Breaking: Facebook bans doll nipples on profile images

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My wife Victoria Buckley just received a message from Facebook asking her to change the profile image on the Victoria Buckley Jewellery Facebook page, threatening to close the page as it did not conform to its ‘terms and conditions’.

Presumably the were referring to condition3. 7. You will not post content that…contains nudity…. referring to the profile image of a beautiful doll touching one of Victoria’s rings.

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Above is the offensive image. If you go to the Victoria Buckley Jewellery Facebook page you will now see a censored image so she doesn’t get banned, along with her close to 1,000 fans. (Though if you click through to the Photos page and the Ophelia Enchanted Doll collection you can see more stunning images of the doll).

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The Social Internet: findings on how countries and regions engage differently with the web

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One of the topics that interests me the most is the variety with how different countries and cultures engage with social media, so I was very please to see in the current issue of Harvard Business Review a great spread on Mapping the Social Internet. Click on the image below to see the central visualization of how countries engage differently on the web.

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Source: Harvard Business Review

The axes of the chart are the portion of internet users who manage a social-network profile, and the portion of internet users who write a blog, a choice of dimensions which yields a few very interesting perspectives:

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Corporate Twittering increases consumer trust, but many don’t want companies to listen to them

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A few days ago I asked the question How much do people want to know their conversations are being monitored?, given how brands such as Gatorade boast about how well they listen to online conversations. As it happens, someone has an answer.

Fleishman-Hillard has just released their Digital Influence Index report for 2010, with a wide range of interesting research and conclusions.

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Source: Fleishman Hillard

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How much do people want to know their conversations are being monitored?

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Here’s an interesting promotional video from Gatorade, which extols their ability to monitor social conversations, apparently using Radian6 and IBM technologies.

There are a number of basic messages in here, most obviously that anything you say about Gatorade will be heard and acted on, though also that your response to their promotions and campaigns will be monitored.

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Leaders in social networks usage: Australia by time, Brazil by reach

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In January I looked at the just-released Nielsen data on global social media usage, and wrote Australians are #1 globally in usage of social media: Why?.

New data from Nielsen shows an updated picture from April 2010, including the proportion of people online in each country who are using social networks.

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Click on image for large version

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One more reason why Australia is a global hub for crowdsourcing: Ideas While You Sleep

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I was recently introduced to Yvonne Adele of IdeasCulture through a Twitter introduction from Tim Longhurst – a great connection to make!

Not long ago I wrote how Australia is becoming a global hub for crowdsourcing platforms: Freelancer.com, 99designs, DesignCrowd. Yvonne’s service Ideas While You Sleep adds to the burgeoning collection of crowdsourcing services based in Australia. Yvonne described to me how the service works.

The concept is that challenges submitted by 4pm will receive an pack of 100 ideas with an action plan by 10am the next morning, currently at an introductory price of A$495.

Ideas While You Sleep draws on 440 brainstormers, who are ranked in experience from apprentices to premium. As they successfully contribute to projects, they are promoted to a higher roles.

Teams are always designed with diversity in mind, so they include the full range of levels of experience as well as background. Team members are rotated as new projects come up.

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What Yahoo!’s purchase of Associated Content means for the crowdsourced (crap?) content industry

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Yahoo! has just purchased Associated Content, with price variously reported at $90 million (by All Things D) and slightly over $100 million (by AdAge).

Associated Content is the second largest player in crowdsourced content after Demand Media, which is looking at an IPO which is likely to be valued over $1 billion. AOL, which was originally considering buying Associated Content when it wanted to get into the space, decided to grow its own business called Seed, which is already a strong player. Other players include Helium.

The model is primarily of advertising arbitrage – identifying where advertising returns from search visitors can exceed the cost of content. Since online advertising doesn’t pay much, content costs need to be very low. As a result the quality is not always earth-shattering.

I wrote last year about how the proliferation of crap content, and how the rise of reputation systems will make it easier for us to identify content quality and reliability. However we don’t have these yet.

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Launch of online community SMETechnologyForum.com – join the discussion!

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We have been busy working on a number of major initiatives this year. One of the most important directions for Advanced Human Technologies is creating communities in which we provide useful content and a place for sharing and discussion.

Our first community is SME Technology Forum, which brings together community insights on leveraging tech for small and mid-sized companies. Check it out. And when you’re there please participate if you have anything to add to the discussions or comments.

We’re keen to get your contribution to the community. We’d love to post any useful articles you have. Also do let us know if you or anyone you know has learned valuable lessons on applying technology to business – we’d be happy to do an interview to write a case study. Full details on how to contribute to SME Technology Forum here.

We will be launching more communities soon, both ones dear to our hearts, as well as custom communities for companies that want to build a rich B2B community for their customers and prospects. Keep posted for more new communities – they’re intended to be valuable for you!

Discovering the most interesting and inspiring phrases

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I’ve long said that newspapers and books will become digital when they have all the qualities of the existing media – including readability, portability, and the ability to highlight and make notes – as well as all of the capabilities of digital media – such as searchability, compactness, and remote access.

The Amazon Kindle allows people to highlight passages and take notes – a basic functionality required for a e-book. What this also allows is to discover what others are highlighting, providing a form of collaborative filtering. Amazon has just released a list of the most highlighted books and phrases on the Kindle.

The most highlighted books are:

The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown

The Holy Bible

The Shack by William P. Young

A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle

Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

A selection of the most highlighted phrases:

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There are TWO possible attitudes companies can have to social media

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Last week I gave a presentation on the future of business to the top executive team of a large fast-moving consumer goods company at their quarterly offsite meeting.

One of the issues they were keen to hear about is the rise of social media and how they should respond.

I told them that there are essentially two possible attitudes a company can have to engaging with its customers in an open world.

One attitude is to EMBRACE the fact that customers now have a voice that the company – and others – can hear, and to do whatever possible to help its advocates to form communities and talk about its products. That doesn’t mean its executives aren’t concerned that things can go wrong in social media. But the belief is that fundamentally it is a GOOD thing that customers can be heard by the world at large.

The other attitude is to HATE the fact that customers have a voice that can be widely heard. While the executives realize that their fans can communicate their love for their products, they are far more afraid that bad things will be said about them, merited or not, and they think they will have no recourse. The belief is that it is fundamentally a BAD thing that customers can be heard by the world at large.

I used one example for each of these attitudes.

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