Lady Gaga’s ‘Bad Romance‘ is now the most watched YouTube video of all time, with 180 million views, overtaking the home video phenomenon “Charlie bit my finger.”
Last month Gaga became the first artist to break a billion views on Vevo/YouTube with the combined views of three hits -’Poker Face’, ‘Just Dance’ and ‘Bad Romance’.
Managed hosting provider NetBenefit has appointed Furlong PR to implement an online pr and social media strategy, following a three way pitch.
Furlong will also undertake traditional media relations work for NetBenefit in the UK
Kristel Scattergood, Marketing Manager for NetBenefit commented, “We appointed Furlong PR because we were impressed by their ability to combine expertise in online pr and social media, with an ongoing traditional media relations service.”
NetBenefit is the third new client Furlong PR has added to its portfolio in recent weeks, following appointments by FESPA and Freedman International.
Ross Furlong, CEO of Furlong PR commented “Online pr is generating a lot of interest from companies who seem just a little jaded with traditional pr approaches. Online and social media pr strategies are proving an attractive proposition, not least because their success is more measurable” More »
Twitter has announced its number of daily status updates or tweets has now passed 50 million, closing in on Facebook’s claimed 60 million.
Announced on its blog, Twitter describes the exponential growth of the service since it began:
“Folks were tweeting 5,000 times a day in 2007. By 2008, that number was 300,000, and by 2009 it had grown to 2.5 million per day. Tweets grew 1,400% last year to 35 million per day. Today, we are seeing 50 million tweets per day—that’s an average of 600 tweets per second.”
According to a report by RJ Metrics last month, while Twitter is adding accounts at the rate of 6.2 million per month, only 17 percent of these are active each month.
For those indie-minded old grumps hiding in the home office, like me while the X Factor saga rumbled to its depressing conclusion last night, a last minute hero has emerged.
A self-described stay-at-home mum from Essex, Tracy Morter set up a Facebook group in mid November, proposing ‘Rage against the machine for Christmas No1′
By the magic of Facebook and an alignment of media interest around X Factor, Tracy Morter’s idea may now determine the outcome of the Christmas singles chart.
There are 714K members of the Facebook group at the time of writing and between 250K and 500K purchases of “Killing in the name of” are estimated to be needed to secure the spot. The song is already number one on iTunes.
No wonder Simon Cowell is coming over as a bit cross in interviews about the campaign he describes as ‘silly’. With all his TV ratings power, it looks like he’s still no match for a mum with a social media platform. More »
Mashable’s Peter Cashmore interviewed live on CNN this week, talking about the major web trends he expects to see in 2010, including location sharing, internet TV and fewer mobile gadgets.
Players from PR, SEO & Digital, competing hard for ground in the newest game in town – social media, now have another entrant to contend with, at least in Australia – a law firm.
A Sydney legal firm, Turner Freeman has teamed up with comms agency SR7 to launch En Garde, a social media monitoring company targeting businesses, government departments and institutions, offering to police social media networks to “prevent social media marketing campaigns from becoming a platform for inappropriate content or attacks on brands”.
Quoted in mUmBRELLA, Turner Freeman partner Steven Penning said: “The management of online risk should be approached with the same diligence afforded to traditional risk factors such as financials, operational and material. Social Media risk can be managed properly if appropriate mechanisms and procedures are put in place and legal counsel who understand the medium are used.” More »
Brands like Mastercard and Geek Squad are creating their own news content published direct to consumers via channels like YouTube, rather than pitching stories to traditional media, Advertising Age reports today.
The US advertising monitor cites the declining number of media outlets combined with the growth of quick fire customer engagement through online communities as drivers of a new approach to PR.
Mastercard, for example has deliberately pursued a low tech video route, interviewing it’s executives on camcorders, editing on laptops and uploading to YouTube. Mastercard’s PR agent, Andrew Foote at Cohn and Wolfe says:
“They’re realizing they can comment on issues and get the points of view of their experts out there and on the record. Once the videos are up, the company will often tweet the links and follow up with reporters letting them know MasterCard commented on the topic.” More »
In a post on his blog yesterday Stephen Fry reflected on his role in the Jan Moir Twitter storm last week and also a regretted comment he made on Channel 4 the week before “let’s not forget which side of the border Auschwitz was on.” Fry explains “The words just formed themselves in a line in my head, as words will, and marched out of the mouth.”
It was odd to see Fry talking politics on Channel 4 in any case, especially in that shirt he was wearing and of course the opportunity to gaffe live on TV as an entertainer is multiplied many times, as Anton Du Beke and Brucey have experienced recently in that highly controversial political show, Strictly.
Writing something first before sending it anywhere at least gives you the chance to weigh up and edit what you’re expressing. My rule of thumb on Twitter is never to say anything too negative, if I can help it. More »
So says Weber Shandwick’s US based chief executive Harris Diamond, speaking this week to PR Week’s Danny Rogers. Diamond sees the Italian suited ad execs and Ivy League management consultants ‘walking away’ from the challenge of driving reputation in the era of dialogue and a more strategic place for PR in the corporate pantheon.
On a more micro level, I was in a restaurant in Reigate this week, eating a cheese omelette with some very successful international marketers, talking about social media. The thing that stands out is not the need for technical advice, though there was a bit of chat about blogging platforms, but the need for good quality, on- message communications through new channels which they simply don’t have time to handle. More »
There are some tricky questions in this Bloomberg interview last night with Mashable’s Pete Cashmore, ranging from some rather un British ones “How are you profitable?” to the big one, at least where I’m sitting about the difference in story content for social media versus that of traditional media.
