Online Communications

Supporting PR students

Mark Phillimore sent me a list of questions he prepared with his students from the London Metropolitan University and asked me whether I could answer them through a podcast, what we did together thursday evening, and also blog the list here to give a chance to his students to get other point of views...
I won't share the podcast here as unfortunately it was one of my worth (on the technical point of view, I also lost 3 minutes of it, it has been a real mess....) so I decided to moderate this blog...;o)
Regarding the list of questions, I copy paste them below, if you could give few minutes of your time to grab some of them and leave your thoughts in the comments or on your blog and trackback here to let us know, this will be great for Mark's students.

Questions:

1. What do you think of Google’s use of its corporate blog to announce the recent
court case settlement. This caused a great deal of fuss from the investing
community. Was this due to Google perhaps misunderstanding role of blogging
and failing to consider more formal communication routes for certain
announcements (such as online press office) or do you think it was deliberate to
highlight growing role of blogging ?
2. How important is new digital media technology for the PR industry?
3. Have you come across the Vocus system which was demonstrated to us. The
CEO said PR companies have been slow to invest in IT infrastructure, what do
you think?
4. How long did it take you to develop the “right” style for your blog?
5. Losing control in the social computing model seems a concern to business, what
is your view? How are you able to reassure company’s or organizations on this
issue?
6. Today we have been looking at company web sites and many have used very
traditional communication models. Which sites would you suggest highlight or
are starting to explore more advanced social computing models?
7. Do you think podcasting may become more influential than text blogs?
8. We noticed that many blogs actually have very few comments from readers.
Does this highlight the limits of blogging as an interactive medium or that
“information grazing” is a key participation process in blogging as opposed to
actual interaction?
9. Do you distinguish between forums/chat rooms and blogging? Do you know of
companies using forums in an active dialogue?
10. How much time do you spend blogging each day?
11. Tell us about some of the projects you are working on and the communication
issues this is tackling?
12. Which new media technology, do you consider, is one to watch and is going to
become influential and powerful over the next few years for the PR community ?

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Cyril Fievet leaves Pointblog

You might have heard about our french blogzine dedicated to the blogosphere, Pointblog, without doubt the most popular french one.
Launched in 2003 as a personal initiative, PointBlog became a company recently.

Today, the original founder announced he is leaving (title of his post : "Without me") and pointing out the bad administrative management and the lack of consideration for the team by the head of the company.

I don't have any information allowing me to take any position here, I hope Pointblog will survive to this crisis, it would be really sad to loose it.

On a corporate blogging point of view, this is an interesting point to see that the founder (co-founder in this case) of a company is announcing his departure on the blog itself, making by this way a strict application of "transparency" so precious to the blogosphere.
But I am wondering....
He didn't just announced he left the company, he gave the reason of his departure and directly pointed out one men's responsibility. Did he go one step too far ? Should he have tell the whole story on the company's blogzine... Well, it's not so easy to answer I am afraid... In my deep thoughts, I would rather not have gone so far, but on the other  hand, as he is the founder of this blogzine, everyone would have asked for the exact reason of his leaving...
I'd leave the question open.

Update: One more thing: the founder, Cyril, is selling is shares on his blog...

Tags: pointblog, cyril fievet

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Welcome PRojetZ

A new french PR blog entered the blogosphere yesterday, PRojetZ, authored by Philippe Cherel.
If you can read french, I fully recomend it to you as he is a very smart writer and I am sure you'll find his blog a great daily RDV while drinking your first coffee in the morning...;o)

Welcome Philippe !

Tags: philippe cherel, projetz, projet z

Steve Rubel to join Edelman

Waoo, this is a great news ! Famous PR blogger Steve Rubel from Micro Persuasion is joining Edelman US at the end of this month. He will be based in the NY office and will join Rick Murray's team, which already includes Phil Gomes, the first PR pro to enter the blogosphere...

Well, I have to say I am more than happy to be part of this international PR blogger team, the complementarity of our skills is going to bring us a lot of opportunities to exchange on a topic we're all fans of.

Welcome Steve, I am very excited to meet you in real life now ! ;o)

Technorati Tags: Edelman

Some thoughts back from London

I've not been blogging a lot those last days due to my new new responsibilities here at Edelman, and I have to say "slamed" is a word which is going to stick to me for a while...

Anyway, I spent this all day in London attending the event organised by the london office around blogging or "why you can't ignore blogging" at this great place, One Aldwych. It was a nice opportunity for me to meet Stuart Smith, CEO of Edelman London, Pamela Fieldhouse and Julie Halley but also Charlie Cannell from EIS and Jackie Cooper from JCPR.

Kevin Anderson from the BBC was one of the panelist and we have had some amazing discussion about his podcasting activities and how he collects some of his interviews from countries like China per MP3 files sent piece by piece to a Gmail account... He also explained how chinese bloggers are using their Flickr account to avoid censorship by sending pictures of themselves handling big shields on which they write their messages... Unbelievable, but... only the truth.

And again, the french riots... Two articles in this morning issue of USA Today, this is really in everyone's head around the world, so let me confirm, you can come in France now without risking your life, we are a safe country and tourists won't be hurt ! Unfortunately it's not our first time, we are used to these suburbs problems, even if we'd love to see an issue for it, although I don't see any at the same time, this is such an old problem, all governments have tried to solve it and all have failed...

Anyway, now that I am on the way back, I really appreciate to be part of such an international team with so many complementary skills and at the same time, such a strong voluntee to work all together and to make it happen ! That's just great and so exciting to connect with you guys.

(I've moblogged some photos of the event on my moblog Winks)

Technorati Tags: edelman, JCPR, london

I am joining Edelman !

This post is probably my biggest announcement since the begining of my blog ! I am more than happy to share the news with you this morning: I am joining Edelman Paris as Director of Online Communications.

I am leaving my entrepreneur's life to join the only independent global PR firm, counting 1900 employees in 43 countries worldwide and 272 M$ in 2005...

Well, I have to say I am very enthousiastic and also excited to join such a famous brand and by the way one of the first to have very seriously consider the blogosphere, which is not so usual for a PR firm... Studies conducted with Intellisseek and Blogpulse, global survey to identifye bloggers profile with Technorati, launch of Richard Edelman's blog one year ago, and Phil Gomes the first PR blogger in the world, it seems like I won't be lost there... ;o)

So yes, for all those reasons, the first positive business experience I shared with the team here in Paris, the potential of development and the kind of companies Edelman is working with, the way they've asked me to join and leave my own consultancy: I come ! And yes, I leave my entrepreneur's freedom !

To terminate this post, I'd like to say a special "thank you" to someone who had a strong influence in my blogger life and who has some "responsibilities" in this story happening now, and who probably will in the futur again...;o)

Technorati Tags: edelman

The next generation of PR folks will be blogging ...

Robert French, a terrific innovative teacher at Auburn University where he is teaching PR, begins this semester with a new initiative: he is launching a community of PR bloggers at PRblogs.org, nothing less than that !

PRblogs.org offers free blogs to PR practitioners, educators and students with the purpose to be prepared to deal with them, use them, in professional life.

What better way than to use blogs on a daily basis to feel used to these new communication tools. More than that, Robert has invited some PR pros to join the community and participate during the semester in ongoing discussion and to provide thoughts, inputs, links, in other words, to share their knowledge with his students.

When I see this kind of great initiatives, I wonder how traditional PR can't be dead... The next generation of PR folks is going to be terrific ...

Technorati Tags: PR Blogs, Robert French

Skype launched it's blog !

Good news: Skype has launched a blog "Share.Skype.com", another famous brand coming in the blogosphere, I hope they'll be playing the game well and give us another successful example of the benefits of corporate blogs.

See Neville's post.

Blogs & Wikis: Technologies for Enterprise Applications?

Frank Gilbane recently drop me an email to let me know about the last report his company has been publishing,  Blogs & Wikis: Technologies for Enterprise Applications ?  I am happy to post a short reminder here to make sure I'll have a deep look on it in the very next days as I am more than interested in that kind of topics...

Thanks for letting me know about the survey Frank.

Executive summary:

"Blogs and wikis are flexible practices and technologies that are increasingly being used within companies and organizations to ease the creation and dissemination of information, as well as making it easier for companies to communicate effectively with customers, partners, and the public. This article discusses some of the salient features of blogs and wikis, and give examples of companies who already have implemented one or more of these systems.

On speaking with several vendors and users, it is obvious that many companies are implementing blogs and/or wikis or hybrid systems successfully and I expect this to continue as the technologies and practices mature."

Download a PDF version of the report here

Intelliseek's Blogpulse

Did you know about Blogpulse, "an automated trend discovery system for blogs" developped by Intelliseek ? It is described by the company as a portal into the world of blogs, applying machine-learning and natural-language processing techniques to discover trends in the highly dynamic world of blogs.

BlogPulse.com features are followings:

• Search engine for blogs
• Set of analysis tools applied to blog content daily
• Trends as reflected through blogs
• Showcase where Intelliseek researchers bring some of the coolest new ideas, tools and gadgets for blogging

Definitely a place to go, still much more to discover there...