Astroturf to get an early bath

Well would you believe it another astroturfer got fired.. When will they ever learn. Kevin Dugan reports.

A top aide to U.S. Rep. Charles Bass resigned Tuesday after disclosures that he posed as a supporter of the Republican's opponent in blog messages intended to convince people that the race was not competitive.

We don't want press releases.

This is something everyone in PR is going to have to understand and not just for this site.

(1) Read the site. (2) Understand what the hell we talk about (3) Maybe participate on the site in comments (4) Explain to us why whatever your pitching is really interesting to our audience, rather than just claiming its "exciting." Oh yeah, if you claim that the company you're representing is "the leading" company in whatever tiny market you've made up just so you can claim to be leading it... don't even bother.

The old folk aint old anymore

"Complete rejection of the status quo."
"Make it new. Make it different. Make it mine."
"65 isn’t old anymore."
"We don’t want to become old and just do nothing."

"It’s all about me."
"Because I've earned it."
"I want it all."
"I’m moving forward, not backward."

Thank you David Meerman

Looks like a light bulb went on somewhere.

BT get a new Chief

JP Rangaswami, who bloggers will know as 'Confused of Calcutter' and an innovative thinker is to move from Dresdner Kleinwort to become CIO, Global Services, BT .

This is a serrious development and signals a new direction in social media for the UK's biggest telecoms giant.

IBM bundles Social Media Tools

IBM announced new product and service “bundles” for small businesses. The initial bundles focus on hardware, software and related support services. Interestingley the services are in the areas of voice/data communications networking, digital surveillance and collaboration.

Sounds like social media tools.

Compatible mobile

The problem of compatibility between wireless devices is being addressed at an international conference this week reports the BBC.

Scientists will be discussing what has been dubbed "Tower of Babel" technology - software that can converge different wireless gadgets into a single device.

This means that very soon it will be easier to re-purpose information for different cammunications platforms which will cut both production and distribution costs of new media programmes.

The Internet never forgets

What you do online will always be visible and it is getting ever more accessible.

A tool that makes it easier to gather and store digital archives has been developed by the National Library of New Zealand and the British Library reports the BBC.

As more and more information goes online the race is on to create meaningful digital archives.

The web curator tool automates the process of collecting and storing information.

It will become a key part of the British Library's existing digital preservation programme.

Social Media drives retail visits in the USA

Google is top U.S. search engine responsible for 14.93 percent of U.S. upstream visits to the Shopping and Classifieds category, Yahoo! Search was the second and MySpace.com accounted for 2.53 percent according to Hitwise.

Social Media is beginning to drive traffic and at these levels, a lot of traffic.

"Search is a proven method of acquiring traffic and Google is the leader in driving online retail site traffic," said Bill Tancer, General Manager of Global Research at Hitwise. "With the growth of MySpace and others, online retailers should expand their focus beyond search to consider social networking sites as a source of additional traffic."

Social Media is figuring strongly as a candidate for inclusion in media programmes.

Tips on being creative from CIPR

From the CIPR 'Active Events' blog:

Top tips for injecting creativity into your PR

1. Create 'idea banks'. Why reinvent the wheel? Be comfortable in re-using used material and ideas that are not fully developed, or adapt them slightly to create a new dimension. Be masters of 'creative recycling'.

2. Make you and your team creatively accountable - don't just expect creativity to hang about in the ether around you and somehow happen. Inspect what you expect by demonstrating to your team you are alert to new opportunities, new ways of doing, or challenging the established or routine.

3. Know the ultimate creativity question: Are you asking the right questions? Challenge your assumptions and explore new dimensions by stretching your questions or breaking them down into multiple questions.

4. Harness your 'incubation' - as long as it is not an excuse for procrastination. Sleeping on a problem usually brings results. Even a walk to the photocopier and back is a mini incubation break.

Drapers gets a blog

EMAP - is getting further into new media.

Madgex, the specialists in B2B magazine websites and job board software solutions, have completed the design and development of a new blog website for Drapers.

Drapers is the leading weekly publication for the UK fashion industry and covers all fashion sectors from womenswear, menswear and childrenswear through to footwear and accessories.

For more see onrec.com.

Bloggers to help Charity SEO

Kent Air Ambulance has announced an innovative partnership with Spanish based niche company Hogtronix Ltd in order to climb the Search Engine ladder and be the organisation of choice for worldwide audiences seeking information on Emergency Helicopters. Reports Rotohub.

The charity is calling upon local Kent businesses and blogger’s to link to their website for the mutual benefit of all involved.

Local Governement adopts Mobile

The latest findings fromndl-metascybe's annual UK Council e-government survey, examining the different stages of CRM (Customer Relationship Management) implementation within local authorities across the UK are published today.

Benefits of the programme, the hurdles currently being faced and the specifics of chosen technologies formed the basis of the survey, which revealed some significant changes in findings from previous years. These included a new emphasis on the integration of emerging and mobile technologies, considered as part of the strategy for the delivery of improved citizen service.

Iain Pickering, Product Director, ndl-metascybe said, “The use of mobile devices plays a significant role in many council road maps, with over 68% planning to implement solutions utilising smart 'phones, PDAs, tablets or a combination. Urban councils in particular seem to be incorporating these technologies as part of their improved citizen service delivery.”

This would suggest that Wifi and Wimax applications for towns and cities may offer considerable economic advantages for municipal authorities.

More by Mobile reports Wray

Mobile companies have been watching the rapid growth of networking and video-sharing websites such as MySpace and YouTube. They have realised that content created by users themselves might be just what they need to persuade their customers to do more with their phones than make calls and send text messages.

Early experiments certainly suggest there is a nascent market to be tapped. In August, Orange's "Buff or Rough" service, which allows people to vote on whether or not they think a particular victim willing to post a photo is worth a second look, notched up 1m votes in a week, double the previous month. So says Richard Wray Comminications Editor at the Guardian.

On line public relations more important in Manchester

Electronic public relations - is becoming an increasingly important part of the mix at agencies which have, until recently, relied exclusively on more traditional methods of getting their clients' messages across. Manchester's traditional public relations agencies are matering blogs, message boards, viral marketing and digital press releases are some of the new tools available to public relations agencies says Simon Donohue of the Manchester Evening News.

Publishers get a good gun - then aim it at their feet

The Automated Content Access Protocol (ACAP) technology, launched by the World Association of Newspapers (WAN) and various other groups, aims to calm publishers’ fears that they are getting a bad deal when their content is indexed online. Reports e-consultancy.

Tagging is ver good and helpful. It is an aid to finding stuff on-line.

They say that the system, set for launch later this year, will tell search engine’s crawlers how their material can be used, so that the likes of Google and Yahoo! can no longer claim ignorance of their copyright rules.

Ah... so now the publishers want to use it to hinder finding stuff online - why do that?

“This system is intended to remove completely any rights conflicts between publishers and search engines,” said Gavin O’Reilly, president of WAN and also the COO of Independent News & Media.

“This industry-wide initiative positively answers the growing frustration of publishers, who continue to invest heavily in generating content for online dissemination and use.”

The move follows a recent Belgian court ruling that Google had infringed on newspapers’ copyright by publishing sections of their articles.

So this is a copyright protection idea. Its so that publications can generate content and be paid for the content.

They have a problem. Millions of people create content (blogs, wikis, podcasts, vidcasts, lectures, papers ..........). Some of it is very very good content.

Content is cheap.

The idea that you are going to protect copyright is a fine idea. It means that if you have a monopoly, you can sell it.

But this is only true as long as you have the monolpoly and is only true if your monopoly is competitive. It is only true if you can innovate (generate original content) faster than your competitors.

And what do we know about this? We know that is not how it works.

When Bloomberg broke the story about Mrs Blair commenting about Gordon Brown's speech at the Labour Party Conference yesterday, it had no value until broadcast. At that point a frenzy of activity by journalists added to the story. They took the copyright and added value to it but it the value was in its presence on the newswires and Internet. The real value in conversations all over the world was well beyond the reach of the publishers. It was a topic of conversation in households pubs and bars all over the place. That is where the real value was.

And, if it had not been Carolin Lotter who spilled the beans, it could have been a blogger. The result would have been a firestorm just as potent.

All I say to the publishers is to be very careful what you wish for.

Online advertsing growth slows

This means that the rate of increase in the USA (and mirrored in the UK) is less but growth continues. Comment from e-consultancy says:

Research firm eMarketer has forecast that growth in US online ad spending will slow slightly this year as due to weaker consumer spending and as the market matures.

A report by the firm predicted internet ad revenues would rise 26.8% to $15.9bn this year – a move that may calm some fears in the industry after Yahoo!’s warning sent shares tumbling last week.

But that represents a slight cooling off from growth rates of 30% and above in the past two years, and is lower than eMarketer’s previous estimate of $16.7bn, the company said.

Microsoft have an ad strategy

Microsoft has launched of a set of services that firms can use to target consumers via PCs, game consoles, mobiles and PDAs reports e-consultancy.

Announced at Advertising Week, ‘Microsoft Digital Advertising Solutions’ the company’s ad products and services now come under a single umbrella, assisting firms that want to reach customers across different digital platforms at a time when media continues to fragment.

Its hope is that consolidation of its ad platforms will persuade firms to move more of their marketing budgets online.

On-line advatorials - who is going to read them?

Techmeme, the go-to site to find out what tech bloggers are talking about, is finally putting ads on its site, but with an RSS twist. The ads are a combination of sponsorship spots and paid placement. For between $3,000 to $4,500 per spot, you can deliver your message via a regular RSS feed straight to Techmeme's homepage, reports B2Day.

The conclusion from Erick Schonfeld is that "this kind of effort is that once you cross that line from content to advertising, you are going to turn a lot of readers off. It's like those 12-page advertorials in magazines that everybody skips over."

I agree.

However, I like the technical capability and that may offer a different opportunity which could be value related and that would be a different story.

Wine + Blog + sales

Here is a case study about how one can use blogging to increase sales from B2Day:

While I am on the topic of blogs and marketing, I've been meaning to write a post about Stormhoek, a South African winery that is using blogs as its main marketing channel. Last year, it launched its blog marketing campaign in the UK by offering a free bottle of wine to about 85 bloggers there. Some of the bloggers then wrote about the wine, others wrote about the marketing campaign, but the buzz worked. (Yes, I got two free bottles myself—a pinot grigio that tasted more like a chardonnay and a red pinotage—and I've got to say they tasted quite good). Last year, Stormhoek doubled its exports of wine to the UK from 50,000 cases to 100,000 cases.

Friends are more than hyperlinks

I extract from Bernaise Sourse.

He says: Apparently, competition for friends among the younger set can be fierce. Too few friends, and you are like way uncool.

Apparently friending has become big business.

Rachael King recently reported in Business Week: "As companies try to build or keep relevancy among young people, they're increasingly tailoring marketing campaigns specifically to social networks. These go far beyond placing banner ads on a site, and involve interaction with users over time in what companies hope will be a memorable way...Burger King, for instance, created a MySpace page for the King, the weird character that appears in their commercials."

There are some who think it is no longer a matter of numbers anyway. There is an emerging school of thought that says - when it comes to social media -- the level of customer engagement is the more meaningful metric.

There is evidence elsewhere that the friends where there is a big numbers game going on are regarded differently to the friends in a social network where introductions are made at a very personal level. The interaction does count.

This is really about this acknowledgement of values and creation of relationships through mutually accepted values.

Berger King is a token with values and it will only have a relationship with its 120,000 'friends' in MySpace if it is able to find the values of those friends to which it can offer empathetic values. Otherwise its friends are unused hyperlinks.