My Friend “Likes” a Brand. Hmmm…

Ipsos has revealed research that nearly one in four people say they would buy from a brand because a friend engages with the brand through social media. 22% of people say they bought a brand because a friend follows or “likes” the brand on a social network. In the BRIC countries, that number rises to 39%, about four in ten people. It follows, then, that the better able a brand is to influence people to “like” it, the more sales it has the potential to drive. Now that’s a piece of information brands that are socially active online should really like! 

Twitter users are the most mobile of all social network users

Despite it being common knowledge that more and more people prefer to check their social networks whilst on the go, Ipsos Mori has revealed that in the UK Twitter is what you’ll most likely be checking when out and about.

82% of Twitter users own a smartphone and 22% own a tablet, perhaps reflecting the fact that they are likely to be more affluent. The research also highlights that Twitter is the youngest of all social networks, with two thirds of users aged under 35.

Facebook begins rolling out Timeline for pages on mobile devices

Page owners can now tag their posts with location in the same way that has been available on personal profiles. As a result, a map of the location of a post will be included when a photo or link is not included, which could help text-based status updates get noticed in the News Feed – though no word yet on whether this improves EdgeRank.

More importantly, Facebook has added an option for pages to make “unpublished” posts. Aside from testing how a post might look before having to hitting publish, this will also open advertising opportunities. Previously, if a page-post ad was to be created, it would have to pull content that had already been published to a page. Now, page-post ads can be created to target new fans without having to post content on the page that current fans may already have seen.

Facebook and Spotify still going strong
Facebook and Spotify have publicly declared their love for each other once again this week after introducing a new level of integration. When visiting an artist’s fan page,fans can now search for a song by that artist and easily share it to their wall. This appears to be a gentle nudge to discourage fans to simply post a YouTube link to the latest song they can’t get out of their head. This can only be a good thing for artists, as it builds their Spotify playcount for which they receive an (albeit small) amount of money.

Expansive experiences in latest mobile apps for iPhone, Android

Twitter released new versions of their ever-popular mobile applications this week. Despite no plans to increase their 140-character limit, Twitter continues to push ‘Expanded Tweets’, offering followers richer content directly from within the application. They have also worked hard to improve their search function in an effort to make finding people easier. Starting today, you can also expand Tweets on Twitter for iPhone and Twitter for Android. When you tap a Tweet linking to a Kickstarter project, for example, you can play its video directly from the Tweet details view in your app.

Twitter’s new age verifier excited alcohol brand teams up with Buddy Media to create tool to weed out minors

With so many young Twitter users, being a drinks brand on the platform has previously been problematic. Brands would have to message each new follower they acquired to ensure they were of legal drinking age. This looks all set to change now following a partnership between Twitter and Buddy Media, which allows Twitter to offer brands a much more elegant solution for checking the age of their followers.

Twitter and Buddy Media today launched a free tool designed to help alcohol brands market only to people of legal drinking age. Jim Beam, Jack Daniels and MillerCoors have been testing the feature over the last month, and other brands can now sign up to employ the feature.

When users attempt to follow a liquor, beer or wine brand on the social site, they will automatically receive a direct message on Twitter from the company, directing them to an age screening page. If they give an age that meets the requirement of their local drinking law, the consumers will be able to follow alcohol brands.

Google+ app for iPad available now in the App Store

Google+ has finally brought its gorgeous iOS app to the big screen with the release of an official iPad app this week. Perhaps they’re smartening up their tablet appearance ahead of the imminent release of the Google Nexus tablet…

LinkedIn gets a revamp

They announced: ‘In keeping with our continued vision to constantly refine our products with our members’ needs in mind, we are pleased to announce two new features we’ve added to LinkedIn Today.’

After the end of the long-standing tweet syndication partnership with Twitter, LinkedIn has announced a raft of new changes to how users keep in touch with news within their network. These include being able to ‘like’ articles as well as seeing what articles are ‘trending’. Sound familiar?

Facebook and CNN team up for the US presidential election

In the buildup to coverage of the 2012 US presidential election, CNN has announced that it will be partnering with Facebook. CNN has released an Open Graph-enabled app, so that users will be able to publish which party they will be pledging their allegiance to and find out where their nearest voting booth is. More notably, the partnership means Facebook will provide CNN with metrics about the discussion of on each presidential candidate online.

NBC and Facebook team up for Olympics coverage
The 2012 Olympics have been branded the ‘Social Games’, and it’s amazing how far the bonds between social media, sport and TV have come since the last Games in 2008. Through a new partnership between NBC and Facebook, NBC’s fans can tell their Facebook friends what Olympics-related videos and articles they are watching and reading, which the two are hoping will spurn more views and shares. But it sounds like the most interesting part will be number crunching the conversations afterward to see who should win the gold for Most Discussed on Facebook.

Cadbury Wispa to award fans grants for ‘goofing off’

What do you get when you take five of your family members and shove them in a taxi with a grandfather clock? I’m not quite sure, but Cadbury’s Wispa has launched a new Facebook app to celebrate crazy ideas like that and vows to make them reality. Fans can view a gallery of goofs or apply for their own ‘goofing off grant’. Sounds like a good way to mis-spend your lunch hour.

YSL’s new Facebook-inspired eyeshadow

YSL has turned to Facebook for inspiration for its new Pure Chromatics Devoted to Fans eyeshadow palette. Housed in a luxe gold case, with a Facebook blue lid and YSL’s trademark insignia alongside ‘Devoted to Fans’ and ‘#1’ signage, the Pure Chromatics Devoted to Fans eyeshadow quartet features two shadows in Facebook’s famous blue and white colours, plus one shimmering grey and one black.

We love this mix of social media and make-up – and we’re not the only ones; unsurprisingly Facebook are also big fans.

Speaking about YSL’s Facebook palette, Damien Vincent, Commercial Director of Facebook France said: “We are honoured that a prestigious brand such as Yves Saint Laurent [is using] Facebook colour codes to launch a unique product destined for his fans.”

A true collectors’ item, only 1,650 YSL Pure Chromatics Devoted to Fans palettes have gone into production, and the set will only be available to buy on YSL’s Facebook page on July 19 (priced £39).

Natwest failed to support its customers on Twitter during IT collapse

A number of things are hard to go without in the modern world, and money and mobile phones are pretty high up on that list. So when massive failures struck two giants in the banking and mobile phone industry over the last few weeks, it’s no surprise that Twitter was up in arms. After a computer glitch made payments impossible to process,NatWest was flooded with cries for help from their customers, but it did little to actively respond until much later in the crisis.

Compare that to O2′s Twitter response to customers during their outage last week, and similarly to NatWest, those tweets ranged from the good to the bad to the very, very ugly.  Although O2 was slow to reply at first, they eventually responded to every tweet, no matter how profanity laced, in a brilliantly non-corporate way that lightened the mood and took some of the edge off  the crisis.

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