Social Soup #9: The rise of Karp, and a few red herrings

This week, Bayern Munich’s ‘new signing’ missed the target, while Tumblr’s David Karp netted in front of record crowds. McDonalds scored an own goal on the same platform that launched a censored version for China. All in all, it was a pretty busy week in social, and we’ve got it covered in our weekly serving of Social Soup.

Social-Bowl

Super Bowl XLVI organisers have realised the power of social media and the help it can provide in dealing with the madness that comes with managing the world’s biggest annual sporting event, by creating a 2800-sqaure-foot command centre in downtown Indianapolis. Advanced search tools and analytics will help the team identify fans in need of help by indexing key words and phrases. So if you’re looking for advice on where to park, where the best attractions are located, or you’ve set a fire whilst tailgating, just tweet for some help!

Booked for diving

FC Bayern Munich angered fans this week with a social media stunt that failed to hit the net with the club’s followers. Promising the unveiling of a ‘bomb’ striker, the Bundesliga leaders prompted fans to like its Facebook page to learn the identity of the new star player in a live press conference. Fans tuned in to find the clubs director of sport hosting a realistic-looking press conference. However, when it came time to break the news, a piece of paper was turned round showing the profile picture of the user watching the video. If that wasn’t bad enough, the club retaliated to the backlash by claiming the reason behind the video was to highlight that ‘Every single FCB fan is the ‘spectacular new signing! Our 12th man!” Stick to the on-pitch antics Bayern!

Tumbln Along

Tumblr’s CEO David Karp took to the stage at the Digital Life Design conference in Munich, not to announce a ‘new signing’ but to announce the site reaching 15bn monthly page views, and 120m users. Despite the resounding success, Tumblr’s revenue was quickly questioned. Alongside custom themes, David stated it was ready to launch Google Ads, but how will this affect the site’s appeal, as it remains one of the few popular platforms to be virtually ad free.

#McFail

I can’t quite imagine this is what McDonald’s had planned when it promoted its #McDStories to the top of the Twitter trends list at the start of the week. What started with #MeetTheFarmers, a campaign identifying McDonald’s hard-working suppliers, turned bitter when the fast food giant changed the hash tag to #McDStories. Its 24-hour campaign was cut short as negative stories came rolling in…with even Peta getting a slice of the action. What next for McDonalds? Let’s remove #McDStories and leave #MeetTheFarmers…dear o dear!

Tw...er

Following in the footsteps of Google, which created a censored version of its site specifically for China, Twitter has introduced country-specific censorship of tweets, meaning that it can withhold content from users in a specific country – while keeping the same content available to the rest of the world. This is an example of Twitter’s continuous attempt to expand the platform into countries where freedom of expression isn’t so culturally acceptable. Even with such restrictions in place, do you think Twitter will be able to coexist with countries where severe internet censorship is rife?

And finally...

Meet the Obamas

Barack and his family aren’t ones to shy away from social media, particularly as it played such an instrumental role in his 2008 campaign victory. This year, shortly after Michele’s introduction on Twitter, Barack announced he would be ‘hanging out’ with voters using Google+, a platform where he has already amassed 314k fans. The president’s annual report to congress was streamed online, while the best questions from his Facebook, Twitter and Google+ fans were answered by the president himself. You can view Obama’s entire state of union address on his YouTube channel. See the most popular clip below.

Last but not least, Yomego has teamed up with Marketing Magazine to present the 'Social Brand Tracker'. The weekly feature analyses some of the current movers and shakers in social. Each week we will look at a different brand, assessing their performance over the past three months. This week, Europe's second biggest tour operator, Thomas Cook.


Mark Stuart, Insight Executive, Yomego (www.yomego.com)  

#YomegoSocial @YomegoSocial @MisterMumble