PLoS and Mendeley recently closed their Binary Battle contest to build the best apps that make science more open using PLoS and/or Mendeley’s APIs (Application Programming Interface). There are some big names on the judging panel, such as Tim O’Reilly (coined the term ‘Web 2.0’), James Powell (CTO of Thomson Reuters) and Werner Vogels (CTO of Amazon.com).  The entries have been whittled down to 11 finalists and the winner will be announced on 30th November 2011. Read on for details of some of these finalists or go here a full list: http://dev.mendeley.com/api-binary-battle more…

Google+ Pages were announced on Monday, allowing companies of all sizes to post updates about themselves and their products or services. Similar to Facebook, people who follow a Google+ Page can comment on or share the company’s posts, creating running conversation threads. However, businesses can also set up Hangouts where they can chat directly with potential customers.

more…

Google started rolling out the ‘+1’ recommend button across its own portfolio and third-party web sites just a day after Twitter unveiled its new ‘follow’ button. Both releases are being viewed as direct competitors to Facebook’s popular ‘like’ button.

Central to an effort by companies to stake out their claim in the social-networking domain and encourage ordinary ‘surfers’ to be more engaged with their products, the tools also facilitate the collection of detailed user behaviour data and have obvious benefits for online advertising. The suite of Web 2.0 buttons featured on most websites has grown steadily over the past few years (you may well have noticed) and sites like Digg, StumbleUpon and Reddit are long-term residents. But the success of Facebook’s ‘like’ button has spurred others to get in on the game. Afterall, it is said to appear on more than a third of the 1,000 most popular websites and apparently the average media site integrated with Facebook has seen a 300% increase in referral traffic. more…

The annual Technology for Marketing and Advertising exhibition took place this week at London’s Earls Court, bringing together some of the UK’s leading Internet marketing innovators. Amongst more than 200 exhibitors, keynote speakers included Facebook’s UK commercial director, Stephen Haines, and Nic Cumisky, Google’s Senior Industry Manager.

Impressive statistics

The keynote speeches were dominated by startling statistics.

• 124 years of Angry Birds are played every week.
• 40 % of all Tweets are from mobile devices.
• There were 2.4 billion UK internet visits to social networks in January 2011.
• Facebook is now the second most visited site in UK (after Google) – every 6th page viewed in the UK is on Facebook.
• On Christmas Day 2010, Facebook traffic exceeded Google traffic for the first time ever.
• On average, we pass 3,254 pieces of personal information into databases each week.

Interesting trends

Microsoft and Experian teamed up to discuss a number of trends that are sweeping the online realm. Social networking users have now surpassed email users. Demographically, younger internet users often only use email when communicating with adults. When speaking with their peers, they prefer to use social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

Robin Goad from Experian Hitwise (a proprietary software that Internet Service Providers (ISPs) use to analyse website logs created on their network) revealed clear profiling patterns in social media usage. By cross-referencing this information with Experian’s Mosaic consumer classification data, they were able to identify a trend for more affluent members of society to use Twitter, whereas Facebook is much more mainstream and skews towards the upper working class.

Emerging technologies to keep an eye on

• NFC (Near Field Communication) chips were described by Google as ‘bluetooth on steroids’. NFC allows a device, usually a mobile phone, to collect data from another device or NFC tag at close range. In many ways, it’s like a contactless payment card that is integrated into a phone. In other ways, it’s similar to Bluetooth, except that instead of programming two devices to work together, they can simply touch to establish a connection.
• QR codes can be scanned and read by anyone with a smartphone, just by clicking their camera. By scanning the codes, you can access images, websites and text. QR codes allow for more data than the standard 10-digit bar code and scanning requires less effort than typing a URL. Click here to view some novel uses of this technology.
• i-Ads – AXA have recently released the first i-Ad, which integrates newspaper advertising with an iPhone. The video below explains the process in more detail, but the gist is that you come upon an engaging picture in print and are asked to place your iPhone on a blank space on the page which brings the story to life, and keeps eyeballs on the i-Ad for a full minute.

• Third life – It is becoming increasingly hard to determine what is offline and online. Google and many others are in the process of seamlessly combining the real world and the online world into something entirely different. Industry experts predict that we will soon experience an indistinguishable mashing of our real physical first life and our second virtual life into a ‘Third Life’. Both General Motors and Ford are integrating augmented reality technology into their windshields so that GPS directions will be layered on to the road in front of you, along with directions to your local Burger King or HSBC branch. A car has even been released with voice-activated Facebook newsfeed updates: watch a demonstration in the advert below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seKnxwzF2DU

Facebook has once again been busy redesigning its site, this time focusing on the fan pages used by brands, organisations and specialist medical journals! The Facebook page makeover essentially makes Facebook’s public pages look more like personal profiles, which themselves were redesigned about two months ago .

So what’s new?

Facebook pages, like their profile counterparts, now show a line of photos at the top of their main wall (see screenshot below). For pages, these photos include any images posted by the page owner.

Aside from that, page elements are shifted around a bit: the navigation area, which allows you to toggle through different tabs, is now on the left-hand column of the page instead of the top. The other update Facebook is adding is an “Everyone” filter that brings the most interesting and engaging posts from a page’s community to the top of the page.

The posts displayed on the wall are now filtered through an algorithmic process similar to what’s done in the “Top News” option on the main Facebook stream. Previously, posts were shown in a purely chronological order.  This makes it easier for users and admins to easily find the most “liked” and commented-on conversations on a particular page. The new Facebook Pages are also smart enough to filter out posts that are not in a language you speak.

New social media links on our journal sites

By coincidence, new Facebook and Twitter links have also gone live on each of our journal websites. As mentioned in a previous post, each of our journals has a dedicated Twitter account and Facebook fan page, where users can keep up to date with the latest Editor’s choice and Unlocked articles, podcasts, blogs and mentions in the press. These accounts are now directly linked to from the right-hand column of each journal website (see below).

Users can either navigate to an individual journal website to access the Facebook and Twitter pages, or they can use this central list of all journal social media accounts:

https://group.bmj.com/products/journals/social-media

We’re pleased to announce that individual Facebook fan pages are now live for all our specialist journals. Click on the links below and become a fan of your favourite journal! Please scroll down the page for more information on the functionality and value that these pages offer.

• Acupuncture in Medicine
• Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases
• Archives of Disease in Childhood
• BMJ Case Reports
• British Journal of Ophthalmology
• British Journal of Sports Medicine
• Drug and Therapeutics Bulletin
• Emergency Medicine Journal
• Evidence-Based Medicine
• Evidence-Based Mental Health
• Evidence-Based Nursing
• Frontline Gastroenterology
• Gut
• Heart
• Injury Prevention
• JAMIA
• Journal of Clinical Pathology
• JECH
• Journal of Medical Ethics
• Journal of Medical Genetics
• Journal of NeuroInterventional Surgery
• JNNP
• Medical Humanities
• Occupational & Environmental Medicine
• Postgraduate Medical Journal
• Sexually Transmitted Infections
• Thorax
• Tobacco Control

What are Facebook fan pages?

The world has never been so connected as it is today. The internet has reduced the usual ‘six degrees of separation’ to just one or two. Colleagues can interact with friends and family, old friends get introduced to new friends, and family members can keep in touch with all of your associates. Nowhere does this kind of social activity occur more than on Facebook. After all, Facebook is not just for keeping tabs on friends and filling out quizzes – it can also be used as an effective business tool.

Facebook and networking

Facebook is what you make of it. It can be a serious professional tool, a place for fun and entertainment, or a combination of both. Ultimately, you have control over what you add to your profile and with whom you share it. As more and more ‘adult-users’ join Facebook, the possibility for connecting to others with similar professional interests increases.

Many professional and academic organisations have a presence on Facebook and the roles they play on the social networking platform are as varied as their types.  While some serve to organise individuals from a large geographic area (alumni groups), others are location specific (Association of Women Journalists in Chicago) or event specific (charity walks).

According to Facebook, 85% of college students use Facebook. Following the saying ‘meet them where they are’, database developers and other educators are creating academic and scholarly applications for Facebook. For example, PubMed Search allows users to search PubMed within Facebook, share articles with friends and save them to their account for future reference.

Is this really a suitable and sustainable source of business opportunities?

Social networks can be a great way to extend branding and create a community around an organisation.  Facebook groups and pages provide an identifiable canvas for users. They can be marketed with ease, and they can create a ‘human’ touch to a product. Taking a laid back or personal approach to a Facebook business profile could help generate unsolicited interest.

However, there are inherent dangers with taking a more relaxed approach to marketing. Organisations should always remember not to mix personal and professional views and to restrict the amount of data which is shared with external applications.

For those of you who are new to social networking and would like some background information, the video below provides a useful introduction:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6a_KF7TYKVc