Anyone who has clicked a mouse and entered the world of the internet appreciates that there are a significant number of anonymous online people who are out to judge, criticise, bully and do harm. These ‘trolls’, as we have come to know them, can cause serious damage. Nevertheless, it has been incredible to watch on and see how the public have reacted to the death of Claire Squires, after the London marathon, and how people took to the internet to provide a lasting legacy for one incredible lady.
It was heart rendering to hear that Claire, a 30 year old woman, collapsed during the final mile of the London Marathon and consequently died. Claire had raised over £500 herself in order to support the good work of the Samaritans who offered professional help and support to her family when her brother died. It was humbling to see that within hours of the sad news breaking, Claire’s name was globally trending on Twitter with a link to her donations page encouraging people to give in her memory. Before the first day of promotion was over £60,000+ was added to the total. A day later the media broke the story and less than seven days after Claire sadly died the total figure stands at an incredible £1million. At one point a staggering £1,500 per minute was being donated!
What an incredibly positive story demonstrating the true power of social media. It was the thousands of people across social media that decided to launch a campaign to raise as much money as possible – no newspaper, radio station or magazine, but people. Naturally, the next day the story was picked up by Sky News and in every leading National media outlet which further fanned the flames of the campaign. However, if it was not for social media and the public’s quest to raise as much money as possible, the media would not have a public campaign story to tell. The goodness of people and the viral nature of social media did this.
Of course you get idiots online. But the potential of people coming together online with the goal of doing something incredibly, outrageously positive has huge potential. It was fantastic to see how this campaign was launched and spread virally and, although it is not the first of it’s kind, it does represent an increasing move towards a discovery of how the internet can be used positively for social causes, causes that are not initiated by the government, the press or other bodies but, quite simply from the people. I love it!
After 25 years of the Oprah Winfrey show it seemed to many that ending the show to start her OWN TV station was a bad idea. Nevertheless, Oprah Winfrey has dramatically turned it all around and in doing so has provided a model that every brand can learn from.
When Oprah Winfrey launched her OWN TV show, ratings were plummeting and there was cause for concern at Oprah Winfrey HQ. Furthermore, between January and July of 2011 the audience to Oprah Winfrey’s own website dropped by over half, from 5.1million unique users to 2.4million. Nevertheless, appreciating the power of social media Oprah sat down with her team, sought advice of Facebook and Twitter Execs and launched season two of her Lifeclass roadshow making Oprah Winfrey Queen of the social media limelight.
Oprah Winfrey has traveled the length and breadth of the USA with her Lifeclass, which is a live TV show that is simultaneously broadcast on her website, encouraging live interaction on both Facebook and Twitter. Viewers can even Skype into the show to ask questions.
If you have not had the opportunity to watch Oprah’s Lifeclass, you really should. It is incredible to see Oprah bring together respected leaders including the likes of Life Coach, Tony Robbins and Bishop TD to share words of wisdom encouraging the audience to ‘live their best life’.
With the whole stage being social media driven, with tweets and Facebook messages appearing in the background and Oprah and her ‘gurus’ commenting on messages as they happen, this truly is a social TV phenomenon. The lifeclass buzz on social networking sites is thriving and the Oprah Team stated that in the first week of April 2012 alone there were 414,780 mentions on Facebook, 3,026 answers posted to the Lifeclass wall on Oprah.com and over 29,000 views to the wall. Meanwhile, the web cast brought in a staggering 2.7 million viewer minutes from 149 countries.
Granted, not every brand has the Oprah Winfrey budget, nevertheless, the idea is as important as the figures. Oprah Winfrey’s Lifeclass hits it hard in simultaneous locations – The live show, TV, Facebook, Twitter, Orpah.com for a concentrated amount of time once a week, with the brand benefits rolling out from their on in.
Imagine a live TV commercial airing that also promotes a hashtag and immediate engagement on their Facebook wall, perhaps for the chance to win an awesome prize. Imagine a brand rolling out the fact that they were going to make a major product announcement live online at a certain time and date with carefully selected methods of promotion on Facebook. Or quite simply imagine TV shows taking their social media engagement to the next level as the presenters sit in front of a backdrop of tweets and Facebook messages enabling the public to interview celebrities in real time.
Oprah Winfrey is revolutionising social TV by brining all the elements together at once. This is the ultimate lifeclass lesson for brands. Think about your brand and your business, what could you do via social media, your website and other media avenues in order to see your brand stand out from the crowd?
We all know Alex Tew, in fact, many of us are green with envy whenever his name is mentioned. Alex Tew is the guy who created milliondollarhomepage and made a million dollars in the process. Alex has also had a number of other viral successes including donothingfor2minutes.com
What some of you may or may not know is that Alex Tew has moved to American to become Product Manager of Monkey Inferno which, according to it’s website is a ‘place where we dream up cool internet projects, develop them, nurture them into successful businesses’. How cool?!
But there is more, Monkey Inferno, is self-funded by Michael and Xochi Birch who sold Bebo in 2008 for a cool $850million! Basically, what this means is that Monkey Inferno can a) never go bust and will b) never need investment.
Alex Tew is a genuinely nice guy who dreams up big ideas and ensures that they happen in practice. I cannot think of a more perfect fit for Alex to be working with Monkey Inferno. A massive congratulations to you Alex!
I am pretty sure that Alex Tew + Monkey Inferno will = a shit load of cool stuff!
All of the above, must be true, it is on Alex’s Twitter bio: @tewy
Media used to be a top down thing, you could listen to the radio, watch TV or newspapers and the only time that you could share your voice on such platforms was when the gate keepers allowed you to do so – whether this be a letter to the editor or a radio phone in. Well, with the advent of the internet this has all changed and has significant and far-reaching consequences, consequences which I believe are greater than we currently understand.
Let’s take two contemporary cases:
The Murdoch Empire - Rupert Murdoch, as well all know, is a media mogul who is worth a cool $5billion. In no way, shape or form did anyone ever think that the foundations of this empire would shake and his media business would start to crumble, but it has and to me, this points to one thing… People are fed up of the way things are, with the way things have been and they want to see change. The internet provides a platform to voice these feelings, for good or for bad.
I am not making any startling revelation. We have seen the powerful results of WikiLeaks and we have seen the voice that the internet has become which has aided country-wide political revolutions. In Murdoch’s case the internet does not play any part in the revelation of the information. Nevertheless, people, in their droves hit the internet, tweeting, increasing their Facebook status and discussion on forums their dislike of the whole News of the World situation which resulted in advertisers pulling their marketing budgets, the public boycotting the newspaper and, ultimately, the closing down of the whole operation. A growing disillusion with the way that things are + the power of the internet to spread a message has resulted in the foundations of a worldwide media empire start to crumble = powerful consequences.
Google: The second media company that I want to discuss is Google. Google has traditionally been good at what it does, enabling people to effectively “search” the internet to find information that the need, fast. Google has launched a number of businesses that quite simply didn’t take off. Jaiku, a Twitter equivalent, launched by Google and subsequently failed, is one example. Google have always wanted to get into the social networking space and launched Google Wave, in an attempt to take a chunk out of the power and influence of Facebook.I remember speaking to Google’s PR team when Google Wave was launched and he was championing the impending success of Google Wave and how it was going to be adopted by future generations. Great idea, awesome ambition but the public did not take to it and ultimately it was closed down in August 2010.
Recently, Google went for it again and launched Google+, this time the public adopted the social networking site and within weeks it was announced that there was 10million users on the site. Some of the Google+ features have caused Facebook to panic leading to an announcement of an integration with Skype. The public are really going for Google+ and it has left Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin trying to raise their game.
The point that I am trying to make is that people have power and as people talk, share and engage online it brings about a confidence in others to share what they seek, what they think and what they feel. The News of the World ‘phone hacking case could only be held off for so long, people talk.
I believe that this is only the start. People are getting restless and fed up with the unacceptable behavior and now, more than ever they have a powerful method to share their views. Murdoch’s empire is only one foundation that is shaking, many more businesses will shake. However, at the same time, when the public get behind something, like Google+ they will do.
People are talking, about good and bad and the consequences of both are set to be significant.
I would love to hear your thoughts.
I was added to Google+ this week by a Pasa Mustafa, a good friend and a media guru in his own right. So, naturally I headed over to this brand spanking new social network in order to see what the fuss was all about!
To be honest, initially, I thought it was a bit rubbish. When you start creating your own profile it seems a bit basic, however, in hindsight I suppose I am used to the Facebook layout and, of course, it’s a case of building and populating your Facebook profile. When I first got on to google+ I did not really have much time to play around so I logged of wondering what the fuss was all about. But, and this is a huge but, today I had a few hours to play around on the site and, to be honest, I am addicted. Here are some top level thoughts:
1) Google+’s biggest user will be…
I am pretty confident that, in the same way that Twitter is dominated by techies, geeks and media practitioner’s, Google+ will be the same. In my opinion it actually sits in the Twitter/LinkedIn market space so it will be interesting to see how much of a chunk Google+ take’s out of these other social networks. In order to start using Google+ you have to be invited on to the platform which means early adopters, techies, geeks, entrepreneurs are using it which, in my opinion results in the fact that this group of people will become the dominant users.
2) Google+ ‘s killer features
There are some cool killer features on Google +. Firstly, you place your contacts into circles i.e friends, family, acquaintances and whatever other circles you wish to create. This is highly specific and targeted which means you can decide who and what you share. I appreciate that Facebook has it’s groups feature, however, this was an added functionality, something that Google+ has added as a core feature. I do have to say that I had made a mistake in discovering, a bit late on, that Google+ would initially be used by entrepreneurs and so most of my contacts fit into this specific circle!
Secondly, the other big feature, for me, is that of the video software. This is a highly refined video conferencing feature which enables you to have a conference call with 10 people at once, which is a great little tool. It will be interesting to see the impact that this also has on Skype.
It is also important to add here how Google’s +1 now makes a heck of a lot more sense. When you +1 it comes up in your Google+ stream. Clever.
3) Google+ and the future.
I am intrigued to know what is in store for for Google+ and, indeed, for other social networks as a result. In my opinion it is difficult to be on and manage everything: LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Google+ etc so will one loose out? Is it possible to use one social network in order to cover all bases (friends, family, business etc) or does this all start to become a little too much to manage. Since the birth of Twitter I use Facebook less and less and, indeed, I use Facebook to stay in touch with my friends and Twitter for business, entrepreneur, media. So, what impact with Google+ have, we will soon find out!
4) Google+ for businesses.
I am interested to know what will happen here. Facebook obviously has Facebook pages, in the same way, will businesses start to adopt Google+, it will be interesting to find out. I wonder if businesses will use it and people will start to develop business circles or circles for different types of businesses: local, national, online etc.
At the launch of Tribewanted.com, my focus was crowd-sourcing, gaining the wisdom and skills of people online in order to make something happen offline. What really intrigues me now is that the floodgates are now open and I am seeing a move away from crowd-sourcing and the wisdom of friends to crowd sharing, we are sharing information that we pick up. The crowd sourcing model meals that we input our wisdom whilst the crowd sharing model seem to have a much more humble approach, we read, we get inspired, we share and we learn. Now, people collaborating in this way, through the likes of Google+ could lead to incredible new inventions, businesses, charities and changes. Quire exciting, really.
If you are on Google + please add me to your circle: