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

5 of the best social media stories of the week as chosen by the Qubite’s. Also 5 of the rest aka the “Bazaar of awesome”.

5 of the best

Google end censorship in China

Google will be ending its censorship of results in China. Google’s mantra is “Don’t Be Evil” and it looks like they might be living up to it.

Ad Agencies Please Know That Social Media is Not a Tactic

Too many times companies treat social media as another tick box without much further thought.

TV ad? “check”

Print ad? “check”

Facebook page? “check”

Social media is a conversational platform and not just another place to plaster your witty advertising slogan.

Zuckerberg: I know that people don’t want privacy

A fair few articles popped up around Zuckerberg’s recent comments on privacy. I have mixed views on internet privacy but you have to hand it to Facebook for being so willing to make huge changes to their product. Many companies get stuck for years with legacy systems that just don’t fit into the ever changing landscape.

Children who use technology are ‘better writers’

I have often wondered how the internet and social media effects literacy. Using the internet means we are often reading and writing more than ever. Sure there are arguments to be made about the quality of the writing, but being able to use the internet is quite a big incentive for someone to get literate.

The great specialist vs. network agency debate

As I work for a specialist social media agency I may be biased (slightly) but I would say the network agency have quite a lot of catching up to do in the social media space.

5 of the rest

Why I believe printers were sent from hell

The Qube printer is one of Qube’s most hated office appliance. Second is the stapler that always hides itself and decides to stop working when you finally find it.

ASDA Complaint – Welsh Pizza

What a punchline!

How to make Jack Nicholson very happy

I have no idea if this picture is real, but it is perfect in every way.

Audi A5 “suicide ad” still touring the web. p.s It’s still a spec ad and not real

This advert may not be real but it is expertly put together and very funny. I wonder if there is a way to track this fake ad to traffic, brand awareness or sales of Audi?

FARMVILLE Commercial!!

After my social gaming blog post about Farmville I received this funny and spot on video.

I am running out of collective commons images of the number 5! Might have to start making some myself. Here are this week’s 5 best social media stories and 5 other things of interest.

5 of the best

SMEs are smarter than you think

It is great to see so many SMEs using social media! In this day and age I think you would be a fool not too and it is an area that can really define you as a company. Social media isn’t free and doing it right will cost time, but the benefits are there for all to see.

November Data on Facebook’s US Growth by Age and Gender: Young Men Following the Women

A huge increase in the amount of males signing up to Facebook last month. Any ideas why? Tom in the office thinks it is because of Movember (being that girls cant enter and all) but it still seems a bit much to me! Please tell me if you know why

No Comment

I love this article (Kudos Hellogames). A really interesting perspective on what it is like for a company see their product talked about online and all the range of emotions. I went to the Eurogamer Expo mentioned and played the game with a lovely Hellogames man, and I thought Joe Danger was amazing! So put me down for a copy and here is some more positive word of mouth for you.

GiffGaff

People powered mobile phone network. Interesting. At the moment they also have free internet browsing, might drop a couple of these sim cards into some Christmas stockings .

Online portal gathers wedding photos from guests

Really interesting idea. You can already do this sort of thing with Facebook, Flickr or even Google Wave, but those services usually require a bit of tech savvy and an account! A good social service to bring all the memories from one of the most important days of your life together.

5 of the rest

My real name is David Jones

I believe we have posted about “Letters of Note” before. This one is well worth checking out .

Watson urges action on “UK Games Council”

I think it is about time Government took the UK Games Industry a bit more seriously. There is a lot more to the industry than warping our kids minds with guns and violence .

Google Me

This is like an American Dave Gorman. I have only watched a short amount of it, so will someone please let me know if it is worth watching all the way though .

Cute Overload

This is CUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUTE!

The Infinite Monkey Cage

A new podcast from the BBC that is somewhere between comedy and science. I have enjoyed the first 2 episodes so far and I have learnt some really interesting things, there is a jurrasic revalation on the first epsiode that shocked me to the core!

Ten top quality stories (hopefully) half on social media and the general online world we work in….the other a mish-mash of silly, brilliant, funny, exciting, surprising and cute stories (again…hopefully)

5 of the best

Social Media Spins Into Specialization

An example of all the different services and businesses that offer Social Media in some form or another.

Oddities of outreach…

I love this quote “An outreach program should have only one objective; can I make these people fall in love with what we’re doing?” The reason the best advice in social media is to make great content and be honest is because it works! Great read.

Henry 8.0 – The Book of Faces

This is a bit hit or miss and it’s only real saving grace is Blessed. Still worth checking out though, they are all pretty short .

Just Married: Groom Changes Facebook Relationship Status at the Altar [VIDEO]

I am quite a big geek, and I think geeky things like “Should I give my child a fairly unique name so they can get the URL and a good Google rank easily”. However there is no way I am geeky enough to want to update my social networks at the altar!

Google to limit free news access

Looks like Google were the first to blink in the free news war of words with Murdoch. You can see what this is all about in a previous 5 of the best.

5 of the rest

The End Of The CrunchPad

I didn’t even know I wanted this until I found out it no longer existed. I assume $300 would translate to £300 but that would still be an amazingly cheap device considering the alternatives (which there aren’t really many of .) Fingers crossed this will flicker back to life.

Twitter Creator Launches ‘Square’ — Like Smartphone Paypal for Credit Cards

My favourite bit of how this works: “In order to accept credit card payment using Square’s iPhone app, a merchant attaches a card-reading dongle to the smartphone’s audio input — or “any device with an audio input jack.” Once the customer signs the phone with their finger, the transaction is complete, after which the app can e-mail a receipt to the customer:” Very clever! On a similar note I predict the next iPhone will have an RFID tag and allow payments oyster card style.

Christmas Cupzilla Cupcake

Feeling festive? Nothing is more festive than eating a Christmas cake..probably.

Saving Private Robin?

Robin Williams hasn’t really made me laugh in a while, but this was really funny.

Ministry of Sound To Take Over London’s Jubilee Line

This might just be so uncool that it is cool!

5 of the best

American Airlines fires an employee for…customer engagement

Oh dear! Another airline that isn’t making the most of its social media. Obviously we will never know the full story behind all of this but if this was the main reason this member of staff got sacked it strikes me as a little careless!

Q&A: Sienne Veit on Marks & Spencer’s social media strategy

A run down on how M&S are opening up to social media. Nice to see big brands understanding that it doesn’t matter how many fans or followers you have if you are not engaging with them. We need metrics that favour quality over quantity

Tweets from the Streets

I think we often take for granted the lives and comforts we have. It is great to see that the Internet and social media is allowing for more social good to happen in society. It has also made me think more about my attitudes towards homeless people and reading their tweets really brings it home (no pun intended).

Dan Siroker: CarrotSticks, Google Chrome, and Obama

Where does this guy find the time to do all these things! Really interesting interview especially around engaging and educating young people online.

Twitter Trending Analyses

This isn’t a mathematical equation but it is a very good observation of how things become trending topics on Twitter

5 of the rest

Amazing soda shop

In an age where selling out to big corporate is not only common place but often the business plan it is nice to see someone bucking the trend. It makes you stop and think what would we gain from having a bit more variety and independence in our lives.

How to use an apostrophe

I will be first to admit my grammar isnt isn’t always the best. This helpful guide will improve yours (or make you laugh, hopefully one of them)

Cell Size and Scale

A scalable picture that takes you all the way from a coffee bean to an atom, very cool!

Murdoch to pull newspaper content from Google

There isn’t much more to say on this other than, oh dear…what a silly old man.

A Gramophone that Plays the Earth Instead of Vinyl, and a Sonic iPhone Epidemic

You don’t need to be able to play a guitar to make some music Just get a plough!

Hopefully you know what kind of communities you are looking for and the language your audience use, but how do you use this to best find the communities you want? Well there are plenty of tools out there and here are some of the most commonly used tools here in the Qube office.

Google search

Obviously Google is a good place to start! Typing in the kind of community you are looking for will get you some results but check out the filter options for a more refined search (see below). You can then see just results from forums or blogs and change how recently they were updated. This is always my first port of call and its flexibility should cover a large amount of your communities, especially those that fall outside the big social networking sites.

Twitter search

Searching Twitter is a great place to find up to the minute thoughts and feelings on a topic. Twitter has two ways of searching, Twitter search and Find People. Find people will get you names based around the terms you have searched for but the real power of Twitter is its search tool which will find everyone that has mentioned your term in the last fortnight. Remember you can refine your results with the advanced search options like below. Twitter is a great way for finding influencers around your target audience.

Facebook search

Facebook has had a recent overhaul to allow more Twitter like search results. You can filter your results into people, pages, groups and updates. Make sure you look across a range of these to find the best communities and influencers.

Social Seek

A desktop app that will search across a variety of popular social networks and blogs and pull in the results. The nice thing about this app is it will also give you charts and visualisations as well as allowing you to export the data, this can be really useful when trying to analyse a community or term.

Brandwatch

The only paid for service on this list but if you want continued and extensive community finding it is a great tool. Especially recommended for high end users just make sure you have a clear set of defined terms you want to find communities around.

Tools are just the start of any community mapping and they still require a high level of care and attention. The communities you find will only be as good as the words you put in so make sure you thoroughly semantically map your audience. A combination of these tools should get you to the majority of places your audience is talking but just incase you want to try a few more tools to really maximise your coverage here a few more: IceRocket, BlogPulse, Omgili, Delicious and Blinkx.

Let me know if you have any other preferred tools or why you use these tools in the comments

Our 5 favourite Social Media stories from the past week and  5 other random things that may or may not be interesting.

5 of the best

Twitter search deal: five things you need to know

Get the low down on why Twitter appearing on Google and Bing is a big deal.

Social media: the best and worst of 2009

The end of the year is approaching so it seems about time for some year reviews. What are the best and worst uses of social media this year?

Google social search

Google is adding in search results from your friends and online connections. Will be interesting to see how this feature develops over time. Are you prepared to share your friendship groups with Google? Do you think they already have enough information on you?

Social Seek

A handy desktop tool for finding mentions across social networks. It also gives you location specific mentions, lovely

Media140: How Twitter has affected brands

Twitter has been in the news a lot recently (again!) but how is all of this affecting our brands and businesses?

5 of the rest

The World of Tomorrow (If The Internet Disappeared Today)

What would our world look like if the Internet went away?

Google Chrome Themes

Not that exciting a video at face value, but let the video finish playing and it has a very nice surprise . Really interesting use of Youtube to show a new feature but also to see it in action before you install it!

Google Power Meter comes to the UK

Now you can track your energy usage and work out where you can save money thanks Google. I would also recommend checking out Wattson for a similar service.

Satellite tracking the postal strike

What happens when there is a postal strike? The Guardian attempts to find out.

Flutebox and Beardyman

This might be quite old to some of you but for those that haven’t seen it go now! So awesome…I wish I had mad skills

Our 5 favourite Social Media stories from the past week and  5 other random things that may or may not be interesting.

5 of the best

Don’t blame social media for bad behaviour

I think too many times blame is shifted from people to something else be it films, games and now Social Media. It is clear that these things have changed society but that does not mean they are making us bad people. While people are quick to point out bad behaviour on Social Media sometimes not enough mention is made of good behaviours, helping someone with a question on Twitter or catching up with old friends on Facebook.

A Wiki of Social Media Monitoring Solutions

Here is a nice long list of tools you can use to monitor Social Media activity. Brandwatch and Google are my personal favourites.

Calling Open Data Developers: We need your help

Last week I mentioned that the American government was moving forward with its transition online and that we needed to catch up. Only a few hours later this blog post popped up from the cabinet office. Would it be sycophantic to say maybe someone was reading my blog? Probably! Still good on them, lets hope it leads to the UK having a government 2.0.

87 Cool Things

Google have put together a list of cool things from the internet. It is great to see how the social web allows us to mashup our content to create something new. One of my favourite discoveries from this list will be appearing shortly in 5 of the rest .

WikiLeaks

I came across this after the story that a government document about stopping leaks onto the internet, was leaked onto the internet! You can’t make this stuff up. This is a fascinating repository of information and who knows what could turn up in it next.

5 of the rest

What is Google Wave?

There has been a lot of fuss made about this Google Wave thing, but what is it? This slightly tongue in cheek video might help you understand it a little more.

Daytum

I hinted at this earlier from Googles “87 Cool things”. It fascinates me. I have always wondered about my life statistics, how many chips I have eaten, how many times I have been to the doctor. This is obviously a very manual way of doing it but a nice looking tool. I intend to start using it and I think you should too Lets see what we can track over the coming months and what we find. Check out one of the creators reports for insperation.

Letters of Note

Weird and wonderful letters from all sorts of people. Such as Lindsay Lohan getting a telling off!

Kashiwa Mystery Cafe

The Cafe where you get what the person before you wanted.

Neurosonics Audiomedical Labs Inc.

A slightly creepy but very entertaining video