The BBC announced this week it’s plans for coverage of the London 2012 Olympics. Thanks to a dedicated Olympics Player, users will be able to access every single event online and by the press of a button.

Four years after the impressive Beijing Olympics the BBC has capitalised on the growth of technology and the rise in smartphone ownership to ensure that audiences never miss a moment.

Broadcasters have been living in fear of the fragmentation of the television market place, but because the BBC is tax-payer funded it has been able to take a leap and use technology that will put the audience truly in control.

For advertisers the segmentation of viewership has signalled confusion, forcing many to relearn how to reach and promote their brands to potential customers. Television, let’s not forget, is still the most dominant media when wanting to engage with an audience. But this is changing. Today, corralling people together is more difficult as more channels allows people to watch what they want to watch.

The BBC is using these Olympics to test out social features that will enable viewers to learn, comment and share about the event and athlete they watch.

By focusing on a platform agnostic belief, the BBC is putting the Olympics in the hands of the user, weather they are at home, work or travelling.

And if you are outside the UK overseas and want to see how it works then now is the time to get that VPN network up and running.

The Olympics, in your hand. Wherever you are.

Data and analytics is shaping the media landscape.  That is the message that came from the speakers at the first day of this year’s FT Media Media Conference in London.

While Jimmy Wales opened the two-day media gathering with insight on the power of the community, it was the FT’s CEO John Ridding and AOL Huffington Post Media Group VP Noel Penzer who pushed the importance of data in knowing your audience.

John Ridding said, ‘I didn’t think that when I went into journalism 20 years ago I’d get excited about data and analytics.’  And data is becoming as central to the media landscape as making the content seamlessly available across platform.  Ridding himself added that HTML5 is a big deal for publishing as making content available across multiple platforms is very expensive, something that HTML5 resolves.  This move to HTML5 highlights the growth of users receiving content while on mobile devices – phones and tablets.  And it is this that gives the kind of real-time data that enables us to better understand the audience.

Many of the platforms that are becoming essential to those in media are funded by venture capital and it took Index Ventures Partner Neil Rimer to say that Facebook might not have yet exploited it’s full potential, before adding that it could become more valuable than Google.

Balderton Capital’s Dharmash Mistry provided the strategic and focused insight by stating that Facebook’s strength is as ‘a powerful distribution network.’  Mistry gave the example of Spotify, who grew in the US by making the decision to embedded itself into Facebook’s open graph.

The audience has gathered in one place and it’s just a matter of time that this benefit is fully utilised by those in media and communications.  I am not talking in a marketing sense either.  I’ve been making this point for the past 12 months, about how a connected community can bring together an audience.  This, together with using micro payments on Facebook, such as it’s credits offering could see revenues for publishers as for gaming companies like Zynga.  Dharmash Mistry himself said that the future for Facebook is with micro-payments.

Data is no longer dull, but a currency that can help not just business understand their audience, but help the audience find the content that is of interest to them.

This year’s GSMA Mobile World Congress 2012 brought together last week in Barcelona an industry that has been working during the past year to guess and meet the mobile needs of consumers and businesses.  Over 65,000 attendees and 3,000 journalists were asked ‘How do you redefine mobile?’  This theme was much more than about new handsets or associated technology.  It was about how the industry can continue to embed itself in our daily life.

While handset manufacturers such as Samsung, HTC, Huawei, Nokia and BlackBerry grabbed the headlines at this year’s congress, it was the operating systems and the application of these that grabbed a lot of the discussion.  Mobile commerce was one such subject that was hotly discussed.

Mobile connects people with people.  It connects business with people, opening a host of opportunities for news and media outlets, as well as businesses that rely on direct to consumer sales.  Just look at the new Guardian advert about the Three Little Piggies to see how new is now shaped by the opinions of people on the move.

While Google and it’s Android operating system was everywhere, Apple and it’s non-attendance were the still benchmark for the many handset manufacturers.  Samsung unveiled not just the Note handset, but also a partnership with Visa that would facilitate it’s Near Field Communications (#NFC) capability.  With a NFC-sim in place, Samsung will be providing athletes at the London 2012 Olympic Games with handsets through which they can pay for goods, educating the public about the benefits of contactless mobile payments.

Samsung London Olympics NFC enabled mobile

Athletes will just need to open a pre-installed app and with just the swipe of their phone over a RFID Visa reader they’ll be able to pay for purchases of up to say £20.  Any purchases over a set preset amount will require the user to enter a security PIN number.  Visa hopes to launch this NFC payment service to the public later on in the year, though with a few conditions: you will need a Visa debit or Credit card associated with the service, you mobile operators will need to send you an approved SIM card and your NFC enabled phone will need to be approved by your bank.  Seamless it isn’t, but a step in the right direction it is.

Meanwhile, Japanese Mobile Operator NTT DoCoMo unveiled their own NFC offering, which was more consumer-friendly and has been in use in Japan since 2004.

NTT DoCoMo pioneered mobile payments by ‘encouraging’ Sony to design what is now the NFC FeliCa chips that have become the contactless default payment system in Japanese handsets.  NFCTimes.com reports that today ‘more than 60 million phones in Japan pack the contactless FeliCa chip, which comes from DoCoMo’s joint venture partner Sony Corp. The chips and associated secure memory can support a range of payment, ticketing and other applications.’  The operator makes it’s money by collecting transaction fees every time a subscriber uses the NFC system.

Extending the service beyond payments, NTT DoCoMo unveiled services where NFC could be used across borders and for mobile ticketing through the Boardwalk Mobile Ticketing, which uses NFC on mobile devices to create a seamless way to engage with events that require ticketing and through which event promoters can further push additional content.  In Japan, NTT DoCoMo also provides the subscriber with the opportunity of charging purchases to their monthly bill.

With the continued rise of geo-location marketing pushed by the likes of Foursquare and Facebook, the missing piece in the payment and promotion system is appearing in Asia, where seamless services have produced high consumer sign-up numbers, something that Samsung and Visa need to consider when they roll their own services in western markets

According to Ovum the ‘GSMA estimates that there are now over 100 deployments around the world.’ High-adoption for mobile payment in emerging markets is partly driven by the fact that mobile phone ownership in these markets vastly outnumbers payment card ownerships.  In developed markets, the incentive to use NFC and other mobile payment options need to be established through promotions to the user – discounts and coupons that can be redeemed with ones own handset.  Location services such as Foursquare could add value and increase sales.

Brands today require a mobile strategy as part of the communications activities.  Reaching people wherever they are is going to be central, especially when you consider that at some point within the next 24 months more people will be accessing the web through a mobile device than a desktop.  Views and opinions will be in real-time, offers made when target customers are in location.

Mobile and telecoms have embedded themselves in our daily life.  They are the channel for business and real-time comment and opinion.  They are wire that connects people on social networks.  Mobile is redefining itself, and it will continue to do so.  Develop a mobile strategy and accept that real-time business is already upon us.

Telefonica owned UK mobile operator O2 was this morning caught in a storm when a user discovered that his phone number was being sent to websites he visited when roaming through O2′s network.

System Administrator Lewis Peckover discovered the data and privacy breach when building a site and wanting to know the information that was being sent and possibly collected while browsing on a mobile network.

After alerting O2 yesterday 24 January at 15.12 through Twitter it took the mobile operator nearly four hours to ask @lewispeckover for a screenshot.  This request followed a previous tweet where the company tried to reassure him by stating that ‘the mobile number in the HTML is linked to how the site determines that your browsing from a mobile device‘.

This issue went public this morning when people bombarded O2 for answers, forcing the company to issue it’s first statement at 08.49 by stating ‘we are investigating this at the moment and will update everyone as soon as possible.’

This breach in privacy creates a massive concern not just for consumers but businesses that use O2 for data roaming as sending users numbers might enable bots to harvest these for spam.

Twitter users have already been calling for O2 to be reported to both Ofcom and the Information Commissioner’s Office (IOC).

To check if you are affected switch to 3G and use the following script developed by Lewis Peckover to see if your own UK or International overseas cellular network sends your number.

This story is developing.

Wednesday, 25 January – 15.40: O2 has tweeted at 15.32 a statement saying, ‘We’re sorry about the concern re mobile numbers and web browsing, which is now fixed. Here’s what happened + Q&A.‘  They included a link to a Q&A in their blog: http://tfs.me/wdekaS

The London Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (LOCOG) last week released their social media guidelines for their 70,000 volunteers, in which they ban individuals from posting pictures or release details of athletes, VIPs and dignitaries in backstage areas at this summer’s 2012 Olympic games.

In the hope of keeping a tight-lid on the London 2012 brand and messaging organisers have made the outrageous statement that social media will be managed by its communication team.  Such level of control is going to be nearly impossible given the number of individuals that will be operating behind the scenes.

A large majority of news outlets already use social media channels as a source that adds value and content to unfolding stories, so rather than control the possible behind the scene messages, why didn’t the communications team look to embrace these channels and empower volunteers add an extra layer of information?  It begs the question, will volunteers have to hand in the mobiles before each day that they work, sorry, volunteer for free?

Surely empowering volunteers as behind the scenes crews would act as a way to bring the spirit of the Olympics closer to the people.  Those athletes, celebrities and dignitaries that are caught in a scandal would only have themselves to blame.

As several other bloggers point out, the call by LOCOG goes against the International Olympic Committe’s (IOC) own guidelines and recommendation.

We await and see how this develops.

Storm clouds have been gathering over the UK public relations industry after a couple of its top agencies were caught editing Wikipedia pages on behalf of their clients.  Last month Bell Pottinger was outted in a sting by The Independent and the Bureau for Investigative Journalism, whose journalists posed as businessmen from Uzbekistan.  This month PR agency Portland Communications tried to edit out Stella Artois from the Wikipedia page for Wife-beater – the UK urban description of this beer brand.

The issue at hand was not that they tried to edit Wikipedia pages for clients, more that they failed to declare a conflict of interest in these edits.

Wikipedia, the free, collaborative and multilingual online encyclopaedia, is seen as a first port of call for accurate information and description because it is built on 3 key pillars – 1, contributors and editors must have a neutral point of view and no conflict of interest; 2, content must be verifiable; 3, articles must not contain new analysis or synthesis.

Today, Wikipedia has over 20 million articles – over 3.8 million in English, is available in over 280 languages and is edited and monitored by over 10,000 active editors around the world.  The fact is that anybody anywhere can access and edit nearly any Wikipedia page – some are controversially protected and can only be edited by Wikipedia’s own system administrators, is one of it’s key strengths.

Let’s be honest, managing and editing reputations on Wikipedia is not an action confined to individuals working in the global public relations industry – the internet has connected millions of people around the world.  Vandalism and trolling are a growing issue that has affected and will continue to affect this platform, though Wikipedia’s own systems, based on the power of the community, has thankfully enabled it to so far keep it in check.

The issue is about transparency, or lack of by certain communicators who fail to declare they are representing the individual or brand they are editing.  This not just damages the reputation of the brand they are working for, but that of our own profession.

Everybody has the right to a voice and to a reputation.  That reputation though is based on the actions of a client and not the image that a PR might subsequently provide.  Social networking has educated the wider audience to believe what members of their trusted community say and while PRs continue to hide behind a cloak of secrecy this profession will find it harder in it’s primary mission, which is to ‘help establish and maintain goodwill and mutual understanding between public, private and not-for-profit organisations and their various audiences.’  I ask this, knowing how connected the world is and how communities work, was it strategically wise to try to edit out Stella Artois from the page in question?  Total control is no longer an option in today’s connected world.

The Chartered Institute for Public Relations (CIPR), the UK’s professional body for PR, issued a statement yesterday (6 January 2011) stating it’s commitment to put together clear guidance for the profession on using and editing Wikipedia by working with representatives of Wikimedia UK.  The CIPR already has in place social media guidelines that were developed by the institute’s own social media advisory board, which I sit on.  Before being adopted the guidelines were put out on a wiki for comment and debate to the UK PR community.

While here in the UK the CIPR has taken the first step in seeking and securing a partnership for the specific creation of  dedicated guidelines for PRs we should remember that the issue, like our profession, is global.  Public relations is a profession and industry in the rest of Europe, North and South America, the Middle East, Africa and Asia.

Wikipedia and it’s community should use this opportunity to work with PRs around the world so that these guidelines can be adopted globally.  Groups are already coming together to encourage a dialogue and understanding of what PRs do.  I personally do not expect everybody to be won over.  In fact I wouldn’t want this.  Debate is healthy and fuels change.  But I do hope that we can demystify what PRs around the world do and and contribute.

After all, we live in a globally  connected world filled with different cultures and jurisdictions that is unifying and shaping us and our opinions.  Our views are shaped by those we know and trust within our networks.  It is time that public relations professionals improved the PR for themselves.

Less that a month after the Bell Pottinger gets caught boasting about using ‘dark arts’ and ‘having a team that could sort Wikipedia,’ it appears that another agency has been outed.

Rival public relations agency Portland Communications has been caught by West Brom MP Tom Watson for trying to edit out the name of Stella Artois, a brand owned by Portland client inBev, from the Wikipedia description page for Wife-beater.

Watson rightly suggests in Portland Communications Wikipedia discussion page that agencies list their clients in their own Wikipedia entries so to declare conflict of interest and as I suspect for transparency sake.

What is interesting is that at 16.31 today (04/01/2012) Wikipedia user Portlander11 edits Portland Communications Wikipedia page and adds, ‘Current and previous clients include BTA Bank, Mukhtar Ablyazov and AB InBev,’ before adding, ‘The reason for this change is that Mr Ablyazov is not and never has been a client of Portland Communications.’  That final statement is very clear, stating that Mr Ablyazov ‘is not and has never been a client of Portland Communications.‘

Looking at the Wikipedia page for Mr Mukhtar Ablyazov one sees that the page has been edited on a regular basis, mostly by registered Wikipedia users.  A number of edits though are from a user whose IP address has been captured as ‘83.244.252.242.’  This IP address has the following hostname associated with it, ‘mx9.portland-communications.com.’  Perhaps, that bold and unambiguous statement is not as accurate as Portlander11 led many people, including Tom Watson MP to believe.

The fact is that fingerprints exist online.  The web connects people.  Wikipedia and social networking site brings groups together that act as editors and fact checkers, something, it appears that some public relations consultancies are yet to understand.

UPDATE: I should point you to two blog posts that were equally published yesterday by Stuart Bruce and Phil Gomes, the latter calling on Wikipedia to ‘have an open, constructive and fair discussion about the important issues where public relations and Wikipedia interset.’

This time last year I made a series of predictions about social media and public relations.  I suggested that while 2010 was a year of discovery, the past 2011 was going to be about sharing and engaging.  About communities being empowered by the knowledge they will have pooled together.  I highlighted from my perspective the challenges and opportunities that Facebook, Twitter and YouTube will pose for companies and individuals.  The impact that social networking has had on events during the past year has truly been beyond what anybody could have expected.

While 2010 was about Wikileaks, the past year has been about challenging the reputation of companies, organisations and individuals that used the law to hide their indiscretions.  Twitter and other social networks came into their own as members of the legal profession struggled to grasp the structure of communications across international jurisdictions.

In my post ‘2011, A Year Of Change In Public Relations,’ I said that the coming year was going to be about communities that were engaged and empowered.  Wikileaks showed what you could do privately.  Facebook, Twitter and YouTube were the channels through which you could anonymously share content and opinion.  They are the channels that gathered a community together, empowering them to seek the transparency that was far too often absent.  Even the once trusted media estate came under the gaze of the community.

The Arab Spring in North Africa was an occasion that surprised many commentators. Sharing of stories on Twitter about high-profile individuals was going to happen.  Managing reputations has now moved into a real-time business.  In fact, if something wrong has been done it is today best expected that such an act will become public.

Last year I also raised the point about the power of mobile, of cellphones.  Wherever you are you have a cellphone.  You are connected to a world of real time information that reaches you as quickly as you wish to access the news that is available.  News shared by the network that you are connected to.  Reliance on traditional news channels is long gone.  News is shaped by members of the communities that we trust, which is why from a public relations perspective crises are today that when audiences go negative on a brand, cause or individual.

As I stated, news organisations are not dead and they are certainly not dying.  They are just changing and adapting to become what their primary audience wants of them.  An adoption that will continue in the 2012.

But what about the coming year?  Well, I am finishing my thoughts on this and will share these with you pretty soon.

It has been some time since I posted an update to my blog. My apologies for this. One of reasons is the fact that I’ve been working on updating this site with a new look that will enable the content to be more social and shareable.

Since the last update we’ve seen great updates to Facebook, Twitter and other sites. One of the problems though is that as much as these networks updates businesses and other organisations are yet to maximise their potential for their own enterprise. This I predict will change in 2012.

As always you’ll be the first to know when the new site goes live. In the meantime I wish you a prosperous and very Happy New Year.

George Lucas was right, 'The audience IS listening'

Facebook has brought together an audience of incredible numbers.  The social networking giant is today a community of people that keeps on growing, creating for businesses an opportunity to reach out directly to consumers.  But here lies the question, why are businesses still looking like ‘rabbits in the headlights’ and failing to truly engage with audiences that can help many survive during these hard economic times?

Today, Facebook has over 750 million users worldwide.  For many businesses that figure is a fantasy, after all, are we going to engage with so many?  So let’s narrow this figure down into more manageable and relevant numbers.  In the US there are over 154 million ‘active’ users, Indonesia comes in second with 40 million and a 16 per cent penetration rate, while in the UK there are 30 million users reaching half of the population. Malaysia has over 11 million users accounting for nearly 1 in 2 residents, while Singapore has a very active 2.5 million with 54% of people being on Facebook.

And the figures don’t stop there.  Here are some more, more than have of Facebook users access the network each day, half of which do so through their mobile phones.  And those that access Facebook through a smartphone or other mobile device are ‘twice as active as Facebook compared to non-mobile users.’

For many companies and organisations, these numbers are very 2-dimensional.  The audience is there, but the history and culture of 20 century business dictates that for many they still broadcast to them through a given Facebook Page.

Audience engagement is much more than a Facebook Page and the apps and tabs that these Pages have.  It is about, well, engagement.  It is about listening and delivering.  In business it is about meeting needs.  And to meet business needs you needs to re-invent itself, spending time speaking an engaging with your various audiences.

Many companies are focused on the comfort of your own structure.  Safe in the knowledge of how they have always delivered their business.  But what about your audience?  Have they been happy in how they have received your business?

As Facebook show’s us, people today are connected online.  For many they check their network, their community first thing in the morning.  People seek input, advice and support from their community that they have before they have spent money.  Today, people are happy to share bad experience, which shapes many companies brands and reputations.

While engagement is certainly not as cheap as business thinks it is, it creates a much more personal relationship than brands have ever had with it’s audiences.  It creates the loyalty, the holy-grail of business relationships that many aspire for.

Think about it this way, how do you like being talked at?