Archive for February, 2008
Blogging: is it becoming a propaganda tool?
February 29th, 2008
‘Propaganda’. Now that’s a word I haven’t used for a while. Probably not since my politics A-Level! But yesterday’s report by US blog the Drudge Report, of Prince Harry’s stationing in Afghanistan, has brought to light the propaganda influence a blog can have.
Tonight Jon Snow is referring to events over the past 24-hours as a “propaganda war”.
Without wanting to state the obvious, the shocking reality of the situation is that one blog report, which ignored media censorship rules, has led to Prince Harry being flown home from Afghanistan. Public opinion is very divided on whether Druge should have published the classified information or not, as it would be on such a highly contentious issue…but for me what’s more concerning is the political power a single blog has managed to achieve.
The potential for abuse is deeply concerning. The uncensored openness of the blogosphere is what makes it what it is, but are we heading for an abuse of that freedom? If blogs of influence begin to harness the power they have within their network, and use it for the wrong reasons, that could take us to a very bad place…
Best weekly round up of social media and web 2.0 resources / news for week ending 29th Feb 2008
February 29th, 2008
Below are new the links we have added to the Liberate Media resource page,
- The 10 Simplest Ways to Boost Your Social Media Credibility Right From the Start.
- The Benefits of Social Media Marketing for Small Businesses | Social Media Trader.
- How Do I Measure ROI?
- Companies that Measure Social Media, Influence, and Brand.
- Overhype Alert: Twitter .
- Can the Digg/Mixx/Buzz Model Hold Up Against FriendFeed and Sphinn?
- How To Manage Your Online Reputation .
- The Uncanny Evolving Social Media Blog List!
- How to Really Sell Social Media.
- Digg Front Page Data.
- Killer Content: Tutorial.
- The Ultimate Guide To Networking With Bloggers.
- Social media in the 1990’s.
- Internet World Maps - Visualize Web Across Countries & Continents.
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UK earthquake statistics from Twitter analytics and search tools
February 27th, 2008
Like most people in the UK I awoke this morning to hear the news of the earthquake in Lincolnshire, which was felt as far as London.
After my blog post yesterday about must-have Twitter tools, I decided to try some of them out to measure conversation around the subject of the earthquake, focusing particularly on search and analytics tools.
- Here are the results from twittermeter using the keyword: earthquake.
- Over 5000 tweets about the earthquake were found at terraminds.
- A Tweetscan also confirms a high number of tweets about the UK earthquake, and the results can be found here.
- Here is the Tweetmememe page with one of the top items being the UK earthquake, with Twitters claiming the news broke on Twitter a full 20 minutes before the BBC reported it.
- Finally we have a TweetVolume graph which shows keywords and how often they appear on Twitter. The keyword ‘earthquake’ was featured 1640 time.
So it looks like Twitter has got the march on its bigger news rivals in terms of breaking news . Citizen journalism is evolving fast!
The complete ‘must have’ Twitter tools list
February 26th, 2008
Over the last year or so Liberate Media has been creating a social media and web 2.0 resource/research page. When we first started creating the resource Twitter was non-existent, but now its probably the category that’s updated the most!
Twitter has been going crazy over the past 6 months and I have noticed that people with dual blogging/Twitter responsibilities are tending to tweet more rather than updating their blog. Is blogging so last year? Well that’s a separate conversation.
However, check out the compendium of links below, as there’s probably something there for you!
Firefox
TwittyTunes - Allows to post your currently playing songs to Twitter with a click. As a bonus, you can also post the websites you’re visiting, videos you’re watching and more!
More Firefox twitter add-ons here.
Photos
twitpic - share photos on your Twitter stream.
visualtwitter - pictures sent by Twitters.
Search, statistics and analytics
Tweetscan - Real time Twitter search and scan.
Twemes - search Twitter by tags.
Basic twitter search goole search
Twitstat - Twitter analytics
Twit.io is a social database, comprised entirely of tweeters
Terraminds - Twitter search.
Tweetmeme - takes the clutter from Twitter and makes a meme tracker.
Produce some stats from your Twitter feed and present them with the Google charts.
Tweeterboard - This is a list of the top 100 people tracked by Tweeterboard based on their reputation score.
twitterbuzz -TwitterBuzz shows you what people are linking to.
tweetvolume - words or phrases and see how often they appear in Twitter in the form of a graph.
twittermeter - Enter a word or phrase and receive a timeline graph
RSS
Twitterfeed - feed your blog to twitter.
Twitter mail - a TwitterMail email address. For instance abcdef1234@twittermail.com. If you send an email to that address it will be posted to Twitter.com
Comics / fun stuff
social comic book - enter your Twitter name, and the app creates a comic book of six panels - with your Tweets serving as the description in the panel and Flickr photos being pulled in that relate to your Tweets.
Twaction - is a simple site that turns your tweets on Twitter into actions. You can now poke, slap, drink beer or smile at your friends on Twitter.
foamee - send a twitter friend a beer.
Desktop
twitteroo - Update your Twitter status from your Desktop.
twittershare - Share pictures, music, video, and other files with friends using Twitter.
TwitBox - This desktop client with many features.
Others
tweetchannel - TweetChannel makes it possible to create channels by Twitter.
twittpoll - is the opinion channel of Twitter. - twitt your opionion!
twittervision - selected Tweets in real time as they are posted on a world map.
twiddeo - show user video on your timeline.
twitterlights - If you find something you want to send to your Twitter followers send it through i-Lighter.
twitplus - twit+ is a new service that works on top of Twitter that lets you tweet with pictures or video and also privately send files to your Twitter friends (Don’t email files, twit+ them!).
This is just the tip of the iceberg. Twitter applications are being turned out in the hundreds, so if you have any recommendation’s please let us know.
If you want to add the Liberate media crew to your Twitter friends please go ahead and we will return the favour.
http://twitter.com/Liberatelloyd
http://twitter.com/wendymcauliffe
Digital skills crisis: we need industry-level collaboration
February 22nd, 2008
As with nearly every organisation in the digital media sector, recruitment is an ongoing issue for Liberate Media. Actually, let me rephrase that, finding the right candidate is an ongoing issue.
We’ve tried adverts, using our network of contacts, various social recruitment techniques - Facebook, Twitter, blogging etc and now even recruitment agencies to find the best people. We’ve managed to overcome the issue and secure some strong candidates, but it hasn’t been easy or quick. So the problem remains, how do you find reliable candidates quickly? Is it even possible?
What if, we as an industry were to stop fighting over the best candidates and start sharing them? For example, if I come across a really strong candidate but one that isn’t suitable for a role we are looking at, I recommend this individual through the recruitment network to those agencies (PR/digital/or otherwise) who are after the relevant position. It’s a collaborative recruitment network, and benefits both the candidates and the recruiters.
This is still an idea in formation but I wanted to put it out there and see what people thought. But first a few points of confirmation:
- I don’t mean a network run by a recruitment agency
- I don’t mean a network/alliance of recruitment agencies
- I don’t mean a paid service
- I don’t mean a job site or an advertising platform
I mean an agreement between digital media companies to share and recommend candidates, across some sort of social media network. If they’re not relevant to you, but think they have the attributes to succeed - share and share alike.
So what do we think? Has it been done? Could it work? Let me know your thoughts and following feedback, I’ll do my best to drum up support and see where this could lead us.