Blog post to follow…. (as per my style)

Well it finally happened, I got an internship! But an element that me and my friends are dealing with is how much can we really talk about our experiences?

So here goes, and hopefully I don’t get into too much trouble.

I am interning at The iPR Group and I absolutely love it! This is a scary point in my life and I put a big gamble on the whole PR thing.  The moment I finished my first “billable” hour at The iPR Group I finally was able to see a future for myself.

The iPR Group is a small boutique agency that specializes in consumer, consumer technology and corporate communications. I do a lot of research for my boss.  In my interview I told him flat out, “I can find ANYTHING!” (I hope I am demonstrating this.)

Pretty much I surf the internet all day, reading various technology blogs in the attempts to pair up suitable matches to pitch to.  I take this very seriously, because I know what it is like to receive an unrelated pitch.

Actually, right now I relate some of my experience to telemarketing (but more glamours of course).  The whole act of “pitching” to someone where the moment you say you are with such and such PR firm instantly shuts down the line of communication is very discouraging.  However, I am learning from John, the owner, how to find that line between being myself and representing the client.  After all, if targeted correctly, you are providing useful material.  At least, I hope this is the case!

My future is just beginning, I can feel it and I don’t think I would be getting half the real world experience with any other agency! The people at the iPR Group are professional, personable and, most importantly, teaching me how to play this game and win!

I wanted to take a moment to vent (for anyone who cares to read this). So I once thought of myself as a huge supporter of online dating but now I am starting to rethink things. I have met many people and creatures from various online communities, but recently, I met a man who ventured dangerously close to my idea of perfect. Meet “Creig Lurphy“, a confident man that boasted, “he would never hurt me.” Tisk tisk, this is my own fault for believing this too soon into it. I think I am just so sick of dating that I am making myself vulnerable.

Now before you all think this is a spite-filled rant, relax. The rant is directed to the dating game in general. Dating sucks, lets face it. In hind sight, my “Creig” experience taught me that I can’t give up hope. I was pissed off at how things ended, but let me tell you how it began. ONLINE. Maybe I should not have merged my online presence with my offline feelings. The irony of this situation is that two weeks ago I asked him to candidly talk about his experiences with online dating and me. The irony is that he assured me, my class and my mom that he liked me and that he would never had met me if it wasn’t for online dating. Live and learn I say.

I am still coming to terms with losing someone I felt very comfortable with. “Le sigh“

Anyway, I have bigger fish to fry, try and eat up.

Blog post still to come, in the process of writing it.

Today I noticed that my cat, Helvetica, was taking too much time checking all the various conversational sites that he is a part of. I began to wonder if there might be a quicker way for him to go about doing this.

Welcome to the world of: What are you doing right now?!?

Let me introduce you to the increasingly voyeuristic platforms of Pownce, Twitter, Jaiku and Facebook, which are called (and considered) presence networks. These sites outfit us with a way to stay connected. We express (in 140 characters of less) exactly what we are up to at that very moment, live and uncensored, no matter how mundane or excitable it may be.

As a PR practitioner, staying up-to-date with the latest forms of communication is crucial. Arguably, knowing how to “jump into” the digital conversation is the future of PR. What Socialthing! does is allow users access to the site from any computer (there is no applications to download which is convenient) and like a RSS reader, it manages all your lifestreaming accounts. Although Socialthing! may not offer a lot in the way of 2.0 conversation, as an input device, it’s the cat’s meow. I am taking the stance that as more PR professionals use social media to convey messages, they will need a good feed reader to keep track of all the conversations.

In a recent video blog posting by Aaron Brazell, he interviews Brian Solis, of FutureWorks (a decorated PR and New Media agency in Silicon Valley). They discuss various interesting PR topics but most important to this post is that they talk about how new media is creating extra work for the PR practitioner. This just proves my point that with the creation of Socialthing! the PR practitioner can easily and efficiently follow a blogger’s Twitter/Facebook/Pownce feed all in one go. We all know corporate communicators pay good money to those who make their lives easier.

An article in Business Wire called, Socialthing! Opens Private Beta for Its Digital Life Manager, the author goes further to elaborate on the overall benefits of Socialthing!

The service uses proprietary technology to integrate “friend lists” and other content on these sites automatically and with limited subsequent user intervention, effectively creating a single manager for anyone’s digital life.

What does all this mean? Well, Socialthing! “makes interacting with web-based content easier and more productive.”

Another person who agrees with me on how Socialthing! is the cat’s meow is Muhammad Saleem, a blogger who writes about social media and new media trends for entrepreneurs.

Socialthing! is quite simply an aggregator and not a network (at least not yet) and the reason why I love it is because when I interact with an element from socialthing!, the interaction appears on the external site (from which the lifestream was aggregated) and not on socialthing! itself. For example, when I reply to someone’s twitter message, the reply appears on twitter.

This tool helps PR professionals maintain and follow important players and their conversations more closely.

While Socialthing! is still being exclusively beta tested, a few kinks are in the process of working themselves out, but like any software that is being tested, these complaints tend to be user based. In the latest blog posting by creator and CEO, Matt Galligan, he comments on the future of Socialthing!;

We have a very extensive roadmap with a ton of great features that all play into the premise that we’re a “digital life manager”. Right now we’re working on the most mission critical pieces of that. There’s some things that we’re releasing soon that will be pretty significant.

Looks like we will all have to wait and see. However, my cat Helvetica is pretty content with what Socialthing! has to offer now.

My question is, how did my cat get an invitation and not me?!?

This entry is in response to a comment posted by Will O’Neill. 

 Your boob problem is interesting - I was set to roll back my opinion somewhat, but then I went looking for it myself and it seems like the video is vanished, and the context of it was almost certainly in more of a humourous tone than an erotic one? So you should be good.     

To discuss, though, I would say that pornography is maybe one of the last truly stigmatic things out there, actually. I think the world out there has a more liberated attitude about sexuality and the display of it, but only when it’s attributed to strangers - to people we’ve never and will never meet. By and large, I think people are *very* uncomfortable, or at least deeply affected in some way, by bearing witness to even the simple nudity of people who they have strictly professional relationships with, and if it were even more progressed than that…? Aiee.

I’m just saying - I think it will be a long, long, long time before the social contract evolves to that extent. Anyone who allows anyone to videorecord them in any kind of sexual context is in this day and age is, in my opinion, extremely unwise. 

Publicists especially.

Do you agree? Or am I already old?!

I agree with you and think you raise several good points.

Let me clarify for the record, what happened, and know that this is EXACTLY what I am talking about. You google my name, and “pure boobies/Miranda McCurlie’s Boobs” comes up.  To the average person, a natural assumption is that, “Miranda McCurlie showed her boobs online.”

This simply DID NOT TAKE PLACE!

There was no “boob” show. That would imply that I revealed to the world, everything. Once again, this did NOT take place NOR would I ever do that. Pornography is pornography.

Here is a link to an audio mashup of the incident.  Needless to say, I have learned a lot regarding what is at stake and how to restructure your image. 

I think you are “old” if you believe that we can have a closer relationship to those in power YET not be able to, in a conversational manner, chat.  We are not robots, but real people.

I also believe that to be a successful publicist, you should have experience in what you do.  What gives you more experience than jeopardizing your OWN reputation and how you go about “fixing” it. 

I argue that the hardest part about making it into PR is knowing how to manage your own reputation. I “googled“ my name and for all the good, positive and rewarding hits about me, there were just as many negative, stupid and down right trashy hits about me. 

So what is the point of this post? Well, I am battling for control over my own message, the need to be the centre of attention and the passion to work at a PR agency with real clients.  Clients do not like to see their PR people getting more attention then themselves, or so I am told.

So hopefully you are able to read between the lines and see the struggle that I am going through. 

Moral of the story—as I start to build a good name for myself, I am also tearing it apart. 

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday, See Offline Miranda Battle Online Miranda. Who will win?

I know I still have to finish my last train of thought—but a lot has happened to me over the last few days. I didn’t think it was possible to hurt my feelings and make me feel utterly shallow over the internet, but the day is here. And now because of it I am wondering, can people honestly make a judgement call on snippets and fragments of video feed.
Do people really have nothing better to do? Did I invite this?

This is unlike me to write about an idea before I visually show you that idea.

So folks, stay tuned.

Same sensitive time, same sensitive channel.