social media

The live phonecasting service, ipadio, announced today that it will be providing technology to support the partnership between Sport England and Facebook. The partnership is helping people play more sports in the run up to London 2012. Sport England and Facebook recently launched a Facebook tool named the ‘Community Sport Hub’. Its main purpose is to allow sports governing bodies to interact with over 20 million UK Facebook users. The Hub is designed as a Facebook fan page but offers new and specific applications, including ipadio. For The Hub, ipadio is making it possible for sports bodies to market and... Read More >

What is social networking really for? Well, networking, of course. The digital version of word-of-mouth is what brands are after, however, as personal recommendations come in the form of Twitter status updates, Facebook wall posts and bookmarked web clippings. Social networking has become a conduit for sharing information we feel is important, hoping that others will feel the same. Brands looked to this growing capacity of social networking for Black Friday in particular, as both social networking and social media marketing have reached the point of mutual acceptance. That means that brands are looking to social networks as relatively inexpensive... Read More >

After being set to be released on bail from a 2-month stay at a Swiss prison, the extradited Roman Polanski has reportedly been banned from poking other users on Facebook. Arrested for a 1976 sex case in L.A., Polanski is fearful of returning to the states. And considering the nature of his alleged crime, certain precautions are being taken towards controlling his actions while free on bail. Ruled by the Swiss courts, the limitations on Polanski's online social networking behavior seem bias and unnecessary. But will such measures be taken in future sex cases? In addition to the Facebook poking... Read More >

Caught up, on super blast. It's the trade off we have for participating in online social networks. and for some, the prerequisite of such online participation can still be avoided when it comes to getting caught. It's usually the photos that get ya. Facebook is one of those social networks that has a tendency to get lots of people caught up. Take Nathalie Blanchard for instance. She was on disability, unable to work full-time for the past 18 months. Blanchard suffers from depression, and was told by her doctor to go out and have some fun. Perhaps she had too... Read More >

Tweetsgiving was built last year by small team Epic Changes in six days, launching a widely successful fund-raising effort that brought $10k towards building schools in Tanzania, Australia. At the heart of Tweetsgiving’s success was the power of Twitter. Released two days before Thanksgiving in 2008, Tweetsgiving quickly became a trending topic on Twitter and the spirit of gratitude was spread across the world through shared tweets. As far as we have come in our American history, Thanksgiving remains a universal holiday staying true to that spirit of gratitude. Leveraging a widespread appeal to individual’s potential for graciousness and the... Read More >

Someone may be squatting on your company's name on Twitter (or for that matter, any other social media site). In many countries, squatting refers to property rights. A squatter is someone who doesn't have a legal right to use property (such as a home or an apartment), but proceeds to live there anyway. In this high tech age, squatting is no longer limited to physical property. Electronic squatters (also known as cyber squatters) are those who use a company's name or slogan without permission. They have been around since domain names first started being registered. In many cases, domain name... Read More >

With Halloween literally right around the corner, let's look at some potentially scary marketing trends. Specifically, let's examine the new trend of paid tweets. Twitter has been around for several years now, and some have questioned Twitter's value as a business tool. Many see it as little more than a glorified chat room or yet another online distraction. Others see Twitter as a valuable online resource for developing genuine business relationships and sharing valuable or interesting information with like-minded individuals. (I happen to fall into this category.) A few see Twitter as an unexploited advertising platform - a sort of... Read More >

We've been seeing a lot of campaigns to promote breast cancer awareness this month, but here's a fairly new one . . . #beatcancer. Today, the hashtag has hit the top trends on Twitter, with everyone tweeting about cancer, breast cancer being the obvious focal point for some. The campaign was instigated by Beat Cancer Everywhere, a site that works to raise money for breast cancer research. They intend to set a Guiness World Record for the distribution of the largest mass message through social media within 24 hours. At the time of this writing there are still just over... Read More >

If you aren't leveraging Twitter to spread your online message, then your PR campaign may already be in trouble. Consider the following: The other day I ran across an excellent article on a business blog that I read sometimes. I thought that the material was interesting and helpful, so I decided to share the information with some of my friends and colleagues via Twitter. That's where I ran into trouble. There were two problems: First, I attempted to cut and paste the URL into my tweet, but I couldn't do it because the rather descriptive title of the article exceeded... Read More >

A recent survey by Robert Half Technology shows that many companies with 100 or more employees prohibit the use of networks likes Facebook or Twitter during work hours. Employees who want to use these networks have to wait until after hours or risk violating company policies. RHT interviewed more than 1,400 chief information officers (CIOs) from companies across US. More than half (54 percent) of these said their firms do not allow employees to visit social networking sites for any reason while at work. CIOs were asked, “Which of the following most closely describes your company’s policy on visiting social... Read More >