Category: Facebook

January 17, 2013

Graph Search. What does it all mean (Basil), especially for Google

So, this is my first time on the Amnesia Razorfish blog. Please be gentle. I’ve probably already blotted my copybook with an Austin Powers headline reference. But bear with me.

I recently joined the team here as Social and Optimisation Director from the Razorfish London office. Given my job title, Facebook’s announcement this week of Graph Search is a subject that I couldn’t just ignore…

First things first. Hallelujah! For a long time, those of us who have wrestled with Facebook internal search have longed for the day when Mr Zuckerberg and friends would come up with something that didn’t leave users banging their heads off desks/bus stops/tablets in frustration.

Ever since Lars Rasmussen made the jump from Google I’ve been waiting expectantly for that day to arrive. And now it has. To much fanfare from Facebook itself (a new pillar at the core of Facebook’s offering no less) and a proclamation of the beginning of a new socially enabled digital dawn.

The new Facebook Graph Search — Take a little look for yourself https://www.facebook.com/about/graphsearch

There’s been a lot of commentary on the announcement globally, as you’d expect. Wired ran the ‘Inside Story’ on how Graph Search came to be. Lots of back slapping and high fiving in that article. Which seems to sum up most reactions, at least from my (Google powered, shhh, don’t tell) searching.

The mood is pretty positive. Even if Facebook’s share price actually dropped in the immediate aftermath.

Inevitably, a few have chosen to go with the sensationalist headline of how Facebook is now set to slay the big G. My view? Fundamentally, both companies still approach the web from different standpoints.

Zuckerberg himself was quick to point out the differences during the announcement.

Google is still primarily about indexing information, and providing quick access to facts, stats, quotes and places to buy that new must have thingamy bob. While Facebook is still primarily a (giant) closed network where people can keep up to date with what’s going on in the world of their connections.

Yes, Google last year made its own first stab at connection driven results (anyone remember the big reveal of Search, Plus Your World?). And with Google+ it also threw itself, and a considerable chunk of change, into cracking the elusive social nut that other initiatives, such as Wave (Lars’ former foray that ended badly), had failed to do.

Facebook has obviously been keeping tabs on Google’s efforts. But let’s be honest. It’s really only been steady progress Google side, even with features like Hangouts, which didn’t just get me, but also President Obama excited. Zuckerberg won’t exactly have been rocking himself to sleep in fear.

Google’s core is still people finding stuff out quickly. And in all the furore, people seem to have forgotten about the Semantic Web – which is still a big deal for Google. Information connecting with other information to help us discover stuff that both we and even our friends don’t know about.

I italicised this last point as I believe this is the biggest difference. People find things initially through Google, and their favourite (non Facebook) sites, then share it through their networks with people.

There are two different elements, the discovery and the sharing (which can take the form of an endorsement or a recommendation). Google and Facebook, when you strip it back to their core offering, compliment each other ultimately, as they perform different roles.

That’s my two pence, sorry, cents worth in any case.

November 15, 2012

Pass the Parcel with Australia Post

ptp_shot — Australia Post’s Pass the Parcel. No messy newspaper to clean up.

It’s been a busy week for us here, starting on Monday with the launch of Australia Post’s new Pass the Parcel promotion on Facebook.

Australia Post approached us with the idea of using social to reinvent the classic kids’ party game Pass the Parcel – one of the first really “social” games most of us played as children – while keeping the concept simple and accessible.

We put together a Facebook app that put you in a “circle” with other contestants – don’t be surprised if some of them are your friends. We sat you guys together.

When the parcel gets to you, just click on it and see if you’ve won a prize. There’s a lot to be won and you can come back and try again every day.

The response so far has been amazing. Since launching on Monday morning, we’ve had more than 50,000 unique users and more than 30,000 new likes for Australia Post.

Head over to Australia Post’s Facebook page to have a go.

Fine Print: I know there’s a bunch of us in that screen shot, but we’re not actually allowed to enter. We don’t click on the button. Sadface.

July 7, 2011

Facebook Video Chat… World Takeover Strategy

Now that facebook has not only dominated the social network space, launched a successful advertising platform, launched geo location offline business integration(facebook places), why not just jump into another market ? video chat ?

The facebook+skype integration allows users to connect with their online friends via skype

how to setup facebook video chat — video chat

Step 1 seen above is selecting the person you want to start a video chat with.

facebook video chat installation — installing facebook video chat

Next thing we need to do is download and install the software that makes the video chat possible, this is a simple 2 click process(Tell google to keep it simple). Are you excited yet ?

facebook video chat installer — video chat installer

Now you run the file and within seconds you can be chatting away with people all over the globe. Without having to invite them into circles(out the box functionality, now way!) Yes way.

video chat installer progress — video chat away

A simple web call authentication that installs the program

calling someone on facebook video chat — video chat call request

What you see above is what it looks like when requesting a video chat call(if you are the person requesting it).

A simple call request before a call launch is seen above and the grand finale, the peice de resistance is seen below.. Drumroll please

And below is my little cousin who never wants to use any new technology(we all know someone like her)

facebook video calls — arguing with late adopters

Presto.

Since none of my friends have video calls and the 1 person I called was unlcothed, it will be a while before you see the actual video call image

July 1, 2011

How Google+ might shape social experience optimisation

Sometime around March 2011, Google made a new feature known as +1 available in the search results. Users who wanted to rate various websites for relevance could do so by clicking the +1 button,which would give the website or content additional visibility online. However what was not clear, was what would a flood of +1 ratings do for any particular website ? It was unclear how each person who clicked the +1 could use their influence within various social circles to ensure that “relevant” and “timely” content was shared with the people best suited for it within your social circle.

Enter Google+

Google+ allows people to build networks around locations and interests as well as numerous other factors. The question is how will this impact SEO (search engine optimisation) and will social experience optimisation influence search results ?

2011 Overall Ranking Algorithm

Source: SEOmoz Ranking Factors

We know from a survey done by one of the leading SEO communities, that social media is one of the many ranking signals for organic search. The survey also revealed that geo location is one of the other factors that influences organic search results. All evidence points towards increased relevance being localised as well as influenced by social signals.

The answer has already been provided by google who recently announced that google+1′s will be visible in your analytics profile, and since we already know that social media is one of the ranking signals for website performance, brands will now need to factor in generating content that resonates with their target audience strongly enough to get them “Social approval”.

November 25, 2010

Will it go dot.mum? (the real adnews article)

A new phrase has entered the building – dot.mum. It was blurted out (as these things normally are) in a creative brainstorm the other day, ‘I like it, it’s a great idea, but will it go dot .mum?’.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lwr/3946109956

At the time, it came out as shorthand for ‘the mainstream’. The incomplete thesis behind the mumbling was once you’ve gone dot.com you then need to go dot.mum, which means you’ve pretty much got yourself into every household (pretty much – an incomplete thesis as I said).

As the presumed ruler of the household purse, Mums have long been the targets of some pretty one-dimensional strategies (we’ve all seen it before in this industry; food = fear, toilets = pride, etc) and, of course, the terrible advertising that accompanies it. There is a lot more to dot.mum than meets the eye though (now that I’ve actually bothered to explore my mind fart) the truth of the matter is that actually dot.mums are changing the nature of what the mainstream is.

The Entertainment Association of Australia quietly released a study last month which predicts mums are set to overtake teenage boys as the new gamers (ask anyone at Facebook and they’ll tell you they’ve already seen it happen). Their study shows that 46 per cent of the Australia’s gamers are now female, with the average age 30 years.

While we’re fighting some female marketing stereotypes, I’d like to include a side point of clarification here: In the same way that mums aren’t fear-driven, pride-seeking, FMCG buying machines, when women play games they do not necessarily want teddy bears and shopping apps.

A study undertaken in 2006 by the Australian Catholic Univeristy no less (their misspelling not mine… Given this, perhaps we should view all results as indicative at this stage) found that female gamers find mental stimulation, creativity, interesting story lines and superior graphics more important than anything else (more important than dolphins and flowers for example).

Once you’ve put your copy of Ad News down go and check your analytics for some genuine insight. When we launched our paper plane game (check it out – it’s fun) we found out that the majority of the users where female (55%) and since then we’ve taken specific learnings into a number of campaigns. One implication is the fracturing of engagement (mum’s are very busy people) so we need to make any content bite sized, flexible and something they really want to return to.

Make no mistake the dot.mum phenomena has its downside. Is something still cool if it has gone dot.mum? Just ask Dido. And then there is the question of where dot.mum finishes? Once the chick chick boom girl appeared on sunrise her cache evaporated. So where does Sunrise fit and should we include Sunrise in our media plans for dot.mums? That really is the stuff of sleepless nights.

So guess what, games are increasingly a mass marketing channel and women aren’t idiots. No, there is much more to it than that. Going dot.mum is important, it is the future of the mainstream, a future mainstream we must connect with and, in order to do so, ultimately understand. If we can’t get that far let’s at least make sure we don’t fall back on some of those bad marketing assumptions.

Now you’ve read this rubbish, go and check out some serious gamer girls here – girlgamers.com.au, thumbbandits.com or womengamers.com (the latter of which is now 11 years old btw).

Ben Hourahine is Strategy Director at Amnesia Razorfish – @benhourahine

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Published in Adnews - ‘Dot.mum is the new mainstream’ – 19.11.10

This is the original version before the re-edit, my name is also spelled correctly here too

August 27, 2010

Kitty criminal – the viral story of CatBinLady

“I was walking home from work and saw this cat wander out in front of me. I don’t know what came over me, but I suddenly thought it would be funny to put it in the wheelie bin, which was right beside me.”

Happens to the best of us, eh? This is how 45 year old Mary Bale from Coventry in the UK described the bizarre lapse of judgement that has catapulted her to global interweb fame in the space of a few days.

Lola the cat’s owner, Darryl Mann, heard her piteous yowling inside the wheelie bin outside his home fifteen hours later. Unluckily for Mrs Bale, her random act of kitty cruelty was captured on Darryl’s security cameras and promptly uploaded to YouTube by his wife, Stephanie. It wasn’t long before the resourcefulness of crowds tracked her down, and now she’s news from the Washington Post to the Sydney Morning Herald.

Her name, address, manager’s phone number have been posted online; there are at least 8 Facebook pages denouncing her villainy (not counting ‘Death to Mary Bale’, removed by Facebook). The Sun newspaper in the UK has published a Flash whack-a-mole game (renamed Whack-cat-woman) allowing users to smack Mary’s wicked head as it pops out of wheelie bins.

Back on YouTube there’s a video entitled ‘Cruel Cat Dumps Woman In Bin (Revenge of Cat)’ in which the tables are turned – a man in a Sylvester the Cat suit dumps an old lady in a wheelie bin.

Mary’s even got a fake twitter account in her name, CatBinLady, which has her tweeting pathological random acts of weirdness as she goes through her day: “Just kicked the head off next door’s gnome. For a joke. Who’s laughing now though? Not me. Not me.”

In short – she’s gone VIRAL! In just days.

While notorious Mary is barricaded at home, pilloried by the world’s media, menaced by crowds outside her house and expecting to lose her job, you’ll be pleased to hear that Lola has recovered from her ordeal purrrfectly.

May 19, 2010

New Facebook Privacy Tools: A Cunning Ruse?

Everybody is mad at Facebook for destroying privacy all the way across the Internet. Here’s the thing though, they’ve recently had this meeting, right? You’ve probably heard about it. Only two things appear to have come out of this meeting so far, and neither address the issue at hand.

In essence, the two new tools described here allow you to give specific devices (your phone, work computer, and home computer for instance) the authority to log-in to your Facebook account. While this is fantastic for account hacking prevention, and are therefore important for privacy, they’re barely related to the reasons an angry mob has formed at Facebook’s gates.

My rant after the jump.

Continue reading →

January 8, 2010

Refreshingly Fun: What we've been doing with Pepsi

You’ve probably seen the billboards and bus ads by now, but in case you weren’t aware, we recently launched the digital side of Pepsi’s new Hit Refresh campaign. MTV are pushing it on television, we’re running it here on the ‘net.

It’s pretty cool, a mash-up of Pepsi re-inventing their image and placing a huge focus on digital marketing the combination of which turned into a Twitter based scavenger hunt, with the prizes coming in the form of cold hard cash. Well, not cash so much as 101 slick little EFTPOS cards loaded up with $250 each.

A brief run down: the refreshment company activation team (known as Pepsi Refreshers) make their way out into the world, choose an obscure location in a well populated Australian city, and then start tweeting out clues about where they are from the Pepsi Australia Twitter page. We’ve rigged it so that game playing, money lusting, Pepsi fans can also catch these updates on the Facebook Page, or at the Hit Refresh site, in order to more effectively race each other to the prize.

This is excellent because the entire thing can essentially be run from a smartphone, an easy thing for a Pepsi Refresher to have on them at all times. Plus, the players themselves aren’t tied into any particular service in order to keep up with the clues. It’s infectious, interactive, and incredibly efficient – social media at its best, really.

Creative mastermind Toby Caves really took advantage of the fact that APIs and widgets basically rule the internet now, and the main campaign site grew into a deliciously crafted overview of everything that’s happened, and is happening in the competition at any given time.

The latest clues are fed in from the Twitter page, Facebook fans are prominently displayed, a schedule and Google powered map let people know which cities the Refreshers are going to pop up in next and the Winners Gallery shows off all those lucky sods with their fancy new free money cards. It’s all ruled over by an explanatory Flash header, and coated in a vibrant blue that only exists between shades of Pepsi and Twitter.

Speaking of those cards, we feel like they’re a bit of a win. Based on the global Refresh campaign posters and candy colour palette, they are a bit more recognisable and fun than straight up cash in your hand while still being just as usable.

Stamped with the new Pepsi globe logo, we’ve also slapped some helpful thematic suggestions for spending the well won dollars. Things like style, scene, and so on – after all, if you win a prize you shouldn’t be using it to pay your bills (unless you really need to, then it’s ok). As a general rule though, prizes are fun, should be used for fun, should be spent on your self, and we wanted to encourage that.

We wanted the prize cards to be like the campaign, simple, effective, fun and it feels like we nailed it.

No, it’s not modest or polite to rave on about oneself, but this is a pretty exciting project for us, and the response so far has been amazing, so we thought we’d throw out a few more details and see what you all think.

Check out the campaign, hit us up in the comments and let us know.

November 13, 2009

Orange friend-o-meter

An interactive quiz to promote the launch of the Motorola Dext (‘The Super Social Networking Machine’). This quiz connects to twitter, facebook and myspace and tests how well you know your friends by pulling data from their profiles and feeds.

Pretty cool ‘eh.

@handypearce

October 27, 2009

Historical Moments of Internet Social Power Changes

I was just checking my folder where I keep interesting screenshots of stats (ok, I admit they’re probably only interesting to me but hey… I just like sharing). So here’s some ‘interesting’ moments where power shifts occur in the world of social and UGC. (Note: Stats are from the publicly available Alexa site). Note that I screen grabbed these at the time and saved them because there’s not always a guarantee you’ll be able to get the data in the same state in the future. Currently Alexa now only goes back 2 years since they changed their data analysis so the first screenshot below is something of a collectors item (if you collect screenshots of stats that is).

~ @eunmac

Below: Jan 2007 YouTube clearly passes MySpace.

Below: What has happened since (in a little under 3 years)

Below: Another change in global domination in 2009. Facebook passes YouTube in July.

Below – What’s next? Despite the hype surrounding Twitter it’s got a long way to go to catch Facebook which continues to grow at a phenomenal rate with YouTube appearing pretty solid – although interestingly Twitter appears to be now on par with MySpace and looks set to pass it next month.