Matt Rhodes

AP Twitter account hacked, fake Tweet causes Dow to fall 143 points

Matt — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 19:38:59 +0000

It wasn’t the first Twitter account to be hacked, nor will it be the last. But on Tuesday fake tweets from a hacked @AP account caused momentary panic on Wall Street. A, clearly not true, announcement that the President of the United States was injured after explosions caused a 143 point fall on the Dow Jones industrial average.

The Tweet was clearly a fake. It didn’t follow the style of other Tweets from the AP account, and it was sent during a live conference from the White House (which was undisturbed by the apparent ‘explosions’). In fact it had all the hallmarks of a fake Tweet and was no doubt spotted by many. The response was quick – the account was taken down for the rest of the day whilst AP restored control and deleted the Tweets that had been sent. But this didn’t stop the markets getting jittery.

The drop in the Dow was quickly recovered, but this experience shows the damage that can be done by hacked accounts or even erroneous Tweets. And it shows the impact that actions in social media can have on stock market movements.

Twitter is becoming the go-to source for many people for breaking news and information – with a belief that news and information will be spread more rapidly thought this social network. It is also being used as a data source for algorithms and systems that use social data to make decisions. It may have been such algorithms that caused the drop in the Dow on Tuesday – automatically identifying the Tweet and trading quickly.

So for both human and machine ‘observers’, the reliance on Twitter as a data source is increasing and decisions are being made quickly on what is found there. Brands need to be conscious of this not just when they plan their online security and crisis communications plans – what would happen if their Twitter account was hijacked? They also need to be conscious of the potential impact of what they use Twitter for and what they say.

What brands say and how they behave on Twitter is moving from just being a communications mechanism to reflecting on the performance of the business and brand as a whole. A poorly targeted or planned Tweet could have as much damage as a fake Tweet from a hacked account.

‘Ungoogleable’ and the lexical creativity that digital is fueling

Matt — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 11:28:40 +0000

The word ‘ungoogleable’ (or rather ‘ogooglebar’) was removed from a list of new Swedish words this week by the Language Council of Sweden. They had defined it as a term that ‘could not be found on a search engine’; Google said that is could only refer to terms not discoverable on Google. Rather than redefine how people use the term, the Council left it out. As they said:

Who decides language? We do, language users. We decide together which words should be and how they are defined, used and spelled.

That people use a term like ‘ogooglbar’ to refer to all search engines, and not just Google, is not unusual. Most languages have words that started off as a brand name but are now used as the generic noun – hoover, zip and more recently photoshop are used in that way. Usually you start by using the brand name for the whole class (a form of synecdoche and then that generic noun is used in other forms of speech – for example as a verb (‘I googled his name’) or an adjective (as is the case with ‘ogooglebar’).

So it should come as no surprise that people use the term, nor that it is used to refer to generic searching. The efforts of Google to dictate that the definition refer only to them would make little change on the way the term is used, and so the Language Council of Sweden can do little but ignore the word and allow people to carry on using it.

This example highlights the nature of lexical creativity that the digital world, and indeed social media, is bringing. The use of terms like ‘twitter’ or ‘instagram’ as verbs rather than as proper nouns is widespread – and as new digital tools and technologies appear so we should expect new words to enter our lexicons.

But perhaps a more interesting example of new words comes from looking at where languages collide – where, for example, English is used by non-native speakers when they are referring to digital terms. The term ‘Handy’ in German (meaning ‘mobile phone’) is an example where a word that means one thing in it’s original language (where it means ‘convenient’ in English) is used to mean something very different in the language that adopts it.

With social technologies people from different languages can communicate more regularly and more easily. They will be exposed to and often start to use words and terms that don’t come from their original language. But the manner of these adoptions, and how the words then develop in their adopted language will be interesting to follow.

Words are important, and with digital technologies we are experiencing lexical creativity. We shouldn’t let a global brand, or a language council stop this.

Photo credit: Why do we need a dictionary when we have wireless? by ElektraGrey

Twitter communities are definable by the language they use

Matt — Sat, 16 Mar 2013 13:58:05 +0000

Social media tools are a great way of building communities – they allow people to find others who share similar interests, passions and concerns. And like any communities these develop their own rites and traditions. A recent study of interactions on Twitter found a strong correlation between communities and the language they use – another example of social media mirroring behaviour offline.

Communities have always been defined by the language they use – as much to define what they discuss among each other as to exclude people who are not part of the group. An argot is a ‘secret language’ used by such groups which, at its simplest, just involves the groups using specific words and language. Words that define the community that uses them, but also excludes others from joining.

The research analysed 75 million Tweets between 189,000 users to identify the communities that exist and then looked at the words these communities used. The communities they found included the following (names my own):

The SXSW-goers used words like ‘sxsw’, ‘tweetup’ and ‘conference’
The educationalists used words like ‘edtech’, ‘pln’ and ‘edublogs’
The Bieber Believers used words like ‘bieber’, ‘pleasee’ and ‘<33″
The Twlighters used words like ‘kstew’, ‘robsessed’ and ‘twilight’

A full list of communities, and the words they use, is available in the original research.

But, perhaps more interesting that looking at how these communities can be defined by language is to look at how you can tell a community somebody should belong to by the words they use. Given a random sample of 1,000 words any given person uses on Twitter, it is possible to correctly say which community they belong to in 72% of cases.

This has potential benefits for anybody looking to identify or engage people in Twitter. By looking for patterns in the words that people use you can start to understand more about them, the issues they care about and the communities they are part of.

Photo credit: Stairway diagonal by Candida.Performa

Welsh Government introduces scheme to teach safe use of social media in schools

Matt — Sat, 09 Mar 2013 20:27:47 +0000

The Welsh Government is to introduce lessons in the safe use of digital and social media tools to the curriculum. Schools are to give students more access to social media sites and teach them about how to protect their personal information and to protect their personal brand online.

The scheme is being run by the office of the information commissioner and will be followed by a broader pilot across the UK. It reflects a mature attitude to social media – recognising the role these tools play (and the increasing role they will play) in the lives of young people and providing them with the tools and education to protect themselves.

The Assistant Information Commissioner for Wales, Anne Jones, commented:

It’s trying to make sure that they deal [with their personal information] appropriately – that they don’t give it away to the wrong people, that they keep it safe where it needs to be kept safe

The importance of social media education

Such lessons are critical for students. As we continue to share more and more information about ourselves online it is important for them to understand what they are sharing, with whom and what the consequences of this might be. I was recently interviewed by BBC Radio 1 on this topic as part of their Share Take Care season and discussed:

That anything shared online is there forever. It can be reshared, copied and seen by others, often even if you try to delete the original. The best thing to do is to just not share things in the first place if they might cause problems.
To know how to set privacy settings for the different sites and networks that you use – think carefully about what you want to use these sites for and who you want to see what you share on it.
To think carefully about friends you add on sites like Facebook – too many people add friends that they don’t even know, who then have access to your personal photos, comments and data. Only add people you know – you wouldn’t invite strangers into your house.

Whilst social media education like this is important in schools it is also important for many adults too. Social media, and sharing personal data online in this way, is new to everybody. We are all learning about what we want to share with whom and what people can do with the data we share.

Photo credit: Welsh Flag by angusleonard

Lessons in innovation for political communications – what role for social?

Matt — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 11:19:03 +0000

One of the films nominated for best foreign language films at the 2013 Oscars is a story of politics and advertising. ‘No’, tells the story of the 1988 plebiscite of the Chilean citizenry over whether general Pinochet should have another 8 year term as President. But really it is the story of innovation in advertising and political communication.

In the film, as in real life, the No campaign’s victory is supported by an advertising campaign that challenges tradition at the time. It uses music and imagery in a way different to advertising in Chile at the time and, critically, differently to the adverts from the Yes campaign. Much can be made of this innovation but the successful campaign was the one that used new techniques and developments to convey their message to people in new ways.

The 1988 Plebiscite in Chile was a pivotal moment of huge political important – bringing an end to 15 years of dictatorship – and perhaps such innovation was driven from the critical nature of the vote.

Or perhaps such innovation was fuelled by consumer and technological trends that were ripe to be taken advantage of.

Throughout the film, and reading the real story, I was left with a thought: what role could social have played in that? We have seen many examples of social being used to effect societal change – most notably in the Arab Spring. But the use of social media in formal political communications is ripe for innovation.

What we do see is good – getting candidates and politicians to talk directly to the public, spreading campaign messages, organising events. But there is more that could be done and real innovation opportunities out there.

Some areas ripe for such innovation could include:

Encourage micro-communities: Social media is strongest, from a communications perspective, when it is used to allow people with similar interests or connections to connect. For many voters, politics is about an individual patchwork of issues that they care about – some big and some very small. Developing an ecosystem of communities would allow any political party to engage the public across these issues and allow them to engage with the part on a mix of topics that is bespoke to what they are interested in. Very simply this could be achieved with a control panel on Facebook not dissimilar to that used by the BBC. But this could develop to allow campaigners to run micro-communities where they talk to people about issues they really care about – even offering a real way for supporters to campaign digitally rather than in person.
Moving beyond listening and monitoring: Using social to help understand what voters really care about and what they really talk about. Moving beyond social media listening to proper semantic analysis to understand the issues voters associate with each other in their natural language. And then using this analysis to inform conversations, speeches and all communications materials. A systematic approach of analysing conversations and using this analysis to drive communications strategies.
Engaging (only) where we can have biggest impact: It is neither practical, nor often desirable, to engage in every conversation relevant to us in social. The temptation, and indeed the danger, can be to engage with the same people endlessly – either because we know they agree with us or that they disagree with us. More profitable would be to systematically analyse conversations to know where an intervention can have biggest impact, and where one is not needed. This is complicated and requires systematic analysis of conversations in social and what happens as these conversations develop. But overall we should shift from engaging with individuals who look ‘influential’ to conversations and places where a timely intervention can change opinions.

Overall, it is not that the way social media is being used in political communication is bad – there is some great activity out there. It is more that it is time to move on from using it to support and augment more traditional communications strategies and to innovate in ways that could bring transformative change to the way we campaign and influence.

The Foreign Office’s sensible, empowering social media policy

Matt — Sat, 12 Jan 2013 12:06:45 +0000

Many organisations still feel that one of the biggest threats to them from social media is what staff, customers or others may say on it. it isn’t. The biggest threat is really their not having a clear strategy for how they use social media (if they do) and what staff are and aren’t allowed to do. and the beat such policies tend to be more empowering than restricting.

One of the best examples of a pragmatic, empowering social media policy that I’ve seen was recently released by the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO). The policy is designed as much to encourage and enable staff to engage as it is to protect the FCO itself. And this is something many brands can learn from.

The guidelines themselves are clear and easy to understand (something too many are not) and there are three main things organisations can learn from them:

They recognise the value of social media: Any organisation that benefits from people, relationships or knowledge can gain hugely by encouraging staff to engage in social media. Be that for learning, finding and building relationships with peers or for adding to discussions and debates. The FCO is clear that social tools can be hugely beneficial to their aims and that it encourages staff to embrace them.
They understand that social is not always about talking: One of the biggest barriers for many people with social media is that they don’t personally want to talk or engage on channels. Not everybody does not should they. In encouraging staff to use social media, the FCO gives as much weight to listening and learning from discussions as it does to taking part in them. It provides advice on how to find and listen to useful discussions and says that as a minimum all staff should be benefiting in this way.
They are clear about what should and shouldn’t be discussed: In any organisation there are issues that staff should not be discussing publicly.

My quantified self: 2012 in numbers

Matt — Mon, 24 Dec 2012 14:28:09 +0000

Quantifying my year in 10 numbers:

1 New country travelled to (Vietnam)
2 Marathons run (Brighton and Edinburgh)
3 Trips to Glyndebourne (thanks @richardnolan)
18 Hours on the Reunification Express through Vietnam (arriving in Ho CHi Minh City)
19 Conferences and events spoken at (mostly about social media)
22 Books read (my favourite was Orhan Pamuk’s Silent House)
26 Hours my new sofa was outside in the snow (as I worked out how to squeeze it into my flat)
38 Olympic and Paralympic gold medals seen won live (half on Thriller Thursday)
282 Photos shared on Instagram (my favourite is this shot of Tower Bridge during the Olympics)
602 Miles run (all tracked on Runkeeper)

What were the numbers of your 2012?

How do you make client case studies truly engaging? Google knows how

Matt — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 19:55:14 +0000

For agencies and consultancies, client case studies tend follow the same format – they describe a problem that the client had, then describe in superlative detail how this problem was fixed and end with a quote saying how good the agency is. Some are more convincing than others, but they rarely make for interesting reading. Which is a real shame – the enthusiasm and passion is lost in the formulaic need to describe your products and services.

And this is a real disappointment.

Once great example of a good client case study at the moment is this Google advert in the UK for their Chrome product – showing how they have supported the Cambridge Satchel Company.

Whilst the production qualities are clearly very high, there are two simple ways that this works as a case study that we want to watch again and again:

It’s a story not a template. Brands need good storytellers, not content producers or writers but people who can tell a story. This case study from Google doesn’t follow the problem-solution template; rather it tells a story, taking us on the journey of business start-up to success. Stories are engaging and telling any case study as a story will immediately make it more interesting.
It shows passion not product. Whilst potential buyers want to understand the specifics of your product, the case study is not the place for this. Rather than labouring through the things that their products do (as you find in too many case studies), Google just show their product in action. They tell the key moments in the story with their product. This makes you want to find out more about what they do and explore more about them. It’s not about showing the detail of the product but sharing the passion.

Not many case studies that agencies and consultancies produce would make such great adverts. If they focused more on the story and the passion than on the template and the product then they might be more interesting to discover, and more successful for the people who’s services they sell.

Photo credit: Runaway on the Runway

What London 2012 taught us about creating a sense of community

Matt — Sat, 08 Dec 2012 13:03:53 +0000

There are many memories that those of us who experienced London 2012 will take from this year and many of these will be very personal. But perhaps an overriding feeling across all these will be the sense of community that pervaded the events and indeed the city of London during the Olympic and Paralympic Games.

On a personal level, the first sign of this community was early in the morning the day before the Games began. The Olympic Torch was passing outside my house and I stumbled outside to find that the usually busy main road was eerily quiet, and that slowly – alone or in small groups – the road was filling with hundreds and hundreds of people. We stood there, waiting, together, and after the torch procession had passed we quickly dispersed. But this time we weren’t in the small groups we arrived but chatting to people around us and sharing our excitement.

It was clear from this brief moment that the coming weeks would be rather special and would create a real feeling of community across London.

Much is said about community – both online and offline – but the truth is achieving a real community can be hard. How can you build a community among disparate residents in a street in London, or indeed between consumers online? The truth is often that attempts to do so fail to live up to expectations.

And the truth is that communities can be very simple to catalyse – you just need a true shared interest, passion or concern that people can mobilise themselves round. And this is why London 2012 left Londoners with that sense of community. Either from the feeling that deep down we all feared it things might not go to plan, and yet they did – we shared our fears and our delight. Or from a desire for a TeamGB victory that you shared with the people sitting near you as you watched – or indeed with 80,000 other people on some nights in the stadium. Or indeed from a new or rekindled interest in different sports and activities.

For a few weeks this summer, London became hyper-connected with people sharing passions and interests with others that they knew and that they would get to know. A real sense of community thrived.

So when you are thinking about building communities or mobilising people around an issue or cause you need to think about what can be learned from this. Find a powerful passion, issue or concern that people can share and the connections and sense of community can really grow.

The truth is that whilst this may seem simple, finding that true commonality is harder than you might think; and making sure you capitalise on any opportunities for community building is harder too.

Photo credit: mattlondon on Instagram

Help me to crowdsource a mini-break in New York

Matt — Thu, 06 Dec 2012 14:16:41 +0000

Earlier this year I wrote about whether people would crowdsource personal decision making; would they let others (including people they don’t know) help them to reach an answer to a personal question or design an experience for them. In essence I am interested if we would naturally behave in the way that brands want consumers to behave with them in social media.

Travel is an area that interests me here – when you travel for leisure it is typically an important purchase (in terms of cost and time) and so one you want to get right. Yet discovering new ideas and things to do is still difficult online – you can read reviews of places once you know where you want to go, but true discovery and inspiration is difficult. Which is a shame as it is an area where others have so much support to offer.

So to test if you really can crowdsource decision making about travel I am looking for some help with a trip of my own. I know where I’m going (New York) and when (early January) and I’ve already booked a hotel, but I have no more plans. I’ve been to New York a few times so am looking for new things to discover, places that tourists might not always go to as well as things you think I really shouldn’t miss (just in case I have).

I want to create my itinerary based on recommendations from the crowd.