Welcome to Porter Novelli’s weekly digital news post.

One of the major concerns about location-based social networking has been hitting the headlines lately. Whether it’s people telling others what they’re up to through sites like Twitter, or saying they’re “going out” through specific location-based tools like Foursquare, the threat that people know where you live and when you’re not there is a very real one.

And that’s just the users who aren’t stupid enough to check in to Foursquare at their home!

That’s why the Flavour of the Week in social media has been Please Rob Me, a site by Forthehack, an outfit whose stated aim in launching the controversial site was to raise awareness of online privacy issues. Mission accomplished.

The site essentially comprises a Twitter search for ’4sq’, revealing a handy list of people who are out and, therefore, not home. And by providing the list in reverse chronological order by check-in time, it’s possible to make assumptions about who will be out for a while. If you checked into work 15 minutes ago at 9.20am, chances are you’re likely to be out most of the day.

So, if you make your address known online, you’re knackered. But this is all nothing new – as Mashable notes, burglars can always just go around calling houses from telephone boxes. And in online privacy terms this is pretty basic stuff. I guess the interesting point comes where the creative potential of Foursquare meets our desire to be safe. Are we really ready to take the occasional risk to pick up some movie’s Foursquare location badges?

Apps, mobile editions and the future of news consumption…

Following the hype around Apple’s iPad launch, the inevitable showing off of iPad’s possible uses. The first big media name to reveal its iPad plans was Wired. With the likes of GQ, Esquire and Maxim already operating iPhone editions, Wired made a big play in Chris Anderson’s appearance at the TED Conference last Friday. The ace up his sleeve? Wired’s iPad edition.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the iPad version looks rather like a magazine on a screen. But the back-end is where things will get really interesting, and will likely change our understanding of how a media title is put together. There is no front or back cover, no natural flow, no (gulp) centrefold. That’s just the tip of the iceberg, and the possibilities are intriguing. Financially, a magazine or newspaper’s ability to carry media-rich advertising is a particularly promising possibility – for them, at least.

If you’d like to see Wired congratulating itself, here’s the video.

Meanwhile, the BBC is stepping up its iPhone presence. From April, the corporation will offer free applications for its news and sport content on the iPhone, with BlackBerry and Android apps to follow. The value and benefits of the apps have been questioned but the BBC understandably wants to be involved in a market which consumes its news as and when it’s required.

However, it will have to do a good job to compete with the many existing unofficial apps which (I have it on good authority) are available already.

…and social networking

From news to networking, perhaps 2010 really is the routinely predicted ‘Year of the Mobile’ which its predecessors have failed to live up to. We already know about high-end mobile apps for sites such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, but what about those of us who don’t want to waste mobile operators’ bandwidth by trawling through Facebook photos?

Facebook is targeting the 100 million users who now access the site on their mobile phones with a low-bandwidth version named ‘Zero’.  From the BBC:

Data from industry body the GSM Association recently revealed that Facebook accounts for nearly half of all the time people in the UK spend going online using their phones.

The data showed that people in the UK spent around 2.2bn minutes browsing the social network during December alone.

Facebook said the new site “omits data intensive applications like photos”.

I suppose there’s an element of competition with Twitter here, and another sign of just how important Facebook considers its status function’s development to be. Not my bag, but each to their own.

Retail and social media

British retailers are rubbish at social media, according to a dotCommerce study (the word rubbish is mine, not theirs – sorry, retailers). The top ranking British retailer on Facebook is the Body Shop – unsurprising – but it’s presence there is weak compared to some retailers overseas, particularly in the US.

The Body Shop is 23rd on All Facebook’s Facebook page leaderboard, but is behind better engaged brands like The Cheesecake Factory, Starbucks, Best Buy and Target. The problem is not the strength or otherwise of The Body Shop’s brand, it’s the execution of its tactics within social media.

Having an effective Facebook page may not be crucial to the success of a business, but used cleverly it can be a great tool for contests, customer service and public relations. It seems silly not to grasp the nettle.

Welcome to Porter Novelli’s weekly digital news post.

One of the major concerns about location-based social networking has been hitting the headlines lately. Whether it’s people telling others what they’re up to through sites like Twitter, or saying they’re “going out” through specific location-based tools like Foursquare, the threat that people know where you live and when you’re not there is a very real one.

And that’s just the users who aren’t stupid enough to check in to Foursquare at their home!

That’s why the Flavour of the Week in social media has been Please Rob Me, a site by Forthehack, an outfit whose stated aim in launching the controversial site was to raise awareness of online privacy issues. Mission accomplished.

The site essentially comprises a Twitter search for ’4sq’, revealing a handy list of people who are out and, therefore, not home. And by providing the list in reverse chronological order by check-in time, it’s possible to make assumptions about who will be out for a while. If you checked into work 15 minutes ago at 9.20am, chances are you’re likely to be out most of the day.

So, if you make your address known online, you’re knackered. But this is all nothing new – as Mashable notes, burglars can always just go around calling houses from telephone boxes. And in online privacy terms this is pretty basic stuff. I guess the interesting point comes where the creative potential of Foursquare meets our desire to be safe. Are we really ready to take the occasional risk to pick up some movie’s Foursquare location badges?

Apps, mobile editions and the future of news consumption…

Following the hype around Apple’s iPad launch, the inevitable showing off of iPad’s possible uses. The first big media name to reveal its iPad plans was Wired. With the likes of GQ, Esquire and Maxim already operating iPhone editions, Wired made a big play in Chris Anderson’s appearance at the TED Conference last Friday. The ace up his sleeve? Wired’s iPad edition.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the iPad version looks rather like a magazine on a screen. But the back-end is where things will get really interesting, and will likely change our understanding of how a media title is put together. There is no front or back cover, no natural flow, no (gulp) centrefold. That’s just the tip of the iceberg, and the possibilities are intriguing. Financially, a magazine or newspaper’s ability to carry media-rich advertising is a particularly promising possibility – for them, at least.

If you’d like to see Wired congratulating itself, here’s the video.

Meanwhile, the BBC is stepping up its iPhone presence. From April, the corporation will offer free applications for its news and sport content on the iPhone, with BlackBerry and Android apps to follow. The value and benefits of the apps have been questioned but the BBC understandably wants to be involved in a market which consumes its news as and when it’s required.

However, it will have to do a good job to compete with the many existing unofficial apps which (I have it on good authority) are available already.

…and social networking

From news to networking, perhaps 2010 really is the routinely predicted ‘Year of the Mobile’ which its predecessors have failed to live up to. We already know about high-end mobile apps for sites such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, but what about those of us who don’t want to waste mobile operators’ bandwidth by trawling through Facebook photos?

Facebook is targeting the 100 million users who now access the site on their mobile phones with a low-bandwidth version named ‘Zero’.  From the BBC:

Data from industry body the GSM Association recently revealed that Facebook accounts for nearly half of all the time people in the UK spend going online using their phones.

The data showed that people in the UK spent around 2.2bn minutes browsing the social network during December alone.

Facebook said the new site “omits data intensive applications like photos”.

I suppose there’s an element of competition with Twitter here, and another sign of just how important Facebook considers its status function’s development to be. Not my bag, but each to their own.

Retail and social media

British retailers are rubbish at social media, according to a dotCommerce study (the word rubbish is mine, not theirs – sorry, retailers). The top ranking British retailer on Facebook is the Body Shop – unsurprising – but it’s presence there is weak compared to some retailers overseas, particularly in the US.

The Body Shop is 23rd on All Facebook’s Facebook page leaderboard, but is behind better engaged brands like The Cheesecake Factory, Starbucks, Best Buy and Target. The problem is not the strength or otherwise of The Body Shop’s brand, it’s the execution of its tactics within social media.

Having an effective Facebook page may not be crucial to the success of a business, but used cleverly it can be a great tool for contests, customer service and public relations. It seems silly not to grasp the nettle.

Kevin Smith, the writer and director behind cult movie ‘Clerks’ and its New Jersey series stablemates, is a big lad. He’s never shied away from it, he’s never denied it and he’s credited it for the drive and determination which has made him a globally recognised – if niche – face and bagged him a great big sack of cash. (Disclosure: I’m a Kevin Smith fan.)

Smith has been embroiled in a bitter war of words with Southwest Airlines for the last few days. The detail is all over the place, but suffice to say that the issue between the two parties revolves around a fairly unexceptional customer service issue – Smith was ejected from a flight, with SWA claiming his weight was the reason – in which an exceptional customer was wronged.

In a nutshell, as Smith himself has said over and over and over this week, he’s fat, but he’s not that fat. He’s determined to get to the bottom of the situation, because his weight doesn’t seem to be the genuine issue. He fits into SWA seats, and he shared a moment with a seated, worried larger chap as he left the aircraft.

Whatever the problem, SWA stuttered slowly into crisis mode and did a less than stand-up job. When dealing with a standard customer with a reasonable Twitter following, a company is walking the grey area where granular PR and traditional customer service meet. When the customer has 1.5 million followers, several other audiences and a crusader’s sense of righting a wrong, it needs to get it right. Quickly. SWA has, so far, failed on all counts. It’s ‘apology’ was appalling.

As the story has developed and PR commentators have begun to analyse SWA’s response, the question of what it might mean for the future of PR has inevitably cropped up. This is a story that’s been blown worldwide on the wind of social media. A Twitter user was wronged, tweeted – lots – about it, recorded a podcast about it, and his followers have begun taking potshots at the company which created the problem. It’s the classic ‘power of social media’ situation.

Caroline McCarthy at The Social identifies the CRM-PR hybrid zone which may well form an important part of hands-on PR in the coming years. When your customers have an audience, your issue becomes a PR matter. It’s something James Whatley discussed at a Porter Novelli Twitter event many moons ago.

But for me any mention of Smith’s anti-SWA campaign having an effect on the future of PR are wide of the mark. Yes, it demonstrates the power of a large audience. Yes, it probably sped things up significantly. And yes, it has shown the value of openness, sincerity and speed of reaction when dealing with a thorny customer service and public relations issue.

However, stripped to its facts this case doesn’t really tell us anything at all about the future. We already know that customer relations and public relations are converging. We already know that bad customer service happens and causes customers to vent through whichever channels are available, and we already know that dawdling responses to a crisis may eventually lead to mainstream coverage of the situation. But would SWA have reacted at all if Smith wasn’t a famous face? Doubtful.

And there’s nothing new there – celebrities have always had more power to make their voice heard. We’ve all got a voice these days, but celebrities like Smith, Ashton Kutcher and Stephen Fry have megaphones.

The correct process for SWA would have been to not act stupidly, apologise immediately when it did, and apologise sincerely when the matter escalated into the media – or, in this case, Smith’s audience. Those principles were as true in days gone by as they are now and SWA failed. The channels may have changed, but you or I would still be shouting at nobody had we been in Smith’s situation. We’re not famous.

In that sense, this is a bit of a one-off. I find it difficult to see a blueprint for the future of PR developing on that basis.