Peter Kerwood's weekly tech news round-up

Facebook app store opens in UK and Europe

Last week Facebook opened an app centre (pictured) which now makes it easier for its 900+ million users to find user recommended applications for productivity, gaming and lifestyle. The new store is currently only featuring 600 applications but more will be added in the coming weeks. This new initiative is going to make it easier for event professionals to find useful applications.

Klout for conferences starts scoring sponsorship value 


Last week, SponsorHub the online marketplace for event sponsorships launched a new feature called ‘The SponsorHub Score’. The company says the score is “like Klout for events”. Every event selling sponsorships on the site gets a rating between 0 and 100 which will make it easier for anyone trying to effectively measure ROI. Read more here.

The top 15 reasons why people unfollow on Twitter 


DK New Media has produced a very insightful infographic that illustrates the reasons why people get unfollowed on Twitter. I’m guilty of several of these Twitter crimes! The number one reason for unfollowing is being too noisy. I’d better watch out! Second place goes to the shameless self promoters. Third place to those who spam, fourth place goes to those who are too dull and fifth place to people that say the same thing. Other reasons given include being too quiet, swearing, poor grammar, those who use automated tweets, hashtag abusers, those who RT their #FF and bypassing the 140 characters allowed by splitting into separate tweets.  

Free social media guide from Cvent

The world's number one cloud-based online registration and event management company Cvent has bought mobile event apps maker Seed Labs for £2.7m. The acquisition will allow Cvent to manage $6bn of events in 2012. The company lists over 200,000 venues and event suppliers across the world. They really know their tech. Their free social media guide ‘Event Marketing 2.0 – How to boost attendance through social media’ offers a really thorough guide to integrating social media into events. Well worth a read. 

Hailo taxi app takes the waiting game out of finding post-event taxis 


Say goodbye to waving down cabs after an event. If you are based in London (Dublin, Toronto or Chicago) check out the Hailo geolocation-based mobile app. Founded by three London cabbies, the service finds the nearest black cab to you out of a network of 23,000, allows you to track its location and pay with your pre-registered card with no additional charges with just two clicks. The app is available for iPhone and Android. Addison Lee offers something very similar.   

A new Twitter directory of journalists, bloggers and media professionals


Lissted is a new online resource which allows you to instantly access over 10,000 journalists, bloggers and media professionals using Twitter. The site’s ‘find’ tool enables you to search for trusted print, broadcast or online professionals and then use Lissted to follow, track and listen into conversations. The resource will prove invaluable for PR companies to engage with journalists and for journalists to uncover new stories.   

Stay connected with friends and colleagues 


Path is a digital scrapbook accessed via an iPhone or Android app which allows you to stay connected with friends, colleagues and family. It works like a private Facebook group but is so much nicer to use. I think this would work brilliantly for events such as conferences where you use Path to keep delegates connected before, during and after an event. Launched in November 2010, Path currently has two million users, but this number is rising fast.

Curate your own digital story with Storify 


Storify allows users to pull together a broad range of social elements to create an online storyboard. Pull together tweets, Facebook updates, blogs, YouTube videos, Instagram, and Flikr albums on Storify and add captions for each one. The story you create will allow you to see the full social reach of an event, and share it with others. Storify is an ideal tool to display the social amplification of events and press launches. This is one that was created for the launch of a new restaurant in Covent Garden and this is a selection of examples of Storify where #EventProfs has been used. 

The world's number one marketplace for creative ideas 


Stuck for a good name for your next event? Do you need to design a new logo? Prizes.org is the perfect way to share your conundrum with the internet and find a solution. Create a contest on prizes.org, name your prize, and pick a winning answer from those who choose to answer your question. I used this service to help to come up with a name for a project I was working on. It was very easy to use and I love the way people really want to help you choose the winning entry if you can’t decide. This video explains everything perfectly.

100 most social brands 2012 


Social Brands 100 was created by social specialist agency Headstream two years ago to identify and acknowledge those brands beating a social path. A social brand is one that has adopted three important social principles: 1) ‘Building win-win relationships’ defined as a focus on an equitable and fair value exchange with all stakeholders. 2) ‘Active listening’ where brands monitor the social web to uncover relevant conversations and interact and 3) ‘Appropriate Social Behaviour’ which the rules define as a commitment to provide a consistent brand presence in social spaces that is compelling, true, authentic and transparent, and that acknowledges the etiquette of each particular community.

Read the full 29 page free report. The 19 observable markers on page 11, which explains how brands were scored, were a real eye opener for me. This year's winner was Innocent who absolutely nailed it!