Friday Roundup 6th June 2008

Ben Ayers provides us with a light hearted fact for the weekend: Mario Lavandeira, the guy behind Perezhilton.com (the infamous Hollywood gossip blog), is making an absolute fortune via advertising. Apparently a single advert on the site goes for $9,000 a week and the most expensive ad package is a grand $45,000!

Mobile Monday’s also provided its usual food for thought this week. Smart mobile browsers and Mobile Web standards were the top two mobile trends - check out Ben Matthews notes for more info.

And finally, Philip Sheldrake’s The B2B Social Web post is worth a read. He makes some great points about B2B video programming.

Have a great weekend!

Best regards,

Andrew and the MarCom Professional team.

Interview: Perez Hilton

by Ben Ayers of ITV

He's the most controversial blogger in the world and reportedly makes millions but Mario Lavandeira, the flamboyant gossip columnist behind PerezHilton.com, admits: "I always want more."

As his popularity continues to soar (his site is number 20 in a list of the 100 most linked to blogs) and his ambitions take him further into the world of TV, radio and film, the prolific blogger has hired his younger sister Barbara as his assistant and his mum Teresita is reportedly moving from Miami to help him out. More...

Your web site needs to create social currency

by Graham Jones of Internet Psychology

Anthropologists in the USA have just published the results of a year-long study performed on behalf of the Associated Press and which has some pretty important findings for all web site owners. The study's results were announced today at the annual World Editor's Forum in Sweden.

The research is a substantial and complex piece of work and needs to be taken notice of. Even though it is primarily focused on the world of online publishing for newspapers, the results tell us some interesting things. More...

All boarding for the green train express…

by Peter Prodromou of Racepoint Waltham, MA

Who isn’t getting on the green train these days? Add a couple more - the Discovery Channel, Indy 500 and Honda!

On June 4th the Discovery Channel is launching Planet Green - the first and only 24-hour eco-lifestyle television network. It’s the center for the new green conversation, speaking to people who want to understand green living and to those who truly want to make a difference in meeting the critical challenge of protecting our environment. Planet Green’s unique content, tools and information will enlighten, empower and most importantly, entertain. More...

Man behind the McCanns: Clarence Mitchell

by Stephen Waddington of Rainier PR

Tim Hoang attended Clarence Mitchell’s seminar at Leeds Town Hall about crisis communications yesterday, where Mitchell discussed how the Madeleine McCann campaign has been handled.

Mitchell has handled both the negative publicity surrounding the McCann’s case and dealt with press intrusion and accusations lobbied at himself. But there can be no doubt of his affection for the McCann family and his drive to see Madeline returned.

He ridiculed elements within the national press that had written unsubstantiated stories such as claims that Gerry McCann is not the biological father of Maddie and orgy claims. More...

Think local, not global, to make the most of the Internet

by Graham Jones of Internet Psychology

People are creatures of habit; we tend to do similar things each day. However, when asked about what we do in surveys or in research studies, guess what? We lie. We like to tell researchers what we think they want to know, or we want to make ourselves seem more "normal" than we think we are. The result is that many surveys about human activities are fraught with error.

Luckily technology can often provide the answer to what we really do and a new piece of research using mobile phones is causing quite a stir. More...

The B2B Social Web - B2B video programming

by Philip Sheldrake of Racepoint Group UK

My last post described the first half of my interview with Ecommerce Times. The second half of our interview focused on B2B video programming, or what the publication described as TV Media Relations. B2B multimedia is one of my favourite topics, so I plunged straight in...

Forget "Pop Idol" and "The Apprentice", B2B programming is the new hot programming. We're within sight of bespoke TV shows dedicated to your industry, your profession. Coming to a screen near you, a whole raft of new productions with names like Logistics Insights Live, The Coronary Care Beat, Patent Law Update, IT Compliance Bulletin. More...

PR Event: Mobile Monday London

by Ben Matthews of Pudding Relations

I went to my first MOMO London (Mobile Monday London) last night, down at the Royal Statistical Society near Old Street.

Titled “Whassup in Mobile Marketing and Media?”, the evening was sponsored by Wireless Foundry. Featuring a high-level panel discussion on current mobile web, services and applications from a media and marketing perspective, the event took a look at everything from mobile web to proximity to messaging to games and highlight creative execution and effective campaigns. More...

Sweet Valley High

by si crowhurst of We Love Mobile

Take a load of school kids. Promise them a truly spectacular free concert. But only to the high school that sends in the most votes. This is exactly what a radio station in Miami, Florida did. And in just over four weeks, they got over 4 million votes, doubled their mobile marketing database (listeners could opt in to receive future promotions from the station) and made a lot of teenagers very happy indeed. (Hopefully the losing high schools - each were assigned a keyword - would have got a mobile-based ‘gift’ More...

Tuned In - my newest book - in stores early July

by David Meerman Scott of David Meerman Scott

My newest book Tuned In: Uncover the extraordinary opportunities that lead to business breakthroughs hits stores in early July.

I wrote Tuned In with two other authors: Phil Myers and Craig Stull from Pragmatic Marketing. It was fun to apply our different (yet complimentary) perspectives to the writing process, creating a book that's much more than any one of us could have written

We came together to create Tuned In because we see a tremendous need in the marketplace for a book dealing with aspects of the marketing process, including: More...

Don't bite the hand that feeds you

by Ben Matthews of Pudding Relations

In today's Media Guardian, Damien McCrystal continues the discussion on the hot topic of the moment - that is, the relationship between journalism and public relations.

The article, headlined "Don't bite the hand that feeds you", is a well-balanced piece, but is occassionally in danger of sitting on the fence too much - and you get splinters by sitting on the fence:
"There is an old school of journalistic thought, as conceited as it is quaint, that PR people should be information officers whose primary function is to make life easier for hacks. More...