Simon Collister, PhD

Strategy + Consulting

social media

Radio 4 on corporate blogging and ghosts in the machine

by simoncollister 2 Comments

Interesting piece about corporate blogging on R4’s Today this morning. As you might expect from the MSM it was a tale extremes. One the one hand there was Tom Coates talking about his recent experience with PROs pitching him in ways "that are probably illegal" to Spin Vox‘s Chief Blogger, Mark James Whatley and on to an anonymous ‘ghost-blogger’ who makes his living speaking to CEOs and writing their blog posts:

"ghost-writing blog posts is no different to ghost writing books by premiership footballers."

Erm….

I wonder if he work’s agency-side or as a freelance. either weay, he can’t be a memebr of the CIPR as he’s in breach of their Code of Conduct.

I confess I didn’t listen to it live, but woke up to a volley of texts from friends and family saying "are you listening to R4 now?" At 7.30am on a Saturday that is also my birthday? NO!

You can listen to the package via the BBC’s iPlayer here – although you’ll have to fast forward to 43 minutes in.

Technorati tags: Radio 4, Today, ghost blogging, Tom Coates, Spin Vox, Mark Whatley

Technology = boring?

by simoncollister 2 Comments

So I was miffed I didn’t get sent an advance copy of Clay Shirky‘s new book Here Comes Everybody.

But James Cherkoff over at Modern Marketing has a great quote from the book:

"Communication tools don’t get socially interesting until they get
technologically boring.  The invention of a tool doesn’t create change:
it has to have been round long enough that most of society is using it."

Tis is something I’ve been known to bang on about before and chimes nicely with some thinking I’ve been doing this morning around ideologies in the 21st Century. Hopefully more to come…

Technorati tags: James Cherkoff, Clay Shirky, Here Comes Everybody

Unheard voices: Election blogging in Iran

by simoncollister Leave a Comment

Fascinating article in yesterday’s FT about Iranian bloggers.

Key take-aways for me include:

  • There are now
    about 800,000 blogs in Iran
  • Iran is second only to China in the
    ranks of top blogging countries
  • Roughly 15m internet connections in a country of 70m – making Iranian Internet access high compared to the rest of the region
  • Blogs are faciliatating debates left uncovered by the (heavily censored) mainstream media
  • Iran is ranked 166th out of 169 countries in Reporters Without Borders
    worldwide press freedom index  – ahead of Turkmenistan, North
    Korea and Eritrea
  • President Ahmadinejad blogs at www.ahmadinejad.ir – and is getting addicted to it as well!

What is really interesting is while blogs offer a debating platform for discussion about reformist candidates in the forthcoming elections being barred, they internet looks like it may well play a much bigger part in the subsequent campaign as well:

"It is still possible that the Guardian Council will allow more of the
reformist candidates to run on March 14, but analysts say it is likely
to leave such decisions to the last minute – giving an advantage
to conservatives, who will have time to print posters and leaflets
ahead of the seven days of official campaigning. This means the
internet could take on an even greater role for reformists, becoming an
important lobbying tool for last-minute candidates."

Seriously fascinating. And I would definitely add that if you want to hear more from traditionally unheard voices around the world then defintiely have a look at the Global Voices project at Harvard’s Berkman Center

Technorati tags: FT, Iran, blogging, elections, Global Voices