One website that serves to draw attention to bad PR practices is PRfail.tumblr.com. The site was setup nearly a year ago by Jonathan Hopkins to aggregate examples of bad PR highlighted on websites such as Twitter, which sees many users attach the #PRfail hashtag to their tweets.

The site now features plenty of PROs who have pointed our mistakes made by their peers or by the companies they represent, but is this wise?

If I were to criticise a company’s mistake on my blog or on Twitter, Google would automatically connect my name and the name of the company I work for to the name of the company I badmouthed. So if I or the company I work for were to then pitch for a PR brief by that company it would only take a quick search of those names, for example Nike and Speed Communications, to bring up my blog post or my tweets in the first few results. I’m pretty sure that digging up old mistakes that a potential client would rather forget, is probably not the best way to make a good impression.

That said, identifying a ‘PR fail’ and offering a solution as to how the company might have dealt with that crisis more effectively could demonstrate expertise. Though I’m not sure how much expertise you can demonstrate when you’ve already used up 7 characters of your 140 character tweet with a #PRfail hashtag!

My mind’s not totally made up on this. Do you think we should be more careful about what we say online or use our freedom of speech to highlight bad PR in an effort to separate the wheat from the chaff?

Here are two easy steps to make your blog mobile friendly. This script should direct visitors who visit any of the pages on your blog to a main mobile blog site. It is possible to create a fully mobile blog site by creating a specific stylesheet for mobile users using CSS but this is more complex and I haven’t fully worked out how to do it yet. But will blog about it if and when I do.

Step one
Create a mobile blog using Mippin.

Step two
Add the following code inside the head tags. Remove the asterisks and add your mobile blog web address.

<*script type=”text/javascript”>
if (screen.width<=800) { window.location=”http://mippin.com/yourblog” } <*/script>

Hey presto you’ve got a mobile site. Grab your phone and check it out!

I’m not sure I agree. Certainly paid for blogs produced by professional bloggers or PROs has had an impact on the blogosphere, but I don’t believe that it’s killed off the blogosphere as professional and amateur bloggers blog for different reasons.

Professional bloggers blog to share news or their opinions about issues affecting the industry they work in, as well as to network, whereas amateur bloggers blog to share their thoughts and ideas, and to keep in contact with friends and family. As long as the barriers to entry stay low, amateur and professional bloggers can co-exist.

Further proof that the blogosphere is far from dead comes in the form of Technorati’s recent ‘Blogosphere 2008′ report, which reveals that 79 per cent of bloggers write personal blogs. This hardly makes amateur bloggers sound like a dying breed.

Instead of pointing the finger at PROs or professional bloggers I would suggest that social networking sites, such as Facebook, have had the biggest impact on the blogosphere. Since many amateur bloggers blog to share news and photographs with friends and family it is no surprise that some have swapped blogs for social networking sites.

I’ve picked out a few interesting facts.

• 133 million blogs have been indexed by Technorati since 2002
• 76,000 blogs have a Technorati rating of 50 or higher
• 41 per cent of bloggers use Twitter
• Technology is the 2nd most popular topic for bloggers
• Corporate blogs make up 12 per cent of all blogs
• Professional blogs make up 46 per cent of all blogs
• 50 per cent of bloggers are aged between 18 and 34
• 44 per cent of bloggers are parents
• 42 per cent of bloggers spend 3-10 hours blogging per week
• Only 15 per cent of bloggers spend less than an hour blogging per week
• ‘Blog’ is the 5th most popular tag
• ‘Technology’ is the 11th most popular tag
• 83 per cent of blogs are listed on Technorati
• Just 4 per cent of bloggers pay to advertise their blog
• 46 per cent of blogs don’t feature any advertising
• Bloggers spend twice as much time online as U.S. adults 18-49,
• 82 per cent of bloggers post brand and product reviews
• 89 per cent of bloggers post about brands that they love or hate
• 37% of bloggers have been quoted in traditional media based on a blog post
• Half of bloggers believe that blogs will be a primary source for news and entertainment in the next five years
• 1 in 5 five bloggers don’t think that newspapers will survive the next ten years

Thibault helped answer about a million of my questions and gave some brilliant answers as well as an insight into the French blogosphere. This should help hugely when I consider language barriers and cultural differences that affect blogging.

He said that not all businesses should blog especially if they are, “Blogging about something that no one care about like the CEO’s new hair cut.” This ties in great with an article I have by Janet Street-Porter from the Independent called ‘Just Blog Off!’ about the uninteresting Waitrose blog written by the MD about his weight loss.

So I urge you to check out Fashion Fox. It’s a great resource run by a great person! Also if you are interested in fashion, Thibault runs two fashion blogs Chaussure-femmes.com and Lingerie-Meets-Underwear.com