PR and the Social Web

Book Reprint Imminent

Rob Brown — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 18:20:29 +0000

I noticed last week that the book to which this blog is a companion ‘Public Relations and the Social Web’ was apparently out of stock at Amazon. The website is showing 1-3 weeks delivery time. I checked with the publishers Kogan Page and got the following response from commissioning editor Annie Knight “It’s just reprinting at the moment – it will be available again in two weeks. It sold out a lot quicker than we had anticipated…” That was last Friday (6th November) so it should be in stock again in about 10 days.

BBC iPlayer on iPhone

Rob Brown — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 22:23:47 +0000

The BBC’s iPlayer is accessible on the iPhone and iPod touch as well as a range of smart phones. A search for iPlayer in the Apple app store turns up nothing at all, as the iPlayer mobile is currently a web based application. It is most easily accessed via a mobile web browser. The service is also accessible as a click through via the tvguide.co.uk mobile application (which is how I discovered it).

Delivering TV on mobile devices has been a key objective for programme makers and mobile operators for years. The quality of the service at first look is exceptional and this, combined with being ‘first to market’ is a major coup for the BBC. Rather than aiming for a specific mobile phone platform the BBC is looking to provide a service that is widely available. According to the iPlayer website all of the following devices should be able to receive the mobile iPlayer:

Are they Spammers?

Rob Brown — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 21:26:21 +0000

This blog is companion to a book and the blog has a companion twitter feed which doesn’t do much except post URLs from the blog. It is a convenience more than anything for users who prefer URL’s via twitter to using a feed reader. This seems to make sense as over 6000 have chosen to follow the twitter feed – with just over 40 using feedburner.

When I started the twitter feed I decide to follow back all of the followers – more out of courtesy than anything else and I did it manually. I still do partly because I don’t want to auto follow bots or spammers.

However I noticed that a proportion of followers then decide to unfollow after I follow them back and I wondered why. It looks to me that some of them are doing this on huge and systematic scale just to boost their own follower numbers. Generally this practise is regarded as spamming. So I though I would publish the top eight (there are several hundred). You have a look and decide if you think they are spammers and if they see this and they don’t agree perhaps they can add their comments and explain their approach to social media.

Update: The Twit that Made Fry Quit

Rob Brown — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 08:56:56 +0000

Or didn’t as the case may be. With his mood lifted by the Californian sunshine Stephen Fry returned to twitter within 24 hours of announcing his departure and apologised to Richard from Birmingham ( @Brumplum ) for the furore. Richard for his part seemed to be bemused by the attention good and bad and contrite about his description of Fry’s musings. His follower numbers have risen from a couple of hundred to nearly 1500.

It hasn’t gained much attention but the person who came out of this with the least to smile about was comedian Alan Davies, panelist on Fry’s QI show, who used his twitter stream on Saturday night to hurl abuse at anyone who didn’t agree with his take on the spat. He has since deleted most of them but you can see a choice selection of them here. Davies is of course the happy go lucky chap who once chewed a tramp’s ear outside a London nightclub.

My Top 20 PR and Social Media Lists

Rob Brown — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 13:42:11 +0000

The arrival of twitter lists has led to a frenzy of list publishing along with widgets and gadgets and even a dedicated on line directory called Listorious. My issue with the majority of these lists are that they are too long.

As a contribution to the current list mania I am publishing a top 20 PR and social media list of lists. The criteria used are that in addition to being on subject, all of these lists are of a manageable size, specifically they list between 10 and 50 accounts. The figures quoted after each list are the number of twitter accounts that they include at the time of publication.

@benfurber/media-new-media-people 23

@uwelang/socialmedia 47

@kprzewuska/all-about-social-media 14

@PressPRsVIPs/uk-prs 27

@djshadow19/pr-ism 13

@CaSuPe15/pr 20

@missPRmonkeee/pr-people 14

@PRProspect/feed 35

@dorothycrenshaw/pr-sources 11

@mmmkatya/pr-sm-news 35

@miguelstil/everythingpr 50

@jeanette_fuchs/socialmedia 18

@Blinkblog/comunica-o 40

@kbuddski/pr 13

@alexleebehan/pr 33

@robynslingsby/journalists-pr 25

@paulruk/pr-watch 28

@attrACTpr/social-media 35

@LozanoRP/publicrelations 13

@walker_pr/social-media 47

Update: Hacked Off with Twitter Spam

Rob Brown — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 12:08:10 +0000

Following the twitter hack attack last week, thousands of accounts are still being hijacked by spammers who are using them to send bogus direct messages. The majority being sent today appear to promote money-making scams. Colin Byrne (@capbyrne) the CEO of Weber Shandwick in the UK and Europe is one of the latest victims.

The ‘phishing’ attach has been highly sophisticated. The hackers have employed a bogus twitter login page to grab names and passwords. It has also been reported that the players of the online game ‘Tribeswar’ have had their accounts hacked. Users should check the connections tab in their twitter settings page and ‘revoke access’ for any applications that don’t know and trust. When logging onto twitter check that the url is twitter.com before logging in.

The Twit that made Stephen Fry Quit

Rob Brown — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 16:44:46 +0000

It looks as if Stephen Fry is leaving the social network that he has helped to make famous. This morning he announced that aggression and unkindness had caused him to give up on twitter. It seems that an exchange with Richard from Birmingham or @brumplum as he is known was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

The spat began with a bitchy if fairly unremarkable tweet from @brumplum in which he described Fry’s microblog contributions as a ‘bit boring’. Fry replied in kind and blocked the offending tweeter. Richard announced he’d been blocked and then referred to the national treasure in what might be considered homophobic terms if @brumplum was not himself openly gay.

Fry has left the door open for a return by saying that he’d see how he felt in a few days and there is already a twitter petition asking him to reconsider. Perhaps frustration with technology was getting Stephen down – both his Kodak printer and a Sony Vaio computer were playing up this morning and he was due to fly to America so the combined stress may have been a contributing factor. Fry’s follower list is very close to a million so he is a genuine standard-bearer for the network. We will now have to wait and see whether he is really joining the list of celebs that have lost faith with social networks or when spirits are higher he decides to twit again.

Hacked Off with Twitter Spam

Rob Brown — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 08:37:19 +0000

Thousands of twitter users have had their accounts hacked in the past three days. The hackers have used the accounts to send a deluge of direct messages with links to diets, sites offering colonic irrigation and the inevitable porn. It appears that affected users have been the victims of a phishing attack; they have been tricked into giving out their passwords either by registering for a dodgy twitter application or by being presented with a fake twitter login page.

The best response would usually be to change the password on your account but recently twitter has reported that users are being locked out of their accounts after trying to reset their passwords or change their email address or user names. It is not impossible that these two events are connected as part of a coordinated attempt to take control of user accounts.

The best defense at the moment appears to be to go to the connections tab in your twitter settings page and ‘revoke access’ for applications that are listed. Only leave access for applications that you know and trust. If a pattern emerges as to the applications that are being used to hack accounts this will help identify the source of the attack.

Trick or Tweet

Rob Brown — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 18:31:56 +0000

One of the most powerful, authoritative and influential corporate voices in the world of UGC and the social web is that of Scott Monty, head of social media at Ford Motor Company, Detroit. He has over 30 thousand followers on twitter and is a genuine trail blazer in the use of social media marketing and PR techniques.

Today he used this voice to give advice on how to carve a Halloween pumpkin. To be fair it is not the only thing that Scott has talked about on twitter today. He has referenced the fact that Ford management at all levels have taken compensation cuts. He alludes to plans for ‘mind blowing’ in-car technology and promotes a post which describes Ford vehicles as ‘world class’.

What is interesting about the way that Scott uses social networks is that he blends the personal with the corporate. It is a clear example of a trend towards greater informality and using human faces, acting in a personal way as part of the corporate brand and culture. Though to be fair if I wanted to carve a pumpkin (and I don’t) there might be better places to go for advice. I mean…ice cream scoops?

What is Say What?

Rob Brown — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 17:54:01 +0000

The digital marketing agency iCrossing has released an iPhone app that allows users to search Twitter, Digg, forums and blogs direct from their phone. ‘Say What’ scans social media networks and the user inputs keywords for live monitoring of online conversations. ”Our goal was to put one-click social media monitoring in the palm of the user’s hand” said Rachel Pasqua, director of mobile strategy, iCrossing.

Given that a year ago this kind of search was a novelty on a desktop computer and usually only available with paid for web services it represents a real technological leap and what’s more it’s free.

I downloaded the app to an iPod touch and it works. You can build up a history of searches and you can drill down into the source material; be they twitter streams or blogs. It does however have real limitations. Free desktop tools now come with various types of analysis built in and a phone screen is really too small for any meaningful monitoring. What ‘So What’ really is, is a fantastic marketing tool for iCrossing. It demonstrates that they really understand social media and they are at the forefront of the business sifting through the social web. It also puts a reminder of that fact literally in the hands of their target audience.