Rumours, insinuations and accusations have been bubbling around for a while now, but today’s announcement that the European Commission has launched a preliminary anti-monopoly probe into Google’s affairs is the first concrete action to challenge the firm’s tactics.

Brief summary without getting too technical – Google allegedly artificially demotes articles in its search results to discourage users from visiting particular companies.

Google’s response to today’s allegations has been simply to swat them aside, claiming “this kind of scrutiny goes with the territory when you are a large company.” They will also be encouraged that much of the disquiet can be traced back to Microsoft, making the claims seem like a case of sour grapes.

Google would also argue that its search engine algorithms are as much a part of its unique appeal and success as, say, Coca Cola’s or KFC’s recipes are part of theirs. SEO experts feel they have a general idea of how Google works, but many of the intricate vagaries and updates remain closely guarded secrets only revealed to an inner cabal. Google believe this is its intellectual property, and that making too much of the information available would weaken its position and open the company up to its competitors. All companies have their own ideas, and in a free society, they should have the right to hold onto them shouldn’t they?

The position is weakened somewhat by the fact that Google’s formulas are constantly being tweaked and updated. Coca Cola and KFC introduce new products, but their core offering remains basically the same as it has always been. Google can change its algorithms at a whim, constantly updating and reacting to patterns as it likes.

Many in the industry have a love/hate relationship with Google. For some, Google is a team of evil scientists, seconded in Silicon Valley bunkers coming up with ever more diabolical schemes to rule search engines and, one day, maybe even achieve total world domination. Google Government anyone? For others a paragon of what can be achieved through always being one step ahead of the competition.

My suggestion to Google would be: a little transparency can go a long way. Give us a crumb of insight, enough to dampen the criticism, but you can always leave your audience wanting more.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

This week the Guardian online posted a blog on the rise of social media as a relevant source of information for journalists, as revealed by a recent US survey which claimed that 56% of reporters view it as an important tool for producing stories. The research carried out by Cision and The George Washington University, showed that over 89% of journalists make use of blogs while conducting their online research, with two thirds turning to social networking sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn.

But, is this a good thing? Are journalism standards slipping?

There is certainly a strong advantage to using social media as part of journalistic research. Its global reach and speed means that stories can be documented and sourced as they are taking place – the New York Hudson River plane crash is a great example. Ferry passengers were able to tweet about the accident before TV crews even got to the scene.

However, social media shouldn’t be used as the sole source for stories, but rather it should sit alongside public relations – providing interviews and access to sources and experts to help paint a fuller picture. It still begs the question as to why the media is so obsessed with social networking?

Phenomenon! Everyone loves to be in the middle of a newly discovered craze and social media is currently it! Flick through the national papers and there will undoubtedly be a story relating to social media. As a PR professional, I have been told by numerous news desks and news agencies that stories relating to Facebook or Twitter stand a much higher chance of being selected than those that don’t.

Why? Because social networking provides that much needed human interest angle that the media loves, especially tabloid papers. The fashion designer, Alexander McQueen died tragically last week but rather than lament on the fashion world’s loss guess what the papers chose to write about…the string of ‘weird’ Twitter posts that he had left during the run up to his death.

So, celebrities and politicians be afraid. It’s no longer what’s lurking behind your closet that matters but what’s lurking on your Facebook and Twitter page!

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

We recently added a new page to the immediate future blog, a social media dashboard for the 2010 UK general election. The dashboard pulls together data from various sources to provide a quick visual overview of which of the three main political parties are generating the most conversations in online and social media.

We’re not claiming that this will predict the outcome or anything like that, but it certainly gives you an interesting snapshot of online buzz. We use a chart from Google Insights for Search to show the volume of online searches for the names of each of the three main party leaders, as this is a good indicator of the level of public interest in those people and their parties.

On the surface of it, there are no surprises in this chart – Gordon Brown comes out on top, as you’d expect since he’s the current prime minister, followed by David Cameron and then Nick Clegg of the Liberal Democrats.

If you look at the chart right now you’ll see that Gordon Brown has enjoyed quite a large spike in public interest from February 6^th onwards. One of the great features of Insights for Search is that it allows us to see what caused this spike.

If you click through to the full report on Insights for Search, and scroll down to the bottom of the page, you will see a section which shows the most popular current searches that are related to Gordon Brown, as well as those which are rising fastest. Right now it looks like this:

What this tells us is that the phrases “Piers Morgan” and “Gordon Brown Interview” are currently popular and, by extension, Morgan’s TV interview with the Prime Minister is generating interest amongst the public.

This is a great tool because it lets you pick a topic (in this case the PM) and find out what the trending issues associated with that topic are, and this allows us to really get a feel for what the public is interested in. During the run up to the election, we’ll continue to monitor these trending topics and report back on the most interesting issues.

Additionally, if you look at the top search terms related to David Cameron, most of them revolve around the recent ‘roll your own David Cameron poster’ meme – some food for thought, for the Conservative leader’s PR team. Perhaps worse for Nick Clegg, there are no related searches at all – not surprising given the low volume of interest compared to his rivals.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Image via Wikipedia

Last week Google announced its new social networking feature, ‘Buzz’, which gives its Gmail service similar features to those found by social networking giants, Facebook and Twitter.  Google executives describe it as the “poster child” for Google’s future: ‘a social networking structure that automatically finds people to connect with you.’

The new Buzz module will allow all 176 million users of Google’s Gmail service to see their friends’ live status updates, and share photos and videos.

Sound familiar? Been there, done that, got the Facebook/Twitter account already?

With social media success stories like Facebook claiming 400 million active users and Twitter recently reaching 75 million users, do we really need another social networking tool? Buzz is unlikely to usurp either of these services ; it doesn’t seem to add anything significant to what they already do and it certainly doesn’t attempt to do them any better.

To add to this, Google also faces competition from Yahoo and Microsoft, which have already added social networking features to their web mail products: Microsoft’s Hotmail and IM products between them claim close to 500 million users.

Also, what are the benefits for businesses? As we know, Facebook and Twitter have both been useful tools for building and maintaining brands, but what does Buzz offer? The answer is nothing at the moment as the service has not yet been rolled out to those using Gmail within organisations – this is due to arrive in March 2010. However, if it is a success, brands would be foolish to ignore the service, as experts predict that, if it was adopted by all of Gmail’s existing users, it would slingshot past News Corporation’s MySpace to become the world’s second-largest social network – behind Facebook.

Despite the cynicism and doubt surrounding this new service (and the growing privacy concerns), we must not cast aside the fact that Buzz has access to a large talent pool of engineers and it stands on top of existing Gmail, mobile devices, and a dominant search portal. Indeed, if Buzz grew, users could integrate with all Google apps and aggregate the entire internet. So, at this stage, I’m going to sit on the fence and say let’s watch this space.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

With Obama’s ‘masterful use of social media’ and the tweets of his 3 million Twitter fans sealing the election of the Democrats’ golden ticket, can our politicians and parties emulate this success and seduce the online masses and turn them into advocates?

There’ll be new blood on the hustings. According to Home Office sources, 134 serving MPs will be “spending more time with their families” instead of contesting in May (87 Labour, 35 Conservatives, 7 Liberals and 5 others.) While natural churn of MPs is only to be expected for personal, health and career reasons, that is an almost 50% rise on the 85 who stood down in 2005.

Various news sources have indicated that this might have something to do with expenses, surely not! Nevertheless, the stage is set for new firebrand candidates to fill the vacuum and the re-standing candidates to face fresh competition. These candidates have been immersed in social media explosion of the last 5 years in their private lives and now are looking to galvanise support with it through their political careers.

The vast majority will be utilising social media and search mentions to push their agenda and their shiny politician faces, at present a mere 81 serving MPs are without their own website.

New web savvy and Twitter prolific Prospective Parliamentary candidates (PPCs) or ‘iMPs’ include Chuka Umunna (Lab, Streatham, Twitter following 1,397) Iain Lindley (Con, Worsley and Eccles South, Twitter following 481) and Bridget Fox (Lib Dem, Islington South and Finsbury, Twitter following 698.)

We’re not expecting the right honourable member for Bexhill and Battle to boast a Twitter following in the millions, but parliamentary process is becoming more and more integrated with social media, one need only look to the fervent activity on Tweetminster to see that.

Over the next few weeks we’ll look at how specific iMPs’ social media campaigns are progressing and our ever changing Election Dashboard will also analyse how Brown, Cameron, Clegg and co are competing in the social media stakes.

Finally, there’s always that elephant in the corner to confront after the election dust has settled: ‘Does a big online following translate into a seat in the Commons?’

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

I’ve always been intrigued by the use of competitions as a PR tool. How effective are they in reaching the right people for your brand, and do people take notice of much else other than the prize on offer?

With this in mind, I wanted to look at Twitter and how it’s currently being used for competitions in online PR. Search for the word ‘competition’ and you’ll immediately come across a number of different ways that they are currently being hosted and talked about. Three such examples are:

Retweeting or following to enter, often asking you to include a web link or similar

Asking a question or for an opinion – the answer being your entry into the competition

Announcing a competition initiative hosted elsewhere i.e. company website

Obviously, they all demand a varying degree of involvement and as such the ‘RT and win’ option seems to spread most effectively around the Twitterverse. The obvious problem with this is that the competition host isn’t providing much reason for potential entrants to engage or remember them, apart from the one or two people that actually end up winning!

It raises the question as to whether it’s better to build up a large number of followers using these tactics, or whether you invest in a competition idea that gets followers interacting with you (hopefully creating brand advocates in the process).

There’s bound to be many examples of those who have reaped rewards with both methods but I think it’s important to keep in mind the following when deciding on the best way to use Twitter competitions for your brand.

What is your long-term social media strategy? If you’re using a competition to boost follower numbers, have you thought about to maintain these numbers and ensure they stay engaged and interested.

Is the prize relevant? Countless competitions on Twitter lure in entrants and followers by offering iPods, mobile phones and other desirable products. Think about the message the prize you choose conveys, is it benefitting your PR image or Apple’s?

How creative or thought-provoking is your competition? If you come up with something quirky and unusual, you may find it inspires discussion outside the competition itself.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

February marks a milestone in the social networking calendar as Facebook celebrates its birthday.

The site turned six last week and is showing impressive figures of late, with double the amount of users (now standing at 400 million worldwide), compared to this time last year.  Econsultancy statistics also say that 50 per cent of active users log into the site each day – effectively 200m people every 24 hours!

With such huge traffic statistics and progression over 12 months, it’s no wonder Facebook continues to be a big deal for brands.  Many still regard Facebook as a great way to reach their audience.  Others who have been slower on the uptake are now starting to catch on.

BMW UK and Volvo have recently launched Facebook campaigns – BMW with an official fanpage, Volvo with an application to promote their new clean diesel C30 DRive car.  Volvo’s app increased their number of fans from 60,000 to 400,000.

Whilst speculation remains over how Facebook can monetise the site and cash in on 400 million users, you can’t dispute how far the site has come in six years.  Figures released last week from the GSMA also show that Facebook is dominating the lives of mobile internet users in the UK, with around 2.2bn minutes spent browsing the social network during December alone.

Facebook has certainly changed the game for consumer-facing companies, and those wanting to reach and influence everyday people need to understand it.

Happy birthday Facebook!

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Last week saw the announcement in the press of the Indian Premier League’s plan to stream the whole of the 2010 tournament live via YouTube. As many commentators have noted over the past week, this calls into question the whole notion of TV rights. With the focus of entertainment shifting more and more towards online video (recent statistics in the UK prove that services like iPlayer are showing no signs of slowing their popularity), how long will it be before we see more of these type of deals being agreed?

This announcement will probably not raise too many eyebrows in Europe. Cricket is popular in England, yes, but only when England are taking part. The absence of Andrew Flintoff and Kevin Pietersen from this year’s IPL means there is little focus on the tournament in the mainstream media. But what would happen if a similar deal was announced for something much more coveted by the masses? For example, the clamour has always been to make the Ashes free to air again. What could be more open to view than a tournament streamed online?

The main benefit of streaming online is obvious – the ability for advertising to pervade the consciousness on an ongoing basis (banner ads, in-game advertising), rather than being restricted to 30 second ad breaks. This is particularly useful during football (soccer, for any US readers), where the game does not have the same natural breaks as other sports. The issue of quality is no longer an issue either, with YouTube able to host content in Full HD 1080p. More and more TVs now come with widgets and internet video capability, so mass participation can be achieved without everyone having to crowd round a small computer screen. You can watch YouTube anywhere and everywhere; lunchtime kick offs and major differences in time zones become less of an issue.

Measuring consumption on YouTube (and other online video platforms) is easier too. Do broadcasters really know how many people are ACTUALLY watching their flagship sports coverage? Google and YouTube know at a glance. What kinds of people are watching? If you’re a registered user, Google and YouTube know all about you and your habits (for better or worse, but that’s another debate for another day). Plus, we all know the pattern that the adoption of new ideas takes – get the sports fans and the music fans in first (the live stream of U2’s gig on YouTube received 10 million views last year). Everyone’s talking about online video this year.

However, as with most landmarks and advances in online and social media, it is unlikely that there will be an instant spate of these deals being agreed in the short term. What normally happens is there is a wait and see mentality. Let’s see if this pilot programme works out; if it falls flat, everyone will say ‘well, it was never going to work was it?’ If it takes off, well then the sky’s the limit. Many people already use illegal streams to watch English Premier League games not shown on Sky and ESPN. Niche sports only covered in passing by major broadcasters could be given a new lease of life through a YouTube stream. Broadcast rights negotiations are going to be much more interesting in future. How many other companies have competed against the power of Google and come out victorious?

Related articles by Zemanta

• YouTube Dabbles in Live Sports With IPL Matches (mashable.com)
• YouTube To Live-Stream Sports With Multicam – Howzat?! [YouTube] (gizmodo.com)

Bookmark It

Hide Sites