Hashtagging is the way forward!

Posted on March 18, 2013 by Lawrence

Twitter has successfully made hashtagging a social networking essential. If you missed our blog post explaining this prominent feature of Twitter, hashtagging is basically the placing of ‘#’ before terms, which allows all similarly tagged terms to be grouped and searchable together. The reason it has become such an integral part of tweeting is because hashtags can become trends when lost of users implement the same hashtag, and thus can form conversations over a relevant topic, such as the Super Bowl or the Oscars.

Whilst Twitter weren’t the ones to invent tagging and categorisation, they were the ones to incorporate it so well into the social network aspect, that it has become a fundamental tool for other social networks. Instagram caught onto this straight away, allowing for pictures to be hashtagged together, and Pinterest followed suit. And not only are topics and events hashtagged together, but social network-specific trends such as “#followfriday” (for Twitter) and “#latergram” (for Instagram) have become distinguishable characteristics of each medium.

So perhaps it is not surprising that Flickr and Facebook may be finally joining the cool kids with hashtagging. In an effort to catch up with the Instagram powerhouse and to fully integrate itself into Twitter, the iOS app for Flickr now features hashtags (as well as using ‘@’ for usernames – and don’t even get me started on their retro-styled filters). Flickr has even instigated #flickrfridays as a way to invite users to participate in a weekly challenge. Sound like something you might join?

Alongside Facebook’s graph search update, perhaps hashtags are the right step forward to increasing searchable terms. Whilst it is still an unconfirmed rumour, it seems like Facebook is ready to implement such a feature, and could provide much more topic-centred social networking. It would certainly help categorise and group together status updates and photos, whether it may be from one person (e.g. status updates during a concert), or a group of people (e.g. hashtags from everyone that was at your birthday party). There is definitely a lack of such an option currently, and this could be the answer.

How many times have you seen someone mistakenly use a hashtag on Facebook? Perhaps now, publishing posts on multiple platforms at the same time (using services such as Hootsuite) will also be more convenient, with the hashtag being applicable across the board. What do you think? Are hashtags the right feature for Flickr and Facebook? Or do you think they should stick with their current system and not induce the hashtagging frenzy that will inevitably occur?

“John Hardy went from being ‘in a relationship’ to ‘single’.

John Hardy commented on this post: #YOLO”

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More server moving!

Posted on March 11, 2013 by Lawrence

As you might’ve heard, we’re in the process of moving our servers to a new home that will allow us to provide you with better speed and stability. Our technical team have been hard at work at this migration for months now, prepping everything to go as smoothly as possible, and we are into the second part of the big server move.

This time, we will be moving all the websites with the ‘network-maker.com’ and the ‘.socialgo.com’ domains created before January 2012 to our new servers. This big move will be done in stages, which will allow us to test that each section is working before we move safely onto the next. We are not expecting any downtime during the initial stages, but as this is a big migration, the odd problem might arise. However, our developers, programmers and system administrators are monitoring the process very closely to shut down any pesky issues that do surface. We will give plenty of notice as we move to the later stages of the migration, which might cause a few minutes of downtime as we update our core servers. More information will be updated as the migration progresses. As always, if you do come across anything significant, please feel free to contact us through support here.

Your patience and understanding is much appreciated! This is just another big step we are taking to hopefully provide a better platform for you and your community.

 

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Being a Tribe Leader

Posted on February 25, 2013 by Lawrence

Seth Godin delivered a truly inspirational speech at TED back in 2009 entitled “The tribes we lead“. It focused around the concept of tribes, and how tribe leaders drive purposeful and strong movements that can create change to the status quo. If you haven’t seen it yet, it’s worth sparing some time later today to give it a watch here.

I wanted to spotlight this talk in particular due to its interesting titular theme: the tribe mentality. In a nutshell, Godin suggests that we have moved on from the mass media advertising of the previous age where effectively it was just about inputing enough money into the message, and throwing it out to enough people. Instead, it is now about finding like-minded people that are just as committed and passionate as you are about your unique message. You don’t need a million people; you just need one thousand that cared enough. And that would be sufficient for your tribe to then spread the message to other tribes, and to form tribes amongst themselves. With the power of dedicated followers, you could create a movement, and implement realistic change.

We here at SocialGO believe in that tribe and community power. Nothing has more momentum than a group that is truly committed and dedicated. We could get a million people to follow us in the flan community, but they wouldn’t be nearly as powerful as one thousand people who genuinely love flan, whom share the same passion and drive to promote this wondrous dessert to the world. This is because they have a purpose, and they care enough to move forward together. Once they can connect with one another, that single passionate person now becomes a team of equally enthusiastic followers. Together, they possess even more influential strength. As they say: “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts”.

My favourite quote from Goddin’s TED talk was this: “The Beatles did not invent teenagers; they merely decided to lead them.” To be able to harness that incredible tribe power, they must have a leader. Essentially, the community is already there; they just don’t know it yet. It is up to a great leader to find them and pull them together, and then go on to create something awesome. And that great leader… is you.

We’re all about the community here. And hopefully, we hope to provide a service where you can build and manage an online social home for your community. Tell us what you think about tribes, and what kind of tribe you lead!

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Sony Is Pushing PS4 Social Features

Posted on February 21, 2013 by Adam

We may want Sony to focus only on PS4 games, but we live in a social-media world with a social-media market. Sony has spent a lot of time last night talking about social integration and how the system will be a fundamentally social system.

Indeed, much was made of the Share button, and its ability to take screenshots, in-game video clips or even multi-cast your play live to your friends with minimal effort, and social is front and centre on the PlayStation hub at last. Apple and its ilk have reframed how we interact with technology, more affected by ecosystem than hardware, and Sony promises a retooled experience, more personalised, curated and, to be fair, Xbox Live-like.

A social network skin has been laid over the back end, your PSN page looking more like Facebook every day (whether you like that is up to you), while games are recommended Pinterest-style in a wall of personal likes and friend recommendations. You can browse live games in progress and even take control to help chums through particularly tricky bits (no doubt laughing at their ineptitude while you do), while accompanying smartphone and tablet apps will extend many functions to when you’re away from the console as part of the PlayStation Cloud, though the extent of this has not been fleshed out so far.

David Perry, CEO and founder of Gaikai, took the stage at today’s PlayStation 4 announcement to reveal new details on the next generation of Sony’s PlayStation Network and Gaikai’s integration into the service.

Perry said. “With Gaikai, you’ll be able to instantly experience anything you want.”

Using a Share button on the PlayStation 4, players will be able to share their gameplay experiences through networks like Facebook and UStream.

“By combining the PS4, the PlayStation Network, and these social platforms, our goal is to become the social platform for gaming.”

 

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Forever Alone says: “Happy Valentine’s Day!”

Posted on February 14, 2013 by Lawrence

So it’s a Thursday. In February. And apparently, it’s this Valentine guy’s day, or something. Who knows?

As lovey-dovey couples join together to spend ridiculous amounts on heart-shaped chocolates (which, as I found out last year, taste NOTHING like hearts), overpriced single red roses (what do you do with a single rose? Bite onto it during a tango?), and inconvenient, heart-shaped foil balloons (which also tastes nothing like real hearts), the rest of us that aren’t hypnotized will spend the day like any other Thursday.

So to make the day easier to pass, I’ve collected together my favourite Valentine’s Day-themed memes. Enjoy!

Had to start with Forever Alone:

I actually told my friend this (in Admiral Ackbar’s voice, of course). He didn’t believe me. We shall see who the wiser one is tomorrow:

Of course Grumpy Cat has something to say:

To make all the singles feel better:

Oh, what the heck. The best Valentine’s Day card I could find:

So there you have it. Happy Valentine’s to all…

…Valentine’s, Schmalentine’s.

Editor’s note: SocialGO is not responsible for the thoughts of the Office Forever Alone. The Office Forever Alone does not represent the general attitude towards Valentine’s Day, couples or any love-related matter, and this article should not be construed as such. We apologise for his words. He’s like that on days like these. Have a wonderful Valentine’s, everyone!

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Social Media Trends

Posted on February 12, 2013 by Adam

 

The future of social media is rarely predictable. Pinterest had an unexpected explosive growth over the last year. There will always be surprises, but there are also some emerging and continuing  social media trends that we can both track and predict with a certain degree of confidence.

 

Emerging Markets

Social media usage is constantly rising everywhere but growth will continue to be far higher in emerging markets, as Internet penetration and more forms of online engagement continue to catch up with those in more established markets.

According to eMarketer figures in 2011 and 2012, India and Indonesia were the two biggest emerging markets. In 2011 the two countries experienced a social network user growth of 51.5 percent and 51.4 percent respectively. Compare this to the US and UK markets, which grew by only 9.8 percent and 9.9 percent.

In 2013 India and Indonesia are still expected to see the biggest growth, at 37.9 percent and 28.8 percent respectively. The established markets will pretty much plateau, with usage in the UK predicted to rise by 7 percent and the U.S. by just 4.1 percent.

By region the Middle East and Africa, Asia-Pacific and Latin America will see the largest growth rates. The implications for social media marketers are pretty clear: get into emerging markets before they catch up with the rest of us.

 

Mobile Growth

Facebook recently stated “While most of our mobile users also access Facebook through personal computers, we anticipate that the rate of growth in mobile usage will exceed the growth in usage through personal computers for the foreseeable future and that the usage through personal computers may be flat or continue to decline in certain markets.”

Many commentators predict 2015 as the year when mobile search and online activity will overtake overall static usage worldwide. For social media that may happen very soon.

Nielsen’s Social Media Report 2012 found that 43 percent of U.S. users use smartphones to access social media, with 16 percent connecting from tablets. Users have also increased their social app usage by 76 percent. This meant they were now spending seven times more minutes on apps than on the mobile web.

This year mobile engagement looks to rise even higher. However there is still a huge divide between broadband penetration rates in developed and developing countries (International Telecommunications Union 2012 report).

In emerging markets mobile access is still more affordable and reliable than static connections, meaning mobile social media is often the norm. These usage habits are unlikely to change even as broadband infrastructure catches up.

With the recent implementation of 4G, mobile internet will be faster and more versatile than ever before.

 

Multimedia Engagement

More people are engaging with social media while watching TV. This can spike during major events such as the Super Bowl.

Sixty-three percent of users in the Middle East and Africa use social media while watching TV and 52 percent in Latin America do the same. People aren’t just chatting while they do so. They’re also shopping and looking up relevant program and product information.

 

 

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LoNyLa at Digital Shoreditch

Posted on February 11, 2013 by Lawrence

One of our dedicated SocialGOers, LoNyLa, is pitching to speak at the Digital Shoreditch! Go on and show your support by visiting their page here!

Their creative workshop, titled “Presence – Morphing Time/Space in Art and Entertainment”, will answer the question: “How do new telepresence and broadcasting technologies impact content creation and distribution?” You can find out more at their page.

We here at SocialGO wish LoNyLa the very best at Digital Shoreditch!

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