Drew B's take on tech PR

John Edwards and Robert Scoble - the future Whitehouse social media advisor?

If you've been following the US political scene over the last 24 hrs you'll see that there's a new candidate in the presidential race - John Edwards.

What's more interesting to note is that he's the one who will be using social media the most to amplify his support amongst the digerati. And after a few days of murmurs on the blog of Robert Scoble about his move into the world of politics, he has made an announcement too, written up here in the San Francisco Chronicle: "Tech Chronicles has confirmed with Robert Scoble that he's embarking on an out-of-state trip into the world of politics: He's been invited to help former Democratic VP candidate John Edwards announce his presidential bid in New Orleans tomorrow. He flies out today."

Scoble will yield great power in the political scene, and many are saying this is a smart move on both sides. Scoble is disclosing everything on his blog, and says he's not so much an adviser, rather an observer. "Is this a sign of "you" politics?" asks the Chroncle? "Scoble thinks so. He points to a New York Times article that says Edwards is arguably the most Web-savvy candidate in the 2008 race and that he will use Thursday's event to gin up support via the Internet."

This graph I just ran off shows that Edwards has been historically getting about half the share of voice from social media as his rivals. It will be interesting to see how that will now change, and how much that will impact opinion polls. Valleywag says Scoble is Buddha-like and that his blogging single-handedly humanised Microsoft, insinuating this one man can boost Edwards' campaign. Well from sheer blog chatter in the last few hours he seems to be making a significant impact.

Vista giveaway is smart. Masquerading posh choccy not so smart.

Brewing over the winter holidays we have seen a sudden explosion of social media PR stunts dissected in the public eye.

The most visible has been Microsoft's giveaway of 'very expensive' and 'really cool'  Acer Ferrari laptops loaded with Windows Vista to A-list bloggers. One might say this is a standard product testing PR tactic, but as it involves bloggers, the stunt has caused massive blog buzz and has been both endorsed and slammed equally.

The fans: Robert Scoble says he thinks it's an awesome idea. Michael Arrington at CrunchNotes thinks it's not much of a scandal. Loren at Incremental Blogger says this is just Microsoft ramping up and that when Vista's consumer launch hits we will see yet more. Ben Harris says this is a smart choice by Microsoft.

The non-fans: There's a lot of negativity being spread about. Dan Warne on Digg says this is bribery. BL Ochman is saying this is another Edelman ethical scandal in the making. Marshall Kirkpartick is saying that this has been poorly managed, and that the PR backpedal here is just silly.

I think Robert McLaws and Scoble give a fair reflection of this and I agree with them. Awesome idea! Well, nice idea, I'd say.

The other product PR buzz online right now is about 'deluxe' chocolate brand Noka being exposed. Noka is meant to be the second most expensive chocolate in the world, with first place being part black truffle, and third place bing gold-plated. Surely Noka must have something special about it too? No? It's a fake?! Bloggers are saying Noka buys widely-available chocolate and remolds it at up to a 6,956% markup. Are they fo real!? What kind of a product strategy is that? This blogger's expose has made it on to Boing Boing,leading to the blogosphere now coming alight with Noka-slamming articles. Bad marketing strategy Noka.

Update - Noka is now lising distributors of its products.

Xp - LEWIS360

Three new blogs before Christmas

Cleaning up my feeds, I've added some new subscriptions. If you visit just three new blogs before you head off for Christmas, try these:

• I mentioned that Sam Sethi's old blog Vecosys has been redesigned and now has all the features TechCrunch UK had. Sam and his co-editor Mike Butcher are now blogging about the European tech startup market there.
• Columnist for the Wall St Journal Jeremy Wagstaff is blogging about tech trends over at his blog Loose Wire. Well worth keeping on top of what he's thinking.
• Oli Barrett's Daily Networker - He's one of the men behind some growing social and 'real' networking ventures such as Friendsabroad.com, Make Your Mark with a Tenner and Horsesmouth.co.uk. I met him ages ago and his personality is much like his blog. And he's always got good tips on books to read.

Cleaning up my feeds, I've added some new subscriptions. If you visit just three new blogs before you head off for Christmas, try these:

• I mentioned that Sam Sethi's old blog Vecosys has been redesigned and now has all the features TechCrunch UK had. Sam and his co-editor Mike Butcher are now blogging about the European tech startup market there.
• Columnist for the Wall St Journal Jeremy Wagstaff is blogging about tech trends over at his blog Loose Wire. Well worth keeping on top of what he's thinking.
• Oli Barrett's Daily Networker - He's one of the men behind some growing social and 'real' networking ventures such as Friendsabroad.com, Make Your Mark with a Tenner and Horsesmouth.co.uk. I met him ages ago and his personality is much like his blog. And he's always got good tips on books to read.

The "Barrow-in-Furness is a shithole" blogger gets half-page in The Times

Hilarious article in The Times this morning about some guy (Stevo - pictured)  writing about his feelings for Barrow-in-Furness on his MySpace blog. His feeling for the "Shit hole" town landed him in a whole lot of trouble with the locals. Here's his semi-private blog on MySpace, if you'd like to take a look.

He has kindly published his photo and age etc for us citizen journalists to pass on. And here's his story in full, courtesy of The Times. Enjoy.

A chain of confectionery shops has been forced to make a grovelling apology and dole out free chocolates after one of its managers referred to the town it posted him to as a “s***hole”.

Steve Beall, who had been sent from Newcastle upon Tyne to manage Thorntons’ newly opened café and shop in Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, made the mistake of bemoaning his fate on a personal blog.

Before he could say hazelnut whirl, his comments were plastered over the front page of the local newspaper.

Enraged locals laid siege to the shop, staff feared for their safety and the police had to be called in to keep the Barrovians at bay.

By that time, though, an embarrassed Mr Beall, 20, had already made a run for it, back to the safety of Newcastle. Police said that he had either been sacked or suspended.

The trouble began when Mr Beall sat down to his laptop in his room at the Barrow Travelodge. Thinking that he was venting his frustrations harmlessly into cyberspace, he posted his “I hate Barrow” blog.

“I’m the manager of the new Thorntons,” he wrote. “I’m so stressed.

“Well then, what is there to say about Barrow-in-Furness apart from it is a s***hole? How the hell people live there, I’ll never know.

“It is very rough, give me Newcastle any day and staying in a Travelodge by yourself for over a week is very boring!” Mr Beall had been upset by vandals who had smashed the Thorntons store window on the day before the December 8 official opening, and shoplifters were getting him down.

“I am tired, stressed and need to drink,” he signed off.

His comments were picked up by the North West Evening Mail. When confronted by a reporter, Mr Beall appeared to fudge the issue. “I still hate it because it is not home, but I promise I’ll put a nicer post on MySpace,” he said.

But before he could make amends, he was gone, leaving behind his staff to face the music.

One employee said: “We have had to deal with abuse all day and threats from people who saw the story. A colleague of mine has been reduced to a nervous wreck after one woman pointed him out as the manager, which he is not. I think many employees will not return after what has happened.”

A spokesman for Cumbria police said: “The area manager has confirmed the manager who made the inappropriate and tactless comments which were posted on the internet will not be returning to the store. The staff in there are born and bred Barrovians and were most concerned.”

Mike Davies, Thorntons’ chief executive, issued a statement: “I would like to apologise for the disparaging comments made by one of our employees about the town. These comments do not reflect the company’s views or those of its other employees.”

He went on to say that “Thorntons greatly appreciated the warm welcome it has received from the people of Barrow since its store opened on December 8 and hopes to become an active participant in the local community. As a gesture of goodwill, anybody visiting our store until Christmas will receive a free chocolate.”

Nation grinds to a standstill

I thought it was just the planes... Seems like the roads and rail network have collapsed too. My train in from Reading to London took twice the time it normally does to get in this morning and BBC News 24 says roads are clogged up nationwide as the country becomes gridlocked in pre-Christmas panic. My sister-in law was heading off to Germany this morning and stayed at our place last night - with father-in-law due to be ferrying her from our house to Heathrow this morning they'll be hoping the M4 jams didn't get in their way.

Luckily this will be the first Christmas we aren't doing the gumball rally visiting every relative under the sun over the Christmas period, so I'm hoping we won't be too affected. Here's hoping for a white Christmas.

Storms in London and at Microsoft campus

Robert Scoble has just highlighted the storm that has hit near Microsoft HQ in the US in the last few days and the damage it's caused. Apparently many of the Microsoft teams aren't even able to email. Robert tells us:

Mike Hall of Microsoft says that his office has power.
Jeff Sandquist says he hasn’t had power for four days.
TDavid has some pictures of the tree damage.

This had been covered on VNU, but I found the bloggers' first hand accounts way more interesting. the Pic above is from Flickr.

There was some news today on VNU in The Media Guardian. VNU is to sell off its European publishing arm, including IT Week, Computing and CRN, to private equity firm 3i. I hope our pals at VNU are ok with it all, as reports say 10 percent of VNU's jobs will go.

Loving Workhouse Coffee

I'm an absolute coffee freak - my only problem is there is no good coffee near my office. If you're ever in Reading, where I live, and in need of a coffee there's a place I've just found and would v v highly recommend. It gets a few mentions on some blogs (locals here, here and here seem to love it - this guy walks five miles just to get some coffee there), even though it's not been open long, so that's got to be a good sign.

After a busy few days out of the office last week I stopped by at this new coffee shop on Reading's Oxford Rd. It's called Workhouse Coffee, just up from West Reading train station, and it serves what has to be the best coffee I have ever tasted. The owner, Greg, is a massive coffee connoisseur and really knows his stuff (I also love coffee but don't know my stuff unfortunately). He says he used to work in the coffee trade in London selling quality coffee beans or something. Anyhow I'm hoping he'll bring his mobile coffee stall to my train station as there's nothing for me there in the mornings for my commute. Bah.

As Workhouse Coffee's getting such blog love already I hope it starts one of its own and does a Stormhoek on us. As it's going to be selling its quality coffee supplies direct, blogging would help it engage with the many coffee fans out there.

Ipswich prostitute murder suspect has a Myspace... and an open network of 'friends'

All that has been covered on the TV news this morning has been the arrest of a suspect for the Ipswich / Suffolk / Trimley prostitute murders. What caught my eye in particular was the fact that the TV coverage focused rather heavily on the fact that the suspect, Tom Stephens, has a MySpace. And a brief search online showed that The Guardian has shown us where Tom's MySpace is - http://www.myspace.com/85784962.

So was the suspect's use of social networks such as MySpace instrumental in his apprehension? From what I have read I think not. Will the openly searchable links to his "friends" and their networks help the police? I expect it will. But now that, probably, millions of the world's e-literate home detectives will be perusing and blogging about the suspect's online life, how will this impact his life and the privacy of his online friends. Will they be blocked? Will they be deleted? They haven't been yet.

I hope that social networks will help create better visibilty for the police and other forces involved in issues such as this. But my concern is that it is at the expense of the privacy of the extended networks caught up in the action and the innocent-until-proven-guilty suspects involved.

At the time of writing this post, Tom has seven friends on MySpace and I hear this morning he had nine. Google says there are six links on blogs to Tom Stephen's profile using his profile shortcut (myspace.com/85784962) and 14 links to Tom's profile through the long version. The Guardian's coverage of this issue can be found here

* Update 8:30am on 19/12 - Tom Stephen's MySpace has now been deleted.

$1bn mr Yahoo!? No thanks says Facebook

The apparent $1m bid from Yahoo! on Facebook has been turned down and Facebook's Peter Thiel now says they'll never sell out. There's been speculation for a while now, but some are saying a bid of up to $8bn could be seen. Would they turn that down too? The quote from Thiel in Bloomberg goes: "'It's going to remain an independent company,' Thiel said in an interview last week. 'The plan is to actually build it, maybe at some point take it public, but definitely not to sell it.'''         

The big question is if and why Facebook will be the first big social networking site not to be snapped up by a megabrand for megamoney. Will such a strategy make the owners megarich?

Sam Sethi leaves TechCrunch UK, ethical debate rages on blogging

*  Update - Sam Sethi and Mike Butcher (thanks for the comment Mike) have relaunched at www.vecosys.com. Congratulations both.

This week's social media conference Le Web got some pretty poor feedback from its delegates. Neville Hobson has written up a thorough review that's worth reading. And organiser Loic le Meur is bearing the brunt unfortunately. But since blogging about his thoughts on the event, Sam Sethi, publisher and former editor of TechCrunch UK, is going through a rough patch. According to his blog, Sam's opinions caused some issues between him, Loic at Six Apart and Michael Arrington at TechCrunch US. Sam was a little critical about how Le Web went. Not as critical as the other delegates by any means. But critical enough for Loic Le Meur, the organiser, to write on Sam's blog: "You are just an asshole". The result? Today Sam had to leave TechCrunch. These two posts on TechCrunch UK explain it all: Putting my money where my mouth is and Sam Sethi leaves TechCrunch UK.

Update 1: Since this all emerged about three hours ago, Sam's two posts on TechCrunch UK, which I linked to above, have been deleted and Michael Arrington from TechCrunch US has put the UK site on hold.

Update 2: There are more deleted posts - this one at a blog called EirePreneur titled Arrington falls out with Sam Sethi, surprise victim of leweb3 seems to have dissappeared. Anyone know what's going on?

Update 3: There's now an ethical debate taking place in the comments section of TechCrunch UK over why posts have been deleted. Must read.

Sam's a great bloke and I wish him all the very best. He told me about some of his other technology ventures when we had a coffee recently and they all sound really interesting. I'm sure he'll make a success of them. Good luck Sam.

Update 4: Michael Arrington's ethics are now being questioned in the comments section on his blog CrunchNotes.

Update 5: Sam Sethi's personal blog has apparently now been suspended, and he's not sure why.

Update 6: Scoble's just posted about this too, and in the discussion on his comments the issue of whether Sam's firing stands up in UK law has been brought into question.

Update 7: The Guardian has reported on this story now, as has journalists' site Journalism.co.uk. "Anyone need a Sethi?"

And finally, Loic Le Meur finishes off the debate with his closing comments.