The internet giant says that marketers could bid against one another to have their adverts presented to those perceived to have a high degree of social authority among their circles.

According to the patent, users could be assigned a score based on their number of followers, connections or mentions – not unlike Klout or Kred, then, which are already being used to identify user traits and social desirability.

The patent says that this score could be further tweaked by considering:

• The number of posts, reports and retweets a user makes
• The type of pages they ‘like’
• Lists they subscribe to
• The degree to which others write about them
• How influential their own followers are

“In this manner, an advertiser may be billed a higher amount for advertisements provided to users having a higher social authority score than for advertisements provided to users having a lower social authority score,” the patent states.

How Yahoo plans to move forward with this plan is not yet clear. The patent for ‘social reputation ads’ was filed in December 2011, but has only just been published, and according to a spokeswoman for the company, hasn’t yet been approved.

Try catching the goat’s poo to make Argan oil!

If you asked me just a few months ago if I would ever consider running my own crowdfunding campaign I probably would have dismissed the thought out of hand. Sure I’d seen the monster success of such high profile ventures like the Pebble Watch on Kickstarter and the “Let’s Build a Goddamn Tesla Museum” on Indiegogo but still, the idea of asking complete strangers to help fund my own creative idea seemed, well, a little uncomfortable to be quite honest.

That said, I was facing a major dilemma. For the past two years I’ve been devoting a great deal of my spare time to developing a new kids brand around food and adventure. Together with a very talented animator and illustrator called Phil Hayes, whose credits include The Simpsons, King of the Hill and Bob’s Burgers, I’d created four characters, Dill, Olive, Sprout and Pickle and written five short stories detailing their amazing adventures all over the world discovering and learning about food.

It was a great project to invest my time in and the stories scored highly with their target demographic….. my kids, aged 10 and seven, that is. Surprisingly though, those results didn’t seem enough of an incentive for book publishers and major motion studios to write me a multimillion dollar development cheque and greenlight the project. Indeed, the more people in the kids entertainment business that I talked to – and I’ve chatted with the lot (including top producers, Hollywood agents, major toy brands and media lawyers) – the more I got the same advice: you’ve got to demonstrate your brand can establish and command a community before anyone will take a risk on yet another kid’s entertainment venture.

Now, as anybody involved in social media can tell you, building a loyal community around an already established business or product is hard enough. Creating community and loyalty for a brand of fictional characters that no one has ever heard of is really hard work! And so, even as I’d started blogging about the foodie adventures of Dill, Olive, Pickle and Sprout I kept searching for a way to, um, kickstart my project.

I’d been writing about crowdsourcing and crowdfunding platforms for a while but it was only when I was listening to a presentation at SXSW by Indiegogo co-founder and CEO, Slava Rubin, that I realised crowdfunding actually could help my project. But only if I had a tangible product to rally around. That’s when I decided to create The Gross Food Guide, a kids entertainment and educational App that explores the most interesting, bizarre and, yes, gross foods that people like to eat all around the world.

The reason for creating an App was straightforward: kids, aged 6 – 10 love interactive Apple and Android Apps and games. They also love gross stuff and are fascinated by food. Admittedly the children’s App market is a competitive field to say the least but if I didn’t believe in my project I shouldn’t be trying to raise money to fund it right? And so The Gross Food Guide was born. We launched the Indiegogo campaign six days ago and so far we’ve raised 23 percent of the £15,000 we need to build the App – a good start according to most research on crowdfunding.

The other reason for undertaking this crowdfunding campaign was to learn firsthand about this fast growing social sector. With this in mind I’ll be writing a regular diary through the course of the campaign detailing the highs and lows (of which there are many) of running a crowdfunding campaign. At the end of the campaign I’ll write a special SMI guide to crowdfunding, drawing on my experiences.

So stay tuned for the next update And, of course, if you’d like to support the Gross Food Guide, I’d be very appreciative and it will make for a better story. Everyone loves a happy ending after all.

Tomorrow: I’ll document all the planning that went into the campaign before we launched and tell you about a special offer for SMI readers.

The ‘Jigglevision’ initiative, built around a dedicated Facebook app, invites fans to create secret messages that can only be decoded after the recipient has purchased a Jell-O snack pot.

Messages are concealed with a pattern and can only be viewed – thanks to optical jiggery pokery – through a Jell-O snack lid. The campaign is also supported by a series of interactive print ads featuring jokes requiring a lid to view the punch lines.

It’s a kid-friendly campaign that adds a really fun element to the usual challenges inherent in bridging the online/offline divide, and marks another marketing triumph for the brand, which recently stirred controversy by ‘reinventing’ popular (and sweary) acronym and hashtag ‘FML’ as the far more family-friendly ‘Fun My Life’.

The first time a consumer makes a purchase with Chirpify they’ll be asked to sign up and enter their card or bank routing information. After this, they’ll only have to type the words ‘buy’, ‘donate’ or ‘gimme’ on a Facebook or Instagram post, or reply to a tweet, in order to seal the deal.

“Our brands and members want optionality when it comes to paying and payment acceptance,” said Chirpify CEO Chris Teso. “With direct payment processing we are making the transaction as frictionless as possible for consumers, eliminating the need to connect with another payment platform outside of Chirpify. For brands, the direct payment acceptance lowers fees by eliminating the need for a third party, and enables wider acceptance beyond just PayPal.”

Social media is the least credible source for information about products and brands, according to a new report from Adobe.

The study, Click Here: The State of Online Advertising, based on a survey of over 10,000 consumers and marketers across the US and Europe, shows that friends and family remain the top go-to source for finding out information about products with 51% of global consumers agreeing. Company social media, however, is endorsed by only 3% of consumers, and just 7% of marketers.

Traditional media is also considered the best medium for advertising, with 47% of global consumers and 41% of global marketers agreeing that newspapers and TV take the lead, whereas only 9% and 13% (respectively) tout social media as an effective advertising platform. A total of 70% of respondents thought TV adverts were more important than online campaigns.

These stats can once again be attributed to the issue of privacy and user experience, with consumers citing online adverts as ‘annoying’ (62%), ‘invasive’ (45%) and ‘distracting’ (44%).

However, consumers are not completely averse to online advertising, providing it’s done right:

• Advertisements should tell a unique story, not just try to sell: 74% agree
• A video is worth 1,000 words: 67%
• User product reviews are the best source of truth: 66%
• In-store experiences trump online experiences: 71%

To grab consumers’ attention then, marketers must forget the hard sell, push video content, implement user reviews and take steps to bridge the online/offline divide. Perhaps in doing so they can change the perception of advertising and marketing being one of the least valuable professions to society, as the report also finds (ouch!).

Let’s Date

This Facebook-centric dating app made the headlines recently thanks to this faux pas going viral (NSFW), but no doubt the episode has captured the attentions of curious would-be daters. It’s pretty straightforward. Simply log in with Facebook to create a ‘Dater Card’, then browse other users’ cards, pick one that takes your fancy and hit ‘Let’s Date’. The app then suggests a date and opens up chat to allow the love birds to iron out the details. Despite the horror story above, privacy is only an issue if you behave like a douchebag.

Platform and developer: iOS (by Saturn Technology Inc.)

Final word: The app is designed to be fun and frivolous – you’re not going to find your soulmate here (probably). But if you need a date for tonight, Let’s Date delivers.

InstaDo

This one bills itself as the saviour of the friendzoned, and allows shy users to approach their Facebook friends for a date without the fear of potential out-and-out rejection. Simply create an account by logging in with Facebook, then select the Facebook friends you’re too shy to approach IRL, and invite them to coffee, dinner or a movie. The recipient will receive a private message informing them someone’s got their eye on them, and they in turn will be asked to choose who they’re interested in. If there’s a match – voila! If not, then no-one loses face.

Platform and developer: iOS (by Roasted Brains)

Final word: Clearly the biggest obstacle to success here is ensuring the recipient doesn’t disregard the message as spam. Otherwise, this one wins in terms of privacy and self-esteem protection.

Smart Sex

Less of a dating site and more of a lurve resource, Smart Sex claims to be ‘your confidential sex advisor’, offering up-to-date information, Q&A games, sex news and the ability to share and discuss items with friends on Facebook and via email. A well-laid out interface makes it easy to search for information via keyword, take part in polls and find further information and advice.

Platform and developer: iOS (by Pando Health Resources, LLC)

Final word: As the guy in the first review demonstrates, some people remain utterly clueless about sex etiquette, so anyone looking to get back on the scene would do well to give this app a brief glance. As it says itself: ‘Being smart about sex is sexy’.

First against the wall is Sponsored Stories, which won’t be entirely removed but incorporated into new ‘social context ads’. Here, advertisers simply buy an advert and Facebook fills in the context, rather than – as previously – advertisers buying both sponsored stories and a standard advert in order to get noticed.

This should prove a winning move all round, since it streamlines the process for marketers and eliminates irrelevant adverts thinly disguised as ‘stories’ in users’ newsfeeds.

The once pioneering Offers product will go, too (more bad news for f-commerce?), since “marketers have found that using a Page post link ad is a more effective way to drive people to deals on their websites”, the company says.

Other changes include a more consistent ad template and the removal of Questions.

This handy infographic from Babble should help. Detailing exactly what teens are sharing on social networks, it also provides some interesting insight into the way young people use their channels. For example, 26% say they post false information in order to protect their privacy, while 20% opt to display their cell phone numbers publicly. Take a look.