Boozing, Smoking and Drugs. British Kids Really Are The World’s Worst (Best?)

via guardian.co.uk

Wow. Why have I only just discovered The Guardian’s DataBlog?

Now I’m rueing all the magic stuff I’ve missed.

This table shows what we all suspected anyway – that British kids really are world leaders in boozing, smoking and cannabis use.

If you haven’t already done so, do yourself a favour and check out:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog

Posted via web from scottdouglas

Five Reasons Why Flickr Sucks Harder Than a Turbo-Charged Vacuum Cleaner

Flickr

Social media’s all about ‘the conversation’, isn’t it? Everything I’ve read, seen and heard about social media puts the all important ‘dialogue’ aspect at its very heart.

So how come one of the giants of the scene – picture sharing site Flickr – can totally ignore the values which are so fundamental to what it’s supposed to be about?

I’ve learned to my cost that:  “Flickr reserves the right to terminate your account without warning at any time.”

For Deadline, the Edinburgh-based news, photo and video agency I set up a Flickr account almost a year ago.  Last week that account vanished and a year’s worth of work disappeared.  We immediately started working through a checklist of possible reasons? Unpaid bills? Sabotage? A catastrophic software glitch?

After ruling out these possibilities we finally contacted Flickr for “help”. Three days later we got the following, less-than-enlightening response:  “Your Flickr account was deleted by Flickr staff for violating our Terms of Service and Community Guidelines.”

No further explanation. Just a link to the extensive small print.  We sought further clarification. A couple of days later came another dismissively short response: “Flickr accounts are intended for personal use, for our members to share photos and video that they themselves have created.”

Oh aye? Funny that. Anyone who has spent more than five minutes on Flickr knows there are many businesses and enterprises represented. As long as they aren’t selling, but sharing useful and interesting content, it seems to be acceptable.

So guess what? Learning that Flickr’s draconian switch off policy isn’t for perverts, pornographers  and spammers but actually applied to us left me less than impressed.

More than a week later my anger has settled. However,I hope you won’t mind me sharing  five reasons why Flickr sucks harder than a turbo-charged vacuum cleaner:

Powerful suck action

1 – Flickr canned the concept of “conversation”
Either Flickr is proud to part of the social media landscape or it isn’t.
If it is in, then engagement should be a fundamental part of what it does.
If it’s out, then it’s just another soulless, corporate sham, paying lip service to the concepts of “social” and “conversation” while wearing a thin veneer of Web 2.0 respectability.
I wonder how many others have been switched off in this way, with Flickr simply opting out of any engagement with the affected users?
Had Flickr taken the time to contact us (whether out of courtesy for  the fee we paid them, or because we got so many hits from the Flickr community over 10 months of honest sharing) maybe we could have made adjustments to get back within the “community guidelines”.
If the problem couldn’t be resolved and the decision to switch off went ahead, then at least we could have prepared for it and not spent days chasing our tail trying to find out what went wrong.
Simple conversation. In the age of endless dialogue is it too much to expect even a basic email notification?
Instead we got the equivalent of the Guantanamo Bay treatment: tried by a kangaroo court in our absence and with no right of reply – with Flickr acting as self-appointed judge, jury and executioner. 
Hardly what you’d expect from a poster child for the whole “social media transparency and sharing” schtick.

2 – Flickr customer service is a total #PRfail

sucks really hard

The most innovative, forward-thinking (and yes, successful) companies are using social media to engage with customers, listen to what they say and address problems and shortcomings.
The time it took Flickr to let us know our account had been pulled would be a source of embarrassment to anyone professing to practice even rudimentary customer service.
The fact we were cut off arbitrarily is bad enough. That we then contacted Flickr and the first point of contact wasn’t able to immediately tell us this (or explain why) is laughable.
To compound the calamitous bad practice, when they finally did give us an explanation it said only that we’d breached guidelines – with no detail, or elaboration.
So just to recap it seems to work like this over at Flickr Towrs:

• Take the money from paying customers (yes, we PAID and weren’t on the free service)
• Take a unilateral decision to pull that account without explanation or warning
• Take an inordinate amount of time to acknowledge the account was pulled (and didn’t disappear because of hacking, user failure or non-payment)
• Take the paying customer to the limits of their patience, by putting this down to a “breach”, without specifying any details.

Seems it’s all take-take-take over at Flickr – and not in a good way. Here’s how I reckon any self-respecting company (social media or otherwise) would have handled this customer issue:

• Take the time to contact a customer and explain any breaches of protocol.
• Make an effort to listen to any mitigating circumstances
• Rake in other opinion and factors, including looking at the site history, visitor feedback etc
• Shake the whole thing together – so that any final decision is based on sound judgement and gives the customer some sense of having been dealt with even-handedly.

3 – Lawyers, sales people and unpopular professions hide behind small print. Now Flickr does too!

Suck it up

Here’s a newsflash Flickr – no-one reads the small print.
Especially when it comes to the fun and well-intentioned stuff of social media.
Generally small print is the preserve of complex legal transactions, ass-coverers, petty officials, those with a need to confound and those with a high expectation of customer dissatisfaction.
Most of us accept social media sites have to include small print to cover the legal possibilities when working with millions of people across multiple interests and without geographical borders.
We also expect that 99.9% of the time this jargon-filled and legalese mgumbo is entirely irrelevent to us and the only people who really need to read it are lawyers or insomniacs.
Most of us understand what is really important – that social media isn’t the Wild West and the basic guidelines of legality, decency and respect for others still have to be followed.
Isn’t the whole point of social media that that it rips up the rulebooks? In a way the only rules are: Engage, converse and share without expecting to benefit in return.
Wasn’t social media meant to change the culture of small print and inflexible, hidebound bureaucracy?
It seems not. Pulling our account without warning and expecting a link to your small print to suffice by way of an explanation should make Flickr’s people shudder with embarrassment.

4 – Flickr deceives with its use of language

Yo Suckr!

After pulling the rug from under us, Flickr made the point that it is a sharing platform for individuals – and not for businesses.
Fair play.
However, if that’s the case, then why does it offer an enhanced paid-for service called ‘Pro’?
My understandable assumption was that I was paying for the privilege of an enterprise version, aimed at professionals rather than enthusiastic amateurs and hobbyists.
If ‘Pro’ doesn’t mean ‘Professional’ then what does it mean? Does ‘Pro’ somehow translate as ‘Hobbyist Plus’ or ‘Amateur Extra’?
The fact remains that what we shared (free of charge) with the rest of the Flickr community on a daily basis was the work of our professional photographers. Yep, Pros.
We weren’t selling the images. There were no prices, no charges, no attempt to advertise.
In short, there was no subterfuge, no sleight of hand, no deception nor any attempt to deceive.
Every image we shared was the pick of any news assignment, with an informative caption. We were sharing, with no expectation of any return.
In fact, the only lack of clarity here is what  Flickr means by  ‘Pro’.
That isn’t the only fast and loose wordplay by the picture sharing giant.  Just how do they define “business”, I wonder?
Broadly speaking I’d expect business to mean a focused, money-making enterprise. In fact, The Oxford English dictionary defines it as: “one’s regular occupation, profession or trade”.
So, if Flickr is for individuals rather than businesses, then presumably any and every professional photographer – whether a one man band or part of a bigger enterprise – is banned from using the service? Aye, right.
Calling an enhanced paid-for service ‘Pro’ then claiming it is not for businesses or professionals is simply the worst kind of oily and deceptive word play.

5 – Flickr disregards the behaviour of its own community

Sucks like Flickr

In our case Flickr’s decision was unilateral and also seems entirely arbitrary.
While they had no engagement with us at all, it seems the  decision to cancel our account also paid little, if any, attention to the behaviours of Flickr’s own members.
Let’s start with the member I’m most concerned about – Deadline.
Here’s what’s important: every day Deadline’s professional photographers chose a single image from each photo assignment and uploaded it to Flickr, along with an informative caption.
This ticked all the boxes of responsible social media engagement. We were sharing informative, interesting, engaging and newsworthy content in real time with the Flickr community.
By paying for a ‘Pro’ account, we also contributed to Flickr’s income while delivering them stacks of content.
Even a cursory look at our account and our history would have shown that, despite being a business, we were categorically NOT selling images – but sharing them. But let’s look beyond our own narrow, one member perspective.
In the wider Flickr community was our content well received and well rated?
More than 10,000 visitors a month (a total of 166,000 in the past 10 months) thought so, with many leaving positive comments to thank us for sharing.
On a typical day 800 people viewed our stream. On our best day we got 16,000 visitors.
Flickr seemed totally oblivious to those stats when it switched off our account.
At best this shows little faith in its community of members – at worst it represents total disdain for the preferences of those members.

Flickr and its cutely misspelt name?  What a bunch of Wankrs.

Any other picture sharing services out there who’d be interested in hosting Deadline’s photographs, please do get in touch.

Great Comment Norbert!

Web Seal of Approval

A splendid moment of light relief this morning, with just the tiniest touch of schadenfreude.

Listening to the latest podcast from Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson I couldn’t help but chuckle when Shel responded to a listener’s contribution with an enthusiastic, “Great comment, Norbert”.

Nothing funny in that – except that the listener in question was actually Daniel P. Bingham, a communicator out of Manhattan.

Let me state here and now – Shel Holtz is a legend and his podcast with Neville (For Immediate Release, known as FIR) is a work of genius and a must-listen for anyone working in media. There is absolutely no slight intended on Shel or Daniel.

Anybody can get a name wrong – and I frequently do .

In this case it was entirely excusable since FIR has been inundated with listener comments and contributions to celebrate its landmark 500th episode (check Twitter #fir500).

Add to that the fact that someone called Norbert is among the regular commentators on the show and Shel’s slip is even easier to understand. In fact, it was so trivial it should have slipped by totally unnoticed.

However, Norbert is just one of those names.

In certain parts of the world it is probably as ordinary as Dave or Jim (or Scott). But here in Scotland I’ve never come across anyone called Norbert, unless they were either the speccy bullying victim/villainous henchman in a Harry Potter book.

So, with my schoolboy-grade sense of humour it was transformed from an easily-made slip of the tongue into a memorable moment in my day.

And hey, sometimes all this social media stuff seems like an awful lot of serious graft and hard work, so I’ll take the occasional chuckle where I can get it.

I remember in the 1990s when Loaded magazine burst onto the scene in the UK  and its irreverent catchprhase, Good work fella (GWF) became a byword for anything the magazine and its staff liked a lot.

Well, from this day forward I plan to use Great Comment Norbert! for anything online which gets my stamp of approval. And if anybody asks why, I can refer them back to those post to explain why.

So on top of the many hours of pleasure I’ve had from listeing to Shel’s podcasts with Neville I now owe him thanks for this wee gem.

Good work fella – or should I say, Great Comment Norbert!

 

Listen Up! This Podcasting Malarkey is Harder Than it Sounds.

QND Podcast

I’ve recently made a foray into podcasting, along with Shaun Milne, who may also be familiar to blog readers through his Milne Media musings. The pair of us do everything we can to keep on top of social media.

However, bear in mind that Shaun’s real work is running Deadline Press & Picture Agency, a busy multi-media agency turning out top quality news , photography and video. Meanwhile I find plenty to occupy my time running Scottish PR agency, Holyrood Partnership.

There’s loads of innovative and exciting stuff out there on t’interweb, much of it reported by genuinely well-informed social media experts.

However, there’s also a lot of hot air- recycled and regurgitated by so-called “new media experts” whose raison d’etre seems to be to get themselves on the lucrative talking circuit.

What strikes me most is that they don’t seem to hold down anything I’d recognise as a job. So Shaun and I thought people in the Scottish media – whether in journalism or public relations – might have the same problems we do: wondering how to manage busy jobs, family and social lives and still find time for keeping up with the latest developments online, where change is the only constant.

From that small acorn grew the Quiet News Day podcast. Not quite an oak tree, but the first green shoots of … well, something we hope. Anyway, I’ve just finished the edit on QND #3 and it will be uploaded and live on November 18 for anyone who cares to check it out.

At this point, I should say that it runs to more than 50 minutes – and that each episode has been longer than the previous. The only defence I can offer is that each episode also features less of me and Shuan – and more from guests, including regular contributor, Craig McGill.

This week’s guest chat is with Stewart Argo, media manager at the City of Edinburgh Council. Our thanks to him for joining us at the Cask and Barrel in Broughton Street Edinburgh durigng a busy lunch break. I hope the 18 minute edit does justice to our wide-ranging and enjoyable chat.

I also hope it will reassure the hundreds of other people in publice service or in-house PR teams who are also nervously wondering what exactly they should be doing about this new social networking thingummy. Stewart certainly shares our experience that it is a hard graft getting to grips with all these new forms of communication – while still doing all the traditional media relations and other gubbins we take for granted.

Dunno about you, but in the past two years I’ve had to learn video editing on several software formats, the intricacies of numerous blogging platforms, various content management systems while also getting to grips with some fairly advanced SEO techniques. And that’s before I even get to Facebook, Twitter et al.

Crikey – until all that landed, I was still trying to master basic Photoshop and how to work the remote control for the DVD player – or trying to remember to use that mystical tool that is spellcheck for Word documents.

The point is this: now I’m also having to learn about audio recording levels, digital editing, balance levels, sound compression, music licensing rights and converting files from format-to-format. And it’s much (much!) harder than I thought.

So if you do tune in and listen to the latest episode of QND (its on iTunes or more easily found at http://web.me.com/quietnewsday/Quiet_News_Day/Podcast/Podcast.html),then cut us some slack if it sounds a bit rough and ready.

We appreciate it’s not quite as slick as it might be – but that aside, we’d love to hear your feedback, your suggestions for future topics and ideas for polls, interviewees or any other constructive criticism. Then switch on the Bachman-Turner Overdrive and get ready for something rock-a-tock-a-tabulous, mate.

You can get us on Twitter @quietnewsday or by email through quietnewsday@me.com

So You Want To Impress The Bossman With Your Social Media Skills? Here’s How

Loving this presentation on measuring the Return on Investment (ROI) of social media activities.

Funny as hell and very informative.

But life didn’t half just get a lot harder for the dedicated PR.

Olivier Blanchard Basics Of Social Media Roi

View more presentations from Olivier Blanchard.

Warring Social Media Pair Need to Have A REAL Conversation

Iain Hepburn and Gordon White

I’m troubled by a rather unfortunate spat between two of Glasgow’s leading advocates of social media.

In the red corner sits the Daily Record’s digital editor, Iain Hepburn, a man who is not only at the forefront of changes in the Scottish news industry, but also a voracious consumer and analyst of all things digital.

In the blue corner is Gordon White, the man behind Podcast Matters, which encourages business to embrace social media – most recently through his freshly launched New Media Breakfasts, which are proving a huge hit.

I’m fortunate enough to have a passing acquaintance with both – though couldn’t claim to really know either. So, I don’t feel half as uncomfortable as I might at tossing in my tuppenceworth.

Differences of opinions emerged between the pair after Gordon’s first New Media Breakfast in Glasgow. The rift deepened after the second event a few days ago.

As you might expect, it’s a disagreement that’s been played out through a subsequent flurry of audioboos, blogs and tweets .

All very fittingly ‘new media’, but definitely not very  ‘social’.

It strikes me there are two people here heading in the same direction – but arguing feverishly over whether they should find the destination  using one man’s expensive sat nav, or the other man’s equally expensive iPhone with GPS app.

Perhaps I can suggest an old school solution – the equivalent of handing over a humble, dog-eared copy of the A-Z?

Having followed the debate so far I can’t really see much to disagree about. All the eloquent points and counterpoints are delivered well across multiple platforms.

Yet I gather these two haven’t actually so much as exchanged half a dozen words, despite being in the same room together at least twice.

As proponents of social media are so keen to remind us, Web 2.0 in in all its multicoloured glory is all about conversation. So sit down and have one, gentlemen.

 In my own, albeit limited experience, Scotland doesn’t have nearly enough people pushing the boundaries of Web 2.0 in the media or in business. So we could do without those who are falling out over … well, nothing really.

When I suggest you have that conversation in “real time”, I mean put away your iPhones, leave the Flips in their cases and don’t bother booting up the supersleek laptops.

Just enjoy a good, old-fashioned blether across a pint or a mug of coffee. Hopefully for the rest of us, you’ll  find there isn’t that much to disagree about after all.

Is This The Best PR Goodie Bag in Scotland This Year?

PR goodie bag

I could get used to this ligging thing.

Not only did the nice people at Missoni treat me to as much free food and drink as I could possibly manage  – they also gave me this very generous goodie bag.

It was all part of the official launch party which took place for the chic new Edinburgh venue last week (or October 22, 2009, for those who like precise dates).

Thanks due to the hardworking team at Stripe Communications for arranging the invite.

Since I may be having to pull together something similar at some point, t’would be good to hear from PRs and journos alike on their favourite, free PR  goodie bag experiences.

To see the contents of the goodie bag (I made a video – sad, I know) see the full post at our Holyrood Partnership blog, HP Sauce.

Five Minutes to Change the World – Because Shift Happens!

From the nice people at Shift Happens / Did You Know. Recommended viewing, particularly if you are in the media:

Plug In To The Power Of The Humble Billboard. No Cable Required.

Powermat. Wirleless charging

Terribly old-fashioned, I know. But this morning my eye was caught by the quaintest of media throwbacks. A billboard.

Not a digital display. Not a clever spinny-thing with three different, rotating ads.

Just a basic billboard pasted up by the side of the road, hopefully  by a guy with a ladder, a bucket and a big brush.

Lose The Cords It urged in three foot high letters – accompanied by a pic of rather fetching young woman with lots of power cables wrapped round her napper.

Taking a mental note of the product on show (Powermat, should you be interested), as soon as I got into the office, I checked it out on Google.

Yes, my life would benefit from this hi-tech work of genius (maybe they’ll send me one to review?). All I needed was was a nice, stolid, unfashionable, unglamorous and rigidly rooted billboard to tell me so.

Read this full post at the HP Sauce blog of Holyrood Partnership, public relations in Scotland

Don’t call them Muppets – they’re living legends!

LEGEND: Kermit

PR in Scotland is a pretty small fishpond.

Scottish PR agencies large and small depend on the patronage of the great and good in the business and cultural community.

So it wouldn’t ever do to offend anybody really important.

Deep breath.  I’ll just have to hope that giants of Edinburgh life, Charlie Miller and Richard Demarco, have a sense of humour.

When they were photographed together at the Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce AGM, only one thought sprung to mind…

Read the rest of this post and see the pictures at the Holrood Partnership blog, HP Sauce