As all you Gmail users probably are aware, this morning Google launched a new leap into the Social Media space. They call it Google Buzz, and it works very similarly to Facebook’s “What’s on your mind?” sharing functionality:
You are able to share thoughts, links, photos, videos, RSS feeds etc. What sets it apart from Facebook, aside from one obvious thing, is that you are able to pull in content from your social networks or utilities such as Picasa, flickr, Google Reader and Twitter. This is a great functionality that facebook is lacking, and will probably do so due to equal lack of collaboration partners. All this is done straight through your Gmail account and is shared to your Gmail contacts. You are able to follow peoples’ Buzz feeds, or bring in random content from all your contacts.
Of course this has taken Twitter by storm (around 3,189 tweets over the last 6 minutes on ‘Google Buzz”) , and is the second highest ranking topic at the moment. However, even though it holds high share of buzz, it is not really received well:
According to me the biggest difference between Buzz and Facebook is also why I don’t think it will revolutionise the Social Media world: Gmail is not the forum where you want to share thoughts, party pictures or funny videos to everyone. My contacts in Gmail differ quite a lot from my friends in Facebook. Even Twitter gets around this problem due to a level of anonymity within the micro blog. As I have used my Gmail account for professional correspondence, I run the risk of sharing my content to unintended recipients.
Even though it could be considered a nice effort by Google to try to break into even another space, I don’t think they will succeed. I use my Gmail account for sending emails, for which it is great, but that’s what I will continue to do, nothing more. I’m not saying that Google hasn’t succeeded before in branching out, but this time they are moving in the wrong direction.
But an even more important question, what happened to Google Wave? I haven’t heard anything about it over the last months. This email system that was going to revolutionise the email world, did it flop?
Being Friday and the end of a somewhat busy week I was delighted to come across this video. I feel that such machines should exist in every work place.
Coca Cola invites college students in the U.S to experience the happiness factory via “the happiness machine”. When visiting their vending machine they get a little more than expected.
So far it has racked up 1,223,441 views on YouTube. The only distribution sources for the video were a tweet from the Coke Twitter account and their Facebook fan page. Interactive YouTube feature have been used to great effect as the video finishes with a call to action “Share the Happiness” alongside the question “Where will the happiness strike next?”.
As we saw last weekend, buzz isn’t enough to predict the winner – there’s something good going for each of the contestants, so which one is the best prediction?
Olly Murs has had the most buzz since 10 October and during the week leading up to this weekend’s final.
Source: Brandwatch
Stacey Solomon has the most fans on Facebook.
Source: Sum of Facebook pages with 100 or more fans
Joe is winning in the polls.
Forums on the Daily Mail, Digital Spy, Entertainment.stv.tv, PopSugar, StudentRoom and UnRealityTV forums all agree that Joe will win.
StudentRoom forums
Entertainment.stv.tv
DigitalSpy forums
So what’s the best predictor of who will win?
Buzz gave some indication of who would be voted off earlier on, but now that it’s down to the last three, buzz isn’t reliable enough. Stacey has a lot of Facebook fans, but it could just be her personality giving her fans. Polls are the closest to the actual vote, so I’m willing to bet that Joe will win this weekend.
What will it mean for Facebook? Well, there’ll probably be the compulsory whinge period whilst people get used to it, before everyone forgets how it used to be (check out my comment in MediaWeek in 2008 – it’s at the bottom of the page). Then there’ll be the changes that need to happen to apps and pages if they’ve been developed for a 760px wide tab.
Update: These updates will happen in February 2010.
In the mean time, here’s some pics (via PC INpact of course):
Facebook’s set to go through a few changes again over the coming months, so I thought I’d detail some of the plans for anyone with a presence on the social network.
Depending on whether you have a Profile, Page or App, there are some points worth bearing in mind in order to maintain or augment some of the functionality of your activity.
1. The user interface is getting a redesign. There’s going to be a left hand column through which users can navigate their feed, events, photos, games, apps etc. This’ll take up about 25% of the screen on the left, and gives app owners the opportunity to get a shortcut permanently on a user’s homepage.
However, app and page owners will have to rethink some of their functionality. This new column will replace where users currently have their “boxes” – so you’ll no longer be able to include app functionality or content here. In addition, it means that application tabs on profiles will now be about a third narrower (instead of 760px wide, they’ll be 520px wide). Of course, this means if your app or page makes full use of the 760px wide tab at the moment, it may well need a redesign.
Canvas pages (where users make use of a full application) are unaffected.
Timescale for implementation: Late ‘09 early ‘10
2. Facebook are going to implement Open Graph API (nice name…). Any website will be able to install a Fan widget, which will let visitors “fan” the site. This means you’ll be able to have a Facebook presence without having a Page on Facebook. You’ll then be able to publish stories to fans through the widget.
Timescale for implementation: Early ‘10
3. Facebook app owners should be getting access to their users’ email addresses (previously you’ve had to message users through Facebook’s inbox). It’s unclear how you’ll be able to email users (will it be through Facebook or through your own platforms?) but this has the potential to expand a brand’s eCRM activity. As with eCRM though, you’ll need to plan a decent strategy with reasonable frequencies, timings and messaging etc.
Timescale for implementation: November ‘09 (!)
4. More analytics. The insight tool’s going to be expanded to include more activity (such as feed distribution, which shows how many people saw the social actions your page/app generated) and also be given an accesible API. This should be great as you’ll be able to pull the data from your insight tool into other areas. The potential’s big here, especially for agencies to integrate into reporting software.
Timescale for implementation: Late ‘09 early ‘10
5. This is already implemented, but Facebook pages can now publish updates to specific regions and languages. There’s now an “Everyone” button next to “Share”; click on it and you’ll be able to customise your audience.
The Mashable Open Web awards are currently live and kicking. It’s an opportunity for social media campaigns, apps, agencies, non profits and individuals (across all platforms) to get a nice little ego boost. I say ego boost, as there is no prize attached beyond Kudos. However, ‘social media agency 2009’ does have a nice ring to it.
For Mashable however, it’s the perfect marketing tool. Entrants are encouraged to vote in any of the 50 categories once per day (or twice if you cheekily log in through Facebook and Twitter). By casting your vote, you automatically and compulsorily post to your social network of choice. With no option to turn this functionality off 64,004 link-laden tweets and Facebook posts promoting Mashable have so far been generated – creating one heck of a good viral campaign for next-to-no expenditure (albeit quite spammy).
I’m sure it helps that Mashable is massive (1.6m twitter followers and 349k UU’s in October) so it began with an excellent communications platform to get the ball rolling.
Votes are being cast at a rate of around 5-10 per minute, with some 100k+ Facebook fan pages battling it out fiercely and imploring their fans to cast their vote.
Not being one to miss a trend, Jam are hoping you’ll take a moment to:
CNN technology posted an article two days ago stating that Vivox, a US based company that provides an online integrated voice service for gaming and social virtual worlds, is going to launch its services on facebook. Vivox, who currently have over 15 million users, will probably be able to expect a massive user growth, and facebook users will be able to experience their favourite social network in a completely new way.
But Twitter is not late to follow its main rival. Yesterday the web based phone service JAJAH released news about their new service. Through typing “@call @username” Twitter will prompt both phones to start ringing on a secure line, through Twitter. They are also true to the Twitter brand through keeping the conversations to a 2 minute maximum.
I can’t help to think about some problems that this will bring. Both Facebook and Twitter are currently being flooded with information, and to a large extent spam. This opens up for another way for us to get targeted by all the litter out there. Are we going to get this spam through our phones now?
Also, some people have hundreds, others thousands of friends and followers, that actually post or write them messages every day. Imagine that coming as phone calls instead.
from teaberryltd.com
So now that we are actually going back to talking to each other again, will this mean that in a not too distant future we are also going to start meeting each other in person?
A really awesome website by MoMA (The Museum of Modern Art) in New York. Designed to make visitors experiences more personal using Facebook.
With Your Facebook profile you have your tastes, indicate your lifestyle, show the things you like and dislike. MoMa uses this information to your advantage. MoMA connects to your profile in the social networking site, scans it, analyses it and then the interesting bit… matches your preferences in the in your profile with the experiences currently offered at the museum.
Within in a space of a click you are given personalized recommendations of all the things that you should see. You can then simply share this information within your network and on twitter. Your customized visit plan can then be saved where you can then adapt it,
This idea got me thinking that many sites require you to enter details about yourself. With an idea as simple as this why should we be typing in such information manually?
ProvoCraft, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of paper cutting tools, has developed a breakthrough in the paper cutting world. Their newly invented gadget, called the Gypsy, lets you design your scrapbook crafts anywhere you go (finally!).
To spread the word on Social Media platforms of this magical invention, ProvoCraft has hired the Salt Lake City based agency Struck Creative. Online – through the website, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Flicker – we get to follow the macho bounty hunter Donny K, who loves T-bone steaks and Energy Drinks, in his pursuit of ten scrapbookers who has stolen the ProvoCraft Gypsy. Each episode is about the pursuit of a new scrapbooker and how Donny K goes about catching these felons. However, Donny K isn’t the most professional bounty hunter, so even the task of catching a 50 year-old lady usually ends in failure.
The campaign is very creative, with an execution filled with a lot of wit. Struck has made sure that the audience has the ability to follow the pursuit of the rogue gypsies through a broad range of channels, with the possibility to create a very large reach. However, what bugs me with this quite clever execution is the target audience: Are there enough scrapbookers out there to actually respond to this campaign? And are they in this media space? People creating physical photo albums must be a niche market, as most photos are taken digitally. And if this campaign is supposed to target businesses, isn’t this a completely wrong way to go about it?
Or am I completely wrong? Is creating scrapbooks a hobby that the general public is still engaging in? I know that my mother is, but she would never respond to this campaign…
No prizes for originality today I’m afraid, but the death of an icon has triggered an amazing online response, with Facebook groups, Tweets, Last.FM plays and search volumes that prompted Google to think it was “under attack” all supplemented by an unhealthy amount of pretty rubbish jokes.
At last count, 561 groups have been created today around R.I.P Michael Jackson with over 300,000 members. We have tracked the largest group over an hour this afternoon and have witnessed staggering viral growth in real time.
So with such viral momentum behind these groups, the only question left to ask is, where is my invite!?
