Danny Whatmough.com

• AP is Visionary: They See a “Siteless Web”
• Mashable’s New iPhone App: Download Today!
• LoveFilm launches iPhone app for members
• How 30 publishers are charging for online content
• Why the iPhone might not be the future of mobile
• BBC Mobile Apps: a demo
• 7 Things to Consider for Social Media in the Enterprise
• My Wordpress Plugin List
• The top ten ReTweet measurement tools
• 56% of journalists think social media is important for producing and sourcing stories
• Punch above your weight – the secret to PR success
• Was the iPad the best PR launch ever?
• Linkedin, Twitter, Facebook, Bebo… what exactly is social media?
• Generating new email recipients from Facebook apps: why integration is the key to success
• Manchester City needle Liverpool with Craig Bellamy viral

A report today in TechCrunch reveals that the Associated Press is using their Twitter account to push followers to their Facebook page. Rather than linking directly to news pages on their website, they are linking to pages on their Facebook profile which also features the news.

Techcrunch critises this move: “maybe they think that by hosting the content on Facebook, they’re being impartial with the tweets. But again, why not just use their own site?”

But, I think Techcrunch misses the point here. This isn’t about impartiality. It’s about building communities and it’s a smart move. I’ve written recently about the war that is brewing between Facebook and Google as both networks seek to become the social media (and email/messaging) dashboard.

Facebook is moving from the ‘walled garden’ network to the more open, ‘first port of call’ that, in many ways, Google has been to date. And with its user base soaring, it is perfectly poised to capitalise.

Facebook is also envious of the success that Twitter has had by embracing businesses and news outlets and has taken big steps recently to mirror this. It is a move that seems to be working, with recent research showing that Facebook is becoming a major driver to news networks. Outlets like the NYT has realised this and AP seems to be catching up on the action now too.

AP should be able to make the most of this, open digital world that media organisations now find themselves in. They are all about content. Monetising this content is a challenge. But embracing and building communities and new distribution networks is vital. By distributing their content directly to an engaged user base on Facebook (and Twitter), AP has much more control of how it uses this audience.

The traditional ‘website as a destination’ is beginning to decline. Fast forward to the ’site-less’ web where rather than engaging with audiences on a corporate site, media outlets (and indeed brands) need to go to where the audience is. This is a big challenge for Murdoch et al but is already happening and is happening big-style.

As Steve Rubel says: “The AP is now changing the game for news by not only going where attention spirals are taking us but by also using their content to curate a conversation there and – above all build relationships.”

Monetisation is certainly an issue, but if AP can build up a significant user base on Facebook, the money will come.

As the power of Google News dimishes, can Facebook take over as the web’s news curator? AP seems to think it can…

hat tip to Ben, picture credit

I wrote last week about the battle between Google and Facebook. Now there is more interesting research out which adds yet another subplot: according to Compete, Facebook has passed Google to become the top source for traffic to major portals like Yahoo and MSN, and is amongst the leaders for other types of sites too.

This follows news earlier this month that Facebook is now the 4th driver of traffic to major news sites.

Whilst for many businesses, Twitter is seen as the social network to use, it would be foolish to ignore the power of Facebook.

This preference towards Twitter was well founded. Twitter has a very open doors policy to brands, unlike Facebook – at least in the early days – when the emphasis was social networking between friends that you actually know.

This ‘walled garden’ was a scary place for brands (and the media) that didn’t want to experience a backlash from consumers.

But it is perhaps exactly this walled garden approach that makes Facebook such a hotbed of social media (and traditional media) sharing. Facebook networks are tighter, more controlled than the often sprawling connections that are made on Twitter.

Sharing on Facebook is perhaps less frequent than retweets on Twitter, but when it does happen, the effect can be significant, allowing brands to reach targeted and carefully curated networks of like-minded individuals.

And it’s not the no-go area for B2B companies that it was in the past. To my mind, social media blurs the boundaries between work and home, between professional and personal.

With 400m users worldwide, ignoring something this powerful is ludicrous.

• How much is news worth?
• The Smarter You Are, The Less You Click – I’ve had a number of conversations recently covering all aspects of marketing which end up w/ someone saying, “if only x% convert, are we wasting the remaining 1-x% of the budget?” by Mat Morrison
• Vodafone: why control is important in social media
• 5 B2B Social Media Winners
• Ding ding: it’s Google versus Facebook
• Facebook Mobile Now Has 100 Million Monthly Users
• New BBC Director Mandates Journalists Use Social Media
• Guest Post! Five reasons the iPad will blah blah blah Kindle
• Buzz asks more questions than it solves
• Google Wastes No Time in Launching Google Buzz API
• How Millenials Use Tech at Work – A useful counterpoint to the talk on social media in enterprise I gave last wk by Mat Morrison
• What’s the (Google) Buzz? Tell me What’s Happening
• Technology – why it’s a lifestyle thing
• Belgian advertising agencies strike
• Facebook Will Centralize the Social Web
• Should you cite tweets as a source?

Last Friday, Vodafone UK joined the likes of Habitat, Motrin, Walmart and Eurostar in the list of social media fails.

If you missed the story, a slightly inappropriate message appeared on the company’s Twitter account on Friday afternoon:

“VodafoneUK is fed up of dealing with dirty homo’s (sic) and is going after beaver”

The initial reaction from the twittersphere was that the message was the result of someone hacking the account. However, a few minutes later, another tweet confirmed the real cause of the offending article:

“A severe breach of rules by staff in our building, dealing with that internally. We’re very sorry”

The company then set about a mammoth task of apologising individually to all its followers that complained about or mentioned the sorry affair.

It transpires that the tweet in question had been composed and issued by one of the company’s call centre operatives in Stoke. The agent in question has now been suspended.

Here are my random thoughts about this whole incident:

• The customer service problem – I think the issue of ‘how to deal with customer service on social media is a really interesting one and is yet to be dealt with really effectively by many brands. I’ve actually often thought that Vodafone does a pretty good job on Twitter, they reply quickly and informatively to those that tweet. But to do this, you need a big team and this does pose problems
• Putting social media in the hands of your employees – this is always going to be a risk for a brand, but it is impossible for big companies to manage this in any other way. Just make sure the right policies are in place
• Does it really matter? – Yes, a mistake has been made, but it’s not really the end of the world is it? All of the social media analyst crowd (and I include myself here) were delighted by the ‘new case study’ material, but for your average Twitter user, this whole incident is probably of little interest.
• If things go wrong, deal with it and deal with it quickly – Vodafone rectified the issue pretty well. The responded quickly and very transparently. The constant tweeting of the same message looked a bit odd, but as Mark says, probably worked very well in terms of reaching out directly to those that were concerned enough to complain or mention it.

There’s been a mad rush in the last 24 hours to blog and tweet about the latest social media craze – Google Buzz. It’s rarely possible to objectively comment on something this new until you’ve tried it and lived with a for a bit, but such is the pace of social media…!

I always try and take a step back and avoid the urge to blog immediately but, as the day has gone on and as I have read more and more about it, there are a few initial thoughts that spring to mind that I thought I’d jot down.

A few caveats. Firstly, I haven’t really tried Google Buzz in anger yet. I use Google Apps for my personal email and it hasn’t been switch on there yet. Secondly, I reserve the right to change all of these views and opinions in the future!

• Aggregation, location/mobile, social search – these are the three elements of social media that will be big this year. And to a certain extent, Google has made a start to confront each one. Google Buzz is yet another step in this direction, but they aren’t the only ones. Facebook in particular is also making big strides
• This is not a Buzz v. Twitter debate – I see Twitter much more as a data store rather than a destination. This is enforced by Twitter’s willingness to encourage API usage etc. Twitter.com as a destination is likely to become even less important, it’s the tweets that matter. Therefore Twitter and Google could happily co-exist
• It’s Facebook v. Google for social dominance - Facebook and Google have their sights on the big prize: they both want to become social media dashboards or the destination for all our online social (and even non social) activities. Facebook took a big step with the acquisition of Friendfeed and Google has moved into this domain today. Facebook’s announcement this week about it’s new email platform also adds fuel to the fire. It’ll also be interesting to see how software like Tweetdeck and Seesmic responds to this move
• But what if I don’t use Gmail? – this could be a big issue for Buzz. I can understand why they wanted to integrate Buzz into the Gmail interface rather than create yet another destination, but what about those of us that don’t use Gmail regularly? It makes more sense for Facebook to bring an email client to its 400m users than for Google to bring Buzz to its 140m users
• It’s more proof of the power of social – most of us now appreciate social media is here to stay, but this brings further confirmation from the biggest online player. Brin was on stage at the Buzz announcement which I think is a telling sign that Google has big plans for this in the future
• What does this mean for Google Wave? - we all got very excited about Wave when it launched last year, but this has fizzled out to some extent. I just wonder if Google sees Buzz as some sort of link between Gmail and Wave. I still think Wave is potentially very interesting, but it is a big jump for most. Buzz is more palatable and could just possibly bring a middle solution

I started the day quite enthusiastic about Buzz but, having used it a few times I’ve become less convinced. I can see that it would be great for those that spend a lot of time in Gmail and use their Google address book etc., but that’s not me. Buzz is definitely one to watch, it has to be. But, I hope for Google’s sake, there is more to come…

• Dan Howe: Should you cite tweets as a source?
• Who should provide social media marketing?
• Loft bribes bloggers for positive coverage
• Voucher Cloud: iPhone app review
• Gartner predicts most IT-led social media initiatives will fail
• Foursquare and Bravo try to bridge the digital divide — one check-in at a time

• 5 Twitter Apps Every Marketer Should Test-Drive In 2010
• Taking the leap of faith and joining Dare..
• How to Stop PR Spam
• My political compass
• A mildly popular blog’s stats laid bare
• Remember Google Wave?
• Guardian says no to paywalls
• UKGovCamp 2010
• How to understand your customers’ social behaviours – audience not technology
• Tagcrumbs lands on iPhone – social bookmarking for places