I love podcasts. So much I decided to make one myself (of which more shameless self-promotion later). I love the form; I love the nicheness; I love the short bursts, the weekly fix; I love the irrevence; I love the remarkably professional standards many amateurs hold themselves to in this narrowcasting cottage industry. And maybe it's that quality that lulls me into thinking it's like radio and so brings this complaint to the fore: podcasts can be horribly irregular.The Word Magazine podcast was a case in point. I love The Word podcast. David Hepworth, Mark Ellen and guests provide a regular hit of audio brilliance to my ears.
But back in the early days of their free service (you have to subscribe to the magazine to get the full episode now), their weekly podcast was anything but regular. It was all over the shop. Just when you figured it was released every Wednesday... it would be released Thursday. Or later. Or seemingly not at all. The damn thing seemed to have no schedule, no rules, nothing I could count on. It frustrated me. I wanted a regular, reliable service. For free.What a wanker.These guys were creating extra content, sharing their wit and wisdom with me while busy producing a magazine - the actual day job - the thing WITH the print deadline. If something was going to give, of course it had to be the podcast.So now I produce a social media podcast called Off The Wall Post with two of the smartest funniest people in the digital / social space - Barry Pilling and Kat Sommers. We record it once a fortnight and I publish it late Sunday nights every two weeks through the usual channels.
We set ourselves this schedule. We knew a weekly podcast would be unsustainable given our busy day jobs and family commitments, but we deliver a podcast every two weeks. It seems reasonable.
But sometimes even that feels like an unachievable goal. Shit gets in the way. You know - life shit, career shit, fun shit and not having fun shit... Shit, as they say, happens.And you know what - this ain't radio, it ain't TV. There's no print deadline missed and machine schedules upset; there's no dead air, no nihilistic, end of days static in Off The Wall Post's absence on Sunday night / Monday morning. And on the rare occasions I have missed the Sunday night release deadline, there's not been a monstrous backlash from a furious, disappointed audience.But it bugs me when I miss that self-imposed deadline. It really bugs me.
The question is - does it bother you? Does anyone, except the podcast producer, set their clock by a podcast release date? And - given podcasts are largely free - have they any right to?
This week: We are all in the Twitter, but some of us are looking at the stars...; "Pick a tweet... any tweet."; Habla Facebook?; There is both a blog about Horizon and not a blog about Horizon; MySpace TV; Would the real Murdochs please tweet up; Google+ gives the finger to giving the finger; It's Timeline time; Louis laughing in the face of piracy; Shazam sounds interesting for TV; Are your parents stalking you on Facebook? Auditing the Facebooks...
Recent BBC social media news and launches.
BBC Two's live astronomy extravaganza, Stargazing LIVE, returns for a three-night run on 16-18 January 2012. Once again the Stargazing team have joined forces with The Sky at Night Flickr Group to gather images from the 2,000+ strong astrophotography community for the show. They're also connecting the dual-screening audience's curiosity to the Stargazing experts and Jodrell Bank scientists through Cover It Live web chat - Talk Stargazing - running live with the show on laptops and mobiles and feeding questions into the UGC-focussed sister show Stargazing LIVE: Back To Earth on straight afterwards. Tune in to BBC Two from 8.30pm Monday 16 January (and from 8pm on 17 / 18 Jan).
Image: M42 - Orion Nebula by St Anger01 from The Sky at Night / Stargazing LIVE Flickr group
BBC One's live magic show The Magicians wowed audiences with a live trick using Facebook and Twitter. 2-screening audiences at home were asked to think of a card, then tweet it to @bbcmagicians or post it to the BBC Magicians Facebook page. Over 10,000 people sent in card suggestions, one of whom's card was picked by members of the live studio audience from a big screen scrolling the social media-posted card choices, to then be revealed as the card set aside the magicians Barry and Stewart.
BBC Learning languages have launched the BBC Learn Spanish Facebook page to reach and engage with users of Facebook looking to learn or improve their español. Tapping into that new year resolution buzz to expand one's horizons, the page is already bulding good numbers organically and, more importantly, receiving a decent level of engagement and bi-language discussion.
Ok. Let's talk TV long tail and the wonders of discovering an old episode of Horizon on iPlayer that busts out some String Theory and multiple universes. This is the BBC Four iPlayer discovery that set the Sci-Fi writer and critic, Cheryl Morgan, blogging. Cheryl's post A Time Before Time confesses not to know the intricacies of String Theory, but outlines her delight in Horizon's other revelations: 'I am [...] rather pleased with the prospect that other universes might exist, and that they have been discovered by a woman physicist fromAlbania'.
MySpace have apparently read a newspaper and decided 2-screening and social television are the place to be to bring it all back home. Partnering with Panasonic connected televisions, the plan is to build upon music channels and content within MySpace with other media entertainment content to follow. An interesting play by MySpace, which may achieve much or little by way of redemption for the platform, but it's unmistakably a further signal of the future of the Internet's unstaunchable bleed into the traditional living room screen.
What would ex-owner Rupert Murdoch say about his erstwhile Social Media Platform? Turns out we didn't even have to ask - he told us on Twitter:
Many questions and jokes about My Space.simple answer -we screwed up in every way possible, learned lots of valuable expensive lessons.
Yes, Rupert Murdoch joined Twitter at the end of 2011; though his wife Wendi Deng did not - despite Twitter's suggestion to the contrary. A truly erratic episode in Twitter's history, Murdoch Snr joined and was verified as @RupertMurdoch (and began posting various brash messages across the platform), swiftly followed by his wife Wendi Deng, also officially verified by Twitter. It turns out this was not Wendi Deng at all, but a mock account - the owner of which was utterly bewildered by the verification. Twitter have corrected the mistake, but questions are being asked of its already mysterious verification process. NB - the @wendi_deng account has been claimed by another fake - it is neither Wendi Deng, nor the original imposter*.
Sure, we're all about the social media updates and LOLs, but how much fun are you having in the real world? Well, Social Life Audit can tell you. Using facial recognition software and check-in details from your Facebook photos and updates, Social Life Audit produces an amusing appraisal of your social life - as reported on Facebook.
Come on... You knew it was all leading to this!
Please note: this is my personal blog. This post is in no way an official communication from the BBC. I write a fortnightly update for BBC Vision staff interested in social media on and off bbc.co.uk. The items covered are on and about the social web; I post the notes here for anyone interested in the hope that they may spark further ideas or knowledge-sharing. Listen to my Off The Wall Post podcasts here.
This week: That's Social Media; Laptop dogs; A Buzzing choir; You don't have to LIKE us to hate us; Four degrees of Facebookation; Top Boy BBMs; A vision of Zee future... Desperate Two Screens; Search Dexterity; Obama's pro Plus; NewTube - all about the channels; Pseu-pseu-pseudonyms; Technological leanings learnings; Whoops, can we have our viral back...?
Recent BBC social media news and launches
BBC One's That's Britain has thrown a lot of user generated content at the wall - literally - presenting a word cloud wall of opinion and opprobrium on the show. They also launched a Facebook page and That's Britain Twitter feed to capture comments on the state of Britain (let's assume they mean the UK and move on...), which are responded to online and read out live through the course of the show.
BBC Two's The Choir: Military Wives really struck a chord across social networks. Choirmaster Gareth Malone trending on Twitter during TX (and I'm surprised 'would like to marry' wasn't trending alongside!) and inspiring a number of heartfelt blog posts about the series following the ersatz choir of military wives building towards a performance at the Royal Albert Hall. Mayfair Mum's personal reflection on how music has travelled with her through life and the show's poignancy and connection with her is a lovely read that reflects the way that The Choir genuinely touched the audience over its three episode run. More about Buzz.
Social Media Elsewhere
Facebook removed the stabilisers from brand pages last month. Without much of a song or a dance, the previous rules for brand / fan pages (eg The One Show, Luther, EastEnders...) altered to allow anybody to post a message on an active Page wall or post. Previously this level of interaction was held behind the wall of the Like button - a person had to LIKE a page to comment on it, and while this may seem a small barrier to entry, it was a barrier nonetheless, particularly a barrier to complaint, abuse and shoot first ask forgiveness later kind of commenting. The nature of a FAN page was that it was meant largely for fans - you had to LIKE a brand to leave a comment, and as small as that seems, it was a filter, an extra inch. Now that's gone; your public-facing Facebook page just started facing the public a little bit more.
Channel Four's Top Boy was a drama series played out hourly across a week of programming. Their extra social media content was fascinating: of course there was a Top Boy Twitter (brand-level, not fictional accounts), but more interestingly, they launched a Blackberry BBM account that people could pin into and follow realtime messages from the characters during the live TX. This presumably understanding that young people have a great affinity for the Blackberry messenger network; the Twitter account received under 2K followers, it would be great to know how many users followed the Top Boy BBMs. A further internet extra was provided in the form of a SoundCloud mixtape of the Top Boy Soundtrack. Oh, yes - C4 had it going on for Top Boy.
The Video on Demand master formerly of the BBC parish, Anthony Rose, returned to the Media Centre to deliver a presentation on his latest endeavour Zeebox - a dual-screen app for the iPad or laptop browser. The app's free; if you have an iPad it's worth a download, if only to look at the brand integration Zeebox offered to E4's Desperate Scousewives...
And so didst #scousewives set the nation tweeting: part aghast, part appalled, part enthralled. Interestingly The Desperate Scousewives Facebook Page only has 556 fans at the time of writing; the Scousewives Twitter feed has nearly 10K followers... But Zeebox integration hosted the contextual twitter feed; Zeebox content tags featuring extra e4 created video clips, Scousewives translations eg 'bezzie', location info and maps... Everything except an explanation of what the hell it was we were watching! Interestingly e4 trailed zeebox in the ad break interstitial. I would love to know the engagement stats...
An interesting little Easter egg appeared in serial killer drama Dexter recently. A dig at google and SEO (search engine optimisation), a character declares Google "So five minutes ago," and proceeds to introduce search engine, typing http://eliotsearchengine.com/ into a PC on screen. Transmedia buffs following this clue were taken to a Facebook game where users are tested on their observational skills from the last episode to receive kudos as the Intern of the week with maximum 'Dexpertise'. (I know, I know...)
The President is a-plussing. Whether it's through a genuine desire to connect with Google+ communities and the more long-form discussions of the technorati, a sense of fair play, or some kind of social media Pascal's Wager, Barack Obama has stepped up to the Google+ plate to post images and news. We all know it's really just his way of connecting with BBC Sport :)
It's time to get more into YouTube apparently. There's a new look! Moreover, there's a greater weight being placed upon the concept of channels (as well as shareability through Google+ and other networks). But there's no doubt that the channels / subscriptions and aggregations element is tipped towards Google TV and all internet enabled TV viewing. Definitely worth a look beyond the cheerful intro video...
Tech news sites reported the beta launch of a new social network Anybeat. Essentially a messageboard community, the interest develops more from the ethos of the site - that is that it values and encourages pseudonymity as a tool to allow true opinion to emerge without stigma of 'sensitive' views posted online bleeding into Job Search or other identities. Pretty much the antithesis of Google and Facebook's approach to social networking, the ideological differences are similar to those highlighted a few months ago in this newsletter's infographics section: Facebook vs 4Chan - are you who you say you are.
Infographic of the week: How are students using technology
Students and technology? Sounds like a terrible combination to me. No good shall come of it, mark my words...
The original video was removed, but the internet already had it and the snark-o-meter has exploded trying to measure the level of cruel and facecious tweets and comments posted about it. Sapient Nitro have since been blogging with a (slightly rueful) sense of humour about the whole thing, but the internet's savagery has done its work. Best resulting mash-up video to date? The Groundhog Day mix:
Please note: this is my personal blog. This post is in no way an official communication from the BBC. I write a fortnightly update for BBC Vision staff interested in social media on and off bbc.co.uk. The items covered are on and about the social web; I post the notes here for anyone interested in the hope that they may spark further ideas or knowledge-sharing. Listen to my Off The Wall Post podcasts here.
This week: Facebook has a Hire calling; Autumnwatch conkers social media; Hour chance to get others online; Spooky Buzz; Twitter DM-strates its social voting with XFactor USA; Who guards theGuardian? Google what's good to know; Lick the lollipop of doom; Careless tweets cost jobs; Anti-Social Media Disorder...
Recent BBC social media news and launches.
BBC Three's Up For Hirecampaign has continued to tackle the UK's youth unemployment epidemic.Radio One featured multiple segmentsand discussions across the week of TX, while on BBC Three, Up For Hire Live engaged audiences online in conjunction with their television debates. The show integrated, responded to and tailored its content according to the online community's feedback and discussion topics.BBC Three's Blog alsoplayed major host to a slew of informative blog postssharing experiences and advice for young people looking to break through into the jobs market.
Meanwhile theUp ForHire Facebook pagehas provided a valuable platform for users to connect with, interrogate (and occasionally terrorise) major brands joining the page to offer recruitment advice and support. Perhaps the most telling stat is that of the 4,700 fans the page has attracted in three short weeks, Facebook reported (last week) 4,422 people 'talking about' the page which is an astounding percentage of user interest and engagement (most pages would kill for 10%)
Not enough for you? Then trythe Lab UK Get Yourself Hired Testthat's been running alongside the events. Tens of thousands of people have taken the test to determine their strengths and weaknesses in jobseeking so far, doubtless more will come through in the coming weeks.
Autumnwatchis back andblogging,tweeting,Facebookingand hostingthe finest damned Flickr group in the northern hemisphere. Despite the turning leaves, Autumnwatch's social offers remain evergreen and fresh, engagingwith a variety of demographics across the various platforms, sharing stories, queries and pictures about UK wildlife, rural and urban. There's even video montages emerging from the Flickr group.
The Give An Hour campaignis an excellent idea to raise awareness and encourage people to help fill the 'digital divide'. With the clocks going back in the UK on Sunday 30 October, we all gain an hour - so the campaign asks people to use that hour to enable a friend or a relative with no internet experience to get online and learnhow to use this incredible resource. A host of celebrities are on board pushing the message that a spare hour's tutorial could really empower and change someone's life for the better. So please spread the wordwith the hashtag #giveanhourand share the link with your friends. (Just don't get your granny hooked on Farmville...!)
Buzz of the Week
Spooks' final seriesinspired many a tweet, update and blog post over the past weeks of its run. Spooks drew out an interesting thought on the show's implicit pathos from Notepad on Life:Spooks let slip what James Bond never will-'Even if the shoot-outs and car chases are little thinner on the ground when you work for the real MI5, I can easily imagine some people on its payroll being genuinely damaged emotionally by a career that has a one-word mission statement. Suspicion.' More about Buzz.
Madness? A shiny new toy played with a niche but increasingly super-served audience? Maybe, thoughBBC News highlights the results of the YouGov reportcommissioned by social media agency Diffusion:'it suggested 43% of British adults commented on or discussed TV shows they were watching using Twitter, Facebook, other websites and mobile phones.'
The Guardian took a bold step into online news transparency and collaboration (with a hint of Virtual Revolution's legacy in there) with theirExperiment in opening up the Guardian's news coverage. You have to see it to understand it fully, but the essence is simple - the Guardian posted up several live Google Docs in their blog containing details of the stories their teams were working on (obviously some embargoed stories / breaking news were excluded) and users were able to add their thoughts on the stories: opinion, links, information etc. to help inform the journalists working on those stories. Users could also tweet journalists directly and submit info privately ifrequired.Mashable has an article with more details and comments byDan Roberts, national news editor atThe Guardian.
Google have partnered up with Citizens Advice Bureau to createGood To Know- a guide to internet safety - full of information around password security, not following strange URLs etc. If you're consideringusing your extra hour to help someone get onlinethe Good To Know site is an excellent bookmark to leave on their browser:
All of which comes at the same time as the somewhat horrifying websiteTake This Lollipop. The app uses your Facebook information (friends, updates, pictures) to scare the living bejeezus out of you, with the aim to highlight the amount of data you may be sharing online with... anyone. Of course this is all rather disingenuous, as the app requires you to give it permission to use the data regardless ofyour actual Facebook privacy settings. But if in doubt - sign out of Facebook and search for yourself - you will then be able to see what anyone could see if they weren't your friend, but a sweaty, cellar-dwelling psychotic in a vest...
Infographic of the week:
Appropriately posted around the time of Up For Hire -How recruiters use social networks to screen candidatesis an eye-opening view of the impact a person's social media footprint can affect their application, eg 69% of employers surveyed have rejected candidates on the basis of what they saw on the individual's social networking site.
And Finally...
"Ever have one of those days when you just don't feel like Tweeting...?"You probably have Anti Social Media Disorder...
Please note: this is my personal blog. This post is in no way an official communication from the BBC. I write a fortnightly update for BBC Vision staff interested in social media on and off bbc.co.uk. The items covered are on and about the social web; I post the notes here for anyone interested in the hope that they may spark further ideas or knowledge-sharing. Listen to my Off The Wall Post podcasts here.
This week: Blogging a Walford mobile mystery and E20 Twitter; Who'd LIKE to get a job? UK-tube; Funny there's no women; E4 makes its fans heroes; Facebook is the first screen; Time to get people talking; Twitter, ye not; Oh, Flickr, where art though?; Social Media hits the Bullseye...
BBC Three launched a new project this week with one of the most ambitious social media campaigns to date. Up For Hire Liveis a five-part series of live programmes played across five days of the week beginning 17 October 2012, dedicated to highlighting and tackling the issue of youth unemployment in the UK. Over 1M young people are unemployed in the UK today and Up For Hire seeks to inform, engage and empower the BBC Three audience towards gaining employment through a series of films and studio debates, connecting to two planned Cover It Live web events putting users in touch with presenters and employment experts. The show will integrate tweets, texts and Facebook updates from users during the live shows.
Alongside this they have launched the Up For Hire Facebook page to offer Facebook users advice on scoring that first job interview; prepping for nailing that interview; what to expect from the first day, week, month on a job; to share experiences among jobseekers. The really big draw is that the page will also play host to the Facebook Page representatives of 60 major employers across a range of disciplines and careers, all joining the page to offer guidance and tips for getting a job and making the most of the opportunities out there.
The BBC is planning to follow the approach of Ridley Scott’s YouTube crowd-sourced film Life in a Day to create a user-generated film entitled Britain in a Day, Ridley Scott is on board with the project which will look to gather films that document and capture the essence of British life over 24 hours on 12 November 2011.
Buzz Blog Post of the Week
Backwards in High Heels has written an outstanding blog post regarding the Radio 4 Extra topical comedy show Newsjack. The blogger is a comedy writer herself, who submitted material to the show, but Ovaries and the Comedy Gene is not an accusation, it's a question in response to the fact that not one of the plethora of writers on the show is a woman: why don't more women write comedy? And how can they be encouraged to step up and get involved? 'I want the best work, best fit for that show to make it through regardless of the author. But, as in motorsport, I do think there may be a place for women only initiatives especially at an entry level. '
E4 have launched a super fan campaign called E4ers. They called on their users who are most active on social media to apply and join their crew of a chosen few - social media ambassadors and influencers that (it appears) will get access to exclusive content before anyone else with the opportunity to then shout / broadcast about it across the blogosphere, twittersphere and every other sphere you care to slap a Like button on.
It will be interesting, now the application process is closed, to see how this manifests - will E4ers have badges / twibbons for their pages, their blogs etc.? Will they have to disclose their 'affiliation' whenever they post updates about E4? Is this purely a reward scheme by E4 to fans, or do their blogs become advertorial...? Super fan relationships are being fostered across media organisations (eg NBC Fan It). Definitely one to watch.
Warner Bros. have already pushed out into social media by streaming movies such as The Dark Knight on their Facebook page (for Facebook credits). Now they've stepped up to produce a show for Facebook. High School hitman romp Aim High looks set to air on Facebook 18 October 2012 and word has it that it will include pictures of users' profiles and Facebook content in the show itself! Before you panic, this will be likely using similar technology to that seen in True Blood Immortalize and Misfits Facebook apps that integrate your content into the video for you to see, rather than everyone viewing it. A pretty major undertaking, nonetheless.
Facebook Pages have gained a number. A number that sits on a Fan Page just below the Page's number of likes:People Talking About. This number indicates, not the number of fans a page has accrued over its lifespan, but the number of Facebook users actually engaged with the page / brand over the last seven days. And it's a lot smaller than the number of likes! Want to boost that number? Get people thinking, talking, interacting... Don't just let your followers snooze!
This will blow your mind. 1000memories.com has taken a range of data, extrapolated and known, to conclude that 4% of all photographs ever taken are now hosted on Facebook. Yes: read the blog post, look at the graphics, repeat, until it sinks in that, whether this figure is remotely credible or not, the fact remains that 140 Billion photos have been uploaded to Facebook to date and that number is growing by the billions.
And Finally...
Tumblr is a social media platform which provides online content management / upload spaces which are simple to set up and post to - part blog, part twitter, part social bookmarking, part instagram... Tumblr. Often used to crowdsource images around a single theme (as seen in the Photoshop Looter tumblr I highlighted a few weeks ago), they are at their best when telling one joke a hundred different ways. To that end, I give you Bullseye Contestants - a blast into a wonderful, ridiculous and very British past. Go there. Go there now.
Please note: this is my personal blog. This post is in no way an official communication from the BBC. I write a fortnightly update for BBC Vision staff interested in social media on and off bbc.co.uk. The items covered are on and about the social web; I post the notes here for anyone interested in the hope that they may spark further ideas or knowledge-sharing. Listen to my Off The Wall Post podcasts here.
This week: BBC One gets vocal on Social Media; Strictly Come blogging; You, me and history makes free data; Twitter comedy; Blogging the baking; Facebook, Facebook and more Facebook; Veni, vidi, vending machine; Made from bits and Glue in Chelsea; OK Commuter; The Social Media Age; Google invents time travel...
Recent BBC social media news and launches
The Voice UK is a big Entertainment talent show coming soon to BBC One. The talent search / nurture / judge format, already huge in the US, incorporates a massive amount of social media activity (as you can see from the US NBC Voice site). Social media output from the contestants, the judges, from the show's presenters are all promoted and celebrated as integral to the offer and creates a huge online buzz around the show. For BBC One the undertaking has just started with a BBC The Voice UK Facebook page and a BBC The Voice UK Twitter feed both kicking off the search for vocalists to take part in the auditions, but this is only the beginning, my friends...
Talking of big Entertainment - Strictly's high-kicked off its new series and with it the social media community engagement across a wealth of platforms. The Strictly Come Dancing Blog is firing on all cylinders to feed backstage and rehearsal gossip to the sequin-hungry masses being made to wait three weeks between the first episode and the main event shows starting in October. Likewise @bbcstrictly has the Twittersphere tangoing on the spot in anticipation, while the Strictly Facebook page is feeding links to its 227K strong fanbase.
Do you remember BBC Dimensions and online developers BERG's clever data / maps mash-up How Big Really? Well, they're gone one better with the socially-integrated How Many Really web app. This fantastic collision of social media data and historical data allows users to compare (and so contextualise / realise) historical statistics with the statistics they have created through their online social networks. It's brilliant, if occasionally creepy, especially to see how many and which of your Facebook friends would have died / returned wounded from WW1 or WW2.
A couple of comedy entertainment shows joined Twitter this week - Never Mind The Buzzcocks and Would I Lie To You are both indie team-led offers connecting with the live TX conversation, offering extra clips, jokes and other imaginative engagements appropriate to the 140 character platform.
Buzz Blog Post of the Week
The Great British Bake Off inspires much buzz on the blogosphere. Few posts have been more entertaining than that of Katyboo1's weblog: Pie Chart. Katy's post is a full, frank and hilarious report of the week's baking masters and disasters and well worth the read. ' Flaky pastry has to have the fat rolled into it in sections so that it creates sheets of thin, flaky pastry that have depth to them. It is not easy to make. I know this, because when I did flaky pastry at school, mine came out looking like a grey vest that had gone through a mangle.' More about Buzz.
Social Media elsewhere
Facebook... Nothing to see. Nothing to see here. Move along. Nothing to...
Alright. There's a lot to see. Firstly, at the F8 conference on 22 September Mark Zuckerberg announced the new-look Facebook - the facebook that aims to be about stories - sharing our stories with each other - as accumulated by you and your interactions with friends (and brands and games and groups) over your Facebook Lifetime. Timeline is set to replace your profile as you knew it in the coming weeks, and, while we all hate change (especially change on a service we use for free), I have to say, there's something quite elegant and wonderful about the new look. Or maybe I just got swept up in the moment of their emotive video promo...
So what's it mean for programmes and brands? Well, short term, pages may lose followers (they may not!). It appears that the new profile makes far more explicit use of Facebook's long-standing algorithm that promotes or demotes updates on your feed according to your engagement and your friends' engagement with these profiles or pages. The new feed timeline now highlights Top Posts, but then surfaces a lot more content from all of your pages and friends just below (which previously had been hidden behind the Most Recent link on your feed). The upshot is people will see your brand page posts more and may find them a bit overwhelming in their feed of friends. So you may get unliked as people do a bit of feed-cleaning.
So now more than ever is the time to make your Facebook Page updates count. To make those replies to comments count. To make sure the page's content is useful, relevant and awesome. Otherwise, you may find yourself noise to be filtered rather than a voice to be valued.
Because the good news is, with this new look and the sidebar (Twitter-esque) activity ticker, you are far more likely to be seen, shared and engaged with - providing you are offering engaging content. The ball's in your court. Get creative, get social.
Other interesting features include the new feed-integrated apps, such as that of The Guardian. You can now sign up for this application to view Guardian content and stories in Facebook (thank goodness, soon we'll NEVER have to leave Facebook to look at the web...!) One issue thrown up by this is that the app posts to your wall (and so your friends' feeds) the stories you have been reading. So, just remember when you spend two hours link-burrowing through the life and times of Peaches Geldof... everybody's gonna know about it!
Likewise, music service Spotify has partnered in with Facebook to enhance the socially sharing music dimension of the online music streaming product, with the same 'frictionless sharing' auto-posting of your music listening to your feed and friends' tickers. More details of some of the notable apps and partnerships are available here. ***Update - Spotify have now changed their service sign-up to only allow new users to join if they have a Facebook profile to sign in with. This has angered many users, but given this deal has opened up Spotify to 700M+ users, I suspect they'll take the hit of a few protests and quitters.***
Enough. Already.
Nokia have partnered with location-based social network FourSquare to create a real world check-in and reward vending machine - the Nokia Gift Machine. Basically, you check into the vending machine on FourSquare using the hashtag #nokiaconnects in your update, tweet your check-in and receive your prize. No buttons, no QR codes, no doubt. I saw one in the wild at the Glasgow Social Media Week launch event, but sadly, as is often the way with FourSquare, had other things to do besides stand around checking in, but, it's an interesting automated word of mouth marketing / reward concept none the less.
Transport for London have launched a Facebook Stories-like offer called Acts of Kindness, dedicated to sharing examples of humanity and kindness amid the insane dehumanising crush of commuting in our punishing capital. Anyone who has lived and worked here long enough to have been Londoned into an angry apathy will appreciate the stories shared here - little shafts of light in the darkness, which TFL is encouraging people to join in and share.
Infographic of the week:
How Do Different age-groups interact across the social web? We know they're on there - the audience, the users - but are there certain social media platforms more appropriate to target when seeking to engage with a particular topic, theme in programmes? Let this deminfographic* enlighten you.
And Finally...
Google has secretly been developing time machine technology. The Google Street Map car has been replaced with a Delorean and is now capable of jumping through time. How do we know this? The proof is easily found on Google Maps itself: click through to this location on Google Street View and once there move one step forward.
Please note: this is my personal blog. This post is in no way an official communication from the BBC. I write a fortnightly update for BBC Vision staff interested in social media on and off bbc.co.uk. The items covered are on and about the social web; I post the notes here for anyone interested in the hope that they may spark further ideas or knowledge-sharing.
*Yes, I made that up. No, I won't ever use it in polite conversation again.
This week: Public images Limited; UGC detectives; Buzz economics; checking in at The White House; 'I retweet a riot...'; Police count on a Flickr of recognition; Serious stir for Facebook stirrers; It's a fair crop; I saw it on the Photovine; Betfair's really out there; live tweets and TV - an engaging graph; Facebook assumes a foetal position..
Recent BBC social media news and launches
Alex Murray has written an excellent post for CoJo on the BBC processes for verifying social media content. The post describes a staggering array of issues and triple-checks that occur before accepting User Generated Content for republishing or citing as reliable source material - a sort of UGC CSI - a fascinating read.
Buzz Blog Post of the Week
Radio Four presented a debate from the London School of Economics about the financial mess we're in, featuring two of the world's leading economic thinkers. Keynes Vs Hayek inspired a flow of blog buzz; a particularly interesting post on the programme coming from Cafe Hayek - FA Selgin vs JM Skidelsky. The post is less interesting for its own content (it's not much more than a link to the programme page), but for the comments thread that emerges from fellow listeners... 'To argue that politicians and central bankers will magically transform into better human beings in order to ‘manage their monopoly with caution’ is silly at best.' More about Buzz.
Social Media elsewhere
"President Obama has just checked into the Situation Room on Foursquare." Sounds unlikely...? The White House is now a member of the location-based social network FourSquare. The recent White House blog outlines the plans to activate social check-ins across the Midwest of the US as they tour the towns and states. The White House plan to leave tips, historical references etc. to add value to their check ins and presence on the service. I wonder whether this will lead to a check-in race come next election, as the traditional red and blue map gains an overlay of Democrat and Republican Foursquare badges. All of which will surely lead to the winner being declared Mayor of America...!
Meanwhile, amidst all of the confusion, debate and breaking news, there were still shafts of light breaking through the darkness, such as in the Tumblr site Photoshop Looter. This site has been set up to invite users to take images from the riots and doctor them to absurdity. (A personal favourite is Causing a racket, but there's many gems in there.)
Google have launched Photovine - an iPhone app (curiously unavailable to their own Android mobile platform). And before you ask - yes, we needed another photosharing community mobile app - of course we did! Photovine has a lot in common with the look and feel of Instagram, but rather than offering effects to pimp your images before posting, Photovine is all about gathering images around a theme or a tag - eg 'Clouds' or 'WTF?'. From the seed of a given tag / theme grows a vine of related images posted by other users... Like a Flickr group, only without the sense of ownership / moderation in the case of a vine.
An interesting Twitter brand case study comes from a blog post on The method behind the madness that is @betfairpoker. Tweets include: 'If you cannot make the intellectual leap that implicitly connects Jeremy Clarkson, a fax machine and wasps to poker, then you should leave.' I don't point to @betfairpoker as the way to go for BBC programmes on Twitter, but it's food for thought around considerations of creating personality and compelling content that people will genuinely want to share among their friends and followers.
Infographic of the week:
Wiredset.com offers an interesting graph of Twitter Social TV Best Practices, depicting a timeline of interactions and content strategy across the online lifespan of a show. Attain; entertain; retain are the action headlines, and while it's a bit uber-new-media in approach, there's some decent sense and tips for a programme team looking to engage with realtime social media.
And Finally...
Facebook now lets expectant parents list unborn children as family on their profiles. Yes. As well as tagging and categorising your friends, family and co-workers you can now forewarn Mark Zuckerberg as to a new potential customer to the social network. Of course, that baby can't actually sign up to Facebook until its 13th birthday... But that's where Crèchebook comes in...
I'm kidding. There's no Crèchebook.
Yet...
Please note: this is my personal blog. This post is in no way an official communication from the BBC. I write a fortnightly update for BBC Vision staff interested in social media on and off bbc.co.uk. The items covered are on and about the social web; I post the notes here for anyone interested in the hope that they may spark further ideas or knowledge-sharing.
This week: There's Snow knowing on Twitter; Crowdsourced science goes tweet; a rotten social media offer from BBC Four; Small Teen makes a big impression on Buzz; Google+ minus brands; a game of murder; Misfits get snap appy; 200 Million users = infographic heaven; Movember spawned a Monster (for Google)...
Recent BBC social media launches
The BBC's citizen science project Lab UK has joined Twitter as @BBCLabUK to reach out to and build its army of science-friendly, lab coat-loving, online test subjects. Currently running a brilliant online test to assess your relationship with risk, LabUK are looking to find people to take their tests, share their results, get excited about participating in science and discovering more about themselves in the process.
National Treasures Live hits BBC One next week and with it comes their Twitter feed @BBCTreasures helmed in partnership with production and Learning's Hands on History team. Already working to promote the show and content, Twitter will be used to source questions to spot-test host Dan Snow's history chops during the show (no Googling allowed!).
There's something going down in Edinburgh Zoo this summer. In fact, there's something going off, going bad and most importantly going to tweet. BBC Four's production Afterlife: The Science of Decay has set up a giant, sealed glass box filled with a domestic scene - kitchen and garden - and left it to rot in front of the world via regularly released timelapse videos on their site. The box itself is tweeting its own internal demise as @BBCrotbox. Sounds revolting - and it probably will be - but the twitter account is brilliant: full of character and well worth following throughout the process. 'I have a chilli on the stove. In four weeks, it'll be wearing one hell of a hairy hat. A hot, hairy, hat.'
(I wonder if in the last days it will start tweeting like HAL at the end of 2001...?)Why not enjoy a taster of the grossness to come with Dr Yan and Bang Goes The Theory's own timelapse video of decaying food? Imagine a giant box full of that!
Buzz Blog Post of the Week BBC Three's Extraordinary Me season has attracted much attention and praise amidst the blogosphere. Small Teen, Bigger World receiving a good amount of comment, includingInspire Blog's post about the series' focus not on disability but central character Jazz's 'normal dramas'.'She’s not afraid to be herself and is confident in who she is. “I’ve never hated myself or hated the way I look. I hate the way people treat me.” Very wise words.' More about Buzz.
Loveable US Serial Killer drama Dexter is set to launch a Facebook game Dexter: Slice of Life. Thus will Dexters' 9 million+ Facebook fans (or Dark Defenders as they're disconcertingly termed...) be able to satisfy their inner psychopath and share updates with their friends and family. Mental status:it's complicated.
E4's youth comedy-drama Misfits have added a further social string to their bow - Instagram. An iPhone app-oriented photo-sharing social network, its USP is to allow users to add retro effects and filters to the images. It's not really a web app, so I can't link to much, but hashgram (what a name!) seems to aggregate instagram images tagged #e4misfits. Of course, if you're on Instagram you can search and follow E4misfits via the app.
Infographic of the week: After just over five years of service, Twitter now has 200 Million users. I smell a infographic retrospective...
And Finally...Want to get a job at Google? Matthew Epstein does.Bad.
If you're still reading this and haven't smashed your computer to pieces... There's more to Matthew Epstein's mustachioed googlepleasehire.me campaign - a blog. The good news for Matthew is that this activity has apparently led to a call from Google HR and he's been accepted into the Google interview process; the bad news for us is this means Matthew has been advised by Google to put the campaign activity on hold, so we may never get to see how deep this mental rabbit hole went...!
Please note: this is my personal blog. This post is in no way an official communication from the BBC. I write a fortnightly update for BBC Vision staff interested in social media on and off bbc.co.uk. The items covered are on and about the social web; I post the notes here for anyone interested in the hope that they may spark further ideas or knowledge-sharing.
This week: Weapons of math distraction; A blog post can word a thousand pictures; Tweeting up a storm; Popsquits; Eastenders: a hive of Buzz activity; Fans for the visits; Fans for the ads; Twitter to cause a flap with ad tweets; Will Greenpeace Force Volkswagen into a U-turn?; Poignant picture posts; Masterchef mash-up mastery; "Hello, Emergency, which social media service?"; Hostage to Facebook...
The awesome public art product Your Paintings launched this week with an editorial and comments section to share the news and enthusiasm of the project. This ambitious online product partners the BBC with the Public Catalogue Foundation to deliver a staggering online gallery of public-owned oil paintings. Particularly pleasing is the response on Twitter, which is reflected in an article about personal stories unearthed by the collection going online
What would the British public be without the weather to grumble about? Nothing! Just so many void and lonely vessels walking the streets with good manners and bad teeth. Luckily the Great British weather is always there for us, and BBC One is about to embark on a four-part series of live shows called Great British Weather tapping into our fascination with the fecundity of our firmament. To accompany the events they've launched a Twitter feed - @bbcbritweather - to seed discussion and conversation leading up to the TX in July and to engage with the live 2-screen moment during shows. Looks like turning out fine again...
Eastenders' recent output inspired a particularly considered blog post from Flow TV, the University Of Texas’ TV and culture blog. After reported complaints about the soap's scenes featuring Christian and Syed in bed together, Faye Davis has written an intelligent analysis on the gay representation on pre-watershed TV in the UK and how Eastenders is (positively) challenging the previously accepted line. 'EastEnders appears to have overstepped the boundary of the non sexual gay man. Such characters as ‘Will’ and ‘Jack’ in Will & Grace are the predominant examples of such a non sexual discourse, hinting at their sexuality and sexual acts whilst virtually never actually realising this as part of the narrative.' More about Buzz.
Social Media elsewhere
What's a Facebook fan worth? I mean really - what's the conversion rate here? The ROI? Give me numbers - I need numbers! Well, Hitwise UK's Robin Goad reports that, after masses of analysis, they reckon 1 Facebook fan = 20 additional visits to your website over the course of a year. Goad's post is aimed quite heavily at retail, but nevertheless makes for interesting reading about the social network's influence online. 'Facebook is the second most visited website in the UK after Google and is now the second biggest source of traffic to other websites as well.'
Facebook's also launching 'Comments Ads' - a new form of online campaign available to marketeers which hopes to attract users to engage with a brand conversation... (sorry, I was just a bit sick in my mouth)... and to interact with the Facebook advert by replying to a question it may pose. The launch ad for this new approach is said to be Allstate car insurance, who will ask: 'What's the worst thing your kid's ever done in the car?'
Twitter’s all about the advertising too these days. The 140 character service announced that it will soon be serving [targeted] sponsored tweets into users’ feeds. Naturally there’s been a degree of pre-emptive uproar from the ‘how dare you make money from this thing I use every day for free’ crowd, but we wait to see how prolific and annoying the tweetverts are before declaring the death of Twitter. However, if these sponsored tweets are ‘sticky’ and abide at the top of your feed, there’s a real sense that this will resemble the ill-fated mobile version's ‘quick bar’ (quickly referred to as the 'Dick Bar' by users, and almost as quickly removed again) and Twitter may have to rethink its approach. NB: at this time there's no suggestion that Twitter might feed such ad tweets into or through a user's profile to suggest a user's endorsement / tweeting of the ad.
Greenpeace have unleashed The Force on Volkswagen in a new campaign of videos, sign-ups and games bent on turning VW away from the dark side. Greenpeace are calling on VW to be more Earth Mother than Darth Vader, and cease their attempts to block CO2 emmissions cuts.
So, beyond the cute li'l Star Wars kids what's the Greenpeace campaign's story? Gamification and achievement rewards, baby. By signing up to 'The Rebellion' you start your jedi training and get a lightsabre. Tweeting and Facebook sharing the links gets you enough Force points to bring you up to the glorious status of helping a 'Baby Ewok', but to elevate yourself out of the teddy bear slums to become one with the likes of Princess Leia or Yoda, you have to get people to visit your training page and sign up to the campaign via your Jedi page. It's awareness raising with a dash of charity social media pyramid sales and you may get a t-shirt for your troubles. What I'm wondering is whose lawyers will knobble the whole thing first - Volkswagen's or Lucasfilms'?
Remember the BBC History Learning campaign and Flickr Group BBC Turn Back Time which invites people to share images of old photos of the high street held up to juxtapose with the high street of today? Well, here's something to really tug at your heart: Dear Photograph. This collaborative Tumblr site takes the next step to superimpose old photos of people onto the location with personal annotations about the moment, the memories, the emotions... (I promised I wouldn't cry doing this... No. It's no good. I've gone!)
Mash-up of the year so far - see what someone with a lot of patience, skill and humour can do with about 20 seconds of well-chosen Masterchef material.
Infographic of the week:
In an emergency who do you turn to? The police? The Ambulance Service? Twitter...? This infographic Social Media and Emergency Response presents some stats and behaviours around our use of social media in a crisis.
And Finally...
You want social media in a crisis? I'll show you social media in a crisis! A gunman recently held up a bank in Utah; the robbery swiftly turned into a hostage situation - cops, helicopters, negotiations and demands... Amidst all of which the gunman found the time to update his Facebook profile! Excerpt: 'They shut down all the power and our phones are dying but I'm keep letting u all know I'm okay til these foolz make some dumb fuckin move! Told em ill come out WHEN IM READY!!!!' It's a very modern kind of tragic. Read the article and scroll through the screen captures of Jason Valdez's updates - including uploaded phone photos of him and his hostage - and just wonder at the madness.
Please note: this is my personal blog. This post is in no way an official communication from the BBC. I write a fortnightly update for BBC Vision staff interested in social media on and off bbc.co.uk. The items covered are on and about the social web; I post the notes here for anyone interested in the hope that they may spark further ideas or knowledge-sharing.
This week: Twuther; Radio 1 is where it's at; The good, the bad and the OMG; All buzzed by bloggers of loving grace; Facebook tag - you're it; Rien, je ne tweet rien; Shortening bread; The Dark Knight Retweets; Hot vide-eau; The world is so likeable; I curate a riot...
(NB: this post was written June 20; posted 24 June due to some snarl up between posterous accounts)
Recent BBC social media launches
The excitement around the arrival of the new series of Luther has been building on their Facebook page, and Twitter has proved a fertile soil too for the Luther team to arrive into - Luther trending worldwide on Tuesday night. This second series has only just kicked off and already tweets and updates are looking ahead to demand a third series from Idris Elba and co. Follow @BBCLuther for more updates.
We're aware that there are a multitude of concerns surrounding personal activity on social networks. With Twitter's incredible knack of crucifying the acontextual; as well as issues of rights and disclosure of images, clips and spoilers across other platforms such as Facebook and YouTube - it's easy to forget how public public updates are. With this in mind, responsible organisations should be working to inform and empower employees around Social Media opportunities and potential pitfalls. There already exists an excellent set of public Editorial Guidelines around personal use of social media for BBC staff, but as an introduction to the issues, we've put together Social Media and You: The Good, The Bad and the OMG - a short film produced by The Academy in conjunction with pan-BBC social media teams to offer staff some food for thought. For further advice and guidance there's an article accompanying the video and a recent episode of the Academy's CoP Show covers the same with Rowan Kerek Robertson, Steve Saul and Steve Bowbrick bringing their wisdom to the podcast.
Buzz Blog Post of the Week
The great documentary story teller (and blogger) Adam Curtis has set the blogosphere thinking with his three-part 'All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace'. The aptly named blog A Lifeline to Reality offers their take on the series in the post Ayn Rand, Cybernetics and the Selfish Gene. 'The portrayals of the computer utopians in the second episode are particularly brilliant too, with their dreams of what can only be described as a cybernetic anarchist social order, long before the internet or even the first personal computers were a notion within mainstream thought.' Right on, brother. Right on. More about Buzz.
After writing this I've since discovered the rather brilliantly produced parody of Curtis' documentary style on YouTube - The Loving Trap:
As you know the BBC has its own URL shortening service (a deal through bit.ly) which turns any long BBC URL into a shorter version; eg http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/thaifishcakesservedw_73733 becomes the eminently more tweetable http://bbc.in/e9CpNg. Bit.ly is just one of a plethora of URL shortening services, but a new Brazilian site offers an innovative approach to shortening URLs while raising cash for Oxfam - Virou.grama is a shortening service sponsored by food giant Carrefour which claims to donate a gram of food for every character shortened through the tool.
The Dark Knight movie was famous for its transmedia marketing campaign of puzzles and clues spread around the web and the real world as ‘Why So Serious?’, and it appears the fun has already begun in the run up to Christopher Nolan’s next Batman movie. Already videos have appeared then been removed from mysterious YouTube accounts and a neat trick was performed using a hidden message in an online chant found on the movie site. The message decoded from the waveform of the chant translated as #thefirerises. This caught on and was soon being tweeted and retweeted across Twitter... It then became clear that the profile images of anyone tweeting that hashtag were being used to gradually populate an image constructed of profile pictures to eventually reveal the first released image of the movie’s villain: Bane. Pretty obscure; pretty cool; it’s explained further here.
Talking of increased participation delivering increasing content, Perrier are up to an interesting game with their latest video campaign: a series of videos which portray the same scene (a nightclub party), but as the numbers of views increase so to does the ‘steaminess’ of the video. So with each viewing figure milestone a new iteration of the video is released - hotter and sexier than the last (depending on how hot and sexy you find melting light fittings and women dancing with rope...).
The Kaiser Chiefs have produced an online 'create your own' album which is a novel approach to selling the album concept to consumers. The basic premise is that the Kaiser Chiefs have recorded 20 tracks from which users can select their favourite ten tracks and create an album in the order of their choosing. Users are also able to create their own bespoke album art for their download. Not only can they then buy that album, but their creation goes on sale and people can then buy that version of the album (or any of the other versions created and 'released' in this process by fans) and £1 profit goes to that album's creator for every download. Current best selling compilations are 1 - Guardianmusic; 2 - Drowned in sound; 3 - Chris Moyles (interestingly enough NOT the real Chris Moyles, just some clever chancer who's milking it); then hilariously at 4 - Christopher (the actual Chris Moyles).
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We discuss the Kaiser Chiefs' album and Virou.grama, as well as many other Social Media and Transmedia stories in this week's Off The Wall Post podcast with special guest: BAFTA's Dave Green.
Please note: this is my personal blog. This post is in no way an official communication from the BBC. I write a fortnightly update for BBC Vision staff interested in social media on and off bbc.co.uk. The items covered are on and about the social web; I post the notes here for anyone interested in the hope that they may spark further ideas or knowledge-sharing.
We set ourselves this schedule. We knew a weekly podcast would be unsustainable given our busy day jobs and family commitments, but we deliver a podcast every two weeks. It seems reasonable.
