Top digital stories this week, incl. Xbox, hackers & hashtag disasters

Gemma Burkinell, Social Media Week Intern

McDonalds recently launched the Twitter hashtag campaign #Meetthefarmers to promote the company’s fresh produce and meat. The fast food chain took the campaign to a wider consumer market with the hashtag #McDstories, but unfortunately for Mcdonalds, tweeters soon hijacked the hashtag to tell less favourable tales about the brand.

The McDonalds hashtag is a brilliant example on the bad effect social media can have on a brand if they are not careful. #McDstories lost control within one hour, which suggests McDonalds didn’t realise the extent to which their brand strongly divides opinion.

Mars-owned brand Snickers took a similar gamble yesterday, sponsoring the hashtag #hungry. When Snickers hijacked Katie Price’s Twitter account it had her 1.5 million followers wondering if she had been hacked and with recent concerns around celeb phone hacking, this PR stunt could have gone terribly wrong. Unluckily for Snickers it didn’t generate negative tweets about the brand but it has prompted investigation by the ASA.

It just goes to show that what people say about you as a brand on social media can never be fully controlled, and any attempts to piggyback on the fast-moving and viral nature of platforms like Twitter should bear this in mind.

Angry Bird

I scared the life out of my wife last week by leaving my Xbox turned on all day when I was out at work and she was sat at home.  Not very scary, I hear you say… well,no … until I remotely ejected the disk in it even though I was travelling on a train back from London. Oh how I chuckled. Oh how she didn’t.

The new Xbox Companion App (out now on Windows Phone and that other phone that fan boyz go on about) is really quite revolutionary in joining up the Xbox eco-system.

If you haven’t got an Xbox you won’t know that it’s now a fully featured movies-on-demand machine (Netflix, Sky Movies plus the already fully featured Zune), which also gives full access to music services and social networks, as well as the category-defining list of AAA games titles.

All that entertainment was just crying out for an app to let you browse, buy, download and organise your night’s entertainment.  Not only that, it lets you pre-arrange meeting up with your friends on Xbox, lets you checkout your gaming achievements from Console to Mobile, and lets you manage your Xbox account.

It’s really quite gob-smacking how Microsoft has created such an extensive, well-connected, well-designed and useful eco-system, which you won’t really appreciate if you don’t have a Windows Phone too. I do so yah boo to you!

The final cherry on the top of the Xbox Companion trifle is that it all turns off and changes into a fully featured remote control! Which … err … allows you to eject disks in your living room from anywhere in the world…mwahhahahahaha!

Hackers played at their own game

Dear 2012,

Christmas is now a distant memory and, having almost survived January, I thought now would be a good time to write to you about the year ahead. I think this will be a really interesting year for digital. Here is my top three of  things to watch:

1. Piracy.  This debate rages on more than ever. Yes it needs to be tackled, but the heavy-handed propositions like SOPA and ACTA coming out of governments are dangerous and threaten to strangle the life out of the web.  It was born free and uncensored and should remain so.  The best way to tackle piracy is to provide legal alternatives that give good service at a fair price.  You only have to look at the success of Netflix, iTunes and iPlayer to see that people are willing to pay to use them

2. Hackers.  The exploits of the likes of Kim Dotcom and Anonymous.  Kim Dotcom is  a jet-setting-celebrity-playboy-hacker,  driving around in a Mercedes with number plates like GOD and MAFIA and cruising into the Monaco GP in a $10m super-yacht.  Though it turns out all this was a clever trick to make him seem wealthier than he was in order to attract investment for his businesses.  Hacker collective Anonymous continue to strike out in the name of a free web.  Symantec is the latest firm to be compromised after Anonymous leaked source code of their security products.

3. Microsoft.  Yes really!  I want one of those new Windows Nokia phones.  I was a Nokia man through the noughties and the prospect of them making some decent phones again gives me a warm fuzzy feeling.  Plus my Android is doing my head in (I can’t install anything else unless I delete my contacts database) and the only apples I like are Royal Galas.  Also Windows’ tablets that share an OS with a PC and a new Xbox all sound ace.

So that’s my top three, I hope you like this letter.  It would be great to hear from you if you have time to write me back.

Yours faithfully

James Wheatley, Technical and Scoping Director

P.S. I hope this isn’t the last year in the world like in that dreadful movie.