Browsing in style

Personalising your browser front page is quite fun.
The biggest by far is Google Personalized Page, but there are many more.

They offer interesting opportunities for promotion. For example, creating widgets for them, content for them and even creating or adapting them can offer promotional and message carrying opportunities.
Examples of the genre are:

Webwag,
Motto
Microsoft's Live.com
Pageflakes

Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography

Congratulations to Charles Bailey for making the 10th anniversary of the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography! For those of you playing along at home, this is version 64, and covers over 2,750 articles, books, and other resources related to scholarly electronic publishing online.

Monitoring and evaluating online content

Read/Write Web has been looking at some of the products that are available for monitoring and evaluation blogs.

He has reviewed:
Techmeme
Topix
Tailrank

For more read the reviews here.

Others might include:

Blogniscient

Blogrunner

Blogsnow

Chuquet

Megite

Memeorandum

Newroo

Tailrank

Technorati Kitchen

Tinfinger

Topix.net

TruthLaidBear

Move over PR's we're the new guys on the block

It happened with the web and its happening with social media.

The PR industry is letting outsiders take over the role of communications advice, service and competence.

For example, many companies are already setting up shop in SecondLife. CNET Networks, Reuters, Adidas, Sun Microsystems, Toyota.

Is the PR industry involved. Yes. Notably Text100. And the other consultants?

Big gaping void.

Instead there is Justin Bovington, CEO of Rivers Run Red, which helps companies like BBC Radio One create events and design buildings inside Second Life.

Media companies even face competition from virtual upstarts inside Second Life, including New World Notes and SL Herald.

Reuters has even commissioned its longtime tech reporter, Adam Pasick, to cover Second Life full-time and act as Reuters' Second Life bureau chief.

I wonder what Peter Gummer thinks of SecondLife?
What does his wiki farm look like and where are his blog advisors?

Half of all people read their newspaper news online......

Does this tell us something?

Visual branding blindsided

Simon Wakeman has begun a discussion about the nature of brand for bloggers.
It is an interesting and well considered piece.

One of his thoughts is about the way blog content is delivered which means the visual identity is less important. As a blogger your personal brand is communicated more through what you write and how you act as a blogger - how your site looks is less important than ever before, especially for your audience that reads your RSS feeds.

This issue of visual branding is also significant for re-purposed content. Say you want to offer a stry to the media, thoughts about Serach Engine Optimisation may colide with how you offer branding in video, MP3, SMS, newsprint text, an interactive PDF, and even the web page on your virtual press office.

As Simon says it is all about presenting values.....

Yahoo profits down

Yahoo posted a 37-percent slump in third-quarter profit and announced it would buy back up to three billion dollars' worth of its stock.

Newspaper competes with TV for hard news

The Express & Echo in Exeter beat television news to a major regional story by publishing a video report on its website Reports the Press Gazette.

Using only a £190 camcorder and consumer software, the paper rushed an exclusive story onto the web which revealed that Devon County Council's preferred bidder for Exeter Airport was a consortium of London City Airport and Balfour Beattie.

Online PR practices can now learn the lesson that Newspapers take theironline presence very, very seriously. Contributing to this new mindset is essential in PR practice.

This means we need a new form of media release, we need a much wider range of elements we offer to the media (backgrounders, photo, video, re-purposed content for mobiles, blogs, contribution to media wiki's, podcasts and so forth).

To do this effectively we need XPRL..... but you know this don't you?

This is the new PR.

Passing off - the Edelman story

Richard Edelman today issued an apology for his agency's role in creating a blog for client Wal-Mart that did not properly disclose its origins or funding says Brand Republic.

The blog, walmartingacrossamerica.com, chronicled a couple's journey across the country in an RV while stopping at various Wal-Mart parking lots. Although the blog did not initially bear any clear disclosures outside of an advertisement, the trip was funded by the group Working Families for Wal-Mart [WFWM], a Wal-Mart-backed organization designed to promote a positive portrayal of the company. The group is part of Edelman's effort to turn around the reputation of the controversial retailer.

Richard Edelman posted a statement of apology for the incident on his personal blog on Edelman's website today.

"For the past several days, I have been listening to the blogging community discuss the cross-country tour that Edelman designed for Working Families for Wal-Mart," the statement said. "I want to acknowledge our error in failing to be transparent about the identity of the two bloggers from the outset. This is 100% our responsibility and our error; not the client's."

Edelman went on to say his agency supports the transparency guidelines of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association [WOMMA], which call for disclosure of the source of such efforts.

The fact is that, 'passing off' is bad practice, transparency is essential and both Edelman and WalMart know this and both are culpable. There is no excuse. It is, as Edelman says, an error. It is also bad practice and reflects on the professionalism of the profession. In the UK Asda was acquired by Wal-Mart and would hope its PR team is more professional.

In the UK this form of practice is banned by the CIPR code of conduct. It may also be illegal anyway.

When Colin Farrington comes out of his six month purdah and it will not be soon enough for CIPR to ask its lawyers the nature of the legal position. Certainly in election law passing ones self off as another candidate or representing a participant is not legal and there is a lot of consumer law that would make miss-representation illegal as well.

Wikipedia to get competitor

Larry Sanger, the co-founder of Wikipedia, is launching a social media encyclopaedia that will attempt to balance the original's democratic principles, allowing anyone to add content, but with much greater editorial control.

Citizendium (sit-ih-ZEN-dee-um), which will go live in the next few days, will initially be made available to a limited number of content editors and members of the public who apply. It will become available to the masses by the end of the year.

From Revolution

Bertelsmann to compete with Murdoch's MySpace

PC Advisor has an inside story.

German media giant Bertelsmann AG has begun crafting plans to develop an entertainment-driven social networking website to compete with MySpace and other similar services, a source familiar with the discussions has revealed.

The news comes less than one week after Bertelsmann agreed to sell video content to the popular internet video site YouTube, which has a social networking component and which was acquired days later by Google.

With the new site, Bertelsmann aims to create a community for its music and video projects, according to the source.

Saudi link up

"It really took off last year," says Saudi journalist Rasheed Abou-Alsamh to the BBC.

There are now between 500 and 600 Saudi blogs - in English as well as Arabic - and the bloggers are women as well as men.

"I think young people see the internet as a way of expressing themselves easily and in an uncensored fashion," says Mr Abou-Alsamh.

This means it is not too difficult to open a dialogue with Saudis.

In Blog Relations terms this is an opportunity for PR and the rest of the world.

There are some links in the BBC site.

Teen blogger for the Shropshire Star

Hey! I’m Rhian, I’m the new teen blogger for the Shropshire Star.

And away goes another blog published by a newspapers. What is going to be interesting is the kind of pitches she will get from 'PR' people.

She says:

Before I get started I just want to get one thing clear, in case you don’t already know. Rhian is a Welsh name, pronounced Ree-Ann.

So at least there is no excuse for getting her name wrong.

Next, I guess, you will want to know how to pitch to a blogger.......

One in ten are bloggers

Here is a nice quote for Colin Farrington:

All the world's a multimedia platform, and all the men and women merely bloggers. Or perhaps to blog or not to blog sums up better the sense of Hamletian introspection, the solitary unburdening of one's hopes and fears.

It comes from Tom Leonard writing for the Telegraph. He reports:

Research published yesterday by Harris Interactive suggested that nearly one internet user in 10 has started a blog.

The big suprise is how few undergraduates are bloggers. In Bournemouth the figure is (was) 2%. So these figures worry me a little:

The figure suggests that the blogging habit goes way beyond the teenager stereotype and, today, charities including the National Trust and English Heritage are asking all of us to submit a blog of our day to a website (historymatters.org.uk) to provide a snapshot of a day (October 17) in the life of Britain.

Once more famous for people wanting to talk about their sex lives, their views on politics or, perhaps, just what they had for dinner, blogs are now frequently seizing the news agenda.

Who'd have thought David Cameron would ever jump on a fashionable bandwagon? But sure enough, he has his own blog, featuring video clips of his thoughts on cleaning up politics and his actions on cleaning up the kitchen, while his children scream in the background.......

Perhaps David C has more than one blog.

Virtual meeting of communicators

BL Ochman reports that Kami Huyse has posted a PDF transcript of a meeting of communicators' avatars in Second Life last week. ....

Hosted by Text 100 this is a classic PR tool. It is a conference.

TV rules different for Internet content

The BBC is reporting a debate in the UK Parliament. Members of the House of Lords were told trying to impose new rules on audio-visual internet providers - like the YouTube site - could stifle new broadcasters.

Internet broadcasters should not be subject to the same rules which govern television, peers have been told.

The cost of complying with new rules could deter new would-be Internet entrepreneurs, the committee heard.

And it would prove difficult to get TV regulation to fit online services, as well as impose any rules on such fast-changing technology.

Each point is valid and the debate should be enjoined by the PR profession as well.

Demonstrating Social Media Value

Andrew Lark has a comment about LinkedIn.

He shows how valuable it is for job hunting (in his case recruiting).
It is this kind of exposure - public relations - that demonstrates the value of social media.

His comment begins:

I was extremely skeptical of LinkedIn but unlike Stowe and Jeff have found it to be pretty valuable. First for recruitment - the quality of the candidates I have seen through advertising on LinkedIn are fantastic - and I like the fact that some of them come recommended by people I trust. Second, it has proven to be immensely valuable in connecting with old colleagues and keeping my current network humming along

Optimising your content for search engines

Evert press release and all blogs, web pages and emails need to be optimised for search engines - if you want them to be found by journalists, bloggers or in email searches on the Intranet.

Its called Search Engine Optimisation. It is acore discipline for PR people. It is best done by a professional and here is are 20 reasons why you could do it yourself or could use Anthony Mayfield.

Sky ousts Beeb - Now go for digital posters for PR campaigning

Mark Sweney at MediaGuardian.co.uk tells us:

Sky News is to be broadcast in major Network Rail stations across the UK, replacing BBC News 24.

Transvision, the national digital outdoor screen network owned by Titan Outdoor, chose Sky News after a pitch against BBC News last week.

The outdoor network, which is seen by around three million people each week, will provide five strands of Sky News including main headlines, financial, entertainment and sports news and the weather.

There is a case for much wider use of big screens offering interesting content. The technology is changing fast and soon we will gave digital posters like this one all over the place.

In fact, for direct communication, this is a really cool tool for PR. In addition, when pitching a story to Sky, are you asking if it will be available through this added communication channel.

Virtual Worlds can't avoid the taxman

With virtual economies booming at double digit growth per month the world's tax collectors are on the lookout for a new source of revenue says IT Pro.

Users of online worlds such as Second Life and World of Warcraft transact millions of dollars worth of virtual goods and services every day, and these virtual economies are beginning to draw the attention of real-world authorities.

"Right now we're at the preliminary stages of looking at the issue and what kind of public policy questions virtual economies raise -- taxes, barter exchanges, property and wealth," said Dan Miller, senior economist for the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress.

LinkedIn -

Online network LinkedIn is to offer a new directory search, giving its members a new method of choosing business service providers based on recommendations, reports e-consultancy.

With a massive student user base, this could help in development of markets to student networks and a revenue stream for this MySpace/Bebo competitor.

In the new directory, LinkedIn users will be able to search for service providers among those recommended by friends, or else broaden the search to include friends of friends.

The site will also offer a global search option, which will search for service provides across the whole LinkedIn network.