BBC readies social media make-over

A couple of reports around today on the BBC's social media plans saying that as soon as this weekend it will begin adding applications to support its most popular shows.

Broadband TV News says that the likes of 'Strictly Come Dancing' will get the social media treatment first and that the BBC is working on bringing in third party partners (such as buzz tracker), which cold extend to Facebook, Twitter and MySpace.

It quotes Anthony Rose, BBC’s controller of Vision and Online, speaking at the Social TV Forum in London, who interestingly talks about the status of the BBC in relation to the rest of the web.

"An island in this socially connected world is very tricky, you don't just want to have BBC friends, but also Facebook friends if you have them already, so opening it up is very important."

Sounds like a change in thinking to me. Much needed. The site also says the BBC is looking at some kind of real-time search that will allow visitors to the site to "follow" content on the BBC and from outside, which would then be delivered as a feed.

MediaGuardian has more on this and it says BBC sources have told it that that the new-look social media enabled site will be on stream by March and that the corporation is researching "what the next generation in social media will be".

It also quotes Rose, he talks about innovations such as allowing users to comment on particular moments of shows while watching and see what other users said about the same moment "or simply rate moments with 'Boo!', 'Good!' or 'Gosh!'."  Sounds like 'Strictly Come Dancing' territory to me.

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Gordon Brown needs to consider his social media reputation

Following on from Friday's post on Labour's Twitter lead, research says that Gordon Brown has a lot of ground to make up with Britain's 30m online social network users as he looks to make his keynote speech at the Labour Party conference this week.

Of course, his social media reputation is not the only thing he and Labour needs (a fight back would be nice, but not the place).

Social media agency Yomego carried out a Social Media Reputation audit (a new service it is launching) of the Prime Minister's online reputation looking across the spectrum at Facebook, Bebo, Myspace, Twitter and YouTube alongside other social spaces such as blogs, comments, ratings, reviews and user-generated content.

While the party might have more MPs Twittering and engaging with social media, David Cameron's reputation in the world of Twitter, Facebook and the blogging community is ranked 20 points higher, which is of course ironic give what he thinks for instance of Twitter ("Too many twits might make a twat.") although he really should come clean about Facebook as well (I'm just sitting here drumming my fingers waiting for that one).

Out of a possible 100, the Prime Minister scores 42.59 in the audit, which measures the volume and newness of social media chatter and whether it is positive or negative.

To be honest the recent week's that Brown has been having that is almost better than expected. From here on out, and with his speech this week, the party and Brown have to get that higher.

According to Yomego, in Brown's case there was lots of noise, but opinion was almost universally unenthusiastic with his "sentiment" score lower than that achieved by British National Party leader Nick Griffin (seriously? I find that hard to believe, but that is what the agency says).

Tory leader David Cameron rated a score of 62.49 with the level of noise on social media networks achieving similar volume and recency to the PM, but the overall sentiment rating more than three times better than his Labour counterpart. Well the Tories are between 13 and 15 points ahead in the polls depending on who you look at so that is going to happen.

A ray of light for Brown comes from the Liberal Democrat who should be soaking up the anti Brown/Labour chatter, but while leader Nick Clegg scores a respectable 54.13 he is let down by a low noise rating. You mean no one is talking Clegg? Apparently he is not exactly inspiring the Lib Dems to new heights as the party's recent conference appeared to demonstrate (either that or Lib Dems don't chatter/make much noise in social media).

Steve Richards, MD of Yomego, says that the audits carried out so far have underlined how important it is for brands (political parties) to manage that social media noise and sentiment around them.

"The noise around your brand may be deafening but if that noise is overwhelmingly negative, its reputation will suffer real damage. Conversely, if positive sentiment about your brand is drowned out by your competitors, you won’t see the benefits.

"For politicians, with nearly 30m people in the UK alone regularly using a social network, social media reputation is an important barometer for measuring whether their message is getting through and how it’s being received. That’s particularly true as we enter the party conference season and all parties start gearing up for a general election next year."

Other stuff thrown up by the audit, but not strictly earth shattering (but here you are) are the high scores achieved by Barack Obama who scored 77.79 (shocker - he is the social media king, or president as he likes to be known) and French Premier Nicolas Sarkozy achieving 66.15. Does he Twitter? Do the French? I'm sure they do, but weirdly I don't think I have ever followed/been followed by someone from across the channel. The rest of Europe yes, France no.

I digress, um here's a bit of how they did the Social Media Reputation audit, which Yomego says is a first measurement system combining quantity and quality, with insight and will be officially launched at Mipcom 2009 (5th – 9th October).

 The result is a total score out of 100, representing an average of the level and freshness of noise generated and the nature and recency of sentiment behind what’s being expressed.



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Labour Party out in front on Twitter

Things might not be going spectacular well for Labour, but when it comes to engaging on Twitter the party is way out in front showing how some of its MPs have taken to effectively harnessing the micro blogging service.

As if to confirm it I picked up this piece of research via Labour MP and Twitter user Tom Watson. Research showed that nearly 67% of all MPs that Twitter belong to Labour with the Liberal Democrats on 18% and the Tories who despite all their talk on 12% (no surprise maybe given David Camerson's own goal comments recently).

Digital strategy in the next general will count more than ever with blogs, Twitter and social networks playing and ever larger role. Maybe not quite in the way that we saw in the 2008 presidential election for Barack Obama (the scale is so different), but it is going to be important.

That's why it is such good news to see how Labour has taken to Twitter. What it does next will in part be down to Kerry McCarthy the Labour MP recently appointed as the party's Twitter tsar (or is that czar?).

It's going to be her job to co-ordinate Labour's online presence and help Labour MPs, candidates and supporters use what's available in the best possible way to try and stop Cameron getting elected (if the election was on Twitter Labour would have no problem – as Tweetminister research showed earlier this week).

One of those tasks that McCarthy is no doubt working on is getting those MPs already tweeting to tweet more often. As Labour might lead the race, but only 51 MPs are classed as regular Twitter users (out of a total of 645: poor) by the joint Plymouth and Bournemouth University research.

Although some of those who are tweeting on a regular basis are big names including: Ed Balls, secretary of state for children, schools and families; BBC basher Ben Bradshaw, secretary for culture, media and sport.

Although McCarthy makes some strong points in an interview on PR Media Blog about how it is important that Labour avoid the risk of positioning itself as the “social media party”, which she warns will detract from the real issues the public care about, not to mention the importance of staying away from the tactics used by right wing smear sites (the direction that Derek Draper almost dragged the part in with Red Rag).

As interesting the research project also indicted that Twitter could be more influential than blogs. That's good news for Labour given the power and influence of Tory bloggers such as Guido Fawkes and ConservativeHome.com (although whether that site will be less effective under Lord Ashcroft will be interesting to watch).

Dr Darren Lilleker, of Bournemouth University said Twitter may be a more effective means of enhancing an MP's representative role than blogs or other social networking sites (although there are good examples of Labour MPs integrating Twitter and Facebook to organise meetings and rally support).

Lillker says that because Twitter is quick to update, MPs can use it to regularly explain what they are doing on behalf of constituents. It's another reason why McCarthy needs to help mobilise more MPs to get Twitter – its ease of use for time poor MPs is one of its major selling point. Of course Lillker points out that some care needs to go into the tweets to make it worthwhile.

“In a time of public scepticism towards politicians, Twitter may be more effective than other non face-to-face communication channels, but only if MPs’ tweets are seen as worth receiving.

“With MPs finding audiences hard to reach, Twitter may well be used more widely in order to speak directly to the public. However, Twitter cannot be simply a tool for broadcasting. MPs need to talk to others in the ‘Twittersphere’ and respond to questions if they are to gain a loyal, trusting audience”

 More from the research

1. On average 27% of MPs tweet as part of an impression management strategy. MPs promote their activities, such as giving speeches, speaking in parliament, holding positions or launching a policy document to help build a positive impression of them both as a professional and as an individual.

 2. 21% of MPs’ tweets are used as promotion of self whereby the MP seeks to present a ‘hinterland’ which shows them as human beings. This tends to include details of their personal life, personal interests, such as sport and music and the use of humour.

3. 14% of MPs’ tweets support their constituency service role where they explain what they are doing in the constituency, highlight local issues and mention local constituents.

4. Only 11% of MPs’ tweets are partisan in nature. So this means that MPs are far more likely to raise their own profile rather than that of their party!

5. MPs are using Twitter to provide the public with a ‘ring-side seat’ at major occasions. For example, when the new Speaker was elected on 22 June, a number of MPs sent updates from the Chamber during the speeches and voting – with Sandra Gidley, Lib Dem MP for Romsey, Hampshire, tweeting over 100 times.

6. The number of tweets made during June – the month selected for the purpose of the research – ranged from just one to 827 (Labour’s Bristol East MP Kerry McCarthy), while the number of followers ranged from 63 to the 4,441 reading the updates of Tom Watson, Labour MP for West Bromwich East.

7. MPs tweeting is not a one-way street. The number of other tweeters that MPs follow ranges from zero to over 1,000, with a median of 133. Twenty two MPs follow less than 50 others tweeters, while 23 reciprocated by following at least 100, and in some cases entering into ‘public conversations’ with followers.

 

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Paid content: what we've learnt

Paidcontent's survey this week looking at what people will pay for content online has been useful in reminding us about a lot of stuff we already knew, but chiefly that the print and online products are very closely (and need to be) related.

In its latest post paidContent:UK is writing about how resistant most consumers are to paying for content online, but there is more hope when closely linking the print and online product.

Earlier this week the research told us that people prefer subscriptions over micropayments and that "only" 5% of people who read a news site at least once a month would pay (and while that's "only" 5% that's quite a lot if you add up that portion of a decent site's traffic), but if you throw in discounted subscriptions the number interested in possibly paying rises to a combined 48%.

People want to feel they're getting something for their money - that's what 48% says. Throwing in access to a paid website as part of a subscription or offering a discount ticks that box - it becomes a package (like holidays people like it when you roll stuff together). The offline and print product are symbiotic and without an eventual payment one or both will wither. The Wall Street Journal has done this for years.

For publications subscriptions have the advantage that they are much easier to manage. A one off payment option is much easier to implement than being tied into some sophisticated iTunes like micropayment system (it has to be bought and paid for and that all costs). All you need is your subs offer and a pay wall: job done.

You can see that model working well although it presents something of a challenge for UK newspapers who get a lot of international traffic. Those international readers while they might have a strong affinity with the website have little connection to the print product and so getting money from that quarter is a long shot.

The poll also found that subscriptions appeal more to UK readers, but they're not the only ones looking at it.

Despite the groundswell of chatter about micropayments in the US from Rupert Murdoch and Steve Brill there are plenty of others looking at testing subscriptions. Earlier this week online payment startup Zuora revealed its Z-Commerce that allows news organisations to "customise price schemes based on their needs or preferences, with options ranging from charging small amounts per story to offering monthly or annual subscriptions".

The Star Tribune in Minneapolis (about to come out of bankruptcy protection) also has plans - its resting its hopes on sports fans and is hoping that Minnesota Vikings supporters will pay $5.95 for a three-month web subscription to get access to an NFL Vikings Premium section.

Charging for sports content is going to be a tough sell, but it's another experiment, another toe in the water, in the drift towards paid content...that Google's Eric Schmidt has been saying again this week won't work. 

"In general these models have not worked for general public consumption because there are enough free sources that the marginal value of paying is not justified based on the incremental value of quantity. So my guess is for niche and specialist markets ... it will be possible to do it but I think it is unlikely that you will be able to do it for all news."

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Douglas Coupland's Generation A and how the Channel 3 news team gets it

Random House is doing its thing again for Douglas Coupland and his new novel 'Generation A' with a campaign that puts the author and his words centre stage.

The new book mirrors his best known novel 'Generation X' (kind of) in that it brings a group of people together who tell each other stories. In this case they are pretty much all stories about dsyfunction (an alcoholic Superman, the break down of society and loss of language and a child who takes revenge on the parents who scarred her).

It isn't Generation X and it doesn't have as much to say about the world that a generation is about to inherit. This time the backdrop is not so much about a generation trying to find their way in the world, but rather it is environmental. It feels more obvious, but perhaps no less valid. Coupland serves up a future world just a little down the line where millions are addicted to some mind nulling drug and fossil fuels are desperately short.

At the centre though is the disappearnce of bees. In Generation A they are a memory (the location of the last hive a Unesco world hertiage site) until five people are suddenly stung and become sensations.

It is the stinging that unites them rather than being a group of struggling and over educated McJobs, the first poverty jet set generation with divorced parents and few immediate prospects.

Having all been stung the five get stuck in labs before being bought together and instructed to tell stories. The book feels more contrived and less convincing, but if you like Coupland you will probably get something out of it. I did.

I digress, kind of, Crush in Toronto has developed a nice campaign for Random House Canada having done one for his last book 'The Gum Thief' as well) .

Last time it was nine films, this time it's three, but they have the author involved which makes a difference. He pops up in '10 Question for Douglas Coupland'. Gary Thomas, Crush Creative Director, says: "In both campaigns we let the content of the books drive our creative. The books are quite different, structurally and thematically. We had Doug this time, and since the characters in Generation A are all isolated and asked a series of seemingly random questions by a disembodied voice, we decided to subject Doug to the same experience."

 To accompany that there are two excerpts including 'Colour Samples' and the best of the bunch 'The Tragic Death of the Channel Three News Team'. This story is one of the tales told by Diana who is one of the five. She's a dental hygienist who has Tourette's syndrome, which feels veyr Couplandesque.

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How corporations killed newspapers

In case you were wondering it wasn't the internet and free content that killed newspapers it was corporations. Well that's what Michael Moore has been telling people in Toronto as he promotes his film, 'Capitalism: A Love Story'.

He spent some time talking about the US newspaper business and the thousands of reporters who have been cut by their corporate bosses, which has left many beats uncovered and stories unwritten. He said he looked at including the decline of newspapers in his new film, but the subject was a documentary in itself.



He argues that American newspapers have ignored their markets and stopped writing about what people want to read. So fewer reporters covering labour and poverty issues, which if you live in Detroit (his home town) or Baltimore (home of 'The Wire's' creator David Simon) might be important.

The decline of US newspapers is, of course, a subject close to David Simon's heart and Moore says he spent time speaking with him about the subject. The final season of the 'The Wire' picks up the story of The Baltimore Sun as it goes through a new round of cuts by its parent corporation in Chicago.

The Baltimore Sun like a lot of US newspapers is in decline. In 'The Wire' we got to see its foreign bureaus shut down and reporters made redundant resulting in corners being cut and standards slipping.

Moore says it’s the cost cutting bean counters and corporations in America who have bought these newspapers like Sam Zell whose Tribune owns the Baltimore Sun and private equity firm Platinum Equity, which bought and swiftly slashed The San Diego Union-Tribune.

"These newspapers have slit their own throats,” Moore said. "Good riddance."

Worse in Moore's mind is these corporations backed the Republicans who have reduced investment in education, which means America has a growing illiteracy and comprehension problem that ultimately means there are less people capable of picking up and reading a newspaper.

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Twitter gets $1bn valuation but where are the revenues?

Twitter is raising around $50m more which sees its valuation leap to around $1bn, but there are still no immediate signs of significant future revenues.

Interesting that Techcrunch has broken the news of the latest round of venture capital money raised at the same time that Facebook says it is making money ahead of its 2010 schedule. Does Twitter have a schedule? I'm guessing not.

Last week Twitter changed its terms and conditions to allow it to implement targeted advertising across the site and last month the micro blogging service said it was looking to launch commercial accounts to entice business users to pay for premium services like detailed analytics. It's making all the right sounds.

Much of the speculation around where it might run ads to generate revenues has centred on linking the ads to its search results. This would be similar to Google's money spinning paid search business, but it is unlikely to generate anything like the revenues until it creates some new way of displaying its search.

Other than search, Twitter is almost hamstrung by the way that its service works. Users spend most of their time when using it on a single screen displaying a constant stream of tweets. Integrating significant advertising into this, particularly when so many use third party client products like TweetDeck, is problematic to say the least.

The potential is there. How much that potential is really worth is one question and whether the $1bn valuation is warranted is another. The new funding follows more than $35m raised earlier this year. In between raising that $35m and this $50m its valuation has increased from $250m to $1bn.

Giving his take on the valuation Salil Deshpande, a general partner at venture firm Bay Partners told Reuters: "When something like Twitter or Facebook becomes a cultural phenomena, it's much more than the sum of the parts. It's really tapping into a cultural shift. As the network effect increases, the value increases."

It is certainly more than the sum of its parts and the network is growing. In the same period, between the two rounds of funding, Twitter's user numbers have leapt. In July the site's worldwide traffic rising to a record 51.6m unique users, according to comScore. US user numbers rose to 21.2m, up from 20m in June, and now represent 41% of the site's traffic. International users represent 59% of Twitter's traffic, increasing from 55% in June.

Twitter has now raised a total of around $55m to date with $30m million in the bank. The fresh funding would certainly suggest it is planning something, but there are a lot of people who remained unconvinced that, Twitter as useful as it is for networking and marketing, will make significant revenues anytime soon.

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Facebook at 300m it's the Disney of social networks

Facebook has passed a number of milestones this year and as it passes the 300m users mark there doesn't seem to be much stopping it or much competition in its rear view mirror.

Adding 50m users in two months is really something. Earlier this year it became the fourth biggest website on the planet, snapped up FriendFeed for $50m and is making money. Although no clues on how much money it is making.

The trick that Facebook has managed to pull off so successfully is that it is all encompassing. If you look at it in terms of the family set-up, whole families are there: kids, parents, cousins, aunts and grandparents are all represented. Sports teams and other groups use it as a virtual adjunct. It's social and crosses the business divide as well (although not successfully).

It's like the Disney of social networks. Okay, so Disney would never allow you to post pictures of your friends vomiting – but hey you get the idea.

I know lots of people who have their parents as friends on Facebook. I'm not sure they always want to and occasionally live in fear that drunk status updating might draw leading questions.

But it is that achievement of universality that is the cornerstone of Facebook's success, coupled with the fact that it is a generally cleanly designed and not to cluttered website. Yes we all have irks with the changes that get introduced now and again, but by and large it works and navigating is as easy for my mum as it is for a teenage cousin.

Its growth to some degree I'm sure has been helped by the lack of solid competition. MySpace has faded in a mess of spam, clutter and lack of focus. Twitter despite its really impressive growth is not Facebook. I might spend a lot more time on Twitter, but I still use both. Twitter clearly works very differently, it serves a different purpose, and it is not universal in its appeal.

So much has already been written about why teenagers are not on Twitter (less about my mum), but that always seemed pretty obvious to me from the start. Twitter is much more about grown-up networks. Its use as a business networking tool is well established and can be awesomely effective at this (see yesterday's post about Twitter and the power of small business). That's not what Facebook does and teens generally don't have a lot of business networking to do.

What they do have is friends to connect and socialise with and Facebook works brilliantly for that. For those in work who don't need the kind of connections that those in certain industries need (communications, media, marketing, entertainment et cet) Facebook answers most of their social networking needs.

All ages are welcome which is why I guess it is making money ahead of its 2010 target as Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg writes on his blog:

"We're also succeeding at building Facebook in a sustainable way. Earlier this year, we said we expected to be cash flow positive sometime in 2010, and I'm pleased to share that we achieved this milestone last quarter. This is important to us because it sets Facebook up to be a strong independent service for the long term.

"Over time, Facebook will continue to be as strong as all of the connections you make. We'll continue building new and better things to make connecting with the people you care about as easy and rewarding as possible. We thank all of you for helping us reach the point where we are connecting 300 million people, and we hope to serve you and many more people in increasingly deep and innovative ways in the months and years ahead."

Congratulations its seems well deserved.

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Twitter and the power of small businesses

This video interview with a small New Jersey-based iced tea business is literally your small business marketing plan. It shows as well as anything I've seen how good Twitter and social media can be at helping people tap into a community and get results.

Mary Anne Rollano who started Mary Anna's Summer Sweet Tea says it herself: she had zero marketing budget and having looked at Facebook and found it a little complicated for what she wanted she turned to Twitter, which turned out to be the perfect tool.

She's on it for half an hour a day and from that she has connected with local New Jersey Twitters and bloggers who have helped her get her message out there about the wonders of her iced tea (which is apparently a "perfect balance of flavours, blending rich, fragrant black teas with pure cane sugar and 100% lemon juice").



It chimes with the piece I read in the New York Times recently, which had other good examples of small businesses that were finding Twitter a real boon. Hat tip: Media 140 (because small businesses love Twitter!).

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Patrick - The mute assassin - Swayze is dead

Sad news today, Patrick Swayze, also known as the mute assassin in the Orange Gold Spot ad, has died.

Okay, so he's best known for 'Dirty Dancing' and 'Ghost' by most of the world, but let's not forget 'Point Break' where he had such great lines as "Little hand says it's time to rock and roll".

The spot he shot for Orange was one of the early ones and best where we see Patrick Swayze pitch his 'The Silent Hunter' movie idea.



The silence was never going to fly with the Orange panel, but aged 57 it does sadly today after a two year battle with pancreatic cancer working until the end (most recently playing an FBI agent in in the US TV show 'The Beast').

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Citizen sales people needed for hyperlocal success

Jeff Jarvis in the Guardian this morning writing about hyperlocal with some positive numbers and he also talks about "citizen salespeople". You don't hear so much about them as you do citizen journalists, but without them you are not going to have much of a commercial venture.

In much of the talk and coverage of hyperlocal the focus is usually on the content created by local people, hyperlocal networks and former journalists most of whom don't have any commercial experience.

Jarvis is writing about research that the City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism's New Business Models for News Project has done that shows some existing hyperlocal bloggers, serving markets of about 50,000 people, are bringing in up to $200,000 a year in advertising and these are sustainable businesses.

This chimes with the recent projections published by Borrell Associates that say the hyperlocal market could be worth $15bn by 2013.

Jarvis says that after three years a blogger could hire editorial staff and advertising help, the citizen salespeople, and generate $148,000 out of $332,000 revenue, which he is arguing is a conservative estimate based on the fact that a community paper in a town probably earns between $2m-$5m.

But for that to happen you are going to need as many citizen sales people or sales people in general teaming up with those creating the content to lead to the future for news that Jarvis is writing about. There must be as many if not more of these people out there as there are journalists or would be journalists.

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Economist is a natural for paid content

On hearing the news this morning that The Economist is to charge for news content across its site I was wondering why they waited so long.

The Economist is a natural for paid content in the same way that the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times are. They are likely to end up being select members of a very small paid content club. With the power of the distinctive Economist brand and loyal readership (talking of, which check Campaign's "How the Economist changed tack to attract new readers"), I think it can successfully leverage the kind of analysis and insight it offers in to a paid content model.

The Economist.com website currently gives away its news and charges for its archive in the way that the New York Times once did. I'm betting that was not a huge money spinner.

Yvonne Ossman, publisher of The Economist, who confirmed the move to Media Week says they looked at a number of payment options, including an iTunes-style micropayment model. It's going to be interesting to see how this works and how quickly they get it going.

She also says that she's not "sure others will follow suit". She's right about that, of course, as mostly newspapers can't charge as much as some might like.

The most interesting development around at the moment for newspapers seems to be the club idea that The Guardian, The New York Times and others are exploring. The idea seems to be gaining ground.

Steve Outing has a blog post on how Fox News personality Bill O’Reilly (yes he of much right-wing Republican nuttiness) and his team have created something called the BillOreilly.com Premium Membership package (there are 16 reasons to become a member, apparently).

While the website for his show 'The O'Reilly Factor' is mostly free, he is now offering more for serious O’Reilly fans. Some of those people are very serious -- although shouldn't always be taken as such. O'Reilly and his people are serious as well as -- he's charging $49.95 a year or $4.95 a month (must be why there are 16 reasons to sign up).

As Outing says, "this is exactly the model that many newspaper and magazine publishers have been talking about lately, though many are having trouble figuring out what they’ve got that they can charge for".

Would love to write more, but boy am I suffering from a double whammy: right finger recovering from dislocation and now struck by man flu (I don't think its swine flu, but don't get too close).

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Is Apple finally ready to welcome The Beatles to iTunes?

Can you hear it? The nothingness? The strange and gratifying silence that only comes once a year. The unnatural calm that precipitates out of every Apple September event?

Everyone is holding their breath, mouthing the same wordless question: Just what the hell are Jobs and Co going to drop on Wednesday?

For digital journalists, the stream of news has been reduced to a noticeable trickle. No one is moving, there's no shaking - it's a dry creek-bed and Apple's hand is on the faucet.

Any company, especially a plucky young start-up, would be wise to wait a couple days, maybe even a week to make a major announcement, lest Apple shows up and turns the industry on its head once more.

Apple enthusiasts have been sifting through rumours, gossip, hearsay, patent logs and their wildest dreams - for months - in anticipation of Wednesday, questioning every subtle nuance, inspecting every detail, like a jealous, embittered spouse.

For those in the know, a glaring peculiarity precludes Apple's event. It's as simple as the days of the week.

Specifically, Wednesday. Why Wednesday?

Historically, Apple events have been on Tuesdays.

Yet, Wednesday also happens to be the day MTV Games releases 'The Beatles: Rock Band'. It also marks the day the band's remastered albums hit store shelves.

Is Apple finally ready to welcome The Beatles to iTunes?

Deciphering clues is like a reliving the 'Paul is Dead' hysterics.

For instance, take Wednesday again - or 09/09/09. Nine, a famous Beatles number, as in 'Revolution 9'.

The invite to the event reads "It's only rock and roll, but we like it" - which is, well, a Rolling Stones reference - or rather a 'red herring', according to Mac Rumours, to throw us off the track of the likely Beatles announcement.

Beatles on iTunes has been rumoured for the past two years, with negotiations very much ongoing between the Beatles Apple Corp, Jobs' Apple Inc and EMI, specifically the $0.99-per-track pricing scheme that has irritated music labels since its inception.

Apple and Apple Records have a prickly history, going as far back as 1978 regarding a trademark dispute, which was settled in 2007, yet just last year Macca described the 'Beatles on iTunes' proceedings as "stalled".

Have the two sides finally buried the hatchet?

Is Apple going to launch a new iPod on Wednesday, with Beatles tracks preloaded (like it did with U2 a while back), much to the delight of millions of Apple and Fab Four fans the world around?

Sure.

But what else might happen?

iPods with cameras? This seems likely. iPods always play in the September events in one way or another, but as sales stall, how long can Apple depend these ubiquitous devices in the lead up to the holiday season. An in-house camera could certainly have Christmas shoppers clamouring for a replacement.

New iTunes? Almost certain. iTunes 9 (Number 9!), is expected to be integrated with Facebook and Twitter, marking Apple's descent into the murky depths of social networking. Perhaps a subscription package is in the works, much like Spotify has had success with, because if you can't beat 'em, just rip them off.

The iTablet? You wish, and so does everyone else, but it simply not going to happen. Not on Wednesday at least...