a working class hero is something to be

Who would you say is the most new-media savvy politician in the UK?  My money is on John Prescott (JP) the former deputy leader of New Labour, who retired from the House of Commons in 2007.  He may no longer occupy a  central place in the physical political sphere, but he is leading the way in showing others how to maintain an involvement and influence in the virtual political space.

He is an active contributor to Facebook, claiming 1800 friends on the site, and is using it as a campaigning device.  It is here that he is petitioning against the bonuses being paid out to senior employees by the Royal Bank of Scotland.  He is also a founder member of the campaign to get New Labout re-elected for the forth time and has a Facebook group supporting this.  

But it was on Friday last week that I was most impressed by his use of new media.  His quick reaction to a breaking story gave him national coverage in the traditional media.  An environmental campaigner had thrown green coloured custard at Lord Mandelson, the Business Secretary, as he set off for a low-carbon conference in London.   This was reported on the Today programme on BBC Radio Four on Friday morning and it featured a comment about this incident from JP.  The programme had not contacted him.  He had posted this on YouTube and their editors had picked it up. 

Perhaps they are among the 1300 people who follow him on Twitter.  He announced at 5.11 AM (just about the time the Today editors were finalising the stories for the programme?):

"I've just posted a vlog on Peter and today's attack - they should arrest her"

So there we have it.  He might be retired and drawing a pension.  But by actively using Facebook, Twitter and Youtube, he is able to retain an influence in politics.  An influence noticed by the Today programme and the much-sought-after younger voters.

If you think another UK politician is a worthy contender for the tile of most new-media savvy politician, I would like to hear from you.

Note
The  image is courtesy of  Steve Punter on Flickr at  http://www.flickr.com/photos/spunter/639740500/sizes/m/

A beacon to us all - is innovation always good for us?

Today Facebook's founder, Mark Zuckerberg, apologised for the mistakes the company had made during the build and implementation of its social advertising system called Beacon.

He explained that the company had set out to build something that was easy to use : "our goal was to build a simple product to let people share information across sites with their friends."

In his blog, Zuckerman stressed that Beacon is a product which helps Facebook users to share additional information with others. It is interesting that he omits to mention its intended use for raising adverting revenue!

How does Beacon work? It tracks Facebook users' purchases online at sites registered with the system and then advertises these purchases to members of their social network. Follow this link to read how one Facebook user found out about purchases made by her husband from her PC.

Most commentators have picked up on the privacy issue related to this story. Our interest, in this blog, is to note its lessons for students of innovation.

These include:

1. Organisations should make sure that their investment appraisal evalaution techniques extend beyond a consideration of technical issues and a cost benefit analysis. This company might have incuded some appraisal of the likely impact on its users and the consequent reputational damage it might suffer.

2. Innovation does not always benefit all stakeholders or wider society. It might affect people in society who are not even directly users of the innovative product or service.

This leaves us considering the question: "At what point does an innovation, that turns into a disaster from the shareholder perspective, become known as a bad idea rather than an innovation at all?

photo: courtesey of Scott Beale / Laughing Squid