For those still navigating their way around the evolution of Web 2.0 and what it means for social and business interaction, you couldn’t hope for a more lucid analysis than that of Clay Shirky who has just written Here Comes Everybody about what the changes in the online world mean for, well, the clue’s in the title.

Listen to him here.

As candidate for the biggest job in the world (that’s President of the United States, by the way), which commentators would keep you awake at night? The big journalist guns of the New York Times or Washington Post, perhaps? Or might it be a 61-year-old Pennsyvanian housewife and part-time (wait for it…) BLOGGER? Keeping journalists out of a recent Barack Obama campaign event in Pennsylvania clearly lulled the presidential contender into - well - saying what he really thought.  Unfortunately for him, the 37 cataclysmic words of his speech which included references to small town people being “bitter” and somewhat attached to “guns” and “religion” were reported on an influential liberal blog by Mayhill Fowler - an Obama supporter!

Within a day, the post had 100,000 hits and the Clinton PR machine was in full swing to capitalise on Obama’s comments.

Despite having zillions to spend on the best comms strategists in the business, Obama has learned the hard way about the new reality: in the world of citizen journalism, everything is fair game

An interesting insight into online professional networks can be found here with an audio discussion between FT management writer, Adam Jones, and LinkedIn’s Kevin Eyres. LinkedIn positions itself as a professional - as distinct from social - networking community in which business people can build contacts, get expert advice and manage their careers. Strictly no biting zombie applications or virtual sheep being hurled at one another here, methinks.

Facebook has launched Lexicon, a new tool that allows members to see the buzz surrounding different words and phrases on Facebook Walls.  For PRs, it’s another tool to monitor who’s talking about your brand, in a similar style to Google Trends or Technorati, but in the enclosed environment of Facebook.

After a few initial searches, I have some client names talked occassionally but nothing surprising. Of course, I’ll be monitoring it carefully when my next national news story breaks to see if the topic flows over into the Facebook conversation.

To be honest, it’s more fun to search for generic terms to see what unusual spikes and drops appear. Conversations about ‘Halloween’ predictably climb rapidly, peaking on 31st October. ‘Love’ is at an all time high on Valentine’s Day while there are fewer people wishing ‘Happy Birthday’ on leap day, 29th February.

According to the Facebook blog:

Lexicon pulls from the wealth of data on Facebook without collecting any personal information in order to respect everyone’s privacy.

Well that’s good news considering all the recent media hype surrounding privacy of online information. But Lexicon is a far cry from companies who constantly monitor conversations across social media such as 1000 Heads.

As their homepage states:

Web forums and communities are where these decisions are being made. In these public spaces, users discuss their thoughts and experiences, recommending, or warning against using certain products and services. This peer to peer dialogue is guiding the purchasing decisions of a new generation of information rich consumers.

Clearly an area of growth for some brands to invest in but an area that could be perceived as a moral tightrope for others. The rise in concerns over online privacy are only going to tighten especially with the introduction of Big Brother-type programmes like Phorm.

Smarties is that kind of sweet that you can’t help but like - psychedelic coloured chocolates that don’t stain your shirt. But, from a PR point of view, where’s the story?

Smarties have done a great job with a simple idea to launch the fact that blue smarties are back, having been banished a couple of years back for containing artificial colours/flavourings.

Commissioning a food artist to recreate famous faces and landmarks out of Smarties must have taken all of 30 seconds to think of (when in doubt, marry marketing and art, that’ll work!). But Guardian Unlimited likes it enough to feature all the art works on one of its galleries linked from the home page, complete with mentions for the blue smartie comeback.

The Smarties website takes the theme to its natural conclusion with a kids’ food art competition, with winners’ works exhibited at the V&A in London.

As this campaign idea shows - much like Smarties - some oldies are still goodies. 

I’ve spent the last few years envisaging an application that would allow me to know what my journalist contacts were up to, minute-by-minute. I’ve thought about a messenger-based system that would allow me to drop a quick note to them to see if it’s a convenient time to chat about a possible news angle on behalf of my client because there’s nothing worse than calling when they’re on deadline.

Well it’s arrived and it’s growing in popularity. If Facebook is the new Second Life, then Twitter is the new Facebook. It’s the tool us PRs have been waiting for.

Of course some believe the end is nigh for Twitter while others are amazed at the number of third party applications - always a good sign when developers get on board.

For those of you who haven’t come across Twitter, I encourage you to watch this video courtesy of Commoncraft.

Exploring Twitter from a PR perspective has been interesting and has shown initial potential but it needs to be accepted by the masses to make it truely useful. Here are my thoughts on potential future uses of Twitter for PRs:

- Online Research: Drawing on a pool of social media enthusiasts (why else would they have Twitter accounts?) has turned Twitter into a great resource for research. Answers to questions are incredibly quick and offer great insight into areas you might not be familiar with. Working on adventure sports for one of my clients, I had to wade through media databases and avoid the much-hyped but low traffic websites. After requested help on Twitter, within minutes I had reached a community of adventure sports enthusiats who offered guidance on forums where extreme sports fans actually interact. Thanks everyone!

 - Contacts: I wonder how many journalists out there would sign up for Twitter if they knew it would put an end to calls and emails from PRs at inappropriate times? Well only 27 so far following a search for “UK” and “journalist”. They’re obviously all too shy to put on their real profession. If newsdesks had Twitter at their disposal, the relationship between hacks and flacks could change dramatically. From instant updates like “Don’t bother me. I’m on deadline!” through to “Looking for urgent case study about….” journalists should be using Twitter as a tool to interact with PRs. If newsdesks are evolving into 24-hour bodies, maybe it’s time for their journalists to move away from resources like ResponseSource to a more immediate communication tool.

 - Driver to website or blog: Driving interested audiences to a particular website is a regular occurance on the application. Most of the people I follow are comentators in the social media field and so links on Twitter to new posts on their blog make it easy for me to make a snap judgement on whether I’m interested in the topic or not. As previously noted, Gordon Brown, or rather Number 10, uses Twitter to publicise the PM’s current activities and highlights press releases from their press office. I have no doubt I’m one of the first to read these releases and I like to think journalists are using this as a resource to follow the PMs movements.  

- Listen to the conversation: Using tools such as Tweetscan, PRs can search for who is talking about their brand and in what context. (Thanks for that one Jon!)

It wouldn’t surprise me if companies with busy press offices set up their own Twitter feeds to announce press releases, but don’t bank on having masses of followers. Brands with a strong online following and dedicated brand advocates, such as Apple, will benefit highly from this but it will be interesting to see which companies experiment with this tool as it gains popularity online and with mainstream media. 

I agree with James Horton that the key to Twitter for PRs is to experiment - the same philosophy behind any new media tool - but don’t forget that this is a community. Don’t see this solely as a resource. Ultimately, the more you put in, the more you’ll get out.

And while you’re there, look me up.

It’s always great to start the day thanking your lucky stars that you’re not someone else! Apparently O2’s press officers got themselves and their phone wires into a tangle when trying to blag a journalist. They were discussing their line on how to pull the wool over his eyes whilst preparing to call him, inadvertently dialed him with hilarious results. I should stick by my profession but it does sound shoddy, although we’ve only got the journalist’s version, perhaps ‘friends’ of the PRs in question might want to put their side? Decide for yourself…..

  PRs on this side of the pond, me included, are devouring coverage of the US election, seeing what ideas and innovations we can import into our own sphere.

My eyes lit up when I saw this story in PR Week about a new start-up in the UK that’s looking to ape Barack Obama’s search strategies and offer advice to clients in the UK. I decided to put a bit of flesh on the bone in terms of what Barack’s strategy is on search;

 His two main players are Josh Orton, who left in October, and Scott Goodstein  (primarily and who is behind this) built a system that integrated the campaign’s PR and press efforts with PPC advertising. Orton worked more with the blogosphere, but their system basically focused on two key points

1) Speed - they focused on getting PPC (pay-per-click/Adwords) ads up as soon as they found out a story was about to break. The main problem was that their geeks at HQ weren’t talking to the journalists (only Obama’s press people) and so information flow was something they tried to fix. They got their early morning discussions with senior staff to also include possible stories that would break in the various parts of the country, and that memo was then passed to the Pay Per Click-optimising team.

2) Targeting - they started with name targeting, but then branched into devising a strategy for John Edwards’ keywords as well (e.g., using “poverty”, etc). Then branched into policy targeting, and in early January (just before Iowa) began looking at regional trends (e.g., people in Iowa were searching for “energy subsidy” and so made sure Obama’s ads were there) and matching everything together.

They basically flooded the market, and at one point were bidding against themselves for ad placement!

 Unlock Democracy, http://www.unlockdemocracy.org.uk/?page_id=490  the organisation established to encourage as many people as possible to vote has set up a novel way of getting over the usual voting barriers of thinking politicians are all the same or thinking its too boring to keep up with the issues. 

We all know what we care about, so Unlock have developed a quick application that asks your views on key issues and then matches that against the views of the candidates and produces a recommendation. It’s not perfect but it’s a great guide. They are launching it for the London Mayoral election.

Press release and link are below. Why not test it out and see whether you are more Boris or Green? 

Unlock Democracy has launched Vote Match London <http://t.ymlpr.net/bbuaaauuyazaumsacawmus/click.php>, an online quiz designed to help Londoners decide who to vote for in the elections for Mayor and Assembly. All ten Mayoral candidates and the thirteen political parties standing for the London-wide Assembly elections have provided their answers to a survey which forms the basis of the web application. As well as matching their views against the candidates’, voters can give specific policies extra weight. The results screen enables them to examine the candidates’ views in more detail and points them to where they can get more information.

The candidates’ responses reveal some surprising results. You may be aware that the Green Party want to lift the ban on feeding pigeons, but did you know that only the One London Party agree with them? Ken Livingstone thinks the police should let people caught in possession with cannabis off with a warning so the police can concentrate on tackling hard drugs but Brian Paddick, who piloted this policy when he was the Lambeth Police Chief, disagrees.

Vote Match has been produced in association with the Dutch Institute for Public and Politics (IPP), which has been developing Vote Match (known as Stemwijzer in Dutch) since 1989. The Vote Match system has been used in the latest European, French, German, Swiss and Hungarian elections and a version was launched earlier this year for the US Presidential Primaries.

  It’s a sorry sight to see Yahoo thrashing around trying to compete in a changing world. They were the future once! Today they’ve launched a new website for women, already a crowded market.

This is the announcement from the press release.Yahoo has launched a site for women between ages 25 and 54, calling it a key demographic underserved by current Yahoo properties. The site is called Shine.Yahoo said advertisers in consumer-packaged goods; retail and pharmaceuticals have requested more ways to reach those consumers.

25-54 seems like rather a broad target but as I’m no expert, I consulted somebody who is, Catherine Rees, Head of Consumer for Staniforth/ (the PR agency I work for). Here’s what she said: I’ve had a look at it and I’m disappointed. I’d already read the Elle interview with Madonna so that’s old news. I’d expect Yahoo to be telling me new stuff and be ahead of print media.

When I see that female interests are fashion, food, health and love I want to scream and yawn at the same time. It’s just so predictable and    something I already get from the mags I read and sites I visit.  When will someone be brave enough to stop clumping all women together and realise that we have wider interests and attitudes?  Even the career section is about sleeping with work colleagues. Add something on there about politics, business, women in the news not just shopping and sh*gging.   So there! 

The future online is in catering for specific audiences in terms of the kind of clubs you go to, the way you live, how much you earn or having a sharper aggregation model. Jeff Jarvis puts it nicely.

This is as good an excuse as any to re-live that Harry Enfield sketch!