Evening all

Having worked for the police, I was pleased to see a police officer winning the Orwell prize for his anonymous blog, NightJack. All too often police are in the news for the wrong reasons and police officers are more angry than anyone about the behviour of the tiny minority of officers who fail to keep up the very high standards we so rightly expect of them.

Police officers are not known for their great communication skills, so it is good to read in the blog what life is really like on the beat. This is the best PR the police can have...from the horse's mouth.

This also shows how Web 2.0 tools can empower ordinary men or women to speak to the majority. More power to this PC's PC.

Taking the twitter

Want to know the latest on the Budget? Then Twitter was the place to be this week with Channel Four offering to keep you up to touch with the breaking news. This shows how seriously PRs need to take Twitter; everyone from journalists to the Government is now using it.

Not everyone takes it seriously, though. Here's a piece of fun I came across on YouTube. Enjoy.

From: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BeLZCy-_m3s

Why are academics so afraid of Wikipedia?

Wikipedia is without doubt one of the modern wonders of the world. Since wikis were invented back in 1994 by Howard G. ‘Ward’ Cunningham, a US computer programmer, Wikipaedia has been an incredible success. I also think it is one of the wonders of the web that you can still go to Cunningham's original wiki.

Launched as recently as 15 January 2001, Wikipedia now has more than 2 million articles and is the largest encyclopaedia in history. It is reviewed continuously by everyone and libellous, criminal an copyright material is removed. While there will always be some arguments over its accuracy, the same can be said for many of the academic books I have read.


Wikipedia is the only book I have ever read which warns me it needs more citations to verify what is on it. It also had far more citations than any other book I have ever looked at. So why are academics so critical of it? Could it perhaps be because Wikipedia threatens their own authority?

Picture: http://ventnorblog.com/copy_images/flat-earth.jpg

In previous eras there were academics who refused to accept the blindingly obvious as the above picture reminded me. Or perhaps the earth is flat, after all.

Twittering about worms

PR clients are always quite rightly concerned first and foremost about their reputation. Twitter has taken a battering this weekend after a worm was placed in the site taking users to StalkDaily.com.

This was set up a by a 17-year-old American student, Michael Mooney, who said he did it out of boredom. He has even published a web page explaining why and how he did it. Twitter has had reputation issues before and has been slow to act when pressed by people being misrepresented on its site. If a student can cause this much chaos just imagine how much trouble a real professional hacker can create.

If Twitter allows worms and such misrepresentation to infect its day-to-day working this will hugely damage Twitter's standing. This could really curtail whats seemed to be the unstoppable rise of Twitter.

If I can't trust whether a Twitter has really come from someone it claims to be, or it could infect my machine, then I for one will not want to use Twitter. I am sure I will not be the only one.

Is this the age of the political blogger?

Even the most powerful communicators can get it wrong at times. Damian McBride, now a former adviser to Gordon Brown at No. 10, will no doubt be wishing he had never suggested blogging about Tory politicians to his erstwhile friend Derek Draper who runs LabourList, a blog for Labour party supporters. For those of us with long memories, Derek Drapper was also caught up in a much earlier Labour row back in 1998 about lobbying.

Picture from: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1022168

McBride should never have forgotten where and who he works for and the immense influence his job gave him. It is always easy to communicate but not always necessary to do it.

However, for Paul Staines it is a massive success for him and his Guido Fawkes' blog. In the UK political bloggers have taken a long time to become popular or influential, unlike the US, where blogs dominated the recent presidential election and President Obama raised most of his funds via Internet sites or various types.

If, as Harold Wilson famously said, a week is a long time in politics, then in then new cyberworld bloggers will speed that up to make just a few minutes a long time in politics.
Perhaps this could be the age of the political blogger.

When a private life is all too public

The Internet is now at the centre of the always uneasy relation between journalists and PR professionals. Having worked on both sides, I know only too well the problems each side can have with the other.  In the past few days I have been reading Deirdre Breakenridge's PR2.0: New Media, New Tools, New Audiences. 

She talks about some of the tools now available to help identify the best specialist journalists to target for particular campaigns; the information can include the usual contact numbers, email addresses, deadline details, special interests, etc. However, she also points out so much more information is now available on the Internet that it is easy to track down far more personal details. So it can be easy to track down a journalist's previous jobs, Facebook pages, where he or she went to college, etc. 

Much of this information would have originally been put on the Internet by the journalist. I am frequently amazed at the very personal information people voluntarily put on publicly accessible website pages. Is this information fair game or too personal to use? Surely there can be no ethical arguments against using it as it is in the public domain, usually put there by the journalist. After all, every journalist I know wouldn't hesitate for a moment to use the same information in a story he or she was researching.

Does this mean there no such thing as a private life anymore? Would PRs be happy at similar information being published in a journalist's newspaper or magazine? I think not. So where should the line be drawn? This is one of these questions that has a different answer for different people. Like all ethical questions there is no easy answer. Or is there?

The $250m Twitter question

The Internet is awash with rumours that Google is wanting to Twitter and ready to pay about $250m. While the credit crunch may be hitting some parts of the world, it looks as if Twitter make fly off to yet new heights if the tie up with Google comes off. Twittering could become as mainstream as blogging.

For those of us yet to join the rush to Twitter and not quite sure what to use it for I was glad to find this guide on the benefits for the PR industry:

WTF is Twitter and why should I care?

From www.prblogger.com

Is Twitter really worth $250m? How do we really find the value of Internet-based busineses? Tomorrow we will be flying elsewhere and $250m is a lot of cash for just a quick touchdown. Friends Reunited seems old hat today but ITV bought it for £120m (then $208m) back in December 2005.

So what is the next big thing? Well, if I knew the answer to that then I could be $250m richer.

Wikis: simple things for people like me

I hate it when computers become difficult. Html codes and such things can make all our lives so complicated. Surely there is a reason why we all like the simple things in life. Wikis work like this, using the simplest of computer language, so even people, like me, who have many better things than learn computer languages can use them and make changes. What should we use them for? Well here is a simple explanation:

From You Tube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dnL00TdmLY

This You Tube video has already been watched more than 700,000 times: there, I knew people like simple things. However, in Rob Brown's new book: Public Relations and the Social Web (2009: p.39, Kogan Page, London) he recalls how the founder of Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, said, in an interview in 2006, that PR people should not edit Wikipedia or wikis in general. Jimmy Wales thinks it is unethical for PRs to change wikis: so is this an open source that is not open, or does he have a point? Of course, academics love to hate Wikipedia. Do they just hate Wikipedia because it challenges their authority or are they right to be sceptical about everything they read? Isn't that there job? Of course, PRs need to check out Wikipedia articles for their clients but, if Jimmy Wales is right and they shouldn't change these articles, what are PR practioners supposed to do when they uncover articles which they know are wrong or damaging - just leave them. Is that really ethical? I'm confused already: I thought wikis were supposed to be simple.