When Bebo briefly went offline due to a ‘technical cluster’ issue, confusion turned to annoyance and, in some instances, apathy.

The most popular social networking site until 2007, the site was overtaken and effectively displaced by the might of Facebook.

With numerous buyouts and a point of difference issue, it’s no wonder that users and spectators assumed the site outage signalled the beginning of the end for Bebo.

This was compounded by co-founder Michael Birch tweeting: “Am super sad that Bebo has actually gone. Some very fun times with very cool people” only to take back his comments within moments.

It’s difficult to think that a brand would undertake such a risky manoeuvre as a PR stunt as many have concluded. All it could serve to do would be to make users realise they need to safeguard content – ie remove it. Which is exactly what they did.

Other than it’s creator’s nostalgic sadness to see it go, the chief reaction to the rumoured demise of Bebo seems to be mild irritation at the thought of lost photos merging into indifference.

“Bebo: gone but not forgotten… oh wait it’s back? Time to forget it again,” wrote @aidankelly.

Two words spring to mind: uh oh.

The face of money

By far the biggest story on the topic of social media so far this year is Facebook preparing to become a public listed company (PLC).

It’s big news as this means that Facebook has, for the first time ever, been obliged to publicly declare its value. And, for those who like numbers, it’s a big one – hitting somewhere between 75 and 100 billion dollars.

Until now a private company, Facebook has not been obligated to publish its accounts – although documents released by Goldman Sachs last year indicated net profit levels of $355 million from the social media giant in the first nine months of 2010.

If everything goes to plan, the flotation of Facebook will raise circa. $10 billion, will be hailed as one of the biggest share sales ever seen on Wall Street and will make Facebook one of the world’s biggest companies via market capitalisation.

Anyone out there still think that Facebook’s a bit silly…?

But why is Facebook such big business?

Facebook has 800 million users worldwide, 50% of whom log onto the site daily to upload new photos, personal information and preferences.

Over a period of time this equates to users having told Facebook A LOT about themselves. And this data is invaluable to brands.

So when people talk about Facebook generating revenue through advertising (to the tune of $3.8 billion in 2011) it isn’t just to do with the number of users advertisers can reach, but the potential for detailed consumer profiling.

It’s not about selling advertising space. It’s about selling you, the Facebook user and all your quirks, likes and dislikes. And your mates too.

Liquid Graphic, understanding the in’s and out’s of social media, so that you don’t have to. Talk to us.

News stories more often feature social media than not. Journalists seem to be increasingly reliant on using Facebook and Twitter to access sources, capture quotes relating to a story and to gather a celebrity perspective on current events.

But as well as being the voice and commentator of the story, social media IS the news too.

The start of 2012 has seen social media dominate the headlines like never before. Here are a few of the stories that have piqued our interest at Liquid Graphic. 

Sneaky Snickers tweets

Albeit naïve to think that social media channels are free from commercialisation, Twitter users were up in arms last month at cheeky celebrity product placement tweets.

Rio Ferdinand, Cher Lloyd, Katie Price and Ian Botham all tweeted followers posing with Snickers bars and quoting the strapline from Snickers recent advertising campaign: ‘You’re not you when you’re hungry’.

We’re not sure how successful Snickers found the activity, but it did succeed in re-raising debate on the labelling of advertising under existing fair trading laws. And advertisers should beware as the Advertising Standards Authority extended their remit last year to govern marketing communications via social networking sites.

Like us though, you may be less concerned about guerrilla marketing techniques and more concerned about the decidedly dodgy photos that accompanied the tweets. More than a few of Ferdinand’s followers lost respect for him that day…

Regarding compliance, a Snickers spokesperson released the following statement:

“To comply with social media regulations a reveal tweet was used and this went out within an hour and a half of the teaser tweets going live to ensure Twitter users knew they were enjoying promotional tweets.”

So Snickers, cheeky or sneaky? Our view: it’s all way too obvious to need a label, and way too dull to actually give it one. But compliance is king.

That said, before this brief moment of newness and sense of beginning fades altogether, we wanted to take a moment to consider what the year 2012 has in store.

2012 is undoubtedly year of high hopes, for the Olympics and for the economy.

And in our small part of things, let 2012 be the year that:

• Social media becomes an integrated part of brand communications

Gone are the days when brands can choose to disregard social media or to view it as separate to their core marketing strategy.

Having the right logo design and the right look for your website has become a hygiene matter.

No matter how big or small you are, your consumer is talking about you. It’s time to get a voice because, if you don’t talk back, they’ll make friends with your competitor instead.

• Brands are proud to be British

Whether tapping into the spotlight the Olympics will throw onto the UK, continuing with heritage branding inspired by 2011’s Royal Wedding fever or evoking a sense of camaraderie for change as seen within recent protests and London riot clean up missions, 2012 is the year that will see brands celebrate their British heritage.

• We get face to face with consumers again

Social media has many benefits and one major benefit for brands during the recession was that it represented a cost-effective way to get dialogue with consumers in the midst of marketing budgets being slashed.

Events, field marketing and exhibitions were often the first lines to be deleted from budgets as results from these forms of marketing can be less quantifiable in boardroom terms.

The truth however is that one is no substitute for another. Yes all brands should be part of an online dialogue with their consumers via social media. But, face to face marketing is the most effective way for consumers to fully experience what your brand is all about and can be a way of connecting with another core of hard-to-reach consumers.

So, as late January bids welcome to the return of our New Year banished vices, we look forward to the year ahead and the challenges that lie in store.

Whether competing on the athletics track, on the stock market or on the Google rankings, 2012 is a year of high hopes for us all.

Liquid Graphic is here, ready to talk to you about why social media is relevant to your business, how you can refresh your brand image cost-effectively and how you can appear higher within the search engine rankings. Talk to us.

• What do you like or dislike about Britain?
• What makes you happy?
• What can you see from your window and how would you describe your area?
• What do you worry about?

Simple questions that the BBC have put out there to get the nation thinking about our mindset and attitudes and how they reflect a moment in time.

Britain in a Day is a BBC project led by Ridley Scott and directed by Morgan Matthews that aims to create a self-portrait of Britain on a single day – Saturday 12^th November – ahead of the 2012 London Olympics.

The BBC is encouraging as many of us as possible to create content ‘capturing the reality of your day’ and upload it to YouTube. The resulting footage will be pieced together to create a film of some of the most ordinary, and extraordinary, moments that are captured this Saturday.

The project is of course inspired by Life in a Day, another Ridley Scott project directed by Kevin Macdonald that used the same format to capture moments across the globe on 24^th July 2010.

The first crowd-sourced documentary film, and arguably the first ever social media film, the piece featured a selection of clips from the 80,000 submitted to YouTube.

Director Kevin Macdonald told The Wall Street Journal that throughout the project he wanted to “take the humble YouTube video, … and elevate it into art.”

Watch the trailer at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bT_UmBHMYzg

Whether you’re feeling in a ‘sharing’ mood this Saturday or not, Britain in a Day is yet another testament to the unavoidable importance of social media: as a means of communicating with peers, connecting and maintaining relevance with your audience, and as a new and emerging art form.

Contact Liquid Graphic for all your online marketing needs and to find out more about engaging your audience via social media.

Sounds fair. But what does You Tube really add to the equation? And why are more and more brands turning to You Tube as the final piece of their digital strategy puzzle?

There is a wealth of thinking in the field on You Tube as a social media channel and why brands have not been as quick to embrace it as Facebook and Twitter. But the tides are most certainly turning.

At Liquid Graphic, we think You Tube serves as an important element of an online marketing strategy for two reasons:

1. It’s the second biggest search engine. Second only to it’s parent company, Google. If a customer’s searching your product and you’re not there, someone else will be.
2. It’s the emotional connection. Video has the capacity to draw us in like no other medium. Customers searching for video are almost certainly at the last stage of research before affirmation of purchase – ie, if they want to see a product in action it’s usually because they want to buy it.

Brands are increasingly realising that You Tube can no longer be ignored and many are developing their own dedicated channels. You Tube has a great resource with plenty of do’s and don’t's advice to help brands get off the ground.

But while brands learn to fly the mothership that is You Tube, there’s plenty of turbulence in the sky. You Tube has served as a more true form of social media and citizen journalism over the years and, as such, there are plenty of anti-corporation videos to be found and brands have to be wary of search results that appear alongside their brand name.

The sky is the limit for brands when it comes to You Tube and 2011 is looking set to become the year that take off really happens.

Get in touch with Liquid Graphic to talk about social media and why it’s relevant to your business.

Abercrombie & Fitch (A&F)

For those of you that tune out anything vaguely tabloid, you may have missed this one. This month A&F released a statement distancing themselves from the tone and behaviour of a character in the hit MTV Jersey Shore TV programme who is seen, in most episodes, wearing A&F gear.

Best piece PR spin we’ve seen in a while…in one foul swoop A&F reaffirm their brand identity, deal with a potential distraction to their brand image and bag themselves oodles of global PR just in time to spike back to school/college sales. Bravo.

Ocean giants

BBC wildlife documentaries aren’t a terribly rock and roll form of inspiration, but it has a captivating quality and the nature of oceans around us so big that they’re unknowable is humbling. It might be the photography or the art direction, it might be the subject matter, but either way it just makes us want to get out there and see more of the world and to use the ocean for creative design inspiration.

Twitter

An ode to the all-powerful potential of Twitter. A simple sales promotion campaign run through Twitter has, this month, resulted in a 750% increase in the number of followers for one of our clients. Social media has never been such a meaningful online marketing tool as it is now.

Visit our Facebook page or tweet and tell us what’s inspiring you this month…

Graphologists believe that our handwriting provides a formulaic glimpse into our soul and reveals things about us that are not otherwise discernible, i.e. our mental or emotional state, amongst other things.

For that (and other) reasons, handwriting is considered a form of artistry and using handwritten typography in graphic design carries some novelty value and implies a sense of intimacy with the target audience and, in some instances, a sense of nostalgia.

And nostalgia carries some weight, particularly in troubling times like have been seen on the news this week. People take comfort in looking back to ‘better’ times gone by and the right brands thrive on this, just ask Hovis or Coca Cola.

Nostalgia for the intimacy of the handwritten form led Craig Oldham to create The Hand Written Letter Project back in 2007.

What initially began as a conversation about how personal a handwritten letter can be, grew into something that has commanded the attention and contributions from big hitter agencies and some of the true greats from the world of design. See handwrittenletterproject.com to read about the project or visit an exhibit about the project at London’s KK Outlet (ends 27th August).

In fact there’s no real novelty to handwritten typography in major brand advertising, it’s all around us. At one end of the market, think Boots, Ford, Kellogg’s – all accessible household names. At the other end, think Cartier, Paul Smith, Harrods.

So, maybe there is no formula to handwriting after all. Brands big and small, mass market and luxury, can all benefit from adding a personal touch to their brand identity.

But there’s one brand’s campaign that has a box of tricks so cutting edge, it has media commentators getting out of their boxes too…

culturejunkie.co.uk describes the campaign as:

“One of the largest international cultural commissioning programmes of its kind”

wired.com talks about it as:

“the world’s first global networked augmented reality gallery”

designweek.co.uk simply says:

“so ambitious”

So what is it?

To celebrate the 25^th year of their art label, lager brand Becks have launched the Beck’s Green Box Project (www.becks.com/GreenBox).

In a nutshell, they’ve commissioned 30 artists to create individual works that will be displayed in seven key cities around the world: New York, London, Manchester, Rome, Milan, Los Angeles and Miami.

Sound simple? Well, it’s not quite that straightforward. In these locations, Becks will install green boxes (hence the project name). Only when onlookers look at the boxes through their custom mobile phone app will they see the unique creative content i.e. the ‘augmented reality’.

The first installation took place in New York this month to mark Independence Day and comprised a 200ft digital art sculpture by artist Arne Quinze.

Becks Green New York

Needless to say, the campaign has spurred a lot of debate mainly to do with the boundaries between art and marketing and the influence of technology on the art world, media consumption and a consumer’s interaction with art.

But art aside, there’s a lot more in the box for Becks as there’s a hefty opportunity for harvesting consumers’ Facebook ID, limitless PR and it’s just the stuff that has Twitter followers chirping a merry chorus.

Not a bad trick for an empty green box.

Best Buy
Already with some serious customer service clout to their name, this retailer has some clever things going on. Not least of all, Best Buy has provided their sales advisors with smart phones to engage with Twitter. Now, when a customer tweets a question about that next LCD TV they’re looking to buy, they will benefit from the expertise of Best Buy’s entire team. In fact, using Twitter has gained such momentum that Best Buy now provides staff with fun incentives purely based on the speed and quality of responses.

Flippin YouTube
Trend spotters in web and viral marketing are citing YouTube as the next ‘big thing’. Already successful in its own right as a social medium, the commercialisation of this channel has been slower. But with brands now having figured out the right and wrong ways to use Facebook and Twitter, YouTube was always the next logical step to breathe animation and ‘life’ into online marketing campaigns.

So, grab your video camera and think video blogs and creative competitions. And grab your video camera while you can. The Flip video camera is one of the most simplistic and popular standalone video cameras on the market but production has shut down since the company was bought out by Cisco due to competition from the smartphone market. If you’re a fan of simple – which we are at Liquid Graphic – go grab one now.

Festival feel-good
It’s that festival point in the Summer where there’s a lot going on that has to do with being outdoors, being with people and being celebratory. It doesn’t need to be about Glastonbury or one of the big music festivals, although these are good examples. It can also be as simple as your town carnival, a barndance, the funfair or a traditional country fete. Whatever your need for inspiration, there’s a lot we can take from these moments of celebrating togetherness and humanity.

Contact Liquid Graphic if we’ve inspired you to think again about your creative or to think about engaging more effectively with social media.

What began as us all being fans and the notion of being interested in a person who plays an inspiring character on TV, nowadays means complex socio-political issues.

In fact there’s a postmodern irony to the fact that issues such as phone hacking, super-injunctions, paparazzi and stalking dominate headlines in equal measure to the celebrity stories themselves. Stories… about making stories… about celebrities…

To some extent, social media has redressed the balance. Celebrities can now employ people to Twitter away about the mundane things they’re doing (cynical but probably true) and their PR-vetted views on current events (cynical but, again, probably true). This then feeds fans with details they crave while they get on with living their normal – forward-slash – fabulous lives.

The question we’re asking at Liquid Graphic this week is what do we really know when it comes to celebrities?

We know about the products celebrities like, because they’re paid to endorse them. By default, we know the story on the front of the weekly gossip magazine is almost certainly not true. We know about the material they’re bringing out, because they’re paid to promote it. And we might even know about the celebrities they rub shoulders with, because it reinforces their A-list standing. So, we actually know nothing that isn’t governed by some form of marketing.

And the boundaries between what’s real and what’s not when it comes to celebrities are becoming less clear all the time.

Case and point: fans of Japanese girl group AKB48 were recently surprised to learn that the girl band’s newest member, Aimi Eguchi, is in fact a computer generated avatar – she’s not real.

Japanese girl group AKB48

Graphic design has evolved beyond recognition with the development of sophisticated computer generated imagery (CGI) but this goes the next step. Aimi sings, she dances, she smiles sweetly while endorsing confectionary on national TV and she had a lot of people fooled.

Maybe there’s something in it for everyone. Cheaper and lower risk endorsement deals for brands, an even greater semblance of perfection for the public to idolise and celebrities may get some of their privacy back. Albeit, at a significant cost, as there would be less demand for them – ipso facto – privacy not a problem.

It’ll be interesting to look back in another 20 years to see whether, by then, CGI has displaced the current notion of celebrity (assuming that we’ll even realise this has happened). Or, whether Facebook has made mini celebrities of us all, and film actors, musicians, TV personalities and trust-fund socialites will return to their day jobs.

Keep watching.