Brand safety on the wild internet

The internet has always had contradictory roots. The infrastructure may have begun as a DARPA-funded project to create a network with no single point of failure, but its first major users were counter-culture Californians who launched bulletin boards on the back of it. And the World Wide Web itself was created by Tim Berners-Lee when working at CERN, essentially to allow different researchers, with different IT systems to share information seamlessly.

This contradiction is still present in the titans that currently dominate the online world. The likes of Facebook and Google may try to publicly position themselves as entrepreneurial start-ups with more in common with the California hippies when talking to users, but in fact they are now enormous corporations with correspondingly huge power.

As we’ve seen with the scandals surrounding Facebook and Cambridge Analytica, internal systems and data protection haven’t grown as fast as the need for control of user data. And this follows concerns about adverts being run next to unsuitable content on the likes of YouTube, leading to brands such as Under Armour pulling their ads.

The issue is one of brand safety – companies want to protect their reputation as well as reach the right audiences. In an always-on world with ever more complex (and opaque) ad-buying systems and increasing personalisation being sure your messages are reaching the right audiences through the right channels is vital. This isn’t just applicable to the internet – I’ve recently seen lots of adverts for household cleaning products on kids TV channels, although you can argue they are more targeted at parents watching alongside their offspring.

The latest challenge to the big internet companies goes beyond poor ad positioning though – focusing instead on unauthorised use of a brand to essentially front a scam. Martin Lewis, founder of MoneySavingExpert.com and consumer finance guru, is suing Facebook for running adverts that use his image to market high risk or fraudulent services, implying that he has endorsed them. Facebook counters that as soon as such adverts are reported, they remove them, only for them to pop up again with slight changes.

Given Lewis’ whole reputation is built on delivering honest consumer advice to save people money, it is no surprise either that he’s been targeted by scammers or that he is going to court to protect his brand image. As he says, he doesn’t do adverts, and that with their image recognition technology Facebook should be able to block anyone trying to use his photo, before it goes live. Lewis isn’t alone in having his details hijacked – we’ve all had emails and calls allegedly from Microsoft, BT or our bank trying to get us to handover control of our PC or account details. But the difference is that no third party is making money out of these activities – unlike in the case of Facebook.

By coming out against Facebook so publicly, and by promising to donate any damages to charity, Lewis is adding to the concerns around Facebook and its business model of publish first, remove later if necessary. It’s a great PR strategy on his part – a classic David vs Goliath move. I’m sure it is also being closely watched by other celebrities and organisations worried about their brand safety online.

All of the current concerns around big tech are part of a wider worry – from consumers to governments and advertisers themselves, people are waking up to the fact that their data is out of their control, and that companies are making large amounts of money from it. I think that 2018 is going to be a watershed year for the online giants – it is time for them to change how they market themselves and become more humble if they want to rebuild and retain our trust. The question is, can they win us back?

Bad tech – the PR battle tech companies face

One of the major legacies of the financial crisis was that trust in banks, and indeed the overall financial services industry, took a pounding. The combination of bad behaviour, misselling of products such as PPI, poor customer service and a culture that was perceived as elitist and uncaring all made them public enemy number one. The old stereotype of the bank manager as a respected, upstanding member of the community was consigned to history.

Artificial Intelligence Programming Robot Ai Ki

In many ways industry reputations are cyclical – before banks, it was probably media organisations (think phone hacking) that were most despised, followed by Big Oil. What is interesting is that I’m seeing a new contender for ‘most hated’ coming up on the rails – tech.

Much of this is down to the huge power technology companies now have over our daily lives. We spend huge amounts of time on our smartphones, on social media, and interacting with technology to get things done. And human nature means that people are quick to forget how things used to be pre-internet and pre-mobile phone, taking the advantages for granted and complaining about what they don’t like.

However, for every story celebrating the progress technology is enabling, I’m seeing at least two arguing that tech companies have too much power, and are not receiving sufficient oversight. In many cases this is true – there is no way of justifying the fact sites such as YouTube, Google and Facebook are earning money on the back of terrorist content or fake news, and at the very least maximising their tax efficiency. But the current mood seems very focused on the negative side of progress and on the harm that it is (potentially) doing, from AI taking our jobs, to websites tracking our every move, and automated checkouts that intimidate the elderly.

At the other end of the spectrum, today’s Budget will see the Chancellor promise that the UK will lead the world in introducing self-driving cars, following a week of announcements around extra funding for technology R&D across the UK. Reading different stories you’d rightly be confused whether the robots are coming to get us Terminator-style or are going to usher in an idyllic life of leisure?

What I think this does is show a need for PR people working in technology (including myself) to take a look at how they communicate and market their companies and clients. It is time to focus on what the benefits are for both consumers and businesses and to honestly address any downsides. That means looking beyond the headline in order to put things into context, and to work with government and charities to solve any unforeseen consequences, be they cyberbullying or unemployment.

Essentially it goes back to being model citizens, and, like previous generations of capitalists (think Victorian families such as the Cadburys and Rowntrees or American philanthropists such as Carnegie), realising that they are responsible for the actions of their products and services. As well as being a genuinely positive thing to do, it ultimately supports society as a whole, including the people that buy from them, making it something that should appeal to their hearts and their heads.

Technology needs to communicate a more open and responsible stance in how it operates if it wants to take the wider population with it towards ever greater innovation.

Video kills the advertising star?

The past week has seen sustained pressure on Google after an investigation by The Times claimed that it was profiting from, and rewarding extremist and illegal content on YouTube. Essentially ads from blue chip brands had appeared alongside content from extremist groups. This then earnt the person responsible for posting the content £6 for every 1,000 clicks that the advert generated. Reputable organisations, including the UK government, were therefore unwittingly contributing money to extremists.

This has led to an advertiser backlash with brands stopping spending on YouTube, apologies from Google, and a newly stated commitment to sort the problem out. Following on from concerns around fake news being used to drive advertising revenues and worries that many online adverts are clicked on solely by bots, rather than people, it demonstrates the potential issues for online advertisers.

What can be done to reassure advertisers? Google has been quick to jump on the problem, with it escalated to its Chief Business Officer, who set out new safeguards for brands in this blog post. The reason for the alacrity is the impact this could have on Google’s revenues – advertising drives the business, and YouTube’s share of this is growing as more and more people watch and share video content through the site.

Can Google get YouTube back under control? There are two problems it has to grapple with:

1          The scale of YouTube
There’s the sheer amount of content on the platform. 300 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute and 3.25 billion hours of content are watched every month. Keeping track of all this content, and removing anything illegal or extremist has traditionally relied on other users notifying YouTube about individual videos, but that is clearly not enough in the digital age.

Google’s defence (like that of Facebook and other social networks) is that it legally it is not a publisher, merely a platform where others can share content, meaning it is not automatically liable for extremist videos. It believes it is the equivalent of the phone network – just transmitting information, rather than creating it.

2          The black box approach
Given the size of YouTube and many other online properties it is impossible to hand match adverts to particular content. So there’s a black box approach at work, where advertisers (and even Google personnel) don’t really know why a particular advert appears alongside a particular video. Therefore promising more smart technology to solve the problem (as Google has) is unlikely to placate people. At the same time Google is not going to release details of its advertising algorithm, as that is the source of its competitive advantage.

These are big issues to deal with, and the threat of an advertiser boycott has focused the search giant on solving the problem. But I think it will take a lot of time, and a lot more in terms of concrete action to bring back advertiser trust, even if it doesn’t dent the numbers of people actually using YouTube. And I don’t think it will end with YouTube – any advertising-supported online business needs to focus on how it polices itself, and where it places ads, if it wants to avoid being the next in line for media stories and potential boycotts.

Google, tax and PR – do no evil?

On the PR side it has been a busy couple of weeks for Google. Firstly, it casually announced at Davos that it had agreed to pay £130m for ten years of UK corporate taxes, although obviously without any admission of guilt. Cue a storm of protest that this was nowhere near enough for a business that reputedly made £7.2 billion of profits over that period, essentially meaning it paid 3% corporation tax. Much of the vitriol came from other media companies, particularly newspapers, that have seen their own advertising revenues decimated by the search advertising giant.

Then earlier this week Alphabet, Google’s holding company, became the world’s most valuable company by market capitalisation, helped by strong financial results and worries about previous number one Apple’s future growth prospects.

Given the closeness of these two events, it would be easy to draw the conclusion that ethically debatable behaviour leads directly to outstanding corporate success. But has it actually made any difference to Google’s reputation in the UK? I’d argue that overall it hasn’t affected its business in any way, for three main reasons:

1.The public doesn’t buy from Google
For the majority of people Google is a utility – providing them with the ability to browse or search the internet, watch videos, manage emails and documents or run their mobile phones, without charging them a penny directly. What people don’t understand is that the price of this free stuff is that they become the product – Google has built its very lucrative business on selling this data on our activities and preferences to advertisers. In contrast Starbucks, another perceived tax avoider, sells physical products direct to the public, giving consumers a vested interest in seeing the right levels of tax paid out.

2.Google does no evil
It will probably surprise a lot of people that Google is as enormous as it actually is. From its beginnings it has cultivated a laid-back, anti-establishment brand, epitomised by its corporate slogan “Do no evil” and heavy investment in moonshot projects such as self-driving cars and research into cures for cancer. Despite its growth, it is still seen as a Silicon Valley upstart successfully battling the likes of Microsoft (search, browsers, productivity applications, operating systems) and Apple (with Android).

3.Is there an alternative?
Obviously you can use different search/email/operating system providers, including those that make it clear that they won’t either track your online behaviour or use it to target adverts based on your browsing. But how many people actually make the effort to go out and switch, particularly when Google makes it so easy to just carry on using its services. The figures speak for themselves – it has nearly 86% of the UK search market, which hasn’t changed much since the first mention of its tax affairs.

So, while as a PR person I agree that it has handled the whole tax situation badly by trying to claim that it is doing the right thing when its activities are ethically dubious at best, I don’t think it will have a major impact on the corporate brand. This is echoed by an (admittedly small) poll in PR Week, where 51% of PR professionals said it would leave its reputation unchanged – and 11% thought the tax settlement would improve the brand.

However, where it may cause issues, is by attracting further attention from regulators at the European Union, which have previously shown that they have more teeth when dealing with tech giants than national governments. Time will tell, but with the media already setting its sights on Facebook for potential even larger tax avoidance, I think Google will feel that the £130 million it spent is worth every penny.

What follows Twitter?

The press and Twittersphere have been in tumult this week concerning the unexpected departure of five key senior managers from the microblogging site. Shares fell by nearly 5% as investors worried about the company’s strategy for growth, while CEO Jack Dorsey was forced to take to the social network to reassure the world that the departures wouldn’t overly impact Twitter.

Given that user figures stubbornly fail to increase beyond 300 million, and that the share price has dropped by 67% since last April, the executive exodus is seen as symptomatic of wider issues – particularly an inability to make money on the scale of rival Facebook. Bold ideas trumpeted to revive the network include extending the lengths of tweets from 140 to 10,000 characters, but it doesn’t seem clear how this will increase revenues. In a month that saw social media pioneer Friends Reunited finally close, is it possible that Twitter will eventually go the same way?

Twitter does have a number of problems – many of which revolve around the original structure of 140 character messages, all displayed in real-time. It is easy to meet messages of interest given the sheer volume of content on the site and the user experience is not as immediately friendly as the likes of Facebook (which has also done a much better job of collecting and monetising data on its users and their habits.) When I was in Singapore last year I was told that no-one really used Twitter as they didn’t see the point, and it is true that in the UK and US much of network’s high profile comes from its use by commentators, journalists, experts, and Donald Trump.

So, is Twitter doomed, and if so what will take its place? First off, it does seem strange suggesting that a business with 300 million users is on its last legs, but we live in a world governed by network effect and the likes of Facebook have much larger user bases. And of course, none of the 300m is paying to use the service. Twitter seems like a network that doesn’t have a clear purpose – people tend to use Facebook for personal social contact, and LinkedIn for business. Both of these have bulked up their offerings, with Facebook pitching itself as a channel for customer service, with Facebook Business on Messenger, and LinkedIn’s ability to write and share blog style content providing a channel for business insight. Essentially Twitter is being squeezed, and for many people has become just a signposting tool, pointing to content hosted elsewhere. I tweet all my blogs, and it provides a steady stream of traffic to my posts – although not as many as LinkedIn.

However, I do think Twitter has a role to play – but it needs to be simplified, made more user friendly and above all clearly monetized. Which brings me to a potential suitor/solution for the service – Google. There are three reasons for suggesting it would be a good fit:

• Google is a master at collecting user data and turning it into a saleable commodity. You may hate the fact that it knows so much about you, but it has built an enormous business on its stated aim of collecting all the world’s information
• Despite its relatively friendly and sensible design Google +, its own social network, has failed to gain any traction, and merging the two will bring the best of both worlds together. There are allegedly 500m Google + users, mainly because registering for other services automatically adds you to the network, providing a ready market for Twitter – and that’s before you start looking at the hundreds of millions that use Google search or YouTube.
• Other tech companies, such as Facebook, Amazon and Chinese rivals Baidu and Tencent are offering more and more services. Google therefore risks being left behind in the long term as consumers choose to spend more of their online time with fewer providers.

So there is logic behind a deal – though I’m not sure what the new entity would be called. Gitter or Twittle anyone?

 

Death of a (car) salesman

Like anything, buying a new car has positive and negative parts to the journey. The excitement of choosing and test driving a shiny new vehicle has to be balanced with haggling with a salesman in a dealership and painfully avoiding the add-ons and extra warranties that they want to burden you with (and co-incidentally give them a bigger commission than on the car itself).

Yet, the internet was meant to remove middlemen and enable us to deal direct with the producer. It has worked in industries such as travel, where package holiday companies have had to reinvent themselves in an era of cheap flights, AirBnB and TripAdvisor. But for bigger ticket purchases we still rely on car dealers and estate agents rather than dealing directly with manufacturers or those selling their house.

The end of middlemen?
So why are these middlemen still here and will they survive for much longer? After all, most buyers now read car reviews online, check manufacturer videos on YouTube, get information on options from websites, and can arrange finance quickly at the click of a mouse. No wonder that the average number of dealers that buyers visit when purchasing a new car has dropped from 5 to 1.6 in the US over the last ten years. As in a lot of fields, more and more research is carried out online without needing to interact with anyone, let alone a sweaty dealer in an ill-fitting suit.

Illustrating this trend, upstart electric car company Tesla is looking to go direct to customers in the US, cutting out dealers altogether. Other manufacturers are trying more limited experiments with special editions sold online only or dealerships remodelled to be more like the Apple Store, with advisors providing information and help, but no hard sell.

The pace of technology change within the car also threatens to make the dealer obsolete. Modern cars are computers on wheels, streaming data back to the manufacturer and able to refresh their operating system remotely without human (or mechanic) intervention. Tesla regularly updates the software on its car over the air– with an upgrade in January 2015 improving the performance of its Model S, meaning it can match the acceleration of a McLaren MP4-12C.

However as a recent piece in The Economist points out, changing the system will be difficult. Dealers are a powerful lobby, and while they don’t make much money on each new car they sell, the ancillary products and ongoing servicing relationship can be extremely lucrative. It also provides buyers with the opportunity to get a better deal by haggling between rival garages – if you have the inclination to do so.

I think that there are more basic reasons for any middleman, whether a car dealer or travel agent, to survive – adding value, trust and ease. These are important concepts for any company in the digital age to embrace and it is worth looking at your business with these in mind.

1. Adding value
With the vast majority of information now a Google search away on the internet, and prices displayed for everyone to see, do you really add value or are you a hindrance to the process? Again, the Apple Store is a good example to follow. You can buy your iPad from one of a hundred shops or websites, but the help you receive and the ability to get your questions answered in a positive, unpatronising way naturally leads people to the Apple Store.

2. Trust
Do consumers trust you? Or more to the point, do they trust you more than the manufacturer you represent? One of the factors I think will hold back the demise of dealerships is that consumers trust car makers less. You only have to look at botched recalls and unreported faults to see why. Car makers are also much more distant than your local dealership, making it difficult to build a relationship of trust. That’s not to say dealers are safe – they regularly top polls of least trustworthy occupations, but in the kingdom of the blind, the one eyed man is king.

3. Ease
People have to do more and more with less and less time. In many ways the internet has made us more time-poor. Whereas before a holiday could be booked by marching into the travel agency and asking what they had available, it now takes hours of internet research, comparing the relative locations of villas on Google Maps and poring over TripAdvisor reviews. Those middlemen that still have a place recognise that they need to make things easy, providing a helpful service that cuts down the time you need to spend and removes roadblocks from the customer journey, without charging the earth.

Looking at your own business, do you meet these three criteria? If not, it is time to change, before pressure from consumers and manufacturers squeezes you out of the market.

Ten lessons from ten years of YouTube

This year YouTube celebrates its tenth anniversary. Originally founded in 2005 it has grown to have over 1 billion users, with 300 hours of video currently uploaded every minute of every day. For those without a calculator that’s 432,000 hours of new content every day.

Available in 70 countries and languages it made its founders $1.65 billion when Google bought the site back in 2006. At the time many thought they were mad, but the phenomenal growth and the amount of user data that it provides to Google has proved the doubters very wrong.

So what can startups and marketers learn from YouTube and the growth of video more generally? To mark ten years of YouTube, here are ten lessons I’ve drawn from its success:

1. Don’t always follow the rules
One of the big issues with startups in new markets is that existing legislation doesn’t cater for their disruptive power. Think of Uber and Airbnb and the regulatory issues they are having as they look to sidestep rules governing taxis and accommodation respectively. With YouTube and other video sites that launched at a similar time the big issue was users uploading copyrighted material. Competitors protected themselves by checking content before it was uploaded – slowing down their growth and adding to their overheads. In comparison YouTube let users upload anything and then took it down if lawyers or rights holders complained. This gave it a key differentiator, attracted more users and reduced its costs.

2. It is all about You
Despite the growth of brands on the site, the vast majority of content on YouTube is still created by amateurs. By giving a platform for everyone to easily share video, YouTube has been part of a democratisation of the web – as shown by the viral success of many of its videos, and the helping hand it has given to the careers of artists and bloggers such as Psy, Ed Sheeran, Zoella and many others. Brands trying to connect with audiences on YouTube need to understand that it is a two-way street – it isn’t just about providing your own content, but encouraging consumers to work with you and share what they are doing if you want to increase engagement.

3. Video is worth 10,000 words

It may have taken a few years for broadband and mobile data speeds to be able to comfortably cope with streaming video, but now it is the medium of choice for many. If a picture is worth a 1,000 words, video is at least 10x as effective as it allows people to see what is happening, rather than relying on words or static images.

4. It isn’t just cute cats
A few years ago I did some market research with C-level executives to find out where they got information from. The big surprise was that YouTube featured highly in their responses. But a quick look at some of the business content on the site – from the Harvard Business Review to TED talks and The Economist – shows that there’s plenty for any audience to learn from YouTube, whatever demographic they are part of.

5. It can be monetised
People do make money from YouTube. Aside from the celebrities and stars that have used the channel to launch themselves, owners of popular channels are able to make money from the ads around their content. The targeted audiences YouTube delivers (thanks to Google’s knowledge of viewer’s demographics), make it an important way for marketers to reach the right people quickly and easily.

6. Media has become multimedia
Ten years ago there was a sharp divide between traditional print media and the broadcast world. The combination of YouTube and cheaper, higher quality video cameras (or even just smartphones), mean that any journalist or publication can create and upload multimedia content quickly and easily. From interviews to reports, people now expect to see embedded video on news sites, with most media outlets now having their own YouTube channel to host and share content.

7. YouTube is the back end, not just the front end
For every video accessed directly on the site, many hundreds more are reached through other sites. Essentially YouTube provides a complete infrastructure for brands to set up their own channels, for free, and then embed links in their own site or other media. Again, it makes it easy for companies to share video, on or off the site.

8. Attention spans are shorter
People, particularly on mobile devices, are increasingly browsing video content, rather than settling down to watch it for a long time. While there are plenty of exceptions – my children would watch 10-15 minute videos of Stampylongnose playing Minecraft all day – most people don’t want to watch long form content on YouTube. So videos need to be short, snappy and broken up into bite size chunks if they are to be watched and shared.

9. Showing is easier than telling
Doing a DIY job used to involve poring through a manual or asking friends and family for advice. Now you simply go onto YouTube and watch a professional doing it, explaining as they go. The same applies to lots of jobs and hobbies, and with YouTube results prominently displayed in Google searches, it has never been easier to work out how to do something for the first time.

10. Innovation is constant
YouTube may be ten, but it still faces challenges. Facebook is looking to compete by making it simple for its users to share videos on the network, while streaming music services are waking up to the amount of music content watched on the site. Recently Snapchat announced that it has 100 million users watching 2 billion mobile videos every day. The shift to mobile and the fact that as video grows up it becomes more of a commodity means that YouTube needs to constantly evolve if it is to remain relevant.

Ten years is a long time in tech and social media, and the growth of YouTube shows how it has managed to build a brand by understanding what people want and giving them a platform to share. It will be interesting to see what the next decade brings – hopefully not another Justin Bieber………….

The future of advertising – no ads at all

Think about it – what was the last advert you saw that you really remember or which made you take action? The likelihood is that nothing comes immediately to mind. This is ironic as we are now surrounded by more and more ads, whether on the internet, TV or billboards. And they should be increasingly better targeted given that advertisers can see our browsing history, previous searches and even what we Like on Facebook.

Why don’t we remember ads? I think there are three reasons. Firstly, we’re getting better at blanking them out ourselves. Our brains are struggling to cope with the huge amount of information around us, and are therefore becoming more ruthless and ignoring things that aren’t relevant.

Secondly, as well as giving us greater opportunities to see ads, technology is also helping us to skip them. Most of us fast forward through the ads on recorded programmes, and given that more TV is no longer watched live (or on a TV), we can save time by avoiding commercial breaks. Even if you begin watching a recording of a programme on ITV 15 minutes after it starts, you’ll catch up by the end, without missing anything but the ads. Websites are also waking up to the idea that you can offer a premium, ad free product to increase revenues. YouTube is looking at subscription model that means you don’t have to see any ads on the site, for example.

Finally, most ads aren’t actually that interesting anymore. Big budget TV ads still exist, but the vast majority are much more basic and programmatic – you do a search for a toaster, and small, mostly text-based ads then follow your round the internet for a week, appearing on every page you visit for example. The creativity is more in the algorithm that understands your intent, finds a corresponding ad and then keeps tracking you from site to site. It would be physically impossible for the advertiser to create hundreds of creative ads telling you about how their toaster will change your life – there simply isn’t the time or space to do it.

I’m sure there are wonderful long form TV ads out there, but apart from the Christmas campaigns (which have become part of the festive experience) I’m not watching them, and I don’t know who else is either. There don’t appear to be ads that tell your friends about, like the Tango, Guinness or Levis campaigns of the 1980s and 1990s. Too many TV or billboard ads are generic or ‘good enough’ in the eyes of the client, rather than pushing the boundaries. Targeting is replacing creativity as the key factor in success, so what does this mean for the advertising industry?

It could mean the end of ads as we know it. Brands are looking for different ways to engage with customers, so are putting their money into sponsorship of programmes, sports and events, content marketing and campaigns on social media. However swapping the TV ads you’ve always done for a Facebook or YouTube-based programme requires a leap of faith from marketing directors and ad planners alike. At the moment many have added the internet to their campaigns, for example sharing their ads on their own site, Facebook and YouTube and using cut down versions for internet advertising.

However I think that there’s going to be a moment when the advertising industry becomes ‘digital first’ and the swashbuckling creatives and Don Drapers will be replaced by data scientists and content marketers who can use technology to understand and reach audiences, as opposed to untargeted TV ads that may win prizes for creativity but don’t deliver ROI. In many ways this will be a shame, but shows that whatever industry you are in, digital can and will disrupt everything you do.

Up Periscope?

I’ve mentioned previously that Twitter is at a bit of a crossroads. Compared to its social media brethren Facebook and LinkedIn it has found it hard to make the move from a network with lots of users to a viable business making significant profits. Twitter may have grown revenues to $1.4 billion in its 2014 financial year, but it is dwarfed by Facebook, and made a net loss. It even lost 20 million users in the last quarter of the year.

Therefore it has been looking around for ways of increasing both engagement and revenues. Given that the 140 character limit on tweets is more than a little stifling, it has made a big bet on video – first with Vines and now with Periscope. With Vines being extremely short (essentially 6 second loops) they at least fitted in with the stripped down nature of Twitter.

However Periscope is something much more long form. Essentially it is an app that lets you live stream pictures from your mobile phone, in real-time, to your followers. It isn’t a new idea – apps such as Bambuser and Livestream have allowed this before. Even more recently Meerkat was the hit of the SXSW festival and raised $12m in funding, announced on the day that Periscope launched. As is the way of cool free new stuff, Periscope has quickly become wildly popular (in social media land at least). This is partly due to its ease of use, but probably more to the prevalence of wifi networks and all you can eat 3G/4G data packages that mean live streaming isn’t going to run up huge bills.

Unlike Vines, which have not really moved beyond being a niche application, there is obviously a lot of potential in live streaming, provided that Twitter can capitalise on its early mover advantage over the likes of Facebook. I can see five ways it can be easily used.

1. Journalism
We live in a real-time news cycle, driven by the likes of Twitter. Therefore it makes a lot of sense to add video to tweets from a press conference or the scene of a breaking story. It won’t replace having a full camera crew on hand, but will fill the gap between recording and going live. And it will be a boon to citizen journalists and members of the public, giving them another way of recording and sharing stories.

2. Adding to the buzz around events
Twitter works really well at collating and sharing what is happening at events such as conferences. By creating a hashtag and encouraging its use, information and opinions can be quickly published and, most importantly, found easily. It is even possible to skip the conference altogether and just follow the key points on Twitter. Expect conference organisers to embrace Periscope and encourage its use to give a fuller insight into events.

3. Sharing sports events
Much of the internet is driven by either porn or sports, and the X-rated opportunities for Periscope are pretty obvious. I presume Twitter will be quick to crack down on them, but the fact that you can live stream from a sporting event has more lasting possibilities. On one hand it will enable people to share football matches as they happen (expect screams of indignation from rights holders), but more importantly it will let niche sports get their coverage to more people, while using a minimum of infrastructure and at low cost.

4. Catching out celebrities/politicians
I’ll wager that it’ll be about a week before the first politician is caught saying something stupid/offensive while being live streamed. And, unlike Meerkat, Periscope video streams are kept for 24 hours, meaning that the evidence will be there to be shared, retweeted and generally distributed to the world. Celebrities are likely to fall into the same trap – expect people to use live streaming to replace selfies and photo bombing as a way of interacting with/embarrassing their heroes.

5. Live streaming cats
If cat videos are the most popular things on YouTube, it won’t be long before someone puts their cat on Periscope, either live streaming everything they do or finding a way of rigging up a camera to them to show everything they are doing.

Time will tell if Periscope actually does provide an extra dimension (and revenue earner) to Twitter. However, given I’ve seen people taking photos of all their meals and putting them on Facebook, be prepared for a combination of a lot of mundane content (and complaints from phone users who rack up huge bills) in the early days before it potentially finds its place.

 

Would we Like a social media election?

We’re now well into the General Election campaign and commentators are examining which media politicians are going to use with engage with voters. I’ve already talked about the debacle around the televised debates, which David Cameron is doing his best to scupper, but what of social media?

Rt Hon David Cameron, MP, Conservative Party leader, during his visit to Oxfam headquarters in Oxford. Full version. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Predictions that the last election would revolve around social media were wide of the mark, proving less like Obama’s #Yeswecan campaign and more akin to a series of embarrassing mistakes perpetrated by politicians and their aides who’d obviously never used Twitter before. This has continued with further gaffes, such as ex-shadow attorney general Emily Thornberry’s patronising tweet during the Rochester and Strood by-election that cost the Labour frontbencher her job.

However, there are already signs that social media will pay a bigger role in this election. For a start, social media is a good way of reaching the core 18-24 demographic that is currently disengaged from politics. 56% of this age group didn’t vote at the last election, so winning their support could be crucial in a contest that is currently too close to call.

We are also in an election where the core support of the traditional big two parties is being swayed by the rise of UKIP, the SNP and the Greens. So, rather than just appealing to floating voters in a certain number of swing seats, the Conservatives and Labour both need to demonstrate to their supporters that they understand their concerns and have policies to win them over. This means that they are likely to be more aggressive than in the past, judging that alienating the middle ground is a price worth paying for retaining traditional voters.

How this plays out generally will be fascinating, but what can social media provide? Early indications suggest there are six areas where it will be most used:

1. Attacking the opposition
Unlike offline or TV advertising, social media is largely unregulated. Which means you can get away with more online – for example, the Tory party is financing 30 second pre-roll “attack” ads on YouTube the content of which would be banned on TV. Given the desire to reassure core voters, expect tactics like this to be used even more as the campaign unfolds.

2. Managing the real-time news cycle
CNN brought about the 24 hour a day news cycle. Twitter has changed that to give minute-by-minute, real-time news. Stories can gain traction incredibly quickly, and fade with the same speed. Parties will therefore look to try and control (or at the very least manage) social media during the campaign, monitoring for trends that they can piggyback and starting stories of their own. And given that the media will also be monitoring what politicians are saying, expect a rash of stories with a shelf life of minutes and hours, rather than days and weeks.

3. Reaching voters
One of the most powerful parts of social media is the demographic profiling it provides advertisers with. This means that spending on advertising can be extremely targeted towards potential supporters, with little wastage. Figures obtained by the BBC show that the Tories are on course to spend over a million pounds on Facebook during the course of the election, based on current activities. Of course, reaching voters is one thing, the next step is to actively engage with them, starting conversations, listening and responding to their concerns. That takes time and skill, so expect a lot of effort to be thrown at content and conversations.

4. Monitoring voting patterns
There’s a lot of excitement about Big Data, and in particular how you can draw insights from the conversations happening on social media. Party strategists will be able to monitor what is trending on networks, and then use this feedback to evolve or change their strategies to focus on areas that are resonating with particular groups. However this sort of monitoring is still in its infancy, so results will need to be cross-checked before parties decide to do a U-turn on key policies.

5. Amplifying success
Third party endorsement is always welcome, so politicians will look to share and publicise content, such as news stories, that position them in a good light, and also encourage their supporters to do the same. This has already happened with celebrity interviews with the likes of Ant and Dec and Myleene Klass. However, as journalist Sean Hargrave points out, the Tories have a problem here – much of the right leaning media (The Sun, The Times and Daily Telegraph) are behind full or partial paywalls, making sharing difficult. In contrast the likes of The Guardian, Mirror and Independent are completely free and design content to be as shareable as possible. That just leaves the Tories with the Daily Mail……..

6. Making it bitesize
Like any modern digital campaign, the election will run on content. And to appeal to time-poor voters it will need to be carved up into bitesize chunks, such as blogs, Vines, Tweets and Facebook posts. Politicians are meant to be masters of the soundbite, so this should be just a question of transferring their offline skills to the digital world.

Social media will definitely be more of a battleground at this election, if only because more people are on Twitter, Facebook and other networks compared to 2010. Parties and politicians will look to adopt the tactics above, but with varying degrees of success. Some, such as those that have been engaging with voters for years, will do it well, but expect more gaffes from those that don’t understand the difference between a public tweet and a private direct message and decide to show the world pictures of their underwear…………or worse.