Roll up, roll up it's free Flip Friday!

By James Bennett, Managing Online Editor, Melcrum

This year will arguably go down as the 12 months when budgets were dramatically tightened and social media took hold of both personal and business worlds and forever blurred the lines between business and pleasure. Twitter, Linked In, Yammer as well as blogs, video blogs, phlogs (phone blogs, and yes I dislike the name as much as you do), wikis and podcasts to name a few, are now being used in communication departments across the world to engage with employees and leaders and spread the right messages to the right audience with simplicity, immediacy and transparency.

Social media has now become mass media and that’s here to stay. More importantly, you are increasingly using it your benefit within the internal communication community. In this month’s Melcrum Key Benchmark Data for Communicators survey, for example we discovered that 40% of you said you were planning to use blogs (38.5%), web casts (34.8%), podcasting (34%) and wikis (31%). Crucially, however, online video was rated as the most important social media tool currently being used in your communication strategies.

So to help you take the first step towards incorporating video into your communication mix, we're offering a FREE Flip Digital Video Camera worth £100 to the next 25 people who register for the SCM Summit and workshops. And today is the LAST DAY so make sure you click here to take advantage of the offer.

If you want to see two great examples of how to use the Flip and the great image quality, check these two videos out that I took when interviewing Abi Signorelli, Director of internal comms at Virgin Media and Stephen Martin, CEO of construction company Clugston Group, star of Channel 4’s Undercover Boss series and guest speaker at the forthcoming SCM Summit in London on 15th October.

Just think of the great information you could capture with a flip if you went undercover!

Recruits face online interviews in Second Life

By Annie Waite, Global Editor of the Internal Comms Hub, Melcrum

Did you hear about Second Life's virtual job fair earlier this year? It saw 2,000 visitors show up to "watch" 300 nervous interviewees field the tough questions – and eBay, HP, Microsoft, Sodexho, T-Mobile, and Verizon were apparently some of the organisations that took part.

I was thinking that perhaps forward-thinking communication agencies, for example, or those seeking more technically-savvy or innovative comms employees might want to give that kind of social media-based recruitment method for communicators a try?

I wonder if any of this blog's readers took part or know someone who did? It'd be interesting to find out how successful it was, so please let us know...

Soundtrack to the blog: Escape (the Second Life Song) by Niko Donburi - yes, it seems there is such a thing!

Show us your virtual VIP pass

I'm off to the Latitude festival this weekend and preparations for it reminded me that at the end of June a rather different kind of music festival took place, requiring no packing, no hulking of a great big rucksack a few hundred miles and no donning of enormous waterproof poncho. This other festival I mention wasn't in leafy Suffolk, but in the less rainy environs of Cyberspace. Yes, Secondfest has, inevitably, arrived. It came and went, complete with the Pet Shop Boys as headliners, a virtual VIP tent, showers and portaloos and even a car park.

Anyway, my point? Well, what with companies increasingly making more effort toward adopting greener practices (and if Live Earth last weekend was anything to go by), once lavish employee reward and entertainment events may soon have to become more humble affairs, like the relatively pollution-free Secondfest.

But what do you anticipate being employees' reactions to such moves? Joy that they're playing their part in saving the world - if they do so voluntarily, or otherwise - or disappointment that the treats/part of their incentive for working for their company has altered? It's a tricky one. 

(If you're interested in reading more about communicating your company's "green" initiatives, this month's Internal Comms Hub focuses on green comms issues.)

Soundtrack to the blog: Stone Roses - The Second Coming

Watching Tennis in Second Life: What’s the point?

There is some comfort for tennis fans wanting to watch this year’s Wimbledon but without the incessant rain: why not watch it in Second Life?

Apart from the guarantee of clear skies in a virtual world, why (on earth) would anyone want to?

The answer it seems is the introduction of Hawkeye technology to track the trajectory and impact point of each shot in three dimensions, making dubious line-calls and John McEnroe-esque rants, a thing of the past. On Second Life this means you can watch the game from any angle on your terms.

It seems to prove the point once again that just because something is technically possible, doesn’t necessarily make it worth doing.

Anyone really interested can watch the video:

Dismissing forward thinking. Again.

A few years ago a similar story to the one I’m about to link to probably crossed the newswires and desks of people all around the world: two big technology companies adopt an existing but potentially massive idea for use in their own businesses, with the idea of improving organization-wide communication, both internally, and even eternally with clients, stakeholders etc.

The two companies involved were IBM and Sun Microsystems (yes, I’ve talked endlessly about them before on this blog, in our shiny new social media report and a lot of other places) and that story from a few years ago would have been talking about those two companies and their corporate blogging programs, which are now hugely successful and were years ahead of the rest of the world.

So, now the same story but with something new instead of blogging has again come up, and this time it's all about......virtual worlds.

Both IBM and Sun, who’ve tested out the increasingly criticised Second Life, have gone and built their own virtual worlds running on their own servers, without any of the nasty, unwashed general public darkening the purpose. A sort of "virtual world intranet" according to the discovering article over at GigaOm.

Here’s a few excerpts from the article, which I highly recommend reading in full.

……The idea is to bring remote workers in Sun’s worldwide offices together into a single embodied space, “where the spacial layout of the 3D world coupled with the immersive audio provides strong cognitive cues that enhance collaboration.” In IBM’s case, it’s a rough-and-ready 3D environment created [in house] by their Innovate Quick team, using the Torque graphics engine from Garage Games….

…..“The project team is exploring ways to scale, and also applying different models of operation,” Ian Hughes of IBM’s UK branch tells me. “We are building a user base of interested users and developers as part of our CIO office technology adoption program.” ….

….“What we need is the ability to gather some people together and use the human aspects of the avatar interaction to be more effective in our communications.”…

…..While some Net pundits have quickly dismissed Fortune 500 interest in virtual worlds as mere marketing hype, it’s projects like these which suggest that high tech companies are serious about their potential to transform the Internet. If they privately come up with new protocols and technology that adds real value to the way they do business, the future of the broader Net as a 3D medium is all but insured….

….By the same token, they may just end up adding another level of aggravation to the conference call…..

So, we’ve all been playing catch up to the IBMs and the Suns with blogs, wikis etc, because  regardless of whether you're from Silicon Valley or Thames Valley, social media is big news for businesses, industries and sectors of every type these days (even politicians are using Twitter for example).

What’s the betting in a few years time people will be taking virtual worlds a bit more seriously and wishing they'd done something about them a bit sooner? Anyone care for a virtual fiver each way?

Alex

P.S. You'll see in the GigaOm story and Sun's own page about their virtual world that both companies use Macs quite a lot. Forward thinking indeed ;-)

Is Second Life getting too similar to the real world?

First terrorist bombings and now, child abuse in Second Life. So much bad publicity for Linden Labs could turn people off using Second Life. It's kind of scary how people can hide behind their avatars and become who they want.

It made me wonder, when companies have meetings in Second Life, are employees genuine? Do they feel that they can say more/less, or be more bold or slack because they're hiding behind an avatar rather than sitting in a boardroom staring their manager in the face? I don't know if I could talk business with my manager if his avatar was say, a pink haired goth...

Sona

The dark side to social media

Is it my imagination, or is there a groundswell of opinion that social media is a force of ultimate evil in the universe? OK. I may be exaggerating a teeny bit, but social media is suddenly mainstream news. From spoof profiles set up by Oxford University students cruelly claiming a professor was a member of the Hitler Youth, to inappropriate photos taken unawares (this link has been duly censored!) on MySpace, education professionals are being harassed the world over. Then there was every parents' nightmare, the teen party advertised on MySpace that drew hundreds of party-goers who promptly trashed the house, swinging from light fittings and baracading themselves in against worried neighbours. Add to that the numerous stories of identity theft reported on social networking sites like FaceBook like the one reported on Canuckflack.com and the frankly, weird and illegal activies of some Second Lifers.  Clearly social media is acquiring a big image problem. Whilst many sites are, to some extent, policed by their members, who alert administrators to inappropriate material, social networking sites are struggling to police the chaos. So what does this all mean for corporations rushing to embrace social media? Well, an employment contract makes a big difference to what people are prepared to do online. The threat of dismissal is enough to make most people think twice. And organizations have an established course of action to bring order to private networks. Lawmakers are beginning to catch up and set legal precedents which will make prosecuting the offenders easier and deter the chancers. But until then, social networks are in danger of being the whipping boys of the tabloid press and social media the poor relation of the more established media. So, here's drawing a line under all this neg-head bull. Anyone know any human interest stories from the corporate world that can be told about how long-lost colleagues were reunited on LinkedIn or how social media 'saved my life'? Robin Crumby

The Melcrum Podcast 11th April 2007: Shownotes

We've just published the first edition of the all-new Melcrum Podcast.

You can download the show here (13.7Mb) in mp3 format.

The show is focused on Melcrum's recent Social Media Forum event, and begins with Melcrum editorial assistant, Sona Hathi, interviewing various forum delegates (starting at 0:57) to find out what they're doing with social media at moment, and what they're planning for the future (starting at 4:29).

She also asks them what they'd call themselves if they had avatars in the virtual world of Second Life, and gets some unexpected replies (starts at 5:50)!

In the second half (starts at 7:29), we go on to talk to some of our expert speaker line-up to get their insights into social media.

First, I spoke to David Ferrabee, MD of change & internal comms for Hill & Knowlton (starts at 7:39) about how to persuade companies that blogging can benefit them, and then with social media guru and FIR podcaster Neville Hobson (starts at 9:52) about what he thinks is around the corner.

Then we finish off by speaking to IBM's European new media team leader, Philippe Borremans, about just how it's developing its own social media strategy (11:59).

The whole podcast is about 16 minutes long, so it should fit snuggly into your journey to work.

Once you've had a listen why not come back here and post a comment on this blog entry to let us know what you think of the podcast.

A very social survey

This week's Source for Comms focuses on our recent Social Media Survey, which revealed that many internal communicators now view the technology as the future of their profession.

But won't the traditional internal comms tools like the company meeting and the staff newsletter have a place in this brave new world?  In the end, isn't good old fashioned face-to-face contact still the way to make people feel wanted and give them a better understanding of what they're doing?

Day 2 at the social media forum: Anybody got a cluetrain.com?

Annie, day two of the Social Media Forum turned out to have two major themes, online video and blogging, and just how easy and effective, the two can be.

Both blogging consultant, Debbie Weil, and Microsoft blogging evangelist, Steve Clayton (he's also the firm's UK Partner Group CTO), showed how easy it is to do amazing stuff with blogs.

Steve also has one of the coolest business cards ever, which I couldn't resist scanning, so all you folks can see it:

The monster, BTW, is a metaphor for the big bad Microsoft that we all used to know and dislike.

Steve's presentation focussed on how this has changed, at least in part because the company has developed an effective policy to get its employees  blogging and show the monster is in fact full of nice, normal people who really want to make good software, not take over the world.

If you want to know more have a look at Geek in Disguise, Steve's blog.

So its not the Bill and Steve (Ballmer) show any longer.

The best bit of Debbie's presentation was where she showed how, using youtube, its really, really easy to put video content into your blog as well. And since its a Friday, I thought I'd have a go (an oldie, but a goodie, I think you'll agree):

I also need to give a quick mention to Richard Dennison and Ross Chestney, respectively the internal programme manager and the head of communication services for BT. Like Steve Clayton, Ross and Richard have their own story of breaking down institutional barriers to the way it communicates.

Emphasizing the benefits of starting out small, they talked about introducing innovations like the BTpedia. As they say, if the experiment doesn't require much investment to start, no-one's going to shout at you if it fails. So why not give it a try?

PS. And cluetrain? Ross mentioned the site during his presentation, with a heavy recomendation that anyone who thinks they're anyone in social media should go and have a read. So here a link, www.cluetrain.com, go read.

PPS. My version was ' Sports champ vicar's drink-drive shame after wife's death.'