My London colleagues call it “plugging” – giving yourself some PR, a pat on your own shoulder. Although, in this case it’s the FT patting Hotwire’s shoulder and founder Kristin Syltevik’s in particular by giving our agency some space which we would otherwise try to secure for our clients.

In a piece about how businesses can cope with glooming recession, reporter Mike Southon quotes Kristin who reveals some of the secrets that made Hotwire one of Europe’s top tech PR consultancies within just 8 years. But hey, read for yourself!

(On a side note: FT.com offers social bookmarking links after the article. Why doesn’t FTD.de?

Der Frankfurter news aktuell MediaCoffee, den ich neulich schon nicht so doll fand, was den Erkenntnisgewinn angeht, fand die Tage seine Fortsetzung in München. Wie es scheint, waren auch da allerlei Sonderlichkeiten “Old Media”-Schaffender zu hören, wie Thomas Knüwer berichtet (und wie üblich polemisiert).

Diese Art Diskussionsforum erinnert mich immer mehr an die Elefantenrunden der Politiker nach Wahlen. Man sitzt in feister Runde und jeder hat die Wahl gewonnen. Nur dass die Vorzeichen bei diesen Medienrunden umgekehrt stehen. Die alten Recken sitzen in der Runde, müssen ihre Wichtigkeit mit wichtig klingenden Sätzen beweisen, aber am Ende sind sie doch alle furchtbar ratlos, wie es weitergehen soll mit Medienland. Fast scheint es, als würden die Elefanten darum wissen, dass sie im gläsernen Porzellanladen sitzen und sich bloß nicht bewegen dürfen, weil sonst alles zu Bruch geht. Sowas nannte man mal “Beamtenmikado”, wer sich zuerst bewegt verliert.

Die Realität ist natürlich anders: An den Rändern, in der Mitte, quer über Felder, Wald und Wiesen brennt es schon, das Feuer namens Internet. Und keiner weiß es so recht zu zähmen und in Wärme, vulgo Geld, umzuwandeln. Da helfen auch die Spitzen des geschätzten Herrn Knüwer nicht, der zwar vollkommen zurecht den Altvorderen den Spiegel vorhält, aber sich selbst unter den sicheren Fittichen des Print(!)-Handelsblatt weiß, das ihm als Online-Aushängeschild eine gewisse Narrenfreiheit zubilligt.

Übermorgen wird es wieder keine Schlangen vor den T-Punkten geben. Dabei hätte T-Mobile die Chance gehabt, mit der Markteinführung des iPhone 3G mal richtig PR-Punkte zu sammeln bei Kunden und (noch-)Nichtkunden. Warum es nicht so kommen wird, beschreibt Johannes in seinem leidenschaftlichen Blogpost. Und die Debatte dazu ist nicht minder leidenschaftlich.

Neu daran ist, dass sich T-Mobile mit dem iPhone auch die Aufmerksamkeit einer sehr aktiven und meinungsstarken Zielgruppe auf sich gezogen hat, mit der sie so ihre Schwierigkeiten zu haben scheint. Aber für einen Ex-Monopolisten (ja, der steckt auch bei T-Mo noch drin!) ist das vielleicht garnicht so schlecht. Das Web macht Druck und das iPhone ist da Anlass für die nötige Leidenschaft.

I keep registering to new services or apps almost every week. Since I first did the “Things I’ve tried” list in April, quite a number of new things have seen my type in my email address. If you’d like to see for yourself, go here:

1. Twhirl, a Twitter client based on Adobe AIR, acquired by Seesmic and being improved more regularly since then. Still suffers from Twitter’s API request restriction which makes all clients slow once you have exceeded a certain number of proliferous followees.
2. TweetDeck, just came in this weekend. Another AIR-based Twitter client that organises Tweets in columns, allowing for replies to be listed separately and offering grouping. It’s pretty much a full-screen thing, so requires more attention than Twhirl.
3. Twibble, is a mobile Twitter client. It works nicely on my SonyEricsson, again with the API restriction in place. Downside is that you can’t click on links in your timeline and read stuff on your mobile browser. But Twibble guaranteed on-the-go entertainment during the Germany-Turkey Euro 2008 semi-finals when the TV signal from Basel failed several times in all of Europe.
4. Brightkite, is a location-based social network that allows users to inform friends on the go where they are and what they are up to. It has a web-to-mobile integration with maps on the site. Currently, the mobile app does not work with carriers outside the US, so it’s pretty useless. Unless you want to send texts to the service to check in. Plazes, recently acquired by Nokia, does a better job with automated check-in and has more European/German users too. Anyway, LB SocNets are here to stay..
5. Identi.ca, is a Twitter clone with a sleek interface but less features than the original. Might become a fallback option if the fail whale keeps appearing for ever and ever.
6. Sixgroups call themselves “live community” which they indeed are. You’ll find my Sixgroup community bar on the top of this blog and I invite you to join my community. Integrating Sixgroups was a breeze (copy-paste of a bit of code) and setting up all the rest is as simple as anything. The cool thing about this is that you can build your own network of people around your personal content offering (i.e. this blog) and engage in discussion live as the Sixgroups drop-down menu offers live chat functionality – apart from the unmissable Twitter integration. Oh, and this is a German startup from Hamburg, which is always worth mentioning.
7. TypePad is the legendary hosted blog service from Six Apart (my client at Hotwire) and I’ve set up a secondary blog (German only) to play with and get aquainted with the service.
8. Plurk is a Twitter-like microblog service, I’ve written about here. Don’t use it much anymore as the critical mass is on Twitter (still).
9. Telewebber was great fun during the Euro 2008 matches. People getting together to chat live about the game. More detail here in my previous post.
10. Mento takes your bookmarks, much like del.icio.us, but with a more immediate community of friends. You can share links with just one friend if you like or publish more broadly. It’s integrated with del.icio.us, Facebook, Friendfeed, Ma.gnolia and Tumblr. Plus Twitter of course. A nice feature, building on the social factor is the “Mento Mix” that gives you a selection of links your friends have saved as a recommended reading. They have Firefox and IE plugins, too. I have a few invites, so just comment here to get one.

Up next: 2 weeks offline in Finland end of July. So 0.5, but I know I’ll love it.

Do you protect your Twitter updates? I do. But why? Let’s explore in a little meme…

Twitter has this little tickbox under “settings” saying “Protect my updates”. It prevents your tweets from appearing in the public timeline and new followers need to ask you for permission to follow you. I’ve protected my updates pretty much from the outset, simply because I don’t want everyone to be able to read my tweetfeed or Google to index every little meaningless note forever and ever.

Now, Peter brought up the issue on his blog, if Twitter couldn’t add a little box where everyone would briefly say why they protect the updates. He thinks this might be a bit less antisocial than just not accepting a new follower without further explanation. In my view he has a point! You could argue that you could put that info in the mini-bio that goes with Twitter, but people might not read that for an explanation.

You folks out there must have come across that situation: a new follower request comes in, you don’t know the person, what do you do? Simply deny? Feels impolite, doesn’t it? So here’s a meme:

Why do you protect your Tweets (or not)? Let’s hear first from Carsten (his blog), “dogboy” Kai (his blog) and Drew (blog) for an international twist from the UK. And Peter himself of course.