“About a year ago we lost track of what people meant when they said. The average young person has two email accounts, two social networks, one IM account and spends more than two hours a day online,” said Goldman.

“We exist in a fragmented mess of communication systems that are incompatible,” he said.

threadsy is an integrated web based communication client. It pulls together your existing email, Facebook, Twitter, chat, and the broader social web into a single stream. Think of it as an in-box for everything that identifies individuals across different communication platform and enables you to filter or search by platform or message type.

Thanks to gabba-founder Paul Fabretti I’ve got ten invitations. Leave a comment or give me a shout on Twitter if you want to check it out.

My latest Greenbang Grumpy Environmentalist column has just been posted. It describes efforts to manage the waste on my family’s renovation project and discovers how truly rubbish we are at recycling and reuse in the UK.

Here’s my interview with Vikki in full.

The action by The Times to block News Now and now Meltwater is another example of a publishers setting out the battlelines in the fight to challenge the business model of aggregators and online clipping agency. The move will inevitably hurt Meltwater. Clients rely on it to provide a comprehensive service and a fragmented monitoring service isn’t helpful if you are charged with managing the reputation of a business.

But it’s odd that The Times is taking this direct action against Meltwater and News Now yet News International is not exercising the NLA’s new web clipping license despite being an NLA member. It shows the ongoing turmoil in publishing industry and it attempts to shift from print to online.

The publishing industry is in real pain as it attempts to monetise its content online. Ad revenues have collapsed and circulation figures are down. Publishers are seeking to create new business models around their content online and believe that third parties that generate income from aggregating and monitoring their content should share the income they generate.

Attitudes will change over the next 18 months as newspaper publishers raise paywalls in front of their sites – and news articles are replaced by summaries in Google News searches.

We’re delighted to welcome back the BMA, Custard, Lighthouse, Mantra, Rainier PR alumni to join us after work from 6.30pm at the office in Leicester Square.

It’s a very real application of social technologies. Here’s Phil Sheldrake in this week’s leader in Marcom Professional:

“I’ve had the pleasure in the last two weeks of working with a dozen of the finest Brits in PR, branding, digital / Web, public affairs and news distribution. We’ve joined up to work voluntarily on an apolitical campaign in the run up to the UK general election (invincecable.org.uk if you’re interested).”

“I’m telling you this because, having blogged about the convergence of marketing disciplines over the years (as distinct from “integrated”), this campaign of ours has revealed just how far the best practitioners’ expertise is now “converged”.

“Sure, there’s still the need to pause to explain the occasional aspect or define a particular piece of jargon or inevitable acronym, but generally the group just understands what we’re trying to achieve and how we can all work together to make it happen.

“There is no bewilderment, misconception or diffidence.

“And this is despite the fact that we haven’t actually all met each other. That doesn’t stop us. We’re Skype’ing, IM’ing, emailing, wiki’ing, posterous’ing, tweeting, and quickly assembling the resources, ideas and timetable for a cracking campaign. And all in the open. And all whilst earning a living. Awesome.”

14 April – Social media and the media
Strategic Social Media London, Westminster

21 May – Anti-social media
Social Media in Business, Richmond/London

20 and 24 May – The great print debates
PIRA, Birmingham

Do give us a shout if you’re attending any of these events. It would be great to catch-up for a coffee or a beer.

• Speed’s creative director Chris McCrudden has tasked everyone in the business with unplugging from their networks at least once a month to explore some of London’s galleries and exhibitions.
• Marie Efthymiou wrote my favourite blog post of the week tacking the tricky issue of kissing and physical contact in business situations.
• Steve Earl has written a cracking series of post this week about the motivations (and management challenges) of Generation Y.
• Dan Howe reported on TEDxWarwick 2010 where he heard presentations on living buildings, molecular gastronomy and an inspiring speech Alex Wright, author of Glut: Mastering Information Through the Ages.

“I started blogging in 2007 during my final year at Leeds Met. However, in Oct 2009 I wanted to change tact and produce something more social media orientated, in order to try and land a social media agency role. I’m a firm believer that having a sound grasp and recorded opinion on industry issues is a great way to differentiate yourself when job hunting.”

“I also wanted a fresh start using WordPress and to get away from the student angst posts e.g. will I get a PR job and focus more on wider industry issues. It has proven to be a wonderful place to collect my thoughts as was initially hoped, however one of the unintended consequences is that it has been an absolutely brilliant networking and personal PR tool.”

This is generation that has grown up with the technology and the tools that so many businesses have yet to embrace. They already have many of the skills that agencies and communication teams are striving to build.

But there is more that the current generation of PR graduates could do to kickstart their PR careers. Developing and demonstrating your digital communication skills will improve your employment prospects and may even enable you to demand a higher starting salary than your less digital savvy counterparts.

This was my message to students on the International PR MA at the University of Cardiff. I ended my session yesterday with a three ideas for ways in which students could kickstart their careers.

Build personal online networks
Create a profile on LinkedIn and include details of your course and any work placements. Start to build a network with people on your course and contacts you make through work placements. Likewise Twitter. Build connections with future employers.

Generate content and conversations
Sunderland journalist student Josh Halliday’s SR2 hyperlocal blog is an extreme example of this strategy but no future employer is going to be left in any doubt of his skills. Demonstrate your expertise by contributing comment and content to hyper local blogs, forums and blogs.

Blog
There is ultimately no better way of demonstrating your ability to build networks and generate content than a blog. Ben Cotton’s is a great example. He started a blog in his final year at Leeds Metropolitan University and recently landed an award from the European Public Relations Education and Research Association – and a job in the digital team at Edelman.

But traditional media is in turmoil: ad revenue is at an all time low thanks to the recession and the internet has reduced the cost of publication and distribution to almost zero.

The rise of social networks has led consumers to fundamentally change their media consumption habits. Consumers are becoming contributors.

The impact on the PR profession has been dramatic. Command and control media relations no longer works and increasing brands are building direct relationships with their audiences using compelling content and story telling.

These changes formed the core of a guest lecture I gave on digital communication to the International PR MA course at the University of Cardiff yesterday.

The slidedeck cites five trends in the media and the rise of social media – and five areas where I believe PR professionals need to skill-up as a result.