Mashable redesign helps status-seekers share breaking news first

by Marketing ON 5 December 2012

‘Connected culture’ news site Mashable has redesigned to help readers identify and share the next big story, playing to the digital generation’s desire to demonstrate how switched on they are.

The site, which started as a digital and technology news site, has redesigned its home page to help readers stay “ahead of the curve” by splitting content into three sections – new stories, ‘the next big thing’ and stories that are trending.

The new site also introduces a number of innovative features including ‘microcontent’ sharing, which lets readers share portions of a page’s content, infinite scrolling so that the home page pops up below the story, embeddable content in the comments section and Pinterest-inspired image features.

Founder and CEO of the site, Pete Cashmore, explains that the changes have been driven by the influence social, mobile and visual factors are having on the web. “Social networks have evolved beyond personal updates to become venues for news discovery,” Cashmore writes. “Mobile phones and tablets have become an increasingly popular way to read Mashable on the go. Meanwhile, modern web browsers now let us make websites that work more like apps.”

Explaining the rationale behind the home page layout, Cashmore says, “the reverse chronological layout of most news sites doesn’t tell you which stories are most important right now. Using data from social networks and a brand new algorithm, we now show you which stories are taking off on social networks, and which are the most-shared of the day.”

Stories begin in a column called ‘the new stuff’. If they are about to break out on the social web, they progress to the middle column, ‘the next big thing’. Those stories with the most social engagement move to ‘what’s hot’.

Stories are allocated to the next big thing category based on a predictive algorithm.

The site, which boasts 20 million monthly unique visitors, has also made an extensive investment in smartphone and tablet apps, to cater to the 30% of its traffic which comes from mobile devices.

Its new design launched overnight after two weeks of beta testing.

YouTube to flush out haters with linked Google-wide accounts

by Marketing ON 26 July 2012

YouTube is encouraging users to link their account with their other Google accounts, a move which would see real names used instead of anonymous monikers and potentially make users think twice before posting negative comments.

The video-sharing site wants users to show their full name and picture by linking to their Google+ account, thereby creating a single Google-wide identity for a more seamless experience. Linked accounts have been part of the YouTube sign on process since March, but existing users who missed out on linking will be prompted with the option of unifying their YouTube personality with their master Google account.

Digital culture news site Mashable speculates that one of the reasons behind the move was to reduce the amount of negative and hurtful comments the YouTube community makes, a characteristic of the platform that Julia Gillard was exposed to after being called “immoral” and as domineering as “Chairman Mao” following her Google+ Hangout last week. At Google’s recent I/O conference a developer said the site would be undergoing some changes to prevent bullying in the comments section, Mashable reports.

Instead of hiding behind a nick name, users with a linked account will go by their real names as displayed on Google+ when commenting on and uploading clips. Users will be able to remove old comments they may not want to associate with publicly, by reviewing their content which also enables editing of old playlists and videos.

“We’re giving you the ability to change how you appear on YouTube, with the option to use your Google+ profile on your YouTube channel,” YouTube writes on its blog. “One Google-wide identity was something that proved popular with new YouTube users when we began offering it in March, so we are now extending it to existing users.”

YouTube now asks users if they want to use their full name when leaving a comment. Users that decline must then choose a reason for doing so, such as ‘my channel is for a product, business or organisation’ or ‘my channel name is well-known’.

“We’ll help you review your YouTube content before your full name starts to display,” YouTube says in a message. “And if you change your mind, you can switch back to your username.”

The change will not be forced upon users. “We realize that using your full name isn’t for everyone. Maybe people know you by your YouTube username. Perhaps you don’t want your name publicly associated with your channel,” YouTube writes.

The prompts will first appear to users in the US, with plans to roll out internationally soon. Brand channels won’t yet have the same option to link Google+ and YouTube, but may be offered the opportunity in the future.

Facebook IPO: tomorrow, or in a few weeks, or maybe even in June

by Marketing ON 31 January 2012

Speculation is rife about a potential Facebook IPO rumoured to be taking place sometime this week in what’s being called a defining moment for the internet.

The Wall Street Journal reports that ‘people familiar with the matter’ have said the IPO could come as early as tomorrow in the US. These sources also said that Facebook executives were considering filing in a few weeks’ time or sometime between April and June, so only time will tell.

Facebook is yet to comment on the rumours, however, according to Mashable the social network has shown signs of preparing for public offer having halted its trading in secondary markets for three days last week and is pushing to get Timeline and other product offerings in place. On its blog, Facebook announced that all users will be forced to adopt the Timeline layout in the next few weeks.

Mashable says that, “If and when Facebook does file its S-1 paperwork, it will be forced to enter a ‘quiet period’ – without product announcements, interviews or any other public statements.”

The social network has still given no word though on when Timeline will be rolled out for branded Pages, which has been slated as a creative way for advertisers to engage in social media campaigns.

The Facebook float would be the largest tech IPO in history, anticipated to value the company between US$75 and US$100 billion, well above Google’s post-IPO valuation of US$23 billion in 2005.

It’s reported the company could raise as much as $US10 billion from the IPO, well ahead of the capital raised by tech’s largest IPO to date – $5.9 billion in 2000 by German-based Infineon.

According to The Wall Street Journal, a $10 billion Facebook offering would rank fourth among IPOs for US companies behind Visa, General Motors and AT&T Wireless, and value the social network on level pegging with McDonald’s.

The WSJ says Facebook increased its global advertising revenue from $738 million in 2009 to $3.8 billion in 2011. Data released overnight by comScore shows the social network increased its share of the display ad market, up to 27.9% in 2011, compared with 21% in 2010.

Principal analyst at Ovum, Eden Zoller, says Facebook’s goal is to become the centre of people’s digital lives, and the dominant platform for rich communications, commercial content and advertising.

“Facebook’s user base continues with its impressive growth trajectory which should comfortably pass the one billion mark this year, with particular opportunities to build the base in emerging markets and to extend its reach via mobile devices,” Zoller says.

“The challenge, and it is a big one, is whether Facebook can keep its users active and engaged in a context where Google is pushing hard into social media and many home grown social networks are looking to up their game, notably in China.

“The money raised from the IPO will give Facebook more resources to invest in acquisitions, service innovation and advertising analytics.”

Homepage image derived from this image courtesy Guillaume Paumier / Wikimedia Commons, CC-by-3.0

Internet goes dark in protest against anti-piracy laws

by Marketing ON 18 January 2012

High-profile web and technology organisations including Google and Wikipedia have gone ahead with planned protests against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), despite diminishing support for the Bill, which would restrict piracy but also render any site using links practically inoperable.

The English language Wikipedia blacked out this afternoon (AEDT) in a global protest against SOPA and the Protect IP Act (PIPA).

The fight to stop piracy, backed by American entertainment and media interests, took a hit over the weekend with several US congressman withdrawing support for the Bill and a statement from the White House suggesting that it would not support several cornerstone provisions of both SOPA and PIPA.

“While we believe that online piracy by foreign websites is a serious problem that requires a serious legislative response, we will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk or undermines the dynamic, innovative global internet,” the statement reads.

While this is good news for Silicon Valley, the battle still has a long way to go with a vote on PIPA scheduled for 24 January.

Organisations will continue with planned protests, including outages of up to 24 hours, in a bid to enlist the masses to their cause.

According to Mashable, sites confirmed to be ‘going dark’, to show people how their everyday lives could be affected by the bills, include Wikipedia, WordPress.org, Reddit, TwitPic and Mozilla.

Others confirmed to be taking part in protests of one form or another include:

Source: Mashable.

More are also rumoured to be participating by protest coordinator site SOPA Strike.com.

Google has confirmed it will post a message on its home page instead of going dark.

If passed, the two bills would prevent American search engines from directing users to sites distributing stolen materials and allow people and companies to sue for copyright.

The Obama administration’s move against the bills angered media mogul Rupert Murdoch who took to Twitter, attacking the government and Google over the issue.

“So Obama has thrown in his lot with Silicon Valley paymasters who threaten all software creators with piracy. Plain thievery,” Murdoch tweeted .

Murdoch also accused Google of hosting pirated material and selling advertising against it, tweeting: “Piracy leader is Google who streams movies free, sells [advertisements] around them. No wonder pouring millions into lobbying.”

Google dismissed his claims as ‘nonsense’.

Google+ makes changes to Pages as engagement flounders

by Marketing ON 22 December 2011

The transparent approach to Google+’s evolution continues, with changes to Google+ Pages announced on Google’s blog on Monday. In the weeks since launching pages, Google has listened to feedback and implemented the most requested changes for Page owners.

The changes are part of a raft of improvements to the social network. For Pages, three changes have been implemented:

Multi-manager support: You can now delegate up to 50 named managers as administrators for a page
new notifications flow: Notification are now visible whether the page owner is viewing Google+ as themselves or as their page to make it easier to keep up with activity taking place on the page, and
unification of +1 and circles: Follower numbers now aggregate the count of users that have +1’ed your page or added it to a circle to give both page owners and visitors an at-a-glance summary of who is interacting with the page.

If you can’t see the video below, please refresh your browser

These changes come as research reveals that engagement on Google+ remains low. According to Mashable, US research company BrightEdge found that 77 of the top 100 global brands (as determined by Millward Brown’s Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands 2011 list) now have G+ pages.

Meanwhile, another researcher, Simply Measured, which looked at Interbrand’s Top 100 Brands, found 61 had Google+ brand pages.

However, Simply Measured’s research found that only 13 of those top brands had followings of 5,000 or more. Of non-Google brand pages, H&M, Burberry, Dell and Amazon are among the most-followed, but comments, shares and ‘+1’s across the brands involved in the study remain low.

Closer to home, Tourism Australia is one of the local brands that has started a page on Google+. According to executive general manager of marketing at TA, Nick Baker, engagement with the Australia brand on the network is low.

“Engagement is pretty low and not much is going on at the moment, but we sense that it will come,” Baker says.

“We are looking to the future and still experimenting with it to work out how it will fit. There are some interesting areas on it in the way that Hangouts and Circles are used. It is a question of how they will develop for consumers.”

Google hasn’t released a figure for Google+’s total membership since October. At that time, the company claimed that the social network had 40 million users.

Mobile wallet still years from reality in Aus

by Marketing ON 20 December 2011

In the US, 2012 is being touted as the year of the mobile payment, but closer to home experts believe the mobile electronic wallet will not go mainstream in the next two years due to delays in infrastructure development.

According to Todd Wackwow, CEO of Australian mobile marketing firm POCKETvouchers, mobile payments for ecommerce will keep growing, but while payment apps may move the market forward, near field communications (NFC) enabled ‘mobile wallet’ payments in bricks and mortar stores will not take off in 2012 or even 2013.

“Delays in infrastructure deployment and dubious incremental value will mean it will take a while to reach the tipping point,” Wackwow says.

Writing for Marketing, founder of Third Screen Media, Joe Barber, agrees that NFC integration is not expected in 2012 or even as mainstream in 2013.

“The need to have NFC-enabled phones and NFC-enabled SIM cards will mean that broad consumer availability requires everyone to change handsets. This is not something that will happen inside 12 months,” Barber says.

Currently, few mobile handsets available in Australia contain the NFC technology required to integrate ‘wave and pay’ functionality into the device.

Google’s Galaxy Nexus contains the chip but the search giant has not made its payment app, Google Wallet, available in Australia since it launched overseas in September (although there is a backdoor way for Australians to get it to temporarily work).

And with Apple yet to make a move into NFC, uptake of the technology will be hampered in the short term.

The financial services industry however is preparing itself with a number of players jostling to be first to market.

In July, the Commonwealth Bank announced that it expected to go straight to a live roll-out by the end of the year, and has since introduced its iPhone app Kaching, which requires a special case that is linked to a PayPass enabled MasterCard in order to complete transactions.

MasterCard and Visa are investing in pay and wave terminals with their PayPass and payWave systems, which Google claims are compatible with Google Wallet.

PayPal has previously said that it would bring NFC to the Australian market within the year and predicted the traditional wallet’s demise by 2015 after acquiring mobile payments provider Zong for $240 million earlier in the year.

While handset manufacturers lag behind the financial services industry in preparing for the technology in Australia, this is not the case in the US, where experts are watching the trend with greater optimism.

Writing for CNN, Mashable founder Pete Cashmore claims, “Next year is likely to be the year when mobile payments blossom. While we’ve seen a great deal of innovation in mobile payments technology this year – including the success of Square’s iPhone dongle, allowing anyone to accept credit card payments — 2012 is the year of NFC.

“By 2013, one in five cellphones are expected to be NFC-equipped. Early contenders include Google Wallet, Visa Wallet, Serve (by American Express) and ISIS.”

Pixar returns to 80s for Toy Story 3 campaign

by Marketing ON 29 April 2010

Animated film producer Pixar has surreptitiously released a fake vintage TVC featuring one of the characters from its upcoming movie Toy Story 3 as a part of a viral marketing campaign.

Created to look like an ’80s-style advertisement for Lots-o’-Huggin’ Bear, the TVC has spread through social media networks and has been viewed on YouTube over 650,000 times.

The TVC has elicited mainly positive responses from consumers despite it not making any references to the movie itself.

Yahoo! Movies writer, Mike Ryan, has commended the idea as a unique way to market not only the film but its new characters.

“Pretty convincing stuff. The distorted sound, the flickering video, the noise on the bottom of the screen – all tell-tale signs of an old commercial uploaded to YouTube from a long-lost VHS tape,” said Ryan.

Christina Warren from Mashable has suggested that the campaign is indicative of the direction that brands are taking in regard to creating buzz around products online.

“Disney and Pixar have heavily marketed the film across different demographics, but there has a been a strong viral push to grab the attention of people in their mid-to-late twenties. For that reason, creating an ’80s-esque toy commercial makes a lot of sense, because we’re a generation that is obsessed with recollecting our past and relishing what once was,” explained Warren.