In case you missed it, I wrapped up the news for last week over on the Wolfstar Blog, with everything from Reddit to E3 and the Daily Mail… Give it a read over here
clare siobhan
gaming, tech & social
Category Archives: news
2012 PR Graduate Schemes
Ben Cotton produced a fantastic post this month on the 2012 PR graduate schemes. So if you’re looking for a job after graduating this year, why not check out the list collated by Ben below and be sure to check out his blog and recommended posts below for more information and tips.
Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been researching and speaking to industry colleagues in order to create this years list of 2012 PR Graduate Schemes.
Despite growth stalling in the wider economy, it’s great to see the PR industry in rude health (judging by the number of grad schemes that is). The list is broadly the same size as previous years and as we’ve come to expect, it is predominantly made up of the larger, international agencies with London offices.
This years list makes one thing abundantly clear. Whilst final year students will be acclimatising to their most important year at university and thinking about dissertations, the race for a graduate PR job has already begun.
Gamescom, Köln – what a week!
Last month I was lucky enough to attend Gamescom 2011 along with the rest of the Sony Ericsson XperiaTM PLAY team, to help out on the XperiaTM PLAY booth (which looked awesome!).
Being the resident Wolfstar geek (every company needs one!) means I’ve had the chance to work on the PLAY account from the start. It’s more then I ever could have hoped for on my internship year, with it being an amazingly fast paced and exciting account and totally focused around one of my own interests; the video games industry.
Still a man’s world?
Whenever the topic arises in conversation, I usually get a funny look when I say I’m into gaming, People assume I must mean on the Wii playing fitness games (which admittedly I do) or on a more female orientated game like The Sims (again, guilty), so they are yet again surprised when I explain it’s more the action and shooter games that I put my hours into.
Social media and CSR
Below I’ve embedded a report we put together at Wolfstar Consultancy, with lots of lovely stats and graphs on how the FTSE Global 500 are performing in terms of social media in their CSR campaigns. There’s some interesting results and a few unexpected anomolies too, well worth a read 
…
Firefox 4 download stats counter, will it beat IE9?
Wow, Firefox 4 downloads are already over the 1 million mark since their release this morning (22nd March).
Firefox have created a very cool site to blow their own trumpet a little, giving you live download stats worldwide (why is the whole world downloading at the same time, does no one ever sleep?) along with a counter at the bottom showing downloads per minute.
If they want to beat IE 9′s first day downloads, they will have to top 2.3 million. Since writing this post, the counter in the image is now at 1,260,845.
For another cool counter, check out Microsoft going against their own mould and creating the counter below to get users off the old, dated and downright dangerous IE6, which is undoubtedly causing a huge amount of irritation to web developers everywhere.
The 5 year plan: Discover Twitter
To celebrate Twitter’s upcoming 5th birthday, the social site has launched an extra site – discover.twitter.com.
The microsite showcases Twitter’s features (mainly following interests and people) in the video above, as well as providing extended interviews with the host of famous faces featured in the vid.
ISS astronaut Paolo Nespoli (astro_paolo) steals the show, moving the camera to display an incredible shot of earth from space (2:05).
So, how does Twitter match up to social giant Facebook in 2011? The infographic below sheds some light on the issue:
Twitter has less daily logins, but more daily engagement. Less brand followers, but more sales. Plus, more mobile users and almost as much awareness despite the huge difference in numbers (all percentages, though).
So, though making money from the site seems to be a big issue, there’s no denying it’s influence, number of users and fanbase. I’m on Twitter all day, but only log in on Facebook once or twice ever few days. Twitter will also always be king in terms of news, thanks to it’s high number of journalists, keen to share and enagage.
I wonder where Twitter will be in another five years?
The Internet of Things: Closer than we think (if you’re rich)
Earlier this month, I discussed the idea of Web 3.0 and the ‘internet of things‘, in which regular everyday household objects become ‘intelligent’ and therefore much more useful and efficient.
This Corning Incorporate video, which I heard about from Stuart’s blog, went viral last week and shows a utopian future in which we’re all very rich, have perfect families and bus shelter vandalism is a thing of the past. But though the social element of the video might be way off, it does get you thinking about how close we are to a future where technology is so heavily engrained into our lifestyles. Some would argue that this is already the case, and that the ‘intelligent glass’ featured in the video is just a more evoloved version of what we already have. It doesn’t feel that long ago that we were using WAP on huge mobile phones, or actually having to *go outside* for tasks making bank transfers (shudder). So perhaps a house like this isn’t really all that far off.
Either way, it’s a future I’m pretty excited about, though also quite wary. It does feel like we’re getting very close to Philip K. Dick‘s view of the future…
PeerIndex: The new ‘Standard for Influence’?
Over the past few days the ‘Twitter-verse’ has been going crazy for PeerIndex, a social profile ranking tool which looks at authority, activity and audience, after it introduced the most requested feature – groups.
The previous go-to tool for this kind of measurement was Klout, though there has always been debate on its effectiveness and usefulness.
When I first checked by PeerIndex profile yestersday, I had a score of 29. However, this morning it had reached 30. If I keep up at this rate by the end of the year I will be ‘god of influence’*.
I’m also very excited to be included on some fairly important lists filled with people much more experienced and influential than I am. It’s always fun to be regarded amongst those you admire. Below is Andrew Smith‘s ‘PR Week Power Players of Social Media UK‘ list.
Everyone knows number 89 is where it's at
Below is Adrian Johnson‘s ‘Top PR & Social Media Agency Players: Yorkshire‘
27 is a much healthier number
Stuart has also put together a Wolfstar Consultancy list, where I’m exactly halfway up the pack at 6/12.
No need to copy and paste my listing on this one
So, how does my PeerIndex and Klout Score compare?
My Klout score is higher and gives me some funky looking badges with my Twitter achievements (they must know I’m an XBOX Live fan).
Klout also gives me much more information in terms of reach, audience, retweet and amplifications. However, the information is all in pretty dull line graphs, which lose their shine fairly quickly and don’t really provide me with that much use.
PeerIndex gives me much more interesting and useful data. For example, I now want to grow my fingerprint in the tech and science areas after seeing that I’m already talking about these topics, as well as start talking more about business to start making an impact in this section.
I’m looking forward to trying to grow my score, but at the same time I know not to read to much into these things. It’s the work you do and the people you do it for that really count!**
*This is a lie
**This isn’t a lie
