PR 2.0 omvat meer dan blogger relations, en PR bureaus doen zelf nog weinig met internet. Dat is wat Mark Rosbergen concludeert in deze posting op Rethinking Media. Hij onderzocht daarvoor de website van 87 Nederlandse PR bureaus op de vindbaarheid van persberichten en de aanwezigheid van een rss feed.

Sociale media nemen een steeds prominentere rol in ons dagelijks leven in. PR bureaus doen er goed aan actiever in te gaan spelen op deze ontwikkeling. Bijvoorbeeld door te zorgen dat de persberichten van hun klanten ook via sociale media verspreid worden.

Belangrijk daarbij te beseffen is dat PR 2.0 meer is dan een push-exercitie i.c.m. relationship management. Minstens net zo belangrijk is zorgen dat je persberichten ook gemakkelijk vindbaar in relevante media. Want niet alleen journalisten zijn op zoek, ook consumenten zoeken actief naar jouw verhaal. Waarom zou je het dan niet makkelijk vindbaar maken?

Met dat in het achterhoofd is het duidelijk dat SEO een belangrijke rol speelt in het optimaliseren van je social media coverage. Blogger Leo Odden gaat daar in deze posting dieper op in. Hij stelt bijvoorbeeld (terecht) dat een goede vindbaarheid in zoekmachines minstens net zo zwaar weegt als vermeldingen op een topblog.

SEO zie ik vooral als een logisch onderdeel in de mix en niet zozeer als doel op zich. Het is absoluut handig, maar met enkel SEO kom je er niet. Persberichten zie ik vooral als nieuwsberichten die de aanleiding kunnen vormen tot een conversatie rond je merk. Deze discussie gaat plaats vinden op plekken waar je doelgroep zich prettig voelt. Dat kan op de verjaardag van Oom Willem zijn, maar ook binnen een sociaal netwerk of een blog.

Wanneer je persberichten als nieuws van een bedrijf ziet, en niet als journalistenvoer, dan zijn er leuke mashups denkbaar waarbij je de content uit persberichten kunt hergebruiken. Bijvoorbeeld het automatisch verwijzen naar relevante nieuwsberichten bij een blogpost.

Voor dit soort mashups, maar ook voor geïnteresseerde lezers, is het belangrijk om syndicatie aan te bieden via RSS feeds. Mark’s onderzoek wees uit dat slechts 23% van de pr bureaus de berichten van hun klanten aanbood via hun eigen website. Schokkend feitje vind ik dat slechts 2,5% een RSS feed daarbij leverde.

Als je als PR bureau je klanten wilt helpen met sociale media en persberichten moet je wel het goede voorbeeld geven. Living the life noemt men dat ook wel. Ik ben dan ook heel benieuwd hoe (en of) PR bureaus zichzelf zullen gaan manifesteren binnen sociale media. Zoals Mark al aangaf zijn er zeker slagen te maken. De vraag is, wie begint?

Sphere got in the blog search game late. Although Technorati was screwing up big time when Sphere entered the market, Google was just getting settled as well. Back then, I thought Google entering the market would be a death sentence for Sphere. They proved me wrong; Sphere was just sold for an estimate of 25 million dollars.

TechCrunch broke the news that AOL acquired Sphere. For those of you unfamiliar; Sphere started out as a blog search engine like Technorati, but ended up syndicating blog posts to major news sites. I recently devoted a blog post to the strategy of Twingly who have adopted a similar business model.

I’ve never been that into Sphere myself, but I must say their algorithm is doing a fine job matching content. As far as I know they only do English content and since I was blogging exclusively in Dutch at the time, their service had little use for me. I looked at it when they launched, then forgot about them.

After a rough start, Sphere definitely grew into something substantial. They have outstanding deals with major publishers like Reuters, Time, CBS, Washington Post, Newsweek and Major League Baseball, making it a sure buy for AOL. I expect Sphere-based technology to play a large role in the new strategy they’re rolling out. Seeing AOL’s focus on content, they have enough options to put Sphere to work.

The real question is what the future holds for Sphere. Even if the course remains unchanged, they are stepping further and further away from the blogosphere and are turning into a general content matching party. Now AOL is pulling the strings, it wouldn’t surprise me if this will increase even further.

I see the benefits from that approach for Sphere as a company, but on the other hand their parting from user generated content leaves a tremendous gap to fill. With that in mind, I thought of a few future scenario’s that each seam likely:

1. Sphere will keep doing their thing, but their technology will power AOL niche sites.

2. Sphere will move further away from user generated content; leaving Twingly to fill the gap.

3. Sphere will introduce new products using AOL’s resources, which will drive profits.

Any other ideas how things might turn out for Sphere?

Building an online reputation takes time. Media professionals like me know that we will eventually benefit from that investment in one way or another. But not everybody feels that way. That’s why I decided to post four reasons why you should build an online reputation.

People often talk about how you should be represented on the web. An interesting topic for sure, but not what I want to talk about today. Before you decide on how to be represented you need to understand why you need to be represented. Doing it because everybody does so is a bad reason, but I’m sure you knew that.

So why do you need to get yourself out there? I gave it some thought and came up with four simple reasons why you too, should start building your online reputation:

1. Everybody else is doing it

Wait, didn’t I just say that this was a bad reason? Maybe I should have added it’s not a bad reason to copycat when you know why you are doing it. Personal branding is all the rage the last couple of years. Maybe you’re not doing it, but some of your peers definitely are. But don’t take my word for it: Google ten of your friends, collegues or anyone else you may know. You will be surprised what you’ll find.

2. You’re already doing it offline

At school, at the bar, at the sportclub or at work. We all build a reputation somewhere sooner or later. We usually put in a lot off effort to make sure people will keep seeing us in a certain way. You’re peers use the internet, as do you. Doesn’t that make it fair game to put some effort into your online identity?

3. You will get Googled eventually

People are curious by nature. Eventually someone will think of Googling you. It may be just for fun, but it could also be more serious. Employers are known to dig up as much information on an applicant as they can find, and Google makes finding information about you super easy. It doesn’t takes a rocket scientist to see that the way you appear in Google might give you an edgy over other applicants.

4. You get a head start

In the offline world, you’re visible. People will create a picture of you whether you interact with them or not. The same goes for the online world. Any available information on there will help build an image about you. It doesn’t really matter who provides the information at that point. Taking action yourself will get you a head start in steering your online identity towards your strongest selling points.

I could name a lot more reasons, but in the light of this blogpost by Ernst-Jan Pfauth I decided not too. I welcome any thoughts, tips or tricks you might have about this subject and invite you to help me expand this list further.

So, who’s in?

Twitter: some like it, some don’t. One of the things I personally miss on Twitter is the ability to search for people who I have something in common with. A similar education, hobby, workfield or area code for example. A few days ago I discovered TwitterLocal, meaning I can now scratch that last one off my list.

TwitterLocal allows you to discover Tweets around a certain area. You simply put in a city, state or postal code and choose the number of miles you wish to take as margin. Next you can either subscribe to an rss/xml feed of the results or view the latest tweets for.

I tried the service and it seems to work fairly well. To see for yourself just click here to see all Twitterazi -a hardcore group of Dutch Twitter users- within 1 mile of Amsterdam. I saw some familiar faces, but also discovered some new ones to check out. So using TwitterLocal, you might make some new friends

I figure it’s also a practical tool to compare the ‘Twitter-adoption rate’ among various cities. I’ll make a comparison like that soon, might be interesting to see which large Dutch city has more Twitter enthusiastic. Will give the hardcore Twitterazi something to tweet about…

Bloggen: voor velen een uitlaatklep, voor sommigen een pr-middel en voor anderen een vlotte manier om klanten, kennissen of collega’s op de hoogte te houden van nieuwe ontwikkelingen. Maar, wat is nu eigenlijk het meest voorkomend gebruik van een blog?

Via een mini-onderzoekje hoop ik beter te kunnen kwantificeren wat belangrijke gebruiksdoelen zijn van blogs. Belangrijk daarbij is dat er zo veel mogelijk bloggers meedoen, zodat de uitkomst zo representatief mogelijk is. Zelf heb ik al enkele bloggers gevraagd om mee te doen aan dit onderzoekje, en ik hoop dat zij op hun beurt weer anderen vragen deze twee vragen in te vullen zodat we een leuke set gegevens krijgen. Deelname is natuurlijk anoniem.

A Swedish based company that leverages the blogosphere for content syndication with mainstream media. That would have been my description of Twingly a week ago. Today, I discovered they have plans to roll out a social blog search engine. An interesting development. Could Twingly have plans to become the next Technorati?

The past year has been a struggle for Technorati. Failing to cope with the vastly growing amount of blogs, they were forced to remove all content older than six months from the search index. Shrinking the index may have helped keep their infrastructure online, as a user I still frequently experience technical problems.

Keyword subscriptions are a good example of their technical problems. The feeds only work half the time, and when they do work you are often presented old or duplicate results. The service is unreliable at best and certainly not a joy to be dependent upon. Luckily, there may soon be a better alternative to work with.

Twingly links blogposts to other types of content. Last week they announced a syndication deal with De Telegraaf, a large Dutch newspaper. At the time I thought that was their only specialism, but when I revisited their website yesterday I noticed a lot has change.

The new website must have been launched right after the Next Web Conference. I wasn’t at the conference myself but I know the Twingly crew attended it. I’m assuming they wanted to wait the conference before unveiling their new services. I heard they gave out some private invites, but since I wasn’t attending I ended up on the waiting list. Luckily, I soon found myself a beta invite code

For those less lucky, I decided to post a couple of Twingly screenshots.

The main interface:

Searching for a keyword:

As you see in the screenshot above, a search for iPhone results in 98,625 hits. They only index linked-to or pinged-about blogposts so that score is not bad at all compared to the 247,034 hits I got from Technorati. The search speed is worth mentioning. It may just be the low amount of users, but results appear almost instantly after hitting the submit button.

Twingly aims to eliminate spam by putting together a whitelist of blogs. With new blogs being created every second, moderating would seem an impossible task. To cope, they must be using a greylist as well. The most sensefull approach is have your spiders looking within blogposts for links to other blogs. Good blogs don’t often link to splogs, so that would ease the amount of blogs that need manual moderation.

Technorati does little to prevent splogs from occurring in the index. The fact alone that Twingly aims for a zero-spam approach would be reason enough to use their service instead. And contrary to Technorati, Twingly is actively listening to user suggestions by offering a Digg-like system where users can add and vote on new feature suggestions.

Twingly is fast, spam-free and still evolving. Sure they are entering a new market, but leading party Technorati has frequent problems with their infrastructure. So where does that leave us? Will an old dog like Technorati be able to take the heat from the new kids on the block? Or will Twingly become the Technorati killer? Tell me what you think in the comments!

First off, let me just say iTunes is great in many ways. I like the clean interface and the intuitivity of program. But, as with all software, it does have it’s shortcomings. One I’d like to discuss here is the inability to sync your iPod trough a wireless connection.

Apple has always been one to come up with innovative new features. Take the scroll wheel on the iPod for example. A new, intuitive feature that worked great and was quickly ‘reinvented’ by other manufactures. Or take that their notebooks were the first to include build-in webcams and firewire, long before any other manufacturer thought of such things.

So let’s review the iPod. Major success, and probably the most owned mp3-player in the world. From a simple black and white display that shows song titles, it evolved into a full-color multi-touch video model. They even added WiFi to the iPod Touch, making it the most feature-rich mp3-player I know. So why did Apple choose to limit WiFi-usage to mere websurfing?

I’m not a big fan of wireless internet, I find it to be unstable. However, It’s great for mobile devices like notebooks or pda’s. Nobody likes to have to connect a ton of wires every time they want internet. For me, the same goes for swapping songs between my pc and my mp3-player.

I don’t want to open my drawer, grab the usb cable and connect it to my computer every time I want to add some new songs. I don’t even like having to plug in the power cable when the battery is running low. But until wireless power induction catches on, it’s my only option.

It doesn’t have to be that way for syncing the iPod with my computer. Apple could put in some effort and add wireless syncing capabilities to iTunes. They already gave me the option to connect to my home network, so all I’d need is a way to sync over LAN.

I’d love to put iTunes to work on my server and get my freshly downloaded podcasts without turning on my desktop computer every morning. Come to think of it, I shouldn’t even need a server to sync with. Apple could update the iPod software so I could sync my podcasts directly over the net!

I definitely think they should add these features to the next iPod. Would you like such a thing?

Een van de dingen die ik zo mooi vind aan RSS is de enorme flexibiliteit van de techniek. Niet alleen ben je er snel mee op de hoogte van de laatste headlines van je favoriete websites, het is ook de onderliggende techniek voor podcasts en de basis voor veel mashups.

RSS is natuurlijk vooral bekend geworden door blogs. Door een ‘abonnement’ te nemen op de RSS feed blijf je snel op de hoogte van de laatste berichten. RSS is niet alleen voor lezers handig, weblogzoekmachines als Technorati werken ook vaak op basis van een feed. Dit is voor bloggers dan ook een belangrijke reden om een RSS feed aan te bieden.

Het leuke van de flexibiliteit van RSS feed is dat je niet per se website of blogs hoeft te volgen, maar dat je ook op persoonsniveau op de hoogte kunt blijven. Zeker op groepsblogs heeft het toegevoegde waarde om de postings van een bepaalde auteur in een aparte feed aan te bieden. Het verbaast me dan ook dat bekende marketingblogs als Marketingfacts en Dutch Cowboys deze mogelijkheid niet bieden.

Op WordPress gebaseerde blogs -zoals het mijne- bieden deze mogelijkheid standaard. Maar wanneer de veelgebruikte FeedBurner FeedSmith plugin wordt gebruikt gooit deze roet in het eten door alle specifieke feeds te verwijzen naar één adres voor de hele site. Geziende vele type feeds die WordPress standaard aanbied, is het jammer dat de makers zich beperken tot één hoofdfeed.

Een alternatief is natuurlijk om het filteren binnen je rss-lezer plaats te laten vinden, maar niet alle lezers ondersteunen dat. Voor zover ik weet zit er in Google Reader bijvoorbeeld geen optie om feeds op die manier te filteren. Jammer, want het handige aan Google Reader is dat je het op verschillende computers en platformen kunt gebruiken.

Nu zullen er vast rss-lezers zijn die wel geavanceerde filtering bieden (namen, iemand?) maar in veel gevallen weegt dat niet op tegen het gemak van een online feedlezer. Kortom, groepsblogs, doe ons allemaal een plezier en bied individuele feeds aan. En als we toch bezig zijn; een feed op trefwoord (zoekopdracht) lijkt me ook wel handig!

I recently noticed Technorati has been indexing Twitter. Given the fact Twitter is considered a form of blogging, it kind of makes sense. It still strikes me odd. I can think of many reasons why Technorati would not index Twitter, but I can only name a few reasons why they would.

For those of you who’ve not been following the news lately, I’ll shortly explain what Twitter is all about. Twitter is -simply put- telling the world what you’re up to in 140 characters. People can “follow you” and receive updates on your whereabouts. The high posting frequency results in a low signal-to-noise ratio, meaning only a small percentage of the “updates” contains useful information.

Now let’s get back to Technorati. As you all know, Technorati’s main function is to map what’s being talked about on the web. To do that accurately, you need to gather a lot of information. Aside from the main article, blogs contain a lot of useful metadata like tags, outbound links, categories and trackbacks.

This kind of data -especially trackbacks and outbound links- is great for tracking conversation across media. You can see this in action on their homepage. They use all this great metadata to try and track what’s being said about news stories in the blogosphere.

Last year news spread that Technorati “temporarily” dropped all content older than six month. To me this says they can’t cope with the enormous amount of data being generated by bloggers. Twitter has far less content to process, but still needs a dozen servers to keep things running.

Knowing that, why would Technorati take on all this extra burden? Surely it can’t be a content-driven desire, as the updates on Twitter contains too little metadata to be of help for linking news stories to the blogosphere. I could understand if they chose to build a separate search engine specifically for Twitter, or simply gave it a unique representation on their site. But they didn’t.

Instead they choose to embed like any other blog; between the main search results. This could be accidental of course, but seeing that Twitter has already been around for like a year, I doubt that. So Technorati is now indexing Twitter like they index regular blogs, and it clues me why. Any ideas?