Barry Bridges spotted Famecount - a service which can aggregate brands on different online platforms and score them based on…well, some sort of patent pending wizadry.

It’s too easy to either attach yourself slavishly to these basic free sites or complete dismiss them based on their lack of meaningful analysis. What I think is interesting is the trends behind the stats and what the leader board says about online brand management.

Food & Drink dominate

A few years ago the top brands engaging online would’ve been Tech brands like Microsoft and Dell (still in the Top 20) but fast forward to July 2010 and the Top 5 of the list are FMCG brands specifically in the Food & Drink sector; Starbucks, Coca-Cola, Skittles, Red Bull, Oreo.

Number 6 is Whole Foods Market, while technically classed as Retail it still supports the overall Food & Drink trend.

Online brand management is ongoing

The Top 5 brand leaders change very little when you change the filter to ‘Fastest Growing’, meaning these brands are adding fans all the time. Is this because the companies have reached a tipping point?  Or are these brands focusing on brand growth online?

Are ranking tools like this useful or damaging to an industry which already struggles to prove ROI for brands online?

The show, produced by Wise Buddha, looks at what happens when your private life becomes public and features interviews with people like the travel agent sacked for calling her colleague a “brown-nosing cow” on Facebook and the accountant fined for tweeting a joke airport bomb threat.

More excitingly [for us] is that Tempero has contributed to the documentary, it’s all a bit of a surprise so I can’t say much more than that, but tune in on Sunday night when I will hopefully be down in the studio live…

Alternatively if you have other things to do on a Sunday night (I hear there’s some sort of sporting event on at the moment?) then you can download the podcast and listen on your way in to work the following morning.

[Image: mightyohm]

[Another day in the office]

The only thing which beats spending your free time messing about with the internet is being *paid* to mess about with the internet, right?

We’re currently hiring a Social Media analyst – you can view the full job listing and apply here.

If you’re interested in working for us I thought I’d provided some top tips on making an impression:

1. Make sure your CV and Cover Letter are tailored to the job, not just generic bumf
2. Please follow the instructions for submitting your CV (i.e. don’t google my email address and send to me)
3. Make sure your CV includes links to your social profile across the web like blog, Twitter, LinkedIn
4. If you don’t know what social media is the job probably isn’t for you
5. If you decide to ignore point II and send me something regardless, my favourite champagne is Veuve Clicquot

In all seriousness Tempero is a top place to work. You’ll be hard pressed to find another company with the impressive range of blue chip brands we work with and we’ve been working with interactive media for 10+ years so you’ll definintely learn a thing or two.

The differing nodes show just how many touchpoints there can be for community and organisation – hence the many different approaches.

Kudos to Dion Hinchcliffe for this.

I’ve deliberately tried to avoid using certain words in this post about the rejection of a Privacy complaint by the Press Complaints Commission. (This is not link bait and I don’t want to attract unwelcome traffic alongside often more sobering content.)

Suffice to say, a young lady posted some perhaps misguided pics on her Bebo page in 2006 which had since become widely circulated online.  Earlier this year Loaded magazine offered a £500 reward in a stunt to find the girl in the photo, causing her to complain the article had intruded on her privacy. The Guardian says:

The commission did sympathise with the woman, and accepted that the tastefulness of the article was questionable… but didn’t think it possible to censure the magazine for commenting on material that had already had such wide circulation, and which had already been contextualised in the same way.

Ouch. As we covered in our free eBook UGC and the Law there are no Privacy laws in the UK but how does a situation like this look under the European Convention on Human Rights? Any ideas?

It’s easy to say that the girl was foolish in the first place and Loaded shouldn’t be penalised over all the other sites which have used the pictures for years. But, I’d argue that it’s not unreasonable to want to complain about an “official” media outlet reviving this in the UK vs. the [un]reality of chasing down 100s of smaller sites and ISPs all over the world.

By trying to publicly identify the girl nearly four years on were Loaded encouraging readers to breach her privacy as it stands today?

I’m also intrigued, as the pictures were posted in 2006 and on youth network Bebo, what was the complainants age at the time of posting the pictures? Does accountability change based on age and experience? Should it?

Image: hyku

The Guardian summises the story perfectly

Released on Monday, removed from YouTube the same day, reinstated with an “age restriction”, then taken down once more (and possibly for good) on Tuesday. The life of MIA’s new video seems destined to be a nasty, brutish and short one.

MIA’s controversial 9 minute video for ‘Born Free’ is achieving the desired publicity generated from the dubious honour of having your work “Banned on YouTube”.

But has the world’s largest video site been heavy handed in their swift removal of the film?

Parent company Google is under increasing pressure to support online free speech while also  fighting convictions in Italy on their failure to remove offensive content fast enough. But many commentators have noted the film, which is trying to make overt political observations, is no worse than other content on the site and by pulling the video they have only increased the chances of it widely circulating on the web.

Not sure whether to hire a moderator or community manager? Wondering whether you can just get someone in part-time? Two great posts last month explored both these questions.

Holly Seddon, from new agency on the block Spoke Digital, has written “When does a moderator become a community manager?” sparking a lot of response from many running communities. The article is a good discussion on the difference between these two roles and shows the variety of interpretation.

Another Tempero fave Blaise Grimes-Viort has written “Can a Community Manager be part-time?” outlining four main approaches and the pros and cons of each. Yours truly waded in to the debate where I tried to avoid demonising the humble intern which seems to be the target of choice these days for social media gaffes – don’t you think?

Image: laurakgibbs

It’s a well thought-out and researched report. Point 9 picked up on the increasingly debated concerns over Erosion of Privacy. Are we becoming a society of over-sharers? Are we risking our safety and reputation on a daily basis while getting caught up in the heady excitement of new social networking technologies?

There are as many opinions on this as there are social networks themselves. In my mind though the most important issue is personal choice. While I’m as permanently connected as the next Social Media geek I, like others, have requirements for privacy. These can be easily breached with a quick tweet including @darika or a Flickr photo tagged darika which may not conform to the way I want to be represented either on- of off-line.

Brand reputations are also sensitive to unknown content appearing online. There are a few tools which can  help at least track online, so that damaging content does not lie un-noticed.

Social Media monitoring software

This has been well covered by others, here’s a selection of good analyses

• Dave Chaffey: review of 26 tools
• Econsultancy Online reputation and buzz monitoring buyers guide: slightly out of date but lists the main ones

Image search

• Photo Tagger: find photos of you on Facebook even if you’re not tagged
• TinEye: Reverse image search engine (try it out by uploading your brand logo, there’s also a commercial API)

Comment tracking

• YackTrack.com: Tracks comments about content you’ve created or posted online, even if the conversation shifts elsewhere
• Disqus: Useful for collating conversations across multiple platforms to remain under the original content

Other

• 123people.co.uk: Type in your name or your CEO’s name and see what it pulls in from the web…

What other tools are people are using? Specifically to protect brands online?

We were astounded to read of the Italian Google convictions last week, but the timing was uncanny – the announcement came on the very day of our UGC and the Law event and eBook launch.

We issued an official statement to the press below:

“Many publishers feel the risk of not moderating and relying on alerts from users is worth taking with ‘safe harbour’ providing a cushion against prosecution. This case has potentially created a landmark ruling for those reactively moderating content on their sites and will send a warning shot across the bows of those operating within Social Media.”

“For sites such as YouTube, moderating every single video is near impossible but such large scale sites are going to have to implement additional protection measures to avoid similar cases. Law lords are going to have to think carefully about how such a ruling is implemented in the future to avoid an onslaught of appeals and lobbying from many corporations.”

In reality we agree with Econsultancy that the Italian Google convictions are a wake up call for UGC services. The convictions seem likely to be overturned and are predominantly symbolic. But is this kind of industry shake-up necessary? Can the UK expect more of the same?

We fully expect the UK to follow suit with some high-profile legal action against one or two service providers here. If there’s anything our work on the eBook highlighted it’s that even basic and pre-existing legislation is  being breached on a regular basis in the land grab for social media. [*cough* Data Protection Act *cough*]

Does it really matter? Aren’t most of these just minor infringements? Yes and no. We love the social web and don’t want to be the fun police, but we’re particularly concerned at the lack of safeguards being put in place for young people online.  For adults, with no privacy laws in the UK, it’s particularly important that we feel assured our data is being protected and sites are contactable and responsive to requests to investigate or remove content.

So now the world waits – What Will Google Do?

Last night we launched our new eBook ‘”UGC and the law”.

Research we conducted with over 200 senior level executives found that brands may be falling foul of laws online with 81% rating their knowledge as only limited to non-existence when it comes to the laws regulating their social media activity.

So we decided  that for the first time someone could pull together all the disparate information and guidance out there and put it into one handy reference eBook.

The eBook is available free to download from

The book was launched at a glittering event with a few beers at our Central London office. We had a fantastic range of speakers come along:

• Danvers Baillieu (Winston & Strawn and Bootlaw.com)
• John Robinson (NHS Choices)
• Jon Bishop (Gumtree)
• Molly Flatt (WOM UK)
• Debbie Towersey (HR2HR Solutions)

All of the above contributed to the guide in addition to Dominic Campbell (FutureGov) and Agnes Nairn – a huge thank you to all who helped over the past few weeks.

User-generated content and the law

I attempted to use Cover It Live to capture some of the chat, which you can see displayed below.

Is your social media activity breaking the law?