The rise and rise of Social Media continues....

• Another teen magazine - CosmoGirl - closes as readership and ad revenue declines (Colin Crummy, Press Gazette)
• The BBC have announced that one of their reporters will use social media tools to report on the Turkish election (Graham Holliday, Press Gazette)

I am speaking at the Unicom conference on Social Tools for Business next month (London, July 11th and 12th) and will be sharing our experience of podcasting for clients as a way of getting messages out to internal and external audiences.

I have interviewed a number of the other speakers to find out what they will be talking about at the event. Listen here. This is a good example of how podcasting can be integrated with traditional marketing. A brochure is great but to hear the actual speakers and learn from them directly what they will talking about is very powerful. A sort on 'audio brochure'.

We hope to be recording and interviewing more of the speakers at the event itself. Check out my blog next month.

I found out in my second job that my new employer was equally interested in my network of contacts as they were in my work experience. When I moved into sales and marketing this was even more so.

I read with interest a post (thanks for link to Steve Rubel) that at a recent conference presenters were saying just how the new generation of workers will expect employers to be embracing social media and having it as a tool.

That got me thinking about me when I first started work versus my son and daughter and the value of our respective networks to our employers.

My ‘network’ was primarily made up of school and sports clubs people. All my own age linked by school or membership of the clubs. I had their addresses and phone numbers but found when I moved to London for my first job over the a year or two most of the contacts dried up.

Fast forward to today. My son (20) and daughter (21) have been on the internet and using mobile phones for a few years now. (When I was young I remember my parents getting a phone in the house. It was like a sacred instrument. The BT engineer showed us how to use it. Probably my imagination but it felt like we all slept and ate near the phone until someone actually rang us. For weeks the phone ringing would send a shiver of excitement through us all. I remember my parents booking a call via the operator to our relations in the USA in 1963 when my cousin got married! We were given a time slot and the operator had to make the call and connect us. I told everyone at the village school and gained a lot of popularity telling and retelling the story.)

So back to my kids. They are not exceptional. Most of their peer group will enter employment with an amazing network of social contacts. People they text and speak to on mobiles and now facebook, MySpace and their other social media sites. Their network of contacts is vast. Far in excess of mine at their age. They are also much more active. Technology lets them be.

Now when will the first job vacancy advert appear that has a job requirements specification item that says?

·         Active social media user wanted

Will graduates and others be able to charge a salary premium for large networks of friends just as experience does?

English is still the global language of business but is not necessarily the language used in the bloggosphere.

A recent report in The Guardian showed the rapid speed of expansion of broadband access in China. 300m accounts were added. That is a figure almost equal to 5% of the worlds population! This is being fuelled by active Government support. When Chinese blogging really takes hold we will see English drop to third place (see graph below)

The report also highlighted the extent of the digital divide. Developing countries are being left behind.

The Q4 2006 report from Technorati makes interesting reading. This shows the languages used in all the posts to blogs that they track (70m+ blogs and 1.9 billion posts)

At a recent conference on advertising to kids there was much talk about how parental attitudes to children and their safety is leading to a 'keyboard' lifestyle. We worry for our kids if they are out and about in the big (and bad?) world. We also worry if they retreat to their own space - their bedroom - and start surfing the net. Hence parents are happy to spend money on allowing their kids to participate in their own social worlds.

Club Penguin is one such social world. It has 4 million members.

The Belfast Telegraph had a good write up of social media sites aimed at girls. One - StarDolls - attracts over 6 million visitors per month. Another is WeeWorld attracting 4 million visitors per month where kids can dress male or female avatars.

Kids have always created fantasy worlds and used play acting to understand socialisation skills. Now they can do it online. Adults have Second Life but maybe it should be renamed 3rd Life as the kids are already there! Child psychologists as well as academics and educationalists are going to argue the value and/or damage of what is happening no doubt. But until we have young adults who have grown up through this we are not really going to know for sure. In the meantime the kids seem to be having fun even if their parents credit cards are taking a hit!

A report by ClickZ Features may give some indication of why in the last few weeks so many people seem to be joining and inviting others to join facebook.

Research we did amongst younger people showed frustration with MySpace (intrusive ads and music was quoted by many) and a move to facebook. MySpace still has 5 to 6 times the subscriber base of facebook but maybe that gap will narrow fast over the next few months.

As it says Broadcast Yourself. Or maybe that should be Watch Others broadcast themselves. That is the power of social media.

As Marshall McLuhan (1911 - 1980), the Communications and Media academic researcher said "With telephone and TV it is not so much the message as the sender that is “sent.”

He died before the internet became such a powerful communication platform so I am sure he would not mind me editing his statement slightly:

'With the internet and online video it is not so much the message as the sender that is sent'

A press release comScore yesterday reported that 80% of internet users (aged 15 and older) streamed video in April 2007. A total of 10% of their time online was spent watching video.

The study measuring video consumption in France, Germany, UK and the USA shows UK consumers are number 1 in terms of percentage watching but France leads on total time spent watching them at 13%. The UK beats all countries again with the total number of streams initiated.

Where are people accessing the video streams from?

• Google                 - 608m (includes YouTube)
• Yahoo! sites          -  58m
• BBC                     -  32m
• Fox Interactive      -  26m
• Microsoft              -  17m

Marshall McLuhan (1911 - 1980)

Vuguru, the new media studio of The Torante Company, Michael Eisner's (ex-CEO of Disney) new business venture, used MySpace as a platform to distribute its first production - Prom Queen. Having watched an episode I can best describe it as teenage angst and supernatural.

Created specifically for a social media platform rather that TV or cimema it had 80 episodes in 80 days leveraging the interactivity and social media platform of MySpace. It gained over 26k friends in the process and a lot of blog traffic. Forum activity was threads: 222, Posts: 1,396, Members: 187.

As it says on the MySpace page 'The story continues via videos, blogs, comments and profiles'.

As quoted on Podcast News Eisner said the show was an experiemnet and cost $100k - $150k and did not lose money.

For companies it is interesting to note that the cost was much less that a national TV or media advertising campaign and provided a platform for product placement and advertising as well as branded goods spin-offs. I am sure boxed DVD set sales will follow.

If advertisers are looking for brand engagement having 26k 'friends' socially networking and promoting on your behalf is not bad. 

Driving to the studios in Southampton I caught part of a radio item or package as they have started to call it. Sorry but I cannot get the image of the Post Office out of my mind when I hear that said!

I am not even sure what station I was on and try as I might I cannot find any details on the internet of the survey.

This has no source so all I can do is quote what I heard....

60% of people will no longer send 'wish you were postcards' but will send an e-mail message instead.

Missing the pictures off the postcard? No. With digital cameras they are now simply attaching a photo that they have taken. The top three pictures:

• Local scenery (sea, beaches etc)
• Hotel
• Sunburn

So what are you doing? Postcard or internet?

In the last few days I have had a number of people asking me to be a friend on Facebook. These are not teenagers or college people - or at least they were 30+ years ago. Why are so many people signing-up? Is this the 'wisdom of crowds' or 'sheep behaviour'. Who knows but they are not alone. See what media types are joining for from the Media Guardian and the reasons given. (Thanks to Social Networking for link).

I have used Linked-In for years to keep in touch/get back in touch with people. Facebook is different as I am using it to look at communities of people with similar interests.

In his post today Seth Godin talks about Steve Jobs and his gift at finding a rift (changing the rules to everyone elses disadvantage).

What Seth seems to suggest is that people accidentially find the rift and then work it. While that maybe true for some for most people they work really hard at creating the riff. Dyson spent many years perfecting his vacum cleaner. Gates and the development team spent years perfecting Windows. As someone once said 'I spent 20 years trying to become an overnight sensation'.

All these people have a few things in common.

• Tenacity
• Drive
• Vision

And as Seth says....a willingness to bet big on success. Sometimes a whole company.

I worked for 3M in the mid 1970s. A company with a deserved innovation. Check out how many of their innovative products came from those 3 things and also earlier mistakes or product design failures.  

I remember something Ben Rosen said at our first Lotus team meeting in 1985 'I have backed a lot of products that turned out to be dogs but one or two have become superstars. That is what keeps me going and why people forgive me for my mistakes'.

OK. I give up. Another present. Just thought - could this be because its Fathers Day? Do cats understand these things?

Found in the kitchen. Frog or toad?

Sunday morning and the animal saga continues. No sign of the mouse but that is not a bad thing as it means the cats have not caught it and killed it over night.

We now have another visitor. We are not sure if it is a vole or shrew. Anyone out there able to identify it? We tried catching it but they are so fast and can squeeze through the smallest spaces. Amazing.

We had put some cereals out for the mouse behind a cupboard as we were worried about it making the 'cat bowl run'. This morning some had gone so we know (s)he is OK. Later today we will have to shut the cats away and pull the kitchen apart to catch them and take them to safety.

Good session. To see more pictures visit here.

The teams made an audio podcast on the day and this will be edited and uploading as an internal podcast in the next week or so. The groups could see many applications for podcasting within the NHS both for internal and external communication.

There were concerns over management of the process and the cost (NHS is trying to balance the books) as it would happen in any organisation. With over 90,000 employees one of the biggest issues is getting messages through middle management to all staff. Being a 365/24 organisation puts even more pressure on communication lines.

Living in the country with two cats (and a dog) I am used to seeing lots of animals - usually dead when in the house. The cats are a killing machine despite spraying them with water and having collars with bells on them to try and ward off any prey! (all suggestions on how to stop them welcome)

So it is nice to see one mouse, who despite playing a dangerous game, is getting one over on the cats!

I saw him/her for the first time this evening. While the cats were out or asleep somewhere he/she came out and took a cat biscuit from their bowl and took a drink of water (to moisten it?) He/she then repeated it again before scampering off!

More pictures at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/adrianjmoss/sets/72157600375800947/

Sometimes we think from all the PR by companies that global brands dominate all markets equally. Not true.

Jennifer Woodward Maderazo at Mediashift has an interesting post talking about social media software products that went out of fashion in the US a few years ago but remained strong in international markets. Early social media software such as Orkut and Friendster are discussed.

That reminds me of my time in the IT industry. It is so long ago that I don't think it will be a problem with company confidentiality. I worked for Lotus - the software company. The follow on from their hit 1-2-3 product was meant to be Symphony. It was launched with great fanfare but just did not set the US market alight. The US management team lost heart and devoted resources to other software development projects.

We in Europe had worked with the US on Symphony and engineered it for rapid translation, something 1-2-3 never had been. Within weeks of the US launch French and German versions of Symphony were on the market. Other languages were available shortly afterwards. Although 1-2-3 2.0 was engineered to be translated (and was) by the time it came along Symphony had been selling for well over a year. 1-2-3 in some markets never made up the lost ground. Symphony stayed a top seller and only when Lotus failed to be updated did the market move away.

As reported in Press Gazette the circulation of mainstream press continues to decline (April 2007 figures). The only mainstream title to grow was the FT.

Media with online sites continue to see traffic grow. The latest audited figures for unique visitors to their web sites show the following:

1. Guardian Unlimited            - 15.1 million
2. Times Online                    -  8.9 million
3. Sun Online                       -  8.2 million
4. Telegraph.co.uk                -  7.4 million

Great to see a traditional publisher embracing the opportunity that social media can bring to marketing to the teenage market. See report from Brand Republic.

Their strategy is to move towards interactivity with their readership. They will have an editorial board made up of readers from their teenage target market. They already have a page on MySpace. As Anna Rafferty, Director of Digital Marketing said their objective is to engage with people, get them emotionally involved and facilitate dialogue.   

We recently did some of our own research with 18 - 22 year olds and found that they used the internet on average 3 hours a day to socialise, get news and information. For them 'online' is the place to be. Traditional print and broadcast media was well down their list of sources of information.

What is most interesting is that recent research is showing that older age groups are now starting to mirror youth behaviour in sourcing information and socially interacting online.

Interesting research by Marketing Charts into the power and influence of social media in making a purchase decision.

Thanks to Michael Seaton at the Client Side Blog for the heads up and link.

What it is shows are the two most important reasons for using social media are:

·         ‘wisdom of the crowds’ (53%)

·         the ability to engage in conversations. (24%)

Both of these are usually unavailable via traditional media product reviews.

As you have breakfast this morning how many of you will wonder if what you have just seen, heard or read is really accurate and fair?

The International Centre for Media and the Public Agenda at the University of Maryland, USA has produced a report looking at public trust in broadcast media outlets. They studied 25 print and broadcast outlets to see how transparent they are.

The Guardian newspaper came top with the BBC and Financial Times both in the top 10.

Research such as Edelmans Annual Trust Barometer shows decline in trust of politicans, press and the broadcast media by members of the public.

The reseach by the ICMPA looked at global news sites that are most transparent about their operations.

They considered 5 areas and the news organisations policies to them

• Corrections - admitting errors and making corrections
• Ownership - disclosing ownership and policies effecting editorial control
• Staff policies - covering conflict of interests
• Reporting policies -disclosing any
• Interactivity - allowing readership comment and feedback (The FT was one of only two in the top 25 to score full marks in this area)

I saw this from the New York Times.

A real example of politicians engaging with the electorate using social media tools. Not without its risks but a real attempt to reduce stage managed Q&A events and open up the conversation.

Contrast that to what is happening in Europe.

It seems the politicians are trying to manipulate the words so the new European Treaty becomes a non-treaty but still stays as some sort of binding document. The result is that no country needs to hold a referendum, which means that there is no risk of being rejected again (by the Netherlands and France as last time).

To be honest I do not fully understand what is happening and why. Something to do with the size of the EU and voting rights I think. It could be perfectly acceptable what they are trying to do but it is the lack of transparency that makes the European public uneasy.

Edelmans 8^th Annual Trust Barometer (measuring trust in institutions across Europe) shows the public has a low opinion of politicians and it is declining. Is it any wonder when you contrast what Europe is doing compared to the EU? 

Note to David Brain of Edelman – you need to change your survey title. The EU has banned the use of mercury in barometers and other similar instruments. The last few manufacturers and re-calibrators in the UK will soon cease work.  See BBC article.

Sorry. I don't usually post e-mail jokes or stories but this made stop and think about life.

This weekend is Fathers Day and my kids (20 and 21) are going to spoil me by cooking me a BBQ. It will be a lovely day but sad too as my Father died 3 years ago.

After a particularly hectic week it was nice to get this....

A group of alumni, highly established in their careers, got together to
visit their old university professor. Conversation soon turned into
complaints about stress in work and life.

Offering his guests coffee, the professor went to the kitchen and returned
with a large pot of coffee and an assortment of cups - porcelain, plastic,
glass, crystal, some plain looking, some expensive, some exquisite - telling
them to help themselves to hot coffee.

When all the students had a cup of coffee in hand, the professor said: "If
you noticed, all the nice looking expensive cups were taken up, leaving
behind the plain and cheap ones.

While it is normal for each of you to want only the best for yourselves,
that is the source of your problems and stress.

What all of you really wanted was coffee, not the cup, but you consciously
went for the best cups and were eyeing each other's cups.

Now if life is coffee, then the jobs, money and position in society are the
cups. They are just tools to hold and contain Life, but the quality of Life
doesn't change.

Some times, by concentrating only on the cup, we fail to enjoy the
coffee in it."

So, don't let the cups drive you... enjoy the coffee instead...

A very thought provoking post from Shel Holtz contributing to the ongoing debate on the authenticity of blogs.

Read the comments and you will see the whole issue laid bare.

At its heart is the same issue that faced Monty Python in their 'Crunchy Frog' sketch. Does a blog labelled as being from the CEO or a senior executive have to be penned by them or can it be 'ghost' written by a member of the Corporate Communications team.

I am all for honesty but I think a dose of reality is needed here. We know the Trade Description Act means we have to honest and truthful. Food labelling has to list all the ingredients. As the Monty Python sketch was highlighting sometimes the marketing spin is such that even the public do not expect there to be real frogs in chocolates - even with the bones in to ensure it is really crunchy.

Can a CEO's blog still claim to be from them personally if the Corp Comms team have helped write it or edited it? The answer is yes but then the question is one of degree. Full fat milk contains only 5% fat so at what percentage does a blog become Full CEO? Now that becomes another debate....

Today we have the NHS in our studios to help edit the podcast recordings we made at last weeks workshop. The intention is to get a podcast that can be used internally within the organisation to discuss the use of podcasting to help internal communication. A podcast on podcasting as it were.

We are not sure what we will end up with (that is part of the fun of podcasting) but with a workforce of over 90,000 anything we can do to help will be great.

Watch this space....

Tomorrow I lead a workshop session on podcasting for the South Central NHS Trust.

The NHS is a big organisation undergoing considerable change and we will be exploring how podcasting can help with internal and external communication.

Some facts and figures from the NHS South Central web site.

·         It covers Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire, Hampshire and the Isle of Wight. It runs from Banbury and Milton Keynes at its northern edge down to the Isle of Wight in the south.

·         This is a population of around 4 million people across 10,000 sq km – four times the size of Luxembourg!

·         Within the region there are nine PCTs, nine acute trusts (two of which are Foundation Trusts), three mental health trusts (one of which is a Foundation Trust), one learning disability trust, one specialist trust and one ambulance.

·         The total annual budget is £5bn.

·         It employs more than 93,000 people who work in primary and secondary care – approximately 5% of the regions working population - making the NHS the largest employer in the area (The Times says the NHS in the UK is the 3^rd largest employer in the world after the Indian railways and Chinese Army)

·         There are more than 25,500 qualified nurses, 2,300 hospital consultants and 2,700 GPs

In 2005:

• Almost 3.5 million people visited a GP or practice nurse
• There were almost 1 million A&E attendances
• More than 43,500 babies were born
• Across the ambulance trusts around 230,000 emergency calls were answered, 80,000 of which were deemed life threatening.

That is a big organisation to change!

When I am asked for examples of a social media site and citizen journalism and how it can work I give the example of TripAdvisor.

There was an excellent balanced review – warts and all - in the Wall Street Journal recently.

There are many worthy travel reviewers out there but they are paid to give a review either by the industry or a publication. Some travel undercover to avoid any impropriety but equally hotel management are on the look-out for those people so they can be given extra special service.

Many guide books and even holiday companies provide ‘satisfaction’ rankings on hotels and places. These are very useful but tend to be tied to publication dates and so are many months and sometimes a year or more out of date.

What is good about TripAdvisor is the sheer number of reviews produced covering so many places. The real power of social media would come to the fore if some sort of profiling is provided. A sort of ‘people like me’. A young couple with kids may have different needs and values on services and facilities to an older couple travelling without kids. Knowing more about the people helps improve the potential ‘matching’ of their review.

It certainly appears that many businesses have woken up to the fact that they can be being vetted by anyone. They post comments back about problems now being addressed. One can only hope that such constant inspection will help improve service overall where it is necessary.

I love reading what Hugh MacLeod and Steve Clayton have to say. Not just because they are smart people and a good read but because of what they are up to at Microsoft. Changing or influencing an organisation - especially the size of Microsoft - is a real challenge. I enjoy keeping in touch through them with the software industry. I am not in the industry today but spent a great part of my early career (at Lotus) alternatively in love and in hate with Microsoft. Whist we would co-operate in anti-piracy and technical projects - we fought to the death over the desktop application space.

It was the 25th anniversary of Lotus the other month. The European one happens in June 2009. We have people coming in from Europe, the US and Australia and New Zealand.

What is fun is to look back and see what it was all about and why it was so special. We felt we were on a world mission. Lotus was the first at many things. Not just software. Aids support, allowing same sex partners to share pension and insurance rights. Baby care. Flexible working. All in the 1980's. All I can say is - how young we all looked like and what great t-shirts we used to have.

For any of you that remember Lotus 1-2-3, Symphony, Freelance, Notes etc check out the worlds first virtual museum. I am trying to track down the UK TV advertising campaign for 1-2-3. We thought the US 'dancing office' would not really hit the mark over here. Remember Barbara Woodhouse? The lady who trained dogs? Well we used her in our first TV campaign. Now that got us noticed - not always in a positive way!

Anyone out there know where we can get a copy?

Disclosure: Hugh and I have met and he even bought me a drink but I don't count that as a bribe as I bought one back.