Ofcom, the media and telecoms regulator released a report today, discussing the state of communciations in the UK.

"Consumers spent 429 minutes, or more than seven hours a day, watching television, listening to radio, surfing the internet and making fixed-line and mobile calls in 2007, compared with 423 minutes in 2002."

FT.com reported it and mentioned although we as a nation thrive for novelty of the digital age, old habits die hard. 

Have a look here for all the detail on the FT article.
 

I've just been introduced to VoxSwap, a great way for those who are wanting to learn a language and connect with people who can teach you.

It doesn't matter if you are a student needing help to get better language grades, a former student who doesn't want to let their language skills go rusty or a business person needing to speak another language for work. VoxSwap's premise is to ensure you can talk to real people and offer one another pointers on how to excel in a language.

This is another example of the beneficial uses of social networking, an alternative to Facebook! Whereby you can actually do something useful and stimulating whilst socialising. 

To have a look and register go to http://www.voxswap.com/

The article posted by FT.com columnist Michael Skapinker has been a hot topic within Digital lately.

He asks the question, "How will consumers respond if they sense the companies’ hand – or that of their PR advisers – behind future campaigns?"

As a company, we work with many brands and look at innovative and creative ways of engaging with their audience. In the past our services have predominantly focused on traditional media. However, with the change in our social behaviour, which seems to rely more and more on the internet, no wonder as communications agencies we are looking at other avenues of conversation. If we weren't, we would be out of business in the very near future.

However, I do feel that it's more a question of where is the world of marketing leading.  How are brands adapting to this phenomenon of social media and how are we as a society communicate and influence each other? That is the real question, from there it leads us to a world of opportunity of creativity and conversation!

What I do find interesting about his article, is that here he is working within a Web 2.0 world, blogging about his opinions expressing them openly, which is great. He speaks about how brands want to control this medium, however should his readers want to send comments one needs to email them through. What happened to user-generated content and open forum of discussion?

My colleague Guy sent him an article which has not been published as yet and took it upon himself to blog about it...He is definitely a more eloquent writer than myself. Have a read...and let me know what how you feel social media is affecting the PR industry or perhaps how PR is influencing social media...

We're in sunny Phoenix, Arizona, USA discussing the importance of Digital at Hill & Knowlton and showcasing our work globally. CEO, Paul Taffe has just spoken about the role of Digital for H&K, Niall blogged about this, to view click here. Right now Niall Cook, Peter Imbres and James Gregson are presenting Social Media Principles.

Why do we need it? There are no rules when engaging with Social Media, until someone makes a mistake, someone broken the rules that is when clients recognise it.  It's about how we respond to these mistakes which is the important part and keeping ahead of the trends to ensure crisis management.

Guidelines for personal and offical blogs and social media engagement including a code of conduct. Mainly to protect Hill & Knowlton and its clients' reputations.

We need to focus on encouraging clients to be transparent, authentic and encourage participation. As Niall says, "Yes it's about listening and about understanding, but it's about participation if we encourage dialogue."

Peter discusses the difference between Social Media and traditional media. Social media describes online technologies and practices that people use to share content, opinions, insights, experiences, perspectives and media themselves and cannot be measured the same as traditional media. Social media is about trust and a vehicle for word-of-mouth.

James discusses blogger outreach, our approach with both the client and bloggers. How it should fit in the greater marketing campaign, fully integrated in the mix. He finishes off with some facts:
1. All major social networking sites have developed a mobile functionality to access your network - 61% were in the femail / maile 16-24 range.
2. According to MMA, 22% of mobile phone users were open to receiving and engaging with products via their mobile phone.

I think Digital, is no longer about the Internet only online and it's no longer about pushing editorial / information to users and consumers. It's about engaging with communities, changing the perception of traditional branding and how our PR function fits or even drives that...

I know it's been almost a year since Netcoms blogged, which is quite sad as Social Media and blogging in particular are our core strengths.  Although it is the agreement that what you do best, you do last for yourself!
 
Alas, it is now revived, and best you hold on to your seats, because the very first piece of knowledge you'll be receiving from our team is that we have a new identity! No longer are we 'Netcoms', or 'Netcomms', or 'Net Comms 'or 'Net What'? We are now called...Digital! 

The reason for simplicity I'm assuming is for those who go blank whenever you mention anything related to IT can grasp it straight away:-)

First piece of enlightenment I would like to share with you is how word of mouth is the #1 influence on business purchase decisions and is best leveraged through face-to-face marketing efforts...click here
 

Just how do you follow Burger King's legendary viral 'Subservient Chicken'? Well, the wags at Crispin Porter + Bogusky keep trying with various degrees of success.

The latest chicken-themed campaign is Huckin Chicken, involving a man on a motorcycle in a chicken suit performing a series of increasingly dangerous stunts. The viral is a clever extension of the related Burger King ads using behind the scenes footage. As the number of visitors grows, they show additional clips, leading to a 'world record' chicken jump after 1m visitors.

At the time of writing, I'm not aware of whether the Guinness Book of Records has added the record to their books. Perhaps they are waiting for other flying chickens to come forward first?

Given its relation to the ads, it is heavier branded than previous virals, with brand mentions in the ad, on the back of the bike and the final ads themselves on display.

It's well executed and another creative piece of work, but maybe it's time to move on now, guys. We've all seen enough viral chickens for one lifetime.

P.S. One disturbing note was a throwaway comment saying that the pit was specially dug to film the footage as 'originally this was all giant redwoods'. I sincerely hope not, as I know which I'd prefer to see.

Thanks to a particularly savage set of keys, my right hand pocket is officially out of action today. This leads to a storage issue for all of the gadgets I have been accumulating in recent weeks, now that it is jackets-off for the summer.

And it appears I am not alone in experiencing this increasingly common problem in modern society.

My poor overworked left pocket now has to cope with wallet, keys, MP3 player and phone, leaving it surely at breaking point. Just as well I'm not carrying a BlackBerry or digital camera. Fortunately, my independent-minded pedometer is at home on a belt.

Given the growing convergence of devices the solution may be to have one of the combined MP3 players and phone. The problem is that no single, affordable device acts as a panacea.

My digital camera takes better pictures than my mobile phone. My MP3 player is more intuitive and has better storage than my mobile phone. Those devices are out there, but will have to go through the early adopter pricing phase before they are viable for my pocket (in all senses of the word).

With the steady growth of m-commerce, mobile transactions will become more trusted and prevalent, allowing me to reduce wallet space, although again it will face the issues of trust and technology that e-commerce went through.

Indeed, even my pedometer's days could be numbered through the likes of GPS. But not anytime soon.

Until then it's time to get out the needle and thread and fix that pocket.

Sometimes Google is just too clever for its own good. I've blogged before about Google's predictive search and the sometimes strange assumptions that it makes about your searching intentions.

I received an unusual email today from someone calling me a 'dingle', which I believe is a reference to my footballing allegiances. Keen to see if I was being insulted or not, I did a quick Google for a 'dingle'. Ever the clever clogs, the predictive search result came back 'See results for house of fraser'. Eh?

More digging quickly unearthed that the House of Fraser had acquired Dingles back in the 70s. Now this could be an obscure reference to my fashion sense, but footballing insults are rarely that sophisticated.

Another scan down the results brought up Emmerdale's Dingle family (bad eggs in a UK countryside soap opera). Bingo! Southampton is not a major metropolis (it's a city though), therefore I am a (London-based) country boy.

Back to the drawing board, Google. Unless of course Dingles do shop at the House of Fraser after all.