This week has seen a former Gypsy boxing champion beat several people on loan from the Priory to win Channel 5’s first foray with celebrity big brother , the Rugby World Cup kick off, Lil Wayne ‘breaks’ iTunes sales record and The Beatles’ yellow submarine stolen from Liverpool church.

As well as all this…..

Do’s and don’ts of hashtags
This is a nice concise list of the key do’s and don’ts to take on board when using hashtags. Like most of these lists it is mostly common sense, but it is still a good list to keep in mind when using the platform

Also from Twitter, this week saw their global pr twitter account (@twitterglobalpr) live tweeting a talk given by their CEO Dick Costelo on the state of their business. He delivered some great key stats with the highlights being:
• Twitter.com has more than 400 million monthly unique visitors, according to Google Analytics. That number is up from 250 million in Jan, ’11
• 55% of active users are active on mobile. They’ve seen tremendous growth with mobile – about 40% increase quarter over quarter
• 40% of monthly active users do not tweet. This means that they have not tweeted in the last month.
• 40% of monthly active users do not tweet. This means that they have not tweeted in the last month.
• And, apparently Twitter is a platform for engagement. Who’d have thought it hey?

From the guys in Palo Alto this week we have an interesting blog about management of social media campaigns. From their research they have discovered that when content is published from third party applications such as Hootsuite, Tweetdeck etc they receive up to 70% fewer likes and comments. As the article describes, this could be down to the ‘reducing of the prominence’ of posts published in this way , the differing capabilities of the applications themselves or Facebook just wanting you to use their platform manually. However, it all boils down to the simple fact that there are now short cuts without consequences.

In other Facebook news, they have relaxed their rules pertaining to engagement by gambling companies on the platform in the UK and Betfair have been the first to move on this. Previously all updates had to be approved by FB and there was a limit on posts per week, however they will now not need to be approved and they will be able to create free to play apps within their page. This may not create the flood of content updates that you may think as there are still a huge number of legal hurdles that prevent them from taking this to the levels that they would like to. However, this could be the beginning of potentially the world biggest gambling site.

My favourite campaigns of the week go to Ariel, Cadbury and Monopoly .

First up is the Ariel Fashion Shoot: Facebook Game Installation. Here is a great piece of digital/social media real world convergence from Ariel. What is really nice about this campaign is that it takes a really cool experiential idea and by utilising the reach of social and digital platforms amplifies this to a global level. Thus proving again, that social media isn’t just online.

Next is the latest extension of the Cadbury Spots V Stripes campaign. This time they have moved the focus to twitter where they found that there are 5,120 tweets (85 per minute) by users complaining about being bored. So they created the Boredom Buster. This takes the form of a both a desktop and mobile game and draws on the Twitter API to show tweets from around the world complaining about boredom and allows the user 1 minute to shoot down as many as they can with a cannon. Users can then post scores to all their social profiles, but the real hook is that everyone who plays and posts their score to Twitter gets put into a weekly draw and three randomly selected players will receive London 2012 tickets and a shedload of ‘Luxurious’ chocolate. Nice.

Finally is a brilliant idea around the family favourite Monopoly. They have partnered with Foursquare to create ‘Foursquaropoly’. As an extension of your Foursquare account you can now not only checkin, but start to play real life Monopoly. It works exactly like the board game i.e. if you own your local Starbucks, you will get ‘rent’ from everyone who checks in. You can then increase you property portfolio and grow your empire. I’m a big fan of this idea, it creates the potential to have lot’s on fun on a platform that, for me anyway, isn’t that much fun.

And finally

If you are like me you never start with anything but a blank page and a pencil. However, this does cause a few problems when it comes to creating digital presentations. But not anymore! Wacom have created inkling, a digital pen that allows you to draw with layers that can be imported to adobe CS5. Happy days-

TFL has released that they are in the process of opening up their real time bus data feed across their mobile platform, so you will never have to wonder if you have missed your last bus home again. They have actually be working on this project for some time and it was initially discovered late last week by a developer poking around in the data feeds of their mobile site (shhh, he shouldn’t have been doing it!) The twitterati and BBC news coverage prompted a short statement from TFL saying it was one of many things that they are working on. I think that this is a great new way of using the extensive data that they have to hand. Don’t be surprised if this is extended to the tube before the Olympics begins.

Everyone must watch this – The Social Media Revoultion

Have a great weekend
rt

Hello all,
This week has seen Team GB have mixed results in Daegu, the whole country get caught up in transfer deadline day madness that led to a astounding £710m being spent in 2011, Google Chrome turn 3 , classic game music feature in classical concert and the discovery of the ‘Oldest’ woolly rhino

In industry news one of my favourite magazines Contagious is featuring a great article by Jon Davie, managing director of digital content agency Zone where he talks about ‘Telling Stories in a Digital World’. He makes a very interesting point about a new bread of agencies and practitioners who blend PR, data and digital expertise with a dash of jargon to create a different kind of storytelling

Argentinian music production house Caja De Ruidos have created a tool that is all kinds of brilliant. It allows users to mix and create their our personal versions of any video on YouTube. Could this be the future of content creation and UGC?

Women at NBCU have unveiled its power brand index of womens favourite brands. Interesting to see an appearance by Barbie on the list, but more so Harley Davidson.

In another ‘PR leak’ that Apple are now infamous for an iPhone 5 concept has fallen into the hands of bloggers. Have to say It all looks very impressive.

The Daily Mail has announced plans to extend its rewards programme after gaining over half a million registered members since its launch in June. However, with only 1.2m rewards being claimed so far there is clearly a lot of room for improvement.

French music streaming service Deezer is launching in the UK next week and in an interesting move it will be completely subscription based. In this article MD Mark Foster talks about why they have opted to buck the trend and shun the ad funded ‘freemium’ model. They will have to watch their backs though, as Facebook have announced that they will be launching their own music service later this month in partnership with, amongst others, Spotify

And finally, for those who want to get involved with Google + click her for an invite

The weekend looks as though it’s going to be cloudy so make sure you make the most of the sun today!
rt

Welcome to the first WSConsumer Digital Digest.  Every week I will be sending around new innovative digital campaigns, new products and generally awesome stuff from the wonderful online world. So sit back and enjoy.

This week has seen England become number 1 in the world in cricket, ‘The Michelangelo of the Digital Age’ Steve Jobs step down as CEO of Apple, Social media driving new language adoption with ‘retweet’ entering the English dictionary and a wandering Penguin ending up 2,000 miles from home.

In other news, Cadbury’s are transforming chocolate bar packaging into games using the born again darling of the digital world, augmented reality.This is a nice extension of their spots vs stripes campaign and works very well.

Volkswagen are showcasing the green credentials of their new Golf Blue Motion with a roulette based game using Google Maps. Google maps mashups were very ‘in’ a few years back and it’s good to see them coming back, as when done correctly they can be incredibly immersive.

In the latest movement in the telco market Skype appear to be trying to take on RIM with the purchase messaging service GroupMe. This is a very clever acquisition as it will increase the interactivity of the platform and, with Microsoft’s purchase of Nokia’s phone business and their imminent purchase of Skype, will allow them to become a much bigger player in this space.

As always, Facebook haven’t been far from the news. This week they have announced, amongst other things that they are changing the way that their places application will work. Now you are able to view places that are nearby your location and see any offers that are available in the vicinity increasing your choice of deals and, most importantly, increasing the potential interaction between brands/establishments and consumers.

However, the biggest announcement, in my humble opinion, this week  is the announcement that Facebook will be live streaming a first round game from the FA Cup. Whilst this may not be the biggest game it does showcase an interesting shift in the way media is consumed. I think that in the future we will see the likes of the Microsoft’s (they own part of FB) and Google’s of the world pitching against Sky et al for rights for events and this is something that broadcasters should be very wary of. Facebook also announced deals with Miramax and the bbc to showcase their films and tv shows respectively.

For tech geeks like me Minority Report was incredible, not only visually, but because we knew that the technology was available to actually make it happen. Fast forward 9 years and with several big brands finding a few spare pounds we could increasingly see some of this technology in everyday life. This article from the Wallb Blog nicely describes how brands are venturing into this space and I for one am very excited.

I will leave you with my favourite piece of digital this week – Snooze and donate. This is either a great way to get people to work on time or a great way to increase charitable donation. Or Both. Either way it is brilliant and it is my pick of the week.

Happy Thursday one and all,

rt