Facebook is currently embroiled in a legal battle with Wellsville, NY resident Paul D. Ceglia after he sued the social networking company, claiming to have a whopping 84% stake dating back to 2003.

I want 84% too!!!

http://www.fastcompany.com/1669647/man-sues-facebook-claiming-to-own-an-84-stake-in-the-company?partner=homepage_newsletter

In case you didn’t, let me share my recent findings with you. While researching social media for a client recently I discovered some interesting (and some not so interesting) facts about social media, the internet and the Chinese.  Like, if you consider yourself one in a million in China, there are 1 300 people just like you!  I started my journey on Google, as it is the worlds number one search engine and then discovered that in the very near future we will no longer search for products and services, they will find us via social media.  Nooooo!  I like saying Google just as I like saying Hoover – I will hoover up that mess as soon as I’ve finished Googling the best place to buy a vacuum cleaner.

After trawling through pages of web and blog sites I found my first really interesting fact – that You Tube is the second largest search engine in the world.  And it is here that I discovered Pandora’s Box.  I will not delve too deeply into the facts, except to tell you that all of the Top 10 jobs of 2010, not one existed in 2004.  Really!  Do what I did – type “Did you know” into the You Tube search tool and expect to be amazed.  Video upon video of (I will not say all of them are) interesting facts, all of them user generated, await to spew their often anecdotal tidbits onto your screen.  Some are interesting facts for dinner table conversation ignitors, like the one about Barrack Obama not raising funds for his election campaign in the traditional manner, instead he raised $55 million via social networks, in just 29 days! Others are great for client presentations, like 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations while only 14% trust advertisements.

So don’t ever get caught without an interesting fact again.  Apparently this is the Attention Age so pay attention dammit!

About this time each year – The Oxford American Dictionary throws a bash for its biggest announcement before the year-end holidays. So while you may be the type of person who gives a standing ovation for it and cannot wait for it’s imminent announcement, or perhaps you are the type who mutilates it with choice profanities and clever dick comments (and there are plenty of these types), it continues to occur year in and year out ….. “The Word of Year”

So without further interruption, the WOTY for 2009 is “Unfriend”
And to celebrate its victory in true old-fashioned dictionary style … a dictionary description…
unfriend – verb – To remove someone as a ‘friend’ on a social networking site such as Facebook. Example “I have decided to unfriend an old flame on Facebook because we just seem to have zilch in common.”

In the social networking setting “unfriend” is most probably completely understood. The Oxford Dictionary USA has made quite an out of the ordinary choice of “un” prefixed words by commemorating it as a modern verb; usually these “un” prefixed words would be adjectives such as unlikable or undesirable. Having said that, there are recognizable “un” verbs such as unload or unseal but wow, “unfriend” is somewhat different from the usual.

So I found my mind trying to decide if there wasn’t a better way to say it, having racked my brains for what I would usually call this action – perhaps something like “defriend” and upon enquiry it seems there are masses of folk who actually do “get-rid-of” friends by say “defriend” and many of them have vehemently argued that “defriend” is the acceptable word…. however, if you go to our good friends Google for some more information on this debate…. this is what happens – Google hits: defriend 46 300 unfriend: 393 000. I guess “unfriend” wins hands down, although it also clearly depends on where in the world you hang.

The other thing worth a little mention while we are at it, in years past the WOTY has generally always focused on more solemn and justifiable issues …. Words like global warming and hypermiling… (oh… stop being slothful, go look it up).  The fact that the WOTY has focused its 2009 winning word on societal media proves that social networking is actually quite a solemn and justifiable affair….. or not?  For more info on this point read: http://popculture2point0.wordpress.com/

If you are wondering what other technology themed words were considered for the New Oxford American Dictionary 2009 Word of the Year? Check out the list:-

• hashtag – a # [hash] sign added to a word or phrase that enables Twitter users to search for tweets (postings on the Twitter site) that contain similarly tagged items and view thematic sets
• intexticated – distracted because texting on a cellphone while driving a vehicle netbook – a small, very portable laptop computer with a limited memory
• paywall – a way of blocking access to a part of a website which is only available to paying subscribers
• sexting – the sending of sexually explicit texts and pictures by cellphone

PS: My spell check still does not recognise “unfriend” as a real word.

Yesterday’s race between Winston the homing pigeon and an ADSL line to deliver the same amount of data is being profiled on all the major international news and tech sites. The campaign was created by Durban based IT company The Unlimited Group to see if a data card strapped to a bird’s leg could be delivered quicker than  an adsl line…..the bird won

It’s been a creative, fun campaign and a great experiment in social media spread, so much so that Winston has 3000+ Facebook fans and #CarrierPigeon is now a trending topic. My concern in the beginning was that the link to Unlimited from a branding point of view was not as strong as it could have been but now that the news has gone global I think it’s safe to assume that the Durban company is experiencing high traffic and getting max exposure.

Check out http://pigeonrace2009.co.za/ and you can follow Mark Smith from Unlimited on Twitter for the latest updates.

People start to visit your blog for example on an almost daily basis, then they comment, you respond, they give advice or request specific articles and you respond and soon a strong community starts to determine in what direction a blog expands and therefore is established as a true community tool.

There are only a few sites that have been around for long enough, and have been focused on the concept of community building for long enough. Rob from Fuel Your Creativity has written a very cool post on 5 Design specific websites that he feels are building communities in the right way. Cool post and some very useful links to some design collectives you may not have heard of.

The latest venture that really demonstrates the culture of the social web comes from Kutiman from Israel. He has mashed and mixed amateur video clips from YouTube musicians to create an almost perfect album.

“ThruYOU” has taken the Web by storm and has received over a million views since its release.

Via The Huffington Post:

What ThruYOU tells us is that all bets are off. The DNA of our media system has mutated so completely that it’s only a matter of time before our society changes as well.

In fact, that change is already happening.

In politics, economics, arts and culture, an era of privileged access is giving way to something that’s much more decentralized, participatory and personal.

We no longer passively consume media, we actively participate in it. This often means creating content, in whatever form and from whatever sources — what author Jonathan Zittrain calls “generativity.”

We no longer limit our political involvement to television ads and the polling booth. This means organizing via Facebook, “Googling” candidates to learn more, joining text-messaging lists and creating Twitter hash tags to stay ahead of our issues.

Read the original article where Timothy Karr explores how this will further impact the web and social media trends.

ReadWriteWeb.com, leaders in social media, web 2.0 and web tech reporting have just released the first part of their ‘Social Media in Africa’ articles.

3 startups in particular are mentioned as Social Media Leaders:

Afrigator (a South African aggregator of African blogs and news),

Zoopy (a YouTube/Flickr like service also out of South Africa) and

Ushahidi (an SMS crisis reporting and mapping engine from Kenya)

Check out the original article to read more, it’s always great to see local ventures hitting the global stage.

Image via

Advertising on MySpace is crazy. The social networking site has around 140-million users, making it equivalent to the ninth biggest country in the world, so advertising on the site is like sending a postcard to Brazil, completely ineffectual.
This is the view of Simon Waterfall, D&AD president and creative director of POKE.
He was discussing his thoughts on the digital landscape at a presentation in Johannesburg last week organised by The Times newspaper.

I’ve picked out some of the thoughts that I found fascinating and listed them below.

Getting noticed

There are two ways to get noticed in the digital world. You can go big and bold like Mark Ecko, a pop culture clothing designer in the US, who recently received massive attention after he bought legendary baseball player Barry Bonds’ home-run ball and then asked the public to decide the ball’s fate. He set up a website http://www.vote756.com/ which attracted over 10-million votes. There are two subtle links to Ecko’s clothing range on the site, otherwise it’s all focused on the baseball.
“Ecko makes clothes, but he’s not talking about it,” says Simon.
Alternatively you can choose to be small and smart, like London Ink. Ad agency Mother set up two enormous tattooed mannequins in London, one at Victoria Station, the other on the banks of the River Thames. It was part of a campaign for London Ink, a new reality TV show following a bunch of tattoo artists. The installations got massive publicity, as people blogged and talked about them.

As Simon explains, anybody who creates something in this online society has got it made, because everybody else is just curating i.e. blogging about other people’s stuff.

It’s not about polish

Simon maintains there is an inverse proportionality in the attention online content receives to how much you spend on creating it.
He cites the example of Daft Hands, a video showing two hands “dancing” to the music of Daft Punk, a French techno band.
“Daft Hands breaks every single rule. It’s too long but kids watch it all the way through. If it was glam and glitz and not out of focus half way through it wouldn’t go anywhere,” he says. Watch it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2cYWfq–Nw

What’s with the weather?
Simon was fascinated with the South African obsession with the weather. “You’re more British than I thought,” he says. “Some 23% of all online traffic in SA is looking at the weather.”
This creates opportunities, he explains. “Where do they keep the milk? At the back of the store,” and that is to get you to walk past aisles and aisles of goods before reaching the essential items. In the same way, if people are going online to get the weather, perhaps we should get creative about what they view on the way to find the weather.
Simon also mentions that out of the around 3.85-million South Africans online, 81% of all traffic went to only 10 websites. “You need to lead them by the nose and do something different,” he says.

The consumer is elusive – not
Simon says, contrary to some popular opinions that consumers are elusive, “They’re not. They’re annoyed!”
He gave the often quoted facts about advertising saturation, but they are worth repeating. In 1978, 78-80% of adults in the US could be reached with three 60-second spots. By 2002, it would take 117 prime time commercials to reach them and nobody has enough money for that. A recent study by Dr Jim Taylor in “The next big idea” says the average American is exposed to 3,800 marketing messages a day.

Simon says there is a part of the brain where all responses are kept and this is the part of the brain responsible for making you switch off to the sound of a constantly ticking clock.
“The only time you are aware of the ticking is when it stops. Think of the last time a brand made you stop and think the clock has stopped. The young can’t see the messages because it’s making them loopy.”

Digital is the bridge
Digital is the bridge between web and advertising, but it needs ideas to function properly, says Simon.
So if you want to develop a great viral campaign, you have to have great content. You won’t be successful no matter what media you use or how much money you throw at it, if you don’t have great content.
One of the worst campaigns Simon has come across is the Coca-Cola Zero “Everybody chill” campaign.
It showed teenagers “chilling” on rooftops in Philadelphia. A website was set up where you could add your comments on how chilled and happy you were feeling. “You were supposed to say ‘just chill’ but people posted comments like ‘I hate America’, ‘Pepsi Twist’ and ‘The zero movement sucks’,” says Simon. If it  seems contrived it does not work.
YouTube
And finally, an interesting fact about the YouTube Top 100 viewed videos – only four of them are paid for adverts created by agencies

Image from 8Hands