Social Soup #8 – SOPA Stars and Social Searches

It’s been a very contentious week in social, with a number of major sites blacking out for 24 hours on Wednesday to campaign as a protest against SOPA, the controversial anti-piracy legislation being considered by the US Congress. But it’s not all doom and gloom, with Facebook getting a Brazilian, Google outing its new tilt and roll Maps game and the gap between search and social becoming that bit smaller.

Shiver Me Timbers!

So, SOPA (or the Stop Online Piracy Act to you and I) stole the headlines this week, with critics saying that it’s the proverbial sledgehammer to crack a nut. The act itself is a preventative measure cooked up by the US congress to halt the spread of privacy by enabling the US government to instantly sever ties with any international server that hosts illegal content. Unfortunately, the completely ambiguous wording of the bill, coupled with the potentially crippling consequences for everyone living outside of the US, forced some of the biggest sites in the world to stage a ‘blackout’ day to highlight their disdain.

Google blacked out their logo, Wikipedia effectively shut down (and student dissertations strangely went on hold) and Reddit closed its doors for 12 hours.

Did it do any good? Well, according to the New York Times, supporters of the bill have been switching their stances all over the place and now the bill has an official list of 31 congressional opponents – just short of the 35 it needs to be completely scrapped . There was also over 2.4 million SOPA-related tweets posted on Wednesday. The internet has always been about bringing people together and the ‘c’ word (censorship) will inevitably rattle many cages, so the controversy is far from over.

Appy Now?

After much Twitter tittle-tattle, Facebook finally held a press conference to announce a whole host of new apps. You may already be familiar with The Guardian app, but now you can get familiar with an additional 60 services without ever having to leave your beloved Facebook page. You can now be seen to ‘listen’, ‘watch’, ‘read’, ‘pose’,’want’,’love’ and ‘become an expert’ in a whole host of interesting things. So far, the list includes big shots like eBay, TripAdvisor, Four Square and Pinterest with promises that the list will continue to grow over time.

Search Lite

Google has overcome yet another hurdle in its attempt to abridge the search and share process, rolling out a new Google+ feature that lets users start a conversation directly from search results. By searching for a keyword or phrase from within Google+, users can ‘join the discussion’ and contribute to a stream of comments spanning the globe. Expect to see this feature being rolled out to Google’s main search functionality in the near future.

Face up to Global Domination

This may come as a shock, but Facebook is not social top dog in quite a few territories. But at least they can now check Brazil off that list of stubborn resisters after new stats revealed Facebook has surpassed Orkut after a 192% growth spurt in the last year.

And finally...

Google Goes on Tilt

Google’s latest attempt to promote Google+ Games is a game which invites users to tilt and roll a ball through their neighbourhood as seen on Google Earth. Although not the most sophisticated of games, we think it’s a really nice way to engage users. See the full scale game below, and check out the ad over on Engadget.

John Paul Fox, Insight Executive, Yomego (www.yomego.com)  

#YomegoSocial @YomegoSocial @JohnPaulFox