By Fiona Campbell-Howes

September 14th, 2007

New Prompt client brings social networking to pet owners

New Prompt client brings social networking to pet owners

We’re excited to announce that Prompt has signed a new US PR client, SNIF Labs.

SNIF Labs is headquartered in Boston and was formed by graduates from MIT’s Media Laboratory. It has developed the world’s first pet accessory that combines wireless sensing and social networking technologies to enhance the lives of dogs and their owners.

The SNIF Platform blends real-time activity monitoring for dogs with online social networking for humans to improve insight into the lives of dogs while enriching owners’ relationships with other pet enthusiasts.

Prompt will service SNIF Labs from its Boston office, with an account team headed up by Prompt divisional director Maryellen Cronin.

By Fiona Campbell-Howes

September 7th, 2007

Prompt lands GenSight account

Prompt lands GenSight account

And a quick bit of company news: Prompt has been appointed as the public relations agency for the GenSight Group.

GenSight is a leading provider of Enterprise Portfolio Management (EPfM) solutions that enable faster and more focused new product development and improved ROI in project-intensive organisations.

EPfM is an exciting new market space and Prompt will be working with GenSight’s management team on analyst relations, media strategy and increasing visibility in key vertical markets.

By Fiona Campbell-Howes

September 7th, 2007

New tool rates Wikipedia trustworthiness

New tool rates Wikipedia trustworthiness

Tech gossip-blog Valleywag reports on a new tool that rates the trustworthiness of Wikipedia entries down to the level of individual words and phrases.

The University of California at Santa Cruz’s Wiki Lab has developed the Wikipedia trust coloring tool, which monitors which words and phrases are changed most frequently, and highlights them in various fetching shades of orange.

The more times a word or phrase is changed, goes the thinking, the more contentious it is, and therefore the more likely it is to be biased. Statements that have never been altered display normally, instantly highlighting the most stable – and therefore most trustworthy – content on the site.

By Fiona Campbell-Howes

August 6th, 2007

Prompt shortlisted for B2B Marketing Awards

Prompt shortlisted for B2B Marketing Awards

Much excitement at Prompt today at the news we have been shortlisted for the B2B Marketing Awards, due to be held in November.

We entered our Blog Monitor product in the category of ‘Best New B2B Marketing Product or Service’. The Prompt Blog Monitor is a web portal that we customise for each client, which lets them track coverage of their brand and products across a wide range of social media platforms, from blogs and podcasts to online video-sharing sites, photosets and ‘citizen journalism’ sites.

We provide each subscribing client with daily email alerts and weekly reports to let them know who’s talking about them, and how influential those people are. We also make recommendations for engagement when appropriate.

We’re chuffed to have been shortlisted as we’ve put a lot of thought and effort into building this product. We’re already helping a very diverse set of clients to understand what’s being said about them in the social media world – which is the first step towards engaging with audiences on social media platforms.

For those clients who choose to engage further, we offer a portfolio of social media services ranging from blogging consultancy to the creation of professional podcasts and advice on the most effective use of social networking platforms like Twitter and Facebook.

The awards ceremony will be held at The Brewery in the City of London on 1st November this year. Wish us luck!

By Fiona Campbell-Howes

June 7th, 2007

PR professionals absent from social media forum

PR professionals absent from social media forum

UPDATE 2: Thanks to Stuart Bruce for pointing out in the comments that the reason PRs were absent from this event may be that they were all over in Regent’s Park for the Delivering the New PR 2.0 event (can’t find a URL, but it’s blogged very nicely by Rob Skinner). And of course there’s also PR Week’s PR and New Media conf coming up later this month and again in Oct, so perhaps in the near future we’ll start to see less of this sort of thing. Thanks Stuart!

[Original Post]:

Of all the interesting things about Tuesday’s Blogs and Social Media Forum, perhaps the most striking was that the PR community was practically absent from the event.

Only three of the 110 attendees were in PR roles, and one of those – Mark Monseau, director of media relations at Johnson & Johnson – was a speaker. That left an account manager from JBA Public Relations and the PR manager of an academic book publisher to make up the numbers for the profession.

With many blogs having achieved quasi-mainstream media status, and online chatter increasingly influencing public perception of organisations, I found this absence genuinely perplexing.

Personally, among the many fascinating topics covered at the event, I welcomed the opportunity to learn how major media outlets are addressing social media. I was heartened to find that even the best minds at these organisations are still uncertain about how to go about it. The BBC’s Jem Stone said that the broadcaster no longer expects people to come to bbc.co.uk to talk about BBC content, but admits that ‘we don’t monitor conversations very well‘ on the wider internet, and that the Beeb is ‘bad at engaging in those [non-BBC] spaces‘.

This will be partly addressed by a new bbc.co.uk feature that will pull in BBC-related content from the blogosphere to show what people are blogging about, he said.

At the Economist, online publisher Ben Edwards is planning to make his first moves into social media by launching a ‘publisher’s blog’ to inform readers of new developments and solicit their feedback. He is also creating a section on economist.com where all readers’ letters will be published, and readers will be able to comment on them, form communities of interest and network with each other.

Edwards did not say whether Economist journalists would join in the debate.

So if PRs were conspicuously absent, who *was* there? The delegate list has job roles ranging from knowledge managers to digital strategists, marketing executives and IT folk, from blue-chips, publishers, government, law firms and charities.

While UK organisations seem keen to get to grips with social media, it looks like PR might be getting left on the sidelines.

UPDATE: This may go some way towards explaining why PRs are having difficulty engaging with journalist-bloggers in the era of social media, to Charles Arthur’s frustration (via TWL).

By Fiona Campbell-Howes

June 6th, 2007

Geeks to inherit corporate world?

Geeks to inherit corporate world?

Ever led a loyal band of dwarves and night elves into victorious battle? If so, IBM may be interested in employing you.

Leadership skills demonstrated inside the massive multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) World of Warcraft are just as valid as leadership skills demonstrated in the ‘real’ world, according to IBM UK’s ‘metaverse evangelists’ Ian Hughes and Roo Reynolds.

Leading an ‘open space’ discussion about the business value of virtual worlds at yesterday’s Blogs and Social Media Forum in London, Hughes said that IBM was just as likely to consider graduate job applicants’ skills with online worlds and networks as it was their real-life achievements.

“If people have natural leadership skills they will demonstrate them no matter what they’re doing,” he said. “Leading a successful guild in Warcraft is no different [in terms of management potential] from running a successful trading card operation, or selling cans of Coke at a festival.”

I asked Hughes and Reynolds if this meant that a different sort of person – one more used to socialising online than in the real world – was now starting to rise up the corporate ladder at IBM and elsewhere.

Hughes says not, but believes that social media and virtual worlds are giving people more and different opportunities to prove themselves in the corporate environment.

“Presentation skills are no longer simply about being able to get up and talk in a departmental meeting,” he said. “Someone who can make a great podcast, or run a successful event in Second Life, has equally valuable presentation skills.”

While Hughes maintains that leaders are all cut from the same cloth, no matter how they choose to demonstrate their abilities, I’m not so sure this is the case. IBM’s valuing of skills gained in arenas traditionally associated with ‘antisocial loners’ may be an early indication that people who were written off in the past as ‘geeks’ and ‘losers’ are now actually shaping the future of business.

IBM, of course, is a natural habitat for geeks, which may be why Hughes doesn’t see anything especially remarkable about his attitude. When the likes of Merrill Lynch and Pfizer start fast-tracking mages and paladins to the upper echelons of management, we’ll know the geeks have truly inherited the earth.

tags: socialmediaforum | metaverse | warcraft | recruitment

By Fiona Campbell-Howes

June 1st, 2007

CBS gains 15m 'earlobes' with last.fm acquisition

CBS gains 15m 'earlobes' with last.fm acquisition

Very mixed feelings here about US broadcasting giant CBS’s GBP140m acquisition of London-based music community site last.fm.

On the one hand, I’ve loved last.fm since joining it in 2005. Unlike other social-networking sites, it’s always put the user first, keeping advertising to an understated minimum and providing its community of music fans with useful tools and features that always seem to work effortlessly.

It’s also the best-looking social networking site I’ve seen – its stylish modernist interface a refreshing contrast to the garish clutter of MySpace. In the last year it’s gone from strength to strength, striking deals with EMI and Warner Music to enable it to stream songs online, introducing an ‘events’ function that lets users socialise around gigs, and providing ‘widgets’ that allow users to customise their blogs to show what music they’re listening to right now.

For many people, it’s also a useful recommendation engine, analysing the music that they listen to, cross-referencing it against other users with similar tastes, and providing recommendations accordingly.

And therein, for me, lies the problem. Last.fm has been outrageously good at gathering personal data from its 15 million users. In the last 18 months, the details of every single song I’ve listened to on iTunes have been uploaded to last.fm, thanks to the Audioscrobbler plug-in that I willingly installed on my laptop. I’ve provided an incredible amount of data about my listening habits, my musical tastes, gigs I’ve attended, who my friends are, and where else on the internet I can be found.

I was happy to give that data to last.fm, because I found the site useful and fun, and I liked the fact that it was independent and put users first. I wasn’t so happy to read that new owner CBS considers these same users simply as ‘earlobes’ (the audio equivalent of a web marketer’s ‘eyeballs’) for its ad-driven radio channels.

As far as I’m concerned, last.fm has just sold me to CBS’s marketing department, for a mere nine pounds*. From a business perspective, I’m impressed. But as a last.fm user, I feel, well, just a bit used.

I deleted my account. Sorry, CBS.

* Hat tip to Andrew Smith for working out the maths.

Tags: last.fm | cbs

By Fiona Campbell-Howes

May 25th, 2007

Female bloggers turn on glossy women's magazines

Female bloggers turn on glossy women's magazines

One of the myths propounded by the mainstream media about the blogosphere is that it is populated exclusively by men.

Last summer, for example, the Independent and the Guardian both ran articles claiming that women don’t blog, and, in the case of the Independent, explaining why.

(It’s because women are too busy cooking and looking after the kids, apparently. Go figure.)

Unfortunately for the opinion leaders on the UK’s national broadsheets, it was later revealed that women do, in fact, blog in copious numbers. No fewer than 46% of bloggers are women, according to a Pew Internet survey published last July.

But this is old news, so why mention it now? Well, one of the reasons for the antagonism between the mainstream media and the blogosphere is that bloggers are increasingly calling their professional counterparts to account. And in 2007, it seems to be the turn of the glossy women’s press to come under fire.

This week saw the launch of NYC-based Jezebel, a new blog from the Gawker Media stable. Jezebel’s manifesto lists the ‘five lies’ that glossy magazines tell women, and says it aims to be “the sort of…magazine that would never actually see glossy paper because big-name advertisers and the publishers who kowtow to them don’t much like it when you point out the vulgarity of a $2000 handbag.”

But while Jezebel purports to undermine glossy magazines, it still buys into the myth that all women are fascinated with celebrity gossip and expensive clothing. I see more to admire in the UK’s defiantly un-glamorous Observer Woman Makes Me Spit blog, whose entire raison d’etre is shooting down the self-serving female stereotyping evident in the Observer’s monthly women’s supplement.

Until recently presumed to be non-existent, female bloggers are starting to bare their teeth – at the very magazines that claim to be on their side, but which are in fact anything but. I like it.

By Fiona Campbell-Howes

May 18th, 2007

US Army bans, promotes YouTube

US Army bans, promotes YouTube

If Vietnam was the world’s first media war, Iraq is our first social media war. But developments this week highlight the US Army’s deeply divided view of the suitability of social media platforms to communicate the conflict in Iraq.

On Monday, the US Department of Defense informed soldiers that they would no longer be able to access YouTube, MySpace or nine other social-networking sites from DoD computers. The Pentagon said the block was necessary in order to free up network bandwidth, but there is a widespread belief that the US military fears the loss of control that comes from allowing troops to publish their own words, videos and photographs online without supervision.

It’s not difficult to understand the army’s concerns – unmonitored blogging, social networking, and video and photo sharing can easily compromise military secrets, whether intentionally or not. Few people would have been surprised last month when the US Army ordered military personnel to stop posting to blogs, message boards and chat forums without clearing the content first with a superior officer.

But there is more at stake than military secrets. With the growing unpopularity of the Iraq war, the army is fighting to maintain its reputation as much as anything else. On this score, it sees social media platforms as a useful ally – as a means to portray the ‘reality’ of the conflict independently of mainstream media bias. So even as it bars troops from accessing YouTube, it continues to promote its own YouTube channel showing footage of military life in Iraq. And while some in the military believe that social network sites represent a threat to security, others are aware that banning online contact with friends and loved ones will further knock the morale of an already beleaguered army.

The sheer newness of social media means that for the US Army – as for many companies trying to get to grips with the new landscape – the relationship between risk and reward is still very unclear. Expect to see more deeply contradictory behaviour before the Iraq conflict draws to a close.

By Fiona Campbell-Howes

May 11th, 2007

News Corp. in two minds about internet frenzy

News Corp. in two minds about internet frenzy

As debate continues about the implications of News Corp.’s shock bid for Dow Jones, a couple of under-the-radar pieces this week illustrated the deeply divided attitude towards the shifting media landscape among top executives in the Murdoch empire.

Firstly, Jeff Jarvis provided a rare insight into Rupert Murdoch’s mindset in a blog post recounting a dinner held for News Corp. execs at the chairman’s Monterey ranch. It’s clear from the post that Murdoch continues to embrace the world of Web 2.0 wholeheartedly. Not only had he invited uber-bloggers Jarvis and Nick Denton to explain the new media landscape to his generals, but he also spent the entire dinner deep in conversation with Mark Zuckerberg, the precocious 22 year-old CEO of social networking site Facebook. At a meeting earlier in the day, Murdoch had also encouraged his executives to ‘make a huge leap in a completely different world.’

While Murdoch clearly grasps the importance of embracing the new dynamics of the participatory Web, not all of his executives are so enthusiastic. A Reuters report from the National Cable and Telecommunications Conference revealed deep reservations among the ‘old media’ about the importance of the internet. Among those calling for restraint was News Corp. COO Peter Chernin, who said ‘the amount of money we get from those [internet companies] are a fraction of those we get from the cable industry. We must be careful not to disaggregate.’

Reuters suggests that a siege mentality has set in among mainstream media providers, with Time Warner chief exec Richard Parsons comparing big media to native Americans besieged by colonial forces in the Indian Wars. Whatever you think of this extraordinary analogy, it seems that YouTube and its ilk have got the established media very rattled. But as Apple demonstrated in the music industry, joining them, rather than trying to beat them, will probably prove to be the better strategy.