Zurich/New York, 12 May 2010 – New York is a melting pot of creativity and a source of inspiration for many. The same goes for the New York Photo Festival (www.nyphotofestival.com), which is now in its third year. Datacolor, as co-sponsor of NYPH, will share impressions from the event at its blog “The Real New York“ (http://spyder.datacolor.com/nyblog). Christoph Gamper, Vice President of Datacolor and a member of the NYPH Awards jury, will provide behind-the-scenes information as it happens.

NYPH connects artists with decision makers from the photographic industry, publishers and art scene. New ways of thinking are welcome and the NYPH provides a lot of space for interaction during 12-16 May including exhibitions, interviews with artists, panel discussions and portfolio presentations. This year’s curators Vice Aletti, Erik Kessels, Fred Ritchin and the musician Lou Reed, will also present their perspectives on today’s photography.

New York Photo Festival highlights
One highlight at NYPH is the New York Photo Awards Ceremony where talented photographers from all over the world are honoured for their exceptional work. In addition, NYPH is presenting a Lifetime Achievement Award for the first time, to honour under-recognised contributions to the field of photography. This year, the award goes to French photographer Marc Garanger for his controversial early 1960s photographs of Algerian women. In addition, on 15 May, an outdoor projection at the Brooklyn Bridge will provide the starting signal for the “night of images” where all venues are open till 10 pm.

For further imformation please visit: www.nyphotofestival.com

For further Information on Datacolor please visit: www.datacolor.eu.

-ends-

Contacts:

Sarah Herd
Ranieri Communications
Tel: 01296 394614
Email: sarahh@raniericoms.com

Datacolor AG Europe
Suemer Cetin
Brandbachstr. 10
8305 Dietlikon
Switzerland
Tel.: +41 44 835 38 30
Fax: +41 44 835 38 20
scetin@datacolor.com

Today in the UK, Facebook has announced that it is helping to get unregistered voters to register. In a tie-up with the Electoral Commission, Facebook users who visit the site over the weekend will be asked if they have registered to vote. If not, they will be asked to register their details with their local council.

But will this make any difference and encourage the 18-24 year-old voters in particular, who have often not turned out to vote?

There’s an interesting article in the Telegraph outlining the different ways that the UK political parties are using new media as part of their campaigns with differing scales of success. Interestingly, it also mentions the findings of an audit of political engagement by the Hansard Society, that showed only four per cent of Facebook users and two per cent on Twitter actually follow a politician or party.

Funnily enough, while writing this blog post, the Guardian has just announced that Labour candidate Stuart MacLennan has been sacked for his ‘foolish’ tweets. He’s the one that tweeted about organic bananas, first class train travel and ‘chavs’.

Maybe there’s a way to go before the UK’s political parties work out how to use social networking well.

I personally think it is a wonderful idea. Hundreds and thousands of people travel the world and see places many of us can only dream of, so why not share them? Not to mention a wildlife photographer that captures the lives of almost extinct creatures. It is a collaborative tool that enables the sharing of information and more importantly images and because it’s photography, no translation is needed.

Like Wikipedia anyone can add pictures… so start uploading all your best snaps!

Certainly puts Facebook in perspective with Twitter…

I can’t take credit for this as a colleague forwarded me the article, but it makes some interesting points about a company Twitter strategy. The article which I will come onto makes some interesting points about segmenting your Twitter communication, and it makes complete sense, as just like all marketing communication tools like press releases, advertising, mailshots, for example, you would of course segment and tailor each exercise to target the audience you are trying to reach.

Referring back to an article we posted a while ago about the fact that you need to have a Twitter strategy and more importantly, just like any other marketing communication, you need to have some kind of sign off procedure to avoid any communication blunders, we feel that ‘Twitter Strategy’ is now starting to move on a step from companies getting a ‘handle’ on Twitter, to deciding how to use it and also how to start making it a bit more creative.

Most companies (or certainly the ones that we represent) are now looking at Twitter communication just like they would any other form of communication within marketing. The link at the bottom of this post takes you to an article on SocialMediaToday.com that talks about how companies can start to segment Twitter for different elements/functions of their business, but I think the general principals apply to most sized businesses or there are lessons to be learn’t in there.

So if you are running a Twitter Strategy and are starting to realise that it dosen’t seem to be hitting the sweet spot for everyone, have a read of this article.

You’ll probably find that many individuals in your organisation are already using Twitter and this can be a great starting point. Before getting ahead of yourself, however, first think about how your company could utilise this great new resource and how can you control it.

Ranieri Communications regularly advises clients in regards to best practice for social media tools and we have picked out some high level tips for getting started with Corporate Twitter accounts:

1 – Twitter is not an excuse to spam people. It is all about two-way communications so, however tempting, avoid using it simply as a way of churning out endless company news

2 – Decide the one person who is ‘owning’ the Twitter page and download an application called Tweetdeck on their PC or Mac. This allows you to set up columns to group together tweets which mention specific words, so you could set up a search column for your brand, its products, competitive products, and consequently keep abreast of who is talking about your company and its ecosystem

3 – Every time someone Tweets about your Company, you should follow them – this will let them know that the company has a Twitter presence, and should make them follow you back, thus increasing follower numbers and giving you a bigger audience for future company and product announcements

4 – If someone asks a question about product availability, send them a standard tweet thanking them for their interest and link them to somewhere they can buy the product – don’t get into too much detail, and certainly don’t tell them anything that hasn’t been announced to the press yet (feel free to be mysterious e.g. “we should have more news about that soon, keep an eye on our website and @CompanyTwitterAccount); where possible, avoid sending the same reply to everyone, as this will show on your Twitter page and could reflect badly on the Company

5 – Always check spellings and grammar when tweeting to customers – your Twitter page is an extension of the brand, so tone and style needs to reflect that

6 – Leave any announcements re: company and product to your PR agency if you have one – Twitter should be part of your ongoing communications strategy, and tweets should be carefully composed and used whenever the Company has something newsworthy to announce

7 – Look out for anyone saying anything positive about the company / products and Re-Tweet these comments (obviously within reason, don’t RT every comment, and let your person in charge of communications know if you are unclear about how to RT)

8 – Look out for anyone saying anything negative about the company / products and, where possible, be seen to do all you can to resolve any issues they have. Communicate firstly via a Direct Message (DM), don’t get involved in a public one to one conversation straight off

That should give you enough to get going, but if you would like to find out a bit more then feel free to contact us!

@RanieriPR

The @ mention idea is pretty simple really. For those of you who are not familiar with Twitter, it was introduced by the social networking and micro-blogging system as a way of letting people know when you are talking about them in status updates. So for example, if I wanted to let Peter Andre know that I was sat at home watching his (ridiculous) reality TV show, I’d tweet something like ‘Can’t believe @MrPeterAndre was ever in love with that crazy woman’ and Peter (if he actually ever checks his Twitter personally) would see that I have spoken about him.

Facebook status updates will include a drop down menu of relevant Facebook friends so the published line will now read ‘Can’t believe Mr Peter Andre was ever in love with that crazy woman’. The name will become hyperlinked, and I presume, the recipient will receive a notification letting them know they have been spoken of – although Facebook hasn’t confirmed this part as far as I know.

@ mentions have played a massive part in making Twitter what it is today. Facebook however, is still leagues ahead in popularity, so whilst in that position, why not take ideas that work from others if you can get away with it. Pretty sure Twitter will be cursing Facebook after this news, it really is game on for them. However if I was in the Twitter hot seat, I’d be thinking of selling up pretty quick if Facebook continue to behave this way!

Over and out.

@AdamRhodes ; – )

And funnily enough someone sent it to me via my FaceBook account…:-)

I love the initial bit about how long it took early forms of communications like radio, then TV, then Internet to reach a certain amount of users and then how quickly Facebook has acquired users…

“Win a reduction in tax; just add the hashtag #gordonisawesome”

However, is this the desperate attempt of an unpopular government to chime in on an incredibly popular international past-time? Is this a shrewd PR stunt in order to give the impression of government showing change and ‘getting down with the kids’? Or is this an exciting and well overdue project which will allow the people in power to re-engage with the masses?

Let me know your thoughts.

Tom

Well, apparently millions of us were sat in front of a computer or on mobile internet devices frantically searching the web for more information on why/how/when it happened. So many people infact, that the web could not quite handle it…

Google had so many users searching ‘Michael Jackson’, that its operating system closed down to protect it from what it thought was a harmful virus. So instead of users reading lists of results about Jacko, they were treated to a page titled ‘your query looks similar to automated requests from a computer virus or spyware application’. Google had this to say in its defence; “It’s true that between approximately 2.40PM Pacific and 3.15PM Pacific, some Google News users experienced difficulty accessing search results for queries related to Michael Jackson and saw the error page”.

The social networking service Twitter also crashed due to the shear amount of users. TweetVolume (a service that instantly measures how many people are tweeting about a particular item) noted that “Michael Jackson” appeared in more than 66,500 Twitter updates (one of those was me!) before it crashed.

AOL, CBS, CNN, MSNBC and Yahoo were also affected however the BBC news website apparently had no such problems.

Follow RanieriPR on twitter – www.twitter.com/ranieiripr