Would you 'choose' the adds you want to see?

Ashley Friedlein of e-consultancy discusses the news that Bebo is overhauling its advertising model in order to let its users choose what types of ads they see.

His arguments are pretty good and his answers are relevant to the Public Relations Industry.

Its pretty obvious that the advertsing model is not going to work. Just live with the idea.

There is a model that shows that attention getting is important.

That is what this post has done. I have greated the opportunity for you to go and look at the story on the e-consultancy site.

And ... know what... not an advert in sight!

The Social Media model is different.


Here are the questions that Ashley tries to answer:

Is this idea misguided? Or is this the future of advertising?

1. Do users really not mind advertising (as Justin Pearse claims)?

2. How many users will choose toilet roll ads and mortgage ads?

3. How many users will actually make the effort to tailor their ads?


4. Will users keep their profile / interests up to date?

5. Will the ads be better than search?

Time to shut down Google News in the UK

Shel Holtz alerted me to the news that a Belgian court could potentially block Google's news aggregation business.

A complaint against the internet giant was launched by Copiepresse, an organisation that manages copyright for the French and German-speaking press in Belgium.

The court has ordered Google to stop reproducing articles from French-speaking newspapers in the news section of one of its Belgian websites.

Online French-speaking newspapers in Belgium may be so awful that no one goes to them. I don't know. But if they are good enough, the web traffic to their sites via Google News must be significant.

The UK press through the Newspaper Licencing Agency, prevents copying of newspaper clippings unless you want to go through a process of licencing and paying fees for doing so.

There is a lot in common between these two ideas.

I use Google News a lot. It is how I get a lot of my news.

Yesterday 23 people went to news sites because of my posts about newspaper stories. It is not many, but there are millions of bloggers doing the same thing. The press would forego millions of hits.

Referencing web sites is why the web is successful and why so many blogs are popular.

Now, lets suppose we did not have Yahoo News or Google News services. Would I buy more newspapers. No. I would rely on other, online, sources.

However, it would reduce the on-line traffic to the press by a lot because so many of us do reference press articles online. In many cases denial of search services like Google News would make the newspaper web revenues shrink to the point where they would be meaningless.

The citations that did not go into the Google News Archive would mean that the media will, over time, also loose the 'long tail' benefit for their on-line content. A double whammy of nonsense by people who just do not understand the nature of the digital tsunami.

It would quickly kill off most newspapers and the survivors would have almost nowhere to go with their on-line plans.

Perhaps it is time to try the experiment.

Shut the service down for a day and see what happens.

Its rather like the press clips. All those opportunities newspapers used to have to put their brand in front of hundreds of people in companies that used to circulate clips has now been reduced to a handful. Who now knows what publications are relevant, interesting, part of their life? A handful at company HQ, who knew that anyway and, incidentally, no longer have time to read clippings.

Do you wonder why newspaper readership is declining.

Perhaps having a dog in the manger attitude to the brand in the name of copyright with a half life of cod 'n chips was not such a clever idea after all.

Varnish PR?

Toni has a great post about PR as the 'varnish'.
He quotes Sir Martin Sorrell's view of responsible corporate behaviour as a coat public relations varnish.

Toni says

Maybe it would be useful if the CEO’s of the many H&K’s and B-M’s which form the roster of the conglomerate’s pr firms and contribute to his personal well-being, demanded a public apology.

Hear Hear!

What does WPP really own?

The Long Tail listed for Award

I think this book is just fantastic.

Great news. The Long Tail has been shortlisted for the Financial Times/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year award.

The mission is: "To identify the book that provides the most compelling and enjoyable insight into modern business issues, including management, finance and economics."

The Long Tail is a must read for Public Relations practitioners. It shows that in building relationships throughout the organisation's constituency has a pay back more significant than all the scream marketing in the world.

Die Marketing Die! Die! Die!

From CNN Money comes a report about the demise of scream marketing.

Ideas about achieving brand strength, that elusive alchemy of awareness and trust, have changed in the past decade. "It's no longer, What can we blast out there about ourselves?" says Michelle Roehm, associate professor of marketing at Wake Forest University. "Brand theory now asks, How can we connect with the community in a really meaningful way?"

Hooray! Some other comments:

"Today it's all about trust, community, and creating a dialogue with your customer that shares real knowledge," says Hayes Roth, chief marketing officer for Landor.

Perhaps no name on the list has attempted a deeper conversation with its customers than Dove. Its reliable but stodgy brand hit an emotional nerve-and pay dirt-with the "Campaign for real beauty," launched in September 2004.

I have more reasons posted here.

The moble audience - kids in the UK

The Mobile Life Survey, commissioned by Carphone Warehouse, quizzed 1,250 people aged 11 to 17 shows that nine out of 10 12-year-olds in the UK now have a mobile phone.

The biggest use is for Texting.

Another video channel

Microsoft is launching an online service to compete with YouTube, Google and Yahoo reports the BBC.

Soapbox starts testing on Tuesday and will launch within six months as part of current service, MSN Video.

So there will be another channel for communication. The video media list for PR professionals is getting bigger by the day.

Publicity, Propaganda or PR -the Cliveden set don't know

About a dozen propaganda and psyops specialists met at Cliveden, Berkshire, last week to discuss how America and its allies can use strategic communications more effectively in the War on Terror reports The Times.

Its a big bucks business.

The United States Government is thought to have earmarked at least $400 million (£213 million) since September 11, 2001, to enlist private companies to supply skills and ideas for an information war, covering propaganda and psychological operations (psyops).

These advisers are bringing corporate ideas to the military. Rebranding is one example.

Call a dog a different name because its mission has changed seems to be the BIG idea (wow1).

This is propaganda. In an age of social media it is simple an AK47 aimed at a delicate part of the anatomy.

Another corporate idea is the use of the chief executive as the voice of persuasion during a crisis (wow2).

The Times reports:

Nancy Snow, of the University of Southern California, who is a former propagandist for the US State Department, said: “There has been too much emphasis on having the President as persuader-in-chief and it isn’t working because he lacks credibility, especially abroad.” (wow3)

The information war experts also pointed out that private companies were motivated by the need to win short-term contracts, while military goals were long term (wow4).

This is publicity. It stems from scream marketing, a practice well known to command and control freaks.

Well what a surprise!

What I am trying to find in all this is Public Relations.

David Robertson, a Times hack thinks this is PR but what does he know? Marginally more than the headline writer is nearly obvious. The Times really does need a proper cub reporter who has, at least, some idea of the nature of relationships, how they are effected and nurtured for a common good.

The critical thing here is that there is a need for grown up public relations. This requires a clear understanding of the goals and ambitions of the governement (s) involved followed by research, planning strategy development, testing, monitoring and tactical application that is constantly monitored in the creation and flowering of relationships among many stakeholder groups all of which are interconnected.

The reason that the government cannot get a public relations person to prepare and execute a plan is that the client is awash with ego and bumbling about with sound bites delivered with 'personality'.

Lloyd-Webber would be a better option than a PR consultant. At least we would have tunes instead of the noise of a washing machine behind the spin.

Good employee relations critical - if poor - dangerous

Sacked spy Richard Tomlinson has defied the UK's secret services by posting the first chapter of his spy novel online. Says The Register.

It reports:

The ex-MI6 officer was fired in 1995 after four years in the foreign arm of British secret intelligence and spent a year in a maximum security prison for publishing a book about his time in the organisation. But he has fought back against what he claims is intimidation by his old employees with the publication of chapter one of The Golden Chain on his blog.

Imagine if this was to happen to your organisation. It is almost impossible to prevent ex-employees blowing whistles and making mayhem online.

This means that the Public Relations manager has to alert management and prepare for the eventuality as part of issues management planning.

Email is chaotic

Over a third (38%) of large organisations across the UK admit their email management system is in ‘complete chaos’, according to the findings of a survey released by AIIM, reports Retail Bulletin.

I have pulled out the key points. But waht this report says to me is that it is about time the Public Relations department got control of email and managed it properly and as a communications medium.

• The survey also found that the same number of end users admitted that their company either had no policy or they didn’t know their company’s policy when it came to email archiving.

• A third of UK organisations do not have any clear plans and procedures for dealing with compliance issues, especially concerning historical records, which poses a number of compliance related risks.

• Only 16% understand that the broader concept relates to information within enterprise resource planning and customer relationship management systems.

• Half of the users surveyed admitted that employees do not fully understand how to access current versions of policies and procedures or other critical corporate information.

• Over two thirds (70%) of organisations admit that content created by employees who have then left, is not actively reviewed or archived appropriately.

South Bank Show podcast

If you have a client who would be good material for the ITV1 South Bank Show you will be interested to know that from today, you’ll be able to download a special podcast version of the show, carrying extended interviews with the week’s guests.

This is important for two reasons. The people who want to see the show can do so at a time to suit themselves which mean that the extended audience will be focused and relevant and, of course the podcast will remain available for years, extending the life of the broadcast.

Of course you will also be able to use the link to the show in additional and further promotional work too.

The same benefits also apply to Nigel Godrich's show

The Radiohead producer will head up 'From The Basement', which is expected to feature appearances from the likes of The White Stripes, Thom Yorke and Beck. The first series has already been recorded.


The show will have no studio audience, and will be available as a video podcast.

So it will get the extra bonus podcasts offer Public Relations practitioners.

Radiohead Official Site

Guradian reports on the power of the blog for corporates

Andrew Clarke tells how Dell learned recently about the growing power of the blogosphere when it recalled 4.1m laptop batteries after a video that showed one of its computers bursting into flames was posted on the internet. The brief clip zig-zagged through cyberspace and went from cult viewing to national television.

"It's a new culture, a new world," says Nielsen BuzzMetrics' marketing vice-president, Max Kalehoff. "For every company there's a huge, long tail of blogs with many, many niches."

He maintains that although blogs can be a thorn in the side of carefully nurtured brands, they can also be useful in alerting executives to hazards ahead.

Space for blogging

From Neville Hobson's eagle eye:

Ms Ansari says she will write the first blog from space. She says that her ultimate goal is to bring her experience and “the ability to fly to space to more and more people and to inspire young woman and men to go into the fields related to space.”

Is it OK to ghostwrite a CEO blog?

Debbie Weil says: This is one of the questions I get asked most often. What I want to know, dear reader, is what you think?

This is a silly question.

What are the corporate aims, where is the social media strategy and how can you lever most corporate benefit.

Most CEO's have a half life of 3 years so when they go... what is best for the organisation?

I am not a great fan of CEO blogs. Imaging the relative power among a wide range of stakeholders should they have a monthly podcast, an interview on sector wide issues by John Humphrys.

Research and evaluation

Heather Hopkins is Director of Research for Hitwise UK. In this role, Heather analyses the trends affecting businesses online and works with Hitwise clients to identify opportunities and threats to online business growth. She was looking at clickstream traffic from MySpace and Bebo this morning for a reporter and noticed HMV.co.uk among the downstream sites from MySpace. In fact, the site ranked as the third highest downstream Shopping & Classifieds site from MySpace Music last week, after eBay UK and eBay.

If The PR industry was to use this information, imagine its power for PR planning, strategy development and evaluation.

Sorta makes the usual charts look a bit ... unreal?

If you don't RSS you ain't in PR

Its simple. Without RSS a practitioner cannot keep up with the news, is unable to follow important discussion and debate about thier client, is swamped by email and is really a waste of salary.

The best advice about RSS today is from Elizabeth Albrycht. Her blog is worth adding to your RSS feed as well.

Then have a play after your workout in the gym and with a glass of Château Ausone and practice.

Its just so cool.

Celeb PR opportunity

YouTube has signed a deal with media giant Warner Music to allow its material to be used legally.

It means interviews and videos by Warner's artists can be used in return for a slice of advertising revenue.
The agreement also covers the use of material in homemade videos, which form a large part of YouTube's content.
Well there is some reality creeping in. The Warner long tail could be very valuable.

For Celebrity PR... get your client into the Warner library.

There is added news from Business2Day:

YouTube is getting ready to launch a "content identification system" by the end of the year that supposedly will let copyright holders automatically find when their content is being used and either charge royalties for it or share in advertising dollars associated with that content.

Eyespot - an vidcast experiment

It works!

I have experimented with Eyespot for the first time.

Just my cellphone (on a pile of books) and the free, simple and easy software works very well.

Now I have to get the camera out, prepare better content and get the sound, lighting, mixing etc better. But for 90 minutes from start to finish, this is not hard.

Show notes, are, of course, the blog comments I made this week.



The next think to do is to send it to YouTube, Live Journal, Veoh, BlipTV etc.

There is one issue which is that it is supposed to load to this blog (Blogger Beta) automatically and that does not work yet. I had to cut and past the code.

Brand Monitoring

Mike Manuel has picked up a Forester Research report about Brand Monitoring and identifying
Nielsen Buzzmetrics
CymfonyBiz360
Umbria
Brandimensions
MotiveQuest
Factiva
on the way.

I am getting more and more uneasy about many metrics. My concern is that they can lead one down the route of market segmentation in a misleading way.

I now tend towards a view that, for many application, there is a need to identify with the content values offered by constituents within contextual frames which can be as granular as one because of their influence on the long tail asset.

For a lot of organisations their long tail asset may be greater than the annual marketing budget which would lead one to imagine how much more effective it might be for closer attention.

Levering up one blog post by a factor of three by just responding would seem to be a valuable investment.

There are not many brand monitoring capabilities that identify the long tail asset.

Mobile keeps up the pressure for effective communication

Mobile keeps cropping up in forecasts and is becomming core to PR communication. By 2012, cellular VoIP services are forecast to generate revenues of $18.6 billion in the USA and $7.3 billion in Western Europe, compared with fixed VoIP revenues of $11.9 in the USA and $6.9 billion in Western Europe, according to a new report, Forecasting the Commercial Impact of Wireless VoIP in the USA and Western Europe, published by Analysys, the global advisers on telecoms, IT and media (http://research.analysys.com/).

European commercial broadcasters threatened

Yankee Group today announced that multi-channel services, new advertising formats and new direct business partnerships between content providers and advertisers are posing a tremendous threat to the core business of European commercial broadcasters. As a result, European free-to-air (FTA) broadcasters are facing a severe decline in advertising revenue. Yankee Group finds that to retain these budgets and margins, broadcasters must refocus their traditional business model and explore new and emerging TV distribution and merchandising options.

This means that broadcast public relations acivities need to re-think how they provide content for broadcsters.

Free video editing software

If you are thinking of learning how to edit your video for your company vidcast or blog, you may want a list of free video editing software from TV ISG.

For podcasting the most used free editing software is Audacity.

Work early for Christmas

Are you ready for Christmas?

Online performance, Internet interactivity and sales performance for the festive season is a must this year. The alternative, gardening in February, is not a lot of fun.

Online retail sales for November and December 2005 were up 20% on the previous year, outperforming the high street by a factor of eight. Way back then, this represented 6.8% of all UK retail sales.

I have already reported research that suggests British retail spending over the Internet is set to double, hitting almost 40 billion pounds, by 2010. This year there will be a surge. It would surprise few people to see an additional 25% sales increase online this year over last, the increase could be even more. This would pitch online sales at £3.75 to £4bn over November/December 2006.

This means, if you have any connection with online retailing you have to be working up your programme now. Of course your web site should already have enjoyed a comprehensive makeover. This will mean it will get its tinsel on time and in the right places.

You will check that server can cope with huge surgesn traffic and high throughput of purchases. You will have a group ready to respond to questions and issues and perhaps a method for helping people who want to ask questions or comment online.


If the PR industry gets this wrong it will never be forgiven. Think in terms of one in every three pounds spent by householders will be via the Internet (and this is not just for the young and trendy, my 89 year old Mother-in-law depends on Internet ordered meals for her lunches).

The evidence of the power of Internet retailing keeps mounting.

John Lewis reported a 25% surge in profits last week fuelled by a huge increase in internet sales. The department store group, which also owns the Waitrose supermarket chain, said it had enjoyed an 'excellent' half year.

Meanwhile, the UK Town Centre Retailing 2006 report by retail analysts Verdict Research found town centre spending fell to £122.3 billion in 2005, a 0.6 per cent drop on 2004.

Clothing retailer Next Plc posted an increase in first-half profits on Wednesday last, as a surge in its catalogue and Internet business helped offset a drop in same-store sales.

Chocolate retailer Thorntons Plc posted a 36 percent drop in full year profits on Tuesday last because of sluggish high street demand. On a positive note, demand for chocolates over the company's Internet site grew 6.4 percent over the past 12 months to 5.5 million pounds.

Shoppers spent £767 million less in town centre shops last year, turning to the internet, retail villages and supermarkets that are selling more and more non-food items like TVs and clothes.

Insurance giant Aviva, one of our biggest financial-services group, said it would cut 4,000 jobs in the UK, in part because customers were no longer shy about doing big financial transactions online.

Online, non car dealer, second hand car sales has increased share from 3% in 1998 to 7% in 2005.

Last week the Civil Aviation Authority issued a report revealing there were twice as many failures of old-style holiday companies this year than last with people booking flights and holiday accommodation direct with vendors via the Internet.

I just hope that the PR industry is ready for all this.

This is coming at us really fast.

The top ten Political Bloggers in the UK

Iain Dale is regarded as Britain 's leading political blogger in so far that his blog is the most visited blog in the country and at the beginning of the political conference season, he has written an article about political blogging for the BBC. Not bad publicity for an aspiring Tory MP.

Of course, for news of events at the conferences, the best 'news' will come fastest electronically.

The bloggers being faster because there are fewer processes in the way (editor of one) and so will be monitored closely.

Political PR and corporate affairs is now much mediated by social media and, whereas in the past the Westminster Village did not need to look outside very often (a few weeks before the next election was quite cool), the influences are coming from a wider range of campaigners that the usual FoE, Greenpeace, CBI lobby machines.

Some of those machines are even using social media to help make their point.

Political application of social media in the USA is a street ahead. For example there is not a single picture on Flickr for the LibDem Blogger of the Year awards last night. Sort of sluggish really.

But this year the political bloggers at the conferences are going to be much more powerful.

Wide area Internet is getting exciting.

This from The Guardian:

xG Technology is the company behind xMax, a transmission technology that can broadcast a phone or wireless broadband signal using much less power than conventional radio transmitters. The technology also uses unlicensed spectrum, which could make it attractive to businesses looking to set up cheap communications networks.

The significance being that it has potential to offer fast Internet access both in homes and offices and on the street making the Internet even more accessible to more people.

Is Television New Media?

Almost but adoption is some way off.

I am tempted to post about this because of Kevin Anderson's post yesterday. In it he describes what is in the pipeline and discusses opportunities for the medium.

The sentence that sticks out for me is his comment: "I watch a lot of video, just not a lot of TV."

He time shifts, he selects what he wants to see when he wants to see it. He references Tom Coates post: Social software to set-top boxes:

Imagine a buddy-list on your television that you could bring onto your screen with the merest tap of a 'friends' key on your remote control. The buddy list would be the first stage of an interface that would let you add and remove friends, and see what your friends are watching in real-time - whether they be watching live television or something stored on their PVRs.

The fact that we are at the mercy of TV type thinking by the TV industry now does not mean that this will not change. Partly this is because TV audiences are dwindling and time watching TV is shrinking.

I think there is resistance built into the system.
The TV we watch is box in the corner that is not a computer.
It seems all too easy to muck up current TV settings when trying to enhance TV options.
The hand controls are designed by Martians.
The interface is not familiar.
We do not know the options that are available because it is such a pain to find out what they are.

All this may explain why TV audiences are declining and may be why there will be change in the near future and not long term.

The announcement that Google is talking to Apple about supplying video clips for Apples's iTV device may be a move to engage the digitl bit of digital television. This lets users watch video content stored on their desktop PC or their home TVs. Google's consumer product chief, Marissa Mayer, told Newsweek that the two companies are "engaged in talks". The iTV device is a video streaming player which uses wireless technology to play video on a TV.

TV as we know it will keep rumbling on like newspapers and fax machines. But there are alternatives that will be exciting for more than few Geeks.

New Media Release case study

Dan McGinn provides a case study of the use of the New Media Release. It is interesting reading.

So last week my firm sent out a press release for the Chevy Super Bowl College Ad Challenge. We used the Social Media Press Release template developed by Todd Defren and Shift Communications. We looked at as many examples as we could find. I have to say that Chevrolet was very open about doing this and a traditional press release was sent out at the same time.

Issues management ideas

BL Ochman has offered a view of how an organisation might manage an issue using a blog.

As part of building a strategy, a PR practitioner may well examine if when and how blogs might be helpful in such circumstances.

Of recent weeks I have been thinking about how one might resolve issues of web server overload in times of crisis. One strategy may be to have a blog available on one of the services with high capacity such as Google.

This would allow for fast response with heavyweight web server capability.

Press release finds its way to magazines readers automatically

Lee Odden at Webpronews, has taken an interest in the hRelease or social media release and offered a list of hyperlinks to web and Usenet resources.

This initiative is of interest to people who issue press releases.

It is especially interesting for people who want to issue press releases via the web, forms of social media or to/through press release agencies.

As an initiative, it has the merit of cutting to cost of press release distribution because of its nature this form of publishing has built in search engine optimisation, RSS and web friendly features such as an XML base.

What practitioners will have to wait for are the software engineers - geeks in garages - to create software to allow you to fill in the boxes to get the most from the idea and some bright person to create a release distribution site. (Disclosure - One of those geeks is a friend of mine).

One thing to remember about social media releases. You get one chance. If a journalist thinks you are abusing the concept you get switched off - permanently. RSS is like that you just switch off the feed. So no more corporate boilerplate stuff from the marketing boiler behind the big desk (you know what I mean ... embargo 0900 hrs 09/08/06 Headline - The Next Revolution - First par - XXX plc. the leading global leader in raspberry blowing today announces the first revolution in pursed lips since its miraculous acquisition of red current jam(tm) ... bla bla...).

This kind of development is only the start. A press release using such technologies (to you... boxes to be filled in) is built up from lots of small elements of information called microformats.

They can be used like building blocks.

A press release may have an embedded calender, or address book, audio or video resource that could be on uTube or Fileodge. It may even link to a Writley document or map.

Using these technologies you can lever up online facilities and add them.

This 'mashup' capability offers the reader (journalist) as much or as little information needed. In addition, it can be issued in such a way that it finds its own way to the online members of your community, the readers of the publication. It goes direct to readers too.

How cool is that.


Picture: Finding My Way

Big Desks

A lot of the 'fixed mind' process, command and control, ISO 9000, Marketing, advertising, MBO stuff has to be thought through again. It is not all bad or all out of date but much of it no longer fits with what we know and what is happening in our societies and cultures.

Simple things just keep coming up and biting the old school in the butt.

What is the value of an MBA when it takes creativity out of management?

Which models work and which are ones force old thinking on new models.

When relationships are so important and relationship value is moving to the fore, we see notions of the networked society and cultural relations having significance in a cultural economy.

To meet these needs there is an ever growing list of Public Relations practices and there will be more to come. It will be down to the Relationship Manager to understand what PR can do and deploy such skills.

The Big Desks are now getting the way.

I see references to 'Marketing' and think of big desks. I see advertising and see Big Desks, I see Auditing and see Big Desks. Mostly, there is not much of worth behind such Big Desks.

The people behind these Big Desks now have to take a walk down the corridor because unless they do, they cannot optimise the value of relationships.

Make your own vidcast

If you ask most Marketing Directors about using Video on line, they get a vision of a cameraman, clapper boards, lighting, scripts, music. The whole nine yards. BDM's (Big Desk Marketers) miss the communication opportunity.

In the meantime Sixty Second View shows, for a lot of communication, you need not much more than a cellphone. Its is the kind of content you can use on a blog or wiki or as content to liven up your intranet.

Good strong points can be made, with a real voice and it is powerful stuff. The use of YouTube has shown how such content can be hosted and there are more options in Dion Hinchcliffe's site.

Of which Eyespot caught my eye. It includes a web based editing suite.

I will try it but it does look very cool and offers an easy option for providing vidcasting.

The Center for PR Education: How Managers Hit PR Paydirt

The Center for PR Education: How Managers Hit PR Paydirt: "As a business, non-profit or association manager, you'll know it's PR paydirt when you're able to persuade your key external stakeholders to your way of thinking, then move them to take actions that lead to your department, division or subsidiary's success.

But to realise such results, you'll have to get personally involved with the public relations people assigned to your unit. Then shift their emphasis from communications tactics to a workable and comprehensive blueprint that will lead to your success as a unit manager.

A blueprint, for example, like this: people act on their own perception of the facts before them, which leads to predictable behaviors about which something can be done. When we create, change or reinforce that opinion by reaching, persuading and moving-to-desired-action the very people whose behaviors affect the organization the most, the public relations mission is accomplished."

Levels of Geek speak for PR's

It is said that it does not take long to learn the basics of computer programming languages. Its not something I have done.

My approach to programming language is the same as my approach to other languages. When in Rome I speak English with a smattering of Italian words picked up on the way. Its fun and it puts me in the mood and, fortunately, Italians have a great sense of humour.

Most computers also have a sense of humour about the misuse of programming language . Sometimes its difficult to see the smile lines round the eyes when your frustration at you own incompetence boils over.

I would recommend that PR student did an appreciation course, just to get over the hang up between arts and sciences and find the smile lines of a geeks best friend.

What to learn? Try this list.

Oh yes, to find out what it is you will need a phrase book.

ONline PR tools and channels

A very, but by no means comprehensive, list of channels and devices for collaborative conversation with corporate constituencies is provided by Go2Web20.

A browse through these ideas may be valuable when trying to come up with a really cool creative approach.

State of play for Mobile Internet

I found this article by Dan Simmons, at the BBC very helpful because it puts the use and application of mobile web into perspective as a channel for communication.

It seems to be a bit of a turnoff but getting my gmail on my mobile is OK . It is a bit slow but then I seldom read email on my mobile in a rush.

Mobile web is coming and is important.
In the meantime there are a lot of communications channels that are available on mobiles that perform brilliantly and should be considered for all PR campaigns (even if they are then cast aside in for some reason).

If you are a podcaster

You may like to note that directing your audience to iTunes to download your podcast may be a problem for your audience.

I noticed problems today and see that c|net has a report:

Apple unveiled iTunes 7 on Tuesday at an event in San Francisco. The new version delivers new features like Cover Flow, a parade of album artwork, and allows iTunes Store customers to buy movies from studios owned by Disney. It was available for download on Tuesday following the event, but the early feedback has not been positive.

The tipping month for UK political blogging

The three main parties are falling over themselves to woo this new breed of political blogger, offering computer facilities, background briefings and even access to big name politicians.

For Labour, the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats it is not just about appearing to be on top of the latest media trend - or showing how open to debate and criticism they are.

It is about getting a toe-hold in a medium which has been growing in influence at Westminster.

So says BBC Political Reporter Brian Wheeler

As the politiacl conference season revs up, this year will be a big year for blogging and I guess podcasting and video casting online. It is something to watch if you have a PR role with a political element.

A twist to traditional blogging

The scientific journal Nature is to adopt an open peer-review system to judge papers submitted for publication.

Manuscripts will be uploaded to a pre-print server and made available online in what is essentially a blog, allowing members of the scientific community to comment on the content's merit, reports PC Pro.

The range of applications for new media is very wide and this is an example. Inagine doing the same for internal reviewing and aproval for draft 'press release' or online comment prior to publication.

It may mean that lawyers and product managers will truly be singing of the same hymn sheet.

Discredited by association with astroturfing

Be careful who you work with.

Netribution made this comment about Google:

BoingBoing is reporting that Google have appointed controversial Washington-based lobying and 'astroturfing' firm DCI to represent them in the US. DCI, run by Republican Party officials, came into public controversy earlier in the year when the Washington Post revealed it had pretended to be a 29 year old basement filmmaker to post a YouTube video attacking Al Gore and his film An Inconvenient Truth, released this week in the UK.

Pointing to This comment from Boing Boing:

Google's new lobbyists: lying, astroturfing, push-polling scumbags
Google's new DC lobbyists have a reputation for slime, astroturfing and push-polling.


The result of hiring a company associated with Astroturfing and other practices that are unpopular with social media commentators is probably not helpful to Google's reputation.

As Google becomes more pervasive in people's lives, its relationship with governments will become more important and any interface will be scrutinised in a very different light because of these comments.

There will be commentators who will look at this appointment in the light of the Google philosophy of 'do no evil'. For many Astroturfing is not good if not evil

What Clients want - really want

Neville Hobson has a great post about how new media is being applied by the Public Relations industry. There are two video clips that are a 'must see'.

They are short contributions by David Brain, CEO Europe at Edelman, and Pete Blackshaw, CMO at Nielsen Buzzmetrics.

I would also recomend the contribution of Pete Blackshaw on 60Secondview about engaing with people who interact on line about brands.

These contributions are further demonstrations of how significant social media has become to the practice of Public Relations.

Note also that these video clips are also applications of New Media in their own right.

On line video is BIG

The PR industry has a big opportunity. Video.

Almost 40% of internet users download and watch videos on the web, according to a survey of 10,000 consumers. Reflecting the explosion in networking websites such as Bebo and video download site YouTube, the research also found that just over half of all young people (54%) want to create or share their own content on the web, reports Tara Conlan of the Guardian.

The global study by consultancy Accenture found that audiences want more control over where and when they watch footage, and they want to make more of their own.

Sounds like an opportunity.

The drumbeat of XPRL

Last Thursday, there was an XPRL meeting. Chris Heuer was among the attendees and he has an excellent report of the meeting on his Social Media Club blog.

First I have to say how delighted I was to meet Chris who I met via an introduction from For Immediate Release. He is great fun. It was very generous of him to make the effort to fly the Atlantic in time for the meeting and even more so to be invited to the inauguration of the London Chapter of the Social Media Club.

His summary of the central XPRL issue is this:

As the Chair of the group, Mike Granatt was trying to dig at some key questions, including “Why would the large stakeholders support this effort tactically and financially?” The group came up with 4 primary answers that I noted (in addition to several other secondary reasons):

1. Financial savings through decreased effort required and easier interoperability of disparate systems that would lead to projects that have greater impact than traditional press releases.
2. The added value of search engine optimization through distributing structured information instead of the typical unstructured format
3. A stronger potential for measurement and tracking than currently exists with clipping services
4. The future capabilities and innovations that will come as a result of a common standard

The nitty gritty part for me is the notion of interoperability. Which means that a client is able to use information, from many sources and plan and implement aims and strategies with tactical ease. The need to respond to developments that offer advantage or disrupt relationships as communication gets faster and to a wider audience means we now need new tools. They need to be able to draw together and distribute information and need a common, global language. We now need the underlying technology in place.

As I put it on Chris's blog:

XPRL needs to become the background drumbeat to the tools we use in our work. Without it, PR can have no rhythm and it is forced to serve the pounding timpani of others while our work is served up in musical phrases, each a delight but together, a cacophony lacking harmony and coherence. In an Internet mediated era, the output becomes ever more raucous.

Its a good time to get rhythm.

One of the best bits on his blog post are the photos of the event which he posted to Flickr.

"This is your audience you want to attack, fool"

There is no doubt that the entertainment moguls are have not yet understood that riding rogh shod over their customers is barbaric.

Apparently not happy with how negotiations are going with YouTube and MySpace, Universal CEO Doug Morris is threatening action over what he sees as copyright infringement of Universal's music videos illegally posted to sites. He told an investor conference:

We believe these new businesses are copyright infringers and owe us tens of millions of dollars. "How we deal with these companies will be revealed shortly.

Them's fightin' words says Business2Blog. To which media critic/blogger Jeff Jarvis responds:

This is your audience you want to attack, fool. They are marketing and distributing your music for you. Don’t want them to? Fine. Plenty more where you came from.

Media executives are realizing that there is a lot of advertising money to be made from online videos and their attitude is to try to grab as much of it as they can. But the YouTubes of the world are saying, "Wait a second. Don't just slap ads on this. The videos are a form of marketing in and of themselves."

Your podcast chances are good

A good PR podcast will compete quite effectively with commercial sound tracks if this BBC report of Jupiter research is right.

The Jupiter Research report reveals that, on average, only 20 of the tracks on a iPod will be from the iTunes shop. Far more important to iPod owners, said the study, was free music ripped from CDs someone already owned or acquired from file-sharing sites.


That site could easily be one run by a public relations department.

The Next CIPR Chair after the next one

Elisabeth Lewis-Jones, director of Midland’s based consultancy Liquid Public Relations, has been elected President of the Charted Institute of Public Relations for 2008 reports the CIPR magazine Profile.

The 8th woman President of the CIPR, Elisabeth will take up her presidency on 1st January 2008, the Institute’s 60th anniversary year. Before taking over the position, she will serve as President Elect to Lionel Zetter, CIPR President for 2007.

Elisabeth, who has nearly 15 years’ experience working both in-house and in consultancy, is a former CIPR Young Communicator of the Year and chair of the CIPR in the Midlands. Today she is director and co-founder of Liquid Public Relations and a director and Honorary Treasurer of the CIPR.

Office 2007 beta 1.1.1

Microsoft is releasing the latest version of Office 2007, scheduled for mass market launch early next year.

The new version of the code has been altered based on feedback from earlier betas and is free to all existing beta 2 users. The company says it has improved performance, built in better product integration, improved collaboration tools and added general 'fit and finish' changes.

Sir Martin and the Tivo poacher create a gamekeeper and top gun

I love this Guardian story. WPP Group has signed an advertising deal with digital video recorder company TiVo. TiVo allows US users skip TV commercials. Tivo then developed a product that allowed it to show adverts from its own software.

It, in effect, replaces one advert with another. Under the deal, GroupM - WPP's combined media planning and buying agency - will buy an agreed minimum amount of TiVo advertising.

I bet there will be a row over this and most of it will come from people who find scream marketing offensive and can't escape.

This is a big issue and one that the digital channel FX and others are trying to resolve. They find that people are getting very creative in time shifting to avoid watching advertisements.

What I cannot understand is that if people try to avoid watching these horrid little adverting interruptions to their lives and go to extra-ordinary lengths to do so, why keep putting them in?

Soon TV adverts will be the kiss of death to brands. Both geese and both golden eggs gone in a moment of greed.

This could be a two way street. The advertising industry's lip smacking visits to The Ivy and eye-wateringly expensive trips to Cannes means that fewer than half of financial directors believe their agencies are trustworthy, according to a survey.

The Accounting for Creativity report, conducted with 100 financial directors in the creative services industry by independent research company Loudhouse, revealed that only 42% of those surveyed thought that clients perceived their agencies to be trustworthy.

Clients think they are being ripped off, customers turned off by the adds the Advertsing industry still thinks it has a future.

Tomorrow, you have to get on line and try it out

If you have not already tried it out its time you did. YouTube is the fastest growing online brand in the UK, increasing the number of its users by nearly 500% in the first six months of 2006. It is a must for PR practice and offers a wide range of opportunities. With 3.6 million unique users in July, YouTube is used by more than one in eight Internet users in the UK.

Thank you to the Guardian for pointing it out but Put another way. This is 6% of the UK population. Its bigger than the Sun or the Mirror. Its 'readership' bigger than any newspaper. It can be on your 'press list' by Monday morning.

Websites with user-generated content dominate the top 10 hottest online brands, according to Internet research outfit Nielsen NetRatings.

YouTube beat rival social networking sites Flickr, which increased by only 131%, and Rupert Murdoch-owned MySpace, which is only up by up 98%.

Now... we are talking 6 (yes SIX) months here not year on year.

Come back in a year and do not be surprised to find that 15% of the uk total (baby Fiona, mum, dad, grandma and uncle Herbert) population all using YouTube.

Net inside the net

PR colleagues will have an excellent opportunity to develop platforms and channels for communication in thier very own private Internet.

The health service in the UK is linking everyone up using BT as the vendor.

"We have quietly created Europe's largest virtual private network that will connect every NHS site in England, enabling information to travel at great speeds between those sites," said the chief executive for BT's Global Services division Andy Green.

The network is due to be completed within 6 months. Currently 15,000 offices have been connected and he network will eventually link 18,000 hospitals and GP surgeries.

Source IT Pro.

Never before have so many Marketing People been so confused

“Never have there been so many media options available to advertisers and consumers, a trend that has both excited and frustrated brand marketers as media buying decisions have become more complicated by a market veering toward new media. But traditional media companies have responded by investing in multiple media platforms to reach this increasingly fragmented audience." said James Rutherfurd, executive vice president and managing director at VSS in an e-commerce article.

Now that old media has cottoned on the the idea that on-line is not about washing clothes and Google and others have presented statistics stuff to make decision making based on facts hard to avoid.


Add to this the growth of social media and the poor old marketing mind is in a whirl.

In PR we do have to recognise the growing range of communications platfoms and the range of channels available to us and the we have to plan.

Optimising email marketing ROI

Some people like me are pathalogically averse to email marketing (you dont know me and want to send an email - phone or get your news to find me) but most are less irritated and some are quite sangine.

This made me look more closely at the article in e-commerce about email marketing.

The article and the white paper it references are both helpful and informative.

Can I now un peg my nose

Add interactive content to Google Earth.

Google has added interactive content from the Discovery Channel and other providers to popular geospatial software Google Earth.

The overlays can be accessed by clicking a box in the software's sidebar, and support videos, photos, RSS feeds and blogs.

Is every corporate headquarters going to be added? Or can PR practitioners be much much more creative

The Discovery Channel, for example, is offering video segments about landmarks, cities and tourist attractions around the world ..

"Google Earth Featured Content is a way for Google to connect users with really compelling, high-quality information being illustrated and shared on Google Earth," said John Hanke, director of Google Earth and Maps.

Create your own newspaper

I owe someone an apology. They pointed me to this and I just can't track back to who did it but its great.

Create your own morning or evening newspaper from Simply Headlines is really cool. You select where you want the news to come from and there it is in a newspaper. So your daily news could be from this blog, the BBC or the Economist or all three.
Here is a clipping service for online stuff.

It also has that half way house element about it.

People keep telling me that clients like to see paper, well here it is.

Mobile - and NewsCorp - and bigness

I have no difficulty with agreeing with News Corp. President and Chief Executive Officer Peter Chernin

“I’m dead serious when I say that mobile could be one of the greatest entertainment platforms we’ve created.”

We have known for quite some time that the "mobile world" was going to be hot. In Asia, it has been for a long time and people maintain a very personal attachment to their phones.

Using a mobile phone, consumers can now pay bills, check a bank account, download books, games, and news content, surf the Web, podcast, share photos, download ring tones and music, and more.

So far none of these wonderful applications has taken hold.

Partly this is because of the silly pricing models associated with mobile. calls cost (almost) nothing and are chared, phones cost mony and are given away. It nuts.

The bundling of services is far too complex.

The application that allows someone into your head and imagination is a different to video and text but each of these is treated in the same way.

But - Mobile is big. We need the imagination to tap its potential.

IP, copyright, secrets and who pays

Confused of Calcutta is a really good place to go if you want to be challenged. I go a lot.

The issue of Intelectual properties, patents and copyright is one that has bugged me for a while. I like owning what I own but keep finding out that when I share it, I get back more. This applies to software, comment and research and even this blog. I am more than please that these thoughts are also in the mind of a Nobel laureate.

JP Rangaswami reports on what he has just said in New Scientist.

....... There’s a fascinating article by Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz in the latest New Scientist. Yes, of course it’s hidden behind a paywall, what did you expect? Here’s the stub.

I quote from the article:

• Locking up products with patents is an unfair and ineffective way to reward innovation.
• There is a growing sentiment that something is wrong with the system governing intellectual property.
• Recent years have seen a strengthening of IP rights…..The changes have been promoted especially by the pharmaceutical and entertainment industries, and by some in the software industry….
• …[some] patents take what was previously in the public domain and “privatise” it — what IP lawyers called the new “enclosure movement”.
• In any system, someone has to pay for research. In the current system, those unfortunate enough to have the disease are forced to pay the price, whether they are rich or poor. And that means the very poor in the developing world are condemned to death

In the relationship value model we see convergence of values to create relationships. Secrets, patents and copyright are not there to build relationships.

Yahoo upgrades its mail service.

Mail is really key for Yahoo, and its 255 million e-mail users are one of its most valuable assets so this upgrade is important.

Yahoo mail is first or second preference for quite a lot of people and was my first on-line mail service (when Adam was a lad and eve was trying to get him into Usenet).

More information is available from Richard McManus.

Understanding virtual environments

Dan Greenfield do have a great blog and his interview with Aaron Uhrmacher, senior account executive at Text 100 is an excellent insight into Second Life.

Aaron's opening comment of:

"Our SL presence stemmed from a presentation that we made at the Arthur Page Society on the future of communications and social media. In our work, we are very involved in peer-to-peer media blogs wikis, podcasts, etc. SL allows for a more immersive form of communications. In SL, you can collaborate in three dimensions. "

Is an excellent introduction as to why people in PR should understand this form of communication.

The full interview is here.


But its in more than an interview it is a Second Life case study. It shows why an organisation might like to use these kinds of channels for communication - for commercial gain.

Social Abuse on line - a danger to kids and organisations

The BBC reports Computing Which has called on social networking sites such as Bebo and MySpace to do more to police what users do.

A study of the sites by the consumer watchdog unearthed pornographic images, evidence of bullying and inappropriate adverts.

It also proved easy to pose as a child as the sites did no age or ID checks.

It is worth remebersing that the kids may be at risk but so too are corporate reputations using exactly the same deception and similar tactics.

from iPod to Zune

Microsoft has announced that its Zune digital music player will be released in the US in time for Christmas.

Unveiling more details of the player, which it hopes will rival Apple's iPod Features include: wireless connectivity (allowing nearby users to exchange songs and photos), an ability to play videos and includes a radio.

Which online videos are popular?

Scott Button, of Unruly Media in London, called his four-week-old project "the world's first comprehensive and independent online video chart." The Viral Video Chart, a hit parade tracking the most popular videos on YouTube, MySpace and Google Video is worth a look. Thanks for knowledge to BL Ochman who has more about the results - beam me up Scottie.

The point being that if you see what is popular, you may like to include similar content in your work.

Issues blogging

A WILMSLOW dad has set up a boozers’ blog. Says the Wimslow Express.

The website for fellow drinkers to exchange views about local pubs and bars is a reaction to the police pubwatch scheme - which he claims is one sided.

Harry Bingley, of Church Street, set up the discussion site ‘pubs4people.com’ for people to chat about their experiences of Wilmslow’s pubs and clubs on the web.

The 50-year-old former marketing consultant says it is a reaction to the changing nature of the town’s pubs and clubs.

He hopes his website will redress the power balance of schemes like pubwatch and encourage publicans to think more about the views of the paying punter.

He said: "I recently saw a joke cartoon in the newspaper where a man was banned from a pub for smiling after happy hour - that just about sums it up for me."

This is the kind of site that is worth watching. It is the sort of blog that could become popular and so, for some organisations being involved in conversations relevant to this blogger may be interesting and advantageous.

Brand messages down on the farm

Among some constituents there is a common affinity that it just creates content.
The magazine Farmers Weekly has a blog running where farmers can comments on how well they are getting on with this autumn's drilling (that is planing seeds for you townies).

The latest news is here.

One of the interesting things to note is the branding that goes with it. Seed types are brands and many are specific to seedsmen. In this blog they get coverage (Google Juice).

PS, the winter wheat is now sown in the field behind us here in Wiltshire. The got it in yesterday just before it rained and rained and is still raining.

My girlfriend bit my foot - celebs in the news

Spongebob has a blog. He is a celebrity Squirrel Monkey, cute and with many adventures to tell. Not least that his girlfriend bit his foot.... you could not make it up ... Unless you were Freddie Star's publicist.

Spongebob went missing from the theme park and zoo in July but was later found being played with by children in Clapham. He had been kidnapped.

What a great way to build a brand and bring visitors to see this charming celebrity. More from the BBC.

Playing Public Relations games

Ryan Gilbey uses this phrase in his article 'A Right Royal failure' in the New Statesman.

In their refusal to play the public relations game, the Windsors create an opportunity for Blair to nip in quick and claim the glory.

Of course it is nothing of the sort.

Public Relations 'games' are practice session in Business Schools. In real life public relations is there to create effective relationships between organisations and their constituency.

One might ask in analysis of the film based on the death of Diana 'The Queen' (15) which of the players has, in the long run, the best public relations The Royal family or Mr Tony Blair.

You see Mr Gilbey, public relations goes to the heart of the organisation and the fluffy bit, the bit that journalists see; the bit that marketing people so often use is mostly of peripheral consequence.

Like most journalists, Mr Gilbey, you have been succored into believing the spin of your colleagues, fluffy bunnies, marketing people and Tony Blair.

An even bigger boooooom

Websites that offer users the chance to express themselves - whether by sharing their latest home videos or editing encyclopedia entries on obscure Japanese anime - are reaping the rewards in spades, research has found and reported in Silicon.com

Sites championing user-generated content have seen a significant leap in traffic on the year ago period, according to statistics from research company comScore - and several are now among the top 50 UK web property rankings.

Social Media makes money. Go get it.

How news moves between media

This is an actual case study.

The first parts of the story were published in online sites, then came the major newspapers: New York Times, Chicago Tribune, LA Times with their coverage. Their stories then helped spark the interest of TV and radio news crews.

It is about the events that surrounded the Foremski family and their uncovering of dark deeds on the Internet.

There are lessons to be learned in all sorts of directions here.

PR Boom Boom

The Guardian's Katie Allen believes its boom time in PR. She writes: In the wake of recent bad press for big names such as Cadbury and Thames Water, companies are waking up to the importance of "reputation management", fuelling a boom in the public relations industry.

Managing reputation is not about public relations it is about managing managers. If the PR person (corp affairs person, comms officer or other description that avoids the words 'public relations') is not facing down managers who should have been put out to grass with Stalin, then they are not doing their job.

So this 'Boom' is built on a fallacy and PR managers who are not gutsy enough to sit in on the board and other meeting and stir the waters.

The other boom has to be teased out of this quote:

The chief executive of Chime, Christopher Satterthwaite, said most companies were taking public relations more seriously as a result of advances in technology.

"If we live in the information age when anybody can find out virtually anything about any individual, any brand, any corporation, then the need to manage your reputation to me is so self evident that not to do so is corporately irresponsible," he said.

note the words 'advances in technology' - THAT is where the boom really is.

The reason I say this is that the online community is already disrupting the organisations (e.g. if you sell on-line you have systems that allow you to. This is the Internet audience changing the organisation for more about this see my lecture) it forces transparency and it makes organisations more porous.

It also means PR has to be the arm of the company that drives this area of activity.

So: Boom Boom!

A scam, or just another list?

Below is a list of PR firms that maintain blogs it says here. It goes on to say: 'Please note that this list is meant to only include official PR firm blogs. Please only list blogs that are directly affiliated with PR firms. We welcome the listing of PR firms of all sizes on this list.

This is a little wizz by the Bivings Group and you might like to check them out before wasting too much time because I there seems to be no reason to do it that I can see except to drive traffic to thier white papers .....

Message to feignt hearts - don't hide information

There ought to be a law that says “Information tends to go corrupt when hidden, and tends to corrupt those who participate in the process of hiding the information,” says JP Rangaswami.

We waste so much in the procurement process for the same reasons. We don’t use the tools we have to discover what’s out there. We don’t make the process a participative one. We make it worse by allowing the tenderers better access to the requirements than anyone else. I’m confused.

As with wikipedia and with the celebrity blogs, there will always be vandals, some in the interests of art, some in the interests of “freedom”, some for the heck of it.

But you don’t shut down record stores because Banksy makes a statement about Paris Hilton.

You don’t shut down museums because Marcel Duchamp puts a moustache on a copy of La Gioconda.

>So why do we do this? Why do we have so much fear of perfect information? So much so we blame the tools, the people, everything.

If you need to build a case for persevering, start here.

Wigets make sense

In the early days of the Internet, most companies would create a destination website, wait for users to show up, and then make money from the advertisements. Now they use widgets to reel users in. Consider a typical MySpace user's page, studded with widgets that pull from video goliath YouTube or photo services such as Slide. Everyone's a winner here: MySpace, because it becomes stickier; YouTube and Slide, because they get the traffic; and the user, because he or she gets it all on one page.

To learn more about this see what Om Malik has to say and add imagination.

Small businesses on the map

Google and Intuit agreed today to let all the small business owners who use Quickbooks automagically list their businesses on Google Maps, manage Adwords campaigns and post items to Google Base from within Quickbooks, says Eric Schonfeld. This is a must for all those small companies and smaller clients to help them gain effective presence in thier locality.

All in a days work

Shel Holtz makes a very good case for Public Relations people to be responsive to the medium they use. In his case he is talking about blogs. He says: There is an expectation in the blogosphere—and not an unreasonable one—that bloggers will check their blogs frequently and clear out their comment moderation queues quickly in order to keep the dialogue fresh and current. As businesses expand their presence in the blogosphere, they appear to be doing so at corporate speeds, not blog speeds. That’s a mistake. The blogosphere will not adapt to the pace of business.

I guess that if a PR person forgot to call journalist back they would suffer sanctions. So what is the difference?

New podcaster facility

A new opportunity for podcasters to market their content creation and technical production skills has just arrived in the form of an offer presented by Voices.com, a web service dedicated to giving everyone with a voice the ability to be found, listened to, and hired for podcasting and voice over work.

Meanwhile, the Independent reports BT is launching a podcasting service to give the nation a platform to show off its talents (or lack of) by making videos and audio clips available on a new internet service. The telecoms giant has teamed up with US PodShow Network to provide the service, to be available to all UK internet users.

Bebo on the market?

while its one thing to see people talk about Bebo because its cool, the number of suits talking about it tells a different story. The latest one is here.

BT and the BBC must have run a ruler over it already and the hype is about price not functionality.

Here is an idea by Yahoo and Intel

Yahoo and Intel are teaming up to pipe sports statistics to TV screens, targeting fans who devour data about real-world players to manage their fantasy teams, Reuters reports.

The deal helps the Internet media giant expand away from the computer screen to the TV screen, while the world's top chipmaker aims to showcase the benefits of its Viiv initiative aimed at making the PC a hub for home media and entertainment.

But think of the other applications. Imagine being able to add PR messages to TV screens.........

Blog wiki combo

David Tebbutt is excited about about BEA's moves into the Social Computing and its "upcoming blog/wiki combo (called Builder)."

David knows about these things.

He says BEA will make sure that theirs is tightly integrated to organisational computer systems, giving the ability to surface material from these systems right up to the wiki, for example. Another element, called Runner, will provide access control and audit trails.

So if you need to implement a Blog/wiki corporate programme, have a look.

WPP storming the social media?

WPP has continued its online spending spree, leading a $2m round of funding in internet marketing for its LiveWorld acquisition e-consultancy reports.

The move comes after WPP and LiveWorld formed a joint venture in July, with both firms saying they have seen growing demand for marketing services focusing on online communities.

LiveWorld has developed social networking applications such as blogs and messageboards for firms including MTV Latin America and eBay.

"In less than two months since announcing the LiveWorld-WPP joint venture, we have already closed new community marketing programs with major brands," said Mark Read, strategy director, WPP and CEO of wpp.com.

BT is getting into content and out of satellites

The Guardian says BT is launching an online "social media network" that will combine elements of the video site YouTube with clips and shows from the entertainment and music industry.

The site, called BT PodShow, is being launched as a partnership with the 18-month-old US-based PodShow.

BT is looking for content if you have some and the is a green eye element cast in the direction of MySpace.

The website is being positioned as a hybrid between the likes of MySpace and YouTube and fulfilling the online aims of traditional companies such as MTV and ITV.

Meanwhile, the BBC says that three-quarters of staff at the largest satellite communications station in the world could lose their jobs after BT said it planned to scale down the site.

Ninety of the 120 workers at Goonhilly, in Cornwall, could lose their jobs or be redeployed, as satellite operations are moved to Madley, in Herefordshire.

I just wish it would provide me with a high speed connection without the packaging, fluff and hard disc junk.

One thing we can be sure, if BT can charge more for the Madley 'pipe' they will just as soon as the wreckers leave Goonhilly.