social media experts

Reinventing Online Shopping With ‘Social Commerce’

Posted on by in advertising, Marketing, Public Relations, Social Media and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , .

Thanks to The Globe and Mail (Toronto) for this article published yesterday, entitled ‘Retail Giant’s @Walmartlabs plans to reinvent shopping with ‘social commerce’.  You can read it by doing the light clicktastic on this word here.

Working in retail in 2000, as I did, one of the questions that ‘brick-and-mortar’ retailers were often asked was ‘do you feel threatened by the rise of e-commerce?’ To which the answer was ‘no – people will always want to experience real goods, in real time, in real surroundings, sold by real people.’ At the time they were right, the tech bubble imploded and things (briefly) went back to how they were.

But, d’you see, we got it wrong – both the question and the answer. We got the question wrong because we didn’t know what to ask – social media had not been invented – and we got the answer wrong because we could never have imagined how reliant people would become on the opinions, statuses, needs, wants and ill-informed dogmatism of others.

The question now is – as a ‘brick-and-mortar’, offline retailer, do you feel threatened by social media?’ And the answer really should be ‘yes’. When Walmart are bringing social media to the in-store shopping experience (want a review of the microwave you’re looking at? Post a message – a member of staff or another customer will respond to you. Want to know where the peanut butter is? Post a message – someone will respond) then you can be certain that this – or something like it – is the future.

And as for the boy turd Zuckerberg – yes, of course he’s in on it. To quote the article – ‘this is where Shopycat comes in. The Facebook application uses social media profiles and comments to generate gift ideas’. Back to Walmart’s breathless tech spokesperson, Venky Harinarayan. (No disprespect to Venky, he (or she, I suppose) has already made a sizeable fortune selling Walmart a thing called Junglee, a shopping comparison site. Well done, that capitalist.)

“It is becoming clear to us that one of the shopping behaviors that people have that is inherently social is gifting. We are building a product that we believe makes peoples’ gifting much more efficient, because all of your friends and family, within reason, are on Facebook. We are leveraging that information to help you buy better gifts and make it easier for you. We believe gifting and social networks are fundamentally made for each other, so getting that right over the next year will be important to us.”

D’you know, snorkellers mine, I’m going to leave it there. I’ll let you work out the number of different levels on which this is just so wrong.  I’ll start you off.

‘Efficient gifting.’

The Unbearable Lightness of Twitter

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, External Communications, Marketing, Social Media and tagged , , , , , , , .

By which, blog snorkellers mine (hello everyone, by the way, been a while) I mean that Twitter remains, as I’ve said before, a not terribly effective communications tool. Much of the content, as we know, is at best banal, and at worst ego-driven and self-important.  Unfortunately, it is the lightweight nature of much of the content that denies it the gravitas and – perhaps – respectability that might render it effective as anything more than a rapid response, or a means to provide service updates. That and, of course, the fact that it’s difficult to say anything of meaning in 140 characters or less. I know that there are serious Tweeters – politicians and thinkers etc – but I cannot but believe that they’re there because they feel, somehow, that they should be, not because they genuinely feel there’s value. What you might call ‘down with the kids’ syndrome. (Absolutely no pun intended, for the easily offended.)

(And yes, Alanis, it is ironic that I shall be attempting to augment awareness of this post via Twitter and also – if you, dear reader, stick with me for a little longer – that I shall, from one point of view, be seen to debunk one of my most fondly held beliefs. Ooooooh, but yes.)

Proof, if any were needed, is supplied by a piece on mediabistro.com, a site which, I freely admit, I know nothing about but (I am afraid) sounds like the sort of place that I would sprint over red-hot, barbed-wire-coated scorpions to avoid.  That being said, the article is called Twitter’s 13 All-Time Most Epic Tweets, it does what it says on the tin and you can view it via the usual swish and flick – engorgio!

(No, of course you won’t. Sigh.)

Anyway, read it for yourself, but I think a couple of comments are in order – not least of which is, if these are the ’13 All-Time Most Epic’ (quite a build-up, do you not think) – why are they mostly rubbish? Why would Jack Dorsey’s first tweet (or twt, at the time) count as ‘most epic’? There was no-one there to read it.

Why would the first tweet from space be the ‘most epic’? Is a radio conversation with the space station considered ‘epic’? Not really – but it’s a sackload more informative that 140 characters of badly-spelled randomness.

Twitter helped a bloke get out of jail in Egypt. Great. I’m delighted. But it’s not ‘epic’. It’s a communication device. If bloke had time to tweet and he could use his ‘phone, why didn’t he call someone? More effective, I’d have said.

None of this stuff is ‘epic’. None of this stuff could not have been done (arguably better) through other forms of communication. It is only seen as ‘epic’ by those who have a vested interest in keeping the service fresh, relevant and – yes – well-used. Normally these people are the ‘social media gurus’ and those who write about social media. I am afraid – dearest blog trotters – the Emperor is still wearing little in the way of clothing.

And finally – and here’s where the lie may be seen to be given to one of my most deeply-held and widely advocated beliefs – to whit – that social media is of no use in selling stuff. Well, on the ‘epic’ list is a tweet from some chap on the top of Everest and – obviously – the first thing he does is get his twat on and namecheck both the service and the brand of mobile device he’s using. Good try, Samsung!

Samsung obviously invested some considerable time and effort and possibly money in this – but my gut tells me that next to no extra devices were shifted on the back of it. I can’t imagine the market for Samsung Galaxys amongst committed mountaineers is that huge.

I am, however, prepared to be wrong. Hell, I would like to be wrong.

I’m not though, am I?

Regulating Social Media

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, Social Media and tagged , , , , , , , , .

Before we start running headlong at this topic, like participants in the annual Cheese Rolling festival at Cooper’s Hill (with similar consequences), let us first consider definition:

Social media, to my mind, includes the likes of Facebook, Twitter, MySpace (owned by Justin Timberlake – who’d have thought it?), Foursquare et al. Linkedin’s a sticky one – business social media, anyone? (It’s like ‘business casual’ – a concept that no-one really understands and no-one gets right. Ever.)

Digital Media – again, to my mind – includes email, instant messaging, blogs and corporate, business or personal websites.

Therefore – social media is a subset of digital media. This is important, because in all the hysteria that’s tsunamied up around social media as the new Jesus, there is a tendency to apply the term ‘social media’ to anything to do with t’internet in or on which some hapless sap is expressing an opinion. A corporate blog is NOT social media. This blog – lovely, bijou and jejeune though it is – is NOT social media. Instant messaging – in its traditional and most basic form – is NOT social media.

One more thought then, before we rush off into the weeds of the regulation of social media debate – is Blackberry Messenger social media (because you CAN form groups, and add statuses – statii? – share pictures etc) or is it, as a glorified instant messenger, digital media and thus a less insidious thing altogether? Simply, you might say, a method of communication – like email, telephone, fax, telegraph, post or a bloke in a loincloth with a piece of parchment in a cleft stick? (Bring back cleft sticks!)

And this is important, because – clearly – what’s driving this post is the recent events in London, and the allegation that riots and looting were organised on Twitter and Blackberry Messenger. Now this is clearly horseshit. As Sophy Silver of Facebook said in a recent PR Week supplement on reputation management – “a house party that gets out of hand is not a ‘Facebook party’ – it is just a house party”. In the same way that riots in London are not Facebook riots or Twitter riots or Blackberry riots – they are simply riots, occasioned by the feral, primitive, selfish urges of the uneducated, immoral, lumpen few. In the not-very-distant past, they’d have used ‘phones to organise their neanderthal, simian rampages – yet no-one would have called for the telephone network to be more stringently regulated.

And now I read that David Cameron is to call representatives of Twitter, Facebook and Blackberry to the House of Commons to discuss “stop(ping) people communicating via these websites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality”. What he’s talking about – in the bigger scheme of things – is regulating the internet.

Another voice, advocating roughly the same thing, but for different reasons and from a different viewpoint, is Anthony Hilton, City Commentator on the Evening Standard (London) and writing in PR Week. (Sorry, you’ll have to subscribe to the website to see the article.) In brief, he’s saying that the internet allows for anyone to broadcast what they like, without any sort of filter – the filter that traditional media (journalists) provide.

See, here’s the thing. I actually agree with Cameron and Hilton. I feel there should be regulation of the internet. There’s too much shite that goes on for it to be unregulated. There’s no recourse, d’you see, no comeback. There’s anonymity, which allows any charlatan to charlat about without a care in the world. It’s irresponsible.

But, and here’s another of those things. It’s arguably too late. Someone should have regulated the internet in 1996, when is started to go mainstream. But they didn’t and now – unles you’re the UAE, where your population are used to being told to stop what they’re doing and get in line – you can’t just bring in random firewalls and prohibitions. It’s fine for the boy turd Zuckerberg to say that ‘privacy is no longer the norm’, and it may, in some senses, be true, but it’s not what people want.

People want privacy, they want anonymity – mainly because it’s a right and because it allows them to live their lives the way they want to without being put under a spotlight and sold insurance and instant whip via cold calls and doordrops – but also so they can hide behind it when they are phishing, spamming and trolling.

I want privacy and anonymity.

Luckily, real, effective regulation of the internet is probably an impossibility. That being said, I was talking to an Enterprise Risk professional the other day – and one of his major concerns in terms of threats facing business today was the ease with which rumour, falsehood and propaganda can be spread via the internet (social media especially) and the potentially enormous audiences that are available for this rumour, falsehood and propaganda.

His solution? A type of global identity card. If you want to use the internet, you will have one identity and one identity only. Every time you launch your browser, you will be greeted by a pop-up screen – let’s call it Global Authentication Portal (get into the GAP!) – into which you will have to type your identity and password.  (Probably a one-time password to prevent identity theft.) From then on, everything you do on the internet will be recorded (not monitored necessarily – but recorded) and should you be a rioter organising a riot, and you are caught, this internet record would be used to bring you to justice. As an alternative scenario – if you are a nasty troll, persecuting someone on Facebook, and you persecute them to death, again your internet record will show your responsibility.

And as I listened to this, I thought – what a marvellous idea. And then I realised that some form of authority would have to run the GAP, and that, undoubtedly that authority would not be able to resist using the internet records of all the world’s internet users for its own ends.

You see, regulation of the internet is a laudable goal. But it will take away privacy and anonymity and will bring us one step further towards Orwell’s 1984. (Which, obviously, was 27 years ago.)

And just imagine the Facebook riots that would take place when the GAP was announced.

Journalists Prefer Traditional Comms – Pope Has Balcony Etc Etc

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, corporate reputation, Corporate Reputation Management, External Communications, media relations, Media Relations and Management, Social Media and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

From the hallowed pages of PR Week (issue dated July 22, cover price £57.32) comes this story – and story it is, for no – disbelievers all – the Week has not made it up, oh no, they let Broadgate Mainland(*) make it up for them – t’Week has simply reported it. They’ll make journalists yet.

(* Meisters of Financial Spin of the parish of Old London Town.)

Anyway, before I got so wildly carried away, I meant, bloggy snorkellers mine, to post the link. No, of course you won’t. You’ll simply see if you can make head or tail of the post without going anywhere near the colourful linkey of doom. Wet, is what you are. That being said, maybe there is an Arthurian trotter amongst you and for that brave Templar I provide this – the Holy Link of Har Megiddo. Carefully now – swish and click – obliviate!

(Warning. I am sorry, faithful followers, but in an almost Murdockian stylee, PR Week will wish you to subscribe before you read the article. You may not wish for PR Week to be your horcrux, however, at least, not while there are still pesky kids around.)

So, the article. In brief, it says that while UK corporates are doing more social, a survey of financial journalists (and I think we can take that to mean journalists, period) reveals traditional comms channels remain the more important media relations tools. That’s what it says – ‘more important tools’. With 81% of the 100 surveyed saying that they prefer to receive stories via email, I’d say ‘most important tools’, wouldn’t you?

In other bears-defecating-in-the-woods- type revelations, only 11% thought Facebook was an appropriate corporate comms channel and 97% researched companies via their corporate websites. (Incidentally, a truly spiffing photocaption for the article’s illustration of Zuckerberg’s monster – “‘Inappropriate’ Facebook”.)

So, it’s official. Journalists prefer to get their stories off real people, in real time, via targetted communication. Unsurprisingly.

Other stats in the article included the 38% of FTSE100 companies signing up to Facebook (up from 25% six months ago) and the 56% running a corporate Twitter account (up from 40% in December). And we know why they’re doing this. Mostly peer pressure and a misguided desire to be ‘down with the kids’ and to have their very own shiny object. And, as I’ve said before – if you’re an airline, then Twitter is useful for updating your customers. If you’re a firm of management consultants it is wholly inappropriate (like Facebook). In the case of most of the FTSE100, it is wholly inappropriate.

Just sayin’.

Lies, Damn’ Lies and Social Media Statistics

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, External Communications, media relations, Public Relations, Social Media and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

Another day, another hefty dollop of horseshit about how the social media conversation is changing, irrevocably, life as we know it. (While I’m here, big up to Danny Rogers, the ‘editor’ of PR Week, for this phrase ‘Increasingly one hears that ‘PR is the new advertising’ or ‘conversational content is now king”. On so many different levels, blog trotters mine, on so many different levels. He goes on to say that we need some stats to confirm what we suspected – don’t tar me with your cavalier ‘we’, Danny – as if stats could actually prove that ‘conversational content’, whatever the living crap that is when it’s at home, is indeed ‘king’, another nebulous and completely immeasurable concept. Anyway, the whole stats thing is what’s driving this post, so let’s proceed, shall we?)

Today’s merde de cheval du jour is from the Not PR Week (some may say that this is a good thing),  Communicate Magazine – you may visit its hallowed portal here – swish and flick – crucio!

Anyhoo, it’s an article entitled Fit to Print (which is, indeed, in the print version of the magazine but not, strangely, available online) and it’s about how ‘social media has fundamentally changed online communications over the last few years.’ Backed up by a wodge of statistics – here’s a few examples:

  • 90% more journalists use social media than in 2010
  • Tumblr’s referrals to news sites increase 350% in past year
  • The Independent has seen referrals from Facebook grown (sic) 680% year on year, whilst Twitter referrals have increased 250%

The problem – obviously, I don’t have to point this out, I know, but let’s pretend that there’s one lone blog snorkeller out there who’s maybe just a soupcon less incandescently bright than the rest of us – is that the stats are meaningless. An increase of 350%? Enormous! Unless your starting point was one, or two. In which case it would be up to three and a half, or seven. (I think. Maths never was my forte.) You see, without hard numbers, it’s impossible to tell. And if people are making it difficult for me to see the full picture well – forgive me – I get a little suspicious.

Even when the stats are reasonably clear cut, there’s something not right about it. Read!

“Visits to news and media sites from social networks have increased by 80% in three years up to March 2011, and in that period social networks have gone from providing6.26% of total traffic to news and media sites to providing 11.33%.”

Great! My comment would be that news and media sites are on t’internet, and part of t’digital age. Thus, really, you got to expect that a proportion of their traffic would come from social media, which are also internet-based and part of the much-vaunted digital age. In fact, you’d be forgiven for expecting that the proportion of traffic provided by social networks – if they’re the phenomena everyone says they are – would be CONSIDERABLY FUCKING MORE THAN A MANGY 11.33%. Just sayin’.

Thank God, however, that Communicate magazine got digital content agency Zone to ‘dramatise the findings’.  Interesting choice of words. ‘Dramatise’. Implies making a story out of something. A fiction.

Which is exactly what I remain convinced the hype around social media actually is.

God Loves Facebook – Could He Be Fallible?

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, Crisis Management, Social Media and tagged , , , , .

Following my post of yesterday, in which – in the desultory and louche fashion that is my wont and has become such a firm favourite with discerning blog snorkellers worldwide (hey – forget worldwide – GLOBALLY) – I examined the Busy Bees of the Divine’s decision to invest some $450m in the Book of the Face, I have some across simply acres of opinion that – to a greater or lesser extent – agrees with my conclusions.

Now, to say this is unusual would be a masterpiece of understatement, but that notwithstanding, it should also be genuinely concerning for those who are investing their hard-won marketing budgets in ever-more-complex Facebook campaigns. It should also be concerning for large companies whose digital media function is becoming ever-more powerful and starting to grasp at the reins of the whole shooting match.

You see, when even Goldman Sachs Capital Partners (the company’s private equity fund) turns down the opportunity to invest in Facebook – and does so (in part) due the lingering burning sensation that remains from the serious injury it received when the dotcom bubble burst – you have to question the longevity of Mr Zuckerberg’s monster.

And when Facebook falls – and it may already be on shaky ground, given there have been no membership number updates since July (is it possible, whisper it, that people are beginning to sign off?) – what will be left of the social media phenomenon that was going to change the way we communicate? Whither the social media gurus then? Whither the value? Eh?

Anyway – don’t take my word for it – read all about it here. (Thank you, Fortune magazine.)

Social Media In The Workplace – Medieval Thinking

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, Corporate Religion, External Communications, Public Relations, Social Media and tagged , , , , .

Morning snorkellers.

Yesterday, you may recall, I stuck up a much-viewed and widely-discussed (I am almost certain that it probably was) post – Social Media In The Workplace – The Debate Rageth On – in which I set out my (by now pretty ragged from overuse) stall of arguments as to why allowing employees access to social media during working hours is not, on the whole, a Good Thing.

This was in response to a post on stopblocking.org (do the clickety-doo here) which – unfortunately – I found (and still find) a little too glib and easy for my taste. Anyway, long story short – as I guess was to be expected – the author of the post (one Shel Holtz) has reacted in kind (see, here!) in which he has, quite kindly, actually, put me straight on a number of my points. Again, right-thinking blog snorkellers mine, you may wish to don the mental equivalent of a welding mask before viewing his (lengthy) sounding off, but it does highlight at least one thing. You’re social, or you’re not. The whole debate over its usefulness has become so widespread and heated that there is no choice but to choose sides. Choose wisely, young padawan.

Anyway, Shel also had a bit of a twat about my post. He described it as thinking from the medieval era. Which, in turn, got me thinking. Would it not be fair to say that today’s many-too-many of social media strategists and specialists and gurus and advisers are, in reality, little different from the mendicant monks that would trudge the filthy by-ways and low roads of the 16th century, looking for the gullible and lazy, to whom to sell their fake and worthless relics? ‘Look here, lumpen peasant with your interesting diseases, shiny thing make it all better.’ ‘Be certain of your passage to heaven with this splinter from the one, true media – sorry – cross!’

Wasn’t that time one of mountebanks and charlatans, dissimulation and deceit? Rather than being medieval myself, I rather think I’m trying to prevent those who wish to get all medieval on our asses.

Cluster Zuck

Posted on by in Social Media and tagged , , , .

Hello in haste, snorkellers mine. No links today, for your lazy little arses to ignore, no – should you wish to read up on this then get your googly eyes on, or your bingly bong or your yahoo moo, whatever takes your fancy and searches your boat, and go get clickety on this story’s topic’s ass. Inna jungle stylee.

Briefly, it’s that nice tweedy Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the gentleman inventor of t’interweb ( and no, I have no idea whether he’s tweedy, or a gentleman, or whether he invented t’interweb in a garden shed in the Yorkshire Dales, but the fact remains that he should be and he should have) who has, in brief, pronounced that Facebook and that horrible little turd Zuckerberg (and no, I don’t know whether Zuckerberg is a turd but he seems so – well – unpolished, so one must draw one’s own conclusions) are, between master and monstrous creation, about to destroy the internet.

The basis of Timbo’s hypothesis is that the internet needs to be free to work (I know, never trust a hippy – but bear with him here) and that the ‘Book and the Zuckerbergster (and, in fairness, all social media of its ilk) are trapping users and information and then refusing to share. I’ve said it before (and if I haven’t, then I meant to) and I’ll say it again (if I haven’t already it said it, then I’ll say it again in the future – but you may have to remind me), once you’re in his Face – you’re never getting out. It’s just a little too Brave New World for me, I’m afraid. With a dash of Terminator and a few sprinkles of I,Robot. Ooooh, ooooh – 2001: A Space Odyssey, don’t get me started.

Where will it all end? In the instantaneous and spontaneous combustion of most of the ‘Book’s apparent 400m users, probably. Which Lord Young might consider an acceptable margin of error.

But that’s not the point. No, the point of today’s diatribe is a little compare and contrast exercise. Compare – Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the internet and then gave it away for free, for the betterment of mankind. Contrast – the odious demon-child Zuckerberg and others of his ilk, who have a taken the gift freely given and done their utmost to fuck it up for everyone in the constant search for their next billion.

This is probably a metaphor. For something.

So Many Pitfalls, So Little Time…

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, corporate reputation, Corporate Reputation Management, External Communications, media relations, Public Relations, Social Media and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , .

And, as I’m not exactly overburdened with spare time myself right this instant, I’ll get straight to the point, dearest blog snorkellers.

Regular snorkellers of this blog will know where I stand. (What’s that? ‘Just to the right of Genghis Khan’? See me afterwards, Blog Snorkeller Minor.) Social media, while not exactly evil (in themselves), are much overrated and are certainly no great shakes in the big MacDonald’s Happy Meal that is marketing and communications. But they are potentially dangerous – which is why I have always advocated tight controls on, and careful monitoring of, their use in a corporate context. There is, sweet reader, massive potential for you and your brand to be sitting, waiting, at home for Mr Fuckup to call.

My other pet bugbear (I breed domesticated bugbears – small, furry, friendly and – if you keep them well fed – they won’t eat your children) is the lack of real talent in PR. Enthusiasm maybe, talent, not so much. And the appalling lack of basic skills. This has always been the case mind, but, for god’s sake, if you can’t write, what are you doing here?

So imagine my delight when I come across this.

Oh yes, people, a blog on behalf of a big PR agency. And they’ve let some hapless staffer loose ‘as part of the foodie contingent of the H&K blogging bunch’. And she can’t write – “Although the initial instinct is that there can be nothing less festive than a pot noodle, it begs to differ that the mere intrigue of such a flavour will generate sales on its own.”

So – it’s a twofer! I’ve got a PR person who – while undoubtedly enthusiastic – is in need of some training, and I’ve found it through the medium of social! (Well, a blog is social media, isn’t it?)  

Serious questions, mind. Who’s moderating the H&K blog, why didn’t they spot this and why doesn’t the company have a more stringent policy in place? Far, far worse – this is a global communications company. They’re supposed to be good at this shit. Much reputational damage on the wold, I’d say.

(I really do hope I’ve haven’t left any typos in this. Now really would not be the time.)

Defining Content

Posted on by in External Communications, Public Relations, Social Media and tagged , , , , , .

Content is the new strategy, blog snorkellers mine.  By which I mean, of course, that it is the latest concept to have a achieved a truly global misunderstanding of what it means, what it stands for and what it does.

For my entire working life – and I’ve posted about this before – I have marvelled at the business world’s complete inability to agree on a common definition of strategy and thus, as a consequence, its complete failure to produce anything of any value to anyone. I’m sure I am not alone when I say that I cannot remember the amount of times I have been confronted with the mantra – objectives, strategy, tactics – and the amount of times that the three terms have been interpreted in different ways. As I understand it, the concept of ‘strategy’ is what business is predicated on – how, therefore and for the love of god, has anyone ever managed to get anything done, given that strategy turns out to be a meaningless construct, created, I can only surmise, to give consultants something with which to justify their enormous fees. (Mind, I shouldn’t really complain as I, too, have had my share of enormous fees generated on the back of fuck all.)

Anyhoo, dear followers, I digress. Content, you see, in this age of digitalisticity, has become the new strategy. Everyone’s talking about ‘content’ – by which they mean (broadly speaking) the holy grail of nebulous shite which, once posted on t’interweb will, miraculously provoke the ‘big conversation’ and, equally miraculously, sell some branded nonsense. The problem, however, is that no-one knows what ‘content’ actually is – and, trust me, spending too much time thinking about it will result in a ‘Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance’ moment, because it doesn’t really exist. Content is really (and very simply) all the stuff you probably had before – video, brochures, boilerplates, messages, Q&A, position statements – all the stuff that you needed to communicate effectively, and which simply needs to be re-packaged (or not) for the medium.

Problem is that somewhere along the line, as the hysteria around social media built, it was decided that ‘content’ was something that was more than the sum, or the essence, of what already existed and was, in fact a completely new thing. (The closest I can get to it is Unobtainium in ‘Avatar’ and we know what a distasteful pile of greying, unwashed y-fronts that was.) It’s a new medium, said the snake-oil salesmen, corporate hippies and purveyors of digital voodoo, and therefore it needs a new type of ‘content’. And so the concept of ‘content’ passed into modern folklore – and became something that everyone had heard about and no-one understood. Special delivery – another set of undergarments for the Emperor!

(Of course, I’m actually behind the curve with this diatribe because, just as the smarter amongst us are finally beginning to realise that social media are not new media, but simply the old media delivered differently, and that the rules by which we played with old media are the same rules by which we must play with new media, and that Twitter is not, in actual fact, a good message delivery system, so those same smarter amongst us are also realising that social media cannot be leveraged as sales and marketing tools. And thus the concept of miracle ‘content’ is redundant before it even got on the job.)

Anyway – here is some content. This is the sort of content that makes the internet go round. Or square. Or long and thin and squiggly. Whatever shape the internet is. This is the sort of content that defines content. Some may find it funny. Others stupid. But I think we can all agree that it is ‘content’.

And no, I do not now wish to rush out and buy a cat. No matter what brand of cat.