Digital Bytes

Facebook advertising driving users 'insane'

Research carried out by Facebook on behalf of Kyp Systems has shown that social network users are becoming increasingly irritated by online advertising. 

The biggest gripes include invasions of privacy and being targeted with irrelevant marketing, but the majority of frustration was reserved for pop-ups ads, with 90%* of the poll voting them as the least trustworthy format.

Social networks are arguably one of the most effective tools to target specific types of consumers, but for agencies the challenge ahead is continue to connect with users but in a less obtrusive manner.

* 800 users between 13-49 surveyed

Source: Brand Republic

Are Swedes Europe's best social networkers?

Are you a creator, critic or collector?  Do you know your blogs from your RSS feeds?  Internet research firm Forrester has released a report looking at the key social networking habits of Europeans - who uses what, when and how.

The report looks at consumer engagement with social technologies and profiles them using 6 levels of participation - from complete lack of engagement to heavy engagement in original content creation.  Click here for the levels.

The report also looks at behaviours by country, citing that Sweden has the most active audience and Holland the most creative.  The UK comes out top in the participation stakes with 21% of the population using social networks compared the 13% in Europe as a whole.

Find the whole report (for a mere £140) here, or for a summary of key points click here.

O2's 'Little Blue Book' goes live

O2's new web portal launch, Bluebook, is giving a platform for customers to publish their 'mobile lives' online.

Users will be able to automatically save pictures and text messages before editing and displaying content in online albums that can be viewed and shared by others.

Blueblog will allow O2 customers to creative interactive diaries using photos and messages saved directly from their handset.

As O2 makes it's social networking debut should every brand be considering starting an online community?  Bluebook does after all provide a service that enhances and pulls together user's lives, but is it simply just another branded network site?  And what 'extra' does it give us that the Facebooks, MySpaces and Bebos of this world don't?

O2 users find out for yourself here if you haven't already...

source: BrandRepublic

Social networking ‘becoming entertainment of choice’- research

Source: net imperative

We've already reported on some research from MySpace in terms of looking into what kind of 'social networkers' you find on MySpace, here's some more info that came out of the same research:

New research from MySpace reveals social networks are now so integral to daily life, for some, they have surpassed the TV as the entertainment media of choice.

Nearly half of 18-24 year old social networkers (45%) told Future Laboratory researchers that if they had 15 minutes of spare time they would choose to spend it on social networking sites rather than watching TV, reading, talking on their mobile, or playing video games. The impact of this trend is so significant that a quarter (25%) of respondents state that the rise in social networks has decreased the amount of traditional television they consume. Other changes in behaviour amongst respondents include:

• 43% increasing the number of emails they send and receive

• 25% increasing their use of instant messenger

• 22% decreasing their use of video games

Facebook: slow and unresponsive?

Source: Mashable.com

Contrary to a recent study that showed that Facebook is among the most reliable social networks, new study conducted by WatchMouse shows abysmal results for Facebook. 104 sites were monitored by WatchMouse, and Facebook was by far the worst performance-wise: it had slow loading times and frequent errors.

Social networking types revealed

Source: BizReport

Research was recently commissioned to identify the types of users of MySpace. The results revealed six distinct types.

Previously undetected categories of MySpace user have been revealed in the results of extensive research commissioned by the social networking website. As well as identifying with various tribes, users also fall in to one of six personality types.

More google news – this time on social networking…

I’m not sure how many of you are aware of Orkut, Google’s social networking site, but the very fact that I’m asking if you’re aware of it indicates the little scale that it has over here.  However, Google weren’t going to sit back and miss out on the huge opportunity in the social networking phenomenon - and hot on the heels of missing out to Microsoft in buying a stake in Facebook, they have released an open system called OpenSocial, enabling web developers to create applications for social networks that are interoperable and essentially avoid fragmentation of an important part of the web.  They have already partnered with about a dozen sites including Friendster and LinkedIn with more partners to be established I’m sure.  There's an obvious upside for them, as they can gather rich behavioural data but it also could offer quite a nice upside for members of multiple networks and could establish some strong competition to the Facebook.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119379738547577212.html?mod=e-commerce_primary_hs%20-%20google%20openspace

http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.san&s=70217&Nid=35883&p=469010

Facebook applications to earn up to £125,000

Facebook announced today that software developers will be offered up to £125,000 to develop applications for their site.  As regular Facebook users will know, there are already quite a few applications around, undoubtedly increasing Facebook’s traffic and dwell time - which is all good news for Facebook and its advertising offering.  By offering cash rewards, they can hope to attract even better applications, increase traffic, users and dwell time and potentially become the one stop shop for life online?  Ok, this may take a while but it will be interesting to see what kind of applications will come out of this…and how it could help shape online habits of the future.

The BBC also have a write up on this…click here to read more