Amnesia Razorfish, an agency of many facets and faces, has joined the Pinterest train. Why may you ask? Well because it’s the big man on campus, socially media speaking.
Plus we get to pin cool stuff like this:
Freddy Mercury riding Darth Vader.
According to Google Ad Planner, Pinterest drew 38 million unique visitors globally in March, which is up from 23.7 million in February and 3.5 million in September last year.
The Los Angeles Times reported how Pinterest is ranked the third-most-popular social networking site behind Facebook and Twitter and the trend is set to rise.
There are articles dedicated to fighting or nurturing Pinterest addictions and Repinly is a page created for the sole purpose of monitoring the most trending Pinterest topics (Food & Drink for now).
So it seems that every marketer, trend observer and media analyst wants a piece of the Pinterest pie, with twitter streams full of answers to the power in a pin.
However for brands, Pinterest is not always the miracle solution for reaching target audiences and, particularly in Australia, the site is yet to prove itself to cautious digital strategists.
For now, these Australian based statistics, found using Google DoubleClick Ad planner, show that while Pinterest is a creative and connected platform, it may not be suited to everybody.
March Pinterest demographics
Pinterest in Australia attracts an older audience, with 34% of users in the 45-54 age bracket.
Of these users, an overwhelming majority (62%) attended ‘some college’ and based on the ‘Audience Interests’ below, the types of colleges become clear.
The most interesting statistic shows that where globally women comprise 72% of pinners, in Australia men are leading the game taking their 52% cut of people pinning.
So what does this mean? Are Australian men less averse to the pictures of cupcakes, Martha Stewart-esque home renovations and wedding dresses dominating Pinterest?
This ostentatious display of everything girly is responsible for the Pinterest inspired site, Gentlemint, that with its mustache logo and promise to be a ‘mint of manly things’ abhors anything with glitter or kittens.
Social and search continue to be essential inbound marketing channels. And while Google’s generating a lot of discussion around its new social network, Google+, another website is actually driving more inbound traffic: Pinterest.
Sometime around March 2011, Google made a new feature known as +1 available in the search results. Users who wanted to rate various websites for relevance could do so by clicking the +1 button,which would give the website or content additional visibility online. However what was not clear, was what would a flood of +1 ratings do for any particular website ? It was unclear how each person who clicked the +1 could use their influence within various social circles to ensure that “relevant” and “timely” content was shared with the people best suited for it within your social circle.
Enter Google+
Google+ allows people to build networks around locations and interests as well as numerous other factors. The question is how will this impact SEO (search engine optimisation) and will social experience optimisation influence search results ?
We know from a survey done by one of the leading SEO communities, that social media is one of the many ranking signals for organic search. The survey also revealed that geo location is one of the other factors that influences organic search results. All evidence points towards increased relevance being localised as well as influenced by social signals.
The answer has already been provided by google who recently announced that google+1’s will be visible in your analytics profile, and since we already know that social media is one of the ranking signals for website performance, brands will now need to factor in generating content that resonates with their target audience strongly enough to get them “Social approval”.
While doing some research for a post I’m writing, I noticed what seems to be a new feature on Twitter’s new .com native site: a media filter.
This media filter was not apparent back when Twitter introduced its new, updated web platform mid-2010, and indeed didn’t seem to be there yesterday when I was using Twitter. What’s interesting is that this filter is based on trust: it’s not there for media (pictures, videos, links) from the people you follow, but just on people you don’t.
Twitter's new media filter (click to enlarge)
It’s on by default, however you can turn it off in your settings. An interesting, and if not expected development from Twitter perhaps designed to mitigate the increasing amount of porn and even disturbing media images being shared via the growing platform. But I’m a little disappointed that this may mean I’m no longer able to ‘rickroll‘ tweeps 😉
Have you seen this media filter before? What do you think?
The AFL ‘dickileaks’ scandal has been unfolding for nearly three days through mainstream news and of course, social media. Where it all began.
Ahh, social media. That sinister, loud-mouthed influencer of the digital playground where content goes to become viral, get blown out of proportion and break all the rules. Or does it?
The controversial story about St Kilda FC player, Nick Riewoldt and his team mate Nick Dal Santo has been flooding the Twitter stream since Monday night when the naughty photos were posted by an unnamed 17 year old teenage girl on her Facebook page. The pics have since been hidden (I feel that ‘removed’ is too strong to use when referring to anything on the Internet), but social media is still buzzing and amping the hype. Since the ‘dickileaks’ hashtag went viral yesterday, it has been mentioned over 1800 times by more than 970 contributors and been repeatedly mentioned in mainstream news reports. It is also still trending in Australia.
Hours after the material was posted, her Facebook profile was closed down and the Police had been contacted. So with the photos, she took to Twitter where her follower count exploded from 200 to 8200. Talk of legal action has been thrown around but in Oz, Social Media and the law meet at a very blurry line. An article on theage.com.au has suggested that she could be charged under the Surveillance Devices Act or the so-called Upskirting Law (prohibits the visual capture and intentional distribution of photos of another person’s genitals) if it is proven that she did take the photos. It also carries a two year jail term.
So, should Social Media be bound by the same legalities that is abided by, by other media types through communications law? Why isn’t it already?
Copyright, Libel and Slander, Liability and Deceptive Acts and Practices have been identified online as areas where social media needs to watch it’s back. In the UK, privacy laws would apply to this situation and in the US, the ‘right to privacy’ could be brought into play. Should we follow suit?
This is the 3rd nudey Australian celebrity incident to circulate, escalate and Twitter-late this year.
This. Year.
In March, we saw Lara Bingle’s ‘deer-in-the-headlights’ naked shower photo appear on the Internet (but not before Woman’s Day reported it) and in early November, (then) Canberra Raiders player Joel Monaghan was snapped in a compromising position with a Labrador while celebrating Mad Monday festivities with his team mates. (See the censored pics below)…
We here at Amnesia Razorfish talk about the value of social objects when looking at how can brands can enter social media. What’s a social object you ask? Anything that people feel compelled to share in a digital landscape. Photos, games, jokes, songs, videos.. and the holy grail, memes.
What binds all of these ‘objects’ together is the simple proposition that the content appealed to someone enough to motivate them to want to share it with their friends. Whether this is because it made that person laugh, cry, revere or repel, it triggered an emotion that caused an effect – they passed it on.
But finding the key to understanding what triggers people to want to pass content on is difficult and takes considered insight. Most brands will fail in their attempts to ‘make something go viral’ and even believe that because they didn’t get 1 million hits on YouTube with that shiny new TVC, that social media isn’t a worthwhile platform for them or for their marketing budgets.
But there are a few basic rules in successful content. And as ’tis the season for all things Christmas (and today being my last day of working in 2010) I wanted to share some fantastic pieces of ‘viral’ content that have garnered the magical seven-figure views.
This magical Christmas lights video is currently sitting on 8,183,000 views. Pretty crazy eh?
Slayer (heavy metal) meets sequenced lights. Rad. And it’s appealed to 1,587,000 people.
It’s pretty slick, but still obviously a ‘home-made job’, but 1,641,000 people watched it.
Because you can’t blog about memes without a LOLcat, this one just makes it in. Sitting at 3,757,000 views, it’s got legs (or is that fur?).
So I’ll leave you with a challenge to find and share your favourite Christmas videos. And have a very Merry Christmas, and a safe and Happy New Year!
We all like music, right? I mean, some of us profess to enjoy it more properly, appropriately or adequately than others – this here Superior Hipster for example:
…but when you get down to it, pretty much everybody likes it.
So, we all want more of it, right? Thus the dawn and success of the iPod, and various other MP3 players. We could carry our thousands of tunes with us everywhere we went, beautiful.
Read on through my rambles to find out what I think the best music streaming service available to Australians is (so far). Read the rest of this entry »
Here’s a nice idea for a game. Smash the living daylights out of this Piñata using facebook, a robot connected to the internet and baseball bat. When the Piñata bursts it’s a free for all to grab a prize.
Here it is in action. It’s a little like watching cricket … the difference is the English are actually smashing the Aussies.
Anyone discovered any cheats to make the robot smash the Piñata a bit harder?
Cyber crime and Twitter scams make good headlines but somewhere underground there are a few concerned citizens that take a vigilante approach to dealing with these scammers and fraudsters. For instance http://www.419eater.com/ bait scammers using highly creative methods to engage Nigerian conmen, waste their time and then attempt expose them. There’s also the Salty droid who names and shames would-be conmen who utilize Twitter and other channels to exploit consumers. But it turns out that life of a digital freedom fighter is not easy.
Here’s the problem : Many scams consist of intelligent, organised individuals and groups. They syndicate and they collaborate, and they actively wage a reverse war on the people trying to expose them. Ironically scammers are using the same processes created to report spammers to shut down the people trying to expose them.
Sadly YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Vimeo accounts etc belonging to web vigilantes trying to alert people to scams are being shut down faster than than those belonging to the scammers. How do I know this? Read on:
The Sad Story of the SaltyDroid
I’m not sure how I first came across the Droid on Twitter but I became interested in the Droid’s outspoken ‘attacks’ on certain individuals. Some of the people it was targeting had HUGE followings on Twitter, some with high profiles and. SaltyDroid had no qualms in confronting them directly in public view and alerting other users. I have no reason to doubt that SaltyDroid’s only purpose was to expose people it believed were engaged in unethical practices (such as this one which was exposed).
I noticed a few months ago that SaltyDroid (which had a few thousand Twitter followers) just ‘vanished’. The blog was still alive and kicking so I wrote an email to find out what the story.
Me: “What happened? Where did your accounts go?”
Salty Droid: “I lost. I’m basically banned from the Internet. Twitter, Facebook, Vimeo, Bluehost, Youtube, etc. Everywhere I go the scammers file false complaints and horrific lies about me. The web companies all default to caving in and banning you rather than risking "trouble". Most of them, and especially Twitter, do it with zero notice, process, or chance to respond. It says sad things about the state of free speech on the all important fringes … IMO.
I don’t have time to fight the web companies and the scammers … so I just gave up on the web companies. I’m on a special free speech server where some really great people take special care of me … and otherwise I’m silenced.
And the Twitter bannings are not as bad as the death threats, the private investigators, the plots against my personal life, etc.”
The Droid also let me know that although he began his pursuit anonymously it wasn’t long before a syndicate of scammers found him at which point the he decided it would be safer to unmask the droid. Revealing himself as a lawyer it gives the whole saga an even bigger sense of irony.
In summary, it’s easier for a scammer to have a web vigilante shut down than vice versa. The Droid is now absent from all social networks and yet the people being named in his blog continue to tweet freely etc. In an age where consumers are able to interact so easily with anyone from close friends to complete strangers there is no easy and quick way of distributing warning messages to others in the case of genuine scams. That’s a service SaltyDroid was attempting to provide before being shut down in social media circles. The internet at present sometimes appears lawless and wide open territory for the scammers, and the presence of government and local authority is limited, and at best slow moving. I’m not condoning Salty droids methods or even agreeing with all his posts but freedom of speech is important so I certainly don’t want to see people prepared to take on these issues disappear especially with the bad guys roaming free so easily.
Beware wolves in birds clothing: Currently I know of one major Twitter account belonging to a convicted spammer in Australia with close to 100,000 followers. This person appears free to be able to act on Twitter regardless of their history. Sadly the only way you are likely to hear the name of this person is via someone like SaltyDroid.
What can you do? 1. Send this link on to people in the industry.
2. Copy and paste this story – reproduce it in your own blog.
3. Help Re-activate or read the Saltydroid: If you know someone who works in Twitter or Facebook etc ask them to reinstate the banned SaltyDroid accounts eg: http://twitter.com/saltydroid
What could be better than combining two of your greatest loves; social media and politics? Nothing!
Last night I had the nervous pleasure of presenting our insights into the 2010 Federal Election’s use of social media at the Social Media Club Sydney. It seemed to go well, and I thought you might like to see what I presented. It involves infoporn!
But the highlight of the tremendous amount of data and analysis we captured during the Election, is definitely Ben Thayer’s Infographic.
Would love your thoughts on how social media was used (or not used) during the 2010 Federal Election, or even other case studies of Political campaigning?
I just had a rather interesting experience with a guy from Vodafone Australia looking after the Android Man Social Media comp. The problem – I tried to enter with a photo of Android Man and an iphone:
I went down to checkout Vodafone Australia’s Android Man competition. The game: locate Android Man from his cryptic tweets, take a creative photograph, upload it to facebook and you could win a HTC Desire HD.
My idea for the ‘creative photograph’ was to give Android Man my iphone in the hope that he would give me a shiny new HTC Desire HD in return. However, after I took the shot I was approached and encouraged to delete the shot. The conversation went something like this:
Vodaman: “You can’t take a photograph of Android Man and an iPhone”
Me: “Why not? The competition is take a creative photo. That’s creative”
Vodaman: “I want you to delete the photo of Android Man and the iPhone”
Me: “Sorry mate, it’s user generated content, social media, my phone, my picture and a public space”
Vodaman: “Delete the photo or I can help delete it for you”
Me: “Seeing as you put it so nicely … Sorry I’m not deleting it”
Vodaman: “Look if you upload Android Man and the iphone to the Vodafone AU facebook group it will be removed and you won’t win the competition”
Me: “Fair enough … You know. You sometimes see dolphins here some times. Seriously. I’ve seen one once.”
Vodaman: “Just one?”
Me: “Just once. It was looking for something.”
Vodaman: “Maybe some food?”
Me: “Yeah maybe”
I love social media competitions like this. In fact I helped create The Smirnoff Secret Party Treasure Hunt a few years ago. However, this incident highlights just how important it is that everyone from the ground up is aware of just how transparent social media is. Your people are your brand and they need to know that everything they say and do can be repeated and tweeted and be the make and break of such campaigns.
Most morbid social media campaign yet? The gist: Take a photo of yourself DEAD and you could end up in next year’s horror movie Redd Inc. According to the company there have been a few ‘inadmissable photos’ so far.
“We wanna make this digital” is the cry of many a client when they enter their ‘digital’ agency with a shiny new TVC and poster under their arm. Too many agencies will take a client’s TVC (and money) and make it ‘digital’ simply by putting a browser around it or sending it’s animated cousin off to Double Click.
I’m proud to say that’s not what we do here at Amnesia Razorfish. When our client, realestate.com.au, shared their really nice ATL spring campaign with us, we got really fired-up by the challenge of making this campaign come to life in the digital space. We didn’t want to simply TELL consumers that realestate.com.au helps give people a fresh start, we wanted to actually GIVE someone a fresh start. Some one that really needed a fresh start.
Say hello to The Fresh Start Project from realestate.com.au. The aim of the campaign is simple. Build a a new home, for a family in need, through people’s use of realestate.com.au. As users interact with realestate.com.au they collect ‘bricks’ which they can donate to the 1 million brick target. In partnership with Habitat for Humanity Australia, the house will be built. There’s no augmented or virtual reality here. Sure – it won’t cause world peace, but it will make a real difference to a real family in real need. And that’s why I love this project so much. Hope you do too.
The IMDB business is almost 20 years old (true, just 10 days to go) and although we all love it the site hasn’t changed much or matured beyond its web 1.0 status. Yes it has 57 million visitors every month but it’s not without flaws. Indeed I think there are some interesting lessons to be learned in how to utilise social and crowdsourcing from the little movie recommendations site Criticker.com especially when it comes to movie rankings – read on:
Aliens – only 8.5/10 ? Pffft come on it’s a 9.1 easy!
So here’s the problem (and I will bet this has happened to you at some point): You watch a movie, love it only to find IMDB users gave it a crummy 6.5 out of 10 (or vice versa – a crap movie gets a good score on IMDB). The issue of course is that movies are rated by everyone INCLUDING people who also hate the sort of movies you love. In short IMDB does nothing more than merely aggregate the mass opinion of everyone. In the real world we make many choices based on trusted opinions, not just those of the many.
Enter Criticker… Criticker calls itself a ‘movie recommendation engine’. How does it work? It calculates ratings by analysing movies that YOU like/dislike then it finds OTHER PEOPLE with the same likes/dislikes and then gives you a Probable Score Indicator (PSI) based on the result. In short it ranks movies based on scores from people just like you.
The outcome is that when you search for a movie, your Criticker predicted score is much more likely to be the score you would actually give it. Here’s an example: The film I searched for here is Clockwork Orange. My PSI (probable score) on Cricketer is adjusted to 79/100 (that rating is based on other ratings of people like me). On IMDB it is rated en masse at 8.5/10. The reality here is that Cricketer is much closer than IMDB (I’d probably give it a 75).
Social web 2.0 I’ve been using Criticker for 18 months, I’ve scored about 230 movies and I find the more data I give it, the better it becomes at predicting my scores. Bottom line – this is a truly intelligent and useful crowdsourcing tool and it works. I love it.
Today I feel ashamed of the the industry in which I work. Although I love this idea and the experimental spirit of the project, it somehow feels wrong. Is nothing safe from the internet? Leave the trees alone is what I say.
This is what I learned after attending the fantastic #media140 Conference yesterday.
Comparing the presentations and discussions of Australian social media experts, journalists and MPs, to those of US Ambassador Jeffrey Bleich on Obama’s and his innovation in social media and community building, and Dr Claire Wardle’scase study on the UK election where content was key, it’s pretty stark: Australian media and politicians have a long way to catch up, don’t you think?
“I was walking home from work and saw this cat wander out in front of me. I don’t know what came over me, but I suddenly thought it would be funny to put it in the wheelie bin, which was right beside me.”
Happens to the best of us, eh? This is how 45 year old Mary Bale from Coventry in the UK described the bizarre lapse of judgement that has catapulted her to global interweb fame in the space of a few days.
Lola the cat’s owner, Darryl Mann, heard her piteous yowling inside the wheelie bin outside his home fifteen hours later. Unluckily for Mrs Bale, her random act of kitty cruelty was captured on Darryl’s security cameras and promptly uploaded to YouTube by his wife, Stephanie. It wasn’t long before the resourcefulness of crowds tracked her down, and now she’s news from the Washington Post to the Sydney Morning Herald.
Her name, address, manager’s phone number have been posted online; there are at least 8 Facebook pages denouncing her villainy (not counting ‘Death to Mary Bale’, removed by Facebook). The Sun newspaper in the UK has published a Flash whack-a-mole game (renamed Whack-cat-woman) allowing users to smack Mary’s wicked head as it pops out of wheelie bins.
Back on YouTube there’s a video entitled ‘Cruel Cat Dumps Woman In Bin (Revenge of Cat)’ in which the tables are turned – a man in a Sylvester the Cat suit dumps an old lady in a wheelie bin.
Mary’s even got a fake twitter account in her name, CatBinLady, which has her tweeting pathological random acts of weirdness as she goes through her day: “Just kicked the head off next door’s gnome. For a joke. Who’s laughing now though? Not me. Not me.”
In short – she’s gone VIRAL! In just days.
While notorious Mary is barricaded at home, pilloried by the world’s media, menaced by crowds outside her house and expecting to lose her job, you’ll be pleased to hear that Lola has recovered from her ordeal purrrfectly.
Launched last night at the Social Election and on Twitter @socialelection, the new Election-analysis blog features commentary on how – and how well – Australia’s political parties are using social media, plus how the major leaders, Gillard, Abbott and Brown, are resonating with people during the election.
Amnesia Razorfish is the only digital agency publishing its full insights into the election and the political parties’ use of all social media and online platforms, including monitoring and analysis.
The 2010 Federal Election, widely touted to be the ‘digital election’, comes after recentexamples of the US and UK elections which used social media to engage and stimulate supportand demonstrated social media’s ability to impact an election. It’s clear that Australian political parties, however, are struggling to understand how to use social media.
Amnesia Razorfish Social Strategy Manager Karalee Evans writes in the Social Election’s opening analysis
When the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, announced the election for Saturday 21st August 2010, I, for one, believed both the Liberal and Labor parties would hit the ‘activate’ button on pre-planned social campaigns.
Just like the war chest of above-the-line campaigns of attack TV commercials, print ads and pamphlets, I was expecting a social barrage – but I’m still waiting.
The social media efforts of Julia Gillard, Tony Abbott and to a certain extent Bob Brown and the Greens, have been embarrassingly poor, even arrogant.
More and more, people are seeking information, participation and validation from our three party leaders via Twitter and Facebook. And in return people are getting a lot of talking at – not to.
The social movement is happening, with or without Gillard and Abbott.
The Social Election will look at how social media provides a finger on the pulse into how people are responding to each party. Results will be reflected in weekly articles and polls, the socialpulse of a feed of online conversation, a real-time share of voice worm-board and aggregated content.
Topics and issues of most importance, and who they matter most to will be analysed, along with how each politician is resonating with the public, and who is really being heard.
Amnesia Razorfish will consider share of voice between who is being talked about most and will analyse social media sentiment, trending topics, key influencers and reach of each party and leader.
These insights are critical to understanding which way the election will go and how the voting community engages with social media during the election. We hope it will also assist in solidifying social media’s place as a credible channel for people and brands to achieve their own business objectives ~ Karalee Evans.
More content and elements will continue to be added to the blog, such as YouTube, Facebook and other online and social platforms, demonstrating that Amnesia Razorfish is the only one publishing election insights across social media and online platforms.
When talking about Twitter accounts which do it well – which engage users, spark conversation and create evangelists, I’m usually not one to go past @Crust_pizza, who do it right.
Their Twitter account has risen to huge popularity using the Weekly #crustfreepizzafriday competition which – every Friday – is practically viral.
Their day-to-day content is targeted at the younger audience, with videos drawn from the vein of Funniest Home videos, music tracks which they’re into, movie trailers, in addition to a sprinkling of corporate news like store openings. And, perfectly, they respond to customers in realtime.
However, today they tweeted this:
What, did they put the Work Experience kid on Twitter for the day?! More on this, after the jump.
Posted by plate3quartersfull 
Here’s the problem : Many scams consist of intelligent, organised individuals and groups. They syndicate and they collaborate, and they actively wage a reverse war on the people trying to expose them. Ironically scammers are using the same processes created to report spammers to shut down the people trying to expose them.
I’m not sure how I first came across the Droid on Twitter but I became interested in the Droid’s outspoken ‘attacks’ on certain individuals. Some of the people it was targeting had HUGE followings on Twitter, some with high profiles and. SaltyDroid had no qualms in confronting them directly in public view and alerting other users. I have no reason to doubt that SaltyDroid’s only purpose was to expose people it believed were engaged in unethical practices (
Amnesia Blog 
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