Social media indicates Jessica is next 'Idol'

MANILA, Philippines - The American Idol finals night has come and gone. Both finalists delivered performances that had the judges evenly split with the performances. What did Rappler see online?

Online sentiment has returned in favor of Jessica Sanchez.

At least 90 minutes before the finals, Jessica Sanchez and Phillip Phillips were tied in online sentiment. Our final tracker for this year’s American Idol finalists show Jessica continuing to grow and in fact accelerating in Twitter follower growth while Phillip’s follower growth actually slowed down.

Socialmention.com is showing Jessica’s sentiment score growing from before the finals (11:1) to 19:1 after her finals performance. Phillip’s sentiment score slightly declines (from 6:1 to 5:1) over the same time period.

Tracking their Twitter handles, we see an even bigger decline in sentiment for Phillip (from 25:1 down to 11:1) while Jessica’s sentiment score grew (from 16:1 to 19:1). Jessica’s passion score also grew.

Based on the significant increase in positive sentiment, the indicators point to Jessica as this year’s new American Idol. The growth in passion (which is a measure of the frequency of people speaking about Jessica), also favors Jessica.

Sentiment140.com tracks a rise in negatives for both finalists – indicating a polarization of the fan base.

This is natural as people cast their votes for one finalist over the other. While there seems to be a bigger rise in negatives toward Jessica, the change in negatives for their Twitter handles is negligible.

Tracking their real names, there was a big spike in Jessica’s negatives (a 13% increase) but sentiment remained significantly positive for both finalists.

To this end, we believe social media is indicating that Jessica Sanchez will be the next American Idol.

Finally, Zaba Research has also released the result of their predictive engine model. Zaba also predicts that Jessica Sanchez will be the next American Idol.

Should these predictions come true, Jessica will be the first American Idol winner to have been voted off the show and saved by the judges.

A win by Jessica will also break a streak of male winners since David Cook’s win in 2008 all the way to last year’s winner, Scotty McCreery. There have been 6 male American Idol winners and 4 female winners. - Rappler.com

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Mid-East eyes social media

25 October 2011 Last updated at 08:46 GMT By Simon Atkinson Business reporter, BBC News, Dubai WATCH: Egyptian protesters used social networks like Facebook to organise demonstrations

From the bursts of electric violin to the furtive bodyguards accompanying Russian oil oligarchs, you could not accuse the Middle East launch of Godudu.com of being low key.

But whether the site makes as much of an impact as the bright green laser show that seared onto the distinctive sail of the Burj Al Arab hotel, remains to be seen.

Billing itself as the world's first multilingual social network, Godudu hopes to take on the likes of Facebook by offering real-time translation that it says will allow people to communicate beyond language barriers.

Already it translates the likes of news and status updates between English and Russian - the language of its founders - but the event on Dubai's shoreline was to launch its Arabic service.

Surging internet penetration in the region had driven the move, says Alibek Issaev, chairman of its parent company Dudu Communications.

"And the number of users of social media here is also growing very fast," he adds. "This is why we believe it's the perfect time to launch our social network in Arabic countries."

Godudu is billing itself as the world's first multilingual social network Going social

The uprisings seen in places like Egypt, Tunisia and Libya this year played an integral part in the growth in popularity of networks such as Facebook and Twitter - as they were harnessed by the young people to organise and give momentum to the Arab Spring.

In the Middle East and North Africa, the number of Facebook subscribers has doubled in the past year, and there are 20 times as many active users of Twitter according to consultancy firm Value Partners.

And in Egypt alone, Facebook gained five million members in the month leading up to and immediately after the protests that led to the fall of leader Hosni Mubarak.

And while the likes of Godudu are seeing that as a reason to launch a social network here, other companies are keen to take advantage of the platforms.

Almost 60% of firms now say they now have some sort of social media presence, according to a report by Econsultancy, well up on a year ago.

Banner advertising has been the key business for the Middle East's advertising network Ikoo.com - which is opening offices in places such as Morocco and Tunisia, which are among the countries seeing the region's greatest internet penetration growth.

Ikoo's Hussam Khoury says more firms want to integrate social media and advertising

But Ikoo also reports rising interest from firms wanting to incorporate social media into their advertising.

"Because of the Arab Spring what we've seen is brands starting to use social media because they've realised it's actually a personal interaction with the actual consumer," says sales and marketing director Hussam Khoury.

"In particular it's been Egypt where we've seen a massive growth in demand from the brands and the agencies we work with in the region."

'Great opportunity'

That trend was evident at the Gulf region's biggest technology exhibition, Gitex, held in Dubai earlier this month.

While the stands demonstrating the latest gizmos - from smartphones and display screens to the car which the makers claim "can park itself" - for the first time there was a section dedicated to digital marketing - including seminars on using social media to boost your business.

And for some companies trying to break into this region, social media is a crucial part of their marketing strategy,

Music streaming company UrFilez targets emerging markets

Music streaming company UrFilez targets emerging markets, which do not have access to firms doing similar things such as Spotify.

Having already launched in Bahrain, it has now done a deal with a United Arab Emirates mobile phone network - and its boss says social media will be essential if it is to win enough subscribers to be viable.

"Because social media is booming here in the Gulf region, that's a great opportunity for us," says chief executive Hassan Miah.

"The social media audience is our audience. It's those people who love music, and who use it to find out about music, to recommend music.

"It's as big in Saudi as in Dubai, It's happening everywhere, and particularly now."

Early days

But despite this enthusiasm, only about 4% of all advertising Middle East advertising spending goes on digital campaigns - from mobile to online display adverts.

Social media made its mark at the Gulf region's biggest technology event, Gitex

And only quarter of that is specifically for social media, according to Emmanuel Durou of Value Partners Dubai, who thinks it is still early days for the sector.

"It's a new concept and you need new local talent to make it happen, which is something that's currently lacking, whether you're talking about brands or about the agencies," he says.

"And I think in terms of return on investment, that is much more difficult to track than traditional advertising, so for advertisers it's a much more difficult proposition to validate in terms of budgets."

Back at the Godudu launch party, a singer in sequins waits in the wings for an event-closing performance which will, it later transpires, feature a version of Tina Turner's Simply The Best.

But before this finale, at a question-and-answer session with the firm's boss, a woman leaps to her feet.

"I'm a Facebook addict, I check it five times a day so how are you going to get me to give that up and start using you instead?" she asks.

For all the razzmatazz and the confidence about booming markets and growing potential users, it is an exchange which really brings home how tough success in this industry will be.

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Beyond the couch: TV goes social, goes everywhere

16 September 2011 Last updated at 04:59 GMT By Fiona Graham Technology of business reporter, BBC News, Amsterdam TV on the go? Making your television viewing a social, mobile experience wasn't quite as easy before tablets and smartphones Sitting on the train on a rainy Monday night, after a long day at work, you have a look on your smartphone to see what's on television.

Your TV operator's app thinks you might enjoy The Big Lebowski. After all your best mate has "liked" it on Facebook. And it's on TV right now.

A big fan of the Dude you whip out your iPad and start watching, swapping favourite quotes with your mate who you have invited to watch it with you through a chat window on your smartphone.

All too soon you reach your stop. You pause it, and head home. Once there you flop on the sofa and switch on the TV, where the film is waiting for you to pick up where you left off.

According to the industry experts attending IBC, the annual broadcasting industry gathering in Amsterdam, this could be the future of television.

And you, the viewer, is driving it.

Status update

According to Facebook's Joanna Shields, the social network's 750m users are sharing twice as much as they did a year ago about their likes and dislikes. So integrating social media and television, harnessing this data to encourage consumers to watch more television seems obvious.

The world's broadcast industry gather in Amsterdam every year

"Facebook represents the biggest opportunity the television industry has ever faced - the potential to tap into a global audience that is waiting to discover, share and amplify your stories," she says.

"For media companies and marketers, it's the power of social discovery and the authentic conversations it enables that's the key to unlocking a whole new way to produce, promote and advertise on television."

"Social TV represents a period of renaissance for the TV industry to define new ways of engaging audiences and telling great stories."

Looking around Amsterdam's RAI conference centre, it seems a lot of people agree with her.

Virtual togetherness

TV services technology company SeaChange certainly does.

Their Nitro software gives TV operators and broadcasters the means to create a multiscreen user interface for their content. The Affinity application adds social media integration.

It also tries to recreate the feeling of television viewing as a group activity with the ability to start a "virtual party". This lets you watch with distant friends, and chat about it via video, voice or text.

SeaChange's Nitro software lets service providers offer content on different devices such as the iPad

SeaChange's Paul de Bot says it is in the interests of operators to embrace social television.

"You can have a recommendation engine, recommending content to users. We know that's effective.

"What's also effective is friends or someone in your social group who is recommending something.

"Social recommendations trigger much higher views than traditional context recommendations. That can really help operators to increase viewing which may help to increase the revenue stream."

Competing interests

This is not an all or nothing situation, according to Anthony Rose, ex-CTO of YouView.

His new venture, start-up Zeebox, is due to launch an app aimed at making television a more social experience. Using a "companion" device such as a tablet or laptop, you can see what friends are watching, and watch it with them.

"Essentially the audience is split. People older than 35 are not as keen on social. People younger than 35 can't live without social," he says.

"Any proposition that is purely social will get one audience demographic but lose out on the older demographic, and for that reason we tried to combine a number of things that are not all about social, in fact you can choose to not log in with Facebook."

Zeebox's Anthony Rose says forced social media integration could alienate some of the audience

The app scans live television and generates clickable tags that give more information on what you are watching.

"Our user research said people love more information around what they're watching on TV. They love to buy things they see on TV. They love to get more episodes of what they see on TV."

Where social really helps, says Mr Rose, is in programme choice.

"Giving people a directory of a thousand things is going to be an unhappy experience. Guiding people to something they want to watch is desirable. I think social is going to play a major part in that."

Making it pay

IBM's John Konczal agrees. The company's Smarter Commerce for Media package helps content owners to sell their product. It uses analytics, marketing tools and social media integration.

"Social media integration is absolutely essential. You're much more likely to buy on recommendation from your friend, your sister.

"It's the sharing of information across Facebook and Twitter. There's no separation - any selling experience, any marketing experience must take advantage of social media."

But what about social networks that do not allow users to "like" things, Twitter for instance?

Cisco's Videoscape platform hosts content in the cloud which is then delivered to different devices

Cisco's Videoscape platform aggregates content from TV, online, and on-demand sources. The cloud-based system can be used on different devices and customised to suit the individual operator.

As well as using "likes", the system will scan your Twitter feed and give recommendations based on what people you follow are talking about.

Ken Morse is chief technology officer for Cisco's video technology group. He says multiple devices bring their own problems.

"Before it was a content or service provider push towards consumers, and now it's turning very much into a pull.

"Content is still king, the consumer is rising, and it's about the consumer wanting their content whenever, wherever, over whatever network at anytime.

"We talk about delivering to these devices, well most of the content rights that service providers have allow delivery within the home. But the moment I walk out the front door what happens?"

Perpetual motion

Serving different devices can mean adopting web technologies.

Pace are best known for set-top boxes, but have branched out in recent years.

Their new Elements software platform is designed to allow pay-TV operators to design their own customer experience, that can be pushed to multiple devices. It is open source, based on Java script and HTML5.

Pace's Elements platform lets operators design and build their own applications

Chief technology officer Paul Entwhistle says innovation is the driving factor.

"By using the same technologies that drive innovation on the web it frees service providers to move at their own pace and under their own control.

"The industry needs to have tools that allows it to drive the user experience on other devices."

Jeff Rosica of Grass Valley, the broadcasting production technology company, says service providers have no choice but to move.

"If broadcasters [and content creators or content owners] don't look at getting content to these alternative devices and these over the top models, they won't exist sometime in the future.

"This is where the growth is."

President and CEO Alain Andreoli agrees.

"We had a customer telling us that he believes the broadcast business as we know it is over... At the other extreme we have people telling you the internet is going to take forever, there will never be enough bandwidth to carry the content.

"We can clearly see that the truth is in the middle because we are in live. And live is the part of broadcast that will probably stick for a very long time."

Dolby's Home Theatre application helps bring surround sound to online video viewing

Different areas of the industry face different challenges.

"It's about bringing the cinematic experience from the big screen to the small screens, the TV, the PC, the mobile phone and the tablet," says sound specialists Dolby's Andreas Spechtler.

His colleague Andy Dowell explains the problems.

"You can stream video on demand in surround sound and use the same technology that was originally developed for digital television, or satellite. But with the net you can never be 100% sure how good the pipe is into the home.

"If we're talking about a mobile delivery, then we've got technology where people can highly compress the sound down and still get a great experience."

Personal services The user experience is the key to keeping viewers bound to your service, according to Irdeto's Christopher Schouten.

"If you don't give people what they want they simply go away more readily than they have before, as they have more alternatives."

The media technology company has unveiled TV Everywhere, a cloud-based TV services platform with social media integration that works with multiple devices.

But finding a balance between social viewing and the individual is important, according to Mr Schouten.

"I think more and more media will define our personalities, just like the brands we choose for clothes or jewellery.

"The media choices we make will be more visible to the outside world and that will say a lot about who we are."

View the original article here

Read More

Beyond the couch: TV goes social, goes everywhere

16 September 2011 Last updated at 04:59 GMT By Fiona Graham Technology of business reporter, BBC News, Amsterdam TV on the go? Making your television viewing a social, mobile experience wasn't quite as easy before tablets and smartphones Sitting on the train on a rainy Monday night, after a long day at work, you have a look on your smartphone to see what's on television.

Your TV operator's app thinks you might enjoy The Big Lebowski. After all your best mate has "liked" it on Facebook. And it's on TV right now.

A big fan of the Dude you whip out your iPad and start watching, swapping favourite quotes with your mate who you have invited to watch it with you through a chat window on your smartphone.

All too soon you reach your stop. You pause it, and head home. Once there you flop on the sofa and switch on the TV, where the film is waiting for you to pick up where you left off.

According to the industry experts attending IBC, the annual broadcasting industry gathering in Amsterdam, this could be the future of television.

And you, the viewer, is driving it.

Status update

According to Facebook's Joanna Shields, the social network's 750m users are sharing twice as much as they did a year ago about their likes and dislikes. So integrating social media and television, harnessing this data to encourage consumers to watch more television seems obvious.

The world's broadcast industry gather in Amsterdam every year

"Facebook represents the biggest opportunity the television industry has ever faced - the potential to tap into a global audience that is waiting to discover, share and amplify your stories," she says.

"For media companies and marketers, it's the power of social discovery and the authentic conversations it enables that's the key to unlocking a whole new way to produce, promote and advertise on television."

"Social TV represents a period of renaissance for the TV industry to define new ways of engaging audiences and telling great stories."

Looking around Amsterdam's RAI conference centre, it seems a lot of people agree with her.

Virtual togetherness

TV services technology company SeaChange certainly does.

Their Nitro software gives TV operators and broadcasters the means to create a multiscreen user interface for their content. The Affinity application adds social media integration.

It also tries to recreate the feeling of television viewing as a group activity with the ability to start a "virtual party". This lets you watch with distant friends, and chat about it via video, voice or text.

SeaChange's Nitro software lets service providers offer content on different devices such as the iPad

SeaChange's Paul de Bot says it is in the interests of operators to embrace social television.

"You can have a recommendation engine, recommending content to users. We know that's effective.

"What's also effective is friends or someone in your social group who is recommending something.

"Social recommendations trigger much higher views than traditional context recommendations. That can really help operators to increase viewing which may help to increase the revenue stream."

Competing interests

This is not an all or nothing situation, according to Anthony Rose, ex-CTO of YouView.

His new venture, start-up Zeebox, is due to launch an app aimed at making television a more social experience. Using a "companion" device such as a tablet or laptop, you can see what friends are watching, and watch it with them.

"Essentially the audience is split. People older than 35 are not as keen on social. People younger than 35 can't live without social," he says.

"Any proposition that is purely social will get one audience demographic but lose out on the older demographic, and for that reason we tried to combine a number of things that are not all about social, in fact you can choose to not log in with Facebook."

Zeebox's Anthony Rose says forced social media integration could alienate some of the audience

The app scans live television and generates clickable tags that give more information on what you are watching.

"Our user research said people love more information around what they're watching on TV. They love to buy things they see on TV. They love to get more episodes of what they see on TV."

Where social really helps, says Mr Rose, is in programme choice.

"Giving people a directory of a thousand things is going to be an unhappy experience. Guiding people to something they want to watch is desirable. I think social is going to play a major part in that."

Making it pay

IBM's John Konczal agrees. The company's Smarter Commerce for Media package helps content owners to sell their product. It uses analytics, marketing tools and social media integration.

"Social media integration is absolutely essential. You're much more likely to buy on recommendation from your friend, your sister.

"It's the sharing of information across Facebook and Twitter. There's no separation - any selling experience, any marketing experience must take advantage of social media."

But what about social networks that do not allow users to "like" things, Twitter for instance?

Cisco's Videoscape platform hosts content in the cloud which is then delivered to different devices

Cisco's Videoscape platform aggregates content from TV, online, and on-demand sources. The cloud-based system can be used on different devices and customised to suit the individual operator.

As well as using "likes", the system will scan your Twitter feed and give recommendations based on what people you follow are talking about.

Ken Morse is chief technology officer for Cisco's video technology group. He says multiple devices bring their own problems.

"Before it was a content or service provider push towards consumers, and now it's turning very much into a pull.

"Content is still king, the consumer is rising, and it's about the consumer wanting their content whenever, wherever, over whatever network at anytime.

"We talk about delivering to these devices, well most of the content rights that service providers have allow delivery within the home. But the moment I walk out the front door what happens?"

Perpetual motion

Serving different devices can mean adopting web technologies.

Pace are best known for set-top boxes, but have branched out in recent years.

Their new Elements software platform is designed to allow pay-TV operators to design their own customer experience, that can be pushed to multiple devices. It is open source, based on Java script and HTML5.

Pace's Elements platform lets operators design and build their own applications

Chief technology officer Paul Entwhistle says innovation is the driving factor.

"By using the same technologies that drive innovation on the web it frees service providers to move at their own pace and under their own control.

"The industry needs to have tools that allows it to drive the user experience on other devices."

Jeff Rosica of Grass Valley, the broadcasting production technology company, says service providers have no choice but to move.

"If broadcasters [and content creators or content owners] don't look at getting content to these alternative devices and these over the top models, they won't exist sometime in the future.

"This is where the growth is."

President and CEO Alain Andreoli agrees.

"We had a customer telling us that he believes the broadcast business as we know it is over... At the other extreme we have people telling you the internet is going to take forever, there will never be enough bandwidth to carry the content.

"We can clearly see that the truth is in the middle because we are in live. And live is the part of broadcast that will probably stick for a very long time."

Dolby's Home Theatre application helps bring surround sound to online video viewing

Different areas of the industry face different challenges.

"It's about bringing the cinematic experience from the big screen to the small screens, the TV, the PC, the mobile phone and the tablet," says sound specialists Dolby's Andreas Spechtler.

His colleague Andy Dowell explains the problems.

"You can stream video on demand in surround sound and use the same technology that was originally developed for digital television, or satellite. But with the net you can never be 100% sure how good the pipe is into the home.

"If we're talking about a mobile delivery, then we've got technology where people can highly compress the sound down and still get a great experience."

Personal services The user experience is the key to keeping viewers bound to your service, according to Irdeto's Christopher Schouten.

"If you don't give people what they want they simply go away more readily than they have before, as they have more alternatives."

The media technology company has unveiled TV Everywhere, a cloud-based TV services platform with social media integration that works with multiple devices.

But finding a balance between social viewing and the individual is important, according to Mr Schouten.

"I think more and more media will define our personalities, just like the brands we choose for clothes or jewellery.

"The media choices we make will be more visible to the outside world and that will say a lot about who we are."

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Social Toolbar WordPress Plugin

Daddy Design is proud to introduce our 3rd WordPress Plugin, WP Social Toolbar. This highly customizable plugin was created to showcase all of your social networks in one easy toolbar that is both eye-catching and functional.

WP Social Toolbar will display your latest tweet status, list your social networking profiles, and allow users to “Like” your page on Facebook, tweet about it on Twitter and Google +1 your page! With so many options for customization our toolbar will easily adapt to your WordPress theme’s style. Some of the customization options include; specifying colors, changing fonts, and rearranging your list of social network icons to your desired order. Check out some different examples of the WP Social Toolbar with custom combination’s below.

What other WordPress toolbar plugin allows you to do all of these things? We at Daddy Design saw the lack of form and functionality in toolbar plugins and have decided to develop our own. The WP Social Toolbar is ideal for every WordPress website or blog that cares about their social networking. Not convinced yet? Try it out on your blog!

As you saw above, you can change the colors of the WP Social Toolbar to help match the color spectrum of your site. Using the color wheel, you have the option to change the background color, border color, recent tweet background and social icon hover background. All of this is done through General Settings.

You can also change the color of your icons between black, white and gray for best color contrast.

WP Social Toolbar (version 1.1) allows you to showcase 14 of the 24 social network icons that the plugin has to offer. You can also arrange the icons accordingly to your desired preference. This can be done under Social Profiles.

Available Icons: Apple, BeatPort, Bebo, Digg, Dribble, Facebook, Flickr, Foursquare, Hi5, iLike, Last.fm, LinkedIn, Meetup, MySpace, Ning, Orkut, Ping, ReverbNation, RSS, Skype, SoundCloud, Stumbleupon, Tumblr, Twitter, Vimeo, Xing, YouTube.

The Recent Tweet Settings allow you to change the font family, color, and size.

Don’t want to display your recent tweet? You can simply turn it off in the Recent Tweet Settings (see above)! Below is an example of the WP Social Toolbar with the recent tweet turned off:

These settings are for the tweet and FB ‘Like’ buttons. There are two available options; always tweet and share your website’s homepage or tweet and share the current page.
NEW. We added Google +1 Share button now!

Another great feature about the WP Social Toolbar is that it does not have to be displayed throughout your entire site. In the Display Settings you are given the option to display it throughout the entire site, just on the home page, just on the archives, just on posts, or just on specific pages.

1.0

1.1

Stay closed feature. When user closes the toolbar, it will stay closed forever on full site until clicked open.Recent tweet fix. Added new recent tweet code that has less errors reading twitter feeds.2 New social icons added. (Tumblr and Digg)Mobile hide. Toolbar is now disabled & hidden on all mobile phone platforms.Correct install path issue fixed. Toolbar will work now even if wordpress install was not created in the root of site.

1.2

Retweet Recent tweet fix. RT now show in the recent tweet status message.iPad hide. Toolbar is now disabled & hidden on all iPad platforms.

1.3

1.4

1.5

Google +1 Button Added. Settings for it in the backend. SHOW or HIDE. Default is hide.1 New social network icon added (Xing).Recent TWEET error issue fixed.

1.6

2 New social networks icon added (BeatPort,SoundCloud).Share URL issue solved on archive pages.

The WP Social Toolbar plugin is currently live on this very page. Just simply look towards the bottom of your browser.

Download or Install Directly via the WordPress Plugin Directory Winzip Direct Download

Upload the ‘wp-social-toolbar’ folder to the ‘/wp-content/plugins/’ directory.Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu on WordPress.Adjust the custom settings on the WP Toolbar settings page.Insert all of your Social Network links on the “Social Profiles” page.

Make sure to have:

just before the closing body tag, usually this would be done in the “footer.php”.
Also make sure to have

inside the head tags, usually this would be done in the “header.php”. Both of these functions are needed for most plugins to work because like ours, many plugins add javascript and html codes using these two functions.

If Error Reading Twitter Feed
Make sure your twitter account is not privacy protected.
Make sure Twitter is not down.
Reweet’s are having issues right now, we are trying to fix this.

If you have any problems with this plugin, need help, or have suggestions for improvement, please leave us a comment below and we will respond as soon as possible. We will be adding 5 more icons in the next version so please comment on which ones you would like to see added.

By popular demand, WP Social Toolbar Pro is in production and will be available soon. Please visit socialtoolbarpro.com to sign up and be notified when it’s available.

Wordpress Plugins

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Social Media Reach Facebook Tab Design

Sorry, I could not read the content fromt this page.

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UK may disrupt social networks during unrest

LONDON — Britain is considering disrupting online social networking such as BlackBerry Messenger and Twitter during civil unrest, Prime Minister David Cameron said Thursday, a move widely condemned as repressive when used by other countries.

Egyptian authorities shut down mobile and Internet services in January during mass protests against then-President Hosni Mubarak, while China is quick to shut down online communication it sees as subversive.

Police and politicians have said online social networks, in particular Research in Motion's popular BlackBerry Messager (BBM), were used by rioters and looters to coordinate during four days of disorder across England this week.

"We are working with police, the intelligence services and industry to look at whether it would be right to stop people communicating via these websites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality," Cameron told parliament during an emergency session prompted by the riots.

Many of the rioters favored Canadian firm RIM's BBM over Twitter and other social media because its messages are encrypted and private.

The company said Monday that it cooperates with all telecommunications, law enforcement and regulatory authorities, but it declined to say whether it would hand over chat logs or user details to police.

RIM's encrypted services have been blamed for aiding militant attacks in India and for allowing unrelated men and women to communicate in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

In August last year, a source close to talks between RIM and Saudi authorities said the company had agreed to hand over information that would allow monitoring of BBM.

Online social media was also widely used by members of the British public in recent days to help others avoid troublespots and to coordinate a clean up after the rioting had ended.

BBM has more than 45 million active users worldwide, 70 percent of whom use it daily, sending billions of messages, pictures and other files in total every month.

Authorities grappling with violent unrest should avoid heavy-handed clampdowns on social media and instead try to enlist the help of the public against the rioters, said John Bassett, a former senior official at British signals intelligence agency GCHQ and now a senior fellow at the Royal United Services Institute.

"The use of social media in the unrest looks like a game-changer. But any attempt to exert state control over social media looks likely to fail," he told Reuters.

"A much better approach would be to encourage and support individuals and community groups in identifying alarming developments on social media and even speaking out on the internet against extremists and criminals, and ensuring that the police have the skills and technical support to get pre-emptive and operational intelligence from social media when necessary."

More on social media and the London riots:

Copyright 2011 Thomson Reuters. Click for restrictions.

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Book Marketing: How 4 Authors Are Finding Success With Social Media

Author: Blake Northcott

Twitter: @ComicBookGrrl

Facebook: Vs. Reality

Website/Blog: BlakeNorthcott.com

If you’re a new writer who’s looking ahead to a seemingly daunting publishing task, take a tip from Toronto writer Blake Northcott.

She recently self-published Vs. Reality, a work she’s calling a “comic book-inspired urban fantasy novel.” The Kindle version is now available through Amazon.com.

During the nine months spent writing her comic and movie blog, she amassed a 16,000-strong Twitter following, and collected more than 1,700 personal Facebook friends. Furthermore, in the space of one week earlier this month, her re-launched blog got 4,500 page views.

To put the numbers in perspective, her Twitter tribe is roughly the same size as that of publisher Image Comics. And a few days ago, Goodreads.com notified Northcott that she is the tenth most-followed Canadian on the site.

Northcott’s social media presence includes what she describes as an “instant feedback mechanism that tells me people are listening.”

“People are so passionate about books, comics and movies,” says Northcott. “When you connect with them on their level, and they know you’re legitimate, they respect you a lot more. Social media facilitates the ‘secret handshake’ where you get into the club, and people know you’re one of them.”

3. Blake Northcott – Vs. Reality

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5 Ways Google+ Will Drive Social Video Growth

Already using Google+? Follow Mashable’s Pete Cashmore for the latest about the platform’s new features, tips and tricks as well as social media and technology updates.

Chris Schreiber is director of marketing at social video advertising company Sharethrough. Before joining Sharethrough, Chris worked in the Global Communications and Public Affairs Department for Google, helping design and execute communications strategy for key consumer applications and social media initiatives.

The new set of features offered by Google+ represents the next chapter for the social web, helping it move from a platform that facilitates conversation and content sharing to a mechanism that can deliver much deeper social experiences. This new forum for creating connected audiences will pay off big for brands that create great video content.

In particular, Google+ is opening up a number of different opportunities for brands to get their videos seen and shared. It’s quite possible that we will look back on the Google+ launch as a landmark moment for social video advertising, because of the new possibilities it created for people to share, co-view, chat and text about entertaining videos.

Here are five ways Google+ will help the social video industry.

While some have taken advantage of Facebook’s features to segment their personal friend network, many have let their friend pool remain one large network with whom they share everything.  This means that when they share a video on Facebook, it goes out to a very broad audience, which includes many people who won’t be interested. Some of us may also hesitate to share a video if it means that everyone in our network — including family and even co-workers — will see it.
The Google+ “Circles” feature, which offers an intuitive way to segment your friend groups, will ease the process of sharing creative brand videos with groups that you know will appreciate them. While I would normally be a little reluctant to share a video as absurd as Skittles Moneyshot with my widely varied Facebook friends, my newly created “Social Video Junkies” Google+ circle will appreciate it.

The Google+ Hangouts feature allows for live video chat in the same “room” as multiple friends.  Hangouts’ tight integration with YouTube allows for genuinely new social video group experiences.

We all love sharing hilarious videos with friends. The only thing better than getting comments on your Facebook feed or via email is to hear people’s laughter and reactions live, “in person.” Hangouts will offer a new real-time, collaborative viewing experience for social video campaigns, which will massively amplify the benefits of these videos for the brands that create them.

Now imagine you have created a Hangout with friends. You’re all hysterically laughing at a video together, but one of your friends is not online to join. Google+’s “Huddle” feature now comes into play. With Huddle, you can text groups of people or individual friends via the Google+ mobile app to let them know you’re gathering to watch a video.  When friends receive a new message in Huddle, Google+ sends a push notification to their phone.
Huddle stands to be a really interesting way to extend conversations that start at the desk and move into the mobile space. It’s a great way to connect a disparate audience around a good piece of content.

Data is king at Google. The Google+ Business profiles already promise to include deep analytics, and while little has been announced as yet, one can imagine that powerful new types of social data insights will become available to advertisers about their YouTube campaigns.

By providing rich data capabilities, Google+ could allow advertisers to gather new insights on the quantity and quality of sharing for their campaigns. Google+’s new collaborative features could also introduce interesting new data categories for advertisers, such as average co-viewing view length (how long a group watched a brand’s video together) versus individual view length stats or engagement metrics via Huddle (mobile) versus Hangouts (desktop). 

While the relationship between the +1 button, Google+ and Google Search is still being sorted out (probably even by Google itself), there are clearly going to be opportunities for advertisers to boost their search results with videos that go viral. Whether content is surfaced based on the +1s of people in your circles or through broad social sentiment around search results, popular social video campaigns stand to gain more search relevance as users interact with it. And once a great video gets discovered, Hangouts and Huddles are sure to follow.

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Mashable is the largest independent online news site dedicated to covering digital culture, social media and technology. With more than 50 million monthly pageviews and 3.6 million followers across social media, Mashable has one of the most engaged online news communities. Founded in 2005, Mashable is headquartered in New York City with an office in San Francisco.

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How To Make Your Site Go Viral with Social Media

The two best social media sites you can use to drive targeted traffic to your website are Digg and Facebook. Despite both being quite radically different together, they get huge traffic and work in a way that your material can go viral fast. ??Digg lets users follow each other (much like twitter) and post links which are put forward and dugged by registered users and followers of your profile. Generally the more diggs a site gets the more visits your site will get (although you’re likely to get many more visits than diggs).

Step 1.
Sign up to Digg.com

Step 2.
Start commenting on diggs – I’ve found this to be the easiest and quickest way to gather followers.

Step 3.
Follow others – by following other people (particularly popular diggers) you’ll not only gain more followers but also have improved chances of getting other people to digg your content. By following other people your news feed will change to show their new content (and vice-versa).

Step 4.
Once you’ve gathered a solid group of followers you should submit your link (Shown top left right of the Digg logo) you should try and post with an intriguing headline.

You really need to contribute to the digg community if you are to get repeat traffic from the website as this way more people will see your link and promote it.

Once you’ve submitted your link its simply a waiting game to see how much traffic you get! Try experimenting with different types of content to see what works best. I’ve also found Digg an excellent way to get pages indexed into Google (usually within 12 hours).

Now we more onto Facebook there are numerous ways to get traffic to your site via Facebook however if you’re not careful most will be limited untargeted traffic.

The best methods are creating a fan page of your website/blog (only worth doing if your website/blog is already getting at least 200 visits a day with a good portion being returning visitors) or by creating a fan page/group at your websites theme i.e. if your site is about cat food you could make a fan page on a certain breed of cats.

Step 1.
Visit Facebook.com (no need to sign in or register yet) and click “Create a Page for a celebrity, band or business.” (Shown highlighted below)

Step 2.
Select “Cause or community” – name your community and click “Get started”

Step 4.
Log into your Facebook account (or create one at this point).

Step 5.
Now you’ll need to add an image (try to make it very relevant) write some content on the wall, invite your friends (only select those who are interested in your fan clubs theme) and finally “Like” the group yourself) this will show the group on your news feed which will encourage your friends to like the page too which in turn will then show up their friends newsfeeds and so on (as you can see this is really is viral friendly!)

Now when you combine the above together along with other social media sites you really are boosting the chances of your site to go viral, just remember you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink i.e. if you post boring content don’t expect the world to fall in love with it!

Share This

You should also consider adding a “share this button” to your website. You can grab the code from: sharethis.com. This gives you a small widget to add anywhere you like on your page which enables people to quickly post your link to Facebook, Twitter, Digg (and many more social media sites) potentially increasing your traffic.

Share this offers multiple looks. The most popular is:?

Simply visit sharethis.com and click “Get the code” (shown in yellow below) add the html code (I find this better since it’s more customisable than downloading the WordPress plug-in) either to the bottom of your posts/pages or in your sidebar.

Sam White has just released a free report teaching you how to drive quality targeted traffic to your website download it at: Drive Huge Traffic To Your Website – Free Traffic Blueprint

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