A new Twitter user appeared this month that raised a few eyebrows. Following the creation of their YouTube channel last month, North Korea has now also moved to Twitter to share their news and have already reached over 10,000 followers in just over a week. The site was immediately blocked by South Korea and from what we can understand the majority of what they are talking about is pure propaganda, but none the less it’s an interesting move by the extremely secretive country

North Korea joins Twitter

On the 18th Facebook called people to their headquarters in Palo Alto to announce the launch of their Geolocation service called “Facebook Place”. The option is only available in the USA at the moment but with notifications on the iPhone saying “coming soon” but we are interested in playing with the new feature when it launches in the UK.

Facebook launches “Facebook Places”

We’ve known about the Facebook movie for a while now and how it follows Mark Zuckberg’s first year at Harvard when he created the Social Media website. Now it seems a movie is going to be created following Google creators Sergey Brin and Larry Page.

Google to move onto the silver screen

With the launch of the iPad, tablet PCs and e-readers, consumers are now able to read books and other publications in a variety of ways. There is now another way that you might be able to read your favourite books thanks to Twitter. One man, @biblesummary, has decided to Tweet the Bible over the next 3 years. Could this trend catch on with other people choosing to Tweet their favourite books?

The Bible to be Tweeted over the next 3 years

Not since the battle between Ashton Kutcher and CNN to be the first Twitter Account to reach 1 million users back in April 2009 has there been much publicity about who has the highest number of followers because Britney Spears held that title for quite a while. If there was anyone to knock Britney off her Twitter Throne it had to be Lady GaGa.

Lady GaGa over takes Britney Spears on Twitter

More often than not social media has been used to raise money by people who then do activities like marathons and sky dives but Christian Aid has seen an opportunity to use social media as the activity rather than just a communication tool.

Christian Aid’s Twitter QuizAid

The Twitter Quiz launches Christian Aid’s annual fundraiser, Quizaid which takes place between 13 and 19 September and aims to raise £230,000 for Christian Aid’s work with communities in 50 of the world’s poorest countries.

The Twitter QuizAid is a live Quiz that takes place over Twitter, with comedian Omid Djalili being this year’s official Quizaid Master. He had this to say about the event:

Twitter is the perfect way to get thousands of people quizzing at the same time, no matter where in the UK they are. The challenge will be to keep the questions under 140 characters. There are no prizes, just the glory of beating your friends, family or work colleagues.

Anyone can get involved in the Twitter Quiz and also set up their own own QuizAid event at home, work, school or in their local pub by simply applying for a free Quizaid pack online at www.christianaid.org.uk/quizaid. The pack includes the quiz questions and answers and everyone who enters a quiz makes a donation.

The money raised will help change the lives of some of the world’s poorest communities. £2 could buy four school books for children in Burundi, £12 could pay for six months of school fees for one child displaced by conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo and £29 could pay for a year’s supply of stationery and uniforms for a child orphaned as a result of HIV in South Africa.

So whatever you’re up to, log on to Omid’s Twitter account, get your brain into gear and get quizzical!

More news to come at Christian Aid’s online PressRoom.

With TrekAmerica Live KMP Digitata wanted to develop a place that brings past, present and potential trekkers together to share their experiences. TrekAmerica Live is not in competition with Facebook (where Trek already has a strong community of nearly 15,000 fans) but integrally linked, allowing for content to be published across both networks.

How It Works

After booking themselves onto a TrekAmerica tour each passenger receives a unique URL, linking him or her to their own individual Trekker Profile on TrekAmerica Live. The system pre-populates the page with the Trekker’s details and loads an interactive map of the tour they have booked themselves on.

The system is designed to allow the Trekker to invite their family and friends to login and keep track of their progress during the trip. The interactive tour map displays exactly where the chosen Trekker on any particular day and provide the users with extra information on all the destinations they visit.

In addition to allow friends and family to follow Trekkers the site encourages users to interact with people who will be travelling on their chosen trip or speak to previous Trekkers to receive advice.

The personal profiles allow passengers to upload photos and videos, write travel blogs, post comments to Facebook and send Twitter updates whilst on the road. To save time on uploading photos the site is able to publish photos the user has already uploaded to their Facebook account, avoiding the issues of uploading the same photo multiple times on different sites.

TrekAmerica Live is fast becoming a reliable resource for anyone researching travel in North America and the site has been designed so that none members can still browser the site and find information about the tours in addition to that of the main TrekAmerica website.

The Results so far

TrekAmerica Live launch on and has over 500 active users who have uploaded 1200 photos and 85 Trekkers writing their blogs as they travel at the moment of this release.

With a 99 per cent satisfaction rating, comments about TrekAmerica are overwhelmingly positive. This what some of the current users had to say about the service;

• “Seen a couple of the blogs on here, so I’m making a little diary of what we did – hope it will be useful to other Trekkers”
• This is a really great feature for the website, I hope I can find some fellow travellers…!”
• “Would love to find out a bit more about the people we are travelling with. It makes it easier when we meet for the first time, no strange looks hahaha”
• “I’ll be taking my camera and netbook as I was planning on making a blog about the trip anyway, so this will be very handy for me.”
• “Loving this new site. Joined up straight away”

We are excited to see how the community around TrekAmerica Live continue to embrace this new platform and look forward to more and more user generated content being uploaded to the site.

Social media, in particular Facebook, reached a huge milestone on the 21st of July when it went beyond 500 million users. No one could of predicted this amazing success 6 years ago when Mark Zuckerberg started Facebook. To celebrate this milestone Zuckerberg announced Facebook Stories, showcasing interesting ways that people have used the social network around the world. If Facebook was a country it would now be the 3rd most populated after China and India.

Facebook reaches 500 million users

It’s not been a smooth few weeks for Apple since the launch of the iPhone 4. With wide spread coverage of the antenna problems and damning reviews by the likes of Which? Magazine, Steve Jobs and Apple had to react in a positive way rather than burying their heads in the sand. Apple’s solution? Call a press conference (and only invite journalists who write positively about Apple) and announce that every iPhone 4 owner will receive a free bumper or a refund for one they have already bought.

Apple gives out free bumpers to fix iPhone 4

Following the news of Facebook going beyond 500m users, fans of Facebook were shocked when Ron Bowes, a Canadian security consultant, collected data from 100m people on Facebook who had not set their profile to private. It strengthens the importance of reading your privacy agreements and double check what information you share online.

Details of 100,000,000 Facebook users published online

Google attempted to break into the Mobile handset market with the Nexus One back at the beginning of the year but on July 16th the company announced that it received its final delivery of the handset and that it has been discontinued. Although it did not sell as well as Google had anticipated many believed it served a purpose and showed other phone makers what the Android OS is capable of and drove them to produce better quality phones.

Google discontinues the Nexus One

The end of July brought some sad news, with the announcement of the death of the world’s oldest Tweeter and Facebook user, at the age of 104. Ivy Bean became famous in the Social Media world when the workers of her care home created her a twitter account and got her tweeting. The world embraced her simple tweets about afternoon tea and the photos she posted up of her and her friends on day trips out.

Ivy Bean passes away at the age of 104

The Big Chip Awards brings together the best companies in the North West digital sector for a night of food, wine and celebrations. Terry Christian once again returned to host the event for the 3rd successive year and we were lucky enough to listen to Shameless actor, David Threlfall, who gave an emotional speech on behalf of the homeless charity Byte Night.

After the meal it was time for the main event to start and the awards given out. Congratulations to all the winners, in particular StarDotStar who won an amazing 3 awards on the night. We were up for “Best E-Business Project” that was ultimately won by 11 out of 10 for their work on the Pure Gym project. Another notable winner was Cahoona, who won the “Tasty Website” award that is voted on by the public.

Thank you to everyone who made the night such a great success and we look forward to the next one.

Photos from our night out can be viewed on our Facebook page and for the full list of winners check the Big Chip website.

We have been recognised once again by the Digital Industry as a leader in our field resulting in two of our projects being nominated for “Best e-business”. As categories go “Best E-business” is one of the most fought over, because those that get nominated have proven that they have not only met targets but went beyond them, created new business and produced amazing ROI.

Our two projects that have been nominated for the “Best E-Business” 2010 are the Jetparks website and ASDA’s virtual assistant, Amy.

Jetparks

The JetParks project was created to help Manchester Airport break into the competitive offsite parking market and establish itself as a provider of cheap Manchester Airport Parking on the search engines. Since its launch a year ago the project has exceeded all targets and produced an ROI of 465%.

Asda’s Amy

Asda launched their new online grocery platform in July 2009 and required a web application that would guide customers through the new interface, encourage the shopping process, handle queries online and decrease the inbound calls. The result of which would subsequently improve customer service, their business process and profitability.
Our Virtual Assistant, Amy, fields over 20,000 conversations a month, 23% of which Asda believes would previously have resulted in a call being made to the call centre and produced a ROI of 185%, which is expected to increase to 1013% by the end of the 2nd year.

As it happens

If you’re interested to see if we won then be sure to return to the blog on Friday to read the post awards entry although we ask for forgiveness if it is late, especially if we win because we are only human and sometimes suffer from sore heads after these award nights.

Be sure to follow us on Twitter to receive the latest developments as they happen on the night.

People to follow:
@KMPDigitata
@JonKeefe
@Gezd
@DanielAshcroft

Following on from our previous Mobile Showdown post, the Smartphone market is starting to once again heat up.

When it comes to the smartphones, nothing can touch the iPhone. It is by far the most popular handset in the world, has the highest number of applications in its market place and it can only be a positive thing that when every single smartphone is released comparisons are invarably made with Apple’s benchmark. The iPhone’s dominance is still strong but has stuttered recently with the ever increasing rise of the Android OS.

The iPhone handset may, individually, still be best selling in the world but 2010 saw the Android mobile operating system outsell the iPhone for the first time due to it’s availability on multiple handsets from Motorola, HTC and Sony Ericsson.

The announcement of the Android 2.2 update, code named Froyo, confirmed what a lot of people were hoping for from the update, Flash being available on a mobile device. This also tied in with the worldwide release of the free turn-by-turn navigation with Google Maps, which stuck fear into the hearts of Garmin and TomTom.

I’ve been fortunate enough to have an early release of Froyo for over a week now, giving me the opportunity to play with the latest update to see how well Flash works.

On a whole having Flash on your mobile does improve the online experience of the net while on the move. There is no need for multiple applications that give you access to on-demand television, watch online videos, or play your favourite online flash games because they are all accessible in the browser.

To say that Flash 10.1 works perfectly would be a lie. It has issues with ability to perform actions that require a precise click because we are working with a 3.7 inch screen after all and there is a noticeable lag when the browser is loading flash heavy sites. The update is not yet on general release and we can only hope that issues that have arisen will be sorted by the time it is available to the public.

Although it is too soon to say whether Android will emerge as the dominate mobile OS it is setting itself up as the strongest contender and we are all looking at Apple to announce its worst kept secret, the iPhone 4G.

The main event in May was Google’s I/O developer conference in San Francisco on the 19th & 20th of June where they announced the latest developments in Chrome, Android OS and their biggest announcement Google TV. By combining the TV that you already know with the freedom and power of the Internet, Google plan to create a more satisfying viewing experience. With the help of Sony and Logitech Google TV will be built into TVs, set-top boxes and Blu-Ray players of the future.

Google announce Google TV

A big birthday was celebrated at the end of April with YouTube turning 5 and the month of May was used to celebrate and look back at who became famous thanks to YouTube. The first ever video to be uploaded onto YouTube on April 23rd 2005 at 8:27pm and thankfully people have got a little more creative with their cameras since that first ever YouTube video.

YouTube celebrates it’s 5th Birthday

A rumour started in May that made some people panic and others jump for joy. TechCrunch reported that the relationship between Zynga (makers of Farmville) and Facebook had reached a low resulting in Zynga threatening to pull Farmville off Facebook because of the intended 30% Facebook tax on game credits. This rumour was scotched when Zynga and Facebook signed a 5 year strategic partnership, so it looks like we will see more notifications of people looking for nails to help build their barns

Facebook and Zynga sign a 5 year deal

The location based social media game Foursquare received a huge boost in May when it was announced that both Starbucks and Domino’s plan to start official campaigns offering the Mayors of their branches receive special offers. Domino’s offer of a free Pizza each week to the mayor sounds a lot more appealing then Starbucks $1 off but it’s a step in the right direction and will show how Geolocation can be used as a viable marketing tool.

Starbucks launch nationwide Foursquare campaign in USA

Domino’s Launch Foursquare campaign in the UK

Facebook has been having a tough time of it lately with all the news about its privacy settings and their CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, admitting they had made mistakes. It was the controversy with a particular page that resulted in the biggest reaction. A Facebook page created after the 200th episode of South Park invited people to draw images of the profit Mohammed. This resulted in protests followed by the banning of the whole Facebook site in Pakistan.

Facebook is banned in Pakistan

As we move into June let’s hope the nice weather continues and be sure to check the next Fantastic 5 update on July 2nd

Well we developed an app for that…

The free Manchester Airport iPhone application is an essential tool for those flying out, flying in and even collecting friends or family from Manchester Airport. It has been designed to save both time, money and enable the traveller to plan their journey and time in the terminals more productively, be it exploring the many retail outlets or airport lounges.

The Manchester Airport iPhone application is the perfect accompaniment for both business and leisure travellers.

The key features of the application allow you to:

• Explore each terminal through the interactive map
• Car park booking – Save money and time by pre-booking your car parking
• View a Google map of each terminal and get directions to and from the airport
• Get real time flight information for arrivals and departures.

The Manchester Airport iPhone application is available to download from the AppStore now for free and more information about the app can be found at the Manchester Airport website.

How-Do Awards 2010. Drinks reception sponsored by KMP Digitata from KMP Digitata on Vimeo.

KMP Twitterfall Awards

In addition to this we have had some requests to expand upon some of the Tweets we featured in our previous post. I’ve had chance to read through the 600+ tweets featured on our KMP Digitata Twitterfall and have selected my favourite tweets for an additional mention.

Best Dressed Award

Purely from the Tweet he sent, the reward for the best dressed goes to Jamie Lyons

@whatjamiedid: Slightly regretting the deckchair shirt look now, looked fun at home

First to get drunk Award

This tweet was sent relatively early on and after re-reading it many times, I still struggle to understand what it is meant to say. The first to get drunk award goes to Joe Bowler

@ItsJoeBowler: apparently I everything these things but I’m glad to be here on behalf of Refinery

What Happened Next? Award

There is always someone you see or hear that make you wander “What happened to them later on?”. In this case a tweet was sent and makes me think about how his night might of gone. Winner of the What Happened Next Award is Michael Pettyt

@speedia: look out, 2 pints and an empty stomach can’t be good

Awkward Office in the morning Award

It’s a clique at office parties that there is always one event during the night that causes an awkward moment the next morning. This also goes for Award Ceremonies and the winner of this award goes to Jon Clements for tweeting;

@JonClements: boss admiring shirt says “matching collar and cuffs”. And it’s still early….

Best way around the Profanity Filter Award

Throughout the night the ever entertaining Gordo came out with some classic Tweets, some that were banned and even one asking if I could fight after putting him in the Sin Bin for the 3rd time. One of his tweets got past my filters and due to his politeness I believe this tweet wins the award

@GordoManchester: Nina, my darling, just been sin binned again for saying what a tight derriere you have m’dear…

Nina Webb later returned the complement

Fail of the night Award

This Award is actually being awarded to the same person for two separate occasions. The first is for an attempt at trash talk towards us of all people, but ultimately failed by getting our name wrong

@ajevans85: who are @kmpdigital?

Yes Adam….who are KMP Digital? His second tweet was picked up by a couple of people who noticed his error. CTI rightfully received a highly recommended accolade but Adam jumped the gun slightly and sent the tweet;

@ajevans85: well done @ctisn for digital agency of the year

Andrew Binns was quick on the case to point out his error

@keeperbinns: @aajevans85 erm, they didnt win it

The Twitterfall would not have been such a great success if it was not for all the people who got involved, so from everyone here at KMP Digitata, we thank you.