More important though was the impression that despite being valued by some at $100bn there is still much debate about where the company’s value actually lies. The big hope of course is advertising, but WPP boss Sir Martin Sorrell poured some serious cold water on that idea, suggesting that Facebook is more suitable as a PR medium.

Even Facebook themselves seem on shaky ground when it comes to their latest innovation in advertising, sponsored stories. It was incredible to see the company’s VP on Public Policy struggle to defend the use of people in adverts without their permission. It ought to be a question to which he, of all people, has an answer and credit to Emily Maitlis for asking it in such a direct fashion and revealing the uncertainty.

At the same time Forrester Research have highlighted the deficiencies in the use of Facebook as a marketing platform, pointing the finger of blame at both Facebook and marketers. Facebook, they say, doesn’t give marketers the tools or certainty that they need, while marketers still don’t know how to plan, integrate and resource for Facebook and have little understanding of the all important EdgeRank algorithm.

Plenty of reasons here to stay sober on social media.

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2. 10 Reasons I Really Should Be On Facebook
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[Picture courtesy of Dance United]

Claremont has been working for some time with the Arts Alliance – an umbrella organisation for arts charities working in prisons and with offenders, be it with dance, theatre, poetry, painting, etc.

These are tough times for the arts, tough times for charities generally.  As budgets are squeezed, charities are under pressure more than ever to prove their value.

The arts are naturally brilliant at winning over people’s hearts to the value of what they do.

It is not uncommon to hear accounts of even the most sceptical critics of the arts undergoing a personal transformation once they have been in person to see projects in action for themselves – ‘taken to the frontline’ – and absorbed the many stories of triumph over adversity.

But the arts are not always so good at winning over people’s minds to the value of what they do.  Especially when it comes to winning over the bean counters, who will probably never be ‘taken to the frontline’ and will only be concerned with the numbers.

And in these tough economic times its the bean counters who hold all the beans.

Responding to this, the Arts Alliance commissioned an economic analysis of the value of arts organisations working in the criminal justice sector, working with an organisation called New Philanthropy Capital - a formidable (and super friendly) think tank made up of economists and brainy types.

The result is ‘Unlocking Value‘ – a heavyweight report that looks at the impact of three arts charities working in different ways in prisons and with ex offenders: Only Connect, Unitas and Clean Break.

Claremont launched the report to the media yesterday, generating some serious coverage including the Times, Evening Standard, Huffington Post, Third Sector, interviews on a dozen or so BBC radio stations, as well as this superb piece on the 1pm BBC One TV News:

Claremont was also deployed at a launch event last night at the Royal Festival Hall to do social reporting – live video, blogging and tweeting from the event.  We even managed to get a few minutes with Lord Ian Blair, former Chief of the Met, as well as Vince, an-offender who’d turned his life around and who spoke eloquently at the event.

We love this kind of work.  A great cause.  A meaningful and highly considered approach to integrated campaigning.  A chance to get some brilliant results that make a difference to people’s lives.  For me, this is what Claremont is all about.

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Hangouts are like a video conference call, the kind of thing you could do with Skype, but with some key differences. First of all it’s free, unlike Skype video conference calls. But the big difference is that rather than calling someone (á la Skype) instead you announce you’re free to “hang out” and it’s up to people whether or not to join you. You can announce your hang out to a small group of friends or the whole internet.

This makes Hangouts more like a video chat room and people have been experimenting with this new opportunity with events like press conferences, cookery classes and music gigs. Hangouts hit the news this week when the Dalai Lama hung out at Desmond Tutu’s 80th birthday celebrations and pop star will.i.am hung out with fans.

So how could you use Hangouts?

• Universities could offer “open day” hangouts with course tutors
• Press officers could host press conference hangouts for regional media
• Companies could introduce new products and services to key customers
• Event organisers could extend the reach of their events or have hang out panels
• Charities could encourage hangouts between volunteers to swap tips on fundraising

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A flock of tweeters

This is one of the most common questions that comes up in our social media training and it’s not a straightforward one for many organisations. For example, I enjoyed a great day’s training and discussion with Box TV last week where not only do they have different brands (such as 4Music, Kerrang!, and Smash Hits) but they also have different offerings in different media (TV, radio, print).

So this is one of those “it depends” questions. Here are some things to consider.

1. Are you speaking to audiences with different needs or relationships with you?
   If so then separate Twitter accounts addressing each need/relationship might make sense. For example, BT has @btcare for home customers and @btbusiness for business customers. Beware of getting too granular with this and making a Twitter account for every box on the org chart – your audience still likes a one stop shop.
2. Are there individuals within your organisation who have (or will develop) a significant public profile of their own?
   If so then it might make sense for them to have a separate account. If they already have a personal account you could use this although consider whether the mix of personal and business would be appropriate.
3. Is it important that your organisation speaks with one consistent voice?
   This would suggest the centralised command of a single Twitter account might be best. This may apply to any organisation where inconsistent messages could be highly damaging, such as a political organisation. Of course this can be difficult to balance with point 2 above, which is where policy and guidelines come in.
4. How many people are trained and ready to commit time to social media?
   If you’re already struggling to make one Twitter account effective then a second one probably won’t help.
5. Could you find a middle ground?
   Lots of corporate Twitter accounts are managed by multiple people with varying degrees of transparency. A common approach is to suffix each corporate tweet with a caret symbol followed by the initials of the actual person tweeting, like this: ^SB. This would be accompanied in the Twitter account profile with a link to a page profiling who each of the contributors are.
6. Could you go for radical transparency?
   A few organisations have a very visible employee presence on Twitter. Online shoe company Zappos has nearly 500 employees on Twitter as well as the more standard customer support and marketing accounts. The main @zappos account is still run by the CEO. Of course this needs proper support and training, but Zappos claims it benefits company culture and customer relationships.

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Ravensbourne course director Jeremy Gardiner talking on Click. First broadcast on BBC News 29 July 2011. Executive Producer Carey Clarke and Editor Richard Taylor. See the full programme at http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006m9ry.

Claremont client Ravensbourne was the focus of two excellent pieces of coverage last week. On Thursday, the Daily Telegraph’s Technology Editor, Shane Richmond, discussed how the rapid prototyping machines like those used by students at Ravensbourne could change the world.

The Beeb’s technology show BBC Click also documented the process of producing a replica of presenter Spencer Kelly’s head using the 3D printing facilities at Ravensbourne.

The programme included an informative interview with course director Jeremy Gardiner about how materials as diverse as titanium and granulated sugar are now being used in 3D printers, broadening the scope of what the equipment is capable of.

Ravensbourne is at the forefront of pushing the boundaries of what can be achieved using 3D printing technology – it even offers an MSc in Applied Technologies course specifically for those wanting to be pioneers in this new and expanding field. You can read more about 3D printing in the Protopunk blog.

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It’s been a frantic few weeks at Claremont Towers in the build up to the Child Accident Prevention Trust’s annual awareness drive:  Child Safety Week.

Our first story went live today – ‘Autopilot Britain‘ – a survey of 5,000 people investigating the extent to which UK citizens are running their lives on autopilot.

So far the story has generated 20 interviews across BBC and commercial radio stations, 75 regional newspaper articles, 30+ internet news articles on the likes of Netmums, Yahoo and MSN, as well as national newspaper articles in the Daily Mail, Express and a big splash on page 3 of the Telegraph:

Part two of our work for Child Safety Week – The Big Taste Test – goes live later this week… watch this space!

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Big thanks to all those who attended and helped make happen our Data is Power event this week. The breakfast seminar at the RSA was designed to get the grey matter going on the subject of data visualisation, with the help of our fabulous speakers: Simon Rogers of The Guardian and Vicky Ames of Alzheimer’s Society.

Elsewhere on the web there have been some great write-ups from others: Steph Grey, who was our social reporter for the day, has summed up one of the key themes with his post Telling Stories with Data; and Simon Francis has picked up on the Risks and Rewards of Data Power.

To see photos form the event jump over to our Data is Power set on Flickr.

Here’s Ben talking about Data is Power and our Pollen service for digital PR of events just like this one.

Here’s me on why we think data visualisation is important right now.

And here’s Vicky Ames describing the dementia map case study she presented.

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MySociety travel-time maps

A real trailblazer this one. Nowadays open data is at the heart of government but back in 2006 mySociety were breaking new ground in their travel-time maps collaboration with the Department of Transport. These interactive maps showed you the possible places you could live in London on a certain budget and with a certain commute time.

Billion Dollar Gram

David McCandless popularised data visualisation in the UK with his blog and book Information is Beautiful, and the first time he really caught my eye was with The Billion Dollar Gram. Produced in the aftermath of the 2007-8 credit crunch it provided great perspective at a time when talk of billions and trillions filled every news report.

Hans Rosling’s Gapminder

Quite possibly the first data visualisation rock star, global health expert Hans Rosling uses his Gapminder visualisation tool to reveal the truth behind development issues with all the urgency of a sports commentator. Here he is making the best use of the Dragon’s Den studio since Levi Roots pitched Reggae Reggae Sauce.

New York Times’ Osama bin Laden sentiment analysis

The New York Times Data Visualisation Lab is innovating in the use of data for journalism, and in particular visualising the response from readers. A recent piece that caught our eye was this one capturing people’s reactions to the news of Osama bin Laden’s death; a great example of how visualisation can provide a snapshot overview and still drill down to an individual data point.

Sound Mapping in New York

Finally, something a bit different. Put together by architect Mark Edward Campos, this is a visualisation of 24 hours of sound in an area of New York, so turn on your speakers.

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I think this is a really important sign that the approach to digital in government is maturing. Over the years I’ve seen many a large organisation try to mangle digital through its tried and tested ways of working only to be surprised when the results weren’t all they hoped. The iterative, non-linear, permanently-in-beta world of digital can have analogue broadcasters and politicians in a cold sweat.

Yet at The Guardian Mike Bracken made digital practices work in an “old media” organisation (albeit one that was already tacking in the right direction). Agile development, user experience, and product managers replaced waterfall projects, “big design” up-front, and project managers. He realised the promise in Simon Willison’s geek aphorism that “you can now build working software in less time than it takes to have the meeting to describe it”.

It won’t be easy. Whitehall’s attitude to failure is, understandably, radically different to a rapidly iterating commercial enterprise; there a huge legacy issues; and the relationship with big IT suppliers will need sorting out. But if he can bring about the same change in Whitehall, and inspire the rest of the public sector with it, we could see a revolution in public sector digital comms.

(For more see Simon Dickson and Steph Gray for their usual excellent context on government digital matters.)

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