Not on various social networking platforms sharing your personal statistics and daily whereabouts with the world? You could appear unusual or even suspicious to others, according to a recent UK report by the government’s chief scientist Sir John Beddington.

The report contradicts popular opinion of old that staring at your computer (and phone, tablet and other devices) rather than living in the real world with real people alienates you from normal society.

But LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter are all part of our current normal society – they’re all methods we use to communicate en masse. History is littered with utterances of “It’ll never catch on” from the TV to telephone and internet, yet where would we be without them today? Continue reading →

This week Facebook announced its new search engine Graph Search. Initially a beta test for US users, the search engine aims to boost user discovery of people, places and objects through the connecting social graph. With this search engine, for example, you will be able to search which bands your friends like or their favourite restaurant in Sheffield. This discovery then works towards correlation of interests which has a large potential for brand benefit, delivering insights on how consumers engage with brands through actions (likes, shares and comments) rather than the traditional approach of watching for brand mentions.

The early iterations of the search engine will point to the long-term value for Facebook and the potential impact on social engagement, paid social placement and, with deeper integration of Bing, more socially empowered SEO.

We asked around Jaywing for some initial reactions. “This is a natural shift towards more social search. People crave information, but they desire acceptance and personal recommendation more. The internet is not just webpages anymore, it is real people with real relevance to ‘me’, the digital mirror image of ourselves,” says Nathan Cook, Head of Communication Planning. Continue reading →

December has been another busy month in the world of Social Media. We’ve brought this month’s presentation forward slightly so that you can enjoy our festive round up before the big day. This month we met Mr and Mrs John Lewis … Continue reading →

2013 could herald a rebirth of location-based technology developments from the likes of Garmin, making it more accessible and less intrusive.

Previously deemed as somewhat stalker like for all but the most ardent geeks, location based check-ins will need to redefine themselves as useful to the masses but those that get it right could be looking at a real revival.

The US has already adopted location-based social networking website Foursquare more broadly, with retail deals on in many major cities. However Europe has been much slower to follow.

Recent changes to the app are making it more useful to wider audiences. One recent change allows location owners to add their own event lists, something that was previously only available to large venues such as cinema chains. This provides a much more useful tool to retailers and venue owners, in turn making it more useful to users. Continue reading →

This month’s social media digest provides you with more insight and information on the latest tools and apps including a look a Crowdbooster… not quite a new kid on the block, but a firm favourite none the less. Particularly useful … Continue reading →

The power of celebrity endorsement, especially when done in an intelligent way with the right person, can be a great boost for a brand. Inaugural 4G network provider EE pulled out the stops by getting Nicole Scherzinger to appear in the UK’s first ever Twitter Dress.

Whether or not Nicole is a fibre optic whizz kid is beside the point. She’s on primetime television and is already in the headlines for her fashion sense week in week out.

The dress itself is stunning, which helps – a fashion faux pas would have turned a PR coup into a PR disaster – the designers, leading interactive fashion agency Cute Circuit kept it simple with black French chiffon, Swarovski crystals and over 2,000 LEDs displaying the tweets sent in by fans on the evening via @EE and #tweetthedress. Continue reading →

Last week’s viral video from Bodyform is one of the best responses to a funny Facebook comment I have ever seen a brand produce.

The video, if you haven’t seen it, is a fantastically tongue in cheek counterattack to an outpouring of sarcasm that a Mr Richard Neill (no relation) left on the Bodyform Facebook Page on the 8th of October.

Mr Neill’s comment jokingly lamented Bodyform for a myth he believed they had perpetrated about women being especially happy and adventurous at certain monthly intervals and how as a grown man he has found out that is not necessarily the case.

Richards’s post garnered over 87,000 likes and currently stands at four and half thousand comments. But rather than get their knickers in a twist, Bodyform matched Richard’s humorous sarcasm blow for blow, so to speak.

They created the fictional Bodyform CEO Caroline Williams who delivers a fabulously withering response, catching the moment to capitalise on the viral post.

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Something caused a bit of a stir last week amongst my colleagues here at Jaywing and that was the Channel 4 plane crash programme that had me cc’d backwards and forwards into so many emails that my laptop suffered turbulence.

Over the weekend I took time to assess the damage of the plane crash campaign and see what all the brewhaha was about. Well it seems that Channel 4 have scored a bit of a winner here by engineering something truly interactive and engaging (albeit it a bit morbid) that had staff in our own offices stimulated and entertained along with 35,000 others that visited the Channel 4 website in the run up to the event.

If you don’t know what happened then basically Channel 4 aired a pre-recorded programme of a controlled plane crash in the desert from earlier in the year and invited people to check in on the flight virtually, choose their seat and see if they would have survived the impact upon landing afterwards. Continue reading →

6 million Facebook update views, 20 million photo views on Flickr, 1.3 million YouTube views and 61,141 hours of music listened to on Pandora all in one internet minute.

We’re sharing more and more data in the form of images, videos and updates with each other via social channels, but we still can’t quite capture that feeling of being there, that moment you want to share with your friends and fans or that sensation or emotion that brands might want to convey in order for you to engage with them further.

I’m here, I’m seeing this, I can hear this and possibly even smell this and now you’ve got a sense of what I’m feeling/experiencing right now. Wow!

Well I can’t believe we’re that far away from that point and in a geeky way it really excites me!
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Or more precisely #SMW12. This week millions of people across the globe will celebrate #SMW12 – either participating at one of the many events organised globally, or simply through use of the hashtag in tweets and watching online.

So is it just an opportunity for social media ‘guru’s’ or ‘evangelists’ to get together and pat one another on the back?

Well, in truth probably a bit of that.

But also an opportunity for the some of the industry’s leading figures from Etsy, Google and the Huffington Post to get together and discuss new and emerging trends for social media. Insight which is likely to benefit your personal social media skills but in turn benefit any of the branded channels you may manage or have a role in managing.
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