A Twitter conversation between two much-followed EU-oriented bloggers over the weekend caught my eye. I won’t identify them as you need to follow them on Twitter to see their tweets. It started when one asked whether anyone out there “still thinks that blogging is in any way likely to have an impact … why should [...]

PR firm interns posting fake reviews about iPhone apps for their clients. Ghost blogging and tweeting by just about everyone, including thought-leaders in social media.  Bloggers not disclosing sponsorship. It’s just a matter of time before someone poisons the well for EU social media. Over the past few months I’ve integrated For Immediate Release, a [...]

A commenter kindly emailed me this morning saying that he has tried and failed to comment on my blog recently. Which may explain the sudden drop in comments. Or maybe not. How will I ever know? I’d be interested in hearing whether other Blogactiv bloggers have noticed a drop off in comments recently – use [...]

Over on Nosemonkey’s blog, in yet another debate on the pros and cons of EU membership, Insideur is of the opinion that: IMHO there is a real gap in the market, that Open Europe has sought but failed to fill, for serious, informed, and therefore constructive criticism of the EU As he points out, the [...]

Over on the Belgian IABC’s thriving ‘web2eu’ site, Philip Weiss embedded a TED video of Clay Shirky, author of Here Comes Everybody, discussing the revolutionary impact of social media (more references on the be-IABC site). It’s really so good I thought I’d repost it here and add some observations (it takes some time to load):

Julien Frisch blogged about a very thoughtful post on writing for (y)EU by Steve, a web editor from the EP, who sounds distressingly like me (white, British, 40s and sceptical about the Generation Y definition of ‘friend’ despite having many) and seems to be coming down from a post-holiday Web2.0 overdose. The key paragraph, highlighted [...]

Constructive discussions generally require good discussion documents. One of the Commission’s major contributions to any European online space should therefore be a EUROPA that supports the conversations – setting out What it (and the EU) does, Why and How it does it to the ‘interested public’, in their language. A pilot project explored one way [...]

Following Finnegan’s Take on Mr Barroso’s statement, here is a visual view of his top 100 words:

Trans-European online Communities of Practice should become a key element in the European online community, but examples so far are few. This post looks at DG INFSO, which has been using online community principles since 2002, two years before the phrase “Web 2.0″ was invented.