Shhh – Social Networking brings back Wispas

Following the success of a campaign on social networking sites, Cadbury’s Wispa chocolate bar is to make a comeback for good on 6th October.  Apparently, Cadbury sold 20 million of the bars when it brought the brand back for a seven-week limited trial run in 2007 and is planning to bring it back permanently as the pressure for its return has continued on Facebook and MySpace.

“We brought it back temporarily to see if the desire was genuine, but fans are still rallying so we took the decision to bring it back for good.”

Just in case anyone was wondering why there is a “credit crunch”

I saw this on Facebook – no wonder the global economy is in meltdown…

For those of you that needs this translating, it basically says, “if you are up to your eye balls in debt, have defaulted on a number of loans and have already remortgaged your family, your car and your dog several times over then it’s all OK because we can lend you even more than you need or deserve and then screw you with a totally immoral interest rate that means we will own you and your loved ones for ever more.”

Excellent – where do I sign up so that I can play my part in burying the world’s economy for good..?

Perhaps Facebook and others should be made to have a slightly more rigorous test for their advertisers..?

The REAL Big Brother

I wonder how many civil liberty, anti ID card campaigners happily install all the Facebook applications and give access to lots of their personal details..?

Click here or on the image to see the full cartoon. Poking is ridiculous anyway…

Do we REALLY need 2008..?

This is a great post from the BBC’s Rory Cellan-Jones (who I once took on a very interesting tour of the Isle of Man’s 3G network…). Might I suggest that we skip 2008 and go straight for 2009..!

Wins Facebook …but loses LinkedIn

Oops. Although Bite recently landed the Facebook PR account, PR Week has reported that “social networking site LinkedIn is reviewing its agency relationships – weeks after bringing in Bite Communications.”

When the Facebook win was announced, “[Bite] MD David Hargreaves said that Facebook is ‘completely comfortable’ with the agency working on both these high profile accounts.” It seems that LinkedIn was not so chuffed with the whole concept. Not surprising really. I’m sure given the choice, Bite’s management team would have chosen to work with Facebook over LinkedIn any day of the week (almost regardless of budgets) but no agency wants to get a reputation for going after their clients’ bigger/sexier competitors.

Facebook keeps us young

Great article from my very old friend Matthew Rose (as in I have known him for a long time – 35 years – rather than that he is an old duffer).

“The adults have invaded the playground and the kids don’t like it one bit.”

I totally empathise with his early Facebook mistakes – too much poking; alerting everyone about something that is absolutely uninteresting; and the incessant updating of your status… Why do some people feel the need to change their status every 10 minutes? And why does it bother me SO much..?

And it amused me that even such a senior reporter on such a prestigious newspaper still found the need to have a dig at his little brother, using his article as a way of accusing him of looking like a thug on his Facebook page. Reminds me of 25 years ago…

Bite to promote Facebook

Nice win for my old employer, Bite Communications, as it has been reported that Facebook has selected the agency to handle its PR in the UK.   I am sure that Bite execs are queuing up to work on this account though I wonder if it actually might be a tough client to work for as it has grown so dramatically by word-of-mouth and a coordinated PR program might take some of the gloss off of what has so far been seen as a phenomenon?

On a slightly different note, PR Week really should get a better picture of David Hargreaves (Bite’s MD) as the one that chops off the top of his head really makes him look too much like the follicly-challenged, Tim McInnerny (Lord Percy from Blackadder)…

(Anti) Social Networks

Interesting perspective on the walled gardens of social networking sites from Internet law professor, Michael Geist – but I’m not convinced we will ever see true interoperability between the networks.  His assertion is that “internet users are repeatedly required to re-enter their personal information for each new network they join and find that each network is effectively a walled garden, where the benefits of the network are artificially limited by the inability to link a friend in Facebook with one in MySpace.”

According to Geist, “the obvious solution is to facilitate greater interoperability between social networking sites, thereby enabling users to better control their personal information and reduce the need for duplication, while simultaneously enhancing the value of all social networks by removing the current barriers.”  This sounds simple enough (and I love the concept) but assumes that two key things will happen that I don’t think will…  One, that the networks will get their act together enough to facilitate such seamless interoperability.  And two, that we all happily accept that our personal and private details be shared amongst the sites…  sounds like MSN and Google‘s customer programs that have the data protection folks up in arms.

Plagiarism is the highest form of flattery, James

Since I’ve been feeling far too guilty for not having posted anything for ages, I have now resorted to plagiarism…  but it’s OK as it seems that James’ thinking wasn’t entirely his own (is anyone’s these days, I hear you cry…).

Anyway, the very smart James Warren found this interesting – and so do I…  the latest stats on the phenomena that is Facebook:

• Over 150,000 registrants daily – that’s 1 million a week since January
• 35 million users today – of course that number will be off a million one week from today
• Half of users are outside college – that number was zero in Sept. 2006
• 0ver 40 billion page views in May 2007
• The average visitor stays 20 minutes
• Most growth is among people over age 25
• 47,000 Facebook groups
• #1 photo sharing app on the web – 2.7 billion photos on site
• More than 2,000 applications – the Top 10 are: Top Friends, Video, Graffiti, MyQuestions, iLike, FreeGifts, X Me, Superpoke!, Fortune Cookie & Horoscopes…  the smallest of these has over 4.5 million users

It’s facebook’s fault

To my dedicated reader(s) – an apology: sorry for having not posted anything recently (though Messi’s goal surely kept you happy for a bit) but I, like far too many others, have been engrossed with facebook and every time I log in for a quick catch-up, I get totally engrossed and a few minutes suddenly becomes much, much longer… Am I the only one to be losing control..? Where can I join Facebooks Anonymous (FA rather than AA) to help me through my addiction..?

I actually resisted signing up with facebook for ages as I thought I was far too old for stuff like that but it is truly compelling and has been fascinating catching up with people that I haven’t seen or spoken to for ages (3 kids = no social life…).

My wife says it all sounds sinister but then readily admits that she doesn’t understand it – though I have to say that those people who do nothing else apart from playing with the facebook profiles, networks and applications do look daft as you can tell how active people are and the ‘really’ active have obviously got nothing better to do.

So, now I just need to learn how to manage my addiction. Maybe allow myself only a few windows each day for my facebook fix? Any other tips would be gratefully received.