Thread – The Dating service, fully powered by Facebook Connect

Launched in September, Thread prides itself on saving users from the long questionnaires and registration processes of other dating sites. Rather, because the free service is based on Facebook Connect, users begin by simply logging in to their Facebook account and answering a few quick questions including their gender, city and relationship status. Once connected, they can easily browse a list of their "friends of friends," or second-degree Facebook connections, sorted by gender and relationship status.

Rather than shoehorning in FB connect functions, Thread is one of the first services developed solely reliant on Facebook Connect. With the ability to piggyback off Facebook’s vast database of users Thread has the potential to offer an easy to use, easy to sign up service with more potential matches than the long running (and major investing) Dating Direct and Match.com

What’s this got to do with Cadbury?

The uptake in Facebook connect is increasing user expectations for when they land on a site. Users are beginning to interact with sites within their Facebook community rather than have a standalone experience, making it increasingly important to take FB Connect into consideration and maximise the content offering on all Cadbury sites. Users will become more comfortable logging into sites using their Facebook account, in turn they will be less inclined to create bespoke site login details – Making it increasingly difficult to collect Traction data.

Facebook's mobile user base reaches 100 million

Latest figures released show that Facebook now has 100 million users accessing the site via mobile, remarkably Facebook only reached 100 million online users 16 months ago (Oct 2008). The figures show that users are quickly changing the dynamics of their social media usage, opting to update throughout their day on topics as they happen rather than summing up their day at the end when they have PC access.

How does this affect Cadbury?

Realtime updates make it possible for users to alert friends on small novelty elements throughout their day which they would otherwise have forgotten/ wouldn’t be relevant in an end of day update summing up their day. Because of this publicity stunts such as the ‘Single Ladies’ and ‘Musical Chairs’ stunts will be the topic of social conversation within minutes of happening.

Social media is changing the goal of a publicity stunt, at the moment advertisers are looking for editorial coverage within magazines but now a stunt’s success could be measured on the social buzz that it receives as witnesses effectively report back to their peers. Realtime social media buzz could also increase traffic to product sampling activity as people tip off their friends within the area.

Market sentinel will be able to monitor the stunts coverage and thanks to Facebook’s new search functionality we can instantly search and find all mentions of the stunt providing users have their status available to all.

Realtime updates also make it feasible to run small competitions within event such as the Buttons farm for fans to feed in their entries via mobile and at the same time alert their friends as to where they are.