Sam Michel's blog

Following on from the multi-brand Twitter banter-fest we wrote about recently, news reaches us from the other side of the pond of more brand on brand banterage.

When AT&T customer @RamblingRooney tweeted about T-mobile's remarkable new plan that doesn't charge extra for international data, the social media teams swung in to action, culminating in a personal tweet from T-mobile US CEO, John Legere.

When Twitter conversations between brands ends up on Buzzfeed, does this represent the content marketer's highest honour or this year's trendiest marketing tactic has jumped the shark?

As the link inevitably made its way around the office there was enough chuckling to make me think it's very much the former. 

Twitter's successful IPO values the company in the billions before it turns a profit. Nothing new here for a tech stock, although unsurprisingly there's plenty of commentary.

Pandodaily writer David Holmes posted an infographic that analyses 12 of the leading tech firms and their profitability over the last 10 quarters. Only half at any quarter are profitable.

OK, we admit it. We got a little greedy with not one, but two new speakers who've kindly agreed to come and speak at next week's PsychUp November: Karen Fewell author of upcoming book #FoodPorn and Ian Randolph, Head of Cognitive Modelling at Samos Analytics.

Along with Alex Sass, who'll explore how social phobias can be used in planning digital marketing campaigns, it's going to be a varied session with plenty of food for thought. And drinks. And nibbles. There's still time to grab a ticket.

Following our recent post on Facebook's healthy earnings, a twitter exchange led to Paul Fabretti's, Digital and Social Media Lead for Telefónica Europe, personal blog where he digs into more detail on mobile and the ageing of social media users.

There’s a lot of planning going on in the business at the moment – our social teams are preparing for 2014 activities and perhaps by default, that also means trying to look beyond 2014 at the kinds of strategic, structural and systems challenges that should be on our radar. 

Facebook's star is on the rise, as are its earnings, which were revealed yesterday at $2.2bn. Not a bad chunk of change. Predictably, FB stock rose 15%.

The admission that younger teens are using the network less also had a dramatic impact, deflating the good news and seeing the stock drop.

Social Media Week London is all about the people. This year with over 260 events and 20,000+ tickets booked it was bigger than ever.

Behind the scenes the Chinwag team swells in number as we do our best to tackle the avalanche of administration, emails, logistics and communications that SMWLDN brings with it.

This year we had an exceptional crop of helpers who supported us through what was, to put it mildly, a rather busy few months. We couldn’t have done it without them.

250+ events and it can be a little tricky working out what to go to. As events get full it can be tricky to figure out what to attend.

We've distilled down some of the sessions (that still have space, at time of writing) that you might fancy perusing.

A researcher at 3D design software firm, Autodesk is championing a new way of visualising how organisations change and evolve using a company's internal graph.

James Mayes, investigated the Autodesk experiment, chatted to the man behind it and discovered a fantastic offer for those wanting to run the same experiment for their organisation.

In a new research 'Social media litigation: How prepared is your business?' nearly 35% of respondents, most of whom work professionally in social media have little or no knowledge of the law.

Perhaps the most glaring legal hole is confidential data. Whilst 76% of companies worry about their secrets slipping out through social media, only 61% aren't confident that their sensitive information is protected on social media platforms.

Immediate Future who published the research have published an infographic with the key findings.

Government backed IC tomorrow, part of the Technology Strategy has launched its latest competition, Digital Innovation Contest 2013, with up to 7 awards of £25,000 up for grabs.

Backed by HarperCollins, Constable & Robinson, MediaCom, Ogilvy Mather UK Group and JCDecaux, FremantleMedia UK, Samsung, and YouTube, it focuses on media, publishing, mobile content and outdoor media.

The Develop in Brighton conference have launched a live pitch competition for game developers to grab £10,000 each to develop a high-impact pitch for their game to help secure a distribution platform and funding.

Launched in partnership with the Wellcome Trust, developers are invited to apply for a spot at the live pitch at the event on Wednesday 10 July 2013. Development funds can be used to develop a game prototype, demo or mood reel.

Eulogised, mythologised and other -oligised, South by South West Interactive (SXSW) is hard to ignore, even if you're not a fan. Tens of thousands of delegates flock to Austin, Texas for five days of conference, networking and not to be forgotten the parties.

For the several thousand international delegates, the UK being the largest group, it can be a little daunting. The official schedule alone will take several hours to navigate. So, we've pulled together thirteen - it's lucky, right? - handy resources to help those intrepid travellers to Texas navigate SXSW.

Big data is big, obviously. It’s huge, in fact with the amount of information pouring out of social networks, ecommerce systems let alone those that run our ‘real lives’ the challenge of figuring out what’s happening is almost insurmountable.

This time last year we started to explore how the worlds of psychology, neuroscience and machine learning could help techno-numpties like me to apply some of this high-fallutin’ brain science to business. From influence to behaviour to understanding emotions, there’s plenty to take on board.

Chinwag Psych was born, bringing together the leaders in this emerging world where academia and business combine in large part powered by digital and social media.

The war on cookies is over, or at least the rhetoric has been turned down a notch. Back in June when the ICO, who enforce the Data Protection Act, implemented the strictest interpretation of the law, their website traffic dropped 90%.

We dubbed it Cookiepocalypse. However, it looks like the war on cookies has just ended, or at least the ground offensive is over. On 31 Jan, they updated their website with the softer interpretation of the law which assumes implied consent.