Archive for January, 2008
Don’t write-off the widget yet!
January 16th, 2008
I’ve recently picked up on widget-fatigue within the industry, and a sense that they are no longer worth shouting about.
Jemima Kiss at the Guardian recently posted a Tweet about yet another widget: “A press release about the launch of Facebook app. Bless them. That will be the 11,000th, then…”
But to put widgets in perspective, they are still having a phenomenal influence on internet traffic.
Photobucket replaced Flickr as the largest photo sharing site in the UK last February, and it has managed to hold onto that no.1 position largely due to 55% of its traffic coming from widgets and applications on MySpace and Bebo. By comparison, Flickr only gets 2.4% of its traffic from social networking sites. (Data from Hitwise).
Interestingly, Photobucket saw a significant jump in widget adoption when they stopped calling them widgets and started calling them slideshows. This is old news and has been widely reported already, but worth reiterating I felt.
So maybe the problem rests with the name…but ultimately, widgets are still proving to be hugely successful traffic drivers.
Technorati tags: widget, photobucket, flickr, facebook, myspace, twitter
January 9th, 2008
If Hillary Clinton is to be believed it was her water works on Monday that secured her win in New Hampshire, as reported by the Guardian.
Although showing her human vulnerability will have undoubtedly won her more votes, was this really the key to her success?
On reading the account of Clinton’s victory it really brought home how much these old school tactics are still central to success in politics, and personally I find it a bit sickening and boring.
As a Brit watching from a far it’s easy to be critical, and I know our own politicians are just as guilty, and our voters just as naive, but wouldn’t it be wonderful to be treated like adults and cut through the games to get to the heart of the matter?
As a digital communicator I would love to turn to the web for a bit of honest two-way political communication, and politicians are embracing the web as a key route to specific voting groups.
As Jeff Jarvis pointed out yesterday, Barack Obama has used the web strategically to reach the younger voter and get them interested again, which reflects how successful the web can be as a political machine. It also suggests that winning votes is more about hitting the right audiences with the right message, something that we should be familiar with, and something the web can do very well - at least for certain types of voters.
And there-in lies the problem. Could the web be a driver for more open and honest communications in politics? Yes. Is the web an increasingly important medium for political communications?Definitely. Will that reduce these ‘built for TV’ and cringeworthy displays? Probably not. At least not yet.
At the moment, the weapon of mass election is the TV, where a well crafted speech or public display of emotion can be much more powerful than a specialised campaign dealing with real issues.
Let’s hope the web becomes a more central political vehicle for the next US election, as I fear the next UK election will be too soon.
Technorati tags: hillary+clinton, us+election, politics, web, communications
Is social media taking the ’spin’ out of PR?
January 8th, 2008
Reading on the Telegraph website this morning about Gordon Brown’s hiring of PR guru Stephen Carter to become his new “principal” adviser, along with a viewpoint entitled “Are spin doctors taking over the world?“, has got me thinking about the role of spin in social media.
To put in context, The Telegraph comment piece makes the point:
“When did PR become so important? Are spin doctors taking over the world? If so, does it matter?
“Is there any hope of curtailing the influence of spin in today�s media-savvy society?”
I would argue to begin with that spin in journalism was certainly curtailed in 2007 with the rapid uptake of social media, and news reporting by the masses. Just yesterday I was reading an apology on the BBC editor’s blog for censoring an interview with the late Benazir Bhutto. As Simon Collister points out in his post on the subject, “social knowledge allows a record of the multifarious voices in any situation (news story) to be heard and mapped out, ultimately providing us with a slightly messy if not better and more accurate version of reality”.
The same is becoming true for traditional PR as we know it. Politics is one subject in particular that is becoming harder and harder to ‘control’, with so many opinions and arguments being voiced across social media networks. The influence that spin doctors can have on political matters is rapidly being diminished, and in my mind will very soon be a thing of the past. There is no pulling the wool over the public’s eyes, when social media offers so much opportunity for the truth to come to light.
So why has Gordon Brown appointed a PR to manage his affairs? The answer in my mind is simple. Despite the changes in media as we know it, the ability to engage with audiences effectively, and understand what grabs attention, is still the realm of PR professionals. There has been a push within the digital industry to make this appear scientific, but at the end of the day, you can’t place an algorithm on the way people communicate. Understanding this is a fine art within itself, and Stephen Carter through his experience at Ofcom and later Brunswick PR is in a great position to assist Gordon Brown in the digital age.
So although social media might take the ’spin’ out of PR, it can’t undermine the continuing importance of PR.
Technorati tags: pr, gordon+brown, stephen+carter, social_networks, ofcom, journalism
Has Facebook fallen out of fashion?
January 4th, 2008
It was only a few months ago that the number of ‘friends’ you had on Facebook determined how cool and popular you were…but has this social phenomenon already been dethroned?
A Tweet Scan today reveals emerging irritation with Facebook’s heavy handed approach to rule-breaking users. There seems to have been a flurry of disgruntled users either deleting their accounts, or actively trying to get banned. Click here to see the chain of conversation on the subject.
Earlier today reports surfaced that respected blogger Rober Scoble had been kicked-off Facebook, for running an automated script. According to his blog post, all traces of him have since been removed from the social networking site.
Funnily enough, this seems to have sparked a mini-craze.
One Tweet reads: “Funny… people want Scoble’s script so that they can be deleted from Facebook. Classic.”
It just goes to show how fluid social media audiences are!
Technorati tags: facebook, robert_scoble, twitter, social_networks
January 3rd, 2008
At Liberate Media, our New Year’s resolution (well one of them!) was to sign-up to Twitter.
If you’d like to follow us, you can find us under the names: wendymcauliffe and Liberatelloyd. We will be sure to follow you in return!
Technorati tags: twitter, social_networks, instant+messaging, social+media, communities