Drew B's take on tech PR

At Internet World...

I'll be at Internet World in London's Earls Court this week - drop me a line if you're going to be there and have time to catch up. Comments on this post will get to me on my mobile, or contact me direct (details are on this blog).

All the UK Web 2.0 scene seem to be registered and attending, so it should be a fun gig. I'll be there with some clients and catching up with one or two old pals from meatspace. See you there.

links for 2007-04-28

• eGov monitor | How blogs, wikis and podcasts are transforming the information age
  Professor Simon Rogerson, of De Montfort University Leicester, is part of a delegation of British academics appearing at a three-day conference in Israel, focusing on issues surrounding information and the web.
• Founders at Work | Uncrate
  "Founders at Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days ($17) is quite simply an amazing series of tales telling what happened in the early days of life at popular tech companies like Apple, PayPal and Flickr"
• Foghound > Beyond Buzz
  A fab looking book on Word of Mouth marketing. It's available on Amazon for £11.
• The Economist on Social networking | Joined-up thinking
  "Social-networking sites are not just for teenagers. They have business uses too"
• gapingvoid: "cartoons drawn on the back of business cards": san francisco and seattle
  Hugh Mcleod and Robert Scoble are planning a geek dinner in San Fran, on Hugh's first ever visit there.
• Oracle can't get blogging respect « Scobleizer
  Robert Scoble writes about why Oracle isn't getting the respect from social media that firms like salesforce.com are.
• Congrats MSFT on great financial results « Scobleizer
  Why Microsoft won't die, and the cool stuff that's pushing its stock and profits even higher
• Note to Oracle: not me « Scobleizer
  Another post from Robert Scoble on how firms should get blog love by tracking who's writing about them and invite them in to learn more. Not just the A listers.
• As Social Networking Rises, TV Watching Decreases | Marketing Pilgrim
  A new study suggests social networking users are increasing their internet, email and instant messaging usage, while decreasing the amount of time they spend watching TV and playing video games.

Esteemed company avec senor Rubel

When Fiona Blamey says: "PR people have been talking about blogs being part of the media for a long time, with uber-PR-bloggers like Edelman's Steve Rubel and Lewis PR's Drew Benvie often leading the debate," I abruptly fall off my chair. How flattering! So now, back to talking about Twittering and virtual worlds as part of the PR debate. Fiona, would you accept a direct debit for that one?

Couldn't make it to the panel at PR Unspun

I was meant to be speaking at last night's panel debate at Chinwag's PR Unspun in front of 'nearly 150 people'. Instead, Neville Hobson was there with Jacqui White from Edelman UK; Stephanie Bonnet from Burson-Marsteller and Mark Rogers, of Market Sentinel. The chair was Mike Butcher who originally asked me in. Again, sorry to Mike I couldnt make it. It looked fab from Neville's pics. Looking forward to the next one.

links for 2007-04-24

• Financial Times - Master new technology or be ruled by the unruly mob
  Businesses have woken up to the web’s potential. A survey of US brand marketers by Jupiter Research found that almost half were planning to advertise on social media networking sites – MySpace, Bebo, Facebook – this year.
• Twitter / Sam Sethi: Register for 1 months free ...
  Free Wi-Fi offer for The City of London from The Cloud's new cloak...
• Social Technographics and a Power Law of Participation
  Charlene Li at Forrester just came out with a report on Social Technographics that surveyed user engagement.

links for 2007-04-23

• Map: Welcome to the Blogosphere | Technology | DISCOVER Magazine
  Matthew Hurst recently collected link data for six weeks and produced this plot of the most active and interconnected parts of the blogosphere
• Vitamin Interviews » Matt Ogle and Anil Bawa Cavia
  Last.fm developers Matt Ogle and Anil Bawa Cavia talk to journalist Bobbie Johnson for Vitamin
• Church of the Customer Blog
  The 1% rule of Web 2.0
• Teaching Online Journalism: How Flickr could help your career
  How social photo sites like Flickr are levelling the playing field for photographers
• Green 2.0. Yahoo to go carbon neutral by end of this year.
  Yahoo! Spins a Web of Climate Influence

Microchunking all over

Since starting to use Twitter my attention span has shortened and widened, I'm microchunking all over the place.

On the linkblog of Robert Scoble (thru Twitter) I read that Marshall Kirkpatrick is pondeing what role social media played in Hitwise's acquisition this week. Bought for $240m by Experian, Hitwise has been very active in the blogosphere for the past 12 months.

Upcoming.org, Yahoo's (acquired) events 2.0 site, is looking like a relaunch! Tshirts are available but only for North America. Hmph.

ZDnet was at the Web 2.0 Expo this week, and has published a vid of its five top firms, including Coghead and Spock.

And Robert Scoble then writes about how he trundled off to Digg's party after the Expo, in San Fran.

He was Twittering live about the panel discussions and, of course, the Web 2.0 Expo lobby webcam! Now for the weekend.

"I only use email to communicate with old people"

In business we see person-to-person communication technology as a mix between phone, email and increasingly IM, right? Oh, and social networks are starting to make an entrance too.

So what does it mean to the future of business communications that a whole generation is seeing email as a thing of the past.

These posts and quotes in particular caught my eye today. Is many-to-many social networking going to put email in the same room as the minidisc?

From Jeremiah Owyang's blog, where he quotes his kid sister:

"I only use email to communicate with old people"

"Out of my hundreds of friends, only ONE does not use facebook or myspace"

And I'm hearing the same kind of thing from my friends. My brother in law for example, who's neither a geek nor generation Y, says he only uses myspace and facebook to speak to people online, no more email.

In business we see person-to-person communication technology as a mix between phone, email and increasingly IM, right? Oh, and social networks are starting to make an entrance too.

So what does it mean to the future of business communications that a whole generation is seeing email as a thing of the past.

These posts and quotes in particular caught my eye today. Is many-to-many social networking going to put email in the same room as the minidisc?

From Jeremiah Owyang's blog, where he quotes his kid sister:

"I only use email to communicate with old people"

"Out of my hundreds of friends, only ONE does not use facebook or myspace"

And I'm hearing the same kind of thing from my friends. My brother in law for example, who's neither a geek nor generation Y, says he only uses myspace and facebook to speak to people online, no more email.

links for 2007-04-20

• Experian acquires Hitwise
  The purchase price is approximately $240m and will be funded from Experian’s existing cash resources.
• Vecosys to rebrand BlogNation
  "In the coming days I will provide further details of the new European sites we will launch and the services. There will of course be the long promised jobs board and advertising network specifically aimed at startups."
• BBC NEWS | Politics | Commons Confidential: April 2007
  Party leaders may be falling over themselves to get their faces on YouTube and MySpace, but veteran Labour grump, Austin Mitchell remains unimpressed.

Virginia Tech student paper: wishing more universities used Twitter

Systems that would help a university to alert most of its student body at the time of an 'event' are something that the student-run Virginia Tech Planet Backsburg has just posted about on its own Twitter site.

"Wishing more universities would use Twitter to notify students of important events"
"Including Virginia Tech..."

On issues like this, one sees social media tools in a different light. The ability to send one message to an entire college campus across email, SMS and web feed in one go has its obvious benefits.

Here is the Planet Blacksburg site: http://www.planetblacksburg.com
And here is the Twitter site run by the student journalists: http://twitter.com/blacksburg