On 1st January 1999, the Euro was introduced.

In August of the same year, Blogger, the online blogging platform subsequently bought by Google, was launched. It heralded the arrival of mainstream, accessible web publishing for all. We’re pretty much at peace with the Euro, so, why, I wonder, does blogging continue to be seen as such a novel concept?

It’s not that way for everyone, of course: there are bloggers out there who have been updating regularly for all of those ten years, and possibly even longer on earlier platforms. Google’s Product Manager, Rick Klau, makes it clear that the habit is becoming more and more widespread:

“In the past two years alone, the number of people contributing to a blog has more than doubled, and every second of every day, a new blog is created on Blogger.” (and that’s just on Blogger, not any of the other popular services!). It sounds like the rest of the world is cottoning on to the marketing power, or the simple pleasures, of blogging.

Something else happened ten years ago – something small, but which was marked by a flurry of retweeting activity on Twitter. One of our best-loved comic writers happened to say something very perceptive in an interview. Douglas Adams, writer of the Hitch-Hikers’ Guide to the Universe books, mused, “we are still the first generation of users, and for all that we may have invented the net, we still don’t really get it“. You can read more of his quotes, and find the source, in the super blog post that started the retweeting kerfuffle.

Yes, that’s right, I said blog post. You know what one of those is, now don’t you…?

Regular readers of this blog will know how we feel about social media for business: we’re in favour! We were interested, therefore, to follow two news stories this week, one reporting that Portsmouth City Council are banning their workers from spending time on Facebook, and the other that Brighton City Council are looking to recruit a Social Media specialist.

Now, these are two distinct councils, so there is no hypocrisy at play, but it is instructive to look at these two apparently opposing attitudes. Portsmouth bosses are clearly worried that they are losing valuable man-hours to the irresistable lure of Facebook, while Brighton are recognising the benefits that are available to them in reaching out to their client base via new channels.

Neither is wrong.

Let’s look at Portsmouth first: you only have to glance around a typical office to see how many workers are flicking between work and Facebook or Twitter screens. How liberal you are prepared to be about this depends, I suppose, on what sort of an employer you are. You might take the stance that a 30-second social-media break every few minutes is just as valid as one half-hour tea break in a day, or you might find yourself boiling with rage as you count up the minutes spent away from your employees’ real jobs.

However you feel, staff need to have a clear policy, so Portsmouth have done the right thing in spelling out their terms of employment. They may live to regret their decision one day, I suppose, when they see how Brighton’s social-media savvy workforce are changing council communications.

Brighton Council has released a job description for a ‘Facebook pro, the fastest Twitter tweeter on the planet’, saying that they have recognised ‘opportunities to increase visibility, build our brand and learn about our audiences by utilising social media’.

Quite right too! This shows Brighton to be progressive in finding new ways to fulfil its remit to communicate with the city’s people as efficiently as possible (while, of course, always recognising that the city’s more elderly residents may not be fully up to speed on Facebook).

It may come as no surprise that I learned about both these news stories not through the usual news channels, but on Twitter itself, and there has been quite some tweeted debate around them. As many Twitter users have pointed out, it may make more sense to encourage all Brighton Council workers to embrace social media as part of their wider job descriptions (and perhaps they will, led by this new recruit – they will still need a strategist at the helm).

Questions have also arisen about how sensitive press releases will be handled: the fact that this job description has spread like wildfire shows the power of social media. When it’s harnessed for one’s own needs, it is a very desirable thing, but you would be cursing the day the wrong news story leaked.

What do you think? Would you be glad if your own council started tweeting? Do you ban Facebook in the workplace? Or are you hoping to breed a social media-savvy workforce for a new wave of marketing activity?

The popularity and simplicity of the iPod Touch and iPhone have done what many have tried and failed to do: turned the UK on to the possibilities of the mobile web. But what might it mean for you, your business, and for the Search industry, as more people turn to hand-held devices and web access on the go?

We’re at the beginning of a mini-revolution. Experts are still saying that the web itself is in its infancy, but it seems positively aged when we start looking at the uncharted horizons of its offshoot, the mobile web.

Totally uncharted? Well, predictions may, of course, be made on the basis of those countries which were much quicker than us to adopt the mobile web, such as Japan, but we must recognise that other factors, such as cultural differences, pricing plans, and accessibility are all going to affect their accuracy.

Here are a few outcomes that we can be sure we’ll see, as more and more people start to access the web while they’re out and about:

• Everyone simply searching a lot more: This is just simple logic. If you have access to the web in your pocket, you have more hours in the day when you might use it. Suddenly, train journeys, boring meetings, or delays as you wait for the bus, all allow for extra browsing time. What does that mean for you? Potentially, lots more visitors, spending much more time on your site.
• People are much more likely to start searching for the information they need in the here and now. Where before they might turn to a stranger to ask where the nearest newsagent is, now they can ask Google. For this reason, you may want to optimise your website for search terms such as ‘nearest to’: “nearest pub to the London Eye”, for example.
• Geo-specific search results come into their own.
  Having said it’s good to optimise, to a certain extent we have seen search engines start to do it for you, with geo-specific search results. Search for ‘restaurant’ on Google, and it will make assumptions about what you want, based on your IP address, delivering highly local results unless you specify otherwise.To take full advantage of this, make sure your business is listed on Google maps (it’s free) and that its purpose or services are clearly defined in terms that a searcher would be likely to use (in other words, think carefully about whether you’re a ‘pub’, ‘public house’, ‘hostelry’, or ‘bar’).
• You can take advantage of the fact that folk are searching ‘on the trot’. What do people need when they’re in a new place, searching for information? Local maps, perhaps, or lists of places of interest. Provide this sort of information, and you may find that the new class of searcher – the last-minute user who relies on their internet connection – comes flocking to your site. They may not buy anything, of course, but you will have achieved the marketers’ holy grail: your business name is now in their consciousness.
• Our devices will come on holiday with us. Who’d leave that iPod or BlackBerry at home when it’s so useful for day-to-day advice? If you can’t speak the local lingo, finding a taxi firm or a restaurant is so much easier when you have the web at hand.This will work the other way, of course: holiday-makers coming to the UK will also be looking for information in their own languages. If your business is situated in a popular tourist spot, or you sell a service that is of use to holiday-makers, you might want to think about optimising in multiple languages.
• Don’t forget the practicalities. Mobile devices mean smaller screens – much smaller screens. Make sure you’ve tried to access your own website via a phone or similar device: you’ll see how hard, or otherwise, it is. Don’t forget that Flash can’t be seen on many phones, and very heavy sites are a no-no where the access is patchy.If mobile web looks like it has the potential to bring you many more customers, there’s really only one answer: you need to do as many of the best sites have done these days, and build a mobile version of your site.