Whilst most technology eyes are on Facebook at the moment, a more important development for the PR industry as a whole is the major update to Google Search. This affects the long term visiblity of client brands and associated content, over the next few weeks we’ll see people worry about the impact on social media techniques. Ultimately this leaves PR in good shape; the main tenets of search won’t change relevant, quality content and depending on the subject area how quickly it is refreshed – you would want updates on many areas like a football club or on social media techniques, you wouldn’t want them on a subject like CPR or Newtonian physics.

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Coalition is compromise. But the number of pirouettes and shimmies undertaken by David Cameron and his senior ministers over the last few months has been amazing to behold.

What particularly strikes someone who’s starting to describe himself as “seasoned” is that the Conservatives used to be an absolute iron fist of a political party. A machine that set its course and ploughed through any opposition no matter how vociferous.

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How times change.

Three or four years ago, agencies were falling over themselves to hire ‘digital PR people’. By that I don’t mean PR people who know what a keyboard looks like, or are IP-numbered droids performing tasks on demand (although I can feel a bit like that sometimes). No, I mean people who, whether from other walks of marketing or those with a keen or borderline-obsessive interest in social media, had reskinned themselves as digital PR people. In doing so, they only worked on the emerging social and branded media aspects of public relations. Journalists not required.

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According to Time magazine Canon is considering moving to robot-only production for its cameras. This follows on from news stories last year that gadget manufacturer Foxconn was considering a similar move. Both are motivated by the need to reduce costs, whilst I was excited that the science fiction future of my youth seemed to be coming a step further to reality I was concerned by two things:

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What a week it was and there is still more to come from the second screen crack stream that is #Leveson.

I won’t comment on the content, there has been acres of stuff written on that. More on the absolutely compulsive nature of the stream to track and follow these fascinating events as they unfold live each day of the enquiry.

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