You may have seen the (re)launch of flattr this week, a service which has just becoming bigger and better from the idea first proposed in 2010. The basic concept is that, providing there are the (pre-paid) funds to do so, anyone viewing a post, a picture, a blog, or a video can give the creator of the material a flattr credit by simply clicking an icon - essentially heralding the era of microdonations. The service is compatible with nearly all major platforms, including Instagram, flickr, twitter, Facebook and various blog platforms.

What this means is that there is, perhaps, finally a small scale monetisation opportunity for everyone creating fresh, engaging content, through a broad all-encompassing service - such a reach that means the reliance on individually monetised silos could be obsolete. This has long been one of the biggest challenges for content creators in the social era; how do you make yourself profitable as a blogger or occasional commentator?

This 'Oyster' card approach is one which could become hugely effective in that it could break down the barriers to siloed content - you can't help but wonder whether if newspapers got together and created a similar approach they'd be able to monetise their content collectively rather than in individually subscribed services.

If you could pre-pay to read a finite amount of content across a variety of news sites (which then divvied up the proceeds based on reader behaviour) then you'd browse more. As it is, the increasing number of subscription-based models merely means people get tied to one title only - or, as seems to be the case, simply find the news for free elsewhere rather than pay multiple subscriptions to be able to browse multiple sites. There's power in working together.

For individual bloggers, it provides a nice opportunity to see tangible rewards for your work (albeit rewards that are unlikely to allow you to retire), as well as be able to give flattr credits to others you enjoy reading, watching or reposting. It's a novel idea, and it'll be interesting to see it progress.

@wonky_donky

It shouldn't *really* be a surprise that people tweeting ad infinitum about social media techniques and tips should describe themselves as 'social media gurus', but the report from What's Next Blog shows how ridiculous this self-aggrandising chest thumping has got.

Over 180 thousand twitter users describe themselves as 'social media gurus' in some shape or form, with some of the worst perpetrators being those who modestly dub themselves 'warriors', 'mavens', and (strangely, given the industry's relatively nascency) 'veterans'.

What would be interesting would be to assess the *actual* guru-ness of these people. In my experience, accounts who boast such a title are often the worst culprits for spamming linkbait blogs repeating the same old nonsense - let's be honest, there is a genuinely finite amount you can write about how to run a good social media programme or engaging twitter account. It doesn't need a dozen posts a day to explain it. Furthermore, they often have tens of thousands of followers, but rarely a RT - they're not practising what they preach by means of engagement.

What really annoys me though is that these accounts follow people, then, within 24 hours, unfollow if they're not followed back, or unfollow you the moment you do so to them (when you get bored of being spammed crap blogs).

Twitter isn't about reciprocal follows, it's about following people you find interesting, funny, or informative; 'follow me if I follow you' is the wrong approach, yet so many self-styled 'social media gurus' do just that - harvesting followers to increase their perceived popularity.

We're all, individually and as an industry, constantly learning about the opportunities social media brings and finding new (and not always perfect) ways of using platforms in the best way possible. However, calling yourself a guru is perhaps arrogant at best and when you fail to grasp the basics, downright annoying.

Populus has released some very interesting stats today on the trustworthiness of our news outlets. The Sun is apparently the least well-trusted newspaper, with just 9% of the population stating that they trust the outlet 'completely or somewhat'.

Whilst we should bear in mind that a hefty chunk of people may have ticked 'neither trust nor distrust', there were a few surprises: both the Telegraph and the Guardian only achieved a 39% trust rating, and the FT - confident intellectual heavyweight that it is - still scored less than half (48%).

Trust is interesting, but I don't think it's a binary distinction, nor should we think about this in really simplistic terms - it's also important to think about factors such as quality. After all, I trust the BBC's reporting, but the reporters have such a broad remit, from 3D games to new processors, from 4G to Facebook stock to security, they can't possibly have in-depth knowledge about all these topics or their heads would explode. So, I trust the BBC for the top line and would look to more niche, geeky sites for more detailed scrutiny. I'd say that whilst the FT is trustworthy, the reporting can be dense and inaccessible to the man on the street, which could lead to distrust.

I was also a bit puzzled by the implication on Populus that trust is equivalent to morality. After all, people might not trust the Guardian or the Telegraph because they know they have a left / right-wing slant to their reporting. I don't think this is immoral; they're entitled to their views and I think these views are well-known. Similarly, the now defunct News of the World may have used sources who gained information via phone hacking, which was clearly immoral, but the information may have been wholly reliable.

I'm not disagreeing with the Populus piece, but I do think that trust, quality and morality are all tied up in a more complex web than a simple 'I trust / don't trust this newspaper'

But I suppose this doesn't make for quick, digestible news.

By @Krsjn

This time last week I was at home, recovering from the Isle of Wight Festival and basking at the sheer joy of being home, and clean, and on a proper bed, and clean, and having had more than three hours sleep, and importantly…being clean.

The idea to go the Festival was first seeded over a bottle of wine, when I asked my friend whether being the tender age of 32 and 13 months made me too old to go to a festival. A gentle 'No babe' was given in reply and a plan was hatched. Yes it might rain a bit, yes it would involve camping and I'd be cold, but we'd have each other and booze, which would make it all okay, right?

Wrong.

Our plan first seemed at risk when the weather report in the week ahead looked shoddy at best. 'No fear', I said. 'I have a Kagool and Jack Daniels, it will be ace.' The closer it got to the event, the more it rained and the more nervous I became about it being a mud-fest. So, I put my hope into modern communications to aide me. After all, knowledge is power.

I became obsessed with weather reports and following anyone vaguely useful on Twitter, from official festival organisers and ferry operators through to anyone tweeting about their journey. Come Thursday afternoon, day 1 of the festival, tales of woe were literally flooding in and there was a Twitter frenzy with people complaining of being trapped in their cars and on ferries in the Solent.  No one could get into the festival site due to mud and social media was awash with panic. Rumours were spreading that thousands were trapped, the main stage was sinking and the whole thing had been called off.

People wanted answers. What they got were two tweets. One at 2pm in the afternoon saying that there were some difficulties getting people on site. The next one six hours later saying 'Cerys Matthews is opening the Big Top' which was understandably met with a torrent of expletives from people who were still stuck on the road and hadn't moved in eight hours.

It comes down to this. If you have a Twitter presence, use it. If people have questions, answer them. If you have nothing to say or update people on, tell them. Just keep in touch. The organisers said that they were busy helping people get on site which is why they were unable to talk to media or put updates on Twitter. This sounds noble enough but just doesn't cut it in an age where everyone is online. Knowledge is power but if you opt for radio silence, you lose that power and the online world will make up their own reality.

In the end, after purchasing an extra groundsheet and an extra bottle of Jack Daniels to see me though, we had a surprisingly easy journey to the festival. Yes we renamed it 'Mudfest 2012', yes the mud will haunt me for years to come and yes it was a brilliant weekend in the end, but poor social media management meant that we could have called it off altogether.

So, my two 'take-aways' from the weekend are as follows. Silence isn't always golden, and white isn't always a sensible choice for festival attire - evidence below.

Helen @fablett

It's been all over the news this week - Google falling foul of Britain's privacy watchdog over the misuse of personal data. The online search engine has been accused of using their Street View cars to gather information from unsecured Wi-Fi networks.

Scary stuff! Even scarier that George Orwell told us extreme surveillance was going to happen - fair enough he is about 28 years out in his predictions, and we aren't all being controlled by the dictatorship of The Party - but still this 'Big Brother' state is a little worrying.

Yesterday, I frantically made my Facebook profile private in as many ways as possible, without removing the ability for people to write on my wall... which is actually just a space for me to post things that I/other people find funny.... I digress; I suddenly became very worried about who had seen my photos and who had been trawling through them, although in reality it is probably just my mother taking a peek at what I have been up to. Still, I do know people who take great pleasure in extracting information from people's Facebook pages -  "OMG did you see she liked his status? I am defo looking through her photos!" The thought of someone doing that to me worries me greatly, especially as these are individuals, not companies, who are following our online movements! **Shivers**

Let's face it; if Google weren't going to extract data from unsecured wi-fi networks then they would probably just get it from our online movements. Both of which are creepy. My advice? Everyone should get offline and go play in the sunshine…..Oh wait? It's raining? I better update my Facebook and Twitter and tell everyone just how much it's raining #EnglishWeather.

Rambo (aka Kelly) @KelRams

Driving to work this week enjoying the sunshine with my window down and music turned up I was not best pleased when a stone bounced off of a passing lorry straight towards my windscreen.  I closed my eyes but knew from the sound of the stone hitting the glass that it had chipped.  I decided to take the mature route of cursing at the chip and at the lorry which had now long gone and continued my drive to work. What a crap start to the day.

When I got to work I vented my frustration on Twitter as most people do (we all know that's what it's really for).

Within an hour I was surprised to see a reply from @Autoglass - especially since I hadn't tweeted them directly or hash tagged them. My first reaction was that it'd be a sales punt that would've caused my frustration and annoyance to spiral. But I was pleased and shocked to see it was a charming, friendly personal note. It cheered me up.

I replied, thanking them for the tweet, and said that I'd speak to my insurers and give them a call if I needed any further help. Turns out my insurers work with Autoglass anyway. So I gave them a call, booked an appointment and they repaired it. Simple.

But what makes this even more remarkable is that it has very little value for Autoglass (it only cost me £10 to have it fixed). I was so impressed with how personal and effective they had been that I've been telling everyone about it (as will this blog!). My experience shows that using Twitter correctly can really help to engage customers and help shape brand perceptions.

I later found out that Autoglass are using Radian6 which is how they came across my tweet.  They simply monitor tweets that contain words like 'chip' and 'cracked' together with 'windscreen' and 'car'.  Specific searches are set up so that irrelevant tweets such as those that include the words 'chip' and 'fish' are ignored. People tweeting about their dinner obviously won't need to be contacted.

I think this is a fantastic example of a brand engaging with consumers through Twitter successfully. Autoglass listened and understood my tweet before responding, were helpful without being pushy and made an effort.

Becca @beccakennett

When you arrive at Stratford station and walk through Westfield into the Olympic Park - it's hard to believe that just a few years ago the same area in East London was something of a 'wasteland' characterised by railway lines, neglected waterways and a history of industrial pollution dating back two centuries.

Last night when the Octopus team turned up in Stratford for the official opening of Cisco House, the scene couldn't have been more different.  Bustling with life and modern architecture, the same space is virtually unrecognisable. As we made our way up to the venue, Cisco House, which is nestled in a unique roof-top location above Westfield Stratford City, the panorama of the Olympic Park from the balcony was stunning.  And the Octopus team weren't the only ones to admire the view!

70 members of the national, business and IT print, online and broadcast press joined Cisco to celebrate the opening of the House, which showcases the transformational opportunities of technology for countries, cities and organisations both today and in the future.

With drinks flowing and some interactive technology for visitors to test out, the evening was a great success - with journalists from the FT, The BBC, Sky News, ITN,  The Metro, The Mirror, The Evening Standard, Computing, Management Today and many more enjoying Cisco's 'business transformation experience' (and tasty nibbles!)

All in all it was a brilliant event and one of the most successful press launches we've done in terms of both quantity and quality for years.  With just 79 days to go until the opening ceremony of London 2012 - and plenty more events in the pipeline - we can't wait to see what's around the corner next!

Ellie @elliejanefry

We are very lucky here in the Octopus' professional service team to have clients such as the Recruitment & Employment Confederation (REC) that see us speaking to national broadcasters on a daily basis. The REC, as a professional recruitment body, talks about all things jobs related and in these economic times, there is always something happening on this front.

So what better place to voice your opinions than on TV or radio? Indeed I don't have to explain that for a PR professional there isn't anything more satisfying than having a client interviewed on telly or radio, and this month we did exactly that  - nine times for the REC, including BBC Breakfast, BBC Radio 5 Live Wake Up To Money, Sky News and BBC News 24. With the new record comes a new challenge to break it and we definitely managed to push the bar a little bit higher!

So how do we do it?

I'd love to say that there is a science behind it, but there really isn't. It's about knowing who works at which desk, what they like and when they like it. To feel comfortable that you possess this knowledge you need to have regular conversations and plan your sell-ins in advance according to various deadlines and preferences. Only by talking to journalists and producers can you find out how and when various stations and programmes book their spokespeople, and trust me, they do vary a lot - some broadcast journalists we speak to prefer to be approached at 5pm for example - not a usual time to pitch stories.

One more piece of advice - broadcast journalists change their positions incredibly quickly so never assume you've finally cracked it - every month I seem to discover something new.

Ingrid @isemanikova

I think it's fair to say that the consumer team at Octopus are often viewed as a being a little bit different, but different is good right?

To celebrate the feast of Easter we sent a delivery of 24 Easter egg piñatas and 72 boxes of eggs (that's 288 Easter eggs), no dead goldfish here, to our favourite consumer tech journalists.

Why, you may ask?  Well besides wanting to make some friends, and eat chocolate, we also wanted to treat everyone to a taste of Trend Micro's latest tech, DirectPass!  It's a really cool new piece of software designed to fight the growing menace of identity theft by simplifying and securing the log-in process for users -  no matter how many different accounts they manage online.

Where are we going with this? Piñatas and chocolate eggs... are you passwords as easy to crack as these?

Long live the media mailer, the cheesier the better. Do excuse us; we're off to find a blindfold and stick!

Kasia @kfwojciechowska and Naomi @missbarry

Customers, employees and journalists came together this week for a Taleo breakfast event discussing the impact of LinkedIn on recruitment, which I was lucky enough to attend.

The event saw a series of insightful sessions from speakers such as Dan Dackombe (EMEA Enterprise Sales Manager Hiring Solutions at LinkedIn), Richard Doherty (Head of Business Transformation, Taleo) and Chris Phillips (VP EMEA Marketing, Taleo). We all know how social media is transforming the game in terms of PR, so it was interesting to see it applied to the world of recruitment.

All about LinkedIn, from LinkedIn

First up, I was really interested to hear Dan give some great insight into LinkedIn itself, and he impressed the audience with some serious stats on the business. Take these for example; in the past 14 months, the number of employees working across EMEA for LinkedIn has grown from less than 50 to an impressive 350. And for anyone doubting the impact of LinkedIn, Dan told us that 62% of all UK professionals now use the site.

He also explained how LinkedIn works to the following three objectives;

1)      Identity - to help recruiters, companies and individuals create an online identity that is constantly evolving.

2)      Insight - allow potential candidates and recruiters to learn more about the individual or the company through various groups and references.

3)      Everywhere - make the process of recruitment and job-hunting a constant experience through their mobile app.

Best practices:

As ever, the Q&A session brought up some nuggets of vital information, and one of the biggest questions for employers, it emerged, is how to engage employees in social media participation? However, the Q&A threw up a great number of things for employers to consider when it comes to social media. Creating groups within your network, thereby allowing employees to own a group by contributing content, beginning conversations and forwarding invitations onto friends was just one idea, as was giving employees the chance to talk about their company or about relevant topics. This allows employers to carve out their identity amongst the greater community and reach their target audience of potential employees, even if they are only passive candidates.

What I definitely learnt is that social media means that the world of recruitment is undergoing massive change, led by the expansion of social media recruitment and the acceptance of new mobile applications and platforms. It's not just PR that social media is changing.

As the morning concluded, many recruiters were left excited about beginning or expanding their journey into the world of social media and all were full of delicious mini eggs Benedict and hash browns! Yummy!

Lindsey @lindsey_hemming