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Thanks X.

As a PR professional having a journalist as a girlfriend isn’t always an advantage. It has never helped me pitch a story one time to be honest. Whenever I talk about one my clients it seems my girlfriend is more critical towards the subject then any other journalist I talk to.

Some time ago we both had a day of, and R. received a phone call. Journalists should always be standby so she picks up her phone:

- “Hi this is R. speaking.”
- “Hi this is X from PR agency Y. I have send you a copy of our exciting press release about luxury cruises, you might have seen it?”
- “Well, I don’t remember seeing it but when did you send it over? I'm not working this week.”
- “Oh, I have send it over to you this morning!”
- “Ok, I haven’t been able to see it yet because ...
- “Maybe you could check your e-mail now and see if you have received it?”
- “That’s a bit difficult because I don’t have access to my e-mail now. When is your event planned exactly?”
- “In about one month.”
- “I see, usually we don’t decide what events we will cover until the …” (X interrupts her)
- “I understand but it’s really interesting!”
- “As I said before, I have a week of at the moment and don’t have acccess” (X interrupts her again)
- “Ok, please check it when you get back and don’t hesitate to contact me should you have any questions!”
- …

X has hanged up and R. turns to me:”God I hate you pushy PR people sometimes!”

Could you believe it?

A lesson from Exxon Mobil on Twitter

Following the brand jacking case of Exxon Mobil on Twitter, we have conducted a small research to see what's happening on Twitter for the 45 most important Dutch and Belgian listed companies. On one hand not a lot is happening by the companies themselves, but on the other hand there are some things to worry about from a communications point of view.

Out of the 45 companies researched, 2 companies are using Twitter in a way that can be linked to them. These are Tom Tom and Randstad.

27 out of 45 brand names have been registered as Twitter accounts, but 25 accounts have unclear ownership (examples: ING, AgfaGevaert, Heineken, KPN, Dexia).

18 out of the 45 brand names have not yet been registered on Twitter.

Should companies now jump on Twitter and get (back) ownership of their accounts? Well, it doesn't only depend on the question if they want to start using Twitter to communicate. As we have seen with Exxon Mobil, it can get quite confusing when someone else starts broadcasting Tweets using a company name. Followers might get the impression this is official communication from the company, when in fact it is not. Not even considering any reputational damage and potential influence on stock rates this might have by spreading rumours... After all, as we have seen in a previous post on this blog, social media (including Twitter) are gaining SEC acceptance as a way to communicate and make information public.

So if your company has not registered an account on Twitter yet, this is the time. Registration is easy and takes only a few minutes. Now is also a good time to start monitoring the conversation about your company on Twitter. Just search for your company name and subscribe to the corresponding RSS feed in your feed reader.

More info on Twitter for those unfamiliair with it.

Press release on the research: Dutch, French

We're interested to find out your feedback in the comments!

Rocket Science

A couple of weeks I hooked up with a friend from college (T. ). Before moving over to the ‘Dark Side’ of PR we even worked for the same newspaper. Sitting in the sun enjoying a fabulous mojito he told me a story that completely baffled me.

He had written an article about a large enterprise in the mobile industry. For a couple of months now there are rumors that the company would have to shrink it’s workforce, but everyone involved denies the plans. However, T. managed to find a union delegate that says things are going wrong in the company. If T. guaranteed he would never disclose his source he could write an article about it. When the article appeared everyone was shocked. An anonymous union delegate that says:”We could do the same work with half the workforce.”, is huge news.

things got ugly

People were concerned about their future for quite some time already, as soon as they read the article they stopped working and there was a strike. A normal reaction if you consider the circumstances. The unions started a manhunt to find the T.’s source. They called him and threatened with law-suits, but T. didn’t comply. Unions tried to blame each other saying the source could not possibly be one of their members. Even posters were hanged and tensions between rose to a climax. T. stood his ground, and warned the legal department about the situation.

and then they got dirty

In the mean time things had gotten a bit worse. The unions had find out that one of their colleagues was in fact T.’s father-in-law. T. told me his father-in-law is one of the most loyal employees of the company. Whenever there is a strike, he would be the guy to climb over the fence to go to work. Of course the poor man wasn’t happy with the article T. wrote. But of course he didn’t have anything to do with it.

T. received a union phone call, saying that they had find out his father-in-law was one of their colleagues. They asked him to reconsider and to say who his source was… In other words, they were threatening him. Pure and simple blackmail.

destroy your media relations with one call

Of course I feel bad about T. and the fact that they try to get him through his family. It’s something you just don’t do. But from a PR point of view I don’t understand it either.

Let’s assume rumors are true, and plans are being made to reduce human capital. As a union you would need to put your case high up the agenda. Politician, media, public everyone should support your case. Now why would you go threatening a journalist that writes for the most popular newspaper in your region? PR is not rocket science, or is it?

SEC releases new guidelines on public disclosure

Some important news for publicly quoted companies came out recently. The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) released a speech that they are planning to issue guidance on how companies can use their web sites to provide information to investors in compliance with the federal securities laws. This is great news for quoted companies who are spending lots of money in getting their investor news out through news wire services under the SEC's Fair Disclosure Regulation. Under certain criteria the SEC will permit these companies to disclose news only through their websites including blogs and social media! This could potentially by the tipping point for corporate websites and blogs as a tool to communicate with investors. The SEC began studying the issue in late 2006 after Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz called the news release requirements an “anachronism.”

The interpretive guidance addresses four main topics:

1. When information posted on a company web site is “public” for purposes of the applicability of Regulation FD;

2. Company liability for information on company web sites – including previously posted information, third-party hyperlinks, summary information and the content of interactive web sites;

3. The types of controls and procedures advisable with respect to such information; and

4. The format of information presented on a company web site, with the focus on readability, not printability.

The 4th point is actually very interesting, as most investor relations websites currently just publish information in a form that resembles the printable forms they use for releasing to PR news wires (usually in the form of downloadable PDF's). It will be interesting to see how investor relations websites and blogs will change now that the SEC has said that the form of this information has to focus on readability and not printability. The SEC has not yet released full details yet.

Measuring PR Share of Voice

A nice way for measuring PR results is to calculate your company’s share of voice as compared to your main competitors. However to get meaningful data there are some things to consider. A short guideline to measuring share of voice:

1. Work with a good analysis company
Be sure to select an analysis company that really monitors all media and websites that are relevant to your market. Beware that there are a lot of service providers who claim to monitor European media, but have a strong focus on UK. The best way to tackle this is to ask for a full list of publications being monitored per country and have your local PR in each country look at it.

2. Don’t select too many competitors
The more competitors you select, the smaller your share of voice will be and the more difficult it will be to monitor in- or decreased share of voice. If you select 100 competitors, your share of voice may only increase from 5.0 to 5.1 per cent. This is not motivating for local PR and frankly does not recognize the good local work. Limit the amount of competitors to a maximum of 4-6 and make sure there are some local market players included per country.

3. Refine overlapping competitors as much as possible
If you are a niche software vendor, and IBM is in your space as a competitor, IBM wil definitely have a great share ofvoice. But their share of voice may not totally be concerning the space you are in, because IBM is messaging on software, hardware, services and so on. Try to refine competitor monitoring to your specific space as much as possible.

4. Measure long term
So what happens if you launch a great new mobile phone and get some great coverage out of it, but at the same time Apple decided to launch their newest iPhone? Although you have done great work, your share of voice is likely to decrease. Alternatively if you get caught up in a high profile lawsuit, your share of voice may go up dramatically for the wrong reasons. These ‘incididents’ happen every now and should be leveled out over a longer period of measurement. Do look at short term results where they can be attributed to great PR (of your company or your competitor), but also look at results year by year.

Good luck! And remember: share of voice is just one of many measurement tools ;-)

Really Smart Students

I want to share a story about one of my teachers in high school. He was a passionate man that understood how he could teach his students some basic skills that would help them to become critical knowledge workers.

One time he talked about information - let it be an article in a newspaper, a movie, a picture,…. He said this information usually has one fundamental characteristic:
"it represents what one person selected because he thought is was interesting or relevant. A photographer only shows what’s inside his frame. He chooses, not to show other things."

Now, there is nothing wrong with that. Most of the time what’s outside the frame isn’t interesting at all. But as a critical knowledge worker you should be aware of such things.

Since then about ten years have past and there has been an exponential growth in the amount of information. Unfortunately that critical attitude isn’t enough anymore. A knowledge worker today needs skills to detect the signal within the noise. Today RSS is the most suitable tool to do so. Only problem, people don't know it, let alone use it properly.

RSS / XML is revolutionary because data can be exported free of formatting constraints. Because of that you can to take it up a level. This ‘meta-RSS’ - if you will- implicates understanding how you can automatically filter and structure the information into something that’s useful for you and your business.

I hope there are a few teachers that, like mine did, can show their students how to handle all this available information and become Really Smart Students.

Turn down the music

Last weekend about 319.000 music fans had a great weekend at Rock Werchter. According to people from the music industry it's the best festival in the world.

A couple of years ago the man behind it, Herman Schueremans ‘sold’ his festival to Live Nation. As a previous subsidiary of Clear Channel Communications under the Clear Channel Entertainment name, Live Nation was party to some highly visible controversies. It didn’t take long before people started to perceive the organization as a gigantic money craving monster, instead of an enthusiastic team that brings the world’s biggest bands to Belgium.

For example some say the tickets are to expensive although 165€ to see 60 class bands isn’t really thàt much. Every year the same stories appear in the press. And every year Herman Schueremans gets angry at media and Belgians that envy his success. A strategy that has lead to negative coverage a few years in a row.

Recently an 18-year old Javache started a little project on twitter that would enable people to receive festivalnews via twitter during the concerts. He started a channel and got quite some attention in the Belgian blogosphere. Unfortunately Live Nation wasn’t happy with his initiative and called him to say they would start a lawsuit unless he didn’t stop. When the word got out, Belgian blogosphere showed no mercy towards Live Nation. If they had stimulated the small fire Javache had started they would have had a great and free campaign. Their reaction backfired and painfully reinforced the negative image.

One could argue that isn’t really a problem because the festival is sold-out every year. In the long run I think it could become a problem, there are some fat years and some lean years. An award of the music industry is nice, but it’s the audience that pays their fees. Turn down the music and listen to them from time to time.

Small talk

Small talk is part of every business conversation. When giving press interviews, small talk usually takes place before and after the formal interview with a journalist. Which is fine and absolutely normal obviously. Most professional conversations just don't take off immediately. Whether you are inquiring how someones holiday was, or just asking if the person that is coming to visit your offices had a hard time finding your place. Showing a genuine interest in the person behind the professional is not something to be ashamed of, and often helps to build a relationship.

In PR however, and especially if you are a spokesman for your organisation, small talk is always something to be careful with. On several occasions throughout my career, I have heard a spokesperson giving an excellent press interview, only to be ruined again after a slip of the tongue afterwards during small talk.

Media are now covering the case of the spokeswoman for the Belgian federal police. According to this article, Els Cleemput, the 12 year veteran spokeswoman for the police, has been taken out of her role. In the aftermath of a press conference, she confirmed the identity of the former secretary of her boss to a journalist. Sylvie Ricour, the former secretary, was granted a spectacular promotion end of 2007. Supposedly she did not match the requirements and did not have to take any exams for the new job. On 12 November 2007 the commisioner-general who granted the promotion already put out a statement saying that the procedure fully went by the rules.

Is this a case of small talk that turned out wrong? I doubt so actually. The case of the promotion already was out in the open in November 2007, and had then been covered extensively by the media. At the recent press conference, a curious journalist just asked Mrs Cleemput which of the persons present was Sylvie Ricourt. Mrs Cleemput just nodded her head, confirming the identity of Mrs Ricourt to the journalist. Internally, the case was already called the Belgian Wolfowitz affaire, which indicated the buzz had been going on for a long time already. Has Mrs Cleemput become the victim of internal police politics?

How social media aid humanitarian relief

I remember a couple of years ago a colleague of mine at Progress Communications was asked to give a presentation to NGO PR Officers on how public relations and the web could help increase visibility of humanitarian aid organisations. At the time, Fritz Institute had just launched the results of a study called Toward New Understandings: Journalists & Humanitarian Relief Coverage. One of the main issues in the report was that NGO's failed to take advantage of internet-based tools. On the other hand most journalists that were covering humanitarian crises and relief stories were doing so as part of wider news coverage, and did not have the resources nor specific knowledge on the topic. These two conclusions combined, posed a serious challenge to NGO's, as public donation for humanitarian relief strongly depends on media coverage. If a crisis is not covered by the media, financial donations by the public remains very limited.

Obviously the best way to provide the media with knowledge and information about a crisis, is to take journalists to the disaster area and give them the opportunity to talk to local people and aid workers on the ground. But as journalists tend to have less time to cover stories and the resources to fly journalists into the area are limited, this is always a problem. Thus, the answer was that NGO's make better use of the web for providing as much information as possible to the media and the public. But in practice this was not easy, as knowledge and awareness of web tools within NGO's was not very high. For example, only a couple of NGO officials responded to the question where their web visitors originated from.

Fortunately, a lot has changed since and reading a story this week in PR Week on how the UN uses web tools reminded me of this story. Nowadays, UNHCR has provided refugees with video equipment to document their lifes. It has also put a layer on Google Earth that allows users to zoom in on refugee camps around the world to see photos and videos of the inhabitants. Field workers no use twitter to enable the public to keep up with developments on the ground. And obviously the are using their own channel on Youtube to get videos out to the world.

Great example of how organisations lacking knowledge of the web can totally catch up on how to use social media to their advantage.

The impact of blogging to journalism

Journalism is evolving with the advent of the internet and widely-available broadband. Blogging, podcasting and video are increasingly becoming a part of daily work for journalists. LVT Benelux PR has conducted a European study, together with other European PR agencies within the Oriella PR Network, to put this trend in perspective. In total we have polled 347 journalists from broadcast, national, regional and trade media across Benelux, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden and the UK.

Some of the results include:

41% of the polled journalists are now expected to produce video or present to camera, despite only 3% being employed by traditional broadcasters.

44% of media offer journalist-authored blogs, 18% now produce audiopodcasts and almost one in four (24%) offer video podcasts.

70% of publications welcome User Generated Content and almost a quarter of journalists regularly quote bloggers.

Almost two-thirds of journalists (65%) confirmed that they are self-taught pod and videocasters, with only one in ten receiving any form of professional video training.

46% of journalists are expected to produce more content; A quarter of journalists work longer hours as a result, and the same number confirmed they have less time to research stories in person.

Download the European Digital Journalism Survey 2008 to get more insight into the results and what this means to Public Relations practicioners.

Interested in future trends in PR?

Are you interested in future trends in European PR? Why not give your own opinion about it and receive a report with the survey findings? Currently EUPRERA, The European Public Relations Education and Research Association, is conducting a survey targeting PR professionals in organisations and consultancies throughout Europe. So please share your thoughts on PR and be sure to leave your email address to get a digital copy of the results in your inbox. The survey runs untill June 30 2008.

Richard

The Diverse and Exploding Digital Universe

Today an other report of IDC was published on the growth of digital data.

In 2007, the digital universe contained 281,000,000,000
gigabytes, which works out to about 45 gigabytes per person on
the planet.

This means, like few Belgian dailies as De Standaard and Le Soir mentioned, that in 2007 in average 10 DVD's per person on the planet have been filled with data.

Underneath some key findings coming strait from the Executive Summary. Check here for the White Paper.

The digital universe in 2007 — at 2.25 x 1021 bits (281 exabytes
or 281 billion gigabytes) — was 10% bigger than we thought.
The resizing comes as a result of faster growth in cameras,
digital TV shipments, and better understanding of information
replication.

• By 2011, the digital universe will be 10 times the size it was
in 2006.

• As forecast, the amount of information created, captured, or
replicated exceeded available storage for the first time in
2007. Not all information created and transmitted gets
stored, but by 2011, almost half of the digital universe will
not have a permanent home.

• Fast-growing corners of the digital universe include those
related to digital TV, surveillance cameras, Internet access in
emerging countries, sensor-based applications, datacenters
supporting “cloud computing,” and social networks.

• The diversity of the digital universe can be seen in the
variability of file sizes, from 6 gigabyte movies on DVD to
128-bit signals from RFID tags. Because of the growth of
VoIP, sensors, and RFID, the number of electronic
information “containers” — files, images, packets, tag
contents — is growing 50% faster than the number of
gigabytes. The information created in 2011 will be contained
in more than 20 quadrillion — 20 million billion — of such
containers, a tremendous management challenge for both
businesses and consumers.

• Of that portion of the digital universe created by individuals,
less than half can be accounted for by user activities —
pictures taken, phone calls made, emails sent — while the
rest constitutes a digital “shadow” — surveillance photos,
Web search histories, financial transaction journals, mailing
lists, and so on.

• The enterprise share of the digital universe is widely skewed
by industry, having little relationship to GDP or IT spending.
The finance industry, for instance, accounts for almost 20%
of worldwide IT spending but only 6% of the digital universe.
Meanwhile, media, entertainment, and communications
industries will account for 10 times their share of the digital
universe in 2011 as their share of worldwide gross economic
output.

• The picture related to the source and governance of digital
information remains intact: Approximately 70% of the
digital universe is created by individuals, but enterprises are
responsible for the security, privacy, reliability, and
compliance of 85%.

David

Why PR is all about relations

Everyone who has a job in marketing regularly gives presentations or prepares presentations for others. If you are a media spokesperson for your company, you will have regular conversations with critical journalists. Whether your objective is to sell a product, share information or change a perception, in some way you are trying to persuade your audience.

Yesterday whilst driving I was listening to a great podcast on “How to be persuasive in a presentation” (part 2). Generally there are three aspects to being persuasive. Firstly your relationship with your audience is of importance. The better the relationship, the more likely people are to believe you. Secondly, there is your level of expertise as perceived by your audience. So no matter how knowledgeable you are in a certain area, it’s your audience’s perception of your expertise that adds to your credibility. And thirdly persuasion is being influenced if there is a hierarchical relationship between you and your audience. This kind of role power usually applies to working life. When your boss asks you to do something you will usually do it, even though you might not have a good relationship with him or her and do not see him or her as an expert.

Now I won’t go into all of the details, it’s probably better to listen to the podcast. But to go short, role power can be very effective, but might not be motivating and only applies to specific situations. When dealing with an audience outside of your company, it mostly is non-existent. That leaves us with relationship power and expertise power, which can be mapped out into a matrix.


If you are a PR professional or media spokesperson, you should be aware of one of the first questions you should ask yourself when dealing with the press: Am I the right person to talk to this journalist and do I have enough expertise on the subject matter? On the other hand, the journalists objective is to get useful information on a particular subject. If he or she would feel that the person they are going to talk to cannot offer that information due to a lack of expertise, they would most probably not invest time in it. So when both parties are well prepared on what the subject matter of their conversation is, the interviewee should have a good level of expertise and the journalist would not doubt the interviewee’s expertise beforehand. In other words: if you work with the matrix, this interview would score in Quadrant 2 or Quadrant 4.

Let’s go a bit deeper into the difference between these quadrants, i.e. high expertise/low relationship and high expertise/high relationship. The latter is obviously the quadrant where everyone likes to be, but it just isn’t always the case. However if you are in Quadrant 2, the biggest pitfall is to loose sight of maintaining the relationship. Don’t underestimate, get over confident and do prepare well.

A lot of times an interview should be placed in quadrant 4. As indicated the journalist will assume that your company has put forward their best spokesperson with a good level of expertise. But you might not have talked to this journalist before. The journalist might be new with the publication, or might be a freelancer who works for a mixture of publications. So there is virtually no relation yet, although there might be a relation between your PR agency and the journalist. Try not to wow the journalist with your expertise all the time. Sure, he or she is interested to hear your expert opinion. But it’s important to ask questions and input so that the conversation stays on-topic. In addition this is an opportunity to find out how a journalist views your company and the market. But don’t overdo it and make it an exam. Journalists cover various topics and don’t have huge amounts of time for preparation ;-)

Richard

How to start with PR

So it's been quite hectic, although everybody seems to be enjoying their holidays the people that are still in the office are quite busy. The advent of a new year will probably mean more people and companies are going to be involved in PR programs. For anyone who thinks about doing more on PR, there is a great read at BrianSolis.com. Have a great New Year and we hope to see you again next year at our blog!

Richard

Can communication specialists anticipate on everything that could go wrong?

When Telenet launched the idea for a new campaign they probably expected a totally different outcome. The campaign started with a commercial on the radio about how Telenet was counting down till the day they would ‘push the bottom’. Listeners who wanted to find out more could visit the website ‘http://www.telenetdruktopdeknop.be/’. A perfect example of a tool that is often used in advertisement or Public Relations: Trigger your target group! That is of course when it all goes well!

A day before Telenet would reveal their big secret they were the victim of a hoax. Several Belgian journalists received a fake press release announcing that Telenet would stop the data limits for downloading. The news was immediately published on several online newspapers and media. Telenet had no other choice than to react by sending the media a real press release denying the earlier release and announcing that Telenet would just speed up the download time for a part of their clients and not stop the actual data limits. And so the campaign failed in two ways. Firstly it was revealed before the actual date which of course completely ruined the surprise part of the announcement they planned. But even worse than that: Telenet had to deny the big news that they would stop the data limits for downloading. And this news was not left unnoticed. It drew the attention of Tik, a national organization for Telecom and Internet clients, and they promptly launched “They day of the download” on the 30th of December. By launching this day Tik wants to point out to the Internet Providers that the data limits in Belgium should stop or be minimized, like they do in our neighboring countries. The campaign of Telenet was the actual trigger for Tik to launch this annual download day.

The above is just an example of what can go wrong in a campaign and hopefully for Telenet it will all be forgotten soon. But it shows that there are so many circumstances that are hard to predict when launching a communication or PR campaign. Who could have thought that someone would send a complete fake press release to the press which ruined the idea of the campaign and lead to a reaction by an organization like Tik? Is it the task of communication specialists to be able to anticipate on everything that could go wrong when launching a campaign? Or is that just not possible?

Karolien

Good news is no news!

Good news is no news! It's one of those bold statements in many press trainings that everyone can regcognize by just turning pages in a random news paper. War, crime, corruption and global warming just seem to dominate the headlines. It has now been backed up by a research from Dutch internet platform Zinfo.nl. They researched the main national dailies in the Netherlands and came up with free Dutch daily DAG being the most positive newspaper of the Netherlands. Out of every story, almost 1 in 4 articles in DAG is a positive story according to Zinfo. Non free Dutch newspapers score 16,2 per cent or less positive articles out of their total daily coverage. Well respected news paper De Volkskrant even scores less than 10 percent.

Now why is it that so little positive news makes it to the headlines? Surely companies must issue enough press releases with positive news from their organisations? So is it just journalists taking a negative approach then? Obviously editorial staff are overburdened by press releases from companies announcing good financial figures, new and exciting products or major deals with new customers. Good news is brought at editors' finger tips for them to reuse so why do we read so little of it?

Let's consider two things. Firstly, journalists always want to write their own story. It's what they are paid to do, they are not hired just to copy and paste press releases or quotes. Adding intelligence to stories by researching and talking to other sources may shine a new light on to a story. And although editors depend on companies for news, they remain critical and do not take a story for granted. Especially not when they feel companies are trying to misuse them for their own marketing agenda.

Secondly, what stories are readers most interested in? Just think for yourself what you would prefer to read: a story about your main competitor getting the deal of the century, or a story that explains why they just missed out on this important opportunity?

In general, news is only news when something unexpected happens. So if things go well all the time, that fact alone becomes business as usual eventually.

Does this means the media are not interested in good news? Not at all! It's just a matter of framing the news into the right story. So when your business is doing well when all of your competitors are not, this may be news in itself. You must be doing something different then!

Even negative news becomes boring eventually. Just take the forming of a new Belgian government as an example. I think almost every reader must now be longing for the good news of a new Belgian government taking up their responsibility ;-)

Richard

SaaS with a GDrive

The Wall Street Journal published yesterday an article on the intentions of Google to offer Internet-based storage services. The acronym ‘SaaS’ originally referring to the concept of Software as a Service, lately is increasingly used as Storage as a Service.

Google of course is already offering Internet-based storage services with Gmail, with the Docs, Spreadsheets and Presentations online applications and with Picasa online photo-hosting services. The next step for Google is now moving toward being able to "store 100% of user data”! Potential names linked to this service like MyStuff and GDrive have already been mentioned.

Maybe one day PC’s will be nothing else than web-connecting devices with almost no software neither hard-discs. Everyone will have a secured account online with his applications and stored content. Two conditions: high-speed Internet connections and global connectivity!

Google of course is still facing few important challenges, like the issues with privacy and copyright.

Let’s see how Microsoft reacts…

David

The Social Graph

Anyone ever heard about the social graph? I did not until few weeks ago when I read this article :Google Gives Some Hints About Social Network Plan

The article refers to the words of Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, at the end of its Zeitgeist conference. He would have said to some reporters that “Google is planning to use information it has about the connections between its users, something techies call the 'social graph', to improve searches and other Google services”.

After doing some more online research, I understood that this social graph is a quite abstract concept for a very concrete thing. It's indeed all the information about users of social media and about the way how they connect to each other.

Now, the issue is that this information is not publicly shared. Everyone owns of course the data relating to his own personal network, and maybe a view on those of friends, but no one has access to bigger parts of the social graph. Google in the first place, but also companies offering online social networking services, like Facebook, MySpace, Orkut, LinkedIn, Viadeo, and so many others, have on the other side a great amount of this information in their possession. This means important parts of the social graph are actually possessed by few organizations.

It's very interesting to see how an open source movement is growing with as main objective “the decentralization of the social graph” under the motto “One company doesn't own your data and social network anymore, you own and control it”. Examples are initiatives like NoseRub, calling themselves a protocol, or like knowee.org, calling themselves an "online social graph manager".

For everyone who's interested in some more techy insights, check this Google Group and this interesting post.

Good luck!

David

Prom-IT-heus

Few thoughts as a sequel to my prior post entitled ICT Therapy!? in which, referring to a column of Peter Hinsen, I discussed the frustrations of ICT professionals who in one way are obsessed with the control of reality and in the other way are facing the increasing complexity of the very own solutions they're using. The lost of control over technology is not only the premise of futurologists like Ray Kurzweil, it was already the theme of some Greek mythologies few millenniums ago.

The story of Prometheus is certainly the best illustration of this technological paradox. He was the Titan God who gave fire to humanity. Fire represents science and technology - the art of looking forward or anticipate (Προμηθεύς ="forethought"). Zeus, the supreme ruler of the Pantheon, didn't want mankind to reach this level of control and was very angry with Prometheus. As punishment, the latter "is chained to a rock where his regenerating liver is eaten daily by an eagle".

The liver - the only human internal organ that actually can regenerate itself to a significant extent - is a metaphor for "perpetual need". This way we can say that since mankind discovered technology, it has always wanted more, never being satisfied of its actual tools. This technological obsession has led humanity to a condition which is comparable to the punishment of Prometheus : chained to a rock !

The same can be said about the ICT professionals who Peter Hinssen describes as losing control over the system they're running and getting more and more stuck in an infinite web of applications. Some postmodern philosophers believe one day technology will take over control (the revenge of the machines !), but that's an other story...

David