Waitrose, a symbol of middle England, has come a cropper.

Whereas their Facebook landing page welcomes you to their School of Christmas Magic; beyond this lies a furore of angry shoppers, all outraged at an incident which occurred in the Northampton branch of the store.

It seems that two shoppers had a confrontation in which one called the other’s disabled child an animal. She was then given a cup of coffee by Waitrose staff to help her calm down.  The original post read:

“I find it very sad that the management of Waitrose Northampton are incapable of apologising to a friend of mine as she was verbally abused on Friday 4th Nov because her disabled child was making a bit of a noise. The lady called her son an “animal” and her “Scum” but the management told her to leave if she wanted to call the police and then gave this dispicable woman a free coffee for her inconvenience. It is illegal to verblly abuse anyone and especially a disabled person. I am discussed and will never set foot in one of your stores until a public apology has been made to my friend and her son.”

After the account was posted on the Facebook page, the situation escalated almost instantaneously, with cries of hate crime and promises to boycott the store. A link to the page was quickly doing the rounds on Twitter, putting the spotlight not on the problems in store, but Waitrose’s poor handling of the situation online.

The main problem it transpired was that they appeared to be keeping quiet on the issue while still responding to inane comments – about the lack of eggs in store for example. And although a Waitrose spokesman claimed that they had responded to the original post, as the wall settings were set to view posts by everyone, it easily would have been buried.

Furthermore, as the page is moderated only between the hours of 9 and 5:30, obscene comments lay on the page and it was not until 1pm that they reissued a statement saying:

“Thank you for all your feedback on the incident between two customers at our Kingsthorpe branch. We work hard to ensure that everyone who shops with us has an enjoyable experience and is treated with courtesy and kindness. Obviously, in this case, there has been an incident that we are taking seriously and treating as a private matter with the families involved. We’re focusing now on investigating and resolving this as soon as possible. Thanks again.”

It’s a hard lesson to learn social media management is not a 9 to 5 job and if Waitrose can’t look after it, maybe it’s time to bring in an agency like us!

Google+, remember that? It’s still there you know, although you are statistically less likely to know it if you’re a) not male or b) not a geek. It seems mad to suggest that with over 20m users the platform is not considered a popular social network, but with Facebook’s active users amounting to 800m and counting only a deluded Googler would dare declare Google + a contender for the world’s most popular social networking site..

What I’d like to suggest though is that Google has contributed hugely to our social experience, even those of you who aren’t aware of Google+.

Something Borrowed and Something New

Quite simply for every intelligent Google + feature that seems to get good feedback from the community Facebook has rolled out something similar.

So Google has circles to allow users to decide what information they see and where it’s inherently an intelligent privacy model too. To match this Facebook rolled out various features including a Subscribe button allows you to mute certain friends without them knowing (just as putting them in a ‘ignore’ circle on Google+) . Smart lists were introduced allowing a user to see a specific subset of their friends, typical circles on Google+ have been ‘friends’, ‘co-workers’, ‘In the neighbourhood’ and ‘College friends’ and these same subsets are the default smart lists on the new Facebook profile. Importantly the privacy model has changed. Privacy settings are now inline with each post allowing you to modify exactly who you share each post with- you’ll never guess where else this exists.  Google +? Yes. The company made privacy a fundamental cornerstone of its product ( I blogged about it here), I’m delighted that Facebook reacted.

Another feature to have been borrowed is improved image settings. Given how huge sharing photos is to the community (not least to brands) it was about time the presentation received a little attention. Images are larger and displayed at a higher resolution, mimicking Google+’s brilliant work on the photo front. Alongside geeks, Google+ is beloved by the photography community.

Facebook’s blog details each feature in an insightful blog, although there’s no mention of where the inspiration lies.

Adapt and Evolve

What I hope is that Facebook continues to borrow and consequently offer an improved service. How else can they progress if there isn’t a competitor? The impending timeline switch is coming soon and once the hubbub dies down it will be a welcome feature that allows users (and eventually brands) to tell a more complete story.

The latest Google+ feature is the creative kit which allows users to apply filters to their images and ‘auto-fix’ them. With the popularity of Instagram, Hipstomatic and the new Flickr app it can’t be too far away, it’s my bet it will be introduced by Christmas.

The riots on the streets of London over the past few nights have chilled us – how can our fellow citizens wreak havoc on their community? Where has morality gone? What fresh horror will tonight bring?

Yesterday, the police blamed social media – highlighting how Facebook, twitter and BlackBerry Messenger have all been used to help organise attacks and keep rioters ahead of the police.

This 21st century equivalent of shooting the messenger, the police statement ignores the reasons behind why people are rioting and highlights how much the police needs to get a grip on how the way people are communicating has had a significant impact on society.

Today, we’ve been cheered by the communities set up to encourage people to take to the streets and reclaim the pavements, roads and buildings as they clean up and start the rebuilding process. We’ve just watched an interview on BBC News with a man from Birmingham explaining he set up his clean up action group because he felt this was his town too.

So is social media a force of good or evil? The answer … well neither. Social media simply is a way of communicating. It’s what’s being said that makes the difference.

Brands have been quicker to realise that they need to understand what’s being said and to act or react accordingly – now is the time for the police to stop making vague statements and listen, learn, and act.

Google+’s system of sharing information is a refined (if not quite intuitive) and intelligent application of something we’ve been doing here at Democracy PR for some time: sharing the right information with the right people.

Whereas Facebook’s privacy settings are lax by default and continue to be until you adjust the settings, Google’s model of sharing permits us, encourages even, to share with the right people. Placing people into your private circles (no one but you is aware of which circle you put them into) allows you to define separate groups with whom you can share content. You may have circles for colleagues and friends (depending on how happy you are at work there may well be some crossover here!) or groups for distinct people; The boss, The wife and the kids maybe?

Share and Share a ‘Like’

Now, as an agency with real strength in social media we’re unsurprisingly well-versed in sharing carefully online. We’re all huge advocates of twitter in the office but unless we create two profiles, or more, it’s difficult to find one voice to manage all your followers. We introduced a hashtag, #dpr, to differentiate work and industry related tweets from all other stuff, be it reality t.v., rants about public transport or poor customer service, and nights out. While it doesn’t remedy the difficulties of managing a mix of followers it’s certainly a smarter way to manage the content on our twitter feed on the website.

The web is littered with stories of employees who have tweeted inappropriate messages due to a mix up between personal and professional profiles. Just as when a Red Cross social media specialist tweeted about getting drunk from the Red Cross account and the tweet exploded. Searching for the Red Cross Twitter account? You’ll likely see the negative story just as quickly as the twitter account on a Google search results page. To avoid any such confusion I am very careful about linking client accounts and my personal accounts to the same twitter client. I have opted to use twitter’s very own android app to manage clients and Hootsuite for my own tweeting!

Billy No-Mates

Facebook is similar and potentially more problematic. Using the platform as we do in several guises for various clients it would be difficult to use our normal public profiles to manage various profesional brand pages, instead we create separate professional identities to manage them. I masquerade online as a professional billy no-mates, but one that has still got his job.

That Google+ immediately solves these issues is a huge boon and furthermore demonstrates that the search giant has privacy at its core; or as a cynic might claim, realises that privacy is the key to users and therefore revenue. I’ve been trialling circles for over three weeks now and i’m really taken by the service and enthusiastic about the introduction of business accounts.

NEWSFLASH: Facebook has announced that it will be making some more changes. Shock.

OK, so any regular Facebooker will know that this is a pretty common occurrence for the world’s favourite social network to have a bit of a ‘tweak’ and update the site, however this time the changes  are specifically for ‘Pages’.

Formally known as ‘Fan Pages’, the updates are designed to improve the ways that hosts can engage with fans, with the overall appearance replicating that of a profile page. Changes include the way photos are viewed, and navigation of the page including tab locations which will be located below the profile page- which is generally the first place people look.

Perhaps the most exciting development is the ability to view and post on to third party pages-  as your own page- meaning that brands will now be able to interact directly with other brands, as if they were friends (yey!).

This basically will allow companies to operate on the site much in the same way as people do. As a marketeer this is very exciting, and will allow us to engage more directly with the consumer and provide them with relevant content, tailored to their ‘likes’.

Admins are able to preview the changes now, and convert to the new format manually, although all pages will be transferred over automatically on 1^st March 2011 – so there’s a date for your diary.

First it was the YouTube channel,  then the Facebook page and now the Confession App – The Roman Catholic Church really is attempting to move with the times and embrace social media.

The App takes ‘sinners’ through the sacramental process of confession and asks a number of questions, including ‘have you ever wished evil on another person?’ (Have you ever heard of Jedward? Then of course I have)

It then suggests an act of contrition to absolve your sins, all with one tap of my iPhone, brilliant!

Not intended as a substitute to actually going in to church, but as a tool to encourage people to pursue their faith through the various digital technologies. It seems that even the most traditional of establishments is realising that if you want to keep in contact with your wider audience and connect with new people, it is essential to create online as well as offline engagement.

Fancy a ‘holy’ weekend? Confession: A Roman Catholic App costs £1.19  and is available from iTunes now.

Groupon find themselves in the news for the wrong reasons following ill-judged adverts aired during Super bowl 45.

Making light of the Chinese oppression of Tibet the advertising space, rumoured to cost 3 million dollars for thirty seconds, sought to explain its group purchasing power to an estimated 100 million viewers but the PR-gaffe could not have happened at a worse time.

Last week Facebook announced it will allow brands to issue vouchers to users who check-in on their GPS-enabled phones. While Groupon, who recently rejected a 3 billion dollar buyout offer from Google, is in a powerful position this badly judged advertising campaign has just given a PR coup to Facebook, the only platform that could topple it, shortly before it launches its new service in the U.S.

Described by the founders as, ‘A continually improving collection of questions and answers created, edited, and organized by everyone who uses it’.  The website seems to be a cross between twitter and Wikipedia with the added bonus of running several useful features that facilitate collaboration such as being able to ask a follower to answer a question, tagging any question with topics-redirecting it to a range of users, and posting the question to your twitter/Facebook account.

But what use is it for me? From a work point of view, with a little bit of luck I might be able to get some useful insight from useful people; currently it’s the hugely influential ‘tech’ people that are asking and answering the questions, but as the community grows the timelines and topics will become increasingly congested- and I’d be better off putting my message in a bottle and throwing it into the sea.

My followers on Quora are a subset of my twitter followers, so i’m working in ever decreasing circles. Quora affords me less engagement and a smaller audience than twitter and makes a voyeur of me. The one big advantage is following topics and reading the insight of the high and mighty, i’ll just sit tight and wait until they ask for my input.

Regardless of its future Quora is a great platform for discussion and will prove to be a hotbed of ideas. Twitter for all its interactivity and brilliance doesn’t provide for prolonged multi-user discussion so with the speed that these sites develop and evolve it’ll undoubtedly be an exciting few weeks, days(!) as it finds its place on the social media landscape.

Google is the search engine of choice for most internet users, here’s a quick rundown of top searches in 2010.

Unsurprisingly Social Media behemoth Facebook was crowned as ‘the most searched term’ with such a huge amount of users searching for the site and of course new users looking to sign up, the top search item was written a long time ago.

The BBC’s news gathering credentials are undisputed, but perhaps the reason that the BBC has managed second place in this list might have everything to do with its Iplayer service streaming content to almost every computer in the country.

YouTube grows and grows, now with 2 billion videos streamed every day, it would be a huge surprise to see it usurped as the world’s leading video-hosting site. Hotmail too features prominently on the site and continues to evolve, now with Active View and Office docs its popularity remains strong.

In the midst of economic gloom a bidding site is assured of a top-five placing on this list, and with Ebay a well-established leader in the field it rightly assumes its place

It’s funny that Google makes it into its own list of search results, remembering that this a list of Google search results! Maybe Chrome users don’t realise their URL bar is also a default google search bar?  It’s unlikely though that web users are navigating to a Google search engine to search for Google’s search engine, but rather it’s a lazy search made by people looking for one of Google’s products; Documents, Android OS , Nexus phones, tablets, netbooks, maps, streetview (it’s endless).

Predictions for 2011

Surprisingly twitter is not on the list, despite its leading role in many breaking stories this year. Breaking news, celebrity spats and great trending topics will ensure Twiiter emerges onto this list next year.

Facebook’s lead will not last with so many browser plug-ins, extensions and a rise in social browsers such as Rockmelt, there shouldn’t be any need for anyone to browse to Facebook, it’ll be instant, a homepage or in-built function directing the masses to their most-used website. That’s not to mention the growing take-up of all the mobile apps that lead Facebookers directly to their friends.

Surely the BBC will maintain its heady place in the list, especially now that it plans to roll out to paying US customers, perhaps it might sneak onto the US list!

What this list shows however is that either web browser developers haven’t made bookmarks simple enough or it’s the average internet user that is simple. Google might be instant but we could all save time by navigating directly to our favourite sites by organising our bookmarks, simple.

As XFactor reaches its conclusion (vote Matt Cardle) and Strictly filters down to the top 5, people of Bury are also being treated to their very own array of talented performers as local singers, dancers and musicians battle it out in ‘Street Stars’ at The Rock.

We launched the Street Stars competition as an opportunity to showcase the best emerging talent in Bury, and the initial campaign was launched on The Rock’s popular Facebook page. Performers auditioned back in October with the final 8 chosen by our panel of judges which included representatives from Democracy PR, The Rock and David Agnew from Bury’s Met Theatre.

The 8 finalists are of an exceptionally high standard, and include an eclectic mix from original singer-songwriter Martin Poole, to teen street dance sensations Darcey & Paige.  Krazy Horse has even produced an exclusive Christmas song for the contest, aptly titled ‘Christmas at The Rock’.

The Street Stars have performed every Saturday at The Rock in the lead up to Christmas, and Democracy have launched an application that enables Facebook fans to vote for their favourite acts.  The act that receives the most votes will scoop a prize worth £1000 to help further their performance career.

The competition has seen fantastic online results with not only a massive increase in fans but also general activity (status likes, video views etc) and time spent on the site.  The competition has proved a phenomenal success.

So the Street Stars will continue at The Rock  over the next 2 weeks, with performances taking place on Saturday 11th and 18th December. Voting will carry on until January 7^th 2011, when we will be announcing the overall winner.

View all the Street Stars, and vote for your favourite here