1. Facebook scam plagues JB Hi-Fi

Yet another Facebook survey scam has hit Australia. This time victims, who don’t know any better, are being lured by the chance to receive $200 JB Hi-Fi vouchers.

Links are spreading like wildfire for the scam because the first step of ‘entering’ is to share a link with your friends for the competition.

It should come as no surprise that after this step, you’re told that you’re a winner. All you need to do is complete a survey to prove that you are human.

This is where the scammers make their money. They get paid for every survey that gets completed.

Remember, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

2. Mobile engagement on the rise

As an indication of the growing trend for users to engage with social applications via their mobile, we thought we would share some interesting insights gleaned from a competition we are currently running for a client.

The competition was released both as a Facebook application for desktop users, and a mobile enabled website. The competition is being promoted across a range of mediums to attract a broad audience. Because we autodetect the user’s device, there is no bias towards what browsing device the users need to use to access the application. So it might interest you to know that the current statistics are that 39% of all entries are being completed from a mobile device. While it is a limited data set, this would suggest that we are not far away from mobile accounting for half of all engagement with social applications.

However, if the objective is to encourage sharing, desktop users were twice as likely to use the share functions we provided and share the content with their network. 23% of all mobile users shared the link, while 42% of all desktop users through Facebook, shared the link with their friends.

Is this an issue of time on the device, or user behaviour? We would love to hear your thoughts on the subject.

3. Smith Family goes social

The Smith Family Christmas Appeal has gone social in 2011. The Facebook campaign goal is to demonstrate the impact on children who live in jobless families.

An interactive video app has been created that inserts you and your friends into the narrative. The idea is to demonstrate exactly what it feels like to be a kid living without the basics.

The charity said that while donations are key, sharing the message through social media and growing the community of committed fans on Facebook is the priority.

4. Marketing budgets set to rise in 2012

Aussie marketing budgets are predicted to increase by 3.5% on average next year, according to the Australian Marketing Institute.

Almost two-in-five marketers said they expected their 2012 budgets to increase by a whopping 20% compared to this year. Social media spending alone looks like it will increase by 6% across the board.

AMI chief executive Mark Crowe said: “Again we are seeing large budget variances across all sectors. However, overall a further increase in budgets is expected, which represents a consolidation of the strong growth that was experienced last year.”

“Online and new media not surprisingly continue to enjoy high levels of increased usage,” Crowe added. “However traditional media can also look forward to increased usage albeit not at the same level.”

5. Facebook ads get you emotional

Facebook have been selling different types of advertising for a while now and suggesting those that resemble status updates are more engaging than elsewhere online. This claim has now been confirmed by two studies conducted by Neurofocus and Nielson.

The studies used brainwave pattern analysis to determine how effective marketing messages are in different formats. It was found on all measurements (brand recollection, recall and resonance), that Facebook scored better on both attention-to and emotional engagement with the test ads. It’s strong emotional bonds, which have kept traditionalist spending their budgets on TV advertising; perhaps these new insights will sway a few budgets in the direction of Facebook.

6. When Twitter impacts TV ratings the most

Last year a report by Nielsen revealed that Internet buzz can increase TV ratings, recently Nielsen have released a taster of their research project measuring exactly how much Twitter impacts TV ratings.

Importance of different forms of Social Media varies through the lifecycle of a premiere:

Findings show that although social buzz can impact ratings weeks in advance, Twitter specifically has the most effect near to and during airtime.

7. Facebook roll out timeline and private messages

The new Facebook timeline has begun rolling out in New Zealand, and will be available globally in the near future. The redesigned interface shows users activity chronologically right back to birth. Once live, users will have a small amount of time to curate their older activities before it’s all readily visible.

On top of the new timelines, Facebook are also trialling Private Messages between Pages and fans. A seemingly minor update, but it will allow brands a chance to interact with fans in a more direct and individual manner.

8. Twitter gets a redesign and sets its sights high

This week Twitter launched their new updated user interface. The interface provides users a faster, simpler way to find out what’s happening around them and the news they care about. The launch added numerous features most notable the ‘discover’ tab, a tab containing useful and entertaining information customised for the user.

After the launch of the exciting new interface, our Singapore team noticed a few similarities with Sina Weibo. The similarities (and differences) help illustrate how social networking is fuelling great innovations and sharing best practise between them.

The update has also seen the addition of enhanced brand pages:

As part of this release, we are introducing enhanced profile pages that help marketers create an even more compelling destination on Twitter for their brands.

Now, your profile page does more to help you make an impression with a large header image for displaying your logo, tagline, and any other visuals.

You can also control the message visitors see when they first come to your profile page by promoting a Tweet to the top of your page’s timeline. This Tweet helps you highlight your most engaging and important content and better connect with your target audience. The Promoted Tweet on your profile page will appear auto-expanded so that visitors to your page can instantly see the photo or video content that you link to from your Tweet.

This page and the Promoted Tweet are both free of charge and publicly accessible for the whole world to see. Your profile page is your own – your colors, your logo, and your messaging.

These enhanced brand pages will offer a much more customisable experience for their fans, allowing them to present their best content on Twitter, and Ad Age have a great overview of how the launch brands are using their pages. However, as We Are Social’s Jim Coleman said to Econsultancy:

Users will only see these pages when they’re first deciding to follow a brand – so we can expect follow conversion rates to go up slightly, but the new brand pages will make no difference to brands everyday interactions with their followers and customers as this still all happens in the stream.

The intent is obviously to make Twitter more ‘sticky’. Twitter has long been envious of Facebook’s amazing average time on site figures, and this is their attempt to bridge that gap. These changes will definitely move the needle in the right direction, but the question is how much.

Not happy with just releasing a simple, easier interface across all platforms, Twitter have also announced their new total user goal; 7bn people. The changes to the interface should help fresh users get to terms quicker, and perhaps the sky really is the limit for this bird.

In other Twitter related news, an email from Twitter sales suggests the cost of a Twitter fan is between $2.50 and $4. The email discusses the benefits for brands as well as flaunting some enticing numbers such as the 15x increase in impression volume from Promoted tweets.

9. Isaiah Mustafa is ‘MANta Claus’

The well chiselled face of Old Spice is at it again with a promise to gift all 7 billion people on earth this Christmas. The video below is the first of many and gifts a ‘pair of high heeled lady shoes made out of necklaces’ to @beautyjunkies.

Other recipients include the city of Balitimore, 25 of his closest Internet friends and the whole country of Australia. Stay tuned to the Old Spice YouTube channel to see what he gifts the rest of the planet.

10. Wikipedia investigate PR firm for edits.

Wikipedia have suspended at least 10 accounts linked to PR firm Bell Pottinger for content manipulation. It has been said that the accounts were linked to positive statements being added and negative being removed from client’s pages. The main issue being that the firm was not disclosing their link to the brands, helpfully the founder of Wikipedia has offered to go into the company and give them advice on ethical editing of Wikipedia.