Five new places online a PR person should get to know better

I've been meaning to share some examples of new social and digital apps that I've been using recently in day to day PR. If you're in digital PR you might find it useful to try some of them out. If you're using some of them already, I'd love to hear the ways you use them.

Feedly - This service has completely changed the way I read news online. I've used RSS readers to track the news, all the blogs that I read, and clusters of client feeds (here's exactly how I structure my feeds). Well, in the age of microblogging my RSS reader has started to gather dust. Feedly has changed that. It presents your news, buzz, blogs and everything else you need to digest in a format that's much more captivating, creative and useful. It's also social, and also plugs into all other websites you use, showing buzz from the social web on them. For example, I read this story just now, and Feedly's little app in my browser tells me how many times it's been added to FriendFeed, Digg an Twitter, including highlights of online buzz. The other thing FriendFeed does is, when you Google something, it shows you, embedded in the search results, social media buzz on that topic, in the white space that Google leaves empty. You'd almost miss this, as it's very nicely integrated. All-round a fantastic buzz tracking tool.

FriendFeed - The best new startup of 2008 according to TechCrunch has been changing the web habits of the early adopters for over a year. Now it's a matter of time before a community big-enough moves the rest of us over (or enough for it to be a proper destination). It's not only a destination site - you can post things on it in a similar way you do on Facebook or Twitter - it's also a funnel. In other words, plug all your other social sites, like Flickr, YouTube, your blog, Twitter, almost anything, into your friend stream. It can then pipe it out to somewhere else, like Twitter. 

FourSquare - This one is new new. FourSquare is a service that asks you, through an iPhone app, the mobile web or a text message, to check in, so that people know where you are. Here's Cnet's review of it from earlier this month. It's one of the hotter and more talked about versions of location-based mobile friend services that help you keep in touch with your community based on your location, but in the simplest way possible. When Twitter came along, it was a massively stripped down and basic version of Facebook. Twitter is to Facebook what FourSquare is to Google Latitude, Brightkite and the other hugely useful but complex location-based mobile apps.

Evernote - Whopping disclaimer, because we work with Evernote, but as you might remember I've been just a little bit fanatical about this service for about a year now. With the social web stretching us thin and far, this technology is your digital brain. Use it for note taking, snapping flipcharts at workshops, group projects or coverage saving. One to watch. Evenote, like FriendFeed, hot with the cool kids.

4chan - It's a picture-based message forum that brings users together in a way that goes against the grain for those that 'get' old social media. You don't have an identity, so no username, and anything goes (ie, really not safe for work in a lot of places. Just to be clear, I don't approve of it's content, I'm simply saying the kind of way topics spread on 4chan is something relatively new to the blog/twitter/facebook way of thinking). There's no archives, so no way of showing off about how long you've been on it or what your most popular post was. Very un-Technorati. This creates swarm like behaviour that turns things viral. In its own words, 4chan's collaborative-community format is copied from one of the most popular forums in Japan, Futaba Channel. Check out some examples on just how its different community approach changes the ways things happen on the web.

Some feedback I've received on Twitter about this post is questioning whether 4chan is mainstream enough to warrant people needing to know anything about it at all. My gut feel is that this style of forum will be the next wave online, with anonymity, speed and currency changing the way people share content and swarm on issues.

- update - I have re-edited this post to ensure it's clear that I'm neither ranking these by importance or sanctioning content on the sites.

Comments

[Stuart Bruce - Wolfstar]

I have a love/hate relationship with Evernote. It's great, but the inability to share notes securely with a group makes it almost useless for me. Evernote is web-based and can't do this, yet OneNote isn't and can do it. I know it's on the roadmap, but until they deliver Evernote goes from being brilliant to a zero.

One reason I'd love to use Evernote instead of OneNote is the great Xperia panel (usual disclaimer Sony Ericsson is a client).

[Ian Delaney]

I mentioned this before, but I a little uncomfortable with your recommendation that everyone in digital PR should check out 4chan.

I am not, of course, a PR, but this is more a public health warning than a recommendation on PR practise.

I do believe that PRs in this space should have a good understanding of subcultures that they wouldn't come across under other circumstances. So should everyone else for that matter.

However, among other things, 4chan is a distribution site for extremely hardcore pornography. It takes two clicks to get to a torrent of a bukkake video, for example. The comment threads contain considerable amounts of homophobic and racist abuse.

I am no prude, but that isn't acceptable either on the political or the legal level. Encouraging people to visit the site is tantamount approval of this content.

I think b3ta or popbitch would have been a far better choice.

[Drew]

Thanks for the feedback Stuart.

Ian - I'm making it completely clear while I'm editing this post that I am not sanctioning content on sites like 4chan. It's their structure and how they change the dynamic of buzz creation that's interesting and why it's caught the attention of people whose opinion I follow and hence made it into this post. In what sense would popbitch or b3ta be a far better choice for this list?

[Ian Delaney]

I understand that - and appreciate your edits since my first post. Its dynamics are extremely interesting. That's why we've both found it, and thus I understand why you are recommending online PRs to also know about it.

However, a big 'however', linking to a distributor of hardcore, illegal pornography is a vote. You know that - that's how blogs have become so powerful. This is a high-authority site within your industry. You have voted for the free dissemination of hardcore porn, made it more easy to find and raised the site's revenues.

Why b3ta? - because of stuff like this: http://www.itnews.com.au/News/41475,virgin-pulls-competition-on-b3ta-website.aspx

Bit old-news for you and I perhaps. But b3ta remains on my *must read* list and is not so widely known.

Maybe remove the hyperlink and suggest people find it?

Mmmm... interesting.

[Ian Delaney]

umm... and also they are very funny.