As reported in the Times Online, a Harvard law student is not only suing Google for breaching email privacy with its social network, Buzz, but is effectively damaging the online giant’s reputation in the process. Uh-oh Google!

Annoyed users of the email service have been posting (and ranting) on Google’s forum, so much so that Google employees are having to intervene, one of which stated ‘we welcome your feedback, but the tone of this thread has gotten completely out of line’ with angry threads popping up frequently, such as ‘Breach of trust and privacy. Get rid of it Google’.

I can imagine it’s been a tough call for Google on how to react to this – on one hand they can’t really boot people off for being annoyed about this issue when it was their fault in the first place. Looks like a bit of a catch 22 for them on how to respond and social media bloggers around the world (including me!) are keen to see how Google will bounce back from this.

However, it does seem that Google have moved quickly to rectify the problem with an apologetic blog post appearing by the product manager, Todd Jackson, for Gmail and Google Buzz, along with a promise to change one of the social network’s features. He said “We’re very sorry for the concern we’ve caused and have been working hard ever since to improve things based on your feedback.” Good approach in my opinion. But, is this enough to restore our faith in Google once more? Time will tell.

Posted by Charlotte Brophy

One of the Swampies emailed me about my post on spring cleaning in social media, commenting that it had made her think about how the whole concept of privacy is actually becoming outdated.  She reasoned that if privacy is being replaced by a more open, online society happily broadcasting their lives via flickring, facebooking and twittering, the politicians of the future will be digital natives, used to both sharing and seeing outrageous content online.  Which might make the tabloid ‘splash’ a mere footnote in history in a more permissive online society.

But perhaps the tabloid press will be fondly viewed as pussycats compared with the cumulative tiger power of bloggers and citizen journalists (digital natives themselves), unhindered by the laws of libel and with cameraphone always at the ready.  With information (however true it might be) able to be disseminated across the globe in minutes via an electronic version of chinese whispers, the potential for inaccurate or sensational reporting is immense.  And unlike traditional newspapers, today’s blog post isn’t going to be out of mind by tomorrow as fish and chip wrapping.

So not just individuals but brands too are going to need someone to watch out for their digital reputation.  Someone to watch their digital back.  Someone like us.  : -)

posted by gemmaT

This week marks the official launch of OnVisible, and I’m excited. Very excited as it goes. I’ve been doing online PR here at Brahm for some time now, and as our expertise continues to grow, it feels great to get the chance to shout louder about it.

What makes a good online PR person?
So what does it take to be an online communicator? Go back a few years and digital whizzes and PRs were a million miles apart, in fact they pretty much lived on different planets. (You remember? When people stockpiled water and candles because of the forthcoming millennium meltdown!).

As I’m sure you know, things are very different now. As companies begin to wrestle the beast that is online reputation management, you need creatures which embrace the principles of PR and mix it with a deep technical understanding of the workings of the web.

I, and indeed the rest of the Brahm PR team, am lucky enough to work alongside the Swamp at Brahm team – over 40 digital experts who work for the likes of Umbro, Heinz and GlaxoSmithKline. Over the last couple of years we’ve begun to work closer and closer together, until we speak each other’s language and the OnVisible team could be born.

Knowing your page rank from your link juice
So now I know my raw link juice from my cloaking, and my meta tag from my canonicalisation (OK, I’m just showing off now). And my colleagues who are techies at heart understand the subtleties of messaging and how we use our unending determination to reach the information gatekeepers.

In fact we’ve even created an animation to show how we’ve fused these two types of communicators together, which we will be showing you soon.

Stronger together
So as we launch our OnVisible team as a harmonious group of unique and wise beasts, I hope you will visit us often, to join us on our journey.
Posted by Charlotte Hancock