twitter

Europe’s leading digital marketing event hosts a stellar line-up of experts as they address the key challenges, opportunities and strategies for marketers.

Search Engine Watch and ClickZ, the 14th annual SES London event which takes place on 18-21 February at The Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre, London. (Map)

SES London is Europe's leading digital marketing event, covering the latest trends and challenges facing the industry. The three day event helps you navigate the digital landscape with guidance from leading experts on Search, Social Media, Display, Mobile, Email and more.

Back in February, as part of Social Media Week, Synergy and Jam co-hosted the first Socialympics, a panel debate on the implications of London 2012 being the first social media Olympic and Paralympic games.

It was such a success, that by popular demand, we staged Socialympics 2, once again bringing together key players in the London Socialympics to review what was a historic moment in sport and sports marketing.

The news that footballer Marvin Sordell has sought treatment for Twitter addiction has kickstarted a new debate about sport and social media.

Plenty of ink has been spilled, with The Guardian’s Barney Ronay asking why 140-characters holds such a fatal attraction.

One thing is certain: it’s a mass affliction. In a minority of cases, such as Marvin Sordell’s, additional factors are likely to be in play, separating the “normal” obsession the rest of us are avidly and cheerfully pursuing.

Do you know you're going to die one day? I remind myself of this every morning. Not for a depressed, self loathing, teenage angst kinda way. It's to push myself to get things done while I can.

My new years resolution was to stop using my phone while walking. My main two reasons for this are -

1) I hate the inconsiderate people (I previously included myself in this group) who slow down or even stop walking while on their phone in front of me. Nothing is that important you have to be staring at your phone that intensely, if it was, you wouldn't have forgotten about it or left it to last minute.

You might say “but I needed to check Google maps for directions”, but you could have moved to one side and not walked into oncoming people, or slowed down the people behind.

In the latest social media battle, Instagram has switched off their integration with 'Twitter Cards', the app used to display multimedia within tweets - meaning we're no longer treated to twitterfeeds enhanced by beautiful photography (albeit mostly of cats and food).

So why the move back to 140 characters, a link and strangely cropped images? Speaking at Le Web '12 last week, Kevin Systrom, Instagram's founder and CEO, said the decision was "an evolution of where we want links to our content to go."

I love Twitter. I never shy away from admitting I think it’s the best social media platform around at the moment and will continue to be so. Why? Well it knows it’s place online. It knows that people are only using a handful of sites every day so to be one of those sites you need to have content that brings people back.

Twitter is a great place to find things out but this post is more about the main three things that bug me about the platform.

For fifteen years I’ve provided research, evidence and carefully chosen words to anyone who would listen to describe the benefits of allowing interpersonal communication within a brand-space. We used to call that "social network theory" or "social engine theory". Over time, the 'social media' industry grew up around our voices (not loud enough to dominate it but still we prattled away).

Today, my agency and team operate as a very tiny part of a £Billion business based on the very same ideas; that conversations are a form of marketing, that the customer can be an ambassador and that brand choices are part of expressible identity.

The questions I’m asked each day remain essentially the same, although the vocabulary has changed a little. Ten years ago a major sports brand asked me "What will I do if the public are critical of our product in a forum we put our brand on", today they ask "What are the costs and risks of page moderation".

TfL don’t do a lot right in my eyes. I feel overcharged often and daily moan about the lack of signs alerting tourists to stand on the right. But recently they made a social investment that made me smile. Their homepage proudly proclaimed they were on Twitter.

I wasn't that impressed at the time as I’ve been following TfL for a while, but clicked the link anyway. They now have Twitter accounts for every line. Ahead of the Olympic Games this is going to be useful.