Google’s algorithms – secret recipe or evil formula?

Rumours, insinuations and accusations have been bubbling around for a while now, but today’s announcement that the European Commission has launched a preliminary anti-monopoly probe into Google’s affairs is the first concrete action to challenge the firm’s tactics. Brief summary without getting too technical – Google allegedly artificially demotes articles in its search results to…

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Social Media – a reliable source for journalists?

This week the Guardian online posted a blog on the rise of social media as a relevant source of information for journalists, as revealed by a recent US survey which claimed that 56% of reporters view it as an important tool for producing stories. The research carried out by Cision and The George Washington University,…

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Tracking the 2010 UK election with Google Insights

We recently added a new page to the immediate future blog, a social media dashboard for the 2010 UK general election. The dashboard pulls together data from various sources to provide a quick visual overview of which of the three main political parties are generating the most conversations in online and social media. We’re not…

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Too many social media cooks?

The new Buzz module will allow all 176 million users of Google’s Gmail service to see their friends’ live status updates, and share photos and videos. Sound familiar? Been there, done that, got the Facebook/Twitter account already? With social media success stories like Facebook claiming 400 million active users and Twitter recently reaching 75 million users,…

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Rise of the iMPs

With Obama’s ‘masterful use of social media’ and the tweets of his 3 million Twitter fans sealing the election of the Democrats’ golden ticket, can our politicians and parties emulate this success and seduce the online masses and turn them into advocates? There’ll be new blood on the hustings. According to Home Office sources, 134…

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Retweet and Win…

I’ve always been intrigued by the use of competitions as a PR tool. How effective are they in reaching the right people for your brand, and do people take notice of much else other than the prize on offer? With this in mind, I wanted to look at Twitter and how it’s currently being used…

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A good birthday for Facebook

February marks a milestone in the social networking calendar as Facebook celebrates its birthday. The site turned six last week and is showing impressive figures of late, with double the amount of users (now standing at 400 million worldwide), compared to this time last year.  Econsultancy statistics also say that 50 per cent of active…

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Howzat for a landmark in live streamed video?

Last week saw the announcement in the press of the Indian Premier League’s plan to stream the whole of the 2010 tournament live via YouTube. As many commentators have noted over the past week, this calls into question the whole notion of TV rights. With the focus of entertainment shifting more and more towards online…

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Net Promoter Score – a flawed science?

Yesterday, I attended a WOM UK espresso breakfast briefing with Professor of Consumer Behaviour Dr Robert East from our very own Kingston University. Dr East and his MBA students have been researching consumer behaviour and word for mouth for 10 years. Without serious funding they don’t have the data to prove the validity of their…

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