

As mentioned before retailers, must integrate their online and offline promotions to get optimal effect from the customers.

And all this is before taking into account the effect of ‘social shopping’: Groupon and LivingSocial are the big boys, but coupon and ‘daily deals’ sites are popping up all over the place.  According to BIA/Kelsey research, the estimate is that what was an $873 million market in deal-a-day e-commerce in 2010 will rise to $1.24 billion in 2011 and increase to $3.9 billion in 2015.  However, the market is a very new niche, and although Groupon has attracted some eye-wateringly high valuations pre-IPO, many analysts think that these are way too high.

What is clear though is that the canny consumer is playing the game to maximum advantage, which has shifted the balance and caused many retailers to lose out.

More research finds that “the relatively low percentages of deal users spending beyond the deal value (35.9 percent) and returning for a full-price purchase (19.9 percent)”, which  means that the long-term market isn’t quite as peachy for the deals market as some would like to think.

So while the consumer is playing clever, so must the retailer. As closures on the High Street become a regular fixture in the headlines, retailers must become more and more sensitive to the needs of their customers. And we haven’t even got onto the effect of mobile shopping on all this yet….another blog coming soon for that one!

This week (well, last two really) has had a bit of a legal feel about it, whether it’s people breaking the law, trying to uphold it or trying to change it. Sony has hit the headlines again with news that LulzSec, a hacker group had stolen the personal details of one million users from Sony Pictures and published them on the internet. The names, birth dates, addresses, emails, phone numbers and passwords of people who had entered contests promoted by Sony were all published on the internet.

Apparently, the group, who have performed similar stunts, said it had done it to prove how vulnerable companies were to ‘simple attacks’.  Maybe they have a point, although publishing the details was maybe not the best way to make it. Another hacking group, Anonymous, has hacked into Iranian Government emails to illustrate that they can control the servers.

British Intelligence too have been doing a spot of hacking by inserting a PDF file of cup cake recipes into an online magazine called Inspire, which is a jihadist site in English and devised by supporters of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula. The recipes replaced bomb making instructions and apparently ‘scrambled’ the site apparently rendering it unreadable. You couldn’t make it up could you!

More legal wrangles this week about file sharing laws and the potential penalties, with lawyers suggesting that taking an internet connection away could breach people’s human rights.

Those pesky super injunctions are still around this week, thanks to an anonymous twitter member, Sue Mae, who posted details (including court papers and personal details) of people involved in the recent spate. And after an embarrassing photo was published on Twitter allegedly by US Congressman Anthony Weiner, it has become apparent that there are potential security issues with Yfrog, although it’s not clear whether he did send the ‘crotch’ picture to his colleague or not…

Over in business land, which seems to awash with money for the select few, Groupon has published details of a proposed $750m IPO (how lovely for Groupon).

And Nokia are denying rumours that Microsoft has offered to buy them for $19billion (how much??!!) although there is less financial enthusiasm for poor old MySpace – News Corp would like $100m for the site and, not surprisingly, the initial list of potential buyers has dwindled to just two. Oh dear.

And to finish off, we have the delightful news that Gwyneth Paltrow has this week joined Twitter and Facebook so that she can impart some of her wonderful down-to-earth advice to the little people. Interested? Mmm, thought not.

Have a fab weekend all, we’re off to sunbathe – see you next week, which is threatening to be the first ‘normal’ week for ages!

Starting off our festive advent countdown of all things digital, we give you Google’s rumoured desire to give the lovely social phenomenon Groupon a very large amount of money (think $6 billion… yum) for Christmas.