Drew B's take on tech PR

Claws out, it's ...The world's leading...

So I hear there's a new bunny on the block. Meet "...the world's leading..." - it's the new site that tears a strip out of the tech PR industry.

I'm wondering why, as Stuart Bruce pointed out this evening, I'm one of the only two PR bloggers in this new blog's links? Hmm, Spin Bunny did always have a soft spot for me back in the day... maybe she's back?

Well, already feeling the sharp end of this new blogger's tongue is agency Inferno for it's website, Ex-Computing hack Chris Green for being, um, large, Hotwire for its "such high turnover" of staff, and there's lots of gossip and bitching about Firefly. That's how to make enemies quick.

So we'll see how long another nasty PR blogger will last before someone gets grumpy and forces it to shut down. Meanwhile, another PR blog into my Bloglines.

New tech PR blogs

Here are some new tech PR blogs I've started reading:

Division6 - a nice UK blog by Brands2Life consultant Armand David
PR Voice - CIPR president Tony Bradley of Bradley O'Mahoney PR, who is PR Blogger Stephen Davies' current boss
Alan Weinkrantz - of PR firm Alan Weinkrantz & Co, Texas

UK tech PR client wins

PR Week has reported that some tech PR accounts have been snapped up of late. Pleon has landed the Kyocera Mita account. Omniture has given its UK & France PR work to Carrot. Sigma Systems has given its UK PR to Kinross & Render. Norwegian firm LUUP has hired Brands2Life for UK PR.

BBC's football world cup blog is live from Germany

15 sports journalists at BBC.co.uk have started a group blog, written out in Germany. The World Cup 2006 blog is going straight into my Bloglines.

The rise of social media

About a million pages of today's Financial Times were dedicated to reviewing the growth of social media. Here's the one I liked the best: Aline van Duyne explains how big hitting consulting firm McKinsey is organising a big head banging session for the ad execs in New York to talk about and try to understand how to target today's fragmented media consumers through the rapidly evolving social media.

"Plans for the meeting reflect the rapid shifts felt by the media industry as people, particularly younger internet users, spend increasing amounts of time on social networking sites such as MySpace and sharing photos, videos and blogs created by themselves rather than professionally produced content."

Update: Simon Collister has a more in depth post on everything The Financial Times, The Guardian and The Times has been saying about social media this last few days.

Richard Tomlinson the ex MI6 agent blogs

Ex-MI6 agent Richard Tomlinson has a blog, as featured in The Observer yesterday. I just started reading it, and will follow closely. Why? He thinks MI6 might pull down his blog, like they did with the previous website he ran, apparently. Here's what he had to say:

If MI6 really don't want the hassle of going to an employment tribunal, they could just admit liability and apologise. Saying sorry won't cost the them (or more accurately the tax payer) a thing. I expect they'll take the expensive option though, and order the Treasury Solicitor to fire off lots of injunctions at me, or get the CIA to approach Typepad and have the blog squashed - like they did to my old website on Geocities. Watch this blog!

Watch that space.

WH Smith isn't selling The Economist any more

WH Smith isn't selling The Economist any more, says Stuart Bruce. Press Gazette has the full story:

"The Economist has been removed from newsstands in more than 500 WH Smith shops over a contractual dispute between the publisher and retailer."

The Guy Goma video

I read this hilarious story on Friday in IT Week writer Guy Kewney's blog, then I almost spat out my fried egg this morning when I saw it in the papers. It's already being covered by The Mirror, The People, The Times and The Guardian.

It's the story of what happens when the BBC lines up an interview with a tech expert but somehow a foreign taxi driver is ushered on set and interviewed instead. "Speaking with a French accent, the man appeared stumped when questioned about the complicated High Court case, but gamely carried on - offering his own opinion of what the case meant." Hi-lairous. Here's the video.

Technorati Tags: Guy Goma, Guy Kewney, The Wrong Guy

PR Week (and me) on MySpace, blog monitoring and blogger relations

I've been doing some interviews with PR Week and here are three articles out recently that I've been quoted in (the most recent having come out today). My, the shameless self-publicity!

One's on how brands can capitalise on social media such as MySpace, the second is on the importance of blog monitoring, and the other is on the challenges faced by embarking on a blogger relations programme.

PR Week: Tapping the potential of MySpace, 11th May 2006
PR Week: Keep your message out of the trash, 6th April 2006
PR Week: Tread carefully in the blogosphere, 3rd March 2006

Fined $100,000 for blogging

Mark Cuban (NBA's Alan Sugar) has been fined $100k for blogging about basketball officials, apparently.