Aaron Toys, CEO of Wicount, South Africa’s oldest social buying site, explains that social buying works by getting a certain number of people to buy the same thing at a special rate, whether it is a meal at a restaurant, entry to a sporting event, a spa treatment, a theatre show or countless other options, but the deal is only successful if that number of people sign up before the deal ends. Toys says that his team contacts individual businesses and guarantees them an agreed minimum number of customers. If that number isn’t delivered, then the business doesn’t pay for the service, the customers don’t get the deal and Wicount doesn’t profit. However, if the marketing promise is fulfilled, then “everybody scores”.

So, it’s a ‘win-win-win’ for consumers, businesses and Wicount. Consumers get “great deals on cool stuff to do” and get the chance to discover new things to do; businesses get lots of new customers that they might not otherwise have attracted; and Wicount takes a percentage of the successful deals. Toys comments, “Our success is tied to the overall success of the marketing campaign.”

Such an interesting take on the traditional ‘buy in bulk and save’ concept’, capitalising on the increase in use of social media platforms to harness the collective buying power of consumers. And in a capitalistic world, it’s interesting to see a concept that isn’t solely about one company making money, but about all those involved gaining something and relying on each other for that gain.

So, when talk of the 2011 municipal elections first arose, I wasn’t particularly interested and I couldn’t really tell you much about the electioneering process. However, the elections took place yesterday, and thanks to social media, I think I ended up being the most excited I’ve ever been to vote (I was only seven when the 1994 elections took place – besides standing in a long queue with my parents, I don’t remember much!).

It’s no secret that social media has permeated society to an astounding degree, and therefore it doesn’t come as a huge surprise that our politicians jumped on the bandwagon. US President, Barack Obama, started the trend in 2008 and, let’s face it, it would take a lot to match his continued efforts (in more ways than one), but seeing@helenzille and @SAPresident trying their hands at Twitter (the one more successfully and prolifically than the other), both the ruling party and the opposition taking part in Twitter Q&A sessions and setting up Facebook pages is a sign that South Africa isn’t as far behind our first world counterparts as we sometimes fear.

Of course, it hasn’t only been the politicians tweeting and ‘Facebooking’ up a storm. In the immediate run-up to the elections, Twitter was flooded with tweets by disgruntled users mentioning that they’d received unsolicited SMSes from the DA, while@mikesharman called on fellow ‘twits’ to share pictures of their newly inked thumbs, with the hashtag, #thumbshot, not to mention the continuous coverage and commentary during and post voting.

So, while I would have voted anyway, out of civil responsibility and because it’s what my family has always chosen to do, it was with a sense of excitement that I announced on Twitter that I was heading to the polls and that I had made my mark – because not only does that make me part of history, no matter how tiny, it also allows me to be part of the social media conversation.

SmallRivers has come up with a solution in the form of Paper.li – a ‘buzzword’ I’ve been hearing more and more on Twitter and even around our office as people are out to promote their own personal ‘daily newspapers’ or try to tweet the content that ends up in said newspapers.

So, what exactly is Paper.li? In a nutshell, it’s an online newspaper app, updated once a day, that compiles all the articles, blogposts, videos and photos shared on Twitter and pertaining to your particular, pre-selected interests. To read more about how this is done, read my Editorial Desk article this week.

Commentators are saying, on the one hand, that the fact that Paper.li is only updated once a day is its downfall because we’re used to being able to access the most up-to-the-minute news at the click of a mouse or simply by glancing at our smartphones; although on the other hand, it is certainly a useful tool to make sure we don’t miss out on any news during our hectic schedules – it will be waiting, neatly packaged, for when we have time to read it properly.

In a society that is more and more interested in customisation and knowledge, Paper.li certainly offers a useful service. I haven’t tried it yet because, to be honest, it intimidates me a bit and I already feel overloaded with too much to read – but I guess that’s exactly why I should be using it… maybe I’ll give it a try…

Have you tried Paper.li yet? What are your thoughts?

Klout goes a little way to provide these answers by showing just how much influence you have online, as well as your level of engagement and amplification in the social media space. Klout Scores ranging from 1 to 100 are based on True Reach (the size of your engaged audience based on your followers and friends who actively listen and react to your online activity), Amplification Probability (the likelihood of your tweets and status updates generating actions) and Network Score (how influential your engaged audience is).

There are several pros and cons to using the tool, which you can read about in my editorial desk article this week, but at the end of the day, while it might tell you you’re influenced by Justin Bieber when you’ve never even tweeted about him, as COUP’s online marketer, Gavin Coetzee, points out, it is one of the very few systems for the measurement of online influence out there currently, and this is becoming an increasingly valuable tool, especially for marketers wishing to operate successfully in the social media space.

So, if you’re serious about tweeting for business or pleasure, then perhaps it’s time to visit www.klout.com to find out just what your Klout is in the online world. Then share your thoughts below…

It’s funny how people who work in the media industry often just don’t have the time to watch, read or listen to the news – but our reliance on social media means we don’t miss a thing. I’ve written before about how social media addiction isn’t just about keeping up with the intricacies of my friends lives (for the most part), but also for the fact that it’s possibly the easiest way to see which news and entertainment headlines have tickled their fancy, that you may well have missed in your busy day.

Case in point, my Facebook news feed last night alerted me to the fact that there was quite the furore brewing regarding the potential ‘scrapping of grammar teaching’ from Grade 10 upwards (that’s Standard 8, to those of you as old-school as me.) News24 quotes the National Professional Teachers’ Organisation of SA (Naptosa), which stated that such a move would ‘negatively affect literacy, particularly among second language students’ First comment in the thread that caught my attention was ‘The kids don’t need no edukaishun’ Granted, the comment was made in jest to prove a point, but that, my friends, is the crux of the matter. Probably the only reason that particular comment stuck out at me above all others is the intentionally incorrect spelling.

I remember my horror at learning of the ‘kill the apostrophe movement’ and at picking up on glaring spelling errors in certain media. A move away from teaching the basics at schools will surely result in even more of these, especially when coupled with the fact that we current technological inventions are symbolic of the move towards a word-centric society where we read more on screens of varying sizes than ever before.

Then again, there’s the movement of thought that states you can still read words clearly if the first and last letters are in the correct place. So maybe a lack of teaching the intricate bits of English won’t have quite the disastrous effect everyone’s predicting… especially if the basics are already in place.

Share your thoughts below.

And in other Facebook relationship news, have you heard of the Breakup Notifier? This app does exactly what its name suggests – notifies you when certain friends’ relationship status changes on Facebook. The tagline is: ‘You like someone. They’re in a relationship. Be the first to know when they’re out of it.’ The app got 700 000 hits in the first 36 hours after its launch.

There’s no doubt that Facebook has become a popular way to keep tabs on your contacts’ love lives – sometimes it’s the only source of this type of information, as hyped up and false as it may be. Facebook certainly adds some drama to our romantic lives, allowing us to live them like a soap opera while the rest of the virtual world watches. Of course, when you’re the dumpee, having that broken heart showing up on your news feed might be entertaining to everyone but you – and now with the Breakup Notifier, it will be even more public than ever before.

My take on it? Don’t take your virtual self, or anyone else’s, too seriously. It’s great that, with the inclusion of same-sex relationship statuses, everyone is able to be more themselves online than ever before. However, with that in mind, we should also consider firstly that this means there are real people with real emotions behind those online personas, and secondly, having said that, that the online world is a great way to have a bit of fun – and being married online might not mean the same to everyone as being married in the true sense of the word, offline.

This is just one classic example of how audience interaction is rapidly increasing across all forms of media, with social networking as the top instigator of this feedback and commentary. Certain media, such as radio, thrive on feedback from their listeners to determine popular topics and what the ‘man on the street’ thinks about community, national and global events. Then there’s the ‘reader’s letter’ page, long a staple of consumer magazines and newspapers, as well as new TV shows that are focused on reader suggestions and interaction.

Added to this, blogs and social networks turn everyone into a journalist as we have the power to share our opinions and images over the internet for the world to see, with these first-hand accounts and opinions often becoming sources for breaking news by bigger media outlets (once curated, of course).

What are your views on greater audience interaction in the media – a good way to ensure the audience gets the news it wants, or damaging the quality and authority of hard news journalism? Please leave your comments below.

Nevertheless, the news comes from the Wall Street Journal, which explains that even though Twitter made $45-million in revenue thanks, in large part, to Promoted Trends and Tweets, the micro-blogging site lost money this year due to hiring and buying data centres.

However, despite not being profitable, Twitter is still valued at between $8-billion and $10-billion – so who exactly would be interested in forking out this sum of money? Rumour has it that both Facebook and Google are in talks about a possible acquisition.

According to TechCrunch, acquiring Twitter “would not fit at all with Facebook’s acquisition strategy, which has up until now mostly focused on talent collection versus product.” Not to mention that, valued at $50-billion, the social network would have to put up 20% of its own value to buy the micro-blogging site. However, Google is potentially sitting in a better position with a value of $35-billion to spend, as well as the idea of “bulking up its social layer full force” – what better way to do that acquire an already established and popular site? Especially after Google Buzz wasn’t quite as successful as the company had hoped.

Of course, with all this said, the Wall Street Journal article ends by saying that the talks are “low-level” and the enquiries are “latent interest”, with discussions having “so far gone nowhere”. So maybe this is all just hot air. Would be interesting should the acquisition go either way, though – can you imagine how powerful Facebook would be if it could add Twitter to its services (already two-thirds of the way to forming ‘YouTwitFace’ www.youtwitface.com/) or alternatively how Google would be able to up its competition against Facebook with an added social boost? Will be keeping my eye on this one for sure.

Citizen journalism is a term that keeps cropping up as the man on the street is able to whip out his cell phone and capture the unfolding of a cash heist and tweet about it before regular journalists even get there, while at the same time we’re seeing more and instances of traditional media being blocked from reporting in areas such as Iran during the elections in 2009 and Haiti as a result of infrastructure damage from the earthquake last year.

Of course, it’s fair to say, as Christine Persuad does on the Here’s How website, that citizen journalists “aren’t journalists any more than I’m a doctor because I can put a Band-Aid on a cut.” Fair comment – not everyone has a journalistic qualification or is necessarily going to report or comment fairly, objectively or even accurately.

However, I think where citizen journalism, and social media’s role in particular, is beneficial is in the following areas:
• People may be more likely to trust what their peers say than what the media says;
• There’s no harm in adding to the body of information available on a controversial topic;
• Social media offers an informal way of keeping yourself informed, as well as a way of hearing about the human stories behind the big story;
• Journalists can’t be everywhere all the time, so they can benefit themselves from keeping an eye out in the social media sphere to pick up on a story – even if they curate this before publishing it.

Social media is also continuously offering new ways to interact and share – whether it’s the ability to ‘like’ or tweet a story as you’re reading it, have your tweets show up on your Facebook page to share your thoughts and findings with a larger audience, or the latest offering from Twitpic, which now not only allows users to upload their photos, but also their videos to Twitter – a definite coup for citizen journalism.

What are your thoughts on citizen journalism and the role social media plays in shaping journalism? We’d love to hear your comments.

Now, our own President Zuma is taking a leaf out of Obama’s book and also getting in on the social action. Far from the #JujuFriday controversy of a few months ago, this time the Office of the Presidency is calling for suggestions and comments in the run-up to this year’s State of the Nation address – and doing so by tweetingabout it with the hashtag, #SONA2011. The Office says it has an active following on both Twitter and Facebook and feels this represents a considerable part of the constituency, which is able to get involved – who knew?!

Of course, it’s important for both Obama and Zuma to not just have a presence online, but also to live up to the promises they make – after all, we know how quickly a reputation can be tarnished with the viral nature of social media. Still, novel to see our won government embracing the opportunity to connect with citizens, rather than trying to ‘closer’ social media altogether! Much more productive, I’d say…