Welcome

Welcome to the Prompt Newsletter. If you'll excuse us blowing our own trumpet, we'd just like to let you know that we're very proud to have won the prize for Best New Product or Service at the 2007 B2B Marketing Awards this week for our Blog Monitor service. If you're interested in keeping up to date with what people are saying about your brands on blogs and social media networks, drop us a line, we'll be more than happy to tell you about our award winning service.

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Technology News

Google feeling sociable
By Lance Concannon

The world of social media got a lot more interesting this week as Google unveiled its OpenSocial API, a set of tools designed to enable developers to produce applications that work across different social networks. To many observers this looks like a clear swipe at Facebook (not to mention new shareholder, Microsoft). Developers of Facebook applications are locked into that platform, which means they face certain limitations, but Google’s new API means that they can build applications which will work with any sites that have joined the OpenSocial platform. Those sites include MySpace, Bebo, LinkedIn and SixApart, and they’re being joined by heavyweight tech names like Oracle and Salesforce.com.

Ultimately, what this means for ordinary internet users is that soon you’re going to see that your “social graph” – (the network of relationships you have with different websites and the different people you interact with on those websites) is going to be much easier for you to manage. For example, you might have a professional network on LinkedIn and a social network on MySpace, which are currently managed entirely separately through completely different accounts. OpenSocial means that these two networks will exist on the same platform, and while you’ll still be able to keep them separate where appropriate, it’ll be easier to manage any overlap between those networks (e.g. a friend who’s also a professional contact). On top of this, it’s likely to stimulate the development of a new wave of innovative social applications.

Only a fool would stick his neck out and say something as rash as “this probably means Facebook will be dead within a year” but if you ask me, this probably means Facebook will be dead within a year…

Fantastic Forums: Rise of the Silver Surfers
By Duncan Heaney

The success of Facebook and Myspace has demonstrated that there is a great appeal in social networking. Many find that the websites skew a little young and alternatives are beginning to present themselves. The Guardian is reporting that a new social networking website has built up a presence online, and this one is aimed at the over-50s.

Saga Zone has been created by the insurance and holiday company Saga, and has been running as a beta version for four months. Users of the site can create profile pages, communicate with friends or join online discussions. The site already has 13,000 users and the company expect that figure to skyrocket once the site is officially launched. The oldest member to join the site so far is the grand old age of 87.

This is not the first time a social networking site aimed at the older user has been launched. Last year American site Eons was launched, aimed at the baby boomer generation. Although the initial reaction was promising, with over £16 million raised from investors, Eons has subsequently struggled and last month laid off a third of its 72 employees.

US Media News

By Tarryn Morley

US

Sam Diaz has resigned as technology reporter for The Washington Post. Diaz was previously the assistant technology editor for the newspaper. No replacement for Diaz has yet been named.

Sharon Gaudin recently resigned as senior editor at InformationWeek and is returning to Computerworld, where she served as senior editor from 1996 to 1999, as a reporter. Gaudin will cover emerging technology, desktop chips and radio frequency identification products and issues. Thomas Claburn, editor at large of InformationWeek, has taken over security coverage at the publication.

Michael Learmonth has been appointed senior editor Silicon Alley Insider, a blog covering the technology, media and communications industries. Learmonth begins his new role on November 5.

For those pressed for time, Washington publishing entrepreneur Jeremy Brosowsky has recently launched Brijit, a Web site that creates bite sized 100-word abstracts of articles from a variety magazines. Readers have access to abstracts of articles from more than 50 magazines, including the current issues of Wired, the Economist, Smithsonian, The New Yorker, Time and Fortune. The abstracts are arranged by publication and subject. Further categories include “Brijit Recommends”, “Most Popular” and “The Latest”.

UK Media News

By Tarryn Morley

UK

Roger Alton has resigned as editor of the Observer. Alton has served as editor of the Observer for almost a decade. Prior to joining the newspaper, he spent 20 years at the Guardian in a variety of roles. Alton will be replaced by deputy editor John Mulholland when he leaves the Observer at the end of the year. Mulholland has been at the Observer for nine years.

Ben Tudor has left his post as features editor of Incisive Media’s Computeractive. Tudor will be joining Current Analysis as a senior analyst.

TV International editor Tristan O'Carroll has been appointed as news editor at Haymarket's MediaWeek. In further changes at MediaWeek, Emma Barnett has been promoted from editorial assistant to reporter.

There have been several recent editorial changes at the Financial Times. Noted historian and Harvard professor Niall Ferguson has been appointed contributing editor at the FT, where he will write a blog on international finance for FT.com. Ferguson will also contribute essays and reviews to the FT Weekend. Henny Sender has also joined the FT. He will serve as international financial correspondent. He is currently a senior special writer at the Wall Street Journal.

The $100 laptop will cost $200, but it finally on its way
By Dave Wilby

Remember the ingenious $100 laptop initiative developed by the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) project to get affordable educational tools out to the world’s poorest children? Well, this week the project’s official website begin selling its first machines in lots of 10,000 or via individual charitable donation, at a unit price of $200 each. The new price point, nearer £100 than $100, isn’t a huge surprise however, with the estimated final cost for each laptop already reaching $150 back in February and $176 by April, according to ZDNetUK. The nifty green and white computers will go into production next month in China but it still isn’t clear when they will actually get into the hands of their final users. The OLPC project was founded by charismatic MIT professor Nicholas Negroponte, who has managed to woo partners including Intel and Microsoft with his vision of low-cost computing for all. We’ll be keeping an eye on the OLPC Wiki for updates on the project’s progress.

Internet users captcha’d with their pants down
By Sean McManus

New malware is using a strip show to encourage computer users to hack antispam technology. In the game, the charming Melissa removes an item of clothing in exchange for the user entering the code word shown.

The twist is that these simple intelligence tests have been channelled from Yahoo, where they are a security feature. Entering the code correctly is supposed to prove that someone registering an email account is a real human, because software isn’t that smart. When players enter the code to see Melissa undress, spam software behind the scenes can automatically register a disposable email account and blast the web with more junk.

The so-called Captcha test, which the BBC says stands for "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart", is inherently flawed. People often need two or three goes to decipher the code, and users of assistive devices like Braille readers can be locked out altogether. What’s more, it would be simple to post enticing content online and make people enter a code to access it, which could then be used to hack antispam measures elsewhere. Perhaps that is already happening, and this case only came to light because it used malware rather than an innocent looking website.

Google-powered phones ready by mid-2008
By Dave Wilby

Rumours of a Google Phone (or GPhone) that have been circulating the industry for over two years now are finally looking likely to bear fruit, with an official announcement from the company expected in less than two weeks. On Monday the Wall Street Journal cited unnamed sources in a report that claimed Google software and services including the famous search engine, Google Maps, YouTube and Gmail would appear on new handsets, perhaps manufactured by LG or HTC, by the middle of next year.

Google is also alleged to be seeking partnerships with carrier 3 in the UK, as well as Deutsche Telekom’s T-Mobile arm in the US and France Télécom’s Orange division. We believe the move is likely to have a huge influence on the future of both the consumer and business mobile phone industries. The arrival of a player of Google’s size onto the smallest screen will inevitably spark battles between developers like itself who advocate social networking, open standards and intuitive data sharing, and wireless carriers who harbour deep-rooted concerns over security, privacy and their profit margins.

Web 2.0 Watch

By Fiona Blamey

Professional journalists at loggerheads over social media

At the B2B Marketing Awards last night, my colleague Lance and I were explaining Prompt’s (award-winning!) social media monitoring service to one of our fellow gala diners. “Well that all sounds marvellous,” came the response, “but it’s beyond me. I barely know how to text.”

Now you might think that with blogging celebrating its ten-year anniversary this year, and Facebook being touted as the advertising and word-of-mouth marketing platform du jour, today’s marketers might be more clued up by now about the importance and value of social media.

But if you’re more like our table-mate from last night, you can at least take heart that a lot of journalists are equally confused about the ‘participatory internet’. The past ten days or so have seen an extraordinary exchange of views about the impact of Web 2.0 on professional journalism, resulting in a high-profile resignation from the National Union of Journalists.

It all started with an opinion article in The Journalist, the NUJ’s official publication, entitled ‘Web 2.0 Is Rubbish’. In it, the union’s National Executive Council representative for new media journalists, Donnacha DeLong, argues that media organisations that embrace Web 2.0 are undermining professional journalism by burying ‘authoritative’ content under deluges of comments from ‘average people’ (that’s the readers, viewers and listeners), to the extent that some organisations (DeLong doesn’t specify which ones, but I imagine the Guardian’s Comment is Free site is one of the intended targets) seem to want to remove the journalism entirely and just post comments from readers.

Like Andrew Keen, DeLong appears to believe that only professional journalists are qualified to provide authoritative news and comment, and that amateurs with blogs and digital cameras should not be allowed to assume the role traditionally played by journalists. His position plays into a larger debate about whether journalists should be required by their employers to become multimedia experts, capable of taking and uploading their own photos, editing their own videos and podcasts, and writing blog posts, in an effort to mirror the way that online publishing as a whole is heading.

The NUJ appears to want to protect its members against having to learn and use these new skills, but many journalists believe that the union should instead be helping its members to embrace new Web 2.0 techniques and technologies, otherwise their jobs will be at risk. The Telegraph’s online communities editor Shane Richmond and Guardian columnist and blogger Jeff Jarvis both provide critiques of the NUJ’s perceived reactionism, while Guardian media commentator Roy Greenslade has gone one step further and resigned publicly from the union.

So for any PR people out there struggling to deal with the new world of social media, don’t forget that things aren’t all that clear-cut on the other side of the fence, either.

Website of the Week

By Duncan Heaney

www.subservientchicken.com

When I was trawling the web looking for a website of the week, I didn’t expect to waste an hour of my life giving orders to a man dressed as a chicken. Subservient Chicken is a great little time waster. You type in instructions and see if the chicken will do it. It’s simple and addictive. The chicken responded to most of my instructions such as ‘run in a circle’, ‘jump’ and ‘dance’, though it had trouble when I requested it ‘pretend to eat a roasted potato’, demonstrating that its not a perfect system. Nevertheless, it definitely has that ‘one more go’ aspect to it, so it’s definitely worth a look.

We hope you find the Prompt Communications newsletter an interesting read. For any feedback on our newsletter, or to discuss how we can help you with your technology PR, marketing, social media/blogging initiatives, copywriting or surveys, please contact us using the details below. We are always delighted to hear from you.