Facebook has over 250 million members, Twitter has more than 75 million micro blogs  and over  60 million people are signed up to LinkedIn - the popularity of social media is growing every day. Even Irish SMEs are using social media to reach out to potential customers. ( Irish SMEs using social media). But have […]

Last week prweek.com reported that House of Commons chiefs are considering extending the parliamentary lobby system to include bloggers.  This would give bloggers the same access as lobby journalists, a way of obtaining government information in an off camera setting. For the UK, it seems to be a forward move into the social media sphere, […]

The public sector union leaders must be cringing at today’s media reports. The Irish Independent  describes how many workers and families took advantage of the one day work stoppage to catch up on cheap Christmas shopping. The sub editors captured the mood with the headline, “Strike for the Border as Shoppers flee North.”
With over 400,000 people […]

Any questions about the impact of the global financial crisis of 2008 on the real economy should by now have been answered. Corporate announcements have had one theme in common this January, retrenchment. No sector of the economy, global or domestic, seems unscathed. From Microsoft to Smurfit Stone, Corus to Barratts Shoes, Intel to Independent […]

The slogan “Yes we can” concluded the victory speech of US-President elect Barack Obama in Chicago last night.
The slogan defined a political campaign.
That campaign was spearheaded by one word - ‘change’.
The lesson of the Obama success is the effectiveness of simple, direct communication.
Yes we can.
 

The latest installment in the Palin-McCain saga has several McCain advisers suggesting to CNN that they have become increasingly frustrated with what one aide described as Palin “going rogue.”  As anyone in the communications business knows, all is not well when “sources”, “close to” a particular public individual or company start to talk off-the-record, especially […]

 As described by John Gapper in the Financial Times  recently, the crisis in world financial markets was anticipated by Warren Buffet, who warned that derivatives were “financial weapons of mass destruction” in the Berkshire Hathaway Annual Report 2002 . With the benefit of hindsight many a central banker will be wondering why that annual report […]

According to a report this week from IR Web Report, under new guidance unanimously approved by the US Securities and Exchange Commission, companies in the US may soon be able to rely on their websites and blogs to meet the public disclosure requirements under Regulation FD under certain circumstances.
The SEC study began in late 2006 […]

 
In the week since the rejection by the Irish voters of the Lisbon Treaty, we have been told that the EU is in both “uncharted” and “unchartered” waters, or is it either “uncharted” or “unchartered waters?
 
So which is it?
 
Is it that there is no chart to guide us on the choppy constitutional seas, or […]

When the dust started to settle on the result of the Lisbon Referendum at the weekend, one of the strongest reasons given for voting “no” was “I didn’t understand it, so I voted no” or “they didn’t tell me what it meant so I voted no”.
And there is no doubt that the strategy of the […]