3 of the best

U.K. to Regulate Social Network Marketing

An interesting challenge for the ASA, trying to manage the seemingly unmanageable internet. There are a lot of questions I have on how exactly this will work, in terms of constantly changing adverts and how far their jurisdiction allows them to regulate.

Facebook has certainly had its fair share of scammy advertising and one would hope this goes some way to stopping it! What I would hope for more is that the ASA see Social Media as not just something to regulate but also to enhance their complaints system.

Are they monitoring social networks to see if there are any complaints on adverts or do they just wait for the letters and emails? A tiny step in the right direction.

Ribbon Hero

Last week we looked at how gameplay and social structures could encourage better behaviour. Microsoft have added a social game to their Office Suite. I think this could be a great way to encourage people to become more efficient and make better looking documents. The interesting thing about Ribbon Hero is that it hooks into your Facebook so you can challenge your friends and compare your scores. Props to Microsoft

A little bit of politics

As the election looms the BBC will start covering how politicians are using the internet to enhance their campaigns. I don’t expect we will see anything of the level of Obama but it will be interesting to see how the major parties use social media and how much of an impact it really can have. Keep your eyes on the BBC tech blog.

3 of the rest

Infographic: Mega Shark

If you have seen the laughable Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus scene in which said shark takes down a commercial airline. You may be very amused and informed by this Mega Shark graphic .

Which Test Won

A neat website for UI people with real world tests on how you can alter your site to get the results you want.

Family see Jesus image in Marmite

The lord works in mysterious ways, some people love that and some people hate that…it’s a bit Marmite you could say. Divine intervention also occurred in our very own office!

Last week the gaming communities were working together to uncover a mystery. The popular Valve game, Portal, had received a mysterious update that added a new achievement to the game. No other information was given from Valve and initially the update looked like it may have been due to some sort of legislation agreement claiming it had “Changed radio transmission frequency to comply with federal and state spectrum management regulations”

It quickly became obvious this wasn’t just a regular update and something was afoot. When moved to a certain place in the game, radios started transmitting strange signals and messages. Over the course of several days these messages were decoded by gamers. One morse code message translated into a series of letters spelling “LOL” – very funny Valve! Other noises turned out actually to be images when ran through Slow Scan Television (SSTV) application.

The most interesting transmission was a phone number that when dialed by a modem led to an old BBS (bulletin board). The password and username were worked out from the hidden images and more secret messages were uncovered. Various text and ASCII images all hinting towards something brewing inside Aperture Science, the game’s fictional laboratory setting began to emerge from the BBS.

The beauty of this campaign was not just in its clever design, but in the way the community responded. The only information that Valve gave out was that there was an update and it was up to the community to do the rest. Fans worked together across a variety of platforms and communities to unravel the mystery, with the gaming blogosphere picking up on every update as it happened.

This was a triumph in public awareness for valve but also one for the gaming community. A second game update extended the games ending and was shortly followed by an official announcement of Portal 2, but the ending is not as exciting as the journey.

The obvious take away from this would be ARGs are good ways of getting publicity, or clever marketing gets you buzz, but these are not interesting conclusions. The lesson to be learned from this is that your fans are your biggest asset and fastest way of spreading a message. They will speak louder and longest about your products than anyone else.

What this update did was supply fantastic fan service and give the fans something they wanted to share with everyone. Giving your fans something to get involved with and get excited about is much more fun than a press release!

Start thinking about how you can better treat your fans and how they can help you when you need them. They are not just a bunch of message board users to throw PR at.

10 links a week was starting to seem like a lot of links to read. 10 amazing stories all require quite a bit of time to read, so for a few weeks I am going to trial slimming down to 6. Let me know what you think of the new, leaner, fitter 3 of the best

3 of the best

Study: Ages of social network users

Social networks aren’t just for the young, but some definitely are not used by the old! Knowing which audience is on which social network and how they are using it is important for any monitoring or engagement. So swat up!

JESS3 / The State of The Internet

The internet, in case you didn’t know, is pretty big. Just how big? Watch this video. It is easy to get caught up in Twitter and Facebook (which do post big numbers in the video) and other Western-centric sites. But it is important to start realising the internet is global, and as Africa and Asia’s populations move more and more online it opens up whole new areas to communicate with.

3 of the rest

Jamie Oliver’s TED Prize wish: Teach every child about food

If you missed it recently Jamie Oliver gave a passionate speech on how we need to better educate our children in the way of food. We wish Jamie every success!

DICE 2010: “Design Outside the Box” Presentation

A fascinating talk that is worth anyone watching. Some real food for thought and we had some more fleshed out opinions of this over here.

Roger Ebert’s New Voice

A heart warming story from a real legend of the movie industry.

Last week this quite interesting talk from the recent Games Developer Convention surfaced online. Jesse Schell addresses a few key talking points but the most interesting to me was how Gameplay could be used as an incentive in everyday life. I recommend you find half an hour today to watch this video! Once you’re done my thoughts on how you could use these ideas in your business are after the jump.

Gameplay and progression are such powerful incentives for consumers and they become super charged incentives when placed in social structures. Farmville would not be played by the millions of people that play it if it wasn’t for its social foundations.

Plenty of local cafes run reward point schemes, they are all pretty basic, each purchase gets you a stamp, 8 stamps gets you a freebie.

These are fine but what more could those businesses do to make being a customer more fun? What about bonus points for coming outside of lunch hours, or achievements for being the first person to order a certain meal. Rather than stamps for purchases maybe you can use them to reinforce positive behavior, bonus stamps for saying please and thank you or bringing your plate back to the bar.

Internally why not give staff experience points for performing tasks, doing the washing up, eating a fruit each day of the week, turning up on time! You can plot these online or just on a whiteboard. Perhaps when staff “level up” they can be rewarded with different things “Congratulations on reaching Level 10 Tom you have unlocked a £100 bonus!”.

Start looking at your own business and look for areas where you want to positively enforce behavior, this may be in your customers or even your staff. Think about how game play and social structures can be used both online and offline to make being your customer and working in your organisation just that little more rewarding.

Word of warning just make sure your look at the strategy and not the technology. It is easy to get bogged down in setting up Twitter account and Foursquare sites but unless you know why you are doing it..dont! Also just because everyone else is doing it is not a good reason! Have fun and let me know if you come up with or see any great examples

High scores started in the arcades. Whilst “Insert Coin” flashed at the bottom of the screen the rest was a leaderboard of the best player with only 3 letters to identify them. Arcades were gaming hubs and being top scorer meant you were the best in the local area.

Those 3 letter names were infamous in friendship groups and you know who you needed to beat. It created a social incentive to want to be better than your friends, play one more time and put more money into the machine.

With modern online gaming the leaderboard is back. You can now see how good you are at the game compared to the rest of the world. But knowing you are 231,321^st out of 2 million players isn’t as impressive as being in the top 10 in your local arcade.

Some of the most powerful incentives we have are social ones, and trying to be better than millions of other people will only compel the few. We need to make the leaderboards local and unique to each user. This creates a much higher social incentive and makes players play more to beat their friends.

Games are turning our social circles into personalised leaderboards. Every user has a unique leaderboard that only shows the scores of their friends. Being the best of your ten friends is a lot more compelling than being better than millions of strangers.

The beauty of these modern games is that they can always be connected online. They can always be plugged into our social circles.

This means no one ever needs to play a game in isolation (unless they chose to) it also means you don’t have to play a game with everyone, you can choose to just play with the people that matter to you.

Now when I play Bejewelled Blitz on Facebook the game is constantly reminding me of how I am doing compared to my friends. I don’t know if I am the best player in the world, I don’t even know if I am in the top million, but it doesn’t matter.

What I do know is that (for a short while) I had the highest score of all my friends and it was great, but my high score just encouraged others to play until they beat it.

This is just the first step soon games will go beyond reflecting your social circles scores. They will start using our social circles to make our games more personalised and unique to us. Our experiences will be used to enhance other peoples games and we are starting to see the beginning of this with games like Spore using our friends creations in our game to make our experience matter just that little bit more. I expect a whole lot more of this over the coming years.

Now I must go and get the top score again on Bejewelled!

I have spent a fair amount of time saying how games need to bring themselves closer to the social web, it now looks like the social spaces might be ready to shoot/splice there way into games.

Even in this day and age of developer blogs and podcasts there is still an element of mystery around how many games comes to exist. There is no mystery however on the origins of “Dudebro: My Sh*t is F*cked Up So I Got to Shoot/Slice You II – It’s Straight-Up Dawg Time”. This game was born by an off-hand comment on a messageboard and by trying to belittle the common “hardcore” game the user cuyahoga has ended up inspiring one!

After creating that title as a way of mocking the “mature” games, cuyahoga inspired the popular gaming forum Neogaf into an idea frenzy. Users began to speculate on what the game might be, what Dudebro looked like, how the game played until it was decided they would make it into a real game. (check out the full story here)

Not only was Dudebro created in Social Media, the creators are using a variety of social tools to make the game. Right now the team is creating design docs using Google docs, using a Wiki to share information on the game, Youtube is being used for users to audition for voice parts or share their Dudebro music, there are Twitter and Facebook pages, there is even a Cafepress to purchase DudeBro Merchandise.

The game, regardless of final quality, will be a great triumph for the hundreds of Neogaf users that have come together to create something. It is inspiring to see a group of people using the power of social media to find all the creators they need to make the game work. What is an important take away is that although the final game may not be as grand and impressive as a retail game, these guys are already using Social Media tools in a far better way then the majority of their professional peers.

I think big developers and companies could learn a lot from how these guys are using Social Media. It isn’t just about setting up a Twitter and Facebook for marketing, they are using tools for internal communication and collaboration. These tools are not just for the community managers and digital marketers they are for everyone! Start looking for communication problems and opportunities in your business (be they internal or external) and start experimenting with social tools and see how they can enhance the things you are already doing.

I look forward to seeing how Dudebro turns out later this year

Here at Qube we (obviously) believe in Social Media as a platform for change. Social media and the Internet are such important parts of our daily lives it makes sense for public officials to start using it as a way of making a positive difference to our country. With that in mind we thought we would start highlighting some of the best and worst uses of social media and the Internet in official communication on a weekly basis. With the election looming it seems now more than ever social media will be important for the political parties.

More of This

This week saw political figures respond to questions asked by social network users. Barak Obama spent half an hour answering a variety of questions from Youtube users. While he was only able to answer a few of the 11,696 questions asked it was great to see the president of the United States taking the time to respond directly to his citizens. The video has received almost half a million views and has over 9,000 comments. That shows a great level of discussion and influence with a smart piece of crowd sourcing.

Over in the UK Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg was taking part in a similar endeavor. Reddit users had been asked to submit questions for Nick and then vote up their most popular questions. Mr Clegg then answered these questions in a refreshingly under produced Youtube video. It was great to see a party leader taking the time to go into other communities and get involved in discussions.

David Cameron has also taken some time to answer user submitted questions. Although the Liberal Democrats approach of going into existing communities may be preferential to some, it is great to see the Tories taking this action (they also have a nice and slick system for submitting and voting for comments).

Why is this worthwhile? A couple of Youtube comments from Nick Cleggs Reddit video make it perfectly clear why.

The next step is for the parties to get involved in these comments on their own videos

Less of This

Labour have a bunch of “tools for your website” on their official site. Rather than focus on their own policies they seem to have taken the school boy approach of throwing insults. There are a series of “satirical” widgets that you can install on your site to show txt speak conversations from the Conservatives. Hardly the most thought provoking or conversation starting stuff. Instead of creating fake conversations for your site perhaps they should help voters engage in real conversations with the party?

Have a look at the offending item below and let us know what you think. How do you think the political parties should be using social media?

5 of the best Social Media stories of the week as chosen by the Qubites. Also 5 of the rest aka “Things MC Hammer says you can touch”.

5 of the best

Google’s Privacy Principles

There are times when I worry about how much Google knows about me. They know all of my web history, my conversations, my personal blogging…the list goes on. On the one hand I can see how it creates better results for me (in both the paid and natural results) as well as providing me with plenty of highly useful services for free. How much should our privacy cost though and how much are you willing to give up? This video calms me a little that Google is thinking about these things and says they will let me remove private information when I choose, but is this enough?

UK Internet Map (as featured on the BBC’s Virtual Revolution)

The BBC’s new show on the virtual revolution had an amazing 3D diagram of how Internet traffic flows in the UK. Here you can see it in all its 2D glory and realise that maybe cyberspace isn’t as big as we think, or at least for all its size we visit a few websites very often and the many websites much less.

The State of the Internet

We love pretty graphs. Here is a collection of useful and interesting top level views of how people are using the Internet.

Five lessons from MyDavidCameron

My David Cameron is both a stab at political satire and interesting social experiment. I would recommend that everyone running social media campaigns reads the findings and see how they reflect their own experiences. I particularly like the “Crowd Sourcing is Good” and “Crowd Sourcing is Bad” section.

Government 2.0: Communication and Engagement Are On a Collision Course

Couldn’t agree more with the differences between communication and engagement strategies. There is a huge difference between using Twitter as an alternative to the phone or website and actually going out and engaging in conversations where members of the public are. Food for thought for any government officials.

5 of the rest

70-Minute Video Review of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace

Any Star Wars fan (and Phantom Menace hater) should find 70 minutes to enjoy this beautiful, witty and spot on analysis of the Phantom Menace that shows how off-base Lucas really was.

Internet archaeologists find ruins of “Friendster” civilisation

Very funny and makes you wonder how long it is until something similar to this becomes reality. Maybe I should start trawling through the way back machine for similar findings, I wonder how Friends Reunited is getting on. Also this Onion video has me chuckling .

Ashen’s Tech Dump – Retro Games

The BBC are doing some great web comedy content. Short in length but not low in quality. This is a funny look into the “past”, They don’t make them like they used to!

The “Blog” of “Unnecessary” quotation marks

This is a very “Funny” series of photos

Facebook is the most popular social networking site in the world with over 350m users and counting. With every person (and some animals) in my family having an account it seems the social media revolution is as mainstream as it could be. With that in mind you would be silly not to have a Facebook presence right?

Before you dash off and put some pack shots and a link to your micro-site on your Facebook take a step back and consider some of the following:

1. Who is your Facebook page aimed at?

Notice I asked who your Facebook page is aimed at, not who is your product aimed at. A product can have many target audiences so making a one size fits all page may end up not appealing strongly enough to anyone but making it too specific may alienate too many. Make sure you know who you want to target so you can tailor the page to best meet their needs.

2. What interests that audience?

Knowing who you are targeting is just the first step, different audiences require different communication strategies. Some audiences will want facts about the product (how much is it, when is it out etc) others may be interested in a behind the scenes look at how it was created and others will be more interested in engaging conversations around the product and its subject matter. For example Wii Fit users may want to talk about their progress and other fitness tips and Lost fans may want to talk about their show theories and ideas.

3. Do you need to create content?

Creating content, such as videos, is a great way to get people talking about your Facebook presence and while it may not cost the earth you may find that time spent creating content could be better spent engaging. As just discussed different audiences have different needs and you may find that putting all your time and effort into responding to every question that needs answering and stimulating conversations is a much better use of your resources. If you do decide to create content make sure you still keep involved with the community or at the very least continue to make great content.

4. Is this community for your product or your brand?

It seems a fundamental question to the creation of your Facebook page but one that frequently isn’t answered. Successful products these days are often turned into a franchise, iterated on or spun out into other products. If this is the plan for your product why try to create a community from scratch with every release? Creating a brand community can spread the news of more than just one product and build a fan base over many years not months. That said creating a umbrella community for your brand can lead to the page being too broad and you may want each product to have its own bespoke page.

5. How will people find out about your page?

We all want to believe the things we do are so good that everyone will just turn up to get involved, but that isn’t how the world works. You may want to create great content that people will share with their friends, word of mouth may be free but the cost is in the content. You may decide that driving people through targeted advertising is your best bet. Leading people to your Facebook page instead of your micro-site may be a better method for your traditional advertising also. You could also use traditional outlets and influencers to spread the word but as before make sure people have a good reason to do this.

Simply put, know your audience, know what they want and then give it to them. It seems so obvious yet so many people overlook it. Facebook is just another platform and not the be all and end all, you may decide you are better off creating your own community, or using another social network. Do what is best for your product or brand and not just what everyone else is doing.

5 of the best social media stories of the week as chosen by the Qubite’s. Also 5 of the rest aka “ Stuff we thought woz interestin’ ”.

5 of the best

Data.gov.uk

Probably the biggest news of the last week was the government launching data.gov an online platform for all its publicly available data. On a basic level this means you could search the site rather than submit a request under the Freedom of Information Act. On a more exciting level it means developers can use this data to create interesting applications and websites. Check out a couple of websites that have already been built Safer Streets and Where Does My Money Go.

Test Tube

Just like Google uses its Labs to show off new ideas and experiments Youtube is doing the same with Test Tube. Insights for Audience and Comments search are really useful for finding out what the Youtube audience is interested  in and talking about.

Preparing for the Launch of the Games and Applications Dashboards

Prepare for another change to how you use Facebook. The current Facebook interface for applications and games has always felt a little makeshift. Now Facebook have created a special dashboard for users to get all of their information in one place. Hopefully this will mean I stop getting ugly duckling gifts on my wall, thanks mum.

Does your company really want to hang out with me?

A succinct and spot on observation of how some businesses still use Social Media. I have lost count of the number of times I have heard Social Media referred to as “A marketing channel” or “promotional tool”. Stop trying to push your message for just one minute and actually listen to what the people you are shouting at want to say.

Your State of the Union

Even with data.gov it looks as though our government is still playing catchup with America. Not only will this years Citizens address be streamed live on Youtube, but users will be able to submit questions to President Obama! Users can then vote on their favourite questions and some of the highest rated will be asked to him the following week. Now that is Social Media!

5 of the rest

Charlie Simpson -  Just Giving

This young man wanted to raise some money for the people of Haiti with a sponsored bike ride. He set himself a target of £500, a whopping target for any one child to raise (I think the most I managed was £50 for a junior fun run.) He has now raised over £160k not bad…not bad at all Charlie. An amazing achievement, but I wouldn’t hire him as my financial forecaster.

Music spies a Spotify sunrise

We are big fans of Spotify here in the Qube office, but have often wondered whether or not it is financially viable. Well it seems the answer is yes and no. Other than the UK and Spain subscription levels are good, but us Brits don’t mind persevering through adverts to get ourselves a bargain. Personally I would like to see more features for my £10 a month. What would get you to upgrade to a Spotify premium account?

Billy Moyers interviews David Simon (creator of the Wire)

If you are a big fan of The Wire this is a must watch. If you haven’t seen it yet this video does contain spoilers…so don’t watch it, just go buy the complete box set here (Do we get commission for this?). You can thank me later .

Functional – why simple, small and cheap appeals to all

Some great examples of why cheap and simple works! Sometimes the best solution is the simplest.

TV shows on Youtube

Not sure how new this is but I just found that Channel 4 and 5 have put all their on demand shows on Youtube. Seems like a smart idea to me. It is a shame that they have disabled comments on the videos though, would be a great way to create conversations and get feedback on episodes.