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The Statistics of Social

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 10:46:00 GMT

Over 1.2 billion people worldwide now use online social networks, and you might presume that Facebook is the biggest site in every country, with Americans being the most social-networking obsessed of all – but you’d be wrong. The facts of social networking might actually surprise you.

By and large, Facebook really is the biggest social networking site in the developed world, with 800 million active users and the 1 billion mark expected to be reached in August this year. The United States is home to the largest number of Facebook users – 154.6million in September 2011 – however, that’s still less than 50% of its population. According to Pingdom’s latest statistics, the country with the largest percentage of its population on Facebook is in fact humble Cyprus, with great internet access and an abundance of English speakers allowing 69% of Cypriots to log on.

In terms of sheer numbers of Facebook users though, the second largest number are to be found in Indonesia, a country that can’t seem to get enough of its social networks. Twitter, the world’s largest micro-blogging site, comes second to Facebook in America, Canada and the UK (to name but three), whereas 21% of Indonesians use Twitter, making them the nation that Tweets most of all. Reasons for this are that Indonesians benefit from widespread access to cheap mobile devices and, like Cyprus, have a large English-speaking population.

Social Networking A Social Norm

When looking at user statistics for Facebook and Twitter, the figures for China, the world’s largest population, are incredibly low. That’s because the two sites, along with many others, are actually banned by the notorious Great Firewall of China - or to give its proper name, the ‘Golden Shield’ - yet some users manage to break through.

Does this mean that China is stunted in its consumption of social networking? Absolutely not. Sina Weibo, China’s answer to Twitter, dwarfs the site it was modelled upon with a massive 250million users, compared to Twitter’s 100 million worldwide.

What this effectively shows is that social networking sites are no longer a novelty to their users, but a necessity.

Social networking exploded in Egypt and Russia last year, where sites like Twitter were transformed into vital lines of communication and comment for protesters, leading them towards their respective political revolutions.

Of course, not everybody will find such radical uses for social networking, but examples such as this underline the importance of finding the most suitable platform for your needs. Not all sites operate in the same way or appeal to the same audience, but with almost a seventh of the world’s population using Facebook alone, the benefits of social networking are yours to reap.

Google Privacy Changes

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 09:42:00 GMT

It’s been less than a fortnight since they threw Social back into Search with their Search, Plus Your World product but Google are grabbing headlines once again, this time re-working their privacy policies and search algorithms. Whilst changes to their privacy policies have for the most part been met with approval, another round of algorithm changes predictably had many on edge.

Consolidating the policies of their 60+ products into one easy-to-read document, the company has already received praise from European Commissioner for Justice Viviane Reding for its amends. The fact that changes to European data privacy laws are looming, we’re sure, has very little to do with this simplification of their policies. But with these typically long-winded and overly jargonised documents now reduced down to one user-friendly policy that even your Grandmother could understand, the move seems a rare coup for the consumer.

Perplexing SEO Types

Also benefitting users, Google’s search algorithm changes are now favouring sites which show restraint when it comes to on-site advertising. In a blog post on the subject, Matt Cutts (an SEO specialist at Google) explained:

“This algorithmic change does not affect sites who place ads above-the-fold to a normal degree, but affects sites that go much further to load the top of the page with ads to an excessive degree or that make it hard to find the actual original content on the page.”

Whilst all this sounds great, the vagueness surrounding what exactly constitutes “an excessive degree” is now something perplexing SEO types the world over. Further rubbing salt into the wound, Google’s own search results have been highlighted as seemingly flaunting these guidelines giving this latest change a “do what we say, not what we do” feel.

Internet Decency

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 11:35:00 GMT

Since the GoDaddy protests of last December, the seemingly innocuous terms SOPA and PIPA have been on the lips of tech-savvy individuals the world over. The internet piracy bills are both still just propositions at this stage, but it’s their potential that’s lit a fire under companies such as Google and Wikipedia to voice their concerns, and now it seems even President Obama is anti-SOPA (at least, in its current incarnation).

Fresh from their Boycott GoDaddy campaign, news site Reddit are once again at the forefront of the anti-SOPA action, last week announcing plans to “black out” their site on January 18th in protest of the bill. The blackout, which as the name suggests, would see visitors to reddit.com faced with a black screen, has now picked up the support of Wikipedia who will also set their English-version site to black tomorrow.

140-Character Retort

In something of a surprise posting though, when broached on whether Twitter would consider doing likewise, CEO Dick Costolo tweeted “That’s just silly. Closing a global business in reaction to single-issue national politics is foolish.” Media mogul Rupert Murdoch went one further on the subject, blasting President Obama as siding with his “Silicon Valley paymasters” and branding Google a “Piracy leader”.

Though the planned actions are sure to bring the issue to an even wider audience, with the White House now backing the sentiment to rewrite the bill, it seems that the battle for now at least might’ve been won by Team Anti-SOPA. But it’s not just America where legal decisions are threatening the internet status quo, with a case due before India’s New Delhi High Court later this week attempting to police the content of 21 websites including Facebook and Youtube.

With social media and the wider internet now so firmly imbedded in our everyday lives, it was only a matter of time before such issues arose in Governments minds. Now that the debate has been well and truly entered into, 2012 could be the year that the internet grew up only to find itself under house-arrest.

How to Get Ahead In Cloud Computing

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 12:20:00 GMT

The concept of cloud computing is nothing new, but its adoption by businesses as their sole method of operations is an idea that’s still greeted with trepidation. With cloud computing closely tied with social networking, there’s still ways for businesses to get into the cloud whilst keeping their feet on the ground.

Simply put, cloud computing is a web-based service that hosts the programs used by a company, and all of its data, on remote machines owned and held by another company. Programs and information are accessed simply by logging on through a web browser, from any computer, anywhere in the world. Computing is simplified, hardware costs are reduced, employees are mobilised and office space is gained too.

It sounds like a cutting-edge technology, but forms of it have been used by consumers for years – whether by operating a web-based email account such as Hotmail, or uploading images to social networking sites like Facebook. A survey conducted last year by Ipsos OTX MediaCT of 1000 American adults revealed that nine out of ten regularly used a cloud service.

An Issue of Trust

However, what deters many companies from switching to cloud computing boils down to two things – privacy, and security. Understandably, the thought of handing over all of their confidential data to another company for safekeeping doesn’t sit well with many corporate executives.

Then, there’s the issue of what happens when the cloud company’s servers go down. When Amazon’s EC2 data centre suffered a blackout, it took down the websites and small companies that depended on it, which included sites such as Reddit, Quora and Hootsuite. Its effects were so disastrous that it made the front page of the New York Times.

Despite these incidents being isolated, they’re enough to make businesses wary. Nevertheless, businesses still have options for cloud computing to prevent being left behind.

True to its roots, the future of cloud computing majorly involves social networking. Sites like Facebook and Twitter present huge opportunities for the development of applications that allow employees and businesses to connect, collaborate and share data.

Businesses can even use the social networks for the leverage of data in the first place to use in those all-important business decisions. If global research firm Gartner Inc.’s predictions that by 2015, cloud-based services will generate 25% of customer-driven banking products and services hold water, all businesses should be getting their heads in the clouds, if only for an idea of which one is right for them.

Google, Your World!

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 09:07:00 GMT

We’re less than two weeks into the New Year and Google have already announced the first major movement of 2012 in the great social media war – social searches. Building from 2009’s Social Search and attempting to pick up the slack left by the death of Google’s Realtime service, it isn’t quite the game-changer we were expecting but could prove crucial as part of their grander strategy.

‘Search, plus Your World’, as it’s been dubbed, will offer Google users the option to switch from regular internet-wide searches to personalised results based on their online presence. Unfortunately though, with results currently only being sourced from Google+ and Picasa (Google’s image sharing platform), the service at launch seems deeply flawed and likely to fall under that most telling of Google cop-out’s, the Beta tag.

A Service “Bad For People”?

The fact remains that the Realtime service which Search, plus Your World attempts to replace gained its popularity due to the data Google were sourcing from Twitter. Without Twitter, and indeed Facebook, involved it seems unlikely that this latest social gamble will pay off, and to further complicate things Twitter have already voiced concern over this development.

Referring to the service as “bad for people”, Twitter’s outburst seems an attempt at kick-starting the debate on whether SpYW affords Google an unfair competitive edge.

“We’re concerned that as a result of Google’s changes, finding this information will be much harder for everyone. We think that’s bad for people, publishers, news organizations and Twitter users.”

What they’ve not touched on, though, is the reason Twitter data isn’t included in these results, this being down to Twitter’s choice not to renew its data sharing deal with Google which expired last summer. In this light, the developments seem more of a technological tit-for-tat than the thought-out strategy we were hoping it to be.

Will the Wait be Worth It?

But what does this mean for both the lay-user and online marketers? With Google+ still failing to hit the mark with all-but the tech savvy, it’s unlikely the majority of those who turn to Google for search needs will find any worth in its results. SEO too is unlikely to be greatly impacted by the launch, at least until users flock to Google+ and a deal is struck with other social media platforms.

It seems once again we’ll have to wait for those involved to resolve their differences before we’ll see any benefit to search experiences. But with social media now firmly embedded in our lives, a search engine successfully harnessing this data seems more an eventuality than pipedream.

SOPA Vs The Internet

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 09:53:00 GMT

In a further step towards a regulated internet, the US Government is currently attempting to pass the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), a bill aiming to strengthen copyright laws. Though on the surface this may seem a logical turn of events, many internet heavy-weights are sensing troubled times ahead if this bill is passed and are beginning to voice their disdain.

The core principle of the bill will be to protect US-born media content that is subject to copyright infringement outside of US jurisdiction. Sitting alongside the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA), a proposed law with similar aims, many are claiming these will give law enforcement agencies too much power in shutting down websites they view as contravening the acts.

Though SOPA was proposed back in October 2011, it wasn’t until the domain registrar GoDaddy.com was outed as a supporter of the bill that a wider audience began to rally behind the anti-SOPA movement. When a further supporting statement backing SOPA was released by GoDaddy in response, a ‘Boycott GoDaddy Day’ was organised for December 29th seeing the likes of Wikipedia and image hosting site imgur give their support. Though GoDaddy were quick to change their tact, the damage was done and SOPA was now very much in the public domain.

Rumoured Protest Action

Now it seems the wider world of online businesses are becoming aware to the potential dangers of these proposed acts, with many of the internets’ largest sites rumoured to be considering protest actions within their own pages. This sentiment has also been mirrored by companies who’d previously backed the bill, such as Nintendo and Sony, who’ve now “Done a GoDaddy” and removed their support of SOPA.

Whilst it seems unlikely that this backlash will stop the bills, it’s almost certainly ensured that amends to current proposals will be required before they’re passed, and moreover that these amends will be in full view of those they will ultimately affect. If the intended changes do come to pass though, we may soon be looking back on the past decade as the internets’ halcyon days for the sake of newly imposed copyright restrictions.

The Controversy of Facebook Timeline

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 08:44:00 GMT

There’s a definite paradox in place when it comes to Facebook developments. Whilst the site’s features, usability and indeed popularity have continued to expand over the past four years, each progression has been met by the same predictable user backlash lamenting profiles of old.

So when Facebook announced its imminent Timeline changes back in September, a step that would see profiles as we knew them becoming a thing of the past whilst bringing with it a fresh crop of privacy issues, Social Media pundits were rightly predicting troubled waters ahead.

But it seemed fate had other plans in mind, and in a twist on Facebook’s history of suing others for supposed copyright and trademark infringements the company found itself on the receiving end of legal action.

Law Suit Filed

Timelines Inc, a small Chicago-based company which uses a similar infrastructure on its site timelines.com, filed a law suit on September 29th (rumoured to have been the initial Timeline roll-out date) attempting to block the features launch. Claiming this latest Facebook development could see them being “rolled over and quite possibly eliminated”, a temporary order was issued against Facebook restricting Timeline to developers only.

Two months down the line and the temporary order expired, Facebook have today begun this much-delayed release, though initially only to users in New Zealand. It’s unsure just how long the rest of the world will have to wait for this update, though with the court case set to reconvene in January and Facebook now counter-suing Timelines Inc it seems the drama is far from over in this latest legal wrangling.

Could the Delay Benefit Facebook?

So what can we expect when Timeline finally lands on accounts of the “lay-user”? Whilst layout changes are sure to cause a public outcry, ironically the delays will most likely have worked in Facebook’s favour.

The staggered developer-only release has meant that the usual raft of privacy loopholes and bugs were being turned up by sympathetic early adopters. With the update having sat as a beta product for over two months now, Timeline debuts in a much stronger light for the sake of this time in the desert.

That’s not to say it’ll be a smooth transition though, with the update requiring that users not only familiarise themselves with yet another re-design but also asking of them yet more content in completing the Birth-to-Present-Date profile.

Though a judgement against Facebook in January could see these developments further slowed, it seems the larger battle will come only when a full roll-out is achieved and a truer picture of user reaction can be gauged. More importantly, if changes are met by an overwhelmingly negative response, will Google+ be a worthy enough alternative to draw users from Facebook’s clutches.

The Growing Impact of Social

Tue, 13 Dec 2011 09:08:00 GMT

Social media brand pages have long been an alluring prospect for marketers, the direct access into people’s online worlds allowing for increasingly targeted advertising. Facebook have sat pretty at the top of the online branding experience since optimising Pages back in 2009, and Google too have recently rolled out a Pages offering to their Plus platform but now it seems Youtube and Twitter also want a slice of the pie.

“..enhanced profile pages help marketers create an even more compelling destination on Twitter for their brands.”

In a move to give the site a more social feel, Youtube last week revealed updates to brand Channels which will aim to increase user engagement and give clearer analytics, and Twitter today (13th December 2011) have announced their own updates to brand accounts. Though these improvements are within wider updates, Twitter simplifying its interface and Youtube enjoying a Google-sponsored redesign, the brand-specific changes are sure to put a fire under many companies who’ve yet to fully embrace these mediums.

“Social Has Moved On”

So why should a brand care about chasing these latest social media outlets? After all, Facebook is the one with 800million users and just how many people actually treat Youtube as a social platform? Here’s homejames Social Media Manager, Nicole Green, had to say:

“Social has moved on from a fringe gimmick to something that customers now expect of a brand, and whilst you might not be there, your customers are and they’re talking about you.

“Youtube is quickly establishing itself as an entertainment channel, with everything possible being done to keep users there for longer than ever before. It’s no longer just somewhere to watch funny cat videos, it’s now looking to replace traditional areas of entertainment, and with Google owning Youtube you can bet that establishing a strategically thought out presence here will benefit your SEO.

“Twitter, in their new design, are ungeekifying the user experience and making it more accessible to the general public. Given the continuing backlashes against content privacy on social media, Twitter’s stripped-down approach to user profiles could see those unhappy with Facebook’s new Timeline update flocking in droves to the micro-blogging platform.”

With the fight between Google+ and Facebook still looking too close to call, Twitter offering great brand exposure without the big two’s overbearing regulations and Youtube looking to evolve its video hosting presence, coordination and prioritisation will no doubt prove the key. One thing is for sure though, merely ignoring this on-going growth within the social market is a likely to see you excluded from these increasingly vital opportunities.

QR? AR? Or In Need of ER? Part Two

Tue, 29 Nov 2011 10:07:00 GMT

Following on from our look at QR and AR codes, we take a closer look at Augmented Reality in this second part.

In stark contrast, Augmented Reality has delivered a wealth of fun and engaging ideas. We’ve seen TV magician Dynamo come alive through a newspaper, Stella Artois directing us to our next pint and even Walkers Crisps acting as real-time weather men.

The beauty of AR, much like many new technologies, has been that once people have downloaded the relevant application they’re all the more likely to then scan for further content in chasing the “wow factor” of turning up a novel new effect.

Will it Have a Big Enough Reach?

With the issue of engaging content resolved, AR’s next obstacle is reach. Though much of this will come down to a waiting game of mobile users upgrading to smartphones, the clincher will be if the marketing world will be able to normalise advertising of this nature in the consumers mind.

The covers of magazines Cosmopolitan, Company and Harper’s Bazaar are all set to come alive via AR in December, and a quick check of Google confirms a world of plans afoot in 2012 for the technology.

It seems that for the foreseeable future at least this virtual reality will very much have a place in our marketing budgets, but once the sheen of its novelty begins to fade and consumers become savvy to the technology it’s anyone’s guess what AR’s shelf life will be.

QR? AR? Or In Need of ER? Part One

Thu, 24 Nov 2011 12:33:00 GMT

You’d have been hard pushed this summer to avoid the marketing world’s latest digital concept, the smart phone conduits of QR and AR (or Quick Response code and Augmented Reality, to give them their full names).

Although the technologies have been with us for well over a decade, the rise of smart phones has finally allowed their cross-over into the commercial market and moreover, the promise of enriched consumer experiences has prompted everyone from Mini Cooper to Pepsi Max to get involved.

Whether a newspaper, building or footballers’ head, the siren song of coveted content had tech-savvy mobile users scanning all presented before them in the pursuit of an enhanced consumer experience. But with the honeymoon period now over and a summers worth of campaigns behind us, did anyone manage to push the experience past that of mere novelty, and what’s next for these techniques?

Reaching Its Zenith Already?

Ironically, even though it’s taken QR codes the best part of two decades to break beyond the manufacturing industry and onto our bus shelters, it could be fast approaching its Best Before date.

Being used mainly to direct mobiles to online content, QR has descended on advertising like a swarm of pixelated locust, sullying many a pristine layout with its uninspired look.

Of course it’s unfair to be placing the blame on this beefed up barcode, after all it began life as a means of tracking car parts not selling soda-pop. It presented advertisers with a high-tech / low-cost angle for emerging smart phone technologies, so it’s no surprise it was so widely embraced, but for all its promise it failed to deliver a stand-out campaign that truly highlighted its capabilities.

Indeed, when media did catch wind of interesting uses of the code it was seldom for the right reasons, with QR codes cut into footballers hairstyles being unscannable and those used on the rear ends of female beach volleyball players being branded sexist.

Next we’ll be looking at AR.