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.

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'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.

Strange goings on with Twitter. It's late, I'm tired and the coffee may not have kicked in but this isn't normal is it! 17 followers in 7 minutes: I would like to think I've reached some kind of Tweeting tipping point but I suspect it's something a lot less exciting! UPDATE: @CherylSmith999 has informed me I have just received the "brogan jump". Love it!

Found a great new website over the weekend that could prove to be an incredibly useful tool for some raw measurement of campaigns, events and activity. It's called Twist and allows you to plot the frequency of keywords found on Twitter. It's quick and dirty as far as measurement goes but clients love the odd chart and this is an effective way of demonstrating the amount of online buzz being generating at any one time. As a side experiment I created a graph based on mentions of "Gordon Brown" and "David Cameron". There is a lot of talk of David Cameron being the new-age digital political compared favourably to Mr. Analogue Gordon Brown. But on this evidence, GB is much more prominent amongst the Twitter chatter!

Today marks the 4th anniversary of BlogDay. To take part the rules are simple: Find 5 new Blogs that you find interesting Notify the 5 bloggers that you are recommending them as part of BlogDay 2008 Write a short description of the Blogs and place a link to the recommended Blogs Post the BlogDay Post (on August 31st) and Add the BlogDay tag using this link: http://technorati.com/tag/BlogDay2008 and a link to the BlogDay web site at http://www.blogday.org - So without further ado, Happy BlogDay 2008: Delightful Work: Coach Tom Volkar provides advice on achieving, as he puts it, "work life freedom". Great blog that should be visited whenever those deadlines start mounting up! PsyBlog: Psychology is little more to me than a fleeting interest however I find this blog incredibly useful for gaining small insights into the way our minds work. For marketers this RSS feed should be a staple The Blog of Tim Ferriss: Any blog with the url fourhourworkweek.com is going to get my vote. Great advice on Tim on working smarter and not harder Chris Brogan: The hardest working man online? Probably! Chris regularly rolls out insightful, in-depth advice and information ...

Further to my post on client adoption of Twitter, Jeremiah has posted a great article on the evolution of brands using the service.

TechCrunch has published an article by Ashley Norris on why blog publishing has failed in the UK.

In his latest post, Steve Rubel has asked whether PR is obsolete and I generally agree with the sentiment. Traditional PR is, to a degree, dead. Distributing press releases far and wide in the hope of getting a hit (the machine gun effect) is time consuming and delivers little if anything. The same goes for press-conference style events - they no longer pull in the numbers. Conversation has changed forever but as PRs we have been slow to adapt our approach and tap into "the new way". One of the problems is moving out of our comfort zone. Clients have to report upstairs and have numbers to hit, numbers that are measured by circulations, OTS and AVE - it's hard to measure conversation. So why put ourselves out by trying to encourage the use of new media and communications tools such as Twitter. Well if we don't then one of two things will happen. Either our competitors will demonstrate how new media can be more effective and clients will walk out the door; or our clients will realise the power of new media on there own and guess what, they will walk out the door. Our clients demand to be where their audiences are and ...