A new client currently has a profile, which they actively use, and a Group. However, I wonder if this is the most effective way of marketing their company, besides which, having 2 searchable profiles (group and page) is confusing to the searching user and hard work to maintain.

I am proposing they focus instead on a Fan page.  However, with more than 2500 members of the group, moving away from it is a big decision. Or is it?

I have started investigating the pro’s and con’s of a Page, against a Group, and I am still convinced that, for a business with ongoing activity, a Page is the better option.

• A Page is Open: once a person “likes” the page, updates will then appear in their News Stream. The only way for Group members to find out what you are doing is for you to invite them to an event or message them. Many people are now event and message weary on Facebook.
• Cross Promotion: a persons activities within  a Group are not posted onto their wall – so other people are not exposed to the group or it’s activities. A fan page, however, is open and Likes, Comments etc, appear on that persons wall. This leads to free promotion to their friends.
• Easier to join – like buttons on sites etc automatically add people
• Clear message – Groups can turn into a free for-all with random people posting random things on the wall. The Group messages are then lost in a sea of irrelevant chat. A Fan page allows the reader to pick JUST the page owner, or page owner and others. The message is more focussed.
• Remote posting/monitoring – You cannot post to a group remotely (from a 3rd party programme like Hootsuite or Tweetdeck, only a Page) For round the clock management and monitoring, a Fan Page is easier to monitor, along with Twitter and other accounts, from one location.
• Analytics: Fan Pages come with detailed analytics of members, interactions, quality of posts etc so you can monitor how your page is doing. Groups do not have this luxury.

How to make the jump:

1. First thing is to HIDE the profile – we still need it as a base for the new fan page – but we don’t want more people to join it.
2. Launch a fan page, Anyone now searching for the product will find the Fan Page NOT the profile – this is what we want.
3. Promote the fan page on the Group and  the profile page encouraging people to LIKE
4. Place a button on every page of the website/other social networks, which people can simply click to “like”
5. Phase out activity on the group but continue to advertise the Fan page
6. Close the group.

It may seem like a risky move but the effort currently going into promoting through the group, which people are not reading, interacting with or mentioning on their own site, seems wasteful.

Authority 2.0 (Birmingham City University, 28 April, 2010) was a fascinating event, organised by the MA Social Media students to investigate how the UK’s police forces should be using social media, AND to discuss some of the very real problems today’s photographers face at the hands of officers in this age of terrorist suspicion.

For me the panel discussion, 2 photographers (@KarenStrunks and Christian Payne (aka @Documentally) and 2 representatives from West Midlands Police (CI Mark Payne Force CID and Inspector Ian Grundy, Counter Terrorism Unit), was the highlight of the day by sparking a series of interesting debates about freedom of access, how the police handle the public and training of their officers.

The discussion started with a, quite frankly, horrifying video recorded by an anonymous photographer as he was subject to some very unecessary harrassment, first by a Community Support Officer, and then by a police officer, as he tried to take pictures in the street. Accused of being “suspicious” and being ordered to give his details, there was mention of “terrorism” and an eventual arrest, which ended in release 8 hours later.

If this is as commonplace as it seems, then I am right behind photographers in their fight for acceptance among the police force – and, give them their due, the officers present at the event were just as keen to see a closer relationship. Unfortunately though, these senior members of the force are as likely to have to deal with a suspicous photographer on the beat, as they are parking in Livery Stret Car Park in Birmingham and NOT getting a ticket (in joke, sorry).

Instead, the message that people with cameras in the street are NOT necessarily scoping out a terrorist target, needs to be filtered down to the officers on the street, the Community Support teams and the private security firms – all of whom have been accused of bothering snappers in the past.

Karen Strunks also highlighted that current poster campaigns asking the public to be vigilant and report anything suspicious has turned everyone into a wannabe Jack Bauer eager to challenge even the most innocent of activities.

But surely terrorists ARE walking the streets armed with SLR’s sussing out the best angle for attack? In reality, probably not.

West Midlands Police admit they now use Google Earth and Street View to check out a property before a raid, instead of sending officers or the helicopter – it’s easier, and a hell of a lot cheaper. So why would your common-or-garden terrorist be any different?

It seem, however, that officers on the streets are sadly behind the times, and sometimes out of touch with modern developments. And is it any wonder? Many forces refuse to allow even their communications department onto Twitter, and bobbies on the beat do not have access to the internet whilst they are out and about (although West Midlands Police are looking into Android phones to solve this problem). Particular mention, however, to CI Mark Payne who DOES have an official Twitter account, which he uses for both professional, and personal tweets.

The discussion also revealed some more interesting developments being investigated by the force, including a website where the public can upload pictures to help them solve crimes.

However, it seems we’re still a way off yet from the “police online” levels reached by the force in Beijing who, as we heard during an earlier presentation. They have designed a cartoon officer who moves across your computer screen with a friendly warning should you venture into forbidden web territory – and judging by China’s current attitude towards content – the poor guy must be exhausted.

So in this social networking world we find we have more contacts than ever before. The number of names in a PR’s Facebook and Twitter account now outnumber their rolodexes or filofaxes 10-1, and it’s easier to contact them all to get the message out there.

Spend any time at online-friendly events, Tweetups, social media cafe’s and the like, and soon you will have friend requests and follows coming out of your ears.

Back in the day, a journalist would boast of a mighty contacts book stuffed full of MP’s and councillors, music stars and agents – and having an “in” with these people was worth something, but do contacts have the same worth today?

A regular criticism of social networks is the erosion of the word “friendship”: I call him a friend, yet I may not speak to “that bloke I met in Manchester 2 years ago” ever again. Does 1000 friends on Facebook equal the personal mobile phone numbers of half the Cabinet? Of course it doesn’t. It’s simply a numbers game – the more the merrier.

I am seeing more and more examples of people, employed by companies and being expected to use their personal social network accounts to promote the product. Are companies employing people because of the size of their friends list? Should we be expected to USE our friends, for our employer?

I admit I am guilty of using my personal social networks to promote my DJing work, but I feel this is acceptable to a point as it is “ME” doing it .. but recently I was asked to promote an 3rd party event through my own accounts. I balked slightly, reluctant to thrust this event onto my friends, relatives and acquaintances, and limited it to my “music” network instead.

By the very nature that some people will use their friends as social (and business) currency, does it prove the point that contacts ain’t what they used to be?

Table of contents for I Phone Apps

1. iPhone Apps: search
2. iPhone Apps: news

Continuing in my series of posts about my favourite apps, I move onto …

NEWS

I currently run 2 RSS readers on my phone. I struggled to find one that could accommodate forwarding to 2 different Twitter accounts.

iNEWS PREMIUM (£2.39) (Itunes link)

I am a big fan of the iNEWS interface – it is fully customisable, so if you are a white-on-black text girl like me, then so be it!

I use this app by importing my Google Reader feed. Unfortunately it does not sync – which under normal circumstances would be a pain. However, as I run 2 RSS readers (one for journalism and tech stories – the majority) and another for music news this “flaw” is actually quite useful. I have deleted the feeds from this reader that are not relevant to me, and it does not affect my Google Reader feeds or the other RSS app I use.

The app can check for new feeds when you open it, it even “bings” at you when the update is complete. The app also informs you how many unread items you have with a number next to the App icon, which, depending how high that number is, can be a good or a bad thing!

The list of Feeds is very clear, with ones that have unread items highlighted for quick viewing. The rest lurk in a shadowy haze, so you can skip them. Click on a feed and it takes you do a list of articles

On this screen you can also scroll down, and see all the articles in all the feeds, which can get confusing at times because it is easy to miss the fact that you have moved into a different feed.

There is also the option to read the article in full.

In full article view, there are some useful share tools:

• Mail
• Instapaper
• Read It Later
• Twitter
• Twitter with Comment – you can edit the text that goes out
• Facebook
• Delicious – via a link at the BOTTOM of the article (a pain if you don’t want to read it straight away).

There is also the option to Favourite, jump to the next or previous article (both carry red numbers to show how many unread articles there are in the current feed and in which direction they are), plus the option to go back to the full list of articles.

There is a handy counter at the bottom, showing you the number of unread articles in the current feed. Another feature is SLIDESHOW, which is fairly self explanatory and if, like me, you tend to skip some articles, this is a great device to MAKE you read the introductory text to an article – time-consuming, but good for the soul.

There is also another option to view the feeds in a “newspaper” style (left), with each feed it’s on box. I don’t really see the point of this, it does not show you how many upread feeds to you have. Pro mode is much easier to use.

iNews is a clever gadget, but for me lacks one facility – to read articles in order of posting. All the feeds are sorted into Alphabetical Feed, not date. This would be a great addition!

8/10

MobileRSS (£1.79) (Itunes link)

Mobile RSS was originally my secondary RSS reader, linked to my CarolineTheDJ twitter account – but the fact that this feed can SYNC with my Google Reader account, has promoted it to top dog over iNews.

The interface is fa less pleasing than iNews, and it lacks many of the features I gushed about above, however, it is a simple reader that gets the job done.

The opening screen shows a list of your feeds, with numbers of unread items next to them. Click on the feed, and you head into a list of all the articles available, with a “show new” or “show all” option.

Another button allows to you Mark All as Read or sort by oldest.

In full article view there are a range of options:

• Full Screen – which places shadowy buttons across the bottom of the article for navigation.
• Mark
• Favourite
• an RSS button – not quite sure what this does!
• Share.

The share button is customisable in the App options with the following options:

• Share with Note
• email
• Twitter
• Facebook
• ReadItLater
• Instapaper
• Delicious

This is a very clean and useful RSS reader, and if it allowed more than one Twitter account, it would definitely have scored full marks

9/10

Table of contents for I Phone Apps

1. iPhone Apps: search
2. iPhone Apps: news

After jumping into the iPhone apps world with both feet, I thought I’d run through my favourites. Watch our for more posts in this series.

SEARCH/RESEARCH

Google (free) (Itunes link)

I am a big fan of the Google app. Not only can you search by typing, but there is an incredibly clever and effective Voice Search tool, which has never let me down. Tell it what you want to find, and it will do it (useful if you are browsing on the move and can’t quite get those words typed in as you walk).

There is also an APPS button, giving you weblinks to all the useful Google gizmos and gadgets, Mail, Calendar, Docs, Talk, Tasks, Reader, News, Notebook, Photos, Translate, Maps, YouTube and Earth.

It would be helpful if there were also links to the iPhone apps, but you can’t have everything!

9/10

Google Earth (free) (Itunes link)

Anyone who has used Google Earth on their PC or Mac will know that it is a very intuitive and useful tool. By using your location, it can pretty much find any business you want and display the results on a map. Perfect for those last minute errands! From this you can access the website, call them or head straight there.

However, the one down side is that Google Earth does not double as a SatNav. I’ve found my business, now I need to go there – I have to type the address into my SatNav (either on my phone or my old school NavMan). If Google Earth could team up with a SatNav company, then it would be full marks from me.

7/10

Wikipedia (free) (Itunes link)

Image via CrunchBase

The Wikipedia App is actually a much better interface than the Wikipedia website. The search is faster, and the pages open already minimized into section headers so you don’t have to endless scroll down through information you don’t need.

There is also the option to view the page on the full Wikipedia site, although I am not sure why you would want to!

10/10

IMDB (free) (Itunes link)

Ok, so this is a specific search tool for MOVIES, but how many times have you been out and about and needed to settle an argument about who starred in which film with so-and-so and Kevin Bacon?

Like Wikipedia, this app is so much better than the full webpage. It opens on a screen showing a search bar and several options

• MOVIES
• TV
• PEOPLE

And shortcuts to

• MOVIEmeter
• STARmeter
• New on DVD and BluRay
• History

Plus ABOUT and SETTINGS

The search bar is obviously incredibly useful, and I don’t find the MOVIES, PEOPLE or TV buttons useful as they link to US listings and celebrity trivia.

The search, however, is fast, easy to navigate and an actor quickly brings up a list of his best known movies, mini biog and a link to his full filmography, whilst “movies” pages show star rating, a few photos, release date, genre, plot summary and top billed cast and crew as well as trivia and links to explore more.

Great for settling those annoying arguments with your friends!

7/10

First, a quick look at how the story was handled in 2 very different newspapers.

Using the ManyEyes Word Tree visualization, I copied articles from The Guardian and The Daily Mail to see how the name Huntley was handled, and which words followed it in the articles.

Can YOU guess which visualization belongs to which newspaper?

Report 1 was The Daily Mail, report 2, The Guardian. The Soham Murders were a very “Daily Mail” story,  and highly emotive and accusatory language was used. The Guardian’s report was more factual.

I was also interested to assess the reaction to the story on the social networking site Twitter.

For sake of experiment, I created a spreadsheet of all the tweets mentioning “Huntley”. (I chose Huntley over “Ian Huntley” so the search would not be limited to the more formal tweets from news outlets etc. I hoped “Huntley” would give a more casual, public point of view.

• I opened a new Google Spreadsheet
• I inserted the following code in A1 – =importfeed(“http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=huntley”, “”, “”, 20)

This created a spreadsheet of the last 15 tweets containing the word Huntley.

I now have the option to use this spreadsheet in a variety of ways:

• cut and paste the tweet contents into a web application
• export the document as an Excel file
• publish the spreadsheet
• create an RSS feed from the spreadsheet

Now to visualise the text.

First, I decide to use Wordle – a site that created word clouds from inserted text, or an RSS feed.

I initially used the RSS feed from my published Google spreadsheet  – which created the following word cloud.

Unfortunately, this cloud was tainted with user names, and the subject of the true gist of the tweets were lost

(MTF)

NEXT:

• Still trying to nail LIVE data ..
• a quick news report (recorded and edited on Iphone)- probably from The Computers show on Wednesday night
• a podcast

More on this story:

• Soham murderer Ian Huntley attacked in jail (guardian.co.uk)
• Soham killer Ian Huntley’s throat slashed in prison (telegraph.co.uk)
• Ian Huntley attack: the Soham murders (telegraph.co.uk)
• Huntley back in jail after attack (news.bbc.co.uk)
• Huntley attacked by jail inmate (news.bbc.co.uk)

It’s taken over the old space left vacant by the departure of Borders Books, so there is certainly a lot of space!

To be honest, I was expecting a museum style tour of the show, the science behind it and the characters. In fact, it’s way way better than that. The exhibition lets YOU become a CSI investigator. There are 3 crime scenes, which you study, take notes and then go into various labs to try to solve the crime … and there are things you might miss to be meticulous!

Oh, and if you solve the crime you get a certificate to prove you are genuine geek! (which, it appears I am)

This is a really interesting exhibition, and a lot of fun … check out the pictures and a video interview below!

Slideshow

Created with flickr slideshow.

Video Intevew

I am the owner of a perfectly good (despite the reports) Sony Ericsson Satio mobile phone. The 12 megapixel camera (and other gadgetry) means the picture quality of video recording great for still interviews. The only downside, is the audio.

1. the internal mic is terrible. It is useless for interviews, and makes the subject sound like they are down a mine
2. the handsfree kit mic records excellent quality sound, but it gradually falls out of sync with the video.

Option 1 is, well, not really an option. 2 is “get-roundable”, if I have got 2 hours to spend muting the video, adding the audio as a sound file on a separate track in something like Movie Maker, and then edging it back in sync every minute or so. So much for a fast turnaround.

I have considered using the phone for the video (because it is so good) and getting a good digital audio recorder, then sticking the two together elements, but again, not incredibly practical.

So, begrudgingly, I am going to have to fork out for a handheld mini video recorder.

Thanks to a great blog post by @Podnosh (here) it seems to be between the Flip Ultra, Flip Mino, the Kodak Zi8 and the Zoom Q3.

I quickly ruled out the Flip MinoHD s it seemed all glitz and not much punch (and doesn’t take AA batteries). I spend my life battling against power. There are never plugs when you need them and to rely on main power (especially at festivals, where I will be using the recorder) would be foolish.

The Flip UltraHD, on the other hand, seems more practical on the battery-front but no external mic, something that is useful in noisier environments.

For better sound, the Zoom Q3 is an option – these guys know what they’re doing with sound, BUT there is still no external mic option – and I’m worried that at a distance, the audio will be lost

The Kodak Zi8 DOES have a plug in mic option but it is not compatible with Windows Movie Maker and needs some faffing around so it can be edited. I don’t really deal well with faff. This is putting me off. However the Zi8 does come with some useful features, including a imagine stabilization, face recognition, good quality video and stills so maybe I can forgo a smooth set up fora good finish.

Or maybe phone, Kodak AND laptop will end up out of the window. Tune in to Twitter later to find out …