Once I clicked, while familiar with the brand from a professional experience, on a link for a Free Experian Credit Report. Halfway through the process, which involved me having to remember ten years of addresses, the site crashed. Since then. I’ve received numerous emails asking me if I want to get a free credit check.

Check out this cool site: If the world could vote  and have your say on the upcoming US Presidential Election.

Unsurprisingly, Obama is streets ahead on a global basis with one significant exception.

In Macedonia, the former Yugoslavian Republic, McCain is recording a landslide 86.8% of the vote.

On a global basis - at the time of writing - Obama takes the Presidency with the same share (86.8%) of the vote.

Forrester has updated its Technographic research. The study categorises and measures different online participation and is based on a US sample. It shows an increase in participation levels year on year.

No such research exists for Australia as far as I am aware.

The Millenials and Gen Ys are an increasingly important segment of our workforce. This demographic has had the luxury of a prosperous economy during their teenage years and adult life. They haven’t experienced an economic downturn or heaven forbid - an R!

Accenture coined the term user-determined computing. The relates to the increasingly tech savvy workforce and the dramatic increase in the availability of free, customisable and easy to implement software.

The Accenture argument goes that new technology within the workforce is just as likely to be deployed by users as it is by the IT department, which poses the question: How much control should IT (the business) exert over its users in the Web 2.0 world?

In recent years, we’ve seen social networking applications, instant messenging, RSS readers and so on enter the workforce in a big way. They may or may not be being used for work related activities.

Companies are presented with four options:

BLOCK: Prevent access to social networks, sites and services that aren’t obviously related to work.

TRUST: Allow access and leave workers to discover their own professional uses for the technology.

APPLY: Work with employees and third party consultants to identify ways in which the technology can be applied to work. Lay down guidelines for the use of social media and other tools in partnership with staff and communicate these guidelines.

MANAGE: Tap into workers enthusiasm for online communication by rolling out a Facebook-like platform for internal (and external with trusted partners) company communications.

Telstra and Channel 7 are two companies in Australia that have received negative media coverage for blocking access to social networks (Facebook in both cases).

It will be interesting to see how the issue of the tightening economy and the use of social networks in the work place converge during the next twelve months. We’ve seen a rash of retrenchments in Australia and around the world, which looks likely to continue.

Recent research by the people at Wikinomics found that 50% of the Net Generations surveyed spend more than 2 hours every day using work technologies (Internet, IM etc.) to complete non-work tasks. 

My bet would be that corporations will increasingly opt to BLOCK as staff are cut back.

The forward thinking companies will respond to this issue by trying to find ways to use new technology to increase productivity in the workplace rather than adopting the punitive BLOCK mentality.  

Here are the results from Wikinomics:

Disclosure: Accenture is a client.

Nick Holmes à Court has released a list:

Australia’s Top 100 Influential Twitterers

Check it out here.

It’s useful as a guide but influence is subjective and one could argue that Twitterers that post often on personal topics (i.e. respond literally to the question: What are you doing?) are Active as opposed to Influential.

I also came across this tool: TWinfluence, which analyses social networks to provide a measure for an individuals influence. TWinfluence goes one step futher than the Holmes à Court analysis by extending the analysis to the second and third layer of a social network i.e. it goes beyond direct connections.

This type of tool is really useful for agencies when conducting influencer audits.

contactdjy’s Rank: #3302 (38%)

In related news, we are currently trialling a social media monitoring tool. More on this later.

I’ve had a very busy few weeks, which has meant very little time to blog.

I just came across this story in Smart Company by Brad Howarth on the top 15 best business blogs in Australia. Brad laments the slow uptake of corporate blogging in this country, as do I.

This is a good piece which includes a 101 guide to corporate blogging but I’d argue that only four of the 15 are actually corporate blogs, these would be RaboBank, RedBalloon Days, RealEstate.com.au and Telstra.

We have Sydney Observatory and Sydney Writers Centre and the rest: a mix of independent thinkers and consultants representing large marketing agencies. I’d argue that these guys are blogging for themselves as opposed to representing a corporation. It may be a fine line but I’m sticking to it. Corporate blogging still has a long way to go in Australia.  

We’re currently consulting to a couple of clients in this area and hopefully can play a small party in getting Australia up to speed.

Apple felt the effects of the cesspool earlier this month. A comment made by a ‘citizen journalist’ on a CNN hosted message board lead to ten point fall in its stock price. The comment falsely claimed that Steve Jobs had had a heart attack.

In some ways this seems like an odd comment to come from the CEO of a company that has been very successful as an organisor of the ‘cesspool’ and I’m sure that Eric would agree that user generated media is not all shit.

We should recognise that Schmidt was addressing an audience of journalists, magazine publishers and content creators. This is the old guard in media terms, a community which has an issue with the lack of journalistic standards in the blogosphere and feel threatened by fact that the keyboard is now mightier than the pen (or print press).

Google is treading a fine line between its role as a search engine and content creator. The company is in a hugely powerful position when it comes to determining what is value online, which makes Schmidt’s comment a cause for concern.

He says that brands are the answer to the problem of quality on the Web, says Schmidt. Brand affinity is hard wired and brands represent authority.

The inherent point in Schmidt’s argument is that brands - by definition commercially viable and therefore good for Google - are somehow more credible than human, individual voices. It’s the rejection of this premise that has fuelled user generated content and commentary and the blogosphere.

Furthermore, by Schmidt’s rule CNN is an authoritative brand. CNN has attempted to co-opt citizen journalists and user generated content with its forums and message boards (including iReport where the Apple rumour first appeared) but still the cesspool seeped through. 

CNN has attempted to tap into the cesspool in order to drive traffic to its site, which has ultimately created conflict between its brand and its perceived authority. A halfway point between the two would see it apply journalistic standards to the user generated content that it promotes but that discussion brings us back to the debate about moderation, which leads on to a discussion about resources and freedom of expression and then the risk of editorial bias.

As an aside, CNN bills iReport as:

iReport.com: See it first. Your Stories. No Boundaries.
You won’t believe what people are uploading.

I think this is further evidence that we are really at the very beginning of a digital transformation in the media sector. There is so much to be ironed out. The battle between traditional media and new media is just beginning.

Look out for a post from me over the weekend about what impact an economic crisis might have on this transformation.

More on the Schmidt story here from WebProNews.

In 1861, the philisopher John Stuart Mill wrote: the exercise of any political function, either as an elector or representative, is power over others.

We live in tumultuous times. The United State Presidential Election is scheduled to take place on November 4 this year.

The question remains relevant today: Do voters have a moral duty to be informed about politics?

The majority of Americans rely on the television for their political information, not realising that most news networks are highly partisan, owned by corporations and biased.

John Stuart Mill argued that the impact of political ignorance should be offset by giving extra votes to the most highly educated portions of the population.

Who is responsible for generating an informed population? Is it the moral responsibility of the individual? Perhaps - It’s rarely (if ever) in the interests of the political elite or governing party to educate the electorate about its shortcomings and failings.  

Edmund Burke coined the term, the Fourth Estate. He is quoted in Thomas Carlyle’s book:

“Burke said that there were three Estates in Parliament, but in the Reporters Gallery yonder, there sat a Fourth Estate more important far than they all”.

Journalism is seen as having a critical role to play as an institution that holds the other institutions to account. Sadly, our society has lost faith in the media.

A Pew Research Centre Study found that 66 per cent of people consider the press “one sided” while only 9 percent of journalists are concerned with the media’s credibility.

Technology is challenging and transforming the Fourth Estate. 

The Internet is perceived to have democratised information. It has placed the means of production in the hands of the consumer, hence User Generated Content. It has enabled the audience to engage in conversation, to provide feedback and to challenge one sided arguments and vested interests.

The Internet presents fantastic possibilities and potential as means of sharing information and mobilising communities around a cause or issue but I don’t think its safe to assume that this potential will necesarily be realised to the benefit of all.  

I think we can draw parallels between free markets and de-regulation and the impact of the Internet on media and information. Recent events clearly demonstrate - if proof were needed - that a laissez-faire attitude does not always lead to a positive or sustainable outcome. Fundamentally, free markets (of information or finance) may be self correcting but often that process is too painful to bare.

We cannot claim that traditional print media has been effective in establishing an informed population (whatever one of those is) but my fear is that new media, digital media will have a downward effect on the degree to which the community as a whole is achieving an acceptable level of informed-ness.

Sure, it will expose active and aware audiences to a much wider and active array of content and opinion but that’s an echo chamber. A situation in which information, ideas or beliefs are amplified or reinforced by transmission inside an “enclosed” space. This was one of the primary objections to the role of the media in the lead up to the Iraq War.  

History tells us that the general public has no inclination and accepts no moral obligation to be informed about events in the world and in the world of digital media where the reader is the editor this concerns me. 

For the majority of the population, the Internet means memes, it means funny videos, it means games, it means shopping, it means entertaining news and opinion. It has little or no relationship with political consciousness.   

The following table captures the characteristics of traditional print media as I see them and compares them with that of digital and new media.

My fear is that if we move to a world where the characteristics of the media and the way that we engage with media reside in the right hand collumn we will utlimely become less informed and not more.

I don’t know what the solution is to this problem given the fact that media is moving irretrievably  along a digital path but I think it’s worthy of discussion.   

I recently posted on Yammer (a Twitter app for Corporates). This micro-blogging client came out on top at Techcrunch 50 2008. I took some time to have a look at some of the other new technologies in the running at Techcrunch and came across Tonchibot. 

Tonchidot is a piece of software for the iPhone, which allows users to capture and tag the real world. The user takes a picture of a a physical thing - be it a building, landmark, sculpture, place etc. They can then create an audio or written note to accompany that image. Other users can pick up the audio or written content if they later swing by and point their camera at the same location or thing.

You could, for example, point your iPhone at a restaurant to receive a review from another user or maybe at a bus stop to receive information about the next service. Its a very clever way to integrate the real world with the Web. Check it out…

OK, I want to start this post with a disclaimer. There are plenty of companies operating in Australia that are active in social media. I have seen some great case studies…

Examples include - wikis at Janssen-Cilag, BlueTube for the Victorian Police Force and the ever present case study: Now We Are Talking.

And I have worked with companies in this sphere.

As a side note: It seems to me that Telstra entered the social media space with a very specific agenda (T3) and objective. The approach delivered value and has since permeated other areas of their business in a positive way.

For the purposes of this post, I want to focus on externally facing social media projects by Australian corporates.

Laurel Papworth recently posted on the topic of CEOs that use twitter, as a follow up to a BusinessWeek story about tweeting chief execs in the US. The list is made up by the leaders of web 2 and tech companies on both sides of the Pacific.

Talk to any PR in Australia and they’ll tell you that the corporate sector remains unwilling to dip its toe into social media in a meaningful or strategic way. Maybe that’s an exercise in PR business development, either way I’d like to suggest a few reasons why this might be the case.

1. A small corporate sector which remains well connected via traditional offline networks
That sense of the old boys network in Australian business still feels very prevalent to me. That concept of mateship and personal connections comes through quite strongly. The people that run Australian businesses are not using social media as a prmary means of communication.

2. The retail sector has not led the way
Amazon and eBay were the Web pioneers in many ways. Their success gave the Web a lot of credibility in a market (the US) which has a very rich catalogue mail order retail culture. The Australian retail sector on the other hand has been very cautious and reticent when it comes to establishing an online presence, resulting in a lack of leadership.

3. The old chestnut: Australia the follower
Why would we expect Australia to lead the rest of the world or even be up there when history tells us that this market is typically a follower? Corporate Australia is watching to see what happens in the US and Europe before it dives in.

4. Abscence of high speed national broadband
Internationally, Japan leads the way when it comes to national broadband speeds. The NBN project in Australia has a long way to go still - a nationwide broadband network in Australia is five years away, at the very least. This has impacted the sophistication, the uptake of Web applications, interaction etc. Australia is way down the rankings in terms of broadband quality, as this study shows.

5. There has been no high profile reputational crisis on the Web in Australia
Corporates will only recognise the power of the Web when they see one of their peers suffer major reputational damage as a result of online activity. Until then, corporates will sit back and focus on the risk of getting involved.

6. Corporates aren’t being sold on the benefits effectively
Marketers, consultants, PRs have to accept some responsibilty for the current state of affairs. It’s their job to educate decision makers. It’s their job to prove the business case. Marketers and communicators in Australia aren’t strong on this stuff.

As I said at the beginning, there is activity out there. It’s happening but Australia continues to lag behind the rest of the world. My sense is that the multi-nationals operating in Australia are leading the way. It can only be a matter of time until we see the large corporates follow Telstra and usurp the telco as the outstanding Australian corporate in social media.