Conversationblog

Here's a great article about the use of web2.0 tools and services in the US elections....

...So when I heard that maverick congressmember Ron Paul was entering the fray, I got a little excited. And I wasn't alone. The Texas Republican has become the Web's favorite dark horse, harnessing the power of the Internet to turn his long-shot candidacy into a [From One Candidate Mastered Online Campaigning. Too Bad It Was Ron Paul]...

In short.... it is - and will always be - about the content...

Dear reader...

Time has come for me to take on a new adventure.

After 8 fantastic years with IBM I have taken on the opportunity to create a new social media agency together with Leads United, a leading Belgian PR agency.

Today we announced Blackline, a social media consulting agency which will apply blogs, wikis, RSS, podcasting etc... to internal, external and crisis communications. We will also offer training and education sessions on a regular basis and will do both strategic and tactical work.

You can find all the details of this new adventure on - what else - the Blacklineblog.

I wanted to thank you, my readers for the support, the interest and the comments during all these year. In some way you have helped me to take this direction.

Now this doesn't mean this blog will stop. I will continue to blog here as well as on the Blacklineblog and will sometimes simply cross post...

Technorati : agency, blackline, blog, leads united, new media, podcast, public relations, rss, social media, videocast, wiki

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I don't write a lot about pure marketing stuff but this post on the Church of the Customer blog is interesting. Not only because it is about one of the finest Belgian beers - and you all know that Belgian beer is already the best in the world - but because it makes the link between scarcity, branding and "cult"... Here's the story.

Another great clip from Michael Wesch, Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at the Kansas State University who brought us "The Machine is Us/ing us" months ago. (Via Techcrunch.)

Technorati : internet r/evolution, michael wesch, techcrunch, the machine is us/ing us, web2.0, youtube

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Technorati : Jack nicholson, a few good men, ad, advertising, tom cruise, youtube

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Technorati : PR, perception management, public relations, the corporation

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Wikiscanner, developed by Virgil Griffith, allows anyone to check which organizations (or/and IP addresses) have been making anonymous edits on Wikipedia.

I just ran a scan on the location "Brussels" and found the following interesting list:

• Catholic University of Louvain: 4136 anonymous edits in Wikipedia.
• Department of Economic Affairs: 1250 anonymous edits.
• European Commission: 928 anonymous edits.

You can see the full Brussels list here. Other searches reveal that many corporations are making anonymous edits to entries about their organization and also show that CIA, NSA etc... are changing information related to hot topics or less popular incidents.

PR Agencies worldwide are also doing some anonymous editing, see Porter Novelli, Edelman, Hill & Knowlton...

Wikiscanner is getting a lot of attention of the mainstream media and the blogosphere at this moment. Great initiative though...

Technorati : Belgium, Brussels, EU, KUL, VUB, cia, nsa, wiki, wikipedia, wikiscanner

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Lots of things happening in the numerous virtual worlds around the globe... Here are just a couple of links I recently found interesting:

• Weblo.com: a couple of American virtual investors have bought the virtual country of England. Now this might sound a bit far out but according to the article in DM Europe; "England's virtual rulers will earn residual income from their purchase. They earn money every time an English city or property is purchased and from all transactions and ad revenue in England. They can also sell the country for a profit."

• Eolus One: now this is a very strong idea - create an environment where virtual worlds are used to interact with the real world and by doing so make our little planet (and our lives) better. The post I found is lengthy but gives a very good description of what this is all about. To me this is the (possible) future of the web as we know it. Thanks to my colleague Erik Reese.

• Codestation: for the more technology inclined amongst my reader; if you really would like to get your hands dirty in code, please check out the challenge in Second Life. The solve a security puzzle by developing and scripting code. You can win a custom designed car made by The Electric Sheep. (Am I still sounding sane...?)

New: thanks to Philip Weiss from ZN I just started using Facebook and found it quite interesting, fun and productive. so if you're on there as well and want to connect, visit me there and let's hook up.

Could be I will be featuring a bit more about virtual worlds in my future postings because this is now one of my focus areas of my day job... However, I promise to stay focused on PR/Media related topics. If not, let me know !

Technorati : 3D internet, codestation, eolus, facebook, ibm, metaverse, second life, virtual world, zn

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As from now on I can sue any company which sets up a fake blog and misleads me by not being transparent... at least in the European Union.

Both the Times and Adlaw cover this new directive from the EU which will affect the way Marketeers and/or Public Relations professionals use blogs in their promotional campaigns. Fake blogs are not new but it is good that there is now a legal framework around this.

Here are a couple of other fake blog stories demonstrating that it is definitely nothing new....

Fake blogs, New Marketing Channel or Really Bad Idea, by Dave Taylor. (2005)

Get used to fake blogs, by Shel Holtz (2005)

And here's a small list of famous "flogs" in Wikipedia of course.... Thanks to the excellent i-merge blog for the link.

Technorati : EU, Europe, blog, ethics, fake+blog, first+amendement, flogs, law, marketing+blog

Great story from my friend blogger Eline in the Netherlands...

While walking her dogs on the beach in November last year she found a bottle... with a message. It was a letter from 11 years old Corey Withers in the United Kingdom who launched his message in a bottle in June 2006 while on holiday with his family.

Eline blogged about this find and now - 4 months later - she received a comment on her blogpost from the Derby Evening Telegraph who is running a story in their newspaper about this.

The next comment on her blog was from the BBC Radio in Derby who would like to interview her !

This story is a great image of how a message delivered by a very old medium (the bottle !) can travel a long way and be revived thanks to the publishing power of blogs.

I am sure Corey and Eline will be pen pals for life now.

Technorati : derby+evening+telegraph, eline+kwantes, inspirationblog, new+media, old+media