Benn will be at WOM UK’s next Espresso Briefing on Wednesday 30th July from 8.30am until 10.00am. This session will look at how to use social networks and online communities to amplify Word of Mouth, and will be held at One Alfred Place, London, WC1E 7EB.

As a member of WOM UK, Neoco client’s can get in for free with us, and our friends can get discounted rates - so make sure you let Benn know if you would like to come along by posting a comment or emailing him directly.

The briefing will look at one of the hottest issues in marketing at the moment - how brands take part in social networks and online communities. Using examples from the US and Europe, the session will help to identify when it’s right to join in social networks and when a brand should build its own community. The briefing will show the benefits different organisations have had from engaging through social networks and online communities, how they can help engage customers and, critically, who they build advocacy and amplify word of mouth.

Friday means Fish & Chips. A great British lunch if ever there was one (it’s no doubt one of the few). We enjoy our team lunches at neoco. Some of us eat faster and more than others, which has lead to several conversations about an eating content… I think the unofficial record is set at 10 McDonalds cheese burgers. Is it immature or wasteful to eat like this? Maybe. Or we could stuff a load of food, then undertake physical activity until we puke, and then make an online TV show/ website about it… is that more immature and wasteful?

Being on the frontline of a digital marketing agency means I’m often the first person a client asks when they have a digital-related question. There seems to be a theme lately, as clients ask me to pinpoint the day that Facebook is going to die and what is going to come next. The opinion I’ve held for the last 18 months is quite simple… Facebook is going to be around for a long time and there is nothing coming to replace it any time soon.

For the foreseeable future, Facebook is only going to increase in size, strength and exposure. A few people have been distracted by how fast Facebook caught up with MySpace and presumed (logically?) that the same was going to quickly happen to Facebook. People were touting the same thing back in the early 00’s when that upstart company called Google surged over Microsoft and Yahoo! search. Many people subscribed to “it won’t last”, “there will be another one soon”, etc. Seven years later (Google was technically set up in ‘98 but it took a few years to really take over) and Google is a powerhouse online. Yahoo! and Microsoft fight over a measly 10% (depending on sources) slice of the Search Marketing pie. The reason is simple. Google took the lead, invested, acquired, innovated and never sat still. As long as Facebook maintain the same ethos there is no reason why in 3-4 years time, they will not be the de facto ‘address & social network’ of nearly all adults. I’ve already seen the little ‘F’ logo appearing on biz cards of ‘new media’ folk.

The problem is that as Facebook growth is a double-edged sword. It is great for me as a user as more of my contacts get a Facebook account because it enables me to stay in touch with more people. The down side is that I have been selective when accepting Facebook friends and already have 300+ (I know someone with 1,300+). In real life it is impossible to maintain meaningful relationships with 100+ people. Why should ‘virtual’ life be any different? It’s not. People are fooling themselves if they think they can be a real ‘friend’ to this many people.

The power of Facebook is realising this and using it as a social tool to empower your ‘real’ life. This is where brands can really enrich user experiences and connect with their audience. Facebook applications (games/ functionality/ etc) are more numerous than friend requests. I stopped deleting them a few months back and currently have about 900+. Just like my Facebook friends, I do not have the time to engage with everyone. I cherry pick. Often this is based on my existing relationship outside of Facebook. Do I know the brand? does it tie-in with an existing ATL (TV, radio, etc) campaign? Is the application productive to my real life beyond Facebook? These are a few of the questions that identify if an application is likely to gain traction with users. A big successful brand and ad campaign is no guarantee that the application will be a success but it means there is likely to be a higher install rate than a total unknown - check out the Indy campaign. Obviously, there are always exceptions to the rule (see a recent blog post about big brand/ big bucks applications that sit around with only 4 daily users).

So, the conclusion for Brand/ Marketing/ Account Directors and Managers looking at Facebook is that for the next 18 months, it is a safe bet to invest in to reach a mainstream adult audience. However, Facebook (like MySpace, Bebo and the other networks) campaigns are most effective when they are not the entirety of the campaign. It is rare that you see an application succeed and deliver campaign goals without any additional support outside of Facebook.

I’ve just stumbled across a really interesting article on the BBC News Technology site, which looks at how mobile technology is touching almost every aspect of the non-profit world in developing countries. Mobile phones and mobile services are facilitating human health care, nature and wildlife conservation, research and education.

The article really shows how developments in mobile technology are making a real difference to a lot of people’s lives in developing countries. And it’s really impressive to discover that the mobile phones which are being used to facilitate all of these new improvements are in fact around 7 years old - with text messaging being the only real way that people can communicate with each other - there are no data services of any kind.

Although many of us would have not considered it before, people in developing countries (even those living off just a couple of dollars or so a day) now have access to a mobile phone. Today, in Sub-Saharan Africa for example, 30% of the population own a mobile, equating to in excess of 300 million people and many more have access via the phones of their family and friends, shared phones or village phones.

This huge growth has mainly been a result of the successful recycling market and the development of cheap ‘$20′ phones. It is also part due to the efforts of forward-thinking mobile manufacturers, who have spent an increasing amount of time to understand what people living in these areas might want from a phone. The example given in the article to have emerged from this user-centric design focus are mobiles with flashlights, which assist people whose electricity supplies may not be very reliable.

Local entrepreneurs who have learnt how to fix mobile phones have set up their own services doing so, and have created a mini industry devoted to prolonging the lives of mobile phones.

All of these factors together have resulted in more phones being owned by more and more people, and working for longer. Which has meant that certain mobile services have been able to be put into place, making people’s lives easier and transforming development work.

Mobile phones are today providing a direct line of communication to farmers, doctors, patients, nurses, teachers and youth, and anyone else the non-profit community might seek to engage. Patients are being sent reminders to take their medicine, market prices are being sent to farmers, citizens are helped to help monitor elections, and activists are enabled to report human rights abuses.

A lesson to be learned for all of us lot then - when you inevitably upgrade your phone for the new iPhone GPS (or another latest smart phone) - don’t throw your old one away, recycle it. For the full article, visit http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7502474.stm

It’s only been available for one weekend but already 1 million new iPhone’s have been sold. And, although the queues were not as long as those of the original release, figures show that despite this, the sales of iPhones were much quicker this time round (it took 74 days to sell the first 1 million original iPhones).

So, what a great start for the iPhone 3G. Especially considering that the new iPhone owners have already downloaded 10 million iPhone applications - which is even more impressive when you consider that there were only around 500 applications available at launch. These figures once again reinforce the belief that users don’t see the iPhone as just another phone - it is another whole platform.

What do you think of the iPhone 3G and the available apps? Let us know…

New data published by ComScore shows that Facebook has overtaken MySpace in terms of global unique users.

In May 2008, Facebook had 123.9m unique users, compared to MySpace’s 114.6m. Over the past year, Facebook’s unique users grew by 162%, whereas MySpace only grew by 5% during the same period.

The latest research compiled by IAB Europe and analyzed by Pricewaterhouse Coopers has shown that European online ad spend has grown by 40% over the past year, reaching €11.2bn/£8.9bn (from €7.2bn/£5.7bn)

Predictably, the UK, Germany and France were the key markets - accounting for two-thirds of the spend. However, other markets are growing significantly - Greece grew by 91%, Spain by 55% and Slovenia by 49%.

The IAB forecasts that 10 of the 16 European countries studied will spend over 10% of total advertising budgets online by 2010 - currently 7 nations have reached this.

If these current trends continue, it is predicted that the online ad spend in Europe will overtake that of the US by 2010, which only grew by 26% to €14.5bn over the past year.

New research by the Advertising Association and the World Advertising Research Centre (WARC) has shown that the total online ad spend in the UK reached a record high of £3bn for the first time over the last year.

Online now accounts for 16% of the total UK advertising market, growing 39.5% last year and remaining the UK’s fastest growing sector.

Ad spend across all media in the UK over the last year grew 4.2% to £19.4bn. The UK cinema advertising sector saw great growth, rising by 10.1% - although, at £207m, this is only worth 1.1% of the UK’s total advertising market. Outdoor advertising also grew by 4.6%, to £1.05bn, which gives it a 5.5% share of the UK advertising market.

Press is still the largest single sector in the UK, accounting for £7.7bn, which is around 40% of the UK advertising market. However, there was some bad news for press advertising as it saw a decline of 1.6%. Direct mail advertising also saw a decline, but a much greater one, at 6.5% taking its total spend to £2.17bn.

Many analysts have long predicted that online would soon be stealing market share from newspapers, magazines and direct mail - and these figures seem to prove them right.

The Yahoo! and Microsoft acquisition talks have finally come to an end  - and Google seem to have come out of it as the clear winner.

After a long-running discussion, Yahoo! have decided to partner with Google, building on their recent ad partnership. Yahoo! will now display Google ads next to its search results in the US and Canada from September. Google and Yahoo! also plan to make their instant messaging tools compatible. In total, Yahoo! are expected to gain $800m in additional annual revenues from the deal.

YouTube is about to get clever with the addition of video annotations. These are a new way to add interactive elements to your videos. Add background information, create stories with multiple possible endings or link to related content. You control what they say, where they appear, when and for how long.

The possibilities are endless, and could open up a whole new set of opportunities for viral marketing. Check out the instructional video, or check out the example below: