Shankman started HARO as a Facebook group in 2007 and the following grew so large he took the concept to the web in March 2008 at www.helpareporter.com.
HARO has been acquired by Vocus, Inc. one of HARO’s largest and most loyal advertisers. According the video below of Shankman and Vocus representative, Bill Wagner, nothing about the service will change. HARO will still be free. Shankman will still write up front notes about where is in the world and what he’s up to.
The only thing that will change is that HARO will now grow in new ways, with these additional resources. One example, Vocus plans to expand HARO to other countries.
HARO is a perfect case study of an entrepreneurial idea come to life. Shankman saw a need and created a service. The service grew in popularity and reach and became a direct competitor to long time paid service ProfNet (read RaceTalk’s post about how they could have merged, but didn’t). Now, HARO has been acquired (a major win for Shankman) providing the service with fresh momentum.
Shankman is also employing a critical PR necessity: transparency. As soon as the acquisition was final, Shankman took to the blog not only providing a written update, but a video message. HARO supporters heard the news directly from him, as it happened. This is key in building customer loyalty and trust, which is the cornerstone of a strong brand.
As long time subscribers to HARO, we look forward to being a part of what’s next for this growing service.
Today Google has added a new homepage feature – allowing users to chose or upload their own background images for the home page. Users were already able to pick their own themes for Gmail, iGoogle and other Google platforms, but now the main page will be customized as well.
Here is a look at how users will be greeted:
Here is one of Google’s background options:
And my customized home page with a background image of Bryce Canyon in Utah.
On June 1, Brad Stone of the New York Times wrote an almost glowing review of the Pulse news reader on the iPad. A week later his parent company forced Apple to take the application off of iTunes because it allowed users to view New York Times Co. content (nytimes.com and boston.com) within the application. And with that, we have the first debate around monetizing content in the tablet-era.
In essence the New York Times Co. is objecting to Pulse creators (two Stanford graduate students) using the company’s RSS feed on the iPad. Something that has been done for years on all sorts of devices (i.e. Google Reader). The problem it seems in this case is the creators had been so successful with that app that it had risen to number one on the paid, iPad application store for some time and they’ve made more than $40,000 in doing so. Steve Jobs even praised the innovation of the application at Apple’s WWDC, before he received a letter from the Times Co. With their own FREE, iPad app, the Times Co. wants a piece of the pie.
However, while the Times Co. sticks with its current position, Kara Swisher, who sat down with the two creators of the app in the video above, notes in an update that they resubmitted Pulse yesterday without the Times’ RSS feed included and it is now on-sale again on the iTunes store. For the time being, anyways.
The Sysomos research report entitled “Inside Blog Demographics,” found that the average blogger is age 21 – 35. This particular age demographic represents 53% of the total blogging population.
Given mommy blogger mania, you might think the majority of bloggers are female. Or possibly if you follow numerous technology and gadget blogs, you might think men dominate the blog scene. Well, you’d be right on both counts. According to this report, bloggers are 50.9% female and 49.1% male. Almost a dead even split.
I think the statistics that surprised me most were the location demographics. Only 29.2% of bloggers are located in the United States. Does that seem low to anyone else?
Amongst the 29.2% of American bloggers, the largest percentage hail from California (14.1%), with New York coming in second at 7.1%. No surprise there.
You can view the full country by country break down below:
Did you realize the average blogger was a recent college grad in CA or NY?
Following in the footsteps of Google and perhaps Hugo Chavez, New York City is looking to hire a “mayor” for social media to activate digital initiatives that push the city’s policies into the digital sphere. The position, Chief Digital Officer, is being offered by the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications.
The job pay will pay between $57,000-$125,000, and according to the opening listing it will entail:
“Managing and presenting a consistent and comprehensive new media face for the City of New York; coordinating with City agencies in the promotion of initiatives via new media tools; working with the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications (DoITT) to improve the design and content of NYC.gov to increase usability and make relevant information more accessible.”
It is believed to be the first city or city administration to seek a CDO and should be a sign of things to come. As community and consumer relations evolve in the digital age, the need for CDO’s (a position now popular in the private sector) becomes as important as having a press secretary.
Got any good candidates for Mr. Bloomberg? Maybe someone at Bloomberg?
The creator of the @BPGlobalPR Twitter account wrote a blog post for Gizmodo, explaining why he decided to start the account. Although he doesn’t provide his true identity (a smart move) the points he makes about BP and online image is spot on. Below is a brief excerpt from the post:
I’ve read a bunch of articles and blogs about this whole situation by publicists and marketing folk wondering what BP should do to save their brand from @BPGlobalPR. First of all, who cares? Second of all, what kind of business are you in? I’m trashing a company that is literally trashing the ocean, and these idiots are trying to figure out how to protect that company? One pickledick actually suggested that BP approach me and try to incorporate me into their actual PR outreach. That has got to be the dumbest, most head-up-the-ass solution anyone could possibly offer.
Do you want to know what BP should do about me? Do you want to know what their PR strategy should be? They should fire everyone in their joke of a PR department, starting with all-star Anne Womack-Kolto and focus on actually fixing the problems at hand. Honestly, Cheney’s publicist? That’s too easy.
BP seems to only care about maintaining their image so they can keep making money
