Piaras Kelly PR – Public Relations in Ireland

Damien Mulley rightly points out the reason why Irish bloggers have gotten so upset over the fact that it@Cork received a cease and desist letter over the use of the phrase ‘Web 2.0′ in the title of an upcoming conference is due to the fact , “Irish bloggers couldn’t give a toss about web 2.0 but they would give a toss if one of us was sued for some stupid reason.” Annette Clancy adds in the comments section of my post about the subject, “What else would bloggers do apart from talk/write about stuff?“

Both Damien and Annette hit the nail on the head. Bloggers are self publishers and write about whatever they feel like. I’ve pointed this out in the past. I write about public relations, Annette writes about her personal life and her consultancy and Damien pretty much writes about everything.

What I’m pointing out though is that some people have delusions de grandeur about the impact of blogging on our lives. Primarily the conversation boils down to two things: blogs as a word-of-mouth tool and blogs’ impact on traditional media. Recently a post on each of these topics has really focused my thinking on the impact of blogging.

The first is by Joseph Jaffe, who writes about the 1% rule. He states’ “1% of constituents are typically responsible for the majority/bulk of content/contributions. The prime example given is WikiPedia: (as per WikiPedia founder, Jimmy Wales) (i) 50% of all Wikipedia edits are done by 0.7% of users and (ii) 1.8% of users have written more than 72% of all articles.“

In the context of blogs as a word-of-mouth tool in an Irish context, blogging is a medium with a very narrow focus. While Joseph insinuates that this “1% of people responsible for 99% of your buzz“, his argument doesn’t really hold in Ireland. In reality Irish bloggers are pretty much a close knit community that doesn’t have much of a word-of-mouth impact outside of our audience. Irish blogs do have an incredible impact on Google, in that our thoughts are starting to rank much higher on the search engine than traditional though leaders, and our topic discussions are starting to make their way into the mainstream media. However as a stand alone medium, blogging in Ireland isn’t an effective communications tool unless you’re looking to target a very specific audience.

The second post that really captured my imagination on the subject was by Adam Maguire who writes that “As bloggers we need to look at ourselves objectively“. He correctly points out after reviewing the ‘much celebrated’ coverage of the Dublin riots riots by Irish bloggers, “the whole situation really amounted to a failure on the part of the traditional media rather than a success for bloggers.“

In my original post I found it amusing that Irish bloggers would get so wound up over it@Cork receiving a cease and desist letter when other controversial subjects don’t seem to generate the same conversation. Damien points out “If we are constricted to talking about what newspapers and the radio covers then we’d be a very very boring community and dictated by business interests and the interests of demographics.” he misses where I’m going though. Adam captures what I’m trying to say brilliantly,

“Blogging is a place where marginal stories have a home; while articles in newspapers are chosen based on the public interest (which is the pleasant way of saying ‘what interests enough of the public to bring us a profit’) blog topics are chosen on the basis of publisher interest (audience comes after the publishers interests). Blogs also act as a ‘Fifth Estate’; a watchdog to the watchdogs. In a country where the media is becoming increasingly consolidated it is important for a democratic and independent voice to be available to all; one that will criticise the media monopoly rather than avoid discussing it.”

The overwhelming reaction yesterday forced O’Reilly Media to change their stance on their cease and desist letter. Now they claim anyone who wants to use the phrase ‘Web 2.0′ in a conference title has to get their permission. It’s still stupid because I only discovered yesterday that they coined the phrase. If someone utters the words ‘Web 2.0′, it brings much more to mind than them, so how they think it@Cork could be cashing in on their thinking is beyond me. Could you imagine me having to ask for permission to use the phrase ‘Public Relations’ in the title of a PR conference?

Blogging isn’t going to bring down traditional media, it is its own medium. I don’t read blogs instead of newspapers. The past seven days have seen some really interesting things published, including informative guides, stories that don’t get picked up in the media and highly personal topics. It’s amazing to think that this form of communication didn’t really exist five years ago. Don’t get caught up in the hype though, sometimes our close knit community can be far too insular.

Going back to what Annette said in the comments section of my post about the subject, “What else would bloggers do apart from talk/write about stuff?” I’m the type of person who looks to look at a situation from the other side of the fence. It inevitably annoys some people because they think that I’m disagreeing with them for the sake of it, but in reality I’m just thinking out loud in order to come to a proper conclusion. If you don’t look at a story from a couple of perspectives, then you’re just a sheep following a crowd in my opinion. Annette asks whether I get blogging at all. As I’ve always pointed out, this website is an educational resource for me as I debate out loud about certain subjects and discuss interesting stories or articles which I think will help my career develop.

Technorati Tags: Cease and Desist, it@Cork, Piaras Kelly, Tom Raftery, Web 2.0