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)

Internet corrupted by fraudsters, liars and cheats - suprise!

The creator of the world wide web told the Guardian that the internet is in danger of being corrupted by fraudsters, liars and cheats. Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the Briton who founded the web in the early 1990s, says that if the internet is left to develop unchecked, "bad phenomena" will erode its usefulness. He warns that "there is a great danger that it becomes a place where untruths start to spread more than truths, or it becomes a place which becomes increasingly unfair in some way". He singles out the rise of blogging as one of the most difficult areas for the continuing development of the web, because of the risks associated with inaccurate, defamatory and uncheckable information.

In PR we have known for over a decade about its potential and the associated hazards have been well documented for nearly as long.

'Managing Your Reputation in Cyberspace' originally published by Thorogood and now available here, showed a wide array of potential threats. It was also one of the first publications (Shel Holtz was the other key author at the time) to seek solutions.

Mojo launces videoblog

MojoPages, a new social search venture, has adopted a documentary-style videoblog to build buzz around its forthcoming launch, while engaging users even before a beta website has launched, to help with aspects such as design and usability.

The website, which will rank businesses in line with user ratings, aims to improve on standard directory-style services such as Yellow Pages.

MojoPages is based around a simple idea: “Do a great job and people will say great things. Offer poor services and/or inflated prices and you will be judged on those criteria as well”.

Source e-consultancy.

Cancer Research podcast

Cancer Research UK is adding its voice to the digital airwaves by launching a brand new podcast this week.

The charity will produce a magazine-style programme every month, showcasing every aspect of Cancer Research UK’s work – from world-class scientific research to health awareness campaigns; from fundraising efforts to survivors’ stories and much, much more.

What is it like to get into Second Life?

The BBC's Mark Ward is taking the journey and reporting on it as well.

Now, I wonder about the experiences of others.... It would make a good story for Text100 and Crayon.

Freinds or markets

Andrew Lark has been talking about public relations evaluation again..
His latest contribution goes as follows:

My view has been that the degree to which actions intended from any marketing activity - say downloads - occur is proportional to participation in that media by readers/ views/ the community. For this reason I like Scoble's idea on measuring media engagement.

This will require a step-change in thinking by communicators. Rather than looking at the reach of publications, we need to think in terms of participation.

I agree with the last point. Reach is, these days, almost irrelevant.

I have a problem with the first.

There is a degree of truth but the key surely is the extent to which the constituent wants to engage their community with the organisation (introduce them to the organisation/ product etc). This may also be the extent to which they want to change the organisation, service, product, aims etc.

In evaluating relationships we need to look after the friend who seeks to offer their best knowledge, opinion, and contacts.

The 'Marketing Objective' is a small part of what we seek.

Surely what is most helpful is the value (not just money) that attaches to both the organisation and constituency.

Job hunting to be bigger online

On-Line Recruitment is suggesting that over the next 5 years (to 2011), the e-recruitment market will grow significantly both in scale and importance.

Indeed, some are predicting that recruitment will be close to travel – the most successful sector in terms of the online business model. A new Market Assessment report, E-Recruitment, from market intelligence providers Key Note, forecasts that by 2011 nearly 2.1 million jobs will be on offer via online recruitment websites, with a monthly average of 32.5 million unique visitors to these sites.

Something in me suggests that this is not the way it is going to be.

The idea of six degrees of separation, allied to the Long Tail may mean there are other options when it comes to recruiting - or finding a job.

Hubble Bubble - more silly prices for companies

Social media site Reddit has been bought by Wired publisher Condé Nast for an undisclosed sum, said to be $65m. At that price it is an expensive acquisition.

Reddit, which enables users to suggest and rank stories, is a user-generated news aggregator, with stories rising to the top based on popularity. It is little cousin to Digg which is rumoured to be in talks with MySpace owner, News Corp.

Iraq - a case study for PR practitioners from the BBC

The BBC's Paul Reynolds has been looking at the propaganda, diplomatic and public relations lessons of the Iraq war in this US election week.

I understand that Mr Reynolds does not know what PR is (how many journalists do) and so he is forgiven for mistakes of nomenclature.

His quote from Walter Cronkite brings back memories:

"To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of the evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past. To suggest we are on the edge of defeat is to yield to unreasonable pessimism. To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory, conclusion.

"On the off-chance that military and political analysts are right, in the next few months we must test the enemy's intentions, in case this is indeed his last big gasp before negotiations.

"But it is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out then will be to negotiate, not as victors but as an honourable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could.

"This is Walter Cronkite. Good night."

This was a moment when war was decive but propaganda diplomacy was a failiure.

If only they had use public relations, that last, and perhaps this present war, would have been less bloody.

Making video clear

For the PR and News industry there is now software to make poor photographs and video crisp and clear. Motion DSP’s new Ikena system cleans up on overcompressed videos and the grainy, blured video you tend to get with mobilephone camaras.

With so much happening in the video space, fired by the combination of broadband and YouTube, video is becomming an important part ofthe communication mix for PR.

The initial Linux-based product (including hardware) costs $30,000, but this type of interpolation-based cleaning will become more affordable before too long. Examples of what is achieved are at at MotionDSP.com.

Software and imaging chips for better video have been a growing business for the past few years. Video -- both from consumers and security cameras -- is exploding, but a lot of it is blurry and finding something on video remains a primitive art. Some of the notable start-ups include NuCore (imaging chips for consumer SLR and video cameras), 3VR Security (a search engine for security camera video) and Pixim, (an imaging chip which captures better images in glare or low light).

Intelligence community wiki

The intelligence community in the US has announced its own wiki, Intellipedia, and is promoting it as the future of American intelligence gathering and sharing - reports Web User.

John Negroponte, the US director of national intelligence, announced Intellipedia yesterday. Like Wikipedia, the site will allow users to add and edit content.

However, unlike Wikipedia, it's not open to all - only security agents and intelligence analysts have access to it.

MySpace isn't fun anymore

MySpace is moving to stop its users illegally uploading music content by introducing fingerprinting technology to the website. The site will scan all uploaded music, check it against a database of rights holders and block any protected content.

Users who repeatedly try to upload content illegally will be barred from the site.

The fingerprint technology is to be licenced from software firm Gracenote.

MySpace is now operating like a Music Agent, Cigar an' all.

Now, if the music industry was half bright (OK 25% bright), it would understand the dynamic of The Long Tail. It would encourage people to spread the music - and the date of the next gig, the price of tickets, the shop for consumables, the book etc etc etc - all of which are more valuable that the price/margin on a CD or download.

These margins are available forever - longer than copyright - and the music moguls can't see it.

So, folks go look for real musicians who want to spread their music AND make a fortune instead of givving it away to agents and Labels.

Viral Marketing speak catching a cold

Politic communication has just released this gem: Viral video marketing campaigns produce 750 percent more clickthroughs than traditional banner ads, according to preliminary figures released today by MarketingExperiments.com, an online marketing research laboratory. “Researchers and analysts speculated that viral videos would transform the way online marketers attract qualified customers,” said Jalali Hartman, director of strategy for MEC. “These preliminary research results are a clear indication that amateur viral videos not only effectively drive viewers to company sites, but also help convert viewers into customers and subscribers.”

Well, let look at what really happens.

Lets go to YouTube and look at an example:



There are a lot of things about this campaign and they are mostly about a public that is being entertained and, most important, is inviting Dove into its life.

Most people find advertising gets in the way of thier life. It is intrusive - it is scream marketing.

But, if the story and the process is part of a conversation, then advertsing can work. Advertsing is in this case, an element in the conversation.

Over 400,000 people have sought out what is a Dove advertisment. This is not an add pushed in the face of someTV demographic. This is an advertsisement that people WANT to see. Not everyone. Not all people in the cinema or watching a TV programme. Just people who WANT to see it.

They have emailed it to friends, embedded it in blogs, wiki's, email and spread the word as part of their conversation in their relationships. This is about shared values between people. Values that would be very arrogant of Dove to assume it owns (it only owns some of them).

Conversations are not viruses, they are conversations. This is not someone passing on a video like a common cold. This is people passing on fun and entertainment to create better relatonships. The relationships are not owned by Dove, they are owned by people.

Stuart Bruce has an excellent blog post about this too with some excellent comments.

This is Relationship Management, not relationship marketing.

And is it effective - you bet!

Its called Public Relations.

Tone of editorial and blogs automatically evaluated

Mr Web says you can use technology to detirmine the tone of editorial and blog comment. They cite Anderson Analytics as having to capability. Google too has its own capability here and it is not rocket science anymore (I know that the PR evaluators and the PR consultants and the PR practitioners will tell you its impossible - so to0 was proving the moon is not made of green cheeze). Mr Web says:

Text mining of websites can fill in the gaps between quantitative and qualitative data. Due to advances in software it is now possible to automatically identify and classify favourable or unfavourable terms relating to various brands and products. It is even possible to measure and categorize actual emotional reactions.

"The increasing importance of social media (consumer blogging and community boards) is changing how firms should measure marketing and PR effectiveness. Yet very few firms are allocating research funds to measuring the impact of this new media short of going in to monitor what is being said a few times a month," according to Rebecca Gillan, Senior VP, Research & Guest Satisfaction, Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc. "Consumer blogging and community boards are a rich data source allowing firms to gain unbiased/top of mind thoughts from consumers and having a method to mine thousands of comments so that management can understand what is being said is exciting."

Some people will remember that as long ago as 1998, I was proposing that Neural Nets would provide and answer (I even have an academic paper published that mentions it).

Pity the PR industry is so slow in adopting these ideas.

E-Zine for mobile search

SourceWire introduces us to a new magazine.

The Mobile Search Analyst is to be the first ezine focused on mobile search and its interaction with social media, social networking, mobile marketing and recommendation.

of course it would be really handy if there was an RSS feed for this new venture - There isn't so it will be mostly ignored.

Second Life puts the 'facts' straight

The Second Life Herald has gone all huffy:

Rohit Bhargava, a VP for Interactive Marketing with Public Relations giant Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide, has a recent post on digitalmedia wire entitled "A Gallery of Virtual 'Firsts' from Second Life." Readers of the Herald will be surpised to learn upon viewing the gallery, that the very first virtual concert in Second Life was Suzanne Vega, the first virtual clothing store was American Apparel, the very first virtual sporting event was the recent All Star Game hypervent, and the very first virtual hotel was Starwood Aloft. Nevermind the hundreds of concerts that we have attended over the last three years in second life, and nevermind the boxing matches and car races and archery tournaments and sailing regattas we have seen over the last three years, and never mind all the virtual hotels and rental properties that have existed in Second Life, and clothing stores...is this guy fucking kidding me??? This place has been wall to wall clothing stores since day one. Many people have made their livings selling virtual clothing here for the last several years. Meanwhile, a so-called new media company called Crayon has announced that it is the first business to be launched in Second Life. Very first business launched. Can you say "bullshit"?

Of course now that Reuters has its own people in Second Life, we can expect a good bit of reporting on this sort of thing now.

Ethics are gets you customers

When price and quality are similar, ethical standards and corporate stability are important decision drivers when choosing to do business with one company over another. That’s what key decision makers in North America are saying according to a survey by Doremus, the business communications company, and the Financial Times.

Slightly fewer executives felt the same way in Asia. And in Europe, reliance on ethical standards as a decision-making factor trailed by more than twenty percentage points. A majority of Europeans feel ethics are important, but of little use as a differentiator.