Browsing the internet today has led me to the conclusion not only do the media love summing up the decade in top ten lists, but across those lists there appears to be one constant – social media, or to generalise further, the internet.

I don’t want to use this blog to state the obvious and regurgitate phrases like ‘the internet has changed the way we communicate’. That kind of comment is best reserved for the BBC Breakfast presenters who have me crying in to my cornflakes on a weekly basis as they grasp digital media with the same level of insight as my Nan. Instead I’d like to highlight how far we’ve come in such a short space of time – a fact that smacked me in the face when I visited my old University earlier this month for a mini-reunion (I started university in 1999 so it seemed fitting). In 2002 (my final year at Lincoln University) I regularly borrowed digital cameras from the media library, technology that appeared cutting edge at the time. This is despite the camera being the size of a hardback book and it saving the images on to a floppy disc! I don’t even know where to buy floppy discs anymore but at the time this was a vision of the future from a time where the likes of Facebook, Flickr and other photo sharing sites didn’t exist.

To emphasise the leaps we’ve made over the past ten years I’ve picked five digital changes that would have blown my mind when I began University.

Facebook: When I started at Lincoln the best way to keep in touch with friends was through mobile phones (with awfully expensive contracts) and MSN messenger. When I left, Mark Zuckerberg had just started attending Harvard and two years later would go on to create Facemash. Originally intended as a means to rate girls attending the prestigious American university, the site would change its name to The Facebook in 2004 and months later be known as just Facebook. The site altered its purpose and gradually opened up its doors to people not at college, university or select businesses. It wasn’t until September 26, 2006 that it would open up for everyone and become the behemoth of social media that it is today – a behemoth that in it’s current form is a little over three years old.

Google: Beginning as a research project in 1996 it would be bending the truth to say Google was a child of the decade, but there is no denying that it is arguably not only the most important digital business of the past ten years but also the biggest business success story also. In 2000 my search engine of choice was Yahoo, at this time Google had only just began selling advertising. In the years that have followed it has given us Google Earth, Street View, Google Maps, it has become a recognised verb and the most visited site on the internet.

Mobile internet: I’m at odds with the government’s desire to hook the country up to a super-fast broadband connection. While I agree that it isn’t a bad thing, I don’t believe everyone needs the proposed speeds. Going back to using the 56kbs connection I had at my student digs would be painfully slow compared to what I’m used to now, but I could still access the internet, check facebook, read the news and use other services that don’t demand a 5mbs broadband connection. But for me the biggest leap has been in how we can access the internet. In the beginning of the decade I used and soon hated WAP. It wasn’t the internet in your pocket; it wasn’t even teletext in your pocket. Now, over a 3G network I can get online pretty much anywhere, I can check emails, watch TV. In many ways I prefer using my iPhone (sorry Blackberry fans) to get online over my laptop as it is so quick and easy. In a nutshell the internet has all the information in the world (I understand that’s an exaggeration), and to have that in my pocket is the type of thing that would have blown my mind in 2000.

Twitter: Twitter is the perfect example of how far we can come in a short space of time. While Google and Facebook have their roots at the beginning of the decade work didn’t begin on Twitter until 2006 and it wasn’t until 2007 at the SXSW festival that it began to get the attention of the tech-savvy. As the decade draws to an end Twitter has changed the way news is distributed, playing a major role in the spread of news concerning the Iran elections, the spread of disgust from the Daily Mail’s Stephen Gatley editorial and the spread of frustration at the Guardian being banned from covering the Trafigura case. While Twitter can be regarded as a modern online invention it has its roots in SMS which in 2000 were still relatively new themselves.

YouTube

This list wouldn’t work without YouTube and while the past ten years have proved to be a watershed decade for the internet, the video sharing site shows that you don’t need the full ten, five will do. The first YouTube video was uploaded on April 23, 2005, by founder Jawed Karim and by the end of the year the site was officially launched. The biggest testament on how far we have come between 1999 and 2009 is the statistic that in 2007 YouTube is estimated to have consumed as much bandwidth as the entire internet in 2000.

What will happen over the next ten years, that’s anyone’s guess. I’m sure if you asked the founders of Facebook, Google, YouTube and Twitter what the future of the internet was in 1999 they would have struggled to predict what was to come.

My guess is that innovation will continue but the biggest move will be the further seamless integration of the internet in to our everyday lives. I can’t wait.

Remember that old joke about laying all the economists in the world end-to-end and them still not reaching a conclusion? I often think you could say the same about too many PR practitioners, especially when it comes to defining, and keeping in mind, what exactly our roles are supposed to achieve.

For the record, about the best succinct definition I ever heard is that PR is reputation management for competitive advantage, which encapsulates an assortment of truths HJ Heinz, with its mere 57 varieties, could only dream about.

I’m concerned that this all-too-familiar lack of clarity is manifesting itself again in many organisations’ approach to the numerous and exciting opportunities offered by digital media. It seems to me that too many companies – quite possibly because they’re not being advised well enough by their PR people – are launching themselves into the world of Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook without a clear idea of what their presence there is supposed to accomplish.

You see, people in rival organisations now tweeting like there’s no tomorrow isn’t reason in itself for you to emulate them. Nor is it right to take the plunge merely because being able to tell the guys at the golf club that you’re now in the blogosphere does wonders for your ego and makes them feel awestruck.

The truth is that having a presence in digital media is fundamentally no different from any other branch of PR, which is itself essentially akin to any other management discipline. In other words, before you dive in, you need a clear idea where you’re starting from, what objectives you want to achieve, what strategy you’ll employ to accomplish them, what this means in terms of tactical execution, who’ll be responsible and accountable for what, how you’ll evaluate your results and what success will look like, among other key considerations.                

If you don’t employ this kind of disciplined thinking in advance, the result could well be the missing of golden opportunities to enhance dramatically the scope and effectiveness of your PR mix. Take the example of a certain law firm (not one of Quest’s I hasten to add) whose website I was perusing. There, you’ll find a blog, very obviously written by solicitors, which not only lacks an obvious purpose but is couched in the kind of fluent legalese that most people whose names can’t be followed by “LLB” find largely incomprehensible.

So, by all means think seriously about entering this new world, if you aren’t there already – indeed, it may be essential for your business that you do so. But think it through first, as you would any other business venture, and if your PR advisers don’t work with you to establish the desired outcomes …well, it may be time to find new ones.

Nielsen Ratings responded to the claim by Morgan Stanley that ‘teenagers do not use Twitter’ with their own survey. Despite having a much wider sample than 15 year-old intern they came up with some pretty similar results.

My problem with the initial claim was down to the financial services giant taking the word of a lone teenager – his findings were fine and in my opinion were pretty obvious. What got my back up was the media being surprised by this and once again considering Twitter and Facebook as similar social media tools – when the reality is far different.

Nielsen’s claim was based on the statistic that in June 2009, only 16 per cent of Twitter.com users were under the age of 25. In the same month, Twitter reportedly reached 10.7 per cent of all active internet users. So, while Facebook was being driven by the teenage market, with over 50 per cent of its users being under 25, Twitter was pushing forward with a predominantly 25 to 54 demographic. Sure, the two sit under the social media umbrella but they are very different beasts with wildly different applications.

Take a look at some of most followed celebrities on Twitter. Up there with the best of them are the likes of Ellen DeGeneres, Lance Armstrong and Al Gore – hardly the kind of poster people you would expect to find on the bedroom wall of a teenager. I know Britney Spears, Miley Cyrus and tech-celeb Ashton Kutcher are high up as well, but red-carpet fodder is still pretty light and a good reflection on the sites users.

While I’m aware that Twitter isn’t about celebrity, I’m also adamant that it isn’t about the other staple diet of teenagers, friends, at least not as much as Facebook is. Twitter plays an important role in the spread of news and current affairs, two areas where teenagers are traditionally uninterested. Try telling a 16 year old that that Twitter doesn’t allow them to create photo albums but they can follow, in real-time, the issues surrounding the Iran elections. I know I’m making sweeping generalisations, but I’m sure their response will be far from enthusiastic.

Facebook should be compared to any social media platform, it has more in common with Yahoo owned photo and video site Flickr. Both support friend lists, profiles and the sharing of images and movies that can be tagged after uploading. More recently Flickr has incorporated a ‘photostream’ section to user’s homepages – very similar to Facebook’s feed.

Of course, Flickr goes after its own market and by doing so is full of amazing photography rather than pictures of drunken people at house parties. In time Twitter will garner a greater youth following as the viral affect results in users signing up because their mates are on Twitter and they don’t want to be left out.

For now, both applications can be useful tools for PR and the marketing mix, but only when seen for what they are – and whom they relate to.

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