Is Britain fed up with Facebook?

With roughly half the UK population signed up to Facebook, there is no question that the social networking phenomenon has taken the country by storm. But with reports of a notable decline in user numbers in the UK as well as in the US, it would seem that our fascination is starting to fade. So what is potentially fuelling the decline?

Some people believe that Facebook has simply reached the natural limit of people who want to be engaged with social networking in the UK. Others seem to think that the eagerly anticipated Facebook iPad app will put user numbers back on track when launched. I would suggest that some of the main contributing factors to ‘Facebook fatigue’ could include the following:

• Worthwhile new features need to be added to keep users engaged
• Some people are beginning to reject the notion of giving up their privacy in exchange for non-stop communication
• Social networking can be addictive and waste too much of our time
• Facebook has been spending too much time focusing on developing countries, and neglecting established user bases in the process

Whether it reaches its goal of one billion users, or goes the way of Myspace over the next few years, it will be interesting to see what the future holds for the World’s biggest social networking service. Or will the Chinese buy it first?

Newspapers can thrive in a social media world

When the Guardian tweeted  on Wednesday evening about it’s live blog for that evening’s Apprentice show, it demonstrated very clearly how newspapers can embrace social media and use it to their advantage.  Forget print (long-term), integrating social media and using it, is how newspaper brands are going to survive and prosper.  By blogging about the Apprentice live, the Guardian is extending its influence and value and role as a commentator. It’s true that the Guardian understood the power of social media globally early on and embraced it with open arms. I really do hope it propers especially with its new digital first strategy announced recently.

Coincidently, Twitter has also been talking about the influence of social media in newspapers this week.   Twitter has recognized that it has become an invaluable tool for the media when it comes to finding  and sharing stories,  so it has now released a guide that shows journalists how to best use the tool in their daily work. ‘Twitter for Newsrooms,’ has no new info particularly but the fact that Twitter has launched an official guide for journalists is indicative of how social media sources make the news now.

Facebook has also recently undertaken a similar initiative, launching a Page for journalists on Facebook, intended to be a resource for journalists who want to incorporate social media into their reporting, networking and storytelling. The social network also kicked off a journalists’ meetup programme.

It’ll be interesting to see how social media tools and newspapers continue to integrate for the benefit of all. It’s a revolution and it sure is changing everything fast.

Social media sites are walking all over UK laws

To say that our current laws and jurisdictions can’t cope with global social media sites is becoming more and more self-evident with the latest football scandal which escalated over the weekend. Whilst the name of the  footballer was revealed via Twitter and abroad,  the English media were enforced by the injunction to stay schtum. It’s clear that our laws will need to be changed to embrace our new global world of communication and social media.
Whilst said famous footballer tried to obtain a High Court order asking Twitter to reveal details of users who had revealed his identity, legal experts claim it was doomed to failure because the High Court in London has no jurisdiction in California where Twitter is based.
There was an avalanche of online publicity with 100s of Tweeters repeating his name which was further reinforced when the Today programme, BBC Radio 4’s flagship current affairs show appeared accidentally to reveal the footballer’s identity – BBC correspondents then tweeted his name making matters worse.  As the Scottish Sunday Herald also revealed his name, it’s quite clear that the our global world that shares news online cannot be restricted by injunctions.  The law needs to be modernised because enforcing injunctions and controlling the media can’t last.

In the year 2036….

Last week US publication Network World published an article listing 25 ways in which IT will morph in the next 25 years. This featured notions such as storage becoming cheap enough for you to record every minute of your life and robots outnumbering humans in developed countries.

If the geeks quoted in Network World’s article are right, by the year 2036, all entertainment will be streamed in 3D via your smartphone, making Blu-Ray the last removable media format ever made. Our grandkids will have no idea what a CD or DVD is and on top of this, everything ever created will be available online, making Libraries disappear and books something to be seen in a museum.

This may seem a little extreme to some, but it got us thinking again about how many jobs will be available to the kids of today which don’t even exist yet. When I was in primary school, back in the early nineties, I remember my school buying two ‘Apple Mac’s’ which were subsequently shared between the entire school. I think I got to use one once! Nowadays, with widespread broadband uptake and the ever increasing influence of social media, schools are having to educate children for roles that don’t currently exist.

I.T. has always had its role models in Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and the like. However, as far as I am aware, these guys never had blockbuster films made about them. Not to the extent of Mark Zuckerberg anyway, who’s rise to fame was documented in the 2010 hit film ‘The Social Network’.

The meteoric impact of social media has given rise to a whole new generation of computer nerds wanting to be the next Zuckerberg. With this in mind, how long will it be before children are coming home from school and telling their parents that they want to be Content Hyperpersonalisers, Augmented Reality Engineers and Social Media Strategists when they grow up?

Mobile: the next big thing in Marketing and PR

The number of people accessing the internet via mobile devices may reach 1 billion by 2014, meaning mobile will overtake the PC as the most popular way to get on the Web. At the same time, more users will be consuming mobile apps with the mobile app market reaching $8.3 billion in 2014 compared to $3.8 billion forecast for this year.

This makes thinking about the marketing opportunities of mobile and mobile apps all the more pressing and exciting. Many brands are already incorporating mobile apps into their marketing and PR campaigns. Deodorant brand Lynx has launched a mobile app which encourages consumers to share their party experiences with selected friends by streamlining their social media activity in one place. The application will be promoted through the company Facebook page, YouTube channel and a dedicated website and will act as a media channel for future brand and marketing campaigns.

What’s significant about this example is how it makes the most of how the mobile platform allows marketers and PR professionals to interact with consumers regardless of time and location. The increase in mobile internet usage is a great opportunity for brands to engage consumers through social networks, while using dedicated apps and location-based websites to make their messages relevant to consumers. Additionally, mobile apps can be used to create innovative, interactive and engaging forms of content using specific Smartphone functionalities such as multi-touch navigation, cameras, GPS, etc.

Not surprisingly brands and media companies are focusing significant efforts on tapping into the mobile platform. In the era of mobility and social networking, mobile devices will have a profound impact on how marketers and PR professionals communicate with their target audiences.

A professional hot or not.

During my daily routine of checking the trends and happenings on Linkedin and Facebook, I found a website that seemed to mix the two.  If there were two social networks that I didn’t think had any need to interact it was these two.  My interest was captured, however, when I began to see a few more of my connections and friends using it.  Now it spans Twitter and your email contacts and invites you to choose who is the best at “social media” or “business development” or in fact one of any number of skills we may have listed on a CV. 

The next stage is what does Mixtent do with this data?  It works out your worldwide rank and the position within your connections and within your company. I am yet to see how accurate this tool is going to be, as there are a number of times when I vote for someone based on the fact that I like them or I know them personally.  And I am sure others will do the same thing.  It is interesting to think that in the future when recruiting you might simply disregard anyone whose worldwide rank is outside the top ten percent. 

If this site does hit the tipping point, then it won’t be long before we will be throwing around terms like, “So what’s your Mixtent rank at Creativity?”

Communications today is about relevance say Brodeur

A great blog from Andy Colville and our friends at Brodeur on the changing world of communications and how ‘relevance‘ now sits at the core of their agency’s mission. Brodeur is committed to helping clients become—and remain—relevant in an increasingly noisy and turbulent environment. Relevance moves people from passive to involved and actually gets them to act. As we know, simply shouting louder does not make you relevant. For communications to succeed in today’s rapidly changing communications world – campaigns have to be ‘relevant’. Here in Europe, onechocolate is doing something similar – listening to each client’s particular communications challenges and then delivering campaigns that have them joining the important conversations and getting them talked about in all the right places. Like the blog Andy and good luck with the new vision, it’s very exciting.