Macroblogging is the New Black

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2D638A12-67DD-48D4-A299-C095433D031B.jpgWoofer is a funny take on Twitter. Instead of limiting you to a maximum total of 140 characters, it forces you to write no less than 1400 character entries.

That’s right. There’s a minimum amount of characters.

Naturally, Woofer won’t be as successful as Twitter, and that’s not the point either. If it was, they wouldn’t spoof Twitter’s design and everything. The hint is in that flap in the top right, promoting Shuffletime. Woofer is nothing other than a fun site meant to garner some buzz for the developer. And what do you know, it worked!

Survey: UK PR companies slowly embracing blogging

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British public relations companies are still lagging behind in their use of blogging as a communications tool according to the Digital PR 2009 survey carried out by Bigmouthmedia.

Looking at the 100 leading British press and PR agencies, interest in social media and networking has improved over the past year and the number of agencies publishing blogs has doubled. [Read more…]

Apple Goes Behind The Scenes At Twitter

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Curios about what the Twitter office looks like? Then this PR profile article by Apple features both a slideshow video, a small photo gallery, and a bunch of Mac-centric text. The latter is really a bit over the top, with whoever did this article going out of his or her way to focus everything on the Mac brand and how important it is to Twitter. That being said, the video and photo gallery is worth a look if you’re into that sort of thing.

Twitter Partners Launches: The Hidden Twitter Business Model

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Twitter PartnersTwitter Partners is a company focusing on helping other companies utilize Twitter, as in doing PR and utilizing the platform. There are several companies that offer Twitter consultation, but as the name implies, Twitter Partners has got Twitter endorsing it. This means Twitter Partners should be able to build pretty cool applications and solutions for Twitter usage, since the fact that Twitter is backing the company should mean that they can have an ongoing dialogue with the developers. If nothing else, Twitter Partners are bound to get a nice flow of new clients – they already scored a couple of heavy names in Europe – because of this relationship. [Read more…]

UK PR company launches Twitter business resources

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It seems the mainstream rush to jump aboard Twitter is everywhere, and while seasoned bloggers and tech geeks have been using the service for years, it’s as well to remember that many individuals and businesses are only just getting their heads around blogging, let alone microblogging.

There’s no shortage of information online about using Twitter, with UK-based PR company Punch Communications one of the latest to set up online resources to help new users get the most out of their tweets. [Read more…]

Best of Twitter: Air Force One Soaring Twitter

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Sure, it is really just a PR stunt for the National Geographic Channel and some show they don’t want to tell me about since I’m located in Sweden and hence redirected to the Swedish site’s mainpage, but still! It’s Air Force One, and it is on Twitter. Like a tweeting airplane. How cool, and weird, is that? That certainly beats Kevin Rose’s cold.

The Power of a Blog Post: Payment Issue Resolved

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Just a quick follow-up to my editorial yesterday regarding advertisers and clients that don’t pay their bills. I used ProToolerBlog’s dispute with BBE Sound as an example, and it proved a good one. The issue’s been resolved, read more about that here. This further proves my point, and question in the title for that matter: How dare they? Neglect to pay that is, a lot of bad press there…

LiveJournal Restructuring: Not As Bad As Reported?

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LiveJournal finally published a press release regarding the restructuring of the company, which is fancy words for cutting parts of the workforce. Previous reports might or might not be a bit extreme, it is really hard to tell because the press release really doesn’t tell us much.

LiveJournal Inc.’s headquarters, technical operations (and servers,) legal, administration, and customer service teams will remain in the United States. LiveJournal’s global product development and design will now be coordinated out of its Moscow office. The pooling of resources between the U.S. and Russia will allow the company to build a stronger business model, well positioned to guarantee the long-term success of LiveJournal.

As a result of these changes, Matthew Berardo, VP and General Manager of LiveJournal Inc., will be leaving the company along with other valued colleagues. Mr. Berardo played the leading role in consolidating product and design efforts to enable the business to more effectively streamline costs during his tenure. LiveJournal Inc. will now be led jointly by Stephanie Gravelle, currently LiveJournal Inc.’s director of finance and administration, and Sergei Komarov, currently CTO of SUP (LiveJournal Inc.’s holding company).

A press representative told me that “LJ laid off about a dozen employees, which is less than 20% of the entire LJ workforce”, a bit less than the previous report of 20 sacked employees posted by Valleywag. On the other hand, the PR rep talked about the entire workforce, which might mean something.

One thing is for sure, and that is that LiveJournal is in trouble. I personally find it unlikely to see this one go belly up, someone will pick it up before that happens, but you might want to hold on to your premium account dollars, at least for now.

TechCrunch Passes 10,000 Posts, Celebrates by Killing the Embargo

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Techcrunch LogoTechCrunch has announced that they’ve passed the 10,000 post mark, which is impressive to say the least. The tech blog launched in June 2005 and has become a phenomenon since then, loved, hated, ignored, and important to the web 2.0 startup industry, if you can call it that.

They’re saying that the Death to the Embargo post was the 10,000th one, and naturally the controversy hit TechMeme, with lots of follow-ups. ReadWriteWeb takes another stance, saying they’ll respect embargoes, which Arrington & Co. obviously won’t anymore. Personally, I think embargoes are a good thing when used right. Problem is, usually it is just a press release you can’t write about until a few days time, and that’s just nonsense. It is a whole different matter if you’ve got early access or similar. An interesting discussion to say the least, one we’ll pass for now.

Anyway, congratulations to TechCrunch on writing a whole lotta posts!

Six Apart Gives Journalists TypePad Pro Accounts for Free

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Six Apart has a clever “program” up to get recently laid off journalists to start blogging. They’re calling it the TypePad Journalist Bailout Program. Basically, it gives journalists these things for free:

They also offer support and whatnot, all for free. The only thing the journos need to do is send a link to their last piece for a newspaper or similar. And according to the post, there’s been an overwhelming interest in this, so they’re lagging a bit behind on setting the accounts up, but no word on closing the program. [Read more…]