Recent BBC Stuff

So The Voice UK is doing alright. A few tweets, a bit of Facebook, Reggie Yates’ blog... Yadda yadda...

OH, COME ON! It's safe to say The Voice UK is absolutely KILLING IT: on telly, on Twitter, on Facebook and on the Official Voice UK blog. Particularly Twitter, where week after week the show's hashtag #thevoiceuk trends worldwide every week, as do its coaches Will.i.am, Tom Jones, Jessie J and Danny O'Donoghue, AND almost every artist that gets picked trends in the UK and worldwide (due to the unusual spike in their names) – in fact some 80+ Twitter trending topics belonged to The Voice UK across TXs last weekend.

Meanwhile Twitter's own official UK Blog acknowledged the tweet battle was won by #thevoiceuk over #BGT by over 10K tweets in the two shows' first big weekend showdown. Barely six weeks in and @bbcthevoiceuk now has 119K+ followers on Twitter and 79K+ fans on The Voice UK Facebook page. This weekend the live shows start – expect more and more as Reggie Yates hosts the V-Room and brings the backchannel buzz of users’ messages from Twitter, Facebook and the blog to the screen.

Planet Earth Live is about to kick off a series of world-spanning reports on the most exciting time in wild animals' lifespan - the precarious journey of youth. Expect adorable lion cubs, bears cubs, baby elephants and chattering monkeys. And expect struggle. As well as three live shows a week across BBC One for the next three weeks, corralling the narrative and conversation online will be the Bristol NHU team: all six location teams are tweeting out images and reports of the stories unfolding.

@BBCPlanetEarth curates these (you’ll be able to see these tweets on the Planet Earth Live programme page) while on Facebook the team are posting glorious images and updates to document the story across the network that loves to share images of cute animals. Add to the mix a couple of TV Blog posts due in from presenters and team and you've got an awesome social media offer. Follow and Like them now for pictures of monkeys on cameras and more!

https://p.twimg.com/ArT0q8aCIAACsOH.jpg 

Free Speech returned to BBC Three for its second episode and tore up the Twittersphere, Facebook and the BBC Three Blog with heated comment and debate - all fuelling the wonderful Power Bar visualiser to demonstrate the backchannel's sentiment throughout the show. This approach has gained credit and kudos across the web. Follow @BBCFreeSpeech and the Facebook Page for regular updates throughout the month.

The BBC has partnered with audio clips social network Audioboo to create a number of official brand channels on the micro-blogging platform. This allows BBC Radio channels to post clips of syndicated content to be shared among the small but rather wonderful audio community.

Vani Sutcu joined the Vision Social Media Team at the end of March 2012 as Social Media Specialist for TV & iPlayer. Vani comes from managing the social media at CNN and will be supporting the Editorial Lead in all social media for TV programmes and brands. Vani is an excellent addition to the TV & iPlayer team.

Blogs Buzz of the week

Radio 4 stalwart and comedy legend, Just a Minute, took a medium-sized step onto the platform of TV in March and April 2012 and the transfer from Radio to TV did not pass without comment. Telly Brain’s blog post Hold on Just a Minute, what’s Radio 4’s best loved panel show doing on telly? is a fantastic take on the history of the show and its arrival onto BBC Two: ‘It takes the game we know and love (and are almost universally crap at), plays it as normal, and even occasionally enhances it. […] It is not blasphemy. Television and radio are simply two different media with their own traits and their own advantages. Radio 4 has its own style, its own traditions, and its own somewhat mesmerising cadence. The show we love is deep-set in these traditions but if it is to survive in a televisual world it has to conform to the medium. And Just a Minute does so. And it does it well. It doesn’t bin the stuff that we like about the show – that would be stupid, but what it does do is adopt a more visual stance.’

Social Media elsewhere

The biggest news of recent times was the surprise acquisition of photo-sharing mobile app Instagram by Facebook for $1Billion! Yes. $1Billion. Dr Evil ransom kind of money. For a photo app (plus a 30 million-strong community of users) with no revenue. Boom. This has of course prompted further discussion of the dot com bubble; people running to find ways to export their images from Instagram etc. But some more measured and interesting considerations also - such as the fact that Instagram has a key feature that Facebook maybe lacks - passion for the platform... Also Facebook has always been about photos - last count had over 140 Billion photos on Facebook. Flickr has 4 Billion. And there was even talk of this being a 'panicusition' based on  an alleged offer for Instagram made by Twitter. Either which way it goes, it's further proof that photo-sharing is one of the internet and mobile's biggest applications.

(If you’re not an Instagram user, but feel you want some of the action without having to commit to ANOTHER social media app, I recommend following Text-only Instagram on Twitter.) 

Really interesting studies and reports abound around news and social media last month: Pew reported on how users discover news through social networks (Facebook users gain news via friends and family to a far greater degree than Twitter users, who source a far wider network), but the study suggests that Social Media is yet to become a major driver of traffic to news. Meanwhile, across town, The Guardian's Director of Digital Development, Tany Cordey, was singing from a different hymnal, declaring that (for a period) Facebook referred more traffic to Guardian news than search giant Google, and that, while that was only a brief usurping of top pile traffic pimper, news outlets ignore Facebook and other social media at their peril. 

 I mentioned the audio-tagging mobile app Shazam last time as being used to tag content in TV ads and shows in the US – and some will report that Shazam’s future lies in tagging TV audio. Well this is an application carrying across to our media as ITV has just signed a deal with Shazam to carry audio tags in their commercials. To recap, it works like a QR code appearing on screen; the Shazam logo appears on screen and users can scan the audio with the app to be presented with extra content from the advertising company. Fascinating innovation, but also increased onscreen clutter understood by only a few, self-selecting users.

Talking of clutter on screens, what with Shazam logos, hashtags, QR codes, Facebook urls / like buttons and normal urls (remember those?), a recent study by Accenture examined the efficacy (and lack of) of these social Calls To Action – from audience recognition to engagement and action. The results might surprise some.

You may not have heard of Path. The social network that works on an exclusivity model - you can only share and interact with a set number of friends on the platform. Originally restricted to 20 people in a network, Path recently underwent a redesign and relaunched to extend the limit to the Dunbar’s Number of 150 friends. While Path remains relatively unknown in this country, it's reportedly experiencing a strong take up in China. And most interestingly a recent round of investment saw investment in Path by Richard Branson. Perhaps he's worried that in space no one can hear you tweet...

Pinterest continues to cause stirs with its success and, more importantly, seemingly incredible return for sites in terms of referrals. I was speaking to the digital exec at a large commercial production house, who told me that 20% of their site traffic was driven via Pinterest. Others too report the same. Of course, there's been trouble for Pinterest because of its original T&Cs which stated they had rights to sell the content you uploaded to the site. Bad press around this led to those terms changing. However, problems remain for Pinterest, as some people have expressed public concern for the liability of users of the site's main functionality (collecting / pinning images from the web into a digital scrapbook) to copyright infringement. Nevertheless, the stats reported around Pinterest are very impressive. Or were. The daily mail reports a dramatic fall in Pinterest sign ins in the last month. Has the bloom already fallen from this Internet rose...

Remember how Sweden decided to hand over its Official Twitter account to its citizens to tweet about Swedish life? (Of course you do.) Well, Kraft decided to turn their Macaroni and Cheese twitter account (yes, of course there’s a Kraft Mac & Cheese twitter account – why wouldn’t there be?) over to two old ladies to run the account for three days as part of their 75 year “Mac & Cheese” anniversary.

Tumblr of the week

Texts from Hillary. That’s Hillary Clinton. Pictures of… Texting. A brief internet meme sensation, it burned SO brightly it actually caught the attention of the US Secretary of State herself and elicited, not a takedown notice or a visit from the Secret Service, but a Tumblr submission by Hillary herself! People – this is how you do it. Seriously. Cool.

Infographic of the week

Less of an infographic this week, than a cry for sanity and soul from legendary web illustrator / poster maker - The Oatmeal. How to get more likes on Facebook. Brilliant and utterly to the point about brands stepping into social media: less marketing - more amazing. If you want a greater insight into Facebook and food for thought around the relationship between Facebook users and brands and where the responsibility to be better lies, you can do worse than watch Facebook’s Christian Hernandez’s key note speech at The Next Web conference.

And finally…

We've seen tweets turned into snow and knitted into scarves for the homeless, so it was surely only a matter of time before they were turned into toilet roll. Sadly, you don’t seem to be able to request another person’s Twitter feed, otherwise, I suspect there’d be a lot of orders for the @ParisHilton edition...

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.

The Voice UK launches big and social; Pramface tweets; BBC Three fights for Free Speech for all; Good News for News; Buzz for The Catholics; Channel Four Seven; Al Jazeera genius; Facebook Timeline hits brand pages; RT @TitanicRealTime "Man the life rafts!"; Who wants to stop Kony 2012? ; Twitter Loves and Hates; Celebrities go nuts on Twitter for Snickers; CNN to buy Mashable; WeatherMob rides the storm; Tumblr numbrs; Cat-breading - the meme that's the toast of the town...

Recent BBC Social Media

The Voice UK launched its website on Friday 24 February. A fantastic-looking piece of internet win, it's notable for many reasons. The principle social element of the Voice UK is the Voice UK Blog, which launched with the site. Built on the new iSite blog platform, this blog hosts Reggie Yates' backstage updates and stands as the principal social content hub for The Voice UK. Clips, pictures, gossip and LOLs - set RSSes to stunned! 

The Voice programme page also presents the first /programmes V2 Twitter Module, pulling in tweets from @bbcthevoiceuk (an account already sporting 20K+ followers without a single TX) - all great social media effort from The Voice UK digital team. The Voice UK Facebook page also just hit 12K+ fans. A superb base of dedicated fans to build upon as the show ramps up towards the TX date of 24 March 2012.

BBC Three has launched a hilarious fictional twitter feed to accompany its brilliant new comedy Pramface. Written and tweeted by the actor, Pramface Mike is a feed for the central protagonist's best friend - the Walter Mitty of teenage sexual enlightenment - the guy who was caught masturbating to the refrains of the Top Gear theme tune by his mother. Follow Mike's delusional stream of consciencelessness via @pramfacemike. Pramface also has a Facebook brand page to connect with fans on the world's biggest social network.

BBC Three's hot new topical debate show, Free Speech, made its debut on 7 March. Raising arguments once a month for the next year and hosted by Jake Humphrey and Michelle de Swarte, this is a caffeine shot of Question Time with a RedBull chaser. The big difference comes in the integration of social media conversation into the show. The show's digital team (the same crew running The Voice UK) run an excellent Free Speech Twitter and Free Speech Facebook page encouraging debate and comment which, combining with topical posts on the BBC Three blog, gauge the subjects their audience want to discuss over a month, then build the debate around a selection of those suggested topics.

 Twitter, Facebook and blog comments are included in the show's lively discourse, while Twitter comment fuels a live 'Power Bar' graphically illustrating the popularity (or otherwise) of each guest panellist’s views. It's vibrant and alive and as close as I've seen to proper social media integration on a BBC show to date, garnering a reported 15K+ tweets and messages over the course of its hour run.

A good news story to emerge this week – BBC Breaking News is one of the top 10 retweeted Twitter brand accounts in the world. A great sign of BBC's value to users of the Twitter platform.

Buzz of the week

As ever BBC programmes inspire the audience to share their personal stories and beliefs, to find connections with BBC content and channel it back into new interpretation and discussion. Growing Up With God presents a personal argument drawn from BBC Four's Catholics around women. 'I still dream and will always dream of a Church, of a world, where complete equality exists. And although saddened by the sight in tonight’s programme, I am in some way heartened to know that there are women in the Roman Catholic Church who hold on to the hope of the God they know to be true.

Social Media elsewere

Last week at the FT media conference, Channel Four announced the development of a new channel which will be scheduled by social media and online buzz. Channel 4-7 intends to present repeat content from the previous seven days based on the buzz it has caused and accumulated on social media platforms: Twitter, Facebook, blogs and message boards. It’s not entirely social media-created - the channel will feed from other sources for its content prioritisation, such as more traditional media (news reviews, write-ups, etc). This radical, yet simple idea, begins to make sense of the E4ers campaign of last year, where E4 recruited social media influencers to gain early access to new E4 content in return for blogging and tweeting rights. It becomes a recommendation channel; Video On Popular Demand, or maybe Video On Demand you can't be bothered to demand yourself...

How will it work? Who knows. People have shared concerns with me that social media buzz volume will just mean repeats of mainstream Twitter fodder, such as Big Fat Gypsy Weddings and Made in Chelsea, but I suspect the channel will apply a similar 'noise reduction' filter as Twitter's Trending does to surface trends beyond the constant Bieber-buzz and Lady Gaga chat (20 million followers by the way!), allowing the smaller but remarkable peaks of interest to punch through and be represented. One to watch.

Of course Al Jazeera have been on the case building shows, if not channels, from social media for ages. The Stream is a social media-inspired news show run on a beta mentality of ‘try it and fix it if it breaks’. There's much to admire in the channel's approach to The Stream that's outlined in a recent article in Read Write Web, though, as Creative Strategist, Ben Connors, admits, it's unlikely to be a format that overruns the media anytime soon. 

Facebook Timeline arrived as an option for Brand Pages at the top of March, and by the end of the month all Facebook Brand Pages will have converted to the new 'chronological' look and feel that people have been getting used to on their personal accounts since new year. Eastenders and E20 have already made the switch to upgrade their Page design and all Page owners should be thinking about their main images as shop window - especially as the new format kills off any landing pages brands may have previously employed to impress new arrivals. Check your pages now as Facebook has guides and tips to help you through the conversion process, but Mashable's 6 big changes guide is well worth a read. Especially consider the new ability to retro-post back to the date of your programme's first TX. Thinking about EastEnders, the opportunity is there to create the most incredible chronological archive of the last 26+ years through Facebook Timeline. What could your programme do with this modern historical document? Though, given only 1% of Facebook users will ever return to your page after the first visit and Like – should you bother spending too much time building an enormous offer on Timeline at all? Personally, I’d say get a great image up there and dedicate your time to writing amazing, engaging updates people will like, comment and share with friends.

Of course, with 42 million of Facebook's accounts being fake or spam, you might say "Why bother?". Well, it’s because that still leaves over 800 million active users that are real.

Talking of modern historical documents... This year marks the 100th anniversary of the Titanic's ill-fated voyage. There's a lot going on in commemoration, including a number of BBC programmes around the tragedy, but The History Press have taken the bold decision to recount the events via a Twitter feed @titanicrealtime. It could be that enough time has passed and this will work well as a historical drama in 140 characters, but they'll still need to tread a careful line when depicting the disaster itself, lest they meet a similar fate at the hands of opprobrium suffered by the Guardian's 9-11 Twitter re-enactment on the ten-year anniversary of the World Trade Centre attacks.

Another modern historical document on social media is the viral phenomenon Kony 2012. The YouTube video that was uploaded on 5 March and as at the time of writing 13 March has amassed a staggering 76 Million views. It's not a sneezing panda, it's not 30 seconds of a child biting another child's finger... It's a 30 minute documentary by a charity highlighting the plight of 'Invisible Children' in Northern Uganda at the hands of villainous LRA leader, Joseph Kony. It's powerful, clever stuff delivered with a personal message that brings infamy to Joseph Kony and has been tweeted and retweeted by people and celebrities across the world. Indeed, during the time of TX, many people messaged Free Speech asking about this issue! However there's come a backlash. Plunged into the spotlight, the charity's finances and motives have been questioned; the emotional manipulation of the content; the call to action expiry date of 31 December 2012... Some reports now question the video as a scam!

A good resource for the debate and information around this now highly divisive video campaign can be found in collected links on Ariana Ciccone's tumblr.  

Still... Love will conquer all. No, I'm not drunk - Love Will Conquer All is a Chrome Browser app that collects and visualises all of the tweets containing the words 'love' or 'hate', and presents them growing out of the part of the world they originate from, depending on which location you ask to view. Pretty cool, if also a little slight.

There's no two ways about it, the prospect and promise of that perfectly timed, erudite and compelling tweet by talent about your show, your brand, your event is the new Eldorado. Increasingly TV shows will sidestep hope and actively ask / direct their actors or presenters to tweet about the show  with some success at that. However, Snickers pushed the envelope for celebrity Twitter feeds earlier in the year with sponsored tweets by Rio Ferdinand, Katy Price, Cher Lloyd and others. These humorously incongruous tweets (Katy Price commenting on China's GDP and the economy, Ferdinand disclosing his eager anticipation to leave practice and get home to finish knitting a cardigan...) were part of snickers' latest campaign and attracted enough complaints from people who felt they were being duped that the ASA launched an investigation. This week they returned the verdict that the tweets weren't a breach of standards and, crucially, the final message of five tweets in quick succession featured @snickers, a picture of each celeb eating a snickers and the hashtag #spon to clearly signpost the commercial nature of the tweets.

There are some who read this as activity as reflecting poorly on the celebs in question, but given the humour involved, this seems a somewhat joyless interpretation. Nevertheless it highlights the increasingly grey area of celebrity Twitter accounts: who and what they represent and how they could and should be leveraged by the brands or shows they are integrally involved with and arguably lawless ambassadors for. 

Twitter gained not just a brilliant BBC Social Media guy this week (Lewis Wiltshire left BBC Sport to join Twitter), but Twitter also acquired speed-blogging platform Posterous. What's the plan? To build out a blogging platform from the Twitter flagship? Posterous could be updated via email, perhaps the intention is to enhance the existing, but clunky,Tweetdeck deck.ly or Tweetmore option to extend tweets beyond 140 characters? Who knows. Only worry for dedicated Posterous bloggers (such as yours truly) is that in the process they close or, worse, break the whole thing. An interesting move by Twitter either which way.

There's something in the water. CNN is reported to be in talks to buy Social Media and tech uber-blog Mashable. The old giants continue to desperately throw cash harpoons into the side of the modern whale as it progresses inexorably, pulling them to their own doom... Or something.

But, some things remain unchanged with the times - people will always talk about the weather. “Weather is something that has yet to be disrupted.” WeatherMob app sets to right that wrong with its Instagram for clouds app, which benefited greatly from the terrible weather experienced in Austin, Texas, the home of tech conference South By South West.

Infographic of the week

Tumblr numbers - the micro-blogging / social blogging (like blogging wasn't social media...?) platform went from strength to strength in 2011 and looks set to continue winning in 2012 (especially if Posterous sheds users to the nearest similar offer - Tumblr). But what's the breakdown of this inexorable rise to 33 Million+ ‘Tumblogs’ across the web? Only an infographic can give us those answers in the broadest, most unscientific terms - Tumblr Numbers: The Rapid Rise of Social Blogging.

And finally...

Talking of Tumblrs... Every time you think you've seen it all, Tumblr delivers a new madness. This time the meme that is cat-breading. Yes. You read that right: cat-breading. So... Have you got a picture of cat-breading in your mind? Nice try. It's nowhere near the full-dip, catbap crackers of Breaded Cats.

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: Being Human = being social; Stellar social media; A blog entry, my dear Watson; Super Me SIMS like a good idea; Emmerdale's gone all Ooh-arr 2.0; Netflix gets in on the channel game; Verrrry Pinteresting...; Hangin' out with the President; Will TV soon let it all Hangout too? Search plus a search minus? Facebook ads killing Google - do you buy that? The timeline is nigh; The chilling effects of Twitter censorship; Who has time for playing games?; Death at one's elbow... 

Recent BBC social media news and launches.

 Being Human made a bloody and tearful return to BBC Three on Sunday 5 February. The fourth series shows no sign of losing its social capital and credibility, with much of Twitter seemed to be losing its hive mind with grief over the deaths of... Oh, wait. Spoilers!

As well as the lovely, fan-feeding Being Human Twitter feed and 620K+ fans strong Being Human Facebook page, the Being Human blog has set the transmedia fans afire with clue-hunting to solve the mystery of the scrolls that underpins the story arc of this fourth season. It's a show that really knows its audience, is confident in opening up its narrative and understands that the TV is only the first screen for one hour a week - the rest of the time it's all eyes online.

Stargazing LIVE enjoyed a phenomenal run over its three days of events, gathering over 10,000 people to its Cover It Live events on bbc.co.uk, as well as trending nightly on Twitter and clearing the nations' telescopes from the shopkeepers' shelves! The Stargazing interactive team were on fire and hosted the events and the Flickr group brilliantly. The Sky at Night with Stargazing LIVE Flickr Group now boasts over 16,000 astrophotography images shared by its members.

Buzz of the Week

More potential spoilers, but this time for Sherlock, and really, if you haven't seen the first episode by now, then...! But risk it anyway, because Cyberology's blog post Sherlock: A Perspective on Technology and Story Telling is an excellent consideration of why this reboot of the Sherlock mythology works so well now and could only worked this well because of the distinctive, stylised ubiquity of technology it uses as prop and foil throughout. It's a great post that really nails how bad Sherlock could have been if they'd made it five years ago and how bloody good it is now. More about Buzz.

Social Media Elsewhere

Channel Four have released a new educational online gaming experience about 'being better at life' called Super Me. It centres around an animated sitcom using an old trick -machinima - that is using video games characters to act out dramas (ie the game provides the animations, the camera angles, the sets - you provide the script and actions), a famous version of this being the hilarious Red vs Blue using Halo on the Xbox.

Aside from the improvised SIMS avatar drama, Super Me is a site full of applications, games, videos and rewarded activities designed to build users' self esteem and build their confidence in dealing with the trials of being a member of society. Although the actual full nature and aims of the sitcom/game have left some people a bit flummoxed... Interestingly, to sign up to the game, you log in with Facebook and use the Super Me Facebook app; nothing else. So if you're not on the world's biggest social network, you'll get no help with your self esteem or life skills here, losers... 

Not to be outdone ITV have announced the huge news that Emmerdale is going multiplatform! Paul Bennun of digital agency Somethin' Else (who also make Super Me) states: "Once Emmerdale told stories only on TV. Very shortly it will become the first truly multiplatform drama aimed at a mass audience, its characters coming alive in a playful, social way. It's an honour to be working on a property of this scale with such a forward-thinking broadcaster." Details are still scarce, but the word's out that the 21st centurisation of the long-running rural soap Emmerdale is about to go down.

Netflix (US video on demand streaming service like LoveFilm, now available in the UK) is pushing its original programming strategy (shall we call it a channel strategy...?) in earnest. This newsletter mentioned the long-awaited David Fincher / Kevin Spacey adaptation of BBC's House of Cards, but Netflix is pressing home that that was no side project, with further high profile series such as Lilyhammer arriving and more to follow.

Pinterest got a lot of focus at the end of 2011 as being a site / social network of huge growth - but what is it? Well, it's kind of a cross between Tumblr and Delicious (social bookmarking), although entirely visually focused like a photo-sharing site. It's been described as a place to create mood boards from the things you discover and like online, and that's very close to the feel of it. Essentially Pinterest allows you to clip and store images on sites in a categorised area (pinboard) in your Pinterest account. It's a very nice user interface and pretty simple to get a hang of, and already visually strong brands (such as The Travel Channel, The Weather Channel and of course the socially ubiquitous Jamie Oliver) are making headway on the site as a referrer to their pages (apparently more effective for driving traffic to sites than Google+, LinkedIn and YouTube combined!).

However, buyer beware, Pinterest has also recently come under scrutiny for apparently undisclosed monetisation by link tracking users' pins on the site. Not uncommon practice online, but the lack of declared interest has bothered some. Worth a look though, as it’s currently a leader in a field of many such bookmarking sites. It's still behind an invite only beta (but you can get invites, just leave your email and wait a week or so). 

Google continues to push the Google+ social network, with Hangout events featuring Barak Obama talking to several users at a time. Mashable and others recounted and evaluated Obama's Hangout - you can make your own mind up by watching below:

So the question everyone is asking... Ok, some people are asking, is will Google+ Hangouts transform traditional TV broadcasting? Well, likely not the likes of Being Human, but maybe News and other live shows. BBC College of Journalism's multimedia trainer, Ramaa Sharma has written a piece considering Google+ Hangouts and their potential role in engaging with the users in news - including her own video of a hangout she took part in with Hangout / Journalism pioneer Sarah Hill from local US news outlet KOMU.

(Psst. Want to see what Google's thinking about when it comes to developing stuff for Google TV? Probably not - it's very techy. But this Google Guide for developing for TV has some insights into the Google's vision of connected television.)

More controversially, Google has launched Search+ in the US, which brings more results from the Google+ ecosystem to the fore, to the point that commentators observe this is not only skewing results to promote Google+, but arguably delivering poorer, less relevant results as a consequence.  NB - this appears to be largely a Google.com, rather than google.co.uk issue at the moment, but it's likely to become relevant soon.

This point has been helpfully hammered home by a collective of developers who have created a browser plug-in called 'Don't Be Evil'. This plug-in will allow you to run a search on Google, view the search+ results, then press the don't be evil button to reveal the search results you would get without Google's new approach. The results shown on the video below are remarkable and could be troubling to brands with social media investment not currently focusing on Google+.  

Who are these developers behind Focus on the User and the don't be evil app? They're disclosed as employees of Facebook, Twitter and MySpace. I think the cold war of Social Search just went to DefCon 2. 

Talking of search and social media advertising, I'd like to highlight a brilliant blog post Is Facebook killing Google? No, but... by author Jeff Andrews. The post compares Google's advertising search model with Facebook's social advertising. Google's ads are completely serving a desire to discover / buy at that moment, but Facebook ads are like demographically targeted adverts on cable tv. Fascinating reading.

Facebook Timeline for brand pages. It's coming. So start thinking about your Facebook page in a more visual, chronological way. BUT also bear in mind that many users may only visit your FB page once. They receive updates via their newsfeed and react from there - click links, like, comment etc. from within their own news feed. Nevertheless, your shop front is about to undergo a remarkable change - possibly in the next month. We'll keep Facebook Page owners updated.

Interesting stuff emerged from Twitter around the ability of a nation state to request a tweet be censored from view in a given geography - not removed from Twitter as a whole, mind, only obscured from view for users registered in the country that has requested the tweet be censored for breaching the laws of that state. Not as shocking as it sounds, Twitter has always had recourse for people / states to remove tweets that break laws, but the system has been adapted to make this redaction more transparent.

But fear not the boot stamping on a human face - forever (at least not this time round). There are several avenues for the free interneteers out there - Twitter posts all requests to remove tweets from its service on the EFF's transparency site Chilling Effects - not the full details of the tweet, but a record of the takedown request and the reasons given by the named party. Furthermore, Twitter's geo-location censorship is based entirely upon user declarations. IE: you see trending topics in London on Twitter because you've told Twitter you're in London. Tell it you're in Damascus and voila - you're looking at trends in Damascus. Likewise you fall upon a censored tweet while in China, say - just flip your location to New York and it's freedom of speech all the way, baby.

Infographic of the week: who are social gamers?

We hear a lot about social games like FarmVille, but what's the fastest growing social game today? And who are these people playing these things? The numbers and demographics on this infographic detailing the latest study on social gamers may surprise you.

 And Finally...

Author, Chuck Wendig, has decided to crowd source ideas for his latest novel. Part of adark fantasy called Blackbirds, one of the characters is able to foresee a person's death by touching them. So rather than sit through an interminable 6 episodes of the Final Destination franchise for inspiration, Chuck's thrown the doors open to Tumblr to ask people to submit their possible deaths to This Is How You Die for a shared experience of the experience we all share in experiencing alone...

 

Er...?

 

This dark and psycho Barbie is definitely one of my favourites so far!  http://26.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lytky7bqv21r00j7yo1_500.jpg

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: 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...

 

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 Three's irrepressible and hilarious Mongrels spilled out of the first screen onto people's laps twice in November with Cover It Live character events. A popular social media brand, the now integrated BBC Three and Comedy team supported two live chat events - both very funny and, without doubt, well worth a read:

Marion and Nelson live chat

Marion the cat rides Cover It Live solo.

Buzz of the Week 

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.

Meanwhile, a recent report suggests that Facebook has put us all a couple of degrees closer to Kevin Bacon. The previous assertion that all human beings were a maximum of six degrees of separation from each other has been chipped away to four degrees thanks to the Facebook effect. You can read more about the study (commissioned by Facebook) on the Facebook Blog.

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...

Via: OnlineEducation.net

And Finally...

There are great ideas and there are not so great ideas. Any Idea Engineer will tell you that. Fail, fail again, fail... Woah!!! What the FAIL??? Creative agency Sapient Nitro found itself in the midst of an inadvertent viral storm, when one of their offices decided to create an internal promo video which accidentally went public. Basically, whatever Rebecca Black can do on a Friday - these guys can do far, far worse all week long.

My eyes...! My ears...! It burns, it burns!

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: 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...

 

Recent BBC social media news and launches 

 

EastEnders’ raucous little sister, E20, returned to screens for its third series and with it a new burst of social media activity. The E20 Blog has launched with an extra online narrative of short webisodes all centred around a whodunit and a missing mobile. The production has also started an @BBCE20 Twitter feed to complement their long-standing E20 Facebook page.

 

That there’s @Got2avefaith, who's hit Walford with panache and Twitter with a splash; even Rio Ferdinand’s been tweeting about her. It’s an excellent addition to E20’s fictional Twitter canon - @manlikefatboy hasn’t had a quiet moment since she joined!

 

BBC Three launched a new project this week with one of the most ambitious social media campaigns to date. Up For Hire Live is 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. '

More about Buzz.

 

Social Media elsewhere 

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!

 

Just for interest, if these things interest you, there were two different takes on Twitter offered by BBC-related comedians: Rob Brydon has complained about the evil abuse he has suffered through the medium, while Ricky Gervais writes in Wired about his positive re-evaluation of the platform.

 

Infographic of the week: 

 

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.

Channel Four are actively promoting social TV check-ins using the service GetGlue around their show Made in Chelsea. Gary Andrews (formerly of this parish) has written an interesting blog post on this and the possible future roads for TV check-ins.

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...!

The riots across England resulted in an enormous amount of reportage around social media's role in the disturbances. Some news reports blamed Twitter and Facebook and Blackberry Messenger - ridiculously termed a 'shadow social network' due to its closed status; doesn't that make email a shadow social network? Other reports extolled the virtues of Twitter in mobilising communities to clear up the mess en masse through twitter accounts such as @riotcleanup.

The London Metropolitan Police Force also utilised social media to release CCTV images of rioters and looters on Flickr in an effort to crowdsource the identities of suspects.

The issue of the role of social media in the riots has been further brought to the fore by the recent news of two men being sentenced to four years imprisonment each for using Facebook to incite disorder.

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.