Wildfire Tech PR Blog – Business and Consumer Technology Public Relations

Revolution magazine is reporting that Twitter founder Biz Stone has said that the microblogging platform will release additional tools for businesses later this year:

“Twitter will launch a range of tools later this year aimed at helping both big brands and small businesses use the microblogging service, co-founder Biz Stone has revealed to Revolution.

“Stone told Revolution that Twitter’s long awaited commercial model is likely to focus on generating revenue through add-on tools aimed at businesses of all sizes, rather than advertising.”

Kudos to the guys at Revolution for the scoop, even if this was largely expected. The full interview is in the mag’s June issue, out tomorrow.

I’m all for web businesses trying to avoid building their businesses on deteriorating advertising revenues, but the Twitter move is very interesting.

Twitter is a fantastic tool for businesses, both for marketing and customer service and it is very interesting to see Stone acknowledging this and making efforts to support this use case:

“We think there are opportunities to support commercial use. How can we help a small bakery Twittering that the cookies are coming out of the oven and the big company using Twitter for customer support? We will be looking ways to encourage and support this.”

I’m excited to see what the tools will be. Excited to see how we can use them with our clients. And intrigued to learn whether Twitter users will continue to embrace a platform that will be driven by commercial objectives.

The beauty of Twitter is that it is opt-in. This could be a winning formula.

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With over 25,000 apps and one billion downloads to date, it is no surprise that other mobile phone manufacturers are keen to capture some of the app-mania that Apple has successfully created.

And today sees the launch of Nokia’s effort – Ovi. So now all those who are fed up with iPhone fanboys bragging about their latest app (and I totally hold my hands up) can join in the fun. Possibly…

So far, the launch hasn’t gone particularly well with the traffic spikes causing all sorts of outages. And, with it, some negative publicity to boot.

To be fair, Nokia responded pretty quickly (but not before TechCrunch got to the story) and some things just can’t be predicted. But surely, with a launch as big as this, high traffic volumes should be expected?

And the problem is that what should be an exciting and bold launch to counter Apple’s undoubted success, turns very negative from the offset.

There is no excuse for negative publicity if the reason for the negativity could’ve been avoided. It just leaves a bad taste in the mouth. One that I am sure Nokia could do without.

It means we all end up writing about the problematic launch rather than the product.

I have been alive for 9,471 days and share the same birth date as Blue singer Lee Ryan – the 17th June (yes, just round the corner), which incidentally, was 168th day of the year in 1983 when the sun set at 9.20pm and there was a waxing crescent moon.

And you would be quick to ask: what does this mean and why I’m writing about it?

But the right question to ask is how I know this useless information. And the answer to that is through the internet’s latest Google-killer: Wolfram|Alpha (I’m not sure if the vertical line is obligatory, but included it just in case!).

The computational knowledge engine Wolfram|Alpha was launched this week to the usual flurry of media attention whenever a ‘Google-killer’ comes along. Despite the rather strange moniker (named after the creators, Wolfram Research, in turn named after British businessman Stephen Wolfram), the search engine is seen by many as the way the web in going. The semantic web.

Others far more wise than me have described in detail how the site works:

“It doesn’t mine the Web for pre-existing facts. It mines limited databases that the Wolfram Alpha team has amassed, curated and vetted for accuracy. Then it performs computations on those facts, giving you new, original data. Makers say it’s a Web engine that “answers questions.”

And many have poured scorn on the site (which is clearly still short of a lot of data). And not surprisingly, The Register has questioned its usefulness:

“I know that in evaluating a Stephen Wolfram production, my meager intelligence quotient may not be sufficient to grasp the gravity of what I’m dealing with. So I don’t feel all that put down that I can’t figure out how Alpha is useful to anyone outside of a small audience of college professors and professional engineers.”

This strikes me as unfair. I can certainly see a use case for a data bank of knowledge that deals in facts (unlike Google) that are credible and reliable (unlike Wikipedia).

And calling the service a Google-killer is way off the mark too as Andy Heaps from Latitude explains:

“Wolfram Alpha couldn’t help me in finding cheaper car insurance. However, when I needed to know the number of vertices of a truncated icosahedron it did the job brilliantly! That optimises everything about the perception of Wolfram Alpha – it’s not a Google killer, it’s not a Google competitor, and was probably never meant to be – its self-proclaimed long term goal is to make ‘all systematic knowledge immediately computable and accessible to everyone’.”

So, it’s got some way to go. It’s not Google, or Wikipedia and has some early detractors…

Seems like one to watch!

I blogged last week about the Evening Standard’s relaunch advertising campaign and last week, the new issue hit the news-stands.

So what’s it like?

Well. the revised version has much to commend it (as long as we ignore the ridiculously large and slightly dull new masthead). The ES has focused on exactly what I suggested it should – valuable news content. Gone are the pages and pages of breaking news (because, let’s face it, most commuters will have read most of this during the day at the office), replaced instead by in-depth features and analysis.

It is a good balance and one that clearly differentiates it from the other freesheets London commuters have on offer.

The relaunch sees a revised version of the ‘sorry’ advertising campaign, this time with a ‘promise’ to its existing (and new) readers.

So far, so good. We’ll see what happens when the next circulation figures come out.

I love my PVR. It lets me record anything and watch it whenever I want. Except on a Wednesday evening when Twitter ruins everything. There I am, working hard late into the evening and, without thinking, I check in with Twitter to see what’s happening (read: procrastinate). And there it is, too late: “xx has been fired”

Twitter ruins The Apprentice for me. Every week.

But, even though the good ‘ol PVR may buck the trend, this is quickly becoming the way of the world. We are living in a real-time, uber-connected society where if something happened yesterday, it’s ancient history. The real-time, social web is here.

And two developments in the world of search over the last week have merely increased this mindset.

On Tuesday, Google announced a new feature called Search Options:

“a collection of tools that let you slice and dice your results and generate different views to find what you need faster and easier.”

The new tool, which appears at the top left of every search, allows you to refine search results by criteria including format (e.g. videos. forums, reviews) and time of creation (e.g. past 24 hours, past week, past year).

This would allow a user to search for particular forum posts written in the last 24 hours for example – very useful and a great example of the real-time, social web.

The second development is, at this stage, more of a rumour, but is equally fascinating. According to Cnet, Twitter will soon begin indexing the pages that users refer to in their tweets and including these in search results performed on the site at search.twitter.com. As Cnet notes:

“This will make Twitter Search a much more complete index of what’s happening in real time on the Web and make it an even more credible competitor to Google Search for people looking for very timely content.”

The two announcements clearly reflect the success of each company. Google wants a piece of Twitter (as buying it clearly isn’t going to happen yet) and Twitter is eyeing some of Google’s search pie for its monetisation plans.

They are both exiting developments, and there are some key considerations as a result for businesses and brands:

1. Updated content is vital, static websites are history – blogs, news, forums, social media activity will all give you more chance of being included in ‘recent searches’
2. Multimedia is more important than ever – Google’s inclusion of video as a search option, combined with the time search option is particularly telling
3. The echo-chamber is growing – with the real-time, social web, problems can become disasters in minutes, so be prepared and ready for the unexpected

As for me, I just need to modify my viewing habits!

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