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.