IAOC2008
Annual Conference to be Held in Zurich, Switzerland Reykjavik, Iceland
Thursday and Friday, May 15-16, 2008 June 12-13, 2008

Save the dates! Thursday and Friday, May 15-16 June 12-13, 2008, for IAOC2008, the Annual Conference of the International Association of Online Communicators, to be held in Zurich, Switzerland Reykjavik, Iceland. For more information go to this recent post.

Two days of whirling-dervish paper presentations, plus panels and our keynote speaker, M.I.T. Sloan School of Management research scientist Peter Gloor, who just wrapped up a week on IAOCblog discussing research into workplace communications.

Our theme for IAOC2008 is "Transparency vs. Anonymity" in online communications. In a stroke of good timing, Forbes Magazine just published a feature story by Victoria Murphy Barret entitled "Anonymity & the Net." It's in the October 15 cover date issue going on sale today.

The IAOC's first European conference in Brussels, Belgium -- IAOC2006 -- was a great success. We plan to build on our European base in 2008. Make your plans today and join us in Zurich in May Iceland in June!

STEVE O'KEEFE
Vice-President, IAOC

I am always amazed about the coolhunting qualities of the Finns. I am currently teaching our annual virtual COIN/Coolhunting seminar at Helsinki University of Technology and as happened to me the previous three times, the cool trends being set here just blow me away. It starts with well-known things like the Finns’ ubiquitous use of mobile technologies. Nokia communicators are everywhere. They are used as browsers in the restaurant, to call up Google and resolve the burning question of which is the oldest church in Finland. To find the restaurant in the first place, the communicator of course also includes a navigation system which easily guides us there through the narrow streets of Helsinki. And when we take a taxi back to the hotel, we pay the taxi driver using our cell phones. Quite different from the US where most taxi drivers in New York still want to be paid in cash!

Finns are also eager users of blogging and social networking. They were among the early adopters of LinkedIn, and they are currently actively embracing Facebook extensions and plug-ins. They even coined a new term for people who buy tech gadgets to obtain the right to belong to their own self-chosen digital tribe. “Yhteisöllisyys” comes from the term yhteisö which means “community” or “society” in Finnish. But as was explained to me, Yhteisöllisyys is more than just the Finnish word for community. It stands for a self-selected group of people who get part of their meaning of life from belonging to a loose association or virtual community sharing the same passion for a high-tech gadget. I am not sure if I understood the meaning completely, but from observing my son playing “world of warcraft” it seems to me that he is definitively part of that Yhteisöllisyys. It is not enough do be part of a virtual community, what counts is to be a passionate member of the virtual community. Surprisingly often, what Finns are passionate about becomes a trend very soon thereafter in the rest of Europe or in the US.

Please join us July 17-21, 2006 for a blog program: PR is Getting Personal, with discussion leaders Joost van de Loo, Clo Willaerts and Dana Gornitzki

ABOUT THE TOPIC:
In today's networked world it is no longer a winning strategy to have a safe job and to trust in the authority of your company. Positions change quickly; your manager can become a freelancer, your supplier can be your client the next month.  Commercial communication is more and more becoming the ongoing dialogue between individuals that the Cluetrain Manifesto predicted. Direct-to-consumer PR is only a small element of this pattern.

As a result, personal reputation is now one of our most precious assets. Successful professionals do everything to be seen as trusted networking hubs. How will this change PR? Will our press releases become more 'fair and balanced'? How do we need to adapt our thinking?

ABOUT THE DISCUSSION LEADERS:
Joost van de Loo is a Marketing Strategist, who joined communication consultancy ZN following a career in journalism and marketing. He has a Master of Arts degree in International Journalism from the City University of London, and a Master of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Delft University of Technology. In addition to work at ZN he currently sets up Distinct News International, a company that produces multi-media packaged television news features from India and China. He also consults for ETV and writes for UK-based Diplo magazine. Joost has worked for BBC Four television, the Amsterdam Weekly, Dynamic Zone, and KPN Mobile.

Clo Willaerts is marketing manager of Belgacom Skynet and an avid blogger.

Dana Gornitzki is a Canadian transplant currently living in London, England. A journalist and media expert, Dana's experience has covered the world of print, online and broadcast. From working with film festivals and inside a major public broadcaster to working with emerging brands, Dana's work has a focus of social interactions and its impact on the here and now. Currently, she is exploring the mobile space and is interested in that medium's far-reaching effects from social communities to advertising and consumption habits.

Here they are, the first pictures of the IAOC European Conference in Brussels !

Susan Fitzgerald and Don Dunnington kicked off with an introduction on the IAOC and explaining the - for us Europeans - strange set up of the conference (moving from table to table...)

You can see the pictures on a trial wiki we're testing out.

We're in the first paper presentation session till 3:34PM. We have 25 people right now, more to come for the next session and the full day tomorrow.

Updates regarding the conference will happen on the wiki.

Hi everyone,

Just wanted to let you know that the agenda for our Brussels conference is taking shape.

Below an overview of topics and speakers but... We need every promotion possible to make sure that this event is a success, also in Europe. Some ideas to spread the word:

Blog about it. Several high profile PR/Communications Bloggers have already done so. Here's a selection:

Guillaume du Gardier, who hosted Blogging Europe on IAOC in June, announced today, "I am leaving my entrepreneur's life" to join Edelman, "the only independent global PR firm, counting 1900 employees in 43 countries worldwide and 272 M$ in 2005."

Guillaume was founder of a Paris PR boutique, PR Planet, and Blogging Planet, a European agency focused on RSS and all its related applications, such as blogs, wikis, and podcasts.  In addition to his PR Thoughts blog, Guillaume recently launched a podcast. Among his first interviews was IAOC member Philippe Borreman (IBM Belgium and Luxembourg) who talked about  IBM’s use of RSS, blogs and wikis and the company’s embrace of micro media (13.24 min.).

It seems to me that PR pro and marketers now have in their hands great tools to track what is being said about their brand in the online world. Ok, the technology is everything but new, but it's now so easy to use for anyone who takes the time to understand the way it goes that it would be so sad not to get use to them.
Seting up a RSS feed thanks to Feedster, PubSub or that kind of tools is dead easy and brings a lot's of help to follow what is being said on a specific topic or brand.
Nevertheless, I have to say we our far away from the common use of those tools in France that still seem to be in the hands of bloggers only... Don't even imagine to talk about "tags" or "taging conversations", only few will understand.
Most of the time, if marketers know what RSS is about, they see it in it's more common use, syndication of information coming from a blog or say a web page, not like a channel that might be use to share so many different kind of informations that might also not be coming directly from a single web page...
However, RSS makes information so quickly available it should be used by every PR/marcom ... To track or to spread information. It happened several times with some of my clients in the past months that informations poped up in the blogosphere at at time where the official press release was still on progress... Thanks to my RSS feeds tracking subscription, I've been able to see it quite in real time, and to ring the bell at the Corp. headquarters, helping things move quicker by this way. The last two times it happend, I was the only PR blogger in the international team, and the first able to react... So isn't this an added value ?
In our world lead by information, I think it is essential to follow what is being said in the online world, we now have the chance to see so many tools poping up day after day to help us monitore trends, topics, issues, it would be a real mistake not to integrate them seriously in our daily work.

Again, PR pro and marketers should be in my opinion the first to understand and use those tools, unfortunately, if you heard about the last PR inepsy, you'll see that our industry is definitely not  up to date...

The common attitude of Italian companies is that nobody reads online media, and therefore the investments and efforts devoted to creating and growing the online presence are negligible. Part of the problem is due to PR agencies, which are usually not able to communicate to online media.

Instead of investing in the improvement of their understanding of online media, these agencies try to convince their clients - and unfortunately often succed - that online media are useless.

Because of this situation, blogs are still far away from the corporate world. Apart from a couple of online media CEOs, like Mario Lupi of AdMaiora (online advertising), there aren't other company executives blogging.

Online branding efforts are limited to the company's web site, which is usually either very static or very "flashed" (including music), but always quite poor in contents. Comprehensive branding efforts, which leverage the contents of the company web site in order to spread the presence across the Internet are still largely unknown.

Italy is still a country where the visibility of a company can increase over 500% in one year only by changing PR agency, or by appointing the right PR manager. The same applies, with the opposite sign, by choosing the wrong PR agency or PR manager.

Therefore, when the problem is still the development of a decent press release or an appropriate pitch, the use of blogs for branding or corporate purposes is still quite far away. This doesn't mean, of course, that there aren't PR agencies or PR professionals able to master the tools of the trade.

Foreign companies trying to improve their reputation or brand awareness in Italy should look for the appropriate partner to place their efforts in the right direction.

The IULM University in Milan has recently carried out a research on the Italian blogosphere, with 600 online interviews. Italian bloggers are mainly young: 40% are students, 20% employees and 15% self-employed. Half of them are "mature" bloggers active for more than 6 months, while 9% are newbies who have just started blogging.

Italian bloggers are frequently online to search for information. The majority of those interviewed updates the blog at least three times per week, and 21% declares of writing on a daily basis. In addition, 65% of bloggers reads the blogs listed on his sidebar, 31% those of his friends, and 55% those of his readers.

The main blogging platforms are the following ones (april 2005):

Splinder: 114.695 blogs
Excite Blog: 15.078 blogs
Bloggers.it: 10.853 blogs
Tim i.blog (moblog): 8.703 blogs
il Cannocchiale: 8.286 blogs
Aruba: 4.820 blogs
iobloggo.com: 4.630 blogs

The following platforms do not release their figures: Digiland Blog, Clarence/superEva, DiaBLOGando, Blogs.it (Radio Userland), Tiscali Blog, Virgilio Blog and Leonardo. It is also difficult to estimate how many blogs in Italian are based on international platforms like Blogger or TypePad.

The Italian blogosphere grows at a 5% monthly rate, which is dramatically low in comparison with other countries, but - on the contrary - is rather high if you consider that Italy is one of the European countries where Internet penetration amongst individuals is lower.

Are Spanish companies listen to the conversation that is taking place in the blogosphere?  I must say yes.

Are they doing it professionally and on a daily basis like with press clippings and using this knowledge in one significant way for the brand?  I have to say no.

Individual employees know the importance of "listen to what the internet is saying", but it is hard for them to make the whole company asume that what is going on in the internet is crucial to the brand.

The reaction of many people -even PR practitioners- with blogs is: "Just another bubble that will  burst".

But there are people from major Spanish companies that are trying to learn more about blogs and are doing their best to figure out how can they use them for different purposes. 

Big companies -both national and multinational- like Telefónica, Vodafone, Paradores de España, Siemens, Repsolypf or Sanitas count with these employees... but some of the companies don't even know it.

Again, I believe it is a matter of time. 

Don't want to be unfair with all, but the majority of the Spanish marketing managers are more concerned about GRPs and massive advertising campaigns, than with the reputation of the company in the internet.

I think they are going to see it more clearly when a huge crisis burst and it will be too late then.

---

Octavio Rojas will launch his book "Public Relations: The effectiveness of the influence" in Spain. There is a microsite available of the book (in Spanish).  http://octaviorojas.com/librorrppini.html

He is looking for an editor to publish it in English and/or French.  Volunteers? ;)

He has a personal Web site: http://www.octaviorojas.com and a blog: http://octaviorojas.blogspot.com in which he offers articles and news about communication, media and PR on a daily basis.

He is member of the Media Bloggers Association and of Bitacoras.org, the most influential blogging organizations in the USA and in the Spanish speaking countries.

It's time to launch the last day of this week at the IAOC blog, we will talk about tracking tools and practice but also probably sharing some additionals thoughts on the topics of the previous days, time has not always been so easy to find to say all we wanted to say, so this will be a good opportunity to add some ideas.

See you tomorrow.

It's also right in France, as Tom and Octavio already said it for their country, it's not always so easy to get informations on internal blogging experience, mainly because if it's internal, then it's secret...

I won't be talking here about  employee blogging experience as the one of Microsoft in France, I rather consider this as external communication as soon as the blogs are open, which is the case with Microsoft France.

I've been recently interviewing Didier Masse, e-Communication Manager at Steria in France to learn more about their experience in internal blogging, which has been very positive in term on internal circulation of information but also helped raised new projects thanks to sharing ideas.

As PR pro, I've been using blogs to share informations with our clients regarding ongoing campaigns, which is also a very good way to store informations and to keep track of what has been said...
At Blogging Planet, we've been using a blog to develop a private and secure platform to help a european PR Manager communicate with his local agencies, and by this way store and share information on one single place rather than sending out tons of emails and receiving though so many answers, difficult to track, difficult to store...

We've also been seting up a private blog for the french users club of Genesys that the marketing manager is using to keep in touch with the customers and inform them about the coming events, studies available, seminars, etc...

I wonder if internal blogs might have more impact on corporate communication or more added value than external ones, let's see in the futur where the trends will go...

I'm afraid I posted already about blogging internally.

SME's are using blogs following different strategies:

- Isoco, a software and internet solutions company, uses blogs as intranet to share knowledge about the industry.  IT department is in charge of updating the blogs.

Internal blogs should come with a change of attitude of the corporation.  If a CEO launches a blog to let the company what he is thinking but doesn't allow -or welcome- comments, then the "so-called" blog will be something different, but not a blog.

It is all about openess, transparency and a candid interest for what everybody have to say. And I mean everybody.

It is not about reading CEO's speeches.  You have emails for that.  Blogs need discussions.

I must say that I like blogs as intranets, but I love wikis to organize events and share documents internally.

Wikis are able to create a "community" around a document and let people to actually edit, rewrite and complete it.

But if blogs are hard to explain, wikis will be the "next stage".

Let's go step by step.

While Internet blogs grab all the headlines, the potential impact of internal blogging has been relatively ignored.  There is no question that internal blogging (and let’s not forget internal RSS feeds) has the potential to make a major contribution to any corporate organization.

 

Internal blogging can amomgst other things:

* Help the collaborative work process

* Improve knowledge management across the firm

* Provide the firm with protection against the loss of employees

* Provide employees with the right information instantly.

 

These opportunities could have a major impact on the productivity and profitability of any organization.

 

Finding examples of successful internal blogging is difficult as companies often view this as a competitive advantage or have no interest in sharing their experience.  There are many companies in Ireland who have internal blogs, I know of many in Irish technology firms, but the organizations I approached were reticent about sharing their experiences – even though they were very positive about it.

 

As a result, let me use my company as an example of an Irish company using internal blogs.  Cape Clear Software has had formal internal blogs for the past three years.  We use them in a variety of ways and we’re already seeing many benefits.

 

Internal Communications

Although our intranet was not created using blog software, it has since 1999, been published using the same format as a blog with plain HTML files published in reverse chronological order.  The intranet looks like a blog and it inclues entries on everything that’s happening within the organization.  It provides a single source of information on every event, press releases, news story, initiative as well as personal milestones such as new babies, weddings etc.  As someone who has been involved with many failed intranet initiatives, this has been a roaring success.  Most employees have the intranet as their home page (it’s set up as default by our IS organization) and we get constant feedback on entries.  We are currently planning to replace the current HTML structure with a blog platform in the coming months.  The main advantage of moving to a formal blog structure is the automatic provision of RSS feeds which staff can subscribe to and then they will be automatically updated on new events etc.

 

Collaboration

Our engineering organization has been using blogs since 2002 as part of their development process.  There are a number of active blogs covering a range of subject areas such as discussions on new features and updates on specific projects. The blogs ensure that all our engineers are current on the status of any project and have an opportunity to participate in the engineering planning process.  We also have specific blogs for different product releases which are archive once the product is shipped.

 

These development blogs have the additional bebenfit that new employees can quickly get up to speed on projects, status and issues by reading the archived posts.  These blogs also publish internal RSS feeds which provide immediate updates to the entire organization.

 

Knowledge Management

We use a number of internal blogs as central repositories for information on a specific topic. These differ from the development blogs because instead of focusing on a project they act as a single point of access for stories, resources etc. on the a specific technology area.  

 

The advantage of using a blog is that because all that information is published in a blog format it is presented in a consisten manner and is automatically archived and searchable over our internal network, making it simple to find relevant information when it's required. This is a major departure over the traditional ways we managed useful information from a whole host of different formats.  Now there’s a single view that is accessible to everyone and with the published RSS feed that information is disseminated rapidly to the right people.

 

 

Although we're a software company it's not hard to see how these same blogs could be very useful in any firm.  Consider a PR agency.  They could have a blog per account or account team, which provides a central resource for all information on an account. So it would include reports on client meetings, project updates, latest materials, measurement etc. The result is a much simpler and faster reporting process with the added benefit that the agency is protecting itself from the inevitable loss when employees leave, because now there is a repository of account knowledge available meaning that new and existing team members can be skilled up in a fraction of the time.

 

Although internal blogging is often the unsung hero, it has the potential to make a material contribution to the bottom line of any organization. I’m glad to report that many companies in Ireland are already embracing internal blogging.  I forecast that for many organizations it may have a greater impact than the much publicized corporate blog.

Do European corporations view internal blogs as a way to make employees more effective or as a waste of time, are internal blogs in multi-national companies being written in English or in the local language.

Since we are talking about internal blogs, the situation on getting information on this terms is a little different from external blogs. We know of IBM, challenging it´s employees to blog, we have heard of Sun's approach to get their people into it, but this is mostly external blogging again (although both companies provde internal access/aggregation to these topics). Too much public information is not available on internal blogs - at least for me.

So, talking about my perspective and experiences, I have recently setup an internal blogging plattform for my company. Goal of this blog is to gather and share creative ideas, files, documentations and to bring multinational teams together. At least virtually.

For other internal projects I would rather prefer wikis instead of blogs, since they offer much more collaboration features and give all readers the possibility to add content, not only as a comment, but inside the article. I have seen a presentation of Ross Mayfield on Les Blogs in Paris about his product socialtext, which could be a tool of choice for internal wikis.

Here we are, time to launch our fourth day on the IAOC blog, you have some times to leave comments while we are going to sleep in our old Europe...

Meet you here tomorrow to discuss the following topics: do European corporations view internal blogs as a way to make employees more effective or as a waste of time, are internal blogs in multi-national companies being written in English or in the local language.

I am everything but comfortable with BlogHarbor, even with screenshot sent by Steeve I can't change my previous post, so I have to post a new note with additional informations (Sorry Steeve and Don, I haven't been able to make it, a shame...) ;o)

In fact I'd like to react on Octavio's post when he talks about the Nokia story... I was not far from forgeting this case study and that would really have been a shame (again)... More over, the Nokia story might be the Nokia -Siemens story...

What happened... One week after the other, Nokia & Siemens both launched a communication program using blogger and blogs. "Bloggers" for Nokia as they've been offering a Nokia 7710 to about 20 french bloggers ( I am taking about France here, but the overall program was on 1800 people around the world....people, not bloggers) expecting from them to blog about the mobile phone they received, while "blog" for Siemens, who quite at the same time, has been hiring 15 bloggers to test the SK 65 BlackBerry phone and share their thoughts on a dedicated blog for the time of the campaign. In both cases, we've been given (ooops, forgot to say, I am one of the rare lucky frenchy to have participate in both campaign...) the phone which might be seen as a "income" but of course it didn't affected our posts as we've been saying the good and the bad about both products...

What I found very interesting in both those experience as PR blogger, is that following some thoughts about the death of  PR or about DIY PR thanks or because of blogs,  2 big brands have been using blogs as PR tools... And this has been a famous idea, as from my point of view, blogs are not the end of PR but an important evolution in the way PR folks have to think about communicating information.

In Spain, there are some companies that are seeing blogs as new media and bloggers as new analysts and as an emerging class of opinion leaders.

Nokia distributed his model 7710 to some of the most important bloggers with an "Open Blogging Policy" - bloggers can write whatever and whenever they want about the mobile.  The impact in the blogosphere was important, causing a "conversation" with hundreds of comments and posts.

Nokia is commited with the blogosphere since it has invested in advertising in Xataka, the most important gadget blog in Spanish.

Editorial Planeta is trying to reach important bloggers to post comment about their books.  It seems that this strategy was original, but it is not working as good as Nokia's.

Maybe because books are not a "hot" issue for Spanish bloggers, or at least not as relevant and important as a state-of-the-art mobile telephone.

SME's are using blogs following different strategies:

- Isoco, a software and internet solutions company, uses blogs as intranet to share knowledge about the industry.  IT department is in charge of updating the blogs.

- kiu, a local advertising and PR company, uses its blog to promote their own clients.   Its blog is kind of a online press center.

Blogs are gaining in importance rapidly in both big and SMEs, but still are on their way to be considered as serious new media or as a communication tool for most cautious and traditional companies (who are the vast majority).

But, as we "evangelists" bloggers say in Spain...

Todo llégará... Time will come...

Blogs have become part of the range of internet tools of Spanish politicians.  Internet sites and political marketing mobile (ring tones, sms, etc.) are heavily used too.

There are a number of politicians that are using blogs, but just during the campaigns.  After that, they just abandon their weblogs.

Juan José Ibarretxe, PNV nationalist party candidate for the Presidency of the Vasque Country launched a blog that was not written by him but by some members of his staff.  This blog was available in Spanish, Euskera, English and French, since this party states they represent a country that is part in Spain and part in France, and speaks its own language: Euskera.  Comments were moderated and that made that some bloggers didn't participate.

María San Gil, Popular Party candidate for the Presidency of the Vasque Country launched a blog that was written by a high representative of the party in the Vasque Country.  The comments were open and received both support and bad words about her candidacy.

The metablog Elecciones Vascas was a success since it was the first blog entirely dedicated to a political campaign in Spain.

Anxo Quintana, BNG nationalist party candidate for the Presidency of Galicia is writing his own blog, well... sort of, since comments are not allowed. 

The metablog Elecciones Gallegas is not doing as well, but this could be because only 26,5% of the population of Galicia has an internet connection.

As far as I know, bloggers don't receive the same treat as journalists... but time will come, since the political parties are aware of the importance of the blogosphere.

You have to remember my yesterday statement, regarding the fact that the role of blogs after the Madrid terrorist attack was fundamental, as they were platforms of opinion and political activism that result in the victory of the PSOE.

---

Octavio Rojas will launch his book "Public Relations: The effectiveness of the influence" in Spain. There is a microsite available of the book (in Spanish).  http://octaviorojas.com/librorrppini.html

He is looking for an editor to publish it in English and/or French.  Volunteers? ;)

He has a personal Web site: http://www.octaviorojas.com and a blog: http://octaviorojas.blogspot.com in which he offers articles and news about communication, media and PR on a daily basis.

He is member of the Media Bloggers Association and of Bitacoras.org, the most influential blogging organizations in the USA and in the Spanish speaking countries.

We do have in France some of our main politics blogging. The first one has been Dominique Strauss-Kahn, left wing, he began his blog in september 2004 so he might be considered as an early adopter. His last posts have respectively 295 and 623 comments ... As far as I can remember he must be an active politics for more than 30 years...
A she said several times, his blog gives him the opportunity to talk to so many people that he could never ever have in his office...
From the right wing, we have Alain Juppé who is blogging since quite the same time, his blogging solution doesn't allow to have such a quick visibility on the number of comments he ususally gets, but it's definitely not  the same kind of popularity.
 The  third example I will use is the one of Jack Lang, blogging since few weeks, impossible to get any informations about number of people participating on his blog, this is the weakness of his blog, there is a moderator acting before one can post, the best way to loose comments... Why those 3 exemples ? Because all three have  been former ministers in the past years.

Of course there are a lot of other politics bloggers in France, of different level, the referendum of the European Union Consitution has been a good opportunity for bloggers to claim their position, see on this topic what Netpolitique has to say, the first politic portal blog in France.

I've been organizing with Loïc Le Meur, VP Executive of Six Apart Europe an event called "Les Coulisses du blog" at the end of 2004 and begining of 2005 in Paris, the second session was about blogs and politics, we had if I remember exactely about 180 attendees with just 3 weeks notice prior to the event... It was the first event on the topic in the french blogosphere and also one with the most passioned people interacting... Speakers where from both politic wings and it was amazing to see how the volume rapidly increased ...

We also have some citizen initiatives in France strongly related to politic and I'd like to share with you the story of Monputeaux.com. Authored by Christophe Grebert, leaving in the town of Puteaux, close to Paris, this blog is giving informations about what's happening in the city, what kind of decisions are taken by the mayor and his staf, etc.... He is rather against the power in place, and is actually on court as they want him to close his blog. The judgement should come in the very next days. He has already been persecuted by the police, he is everything but welcome to access local shows, he became the one undesirable... A first time in France.

French people love polemic and for that reason I assume blogs & politics still have a long way together to do...

In the last couple of weeks i found my self frequent involved in discussions about the question why blogging is not that popular in Germany. It was even discussed on „Les Blogs“ in Paris. It seems, blogging is some how not that attractive in my country as in all countries next door, in the US or in Asia.
This again influenced the way that blogging was perceived by journalists. The majority of traditional media talked about bloggers as nerds, geeks that are socially unprivileged. The chief editor of Spiegel Online Matthias Müller von Blumencron once said in an interview "99% of all blogs are rubbish or at least without any relevance to a journalist".

Since a couple of weeks the focus starts to change slightly, especially due to the fact, that we had a lot of cases in which traditional media was corrected by bloggers. It is still not a big think in Germany, but the awareness is getting higher and the credibility better and better. Magazines and Newspapers like Handelsblatt, Focus and Bunte have started own blogs (but no public bloghosting so far) and Die Zeit offers a Blog Award for the second time in this year.

Still not sure, if the negative standing that traditional media showed about blogs influenced the public, or if the public feeling about this form of media was reflected in the press.

Anyway, things are getting better, we are close to having about 100.000 active blogs in the next weeks. It is more than obvoius, that the election this summer will offer big opportunities for blogging in Germany too.

With about 200.000 unique visitors per month, even the A-list bloggers in germany are far from making any money out of it, even some projects have been started lately.

Politics in Ireland, as in every country, has the ability to bring people together and drive them apart, in equal measures.  Of course Ireland is an interesting political environment with two political territories on the one island adding a lot of opinions from people with wildly differing viewpoints.

A cursory look at one of the one Irish blog aggregators such as Planet of the Blogs or the Irish blogs directory  provides a whole range of different political blogs.

A large number of Irish political leaning blogs, such as Gavin Sheridan’s blog, and Mick Fealty’s blog on Northern Ireland politics Slugger O’Toole have already built a large, loyal and often influential audience.

Mick was kind enough to send me some of his thoughts on the state of Irish political blogs[1]:

"Judging by the increasing number of acknowledgements (the) Slugger (O'Toole blog has) been getting, we are now beginning to get beyond being the journalist's dirty secret - ie that they read blogs at all. But there's no signs yet that they know what to do after that acknowledgement - ie get into blogging themselves.  One key member of the DUP's (Northern Irish political partner) HQ team suggested to me two years ago that hold(s) the attention of all politicians of all parties. I know that leading politicians read Slugger on a daily basis. Nearly the back room staff in all parties are plugged in to Slugger's stories and commenting zones.  In 2005, Sinn Fein became the last of the big parties to send Slugger notices of press conferences and allow contact with some of their big players out on the streets. I spent a large part of the campaign
following (former First Minister of Northern Ireland) David Trimble with his full co-operation."

Sharon O' Suillibhan, who I quoted in yesterday’s post commented that[1]:

"As a 'political blogger' , I find a blog can be useful in driving home a political message - but , on its own , it may as well not be there at all ! When the blog is occasionally 'linked' to a political organisation it , in my opinion , assists that particular political organisation to gain some credence …. In my experience , politicians and their hired suits will only give access to bloggers whom they know to be 'friendly' towards them…if a blogger was 'blacklisted' the public might never hear about it ; other outlets (ie print , radio and TV)  would be more inclined to publicise a similar event if same happened to one of their colleagues in the same field . I believe 'The Sunday Tribune' is the only national newspaper with a regular column on Irish blogs : until such time as other media outlets follow suit , the blogger will continue to be ignored by the politicians .….Still , we get great satisfaction from our blog and are , hopefully , helping to assist our readers better understand the reasons for the political situation that now exists in this country."

However, in terms of how the political parties are using blogs, the results are less impressive.

During a recent by-election, a number of the candidates (or their handlers) created blogs to support their campaigns.  While their initiative was to be welcomed, the blogs were unimpressive and highlighted the fact that blogging in Ireland is still in its infancy.  Some of the candidates did chart their campaign progress through the blogs but they all disregarded the very essence of blogging, namely providing honest, personal opinions on the matters that concerned the electorate.  At best the blogs were online diaries, at worst they were nothing more than a couple of web pages with re-printed collateral.  It’s expected that during the next election we’ll see a major growth in candidate blogging and it’s a step that most welcome.

While it’s still relatively early days for these blogs in terms of their impact on Irish society, the politicians are already taking notice.  You get the feeling that given the volume and quality of Irish political blogs, it will probably only take one major blog-led story to bring the power of the blog to people all over the island.

[1] Mick and Siobhan’s quotes have been edited by the author.

A friend of mine told me that MSM won't adopt blogs in Spain. 

They won't feel the need of blogs and won't allocate extra budget for niche media, he said.

Well, he was wrong. 

Spanish MSM first offered RSS feeds during 2004, and a bunch of them understood the power of blogs and began to use them heavily during 2005. 

El Mundo offers 6 permanent blogs written by columnists of the newspaper, and also has offered special blogs for great events such as the death of Pope John Paul II.

20 Minutos is organising a blog contest with a number of categories.  This free newspaper was the first to offer readers the opportunity to comment all its contents and had RSS feeds.

Qué! is a free newspaper that dedicates one full page to blog content created in blogs by their own CMS.

The example of blogs and MSM that I like most is Informativos Telecinco. Tele 5 is a private TV channel that actually hired one Spanish A-list blogger (Ignacio Escolar) and asked one of his journalists that also is a blogger (Iñigo Sáenz de Ugarte) to run its new internet project. 

Now they are offering news in a "traditional" internet site and have blogs about different topics... and they keep posting in their own blogs! 

There are another examples in both national and regional newspapers that have blogs or even offer their own CMS and I can tell that this is only the beginning of the adoption of blogs by MSM in Spain.

Regarding the topic that MSM may look bloggers as a threat, I can say that the main reason for the quick adoption of blogs by MSM was because they actually felt blogs were threating them because:

- They were not part of the conversation

- They were loosing awareness among influencers

- They were loosing influence

- They were not maximizing their contents' profitability

And also, the most important Spanish newspaper had its own "Elpaisgate".

El País launch a email campaign to promote the online version of the newspaper with this ad:

(Translation: Lots of things could happen in just one day... like September 11th  terrorist attack that change NY skyline).

The reaction for such a bad taste ad was immediate in the Spanish blogosphere and the pressure of dozens of bloggers forced El País to ask for apologies in the front page of the newspaper.

Also, the role of blogs after the Madrid terrorist attack was fundamental, as they were platforms of opinion and political activism that result in the victory of the PSOE.

Regarding the topic of bloggers making money out of their blogs, I can say that in Spain there is one blog publisher (Weblogs SL) that is on the right track to make its blogs profitable with 1 million+ page views a month and with advertising agreements with Nokia, Dell, etc.  As far as I know, some other blog publishers will be launched in the future. 

But I also want to point out that there are several blog companies in Spain: CMS, blog consultancy, blog development, design, agregators, etc.

Spanish blogosphere is a fast moving and pride community, that looks MSM direct to the eye and demand transparency not just to them but to institutions and political parties.

Irish writer Oscar Wilde once said that "the only thing to do with good advice is pass it on. It is never any use to oneself."

It neatly sums up the adoption of blogging among the Irish media.  The potential for blogs to reach, engage and inform an audience, has to date, made no impact on how the media in Ireland deliver news and opinions. The idea of participatory journalism simply isn't on the agenda, yet.

There is a growing awareness of blogging among the media, which is reflected in the increasing number of features on the subject in newspapers, magazines, radio and even television, but while the media has written on the subject, no one has seen it as a useful adjunct to their traditional activities – at this point.

We do have a small number of Irish journalists currently blogging, however these are typically personal blogs with little or no support from their employers.  Examples include Karlin Lillington , Bernie Goldbach and Sarah Carey.

While the Irish media might be dragging their feet, the same can't be said of the Irish blog community which is growing rapidly and capturing a sizeable readership.  Like elsewhere, the majority of these blogs deal with issues around technology and politics.  It's fair to say that many of the Irish bloggers are growing restless with the mainstream media and their approach and view of blogging.

Much of the coverage that has appeared on blogging has been dismissive and has focused on the blogging phenomenon outside Ireland, primarily in the United States.  Many Irish bloggers feel that their efforts are being ignored or misunderstood by the media.  They are unhappy with
the dismissive nature of much of the mainstream coverage of the blogging phenomenon.

Sharon O' Suillibhan, who writes the Irish political blog 1169 and Counting  describes it thus:

"To try and get publicity for the blog is next to impossible , with one radio presenter suggesting that we take out a paid advertisement on their station !  Other than that , they seem to begrudge giving us a mention . I find that some journalists will visit our blog for details on an issue on which they are working ,  but never credit the site  - I no longer attempt to follow them up in the hope of receiving a belated  'credit'  .  Still , we get great satisfaction from our blog and are , hopefully , helping to assist our readers better understand the reasons for the political situation that now exists in this country ."

This is a fairly commonly held view of how the Irish media is dealing with blogs, particularly indigenous blogs.  However, it's not the total story.  One national newspaper is at least is attempting to bridge the divide. The Sunday Tribune, one of Ireland's largest Sunday newspapers publishes a summary of interesting posts from Irish blogs
each week. In addition in recent weeks we are seeing a growing number of formal references to Irish blogs appearing in the media.

There is no doubt that as blogging continues to proliferate, Irish media outlets will be forced to examine how they can use blogs to add colour, opinions and more value to their readers.  However, at this point in proceedings it appears that this process will take longer than expected and will probably be forced upon the various outlets.

Tom Murphy is Director of Corporate Communications with Cape Clear Software.  He's been blogging since March 2002 and covers Public Relations and Marketing, drawing on over fifteen years experience working throughout Europe and North America.
He's still learning....

I am more than happy to announce the beginning tomorrow of a whole week discussion around the art of blogging in old Europe . I'd like to thank you Don, for having inviting me to animate and organize this weekly discussion at the IAOC, it's a pleasure to share here with you our european blogosphere.

To let you know what the topic will be about, we are going to talk about the state of the blogosphere from various european countries, providing each time imputs from a national perspective on the same topics. If richness comes from diversity, we should have there some interesting things coming.

I've been inviting some of the main influent and recognize european bloggers in their country to participate and I am happy to announce already Tom Murphy from Ireland, Octavio Rojas from Spain, I am still waiting for an aswer to come from Germany and one from Denmark, we'll then be able to cover 5 countries. Each of the participant will provide some descriptions of themselves in case you don't know them, and the first topic will be "Blogs and journalism: how traditional media are embracing blogs, are there any competitions between bloggers and traditional journalists, etc..."

I will give the topic of the day each morning to launch the discussion, please feel free to participate also to share your thoughts with us.

Last thing, few words to introduce myself as animator of this weekly discussion: my name is Guillaume du Gardier, I am founder of PR Planet a PR boutique based in Paris and recently Blogging Planet,  the first european consultancy specialised on blogs, wikis, podcast, rss etc... I have launched the CEO Bloggers' Club in august 2004 and coproduced with Elizabeth Albrycht from Corporate PR the New Communication Forum in Napa at the end of January 2005. I blog daily (hmm...) at PR Thoughts.

See you tomorrow for our first stop at the IAOC's blog and let's see what Ireland, France, Spain, Germany and Denmark have to say about blogging.

Thank you again Don for inviting us here.
A bientôt

This week Guillaume du Gardier, Managing Director of PR Planet hosts "Blogging Europe" on IAOCblog Week. Guillaume has invited bloggers from France, Spain, Ireland, Denmark, Poland, Germany and Sweden. Topics include:

• Blogs and journalists: a country-by-country view of how European media are embracing blogs, and who, if anyone is making money blogging
• Blogs and politics: how do Europe's political candidates use blogs for their campaigns, and do politicians and government officials treat political bloggers the same as the press
• Corporate blogging (external): case studies, who's leading the way, do European companies see blogs as an opportunity or a threat, are any small, nimble companies using blogs or is it only the big multi-national companies
• Corporate blogging (internal): do European corporations view internal blogs as a way to make employees more effective or as a waste of time, are internal blogs in multi-national companies being written in English or in the local language
• Blogs and brands: Tracking European and global brands in the blogosphere