Bytes · When managers read - Social networks regionalised - Incentivisation

Thanks to Jeff Kaplan for spotting this.

• According to the new Hitwise Election 2008 Data Center, Ron Paul is demolishing the rest of the Republican field with a 44.2% market share in the week ending August 4, compared to 16.1% for Mitt Romney and 11.8% for Rudy Giuliani. On the Democratic side, Barack Obama has the lead with 40.6% compared to 24.2% for Hillary Clinton and 18.4% for John Edwards. When you stack all the candidate websites against each other, Obama and Clinton jointly eat up 43% of the entire market, with Paul in third at 15%.
  
  
• David Wilcox has posted yesterday's Public Sector Forums story about the dodgy bidding process for a new 'online Innovation Exchange for the Third Sector'.
• Dave Briggs also comments on the innovative bid (which lost, and which Wilcox was involved with) and how they used Facebook.

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Top social networks by global region

Worldwide Growth of Selected* Social Networking Sites June 2007 vs. June 2006 Total Worldwide Home/Work Locations Among Internet Users Age 15+ Source: comScore World Metrix
Social Networking Site	Total Unique Visitors (000)
	Jun-06	Jun-07	% Change
MySpace	66,401	114,147	72
Facebook	14,083	52,167	270
Hi5	18,098	28,174	56
Friendster	14,917	24,675	65
Orkut	13,588	24,120	78
Bebo	6,694	18,200	172
Tagged	1,506	13,167	774

Worldwide Daily Visitation of Selected Social Networking Sites June 2007 vs. June 2006 Total Worldwide Home/Work Locations Among Internet Users Age 15+ Source: comScore World Metrix
Social Networking Site	Average Daily Visitors (000)
	Jun-06	Jun-07	% Change
MySpace	16,764	28,786	72
Facebook	3,742	14,917	299
Hi5	2,873	4,727	65
Friendster	3,037	5,966	96
Orkut	5,488	9,628	75
Bebo	1,188	4,833	307
Tagged	202	983	386

Visitation to Selected Social Networking Sites by Worldwide Region June 2007 Total Worldwide Home/Work Locations Among Internet Users Age 15+ Source: comScore World Metrix
Social Networking Site	Share (%) of Unique Visitors
	Worldwide	North America	Latin America	Europe	Middle East-Africa	Asia Pacific
MySpace	100.0%	62.1%	3.8%	24.7%	1.3%	8.1%
Facebook	100.0%	68.4%	2.0%	16.8%	5.7%	7.1%
Hi5	100.0%	15.3%	24.1%	31.0%	8.7%	20.8%
Friendster	100.0%	7.7%	0.4%	2.5%	0.8%	88.7%
Orkut	100.0%	2.9%	48.9%	4.6%	0.6%	43.0%
Bebo	100.0%	21.8%	0.5%	62.5%	1.3%	13.9%
Tagged	100.0%	22.7%	14.6%	23.4%	10.0%	29.2%

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• ClickZ good stuff> The Site Map: Gateway to Optimization + Is Web Analytics Really That Difficult?
  
  
• eGovernment@large talks incentivisation: he thinks financial incentives for doing government business, like paying tax, online "may have had their moment" but he's basing this on "we might have reached the point of critical mass in e-government" because there are hundreds of "government services online."
  
  Huh? Even 'transactional' can well mean an unusable form, at best, in the current rating mechanisms. That's not really 'services online'. Incentives are about taking this stuff seriously, it's the sort of action a 'normal' website would do, and would have the side-effect of driving usability and driving customer-focus. These sort of baselines always strike me as dodgy. Success/'take-up' is defined against what? Who?
  
  I would love to know where we really stand against Singapore, Latvia, Canada and others — who's measuring that? (+ no I mean eGov, not broadband take-up).
  

> Me: Online transactions: 18% > 25% - how?

Evolution of a political web 'brand'

This is the new campaign site for Australian Labor Party leader Kevin Rudd. When I saw it I thought Howard Dean's children should sue.

Hits all the buttons in mostly the right places (grey images set a depressing tone when you're talking'topics'). Very good, but that, it seems, was the old template - video upfront - parodied as:

Hi, my name is INSERT NAME HERE.

Come watch videos of me on INSERT NAME HERE TV.

Join my team!

Read my blog, even though I never write on it!

I'm one of you! Look! I even have a Facebook page that I have yet to update!

Both Obama's and Hillary's sites (one is spending hugely online over the other, guess which?) are now doing something else - could this be new, more 'mainstream' audience effect?




It's Obama's - and it shows. It's polished 'till it shines.

The Tories campaign site StandUpSpeakUp has also dropped upfront video.

The rapidity and ubiquity of this evolution does place something like StandUpSpeakUp in a new context - yet more online consultation, there's nothing actually special about it and it already looks old to me.

Kevin 07 is ocker (in a good way) but it adds humour - proven virally but sorely lacking elsewhere. It's also broken, design wise. Doesn't really matter - they knicked a brilliant template.

Looking again StandUpSpeakUp fails on some basic marketing levels ('I'm not quite convinced, convince me' > click away) as well as a rather catastrophic usability error in unclickable images — click insanely on the top's calls-to-action.

Bytes · How to Deal with MySpace Predators - Coogan's online soap - The Facebook coppers

Laws Fail to Deal with MySpace Predators

Larry Magid is pretty upset about the way some states' attorneys general are blaming MySpace for the fact that there are pedophiles and other predators on the site, and proposing legislation that would restrict kids' access to social networking sites. There are predators everywhere. The good news is that MySpace is at least trying to get rid of them.

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Time Magazine ran a scary experiment to see how much personalised information they could easily source about someone.

What makes these sites controversial is that they gather all this information without your permission. The resulting profiles can be embarrassing or simply wrong. And getting those profiles removed or changed can be impossible.

The Author, checking on popular site ZoomInfo, "saw that everything from my telephone number to my full name were flat out wrong".

• Washington Post on reputation management
  
  

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• Australian PM John Howard loses YouTube cherry.


Here's another YouTube video subject to takedown for obsessive/zealous copyright policing (warning! features babies dancing).

• Mike Grehan explores Google personalisation - and has a killer headline - A guaranteed number one listing at Google!
  
  
• New York Times Google Maps overview: With Tools on Web, Amateurs Reshape Mapmaking

NYT recommends:

MAPS

Graffiti in Federal Way, Wash.

Hydrofoils Around the World

Cheap Eats in New York City

Illinois Yarn Stores

Biodiesel Stations in New England

Trace Tribute Endurance Horse Ride by April Johnson

Geotagged Photos From Flickr Users

Favorite Places to Eat In Seattle While Boating

Tour de France Stages

Top 10 Oregon Vineyards

TOOLS

Google Maps: My Maps

Google Earth (download)

Microsoft maps (for Virtual Earth download, click on "3D")

Microsoft Collections

Platial

MotionBased

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This is a screenshot from Google Earth Enterprise

It's a geographic view of traffic to Dell.com. Presumably live.

More on

• Google Blog
• Google Lat/Long blog
  

Digital Earth on the GEE update:

Some of the enhancements include:

• Browser integration with the Google Maps API AJAX architecture, allowing 2D map views to be embedded in any web-based application, so everyone in an organization benefits from the power of Google Earth Enterprise.
• Performance enhancements amounting to as much as a 10x speedup for vector data processing and better than 2x reduction in server computation for responding to imagery requests.
• New search framework for integrating geocoding and other search services via Java plug-ins including a Google Search Appliance reference implementation.
• Regionator for creating Super-Overlays with Regions based KML and publishing them for viewing in any Google Earth client version (Free, Plus or Pro).
• Security improvements and extended Operating System support including Red Hat Enterprise Server 4 and SUSE Linux 9 and 10.

They’ve also streamlined the interface and made a handful of other improvements.

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Steve Coogan is behind online soap - sorry, 'interactive online sit-com' - Where Are The Joneses?

Dawn (Emma Fryer from Ideal), discovers from her dying mother that her father was a sperm donor and that she has 27 sibblings scattered across Europe.

Not loving the ads in your widget, Steve. Plus ya'gotta make sure the server's up to streaming it otherwise people will drop your widget. It's also crap marketing because it leads you to a flickr dead end ...

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Metropolitan Police on Facebook. They have a 600 strong group which the Mail (boo!) infiltrated. Something, anything wrong here? Nah.

A Met spokeswoman said last night it appeared that officers had fallen short of their professional standards.

Those involved could now face a dressing down from their superiors and even disciplinary action if they are deemed to have brought the force into disrepute.

:{

UK Gov goes backwards on net marketing

The Central Office of Information (COI) has decided to pull all its government advertising from social networking sites.

They are currently running armed forces ads via YouTube and have used MySpace and Bebo before.

This follows the latest beat-ups on the Web from MSM (MainSteam Media). This time it's the Sunday Times, linking brands to the BNP via Facebook. Vodafone, First Direct, Halifax, Prudential, Virgin Media and the AA have deserted Facebook. eBay have not.

Plus the BBC's increasingly ridiculous primetime ratings-chaser Panorama criticized YouTube for refusing to police so-called 'happy slapping' videos, and damned Peugeot and Carphone Warehouse. [The Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA) called Panorama 'misleading', I'd call it a very good example of the worst sort of tabloid TV.] And Teachers' Unions want the Internet banned.

A lot of bellowing, confused people all sounding like they want the whole thing stopped and for us all to live in somewhere censored and filtered and quiet - like China? Sites are changing content because of this (as they would).

[Register comment]: I work for a large uk website that is made of user generated content.

Our media provider (who serves the ads) has asked us to pull various bits of content and retire entire sections of the site to please the advertisers.

Thank you Panorama, are you the Taliban-wing of the BBC? I notice that News Online is undermining your argument again (see 'Cyber bullying - don't blame the web'), as they did over WiFi.

As Scottish social marketeer Andrew Girdwood puts it:

If you are going to venture out into social media then this sort of thing is going to happen

This is COI chief executive Alan Bishop:

We don't want to exclude use of any of the new social media but we do have to have a very clear idea of what the context is going to be like.

When the newspapers will spend lots of energy trying to place you in ANY negative context — see what the Mail did to 'Whitehall blogger' Owen Barder, taking comments out of context for example — this strikes me as plain wrong and naive.

I'm reminded of point six from the BBC's new Web 2.0 principles:

6. The web is a conversation. Join in: Adopt a relaxed, conversational tone. Admit your mistakes.

Appears not to have reached Panorama.

>>>I've reposted Tom Loosemore's slideshare about BBC 2.0: 15 Web Principles on it's own here by request.

Also reminded of much of what Tom Steinberg wrote in his recent report (for the government, most of which was accepted), The Power of Information.

Appears to have not reached the COI.

Effective government net marketing — hence 'reaching youth audiences through social networks' for example — is never going to happen unless someone gets some backbone and stands up to press/TV luddites. Someone like a politician.

Is it not slightly irresponsible not to go where the kids actually are?

It is just not possible to effectively use social media without something, somewhere which can be taken out of context.

• Register:
  After extensive investigations, The Register can reveal that Vodafone rival Orange's adverts are running on the [Facebook] group "Aryan Satan Worshipers" [sic]. Sick.®

So change the context. It really, really needs it. The 'debate' is ridiculously ill-informed (see Panorama comments).

The commentators on the Guardian about the BNP/Facebook [Racists don't just read online ads] have no information about Web marketing, social networks etc. for which I blame the BBC, in large part.

How is this country's economy going to get anywhere if both politicians taking advantage and tabloid media are dominating the 'debate' and scaring people witless about the Web?

Some would like to change the context to this:

• [blog comment]:
  NEW ad serving engines are appearing from companies like wunderLoop that are based not on the context of a sites content but on the indivdual and their behaviour, so that advertising appears related to their profile.
  

Do YOU want to be graded, profiled, judged and then your platform support withdrawn because you don't fit advertisers desires?

People are already talking about networks based on class.

Never mind how easily gamed that will be:

• [blog comment]:
  I don’t think a filter system would do too well on social networks. Just imagine - if you knew there were certain trigger words or phrases to stop ads from being displayed on your profile, how easy would it be for people who don’t want ads on their profiles to include those so they get a commercial free profile?

It's very interesting that practitioners were also spooked by the gathering tabloid storm and rushed to say 'we will regulate online ad networks'. Although the American reaction to the BNP/Facebook furor has largely been bewilderment. But you can't have user-generated content + ads without some content or 'context' clanging up against something that someone doesn't want to see/hear. That's 'users' (the public) for you.

• Nigel Gwilliam, senior communications manager at the IPA:
  Online ad networks need to address the issue of trust they now face and our view is that independent, random, campaign level audits are the best solution. In the mean time, agencies need to be vigilant when trading with networks, particularly with regard to high volume, low CPM deals.

MySpace, told the Guardian:

If advertisers are nervous, they can speak directly to us and we will make sure their advertising does not appear against user-generated content pages, or against any political parties. The best way is to come directly to us.

You either advertise/engage with 'user-generated content pages' or you don't. MySpace just said that.

It's not possible to filter it to meet the likes of the COI's very strict rules and guidelines.

• Context is Content:
  The ability to connect anything to anything else online continues to challenge standards and practices.

So if you jump like this every time some - frankly - lateral link is made in the newspapers or tabloid TV, effective use of social media is just never going to get off the starting blocks.

The ballpark, the gameplan, the inventory, the master plan .. you've got to change the argument, the context to make real use of social media.

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Postscript: I've been pointed at the following, from June > New PM to bring COI into 'MySpace era

It quotes an unnamed Minister saying:

COI has adopted more modern techniques in recent years but we think there is scope to go further. We want to make sure that it moves more fully into the YouTube and MySpace era.

The RAF YouTube page is currently running video diary entries from the front line in Kandahar.

[SAC Paul Goodfellow] is careful not to endanger the lives of others or include any breach of intelligence, but will speak openly about his day-to-day experiences as a gunner in the RAF.

Although I think ads can be controlled on their YouTube page, Paul's RAF diary is sharable - I just did this and it's below. Which means - yes - the BNP could use it the same as I am. Does that one possibility damn what is evidentially a good thing for the RAF?


RAF AFGHAN DIARIES: 10th July 2007

I don't think COI chief executive Alan Bishop has thought this one through:

We don't want to exclude use of any of the new social media but we do have to have a very clear idea of what the context is going to be like.

Gov Blogs proving their worth

Flood and drought hit Cheltenham have been using a blog along with other Web 2.0 tools to keep local media and the public up-to-date.

Web Officer, Pete Riley, told journalism.co.uk that:

We decided to use the hosted version and wordpress.com because we couldn't be sure that we'd have a reliable electricity supply here at the office. This way, any of the team can update the site from anywhere, including our home computers if the need arises."

The blog has been used to offer advice about emergency water supplies, encourage people to recycle their plastic water bottles, display a supportive letter from the Queen, and post photos of the damage done to the town's leisure centre.

Blog content is supported by multimedia in the form of photos at Flickr and a handful of video clips on YouTube.

Bytes · Right on Miss America - MS tortoise/Google hare - Wikipedia Story

• I agree with Miss America [could she be any perkier?] — she wants mandatory Internet safety classes for kids.

• The Guardian's website has a new Science section, very useful when mass media (the Beeb, sheesh) and politicians push nonsense like concerns about WiFi.
  
  
• AJAX is a technology underpining many dynamic web 2.0 apps, so it's good to see this accessify post suggesting that the well-used Screen reader JAWS is including language about support for AJAX in it's next version.
  
  
• When web accessibility is not your problem (MP3, 28MB) - Joe Clark [session notes]
  
  
  
• Scott Karp: Online Publishers Need To Stop Selling Space.
  

  Google doesn’t sell any space. It sells user intentions, i.e. what’s on people’s minds. And that’s a scare resource — there’s a finite number of people thinking about buying a digital camera today.
  
  So what else is a scarce resource online? Locality.
  

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NYT: Microsoft Offers a Web-Based Strategy

“We’re not moving toward a world of thin computing,” said Steven A. Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief executive, referring to systems in which simple processing takes place on a PC, but more complex processing is moved to a centralized computer through a network connection. “We’re moving toward a world of software plus services.” Nearly every Microsoft software application will be transformed with the addition of a Web-services component within 3 to 10 years, he said.

SEL take:

Even as Microsoft says it's defending its home turf, the company is of course trying to aggressively compete in the world of search and online advertising, which is Google's core franchise. Recent purchases of aQuantive/Atlas (for $6 billion) and AdECN, as well as high profile deals with Facebook and Digg, show how serious Microsoft is about being a major player in both arenas ... my guess is that "3 to 10 years" is too long for Microsoft to wait to web-enable its critical applications; because by then the free, online options will be much better.

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If you missed it, Clive Anderson's great take on The Wikipedia Story is still on Radio 4's website

The NeoConservative Oliver Kamm responded on his blog and distilled the objectors - to them, Wikipedia represents "an anti-intellectual exercise".

(Gawd knows what's going on with the BBC at the moment. Withdrawn digital services + the complicated sounding iplayer. And have you used their website search lately? Whenever I've used it it consistently fails the same comparison test against Google that DirectGov does)

Search Wikia is Jimmy Wales' latest.

Our Four Organizing Principles (TCQP) - the future of Internet Search must be based on:

• 1. Transparency - Openness in how the systems and algorithms operate, both in the form of open source licenses and open content + APIs.
• 2. Community - Everyone is able to contribute in some way (as individuals or entire organizations), strong social and community focus.
• 3. Quality - Significantly improve the relevancy and accuracy of search results and the searching experience.
• 4. Privacy - Must be protected, do not store or transmit any identifying data.

Active areas of focus:

• Social Lab - sources for URL social reputation, experiments in wiki-style social ranking.
• Distributed Lab - projects focused on distributed computing, crawling, and indexing. Grub!
• Semantic Lab - Natural Language Processing, Text Categorization.
• Standards Lab - formats and protocols to build interoperable search technologies.

'All in the past'

One of the standard responses from many Aussies about the Aboriginal situation is 'all in the past mate' - all those massacres, stolen children and cultural destruction is assigned to history.

Well this is coming out of your taxes. Mate.

$525,000 - the price of one stolen life

An Aboriginal man taken from his family as a baby has been awarded more than [A]$500,000 compensation [£211,000].

Bruce Trevorrow was 13 months old when a neighbour drove him on Christmas Day in 1957 from his Coorong family home, south-east of Adelaide, to the Children's Hospital with stomach pains.

Hospital notes tendered to the South Australian Supreme Court show staff recorded that the child had no parents and was neglected and malnourished.

Two weeks later, he was given under the authority of the Aborigines Protection Board to a woman, who later became his foster parent, without the permission of his parents. He did not see his family again for 10 years.

His mother wrote in July 1958 "I am writing to ask if you would let me know how baby Bruce is."

The board knew it lacked the legal power to resist a request for Bruce to be returned, so it lied, writing back to say her son was "making good progress" but doctors needed him for longer.

Thereafter they prevented his mother from making contact with him or from finding out where he was or by what process he had been removed.

By the age of two he showed signs of psychiatric disturbance including trichotillomania, a compulsive hairpulling disorder, and a speech defect. As a boy he also chewed his clothing, damaged books and stole.

He spent eight years growing up in the belief he was the child of a white family living in Adelaide. His dark colour was explained by references to relatives overseas who were darker skinned.

When he was returned to his Aboriginal family he was told he would be visiting them but was instead sent home.

In his late teens he took an overdose and slashed his wrists. Under questioning he admitted to never having felt close to anyone, including his wife, whom he treated "roughly" and "badly". He told the court he did not have the skills to be a father to his children and had never hugged or cuddled them.

In 1998, Mr Trevorrow sued the South Australian Government for pain and suffering, alleging he had lost his cultural identity, suffered depression, became an alcoholic and had an erratic employment history after being taken as a child from his family.

Mr Trevorrow left court saying he would pay off his house with the money. "I thought that we would never get there," he said. "But the day's come when I've got the peace of mind to start my life."

A spokesman for the South Australian Attorney-General, Michael Atkinson, said the [Labor] Government would seek legal advice before deciding whether to appeal.

The former Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission chairwoman, Lowitja O'Donoghue, said the judgment was "a great victory".

"It is time to understand there was a stolen generation, instead of all these history wars [see the 'black armband view of history']."

This is the first ever such payment.

Two previous stolen generation claims from the Northern Territory were defended by the Australia Government in the High (Supreme) Court and were defeated because they were out of time.

At least 100,000 children were removed from their parents

Nationally we can conclude with confidence that between one in three and one in ten Indigenous children were forcibly removed from their families and communities in the period from approximately 1910 until 1970. In certain regions and in certain periods the figure was undoubtedly much greater than one in ten. In that time not one family has escaped the effects of forcible removal (confirmed by representatives of the Queensland and WA Governments in evidence to the Inquiry). Most families have been affected, in one or more generations, by the forcible removal of one or more children
Bringing them Home
Report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families

Electoral Commission wants blog regulation?

From Journalism.co.uk:

The Electoral Commission, which oversees the democratic process in the UK, is increasingly uncomfortable about a lack of regulation governing election campaigning online.

At the moment there is a legal requirement to include an imprint on all printed political material, stating whom it promotes and who produced it.

Although encouraged as good practice, there is no similar requirement for blogs and websites, muddying the waters of what constitutes political comment and outright party political promotion.

The Commission has passed its concerns up the line to its newly formed parent, the Ministry of Justice.

"It's definitely becoming more of an issue, and it's something we are constantly reviewing," said a spokesperson.

Nothing on their website? I found this. Electoral Commission 2003:

Doorstep to desktop: online election campaigning reviewed in new report: "the report stresses the value of allowing these new methods of communication to develop and provide a platform for free speech for election campaigners and voters without excessive regulation."

What's changed that they are now 'increasingly uncomfortable'? What are they proposing regarding 'what constitutes political comment and outright party political promotion' on blogs?

• Ireland awards political vloggers, UK talks regulation

Alastair Campbell and Foxy Brown

Handles Stewart much better than Paxman.



Titter ye lots.