It was a bit tl;dr though so some bright spark made it into a snazzy video.

Et voila…

The World Is Obsessed With Facebook from Alex Trimpe on Vimeo.

If you haven’t seen World View before, the system is probably as you’d expect: YouTube users go to the World View microsite and submit questions in video or text form. You can also vote on which existing questions should be asked. The questions that get the most votes get asked – apparently with no form of censorship or regulation. Users currently have less than 12 hours to submit their questions.

It’s a nice idea, and I’m all for crowd sourcing but I can’t help but be reminded of early 90s Newsround Press Pack interviews, where an enthusiastic but ill-informed teenager would ask a cabinet member what their favourite colour is and what they thought of Brother Beyond.

Of course there are a few contributions from the inhabitants of Crazyville but I can’t see them getting an airing. I think this one from a young chap who seems to think this is an oportunity to ask the PM for a shout out. (Name and email removed)

Will you make a video, For me. . .Saying, Hello ****** ******* from plymouth in devon, Thankyou and send it too a private email adress *******************@gmail.com

***** ***** Royal Marine Cadet.

Good work keeping that email address private, Private. Also, this isn’t Babestation (whatever that is). What kind of video is he expecting if it isn’t suitable for public viewing… *shudder*.

Crazies aside, if there really is no intervention, why are all the questions so perfect for the politician? I’m browsing the top questions for Cameron and they are mostly relevent but bland and likely to allow the interviewee to say exactly what he wants. Is the voting system geared towards presenting questions that give the politician an easy ride or are crowd sourcing systems innately geared towards the bland and predictable?

Unfortunately I think it’s the latter which is why I’d rather see Cameron being put through the wringer by Paxman or another hard-nosed journo with a desire to see someone squirm.

Incidently if it’s Cameron squirming on YouTube you want, look no further.

The HMS Ark Royal, for years a literal flagship of the Royal Navy, will be scrapped as soon as possible, 4 years before it was due to be decommissioned.

Why am I upset about this? Because I am the current Mayor of the HMS Ark Royal on Foursquare.

When I joined Foursquare on the day it was launched in Manchester (thanks to a tip off from @martinsfp) I could wander around becoming mayor of all I surveyed. Now that there are thousands of Foursquare users in my city, I’m down to a paltry 6 mayorships. And then Cameron comes along with his budget cuts and cruelly dispatches 16.6% of them.

I’m considering a march on Parliament.

To mark the 30 anniversary of the classic arcade game Pac Man, Google have developed a fully playable version of the game and used used it as their logo. The brilliant playable logo is developed entirely in HTML5. No flash required.

It’s interesting timing, considering the recent spat between Apple and flash purveyors Adobe. Are Google subtly taking a stance?

Maybe I’m reading too much into it, it’s likely the case that Google, as they always do, wanted to do something cool for no particular reason other than to be cool.

I particularly like the fact that the phrase “I’m feeling lucky” has been replaced with “Insert Coin”. Nice touch

Personally I had no problems voting. My polling station was fairly quiet at 6pm. However, a friend of mine, @mikeedge who voted at the more central Barlow Moor road Parkfield Road South station, West Disbury witnessed queues all evening.

After deciding the queues were getting longer not shorter he took the plunge at about 8.30pm.

Mike estimated there were 150 people queueing when he joined. It took approx 45 minutes to get through these people. 3 people per minute.

As he left after 9.15pm the queue was longer than when he joined, about an hours queue at the pace he experienced with more people arriving.

The BBC is reporting more than 200 people were turned away from Withington as a whole. No indication if this is at multiple polling stations or just one.

Some constituencies are blaming large numbers of students turning up without polling cards or without having registered but although Withington has a significant student population this situation was not observed at the Barlow Moor road Parkfield Road South polling station.

In such a critical seat, this story could run and run. We could be the Florida of the 2010 UK election.

——-update———

Or not. Incumbent Lib Dem MP John Leech held withington and actually extended his narrow lead from the last election.

Labour’s so-called and much lauded social media tsar,  yesterday committed a potentially disastrous gaffe when she tweeted results of postal votes for the upcoming election.

Kerry McCarthy (@kerry4MP) is the twitter evangelist who was responsible for training up Labour politicians in the art of teh interwebs. Oops.

Under the Representation of the People Act it is illegal to reveal details of votes cast before the polling day as it may influence those yet to vote. Avon and Somerset police are now investigating this potentially criminal act.

Other twitter users pretty quickly realised something was amiss and let Ms McCarthy know. Blogger Darren Bridgman was first on the scene.

After briefly trying to defend her position, and presumably consulting with those who know better, @Kerry4MP deleted the tweets. But as we all know, news travels fast and word had got out. Here was her response to the BBC.

On hearing the results of a random and unscientific sample of postal votes, I posted them on Twitter. It was a thoughtless thing to do, and I very quickly realised that it was not appropriate to put such information in the public domain.

“Quickly realised” but not quick enough. At its heart, this is not a social media error. Kerry McCarthy made a simple mistake. She should have known it was illegal to share that information with the public and not done it. This error could have been made when talking to a journalist or writing a press release but in this case she is not only the source of the information but the editor and publisher. What this incident proves, if more proof be needed, is that in this world of instant communication, you have to be really sure of your message and in control of the information you choose to share.

One thing that has always been constant with City, and I’d like to think more so than other clubs, is the strong community spirit felt between supporters. So when I saw the below tweet last week from Denise (aka @doc1online) who is a fellow City fan and previous attendee of KMP’s inblackandwhite seminars, I felt the urge to respond.

For those who don’t know, 70077 is the official SMS number set up by The Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) to raise money for aid to Haiti following the earthquakes. The Disasters Emergency Committee brings together the leading UK aid agencies including the Red Cross.

First of all, I thought this was a great idea to support a great cause and raise a bit of cash for a country that really needs it. But with my Social Media marketing hat on I knew that what we really needed to gather interest on twitter was a hashtag.

So I posted this tweet. I wasn’t happy with the hashtag I came up with, #cupgoaldonate. There are two rules to bear in mind for a successful hashtag. It should convey the main purpose of the tweet associated with the tag and it should be as short as possible to allow for addition comments by users who reweet/quote the message.

#cupgoaldonate is too long and doesn’t include any reference to Haiti or DEC which should be the main focus of this activity. I also didn’t want to restrict this to just Man City supporters because hopefully, Man Utd and even other supporters of Carling cup teams or other competitions may wish to pick it up.

Thankfully, a follower called @bluemoon82 delivered the goods and came up with #goals4haiti. From then it only took a few well placed and retweetable messages to high profile and relevant twitter users such as @mcfc @kaiwayne and @decappeal and we were away.

The sting of City going behind was eased when I thought of the money being raised for such a good cause and the last two donations I made for the City goals – believe me – made me even happier.

You can follow and tweet to the hashtag again tonight in the second leg and please do take part. Remember – text GIVE to 70077 to donate £5 every time a goal is scored and tell your friends by retweeting the below message or just by following this link and updating your status.

I’m giving £5 to Haiti @decappeal for every goal scored in the Manchester Derby. Text GIVE to 70077 to donate #goals4haiti

I’ll do a follow-up post after tonight’s match with a round up of the campaign and my thoughts on what is interesting to a fundraising marketer but for now, I’m just going to ask you to get involved. Tonight and for the final – whoever gets through…

The Sun has drawn first blood with the sensational headline “Labour’s lost it”. The online version of this article is juicy enough link-bait to already hit the first page of Google for the search term “labour”.

There it is, at the time of writing, in fifth position (not counting news results). Ouch.

As well as associated articles, dossiers and microsites also to be found on the sun website, they are also using PPC as part of their attack strategy.

The terms labour, labour party and labour conference all bring up one of the following ads linking to the topic dedicated Feeling Blue section of their site.

And they seem to be pre-empting a response by buying up their own name.

It’s not been all one way traffic, though. Labour were pretty quick to respond with their own ad that plays on a pretty emotive anti-sun topic: Hillsborough. I took this screenshot this morning:

The gloves are off.

However, Labour don’t seem to be buying as many or as broad search terms. If they want to compete, they should be buying up all the search terms the Sun is and directly attacking the paper on its own turf. That could require some deep PPC pockets. In fact, as I check now the ad isn’t showing. Has the budget dried up already?

The US presidential election digital campaigns demonstrated the importance of rapid response to on and offline trending topics. In particular the paid search campaigns for both camps had to respond quickly and effectively to online buzz and breaking news. Eric Frenchman, the guy in charge of John McCain’s PPC has blogged about using search for political or news rapid response.

So now it’s the UK’s turn and although I hope the tactics might not get quite as… dubious as in the American election, I think Search and social media will be two areas where the battle will be viciously fought.

Interesting times lie ahead.

——————————————-

Update: It seems Labour didn’t have anything directly to do with the Hillsborough ads, the Telegraph reports. The ads stopped showing around 2 the afternoon. Either there was a very small budget allocated or they were pulled. Over enthusiastic supporters or plausible deniability? Either way it’s a shame, I’d have liked to see a real scrap!

I want contact lenses with this ability so I don’t miss a drop of metadata that might whizz by!

It’s Microsoft’s vision of how we will be interacting with technology in 2019 and it’s called… “2019″. I bet MS’s skill at naming things won’t be any better by then.

**update**

Ross has brough this to my attention.

Lulz

Here is a priceless example of why it’s really important to remember who you add on facebook.

Maybe just as important is to remember why you use Facebook/linkedin/Twitter/Whatevr.

If you use it for work or professional networking, don’t add “Stinky Dave” from uni and certainly don’t comment on his video of his dog trying to have sex with his neighbour’s cat.

Facebook does have settings to allow you do choose which content you share with whom. But it’s complicated and tricky to stay on top of it.

My advice is to use one SocNet for friends and one for work. And never the twain shall meet.

Excellent. You can follow the furore on Twitter by looking at this twitter search.

KutcherVSCnn.com is the app that delivered the news. He also raised a lot of money for a very good cause, so good on him.

Ah May 2008. I remember it like it was only last year. How things have changed since then.

The battle for 1,000,000 followers is on.

Currently, the CNN breaking news twitter feed is Top of the Twops (not ‘arf) with 967,979 followers. Hot on the heels of this broadcasting giant is one man who likes to tweet. So which wit, which philosopher, which inspirational human being is deemed so important by the new Twitter masses that he or she has 959,259 followers and is challenging a global news corperation?

Ashton Kutcher.

(Note to self: try, really try not to be snooty)

So now Ashton, aided by Electronic Arts, is campaiging for followers so that he can overtake CNN and win the race to the big one oh oh oh oh oh oh.

Says Ashton:

“When I saw that I was approaching a million and that CNN was too, I thought this was really significant for social media. For one person to have the ability to broadcast to as many as people as a major media network, I think signifies the turning of the tide from traditional news outlets to social news outlets.

“Because with our video cameras on our cell-phones, on our picture cams, with our blogging, with our twittering and our posting and our Facebook accounts we actually become the sources of the news, and the broadcasters of the news and the consumers of the news. We have the potential on this day to turn the tide.”

Ashton Kutcher’s stance as the ‘everyman’ is a bit galling. As one YouTube commenter rather crudely put it:

He’s not the “everyman” you c**t muffin. He’s a fu**ing celebrity. His dumb face is all over every printed media.

Quite. Thanks to interestingperson121 for that quote. I added the asterisks.

I do like the fact that Ashton Kutcher seems to care about social media as well as the promotion he gets out of it. He obviously does all his updates himself and he also gets involved with video blogging on Qik and YouTube and… well I admit it: I dislike him a lot less then I used to. At least I don’t have to watch him acting when he’s on Twitter.

But I don’t really agree with him that his having 1,000,000 followers is a triumph of social media. It’s still a single source broadcasting to many. So it doesn’t matter if that source is CNN or Ashton Kutcher. In fact, if I had to pick one as the only twitter stream I could follow I’d plump for CNN. They really do have a lot of content. That’s why they are a news network.

The point is I don’t have to choose. I can follow as many people as I like and get content from them all. Whether it’s the BBC or a mate from work doesn’t really matter. I pick my crowd from which to source my wisdom.

And you know what? It goes two ways. I can tell people stuff I find interesting. It might be stuff i’ve found on the web or even thoughts that have formed in my own brain.

That’s many to many broadcasting. Throw in a dollop of conversation and that’s social media.

Update 1: You can read a blow by blowaccount of the battle so far in a great series of posts in techcrunch by MG Seigler.

Update 2: If you’d asked me six months ago who would be the first to a million followers, I’d have said it would be between Stephen Fry and Barack Obama.

Since then two things have happened.

1) Barack is now the president of the USA

Twitter was a great tool for him while he was campaigning but now his campaign tools don’t need quite so much attention. Apparently he’s too busy saving the world to let us know what he’s having for breakfast nowadays.

2) Twitter use by superstar celebrities has exploded.

Our Stephen, so revered among geeks and other early adopters, now languishes in the lower regions of the top thirty in the twitter charts thanks to more highly exposed celebs and the general public that follow them. Celebs, some of whom don’t even do their own updates like Britney Spears and Coldplay are above him. If that sounds snooty, it’s meant to.

Comedy value aside, I think this guy has more to worry about than his business cards.

His name is Joel Bauer; he’s apparently a hugely successful motivational speaker and I’m not about to knock him for that. Although, am I the only one who is a little scared of anyone describing themselves as a ‘motivational speaker’?

Maybe that’s why on his equally hilarious and disturbing website Joel chooses to describe himself as an Infotainer.

For those who don’t quite believe what you have just read, once more with feeling: an INFOTAINER.

Srsly…

Although I subscribe to Seth Godin‘s Purple Cow theory that it pays to be remarkable, I’m pretty sure it’s meant to apply to a business as a whole – not just a business card.

In any case, I don’t care how remarkable your business card is, if you convey yourself as having the blended personalities of Patrick Bateman and David Brent – the two most abhorrent characters in the history of fictional businessmen – you’re not going to appeal to me.

By putting so much stock in the business card, that most anachronistic 80s hangover of business tools, Joel has neglected the fact that his website and all his available online video content are conspiring to portray him as a complete arse.

If people want to know about someone they have met, they aren’t going to revisit the ludicrous card they have wedge in their pocket, they’ll Google him. And the returns for Joel Bauer, especially the video returns, make him look ridiculous.

Maybe he can spend the next 25 years picking up the pieces and repairing his online personal brand.

Oh and a usability point: if a card doesn’t go with all the other cards, it goes in the bin.

[Just trying out something sneaky with these links: Tom Knowles Joel Bauer Joel Bauer Joel Bauer Joel Bauer]

Over the last couple of years the frequency and ridiculousness of these stories has escalated. Two years ago it was MySpace Thugs Trashed my House or similar and in the last year or so Facebook has been accused of being responsible for identity fraud, economic ruin, murder and cancer.

I was most pleased last month when eight newspapers and one news television channel were forced to apologise and pay settlement charges to a family after running stories describing how a “Facebook party” had gone “out of control” and that gatecrashers had “trashed” the house in Marbella. It came out that the news “journalists” involved didn’t know or didn’t care that the party wasn’t gatecrashed, only led to very minor damage and in any case was organised on Bebo, not Facebook.

The worst example of a paper using a web application to fabricate a story was last month when the Scottish Sunday Express, as Graham Linehan put it so well, won the race to the bottom by describing the impish Internet behaviour of Dunblane teenagers as “shaming the memory” of those who died in the Dunblane massacre 13 years ago.  They too were forced to apologise.

This year’s main headline-grabbing SM service is Twitter. So I shouldn’t be surprised that last week a story broke about the upcoming report by Sir Jim Rose that will make recommendations for an overhaul of primary school education. The leaked report features many recommendations including the teaching of health and environmental matters and that certain topics from history, notably WW2 and the Victorian period should not be taught at a primary school level. There is also going to be a recommendation that by the time pupils leave primary school they should be familiar with modern sources of information including blogs, wikipedia, podcasts and twitter. Guess what the headlines were?

Pupils to study Twitter and blogs in primary schools shake-up
The Guardian

Pupils ‘should study Twitter’
BBC online

This is a leak from a report recommending the biggest shake up of primary education in 20 years and they focus on Twitter? There of course followed lots of discussion on public phone-ins, panels shows and editors columns about how disgraceful and silly this was. Calm down everyone!

First of all, the report hasn’t been formally published yet. Secondly, when it does get published, the recommendations won’t automatically be Incorporated into the curriculum. Lastly, and crucially, the recommendations, as far as I can tell aren’t saying there should be lessons about Twitter. They are saying there should be an emphasis in teaching kids how to use many sources of information available on the Internet to research a topic as well as gaining fluency in keyboard skills and common desktop applications. Isn’t that a good thing?

The above two articles were at least fairly balanced; unfortunately the same can’t be said of the Daily Mail who are rapidly becoming a parody of themselves. In characteristic fashion, they combined the dumbing down of broken Britain with Twitter and a big dollop of hell-in-a-handbasket editorial slant to produce this work of art.

Exit Winston Churchill, enter Twitter… Yes, it’s the new primary school curriculum

Primary schools could ditch traditional lessons in favour of teaching children how to use social networking sites such as Twitter, it emerged yesterday. 

Under the blueprint for a new primary curriculum pupils would no longer have to learn about the Romans, Vikings, Tudors, Victorians or the Second World War.

They even managed to squeeze in some tub-thumping about sex education and drugs.

Compulsory sex education will start from five and children as young as nine will be taught to make ‘informed decisions’ about taking drugs and drinking alcohol. 

Throw in a couple of outraged history professors, a Tory spokesperson for education and an outraged mother and we’ve got ourselves a story! 

Sigh… 

As always with Daily Mail online articles, the entertaining (and slightly frightening) comments by members of the generally racist public almost eclipsed the silliness of the article itself and I should thank Jane from Solihul for inspiring the title of this post with this nugget of knee-jerkery.

If this isn’t the dumbing down of education in this country I don’t know what is. At this rate eventually the UK will have a generation of complete ignoramuses. So much for Tony Blair’s mantra in 1997 – ‘Education, Education, Education’!

Experienced Daily Mail commenters will realise that Jane from Solihul missed a trick by not claiming that the report is a result of ‘political correctness gone mad’. Or immigrants.

Hey Jane, maybe if you had been educated in primary school on the importance of taking information from a range of sources and using your own critical reasoning to form an opinion, you wouldn’t swallow Daily Mail rhetoric and sick it up disguised as your own thoughts when chatting at the school gates. And maybe your corner of the world would be a better place for it.

Those of you who don’t subscribe to the Friday Night Comedy podcast really should.

The Now Show is on at the moment and among others it features regular contributor, Mitch Benn. If you don’t know Mitch, he makes up funny and topical songs all the time, which is great on the radio but must annoy his wife.

Anyway, Mitch is one of many comedians/broadcasters to have recently embraced Twitter (@mitchbenn if you’re interested). A couple of weeks ago I saw him tweeting that he had written a song about Twitter. It’s a funny commentary on how minor celebrities become obsessed with gathering as many followers as they can with no thought as to what conversations they should be having.

At least, I hope he’s joking – he might mean it.

Mitch Benn on Twitter – Download MP3

Here’s Mitch’s take on the ridiculous “schools to teach Twitter instead of history” story. I’ve got a post on this topic baking in the oven but for now I’ll leave it to Mitch. Here is his 1 minute lesson on ‘teh interwebs’.

Mitch Benn on teh Interwebs- Download MP3

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Juvenal / Alan Moore

I think this is the last time I’m going to post about this. Pseudo-political wittering was not the intended use for this blog when I started it. However there has been a bit of a development since my initial post describing my thoughts on how the police use anti-terror laws to stop and search people. When I say people, I really mean me. Specifically me, in Clapham Junction on the 7th of March 2009. I know, I’m not a great philanthropist.

After the incident I wrote to a high ranking officer in the Wandsworth borough of the Metropolitan police to complain, making clear that I think randomly stopping members of the public with no reason for suspicion is complete waste of police time and the cause of unnecessary disruption and upset. I have since received a reply and engaged him in a brief email exchange in which I asked a few pertinent questions and a few impertinent ones as well.

My main gripe was that although I was told that I was stopped at random, the officer ticked the box stating I was stopped on grounds of “behaviour”.

You can see that there is no “random” box to tick. So as I am on record for suspicious behaviour I wanted to know what happened to that data.

Some of my questions were answered and some were artfully dodged. You’ll notice I’m not naming the high-ranking officer in this post. This is because he declined to go on record and asked that the contents of our email exchange were not discussed on this blog. In fact as soon as the word “blog” was mentioned he clammed up and told me he couldn’t help me further. (Bloggers! Aaaaaaaagh! To the hills!)

As I have no journalistic reputation to speak of, it probably wouldn’t harm me to post the email exchange in its entirety. However, I do have some respect for people’s wishes so I will only tell you some of the questions I asked and describe the answers I received.

My first question.

What happens to the record that I was stopped on grounds of “behaviour”? How long are the records kept? Are the records public? Can they be used by the police or any other government body in any capacity or investigation not linked to terrorism?

The response was rather shocking: turns out that stops are placed on the police stops database and are kept for seven years. They are not public records but they can be used by the police and certain government bodies in any other capacity not linked to terrorism.

So for seven years there will be a record that I was stopped on grounds of suspicious behaviour and any government agency can use the data whether they are investigating terrorism, littering or whether or not I am separating my paper and plastics. Great.

After seeing a report that all the section 44 stops by the Met and British Transport police in 2008 resulted in not a single link to terrorism I asked the following question.

How many stops under section 44 by officers of your borough have led to successful arrests under terrorism charges or confiscation of items linked to terrorism?

The high-ranking officer told me he could not divulge this data. Perhaps that means there is data to divulge?
I rephrased my question:

I previously asked how many stops had led to arrests or confiscations. If you cannot divulge this number, can you tell me simply if the number is more than zero or not?

The high-ranking officer declined to comment.

It may be true that there have been successful arrests but surely they would want to shout about this? It is noticeable that in the public records published for 2008, there is no separation of arrests made as a result of section 44 stops. The figures only include searches under section44, not people who were stopped and questioned without being searched (as in my case) and the arrest figures include D&Ds, possession, weapons, assault, robbery etc. Seems like somone wanted to minimise the appearence of the stop figures and maximise the apparent results.

I’ve found a great set of figures released under the freedom of information act that states between January 2003 and February 2008 there were 191,478 searches by the Met under section 44 resulting in only 2108 arrests. Crucially, it doesn’t say how many of these arrests were on terrorism charges or how many links to terrorism were found.

I really would love to know this figure for sure, even just within wandsworth, but I suspect I know already. A big fat zero. If I were a dedicated social activist I would request themore detailed information myself under the freedom of information act. I still might but to be honest my feeling of righteous indignance is waning over time. I guess I’m more of a social inactivist.

In addition, this senior police officer denied that teams of officers in his borough were sent out on shifts specifically with the main intention of performing section 44 stops. He also denied that he had instructed his officers to use the section 44 stop and search powers whenever possible. Both these statements contradict what the officer told me during my stop but hey, I’m willing to take his word on it.

In response to my question as to what percentage of those stopped under section 44 were blond, he gave me some PR guff about community relations, standard operating procedure and briefing and training processes in place to ensure no discrimination blah blah blah. I want figures. Like this or this or this. Or even this.

So what are these laws being used for? If it’s not to combat terrorism directly is this just a huge data collection exercise fuelled and legislated on the back of public fear? Are the lives lost due to terror attacks of recent years being exploited to make it easier for the government to put names to faces on CCTV? I’m starting to sound like a paranoid loony now so I’ll wrap up.

So to the end of my brush with The Man. If it happens again I certainly won’t be giving my name or address. You never know if they might use it to prosecute me for failing to separate my recycling.

If you are stopped under section 44 you DO NOT have to give your name address or any other details. You don’t have to explain what you are doing. Section 44 is for stop and search only.  Here are some guidelines from Liberty as to your rights under section 44. And if you are really curious as to who my email correspondence was with, try Googling the phrase ‘useless bureaucrat’ and hit I’m feeling lucky.

He boils it down to these 5 points:

OK he makes some good points.

Well, let me rephrase that: he makes some points. Eventually. After he’s stopped rabbiting on about burgers and how popular he is on twitter.

If you ever hear me using the phrase “informational yoghurt” without a trace of irony, you have my permission to shoot me. Unless for some reason I’m in the process of explaining artificial insemination to a child, then I might need to use the phrase “informational yoghurt”.

Social media “experts” everywhere (and they are everywhere) should be saying “There but for the grace of God go I”.

Well guess what? It only bloody worked! Check it out.

Putting aside my slightly petulant motive, I think the fact that I have managed to single-handedly divert Google this way is quite interesting. Since the famous Bush Googlebomb a few years ago, it was reported that Google made it harder to do this type of thing.

A new, positive Google bomb was brought in for Obama (“Cheerful Acheivement” was the phrase) but that was helped along by numerous blogs and web sites with huge Google authority. I didn’t have a squad of bloggers at my disposal to help out,  I only posted the link twice: here and on GrammarBlog. It just goes to show that inbound links and the link text used are still as important as ever for natural SEO.

To have any real value in terms of SEO, the trick is finding a term that people will actually search for (unlike “useless bureaucrat“) and for which there is little competition. I doubt I would be successful with the term “great value” or “best car”. But the thing is with Google, you never actually know for sure.

*Update* If the Obama positive google bomb is anything to go by, I’m probably undoing my success by posting about it. Google’s bomb defusion algorithm works by making the reports on the googlebomb replace the googlebomb itself in Google’s top results. So if any Google spiders are reading this: move along, nothing to report here.

Last Saturday, after a quiet potter around Victoria, my girlfriend and I got the overland back to Clapham Junction. As we were walking through the shopping area next to the station she decided to pop into a shop called Accessorize, which, for those of you not familiar which the chain, is pretty much my idea of what hell will be like. All sequins and bangles and tat; filled with cackling, legging-clad high street fashionista. No thanks.

I opted to wait outside and catch up with the weekly wittertainment from Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo’s brilliant film review podcast.

I was leaning against the shop window whilst listening and trying to decide which made me look the least silly: chuckling out loud or grinning inanely whist stifling chuckles. Kermode moved on from his amusing rantings and descriptions of Renee Zellweger (like a hamster squinting at the sun ) and moved on to reviewing the Watchmen movie. He was comparing it rather unfavourably to the film adaptation of another Alan Moore graphic novel, V for Vendetta – a film I like very much. It was while my thoughts were on Alan Moore comics, police states, fascism and the abuse of public fear to enforce totalitarianism that I was approached by two uniformed police officers.

I smiled a greeting and paused my podcast.

The first officer, one Colin Swan of the the Wandsworth Borough Police told me that he and his colleague (unnamed) were stopping and searching people under Section 44 of the anti-terrorism act and that he would be asking me a few questions and searching me.

I’m not normally anti-police and I certainly didn’t have anything to hide but I was furious. Was leaning against a shop window suspicious behaviour? What grounds did he have to search me? So I asked him.

“We’re conducting random stops in this area” came the reply.

Random eh? A bit of background for those who don’t know me. I am a lapsed catholic of mixed Anglo-Indian heritage. I have dark hair and my skin colour, while not the out-and-out brown of an Indian subcontinental, could be described as beige. I don’t think I’m being cynical when I say that I suspect the last factor had something to do with my being approached. I was tempted to ask Colin Swan how many blonde people he had “randomly” stopped that day but thought better of it.

Instead, quietly fuming, I handed over my driver’s license and stated that I strongly objected to being questioned in this manner. The unnamed colleague (who appeared to be more senior) decided they wouldn’t need to search me after all. Maybe I wasn’t giving off enough of a Muslim “vibe”.

The human rights organisation Liberty explains section 44 of the terrorism act as follows.

Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 allows the police to stop and search anyone in a specific area.
Before Section 44, the police could only stop and search individuals if they had ‘reasonable grounds’ and certain criteria were met. That is no longer necessary, and we have seen Section 44 powers used against anti-war, anti-weapons and anti-capitalist protestors.
The power to stop and search under anti-terrorism powers should only be used when there is evidence of a specific terrorist threat. It should not be simply an addition to the day to day powers of officers policing protests.

After further research, that last paragraph appears to be the writer’s opinion rather than any official guideline. A recent BBC article states that “officers have been advised to use the power sparingly” but Act 44 itself seems to imply that the policeman may stop and search whomever he pleases, regardless of whether he suspects terrorism, provided authorisation has been given to use these powers in that area. Indeed, act 45, which deals with the exercise of power states:

The power conferred by an authorisation under section 44 may be exercised whether or not the constable has grounds for suspecting the presence of articles of the kind which could be used in connection with terrorism.

My mood was slightly elevated by the unwitting interruption of events by my mate Adam, who saw me and had already bowled over and and shouted an enthusiastic “Alright!” before he registered the police presence. The dawning realisation on his face was priceless; I reckon he thought he had just associated himself with a shoplifter. He laughed out loud when I told him what was going on, which cheered me up and boosted my confidence.

Inspired by Adam’s laughter and perhaps the spirit of Alan Moore heroes like V, I started to address some questions toward the unnamed, senior officer about the motives behind the policy of using Section 44 anti-terror legislation this way. Admittedly, my subversive action was a little more polite and middle-class than the aforementioned superhuman anarchist’s but I used some long words (some of which I understand) and a haughty, indignant demeanour to my advantage. In the conversation that took place, while officer Colin Swan wrote out a stop/search record very slowly and with scant regard for spelling conventions, a few interesting points came to light.

Firstly, officers from Wandsworth Borough police have been instructed by the Borough Commander, Stewart Low, to use the powers afforded to them by section 44 whenever possible. Not whenever appropriate. Not whenever necessary, but whenever possible. I asked the unnamed officer to repeat this several times and he confirmed it each time.

So keen are Wandsworth Borough Police to be seen to be attempting to combat terror that each team of two officers is given a quota of stops they have to perform each day. Woe betide Colin Swan or any other officer who returns to the station after a shift without the required number of stop/search slips.

“But Sarge, there was an aggravated burglary to attend,” our poor, naive Colin might argue, hoping logic and common sense will prevail over bureaucracy. No such luck.

Is this the best use of police time? Is it an effective method against terrorism? Or is it just time-wasting and posturing that makes a mockery of the terrorism act and will cause police and general public alike to take the act less seriously?

Centre Right has some interesting stats on the use of Section 44 in London in 2008

• Number of people stopped nationwide by British Transport Police using s 44: 160,000
• Number of people stopped in London by the Metropolitan Police using s. 44: 200,000
• Number of people amongst the 360,000 stopped under s. 44 and found to have any terrorist material or links: 0

I shouldn’t be too hard on PC Colin Swan and PC Noname. They were quite polite and had the decency to be a little sheepish about the whole thing. PC Noname even went as far as telling me he didn’t agree with the policy and advised me to write an email to Borough Commander, Stewart Low. I think I shall, although its very tempting to just start a Google bomb on the useless bureaucrat.

As for good old Colin, he might not be the world’s greatest speller but he was good enough not to pepper-spray me when I asked him, “Is this what you joined the police for?”

In response to my impertinence he didn’t club me to the ground a la Stephen Fry’s Gordan Deitrich, he simply looked a bit forlorn and said, “No”.

For those of you who are still interested after wading through this rambling post, here is a copy of my stop/search form. I’ve blanked out my details.

For those of you who, unlike me, have a life instead of monitoring twitter trends, Skittles have revamped their site and the content has almost been completely replaced by relevant pages from third-party social media applications. Visitors to Skittles.com are now directed to the twitter search result for the term “skittles” and invited to navigate their way about Skittles’ social web presence by using the flash navigation menu that overlays the page. [update: the homepage is now set as the facebook page as predicted my moi ]

The ‘Home’ and ‘Chatter’ links both link to the twitter search results for the term Skittles, the products links for each flavour lead to the relevant information on the Skittles Wikipedia entry. There is a ‘Friends’ link that goes to the Skittles facebook page and the video and photo links respectively lead to the Skittles profile on YouTube and Flickr search results for the term… well can you guess?

There are only two actual web pages in use: the product overview page and the contact form.

My first impressions were that this is very brave and very cool. I did have some reservations, however.

Firstly, the idea is not original. Dave Kinsella showed me the Modernista “Unsite” about this time last year.

Remember: a year in social media is roughly equivalent to one dog-year.

I don’t think the skittles implementation is as good. Modernista use javascript menus cleverly to help the user navigate to the content they need, rather than just pulling up a live stream of search results. Even worse, the skittles flash menu cannot be moved by drag and drop which means there is a chunk of the page on the top left that the user will never see. This is especially annoying when trying to navigate around text-heavy wikipedia pages.

I also couldn’t understand why the Homepage was set to the twitter search results. Ok, having a ‘Chatter’ link is pretty cool but why duplicate it on the homepage? All that will do is encourage twitter users to tweet the word skittles over and over again in order to try to get their tweets to appear on the…

*sound of penny dropping*

Aha! That’s it. The cheapest and most effective viral campaign there is. Genius.

I  was mildly concerned (but mainly interested and excited) to see what cunning ways people would try to subvert the idea. There is the most potential for amusing disaster on the Flickr search page. After all, a picture can speak a thousand crude words whereas there’s only room for about 2o crude words in 140 characters.

Unsurprisingly though, it was those cheeky scamps on twitter, led by mischief and Techcrunch UK’s Mike Butcher, who attempted to cause trouble for skittles.  This was closely followed by some wikipedia attacks (which I suspect will stop as soon as Wikipedia lock the entry).

I suspect that Skittles knew this would happen; they make users fill in an age declaration and those underage can’t continue.

I also don’t think that people acting the goat does Skittles any harm. The negative comments, especially the obviously silly ones, reflect only on the user posting them and at the same time as they are revelling in their cleverness at getting rude words to appear on the skittles home page, all their followers are busy investigating what all the Skittles posts are about.

For good or bad, skittles was the number 1 trending term on twitter for most of the day and with twitter’s current high profile, I wouldn’t be surprised to see more mentions of Skittles in the mainstream media in the next couple of days.

I’m also betting that thousands and thousands of people who wouldn’t have thought about skittles ordinarily will now find their hand inexplicably drawn towards that brightly coloured bag while they are queuing at Tesco or picking up a paper. And that’s what it’s about.

There are some naysayers out there, including the normally astute Paul Fabretti, who are of the opinion that people mindlessly twittering the name Skittles, and people talking about the  promotion rather than the product doesn’t actually add any value. I couldn’t disagree more.

Buying a piece of confectionary is an impulse decision. You’re not buying a car so you don’t need loads of information about price and product. When was the last time you saw an informative ad for sweets or chocolate?

“But what about the general public?” I hear people cry. “The ordinary web users who haven’t heard of twitter, flickr, facebook, and wikipedia. They will be scared and confused when visiting the site and throw their laptop in the bath and never buy Masterfoods’ confectionary again and…”

Ok no-one actually suggested that last bit but you get the idea.

I happen to agree that the current homepage , while a great PR stunt, is not ideal in the long term. I think that Skittles will change it to something else in the near future – why else would ‘Chatter’ and ‘Home’ be duplicated?

But are there really any regular web users who have never heard of social networking and the most common web apps? More importantly, are there any regular web users in the target market for skittles that would be repelled by the use of such tools?

I suspect not. All in all, great work Skittles.

Is it great that the community is expanding into the general populous? Is it the end of the world? Do you care?

Have your say with the click of a mouse and a post of a comment.

As you can see from the video, you can now use the Historical Maps feature to go back in time to see how certain areas looked in years gone by. How far back depends on the area. I have to say, I couldn’t find a place that had more than 4 or 5 years’ worth of historical data but I presume they will add more historical data to this feature as they manage to acquire it.

I expecially like the idea of Google Ocean. The BBC have a great video which I can’t embed due to the limitations of wordpress.com (Grrr..)

Al Gore, the media’s go-to guy for anything to do with the planet earth was at the launch of Google Earth 5.0 update in San Fransisco yesterday and seemed to be most impressed.

You can not only zoom into whatever part of our planet’s surface you wish to examine in closer detail, you can now dive into the world’s ocean that covers almost three-quarters of the planet and discover new wonders that had not been accessible in previous versions.

I’m not sure I can remember the last time I was lost at the bottom of the ocean so I don’t know how practical all these improvements are. In any case, I don’t think my EDGE coverage is good enough for my iPhone to work down there.

But of course I’m being flippant. Google Ocean is amazing, beautiful and, conversly for Google Earth,  strangely etherial . All that’s missing is a Sigur Ros soundtrack…

Social Media Workshop originally uploaded byinblackandwhiteseminars

I’ve done a few of these things now ov er the last couple of years and I find there is a noticable shift in understanding and awareness of social media. A couple of years ago we were talking about real 101 suff when it came to blogging, social networks, RSS and media sharing. I doubt that a year ago we could have sold out a workshop like this, there just wasn’t the level of awareness necessary to realise that businesses needed to get involved in online conversations.  

I keep reading about a social media tipping point and there are many theories about the reason for this:  media exposure, celebrity ensorsement, the recession, customer expectation. Whatever the reason people are definitly getting switched on and more and more people outside of the web world are aware of  social networks, blogs and sites like Flickr and YouTube .  

So now business people at all levels are used to using some of the more common social media tools – or at least they are aware of them. But what struck me last week, although workshop atendees were mostly au fait with terms like Blog, YouTube, Podcast, Facebook and twitter, there was a much lower level of understanding when it came to RSS, RSS readers and specialist search techniques (like Blog searches, twitter search). I was quite surprised at this as I see RSS as the cornerstone of social media. This tells me two things.

1) We need be aware that as social media becomes a term everyone understands, some of the basic technologies that are fundamental to social media have remained hidden from popular awareness.

2) Business aren’t considering listening and integration to be as important as broadcasting.

I’m signing off for now – I’m aware that this last point needs lots of embelishment but I’ve decided to leave that for another day.

Have a look at the first 3 minutes of this video.

So is this it? Has twitter finally ‘arrived’ thanks to @wossy and @stephenfry?

Statistically, it’s hard to say. Hitwise has a nice graph showing that the exposure from the show boosted Twitter UK usage more than Obama’s inauguration.

 
In any case the recent growth of twitter in the UK couldn’t be pinned down to one TV appearence so my rather optimistic tweet of last friday evening was perhaps a little sensationalist.

We do know that the use of twitter in the UK has increased tenfold in the last twelve months and that the penetration is higher per capita in the UK than in the US (according to Hitwise). Could this be due to the inceasing number of well-known media personalities who use twitter?

Mike Butcher of Techcrunch UK seems to think so.

Famous Twitterers are boosting the site. Stephen Fry, has over 50,000 followers, John Cleese can claim more than 30,000, and 2,000 people are following Andy Murray’s progress at the Australian Open. Jonathan Ross (13,000+ followers) is spreading the Twitter religion by verifying if his celeb pals are on it. He calls himself the “Number One Twitter Detective”.

Other UK personalities (not fake) with twitter profiles include Robert Llewelyn, David Mitchell, Russell Brand, Andi Peters, Philip Scofield, Alan Carr and the list continues to grow. These celebs seem to be doing a good job using twiitter is to promote themselves – and it seems to be working out pretty well for twitter.

Goodbye Bush - Best ad placement ever?

Absolute genius. For those of who who don’t know, Veet is a brand of products for the removal of body hair. It’s a bush pun – geddit?

Whoever thought this up needs a promotion immediately.

I love my Xbox 360. Right now I’m in the firm grip of an addiction to Gears of War 2. My facebook profile pic is me “rocking out” with my imitation Gibson Guitar Hero controller. I really am that sad.

But I get annoyed at how little I am able to integrate my Xbox live account with other parts of my online life. I know it’s possible to fudge together a gamercard widget for ones blog or online profile, and your Windows messenger status can be set to show what game you are playing. But that’s about it and c’mon that’s pretty limited.

I think Microsoft are really missing a trick here.

The newly updated website is still not geared enough towards community interaction. It should resemble last.fm with activity streams, updates, information on users’ game and video libraries. Users should be able to start groups, organize events and competitions and arrange leagues.

The recent update to the Xbox live interface is a wii-inspired move in the right direction but I think Microsoft could do a much better job of getting users involved in the Xbox live community.

For a start there should be an RSS feed or a collection of RSS feeds for my activity so I can share what games i’m playing etc with others.

If I play a new game for the first time shouldn’t I be able to announce to my twitter/facebook/insert-social-network-here friends that “Gez has just started playing XXXX” without, you know actually typing it anywhere? Typing is soooo web 1.0 .

There could, and should be an achievement feed so I can brag about my progress in GTA4. Ok, I not saying I want to subject my network to all this but I’d like to be able to.

The next step would be a functional API so other people could build cool stuff. I’m thinking Facebook apps, flickr viewers and uploaders. Imagine if, when browsing game previews in the Xbox marketplace, you were able to add those games to your amazon wish-list.

It makes commercial sense too. I’m much more likely to buy a game if I know others in my network already have it. And what about those Xbox owners who don’t subscribe to xbox live? Surely they’re going to be more willing to stump up 30 quid a year once they see how much fun they are missing out on?

So come on Microsoft – have a word with yourself and let’s get connected eh?

Last Thursday saw me up at the crack of dawn in order to lead a breakfast discussion group for pro-manchester. The topic was “Blogging for Business” and the presentation I delivered was a scaled down and slightly updated version of the one written by my colleague Paul for our July seminars on the same topic. The accompanying slides can be downloaded from our seminar pages.

I’m not going to recap the presentation here but there were some interesting points brought up in the ensuing discussion that gave me food for thought.

Fuelled partly by my presentation and partly by the coffee and sausage sandwiches provided by our host, Cobbetts, the discussion was lively and engaging. I was pleased that the topic seemed to strike a chord with the attendees so I’ll do my best to report on some of those issues discussed.

“Where do I start?”

Good question. I suspect the enquirer wanted to know how to set up a
blog. That’s easy. If I were to answer that question I’d simply say
head over to Typepad, WordPress or Blogger
and set up a blog; or if more protection of your brand and/or some
communication strategy is required, engage an agency (KMP for example ) in a design and consultation exercise.

But I think you should start by understanding a bit about the medium
you wish to enter. The key to Marketing 2.0, PR 2.0 and [insert service
here]2.0 is listening.

If you want to know how best to use blogs, see how other people do it. Head over to Technorati or Google Blog search and search for blogs in your field of interest. Subscribe to them, comment on them, get inspired by them.

Being actively involved with the blogosphere is very important when
promoting your own blog and it’s always a good place to go for
inspiration if the creative well is running a little dry.

The best way to consume content from blogs is with a feed reader. There are many free RSS readers available but I recommend Google Reader.
Once you are signed up, any RSS feed link you click on will be able to
be added to your Reader or your iGoogle personalised homepage.

“How do I protect my business from legal action?”

This point was raised by Steve from RALLI solicitors and in his
words it’s a “typical lawyer’s response” when the issue of
employees being given free access to a blog that represents the
company is raised. In fact it’s not only lawyers who worry about this. The risk
of exposing your business to legal action or negative PR is an issue on
most people’s minds. My answer to this is simple: strategy.

It’s very
important to have a clear remit for company bloggers and ensure that
they have guidelines to follow regarding content, copyright and tone of
voice. There is a correlation between size and importance here.
The bigger the company, the more important it is to provide clear, well
thought-out blogging guidelines.

I firmly believe that the fear of negative PR and legal exposure
should never be an insurmountable barrier to the benefits that a
successful blog can provide. It just takes a bit of planning to get
around the obstacle.

“What do we do if people say bad things about us?”

Whether you are talking about comments on your blog or content elsewhere in the blogosphere, my response is the same.

Listen, evaluate and respond.

Does this person have a point? Is their information incorrect? Have
you made changes to your services/business since this person’s bad
experience? Are they just a nutter?

Tell them, engage them, communicate with them. (Unless they are just
a nutter. As long as no one is paying attention to them, it’s probably
best to leave the nutters alone.)

Of course on your own blog, there is always the option of moderating
comments before allowing them to see the light of day. But don’t assume
that because you are blocking negative comments they won’t appear
anywhere else. They will and probably already are.

So engage the disgruntled party. Most of the time, it’s all they really want.

“You mean a blog can be used for SEO purposes?”

Emphatically, YES. 

If you are paying Google or another company thousands of pounds for
PPC keywords but not including those keywords in your content to be
naturally indexed you are wasting money. Blogs are extremely well
indexed by the search engines and all content stays there, archived and
available for users and search engine spiders alike.

In fact, as I write this post, the number one Google return for the term pro manchester business is Jon’s blog post written during the event from his iPhone. It returns above www.pro-manchester.co.uk.

I’m not suggesting you should try and game the system by loading blog
posts with a nonsensical stream of expensive keywords. Just write about
the things you want to be recognised for. It should come naturally. Of
course if some frequently searched-for terms make their way naturally
into the post title or body, all the better.

Here is a post on why blogs are useful for SEO including a list of further resources and here is a post with some tips on how to increase traffic to your blog.

This has turned into a bit of a mammoth post so I’ll sign off now. All comments gratefully received.