Cow revealed some great research in PR Week recently about how 7 out of 10 of the FTSE 100 companies have not registered their company name on Twitter and therefore risk imposters damaging their reputations by brand jacking their name.

There's been a bit of a stir in the PR blogosphere since then, as Wadds registered @CowPR on Twitter. Since then things have escalated with a blog post here, and a blog post there, here a post, there a post, everywhere a blog post. Old MacDonald had a farm ee i ee i o...

Cow PR have however registered @Dirkthecow but not @CowPR. They apparently dropped the PR part of their name a while ago, but it still lives on and even PR Week referenced them as Cow PR.

Last Summer I worked at Concept Communications, but it was known as Concept PR by clients. The reason being as you build up a good relationship with your publics it's only natural that they will rename you with a sort of corporate nickname. For example Marks and Spencer became M&S, Apple Computer became Apple, Woolworths became Woolies, and McDonalds became Maccies. The list goes on.

So registering your brand name online can become a bit of a hassle as there's so many variations of your name in use. Nelson Mandela aka Richard Millington rightly points out it is impossible to register every conceivable variation of your brand name online. Registering a few is always a good idea though. If Cow had registered Cow, Cow PR, and Cow Communications they could have avoided being brand jacked. It's fortunate for them that Wadds didn't try to damage or imitate their brand - instead he did some PR for cows before deleting the account.

Cow aren't the only ones that haven't registered a few possible variations though, despite reporting the story, I noticed that @PRWeek hadn't registered their own name on Twitter. So obviously I nabbed it. If I was a little more mischievous I could wreak havoc and damage the PR Week brand, but fortunately I'm quite nice and will probably delete the account next week as I don't really want it. If PR Week do though, please feel free to ping me an e-mail and I'll send you the details.

UPDATE: I have now deleted my @PRWeek account. I've also noticed that I've been brand jacked too. @Mattwatson and @Matthewwatson have both been registered! Name jacking? And, hats off to Dirk at Cow PR who fessed up here.

Unlike many online and web 2.0 companies, Mozilla are great at providing customer service. Rather than calling an expensive phone line to get transfered twenty times before you finally receive help in broken English, or joining an online forum to talk to other disgruntled customers, FireFox users can simply use twitter to tweet about their problems. By monitoring mentions of FireFox on twitter, @firefox_answers can find out who needs help and offer it to them.

What a great way to use twitter and create brand ambassadors out of your customers! But despite this I wouldn't recommend following @firefox_answers. I imagine it's a bit like eavesdropping in a call centre. Instead just check your replies once you've asked a question.

Here are three other great ways for companies to use Twitter:

1. To speak to your customers
@pbloco uses Twitter well by entering into conversations with followers. The peanut butter manufacturer poses questions, replies to followers and occasionally hosts little competitions to win jars of P.B.Loco. If I won something over Twitter I know I'd certainly tweet and blog about it as well as tell my friends.

2. To provide news about your brand
@BarackObama uses Twitter well to keep followers up-to-date about where the presidential candidate is and what he's doing, as well as how his campaign is progressing. What a great way to keep potential voters informed and position the candidate as a proactive change maker.
@innocentAGM2008 on the other hand used twitter badly by updating followers with little titbits about the company's AGM. In theory it was a good idea, but chatty marketing doesn't really work on Twitter. I don't really care if the cake at the AGM tastes good or if there are 44 coats in the cloakroom.

3. To inform your readers
@guardiantech and @prweektech are great at using Twitter to keep their followers up to speed with technology news and generate hits to their websites. Though it can be annoying when @prweektech goes over 140 characters and you don't receive the full message. If you are going to use twitter as a newsfeed you must be committed to doing it and not stop after 6 updates like
@bbctechfeatures who will have left their 250+ followers quite disappointed.

There have been many negative news reports predicting a recession recently. There's a reason for this: bad news is good news. The same applies to social media. People are more willing to pass on and take in bad news than good news. For example a tweet that says, "My car got me to work without any problems again today." is a lot less interesting than "My car broke down on the motorway today. I'll never buy a Ford again!"

This is why monitoring what people are saying about your brand or product is so imperative. This is particularly important in an age of social media where that negative message could quickly go global. Fortunately by reacting to negative messages and using blogger outreach you can use bad news like the recession to your advantage.

Reactions to negative messages:

• If a blogger has been made redundant offer them a free trial of your recruitment service.
• If a Facebook group has been started to complain that your product is now more expensive, apologise and explain why the price change has been made. Maybe even offer a one-off discount to members of the group.
• If someone isn't happy with their mobile phone. Offer them a free trial of your company's phone. Chances are they will want to keep the phone at the end of the trial so offer them the option to buy it.
• If a blogger can't find any holidays in their price range, suggest some cheap options.
• If someone tweets to say their taxi is late, offer your services instead. (See feverbee)

Managed correctly bad news can really be good news for your company.

UPDATE: Stephen Davies of Prblogger.com gives a good example of the Carphone Warehouse reacting to a negative blog post here.

Three weeks ago I started using Twitter to link to my blog posts and news stories that I found of interest. I didn't really see the point of it, but I thought I'd give it ago afterall it only took up a few minutes of my time.

Gradually I immersed myself into the 'Twittersphere' and started following other PR people and entering into conversations. I thought it was interesting but I certainly had no idea that it would further my career.

After just ten days of twittering I was contacted by Stephen Waddington of Rainier PR and invited to attend an interview the following week. A few days later I had a second interview over the phone and now today I have been offered a job with the company. I start next month and cannot wait. It's been my dream for quite some time to work in technology public relations, so to work for one of the top 10 tech PR companies in the UK is unbelievable! Plus I got a mention on their blog to boot.

Directly through twittering I have also acquired twenty-one followers or contacts. This means that I have gained a new contact for every day I have spent microblogging. Indirectly I look set to gain many, many more contacts in the form of my new work colleagues.

Not bad for a website I didn't see the point of.

Last month Pizza.com sold for a staggering $2.6million. That's one pricy pizza and one dear domain name. It shows just how much companies value domain names. But are they right to do so? Are domain names really that valuable? Is Pizza.com really worth the sames as 69 Lexus RX series sedans?

It's generally agreed that domain names should be short, memorable and easy to spell. That's why you don't see many websites like Order-A-Pizza-Online-And-Get-It-Delivered-To-Your-Door.com or 15inchPizzaIn15minutes.com.

Domain names that are short, memorable and easy to spell, like Pizza.com have therefore become very valuable commodities. But is this all about to change? Are the days of domain names selling for millions coming to an end?

Is the domain name dead?

I've noticed a trend recently in the Guardian and on websites such as Twitter, for domain names to be replaced by TinyUrl's. This is perhaps most prolific on Twitter, where nearly 40% of users use the service to share links, yet have only 140 characters to do so.

For those of you who don't know, TinyUrl is a website that turns big and nasty domain names like this - http://www.m-p-w.co.uk/2008/05/green-light-for-virtualisation.html in to small and friendly ones, like this one for my last post - http://tinyurl.com/3vcj8v. It's sort of like txt spk for domain names.

We are becoming more accustomed to clicking on short links that we probably can't remember or need to remember, yet alone spell. But despite this companies spend millions to get us to remember their web addresses. But is it worth it when their links may just be converted into TinyUrl's or found through search engines anyway? I know so many people that google websites such as You Tube instead of typing youtube.com into their browser. I'd love to see some research into how people actually find websites. Do the majority of web users type the web address or use a search engine? I'd put my money on a search engine.

If the of rise of the TinyUrl continues will we see all websites linked to via their TinyUrl address or their existing url? Or will the two co-exist with companies, journalists and web users using whichever is shorter?

I think the latter, although I think the TinyUrl will have to be significantly shorter. For example http://tinyurl.com/3yc3wc is shorter than http://www.guardian.co.uk/media but only by 6 characters, and that is including all the w's. So is shortening it really worth it? I don't think so.

Almost five weeks ago I posted about Barack Obama's viral campaign, Logobama. This is an update on how that campaign is progressing as well as the presidential race.

Since then nearly 6700 have created logos using the website and a total of $651 has been donated by 24 people. That's not a lot of money or donations really, but I'm sure the number of exposures will be much higher.

Barack now has 156 more pledged delegates than Hillary Clinton and needs just another 183 to become the Democrat candidate. Significantly less than the 339 that Hillary needs to beat him.

Perhaps this is down to Barack's inventive use of new media to support his campaign. A strategy, which Hillary seems to be replicating. In April 2007, Barack started using Twitter to aid his campaign. In January 2008, Hillary followed suit and started microblogging too. Since then Hillary has posted 139 times, whereas Barack has posted a mere 115 times.

If frequency isn't the key to using Twitter successfully then what is?

I think interaction. Although neither candidate has actually entered into a two-way conversation with their followers. I think following other users has been a crucial factor in Barack's success. Barack follows almost 30,000 other users, whereas Hillary follows nobody. No one. Not a sausage. I think people like to have followers, it feels good, even if they know that their followers are not really reading what they have to say. So it's not surprising that Barack has over 25,000 more followers than poor old Hillary, who has just 3,745 in total.

A couple weeks ago I blogged to say that I had applied for a place on Seth Godin's summer internship in New York. I didn't get it. I did however get invited to join his online internship during the summer months. A group of almost 100 top marketing students from around the world will be working together, sharing knowledge and learning from each other as well as from one of the greatest marketeers of all time and perhaps the world's most influential marketing blogger. Exciting, eh?

We'll be collaborating on marketing projects for Seth's website Squidoo.com as well as completing a number of other tasks. At the end of the summer, Seth has stated his intention to showcase the CV's of all the active interns on his phenomenally popular blog. Money can't buy that kind of reccomendation.

For my first task I'm hoping to team up with Richard Millington who writes a very inciteful marketing blog at FeverBee.com. We have been asked to create lenses (web pages) on Squidoo about topics which interest us. We haven't decided what our lenses will be about yet but I'm hoping we can write about the microblogging service Twitter. I shall keep you informed.