Online/offline news blur
Posted Monday, February 26, 2007 at 8:13pm in Blogging, Media, PR General | 1 Comment
UPDATE
Heather Hopkins of Hitwise elaborates far better than I ever could.
Following on from my post yesterday, two pieces from the Guardian and New Media Age caught my eye today. Both illustrate the blurring of online and offline news and how the media is merging (Note: I, like many others, don’t believe new media kills old media) into one.
The Media Guardian reports that the Guardian website recorded a record number of hits to its website in January. 15.7 million people visited the Guardian website in January alone with 5.3 million unique users coming from the UK. From what I gather from the story, this is the first time unique user stats have been certified from the Audit Bureau of Circulations. Although, the Guardian, along with the Times Online and the Sun, are the only nationals to release their web traffic stats.
It doesn’t take a mathematician (or a theoretical physicist) to predict that the Guardian will break its own record in the coming months.
New Media Age reports that the Financial Times online ad sales has increased 30 per cent with profits from the newspaper and the FT.com website moving from £9 million to £11 million. It probably comes as no surprise that, as more and more people get their news online, the advertisers shall follow. And remember, online news is relevant and recycled.
And here’s a couple of graphs to show how news from large media outlets is filtering into the smaller but larger in quantity new media outlets. P.S. I don’t think I should have to explain the keywords but notice the conversation volume spikes on particular dates:
Sidenote: The Daily Star have launched their first blog. It’s written by Hot’s Joe Mott.
Online/offline entertainment blur
Posted Sunday, February 25, 2007 at 3:07pm in Blogging, Media, PR General | 4 Comments
I constantly read how new media is changing business including PR, and I’ve been known to write about it myself once or twice in fact. 
But there’s another change going on; a change in the entertainment industry. First off this post isn’t about how the Arctic Monkeys shot to fame. Some media claimed it was through MySpace but I’m a bit of a cynic when around that particular topic. In fact, the band members themselves deny that MySpace was a part of their success. Let’s be honest, a band creating a MySpace page isn’t going to guarantee success. Creating great music helps.
Pete Cashmore at Mashable! reports on how the girl behind the spoof YouTube member, Lonelygirl15, is to feature in a Hollywood movie called I Know Who Killed Me (nice name) alongside Lindsay Lohan. For those that don’t know the story behind Lonelygirl15, Wikipedia (as always) tells the story well and indepth. It’s not the first time it’s happened either. Others have moved to more mainstream media outlets. Amanda Congdon and Lisa Donovan to name two.
The UK can also boast a piece of the bluring between the online/offline worlds. Not too long ago gadget reviewer, Susi Weaser, was signed up to present as a gadget expert on BBC2’s Something for the Weekend while working for Shiny Media.
On the flipside of this, the most popular person on MySpace, Tila Tequila, who has nearly 1.7 million “friends” is boycotting the major record labels altogether. Instead she’s going it alone (ahem, or her and her management are) and promoting herself through her large member base. Remember, she has access to 1.7 million email addresses - I bet most artists would kill for that type of fan data. Take a look at her blog section, each post she makes receives comments mostly in the thousands. With her fashion label and now her music, it seems as though she’s building her own online empire regardless.
There’s a blur happening I tell thee…
Downing Street spurred by online “success”
Posted Saturday, February 24, 2007 at 6:48pm in Media, PR General, Technology | 9 Comments
The latest edition of New Marketing Age (magazine version, can’t find it online) mentions that Downing Street is to “ramp up” the usage of user generated content on the Downing Street website after the “success” of the e-Petitions section which was introduced in November last year.
The news has been awash lately with the story of the e-Petition against the vehicle tracking and road pricing policy which almost reached two million signatures. The petition, which ended on the 20 February, has 1,806,187 signatures.
The e-Petitions have been called “a small revolution in political communication” by Downing Street’s head of digital communications, Jimmy Leach. Mr Leach also says that they are using other forms of online communication such as webchats, podcasts and web TV interviews. And they are, take a look on the website.
It still looks like only one way communication to me. It would be good to see some comment areas too. However, the article does say that Downing Street plans to roll out a “user content” section so it should be interesting to see how it develops in terms of the interaction between the public and the government.
I think this is a great idea. In a time when the government seems less out of touch with the public than it’s ever been and where more people vote on X Factor than they do in the general elections you get the sense that this is the step in the right direction. Dare I say it. Government 2.0 may help bridge the gap.
Still one question remains: With two million signatures and Dowing Street labeling the e-Petition as a success, are they going to abolish the vehicle tracking and road pricing policy?
Sidenote: In May of last year I commented on how the government were investigating the value of blogs. Independent government research firm, the Hansard Society recently published the findings of their research which you can find here.
technorati tags: downing+street, e+petitions, government
edelman.mobi launched
Posted Friday, February 23, 2007 at 1:27pm in PR General, Technology | 2 Comments
“There are 1.5 billion mobile devices in the world today, more than three times the number of PCs. As the devices increase capabilities and networks get faster, consumers are using mobile devices more and more for common computing and information gathering tasks.
“With the mobile product lifecycle is moving twice as fast as computers at their peak ten years ago, mobile publishing will soon be a requirement of doing business. Hype aside, there are really good reasons why you should be looking at your mobile publishing strategy now.”
It’s not the first time I’ve quoted that comment from Brian Fling. It’s a little outdated as there are, in fact, around two billion handsets in the world today. But it still makes a good point. Anyway, as David Brain points out and Steve Rubel links to, Edelman has just launched its own mobile platform. Point your phone’s browser at www.edelman.mobi to see it. You can also view it on a regular browser btw.
To give a little background, the site is currently at the first stage of a two stage approach. The first phase includes Edelman news in the form of a news river inspired by Dave Winer, weather for each office pulled in by RSS, key contact information for a number of offices and the general website brochure information. Also, as some of you may know, 3GSM has recently been and gone, and six of Edelman UK’s clients were in attendance at the event (including dotMobi). To provide clients with an easy means of finding Edelman contact information and to give an overview of the general blogosphere buzz around the event we created a specific 3GSM section. Note: The external blog links on the site are ran through Skweezer to enable easy viewing on a mobile phone.
The site has passed all the tests on the .mobi ready report with 5 out of 5 score thanks to my mate Mats.
As mentioned, this is only the first phase of the site; the second will have a lot more multimedia including content from each of the Edelman blogs, Edelman videos including those from Sixty Second View and, of course, the rest of the office information worldwide.
Cool.
technorati tags: edelman, dotmobi, mobile, mobile+web, 3gsm
Using social media in crisis comms
Posted Wednesday, February 21, 2007 at 7:41pm in PR General, Technology | 8 Comments
I haven’t been keeping up with events in the whole JetBlue Airways situation. In fact, I’d never heard of JetBlue prior to it reading about it on Todd Defren’s blog. Wikipedia gives a brief explanation of the attention the comany’s been receiving of late: “In the midst of snowy weather at John F. Kennedy International Airport on February 14, 2007, a JetBlue flight headed for Cancún, Mexico, was stranded on the tarmac for nearly nine hours as icing problems kept the plane from departing. Passengers were kept inside the aircraft for the full nine hours. JetBlue has since apologized, and has offered refunds and free round-trip tickets to the passengers involved. Throughout that day, several other JetBlue aircraft were also stranded and many JetBlue passengers were put onto flights that were already canceled.”
What is interesting (to me at least) is the way the JetBlue’s CEO, David Neeleman, has used YouTube to apologise to the company’s customers. Just under three minutes long, Neeleman claims that what happened will never happen again and states new measures they plan to put in place. As Shel Holtz notes: “Neeleman doesn’t read—in fact, he comes across as very human with a lot of “umms” as he speaks off-the-cuff, probably from a simple outline of things he wanted to cover.”
I haven’t read any of the coverage JetBlue has received in the press relating to what happened but I can’t see it being too good; not good at all. I imagine if the same thing happened over here with one of our well known airlines, a selection of the UK media would have had a field day.
However, the use of YouTube has allowed the company to put its own point across while at the same time cutting out the message gatekeepers - the traditional media. I remember reading a quote stating that in this day and age, every organisation (no matter how large or small) has the capacity to be a media company in its own right.
This is a good example me thinks.
technorati tags: jetblue, crisis+management, issues+management, youtube