social media round up
Social Media Round Up – It’s Christmaaaaaaaas!
The nation (or rather, Google) has spoken. Latest data from the search engine giant highlights that people in Britain make more Christmas searches than anywhere else in the world. Whether it’s searching mince pie recipes, or hunting down the perfect tree decorations, the UK seems to be Christmas obsessed. For the past four years the UK has had the highest search interest in festive topics, taking over from Ireland, which was top in 2012 and 2013. The people of Keelby in Lincolnshire topped the poll for carrying out the most searches with a big ‘bah humbug’ to all of the Scrooges living in Burnham. The town on the outskirts of London had the lowest Christmas Google search score. Go on, grab another mince pie and take a look at the festive themed graphs over on the BBC website. We’ve all seen those social posts fishing for likes and followers, well Facebook has had just about enough of such shenanigans. This week the social giant announced it would be tackling posts that exploit the algorithm that pushes certain content to the top of a user’s feed based on high user engagement that are nothing more than an exercise in growing likes and followers. Facebook intends to demote repeat offenders to encourage brands and other content creators to “focus on posting relevant and meaningful stories”. The hope is that it will filter out the low-quality posts and give users some respite from the tidal wave of spam that can often make Facebook a chore to use. Television presenter Richard Osman has become well known on Twitter for hosting various ‘world cup’ events. By that we mean, in support of the Child’s i Foundation, his thousands of followers on the social media platform are led through the various rounds to choose the best of a bunch. We’ve had the World Cup of Crisps, Biscuits and Chocolate Bars but this week, the Pointless presenter presided over the World Cup of Christmas Songs. Putting an end to all festive melody arguments the poll-based contest started with 32 seasonal songs split into eight groups of four. Over 100,000 people voted in each of the polls and the top two from the groups made it through to round two. We lost some good ‘uns early – It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas and Santa Baby didn’t make it beyond the first round. The catchy Christmas numbers were whittled down until we had a final battle between Wham’s Last Christmas and The Pogues’ Fairytale of New York. A hard-fought bout, there was a hair’s breadth between the two in the end with The Pogues claiming the win with 51% of the votes. However, Last Christmas might just have the last laugh as a campaign to honour the late George Michael and finally make the festive classic a Christmas number one seems to be nearing success. Hands up, who loves a good ol’ game of Monopoly? Jenga? That’s always a favourite. What do both of these games have in common? They’ve been around for generations and are much loved by 90s kids and beyond, they are traditional and require lots of patience and mental strength. Fast forward to today and technology has dominated the toy industry to bring us the likes of ‘Beasts of Balance’ (a stacking game that uses an iPad or iPhone to give an extra dimension to the game), ‘Furreal Roarin’ Tyler’ and the cute ‘Fingerlings’ (small monkeys that sit on your finger and make monkey noises and giggle). Furreal Roarin’ Tyler is a personal favourite of ours, not only does he make over 100 different sounds he also moves! His eyes, ears, mouth and tail are fully robotic, plus roar at him and he’ll roar right back at ya. Interactive toys have taken centre stage over the past few years and the younger generation have welcomed them with open arms, but if you ask us, nothing beats a game of Twister after a day of Christmas merriment.BRITS ARE NO SCROOGES, ACCORDING TO GOOGLE…_
FISHING FOR COMPLIMENTS_
THEY THINK CHRISTMAS IS ALL OVER…_
IT IS OFFICIAL…ROBOTS HAVE TAKEN OVER_
