Category Archives: social media mashup

Two Great Examples Showing the Versatility of the Social Media Platform

Two completely different and completely brilliant uses of social media.

This week has seen two perfect examples of why social media has become so huge in recent years. On the one hand we had a political party using Twitter as a tool for a live questions and answers session. At the other end of the economic spectrum we had Orange launching their ‘Spot the Bull’ competition. How did I find out about this comp? Twitter of course.

Put Your Question To David Cameron:

Conservative party leader David Cameron had an early shot at connecting with the ‘yoof”, but this ended in media ridicule following his ‘Hug a Hoodie’ speech. 

On Tuesday May 26th, the Conservative Party website hosted a Q & A session allowing members of the public (with internet access) to ask questions by leaving comments on the page or via Twitter.

conservative live

Using the functionality of CoveritLive the Conservatives pulled off a slick and well worked method of conversing and interacting with their online audience. Will it gain them any voters? Probably not but it improved my opinion of them.

Orange – Spot The Bull


Orange launched their now annual Spot the Bull competition, giving people the chance to win tickets to Glastonbury. Heres how it works (courtesy of Suzanne Bearne at NMA) “The competition, in its third year, challenges players to guess the location at 3pm each day of a bull, Desmond, whose position in a field is being tracked online…On choosing a location, players will be given specific information about the percentage of time Desmond has spent in that area and the percentage of people who have chosen that part of the field.” I’ve entered every day and am yet to guess the correct square but its still fun none the less.spot the bull

Orange have employed a PPC campaign with ads appearing for search terms such including ‘glastonbury tickets’. There was also mention of it round the Twittersphere and there is an Twitter feed called @spotthebull. This year Orange have made good use of mobile by allowing people to submit their guess by text. There is also a widget  “available to download for personal social networking profile pages and blogs, this features a countdown to the next ticket giveaway, the Spot The Bull twitter feed and images direct from Desmond’s field.”

Digital agency Poke are responsible for this great campaign.

So all in all two very innovative social media campaigns used in two very different ways going to show the versatility of social media as a platform.

Twitter – Break it down now

Some would argue that the internet offers a place with no social boundaries and no glass ceiling. ‘Blue sky thinking’ is a certain term that is used (I would never use this phrase.)

Twitter however appears to me to be a complex world of friendships, allegiances, cliques. Socialisers, broadcasters and spammers all have different agenda’s concerning their use of Twitter.
Socialisers use Twitter to:
  • Locate people they don’t yet know, who can add something to their Twitter profile. It may be that being seen to follow a certain person gives you kudos or it may be that you actually want to keep up to date with what someone of interest is doing.
  • Engage with existing friends, colleagues and acquaintances on another level. Twitter allows you to keep abreast of what colleagues out of the office are dong or it allows you to see what friends did at the weekend.
  • Share information. Third party Twitter apps are facilitating easier sharing. Applications such as Twitpic for photos and URL shorteners like Tweetdeck’s bit.ly allow for quick link sharing. Who needs social bookmarking sites these days when Twitter allows you to catalogue your favourite links in the favourites folder and share your favourites via your status update? People can show their interest by retweeting (surely this is the same as ‘digging’ something?)
Broadcasters use Twitter to:
  • Disseminate a message to a large number of people. The people have to ‘follow’ the broadcaster and so must therefore have some kind of interest in what they have to say. Examples of broadcasters are; @bbcnews @google @twitter. They have an asymetric stream of information and tend not to interact with followers but more act like an information source (replacing RSS feeds?)
Spammers use it to:
  • Spam! They follow everyone and hope that they will be followed. They can be following tens of thousands of people. Twitter admin do not like Spammers and they very often have their account removed.
The above profiles are the norm but are not mutually exclusive. Many celebrities broadcast what they ate for lunch to a large number of people but then interact with them on a social level, albeit humouring their fans.
There does appear to be a social hierarchy within Twitter which bears a relation to the number of followers a user has. If their followers to followees ratio is high i.e. Following 100 with 9000 followers then they are high up the Twitter hierarchy. Offline influence can very much affect your social standing within Twitter.
Below is a list of what I believe the social structure of Twitter to be:
1. World leaders eg (@barackobama)
2. Real celebrities – huge stars in the real world eg (Ashton Kutcher @aplusk, Lance Armstrong)
3. Early adopter celebrities – not so well known in the real world but well followed on Twitter (Stephen Fry, Russell Brand, Phillip Schofield)
4. Key influencers/bloggers etc (Seth Godin, Robert Scoble)
5. Journalists for major broadcasters online and offline (@jemimakiss -Guardian Rory Celan Jones @ruskin147 -BBC tech
6. Business leaders/key figures within organisations (@emilybell -Guardian
6. Smaller scale bloggers and journalists –
7. Civilians – You and me @rob__murray @joebloggs
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100 best blogs (arguably)

Following on from a great Sunday roast yeasterday at the folks house, my wife threw Times newspaper supplement at me shouting, ‘YOU’LL probably be interested in this!’ (as though it were an accusation?). I flicked through the pages of the ‘Culture’ magazine to find an article on the top 100 blogs in the world/on the web (same thing really).

This list must be read carefully and with a pinch of salt. As Steve Clayton, London commented on the Times’ website “The UK has more to offer from blogs than fluffing up the careers of these folks. This list proved to me that The Times is the best Sunday Paper but The Guardian has it’s finger on the the tech pulse.” Couldn’t have put it better myself. Personally I prefer the work of Jemima Kiss of the Guardian.

The Times has tried to be trendy with an article on blogs but what we are presented with is a shallow list of blogs…Richard Madley, Paul Daniels anyone?! The article itslef is a well written and incisive piece of jouranlism if you ignore the shameless self plugging “I am also, thanks to Thought Experiments (the title of my blog)” It is a great way of making the ‘real world’ more aware of whats going on on line which can only be a good thing for those of us who’s careers depend upon it.

Here are some of the cream of the crop:


A blog updated by staff of the British ebassy in Harare. A place where actually saying what you think can get you killed. Well they say what they think and it’s great.


I know, I know Lily Allen is not cool and not clever. But hey she does say some funny stuff about other celebs and we all like to laugh at celebs don’t we?!


A wonderfull insight into the life of Eric Arthur Blair. Had he known that Big Brother would actualy become an inane show, synonomous with attention seekers and weirdos, he may not have written the novel 1984 to prevent Big Brother the TV series ever being born!


Quite simply the Blogger’s Blog


Thanks to Bryan Appleyard for the original article in the Sunday Times.

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