The number of honey bees in the UK has halved over the past 15 years; a loss with huge ramifications as these little guys are responsible for pollinating over a third of our food. That means one in three mouthfuls of the grub us Brits guzzle is produced by bees.
So fewer bees in our fields means less food for us and less cash for the Kingdom. In fact, due to their vital role in the agricultural process, honey bees are estimated to be worth around £200million to the British economy.
What can I do to help?
Tweet a message of support to our very special bee beard. Once we’ve collected 10,000 of your lovely messages, we’ll hand deliver them to Number 10 on fancy stationary as a proper petition.
If you’re brave enough to don a real bee beard, let us know. We just might pick you to be the brave lad/y to hand over this Twittiton to Mister Cameron.
Last week Apple launched Ping, their iTunes-based social network. Described as “Facebook meets Twitter meets iTunes”, the new service will allow people to follow artists and friends (like Twitter), create a profile that displays their musical tastes (like Last.fm and Spotify), and a news stream showing what your friends are listening to (like Blip.fm, mFlow and various other streaming services).
It has all been done before, but not necessarily all in the same place: with 160 million iTunes users, it stands a fighting chance of overtaking other social music networks. One million users signed up in the first 48 hours, but if it’s true that one-third of the people who have downloaded iTunes 10 have joined Ping, that still leaves two-thirds who didn’t bother. Take a look at the video tutorial here, give it a try, and see what you think.
Lady Gaga on Ping
Social iPlayer
The new, socially connected iPlayer has finally emerged after months of beta testing. New features include the ability to personalize your viewing experience by connecting with Facebook and Twitter,as well as recommending and commenting on your favourite programmes.
Facebook Credits Gift Cards
Gift cards loaded with Facebook Credits are now available at US retail giant Target. The virtual currency allows users to purchase goods within Facebook’s plethora of social games and applications. The virtual goods market is expected to reach $1.6 billion in the US alone this year, with $835 million coming from social games alone (figures from Inside Facebook). If this launch proves successful, expect to see similar partnerships in the UK soon.
Facebook Credits Gift Card
Draw and Fold Over
The Campaign for Drawing is gearing up for October’s Big Draw with a fun “Draw and Fold Over” game. Simply start a digital drawing on the microsite, then pass it on for your friends to complete via Facebook and Twitter. Thanks to our Edinburgh friends @davelaw00 and @lalrinn for brightening my Monday with this – see if you can make one better than ours!
Google has added Skype-like functionality to Gmail: you can call landlines and mobiles from Google Chat, for free. It’s currently available only in the US and Australia, but keep your eyes peeled for the UK launch: the service has already proved popular, with over a million calls made in the first day.
Diaspora Launch
If you’re tired of Facebook’s increasing ubiquity, you have only weeks to wait before you can jump ship: Diaspora will launch its consumer facing alpha version in October. The open source code will be released on the 15th of September, giving developers a headstart to think about how the project can be integrated with existing services.
Interactive Twitter Murals
The Canadian Tourism Commission has placed giant touch screen murals on US high streets to display real time updates from people talking about Canada. What better way to inspire the persuadable passer by? Hat tip to Pipa for finding this.
Arcade Fire Streetview Video
This is really rather lovely. Arcade Fire are seamlessly integrating Google Street View images in their latest music video – “The Wilderness Downtown”. Simply enter your childhood postcode, and watch as the video is populated with your own nostalgic landscapes. Clever use of HTML5 – thanks to @blackplastic and @samstokes for spotting it.
David’s Bee Beard
Save the bees! LBi and Your Mum have teamed up to draw attention to the plight of the humble bee. Tweet your support to David’s Bee Beard and watch as the beardy petition becomes a mighty swarm.
After months of speculation, Facebook Places has finally launched. Sadly, you can only play with it if you’re in the US: just one of many initial complaints about the service. Apart from alienating international early adopters, the service also allows other people to tag you at locations, a function which Gawker swiftly pointed out would be open to all kinds of abuse. Yet again, Facebook has launched a service by automatically opting all users in, without making the opt-out sufficiently easy.
While Facebook is still allowing other location services to synchronize updates and checkins, they have also just purchased Hot Potato, which implies they are keen to get a technological headstart so they can quickly overtake rivals. You have to wonder how long other providers will be able to stay in the game. After all, it’s probably not a coincidence that the new Facebook Places logo looks suspiciously like a four, in a square…
Do We Still Need Websites?
This article provoked intense debate in the media team – do we still need websites? Admittedly, after the attention grabbing headline, Pete Blackshaw quickly moderates his opinion: “Websites are not going away — they might be more important than ever — but they serve a different and evolved purpose today, especially in this new “social” context.” Worth a read.
Hoaxes and Counter-Hoaxes
First, whiteboard Jenny did the rounds. Then we all found out it was a fake, leaving some people angry, and others saying it didn’t matter because it was such a funny story anyway. The news even made it mainstream because so many newspapers and traditional media channels fell for the hoax (including Fox News and the Telegraph).
Last week, a similarly “too good to be true” story started circulating: a little known DJ, Nick Pittsinger on Soundcloud, had discovered that Justin Bieber slowed down 800% sounds like Sigur Rós. Immediately there were rumours it was a fake, and this was reported as fact by various internet news channels, such as MTV. Turns out it was real after all.
Journalists: check your facts! Sometimes the internet lies.
Twifficiency
You may have seen Twifficiency mentioned in your Twitter stream over the past week, but maybe you didn’t bother finding out what it was. It’s a pretty simple tool that “calculates your twitter efficiency based upon your twitter activity”, and then tweets your score. The problem is, when first launched, it didn’t ask if you wanted your results published: this led many people to accuse it of being a spam app. It also enabled massive viral growth, as anyone curious about their score automatically publicised the results unintentionally. The failure to ask permission was in fact due to the 17 year old coder’s lack of familiarity with OAuth, a bug that has since been fixed. James Cunningham wrote the app for fun: he got a thousand followers overnight, scored a trending topic on Twitter, and an article in Time about his success. Well done.
Google continues to snap up companies that may be useful in its struggle against Facebook: last week it was Slide, this week, it’s social payments company Jambool. The $70m price tag implies Google are willing to invest serious money reinvigorating Google Checkout so it can compete with Facebook Credits.
Official Tweet Buttons
Twitter is launching official Tweet Buttons that will enable article sharing and retweet counting across third party sites. Much like Facebook’s social plugins, this will provide a consistent method of embedding Twitter functions with minimal coding complexity.
The New Tweet Buttons
Facebook Pages Change Again
Just a minor cosmetic issue, but if you have a bespoke tab on your Facebook fan page, it may need a little tweaking due to new sizing requirements for custom pages. This may cause extra design costs as brands scramble to implement changes before the 23rd of August. The narrower page format fits with a new profile layout, expected in September, that allows more space for wider ad units.
Foursquare Visualization
If you’ve been checking in on Foursquare for a few months now, you might be wondering just how much of your location data the service has stored up: take a look at this visualization to see your movements tracked over time, and compare it with your friends to see which venues you have in common.
See where you have been, and compare with friends
The Twitter Movie
Yes, it’s a spoof of the Facebook movie trailer. Thanks to Ken and the CRM team for passing this on.
JetBlue and Steven Slater
In the aftermath of the Steven Slater story, JetBlue has given us another great example of how not to use Twitter, responding to a tweet from comedian Andy Borowitz with a little sense of humour failure. Have we learned nothing from Nestlé’s Facebook disaster, or @BPglobalPR? You can’t tell people not to make fun of you on a social media channel: it’s like sticking a sign on your own back saying “kick me”.
