June was a cracking month of sporting action as Poland and Ukraine played host to the toughest international tournament in the world - Euro 2012.

Following on from their successful World Cup 2010 campaign, ITV football once again team up with Storm Ideas to deliver Euro 2012 Twibbons for each participating nation.



Whether you were cheering on England, Spain or even Greece, the ITV Euro 2012 Twibbon page allowed you to show your support by adding your country's icon to your Facebook or Twitter profile picture.

As the sun sets on a fascinating tournament, we are taking the opportunity to reflect on what has been an incredible month of support for all the countries involved.

As we lead up to the final between Spain and Italy at the time of writing, over 7,500 users have added a Euro 2012 Twibbon to their profile picture! Home support was strong with England gaining 2,500 supporters, while the co-hosts Poland and defending champions Spain both achieved 1,000 supporters each.

As well as creating awareness about the campaign via profile pictures, Twibbon sent out a tweet or Facebook post from each supporter's profile whenever they added a Twibbon. This tweet/post contained a link back to the campaign, encouraging friends and followers to support their country on Twibbon and creating a genuine viral loop.

Furthermore, each user had to like ITV Football on Facebook or follow them on Twitter in order to add a Twibbon, increasing ITV Football's social following with targeted fans.

If you're interested in a White Label Twibbon campaign for your next event, get in touch with us by emailing whitelabel@twibbon.com.

In February 2012, we crossed the Atlantic to team up with the NFL’s New York Giants.

In anticipation of their clash against the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XLVI – American Football’s annual grand finale – we created a web app that would allow fans to celebrate their potential victory amongst their friends and followers online.



Embedded onto the official Giants website, the application would let fans overlay a celebratory ‘Super Bowl Champions’ badge on their Facebook or Twitter profile picture with just a couple of clicks – if the Giants could win the big game of course…

After a dramatic and pulsating encounter – including one of the most thrilling denouements in Super Bowl history – the Giants emerged victorious to become NFL champions. The application was given the green light and instantly placed as the sole feature on the home page of Giants.com.

With the incredible exposure that this brought, after only 8 hours an incredible 45,000 supporters overlaid their profile picture with the Super Bowl Champions badge – at one stage peaking to an amazing 6 joins per second! The numbers were also boosted by updates on Facebook from the official New York Giants page, encouraging fans to visit the app and get overlaying.

We also created an app on the Giants Facebook page that allowed fans to add celebratory Facebook Covers to their Timeline. Launched a few days after the Super Bowl victory, this app also achieved success with over 2,000 supporters adding a Cover.

Storm Ideas and the New York Giants have worked together in the past creating a similar application for the Giant’s push to get into the NFL playoffs and, as a result of this campaign’s joint success, are currently brainstorming some exciting new ideas for the upcoming season.

The overlay functionality in the web app is an extension of our flagship website ‘Twibbon’, which allows users to show their support for almost anything by overlaying their profile picture. From charities and brands to celebs and sports teams, over 10 million people have supported over 160,000 different campaigns since the site launched in 2009. If you’re interested in creating a bespoke overlay application for a future campaign, get in touch at info@stormideas.com.

CoverJunction is the place for creating, sharing and discovering the highest-quality Facebook Covers on the web - http://coverjunction.com

Last month, Facebook announced some of the biggest changes to its site in its 7-year history, which may well fundamentally change the way that we all interact with the site.

One of these changes was the launch of the brand new Facebook profile called “Timeline". The new profile allows you to highlight, share and curate your favourite events, photos and updates from your entire life. The result is a little something like this:

At the very top of the new profile is a wide, prominent image known as a Cover. This unique image can be anything you want, and acts like a first impression to anyone visiting your profile.

We saw the addition of the Cover as the perfect opportunity to launch an online community dedicated to the creation, discovery and sharing of high quality Facebook Profile Covers. The result is CoverJunction.

CoverJunction is the place for creating, sharing and discovering the highest-quality Covers on the web. CoverJunction is great for 3 main reasons:

1. The highest quality Facebook Covers on the web – From beautiful scenery and gorgeous abstracts to high-res sports crests and the hottest celebrities, CoverJunction has the widest range of high quality Facebook Covers online.

2. Special, custom-generated Facebook Covers – CoverJunction creates Facebook Covers that are unique to the user. From mosaics of your most liked photos to personalised Facebook friendship maps, it is the only place for a Facebook Cover that truly represents you.

3. No adverts – CoverJunction is focused on a clear and simple user experience, rather than clouding the process with misleading, malicious, irrelevant or unsightly adverts.

If you have the new Facebook Profile, visit CoverJunction now to find, add and share the best Facebook Profile Covers on the web. Or, keep up with the latest happenings by liking CoverJunction on Facebook, or following us on Twitter.

TagViews is our brand new Facebook app that allows fans to tag themselves and their friends in high-res photographs taken at large-scale events and gigs.

Combining Microsoft DeepZoom technology with TagView functionality, crowds of thousands of people can be easily navigated; allowing fans to tag themselves in massive crowd images in seconds.

Our latest creation has already been snapped up by rock festival High Voltage, and Brit Award-winning boy band JLS, who have been using the app to engage fans during their UK-wide tour.

With over 1.5 million people following the band via their Facebook fan page, TagViews has proved an instant hit with over 6,000 JLS gig-goers tagging themselves, thanks to TagViews' ability to be easily-installed onto JLS' Facebook page.

Even fans who had not attended a JLS gig were able to engage with TagViews via a Where’s Waldo style competition feature - which involves finding a hidden Gold Disc in each TagView. Users could also take a snapshot of them or their mates at the gig that appeared in a frame being held by the JLS members.

As fans tag themselves and interact with the app, they automatically post a message on their wall, encouraging all of their friends to tag themselves in the TagView, and increasing viral hits to the application.

Now in conversation with a number of world-famous recording artists and festivals who are also keen to utilise the Facebook app, TagViews is the ideal online product for bands, sports teams, venue owners and event organisers who are looking to increase genuine, long-lasting engagement with their fans, as well as boosting the number of likes for their page.

If you're interested in TagViews for your brand, please get in touch with us at info@tagviews.com.

We've teed off preparations for this year’s Open at Royal St George’s with the launch of two Facebook apps, specifically designed for The Open Championship.

The oldest championship in professional golf, The Open may be entering its 151st year but is no stranger to the digital age with just as much buzz on Facebook as there is on the green.

Our innovations for The R&A have seen the launch of two very different Facebook applications; both with the aim of increasing engagement with Facebook fans and enhancing overall brand awareness.

The first application enables The R&A to run a variety of competitions through its Open Championship Facebook page. The latest competition – http://twb.ly/opengolfcomp  – asks Facebook users to name a ‘mystery golfer’ who appears as a golf fanatic youngster in a family home video. Those who guess correctly are entered into a prize draw for a family day out at this year’s Open, including tickets, memorabilia and a golfing lesson from a pro.

To access the competition users must like the Official 'Fan Page' for The Open Championship; an incentive that has allowed The Open’s Facebook page to significantly increase its number of likes since the start of the campaign.

The second application – launching today - engages users by appealing to deeply rooted fan loyalties. Here, users can show their support for their favourite Open Championship golfer by overlaying an image of the player and The Open Championship logo onto their own profile picture. Create yours here - http://twb.ly/openbadges

We've also streamlined the user experience by choosing to employ a predictive search interface which allows users to quickly and easily select their golfer of choice without the need to scroll or perform numerous clicks.

Player overlays include everyone from Open newcomer George Coetzee to Rory McIlroy who has currently replaced Tiger Woods as the bookies’ favourite.

In keeping with the objective of generating as much social buzz for The Open Championship as possible, a viral loop is triggered when a user completes their overlay, posting out to their Facebook wall demonstrating their support and bringing further users into the application.

In the week since the apps went live, we've helped The Open Golf to increase their Facebook followers by 10%; performing solidly on par with the targets set by The R&A for their Open social media campaign during the Championship and beyond.

JustGiving have just been announcing the fortunate winners of their Twibbon Custom Campaigns, designed to drive followers, fans, donations and hype on social networks.

Keep your eye on the Twibbon Blog for more on those winners, and we’ll keep everyone posted as to the progress of the Campaigns themselves!

 

JustGiving, the UK’s leading donations platform for charities, is teaming up with Storm Ideas in an initiative offering their membership impressive new features to engage supporters online.

The partnership is driven by JustGiving’s vision of providing their members with exceptional value. A select number of charities will be able to create premium Twibbon ‘Custom Campaigns’ subsidised entirely by JustGiving, facilitating increased donations, followers and fans through popular social networking websites, Twitter and Facebook.

An initial case study run with the participation of Dogs’ Trust revealed an impressive donation conversion rate and this project aims to replicate the effect across a broader range of organisations seeking new ways to spread awareness of their cause online.

Storm Ideas’ Bob Thomson said: “JustGiving are a perfect partner for Storm Ideas; their philanthropic stance is really in line with the campaigning impetus behind Twibbon and we’re delighted to be involved.”

Lee Marshall is JustGiving’s Head of Charity Channel: “We’re looking forward to working with Storm Ideas in offering our charity members unprecedented social networking opportunities. This is the start of an exciting campaign that’s really going to get people supporting and talking about charities online.”

Within the broadcasting industry, ITV are leading the way in social media engagement. “Social TV” is causing a significant stir, with debates and prestigious events being held to discuss the impact of emerging and major networking websites on the industry.

ITV have seen dramatic and unparalleled increase in online engagement, in line with their well-publicised commercial successes over the last year. With dedicated Facebook Fan Pages and Twitter accounts for a host of their most popular shows, ITV have accrued many thousands of brand advocates, doing more than just watching the telly.

We are delighted to have been part of this story, creating bespoke campaigns using our product, Twibbon, for the likes of The X Factor, I’m A Celebrity and Dancing On Ice. When they brought up the idea of Custom Twibbon Campaigns for Coronation Street and Emmerdale, two massive shows with established fan-bases, we were really excited.

It’s all in aid of the popular British Soap Awards 2010, where the two soaps will be going head to head with other staples of the set-top box to compete in a range of categories. On the way, we’ll make sure they are automatically getting more followers, fans, website traffic and crucially, enduring visual engagement with our proven viral service.

Both shows have made a fine start, and you can join in or see how they’re faring:

http://twibbon.com/join/emmerdale

http://twibbon.com/join/corrie

Storm Ideas, our innovations development arm, have secured a deal with University College Falmouth for collaborative workspace product, Colaab.

colaab will allow students across the schools of Art, Design, Media and Performance at University College Falmouth to review and collaborate on all kinds of resources, including video and massive images, in real time. It’s the ideal tool for Falmouth’s students because it exists 100% in the browser, so whether they’re in the classroom, workshops, studios or at home they will have instant access to their collaborative projects. colaab also supports a range of features, allowing users to communicate via an internal instant messaging application.

Bob Thomson, Storm Ideas co-founder, said: “Real-time collaboration is a huge meme for 2010 – we only saw the tip of the iceberg in last year’s global fascination with Google Wave. The ability to review a range of materials like this is going to be increasingly crucial as educational institutions seek to give their students the edge in a fast-moving working environment. We’re delighted that University College Falmouth is leading the way by adopting colaab.”

Ben Bull, Senior Learning Technologist at University College Falmouth said: “UCF has built a reputation for innovative arts pedagogy supported by a curriculum which allows students to develop their potential through creative problem solving, team-working and networking.

colaab is allowing us to enhance and develop these skills for a still more diverse cohort collaborating professionally across a range of disciplines within art, media, design and performance - be they on campus, in work or at home.”

You can find out more about Technology Ehnanced Learning at University College Falmouth by visiting their virtual learning envrionement (http://learningspace.falmouth.ac.uk) or their website (http://www.falmouth.ac.uk).

You can try out Colaab for yourself too.

In fitting with the national blizzard sweeping with the country, we’re pleased to have launched the Dancing On Ice Twibbon destination, allowing users to support their favourite contestants online. This year promises to be more exciting than ever, with the likes of Heather Mills, Bobby Davro and Daniella Westbrook getting their skates on and thrilling the audience.

You can see the destination and grab your Dancing On Ice Twibbon here.

Watch the first episode on Sunday evening at 6.45pm on ITV1.