Bebo worth mega bucks

Four-and-a-half years after Michael and Xochi Birch created www.Bebo.com it is one of the hottest properties on the internet. In less than two years it has acquired more than 27m users and claims to have overtaken MySpace to become the leading social-networking website in the UK and Ireland.

“At the moment there’s a race for traffic,” says Birch and for public relations practitioners this mantra is critical as well. It is worth watching how Birch is going about doing it.

According to The Sunday Times Bebo still has only 15 full-time employees, including four in London, and as yet generates modest revenues from advertising. But its huge and growing audience of young users has prompted suggestions that the business is already worth hundreds of millions of pounds.

Sounds fanciful? It might have been last year, before News Corporation (ultimate owner of The Sunday Times) paid $580m (£310m) for the company behind MySpace.

Birch is adamant that he has no interest in selling. “We used to follow conversations a bit more (when we received approaches). Now we pretty much just say ‘No’ immediately. I was more curious to begin with.

Google to tell Tories about the digital age

Eric Schmidt, chairman and chief executive of Google, is set to make a keynote speech to the Conservative party conference on tomorrow.

Following his first speech to the Tories as party leader on Sunday, Mr Cameron, 39, is to welcome Mr Schmidt to Bournemouth, where he will address the conference on challenges posed by the internet and digital age.

Newspapers are now doing PR

"An exciting new interactive service starts this weekend so you the Cardiff City fans can tell us what you think about the Bluebirds ."

The Echo is launching a new Cardiff City blog on our icWales website to give fans an opportunity to have their voice in your favourite paper.

Fab...

Are YOU spreading your podcasts about?

Figures obtained by the Scottish Conservatives showed eight people downloaded a podcast of a recent sports summit at Stirling University.

Tory MSP Derek Brownlee questioned the amount spent on creating the downloads when "the figures are so poor" reports the BBC.

Mr Brownlee could have a point. Is the podcast being offered to the media outlets across (not just Scotland but) the world. Are they presented in a variety of formats, have they been offered to all the sports club web sites in Scotland .......... and so a normal PR person would want to know the answers.

The politician wants to know about ROI - over how many years?

Silly Mr Brownlee.

Evaluate before the PR campaign...

Glenn has given us this advice :

Evaluation is often thought of as a “concluding” activity - something that is done once a programme or project is finished. But evaluation has its role “before” and “during” an activity. A recent experience highlighted for me the importance that evaluation can play in the “before” phase.quote>In landscaping (see: Gregory. A. 2002 Planning and Management Kogan Page, London) in preparation for planing public relations one has to get the widest view possible. In the use and application of Social Media, which is very dynamic, one needs to be able to both maintain monitoring and evaluation and feed this into both strategy and tactics as a continuum.

This there is no 'PR plan' but a process for managing the organisation's capability to maintain mutually effective relationships.

Create voting sites and get RSS on your Blackberry

Philippe Borrimans always has good stuff.

He introduces us to Ning, a social web service, let's you create and customise applications such as
voting sites, online groups etc... Then ethere is a new RSS to e-mail service called SimplyHeadlines. I think this is a nice one for people who want to stay up to date with news headlines by e-mail based on RSS feeds. The lay out is very easy to read and they also have a "mobile" version for Blackberry or other mobile readers. Another one to add to the list of "RSS by e-mail" readers. Then there's the mix of blogs and forums set off by Tooum and called Switchboard. Their hosted service includes categories, tagging, RSS feeds, sticky posts etc...

Political PR online

In Ohio, U.S. Rep. Ted Strickland, a Democrat, has stocked his campaign website with video clips of speeches and TV commercials. MySpace.com and other websites display cyberspace bumper stickers that can be copied to promote Strickland's campaign for governor.

These candidates aren't alone. The Tory leader has a vidcast. Blogs wikis and podcasts are everywhere in the political PR space are there too.


"If you think of the Internet as a city, those social networking sites are virtual town squares where people spend time, where they share ideas, show their opinion, share information," said Keith Dailey, press secretary for Strickland's campaign.

And I guess that is a pretty good explanation.

Brands are sets of values

The idea that brand are a set of values is prettty old hat but works well in the Relationship Value Model which is why it is good to hear marketing people talking like Public Relations people.

A post in Marketingweb makes this contribution:

In a world of spreading social influence due to the internet, brands are sets of values and ideas whose importance ebbs and flows among communities. Social influence affects which ideas are important within a group of people to such a degree that it is very hard to make accurate predictions. (Important values and perceptions may diverge in different communities and cultures). So we need to become far more flexible in how we manage brands. Coca-Cola has begun to address this by using different colours for its brand in England, depending on the colours of the football team that it supports.

The extract is from Nilewide Vol 22 No 13. For more information or to subscribe, go to www.nilewide.com. and costs mega bucks (unlike the Relationship Value Model - which is free) but is informative and most of it is here.

Emerging blog law

Gradually we are getting legal advice about blogging.
In this case for the USA and covering employee blogging Law.com offers some insights.
It wouls seem that there is not much to stop and employee blogging and not musch more to stop the employee posting about thier employer.

How the Internet sells beer

The Internet's big, it's powerful, but how the heck do you use it to sell beer?

A simple question from Jim Ewing on Business Week.

Easy, why don't you come to my pub The Calley Arms (in the hills near Stone Henge) . It does not have a web site, but lots of people put interesting stuff about it on the web. It is seldom mentioned on blogs (well now its is) and it sells local beers.

The landlady makes great food using locally sourced country ingredients. The locals are just so much fun and guess what, there are always plenty of people there - lots come for the food and some of us go for the beer :)

Of course, you will need a map - it is located here, and as you can see it is very rural and yet is only a couple of miles from Junction 15 on the M4 motorway.

A very friendly place and great beers... what more do you need....

And that is how 1000 people all over the world knows how to get good beer in Wiltshire. Not that hard then....

Well... whose coming over for a quick pint then?

Beyond Advertising

Advertising is not the only model for monetising Social Media but it seems to be the only idea in town.

I am tempted to write about this because of a Red Herring post.

Lets suppose, for a moment one took the advertising out of the deal.

What is of value.

Assets:

Relationships
The digital footprint.

Investment:
Systems and procedure development (especially to make the corporation responsive to consumers)
Creative (technical, managerial, systems) input into the organisation.

P&L:

Direct contact
Sales opportunity
Sales completed
Continuous consumer relations

The problem is that we are hamstrung by the accounting systems we use.

The Rise of the Celeb Social Network

The BBC's Marc Cieslak has been digging arround Social Media to get some celeb comments and begins by saying:

The notion of Web 2.0, or an internet model where content is created and shared by users, has given birth to some of the most popular sites the internet has ever seen. So much so, that anybody who is anyone, wants to be part of the online social networking scene.

Obviously one has to be seen there, otherwise one does not exist and one would like to be thought to exist!

It is also quite useful to keep the celeb brand in view.

AMEC make-over

Gosh! This took a long time to come to me (via Toni's Blog).

The new site (www.amecorg.com) says:

Following a series of strategic planning meetings over the past year members have agreed to re-name AMEC, the international trade body and professional association for media research and evaluation.

The name and corporate re-branding as The Association for Measurement and Evaluation of Communication reinforces the body’s new strategy to expand its membership and services to meet the needs of all organisations and individuals across the globe that are involved in the provision of media evaluation and all kinds of communication research.

Membership is now open to include "PR companies that offer bespoke measurement and evaluation systems and media monitoring companies that offer media evaluation as part of a wider range of services. Individual members will range from students to executives working in the industry for several years."

I might re-join.

PR Return On Investment or bull sh**

Toni Muzi Falconi tells of the IfPR Summit on Measurement and notes that Jim Allman, Ceo of Devries public relations who works for some ten major Procter & Gamble brands, showed how the world’s largest fast moving consumer goods company succeeded in demonstrating that every dollar invested in marketing public relations gives an average return of sales of 2.8 dollars against 1.1 dollars for advertising and 85 cents for promotions!

I wonder how they do that!

Is this more PR agency smoke and mirrors? It has that taint about it.



If the measure is based on return of sales generated attributed to each activity (press, radio, tv bought for time and space v not paid for v promotions) do they also include social media (blogs, wiki, podcasts, vertical search, SEO, RSS, SL etc) in PR or does that not have an effect? For example Arial which is exposed to perhaps ten time the 20,000 blog posts in the last year (and I agree it does not seem to have any expert optimisation of this asset) would be included in what kind of calculation? OTS?<br>
Alternatively is this a measure of return on PR investment and if so:

Is this return on investment on the trading account or balance sheet (and how long is the tail - we know it is quite long on-line)
If cash, is this discounted cash?
Is this based on social media asset as well as press, radio, TV etc assets.
How long is residual value discount for press v social media. Is archive press now included on the balance sheet now that Google as Google News Archive with a repository of 4,000 Ariel citations and 4000 blog posts on permanent display, not to mention web sites going back to those embarrassing ones like this 2002 version.

Then there is the extent to which the brands are the object of consumer interest as a result on PR activity. Is this on the trading account or balance sheet?

I only ask.

Digital natives - kick over the traces.

Most PR practitioners had had to learn about the Internet as part of their job. It is becoming part of every day life (11 million bananas were bought online in the uk last year - now that is pretty much every day). But we were not brought up with 'everything' online.

But as Richard Baily points out, there is a generation that knows nothing else. For them the world has always been online. That is not to say that they have explored its opportunities to the full, or moved very far away from their own comfort zone.

He points to see John Naughton's column in The Observer to get a sense of being a digital native but now, freed from the constraints of mom 'n dad and school warnings about the dangers, students will be quick to try new things out. Time to kick over the traces.

Social media for this generation will be a steep, but necessary learning curve - not necessarily to use blogs but to be able to use other tools like RSS.

Why? Because, as a student, you can use advanced search engines to find both established and recent works (this is Google Scholar's view of PR in 2006) or del.icio.us to keep up to date with your subject tutor or an RSS news feed on an important topic.

These are simple tools that any PR practitioner can use and apply to keep up todate with their client's interests.

PR event listing online - in social media

Sam Sethi is proposing either putting together a “socialtext” wiki to enable event organisers to list their own events on TechCrunch or UpComing.org.

Either way, it is a good idea for Web 2.0 and Mobile start-ups in the UK (the topic for TechCrunch).

It would also be a really cool idea for the PR industry and an inititaive like this by the CIPR, would be a boon for practitioners (over half of members are responsible fo organising events).

It needs to be open (not hidden behind some member firewall) to offer a real service to the whole industry and would help the CIPR live up to its claim as 'The ears and eyes' of the industry.

Of course, one would expect its to be XPRL compliant and with RSS feeds to make it easy for the industry to make it interoperable

Tesco take on Microsoft

Tesco is to launch a range of budget own-brand PC software, in a move that will pitch the grocery giant against the likes of Microsoft and Symantec claims the BBC.

Tesco said it would offer six packages, including office software, security systems and a photo editing tool.

Britain's biggest retailer said each title would cost less than £20, challenging what it described as the current "high" price of PC software.

XPRL - Game-On.

There has been some discussion about a paper I wrote and which is being privately distributed but affects us all. It is about XPRL called "XPRL - Game-On". I have been asked for copies and though it more relevant to post it here.

The big issue for PR, as the paper explians is how the industry can use information from many sources and bring it together as tools for practitioners to use.

The evolution of software development such as AJAX mean that we can use Web 2.0 much more effectively with a PR mark up language conforming to a W3C based schema.

It sounds and is technical. The industry can no longer hold its nose when we talk about this sort of thing because it is pregressively being dragged into the use of more technology based services which is described here.

Introduction

In 2001, the big consultancy fee earning driver was financial reporting. It caused the accountancy firms, stock markets and the regulatory authorities to come together in common cause to develop XBRL (Extensible Business Reporting Language - http://xbrl.org).

The biggest accounting firm now boasts: “Getting the right information to the right people at the right time—faster, more accurately, and with greater efficiency—is vital in today’s business world. Which is why investors and analysts alike favour XBRL” (PwC 2006). The culmination of this work was the announcement in August 2006 that the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has plans for its own XBRL analysis tools that feature easy-to-use software that will allow any investor, analyst, or company to access the benefits (note 4).

In the intervening years, a considerable shift in web development, especially in advertising for relationship building has moved on-line.

"In the month of June alone, our web properties at FOX Interactive attained 30 billion page views, and just yesterday served 4 billion ads (Murdoch 2006)."

Each quarter the shift from traditional media advertising shows a significant change in favour of the Internet. The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) reported that Internet advertising revenues reached a new record of $3.9 billion for the first quarter of 2006."

In addition, there is realisation in the public relations sector that on-line developments are becoming pivotal to the future of Public Relations.

Sir Martin Sorrel CEO of WPP, the second largest adverting, public relations and marketing services group worldwide commented that "One of the interesting thing(s) is that the new technologies, the blogs, the development of Web sites, the development of social networking sites, is really ...... giving a new driver to public relations and public affairs. Paid-for publicity, it is known from research, is probably less effective than editorial publicity." (Sir Martin Sorrel Augst 2006).

Omnicom's Fleishman-Hillard Interactive note that "The Internet and interactive technologies are changing how people communicate. New skills, new strategies, and new capabilities are needed today to build brands, manage relationships, and interact directly with key audiences."

Guy Lambert joint managing director of OgilvyOne also indicates the increasing demand for digital involvement. "Agencies have to really understand the digital agenda and they need to reorganise agencies around putting digital at the heart of the agency," Lambert says.

This is a very different picture to five years ago.

To drive this new era, the Public Relations industry now needs the same capabilities as those developed by the financial sector half a decade ago. In many ways, with the growth of social networking, much of it driven by application of XML (note 4a), there is an urgency of far greater import than developments hitherto.

XPRL, the global Public Relations industry wide eXtensible Markup Language (XML) is now pivotal to realisation of the potential for the Public Relations sector.

This paper explores these developments and the opportunities and proposes a route map with some financial and specialist resources already penciled in.

Why is XPRL so important today

Until recently the application of PR programmes could be separated. Financial PR, Press relations, corporate affairs and the many other domains of PR practice could operate without significant interoperability. The means for communication were discrete and independent.

Social media

The rise and rise of blogging, the evolution of citizen journalism, podcasting, wiki's and convergence between communications platforms such as PC's, mobile text, voice and video and iPods seems to be a sudden and pervasive evolution.

The ability to offer content and interactivity on these platforms has two notable features. First is an ability to spread content (RSS) and second is to transpose content from on platform or channel to another (e.g. blog to wiki to calendar to spreadsheet and back). This is facilitated more by the application of XML than any other technology.

Content

In addition, there is a need for a different form of content. The evolution of interlinked content such as that proposed by the New Media Release (Note 5 ) and knowledge management capabilities under development by PR developers (Note 6) are but two examples of significant developments within the Public Relations sector. To be interoperable with client content, requires software development this is easy when using a recognised XML standards and complex and expensive to develop and maintain when it is bespoke.

In the meantime other sectors are undergoing huge change like the publishing industry and they too have been pushed into action. The International Press Telecommunications Council has continued its development of an XML standard, NewsML (Note 7). It is a standard that PR developments will need to recognise to allow interaction with press release distribution vendors, news agencies, web content aggregators and search engines to smoothly exchange news, text, photos or other media using standard XML modules and tools. The result will be lower costs and shorter development for news agencies and news system vendors who face the challenges of presenting news on the web and a wide range of personal electronic devices.

Volume

The evolution of social media is forcing the Public Relations industry to monitor off-line newspapers, their on-line versions and added value content, on-line only publications, blogs, wiki's podcasts etc. At the same time there is need to make sense of this huge volume of content using a range of techniques from Google Trends to traditional evaluation companies. The industry now has to find software vendors to bring these data together in order that relationship, and especially reputation management can respond 24 hours a day and at speed.

In order to make this happen, there is a need for these vendors to deliver their content in such a way that it can be used in cross vendor applications. This 'interoperability' is key if the PR sector is to offer services to respond to the influences of social media. Interoperability is dependent on common standards.

PR independent vendors

Were this just a matter for the PR industry, bespoke solutions for individual departments and agencies would be, if less than adequate, at least possible. This is not happening. A raft of vendors with no connection with PR have content and data that is used by public relations practitioners. The content and statistical data are available from many applications (Note 8).

Without common standards to allow different vendors' data to interact, the PR industry is at a disadvantage.

Developers

PR software exists. More is coming available but for such a diverse industry and with so many different domains of practice, the numbers of software developers working in this sector is minuscule.

Part of the reason is that every programme and every data fields has to be specified every time a new programme is called for. It is expensive and always one off. Integrating data between one system and another is trying, updating legacy data is difficult. There is almost no open source movement behind the PR sector.

The simple expedient of specifying XPRL compliant software would change the whole industry and the range of products and services available to practitioners.

Interoperability

In simple terms, what XPRL does is to offer names for information and data so that different software programmes know what the data are.
There are many ways of describing a press release or media release or press notice or..... For a computer programme this is confusing. Media reach, circulation, distribution is another example.

To be able to develop capability for simple things like distributing media releases, there is a need for a standard to allow a range of data to be processed without confusing the many computers between the PR executive and the newspaper, television station, blog, cell phone or wiki.

The PR industry needs interoperability.

Meet international norms

To get interoperability it needs a standard and the best standard is the one provided by the World Wide Web Consortium (WW3) but which needs adaptation to the requirements of Public Relations.

There would seem to be an opportunity for a big group to develop their own XML format. Why not? It would offer competitive edge and would exclude others. A schema developed for group subsidiaries like PR firms, evaluation companies, press release distributors, research and evaluation companies and new media agencies would be quite sensible.

Co-operation

Except that, as soon as there were are two suppliers (today there are three XML executions for press lists, umpteen for news distribution and even more for media evaluation) of information and so the existing (confusing and unusable) data transfers will remain and the PR industry will have to continue to make different data match up as now.

And now? At present we use people.

Account executives cut and paste data to prepare research, content, distribution, evaluation and reports. The cost is high, accuracy is a management problem and other vendors easily usurp the PR role.

Multi platform multi channel

At present this is manageable. The introduction of five (e.g. blogs, wikis, podcast, print media, broadcast radio and TV), ten (add mobile sms, Instant messaging, VoIP, vidcast, etc) or more communications channels across a dozen different platforms to reach a single public for a campaign will make cut and past impossible.

The number of platforms and the number of communication channels keeps growing.

At the same time, globalisation means that there is a need for a single international standard. A single PR schema.

For a single company or group to achieve an accepted standard would be, at best, very difficult.

Competition

Competition is coming from where it is least expected. The audience is often the source of news. The amateur competes with the professional. MySpace with its 30 billion hits per month is mostly home to the amateur relationship builder and content provider. These people already have XML.

The publishing industry (NewsML) is already laying out its capability to distribute content to a common standard. The financial sector (XBRL) has adopted a standard for management reporting because the PR industry could not.

RSS having usurped email in many cases is about to replace the news clipping industry (where so many of the vendors have - each - an XML execution).

The need for multi channel, multi source output interoperability is critical between vendors and agencies as much as between client agency, communication channel and feedback.

At present the industry is at a disadvantage.

Future aims

Excite the Industry

Never before has there been such an opportunity for an industry sector.

We are now talking about billions of interactions every month where PR can blossom (Note 9).

From a process of developing relationships with a few journalistic intermediaries, mostly at a national level to building global relationships with intermediaries and the end user is a big leap. It is full of opportunities and rewards.

The PR industry desperately needs a range of tools to be able to realise such ambitions. We need to know what these tools need to achieve and we need to be able to attract the expertise to build them.

The best developers are going to develop products that have large and global markets. A beggar thy neighbour approach will reduce the total size of the market, hamstring software creativity and will encourage competitors to usurp swathes of relationship building and management from the PR sector.

Working together will grow our markets, revenues and profitability.

Provide a platform to respond to new media opportunities

The present schema still stands and forms a basis for development. Industry wide adoption or significant uptake will help development of capability in the old and 'new media' sectors now.

There is a need to build on the existing schema to provide added 'new media' capability and to provide capability for service integration and interoperability.

There is a need to encourage the software developer base, using XPRL, to create software for the industry at least comparable with other sectors like engineering, pharmesuticals and banking.

Enhance revenue and profitability with better service

It is possible for the Public Relations Industry to achieve what the financial sector achieved? Yes of that there is no doubt. because the adoption of XPRL into XBRL will create added revenue and enhance profitability.

For press relations, initiatives like the New Media Release offer so much more to practice by way of added, measurable reach that revenue and profit will follow.

An ability to interact with new media using automation tools will add to capability, increase capability and reduce cost.

Added transparency and fluid project management for executing PR programmes in a time when the news (especially the social media driven news) changes fast will save time, cut cost and improve service very quickly.

The PR industry needs to sell this idea to itself. The belief of Sir Martin Sorrel is that the PR sector will grow. XPRL can make a major contribution to this growth by opening up added capability in the area of web and social media software.

Way forward

Requirements

From Leeds Metropolitan University and a private donor, XPRL already has an investment of over $100,000. It needs to continue to extend its capability and needs a route map.

This comes in a number of steps:

• Identify capability to underpin future development
  • A cross discipline PR/social technology research resource to identify the extant and evolving needs of the PR industry
• Identify and recruit leaders in the Public Relations sector who have the drive and ambition to access the benefits for their own businesses and the market in general
  • A group of leaders in the field who have existing and developing interests in the evolution of Public Relations as it changes to meet the effects of global communications development.
• Agreement, among industry leaders and the institutions that represent the Public Relations sector, to drive this opportunity forward including commitment to aid the evolution of the software and systems development base through adoption of global, industry wide standards for software and data interoperability (note 10).
  
• Implement a programme of development and inter schema relationships (e.g. XBRL, NewsML, New Media Release etc)
  • This requires co-operation among existing vendors and other schema as well as, in some instances, regulators.
• Public Relations for the concept internally to the Public Relations sector and its external stakeholders and publics.

Existing offers and potential

Recent interest in the evolution of XPRL has provided new imputus for the inititative. In less than a week, as the benefits of XPRL re-emerged a groundswell of interest has emerged that speak to the above agenda:

1. Cross discipline PR/social technology research
   1. An offer has been made to sponsor up to half the cost of PhD research over a three year period. There is a need for matched funding to create a total pool to the value of $500,000. This generous offer, with its matched counterpart, will provide the PR industry world wide with both technical and PR related research into the opportunities and technologies that can be depolyed by the industry to inform the development of XPRL to assist development of Internet mediated PR, software design and practitioner opportunity.
      
2. Leaders in the Public Relations sector
   
   1. A mini summit on deliverables from XPRL with a few of the very big hitters from the commissioning side (consultancy heads and in-house) to make sure the project delivers what they need. Colin Farrington, the Director General of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations, has volunteered the Institutes facilities for the meeting.
   2. There are a number of leaders in the Public Relations industry who have made very public statements about the opportunities for the Public Relations sector. They include Sir Martin Sorrel, Richard Edelman and Toni Muzi Falconi, the ex President of the Global Allience and many senior executives in a range of consultancies. In addition there are enthusiasts like the UK Governement Minister, David Miliband.
      
3. Aid the evolution
   1. This will require public relations and negotiation to generate effective funding levels. Lou Capozzi, president elect of ICCO has expressed a wish to be involved and its Director General Simon Quarendon has been briefed. Offers of support have come from David Rosen (NewYork), Toni Muzi Falconi (Methodos S.p.A) who has been very active in New York and among international leaders.
4. Programme implementation
   1. This will needs to be driven by a small professional and properly funded team. It will mean restructuring the present arrangement and there is every reason to propose that XPRL should have representatives and competencies in many countries.
      
5. Public Relations
   1. Toni Muzi Falconi (NYU) has resourced a group to prepare a global Public Relations plan.
   2. A concerted and dedicated competence is required.

Conclusion

The PR industry needs XPRL. In addition, it is the time for XPRL.
The PR industry cannot be very effective in grasping its current opportunities without it.
The way it can operate and the way it can evolve is reasonably clear cut.

While, on the face of it, there is a need for a great deal of goodwill, the underlying drivers are so significant that missing the opportunity will be negligent.

The PR sector has passed up the opportunity to be involved in enhanced revenue and profits through the application of XPRL once because of a lack of understanding that technology is important to PR however remote it may be from daily practice.

Today, technology is on every desk, Google news, Blogs and RSS are migrating across the industry like a virus. Every practitioner is now face to face with technology and, love it or hate it, it is not going away.

This second opportunity, many dimensions greater than the last can be grasped given cooperation, even self interested cooperation of the users of PR and PR services.

With our first donation of this round already offered, XPRL is at the disposal of every practitioner who is excited by the prospect of working among the hundreds of millions of people and billions of interactions that are on offer to the industry now.

Footnotes

1 Rupert Murdoch August 2006 Seeking Alpha http://internet.seekingalpha.com/article/15237
2 PwC 2006 http://www.pwcglobal.com/extweb/service.nsf/docid/6BBA4081197E4EAA80256F500038FA6B
3 Sir Martin Sorrel 2006 http://edition.cnn.com/2006/BUSINESS/08/18/sorrell.intvw/
4a An example is explained at http://www.alwayson-network.com/comments.php?id=12133_0_3
4 The Financial PR sector was excluded from this dramatic development because it did not lever the value of XPRL in these developments.
5 New Media Release discussion list http://groups.google.com/group/newmediarelease and podcast http://forimmediaterelease.biz/index.php/weblog/nmrcast_7_real_world_implementations_09_08_06/
6 Cogenz http://blog.cogenz.com/
7 NewsML http://www.newsml.org/pages/index.php
8 Some data providers include Flikr http://www.flickr.com/, Digg digg.com, Technorati http://www.technorati.com/, Google Trends http://www.google.com/trends and products like Google Zeitgeist http://www.google.co.uk/press/zeitgeist.html, BlogBeat http://www.blogbeat.net/ etc
9 "In the month of June alone, our web properties at FOX Interactive attained 30 billion page views, second only to Yahoo! and just yesterday served 4 billion ads." Rupert Murdoch
10 A draft proposal on XML membership and membership benefits is being considered.

For historical news about XML see: http://news.google.com/archivesearch?q=xml&btnG=Search+Archives&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
For historical news of developments of XBRL see: http://news.google.com/archivesearch?q=xbrl&btnG=Search+Archives&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
For a historical news of development of NewsML see: http://news.google.com/archivesearch?q=newsml&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&btnG=Search+Archives

Other related schemas:

• NewsML and IPTC
• SportsML
• News Markup Language (NML)
• News Industry Text Format (NITF)
• XMLNews: XMLNews-Story and XMLNews-Meta
• Atom: The New XML-Based Web Publishing and Syndication Format
• RSS (Really Simple Syndication | RDF Site Summary)
• Open Content Syndication (OCS)
• Information and Content Exchange (ICE) Protocol
• Outline Processor Markup Language (OPML)
• Extensible Public Relations Language (XPRL)
• XML for Publishers and Printers (XPP)
• Job Definition Format (JDF)
• Personalized Print Markup Language (PPML)
• Printing Industry Markup Language (PrintML)
• PML: Markup Language for Paper and Printing
• PrintTalk Consortium
• printcafe eProduction eCommerce eXchange (PCX)
• XMLTV
• Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI)
• XML and Digital Rights Management (DRM)
• Creative Commons Project
• DIG35: Metadata Standard for Digital Images
• Common Picture Exchange Environment (CPXe)
• Extensible Metadata Platform (XMP)
• BannerML
• adXML.org: XML for Advertising
• SPACE XML
• Newspaper Association of America (NAA) - Standard for Classified Advertising Data
• AdMarkup XML DTD for Classified Advertising

Patents and Software

Suw Charman has an excellent post on this subject.
It is brief and informative and

Software should not be patented at all, it should be exempted at all times.

No one in the audience has a patent.
Lots of people have coded.
No one has ever applied for a patent.

Is right. In fact, we also have problems with trade marks and the actualitie of copyright is now re-writing law in all but name.

In the meantime we have to act within the law - and I know its tough!

Your very own cartoon charecter

You can do lots of things with technology such as create little icons and logos to go everywhere and why not create a cartoon character that can act as an avatar for them on instant messengers, blogs and social networking sites, as well as mobile devices.

Try it... Its fun

What is non-linear search

Ian Delaney has a great description.

In brief:

Non-linear search is one of the bounties of the web 2.0 approach that has been relatively unheralded. Instead of finding information a la Google, social search is about finding knowledge. The idea is how do you connect with the information you need in a context that’s knitted together by people and by human expertise, rather than the linear way we do it now, which is to type a search term into a box.

But go to the post to find out more.

PS another reason for PR people to use tags when providing social media services.

New RSS reader

Simon Wakeman was quick.

He spotted:

Mainstream adoption of RSS took a step forward yesterday when Google launched its Reader product. This is the new version of Google’s RSS reader

I've tried it. Its good.

Adding content to your RSS feed

Lee Odden is trying out 'Feedvertsing'.

I like this. Not for 'advertising' but for use in delivering opportunities to add relevant additional content and messages.

Let Lee explian:

For the past week I’ve been beta-testing a new product from Patrick Gavin and Andy Hagans of Text Link Ads called Feedvertising. This is a service that allows you to monetize your RSS feeds with ads. Text Link Ads will sell the ads for you, or in my case, I just put in ads for some things I’m doing with Marketing Sherpa. You can do it either way or both.

Not only is Feedvertising a potential money maker, but it’s also a clever way to cross promote other areas of your blog, company web site or other web sites that you publish.

There’s a very good tutorial on Feedvertising over at Tubetorial or you can check out the Feedvertising site.

The cost of Control - Emap

Media group Emap is expecting a 2% revenue decline in the first half of its financial year, the company said today.

They'll be lucky....

To take a press clip costs money (even if you use your own scissors) which means their print brand distribution is low.
There is nothing of value on their sites (subscriptions, firewalls etc.) so some magazines have no on-line exposure at all.
The magazine sites have negligible or no interactive capabilities.
The radio stations don't offer podcasts....

If its only 2% it will be a amazing.

MySpace users only 43,000,000

Forever Geek has been at work.

The hype around the 'web 2.0' buzzword continues to grow and grow. From bullshit statements like 85% of college students use Facebook (umm no, that was when less than half of US colleges were supported, yet everyone continues to cite that magical number) to PhotoBucket drives 2% of US internet traffic (again, umm no - peak traffic is no reflection of sustained throughput), no one seems to be fact checking any more.

The latest annoyance has been the self-indulgent claim of web 2.0 bloggers that MySpace has 100,000,000 users. Interestingly, this specific headline says accounts, but the article and subsequent articles all say users. I would say that anyone with half a clue knows that 'accounts' are not the same as 'users', but that would be obvious, wouldn't it?

He then goes on to work out how many people are active in MySpace:

Looks like the popular claim that MySpace has 100,000,000 users is hot air. More than 50% can't even bother to visit again after a month. Based on assuming that type 5 and type 6 are the real 'users' of MySpace, it turns out that MySpace really has roughly 43,000,000 users. Very unscientific? Yep. More accurate than the 100,000,000 myth? Damn straight. The 100,000,000 number is inflated by 133%.

Ethics and online disclosure

The Guardian published this review about personal data.

It is an issue that the CIPR may like to follow through on because of its ethics ramifications.

Facts about each of us are increasingly available to men and women whom we have never met. News that the media giant AOL is being sued for inadvertently releasing details of individuals' internet searches is just the latest reminder. With computers ubiquitous, a log of how someone uses them can give insight into character that would otherwise require a strong personal connection. Such records are exactly what firms like AOL and Google are in a position to build up. This new corporate gaze has joined the well-practised eye of the state. And earlier this month the government proposed to reverse the presumption against sharing of personal data between public agencies, a move which stirs Orwellian visions of a future where officials can readily hunt out and find black marks against any citizen.

Mobile Bebo

Bebo is in discussions with mobile operators over the launch of a range of text messaging services in the first quarter of next year.

Another communications opportunity. This is bound to be great news for Bebo - why did no one think of it before?

From e-consultancy

The companies plan to use SMS to extend Bebo’s functionality onto mobiles, unlike the WAP-based services being developed by some of its rivals.

CNET gets Second Life

On Tuesday night, with a minimum of fanfare, News.com launched the CNET Second Life space, which means CNET is one of the very first mainstream media organisations to have a functional and permanent space in Second Life.

Although not as elaborate as some of the corporate initiatives being opened, CNET's space, which was designed by the firm Millions of Us, is a fully functional facsimile of the company's real-life office building in San Francisco.

The ability to use the facilities of SL for a magazine are endless. Conferences, interviews, advertiser promotions and all with the big hook of credible new.

Britney Spears - a PR person?

Britney Spears has fired longtime publicist Leslie Sloane-Zelnick and taken charge of her own public relations according to media reports in the US.

Years of training and study is now to be revealed.....

Source: Yahoo News

A peek into the future - thanks Taiwan

In Marketing Week, released online at Mad, we can see into the future with a glimpse at Taiwan which is Yahoo!'s canary in the coalmine.

While Microsoft and Google are technology companies at heart, Yahoo! is a media company. Last year, global chief operating officer Dan Rosensweig told the company's local managers in Taipei that they should strive to become the number one media company on the island, overtaking newspaper groups and broadcasters.

It is Yahoo!'s third biggest market in the world in terms of revenue, after the US and the UK. It also serves a very young and tech-savvy market, and provides an insight into what consumers in London and San Francisco might be doing in the future.

Yahoo as a media company is an interesting idea. Certainly Yahoo News is very underrated in the UK and needs more attention from PR practitioners.

I find Taiwan interesting and fun and insightful as is the article.

Are you a small PR agency? Here is an opportunity

This report from VNUNet offers a real opportunity to small PR firms.

Nearly half of small businesses say they would use a blog to drive traffic to their website, according to new research from hosting provider Fasthosts.

But only three per cent of the 2,000 small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) questioned in the survey intend to start a blog.

Go get 'em tiger!

Yahoo buys video editing company

Revolution reports Yahoo! has acquired online video-sharing and editing web site Jumpcut, in an attempt to enhance its Yahoo Video service and strengthen its community

The US website provides users with a free set of online video editing tools, which enables users to manipulate video images without installing software on their computers.

It allows users to do similar kinds of things as YouTube, where people can upload video, but Jumpcut goes a step further with its basic editing tools.

These tools are really useful for 'citizen' reporting.

What is social media - answers here

Anthony Mayfield writing in Digital Bulletin gives a very good description of social media.

The article was adapted from the e-Book "What is social media?" from Spannerworks Social Media division, which can be downloaded free at spannerworks.com/ebooks.

Just to give you a flavour, here is part of his post.

Social media is best understood as a group of new kinds of online media, which share most or all of the following characteristics:

- Participation: social media encourages contributions and feedback from everyone who is interested. It blurs the line between the concept of media and audience.

- Openness: most social media services are open to feedback and participation. They encourage voting, feedback, comments and sharing of information. There are rarely any barriers to accessing and making use of content - password protected content is frowned on.

- Conversation: whereas traditional media is about "broadcast", content transmitted or distributed to an audience, social media is better seen as conversational, two-way.

- Community: social media allows communities to form quickly and communicate effectively around common interests - be that a love of photography, a political issue or a favourite TV show.

- Connectedness: Most kinds of social media thrive on their connectedness, via links and combining different kinds of media in one place.

At this time, there are basically five main types of social media. Note though that innovation and change are rife in social media -- definitions and categories don't stand still for long.

The most common kinds of social media are blogs, social networks, content communities (sometimes called folksonomies), wikis and podcasts. You may have heard of many of these, and we'll go into a little more depth on these later, but here are some one line descriptions to be going on with:

- Blogs: perhaps, the best known form of social media, blogs are online journals, with entries appearing with the most recent first.

- Social networks: these websites allow people to build personal websites and then connect with friends to share content and communication. The best known example of a social network is MySpace, which has over 100m members.

- Content communities (aka folksonomies): communities that organise and share particular kinds of content. The most popular kinds of content communities tend to be around photos (Flickr), bookmarked links (del.icio.us) and videos (YouTube).

- Wikis: these websites allow people to add content to or edit the information on them, acting as a communal document or database. The best-known wiki is the online encyclopedia, which has over 1.25 million articles published in English alone.

- Podcasts: audio and video files that are available by subscription through services like Apple iTunes.

What sort of image do you project from space

Two Google Earth users got an extra surprise when they explored the Dutch city of the Hague and spotted topless sunbathers we learn from Metro.

It made me think of the impression our organisations give from space.

It may be worth a look to monitor what you look like from Mars or No 10 Easington Avenue, Leicester.

This is a Bubble - yes it is

Yes it is.

The mad mad mad venture capitalists and hype merchants are at it and it will take a big tumble soon.

This comment in Mad made me make this post:

The sense that the internet has been running ahead of itself was strongly reinforced last week when Yahoo! chief executive Terry Semel warned that the growth in online advertising was weakening. Advertising has been the backbone of almost all internet companies, so the warning from one of the biggest online media players that two of the most important advertising sectors - automotive and finance - were weakening sent shockwaves through the online world.

But lets put this into perspective. Last time (the dot com bubble) saw the web go out of fashion. Millions were lost. It was said that the web was finished and acquaintances smirked when you talked about your online business.

The PR industry turned its back on the web and now has to regret the lost opportunity.

Last year 11 million bananas were purchased online in the UK. The web is now ubiquitous.

The social media and 'web 2.0' stuff will crash. Possibly as early as this winter.

But, for the reasons made clear here, social media will thrive.

The marketing chiefs will, of course, shun these media because they will no longer be cool.

They will be wrong, but that never stopped them in the past. They will find another way to scream at punters. And, because Advertising has to change, and they will not understand, the PR opportunity will grow. That is not to say that PR does not have to change. It does.

Public Relations has to stay calm and focused and believe in itself. We build relationships and here are 14 reasons why we can be confident. Relationships out-last downturns and will even save reputations. We will achieve this by standing by our beliefs.

In the meantime, we have a great opportunity.

Think not of advertising. Its day is done. Think more of how you can introduce a willing partner in conversation to buy because your recommendation and that of other users is worth it.

Mobile is the new newspaper

The pressure on the media to understand the news consumption habits in the real world is now pressing.

It is an argument one also has to put to the PR industry. Here are three simple questions:

'How many times was your story read on a mobile?'

'Was it more times that in print?'

'Do you really know?'

Well it is getting important.


I learn from M:Metrics that 14% of Brits Browsed News and Information on their Mobile in the three months to July, up 3% over the previous quarter (so expect that to double by next summer).

U.K. Mobile Subscriber Monthly Consumption of Content and Applications M:Metrics Benchmark Survey: July 2006
Activity	Subscribers (1000s)	Pct	Pct Change
Sent Text Message	36,240	84.3%	(0.5%)
Used Photo Messaging	12,877	29.9%	1.0%
Browsed News and Information	6,229	14.5%	(3.2%)
Used Personal E-Mail	2,721	6.3%	(4.4%)
Purchased Ringtone	2,343	5.4%	(4.2%)
Downloaded Mobile Game	1,737	4.0%	(6.8%)
Used Mobile Instant Messenger	1,585	3.7%	(9.0%)
Used Work E-Mail	1,298	3.0%	(5.6%)
Purchased Wallpaper or Screensaver	945	2.2%	(2.1%)

There is a further issue for PR. Are we pitching to the print editor or to the mobile editor?

There is something missing in Social Media

A splendid article in the Scotsman looks into social media and its significance including this snippet:

Recent research suggests that social networking sites are not going away and the behaviour that drives them is among the strongest of current social trends. Monthly figures from industry watchers M:Metrics suggest that 10 per cent of online users in the UK have used social networking sites and that 15 per cent thought they were likely to post photos or videos on the web in the coming 12 months.

It also quotes Dr Cynthia McVey, lecturer in psychology at Glasgow Caledonian University, who says:

"There are going to be some things missing from electronic interaction such as the use of body language and expression. You can say something in words and it can be funny, ironic, sad or malicious depending on your facial expression or your hand movements."

There is much more in the article.

Perhaps this is why so many people who have on-line acquaintances are so happy to meet at conferences to get a deeper sense of who they are interacting with. Is this what PR can add to social media? The opportunity to meet face to face.... Absolutely.

What is PR?

Today, I was asked (again), what is PR?

In social science:

"Concerning that complex whole which creates cultural acceptance for an organisation including knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society to contribute values through the creation of effective relationships"

(from “Sir Edward B. Tylor 1871: "culture or civilization, taken in its wide ethnographic sense, is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society".)

In management:

"That practice which facilitates the nexus of relationship to define an organisation."

In practice

The capability which facilitates relationships to affect an organisation and its constituency to their mutual advantage.


Thus... its all about relationships.

See also:

A previous answer

PR practices

The scope of PR

PR serving industry

What is an organisation

O Table - a communication platform?

Welcome to the latest eye boggling invention in audiovisual (AV) technology. It is a 50in table, with an LCD screen, which looks a bit like an upturned TV.

VNUNet has some other ideas too.

Users can download images from a mobile phone onto the computer below. They can be networked with all the other ‘terminals’ in the seminar area, shared with everyone else on the network or projected onto large screens.

Handy AV has recently installed a 100in screen, illuminated by a 6,500 lumin projector, in London’s Park Lane. It has recently been working on a similarly scaled project at Brompton Road, opposite Harrods.


These platforms for communication can be used for advertising but that would be a terrible waste.

Much better to used them to engage in relationship building, making them relevant and appealing in conversations.

Can I use my phone to send a Happy Christmas message to all my friends using the Screen outside Harrods, video it and send it to everyone all from my cell phone - technically yes.

I bet the screens will be used to show Santa Clause holding up aftershave - yuk!

Can I take my client into Second Life gazing into the conference room table - yup! Hooray!!!!

Smart Cards and mobiles open doors and communication

The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has published a guidance for enterprises setting out how they must deal with individuals' data when it becomes linked to RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) tags - whether they're found attached to goods in a supermarket or on smartcards such as the Oyster card (from Silicon.com).

Everton Football club uses this technology to replace tickets and it may yet speed up airport check in.

RFID is now to be included in cell phones (Manchester City Football Club is trialing it now) which mean that it is becoming an important part of the communication mix.

It means that there is an interactive interface between the phone, location, device and message.

It means that a range of devices from turnstiles to electronic posters can be made to do things (open, present a message etc) as people walk by.

Right message, right person, right time, right location - what more do you need to begin to create a conversation and interactive relationship.

At present scream marketing is trying to use these technologies but as a Social media, interactive and relationship building idea it has much better applications.

This is no longer future technology, it is ready for use in campaigns now.


A backgrounder is here.

The Grocer is on his way

Tesco.com is coming up with new uses for the handheld devices that help its drivers to deliver home shopping orders without getting lost.

The retailer rolled out the devices - combining the delivery scheduling system and a satellite navigation package - to 50 drivers operating from its South London dot-com store in March this year. The store delivers to a big chunk of South London so the drivers are often in areas they aren't familiar with.

The company is also reviewing other areas where the devices could be useful - for example whether the devices can be used to give customers better information on when their groceries will arrive such as alerting them via text message when the van has left the store.

This is communication and therefore part of PR thinking.

Imagine the opportunities for interactive relationships with customers when they know that the driver will arrive and can combine human and technology communication.

There will also be a need for PR issues and crisis management round such technologies.

Foxed - and groveling

FoxNews has admitted that it used 'poor judgement' when it demanded that YouTube remove its interview with Bill Clinton.

The interview, originally broadcast on the FoxNews channel, showed former President Clinton becoming antagonised by what he perceived as a biased line of questioning from FoxNews journalist Chris Wallace.

FoxNews drew heavy criticism after raising its hackles requiring that it get back its belongings in its manger with all the other dusty toys under its bushy tail.


Journalism.c.uk tells the story.

I wonder if Rupert Murdoch really understands that if he hides content such as news. He shuts down the opportunity for it to be sought, seen and useable online when it is fish and chip wrapping or etherware in traditional outlets.

Same goes for press clippings. They are useless to anyone except the PR exec pasting them up and the client. But as brand messenger, they are ace. Enter the NLA the biggest blunderbuss Murdoch has aimes at his feet for years.

But we know that Fox and the Times have some way to go before they understand social media (MySpace) and the long tail (Time archive).

More podcasting thoughts and examples

David Meerman Scott offers:

For content that is best delivered via audio or for buyers who prefer to listen to audio content, podcasting is obviously essential. For example, many politicians and churches podcast so that supporters can keep up with speeches and sermons when they can’t hear them live.

While the podcasting of music is perhaps an obvious choice given the medium's similarity to radio, all marketers can learn from what the music business and bands like Uncle Seth have been doing with podcasts. After all, who would believe that a business like that of student loans providers would benefit from a podcast?

He offers more examples here.

Peter Shankman gets all the good jobs

Like him... despite my best efforts not to, I find myself actually LIKING the video. Damn it.

Social video metrics

From TechCrunch comes news of a for of evaluation for on-line video.

London-based, Unruly Media recently launched Viral Video Chart “the first chart to independently monitor the popularity of videos” from the world’s most influential video-sharing sites i.e YouTube, MySpace and Google Video. They tried looking for references to videos on Yahoo AOL MSN for a while, but nothing ever made the top 25 so they stopped!? This is surprising given that according to Hitwise, the top 5 sites in the US for online video are YouTube (43% market share), MySpace (25%), Yahoo! (10%), MSN (9%) and Google (6%) (Hitwise,24 May 2006)

So if you want to know the number one video that people are talking about today, you can find it on www.viralvideochart.com. Equally there is also a weekly and monthly chart available, plus an archive of previous number ones

Tag - a word to play with

Ian Delaney has an introduction to social tagging. I mentioned tagging on For Immediate Release on Tuesday and this is a less culinary approach.

Tags and tagging are a big part of social media. Instead of sorting items into folders, you describe them with a series of words. The words you use, the ‘tags’, are up to you. Some people refer to this as ‘folksonomy’ in the sense that tags are home-grown and created by users, as opposed to putting things into folders in a tree structure decided by other people, ‘taxonomy’.ote>

This can be useful for lots of reasons and Ian shows some of them.

This is getting crowded - another MySpace look alike

Microsoft spin-off Wallop launched its social networking service at the DEMOfall technology conference Tuesday, saying its unique business model is what sets itself apart from competing services like Facebook and MySpace reports BetaNews.

"After taking a long, hard look at social computing, it became clear that it is not simply about the technology, which has been limited and plagued with problems to date," said Karl Jacob, CEO and founder of Wallop.

"It's about the trend of self-expression moving online, creating enormous demand for easy and limitless customization and an enlightened social experience where the user is in control," he continued.

In addition, users will be able to share music, pictures and commentary across the site. Wallop says all the digital rights management functionality would be controlled by the site. This would include the mods to site pages, where the company asks for a 30 percent cut.

Do I really have to try yet another one?

Well, what did catch my eye is that it sets out to offer a market:

Want to become a Modder?

Create cool Flash and sell it on Wallop. Check out the
Wallop Modder Network.

If people can also make money here, they may be tempted.

BBC peek into the dark side

Well, here is a story.

The BBC and Microsoft have signed a memorandum of understanding to look at areas of common interest as they develop the next generation of digital broadcasting.

"We are currently witnessing unprecedented rates of change in technology and audience expectations," said Mark Thompson, BBC director-general.

"To ensure that the BBC is able to embrace the creative challenges of the digital future, we need to forge strategic partnerships with technology companies and distributors for the benefit of licence payers."

Citzen Journalism - a backgrouder

Mark Glaser, has a nice little backgrounder to citizen journalism, which he says: is that people without professional journalism training can use the tools of modern technology and the global distribution of the Internet to create, augment or fact-check media on their own or in collaboration with others.

It goes back to some of the early examples and is a light introduction and will offer some insight for those practitioners who want to interact in this space.

Diversity in Social Media

'The Business of Diversity - how PR performance can be improved by embracing diversity'. is to be debated by the CIPR on 18 October, the conference will see leading speakers address the issues posed by Britain's increasingly diverse society. At the heart of the conference is the proposition that it is in the best interests of businesses to diversify their workforce.The report will review the diversity of the PR profession today in terms of ethnicity, gender, disability, age and sexuality.

One notes that diversity has not being extended to people without the ability, education or technical skills to be a blogger of Colin Farrington's stature. I have a young dyspraxic friend who is a wizzard Instant Messaging. Perhaps he can attend and explain the problems of using and being accepted as a blogger and with other social media.

Knee jerk

Currys has announced plans to launch a low-cost online DVD and CD store aimed at undercutting major offline and online retailers.

The electrical goods firm said it would offer around 180,000 CDs and 40,000 DVDs for purchase online, with free delivery and chart and new releases priced from £8.99 and £12.99 respectively.

This just does not make sense. If online download to to MP3 player. If not, go to store.

Or did I miss something?

If Currys had offered a 'free to play' instore wifi I could believe it. Then they could make a profit selling coffee.

I don't know who their CMO is but its bout they got a new one.

The web magazines with content 95% suppliers by 'users'.

My out takes from the Journalism.co.uk interview with Jeremy Tapp of online publisher Magicalia.

What we learn from this is yet another market that now exists for good copy from the Public relations industry.

"It doesn't take a genius to look at the ABCs this year to know things are changing.


"Frankly, I think a large part of what is happening is because of the web, it has finally started to grow commercial teeth, its bite is becoming as bad as its bark," said Jeremy Tapp.

Tapp and his business partner Adam Laird co-founded Magicalia seven years ago. It is home to 40 specialist website communities.

However, last month Magicalia bought Encanta Media for £2.72 million to get its hands on its woodworking, modelling, patchwork and gardening magazines and initiate its move from solely digital into duel publishing.

"A lot of people say web is important to their magazines but what they really mean is that it is a defensive action, essentially 'how do we deal with this thing that we would rather not deal with,' by which they mean the ingress of something that changes their world.

"We recognise that magazines are fabulous and have a deep connection with readers, a permanent connection with readers and advertisers, and we want to do that too.

"The fully evolved cross-media company in a couple or three years time will be seamless and will have skills in both those worlds."

Many of Magicalia's sites have up to 95 per cent of their content supplied by the users.

Publishing online and having a sturdy technological base has allowed Magicalia to launch titles that would not otherwise survive in print and attract several small audience groups that when combined offer a powerful advertising bait.

"Without the cost of distribution, without the cost of paper, we can reach into a smaller niche."

"Getting money out of readers for content when there is high quality content available for free on the website next door is always going to be difficult.

"You have to create an environment that is really high quality if you are going to do that, the reason that we have not done it yet is for precisely that difficulty. It's a new world and people are still scrambling for market share."

Cultural Organisations - can they now be free?

Lawrence Lessig is a Professor of Law at Stanford Law School, He notes on his blog:

The British Council and Counterpoint has a new publication, “Unbounded Freedom: A Guide to Creative Commons Thinking for Cultural Organizations,” written by Rosemary Bechler. The book will be launched Friday. There’s a discussion page on the author’s blog, which begins with a useful post addressing the question: “So why did I choose to licence my work in this way?”

What is free - and how

The Free Software Foundation has launched a public discussion on proposed changes to the Free Document License, a license designed “can be used for any textual work” but which, in the world enriched by Wikipedia, now attempts to license all creative work.

This is a discussion worth following. It is, after all, about every press release issued and article published. It is about blog posts and video and it is about social media.

It is about mixing 'free' content such as audio and video and where you copyright extends (like the licence for this work).

Can On-line PR keep up with the growth in Social Media

In a research note quoted by Reuters, RBC Capital analyst Jordan Rohan said he had come out of a meeting with Fox Interactive enthused about the site’s experienced management, "massive" global appeal and potential to become "an intellectual property distribution powerhouse".

While admitting his claim sounds “audacious”, he thinks "media investors may not fully appreciate what has already been done with MySpace or what may lie ahead."

He added: "$15bnan> in a few years? It is possible.” Remember that Fox only paid $580 m for MySpace.

>Now, lets put this alongside the Social Media activities and projections of, say WPP, Edelman or (OK they are the 'eyes and ears of the industry) CIPR. Is the PR industry, the natural profession to engage in conversation and relationship building, going to share in this value. Will PR be bigger than the scream marketing types that want to raid the MySpace users mind?

Um.....

Well, we jolly well should be thinking in these terms.

Colin Farrington - what do you want to say to the DG of CIPR?

David Brain met Colin Farrington.

Colin asked :

"...what exactly did I and we (you bloggers out there I guess) want the CIPR to do help the industry come up to speed on the issue? Fair enough. Let’s think constructively as a group on this one and see what we can suggest. Answers on a postcard to…"

Sixty Second View

professionals seen to understand strategic, tactical and operational use

Simon Wakeman makes a lot of sense in his post about the CIPR and its role in helping develop social media for the industry.

In particular this comment is valuable:

CIPR needs to take an aggressively positive stance on social media. There are many professions vying for credibility in this space, and as a respected body the institute can articulate the valid credentials for our profession.

It’s easy for anyone to get into social media, but the professionals who are seen to understand the strategic, tactical and operational use of these new channels will be those who can benefit most commercially from them.

That’s not to say a debate isn’t healthy - but a corporate stance is needed from the CIPR on social media to give a firm indication of its position - otherwise the messages on behalf of the UK PR community will continue to be mixed.

The changing nature of organisations

An article by Wyatt Kash, in GCN cought my attention.

Despite his use of 'web 2.0' it is interesting because of some of the comments he has brought together.

For example:

"If the Web 2.0 is in its infancy, then Enterprise 2.0 is a total newborn," and "

"...the days when the technologists could impose technology standards, inflicting structure on, and inside an organization" as they have over the past 10 years may be waning."


"...the outcome doesn't have to be chaos. It can be more like an ant colony."

PR speak - just rubbish

Andy Lark has this great post about the absence of thought and PR speak.

Lee Gomes on the use of the word Breakthrough in press releases. There are plenty of other common phrases. Like "leading" - if everyone is leading then who isn't? A simple and imperfect Google search on 'press release leading' resulted in 92,700,999 results...

Our laziness in crafting news releases isn't just tiresome, to Lee's point, it perverts the very language we depend on for our trade.

His full post adds more.
It is a real turn off. Why do PR people keep using these obviously nonsense words.

The PR consultancy social media portfolio

What sort of thing can your PR consultancy do beside write press releases and organise events? Can I suggest looking at how football clubs are showing you the way with the portfolio you need.

EVERTON Football Club has reappointed new media company Rippleffect as its online partner in a five-year deal worth a six-figure sum, reports Cheshire Online .

The Premier League club has long been associated with online innovation, and recently became the first UK football club to produce its own dedicated podcast.

Here we see a broad based application of new media. A plan that can be adopted for a range of PR applications.

Check out Everton Mobile, Everton RSS feeds, Everton blogs, Everton TV and lots of other applications.

The new website offers Everton's global fan base massive amounts of exclusive downloadable and interactive content - in addition to the now-established news feeds and Everton TV - and a subscription based-video on demand TV service that has seen a 250% increase in subscriptions since launch.

Comedy, Podcast and good PR idea

Comics Marek Larwood, Russell Howard and Steve Hall have recorded an exclusive Sun Podcast to mark the start of their new Edinburgh & Beyond Tour, in association with Paramount Comedy and Avalon.

This is a great way of using podcasts. The promoter, paper and participants all get good exposure and not far away, I guess, is the special Sun Christmas offer of an iPod or other MP3 player.

A good PR case study.