1. The Queen hits Twitter
That’s right HRH has joined the social networking revolution with her own Twitter page. Technically it’s actually the whole Royal family’s Twitter page, and none of them will actually be tweeting. That’s left up to two teams at Buckingham Palace and Clarence House. STill at least it shows the Monarchy aren’t as out of touch as some people seem to think.

2. Health officials spend £30 million on marketing
“Where’s the social media link?” you say. Well, health officials have set aside a budget of £30 million to spend over the next three years on a marketing campaign to raise awareness on healthy eating, obesity and the like, with Facebook and Twitter being the main focus. Naturally, this has come under fire, with critics suggesting the money would be better off spent elsewhere. But at a time when advertisers are attaching increasing importance to the amount of time people spend on a site, then why shouldn’t health officals adopt a similar stance? After all Facebook is one of the biggest sites in the world, and Twitter is growing at an unprecedented rate.

3. PrankNET gets probed
Think prank calls are funny? The FBI certainly doesn’t. They’re investigating increasingly violent ‘pranks’ done by PrankNET – an anonymous prank-calling internet group. The group have claimed responsibility for such “pranks” as convincing staff in a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant to douse the restaurant with fire-suppressing chemicals, evacuate the building and strip off their clothes in the freezing cold. Now, firstly that’s not a very funny prank. And secondly, who in their right mind would follow those instructions anyway?

4. Google Street View hits Stonehenge
The internet road-mapping service, Google Street View, has decided to extend its service from driving routes to popular off-road destinations, such as the Angel of the North, Loch Ness and Stonehenge. The service has had its issues with privacy laws in the past, but I doubt Nessie will be kicking up a fuss. The Druids on the other hand, might pose a different challenge…

5. iPhone rings pure
You can get all sorts of applications for the iPhone nowadays. Applications that turn it into a satnav. Apps that run your bath for you. And now you can even get a Purity Ring iPhone application. Basically you take a “purity pledge” and a spinning silver ring is displayed on your iPhone’s screen. Whether this will work is debatable. Unless your iPhone also gives you a shock when you’re about to get frisky, I can’t believe that a spinning ring will stop you. But then I am weak willed.

Take the events unfolding in Iran in recent weeks. During the recent contested Iranian elections, the Revolutionary Guard, an elite military force that answers to the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, told the Iranian state news service that bloggers must remove all material that could “create tension” from the internet or face legal action. That includes the likes of Facebook and Twitter.

The internet has been a vital tool for reporting the events to the rest of the world, especially after the government clamped down on independent media in an attempt to control the images of election protests. That, obviously didn’t stop some determined Twitterers.

It’s an intriguing insight into the importance of social media sites, compounded by the fact that the US government no less asked Twitter to postpone a scheduled downtime so Iranians could continue to post images and reports of any demonstrations and protests.

Problems arise, however, in trying to deduce whether certain posters are actually who they say they are. Posts on Twitter recently have echoed the sentiment, suggesting that certain posters may even be government plants. While other posts clearly came from people who weren’t even in Tehran.

What does all this tell us about social media? Well, the fact that social networking sites are being used as tools by journalists in all walks of life, to get information out to the general populace, suggests that its importance has grown at a phenomenal rate. Yes it’s open to manipulation, but look back at Mussolini’s control of the newspaper Avanti to further his Fascist beliefs. Look at how Hitler manipulated Germany’s national press with his propaganda minister Paul Josef Goebbels developing sophisticated and effective tools of propaganda to control public opinion in Germany. It’s not something new. The media tools have always been manipulated. The fact that social media tools have also been subject to that mis-use is just another affirmation that social media is here to stay.

The thing that has struck me the most is that the concept of what ‘social media’ actually is seems to be getting in the way and making firms who have a firm understanding of who they are and what they do, suddenly very nervous. I sit there and wait for the nervous ticks to start, knowing that any minute the phrase ‘so, what’s this social media thing then?’ is about to be asked.

It strikes me the hurdle to understanding what it is, is the phrase itself: Social Media. It sounds so big, so serious that people panic. For me social media is just a delivery method, a set of tools like any other to be used as and when appropriate. After all, you wouldn’t swat a fly with a bar-bell, so why get involved with social media just because everyone else seems to be doing so

Ben made a very valid point last week, that most social media tools will align together in the coming years, which will make things easier to get a grip on. However, even the best social media doesn’t work without content, which still boils down to words and pictures. It’s just that the words are online and free to roam (so tricky to control) and the pictures can be photos or videos.

For many companies, the idea of not controlling the information, or conversation, is the main fear. The question you need to ask yourself is ‘what do I want to get out of it?’ For most companies, what they want is a new way of getting in touch with existing customers and addressing their concerns quicker. In many cases, this doesn’t need a social media strategy, it just needs the company to be a little more open, a little freer with information.

Then there is the problem that social media isn’t like a tap you can turn on and off at will – social media is more a spring, constantly bubbling away giving up information and ideas. One of the beauties of working on NokNok is that Nokia is open to the idea of what social media means – being open to people prodding, probing and asking awkward questions. Sure, it’s about talking about one company, it’s products and its services but by openly discussing it, those ideas are pushed around to other people, other sites and other influencers.

In the end, social media is a means of delivery, it’s not a solution in and of itself. As long as you’ve got your part right, starting the conversation, leaving the well-spring to bubble away with conversations is a job done well!

Tracking the top ten most popular online brands, Nielsen Online found that UK users spent on average one minute every eight minutes on the social networking site, equating to a total of 3.8 billion minutes in total for the month of April. So those of you who thought that Twitter was stealing some of Facebook’s limelight can think again. Twitter didn’t even make the top ten web brands last month.

As you’d expect, the usual suspects are all present in the list, with Windows Live (Hotmail) and Google completing the podium. Unsurprisingly in these hard-up times eBay makes an appearance at number four with two billion minutes, and Yahoo rounding off the top five.

In all the the top ten made up for 45 per cent of all the time spent on the internet in the UK. That’s a phenomenal figure that shows just how powerful the big boys on the web are. It’s this sentiment that’s echoed by the people at Nielsen Online: “The Internet is a complex and varied ecosystem and I think most people would be surprised by just how much time is accounted for by a relatively few brands who, in turn, are increasing their share of the pie.” said a spokesperson for the company.

If the little man is to get a larger slice of the internet pie, he’s going to have to use all the internet tools at his disposal. That means, among other things, understanding and using SEO to your advantage, creating a community for your website, and pushing stories out there. All elements that we at Republic adhere to and promote. Who knows, with a little hard work and luck you’ll see us on that list next year…

Top ten web brands in the UK for April
1. Facebook – 6.2 billion minutes
2. Windows Live – 4.5 billion minutes
3. Google – 2.6 billion minutes
4. eBay – 2.0 billion minutes
5. Yahoo! – 1.7 billion minutes
6. AOL – 1.5 billion minutes
7. BBC – 1.1 billion minutes
8. YouTube – 898 million minutes
9. Microsoft – 733 million minutes
10. Apple – 719 million minutes

Ann spoke to Paul Chaney, president of the International Blogging and New Media Association and the guy behind Conversational Media Marketing blog, and he simply put it as follows:

“People want to do business with people, not with companies or brands.”

See, I’m of the belief that the two are not mutually exclusive. I agree that audiences and consumers find it easier to connect with people than brands per se in a blog environment, but the ethos and spirit of the brand should intrinsically over-arch any good corporate blog, purely via nature in which the authors engage with their readership.

Ann also highlights what Bob Pearson, president of the Blog Council and former vice president of Communities and Conversations at Dell thinks about what’s important when companies are engaging with social media tools such as Twitter and Facebook.

“Lot of companies do RSS feeds to Twitter accounts and then don’t have a personality. We all like the human touch about Twitter. People want to know who is talking to them. They probably won’t pay as much attention to companies that just pump in all their content. Same thing with Facebook, where companies simply take their Web site content and put it into a Facebook page and try to attract fans. Why would people care?”

He’s right… to a point. The engagement can be personal and should be tailored, but it’s all about establishing appropriate rules of engagement for each social media tool (of course Twitter offers a completely different breed of involvement to Facebook) – it is indeed possible for companies to engage in these areas of social media outside corporate blogging by distributing content in these channels, but to “pump in all their content” isn’t by any means the best approach. It all depends on the nature of the content, the benefit to the reader, and ultimately engaging with the audience on their terms and feeding content tailored to their needs and interests.

(via IT Business Edge)

First up, the Queen. Her Majesty was in the news for two reasons this week: the first being that she sent out her first email for more than 24 years, responding to 23 bloggers around the world who have written about life in the Commonwealth. It’s supposed to mark the celebration of a “new generation”, but if that was really the case wouldn’t she have just updated her Facebook status or sent out a tweet?

Next up, Twitter. It appears celebrities are getting into trouble for some of their tweets. Now, the common man largely has nothing to worry about (mainly because nobody cares what you’re doing and why you’re doing it). But when Labour MP and Minister for Further Education of Birmingham, Sion Simon, joked that Britain’s Got Talent sensation Susan Boyle was to blame for swine flu, then people took notice. Check out the Telegraph for their top 10 worst tweets. It makes for some amusing reading.

On the subject of swine flu, The Centre For Disease Control and Prevention has been using Twitter to provide links to news, helpful recommendations, information on antiviral drugs, and the like. But while the CDC is spreading useful info on Twitter, there are those who have been spreading mis-information, leading the nay-sayers to jump on Twitter’s back. But to suggest that Twitter is propagating fear amongst the masses as some have implied, would be foolish. Twitter is merely a tool to be used. As with television, newspaper, and radio before it, it’s open to abuse. But the answer is to ween out the abusers, not to blame the tool.

Oh, and that second bit of news involving the Queen? Well, it’s nothing to do with social media, but amusing nonetheless. Two people were caught having sex on Her Majesty’s lawn at Windsor Castle. Maybe the Queen should have written about that!

This coming from a table of lads who’d been to a different gig on the other side of town. Now, the oldest was 20 if he was a day, wearing the obligatory crap baseball cap and no doubt sitting with a hand down his pants. Social stereotypes aside, Facebook is now so ingrained in modern culture that even the late-adopters have picked up on it and are getting bored!

This got me thinking: when does an internet phenomenon, a bit like your ‘favourite new band’, go mainstream, become passé and no longer of interest?

Think about it, when was the last time you looked at your MySpace page? Bebo anyone? Do you still check Facebook as much as you did or are you now one of the Twitterati? The sites still did what they did 12 months ago so why the shift in popularity?

The latest social media sites are only as useful as the people who support them. Do they become old hat when they no longer have that sense of exclusivity, or when those who built the tools in the first place start to put restrictions in place and start to turn what was a social media tool into a ‘business model’?

We can already see the cracks appearing on Twitter. It’s already suffering from overload strain and all the talk seems to be about making money out of it. From a gooky little tool to a money machine, next will come the clamp downs stopping us from getting the best from it.

It’s no longer a big deal that Facebook has gone mainstream, but there is already talk that Twitter has gone mainstream, which means Facebook for the masses today, will be Twitter tomorrow, and we’ll have all moved on to something else, something other ‘favourite new app’.

As a final aside, who had the lads been seeing last night? Why it was The Prodigy – one time subversive rebels seen as the cutting-edge, now gone mainstream and playing in some enormo-dome for the masses – sound familiar?