Adage Power 150

The Adage Power 150 is a collection of the top blogs in the social media, PR and marketing space. What started off as a ramshackle group of 150 blogs (hence the name) has now expanded to include 1038, and features some of the most well known bloggers in this space.

To get onto the list, you have to pass certain criteria, including having a high enough Alexa ranking, having loads of inbound links etc – this was made all the more tricky when a PostRank score was thrown into the pre-evaluation mix, raising the minimum objective point total 50, which until a few months ago was actually 20.

I’ve applied twice and i’m not quite there yet.. here’s how I scored on the two occassions I submitted this blog:

November 2008

Yahoo InLinks (1 to 30): 1
Technorati Ranking (1 to 20): 1
Technorati Authority (1 to 20): 1
Technorati InLinks (1 to 20): 1
Alexa Points (1 to 15): 1
Bloglines Subscribers (1 to 10): 1
Google PageRank (0 to 10): 0
Collective Intellect (0 to 10): 0
TOTAL: 6

March 2009

Yahoo InLinks (1 to 30): N/A
Technorati Ranking (1 to 20): 2
Technorati Authority (1 to 20): 1
Technorati InLinks (1 to 20): 1
Alexa Points (1 to 15): 5
Bloglines Subscribers (1 to 10): 1
Google PageRank (0 to 10): 0
Collective Intellect (0 to 10): 0
TOTAL: 11

And here’s my most recent (last week) entry:

June 2009

PostRank (1 to 50): 7
Yahoo InLinks (1 to 20): 1
Technorati Authority (1 to 10): 5
Technorati InLinks (1 to 10): 7
Alexa Points (1 to 15): 8
Bloglines Subscribers (1 to 10): 1
Google PageRank (0 to 10): 3
Collective Intellect (0 to 10): 0
TOTAL: 32

As you can see, that’s quite a jump between now and March, and under the old points system of needing 20, i’d be in. Alas (!) now the rules have changed a bit, i’m 18 points away from getting on that list, rather than being 12 over!

I have no reason to want to be Included, other than the ability to compare this blog with others at a glance; I don’t fancy collating all their stats thanks very much!

This is not for self-gratification, it’s purely to see where I am so I can work on ways to make this better for readers (oh hai) and to try and build a community, no matter how small or large, around it.

Michael Jackson dies – Internet crumbles

Reports are saying that Michael Jackson has died of a heart attack. Others say he is just in ER. The Twittersphere has exploded with rumour and suggestion following a report from celebrity site TMZ.

If Michael Jackson’s death has been misreported, it will be one of the biggest Internet hoaxes of all time, if it is confirmed as true, TMZ will have outstripped every single news organisation in the world and will act as a demonstration of the changing of the media guard.

Whatever the case, it is amazing to see how quickly the story has spread and it is also interesting to wonder how it will be reported in the music press, the majority of whom are at Glastonbury.

Regular reporters will be called upon to quickly knock together copy instead of more experienced hacks and obits will be hastily created.

23:25 Update: Twitter Search has an 18 minute delay on processing tweets, presumably caused by the sheer volume of content it’s dealing with. (approximately 9000 per minute)

23:49 Update: Several mainstream outlets now reporting Michael Jackson’s death as fact including CBS, Mercury News and Al Jazeera English

23:51 Update: BBC News confirmed Michael Jackson’s death, it must be true – even though TMZ reported it first – new media has come of age.

New Journalism

Journalism as we know it is changing, and with all the new technologies we have at our disposal, it is people who are making journalism make that change.

Journalists typically hunt out information, collect it into a big pot of stuff, do the clever bit and work out what’s useful, true or otherwise and distill all of that into a story which is then read by you and me.

Where that information is coming from however is beginning to shift away from ‘the word on the street’, to ‘the word in the tweet’.

As proved by events in Iran, Twitter has proved an invaluble outlet for Iranians on the ground in the thick of the action to report first hand what is happening.

This is a unique situation where a media blackout has been thwarted and I don’t think we’ll see this sort of Twitter-centric coverage of a live event occur too often.

What this has proved conclusively to those in the Twittersphere, and increasingly some outside of it, is the power of the platform, as open and free as it is.

This means that reporters do not need to be in the place where news is occurring to be able to report the facts to their readers. I was taught at journalism school that you need to be able to feel what is going on, see people to gauge their reactions and hear what is being said to report accurately – I don’t think stands at the present time, and is going to diminish even further in the coming years.

Journalists can take what is being said on platforms like Twitter or Facebook, as they would take voxpops for example, and work out what pieces of information are going to make the story. This means that you will be reading stories shaped, not created, by journalists in the future, crowd sourced if you will, to your screen or newspaper (if they are around long enough to see the change happen).

Am I wrong? Is this already ahppening more than we’ve plainly seen? I’d love to know what a journalist’s point of view is on this. Let me know.

David Hockney and mobile art

David Hockney is 72. This is a fact, and I would wager that most 72 year olds are not like David Hockney. He has been at the forefront of art since the year dot, and is one of the most influential British artists of recent times. So imagine my delight when I read this article on the BBC website which tells us how David is using his iPhone to create new works of art.

It started when he e-mailed 12 of his friends something he created and he enjoyed the solitary nature of making his work this way. One question which has gone unanswered is how he will choose to exhibit this work (if at all). Art blog Beyond Project says:

…unmediated personal nature may be compromised in a public domain, possibly lost alongside Walter Benjamin’s elusive ‘aura’ – the unique element that “shrinks” from a piece of art when it is technologically/mechanically reproduced. When the artwork becomes a reproduction, removed from the “realm of tradition” of the act of making.

And I somewhat tend to agree.

Does this not mean a new way forward to display art however?

Is there room for a virtual gallery in the Tate perhaps, or what about a projection of the images onto a wall at Camden’s catacombs?

The arts are generally pretty slow to pick up on new formats for displaying these innovative ideas – hence the rise of street graffiti I’d argue – and for someone like David to be showing the rest of the Art world the way is something to be championed and indeed, very proud of.

Social Media is the New Punk Rock

Social Media is the new punk rock, according to Engage/Orm, hat tip to colleague Tim Callington for the find.

The video compares social media to punk rock, but would it be more appropriate to compare it to Hip Hop, as described in Matt Mason’s Pirate’s Dilemma?

IT state of the nation

Vanson Bourne have released details of a new survey into the IT industry.

The main take aways from the study:

• Over half our respondents reported that their current IT budget is smaller than last year, with an average decrease of 19%.
• Less than a fifth of respondents are enjoying budget increases.
• Within this tiny minority, Enterprise businesses saw budget growth of 31% on average, twice the level of smaller companies we surveyed.
• The worst-hit sector was manufacturing, where 2 in 3 respondents reported an IT budget cut.

I don’t think this tells us anything we didn’t necessarily know, it’s interesting to see the full numbers in the raw.

The full report is below – what are you doing to help your business through this torrid economic time?

Privacy In a Connected World

E-mails being spied on, Facebook being used to spy on workers, Phorm being used to track our internet surfing habits.

The technologies that are supposed to liberate us are being used ever increasingly to provide a shackle and excuse to watch what we are doing in our private lives.

In the UK we’ve been surrounded by CCTV for years and it was a bit of a culture shock on my recent soiree to Lille to see hardly any CCTV cameras at all. It made me feel happy that I wasn’t being watched, but it also terrified me that should I be the victim of an assault, there’d be no video evidence to prove that the attack happened to help catch the offender.

So do I sacrifice the fact that I won’t feel as safe for a freedom to roam uninhibited? I don’t know. I see the drawbacks and advantages of having and not having the monitoring system in place.

Does the same apply online?

I’m not sure it does. But, I see that the equivalent of getting mugged on the street could be a phishing scam where I accidentally pass on my bank details to a cyber-criminal, and that I’d like to know who did it and to get my money and details back – if everything was tracked that could be possible.

But I don’t want that – I don’t want every website I read to end up on a database somewhere that is then used to assign me a character profile or send me appropriate advertising.

I don’t think e-mails should be traceable – what is said in a private conversation, be it online or offline, should stay just that – private. I don’t want MI5 or the Government or my nextdoor neighbour to be privvy to conversations between freinds or colleagues. I have nothing to hide, but it’s a civil liberty to be able to keep a space for yourself which is only for you.

We are at a stage in technology where we post everything we do online – images, videos, hell even blogs contain innermost thoughts, and these are (privacy settings aside) open to anyone to see. It’s very much like the swinging sixties and sexual liberation. It’s never been so easy to go about doing something, so you over indulge for a while until it all comes crashing down.

I believe this is where we are at the moment – social media is currently London in 1966 where everything is going great, it’s all very exciting and we don’t know what the future holds. What we need to be aware of is that just a few years down the line there were strikes and the country almost came to a stand still. This is what, in the back of our minds, we need to be preparing for even though the party is just getting started.

Top Gear’s Stig is not Michael Schumacher

Top Gear pulled a fast one on it’s viewers tonight revealing that Michael Schumacher is the stig. The BBC’s flagship Sunday night programme threatened in the build up to tonight’s show that the real Stig would finally be unveiled, and to a captivated nation, he was un-helmeted (!) as the seven times Formula One world champion.

We all know of course, Ben Collins was the Stig.

The BBC have played a blinder in the PR on this one. They’ve done a week or so of hype building and when the big reveal (a common PR trick) occurred, the shock at the man behind the visor will be enough to get all of the Nationals writing about iot for the next week, ensuring that there is enough sustained coverage to build up momentum towards next week’s dose of motorcar mayhem.

I’m sure many viewers will appreciate that Schumi is not the Stig, but will enjoy the joke and it’ll settle them into the new series quite nicely.

On Twitter, Top Gear, Stig and Schumacher were all trending topics for the majority of the time that the programme was aired, demonstrating the UK’s presence on the micro-blogging service.

Good simple PR with a creative edge – sounds like a good strategy to me.

Weekly Round Up 21.06.09

This week’s news round up has been put together by Elliot Pearson, music business grad with a passion for music and digital and new media advancements. His main focus is emerging online opportunities and social media, and how these can be used by new artists. We will be regularly swapping news round ups as we aim to build, share and combine both our online communities and we believe that one way to do this is to introduce the readers of our blogs to each other ands allow them to interact across both platforms.

You can follow Elliot on Twitter and read what he has to say on his blog.

When reading an interview with David Lyman and Mark Schmulen of NutshellMail, I couldn’t help but be amused by the underlying irony. While the idea behind their service is a valid one – a digest of a users social network updates delivered via a consolidated email – they must surely appreciate the potential hypocrisy behind what they are trying to launch. In their own words:
“With Facebook, it’s easy to get annoyed of email notifications and most of them remain unread. By consolidating activity on Facebook – and even Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn – we deliver email digests to users when and how often they want them.”
By replacing the ‘annoying’ emails with regularly-scheduled updates, surely there is a strong chance that the NutshellMail emails will become the new annoyance, which is where the platform’s powerful scheduling tools come in. Users will be able to specify times when the are most likely to be receptive to the update, but does this mean that, particularly with fast-moving platforms such as Twitter, that even hourly updates will not allow users to stay up-to-date.

With constant developments in options for monetisation through online channels, whether they be app or in-game microtransactions, or ad-funded models, services that offer seamless transaction handling and CRM management are constantly looking for new opportunities to attract consumers to their platforms. Companies such as fatfoogoo are positioning themselves well to make a wide range of monetisation options available for all platforms. Their latest announcement, an avatar store for social profile site mEgo, helps to highlight just how many options are available. While it remains to be seen what kind of revenue can be generated through something that has little substantial value for the consumer (for example simple online graphics for the avatars), the upside for developers and programmers is that no matter what their app or platform is used for, there is a strong chance further revenue can be received from it.

After Facebook released the opportunity for users to pick their own vanity URLs, it faces a period of dispute-settling for individuals and organisations that find themselves subject to ‘cyber-squatting’ on their names. But how important a feature is this for the general public? Remembering friend’s usernames (especially with it being unlikely that it corresponds exactly to their real name) is a far more long-winded process than a site-based search, or bookmarking a page doesn’t require the use of a vanity URL. Surely making the URLs available to fan pages for personalities or organisations would have saved further problems from disputes?

UK Sunday Papers Cover Twitter and Iran

Coverage of Twitter in the mainstream press has been divided, much as it is in general, between those who love it, and those who hate it. Two examples of these scenarios reared their heads in my RSS feed just now.

In the form of two journalists, penning their columns for the Sunday papers, the evangelist and the sceptic are displayed prominently. However, this time the sceptic might just be coming round to everyone’s favourite new service.

Bobbie Johnson, the Guardian’s San Fransisco based tech reporter is an advocate of the service, and he is in no doubt of Twitter’s importance in Iran today:

The site undoubtedly played a vital role in spreading the story from inside Iran to the outside world, as thousands of web users and mobile phone addicts passed on messages and pictures documenting events on the ground.

It is easy to overestimate Twitter’s value inside Iran, where word of mouth, phone calls and text messages were almost certainly more important in helping to organise rallies. But its influence in making the story global was very real.

All of this attention marked the latest high point in Twitter’s dizzying ascent, a rapid rise that has seen its crew of geeks find themselves at the heart of geopolitics more by accident than design.

As for the sceptic turend believer? Andrew Sullivan says:

IT was not, to put it mildly, a new technology I found impressive. Twitter, the social networking website, allows for only a tiny number of characters to be broadcast in each “tweet”, or message, and much of the early tweeting was being done by bored teens or Hollywood celebrities: the illiterate speaking to the impatient.

Well, the last laugh is on me. As I have spent the past week hunched over a laptop, channelling and broadcasting as much information, video and debate about the momentous events in Iran, nothing quite captured the mood and pace of events like the tweets coming from the people of Iran.

So if those who were unsure about Twitter‘s worth are now being turned, where does the service go next?

The Huffington Post, the poster-child of web 2.0/3.0 published this piece by Rachel Sklar, who says it’s time for Twitter to grow up:

Seeing how easy it has been to use Twitter for good has exposed the double-edged sword of how easy it could be to co-opt. (The dummy Iranian protest feeds are one example of this.) Twitter is an astounding platform for information, but it’s a total blank slate — which means it’s an astounding platform for disinformation, too. They need to make money so they can hire more people to monitor all of this — never mind all the problems they haven’t even thought of yet.

Twitter is an amazing public tool with an incredible capacity for public good. We don’t need the State Department to tell us that — and neither should Twitter. Welcome to adulthood, kiddo.

And, like any youth hitting adulthood, there are sure to be growing pains anytime soon.