Jonathan Ross is the latest celebrity to seize the opportunity to self publish through the the microbogging channel Twitter. It is part of the wonder of the the social web that a broadcaster can broadcast whilst still suspended from his BBC contract (although broadcasting is just one aspect of Twitter and if done exclusively defeats the object).
Wossy as he calls himself on Twitter is not the first celebrity to use Twitter. Stephen Fry has amassed an army of almost forty thousand followers. What is fascinating is that Stephen Fry attracted the same number of followers in half a day (circa 1,500) that it took Wossy three weeks to attract.
One of the reasons is that Stephen Fry, a technophile through and through, picked up the online etiquette of micro-blogging immediately, whilst Wossy is still coming to terms with the finer points. So here are some top tips.
1. Get a Clear Identity – It is fine to have an online persona if you’d rather travel the web incognito but most people want to identify themselves clearly. Ross has used a doubtful soubriquet and a picture of his pooch in his profile. There is no link to any site that might validate that this is actually Jonathan Ross twittering. I openly expressed doubt that it was actually he until a couple of journalists put me right.
2. Follow Back - This is an important part of the twitter ‘netiquette’. You don’t have to follow everyone back but you should follow back a substantial proportion. Twitter is a leveller and it requires reciprocity to work properly. Many have talked of the frisson of excitement in getting an e-mail saying ‘Stephen Fry is now Following you on Twitter”.
3. Engage in Conversations - You can direct a comment directly at an individual with an ‘at post’ using the @ character at the start of the twitter name. Clicking on the reply icon on any post does this automatically. These conversations are in public (unlike the private direct messages that can only be sent to people who follow you) and they are an essential part of Twitter culture. For celebrities this is really important because fans can get a piece of you and all it costs is 140 characters. Wossy admits he didn’t get this at first but now converses with the best of them.
4. Provide Some Real Insight Provide some information that people can’t get elsewhere. It adds to the sense of community and it gives real reasons to follow. I
5. Cross Promote - We all use Twitter to tell people what we are doing, what we think or to add links to something we have done. We should also promote things which interest us that other people have done. It is good to do and they might do it back.
6. Quality not just Quantity – this speaks for itself in both in terms of what we post and who we follow which in turn impacts on who follows us. It’s not just about numbers.
If you are reading this Wossy give it a go and watch your Twitter Rank rise and rise. Sadly we may never hear you say the words Twitter Rank but we can imagine.
A term frequently used in digital PR circles is ’blogger engagement’. Although many blogs are a form of participatory journalism they tend regard themselves as different from mainstream journalism. Some bloggers are in fact journalists who see blogging as a channel for communicationg their views and opinions directly to the audience without editorial interference.
The word Blog is a contraction of ‘web log’. It’s hard to be exact about when blogging started. The peripheral ‘blogger’ Jorn Barger editor of the blog Robot Wisdom, effectively invented the term ‘weblog’ but the term “blog” was not used for another two and a half years. It was first employed by Peter Merholz and intended as a joke. He broke the word weblog into two words we blog in his own 
To those that worked in the ivory television towers of the late 20th Century the encroaching loss of control over TV content must feel like the barbarians at the gate. However the battle for influence and control has always been there. British politician Tony Benn foreshadowed many of the current changes in a speech he made in 1968. 
It can be hard to find the bits of the web that will be of interest to us and avoid the myriad of backwaters and blind alleys. Too often it is difficult to see the wood for the trees. 
To search the internet Google must first be able to index it a process that involves continuous updates. The first Google index to be announced in 1998 estimated that the Internet already had 26 million pages. 
Companies are waking up to what is happening with their brands and there is concern in the boardroom. To them the web 2.0 world is the wild west. There are people staking claims, there are outlaws and there are wild rumours of huge fortunes. This is a digital frontier where the laws of the old world do not apply and voices are raised against the might of the old corporations. There are already celebrated examples of major brands and corporations capitulating in the face of on-line challenges like the David and Goliath battle between Jeff Jarvis and the mighty Dell. 
The growth in the power of brands in the 20th Century was partly achieved with the use of iconic visual imagery. 
