Sarah Ahmed
January 23, 2012
Last week witnessed lots of dramatic news and reactions. We decided to focus on the two events that can have the most impact on you – Facebook’s new integrated social applications & the dramatic online blackout as a reaction to US anti-piracy legislation & a statement of online freedoms. Read on to find out quite why these events matter to you.
The Day the Internet went Dark
On Wednesday, many English-language websites – most notably, the online encyclopaedia Wikipedia, blog platform WordPress & many news sites such as Wired Magazine – took a stand against upcoming US piracy legislation with a 24 hour blackout of their sites.
The SOPA and PIPA legislation proposed to crack down on those streaming copyrighted content and would force services or sites accused of “enabling or facilitating piracy” to be shut down. Although hailed by some of the world’s biggest entertainment industries as good news on the road to fighting piracy, there has been widespread and in our opinion, justified online reaction to these bills.
If you don’t know anything about the legislation, one of the most distinguishing features is that it could disallow for the very existence of sites that allow user generated content, as even companies such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr or YouTube could potentially face being shut down if anyone claimed they were hosting a link, video or torrent that was infringing. This would be potentially devastating for small companies.
If you’re confused about how US legislation affects us in the UK, Peter Bradwell, a campaigner with Open Rights Group told the BBC: “We’re concerned about the jurisdiction that gives over the kind of things you or I do on the internet in the UK – and the power that gives US copyright holders over the things that we do here.”
In the words of Wikipedia, such laws could “fatally damage the free and open internet” and “severely limit people’s access to online information.”
Together with a sustained effort and reaction on social media at this infringement of online freedoms across the week, on Thursday night the Republican presidential candidates took a stance against the bills and by Friday 20th January, Congress cancelled the vote to move the bills forward in the Senate, marking the moment that the antiSOPA campaign had worked to kill (or at least, postpone) the bills.
We anticipate both bills will rise again in some form in the future, so if you’re a business with a close relationship to or dependence on user-generated content, we’d suggest you keep a close watch on this developing field.
Blackout Designs
Wikipedia’s distinctive site design as illustrated above became a symbol of anti-SOPA protests, but there were many other interesting approaches.
Google made a gesture of their position without blocking access to its services, with a blackout box Google Doodle on their US site:
And photo-sharing social network Flickr’s last-minute attempt to raise awareness was quite creative, allowing users to darken up to 10 Flickr photos to join in.
Our favourite was the tech magazine Wired who had a particularly cool blackout design on their site with redactions of each individual block of text. The overall effect was very striking.
Some complained because there were clearly still ways to get to Wikipedia – some pretty simple, eg disabling Javascript or on mobile English-language Wikipedia was still up. But it didn’t matter – the gesture was clear.
While Wikipedia was down, there were some interesting developments on the Twittersphere. Some brands were very quick to turn the event into an opportunity for engagement and brand awareness. We were particularly impressed by the tea makers, Tetley who created their own hashtag #tetleyteadia and had their signature mascot Sydney attempting to answer followers’ questions in the absence of Wikipedia. Nice idea and it worked particularly well for them.
An explosion in the Twittersphere that was quite distracting was the hashtag #FactswithoutWikipedia that was trending in the UK and the US, with an onslaught of amusing “facts” provided by the Twitter audience. Here is a little selection:
Comedy and tangential Twitter trends aside – What’s important to remember is the debate isn’t over and we anticipate this is going to be a recurring issue that we must keep an eye on for the foreseeable future.
New Facebook Apps
This week Facebook released a whole spectrum of apps (60, in fact) to integrate into users’ Timeline increasing the types of actions that users can share with their friends. These apps are part of Facebook’s master plan: focused on encouraging integration of applications into their users’ lives to force them to spend larger periods of time on Facebook, adding to their value for advertisers. Some of the most popular apps that you will have heard about include: Foursqaure, eBay, Goodreads, TripAdvisor, AutoTrader and explosively popular virtual pinboard service Pinterest.
How it works
When a user adds an app to their timeline or chooses to share on Facebook from the app on its own site, you can control whether your activities appear on your timelines and to who. Carl Sjogreen, Director of Platform Products at Facebook marked this moment as the beginning of increased social sharing integration: “whatever you’re using, you can add it to your timeline.”
Click below to see a link to the full list and Facebook’s explanation:
What this means for businesses
This is excellent news for businesses.Why?
1)
Many users have struggled to recognise the point of Facebook Timeline and truly haven’t got comfortable with it or its desire to share “Life Actions”. We think that in reality, the true useful integration of apps that users are already using will suddenly make Timeline’s usefulness to them apparent. If there was a worry that users were turning away from Facebook because of such obvious attempts to use them, we think this might reel many back in.
2)
Companies have an opportunity to develop their own applications for true powerful social sharing across one of the biggest and most diverse social networks. We’re all already aware of how social has the power to exponentially multiple brand awareness – eg if users share a post on your Facebook page on their timeline. This application integration offers a whole new avenue of subtle ways for consumers to find out about you and what’s even better, be endorsed by a friend.(The best news for companies considering that latest statistics show 77% of consumers trust social peer recommendations, over 14% who trust adverts.)
If you would like to talk to 3seven9 to find out how we can make Facebook Applications that work for you and your business, just say hello.
