Is he our new guru?

The meeting was, in my opinion, very interesting since the guy knew very well what he was talking about and gave straight answers to the questions we brought up – even if he was perhaps a tad less unambiguous on privacy issues. But I won’t blame him, he was representing his company, was up front about that and we shouldn’t forget it. He gave useful insights on how Facebook is going to develop, what other institutions do and what we, the European Parliament, could do to improve our Facebook-presence.

I picked up some facts and statistics to give an overview of where we stand in the Facebook-galaxy (some of them come from our boss, Steve).

I was sitting next to Fred, our graphist, during the meeting... This is the way he takes notes. Well, my notes are so boring compared to that...

We can be proud of what we do on social media, for sure:

• As far as we can tell, the European Parliament is Europe’s highest ranking public political institution on Facebook
• The European Parliament page brings together the largest online community interested in EU politics – the second one being an unofficial EU page with about 43 000 fans.
• In the world rankings of public political institutions on Facebook, the European Parliament seems to be second only to the White House
• The European Parliament is the indisputable world leader in the use of Facebook by a parliamentary institution

But, nevertheless, we shouldn’t congratulate ourselves too much and forget going on… because our 75 000 fans are nothing compared too:

• 272 000 on the Democracy UK page, which was launched to debate political issues at a national level.
• 455 000 fans/friends of all MEPs on Facebook (It’s even probably more than 500 000 now)
• 9.3 millions fans for Obama
• 9.6 millions fans for Lady Gaga
• 400 million Facebook users worldwide
• 500 million EU citizens
• 500 billion minutes spent on Facebook every month in the world

Are social media reserved for young people? © European Parliament / Pietro Naj-Oleari

The use of social media has been very much discussed during the seminar. It shows that it has become unavoidable. I can remember another seminar about one year ago, when I arrived in the web communication team. It was very complicated to convince our colleagues from other units that social media are not a useless tool for a few geeks. Social media were just out of the debate – “Why should we discuss it, it has no power and the European Parliament doesn’t have anything to do with it!”

I wouldn’t say that the situation is 100% different today, but I see an improvement. People don’t question the use of social media any more – even if they still question their utility and outreach. In my opinion, it means that social media have become an integral part of the European Parliament’s communication toolbox. The work done during the elections campaign was fruitful. Some colleagues still don’t believe in what we do, but at least they accept that we do it and see it as a (minor) communication channel. The next step will be to convince them of the incredible power of social media.

Social media will never replace traditional communication methods. A good conclusion because everyone can understand what he/she wants to understand.

Social media: who's in favour, who's against? Vote during our directorate seminar. ©European Parliament / Pietro Naj-Oleari

Social media will never replace traditional communication methods, they’re just aside these. That was more or less the conclusion of the seminar. A good conclusion because everyone can understand what he/she wants to understand.

And I want to hear a positive sign in this conclusion. Our hierarchy doesn’t want to hurt our old-fashioned colleagues but they want us to keep going.

If young people are the future of Europe, then social media are very important – not only for the European Parliament or for communication purposes, but also for the sake of the European democracy. Because press releases, traditional websites, newspaper articles and open air events will never reach this particular audience at a European level. Is Facebook going to be the beginning of a true European public sphere? Let’s hope it will be the conclusion of next year’s seminar…

IS IT an addiction?! Thanks to Fluxy for the pciture on Flickr @ http://bit.ly/brf29N

I considered myself a “frequent social media user”, with some incipient risk of addiction. Since I read this blog from tech company Retrevo that relieved me. I’m NOT in the top risk category. Apparently, I don’t present the most visible signs of what researchers call “obsession with checking in with their social media circles throughout the day and even the night”.  

Believe it or not, the most dangerous symptom of the syndrome, according to scientists, is interrupting sexual activity (or, as Retrovo delicately phrases it, “intimate moments”), to check your Facebook or Twitter account. According to Retrevo, 11% among young users (under 25) do it regularly. Yes, that’s right, check their fourth chart, third green column from the left… My theory “the youngest, the best” is totally in crisis now.

Another bad sign is if you check your account(s) as soon as you wake up in the morning, sure that there will be somebody even more zealous than you who already posted something. This is a very contagious virus, since it strikes 48% of social media users. Not me.  I’m the kind of girl that avoids any interaction with the world (real or virtual) before 9.00h.

But then, it comes to the third, unmistakable symptom: are you ready to interrupt a dinner for an electronic message? YES! Yes, I am! I am able to start a 2 hours conversation on the phone while starting to eat and I completely forget about my dinner. But then the phone is quite old school isn’t it? I mean, I wouldn’t consider it as “social media”, but more as “social life” addiction.

Naturally, all this left me burning with curiosity… I started to wonder if my colleagues were those kind of very bad addicts, or just we all belong to the old school. Here the result of my Flash Survey 19-04-2010.

Sex and the ex

Definitely happy to discover that the majority of us don’t open Facebook during our “intimate moments”. Only one admits to having had “a chat” while making love.

Worth a mention, the case of “an ex insisting on checking if she got a text to her phone during sex”: maybe a sufficient reason to break up. (ed. How reliable is such information about an ex, I wonder?)

Otherwise, numbers talk clear: we are below the average, with 14 out of 15 answering an unambiguous “NO” to the question.

Night-book?

Unit below the average also there, but with some more positive answers: 1/3 of us check Facebook “during sleepless nights”, when they wake up (no Dan, not everybody does!), or before going to bed. It is, surprisingly, a 80% male majority. Maybe girls have something better to do at night?

Ex are recurrent presences in this poll: “My ex was sticking to Facebook as soon as she woke up. And I would have killed her!”. Poor guy… Take comfort from your colleague who had to deal with the sex-SMS-ex.

Dinner and phone, a popular combination

1/3 of us check Facebook “during sleepless nights”, when they wake up, or before going to bed.

Yes, we’re definitely the old school. Most of us allow interruption of dinner by the phone, but internet is not mentioned at all: we don’t have “our computer at the dining table”.

Some people “try to avoid it” (the phone), meaning that it’s a very frequent practice. Only 5 say a convinced “NO”, whereas the others – knowing that they could be judged under the Fine Dining Etiquette rules – answer a timid “no, unless…”.

No ex this time, but a very liberated family: ” I was always thought those families that wouldn’t answer the phone during dinner were strange. Would they rather have the phone ringing off the hook than answering?!”

And now comes the best…

Eh eh. You thought you were sane, didn’t you? That, despite the hours spent in front of the screen, all the pictures of your school mates you have been browsing, the dangerous chats with the ex, despite Twitter and MySpace entering your adult life, YOU are still immune. I did. Till I got at the end of the article:

“56% of social media users need to check Facebook at least once a day. Even more impressive are the 12% who check in every couple of hours”

Every couple of hours??? What if it’s every couple of minutes??? My god…THAT’s a SYMPTOM! Unless, unless…you have a good excuse…a good excuse like

“I use it for work”

And, uff, I have it. Do you?!

The network is spreading

We don’t claim the scientific method or the statistical sophistication of Fleishman Hillard, but we have some rough and ready figures on how many MEPs are using social media – and it seems the numbers are well up since the elections. Doubtless increasing every day as well…

So, here we go:

Twitter

We found 230 MEPs with Twitter feeds.  That’s just over 31% of the membership of the EP. Collectively, they have over 114,000 followers.  If you want information on who is most followed, most active, etc., the euro-twitter aggregation site europatweets.eu offers some statistics (for which I take no responsibility).

Twitter is of course currently having another of its moments in the limelight, thanks to its role in helping people deal with myriad difficulties caused by the air traffic ban (see Tibo’s post mentioning this and his praise for Eurocontrol’s exemplary efforts on Twitter), and many MEPs have been using their Twitter feeds to tell stories of travel disruption, seek/give information or occasionally vent some frustration.

Facebook

A majority of MEPs have Facebook profiles! We found 401, that’s 55% of them. That’s a comfortable co-decision qualified majority… Unlike Fleishman Hillard, we haven’t got the research firepower to try to assess “extensive” users of social networks, but I think we can assume that the total we found represents a significant increase over the 33% who “used social networks extensively” before the elections.

A majority of MEPs have Facebook profiles! That’s a  qualified majority.

Altogether, and very interestingly for anyone thinking in terms of a burgeoning EP online community, these members have well over 450,000 fans, but, of course, fairly spread out between them.  (We couldn’t help noticing though that almost 90,000 of the total were fans of just two members, but otherwise the numbers are quite even.)

Facebook is the social media platform which seems to offer us the greatest possibilities at present. The number of fans (or, as it now says, “people who like this”) of the EP Facebook page is growing steadily, and stands at 66,640 at the beginning of the day I write this, which also happens to be the page’s first birthday! We are also seeing an increasing level of interaction on the page from fans, and, it is good to observe, from MEPs who wish to join in the debates they see occurring there.

Personally, I can’t find anyone else in the EU institutional framework, or in the wider “official” European parliamentary world, who has built up a number of fans approaching this. (That said, I am not going to compare the page with, say Britney Spears or Barack Obama – 2.6 and 8.0 million fans respectively – but that’s different, right?) So, perhaps, embryonically, the EP Facebook page stands as good a chance as anyone at offering one place where the mythical European public sphere to start taking shape online. Now, moreover, that we know about all those members – and all their fans – it seems all the more clear that the time has come to start getting serious about developing the links and interaction between them all, and maybe creating a kind of institutional hub for their conversation.

But that is another, very interesting, story and doubtless material for many more posts in the future. Back to business.

Blogs

Last in our research, we found 282 MEP bloggers, which is about 38%. I admit to wondering whether we found everything, but do note that the FH study had MEP “extensive” bloggers at 24%.

****

MEPs are increasingly engaging via social media. This must have momentous implications for our own institutional online strategy in the future.

So there you go, just some quick figures. Many thanks to the doughty trainees for their valuable efforts on this. As I said, I don’t pretend it is “scientific” research and I am going to be cautious about getting into more detail, which might be rather spurious. The key thing is we know that, yes, MEPs are increasingly engaging via social media, that a critical mass is surely being reached and that this will have momentous implications for our own institutional online strategy in the future. More anon, no doubt.

The European Parliament is a sociable place - can it also be media social?

“Less stories more creatively told” was one of the phrases ringing in my ears as I departed the recent “Social Media World Forum” in London. These words were uttered by Adam Parker of RealWire who was speaking about the relative merits of press releases and whether they work or not in the social media age.

He lamented the fact that according to his research only 2% of all press releases in the UK had any kind of social media aspect (twitter, Facebook etc) to them.

Our articles for the Parliament’s website are not press releases but they could definitely be improved using hyperlinks more inter linking with videos and audio-visual material. Interestingly, Adam felt that humble audio was the most under-rated and under used of all the communication mediums which was strange considering it has been the method of communication since our ancestors were sitting in caves.

Much of the social media forum was about the uses that Facebook can be put to. I won’t divulge much on that subject as one of our FB-boffins was there as well and is eager to share some findings with you later in this blog.

A generational shift in online politics?

In terms of politics and the public sphere Alex Aitken of Westminster City Council voiced fears that many people were treating social media as merely an end in itself. For him the only point in any public communication must be about encouraging people to be engaged in public debates and policy making.

Craig Elder, the Conservative party’s social media guru said he thought there was an aspect of generational change in the way the parties and politicians generally used social media and the internet. He contrasted Tony Blair and Gordon Brown with the younger pretenders David Cameron and George Osborne in that regard.

The entire panel, including moderator Matthew Fraser, agreed that things were moving incredibly fast (social media was scarcely heard of at the last UK election in 2005), and that future elections would make our current efforts look amateurish.

Newspapers – remember them?

For me personally perhaps the most depressing presentation was on the future of newspapers – if indeed they have one. Caught in a perfect storm of depression, scant advertising and demographic changes circulation is in freefall.

Dirk Singer (“Head Rabbit, Rabbit”) estimated that circulation in the UK had fallen by 3.1 million by 2008. To put that into perspective that equates to almost the population of Wales who have stopped reading newspapers.

This trend started in the US, has spread to the UK and will no doubt soon be found in Europe more generally. Putting this into perspective he said that in the US newspaper have lost 7 million readers in the last 25 years whereas online readership was up 34 million in the last 5 years.  He sees the print future as being made up of specialist newspapers and magazines catering for people who want long well researched articles.

Finally, we turned up for what came to be an ironically named workshop on “Reputation online – are we ready for the future of social media?” Unfortunately, the panel were not ready neither for the future or the present for that matter as they failed to show up! In their place the moderator and a man from Linked in did a great job in filling in and somehow salvaging something.

Nevertheless, a productive and dare I say it enjoyable experience!

Interesting article comparing the advertising strategies of old arch-rivals Coca Cola and Pepsi (found thanks to @MickSiddle on Twitter). Coke is sponsoring the 2010 World Cup, but Pepsi seems to be going for a social media based approach instead. Pepsi even opted out of advertising during the Superbowl this year (unlike, famously, Google with its Parisian love story) after doing so for 23 years, and seems set to spend up to a third of its entire advertising budget on social media. That’s a fair amount for sure, and advertising like Pepsi’s YouTube spot, featuring Henry, Messi, Lampard and Drogba, doesn’t come cheap. Whatever, first World Cup score to Pepsi, says the article. So the big boys are putting their big advertising bucks online…

Public information film NOT as they used to be. Remarkable, and a hit.

The same article also gives a top ten of current online advertising videos. There is a remarkable ultra slow motion dog food advert (I learnt from a careers fair decades ago that Pedigree pet foods is part of the Mars Corporation, so there’s money there too), and the amazing  Evian baby spot that’s been doing the rounds (am I alone in thinking that, though a cool video, there is something slightly “off” about using babies this way?).

I am however most struck – and mightily relieved – that it’s not all megabuck multinational corporations in there. There is a public safety campaign at no. 6, from the unlikely-sounding source (why do I say that?) of “Sussex Safer Roads Partnership”. I’d already been sent this by someone in the office. Over three million views; how many in Sussex, I wonder. If you haven’t seen it, watch it (whether or not you are in Sussex), it’s superb.

Anyway, there is definitely a place for the smart, highly-produced YouTube/”viral” video in the communications mix, it seems, including for the public sector. Hmm. It’s close to a year since we released our election videos, perhaps it’s time to think about the next official offering. Something based on the euro-West Wing concept perhaps?

The journalists followed the nowadays trend on getting the news. Not searching, but getting. Searching is too old-fashioned. Nowadays the mountain comes to Mahomet, via Facebook and Twitter. The same way the EP news came to you this week.

Haiku goes global ©nobuojp

Monday: you find out on Facebook that the Bulgarian commissioner-designate will be evaluated by the Parliament. If approved, she will be in charge with development and she will be expected to take action on Haiti. If you have time to check the fan’s comments you read that she is an economist and was vice-president of the World Bank and that people trust her. Later in the afternoon you read that last year’s Sakharov prize laureate, Oleg Orlov, leader of Memorial, was arrested in Russia, and that the EP’s president called on the Russian authorities to “cease the heavy-handed treatment of peaceful demonstrators”. The fans comments inform you that Mr Orlov is the second Sakharov laureate to be jailed, after Lyudmila Alexeyeva was arrested on New Year’s Eve . On Twitter you read that the Balkans are “still suffering” from Yugoslav wars, and if you follow the link you will be able to read an interview on this subject with the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

Tuesday: you probably already knew that the European Parliament regularly examines the candidate states’ readiness for EU membership. But you can find out the citizens’ views on enlargement in the 200+ fan comments. The day’s bad news: we may have to raise taxes in the next years. If you don’t click on the link you don’t find out that the MEPs asked for the pensions’ reform. On Twitter you read that bankers have lost their friends in Davos and that MEPs ask support for small firms while tackling the crisis. If you are a fan of the EP president on Facebook, you find out that he paid his first official visit to a founding EU Member State – France.

In late afternoon you cannot believe you eyes: the Parliament’s communication team published on the EP official website the comments on enlargement from their Facebook fans.

Wednesday: you are informed on Facebook that the hearing of the Bulgarian commissioner-designate is broadcast live. Unfortunately not on Facebook, but on the EP website. So, follow the link!

Thursday: first news on Facebook: Parliament members look at how cooperation in organ donation could help to overcome shortages. In late afternoon you cannot believe you eyes: the Parliament’s communication team published on the EP official website the comments on enlargement from their Facebook fans. On Twitter you read that the commissioners’ hearings are over, and you can see the atmosphere caught by our photographer in a photo gallery on Flickr.

Friday: On Twitter you find a link to the verbatim reports of the commissioners’ hearings and another one to the parliamentary committees’ evaluations of the candidates. On Facebook you read that during the following week MEPs meet in plenary in Strasbourg. The video proposed in the link shows you the main points on the MEPs agenda, among which the controversial transfer of European banking data to the American authorities.

Did you miss any information by not reading the official news? Find out yourself on the EP “Headlines”!

Now fighting it out on Twitter too

Just  a short post to draw attention to one of the more interesting aspects of the hearings of commissioners-designate, one which may mark an important change in the way EP political groups communicate.

I was fascinated to observe during the seven days of hearings we have already had, and presumably in the one more we are yet to have, the (often contrasting) reactions of the two largest EP political groups were posted almost in real time on Twitter, via the official group feeds.

The EPP (European People’s Party – @EPPGroup), which posted I think the greater number of tweets, took the approach of citing the views of an individual MEP, the group coordinator for the hearing in question, given in the immediate aftermath of each hearing. Though these tweets were attributed to an individual member, the fact they were posted from the EPP Group feed clearly indicated that they could be considered reasonably authoritative as to the group line as a whole.

The S&D group (Socialists and Democrats – @TheProgressives) took a different approach, posting tweets simply in the name of the group, though not systematically after each hearing as the EPP did, but selectively.  In the case of the S&D group, a second string was added by the Group’s Press spokesman, Tony Robinson, twittering in his own name, adding additional comment, speaking clearly for the group. For this, I could not find a direct equivalent in the EPP.

Other political groups did not follow this approach, even those which both have and use group Twitter feeds, for example the third largest ALDE group (@ALDEgroup). That said, many, many members of all groups were twittering in their own right on the subject. (To see who’s active on Twitter, see an interesting, though still slightly buggy, independent aggregation site, Europatweets.)

This is  a radical departure, and one driven purely by the changing online environment.

I am not party to the internal discussions of these groups (or any other), but I can imagine that all have had to address the tension between the internal discussions and processes which are always needed to set a group “line” on any political question and the demands of news media, and now also social media, for quick responses.

What interests me here, for the first time that I have observed, is the outcome. The largest groups in Parliament – not the smallest, which one might expect to find it easier – have clearly decided that the value of getting one’s views out early on Twitter trumps a more prudent reflex.  Obviously, the groups in question avoid unnecessary hostages to fortune, but reading their tweets nonetheless gave a good feel for how the hearings process would pan out. This is actually quite a radical departure, and one driven purely by the changing online environment. Political communication in the EU environment has taken an important step.

It’s early days, for sure, but  Twitterers take note: the EP political groups are now firmly in your midst!

In that contract the shape of WebCom’s annus mirabilis could already be discerned

One year ago. December 2008. I just remember being incredibly stressed out; and, remarkably, that Tibo was even more so. We were up against the deadline for signing the “online” contract with our agency, Scholz & Friends, our part of their big framework contract with the Parliament they won earlier in the year. Things didn’t have to be this tight, but there was always another quibble, another detail to be clarified, another dispute to be settled, another box to be ticked. However, we made it; the procedural issues were ironed out, the budget people gave us the nod, the financial controllers appended their seal of approval.

We maybe didn’t realise it at the time, but in that contract the shape of WebCom’s annus mirabilis could already be discerned.

Hitherto, we had had a clear, well-defined job: to publish on the “headlines” page of the Parliament’s website every day. We thought we didn’t do too badly: we had made big efforts to make the site far more attractive and varied than before. The team had upped its game, kept up a stream of great editorial ideas, absorbed some inspiring training in the secrets of good hackery (cheers Ben!). Traffic to the site was increasing steadily – we were doing OK.  But we knew it wouldn’t be enough for the big elections communication campaign coming up in 2009.

Our world did not collapse under an avalanche of obscenity and abuse from Parliament-haters, nor did political extremists hijack our comments columns

Already, at the end of 2008, we were about ready to go with a special new site for the elections. We were inordinately proud of this, not only for the result, but for the way we did it: in a small team bringing together editors (Eirini and Gaëlle), designers (Fred and Sophie) and geeks (Nicolas and Pascal). Most significantly, this site trailed a whole new departure for the Parliament online, because it included interactive features: comments, debates, polls. It had not been easy to persuade our bosses, still less our political masters, of the wisdom of letting the great unwashed loose on Parliament’s website, but 2008 was also the year when a certain US presidential candidate changed the rules of online campaigning, something which helped our cause considerably. At the same time, the site set a new tone: graphically appealing, occasionally light-hearted, not-too-earnest. It went live on 19 January 2009. Our world did not collapse under an avalanche of obscenity and abuse from Parliament-haters, nor did political extremists hijack our comments columns (well, maybe once…). So far so good.

A team that delivered the goods in 2009

However, the real revolution was still to come. The election communication campaign had to be about reaching parts of the public we don’t normally reach. A year later, it seems a completely banal statement – itself a measure of how far things have come – but we knew we had to get outside the website, and establish a presence on the internet where the people are, to talk to them there, engage them there and maybe get them to wake up to the European elections in June. As one of the Scholz guys put it at one point: we needed to “go fishing where the fishes are”. It was a message which, moreover, we found our masters, administrative and political, had thoroughly taken on board.

As I said, the seeds of all this were in the contract. Workshops on social media, the design of profiles on MySpace and Facebook, a YouTube strategy, online widgets, a Flickr page, viral videos… Ideas all in there, only needing to be made flesh. I, and others, have obsessed lengthily about all of this on this blog. It is interesting in retrospect to see the doubts we had, the sense that we were taking something of a gamble, the notion that all this could come horribly unstuck. Now it seems inevitable, but when we did it, though it was hardly avant-garde on the internet, it was still seriously radical for either an EU institution or any parliamentary institution. To this day, what we did – and are still doing – remains highly unusual in our institutional peer group.

Over a frenzied three months, March to May, we went from being purveyors of a single web platform – the headlines page – to maintaining seven or eight different platforms.  We did this knowing what we were getting into; we would never be forgiven if we barged into the social media only to fall silent once the elections were out of the way (as some suspected we would).

To this day, what we did – and are still doing – remains highly unusual in our institutional peer group

So here we are today, a year on and old hands at the social media game. And it’s true: once you’re in, that’s it, there’s no going back. The job now is to keep it going – constantly to ask what the next thing is, how to maintain the interest of those fearsome Facebook fans. And at the same time, we must not forget our core business – the website. Indeed, right now we are beginning the process of overhauling the whole thing – but I’ll leave it to Tibo to talk about that in the next post.

I could mention a whole lot of other things from this year, but let me stick to just three. First, it was the first year of this blog, our unofficial calling card in the euroblogging community (with especial thanks to avid readers and better-bloggers-than-us Julien, Jon, Kosmopolito, Cédric, Nosemonkey, Eurosocialiste, Ralf and all others who commented), and maybe beyond. Second, we also set up another special website, recently online, (Florent and Bárbara had the energy left for this one), which will cover the commissioners’ hearings next year. Third, we created a fun, embeddable widget – a Christmas eco-quiz – for MySpace (Raffaella’s baby, this), hopefully a pointer to something we will be doing more often in future.

So 2009 will be a tough act to follow: it was exciting, exhausting, genuinely creative and occasionally nerve-wracking. In the small world of WebCom it was the year of our online revolution. Now we live with the consequences. But, as they say: “you wanted the bike, now pedal”.

And now, on the last day at work before Christmas, it’s a good time to say this…

People think we fool around in videos and spend our days chatting on the web. Let them.

The team has been unbelievable this year. They have been asked to do more and more, to keep up the enthusiasm, to find new ideas every day, to work really hard. I won’t say no-one ever complained, but the team stuck together, kept up the spirit and did the biz. The outcome exceeded expectations. Most of all, the team kept its sense of fun, a feeling that even if it is tough, it is possible to enjoy your job if you’re doing something good. Maybe sometimes, from the outside, it looks like too much fun – people think we fool around in videos and spend our days chatting on the web. Let them. We know that we have something here which really works.

Thanks to everyone, and have a great Christmas. It was a year to be proud of.

And if you need reminder of all the things we do – here’s one!