Topic “Social Media and UGC”

Tetley/Mrs Kipling Brand Partnership

Submitted by Claire Kimber on Thu, 09/06/2011 - 09:39

To enable this global media first, The Gaffer and Mrs Kipling simply struck up a friendship with each other, and with their collective 230k+ tea and cake fans in exactly the same way that the 20+ million of us already do on Facebook.

Speaking in tones indicative of their true character voices, the brands launched an unobtrusive, simple and natural chat via their already established Facebook pages. Tactically initiated around the brouhaha of the Royal Wedding, the two characters began chatting about their respective street parties – a topic of conversation that was already gripping the nation. Over an 8 week period this grew into cross-page conversations, polls and quizzes between the characters and the fans, using tea and cake as the only focus; the subtlety of using everyday conversation around their most commonplace daily activity to invoke a compelling and believable level of engagement between two brands and their consumers.

Housed under one agency roof, all content, delivery, and account management was seamlessly created, co-ordinated, and implemented by SMG.

Two brands. One British cultural institution. No media spend.

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Hovis Social Media

Submitted by Bronwen Hole on Thu, 09/06/2011 - 09:39

The social space was identified as a real opportunity for Hovis to engage with consumers in a low interest, highly competitive market.

We know that Mum’s spend circa 18.5 hours online in a week, however only 3% of FMCG media budget is currently allocated to this channel. This allowed us to really own this medium and they are the only bread brand to have a significant presence on both Facebook and Twitter.

Results so far We have built a 104k strong community of fans by connecting the brand to human passion areas. In January we invited consumers to take part in the ‘Wholemeal Challenge’ to enjoy a healthy breakfast and lose weight together.

This generated over 72k fans and over 11,000 consumer wall-posts. We’ve developed this fan base with the Soft White campaign, reaching consumers with a 100% British wheat message, tapping into the pride associated with British farming. This was especially poignant as the campaign coincided with the Royal Wedding.

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Tech Tuesday, 7-6-11

Submitted by Scott Thompson on Tue, 07/06/2011 - 22:56

Tech Tuesday is our weekly round-up of all you need to know from the news in online marketing and digital media technology

Apple unveil iCloud, iOS5 and "Lion"

At the keynote speech of their annual WWDC (Worldwide Developer Conference), Apple revealed a taste of what Mac, iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch users have in store for them when they are released later this year, with new versions of the Mac operating system OSX "Lion", the iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch operating system iOS, and a new iCloud service.

Some big stories included a deep integration of Twitter into iOS (which seems likely to drive usage), a "Newsstand" service for subscription-based iOS apps, and the move to "cut the cord"- freeing iPhones and iPads from the need to plug into a Mac or PC, while moving the important stuff into the "iCloud" and relegating the computer to "just another device."

We will have a more detailed analysis of the implications for mobile media later this week, so watch this space…

Microsoft reveal Windows 8

Meanwhile, Microsoft have revealed a glimpse of what the user interface for Windows 8 is expected to look like. With a release date yet to be announced, but expected at the end of 2012, the design is reacting to recent trends of smaller, lighter devices, touchscreens and immersive experiences, and technology built around web standards.

While the user interface has been optimised for touchscreen devices (ie. tablets), users will still be able to plug in a mouse and a keyboard and use it like a "traditional" PC. This marks a significant difference in strategy between Microsoft, compared to Apple and Google; while Apple see their desktop operating system getting more focussed on laptops and smartphones/tablets as a different category, Microsoft seem to be saying that you can have the best of both worlds with a device that is a tablet on the move, and a "proper PC" when you have the space for a keyboard and mouse.

More info over at Engadget

FT's iPad web app bypasses Apple

The Financial Times launched a new application for smartphones and tablets, bypassing Apple's App Store (and 30% cut.)

Some may remember the first generation of the iPhone, all those years ago in 2007, before the Apps Store, when Apple was insistent that web-based applications would be all that anyone would need to provide a great user experience. But since the App Store opened in 2008, it has got the majority of the attention.

The FT have jumped on some of the benefits that it offers — not least, the opportunity to build on HTML5, a platform that works across tablet devices.

Although the FT have launched it (available now at app.ft.com), they say that they have no plans to pull out of any app stores, but would be launching a marketing drive encouraging users to adopt the web app- including a weeks free access.

You can't say "Twitter" or "Facebook" on French TV

Surprising news from France; presenters are banned from encouraging viewers to "join us:" on Facebook of "follow us on Twitter". Unless they are reporting on a Facebook or Twitter-related story, no mention of the social networking sites is allowed.

The reasoning is perhaps more of a surprise; the thinking goes that encouraging viewers to visit a profile on a specific (and dominaint, American) website is effectively advertising for that service.

Meanwhile, the BBC introduces Share Tools in iPlayer, making it easy for users to share iPlayer programmes via Facebook and Twitter (and Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon and Delicious.)

Groupon valuation leads to questions over the value of group buying

Since Groupon apparently rejected a $6 billion offer from Google in December, group buying site Groupon has had a lot of attention, and with talk of a $20 billion valuation following its S-1 form filing this week (an indication that the company intends to launch as a publicly traded company soon), the discussion is heating up.

With revenues in the first quarter of 2011 alone of $644.7 million (compared to $713.4 million for the whole of 2010 and $30.47 million in 2009), Groupon's growth has been astronomical, but what is less clear is the underlying value of the business.

That kind of rate of growth doesn't come cheaply, and Groupon is still a loss making business, spending heavily to build both its subscribers and sales force, losing $113.9m in Q1 2011 (or to put it another way, spending almost $1.50 to make $1), leading to analysts to question whether the value is rational or emotional.

But on the other hand, this is a very new digital space. It isn't hard to find books from experts in the digital space published in the late 1990s/early 2000s that completely missed the importance of search advertising, or failed to forsee the importance of scale for search engines. This post on Yipit's blog (an aggregator of daily deal services) questions some of the concerns around Groupon's estimated value.

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It’s time to think Return on Experience, not just Return on Investment

Submitted by Jim Kite on Tue, 07/06/2011 - 14:29

Surveys consistently report that the main issue stopping clients fully integrating social media into their marketing plans is the lack of clear evaluation metrics. The often cited phrase “If you don’t keep score, you are only practicing” nicely sums up the problem social media has in muscling into the traditional mix of communication channels that have created their own accepted set of measurement criteria over many years.

This is the cause of great frustration. The impact of social media on everyday consumer behaviour and brand attitudes is immense and unstoppable. But a deficiency in measurement is holding back companies joining and even shaping the conversations about their brands through the new channels of social media interaction.

The challenge to the industry is to find a common currency that values social activities in a non-siloed way whether they are on Facebook, YouTube or Twitter. While many people have tried to produce measurement standards, none have gained much traction because of failure to account for transparency, scalability, affordability and the capacity to leverage existing data.

At Starcom MediaVest Group we see the lack of industry headway as an opportunity as our starting point is the recognition that social experiences are very different to other media channel impressions. Social media is not just a level of exposure but also a simultaneous tracking of human effort or involvement with the viewed content. Using the language of Forrester’s widely recognised social technographics segmentation, social media usage can be categorised in many ways with critics and creators the most engaging reaction. It therefore goes without saying that the most effective social experiences are those that lead to proportionally more of this type of behaviour relative to more passive actions, such as joining or spectating.

Fortunately, data that dynamically measures involvement exists from within the basic social media analytics tools. Each social media has its own set of data to track experience involvement (see table). We can then relate this data to the human experience, which in most cases means that “typing” stuff as opposed to “clicking “signifies a higher level of social media interaction.

Equipped with these basic principles SMG has developed a proprietary statistical model that measures the relative degree of experience involvement to experience exposure. We express this mathematical relationship as a co-efficient which we call the Experience Involvement Coefficient (EIC)- the higher the EIC, the greater the level of involvement. As many of our clients have discovered the EIC is extremely valuable as it works at many levels.

At its most basic it can be used as a static measure to compare a new branded social experience or content execution to the baseline performance of the brand on a social channel. For example, using comments as a proxy for high involvement experiences for our Beverage Industry client we are able to show that the re-launch of their classic TV characters from the 70s drove effectiveness of the Facebook site by 180%

For our BlackBerry client whose Live and Lost initiative with Tinie Tempah to promote The BBM service the results were even more staggering, + 300% on Facebook and + 400% on Twitter

In a very clear way the EIC provides a standard experience evaluation approach that uses the relationship between users and the amount of viewers who are actively involved with the media as our scorecard. But as well as an overall campaign metric, the EIC aids social media planning when used as an on-going moving metric.

By tracking a moving EIC over time the client can see the relative impact of social media activities on the brand. This means the user has a continuous measure of how paid , owned or earned assets are affecting social involvement. For example, by tracking the social activities of a FMCG client, we can see the outcomes and impact of paid and earned promotions.

This consistent approach to social evaluation is being applied to all SMG client campaigns and over time we will have populated a very comprehensive normative database with category and social channel case studies. Results can be expressed in absolute terms or via a constantly updated social experience dashboard.

In conclusion, by creating a single cross-platform social experience metric we believe we have a more objective view on social media ROI. Currently, social return is stated as £ return per “click” or “like” but the EIC takes evaluation to a much higher and impressive level. While a pure ROI for social media maybe some way off, the Cost per Facebook EIC or, Twitter EIC does give a comparative and dynamic view of whether the effort and investment behind social media has translated into an efficient return on experience. From where we are currently, that is real progress

By Jim Kite (Strategic Development Director) and Thaer Namruti (Group Data and Analytics Director)

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Champions' League Tweets

Submitted by Oliver Newton on Thu, 02/06/2011 - 15:11

In recent weeks there has been some great event TV in the form of the Royal Wedding and the Champions league. The TV numbers have come in and they were huge an estimated 14.7 million viewers across the ITV and Sky broadcasts. But how did Twitter and Facebook compare and who were the winners?

This was a historic game for many reasons and not just because Messi scored his first goal on English soil (there should be a stat for how many times that was mentioned) but also because football and Twitter go together. Twitter volume during the game was the 2nd biggest ever for a single event; activity peaked at 6,000 tweets every second.

To start with, where was the traffic coming from?

As you would expect the two leading countries in Europe were the UK and Spain as they had teams playing, but if you cast your net across the globe you see that this really was a world event and the UK was the 2nd biggest market by tweet volume behind the USA who had a massive 34% of all Champions league mentions to the UK’s 14% and Spain’s 8.1% (Source: Sysomos)

And what of Rooney and Messi?

Messi won the battle on the pitch, both players scored, you can see from the Twitter activity below that Rooney peaks earlier at 20:21 which obviously correlates to the 34th minute goal of his. But Messi really wins the social game on this one, garnering well over 2% of the traffic to Rooney’s “paltry” 1.08% and not only did he burn brighter burnt he burnt longer as the messages praising his strong on-field performance were tweeted about and of course his goal in the 54th minute just on 9pm. Interestingly though the Messi star continued to shine all the way through until the final whistle with people still tweeting beyond 11pm.

Rooney mentions on Twitter (source: Trendistic.com)

Messi mentions on Twitter (source: Trendistic.com)

And finally what were the key terms that were being used throughout the game?

As you would expect players, teams and the tournament score highest. As identified in the acitivty charts above Messi comes out bigger than Rooney. As one of the official sponsors and on the back of their popular football app and twitter support map Heineken are the main sponsor to feature. (source: Sysomos)

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Brand Perfect World Tour

Submitted by Basil Kronfli on Wed, 01/06/2011 - 16:21

Buzzwords of the day: Behaviour & Cohesion

While the buzzwords of the day hinged on old-school branding and marketing considerations, the Brand Perfect World Tour delivered anything but old-school thinking. To quote one speaker "A good brand doesn't need a logo", old-school thinking trembles in its boots. The day ensued with a handful of feisty creatives deconstructing the branding we've come to know, then swiftly convincing us the world's changing too fast to take any of it seriously, any of it except for, ‘behaviour and cohesion’ that is.

Neil Christie, the MD over at Wieden and Kennedy kicked things off, telling us about cats, the Bieber and his kids in an inspired presentation, with a firm underlying message: if you want to be huge, viral isn't an option anymore, it’s a given. Take the bit about cats: W&K are responsible for the Cravendale campaign, 'Cats with Thumbs'. On top of being a stroke of genius, it was also played incredibly well from a viral point of view. Off the back of the great advert, they created new content in response to fan’s Facebook comments and tweets, resulting in a tweeters dream - a video of a cat with telekenesis amongst others little gems. Unsurprisingly, this produced waves of viral, sending the Cravendale cats to the top of the Twitter trending list across the pond as well as on home turf. It also brought with it significant ROI for Cravendale. This provided the segway to Justin Bieber and more viral. After telling us what we all knew, this kid posted some videos up on YouTube and now drives 13 year old girls into hysteric fits while he swims in a Ducktales-esque vault of cash, Neil connected the Bieb to a campaign that rejuvinated the Old Spice brand.

If you skipped over the video, you're missing out. It's pretty funny, but it also links out to a whole number of related videos, many spoofs and many made by W&K themselves. In the same vein as the telekinetic cat response, W&K had the male model in the video on standby against a green screen to record instant, polished responses to tweets and Facebook comments. Thus, the concept of a brand message swiftly became a brand conversation, back and forth, across platforms and mediums, leaving Old Spice to enjoy an 8% rise in sales and a rejuvenated brand image thanks to a marked change in consumer behaviour and an agency level understanding of it. Neil maintained, in order to have a lasting impact, this dialogue needs to cross campaigns into a persistent brand conversation with customers.

While there were a host of other fascinating speakers, a certain Mr. Simon Manchipp from SomeOne was the most opinionated of the bunch. From his lips came the introductory quote, and he even went so far as to say he hates logos and what they stand for. The process of creating a logo, colours, brand image etc was fine twenty, even ten years ago, but todays instant access to anything means a brand, like a campaign needs to be a conversation and not a message.

The point Simon laboured most strongly was a hatred for the word consistent. "No one says, I fell in love with her because she was consistent", consistent is safe and for a brand, safe is just another word for mediocre. If you need a C word, stick to cohesive, at least that welcomes change. He brought his progressive talk to a close with some simple guidelines: stop fretting about the logo, start layering multi-faceted impressions as logos and brands are only worth the impressions they evoke, and while you used to be able to polish a turd, these days, if you try, it'll get tweeted and before you know it, your game's up.

Therefore: yes, it needs to look good, but branding has evolved beyond aesthetics in response to the media involved. For an agency like SMG, we can certainly take home some key messages. When it comes to design, we can do the logo test for example: cover up our respective logo, does our product look, feel and speak like an SMG product, be it a reel, a PowerPoint presentation or our literature? It should, because recipients have started to talk back. As for media planning and buying, I'm hesitant to comment on specifics as it isn't my field, though it seems obvious to suggest the shift in behaviour and push towards brand dialogue needs to be driven at agency level before we can even begin to tap into its potential.

Big thank you to Brand Perfect, Creative Reviews' Jade Mellor and all the speakers involved.

Basil is Graphic Design Manager at SMG

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Facebook helps Daily Mirror's web traffic rocket 24%

Submitted by Neil Allen on Wed, 01/06/2011 - 13:46

The website for the Mirror Group was the standout winner in terms of growth last month, with a 24% lift in unique browsers following a renewed social media strategy.

According to ABC Multiplatform figures, formerly called ABCe, for April , Mirror.co.uk attracted 14,108,330 unique users last month, up from 11,418,514 in March.

The site, which includes content from the Daily Mirror newspaper, as well as mirrorfootball.co.uk and 3am.co.uk, has seen unique browsers increase by 51% within the past year.

Helping it outperform the market last month was a renewed focus on its social media strategy, and in particular, Facebook. The publisher embarked on a concerted effort to seed its stories via Facebook and open more of its site content to user comments.

Referrals via Facebook were responsible for less than 5% of total traffic at Mirror.co.uk in the first three months of the year, but this had rocketed to around 30%, more than four million uniques, in April.

There is no doubt that social plug ins, if used correctly can significantly increase site traffic. It is not new for people to desire to share content and make recommendations to others. What sites like Facebook have done is simply make that process easier than before, by allowing your curated network to push information to you.

The Mirror is not the first website to use this kind of strategy to boost it’s audience, The Mail Online has become the largest newspaper website, whilst being plugged in to social media.

Facebook has been actively encouraging brands to take advantage of social plug ins since they launched them a year ago. They are essentially a free way to distribute content across the Facebook platform and have become an integral part of a number of websites’ traffic strategies worldwide.

The Mirror have implemented the “recommend” button for pushing out news stories. Bearing in mind that over 15 million unique users access Facebook in the UK daily, this is obviously a good place for them to be.

This is not a new phenomenon, as over half of comScores’ global top 100 websites have integrated in one way or another with Facebook, and more than 250 million people use Facebook on external websites each month. In addition, since they launched social plug ins in April 2010, an average of 10,000 new websites integrate with Facebook every day.

April was a good month as far as newsworthy events were concerned, with the Royal Wedding and the end of Osama Bin Laden, but whilst The Mirror recorded it’s 24% uplift, all of it’s competitor newspaper websites actually saw traffic decline.

The Mirror still trails the Mail, Guardian and Telegraph by a considerable margin, but it will be interesting to see if this strategy will continue to promote growth, and how their competitors will react.

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Tech Tuesday, 31-5-11

Submitted by Scott Thompson on Tue, 31/05/2011 - 23:04

Apple reveal WWDC topics

Apple announced an outline of its annual Worldwide Developers Conference Keynote speech next Monday. Although it is unusual for Apple to pre-announce the content of a keynote speech, the announcement was doubly unusual in that it also contained the name of a new product; "iCloud". Expectations for the service are running high, with speculation ranging from a free offering similar to MobileMe (released at the same time as the iPhone, but to a considerably less enthusiastic response), a web-based iTunes (with Apple reportedly having signed 3 of the 4 major music labels, with Universal close to finalising a deal), Twitter integration, an online storage service – and many more theories beside.

With updated versions of the iPhone & iPad operating system iOS5 and the eighth version of Mac OSX, it is expected that iCloud will be deeply embedded in Apple's various products' software platforms.

The keynote itself will be presented by Steve Jobs; another surprise, since he announced a medical leave of absence earlier this year. Despite updated iPhone versions being announced at around this time of year since the original 2007 launch, new hardware is not expected to be among Apple's announcements.

Apple also announced that it's iWork suite of office applications (already available on the iPad) are now available on iPhone.

Google Wallet

Google have announced "Google Wallet", a mobile-based service which will allow users to use their phones as payment systems.

Google claim that;

In the past few thousand years, the way we pay has changed just three times—from coins, to paper money, to plastic cards. Now we’re on the brink of the next big shift.

The system will see a limited launch; only available on smartphones with built-in NFC (Near-Field Communication)- Google have announced that the system will be available at launch on the Nexus-S 4G in the US, with support for other devices to follow.

This announcement was quickly followed by the news that Google were being sued by PayPal, with accusations of Google poaching key employees and using trade secrets developed by PayPal for their own mobile payment system.

Although the convenience of a touch-to-pay system for smartphone owners seems relatively clear, whether consumers will want to move away from plastic cards and start using phones for payment is unclear. It seems unlikely that people will feel happy leaving their cards behind, as it will no doubt take some time for NFC-enabled payment systems to become as widely available as chip & pin card readers at points of sale.

AdMob ad requests triple in past year

As AdMob marked its first anniversary of being acquired by Google (following a rumoured bidding war between Google and Apple), the mobile advertising company has announced some impressive figures of growing advertising activity.

Overall ad requests have grown more than 3.5 times in the last year, with over 2.7 billion ad requests a day.

AdMob also revealed that the market for tablet ads is growing fast; more than 300% in the last six months, with 1 in 5 mobile ads now being served to tablet devices – far exceeding the ratio of tablets to smartphones in active use. AdMob's announcement included new formats for tablet ads, with full-screen interstitial ads now available to advertisers, which can include branded video, image galleries and interactive elements. Google's Doubleclick for Publishers ad serving platform has also been integrated with AdMob

SeeSaw to close

Following a strategic review by owners Arqiva, online video aggregator site SeeSaw is to close down due to lack of funding. The site started out as "Project Kangaroo", a combined TV catch-up service from the BBC, ITV and Channel 4, which was blocked by the Competition Commission due to its potential unfair dominance of the UK's online TV industry. The planned brand and technology were purchased by Arqiva, who went on to launch the service. However, facing competition from a number of sources, it has failed to have a significant impact on the UK market.

Govt to resume ad spend

Following a report that the government's freeze on advertising spending had resulted in the loss of lives, around £44m has been set aside for four advertising campaigns in England. These will include promotion of the SmokeFree anti-smoking website (which has seen traffic levels drop by a half), Change4Life campaign for healthy living (down by two thirds), and specific messages targeted at young people, and issues related to older people.

The report also set out guidelines for social media marketing activity, recommending "a shift away from traditional mass-media channels towards those channels the government already owns, such as government websites and poster sites in government buildings." Social media is expected to play a major part in these activities.

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Tech Tuesday, 24-5-11

Submitted by Scott Thompson on Tue, 24/05/2011 - 17:33

Government supports "light touch" approach to cookie regulation

Following EU regulations passed last year, concern and confusion has surrounded how the regulation around online cookies (used to identify visitors across different web pages and sites) would be passed into law by EU states as todays deadline approached.

In an open letter from the DCMS today, Ed Vaizey sets out the governments approach; the government will take a "light touch business friendly" approach, clarifying that the government does not think that they should specify technical measures needed to obtain consent.

Confusion had surround an ambiguity in the EU directive, which originally set out a need for "prior, informed consent", but in a recital to the directive also stated that web browsers' settings (which may be left at a default setting, negating the "prior, informed consent") would be a sufficient indication.

Twitter's first employee moves to London

As Twitter prepare to open their London office (and rumoured EU headquarters), reports are that their first employee to be relocated has moved to head the yet-to-be-recruited London team.

The move will certainly help Twitter to grow its business here; currently, the sales focus of the company is very focussed on the US, but with targeted ads for the UK and other countries being made available later this year and the expected "self-service" advertising model, a local sales house will help to make Twitter's offering clearer to advertisers.

Obviously, unless you have been hiding from the media world this week, Twitter has been getting attention here for other reasons. With a significant surge in traffic reported last weekend as speculation over superinjunctions reached a peak, the site was at one point reported to be responsible for 1 in every 184 internet visits. This represented a 22% spike – compared to a 10% spike on 9th May, when the media reported the creation of an account which purported to name those who had taken out superinjunctions.

Some other interesting stats about the UK's Twitter usage were also reported; 12% of visits to the website are coming from new users (compared to 0.5% of Facebook visits), indicating that growth looks set to continue for a while, at least. Although Twitter only represents 0.55% of website visits in the UK (compared with 7.64% for Facebook, and 1% for BBC News) the growth means it has now passed the BBC's iPlayer in terms of popularity.

But perhaps a more interesting comparison of social and traditional media and the apparent tension between the two came from Tess Alps' Thinkbox blog

Anyone can search online and discover who the alleged sinners are but the mainstream media are gagged from telling us what those searches will uncover. […] It strikes me that until Twitter speculation is rubber-stamped by trusted reports in legitimate media, it is just a whiff of a story coming from the kitchen; it isn’t the meal itself. It needs ratifying to be satisfying.

Amazon selling more Kindle books than print

6 months after announcing that Kindle eBook sales had overtaken hardback books, Amazon have announced that they have now overtaken all book sales to become the most popular book format on Amazon.com.

Obviously, as exclusive sellers of books on the popular Kindle platform, Amazon's numbers aren't reflective of the industry as a whole, but publisher reports indicate around 15% or so of sales are coming from eBooks.

US bookshop Barnes & Noble offer a competing eReader platform ("Nook"), which is powered by Google's Android technology (although can't run Android smartphone/tablet applications), which this week saw the release of a new model with a black and white touch screen to complement the existing Nook Colour reader, which features a colour screen and the ability to run applications.

Future Publishing reach a digital tipping point

Future publishing say that they have reached a tipping point in their publishing model, as for the first time their digital revenue growth has outstripped the decline in print advertising, leading to total revenue growth for the 'magazine' publisher of 2% - its first growth in 4 years.

"The difference in the last 12 months [of trading] is that there has been more change in the last 10 months since iPads and tablets started to motor than the 10 years of digital before," said chief executive Stevie Spring.

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Tech Tuesday, 17-5-11

Submitted by Scott Thompson on Tue, 17/05/2011 - 22:48

Google I/O Developer Conference

Google's annual 2-day developer conference took place this week; Google I/O. This is the platform where Google announce their technological developments, and sets the scene for their plans over the coming year. The "I/O" moniker is a programming term (meaning "in/out"), but for Google, this stands for "innovation" and "open."

The first day focussed on the Android mobile operating system. Along with some of the latest stats (100 million Android devices activated, 310 devices on sale and 4.5bn apps downloaded), Google outlined some of the key developments for the platform;

Android Honeycomb update to 3.1; a software update for Android tablets, including new features such as USB accessories and a film rental service.
The next major software release; "Ice Cream Sandwich"- which will combine the tablet-exclusive 3.0/3.1 versions, and the smartphone-exclusive 2.3 threads into a "cohesive whole".
Facial tracking technology being added to the operating system
"Google Music", a cloud-based music streaming service, and "Project Tungsten"- which will send music to your stereo
New systems to connect Android devices with other technology; "Android@home", which will allow Android devices to control your home lighting, dishwashers, alarm clocks, exercise bikes- pretty much anything, it seems.
Android Open Accessory initiative and Android Device Kit- allowing hardware tinkerers to build their own Android accessories.

The second day focussed on developments with Google's Chrome web browser platform.

Speech input being added to the browser
"Web GL", which will allow 3D graphics to be delivered over the web
"Chromebook"- low-cost laptops from Samsung and Acer (as launch partners), which will bring the Chrome OS operating system announced in 2009 to the market.

Chrome OS looks to be an interesting project; low-cost laptops with a minimal amount of software running on the laptop itself, with a strong focus on web-based services. One key difference is the purchase model, with $20/month laptops expected in the US, and the mobile network 3 expected to be a launch partner in the UK.

Facebook hire PR firm to smear Google

Rumours surfaced early this week about a PR firm hired to smear Google, after a blogger posted an email conversation with the PR firm apparently looking to promote negative stories about Google. After some investigation by journalists, Facebook admitted to being the client.

Confronted with evidence, a Facebook spokesman last night confirmed that Facebook hired Burson, citing two reasons: first, it believes Google is doing some things in social networking that raise privacy concerns; second, and perhaps more important, Facebook resents Google’s attempts to use Facebook data in its own social-networking service.

Facebook's concerns revolve around Google's "social circles" - connections aimed to improve social search - claiming that it;

Uses data mining to find social connections on different websites without users' consent/control
Shares the data it gathers with Google account users
Pulls connection and contact info from a number of sites (with a list of named sites "like"...)
Stores info from users who aren't Google account holders where they have a connection to a Google account holder- even if that is only a "friend of a friend" connection

The PR firm has since said that the assignment "should have been declined", as it is a breach of ethics.

The revelation highlights the growing friction between Google and Facebook, as Facebook's rapid growth in advertising looks set to overtake Google's display advertising (although is still a long way off their paid search advertising), and its growing position as the centre of users' internet experience enables it to become a platform for other services (most notably ecommerce) and a strategic threat to Google in other areas.

Meanwhile, Microsoft has announced that it will be tying Facebook data more closely into Bing search results, extending its vision of "social search."

Survey: 7.5M Facebook users below minimum age

A study in the US by Consumer Reports found that 7.5 million US Facebook users are under the age of 13 - with more than 5 million under the age of 10.

As we noted last month, these findings mirror those from an LSE study into under-age Facebook use (the site states that you must be at least 13 years old to register a profile.)

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