Modern Day PR Monitoring and Evaluation

Practitioners have monitored the environment affecting their clients forever. It’s what we do. Today we have more to monitor and we have to do it faster.

Most know how much of a challenge monitoring this is. Most have their ‘Google Alerts’, their blog and Twitter monitors and the daily updates from Linkedin groups. These are augmented with online media (web based publications) and media online (print publications with online content) and subscriptions to all manner of news services to supplement the daily John Humphreys pre-breakfast fest, newspaper, magazine, radio, TV and press clips.

The internet stream of consciousness seems endlessly oppressive because the practitioner needs to follow all the conversations while the users only follow one or two. It is, all too often, unmanageable and is, mostly, not very comprehensive.

Even with Tweetdeck and Feedreader going full blast, professional communication and relationship advisors are blithely ignorant of all but a fraction of web pages that mention their clients. Does, for example, PR Week see all of the citations that are published about it online at the rate of one every 90 seconds 24/7?

The truth is that after the news, blog, twitter, social networks and discussion list citations, the string of website references, comment in new channels and machine generated content is mostly factors larger. The client’s online web cloud grows every day. It is a competitive asset and creates a footprint for all to follow and affects the algorithms of search engines that make organisations searchable and famous. Klea Labs which is a new interest of mine has interesting capabilities such as its Web to IM service which provides real time monitoring of 'everything'.

For most organisations, more than half of online content appearing each day online is not monitored, measured or evaluated. In addition in an era of Real Time web, Twitter, is the nearest most organisations get to following the movers and shakers of internet reputation in real time.

Too much Too much, I can hear a whole profession cry. Yes, we do have to bring order to all this stuff and this is where there can be a happy marriage between PR and technology. All the content can be sorted into the different generics such that your Facebook content is not confused with your tweets.

Even when some practitioners get this information, is it enough in a digital age?

Far from it. In fact such a view of client publics would probably be misleading. The impression would be, as Colin Farrington once described it “ill-informed, rambling descriptions of the tedious details of life or half-baked comments on political, sporting or professional issues. They read like a mixture of the ramblings of the eponymous Pub Landlord and the first draft of a second rate newspaper column.”

But this is to take and overview of all the conversations of all the Pub Landlords and all columnists. Out of context they do seem banal. But once you are immersed in the community where these comments are made, they make sense and are about real people and the issues in their lives.

This means that monitoring is only part of the story. The content we read needs to be evaluated and evaluated in context.

As long ago as 2007, Read Write Web was discussing the importance of semantics to Google. It is semantics that allows us to make sense of content in context. For ten years I have been involved in semantic developments which provided the technology behind the relationship management research presented at the Bledcom PR conference this year. In PR, semantic analysis is a boon. It provides ways in which computers can mimic human needs. It is not able to completely second guess human understanding but it takes a lot of the hard work out of gaining actionable insights.

We have now come a long way from monitoring online content using tools like Google Alerts and RSS feeds to monitoring all web content in near real time then evaluating for actionable insights in context.

In 1995 it was quite hard to speak to a public relations audience to get understanding that the internet was going to change PR practice. Not many in the industry waited with bated breath for the findings of the CIPR/PRCA internet Commission in 2000. Few practitioners believed the world wide web was more than a fad. Only a minority agreed these developments would change our profession forever. Fourteen years and three online PR books later it still remains challenging.

Asking readers of PRWeek to move to a point where you can begin to believe that technologies will mediate in PR practice is a big ask but that is where I believe we are going.

Kids on Hols - Broadband dies - Alternatives?

For a couple of years now I have come to expect my home network will deliver 100 mbs between my broadband modem, computers in my house and at the end of the garden. Beyond the modem, that is, the (virtual monopoly) BT service, speeds are typically 5 mbs. But this week have died.

There are many vendors for my kind of domestic system. I use my electricity circuits and Devolo's dLan.

This means that the feeble BT wifi system that comes with their modem is not a problem and I can access both cable and wifi irrespective of the thickness of the walls or distance from the hub.

However, with kids on holiday, I have noticed that the network, the other side of the BT hub is struggling.

I typically get 5 mbs from BT but the last week has seen a drop as low as 750 kbs mid morning, late afternoon and when it rains. I guess, this is down to kids at home watching online TV or just surfin'.

So, its time to break the monopoly. The BT cables.

This is where the system I have at my home comes into its own. Use power cables. The country is wired up to electricity and electricity cables can and are being used for data transmission but not for the domestic user.

Broadband Powerline (BPL) is not some fancy dream or over the horizon technology. It is a reality and is simple to implement. It does not require fibre to be installed and it could be implemented as a national minimum 100mbs system very quickly.

A combination of BPL and Wimax could wire up the nation quickly and no doubt would relieve BT of the onerous task of providing consumers with what they want: fast reliable broad broadband at an acceptable cost.

So cheer up BT, salvation is at hand!

Agnostic evaluation of media content

Image via Wikipedia

This weekend, I have been playing with a sentiment engine and thinking about people's perspectives.

This one does not take sides. It is agnostic. It decides if a press story is positive or negative from a neutral perspective.

All you do is past text into a box and it analyses the content as positive or negative and shows the structure of sentences that leads to this conclusion.

You can try it here.

The returns it makes is an academic minefield. It challenges your thinking about truth.

It has a first cousin, that can add perspectives. For example, it can make similar decisions from the perspective of the actors (company, person brand etc) which is why it was invented but the returns with no perspective are very interesting.

Sometimes this programme gets it wrong but not often.

It is able to glean content that is negative but which contributes to the positive side of the article and you can see how it does it.

I have tried news articles, book chapters, reports and even client presentations to see where the sentiment lies.

So where is the beef?

This kind of development is useful for analysing sentiment of news articles, blogs and other content, which is its primary purpose but it also has applications in evaluating style and and bias all of which are very useful to the PR industry, regulators and watchers of political sentinemt on and off line.

Try it out and be challenged.

Touch the virtual

I have a new word for everyone Realtuality.....

Massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) and virtual worlds, such as Second Life, "EVE Online," Habbo, MapleStory and "World of Warcraft" are the next step in "network intermediated" social and economic interactions according to Andrew Burger at Linux insider.

But he missed a significant element. They are now combined with the Nintendo's Wii. Wii adds a physical element.

These developments are easy to dismiss and put into the PR no go area of Games.

As you may know, this has never been my view. Games are a form of communication and online games now allow players to interact with millions of other players round the world.

But the Wii is different. The players can interact, not only in the virtual world but in a mashup between the virtual and real dimensions.

A movement using the Wii from Stonehenge can be transferred to a movement on a screen in San Francisco and in real time and in the existing, simulated or game graphic renderings or virtual world.

David Stone, an MIT research fellow claims the motion-sensitive controller is "one of the most significant technology breakthroughs in the history of computer science." He offers the Wiimote as a key to building realistic training simulators in Second Life.

Add to the Wii and virtual worlds a huge mass collaborative development effort and you get where I am coming from.

Take Nancy Smith, president of the Sims label, who says Sims attracts creative people of all ages and both genders and have a track record of 4.5 million players visiting the Sims site monthly, and 70m downloads of player-created content including user created avatars and environments.

These are pretty big numbers and pretty active communities and they are not alone.

Corporate investment in post 2000 technologiesis already interesting. Disney bought Club Penguin for $700 million in 2007 and has at least nine more developments in train.

A study by Virtual Worlds Management, a Texas-based research company identified $184.2 million this year pouring into companies that run virtual worlds.

You can bet these will be very different and will need to include Realtuality, with its physical dimension to compete.

Intel add fuel to the flames. It say that the next generation Wii will not need controllers. Camera technology and sensors will mean they are obsolete.

The pent-up capability to create applications, the technical advances and money is now converging. The breakthrough cannot be far off.

Virtual offices, virtual homes, virtual friends and all interacting with real offices, real sports, real homes and real people stretches the imagination and yet is not far off.

Does this mean that the press conference is acted out by real people in virtual worlds or virtual people in real environments. Yes to both.

Does this mean the end of the travelling salesman, yes it does, and is supermarket shopping now a case of really walking but down virtual aisles, yes it does.

But these are pretty ordinary transmogrifications. What happens when we mashup email, twitter, VoiP and that old fashioned place of record, the website and add people being both themselves and their alter egos in dynamic activities in dynamic environments and physically involved too. Now add millions of people doing all this in full-on creative mode.

Well... Facebook is, by comparison, dull. Even the announcement by Peekaboo Pole Dancing, the company behind the Carmen Electra pole dancing kit, that they seek a partner to license a pole dancing game for the Wii is tame.

Development of new markets, new inventions and new societies already happens all the time in microcosm in these emeging worlds and at a pace that makes following twitter seem sluggish. But as these people bridge the gap to what our generation believes is mainstream, the effect will be astonishing.

Building relationships between organisations and their publics in existing games has a very new dimension and is culturally very different. Second life using a Wii is different again and adding big bucks investment and open tools and open source to both is a daunting prospect.

And what is going to drive this revolution?

I think fun and sex. These environments are novel and fun and they open up whole new opportunities for romantic interaction.

Millions, of people using open tools and open software backed up with significant investment by business angels will begin to deliver products that make the exponential growth of YouTube look sluggish.

The commitment to life in these environments will drag people from television, the cinema and night clubs to the next mashup generation beyond today's Wii and big home screens, games and virtual worlds.


The first shops in these environments will soon become the biggest mall anyone ever walked down.

Today, we think we are cool with our corporate blogs, wiki's podcasts and social media involvement but perhaps we should now begin to think of the next digital generation.

Evaluation online is creeping away from us

Every time I look at numbers that may help the PR evaluation industry, I come up with the same answer. Its getting harder. As Brett Crosby, senior manager for Google Analytics, notes for Mark Glaser we will be hard-pressed to cover the wide variety of websites and their functions. “My personal opinion is that it’s going in the opposite direction [from a unified measurement]”.

Perhaps we should stop trying to emulate the advertising industry and start evaluating public relations.

Its not hard. Some organisations have good public relations and some have bad public relations.

Such judgements are inclusive of the organisation and its performance, its communications, its ethos and so on. That is the role of the PR manager. So why not use a PR measure.

That does not mean the 'worlds most admired company' based on journalist column inches and tone or ROI or profits or, even, growth.

The simple measure is would you be thrilled if your daughter got her first job there.

So I am offering a new evaluation metric - the daughter litmus paper.

For those who really want indigestion, the following is a kick start for measuring:

For information about numbers of people online http://www.internetworldstats.com.

Who owns and runs sites is quite easy to look up using 'Whois' services such as this like these http://www.internetters.co.uk/whois.php, http://www.nominet.org.uk/

How the internet is performing can come from http://news.netcraft.com

Research data can be from www.nielsen-netratings.com and Pew Research http://people-press.org, and the National Statistics office. Among others you can find out about web site statistics from http://www.websiteoptimization.com and Site Report Card http://www.sitereportcard.com/.

More tools are available at http://www.toolurl.com

To find out about links into and out of web sites, how many pages a web site has then http://www.google.com/help/operators.html, is very helpful.

To be able to identify words associated with a person, brand, company or other organisation when people search using search engines (top of mind words about the organisation) then the use of Wordtracker or similar.

Most sites should be monitored for their Google ranking http://www.googlerankings.com/

Google Analytics for a web site or Google Trends to find how many people search for your keywords are helpful. Compare the numbers of visitors to sites with Alexa Trafic Ranking (www.alexa.com) and other web analytic information is available fro a Google search “web site traffic analytics”.

Hitwise (www.hitwise.co.uk) offers a lot of data about online traffic and monitors who is doing what online.

A quick free monitor to try out web site visitor tools is available from http://www.sitemeter.com.

For some exciting views of online activity try http://labs.digg.com.

What users do using a service like Clicktale when they vist web sites is also a metric that is helpful when identifying how a site is used. Eye tracking is used to see how web pages are used too. Research is already well established with heat maps too and available for citation.

Podcast data can come from http://www.radiotail.com/ripple And

Then there are some of the monitors and some interesting new ideas including one that looks at a range of metrics from Edelman PR which was first discussed on David Brian's post http://www.sixtysecondview.com/?p=325.

The platforms for communication

I am looking at the range of devices (platforms) that can be deployed by the PR industry. I do not mean channels (e.g. emai. IM Facebook etc). What are the things that can deliver interet protocol based information is what I really seek.

My thoughts so far are given below but what have I missed?

Devices like a television or radio set, PC, laptop, mobile telephone, game machine (Yes, Xbox and Play Stations are included too) and VoIP (lets call it Skype for ease of understanding) static and mobile sets are all platforms for communication.

We need not stop there, there are many other platforms available to the consumer. ePaper, a flexible sheet that can be digitally updated, will has a place alongside newsprint and books; ePoster, posters that can be digitally updated are communication platforms that are internet enabled have a place alongside posters, signage and even computer and TV screens.

Then there is Near-field electromagnetic ranging (NFER); Real Time Location System (RTLS); Radio-frequency identification (RFID) and contactless 'smart' cards (like the oyster card used by London Underground). They allow small amounts of data to be transferred between smart devices and receivers. These devices mean that there will never again be a need for exhibition registering when tickets can both include a lot of information and can transmit it to computers for visitors to gain admission. In retailing such technology will mean that the supermarket check out is, well, on its way out.

There are new platforms on their way and the mobile phone is due for a major revolution with iPhone and its more advanced cousins already in the shops. Two hundred Manchester City season ticket holders trialed a system through which they "show" their Nokia 3320 handset to an automatic reader to get into a game, instead of handing a card to a gate attendant. In Estonia cell phones can be used in a similar way to pay taxi fares and and bar bills. Many people use satellite navigation in their cars. These devices can also be used to provide a wide range of information about routes, local restaurants and beauty spots and already 'talk' to mobile phones and thence, to the rest of the internet.

These platforms can be linked using internet protocols by traditional cables, radio in many forms including wireless local area networks (WLAN), often known as WiFi; infrared, often used in phones and the cable free computer mouse, cellular telephony and the simple Universal Serial Bus (USB) devices and cables.

It is usual and common to get money from an ATM on the street. These internet enabled platforms and the information kiosks to be found on many a street corner are part of this mix of channels.

Most people, for the most part, do not notice these changes taking place. They are gradual and quickly form part of daily life. Who today finds the Oyster Card strange or thinks of it as a channel for communication. Oyster cards are also getting 'very clever'.

For the PR practitioner, the use and application of platforms for communication to have a profound effect of publics is a matter only of the extent of their imagination.

Imagine a satellite navigation device offering a story about a company as it passes by. Too late, it has already happened. These devices are already being deployed by the PR industry.

Is there an appetite for all these platforms? A survey in 2006, suggested that 60% of UK consumers spend £5000 on gadgets every year, with 30% of those surveyed saying that they have 15 gadgets in total.

What is really big about these devices? Its un-nerving. Many of them can be used for a range of two way communication. We know this of the ubiquitous PC and cell phone but what of an ePoster? One that can interact with a cell phone. In Japan user can already 'pull' information from them! Progressively, this interconnectedness of these platforms will engage the consumer in ever more one to one, one to many, many to many and many to one forms of interaction. And, while we are pondering these developments (and sending an email from an Xbox games console as one of the authors did when writing this book – and got back an answer!), its worth noting that many of these platforms do not have a keyboard or even a mouse, many do not use text, but use pictures, graphics and sounds.

What have I missed and how are these platforms being used? Answer not on a postcard please.

Consumers 'get it' - So PR has to as well

"Consumers get it; they understand technology and they are adopting it accordingly," analyst Sean Wargo told the Consumer Electronics Show last week.

More than $155bn (£80bn) in consumer technologies is expected to be sold in the US in the next 12 months.

"Driving the industry is the transition to the new breed, the next generation of technologies," Mr Wargo said.

The industry says consumers' love affair with gadgets will continue despite a US/global economic slowdown and a prediction that growth in the US market would halve in 2007 from last year's figures.

Is this true of the UK?

The evidence is that adoption in the UK is, if anything accelerating. The jump from consumer to corporate application is moving ahead too.

What this means is that ordinary people and corporations are using all manner of new web services, gadgets and widgets

It also means that communication practitioners now need at least a basic understanding of what is involved otherwise the population as a whole will accelerate out of the reach of the press relations oriented practitioner.

Ita a snap (URL Preview)

Snap Preview Anywhere form http://www.snap.com is becomming a great success story. They say that in just 8 weeks, over 45,000 sites worldwide have asked to be included on their sites. hey have generated over 120,000,000 previews.

There are lots of similar products out there but this one is really doing well.

One of the advantages` for the PR practitioner is that this kind of added value/contnet can be used in releases sent to jounalists and others to show the depth of information available via embeded hyperlinks (because many journalists don't bother to click the links).

Jimmy offers wiki software and service

SMEs could stand to profit from a new service from Wikia, the for-profit offshoot of open-source encyclopaedia Wikipedia reports IT Wales.

Its founder, Jimmy Wales, is offering free tools including software, computing, storage and network access to businesses and communities who want to build interactive websites.

"We will be providing the computer hosting for free, and the publisher can keep the advertising revenue," Mr Wales told Reuters.

The offer aims to tempt special-interest groups hoping to set up sites as well as SMEs looking for the expertise and tools to expand their user base rapidly.

Nice offer. We have been using PB wwik for some time and its nice to know about different products and services out there.

What broadband did

Internet usage across western Europe is being driven by cheap broadband deals and social-networking websites, the European Interactive Advertising Association (EIAA) has revealed.

Countries such as the UK and France are now experiencing broadband penetration rates of over 84 per cent, while the average time spent online each week has risen by over ten per cent in the past 12 months.

Meanwhile, social media websites are now visited by almost one quarter of all European internet users every month, with that figure rising to 32 per cent among 16 to 24-year-olds.

Technolgy is finding out if you are to be trusted online

I have been looking at the Google Quality Score process. It examines the experience of consumers as they click through to a site as part of the Google AdWords product.

I thought that it would be interesting to think of this process in terms of whether a web site could be considered trustworthy. In a commons of interest sort of way, yes it can.

If one extends this idea to content such as a press release..... yes you get where I am coming from. The is an application that suggests that 'If I get a press release from this organisation, it is probably an extension of the truth' or 'Its propbably trustworthy'.

Very handy if you are a hard pressed publisher wanting to serve up only worthwhile content to your journalists' RSS feed.

I would bet a fortune that a 'Trust barometer' using the Google API will pop up pretty soon.

Get your video voted onto TV

A TV satellite channel dedicated to user-generated content has been launched on the UK-based Sky platform.

The Sumo TV channel, available on Sky Channel 146, will show clips from the Sumo TV website.

Participants who upload video clips to the Sumo TV website will have a chance for them to be broadcast on national TV and get paid if they are broadcast..

Which clips are broadcast will be down to how popular they prove online. All content will be closely monitored by Cellcast, the interactive TV company behind the channel.

I guess there will be a load of competition for good content

Near Field Communication

Mobile phones are closer to becoming smart wallets, following agreement among mobile operators on an approach to near field communications (NFC).

NFC is a short-range wireless technology like RFID tags, which are used to track stock by retailers. If you use an Oyster on London Underground you will get the idaea real quic

The tags inside phones could have personal information stored in them and so could act as car keys, money, tickets and travel cards says the BBC.

Mobile firms representing 40% of the global mobile market back NFC.

There are two elements to NFC technology, which is sometimes called "contactless" applications - a tag, which is inside the phone and can store data and transmit it wirelessly, and a reader, which can access the information stored on tags.

A mobile equipped with NFC technology could, for example, buy a concert ticket over the phone which would then hold those details, together with the details of the phone user, on the tag inside the handset.

An RFID device at the concert would then "read" the concert ticket details on the tag when the phone is passed close to it.

NFC technology could also be used to exchange data between phones, such as photos and music. Not to mention corporate and brand messages. How fast do you really want to issue financial information... here is your chance....

Mobile phones are seen as powerful tools for NFC technology because they are able to download new pieces of information - from topping up a travel card, to new songs, ticket information and electronic keycard data etc.

Now all you Public Relations folk..... don't get too excited. You may need to be a tiny bit creative to use this form of communication.

Near Field Communication

Mobile phones are closer to becoming smart wallets, following agreement among mobile operators on an approach to near field communications (NFC).

NFC is a short-range wireless technology like RFID tags, which are used to track stock by retailers. If you use an Oyster on London Underground you will get the idaea real quic

The tags inside phones could have personal information stored in them and so could act as car keys, money, tickets and travel cards says the BBC.

Mobile firms representing 40% of the global mobile market back NFC.

There are two elements to NFC technology, which is sometimes called "contactless" applications - a tag, which is inside the phone and can store data and transmit it wirelessly, and a reader, which can access the information stored on tags.

A mobile equipped with NFC technology could, for example, buy a concert ticket over the phone which would then hold those details, together with the details of the phone user, on the tag inside the handset.

An RFID device at the concert would then "read" the concert ticket details on the tag when the phone is passed close to it.

NFC technology could also be used to exchange data between phones, such as photos and music. Not to mention corporate and brand messages. How fast do you really want to issue financial information... here is your chance....

Mobile phones are seen as powerful tools for NFC technology because they are able to download new pieces of information - from topping up a travel card, to new songs, ticket information and electronic keycard data etc.

Now all you Public Relations folk..... don't get too excited. You may need to be a tiny bit creative to use this form of communication.

Near Field Communication

Mobile phones are closer to becoming smart wallets, following agreement among mobile operators on an approach to near field communications (NFC).

NFC is a short-range wireless technology like RFID tags, which are used to track stock by retailers. If you use an Oyster on London Underground you will get the idaea real quic

The tags inside phones could have personal information stored in them and so could act as car keys, money, tickets and travel cards says the BBC.

Mobile firms representing 40% of the global mobile market back NFC.

There are two elements to NFC technology, which is sometimes called "contactless" applications - a tag, which is inside the phone and can store data and transmit it wirelessly, and a reader, which can access the information stored on tags.

A mobile equipped with NFC technology could, for example, buy a concert ticket over the phone which would then hold those details, together with the details of the phone user, on the tag inside the handset.

An RFID device at the concert would then "read" the concert ticket details on the tag when the phone is passed close to it.

NFC technology could also be used to exchange data between phones, such as photos and music. Not to mention corporate and brand messages. How fast do you really want to issue financial information... here is your chance....

Mobile phones are seen as powerful tools for NFC technology because they are able to download new pieces of information - from topping up a travel card, to new songs, ticket information and electronic keycard data etc.

Now all you Public Relations folk..... don't get too excited. You may need to be a tiny bit creative to use this form of communication.

Near Field Communication

Mobile phones are closer to becoming smart wallets, following agreement among mobile operators on an approach to near field communications (NFC).

NFC is a short-range wireless technology like RFID tags, which are used to track stock by retailers. If you use an Oyster on London Underground you will get the idaea real quic

The tags inside phones could have personal information stored in them and so could act as car keys, money, tickets and travel cards says the BBC.

Mobile firms representing 40% of the global mobile market back NFC.

There are two elements to NFC technology, which is sometimes called "contactless" applications - a tag, which is inside the phone and can store data and transmit it wirelessly, and a reader, which can access the information stored on tags.

A mobile equipped with NFC technology could, for example, buy a concert ticket over the phone which would then hold those details, together with the details of the phone user, on the tag inside the handset.

An RFID device at the concert would then "read" the concert ticket details on the tag when the phone is passed close to it.

NFC technology could also be used to exchange data between phones, such as photos and music. Not to mention corporate and brand messages. How fast do you really want to issue financial information... here is your chance....

Mobile phones are seen as powerful tools for NFC technology because they are able to download new pieces of information - from topping up a travel card, to new songs, ticket information and electronic keycard data etc.

Now all you Public Relations folk..... don't get too excited. You may need to be a tiny bit creative to use this form of communication.

Near Field Communication

Mobile phones are closer to becoming smart wallets, following agreement among mobile operators on an approach to near field communications (NFC).

NFC is a short-range wireless technology like RFID tags, which are used to track stock by retailers. If you use an Oyster on London Underground you will get the idaea real quic

The tags inside phones could have personal information stored in them and so could act as car keys, money, tickets and travel cards says the BBC.

Mobile firms representing 40% of the global mobile market back NFC.

There are two elements to NFC technology, which is sometimes called "contactless" applications - a tag, which is inside the phone and can store data and transmit it wirelessly, and a reader, which can access the information stored on tags.

A mobile equipped with NFC technology could, for example, buy a concert ticket over the phone which would then hold those details, together with the details of the phone user, on the tag inside the handset.

An RFID device at the concert would then "read" the concert ticket details on the tag when the phone is passed close to it.

NFC technology could also be used to exchange data between phones, such as photos and music. Not to mention corporate and brand messages. How fast do you really want to issue financial information... here is your chance....

Mobile phones are seen as powerful tools for NFC technology because they are able to download new pieces of information - from topping up a travel card, to new songs, ticket information and electronic keycard data etc.

Now all you Public Relations folk..... don't get too excited. You may need to be a tiny bit creative to use this form of communication.

Enterprise blogging tools

Automattic, the company behind Wordpress, has announced a partnership with RSS platform provider KnowNow to extend its publishing tools to the enterprise market.

The two companies have developed KnowNow WordPress Enterprise Edition, a blog platform for businesses which will be in direct competition with Six Apart’s Movable Type.

The platform will include Automattic's spam solution Akismet and a stats package, and will be marketed by KnowNow to its base of enterprise customers.

Teens rule the web

Joel has this snipit: if website A has 700 incoming links from 700 different websites and website B has 700 incoming links, all of them from various pages on MySpace, website B will be ranked higher in Google's search results.

Social bookmarking

TRhank you Barry for the widget to add the social bookmarking boxes below and to Joel for finding him. This is on Blogger beta so it was a bit of a fiddle but works ok.