There are a few parents here in Dialogue, and a few of us are relatively new to the whole parenting thing. This app really appealed to us, genius in its simplicity.

The Irish Data Protection Commissioner’s recent audit of Facebook is being brought to court by a European privacy campaign group, with the group claiming that that the audit did not go far enough. Max Schrems, a law student working for the Europe v Facebook group, said Facebook was keeping deleted data on both users and non-users. The audit itself found that Facebook was broadly compliant with Irish and European law and on the back of this audit The Irish Data Commissioner is looking to carry out audits of all the major social networking companies that have operations in Ireland, including Twitter and LinkedIn.

This case touches on several aspects of Data Protection and its effect on social networks that will be relevant in the coming year. With social media monitoring site socialbakers.com reporting that almost half the population of Ireland is on Facebook (2.2 million Irish users, 48.7% of the population) this is particularly applicable for the Irish internet market.

No less than Mark Zuckerberg has said the “wider strategic rift” between Facebook and Google occurred over their differences in the way they approach to privacy. While some commentators glibly remark that Facebook users have, by posting on the social networking site, given up any right to freedom, Zuckerberg himself would disagree.

“I think the main thing is about when people share something on Facebook, we want to give them not only the ability to broadcast something out but also change their privacy settings later and take the content down,” said Zuckerberg in a Q&A session on the newly launched Facebook Graph Search last week.

The idea that Google would not be able to respond to updates like this with the speed that Facebook would like, seemed to be the main bone of contention between the two organisations.

In the midst of these wrangles between internet giants, the European Commission is trying to update EU data protection laws to make them applicable in the Internet age. A draft was presented by European Commissioner for Justice Vivian Reding at the beginning of 2012. At the time Reding was talking about the “right to be forgotten” for users who post their data on social platforms. A completed draft of the new data protection laws is expected to be voted on in April or May of this year.

Another wrinkle that further complicates the current state of play is that a modified draft of the proposed EU data protection laws has been submitted by Jan Philipp Albrecht, a German Green Party member. Albrecht proposes that social networks should let users move information “from one platform to another” and that users should also be able to obtain details of what data companies hold on them, free of charge.

If these proposals were to come to pass, the impact on Facebook, especially, would be huge. Facebook’s ubiquity creates what is known as a network effect, where the more users that are on Facebook, the more valuable Facebook becomes to each of those users. The connections between the users are what makes the site work. If these connections could be somehow abstracted from the Facebook platform and exported, the dissemination of users could be devastating.

However, with the usual lobbying and pressure groups and the amount of special interests involved, it would be wrong to presume that all of these proposals will make it into law. That said, with both Zuckerberg and the EU commission talking about our “right to be forgotten” as a key issue, we can perhaps look forward to having out own personal “memory hole” where all of our internet sins can disappear.

Further reading:

Spiegel Online: Data Protection: All You Need to Know about the EU Privacy Debate

The Guardian: Facebook Graph Search: Zuckerberg reveals origin of Google privacy rift

RTE: Data Protection Commissioner to audit all major social media firms in Ireland

Bloomberg Business Week: Facebook, Google May Face Tougher EU Curbs on Data Usage

Silicon Republic: Almost half of Ireland is now on Facebook, socialbakers.com reveals

Social Bakers: Ireland Facebook Statistics

According to a number of interviews carried out by Dialogue’s recent international symposium with world-leading marketers from all corners of the world, Ireland has left quite an impression when it comes to our overall reputation. Deeply rooted in resilience, we are seen as a trustworthy, honest, hard-working, powerful, passionate group of people with an underlying sense of humility and humour that is truly unique to all things Irish, as our videos show. These answers gave us an overwhelming sense of hope that we have the fighting power, as a strong-willed nation, to really continue the improvement of our economic situation. At Dialogue, it is our relentless hope and ultimate pledge to contribute all we can to the stability of Ireland’s future, as we feel we are part of the industry that will set the growth in motion. If the rest of the world thinks we are up for the challenge, why shouldn’t we be?

Check out what the world is saying about us here: dialogue.ie/reputation/

As the inauguration for United States President Barack Obama takes place next week, we take a quick glance back at how big data and microtargeting ultimately won Obama a second term.

With a less-than-impressive performance by Obama at the first presidential debate in October, some pollsters predicted the outcome of the election to be a close, nail-biting, photo-finish result, as it appeared that Mitt Romney was gaining ground in the weeks leading up to the election. As it turns out, this wasn’t the case. On the eve of November 6th, Barack Obama won the election by, quite honestly, a landslide. While some polls made these predictions based on opinion polling results, current economic climate, complicated mathematical model combinations and even things like instinct and hunches, they might be better off basing their predictions on tarot card readings and weather patterns when it comes to the idea of accuracy. This is where the use of big data and predictive analytics can come in quite handy.

As the phrases big data, data-mining and predictive analytics continue to rise on the popularity scale of big buzzwords, we examine how this particular method proved to be spot-on for Drew Linzer, an assistant political science professor at Emory University, who posted on his website in June 2012 that the election would be won with a result of 332 votes for Obama and 206 votes for Romney. Turns out, this was the EXACT outcome of the presidential election! So, how, you ask, did he do this? Simple. He used tarot cards and weather patterns. Ok, he actually did just the opposite. Linzer runs Votamatic, a website that uses a unified statistical model to forecast election results. The forecasts update in real-time once information from new polls becomes available and provides extremely accurate predictions.

The model also uses a unique format that fills in any holes or gaps, so to speak, by looking for common trends and similarities in voter preferences from state to state. An example of this included a contest to dine at the home of Sarah Jessica Parker in New York City that targeted a small group of women aged 40-49 who enjoy small-scale dinner parties, competitions, and are attracted to celebrity-endorsed promotions. These specific characteristics mixed with predictive analytics, allowed Obama’s team to determine exactly which type of message would persuade these women to not only vote in Obama’s favour, but to donate money to the campaign, as well. This is the exact principle of microtargeting at its finest.

From the significance of social media in 2008, to big data in 2012, what do you think will be the next big trend for 2016?

Meg Goodrich
Digital Account Executive

Im a bit obsessed with alarm clocks at the moment! Im fed up of hitting the snooze button and of really annoying alarm clock sounds (on my phone). I have the annoying ones because I tend to sleep through the more subtle ones!

I used sleep cycle about a year ago and for some reason stopped using it, but recently I read about Lark in the book Overthrow. Lark started off as a vibrating silent alarm clock and now has become more, its a sleep coach. How cool is that. Lark costs money and Im not quite there in investing in my sleep, although I’m really tempted as Lark is now a coach that you can use 24 hours a day, to track what you eat as well and make sure you are getting the most out of your day. (see Lark video below)

As I looked into this space more, there seems to be a bit of a trend of brands creating alarm clock apps.

This morning I came across a new one called Uniqlo Wake Up, a social alarm app from Japanese fashion retailer Uniqlo that incorporates the current weather, time and day of the week into its wake-up music. How great is that, it wakes you up and tells you its cold or raining outside! How great also that its a brand that is doing this! Love it. I don’t know a lot about the Uniqlo brand, but wouldnt it be great if people woke up every morning thinking about you!
Lufthansa have done something in Sweden, where getting out of bed is hard to do – with long months of dark days. Users of Lufthansa’s free Anywake app are woken to the sounds of a random city — if they guess which one it is, they’re rewarded with discounted tickets to that destination (See video below). There are others like this (Ramos and Wake and Shake)

What they are doing is more than offering a service, or a store, Trendwatching say that this falls under a category of brand called Brand Butlers:

“It has never been more important to turn your brand into a service. Jaded, time-poor, pragmatic consumers yearn for service and care, while the mobile online revolution (it’s finally, truly here!) makes it possible to offer uber-relevant services to consumers anywhere, anytime. Basically, if you’re going to embrace one big consumer trend this year, please let it be BRAND BUTLERS!”

Im going to take a look at Sleep Cycle again and then try Uniqlo and see how I get on. Any others I should try?

Uniqlo Wake Up

Lark Silent Alarm Clock

OK, OK – a year ending in ’13’ doesn’t sound too lucky. But Dialogue is definitely feeling positive.

We’re in the business of growing businesses. That’s why we now describe ourselves as ‘The Growth Factory’. And since we’re really confident that 2013 will see real growth, we’ll spread good news stories whenever we hear them – and here’s the first that’ll put a smile on the face of some homeowners: http://www.daft.ie/report/

So for an even happier new year, look out for more GrowthFact emails from Dialogue over the next twelve months.

All the best,
Gary McLoughlin
Managing Director