Interview: Inspiring social change with ‘Uplifting Gifting’
In June 2013, Nominet Trust, the corporate foundation of Nominet (the .co.uk registry), launched their search for The Nominet Trust 100 – a collective of the 100 most inspiring social technology innovations from around the world.
Will Google answer the ROI of Social Media?
It’s a question still asked in board rooms, on conference calls and in face-to-face meetings probably a thousand times a day. What is the ROI of Social Media? Google as ever love to listen and offer solutions and it’s aim is to answer that question with the latest update to Google Analytics. The nature of social media makes it difficult to really quantify where or when sales funnels begin and what exactly social media is responsible for, but with the new set of social reports within the much trusted Google Analytics system Google claims to “bridge the gap between social media and the business metrics you care about”. The ‘Social Report’ as Google label it, should help you identify the full value of traffic from social sites and measure direct conversions and also their impact on future conversions. The official Google Analytics blog has a good introduction to the new features. What is particularly helpful is the analysis of shares, via Twitter, Google +, etc which is often a strong indicator of how well your content is being pushed out and your reach is being extended beyond just your own following. It is far from perfect, but for free this latest tweak by Google Analytics goes a long way towards catching up the with Web 2.0 world it has never really been able to serve. The ability to track downloads of MP3 fileslike podcasts is still awaited, but at least now you are able to track more readily in a single place, who is ‘sharing’ your content and promotions.
A Messaging Experience
That’s the detail of the newly unveiled “modern messaging system” from Facebook. But what does it all mean? Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg suggests it is based on the way high school students communicate. According to their recent feedback to him they don’t like email “It’s too formal” Zuckerberg noted. Yet, Zuckerberg was also at pains to state “this is not an email killer” it was the “messaging experience” email included that he was unveiling, to make communication simpler. The key factors for communication of the future according to Zuckerberg: * seamless * informal * immediate * personal * simple * minimal * short So Facebook under this new project is to offer seamless messaging, conversation history, and a social inbox. The idea is it is cross-media: email, chat, SMS — all kept in a single social inbox. Plus all of your conversation history with people is kept in a central location. To my own eye that seems a logical move, the kind of way your brain would link information. You don’t store all your SMS chats in one part of your memory away from all the email chats, you store them according to conversations and who they were with. Conversations no longer end when you put down the telephone receiver. You might very well follow up with an SMS, or chat using an online messenger. It’s those often fragmented ‘gems’ that Facebook aims to collate and store for you to readily refer back to. It is all about encouraging 365/24/7 communication and as part of that Facebook is set to soon launch an updated iPhone app too. There will also be @facebook.com email addresses available too – although how and when these will be allocated are yet to be seen, the allocation procedure for Facebook pages has been complicated enough! You won’t need a Facebook email address to use the tool. you can use any address. The big issue with that and the whole concept however will be privacy. The word most often thrown at Facebook by its detractors, the impact on privacy of communication is unknown as yet but is sure to become a hot topic again as Facebook rolls out this new project over the next few months. Meanwhile, hot on the heels of Facebook attempting to change the way we chat, Apple has posted a cryptic message on its Web site, teasing the world about an “exciting” iTunes announcement that’s coming in the next 24 hours. If you’ve not yet seen the rumours, suggestions range from The Beatles back catalogue finally becoming available to iTunes, to the potentially MP3 killing streaming music service. We’ll hold off our comments on this one until the final announcement (3pm London Time today) as we’ve given up second guessing the Apple marketeers, but as Christmas draws near, the competition for brand awareness is certainly hotting up in the internet arena. What are your thoughts on Facebook’s messaging system?