Survey tool

Mrweb offers this news: Kinesis Survey Technologies, a software firm based in Austin, TX, has announced the release of Version 4.0 of its online survey creation package. New features include multilingual support, and more advanced options for tabulation, validation and invitation management.The solution promises researchers the ability to easily design, launch, and analyze a web or wireless survey. Key new features include:

Movie from the mato grosso

Digital movie business debuts are publiciesd by cnet which says Amazon's service, which was expected to launch last month will deliver full-length feature films and TV shows to customers over the Web in two ways, sources said. One is through a subscription service, where customers pay a flat fee to view movies over a certain time period. The other will be either a pay-per-view or a pay-per-movie service, according to sources.
Meanwhile, Apple also appears to have Hollywood on its mind given the theme of its press event scheduled for 12 September, 'It's Showtime'.

This is going to unravel into the biggest social networking rip off of all time.

Podcasting Plod

West Yorkshire Police has taken an innovative approach to ensuring the county’s new students stay safe and secure.

The Force has broken with its traditional methods of delivering crime prevention messages and for the first time is using a series of special Podcasts featuring basic safety advice from the Force’s Crime Reduction, Detective Inspector John Minary.

The podcasts are for students to download and play back at a convenient time The Force’s Website Manager Patrick Brooke said: “More and more people are joining the “podcast revolution” downloading mp3 audio files, similar to radio, to listen to via their computer or on a portable mp3 device, such as an iPod. “They are especially popular with students and we hope they will download our latest topical safety messages along with their favourite tunes and radio programmes.

Facebook faces revolt

Kevin Allison the FT's man in San Francisco says that Facebook, the social networking web site is facing revolt from its 9 million users.

Th problem is the introduction of new features that have raised privacy concerns which allow other users to keep tabs on changes to their friends’ profiles, photographs and other personal information.

Yadee Yardy Ya - the PR phone-round - and celeb journalist

Yes, I know, it should not happen. There are all the reasons why a PR company should not blast out a hundred copies of a release and then follow each one up with a phone call...

'Hi my name is Samantha from Best in the World PR, we sent you a press release about The Greatest Company on Earth and I wanted to see if you would be using it ...... I will email you a another copy now .... let me get back to you about that .....'

It does happen... But will it be relevant in the new era as the newspapers move from 1665 to 2006.

Lets first consider the New Media Release first.

• Its technical
• You loose control because technology can pick up the content and mash it.
• It might not be interpreted by a journalist
• It could find its way into blogs.
• Why adopt a process that is going to put people out of a job and reduce billable hours?

Lets stay where we are.

OK.

But, over the last few years, the number of journalists both staff and freelance has been dropping like a stone. They are very busy, they get a zillion emails and even printed press releases, there are a host of phone calls and they are expected to output story after story like a sausage machine.

Having time to garner the stories the editor needs, checking back on facts and sources and writing is one thing, using, even trusting, feeds arriving from some on-line aggregator is suspect, time consuming and a pain. But... hang on, there is some merit in being able to get past the marketing speak to the story and having lots of available background to give journalistic depth and their own spin. Perhaps for the Journalist there is some advantage.

Disrupting their day is hard and tiresome for both parties when its human. When it is computer driven, it has all the attributes of a punch bag.

There has to be a better way.

Yes there is but, at face value, neither party is going to like it much.

The machines can do a lot more. There is a computer programme that can combine past editorial, current press releases, blogs and wikis and create mashed up content that is founded in historic reportage and current PR outputs leavened with academic research and papers and flavoured with social (blogs etc) content. The amount of content such programmes can review and include into relatively short articles is stunning. The resulting texts are very readable, germane and comprehensive. Unlike present content, the computer can be limited in the amount of content it will use from a single writer, title, publisher or genre of information. Yes, its plagiarism but of significantly lesser degree than current reporting and much less circular and worrying than the current model exposed by shown by Chris Patern earlier this year.

The output might need editing ( I have seen it and, yes, it needs editing into good grammar), but that is a heap better that all the work involved in researching and writing most stories.

I can envisage a day when news outlets deploy such programmes (very soon too).

What then happens to the PR agency and the journalist?

The PR agency is OK. It has to find more copy, more angles, deeper background briefing and content (sounds, pictures, video and even avatars in some cases), and interference in social media leavened with facilitating face to face (Oh! all right - Skype to Skype) conversations with key opinion formers. Its role gets bigger even if the skill sets change.

The Publisher get a big bonus. They have access to much more content, a wider range of content and can fill the new on-line pipeline 24 hours a day using automation. They never run out of news. It is current and cheap.

In addition journalists are relieved of the mundane. They can have more rewarding jobs in part because they do not have to be a sausage machine and in part they have access to the mashup of historic and current comment from which to take a new different and interesting perspectives.

If one takes the topic of the day in the UK, the 'orderly transition of the Leadership of the Labour Party', the new and news content was available electronically. It came as historic media and on-line news and comment and new blog posts and press releases. That kind of content can be automated. The added value was in private briefing and commentary, which once published, goes into the common pool of news.

One can see the difference between automated 'news' and journalist input.

The key here is that the real and actual voice of the journalist is present at his/her outlet and is 'mashed' for all other outlets.

What I see coming from these developments is celebrity journalism. Hugely valuable, hard working, very well connected and expert journalists.

There is an element of win win here.

And for us, the news consumer?

We can 'pull' the information we need, when we need it and then can indulge in that relationship that the media always brought to its readers, as Guy Consterdine put it, reading a favourite magazine is like talking with a friend. We can get the popular 'mash up' news and as a treat a personality journalist take on it.

Of course, these organisations that still want to hide behind firewalls will be fine. Just marginalised.

In the 17^th through 19^th Centuries all of the papers practiced an "advocacy" journalism, it is genre that can adapt and perhaps be more honest than the "objective journalism" of the 20^th Century.


How brave the publishers can be is evident from the Daily Telegraph which is investing heavily in its on-line future but who will be next and who will really adopt the semantic web as the backbone of media.



Picture: The Telegraph Hub published by the Press Gazette today: "The Daily Telegraph is promising to revolutionise the production process of its journalism with what it believes will be the UK’s first truly integrated multi-media newsroom at its new offices at London Victoria."

Clips go Mobile - PRNewswire

This week, PRNewswire is canvassing opinion as to whether practitioners would like their clips on their mobile phones.

This is a text only service. Some of these texts could be quite long.

As most readers know, I have summarisation software that can reduce a press clip to 50 words. A trial can be downloaded from c|net here.

In addition, with a bunch of friends, we have worked out how we can deliver press clip summaries text in spoken words (text to voice).

This means we could deliver clips (aggregate and de-duped RSS feeds or hyperlink to article):

Most relevant first
Any or selected times/intervals of the day
In summary linking to full text
Text email, web, SMS (RSS udate as well)
Voice to mobile phone, iPod, PC.
XML for internal interoperability (you can use the output in other software really easily and integration is dead cheap)
All sorts of metrics because the computer 'reads' every article.

So far no one has said they want it (well ... some want it free, of course).

New Blogging Software

The booming blogging market finds a surprise newcomer from the UK as Terapad.com (wwww.terapad.com) goes out of private beta and launches on September 6th says WebHost Directory.

"Blogging has been technologically very active recently, but feature-wise it's been completely stagnant. We've capitalized on this and added all the features of major corporate websites to the blogging equation." said Stephan Tual, CEO, as he inaugurated the site.

Why all PR students should blog and be in Second Life

Seth Godin passes this on:

Juggler Interview

Circus Manager: How long have you been juggling?
Candidate: Oh, about six years.

Manager: Can you handle three balls, four balls, and five balls?
Candidate: Yes, yes, and yes.

Manager: Do you work with flaming objects?
Candidate: Sure.

Manager: ...knives, axes, open cigar boxes, floppy hats?
Candidate: I can juggle anything.

Manager: Do you have a line of funny patter that goes with your juggling?
Candidate: It's hilarious.

Manager: Well, that sounds fine. I guess you're hired.
Candidate: Umm...Don't you want to see me juggle?

PR account exec candidate: "Have you read my blog?"

SMS applications

There’s a lot of talk about the use of SMS messaging as a communications tool recently. Textually.org has some interesting commentary on the matter, says Piaras Kelly.

This time it is about Text Messaging (SMS).

He says:
It’s obvious that a message is able to be spread much more rapidly than ever before, but can organisations take advantage of this and harness that power. In some cases I believe it can, but we have some way to go before we’ve mastered its use as a communications tool. An example of this would be BA’s decision to send 20,000 SMS messages during the recent terror scare in the UK.

Has your PR consultancy a capability as powerful as this?

It may be an idea to look into this form of communication.

MySpace in iTunes space

Website MySpace is to allow unsigned bands featured on the social networking site to sell their music as downloads reports the BBC.

The suggestion is that the site - which has 106 million users - is currently testing the idea, and hopes to rival market leader iTunes.

If you want to market your podcast (who said that its just music in the podscene), there would seem to be yet another place to offer it.

Pitching to the 24 Hour Telegraph

The Telegraph is to offer between 10 and 12 pages of news for download from about 5pm each day. The Guardian offers an online download service, G24, which is updated throughout the day, reports Guardian Online.

The working day will change as part of the "24-hour news operation", with the first editorial meeting at 7am.

Editorial meetings will continue throught the day in a rolling process.

You could pitch a story at 11 am and have it published by noon.

Can the clipping companies cope?

Mobile PR

Media Guardian notes that Advertising on mobile phones is expected to boom over the next five years, creating a market worth more than $11.3bn (£6bn) annually, with consumers persuaded to accept adverts on their handsets by the offer of free content such as TV channels, games and music.

I don't want to pour cold water on the hopes and aspirations of the aadvertisingindustry (all those advertising bucks and no where to spend them) but, it you want a serious turn off for mobile, advertising is it. They could get a lot of mud on their face.

This can only be good news for VoIP and the vendors of services that are not driven by 'in yer face' scream marketing.

Offering the means by which we can seek interesting things, including entertainment, when we want it, how we want it and in the way we want it is very different.

This means that PR has to understand the breadth of communications platforms that are available (print, radio TV, Mobile, PC etc) and the channels that can be levered on such platforms (pamphlets, newspapers, broadcast, interactive, blogs, podcasts etc).

It has to then consider values of the client and those with akin values and strike up a relationship (conversation) that is transparent, honest, open and inclusive and the social group will form round the subject values. They will, of course want their say, they may want to change the offering and they might even be critical.

It PR.

But advertising is a nonsense


The offer of free content such as TV channels, games and music as part of a conversation both before and after the event such that these freebies are integral to the organisation's value proposition will be a great way to engage key publics and the organisation's constituency.

Its PR and its not cheap, but there again when was advertising cheap and how often engaging?

Picture: a scene on a soap here called 'Emmerdale' a candidate for mobile TV

What do we want? Sex Google and Rock 'n Roll

The Hitwise report lists the categories receiving the highest volume of web site visits from 18-34 year olds in the UK.

The only thing I take out of this is that people like searching for content that they want to know about and don't much like stuff that is shoved at them.

The idea that marketing can somehow meet the value needs and interests of individuals in groups, target markets, stakeholder groups or other 'demographics' is showing its age.

Bundling up and delivering such groups as market segments can only work in very broad applications. In this case (18-34 year olds) it may not come as a surprise that sex, weddings, social events (where else to find a partner) and testosterone (Tennis and Wrestling?) figure highly.

Not much there for a detailed conversation until there is a closer understanding of individual drivers and where better to find them than in a conversation.

What is happening to Magazine circulation

I Read in Media Guardian that the once dominant title in the weekly women's market, Woman's Own's circulation has been hit by the rise of the new breed of women's titles such as Emap's Closer.

The IPC title had a circulation of 367,729 in the first half of this year, down 13.3% year on year and 150,000 down on 2002, when it sold 518,861 copies.

Market fragmentation in consumer publications has taken hold in a big way as consumers seek values in their reading closer to the values they espouse.

The principle of 'The Long Tail' extends well beyond the Internet and applies to print as much as to blogs.

In public relations we have benefited from the 'The Long Tail' forever. Now it is a force that has to be taken very seriously in all walks of life.

Using Google News Archive for research

I have been looking at Google News Archive as a research tool.

It has limitations but also many advantages.

One area where it is going to be valuable is in creating a representative corpus for content analysis which will be a boon for those of us who want to use it in development of a theoretical base for relationship value.

An old friend - turning print digital

Its easy to make a printed document from a digital computer essay. Its harder to make a digital version of a printed document.

Google has re-released an Optical Character Recognition (OCR) engine into open source (software anyone can used and change). It says: You might wonder why Google is interested in OCR? In a nutshell, we are all about making information available to users, and when this information is in a paper document, OCR is the process by which we can convert the pages of this document into text that can then be used for indexing.

The temptation to digitise copyright material will be even greater for many people and PR practitioners need to be aware of the limitations.

In addition, we need to be alert to the potential for such technologies to play in adding to corporate porosity. Just becaus its on paper, does not mean it cannot be on the web.

A leech in the media swamp

e-Consultancy reports research group comScore says 37.4 million US users visited the top consumer-to-consumer ad sites in July, a rise of 47% over the same month in 2005.

Craigslist.org was the most popular, doubling its unique visitors to almost 14 million during the month. Trader Publishing, the leader in July 2005, ranked second with 10.2 million visitors (up 15%), while AutoTrader ranked third with 6.4 million visitors (up 14%).

“While online classifieds are not new, it appears that internet users are really beginning to catch on to this phenomenon,” said Andrew Lipsman, senior analyst at comScore.

>What this menas in English is that small adds are moving from your local newspaper to your local PC.

Where does your local newspaper make most of its money?

Craigslist is just the job for students looking for a flat in Leeds right now.

This development has major implications for the PR.

How long will the media be able to afford to continue in its 20th Century format?

What is social media

Why is Social media so important to PR?

Let us take a view that the financial Of course one would want to extent the thinking of Confused of Calcutter (aka JP Rangaswami one of significant advisors on social media in world financial markets) . But his points are a reasonable jumping off point and I plagarise extensively:

• As an overlay on the internet and the web, social software is first and foremost about connecting people. It allows you to connect to people you don’t know; with collaborative filtering, it allows you to connect to people with similar interests, but not necessarily similar views.
• This is very powerful, since you are able to converse with people who care about similar things; mutual admiration societies, while a risk, tend not to form, because the similarity is about the interests rather than the views held about those interests.
• Networks form as a result, networks bound by relationships between people. The conversations between connected individuals become micromarkets, a patchwork of distributed, often overlapping, groups. People participate in these markets because there is a strong sense of community, yet with individual freedoms retained, even enhanced.
• This communal bonhomie allows a number of very powerful things to happen; people give freely of their time and of their skill, with nothing to gain but respect and recognition from their micromarket, the peers whose approval they see as valuable; people help each other, work with each other; people teach each other, learn from each other.
• All this is about individuals working together. Not the technology. What the technology does is reduce the barriers to entry, reduce disenfranchisement; reduce the search costs and connection costs; allow the conversations to persist and be searchable and findable; provide a rich context; have low maintenance costs; where relevant, allow people to work in small groups bringing their communal, often amateur, expertise to bear on lots of small problems. Massively parallel meets EF Schumacher.
• As the people experiment with the technology, new processes emerge; many of these processes are necessarily lightweight and non-intrusive, in order to preserve the individual freedoms as well as the communal value.
• The distributed nature of all this also makes other things happen; it allows a community to respond faster to things as a result of three characteristics; small agile groups; networked non-hierarchical relationships; low barriers to entry.
• The people, the processes and the technology, taken together, are slowly forming a new culture. A culture where traditional governance models are inappropriate, where co-creation is common, where communal ownership is the norm.
• This is not just about Wikipedia or even just about the Blogosphere. Social software is about people and relationships and conversations and markets. Enfranchising people to do things they have never been able to do, some of which their forebears could do (but on much smaller scales).
• Social software is explicitly about the individual and about preserving the individual, but in the context of the groups that individual belongs to. The technology allows us to scale all this, and as a result we need to build better tools. Tools better at publishing, at searching and finding, at connecting, at aggregating, at filtering and even at visualising. Today’s tools are a good start, no more than that.
• The experimentation phase we are in has already paid great dividends, Wikipedia is a good example of that. And there will be a number of serendipitous communal finds as we continue to experiment. Finds that relate to rediscovery of communal arts and crafts, art and music, that relate to new ways of learning and teaching, that relate to new forms of creativity, new ways of being rewarded for individual and collective creativity. Finds that relate to better understanding of ourselves and our ability to look after ourselves, repair ourselves, enrich ourselves.
• We need to continue experimenting. And for that we need open minds, soft hands and a willingness to work together without seeking to polarise opinion through sensationalism.

Now, lets cut to the core.

What then is the value of relationships. Are they the core corporate asset.

Interpreting each element a psychologist would, I suspect, see emotional drivers above all others. The Social Media is important because it affects emotions.

Social media has a huge capability to add to the value (asset value) of organisations.


Picture: The Institute of Culture Calcutta

New Media participation gets traction

Until the world discovered that combining the two yields explosive results, Coke and Mentos had little in common. Reports AdWeek.

It says that "Thanks to widely circulated Web videos of the stunt, the soft drink and candy were joined at the hip this summer.

In the aftermath, the companies took divergent paths: Perfetti Van Melle, maker of Mentos, quickly moved to align itself with the consumer phenomenon, while Coke kept a studied distance.
Mentos has attracted over 300 submissions, which have been viewed more than 400,000 times. The Coke Show, which wrapped up its first contest last week, got only 35 videos, with none getting more than 2,000 views.

PR lessons: Monitor, evaluate, join in.

How companies use RSS

Via BL Ochman this article by Roland Piquepaille on how companies can use RSS .

RSS technology, like blogs, can be used by companies in various situations. RSS feeds can be used internally or externally to improve business processes, as reports the editorial of the latest issue of CIO Magazine. This article gives some details about how real companies use RSS to complement — or even replace — their e-mail systems.