Facebook Ticker

Facebook Ticker arrived on the right hand side of my Facebook homepage last night, right under a sponsored story, and I’m not entirely sure what the point of the ticker exactly is.

Gradually rolled out since mid August, Facebook Ticker serves you instant content from within your network whilst your main feed is reserved for what Facebook has called ‘Highlights’.

I’d be keen to know exactly how Facebook determines what content fits into which section – I assume that it is down to EdgeRank, their algorithm for deciding how relevant content is to each individual user.

I’m not particularly keen on it.

1) The feed sits underneath an advert (I don’t go on Facebook to receive adverts) which indicates Facebook think less of their users than they do revenue

2) It takes away the importance of personalising content through EdgeRank – if something isn’t deemed relevant to me, I don’t want to see it

3) The position is odd and it takes the user away from their main feed and by default, away from the ‘prime’ content they are using Facebook to see

I can see that Facebook are looking to re-real-time their content offering to users, but for me, in it’s current state, it just doesn’t work.

Have you seen Facebook Ticker yet and what did you think of it?

Top Five Foursquare Apps

Foursquare is one of the most interesting social networks to have evolved over the last two years.

For me, there are two signs that show a service has a genuine value:

It is imitated in both function and design
A whole bunch of other services grow up around it

This is happening to Foursquare in both cases.

So, here’s five neat Foursquare-driven services for you to have a play with:

4sqbadgecrawl
Social currency is key on the Internet, so having the badges to show you are an active member of a community helps to give you that credibility – 4sqbadgecrawl helps you find out what you’re missing and how to get them.

Tripsq
Tripsq makes your Foursquare activity into a cool looking infographic so that you can visulise what you’ve been getting upto. It’s great for showing your Internet chums just how much time you spend in hip coffee joints and how far you walked to get to them…

Deal Burner
Want to know when you check-in if the venue has a deal on? deal Burner will send you a text to tell you if it does! Simple, but effective.

When Should I Visit
If you’re not one for crowds, When Should I Visit lets you find out the busiest days for museums, theatres and galleries so you can see what you want in peace and quiet.

4sqmap
The amount of data available around your Foursquare use is immense. 4sqmap looks to collate all of your data and presents it in a simple format, that shows you pretty much anything you could want to know about your Foursquare use.

So now you’ve heard mine, what are your favourite uses of Foursquare?

Can More Be Had Than Is Had?

‘Can More Be Had Than Is Had?’ is the question at the core of the Doomsday Book, the 1085/1086 Norman audit of the United Kingdom.

The phrase is asking, ‘can we raise more money?’ and the data within the book looks to answer that question.

This is a principle that brands apply to the way they behave digitally, but instead of focussing on money, focus on the service they can provide to their actual audience and potential audience.

For brands who are looking to utilise a presence online, the first place to start can be a William The Conqueror style audit of what their digital properties look like.

It’s very easy for us to think that we are innovating in the way we look to use to data to find efficiencies and improvements in the digital space.

It’s worth remembering that for all the wonderful things we can do with data online, we’re still looking to answer the same questions as William:

What can we do better?
How can we go about it?
How soon can we do it?

So, if you’re thinking about what your brand looks like online and ways to improve and reach more communities, do an audit of what’s working and what isn’t, and identify opportunities to improve.

Surfing the Web at Work is Good For You

A study by Vivien K.G. Lim and Don J.Q. Chen claims that surfing the web at work can make you more productive.

Digital Life reports:

Lim, an associate business professor at National University of Singapore, and graduate student Chen presented that finding from their study, “Impact of Cyberloafing on Psychological Engagement,” at the Academy of Management’s annual meeting last week in San Antonio.

Web surfing at work “serves an important restorative function,” the researchers said…

What’s interesting about this, to me, is that ten minutes of wandering around the web, reading, watching and looking at different stimuli can help to encourage productivity.

Anecdotally i’ve always believed this to be the case – I always feel refreshed after reading around and consuming content that is the antithesis of what i’m looking to do.

Need to write? Watch a video.

Need to listen? Read a blog post.

Do you find the study to be true in your experiences?

Open Rights Group: Riots Social Media POV

I can’t help but agree with everything in this post from the Open Rights Group: PRIME MINISTER’S ATTACK ON SOCIAL MEDIA UNWARRANTED

I urge you to read this and leave your view on the ORG blog.

Joey Barton and More Footballer Twitter “Problems”

The latest Twitter related saga in football comes with Joey Barton using the service to air his opinion about his club, Newcastle United. The not-so-positive comment led to Alan Pardew, the club’s manager, making Joey available for a free transfer.

Footballers seem to continually find themselves in trouble, but to my mind I am baffled as to why.

The clubs should be looking to help the players use the service in the appropriate way. If they don’t want team selections or confidential information ‘leaked’, write it into their player’s contract that they will be bringing the club into disrepute, just as any other employer would.

A club should not prevent a player from having an opinion, we’ve had enough of players who just do as they say, pick up their paycheck and go home – it’s about time the clubs encouraged their players to interact with their fans.

Rio Ferdinand and Joey are two high profile examples of where, in my opinion, this actually works – what’s more, they’ve done it at their own leisure because they see the benefits of using Twitter.

If I were to tweet negatively about my employer, yes they may get a little annoyed, but they will respect my opinion. If however I were to tweet industry secrets, I’d probably get a decent telling off and a warning.

What the issue highlights is football clubs’ unwillingness to relinquish control of the PR that surrounds them. They only want their perception of the club to be listened to, not what the players think of the club.

Indeed, if they don’t want a player to say bad things about the club, don’t give them a reason to! The club must do better at getting the player to buy into the philosophy and fight for the club with every ounce sweat on the pitch and charisma off it.

Issuing ridiculous ultimatums to players will only worsen the situation. Fans deserve that connection with players, and what’s more, I think the players want to deepen that relationship too.

Smartphones rule, ok?

UK telecomms regulator Ofcom have released a study of smartphone usage in the UK.

Mashable have pulled out some of the key findings of what is one of the most in-depth pieces of consumption research yet:

- 37% of adults and 60% of teens admit they are highly addicted to their smartphones.

- 81% of smartphone users make calls every day compared with 53% of regular users.

- 23% of teenagers claim to watch less TV and 15% admit they read fewer books as a result of their smartphone use.

- 51% of adults and 65% of teens say they have used their smartphone while socializing with others.

- 23% of adults and 34% of teens have used their smartphones during mealtimes.

- 22% of adult and 47% of teens admitted using or answering their smartphone while in the bathroom.

- 58% of adult males owned a smartphone compared with 42% of females.
Among teenagers, 52% of females use smartphones compared with 48% of males.

- The majority of adults (32%) identified Apple’s iPhone as their favorite device, while the majority of teens (37%) prefer the BlackBerry.

What do you make of the findings, do they resonate with you?