Welcome to Porter Novelli’s weekly digital news post.

If we were to draw up a list of people not to annoy, the President of the United States of America would most likely appear somewhere in the top, ooh I don’t know, one. It’s a shame 25-year-old Frenchman “Hacker Croll” didn’t have the same view, because he could soon be in jail.

It’s not really fair to call the guy a hacker. He’s supposedly more like a geek who thought it would be clever to log in to the Twitter accounts of celebrities as well as Barack Obama. His high-tech method was allegedly to guess their passwords or hint questions for their email addresses, according to BBC News.

While we could question whether Hacker Croll would be sent to prison for hacking any other Twitter account, if he is convicted I think it could be argued that he’ll be doing a stretch for stupidity.

More on paywalls

The paywall debate is picking up speed as the UK national newspapers begin to put in place their new online business models. The Times will soon launch its paywall model (charging for access, with the lowest price point being £1 for one day). The company clearly believes the paywall is a workable and viable system, but Will Sturgeon points out a slight problem: on the day the paywall was confirmed, The Times‘ top story was shared by most of its competitors – including The Guardian, which will remain free.

In other words, the newspaper is asking an awful lot of loyalty from its readers.

Elsewhere, The Independent might just be going the other way. Evening Standard owner Alexander Lebedev has bought the group and is rumoured to be considering boosting circulation (and ad revenue?) by making the print edition free. Clearly making the Standard free has done the business.

Liddle blog censured by PCC

The Press Complaints Commission has ruled that a Spectator blog by Rod Liddle breached the accuracy clause of the Editors’ Code of Practice and that the Spectator must ensure that the inaccuracy is corrected.

Back in December Liddle caused a wave of outrage with a blog post which claimed that “the overwhelming majority of [violent crime] in London is carried out by young men from the African-Caribbean community”. Unsurprisingly, complaints were made and action taken. However, this is an intriguing precedent. As Londonist notes, Liddle is the first journalist to have a blog censured by the PCC.

Who knows whether the PCC might some day be responsible for complaints relating to blogs by non-journalists. What do you think?

Incidentally, if you read Liddle’s original post at the end of last year and found it offensive, you’ll probably like The Daily Mail Song.

Facebook reveals private email addresses

Valleywag is reporting that Facebook’s had a little privacy problem overnight: a glitch led to members’ private email addresses being shown on their public profiles. It seems that the problem only lasted around half an hour, but it will have done nothing to help Facebook’s reputation on privacy. It was spotted by many users, of course, and the news was spread on Twitter and, presumably, on Facebook itself.

Facebook’s ongoing experimentation and occasional privacy issues, even when combined with usually unfair abject press coverage, seems to be doing little to restrict its popularity. Facebook will be around for some time to come, but there are people out there with genuinely serious reasons for keeping their details private and I doubt they’re pleased about this latest lapse in security.

Welcome to Porter Novelli’s weekly digital news post.

If we were to draw up a list of people not to annoy, the President of the United States of America would most likely appear somewhere in the top, ooh I don’t know, one. It’s a shame 25-year-old Frenchman “Hacker Croll” didn’t have the same view, because he could soon be in jail.

It’s not really fair to call the guy a hacker. He’s supposedly more like a geek who thought it would be clever to log in to the Twitter accounts of celebrities as well as Barack Obama. His high-tech method was allegedly to guess their passwords or hint questions for their email addresses, according to BBC News.

While we could question whether Hacker Croll would be sent to prison for hacking any other Twitter account, if he is convicted I think it could be argued that he’ll be doing a stretch for stupidity.

More on paywalls

The paywall debate is picking up speed as the UK national newspapers begin to put in place their new online business models. The Times will soon launch its paywall model (charging for access, with the lowest price point being £1 for one day). The company clearly believes the paywall is a workable and viable system, but Will Sturgeon points out a slight problem: on the day the paywall was confirmed, The Times‘ top story was shared by most of its competitors – including The Guardian, which will remain free.

In other words, the newspaper is asking an awful lot of loyalty from its readers.

Elsewhere, The Independent might just be going the other way. Evening Standard owner Alexander Lebedev has bought the group and is rumoured to be considering boosting circulation (and ad revenue?) by making the print edition free. Clearly making the Standard free has done the business.

Liddle blog censured by PCC

The Press Complaints Commission has ruled that a Spectator blog by Rod Liddle breached the accuracy clause of the Editors’ Code of Practice and that the Spectator must ensure that the inaccuracy is corrected.

Back in December Liddle caused a wave of outrage with a blog post which claimed that “the overwhelming majority of [violent crime] in London is carried out by young men from the African-Caribbean community”. Unsurprisingly, complaints were made and action taken. However, this is an intriguing precedent. As Londonist notes, Liddle is the first journalist to have a blog censured by the PCC.

Who knows whether the PCC might some day be responsible for complaints relating to blogs by non-journalists. What do you think?

Incidentally, if you read Liddle’s original post at the end of last year and found it offensive, you’ll probably like The Daily Mail Song.

Facebook reveals private email addresses

Valleywag is reporting that Facebook’s had a little privacy problem overnight: a glitch led to members’ private email addresses being shown on their public profiles. It seems that the problem only lasted around half an hour, but it will have done nothing to help Facebook’s reputation on privacy. It was spotted by many users, of course, and the news was spread on Twitter and, presumably, on Facebook itself.

Facebook’s ongoing experimentation and occasional privacy issues, even when combined with usually unfair abject press coverage, seems to be doing little to restrict its popularity. Facebook will be around for some time to come, but there are people out there with genuinely serious reasons for keeping their details private and I doubt they’re pleased about this latest lapse in security.

Everyone in the Twitterverse is falling over themselves about DDB’s new campaign to promote Marmite. The campaign seems to be a big bold gooey mess of traditional advertising mixed with approaches more commonly associated with PR. And so?

We think it’s interesting that Marmite is moving even further into the arena of audience engagement, something it started with the ‘love it or hate it’ TV ads and street campaigns. DDB UK’s new Marmite campaign will run on an election theme to coincide with this year’s, well, election, and as such they have created two distinct ‘parties’ for consumers to vote for – ‘The Love Party’ and ‘The Hate Party’. It’s not just about having a preference any more, you actually have to go out there and make a stand.

What’s interesting is the mix of above-the-line advertising and social media engagement. Posters, TV ads and ads in press will provide ‘campaign’ platforms for both parties, but if consumers bite, they’ll find themselves wrapped up in a Marmitey digital world including website and social media.

This has got a PR feel to it. It’s about engagement, it’s tied to the national news agenda and its primary purpose is build loyalty to the brand, rather than drive sales. Results will presumably be measured from the number of unique visitors to the site itself and the amount of people who sign up to the various social media presences.

Advertisers using PR tactics is no new invention, as the much-admired ‘Best Job in the World’ campaign by ad agency Nitro demonstrated. In times of economic crisis, it’s common for marketing budgets to be slashed, and so big-spending ad agencies have to be seen to be delivering value for money and influencing their audience on a level far beyond the traditional methods.

But it’s about more than just money. Integration’s the watchword these days, but its attraction doesn’t just lie in leaping from platform to platform. It’s about reeling consumers in and getting them to ‘engage’, or talk.

While it’s too early to tell yet, Marmite might find it more difficult to get consumers to care about this campaign than the marketing professionals who are praising it so much. It is, after all, just a spread and people are terribly cynical about marketing/PR ploys. And it’s not like the ‘love it or hate it’ theme hasn’t been done already. Love it or hate it? Not that bothered about it? We’ll see.