Interesting how people get attached to what they know and just hate change.

Take Facebook’s new look and feel, which has spawned - ironically - a “hate the new Facebook” group on the site itself.

If I’ve got this right, the new look was, initially, a clickable option to be viewed before returning to the familiarity of the old look. Then, it became the default view, with an option to click back to the old version. For me, it took a couple of visits to get used to it, and now it seems pointless to make the effort to seek out the former incarnation.

Sometimes, with change, you have to be bold. As long as it doesn’t take users’ experience so far backwards they get fed up, you can expect the majority to come along with you, though some sticklers will keep up the protest.

Personal Branding on the Social Web

Why, I wondered does Neville Hobson hold his hand in front of his face in the picture on his blog…and on Twitter…and on…hang on a minute.

Is this a subtle form of personal branding?  Social networks; Facebook, Linked-In and microblogs like Twitter are growing fast and individuals are, if not clamouring for our attention, at least aware that there is a lot of noise out there.  If we are going to build an individual online presence it makes sense to follow some of the tradional rules of branding.  Consistency is one, which means using the same image across a range of networks.  Using a strong, stand out and easy to remember image is another.  Pr 2.0 gurus Todd Defren  and Brian Solis  both do this - Todd has a cartoon style image on his Twitter feed and Brian uses an arresting image with his specs in the foreground on his blog.  

Chris Brogan has just published an ebook on personal online branding so it’s a hot topic.  It’s an interesting read and looks at personal branding from a broad prespective.  What particularly fascinates me is the way in which people apply the iconographic rules that have histrically been used by brands totheir own images of themselves.  

This world has created some rules of its own.  Take a look at the picture above of some of the people I follow on Twitter.  These images are tiny, smaller than thumbnails, so making something work at this scale becomes part of the art.  Colin Byrne  CEO of Weber Shandwick and Deirdre Breakenridge author of the book PR 2.0 both use strong purple colours in their backgrounds to make them stand out.  Aleks Krotoski , presenter of The Guardian’s Tech Weekly podcast uses a close up of her fire red locks as her Twitter image (fifth row, left of middle).

I have no proof that any of these individuals have done anything other than post the first image they came across but whether by luck or good judgement they all stand out.  I have to confess I have toyed with the technique myself.  There is a deliberate use of colour in my profile pic and it seemed to me that if social networks use small images an extreme close up might be a good idea.  Charles Arthur Technology Editor of The Guardian didn’t agree.  He thinks I’m trying to hide a dodgy moustache. 

Spent the bank holiday at the Edinburgh Fringe. Me and the wife go every year. She’s a financial journalist and is invited as a guest of Intelligent Finance, who have a press trip comprising of about 20 financial journalists plus partners:)

The brand link is through IF’s sponsorship of the fringe comedy awards, which used to be the Perrier awards and are now the IF.comedy awards. Great idea to link to something that could be described as a very popular niche! IF are a Scottish based company, owned by HBOS, and this kind of hospitality is a fantastic excuse to get their core, largely London based media away to a weekend on their home patch.

They always take us to see a top comedian on the Saturday night after a slap-up dinner at the Scotsman hotel and the evening culminates in the IF.comedy awards ceremony at the Jamhouse. Its a good way to finish off the evening - drinks, canapes, VIP section, Neil and Christine Hamilton (?!). But the awards themselves lasted about 15 minutes and were basically a 5 minute bite of last year’s winners announcing this year’s winners. They could have done so much more with it. Made it a real event that everyone wants to be at regardless of any free drinks.

I actually spent the whole weekend thinking what I’d do with the fringe for the benefit of my clients. I know, I know its sad but I blame too much creative stimulation and the coffee and toffee muffins at our basecamp, the excellent Chocolate Soup.

Ok, so what would I do if IF were a client? Why not involve your customers in the brand and get them to rate a group of up and coming comedians via YouTube? Budding comics would post 5 minute demos of themselves on an IF.comedy channel.

This thing would be worth doing because all the finalists would end up doing a turn at an enhanced IF.comedy awards evening. with stronger press profile (great for the brand) and possibly televised via the web, attracting traffic to an IF branded web presence. The IF.comedy site is great but could have more ongoing interaction. There is a Facebook group but its got barely 200 members and again, not a lot regularly going on that would incentivise you tell your friends. Is there any blogger outreach?

Whenever we’re at the Fringe we always disregard the official brochure. Its a doorstop and picking shows is the proverbial needle in haystack job. So you ask other folk. People in the same hotel, people who were there last weekend. Or you walk up and down the Royal Mile, chatting to budding producers and performers. But there still hundreds of shows and fresh talent that you’ll miss. Surely this is screaming out for a Tripadvisor type service, where folk post about acts/shows they’ve seen and other people can agree/disagree? Well promoted this would attract critical mass and you could plan your w/end well in advance.

I Googled but couldn’t find one. Can anyone let me know if I’ve missed it before I put my life savings into starting one (that’s a joke, Boss:))  

Other highlights:

- A drama called Borough High Street - dark drama about two gay students and cocaine addiction. Acting, direction and writing excellent! What drew me in? It was well promoted by the flyers, guys who were chatting to us on the street and the chalk outlines all over town pointing towards the venue.

- Chocolate and cinnemon soups at Chocolate Soup.

- RANDOM EXCLUSIVE: Got talking to a source ‘extremely close’ to Simon Fuller who says that Fuller and David Beckham plan to buy a US soccer team when Beckham retires and basically use all of their combined stardust to create an international football hub that competes in the Champions League……

You may remember the story of the graduate who broke the bank!? Not a story about unpaid library fines but an enterprising young guy who used new media, particularly Facebook, to organise a protest against HSBC levvying charges on its graduate accounts. View our interview with him here. He found many, many people who felt as strongly as him and they organised petitions, flash-mobbed flagship branches, got mainstream media interested and HSBC blinked first.

Well he’s up to his old tricks again! He’s working as Campaigns Officer for the Burma Campaign  using new media to mobilise protest against human rights abuses in Burma (check out their activities and huge member base on Facebook). Finding supporters in the country who feed stories out that he uses to funnel to UK media, who then build up trust a mutually beneficial relationship with him. It also keeps people talking and focusing attention on what’s going on ie a truly terrible situation that can easily be forgotten about due to its geographical distance from here.

His latest trick is to name and shame British insurers that are profiting from doing business in Burma. Already two insurers, XL and Chubb, have pulled out of Burma and it’s causing a kerfuffle amongst the bowler hats in the City of London. They’ll keep up the pressure by exploiting their supporter base on/offline. They recently asked over 20,000 supporters to contact the ‘Dirty Insurance Companies’ via email/post, urging them to pull out.

Also check out the kinds of people they’re getting behind their campaigns.

Social media is constantly changing. Well that’s what we all thought with the migration of MySpace to Facebook but what if the online tools we’re using today could actually develop at the same pace as our attention span?

Maybe it’s me, but it feels like Flickr, Digg and Twitter have been around for so long, I can’t remember life before them!

On the anniversary of the launch of Facebook Platform, the company has announced on its blog a whole host of improvements coming soon. Many of you will have noticed the change in profile layout, something that I think is a massive improvement allowing me to find the most recent information quickly. More importantly, I’m no longer being distracted by all those apps I added a year a go.

The most interesting part of the post for me is the upcoming Facebook Connect:

“Facebook Connect is a new way to use applications, on the open web and not just on Facebook. Soon, you’ll be able to use your Facebook account to login and connect on websites throughout the web. Imagine never filling out another profile at a new site, or having to find your friends all over again. Facebook Connect will help make this a reality and allow you to use Facebook to share information from all over the web with your friends.”

So that’s my personal information following me around wherever I go on the web. Is it ok for me to be intrigued and scared at the same time?

I’ll be fascinated to see which sites sign up for this and what benefits there are for web developers in the short term. For advertising I can see huge benefits in terms of personalisation.

Flash forward to a point when facial recognition becomes common place in CCTV cameras and that personal data is not only following me around the web but down the street.

Now exactly when should I start to regret putting all that personal information about myself on Facebook? Perhaps when I have billboards shouting out at me?

Once it’s up there, it’s not just going to disappear, even if you ‘delete’ your profile. We’ve put into action a chain of events where information is the currency of the technology age. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Stalkr - (pronounced stalker) a person that you don’t know who tries to Facebook you or become your friend on MySpace or indeed on any social network.   The term also apples to someone you may know a bit who decides to relentlessly pursue a more active online discourse than you would like.  Would also apply to someone you are not following who frequently talks @ you on Twitter.  Essentially a  stalker in the 2.0 style of Flickr, Tumblr etc.   

So the iTunes App Store has finally arrived and we have a breakthrough in how customers are engaging with companies.

Before I go on, I should acknowledge that I’m (trying to) purposely ignore all the problems Apple had in activating 3G iPhones, the lack of a fully integrated push solution as part of their new mobileme service, yellow tinted iPhones and the constant crashing of the applications from the App Store. It’s only been three days but the impact of these problems are a growing concern for both new and loyal ‘fanboy’ customers who are voicing their concerns all over the blogosphere.

Moving on and looking to the (not so distant) future, companies have a great opportunity to place themselves in the pockets of consumers and considering how affordable the 3G iPhone is now, that audience has just grown. Of course, online services such as Last.fm, Shazam and Facebook have developed great applications that extend their traditional offering but other companies are becoming a little more creative.

Hats off to the team at Carling who developed iPint which I can only describe as the perfect game to play with mates after a few beers, followed by a virtual pint as a reward. Delicious and fully branded.

British Airways have provided a useful flight finder allowing frequent travellers to monitor changes without having to check to departure board. Although I probably would given the number of crashes from other apps I’ve experienced so far!

I’ll be keeping an eye out for other, creative applications coming from corporations who can afford to give them away for free which, let’s be honest, is the real clincher in whether consumers are going to try something out. Thankfully Carling and BA didn’t get greedy and try to charge for their apps but beware, the iPhone could soon become the new fighting ground for all those application developers who are moving on from Facebook.

Facebook has launched Lexicon, a new tool that allows members to see the buzz surrounding different words and phrases on Facebook Walls.  For PRs, it’s another tool to monitor who’s talking about your brand, in a similar style to Google Trends or Technorati, but in the enclosed environment of Facebook.

After a few initial searches, I have some client names talked occassionally but nothing surprising. Of course, I’ll be monitoring it carefully when my next national news story breaks to see if the topic flows over into the Facebook conversation.

To be honest, it’s more fun to search for generic terms to see what unusual spikes and drops appear. Conversations about ‘Halloween’ predictably climb rapidly, peaking on 31st October. ‘Love’ is at an all time high on Valentine’s Day while there are fewer people wishing ‘Happy Birthday’ on leap day, 29th February.

According to the Facebook blog:

Lexicon pulls from the wealth of data on Facebook without collecting any personal information in order to respect everyone’s privacy.

Well that’s good news considering all the recent media hype surrounding privacy of online information. But Lexicon is a far cry from companies who constantly monitor conversations across social media such as 1000 Heads.

As their homepage states:

Web forums and communities are where these decisions are being made. In these public spaces, users discuss their thoughts and experiences, recommending, or warning against using certain products and services. This peer to peer dialogue is guiding the purchasing decisions of a new generation of information rich consumers.

Clearly an area of growth for some brands to invest in but an area that could be perceived as a moral tightrope for others. The rise in concerns over online privacy are only going to tighten especially with the introduction of Big Brother-type programmes like Phorm.

Ofcom has released a report stating that half of eight - 17-year olds have a profile on social networks. The report also reveals that some under-13s are bypassing age restrictions (who knew??), that the average adult social networker has profiles on 1.6 sites and most users (30%) visit the site once a day.

As expected, the big three all feature heavily with Bebo the choice of children, Facebook the choice of ABC1 adults while C2DE adults are more likely to have a profile on MySpace.

Most media outlets are focusing on the privacy of information issue as expected with two thirds of parents claiming to set restrictions but only half of children agreeing with them.

Mostly information we already knew but the report is packed full of lovely stats that clients crave so much. My favourite part is the breakdown of personalities found on social networks. Personally I see myself as a ‘Faithful’ when it comes to social networks but what are you?

You can see the BBC report here or dowload the full Ofcom report here.

Last night we attended a highly informative presentation by Blake Chandlee, commercial director of Facebook hosted by TBWA\Manchester. The presentation to prospective clients, media and account handlers gave an insight into the company that can only be described as a social media success story.

He addressed some interesting issues including recent media claims that ‘Facebook fatigue’ has kicked in and active user numbers are dwindling. Blake claims quite the opposite citing the rise in users following the recent launch of the social utility across other European countries. He explained the ambitious system of translating the huge network into different languages with the support of the community through the ‘Translation’ application. What astonished me more than anything was the speed with which the translations took place within the community- just 8 hours for one of the languages!

He covered numerous topics including polls (”Don’t ever pay for one”), Beacon (”Didn’t go down well”), Apps (”Some work but a lot fail”),  taking on HSBC and even Mark Zuckerberg (”He looks about 12!”). The most interesting aspect was Facebook’s perception of itself as an altruistic company, seeing themselves as a social utility rather than a network - a tool to connect people and extend relationships rather than a social space. There’s conversation at the moment about the sharing of information and applications across multiple user spaces as encouraged by Google Open Social. Blake explained that Facebook is excited about this development and has no goal to keep users locked into using the site.

All this relates to the user experience. Something that Facebook are trying to make as enjoyable as possible. In relation to marketing, this means you’re likely to see the flashy side bar ads disappear in the near future and clients investing more in social advertising. Currently appearing in the newsfeed section of the site, these are likely to develop although Blake did note that personal information would always be kept secure and never given out to third party advertisers despite the adverts becoming more personalised.

As for the continual barrage of app spam we receive every day from so-called friends? Well Facebook has banned ‘force invites’ in apps - something I wasn’t aware but probably only because it was publicised to the developer community. As Blake commented, if an app is forcing you to invite friends, just report them and they’ll be kicked out.

He did also comment afterwards that their business plan is constantly changing so who knows what we can really expect from Facebook in the future? Only Mark Zuckerberg really knows and so let’s hope he really is one of those rare individuals who “think different“.