My morning kicked off with a conversation about Twilert and in particular why the site was launched in BETA and what BETA actually means. It got me thinking about my reasoning behind it and I ended at the question of "Why would I ever take the site out of BETA?" For me, BETA means the final version of a service or site before small tweaks are made and a final, clean version is rolled out to the masses. However, that implies that the service is perfect as doesn't require constant TLC, tweaks and improvements and I'm yet to find a single online service that fits in the "perfect" bracket. The point is that, as I am finding with Twilert, user interaction online now means that feedback and advice for online tools and services comes thick and fast and webmasters (for want of a better word) need to react to this feedback by incorporating it into their sites. The feedback will never stop and therefore neither should the tweaking. BETA works for real-world things, things that can't be upgraded or changed en-mass easily. But online, there is no such thing as BETA. Every CEO, CFO and webmaster should treat their site like it is ...

It's been pretty quiet round these parts (again) but there is good reason. Between my day job (usually 2am - 3am) I have been working on a new Twitter application that effectively replicates the Google Alerts service but, yes you guessed it, for Twitter! So, I proudly introduce Twilert.com to the world! Ideal for anyone interested in following opinion or discussion on brands, products, people - anything really. Give it a go, it's dead easy to use and completely free. Let me know what you think. Oh and follow us on Twitter too.

Has the world gone mad....and when I say world I mean the British media? I'm not condoning the actions of Russel Brand or Jonathan Ross, what they did went beyond an innocent prank and simply wasn't funny, but this morning I've woken up the front page outrage aimed at the pair. What's more, Gordon Brown has jumped into the furor blasting the pair, and Sky News informed me that the issue was likely to come up during Prime Minister's Questions this afternoon. With two wars, an economic crisis, an entertaining yet globally relevant US election, Tory sleaze etc is the outrage caused by this practical joke really reflective of its severity? I can't help but think it's all gone a bit to far a la Princess Di (oh no he di'n't). Perhaps Elton John should dust off his songbook. While I'm on the point of the media: On Sky News this morning, after Noel Gallagher blamed the decline of Top of the Pops for youth crime, its newspaper critic responded - "I don't know if it's true but it's a good point!" A good point indeed, particularly if you step out of the realm of reality. As the old saying goes...why let the facts get ...

Another day another Internet meme doing the rounds. MIchael Litman from LitmanLive and [EDIT 30/10/2008] Paul Stallard have tagged me in the Three for Three post where bloggers are encouraged to list their three choices across three categories before tagging other bloggers to continue the chain. So, here goes... Top three non-work websites: - Football365.com - The number one resource for the UK football fan. It isn't the mecca for stats that the BBC is but its mix of irreverent comment, insight and humour makes it a winner in my book! - Digg.com - The ultimate time waster but an incredibly useful one. An instant snapshot of what's hot on the web - TheOnion.com - Older than the WWW itself. One of the few US sites to do satire very well Top three karaoke songs: - Don't Stop Believing by Journey - "I love Journey, but I hate baseball cards" - We Built This City by Starship - Guarantee you'll get groans when this first comes on but 2 minutes in you'll have the entire bar singing it with you - Livin' on a Prayer by Bon Jovi - For little over 3 minutes you honestly believe you are a rock star Top three weekend cocktails: - Mojito from anywhere - Raspberry Collins ...

I was catching up with some friends earlier this week, most of which work in some sort of marketing / digital / interactive capacity. During the course of dinner we noticed the array of mobile phones on the table and in particular the fact that 5 out of the 6 phones were iPhones. The conversation moved onto how to engage consumers on the mobile platform (seriously, we have some crazy rock 'n' roll dinners) with half arguing that brands need to engage users through iPhone apps and others arguing that the market share of the iPhone was still too small for it to warrant such a large focus. My view, for what it was worth, was that the focus should be on non-iPhone but there is no reason why this can't be supported through the iPhone. Anyway, it struck me, looking at the array of iPhones on display, how important it is for us to remember that as marketers we aren’t our client’s target audience – and we shouldn’t lose sight of what is the norm for us and what is the norm for the general population. I've see it so often, and I do it myself, when marketers presume audiences behave in ...

I'm beginning to find some innovate ways brands are leveraging the Twitter platform. Two new services caught my eye this week! The first, Qwitter, aims to help stop people smoking. As a non-smoker I haven't tried it but it's simple to get involved. Simply follow Qwitter and send messages to the user (@iquit) telling it how many cigarettes you have had. Qwitter will track how many packs you're getting through and provide tips and advice to help you kick the habit. The second is Tweet What You Spend which, like Qwitter, allows you to send messages and track how much you are spending day to day. What I love about this is the fact that it's such a simple way of engaging an audience through an existing and established platform. Both Qwitter and Tweet What You Spend are the start of brands engaging Twitter users with value-add services. Many of our clients are jumping on the Twitter bandwagon, using it as a simple comms tool. But, the examples above show that Twitter is becoming much more than a micro-blogging service and extending beyond comms and into a powerful web app for both brands and consumers.

So some of you will have noticed that the old blog hasn't been in its best state recently. Between work, a holiday and work I really haven't had time to show it the love and tenderness it deserves. But I am still here and remarkably have found 10 minutes to myself and thought I would post a note around a topic I was discussing yesterday on Twitter - The Great Drain Robbery, or, in non-Sun speak, the fact that Starbucks has been caught wasting millions of litres of water every day. I won't go into the story itself, you can read it here. What is interesting though is how quickly the flames of such a potentially damaging story have been doused. Yesterday this was a front page story and appeared across a number of nationals and online publications. Today though, not a whimper. More than that though, a quick search on Google News reveals less than 30 articles. On BlogPulse and the various Twitter trend trackers the story barely raises a squeak! I'm not going to judge Starbucks on this as I don't know the ins and outs of the issue however given how prevalent environmental issues are within today's media, their ...

PR Lesson #63: Treat your customers like thieves and you will get, in most cases, a negative reaction Poor EA Games, not content with creating the biggest games franchise of all time with The Sims and making millions in the process they decide that their bulging wallets just weren't bulging enough. They have recently released their latest "must-have" game, Spore, with a new DRM system that means people that buy the game can only install it three times before the game locks and it can't be used. Wait it gets better... ...now, this could be a brilliant ploy to sell more games but then a glitch with EA's registration system means gamers were struggling to authorise their copy of Spore and ended up using up their three installations and locking the game. The decision by EA games to treat all their (loyal) fans as software pirates has resulted in a flurry of negative reviews and uproar amongst the gaming community. In one fell swoop, EA has turned the most eagerly anticipated game of 2008 into one of the worst. Can I suggest next time EA skip the formalities of online registration and simply take fingerprints and DNA swabs at point-of-sale.

This week I watched an interesting video stream from Hot Dog Media where we discussed, amongst other things publishing content. Along the course of the debate we touched on whether making content available online means it should free and that artists/authors/developers should look to monetise their creations through additional services. I argued that we shouldn't assume that because something is online it is free however I do believe the way content is published should change. For the music industry, I still find it amazing that the record companies continue to rip off fans with albums costing £15 plus. Their decision not to embrace the digital movement is leading to their own downfall as consumers look for more convenient and cost-effective means of getting their music such as Last.fm, Napster and of course illegal downloads. I have no doubt in my mind that the level of music piracy would plummet if labels offered consumers a fairer price for their purchase. But, this issue isn't confined to the music industry. We hear little from the publishing industry on the impact that e-books are having on hard-copy sales. Probably because e-books haven't hit the mainstream in the same way MP3s have. However, with more cost effective ...

A couple of weeks ago I posted an article discussing how traditional PR is dead and today's Google Chrome announcement only furthers my belief that PRs must continue to looks at new and interesting ways of communicating to the media and consumers. Google has pulled off, in my opinion, a mini masterstroke by announcing its new browser through a cartoon. Why? Well for a start it's much more interesting than a press release. But, more importantly look at how the story is being reported, there are just as many blog posts and news articles discussing the cartoon as the product itself. The cartoon does nothing more than communicate the key messages and features of Google Chrome but by packaging it in an interesting and unique way, (all of) those messages are reaching the end-user. By discussing or even posting scans of the cartoon the media are doing the equivalent of reprinting a press release. I don't think we can all go start sending out cartoons to journalists, we can't lose sight that the Google brand and this particular announcement carries a fair amount of weight with the media. However, we shouldn't be afraid of exploring new ways of engaging journalists and consumers, especially ...