pr-media-blog.co.uk

For the last three weeks the BBC Two series ’The Virtual Revolution‘ (7.15pm Saturday) has been a highlight of the week.  It charts the very real impact that the Internet has had on our lives and forecasts how it might develop as access spreads around the globe.   The list of interviewees is stellar; Tim Berners-Lee, Arianna Huffington, Clay Shirky, Jimmy Wales, Steve Wozniak, Biz Stone and Evan Williams are just a small selection.  All of this hosted by the brilliant Dr Aleks Krotoski.  It takes on the big questions around politics, privacy, society and relationships bringing genuine insight into the changes driven by the web.

The web isn’t a channel like TV, radio or print it is so much more than that but it is critical that those involved in communications remember the residual power of conventional channels.  This series can be viewed on line but most are still watching on TV and tuning in on Saturdays at the point in time determined by the scheduler.  Mainstream media is still driving online traffic.   There is a very neat illustration of this if you take a look at Dr Aleks K’s twitter following.  She was already a respected authority on-line; Guardian journalist, blogger, presenter of the excellent Guardian Tech Weekly podcast, however her twitter following  went through the vitual roof when this series went live on the 30th January. 

TV along with many of the strands of conventional media is a channel of the future as well as the past and digital channels sit comfortably alongside.  It is the final episode of the series tomorrow and you really dont want to miss it.  Make an appointment to view and get a smartphone or laptop in hand for those live watercooler conversations. 

Hashtag #bbcrevolution. We’ll be virtually in the same room.

Wordpress, the leading blog platform, suffered a major outage at around 21.40 GMT today taking around 10 million blogs with it.  Twitter has been awash with commentary, many quoting the figure of 9.2 million blogs but this is a significant underestimate.  It is the number that appears on Wikipedia but this is almost four months out of date - the true figure is around 10 million based on an extrapolation of the published rate of growth.

Although PR Media Blog uses Wordpress it is independently hosted so therefore not affected by the current crisis.  No reason has been given for the service interruption but Matt Mullenweg the 26 year old founding developer at Wordpress tweeted in the last few minutes “we’re investigating the source & most expedient fix. I hope to have everyone’s blogs back & running as soon as possible”.

It remains unclear as to whether this is the result of a denial of service attack similar to that suffered by twitter last August or perhaps a technical problem caused by the volume of users.  Whatever the explanation 10 million blogs represents a huge volume of information and the pressure on the team at Automattic, Inc. the web development company that runs WordPress must be immense. 

Tens of thousands of music fans were left enraged after seetickets, the only website on which fans were able to enter the draw for the free Rage Against the Machine concert, apparently crashed. The error left many fans staring at a loading screen or frantically refreshing the page for the three hours it took for all the tickets to be allocated. 

The free gig in London’s Finsbury Park was announced by the US anti-establishment rap-rock band earlier in the year as a thank you to British fans who helped the band’s expletive-ridden 1992 single, Killing in the Name to reach this year’s Christmas number one slot.  

The band achieved the feat after a social media-driven campaign - urging music fans to shun the latest X-Factor offering -caught the imagination of a large part of the British public. As the campaign’s website proclaims: “You spread the word, you swayed the outcome, you made music history”.

Over the weekend, tens, maybe even hundreds of thousands, went to seetickets.com to pre-register for the draw. Fans were then told to log on to the website at 9:00am on the 17^th February to enter the draw for tickets.  

However it appeared that, despite knowing how many people were likely to visit the site, seetickets could simply not handle the numbers. Many have now taken to social media – the very platform which brought the gig into existence – to vent their frustration and lambast seetickets for its poor foresight and lack of preparation. 

From a PR perspective, this was a golden opportunity for seetickets to achieve some money-can’t-buy brand awareness. The only thing most music fans are aware of now, however, is the site’s ineptitude. Do a Twitter search for seetickets and you will struggle to see a positive comment, with many stating they will never use the site again. 

Seetickets? Just seeing the homepage would have been nice.

In a live press conference broadcast through YouTube, Google today announced the launch of Google Buzz a social networking application built onto Google Mail.   Todd Jackson, Gmail Project Manager explained how it uses Gmail contacts to create a ready made friend list but then allows users to pull in contacts from other social networks.    

It borrows a lot of the ideas born out of twitter but adds a new level of sophistication.  For example the recommendation engine will over time filter ‘good buzz’ from ‘bad buzz’ - if you like an intelligent retweet system.

Google Buzz has some stunning features that set it apart from other social platforms, particular when it comes to smartphones.  It uses GPS to locate where you are and integrates with a new version of Google mobile maps.  Posts from mobiles including pictures will be automatically geo-tagged (or located to place) which will allow you to broadcast and recieve the buzz around shops, restaurants or visitor attractions, nearby.

Perhaps the biggest new feature is the inclusion of voice to text.  This means that you can speak directly into your mobile phone and it will appear automatically as a text in your Buzz profile.   In one fell swoop Google is taking on Friendfeed, Twitter, Foursquare, Gowalla, Facebook and, oh yes, the iPhone.  The mobile features of Buzz will be available on the Google Nexus One and other Android handsets but not (at least for now) on Apple’s market leading smartphone.  When will Buzz be available?  It launches now.

Tweeting just three times in 24 hours @BillGates has amassed over 165,000 followers on his twitter account.  Twitter Counter is predicting that by tomorrow he will have reached the quarter million mark. 

The account was set up last June but was dormant until yesterday when the Microsoft supremo broke his silence with the words ‘Hello World’.  He also mentioned that he would be publishing a letter on behalf of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in a few days. The missive from his philanthropic organisation will land on the 25th January.   We can only guess at the content but Gates has also tweeted his concerns about the situation in Haiti.

The Hollywood celeb Ashton Kutcher was the first to break the million follower mark on twitter.  He took three months and some active campaigning to hit that figure.   It looks like Bill Gates will reach a million within a week or so.   This puts paid to any notion that twitter can’t be a broadcast channel for certain individuals and organisations. 

Some quick twitter facts about Bill Gates first day of tweeting:

• He is using twitter.com rather than a twitter client
• No mobile posts as yet (not too suprsing from the founder of Microsoft)
• He has tweeted 5 times but two of these have been retweets (using the native function on twitter)
• He has already been ‘listed’ over 5000 times
• He has @posted twice - both to US celebs
• The first person he followed was New York Times columnist Nick Kristof

The social media arena has been dominated by the growth of Twitter, Facebook and other networking sites this year. As we’re nearing 2010, there’s chatter about how networks will evolve going forward and one of the key points I’ve seen in almost every trend forecast is filtering out the clutter.

According to Pingdom, Twitter is already closing in on 30 million tweets a day and the latest figures from Facebook reveal that over 45 million status updates are uploaded on the site each day. It’s no surprise that some users are starting to tune out and some still think that Twitter is a waste of time.

David Armano predicts on the Harvard Business Conversation Starter blog that social media will begin to look less social next year - i.e. we will try to get more value out of our networks through filtering messages (hiding from hyperactive updaters etc).

Twitter has already started tackling this with Twitter Lists, but it raises an interesting question - do we actually want to connect with people we don’t know? The majority of people using social media connect almost exclusively with people they already know in the real world. Or is it simply information overload and we need to be able to administer the incoming messages better?

Either way, it emphasises yet again that successful online PR does not equate to a large number of followers on Twitter or fans on Facebook. As people start to sift through the clutter (and some will probably do this early next year as everyone jumps on the New Year’s resolutions bandwagon and pledge to tidy up their lives in general), brands which aren’t offering something really valuable are likely to be the first ones to fall off the list. Relevant and trusted content has always been important but more aggressive filters will mean it’s paramount to digital PR success next year.

How do you see 2010 panning out? Will it become more difficult for brands to reach consumers through social networks as people are increasingly being bombarded with marketing messages?

Who still hates social media?

Some have been vocal in suggesting that the principles are right but the execution is worth only throwing out and replacing with “something real”.

In Jeremiah Owyang’s recent blog post following the Forbes CMO summit in Florida, the former Forrester analyst and now strategist for the Altimeter Group claimed that this group of chief marketing officers had “elevated” the social media discussion.  Despite the prospect of shrinking marketing spend, he says, the marketeers had seen opportunities to “innovate with inexpensive channels” and not a moment too soon, as they were facing something new: a loss of power to the empowered consumer.

Owyang points out that social media in particular was “on the lips of nearly everyone”, with a focus on how it could apply to changes in influence, reputation management and be integrated with existing activity.  One example he cites from the companies represented at the event is that of Ritz-Carlton hotels, whose hotel managers apparently review online chatter about their hotel before doing anything else of a morning.

Overall, 70% of CMOs polled by Forbes said they’d be doing more work in social media next year, now comfortable that it offers real value, though measurement was still in its infancy.

So how does the picture look in the UK?  There is some caution but big organsiations have been listening and in some cases joining the conversations too.   Retail is one sector where business understands the need for customer dialogue.  It was more of an old fashioned PR stunt but Debenhams used social media to good effect with a twitter assistants day in September.   Habitat was an early adopter but got off to a false start with the hashtags debacle, in which they attempted to piggyback serious stories like the Iran election protests in order to flog lampshades.  ASDA’s new Aisle Spy and Your ASDA blogs are examples of a much more considered approach to long term engagement.

Twelve months ago the attitude of big business to social media ranged from cautious interest to total disregard.  Now, in the UK too, the sound of consumer chatter is gaining an audience in the board room.

In today’s guest blog post Staniforth Manchester intern, Andrew Doyle, checks the scores of UK football clubs when it comes to the Facebook league.

With the season just under a third of the way through, English football’s most successful clubs are battling against each other for domestic dominance. But it is not only within the Premier League that England’s footballing giants are competing for success. Research conducted by Revolution magazine indicates that the country’s top teams are also competing with each other in terms of their popularity on Facebook.

Leading the pack with over one million fans signed up to the club’s official Facebook group is Liverpool, while Manchester United are just behind their studded heels with 955,377 followers. Also making it into the top ten, although trailing some way behind are Arsenal and Chelsea, with Stoke

The growing presence of football clubs within the social media network is not, perhaps, something to be surprised by.

Before the investment of wealth through the BSkyB revolution, it was easy to see how football clubs regarded their fans as one of the main reason for their existence. Compare that to the initial changes stimulated by BSkyB’s involvement and the subsequent affluence it generated, it is possible to see how football clubs came to see fans less in this way and more as customers, each of whom is a potential stakeholder in a commercial transaction.

Thus it comes as no shock to me that football clubs are using sites such as Facebook in an attempt to ‘get back in touch’ and communicate with fans and the community in an effort to bridge the divide that has been created. However could this be regarded as something of a two-edged sword? This leads to the question: what are the motives for clubs having a presence on such sites? Is this altruism and benevolence or a shrewd and cynical attempt to raise the profile of clubs across the world in a business still dominated by global markets and financial opportunism?

While the banks, collectively, may be short of friends right now, one bank is stashing away praise for its foray into social media.

First Direct - pioneers of the UK’s first telephone bank - launched its “live” site  a month ago to resounding welcomes in online places such as here and here.

So, I think we can agree that a bank providing a forum for both good and bad comments from its customers is a bold move and one to be applauded.

But another interesting dimension to this is raised in First Direct CEO, Matt Colebrook’s customer message a month on from the launch.

While he describes the social media initiative (or is it a culture change?) as “a new voice for customers”, “the right thing to do” and “overwhelming” in the response it’s generated, he’s careful to qualify this with “Clearly we can’t be all things to all people” and “we won’t be able to offer everything that’s been suggested”.

And that’s fair enough. What social media gives customers is the chance to be heard and taken, perhaps, more seriously than before as their views are not kept behind closed doors or on a private phone call but in the visible, searchable online arena. But, for businesses, there will always be a limit, as Colebrook suggests, on what’s possible and customers have the choice to live within those limits, or not.

And maybe it’s this dilemma that causes social media anxiety for some organisations: “If we engage openly in an online forum with customers, will they criticise us or ask for things we can’t possibly provide, so disappointing them and harming our brand?”

Well, if they’re unhappy, they’ll talk about your brand whether you choose to engage with them or not. So, opting for the conversation provides an opportunity to turn the detractor around. And, to paraphrase Colebrook again, you won’t please all of the people all of the time. But if can demonstrate that you’ve listened and are taking the time to explain, publicly, what you can and can’t deliver, it places you ahead of the brand that says: “This is what we sell, are you havin’ it or what?”

So well done to First Direct and let other businesses take heart: social media shouldn’t be seen as the “lynch mob online”, but an ongoing discussion between company and customer that could even - gasp - be a win-win.

Following on from my recent blog, Lily is Logging Off, in which I considered the rather cynical reasons why Lily Allen has had enough of the social networking space, I am now most intrigued about the recent goings-on of a certain Stephen Fry.

He quit Twitter, then changed his mind; blamed it on feeling very low and depressed, a symptom of his bipolar disorder.

It was a disagreement between Fry and another tweeter who described Fry’s tweets as “a bit…boring” which lead him to temporarily quit the site.

But for me it’s not the fact that Fry, rather impulsively it seems, announced he was retiring from Twitter, it’s the astonishing coverage it received and the unquestionable candour that Fry has displayed.

The Sunday Times (front page), Guardian, Telegraph, Sun… they’ve all harvested a good story out of it which in itself is quite incredible. Twitter is not a stand-alone community and any mildly contentious or salacious tweet, particularly by a celebrity, will make the national press.

Let’s face it, unless your tweets are protected they are open to everyone - and that goes for journalists looking for a good scoop.

Clearly, as one of the first celebrities to embrace Twitter - and now having a massive 945,000 followers - Fry’s announcement to retire was bound to cause a stir. But, in the grand scale of things, and particularly in light of his rather quick retraction, this really is a tornado in a teacup.

Not only that but if you consider the person that is Stephen Fry - a highly intelligent, slightly ungainly, old fashioned eccentric who will in no way appeal to everyone - he is bound to be described as boring from time to time!

Personally, I admire his honesty and thought his retrospective tweet which read: “l feel more sheepish than a sheep and more twattish than a twat” was exceptional and I’m sure his “twitter quitter” moment will only enhance his national treasure status.