Welcome to Porter Novelli’s weekly digital news post.

One of the major concerns about location-based social networking has been hitting the headlines lately. Whether it’s people telling others what they’re up to through sites like Twitter, or saying they’re “going out” through specific location-based tools like Foursquare, the threat that people know where you live and when you’re not there is a very real one.
And that’s just the users who aren’t stupid enough to check in to Foursquare at their home!
That’s why the Flavour of the Week in social media has been Please Rob Me, a site by Forthehack, an outfit whose stated aim in launching the controversial site was to raise awareness of online privacy issues. Mission accomplished.
The site essentially comprises a Twitter search for ‘4sq’, revealing a handy list of people who are out and, therefore, not home. And by providing the list in reverse chronological order by check-in time, it’s possible to make assumptions about who will be out for a while. If you checked into work 15 minutes ago at 9.20am, chances are you’re likely to be out most of the day.
So, if you make your address known online, you’re knackered. But this is all nothing new – as Mashable notes, burglars can always just go around calling houses from telephone boxes. And in online privacy terms this is pretty basic stuff. I guess the interesting point comes where the creative potential of Foursquare meets our desire to be safe. Are we really ready to take the occasional risk to pick up some movie’s Foursquare location badges?
Apps, mobile editions and the future of news consumption…
Following the hype around Apple’s iPad launch, the inevitable showing off of iPad’s possible uses. The first big media name to reveal its iPad plans was Wired. With the likes of GQ, Esquire and Maxim already operating iPhone editions, Wired made a big play in Chris Anderson’s appearance at the TED Conference last Friday. The ace up his sleeve? Wired’s iPad edition.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the iPad version looks rather like a magazine on a screen. But the back-end is where things will get really interesting, and will likely change our understanding of how a media title is put together. There is no front or back cover, no natural flow, no (gulp) centrefold. That’s just the tip of the iceberg, and the possibilities are intriguing. Financially, a magazine or newspaper’s ability to carry media-rich advertising is a particularly promising possibility – for them, at least.
If you’d like to see Wired congratulating itself, here’s the video.
Meanwhile, the BBC is stepping up its iPhone presence. From April, the corporation will offer free applications for its news and sport content on the iPhone, with BlackBerry and Android apps to follow. The value and benefits of the apps have been questioned but the BBC understandably wants to be involved in a market which consumes its news as and when it’s required.
However, it will have to do a good job to compete with the many existing unofficial apps which (I have it on good authority) are available already.
…and social networking
From news to networking, perhaps 2010 really is the routinely predicted ‘Year of the Mobile’ which its predecessors have failed to live up to. We already know about high-end mobile apps for sites such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, but what about those of us who don’t want to waste mobile operators’ bandwidth by trawling through Facebook photos?
Facebook is targeting the 100 million users who now access the site on their mobile phones with a low-bandwidth version named ‘Zero’. From the BBC:
Data from industry body the GSM Association recently revealed that Facebook accounts for nearly half of all the time people in the UK spend going online using their phones.
The data showed that people in the UK spent around 2.2bn minutes browsing the social network during December alone.
Facebook said the new site “omits data intensive applications like photos”.
I suppose there’s an element of competition with Twitter here, and another sign of just how important Facebook considers its status function’s development to be. Not my bag, but each to their own.
Retail and social media
British retailers are rubbish at social media, according to a dotCommerce study (the word rubbish is mine, not theirs – sorry, retailers). The top ranking British retailer on Facebook is the Body Shop – unsurprising – but it’s presence there is weak compared to some retailers overseas, particularly in the US.
The Body Shop is 23rd on All Facebook’s Facebook page leaderboard, but is behind better engaged brands like The Cheesecake Factory, Starbucks, Best Buy and Target. The problem is not the strength or otherwise of The Body Shop’s brand, it’s the execution of its tactics within social media.
Having an effective Facebook page may not be crucial to the success of a business, but used cleverly it can be a great tool for contests, customer service and public relations. It seems silly not to grasp the nettle.
3 March, 2010
Virals – Always a good thing?
Viral is regarded as something of a swear word at PN Towers, and most people who have mentioned it in front of the digi team have been forced to join in the mantra of ‘viral is not a strategy, it’s a tactic’. We also have this handy sign pinned to the wall to remind people of our stance.
One of the reasons that we dislike the word viral so much is that making something viral is actually not that easy. There’s a lot of content out there, a mere 20 hours of content is uploaded very minute to YouTube, and that’s just on one video platform, albeit the biggest. Another thing to bear in mind that there is a myth around user-generated content going viral, have a quick peak at the the current top watched videos of all time on YouTube and you’ll see mainly music videos, some extracts from Britain’s Got talent and a a couple of videos that can truly only be described as WTF? Achieving cut through is often difficult, and normally expensive, which is why we were impressed when we first heard about the Sussex Safer Roads Partnership (SSRP) video which apparently had gone viral, with over two million views in a month.
A review of the case study on Direct Traffic Media claims that it has been showcased at TED in front of James Cameron and Bill Gates, and that there have been calls from around the world to have it shown on national TV in the USA, Brazil and others. So a roaring success all round?
A discussion on Twitter today with some social media peeps, including ex-PNers Mat Morrison and Brendan Cooper concluded with the thought that perhaps, while a very worthy campaign, Embrace Life, had been chasing the wrong goals. Turns out we were being overly cynical as this interview with Neil Hopkins, the communications manager for SSRP reveals, on Osocio.
Reassuringly, Hopkins also states that:
Which means SSRP is evaluating the success of its strategy and not of the tactic, something that’s easy to get carried away with – particularly when you have a very successful video. What’s also refreshing is the inclusion of offline elements to drive the campaign, which mainly took the form of graffiti and banners around Brighton. Again SSRP will be asking people how they came to know about the campaign, and gives one anecdotal account of the success of the offline tactics.
It also created great images for use by the traditional media, and obviously the story of how the video has gone global is quite news friendly too.
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Filed under News commentary, Opinion, Social media, Word of Mouth
Tags: case study, Facebook, Viral, youtube