Drew B's take on tech PR

Trust in word of mouth vs the media

Jeremiah Owyang at Forrester (I heart them) has written a great post on how social networking sites are trying to balance the need to sell advertising space with the power personal referrals have on someone's desire to but a product or service. In other words, we trust word of mouth more than ads, so let's look at how social networks can be a more powerful marketing tool.

Fake-named bloggers kicked off Facebook. Guido and TWL next?

Popular US political blogger Jon Swift got kicked off Facebook today for not using his real name. It's against FB's rules apparently. But then after some negative blogging about the issue, Facebook reinstated him. What will this to-ing and fro-ing do to the UK bloggers that use false names on Facebook, like Guido Fawkes, and TWL ('Theo' Worlds Leading)? TWL won't care too much I imagine...

Some new PR blogs to subscribe to

Check out some new tech PR-related blogs I've been reading but haven't had a chance to write about yet over the last few weeks:

Life moves pretty fast - a blog by Amelia Torode, bright spark and digital strategy boss at VCCP
PRotagonism - by the PR-otagonist?
Buffalo Blog - by the people at Buffalo PR
Another Flaming Blog - by a better-known blogger than many realise
Brendan Cooper - A copywriter in tech PR (formerly known as The Friendly Ghost)
Web 2.0 Watch - by Fiona Campbell-Howes
Spin Twist and Churn - an nicely written and designed blog, and the unique angle of tech PR in Romania
And a funny - the Lewis beards. All for a good cause. I vote Clive.
And a late entry from commenter Melanie Seasons, a digital PR blogger moving to London soon

And any other suggestions please let me know and I'll stick 'em in.

For and against virtual worlds

I'm enjoying reading Ian Delaney's write-up of the Virtual Worlds Form which took place two weeks ago in London. I'm openly a virtual worlds fan (and used to PR Second Life in a former real life) and Ian's healthy dose of cynicism is worth a read.  He's covered Heineken's presentation on why not to go into Second Life.

If you're trying to set out a case for why a brand should engage in some kind of social media activity, you need to fully understand the case against. Only by being able to fully explore why someone would say no a campaign, are you going to able to confidently hold down a discussion on the topic. Nice post Ian.

What to put in your bookmarks if you're in social media

Found a useful list of bookmarks that you could make use of if you like (or need to) do things like post easily to a social media site or network, or if you just like shiny new web things. This list is from Steve Rubel over at Micropersuasion. My favourite of his list is Convert Me, which turns YouTube vids and makes them downloadable for my iPod Touch.

From Steve:

Here's a list of some new ones that I have started to use in the last few months. Just drag these to your bookmarks/favorites bar and you're good to go.

Pocket Tweets Pop - pops up the Pocket Tweets interface for interacting with Twitter. (More pop-ups here)

Twit This - send a web page directly into Twitter (requires you first enter your info on the TwitThis site)

Map This - pops up a window, enter an address and you will take you to the map

Gmail-to-Gcal - takes any selected text in Gmail and converts it into an event

Mobilize Me - great for mobile phones, takes any web page you're viewing and strips away the formatting by running it through the Google mobile transcoder

Share on Facebook - takes a web page and sticks it into Facebook as a shared item

Pasword Saver - for sites that won't remember your login info, click this link then enter your username/password and your browser will never forget it

Take Screenshot - automatically create a screen grab of any public web page you're visiting

Search and Highlight - scans a page for any term you enter then highlights the results

New Doc - creates a new word processing Google Document

Movie Times - enter your zip code and get a list of all the movies playing in your hood

Amazon This - pops up a little window, enter a term and it will run your search through on Amazon

Convert Me - takes any YouTube video and converts it into another downloadable format using Zamzar

Edit in Picnik - pushes a web page's images into Picnik where you can edit and save it

Back again

Reading up on gossip, what's hot, new technologies and all that in PR land isn't very easy right now. The big PR blogs are either disappearing, or they're going very quiet. Mr TWL has gone! Some like Mr Bentwood say it's a to do with a trough of disillusionment. I completely agree. Unless there's something in it for you personally then why keep doing it? Some go and come back. Maybe it's all in the name? Nevertheless, with all sorts of other sites like social networks or microblogs like twitter, those that are still there are spreading thin.

It's been quiet at this blog too. I've been completely offline for some weeks after heading back to my home town and spending a lot of time with my family.

Well I wasn't gone for good. Thanks for staying with me! If you're hoping to keep on top of what's happening in the tech PR game, trends, technologies, opinion and stuff like that, please do keep tuned in here. You can subscribe by email or RSS. And I post more frequently on twitter.com/drewb.