Google Street View car (image courtesy of Official Australia Google blog)

Make sure you hook up your grey water hose and water your front lawn, trim the hedge and maybe plant a few pansies - Google cars will be coming down your street this Summer capturing images for the Street View feature of Google Maps.

Despite concerns about privacy as Asher Moses discussed in the Sydney Morning Herald yesterday, the Google cars will be updating images of Australian streets over the next few months according to the official Australian Google Blog.

Bookmark this page and you can find out where (roughly) they’ll be driving.

Here’s my (collectors?!) jar of Vegemite’s iSnack2.0 which I couldn’t help buy when I saw it at Foodland (at a significant discount) yesterday.

And there’s no danger of this jar ever being opened given my family made their own decision on an appropriate name based on their taste test of the original Name Me jar:

But seriously, Kraft has had to respond to claims from right around the world that the Vegemite iSnack2.0 naming debacle was a publicity stunt and publicly deny it, yet the latest twist that the new, new name - Cheesybite - was registered by Pizza Hut in 2006 as outlined in this article from the Sydney Morning Herald makes it even harder to believe.

There are those who believe it was a genuine mistake like Tony Richardson on the Crikey blog and here’s an interesting summary from Sheldon Nesdale as to why he believes it could never have been planned.

I’m more interested what impact this has had on the Vegemite brand and how effectively they’ve managed their brand’s reputation as is Professor Kenneth Miller from University of Technology Sydney’s marketing school in this interview with ABC Online.

“There’s potential to do significant brand damage to Vegemite and Kraft because people are talking about it and they’re not talking about how wonderful Kraft is,” he said.

“They’re not talking about how wonderful the product is - the former iSnack 2.0 - they’re talking about things that will damage the brand.

I almost think this marks a watershed moment in our marketing history when 2.0 comes into the mainstream vernacular - many who’d never heard of Web2.0 certainly do now, but at what cost to our beloved Vegemite?

Here are my picks of the best reads last week about things you should consider if you are responsible for your brand’s reputation online.

Please note: A big hat tip to Gavin Heaton (or @servantofchaos) who provided the insipration for this post. His weekly “5 must read posts from last week” are great reading which is probably why, totally unwittingly when I posted this last night I managed to completely (almost) plagiarise his blog post title - funnily enough, that being the topic one of the must-read posts he links to on an earlier list.

1. How brands should manage their reputation online

Some of the biggest names in social media gathered together at Blogworld expo last week. This post covers highlights from one of the panel sessions including some level headed advice from Amber Nasland at monitoring specialists, Radian6 such as “social media didn’t invent criticism” and that organisations should have emergency plans in place (Vegemite’s iSnack 2.0 leaps to my mind here).

2. The Top 10 free tools for monitoring your brand’s reputation

One of the most important things to do if you are responsible for your brand’s reputation online is to know what people are saying about you and this article reviews some of the easily accessible, free tools to listen to online conversations.

We must remember that conversations are being held on the web with or without our consent. That means we can choose whether to be observers, participants or outcasts

3. Top 5 Twitter Trends to watch right now

Once you start monitoring conversations going on about you / your brand / your organisation you’ll realise quickly that many of these are taking place on Twitter.

Here’s a great article that includes insights about Twitter trends from blogger, author and entrepreneur Guy Kawasaki as well as PR2.0 guru Brian Solis.5.

4. Managing your reputation through search results

This post from the Google blog has some tips on what to do when you aren’t that happy with what you find when you type your company’s name into Google. These include thinking twice before you publishing anything online and if there’s something you don’t like - contact the source of the information (and there are some tips on how to do this) as well as proactively publishing positive information.

5. Damage Control: Social Media Reversals

Renowned web strategist Jeremiah Owyang identifies and analayses three case studies in this post looking at how organisations should respond to a social media crisis: “assert themselves and be proactive - even during a crises”.

Brian Solis on his PR2.0 blog has collated and published this amazing list of the top 100 ways you can use Twitter.

Twitter Client Market Share

1. Web,40.945%
2. API,11.6418% (custom applications, scripts or bots)
3. TweetDeck,6.635%
4. UberTwitter,4.288%
5. twitterfeed,3.9538%
6. txt,3.9254%
7. mobile web,3.567%
8. TwitterFon,2.4622%
9. Tweetie,2.1434%
10. TwitterFox,1.3588%
11. Echofon,1.3356%
12. Twitterrific,1.2322%
13. twidroid,0.886%
14. twhirl,0.8756%
15. movatwitter,0.8398%
16. TwitterBerry,0.835%
17. TwitPic,0.7806%
18. Seesmic,0.5524%
19. Tween,0.5414%
20. HootSuite,0.5258%
21. Power Twitter,0.3556%
22. Twit,0.3358%
23. gmedtwitpost,0.3188%
24. Snaptu,0.3018%
25. Twittelator,0.3%
26. POLLpigeon,0.2868%
27. FriendFeed,0.275%
28. P3:PeraPeraPrv,0.229%
29. DestroyTwitter,0.2188%
30. Perl Net::Twitter,0.2154%
31. Ping.fm,0.2128%
32. LOL quiz,0.1792%
33. TwitterGadget,0.1758%
34. Facebook,0.1722%
35. Twitter Tools,0.1558%
36. Tumblr,0.144%
37. RSS2Twitter,0.1412%
38. Sidekick,0.1386%
39. twitRobot,0.1338%
40. Google,0.1326%
41. dabr,0.1304%
42. CoTweet,0.129%
43. Blip.fm,0.1276%
44. Fun140,0.1274%
45. Gravity,0.1264%
46. SocialScope,0.1116%
47. Tweed,0.1074%
48. YoruFukurou,0.1064%
49. Mobile Tweete,0.106%
50. BlogTalkRadio,0.106%
51. WP to Twitter,0.1058%
52. bit.ly,0.0962%
53. iTweet,0.0914%
54. PockeTwit,0.091%
55. Tweetbots,0.0902%
56. PhotoShare,0.0862%
57. TwitterRide,0.0854%
58. NatsuLiphone,0.0794%
59. Mobster World,0.0784%
60. SimplyTweet,0.0672%
61. TinyTwitter,0.0664%
62. Digsby,0.0642%
63. Twitter4J,0.0614%
64. Reuters.com,0.0608%
65. Ustream,0.0606%
66. Tweets60,0.0584%
67. Movatter,0.0572%
68. MySpace,0.0568%
69. twibble,0.0562%
70. TwitZap,0.0526%
71. Twitter4R,0.0518%
72. Twaitter,0.0484%
73. Twitterizer,0.048%
74. Nambu,0.0464%
75. TwitterBar,0.0426%
76. Twikini,0.0412%
77. Epic Pet Wars,0.0386%
78. Twitme for WordPress,0.0368%
79. Photomemo,0.0356%
80. Mixero,0.0356%
81. yoono,0.0332%
82. Netvibes,0.0328%
83. TwitBin,0.0326%
84. Flock,0.0316%
85. Twidget,0.0312%
86. Spaz,0.031%
87. WordTwit,0.0308%
88. Twitterena,0.0304%
89. Post to Twitter,0.0298%
90. 140 Mafia,0.0298%
91. TweetSG,0.0292%
92. Fantasy Sports,0.0292%
93. Gwibber,0.0276%
94. TwiXtreme,0.0276%
95. Posterous,0.0274%
96. m.slandr.net,0.0272%
97. TwitKit,0.0264%
98. Twitter Opera widget,0.0264%
99. Tweet-U-Later,0.0264%
100. Twibbon,0.026%
101. Splitweet,0.026%
102. schuelerVZ,0.026%
103. ShareThis.com,0.0258%
104. TwitterMail,0.0256%
105. twittai,0.0252%
106. Identica,0.0236%
107. Adium,0.0228%
108. Brightkite,0.0224%
109. モバツイッター,0.0224%
110. Stickam,0.0218%
111. HTC Peep,0.0218%
112. BeTwittered,0.021%
113. TweetLeads,0.021%
114. Adjix,0.0208%
115. Twitstat Mobile,0.02%
116. TwitterIrcGateway,0.0198%
117. Viigo,0.0188%
118. EventBox,0.0186%
119. TweetGenius,0.0184%
120. twitthat,0.0184%
121. blu,0.017%
122. TwInbox,0.0168%
123. Matt,0.0166%
124. TweetPhoto,0.0166%
125. buzztap,0.0166%
126. TweetGrid,0.016%
127. Bird Feeder,0.0158%
128. JTwitter,0.0158%
129. LiveTweeter,0.0156%
130. TwitThis,0.0152%
131. TypePad,0.0152%
132. Spymaster,0.0152%
133. Flickr,0.0152%

Mind boggling really isn’t it? (More on that later…)

And what is the best one? Is it simply the one used by the most people? Obviously it depends on for what purpose you are using it for, those just keeping in touch with friends will have far different requirements than those actively monitoring their brand’s reputation.

However, I’d be interested to know if you have a favourite Twitter application you use all the time?

My personal experience is that I swap and change all the time between a few different applications, but having said that I’m not surprised really…. as a total aside (read: stop reading here if you are just interested in the Twitter story), someone asked me the other day which arm I put first into the armhole when putting on a jacket - apparently it has something to do with which side of your brain is dominant and makes a huge difference if you ever have a stroke - and, I realised I use both…but I’m still not sure what that means if I do have a stroke? Best not to think about that…

But it does reminds me of a really interesting little test we posted ages ago which determines which side of your brain you think with: Creative or Practical - here’s the link to the old post - have a go it is pretty cool. And yes, in case you were wondering she turns a different way everytime I look at her…now my mind is truly boggled.

I just discovered Gary’s social media count (when I saw his tweet that it has, quite literally, been an overnight success - 400 RTs in last 24 hrs). The awesome little app shows just how amazingly fast the social web is constantly and rapidly growing:

Here’s a bit of background from Gary Hayes blog post about the count below:

More about the Count - I quickly built and coded the app based on data culled from a range of social media sources & sites at the end of Sept 2009. The design will be finessed and I will be adding extra functionality (such as week, month & year lookahead/backs plus dynamic data input).

The social web has exploded in the last year and below are some of the key data points that the ‘Gary’s Social Media Count’ is based on (many will be updated!).

• 20 hours of video uploaded every minute onto YouTube (source YouTube blog Aug 09)

• Facebook 600k new members per day, and photos, videos per month, 700mill & 4 mill respectively (source Inside Facebook Feb 09)

• Twitter 18 million new users per year & 4 million tweets sent daily (source TechCrunch Apr 09)

• iPolicy UK – SMS messaging has a bright future (Aug 09)

• 900 000 blogs posts put up every day (source Technorati State of the Blogosphere 2008)

• YouTube daily, 96 million videos watched, $1mill bandwidth costs (source Comscore Jul 06 !)

• UPDATE: YouTube 1Billion watched per day SMH (2009)- counter updated!

• Second Life 250k virtual goods made daily, text messages 1250 per second (source Linden Lab release Sep 09)

• Money – $5.5 billion on virtual goods (casual & game worlds) even Facebooks gifts make $70 million annually (source Viximo Aug 09)

• Flickr has 73 million visitors a month who upload 700 million photos (source Yahoo Mar 09)

• Mobile social network subscribers – 92.5 million at the end of 2008, by end of 2013 rising to between 641.6-873.1 million or 132 mill annually (source Informa PDF)

• SMS – Over 2.3 trillion messages will be sent across major markets worldwide in 2008 (source Everysingleoneofus sms statistics)

The “mummies on the bus go chatter, chatter, chatter” sound familiar?

Research released from Neilsen in the UK shows that women (over 35) are the fastest growing demongraphic on sites like Twitter and MySpace as reported by The Times:

Figures gathered for The Times by Nielsen, the market research firm, show that just over half of all social-networking users in the UK are women. But almost 59 per cent of females “consume the content” of these sites — a jump of almost 10 per cent since last year.

Not surprising really is it? Social networks are merely just another social arena, so it was only time before women caught up with the latest place to have a good chat and gossip.

But what does this mean from a marketing and corporate communication perspective?

Mommy Bloggers have long been on the radar as Darren Rowse (@problogger) wrote some time ago about Five Reasons why Mom Blogs are the Blogs to watch.

Corporates must be careful though: Nestle recently tapped into this influential group of women only to have it backfire on them according to an article in The Age last week.

LinkedIn Recommendations & Jeremiah Owyang is an interesting (and comic) article by Jason Alba looking at why you should consider requesting/giving recommendations via your LinkedIn profile.

I know there’s a lot of skepticism about LinkedIn in Australia, and it hasn’t perhaps yet proved itself here. Social network strategist Laurel Papworth recently suggested to a packed theatre full of marketing people at Marketing Now! to that perhaps Twitter was more effective/useful at this point.

I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on how you view the value of these recommendations and if they replace/take place of the trusted old written reference.

Only a miniscule 64 PR companies participated in the UK’s PR Week digital survey released yesterday which showed the majority of clients (83%) are now expecting a digital element to PR campaigns, but what was also interesting was the range of budgets for those highlighted as the best campaigns - they ranged from ‘no direct costs’ for the Henry VIII Twitter campaign using @IamHenryVIII to almost $300,000 for Cadbury’s Red Licquorice Allsorts love story using Facebook.

A panel of experts from agency and client side highlighted what they thought were some of the best UK digital campaigns here.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on how this compares here in Australia? Is digital now expected in a PR campaign or it still distanced from PR efforts?

Everyone in the world has heard about the best job in the world’ by Queensland Tourism but what do you think is the best digital PR campaign in Australia so far?

I am very much looking forward to speaking at the Sales & Marketing in Travel European Summit in Prague next month ( details ).

I am going to be talking about how travel organisations can realise value from Corporate Social Networks. Specifically we’re going to look at how you can  develop a social media strategy, and part of that is going to include building an active listening plan.

As per our post to the Social Media In Travel LinkedIn discussion group, we’re looking for a couple of volunteer organisations actually whose brand / profile / market place we can look at live ( a bit like this example ) during the event.

Anyone like to volunteer their company or specfic idea / market?  Comment us below if you’re interested.  See you in Prague.

We are loving working again with Wine Australia to help launch the 2010 Landmark Australia tutorial. Wine Australia is looking for the best and brightest wine talents from around the world to participate in an intensive five day tutorial to learn more about Australia’s fine wines.

A blog / online hub will go live today with details about the tutorial, how to apply, a Twitter feed and YouTube videos including TV coverage of the first Landmark Australia tutorial which was a huge success and looks like it is already having an impact on how Australian wines are perceived overseas. Eager participants can search the hub to find out about past participants’ experiences in the first tutorial as well as a complete list of all the 248 amazing fine Australian wines tasted. Paul Henry from Wine Australia talks about the 2010 tutorial below:

Here’s a good overview about what the 2009 tutorial was all about: