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Weekly Social Media Update

Posted by Jamie Pither November 17th, 2011

‘Girls who like boys who like boys’ premieres on Twitter

The Sundance Channel is showing the first episode of its new series of ‘Girls Who Like Boys Who Like Boys’, on Twitter. It’s the first time that Twitter has been used to broadcast a major television show before its release. The broadcast will be accessible to watch via a TwitVid embed on Sundance’s Twitter profile on Friday 18^th November.

Over the last year real time Twitter chatter during television viewing has increased dramatically. This broadcast placement will harness the combination of Twitter as a realtime conversation and media platform, and is a major step in helping to shape how we’ll behave while watching things, in the future.

Starbucks Cup Magic

Starbucks have created a free augmented reality app as part of its festive activities in the run up to Christmas. The app called Starbucks Cup Magic conjures up five Christmas characters that appear in animation on your phone when placed in front of a range of Starbucks products.

Users are also given information on the latest seasonal Starbucks offers through the app and can also create a personalised Christmas card which can then be shared with friends and family via Facebook. Users who activate all 5 characters will be entered into a draw to win Starbucks prizes too!

Foursquare experts, check-in here

The location-based social networking platform Foursquare is now giving users the chance to conquer a series of levels for each one of the core 25 expert badges on offer.

• You now hit Level 1 for checking in five times to a place in a category, or three unique places.
• Level 2 is for five unique places.
• And from there, every level up is five more unique places, so you get rewarded for exploration!

The added levels will help users to identify who the experts of the Foursquare community are and will also help to inform the decisions that users make in the real world – great stuff Foursquare.

Tags: augmented reality, Badges, Broadcast, Cup Magic, foursquare, Level-up, Starbucks, Sundance, twitter

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Weekly Social Media Update

Posted by Jamie Pither November 4th, 2011

Mentos Negative Tweet Eliminator

Mentos, the well-known mint, has created a Facebook application that eliminates negative tweets in real-time. The app is virtually managed by a positive zen guru called Dragee who uses the power of Mentos to eliminate negative tweets which include the words ‘fail’ or ‘hate’ among others.

The app is  a great example of how to creatively bring together both Twitter and Facebook in one campaign, using the open nature of Twitter to supply real-time content to the Facebook page.  Why not try sending out a tweet using the campaign keywords and look out for it on the Facebook page here.

Water Forward by Charity: Water

The non-profit organisation Charity: Water has begun a new initiative to help raise $10 billion for 1 billion people who don’t have access to clean water. The initiative is called ‘WaterForward’ and allows donators to place a Facebook friend into the Water Forward charity book when they complete a $10 donation. The idea is that the Facebook friend who has been added to the book will then make a $10 donation and add one of their Facebook friends to the book and so on.

The only problem is that you can’t put yourself in the book so you’ll have to wait for one of your Facebook friends to add you. When the book is filled up it will be printed and bound to keep as a memento, so let’s hope the infectious spirit continues on.

The Ebay Inspiration Shop

Ebay has setup an offline inspiration store in the form of a shop window with the help of designer Jonathan Adler. Cleverly merging the offline with the online world, the Ebay Inspiration Shop in New York City contains a collection of over 20 items that have been selected by influential trendsetters such as model Coco Rocha. Each item is displayed next to an individual QR code which directs users to similar items of the same trend when scanned.

The Inspiration Shop may seem like an extensive way to make a transaction as opposed to walking into a normal store, but for passing shoppers and the usual window shoppers, the inspirational item in front of them could lead to increased purchase intent compared to a normal Ebay purchase. You get to see what your item could potentially look like in real life. Check out the Facebook Page here.

Tags: book, Charity:Water, donate, Ebay, Facebook, Mentos, Offline, qr, realtime, Shopping, twitter, Water Forward

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Polar Bears and Dual Screening

Posted by Ed Beard October 28th, 2011

On 9pm Wednesday night David Attenborough was back on our screens telling us about the frozen parts of our planet.

I didn’t watch it but when I hopped onto twitter on thursday morning there was still plenty of chat aligned to #frozenplanet.

Except it didn’t really look like chat.

It looked like a bunch of statements.  Now this could be because of the nature of Frozen Planet.  It could be because of the nature of its audience.  Or it could just be the way things are.  To get a fuller picture one would obviously need to look at a much wider range of programme types.  It’s a reasonable guess to expect things may be different for X Factor.

Anyway, speculation only gets you so far.  So we delved into the data to see what actually happens around Frozen Planet. In particular I wanted to know if the ‘shape’ of conversations changed in the build up to the show, during it and after.

Or put another way does our social-ness differ when there is a live event to dual screen to when there isn’t.

And sure enough it does.



Volume of course changes -and the rate of posting is of course highest during the show itself.  Again – for X Factor you’d expect much higher volumes.

But would you expect different shapes?  Only more research can tell us that.

In the case of Frozen Planet the shape does before, during and after the show.

BEFORE – the excitement of anticipation is worth conversing about.

The run up to the show is when people are at their most conversational. And it’s also when they retweet the most. Consequently, or causally, it’s when people are least likely to make original statements.

DURING -I’m enjoying this and I simply want to tell people about it.

People are at their least ‘social’ during the show. People are then truly in broadcast mode. The fact that retweets are at their lowest during this period may also suggest people aren’t looking that much at end what others are saying.

AFTER -in your own words, I was there.

And then after. I would have guessed that this is when conversations were at their highest. But it’s when they are at their lowest. And it’s also when retweets are at their highest. Post event it appears that many simply want to affirm they were part of the experience and they are happy to use other peoples content to do so.

As I’ve already mentioned this data refers to just one programme, and one specific type of programme at that.  We’re only just beginning to look into this.  With time we’ll be able to tell what is common to dual screening in terms of social-ness and how different genres and audiences interact around ‘social objects’.

And insight how the before, during and after nature of ‘social-ness’ differs.  Because that way we really will be able to be part of the conversation.  Or statement.  Or retweet.

Because face it. There is more to life than simply providing a hashtag.

Thanks to Jennifer Clapton, Darcie Tanner and Sinead Doyle for their help.

Tags: Data, dual screen, dual screening, Frozen Planet, live events, Retweet, Social Media, twitter

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Say thank you

Posted by Simon Gill October 6th, 2011

“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”

The world says thank you Steve

Tags: RIP, Steve Jobs, twitter

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