Comments on: Inside PR #104 – Tuesday March 25, 2008.

By: Neil @ Facebook Insight

Neil @ Facebook Insight — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 15:32:41 +0000

Being involved heavily in application development for Facebook, I can definitely chime in to say that the nature of social ‘games’ and social ‘news’ on networking sites like Facebook and MySpace is small, but with the eventual growth of blog connectors, we’re seeing more people turn into Facebook news sources.

With respect to the issue of the day, this would eventually require a PR team to deal with a variety of individuals through their personal account. I’m sure this already occurs with blog-based news, but somehow it will be different to contact a popular individual on Facebook regarding his/her supply of news.

By: Tom Reidt

Tom Reidt — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 19:36:26 +0000

I almost forgot, congratulations on two years of great programming!

By: Tom Reidt

Tom Reidt — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 19:27:28 +0000

Social media and websites are definitely excellent media to really expand and detail a particular issue or story. The information can be available, in its entirety, and broken into bite-size chunks through links and/or different pages. Also, audiences/visitors to the site will be generally more open to your viewpoint, or at the very least, interested in the debate. The downside? Audiences can find opposing viewpoints just as easily as yours, or even create their own counter arguments. However, if you make a convincing case, that shouldn’t be a problem. The trick is getting people to actually visit the website.

I think a good example of this, related to big tobacco, is thetruth.com campaigns. They use a lot of traditional media to drive traffic to their website, which then provides a lot more detail to their viewpoint to try and sway viewer’s opinions. More of a marketing example, since they use mainly ads, but a good example of a complex topic being handled through an online presence with other media accompaniments.