Media Week

Further to my post on the subject earlier this month, the Guardian reports the Information Commissioner's Office has said it's satisfied Google's doing its utmost to safeguard people's privacy as it rolls out its new service.

"We are satisfied that Google is putting in place adequate safeguards to avoid any risk to the privacy or safety of individuals, including the blurring of vehicle registration marks and the faces of anyone included in Street View images. Although it is possible that in certain limited circumstances an image may allow identification of an individual, it is clear that Google are keen to capture images of streets and not individuals."

Who's going to tell these Daily Mail readers?!$**+=

Lee Odden’s got a great thread going on his Internet Marketing Blog on how business is done via Social Networks, and which are the most influential. He’s set up a poll which has some interesting results. LinkedIn - is coming out top, but only just ahead of Twitter, the micro-blogging service - http://twitter.com/melcarson - and Facebook is coming in with 20% of the vote.

I’ll admit I was late to the “socnet” party. I feared it would take up far too much time for little reward, but I have found it really is a great way of keeping up with developments in the online media space. You also get to let others know what’s going on in your "manor" as well.

Do you think LinkedIn would get way more votes here in the UK if we held a similar poll? (Not that only folk in the US read Lee’s blog!) Because I’m not so sure we’ve quite grasped the power of being social on FB and Twitter yet.

LinkedIn is a little more formal and “proper” so is seen as more professional. I was called up by a head hunter recently who wanted me to interview for a job. I asked what she knew about me because she said she’d heard great things, and she simply rattled off my LinkedIn profile – so it does have some uses and maybe I’ll delve a little deeper!

Twitter on the other hand has now twice been responsible for getting news out across the world about earthquakes.

First time was in May and again yesterday during the quake in Los Angeles. Apparently “tweets started rumbling nearly as soon as the ground stopped shaking!”

I’m so glad our US cousins have got their priorities straight!

My local pub in Richmond has re-opened after a whole year being re-furbished. I took a friend there last week to check it out and it was buzzing. Now quite fancy, it has a pricey menu and throbbing wine list. I had pigs trotters stuffed with foie gras, not exactly pub-grub but scrummy nevertheless.

The owner dropped by our table to ask us how we were getting on and what we thought of the food etc etc.

Being a digital butterfly (ok moth!) I mentioned he needed to sort out his web presence. He currently had a .com and a .org site in the search engine results pages, both with different content and one with just a page – no links, no information, just a holding page with a bit of blurb.

His response astonished me!

He said that he was TOO busy and that business was booming and it was the least of his priorities.

As Steve Martin once said – “Well EXCUSE ME!”

To cap off the evening my friend who works for KPMG waded in saying he agreed! If a business is doing well, why bother with another marketing channel that might over-promise.....?

My stance was a website is your calling card if you’re an offline business. It tells you who you are, where you are, what you do and what people might need to do to get hold of you.

I’ve not used a phonebook for years. I always use the web. So when I see a shoddy website with minimal information I think it reflects badly on the business.

With so many small businesses not marketing their websites or having the basic knowledge of content management or optimization, coupled with many not actually wanting to grow because it’s too much like hard work, how can we expect search engine results pages to get better and more relevant? Don't the two go in tandem.

Am I right or have I drunk too much digital ale?

Tomorrow is the 1st anniversary of my first post on DigiTales.

In 157 posts, as the tagline says, I’ve tried to bring “stories and insight from the digital media space back down to earth...”

The first post about The Search Works getting sold to TradeDoubler kicked the blog off and since then I’ve been commenting on events, and also trying to dish up some more esoteric yarns about advertising and the internet.

From Google’s scrapping of BPF to Royal Mail’s Direct Mail, the BBC’s new site to Faceparty age discrimination, thoughts on The Apprentice to rants about Amy Winehouse – it’s been a fascinating ride which will continue with aplomb as long as Rich and Steve will have me!

My favourite post had to be the one about Liz Jones – it’s just that kind of ignorance about the internet, web marketing and the digital industry that this blog is trying dispel.

Thanks for reading...

Read a fascinating piece by Tim Harford in BA’s Business Life Magazine (can’t find a link anywhere!) about how the mobile phone has transformed the fortunes of fisherman trawling the 400 miles of Kerala coast in India.

With a million fisherman and 100’s of markets selling their catch knowing where demand was greatest was never a done deal. Very often some areas would be over stocked and tonnes of fish would be wasted, while a few miles down the road that particular type of fish was nowhere to be seen, leaving buyers empty-handed and prices sky-rocketing.

The mobile changed all that. Once fisherman were connected up to the phone masts they had a way of hooking (!) up with the buyers and determining what was needed to be supplied and where.

Fish prices, after an initial scramble, soon flatlined, equalising all the markets. Profits grew and wastage ceased.

Who would have thought such a thing possible 15 years ago?

Let’s hope they don’t catch too many Crazy Frogs!

Not quite....but nearly!

Spread-eagled by a pool in rural south-west France it’s easy to not want to have internet access. After all, our lives seem to be ruled by email and the need for immediate-response communication.

Finding myself, more and more, surfing the web while watching TV, picking up my phone just to have a fiddle, and an increasing use of Twitter (follow me at http://twitter.com/melcarson), I was determined to get through a week on holiday with the family without checking mail or the internet.

I failed.......but I learned some things in the process:

- No one died while I was away!

- There were no emergencies, no desperate “we need you” calls from the office and the building is still standing when I got back this morning!

- Over half the emails I got we’re deletable as soon as I read them today.....so why did I worry about how many I’d come back to?

- It’s ok to use your phone to check the cricket score....as long as we’re doing well

- It’s ok to check your phone to check your return flight is leaving on time

- It’s not ok to shut yourself in the toilet and checkout friends statuses on Facebook when you still have 12 chapters of Tom Clancy to get through

- It’s not ok to leave your phone in direct sunlight if you don’t want complex surgery to un-fuse it from your smoking ear

I once went on holiday with a mate who insisted on checking his email AND REPLYING twice a day during a two week trip. He had confidence issues that some people were after his job and that he couldn’t trust his staff to do their jobs either. It was pretty sad because it was hardly a holiday for him. It just meant he was as stressed as he ever was, just on the other side of the world and wearing a pair of speedos!

We owe it to ourselves to take time out and enjoy holidays for what they are, a time to relax, recharge the batteries and spend time with family and loved ones.

Employers have to make sure they create the right work ethic and work/life balance culture to ensure we can go on holiday and not have to worry.

Otherwise we’ll never be as productive or efficient as we could be when we come back...

South West of France where it's very very wet!

Back on 21st July!

Google cars have been spotted in the UK filming 360 degree views of roads in London according to Rory Cellan-Jones at the BBC.

The premise behind the technology is to offer a detailed picture of road mapping from street level. The idea being that if you know what the building your visiting looks like it'll be easier to find it.

It is a pretty cool concept, but has come in for criticism because in the US some photos of actual people have been displayed in some uncompromising situations, giving rise to privacy concerns.

Question is does it really matter? Google have said they will blur out faces and car registration numbers but is that far enough?

How far can technology of this sort go before it's a step too far?

Microsoft is working on its Photosynth technology which stitches photos together having recognised unique "DNA" in their make up. Similar questions are asked of me when I demo it, and I know that privacy is one thing they'll be working on very closely before it gets released to the public.

How far should this stuff be policed to the "enth" degree?

I sit on the Internet Advertising Bureau's Search Council.

Reps from Google, Yahoo and Microsoft plus a raft of agencies and industry notables meet every month to chew some digital cud, discuss the issues of the day, and come up with helpful resources to help educate and grow the search advertising industry here in the UK.

Last week we launched the Search Help Centre - an information hub where details of some of the hot topics in the industry are listed with full explanations from the different search engines showing where there might be differences in policy.

Topics include:

- Trademarks

- Copyright

- Invalid clicks (including click fraud)

- Intellectual property in campaigns

.....your article in last weekend’s Mail on Sunday – 400 Facebook Friends, But Who Else Did The Web Let Into Laurent’s Life? – was a little silly!

Here are a few comments:

- Individuals and companies search for their names online in order to measure their online reputation all the time. The internet has given a fabulous voice to all and sundry via blogs and forums, so knowing what people are saying about you or your company, good or bad, is necessary in order to improve products or services or to take action if you feel you’ve been hard done by.

- Men can be guilty of spending too much time online but according to the Internet Advertising Bureau, women aged 25-34 spend more time at their computer screens than men.

- Anyone who types in their name followed by “genius” doesn’t deserve you as they obviously don’t know how search engines work – I hope you took him to the cleaners!

- I have over 400 Facebook friends – I actually know and have met over 90% of them through work and the online advertising industry. The rest are friends of friends who I have a shared interest with and may be interested in something I have to say and vice-versa. “Friend” is just a word for “connection” so to patronize anyone born since 1990 as “under-achieving and nerdy and friendless” because they spend time online interacting with other people is simply showing your age Liz. A huge number of interactions are people organising nights out or events and sharing photos of their holidays or the evening before. They’re using online to enhance and organise their offline lives. Offline lives that are full and plentiful!

- According to the Brand Futurist Martin Lindstrom those of us over 30 can cope with receiving communication from 1.7 channels at the same time, so watching TV while surfing the net. Anyone under 20 can cope with 5.4 channels – he thinks that might be a factor in those with ADHD – but that said so what if they’re socialising online as well. For some it’s just the outlet they need to engage with other people and perhaps take the relationship further in real life. Just think of the huge successes of internet dating or forums to do with anything from fly fishing to mountaineering to plane spotting!

- Online security is a very important concern. Most people “get” how to be safe online with privacy permissions etc, but some don’t, and we should continue to educate and inform responsibly those who may be as vulnerable online as anywhere else in life.

- Your article’s sensational headline and the tenuous link to the tragic murders of Laurent & Gabriel, somehow suggesting social networking might have been to blame, is the icing on the cake of how silly and uninformed your words are.

It’s no wonder when you search for your name you find that some people don't like you.....

Always on the look out for new and interesting sites, I picked up on Twitter (melcarson) that Lorna Harris, Danny Sullivan's wife, had entered the world of social news and networking with the launch of Boudica.com.

Billed as "....the best place to catch up with your friends. No work, no kids, no stress, just B," the site is designed for woman from all over the world to connect, chat and share stories. I managed to get some time to chat with Lorna as they packed to move their entire family to California.

So tell us a bit about your background and the idea behind the new site? 

"My background is in broadcasting.  I started at the BBC World Service as a production assistant with the Yugoslav Section. When I moved to the States a couple of years later, I  worked as a Promotions Director at a radio station in LA for a few years, then back in London, I was the Promotions and Sponsorship Executive at Lord Hanson's Melody FM. 

I registered the domain Boudica.com a few years ago, with plans to create a directory style site for women in the UK, featuring lists of shops, magazines, etc but was never truly inspired about creating that sort of site and so it never got off the ground.

When Danny launched Sphinn last year, I loved watching this niche community grow and seeing people participate on the site.  I really felt it would be far more exciting to create a social news site for women rather than just a directory.  I hadn't found a social media site that really inspired me to visit a great deal.  Also, a lot of my friends are hugely time poor, with work and children, and when talking to them about going online, they were only really using Amazon, Expedia and Google.  I  wanted somewhere that women could find great stories and connect with friends with the feel of having a glass of wine with your friends when you talk about anything and everything other than work or your kids. 

It was also important to me that Boudica be a global site.  We have editors in the US and the UK and I would like to keep adding editors from all around the globe."

Is this part of the general shift towards niche social networks? 

"I think there is a definite shift towards niche social networks, I've had some great feedback from women using the site and feeling that they've found a place online just for them.  I don't see a huge difference between the US and UK women in terms using social media sites, perhaps as these sites grow there will be a difference but I'll be really happy if Boudica connects women in the UK, Australia, the US and around the globe."

The site is in beta at the moment - what pans have you got for it?

"We're adding a podcast at the beginning of August and are just finishing up all the details for it now.  I have a few other ideas as well which I'm putting together and will add to the site over the coming months. I'd like to take the site out of beta in mid July - launching Boudica and doing an international move isn't a great combination! I probably would have taken the site out of beta slightly earlier, but I'm waiting until we move to California and know I'll have Internet access set up."

Good luck with the move Lorna - although why you'd want to leave the weather we've been having here in England for the south-west coast of America I'll never understand!

Steve Barrett took me on as Media Week’s “Digital” blogger nearly a year ago to comment on stories and events in digital media.

But there are many indications that describing media, or marketing involving the internet, as “digital” is becoming as much use as calling grass “green” or Andy Murray “muscular”.

There’s no need for the word "digital" because the lines between online and offline are now being blurred.

Digital TV is set to be the norm. Media power players are getting into advertising delivery on radio and TV using internet protocols. Research companies and search technology providers are getting better at being able to measure the impact of the internet on sales in the physical high street. More and more people are shunning the morning paper in favour of pouring over mobile devices on their way to work. Sports stadiums are using electronic billboards for outdoor advertising.

Even Microsoft dropped “digital” from its advertising brand because all advertising will be digital in the next 5-10 years – so says Mr Ballmer.

So are we ready for this shift? It makes perfect sense doesn’t it? How do we adapt and embrace any positive fall out?

In a “high speed/low drag” kind of a world we need to create efficiencies, and efficiencies come through understanding and making better sense of data.

Data isn’t all about the numbers either. There are plenty of tools out there that turn the digits into pretty graphs and pictures where trends can be noticed and acted upon.

We have to get used to dealing with data – “digital” is dishing it out like never before and in places we never thought possible.