Drew B's take on tech PR

Future of print - keep media

This week saw the closure of one of London's big newspapers, freesheet TheLondonPaper. Earlier this month a lot of talk circulated about the contemplated closure of The Observer. In the wake of all this, the industry is looking at what the future holds for print media, and it was the topic of conversation over lunch today with an old friend and client and who was thinking what might happen next - as am I.

The thing we settled on was media you like to keep. Keep media that fills your bookshelves, or that you like to keep around for the week rather than a day. Consumers that graze online channels who are presented with everything they might want for free will only invest when there's value. A niche will give them that, but quality will too.

This weekend I'll spend about a fiver on print media, keep it a while, tear some bits out, and so on. For the week, well, apart from what I get online, I hope freesheets don't die out altogether as they're a staple for me in the week too. But maybe there just isn't room for them when the content they offer is not going to give them a sound business in the end.

Foursquare to launch in London

I got a message from Foursquare this evening saying that they will be launching in London soon. That's news to me, and I think it will shake up the local web sphere a little. The next big thing? Who knows, but all the early adopters who helped Twitter grow when it was young are all over it, and the Foursquare system is showing a lot of Twitteresque signs in these early days.

Up until now Foursquare has been a US-centric community. I've been a dormant user of it for a few months now, but I've been largely locked out because the service is set up in a way that you have to be in a registered city to use it.

Foursquare is a new social networking application that has been getting the early adopters spending a little time away from Twitter of late. It mixes microblogging (like Twitter), location-based check-ins (like Dopplr) and adds a layer of game theory, like unlocking prizes an badges for certain achievements. It works online, on your mobile and it has a slick iPhone app.

The founder of Foursquare describes it as a system that learns as it grows, and because it's city-based, it really does become a valuable community. Have a look at this interview he did with Edelman's Steve Rubel recently.

The city-based element to Foursquare is really important. It makes the system very rich, but excludes those not in a city where Foursquare works. That's why I've been a dormant user so far. At the moment Foursquare works in 21 cities, 20 of which are in the US. I only learnt this evening that the one European city on Foursquare, Amsterdam, was a test in preparation for launching in London. I'm now looking forward to trying it our properly when it launches.

A UK interview with @Ev, founder of Twitter, and my question to @bbcnewsnight

Tonight on BBC TV it's Newsnight's turn to interview the co-founder of Twitter, a chap called Evan Williams, aka @Ev. At 10:30 he'll be on, and if you have a question for him, go on to Twitter and ask (you have to address the question to @bbcnewsnight).

This is the first mainstream TV interview I've known Ev to do, as he leaves most of the PR work to his colleague Biz Stone, aka @biz. I'm really looking forward to it, as Ev's got an interesting story that I hope he gets a chance to talk about.

Before founding Twitter, Ev was one of the principal figures behind the growth of blogging, founding Blogger, the blogging software that was bought by Google and is now one of the biggest blogging platforms online. It was through blogger that Gmail was launched.

So my question to Newsnight for Ev: what's next after you sell Twitter?