This blog was originally posted by our friends over at Melbourne.co.uk.  Thanks to Rajesh Joshi at Melbourne’s Serverlove for allowing us to use this as a guest blog.

We love sharing funny, moving and clever videos around the office at Melbourne. Recent ones that have done the rounds include a 999 call by a women reporting the theft of a snowman and the Cassette Boy remix of Dragons’ Den (possibly NSFW).

But my favourite one is an old classic from the early days of YouTube.

What makes all these videos shareable? Why do I forward them round to my colleagues over email, Twitter or instant messaging?

As Geth from Young said at last night’s Feed, the key to making someone share a good piece of content is for it to elicit an emotional response. Whether it makes you laugh, cry or – in the case of the Picard video – simply feel bemused at the ultimate cultish geekiness, it has to do something to make us even think about sharing it with our friends.

And that really is it. ‘Viral marketing’ is not a panacea, nor is it something for which there’s a secret formula. In fact, I’d go as far as to say that they term ‘viral marketing’ is an opportunistic branding of a natural phenomenon. Dan Carrol expanded on this in his guest post for The Feed last week.

Content is key: always has been and always will be. None of the videos I’ve linked above intrinsically sell a product – but they’re bloody funny. Anyone producing content that they want people to share is going to have to compete with these and more. Take a look at James Webb’s blog post (and inevitable associated infographic!) about the most watched and searched for terms on YouTube. With so much high-quality – and low-humour content – there’s no way that anyone can guarantee that something can “go viral”. However, latching onto the trends of the day can definitely help users discover and subsequently share your content if it’s any good.

In short, the best way to harness the viral effect is to make something special that gets you thinking and make sure it gets found by users. Anyone that tries to sell you a ‘viral marketing campaign’ is selling you snake oil.

‘Not on Facebook? It still has a fix on you’ is the headline that’s grabbed my attention this week. It was a piece about how the world’s biggest social network is building-up data about people who haven’t even signed-up yet.

There were also some ‘shocking’ facts about existing users – apparently, Facebook keeps every message and tagged picture even after we’ve deleted it from our account! So, that’s what it’s just filled its humongous data farms with in Sweden!

Your contact details can be culled from friends, you’ll be linked to anyone who has ever searched for your name and there may already be tagged holiday snaps of you, despite the fact you’ve never given permission for this.

When you look at this from a civil liberties perspective, it does seem extreme that non-users have already unwittingly created a Facebook profile of sorts. But I, for one, wasn’t massively surprised.

When you think about it – why would Facebook delete any of this precious data? Remember that Facebook doesn’t charge you to log-on and tag those pictures of your friends. Every scrap of its value, and the success it’s achieved, is down to the mountains of data and size of the communities it’s managed to build. This is what allows it to go on to sell very cleverly targeted advertising that makes the company its billions and zillions.

The reason we like Facebook is because all of our friends are on there, so there has to be some element of give and take. There’s no doubt that people do tend to be a bit laissez-faire in what they post online as they feel it’s not permanent. For me, rather than scaremongering about a surveillance state, we need to ensure that we’re educating ourselves to post information that we’re happy to hand over to Facebook and the like. 

You only have to go back a couple of generations to find examples of people who were worried about handing over information to machines and organisations that we now accept as a daily fixture. My Grandma won’t even use a cash machine or bank card, because she’s worried the robots will nick off with her pension! So, if the social networks are watching our every move, let’s just make sure we keep an eye on what they’re up to too.

Do you ever wonder where you’d be if you’d made a slightly different decision somewhere along the line? Or perhaps if Lady Luck hadn’t been standing by you when you faced a particular situation? Things could’ve turned out quite differently, right?

Friday night saw me and fellow Peppermint, Rachel, head into town for our first shift doing the soup run at Manchester-based charity − The Mustard Tree. Never before has this ‘Sliding Doors’ effect seemed so relevant. Most people we met out on the streets had ended-up there following a sequence of events stemming from a single decision or bit of bad luck. Many were ex-forces, had been made redundant or were retired.

Now, I’m not going to get really deep and reflective on you, but hopefully just raise a tiny bit of awareness for a remarkable charity that’s helping to improve the lives of the homeless and marginalised in Manchester. It was all part of ‘Project Peppermint’ – a programme aimed at encouraging the Peppermints to dedicate time to deserving local causes throughout the year.

On Friday, the task at hand was to prepare the food for the soup run and then go out to a regular meeting point to serve a meal. Although the experience was quite intense, it was unbelievably inspiring to see the warmth that The Mustard Tree’s presence brought to what was otherwise a drizzly October evening.

There are tonnes of ways to get involved with the work that The Mustard Tree does, from donations of food and clothes to mentoring and general fundraising. The rest of the Peppermints are helping out in one way or another over the coming weeks − maybe you could too?

Twitter is all of a flutter today with the latest announcement from Brit-brand Burberry. The fashion label is offering its Twitter followers a virtual backstage pass that means they’ll clap eyes on the collection before the A-listers in the front row.

Live-streaming of fashion shows has been popular for the past couple of years and 32 of the London shows this week will be streamed to a wider audience. Burberry has managed to go one better and this afternoon will see the world’s first ever ‘tweetwalk’. This means that you and I will have the opportunity to catch a glimpse of next season’s collection well before the ‘fash pack’, as we follow a series of backstage Twitpics today. Bravo Burberry!

There’s no denying that this is a very cool idea and will provide the brand with additional exposure − but will it make any difference to the company’s sales? According to a recent report about why we follow brands on social media, a massive 97 per cent of respondents said that an online experience has influenced whether or not they bought a product from a brand. I’m sure that Burberry will see an increase in sales − for one week after the show, items from the collection will be available on its website, despite not hitting the shops until much later.

Burberry is also set to capitalise on other platforms as it hands over the reins of its Instagram account to photographer, Mike Kus − the most-followed Instagram user in the UK. And, for those whose budgets don’t stretch to the latest Burberry trench coat, fear not − you can buy your own piece of London Fashion Week when the show’s soundtrack is made available to buy on iTunes.

This is surely fashion for the masses and has transformed an event that was once the domain of a limited number of industry insiders. It’s no secret that Burberry has had to work hard to overhaul its image, following criticism that a luxury brand is devalued as soon as it becomes accessible to the mass market. Yet, this somehow works, as the focus on social media keeps it fresh. Follow @Burberry to see more…

There are certain moments in life that we want to remember forever – and a fair few we’d rather forget.  Inevitably, as we grow older, our brains get a little rusty and even our most cherished moments fade.

But advancing technology may mean we can hang on to those images for ever. Dr Cathal Gurrin, a lecturer at Dublin City University’s School of Computing, is leading research into a new phenomenon known as ‘lifelogging’. 

If thoughts of ‘The Truman Show’ automatically spring to mind, you wouldn’t be far off. Dr Gurrin wears a small SenseCam around his neck everyday which automatically takes around three snapshots per minute through a fisheye lens. The images are then uploaded to a server and stored in a digital archive.

What began as a two-week experiment has now turned into pioneering research between Dr Gurrin and cognitive psychologists at the University of Leeds, who are looking into how our brains process memories. The overall aim of the experiment is to create a ‘perfect digital memory’ and they hope to have the first memory search engine ready by the end of the year.

Though the concept of creating a ‘digital memory’ is, in itself, truly fascinating, do we want to become a society that stores all of our daily activities in order to share them with others further down the line? You can see how lifelogging will become as voyeuristically addictive as Facebook or Twitter, especially if celebrities have got anything to do with it!

Lifelogging has perhaps already started with camera apps such as Instagram, which allows users to upload photos from their smartphones and follow others to view their photo feeds. It’s another impressive development in the world of technology – but is it also a little too close to Orwell’s dystopian 1984?

The dangers of the social web scene are no longer confined to celebrities sending out tweets without thinking. Soldiers now face the risk that their latest tweet, comment or check-in could affect the rule of law and, at its most extreme, could cost lives. 

The Ministry of Defence is taking a huge leap into the digital age by warning British armed forces of the risks of sharing too much information on social networking sites, such as Twitter and Facebook.  The MoD’s latest ‘Think before you…’ campaign on YouTube highlights the dangers of servicemen and their families posting seemingly innocent status updates only to reveal confidential information online. 

This move comes as Joanne Fraill, a woman who sat on a jury last year in a drugs trial, faces prison for contempt of court after she came clean on contacting acquitted defendant, Jamie Sewart.  The jury was in the middle of determining the charges against other defendants and the 30-minute Facebook conversation led to them being discharged, causing the case to collapse at a cost in the region of £6 million. Millions of pounds for a 30-minute Facebook chat!  Careless talk also costs money. Lots of it!

With that in mind, this initiative from the MoD makes perfect sense. It isn’t looking to gag troops completely and recognises that these sites are ‘great for keeping in touch with friends and family and letting the world know what you are up to.’ But, as the WW II posters said: ‘careless talk costs lives.’

This was good advice back then and it remains good advice today.  Go ahead and educate our British soldiers.  Don’t educate our celebrities though; it’s far too entertaining…

Given my line of work, it will hardly come as a surprise that I’m absolutely obsessed with how we consume our news. I’ll take it however it comes, whether it’s via print, digital or social media. My daily diet kicks off within minutes of my alarm with a quick check of my favourite news feeds on Twitter, then it’s off to work with the radio on, another Twitter check and a cover-to-cover read of a newspaper − and so it continues throughout the day.

News is already fast and ever-breaking, so I was quite surprised to read that people are fed up with the ‘old’ way of breaking and reporting news and are now looking for a transformation in how news is delivered. Really?

It was the founder of the ‘I Can Haz Cheezburger’ network who expressed this view and he’s looking at ways to combat the ‘problem’. It seems that plans were afoot to come up with software that combines the best bits of the Huffington Post, WordPress and I Can Haz Cheezburger.

The software was set up to allow anyone to report breaking news, pulling together different sources and opinions. In my view, Twitter and blogging are already doing this job pretty well, but I’ll keep an open mind. Even when I pick up breaking news on social media, I look to traditional news sites to qualify the information.

Following some initial criticism, the latest plan of action is to scrap the software in favour of bringing together a group of 50 specialists who’ll brainstorm the problem on 29 July. Watch this space…

Science fiction films are often ridiculed for their expectations when it comes to forecasting the future. After all, 2001 passed us by without Stanley Kubrick’s predicted space odyssey to Jupiter.

However, the film Minority Report – Steven Spielberg’s 2002 sci-fi drama – may have actually underestimated the rate of technological progress when it showed 2054 as the year when targeted, holographic advertising is used. This week, the PR world is cooing over the success of Lynx’s ‘fallen angel’ campaign, during which virtual angels were digitally projected near unsuspecting commuters in London’s Victoria Station. This was a full 43 years before Hollywood told us it would happen!

The stunt arguably showed the shape of things to come. With the growth in popularity of smartphones, mobile augmented reality – as it’s known – is expected to become a part of everyday life. Thanks to the company Total Immersion, which uses augmented reality software to integrate 3D objects into live video, the day when mobile phones project holographic products could be just round the corner.

Interactive advertisements are an exciting prospect for any marketer who wishes to engage with the difficult-to-reach ‘Facebook generation’, and holographs are undeniably an intriguing concept. But I have my doubts about their practical application. After all, the novelty of TV advertising swiftly wears off, and I can’t imagine that carrying a portable advert machine would appeal to most people.  Especially if one pops up mid-tweet!

Last week it was announced that Facebook has set up a new resource for journalists looking to find sources, interact with readers and distribute stories. It’s been christened ‘journalists on Facebook’ and is proving very popular, having collected over 40,000 ‘likes’ since its inception.

The question still remains − can Facebook take the podium from current title-holder, Twitter, as the place to source and share news?

Looking at the competitors’ vital statistics, Facebook certainly has size on its side. Weighing in at over half a billion users, Facebook is ten times larger than Twitter.

Aside from this, Facebook is really packing a punch. It allows journalists to share content and analyse stats from their page. It also encourages engagement and has the facilities for readers to leave comments, promising to build audiences and create communities.

What Twitter lacks in size, it certainly makes up for in speed. Twitter already provides journalists with the facility for instant, mass distribution of news. Despite having fewer overall users, most major publications have more Twitter followers than Facebook fans.  

So far, the two sites seem to be on a fairly level playing field. But it’s important to think beyond who’s on a particular social network and consider why they’re there. Twitter is used both professionally and personally, whereas Facebook, on the whole, is purely for play. When I’m on Facebook, I’m looking at a friend’s holiday snaps or arranging a night out with the girls. It’s the place to pick up the news in my world and not where I’d take in the world’s news. It’s difficult to see how this will change any time soon, but social media is continually evolving and Facebook’s latest launch is certainly worth keeping an eye on.

Last night was Manctwester. This is the local arm of the global phenomenon Twestival which uses social media for social good. It aims to unite people across the world on a single day to highlight a great cause and have a fun event.

So, off we went to Noho Bar in Manchester’s Northern Quarter to see what the evening had to offer. We walked in to see a mass of people tapping away on iPhones – probably looking up answers for the ‘twiz.’ It was a tough one and, unfortunately, Team @Peppertweets didn’t fare particularly well!

The nominated charity for the event was the Wood Street Mission which had, unsurprisingly, been voted for through social media. The evening kicked off with a short video about the work that the Wood Street Mission does and how our donations would go towards helping the cause.

The evening rolled on with a charity auction and a live link-up to events across the world. It was all quite exciting and oh so very web 2.0 − from name badges with your Twitter username on them, to the live video blog and Twitter wall. A good night was had by all and hopefully a decent total was raised for the charity. Mission accomplished.

It goes to show those out there who think Twitter is a forum for showy celebs and people updating you on what they ate for their lunch that they may need to reconsider. Social media is a force to be reckoned with and there’s little doubt that fundraising will continue to go in this direction.