It’s almost Easter, and that means we’ll all be needing to buy some egg/bunny/chick shaped chocolate. Yum.

Although it’s almost a given to buy at least one egg for yourself and for your loved ones, at least in my house, Tesco has decided we all need a little encouragement to hit up their many, many, many stores. Queue this rather nice Google StreetView mash up:  tescofindtheeggs.com.

It’s a good ol’ fashioned Easter egg hunt brought online for your social media convenience. The site lets users hunt for virtual eggs by tapping in a postcode and navigating around Google’s StreetView map. Once you spot three, you get a voucher for a free MalEaster bunny.

The site also promises a few ‘cheeky’ golden eggs, which get you a Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 if you spot one (wow, Samsung really is giving those away for free ain’t they?)

Tesco’s hunt also includes some clever social media links. I found my first egg quite quickly, but struggled to find the next two. As I was already invested, I opted to ‘Like’ the site on Facebook (along with 14,000 others at time of writing) to activate my ‘EggRadar’ (annoyingly/sensibly, golden eggs don’t appear on the EggRadar).

Now anyone on my Facebook has the change of spotting the site too. Once you’ve found three eggs and claimed your voucher, you can spread more eggs at a postcode of your choice (say, a friend’s pad) and are encouraged to tell them about it through Facebook and Twitter.  

Nice one Tesco, clever seasonal promotion. Although we’re essentially looking at thousands of children getting chocolate in exchange for sitting at a computer screen and not hunting for eggs in the traditional outdoorsy, fresh air kinda way.

Jamie Oliver and Sainsbury’s might be having a word.   

HT @vickywoollaston

Another interesting infographic today, this one charting the top 20 social networks (remember the days when we all said ‘social networks’ instead of ‘social media’ – back in 2006? Good times).

Some interesting stats, especially on user bases – Instagram is bigger than Tumblr and Flickr. Bad news for people who can’t stand a letter ‘E’ in their social network name of choice. Also interesting to note Foursquare is listed as a ‘rising star’, where abouts exactly?

See below for the full graphic.

If I were to name two things that are talked about a lot online, it’s social media and the Internet of Things. They’re both awesome, of course, but an example of their combined power appeared online yesterday that fired one’s imagination.

Zach Seward, a Mashable contributor and social media editor at soon-to-be-launched mobile business publication Quartz (that’s a mouthful), has hooked up an Internet connected light bulb to various online inputs. The result - every time someone mentions the @quartznews on Twitter, the light burns a little brighter. Whenever China wins an Olympic medal (note Seward is from the US) or Facebook’s share price drops below $20 the light goes out.    

Seward examples it all in a Tumblr post, “Now, when you interact with us, our newsroom is literally brightened”. What a lovely idea. 

To achieve this, Seward connected the light bulb to a Belkin WeMo Switch – usually used to turn appliances on and off with an iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch. The switch’s control of the light is determined through a connection with a service called ifttt (if this, then that). ifttt monitors online sources to figure out when China has won a gold or someone has tweeted @quartznews, and then tells the light bulb what to do.

It’s not exactly living up to the potential promise of the Internet of Things, but it is pretty darn cool nonetheless.

@simonhill

Another piece of data visualisation brilliance has appeared on The Guardian’s Data blog this week; The Internet Map.

The map pretty much does what it says on the tin. It’s a map of the world’s websites, with different sized and coloured circles representing the largest sites in terms of traffic and ‘levels of activity’. The bigger the circle, the more traffic and attention the site is getting.

The different colours represent different countries, the UK is a rather pleasing light blue. Circles are also positioned in relation to other sites that are visited by the same users. For example, you’ll notice visitors to telegraph.co.uk also hit up guardian.co.uk, independent.co.uk and timesonline.co.uk quite often.

It’s also interesting to see which sites are close to each other. Sites like Wikipedia, Twitter and Facebook are surrounded by many others, as one might expect. This gives some good insight into a media outlet’s links to social media – look how close The Next Web appears to Twitter’s huge sphere.

The map has been developed by Ruslan Enikeev, a data-visualisation designer. The appeal of the map is so great Ruslan is appealing for donations to cover the cost of hosting it. You can donate, if you’d like to, direct from the site.

@simonhill

The legal precedents around Twitter continue to be established at a rate of knots this week, driven in part by everyone being uber keen to tweet about the Olympics (although not always in a nice way).

Yesterday we posted on several legal wranglings involving Twitter; those of Guy Adams of The Independent newspaper, the anonymous user behind @UnSteveDorkland and teenager @Rileyy_69. In less than 24 hours, there’s been progress on all three.

Guy Adams

Bit of a bad one for Twitter, this. It turns out Twitter workers originally alerted NBC to Adams’ critical tweets of the news outlet’s coverage of the Olympics. This resulted in his account being suspended. Twitter has now published an apology, admitting “we did mess up”. Adams’ Twitter is back up and running, but the questions around Twitter’s reputation won’t go away overnight. It’s likely this example will be dragged up time and again when a user is accused of something untoward. This leads us to…

@UnSteveDorkland

Today, 1^st August, was the deadline for Twitter to handover details of the user behind @UnSteveDorkland, a spoof account of Northcliffe Media’s chief executive Steve Auckland. Handing over user details is well within the rights of Twitter’s T&Cs, if the site receives a complaint from a third party about said user’s account.

However, Twitter also provides details of how the user can acquire legal aid. This, combined with a high level of media attention for the case, led pro bono layer Frank Sommer to take up the case. He’s now filed a motion to halt the disclosure order from Northcliffe. According to the BBC, Sommer has stated “I have been unable to find any website that lists this controversy in terms of someone being deceived that any of the Twitter usernames listed in the subpoena are anything other than a satire on Mr Auckland.”

Take that out of legalise and it simply means if an account is obviously a spoof, there’s no case for taking it down or even handing over a user’s details. The difficultly here is defining exactly what counts as ‘obvious’ in a court of law. Amazingly, this could reach a court room (if Northcliffe decides to push on) on 2^nd September. If this happens, presumably we’ll get a clear ruling and precedent on what can and can’t be deemed an overtly satirical, spoof Twitter account. Good luck reaching a verdict on that one. 

@Rileyy_69

Finally, the rather unpleasant case of @Rileyy_69 appears to have been settled. After the 17 year old behind offensive tweets to Olympics diver Tom Daley was arrested, he was released with a harassment warning. Clearly this wasn’t a case that would ever make it to court, but hopefully one that shows you can’t get away unscathed with vicious comments on Twitter anymore than you would saying it to someone’s face (although you’re far more likely to get arrested, and less likely to get punched in the nose, it seems).

@simonhill

It’s no secret where you live has a bearing your quality of life – but this data mashup hammers home the message of poverty in London against average life expectancies.

James Cheshire, an academic at University College London (UCL), has taken life expectancy data and mapped averages against the London tube map. So essentially, you can see how long you’ll live based on your nearest tube stop.

You can see the full map on the Lives on the Line.

There’s a fairly important international sporting event coming up, and as its 2012 some are predicting this will be the first “social media games”. In other words, the Olympics organisers are looking to social media to make the events engaging for everyone not holding a ticket.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) didn’t get off to a brilliant start. Their Social Media Guidelines issued in advance of the games caused something of a stir, with regulations banning ticket holders from posting or uploading their own images, video and other digital recordings to social media or the Internet. So no burly Instagram shots of sprinters as they whizz past.

In contrast, the IOC and other sponsors have gone a bit social media bonkers in the final few days before the games. A whole host of sites and interactive content around the athletes, Olympic venues and London generally has popped up. Here’s a quick snapshot of what we have to look forward to:

Athletes Hub, Facebook, FourSquare, Google+ Twitter, Tumblr and more

Paid Content has published a handy rundown of the IOC’s official social media channels, which includes all the big names you’d expect.

Some highlights:

·         The Athletes Hub, aggregates 2,000 Twitter and Facebook accounts from athletes at the games in one place.

·         Four official Tumblr blogs to follow: olympics.tumblr.com, Faces Of Olympians, Olympic Fashion and Olympic Moments

·         Foursquare users checking in at Olympic venues will be in with a chance of winning tickets in a daily giveaway.  

Twitter photos from the Athletes Village

Even the athletes themselves are getting in on the social media fun, with a bit of cajoling from the IOC. The Guardian published a collection of photos posted on Twitter from the athletes as they arrived in the Athletes Village, their digs for the summer. The women’s football team seem to be having the most fun.  

London Eye

The colours of the London Eye’s nightly light show vary depending on Twitter sentiment. A clever sounding ‘intuitive algorithm’ developed by British professor Mike Thelwall from MIT, and his students, will monitor the sentiment of tweets during the games. Depending on how happy or sad the great British public is, the riverside ring will change colour. It’s yellow for happy, green for sad and purple for ‘meh’. The algorithm’s development is being sponsored by EDF Energy, which is also an official Olympics sponsor. The nightly show will also be live streamed of light show on EDF’s website.    

Quite a nice idea that last one. Although if Team GB aren’t winning gold and the weather sticks to British summer tradition we’re gona be seeing alotta green on the South Bank in the coming weeks. Lets pray for yellow.  

@simonhill

My previous posts on ASA rulings have started a bit of debate from my learned colleague Karan. I believe this is what you call a gentleman’s disagreement. So, to continue:

To the argument “it needs to be abundantly clear that you’re being paid to promote a product” on Twitter, I say posts containing branded URLs or discounts for haircuts already fulfil this criteria.

Labelling every single marketing-focused tweet with #ad would be like scrawling “this is an advert, make sure you want to buy this product before you buy it” across every billboard, poster, side of a bus, leaflet, flyer and printed ad in existence. Do we need to be reminded an image of Wayne Rooney looking stern and wearing a Nike shirt is an advert for the Nike shirt?

If you were to liken this practice to established rules and regulation, consider the imitation feature articles in national papers that have ‘Advertorial’ printed across the top of a page. This has always seemed strange to me. If you can’t fathom an 800 word feature article on a trouser press is an advertisement, how on earth did you make it to the shops to buy a paper without tripping over your idiocy. These advertorial labels must exist to safeguard papers against being sued by anyone who brought a trouser press under the impression the ‘bedroom dressing and equipment correspondent’ had recommended it to them. Every major or B-list celeb does not need the same safeguard.

The question on social media’s “constantly evolving” state doesn’t hold much mustard either. In such an evolving state consistency becomes more important, not less. Why bother to legislate at all if you’re simply look at the situation afresh each time. In any case, as quickly as social media does evolve, Twitter didn’t change that much between the Snickers and Nike rulings.

This is not ranting at the ASA for no reason. Just this morning, for example, a very sensible and consistent judgement was reported. Where the ASA had previously ruled on T-Mobile’s use of the term “truly unlimited” (against, by the way), they’d also stumbled into defining which services can be called “truly unlimited”. So when Virgin Media compiled Sky’s use of “totally unlimited downloads” was misleading, Sky simply pointed to the T-Mobile ruling and low and behold the ASA confirms they’re in the right.

Proof the ASA can be consistent. Now if they could just inch that thinking over to Twitter we’d all be set.

@simonhill

Everyone’s favourite advertising watchdog the Advertising Standards Authority, or ASA, is firmly stamping down on ‘unacceptable’ uses of Twitter an advertising platform. Tepid on the heels of a ban on Nike’s Make it Count campaign for failing to use the #ad hashtag in shoe-related tweets, the ASA has come down hard on those ‘actors’ from The Only Way is Essex, or TOWIE if you like.

Love it or physically want to beat yourself unconscious rather than endure one second of it, TOWIE is pretty popular. Said popularity has led to the ASA looking very closely at the tweets of a certain Gemma Collins.

Miss Collins has recently had her hair cut at hairdresser chain Toni & Guy. In two tweets deemed ‘marketing communications’, she enthused about how great her hair looked after a visit, followed by the below offering a 10% discount off a cut for anyone coming to the Lakeside shopping centre and mentioning her name. Truly a case of ‘not what you know…’.

As in Nike’s case, this is another questionable decision by the ASA. The very fact the tweet contains the mention of a ‘10% discount’ makes it pretty darn clear this is a marketing related statement. As one needs to mention Miss Collins’ name to get an equally ‘amazeballs’ haircut is also a clear indication this is marketing related. Do we really need a #ad in there as well? That would be three indicators of an ad in 140 – on top of the fact she’s a goddamn reality TV star.

If Collins was to include a #ad or similar, it’s likely this would cause, rather than clear up, confusion regarding the nature of the tweet. I’m hedging a guess the majority of her follows could deduce the promotional nature of the above tweet, but how many of them will instantly link #ad with advertising? It seems more likely they’d assume it’s to do with the programme in some way, or encouraging people to ‘add’ (follow) Toni & Guy. It’s not clear cut anyway (and just to avoid any confusion, that last sentence should be followed by #PunIntended).

Poor Toni & Guy has been somewhat singled out here as an example of the ASA’s increasingly zero tolerance stance. According to a source, Collins made the appointment herself and the tweet idea was a “spur of the moment” one. They also believed “the reference to a discount was clear evidence they were marketing communications”, according to The Guardian.

You can see their point.

Compare it to other TOWIE stars, for example Lauren Pope, and the picture gets more murky than the water in a fake tan soiled shower basin. Pope openly asked Virgin Airways on Twitter for free flights in exchange for “some twitter shout outs and PR”, says the Mail. Now, when one is blatantly presenting oneself in such a fashion, do we really need constant reminders of their habit of exchanging cash for product endorsements?  

The ASA rulings need a bit of work on consistency, and consideration for users’ common sense, before being fully effective.

@simonhill

The Reuters Institute Digital News Report has revealed there’s something of a mix future for online news journalism and paid content.

Three-quarters of Brits read news everyday – which is low

According to the survey findings, based on a poll of 6,000 people from the UK, US, Germany, France and Denmark (so when I say ‘rest of the world’ that’s sort of not at all true), around three quarters of us Brits access news every day. ‘Access news’ meaning either watching TV, listening to radio, reading it online or in good old fashioned inky finger newspapers.  

Not a bad stat, but compared to the Germans we’re lagging behind. 90% of our Deutschland friends are accessing news on a daily basis. We’re also lagging behind the Denmark, the US and France.

Source: Reuters, via BBC News Online

Celebs vs politicians

But maybe it’s about the quality of news read, rather than quantity? Actually, no.

According to the BBC’s abridged reporting of the survey, us Brits are far more into celeb news (that is gossip, film and music) than political news. 21% of readers in the UK are hungry for celeb-centric stories, compared to 16% in the US, 14% in France and Germany and a miniscule 9% in Denmark (although to be far, I can’t name a Danish celeb).

The BBC attributes (blames) this on sites like Mail Online, Holy Moly and Female First.

In comparison, 37% of UK readers were interested in political news. This sounds good, until you compared it to the US’s 63%.         

Future is bright for online journalism and the social media savvy

The upside to this, from the future of journalism perspective, is UK users are more likely to find news online than anywhere else – 82% of those snap-shotted in the survey had read online news in the last week.

More good news for online comes in the social media usage and discovery stats. On average, 20% of readers are now likely to find a story through social media sites (Facebook and Twitter named specifically). For younger readers, those tweet posting / status updating whipper-snappers, this goes up to a whopping 43%. More exciting still, social media collectively surpasses search engines as a source – take that Google News.

Mixed results for paid content

Sadly, one of the lowest numbers in the entire report is the percentage of UK readers willing to pay for news online: just 4%. It’s not much better elsewhere, the highest figure came from Denmark and barely broke into double figures at 12%.

Its better news for those who’ve looked into a tablet app as well as a website – 21% of tablet owners have paid for news. As always this is always a slightly skewed statistic. Tablet owners tend to be at the upper end of the affluent scale, so have more dosh to splash on digital content. I’m not sure Mail Online readers will be queuing up to pay for a tablet app ticker of celebs posing at the Wimbledon final. Never say never though. 

So while there’s money to be made and online eyeballs to be grabbed, the ball is still in the media innovators’ corner to secure the future value of news journalism. The full report can be read for free online here.

@simonhill