Here's one     -------------------------- and updated:... Read More

It would appear National Australia Bank (NAB) stuck a toe in the waters of social media, and liked it so much they jumped right in. But then jumped out right again, very shortly afterwards. Story here. More salutary lessons on how large organizations... Read More

eMarketer lifts some interesting data from TNS on the online activities of UK internet users in an article on Advertising on UK Social Networks. As ever data throws up some curiousities - 76% have used online banking, but only 16% have viewed, or contributed... Read More

Something about the juxtaposition of junk food and social networks appeals. Bin out 10 Facebook friends and get to gorge on junk food with Whopper Sacrifice. Hat tip to Wade.... Read More

The BBC's Rory Cellan-Jones explains why Twitter can't be ignored by both the media and PR professionals here. Neither is Twitter a complete answer, of course. And yes, there is a law of diminishing returns that surrounds the time invested in it.... Read More

In this Reuters article - Tech Firms Tune into Social Media to Reach Consumers - NetApps says it plans to spend 20 per cent of its PR budget on social media. If NetApps were really radical, they would be planning to spend 20 per cent of their advertising... Read More

Harvard Business Publishing shared some research on Twitter usage last week. The data gave ammunition to PC World among others, to deflate the Twitter bubble, just a little bit at least. According to David Coursey at PC World: Across the 300,000... Read More

                That's it I'm retiring from social media. It doesn't get any better than this. Out of the blue, Gene Hunt (fictional Life on Mars detective from the 70s) starts to follow me on Twitter.... Read More

On the day that Britain's PR industry disappeared into it's own PR Week inspired Twitter maelstrom, some Social media demographics from Brainz, sort of. Here's the view on Twitter. There is truth in their irony.... Read More

A few people have posted about the pros and cons of excessive tweeting. Tom called it Twitter Tourettes. So if a 'tweet' captures a thought or comment, then surely a 'twitch' is a compulsive nervous tic expressed through Twitter.... Read More

Funny thing that social media, the news just gets out there and old fashioned PR cycles get bypassed. Which is great. It's just one reason why we think many aspects of traditional PR are history. Hence we have wooed the very wonderful Brendan Cooper... Read More

A flurry of stories on the issues around managing social media participation for employers and, by default I guess, employees too: BL Ochman - Does Your Company Have a Social Media Participation Policy? News of the boys in blue and their special interest... Read More

I signed up to Mr Tweet. The strength of Mr Tweet is also its weakness. Mr Tweet analyses who you follow via Twitter, and then suggests other people to follow, based upon who the people that you follow, are in turn following themselves. If you follow... Read More

Nothing like a spot of snow to get people Twittering, Flickring and Mashing. On the other hand Belle (see below) and I are too busy scouring the Chiltern hedgerows looking for stranded commuters to write it up, so take a look at Ben Marsh's nifty... Read More

There have been some interesting, vaguely connected, posts this week contributing to the discussion around where we are with the adoption of social media, particularly among larger or more conservative organizations. A bit too much to... Read More

OK so everyone hates the 2.0 attachment, but also everyone knows what we - loosely speaking at least - mean by it. A couple of articles on the subject of enterprise 2.0 caught my eye in the past day or two. Bill Gates took time in his last CIO Summit... Read More

                  As Twitter ends a creaky week of sporadic downtime, BusinessWeek has an article on Why Twitter Matters and explores the potential for it to emerge into a 'social media powerhouse'.... Read More

Last week I listened to a Woman's Hour* feature about Second Life (OK, I spend too much time commuting). At the time, I couldn't decide whether the arrival of Second Life on Woman's Hour signified it had gone mainstream, or that it was all over for... Read More

I like Best Buy's idea to create Remix, an API for Best Buy product line information and price data. Basically, third parties can now incorporate the data into their own service offerings, extending the reach of Best Buy into new channels and services.... Read More

Picking up on a contributed post at e-Consultancy's blog: The problem with conversational marketing The quick summary of the post is, that opening up conversations (dialogue via social media) with your customers isn't going to be enough, if... Read More

The Forrester posse is full of their new report on B2B buyers use of social media. Josh Bernoff says: "If you're a B2B marketer and you're not using social technologies in your marketing, this report means you're late." "This is your chance to stand... Read More

Analyst reports and market data are all well and good but its personal experience that tells you something has really reached an inflection point. It was Open Day at my girls next school yesterday. On one wall was a project where the pupils had been... Read More

Deloitte's research is picked up here in a piece by Read Write Web's Marshall Kirkpatrick, who refers to an earlier WSJ article. Blanket condemnation is good for headlines but is not 100 per cent true. It would be more accurate to say dumb ideas... Read More

Much discussion about the role of Twitter in reporting on the recent Mumbai attacks. Forbes.com reports: Mumbai: Twitter's Moment Rory Cellan-Jones of the BBC puts some perspective around the more outrageous claims for Twitter in Twitter - the Mumbai... Read More

Charlene Li, now the sole employee of Altimeter Group, has produced a new report - free to download - correlating leading brands' level of engagement in social media and their value. The report can be found here and explanatory post from... Read More

Having just returned from SXSW and MIX10, where geo-location, social technologies and user experience were all big topics of conversation, I arrived back in London to find Metia Labs has just finished the Near.me project. Near.me uses the Foursquare... Read More

Here's the formal release: Metia creates a ‘Rough Guide to the World’ web site for leading travel publisher ·         Interactive site uses Windows Internet Explorer 9, HTML5 and Flickr to allow travellers to... Read More

Btw – introduced Emma to the delights of #bbcqt last night – she most amused – funny made me think about Trigger Moments or Get it moments – different for each individual – a good social media consultant will understand and explore their client's use... Read More

On Wednesday the New York Times had a piece on the unlikely but multi-billion dollar market for purchasing virtual goods for real cash - Asian Social Networking Sites Profit from Virtual Money. Yesterday the Guardian's Victor Keegan had a post... Read More

Who let the human in the building? In a slightly mind bending move Linden Labs, who built and run Second Life, acquired the Swedish company behind Avatars United, an online community for avatars, or more precisely, a community for the... Read More

There have been various pieces of analysis put forward to debunk the view that the web increases diversity, and to put forward the contrary view that it limits choice by fostering the herd instinct. Now, e-Marketer has a post - Twitter Power Users Solidify... Read More

bbb... Read More

Steve Rubel recently commented that The Future is Web Services, Not Web Sites. He's right but that's not the point of this post. His headline helped me draw together a couple of related thoughts. Namely, that The Future is Interactive, Not Online.... Read More

There have been some considered and thoughtful posts on the implications of social media recently (and some silliness too). I like these two viewpoints for inspiring intelligent discussion on some of the practical issues arising... Read More

                    I was invited along to the Dachis Group's Social Business Summit 2010 held in Austin on the eve of SXSW. Jeff Dachis had gathered a great ensemble of speakers - including... Read More

Not everything goes to plan. My World Cup journey ended in a bar in Washington DC, rather than Johannesburg. While neither England or the USA exactly set the competition alight. Metia came away with more than a few extra fans. Metia's Mobile Keepy... Read More

Venerable UK journalistic institution, John Humphrys caused a kerfuffle around making his first tweet today - here on the BBC web site. UK Govt got slammed (wrongly) for reportedly appointing a Twitter Tzar - here the story put to rights by Charles Arthur.... Read More

Dale at Freeform Dynamics has shared some data on the use of social media based on an online study of 1,456 IT professionals undertaken in September 2007. Six months is probably a long time in social media, so it would be great if Freeform... Read More

Some time round about now in San Francisco and London, Microsoft is formally taking the wrappers off IE9. Which means our NDA and embargoes time out and we can shout about the Rough Guide to the World. I suspect the launch will grab a bunch of coverage,... Read More