Social media 101: The Guardian is really getting into this social media marketing thing. They’ve launched a dedicated section on their website dedicated to the topic. A great resource if you’re starting out in social or just want to stay abreast of the latest developments without things getting too geeky.

As a brief selection, there’s a piece on how Twitter has become the marketing platform where people answer back, why you should think mobile when thinking social media and tips on how to manage reputation on social media.

And while we’re on the basics of social – an actually useful ‘how to do social media‘ post by @mycleveragency.

Twitter history: Quartz have published a great timeline of how Twitter has been described by the New York Times since it was launched in 2007 to present day. A nifty way of looking at how Twitter, but also the NYT’s understanding of Twitter has evolved over time from

“This short-messaging service allows you to ‘micro-blog’ your life in 140 character bursts.”

to

“…which started out as a way to post short bursts of text, is slowly but surely evolving into a media-rich and never-ending stream of information and entertainment that includes short videos, photographs and advertisements”

More proof that Facebook has lost its cool: The news that Facebook is losing younger members and no longer cool is nothing new. These claims have been backed up with data and analysis and I’ve written about them here before. If you still don’t believe it or want further proof then you should check out this splendid post on HuffPo about why the kids don’t like Facebook anymore.

Predictive search: Google Now does it, many other search engines, apps and companies are working on it. A clever set of algorithms look at a whole host of data about your likes and dislikes, behaviours and habits, personal information and what ever else they can get their hands on to give you something that you’ll only realise you wanted afterwards.

The New York Times looks at why some people see this is as the holy grail of marketing and others see it as the death of serendipity and privacy. 

Social media trends: This top notch presentation by @kpcb about social media in 2013 has been online for a few months now and in that time has been viewed over 2.4 million times. It explains brilliantly how mobile plays such a huge part in social and provides gratuitous amounts of stats on social for the next few years (US centric, yes, but still useful).

Some key bits:

  • Facebook and Snapchat are best for sharing photos. Instagram and Flickr are very far away behind
  • Video is still huge and only getting bigger: 100 hours of video are uploaded to Youtube every minute
  • Sound is catching up though: More than 11 hours of music are uploaded on Soundcloud every minute. The next big thing after sound: data
  • Despite all its reported trouble, the big blue social network Facebook is the biggest player, followed by Youtube, Twitter and Google+
  • The countries with the most prolific sharers: Saudi Arabia, India and Indonesia. Those more guarded about sharing their lives online: Japan, Germany and Hungary

Computerphile: I’m not sure how I’ve missed this before but let me introduce you to my new favourite Youtube channel. Übergeeks coming together and explaining in simple English some incredibly complex things that we all use every day but don’t really understand. Like browser cookies, email, the world wide web or the clip that got me onto this channel in the first place: How intelligent is artificial intelligence? Proper geekgasm stuff. Love it.

Branded accounts are people too: The wonderful @usvsth3m posted an enjoyable listicle about the woes of managing a branded social media account. Definitely one where other community managers and social media bods will empathise.

For me, my pet peeve is the usual reaction I get when I speak to people outside of marketing/comms about my job: “Hang on. You just browse Facebook and Twitter all day long. Can I have your job?”

Oh. And poorly executed user journeys based on QR codes. But that’s more than a pet peeve. That’s more like a deep rooted hatred.

Videos of the week: Based on the Cannes award winning public service announcement campaign ‘Dumb Ways to Die‘, a version featuring dumb ways to die while playing GTA V (and yes, they are very dumb, but they are so much fun. The GTA V ones. Not the real ones) has popped up on Youtube.

And two related clips, the first of a woman who quits her job with an interpretive dance to Kanye West’s ‘Gone’…

… and the response from the company she left.

And finally: How much does the The Daily Mail hate you? 

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