A picture of Australian MySpace users…

I just read the results of a census of Australian MySpace users on mumbrella which labelled users as “Calvin Klein-wearing, Corona-swilling, dope-smoking, teeth-brushing, Coke-guzzling, Lynx-spraying social networking machines”. The conclusion was reached based on a survey by MySpace into the opinions and attitudes of 2,000 of its 2.4m Australian users to build up the picture of their favourite brands.

The mouthful of a sentence conjures up a very interesting mental image and I can’t help but wonder - what would a photo of an Australian MySpace user look like?!?

The stats on Aussie MySpace users were quite interesting (I found the one on Colgate’s popularity – 81%! – to be of most interest, must be the ex dental nurse inside of me), and knowing many MySpace addicts myself I found the profile to be scarily accurate.

It all provokes some still unanswered questions about how brands are engaging with existing fan bases online for their own benefit. I wonder whether this level of brand advocacy is news to Colgate today?

Yay we won!

No more internet censorship plan by Australian federal govt - yay we won! For now at least.

I never thought I could be so pleased at someone called Xenophon! But it seems the Federal Govt's plan to introduce mandatory internet censorship has been drop-kicked off the cards - thanks to Greens and Nick Xenophon's joining of ranks with the Opposition.

Thanks to Asher at SMH online for breaking the story (to me at least) and for this handy fact: The Opposition's communications spokesman Nick Minchin has this week obtained independent legal advice saying that if the Government is to pursue a mandatory filtering regime "legislation of some sort will almost certainly be required".

Now watch the blogosphere go crazy people!

Help your customers help you

OK, I confess I am increasingly consuming my online content in the form of images and videos - very unlike me (I don't love TV as much as a good book). Perhaps it is a sign of the affliction known as Information Addiction - it's quick and effective. Anyway, I love this - it is a short video which really helps to explain how your customer is thinking about you, and why they want to interact with you, and why the way they want to partake in that interaction is changing (for your benefit!)


Our Identity in Flux and the Role Brands Can Play from Amanda Mooney on Vimeo.

Seth Godin speaks...

Really interesting minute-long Q&A with Seth Godin, the genius author, entreprenuer... visionary. He answers the question; is social networking important for business....?

What's a nice girl like you...?

I just emailed @brooke__ about a whitepaper one of our clients had shared with us overnight (they are in the UK). My email did little to contain my excitement, and she now thinks I am peculiar.... why? Well, the whitepaper is about MPLS, my all time favourite technology.

I can hear you wondering, if you don't already know, what on earth MPLS might be that could get a respectable girl like me, proud bearer of a non-techy history degree, all excited.

Back in the UK, from whence I was shipped last year, I was a telecoms specialist and MPLS stands for Multi Protocol Label Switching. Essentially MPLS gives a label to every packet of data transmitted over the network so you can prioritise, say, VoIP traffic over email, or whatever.

I know, I know, you still think its boring. Well this technology lead to some of the coolest case studies I have ever seen - radio stations migrating to a single IP network for voice, data AND their broadcasts!! By day they transmitted locally produced content, by night the entire network switched to a single broadcast (probably naff love songs and requests) all transmitted to the local stations over the IP network. If it weren't for MPLS they would never risk it because a single fat email could knock the broadcast off air.

So, dear reader, please don't think we PR folk accidentally fell into technology with our history degrees and wotnot... some of us have become really rather geeky in our old age.

Its not just about them

Today, watching my Twitter stream I was sulking slightly at all the #Kickstart09 tweets - all those lucky journalists and vendors up in sunny Queensland. So I idly tweeted:

EmVicW: Thinking we also need #notatkickstart just to make me feel less alone ;-)

And suddenly I am feeling very proud because in the last hour all the PRs, vendors and journalists who have *not* gone to Queensland for the gathering have crept out and declared themselves. Handily we now all know who is, and who is not at Kickstart. Excellent.

Emboldened by my prowess, I decided to reveal a plan I had been a-planning for a while:

EmVicW: Looking to start a Sydney tech PR informal networking scene. Who would be interested?

I already have four replies from non Kinetics folk, and know a few other people in my Twitter network will be up for it once they are back from their meetings or whatever it was they tweeted was keeping them busy this afternoon.

I am keen for PR folk in Sydney to get to know each other a little better, because we have so much in common. Without threatening anyone's competitive secrets I think we can definitely pally up a little more over a pint of beer, to the benefit of the general standards of PR.

Keep you posted on how we go!

A bit of a warning from Anthill

Look out - Anthill contributor, prolific blogger and social media commentator/consultant Mick Liubinskas reviews the process of PR's sending him free stuff to test and write about, all in a rather amusing video!

Check it out below, it's a bit of real insight into what really goes through a journo's mind when they receive product with a couple of handy what not to do tips as well!

Music rights

Interesting to see that Warner Music's fall out with Google has lead to the ever popular Gorilla/Genesis Cadbury Dairy Milk advert to be taken down from YouTube.

Warner Music was one of the first music houses to do a deal with YouTube, back in 2006. Google is YouTube's parent company.

Interesting because that advert was a viral success on the internet and now a dispute between two unrelated companies leaves Cadbury unable to reap any more benefits from its content. It will have acquired the rights to the advert for TV use, but I am guessing the contract must not extend to unlimited internet play back.

It should serve as a warning to marketing folk and lawyers everywhere to check and negotiate on DRM for any third party content when adding it to your own.

Instead, to attempt to fill the void here is Cadbury's new offering. Not as good (you can't replace a little Genesis with this noise), but rather amusing none-the-less!

Why an internet filter is not the answer

I mean like 'hello' when has blanket censorship ever worked people!

Mr Rudd sit up and listen to the hundreds of thousands of people arguing against the Aussie internet filter. I am most certainly not an advocate of child pornography or all the other nasties you may find on the internet but protecting children and ourselves is our own (and/or parent's) responsibility!

This is most definitely not the answer. Anyway, there are many many experts out there that have expressed this sentiment much more eloquently and logically than I so I will defer to them - in particular I highly recommend you check this out on the newly created site Trespass - which I might add is very cool, informative and funny. And soon to be contributed to by your friend and mine Tori...