From March 1st Google will be releasing a new privacy policy which replaces its more than 60 strong current policies relating to each of its products and services.

The new policy aims to provide a single reference point for users and gives Google greater powers to share data more easily across its application.

While users can still edit their privacy preferences, what this essentially means is that Google can tailor your online experience based on the interests you’ve shared in Google+, Gmail and Youtube. So you might start seeing ads popping up that relate to a subject you’ve emailed someone about.

This doesn’t mean that Google has sold your information to advertisers; it still insists that your personal data is secure within the Google network, but it gives Google the ability to target ads to exactly what you might be looking for at a particular time.

Google will also be able to suggest search terms for you based on your recent activity and can predict what you might be looking for by monitoring what you look at and comment on and build a profile around this.

Even better than this though, by combining the various Google services, the user experience will become even more intuitive until it begins to act like a virtual PA. The example Google gives in its FAQs is: ‘we can tell you that you’ll be late for a meeting based on your location, your calendar and the local traffic conditions.’ Pretty cool huh?

Of course there is always the usual suspicion when a company changes its privacy policy and Google has been clear that the only way to opt out is to close your account. But at the same time Google isn’t here just to provide us with a wonderful tool completely free of strings, this update will give it an even greater insight which will significantly increase its advertising revenue.

Google is being clear about how the new policy works and what to do if you don’t like the changes, but overall the feedback is pretty positive. For most people though the change seems a natural development and makes managing the different applications a whole lot easier.

Google has outlined the changes in it’s policies pages and has included some FAQs that explain the implications for users.

Written by Felice Ayling

For those who have yet to enter the wonderful world of the Facebook Timeline, the deadline to clean up your act is fast approaching. Facebook has announced it will be rolling out the new look profile page over the next few weeks, and once yours is in place you’ll have a week to filter out the content you don’t want displayed.

The update is causing quite a stir for a variety of different reasons. There is a fair amount of negativity about the new layout with many complaining it is messy and difficult to understand, preferring the more simple layout of the current profile page. Facebook has helpfully provided a short film telling us their thinking behind the recent change.

For others, they feel the information displayed in the timeline doesn’t appear to have any real synergy to it, with much of the highlighted portions appearing to be irrelevant next to other more important information about an individual.

But far outstripping that is concern around users ability to search back in time and theoretically find every post ever entered by the profile owner. In the past it would have been difficult to find anything past a certain post as it would disappear from view after time. This made sense as it most posts are a reflection of the here and now and hold no real relevance out of context.

Of course, most of us have posted something at some point that we’d rather not be reminded of, or related to an event or past relationship that we’ve all but wiped from our memories and do we really want those now popping up for the world to see? Probably not.

But having installed the timeline myself, and having checked out those of my friends who’ve already opted for it, I have yet to see anything that looks like it’s been dredged up from the dungeons of my Facebook past. In fact, everything is just as I remember it from my old profile.

Of course if I wanted to spend a few hours scrolling back through my history I can, but it only seems to point to the main events, such as moving jobs, or adding new friends. And because Facebook has linked my timeline with my school and college dates I now have timepoints logged from before Facebook even existed which I find quite a nice touch.

Of course this feature does play very nicely into our more voyeuristic tendencies and allows us to engage in a little light Facebook stalking which has been the basis of a few criticisms I’ve seen. But this is surely more to do with human benhaviour than Facebook’s decision to change its product.

I have to admit the new layout will take some getting used to but I’m not sure Facebook deserves the bashing it’s currently getting.

If you want to get Facebook Timeline before the rollout then visit the Introducing Timeline page and chose ‘Get timeline’

Written by Felice Ayling

Google’s master plan has suddenly started to become a lot clearer with its new and quite frankly very exciting social search feature.

Since Google+ launched there have been a fair amount of general wonderings as to where its social platform was going and what value it was bringing to users. We all struggled a little to see what it was bringing to our already cluttered online lives but we should have known Google had a plan worth waiting for.

And here it is! Social search! According to Google’s blog, as well as the standard search ‘You should also be able to find your own stuff on the web, the people you know and things they’ve shared with you, as well as the people you don’t know but might want to… all from one search box.’

Once the update is rolled out over the next few days you will start to see search results from your personal networks, particularly from Google+.

New results will cover three main categories; Personal Results, Profiles in Search and People and Pages.

Personal Results will show results that only you can see as they will be pulled from our current contacts and networks.
Profiles in Search will help you to find people who are looking for. The autocomplete feature will try to predict who you are looking for and take you straight to their profile.
People and Pages will point you at people who are talking about the query you’ve entered, with a nifty new link to add them to your circles right away.

Google has dubbed this new collection as ‘Search plus Your World’ and this lovely little clip explains what it’s all about.

All of this suddenly gives users a very good reason to sign up to Google+ and for those us already using it we’ll be keen to expand our networks as quickly as possible.

This also adds weight to Google’s recent decision to encrypt searches made by signed in users. The additional security will be fundamental to ensuring personal data isn’t shared accidentally.

All in all this is a really interesting move by Google who must right now be feeling pretty pleased with themselves. They’ve kept this under wraps and borne the sneers and sniggers at its social offering from the likes of Twitter and Facebook who dismissed Google as a small time player. Cue evil genius laugh……

Well done Google!

Anyone interested in adding me to their circles?

Written by Felice Ayling

There’s been a lot of noise this week about the fact that Facebook’s new subscribe feature has been made available for websites. Some of the headlines announced the new feature was to rival Twitter and replicated the user’s ability to ‘follow’ individuals.

It all sounded very exciting until I spent a good half an hour head scratching over the not insignificant number of posts about this new tool just to come to the realisation that this is a bit of a non story.

The subscribe button for a brand page does exactly what the ‘Like’ button does, and for an individual it allows you to see their public posts (if they’ve enabled that feature and already have the subscribe function on their Facebook page).

Where I can see a benefit is for sites that have many contributors and so it gives the user the chance to subscribe to an individual blogger or through an employee page as well as the brand itself.

And while this does appear to offer an alternative to the ‘Follow’ button, I’m not convinced it’s the threat it’s been made out to be. The kind of updates we look for in Facebook are generally different to our Twitter follows so having the option of where we view an individual’s updates gives us greater flexibility in streamlining the information we receive.

I’m sure Facebook are positioning themselves to rival other social networking sites but I doubt Twitter is shaking in its boots just yet. It’s a nice update but let’s not get carried away.

If you want your own subscribe button you can pick one up from Facebook as long as you have the subscribe function enabled on your page.

Written by Felice Ayling

Editor: On first impression it does seem very similar and a bit of non-story. However I’d be interested to see how Facebook’s Edgerank (If you are not familiar with Edgerank, Econsultancy have a very well title post on the Subject: Edgerank, the most important algorithm you’ve never heard of) is going to treat a Like and a Subscribe differently. Also, they are keen to push the idea you can control your subscriptions, where as people aren’t really aware they can do this with the feed of things they have Liked. We’ll keep you posted on how it develops……

 

The world according to Mark Zuckerberg is one where email is no more and replaced by messenger services such as Facebook.

While it’s true that we now have more choice when it comes to our preferred method of communication, this doesn’t mean that email no longer has a place. In fact the use of email has grown significantly over the past few years.

According to a report produced by Royal Pingdom early this year, 107 trillion emails were sent in total during 2010. There were almost 2bn email users and 3bn email accounts, this figure growing by 500m. Given this last figure was Facebook’s total user base at the time; it seems unlikely that social messenger tools will outstrip such a popular form of communication.

While I’m sure that Facebook messenger is extremely popular, I can’t see how it in any way works as a replacement for email. Perhaps considering the user base this data was extracted from could give an indication of how skewed it might be.

But Zuckerburg isn’t the first to make such a claim, with many of his predecessors also proclaiming the end of email and yet it appears to be thriving better than ever.

Perhaps considering email as just one tool alongside many others, all of which have their place and function within our suite of marketing channels, is the preferred alternative. Email is still a vital part of our everyday lives, and if I had to chose between social and email I’d probably be waving farewell to my networks long before I considered doing without email.

But do we really have to choose? Surely email and social media together make a great team and the creative use of both can lead to a strong overall campaign message.

While social media can be great for raising a brand’s profile, most consumers still respond better to offers made in an email. In this sense, social media is the tool that acts to warm up the audience with email coming in to close the deal. A perfect combination in any marketers eyes surely.

Like anything, email must evolve to remain relevant and we may well start to see some more social elements in its function. However I can’t imagine a world where I carry out my business transactions through Facebook Messenger or MSN chat or ask my bank to IM me each month with my statements.

Email is more formal, more practical and allows me to keep my work and personal life separate to a certain extent. If I want to make a good first impression I have a specific email address I will use above all others and I never let anyone into my personal social space who I only know professionally.

Perhaps this attitude is outdated and is being replaced by the next generation who think nothing of living their entire lives in the public domain. But I think for the most part we see social as just that and email as our default choice for exchanging information.

Abi Clowes, Head of Marketing at Pure360 says “I totally agree with Felice. As a marketer I see social as another channel to send messages through – no different to mobile or email, it’s great that it expands our reach and allows us to target the person not just the title or consumer.

As Pure360, we are seeing huge growth in the number of emails sent out each month, certainly not a decline. We’re talking 3 billion emails being sent a year. In addition we’ve taking steps to better integrate email and social campaigns so people can send their messages regardless of channel.”

And before the Mark Zuckerburgs of this world start heralding the death of email too loudly, let’s not forget that every social network platform requires an email before you can sign up.

To find out more about getting the best out of your email marketing, take a look at Target Internet’s Email Marketing Best Practice guide.

The Pure360 website has some great resources, check out Abi’s Pure360 Guide to the Ideal Email Campaign

Written by Felice Ayling

Editor: NO NO NO. EMAIL ISNT DEAD. My favourite point on this that you can’t open a Facebook account without an email address. Sigh.

We’ve been playing around with Google+ for a few months now with mixed feelings about its usefulness.  And while some of the tools look promising it still feels as though it hasn’t really taken off yet. So it’s a bit of a surprise to see that Google have launched pages for brands to set up and begin establishing a presence on the social networking site.

Obviously the likely candidates have already jumped in and created their pages, pushing out this new development to the world over twitter and their websites. While some of the bigger brands gained some immediate traction, it’s difficult to see how creating a presence on G+ is going to be add anything other than creating yet another area of engagement activity to maintain.

Once the immediate hype died down there has been little talk of G+’s usefulness, it seems people are still waiting to ‘get it’. So it’s unclear what including brand pages will add to the experience.

Many have likened to the new pages to bringing Facebook and Twitter functions into one place. But if you already have a Facebook and Twitter page, what’s the point in setting up another one? Perhaps this is the question Google are trying to answer and how quickly brands engage with the new feature will give them a good indication as to its viability.

One thing which Google does bring to the table though is a new function it calls Direct Connect, the ability to find a G+ brand page easily from a Google search. All that’s needed is to enter a ‘+’ and the brand name and Google will link you straight to the brand G+ page. It’s a neat little tool, but it shows how Google can manipulate search rankings when it owns its own social network.

Google+ is still a bit of a mystery, or rather its benefits remain a little out of reach. But it will be interesting to see how the new feature brings more of the answers we’ve been asking ourselves since it launched.

Find out more detail about setting up brand pages on Google’s blog.

 

If you use Facebook Comments  on your site you should soon be seeing some benefit to your SEO. Google has updated its search and is now able to index comments left on websites using the Facebook Comments plug in.

This is quite a dramatic change for Google who was previously unable to return results containing comments left via social network plug-ins as they were rendered within an <iframe> making them invisible to search engines.

So while websites tried to make it easier for users to comment without having to create a new profile within their site, it meant they were losing out on any benefit the comments might bring to search ranking.

The search isn’t perfect though and results only show up if you search for a string of text that matches a comment posted. But it’s certainly a step closer for website owners who are working to balance getting the best from their SEO and providing a positive user experience.

However it may have some implications for users as it means Google now has access to information previously held behind privacy settings which means they can track and analyse your commenting habits. If you’re commenting publicly this may be fine with you, but when you consider your comment could potentially appear on the front page of Google this might impact what you say and how you say it.

It’s a nice step forward for Google and for Facebook that now has one less barrier to people using its comments feature. There isn’t much to report yet on the change but no doubt more discussion will be coming out as people start to see the effect in their result.

Editor: We’ll see how this pans out and how much of an impact they can have. We’ll do some testing on this and see what we can work out.

 

Editor:  As most of you may already now, I’ve had an unhealthy obsession with Klout over the past few months. They may in part have been because my score was so high Its not anymore. It dropped by over 10 points overnight. Klout is clearly trying to improve their algorithm and rightly so. However there really are some clear flaws in the new algorithm (which I’m sure they’ll iron out). However, if I have more followers, likes, and connections, I am more active and get re-tweeted more, it would make sense my score was higher than someone that was didn’t have any of these things. Sadly this isn’t the case right now. The big concern here is that Klout aren’t testing things behind closed doors properly before they make them live (either that or they have a completely different idea of what is important than the rest of us). This means that people may take Klout less seriously – which would be a shame as I think it has great potential. You check out a podcast on the topic  (recorded before the changes): Social Influence and Klout Podcast

 

Anyone who spends much time on Twitter knows about Klout and its apparent ability to measure how effective you are online.

Most of my friends compare their score regularly and alert their followers to any increase as proof that they are doing something right. So you can only imagine the uproar which followed Klout’s update this week which saw some pretty high scorers drop significantly overnight.

According to Klout’s blog, the update has been planned for a while and its new algorithm is designed to provide a more accurate scoring based on greater intelligence about the people you interact with.

For example, one of the areas you are scored on is your ‘Amplification’ which measures how you influence people with your content. Previously it would measure how many people acted on your comments, e.g. liked or retweeted them. Klout has taken this a step further by looking at how these actions compare with the individuals habits. So if someone ‘Likes’ your comment but also likes numerous other posts during that day it won’t score as highly as someone who rarely acts on content but selects yours as something worth taking action on.

The same approach has been taken with the other areas the tool measures in a bid to reflect quality rather than quantity. But what do the score changes really mean for people?

Anyone working in social media knows how hard it is to measure with any real accuracy the impact of your efforts.

A lot of what we do is based on educated guesswork, instinct and interpretation. So it’s understandable why so many would leap on a tool that claims to provide us with a quantifiable assessment of our impact. If we know how it works we can act accordingly and watch our score go up, safe in the knowledge that we are heading in the right direction.

Many of the comments left on Klout’s blog following the update have complained that they’ve spent the past few months building their score only to find it’s now wasted. I disagree with this claim wholeheartedly and anyone who engages online with the sole purpose of increase a notional score was wasting their time and everyone else’s from the start.

Online engagement is about building relationships and offering your followers and peers good quality content that adds value and interest. If you’re doing this well then your followers will let you know, if you’re not they won’t stick around for long.

So forget about your score and focus on what your customers and followers want from you. And I guarantee it’s probably not a daily update telling everyone your Klout score has gone up by 2 points.

 

 

Where are Facebook changes heading?

Is it me or does Facebook seem to be running scared from Twitter and G+? It’s understandable that it would want to keep its product fresh with rising competition from elsewhere in the world of social networking but it looks to me like Facebook is frantically replicating key features and throwing them into the mix. Causing much consternation from many users.

First of all came the updated friends list; this allows users to manage their contacts better and share updates only with key groups. Much like G+ circles, it allows you to group your friends and control what you share and with whom. It also means that you get more from the people you care about most and remove posts from people you don’t.

Next came the subscribe button, a nifty little tool that allows you to start seeing news updates from profiles that aren’t in your friends list. It means that you can see public news items from people you are interested in and allow others to do the same. By activating the subscribe button on your profile, users can chose to see the updates you decide to share publicly.

For your existing friends, the subscribe button allows you to customise the feeds you see from certain individuals. We all have someone in our list who incessantly plays games and posts each and every update into our news feed. With subscribe you can turn these off.

And the most recent update is the news update which now displays what Facebook considers to be top stories personally selected for you. It does this based on lots of factors such as who the person is to you, how many comments or likes an update receives etc. Tope stories change depending on how long it’s been since your last visit and any images linked to top stories display larger than previously.

There is also a news ticker down the right hand side of your page which shows real time updates as they happen. So you can see what your friends are doing while they are online without filling up your news feed.

I have to say that the news feed looks great and minimises the number of updates cluttering up the front page. The stories chosen for me by Facebook don’t seem to come from the people I interact with or view most often which is what I’d expected. And at least for now I can change back to the old look Facebook if I want to.

With all the changes being rolled out, it does appear that Facebook have lost the plot a little bit. While the ideas behind the changes appear sound and clearly are meant to rival the competition by pinching their key features, it feels like Facebook is trying to be all things to all people.

The news feed and ticker now feel like I’m being rushed through my Facebook visit where I would normally have browsed leisurely, something Mark Zuckerberg stated only a few months ago was him aim. The new friends lists feel like Google+ circles, great because they provided a tool for people who wanted to manage a range of contacts and acquaintances in one place, but do I really use Facebook to do that?

It certainly seems like Facebook is covering all of its bases and new tools are always worth trying out but if those changes fundamentally alter the user experience and the underlying principles of the service it does raise a few questions about where this is all heading.

The changes certainly caused a fair amount of negative comment across the web this week and a lot of users don’t seem to be in favour. It will be interesting to see what Facebook unveils at its upcoming f8 conference. Whatever it is I hope it gets a better reaction from the crowd that these recent changes have.

All of the changes are covered in Facebook’s blog

Editor: Lots of peoples  reaction to the live feed was “I thought thats what my feed was anyway”. Hence there have been lots of comments about it allowing you to Facebook while you’re in Facebook: http://www.yodawgyo.com/yo-dawg-i-herd-you-like-facebook/

I think in reality the changes will help people cope with the volume of things they have ‘liked’. The risk was that otherwise we’d all stop ‘liking’ things as it was becoming manageable. As for all the people moaning about the changes; It’s Facebook, if you don’t like it , don’t use it.

 

 

Steve Jobs quits Apple

The news that Steve Jobs was resigning as Apple’s CEO came as quite a shock and the reaction has been a stream of comments and tributes published this last week.

There has been a lot of speculation about the reasons behind his resignation and whether poor health might be a factor especially given Jobs has been on medical leave since January this year. But whatever the reason, his departure appears to have rocked the worlds of many and in some of the tributes you start to question whether he resigned or died!

Google’s chairman Eric Schmidt said of Steve Jobs that he “Had an artist’s eye as well as a definition of what great engineering is”. Lovely sentiment but you have to wonder at the sincerity given the open hostility being shown between these two companies recently. Then again I’m sure there are many of Apple’s rivals who are hoping that this move signifies a decline in their biggest competition so they can afford to be a bit generous with their praise.

While it is certainly the end of an era, Jobs is taking on the role of Chairman for Apple and will still be actively involved in the company, working alongside his replacement Tim Cook who I’m sure is feeling a little daunted by his new role.

While well versed in the company’s operations, Cook will need to make sure he continues to build upon Apple’s reputation as the leader in innovation in order to quiet the critics. Apple’s success is not only the super cool and gorgeous looking products it makes but also the speed at which they keep them coming. And Steve Jobs is widely recognised as the force behind this making his resignation a potentially huge blow for Apple.

However, while Cook has been focused on managing the companies operations, he is not a stranger to leading from the top. He stepped into the breach in 2004 when Jobs was battling cancer and then again in 2009. Added to the fact that he’s been covering the role since January this year, it seems he’s proved himself a worthy replacement.

And it seems most people agree. While Apple shares took a small dip following the announcement, they’ve held steady since and nobody seems to be panicking.

With Apple’s plans for further improvements to both the iPhone and the iPad coming in the next year it seems at least for the foreseeable future Apple has a firm plan in place.

The BBC has pulled together a nice collection of quotes reacting to the news.

Social media censorship

While the Government talks last week have not resulted in any firm decisions, it seems that the likes of Twitter and Facebook may still see heavy restrictions in the future during periods of trouble.

While the Home Office has acknowledged the value of being able to use networks for disseminating crucial updates, it still firmly believes that they had a part to play in enabling rioters to communicate more effectively.

However representatives from Facebook, Twitter and Blackberry all said they felt the meeting was positive and productive and focused on how to keep people safe rather than imposing more restrictions.

But given the Government’s line doesn’t appear to have changed following the meeting, it’s hard to see what it actually achieved.

Everyone will have their own opinion on this but it still seems like social media is being used as a bit of a scapegoat. After all, it’s not the first time we’ve experienced unrest in the UK, and in the pre social media era would we even have considered laying the blame at the door of BT or Royal Mail.

Enough said, I’ll climb down from my soapbox for now.