Last Wednesday I took part in a PRCA briefing session with the Financial Times’ CEO John Ridding who talked to a group of comms people about the future of news media. And guess what – he was quite optimistic about it. Although he did admit that such an attitude is quite rare in his industry.

But he’s got every reason to be optimistic. This year, for the first time, FT will be profitable even before advertising revenue is included into the figures. That’s a huge milestone for the publisher – and the industry as a whole. Especially when taking into consideration that just five years ago Ridding wasn’t even sure if the paywall route was the right business model. He doesn’t have any doubts now as digital subscriptions have gone through the roof.

Interestingly, however, the paywall is not just about revenue for the FT. What Ridding didn’t realise when he signed up for this solution is that he will get access to data. Big data. And that it would transform his business. Back in the day, FT didn’t know much about its readers buying the paper from newsstands around the world. However now….. Well, you can imagine – Ridding calls it the Age of Enlightenment.

So is print dead? No way, according to Ridding. Just as TV didn’t kill radio, internet won’t kill print.

By Magda Bulska

Recently the HTC team hosted an East London photography tour with lifestyle and photography press.

The event gave each of the journalists hands-on time with HTC’s flagship smartphone, HTC One. A local expert led the tour, and both a professional photographer and a member of HTC’s tech team were on hand to provide specialist advice along the way. The sun made a timely appearance, and the afternoon was spent learning about and photographing historic architecture, unique views of the city and the subtle features of East London that most people never even notice.

Each stop was tailored to showcase different features of HTC One’s camera, from capturing vivid photos using HDR mode and taking quality snaps under a bridge in low-light, to having fun with HTC’s Zoe function, which allows you to shoot high-res photos that come to life in three-second snippets. It even allowed them to capture a brilliant sequence shot of Corey, HTC’s resident camera expert!

After 90 minutes of exploring, the tour ended with some well-earned food and drink at the Tramshed, famous for its Damien Hirst installation, to give media one last chance to capture a show-stopping image for their articles and social networks.

Keep your eyes peeled for some amazing photos on the likes of the Huffington Post, Obsessed with London, Amateur Photographer and This Little Lady.

Twice a year the RIPE NCC hosts RIPE meetings – events which attract over 500 Internet networking specialists and other Internet-related service stakeholders. This week, Lucie S and Natasha have been at the latest meeting – RIPE 66, in Dublin.

These events are designed for the community to come together and discuss a range of topics, share technical knowledge and best practices, develop community policies, and to build on their professional networks.

Lucie and Natasha were excited to hear the latest updates on the on-going deployment of IPv6, something that is critical for safeguarding the future growth of the Internet. And take advantage of the bountiful supply of free fun goodies, like t-shirts and stickers, of course!

On 2^nd May, behind an unassuming doorway off a Shoreditch backstreet, Facebook held its biggest ever UK developer conference – Mobile Devcon.  In a giant whitewashed warehouse, with walls bearing familiar Facebook ‘graffs’, 440 developers congregated to hear how they could make their apps more social and more mobile.

It only takes a few statistics to show the influence that Facebook has on the app market – 81% of the top 100 iOS apps and 70% of the top 100 Android apps are integrated with Facebook. It’s probably not a coincidence either that apps like Candy Crush Saga and Slotomania, which are top of the App Store, all began life inside Facebook. Like most things, games are more fun with your friends and Mobile Devcon was all about helping developers learn how to integrate with Facebook to drive distribution and build their business.

James Pearce, Facebook’s Head of Developer Advocacy, kicked off the conference by saying Facebook’s next billion users will have never used a computer so mobile has never been more important. ‘Mobile First’ is more than just a catch-phrase – last year Facebook put all its engineers through extensive mobile training to ensure they had the skills needed to fulfil the company’s vision for the future. And with London’s thriving developer scene (second only to San Francisco), developers big and small are growing with Facebook.

Grant Kemp from Android Bloke was one of the influencers who came along for the day – you can read his full account, through a developer’s eyes, here.

Following yesterday’s blog, I’ve put together some more highlights from the Chinwag Psych conference I attended last week:

The science of sharing: video

You go on Facebook, you see that your friend has posted a video of goats singing like Taylor Swift, you share it with your friends. But why, what made you do that?

Cat Jones at Unruly Media walked us through the science of sharing: how the average video share rate is just 4% of all video views, an explanation of why videos go viral and how ¼ of all video shares happen within the first three days of posting. Cat primarily focussed on a tool they launched earlier this year, ShareRank; an algorithm trained on a data set of more than ten thousand points about video sharing, helping to identify which factors and social motivations push people to share.

Hilarity, happiness and warmth all scored highly as reasons for sharing – Cat showed the Three ‘Dance Pony Dance’ video to emphasise this. She stressed the algorithm registered and recognised both cognitive and primal responses, finding that in this case these triggers were the ones that drove people to click the ‘Like’ or retweet button. Cat highlighted that as PR consultants we can look at a client’s video characteristics and consequently use this information to help inform the distribution and sell-in strategy. Using the correct tools we can effectively tailor our approach to targeting media, based on what the video’s strengths are.

Designing your day

As Aristotle once said “Excellence is not an act, but a habit”. This talk looked at how, as professionals, we should challenge and change our habits in order to perform at our best and work smarter – without having to work harder or longer hours. Nokia and Brilliant Noise devised the ‘Design your day’ e-book to help encourage productivity. They spent months working in conjunction with Dr. David Rock, an expert in applying neuroscience to the workplace, to develop this.

So why should we be striving for excellence in the workplace? Well, with the brain using 20% of our blood glucose each day thinking is expensive, and a key reason as to why – as PR professionals – we need to effectively plan our day. Antony Mayfield discussed the ‘three Ps’ we should be contemplating on a daily basis.

Firstly, purpose: you need to understand your purpose and what you want to achieve in order to be excellent. Secondly, prototyping: each day is a prototype, plot your day out and learn what works best for you, as well as noting activities that drain you. Lastly, prioritisation: we must all learn how to effectively prioritise our activities; we need to plan our energy as well as time as both are a finite resource.

Throughout the day I learnt a huge amount from the sessions I sat in on and left feeling positively overwhelmed with great ideas. This blog post can’t do it justice but if you want to find out more there are plenty of updates and interviews being posted on Chinwag’s blog.

By Harriet Mumford

Image courtesy of Benjamin Ellis

Last week I headed down to Chinwag Psych – a day-long conference that examined neuroscience, behavioural psychology and machine learning, specifically focussing on how these practices will revolutionise media, marketing and business.

Throughout the day the talks were split into four themes: approach, optimise, predict and behave. Each included dynamic and engaging discussions from academics and business leaders at the forefront of behavioural psychology and neuroscience. Whilst there’s not enough time to go through everything I learnt (my brain was slightly frazzled by the end), I thought I’d share some of the most interesting bits:

Psychological predictions: ‘show me the money’

The guys at Cambridge Personality Research (part of Cambridge University) discussed the importance of understanding individuals’ behaviour from basic online activity. The team ask people to answer scientific personality questionnaires; they then combine that with observations about their online behaviour (such as ‘Likes’ on Facebook), to indirectly find out what kind of person likes which kind of product without having to ask them.

Image courtesy of Benjamin Ellis

With an ever-growing database of over 6 million respondents it gives brands a strong platform to tap-into the brains of consumer groups. As PR consultants, we can use this to help predict audience behaviour to see what kind of customer the brands we work for are currently attracting, along with specific personality traits. This information can then be used to address the audience with a targeted strategy, to create loyalty, or event to poach customers from rival brands.

Tomorrow I’ll be sharing more of my event highlights, from the science of sharing to why we should be designing our workdays.

By Harriet Mumford

Facebook is a fantastic platform for small businesses to establish an online presence and reach their customers quickly, easily and cost-effectively. Last Friday the Facebook team at Nelson Bostock gathered a select group of national, business and marketing journalists to hear Felicity McCarthy, Head of SMB Marketing, speak about all the latest opportunities available to small businesses – including how new ads products such as Promoted Posts work. The aim was to give media a better understanding of Facebook’s current offering for SMBs to generate opportunities for future coverage.

Felicity was joined by two business owners – Maggy Velsquez, Direct Cosmetics and John Peters, Serenity Spa ­– who both use Facebook to market their small businesses. They shared some lessons they’ve learned along the way and what has been working especially well for them. In particular, both guests highlighted Facebook’s powerful targeting capability, which crucially enables them to target very specific audiences for particular products or spa packages. John commented: “We’ve found [Facebook] works better than anything else to target specific markets.”

The feedback from attending media was extremely positive, and the session demonstrated how compelling Facebook’s story can be when businesses bring it to life through real-life examples.

Last week the salesforce.com team headed over to the ExCel Centre for the company’s annual event – The Customer Company Tour. In the months leading up to it the team worked tirelessly at pulling together a press programme including meetings with top Silicon Valley execs and big brand customers like Philips, Coca-Cola and Unilever.

George Hu, salesforce.com’s COO, urged companies to sit up and take notice of the ‘customer revolution’. He outlined the new era we’re facing where the customer is still king, but we’re able to create richer, deeper and more authentic relationships with them. Hu argued that ultimately, if your company doesn’t adapt it won’t be able to compete – a shocking 64% of people will take their business elsewhere if they receive bad customer service.

Additionally during the event, salesforce.com announced an ‘Innovation Challenge’ for enterprise app developers, a great opportunity for UK start-ups to receive funding. You can read more about in the Wall Street Journal: Europe Enterprise-App Market Is Poised for Take-Off.

Everyone had a great time, engaged with some incredible people and learnt a lot – it was hectic, but brilliant. Next stop: Dreamforce 2013.

At the end of last month the Facebook team was busy tearing around Europe’s very first Advertising Week. A staple of the New York ad exec’s calendar, the event made its way across the pond this year. The venue? BAFTA’s HQ. But what theatrics were we party to as the great and the good of Europe’s advertising industry discussed, gesticulated and argued over the profession’s key issues?

The week wasn’t short on lively debate. The sessions we attended clearly demonstrated that topics such as mobile advertising, the measurement of digital campaigns and the monetisation of social platforms continue to divide opinion amongst even the most senior figures in the industry. Facebook had a very strong presence throughout the week, taking part in nine sessions in total, and with senior spokespeople including Mark D’Arcy (Head of Global Creative Solutions), Paul Adams (Global Head of Brand Design) and Christian Hernandez (Director of UK and EMEA) leading the charge with a keynote, seminar session and panel debate, respectively.

A fast-paced event packed with the best minds in the business, we hope next year’s Advertising Week Europe is even bigger and better! For some top tips on designing creative, engaging and above all, effective campaigns for Facebook, our pick of the week is Paul Adams’ seminar session, “Designing for Facebook”. You can watch it on demand here.

From HTC, to Lookout, to EE, we love our mobile clients at Nelson Bostock. And like much of the world, we’re all addicted to our smartphones.

A couple of weeks ago, we launched Home for Facebook – a new way to turn your Android phone into a great, living, social phone. It was something of an agency affair as our client HTC also launched the HTC First, the world’s first phone to come pre-installed with Home and EE was announced as the exclusive UK launch partner for the phone when it arrives in Britain this summer.

At a live streamed media event in Facebook’s London office, Home was unveiled as a completely new experience that lets you see the world through people, not apps. Getting a sneak peak of Home before it launched, we’re already addicted to some of the features like chat heads which let you continue talking to your friends even when you’re in other apps.

Home was launched globally in the Play Store for compatible Android phones yesterday.

To coincide with the availability of Home in the UK, we worked with The Sun to test drive the new experience so have a read to find out more or visit: https://www.facebook.com/home