You may have heard about the new US start-up that’s been making the headlines recently. Of course, it’s yet another social network. But this is a social network with a very different twist.

Backed by a Twitter co-founder, the site is called Blippy. Much of the design, functionality and user experience mirrors Twitter. It requires you to share your debit/credit card numbers with it, as well as your bank account details and other online accounts such as eBay or iTunes. Every purchase made on these accounts is displayed, in real time, to other Blippy users online.

What did you buy today?

To many, this may seem like the most outrageous sacrifice of privacy and security. Yet the Blippy founders think it holds the key to learn more about deals, new products and consumer spending habits. Surprisingly, quite a few have signed up. 5,000 volunteered to try it during private testing, sharing information equating to $5million worth of purchases. Since launching publicly in January, Blippy has persuaded more than 13,000 consumers to sign up and has even piqued the interest of a number of US investors.

Another key element is the data that Blippy offers, which details where you shopped and the money spent per purchase. It even prints a description on occasion and in the same window your friends are invited to comment on each transaction. So if I saw a DVD a friend of mine purchased, I could ask them if they liked it.

Living this publicly online could be a step too far for many. Especially given the concerns raised recently over location-based and social network sites making it easier for criminals to ascertain when you’re not at home. Despite this, I’ll draw on what Facebook founder Mark Zuckerburg said recently, which is that ‘living publicly is now the social norm.’ Blippy, therefore, could be the one to watch this year.

A recent campaign on Twitter, so-called “twitterbombarding”, introduced us to a new level of interaction with the microblogging site. Comedian Ross Noble (@realrossnoble) started the campaign in December 2009, targeting both individuals as well as corporations. There was no specific logic in selecting the targets; someone could suggest a target to Noble (as they did with Nick Griffin) or Noble came up with the target himself. The intention wasn’t to cause any animosity or aggravation toward the targets. The idea behind twitterbombarding wasn’t for Ross Noble to be the focus point. He was looking to do something fun, see how to master a practical joke online, if you like.

Having encouraged his followers to bombard a selected target with ridiculous questions, it would then be a waiting game to see how the target would react. Would there be direct replies, would a company provide a holding statement or would there be silence. Targets varied from Kerry McCarthy (Labour MP Bristol East) and Doritos, to BNP and Nick Griffin.

Ms McCarthy took the campaign in her stride: in the space of six hours, she answered more than 100 questions. The BNP responded with silence, posting general tweets but ignoring the commotion on their pages. This was like throwing fuel into the fire as the tweets got more and more provoking, looking for a reaction from the BNP.

Are campaigns like twitterbombarding likely to become a norm? I don’t think so. Random twitterbombarding is meant to be a form of amusement, keeping us occupied online. A coordinated PR campaign would very quickly become spam which would undermine the campaign completely. If the audience is seeing a campaign as spam, it is very easy to block users on social media sites, such as Twitter. Quirky brands that look to flirt with danger with their PR activity might pull a campaign like this off; fans of more traditional approaches should steer clear.

If a client is targeted by a guerilla campaign similar to the twitterbombarding, the response has to be reviewed on a client-by-client basis. Brands such as Doritos are perfect for some online banter; would more traditional/conformed brands benefit from taking part? The good thing about campaigns of this nature is the possibility of answering selected questions. No one is expecting all questions to be answered. I see the campaign as a great opportunity to communicate directly with the end users. By showing the brand is listening to them, this can only be a good thing, surely?

This week the Guardian online posted a blog on the rise of social media as a relevant source of information for journalists, as revealed by a recent US survey which claimed that 56% of reporters view it as an important tool for producing stories. The research carried out by Cision and The George Washington University, showed that over 89% of journalists make use of blogs while conducting their online research, with two thirds turning to social networking sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn.

But, is this a good thing? Are journalism standards slipping?

There is certainly a strong advantage to using social media as part of journalistic research. Its global reach and speed means that stories can be documented and sourced as they are taking place – the New York Hudson River plane crash is a great example. Ferry passengers were able to tweet about the accident before TV crews even got to the scene.

However, social media shouldn’t be used as the sole source for stories, but rather it should sit alongside public relations – providing interviews and access to sources and experts to help paint a fuller picture. It still begs the question as to why the media is so obsessed with social networking?

Phenomenon! Everyone loves to be in the middle of a newly discovered craze and social media is currently it! Flick through the national papers and there will undoubtedly be a story relating to social media. As a PR professional, I have been told by numerous news desks and news agencies that stories relating to Facebook or Twitter stand a much higher chance of being selected than those that don’t.

Why? Because social networking provides that much needed human interest angle that the media loves, especially tabloid papers. The fashion designer, Alexander McQueen died tragically last week but rather than lament on the fashion world’s loss guess what the papers chose to write about…the string of ‘weird’ Twitter posts that he had left during the run up to his death.

So, celebrities and politicians be afraid. It’s no longer what’s lurking behind your closet that matters but what’s lurking on your Facebook and Twitter page!

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.

With Obama’s ‘masterful use of social media’ and the tweets of his 3 million Twitter fans sealing the election of the Democrats’ golden ticket, can our politicians and parties emulate this success and seduce the online masses and turn them into advocates?

There’ll be new blood on the hustings. According to Home Office sources, 134 serving MPs will be “spending more time with their families” instead of contesting in May (87 Labour, 35 Conservatives, 7 Liberals and 5 others.) While natural churn of MPs is only to be expected for personal, health and career reasons, that is an almost 50% rise on the 85 who stood down in 2005.

Various news sources have indicated that this might have something to do with expenses, surely not! Nevertheless, the stage is set for new firebrand candidates to fill the vacuum and the re-standing candidates to face fresh competition. These candidates have been immersed in social media explosion of the last 5 years in their private lives and now are looking to galvanise support with it through their political careers.

The vast majority will be utilising social media and search mentions to push their agenda and their shiny politician faces, at present a mere 81 serving MPs are without their own website.

New web savvy and Twitter prolific Prospective Parliamentary candidates (PPCs) or ‘iMPs’ include Chuka Umunna (Lab, Streatham, Twitter following 1,397) Iain Lindley (Con, Worsley and Eccles South, Twitter following 481) and Bridget Fox (Lib Dem, Islington South and Finsbury, Twitter following 698.)

We’re not expecting the right honourable member for Bexhill and Battle to boast a Twitter following in the millions, but parliamentary process is becoming more and more integrated with social media, one need only look to the fervent activity on Tweetminster to see that.

Over the next few weeks we’ll look at how specific iMPs’ social media campaigns are progressing and our ever changing Election Dashboard will also analyse how Brown, Cameron, Clegg and co are competing in the social media stakes.

Finally, there’s always that elephant in the corner to confront after the election dust has settled: ‘Does a big online following translate into a seat in the Commons?’

I’ve always been intrigued by the use of competitions as a PR tool. How effective are they in reaching the right people for your brand, and do people take notice of much else other than the prize on offer?

With this in mind, I wanted to look at Twitter and how it’s currently being used for competitions in online PR. Search for the word ‘competition’ and you’ll immediately come across a number of different ways that they are currently being hosted and talked about. Three such examples are:

Retweeting or following to enter, often asking you to include a web link or similar

Asking a question or for an opinion – the answer being your entry into the competition

Announcing a competition initiative hosted elsewhere i.e. company website

Obviously, they all demand a varying degree of involvement and as such the ‘RT and win’ option seems to spread most effectively around the Twitterverse. The obvious problem with this is that the competition host isn’t providing much reason for potential entrants to engage or remember them, apart from the one or two people that actually end up winning!

It raises the question as to whether it’s better to build up a large number of followers using these tactics, or whether you invest in a competition idea that gets followers interacting with you (hopefully creating brand advocates in the process).

There’s bound to be many examples of those who have reaped rewards with both methods but I think it’s important to keep in mind the following when deciding on the best way to use Twitter competitions for your brand.

What is your long-term social media strategy? If you’re using a competition to boost follower numbers, have you thought about to maintain these numbers and ensure they stay engaged and interested.

Is the prize relevant? Countless competitions on Twitter lure in entrants and followers by offering iPods, mobile phones and other desirable products. Think about the message the prize you choose conveys, is it benefitting your PR image or Apple’s?

How creative or thought-provoking is your competition? If you come up with something quirky and unusual, you may find it inspires discussion outside the competition itself.

Just for fun I thought I’d use Google Trends to compare the leading social networks in terms of how much traffic they’re getting from UK web users. This first chart shows that Bebo and MySpace both declined at a fairly similar rate over the past 12 months, while Twitter has been steadily climbing.

What’s interesting is that all of these sites seem to have levelled out over the past couple of months at approximately the same volume of visitors – between 110k and 150k unique visitors per day. Obviously there are some clear long term trends here, so it will be worth revisiting this graph in a few months time to see how things have changed.

Now let’s see what happens when we open the door and let the big hairy Facebook gorilla into the room…

That puts things into perspective a little, doesn’t it? But when we look at the trend, it seems Facebook has been stuck on a plateau of around 2 million unique daily visitors for the past 12 months. If anything, the trend seems to be drifting ever so slightly downwards.

There are a couple of caveats to this. First, this data is based on Google’s own estimate of website traffic, rather than the sites’ own analytics – although I’d argue that if you were going to trust any third-party estimate of traffic volume, Google’s would be the most accurate.

Secondly, these are visitor numbers, not user numbers. Facebook’s UK user numbers have increased over the same period (although they seem to have levelled out recently too) which could indicate that users are visiting the site less.

Another issue with these stats is that they are likely to miss a large chunk of regular Twitter users who do not use the site through their browser, but through third party tools like TweetDeck. Some analysis puts the number of users who access the service via such tools at 68%, so that’s a potentially huge volume of Twitter users who aren’t accounted for in this graph.

This would put Twitter far higher up the chart than Bebo and MySpace, but still nowhere close to Facebook.  Despite a clear upward trend, Twitter still has a long way to go before it can compete with Facebook in terms of audience size.

You might be aware that Twitter recently updated its terms and conditions, so we thought it was worth highlighting what these changes might mean for brands that use the micro-blogging site.

Advertising

Although no specific announcement has been made regarding advertising, the new terms make it clear that Twitter is seriously considering using adverts to generate revenue. Clearly, this will have an effect on organisations which use Twitter as a PR and marketing channel – the main implication being that they could end up with adverts on their pages that they have absolutely no control over.

We suspect what will happen is that Twitter will roll out advertising at the same time as paid-for ad-free accounts to kill two birds with one stone, since no business would want to allow third party adverts on its page, least of all if it had no say over what those adverts will be.

Content Ownership

Twitter makes it clear that publishers still own the copyright of their tweets, but by publishing them on Twitter they allow the company rights to distribute that content through its websites and API. There’s very little to worry about here, Twitter isn’t about to start doing nasty things with people’s content, since that would immediately scare away all of the business users which are most likely to contribute to its future revenues.

One potential issue in this area is that the content is published to the API which third party developers can then use for any number of things. At the moment there’s nothing bad happening in that space, but it’s worth keeping an open mind about what unscrupulous people might use the content for in future – although it’s safe to assume that Twitter will quickly block access to anybody who’s using the API for illegal/spammy behaviour.

UPDATE: Netimperative reports that Twitter has ruled out introducing advertising this year.

There’s been a huge amount of discussion about how Twitter can be used most effectively for online PR and marketing, and there’s no shortage of interest in the subject since the mainstream media became obsessed with the platform. The only problem is that most of the current analysis is either lofty strategic level stuff, or is based on the assumption that you already know a lot about Twitter, neither of which are much use to the majority of people who just want to know where to start.

This prompted us to produce a practical guide to help PR and marketing professionals get some real value from Twitter, without assuming that they already have a deep understanding of the service.  You can get hold of a free copy of the Twitter for PR and Marketing Professionals guide on our website – we put a lot of work into it, so I hope you find it useful.

If you haven’t got time to read the whole thing, the following diagram outlines the basic steps you should follow to incorporate Twitter into your comms activities. It’s a very brief overview, and the full guide goes into a lot more detail about how you can accomplish each of these steps:

Simply put, you first need to monitor Twitter to find out what people are saying about the issues that matter to your organisation, then learn how to participate in the Twitter ecosystem appropriately in order to gain acceptance, and then you will be in a strong position to instigate the kind of conversations that are important to you.