technology archive
Ignoring social media is like refusing to have a mobile phone
Today’s the day I feature in the CIPR’s Meet The Members campaign:
Shock news: being rude to someone isn’t a good way to make them agree with you
Mother Jones reports: In a recent study, a team of researchers from the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication and several other institutions employed a survey of 1,183 Americans to get at the negative consequences of vituperative online comments for the public understanding of science. Participants were asked to read a blog post containing [...]
Councillor Camp: 10 questions to see if your council gets digital
My session this morning at Councillor Camp (well done to the team organising it – excellent job!) was about how councillors can prod their councils into getting digital. It was in the form of 10 questions to ask and as I’ve now had several requests for the slides, here they are for your delectation, followed [...]
Wrexham Council shows how not to do digital
As today’s excellent Councillor Camp demonstrated, there is lots of great digital work being done by local councillors and local councils. But as this story tweeted around today also illustrates, there is still a long way to go in some places: A Welsh council banned reporters from live tweeting at a meeting this morning. The [...]
Do you really know when the best time to tweet is?
It has become standard advice to anyone wanting to get the most out of Twitter: time your tweets for the most impact. In this case, the standard advice is also good advice – and so has spawned a mini-industry of tools which promise to tell you when the best times to send your tweets are. [...]
18 minutes of fame: the prime life of a tweet
How long does a tweet attract attention for? A few of course get read, re-read, shared and re-shared a long time after they were sent. Barack Obama’s tweet on being re-elected will probably feature in various forms for years to come. But you and I are no Barack Obama. (Though if you are, hello! Nice of you [...]
How a print publication prospered by switching to online – and not chasing traffic
There’s a fascinating piece over on The Media Briefing about how Computer Weekly went from print to digital: Ending the printed magazine was, admittedly, something of a milestone, given that Computer Weekly had been around since 1966, the world’s first weekly technology magazine… We’re pretty proud of what we’ve delivered – but that success has [...]
The Amazing Weapons That Never Were: the future as it used to look
Following the success of The Wonderful Future That Never Was, Gregory Benford and Popular Mechanics magazine have now produced The Amazing Weapons That Never Were. I very much enjoyed the previous book, this one not nearly so much. Why the difference? Primarily because pretty much everything in the book in one form or other came [...]
5 things you shouldn’t miss: cleaning up your social media, checking on Facebook Pages and more
Welcome to the latest of my monthly collections for the Engine Group of five links that you shouldn’t miss. Social media neglected in crisis management http://bit.ly/Sdhsgk More than two out of three professionals in comms, marketing and social media admitted there is a gap in their businesses’ social media planning for responding to crisis [...]
An interview with a paid Chinese troll
There’s a fascinating interview over on the New Statesman site: In February 2011, Ai Weiwei tweeted that he would like to conduct an interview with an “online commentator”. Commentators are hired by the Chinese government or the Communist Party of China to post comments favourable towards party policies and to shape public opinion on internet [...]
