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

5 of the best

Old people talking about Facebook Exodus

Apparently teenagers are leaving Facebook as it is too full of adults, who wants their mum checking their Facebook wall after all. Anecdotally I don’t see much evidence to back this up, most teenagers I know cant seem to get enough Facebook! There are also a bunch of Youtube opinion videos from teenagers for some interesting insight. One thing I would say to many of those complaints against Facebook is that it is just a tool. A tool that is only as good as what you do with it, so if someones status updates annoy you just un-friend them. (more insightful Facebook advice is available on request )

The Whuffie Bank

A virtual bank, but not for your money. The Whuffie Bank is building a new currency based on our reputations. Twitter and Facebook are making our online reputation really important, we all excerpt our own influence over groups of people in different ways. This site offers you a way of turning your reputation into a currency that can be traded and used for … well whatever someone is willing to give you for it. I first scoffed at this site and thought “It will never take off”, but then I tried to be a bit more open minded about it. The money we use today is just a system we all believe in and use, what is to say a new virtual currency couldn’t exist and do the same? Food for thought.

YouTube to introduce live sports coverage

Youtube will start showing live sports shows, only Cricket for now but this marks an interesting move for the video sharing site. Obviously this means you can watch it anywhere without a TV licence, but what does it mean for the product? One of Youtube’s main features is the ability to rate and comment. This could be the beginning of live sport becoming social in a big way.

Virtual game purchases benefit Haiti Relief Fund

The recent events in Haiti have been tragic and is something we all need to help with. Whenever such atrocities happen companies often donate large sums of money, but more importantly those companies use their influence to encourage others to help. Hugely popular Facebook game Farmville has recently added some virtual items that can be purchased to support the Haiti Relief Fund. I think this is a great idea and something all people and businesses of influence should be encouraged to do. Think about how you can use your influence to help others when they need it most.

Manchester United bans players from using Twitter

After some high profile Twitter gaffs from professional footballers Man Utd have banned their players from having a presence on social networking sites. It is a shame that the club feels the need to control the PR of their players so heavily. The nice thing about footballers being allowed to use these networks is it actually made them appear as real people, with real faults. It also gave them direct contact with the fans who help pay their wages, something that is surprisingly lacking in the modern game.

5 of the rest

Silicone ‘clay’ lets consumers modify troublesome products

If the product you bought doesn’t quite fit the bill, maybe you can customise it? This stuff looks a bit like silly putty to me, but hey maybe it is just what I need to fix my action mans broken arm.

Crayola Color Chart, 1903-2010

How Crayola’s colours have evolved over the year. I like cool looking diagrams .

Crappy Taxidermy

This is a weird and slightly creepy site. Probably not for everyone and the title pretty much says it all.

Love Money

I have been whining about lack of really good online banking tools for a while, it looks like the banks aren’t listening but at least someone is! Love Money requires you put in your account name and password (which is a little scary) but in return offers you a financial breakdown of your spending in a really useful way. You can even set personal savings goals for it to track. Definitely one to watch.

Irrational Behaviour

For anyone interesting in videogames especially those create by Ken Levine (System Shock, Bioshock, X-com) should go check out Irrational games new website and should definatly check out their new podcast. A great example of how to do a company podcast and how to make it interesting.

An hour ago the Parlaphone Twitter account announced a competition to win tickets to the Blur film premier. To win you simply have to tweet #blurfilm more than anyone else does. Queue mass #blurfilm spam tweets. Wait, why is there so much spam? Parlaphone clearly said not to spam:

The problem is the entire competition was set up in a way that will always generate spam. In order to tell all of my twitter friends about the film I just have to make one tweet….that is how Twitter works. I make one tweet and all of my followers will see it. Sending each of them a message individually is still spam and unnecessary. This should have just been a random prize draw, even a Retweet competition would be better (although still spammy!)

Parlaphone in fairness use Twitter better than most, they interact with their followers and don’t just push news through an RSS feed but this is quite a faux pas. Fortunately it only lasted an hour, however even with the competition over some users seem unaware and are still spamming away.

Naughty Parlaphone!

UPDATE: Just got sent this screen grab from the Blur Facebook page encouraging users to tweet as much as they could. The comment has been taken down now, probably because the competition is over, but maybe to hide the spammy encouragement? Conspiracy! Double Naughty Parlaphone.

5 of the best social media stories and 5 festive stories for you . This will probably be the last 5 of the best until the new year. Have a merry Christmas from all of Qube!

5 of the best

The 100 essential websites

100 websites you cant live without, really useful list. A lot of the obvious things on here like Google and Youtube, some hidden gems though are Zamzar, They Work For You and  Say no to 0870.

Blippy launches the Twitter of personal finance

Personally I feel the financial services are way behind on online technologies. Not sure I want to go as far as sharing all of my purchases with my friends, but I can see personal uses for this, or perhaps allowing a parent to monitor their child’s spending. Shame it looks American like all of these awesome online finance tools (See Mint.)

Digg Dialogg: Trent Reznor

I like this use of Social Media for doing interviews (as long as the interviewer doesn’t then selectively pick and choose which to ask) but also this interview is interesting as it shows someone who understands how the internet works and how people consume media these days.

Extreme Gaming with an Epson Projector

Viral videos give me mixed feelings. Part of me feels I am falling into a marketing trap and the other part of me goes oooOO this is clever and/or funny. This viral video is more of the latter, a clever video that did kind of make me want a projector.

Will Facebook’s privacy blunder hurt advertisers most?

There have been a lot of mixed feelings over the recent Facebook privacy settings change. Are advertisers the ones who are really going to suffer most though?

5 of the fest

Family sees red over Christmas card ‘ginger kids’ joke

Bullying isn’t really a laughing matter, but sometimes people take political correctness too far. No I am not trying to say it is fine to bully people with ginger hair, it isn’t. What I am saying is she goes a bit far when she says, “I just said there was nothing wrong with being a ginger, or a ninja for that matter.”…. Err. Weren’t ninjas highly effective, trained killers?

French Roast

Ok not quite Christmassy, but there is some snow in it. Think of this as more of a Christmas present from me to you. A truly brilliant short film.

Sketchy Santa

The internet sometimes brings us together to share beautiful moments. In this case though it shows us some of the most horrifying child experiences many of us face….a sketchy looking Santa.

Rage against the machine for Christmas number one

You cant seem to move without this being discussed on social networks! Whether or not you want to partake in this, at least it is raising money for charity and now some of the band are also donating.

NORAD santa tracking

You may have seen this before but every year the NORAD (North american aerospace defense command) track santas movements across the world. I knew he was real mummy!

Welcome to Qube’s weekly video games column. We don’t have a name yet, but that can come later . Expect news, opinions, best practice and even the odd interview all focused around social media and the games industry. Excited? Good I am too!

To kick us off I thought I would get all social media and talk about a little social network called Twitter. All the rage in 2009, but how are games companies using it and more importantly how are they using it successfully.

The great thing about Twitter is it allows direct communication with your fans. It also helps that Twitter has certainly been embraced by the more geeky among us….many of whom just so happen to like video games.

The first mistake you can make is just to set up a Twitter account and spam it with links to your games or blog. That is quite a quick way to get unfollowed and recieve a negative reaction. What you need to do is engage with your followers and keep them interested. This is as much about customer relations as it is about marketing. Here are some great examples of games companies who really get Twitter:

Media Molecule (creators of LittleBigPlanet) use their Twitter account to to talk to their fans (duh!) but they spend a lot of time responding to peoples questions and spreading their love for their fans. Fan made sites, levels and sometimes Cakes are often Re-tweeted allowing the best fan work to be shared. Obviously they spend a fair amount of time talking about their game, but this is a Twitter account where the fans come first. Some Twitter highlights from Media Molecule include co-founder Alex losing his shoes and a request for Teabags resulting in loads of them arriving at the office, that’s crowd sourcing for you!Sega are really good at keeping their fans in the loop, interacting with them and also giving them great prizes! Every Friday Sega give away a bunch of prizes to their followers. This isn’t a #moonfruit retweet spam competition, just a plain old guess the answer to our question. This is about rewarding fans and having fun not spamming people until they hate you. I also really like how they use the one Sega account for all their English speaking regions, with responsibility flicking back and forth between UK and US with the timezones. It is a really great way of keeping the community together. Good work Sega!

Major Nelson, Director of Programming for Xbox Live, uses his Twitter account (and other social media profiles). Obviously this man is in a privileged position to Tweet out great content and news before anyone else, but what is really important is that he uses his Twitter account just like anyone else. There are plenty of tweets about Xbox sure, but he also tweets about his personal life. Keeping your Twitter account Human is so important, fans will engage so much more if they feel there is a nice person at the end of their @ replies.

Also big ups to @InfinityWard, @capcom_unity, @LucasArtsGames for creating top quality Twitter profiles too. If you want to find other games industry people on Twitter you should check out @samhouston’s list over at GameIndustryTweet

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

Writer Evan Ratliff Tried to Vanish: Here’s What Happened

This is a really amazing story. Have you ever thought about how secure your life is online and how much people can learn about you? It’s a bit of a read but well worth the time!

Twitter: Small Games for Simple Purposes

Some interesting and outside the box thinking on how you can use Twitter.

Ikea invents Facebook tag marketing

I’m not sure if Ikea really invented tagging people in pictures that aren’t them, but this is the first commercial use I have seen of it. What do you think, clever marketing or spammy idea?

Crowdsourcing Business Documents

How do you collaborate with your clients to deliver exactly what they want?

Social Media Needs To Become a Team Sport

I think too often emphasis is placed on one person running or controlling all of a companies social media. Just like you wouldn’t have a call centre with one member of staff maybe it is time to start thinking about the real resources good social media needs.

5 of the rest

Cutthroat Capitalism: The Game

Do you have what it takes to be a pirate in this day and age? Tom made $12m profit as a Somalian pirate on a lunch break…I challenge you to beat it!

What is Google Chrome OS? (Explained by Google)

Personally I am not sold on Chrome OS yet, however I do love the videos Google makes.

Here are Qube’s favourite tweets from the last week.

@Glennw’s favourite tweets

@jen_bolton another great Halloween costume from this year, woman pixelated herself and went as “Low Resolution” http://bit.ly/41mko6

@Nijay’s favourite tweets

@euzie: Oh David Cameron. Do you not realise that the way for England to become relevant again is as part of a powerful & insynch Europe?

@Danacea *Chortle!!!* Venn Diagram of the Undead… http://tinyurl.com/yjzrshm

@Liberatelloyd Data on Twitter and Social Media Useage http://bit.ly/1wQvgl

@eggboxrobin: Wondering how I came to be on a ‘business mums’ list. Don’t recall every giving birth.

@Seelpod’s favourite tweet

@digitaloutlook Family members afraid of flying? Virgin Atlantic launches Flying Without Fear app for iPhone http://bit.ly/ULDFR ^JB

@dstradewell: Anti gay marriage ad (it’s real) – http://bit.ly/RwPM , and a funny parody – http://bit.ly/UOybt

@MrTomasz’s favourite tweets

@nonlinearDog I love playing Wii Baseball. Dad gets mad because I never swing at the ball. I just like catching it. LOVE catching it.

@abigvictory FINAL ACHEIVEMENT UNLOCKED #sadepitaph

@abigvictory I brought shaving cream and eggs to work today just in case anyone tries to dump their leftover Milk Duds and Mounds on us.

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

Everyone has got list fever at the moment. There’s frenzied chat all over the twitter sphere about lists. Search for “Twitter Lists” in Google and you get 107,000,000 results. That’s a fair few considering how long they have been about.

So, what we’re going to do with them? What strategies can we employ with them? How are they going to help us?

Lists are a really useful way of organising your followers, and finding useful people to follow. For instance, I could make a list of all the people I follow who live in Brighton. If you follow me and you want to find more people on Twitter who live in Brighton, you can go to this list and see a feed of all my Brighton buddies.

It is a fairly labour intensive process at the moment, but it is well worth the effort once you have created one, both for yourself and others.

Some interesting experiments have been started, most notably by Simply Zesty who are attempting to list the whole of the UK, Ireland and USA’s Twitter population, and in the process create an incredibly useful free tool that allows people to find local twitter users. You can find out how they are going about it here.

We can’t offer you anything nearly as comprehensive as that, but we are creating a Qube social media people list. You can see the list here. It is by no means exhaustive, and if you think of anyone we have missed, please leave a comment, an @reply or an email and we can add them.

Our list skews towards the UK and mainly focuses on people who work in the industry but also has a few agencies, new feeds and even some *gasps* gurus. Some of them may be funny, some of them may be interesting, and some of them may bore you to death, but they are all there because Qube Staff think they deserve to be there.

Have fun playing around with lists, and I hope you find ours useful and interesting.

p.s Sorry if I missed you off, it was in no way personal.

5 of the best

State of the Blogosphere 2009

As 2009 draws to a close what is the state of the Blogosphere and what have this years hot topics been?

Twitter needs to step up to the mark to protect children

How can Twitter do a better job to protect children from some of the dangers of online media?

Foursquare

This idea fascinates me, on its surface it is a way of finding where your friends are or getting people out for a meet up. Beneath this is a social game of reward points for doing certain activities (Going out to a club multiple nights of the week earns you a “Bender” achievement) and if you visit a place enough you become the “Mayor”. Slightly scared by the slant towards alcoholic venues…but the idea sounds really interesting. Online social networks are merging with where we are in the real world.

30+ Twitter Lists and 5000+ Twitter accounts worth following

Twitter lists are here! You can now group people together into a twitter list to share with everyone.. ok so its not that exciting but it could be really useful Here are a bunch of lists that might be worth following.

There is now a mobile device dedicated to Twitter. Why?

I guess this might be useful to someone? I do like that there are online enabled devices popping up that dont tie you in to a data plan (such as the Kindle). Although in this case it seems slightly over priced.

5 of the rest

Football Hero Looks Difficult, Totally Awesome

Sometimes….”Viral” videos are really clever Like this one.

Nathan Barley AKA Trashbat Soundboard

Not really for anyone who isn’t an Chris Morris fan….you might also want to look at the Alan Partridge soundboard, AHA!

PicTranslator: Snap and Understand

Turning a picture into words is clever, but even more clever when it translates the words! When I next go on holiday I will be asking for the local menu….to be smug and show off.

Site review: BBC Democracy Live

Seems like every week we are getting closer to gov2.0! A really well put together website from the BBC (It should be for £1m!!)

File-sharers are big spenders too

Perhaps the online piracy debate isn’t as black and white as some would have you believe?