If exclusive restaurant memberships, golf club cliques and needlessly fast cars weren’t enough for those top execs & fat cats of the business world, they were given yet another outlet this week to display their bulging wealth as well as boasting their vast number of contacts. On Monday, it was announced that the FT have introduced their very own social membership forum in which their media and technology executive clientele can network. Those who cough up the 12-month standard membership fee will be able to treat themselves to hours of searching and contacting fellow peers and members as well as gaining complimentary passes for any chosen conference from the Financial Times Global Conferences and Events portfolio, a subscription to FT.com, access to FT conference speaker’s presentations and podcasts and access to face-to-face members networking events. Jayne Van Hoen, FT’s Global Conference Director explained why she feels the network will be a success – “Our readers rely on the FT’s quality of insight and reporting and the new forum will enable them to interact and use that information more effectively with their peers.â€? Fair do’s – it sounds like a reasonable explanation to me.
 
Hang on though, I almost forgot…what’s the cost to join this social field of dreams? £1,700 plus vat per annum. Pocket money.
 
 
Another interesting news tit-bit that caught our eye at Headstream this week was Brand Republic’s insight into the importance of online pr, as Robin Grant reports:
“Pollsters surveyed 1,000 people – Among those aged 15 to 44, it found that 45 per cent read online news on a daily basis. Only 38 per cent of this age group read nat­ional newspapers every day. The figures are the starkest warning yet to the industry that it can no longer afford to rely on traditional forms of media relations.”
To read the full story, click on the link A wake up-call for the complacent PR industry:
 
 
Finally, for those of you who have the ‘doodle-bug’ and while away the hours at work by scrawling every spare piece of paper with your delightful sketches, make haste to WebCanvas. WebCanvas is a collaborative effort to make one giant piece of graffiti-wall style ‘art’. Anyone with a web browser that can support the application can get fully involved. As expected, you can upload an image, draw with the brush, and erase with the eraser as well as being able to draw lines and make shapes. What the outcome of this novel social idea will be, who knows? But if you happen to find your glorious masterpieces erased and ruined within minutes, I apologise in advance.