Drew B's take on tech PR

Tell your friends... new things in social media

Later today Twitter the thing that's a bit like status updates off of Facebook is launching a new site that shows you in a yellow-brick-road type way what your friends are saying. To see what it looks like, look at TechCrunch. To have a play, click here later today when it first goes live! This will let you network with people much better and show people why Twitter's a great tool for reaching people the way they want to be reached. Twitter's cool cos it links with your mobile on SMS or your Instant Messaging thingy, it just doesn't have the mass following of Facebook with its statuses. If only they would just merge!

And Joost, the web TV that made a humungous splash earlier this year, is opening up its API. That's what Facebook did when it went massive earlier this year. Should be interesting to see what new apps start to emerge on a TV screen. Will we see Joost apps being bolted on to all our PR campaigns soon?

And if you want to be tracking all this good stuff, you might have notices that Hitwise's stats supremo Heather Hopkins is taking a wee break. She has told me that Robin Goad is now blogging for the UK for Hitwise - on www.ilovedata.com. Subscribed.

The future of web 2.0 from McKinsey

A good resource for social media business rationale is the McKinsey digital marketing practice which churns out papers on various topics from time to time. August's edition is on UGC and how the success of such a project depends on a core group of enthusiasts. You're telling me! I think they're referring to the 99/1 rule (aka 1% rule) of user generated content, that on average one in 100 people will generate the content that in some way benefits the other 99.

Earlier in the year McKinsey published a global survey on how businesses are using social web technologies. It's one of those meaty chart-laden papers that says the kind of thing you'd expect to see. But buried away there are some good snippets that show what kind of benefits businesses are seeing from their investment. I'd have liked to see those elusive stats on firms' return on investment, but it's a good read in any case. Worth registering and having a read.

Some executives say the tools are already having visible effects, such as better communication with customers. “The most valuable aspects today are providing a means for customers to have a dialogue with us.” One panelist cites blogs and RSS as factors that are helping to reduce the customer churn rate. Perhaps even more important, several participants are tapping customers’ opinions and expertise to improve product design. “We now see customers, particularly the professionals and customer experts, as having a much greater role in the development of new products,” says one. Another adds, “Our success is based on allowing [clients] to participate in the process.”

How not to court a blogger

Remember when a PR agency aimed their sights on Yahoo's Tom Coates a while back and felt his fury? One is entitled to be furious in such circumstances. The fact that it was an A list blogger meant the press covered it too though. And his squillion readers all joined in the fight. I'm pretty sure that when Tom was blogging more regularly that he was ranked by Technorati as the top Brit blogger. He's kind of still seen that way I think. Well now Tom has reached a point where he feels he's being targeted by PRs with 'parasitic bullshit', that he finds the way PRs treat him is 'revolting' like 'a piece of meat'. Have a look at his post it's not pretty reading for any PR person that's considered sending their news story to a few bloggers in addition to the press.

What does this say about how (or how should) PR people treat well-read personal websites and the people behind them?

Maybe us PR people need to tread increasingly carefully and realise this is more like networking than 'distributing messages' via press releases. And maybe bloggers need to realise that if they publish and they have an audience, they are vehicles conveying messages, and companies will always look to sign them up. A lot of the time the wrong way, but they will try.

Thanks RC for the scoop on this one

Hallam Foe joins the Bebo Kate Modern blog soap

The digital campaign behind the new movie Hallam Foe is a cool little one. Met one of the guys behind it last week with Hugh. Brand Republic has some more info on what's going on there, but the Kate Modern Bebo campaign that's going on right now which is also really sweet and different is having Hallam Foe people appear in its blog soap installments. Cool way to grab the attention of a highly networked audience on a social network (note - not a press release!)

Moves and changes

PR Week's back from its hols and reporting on the industry moves and changes... Cohn & Wolfe has lost its MD of nine months, and Band & Brown has lost a 15-yr veteran boss guy leaving their head of tech to take on his role. It's also done an article on Wikipedia, but I hope it will dig a little deeper into the ethics behind it as it's an issue which seriously needs to be clarified.

Bobbie Johnson logs off

The Guardian's social mediaista journo extraordinaire Bobbie Johnson has stopped blogging. On his blog he points to one of his three social networks (Twitter, Flickr or Facebook) or his Guardian articles if you want to follow what he's saying.

Insights from Rangaswami

A nice little discussion's taking place over at Lem Bingley's blog at IT Week touching on how and in what ways JP Rangaswami is dissecting the current Facebook debate. The Wall St Journal has printed a rubbish article and both JP and Lem rip into it for it's not-very-progressive stance towards understanding how these things web 2.0 things work. Both posts are worth a read and JP's whole series of posts on Facebook are excellent reading for people looking at what social networks can do to the comms discipline. The most recent one is fab and focuses on management and mentoring. JP's an excellent CIO blogger and worth subscribing to.

You plant some apple seeds

Friday morning I had the pleasure of a fried breakfast with Hugh MacLeod. Amongst other things we talked about how well / badly brand owners can sometimes manage the social media campaigns that people like Hugh and I are involved in. One of the ways he summed up times when it doesn't go right is when this happens.

That was Friday. On Saturday Hugh spent the day drawing cartoons, then in the early hours he posted this one. Quite cool that he ran this one past us then he drew it and then posted it. I feel like part of some kind of social blog art web 2.0 buzzword bingo etc process. Nice.

It was cool to meet Hugh. He is genuinely nice bloke and asked lots about what I was up to. Looking forward to seeing him again at the Facebook BIMA shindig.

Pic courtesy of Hugh at Gapingvoid.com

British Interactive Media Association putting on massive Facebook event

I'll be going along to the BIMA debate on Facebook in October. Everyone who's everyone in London's social media scene is there. For more info look it up on Facebook or on the BIMA site. Worth coming along to for people at any level I think.

Here's what the event's Facebook page says:

There has been a great debate taking place over the past couple of months. Facebook has been discussed by just about everyone with a blog and many of the mainstream publications. BIMA (British Interactive Media Association) would now like to host a face to face debate, taking the conversation offline.

Confirmed speakers so far

- Hugh MacLeod
- Michael Nutley
- Damien Mulley
- Robert Loch

Some of the views expressed so far include:

1) It's like AOL with a 'walled garden'
2) It's a black whole because it's easy to import information from other sources, but I'm unable to get my information out
3) It flies in the face of open standards
4) It reduces employee's productivity
5) It's the next Google with lots of trusted people recommending content that's approproate for me
6) It helps me to communicate with people more easily
7) It encourages me to communicate more often, helping me to build stronger relationships with people and organisations
8) It helps me to raise awareness for my products, services, events or brand.

links for 2007-08-17

• Kameraflage - Gizmodo
  With Kameraflage, now you'll be able to plant subliminal messages on T-shirts, movies and billboards that can only be seen with digital cameras.