Peter Schiff was right...

...and was laughed at:

Wii are shaking it up

Normally I get annoyed if for some reason I'm not able to take content from one site and share it with my friends through whatever channel I choose. Whether it's via email, Facebook, Twitter, Delicious or embedded content on a blog, it makes sense to make your content as shareable as possible.

However, this YouTube video for the new Wario Land Shake It! game on the Nintendo Wii is the exception to the rule.

What appears as a normal YouTube video actually descends into an engaging experience that plays on our normal experience of social media, yet actually mimics the gameplay mechanics of the real-world product. This experience is also replicated on the game's minisite, which requires you to shake the menu items before you can move on to the next page.

It's an example of traditional advertising making forays into social media and will leave you hesitating over whether to play that next YouTube video or not. Then again, I might not want that happening to my Twitter stream...

(Hat Tip - Outside Line)

Magpie: How to lose followers and alienate tweeple

There's a lot of chatter on Twitter this morning about Be-A-Magpie,  a service that will pay you to insert advertisements into your Twitter stream.

According to TechCrunch, advertisers pay on a cost-per-thousand-impression basis, and the ads are promised to be delivered to relevant audiences based on keywords. That means Be-A-Magpie will analyze the content of your Twitter messages to see if there is a match to particular advertisers. The service auto-determines the number of ads to insert per legitimate Twitter message - the default is one ad for every five tweets. The service inserts the ads automatically by storing your Twitter credentials.

The TechCrunch Twitter account, with 31,000 followers, can earn a whopping €14,410.51 per month. By comparison, my Twitter account can earn a paltry €149.11  per month.

However, there has been a lot backlash against the service. One of the main reasons seems to be that Be-A-Magpie is aginast the ethos that the twitter community has created, namely to share what's interesting to you at that moment, not what someone has paid you to share with others.

As for disclosure, a #magpie hashtag is added to each Tweet. You can also see who has signed up for the service already as Be-A-Magpie are seeding messages through Twitter to get more people signed up, as this photo from TechCrunch shows:

Scobleiser has started an interesting disucssion over on FriendFeed which discusses whether Be-A-Magpie should be banned from Twitter. A lot of people are saying that they will unfollow anyone who starts using the service as it is considered spam.

My favourite comment comes from Enrique Gutierrez:

"Social Media is about sharing interesting things with people who find those things interesting, not about soapboxing crap and spamming others with random junk. Magpie is a service that doesn't understand that, and though it attempts (poorly) at doing some level of justice to spamming, it's still spam/ads and unwelcomed in my book"

Jeremiah Owyang gives his take on the service here. Neville Hobson also gives his take on what Twitter with ads might look like, which explores some of the issues around advertising on Twitter, although the post doesn't look specifically at Be-A-Magpie.

No doubt @Ev and the others from Twitter will be taking a close look at the service and whether it should be allowed on Twitter. Their terms and conditons don't prohibit this kind of service, but if the backlash continues, it may well be worth their time to amend its terms.

I won't be using the service, but it will be interesting to see who does from those I follow. Although, if they do subscribe to Be-A-Magpie, I for one won't be following them for much longer.

Is a public relations degree worth it?

Over at Rock Star PR , Jed Hallam ponders the value of a university degree in public relations:

"I didn’t study public relations at university, I studied English Literature and, typical for the industry, I fell into PR. But what if I would’ve always have wanted to work in PR and would’ve studied it at university? Would that make me a better PR professional? Or would it have simply prepared me for the technical aspects of public relations; the format of the press release, the communications audit, the strategy, the three month plan, the research, the analysis and on and on… Can this be learnt on the job or must it be taught?"

John Burg left a comment on the post that points out that even the best degrees are useless uinless you can convert theory into practise:

"You cannot learn to ride a bike until you get on it. But if you first study physics, balance and riding on a stationary cycle, you will be better prepared once you hit the ground. However, just because you don’t have that piece of paper doesn’t mean that you are any less qualified than the next guy. All it means is that you don’t have the perspective of a trained “practitioner”. PR and Communications are a human sciences. We invented them, we drive them, we are them. If you intuitively “get it” you can do it. But a little background, some perspective, some experience goes a long way."

I feel personally that a degree in PR is the same as any other degree in the arts and humanities - unless there is a strong vocational element (as Richard Millington points out) then the degree won’t prepare you that well for working in ‘the real world’. History, Philosophy, English Literature, Sociology, etc. - all very good degrees with no clear career path at the end.

As such, it is the experience gained outside of these degrees that is more likely to prepare you for working life, whether its playing sports, joining a society, or taking up work experience as part of the degree.

It’s only when students/graduates get into a real working situation with real clients that their skills are put into practise. As Vikki Chowney tweeted just yesterday:

"Graduates; there’s nothing like real industry experience - now you really start learning"

This is an element that Bright One is trying to help with, offering students real life clients as part of their degrees - even if they’re not studying PR - so that they can learn on the job and do something for the social good at the same time. It's an opportunity to gain real world experience with real clients that will translate into a higher level of professionalism in years to come, using skills learned from studying in real world situations, benefiting both current studies and future employment.

Those who study for a public relations degree will benefit by gaining a better understanding of the communications industry and the everyday workings of a PR agency. There is a gap here that posts like Jed's highlight, a gap that Bright One hopes to help fill.

What inspires you to blog?

I've been tagged in a meme by Tom Malcolm, who was in turn tagged by Stephen Waddington to continue a meme that he was tagged on to by Ged Carroll on what inspires him to keep up his blog posts.

(See all that tagging by the people on the meme who already have a working relationship with each other? That's today's top tip on "How to start a meme").

So, what inspires me to keep up with my blog posts?

• Twitter - Probably first and foremost, this is where most of my inspiration for things to write about comes from, either through conversation, observation or procrastination (e.g. clicking on a URL when you have nothing better to do).
  
• News - Looking for stuff to blog about always makes me keep up with the latest news and issues in the big wide world.
  
• Writing - I think learning how to jot down thoughts in a clear and cohesive manner is an essential skills in the workplace in general. Plus I enjoy writing.
  
• Ideas - Whether it's an idea I've been thinking about and wanted to test to my blog readers, or an idea that I came across somewhere else but wanted to share, the blog is the place for it to go.
  
• People - At the end of the day, this is what it all comes back to. My inspiration to keep up with my blog posts comes from the people, whether to share something with them, hear what they have to say about something, or help me to connect with them.

If you want to read what other people have said inspires them to keep on blogging, then here's a selection of responses to the meme (See? More tagging!):

• Ged Carroll - Looking for inspiration
• Tom Malcolm - Shoestring inspiration
• Drew Benvie - Inpiration to blog
• JonnyRosemont - Looking for inspiration
• Matthew Watson - What inspires your blog posts?

To continue the meme, I'm going to tag Dommy W, Philly S, Timmy B, Jazzy C and by special request, Jeddy H (yet more tagging!).

What inspires you to blog? Let me know in the comments below or even carry on the meme yourself - just don't forget to tag me!

Can I have my spider back please?

A little bit of Friday fun to round the week off, courtesy of Miss Annie Woodhead:

Enabled by Innovation

Our friends over at Enabled by Design (EbD) have been very busy indeed as they have just been accepted onto Innovation Exchange's Next Practice programme, which aims to tackle the problem of innovative ideas that struggle for the resources to sustain or scale by bringing people together to grow help grow third sector innovations.

For those of you who don't know, EbD supports anyone looking to make adjustments to their lives through the use of assistive equipment be it as a result of disability, injury or personal identified need. They aim to make independent living more accessible through the use of clever and stylish modern design.

The Innovation Exchange programme that EbD have been accepted for also includes seed funding through NESTA’s Innovation Fund, which the EbD team will be using to build an innovation pipeline website, where users can share their frustrations (or loves) of different gadgets, gizmos and equipment and work with others to suggest solutions and how improvements can be made.

For a better idea of what EbD are working towards, you can find their offical post here and below is a selection of photos of what a kitchen designed by EbD might look like:

Congratulations to everyone at EbD and we're looking forward to seeing what you get up to next!

(Cross posted to the Bright One blog)

Hotwire heads up 'preeple' table

Following on from yesterday's post on Stephen Davies' list of preeple on Twitter, Michael Litman has produced a table listing agencies' presence on Twitter, which is aimed as a compliment to Stephen’s alphabetically ordered list.

I'm sure the list will get updated as more people add themselves to the list through comments so the table may change, but at the time of writing Hotwire heads up the table with a total of 16 preeple without including any twitterers from it's sister agency, Skywrite Communications. Axicom comes next and it's good to see the Rainier team with 11 Twitter users.

Although the table might not mean that much as the agencies listed vary in size and as such will have differing levels of people on Twitter, it is nice to see that Hotwire has a lot of active people on Twitter and how we recognise it as a useful tool throughout the agency, not just in our digital media practise.

Here's the list as it appears on Michael's blog:

1. Hotwire (16)
2. Axicom (12)
3. Rainier (11)
4. Edelman (9)
5. Lewis (9)
6. Ruder Finn (9)
7. Cow (8)
8. Berkeley (6)
9. Freelance (6)
10. Wolfstar (6)
11. Hill & Knowlton (5)
12. Porter Novelli (5)
13. Six Degrees (5)
14. Text 100 (5)
15. ITV (4)
16. Liberate Media (4)
17. Mantra (4)
18. Microsoft (4)
19. Waggener Edstrom (4)
20. Weber Shandwick (4)
21. Diffusion (3)
22. Kaizo (3)
23. O2 (3)
24. Shiny Red (3)
25. Wildfire PR (3)
26. Fishburn Hedges (2)
27. Nelson Bostock (2)
28. Punch Communications (2)
29. Racepoint Group (2)
30. Splendid Communications (2)
31. Staniforth (2)
32. University of Warwick (2)

Jeeple and Preeple

Stephen Davies of 3W PR has produced two blog posts of note recently (not that is other posts are rubbish, just these ones have garnered more attention than normal...).

The first post lists journalists in the UK who are on Twitter. The second does much the same, listing PR people in the UK who have a profile on Twitter.

So far, there are 85 journalists on the list compared to 137 PR people by the last count. That's almost twice as many 'preeple' on Twitter as there are 'jeeple' (using Stephen's terms), and the list of PR professionals is growing as people leave comments below the post to be added on to the list.

What does this actually mean anything though (apart from the fact that journalists are now going to get contacted more often by PROs on Twitter, PROs will get contacted by recruiters through Twitter, and Stephen will get a lot more hits to his blog)?

It has been documented that there are currently around three times more PR professionals than there are journalists in the UK, so it might come as no surprise that the list of hacks is longer. 

It might also be an indication of the varying levels of usefulness of Twitter as a tool for both professions:

Journalists can source stories and potential snippits of information on Twitter much quicker than most other tools, tweet stories they've recently published, and use it for sourcing information for articles. There's a much longer list of uses and some good discussion on the subject here.

PRs can use Twitter to have a conversation with their cleint's market and make and mange connections with customers, bloggers and other stakeholders, keep in touch and build relationships with the  media and influential bloggers, monitor mentions of their company or client brands, announce special deals,  post live updates on events or conferences and promote blog posts, webinars, interesting client news and more.

I'm sure that journalists will argue with me on this one, but it may just be that PR professionals have a wider range of users for Twitter than journalists and these uses are more valuable to their work (BTW, this isn't me trying to get journalists to leave comments on this post so we can find out more clearly how they use Twitter...).

Then again, it might also be an indication that PR professionals have more time to waste scouring t'internet and posting up to Twitter ;)

What do you think? Do you feel that there is an imbalance in the number of journalists on Twitter compared to PR people? Is this a bad thing? What does it mean for both journalists and PR professionals?