Having spoken just on audio podcasting earlier this year I knew that videocasting and the potential of viral video would have to play a part in this session. I also had to update all statistics about the industry and
it became clear that the various forms of online PR are in some ways converging. Sites like YouTube, Facebook, Digg.com bring a variety of functionalities that businesses are really beginning to harness with some great results.

It was exciting to see a tremendous mix of people in the audience. Present were some of the North West’s largest PR agencies as well as representatives from some of the regions biggest companies. Some of them
were coming completely fresh to online PR, others had success stories and enthusiasm with them.

Hearing stories from the audience, two things stood out. One delegate revealed that the mix within a PR pitch a few months ago was four fifths offline and one fifth online. Now, they are looking at closer to a
fifty-fifty split. Another told of using Facebook to develop awareness and how they had not received instant results.

The online PR landscape is developing so rapidly that a lot of what we try is experimental at this stage. Personally, I think that what is most important is that we do try it and in many cases, those who persist with
it will be the ones with the most impressive results.

UKFast

I wonder how this will develop over the coming months and whether others media brands will utilise the same techniques.

The idea that we can trust real people to give good honest opinions is stronger than ever. So much so that it reflects very badly indeed when this trust is betrayed by a product or service. Earlier this week, the Manchester Evening News revealed that the GMPTA’s (local transport organisation) new publicity drive promoting a congestion charge across the city is in fact falsely portraying members of the public as pro charging.

The people who appear on the site and in direct marketing campaigns are actually models and the images were bought from an American photostock supplier. The case studies that they accompany are fictional and no interviews with the public were done during the production of the promotional literature.

If you read the many comments on the MEN website, it’s obvious that by misleading the public, the GMPTA has alienated a lot of people they were originally trying to impress their views upon. It was also crisis management at its worst when both the PR company involved and the GMPTA denied fabricating any element of the information when they were first challenged.

Trust is the most important element involved in customer relations and the Internet is instilling this ever more deeply. Manchester’s congestion charge has now set itself an even harder task.

On the whole the information is very useful and while the results do not surprise greatly, some links can be drawn between overall brand success and the online contribution of consumers.

However, a failing in the study brings up a very interesting question. How do you monitor the brand popularity of a company with a generic name? The best example is clothing company Gap, which appears at 52 in the Interbrand 100. It jumps to 17th in immediate future’s social media chart and almost half of the mentions are attributed to Flickr the photo sharing website. When you search for ‘Gap’ using ‘most relevant’ as the search instruction you have to scroll through 8 pages of images of the London Underground before you actually reach an image of the US retailer.

Gap as a term has over 95,000 results on Flickr but it would take too many man hours to work out how many of those actually refer to the right Gap. Compare this to Honda with 100,000 mentions on the site. It is unlikely that any of these do not relate directly to the brand and therefore a quick search gives an accurate analysis of the company’s presence and reach.

So does Gap deserve its place in the study?

So it is no surprise that Microsoft has just gone all out, spending a reported $6bn on online advertising company aQuantive Inc. But it’s still playing catch-up with both Google and Yahoo! having made similar acquisitions previously.

I’m interested in the fate of TV adspend. Until now, overall marketing budgets had been increasing with TV spend increasing also. Now this trend has slowed and actually reversed, the future of Independent television is evolving. In the UK, ITV is the broadcaster that feels slow to respond to such changes. The new website does not live up to the hype and the other major stations appear to be drawing ahead in the IPTV race.

Interesting times ahead.

Helen revealed that some departments have a ‘Web First’ policy meaning that their stories appear on the web and then the next morning in the paper. She also talked about reporters having to take recording equipment out with them to generate both written articles and podcasting material. Projecting forward she expected to be taking a video camera out on assignments soon too. The job is becoming more and more technically demanding.

She gave companies’ blogging a welcome boost by admitting that she loves the arena and has found and researched a number of her stories through blogs.

James admitted that the FT has not embraced the web quite as fully as The Guardian yet – but intends to in the very near future. When you think about it, the FT’s focus on business only mirrors UK companies in their slower adoption of the web’s social opportunities than the UK public.

James also talked about the FT’s model online that allowed subscribers only to view their breaking news content and about the papers intention to turn up at businesses with video cameras for interviews, just like Guardian reporters.

In other broadsheet devlopments, Shane Richmond of the Telegraph blogged about MyTelegraph a few weeks ago, which has now launched and is an online community encouraging users to blog their views and comments on the broadsheet’s website.

Back at the event, possibly most telling was the response from the audience of PRs to the Internet topics. There was a sense that many were hoping the journalists would say that the newspaper was irreplaceable and the web was going to fade away in a few years.

But just as the journalists are moving out of their comfort zone, so must the PRs.

So while the Huffington Post is announcing that it will host the first online debate for the US Presidential election race and the French are racing online to scrutinise each of their candidates websites, I had a look at our probable leader-to-be and his presence online.

If it weren’t for Theyworkforyou.com and the No:10 website, Gordon Brown would have a very limited online presence indeed. He doesn’t have his own site or blog and the labour party seem to be making much less effort as a whole to garner support on the web than their Conservative rivals. Most importantly, Brown is making no effort to be available to people online.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Brown’s own website appears at a time when his advisors convince him it is necessary. The only problem is that by then, it will be too late to win the real support of people who want to trust and respect the candidate that they vote for.

The most interesting finding for me is that the US statistics separate off online marketing and online PR (termed new media). Within direct response communications, online marketing is now the second largest focus taking 18.8 per cent of the budgets. While Online PR has a much smaller budget and appears as the smallest area mentioned (at 1.5 per cent) it is great news that companies are taking blogs and RSS and other such tools seriously enough to acknowledge its worth.

I doubt that we would find such a statistic in the UK just yet but am sure from talking to businesses and PR professionals that we are quickly moving in that direction.

As a B2B hosting provider, UKFast has a number of clients working in e-learning and so the conversation has come up a number of times.

A public service broadcaster like the BBC, with £150m in budget for such a project would almost certainly preclude smaller businesses from being able to enter the sphere. There is a definite likelihood here of stifling the entrepreneurial spirit of an industry that is, in any case, not noted for it’s courage in striking out independently.

There is also a second consideration, which is easier to appreciate once you spend time talking to tutors and teaching professionals. When you have spent years of your life delivering tutelage you don’t just understand the curricula, you understand how best to deliver it. Surely it is better for the consumer, in this case school children, to have a wealth of choice of online courses that may ‘click’ with their way of learning rather than just one huge resource provided by the BBC.

It will be interesting to see whether BBC Jam will return following review. I’d also like to know other people’s opinions on this. It might be that many parents would prefer the BBC as it brings with it an established stamp of approval?

The new report which compares Q1 2007 to the same time last year also notes that Europe has now overtaken Asia as the largest spamming continent. Increases across many parts of mainland Europe have been compounded by a huge surge in spam from Poland which has almost doubled in a single year.

India is one of the nations responsible for knocking the UK out of the top 12, as is Taiwan but the biggest newcomer to the Spamming ‘dirty dozen’ is Italy accounting for 5 per cent of the world’s spam.

One last interesting factor is that China, while still in second place has reduced its spam percentile from 21.9 per cent to 7.5 per cent in a single year. In comparison, the US has only managed to reduce its contribution by 3.3 per cent.

It’s not cheap to become a fully fledged client of the Online marketing analyst Hitwise but you can find out more about them and dip your toe in the water by having a look at the data they offer on their website. At the moment there’s a great opportunity to find out details of the UK’s top 10 websites in over 45 different categories.

It’s worth searching for your industry and taking a look at what those featuring in the top ten are doing that you might not be. Consider the wealth of content and choice on their sites, the amount of PPC they might be doing and see if you can ascertain the disparity between number one and number 10.

One increase I notice is the domination of traditional companies and supermarkets such as Tesco. To further improve the quality of the information, you can cross reference certain elements of the lists with Hitwise’s most recent Hot Shops List. Searching under Shopping and Classifieds – Grocery and Alcohol gives the impression that Tesco and Asda (1st and 2nd) could well be close rivals online. However, the Hot Shops List places Tesco in 3rd place overall and ASDA in 47th. So this gives a better indication of Tesco’s lead in the sector.

The one company that seems to rise up the ranks every time I see a new survey is Argos, which now appears to be the most popular UK owned e-commerce site.

The biggest eye opener is that less than half of us actually realise that the responsibility for protecting our personal data starts with us as users. One in six thought the responsibility should lie with the banks instead.

It’s also interesting that five percent of people had experienced online fraud and also had their bag, wallet or mobile phone stolen, showing that online fraud is not always originated from information gathered online.

The survey is supposed to begin an Internet Safety Week, however, apart from two articles on the BBC website, there doesn’t appear to be anything else online that actually delivers this agenda. It’s a shame because if the survey shows anything, it’s that the general public need encouragements to learn more about how to be safe online.

MySpace has created a section called Impact in the last week to encourage closer ties between the American Presidential candidates and it’s users. Similarly YouTube’s most linked to video this week is called One Voice and has been made in support of Obama, mashing up George Orwells 1984 with a speech by Hillary Clinton.

A few weeks ago at a presentation, somebody asked me the question – is there room in online PR for guerrilla tactics. This shows clearly that there are new unconventional channels through which to deliver your message to a whole new audience and with over 2 million viewing of the video on YouTube it difficult to argue that it’s not a valuable piece of campaigning.

People as consumers will demand a lot from the Internet. Sites have to be fast, straightforward and easy to use. The sites that we spend time on and add to our bookmarks are those that we can interact on or at least carry out some sort of function.

So why do many people running their own websites not choose to provide the same level of service that they expect as consumers?

There may be over 1.5million businesses in the UK with a web presence but I wonder how many of these are actually delivering the same level of service as they demand when browsing.

It’s probably the two percent that are making 75 per cent of the Internet’s revenue.

The power that having in-house programmers gives a company is incredible. Lawrence looks at the potential of programming as a tool for company growth and communication, while Steve has developed a piece of software, called Eclipse, that quite literally places the recruitment sector on a whole new online platform.

I also asked both MD’s about whether programming plays a part in ranking success with the search engines and there are some great insider tips to be gained from a quick listen.

In following the case, Sophos ran a poll to see whether the public thought that it was justified to use hacking in this circumstance.

The results of 233 votes show that almost two thirds believe that hacking is unacceptable in any circumstance. I wonder however what the results would be if another website ran the poll. We have to remember that people using the Sophos website are likely to have cyber crime on the mind and this could create a negative bias.

In order to catch a thief you often have to think like a thief and even behave like one. So should the laws be black and white when it comes to hacking. Could there be an acceptable use policy?

Eighty per cent of all malware detected in 2006 came in the form of Trojans and eBay is currently facing its own problems. Malware is now very sophisticated and many hackers have graduated from attempting generalised attacks to being very targeted indeed. In this instance people bidding on car auctions are being directed to fake sites that mimic the functionality and look of eBay.

There are still hundreds of fake pop-ups out there that tell you about the free laptop you have won but most of us are wise to them now. The ones we need to be wary of are those taking on organisations like eBay and creating versions of the site that are both cosmetically convincing and dynamically similar.

As consumers we have to be constantly vigilant about which links we click on and where they are taking us, especially before we give away any private data.

They plan to show short clips from top rated programmes such as Dr Who and Life on Mars but also create dedicated content such as tours of the Dr Who set by star actor David Tennant.

I’m interested to see who opts in and who opts out over the next few months as in many ways this could dictate both the fortunes and direction of YouTube.

According to Google Trends it’s less than a year since YouTube’s traffic overtook that of MTV, Viacom’s most successful website.

The big question is, how long would it be before the trend reversed back again if all content providers demanded their content be pulled, leaving only user generated video on the site. There’s obviously a huge mix of content on the site but a quick glance at the most viewed videos on there at the moment indicates that seven out of the top ten are big studio music videos, broadcasted animations or televised content. Two of the remaining three are adverts, most likely posted by the brand themselves and only one of the top ten is user generated.

A worst case scenario would be a YouTube where 66% of the viewed content is adverts. How long would YouTube last?

Obviously, YouTube has put some deals in place to make sure this is not so, but would it be such a bad thing if YouTube were to revert back to user generated content as its mainstay? Afterall, that’s what made its name.

It seems that MySpace is now sending more traffic to TopShop than MSN and Yahoo Search combined. If you ever needed a sign that social networking could lead to dramatic traffic generation, this is a clear indicator.

Hitwise is a very useful tool, which doesn’t come cheap but the competitive advantage you can have with their statistics behind you is considerable. At the very least, I would recommend subscribing to Heather’s blog.

Heather was one of the panellists on last years Optimising Your Online Presence seminar which we also spoke at along with others including Yahoo.

So whose responsibility is it to secure your mobile devices? John Pescatore of Gartner, a company that offers technology-related insight to its clients, believes the responsibility ultimately lies with the mobile carriers. I decided to call some of the UK’s major players to see what security provisions they had for mobile Internet.

Orange informs me that there is nothing on its mobile network that will protect my phone from malware. However, to soften this blow, the rep opined that 98 percent of all mobile viruses are caused by Bluetooth and as Orange’s Smartphones don’t use this it isn’t a problem. He suggested that I speak to phone manufacturers rather than networks if I wanted to look into it further.

Pescatore also says that in the first instance we need to make sure users are well educated about the threats and this view is echoed by T-Mobile. The contact here said he would send me some information about their mobile security policies but instead forwarded me three links to websites that informed me how to be vigilant whilst using mobile Internet devices. Valuable information but not quite what I was after.

Shane Coursen, senior technology consultant at Kaspersky Lab also believes we should be more proactive as users and download both firewall technology and anti-virus software to our mobile phones. But should manufacturers be doing this for us?

Carphone Warehouse informed me that none of the Internet enabled phones it sells have any protection as standard – further more, none of the manufacturers plan to add such a facility. It did however say that Smartphones will support downloaded software if I can find any that is suitable.

So right now, at the advent of the mobile Internet we cannot rely on either our mobile network or our phone manufacturer for the security support we need. We must look for downloadable packages and encourage safe usage policies. My research leads me to encourage you to take your mobile security as seriously as for your PCs and Laptops. Once prices come down and technology improves we could all find ourselves with another device to defend from cyber crime.

Mobile ad spend is now becoming a feature on the advertising landscape and there are predictions that along with Internet and gaming, mobile ad spend will become 15% of the market by 2010. By this time it’s hard to know just how much functionality our mobile phones will have. One thing is for sure however; each time mobile Internet advances we’re likely to jump straight online and find out how much our current phone is worth to envirofone.com before we upgrade.

The ISPA is an organisation punching well above its weight. Nicholas Lansman, the secretary general has been influencing not only ISP’s but government bodies and other organisations who play a big part in the UK’s Internet future for around a decade now and the awards are in their ninth year.

So as you can imagine, it’s a big deal to any company to be nominated for an award. The ISPA are a very secretive bunch and there’s absolutely no way to know if you have won before the envelope is opened, so we were pretty nervous right up until the announcement.

Luckily, the best hosting award comes third on the night, so after Lawrence Jones, our MD, had picked up the award we were able to sit back and relax for the rest of the evening.

It’s the third year that we have won the award and this year the judges praised us chiefly for being able to offer hosting to any type of company – big or small. It’s something that has always been important to us, so it’s great to hear from our peers that it is working.

There’s a news story about the ISPA win on the UKFast website.

We celebrated by taking half the UKFast team – the brave half – up Snowdon on Saturday!!

The UKFast Manchester Squash Open took place last week and entertained players from the world stage – which not only makes for fantastic spectator sport but gives local talent the chance to stretch themselves against competition that they might not normally get to play.

The knock on effect of an event like this for a community is enormous. We all join in a collective groan when thinking about the near misses our national sporting elite achieve. Too often we look to the country’s infrastructure for someone to blame. However, I think the area that is most neglected is the space between school sport and professional sport where people with niche talents are allowed to thrive and reach for the world stage.

Lawrence Jones sponsored the tournament because of a commitment to the community he and his company works and lives within. His support allowed local talent to play out of its skin and inspire others to work towards the same excellence.

Our government may not have the same attitude to sport as that of Australia or the US but that doesn’t mean businesses can’t do their part for our country’s sports, because, in many cases, if businesses don’t offer support, it simply may not happen.

There are two articles in today’s news that support the shift towards transparency. Studies by both Booz Allen Hamilton and Nielsen//NetRatings are warning us that businesses are not people friendly enough for the online environment.

Another step in the right direction are the new rules on disclosure of company details, which were extended to cover websites and emails at the start of this year. This means that businesses have to display their corporate name place of registration, registered number and the address of its registered office in legible characters.

E-commerce sites have additional rules to comply to as well, which all serve to help us as consumers feel safer about spending money or building relationships with the businesses that we find online.

Video online has a huge advantage having seen the mistakes and successes of the music industry and many broadcasters and online video providers have already presented a working model. If broadcasters hold back from experimenting now they are likely to be the ones who fall foul of the pirate market first.

Is it wise for traditional broadcasters to show their hesitation to move online? Those who grab the challenge and run with it have the best chance of being there in five years time when scheduled programming is the marginalised format and user preference is driving the industry.

It’s fair to say that the last two years have seen an impressive growth of more specialised ISPs dealing in the hosting market and when UKFast was a finalist again last year we were one of the more experienced names in the pot. Last year also saw a nomination in the top ISP category for Best Business ISP.

Our victory in 2006 was once again based strongly on UKFast’s emphasis on customer service and we are thrilled that this year once again we are included in the final line up for both Best Business Host and Best Business ISP.

We are up against some very fine competition, so I hope you will wish us the very best of luck as we wait for the awards ceremony on February 15.

Just today a new report is published about UK Internet user concerns, which says that four in ten of us worry about online fraud. Worry might be to light a word as the report places fear of online fraud above fear of gun crime and contracting MRSA in hospital. It’s a genuine concern.

The big online companies recognise this and many are working hard to come across as transparent, genuine and user friendly. eBay’s Head of Trust and Safety is on the case to reassure customers today. Garreth Griffith says “we’ve seen an increase in the bad experiences members face due to two factors: increased fraud across the internet and a very small proportion of sellers who fail to deliver a positive buyer experience.” His email then continues by listing all the positive actions eBay are taking in the fight against fraud.

At the other end of the Net, we have advertisers recognising where consumers are going and building online awareness of offline products. Cadbury, untouched by online fraud is using outlets like YouTube this year as it ramps up it’s online spend into the millions.

However, they shouldn’t forget though that the other escalating fear online is that of the safety of social networking sites, who are also having to put in place measures to reassure users that they are logging on to a safe environment.

Paul Fisher provides a great list of all the venture capital ploughed into European companies last year. I’ve concentrated on the UK investment and it seems to present a varied mix of sectors across 21 companies.

I had expected social networking and video on demand to play a majority part but the list provides a couple of glimpses into possible future ground breakers.

Creating communities accounts for 30 per cent of the deals with companies from Bebo through to Mind Candy (Second Life potential) receiving funding. Retail sites have also done well with 4 receiving around £20m between them – the majority going to wiggle.co.uk.

An area of Web 2.0 represented less strongly is Video and audio provision, with only Last FM and web TV site Aggregator getting the nod. It’s likely that Venture capitalists are staying out of this field because of the provisions already being networked by the big national broadcasters.

Two surprise entries in the list are ticket vending sites, specialising mainly in concert and sports ticketing. The most revealing ones for me tend to revolve around new technologies. Skinkers is a device-to-device RSS tool allowing us to receive our web information in various forms and Yuuguu connects remote workers allowing them to share collaborative efforts more rewardingly and efficiently.

I have also noticed through the various Google Alerts that I have set up, the amount of blog redirects that are appearing in the blog search rankings. These are manufactured blogs designed to forward you away from what you are looking for and on to a spammers website instead. To further compound Google’s problem, Chris points out that the majority of these ‘spam blogs’ are actually set up in Google’s own software, Blogger.

We’ve already looked at Google’s dominance of the search market on the blog this year and the possibility that the only avenues for catching Google lie in emerging formats such as mobile search but this brings up an interesting point. If search engine spam grows at the rate email spam has done how quickly will we be looking for alternatives to the engines that we currently use if the problem is not fixed?

And Mozilla’s Asa Dotzler has started the New Year by taking a tough line on browser’s communications with customers as it is revealled that Opera has potentially put customers at risk by not disclosing security vulnerabilities. Dotzler even goes as far as saying that arch rival IE would be more forthcoming with information than Opera has been.

The impact of IE7 has yet to be determined but I suspect that 2007 will be another good year for Firefox, which in my mind remains the market leader when it comes to innovation and company transparency.

I was therefore interested but not surprised to learn that, according to Hitwise, words related to the Next brand accounted for almost one fifth (19.55 per cent) of all Internet searches in the UK in December for the Lifestyle-Fashion industry. When you consider that the closest competing brand was River Island with just 3.42 per cent, that’s a terrific lead.

So how has the clothing giant managed to influence Internet users so dramatically?

A very simple name obviously helps. The single word ‘next’ accounts for over 14 per cent of the search terms in the category. It’s much easier to type ‘next’ than ‘debenhams’, so when you are browsing on spec it is likely to be a key choice.

Having a range of routes to market also helps. Next Directory is the seventh most used term. The directory delivers a captive audience that grows with the Next brand and builds the company profile. And brand building offline and on has to be the biggest factor in Next’s huge popularity.

It’s a stark warning to all those businesses that think clever PPC and SEO can deliver the market share and a suggestion once again that the nations High Street brands could be taking precedence online in 2007.

Music Zone was unlikely to sustain competition on a large scale in the mainstream with HMV, Virgin and of course Amazon, but would it have done better by moving in a niche direction?

MZ Direct was the seed that could have given them a USP. The idea that they could find for a customer obscure DVD’s, CD’s, even band merchandise. However, this would only have worked had they created a user friendly online interface that allowed the customer to feel as though they were processing and discovering their desired item. Using the internet they could have made the product tangible and accessible.

It’s astonishing that such a young company within that sector did not anticipate the direction the market is going in. In 2007, I wonder how many more high street companies will finally activate e-commerce solutions.

Not only did we have 100% more entries in 2006 but the judges found it much harder to choose the final winners due to the quality of the applicants.

What is great about the awards is that companies of all sizes are pitted up against each other and they all have an equal chance of winning.

The winners are a pretty good representation of the network really. We have big business with Sainsbury’s Contact Lenses and small business with VRM Swansea’s great number plate site. We’ve also got regional development agency North West Jazz Works winning the Community Award and global gaming giant Square Enix taking a web design award.

Our other big winner is the 2006 Internet Innovator, awarded to a business or entrepreneur that has brought a new concept to the web in the last year. This award goes to www.envirofone.com, which is part of the Eazyfone Group. In just 9 months they have made recycling of mobile phones a national phenomenon and over the course of 2007 they’ll be taking the scheme right across Europe and beyond!

I’m in a privileged position to be able to work with all these great online businesses and more. Our winners and many of those that entered this year are representative of the best of the UK online and long may it continue.

The new project spurns algorithms in favour of the human touch, brought by a team of volunteers who will deliver and order the results. Wales believes that current search technologies lack freedom, community, accountability and transparency and Wikia Search will restore this to the online environment.

There’s no doubt that Wikipedia’s popularity will help the development of the new search system but to me it feels too niche to ever rival Google, which has reportedly overtaken Technorati for Blog search in the last week. I’m not sure the search giant can be caught in it’s own back yard but online is moving to other devices, so will Google be the market leader in mobile search by this time next year?

I’d like to pinpoint three things that we should be looking at.

The first is RSS. 2007 will mark a split between people who browse for content and those who choose content to be delivered to them. Every business needs to offer an RSS feed. Newsletters, press releases, special offers, industry news, company news, free giveaways should all be available for people who desire to receive them. Providing feeds not only makes the visitor feel in control but it reduces your workload on building mailing lists. Businesses need to take them as seriously as News sites do.

The second big thing is video on the Net. We’re beginning to see mobile tv and IPTV. Video on demand is a priority for telecoms and media companies. Channel 4 has made less money on advertising this year in the UK than Google. We all know where the consumer’s eyes are going. So what are the best ways to keep our products in front of our audiences? And does the video wave offer us new ways to present our offerings on our own websites and other people’s?

I think Second Life will be the YouTube of 2007. There’s already a huge amount of money and enthusiasm being pumped into the virtual world and businesses, from retailers to radio stations have stamped their brand on this environ. One Chinese entrepreneur has already made a million dollars by buying, developing and selling virtual land. How can you build your profile and convert virtual cash into real revenue next year?

One thing is for sure. The Internet has to be placed closer to the heart of every UK business if they want to grow in 2007.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on what the major Internet trends will be in the coming year. Maybe you disagree about the impact of RSS or the importance of Second Life for businesses? Let me know.

Lets take the top 50 sites ranked by Alexa for traffic in the UK. There’s only one British company in the top 10 and that’s the BBC. In fact only one third of the top 50 are native UK businesses.

You can get an indication of what Brits look for online by breaking down the list. Of the 17 companies, 5 are Media, 5 are directories/listings, 4 are Internet retail and the other 3 are Royal Mail, HSBC and Streetmap.co.uk.

So, of the top 50 there are only 4 British businesses selling a tangible e-commerce product. Two of these happen to be High Street giants – Argos and Tesco. The other two are original e-tailers – play.com and ebuyer.com.

It’s not easy to get there for an retail entrepreneur, but as you can see, it’s not impossible either.

Following talks with Orange the search leader is preparing to deliver a new generation of mobile phone content in what is described as a multi-billion dollar partnership.

Just yesterday a colleague and I were discussing the time it takes to access the net on a mobile phone and the quality of information available. I joked that we should download Google Earth. And now, the two superbrands are looking to make this a reality by 2008.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Orange followed this up with the acquisition of Tiscali’s UK division, which is on the plate for around £600m right now. However, Orange is reportedly up against BT, BSkyB, NTL and Carphone Warehouse amongst others.

The online landscape is changing quickly and deals being done now are likely to have major influences on the state of the net in the years to come.

I think this view may change depending on whether you’re a marketeer, a salesman, a content provider but ultimately I think it depends on what your sites main objective is.

I can see RSS causing a split online between sites that provide information and sites that aim to drive sales. The consumer market will doubtless remain within the domain name camp, while news sites are more likely to champion the RSS route.

What are your thoughts on this?

SKY is a good example, having just announced a new deal with Google, which extends News Corp’s relationship with the Search giant into the TV online arena. The deal allows them to have that little bit more control over the choices users make while on their sites.

We’ve looked at News Corp before and Murdoch’s about turn on the Internet. I’m interested to see how the public debate over SKY’s stake in ITV will develop considering last night’s meeting of MP’s at Parliament.

Elsewhere, Richard Branson has called it undemocratic and C4 are equally unhappy. Of course, the debate is about much more than just TV. ITV has been diligently developing an online offering including it’s acquisition of Friends Reunited a year ago this week. Couple this with SKY and you have the most comprehensive network of online content in the UK.

It’s no wonder they’re all a little unhappy. Only the BBC will be able to compete and I wonder how much they’ll struggle.

I initially went along to record Jacqueline Gold CEO of Ann Summers talking about the challenges that she’s overcome to build her £150m a year business. The podcast, part of our Chamber View series is now available for download on our website and is well worth a listen.

Not surprisingly she championed the Internet as a fantastic sales channel, citing almost 100% growth in sales over the last year.

But Jacqueline wasn’t the only inspiring speaker at the exhibition. Sahar Hashemi, Simon Woodroffe, Gerald Ratner and Bob Geldof were all giving their take on ‘making it’ in business. I would say that the speakers were probably the single most important aspect of the exhibition and hope the Manchester community took their chance to learn from all this success.

If you missed out, the Jacqueline Gold interview, conducted by Angie Robinson of the GM Chamber addresses some great topics, including the lack of female entrepreneurs, motivating your workforce and innovative channels for sale.

The first covers economic secretary Ed Balls’ visit to Manchester in October (as mentioned here last month) and answers some of the regions biggest questions about government funding and the ways to direct the finances to strong economic cities like Manchester.

The second takes a very different angle on Manchester businesses, presenting the highlights from the MEN Business of the Year Awards, which took place last week. There are interviews with all the winners and some opinions from Chris Barry, business editor at the MEN and Angie Robinson, chief executive of the GM Chamber.

The partnership is designed to offer all businesses the opportunities that only a few have access to.

You can download Ed Balls and the MEN Awards, or go to the UKFast Podcast page to find out more.

It’s an interesting topic. It has already been said that the next US election will be won on the Internet and there are a growing number of UK MPs with their own blogs encouraging debate online.

I went to Boris Johnson’s blog site today to see what his views on Schmidt’s talk were, but he may be too busy taking on Jamie Oliver at the moment to give comment on this Internet issue.

Tomorrow, I am going to a Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce event to produce a podcast on Ed Balls, MP for Normanton’s talks to local businesses. As one of Gordon Browns inner circle, I might ask Ed what involvement he sees the Internet having in the next UK general election.

When the podcast is finished I’ll post a link here.

The sector in question is (unsurprisingly) the music industry and the BT Digital Music Awards have introduced a Best Music Blog category this year.

The awards on the 3rd October will pit the likes of Lily Allen against the Streets and Sandi Thom to find the best ‘online communicators’ in the business.

But talking of business – I wonder when our sector’s awarding bodies will start to recognise the important role blogs can play within the communication strategy enough offer rewards?

They’ve uploaded their tv ads and are getting a respectable amount of hits. One video has been watched by over 10,000 people in the last week. That’s people actually choosing to click on and view.

As well as the tv ads they have filmed a conference discussing the rate of teenage drug use reducing. However, the video – displayed in 3 parts reveals a naivety in the system. YouTube orders from the most recent downward and so, it highlights part 3 of the report above the other two. The result is over 2000 views for part 3, less than half this for part one and only 367 views for part 2. Does this suggest that the whole thing is not worth sitting through? Or simply indicate the time restrictions we face in reaching this audience? After all – the adverts are 30 seconds long, while the reports weigh in at 4 or 5 minutes a go.

It’s a big step though and I would say it will prompt similar moves from public sectors across the world. I wonder whether the private sector will be as transparent in their involvement?

The story covers a new report on the slowing of high street spending and the increase in online sales. The average Internet shopper is now spending about £130 more per year than they did in 2002.

Firstly, I am quite surprised that online spend per person has only risen by 28% over etail’s biggest growth years and secondly I’m not sure that the report takes into account those people who have migrated their business from the high street to the Internet because of the opportunities there.

The report doesn’t integrate the 1.5m UK businesses online, a number which is rapidly increasing and suggests that before long our high streets will look like ghost towns.

In Manchester everywhere you can see redevelopment of residential and city areas. The spaces are being filled by different industries. While retail is moving online and competing more effectively there, the service industry is moving into our high streets and filling a very public demand.

I’d love to know figures on those businesses moving online from the high street and similarly, the proportion of retail versus service sector on the local high streets now. I think extra statistics are needed to validate a report like this.

She has a very broad knowledge of the industry and the interview is well worth reading. I’m pleased she raised the point that developing nations are not only producers but they are consumers. We spend too much energy bemoaning the competition they bring into the market place and not enough time looking for opportunities in these fruitful consumer climates.

She also takes the idea of the semantic web in a different direction by talking about pattern recognition being the next big step on the net. Once again – it all comes back to relevance. She believes Google is not the ‘be all’ as Google doesn’t understand meaning.

So good luck to all of you currently working on this kind of technology. I suspect it will burst into cyberspace all at once and present Google with some real challenges.

Have a read of the interview.

The day was all about blogging, podcasting, RSS and e-marketing and it was interesting to see the spread of knowledge across the delegates. Some knew all about the various techniques but many were there because they were entering at ground level.

Perhaps, most interesting was the fact that the majority of the clued up members worked for the smallest organisations. They’d already got to grips with various technologies through the need to stretch very limited budgets.

It felt a little bit like taking coals to Newcastle. With podcasting being a very creative medium, I spent a lot of time talking to some of the North West’s most creative thinkers about how they can innovate their web services.

The podcast (online soon) offers a flavour of the day and gives direction to some pioneering thoughts about the arts sector online today – so it’ll be well worth listening to. A podcast can only be as good as its subjects and there was a wealth of knowledge and experience at FACT yesterday, so I am looking forward to the end result.

This news is followed hot on the heels by an online advertising conundrum. A number of media companies are suggesting that there is a shortage of expertise in the online advertising arena and this is slowing business opportunities to capitalise on the audiences across the web, particularly on social networking sites like MySpace, Bebo and YouTube.

Does this mean that the sector is not growing as quickly as we would all like it to? Start-up Spiralfrog obviously doesn’t think so. The online music outlet, launching in December, is planning to be the first to provide free and legal music downloads. It’s going to fund itself, the music labels and the artists through advertising on the site.

In this circumstance ‘build it and they will come’ is probably a fair assessment. Who is likely to turn down free music with the added bonus of a clear conscience! However, can the net sustain itself across other markets funded purely by advertising?

I’d be interested to know other people’s thoughts as I suspect ROI in online advertising will at some point become much more challenging.

In order to build an extensive list, I’d love to consider people’s thoughts on the best and worst of those online. We’re all aware that certain industries – like the travel sector have been revolutionised by the advent of the net and many of these sites are designed and run in a very professional manner. But which areas are racing to catch up, which are just getting a foothold and which are still down right ugly?

I’ll be working on this over the next few weeks and considering criteria including the look of a site, its navigation and search success amongst other things.

So if you’d like your say, post a comment here.