Gary Andrews

2009 wasn’t a space odyssey. But it was the time when social media got a little bit more serious. Whether it was Philip Schofield, Iran, and Stephen Fry dragging Twitter to the masses, or Facebook and Google seemingly taking over the world, social media was the place to hang out with the cool kids on the internet.

But, as Echo and the Bunnymen once sang, nothing lasts for ever, and social media will undoubtedly change in 2010. Here’s a few stabs in the dark, most likely wrong, as to what I think might happen in the coming 12 months.

Companies ask to show me the money

As opposed to show me the fluffy bunny, which is what social media appears to have been up to this point: there’s been plenty of backslapping on a job well done, and wide-eyed wonder at how far social media can go. If that was an age of innocence, that age will soon pass.

Quite simply, big companies have started cottoning onto social media in a big way. Witness Pepsi deciding to spend $20m on social media rather than a Superbowl advert. This may turn out, ultimately, to be a terrible decision by the soft drink company. Or it may be inspired. But it shows that brands and companies want in.

And if the likes of Pepsi are spending that much money on social media, they’re sure as hell going to want a return on that investment. Is that return possible? Maybe. Dell would suggest any money spent on Twitter has easily made it back. But then other  companies may not have been so successful.

That also means that brands and companies will be out to colonise Twitter, Facebook and everything else in order to make money. Yes, the more enlightened ones will be there to engage in the conversation. These will probably be the more successful ones. But there’ll be a lot more company chatter.

And you know what. Users will probably accept it, especially on networks outside of Twitter. Facebook will step up a gear when it comes to accommodating companies. Twitter maybe less so, but there’s potential to be battle lines drawn between the hardcore old school set of users who were there at the start and slightly newer users. Both will still be huge.

Ironically, there may be a few winners here of neglected or niche social network areas that companies don’t want to get into because they require too much effort or are slightly too off-centre for their wants. Certainly Posterous, Audioboo and that old stalwart Flickr may profit from this.

PR gets serious

For PR, 2009 was a year of transition where PR was concerned. Traditional PR and online-cum-social media PR nudged ever closer to each other. Personally, I think we can do away with the words traditional and online prefixing PR. It’s all part of the same discipline now.

And in a 24 hour social media world, that means getting your message out and updating your social media network as soon as possible. Not tomorrow. Not in a couple of hours. Not after you’ve briefed the press. Now. People will expect nothing less. They will be watching and waiting, and there will be plenty of people watching any response to see if your brand is perceived to slip up. Which some inevitably will.

In a more generic terms, PR and publicity will need to start discussing social media as a strategy from the very start. It’s no good bolting it on as an afterthought. Anything of a reasonable size needs to have some form of social media at its core, as well thought out as any print or broadcasting campaign.

And the companies that succeed will be the ones who know who should be doing what. Even towards the end of the year, social media and the PR aspect was thrown around some companies like a proverbial hot potato.

So, marketing decided it wasn’t their responsibility and passed it onto the PR team. The PR department said it was down to the website people to do the social media, the website said it was the communities guy, the communities guy wasn’t quite sure how to progress and passed it onto the customer service team, who quickly realised it was a PR matter, and by that time whatever the issue was had taken on a life of its own.

This isn’t to say PR that doesn’t involve social media will die. Often it’ll still be the mainstream media who kickstart something. But there’ll be just as much organic growth, and those companies who realise you can’t just go “It’s the internet, these people on Twitter and blogs and Facebook will be happy for us to throw something at them,” will be the ones who do well.

There will be some innovative campaigns that will set the template for how to do online PR. And there will be more fails than ever before, as PR and brands previously not on Twitter or Facebook or engaged with blogs get it spectacularly wrong, or chancer agencies looking to make a quick buck will go about things in a cackhanded way, totally misunderstanding social media.

But above all, it’ll be fun to see how PR reacts to this challenge [1].

Stop touching and feeling me

One of the nicest things about social media is, well, how nice people are offline and online to each other, within reason. Bloggers, Twitterers, Flickrers, Audiobooers, and the rest are generally a pretty welcoming scene and that extends to the number of social functions.

That’ll still continue into 2010, but a sense of “we’re all in this together” may not still be around by the end of the year. Those who’ve been in social media for a while will be pushing on with projects they hope will make them money. There will inevitably be conflict along the line.

Meanwhile, the more these social spaces grow, the more likely you are to have trolls involved. Etiquette will keep coming to the fore. Aspects of, say, Twitter that are legal but are frowned upon by some will reverberate around the net and some reputations will be destroyed, some fairly, others not.

Outrage (to coin the Express’ favourite term) across social media will be swifter than ever before. On occasions it will inspire users to chance the world (an exaggeration, but you get the idea) beyond anything they believed possible. On others, it will be more nastier and unpleasant, and the naysayers in traditional media will leap on this will glee.

There will be arguments. There may be blood. But friendship will survive.

Blogging isn’t dead but it has evolved

With so many social media users moving across to Twitter and other more instant services, the death cries for blogging will echo far and wide. But blogging isn’t dead, it will just be rearranging itself.

Largely this will take the form of group blogs or affiliated blog networks. Individual blogs will get started, but the networks will have a wider reach in terms of readership and these will be the ones that bloggers will, naturally, spend more time writing for. This is where Posterous can step in and help the busy blogger who still wants to retain an individual presence.

And while plenty of lazy commentators will continue to look to the (rather excellent, admittedly) Huffington Post as proof, or otherwise, that blogs can challenge the mainstream media, there will be plenty of smaller group blogs or networks that rise and become fully-fledged internet publications in their own right [2]

These might be blogs that inadvertently end up providing a more popular alternative to existing media, they may have existing media firmly in their sites, or their growth and popularity may be a happy accident.

And as some of these get bigger, so the big companies will come sniffing around, scenting another payout. But there will be very few that will make big money, with profits being more modest. Inevitably one or two will overstretch themselves and crash and burn. Others will soar. And blogging will be as strong as ever.

It’s the live, stupid

What 2009 has shown, beyond any doubt, is the internet is now well and truly a global watercooler. Look at social media interactions during X Factor and Britain’s Got Talent. Look at how social media turned Susan Boyle from a TV phenomenon into a global superstar. Look at the response to Michael Jackson’s death. Look at Iran (although this last one is perhaps a tad misleading).

Breaking news, sport, and must see TV will be three areas that will continue to grow. Despite experts predicting the death of traditional TV, viewer numbers for the X Factor and Britain’s Got Talent continued to rise. The likes of Doctor Who and Flash Forward pulled into the social media crowd. People wanted to discuss and comment on what they were seeing and they wanted to do it now.

So, TV, news, and sport will continue to get more social. Expect to see the likes of Cover It Live  - in essence no more than a souped up chat tool, but an incredibly smart and brilliant souped up chat tool – really come into their own.

Expect to see plenty of companies trying even harder to tap into Twitter, Audioboo and especially Facebook, post-privacy changes. With Twitter and Facebook more searchable on Google and Bing, it’ll never be easier to pass comment in real time, and then see other responses. And TV… well, that could just grow and grow.

Get mobile

If live events get bigger in 2010, then mobile will play a huge part in that. Smart phones are now no longer the preserve of the social media and geek elite. Twitter clients, iPhone and Android apps, and all manner of things are making mobile the place where the development is taking place.

Mobile, I’ll confess, isn’t exactly an area I’m hot on. But I really should be. Because application after application will make the world quicker and smaller and potentially easier. And, unlike plenty of areas of social media, there is potentially serious money to be made here.

Two events to chance the world (well, Britain at least)

Social media could well come into its own this year with two huge events that will be covered on and offline, and especially on social media, like never before.

The UK General Election will be the first social media election. It will be different from the States. Obama tapped into something new and on the cusp of being huge. Now that cusp has well and truly been passed. Any attempt to ape Obama’s tactics will be seen a cynical.

Plus, all political parties have members who are good with social media or who don’t get it at all. Or those like Nadine Dorries who attempt to engage but completely misunderstand the point (and there will be members of other parties who are as bad, but she’s the most obvious example I can think of).

But social media will be a key battleground for all parties, and the commentary and coverage on the internet will be like nothing ever seen in politics.

If I have one wish, it’s that social media will improve politics, hold our elected MPs to account more and cut out the petty sniping and horrible personal political rows that make politics a hugely off-putting area. I’d be a lot more engaged if it wasn’t for the disgusting, petty, braying nasty behaviour I’ve seen from all three main parties.

I fear that’s too optimistic.

And then, post-election, assuming the Conservatives win it, it will be interesting to see how prominent right-wing bloggers get on now they are the party of government. And how the opposition parties rally using the internet.

Then there’s the World Cup, the big event of 2010, and one where fans all around the world will be using social media like never before. The internet may actually break under the level of expectation. And it will all be glorious.

I hope.

And finally…

There will be lots of other success stories and failures. The big players in social media will become bigger as the sector consolidates. The medium players will either become bigger or stagnate.

But there will be a few unexpected players who storm into the mainstream public conciousness. Perhaps it’s a website or an iPhone app that hasn’t even been invented or launched yet. Or perhaps it’s something like Foursquare or Qype that catches the public imagination. Or perhaps its something different.

Whatever, it’s going to be an interesting year.

[1] See also: Eurostar

[2] You want an example? Something like the Domestic Sluttery site has the potential to do this.

written by Gary

No, not Rage Against The Machine. I like the track I’m far too apathetic and quite like The X Factor as well. Whatever. But somebody on Exeweb suggested an alternative campaign to get Half Man Half Biscuit’s ‘All I Want For Christmas Is A Dukla Prague Away Kit’. Now that’s a campaign I could really get behind.

And because you can never have too much Half Man Half Biscuit, here’s the wonderful Referee’s Alphabet.

Time to dig out my copy of Cammell Laird Social Club, methinks.

written by Gary

Everyone’s favourite microblogging site has continued its evolution this week, as Twitter moved subtly into a mass grassroots campaigning tool. Move over breaking news, you were so Spring 2009, organic protest is where it’s at now.

First up was the Trafigura case, of which so much has been written, it’s somewhat pointless to rehash completely what went on (Adam Tinworth has a nice, concise summary). In a nutshell, the Guardian were gagged on writing about reporting on a Parliamentary question concerning Trafigura and there actions surrounding the dumping of toxic waste in the Ivory Coast.

Once the Guardian wrote that they’d been gagged, Twitter (and plenty of blogs) quickly ensured it was one of the most discussed and written about topics online. The Streisand effect, if you will.

Much has been said about how Twitter brought about the downfall of Carter-Ruck’s gagging order. For what it’s worth, I suspect it would have been lifted eventually – you simply can’t stop papers reporting on the democratic business of Parliament just because it damages your client’s reputation. That would abolish hundreds of years of precedent. There’s a fair bit of that around.

For me, that’s the most important aspect, more so, even, than Twitter’s role in all this. The very fact a law firm thought it could ride roughshod over a basic right that’s essential to any functioning democracy is somewhat concerning. It would have set a very dangerous precedent, and it’s good to see, for ones, MPs from all parties standing up pretty strongly against this. This would have been a step too far.

What Twitter definitely did was to accelerate the process. Carter-Ruck may not have backed down so quickly were it not for Twitter, and it’s unlikely that it would have spread onto more news outlets, and the original root of the litigation wouldn’t have been dug up. In all honesty, can anybody recall Trafigura’s name before this?

As Adam says, it was crowdsourced journalism at its finest.

The second was Daily Mail columnist Jan Moir’s rather sickening piece on the death of Stephen Gately (no, I’m not going to link to it), which again hit the trending topics as Twitter users flocked to express their disgust. Again, this became, and maintained its place, as a trending topic on Twitter throughout the day.

This was somewhat different from the Trafigura campaign in some respects – it was more about decency than an affront to democracy. Nevertheless, the strength of feeling was enough to crash the Press Complaints Commission’s website and cause advertisers to ask to be removed from Moir’s article on the Mail’s site.

There has been a lot written about Stephen Gately’s death, some of it probably untrue, and some of it not overly pleasant. But it was this one article that ignited Twitter’s fury. It could have ben written by any writer in any national paper – the result would have probably been the same.

The Moir case really shows the power of Twitter. I wouldn’t like to hazard a guess at how many complaints the Mail gets each day. It’s incredibly rare for them to issue a statement around a complaint so quickly though (in an episode that contains just a touch of schadenfreude).

The difference, I think (and this is only hypotheticals), is that Carter-Ruck’s injunction would have been overturned sooner or later. This isn’t to say Twitter didn’t help, but it was a key player rather than an essential in getting it lifted. With Moir, the statement would never have been issued were it not for Twitter.

Moir also grasps the wrong end of the stick with her statement by describing it as “clearly a heavily-orchestrated online campaign”. Wrong. A heavily-orchestrated one implies a degree of organisation, whereas the reaction to her piece was spontaneous. It was the strength of feeling towards Moir’s article rather than a grassroots piece of action from, say, a gay rights group. It’s difficult to think something would trend so quickly and stay trending by organisation alone. It needs other Twitter users to keep talking about it long after it first moves towards trending.

And it’s also why I can’t see an organised campaign working as well as the Moir campaign. There’s only so far you can tap into the internet before it falls away, a victim of natural information turnover.

A quick note on the politics of Twitter as well. Somebody (I can’t remember who) noted that the two major Twitter campaigns were predominantly on liberal topics.

Is Twitter a liberal haven? I’m not so sure. To me it feels liberal, but that’s because of the people I follow. That doesn’t mean there’s not a large conservative following on there.

Secondly, it’s worth pointing out that Trafigura transcended political divides. Having heavyweight and idiologically different bloggers like Guido Fawkes and Chicken Yoghurt lending their support it somewhat like the suspension of cold war, in online terms. The only internet community recognised the chilling threat of the super-injunction for what it was: an affront to democracy. That does not necessarily make it liberal.

The Moir reaction leans towards a traditional cause of the left, or liberals, but you don’t have to belong to that part of the political spectrum to be appalled by her views on Stephen Gately. It, perhaps, shows how we as a society have become more liberal and tolerant, but it isn’t quite a cause championed entirely my liberals.

For me, Twitter comes across as more libertarian than liberal, and there is a crucial difference in this. It’s quick to stand up for freedom in all sense of the word, but also leans away from censorship. It certainly isn’t an area where one spectrum of politics dominates though.

written by Gary \\ tags: Carter-Ruck, Daily Mail, Jan Moir, libel, Stephen Gately, The Guardian, Trafigura, Twitter

Deep down, part of me still believes I could have made it as a footballer. Well, if it hadn’t been for discovering beer and generally being lazy. And possibly learning how to tackle and head a ball. Minor inconveniences aside, I could have been a contender.

Anyway, as part of my non-footballing development I stopped playing around the age of 17 when I went to college. Between then and finishing university, I really didn’t play that often, other than the occasional kickabout or turning out as an unfit favour for a mate’s team.

Since moving into the world of work, though, I started playing regularly for the 5-a-side team, and haven’t stopped since then. I may be in a different city and different job now, but I still make a point of playing every week. Mondays are football nights, and God do I miss them if I’m not playing.

Anyway, the point of this slightly rambling reminiscing brings me to the latest campaign from the FA. Called Whatever Your Level, it’s designed to encourage people to carry on playing and enjoy the game whatever your level is.

It’s a very smart, slick and engaging video. I was actually asked to pop along and watch it being filmed on Hackney Marshes but sadly wasn’t around at the time. My co-host of the twofootedtackle podcast, Chris, did make it down and even landed himself a quick cameo. Lucky git.

There’s always a misconception, I find, that the FA is just about top level football, the FA Cup and a few other things. It really isn’t – and I’ve seen for myself in the past their commitment to the sport at its most basic level.

The Whatever Your Level campaign is just as important to the wellbeing of football as the national team. And the FA should be applauded for their efforts here. Playing football once a week has left me fitter, healthier, stronger and even happier then when I wasn’t playing. Long may it continue.

written by Gary

How quickly times change. When I first started doing work experience and then freelancing for assorted journalistic outlets nearly a decade ago, the only thing the newsroom used the web for on any kind of regular basis was Google.

When I took over editorship of our student paper, we had a website but no content. When I left, we had a different website with the building blocks for content. We also had an editorial blog, hosted on a basic Blogger.com template [1]. This was seen as quite novel at the time.

When I did my professional BJTC qualification, I was one of only two people who blogged regularly. One of our regular assignments was to blog about journalism and the stories behind the stories. Many of the course were a little baffled and confused by this. This, they said, wasn’t journalism.

When I was a fully fledged reporter, the web was seen as both a curiosity and vaguely important, but we’d be buggered if we could work out exactly what to do with it. What we did know was when we got it right, we got one hell of a lot of traffic and comments. This didn’t happen often. Meanwhile, I was using Google Alerts, Technorati and other such tools to find stories. This was seen as something of a curiosity.

When I took the decision to move into PR, the debate on whether blogs should be treated the same as other media outlets was in its infancy still. Twitter was something only a couple of us geeks in the corner were spending time on, while everybody else looked on somewhat quizzically.

Now, as I prepare to move into yet another new role, I can’t help but wonder what the future holds and what I’ll be looking back on in a few years time and go “isn’t that funny.”

In just under ten days time I officially become part of the communities team at ITV.com, driving online engagement and facilitating conversations and other such things. I’ll be working with another ex-journo, Ben Ayers.

So what does this have to do with journalism? If you’d described my new role to the 18-year-old me, eagerly applying for work experience with local newspapers and radio stations, I’d have probably looked at you slightly funny before probably telling you this was nothing to do with journalism whatsoever [2]. In fact, I’d probably have had no clue what the hell you were on about.

But times change. Journalists are now bloggers, podcasters, video editors, and more as well as being reporters. And, yes, they’re working within online communities, be it facilitating conversation, engaging in the comments, posting blogged responses to the community and the like.

You could probably argue journalists have always done this, but there’s never been as much of a two way conversation, bar letters to the editor, or the odd chance to accost the journalist on their patch. Communities, though, have always been at the heart of journalism.

And the lines are becoming increasingly blurred. I’ve been addressed in emails as a football journalist, due to my writing for Soccerlens and podcasting for twofootedtackle, both of which are done in my spare time [3]. I’d call myself a football blogger and podcaster, but break it down and it’s very similar to what many traditional media outlets do.

Other boundaries are being broken. Not too long ago I was chatting to Joanna Geary, then of the Birmingham Post now of the Times, about getting the news about, well, the news out there. Journalists, she mentioned, were increasingly doing their own PR on the web to get people reading their stories. That’s not a million miles away from a communities editor.

When I first started in journalism, I did so because I wanted to make a difference. Granted, my career may not have gone the same way as Woodward and Bernstein, but I still repeat and hold onto that. I’d like to think I’m still making a difference these days, just in a different way.

[1] While it would have been nice to have kept this going for posterity, it got deleted the year after due to a small misunderstanding with some cartoons. You may be familiar with this.

[2] Although the web-loving part of me would have probably been reasonably impressed.

[3] I may still be a rarity though – a journalism trained blogger who does this sort of stuff for fun.

written by Gary Andrews

Two excellent, interesting, a very different posts that are worth flagging up.

Firstly, Sarah Evans on Mashable on the ten best social media tools for journalists and PRs. It’s a bit US centric but there’s a couple of the list I use from time to time, and I’d especially love to get more people into working with wikis, as there’s so much potential there.

Even if you’re not planning on using any of them, it’s worth a look just to get an idea of the tools and sites that are available.

On a completely and utterly different note, POLIS director Charlie Beckett asks if, in relation to journalism, we can trust the internet. It’s a fascinating read that, if I had more time, I’d have liked to blog a bit further about. There’s small points I disagree with, but his conclusion is one I’d go along with.

written by Gary Andrews

It’s always difficult to gauge exactly how widely Twitter has extended outside of the tech and social media crowd (and, to a certain extent, the media). On one hand, I have Twitter on in the background every day at work and find it increasingly useful. On the other hand, I went out to dinner the other night with a couple of friends who I did my journalism training with and neither of them had heard of it.

But just when I learn to the other hand and start to wonder if it generally has a wider application, something like this comes along.

Essentially, The Chicago Tribute has an online Twitter presence who interacts with other users and it was to this profile that other Twitters turned when a few of them started asking about some kind of panic at a local plaza they were hearing about.

Not only did the Tribute’s Twitter feed reply, it got back to them about twenty minutes later with the full story, verified by the paper’s journalists, before crediting the breaking story to the Tweeter who first told him (or her) about it.

Thanks to the retweeting of the story by other users, it turned into one of the most widely read stories on the site. Neither the story nor the subsequent hits would have been as big had it not been for Twitter.

This small event is the perfect example of how new and old media can work together to create great journalism, and it’s the journalism aspect of Twitter that excites me the most.

At it’s most basic, it’s like the pub, where plenty of conversations are taking place [1]. Some of them are meaningless, but some may be interesting to the journalist and make a great story. Older journalists will have done more than their fair share of pub stories, while whenever I was sent to cover a story in an area I didn’t know, I’d usually head down the pub, as this was one of the best places for background and context.

Twitter can be seen as the pub. Or perhaps a trendy, if somewhat dilapidated, wine bar. That has poor acoustics, and the clientele speak in clipped tones. But is up to date with the latest news from the area.

Twitter, then, goes beyond just searching for people on location for a breaking news event – it allows those users to break the news to the journalists, although that only seems to have happened because of interaction. If the Chicago Tribute’s Twitter account didn’t bother to interact with its followers, then it wouldn’t have got the story (or got the story as quickly).

That, for me, perfectly encapsulates what social media is all about, and why it complements journalism rather than threatens it [2]. And why every journalist should at least be aware of how useful Twitter can be for newsgathering.

It may not have as many people signing up as Facebook did, and nor will it probably take off on such a mass scale as Facebook did. But that’s not necessarily the point. As my colleague Ben is fond of saying, it’s who you follow, not how many you follow.

The next question is how many news organisations have a presence of Twitter, Facebook, Bebo, and other sites, and regularly interact with readers? Those who don’t, or haven’t even considered it, are potentially missing a trick.

It’s why it’s important that Twitter users are able to receive SMS messages in the UK and Europe. The site cut this service due to spiraling costs they incurred from mobile providers.

It’s one of the most useful services Twitter offers, and for journalists is a key part of why Twitter is so useful. Paul Bradshaw has started a campaign to get mobile operators to strike a deal with Twitter – the Facebook group is here.

[1] I have a feeling I’ve shamelessly stolen this analogy from Joanna Geary. Sorry Jo – think of it as social media analogy sharing

[2] Quite whether the same is true, at this current stage, for PR, I’m not so sure. It’s very useful, but nowhere near as useful as journalists are finding it. There’s definitely potential in there though, but as Jaz Cummins said to me at the Shoreditch Twit last week when I mentioned I was using Twitter for PR purposes, a lot of its users are still very much in the London or media-centric bubble and bursting through this bubble is the challenge. At least I think that’s what she was saying. My memory of the night is a tad hazy, but it was along those lines and is a very valid point. It’s certainly a major challenge for PR to work out how best to utilise the potential of Twitter.

written by Gary Andrews \\ tags: journalism, newsgathering, SMS, Twitter