_Mitch Joel is a passionate entrepreneur and speaker who connects with people worldwide by sharing his communications insights, marketing strategies and commitment to building a better community. As well as being co-owner of “Twist Image – Multimarketing Studio”:http://www.twistimage.com, he is an interactive expert, educator, community leader, freelance journalist, blogger and believer in doing the impossible._
*One Degree:* “Mitch, If you could recommend one book to people interested in how marketing is changing, which one would it be and why?”
*Mitch Joel:* So essentially, you’re asking me to choose between my four children. Do I choose “Re-Imagine”:http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/ASIN/078949647X/imho0b-20 by “Tom Peters”:http://www.tompeters.com/, “Purple Cow”:http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/ASIN/159184021X/imho0b-20 by “Seth Godin”:http://sethgodin.typepad.com/, “The Cluetrain Manifesto”:http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/ASIN/0738204315/imho0b-20 by Rick Levine, Christopher Locke, “Doc Searls”:http://doc.weblogs.com/ and “David Weinberger”:http://www.hyperorg.com/blogger/ or “Life After The 30-Second Spot”:http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/ASIN/0471718378/imho0b-20 by “Joseph Jaffe”:http://www.jaffejuice.com/ ?
Month: February 2006
Edits to this article appear at the end (Nov. 4, 2007)
Well, this will stir things up a bit.
A few hours ago Google launched “Google Pages”:http://pages.google.com/. If you have a “Gmail”:http://mail.google.com/ account you can create your own web site on Google using a very nifty AJAX interface.
The application itself is great, although the standard templates leave something to be desired.
Some of the nicest features:
* An “undo” button
* Ability to add images, links and pages easily
* Testing links while in edit mode
* 100MB of storage
* Simple, memorable URL
You should really try it out. But you might want to *think twice before you hit “publish”.*
See that last feature (simple memorable URLS) is also the greatest weakness of Google Pages and I think it is going to cause a *huge* headache for Gmail users. And *a potential PR nightmare for Google.*
Why?
_Jennifer Evans is President of “Sequentia Communications”:http://www.sequentia.net, a Toronto-based marketing and public relations firm that specializes in helping companies acquire and retain customers through community building._
*One Degree:* “Have blogs changed the role of PR professionals in the last few years, and if so, how?”
*Jennifer Evans:* The world of PR is changing drastically. It used to be that you needed to use media as an outlet to reach the public, so media relations was one of the primary tenets of a public relations strategy. However, the Internet has completely changed all that – first of all by making it not only possible but economically feasible and efficient to reach the public without an intermediary. Secondly, it’s introduced a new layer of voices and ‘content creators’ that PR strategists need to factor into their planning: the blogger.