Top 20 Social Media Sites in 2008

Following on from yesterday's post on the rise of social media, another piece of research just released shows which sites have been visited the most. Comscore has released a list revealing the top Social Networks and Social Media sites in 2008. The graph above shows the total unique visitors for the top 5 sites from September 2007 to November 2008 (click to enlarge).

Although the list doesn't include figures from December, it does list the Total Unique Visitors as of November 2008:

1. Blogger - 221,503,000
2. Facebook - 200,189,000
3. MySpace - 126,168,000
4. Wordpress - 113,661,000
5. Windows Live Spaces - 86,760,000
6. Yahoo! Geocities - 69,159,000
7. Flickr - 63,866,000
8. Hi5 - 58,069,000
9. Orkut - 46,446,000
10. Six Apart Sites - 45,606,000
11. Baidu Space - 40,276,000
12. Friendster - 31,325,000
13. 56.com - 29,171,000
14. Webs.com - 24,230,000
15. Bebo - 24,149,000
16. Scribd - 23,524,000
17. Lycos Tripod - 23,350,000
18. Tagged.com - 22,300,000
19. Imeem - 21,889,000
20. Netlog.com - 21,1777,000

Blogger, Google's blogging platform, comes out on top. But Facebook is rising quickly and if the numbers continue will take the top spot and further stretch its lead over its closest social network competitor, Myspace, which comes in at third place.

Wordpress, a blogging platform that takes a more professional take then Blogger's 'push-button-and-publish' approach, comes in at a close fourth, demonstrating its rising popularity among bloggers.

Scribd, a social network for the sharing and discovery of documents, continues to grow and is likely to become more popular in 2009 as it becomes the premier destination for document sharing.

It's also interesting to note some of the lesser known sites - lesser known in the UK, anyway. For example, 56.com, one of the largest video sharing websites in China, and Baidu, the leading Chinese search engine, each have strong userbases which are only set to rise further as more of China comes online.

Surely it's only a matter of time before Twitter enters the Top 20? What sites do you predict to be in the Top 20 next year?

The Rise and Rise of Social Media in the UK

Over at the We Are Social blog, Robin Grant points towards research from Hitwise showing that 10.09% of all UK internet visits over the Christmas period were to ‘Social Networking and Forums’:

"The successes of Facebook and YouTube, along with similar sites, meant that social networks accounted for 1 in every 10 UK Internet visits during Christmas week. For the week ending 27/12/08, our Computers and Internet – Social Networking and Forums category accounted for 10.09% of all UK Internet visits, the first ever time it has passed the 10% threshold."

Robin Goad, Research Director at Hitwise UK

Here's the graph showing the rise in internet traffic to social networking sites over the past 12 months:

UK Social Media traffic Dec '07 - Dec '08

The trend also applies to Twitter:

UK Internet visits to Twitter Jul '07 - Jul '08

The post on We Are Social pulls out another quote from Robin Goad that highlights the key facts about the rise in visits to Twitter:

"UK Internet visits to Twitter have increased by 631% over the last 12 months, with 485% of that growth coming this year. Twitter is more popular with Brits than Americans: last week the site’s share of UK Internet visits was 70% higher its share of visits in America. Twitter cannot yet be considered mainstream in the USA, but in the UK it’s getting there."

It all makes for positive reading for those operating in the space and I'm sure it won't be long before Twitter becomes one a 'mainstream' social network, as many are predicting.

The full set of in-depth data is available in Hitwise’s UK Social Networking Update. Thanks goes to Robin Grant for flagging the research to me.

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)

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?

Geek + Heart = Social Innovation Camp

Here's a video from the guys at Social Innovation Camp, which takes a rather special take on what the event is all about is all about.

The video is a great way of illustrating how Social Innovation Camp encourages the use of social technology for social change - just make sure you watch with the sound turned on!

I caught the end of the first event this year and everyone seemed to come out buzzing from the event, especially our friends at Enabled by Design who picked up first prize.

The next Social Innovation Camp takes place on 5th-7th December, with ideas for submission closing on Friday 7th November 2008. So make sure that you find out more and enter your ideas by checking out the entry page here.

How to write a "great blogger pitch"

My colleague Drew Benvie was sent an "interesting" pitch from a PR firm, which you can read about more on his blog here.

The pitch has received a lot of criticism, not from Drew (as he left the post fairly neutral) but from the comments below the post. These include: "it just seems like a load of waffle"; "what strikes me is that there is no sense of personality in the pitch"; "the overuse of the word aggressive is, well, aggressive"; and - my favourite from Luis Levy - "it's almost as if Word wrote that pitch by itself based on crappy Microsoft algorithms."

Perhaps a bit harsh, but these criticisms could have been easily avoided.

One of the things that I have found most appealing about people involved in social media is the ethos of sharing. Sharing is a good thing, especially when trying to pitch a blogger, as there are plenty of examples and tips on how to pitch a blogger. Now, I'm not going to dive into a long, long list of all sorts of tips on how best to pitch to a blogger. Instead, I'm going to show what the PR professional from 5WPR might have done better, even as some first steps.

In the interests of research, I simply googled the term "great blogger pitch" and came up with the following results:

How to Pitch to Bloggers - 21 Tips
www.problogger.net/archives/2007/10/30/how-to-pitch-to-bloggers-21-tips/

The Jeff Pulver Blog: PR 203: How to Pitch a Blogger
pulverblog.pulver.com/archives/008349.html

Will Video for Food » Best Blogger Pitch Letter Ever
willvideoforfood.com/2008/06/06/best-blogger-pitch-letter-ever/

How to Pitch a Blogger » BloggerDesign.com
www.toprankblog.com/2006/10/blogger-relations-101/

Attention marketers: do you know how to pitch a blogger or podcaster?
www.krishnade.com/blog/2007/how-to-pitch-a-blogger-or-podcaster/

How not to pitch a blogger: Church of the Customer Blog
www.churchofthecustomer.com/blog/2007/04/8_bad_pr_pitche.html

Micro Persuasion: How Not to Pitch a Blogger
www.micropersuasion.com/2005/02/how_not_to_pitc.html


I hope I'm not being too unfair here, but surely it wouldn't have been too much effort to find out what other people have said on the subject? After all, every one of the bloggers on this list would have had to have started somewhere. If it took those bloggers a while to get the pitch just right, then they've done the hard work for you by repeating the exercise until they have found a way that gives them a good chance of being well received when/if they pitch to a blogger.

This situation can be repeated over and over - if you're not sure on how to go about something in the social media sphere, google it and there is sure to be a helpful article from Chris Brogan, Brian Solis, Seth Godin or other brilliant social media strategists to at least help get you started on whatever you're thinking of doing.

While I don't think that there's such a thing as the perfect blog pitch - after all, I believe that every pitch should be tailored for every situation - if all I have to do to pick those social media guru's brains is to google a certain phrase, then I count myself lucky that they have been willing to share their expertise with the rest of us. When we believe our expertise to be of use to someone else, we should be sharing that knowledge too.

So how do you write a great blogger pitch?

Google it. The answer's out there somewhere.

A Bright Idea with A Bright Future

I just wanted to take a moment to tell you about Bright One, an intiative that I've been spearheading over the last few months and that launched last week.

Bright One is a communications agency aimed at charities, non-profits and social enterprises, run by volunteers from the industry who want to broaden their communication’s experience and use their expertise for social good. It aims to deliver high quality communications for charities, non-profit organisations and social enterprises, and in turn help them to reach those they are trying to help. You can find out more about Bright One's aims by going to the website here.

Bright One launched officially on Thursday 25 September with an appearance in PR Week, which you can read by clicking on the photo below.


I hope you agree that this is a great idea - everyone we've spoken to has said so and we know there are plenty of people out there who need our help, which is why an idea has become a working organisation.

You can follow us in Twitter, join our Facebook page, flag useful things to us using Delicious, and find out about the other social entrepreneurs we are working with over at Unltd World.

To get a better idea of what I'm up to over at Bright One, read the introduction post here.

Shenanigans in Chamonix

So I was on holiday a few weeks ago. Well, I call it a holiday but I was actually doing some charity work for Camp Quality UK, running an activity holiday for young people with cancer in Chamonix, France.

It was an amazing week, but definitely one of those 'holidays' where you need a holiday to recover from the previous one (especially if you're responsible for a large group of people on a holiday in a foreign country).

One of the things I've tried to encourage the charity to do is to make more use of Social Media and Web 2.0 and it just so happened that the fact that one of the young people was anaspiring film maker really helped! So Murray (or Mr. Spielberg as we affectionately took to calling him) has produced this rather stunning documentary. At 14 years old he's certainly in the running for the youngest ever film director to win an Oscar!

The documentary runs to about 35 minutes in 4 parts and features yours truly as an MTV Cribs style presenter. Enjoy watching it and joining in the fun. If you fancy donating to the charity so that I can go on more holidays we can take more young people with cancer away on these amazing holidays, then you can do so here.

I'm thinking of writing a post on my experiences with the Camp Quality UK and how they are using Web 2.0 and Social Media to aid them in their cause, which I'll post week or so - any thoughts/links to help me out? Leave them in the comments section below!

Chamonix 2008 - Part 1/4




Chamonix 2008 - Part 2/4




Chamonix 2008 - Part 3/4




Chamonix 2008 - Part 4/4

To Blip or not to Blip?

There's been quite a bit of buzz about Blip.fm recently. For those of you who don't know, Blip.fm is "a music sharing site where you post short messages (blips) with a track attached. The timeline builds up a story accompanied by music documenting your friends’ day. You play the timeline and have music on all day selected by your friends." (Hat tip: Becky McMichael)

You can even upload your own music and give people "props" if you enjoy a particular song they've blipped. You can also share your music on other sites, such as Last.fm and Twitter (check their FAQ to find out more). It's a great site which I'm sure - as more people join - will become an alternative, if not a direct competitor, to Last.fm.

But the ability to share what you're listening to on other sites - normally a definite plus point for emerging services - may actually threaten the success of Blip.fm. Some people have taken to cross-posting every single one of their blips to Twitter, meaning that some people's Twitter streams end up covered with muscial notes and Tinyurls to someone's Blip.fm stream.

This has annoyed a lot of people on Twitter, most notably Bobbie Johnson:

Sorry people - the bliprage has hit me. Please, no more ♫♪ LISTEN TO MY STATION ON COCK.FM!!!!! ♪♪

(Good luck with the move to San Francisco by the way Bobbie - hope it all goes well!)

The reason it annoys people? Tweeting every single one of your blips is spam. Twitter is a platform for conversations, for useful links and for interesting thoughts. Unfortunately, the majority of blips don't fall into any of these categories.

Blip.fm operates just like Twitter, meaning that you can follow other "DJs" and they can follow you back. You can also do @ replies, so you can get a conversation going with any contacts you make on there. The only reason that some people aren't using Blip.fm like Twitter is that the audience isn't there yet. No one is listening to what you have to say on Blip.fm, but by cross-posting to Twitter you instantly gain a much bigger audience.

But, unfortunately, the people who tweet every blip will find that their audience on Twitter will decrease - I've stopped following at least 3 people because of their blip spam.

It's an interesting example of where cross posting can go wrong and I'm sure (and hope) that Blip.fm won't fail because of this.

What are your thoughts on Blip.fm? A good service or do you still favour Last.fm? Do you tweet your blips?

If you fancy finding out about the music I listen to, you can add me as a favourite DJ at blip.fm/benrmatthews. I promise I won't spam you with 80s glam rock!

Silicon Seaside

Last week Tim Bradshaw, the Financial Times' intrepid Digital Media Correspondent, wrote an article called "Silicon Roundabout", about an area near Old Street tube station where a whole menagerie of internet start-ups are based.

It started when Matt Biddulph, CTO of Dopplr, plotted his fellow Roundabouters on Google Maps to lend credence to the idea (see http://bit.ly/siliconroundabout). It was soon picked up and spread around the blogosphere (see here, here, here and here.)

Well, I'd like to be so bold (if I may) as to offer up an alternative to Silicon Valley, Silicon Roundabout and all the other Silicon Somethings out there (is there such a place as Silicon Implant?)

It's called "Silicon Seaside", and is otherwise known as Brighton.

Brighton seems to have captured the right mix of creatives and techies to form a special place with its own distinct atmosphere (let alone being my place of birth, which is pretty special in itself...)

There's a whole host of stuff going on in Brighton. There's Wired Sussex, who works with digital media companies of all sizes helping them to develop and grow, and Sussex Digital, which focuses on the Sussex figital commnity. There's the Whuffie Club, a new social media network started by the guys at Social8, a company that advises, supports and trains organisations wishing to deploy blogs, wikis and collaborative solutions. Nixon McInnes, those social media superstars with Tom Nixon and Will McInnes at the helm, also call Brighton their home (and are a client at Hotwire). There's more SEO and Search Marketing companies than you can shake a stick of Brighton rock at, Leapfrogg and Propellernet being the two that I'm most aware of.

For those that don't have their own fancy office space, there's The Werks, a hub designed to provide workspace, education, support, events and workshops to creative businesses in Brighton. The Werks also runs a range of events which appeal to the the Brighton scene, with subjects ranging from "Grow your wiki" to "Using Wordpress as a CMS".

Brighton also plays host to its very own BarCamp, with the next one (BarCampBrighton3) being held in September. BarCampBrighton3 is proving as popular as its London counterpart, with the first round of 40 tickets selling out in just 10 minutes and MySpace heading a list of impressive sponsors.

In fact, Brighton is showing more signs of giving London a run for its money. Microsoft announced that they would be holding their ReMix UK event in Brighton this year, which is usually held in London. Microsoft even went so far to describe Brighton as "a really chilled out place that has a unique creative buzz about it."

If all that wasn't enough, up pops Josh Russell with yet another scheme to pull the digital media mavens away from London Town - the Brighton Social Media Cafe, "a place for people interested in social media to gather, get acquainted, and to plot, scheme, and share." The first meet up takes place at 11am on Saturday August 16th 2008 and there's a wiki you can sign up to at www.icanhaz.com/TuttleBrighton

Incidentally, Josh also blogged about the proliferation of geeks and techies in Brighton where "you’re never more than 5 minutes away from another geek or “web professional” like-minded folk."According to Josh, all it takes "is a twitter about coffee and a vague mention of a location, and the geeks will find themselves drawn towards you."Josh even produced a map of their regular haunts should you ever want to bump into one, which you can see on Google Maps.

I'm not sure if the term will catch on, but there's a lot going on down in Brighton so why not take a trip down to find ou for yourself? It's under an hour by train from London, there's a lovely beach and ther'es always the Josh's Google Map should you want to meet some like-minded folk.

I'm sure there's a whole host of companies, ideas and networks that I've missed out here, which I'm hoping those too-cool-for-school Brighton people will fill me in on.

"Silicon Seaside" - what do you think?

Blogging for the real world

Last weekend, I was lucky enough to spend the weekend in Dorset doing some charity work. Much as I love London, it was great to get out of the City into the countryside for a bit of a break from the fast-paced city life.

As an added bonus, we were in the middle of nowhere and could barely get any phone reception, let alone an internet connection. This meant that there was no way of keeping up with the blogosphere, Twitter, or emails.

It was great to get away from it all - even if for just a weekend.

This sentiment rang even truer given the book I took away with me to read: We Think by Charles Leadbeater. It seemed to me, reading in the middle of a field in the middle of nowhere under a lazy blue sky, that Leadbeater could have done with stepping outside his office more often.

Don't get me wrong - We Think is a great book. It explores plenty of the issues surrounding the new ways of working that the internet has brought about and the challenges we will all face in the future in light of this. Leadbeater also avoids using overly complicated language for the sake of it and uses simple terms and descriptions to get across his ideas (a big tick in my box).

But - and I think this is a problem with academia in general - it seems to be less rooted in the real world with concrete examples of how to apply the theories put forward to the real world, and more as a piece of academia written for academia's sake.

You could argue that the same happens to the blogosphere - blog comments just come from bloggers commenting on each others blogs. Twitter is an extension of this; bloggers commenting on issues - not on each others blogs, but on Twitter (could it be argued that Twitter is a post and every Tweet a comment underneath it?)

Clay Shirky's Here Comes Everybody is a much better book - for me anyway. It is written ion the same simple language as We Think, but the ideas it puts forward are much more rooted in the real world, concrete examples and case studies are explored in depth, and - most importantly - it is discussed how these examples can help us in our everyday business and personal lives and what we can take from these examples. Shirky has stepped outside his office into the real world, but then brought it back to write the book, and finally tailored it to be put back out into the real world.

This is a lesson that I'm hoping to take to my blog. I'm going to try and root every blog post in the real world, giving examples of how readers can apply the ideas given to their work and personal lives. It may be a tall order - not every blog post will appropriate or useful - but it's a good ideal to work towards.

As for stepping outside the online bubble? I think I'm pretty good at that anyway, but will try to keep on keeping on and getting out into the real world. This may seem hypocritical coming from someone who's paid to do online PR, but to keep things even more in perspective, read this unbelievably true blog post from Jeremy Pepper.

The kids I was helping this weekend have gone through so much more than you or I probably ever will, so just bear in the back of your mind the next time you're still reading blogs at 2am that it just doesn't matter.

CIPR release a SMNR

The Social Media News Release (SMNR), derided by some as unecessary, has been given a new lease of life.

The Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) has used WebitPR to promote their upcoming World PR Conference and Festival using a SMNR.

Based upon Todd Defren's original idea, the release has all the normal content of a traditional press release, but also contains images of senior executives, logos, related documents, related websites, tags, a range of social bookmarks, and feeds for other releases and comments.

You can view the Social Media News Release here, and presumably we'll see a lot more companies doing them - unless of course they bypass this angle and setup a social media press office or a blog, which some argue has replaced the need for a SMNR.

The Social Media Library

Sitting on the corner of my desk is a small (but growing) collection of books on social media and Web 2.0 that I've somewhat affectionately dubbed "The Social Media Library".

The idea is that people can borrow books from the library to get up to speed with what's going on in social media and Web2.0 right now and the theories behind the latest developments. Sure, there's blogs and Twitter to keep track of too, but books are still an important way of exploring current issues. People can then add to the collection if they spot a good read - I've been potentially promised a copy of Chris Anderson's The Long Tail by a colleague already - and share their thoughts with each other on how they can use the ideas described in each book.

Because the collection is quite small at the moment, I should probably call it a "mini-library", but it's getting bigger as I get more books. I also considered calling it "Library 2.0", but the collection is based in the real world, so that idea went out the window.

So far, the books in the library are:

• Small Is The New Big, by Seth Godin (@sethgodin)
• We-Think, by Charles Leadbeater (@wethink)
• Here Comes Everybody, by Clay Shirky (@cshirky), courtesy of Tom Watson (@tom_watson)
  
• Groundswell, by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff

I've read "Small Is The New Big" and "Here Comes Everybody" (both highly recommended) and have just started reading Groundswell, which I want to give a little background on as to why I'm looking forward to getting really into it.

Groundswell's bottom line is that Web 2.0 is about LISTENING to PEOPLE, not about the technologies. Loads of varied yet relevant examples are woven throughout the text to illustrate the points, which is great to see how other companies have innovated in this field. The authors also provide numbers that show how an investment in executive blogging and nurturing customers and partners can give back at least 150% if not more - vital for any PRs wanting to demonstrate added value to their clients.

It's also worth sharing an opinion from someone who's actually finished the book, so here's an excerpt from a review by David Berkowitz (www.marketersstudio.com):

"Groundswell is the best book on social media I've ever read, and it may be the best book ever written on the subject. Here's why:

1. It's current. Books on social media by nature almost can't be current. Everything is blogged or twittered one day, forgotten the next. Yet this book has some staying power, and you can give it to your boss or your client feeling reassured that even if they don't get around to reading it for six months, it'll still be valuable when they do.

2. Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff write the book like authors, not analysts, even though there's plenty of number-crunching with meaty take-aways. The human stories that illustrate each point provide protagonists you can identify with.

3. If you're new to social media, you'll appreciate a lot of the how-to material. If you're a pro, you'll appreciate how to do it even better and some of the more advanced material in the book.

4. The technographics, discussed frequently on the Groundswell blog and in the analysts' presentations, are useful. I've already used these for planning client campaigns to at least check if I'm on the right track or inspire some new thinking. If you read the book, the technographics tool on the Groundswell site becomes even more intuitive, although the site has enough info to get value out of it. It's amazing how much Forrester's giving away.

5. You get breakdowns of return on investment metrics of an executive's corporate blog, ratings and reviews, and a community support forum, figures which are hard to find elsewhere and can provide good benchmarks for related scenarios you may encounter.

6. The book offers thoughtful answers to some of the more important questions. How can you tell if a new technology has staying power? Why do people participate with social media? How do you energize your customers? When should you use blogs, social networks, and other media technologies?

The one thing the book doesn't do enough of is describe why some campaigns go awry. They mention a Special K community on weight management that had a promising start but soon fizzled. Why?"

Groundswell is shaping up to be a "ripping yarn" and I'll let you know my thoughts on it when I finish. I'm hoping that The Social Media Library will have grown - both in the number of books and readers - by the time I finish it.

What about you? Do you have a social media library? If you set one up, what books would be in there? What books should I add to my library?

PR Event: Chinwag Live's Micro Media Maze

I piled in late to the Chinwag Live event last night, which took place at The Slug and Lettuce on Wardour Street, Soho. I managed to get a fairly good seat at the back though (complete with clear route to the bar), so got to catch plenty of the action.

The event was billed as follows:

"First the music track was decoupled from the physical product and the "long player" album, then the newspaper article was severed from the website. The same wave rolled over the blog post, the TV show, the photo, the vlog, and now the tweet...

It seems like everything's gone micro. As content is disaggregated into ever smaller pieces and syndicated and widgetised at accelerating speed, how is the media landscape being re-shaped, and who are the winners in this scenario?

Are media owners caught between a rock and a hard place? They've got to get their content out there, but context and branding work differently in the world of mashups and aggregators. In turn, the revenues they make from micro media pale in comparison to their staple money-making ventures (print, CDs, TV, DVD, film).

P2P culture is also firmly embedded, with iTunes and other digital retailers numbers' still dwarfed by ripping and filesharing. Now media giants like Microsoft and the BBC are using P2P technnology, but has their deeper modus operandi shifted? Are they fated to be outpaced and outgunned by innovative companies who play by different rules?

In turn, is the profusion of micro-content a recipe for meltdown, with information overload and competing "me-too" platforms delivering little but dumb aggregation which ultimately becomes a headache?

In this, the sequel to our groundbreaking Media Widgetised / Widget Week event in May 2007, our panel of experts will look at the issues and opportunities surrounding the explosion of micro media for publishers, brands, business, and culture more broadly..."

And the panel of exeprts were:

Umair Haque - Director, Havas Media Lab / Bubblegeneration
Umair heads up the Havas Media Lab, a new kind of strategic advisor that helps investors, entrepreneurs, and firms experiment with, craft, and drive radical management, business models, and strategic innovation. Prior to Havas, Umair founded Bubblegeneration, an agenda-setting advisory boutique that helped shape the strategies of investors, entrepreneurs, and blue chip companies across media and consumer industries. Bubblegeneration’s work has been recognised by publications like Wired, Red Herring, Business 2.0, and BusinessWeek, and in Chris Anderson’s Long Tail, to which Umair was a contributor. He also blogs as a discussion leader at Harvard Business Online.

Gerd Leonhard - Media Futurist, Author, Entrepreneur
The Wall Street Journal calls Gerd one of the leading media futurists in the world. Co-author of the influential book The Future of Music (2005, Berklee Press), Music2.0 (Jan 2008, self-published paywhatyouwant pdf available), and of Open is King (Fall 2008), Gerd's background is in music (he won the Quincy Jones Award in 1986) as well as technology and the internet (former CEO of LicenseMusic Inc; currently CEO of Sonific.com). His work focuses on the convergent sectors of music and content, technology, communications and culture. His clients include SonyBMG, RTL, ITV, BBC, France Telekom, German Telekom, Orange, LebWeb3, Financial Times, TribalDDB, the European Commission, and Nokia-Siemens.

Miles Lewis - SVP, European Advertising Sales, LastFM
Miles launched his career in media at Haymarket publishing in 1988, moving to a consumer magazine role with IPC Media for their Leisure Network. Shifting to Good Housekeeping, a 5 year stint at the National Magazine Company included various roles across Corporate Business Development and finally Director, Advertising Sales at Esquire. Miles then became the UK’s first Head of Agency Sales at AOL (UK) Ltd in 2001. Five years on, Blake Chandlee (now at Facebook UK) brought Miles into Yahoo!’s UK and Ireland operations as Head of Agency Sales. Then CBS’s Last.fm came knocking and now Miles is charged with the strategy, direction and monetisation of Last.fm across Europe, Asia Pacific and Australia.

Mitch McAlister - Product Director (Europe), MySpace
In his current role Mitch defines and lead European product strategy and architecture to address market demands, revenue oppertunities, and user growth, identifying and building relationships with potential technology partners to enhance current product offering. Prior to Myspace, he was Project Lead at Universal Music Enterprises. With over 8 years experience in the internet industry Mitch's focus has been product and marketing, specifically on the social media side of things. He has built eBay stores, runs a weekly podcast, and has been working with MySpace for three years.

Neil McIntosh - Head of Editorial Development, Guardian Unlimited
Neil McIntosh is head of editorial development for Guardian.co.uk, where he has led the launch and development of innovative blog, audio and video services since 2004. He lives in London, supports Swindon Town FC, and blogs about it all at completetosh.com



CHAIR: Steve Bowbrick
Steve is one of Britain's most experienced Internet managers and entrepreneurs. A fifteen year veteran of dot.com boom and bust, of web site design, online marketing, technology strategy, capital raising and people management. Steve advises media owners (Channel 4 and the BBC), startups (Rememble.com) and consumer brands (King of Shaves) about social media and digital strategy.


Here's the skinny on what I managed to jot down whilst balancing a notepad on one knee and a hard-earned pint on the other:

Micro-media and social issues:

• We still see widgets as games, largely due to Facebook
• Last.fm and Myspace revolutionised the music industry, solving a problem along the way
• But there are more serious global problems, such as world poverty, health, education, rising food prices
• We are under an illusion, especially in London, that media is entertainment, but the media also educates and can be used to solve social problems
• Widgest and micro-media can offer a way to help solve these problems
• But you have to create value before you can capitalise on it, you have to have a purpose before you can profit from it
• Umair Haque's challenge for micro-media developers: how do we solve social problems and add value at the same time?

The media's control of micro-media:

• The media is starting to move to a model where they are collaborating with their audience
• The key is where they choose to loose control and where they choose to keep it
• The stakes and the risks are high for media organisations, but if they don't take these risks then it's game over for them
• If these "old dinosaurs" don't change their business moidel to address social problems then they will become extinct

How will revenue be generated?

• Media comapnies control billions of punds of spend
• But this money is being spent on where the audience is migrating to
• They are putting it into TV and search, which works for some companies but will not reach the right audience for most
• Old media won't die, people will just use it in different ways
• People still watch Eastenders, but they'll watch it on BBC's iPlayer rather than on their TV
• People used to pay for music, but now they get it for free by clicking somewhere
• The same has happened for software and phone calls
• No one knows where the next success is, the next "Google", but this is where we should be investing, not in traditional media

Brand Messaging:

• There is an assumption that brands will have to piggy back a message onto their widgets
• The CEO of Kellogs can't go to traditional media and say "Well, we've turned Crunchy Nut Cornflakes into a listening brand - what more do you want?"
• Micro-media is a slower process of engagement with a brand's audience

What does this mean for our culture?

• The BBC can't commission big budget dramas that people like to watch, e.g. 24, The Sopranos
• We must think carefully which content and functionality we push out into micro-media
• The BBC like to think that their content is good enough to push out to YouTube and iTunes, through which they can create a global voice

Last.fm have already created value - what percentage of your reve=nue comes through affiliates, e.g. ticket sales?

• Can't give percentage split of revenue streams
• But Last.fm is the world's largest on-demand jukebox
• The future will be taking data to agencies: how can data on listener's music tastes fit into a brand's efforts?
• For example, if dishwasher powder buyers like Madonna, and the advert plays a Madonna song, at what point does this affect sales?
• Listeners have been giving Last.fm their music tastes, but the challenge for Last.fm was to build a platform to keep this data safe
• But now micro-media will take this data away from the Last.fm site, which raises the problem of data security
  
• Some data is too personal to Last.fm - they are purely a music silo that benefits users when they give more data to the site
  

What financial incentives could there be for users creating content?

• The overhead for running user generated content is tremendous
• Myspace has 100s of people checking photos that are uploaded to the site
• Running this outweighs whatever revenue could be giving to content creators
  

The end of the night was the best bit, with plenty of good chat/banter, ideas developed and new introductions made, all lubricated by a healthy amount of alcomahol.

Among the crowd were Jonathan Hopkins (@jopkins), Claire W (@claire_w), Amanda Rose (@amandita), Dom Whitehurst (@domw), Katy Howell (@katyhowell), Robin Grant (@robingrant), and Will Mcinnes (@willmcinnes) - so a big hello to them!

I'm already looking forward to the next Chinwag Live event, but in the meantime I need to start building that micro-media application for this blog that will solve world hunger...

Update 1: Jemima Kiss blogged the Chinwag event at The Guardian's PDA blog.
Update 2: Jonathan Hopkins also adds some great insight into the event.

The unconference that 'Shined' on us all

In case you missed it, the SHINE Unconference took place over the weekend. I blogged it where I could, but just found the sessions to be too engaging to really take the time and write it up in-depth.

Instead, I'll point you towards shine.socialreporter.net where a team of bloggers covered the event properly, a Qik event page with lots of glorious video, and a Flickr set with all its photographic goodness - including this one of me pitching my social enterprise idea to a crowded room:


Meanwhile, over on UnltdWorld - the social network for social entreprenuers - those who attended were asked for feedback on the event:

"What did you think of it? Which sessions did you like? Did the style and format work for you? Did you make any lasting connections?"

Here's my response to the questions:

• Walking round a random corner into a random room and joining a random session, but finding lots of great people doing great things and talking about great ideas
• The wide range of support for those at different stages, whether that was an idea, the beginning stages of setting up, or those further along.
• THE PEOPLE! Met some really inspiring figures and everyone I met was more than willing to help everyone in whatever way they could or point them out to someone who could!
• Made loads of connections and have a whole heap of business cards to get through - will email everyone I said I would soon!

I really did meet lots of inspiring people doing some great projects. I offered communications advice where I could to social entrepreneurs like Maureen (pictured with me below). I also ran a session on how to communicate on a tight budget, which seemed to go well by the smile on people's faces as they left the room.


Loads of other people answered the question on Unltd World. Here is a selection of their responses:

• I love the informality around the sessions. Great participation, networking, the venue. Though would have liked more participation.
• It was fantastic. Great vibe. It was about people, conversations and genuine knowledge sharing. It was about the power of context over formality, and of fun and passion over structure. Brilliant.
• Best things about Shine - the spirit, the people, the collaboration.
  The style and format worked in the spirit of the event. I'd been to Good Deals afew days earlier - a "Conference" that involved pretty much 6 hours of sitting & listening to (great) speakers. Shine is to Conferences what the Fringe is to the Edinburgh Festival.
• I enjoyed a 1:1 session with What if!, I really enjoyed the session I did on Entrepreneurs & Emotional Intelligence because of the participation from a lovely group of interested people.
  
• I loved the synchronicity of the whole event and all that busy blogging, reporting and podcasting. It all felt really alive.
• The visual impression: passing room after room and seeing circles of social entrepreneurs leaning forward in intense discussions.

As you can see, everyone seemed to think the event was a great success. Sure, some things did go wrong and there are plenty of aspects that could be improved, but it was the first time the event took place, so there was always going to be teething problems.

I hope to be there again next year - perhaps the various online content around Shine has inspired you enough that I'll see you there too!

Charity Communications: Brave New World

This session was billed as "An interactive and entertaining session about the opportunities new media offers to charities, for communications and fundraising. A particularly innovative format; inspiring and a little outrageous."

And to be fair, Russell Davies (@russelldavies) - internet marketing guru and columnist at Campaign magazine - lived up to the hype.

Russell started by admitting that he didn't know what charity communications people do and wouldn't pretend to, but he was here to tell us what he tells all the brands he's worked with and hoped we were clever enough to use it in our own way.

The world is getting blurry, e.g. anyone with a camera is considered a journalist. This offers dangers as well as possibilities.

Brands have to get interesting or get useful - preferably both.

For the last 15 years, marketing meant find a message, fine tune that message, then hammer that message home.

Now, marketing has to question how it can get its audience to engage with it. Their messages must have depth, humour, subtlety, irony, anger, romance, excitement, etc, etc...

It's like velcro, which works because it's got loads and loads of hooks. It doesn't matter if they don't all hook, as long as some do.

Russell then showed this Nike advert:



It is effective not because of the message it is delivering, but the way it is communicating. It is bypassing language, as viewers smile an nod along with the music. You can't bash people over the head with your message - your communication needs to be more interesting.

The Run London campaign for Nike was a success because of its usefulness. Feedback suggested that Reebok and Adidas adverts were better, but the Nike campaign helped a lot of people run 10k. This usefulness was more effective in reaching the campaign's target audience.

He then showed us this clip:



There are millions of people out there who are smarter, funnier and better at doing this than you. Organisations need to work in partnership with these people, not ramming the message down their throat.

As an example of this, Russell showed the Nike 'Joga Chain' campaign:



This campaign worked because of the partnership. It wouldn't have worked without the individuals who created the content or without the global reach of the Nike.

Key Lessons:

1. You learn this stuff by doing it, not by viewing it
2. Think quick, small, real
3. You can't control the conversation, but you can build somewhere for the conversation to happen
4. It's not about more powerful machines, it's about more powerful people
   

Charity Communications: I'll Tell You What I Want

The panel of journalists and producers spoke candidly about what kind of stories they’re interested in and revealed exactly what they need for a news or feature story.

On the panel were:

• Andy Smith, editor, BBC Radio 4 You and Yours
• Sara Ward, deputy editor, Take a Break magazine
• Vikki Cook, executive producer, Sky News
• Emma Tucker, editor, Times2

What makes a good pitch?

Andy Smith:

• Don't ring between 12 and 1 when the programme is on air!
• Ensure the pitch has a human interest
• Helps if public policy is involved in some way
• The story must stand up journalistically, e.g. make an interesting news piece
• Know you story - hates it when he asks questions and the PR can't answer them
• Avoid spin, e.g. fake survey
• Phone the appropriate journalist

Sara Ward:

• Look at our magazine and what we write about
• There are no celebrities on the magazine so don't offer us celebrities!
• Call in the afternoon - as a newsroom they're busy in the morning
• Thursday at 3:30pm is the best time to call as they have just put the previous issue to press
• Find out when a publication goes to print and contact them straight after that
• Offer an interesting 'life story' rather than a boring case study

Emma Tucker:

• Doesn't read press releases (!)
• Know the section you're pitching to
• Target the appropriate section editor
• "I've got a great idea for this column on this day"
• Try approaching freelancers, as they will often have a relationship with editors and therefore have more of a way in

Vikki Cook:

• For TV, it is critical that you have good case studies
• Have a great story - if you can't sell it to me then I can't sell it to our viewers
• A good spokesperson must really know their stuff and think of 2/3 key quotes that can be used as soundbites
• Those key quotes will be used across all platforms - Web, TV, Radio, Print
• Ask for the charity's details to be included in the piece - if you don't ask, you don't get!
• But not for radio, as listeners don't have time to write down a website

Charity Communications: Soundbite Session - Kids Company

Camila Batmanghelidjh, Founder and Chief Executive of Kids Company, is an award-winning campaigner who was here to tell us all about how she uses media coverage to lobby government and represent children's issue to an audience who would not otherwise hear about them.

Kids Company has 220 paid workers, 3000 volunteers and around 100 clinical consultants.

It is very important to speak to journalists as kids have no voice to call their service providers to account. But it is important not to have a media agenda focussed on promoting the charity, but rather make all media coverage about the kids the charity is helping.

The Government needed to understand that young people can be reached. Without media coverage, the charity wouldn't have got their Government grant. Not that the Government had ill will, but they didn't think about the issues that the charity was addressing and they needed to think about those issues. The Government changed its financial structure, resulting in 90 charities applying for the new grants, with 5 receiving funding in the end.

The charity finds opportunities to bring the experiences of the kids to the public. They are 'bridging experiences'. The public won't go to a crack den, so the charity has to get the kids to bring a version of a crack den to the public through exhibitions, events, etc.

Their first motto is 'The kids come first'. As such, they won;t put any kids forward to speak to the media as a case study if they are vulnerable.

"Love and respect is a better surveillance camera than a surveillance camera itself."

Why do the media concentrate on Batmanghelidjh rather than the charity?

Firstly, she is fat and colourful (her words!). Secondly, she is prepared to be attached to an sensitive issue and is prepared to stand by what she says.

How do kids find the charity?

97% is through self-referral. These 'menaces to society' are talking to each other about the chairty and helping each other take advantage of the services it offers.

"If you can get the service right, the customer always comes."

Charity Communications: Changing Attitudes

The first session of the day at Charity Communications 08 was called 'Changing Attitudes' and was based around the following questions:

• Can a high profile media campaign change the way we think and live?
• What are the next big issues facing charities?
• From AIDS campaigns of the 1990s to the recent smoking and drink driving campaigns - Is the media the right place to be educating the nation?

The panel consisted of the following:

• Jean Collingwood, chief executive, The Drinkaware Trust
• Kate Stringer, communications officer, Moving People
• Clare Hutchinson, head of planning, WCRS

The session started by showing the British Heart Foundation's 'Pick Up The Beat' advert:

Does this advert work? Who does it work for?

Jean Collingwood spoke about truthaboutbooze.com, which works with other charities who share alcohol related issues. She argued that charities need authentic engagement with their audiences - such as Myspace, Bebo, Facebook, etc - two-way mechanisms that will create a conversation,

What they found from their research was that young people were more savvy about alcohol then they gave them credit for. The messages that charities were giving them were very patronizing.

Having got this information about attitudes, is there a way of changing behaviour?

Kate Stringer spoke about the Moving People campaign, which aimed to reduce negative attitudes towards people with learning disabilities by 5%. The stigma towards mental illness comes from ignorance. People with learning disabilities feel that their illness is the 'last taboo.' The campaign needed to reach 75% of the population to change attitudes and the media was a key to achieving this.

Before the campaign even started, the organisation spent 2 years researching attitudes towards people with learning disabilities. Once the campaign started, the ad campaign was backed up by a local media campaign around the UK.

Claire Hutchinson spoke about the 'Don't Make Children Breathe Your Smoke' campaign:

When smoking was banned from pubs and clubs, its prevalence dropped significantly. But many smokers, particularly from low income families, were unaware of the damage second hand smoke caused to others. After the campaign, there was a shift in people making their homes smoke free.

The campaign was part of a collective effort to help people stop smoking. In 2000, 8% of people said anti-smoking adverts were the trigger to quit smoking. In 2004, this percentage rose to 30%.

This was achieved through the right adverts used in the right ways in the right locations. But it was agreed that it takes a long time to change public attitudes towards a subject. For example, it too 25 years to change attitudes towards drink driving.

But the media is often the first attitude that needs changing as they are key to the public changing their attitudes.

PR is essential to changing attitudes, as its strongest point is its 'realness' - truth penetrates much better through PR than advertising.

PR Event: Charity Communications 08

Today I attended the Charity Communications 08 conference, which took place at Friends House in Euston, London. I was there representing Camp Quality UK, who I am on the board of as Secretary and as a trustee.

The charity has been improving its communications practices in recent months, with a rebranding and social media programme the most notable improvements.

I hoped that the conference would give us plenty of advice and expertise on how our charity can communicate with its stakeholders, the media, and the general public.

I took notes on most of the sessions and will be writing a post on each one, but for the moment the full programme is below:

Changing Attitudes
Can a high profile media campaign change the way we think and live? What are the next big issues facing charities? From AIDS campaigns of the 1990s to the recent smoking and drink driving campaigns. Is the media the right place to be educating the nation?
• Jean Collingwood, chief executive, The Drinkaware Trust
• Kate Stringer, communications officer, Moving People
• Clare Hutchinson, head of planning, WCRS

View the write up to this session here.

The Soundbite Session
Camila Batmanghelidjh, chief executive, Kids Company
The award-winning campaigner and founder of Kids Company tells all about how she uses media coverage to lobby government and represent children's issue to an audience who would not otherwise hear about them.

View the write up to this session here.

I’ll tell you what I want
Our panel of journalists and producers speak candidly about what kind of stories they’re interested in. The panel will reveal exactly what they need for a news or feature story, and delegates will have the opportunity to ‘pitch’ their story.

• Andy Smith, editor, BBC Radio 4 You and Yours
• Sara Ward, deputy editor, Take a Break magazine
• Vikki Cook, executive producer, Sky News
• Emma Tucker, editor, Times2

View the write up to this session here.

Keynote Q&A
• Kelvin MacKenzie, former Sun editor and tabloid expert.

Brave New World
An interactive and entertaining session about the opportunities new media offers to charities, for communications and fundraising. A particularly innovative format; inspiring and a little outrageous.
• Russell Davies, internet marketing guru and columnist, Campaign magazine.

View the write up to this session here.

What’s the worst that could happen?
How to survive a PR disaster or media crisis. Get advice from communications experts who’ve seen it all and from charities who have survived. This session will be packed with info for charities about how to plan for the worst.
• Brendan Paddy, media manager, Age Concern England
• David Cowdrey, head of press and media relations, WWF
• Sue Stapely, crisis communications consultant

The Soundbite Session: Charities Take Control
Charities have voted to hear from the communications campaign they’ve most admired in the last year. The session will be presented by Sarah Fitzgerald, head of communications at Motor Neurone Disease Association, the winning organisation.

The Big Interview
Nick Davies, award winning journalist and author of controversial new book Flat Earth News: Falsehood, Distortion and Propaganda in the Global Media, will talk about how charities can find a way through media misrepresentation to get their stories told fairly.
Polly Toynbee, Guardian columnist and author, will be asking the questions and sharing her own experiences.