I find the use of video in social media absolutely fascinating at the moment. When to use it, how to make people aware its there, what is the quality threshold in different circumstances.

According to Freshnetworks

We find that different community members will want to engage and express themselves in different ways, and so allowing them to do this will maximise participation. It’s also a great way to build engagement between the brand and the community - letting them see inside an organisation; video can break down the barriers between brand and customer. It’s an effective way of conveying content as it often encourages more personal and more efficient presentation of ideas. Finally, video can be easily shared and so has a great viral effect.

The Tories have used video in an interesting way, learning from the US that seeing ‘behind the scenes’ can help break down barriers. OK, OK its still scripted but it ‘feels’ different. And a big part of persuading me to vote is about how I feel rather than sitting down and analysing the policies.

Christian Mahne, from my old employers Lansons, had some interesting comments on a recent corp comms initiative from Budweiser.

When it comes to content, we as an industry need to move our clients away from soft pre-agreed lines of questioning towards more credible, editorially rigorous discussion. This is where Cantos slips a little. The impact of Brito’s clips is lessened because they don’t tell us much we didn’t already know or expect.

Content is nothing without distribution. Waterloo may have been won on the playing fields of Eton but takeovers like this are won in front of computers and TV screens. These days, whether you’re a player or a pundit, you go to the internet first for more information. In a world where perception is reality, Cantos won the battle for shareholder hearts and minds by presenting a multimedia onslaught of InBev’s point of view, unopposed. It did it through the microsite, its own website and syndication partners. A good campaign well executed.

Google has launched probably its most ambitious project to date. As part of the Project 10 to the 100th, the search engine company (which is rapidly changing into a company that defies definition) is calling on everyone to submit ideas to change the world. Throwing in $10million to bring these ideas to life, Google is clearly putting other CRS campaigns to shame as only they could and living by their motto of ‘Don’t Be Evil’.

There are no rules aside from the fact that ideas must fall into one of the stipulated categories: Community, Opportunity, Energy, Environment, Health, Education, Shelter and Everything Else because ’sometimes the best ideas don’t fit into a category at all’.

As a PR, I’ve lost count the number of times truly great ideas from either a campaign or social responsibilty perspective have been rejected by senior figures and clients due to budget restrictions. Taking the over-used buzz of ‘blue sky thinking’ rarely comes without caveats that further down the line, the idea will be ’streamlined’ or just dropped.

So this is a call to all those marketeers out there who spend their days dreaming on behalf of their clients. You have a new client with a $10million budget and you can do anything you want, so long as it changes the world for the better. Now that’s what I call a brief!

Sometimes it’s good to stop and daydream about exactly where we’re going. Social media is advancing at a fairly rapid pace and most people are still trying to get to grips with ‘web 2.0′. This has all come about with the advancement in technology and so the best way to get an indication of what we’ll be using in the future and how we’ll be interacting with it is to look to the current areas of growth in this field.

We’ve been priviledged to get our hands on some next generation technology on behalf of one of our clients, something that I personally believe will change how we see the world around us with this technology becoming an even more integral and useful part of our daily lives.

But if you’re lacking vision of the future but don’t have a crystal ball to hand, you could do worse than read the report from InfoWorld that looks ahead to the year 2018. Place your bets now on which of these predictions will come true.

Personal Branding on the Social Web

Why, I wondered does Neville Hobson hold his hand in front of his face in the picture on his blog…and on Twitter…and on…hang on a minute.

Is this a subtle form of personal branding?  Social networks; Facebook, Linked-In and microblogs like Twitter are growing fast and individuals are, if not clamouring for our attention, at least aware that there is a lot of noise out there.  If we are going to build an individual online presence it makes sense to follow some of the tradional rules of branding.  Consistency is one, which means using the same image across a range of networks.  Using a strong, stand out and easy to remember image is another.  Pr 2.0 gurus Todd Defren  and Brian Solis  both do this - Todd has a cartoon style image on his Twitter feed and Brian uses an arresting image with his specs in the foreground on his blog.  

Chris Brogan has just published an ebook on personal online branding so it’s a hot topic.  It’s an interesting read and looks at personal branding from a broad prespective.  What particularly fascinates me is the way in which people apply the iconographic rules that have histrically been used by brands totheir own images of themselves.  

This world has created some rules of its own.  Take a look at the picture above of some of the people I follow on Twitter.  These images are tiny, smaller than thumbnails, so making something work at this scale becomes part of the art.  Colin Byrne  CEO of Weber Shandwick and Deirdre Breakenridge author of the book PR 2.0 both use strong purple colours in their backgrounds to make them stand out.  Aleks Krotoski , presenter of The Guardian’s Tech Weekly podcast uses a close up of her fire red locks as her Twitter image (fifth row, left of middle).

I have no proof that any of these individuals have done anything other than post the first image they came across but whether by luck or good judgement they all stand out.  I have to confess I have toyed with the technique myself.  There is a deliberate use of colour in my profile pic and it seemed to me that if social networks use small images an extreme close up might be a good idea.  Charles Arthur Technology Editor of The Guardian didn’t agree.  He thinks I’m trying to hide a dodgy moustache. 

I often talk about how politicians can use new media to connect better to Party members. Here’s an enterprising Tory who has set up Tory Radio, an online radio station dedicated to doing just that. In the spirit of Tories online, here’s Iain Dale  interviewing him on Telegraph TV.

The eyes of the world’s media are trained on Denver, the scene of the Democrat National Convention (DNC), where Barack Obama aims to show everyone that he can hold the most powerful (elected) role on the planet. You would expect it to be a media circus but lets peak behind the curtains a bit.

This race has seen relations with the blogosphere professionalised in a way that holds many lessons for corporate and public bodies over here in the UK. Here’s an example. According to the Wall Street Journal, Google is investing big in a media centre for bloggers at the DNC. Highlights;

 Google Inc. will help set up a two-story, 8,000 square-foot headquarters for hundreds of bloggers descending on the Democratic convention in Denver next week, and it will offer similar services at the Republican convention in September, as new media gain influence in politics.With its financial support for the “Big Tent” blogger facility at the Democratic convention, Google stands to gain exposure and goodwill from 500 or so bloggers who paid $100 for access to the facility, run by a coalition of bloggers. Google’s software and services will be featured, including a kiosk in the public area of the tent where anyone can post videos on YouTube. “Four years ago, YouTube hadn’t been founded yet. Now, it will have booths at each convention to help delegates and bloggers upload videos taken on the floor or at events around town.

“It’s an amazing opportunity for us. You don’t get all these people in one place but every four years,” says Robert Boorstin, director of corporate and policy communications in Google’s Washington office and a former Clinton administration official.

Not only will bloggers have Internet access, workspaces and couches for napping in the “Big Tent” headquarters, they will be provided food and beverages, Google-sponsored massages, smoothies and a candy buffet. On the final night of the convention, Google is co-sponsoring a bash with Vanity Fair magazine for convention-goers and journalists that has become one of the hottest party invites.

Google will offer similar amenities for bloggers and new-media reporters who attend the Republican convention in St. Paul, Minn., company officials say. It will demo a variety of new political tools next week, including a search function on YouTube that will offer almost real-time keyword searches of convention speech videos.

The fascinating bit is that McCain’s team actually have set up base just a few blocks from the convention centre to counter the messaging! What does that involve? Well, you hire a big venue, invite all your mainstream media chums (don’t really have to invite - they’ll come automatically once you tell them where you’re gonna be), give bloggers free hotel rooms, and make sure you’ve got big trucks with satellite dishes on them.

Also bring along a few protestors who have some beef with Obama (either they’re “pro-Hillary” or “pro-life” or something or other), and then bring a few far left anarchist protestors as well (just to spice things up). Then go around the city and shake hands and kiss babies, making you look like the man on the street, and the black guy is made to look like an elitist rock-star.

They’ve set up this site as a focus for the ‘counter-messaging’ (great American-type term that will inevitably surface here!).

They’ve posted the reaction from Fox News’ Brit Hume on the home page:

“What’s interesting about this to me is I have never seen the campaign that is idle, if you will, during the other candidate’s nominating convention have as much of an impact before, and I think it owes something to the phenomenon of these what we call ads, and I guess in some broad sense they are. But what they really are, are Internet videos that are being published to the Internet and they spread around in this day and age very quickly and are probably as good as paid ads and I guess there’s some paid advertising going on. But, this is, wouldn’t you say Carl, from your experience, that this has been remarkable the extent to which the McCain camp has succeeded in intervening, so to speak, in this convention?”

Mozilla, the people behind the popular Firefox web browser, announced today a new project that could will change the way we engage with the internet.

Ubiquity has a simple goal: ‘to enable the user to instruct the browser (by typing, speaking, using language) what they want to do’.

The smartest part of the software is making use of language and allowing a computer to understand what we mean without us mere mortals having to modify our speech or writing patterns.

Imagine typing (or even saying) “book a flight for me from Manchester to London, leaving on Monday and returning on Wednesday, the cheapest, then email my colleagues in London office the flight details and add to my calendar. Oh and book me a hotel with at least four star reviews for the same dates.” You understand what I mean. If I had a personal assistant, they would probably make this happen. But my computer didn’t do anything. Not a thing.

As Aza points out:

“We aren’t there yet. Instead, we have the rudimentary systems of structured natural language commands. You can select something and Ubiq “translate this to French”, or “email it to Jono”. In both cases, Ubiquity is smart enough to realize what “this” and “it” refers to, as well as knowing who Jono is (by talking with my web-mail’s contact list). It’s also smart enough to be able to understand commands like “map Chicago Comics” and “yelp Tapas near SF” and give you rich previews and search results to get you where you want to be quickly. Even better, both of those commands let you insert results directly into, say, an email you’re writing so that you never have to interrupt your chain of thought.” Genius.

Robert Scoble notes that this will only be picked up by passionate internet users but I believe that once this is adopted by an even bigger player, most likely as copycat software introduced to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, that’s when everything changes.

I can even imagine Steve Jobs taking to the stage in a couple of years time to explain how the new version of Safari can take care of everything for you. Just type it in and BOOM!

There’s no need to wait for a keynote from Steve or Steve. If you’re a passionate internet user you can take a sneak peak at the future right now with this video. Or go one step further and download Ubiquity for Firefox.

Ubiquity for Firefox from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.

They’re talking about you. Right on your doorstep. In front of your restaurant, your bar, your shop. Remember the poor service you gave that guy? Well now everyone who walks past knows about it. They know which bartender pours the best cocktails. They know who to speak to in order to get the best seat. They know that you offer discounts to ’selected’ customers. They know that your bar is better than your neighbours.

How do they know? The writing’s on the wall…but you probably don’t see it yet. You won’t see it until you have an iPhone and an application that I believe will change how we see the world around us. Graffitio is so simple, it’s genius.

“Attach conversations to the places you go and the things you see! As soon as you open Graffitio, it looks around you for Walls created by other users at restaurants, bars, stores, parks, events, or anywhere else you could imagine.

Read what other people have to say, and leave your own thoughts behind for others to find later. You can even create your own Walls. Graffitio connects you to people who have been there before and those who will follow.”

It’s just one of the many applications now available for the iPhone which make great use of the location-specific data. This isn’t the first time this technology has been talked about but it is the first time I’ve held it in my hand. There is no doubt other similar applications will soon find their way onto other mobile devices but in the meantime, Graffitio has a great opportunity to take the lead in this field.

At the moment the creator, anoopr, admits there are problems:

“Graffitio is still pretty raw. Someone on Twitter said that Release 3 is a solid 1.0, and I agree with that. In it’s current form, it’s not impressive. I’m really flattered that so many of you are so excited about it and see its potential. It’s really inspiring, and why I’m working my ass off to get new features into your hands.”

And, of course, the walls are being abused by ‘vandals’ who just want their make their mark with profanity but you can’t deny the potential.

For years, we’ve been told that location-specific technology will allow advertisers to jump out at us as we walk down the street, screaming out special offers, new products and ‘exclusive’ events. In using Graffitio, I see a very different world. One run by consumers who can share information, practically writing it on the wall of the establishment for all to see, allowing them to make a judgement without walking inside.

Some may see it as a mobile version of trustedplaces. I see it as one of the most powerful consumer tools of the future available today and PRs need to keep a close eye on how this technology develops because all the press coverage you work so hard to achieve just to get someone to walk in the door could be undone with the bad review they read on the doorstep.

At the moment, the blog I most look forward to checking out when I get in in a morning is the excellent Todd Defren. This post builds on two themes close to my heart; profiling individuals, which I love, in terms of championing causes, profile opps in the nationals, op-eds; and use of content in social media.

At Staniforth Towers we are having a really interesting debate about content standards for different media. We know that video that can be used by bloggers won’t need to be ITV quality and every image won’t need to be David Bailey but its knowing what is expected by publishers and what is still expected by clients. We’re pushing boundaries all the time and its the right debate to have.

There’s an argument to say that the quality standard is also dictated by the situation you are in and the demands of deadline. Todd uses the example of exploiting a speaker opp with a busy CEO….

• Interview the CEO in the car on the way to the event, with your Flipcam.

• Hustle the CEO into a quiet conference room for an impromptu podcast.

• Document hallway chatter and interview the conference attendees before/after the CEO’s keynote speech (“What are you hoping to hear today?  Did the speech meet expectations?”).

• Film or livestream and/or liveblog/tweet the speech itself… while monitoring and responding to other tweets by fellow conference attendees.

• Share this content all along the way, and monitor responses; interacting directly with users; answering questions, etc.

Would your CEO be happy to have an interview syndicated that is done via your mobile phone? Would love more views on this issue…..

Social media is constantly changing. Well that’s what we all thought with the migration of MySpace to Facebook but what if the online tools we’re using today could actually develop at the same pace as our attention span?

Maybe it’s me, but it feels like Flickr, Digg and Twitter have been around for so long, I can’t remember life before them!

On the anniversary of the launch of Facebook Platform, the company has announced on its blog a whole host of improvements coming soon. Many of you will have noticed the change in profile layout, something that I think is a massive improvement allowing me to find the most recent information quickly. More importantly, I’m no longer being distracted by all those apps I added a year a go.

The most interesting part of the post for me is the upcoming Facebook Connect:

“Facebook Connect is a new way to use applications, on the open web and not just on Facebook. Soon, you’ll be able to use your Facebook account to login and connect on websites throughout the web. Imagine never filling out another profile at a new site, or having to find your friends all over again. Facebook Connect will help make this a reality and allow you to use Facebook to share information from all over the web with your friends.”

So that’s my personal information following me around wherever I go on the web. Is it ok for me to be intrigued and scared at the same time?

I’ll be fascinated to see which sites sign up for this and what benefits there are for web developers in the short term. For advertising I can see huge benefits in terms of personalisation.

Flash forward to a point when facial recognition becomes common place in CCTV cameras and that personal data is not only following me around the web but down the street.

Now exactly when should I start to regret putting all that personal information about myself on Facebook? Perhaps when I have billboards shouting out at me?

Once it’s up there, it’s not just going to disappear, even if you ‘delete’ your profile. We’ve put into action a chain of events where information is the currency of the technology age. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.