We Are Social’s Tuesday Tweakup #4
Google launches Realtime search page
Google launched their new Realtime Search homepage to add to the real-time search features already in place in the main Google search. The homepage allows people to search on particular terms geographically, to review conversations as they happened by altering timescales and to set up alerts for real-time conversation. They have also produced a video to show you how to get the most out of Realtime:
Social media across the generations
Older users have been noted as ‘especially enthusiastic’ about embracing new social networking tools over the last year, with social networking use amongst those over 50 in the US nearly doubling from 22% in April 2009 to 42% in May 2010. Uptake in those over 65 grew by 100% from 13% to 26% in the same period. At the other end of the spectrum, ‘tweeny bloggers’ are growing in number quickly as more take to their computers to write. The Independent reports that while only 2% of 8-11 year olds in the UK have a blog, almost 20% would like to start one, and that the trend is likely to continue with tweeny blogs becoming more and more popular.
Facebook’s growth (or lack of)
With the 500 million marker being passed a little while ago, there’s stats suggesting that Facebook could be close to reaching saturation here in the UK. Despite this, there’s plenty of growth elsewhere, with stats showing that Facebook is now the top social network in India and Arabic taking a clear lead as the fastest growing language on Facebook.
Organic Facebook page fan growth slows down
Robin wrote a great post on Facebook Places last week tying in lots of the best information on what it is and how it works. Well since then, Inside Facebook has noticed that the algorithm, which determines what users see in their news feed, must have changed to boost impressions of Facebook Places. It appears that pages have been given less weight in people’s news feeds and places are getting more, thus leading to a significant decrease in the amount of new likes per day which is shown in their graphs.
Foursquare fights for its place in the social space
With Facebook Places having launched in the US, and being just around the corner here, there’s speculation about the future of Foursquare. But fear not Foursquare fans (and brands) because, as well as reaching nearly 3 million users, there’s a heap of new bits and bobs coming soon. So keep your eyes peeled for potential improvements such as the integration of Facebook Places, a mobile-friendly site, photos, how close you are to being mayor, points 2.0, rewarding more than the mayor, better friend communication and a recommendation engine. In addition to offering more to it’s users, Dennis Crowley has said that Foursquare is in the process of building a self-serve tool for creating brand profiles – thus putting an end to the lengthy process of applying to Foursquare and having them manually created.
Nutella migrates fans from unofficial pages
Nutella have recently combined multiple fan-run Facebook pages from around the world into one official global page. Originally these pages were owned by extreme fans of the brand and were kept updated regularly, but since they’ve migrated fans from other pages into theirs there’s been barely any activity (in fact they’ve posted a message saying they’re on vacation for a while). Let’s hope their fans are prepared to wait…
Facebook ‘likes’ help with determining popularity of clothing…
Urban Outfitters has begun arranging the clothes on its website by the number of Facebook ‘likes’ each item has been given by its 312,000 Facebook fans. Visitors to the US website can choose to sort clothese by their Facebook popularity when they arrive on the page.
…or lack of clothing in Playboy’s case
Meanwhile, Playboy have started their search for a Miss Social, the girl most Playboy Facebook fans would like to see undressed in the next issue. Social Media Influence reports (with one of the best opening lines we’ve seen of late) however that the contest has not driven as much interest as may have been expected with such a hook.
Cat bin lady
When a security video was uploaded to YouTube of a Coventry woman throwing a cat into a wheelie bin, there was a huge public outcry which quickly manifest itself into death threats from individuals on several Facebook pages. Mary Bale was outed by 4chan members (b-tards) in a matter of hours and she was placed under police protection soon after her details appeared online. Interestingly, one of the pages which has attracted over 45,000 ‘likes’ has now dissipated the public anger by focusing on raising funds for the Coventry RSPCA.
Climate Camp get ridiculed for their middle-class demographic
We’ve all seen how social networks can be used to lobby people together to campaign for a particular cause, for example when Greenpeace boycotted Nestlé and their use of Palm oil in KitKats. But what about when it all backfires? Well last week Climate Camp tried using Twitter to publicise their protests at the Royal Bank of Scotland corporate HQ but it all went wrong when Twitter turned against them. It appears that they’ve cut down on using the #ClimateCamp hastag since it was swamped with ridiculing tweets such as this and this.