Drew B's take on tech PR

links for 2006-10-31

• The fake boarding pass
  Blogs everywhere are talking about the 'fake boarding pass generator' website. A US congressman has called for the author of the site to be arrested.
• Top 50 Swedish blogs
  The blog portal Knuff.se lists the 50 Swedish blogs with most incoming links (from Swedish blogs).
• New life management site Scrybe launches to blogs with rave reviews
  Scrybe mixes offline surfing, calendars, list management and more in a web 2.0 style. Feedback has includes comments like "simply unbelievable" and "jaw dropping".
• Keynote from Blog Business Summit - The Jason Calacanis Weblog
  Jason Calacanis announces CSR podcast on Podtech.

New PR blogs

Here's some feeds you may want to subscribe to if you're trying to keep up with the goings-on of the PR industry:

Prompt PR - UK / US tech PR agency blog
Stirlig PR - Derek Hodge, lecturer in Public Relations at the University of Stirling
Clogger - my meat-space co-colleague and PR industry cynic, Clogger, is back griefing
Expat Ed Lee is now at iStudio Canada (blog) a sister agency to Fleishman, where he used to work
Screaming Headlines - Pete Wilby,  Lecturer in Journalism, PR and media and cultural theory at UCE Birmingham

links for 2006-10-28

• Inside the PR Week Awards
  Winners losers and reaction from this week's awards.
• TechCrunch UK » New York Times: London is the New Financial Capital
  Article in New York Times article on why London is surpassing New York as the world’s financial capital.

10 years in jail for blogging

The first time I've seen an entire front cover dedicated to the issue of blogging in a national paper.

Today's Independent leads with the story: Martyrs of the web. It's about the world’s jailed bloggers. The cover story looks at bloggers from China, Iran, Tunisia and Vietnam who have been jailed for up to 10 years for blogging.

Here are the two links to the stories online at the Independent:

• Martyrs of the web
• Set the bloggers free

Thanks to Stuart Bruce for the scan of the cover.

New blog launched at Windows Vista

Microsoft has started a new blog to communicate better about Vista:

"Welcome to the new and improved Windows Vista blog.  A few months back, I pushed our team to bring the blog from the blogging Dark Ages into something a little more modern.  The blog back then wasn't quite doing the job."

It's a huge makeover, says Cybernet Technology News. Other noteable reviews here and here. I think it looks pretty but it's not very functional. No trackbacks or widgets.

Second Life goes open source

Mike Butcher has an article on TechCrunch UK about the possibilities of open source for Second Life. It's "potentially very revolutionary, and I don’t use that word lightly. Imagine if people flip their MySpace profile or even their LinkedIn or Blog into Second Life?" says Mike. Now that will be cool. (SL is a client)

links for 2006-10-23

• Channel 4 loses Lost to Sky One
  Sky One has snapped up the rights to the award-winning drama Lost, robbing Channel 4 of one of its biggest hits. Experts predict surge in online downloads of the cult series.
• Social Media - Social Research
  A scientist in the U.S. has been given £128,000 to develop a secondlifealike set in and around the world of shakespear.
• Techcrunch launches UK edition
  Web 2.0 blog Techcrunch had its official UK launch in London [Thursday] night at a swanky bash attended by the capital’s digerati, many of whom were on the scene this time 10 years ago when Web 1.0 was just getting going.

Virtual social media group launches in Second Life

Blogger Neville Hobson just emailed me to say he's teamed up with three like-minded individuals to launch a venture named Crayon. Their office will be in the virtual world of my client Second Life, and the launch will be on 26th October on Crayonville Island. Neville says Crayon is "both a real and a virtual" marketing agency.

Good luck to Neville with his new venture.

Two more fake blogs from Edelman | Edelman's fall from blogosphere grace

Oh boy, what terrible stories are starting to spread about Wal-Mart as a result of its PR firm Edelman's work. This just in from Media Post Daily:

PUBLIC RELATIONS FIRM EDELMAN, WHICH last week pledged to be more transparent in its involvement with client-related blogs, Thursday revealed it is behind two more 'flogs,' or fake blogs, created on behalf of Wal-Mart.

Until the new disclosures, both blogs appeared to have been created and contributed to by independent supporters of the big box retailer, an Edelman client.

One blog appears on the home page of Working Families for Wal-Mart, the allegedly grassroots advocacy group formed by Edelman last December, which is "committed to fostering open and honest dialogue...that conveys the positive contributions of Wal-Mart to working families." The second blog is on WFWM's subsidiary site Paid Critics.

The Paid Critics blog is devoted to "exposing" links between unions and other vested interests that are "smearing Wal-Mart" through the media. Until yesterday, blog entries on both WFWM and Paid Critics were uncredited. Thursday, bylines were added to blog posts "in response to comments and emails."

Last week, the travel blog "Wal-Marting Across America" was shut down following revelations that it was the work of two writers paid by WFWM.

As a result of the new transparency, every entry on the blogs is now credited to one of three contributors: Miranda, Brian or Kate. A click on these single monikers reveals biographies of Edelman employees Miranda Gill, Brian McNeill and Kate Marshall, whose clients include Working Families for Wal-Mart, the sites say.

While noting that he was speaking in generalities and not to this specific situation, Dave Balter, president of the Boston word-of-mouth marketing firm BzzAgent, said: "Even if you're doing the right thing but you know you're going to deceive people, you have to do everything to make sure it's completely transparent, and any tactic that crosses that line you're doing a disservice to the brand [and] the consumer."

The spokesperson for WFWM, Edelman employee Donna Lewis-Johnson, said the company was now being completely transparent. She said WFWM is a client of Edelman separate from its Wal-Mart account, but could not confirm that WFWM pays Edelman for its work. She said Edelman's employees make up some but not all of the WFWM staff. She said that WFWM accepts funding from Wal-Mart, but did not know how much.

In a May New York Times article about WFWM, a member of the group's steering committee, Martha Montoya, said she was not aware of any financing that group received outside of Wal-Mart.

A spokesperson for Wal-Mart referred all questions to WFWM.

One observer questioned whether once a flog becomes transparent, its original purpose is rendered moot.

"Once you make this kind of revelation, you need to question whether [the strategy] is even effective anymore," said Virginia Miracle, director of word-of-mouth marketing for Brains on Fire, in Greenville, SC. "This is a very difficult time. As the media has exploded, the ethical guidelines have not been growing at the same rate."

Another critic called the situation "ridiculous," and pointed out the innate contradiction and paradoxical dilemma Edelman is facing.

"Doesn't anybody at Edelman see the irony behind having their own paid critics writing Wal-Mart's Paid Critics blog?" asks Sean Carton, a blogger, author of eight books about technology and the Internet, and chief strategy officer for Baltimore interactive consultancy idfive. "This was a brilliant idea, in its way, but it was evil and they got caught. It was old media thinking in the new media world, and you can't get away with that [stuff] anymore."

Link Via Neville Hobson: Edelman's fall from blogosphere grace

 

links for 2006-10-21

• BBC extends Innovation Labs programme
  The BBC's Innovation Labs programme is being extended - new media companies with some ideas to pitch to the BBC should take a look.
• FT launches markets blogs, from Open (finds, minds, conversations)
  The FT is launching five "markets blogs" on Monday. The first, Alphaville, is up and running already as a beta.