Twitter announced in December of last year their intention to introduce pages for brands on their social networking platform. Founders Jack Dorsey and Dick Costolo announced during their “Come See What We’re Building” press conference some key changes to the platform, including Company Profile pages, of which the first are now rolling out in the [...]

Twitter announced this week amid a media storm that it has given itself the right to censor and withhold tweets and content in certain countries, in a blog post on Thursday 26th January.   The post, entitled “Tweets must still flow” harks back to a post a year ago, “Tweets must Flow”, in which the [...]

Maybe you have Facebook fatigue. Maybe the constant updates from Twitter and Foursqure make you feel swamped by ‘lifecasting’.  Perhaps Instagr.am is a bit too lomo for your tastes. Enter Path, the social network that has been described as “anti-social”.   Path launched in 2010, the brainchild of ex-Facebook excutive Dave Morin, who saw a gap in [...]

Today, #blur is trending on Twitter. The 90’s band will receive the 2012 BRIT award for Outstanding Contribution to Music and the Twitter congratulations are pouring in. That means that our Tweets, which contain #blur as a matter of course, are read by more people than usual today. The hashtag overlap was a coincidence, but [...]

At blur Group, social media is the sea in which we swim. We recruit creatives, engage with potential customers, promote our blogs, share interesting content and we’ve found that Twitter is the most effective platform to do all that, and more. Here’re the tools, initiatives and people impacting Twitter today. Users were outraged by the introduction [...]

A new study suggests that widely accepted Twitter strategies may be misguided. The report, Measuring User Influence in Twitter: The Million Follower Fallacy, rejects what it calls the “modern view” flows according to interpersonal connections among ordinary users, and the general marketing willingness of a community to accept an innovation. Rather, it seems that information cascades down [...]

Well klout scores have really hit the Twitterwaves this week with the launch of k and a frenzied obsession of seeing just how well you’re doing, offering your friends increased klout and generally developing a paranoia of influence or otherwise. I was interested to discover that I am an expert on Swansea, a city I’ve [...]

It’s no secret that social media is an effective marketing strategy for businesses to build brand awareness.  You set up a Twitter account, send out some messages and that should be enough, right? Unfortunately, no.  Successfully leveraging social media is a challenge, but if done right, it can be the linchpin for any business. Tom [...]

Championing independent journalism: such a noble cause. And one that Frontline has been fighting for since 2006, ironically the very same year as Twitter was founded. Why is this ironic, you ask? Well, sitting in the audience at Frontline’s Face the future: tools for a modern age event last night, it was clear there is [...]

Social media is very much a double-edged sword for businesses. Whilst it can help raise profiles and generate revenue, it can also bite businesses hard where it hurts. Companies can only exercise so much control over their online exposure, and if your customers want to talk about you, there’s not much you can do to [...]

When Financial Directors, a breed that can normally produce a spreadsheet from a dinner party conversation, talk about tangible but unmeasurable ROI where social media is concerned you know that showing hard numbers is, well, hard.  But as we mentioned in our introduction to ROI measurement, financial return is part of the mix. We described [...]

We often think that Crowdsourcing is about the early ideas stage, but this week a story has broken showing how online retailers are using it to drive their sales plans. Moxsie.com is an online fashion boutique.  It has embraced Crowdsourcing by making use of instant feedback from its twitter and Facebook followers to decide which [...]

Can Crowdsourcing change The World? It just might… Get It Done are a Crowdsourced aid agency, whose mantra is to bring the personal connection back to giving aid. Get It Done aim to, as they put it, ‘bring aid back to where it once started: as the basic human activity of taking care of the [...]

Every now and then a ‘random’ and supposedly ‘fun’ game sweeps the status updates and news feeds of Facebook the world over. Now is one of those times. Ladies and gents, let me introduce you to….The Numbers Game! We have had spam apps such as the ‘see who’s using your profile’ scam, various cryptic games [...]

‘We plan to take Crowdsourcing further than it has ever gone before….. We want media companies to engage users as citizen journalists, and NBC2 is just the first step toward this. We want to enable local governments to encourage users to report about hazards on the road to help keep our roads safe. We want major [...]

As we all know, hash tags on Twitter can be a great way of getting a subject trending and gaining exposure. It also seems they can be used just as effectively to dampen public hysteria and put the record straight in the world of news broadcasting. During Thanksgiving week in the States, stricter than usual [...]

The Mini Feeds of Facebook pages up and down the country have been awash with animated faces over the last few days. This weekend saw an NSPCC campaign urging users to change their profile pictures to one of their favourite childhood cartoon characters. The campaign has seen huge press, the Facebook group attracting almost 90,000 [...]

How do you host an office Christmas party when you have 8,000 staff/Crowdies spread all over the globe? Well, we’ve come up with the answer -  we’re holding our annual knees-up on Twitter this year at #blurParty. It will take place from 4 – 5pm GMT on Thursday 16th December and the coolest stuff will be [...]

The blur Group blog has always been a bit of Tim Burton fan. We like his take on the unconventional, the wacky and taking everything just that one step further than anybody else… But now he’s only gone and trumped himself by creating a Crowdsourced script via Twitter!

Meet the New Twitter – Twitter.com. New interface, media… and more. The real-time information network.

Crowdsourcing has become one of the hottest trends on the Web. But who are the real experts? Here is our list of hottie Crowdsourcing leaders and a link to their Twitter page. Follow them and watch the space unfold.

It’s snowing in London – but the real news is that you can see Crowdsourced live snow updates on a map. Last year, when London got snow the hashtag #uksnow started. Also, @benmarsh had the nifty idea to use the hashtag to crowdsource live updates about snow in the UK. Well it’s back and looks terrific. [...]

“I don’t have enough time for twitter, Facebook or blogging.” What if it paid back 200% of your time invested? Photo by Marchin Chady via Flickr ‘Not having enough time for social media’ sounds like the title of a summer song. You listen to it again and again, without asking yourself why. Maybe we should [...]

If you take social networking seriously you’ll end up with a personal brand. Here are some tips on how (not) to mange yours. Photo by bonked via Flickr If you’re reading this blog we’ll assume you’re experienced with social networks. Personal branding is the result of intensive use of social networking. A field we’ve been [...]

Is Twitter the Web’s greatest Ponzi scheme and Evan Williams the Madoff of the information age? Will this ‘pulse of the Web’ communications house of cards finally collapse when the vast majority of Twitter users figure out that the vast, vast majority of their ‘followers’ are nothing like followers and probably never will be. Is [...]