Bad Lieutenant and Oasis

Bad Lieutenant is the brainchild of former New Order/Joy Division/Warsaw singer and guitarist Bernard Sumner. Following New Order’s apparant split, Bernard has drafted in Phil Cunningham, he too of New Order, and some others to form a new group. Their single Sink or Swim, can currently be downloaded for free from their website Badlieutenant.net

Surely this should be on CBM? Perhaps. But what I like about this is that the band have already got a Twitter account and an active Facebook group. They’ve not gigged yet, but they are using Twitter and Facebook to spread the word about their music, as well as the ineviteable Myspace page.

Now, this may well of course be down to the record company’s insistence, but it demonstrates the importance of these platforms when reaching out to new audiences, be it from a band or a brand. Indeed, Bernard is blogging on the Myspace site to give fans an insight to the inner workings of the group.

Now, the announcement from Noel Gallagher that he was leaving Oasis came too from a ‘blog’, albeit a website based platform. The statement did not come through a traditional press release, it was a few words on the Oasis website, which shows how the power of reaching millions instantly is much more important in some circumstances than reaching millions over the course of a few days.

Again, as we all know, that is what the Internet does best, giving us instantaneous delivery of information, whether you’re a musician, a banker or a mobile phone operator, and is an effect a press release can never hope to achieve.

Twitter Resources

You may have heard about this thing called Twitter, and noticed that it is a topic I write about a lot…!

Here’s a quick list of the places to check to keep up to date with the latest Twitter news and cool Twitter tools, followed by some stuff what I wrote!

Twitter
Twitter
Blog
Status
Business 101
Twictionary
Fan Wiki
Twitdom

Twitter Analytics
Twitter Analyzer
Twitter Counter
Twitter Grader
Tweet Wheel
Tweetstats
Twitterholic
Twitalyzer
Twinfluence

Directories
Twellow
Wefollow
Twibs

Hashtag Resources
Tagalus
What The Trend

Search and Trends
Twazzup
Topsy
Retweetist
People Browsr
Tweet Volume
Twittervision
Tweetmeme
Monittor
Backtweets
Tweetscan
Twitscoop
Twitter Search
Muck Rack
Microplaza
Twendz
Twitturly
Twitterverse
Tweepz
Trendistic

Follower Tools
Twitter Sheep
Friend or Follow

Browser extensions
TwitBin
Power Twitter
Tweecious

Image Sharing
Twitpic
Mobypic

Visualisations and cool stuff
Twistori
Visible Tweets
Cursebird
Twitter Patterns

Some of my stuff…

What Is A Twitter Hashtag
Twitter Dies – Then What?
3 Twitter relationship building steps
The power of a retweet
Are Twitter Trending Topics The Next You Tube Video Viral?
Twitter to end fast following
Twitter in Schools
JournalistTweets
India Twitter Demographics
JCPR Twitter Index
How can bands use Twitter?
Monitoring keywords on Twitter

Communication 2.0 a Perfect Anarchy

Perfect Anarchy is a theory which is based around a non-authoritarian run society, where everybody is free to do as they please, without impacting on anybody else. In it, citizens come and go as they please, work of they want, live how they want and believe what they want. Basically.

It appears somewhere in the middle of complete socialism and utter mayhem. Here’s an example of thoughts about anarchy itself:

..anarchy tends to constrain wickedness, whereas statism tends to expand it (hence our current need for more and more prisons.) …Given any level of morality, anarchy makes for a more ordered and peaceful society than a state does.

I believe that at the moment, this a situation we’re finding ourselves in as communications professionals – be that digitally or otherwise.. Citizens (bloggers) do as they please – writing articles that suit them and without a need for consideration on how their views may affect other people, or brands.

Bloggers can be anonymous and attack people they don’t know, or they can be open and attack brands or institutions they have no affiliation with or people they don’t know.

Is this a good thing?

Yes.

It means that brands are openly held accountable for the service they provide, and they will get called out if they are not doing their job right. Social media dictates that PRs are now much more than delivering a brand’s message to online communities, they are shaping it to help the brand discover, or build, their online reputation.

It also means that standards for failure are much higher and brands that are left to catch up, have more work to do and further to fall than those which are openly and actively embracing the current communication method of choice.

With openness and transparency from bloggers and brands, we can find ourselves approaching a more civilised and ‘ideal’ communications pathway, where brands supply bloggers with content that is valuable, and bloggers supply brands with a genuine loyalty and trust that has been earned, not bought.

The Science of Motivation

Dan Pink discusses the science of motivation in this talk, kindly shared by TED.

Traditionally, incentives (ie bonuses) have been the way that big, and small, businesses encourage their employees to develop, grow and produce more: work harder to get a bigger cheque at the end of the month.

Dan argues that this is no longer the case with several scientific studies, and that top-down management is a thing of the 20th century (a point on which I wholeheartedly agree).

He makes several really interesting points throughout, and I urge you to watch the full video (around 20 minutes), about the new (?) motivations for people at work.

He says that carrot and stick economics are no longer working, and that there are three things that are driving people to want to work better:

Autonomy – The ability to work how you want, when you want, as long as you get the job done

Mastery – To become the best at what it is you do

Purpose – To feel that you are contributing to something with a greater meaning for a greater good

The example which he gives, which has also been often cited by my colleague Jason Mical, to this is Wikipedia.

He says that Microsoft wanted to make an encyclopaedia, Encarta, and put management and budget into the project, creating the world’s most comprehensive resource.

Yet, Wikipedia was built by volunteers and is perhaps an even greater achievement because of the lack of management structure, lack of monetary reward and succeeded because the contributors wanted to be a part of something.

This is a fine point and something we should all consider when managing, or looking at different ways to motivate those below, around or above us, to work more productively and with a greater innovative streak.

Top Eleven: Football Blogs

With the new football season well underway, It’s time to have a look at just where you can keep up with the latest news and views from the blogosphere with my football blog first eleven. Whether you’re Championship, Premiership, League 1, League 2 or Blue Square, there’s something for everyone.

For my Watford ramblings, check out Fan 6927

1) Soccerlens
2) Two Footed Tackle
3) Touchline Views
4) The Original Winger
5) Some People Are On The Pitch
6) The Onion Bag
7) Two Hundred Percent
8) When Saturday Comes
9) The Run Of Play
10) Pitch Invasion
11) Unprofessional Foul

Now i’m bound to have missed a bunch, who would you promote to your starting eleven?

(Apologies for the cheesey puns, I couldn’t resist)

Rosemary Port v. Liskula Cohen AND Google

Rosemary Port, the outed anti-Liskula Cohen blogger is to sue Google for $15million.

Rosemary Port, a Fashion student, said:

“By going to the press, she defamed herself,”

“Before her suit, there were probably two hits on my Web site: One from me looking at it, and one from her looking at it,” Port said. “That was before it became a spectacle. I feel my right to privacy has been violated.”

“When I was being defended by attorneys for Google, I thought my right to privacy was being protected,”

“But that right fell through the cracks. Without any warning, I was put on a silver platter for the press to attack me. I would think that a multi-billion dollar conglomerate would protect the rights of all its users.”

I think that outing Port was the correct decision, and I can’t help but think that her lawyer’s decision to try and sue Google, is nothing more than playing to Port’s vanity and need for attention.

If she had nothing to hide, why post anonymously?

Liskula Cohen, the model implicated has chosen not to follow up her $3million claim – a fine gesture that leaves Port looking more than a little foolish.

How (not) to pitch to bloggers?

Quite an extraordinary similarity, that has resulted in two very different endings, has occurred in the last few days.

PRs are often called out for sending out mass e-mails to journalists and bloggers, lazily copy and pasting e-mail addresses into that Bcc field in Outlook and sending out one pitch or press release to hundreds of writers.

Techcrunch reported on Wednesday how they managed to find themselves on the end of a huge e-mail thread after a PR agency did this, but mistakenly put all of the e-mail recipients into the Cc field. Thus, when one angry hack responded “Take me off this list!” each of the recipients were then subjected to the e-mail. Said PR firm were called out.

Now consider this, the exact same scenario occurred with an up and coming musician, publicising his latest tracks to a mailing list of music bloggers. What happened? #musicbloggerday instead of hurling abuse at the poor musician, the bloggers had a mass chat about all manner of topics. Splendid.

What does this show us?

a) Music bloggers are cool
b) If you’re not a PR, you’re less likely to get yourself in trouble

But most importantly,

c) When you’re sending out an e-mail, think about the audience it’s going to, the content within and the tone of your text!

And if in doubt, spend a little time to personalise the e-mail before you send it…

You can read my thought on this hot topic at: How To Pitch To Bloggers and Blogger Engagement and A Quick Note To PRs and PR Policy for Bloggers.

Yes, four articles may seem excessive, but some PR agencies just aren’t listening…

News International closing thelondonpaper

News International is to close thelondonpaper, according to the media Guardian .

James Murdoch, chairman and chief executive, News Corporation Europe and Asia , said “The strategy at News International over the past 18 months has been to streamline our operations and focus investment on our core titles”

According to the Guardian:

The London Paper recorded a pre-tax loss of £12.9m in the year to 29 June 2008 on a turnover of £14.1m. The paper had a free distribution of 500,348 copies in July, about 100,000 more than London Lite.

However, Brand Republic says:

The company did post a rise (75%) in turnover, up from £8.04m to £14.08m for the year to 30 June 2008.

To me this closure makes sense following Rupert Murdoch’s insistence on providing content only to those who pay for it. That and a drive to cut costs and falling advertising revenue, will see the better of London’s evening freesheets close in mid-September.

The remaining evening papers will now have just a two way squabble over readers, and this may well lead to a decrease in the quality of the newspapers over a long period of time, especially journalistically.

Will this indicate a paradigm shift for old media, or is it just a blip on the landscape, and what will it mean for thelondonpaper’s music event due to be held 16-17 September?

So I wonder, is free doomed to fail?

Let me know what you think!

Blogger’s Identity To Be Revealed – Right or Wrong?

Liskula Cohen has won her case in an New York court to have the identity of a blogger, who called her various nasty things (I shan’t repeat here as it’s a family show), revealed.

The model has fought Google, who initially tried to protect the blogger, and will find out who has been behind a hateful blog campaign defaming and abusing her character.

Ms. Cohen, a model who has appeared on the front cover of Vogue, has unwittingly set a precedent that could find itself to be the undoing of many gossip blogger for years to come, especially those writing under a pseudonym to air their views/grievances/revelations anonymously.

If you offend, you may end up outed.

Now, I am in two minds about this. There are of course nasty things said on the Internet all the time, and we are not going to see this change anytime soon. If someone is a coward and unable to say things under their own name, they obviously have a reason for wanting to protect themselves.

Why should an innocent party be affected by the random rumblings from an unidentified person who may command a lot of attention?

On the other hand, we are living in an age where we, in the West especially, have the chance to have the right to a freedom of speech. Why should those rights be inhibited in the digital age where what one person says isn’t even a drop in the ocean to the total amount of content being generated and created?

I think, and please please please help me out here, that it is a good thing that the blogger will be outed.

I go back to my point about one person not having to suffer at the hands of another’s need to attention grab and disparage a reputation. If they had the courage to identify themselves in the first place, there would be more credibility to what they are saying, even if what they are saying is false.

What do you think?

Momentile Review

Momentile is an online diary that allows you to document each day with a single image. This is not a Flickr or Expono, this is a one hit, one upload per day picture book.

You can upload images online or e-mail them from your phone to a personalised e-mail address which will then post your image for you a la Mobypic. Images can be no bigger than 1MB and, i’ll say it again, you can only upload one per day. If you’re not happy with your selected picture, you have all day to change it. You can view your images individually or as a mosaic which, when there’s a few uploaded, i’m sure will look cracking.

You can follow (Stalkees), be followed (Stalkers), save stuff (Stash), get sms notifications when your Stalkees upload their images, share your image feed on Facebook and of course upload your image from an iPhone.

I think this is a great idea and, if they can keep away from the deadpool, Momentile is offering a fun, free and easy service which is so simple (I really like the UI) I could navigate with my eyes closed.

With the ease of posting to the likes of Tumblr or Soup.io, you could argue that Momentile has missed a trick here, especially for more experienced users. I think however, that this isn’t aimed at users of these existing a service as such – more it is those not so Internet savvy who just want a bit of fun in their everyday general net useage.

If you’d like to try Momentile, drop me a line and i’ll send you an invite code!

Momentile is currently in Alpha, so if you try it out remember: there’s bound to be bugs!