Top five digital stories this week, incl. Weetabix, Blackberry & Diaspora

* Featured, Brass digital roundup — By Brass Team on October 14, 2011 12:27 pm

Google SEO & PPC changes

Jamie McGrath, Online Visibilty Manager

Google recently announced support for ‘view all’ in search results, showing that they have realised that users prefer to view all pages and are working to deliver these pages in search results. If your website has ‘view all’ pages, Google should start to use those pages as the preferred page to index, and you can make it even easier for them to do so by including rel=”canonical” in your HTML and linking it to your ‘view all ’ page. This is useful for users as it allows them to navigate through your site quicker once they have been served the ‘view all’ page in Google’s search results.

Alongside this, Google has launched support for pagination – pages 1,2,3,4,5 etc on a website, something which has been a hassle for SEO’s for some time as there have been different ways and views on how pagination should be dealt with, some more effective than others. The idea behind this is to let search engines know what content is paged using HTML properties rel=”next” & rel=”prev”, therefore indicating to a search engine that indexing properties such as links from the paged content should be consolidated. This will help eradicate common issues with paged content such as duplicate content.

In PPC news, mobile-optimised websites now form part of search ads quality, following a study which showed that 61% of users were unlikely to return to a website that they found difficult to access on their mobile phone. Having a well optimised mobile website is now part of Google’s metric for a quality score that can have a direct impact on your ad rank and ultimately on your cost per click. Google offer a tool to create mobile-optimised landing pages completely free of charge, so now there’s no excuse!

Have you had your Weetabix?

George Hurrell, Digital Designer

Weetabix have gone down a different route with their new advert for Weetabix Chocolate Spoonsize. Being a chocolate mini version of their cereal, this is aimed primarily at sweet-toothed children and that shows in the new advert.

Rather than a standard nutrition/fill you up for the rest of the day based ad or some Pixar inspired full 3D animation, they’ve gone for a really fun/cute pop star style dance routine with teddy bears as backing dancers.

It looks like they’ve had a lot of fun making this and it shows.  You can watch the Making of the Weetabix Chocolate Spoonsize ad here; it makes a refreshing change to see that the bears aren’t computer-animated!

I love the ending with her friends watching on in awe. The ad really fits the tagline and concept for the cereal.

See the full Weetabix Chocolate Spoonsize advert here

Diaspora flounders…

Mark Kelly, Digital Solutions Director

The embryonic (oxymoronic ) Private Social Network , Diaspora, sent me an email last night asking for a donation (suggested $25) to help them complete the project they started back in early 2010 – to build an alternative to Facebook (and now Google+). The request itself stood out for me as I remembered they’d already had a lot of venture capital funding and a load of social media (Mashable et al) coverage and fanfare at the start – but had gone quiet of late. So I had assumed they had run out of steam. It was also borderline patronising as a note (something a lot of people have bridled at, looking at twitter) – how not to ask supporters for money.

But if you believe in what they were / are trying to do, its worth considering and not rejecting the request out of hand.. Why? In a nutshell, Diaspora will appeal to those who are reluctant Facebook (or Google+) users and have concerns around Choice, Ownership and Simplicity (their stated USPs). Choice: who sees which updates, jokes, and photos. Ownership: you control the rights to the photos or videos you share on the platform. Simplicity: easy to maintain privacy and keep a secure profile (if you want to).

So can Diaspora become a credible contender for a new way to network socially online? That’s a big ask – not just the $25 in this climate and if you support other causes – but the ability to build an (open source) alternative to the juggernauts of Facebook and Google. And to migrate people in sufficient numbers (think 10,000s at least) to it to make it viable in the long term.

Viability comes from revenue models, one of the most popular being attracting advertisers, who won’t come if you don’t have user volumes (ok, with the exception of niche advertising).

The email from Diaspora also reminded me of Glow, another contender for a new private / controllable (by you) social network, which also seems to have stalled (in July). But as the developer said on his blog : “.. you can rest assured, I’ll be putting the finishing touches on Glow and throwing it out there for the world to ignore. .. Meanwhile, you should check out Google Plus. Many of the features I’ve included in Glow are also part of Google Plus (and look much nicer). “

If Diaspora delays any further will they be posting a similar message?

Steve Jobs, The Legacy

James Wheatley, Head of Technical and Scoping

According to technology weathervane dailymail.co.uk, Steve Jobs has left a secret legacy of future products to keep his former employees busy for the next for years.  You have to admire that forward planning.

I got to thinking about what those next four years could bring and here are my predictions for the must-have products of the future that we don’t even know we need yet:

iFog – its cloud computing – only thicker.
iSpoon – the spoon that tells you what to eat and when.
iHat – the hat that always gets you home.  Navigate your way to and from anywhere, includes live weather updates.
iCar – you remember car phones right?  Well this is similar except it’s a car in a phone.

Ronnie Corbett and Harry Enfield in topical comedy SHOCK

Paul Mallett, Managing Partner

In an hilarious quirk of technological zeitgeisty pre-cognition, Ronnie Corbett and Harry Enfleild made a funny sketch.  ‘My Blackberry Is Not Working’ proved to be 10 months ahead of its time, literally cramming in tech-references 2 to the dozen.

Now it gets really exciting…a new series is in the offing and I literally can’t wait to see what else these modern-day-mediums can predict…so I won’t bother.

Prepare to ROFL:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAG39jKi0lI&sns=fb

Tags: apple, blackberry, diaspora, digital design, google, ppc, ronnie corbett, seo, Social Media, Steve Jobs, weetabix