Today’s Likes and Fails take a look at LinkedIn’s big company acquisition, and a twitter trend outrage based around new teen horror film The Purge: Anarchy’s original hashtag #TwitterPurge.

Likes

LinkedIn have made a big purchase. They’ve decided to add ‘Bizo’ a marketing agency, founded in 2008, to the company, in a deal worth around $175 million to be paid later this year in 90% cash and 10% stocks . It looks as if they are hoping to benefit from Bizo’s B2B expertise and focus it on measuring social advertising programs aimed at the network’s professional audience.

Russell Glass, the co-founder and CEO of Bizo, said: “We have been a LinkedIn partner for a while now and it became clear that our respective missions and cultures are really well aligned. I couldn’t be more thrilled that we are coming together to accelerate our ability to reach professional audiences, nurture prospects, and acquire customers in truly powerful ways.”

This news comes after a year of high profile business acquisitions such as Facebook purchasing WhatsApp and Apple collaborating with Beats by Dre in a whopping $3 billion deal. It seems to be the year of the big company purchase.

Fails

A twitter trend sparked outrage the other day when it got into the wrong hands. The trend #Twitterpurge was initially linked to the new teen horror film coming out called The Purge: Anarchy (a sequel to the original The Purge), the idea of the purge in the film is that for one day in the year all crime is legal. Unfortunately some took the trend too far subjecting others to a horrible ‘purge’ by posting images of ex’s in compromising images in an act of ‘revenge porn’.

The trend peaked on the night of the films release,  though after one teenager set up the same date for a #TwitterPurge and suggested people have an ‘anything goes’ attitude to Twitter for one evening, the trend was hijacked by users posting nude photographs of ex’s and sometimes @ing them in the tweet or subtweeting about them. These people are obviously not thinking about how it will affect the lives of the girls they are tweeting about, as we’ve seen before, it can cause humiliation and ruin lives, it can even lead to suicide.

The other grotesque thing is that as this film is aimed at teens, it meant that the hashtag was mainly picked up on by teenagers, which therefore meant that many of the images being posted counted as child pornography. Twitter have been removing accounts as quickly as they can which are associated with the purge trend and are sharing these sort of images. Unfortunately the trend caught on on Facebook and Twitter as well.

Luckily there were a large proportion of users that spoke out about the trend and shared their disgust at the people who felt it necessary to share private images.  Here’s a look at one of the tweets calling out how irresponsible the pure was.

realest thing I’ve read all day #twitterpurge pic.twitter.com/ccEdvMvNzl

— Relatable (@JustReIatabIe) July 19, 2014

It’s Monday morning and here is a round-up of all the Social Media news you may have missed!

1. LinkedIn have reported their Q4 earnings from 2013, and their revenue for the quarter was $447.2m which is an increase of 47% from the previous Q4 in 2012. Premium subscriptions accounted for $88m of the revenue, (about 20%) and $113.5m was from marketing solutions products which equals about 2%% of the total revenue. The overall growth is weaker than expected which has lead to a 15% fall in shares which is not a great start to 2014 for the company.

2. You may have heard about Flappy Bird this past week, in fact I’ll be surprised if you haven’t. The annoying and frustrating bird has been flapping its way into you throwing your phone at a brick wall for the past month or so and now he is no more. The app/game had been up on the app store for a while and had been highly successful, but frustrating players with its game-play. The aim of the game is to keep a bird airborne by repeatedly tapping the screen and to guide it through a number of obstacles without any mistakes. The overwhelming popularity of the app had led the creator to become either frustrated or overwhelmed and on Saturday he threatened that the app would be removed from the app stores. It turns out he wasn’t kidding, on Sunday the app was removed from the store leading to outrage from some fans of the game as well as some even going as far as to send death threats. Which is a little absurd.

I am sorry ‘Flappy Bird’ users, 22 hours from now, I will take ‘Flappy Bird’ down. I cannot take this anymore.

— Dong Nguyen (@dongatory) February 8, 2014

3. Following on from last week’s popular, (probably not the right word) hashtag #SochiProblems, a clever response stunt from Airbnb has arisen. The holiday company has begun responding to some of the #SochiProblems tweets, which you may remember were a glimpse at the pretty appalling accommodation laid on for the worlds journalists. The company has cleverly been tweeting these journalists pictures of their own accommodations within Sochi, suggesting a move may be a good idea and stating that they do have rooms available. I imagine more than one journalist may have taken them up on their offer, especially after seeing the orange water, the unfinished hallways and live wiring in the showers.

.@bruce_arthur We found your hot water & it has new friends: a heated towel rack & a cozy apartment http://t.co/0GvxjnF7aX #SochiProblems

— Airbnb (@Airbnb) February 7, 2014

4. You probably heard, or more likely saw, video upon video of people’s ‘Look Back’ videos swamping your Facebook Feed last week. You likely watched none of them, apart from your own, and possibly your partner’s. Many people were disappointed with their ‘Look back’ video, being reminded of things they may not have wanted to be reminded of, old relationships, drunken statuses, etc. They were calling out for an edit feature and now Facebook has delivered, they put out an announcement that they were working on the feature mid last week and right at the end of the week the edit feature went live.

The edit option isn’t as feature rich as you may hope with the option to switch out photos being limited to certain pre-picked photographs, you can’t select any image to feature. To access the edit feature re-visit the Look Back page  and at the top right corner instead of hitting the share button, like everyone else has, hit the edit button and you can edit away!

LinkedIn has a bit of a reputation for being a stuffy, corporate social network, of interest only to the super corporate who like to brag about their achievements.

This is an unfair view in our books, as LinkedIn can actually be very handy, particularly for finding both new business and a new job.

Most business people are on LinkedIn now, particularly those who work in office environments, but it’s not just employees who are on there. Since their revamp earlier in the year, LinkedIn groups have become increasingly popular, and companies can now create their own page on the site too.

We’ve put together a few tips to help you out if you’re looking to use LinkedIn to find new clients or a new job.

Use groups to get yourself noticed

Find groups from companies and/or topics that you’re interested in and join in discussions. Your answers could help get you noticed. Starting discussions can help as well, as you can help position yourself as an expert in your field. You can interact with people on your posts, making sure your name stands out.

You could even post that you’re looking for a job/freelance work, as people are often keen to help and will comment, letting you know who to get in touch with.

Look up contact details

If you’ve found a company that you want to work for, but all you can see is a generic ‘contact us’ form or email address on their website, you can use LinkedIn to find some more helpful contact details or, if you’re feeling particularly ballsy, you could just message them directly using the site.

This also helps if you know the company, but you want to find someone specific who works there, such as the MD or their social media manager.

Search jobs

Some massive brand names advertise for jobs on LinkedIn, from BT to Burberry, so don’t forget to search the LinkedIn jobs list when you’re on the lookout. You can also make your search specific to you, selecting variables such as industry, salary and location.

If you wanted to be really sneaky, you could see which companies are looking for new employees and put yourself forward as a freelancer, just so you’ve got your name out there. Be sure to make yourself memorable, and don’t confuse being cheeky with being rude.

Keep your profile up-to-date

This may seem like an obvious one, but keeping your profile up to date is important. You don’t want to miss out on a job because someone is looking for an Account Manager, but you didn’t update your profile when you were promoted from a Senior Account Exec.

Also, be sure that you’re listing what you did at different jobs. It’s all very well saying you were a Gallery Assistant at one of London’s biggest art galleries, but what did you actually *do* there?

You can even use your LinkedIn profile as an extension of your CV. It’s recommended that you keep your CV under two pages, so keep all the essential information on there, and elaborate on your LinkedIn page.

Networking

Use LinkedIn to find out what’s going on in your area. Be on the look out, as company pages might lead you to a great breakfast networking event where you could snag yourself a new job, or even some new clients.

Mutual connections

Keep an eye on mutual connections that you share with others. It can bea great starting point for conversation now, or even in a few months time.

It could also be a great excuse to get in touch with a new client or employer, especially if you can be recommended by a mutual connection.

Include a photo

Again, another obvious one, but not having a photo on your profile makes it look like you’re on the run, or you’ve got something to hide.

Also, try and keep it professional. If you don’t have a head and shoulders shot, get a friend or colleague to take one. It won’t take long and it will make you look approximately one hundred times more professional than that shot of you in Liquid with a blue WKD from five years ago when you were a fresher.

Share regularly

Unlike Twitter, you don’t need to be sharing content 60+ times a day to get noticed. According to Nicole Williams, a career expert for LinkedIn,  if you share something just once a week, LinkedIn has found you are 10 times more likely to have your profile viewed by a hiring manager.

Personalise your invitation to connect

Don’t just stick with the standard ‘A Social Media Agency would like to connect with you on LinkedIn’ message. Keep it fresh and original with something that displays your personality.

Again, keep it professional. No smutty jokes. Ever.

Post regularly 

Keep your feeds updated regularly. There’s no point working hard to rack up your audience, if you’re not going to interact with them. Update your accounts regularly with new posts, photos, polls, etc. You should try to keep your feeds updated daily; if you’re struggling for content, why not share posts or pieces from your peers?

So how will this help you gain new followers? Well firstly, it will prevent you from losing your current audience. If you fail to keep your page up to date, you aren’t engaging with your followers. If they aren’t seeing content they are interested in, or any at all, they will soon get bored and unfollow you.

Also, if a new follower stumbles across your Facebook page or Twitter feed and see it has been dormant for days, weeks or months, then they are going to take one look at the lack of activity and leave.

Creating a post takes no more than five minutes, but it could ensure the continued growth of your social following.

Involve your followers 

Make sure you don’t exclusively post self-promotional content on your feeds. No-one follows a brand to be told constantly how great they are.

Instead, try and encourage your followers to join the conversation by asking them for feedback or opinions.

Your customers are far more likely to connect with your business if they see you value their input and take their opinions into consideration.

Be Responsive 

There’s no point asking your followers to engage with you if you don’t respond.

Respond to your followers. It proves to your customers that there is someone there behind the brand, listening to what your they have to say and acting upon it. By interacting with them and showing you care about what they have to say, you will see you earn some serious brownie points from your customers. They are also far more likely to remain loyal customers and recommend your business and your social outlets to friends and family.

Nike, KLM Airways and Microsoft’s XBOX are just a few of the brands who are leading the way in interacting with their followers, it’s worked for them so don’t be afraid to look to these brands for some inspiration.

Follow your peers  

Connect with likeminded people and businesses within your industry. If you are discussing and producing content that is relevant and interesting to them, then they are more likely to follow back and engage with you. Surrounding yourself with a network of relevant people and businesses who value your brand and opinions can see you become an influencer within your industry.

Entertain 

Don’t underestimate the importance of entertainment. No-one will bother to engage with you or read your content if it is dull. You want to educate your followers without boring them, so keep your posts short, informative but entertaining and easy to read. You can always provide a link to articles on your site for those who want to read more about your companies latest product or services.

Don’t be afraid to be funny. A little light humour can go a long way and help to humanise your brand.

Exclusives 

Everyone loves a good offer or exclusive, and it’s no different on social media!

Whether it’s offering an exclusive deal to your Twitter followers or releasing sneak peaks of your latest product via your YouTube Channel or Instagram feed, people love to feel part of the ‘inner circle’. These exclusives are a great way of rewarding your current followers but also provides a reason for others to start following you. Once people hear about theses exclusives you are sure to see your likes and follows receive a major boost.

Like

Google+ has rolled out a new design, making it a lot more image based (not unlike certain other social media sites that we can think of…). Photos take centre stage of the redesign and fill the entire width of the stream, as a part of an effort to make it easier for users to scan the site.

Google have added 41 new features to Google+ as a part of an effort to make it smarter and more intuitive, with the help of bigger pictures and related hashtags.

The update includes a multi-column layout which, depending on the screen size and orientation (and the kind of device you’re using) there will be one, two or three columns.

Apparently, Google announced that 190 million people are now active in the Google+ stream, while 390 million are active across Google, including +1’ing apps in Google Play, making video calls in Gmail and sharing videos from YouTube.

Fail

LinkedIn has made a decision to prevent prostitutes from using the site to market themselves, which hasn’t gone down well in the sex trade.

The business networking website announced a new privacy policy and user agreement, which you can see here, that prevents members from creating profiles or providing content for promoting escort services or prostitution.

LinkedIn have rolled out video advertisements for the site. The platform LinkedIn Ads, lets advertisers use their YouTube or other videos to promote brands.  The ads are easily cost controlled with pay per view/click and the campaign can be cancelled at any time. It is expected that the adverts will be 300×250 in size, similar to the existing adverts. Will Hambly the marketing manager for LinkedIn wrote today, “Video ads are currently available through the LinkedIn Ads self-serve interface, our targeted advertising platform that lets large and small advertisers place text and image ads across the LinkedIn site.” LinkedIn is hoping that this along with its new profile design will improve ease of use and make it much easier for advertisers to connect with users.

Ann Coulter has caused an online uproar after posting a tweet, (see above) about President Obama. This sparked a response from Special Olympian, John Franklin Stephens who condemned her use of the R-word in an open online letter. He writes “I’m a 30 year old man with Down syndrome who has struggled with the public’s perception that an intellectual disability means that I am dumb and shallow…” He continues, “I thought first of asking whether you meant to describe the President as someone who was bullied as a child by people like you, but rose above it to find a way to succeed in life as many of my fellow Special Olympians have.” He poignantly ends the letter with, “No one overcomes more than we do and still loves life so much. Come join us someday at Special Olympics.  See if you can walk away with your heart unchanged.” See the whole letter here

Helen here with today’s news!

Last night the Presidential debate was taking place in America, and unsurprisingly it caused an uproar of tweets online. Most interestingly the mentions of “Big Bird” went up 800,000%, this is because Romney announced he would cut funding for the channel PBS, which hosts Sesame Street, and then announced “I love Big Bird..”. Here are a few of the best tweets about the debate: “@ConanOBrien: Romney prepped for tonight’s debate by debating with a man whose views differ radically from his own: himself from 8 years ago.” “@robdelaney: I was gonna vote for [insert candidate] but after watching the debate I’m going to vote for [that exact same candidate.] – Everyone” and finally, “@riley_neyssen31: Sure Romney won the debate, that is if your [sic] going off of the number of times he interrupted the host”. Early signs show that American’s have favoured Romney after the debate, but Obama is still most popular on social media sites. It has also just been announced that the debate managed to set a twitter record. It is the most tweeted about event in political history with 10.3 million tweets within the hour and a half it was being broadcasted. The peak point however didn’t belong to either candidate, it spiked just after the debate moderator made a quip towards Romney. He simply said “Let’s not” when Romney asked if they could move on from the topic. At this point tweets rose to 158,690 a minute! Here is a nice graphic to show you the twitter trends as it happened: http://goo.gl/8G5FY

Some more Facebook stats and figures have been announced today. The biggest news of all is that Facebook has reached 1 billion regular users, which means the stat doesn’t include fake accounts or ones run by bots.  Here are some more numbers for you; Facebook has racked up 140.4 billion friend connections, 219 billion photos shared, 17 billion location check ins and most impressive of all 1.18 trillion “likes”. The median age of a Facebook user is 22, which makes me distinctly average! Just incase you haven’t heard enough numbers today; here are some more; 600 million of those billion users use Facebook on their mobile regularly (at least once a month). These users equate to 2.7 billion likes every single day, it’s good to see everyone being so amiable!

Endorsements are the new thing on LinkedIn today! A brilliant idea allows users to see quickly who you have been endorsed by, a great word-of-mouth type of tool to suggest good workers! You simply click by their name on their profile to see their current endorsements, and you can suggest a skill to endorse them for, and it will appear as soon as the user accepts. A great new tool for finding appropriate and highly recommended employees!

Today’s late news! It’s been a busy day today, so here’s the round up!

LinkedIn have taken a lead from twitter and have started  promoting user accounts. Today the site started promoting to people to “follow” users (much like twitter), promising useful updates. From these promoted accounts you could be getting business building tips from Richard Branson or seeing inspiring thoughts from Barack Obama. The new update basically means you can see interesting updates from those that inspire without them having to accept your connection request. LinkedIn have only selected a few high profile users for this application, but it adds a new interesting option to the site. I think this will be a very good addition for those aspiring entrepreneurs out there; getting advice from Mr Branson himself has to be a good idea for the biggest business social media site out there.

You may have already heard about missing schoolgirl, 5 year old April Jones, but social media has got involved in this search in a big way. Currently over 80,000 people have got involved with her search party page on Facebook and her name is currently a trending topic in the U.K. on twitter. What an important tool social media has become in situations like these; just recently many campaigns were set up to find missing schoolgirl Megan who went on the run with her teacher. During the course of today the amount of people on the Facebook campaign has risen from 2000 to over 80,000, let’s hope this campaign proves fruitful and April is returned home safely.

More news about Facebook and their struggle with COPPA (Children’s online privacy protection act) laws; this time COPPA are saying that a child must be over 13 to use the “like” function on Facebook. It is definitely going to be a challenge for Facebook to comply with these laws as their “Like” buttons are used externally on over 9 million websites. Facebook have responded by sending a letter pleading for a change or allowance in the law as it will be tough to regulate users’ ages whilst ‘liking’ an article or page. So if you’re under 13 kids, don’t press the Like button under this article!

Here’s today’s social media news.

Following on from Monday’s post, where I mentioned how the candidates for the presidential election were doing in the Social Media race, Romney has taken a massive plummet. Now I’m sure you’ve heard the news about the secretly filmed “47% video”, so I won’t re-bore you. Instead here are some of the twitter responses. “@AshleyJudd : Really, Romney? You believe that? & you said it out loud? Oh dear. You do, & you did.” and a Chris Rock parody account shared a tongue-in-cheek view on the video. “@chrisrockoz: Mitt Romney, the guy who pays no taxes on millions of dollars thinks you’re a welfare freeloader, God bless 47% of America! #RomneyEncore”. According to @twitternews as of Yesterday evening, there had been over 348,000 mentions of 47% and #47percent since the news hit.

Facebook has once again got someone into extra legal trouble. A teenage girl got into trouble after driving drunk, hitting another car full of teenagers and fleeing. One of the victims parents noticed after getting charged with a DUI, that she updated her status to say “My dumb bass [sic] got a DUI and I hit a car…LOL”. The judge was made aware and the girl was held in contempt and sentenced to two days in jail. She commented to a news station, ‘I didn’t think “lol” would put me in jail.” She is still awaiting trial for the other charges against her. Again a flippant comment online has become much more in legal trouble. I’m not at all condoning her comment,  but I’m sure many worse things have been said on the internet and ignored, it’s a hard line to draw here.

Just after Google has announced its 400 Million members on Google Plus, LinkedIn has announced some new numbers. It claims that it now has 10 million U.K. members, which they say represents 4 out of 5 professional workers in the U.K., and unsurprisingly the most popular location for its users is London. The top represented company is the NHS and the most represented industry is IT services. Many join the site for job opportunities, but it has been said that misuse of the site (e.g. out of date details and over exaggeration of achievements) could affect employers candidate research on the site.

Today’s Lighter than light news, is a clever, yet mildly offensive new Facebook marketing campaign for Grey Poupon mustard. It is only allowing those with “good taste” to join their exclusive group. When someone likes the Facebook page, an algorithm searches their profile and passes judgment based on proper use of grammar, taste in art, restaurant check-ins, books and movie selections. It has currently attracted over 30,000 fans and nearly half of those have been sharing the page. A good move by the company who have not invested in mass marketing for 15 years. Jolly good show Grey Poupon. (Maybe I’ll get accepted now!)

Share

Excellent news for Twitter today, as they have hit a new record volume of Tweets, notching up 400 million updates every day. The incredble figure was revealed at the Economist’s Ideas Economy: Information 2012 conference  by the social networks CEO, Dick Costolo, who noted that both mobile usage and revenue are outpacing desktops.

400 million tweets a day is pretty freakin high. Who are your favourite Tweeters and who have you been forced to unfollow? It would be great to hear your views!

Shame

Bad news for LinkedIn this week, as they have confirmed that over 6.4 million passwords were stolen from the site yesterday. The firm has been looking into the security breach and those affected would no longer be able to access their accounts with their current passwords. LinkedIn has apparently sent out emails to those that have been affected by the breach. If the leak is as bad as first feared then personal data of users of the social network, including contact information, could be compromised.