Thursday 18 June 2009

What does the internet think? A good PR tool?

Ok so one of the main things we attempt to evaluate in PR is what people think about a client, product or a service. There are many ways to go about this which are very effective, many of which can be complicated, others can be simple.

Today I read about one which I assumed could be an evaluation tool in the latter category. And it's a search engine! I thought wow! Like we don't have enough of those... BUT it said it gave percentages of all the information about your chosen subject on the net, this made me intrigued- finally! Something extremely simple, cheap and quick! Ladies and gentlemen I present to you 'what does the internet think'?

According to the Metro it, "trawls the main search engines - Google, Microsoft's Bing and Yahoo! - for positive and negative phrases ('I love', 'I hate', etc.) associated with that thing. And then works out how fond the internet is of it".

Great stuff. I don't need to listen in university about evaluation techniques... Well no, actually I still really need to! This search engine does not make a PR persons life any easier at all... Sure it is fun, but when it comes up with 79.7% positive feedback for Adolf Hitler then we know that this is not the most reliable evaluation technique.

Although the Metro article does state that, "the internet is a big fan of kittens (92.6% positive) and cake (93.7%), less keen on ninjas (83.4%) and even less keen on swine flu, recession and Twitter (although they still all got over 60%)". Interesting...

So this may be something to have a laugh about in the office (may be not about the Hitler search as that is way not cool) but it ain't going to make any ones life easier and especially not the PR practitioners, although a comedian could get some brilliant material from it I am sure.

Oh and Public Relations is 88% positive...nice.

Monday 1 June 2009

Everyone is a journalist!

The missing Airbus over the Atlantic makes it ever more apparent that everyone is a journalist. Twitter is full of people (including myself) constantly commenting on the story.

Under the 'trending topics' section the term 'Atlantic' is rising up the list. Although at the moment (13:00) the topics above include Susan Boyle and #musicmonday. What that says about society I do not know!

The sources are generally from other news sources such as the BBC etc People are engaging making comments and giving opinions. With the plane apparently missing over the sea Twitter will not play as central a role as it did with the recent Amsterdam air crash, as I assume there will not have been any eyewitnesses or 'on the scene' reporting.

However, I think that this story also shows that journalism will remain a profession. For example with this current story much of the news is coming from the news agency Reuters as they have the means to gain access to breaking news. Much of the 'noise' on Twitter is information from news agency's and television/internet sources such as BBC News.

I think that this is a reminder that journalism is still very much a profession, especially when news is not accessible through eyewitnesses and bystanders.

Air France Airbus missing

I am trying to find out as much about the missing Airbus. I first heard about it on Twitter from news sources such as NYtimes, BBC news, The Guardian etc.

Obviously info is still pouring in all the time. It is looking similar to how the news broke about the recent Amsterdam plane crash.

Where is best to follow the details? BBC News 24 on the Television is emphasising that the details are extremely sketchy saying that some of the news sources are unreliable.

As a journalist, or even as an audience, where do you start collecting info? I am following on twitter, BBC News 24 (Television).

For research I have viewed Wikipedia, Searching for Air France and the model of the Airbus A330-200 . The page has been altered on the accidents and incidents section already.

I don't know if this is possible and may have ethical issues but could someone who is interested in the story find info on Twitter?

If a passenger placed an entry which may give insight into what happened? Surely if this has happened could the entry from (what would have been a laptop or mobile) give a traceable location as to where the plane is? Or passengers are?