Neville’s posterous

Todd Stitzer, chief executive of Cadbury, has appeared to concede that a combination with Kraft makes “strategic sense”. Bank of America/Merrill Lynch revealed that Mr Stitzer had told a conference organised by the investment bank that he did not expect Kraft would walk away and that his “job is to get as much value as possible”.

The bank said he spelt out specific synergies that could be extracted from merging the operations of the two multinational food groups.

Cadbury later insisted the comments were an “inaccurate reflection” of what was said in a private meeting and that the company’s stance towards Kraft had not changed.

My interpretation: Kraft acquiring Cadbury is inevitable once the price is right. Assuming no other suitor emerges and that everything else is equal :)

There's no need to Sellotape your iPhone to a dashboard anymore. Thanks to a tweet from Mark Owen this morning, we've found out that the TomTom car kit for the iPhone 3GS is now available to pre-order from the UK Apple store for £100 and it will ship in two to three weeks.

[Update] The store description says, "You get both the TomTom navigation app for your iPhone 3GS or 3G and the docking kit to hold your iPhone securely in place on your dashboard or windscreen." -- so it costs £100 for everything, which isn't too bad.

I have a TomTom 710 Go, about 3 years old. I think its on it's last legs, so that's probably my justification for investing in a new sat nav. And I'm severely tempted by this piece of kit. Not just for iPhone 3GS but for iPhone 3G too.

CoPilot Live also looks pretty damn good...

Neat. A brand owner's dream with all those logos everywhere all the time.

Note: iPhone 3GS only.

Medics posting messages on networking websites like Facebook and Twitter are breaching patient confidentiality, a leading journal reveals.

Research in the Journal of the American Medical Association found examples of web gossip by trainee doctors sharing private patient stories and details. Over half of 78 US medical schools studied had reported cases of students posting unprofessional content online. One in 10 of these contained frank violations of patient confidentiality. Most were blogs, including one on Facebook, containing enough clinical detail that patients could potentially be identified.

Many postings included profanity and discriminatory language. Sexually suggestive material and photos showing drunkenness or illicit drug use were also commonplace.

While most incidents resulted in informal warnings, some were deemed serious enough to lead to dismissal from medical school.

But few of the medical schools had policies that covered online social networking and blogging.

via news.bbc.co.uk

Setting aside behaviour issues - why would a med student post any patient-related content online to a public site? - this just illustrates the folly for any organization in not having clear guidelines on what you can do and what you can't.

Guidelines in themselves aren't enough, though: you need to involve employees and anyone associated with your organization to help them understand those guidelines, perhaps even shape them, and their agreement to following them.

Seems as simple as that to me.

[...] The site lists 1,332 free and paid applications and services built on Twitter’s API, where people can search for, rate and buy Twitter services. The site also features lists of the most popular apps on the marketplace, ad lists the “best” app for nine types of Twitter services, such as apps for business, url shortners, image sharing, news, and travel. The site also hopes to be somewhat of a social network, with users having the ability to create profiles of their favorite Twitter apps and services.

You sign into oneforty with your Twitter account, which lets you interact with the site with your Twitter handle. Each listing for an app or service has a detailed description of its features and and includes screenshots, and categories that the app fits into (i.e. business or mobile). You can click the “I use this” to add the app to your profile and you will be listed on the app’s page as a user. The listing also identifies the developer who created the app, features press mentions of the site or app or site and pulls in a stream of Tweets that mentions the app or site. And you can “share” a particular app via Twitter.

Timely idea. I especially like the rating and recommendation aspects.

It's in private beta; I've asked for an invite.

A hotel booking engine that enables travellers to book accommodation at the last minute using the social networking site Twitter has been launched today.

The privately-funded Inoqo provides a platform for hotels to advertise accommodation packages that are available in the next 48 hours on Twitter, filling otherwise vacant rooms at the last minute.

Twitter users can follow the stream for their chosen travel destination, for example hotels in London are found by following @2LondonHotels on Twitter, and users receive deals directly into their personal Twitter stream as they go live.

Although the service is free to travellers, Inoqo generates revenue by charging hotels a commission for each booking made.

The service opened to hotels on 15 September and went live today with launch hotels in the USA, France, Portugal, England, Scotland, Ireland and South Africa.

Inoqo plans to launch an affiliate program so that bloggers and web site owners can embed a widget into their website.

Imaginative use of Twitter.

[...] This is terrible news. Thomson Reuters will run hundreds of innovative smaller web developers in Europe out of the investor relations business, just as they have done in the US market. They will undercut everyone with their cheap product, and NYSE Euronext’s role as an exchange holding company will make it easier for them to do so.

That part just stinks. Exchanges should not be involved in businesses that help companies meet their listing standards. It’s a clear conflict of interest. Before the financial crisis, North American regulators turned a blind eye to this conflict because they lost sight of right and wrong. Hopefully, European regulators have a better ethical compass.

Strong views from Dominic Jones, an authoritative voice to whom I pay attention on IR matters.

2nd ENGLAND – av 281

1	NevilleHobson.com	45	http://twitter.com/jangles
2	Blogstorm	52	http://twitter.com/patrickaltoft
3	Nick Burcher	63	http://twitter.com/nickburcher
4	Crenk	81	http://twitter.com/crenk
5	russell davies	92
6	Crackunit	137	http://twitter.com/iaintait
7	This Is HERD	158
8	Welcome to Optimism	170
9	adliterate	178
10	Only Dead Fish	188	http://www.twitter.com/neilperkin
11	PR Blogger	227	http://twitter.com/stedavies
12	PR Media Blog	233
13	HERD	246
14	Jims Marketing Blog	264
15	Spinning Around	268
16	The Engaging Brand	269
17	Rubbishcorp	271
18	50-Plus Marketing	272
19	Simon Wakeman	276
20	Technobabble 2.0	277
21	Wadds’ PR Blog	280
22	Life Moves Pretty Fast	288
23	Faster Future	292
24	Social Media Trader	297
25	Make Marketing History	313
26	London Calling	315
27	A PR Guy’s Musings	322
28	Modern Marketing	326
29	Simonsays	333
30	Apple Pie & Custard	337
31	UK Internet Marketing Blog	348
32	Interactive Marketing Trends	351
33	Liberate Media blog	368
34	The Way of the Web	370
35	livingbrands	371
36	Talent imitates, genius steals	394
37	never get out of the boat	404
38	SEOCO Blog	435
39	Drew B’s take on tech PR	445
40	Sturgeon’s Law	472
41	greenormal	489
42	Mediaczar	500

A lot of work putting this together. I've just grabbed the pie charts plus the stats for UK blogs - read Gary's post for the detailed breakdowns of all the countries he talks about.

The webside adware company is getting low on directors, and possibly cash, as it prepares to announce its financial results. What's the outlook?

Remember Phorm? Of course you do - everyone's favourite (sometimes, or often, in the love-to-hate sense) webside adware company. It's due to release its latest set of financial results on Monday morning, but in the meantime a few things have happened.

Its Stopphoulplay.com website, which it launched back in April - in what looked to most with any experience in public relations like a slightly wild attempt to smear anyone who didn't love it - is now gone.

[...] its chief technology officer is no longer its chief technology officer: Stratis Scleparis, who was at BT when Phorm carried out its first (and extremely controversial) trial and subsequently joined Phorm, has left. Second, its director of corporate communications David Sawday has also left.

[...] the board now looks rather thin. There's Kent Ertugrul, its founder and chief executive (we interviewed him); and then there are four, count them, non-executive directors. There's not a lot of executing going on there.

We don't think that Phorm's results will be delightful to its investors. [...] All in all, the great idea that this form of "targeted online advertising" would help ISPs out (by routing some of the money from ads back to them) has looked less and less robust. It has said that it will aim for other countries that are more interested in its products. But from where we sit, it's not looking that hopeful.

Phorm's days were looking numbered back in June.