The Cloud

The Cloud

The Internet, as we know is huge. It shifts masses of data via a network. This three dimensional space with millions of nodes using a range of pipes (wires, radio, cable, cellular, even sound signals) is huge at the core. Most of that data is of no interest or value and is well beyond the understanding of more than a few dozen people. Who knows, cares or even has an interest in the TQM data transfer about the real time ware characteristics of a bit drilling holes in an engine for a manufacturer three thousand miles away for a customer two thousand miles further on and a designer in another location altogether. But it is that sort of information that makes up the big juicy heart of the Internet.

On top is the rich, thick, heaving and growing relationship cloud. It feeds off email, instant messaging, web, VOIP, and other stuff that gives these billions of people the sort of Internet they want and need. This is the Internet of relationships. The social Internet. Here are billions of relationships - the Relationship Cloud.

This is the stuff of social communities. Groups of, now, billions of people who, in the context of the time, environment, and interaction and with values held in common express themselves using a raft of different technologies in even more billions of relationships. The daily billions of e-Mail, MySpace, Bebo, YouTube or eBay social interactions are essentially small group in nature. They are each first and foremost of a culture, of social standards, of language, of place.

The groups of people, the social interactions are dynamic, pervasive and permissive. they reach deep into the Internet core and flirt and flame with the marketing veneer of actors on the fringe of the The Cloud.

Some 70% of all email is considered spam by people in the Relationships Cloud. By extrapolation, is 70% of all the other commercial interceptions in the social Internet also regarded as spam?

I have a sneaking suspicion that there is more than a grain of truth here. Do we want the flashing advertisement, the pop-ups, the click throughs? Can we mechanically mentally block them out. How does The Cloud flirt and flame with marketers?

The Relationships Cloud believes it has rights. It believes it has rights to availability of the Internet, it claims rights over copyright, it believes it has rights over the views of others, it believes it has rights to service. It accepts some responsibilities. It is prepared to tolerate some advertising and cost for delivery service. It will, in some cases pay 'fair' prices but the line is finely drawn.

It does not matter what the accountants and economists say. The Relationships Cloud is valuable. Some parts of it like MySpace and YouTuble are represented on balance sheets, are worth billions in the 'real' world. But theses parts of the Relationships Cloud but a few ant hills in a world infested by ants.

It does not matter what the sociologists like to think, the online groups are a real phenomena that uses games to build whole new communities as real as Trumpton to a five year old.

In the management of nation states the boundaries have changed. Politics has changed. It is not that boundaries have been abolished. It is that a different type of boundary now also exists.

This is not a matter of haves or have nots, Internet users and non users. All mankind is sucked into the mediation of the Internet. They are affected by the social groups that form and make up the Relationships Cloud.

Right now, people in marketing and advertising and PR are trying to stand close to the Relationships Cloud. Their web sites gain traffic, sell goods and services and offer information with thousands of interactions but into a mart of social groups aggregating relationship transactions counted by the stars in the sky.

But, one gets the impression that the relationship cloud radiates powerfully and can burn and sicken the corporation that stands too close or offend to greatly.

The waspish nature of The Cloud is quite capable of wreaking vengeance. Too much spam and spam blockers become common and email addresses are just abandoned. Popups are blocked, adverts are just avoided (RSS still scores well here). Blocking and flaming becomes common, viruses are created or The Cloud simply flows round the obstacles.

The Cloud is quite happy to shrug its shoulders over command and copyright and work round control. More sights and sounds are being downloaded than forever and an even smaller proportion is being paid for now. The Cloud has spoken.

The Cloud can also attack. It will attack companies. Ask Dell, Wal-Mart/Edelman.

We have not yet seen a major confrontation between The Cloud and other institutions but the skirmishes have been pretty bloody.

It attacks individuals too.

The Cloud has no Parliament. It is and is not a democracy. It has a currencies of relationship values. It has no grand rules and yet tends to self policing.

The Cloud can be wrong by any measure and yet The Cloud can avoid the justice of our traditions.

Love the social interaction and beware The Cloud.

Photo: Photoshop talent.

BBC get its licence fee payers to create its content

Oliver Luft reports that the BBC News 24 has launched a news programme based entirely on user-generated material.

Your News, which began a pilot run on Saturday, will feature stories, features and video proving most popular with viewers on TV and the internet.

Of course, I expect some PR type will get in there with something worth watching.

Disintermediate the Ad Agencies

This move by Google could make some agencies wince. Anyone can buy Google Ads. Its easy, cheap and understandable - and now can cross over to newsprint (and radio, TV and well... YouTube) like falling down at an Agency lunch.

Public Relations the strategic management function - not a communications strategem

Three weeks ago Professor Grunig put his thoughts about what public relations is to the New York Yale Club.

I quote:

Simply put, I have come to understand public relations as a strategic management
function that uses communication to cultivate relationships with publics that have a stake in the
behavior of the organization—either because they benefit from or are harmed by what Dewey
called the consequences of that behavior. Public relations has value to an organization because it
provides publics with whom it develops relationships a voice in management decisions that
affect them.
...

Quality relationships have both financial and nonfinancial value because they reduce the
costs of regulation, legislation, and litigation; reduce the risk of implementing decisions; and
sometimes increase revenue. They also have the secondary effects of improving the reputation of an organization (what members of a public think about it) and reducing negative publicity
because there are fewer bad behaviors for journalists to write about. The only way to “manage a
reputation” is through managing the organizational behaviors that are reflected in that reputation.

Some critics argue that the interests of organizations and publics are incompatible.
However, a great deal of research shows that organizations that interact with their publics
responsibly are also the most successful—based both on financial and nonfinancial criteria.

Cutlip and Chase identified a gap between elite practitioners and the mass of tacticians
and technicians who massage the media daily to make organizations and their products look
good. Some theorists might say that the elite practitioners have a theory of the nature of public
relations and its value and values whereas the mass of technicians fly by the seat of their pants or simply do what employers or clients ask them to do. I would say, in contrast, that both groups have a theory—just different theories. I believe there have been, and still are, two major
competing theories of public relations both in practice and in the academic world. I call these
approaches the symbolic, interpretive, paradigm and the strategic management, behavioral,
paradigm.

Scholars and practitioners following the symbolic paradigm generally assume that public
relations strives to influence how publics interpret the organization. These cognitive
interpretations are embodied in such concepts as image, reputation, brand, impressions, and
identity. The interpretive paradigm can be found in the concepts of reputation management in
business schools, integrated marketing communication in advertising programs, and rhetorical
theory in communication departments. Practitioners who follow the interpretive paradigm
emphasize publicity, media relations, and media effects. Although this paradigm largely
relegates public relations to a tactical role, the use of these tactics does reflect an underlying
theory. Communication tactics, this theory maintains, create an impression in the minds of
publics that allow the organization to buffer itself from its environment—to use the words of
organizational theorists—which in turn allows the organization to behave in the way it wants.
In contrast, the behavioral, strategic management, paradigm focuses on the participation
of public relations executives in strategic decision-making to help manage the behavior of
organizations. In the words of organizational theorists, public relations is a bridging, rather than
a buffering, function. It is designed to build relationships with stakeholders, rather than a set of
messaging activities designed to buffer the organization from them. The paradigm emphasizes
two-way and symmetrical communication of many kinds to provide publics a voice in
management decisions and to facilitate dialogue between management and publics both before
and after decisions are made.

Francesco Lurati of the
University of Lugano, distinguished between the strategic role of corporate communication in
defining organizational objectives and its tactical role in supporting organizational objectives. He
pointed out that practitioners of public relations are eager to assume a strategic role, but they
typically define strategic public relations as communication that supports the implementation of
organizational objectives that corporate communicators had no role in defining. In his words:
“From this perspective corporate communication is considered strategic when it pursues
objectives which are merely aligned with the corporate ones. The term ‘strategy’ does not change
the tactical nature of the task communication fills. In other words, the communication function
here makes no contribution to the defining of corporate strategy.”
If we truly want metrics that show public relations has value to an organization, the
measurements required are deceptively simple. We should measure the nature and quality of
relationships to establish and monitor the value of public relations. And we should evaluate
public relations strategies and tactics to determine which are most effective in cultivating
relationships. In his book, Corporate Public Relations, Marvin Olasky, a conservative critic of
public relations, argued that before the invention of “public relations,” corporate executives
engaged in “private relations” by being personally involved in the community and civic
organizations. With the advent of public relations, which he equated with the interpretive
paradigm, Olasky said that public relations practitioners intervened in this relationship to
manipulate the media and to participate in camouflage techniques of supposed social
responsibility to isolate executives from their publics. Olasky thus identified the importance of
relationships in public relations. Today, we must use social, mediated, and cyber relationships as
well as the interpersonal relationships of Olasky’s ideal time in the past. Relationships are the
key to effective public relations, however, and they can be measured to show its value.

Excellent!

How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything

Howard Rheingold says this about don Tapscott's new book: "The copy on the website is a little hype-y, but the research behind the book is very solid, and their thinking about intellectual property, collaboration, innovation is deeper than their promotional copy indicates."
This is going to be a great Christmas!

Technolgy is finding out if you are to be trusted online

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

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

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

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

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

The Power Geeks - Bloggers

Forrester Research has said that the four million European internet users who write blogs should be "got on side" by advertisers wanting to succeed in the online market.

The company's study into blogger attributes has revealed that those who write blogs spend more time online than they do watching television, and that they spend 50 per cent more time online than regular internet users.

Crucially, Forrester reveals that bloggers are more welcoming of targeted advertising than most internet users, with 41 per cent saying they don't mind such adverts compared to an average figure of 34 per cent.

Bloggers are also more willing to investigate new products, and the social aspect of the medium means that almost 25 per cent of bloggers trust other blogs, compared to just ten per cent of all users.

"Active bloggers can make or break a brand in less than a day. Firms shouldn't fake a relationship with them or they will experience a backlash. To get bloggers on their side, firms should gain bloggers' trust by establishing an honest and transparent relation," said Forrester research director Jaap Favier.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Brands

Andy Lark has an found an excellent article about how PR people can listen to conversations about brand to get a better understanding of what is being said about brands.
The original article is to be found here.

Cutting out web censorship

A tool has been created capable of circumventing government censorship of the web, according to researchers reports the BBC.

The free program has been constructed to let citizens of countries with restricted web access retrieve and display web pages from anywhere.

The University of Toronto's Citizen Lab software, called psiphon, will be released on 1 December.

Net censorship is a growing issue, and several countries have come under fire for blocking online access.

Of course, this is just another example of how Internet Transparency at work.

We really do have to wake up to this phenomenon and learn to live with it.

Making millions in virtual worlds - a PR opportunity?

Still think Second Life is just a game asks B L Ochman. Rob Hof's Businessweek blog, The Tech Beat, reports that Anshe Chung, Second Life's virtual land baroness, has become the first millionaire in Second Life - in real US dollars - from profits entirely earned inside a virtual world. She parlayed her fortune from a $9.95 investment in a Second Life account two years ago.
No we may even see a PR firm act as agent in virtual worlds to make thier fortune - that would be fun.

YouTube on Mobiles

Users who subscribe to Verizon's Vcast service will be able to view content on the YouTube website via their mobiles.

The trial, which will begin in December, will also allow users to post video clips from their phones more easily.

It is likely that similar tie-ups will follow as mobile operators look for value added social network opportunities. Services in the UK are not far away.

More than 100 million video clips are viewed every day on the YouTube website.

Get your video voted onto TV

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

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

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

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

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

Press Complaints Commission - Land Grab?

The BBC reports Press Complaints Commission director Tim Toulmin opposed government regulation of the internet, saying it should a place "in which views bloom". But unless there was a voluntary code of conduct there would be no form of redress for people angered at content.

He spoke during a session on free speech at a London race conference. Mr Toulmin described the phrases "free speech" and "free press" as relative terms because views expressed on the internet are still governed by laws such as libel and data protection.

Not to mention, one might add, the government of fearless people who respond on-line as well.

The 'silent majority' is not as silent as it used to be.

Tomlinson is also reported as saying: "If you want to see how the newspaper industry would look like if it was unchecked, then look at the internet."

well the Internet has now been arround for a long time and the world did not stop. so where is the rub? Or is this a land grab by the PPC to get its sticky fingers on blogs and YouTube?

CIPR and digging holes

Stuart Bruce made this comment this week:

The Chartered Institute of Public Relations has just published its draft (PDF) for consultation of its proposed code of conduct for social media. I will comment more fully once I've had chance to digest it.

My thought before it was published was - why do we need a separate code, we already have one for CIPR and its principles should apply to social media. We don't have a separate code for media relations, event management, internal communications, newsletters, video or dozens of other PR channels and activities.

This is a rambling document and good in parts. I have Responded here. (You can add your comments too). I am a member of the Institute, I have two books on online PR, have published a number of academic papers and I teach the subject as well. I was even the 1999/2000 Chair of the CIPR Internet Commission.

I think there is a need for the CIPR to get the 'social media' thinkers and do-ers together before it ventures out of doors again as recommended in 1999.


So far we have a blog that does not seem to have a strategy; a CIPR blogger who seems it's OK to jump into people's social space and this document which is thrown together.

My recommendadtion is: Stop digging!

Near Field Communication

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Near Field Communication

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Near Field Communication

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Near Field Communication

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Near Field Communication

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

10 Minute News

Jon Silk was working his fingers hard at Lewis PR' Industry Forum this morning blogging my comments in near real time. This is Public Relations served up fast and fun.

My points are well reported which is nice . The significance of 'The Long Tail' is one that needs to be deeply implanted in the minds of both publishers and Public Relations people. Articles, photos and videos have a long , long life.

The picture is not as frightening as it the photo seems to show. Paul Charles of Virgin Atlantic chose to bring two of its new Premium Economy seats to the Forum and I just had to try one out. Paul Hender from Metrica is the other guy measuring it up.

Of course, The Lewis Forum also showed good practice. Here was an event that they presented, and blogged about at the same time. It extended the reach of the event and the Lewis brand.

PR has changed.

Very comfortable and roomy. Better than most club class seats. I now need to try out for real.

Slagging-off legal in California

PC Pro reports The California Supreme Court has ruled that individuals - such as bloggers - who use the Internet to distribute information from another source may not be held to account if the material is considered defamatory. This is a reversal of a previous lower court decision.

The ruling supports federal law that clears individuals of liability if they transmit, but are not the source of, defamatory information. It expands protections the law gives to Internet service providers to include bloggers and activist Web sites.

'We acknowledge that recognizing broad immunity for defamatory republication on the Internet has some troubling consequences,' California's high court justices said in their opinion.

'Until Congress chooses to revise the settled law in this area, however, plaintiffs who contend they were defamed in an Internet posting may only seek recovery from the original source of the statement,' the decision stated.

The law in Europe is NOR the same - don't defame.

Bono ay Habbo

The Guardian has sniffed out Bono and the rest of U2 hosting a pub quiz for all comers, while elsewhere R&B star Jamelia holds court in her own beauty salon.

Next door, teen pop sensations McFly and Shayne Ward are chatting to a throng of inquisitive fans and a new boy band is wandering the corridors trying to drum up attention.

No, these are not the wild fantasies of a tabloid gossip hack, but scenes typical of Habbo Hotel, a 3D online world popular with teens which is being targeted by record companies desperate to find new ways to reach this crucial audience.

So Second Live does not have it all its own way!

On-line Retailers grab the money and run - survey

In a Release issued by Chameleon PR for Blast Radius, Research examining the whole online shopping experience - from first visit to returning unwanted items at the UK’s leading non-food online retailers - has found that even the best online retailers could deliver a very much better shopping experience.

The research, carried out by Marketing Assistance Ltd analysed the top 28 UK online retailers (selected by traffic volume) grading their performance in the run up to the expected boom in web shopping predicted for Christmas 2006.

The researchers purchased a single item from each of the sites, and then sought to return the product once it had been received. They graded their experience against a set of 36 subjective and objective criteria at every step of the process.

The study results show that investment by online retailers tends to focus on what they care about most, securing the sale.

The loosers seem to be B&Q and HMV.

HMV is still, one presumens fighting Napster and music file shareing by ripping off custmers.

1. Amazon UK
2. Dell EMEA
3. Apple Computer UK
4. Next
5. Comet
6. Tesco/ QVC UK
7. Currys/ Littlewoods
8. Asos
9. John Lewis
10. Hewlett-Packard/Marks and Spencer



I think that Wiltshire farm Foods is darn good too.

Enterprise blogging tools

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

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

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

Remember when

I have been looking back at the early days of the Internet and came across the early citations still held about Usenet posting in Google Groups.
Today they seem quaint:

----- 11 May 1981 Oldest Usenet article in the Google Groups Archive
|                 
-------- May 1981 First mention of Microsoft
|
-------- Jun 1981 A logical map of Usenet when it was still small

|
-------- Jun 1981 First mention of Microsoft MS-DOS
|
-------- Aug 1981 First review of the IBM-PC
|
-------- Oct 1981 TCP/IP Digest #1

First mention of Microsoft!

Who remembers the debate between Word Perfect and Word. It was a big issue when we were all decisding which standards we are going to use (and I remember the pain moving to Word)

Newspapers send bloggers to comment on Ashes

Manchester Evening News blogger Graham Hardcastle flew out to Brisbane on Friday and will be filing regular reports for the paper from Australia. As England attempt to get through the Ashes series without suffering any more injuries (and who knows, maybe actually retain the damn urn as well) Graham will be reporting for the paper and he'll also be sharing his thoughts in his own blog on this site.

Perhaps it is now time for PR people to have a list of media bloggers.

Important news

Cricket fans will be able to watch video highlights of the Ashes tests at the end of play every day on the internet.

BBC Sport will show 10 minutes of the best moments of every day of each Ashes test.

Monitoring video coverage

Eric Schonfield has noted a new PR service that allows PR people to monitor video on the web (e.g. YouTube posts). He also notes some mashup opportunities too.

Teens rule the web

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

Social bookmarking

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

The end of Knitting as we know it

Well, you know... that jumble of wires behind your desk. The power for the wifi connections, the camara power cable, the phone charger... knitting behind the desk.
It could all just go away according to BBC reports.
Imagine... full .... no batteries... mobile.

Mobile Moguls Mashup

What happens if you bolt on services and charge for it.
Customers leave in droves.
3G technology was seen as just such an opportunity by the cell phone companies . No one played. It cost a fortune.

Now

At last

Beeb tells us 3 says it is going to make the mobile internet more interesting.

It is launching a partnership with internet firms including Skype, Google and eBay.

The promise is that users will be able to make free internet phone calls, watch their home television on their phone and tap into their home computers on the move.

The price for all these services will be a flat-rate monthly fee.

What took so long guys?

Now we can run some serious integrated (mashup) PR campiagns.

The way we are

I am not in the habit of 'lifting' big blocks of content from other blogs or newspapers. I would rather the source speak for itself. But I am going to steal a big chunk of John Naughton's contribution to the Society of Editors conference reproduced online at the Observer.

Today's 21-year-olds were born in 1985. The internet was two years old in January that year, and Nintendo launched 'Super Mario Brothers', the first blockbuster game. When they were going to primary school in 1990, Tim Berners-Lee was busy inventing the world wide web. The first SMS message was sent in 1992, when these kids were seven. Amazon and eBay launched in 1995. Hotmail was launched in 1996, when they were heading towards secondary school.

Around that time, pay-as-you-go mobile phone tariffs arrived, enabling teenagers to have phones, and the first instant messaging services appeared. Google launched in 1998, just as they were becoming teenagers. Napster and Blogger.com launched in 1999 when they were doing GCSEs. Wikipedia and the iPod appeared in 2001. Early social networking services appeared in 2002 when they were doing A-levels. Skype launched in 2003, as they were heading for university, and YouTube launched in 2005, as they were heading toward graduation...

...Now look round the average British newsroom. How many hacks have a Flickr account or a MySpace profile? How many sub-editors have ever uploaded a video to YouTube? How many editors have used BitTorrent? (How many know what BitTorrent is?).

I think he is a trifle harsh. OK, so the new Telegraph facility is a trifle poky for the journalists and the BBC is buying video clips from local newspapers. The key is that the publishers are now beginning to see that content is only king when the king serves his people.. Hidden behind some walled garden the best that can be expected is a peasants revolt.

Now look at the PR courses offered by the CIPR, Universities and training organisations. There is scant recognition of the real channels for communication and an obsession with gaining admission to the walled garden.

Copy wrong - a report for (PM in waiting) Gordo

Silicon.com's Tim Ferguson writes that some copyright laws are as much as 300 years old and their legal interpretation means consumers who copy CDs and DVDs in order to transfer them to their iPods or equivalent media players are breaking the law.

Kay Withers, who researched and compiled a report for the Institute for Public Policy Research
told silicon.com this is a "key immediate issue for consumers" as "IP law affects absolutely everyone". She added that copyright law needs to be updated to come in line with public preferences for the way media is consumed.

The recommendations are aimed at a review of intellectual property which was set up by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, last year and is due to report its findings in next week.

There is a great case for significant lostening of control. Very little copyright material has any value. Mostly it is a vehicle for creating value. A new legal structure that recognised copyright as the vehicle for creating value would be a big step forward.

OK - you have to listen to Luke Armour

Its just too good. A sendup for all FIR listeners to laugh at for weeks.

This is a really great case study if you want to explain Internet Agency.

Number 10

Number 10 launched the scheme to allow people to petition Prime Minister Tony Blair online, saying it encourages more campaigners than "ever before".

The most popular "e-petition" so far is one calling for the repeal of the 2004 Hunting Act reports the BBC.

PR Strategy needed when using social media

When The Carphone Warehouse boss Charles Dunstone started his corporate blog earlier this year, he was hailed as a cutting-edge chief executive; a man prepared to open up the inner workings of his company to the wider world and willing to communicate directly with his customers, writed Fiona Walsh at the Guardian.

She continues:

But that was April, when Britain's biggest mobile phones retailer was riding high on a wave of favourable publicity about its "free" TalkTalk broadband offer.

Scroll forward a few months and the web is full of tales of "My TalkTalk Hell" as the group struggles to cope with the demand it so badly under-estimated, leaving thousands of customers angry and frustrated.

So what did Dunstone do at the height of the crisis? He simply stopped blogging for two and a half month. His post this Monday largely consists of an apology for his lengthy absence and a reassurance that the broadband supply problems are being worked out.

According to online marketing and communications consultant Debbie Weil, author of The Corporate Blogging Book, Dunstone committed the worst mistake a blogger can make: to start a blog and then abandon it, whether through lack of time or lack of inspiration.

"It makes you look lame," says Weil. "It's important to post regular entries, even if it's only a few lines. An absence of more than two or three weeks is an eternity in the blogosphere."

Which is why using social media needs a Public Relations strategy in place before it is used.

Pearson write a book using a wiki

Pearson the publisher is going to have a crack at writing a business book using a wiki and an online community dedicated to churning it out.

The book called "We Are Smarter Than Me" will look at how businesses can use online communities, consumer-generated media such as blogs, and other Web content to help in their marketing, pricing, research and service.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the project is being controlled through the WeAreSmarter.org web site. Chapter headings and a few starter pages were penned to direct the project. The big idea is that the community writes the information and provides more anecdotes.

Not the first but interesting to see a big publisher using social media.

AIM 6.0

AOL has launched AIM 6.0, an enhanced version of its instant messaging service. As one of the most used IM services this is a channel that is important in Public Relations and features offering deeper integration with the ISP's social networking needs to be noted.

AIM 6.0 offers a mobile dashboard to forward instant messages to users' mobile phones, and an expanded Buddy List which can now hold up to 1,000 contacts.

Automatic tagging

Every person who has digital photos faces the problem of forgetting valuable information about people or objects captured on an image. Moreover, as the number of images grows, an ability to quickly find the desired image becomes crucial. Now you can annotate individual elements or parts of the image. Its a really handy idea for tagging photos in social media. It is something PR people need to be able to manage large photo libraries and tag them for use on the web.

Users can place easy-to-hide annotation tags directly on a picture in order to describe specific objects. Each tag can have an arbitrary location and contain a free text capturing the names of the people, links to Web sites or other images, explanations, translations of inscriptions, and more. The tags can be hidden in a click of a button so the original view is never spoiled.

As images are annotated, FotoTagger lets users easily find people or objects by their names or other text typed in the tags across piles of digital pictures.

To let users share annotation with an image wherever it goes, annotation tags are embedded in an ordinary JPEG file meaning the image content description always stays with the image itself. Users can publish tagged photos to Blogger.com, LiveJournal, as well as to their own Web sites, Flickr and other social media.

More information from www.phototagger.com.

Citizen web - an issue for PR

IT Pro had this story this week.

Home-made videos, songs, blogs and other user-generated content will eventually exceed the amount of professionally produced web-based content, claims a senior Google executive.

Asked if the volume of home-produced entertainment and information could overtake the amount of professional content, Nikesh Arora, European head of the internet search engine said: "Of course. Definitely."

This will mean that PR people will have to be 'involved' with the creators of such content.

Is there a pint in it?

Will Sturgeon reports on what we really think about personal authentication and security issues - is there a pint in it.

Although opposition to biometrics - the authentication of the individual based on factors such as iris or fingerprint recognition - remains strong, support appears to be growing as long as there is a tangible benefit for the average man and woman on the street.

And perhaps the most average activity of all - going into the local pub for a pint – is one area where biometrics could find a more welcoming constituency, according to the results of a silicon.com poll.

For PR's in events management, this is an opportunity... no more checking people in at events - just look into thier eyes.

UK sans-zunes

Some corporate speak is just not believable.

Microsoft says it has no firm plans to launch the 'iPod killer' Zune digital media player anywhere outside of the US following its official release later this month.

Zune will go head-to-head with Apple's iPod when it goes on sale in the US from 14 November, and comments from the darkside this week claimed the device would not hit the UK until late 2007 or early 2008.

With half the US population ready to trade in their iPods for Zunes I can't imagine Microsoft waiting for another competitor to grab the action.

Meantime PR should be gearing up to offer stuff on the new platform.

PayPal have 33% UK market penetration

One-third of all UK adults now have a PayPal account, according to the online payment company.

Not only does this open opportunities for e-commerce, it means there is a currency out there for more on-line PR as well. As direct PR generated relationships mature, the buying proposition can be as a direct result of PR activity.

Currently, around 15 million people in the UK use the system to make and receive online payments.

PayPal CEO Geoff Iddison said advances in technology and the demands of a "time-poor" society are transforming the way we shop and transfer money.

More about heads in the oven

Second Life - the corporate invasion

Besides Crayon and Text100, lots of real-world businesses that have set up outposts in Second Life.

Adidas
Nissan
Sun Microsystems
Reebok
Penguin
American Apparel
Reuters
CNET Networks
PA Consulting
Yankee Stadium
Bartle Bogle Hegarty

On line more secure than you think

e-commerce is far safer than it is perceived to be. And yet the message appears not to be getting through.

Sure there are problems - where there is money there is crime - but statistics from PayPal (which has a very obvious reason to want to address these concerns) suggest the majority of UK adults still think the internet poses a considerable risk.

And, according to Silicon.com

A credit card number has never - to our knowledge - been intercepted in flight. This is because, to use an analogy, it is like trying to shoot down the smallest, fastest moving bird through a thicket of trees.

To further the analogy, it's far easier for the criminals to wait therefore until all these birds are sat in one big coop with all the other birds and then try to find a way to take them all rather than wrestling with the complexity of taking them one by one.

As such, the database is more commonly the target than the transaction. And databases are at risk whether it is an ecommerce site or a high street shop processing the transaction.

e-media spend - £36 per year per person

Nielsen/NetRatings reported that UK consumers are starting to embrace the idea of paying for their e-media.

On average people are spending £36 per year. Video content is closing the gap on audio, accounting for 43 per cent of spending.

The biggest spenders are unsurprisingly the 18 to 24 age group, which spends an average of £5.34 per month on online content. Men shell out around 40 per cent more than women per month.

Does this mean that men need more entertaining.

Interactive video

The Agent Provocateur film, will be the first viral film that allows viewers to click on objects within a moving video and be directed straight to the relevant information webpage/site.

The viral trailer is being distributed this week by NovaRising via interactive video email, which opens directly within the receiver’s email application. Initial click through rates of up to 56% have been recorded so far in the campaign.

In the meantime, in the interests of factual completion, I thought you may like to see the video in YouTube.

It cuts out the email middleman.

Integrate email and cell phones plus mobile video and podcasts

Allisblue has announced a partnership with European Telecom, to offer its 'SMS2mail' service in the UK.

The technology creates a link between SMS and email and transform all types
of mobile telephones into Web remote controls.

By sending an sms (or placeing a a call) to initiate the transfer of content, applications can include:
News briefs, administrative forms, access to a contest, downloading of an MP3, Video clips, Manuals and even a video game.

This will be a useful tool for all kinds of PR activity including issues and crisis management, information for journalists, podcasting and lots of other things.

The Online PR opportunity

A study, commissioned by Bluestreak, reveals consumer behaviour and attitudes towards emerging technologies including podcasts, text messages (SMS), RSS, blogs and message boards as well as the more traditional email platform.

The rate of adoption for new communication technologies represents a huge opportunity for Public Relations. The findings of the survey help us find out why.

People use a range of channles: 100 percent of respondents currently use email compared to 88 percent using text messaging; 71 percent using message boards; 63 percent using blogs; 36 percent using podcasting and 28 percent using RSS.

There is acceptance of adjunct messages and even advertising as the trade-off for good content and a further willingness to accept ads and "sponsored" content as long as the information is relevant and high-quality. As always, over-communicating can have an adverse effect both on the marketer's brand and their bottom line.

The proliferation of sponsored channels seems to have an impact on consumers’ usage (30 percent would stop reading a blog they know it is sponsored, 34 percent would stop reading a sponsored message board). Text messaging advertising is cited as the most unpopular form of advertising communication among these five emerging channels (77 percent of respondents say there is too much text advertising and 80 percent feel negatively towards text message advertisers).

A majority of respondants expressed a feeling thta ads are either “random” “get in the way” or “are not directed to me”

Although consumers accept the existence of advertising, most do not respond unless they feel the offer is "personalized" or "useful"

Although podcasting is included in this criticism, it also had the highest score among its peer set on relevance/personalization with 25 percent feeling the ads accomplished that goal.


Consumers are mainly concerned about viruses, identity theft and spyware as byproducts of using such channels (64, 56 and 53 percent respectively). Spam concerns were listed below these at 44 percent.

Respondents consider “emails they once signed up for but no longer want” as spam.

Building communities would still seem to offer the best opportunity.

PR TV now playing

PR practitioners can now host their own on line video Screening Rooms, inviting others to watch high-quality video content, while they control the video experience.

Online portal Lycos has launched a new site that lets users watch video content and chat with other users at the same time.

Initially available as a beta test, Lycos Cinema uses a patent-pending video platform which allows users to view and chat in real-time.

IBM sticks its head in the oven

On Monday I commented about how we have such an awful time with our heads stuck in the virtual world of our computer screens. Well IBM has already given it a lot of thought.
CEO Sam Palmisano announced a $100 million spending plan in front of more than 7,000 employees at a Town Hall meeting held on the popular virtual world Second Life. Palmisano unveiled 10 new business opportunities the company intends to pursue.
Each of those ideas will receive approximately $10 million in funding to be spent over the next 12 months. One of the ideas Palmisano will announce is that IBM is forming a new business unit to help clients use lessons learned from virtual worlds to real-world business problems.

Chief technology officer, Irving Wladawsky-Berger, is on record saying (on his blog) "using such virtual, highly visual capabilities to help us design, simulate, optimize, operate and manage business activities of all sorts is going to be one of the most important breakthroughs in the IT industry over the next decade."

"I am convinced that dealing with such business applications in a kind of SimBusiness fashion -- that is, the application feels like a realistic simulation of the business and its operations -- will not only transform IT but business itself."

I have no doubt.

Web advertsing - big under estimations - Semel

There is a fixation among so many people that the internet is the web. US online ad revenues have reached a new record according to figures from the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB). They are talking about web sites (remember those things - sort of brochures with gizmos).

The report, conducted by PwC, showed a 33% increase in internet ad revenues from the same period in 2005.

But, in a speech in London yesterday, Yahoo! CEO Terry Semel said growth predictions were underestimating the market by failing to take account of the potential of video, social media and mobiles advertising. "[Video] will be ever-present throughout the internet, and it will find its proper way to advertise. "So whether it's mobile or whether it's video or whether it's more and more community, these factors have not gone into those numbers, so we think the actual growth potential of advertising online is really being understated."

And lots of it is 'community' the natural space for PR practice.

Local Newspapers stringers for the Beeb

BBC director general Mark Thompson speaking at the Society of Editors conference promised that online local TV would work in "partnership" with local newspapers, and even pay them for content.

"But in the words of one regional newspaper executive, the most constructive thing Thompson could have said would have been: "We're not going to do it."

"Thompson told the Glasgow conference this week: "In addition to our own local and regional newsrooms, we want to draw on the newsgathering clout of the UK's local and regional newspapers — and we'll pay for it.

"That means a revenue stream, but also visibility and credit on the BBC's new local service."

Not to mention an extra outlet for the video content generated by local newspaper reporters.

Vodaphone offers grungy broadband

Vodafone has said it will offer broadband for £25 a month from January 8 to Vodafone mobile phone customers.

The "Vodafone at Home" package includes line rental, unlimited broadband access, landline calls within Britain and 25% off calls to mobiles. Bla de Bla de Bla.

Rivals Carphone Warehouse, Orange and satellite TV operator BSkyB, BT et al have been battling for subscribers with grungy 2 to 8 meg Broadband a load of junk dumped on your computer (called 'giveaways') and time wasting hours - sometimes days and days and weeks of Internet downtime while they swap you to their equally slug like service.

If Vodafone could offer cellular broadband for my laptop at a price that makes sense, a decent link from phone to computer without a heap more software dumped on it (oh... and yet ANOTHER bloody email address), they may have a chance.

Welsh put forward best PR campaigns

David Williamson tells us that SWANSEA-BASED public relations agency MGB PR has notched up eight nominations in the PR industry's flagship awards.

This record number of possible prizes at the Chartered Institute of Public Relations awards is a first for Wales in the process as it now holds the title of the most-nominated PR company in the UK.

Brits lag in the blog race

Among Europeans Britons are the least switched on to web logs, an Ipsos MORI poll found.

The French are far more savvy.

The survey of 2,200 Europeans that 90 percent of French people surveyed said they were familiar with blogs, nearly twice as many as the number of Britons interviewed (50 percent).

But the rest of Europe is barely logged-on when it comes to online diaries either. The Spanish did only marginally better than Britons in recognising the term blog (51 percent), while in Germany, 55 percent were blog-aware, and in Italy, 58 percent had heard of the term reports Reuters.

Blogs - the new sellers medium?

Blogs are becoming a force to be reckoned with as a means of advertising products, according to an Ipsos MORI poll. It found that the Internet journals are a more trusted source of information than TV advertising or e-mail marketing.

Well! What a suprise! Here is more of the report from Reuters.

Ipsos MORI found a direct link between blogs, or user-generated content, and people's intentions to buy goods or services. Any company that fails to come up to standard should beware. The blog is replacing word of mouth for endorsing or condemning a product or service. About a third of those Europeans questioned said they had been put off making a purchase after reading negative comments on the Internet from customers or other web-users, while 52 percent said they had been persuaded to buy after a positive review on a blog. Get it right, and blogs could be a boost to companies and even save on their advertising and marketing budgets. Blogs, or weblogs, are a more trusted source of information (24 percent) than television advertising (17 percent) and email marketing (14 percent), the survey commissioned by Hotwire, a technology public relations consultancy, said.But they still lag behind newspapers (30 percent).

Head in the Oven

The NewPR conference on Friday was, as always, great fun. The light bulbs that go on are especial fun and meeting Victoria Newlands (a student from Lincoln University who is really into social media) and having a good gossip with Simon Wakeman, Stuart Bruce, Neville Philip, Rob Skinner and Rob Skinner was an extra bonus.

Nicky and Andrew Wake from Don't Panic have a very friendly way of managing conferences which is a boon. I should say that Sam (from Bournemouth Uni was there too... Hi Sam! can't wait for you to blog about the conference too (and this is what we got up to while you trained it back for the Graduation Ball).

The conference closed with an overview of networking and a short but debate-provoking look at virtual environments but mostly Second Life.

One of the conference goers, said that she would rather out her head in the oven that go into SecondLife.

It struck me that this is where most of us really are.

We have our heads stuck, not in an oven but close to it, a computer screen. In there we play with a pretty clunky virtual environment (word processing, emailing, a bit of IM, cut, copy, save, drag, retype, look up phone number, tasks to do - all that sort of stuff). Its very boring. It is virtual environments with none of the fun. It is the equivalent of a smoky industrial town of the 19th century. It is a pretty smelly oven.

PR's, Journo's, marketers, CEO's all with their heads in the oven.

Perhaps it is time that decent virtual environment should be made available.

Something and somewhere worth inhabiting. A place where work is not clunky, soulless, and populated by documents, pages and emails but populated with people, action and results.

We have had our heads in an oven.... Can we move on now please?

Public Relations affects England soccer lin-up

ROD LIDDLE writing for the Times Online reports that:

".... it is assumed, probably correctly, that Beckham’s defenestration from the England set-up was a judgment based more on public relations than on Beckham’s apparently declining ability on the football pitch.

A new manager who began the job tainted by his association with the discredited previous regime asserted his supposed independence by dropping the player most closely connected to Sven-Göran Eriksson — the player Sven would never drop, no matter how hopelessly he was performing. Steve McClaren seems not to have the slightest intention of picking Beckham, no matter how catastrophically his first-choice XI perform."

The interesting part of this is a media comment that recognises a PR strategy into the management mix. The important part is that it shows how important it is, even for a Football star, to have a public relations strategy.

Voices for your podcast

After wading through the usual PR/marketing hype, this news from a press release may be useful.
Voices.com has added three new categories of voices including documentary voice over categories that you can use for you podcasts.

The abomination called a press release takes hundreds of words to say it but if you are really bored, the release was published at Newswire Today.

Google dug up worms

Google has apologised to users of its Google Video Blog, some 50,000 of whom were exposed to an email worm after three postings were infected and sent out to mailing lists. No details of how the incident happened have emerged, and Google claims to be 'taking steps' to prevent such occurrences reports Virus Bulletin.

The blog (here) is used to keep readers informed of the latest and best additions to the YouTube-style Google Video system, and includes an email subscription system for updates. The postings, made on Tuesday night and since removed, were infected with 'W32/Kapser.a@mm', also commonly known as MyWife, Nyxem or Blackmal and referred to in the press as the Kama Sutra worm.

For PR people this sort of news is a problem. Where do you go to for advice, how can you tell if you have a virus and how can you be sure you are not passing one on.

Try the virus checking software people. They have really good information on these things.

Telegraph.co.uk launches bloggers 'style' guide

Telegraph.co.uk, which has 14 bloggers, has published an editorial style guide for its bloggers.

Pause in rate of blog growth

Blog growth, which is down from an average of 160,000 new blogs per day in July to 100,000 new blogs at the end of September. Technorati’s latest State of the Blogosphere report shows continuing growth in the number of active blogs, with over 57 million blogs currently being tracked. Blog numbers has slowed slightly since the last quarter, something Technorati put down to more effective measures at limiting the number of spam blogs (aka 'splogs') listed.

English langauge now accounts for less than 40% of blogs, with Japanese and Chinese language blogs in second and third place (in terms of popularity).

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THE PR search engine

Contantin has done it again.

Here is his introduction:

If you want to search across all the PR blogs, wikis, and news feeds included in the PR & Communications Blogs List, you can use a custom search powered by Google Co-op:

http://301url.com/prblogsearch

BT slugging it out - again

Increasingly, broadband is allowing people to contribute back to the net rather than just being passive downloaders of content, reports the BBC. But, while uptake has helped the UK to the broadband fast track, lack of speed compared to other countries could still see it derailed.

Experts warn the UK is falling behind its European counterparts when it comes to speed. In the UK the fastest speed currently on offer is 24Mbps (megabits per second) although typically the fastest people will get is about 8Mbps. French surfers are enjoying around 24Mbps as standard. BT does not plan to roll out its next-generation broadband until the middle of 2007.

Broadband is certainly holding our attention - with high-speed surfers spending around six hours more online each week than those still using dial-up.

Keeping up with like minded people - marketers note

BL Ochman reports that most big brand sims in Second Life are empty or have little traffic despite massive MSM media coverage, and many events are poorly attended. "That's because brands aren't creating or joining groups -- the most fundamental aspect of the metaverse's social structure, says Linda Zimmer in Business Communicators of Second Life."

At the same time she has reported on how Penguine, the publishers and others are opening a new presence, a virtual one, in SL.

It goes without saying that there is no point in moving in and then not joining the community. Its just like moving house. Some people just don't know how to get out and become a member of the community - I wonder how the marcom executives get a life if they can't get one in a virtual community?

Why blogging matters - six expert views

Dan Greenfield - VP Corporate Communications - EarthLink – Bernaisesource

Invites you to join a converastion with:

David Armano - Creative VP - Digitas – Logic + Emotion

Peter Blackshaw - CMO - Nielsen Buzz Metrics – Consumer Generated Media

David Churbuck - VP Global Web Marketing - Lenovo – Churbuck

Dan Greenfield - VP Corporate Communications - EarthLink – Bernaisesource

Eric Kintz – VP Global Marketing Strategy - Hewlett-Packard – Marketing Excellence

Will Waugh – Senior Director, Communications - ANA – Marketing Maestros

Introduction

Technology has enabled customers to dramatically change their attitude towards marketing. As a result, they are tuning out in increasing numbers and talking back. Customers are shifting massively their entertainment and information consumption away from traditional media to the new web space.

How to influence nespapers 'social media' experiments

The moves by some publications into 'social medi' was examined last Saturday by Erick Schonfeld. He posted about how people can influence some of the ideas currently being tried by some publishers and how they can be influenced.

He writes:

Gannett newspapers are turning to their readers to help research and write stories in a new "crowdsourcing" initiative. The idea is to tap into the knowledge, and even investigative zeal, of readers to help cover stories for the papers. It sounds like USA Today wants to look more like Digg.

But figuring out how to tap into the culture of participation without abandoning journalistic objectivity is going to be tricky. Once people figure out that they can influence what goes on the front pages of Gannett's 90 local papers across the country, they will try to game the system. As Digg is finding out, giving the crowd a voice comes with its own set of issues.

Watch out for some people in the publicity industry using these idea - and comming to grief.

Who is offering homes for your content

By Erick Schonfeld, Business 2.0 Magazine has an interesting view about file sharing start-ups.

I list them here but he has some excellent comments.

Sharing Made Simple
Several new services hope to profit from letting people exchange big digital files.
SERVICE	HOW IT WORKS	COST	BUSINESS MODEL
AllPeers	Transfers files to your buddies through a BitTorrent-based add-on to Firefox.	Free	Content delivery fees, peer-produced media sales
Glide	Stores and shares digital media via browser-based "desktop" or smartphone	300MB free; $5/month for 1GB; $10/month for 4GB	Subscription fees, software licensing
MediaMax	Stores digital photos, movies, and other files on the Web	25GB free; $5-$30/month for 100-1,000GB	Subscription fees; software licensing; advertising
Myfabrik	Sends links to shared files stored on the Web or a Maxtor Fusion hard drive	1GB free; 49 cents/month for each additional GB	Subscription fees, software licensing
Pando	E-mail attachments initiates BitTorrent-based P2P transfer backed by server	Free	Content delivery fees, advertising
YouSendIt	Sends links to uploaded files good for 14 days; designed for business use	100MB free; $5-$30/month for more	Subscription fees
Zapr	Turns any file or folder on your PC into a shareable Web link	Free	Advertising

The future of blogging

Frank Barnako, over at Market Watch last week talked about his friend Herb Greenberg, a fellow runner and blogger, who said, "There are simply too many blogs. There is going to be a huge shakeout."

Frank suggests that while a shakeout in business often means lost jobs, in blogs, it just means less to read. Wouldn't that be wonderful?

We'll know more about blogs next week, when Technorati publishes its quarterly review of the 'sphere. I suspect we'll see some shakeout in terms of bloggers who have begun posting less frequently.

Frank suggests that the novelty of blogging must be wearing off, if not for the writers, then for the readers.

Well I disagree.

There will be churn. There is a limit to the total number which will be limited by population/broadband penetration of the internet.

Mostly there will be new widgets (video on my blog - woweeee!), there will be more excitement in new areas of blogging - politics this week, economics next.

Most of all will be the realisation by organisations that they need digital footprint.

The loss of competitive edge for today's sales and long term sales growth will be tied to the number of comments and hyperlinks that add to the on-line property.

Its an asset, stupid!

It delivers people to your online store who will buy your fastest and slowest moving stock on-line and at minimal cost.

Companies need web pages that link to their site - economic fact.
Blogs are good at creating loads of such pages - Internet fact.

Shakeout, maybe, diminution? only if the facts of economic life pass organisations by.

Is PR ready for the video revolution?

This is getting to be boring. Every day, it seems, I tell of a new video news medium.

I wonder how the PR industry is coping?

Friday, it wasn't just Dow Jones who launched a bunch of online video channels (see "Dow Jones TV: Can Print Guys Do Video?), so did CNNMoney.com.

So did 60 local newspapers in the UK.....

So now we need to find the capabilities that turn us into video experts....

Blog style - a new form of magazine?

B2Day is finally pulling back the covers on Business 2.0 Beta, its new experiment with blogging at the magazine.

As Its editor has mentioned, from now on, the blog you are reading will be called The Next Net and the official Business 2.0 blog will be B2 Beta. What they are doing is essentially launching a mini-network of blogs all written by B2 staffers (including reporters, editors, and even our art director and a photography editor), and collecting all the posts on B2 Beta.

This is interesting for PR people. From now on they will be pitching to a blogger, not a journalist.... I wonder what the Journos will say on their blogs about time wasting pitches - will they name names?

Typepad gets voice message widget

The millions of visitors to blogs now have a new option for leaving their comments. They can record messages in their own voices using a computer microphone. The Evoca Browser Mic. available as a Widget for TypePad, now makes it possible for blog readers to leave voice comments using the Typepad blogging platform.

THE DOUBLE PARADOX

This is a case study from 1999. It is still relevant today:

It was a chill morning in London on October the 16 1986 and a day that was to create
one of the pivotal events in Internet Activism. It was the day when a campaign was
started to put McDonalds in the centre of anti-corporatism by a number of activists.

It gave rise to the longest civil court case in history between David Morris and Helen
Steel and McDonald's.

The appearance of a Web site created by the activists, came in February 1996 when
Morris and Steel launched the McSpotlight site from a laptop connected to the
internet via a mobile phone outside a McDonald's store in Central London. The
Website was accessed more than a million times in its first month. It was headline
news across the world.

By any standards, the McSpotlight site is big and has an amazing amount of content.
A large part of the content is critical of McDonald's and some is allegedly libellous.

£60,000 settlement against Morris and Steel, the Web site was accessed 2.2 million
times.

The first paradox is that McDonald's won the court case but the allegations are still on
the Web site available to this day (and is mirrored across the world so that if it is
turned off in one country, its content can be accessed from another).

The second paradox is that with so much criticism about the company available for all
to see, the company remains one of the most successful food retailers in the UK and
across the world. McDonald's ten years after the court case was the largest and best-known global foodservice retailer it had more than 24,500 restaurants in 116 countries. Its share price was four time higher than when the McSpotlight site was launched and dividends per share were up 44%.

It there a linkage between corporate performance and Internet criticism? Will there be
a link as the Internet expands?

There are a number of considerations. The first is that all this happened a long time
ago. In 1997, at the end of the court case and 18 month after the launch of
McSpotlight, the on-line population was 57 million (in 1999 it was 179 million) of which
only 960,000 were in the UK (over 10 million in 1999)

Today, the McSpotlight site is really a gateway site for people who are interested in
anti-corporate activism. Compared to many other activist issues, McDonalds is a
relative side show.

McDonalds significance for most people is its brand strength. It is a company that
delivers on its promise (caviar no, fries yes, silver service no, in a box with a paper
tissue yes). In this respect it is trusted by consumers.


The apparent double paradox is, in fact a matter of timing and the fast changing
dynamic of the Internet.

The Consumer Opinion pages of Yahoo show a list of rogue sites which reputation
managers should visit to see examples of what may affect them at any time.
Smaller brands in a virtual community ten times as big, may not be so lucky. So just
when should a company get scared of the Internet?

There is a lot to take out of this.

Critically, there is an issue of the real effect of activism on reputation and the effect of reputation on the value of companies.

Is the effect of the internet on markets more potent today than ten or even six years ago?

Do the financial markets reflect the trading patterns of companies under pressure from Internet activism?

Is there a parallel for, say Dell and in the blogging era.

Perhaps its time to re-visit the effects of on-line activism.

Eleven Years ago - The Internet and PR

Eleven Years ago this week Dr Reginald Watts, Dr Jon White, Tom Brannan and David Phillips explored the future in a Public Relations future gazing symposium.

This is how I introduced the Internet:

‘The new media will enfranchise the individual
with more one-to-one, one to many and many to many communication which will be
easy by personal ‘phones, E-mail and video conferencing. Person-to-person-to machine
and database communication will be more important, electronically managed
and more global. Increasingly this broth threatens brands and corporate reputation and
needs professionalism to immunise (our organisations) or doctor the effects of the
brew.
‘In its most perfect form, reputation management sustains relationships with publics
in a state of equilibrium during both evolution and in crisis. This enhances corporate
goodwill (a tradable asset).
‘The big change is that many-to-many global communication brings with it loss of
‘ownership’ of language, culture and knowledge and that there is a breakdown in
intellectual property rights, copyright and much plagiarism. This is already a major
problem.
‘News now travels further and faster and is mixed with history, fantasy and
technology. Reputation in crisis is even more vulnerable. At a growing rate, the new
media uses reputation as ‘merchandise’, stripped from the foundations which created
it, then traded for pieces of silver - and at a discount’. ...

(IPR symposium in 1995)