Is social media responsible for cheating?

Is this the dark side of social media...making it easy for partners to cheat?  In an article I read, Facebook is being blamed for the increasing amount of marital breakdowns. Lawyers were claiming that in 2011 Facebook was cited in 1 in 3 divorces.

I found many websites claiming social media played a massive part in cheating. There seems to be a view that social networking sites make cheating easy using the benefits that people (innocently) love it for: the ability to connect instantly, connect to many more people than we would before social media, it's online and accessible anywhere & anytime and the ability to have a different persona online than in your real life.

With regards to cheating, I think another reason that cheating could prosper is due to the way a relationship can easily progress through stages, moving from it's soft and relatively innocent initiation through likes & comments, into discovering shared interests, into an open conversation via news feeds, then onto private conversations. It's at this stage that the danger can escalate, as the communication is no longer public.  The  final stage is to meet in person. Some would argue that if you were intending to cheat on a partner, this whole process is a lot easier than meeting someone in person in the first instance.

There are many websites and blogs that discuss how to tell if your partner is cheating using social media. These are some commonly claimed signs:

• Late or early night online sessions 
• A profile that doesn't match their true self
• A fake profile
• A profile page with little or no activity
• Passwords on everything 
• Lots of frequent and private correspondence
• A sense of happiness that is only seen when they are online. 
• Talk about their online friends more than their real friends. 
• Cutting off the monitor or shutting down when you are around

The website dontdatehimgirl.com goes as far as listing ways to catch your man cheating.

I have no doubt that there are a lot of people using Facebook and multiple other social media sites to cheat. I also believe that social media can make it easier for someone to cheat. However, I do not believe for one second that social media is responsible for cheating. People must already be predisposed to that behaviour. Responsibility lies solely with the person who cheats. Social media is merely a tool that people use for connecting with each other. Like anything else, this tool can be used for less than desirable means. After all, cheating has happened since the dawn of time. When email, mobile phones and text messages were invented they all provided newer and easier ways for cheaters to carry out their behaviour.

What do you think, is social media is responsible for cheating? Or does it merely facilitate it? I'd love to hear from you about this or any other thoughts you may have.

Spotify looks to brands and advertising for a viable future

Recently I read a great post about Spotify on 'getting my socialmedia on'. Anna talked about falling in love with Spotify after discovering everything it does; streaming music, sharing with friends, supporting artists and cleaning up your mp3 files. Anna also discussed how Spotify works with advertisers. In the first instance they use banner adverts which seem to be the same as any other site: boring and predictable. In the second part they partner up with brands and apps. Anna posed the question of whether this could only work with music related brands. Although music related brands would be the obvious choice, I thought there would be scope for other brands to work with Spotify. As long as it was done creatively and in a relevant way for consumers.

So I looked into this further and learned that Coca Cola is becoming an increasingly important partner of Spotify. Coca Cola is a beverage company but clearly they are positioning themselves closely with music.  Spotify provides the perfect platform to facilitate this because it is all about social, sharing and aimed at the young hip market yet still has mass appeal. 

In Australia, Coca Cola are running a huge summer promotion where they offer consumers access to the top 50 tracks from any of the past 75 years. Coca Cola will rebrand their cans and bottles with individual years from 1938 to present. Consumers can scan a QR code on the bottle and access the top tracks from that year. Consumers will also be able to nominate any of their favourite songs from Spotify which Coke will combine into ready-made playlists for Spotify subscribers. Coca Cola Marketing Director, Lucie Austin, told The Australian "Coke's history has always had a strong link to music and we thought music choices are an incredibly personal thing. Also, people connect over music, people share it, they talk about it."

You can see the obvious benefit for Coca Cola by partnering with Spotify which gives them access to a revolutionary music platform. You can also see the benefit for Spotify. If the worlds biggest brand wants to be involved with you, then it should provide you with mass exposure, revenue and a degree of confidence. On the point of revenue, Spotify's biggest challenge at the moment is to create profit. While the growing investment of advertisers is helping them get there, Spotify say it is vital to convert a larger portion of free users into subscribers to ensure viable economics for the business.

In an effort to achieve this goal, Spotify are launching their first ever outdoor campaign in the UK. The campaign is called 'The mood of the nation'. What I love about their campaign is that it uses the Spotify service to gauge the mood of the nation through the music they are listening to on Spotify.  The billboards will reveal the regional variations of each cities listening habits.

Let me know if you like Spotify? I'd also be very interested to hear if you've seen great examples of brands working with Spotify in a much more creative way than banner adverts?

Sex or Facebook??

Don't worry, you don't have to answer that. However, in a Daily Mail article, referencing a recent study by Chicago University's Booth Business School, it is claimed that checking Facebook or Twitter is more tempting and harder to resist than sex or cigarettes. These findings emerged from an experiment using smart phones to track the subjects cravings and desires over a 14 day period. "Desires for media may be comparatively harder to resist because of their high availability and also because it feels like it does not cost much to engage in these activities, even though one wants to resist," says Wilhem Hofmann, lead author of the study.

I don't believe that people are making a choice between the two. It does highlight the addictive nature of social networking sites, but that won't be news to anyone.

So, what about if we didn't think of social media and sex as mutually exclusive? After all, social networking sites are all about relationships and connections. Maybe 'sex' is too strong or emotive a word to use but certainly there must be plenty of flirting and sexual or romantic relationships on a site such as  Facebook?

I recently came across an app that taps into this insight extremely well. The app is called Slipperfits. It is designed to help people become more than just friends with the Facebook friends they are secretly attracted to. This is how it works:

1.    Create a 'Hotlist' by selecting any of your Facebook friends that you might want to be more than just 'friends' with.

2.    Slipperfits lets them know they have a secret admirer but won’t tell them who.

3.    Slipperfits invites them to create their own 'Hotlist' and if they select you too then they tell you both, if not then your secret stays that way.

Check out the short promo video which explains the app well:

I think it is a great idea and could be really popular with high school kids and maybe with uni students too. Do you like this app? Do you think it will be successful?

A day in Phuket

In my previous post on Muz Buz, Social Media on the beach anyone? ,  I discussed my realisation of how much social media plays a role in travel. I focussed in particular on Trip Advisor and I shared my first ever review on the site. The review made me feel like I had contributed a little something back to the travel community from which I had previously benefited from through social media.

However, I still felt I owed the Karma tree something a little more meaty. I decided to create a video/photo montage depicting a day in Phuket and upload it to Vimeo. It was my first experience editing photos and video so I apologise for the low production value.

Please check out the video and let me know what you think. I'd also love to hear from anyone else who has loaded something onto Vimeo or YouTube. Do you have any tips for an amateur?

A day in Phuket from Murray Raeburn on Vimeo.

Social media on the beach anyone?

On a recent holiday to Thailand, I suddenly realised how major a role social media plays in travel today. I realised that social media became involved as soon as I decided I was going to plan a short break.

Before I even had a clue where I was going to go I put a call out on Facebook asking for any recommendations. I got loads of responses. Who doesn't like talking about holidays after all?! When the suggestions came through I asked my friends a few questions based around the criteria I had. I then clicked through holiday photos of my friends who had suggested destinations I liked. This gave me a great sense of what their holidays were like. A 1000 words in a picture and all that.




TripAdvisor played one of the biggest social media roles in my travel experience. It started in the search phase. After I had a few destinations in mind I used TripAdvisor to find out more about hotels. A word of warning, before you sit down to start immersing yourself in the world of user generated reviews, make sure you have a few hours to spare. Or some may argue, don't even start! The reason I say that is because there are often hundreds or thousands of reviews and curiosity can get the better of you, tempting you to read way more than needed. It can also be very frustrating because you don't normally get the clear picture you were hoping for. For the number of people that love something or somewhere there are usually many who feel the complete opposite. But at this stage we are talking about unfiltered reviews by anonymous users. How relevant are they really?

One way TripAdvisor addresses this question is by allowing you to filter results based on demographics (Families, Couples, Solo, Business), date, rating, language or key words. Or for the ultimate in relevant peer reviews you can filter by your Facebook contacts.

I decided on Phuket as my holiday destination. Once I had arrived there, TripAdvisor again played a key role by helping decide where to eat out of the thousands of choices. I found lots of great options to eat and visited a few but the one I want to talk about is Cafe Siam. This cafe caught my attention for two key reasons. Firstly because the reviews were overwhelmingly positive, especially considering my earlier comment about the contradicting views you so often get. Secondly, a number of the reviewers raved about the amazing owner. They said she was helpful in recommending things to do in Phuket, prices you should pay for things, where to eat and lots of local hidden treasures.



It was decided, we were going to Cafe Siam for an indulgent breakfast and hopefully some local intel. I was successful with both objectives. It was also at Siam Cafe where I had the moment of realisation about how important social media is when you travel. Although I have discussed a bit about Facebook and TripAdvisor I also spent a lot of time looking through Youtube holiday and tourism videos, checking out reviews on other sites, and reading blogs about the best flight deals I could get.

After reflecting on this I began thinking how much I had depended on and used these sites yet I hadn't given anything back to the social media community. I also thought about how great the owner of Cafe Siam had been providing me with loads of useful information about Phuket, that as it turned out, significantly enhanced our holiday.

I decided to address both these points by creating my first ever TripAdvisor review. I thought this was a great way I could share something back with the TripAdvisor users and also show my gratitude to the Cafe Siam Owner, Sheryl. Below is a extract of the review I wrote or please click here to go to the website and see the full version.




How have you used social media for travelling or holidays? How do you think businesses can use user review sites to better to market themselves?

P.S Look out soon on YouTube for my video documenting a day in Phuket....

JT brings sexy back.....to Myspace 3.0

Myspace first launched in 2003 and became the first mega social networking site. During it's hey days 2005-2007 it was the most visited social media site in the world. During 2006 there was even a period that Myspace was more visited than google in the US.

However since then Myspace has experienced significant decline in users, revenue and ultimately value.  The peril of Myspace were largely due to incredible rise of Facebook. While Facebook remained independent,  Myspace commercialised and became hamstrung to Google and advertisers. This resulted in far too much advertising that invaded users space and made the site slow.  Facebook truly surpassed Myspace on all levels sticking with a simplistic, sleek and consistent design while continually innovating.

Fast forward to late 2012, bring on Justin Timberlake (co-owner) and this is the new myspace.....

Myspace claim to have started from scratch. The new site looks significantly improved from the original or the subsequent revisions. It has lost the over-engineered, customised and cluttered interface. It is now rich with images and sleek, sexy, simple design. Myspace has firmly cemented it's core proposition as music & artists. This is actually where Myspace started from almost a decade ago. Many people may have forgotten but it was Myspace who launched the careers of some of todays well know artists including Taylor Swift, Lily Allen, Fall Out Boy & Arctic Monkeys to name a few.

Another interesting point to note about the new site is that with it's renewed focus on music and artists it appears to not be competing directly with popular social networking sites such as Twitter & Facebook. In fact, you can log into your myspace page with your user ID from either of these sites and then transfer all your contacts over.  Just because myspace is focusing on music does not mean it has overlooked the functionality of current leading social media sites.  Myspace appears to have incorporated the very best parts of Facebook, Twitter, Spotify, Pinterest, YouTube etc Perhaps this is an indication of bigger things to come?

Based on what I've seen so far of the new Myspace, this is the best attempt they've had so far. The use of images, video, content and overall design looks amazing. The first step of the re-launch looks like it will certainly create all the right hype. But there are still a lot of questions that need answered. Can the proceeding steps be done well enough to re-popularise Myspace? Can JT make a difference? Can they attract the right kind of artists to build the site with innovators and early adopters before launching to the mainstream? I think these are marketing questions and with the right kind of marketing they are very achievable.

However, I think the biggest questions will be about the product itself. If Myspace is to become the mega a site it once was I believe it has to provide a solution to multiple social media needs, not just music. But music is great as their core proposition.....it's universally appealing! I think Myspace needs to be as good or better at social networking, sharing photos, videos and interesting web content to really make it big. I hope it can, because personally I'd love to see what that looks like and I need my social media world to start getting simpler.

Does anyone else think Myspace 3.0 can do it? Or let me know if you think it's had its day in the sun.

TV is finally socialising!

WARC recently reported about brands such as Levi & Monster testing out social tv apps to help them connect with consumers in an environment of blurred and integrated media

The app they have chosen to use is Showyou, which recently became open to advertisers. Showyou is an app that gathers all your videos shared from friends through Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc and houses them in one personalised viewing platform. The other key feature for Showyou is that you can now easily comment, thank or share any of your videos though Facebook, twitter etc. It’s ideal for people who are overwhelmed by the amount of video content on the net and what to find the most relevant and recommended video for them. It’s also great for the social aspect. People can now easily let others know what videos they are watching.

Showyou

When I first thought about the brands running video commercials on the site I thought it sounded like another example of boring & unoriginal advertisers placing the same old content in a new popular media space. However, Levi is planning on running 30sec commercials, which they claim will be engaging, and original content. They want to use the site to find out what stories and their viewers find more interesting and news worthy. This is what changed my mind. I realize the content served really does have to be interesting and original otherwise Showyou viewers simply wont click on it and the advertisers will be wasting time and effort. In a sense viewers really will have the power to influence what type of content is show supporting the content that provides them with value and ignoring the content that doesn’t.

There is a different kind of social tv app that I stumbled across which I really like. The app is called PEEL and it collects tv shows and movies from multiple sources such as Live TV, your DVR & Netflix and houses it in the app. Once Peel knows what you like it will recommend other shows for you. You can also share what you are watching and find out what friends are watching. You can add comments and ratings too.

PEEL

Peel taps into the trend of media multi tasking in a brilliant way. Using the latest season of American Idol, Peel integrated a feature that allowed users to tap the screen in order to cheer or boo contestants continuously through each performance. Each contestant and Judge is then given a rating based on your input of cheering and booing. After the voting is done all the users results are tallied in a leaderboard.

 Techcrunch.com

You can also immediately download the song through iTunes. The app is not officially linked to American idol. However, if Peel gets the formula right, you can imagine the TV networks would seriously consider the opportunity to partner up. This could significantly increase the potential of the app and engagement with audiences at home. I can envisage a show that ingrates home audience ratings into the result of the real show. Perhaps studio audience vs. home audience? The potential is huge and it is a brilliant way to change the dynamic of tv as simply a broadcast medium.

What do you think of the concepts of Showyou & Peel? Can you think of other applications for this type of customization or interactivity?