Another weekend, another football sex scandal splashed all over the front of the Sunday tabloids. This time it’s the turn of Wayne Rooney who allegedly paid for sex with a prostitute whilst his wife Coleen was pregnant.

Whatever the truth behind the allegations, the social media world has been revelling in the news since it first broke. At the time of writing this post, Wayne Rooney is a trending topic on Twitter with new updates being posted approximately every 18 seconds (according to social mention). The micro blogging site is awash with comments, jokes and slander from the general public, with everyone offering their thoughts on the scandal.

It’s true that many of the jokes evoke a chuckle but something about the whole situation makes me slightly uncomfortable. Before the days of social media, tabloid scandals tended to be read, commented about on TV and discussed in the pub with your mates for a couple of days after.

Modern news consumption is a totally different ball game, one in which the public has a platform and receptive audience to share their thoughts and opinions. For the most part, this is a positive thing, as citizen journalism in the form of social media has given everyone a voice and the power to help set the news agenda. The downside is that people now feel free to openly share their thoughts, no matter how critical or potentially hurtful they are to those on the receiving end.

For Coleen and Wayne, reading the ‘exclusive’ coverage in the NOTW will not have been a pleasant experience. But, how much worse must it be to see millions of people across the web commenting on your private life? A giant blanket of faceless opinion on the scandal is now forever documented in Google’s bottomless vault of information.

Just recently, X-Factor’s Joe McElderry announced that he was gay, the pressure to come out stemming from constant rumours spread on Twitter. Although celebrities are in the public eye and expect to be the subjects of gossip, it is unsettling that it has now become so easy to pass and share judgement, with social media providing the perfect platform.

Don’t get me wrong, I am a huge advocate of social media; it has changed the way we live and work in an unprecedented way. But the fact that we can publish anything and everything with the click of a mouse has made it easy for people to behave in ways that they might not in the real world. In the world of online communication, is the social sometimes in danger of becoming anti-social I wonder?

Image via Wikipedia

We’re a faddy lot. Two years ago you couldn’t swing a plastic bag without hitting an environmentalist head-on. Fast-forward to 2010, however, and it’s all gone quiet on the eco front.

The New York Times recently ran an article asking whether the recession had pulverised environmentalism. The article draws on a working paper by Matthew E. Kahn and Matthew J. Kotchen, which correlates higher unemployment rates with a lower interest in the environment. Khan and Kotchen claim that when a (US) state’s unemployment level increases, Google searches for ‘global warming’ go down, while searches for ‘unemployment’ go up.

It might be selfish, but it’s understandable. In the boom years we had the time and the money to ponder ‘global warming’, but now we have something more pressing on our hands – we have ‘global youth unemployment’.

According to The Guardian, 81 million 16-24-year-olds were unemployed at the end of 2009. With entry-level jobs at such a premium, squeaky clean covering letters and CVs are taken as a given – pristine online-footprints become a pre-requisite.

It’s not surprising to read that celebrities such as Lindsay Lohan employ ‘reputation managers’ to maintain their online-footprints, driving positive conversations further up the Google search pages and making negative sentiment ‘go away.’

What’s more intriguing, however, is that parents are now doing the same thing. Companies such as Reputation Defender offer packages specifically aimed at children, monitoring cyberspace for anything that could potentially hinder a child’s school, university and job prospects. The company monitors all posts, private info and photos across the Deep Web – i.e. non-indexed pages, pages that are created dynamically, and pages that require a login – including ‘40 of the biggest social networks.’

They then deliver reports highlighting any coverage that might need ‘destroying’ and for the sum of around $30 per item, the offending coverage can just ‘go away’. The ‘destruction’ process takes between 30-90 days and is done using undisclosed ‘proprietary in-house methodology.’

Are children brands in need of reputation management? I got caught out aged 16 playing truant, cigarette-in-hand, thanks to a photo published on page five of the Daily Star, showing the nation – and my headmistress – I definitely wasn’t at home in bed. I got my knuckles wrapped, but it hardly haunted me for life. I learned from my mistakes;  surely today’s children should be given the freedom to do the same.

With Facebook having just announced it recently hit the half billion user mark and with Twitter declaring this week that it received its 20 billionth tweet, it’s hard to comprehend that there may be another phenomenon biting at the heels of the giants of social media. Over recent years we have seen other contenders try, and fail, to reach the top spot – even Google can’t seem to be able to do it despite their continued attempts.

So when I heard the recent hype around microblogging site Tumblr, I wanted to check it out and see what all the fuss is about.

Founded by David Karp in 2007, Tumblr was created as a way for the average person to easily manage a blog without the complications inherent in a search engine-friendly application like WordPress. Think of your grandmother being able to start a blog and that gives you an idea.

To date Tumblr has about 6.6 million users and apparently 25,000 new people are signing up every day. Tumblr is clearly different to MySpace or Facebook – while the idea is the same (to connect to people with similar interests or background) the venue is far different. Described as the space “in between Twitter and Facebook” the site allows users to upload images, video, audio and quotes to their pages by emphasising the types of graphic content which can’t be reproduced on rival formats. Users can then follow others whose posts become visible in a live “stream”, these snippets can then be “liked” by clicking on a heart or “reblogged” to the users own followers. What sets this aside from its competitors is that the volume of followers is not given, in an attempt to boost the “community” feel of the site, which values commentary above simple links to outside sites.

My verdict?…well, our American friends across the pond are beginning to embrace it with open arms, with Newsweek and Rolling Stone both signing up to engage their readers in conversation. Will the UK be next to jump on the bandwagon? Tumblr’s figures are certainly impressive and there seems to be a growing momentum behind the website and despite the fact, in many ways, Tumblr does offer what Facebook and Twitter do, it does this in a very unique way. I’m watching this space!

In a recent online poll by Faxo.com, the public was asked where they would most like popstar, Justin Bieber, to tour. The public said North Korea. When ‘the public’ cast its vote on July 7th, it was, however, predominantly made up of fans of the online bulletin board, 4chan.org, which encouraged visitors to hijack the poll and manipulate the results.

Given that Faxo.com is currently running a new poll entitled ‘‘Justin Bieber Loves Animals’’ it looks as though the site’s intentions have always been sardonic rather than sales-driven. And given that 4chan.com members delighted at the thought of sending Bieber to the ‘axis of evil’ this again looks unlikely to be a PR ploy.

This is the latest in a series of online attacks against Bieber – BBC News online reports that 4chan.com also recently encouraged visitors to search for ‘Justin Bieber Syphilis’, sending the search term up to the top of the ranks of Google Trend’s Hot Searches list. Bieber is also dead, apparently. Read the full article here – http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10506482.

Bieber’s record label, Universal, has denied any involvement in the poll, calling the whole thing a hoax. Even the most guerrilla of campaigns will avoid associating clients with animals, STD’s, communism and/or death, so by process of elimination we can assume the conversations were not sparked by the Bieber marketing camp, but by a cult of Bieber-haters ready to topple the pop prince. The joke, however, is on them, because all they’ve done is give him a leg up.

Team Bieber was quick to react to the attacks, reinforcing his social media presence and ensuring he had a steady stream of tweets going out to fans both responding to the attacks – “let’s take some time to answer some crazy rumors….these are always fun.…” – and thanking them for their support – “I like answering all your questions. Thank u all for caring. Just want u to know I care to and I’m just a normal kid [sic.]”

By July 16th Mashable reported that Justin Bieber was battling with Lada Gaga for the YouTube top spot – his video for “Baby ft. Ludacris” having captured 245,746,720 views. By maintaining a strong microblogging presence and openly responding to the attacks, Bieber has successfully managed to convert what could be career-damaging sentiment into one of the most viewed online videos of all time.

Times they are a changin’, or so it seems. The powerhouse of the internet that is Google has a pretender to its crown. Facebook has managed to gain a level of momentum that could well see it take over as the most influential company on the web.

It is the strength of the relationship that Facebook has with its 450 million plus users that puts it in such a strong position. Add to that the announcements from its f8 developer conference and the writing could well be on the wall for a number of the most promising businesses currently laying claim to their own piece of our web based life.

In a way that seems contrary to the normal scheme of things, the greater Facebook’s success the more it has continued to attract new users. It is now a platform that circles the world and brings together groups of friends in a way that no other site has managed.

Adding new features and functions, such as “Presence”, could well make it the largest provider of these services at the click of a mouse. Location based services are just one possibility. Foursquare has a great proposition and has gathered a significant number of users and momentum of its own. But, and it really is a huge but for the guys at Foursquare, a Facebook location update service will automatically have millions of users an catapult it to number one in a second.

Another example of how Facebook is capturing more of our online time is its instant messenger service. With more of my friends on the site more often, I have found myself using this over more established services such as Microsoft’s Live Messenger, it is right there, quick and easy. Another significant move is Facebook connect. This service shows how Facebook is working closer and closer with other sites. The technology enables web sites to remove the need for their own registration process by giving access to services and information through a users’ Facebook login.

The really clever thing about all this is that with Facebook, registration and creation of an account is accepted absolutely by users. This automatically provides a huge, already accepting, market for any new services it bolts on. Google on the other hand, came from the opposite point of view. It was created as an open, free to all, search engine and as a result has struggled to change its proposition to a registration based model. Just look at the slow uptake of Buzz.

Rumours, insinuations and accusations have been bubbling around for a while now, but today’s announcement that the European Commission has launched a preliminary anti-monopoly probe into Google’s affairs is the first concrete action to challenge the firm’s tactics.

Brief summary without getting too technical – Google allegedly artificially demotes articles in its search results to discourage users from visiting particular companies.

Google’s response to today’s allegations has been simply to swat them aside, claiming “this kind of scrutiny goes with the territory when you are a large company.” They will also be encouraged that much of the disquiet can be traced back to Microsoft, making the claims seem like a case of sour grapes.

Google would also argue that its search engine algorithms are as much a part of its unique appeal and success as, say, Coca Cola’s or KFC’s recipes are part of theirs. SEO experts feel they have a general idea of how Google works, but many of the intricate vagaries and updates remain closely guarded secrets only revealed to an inner cabal. Google believe this is its intellectual property, and that making too much of the information available would weaken its position and open the company up to its competitors. All companies have their own ideas, and in a free society, they should have the right to hold onto them shouldn’t they?

The position is weakened somewhat by the fact that Google’s formulas are constantly being tweaked and updated. Coca Cola and KFC introduce new products, but their core offering remains basically the same as it has always been. Google can change its algorithms at a whim, constantly updating and reacting to patterns as it likes.

Many in the industry have a love/hate relationship with Google. For some, Google is a team of evil scientists, seconded in Silicon Valley bunkers coming up with ever more diabolical schemes to rule search engines and, one day, maybe even achieve total world domination. Google Government anyone? For others a paragon of what can be achieved through always being one step ahead of the competition.

My suggestion to Google would be: a little transparency can go a long way. Give us a crumb of insight, enough to dampen the criticism, but you can always leave your audience wanting more.

Image via Wikipedia

Last week Google announced its new social networking feature, ‘Buzz’, which gives its Gmail service similar features to those found by social networking giants, Facebook and Twitter.  Google executives describe it as the “poster child” for Google’s future: ‘a social networking structure that automatically finds people to connect with you.’

The new Buzz module will allow all 176 million users of Google’s Gmail service to see their friends’ live status updates, and share photos and videos.

Sound familiar? Been there, done that, got the Facebook/Twitter account already?

With social media success stories like Facebook claiming 400 million active users and Twitter recently reaching 75 million users, do we really need another social networking tool? Buzz is unlikely to usurp either of these services ; it doesn’t seem to add anything significant to what they already do and it certainly doesn’t attempt to do them any better.

To add to this, Google also faces competition from Yahoo and Microsoft, which have already added social networking features to their web mail products: Microsoft’s Hotmail and IM products between them claim close to 500 million users.

Also, what are the benefits for businesses? As we know, Facebook and Twitter have both been useful tools for building and maintaining brands, but what does Buzz offer? The answer is nothing at the moment as the service has not yet been rolled out to those using Gmail within organisations – this is due to arrive in March 2010. However, if it is a success, brands would be foolish to ignore the service, as experts predict that, if it was adopted by all of Gmail’s existing users, it would slingshot past News Corporation’s MySpace to become the world’s second-largest social network – behind Facebook.

Despite the cynicism and doubt surrounding this new service (and the growing privacy concerns), we must not cast aside the fact that Buzz has access to a large talent pool of engineers and it stands on top of existing Gmail, mobile devices, and a dominant search portal. Indeed, if Buzz grew, users could integrate with all Google apps and aggregate the entire internet. So, at this stage, I’m going to sit on the fence and say let’s watch this space.

Last week saw the announcement in the press of the Indian Premier League’s plan to stream the whole of the 2010 tournament live via YouTube. As many commentators have noted over the past week, this calls into question the whole notion of TV rights. With the focus of entertainment shifting more and more towards online video (recent statistics in the UK prove that services like iPlayer are showing no signs of slowing their popularity), how long will it be before we see more of these type of deals being agreed?

This announcement will probably not raise too many eyebrows in Europe. Cricket is popular in England, yes, but only when England are taking part. The absence of Andrew Flintoff and Kevin Pietersen from this year’s IPL means there is little focus on the tournament in the mainstream media. But what would happen if a similar deal was announced for something much more coveted by the masses? For example, the clamour has always been to make the Ashes free to air again. What could be more open to view than a tournament streamed online?

The main benefit of streaming online is obvious – the ability for advertising to pervade the consciousness on an ongoing basis (banner ads, in-game advertising), rather than being restricted to 30 second ad breaks. This is particularly useful during football (soccer, for any US readers), where the game does not have the same natural breaks as other sports. The issue of quality is no longer an issue either, with YouTube able to host content in Full HD 1080p. More and more TVs now come with widgets and internet video capability, so mass participation can be achieved without everyone having to crowd round a small computer screen. You can watch YouTube anywhere and everywhere; lunchtime kick offs and major differences in time zones become less of an issue.

Measuring consumption on YouTube (and other online video platforms) is easier too. Do broadcasters really know how many people are ACTUALLY watching their flagship sports coverage? Google and YouTube know at a glance. What kinds of people are watching? If you’re a registered user, Google and YouTube know all about you and your habits (for better or worse, but that’s another debate for another day). Plus, we all know the pattern that the adoption of new ideas takes – get the sports fans and the music fans in first (the live stream of U2’s gig on YouTube received 10 million views last year). Everyone’s talking about online video this year.

However, as with most landmarks and advances in online and social media, it is unlikely that there will be an instant spate of these deals being agreed in the short term. What normally happens is there is a wait and see mentality. Let’s see if this pilot programme works out; if it falls flat, everyone will say ‘well, it was never going to work was it?’ If it takes off, well then the sky’s the limit. Many people already use illegal streams to watch English Premier League games not shown on Sky and ESPN. Niche sports only covered in passing by major broadcasters could be given a new lease of life through a YouTube stream. Broadcast rights negotiations are going to be much more interesting in future. How many other companies have competed against the power of Google and come out victorious?

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• YouTube Dabbles in Live Sports With IPL Matches (mashable.com)
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Last week Google quietly added an interesting new feature to its Insights for Search tool, predictions of future search trends. If you don’t already use Insights, you should, it’s a useful tool for monitoring search trends in order to get a good picture of how consumer interest in specific brands and topics rises and falls over time.

Google’s latest improvement to the service, based on some very clever science which I won’t try to bluff my way through, enables you to see what the future consumer interest in brands and topics could be.

There are a couple of points to make about this. Firstly, for a lot of searches you don’t need a sophisticated algorithm to predict future trends, because the annual pattern is so consistent that it’s easy to make an educated guess about how the chart will look for the next twelve months. For example, the trend for the search term “cheese” is highly predictable, so most people could figure out the pattern for themselves.

Secondly, there’s no way the prediction algorithm can account for unexpected events, since it relies purely on past data to extrapolate future trends, so like all predictions it’s only of limited value. However, it may well prove to be helpful for planning, once we’ve ascertained how accurate its predictions are for the less obvious trends.  For example, the search trend for the keyword “ninjas” is much less obvious than that of “cheese” and this is where the tool could be really useful, in spotting more complex trends and patterns that a human observer would not be able to identify.

This is obviously going to take a little time – we need to record Google’s predictions for search trends now, and revisit them in future to see how accurate they were. If they stand the test of time, then we’ve got a powerful new tool at our disposal.

Positive and negative comments in groups on social network sites, such as Facebook, Flickr and MySpace reveal Disney, Nintendo and Google are the most popular brands. This comes from our latest research, Brands in Social Media.

Social networking groups are proving very popular in the UK. They are a very public demonstration of the connections between people and brands. Popular groups can quickly swell in numbers and influence large numbers of consumers online.

Understanding the sentiment of brand conversations is crucial. Frequency and popularity in the conversation is meaningless without a clear picture of whether the discussion is positive or negative.

We assessed groups set-up on three of the most popular social network sites: Flickr, Facebook and MySpace. We compared groups against the Interbrand Top 100 Global Brands. Groups that mention the top 100 brands were examined and brand sentiment (positive, negative or neutral in tone) recorded.

Automotive brands had the most loyal fan-based groups, Microsoft the most negative groups and Google hardly any negative comments at all! In fact, most Google groups were either advocating the search engine or explaining ways of using the technology.

The full report will be on our website on Thursday – for those that want the detail.

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