Is Social Media More Powerful than the Government?
Do you agree with the government’s Workfare scheme? If you’re against it, you’re in a tiny minority of ‘loony left’ activists, according to number 10’s half-hearted smear campaign to discredit its opponents.
Despite the Department for Work and Pension’s attempt to make us think only a small minority of extremists are against Workfare, there are people all over Britain from varying backgrounds who oppose the controversial scheme. Something isn’t working…
A Revolution from Below
Whether Workfare is good, bad or just plain ugly, it has highlighted two significant issues. The first is the shortsightedness with which the government, Tesco and other large companies embarked upon a scheme which was almost guaranteed to get people’s backs up, seemingly with no strategy in place to communicate the scheme positively.
Posted by Amy, 29 February 2012 , 10:45 am
Zeta Director Brad Fry Exorcises Google Demons on International News
Have you ever started to type something into Google, and spookily had the search engine’s autocomplete function finish the sentence for you?
It happened to me the other day – I wanted to find out why the moon is more visible at daytime in winter. I began to type ‘why is the moon…’ and was surprised to see that, as if by magic, Google seemed to have guessed what I was thinking – the rest of the sentence appeared in the search field before I had typed it.
I knew this must be something to do with Google’s algorithms and not an act of witchcraft – but then again, it was a dark and spooky night on a full moon – could it be that my browser was haunted?
Is Google Haunted?
Last week, our very own Brad Fry debunked the myth when he was approached by ABC News to comment on the search engine’s ‘psychic’ powers. The article gives focus to the amusing / insulting phrases that are generated when one types ‘Barack Obama is..’ into Google.
Speaking to the US news channel, Brad explained that Google’s search suggestions are not a result of mind reading powers, but in fact are generated by the things that other users around the world have been searching for: “The Autocomplete suggestions are not manually influenced by Google except in extremely rare cases”, Brad told them. “Google is a machine that reflects the activity of its users.”
To read the full article, click here
Posted by Amy, 27 February 2012 , 12:08 pm
5 Ways to Make Pinterest Work for Your Business
Last month, Pinterest.com received 11 million unique visitors, becoming the fastest site ever to break the 10-million-visitors-a-month threshold. If you compare Pinterest and Twitter side by side, Pinterest retains and engages users two to three times more efficiently than Twitter did at the same point in its history. Pinterest has been around for about two years, but it’s suddenly started to pick up pace – I’ve been getting to grips with the site to find out how the best way to make it work as part of your social media strategy. For those unfamiliar with the site, its concept is similar to that of Twitter. The point is to ‘follow’ people from all over the world – not just your real-life friends. However, instead of tweets, you follow user’s ‘pinboards’ full of images. more…
Posted by Amy, 21 February 2012 , 5:19 pm
8 Reasons why Online Video is essential in 2012
2012 is the year of the online video – fact. Businesses worth their salt are rapidly jumping on the video bandwagon, as it becomes increasingly apparent that it’s the best way to gain serious online presence.
Video is an incredibly powerful medium – much more engaging than text and images, which are viewed and quickly forgotten. If a picture tells a thousand words, a video tells the whole story. Actually, it’s better than a story. Video has the power to make your audience laugh or cry – helping your brands’ message stick in the hearts and minds of viewers and get shared across the www. And as any marketeer will tell you – triggering an emotional response in potential customers means you are tons more likely to make a sale or promote your service. Sounds cynical but it’s true!
Posted by Norman, 15 February 2012 , 10:30 am
Sex, Lies and Search Engines: Why Everyone is Wrong about Google’s Privacy Changes
Recently I wrote quite a scathing blog post about how Google is evil for tinkering with search in order to get its own social networking site higher up in results; thus ruining the internet for everyone.
The world’s favourite search engine has caused mass outrage again with its latest announcement - this time about changes to its privacy policy. My reaction to mass outrage is usually to take the opposite view because it’s fun to do so and also because it makes for a much more interesting read. So today I am going to argue that all these people up in arms about Google’s privacy rules are wrong. more…
