Drew B's take on tech PR

I Can Has Cheezburger?

This site, I Can Has Cheezburger?, apparently is the number 1 most visited site on Wordpress, with half a million visitors a day. It's full of those pet pics with slogans (a la Twitter's error pages). I think I will now subscribe.

links for 2007-05-11

• Daily Telegraph starts reader blogs
  "Today the Daily Telegraph newspaper launched My Telegraph, a free service that enables readers to set up their own blog."
• Rupert Murdoch on Media 2.0 "Media companies don't control the conversation anymore"
  "Traditional companies are feeling threatened. I say, bring on the changes."

links for 2007-05-10

• PSFK presents a series of presentations and discussions by leading innovators over the course of a day
  PSFK Conference, London - 1st June, Imagination Studios
• NNM - 80% of the internet users will have a virtual second life by 2011
  4 in 5 Internet users will have a virtual second life (not necessarily the Second Life) by 2011
• JAJAH Lands $20 million Series C Funding From Intel
  VOIP provider JAJAH closes Series C funding of $20 million today, with the lead investment coming from Intel Capital, the venture capital arm of Intel.
• Social network marketing to hit $2.5 billion in 2011
• Spitting: The Definitive Reason Robert Scoble Should Join Facebook
  Facebook is the ultimate tool for spitting. It combines the best of del.icio.us with your own little social network.

Book review: Life's a pitch

Random House sent me a copy of the coffee table business book Life's a Pitch earlier in the year. I'm ashamed it's taken so long for me to write up a review of it, but here it is.

Now, I write about PR, so the first thing I noticed was how well the review process had been put together for a social media audience.

I was sent some YouTube footage (the book has its own channel on http://www.youtube.com/lifeisapitch), pics of the book, and shots of the authors. All as links. Very blog friendly! The website for the book's really thorough too, so I had plenty to sift through before the book even arrived.

The book itself is like coffee table business etiquette reading. I wouldn't stick it in my bag. But it stays firmly on display on my desk. It's one of those you can judge it by its cover and flick through to find some interesting content. It's a nice little package. It's red, chunky and got lots of bullet points.

So all in all, very nicely PRd and a nice book to have lying around your office. A recommended buy. To grab a copy check out its site where you'll see its doing pretty well in the proper book review media :-)

links for 2007-05-09

• Growth of Twitter vs. Blogger (kottke.org)
  Some great graphs on the growth of Twitter as an online networking and publishing application
• Twitter vs. Blogger growth « Scobleizer
  And so we see Robert Scoble's self-proclaimed role in Twitter's growth. He first blogged about Twitter the day before it took off
• Today's book: the 4-Hour Workweek
  Another book that has succeeded through being marketed to bloggers

Clive Longbottom from Quocirca on green policies

Clive Longbottom from Quocirca up now. He is saying how we can draw likenesses between the growth of the green movement and the growth of the organic movement in the past. As consumers grew to understand the benefits of organic products, so the movement grew. As the green agenda becomes better understood by businesses and consumers, so its adoption will grow.

He believes businesses need to be innovative but not inventive in their green strategy development. They must advocate carbon neutrality, but not carbon offloading, such as the practice of outsourcing resource-intense processes to 'look' green.

Clive's making some really interesting points about how businesses are playing on the fact that they have a carbon strategy and then engineering the the results they're getting.

The media will be looking for the dir, so your credentials have to be solid when you're going green.

Green tech brekky this morning

I'm attending a breakfast in London this morning on green tech and sustainable development. It's being held here in our media centre - I'll be twittering and blogging on the agency blog, so if you're following green tech then do stop by.

PR social media updates

Catching up on my RSS feeds there seems to be a lot on.

Richard Millington from Apt PR has blogged about his next move: "I've recently been hired by a Birmingham company in the PC gaming sector to undertake a large social media project."

Weber Shandwick is soon to launch a blog about digital PR. More about that on James Warren's blog.

And Edelman London's Justin Westcott is going on a client press trip up Everest for a month! Mentalest press trip I've ever heard of. Justin - please Twitter from up there. :-)

Marketing web strategies from Cancun

There's a forum taking place at the moment in Cancun, Mexico (that's what I'm thinking too) where the biggest tech and business brands are yarning about web strategies for marketing. Robert Scoble's blogging from a panel discussion including Forbes, Siemens, Symantec and DHL.

You can read more about the Forbes.com Online Brand Leadership Forum here, and see some video footage here.

Mental LSO St Luke's

When I was a student I did a summer internship at Legal & General and lived with my mate Ash on Old St, London. We lived that summer in his student digs, a mouse-infested, three-floor flat above a kebab shop. It overlooked a ruined shell of a church. I think it got bombed in the war and was never rebuilt. We used to chuck a frisbee around in its graveyard and generally thought ourselves lucky to be overlooking greenery considering we were in Zone One.

Then three years after that, work brought me to the same street. A PR agency I worked at was just a stone's throw away from the same church yard, so for nostalgia's sake I would sometimes eat my lunch there  when I fancied some peace and quiet. It seemed to be in the process of being rebuilt and not quite the ruin I remembered.

Then in some random coincidence, I see that the NMK Forum 07 is being held in a place called LSO St Lukes on 13th June, and when I first saw it I wondered what kind of venue could have sprung up on Old St since I was last there. Same church, it turns out.

It's looking very swish now. Not only does it now have a roof. It's proper swish! I'm looking forward to attending the conference. And can wholeheatedly recommend NOT getting a kebab or room for rent over the road If you're planning on being there :-)