Trevor Cook on public relations, social media and politics

Monthly Archives: December 2008

Blogging is far more important than journalism

December 31, 2008 – 4:14 pm

Journalists have a tendency to assume that bloggers want to be journalists, despite the fact that few bloggers make such a claim. The assumption is that journalism is serious stuff (’first draft of history’, ‘critical for democracy’, ’speaking truth to power’ you know the spiel) and blogging is not.
Of course, this assumption always measures the [...]

By Trevor Cook | Posted in Media, Social Media | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)

The prospects for social networking (a personal view)

December 29, 2008 – 8:44 am

Much of the online buzz this year has been focused on Twitter (founded 2006), and to a lesser extent friendfeed (launched October 2007), just as last year it was facebook (founded february 2004), and before that linkedin (2003), myspace (2003) etc. These are just the tip of the iceberg there are dozens of other social [...]

By Trevor Cook | Posted in Advertising & marketing, Social Media | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (1)

Phone seizure story followed up by Courier-mail

December 26, 2008 – 9:12 pm

The story referred to by Crikey blogger Margaret Simons on Xmas eve has made it into the mainstream media. The newspaper story notes: 
News of the incident first broke when Mr Holmes a Court sent a message out on microblogging service Twitter just minutes after getting his phone back from police.”I got searched and my phone confiscated for [...]

By Trevor Cook | Posted in Media | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (0)

The future of print? Some good news, some bad.

December 26, 2008 – 8:34 am

Once again a presidential election seems to have been a boost for the Internet, but it’s not clear from this report how much of that Internet coverage that attracts people is actually newspapers and other traditional media moved to the web:

The internet, which emerged this year as a leading source for campaign news, has now [...]

By Trevor Cook | Posted in Newspapers | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments (0)

Tor might thwart Conroy’s censorship

December 25, 2008 – 9:07 am

The Rudd Government is not the first to try and control what its citizens can access on the Web and one of the solutions is a thing called Tor:
Tor is a freely accessible network that allows Internet traffic to flow through it securely and anonymously. Tor helps to prevent websites from tracking users and can also [...]

By Trevor Cook | Posted in Federal politics, Social Media | Tagged , , | Comments (1)

The tail is extended choice but not endless

December 23, 2008 – 9:18 pm

The ‘long tail’ theory sounds great, it sounds revolutionary, but like so many Internet dreams it seems to be failing to materialise:
a study of digital music sales has posed the first big challenge to this “long tail” theory: more than 10 million of the 13 million tracks available on the internet failed to find a [...]

By Trevor Cook | Posted in Business & economics | Tagged , | Comments (4)

Telstra’s environment expert dismisses Rudd’s climate change targets

December 17, 2008 – 9:02 pm

In a blog post yesterday, Telstra’s Group Manager Dr Turlough Guerin wrote:
These are very conservative targets and unlikely to encourage the investments needed to transition to a low-carbon economy. And they don’t push consumers far enough to make the behaviour changes to reduce their reliance on fossil fuels.
This is the crux of the matter, the extent [...]

By Trevor Cook | Posted in Business & economics, Social Media, environment | Tagged , , | Comments (1)

Nominations called for PR Disaster of 2008

December 17, 2008 – 8:37 pm

Melbourne blogger, author, PR guru and football fanatic, Gerry McCusker is calling for nominations for this prestigious award, for which there is never any shortage of deserving candidates.
Personally, it is difficult to see how you could go past the NSW Government this year. After all, they lost a Premier, Deputy Premier, Treasurer, Health Minister and [...]

By Trevor Cook | Posted in NSW politics, Public Relations | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

Dell makes a million bucks from Twitter

December 17, 2008 – 4:20 am

It’s a small beginning but as Twitter is currently free (but they’ll have a business model real soon), it’s all upside:
some businesses have discovered that Twitter is an effective way of communicating with consumers. Dell (NASDAQ: DELL) says Twitter has produced $1 million in revenue over the past year and a half through sale alerts. [...]

By Trevor Cook | Posted in Advertising & marketing, Business & economics, Enterprise 2.0, Internet, Social Media | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

Bob Dole was right

December 16, 2008 – 8:39 pm

A friend sent this to me yesterday:
I referred to the 2008 financial crisis immediately above.  In 1996 when Senator Bob Dole ran against the incumbent Clinton, Dole said in one of the debates that “debt kills.”  Clinton gently chided him for such an old fashioned view of life.  The ladies and gentlemen of the media [...]

By Trevor Cook | Posted in Business & economics, Politics | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)