During the 2010 U.K. general elections, I, like thousands of others, was glued to my various screens as I kept up to date with one of the closest contest in living memory. This included the first ever televised leadership debate in a British election, during which Twitter acted as a default running opinion poll. At […]
Last week’s F8 conference was full of news about where Facebook is heading, and how it intends to get there. It highlighted, for anyone who wasn’t already sure, that Mark Zuckerberg’s ambition for his company is huge: he want to be the glue that binds the Web together, in the same way that Google was […]
Last month, I talked about how marketers need to distinguish between interactions and true engagement*. As part of that, I referenced the fact that Facebook and Twitter had been written about in relation to events such as the death of Amy Winehouse, the massacre in Norway and the Egyptian revolution. But since writing that, social […]
If there’s one thing that the social media sector has in spades, it’s statistics. We’ve all seen the videos, most, it seems, with a Fatboy Slim soundtrack, that list the mind-bending figures about the continued growth of social platforms and devices. Facebook has over 750 million active monthly users Those users share over 4 billion pieces of […]
Is there anything else that this week’s column could have been about? After months & months of rumours, leaks, presentations and high-profile talent grabs, Google finally launched its Facebook competitor™*. After the farce that was Wave, and the let-down that was Buzz, Google+ seems to be Google’s big push to date to get into social. […]
The biggest news in the world of social media over the last few weeks has been the IPO of LinkedIn, the upcoming Groupon IPO, and the slew of floatations these two are likely to herald. And, of course, underpinning all of this has been the simple question of whether the valuations these companies are receiving […]
A couple of weeks ago, I spoke at the excellent SMX Sydney conference. As usual, it was a great show with any number of fantastic speakers. Before my last session, I was preceded by the also very excellent Rand Fishkin from SEOmoz; his presentation on Social Media For SEO was, as with most of his content, must-have […]
Anyone willing to bet on Google’s attempts to get social would have to have deep pockets and a short memory. For years, Google crowed about the fact that Orkut outweighed Facebook in two of the most important developing markets (Brazil & India), but that is likely to change soon (Facebook is gaining in both), whilst […]
Every month, I get a reminder email from the team at Search Engine Land to tell me that my post is due. Most months I already have a clear idea of what I want to cover, but some times I find myself staring at the screen, not sure where to start. And in many ways, that’s […]
One of the disadvantages of being a digital marketer outside of the US, as I’ve said before, is that so many great new innovations take months to be launched in other countries. A case in point is Facebook Places, which, despite the fact that Facebook’s EMEA HQ is based in Dublin, has only just been […]
In my last post, I suggested that Groupon would be 2011’s Twitter, by which I meant that it would start attracting more and more media attention, as well as big brand dollars. And I stand by that. However, if you’re a frequent reader of Techcrunch or many of the other big tech-blogs, particularly those based […]
Another year is almost over. The Christmas Number 1 song has been decided (in the UK at least); the web has proved that even after a brutal recession, people still need to shop; and, after a year in which Facebook & Twitter became (if they weren’t already) true phenomenons, we had the interesting experience of watching […]
Earlier this month Microsoft and Facebook announced a new partnership that essentially makes Bing a social search engine. Danny Sullivan has written a great overview, but basically if you’re logged into Facebook and use Bing, you’ll now see results which are based on content viewed and shared by your Facebook friends: in this way, “Likes” […]
Twitter’s recent interface update is probably the single biggest change to the site since its launch. By expanding its columns to see multimedia content straight from tweets, it shows that Twitter is looking at how to engage a wider audience, and to provide a richer experience for advertisers. [youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIpD7hfffQo[/youtube] By keeping the roll-out to Twitter.com, […]
Dear Facebook, A couple of weeks ago you launched your new location service, Places. We all think it’s great and are really excited that you’re opening up the world of location to a whole new audience. We can’t wait to start finding new and exciting ways of using Places to connect consumers and brands. But […]
There can be no doubt that social marketing has been the hot topic for the last few years, but many marketers still have reservations about seriously investing in the space. Whilst many of the reasons for such reticence can be quickly brushed off (it’s just for kids, it’s a fad, etc…) some deserve more attention. […]
One of the challenges that bloggers face, compared to ‘real’ journalists, is that we’re not conditioned to churn out stories, no matter what. And so with a deadline looming for this post, I wondered what to write about, but nothing really grabbed my attention. But then I got to thinking – maybe I should write […]
At its recent F8 developer conference, Facebook announced a raft of new developments which have been causing ripples in the worlds of technology and marketing ever since. The one that arguably has the biggest implications is the roll-out of social plug-ins and the Open Graph API (you can read my thoughts on that here if […]
Having spent 2009 being beaten in the hype stakes by Twitter, Facebook has started off 2010 with the last laugh. While Twitter’s growth is apparently stalling, Facebook goes from strength to strength and is now, arguably, the world’s largest digital media ‘owner’ other than Google. Its audience is now a very international one, with 70% […]
Until very recently, research company Forrester had been one of the poster-children of people wishing to show how companies have grown their business on the back of a deep understanding of social media. Its analysts, including Groundswell author Charlene Li, not only produced research on how businesses and consumers were using social media, but also […]
As with many people, I started 2010 with many good intentions, one of which was to ensure that my first post of the new year wasn’t about Twitter, and was full of practical tips on how to make the best use of social media to build your brand. Unfortunately, as with so many resolutions, mine […]
I’ve just had a rather surreal afternoon, having been asked (at very short notice) to appear on Channel 4 News (the main news show on one of the UK’s 5 terrestrial broadcasters.) I was invited on the program to to discuss Rupert Murdoch’s reported plans to link up with Bing at the same time as […]
Since its invention towards the end of the 20th century, the Internet has changed a great many things. And one of the things that is has done time after time is dismantle business models that had seemed, until its arrival, absolutely rock solid. From music to publishing to TV, the Internet has swept away seeming […]
One of the greatest marketing success stories of the last couple of years has been Cadbury, the British chocolate maker – which, at nearly 200 years old, could be forgiven for failing to grasp modern technologies to promote its brands. However, helped by some great creative work by London shop Fallon, they’ve had huge success […]
Last month, Google was forced by a New York judge to hand over the personal details of a user of its Blogger service to someone who wished to sue the blogger in question for defamation. In a series of posts, fashion model Liskula Cohen was described by fashion student Rosemary Port as a “psychotic, lying, whoring […]
With the recent spate of companies such as United Airways, Domino’s Pizza and Habitat UK, being hit by negative publicity online, one could be forgiven for thinking that social media can be used as a cure-all for such issues. But in fact, social media will only ever be a band-aid for such problems, unless it’s […]
Until Andy Murray recently gave hope for a British man winning Wimbledon for the first time since his clothing’s namesake Fred Perry, the news here in the UK had been almost entirely full of stories about politicians, their inventive expenses and the political careers that had come to a premature end (or overdue end, depending […]
Anyone reading this post is likely to be someone who spends some, if not all, of his or her time at work trying to make use of social media to market products & brands. We spend hours trying to maximize the benefit for our employers or clients from sites such as Facebook, YouTube & Twitter […]
The recent launch of the UK edition of Wired, the magazine for people who keep saying that magazines have no future, has seemed incredibly apposite when considered alongside many of the stories in the news every night. Whether it’s celebrities Twittering, the Queen getting all 2.0, or news of magazines killing their print editions and going […]
Every so often a site comes along that, in the amount of hype it generates, blows away everything that has come before it. Not so long ago it was Second Life, then Facebook came along and now Twitter is scattering all before it in a blizzard of press-coverage that many of its start-ups peers would […]
The start of this month saw the UK hit by the worst snowfall it had seen for nearly 20 years. Whilst the amount of snow involved (about 1 foot at its worst) would barely count as a sprinkling in parts of North America or Scandinavia, it brought the UK’s (mostly 100 year old plus) infrastructure […]
As the campaign progressed many pundits were taken aback by the way in which the candidate had managed to use the net to mobilise supporters in a way never seen before. By allowing supporters to take his core values and messages, tweak them and broadcast them in whatever way they saw fit (such as the […]
I was recently asked whether, if I had to make the choice, would I choose to work in just SEO or social media. Without any hesitation I answered SEO. In the current climate it’s obviously more accountable and seems a more obvious choice to me for brands looking to make reduced marketing budgets go further. […]
I recently had the dubious honour of being told that I looked a lot younger than one of my closest friends, who was in the same year as me at school. It’s a dubious honour because no matter how well I may be fighting off the wrinkles and laughter lines that pattern the faces of […]
The vitamin supplement company Berocca has been engaged in a vaguely interesting piece of blog marketing over here in the UK. Taking their cue from the recent New York Times article suggesting that blogging can be highly stressful, they have put together a blogger relief pack which consists of a number of ‘stress-busting’ desk toys […]
Anyone reading newspapers or watching the TV news in the UK over the last couple of months could be forgiven for thinking that, along with computer games, social networks posed a bigger threat to personal security than anything this side of a full on recession. Headlines have concentrated on the supposed dangers involved in having […]