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So Lily Allen is officially a neo-Luddite.

She’s quit Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and email, ditched her Macbook and BlackBerry and apparently, according to numerous newspaper reports, her only means of communication with the outside world is a home phone and an old mobile.

Putting aside for a moment the underlying message that Lily Allen is to become a recluse, her reason behind such a decision could well be deeper than we’re led to believe.

We all know that the Internet made Lily Allen (in a very real sense) but as a notoriously outspoken and sometimes angry user of social networking sites, has she laid herself bare, torn down every personal barrier and let the world see her for exactly what she is and what she believes in?

In celebrity world this can surely be dangerous. We all love a sense of mystery but with Lily, we’ve seen it, heard it and she’s probably worn a T shirt with it emblazoned across it.

But it works both ways. She’s encouraged opinion and some of it will have undoubtedly been hard to swallow. Random strangers calling you fat, ugly, brattish, vulgar must surely instil a sense of fear… which is likely to lead to silence.

Reports suggest that her boyfriend asked her to choose between him or Twitter, but could this in fact be a shrewd move by her management: “Ditch Twitter, keep your opinions to yourself for a while, be seen to disappear into obscurity, oh and let’s get a press release out …”

As for the effects this may have on her personal life, she’s hardly going to become a recluse. With A-list friends like Kate Moss and Agyness Dean, whilst gigging at some of London’s coolest venues, I very much doubt that her decision to log off will leave her short of party invites.

For 100 years marketing has been about business to business communications (B2B) and consumer targeting (B2C).  With the impact of the social web, consumer to consumer communications are edging out some of the traditional brand PR messaging.  Consumer opinions are more important than ever in influencing the dreams and desires of the consumer.  Fashion has always been influenced by independent opinion.  Now fellow consumers sit alongside magazine editors as a source of ideas and inspiration.    

Social media provides consumers with front row access to all of the international shows and this enables them to see trends without the intervention of the mainstream fashion media.  They get the unedited vision of the designers and fashion houses.  In previous years the success of a new season launch was down entirely to the reviews the press gave it, if indeed they featured your product at all.  Now PRs can launch collections directly to the consumer.

Working with social media and social networks offers potential access to a broad spectrum of consumers. Traditional PR routes can encounter many obstacles. Regional newspapers for example won’t run features on items that aren’t available in their region or if the brand doesn’t have wide recognition.  Social media can overcome this, breakdown the boundaries and reach out to new audiences. 

There is a burgeoning portfolio of examples where old brand rules are being broken and rebuilt on the web.  American Apparel addressed their customer base directly by hooking up with Chictopia to invite real girls to become real models for the brand.  American Apparel has built part of its brand image by refusing to airbrush models in their advertisements.  By going a step further and engaging their customers and fans to appear in their ads was bang on brand and generated significant PR.

Victoria’s Secret Pink has a Facebook group with over a million fans.   It contains nearly a thousand images posted by fans plus catwalk videos and official images and hundreds of thousand of comment postings.  Swedish fashion brand H&M also uses Facebook to engage with its customers and also has over a million fans signed up on the site.

Fundamental to communications in the era of the social web is dialogue. This is not about brands talking to consumer; it involves consumers talking back to brands and consumers talking to each other.   In this environment the scope for inspiration through interaction is huge.  Filipino fashion fan and blogger Bryanboy wrote and posted on Youtube about his love of Marc Jacobs design.  In response Jacobs named an ostrich handbag “the BB” in his honour.  

Facebook, MySpace, blog posts and the social network du jour twitter are all contributing to a culture in which instant feedback is available with a mouse click, so brands can test ideas and source public opinion in an instant.  The discussions that happen on line will influence the market and provide the endorsement that drives fashion.   Being involved and sharing knowledge with consumers in the space where these conversations are taking place will become vital. Twitter is sure to emerge as a prime location for fashion brands and fashion fans.  What began as a niche network has emerged as a major sphere of communication with the twitter accounts passing the million follower mark for the first time this month (April 2009).  If you are not convinced in less than three months Women’s Wear Daily has gained over 300,000 followers on twitter.  

This article is an edited version of one that was published on WGSN.com the world’s leading fashion and style forecaster.  My colleague at Staniforth Julie Wilson provided much of the insight into the world of fashion.

From 1.10pm today, Amnesty International showed what social media can do to propogate awareness of and support for a critical cause.

Its 1:10 campaign - based on the statistic that one-in-ten UK women are raped or subject to violence each year - asked Twitter users (along with MySpace and Facebook folk) to replace their avatar with the above logo and, at 1.10pm, update their status message to reflect the main one-in-ten campaign message and pass on the web site URL.

It’s a simple idea, but one that is memorable and easy for the social media audience to get behind and share (seeing as that’s what they do best!).

The United States presidential election has been the first major democratic process anywhere in the world where the use of social media has played a significant part in communications.

Of the eighteen candidates running in the primaries for the two main parties, nine had blogs, including both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.   Involvement in social networks was significant from the earliest days. Republican Mitt Romney was the first prospective candidate to launch a Facebook profile,  Democrat John Edwards set up a campaign headquarters in the cyber world of Second Life.  This resulted in a bizarre web 2.0 event when it was vandalised by the avatars of his political opponents.  Clinton used her web site to launch her campaign.

It was Barack Obama though who was the prime mover from the outset.  He engaged with most of the high profile social networking sites including MySpace, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Twitter.  On the day that Barack Obama announced he was forming a presidential exploratory committee in January 2007, student government co-ordinator Farouk Olu Aregbe created a group on Facebook called “One Million Strong for Barack”.  The social web was critical to the Obama campaign in another fundamental way.  It played an important part in the funding of his bid for office.  In a campaign video directed at his supporters he said “Instead of forcing us to rely on millions from Washington lobbyists and special interest PACs, you’ve fuelled this campaign with donations of $5, $10, $20, whatever you can afford, and because you did, we’ve built a grassroots movement of over 1.5 million Americans.”  Obama’s success raising money via these small donations was achieved in a way never before possible as part of a U.S. presidential election campaign.

The 1960 election of John F Kennedy was thought to be point at which television became central to the democratic process.  2008 may well be the year that sees the critical intervention of the social web

This just in - music and film retailer HMV is launching its own social networking site getcloser.com where you can do - well - the sort of things you’ve been able to do on Facebook and MySpace for quite a while.

So why now? Will the punter feel that “the man” is trying to get in on the act? What will it do to drive sales that HMV’s regular e-shots don’t (and I should know, as they consistently empty my wallet).

Stalkr - (pronounced stalker) a person that you don’t know who tries to Facebook you or become your friend on MySpace or indeed on any social network.   The term also apples to someone you may know a bit who decides to relentlessly pursue a more active online discourse than you would like.  Would also apply to someone you are not following who frequently talks @ you on Twitter.  Essentially a  stalker in the 2.0 style of Flickr, Tumblr etc.