TechCrunch hailed it as the first real online child safety campaign, designed to connect and engage with the user. They pointed out that previous ‘panic button’ styled formats, including that of Bebo, were little more than documents about online safety.

http://eu.techcrunch.com/2010/07/12/facebook-has-not-launched-a-panic-button-its-smarter-than-that/

We learnt from previous efforts to keep children safe online, and looked carefully at the format in which the information was presented to children.  Previous formats have been information-heavy, not something that children would find particularly interesting. Rather than trying to engage with the user they tend to speak at them, or moreover, speak to the adults who were far more likely to be reading them.

The CEOP app that we built with Facebook for CEOP intends to educate children on how to be safer online and is designed to encourage children to come forward and address issues that worry them online. Whether that is from negative wall postings from people they do know, or chats from people they don’t. It isn’t designed to appear as an overbearing adult, but rather ‘speak’ with the user and make them feel it is one of them. Its look and feel is simplistic making it easy for the user to navigate, whilst the tone remains friendly and reassuring.

Joshua March, CEO of iPlatform, says:

“It’s been great to have the opportunity to work alongside Facebook and CEOP, in a continuing relationship, not only to build this application but also to more generally help CEOP engage properly with teenagers on the Facebook website; making it a safer place and connecting with CEOP’s schools outreach programmes to really educate users”

CEOP Facebook Application

The application isn’t designed to scare children into believing that the online world is bad, but rather act as a safe haven where children can reach out if they feel threatened.

One of the most important roles the application may play is its ability to ward off sexual predators and cyber bullies.  As TechCrunch discussed, the app acts as a visual warning and deterrent. It shows the user has an understanding of the need to be safe online and serves as a warning to those with less than good intentions.

In terms of users’ interest in the campaign, thus far it is proving a great success. In its first week over 100,000 children engaged with the app, with 20% adding the application’s tab to their profiles – ranking it highly even compared to big brand campaigns. For this campaign however, the true measure will not be the standard user stats, but whether or not it does make the web safer for children.

iPlatform worked alongside Facebook to produce the CEOP application, and Conversocial, iPlatform’s fan page management tool, is being used by Tempero to help moderate and manage the Click CEOP fan page.

The button allows users to like the content without being redirected to Facebook, making it ideal for both brand and user. Brands keep the users on the site and the user’s browsing isn’t interrupted. Since Facebook hosts the content of the widget itself, the button can display personalized content (like how many of the user’s friends also liked the article) whether or not the user has logged into the brands site.

How can it help brands?

The design of the Like button enables brands to harness the viral power of Facebook more effortlessly. The open graph means that brands no longer need to just heap all their content on to fan pages, and can instead allow fans to connect direct to their own websites.  Brands, especially those who don’t feel they have content engaging enough for Facebook users, will often be unsure as to how to connect their product with the user. They often feel it necessary to put all of their corporate information onto a fan page, even though most of the information may be fairly irrelevant for the user.

To be social, brands need to be engaging. Posting a load of corporate information on to Facebook isn’t engaging; but in the same way, leaving that on a corporate website and putting in a Like button won’t help much either! People will engage with interesting content, and this needs to be the focus of social. If you naturally have this, like IMDB below, it makes sense to use the Like buttons to allow users to connect directly to your content. If you’re a more traditional brand with an otherwise staid web presence and corporate website, it may make more sense to leave that where it is, and set up a separate fan page on Facebook to focus just on interesting and engaging content you can produce especially for social platforms.

One key feature of the widget is that it allows users to Like individual content, not just brands or pages. If brands have specific information, for example articles on how they are developing or changing, users can Like and share the specific content. When a user clicks on Like a one-line clickable news story is published to the users newsfeed. This link will then in turn also show on the user’s friends’ homepages.

IMDB utilising the Like button so users can like individual films

A lot of websites have already adopted the button and seen good results. Mashable reported that TypePad users who installed the Facebook Like button on their blog sidebars experienced a 50% increase in referral traffic from Facebook collectively http://mashable.com/2010/06/13/facebook-like-increases-blog-referral-traffic/.

An idea devised by Dare Digital and brought to life by iPlatform, the app allows users to get their very own unique England squad shirt and number, which is shown in a giant squad gallery (which includes the real squad, and lots of celebs who’ve signed up for their own unique shirts!), and can be shared back to their Facebook profile.

Join the Squad

Within the first day an overwhelming 30,000 users had joined the squad and had their own unique shirt number.

Stephen Fry tweeted about it, Campaign Magazine rated it 5 stars and due to the vast amounts of money spent on alcohol after many late nights of working on it, iPlatform may now own the rights to our local.

Stephen Fry, loving the app!

Over 77,000 users now have their own individual shirt name and number. As this will be the closest that any of us mere mortals, oh and Walcott, get to wearing the England shirt, long may it continue to grow.