Day: March 30, 2004

PR: the art of butt kissing?

Quick item.

Back in February I touched on the growing interest surrounding “social networking”.

The Linkedin service seems to be the most common vehicle for “networking requests”, but that’s just my experience to date.

However, I have spotted a disturbing trend.  These “hubs” have areas where people can commend your work and I’ve spotted a disturning trend of a few PR people writing fawning recommendations of media people…. Not sure I approve of that or if it’s to be recommended.

Nope, don’t like that.

PR's prominent role at Disney…

Marc Snyder points to a fascinating profile of Zenia Mucha, Disney’s colorful chief communications officer, in the LA Times (Free subscription).

Marc makes the point that, while her role as a close advisor to Michael Eisner is a great testimonial for PR, the fact she declined to be interviewed for the profile was less stellar.

Footnote:

As Marc also correctly points out, I was never on the Disney board, I’m not a playright, nor the Mayor of Pittsburgh. 

Internet commerce keeps-a-growing

I’ve written quite a bit over the past few weeks about the “Internet reality distortion field” and the dangers of extrapolating online findings to the world at large, a-la Howard Dean.

However, away from the hype, the Internet is continuing to grow nicely.  Research from the Pew Internet and American Life Project has found that two thirds of online Americans have purchased products and services over the Internet, while Forrester estimates that $120 Billion worth of goods will be sold online this year.

Unfortunately it’s four years too late for the Internet boomers… c’est la vie.

The story in the New York Times has a lot of very interesting statistics if you’re interested in the changing online demographics.

Footnote:

Thanks to MarketingVox/MarketingWonk/Up2Speed for the link.

Pew Research also did some recent research on Blogs.