Midsummer Night's Dreaming: an online play (Shakespeare for the digital age)

Welcome to Midsummer Night's Dreaming - an innovative digital theatre project brought to you by the +Royal Shakespeare Company with a little help from +Google UK and you.

Visit http://dream40.org and find out how to get a character of your own invention to join the on-line play.

Or, if you prefer, how to join the real-life wedding in Stratford-upon-Avon on Sunday 23rd June!

The virtual audience can join in using the hashtag #dream40.

What do you think?  Will you be joining in the theatrical fun?

Tag people in your Blogger posts with a linked Google+ profile

If you still don't have a Google+ profile (and take your brand on social media seriously), you're missing a opportunity here; but let's assume that you have one for now.

Google has made no great secret about the fact that it wants to continue integrating services (and long may it continue) and the ability to tag people on a blogging platform has historically relied on either tagging someone's @Username when posting the link to your blog to Twitter, likewise on Facebook or by including someone's twitter name in the title to a post.

Blogger and Google+ allow you to actually do this in a much smoother way.  When creating a post, there's often times when you mention someone or 'somebrand'; by providing a link to their 'presence' (website, social network etc.) it creates a unidirectional connection for your reader, but it doesn't necessarily let the person tagged know.

By linking your Google+ and Blogger profiles (aside from giving you a very easy way to publish your blog to your Google+ account), allows you to tag people by using the exact same function as you would from inside Google+.

For example, I sometimes write about +The Freecycle Network, a global charity I work with both on their social media strategy and the UK specific charity wing for the organisation.  The exact same process is used whether it's a brand (for example, the creative handmade styles of +Southern Home Hookin') or an individual heads up (+Kelly Head dominates my timeline presently, so I'll use her as an example).  This is now a simple way to engage new conversations.

I simply hit "+" and start typing their name to find them.

This is another step from Google in reinforcing the "social" in social media.  Will other platforms want to follow suit in this type of cross platform cooperation?  Will they even be able to?  Time will tell.

Facebook Messenger: for iPhone, Android and Blackberry

Although not the world's biggest Facebook fan, I was still interested to try Facebook's Messenger which claims to be "a faster way to send mobile messages to friends".

The app lets you -

Send messages instantly to other friends who have Messenger
Chat with friends who are on Facebook
Get free push notifications for incoming messages
Add location and photos to messages
Reach friends via text message if they don't have Messenger yet
Access sent and received message on both Messenger and Facebook
Create group conversations for making plans on the go
Add more friends to group conversations at any time
Control alert and location settings for each conversation

Largely, it's a repackaged messaging module from Facebook that brings a few tweaks to the already largely available functionality.  It doesn't really take any leaps or bounds away from the main app; it does however, step on the toes of Google.  Taking on Google Plus in a big way is perhaps the Social Media giants' way of banking that more people have an [active] Facebook account than a GMail account (foolishly so, in my opinion).

I think this may be a step in the wrong direction as, where Facebook certainly [for now] dominates the Social Media world, Google has a tight reign on the messaging realm.  Just about everyone I know has a GMail account, probably around half the people I know have a Facebook account.

I don't particuarly care for the app, but then I've never been a fan of Facebook 'messaging' in general; I don't get notifcations of new messages at all sometimes, and late other times.  If I wasn't a Google Plus user, I may be more interested to try it; and perhaps this is Facebook's attempt to 'nip in the bud' and try and stop what is every day looking more and more like the prophesied mass-exodus of Facebook.

Of course, if you're a Blackberry user, you're probably just grateful that you have some messaging functionality right now.