Twitter’s CEO, Dick Costolo defended the every changing micro-blogging platform, at the AllThingsD media conference in Laguna Nigel, CA, yesterday stating: “There’s been no change in our stance or attitude or policy with respect to content on Twitter.”

The CEO was standing up to challenges made towards the company on their announcement that some countries could find tweets censored in the interest of government compliance. Some felt this was a foolish move on behalf of Twitter, with many criticising Twitter for selling out to the corporate machine over the new censorship policy, losing its authenticity and interfering with freedom of speech.

Costolo went on to add, “What we announced is a greater capability we now have. Now, when we are issued a valid legal order in a country in which we operate, such as a DMCA take down notice, we are able to leave the content up for as many people around the world as possible, while still operating within the local law. You can’t operate in these countries and choose the laws you want to abide by.”

The new policy does seem to give a greater platform for freedom of speech, and could open the door for Twitter in places like China and Iran where they are currently blocked.

When a tweet is censored it won’t necessarily be blocked from the world, only hidden from the countries that by law require such.

But this wasn’t the only matter, the companies CEO found himself defending at the conference.  Given the significant changes Twitter have made recently, the micro-blogging label seems a difficult one to pin down these days; given the multitude of information, search value and news content it provides us with each day.

 

Costolo’s response: “We are in the media business, but we’re not necessarily a media company.”

He went onto explain that they do distribute content, and traffic, but do not create their own.

His words also seemed to echo that of a similar interview held with co-founder, Jack Dorsey at last week’s DLD conference. “Twitter’s business model has been in development for quite some time, and it works.”

Of course in between now, and then Twitter has also acquired the social news curation service Summify, which Jack said would help Twitter in “delivering relevant content to people.”

Micrositez: Digital Agency Glasgow offering Web Design solutions.

digital media, micro-blogging, social media, social network, twitter

Facebook have rolled out yet another change to their users. The Open Graph feature was publicly unveiled at F8 in 2011, but has now been launched and to users and to developers interested in building lifestyle apps.

The initial partners include some familiar names like Zynga, Pinterest, Ticketmaster and Rotten Tomatoes. Facebook has confirmed they will start approving new apps from developers straight away.

Some Open Graph features were already in use, and users have been sharing their music activity through apps like Spotify, and their news habits through social reader apps. These features were already using frictionless sharing to update users’ timelines, and the new apps will work in the same way.

The difference with the new apps will be the range of activities users are now able to share. Facebook’s ubiquitous “like” button has been criticised in the past, and even Mark Zuckerberg has admitted that it has limitations for users and marketers alike. The new Open Graph apps can use frictionless sharing to update activity on other sites. For example, for e-commerce sites a user can update that they “want” or “own” a product, and this will be shared to their timeline. With the range of apps available there is a lot of potential for reported activities, and users’ timelines will soon share what they “read”, “cooked” or “ate” on their timelines.

The idea of frictionless sharing is to turn the timeline into a type of noticeboard where users an update all types of activity. Some people are concerned that it could mean more corporate updates into already crowded newsfeeds, or that it could be the very definition of oversharing. Facebook users are not known for keeping their opinions on such changes to themselves, so we will soon be able to see how well the changes have gone over.

Micrositez Digital: Web Agency Glasgow.

facebook, frictionless sharing, Open Graph, pinterest, social media

Once upon a time, the go-to online social hub was MySpace. You were on MySpace, your friends were on MySpace and, if you wanted a social network, it was the only logical choice. Recent figures suggest that MySpace’s decline could be terminal, as they shed more than 1 million users between November and December 2011. So where are those users going?

Today, Facebook dominates the social landscape, and has infiltrated popular culture to the point that the brand, like Google, peppers people’s speech as a verb:

“I need to find a car hire company, I’ll Google it”

“I don’t have her number, I’ll just Facebook her”.

The growth of Facebook has been well documented, and recent figures now suggest that the social network could hit the 1 billion user mark this year. Local big players in countries around the world are being usurped one by one, from Hyves in the Netherlands and StudiVZ in Germany to Orkut in India. Mark Zuckerberg’s creation now has unparalleled global reach, and that makes it an incredibly attractive platform for advertisers. Facebook controls approximately half of all social media traffic in the UK.

But this figure indicates that Facebook is in decline here. Recent figures are suggesting that Facebook’s share has fallen by more than 7% in the last year, and analysts are suggesting it has reached saturation point. Social media users in the UK are gaining a reputation for being a fickle bunch; MySpace’s dominance a few short years ago was shaken by Bebo, which then stepped aside for Facebook. Now, Twitter, YouTube and even Yahoo! Answers are showing considerable growth. Meanwhile, Google+ isn’t in the top 10 social networks in the UK yet, but it is growing incredibly quickly.

So how do you keep social media users in the UK interested in your online social media presence?

The important thing is to watch and engage with the movers and shakers on the social media landscape. The popularity of niche social networks and forums like Moneysavingexpert and Pinterest, and even local social networks such as KILTR, make social networking in the UK a different experience. Make sure your business establishes a presence in these networks before your friends start to explore them as well. It’s a lot of work, but there are big rewards for those who invest in this kind of brand awareness.

Micrositez Digital is a Social Media Agency.

facebook, Google, KILTR, moneysavingexpert, myspace, pinterest, social media, twitter, YouTube

Google’s announcement of social integration into search (which we blogged about yesterday) has given a shock to both search and social media. Now that the changes have become active for some users, we get a clearer picture of the reality of the implications of this integration. For UK users this will take some time, but that big white space at the right hand side of Google results will soon be populated with Google+ people and pages which correspond with your search query.

As an example, Search Engine Land used the search term “music” to measure the impact of the nee social integration. The search as done using the chrome browser in incognito mode, meaning that Google had no access to personal data when amalgamating the search results. These results turned out to be quite interesting. The results area on the right hand side immediately listed the most popular musicians on Google+, Britney Spears, Snoop Dogg and Mariah Carey. Despite this being a people and places recommendation there was no mention of any of their Twitter accounts. And what about other musicians? Katy Perry has broken many Billboard chart records in the last year, and has a huge loyal online fanbase (over 40 million fans on Facebook alone), but her absence from Google+ means an absence from Google’s people and pages results.

A search on the top music suggestion – Britney Spears – immediately prompts the user to select her Google+ profile. Ignoring the suggestion still prompted at least two Google+ links on the front page, and four links to Google-owned YouTube. Her twitter account languishes in 10th place, and her Facebook (with over 16 million fans) isn’t even on the front page.

Feeling a little mischievous, they searched for Facebook. The top people and pages result is Mark Zuckerberg; but it is his Google+ account. This account has never been updated, and this raises some questions on the relevancy algorithm of this feature.

Today, some tech news sites and blogs are speculating that Google could face antitrust legislation over the changes, but it remains to be seen whether this will come to pass.

What this indicates, is that having a Google+ account is more relevant and essential than ever for businesses who want to succeed online. In order to be noticed, companies will not just want their website to appear near the top of Google search results, but to attract users with a Google+ page link. Remember, if your business isn’t considering a Google+ presence, your competitor probably is.

Micrositez Digital is a Social Media Agency.

Britney Spears, Google, Katy Perry, mark zuckerberg, People and Pages, social media, social search

As 2011 draws to a close, we thought we’d take a brief look at some key events that took place throughout the industry over the last year in social, search, web, and PPC;
From Facebook, to HTML there have been significant movements and achievements particularly amongst social and search as the two continue to merge closer together.

Social
• Facebook attracted over 55% of the world’s online population in October
• Twitter grew by 59% with over 160 million unique users visiting the site every month.
• Linked In grew by 55% this year
• Google+ was unleashed into the world, reaching 65 million users world wide

Search
• Google, Mozilla renew search partnership for a further three years.
• Google’s Caffeine Update impacted 35% of searches, increasing demand for fresher content.
• YouTube attracted more than 1 trillion videos views this year
• Integration of search and social data that enriched our real time search results
• Google Panda Update back in February 2011

Web
• This year saw the arrival of a long awaited CSS3 and HTML 5
• Simple colour schemes proved to be a great success
• With the rise of smartphones, came the rise of mobile web design
• Domain names became that little bit more creative giving people more option than .com or .co.uk, to .me .us .pretty much anything you can think of.

PPC
• Online shopping increased this year. An estimated £15 Billion dollars has already been spent online in the run up to the Christmas period.
• Rich media ads are almost three times more effective in driving purchase intent v basic Flash
• Rich media ads grew 66%
(Sources include: Inside Adwords and ComScore)

May we take this opportunity to wish you all a very Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year from everyone at Micrositez Digital.

Micrositez: Social Media and Digital Marketing

Digital Marketing, PPC, search, social media

Search engine marketing and SEO went from strength to strength in 2011. It’s been a big year for developments in search, with increased social media marketing integration, and plenty of changes from search engines themselves. Here at Micrositez Digital, we’ve been taking a look at the key trends that shaped our year.

1. The sad passing of Yahoo Site Explorer
Yahoo Site Explorer closed down in November, and integrated most of its services with Bing Webmaster Tools. SEO professionals and webmasters everywhere were sad to see it go. Yahoo’s free analysis tools for webmasters were unrivalled, and Site Explorer’s ability to check rival websites was a huge advantage. A number of similar services have benifitted from its passing, but as yet there’s no frontrunner for the title of natural successor to the popular service.

2. Google’s caffeine injection
The Panda update in February 2011 was big news; up to 12% of searches were impacted as Google got tough on content farms and low-quality content. This was nothing compared to what they had up their sleeves for later in the year. Google’s move to the caffeine infrastructure in 2010 was an indicator of the move toward fresh and relevant results, and in November this year they took some of that caffeine buzz and implemented a massive algorithm update. Up to 35% of searches were impacted by the update, which rewarded new, up-to-date and relevant content. The message to webmasters was clear: freshness matters.

3. The social boom
It would have been impossible to miss the social media boom this year. Facebook and twitter saw record users, updates and traffic, social sharing sites like StumbleUpon and Reddit soared in popularity, and photo sharing from mobile devices took off in a big way thanks to Instagram. The biggest social impact on search is still in its infancy: Google+. Google+ is a new player on the social field, but with 25 million users, Google search integration, business pages and the “+1” button, it’s a force to be reckoned with. Google’s integration of the “+1” button into search results is an indicator that influence on Google+ may well impact on search engine rankings. We’ll be keeping a close eye on this one.

At Micrositez Digital, the big search engine marketing trend this year has been success. More clients than ever are enjoying soaring search engine rankings, and even number one rankings. Our small company has grown into an international digital marketing agency, and continues to work hard to achieve the best results and increase traffic to our customers.

We’d like to thank all our clients for sticking with us through 2011. We’re excited about 2012, and look forward to continuing our successful relationships, and seeing all our customers’ search engine rankings climb.

Micrositez Digital: SEO and PPC.

Google, Google Panda, PPC, SEO, social media, Yahoo! Site Explorer

Twitter receives a $300m investment from Saudi Prince Alwaleed bi Talal.

The billionaire Prince known for his substantial investment in Robert Murdoch’s News Corporation, where he holds 7% ownership, is also the principle owner of Saudi Arabia’s largest company, Kingdom Holdings.

Prince Alwaleed was listed by Forbes Magazine as the 26^th richest person in the world, with an estimated net worth of around $19.6 billion. His stake in 3.75% stake in Twitter was purchased through this international investment company, Kingdom Holidays, in which he owns 94%.

A statement released by Kingdom Holdings spoke about their latest investment in the social-blogging site said that this had been “the result of several months of negotiations and comprehensive due diligence”.

Prince Alwaleed has also made a comment adding; “Our investment in Twitter reaffirms our ability in identifying suitable opportunities to invest in promising, high-growth businesses with a global impact.”

Picture sourced from Flickr.com by eldh

Micrositez: Social Media and Internet Marketing

kingdom holdings, social media, social networking, twitter

The fairly new social discovery platform, Pinterest proves itself to be a growing trend clocking up 421 million page views on its invite-only platform. The idea behind the site came out of a group of friends who love collecting, started working on the site for fun, by pinning and bookmarking images of things they liked.
Since it’s official launch back in March 2010, Pinterest has grown itself to 3 million users, gathering up interest from people looking to organise and plan their wedding, decorating their dream home, or create that all important vision board.
Co-founder Evan Sharp, explained to Mashable why they have seen immense growth without taking the usual tech start up avenue through a tech site.
“We didn’t build this company to build a really hot tech start up; what we wanted to do was build a product — and also a company — that we wanted to work on for the next five or ten years.”
Even’s valuable lessons from Facebook, where he previously worked have led him to adopt and install some of the same ownership principles in Pinterest.
Although the social discovery site says it’s not primarily for self-promotion many businesses and marketers have already found ways to promote their products, and share brand messages through a symbolic collection of images.

Micrositez: Digital marketing agency

facebook, pinterest, social media, social network

The Philadelphia 76ers NBA team launched contest last week, encouraging fans to choose a new team mascot from three finalists. The campaign was advertised on their official social media accounts, but the response had been lukewarm. The team’s CEO Adam Aron had made it clear that he saw increasing social media presence as a priority when he took over in October, but the contest had failed to catch the fans’ imagination.

Enter Jerry Rizzo and Hunter Coleman. These two enterprising fans decided to help the team out by launching and running twitter accounts for two of the mascots. Soon @PhilEMoose and @BFranklinDogg were engaging in friendly banter online and encouraging fan votes. This quickly caught the attention of Adam Aron, who sent a friendly but firm e-mail requesting ownership of the accounts “without the use of lawyers or anything like that”.  When voting closed, Rizzo and Coleman dutifully handed over the account passwords, and the 76ers rewarded them with box seats for the season opener, and season tickets for their troubles.

Adam Aron wasn’t finished yet. He began to research Jerry Rizzo, a self-confessed “social media sponge”, and was impressed by his social media presence and the quality of writing in his blog posts. So impressed, that he offered Rizzo the role of Social Media Consultant for the 76ers. Jerry Rizzo accepted the offer of his “dream job” and the story gains an even happier ending.

This doesn’t appear to be an isolated fairytale. Beverly Macy, social media author and Huffington Post contributor, sees this as evidence of shift in the communication industry. She told Mashable: “It just shows that people now have the ability to showcase who they are for good and bad, and that all of that is findable. It says it’s about personal initiative and that if you have a love or an affinity for something just go do it, because you don’t know what might happen.”

Statistics released by MBAworld this week show that social media recruitment is on the rise. Over 18 million americans credit Facebook with getting them into their current roles. Over 10 million LinkedIn users got jobs through the site, and 8 million Americans are in jobs they found on twitter. Employers are more open about monitoring the social media presence of job applicants, not just for the screening process, but for recruiting stand-out “superusers”.

The moral of this fairy story? Make your social media presence stand out and it could reap real rewards.

Micrositez: SEO and Social Media.

facebook, jobs, LinkedIn, NBA, social media, twitter

Google celebrate Silicon Valley icon, Robert Noyce on what would have been his 84th birthday today. Google’s doodle features an animated interpretation of the micro-chip, which Robert co-created with Jack Kilby back in 1958.

The duo’s invention revolutionised the world of computing, is known today as the driving force behind the icon hub, Silicon Valley, home to the world’s largest technology companies.

Also known as a father and mentor too many entrepreneurs of his day, Robert Noyce later co-founded the world’s largest semiconductor chip maker, Intel in 1968.

Robert died in 1990, aged 60. His family later set up the Noyce Foundations that works to improve education of science, maths and English across US schools.

Micrositez: Social Media Marketing

Google, Intel, Silicon valley, social media

Ten weeks after Facebook’s annual developers conference and the Facebook team are about to roll out the networks new Timeline feature for the first time since their detailed illustration back in September.

Since then developers have been given access to the beta of Timeline, which has enabled them to build apps around the new feature. Over a million coders have signed up to the test version and so far feedback has been positive.

In true Facebook fashion, the news was announced through the update of the original blog post published back in September.

Timeline, which is all part of the Frictionless experience, has been designed in such a way that users will now be able to share their whole life in a chronicle fashion, everything from place of birth to the present day.

There has been some controversies regarding the level of openness Facebook are encouraging, however; Facebook believes this is in the interest of their users.

Micrositez are a social media company.

facebook, social media, social networking, timeline

According to a report in the Wall Street Journal on Monday, Facebook are preparing for an IPO in spring 2012. The world’s largest social network aims to raise $10billion during the public stock offering, which would value the company at an incredible $100billion. If this expected valuation is correct, the company started by Mark Zuckerberg in a university dormitory will be worth double the valuation of PC giant Hewlett-Packard.

The IPO will raise enough money to keep Facebook evolving and developing for a few years, but analysts are concerned about what outsider influence could do to the company. Mark Zuckerberg is notorious for keeping a tight rein over the company’s direction and any major changes and developments. This is one of the reasons he controls an extra seat on the board of directors. Relinquishing some of that control to outside investors could be a big problem for a company innovative as Facebook.

Changes that niggle users – as the newsfeed did when it was first introduced – could be discouraged by stockholders to avoid temporary dips in the stock price. The ad-less Facebook mobile site and free smartphone apps will doubtless be a bone of contention to outside investors, keen to see advertising revenue rise without real thought for the user experience. For Facebook to avoid a future of banner ads, sponsored stories in the newsfeed, and other potential irksome changes, it needs to find a way to balance outside investment with the level of control and identity it currently maintains.

In other tech IPO news, the recent public offering from Groupon has quickly gone from success to mediocrity. Stock is currently trading at $15.24, around half high price that investors paid for stock at the offering earlier this month, and below the initial $20 price Groupon itself set. For the stock to fall so quickly in the space of a few weeks could show that initial excitement about the company has worn off. Groupon’s failure to profit from the momentum around black Friday and cyber Monday has also disappointed investors.

Micrositez is an award winning Digital Marketing Agency.

Advertising, facebook, Groupon, mark zuckerberg, social media, Tech IPO

Black Friday, Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday are three of the biggest shopping days of the year in the US. Today is Cyber Monday across the pond, and while the UK equivalent isn’t for another week, we thought it was still a good enough reason to check out how businesses are using social media to promote their big deals this year.

Cyber Monday falls on the Monday following thanksgiving, and is the busiest day for online retail of the year, as families prepare for Christmas. In the UK the busiest day for online retail is usually the first Monday in December. US retailers often offer massive discounts, similar to Black Friday deals and will be competing with each other to lure shoppers to their sites.

This year, more than ever, social media is being used to spread the word about deals, offer exclusive discounts and attract customers. According to shop.org, 29% of American consumers will check out the Facebook pages of retailers when deciding where to shop this year. More than ever, it pays stores to have a social media presence.

Social media also serves the customers well. Dedicated Facebook and twitter accounts have popped up seeking out deals for customers (searching “Cyber Monday” on either site yields a large number of new accounts). Individual retailers are also offering exclusive deals to fans. Great techniques include inviting fans to “events” at their online store (Hudson Jeans), updating fans with new offers in real time on twitter (Best Buy, Kmart), and deal alerts to customers’ mobile phones by SMS (Amazon).

On Small Business Saturday – a US only event which encourages shoppers to buy their festive goods at small, local merchants – American Express customers who synced with Foursquare got a great deal: a $25 dollar voucher towards purchases at the small businesses of their choice. Etsy, as a collective of small merchants selling handmade wares, was a perfect fit for Small Business Saturday, and used their blog to showcase deals available on the day.

At Micrositez, we can’t wait to see if UK retailers are as keen to use Social Media to get our attention next Monday.

Micrositez: SEO and Social Media.

Cyber Monday, facebook, Foursquare, online retail, social media, twitter

“Most people make the mistake of thinking design is what it looks like. People think it’s the veneer – that designers are handed this box and told, ‘Make it look good!’ That’s not what we think design is. It’s not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.” Steve Jobs

Continuing on from yesterday’s blog, what’s next in Web Design in 2012 part 1, we have listed a further three trends for any website owner, designer, or business looking to create or improve the success of their website.

1.Illustrations and graphics over photos

As important as social is to media, illustrations and graphics are to websites. Following in the ‘social’ trend, which encompasses user experience and user engagement, graphics and illustrations will be one of the main vehicles used to give websites that unique feel. With much more appreciation given to hand-drawn designs, animations, and interactive design used to grab the users attention.

2. Mobile friendly Design

As smart phones, tablets and iPads continue to increase in popularity; the demand on designers will be to ensure each website is easily accessible and read from our mobile phones, iPads and tablet devices.  For the designer this means thinking about screen resolutions, which differ from our main computer screens. Using CSS3 for these kinds of sites will certainly pave an easier road for the web designers to integrate both website design and mobile technology, which they must do without losing key design elements of the original site. They will also have to take into consideration touch screen elements of these devices too, as technology will continue to move in this direction next year.

3.Social connections

You may wonder why there is a social connections section in a blog about web design, but as the internet and technology advances it is vitally important for every website to consider the social side to their website. This will include various social network add-ons, to enhance user experience, and enable users to share all kinds of content on a variety of social networking platforms at their convenience.

Micrositez: Web Design, Web Design Company Glasgow.

graphic design, illustrations, social media, web design

In yesterday’s blog we unpacked a little of what we believe will be trending in social media in 2012. We talked about the personalisation that businesses and marketers will have to think about, and incorporate into every strategy and business model going forward.

According to a recent report by eConsultancy 64% of 1000 online companies said they have moved beyond experimentation on social media this year.

52% of companies use Facebook to address customer issues, and inquires. With 50% of companies also using Twitter for customer service.

If 2011 has been the year of global awareness of social media, where companies have grown in their understanding of what social media is and what it has to offer, then next year and the years to come will be all about touch.

• Touch

Where personalisation is all about what the consumer needs, wants and desires. Touch is all about the consumer’s experience.  A large part of touch relies heavily on devices like the iPad, smartphones, tables, and other similar devices as they become an essential tool, in which consumer’s uses to engage and interact with during their favourite TV programmes, games, music, movies and so forth.

“The smartphone is overwhelmingly deemed to be the most persuasive device for social media, according to 73% of company respondents.” eConsultancy

Social media will continue to become much more integrated with digital media and other traditional marketing practices. To incorporate this idea of social sharing, search and touch here are some of the things we will see more of:

• QR codes
• Subscription emails
• Video sharing
• Social gaming
• Apps
• Social search
• Mapping customer acquisition

Of course some of these are already happening right now, but as the frictionless experience kicks, social will become much more detailed. Peter Cashmore touched on this at week’s Mashable summit , when he referred to the frictionless experience as more than just liking something, now we can share what we’re reading, watching or even listening too.

Micrositez are a Global Digital Marketing Agency and offer Social Media Marketing.

Marketing, social media, social networking

Welcome to the first part of our two part series on what will be next in Social Media, in 2012.

If we are to sum up the trend of Social Media and put down some of the ways we believe the industry is going in two words; these words would be ‘personal’ and ‘touch’.

In this next year we believe the focus within Social media will be all about personalisation and touch. Today’s blog will look mainly at Personalisation, and tomorrow we’ll cover Touch.

• Personalisation

Personalisation is all about the consumer. It’s providing a user friendly service or product that encourages users to share and engage with. It’s no longer media, its social media.  So things like video, pictures, fresh content and innovative ideas that encourage consumers to share with their peers, that get them talking about you or your product is MASSIVE.

According to mobithinking.com:

• There are 5.3 billion mobile subscribers (a whopping 77% of the world’s population). China and India are the current leaders.
• Of all mobile devices in 2010, smartphones grew the strongest.

According to Hitwise:

• Google UK, Facebook, YouTube, eBay UK and Window’s live mail were the highest ranking websites who received the most traffic for the week ending 5 November 2011.

So mobile marketing and QR codes will play a bigger role as we are already starting to see them sneakily creeping onto our TV screens, billboards, business cards and even plastered across our websites, social networks and other merchandise.

Is content still king? Yes, but in 2012 we will see context become just as big and important. As the world of communication continues to evolve at great speed, businesses can no longer rely on fresh content alone, (although for SEO purposes content and the changes in algorithms fresh content is vital). In terms of social and embracing content, businesses must now look at the circumstances surrounding each campaign, and take a more holistic approach to any marketing campaign and make sure there is digital in there somewhere.

No longer will companies get by on the old PUSH marketing alone, we are moving into a new season, what marketers are calling PULL marketing, which basically incorporates social sharing.

It has become imperative for companies to have a strong digital presence that can adapt quickly to the constantly evolving changes in both technology, and in best practices.

There is massive buying power in social sharing and companies who are willing to invest time, attention and finance into the area of social media will hold greater potential. This is an extremely exciting time to be living in, and we haven’t even covered Touch in today’s blog.

Join us tomorrow for part 2 of what next in Social Media in 2012, and in the meantime check out just some of the other trends we see taking a larger role within businesses in 2012:

• Social search
• Mapping customer acquisition
• Social gaming
• The infusion of social and news

Micrositez are a Digital Marketing Agency with a range of Social Media on offer.

social media, social networks, social search, social sharing

Adobe Systems announced in an e-mail to partners last night that it will cease development of its Flash plugins for mobile browsers.  The news appears to signal a shift in focus for Adobe’s mobile strategy; when it launched flash 10.1 in June 2010, the company had lofty plans to have Flash pre-installed on more than half of all mobile devices by 2012. Companies such as Motorola and RIM who heavily promoted the Flash functionality on their products may feel let down by Adobe’s shift in tactic, but will have to accept that mobile browser Flash just wasn’t working.

Mobile-optimised Flash has been desirable to smartphone and tablet users for some time, but has been plagued by problems since its initial launch on Android devices. Development of the plugins had been promised and delayed since 2008, and when it finally did arrive it was only available on devices running Android 2.2 and above. Smartphone users who could not download Flash were frustrated by the lack of availability, while users who did have Flash expressed frustration at bugs and functionality issues.

The news from Adobe may well have a larger impact on another company: Apple. Steve Jobs famously took issue with Flash technology, stating in his widely circulated ‘Thoughts on Flash’ message in April 2010 that “Flash has not performed well on mobile devices. We have routinely asked Adobe to show us Flash performing well on a mobile device, any mobile device, for a few years now. We have never seen it.” Apple’s decision not to support Flash on the iPhone’s iOS software has been criticised in the past, and has been credited with driving some users to purchase alternative smartphones. Now that Flash on mobile is being put to rest, Apple may well have proven that they made the right decision about the technology.

A statement has been promised from Adobe, but analysts are already suggesting that Adobe’s focus will shift to development of HTML5, and focus packaging apps with Adobe AIR. People will also be watching Adobe closely to see whether this could signal the beginning of the end for Flash player on desktop browsers too.

Micrositez: SEO and Social Media.

Adobe, android, Apple, Flash, HTML5, SEO, social media

Google has taken to their blog once again to announce Google+ Pages – the place for companies and organisations to establish a presence on the social network.  Until now, Google+ profiles had been limited to personal profiles assigned to an individual. Now, businesses and brands can create Google+ pages and open up the potential for interaction with the growing number of Google+ users.

By allowing businesses to create a presence on Google+ the new kid on the social network block has opened its doors to those looking to build brand awareness and generate business. The immediate popularity of the new feature is apparent to anyone with a Google+ or Twitter account, as feeds have immediately been littered with links to new Pages. It will be interesting in the coming weeks to see the statistics on new accounts, and the number of Google+ users who are adding organisations to their circles.

One notable feature is Direct Connect. Taking advantage of their search dominance, Google has enabled the feature, which allows a person to find a company’s Google+ name by simply searching for the company’s name with a + symbol in front. This simple search shortcut makes a Google+ Page a must for any company looking to expand their web presence. The open nature of the Pages platform (all feeds are automatically set as “public” meaning anyone can access them) makes companies’ presence immediately accessible, even to those without Google+ accounts. The search engine giant is hoping to merge search and social in a way that means a Google+ page is the essential internet presence for a business, just as websites have traditionally been, and Facebook and Twitter accounts have been more recently.

While immediately popular, there are some issues with the new types of account. A page can only be administered by one Google account, making it difficult for social media teams to maintain a company page as they would do on Facebook. And with little ability to customise their page, there is a limit (at present) to how creative businesses can be with their Google+ presence.

Micrositez is an award winning Digital Marketing Agency.

You can now add the Micrositez Google+ Page to your  circles.

Direct Connect, Google, Micrositez Google+ Page, social media

In a startling admission, Facebook has declared around 0.06% of the logins they receive over any 24-hour period are compromised. This may seem like a small percentage, but it translates to 600,000 compromised logins each day. These hacking statistics were detailed on Facebook’s blog, along with an introduction to new security features. Attempting to reassure users, Facebook said, “We are adapting and responding to new threats everyday and will continue to roll out new ways to protect your account”.

The most talked about of these new additions is the “trusted friends” feature. Users can assign trusted status to between three and five friends. If your account is compromised, Facebook can send codes to the three friends you have nominated. You then simply retrieve the codes from your friends to regain access to your account. Application security is also under the spotlight, and Facebook are now planning to allocate passcodes to maintain security for users.

There are some basic security steps that all users of social media can take to prevent their account being compromised:

• Never share login details with other people
• Choose complicated passwords, containing letters, numbers, and symbols
• Avoid using the same login details for multiple sites
• Regularly change passwords
• Report any suspicious activity on accounts to site administrators, and
• Ensure you log out of your profile/account after each use, especially on shared computers.

Exploting the fear of online insecurity, Jason Zada, a TV, digital and music director, created “Take this Lollipop”. Many users of Facebook will be familiar with this film experience, considering the speed with which it went viral last week.  Users log in using Facebook and are then presented with a security nightmare. (If you’re brave enough, have a look for yourself at www.takethislollipop.com.) It can be speculated that the video’s popularity has a lot to do with the way it taps into the very real fear users have of someone accessing their Facebook accounts.

With social media such an integral part of day to day life for hundreds of millions of people, online sharing has become the norm. The difficulty for many users is striking the balance between sharing and engaging online, with maintaining privacy and security.

Micrositez: Social Media and SEO.

facebook, online security, privacy, social media, take this lollipop

There’s a new kid on the social media block. A cheeky young upstart by the name of Unthink has launched with the lofty ambition of toppling Facebook. By immediately pitting themselves against the big boys of social, they have attracted a lot of attention from the press and bloggers.

But of course, we’ve heard this before. Google+ has the money and clout to take on Facebook but hasn’t taken the mantle (at least for now). Diaspora’s launch in November last year was hyped in tech media, but their growth has been slow and with the site still in alpha release (no features like video, links, etc.) it isn’t likely to be a real challenger for now.  Unthink, however, may just be the one to watch.

Visitors eager to sign up to Unthink have swamped their servers, and users were greeted with this screen almost immediately. (Disclosure: I am one of the masses eager to try it out, and because of high demand have been waiting for an invite code to get started for three days.)

Unthink hopes to appeal to the large contingent of Facebook users who are concerned about privacy and the level of information sharing with advertisers. Unthink CEO Natasha Dedis came up with the Unthink concept when her teenage son wanted to sign up to Facebook. In order to survive the social minefield of school he had to be online, but Natasha was unhappy at the privacy conditions that come with a Facebook account. Her plan was to create a social network that she could feel happy about her son joining.

To attract investment and keep advertisers interested, Natasha developed a novel model for users to control their account. Users can either pay a subscription fee to use the site (just $2 per year) or choose a brand to “sponsor”. By choosing a brand, users are allowing targeted advertising from a company they are already aware of or interested in. This kind of active brand engagement could be the key to the fortunes of Unthink, as at first glance it looks like a win-win for users and advertisers. While no one is expecting them to unseat Facebook from their social media throne anytime soon, they could make a serious impact.

Micrositez: Social Media and PPC.

facebook, social media, social media advertising, Unthink