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Why Every Company Is A Media Company (via Mashable)

11 February 2009 by Carl Morris

Check out this intriguing post Why Every Company Is A Media Company (from Mashable blog) about a small restaurant which dominates at least one Google search query – by having a website with some interesting, relevant, “human” content.

If you’re using businessy or corporate speak on your site, it’s a good opportunity to reconsider. People are mostly immune to that. People like real voices!

Filed Under: Commentary Tagged With: branding, Business, communications, corporate, mashable, restaurant, strategy

LBC Radio vs. Ben Goldacre (A Perfect Storm of Bad Science)

9 February 2009 by Carl Morris

[ UPDATE 10/02/09: The Times have now published an opinion piece on this story. Keep watching. ]

In brief: while cases of measles in children are increasing, presenter Jeni Barnett on LBC radio takes a very vocal stance against MMR immunisation. Blogger and doctor Ben Goldacre opposes, on the grounds of bad science while posting a recording from the show to make his point. Almost immediately, LBC issues Goldacre with a legal takedown notice citing copyright infringement.

Or in other words, LBC begins a virtual perfect storm in blogs and the mainstream media.

You can read more about it on Techdirt, Ars Technica and other places.

Look at the average number of comments on Jeni Barnett’s personal blog (currently 2 or 3ish per post) against the comments for the two posts about MMR (at the time of writing, 82 comments for Bad Scientists and 134 comments for MMR and Me).

The killer elements of the storm are:

an already existing health controversy
the welfare of children
in LBC, a popular media outlet with many listeners
a perception of LBC as “traditional” media
the nature of blogs as a fast, cheap and direct medium for expressing opinion
and likewise for online comments, although more so (see also: the recordings on YouTube)
“bad science”
a strong feeling of solidarity among bloggers
and particularly against lawyers as relates to copyright and freedom of speech

Search Twitter for LBC and MMR and you’ll get more reaction (that doesn’t even cover all the possible terms which relate to this story). There’s also a Facebook group called Defend Ben Goldacre from LBC with, for what it’s worth, 1048 members at the moment.

There’s a weary inevitability in the tone being used to tell this tale. As my colleague Tom remarked to me earlier today, someone should (if not already) document these frequent and grisly incidents in a dedicated blog. It could be called Blogging Blazes or something of that nature.

If you’re looking for scientifically sound advice about MMR vaccines for children, then it’s easy to find. Let’s just say that Goldacre, a qualified doctor, would certainly advise you to research more widely than a talk radio show.

Was Goldacre’s use of the copyrighted recordings a legally fair dealing? Interesting question.

But the main question I’m asking in a PR context is, why is this being considered a “fail” for LBC Radio? Their objectives are controversy and ad revenue. They’ve got the controversy and the free blog promotion (including this post).

To date, none of LBC’s advertisers has backed out over this. (Although this could happen and I’ll be certain to post an addendum here if this changes.) Whether it’s intentional or not, this situation is playing out very well for them.

Goldacre will have no trouble finding legal advisers or funding if it goes to court. And whatever the result, LBC still get headlines.

Let’s just hope it leads to better discussion and more conscientious and informed parenting, shall we?

(I’m going to try to focus on edifying things for the rest of this month! We’re working with a photographer who is doing some great work with some very diverse people and I can’t wait to tell you about it.)

Filed Under: Commentary, Social media strategy Tagged With: bad science, copyright, fail, goldacre, jeni barnett, lbc, mmr

First Impressions of Alastair Campbell’s New Blog

5 February 2009 by Carl Morris

[ UPDATE 06/02/09: Comments have been enabled on Alastair Campbell’s site, albeit in an unusual place. At the moment it’s unclear whether they apply to the whole site or each individual post. Nevertheless, you can disregard some of my criticism below as Campbell is also responding personally. He explains that the original lack of comments was down to “first day teething troubles”. ]

Alastair Campbell has somewhat belatedly launched his own text blog and video blog.

For someone so strongly linked with political communications in the UK, he’s a little late to the game. But I for one am a little intrigued about how he will choose to use it.

He’s also on Twitter now as @campbellclaret – presumably a reference to his chosen football team, Burnley.

First impressions? He talks about having discussions, but there is no comment facility on the blog. Why do high profile bloggers shy from this? People will talk about you, so you might as well encourage and “own” some of the discussion. A busy comments area brings people back, especially if there’s controversy. And Campbell is not unfamiliar with that.

He’d even retain the power to moderate comments, which is again something at which he’s had plenty of practice.

Otherwise they’ll use a system like Diigo to maintain annotations about your site elsewhere, as we saw with Whitehouse.gov recently.

Incidentally, call me picky but the convention is that the whole thing is referred to as a “blog” and one article is referred to as a “blog post”.

There’s also a video blog and the first entry (I mean post) is a very slickly-edited piece with some footage from the glory years with Tony Blair and the upbeat sounds of Paul Simon’s “You Can Call Me Al” on the soundtrack (I wonder if they sought permission for this).

It’s entertaining.

I generally think people’s expectations of online video have lowered these days. Just shoot a quick and frank piece to camera from your living room – it’s cheap, it’s immediate and it feels more open and honest. With such high production values from the outset, I’ll be surprised if he can sustain this regularly.

Filed Under: Commentary, Social media strategy Tagged With: alastair campbell, blogging, labour, Politics, spin, uk, vlogging

New York Times – Online Subscription “Heresy”?

4 February 2009 by Carl Morris

Silicon Alley Insider has a provocative piece about New York Times exploring a paid subscriptions scheme for its online service.

I’ll keep this brief. I just want to stoke up some of the issues around this.

These are the potential problems, as I see them, with this scheme:

Wall Street Journal and Financial Times have already pursued paid subscription models. But their distinctive topic area is finance. As the article points out “those papers count on business readers who just charge their company for access.” Then in reference to the New York Times itself, “the general reader might not pull out the credit card for access to news that will remain available for free elsewhere”.
It could be argued that any niche platform might have a chance of charging for content. But something as broad as the New York Times? The way people read news is different now. The paper newspaper format aggregates news about a range of subjects, but that’s partly a result of the economics of printing. A reader’s loyalty to a trusted brand for an all-encompassing news service is somewhat diminished now. Consider the physical paper newspapers you NEVER buy – but you can very easily visit an individual article, if it’s forwarded to you or you find it in a search. Who’s done this? I definitely have. A fully paid service doesn’t take advantage of this.
For journalism these – to use the words of the Chinese – are “interesting times”. The past success of the New York Times is no guarantee of future success when that brand is extended into a paid service. The past loyalty of readers is not a guarantee of future loyalty. Really, the clearest viewpoint from which to start when designing a successful business for online news would be no legacy, no tradition and no baggage. In other words, this is not be a bold business decision but a move of desperation – it’s about a plan to “save the New York Times”. The correct plan should be “to launch a profitable online platform that publishes high quality news and articles”. New York Times has many years of journalistic experience coming up with the content, but on a business level they don’t have the luxury of taking time over this. Elsewhere, entrepreneur Marc Andreessen thinks they should shut down the costly print edition altogether.
“Information wants to be free” from the article is a quote from Stewart Brand which is right in the sense that market forces will drive the price of a piece of information towards zero. This is economics. Given two identical options, which are you going to pick – the free version or the version where you have to pay? But whether this applies to daily news as well as encyclopaedic and other information is another question. Readers also value other things that New York Times is able to provide (such as convenience, trustworthiness and high quality of journalism).

As ever, comments are open.

Filed Under: Commentary Tagged With: financial times, journalism, new york times, news, stewart brand, wall street journal

Addicted to Spotify – the Music Streaming Service

2 February 2009 by Carl Morris

Here’s an introduction to Spotify from my personal blog.

There are plenty of people saying this music streaming service is amazing, they’re all correct and you can read their writings. So I tried to give the blog post a record label perspective, as that’s my background and my distinctive.

Cover what you do best and link to the rest!

Filed Under: Commentary Tagged With: advertising, last.fm, licensing, music, pandora, spotify, streaming, youtube

BBC Takes Back Control of Rogue Twitter Account (Lessons for Brands)

29 January 2009 by Carl Morris

Yesterday I wrote about Twitter name squatting and included a recent example where a rogue person had registered the name BBC on Twitter.

Earlier today Twitter Inc handed the account to the real BBC, after a BBC staff member complained to Twitter Inc. It’s been cleared of all previous tweets and all 7,684 followers.

It’s now impossible to follow the original links and see what happened. So here are some screenshots to illustrate my point about the importance of brand control. All were taken on 28th January 2009 just after 5PM.

The screenshot above shows an @ message sent to the BBC Twitter account.

The user @sputnik101 was surprised to see this reply from the BBC Twitter account. Like many people, including me, he was unaware that the BBC did not have control over the account. In that sense, like many others, he’d be duped into thinking he was following the real BBC. It’s generally expected that large corporations will protect their trademarks and copyrights to prevent this happening.

I tried to see how long the BBC account had been in third party control. Above is the earliest tweet I found – from 9th October 2008.

As far as I could see the message to @sputnik101 was the only @ reply from the impostor posing as the BBC. But many other people sent @ messages to the account about many different topics. You can see just one page of search results above.

We don’t know if the rogue posing as the BBC sent any private direct messages to any of his or her thousands of followers, in the four months he or she had control over the account. It would have been possible.

Today the real BBC have control. So do head over and read what they’re posting from the new look, genuine @bbc. If you’re on Twitter you can follow them too.

This BBC story is an excellent example of the need to control your brand name on Twitter. If someone has your brand name, particularly if it’s a trademark, you should complain to Twitter Inc by sending a message to @crystal in user support.

If your name or brand name is still available, then register a Twitter account today to prevent somebody else taking it.

It’s also worth using usernamecheck.com to check the availability of your name on a variety of other popular sites.

At Native our purpose is to advise companies on good use of online and social media. This is advice we give to all our clients. As such, the BBC story is given here purely as an illustrative example. I’m not going to labour this point – there are many other examples of Twitter squatting but I won’t be attempting to catalogue them all.

I do believe that Twitter squatting could lead to examples of phishing and other nastiness if companies are lax about this. Unfortunately the onus is largely on them to monitor this. (If you’re concerned about this or you want more information, call us.)

In this example, on the surface it would appear that the rogue was attempting to provide a useful service – by pulling in the legitimate RSS feed from BBC News. But it would be easy to do this for other purposes – including phishing – to give an appearance of authenticity to an account. The legitimate feed could easily be combined with a feed from elsewhere (using an RSS aggregation service such as Yahoo Pipes).

Filed Under: Commentary Tagged With: bbc, branding, fake, impostor, strategy, twitter

BBC Impostor Fools 7,684 People (Control Your Twitter Name, Even if You’re a Twitter Sceptic)

28 January 2009 by Carl Morris

[ UPDATE 29/01/09: Some of the links here no longer work because the real BBC have taken control of the rogue Twitter account. Read this post for screenshots and updated info. ]

There’s enough hype saying you need to use Twitter. Just as TV presenter Phillip Schofield and other celebrities are discovering, there are few barriers to investigation. If you’re curious then just sign up, post a couple of tweets, start following a few people and see what happens.

What I will say is, whether you care about Twitter or not, you must protect your name or your brand.

Domain name squatting has been happening for years. Twitter is starting to tip and a similar thing has been happening there. Lots of people are reserving other people’s names, whether for pranks, experimentation, promotion of other projects, revenge, financial gain or reasons known only to them.

For instance, in December it took several days before we were sure that the Twitter account for Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, was being run by an impostor. The poor spelling and writing style had me suspicious – but he or she still managed to gather a couple of hundred followers and dispense some tweets of pithy wisdom. It was mostly good-natured, but the risk of damage to the Archbishop was still there. (The account has been taken over now and is dormant.)

Again, back in December, tech blogger Mike Butcher of Techcrunch UK admitted to stealing the account name of Andy Burnham, the UK Culture Secretary after a grievance involving Burnham’s opinions on net regulation. (I happen to agree that Burnham’s opinions were misguided, but I’m illustrating another point.) That one’s been suspended by Twitter Inc now. If Burnham had been quick to reserve his own name, it wouldn’t have happened.

(Incidentally, there are very few real politicians registered on Twitter, let alone actively using it. In Wales, we’ve seen the Plaid Cymru AM Bethan Jenkins and the Lib Dem candidate Alison Goldsworthy.)

This is not confined to individuals, it includes companies and brands as well. Lots of well known brands are taken by fakes.

Now most recently and amazingly, the name BBC on Twitter is being run by a third party, who have made no explicit indication that it’s unofficial. The fact they are pulling in a useful feed of current BBC news stories adds weight to the deception.

Look at my screenshot above. The account has 7,684 followers. This is very dangerous indeed for the BBC’s reputation.

Normally, only an eagle-eyed user would notice, with suspicion, that the only people they’re following back are Sky Sports, Manchester United football team and something called Funny Times. Or would click the profile link to discover the following disclaimer:

The news published on http://www.twitter.com/BBC is syndicated content taken directly from the BBC News website vie their public RSS feed found here. The account is not operated by the BBC but is offered for your convenience so that you may receive the latest news stories from the BBC website whilst using the Twitter Service.

Now though, someone called @sputnik101 discovered this when he complained to the BBC account about their broadcast policy on the DEC charity appeal for Gaza.

He then received a surprising and somewhat inappropriate reply. Here’s more on that story.

As you can see from the comments, somebody at the BBC has finally had the sense to complain to Twitter Inc to ask for the account to be suspended or handed over.

Here at Native, we like Twitter as a communication platform – and have got a lot of benefit from it in terms of contacts, information, useful links and smart conversation. Fortunately the culture of Twitter engenders authenticity and the confirmation of an account being fake, once known, can be spread very rapidly. But now that newer people are joining and taking time to learn how it works, the potential for deception is huge.

If you don’t fancy using it, make sure nobody uses it on your behalf.

If following this advice means registering for Twitter and – at least for now – leaving the account idle with a brief explanation, so be it. Here’s an example.

Filed Under: Commentary, Social media strategy Tagged With: bbc, branding, fake, impostor, twitter

What Would Google Do?

27 January 2009 by Carl Morris

We are blog and news junkies here at Native. (We need to be.)

One thing that amuses me is when commentators emerge from the woodwork to direct their earnest advice towards the business and technology strategies of Google.

Google’s huge success in building an empire on search advertising is very well known. It’s enabled them to launch an entire suite of web-based applications.

(It’s likely you might be reading this blog post in Google Reader or Google Mail, for instance. If not, maybe you’re using their Google Chrome browser.)

But daily, hourly even, there is no shortage of people with some nugget of insight. Or withering putdown.

When you’re the best, you are at your most visible and you are the biggest target for ill-conceived challenges. Just ask any boxing champion who has to walk into a bar.

Admittedly Google’s recent 4th quarter financial results were down. But considering a tough market for advertising in general, they continue to do comparatively well – beating analysts’ forecasts with net profits of $382 million.

Media commentator Jeff Jarvis’ overall premise is different. While not without his own critics, Jarvis is not foolish enough to take cheap shots at the fastest growing company of recent times.

Jarvis has some good insights on his blog and Guardian newspaper pieces. I for one am looking forward to reading his new book What Would Google Do?.

His subject scope is large, judging from this book teaser:

It seems as if no company, executive, or institution truly understands how to survive and prosper in the internet age.

Except Google.

So, faced with most any challenge today, it makes sense to ask: WWGD? What would Google do? In management, commerce, news, media, manufacturing, marketing, service industries, investing, politics, government, and even education and religion, answering that question is a key to navigating a world that has changed radically and forever.

So, WWGD? (I’m looking forward to the bracelet and sandal franchises.)

Jarvis’ background is old school print journalism, so it helps to view his commentary as coming from that perspective. You might remember him from his Dell Hell online campaign in 2005 when he openly criticised the PC manufacturer via his blog and became responsible, in part, for the subsequent improvements to their customer service.

If you’re looking for more detail from Jarvis, read The Google Economy and The Imperatives of the Link Economy.

The book is out next week on Collins. (I wonder if News Corporation, their parent company, have anything to say about it.)

Filed Under: Commentary Tagged With: google, jeff jarvis, strategy, wwgd

The Safe Foundation website

26 January 2009 by Tom Beardshaw

NativeHQ present the Safe Foundation’s new website. Built on WordPress, the site gives the charity the capacity to operate online.

The Safe Foundation are a Cardiff-based charity that raises funds for small community projects overseas. They organise fundraising balls, parties and other events in the UK, getting contributions from their networks for communities they connect with directly.

Their new website provides them with a platform for operating online:

A latest news blog with RSS feed
Profiles of the projects they work with
An events calender for their fundraising events
A donation page where you can donate via PayPal, using Chipin
A Flickr group gallery for their photos
A cideo channel

The site is built in WordPress, giving the Foundation an awesome open source platform that is infinitely extendable.

You can also connect to the Safe Foundation team on Twitter:

For their first online fundraising effort, the Safe ladies are raising money to send a Flip Camcorder to the kids they work with in Sierra Leone. They only need $125 (about $90), so why not give them a big welcome to the web by Chipping into their fund?

UPDATE: It took then 1.5 hours to raise $125! So the Safe Foundation are going to raise another $450 for Flip cams for the kids they work with in India, Ghana and Uganda too!

Filed Under: Case studies, Web development Tagged With: charity, fundraising, Safe Foundation

Stephen Fry on the joys of Twitter

26 January 2009 by Carl Morris

BBC have a 3-minute video on the joys of Twitter – with well known user @stephenfry explaining how he sought advice on his household bat problem.

We are on Twitter as @carlmorris and @tombeardshaw.

Filed Under: Commentary Tagged With: microblogging, stephen fry, twitter

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