Facebook Patent: Facebook awarded major patent by US Patent and Trademark Office

Facebook filed a patent claim on August 11, 2006 for what is now called the newsfeed patent, which was awarded on February 23, 2010. Commentators are calling this the single-most significant patent since the Six Degrees patent, which had its fair share of drama. So, what is so significant in this patent? It is vastly broad and open to interpretation. Twitter's future comes to mind and according to Nick O'Neill Facebook are claiming that this does not apply to status updates, instead it is about implicit actions and stories that a user is engaged in. Implicit actions?

I have watched tweets and blogs about Tweetups and then GeekFests and I ignored them. I ignored them because I thought they were cheesy. By the third one (or what is dubbed 3.14 and incorrectly called geek to the power 3.14) I decided that it was time to check what it was all about. Admittedly, part of the turn off was the location. Al Quoz. I'm not particularly fond of driving in areas I'm not familiar as I am notoriously known for my lack of internal GPS :) But.. still. Al QUOZ?!

A few days ago, Socialize and YouGov Siraj issued a press release about the influence social media has on consumer decisions. The headline read: Most UAE residents use social media for purchase decisions. I had to pause for a minute. Really? Are you saying that UAE residents are the most tech savvy?

Oh, wait.. the survey conducted by YouGov Siraj is conducted online. So, we can rephrase this by saying, most residents who are online use social media to make purchasing decisions. Admittedly, this does not make for an attractive, attention grabbing headline. I'm not a journalist, so I'm sure someone can do a better job at that.

You talk to anyone in the PR industry about the blatant lies that come out of their agencies on behalf of their clients and they will vehemently defend themselves with words like "integrity" and "credibility". The truth of the matter is, PRs lie. Some stretch the truth, some bend it and most outright break it.

Although not unique to our region, but we do have a rather unhealthy obsession with being the 'first' and 'only'. I will not pretend, we love being the first and we try to always be ahead of everyone else. The problem is when you are so focused on that and you forget to check if you are indeed the first or not!

Indeed it's not just a question of lying about just being first or only.. it also goes back to throwing out figures that have no basis in reality. And oh how we love to give out dollar amounts! The general justification a PR will have is that journalists love numbers and so we need them even if we have to make them up!

The past couple days have been crazy. Coincidental announcements from us and a competitor about the launch of social media monitoring solutions! You can't make this stuff up! What caught my attention however was the whole Arabic-centric theme. Clever. Not entirely honest, but a clever PR twist.

Arabic is a challenging language to support, from a purely technical point of view. Well, at least it used to be. I know this from my experience when I was writing the first Open Source Arabic Spellchecker back in my Arabeyes days. You see, I know a thing or two about Arabic and the linguistic challenge involved.

The bulk of PR agencies in the Middle East aim at gaining more media exposure to their clients. I think evaluation fits in when we smartly link this media exposure with pre-set business outcomes to our clients.
Needless to say that organizations from both private and public sectors in the Gulf have recognized the power of public relations in strengthening brand equity and enhancing corporate reputation.
They started to recognize that PR involves creating, maintaining and enhancing long term relationships with stakeholders.
Clients in the region realize that their stakeholders have become too demanding. These facts make it imperative to PR practitioners to start providing integrated solutions directly tailored to match their clients’ PR requirements and precisely evaluated according to pre set business outcomes to move PR from being “lovely to have” to being a crucial part of any business strategy!

Dubai’s decision to establish the Dubai Media Affairs Office 'Brand Dubai' in June to coordinate Dubai's media affairs internationally is a classic example of recognition of the value communications bring to the table. While the new office will work as a platform to project Dubai's continuing achievements on economic, cultural and social matters, it also demonstrates that Dubai is a great believer in communications as the key to emerge one-up in the current global crisis. If an entire Emirate can adopt this innovative approach to communications, Arab governments and businesses should made extra efforts to retain their communications personnel because this is the time where they are needed most.

WARNING: A highly technical rant

I've had the unpleasant (but increasingly recurring) hardware failure of Apple hardware. This time it was the HDD of a 13" White MacBook. So, I took it over to the guys at PRO-TECHnology to have a look and replace it (or hopefully tell me that I was wrong and it's just a software thing).

They came back to me with a quote: AED 900/-. That is, to replace my 120GB 5400 RPM 2.5" SATA drive (Fujitsu for those who care), I would have to get a 250GB 5400 RPM replacement. They didn't specify the brand and I didn't ask. That was an exaggerated price for a harddrive, even for Apple.

I said no thank you. They came back and said, oh, we can do it for you for AED 250/- only. I asked how? They said, ah.. we will replace your HDD with the same 120GB model! I said, no thank you.

I know we're all learning as we go here.. but a PR agency that simply uploads clippings of press releases and placements they have done for their clients in their twitter feed is just asking for it.

Really? Cause, if anything, that shows just how brilliant of a PR agency you really are, doesn't it? Your contribution is links to scans of magazine and newspaper clippings?

Sigh.