Here is a great tool to use when thinking up your next great website idea, band name, product, start-up, pet’s name etc.

The question that usually follows any name choice is: “is the URL free?” In the Web 2.0 era the question has been amended a little to ask: “is the Twitter handle free?”

NameChk quickly and easily answers that question by scanning over 80 social networks and bookmarking tools for availability of your desired name: http://namechk.com/

The Facebook “like” button has become an iconic part of the Internet over the last two years since its launch, but the next stage for the social network is to introduce a “want” button for products and pages – something brands are very keen on having. In July, there were several reports that Facebook are set to introduce the ‘Want’ button in a test phase to certain brands and businesses who are currently using the social network.

This comes hot on the heels of Facebook’s first attempt at f-commerce, turning the network into a marketplace for goods and products, including the introduction of a Facebook currency.

A ‘Want’ button could potentially give brands and advertisers access to a huge volume of data regarding purchases and would be much more active indication of intent to purchase than clicking ’Like’ which could, in a sense, describe anything from casual interest to a deep intention of desire or love for the brand.

Blogger Tom Waddington who discovered the code for the button recently told Mashable: “It’s definitely been worked on. This shows that it’s still under active development, rather than being a ditched project. The fact the code contains references to ‘social commerce’ is a sign that they’re taking it seriously. In the same way music, news and videos are shared on the site, Facebook is planning to allow users to share both Wants and Purchases, from items bought within games to donations.”

…In the Blue Ring we have ‘Twitter‘… And in the Red Ring we have ‘Weibo‘!

Weibo is a Chinese social media platform, seen as a combination of our two important friends “Facebook” and “Twitter”. I call it the “TwitBook”!

With no limit on 140 characters – it is certainly the hottest social service in China now. With continous growth and even expansion to Hong Kong and Taiwan feeling the heat too.

Weibo definitely has a huge appetite, consuming 90% of China’s microblogging market share! Gaining 140 million+ users in the space of 2 years, while Twitter gained only 200 million+ users in 5 years.

Currently with over 300 million+ users and 500 million+ users for Twitter, Weibo is certainly stepping up to its rival..

 

It’s New! It’s Hot! and it’s becoming Bigger, Bolder and Stronger!

Over the last few years it’s become clear that much like Gin & Tonic, Ant & Dec or a man & a well earned beer, Twitter and sport have become completely inseparable. Whether it’s (the soon to be ‘Sir’) Bradley Wiggins celebrating his Tour de France and Olympic success or Rio Ferdinand promising to snaffle Usain Bolt a trial at Manchester United everyone  is doing it and ‘engaging’ more with their fans. In fact the only notable exception I can think of is Roger Federer, a man so nice that he’s probably protected from the internet by his entourage for fear it might ‘corrupt’ him.

For a lot of sports fans and journalists it can be a great source of information (and often humour) but more and more frequently it lands athletes in trouble, or at the wrong end of abuse following a below-par performance. Tom Daley, Kevin Pietersen, Swiss footballers and Greek triple-jumpers have all had one scandal or another in just the last couple of weeks, and in the case of Tom Daley and KP with no fault on their part, leading to the conclusion by many that controls should be stronger on what people can and can’t post. I for one think that, as long as it’s legal, people should be able to say whatever they want on Twitter and around the internet, but it’s an interesting problem for athletes and (probably more realistically) their PR teams to face as their online presence becomes increasingly important.

A significant ruling has been made by Australia’s advertising watchdog against Carlton & United Breweries VB Facebook page that effectively says that Facebook is an advertising medium and therefore brands are responsibly for all comments and posts by users submitted to their pages. This makes brands personally responsible for all comments that appear on their Facebook Pages, an huge moderation task and something that looks to be as difficult to enforce as it will be to monitor.

Fortunately the ASA here in the UK has said that there are no plans to bring in any similar legislation, however the concern is still very real as the courts struggle to make sense of the new online advertising landscape.

Following Usain Bolt’s outstanding 100m Olympic record clocking in at 9.63 seconds, Twitter reacted immediately after his lightning quick victory with a staggering 2,360 tweets per second.

Overall tweets per minute peaked at 105,000 which is at four times the level monitored during the Olympic opening ceremony by EchoScreen, the in-house monitoring tool used by Starcom MediaVest Group. Team GB’s Jessica Ennis, Olympic heptathlon champion managed to top 293,000 tweets after her gold win with her surname trending nationwide on the social network.

Below is an awesome infographic about how Bolt beat Twitter. Go Jams!

Reddit.com took the Olympics empty seats dilemma to task by using photoshop to fill as many memes, characters and Internet superheroes into all available space. Awesome gif making skills and a great example of the shared creative power of a good idea. All done in the name of karma.

Finally with days to go before the ceremony, the Olympics have finally arrived. The Olympics have always been a huge talking factor, making this month the biggest buzz people are talking about!

Here you can see the evolution of how the Olympics grew wider in audience over time. Social media being the big player, giving fans the ultimate platform to share their latest tweets and even the chance to talk to their heroes.

In comparison to traditional platforms, social media gives fans from around the world the opportunity to respond from their brands to even their favourite athletes. Twitter will become the central lounge for everyone around the world, with news being spread in the space of a second.

A cycle of 4 years per Olympic event will see exponential change over the years, with Facebook users surging from 100 Million users to 845 Million. Twitter users 6 Million to 140 Million users since the last Olympics.

According to the survey called ‘Summer on the Sofa’ found that 180 Million Olympic-related tweets will be sent during the games. With over 10,000 Olympians, 11 Million visitors to London, 34 Million+ Brits tuning in this Olympic event, how socially-buzzed are you with the Olympics this Summer?

 

 

The hype, controversy and press coverage surrounding Christopher Nolan’s conclusion to the epic “Dark Knight” trilogy reached fever pitch during the opening weekend. Driving the key messaging and call-to-action for ticket sales and providing a virtual countdown to the launch date, the team behind The Dark Knight Rises Facebook Page released a series of great cover images (inspired by the banner ads). Each cover image attracting over 10,000 likes and an huge number of shares and comments, rolling the momentum for the release of the film right up to the launch date. Fans of the film adopted the cover images onto their own profiles, broadening the awareness of the page and the release date of the film. A smart, simple and creatively-led social media campaign.

Facebook is becoming increasingly important for almost any business. Having your own facebook page offers the possibility to stay in contact with clients or potential clients and inform them about offers and activities. Whereas most medium-sized companies just recently started to use the world’s biggest social network for their purposes, a great number of huge companies already recognised facebook’s importance many years ago and do now have millions of facebook fans.
In the following chart, published by ‘statista.com’, there are listed the 20 companies with the most facebook fans worldwide: