Friday Social Round Up: Facebook Gunman, Promoted Tweets, Amex and Pottermore.

Twitter Changes

Twitter are making a few changes in the next couple of months. The first has been a long time coming, ‘Old Twitter’ is being eliminated “very very soon”. After launching the new style twitter 9 months ago frankly it is surprising that it has taken this long to eliminate the old version. There has always been a message asking users to switch to the new twitter but now it reads “You will automatically be upgraded to New Twitter very, very soon,”. I suppose the 9 month delay is an attempt at user satisfaction after all the outrage every time you log on to Facebook to discover it looks completely different.

The other change, which I feel is more intrusive, is the news that Twitter is going to start putting promoted tweets into users’ timelines over the next 8 weeks. Twitter are apparently looking at ways to make sure that we don’t ignore these tweets, one such idea is that they will be ‘sticky’ so that they will stay on top of the page no matter how much you scroll. This is similar to the Twitter iPhone App feature the Quick Bar, which was nicknamed the Dick Bar after CEO Dick Costolo.

More Social Media and Law

Last week I wrote about several stories where social media meets the law, this week is a slightly different story. On June 17th police in Salt Lake City, Utah went to serve Jason Valdez with a felony drug warrant after he missed court. Rather than be arrested, Valdez barricaded himself in a hotel room with a female who was characterised by police as a hostage. Unbelievably he proceeded to update his Facebook as the situation evolved.

Not only did Valdez update his status 6 times in the 16-hour stand off, he also uploaded two pictures of his female ‘hostage’ and added new friends! The stand off ended when police stormed the room. Valdez shot himself in the chest and is reportedly in critical condition.

The police believe that Valdez’s Facebook usage gave him an advantage in this situation and they are discussing whether his Facebook friends should be charged with obstruction of justice for interfering with a police investigation.

How the world uses Social Media

This infographic was mapped by Global Web Index as a result of their ongoing market research. The research was conducted during series of six surveys about  global consumer adoption of the internet and social media in 36 markets. It shows the differences in online customs and culture from all over the world. In countries like the UK and Canada use social media primarily to send messages where as in parts of Asia they focus more on content sharing.

What I personally find incredible is that Japan and South Korea had the smallest numbers of active online users.

Foursquare and Amex Join forces in the U.S

FourSquare  and American Express have got together to save American Express card holders money! The deal is exclusive to America and means card holders will need to sync their cards with their Foursquare accounts in order to get discounts at certain restaurants and shops.

An example of this is if and Amex card holder checks in to H&M and spends over $75 they will get a $10 credit on their card account. Not only does this benefit Amex card holders but as the check-in is synced with the card it is easier to see how many people are using the service, as well as when and how long for.

Pottermore!

Now on to what I feel is the most exciting news of the year! After a lot of teasing with an online campaign involving secret co-ordinates on several worldwide Harry Potter fan sites, J.K. Rowling announced yesterday that the mysterious Pottermore website will be an interactive Harry Potter experience. The site, which goes live in October, will include an interactive reading experience of The Harry Potter series with additional content including new material about the characters, places and objects. 

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