If you’ve been hiding under in bed this month to avoid the snow, it’s the only way you will have missed the UK’s biggest social secret Santa!
After having to clamp my hands over my mouth for a whole month, I can now reveal the #SoCol Secret Santa givers.
From a mini Christmas tree to Facebook ‘like’ and ‘dislike’ stamps, the gifts have certainly been creative. To see a selection of the best, visit our Facebook page or scroll to the bottom of this post. Got one to add? Just send us a pic on Twitter and we’ll upload it to the Facebook album.
Get scanning for your name and don’t forget to thank your giver. To find them on Twitter, just click on their name.
We hope you also enjoyed the little extra gift we sent to each giver. If you didn’t take part and want to get your paws on a limited edition #SoCol badge, we have a few left so will give them out on a first come first served basis.
There’s been some fantastic, measured yet insightful 2010 round up posts going around this week. And more importantly it’s great to see the intelligent thinking that’s been going in to 2011 planning and predictions this month.
But folks, it’s also December, the month of Santa, mulled wine and frivolity. So, for our end of year round up post, we’ve selected our favourite fixes of festive fun from across the social web.
Our Top Five Fixes of Festive Fun
1. The digital nativity – This has probably already graced your screens but it’s worth another view. Watch the tale of the nativity be mapped out in a fast paced overlay of social screen shots.
2. Santa, the brand – Does what it says on the tin. Remember, Santa is fond of children. Santa is not a bit creepy. Nice work Quietroom.
3. 12 days of social Christmas – A fresh take on the traditional theme tune of Christmas. Stay alert and watch out for the five angry birds!
4. Fresh Networks social Santas – What better way to celebrate Christmas, while amusing others, than renting Borris bikes and Santa suits then attempting some synchronised cycling?
5. 1000 Heads Custom Cracker – You’ve got to admire the festive spirit of the guys over at 1000 Heads. A small team locked themselves in a room for a day to create custom jokes for their loyal followers. This was the gem I received: “Santa hires elves b/c orcs stink, there aren’t enough dwarves & pixies haven’t done anything decent since 1991.”
Bonus: Essential Christmas – It would be slightly biased to include this in the official list but a Christmas fist bump should also be delivered to Felix and the guys at Essential, well, just for the tights really.
Got any Christmas corkers that shine brighter than these? Has your agency come up with a quirky alternative to the Christmas card this year? Share yours in the comments box below.
There are two things I love more than anything else about Twitter; the debates and the banter.
Throw out an issue and you’ll find an instant audience ready to share their pearls of wisdom. One of the only frustrations is the lack of structure to these debates. I’m sure you have all spotted a great conversation that you missed because you were in a meeting or just came to the table a little too late.
We will be bringing you weekly sessions where you can debate the current hot topics, lead by two weekly guests with contrary view points. You’ll all be invited to join in and at the end of each session we’ll vote to see who’s convinced the masses and who’s going home with their tail in between their legs.
What’s the point?
a) To provide an informal discussion forum for the hot industry topics
Paul and I will be announcing the first Tweet Off topic and contenders in advance of the first weekly Tweet Off, which will be held on Thursday, 4 November 2010.
Dust off your fighting gloves and start training. The Big Tweet Off is on!
We were privilaged enough to have the first look at the results from CNN’s global social media research at Social Collective conference on 30 September 2010. Our guest blogger Gemma Went put together a great overview on the day which can be viewed here.
For those who were unable to attend, CNN has put together it’s own summary of the results, which can be viewed here. This includes the video shown at Social Collective.
The key findings:
1. The study aimed to measure emotional engagement associated with online news sharing. The results showed a “halo effect” of substantially higher engagement with “recommended” news content and embedded advertising, as opposed to “randomly” consumed content and advertising.
2. The overall uplift for brands who advertise around stories recommended in social media is significant. The global online survey showed that people who received news content from a friend or associate via social media, were 19% more likely to recommend the brand that advertised around that story to others and 27% more likely to favour that brand themselves.
3. More specifically, POWNAR examined case studies including one where a major European tourism board reported notably stronger campaign cut-through with aided ad re-call up 50% and brand favourability up 32% after advertising around news that was shared in social media.
4. The results from POWNAR also showed that video pre-roll advertising had overall a superior branding effect when appearing around news content shared in social media, in comparison to display banner advertising.
Our Social Collective speaker, Didier Mormesse, Senior Vice President at CNN International, commented: “The commerciality of the social media space is fast becoming apparent and this study means that for the first time, we are able to substantiate the value of shared news from an advertising perspective.”
Some juicy stats:
What makes news “shareable”?
POWNAR identified a three tiered semiotic wheel that guides sharing patterns; comprising the three types of codes of narrative, theme and underlying message. For narrative, 65% of shared content comprises ongoing stories, 19% comprises breaking news and 16% of content falls into the “quirky or funny” category. In terms of theme, news recommendation is driven by content that is visually spectacular, stories about science and technology, human interest stories and money-related stories. The majority of stories being shared carry an underlying message of the “sharer” imparting knowledge.
The 80/20 rule applies to the findings. 27% of all frequent sharers* account for 87% of all news stories shared. The average global user shares 13 stories per week and receives 26 stories through shared social media links or emails.
Which platforms dominate?
In peer-to-peer communication, 43% of news sharing comes from social media networks and tools e.g. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, MySpace, followed by email (30%), SMS (15%) and IM (12%).
As a personal Foursquare fan, I instantly bought in to the potential for location based marketing. Unless you’re daft it makes sense. In the vast and all powerful social space, the one challenge we have yet to overcome is how to provide quality information on a local basis.
Hyperlocal news sites are stepping in to fill the void but are not fullfilling practical needs.
Hello Foursqure. OK so, it’s not really ‘there’ in the UK yet but chat to your American friends and you’ll start to recognise the power of local.
The ability to talk to the companies, venues, reastaurants and… WORLD that’s around you is huge. From a personal perspective, Google becomes defunked. Let your friends tell you where to drink, eat and make the most of your surroundings. From a business perspective, interact with your customers while they’re near you, with you and engaged.
Wouldn’t you just love it if you could apply the power that foursquare has driven to life? Wait, you can! Roll out GetGlue.
GetGlue is a social network for entertainment and everything in life you want to share. GetGlue users rate and check-in to things they like to get recommendations and earn rewards.
The GetGlue mobile app enables users to check-in to tv shows, movies, music and books, plus see what their friends are consuming in real-time. On GetGlue.com users can quickly build up their taste profile, get fresh suggestions every week, browse top lists and find taste neighbors.
The potential is endless. Although you can’t just set up a profile with ease, like Foursquare users have come acustom, it’s a minor set back. What you can do is share everything that’s relevant to you in a clean simple and user friendly way. Get stuck in and have a good play and you’ll become quickly addicted. The recommendations are genuinely useful and the competitive streak running through you will explode when you realise the stickers you’re earning will actually be sent to you in real life by the GetGlue team.
Those thinking about the impact for clients should get excited. We’ve always wanted to know exactly when how and why consumers are interacting with our brands. If GetGue becomes mainstream then we could. I can see your creative juices flowing.
Time to head over and check it out.
I became quite consumed with getting the stickers I wanted. To kick start your sticker portfolio, here are the secrets to getting your first 20 (in order of convienience):
20 Quick win GetGlue stickers
1. iPhoner: A tough one… use the iPhone app and you’ll get this.
2. Bootcamp: Some recognition for your first day on duty at GetGlue.
3. Addon Adhesive: Install the Crome browser add on and you’ll recive a googlisious treat.
4. Movie Hopper: Check in at three movies in a row and let the popcorn flow.
5. Cabin Fever: Geek out with 10 check ins for a mildly embarrasing sticker.
6. Check in pro: No shame? Go for 25 and you’ll get another treat.
7. Curious George: Let your curiosity go wild and scope out 10 other profiles. It will be worth it.
8. Fist Bump: While you’re over on your friend’s profiles, like 10 of their posts to share a fist bump.
9. Listmaniac: Work your way through the lists. It’s a great way to get started and once you’ve worked through around 20, your sticker count will increase.
10. Book Worm: Like 50 books for literary recognition.
11. Couch Potato: Like 50 TV shows for yet more attention.
12. Radiohead: You don’t have to be a fan of the band. Like 100 albums or artists and you will become a Radiohead.
13. Movie-buff: Spend some quality time in the movie lists section. Once you’ve been through a good 250 you’ll be acknowledged.
14. Clash of the Titans: Find the movie and check in and you’ll get yourself a hot little sticker.
15. Hands All Over: Check in to Maroon 5 with the phrase ‘hands all over’ to bond with this award.
16. Newman: Check in at Weeds. End of.
17. Road Trip: Check in at Weeds with this phrase and get an exclusive sticker – ‘The Newmans take a purple coupe 32 on a road trip this season’.
18. Freeloader: Head to Entourage, enjoy it, check in, reap the rewards.
19. True Blood Newbee: Same diff. Watch it, check in, get a prize for your efforts.
20. Don Draper: If you’ve watched Mad Med, you’ll probably want Don Draper. Just share that (‘I want Dan Draper’) with your friends while checking in and he’ll join your bounty.
This week, Twitter, launched its official ‘tweet’ button to help users share content using the technology that tweetmeme has made so popular in recent times.
On the back of this historic milestone, we strapped on our digital boots and when stomping through the internet to fine the best buttons of all time.
Our criteria was simple:
Functionailty: What does it do? Style: How cool does it look? Usability: Does it actually work? X factor: That something ‘eXtra’
So sit back, relax, take your finger and put it solely on your scroll button…it’s time to absorb some greatness…
Here are our selections:
1. The RSS button – dating back to 1995 when Ramanathan V Guha ws working at Apple Inc he developed something called the Meta Content Fraemwork. Little did we know that 15 years later its ability to push content around the web would make it to the top of the best button of all-time chart. Nice one Ramanathan. Although the RSS button has historical ties with Apple, it is the most orange of buttons on the scene.
2. The Facbook ‘like’ button – for such young button, the Facebook ‘like’ has made a huge impact, and brought the classic ‘thumbs up’ custom into modern day communications. The casualty in the ‘like’ button’s rise to fame has been the ‘fan’ – now relegated to a remnant of past Facebook glory. Weep.
3. The belly button – Incredibly only entering our chart at number three, this button actually helped bring humans into the world. Clinically known as the ‘umbilicus’, it can be in a depression like state (aka an innie) or protrude (aka an outtie). The invention of the bikini in 1953 gave belly buttons a new lease on life, liberating them and becoming a popular destination for piercings.
5. The pause button – the current incarnation of the pause button dates back to (possibly) the first ever videotape recorder produced in 1956 by Ampex which carried a price tag of $50,000. Today, we mainly associate it with DVDs of Live TV to take an extra close peek at embarrassing positions people often get into.
6. The WordPress button – This one made it to number six in our chart for the simple reason that button is preceded by (Word)press. Genius.
7. Jenson Button – Jenson loves buttons so much he has one tattooed on his arm. True story. In addition to being a great driver, he’s known for pushing many women’s buttons. People also know how to push his button – more than 123,000 people follow @The_Real_JB on Twitter.
8. The 4sq ‘check in’ button – ruled by all-powerful Pouty Princess, this button lets you compete for all kinds of cool stuff and collect really valuable badges like…ermm…the Swarm Badge.
9. The Reddit button – the social news bookmarking site is owned by Conde Nast Digital (no, seriously) and has made our top 13 ½ mainly due to the lil guy adorning the logo. The Reddit community also helped raise more than $134,000 for Haiti Earthquake victims in 2010 – making it philanthropic button on our list.
10. The digg button – originally an experiment back in 2004, digg made its way into the social media mainstream thanks to its ability to help stories rise (and crash) in popularity based on the feelings of its community. It is also known for having more makeovers than Madonna.
11. Ejector seat button – this post doesn’t come with an ejector button (sorry) but in other situations where escape is required, this does the business. Most famous user? Inspector Gadget.
12. The ShareThis button – the daddy of share buttons. The ShareThis button is a one-click solution that simplifies social media services, by reducing clutter on webpages, and provides immediate distribution for content across social networks, affiliates groups and communities. Using the ShareThis widget, online content publishers can provide their site’s visitors the ability to instantly access their profiles, blogs, friends, and contacts for easy sharing of their content. The question is: does anyone actually use this button? We’re not convinced but threw it in at number 12 anyway.
13. Panic button – A film from 1964, also found on train platforms, and normally sporting a red complexion, the panic button is a panophobic’s best friend.
13 ½. The retweet button – enough has been said about this and the tweet button this week. Good day.
To keep up with real time button updates follow the hashtag #buttonup.
If you’ve been hiding under in bed this month to avoid the snow, it’s the only way you will have missed the UK’s biggest social secret Santa!
The Social Collective Secret Santa
