The IAB in Sweden (the trade association for the digital and interactive marketing industry) have, this month, released a set of new recommendations on how website cookies should be used. These place the emphasis on the website visitor’s browser setting to determine whether cookie will be used, and move away from the website banners that have been previously promoted as a solution.
These recommendations are a response to the Electronic Communications Act (Sweden), which is itself a response to the EU directive concerning on-line privacy. This directive requires consent from a website visitor before cookies are placed on their computer; but – as I’ve posted previously – this breaks many important tools for ensuring a good visitor experience. Not least, it directly impacts the use of Google Analytics.
The IAB guidelines say the following:
- Cookie use, and type, should be clearly identified on the site
- Clear information should be given about what cookies do and their purpose
The awesomeness (but also what I expect will be the controversial element):
- If a user’s browser is set to accept cookies this means they have granted consent for cookies to be used (if the website clearly identifies which cookies are being used)
- If a user’s browser rejects cookies, then this must be respected
They promote the use of a standardised badge, to help users find out what cookies are used and make their own choice.
I need cookies to do my job – that is, to make the user experience better; these recommendations seem like a sensible solution for everyone. Unfortunately, I doubt that the EU will entirely agree – particularly given the apparent disagreement between EU ministers on how this directive should be enforced.
(You can see this slow car crash unfolding by checking out all my posts on the cookie directive).
What do you think? Will this work – is this an alternative to the opt-in banners which seem to be popping up?
Facebook Page Comments – Monthly review of Swedish university Facebook pages
November 8, 2011Another month passes, and we’re out of the national application period and into the beginnings of the frenzy of international recruitment. The overriding trend is that almost all pages saw a drop in comments, only the English pages saw similar numbers to last month – but even they showed a reduction in the number of comments. Chalmers School of Technology have opened their wall for comments, but 6 others still remain closed.
Comments
Swedish Universities English Facebook Pages – Ranked by number of comments left in October.
Page
Comments left by page friends
Malmö University
41
Lund University
38
Uppsala University
11
Jönköping University
12
Mid Sweden Uni
15
Stockholm University
Wall closed
University of Borås
2
Stockholm School of Economics
Wall closed
Umeå University
Wall closed
Chalmers School of Technology
1
Swedish Universities Swedish Facebook Pages – Ranked by number of comments left in October.
Page
Comments left by page friends
Linne Universitet
45
Mälardalans Högskola
25
Uppsala universitet
23
Linköping Universitet
23
Högskolan i Skövde
22
Lunds Universitet
20
Högskolan i Borås
17
Karlstads Universitet
14
Högskolan i Jönköping
12
Högskolan i Halmstad
11
Mittuniversitetet
11
KTH
10
SLU
8
Malmö Högskola
8
Umeå universitet
8
Högskolan Kristianstad
6
BTH officiell
4
Högskolan Dalarna
4
Högskolan Väst
1
Karolinska Institutet
Wall closed
Royal Institute of Art
Wall closed
Stockholms Universitet
Wall closed
My top tip for this month – open up your Google Analytics account, create a segment called ‘Social Media’ which includes Facebook, Blogs and Twitter and then apply it to your visitor traffic. For extra marks combine it with another segment, such as international visitors. Hopefully you’ll see an upward curve of traffic, particularly if you’ve been investing in Social Media – bask in the glory, but also consider how you can continue to drive this traffic. Ping me if you need advice on creating advanced segments.
Activity and Influence
I was struck by a post I read recently ‘confusing-activity-with-influence‘. In particular the line ‘..growing acceptance that activity somehow relates to influence’. I’ve been thinking about this a lot, and have already touched on this previously with the observation that pages with relatively low numbers of friends can still have lots more comments than pages with far more friends. This notion of influence intrigues me, as this is what – presumably – most of us are striving after; I’ll soon be buckling down to an analysis of comments from the pages I look at in this review which will give more of a measurement of influence, rather than just activity.
Update: I’d missed off the number of comments from Högskolan i Jönköping from the above tables, they are included now. Thanks to @ollehallberg for letting me know.
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Tags:comments, facebook, international, social media, sweden, swedish, universities, university, web
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