Ofcom, the independent regulator and competition authority for the UK communications industries, has just released its first dedicated report on social networking in the UK. It’s free to download and makes very useful reading - essentially an extremely well researched one-stop primer on the whole subject. Alternately, if reading a report is just far too ‘old media’ for you, then you can watch a summary video - just click on the YouTube screen I’ve embedded above.
Largely based on Ofcom’s own quantitative and qualitative research, the report highlights a range of interesting usage findings - such as:
- The UK apparently has a higher level of social networking site take-up than the US, Japan, France, Germany and Italy. The only country where social networking is more popular is Canada.
- On average, adult social network users have profiles on 1.6 sites and check their profile at least every other day.
- Nearly a quarter of those who visit social networking sites are aged over 50.
Of particular interest to me is the attitudinally-based segmentation of social network users and rejectors developed on the back of the qualitative research, which provides some useful insights into different audiences for social networks.
The report also examines privacy and safety issues, including both primary research and a literature review.
Overall, it’s a must-read for any marketers working with social media (or just wanting to know what it’s all about).
All this great research insight for free! Go on… hit download, grab a cup of tea, and go read it.
Do The Green Thing is a great site that launched earlier this month, aiming to help as many people as possible to do something to help protect the environment.
There are already a whole host of sites around aiming to do the same thing. But, what makes this one really different is the way it addresses the whole issue in a fun way - and its beautifully crafted style (no surprise, given that one the people behind it is Naresh Ramchandani, formerly of advertising agency St Lukes).
There’s a vast amount of fun content (the videos in particular are fantastic) and to encourage you to keep on doing the green thing you can sign-up to receive regular videos with ideas of more green things to do.
(This post is part of Blog Action Day- 15,000 blogs of all shapes, sizes and specialisms uniting for one day by publishing posts about the environment)
I’ve been wanting to post about this for a while, but waited until now because today is Blog Action Day - with some 15,000 blogs of all shapes, sizes and specialisms (including this one) uniting by publishing posts about the environment.
We all know that we shouldn’t leave our TV, DVD player, etc. on standby when they’re not needed because of the amazing amount of energy that is wasted. But, because you don’t see the impact of such simple actions it’s easy to forget.
Well, not any more. This wonderfully cool little gadget is a Wattson. Using a wireless transmitter attached to your electricity meter or fuse box, it shows you - in Pounds Sterling (or Euros, Dollars, or Yen) - exactly how much electricity your home is using at any time. Plus, to help remind you to do the right thing it also glows blue when you’re not using much electricity and flashes red when you’re using a lot.
Creatively called ‘MySpace Platform’, it is expected to comprise a set of APIs and a new markup language that will allow any developer to produce advanced applications with the ability to access member information (profile data, friend list, activity history, etc.) - rather than just sit on the surface of the site as a plethora of MySpace profile pimping options currently do.
This launch has been expected ever since Facebook opened itself up to 3rd party applications in the same way back in May - in a move that has contributed significantly to that site’s astonishing growth since then.
For digital marketers MySpace platform will offer a whole range of new opportunities to engage with the MySpace member audience in a far more sophisticated way than ever before. For those watching the race to be top social networking site, things look set to get interesting again.
Apparently there are now over 9,000 blogs (including this one) signed-up to take part in what is being heralded as the first ever Blog Action Day on Monday 15th October.
This is one of the best interactive online ad campaigns I’ve seen since ‘ave a word’ for Mini, in terms of its connection with the target market and viral potential.
Launched to promote the Bob Dylan compilation album coming-out next month, it utilises one of the most iconic images of Dylan there is - by enabling you to personalise the cue cards the man himself drops in the Subterranean Homesick Blues sequence from Don’t Look Back, the documentary of his 1965 UK tour.
For Dylan fans of all ages this movie sequence brings back fond memories of the man and his music, no doubt proving a highly effective prompt to re-live them through this compilation release.
Not only is there a microsite where you can enter the ten words or phrases you want on the cards, but the same functionality has also been built into a Facebook app in the best example of Facebook advertising I’ve yet seen.
At the end of last month Facebook announced a major change in the way it measures and ranks applications – shifting from a simplistic approach based solely on the total number of installations to one it claims is based on ‘user engagement’.
In its announcement on the Facebook developers blog, ‘engagement’ is defined as “the number of users who touch your application every day (measured from midnight to midnight each day)” - with ‘touch’ being based on the summation of four key touch points: Canvas Page Views; Link Clicks in FBML; Mock-Ajax Form Submission; and Click-to-Play Flash.
This measurement is now displayed alongside each app in the application directory as the number of ‘Daily Active Users’ together with a percentage showing what proportion of that app’s total number of installations that represents – and app rankings are now based on either Most Active Users or Most Active App.
Right now, the app with the Most Active Users is Top Friends - with 2,773,134 active within the last day, representing 18% of the apps total number of installations (as shown in the screengrab above).
This is undoubtedly a real step forward for anyone interested in the marketing potential of Facebook apps – in particular because it enables the clear differentiation of fad apps from those with lasting user appeal. For example, you can compare Top Friends’ current 18% active rating with that of the recently popular app Food Fight which scores just 2% active over the last day. Pretty clear which is a fad app there.
Officials in China have announced that, starting this weekend, the cartoon police officers shown above will appear on the country’s 13 most popular web sites to warn users to avoid unapproved websites and encourage them to report anyone not abiding by the country’s censorship rules. Their beat will apparently extend to all websites registered in China by the end of the year.
According to a report in the Telegraph, “They will be on the watch for websites that incite secession, promote superstition, gambling and fraud”.
While this latest initiative is being promoted as a reassuring presence for web users, elsewhere in the world it is being seen as just another attempt to restrict internet use and remind Chinese internet users (of which there are an estimated 137 million - second only to the US, who they are on track to exceed within the next two years) that they are being watched.
Online news for football fans. A report from online intelligence service Hitwise has revealed Liverpoolto be the most popular Premier League club - for the second year running - based on share of UK Internet visits to the top 20 club websites in the week before the start of the new season.
As seen in the summary table above, Manchester United took the number two slot followed by Arsenal - while Chelsea didn’t even make the top ten.
Last week saw the launch of Blog Action Day, an international initiative aiming to unite thousands of blogging voices and have them talk about one specific issue on one specific day – with the aim being to further global awareness of that issue and so contribute to bringing about positive change.
The inaugural Blog Action Day is scheduled for October 15th 2007, and the issue that its organisers are asking bloggers from around the world to focus on is the environment. As well as dedicating that day’s posts to reporting on issues relating to the environment, bloggers who make money from their sites are also being asked to donate the day’s earnings to environmental charities.
We’ve added this blog and the nonprofit fundraising and marketing blog I also write (Giving in a digital world) to the 1,300-plus already registered (not bad for under a week!), and will be seeking-out relevant fundraising topics to blog about come the day.
If you author a blog - on any subject at all - then dotake a look at their site and consider adding your voice to this innovative global initiative.
Some musings (from me and my colleagues at WWAVRC) about interesting interactive work and the innovations that are reshaping the way creative agencies operate.
