Social Media – Page 6

February 22, 2013February 22, 2013

In memory of where we’ve been: New Zealand’s #eqnz tweets

I wrote this two years ago, as the Tweets of the Month from the month of That Quake – and as posterous, where it was hosted, is closing down, I thought it should be kept.

February 2011: There’s something wonderful about the Kiwi spirit. We’re opinionated, bulshy, and have awesome senses of humour. And given the terrible events of the last week, that sense of humour has done us proud.

Here’s to you, New Zealand, you funny, amazing people.

nasstkVEVO I’d like to personally thank the U.S for sending 960 Portaloos to Christchurch. When things turn to shit, we know we can count on you
Tarquin_Death The bottle of ‘earthquake vodka’ is getting low. Almost time to open the earthquake rum! Not sure the earthquake is a good influence on me.
securitygalnz No power/water = no bathroom cleaning, washing, ironing, vacuuming, car cleaning or mowing lawns = silver lining to #eqnz
Kiwi05 Only in NZ would the mayor describe the broken sewage system as “seriously munted”
harvestbird The dogs assembled around me and the bush toilet at dawn, as if to say, we knew you’d join us out here one day.
richirvine Everyone, make sure you hug + kiss your partners and kids tonight. Not your flatmates though, that leads to dark places.
brianedwardsmed Just heard – from total stranger on Twitter – that my daughter and family are ok. He went round to her house for me . Kindness in bad times.
JohnJCampbell Dear Christchurch, and all who love that city, what can any of us say, except we’re carrying you in our hearts.
NZTopModelColin As always, be considerate of someone more vulnerable than yourself. Strength is multiplied when the burden is shared.
LitaNZ We are all family, no matter where we come from and our backgrounds. WE WILL get through this. WE WILL stand as a nation again!
nathanknz These shakes just keep coming. Every time I feel one I can’t help but think what it must be like for those amongst the rubble.

benkepes Hope. Pure and simple

This person (a complete stranger to me) responded to a tweet of mine. I was trying to locate the mother of a friend in the UK. She actually went round to his mum’s house and then tweeted me that she was fine. You can imagine the relief of her son after waiting over 24 hours and hearing nothing. Just awesome. – Marg

February 13, 2013February 13, 2013

Is bigger better when it comes to Facebook pages?

Are you a social media/community manager who struggles to determine what a “good” Facebook page metric is?

It seems that the only number people are really looking at is “likes” – as if that means something really important in this day and age of Facebook algorithms, reach and “people talking about this”. It’s essentially like looking at Twitter follower numbers, but not how many replies or RTs an account gets… And we all know likes can be bought.

I’d noticed a trend for a while – that despite Facebook page growing like numbers, the “talking about this” number didn’t really climb, and the percentage of fans talking about the brand dropped!

So I decided to investigate. Here’s my very unscientific method:

I picked a range of pages, mostly from NZ and Australia and a few from the US that:

had between 1,000 and 500,000 fans
had posted in the last week
were ‘official’ pages, not fan pages

and I cross-examined ‘likes’ with ‘people talking about this’. Here’s what I found:

Even as the number of fans grew, it was rare to see the “talking about this” figure go over 15,000. Here’s what the same data looks like when you change the scale:

It’s not that you’d expect a page of 500,000 fans to have 500,000 people talking about them – but why is it so low? Maybe if I had a bigger sample of pages sized 300-500k, I would have had more outliers.

Lets look at ‘talking about this’ as a percentage of fan numbers. I’d expect this to stay reasonably constant, but…

I know it’s difficult to infer from a small sample size, but maybe this is a trend – that when a page gets bigger than about 140,000 fans, engagement slips below 10%. I thought it might have something to do with people not wanting to have their say when a certain number of others are – the old “what’s the point of me saying something when 1,000 other people are”.

Is there are critical mass for Facebook conversations?

Some caveats:

n=200
Pages may have been running promotions and ad campaigns which skew the data
Also note, I looked at many more pages that had <200,000 fans – simply because there is more of them.
I am not a statistician and have not run any of this via a researcher. That doesn’t mean my data is bad: Just that I’m putting this out there as a thought starter.

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February 3, 2013February 8, 2013

Best Tweets: January 2013

Compiled by Vicky Rawhiti-Forbes

As it should be during summer holidays, we spent a great deal of the past month drinking. Then we went back to work and watched cat videos. One generous tweep shared extracts from her teenage diary, and we may never look at Oprah the same way again. Here are January’s tweets of the month.

Bottoms up
@BenQuigan I’m too drunk, too many waiheke
@nikkitheknitter I’m at the stage where it feels appropriate to finish other’s abandoned glasses of wine at the table. #weddingettiquite #quitedrunk
@AshleyCnz Shingle Peak says its new 500ml bottle is “perfect for two”. I think it’s misspelled one
@DanniiGardiner So I just woke up handcuffed to myself. What happened last night #hensnight
@annemjw Signs the person you are hanging with may have had A Night? Powerade-blue tongue.
@Robbo_Junior I’m having fruit salad for lunch. It’s mostly grapes. All grapes actually. Fermented grapes. Ok, I’m having wine for lunch.

Face, meet palm
@beanbiz Read the ‘rinse just before use’ label on the blueberries. After demolishing them all. Do I drink a glass of water to now to clean them?
@TroyRF Mum: “How do we cremate a frog?” Brother: “Do we put it on a toothpick?” Decision: Burial. #FrogRF
@RachelRayner Watching cat videos. Ad: Are you single? Meet men near you! Shut up, YouTube, stop judging my choices.
@TophHooperton Something huge with a lot of legs crawled across my bed and then Kaiser Soze disappeared before I could fight it. #hyperventilating
@pinkdeedle I just dried myself with a tea towel after a shower. Must do washing.
@CyrisXD Person is typing…Person is typing…Person is typing…Person is typing…Person is typing…Person: Hi.

Like a boss
@MeghanMutrie Slow clap to Oprah’s team for figuring out how to get men to openly watch Oprah.
@CateOwen Bought a bunch of those naff stick figure car decals and have been slowly adding to the neighbour’s collections. Only God can judge me.
@hamish_keith Someone knocked on the door and asked what did I think the “personal name of Gd was?” I suggested Fred and they went off in a huff
@EstherStephens_ Dear neighbours. If your shit music is loud enough for me to shazam and establish what bullshit you are listening to, IT’S TOO DAMN LOUD.
@kittenypentland Tomorrow I am going to go up to a bald man and ask him if his carpet matches his drapes. I suggest you do the same.

Kiwi as
@cathmarygeorge Sat next to some Americans at lunch who were quite disappointed that the kiwi burger at McDs here didn’t have actual kiwi in it
@JennySuo My mother on the NZ Police force: “They don’t even get to use guns! They run around with those tweezers instead!”
@kirsty_johnston You know, when the early settlers nicknamed Russell “the hell-hole of the Pacific” they’d obviously never envisaged Waitakere District Court

The diary of a teenaged tweep
@BoganetteNZ happened upon a diary from her teen years. We spent the evening glued to Twitter while she quoted gems from her journal and added comments from her older, wiser self.

“Mum told me to fuck off 2day. She is such a fucked whore of satan slut bitch cunt. I’m going to kill her, steal her pills and sell them”
Oh Jesus. “MY FUNERAL: play Dolphins Cry, bury me with my Marlborough lights, party at K Bar afterwards, red coffin please” LIVE? LIVE?
“I love Jax so much I can’t even breathe my lungs are made of water. Fuck my mum is a whore. I hope she dies.” Who the fuck is Jax?
“I am actually having the best week. Other than my mum being a fucking whore. I want to stab her every day”
“We are going to the beach today!! I got a new bikini I look ok. Better than that fucking whore Gemma. Also I got a kitten! So cute”
“I am so in love with David” Let me guess…David gets a hand job? I’m like Oprah. You get a handjob! And you get a handjob!

This month’s winner of some delicious cider is @BenQuigan. Thanks, Old Mout! Make sure to follow them: @OldMoutCider.

And thanks to Cate for putting her baby in my care this month. What a fun way to start the year!

Cate’s note: I hope you’ve all enjoyed Vicky’s sweet tweet choices, and thanks again for all your nominations – I couldn’t do this without all of you! I have enough guest editors to see us through to August, so I’ll put another call out in the middle of the year. If you’d like to be a guest ed, keep your eyes peeled for that.

January 23, 2013January 23, 2013

Facebook’s Open Graph Search: A user’s first time

Today I got my Facebook account upgraded to include the new Open Graph Search – a function that allows you to use information which you and your friends have uploaded to Facebook, as well as info supplied by Bing, to find what you’re looking for.

This is what the start screen looks like:

The search starts refining as soon as you start typing.

And when you’re already on a page, it defaults to this view, basically allowing you to search the page, and dig a little deeper.

You can also put qualifiers directly into search – I asked Facebook to tell me TV shows my friends like, and this is the results display.

Clicking on that “other TV shows” link starts you down the rabbit warren.

Open Graph Search also groups activities such as location checkins, as demonstrated below.

This shows me where my friend Jesse has been lately. I can filter it down from here.

You can search groups of friends, too. Below is an example Facebook provided during its guided tour – here are some of my friends who went to the same university as me. I can then drill these down with filters.

Another nice function is the display of photos you’ve liked. Previously these would disappear into the ether, but Facebook now displays them for you. Not sure why I liked that Justin Timberlake photo. Don’t judge me.

Much ado has been made of the potential dating aspect to the new search. I started by looking for single friends of friends. Here are the options Facebook gave me:

And those can be drilled down to:

So if you wanted to see friends of friends, who worked where you do, in the same city, and single… you can.

In a nutshell, if you want to keep using search in the simple way you always have, you can. And if you want to get into some serious stalking, you can. I don’t doubt it’ll be confusing for some people, and we’re yet to work out any of the algorithm (How much do likes, or does Bing come into it, I wonder), but I think this could be very, very interesting.

It’s easy to use, and fast, too. I did notice, however, that a few pages that previously appeared first for me were appearing last, or not at all.

I think a lot of people will be shocked by the sheer volume of information Facebook has on it – but remember, it’s all stuff you’ve given it. I’m yet to work out whether Facebook uses implicit data to draw conclusions about things like hometown and marital status, but either way… Where to adjust your privacy settings.

December 30, 2012

NZ in 2012: As told via Twitter

2012. It was a strange year. A year we, as a nation, ran out of Marmite. A year we watched people in lycra chuck stuff and run fast for shiny necklaces. A year where ANZ finally put the NBNZ horse to sleep. A year we rocked the classiness harder than ever before.

There was Valentines Day
ErinNoName I was just given a bottle of codeine and a box of tramadol. That’s a valentines day gift, right?

A road rule changed
robtreacher Starting Sunday, Kiwi motorists will be giving the finger to other turning traffic with the left hand and not the right.

Kim Dotcom happened
KimDotcom You heard of this guy who was nailed to a cross, came back from the dead & launched a cool movement? Mega is kinda like that 😉

We watched the Olympics together
rhysiedarby BBC commentary: “The NZ rowers are a little rough around the edges.” – yeah that’s how we like it. We’ll wait for you at the finish bro.
katie_skatie Oh, & Olympics Gods… thanks for making weightlifting terminology so fun. “In her snatch” is the best! Followed closely by the clean jerk!
TophHooperton THROW THE BALLS YOU BEAUTIFUL MASSIVE LADIES
snappy_nz New Zealand now top the medals per exploding barbecues at fan bases table.

#marmageddon hit!
evilkud As long as Hamilton exists their will never really be a lack of yeasty spreads in NZ

There was another Batman movie
Nightwyrm It’s okay that I’m not wearing pants while repeatedly watching the new Dark Knight Rise trailer, right? No-one on this train seems to mind.

Aaaand there was a Hobbit movie
kebabette The only way I could be more bored by The Hobbit is if it starred Kim Dotcom, Dan Carter, and a big jar of marmite.

The Shopping Channel launched
damianchristie The shopping channel reminds me of a game where you give someone a bunch of P then get them to talk about some crap they found in a drawer.

The Target guy fapped
VinLew Clean a stain, make a stain, clean a stain, make a stain
_victoriajayne_ Is he watching videos of girls staining carpets?
hello_im_megan After all is said and done, I was impressed by a man multi-tasking

We said goodbye to The National Bank
cjlambert quick other banks! *cue rolling thunder switch campaigns #blackhorsedown

Movember!
TwitOnTourNZ Planning My Movember Gala outfit… Question, How long does it take to grow eyebrows back?

Christmas happened, again.
And I did a whole post about it.

Bonus: The best of Stay Classy tweets
lmfbs Is a DIY brazilian a terrible idea, or simply a bad idea?
jessepeach Taught my parents to use Skype tonight. Then my dad tried to squeeze a pimple on my mother’s face. I really don’t think they get it.
pinkdeedle Accidentally pashed a dog. Long story. Bull mastiff.
JaneYee Superman may be able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, but I can catch baby vomit with my bare hands.
JaredNeilsen Glade has ruined walking in parks! The smell of fresh cut flowers now reminds me of restrooms
mikokiko Hey snobby lady. Ohakune called. They want their carrot back.

Thanks for another year of awesome, Kiwis of Twitter.

Read more:

December 29, 2012December 29, 2012

FAQs about Tweets of the Month

Here are answers to some of the frequently asked questions I get about Tweets of the Month.

How do you pick who appears in TOTM?
Thoughout the month, I keep an eye out for tweets that are either really funny, or really poignant. People also nominate tweets they enjoy. I make sure they meet the criteria, cull it for size, and then publish. Sometimes I’ll ask guest editors to do it on my behalf.

What is the criteria for TOTM?
You need to be in NZ, or be a Kiwi abroad. Sometimes I’ll include infamous tweets about New Zealand. The other important note is that the tweet has to make sense outside of context – i.e. it doesn’t work to read an in-joke out of context a few weeks later.

The tweet also has to be ‘alive’ at the time of publish – if the author deletes the tweet, I won’t publish it.

How can I nominate someone?
The best way is to tweet me a link to the tweet you want to nominate. I prefer to not have the nominee cced in just in case the tweet doesn’t meet the criteria or make the cut. Failing that, you can send me the tweet. Thank you all so much for your nominations – even if I don’t use them all, I appreciate them all.

Can someone with a private account be nominated?
Yes. I’ll ask their permission before I publish the tweet.

Can I get a tweet removed from the list?
Yes. Just send me a message.

Do you only pick your friends?
People nominated include a mix of people I know, and people I don’t. I don’t care if I know the person or not, I don’t care if they’ve been in every single TOTM before. In a nutshell, if the tweet makes me laugh or think, and it meets the other criteria, it’ll probably be in there. I’ve followed some amazing new people thanks to other people’s nominations.

How long have you been doing this for?
Since 2009. You can read my first TOTM on the blog it started on.

How do you get the prizes?
Companies sometimes approach me, asking to partner on TOTM. I figured it would be nice to give a treat to someone, so that’s why y’all get some goodies. They have no say on the editorial content of TOTM.

Any more qs just hit me up in the comments.

December 26, 2012December 26, 2012

Best Kiwi Tweets of Christmas 2012

Happy holidays, everyone!

The People of Twitter didn’t let the silly season get to them. Much.

There were gifts
robtreacher I now have incredibly sexy underwear. All I need now is a wax job and 6 months in the gym…
Sportzfreak Those 1000 things to do / see / hear / visit / cook etc before you die books make great gifts. But not for the elderly

We watched some TV
AnnaGConnell Mum and are watching ‘Kendra On Top’. Mum seems to know a lot about her.
TophHooperton ‘To my brother, the richest guy in town’. You may now commence sobbing like a middle aged divorcee. #ItsAWonderfulLife
rarahsobson I am so emotionally invested in this one direction tv documentary.

We ate some food. Mostly Trifle.
joesomething_ Trifle for all meals.
MoataTamaira Trifle breakfast, round 1 underway.
AnnaCoddington At Christmas time your second helping of pudding better be AT LEAST as big as your first was.
dane_0k I’d like to throw a baby shower for my food baby

We drank a little
allstarangel In hindsight six shots of sambuca in six minutes was not the brightest idea I’ve ever had.
_HannahTweets_ I am clearly the drunkest of my family right now because I just sang happy birthday to baby Jesus as “grace” before we ate.
Rageaholic_ I’m about to put the code thing on my phone ….#crhishmis
Stitchpunk …,,a bit sozzled, just quietly..which not stop me having more when we get home….
unstatusfactory Christmas made me drunk.
VickyRF Eggnog is made! Everything from this point on may be a blur.

We had interactions with whanau
toryhipster Cousin’s boyfriend calls himself the Timinator. Fuck. Send help.
Rose_Matafeo “So, have you seen any good film recently” – actual conversation I tried to make with my 3 yr old nephew
hakiclark You’d be proud of me. Uncle asked how I was, told him. “I’m all for counselling” he says. “Tell me how it goes”. So that was unexpected.
Tenani I feel like at Christmas everyone tweets about how weird their family is & in doing so realises since every family is weird none of them are
mattdeevee 1.5 hour Skype session with the family in NZ… 4 generations sharing Christmas at the same time on opposite ends of the world. Priceless!!!
kathadu Wearing a top that is entirely inappropriate for Christmas with the ex. Oh well. It fits and it’s comfy. Merry Cleavage everyone

It was hot
karenhurley 830pm and haven’t started cooking Xmas dinner yet. Too damn hot. Poor kids been surviving on carrots & corn chips.

Some weird stuff went down
I_Am_Artemis My chicken has the right idea, she is fast asleep in the tree.
ashleigh_young Just passed a bunch of people having their Christmas lunch in the middle of a roundabout. Picnic table and umbrella and everything.

And there were some adorkable grinches
MattTaylor HAPPY HALLOWEEN
guywilliamsguy So many people have wished me a “Merry Christmas” this year, I’m feeling a lot of pressure to live up to such high expectations!
terror_nz Goddamn I hate Christmas. Which Santa was never born.
blendy All the boxing day sales emails coming at once are making it easy to unsubscribe from all the annoying mailing lists I’m on.

Enjoy the rest of your holidays, New Zealand. And for the first time ever, I’ll let Brad have the last word!

Kiwi_Chatter Ngā mihi nui mō te Kirihimete.

December 5, 2012December 5, 2012

The worst Facebook updates of 2012

So many people and brands are now gaming for Facebook “engagement” that it’s ruining the platform for a lot of people.

Luckily, not too many of my friends fall for this stuff, but plenty of people have friends who do, so here’s a selection of the more desperate attempts to raise page awareness.

Lets start with this one.

No, I’m going to let my mum die. She knows it, too.

Because spamming your mates with crap always makes you lots of money, right? And cos magic.

Well played.

I liked this four times. It was heaps of fun. Changed my life.

The old “vote with a like or a comment” spam. Also if you don’t vote you obviously hate your country and won’t get any pavlova, which totally puts a dampener on my plans to finish an entire one by myself on Christmas day.

Not pictured: The “one like=one dollar donated” spam, and the “leave your password in the comments to see what happens!” spam.

DON’T FALL FOR THIS CRAP.

December 2, 2012December 2, 2012

Best Tweets: November 2012

Time for the best Kiwi Tweets of November! There were a LOT of nominations this month – it’s great to see some fresh faces amongst our regulars! Thanks to everyone who messaged me your favourites.

Parenting Tweets
‏@harvestbird Based on a sample set of two, everyone is teething. You, clearly, are teething. Those buildings there are teething. This desk is teething.
@bobsyauncle I love this time of year & being able to invoke “Santa’s Naughty List” blackmail
@MsKateMcD 7 yr old daughter opens birthday card from grandparents, finds generous birthday cheque. Looks at it, bewildered – “what is it?”
@jamesotron Just rang the phone in the kitchen to tell the 8yo to get dressed so I didn’t have to get up
@delphijunkie Miss 14 is at home studying today. Apparently Spongebob is on the curriculum this year
@CherylBernstein “I always eat the gingerbread man’s head first, Mum, because otherwise he has to watch himself die, which is a bit mean.”

That New Zealand feel
@Atomic_Moog Yes, the Black Caps are playing on Sky Sport tonight RT @lisalooloo70: Is there a Sunday horror?
@BexieLady “I don’t sleep with guys in their cars, the boys I sleep with don’t have cars!” Oh Christchurch, full of great comebacks and class.
@shazndolly when I woke up it was all Trelise and sunny. Now its cloudy and Glassons 🙁
@kebabette The only way I could be more bored by The Hobbit is if it starred Kim Dotcom, Dan Carter, and a big jar of marmite.
@Dovil Hekia Parata should finish off each set of meaningless ramblings with a flourish of jazz hands and a canon shooting glitter.

Stay Classy
@Sidawg2 Saw someone flip the bird to a passing car today and then immediately walk into a pole
@oldmannato I was bringing sexy back this morning, but I didn’t have the receipt and now I’m stuck with all this sexy
@pinkdeedle Got stuck in the toilets at restaurant. Had to text for help. A screwdriver was used. I got a free dessert.
@sonyamanchiraju “Welcome to the family. Here’s your deworming tablet.” – Early days with mother-in-law.
@ryansallan I do NOT recommend chopping chillies then handling genitals….
@BitchAboutDevoWhen i play monopoly i always end up going directly to jail. Maybe its because I’m black?
@antsgardiner I would like to use the same PR agency that dolphins use. Those dudes are badass, calculating, killers, but everyone loves them
@Paj8 In from milking to find note saying “at neighbours having a wine” This usually means takeaways, drunk wife and potential #boomchuckawowowo
@lmfbs I’m on the same pee schedule as another lady from work and I think she thinks I’m stalking her in the toilet.

Movember!
@TwitOnTourNZ Planning My Movember Gala outfit… Question, How long does it take to grow eyebrows back?
@beanbiz There should be a Movember where people who have grown disgraceful moustaches in the past get sponsored not to grow a mo.

Digital Life
@j20r Just got called a “cat googler” on Facebook like it’s some kind of insult
@katemilkshakes The elderly man next to @badtom and my table after dinner: “oh, you don’t need a photo of your glass of water too?”
@Sportzfreak NZ Twitter has been at its best in the last half hour. Ask where some obscure sportsman went to school and half of you know him / his dad.
@CyrisXD I’m changing my Gamertag to “a baby panda” so when people kill me, it’ll say, “You killed a baby panda.” and everyone will hate them.
@KendallForbes Sometimes the “similar to you” twitter suggestions are a little offensive.

This month the Old Mout Cider has to go to @TwitOnTourNZ for all his fantastic work with Movember – Angus raised over $6,000! Well done, mate. Enjoy the cider – you really deserve it.

Just as an aside, I’d like to say a big THANK YOU to websam for all the amazing work he’s done on NZ Secret Santa. It’s been a huge effort on Sam’s part, and an awesome thing to be a part of.

November 16, 2012November 16, 2012

Facebook blocked me for something a co-admin did

Last night I was using Facebook when the platform automatically logged me out. When I logged back in, I got a message that this was my second warning for posting material that violated Facebook’s policies – namely that I or someone who co-admins a page I manage had left a comment that was against community standards. I had a 24 hour ban.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but I had been banned from Facebook for something someone else had posted.

So what did the co-admin post that saw every single page admin booted out, and me banned? A racist idiot had taken to the page, posting vitriol. It had upset the community, and a page admin, in a manner befitting the brand, called the person a “racist nut sack”. Someone must have complained, and we all got booted.

I’ve seen people say much worse. I’ve seen entire pages set up to harass and hate, have complained to Facebook and been told it doesn’t warrant removal. This makes no sense.

As you can imagine, working today has been problematic. I can log in, but not do much.

You know what else is bad about this situation? Trying to get help from Facebook. I go to the “learn more” section, am advised to lodge an appeal.

“If you did not posted…” #engrish

Meanwhile, if you click on the appeal link, it takes you here:

That’s right: It tells you to go back to the help centre. Where you will advised to lodge an appeal. Where you are told to go back to the help centre.

So page admins be warned: You can and will be punished for comments made by co-admins, even if that admin is telling someone off for offensive content.