Recently by Chris Tomlinson

Considering it is the largest media owner in the world, Google is very bad at communicating with its users - which, lets face it, is most of us.

Back in December Google slipped Personalised Search into our lives, but few peopled noticed.

Google is always fiddling, or 'refining' as it calls it, with its algorithm, the one that determined which sites we see at the top of our search results pages.

Usually you need to be a search engine optimisation (SEO) expert or a real geek to spot the changes, or follow Google's official blog.

But now even normal people are noticing that their search engine results are becoming very different to those of other people - even when they search with the same words!

Last week saw the blogosphere speculate that Twitter's meteoric growth might finally be ending.

According to web monitoring company, Compete, traffic to the micro-blogging website has flat-lined, suggesting its world dominance may not be so assured.

If you're in the creative business, you can't just send out any old Christmas card.

No, this is the one time of year you're allowed to spam your clients, under the guise of festive cheer, so you need to show-off that award- winning creative team you've been banging on about all year.

You opt for an e-card, claiming the environmental high ground, when really you just didn't want to pay for the print or more likely left it too late.

Of course if you're a digital agency, nothing less than a fully interactive, social media enabled, viral game will do; the more inanely pointless the better, or so it seems.

But which of your Flash designers do you give the job too - who gets the poisoned Xmas card chalice?

Well, I've survived another X Factor season, despite it being the worst ever regurgitation of the same old manufactured pap. I've been held captive by my wife's dominance of the remote control for four excruciating months.

But thanks to social media, I find that I'm not alone.

I hate every nauseating minute of the show. From the insipid voice over to the hackneyed 'old spice' music, through the endless regurgitation of clichés, that make footballers sound intelligent, right up to the gurn inducing, blart infested melodrama that is the vote.

Yes it has been a "journey" for me too Dermot.

Last week, news that the BBC were changing their website headline style to be more search engine friendly was regarded by many old school journalists as another nail in their internet coffin.

It's easy to see how search engine optimisation (SEO) could affect the ancient art of grabbing readers attention, but will it really lead to the death of the creative headline?

It's true Google's indexing robots don't have a sense of humor and unlike humans, cannot be shocked, or mislead by ambiguity into reading an article.

For instance, it is hard to explain to a robot why "Headless body found in topless club" ( NY Post 1983) is generally regarded as the best headline of all time!

The fact is that to gain readership, the BBC, like other online news providers need their articles to be found in search engines and that mandates them having more 'accurate' headlines.

But does accurate necessarily mean boring?

Last week I attended the PRCA Digital Revolution event at 'Funlop" as the Birmingham Post staff affectionately call their home.

Online PR guru, Fernando Rizo, was speaking on how to sell 'digital' to clients. (he was destined to become some sort of guru with a name like that!).

His main point was that, thanks to the internet, mass communication was no longer the preserver of the media - everyone is now in the broadcasting business and that has fundamentally changed how PR works.

(That's probably a poor summary so judge for yourself - video of his full presentation can be found here : http://bit.ly/3ADvb4 )

He also underlined what many of us have already worked out - that PR has become conversational. Rather than issuing press releases it is about listening to, and then joining, online conversations.

To use Fernando's words: PR consultants used to spend most of their day writing, now they need to spend most of the day reading.