Drew B's take on tech PR

links for 2007-08-16

• Mobile operators see 10 times more potential in social networking | The Guardian
  "Revenues from putting user-generated content onto mobile phones is expected to rise more than tenfold over the next five years, according to estimates by Juniper Research published yesterday."
• MySpace begins talent search for UGC movie - New Media Age
  "MySpace has begun a talent competition to find actors for its MashUp movie project.The social network has begun a quest to find talent to star in £1m production 'Faintheart', the world's first user-generated feature film."

New social web tools we couldn't live without

Clogger/Copypunk is back and reminding us that we used to blog about the social media tools we like to use, and that those tools have probably changed. He has switched from Blogger, Technorati, del.icio.us, Statcounter and YouTube, to Blogger, Google Analytics, NetNewsWire, YouTube and Technorati.

Here's what the rest of the class of '06 chose, one more time (I compiled this list last year):

Simon Bisson: Newsgator, Trillian, Livejournal, Semagic, Flickr
Bobbie Johnson: Moveable Type, NetNewsWire, MarsEdit
Danny Bradbury: Furl, Del.icio.us, Attensa, Wordpress, BlogDesk
Iain Delaney: Bloglines, BlinkList, Opera RSS reader
Simon Collister: Google, RSS, Feedburner, YouTube, MySpace
Charles Arthur: NetNewsWire, MarsEdit, Technorati, Google Blog Search, Camino, Wordpress, Spam Karma 2
Niall Cook: humour, reality, respect, perspective, independence :-)
Antony Mayfield: Bloglines, Firefox, Microsoft OneNote, Qumana, Google Blog Search
David Terrar: Wordpress, Qumana, Technorati, Crispynews, Statcounter
Dennis Howlett: NetNewsWire, Ecto, Technorati, CrispyNews, Feeds2
David Tebbutt: NewsGator, NetVibes, Wordpress, Typepad, Technorati
JP Rangaswami: Netvibes, Technorati, Wordpress
Neville Hobson: WordPress, FeedDemon, Skype, Statcounter, Mint, NetVibes
Armand David: Wordpress, Wikipedia, Del.icio.us, Skype, FeedReader
Stephen Davies: WordPress, Bloglines, Firefox, Google Analytics, BrandPulse
Josh Hallett: Flickr, MySpace, Flickr, YouTube, Technorati
Richard Bailey: RSS, search, podcasting, tagging, missing the paradigm shift
Andrea Weckerle: Del.icio.us, YouTube, Flickr, CrispyNews, Co.mments
Todd Defren: Del.icio.us, Qumana, NewsGator, Toread, Technorati This / Blogger Web Comments
Stuart Bruce: Typepad, Statcounter, Zoundry, CrispyNews, FeedDemon

My choices are more networky than they used to be. So I'm deciding to plump for:
1. Bloglines / Google Blog Search RSS / Technorati RSS cluster mashup
2. Del.icio.us
3. Blog
4. Twitter hooked up to GoogleTalk IM on my BlackBerry
5. Facebook
(Close sixth but not quite in my daily routine yet: virtual worlds)

So anyone want to update theirs?

PR in Moscow

Edelman's David Brain has been keeping us updated on his Twitter and on his video blog of his travels to Moscow. It's v hot there, apparently. I find his stuff  gets more interesting all the time and hope he keeps all this up. Must take a fair bit of his time and hand-luggage weight.

Break and back

Over the last few weeks I've had a nice break and this week I've been getting my feet back under the table at my new gig. I feel there's so much tech PR industry goings-on to catch up on I've had a bit of blogger's block. There's a lot (for August) happening in the industry it seems... a few friends and ex-colleagues have started blogging, industry commentators are re-launching, and there's PR business flying about according to the talk of the industry. So now that I've overcome the information glut that was my RSS inbox (not to mention my Facebook and Twitter feeds) I can start from ground zero.

You can track what I'm reading over on my del.icio.us or on my Social Media Report blog. I'm keeping tabs of what events I'm attending on Upcoming.org. Some pics should go up on Flickr soon of what I'm up to now. And of course I'll be Twittering and updating my Facebook. I'm letting the MySpace, YouTube and Jaiku and Pownce slide for now.

So what's been happening while I've been away that I've missed?

links for 2007-08-14

• Cake to promote HMV's MySpace challenger
  ‘We seek to replicate online the social space that record stores have long represented in the high street,’ said HMV e-commerce director Gideon Lask. Cake described the site, currently in development, as ‘a bit like Facebook and MySpace’.
• Good interviewing: the quest for repeat business
  Jon Silk the Copypunk gives his top 11 tips for PR spokespeople looking to build relationships with journalists
• …the world’s leading… » Welcome to our new home…
  TWL has relaunched and now looks like a polished media site. Go take a look. It's taking ads too.
• Groundswell - Soliciting entries for the Groundswell awards
  Are you doing something special with social technologies? Forrester wants to reward you.
• gapingvoid: why we're all blogging less
  Blogging isn't for everybody. Web 2.0 is for everybody
• prblogger.com » Blog Archive » Facebook security flaw found
  Davies (and me) uncover a Facebook privacy glitch

Facebook inboxes given to friends - major glitch unfolding

Readers of this blog have written in about their first hand experiences of this week's Facebook crash. One recurring glitch appears disturbing - that of inboxes falling into the hands of 'friends'. One reader said that their inbox had several emails marked as read. Another said someone they knew was given access to one of their Facebook friends' inboxes where private messages about them caused no end of grief with personal information falling into the wrong hands.

Today's Metro has reported on this too: "When I tried to click on my inbox I got someone else's," said one [user]. "If I clicked on any of the messages it took me to my homepage." This blog cuts to the chase and tells it how it is - be careful the next time you talk shit about someone on Facebook. You never know who might end up reading it.

It's one thing for a web app to be down. But if users think their friends could see inbox messages (the kind of messages not suitable for a wall, a status or a photo) then Facebook will come unstuck. One of its strongest lures is its walled garden surely.

Update 3/8/07: Facebook is down again - no access at all and yet more reports of mixed up inboxes in the blogs

Did Facebook get hacked?

Facebook has been crashing for the last 24 hours. Rumours are floating around online that it's because of a hacker and that the glitch exposed users' inboxes. Not sure if there's any truth in this, but I'll post updates when I'm next online if I hear any more.

Update: Twitter followers say that the outage may have been caused by the flushing out of third party Facebook applications that are being used for ID theft

JP Rangaswami on banning comms technologies

BT's social media evangelist JP Rangaswami puts forward a typically plain english perspective on how business communications could fundamentally change, were enterprises not to ban Facebook. Have a read.

I'm wondering whether internal comms bosses at places like Lloyds TSB, DrKW, British Gas and those other places that are banning Facebook are fighting hard enough against the IT managers that have made these decisions.

JP used to work at DrKW. He also remembers when direct phone lines and internet email emerged in the enterprise and were also banned, for fear they would hamper productivity. So he knows a bit about what's going on. Every enterprise has a choice, he says, to catch the next boat home, or to send for reinforcements.