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Can a popular Facebook group become a real "startup"?

What happens when you start a group on Facebook and two weeks later, you have over 180,000 members? If you're 21 year-old Tiffany Philippou, the creator of the hit Facebook group Secret London, you do the entrepreneurial thing: try to parlay your Facebook popularity into a bona fide startup.

After a 48-hour crowdsourcing marathon during which more money was spent on food and liquor than on design and development, Secret London was reinvented and launched as a standalone online community.

by Patricio Robles 18 February 2010 10:04am 6 comments

How to use social media to resolve a dispute with a company

Social media is increasingly the battlefield for disputes between David and Goliath. Thanks to the spotlight that social media tools like Twitter and Facebook can shine on these disputes, individuals have more power than ever to get companies to acknowledge their complaints and resolve disputes out in the open.

But that power can be deceptive. Despite the fact that social media can pressure companies to deal with sticky situations in a more even-handed fashion, individuals often waste the opportunity.

by Patricio Robles 15 February 2010 09:22am 5 comments

The BBC's misguided approach to social media

News organizations are getting hip to social media. For many of them, figuring out how to use social media hasn't been easy, but a growing number of them have seen the light and realize that social media platforms can serve as valuable tools for journalism.

But should news organizations require that their journalists use, say, Twitter and Facebook? The director of BBC Global News, Peter Horrocks, apparently thinks so.

by Patricio Robles 11 February 2010 09:24am 8 comments

Content sharing and discovery: is Facebook the new Twitter?

Facebook is the world's largest social network. It recently passed the 400m registered user mark and is now the a top five web property according to comScore.

But Facebook is fast becoming more than just the world's largest social network. With 5bn pieces of content being shared every week, and a whopping 60m status updates being post each week, Facebook can no longer be classified as a simple 'social network'.

by Patricio Robles 10 February 2010 09:20am 6 comments

Facebook, Gmail and iTunes: your future wallet? Probably not

What do Facebook, Gmail and iTunes have in common? By 2015, they might be dominant online payment providers.

At least that's the thinking of Dave McClure, a Silicon Valley startup investor. In a post the other day (caution: heavy profanity), he argued that "in 2015 the default login & payment method(s) on the web will be Facebook Connect, Google Gmail, or Apple iTunes".

by Patricio Robles 03 February 2010 13:00pm 8 comments

Foursquare and Bravo try to bridge the digital divide — one check-in at a time

As television audiences shrink, the networks are suddenly very interested in partnerships that bridge the digital divide. That might help explain why a big brand like Bravo TV would announce a partnership with a tiny startup like Foursquare today. And it might just work.

Starting this week, Foursquare will start awarding its users with badges that have Bravo themes when they visit over 500 locations associated with the network. The announcement is just one of many partnerships Foursquare has been quickly announcing, and it is just the kind of thing that networks need to do if they want to connect their television audiences with digital and real world products.

by Meghan Keane 01 February 2010 17:55pm 1 comment

Google Social Search goes live — without Facebook results

In the battle to conquer real-time search, Google has drawn a line in the sand. The search giant today went live with its Social Search feature, which adds relevant results from users' social graph. But one thing is noticeably absent from those results — Facebook content.

Because so much of Facebook's information is private, Google cannot access it. For a social network trying to plant its flag as the curator of personal content online, that could be a problem.

by Meghan Keane 29 January 2010 18:30pm 7 comments

20+ mind-blowing social media statistics revisited

It’s around six months since I last threw out some truly mindboggling pieces of data surrounding social media. So, what’s happened between then and now?

I try to put as much information as I can into Econsultancy’s Social Media Statistics, which is part of our Stats Compendium (a truly awesome resource) but I find it’s always interesting to go back and review the old against the new.

So, I’ve collected as much as I can from my previous insane snippets of data and benchmarked it against the here and now, alongside rooting out some new stuff for you to mull over.

by Jake Hird 29 January 2010 10:07am 72 comments

Brands, agencies and vanity URLs: where's the common sense?

Imagine that your name is Harman Bajwa. Your Facebook profile is located at the vanity URL facebook.com/harman. You log into your Facebook account one day only to receive a message indicating that your vanity URL has been "removed for violating Facebook’s policies". This message implies that your vanity URL is unrelated to who you are, and that you've been impersonating someone or something.

That's exactly what happened to Facebook user Harman Bajwa. What gave? A message from a new Facebook 'friend' who works for agency giant Carat provided a hint.

by Patricio Robles 25 January 2010 11:02am 6 comments

Social media takes the field in 2010

2010 is a big year for the world of sport. Later this month, the Super Bowl will air, next month the Winter Olympics will begin and in June, the World Cup kicks off.