Digital Britain: Preliminary Report

On 17 October 2008, Lord Carter, the minister for communications, technology and broadcasting, began work on a report dubbed “Digital Britain”. The idea was to create an action plan that would secure the UK’s place ‘at the head’ of the new media age.  There is more about this action plan here and here.

Released today, the interim report outlines 22 specific actions, and in so doing commits the government too.  These are based on a range of topics including: Universal Connectivity, Original UK Content, Digital Content, Digital Radio, Digital TV, Mobile Wireless, and Next Generation Networks.

The Culture Secretary, Andy Burnham, outlines the report’s interim findings here (why are the parlimentary benches so empty?) and the BBC editorial team reports on some of the key points taken from the report here.

It seems feedback is mixed with the announcement of Broadband ‘in every home by 2012′ being called a ‘damp squib’ no less.  Potentially a tad party political perhaps, but IT industry analyst firm Ovum said the report was well-intended but “severely lacking in the detail.”  Ouch.

As the final version is due in June, one can only assume this will be even meatier – but for the keenest digerati the complete interim report is here (open’s 2MB .pdf) in its 81 page glory.  Enjoy.

Filed under: Business, Computing, Media, Online, WIFI, digital, technology, wi-fi , BBC, Broadband Britain, Digital Britain, Interim Report, Ovum

Superb internet marketing community & FREE industry reports (no catch!)

I wanted to draw you attention to a FREE resource for those of you who want to benefit from a community of the world’s digital marketing and ecommerce professionals. Econsultancy exists to help its members “sharpen their strategy, source suppliers, get quick answers, compare notes, help each other out and discover how to do everything better online.” I have to say that it is a great source of independent advice and insight on digital marketing and ecommerce.

imho there’s no shortage of marketing opinion online, but being ten years and with 71,000 marketers Econsultancy is pretty special.  Bronze membership is FREE and there is more info here.

These are complimentary reports you get for free upon joining (there’s another 20+ too!).  Great, er, value!

————————–

Online PR Industry Benchmarking Report

By Michelle Goodall and Aliya Zaidi, December 2008

Overview Authors: Michelle Goodall and Aliya Zaidi Pages: 35 Features: Survey-based research about the Online PR Industry, with expert input from respected industry commentators.

Digital Outsourcing Survey Report

By Econsultancy, December 2008

This report, produced in association with Lemon Digital Production, is aimed at agencies who are interested in the business case and challenges associated with outsourcing digital work.

SEO Supplier Showcase November 2008

November 2008

Online Customer Engagement Report 2009

By Econsultancy, November 2008

The third annual Online Customer Engagement Report has been produced in partnership with cScape. This research is based on a survey of 1,300 respondents carried out in September and October 2008.

Email Marketing Briefing – November 2008

By Econsultancy, November 2008

This free, 12-page briefing contains a write-up of an E-consultancy roundtable on Email Marketing held in autumn 2008.

Comparison Shopping Engines Survey Report 2008

By Econsultancy, October 2008

This DoubleClick-sponsored research is based on a survey of retailers and agencies carried out in August and September 2008, with the aim of understanding more about the use of comparison shopping.

Paid Search Marketing Supplier Showcase October 2008

October 2008

Paid Search Briefing – October 2008

By Econsultancy, October 2008

This free, 12-page briefing contains a write-up of an E-consultancy roundtable on Paid Search.

Affiliate Marketing Briefing – October 2008

By Econsultancy, October 2008

This free, 11-page briefing contains a write-up of an E-consultancy roundtable on Affiliate Marketing.

Measurement, Analytics and Optimisation Briefing – October 2008

By Econsultancy, September 2008

This free, 12-page briefing contains a write-up of an E-consultancy roundtable on Measurement, Analytics and Optimisation.

————————–

The Services Econsultancy Provide:

Reports: Econsultancy is an award-winning online publisher of reports covering best practice, user experience benchmarking, market data, supplier selection, template files, trends and innovation aimed at internet professionals who want practical advice on all aspects of e-business.

Training, Learning & Development: Econsultancy operates a highly popular training division, used by the world’s leading brands for staff education, both in-house and via public courses. We provide training across all areas of digital marketing and ecommerce and at all levels from accredited one day courses to formal qualifications including diplomas and a Masters in Digital Marketing.

Events: Econsultancy hosts over 100 events a year, including conferences such as the Online Marketing Masterclasses, Future of Digital Marketing and Digital Cream as well as regular Supplier Showcases, Roundtables, the annual Innovation Awards and a range of social events.

————————–

Free memberships of marketing clubs, and online resources are ten a penny.  You just have to surf, or browse LinkedIn groups to see that.  But Econsultancy is very different.  I’d highly recommend you join if you are an internet professional who wants practical advice on all aspects of e-business.

Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Analyst, Analytics, Blogging, Branding, Business, Buzz, CRM, Customer Experience, Design, Direct Mail, Email, Events, Media, Mobile, Online, Planning, Research, SEO, SEO / SEM, Search Engine Optimisation, Social Media, Strategy, Usability, User Generated Content, Viral, Web, Web2.0, digital, marketing, technology, web 2.0 , development, ecommerce, Econsultancy, Events, Free, learning, reports, Strategy, training

Google looks to measure ‘influence’ and the ‘influencers’

Dirk van Graver at “Record | Preserve | Share” has commented on a business week article that asks us to imagine one number that sums up how influential we are.  It is a subject I discussed some time ago, when I was craving a golden ratio in relation to social networking.

Back then I said;

It is pretty obvious Trust would be a great dimension for social networks to embrace. So would Influence or Buzz (or both). And when elements like this are developed I believe Social Networks will be onto something very significant indeed.

If you didn’t follow the link, according to the Business Week piece, Google has a patent pending “for ranking the most influential people on social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook.”

It is a great idea.  Clearly if this works, it would finally make adverts on social networks relevant and potentially profitable.

It would seem (if the report is to be believed) that Google is applying the same approach to social networks that it has used to dominate the online search business (it would be like a page rank).  Apparently the Google approach would take into account all manner of aspects of influence, from ‘how many’ people you know, to ‘how frequently’ you talk with them, to ‘how strongly’ they value your opinion.  So your ’score’ could be compared with that of pretty much anyone in the world.  A personal Google ‘influence score’ if you like.

Hear are my hopes and fears:

FEAR #1: I worry that if an influence score is used to justify, or generate a monitization strategy for social networking sites, the emphasis on what constitutes ‘influence’ must start on a sound footing.  This is an area that I really don’t want to see messed up – as I’m not sure many social networking sites can withstand high profile failures at monitization.

FEAR # 2:  If influence is measured by Google, (or anyone else) surely everyone will be able to find their (or their companies, or their competitors) biggest advocates or doomsayers?  Yes?  Well I cannot see that happening accurately.  I would be very surprised if your biggest influencers are known by you (i.e connected to you) and so how do Google propose to measure or track that?  And in fact, surely influencers by definition are 3rd parties (i.e. are unconnected to you) in the first place?

Hey, maybe I missed something and that is the whole reason why Google is exploring this.

Which brings me on to my great hope.

Hope #1: I hope how ‘many’ people you know (‘follow’, ‘connect’ with, ‘add’ as a friend) is not closely related to your degree of influence.  Those fools who have adopted a strategy of following ‘en-masse’ in Twitter (in the hope that a high percentage will return the favour) must not be seen by advertising buyers and sellers as ‘influencial’.  They are not.  Bob with 1000 friends is not necessarily more influential than Susan with just 85.

Equally seniority isn’t the be-all either.  John the 46 year old bachelor & CEO is not necessarily more influential than Raphael the 28 year old IT Manager, who is a father of two.  And postcode xyz, doesn’t bear higher influencers than postcode 123, in the same way that an OxBridge student shouldn’t be seen as more influencial that a 2:2 student from a ‘lesser’ ranked university.  My hope is that an influence algorithm doesn’t arbitrarily look at volumes and a set of pre-determined values and rules.

Influence is, I believe, far more multi dimensional and complex than that.

If this becomes a reality what are your hopes and fears for ‘Influencer’ tracking?  I’d love to here your views.

Filed under: Business, Buzz, Facebook, Google, Ideas and Riffs, Influence, Measurement, Online, Social Graphs, Social Media, Social Networking, Twitter, Web2.0, ideas, marketing, technology, trust, web 2.0 , Branding, Business Week, Google, Influence, Personal Brand, ranking, Social Networking, Twitter

The mobile web gatecrashes the marketing mix

(Update 22/07/08 – dotMobi, the company behind the .mobi Internet address designed specifically for mobile phones, and AKQA Mobile, the mobile division of the AKQA agency have launched the results of an extensive consumer study of mobile Internet usage and attitudes.)

With the news that 40 million US mobile subscribers (15.6 percent) actively use the mobile Internet, the mobile web is set to be a sure-fire line item entering many B2B marketers marketing plans in 2008/9.

According to a recent Nielsen Company’s report (with 16 countries tracked) the US is the leader in mobile Internet adoption (by penetration #’s), followed by the UK (12.9 percent) and Italy (11.9 percent).

Whilst I believe there is an element of ‘lies, damn lies and statistics‘ about this report (are US citizens browsing, or simply downloading email / how endemic is sophisticated use in the US compared to Europe or Japan?) the reality is I probably shouldn’t care.  The bigger picture is that the mobile web is going to gatecrash the savvy marketers marketing mix quickly.  Very quickly.  You ignore 1million iPhones sold in a weekend, 4G wireless plans and the EC slashing of roam rates at your peril.

Which brings me neatly onto MoFuse – which allows webmasters& bloggers to launch and manage blog content (providing it is available as an RSS feed) in mobile friendly format.  All that you need to do is provide the feed, and in a few simple clicks your blog is viewable on mobile devices at a url like yoursite.mofuse.mobi.  Potentially very nice.  I’ll certainly be checking it out.

So to recap.  Why mobilise your blog?  Well MoFuse believe you should for 5 reasons.  I can’t argue with these, (even if i instantly take a disliking to the fact that a mobile advertising platform seems to be built in, Yuk!….I should be paying my readers not subjecting them to crappy ads) but the real truism is that people want to read content on the go.  Plain and simple.

How are your plans for m. or .mobi coming along?  Can you share your thoughts or best practices?

Filed under: Business, Media, Mobile, Online, Planning, Research, Social Media, Strategy, User Generated Content, Web, blogs, marketing, technology , .mobi, 4G, AKQA, B2B, commerce, dotMobi, M-commerce, m., Mobile, Mobile Commerce, MoFuse, Nielsen

Please help

Sport Relief

(I should apologise for bringing you here by illicit categorisation and tagging, but I won’t. You might have wasted just 10 seconds. Hopefully you will make the choice to change someone’s world in less than a minute).

Filed under: 2.0, ACL, Adobe, Advertising, Affiliate Marketing, Analyst, Analytics, Apple, Awards, BBC, Blog, Blogging, Blogroll, Books, Branding, Business, Buzz, CBS, CIM, CRM, Charity, Colour, Computer, Computing, Conversational marketing, Conversion, Cool, Corbis, Customer service, Data, Deloitte, Design, Direct Email, Direct Mail, EMI, Email, Entertainment, Entrepreneur, Events, Experiential, Facebook, Fairchild Semiconductor, Forrester, Fun, Gartner, Google, IBM, IODA, IT, IT Planning, Ideas and Riffs, Illusion, Imagery, Influence, Infrared, Job, Keywords, Knee, MIT, Mac, Measurement, Media, Microsoft, Mobile, Music, News, Online, Online Video, Open Social, PC, PR, Planning, Power 150, Printing, Public Relations, Punchstock, Quotes, RSS, Religion, Remarkable, Research, SEO, SEO / SEM, SPARQL, SQL, Salmon, Scene7, Search, Search Engine Optimisation, Second Chance Tuesday, Second Life, Semantic Web, Sinclair, Social Graphs, Social Media, Social Networking, Software, Sony BMG, Spam, Spectrum, Strategy, Surgery, Survival, TV, Tattoo, The Orchard, Tim Berners-Lee, Twitter, Usability, User Generated Content, Viral, Viral Coefficient, Virtual Worlds, WIFI, WIKI, WOM, Warner Music Group, Web, Web2.0, White Paper, Wired.com, Wordpress, Xerox, Xuuk, Yahoo!, YouTube, ZX, blogs, bob, copywriting, digital, dotcoms, garfield, iStock, ideas, illustration, last.fm, marketing, ogilvy, permission, photography, podcast, sport, startups, stock photography, technology, trust, venture capital, verge, web 2.0, webmasters, wi-fi, word of mouth , 2008, Advertising, Age 5-14, Animals, Anime, Announcements, Answered, Art, Articles, Barack, Basketball, Bible, Big, Big Questions, Blog, Blogging, blogs, Books, Business, Charity, Children, China, Christianity, Church, clinton, Club, Comedy, Commentary, Community, Crime, Culture, Current Events, Daily, Democrats, Design, Economics, Economy, Education, Election 2008, Elections, Eliot Spitzer, English, Entertainment, Environment, Events, Faith, Family, Fashion, Fiction, Film, Food, Friends, Fun, Funny, Games, God, Government, Health, Hillary, Hip-hop, History, Home, Humor, ideas, India, inspiration, internet, Iraq, Islam, Jesus, John McCain, Journal, Kids, Leadership, Life, Links, Love, marketing, Marriage, Me, Media, Misc, Miscellaneous, Money, Movies, Music, Musings, My Life, Nature, News, Obama, Opinion, Parenting, penguin, People, Personal, Philosophy, photography, photos, Physics, Pictures, Poems, Poetry, Political, Politics, Pop culture, Prayer, Projects, Psychology, Questions, Quotes, Race, Ramblings, Random, Rants, Recipes, Reflections, Relationships, Religion, Research, Review, Reviews, School, Science, Sewing, Sex, Shopping, Society, Software, Spiritual, Spirituality, Sports, Stories, Stuff, technology, television, The Page, Theology, Thoughts, Travel, trends, TV, Unanswered, United states, Update, USA, video, Videos, web 2.0, Welcome, Women, work, World, Writing, YouTube

US Marketers Losing Confidence in TV

<Update 03/02/08: More advertising shifts here>

Whether traditional TV advertising has truly lost its power, marketers and advertisers are already eager to find alternatives. The US based Association of National Advertisers and Forrester Research’s fourth biennial TV and Technology survey shows a dramatic loss of confidence in the medium as the industry gears up to explore new ad formats and forms of video commercials.

Wow.

There is a bit of me that is surprised that someone somewhere still feels the need to research TV and marketing; but with so much money spent on TV advertising it is very understandable that TV is being scrutinised so heavily, and for so long.

Here’s the science bit…

• 2/3s of C-level-executive respondents said they are watching the medium closely, up from just half two years ago
• 87% of respondents said they were going to be spending more on web ads in the coming year.
• 62% percent of marketers believe traditional TV ads have become less effective during the last two years.
• 50% of marketers reported that when half of all TV households use DVRs, they will cut spending on TV advertising by 12%.
• 87% percent of advertisers believe branded entertainment is the key to TV advertising in the coming year, and 65% of them are eager to try ads in online TV shows.

And emerging technologies continue to lure marketers looking to experiment.

• 43% would like to try interactive TV ads
• 55% are interested in ads embedded in VOD; and
• 32% would like to try ads attached to the set-top-box menu.

With the proliferation of new media, media agencies have stepped up their game to help clients deal with the changes. Two years ago, just under half the agencies reported they were ill-equipped to address changes in TV advertising, whereas only 28% did so this year.

But quite surprisingly it is the creative agencies that are falling behind, according to marketers:

• 47% of them said their agency was ill-equipped to deal with the changes, a mere 8% improvement from two years ago.

By the way the study was conducted in January 08 and is based on a survey of 78 leading advertisers across all major industries and categories in the US.

Filed under: Advertising, Analyst, Business, Forrester, Measurement, Media, Online, Research, Strategy, TV, digital, marketing, technology , ad formats, Advertising, Advertising confidence, ANA, Association of National Advertisers, Forrester Research, TV, TV Advertising

The 26 Week Internet Marketing Plan

If I said to you, you can learn about Internet Marketing in a weekend, and implement a thorough Strategic Internet Marketing plan in just 26 weeks, you might react in two negative ways; depending on your perspective. I know I did.

How can you provide me a strategic plan? That’s nonsence.
or
26 weeks? That’s too slow, too lethagic.

I’ve changed my mind. And I’d urge you to think again. I VERY rarely recommend items on this blog, but this deserves a mention…….

When the authors of the 26 Week Internet Marketing Plan asked me if they could send me a full preview of their package I was flattered, slightly nervous about what I would receive and hestitant to be seen like so many other bloggers who jump on a bandwagon to secure affiliate revenue, or traffic to their site (the latter is just not my style)

But I am so glad I accepted the gift, and challenge! What a wealth of content. It took nearly a full weekend to get through the content – and I am sure I missed bits.

Many UK marketing bloggers have been sent the pack as part of the stealth launch, and I’ll link to some of their content in this post. In a nutshell though, to be one of the best online marketers it is really key to know the basic rules of Internet Marketing – and this package has the basics outlined in as clear a manner as I have EVER seen.

The 26 week Internet marketing plan contains 4 DVD’s, 8 Multimedia CD’s and 4 ring-bound workbooks; plus a wall planner and 10 step quick start guide. It is written in a no-nonsense, pragmatic and conversational way – clearly a reflection of author David Bain’s clear understanding and experience in the Internet Marketing space. Great stuff.

Now don’t get me wrong. If you are a well read, experienced Internet Marketer, with a record of practising Internet Marketing for a number of years this quite possibly is not the guide for you. BUT (and I think this is a big ‘but’) if you are a marketing manager, business leader, entrepreneur or anybody who needs to make an impact online, is serious about it (you should be), and don’t know where the hell to start, the 26 week Internet Marketing Plan is an unbelievable package for you.

To give you an idea on its depth and breadth, this is what is provided out of the box.

Phase 1: Website Structure
Business Strategy
Keyword Research
Site Architecture
Conversion Rates
Viral Coefficient
Visitor Tracking

Phase 2: Automation and Launch
Blogging
RSS
Email Updates
Blog Communities
Blog & RSS Directories
Press Releases
Pay Per Click

Phase 3: Broaden Your Base
Major Directories
Industry Directories
Local Directories
Article Marketing
Competitor Backlinks
Forum Interaction
Blog Comments

Phase 4: Broaden Your Horizon
New Website
Social Networking
MyPage Marketing
Podcasting
Video Marketing
Visitor Analysis

Phew! See why it took 2 days to get through it!

This is what my marketing counterparts are discussing about the materials, and here is a brief introduction, plus here’s another.

As I mentioned the workbook writing is hype free, clear, easy to read; but most importantly littered with examples that makes the content easy to read and understand. So what? Well I have read many internet marketing books and too many are still poorly written.

But whilst the 4 workbooks form the core of the 26 week Internet Marketing Plan, they really are just the tip of the iceberg. And that leads me to the next great thing about the package. Its loaded with MP3’s of interviews, documented transcripts and .pdfs which really help to contextualise what you can learn in the core workbooks. Contributors include Jonathan Farrington and Yaro Starak by the way.

And finally what I really like is the overriding candid, honest, hype free approach that David has taken in producing this package.

IMHO there are numerous starter courses that prospective Internet Marketers could take – seminars, courses, training sessions etc. The trouble is they’re slick, polished but ultimately forgettable (most of the time).

For £399 I would be amazed if you could spend your hard earned money more wisely. And for the forgetful – the CD’s, MP3’s, .pdf’s and workbooks are a timely reminder of what to do, when and how. Highly recommended!

Filed under: Advertising, Affiliate Marketing, Analytics, B2B, Blog, Blogging, Branding, Business, Buzz, Conversion, Data, Direct Email, Entrepreneur, IT, IT Planning, Influence, Keywords, Measurement, Media, Online, Online Video, Open Social, Planning, RSS, Research, SEO, SEO / SEM, Search, Search Engine Optimisation, Social Media, Social Networking, Strategy, Usability, User Generated Content, Viral, Viral Coefficient, Virtual Worlds, Web, Web2.0, YouTube, blogs, copywriting, marketing, permission, podcast, technology, web 2.0, word of mouth , david Bain, Internet Marketing, Internet Marketing Plan, Jonathan Farrington, Marketing Automation and Launch, Marketing Strategy, Marketing Training, Purple Internet Marketing, Strategic Plan, The 26 Week Internet Marketing Plan, Website Structure, Yaro Starak

WordPress for a corporate site?

Does anyone out there have good examples of WordPress being used for a B2B Corporate website? 

This is not related to my job – but a family member asked the question, and I hadn’t considered it before.

Any tips, examples or feedback appreciated!

Filed under: B2B, Business, Online, Planning, Strategy, Wordpress, marketing, technology , B2B, Business, Corporate, website, Wordpress

Watching the British dotcoms: Update

 

Back in August I said that there were 13 British dotcoms to watch.Well TIOTI (Tape it off the Internet) just launched.

TIOTI is a social media aggregator for television. Huh? ‘What does that mean?’, I hear you say. Well TIOTI is designed to use the web to put together all sorts of information about TV shows, and let the audience edit and add to that. TIOTI lets you see what’s hot, what other people like and where you can get it from. Simple.

And at a time when under-30s now watch 40 per cent of their ‘television’ by downloading it over the internet or viewing it ‘on demand’ rather than watching it as it is broadcast, I’d say the timing is right.

Filed under: 2.0, Online, Online Video, Social Media, TV, User Generated Content, Web2.0, dotcoms, startups, web 2.0 , aggregator, dotcoms, download, startups, television, TIOTI

Web 2.0 – Why we got here and whats next

Alexander van Elsas points us to a Marketingfacts post highlighting a brilliant presentation by Rolf Skyberg, the disruptive innovator at eBay.

Skyberg discusses the evolution of the Internet by placing it into a historical context; the result a unique perspective.

At 477 slides you could be inclined to give this a miss.

Don’t.

You’ll fly through this.

And no doubt this will capture attention in the same way that The Machine is Us/ing Us has.

Filed under: 2.0, Business, Computer, Computing, Data, Online, Social Media, Strategy

Second Chance Tuesday – Learn from Last.fm

This afternoon I was invited to join Second Chance Tuesday for a rare opportunity to hear first hand, the inspiring story of how three swashbuckling entrepreneurs developed their ground-breaking social music experience, raised angel and venture capital from some of Europe’s most respected investors, guided their user growth to over 20 million active users in 240 countries, and sold to CBS as one of the biggest European Web 2.0 exits to date.

Sound interesting to you? Go register

The BBC’s technology correspondent, Rory Cellan-Jones, will be unearthing the secrets of their success, debating the future of online communities and digital content, and posing some more lighthearted questions including whether they still sleep in tents on the roof of their office, and what they plan to do with their share of the $280m. Spend it?

Who’s Who?

Felix Miller is CEO of Last.fm. He came to London from Germany to study in 1997. He met Martin Stiksel at a gig through a mutual friend. He was in a punk band at the time.

Martin Stikselis the co-founder and CCO of Last.fm. Martin came to London in 1995, where he created a sound design company (working on commissions for the likes of MTV and the BBC), before meeting Felix Miller at a gig in the late ’90s. The two of them set up an online record label, before launching Last.fm in 2002.

What is last.fm?

Founded in 2002 in London, Last.fm is the online, social music revolution that connects people with music and artists with listeners. By joining the Last.fm community, music fans can choose to share their music preferences by linking their media player to the Last.fm database. This database is populated continually with over 500 million monthly track submissions from Last.fm music fans. As a result, Last.fm can intelligently recommend songs, artists, local concerts and even other members based on their musical tastes.

Thanks to partnerships with EMI, Warner Music Group, Sony BMG, independent aggregators The Orchard and IODA, and more than 100,000 independent musicians and 20,000 labels that upload music directly to the site, Last.fm can draw recommendations from one of the most extensive online music catalogues.

Second Chance Tuesday is an event for anyone who believes in the power of the internet to change everything, from the way we communicate to the way we entertain ourselves.

Interested in mingling with London’s leading entrepreneurs and investors (as well as some older and wiser faces from the ‘99 dot.com boom) who are helping create the world-changing ideas of tomorrow?

Filed under: 2.0, BBC, Business, CBS, EMI, Entrepreneur, Events, IODA, Music, Online, Second Chance Tuesday, Social Media, Sony BMG, Strategy, The Orchard, User Generated Content, Warner Music Group, Web2.0, dotcoms, last.fm, marketing, startups, venture capital, web 2.0

Banner Blindness

The most prominent result from Jakob Nielsen’s new eyetracking studies is not actually new. He simply confirmed for the umpteenth time that banner blindness is real. As I have always thought, users almost never look at anything that looks like an advertisement – whether or not it’s actually an ad.

Remarkable.

According to Nielsen’s findings, users didn’t fixate on ads across a number of different page types either.

Nielsen’s heat maps show three examples that cover a range of user engagements too: quick scanning, partial reading, and thorough reading.

Ouch. Some marketers will not be amused! Haha haha.

Filed under: Advertising, Analytics, Measurement, Online, Research, Strategy, Usability, Web, marketing

Social Media for Business

It is about time the UK had a decent Social Media conference and now we do. The Social Media for Business conference programme is now online. See which experts will join Yahoo! to guide you through the pitfalls and opportunities of social media.

Don’t miss this opportunity to learn how you can leverage the key ideas from social networking to create buzz around your brand and successfully promote your products and services.

Click here to read the conference programme. This is the conference for you if your business is struggling with questions like these:

• How do I integrate social media into my business?
• How do I turn social media into a revenue generator for my business?
• How do I create purposeful social networks?
• How do I monitor our reputation on-line?

Have these questions answered and many more by spending just one day out of the office.

More details here

Filed under: 2.0, Branding, Business, Buzz, Conversational marketing, Events, Experiential, Online, Online Video, Social Media, Strategy, User Generated Content, Virtual Worlds, Web2.0, blogs, marketing, podcast, web 2.0, word of mouth

Aug. 7, 1991: Ladies and Gentlemen, the World Wide Web

Perhaps it is time to pause and think today. This is from Wired:

This day in History……1991: The world wide web becomes publicly available on the internet for the first time.

The web has changed a lot since Tim Berners-Lee posted, on this day in 1991, the first web pages summarising his World Wide Web project, a method of storing knowledge using hypertext documents.

In the months leading up to his post, Berners-Lee had developed everything necessary to make the web a reality, including the first browser and server.

His historic post appeared on the alt.hypertext newsgroup, ending a journey that began back in 1980, when Berners-Lee was at CERN, an international particle physics lab located near Geneva, Switzerland. There, working with collaborator Robert Cailliau, Berners-Lee began the ‘Enquire’ project, the forerunner to what would become the web.

The project, which made hypertext a chief communications component for the first time, was intended to facilitate the sharing of information among researchers across the broader internet.

Today’s web is far more powerful and sophisticated than the research tool developed by Berners-Lee and Cailliau but continues operating on basically the same principles they established a quarter of a century ago.

Tim Berners-Lee, an inventor of the internet, sits outside his office at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2000. Photo: Ed Quinn / Corbis

Filed under: 2.0, Business, Computer, Computing, MIT, Online, Semantic Web, Tim Berners-Lee, Web, Web2.0, web 2.0

Working at big co. just got duller

How predictable. A big I.T. company is telling it’s employees how to behave online….

IBM has just released ‘employee guidelines‘ for virtual worlds. The seven-page .pdf outlines basic principles governing how employees should represent IBM in the virtual arena.

Rules like these make me feel sad. It seems that the bigger the company, the lower the risk they want to assume. The trouble is, the more stakeholders/shareholders a company has – the bigger the potential risk.

Ok, in this instance it’s IBM, but I might very be writing about Microsoft, Oracle, Xansa, Cap Gemini or any other ‘big’ I.T. company. Market gorillas play it safe. They are protective, defensive and either instinctively behave in this fashion, or ‘learn’ to behave like this.
But the result of strategies like this? You become monotone, dreary, dull and predictable.

Two things that IBM’ers won’t do under this type of governance….

• They will never break ‘news’. Big companies want their employees to play safe. Safe = Boring and dull.

• They will never be ‘nearly libellous’. Unless you flirt with danger, you never dare a response. To me that seems like easy street. And easy street takes you nowhere, fast.

Acting ‘big’ in this way slows you down. And it certainly waters down what you are doing. And that is a very bad thing.

Whoever you work for (Big or small, but particularly if you work for a big company) be brave, tell the truth, be remarkable, break news, be transparent, be pithy, challenge convention, enter debate, admit your wrong, and lobby for what you think is right. And tear up the rule book.

Filed under: 2.0, Blog, Blogging, Conversational marketing, IBM, Online, Second Life, Social Media, Strategy, Virtual Worlds, Web2.0, blogs, ideas, marketing, web 2.0