Our new business information wiki – Business Essentials on the Web

As part of our continuing experimination with all things Web 2.0 (Social Media) we have created a wiki for essential business information. Still currently in beta, this wiki is a designed to allow any of my British Library business information colleagues to add useful links.

 

But more revolutionary (for the British Library) is that we are also opening up the wiki to anyone who has useful information to add. In particular our partners, who have expertise in a wide range of business support activities.

 

The wiki will be of help to people who are not able to come and visit our St Pancras building, and who find that Google does not provide all the answers.

 

Obviously we ony want useful content on the wiki, and will be taking any spam off straight away, much like you see on Wikipedia. Our wiki guidelines explain in more detail.

 

Please join our little community and add your comments and submit links of your own.

http://bl-business-essentials.wikispaces.com

 

The current hot topics are, Business planning, Grants and finance, Industry specific, Intellectual property, Marketing and PR.

If you have any ideas or comments on the wiki, you can email bipc@bl.uk

Free vs Fee – the Future of News – SLA Europe meeting 3 November

Another successful SLA Europe event this evening, this time at the swanky venue of the Crowne Plaza Hotel, five minutes away from Blackfriars station.

The hot topic was Free vs Fee – the Future of News. And stemmed from the fact that most newspapers have offered their content via the Internet for free with the expectation that display advertising would create enough revenue to cover the cost of creating and distributing their content. However, with the continuing decline in physical newspaper sales and the softening of the display advertising market, news organisations are exploring new ways to charge for their digital content.

On the panel were Jeremy  Lawson  VP Sales, EMEA, Dow Jones & Company, Andrew Hughes – Commercial Director for the Newspaper Licensing Agency (NLA), Laurence C. Rafsky Ph.D. – CEO of Acquire Media and Laurence Kaye – Principal at Laurence Kay Solicitors. The panel was excellently moderated by Donald Roll – Managing Director, Europe for Alacra.

Here are my notes from the evening:

Don Roll introduced the evening by talking about the steep decline in newspaper circulation, the recent arrival of the first free quality newspaper in the form of the London Evening Standard, and how the NLA wants to ensure newspaper publishers receive payment for web content.

Andrew Hughes – NLA initiatives

NLA are moving towards creating a set of licences for commercial use of newspaper websites.

UK newspapers spend £1b a year in creating this content, which is quite different from paper published information. For example 31% of newspaper websites has never appeared in print.

The plan is that for those who charge for access to newspaper content will be charged by the NLA, who will also charge end user clients for access to content.

Existing licences will be extended and new ones created where necessary

e-Clips Web – Working to improve access to content by using newspaper CMS systems.

Laurence Kay – The legal view – 10 key points

1. Professional journalism, ‘trusted content’ and UGC (user generated content)

2. Change takes time! Business models and culture takes time to change.

3. Global Media / local copyright?

4. If content is going to be free, why does copyright matter? Provides the framework for access and usage rights.

5. B2B versus consumer copyrights

6. ‘Effects-based’ approach to copyright. Helps to work out how to apply rules to the real world. Look at the commercial impact of activities.

7. ‘Legal’ versus ‘Illegal’ content. When to take action or technical measures over infringements.

8. Who are the ‘intermediaries’ in the value chain? E.g. Where does Google fit in? Searched for or ‘scraped’ conent?

9. ‘Fair Use’. Big variations across Europe. United States has a broad definition. If the use is commercial is that no longer fair use?

10. We are still lacking 21^st century infrastructure to cope with licensing and payments for use.

Laurence C. Rafsky – What do we mean by free?

Once freedom has been tasted there is no going back.

Value chain –

1. professionally produced but given away selectively – e.g. advertiser supported
2. Non-professional content
3. Gifted professional content. E.g. Stephen King novel
4. Free to some but not others
5. Content that should not be free.

Two enemy camps

1. Information wants to be free – the hippies
2. Corporate suits who want to charge for everything

The solution will need to be  a compromise.

A question for the NLA to consider:

Do you use copyrighted material for commercial gain without payment to content owners?

Do you use copyrighted material for commercial gain without permission from the content owners as we understand it?

The crux of the debate is between these two viewpoints.

Can we separate business use from personal use? Google don’t distinguish between the two.

Jeremy  Lawson – Supporting publishers and their right to monetise their content.

Questions from the audience:

Did the newspaper industry start digging its own grave by giving away content?

New York Times started with some free and mainly fee access. They ended it because when compared pay per click ads versus pay for access would give ten times the revenue. But as ad revenues fall they may go back to first model.

Should be driven by economics.

Do you think news aggregators are a serious threat to publishers?

Links are fine, but extracts complicate the issue as readers may not link through to content. But as web content grows and newspaper content becomes a smaller fraction, increasing hits to newspaper sites lose their economic value to the publishers.

85% of newspaper traffic comes via Google. So should Google pay the majority share?

Is the Kindle from Amazon a potential future model for subscription access to newspaper content?

Disagreement – ability to break news up into selected streams for readers counts against Kindle model.

When will paper newspapers die?

Laurence C. Rafsky predicted that by 2030 newspapers would cease to exist in paper form as a  mainstream product.

He compares their future to candles today – they will become a decorative only production.

As he pointed out, if you had a choice, why would you use paper for something that only has a value for a few hours, and then you need to scan it to create a digital version which can be archived.

B2B vs B2C

Issues about consumers within a business environment – now that the genie is out of the bottle, how do you get individuals in a corporate environment to accept paying for information.

The event was kindly sponsored by Dow Jones.

My blog reaches 30,000 visits

I don’t rate this as a ‘real’ story, but I can’t resist recording the fact that according to my free Sitemeter account the number of visitors to this blog has now reached the 30,000 mark.

I am aware that many of my visitors are coming via Google, so are accidental tourists rather than regular readers, however I am still somewhat proud of this achievement for a British Library based blog.

Looking at the chart below reinforces the advice I have heard about blogging, that patience is required to build visitors.

I made it onto net@night

As I am sure you will be aware if you are a regular reader here, I am something of a fan of Leo Laporte and his one man TWIT.TV broadcasting corporation.

From his current output of fourteen netcasts, I currently subscribe to Windows Weekly (which was instrumental in my decision to skip Vista and go straight to Windows 7) and net@night co-hosted with Amber MacArthur from Toronto.

As a loyal listener from their very first netcast, I feel honoured to have been selected as their email of the week in the latest show.

Perhaps surprisingly the topic was the controversial  choice of typeface by IKEA the global furniture brand. To be more specific it was their recent switch from the traditional print fonts of Futura and Century Schoolbook to Verdana which was designed primarily for screen use.

Although this might seem a rather esoteric topic for a show about the Internet, both Leo and Amber have experience of designing websites. And of course they spend their lives using and reviewing newly designed sites and web based services like Twitter. Consequently they are well aware of the importance of screen design and the impact the choice of typeface has on this.

For myself, ever since being volunteered to create and edit a staff newsletter way back in 1992, in the early days of desk-top-publishing, I have been interested in the impact of type styles and fonts on readers.

My email to net@night was pointing to a fascinating discussion on the BBC arts program Front Row about the implications on the IKEA brand of their change of typeface.

SLA Europe event – The Google-isation of [Re]search

I’m just back from one of the most popular events I can remember in my many years membership of SLA Europe. I’m not sure if it was the catchy title, the interesting speakers or the recent sad closure of the City Information Group that resulted in nearly 100 information professionals gathering in the Balls Brothers rooms at Minster Court this evening.

Kathy Jacobs the Library and Information Manager at Pinsent Masons,  Professor David Nicholas Director of the Department of Information Studies at University College London and Professor Roger James Director of Information Services at University of Westminster talked about how Google is influencing our research behaviours, the challenges this brings to information professionals, as well as the opportunities new search technologies offer.

I should point out that as a rather hastily appointed Chair for the event, my view of the evening might be somewhat skewed. For a more balanced view from the audience I recommend you check out the Organising Chaos blog review. Melanie Goody has also written a short review on the TFPL blog. Sara at Uncooked Data has a more in depth review which I recommend reading.

Dave Nicholas was as controversial as I remember from way back when he was my lecturer at North London Poly (as it was then). He concentrated on the ‘D’ words of dis-intermediation and de-coupling caused by the Internet in general and Google in particular. He pointed out how we as information professionals can’t see what is going on in the digital space. Which has led him to monitor how researchers behave in cyber-space. His evidence shows that consumers want to dive in and out quickly, snatching bits of information. They want everything short and bite sized, preferring abstracts to full content. They scan web pages vertically, zooming past headings and sub-headings, instead of reading horizontally taking in the full text of every paragraph.

One of his most memorable points (which I have only just remembered four days later) was the views of consumers of a health information screen located in a Tesco branch. People seemed to assume that the information came from Tesco and were happy with that trusted brand as a source. However, when informed the content was actually coming from the National Health Service their confidence plummeted. As David put it, Tesco don’t make mistakes, wherease the NHS regularly lets its customers die.

Kathy Jacob reported on her real life experience of going from a meeting with a new manager who wanted to know why they needed a research library when ‘everything could be found with a Google search’, to building a federated search tool for her current firm. The lessons learnt were that the new system must have an equivalent usability, design and speed to Google in order for staff to even try it out. Kathy had the advantage of working in the legal sector, which enabled her to scare researchers with horror stories of cases which had collapsed due to relying on Google searches. In some cases the cost to the law firms involved and subsequent negative impact on the careers of the lawyers concerned were high.

Roger James began his session by asking the audience some provocative questions such as ‘who does the work for Google’? And ‘what is the next big search technology coming down the line’. The answer in both cases is ‘we are’. Every time we click on a link in Google we help them refine their search capability. He wanted to know how many members of the audience were applying this approach in their workplace. Or were they still relying on the old fashioned concepts of surveying their customers? His view was that unless we all join the Google ‘arms race’ we are doomed.

The speakers were followed up with a lively question and answer session from the audience. Which was followed by some intensive networking aided by tasty food and wine sponsored by EBSCO Information Services.

(which Sara at Uncooked Data also picked up on – incidentally I’d highly recommend reading her summary of Wednesday’s event, it’s a lot more considered than mine!

StartupTube – A ‘YouTube’ for small business help

They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and given the spectacular success of YouTube since its launch in February 2005, it is not surprising to see lots of look (and sound) alike sites.

This time it is the organisers of the very successful Business Startup Show, who have recently launched  Startup Tube ,which links to the Startup Community founded by Katie Moore.

My colleague Fran Taylor has been working to develop a Business & IP Centre channel on the site – which has a selection of our Inspiring Entrepreneurs videos on it. Ironically these videos were originally posted onto YouTube itself.

Our Twitter followers go over 1,000

Last May I wrote about putting our toe into the water with regard to Twitter, The Business & IP Centre takes on twitter.

Since that time the amount of activity on Twitter (I can’t be doing with these modern lower case names) has increased almost exponentially. Even taking that into account, our recent move above 1,000 followers for the Business & IP Centre Twitter feed is pretty impressive. This is nearly half of the current following of the main British Library Twitter feed.

http://www.nickburcher.com/2009/03/twitter-demographics-and-usage.html

Marketing Maestros: Innovative Strategies for Small Businesses

Many thanks for writing a blog article about Marketing Maestros!  Just a thought – if possible, would you mind adding a link to the webcasts as well?  http://www.inspiringentrepreneurswebcast.co.uk/

Once again a great Inspiring Entrepreneurs panel this evening, with regular chair Matthew Rock (the founder-editor of Real Business) brining his inimitable enthusiasm to the event.

(You can still watch a  webcast of the event at http://www.inspiringentrepreneurswebcast.co.uk/)

Ajaz Ahmed Chairman of AKQA, the world’s largest independent digital agency showed some impressive examples of innovation in advertising, illustrating his point about the importance of originality.

His key message was for his company to let their work do the talking’. In other words, don’t tell you customers how great you are, show them.

Not surprisingly Simon Calver the CEO of LOVEFILM (a £100 million turnover company) is a fan of films, and so used examples to illustrate his four P’s of business success.

P1 – ‘I’m going to make you an offer you can’t refuse’ (The Godfather).
Focus on the consumer proposition first and worry about building the brand later on. The three legs which hold up his company are choice, value and convenience.

P2 – ‘Self preservation society’ (The Italian Job) i.e. Preserve the cash in the business. Make sure you focus on the time it takes to get cash in and out. If you get it right it gives you a competitive advantage. Also analyse everything you do – where you spend your cash and how you do it.

P3 – Spin City (American sitcom)  Never under-estimate the importance of PR. In his case they have three targets, their investors, trading partners and of course their consumers. You have to be constantly creating new stories about your business the papers will want to publish.

P4 – Passion (a choice of seven films according to Wikipedia) Make sure you surround yourself with great people from the beginning. ‘Fiirst division people recruit first division people’, which makes the business great. Make sure you have fun too. Simon hosts a monthly BBQ for his colleagues. Also reward your people on a quarterly basis (in the case of LOVEFILM bonuses of between 10 and  20%. This allows for more flexibility in changing targets in a fast growing business.

In conclusion, starting a business is probably the most rewarding thing you can do in your life.

Tristram Mayhew the founder and ‘Chief Gorilla’ of Go Ape, the UK’s leading forest-based adventure company talked about Gorilla marketing.

Instead of focussing on their specific activities Go Ape are branding themselves as ‘creating adventures’, and are encouraging everyone to live life more adventurously.

Gorilla marketing means turning your customers into an effective free sales force. These are his tips:
1.    Wow them with what you do.
2.    Delight them – turn complainers into ambassadors.
3.    Build a trust and charm based relationship
4.    … and they will buy more, and more often – Tristram openly admitted that many of their ideas have been borrowed from the Innocent drinks company.
5.    Innovate, validate, cultivate.

Tristram strongly recommended The Brand Gap, it is very readable and nice and short too.

They are building a loyalty base using Tribe magazine (published every 6 weeks) to reinforce brand values.

They also make use of Social Media such as encouraging customers to post videos on YouTube, and have nearly 5,000 to date with hundreds of thousands of views.

By ‘making friends’ with existing adventure bloggers and giving them free Go Ape experiences they hope to generate positive reports online.

‘Doing good things.’ For example to help support gorillas in Rwanda 25 staff and 85 customers completed a fun run dressed as gorillas.

Will King is the ‘King of Shaves’, creator of the cult shaving brand that has overtaken Wilkinson Sword and Nivea to become number two to Gillette in the UK shaving market.

After 16 years of building the brand Will launched his own razor the Azor one year ago almost to the day. They already have up to 10% market share in the UK.

Lessons learnt:

The Harvard rule of 4
1.    No one has it
2.    Every one will have it
3.    Price for profit
4.    Price for sale

Take an existing product and make it better – eg iPhone, Innocent smoothies.

Change constantly, push boundaries – it also helps to generates news stories for PR coverage.

Will introduced his SPACE strategy, which stands for Satisfaction of Success, Passion and Persistence, Attitude of Action, Confidence and Communication and Enthusiasm and Enjoyment.

There is a great degree of satisfaction in succeeding. If you achieve great satisfaction, whatever that is, it may be having children or running a marathon, but you’ve got to work at that. There’s no substitute for hard work to get that satisfaction of success, which feeds on to the passion and persistence bit. Things don’t happen overnight, it takes years to become truly successful..

You’ve got to have a can-do attitude to get things done; if you can’t be bothered who else will? The confidence and common sense part relates to having confidence in yourself and what you’re doing but not being delusional; if you try to take on Apple with an iPhone it’s a big ask, but if you want to come up with a cover to protect the iPhone clearly that’s something you could do.

There’s a certain amount when you’ve got to have confidence beyond the success that you don’t enjoy, especially when you’re starting out – people won’t give you credit, people don’t believe you’re going to do it, people think you’ll go bust, you’ll owe them money, and you’ve got to imbue them with confidence if you’re going to be successful.

And finally the enthusiasm and enjoyment piece; if you’re not enjoying it then nobody else is, especially if you’re leading a business. So have enthusiasm, have an edge about what you’re about to do because people do look to you, especially if you’re running a business or are involved in senior management. If you can’t get them motivated by transferring your enthusiasm to them, then how are they going to transfer their enthusiasm either to the products you sell or to the services you provide? They’re not.

Many thanks for writing a blog article about Marketing Maestros!  Just a thought – if possible, would you mind adding a link to the webcasts as well?  http://www.inspiringentrepreneurswebcast.co.uk/

Visit to the new Guardian newspaper building in Kings Place

The same evening as the The Social Media Exchange – For the Cultural and Heritage Sectors event, I hobbled over to Kings Place to visit the shiny new Guardian (and Observer) newspaper offices.

As it was evening, we were able to see the journalists hard at work creating the next days newspaper. The building itself is amazing, with lots of glass and open spaces, making for a ‘transparent’ working environment. But as the building is also partially open to the public, the journalist are even more open to scrutiny.

Our guide, Luke Dodd, the Guardian’s project manager for the building and former Director of the Newsroom, explained the background to the move. In particular the bringing together of several disparate offices into one space. As well as merging the paper and digital activities, so that content for both media is produced by one extended team instead of separately, as before.

As a bit of a techie, I was most impressived by the  sight of literally hundreds of uniform 24 inch iMac computers on every desk. Each floor was filled with these very desirable pieces of kit as far as the eye could see. Again, the move gave an opportunity to equip all the staff with a same technology.

Many thanks to the Association of UK Media Librarians (AUKML) and SLA Europe for organising such a fascinating visit.

The Social Media Exchange – For the Cultural and Heritage Sectors

It has already been a week since I attended the one day Social Media Exchange – For the Cultural and Heritage Sectors. Organised by the irrepressible Jude Habib, co-founder of Sound Delivery the communications and training company, it was a fun day learning about the uses of social media in museums and libraries.

I have included a selection of my notes from the day below, but most of the content plus updated comments are available through their dedicated website at http://socialmediaexchange.org.uk/

Using Web Content to Build and Engage Your Audience

Madeleine Sugden – KnowHow NonProfit – http://www.knowhownonprofit.org/
http://www.slideshare.net/sounddelivery/making-content-work-for-you-presentation

What is web content for:

• Proof of existence
• Help people to learn something – 24/7 learning
• Encourage action / change behaviour – find out more/shop etc

What is web content for? – 5 Questions to help you make the most of your web content

1. Audience – will they get beyond your home page?

Examples:

• Museum of Witchcraft – poor design, which doesn’t match the nature of the content i.e. it looks like it is designed for accountants – http://www.museumofwitchcraft.com/
• Walsal new museum – too much text, missing image – http://www.artatwalsall.org.uk/
• compare to Tyne & Wear museums page – http://www.twmuseums.org.uk/
• Porthcurno telegraph museum – sections for different visitors – http://www.porthcurno.org.uk/
• Pages for visitors or for creators eg about page from Museum of Brands and Packaging is too boring – http://www.museumofbrands.com/background.html
• Working with Men website one of very few asking for feedback to improve website – http://www.workingwithmen.org/
• Friends of the Earth website – what you said content following on from consolation exercise – e.g. local groups. – get into the mindset of audience
  http://www.foe.co.uk/community/local_groups/group_resources_index.html

2. Presentation

• Are you helping with skim reading?
• Use headings, blocks of text, links to more content
• Are you giving too much information?
• Placing text over images leads to accessibility issues
• Is content accessible
• Are you encouraging people to read on?
• Don’t use – “Click here to find out more about…” unnecessary text
• Bring in other content to improve experience e.g. weather forecasts from BBC

Examples:

• Samuel Johnson website – good layout – http://www.drjohnsonshouse.org/
• Shakespeare birthplace trust – more links to content – http://www.shakespeare.org.uk/
• British Heart Foundation – good example of design – http://www.bhf.org.uk/

3. Medium

• Content isn’t just printed words
• Are you using the best format?
• Are you using audio and video content?
• Is it interesting and fun?

Examples:

National Museums Liverpool – audio content is key part of page – subject integration – includes transcript alternative – http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/

Great Fire of London – interactive video game type experience for children – http://www.fireoflondon.org.uk/

Welcome to Yorkshire – help to build your day in … – dynamic itinerary building tool – http://www.yorkshire.com/inspire/inspire-me

Hackney Museum Virtual Tour – very boring – http://www.virtualtours360.net/hackney/virtual-tour.html

4. Marketing

• Help people find your site
  Search engines – work on Google Search Engine Optimisation, think about subject terms used to find your content. E.g. A search for Victorian homes does not find many of the relevant museums.
• Use all channels
• Integrate on and offline activities

Examples:

Eric Bloodaxe from York Museum has a Facebook page

Mediamuseum on Twitter with 1,700 followers

Eureka museum putting their images on flickr

Wellcome collection – medical London – videos of relevant walks around London – http://www.medicallondon.org/related_events.html

Imperial War Museum North – their page on the Big Picture Show does not come close to capturing the impact of the actual experience in the museum – http://north.iwm.org.uk/server/show/ConWebDoc.2141

5. Influence

• From passive users to active users to super active users…
• Make it easy to interact and take action
• Influence windows

Examples:

• Nation Museum of Wales – use e-cards – http://www.museumwales.ac.uk/en/ecards/?cat=all
• + make your own love spoon – http://www.museumwales.ac.uk/en/lovespoon/
• Barley Hall – oral history involvement – http://www.barleyhall.org.uk/content.asp?ID=35
• Kent Police Museum – donations page – call us, but no phone number – http://www.kent-police-museum.co.uk/core_pages/donations.shtml
• Sponsor a valve on Colossus web page – http://www.colossusonline.com/
• Museum of Childhood – page on Lego has no opportunity for interaction – http://www.vam.ac.uk/moc/collections/toys/construction_toys/lego/index.html
• Museum of London – e-newsletter ‘close this window’ page after completing request – http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/English/AboutUs/Newsroom/Enewsletter/EnewsletterForm.htm
• KnowHow NonProfit – good example of many points – http://www.knowhownonprofit.org/

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Group Tweeting or Finding your organisation’s voice on Twitter

Ali Holder – Westminster Libraries

@wcclibraries

Started in March 2009

Currently lone tweeter

First tweet: Planning to put all news and events in libraries here. Also additions to the 24/7 library of exclusive online resources for library members.

11:34 PM Mar 3rd from web

Why?

Instant

Getting started:

Buy-in from senior management important as speaking for Westminster

Get tweeting – once or twice a day, most days – not too much, not to little

Set up Business Continuity colleague so they can tweet library closures etc

Aims:

Mainly post news & events, but also draw attention to existing / regular / ‘hidden’ aspects of service.

Issues:

• Organisational voice
• Broadcasting, not conversing
• Access restrictions within the work setting
• Getting customers and potential customers to follow us.

Lessons:

• Aware of popularity of posts with existing and future followers – e.g. free wi-fi
• Use search tools to find out what people are saying about us.
• Proactive use allows us to build trust and demonstrate use to organisation
• Ditto for users –

Finding our voice – who is tweeting?

Me, us or them?

Future plans:

• Group tweeting – or groups of tweeters
• More feeds
• More use of hashtags
• Tweeting through events
• Feedback and conversation
• How do we measure success?

Tips:

• Never forget the biog section
• Work out who is speaking
• Provide links
• Don’t protect updates
• Watch how others do it
• Don’t exclude – have a feed

Twitter demographics – typical user – around 30 and urban

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Round up discussion

Patrick Forbes – Head of Documentaries at Oxford Film and Television

Nick Reynolds – Editor, BBC Internet Blog

Frances Croxford – Consultant and Account Manager at Jane Wentworth

Be aware of both huge opportunities and significant risks associated with adoption of  social media.

Inherent lack of control.

Before you start make sure you are aware of the external perception of the organisation.

• Clarity
• Confidence
• Transparency

Tell stories which come from both your staff and your audience.

Conclusions:

• Institutions are naturally resistant to social media as it leads to loss of control.
• Biggest resistors are curatorial staff
• Cultural change can take between 5 and 10 years

New Business & IP Centre website went live today

After many months of patiently waiting, I was glad to see that our new website went live today at www.bl.uk/bipc.

It has a much cleaner look than before and is designed to simplify what we offer to entrepreneurs, business start-ups and inventors.

The sections are divided into :

• Business networking
• Business planning
• Protecting your ideas
• Researching markets

I would be very interested in any comments you have on the website (both positive and constructive criticisms).

Vote for your ‘most loved’ brand

To celebrate their 50th Anniversary the Marketing Society has selected 50 brands from last 50 years, and asked visitors to vote for their favourite.

Although some of my favourites such as Apple and The Body Shop do appear on the list, they have missed some truly iconic names such as Walkers Crisps, Marmite and my personal favourite Alessi.

In true social media style the site allows comments, and I was amused to see “No Marmite No vote” from Michele.

1959 was the year The Marketing Society was founded and the birth of modern marketing. Today, The Marketing Society is the most influential network of senior marketers dedicated to championing marketing in the UK. Fifty Golden Brands is our exploration of the changing role of brands since our foundation.

Selecting a brand for each of the past 50 years was not easy. Our shortlist was assembled using a variety of different criteria. Which brands were launched, relaunched or revamped? Who was winning awards? Who were the top spenders and the top sellers? And which brands encapsulated the zeitgeist of the year?

Pick a brand 1959 – 2008

This is not a definitive list. It’s a work in progress, a platform for discussion and now we need you to get involved. Who have we missed? Where were you? Which brands shone more brightly? Share your memories and insights of the last 50 years. Your involvement will enable us to finalise the definitive 50 Golden Brands in time for our anniversary in 2009.

Check your name on the Web with namechk

Thanks to Sarah Lane a guest on net@night with Amber and Leo for recommending namechk.

This is a ‘one stop shop’ for seeing if your personal or company identity is available at dozens of Social Networking and Social Bookmarking websites, such as Twitter and Facebook. It enables you to be consistent with your brand or identity wherever it appears on the Internet.

Will Spotify kill iTunes?

This is the heading for an intriguing article in the latest issue of gadget obsessed Stuff magazine.

I have to admit that I only heard about Spotify for the first time two weeks ago on Leo Laporte’s net@night 91.

However, since then the mainstream press has started to pick up on it as a potential iTunes killer – Spotify declares war on iTunes.

It seems hard to believe that Spotify can already have six million tracks (including the very latest albums in full) and over a million members signed up to either its’ free advert supported service, or the ad-free subscription of £9.99 per month. Although the fact I am listening for free to the brand new album from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs as I write, proves the case.

Now it has gone one stage further by linking up with London-based online music store, 7Digital which has four million individual tracks.

This is yet another indication of just how revolutionary the Internet can be when it comes to both established and even novel business models. It took iTunes just six years to become the dominant player in music sales, currently accounting for 70 per cent of all online music sales, and selling six billion songs along the way.

However, Spotify was only launched in the UK in October last year and already has more than a million customers.

The lesson, is that if you are going to operate a web based business you can’t afford to stand still for a moment.

PitchTV – your chance to make your pitch to Richard Branson

Perhaps not surprisingly in these YouTube obsessed times, there has been something of a rash of video-pitching websites. A friendly version of Dragon’s Den? and See my pitch are just two that I have covered previously.

However, when Richard Branson of Virgin fame gets involved you just know there will be a lot of interest.

PitchTV gives you the “chance to pitch your business idea directly to people who could make your ambition a reality.”

Once a month we’ll pick out a selection of the best video pitches and then let everyone vote for their favourite. Each month the five most popular video pitches will make it on to the PitchTV show which will premiere on Virgin Atlantic’s in-flight entertainment – to be seen by top business professionals from around the world.

So if you think you have the media friendly features to make it through to the final round, then why not give it a go.

http://entrepreneur.virgin.com/pitchtv/

I was an April fool, but it’s no joke for SlideShare

I have always been a fan of April fool stories. My previous job included producing a daily press cuttings service for my organisation, and I used to look forward to trying to find all the April 1  ‘news stories’ for inclusion. One of my all time favourites was from the Daily Mirror announcing that the Channel tunnel diggers had struck gold half-way to France.

The big ’story’ from today has been the Guardian newspaper letting its loyal readers know that it would shortly be giving up on old fashioned ink and paper. Instead they would switch to Twitter for all future news coverage. The Twitter switch for Guardian article has some lovely touches about the benefits of reducing all news to 140 characters. Even going back intto their archives to ‘re-write’ history;

Major stories already completed include:

“1832 Reform Act gives voting rights to one in five adult males yay!!!”;

“OMG Hitler invades Poland, allies declare war see tinyurl.com/b5×6e for more”;

and “JFK assassin8d @ Dallas, def. heard second gunshot from grassy knoll WTF?”

On a less amusing note I received an email today from SlideShare (a free service I blogged about in 2007).

Hi infield,
We’ve noticed that your slideshow on SlideShare has been getting a LOT of views in the last 24 hours. Great job … you must be doing something right.
Why don’t you tweet or blog this? Use the hashtag #bestofslideshare so we can track the conversation.
Congratulations,  SlideShare Team

I checked my three presentations and sure enough one of them had rocketed to 751 views. This was something of a surprise and perhaps I should have been suspicious. However, it took a blog post from Phil Bradley (Slideshare April Fool joke goes disastrously wrong), before I realised I had been conned.

As Phil points out, SlideShare have made ,”a huge error”;
I don’t appreciate anyone manipulating data on my content. That SlideShare are so relaxed about this, and feel they can do what they like is really sending entirely the wrong message about how they view users and content.

To be fair to the authors of this ‘prank’ have confessed their sins on Phil’s blog, and apologised to their customers;

Phil,
My sincere, personal apologies. Its just an April Fool’s prank. I understand why you are upset, however, we did not mean to offend our users who we love. But I can see your perspective.
Rashmi, CEO & Cofounder, SlideShare

I think I can  forgive them this time, but fear many of their customers may move to rival services as a result.

The British Library is all a twitter about Yammer

Although I like to think I have my finger on the pulse of Social Media, it took a colleague in our marketing department to introduce me to our Yammer page.

After a very short space of time we have 97 members and several hundred messages.

For those of you who are also new to Yammer, it is a micro-blogging tool for the enterprise, launched in September last year, and has already been nominated for the CNET Webware 100.

Yammer is a tool for making companies and organizations more productive through the exchange of short frequent answers to one simple question: ‘What are you working on?’

As employees answer that question, a feed is created in one central location enabling co-workers to discuss ideas, post news, ask questions, and share links and other information. Yammer also serves as a company directory in which every employee has a profile and as a knowledge base where past conversations can be easily accessed and referenced.

Anyone in a company can start their Yammer network and begin inviting colleagues. The privacy of each network is ensured by limiting access to those with a valid company email address. Information is never shared with third parties.

The basic Yammer service is free. Companies can pay to claim and administer their networks.

Yammer was founded by former executives and early employees of PayPal, eGroups, eBay, and Tribe. It is backed by venture capital firms Founders Fund and Charles River Ventures.

We have all worked at companies and understand the needs of companies to share information within a private network. We built the solution that we would want to use ourselves.

Update to our first Free Live Webcast – Mothers of Invention

After a few minor technical hitches I managed to watch the webcast of our Mothers of Invention Inspiring Entrepreneurs event last night.

Although the image was small and a bit grainy the sound was excellent and it almost felt like being there, particularly during the question and answer session.

Highlights for me were Liz Jackson the founder of Great Guns Marketing who had left school with just one GCSE, but through the help her first boss who became her mentor and an unofficial apprenticeship, has become a leader in her field.

Her top tips were:

• Don’t be a nearly man or women. Make every single day count. Pull your finger out and get on with it.
• Don’t believe in luck – Her definition of luck is where hard work meets opportunity.
• And a quote from Henry Ford I had not heard before. “If you think you can, or you think you can’t; you are absolutely right“

It was also fascinating to hear how difficult it was for Gurinder Chadha the director of Bend it Like Beckham to get funding for the film, even with a previous success under her belt.

Our first Free Live Webcast – Mothers of Invention

I am proud of the way my colleagues in the British Library have adopted and experimented with Web 2.0 and social media in the past three years.

We have activities in Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Linkedin, a free e-course on intellectual property, a good old fashioned monthly e-newsletter and of course our two blogs on business and intellectual property.

Our next venture is into the world of live webcasting starting on Tuesday 10 March 2009 at 6.30pm (UK time) with Mothers of Invention.

Not only will you be able to watch our Inspiring Entrepreneurs event online at website www.inspiringentrepreneurswebcast.co.uk/, but also put questions to our panel of experts.

	Gurinder Chadha OBE is one of Britain’s most successful film directors, best known for Bend it Like Beckham, Bride and Prejudice and, most recently, Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging. Born in Kenya, she began her career at the BBC before making a huge impact with Bhaji on the Beach in 1993.
	Liz Jackson MBE started her telemarketing business Great Guns at the age of 25, with few educational qualifications and a £4,000 loan from The Prince’s Trust. In the first year of her business, she lost her eyesight, yet has gone on to build a £3m-turnover business with eight offices across the UK.
	Laura Tenison conceived her children’s clothes business in 1993 after a severe car accident in France; the woman in the hospital bed beside her complained about the standard of mail-order kids’ clothes. Today JoJo Maman Bebe is an award-winning multi million-pound retailer with stores across the UK.
	Dee Wright’s business The Hairforce is an innovative nit and lice removal service.  After just three sessions with one of Dee’s “lice assassins” both the nits and the lice are gone, and children are treated like VIPs in a massage chair; the whole experience is fuss-free. Dee supports female staff by providing a job which they can fit around school hours.

The British Library is bringing together four trailblazing British women for an evening of inspiration in celebration of International Women’s Month. If you can’t make the event, you can still join in the debate by watching our live webcast.

In partnership with HSBC, the world’s local bank.

Our speakers:
Gurinder Chadha OBE, director of Bend it Like Beckham and Bride and Prejudice
Liz Jackson MBE, founder of telemarketing business Great Guns
Laura Tenison MBE, who runs award-winning mother and baby brand JoJo Maman Bebe
Dee Wright, the brains behind The Hairforce, an innovative nit and lice removal service

How to watch:
How: Visit the website www.inspiringentrepreneurswebcast.co.uk/
Date: Tuesday 10 March 2009
Time: 18.30 – 20.00 (GMT)

Don’t worry if you can’t make this time; you’ll be able to view the webcast after the event.

Digitising the British Library one page at a time

Lynne Brindley the British Library Chief Executive has been campaigning hard for the cause mass digitisation of content in order to facilitate access for all and preservation – Dame Lynne Brindley challenges Government on Digital Britain

However scanning books to turn them into digital ‘assets’ is not as easy as might be thought. I was lucky enough to be able to visit the part of the library where the work is currently in progress, and was impressed by both the scale and complexity of the challenge.

Recently I came across a YouTube video from German TV which gives a revealing insight into the project.