Facebook more popular than Google on Christmas Day

That's right for the first time Facebook received more UK Internet visits that Google UK on Christmas Day 2010. As the illustrated in the chart below compiled by Hitwise, on Christmas Day (December 25th) facebook.com accounted for 10.50% of all UK Internet visits, while the figure for google.co.uk was 9.77%. This was the first time that Facebook has ever been the most popular UK website. Facebook has been known previously for it's unusually high traffic volumes on Christmas Day, however I'm sure this was still a very nice Christmas present for them.



Pic - Facebook Vs Google Traffic Volumes December 2010


Via

5 Gum Street Raid – Online Treasure Hunt

In order to promote the limited edition 5 Gum tin Wrigley’s have launched the 5 Gum Street Raid, a treasure hunt hosted on Google Street View. Using Google Street View, 5 Gum has hidden 120 Limited Edition 5 Gum Tins in 10 cities. Each day for the next 10 days, 5 Gum’s Facebook fans will be given access to one of those cities in order to search and score a tin for themselves. The 5 Gum Street Raid will target destinations online throughout Australia and New Zealand before a finale in New York City on December 10th.


Video - 5 GUM STREET RAID


This is a nicely executed idea, and as highlighted on Creative, is very well suited to the 13 to 17-year-old net savvy target audience who are more than comfortable Social Networking and interacting with brands in the online space. It has also been posted that the page currently boasts the fifth largest brand Facebook group in Australia, however have not personally used the Facebook element of the page as much as they could’ve with an audience of now 242k.



Pic - 5 Gum Facebook Page


I think this is always an interesting issue for brands to tackle when creating a Facebook page and engaging a community, and can be difficult to engage an audience long term. I have included some examples of interesting brand pages below I have come across, however would like to know if there are any you guys have seen!


Tampax ‘Mother Nature’
Marks & Spencer
Starbucks
Aviva ‘Be The Big Picture’

Google Facts and Figures - as presented by Pingdom

This is a really nice one-stop-shop of all you could wish to know about Google, posted by Nick Burcher (Post found here), I felt compelled to have this for my own record. The information covers not only stats about Google Search, but a timeline, people, Money, and other product such as YouTube, Android, Blogger and Gmail to name just a few.





Image originally posted & Created by Pingdom - Google facts and figures (massive infographic)

'Going Google' Campaign

So what do you get when you pick a fight with Google? Well I think Microsoft are about to find out! Aside from the below billboards which is part of a new 'Going Google' campaign designed to show everyone of the benefits of using Google apps over Microsoft Office, there will also be a letter writing campaign and hashtag assult via @Googleatwork to boot.



Video - 'Going Google' Billboard: To give a new message about Google apps everyday for a month



Via Tech Crunch

Google Homepage Celebrates Tetris 25th Birthday

Today Google celebrates the 25th Birthday of Tetris, the 80's hit game for Nintendo, created on June 6, 1984. In the only way they know how Google have created one of their trademark logo variations (shown below) paying tribute to the computer game, voted second place in IGN's "100 Greatest Video Games of All Time" in 2007.



Pic - Google Homepage Celebrates Tetris 25th Birthday


Below is the old ad for the game, which after countless variations still remains as popular in its simplicity today as ever.


Video - Classic Tetris Advert


Happy Birthday Tetris!

Google Streetview Guerrilla ads Amsterdam

Google has claimed the streets of Amsterdam in order to promote the functionality of their Google Street view application. The activity (shown below) consist of stencils on the streets and Outdoor posters in bus stops where people can see how it all works. The activity promotes the Street view service in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and Groningen, which launched roughly the same time as it did here in the UK (March 2009).



Pic 1 - Google Street View (Street Stencil)



Pic 2 - Google Street View (Bus Stop)



Pic 3 - Google Street View Amsterdam


One more quick note for all of those curious, whilst on the subject of Amsterdam and Google Street View... yes you can view the famous Red Light District (Redlight District Amsterdam on Google Street View).


Via adsoftheworld.com


Related Posts
Google Street View hits the UK

Google Street View hits the UK

Right, so everyone today is talking about Google Street View finally coming to the UK, and quite rightly so, its funking awesome, and everyone loves the challenge of working out when the pictures were taken, along with other evolving past times such as looking at your house, friend's house, celebrates houses (maybe not the later one, but you get the idea).



Anyway Google Street View is now live in 25 cities across the UK including London, Belfast, Cardiff, Manchester, Edinburgh... and Norwich, nearly two years after it first launched in the US in May 2007. You can view it by simply going onto Google Maps, and selecting the little man icon in the top left of the map screen.



Interestingly according to Brand Republic there has also been partnerships by Visit Britain, FancyaPint.com, The London Mayor and Tate set up with Google and have selected a gallery of Street View images that showcase UK tourist attractions. The first of a whole host of opportunities I'm sure we will see as Street View rolls out further.



I also wanted to mention a brilliant piece of Street View art, set up on May 3rd 2008, by artists Robin Hewlett and Ben Kinsley. They invited the Google Street View team as well as residents of Pittsburgh’s Northside, and put together a series of pictures including a seventeenth century sword fight, a heroic rescue scene, marching band, and huge rubber chicken.



It would be interesting to see whether there will be similar stunts, or even brand involvement integrated somehow into the UK Street View mapping process.

An earlier mention of this came from Rick Lamb, along with this post from Nick Burcher using Google Streetview to re-create album covers.

Oohgle mystery posters hit the UK

Do you Oohgle? Do you even know what oohgling is? Well neither did I, until I started my online search the same way the majority of the online world now does as a matter of course… through a search engine. Upon typing Oohgle into Google, I was introduced to a PPC advert asking me if I’d seen the ad, and to click through if I wanted to find out more.



Oohgle is apparently the term coined for those of us which see an out-of-home advert, and follow it up with an online search (as most of those visiting the site would have done). The site put together by Posterscope, promoting their Prism Search tool, goes on to explain everything, and there is an optional short survey to enter a competition.



This piece of research will probably make its way to the agency world soon, and I’m hoping will give us some insightful knowledge of the way out-of-home is evolving people’s brand journeys and experiences. One of our increasing challenges as planners is accountability, and any research showing how media can work together is very welcome.