Yoosk

Yoosk as a Hustings Tool

2010-12-01T11:59:00.001Z

by Keith

Yoosk has recently been used as part of the Hustings for the election of new leaders to both the Labour Party and UKIP. Both Labour and UKIP held their own hustings events around the country of course, but these have their limitations:

Not everybody can attend ‘live’ hustings events.
Not every part of the country can be covered by ‘live’ hustings events.
Not everyone who attends a ‘live’ hustings will be given the opportunity to ask a question.
A filmed ‘live’ hustings event is not user friendly in that only dedicated users will sit through a 90 minute video clip of politicians talking.

Yoosk addresses these issues very simply by allowing anybody, anywhere in the country to put their question. Of course, not all questions will be answered, but the most popular ones will be answered and the answers will be there for everybody to view. And because at Yoosk we cut up our interviews into individual video clips for each question, the clips are easliy navigated and users can choose to watch only the clips that interest them and know that they will not have to invest a huge amount of their time in order to do so.

Here are example clips from each of the Hustings we covered:

This type of engagement with voters must surely be the way forward for future election campaigns. Imagine, at the next general election, an online location where constituents could post questions to prospective parliamentary candidates and the candidates could log on to add their answers in either text or video format... Such a site would be an invaluable central tool for voters to visit to find out just where their candidates stood on local and national issues. And the benefits for candidates in being seen to actively engage voters and to be able to get their message across to them would surely outweigh any complaints such as ...’I don’t have time for this...’

In addition to Yoosk, there are other sites which share the same general concept such as Votewise and Hustings but none of us are quite there yet in either format or ability to cover a complete national election campaign.

Tanya Franks - Rainie from Eastenders - answers your questions...

2010-09-01T12:44:00.011+01:00

At Yoosk we have become known for our interviews with politicians, but actually, we are happy to conduct our crowd-sourced interviews with anyone in the public eye and in the past we have interviewed sports personalities and TV celebrities too and today we are happy to publish our interview with the actress and writer Tanya Franks ('Rainie'in the clip above).

Thankyou for your questions and a big Thanks too to Tanya for her interesting answers:

From cat-kiti: Did you do any kind of research to play Rainie in Eastenders?
Yes, lots. The producers put me in touch with DrugScope who were a great help, and of course there was a lot of video footage, reading material, talking to people, etc.

From Mike Rouse: Do you ever feel typecast?
I don't feel typecast, but I guess you are asking that question because you think I am. Check out series 2 and 3 of Hotel Trubble on BBC1 from the end of September, that will probably answer it for you.

From JDanil: Presumably, a permanent role on Eastenders would mean you giving up your other interests - your production company, theatre, screenwriting....... - so would you take one if the chance came along? Or has it already?
When I enjoy playing a role I don't worry about what I have to give up for it - usually it is just a little delay, not having to give them up completely. There are often bits of free time around shooting as a regular in a series, so it is certainly feasible to juggle the writing. Who knows what will happen with EastEnders in the future, I weigh up each proposition as it comes along.

From Neil2025: Do you have a favourite medium - theatre - film - tv - comedy - drama.. ?
I am very fortunate to get a lot of diversity within the roles I play at the moment. I don't worry about what medium it is in. They all demand different disciplines and I am more tempted by the quality of the scripts and the challenges of the characters than which medium they are in.

From Neil2025: What TV shows do you enjoy watching?
I am enjoying 'Pete V Life' at the moment and 'Mongrels'. Also I love some of the American shows like Breaking Bad, and Treme.

From NE11: Can you tell us a joke please Tanya?
A guy walks in to a pub with a steak and kidney pie on his head. The barman says, "Here mate, you've got a steak and kidney pie on your head". The guy says, "Yeah I know, I always wear it on a Thursday". The barman says, "But it's Friday". And the guy says, "Is it? Oh no, I must look such a c***!"

From HoaiHood: Which would you prefer to do, celebrity master chef or I'm a celebrity get me out of here?
Neither thanks.

From lydiadid: Eastenders - when ur not in it, do you watch it?
I'm not a soap-watcher by nature, I don't have too much time to watch a lot of TV.

From Charley: Have you had a holiday this year? If so, where did you go and did you have a good time? What is your favourite holiday destination?
I am about to take a trip through parts of Spain that I have never been to before and am looking forward to some quiet time. My last trip was to Tokyo, amazing, Japan is a place I would like to explore more of. I also love Italy, Israel, Egypt, Crete, I just love travelling full-stop.

Crowd-sourcing has its place, even if it does resemble tabloid-consultation sometimes

2010-08-07T07:15:00.000+01:00

By Tim

I've just been moved to comment on RSA Chief Exec Matthew Taylor’s most recent post about the Government’s Spending Challenge and Your Freedom crowd-sourcing campaigns.

Although the Yoosk team have conducted various crowd-sourcing projects for government, we weren’t involved in these most recent campaigns. But I have watched with sympathy as some of the talented civil servants and the excellent company involved- DELIB- have come in for undeserved criticism.

It is true that as an initial attempt by this new government, it might have backfired slightly but it is also entirely predictable that both political opponents and internet sceptics have written it off as an abject failure.

There are two main criticisms. Firstly, that the various crowd-sourcing web projects generated a lot of semi-literate comments and unpalatable ideas. Secondly, that there have not yet been any concrete policy changes as a result.

Crowd-sourcing on a mass scale, by its very nature, is a populist activity. In fact this type of exercise might best be described as tabloid-consultation. Much of the content generated came from people who express themselves in tabloid-like language, which is unsurprising since that is what they digest when they read newspapers and watch popular TV.

Personally, I don’t read tabloids because I don’t much care for the tone and simplicity with which they express ideas- ideas that I often find repugnant. But I recognise that tabloids are part of a free press and that they keep millions informed and generate some kind of feeling of involvement in society for their readers.

So the same applies to large-scale crowd-sourcing of ideas and views on government policy: it has its place in direct government-to-people communications, as much as briefing the tabloid press has its place in government-to-media communications. Those of us who don’t like the tone and the content will have to live with it.

True, there was an element of hacking, spamming, abusiveness and general nastiness on the sites that I think took the organisers by surprise. But it was the first time it has been done on this scale and I know they have learnt lessons.

So to conclude on the first point: crowd-sourcing will always generate a lot of tabloid-like opinions of varying usefulness and acceptability (to us) but it has its place alongside more meticulously designed consultation methods. Indeed, this government is using other methods including another populist approach, PM Direct. They should probably be explaining this better and presenting the mix as a more coherent long term programme.

The second objection- that government response to ideas has been formulaic and impersonal, that nothing has come of it and people will therefore not participate again- is stronger. It would have been better to do this over a much longer period, with separate crowd-sourcing projects between individual departments and targeted online communities relevant to their work (e.g: Ministry of Defence asking the Army Rumour Service, as we have supported in the past). Crowd-sourcing can be done with different sized crowds and crowds with common experience: it doesn’t mean inviting everybody all at once.

So will this reduce the prospect that people will participate again? I don’t think so. I think this will be seen by most as the first large scale government-to-people communications exercise and people will quickly forget about the problems. If the next one looks better, they’ll give it another go.

It is easy to criticise with hindsight: the new government tried to deliver on their commitment to widely consulting the public, rushed it and got it partly wrong the first time. It was too broad brush and they weren’t prepared to process and act on the ideas quickly enough. But at least they tried and they tried using a small UK innovator, not a huge consultancy like Capita or a trendy, hyper-financed West Coast website. Next time they’ll do better, I’m sure.

Don’t write-off popular digital consultation- it has its place!

Yoosk Hustings....how the questions put to the candidates will be chosen.

2010-08-03T13:59:00.000+01:00

As the Yoosk Hustings charge into their second week, the quantity and quality of questions is really heartening as our recent article for LabourList shows.

But as the race for votes to be assured of a place in the top five for each candidate, and therefore a place in the interview, hots up; now is a vital time to serve a couple of reminders about the manner in which the final questions will be chosen.

We at Yoosk pride ourselves on being entirely impartial and democratic about our crowdsourcing process. There are countless crowd-sourced interviews out there, but the majority of questions still live and die by the sword of the interviewer who cherry-picks the questions provided by the masses.

We hold firm to our principles of letting you not only pose the questions, but vote for which ones should make the final cut, and we would always let you have the last say.

So the issue here is not one of editorial selection, but one of repetition.

Some questions already asked of the Labour candidates are duplicates of previous ones. A greater number tackle the exact same issue from a slightly different angle.

Should it occur that two questions in the final top five be on an identical issue, we will choose one or combine the two and then add the sixth most popular question to the list.

By the same logic, should a question on one particular issue be asked of the whole panel, we will then look over any identical questions asked of any individual candidate as they will already be covering that topic in their five 'all panel' answers.

By no means let this dissuade you from posing your question if you feel it is original enough to hold its own and earn enough votes, but first see if someone else has already asked it, and perhaps choose instead to lend them your vote.

The second point is a much simpler, and much more inclusive, addition. We know that even if it doesn't receive enough votes to be asked on camera, each and every question is the most important question to at least one person.

So we will do our best to get every question answered and after each interview will leave behind as many of the excess questions as possible in the hope that each campaign team may at least email us a text answer explaining their candidate's position.

Any answers we do receive will, of course, be posted on the Yoosk website.

How to maximise the chances of getting your question answered.

2010-07-30T17:01:00.000+01:00

by Keith

Last week, Yoosk had the pleasure of interviewing Liberal Democrat MP Simon Hughes. You can see Simon’s answers to your top-voted questions here.

When we started Yoosk we hoped our site would be used by campaigners in order to get the issues they are campaigning for, in front of the relevant people in power. When Neue Politik blogger Jae Kay saw that we were inviting questions for Simon Hughes he posted this question:

‘Will the Lib Dem parliamentary group, of which you are the most senior non-ministerial member, fight for full marriage equality in the recently announced "consultation" rather than accept current inadequate plans for religious civil partnerships?’

which is clearly an issue on which Jae Kay feels strongly and his question was answered by Simon in our interview. In order to try and ensure that his question was answered, Jae requested his followers on Twitter to visit Yoosk and vote for his question....a little unfair maybe? No, not at all we think, this is exactly how we would like to see Yoosk being used – questions posted on Yoosk and shared on social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook to gain support.

Following his Simon Hughes question, Jae has posted another one to David Miliband and we wish him luck with getting that one answered too.

The Yoosk Labour Hustings: reaching out to Labour's core vote

2010-07-23T16:49:00.001+01:00

By Tim

It's fair to say that many of Labour's core voters do not want to participate in the political process online or even know that they can. And when we started looking at the Labour Leadership election, we also felt that many of the hustings were being attended only by a politically active elite.

We want Yoosk's Hustings to draw in those 'digitally excluded' core voters by giving them a chance to put their questions in the most convenient way possible-online, by SMS or even handwritten questions. That's why we have printed these postcards and will be distributing them to Working Men's clubs in targeted areas of the country.

It will be interesting to see the results. Where we have used print to supplement online before, the results have shown that we get very different questions- raw, challenging but ultimately highly relevant to the very real problems faced by ordinary people.

The Yoosk Labour Hustings

2010-07-22T07:17:00.000+01:00

Yoosk's Hustings for the Labour Leadership start today. Enter your question below or go to www.yoosk.com/labour

Help us Ask Simon Hughes

2010-07-05T15:20:00.003+01:00

Next on Yoosk, answering your questions, is Simon Hughes, the LibDems new Deputy Leader.

Why not help us gather questions and give our new i-frame embed a go? To recreate the feature embedded below, use the code appearing in the box at the bottom of our 'mashing Yoosk page', replacing the number '14' with number '267' : http://yoosk.com/about-mashing.aspx

If you have any difficulties, please let us know below. This and our other widgets are still a work in progress and we need your feedback to get it right.

What is the point of open data without open communication to follow it up?

2010-06-09T07:29:00.002+01:00

By Tim

It has been very encouraging to see the new government continue the great leap forward that is open data. However, we hope that communications specialists are very closely involved in the debate about what comes after the opening up of data.

For example, I imagine the public will have many questions to raise following the discoveries and analysis that will occur once government data on expenditure becomes common currency. And as enthusiasts start to publicly present data which screams out for a response (the identification accident black spots or botched procurement, for example), surely the logical next step will be to contact someone in government to ask for action or explanation? Wouldn’t it be contradictory to have direct access to open data without direct open dialogue with ministers, council cabinets and even officials about that data?

It makes sense that this communication also occurs openly and transparently and as close to the content as possible-ideally on the same pages. For example, a Yoosk style widget enabling the open posting and ranking of questions to named ministers and officials- with their answers posted alongside-is publicly available. This could be readily deployed alongside content on open data inspired websites. Questions arising from open data content could then be put to a named individual for all to see and support, rather than emailed to an anonymous official in private correspondence.

Even though the tools are readily available to set up and manage direct open conversations systematically, I don’t yet see any movement in government driving this forward in parallel with open data. It needs senior communications staff to buy into the open data ethos and to deal with all the implications for government communications strategy that comes with it. There's no point in having the technology for dialogue if the communications teams don't make ministers available systematically and regularly to answer the public's questions on open data and other matters.

Labour's legacy and the role of the internet in the election? Your questions please..

2010-06-04T10:28:00.002+01:00

by Keith

Things have been a bit quiet on the Yoosk front recently as we have been focussed on getting a new site design and some new features built (more news of this next week).

But we are back this week with two interesting topics to post questions around and two knowledgable panels to answer them. First up is 'Labour Legacy: 13 Years of New Labour' and answering your questions will be Independent on Sunday political correspondent and Tony Blair biographer John Rentoul, Labour MP Stephen Twigg, and Tory MP John Redwood.

Our other topic is 'Election2: How did the internet shape the general election' and some more big names answering on this one - Labour List's Alex Smith, Tory blogger Iain Dale, James Evans, Founder of Hustings.com and Lib Dem Voice Editor Mark Pack

You have until the weekend of the 12th June to get your questions in. But even if you don't have a question, drop by the site to browse what other people are asking and to add your support for the best questions. As usual it will be the top-rated questions which are answered and we'll be getting the answers on the site the following week.

Yoosk inVietnam

2010-04-10T05:33:00.003+01:00

by Keith

WE have long thought that Yoosk would work in most countries in the world, but who would have guessed that our first overseas website would be built for the National Assembly of Vietnam? Well, actually, maybe not such a big suprise, given our connections with Vietnam (both Tim and myself were working there when Yoosk was founded) but an achievement of which we are very proud nevertheless.

The site has been sponsored by the British Embassy in Hanoi - and a big Thankyou to them for their continued belief in, and support for Yoosk - and has been 'live' now for just over 2 weeks. And the response from the Vietnamese public? Much better than we had dared to hope, with nearly three hundred questions already and eighty answers.

The website will run as a 'pilot' project for four weeks but we hope that the pilot will be converted into a permanent project and maybe even expanded and become a model for how Yoosk can be adapted to suit the needs of any possible partner worldwide.

Digitally engaging the excluded part 2

2010-03-10T09:08:00.000Z

We have now completed all the interviews as part of series supporting C4's Tower Block of Commons and you can see all the answers here

Huge thanks to Natina James, one of the tenants featured on the programme who went to Westminster to put the public's questions to the three MPs. Here's an example of her and Tim Loughton talking about the difficulties of getting some locals to engage.

Here's an account of the project on our funder's website, which sadly did not attract any press attention, suggesting that digital engagement and the innovative projects associated with it are of no interest whatsoever to mainstream media.

Digitally engaging the excluded

2010-02-22T08:03:00.002Z

By Tim

Yoosk's business is creating direct, open conversations with leaders. But what do you do if you want people to engage with leaders when they are not online, let alone on Twitter, Facebook or even Yoosk?

Digital inclusion issues have always been very important to us and were especially pressing last week because we wanted tenants of council estates to post questions to MPs participating in our Tower Block of Commons Q and A which we are running in support of the Channel 4 series.

The answer is to hit the streets and ask them face to face. Keith did just that on Friday, armed with camera, he set about trying to persuade tenants in Newtown Birmingham to put questions to Tim Loughton, the Conservative MP who stayed there while the programme was being filmed. Tim will answer these today, in a face to face reunion with Natina James, the very impressive young woman who hosted Tim in her council flat and who has agreed to act as the ‘interviewer’ on behalf of Yoosk users.

The results of Keith’s foray were moving, encouraging but also disturbing. But we are now are hooked-convinced it is essential for Yoosk to establish the partnerships and infrastructure to do this regularly.

Sadly, many people were reluctant to be filmed, although many did express a positive view of the programme and Tim Laughton's involvement. It seems to come down to a reluctance to be seen to be interested in politics by one’s peers, as well as an awareness that the views and questions they might have would not be acceptable if expressed publicly.

For example, Keith found that many questions centred around a recently closed local pub being turned into community centre for a particular nationality and the fact that it was ‘being used as a mosque’. Yet no one would ask this question to camera.

Our mission has always been to reach out to diverse audiences, many of whom are not regular social media users: we recently gathered questions from soldiers and Afghani’s in a feature we ran for the Foreign Office and we have gathered questions from readers of newspapers in partnership with regional titles such as the Birmingham Mail and Halifax Courier. But this is the first time we have deliberately targeted people who would never find us through a website or printed paper. We now have concrete plans for drawing people who are not online into such conversations and welcome enquiries from partners who’d like to work with us on this.

We are also now convinced that our methodology of getting ordinary members of the public, bloggers and campaigners or celebrities to put the questions on behalf of the public is an essential part of our overall approach -just as much as the social media technology. Again, contact us if you are interested in acting as a kind of 'People's Paxman'.

And here are some of the questions which will be answered by Tim Laughton MP and Mark Oaten MP today, put to them by 23 year old single mum, volunteer worker and dance teacher, Natina James. See all the questions here.

You ask David Miliband: the questions so far

2010-01-17T14:55:00.002Z

By Tim

Tomorrow is the deadline for the first set of questions on Afghanistan to be put to UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband.

These are being gathered on the Foreign Office website using a Yoosk widget [see below for more details]. Nearly 2o questions have been posted and apart from two, most of them are firmly on topic and very well worded.

The questions we have so far appear to have been put by users from a range of ethnic groups and nationalities.

Thematically, I’ve sorted them provisionally into five broad groups, although of course it would be easy to categorise them differently.

A complex regional challenge

The first group reflects people's concerns that Afghanistan is part of a wider regional challenge involving a large number countries. There are questions about the link between Afghanistan and Yemen and the role of the Saudi Arabian government. What is the plan for combating the Taliban in Pakistan- will we get sucked in there? And is the UK satisfied with the cooperation of the governments of Afghanistan and Pakistan?

How Afghanistan is governed

The next set of questions concentrates more on the complexity of the political situation inside Afghanistan itself. One question from Rassa asks if Western governments are committed to ‘Afghanisation, Tribalisation or Talibanisation’. User Itsmattsmith asks what measures are being taken to move towards state building and away from ‘tribally orientated politics’. These sound to me like fundamental questions for people inside Afghanistan and perhaps not as simple to answer as they sound.

Several questions demonstrate real discontent with the current government and serious worries about the institutions of law and order, questioning President Hamid Karzai’s control over Parliament and the dominance of Pashtuns in the Cabinet (many of whom –as one questioner points out- have had their nomination by President Karzai rejected by MPs). Other questions focus on corruption in government, as well as the judiciary, army and police.

For me, one of the most interesting questions asks how the Taliban would be involved in any future government- under what circumstances would they not be allowed to stand or enter Parliament if they chose to take part in the democratic process.

Role of religion and culture

This group includes questions on the status and treatment of women. one user asks to what extent Western leaders analyse and address Islamic philosophy, law and practice when planning how to deal with extremism.

Economic considerations

A few questions ask about the international community’s plans for combating poverty, with one user focusing on how the situation of Afghanistan is communicated in the UK, with the questioner feeling that coverage of the military situation overshadows issues connected with poverty and development.

A popular question is one that centres around the policy on opium and why with an international shortage of medial opium, the West doesn’t buy it from Afghan farmers.

Chances of success

The final group of questions are related to the likelihood of eventual success or perhaps the impossibility of success. They ask about the real effectiveness of fighting ideology and non-western values with military action, the historical lessons of the Russian occupation and wider lessons of post war western military intervention, including the Korean War. Yet other questions reflect users concern that the UK's intervention does not have popular support.

There is another day to go until Mr Miliband answers the first set of questions so keep them coming.

Ask David Miliband about Afghanistan.

2010-01-16T11:19:00.004Z

by Keith

We are pleased at Yoosk that the Foreign Office are once again using the Yoosk platform to gather questions for David Miliband.

In the run up to the London Conference on Afghanistan on the 28th of January, the foreign Office are inviting questions on the subject of UK foreign policy in Afghanistan. To post a question or to browse trhe questions other people have been asking, you can visit their page here.

We are excited about this for two reasons. Firstly of course, because we believe that everybody should have the right to ask our politicians questions, and especially about matters as important as foreign policy in countries where our troops are fighting and secondly because of nthe technical aspects involved.

In the past, the Foreign Office have used our dedicated FCO page but on this occasion, they needed the Yoosk page to display inside their own website. This threw up a number of issues around page size and user journey but we are happy to say that our web team have managed to resolve those issues and got the page up and running on time for the FCO deadline of earlier this week.

We now have two sites running with yoosk embedded within them - the Birmingham Post embedded yoosk earlier last year - and we can see that this is the model that people are going to be turning to more and more. For this reason we are developing an API which will be available soon and will allow this kind of integration to be performed by anyone. We will be posting more about the API here once we are nearer completion but in the meantime, if you have any questions or comments about it, please feel free to post them here.

Voting begins in our 'Britain's Best MP' Campaign

2009-12-22T11:47:00.001Z

by Keith

At the beginning of December, we started our 'Britain's Best MP' Campaign. The thinking behind it was to highlight that, despite all the negative press surrounding politics, there are MPs out there who genuinely do a good job for the UK.

We asked users of our website to send in their nominations for Best MP and to send us the questions they would like to put to the nominees. All eight nominated MPs agreed to answer and you can compare what they said on our home page now and cast your vote in our Poll, which will be ‘live’ until the 31st December.

These are the MPs you nominated.

Douglas Carswell (Con Harwich), Lynne Featherstone (Lib Dem Hornsey and Wood Green), Tom Harris (Lab Glasgow South), David Howarth (Lib Dem Cambridge) Chris Mullin (Lab Sunderland South) Bob Russell (Lib Dem Colchester), Gisela Stuart (Lab Birmingham Edgbaston), and Jo Swinson (Lib Dem East Dunbartonshire).

And below is one of the questions which threw up some interesting answers:

'How do you think Uk democracy could be improved?'

Tom Harris has a pessimistic view that just changing the electoral system won’t engage more people in democracy because, as he says, the ‘democratic process isn’t of interest to most people.’ Is this the case though, or is it just that nobody has yet found a way to present the democratic process in an appealing way?

This is what we are trying to do – make politics a bit more fun and engage more people. We let our users choose the questions which will be asked, have introduced voting, we try and keep answers short and publish them in an easy to view format and then we allow feedback on the answers.

We are not the only ones either, with ideas to liven up the political arena, with Simon Cowell possibly getting involved next year. Until he does though, and telephone voting becomes the norm in political debates, please nip over to our website and take part in our old-fashioned online poll and cast your vote for ‘Best MP.’

MPs R Us: visiting Parliament reveals a very human mix of personalities and behaviours

2009-11-26T23:07:00.002Z

We’ve seen the headlines, read the comment threads, heard the conversations in the pubs and over the dinner table: MPs are not like us, they are not good people.

A quick Google search for the phrase ‘MPs are Scum’ gives 137,000 results.

A similar search using the word ‘Vermin’ returns 40,900, the C-word gets 25,000 and ‘MPs are Bastards’ tops them all with 183,000. Admittedly, sometimes it is the odd MP calling other people scum but most of the time the abuse is aimed firmly their way.

Here’s one that stands out: http://raedwald.blogspot.com/2009/05/lets-trash-these-troughing-scum.html

“These MPs are scum. They are thieves. Their avarice, their grasping mendacious filthy peculation of public funds, their troughing porcine deception, their self-serving self-righteous....”

There’s more but you get the picture.

Intrigued, as we all are by evil and nastiness, this week I ventured into the Commons to meet five of these ‘troughing scum’ and here’s what I found:

-An MP who was obviously so tired he was struggling to keep his eyes open but who still managed to chair a meeting and to ask some intelligent questions .

-A genuinely warm and open young MP who was quieter than usual and who seemed pre-occupied at the meeting. She later tweeted that she was ‘ a bit miffed at being dropped from the BBC Question Time panel at 48hrs notice-because of the Iraq enquiry’. I’d be disappointed too.

-An MP who talked about locking himself in his house and drawing the curtains in the face of a barrage of press attention, and of the effects of all this on his family. This MP is very respected by a great many entrepreneurs and innovators for his willingness to listen to their problems.

-A down to earth and deeply committed woman who breaks all the stereotypes of how a typical MP looks, talks and behaves. If it wasn’t for all women shortlists, she almost certainly wouldn’t even be an MP.

-An ‘old school’ MP who is incredibly knowledgeable about China and Vietnam and who clearly wants to see the UK act as a force for good in those countries. What struck me was that he didn’t have a computer anywhere in his office , so no fancy gadgetry for him on expenses.

All these people were very different in personality, behaviour and politics but they all seemed to share a commitment to serving the public and their country. They have one other thing in common: they are not scum.

Are most of MPs flawed? Certainly. But then, aren’t we all? Help us find Britain’s best MP by interviewing them with your questions- find out how by clicking here.

The Yoosk Leadership Contest: help us find the country's best MPs

2009-11-20T22:47:00.003Z

By Tim

Britain’s Best MP

‘UK Politics is broken’ is the all too common refrain we hear from the media. ‘Something must be done.’ Very often though, that ‘something’ is to sit back and highlight the negative rather than focus on the positive and the best way to ‘fix’ things.

Have some MPs abused the expenses system? Yes. Are all MPs bad? No. Many are hard working people, trying to do their best for their constituents.

We at Yoosk want everyone interested in politics to help us find the MP's who are the best examples of what a good MP is and does.. Then, in conjunction with The Independent newspaper we are going to interview them and find out what makes them tick. What are the experiences that shaped them, what values drive them, how do they behave and what makes them different?

Here's what we want you to do and how it will work:

1. Send us your nomination and a brief reason why you have nominated this person by clicking here or you can twit your nomination to #bestMP or add your nomination in a comment at the end of this post. Or you can just visit the site to see who has been nominated and add your vote.

2. Nominations close on the 27th November.

3. You will then have an opportunity to question the top 10 nominated MP's. Yoosk and the Independent will get the answers and publish them here and on Yoosk. You will have the opportunity to rate answers and the MP's performance via the yoosk website..

4. The winning MP will be the person who finishes at the top of the Yoosk Performance League Table which you can see on the top right of the Yoosk Home page on the closing day 17th December.

We are not looking for what makes a good party leader or how politicians rise to the top of factions or cliques. We think those are different qualities. We are looking for your ideas on the MP's who really stand out as strong, independent and principled voices, who can act with a degree of selflessness and who in doing so, show us a better way.

Yoosk offers a very open forum where both question and answer have a dynamic and an immediacy. ....... and I believe it is important (particularly in these times when we politicians are somewhat unloved) to be out there to show everyone that we do care and care passionately - which is the reason that I am sure we all got into politics in the first place!'

Lynne Feathjerstone MP

Why are we doing this?

When it comes to politics and the connections we the public have with the MP's and Councillors who represent us, Yoosk is very much about individuals rather than parties. We like Lynne Featherstone (LibDem), Deirdre Alden (Conservative prospective parliamnetary candidate) and David miliband (Labour) because of what we have personally witnessed: an obvious commitment to listening and engaging with the people they represent.

We want to do our part in making sure we get the best individuals in the next Parliament, irrespective of which party forms a government.

Reasons to be Cheerful..

2009-10-11T15:29:00.003+01:00

By Keith

Trying to get Public Figures to answer questions from our users can often be a difficult task - we still haven't succeeded in getting any answers from Gordon Brown for example.

Whenever we get some answers, we see it as an achievement, but occasionally there is extra cause for satisfaction such as when the answers are particularly thoughtful or insightful as were these answers from Mathew Taylor, or when we manage to obtain answers for people who would not normally have a chance to get their voices heard. See this question (the asker of the question is no relation btw) posted to James Purnell and these questions posted from Jordanian citizens and answered by David Miliband.

In the interview which Jonathan Walker conducted with Siôn Simon last week (blogged here earlier) one of the questions came from Alison Smith aka Pesky People who is an ardent campaigner for the rights of disabled and deaf people to have full access to the Web, and after having her question answered, Alison told us this:

'Asking this question means that we are on Siôn's radar and he has been in touch to meet with us. This will enable us to influence, campaign, demand and highlight the digital injustice and discrimination we face. Digital Britain doesn't include Disabled or Deaf people and the discussion of digital inclusion is very tokenistic.'

Having met Alison, I know that she is a determined person and am sure that her persistence is the main reason that she has secured this meeting with Siôn but it's good to know that maybe Yoosk has helped in a small way.

If you would like to know more about Alison's campaign, you can visit her blog here. Nobody could argue against the justice of her cause.

New Features and a New Look on Yoosk .

2009-10-08T20:41:00.005+01:00

by Tim

We've just made some quite significant updates to the Yoosk platform and we would like your feedback.

First a quick explanation of how the changes fit into the scheme of things. This is really only an interim upgrade which we wanted to do before we get started on a thorough overhaul of Yoosk, which we plan to complete by early 2010. This rebuild will happen in stages and will include the implementation of the development work funded by 4IP, which was announced here.

What you see at the moment is not related to this forthcoming rebuild but is rather an interim fix to address some quite pressing priorities we have identified over the last 6 months.

1. League Table and widget.

This aggregates all the positive scores that public figures receive when they answer. It has been widgetised and can be easily embedded on blogs. Each Yoosk channel (Parliament, Birmingham, FCO etc) has its own league table, so as we grow the number of local Yoosks and Yoosk channels for different organisations, the public figures who appear there will be able to keep track of how users rate their interview performance.

We know that this is a challenging proposition to sell to some public figures and we welcome feedback on how best to position this.

2. Key Page redesign

You'll see we have tried to make a clearer user journey- we have some way to go yet we know, but we hope you'll agree that it is an improvement. Above all, we've attempted to make it more obvious what Yoosk is for and how users can get involved.

Examples of this are:

-embed code for the two widgets up there on the front page

-Clearer links to Yoosk channels

-A simpler question box making it obvious that users must ask a named individual

3. Learn More site guide.

In order to give greater clarity on exactly how Yoosk can be used by different individuals and organisations, we have created a Learn More section.

We look forward to getting your feedback and hope you enjoy the new site.

You the Interviewer.

2009-10-02T14:51:00.010+01:00

By Keith

Last week marked something of a 'first' for Yoosk. Birmingham Post journalist Jonathan Walker arranged an interview with the Minister for Creative Industries, Siôn Simon and used the Yoosk platform to gather the questions from the general public which he would ask in the interview.

It worked like this. First Jonathan was registered as a 'reporter' on Yoosk which allowed him limited access to the Yoosk CMS, he then wrote an article in the Birmingham Post explaining that he was going to interview Siôn Simon and inviting questions from his readers and directing them to post the questions on Siôn's page on Yoosk.

Jonathan caught up with Siôn at the Labour Party Conference in Brighton and, camera in hand, asked him the questions gathered from Yoosk.He uploaded the answers to his personal Youtube channel and published them in the Post and also on Yoosk.

This is not the first occasion when journalists have used the Yoosk platform, (City University students have conducted several 'Yoosk' interviews) but it was the first occasion when the complete process from gathering the questions to posting the answers on the Yoosk site had been managed by an independent journalist.

The exercise went without a hitch which was good from a technical viewpoint, and seven questions were posted for, and answered by Siôn. Many Thanks are due to Jonathan, Siôn and our 'question posters' for their cooperation and support.

If you would like to conduct your own Yoosk interview (you don't need to be a recognised journalist), contact us via our 'Contact' page, and we will be happy to work with you on your idea.

Is a proposal for a government of national unity for ten years such a bizarre idea?

2009-09-25T06:27:00.001+01:00

By Tim

The UK has some pretty serious problems. But surely the idea of a government of national unity-conjuring up images of wartime as it does- is going a bit too far? Isn’t it all a bit overly dramatic and apocalyptic sounding? And anyway, what’s wrong with PR? I’m going to go out on a limb and say I don’t think it is an over- reaction and that in the short term it is actually preferable and more do-able than PR. It has been mentioned already by the journalist and blogger Xan Philips and even Guardian columnist Michael White, although I'm going to employ slightly different arguments for it.

Here’s why I think the circumstances are so special that we can’t afford ten years or two terms of politics as usual. If all went well, we’d be able to return to that later, in 2020, if we really wanted to.

1. Global capitalism -while not inherently bad- has become too complex, too quickly, for any one political party to be believed when they say they know how to manage the profound implications it has for our economy and for our way of life. It will take ten years to properly understand it and get to grips with the challenges it presents (including the current crisis), by which time our economy may be in irrevocable decline.

2. In parallel, rapid changes in consumerism, media , technology and the cultural, sexual and ethnic mix of our cities have transformed our lives so utterly, that there is now an unprecedented gap between the life experiences of one generation and the next.

Approaches to managing these social revolutions fall far beyond the usual Labour-Conservative divide. In fact it is responses to these problems that are most emotive and create the most bad blood within the parties themselves. The gap between Conservatives who are both economically and socially liberal on the one hand, and economically liberal but socially conservative on the other, is probably wider and more rife with personal animosity than the gap between socially liberal Labour and Tory supporters.

3. We have a short space of time in which to prevent catastrophic climate change which would severely degrade the lifestyles of our grandchildren when they grow up and possibly lead to mass death being inflicted on their grandchildren a few decades later. We either take steps now or it’ll all be over within two terms of office.

And those steps are political dynamite.

The carbon emission cuts required mean that we will need to succeed in the biggest transformation in our economy and lifestyles since the industrial revolution, all in a matter of ten years- two terms. Government will have to persuade or compel voters to spend thousands a year on things they don’t want (such as insulation) and which may seem to offer them no gratification in their lifetime, as well as to change the way they shop and holiday. Where is this kind of measure written about in the books that have always informed Labour and Conservative ideology? And how exactly are parties going to resist the temptation to make political capital out of this, thereby endangering the entire process?

4. The free movement of populations the world over, combined with sometimes valid post colonial resentment and unprecedented free access to technology, mean that we have a tiny number of religious fanatics living here legally who are intent on, and potentially capable of, causing catastrophic damage to our cities. A larger number are able to move freely to plot and support these attacks either in failed states or-in countries such as Pakistan- in provinces where functioning states do not have control. There is no precedent in the UK for this kind of threat to be dealt with because it simply wasn’t a threat until very recently. No one really knows what to do about it.

5. Finally, a vast trading bloc taking in most of our export markets has developed on our door step, and the countries within it- including us-are being driven to ever closer political union. It wasn’t the brainchild of either of our main parties and in truth, we still don’t know what to do about it and we will never be able to control it. Only, a small minority on either side want either to pull out of the EU or to see it expand its powers further.

These five problems are an order of magnitude greater than those faced in normal times in traditional policy areas such as health, education, crime and economic policy- where elections are generally fought on the basis of opposing ideologies.

To tackle them, we need a government that is able to operate with cross-part support and thereby avoid the destructive propensity for opposition parties to score cheap points by questioning a government’s competence. Only a government of national unity with collective responsibility for these key areas can do this.

I’ve always been a supporter of PR but this seems to be a more viable short term proposal at this point in time. Why?

It’s the party conference season and I have been spending too long reading the political commentariat-both professionals and amateurs. What stands out more than ever is the blanket low esteem in which we hold all our politicians and the lack of belief that any one party have the answers. This seems to be genuinely pervasive, more than I can ever remember in the past.

The idea that all our politicians are not up to the job of governing, as many seem to suggest, is plainly nonsense. There are probably well over a hundred good MPs and many more hundreds of potentially good MPs who’ll be elected in the next election. However, the idea that those people are disproportionately banded together in one of three organisations –the main parties- who will receive a mandate for their ideas from the electorate accordingly, does not seem credible. Yet that is the implication of our system of government. It’s this belief that drives my preference for PR, as well as the obvious argument that it is more just.

But will PR be any better in the short term in addressing these five problems? I don’t think so- it will take too long to bed down. The main parties might fragment, new parties will form. Who is to say that a coalition might not get held to ransom by a smaller party who deny climate change or unduly influence policy on any one of the other crucial challenges above? PR does not automatically equate with consensus and that is what we need more of now.

Here’s an alternative. Commit to forming a government of national unity for the next ten years-with a Cabinet formed by the winner of the first past the post system but with cross-party cabinet level teams to deal with the five themes of Globalisation, Social Change, Climate Change, Defence and the EU.

Once we understand these problems better and have taken the potentially unpopular actions which might be necessary to address them, then let’s go for PR.

Social media and cultural relations: some reflections from a practitioner . Part three.

2009-09-23T12:50:00.001+01:00

Part three: twenty recommendations for an organisation to think about…

Some time ago, a leading cultural relations agency asked me to conduct a consultancy to identify best practice in cultural relations online. Here is a summary of the practical recommendations that came out of that report.

Cultural Relations Report Summary

Social media and cultural relations: some reflections from a practitioner . Part two.

2009-09-23T12:29:00.011+01:00

Four case studies of how social media can be used for cultural relations

In the first part of this post, I talked about the necessity and the difficulties of cultural relations practitioners getting to grips with social media. Now by taking you through four case studies I have personally been involved in, I will try to show exactly how social media can be used to build new partnerships, enable the participation of fresh voices and make an unambiguous statement about a culture’s openness and desire for dialogue.

First a bit about Yoosk (which is derived from ‘you ask’). Yoosk gathers questions from the public for named political, business and civil society leaders, arranges for the interviews to be conducted by a member of the target community and then publishes the answers. We use a set of web tools and associated methodology to help clients conduct domestic and international engagement exercises and this latter activity falls into the sphere of cultural relations.

Yoosk FCO: public diplomacy through direct conversations with political leaders

The website www.yoosk.com/fco has been used to gather questions from the UK’s Muslim community and from the Jordanian public around visits by the UK’s Foreign Secretary, David Miliband. The fact that the questions are unmoderated and openly displayed so that the public can vote on which they most want answered makes a clear statement that the UK are open for transparent dialogue. Furthermore, these questions are then delivered by people that the target audience recognise as not being part of the establishment, bringing fresh voices to media content that would normally be the preserve of established reporters. In Jordan, the questions were put by a young Jordanian female blogger and elsewhere on Yoosk interviews are conducted by community leaders, campaigners and even respected celebrities.

An extract from David Miliband’s interview in Jordan

The UK’s Ambassador to Vietnam talks about his job on Yoosk

A full case study of Yoosk FCO can be seen here.

Yoosk London Summit: open conversations with leaders around major themes

There can be no more global an issue and no problem more in need of a cross-cutting response from government than the current worldwide financial crisis. In the lead up to the G20 London Summit, the FCO and Cabinet Office commissioned Yoosk to build a platform dedicated to allowing people from all over the world to put questions directly to a wide variety of leaders from government, business and civil society.

Questions came from all over the world and the UK. Visitors can see open debate and dialogue in action and the exercise itself makes a statement about the UK’s values. But beyond that, it is a convenient place for overseas visitors to observe the plurality of views in the UK and perhaps might help them separate the attitudes and behaviours of the UK government from those of its wider population.

Highlights of the interviews are below and a full case study can be found here.

Yoosk Vietnam: cultural dialogue as media content

Yoosk Vietnam involved ten conversations between leading UK cultural, sporting, business and political leaders and the Vietnamese public. The project was run on behalf of the Embassy in cooperation with a leading Vietnamese news publication, Vietnam Net and involved an editorial team working in both the UK and Hanoi. This partnership was essential to the success of the project.

The online conversations that took place using social media did not just contribute to the FCO’s strategic themes, it made a statement in itself- that the UK and its leaders are open to talking to the public. As a media activity, it generated a lot of press attention about different aspects of UK culture that wouldn’t normally attract coverage.

A further outcome is that the openness demonstrated by the UK has raised interest among partners in Vietnam and Yoosk are now working with the National Assembly on an FCO funded citizen engagement project.

This demonstrates the value of innovation and openness, which are the hallmarks of social media. The fact that a government institution traditionally seen as being inaccessible to the public is so enthusiastically showcasing digital innovation, will I believe, have an effect beyond the already valuable benefits social media brings to cultural relations.

A full case study of how it worked can be seen here.

Managing difficult dialogue: Yoosk’s feature on Muslims in the UK

Bringing together a right wing Daily Mail commentator and the spokesperson for the radical Islamist Hizb ut Tarir organisation and offering the public the chance to put questions to them would not normally be an easy task. Yoosk’s Question Time-type panel interviews make this possible. This is just one example of how social media can push the boundaries of intercultural debate-in this case showing clearly that neither holds views as extreme as they are often represented to be. To see the feature, click here.

In conclusion

I hope these case studies will help clarify the important point that social media is not a technical issue and can lead to outcomes that are very much part of a traditional cultural relations manager’s stock-in-trade: increased trust and understanding gained through subtle processes that combine media with social interaction.

In other words, it’s a continuation of our job by new means and well worth the time needed to develop the understanding and knowledge required to do it well.

Social media and cultural relations: some reflections from a practitioner. Part one

2009-09-23T12:12:00.003+01:00

A senior manager in cultural relations? Some thoughts on getting to grips with social media.

Even if so far you have resisted the temptation to create a naff user name and input an instantly forgotten password to a website that you suspect you’ll never visit again, there’s no getting away from this one fact: you’re going to have to get to grips with social media at some stage between now and retirement. I hope that what follows might help you to confirm in your own mind why this is worth doing.
First of all, I should say that this is not a blog post, rather it is more of a short lecture delivered electronically in three parts. That is another way of saying that it is long, I suppose, but it is also an attempt to challenge the already well-entrenched misconceptions of what social media is. Getting beyond these is an important part of the process in understanding its potential.
I’m going to talk about why social media is important for cultural relations organisations, why it is difficult but can’t be ignored and I’ll finish by looking at how its value lies beyond a simple numbers game.

‘Media’ and ‘Social’ were always part of cultural relations

Here’s what cultural relations activity involves and always has done:

Media: We bring our target audiences together to watch films, listen to music or to people talking about ideas and events, they read articles and fiction, look at photographs, appreciate design, painting and sculpture, they might attend our exhibitions, conferences, classes and workshops or even play sport or video games together.

Social: Then they talk to each other about it, give opinions, disagree, agree, argue, reach conclusions and finally, arrange to speak again (or not), and if we are successful, keep in touch and even collaborate.

It’s difficult to conceive of any cultural relations strategy that doesn’t make use of media to convey messages about the achievements and values of the groups involved and rely on social interaction to build close personal ties. In fact the combination of socialising- face to face networking- and the use of media -press releases, films, music, publications, exhibitions- have been a staple of cultural relations for years and have often taken place at the same time and been mutually supporting.

Doing this online is surely a logical next step.

Social media: high barriers to entry for the organisation

So why then has there been reluctance from some practitioners to embrace online social media as a key component of their cultural relations work?

Perhaps it is because they don’t really see it in these terms. Sadly, the labels internet, website and ICT are too often used to confusingly describe social media activity. These are loaded words, implying as they do to some people, a complex undertaking that is beyond the skills of anyone except those with a certain degree of technical literacy.

But the truth is that not investing in social media, not taking the time to understand and not participating is like turning down invitation and after invitation to cultural events. It is the equivalent of staying at your desk and then going home at the end of the working day rather than attending conferences, seminars, receptions, openings, and parties.

That might seem an exaggeration- after all, not everyone is online and certainly most of the older influencers and decision makers in society are not regular users of social media tools. This is true perhaps. But the emerging generation of decision makers and influencers most definitely are using social media - so online socialising and the use of online content among this successor group are taking place right now. By the time you retire, they will be well on their way to forming a new generation of leaders heavily influenced by online content and interaction along the way.
Sorry to say this but part of the problem with cultural relations organisations making effective use of social media lies in seniority and organisational hierarchy. In every country where large cultural relations agencies operate, the 20 to 30-something future leaders of that country are socially active online and increasingly consuming media online. But the senior managers of the cultural relations agencies are not of that generation-they either don’t see these conversations or they are not able or inclined to fully participate. And in a hierarchical organisation, delegating very significant and meaningful activity like this to younger staff does not come naturally.

Another problem is perceived cost and tangible benefits. If the latter are measured in the short term as a set of numbers- traffic is the most convenient way to evaluate social media- then it is often easy to discount the impact of projects where social media is involved. Getting those fabled millions of hits is actually a very difficult and expensive process.
I could go on but the point is that doing social media well, as many organisations have discovered, is not easy. Organisations are just not set up for it and the barriers to effective entry are actually quite high.

Cultural relations: low barriers to entry for new organisations

If it is difficult for established organisations to use social media, paradoxically, social media has made it an increasingly simple matter for others to enter the cultural relations industry. Thanks to the ease with which online communities can be set up and are able to connect with each other, organisations, groups and individuals are now quite capable of participating in cultural relations independently of government agencies.

It’s true that friendship societies and twinning associations thrived without the involvement of cultural relations agencies long before the internet was created, but there’s no doubt that it is now far easier to find like-minded communities and share content and interact with them online. In theory, any civil society group can locate and build links with its analogues overseas.
Media companies too, are hosting intercultural dialogue. This occurs as an inevitable part of the commenting that goes on around their content- You Tube and the Guardian are just two examples of places where you can easily find people of different cultures communicating, although with often questionable outcomes.

The opportunities for established cultural relations players

This brings me to the opportunities for the established players in cultural relations: despite the problems they face in fully embracing the potential of social media, there is clearly a role for them to play in raising the bar when it comes to online interaction between different cultures.

Exactly how this can be done is a little complex to go into here and needs to be the subject of another post (sorry, mini-lecture), but broadly it can be summarised as follows:

1. How they can integrate their own social media activity into their existing work
2. How they can use other people’s social media activity to add value to their own work.
3. How they can use their physical presence and in-country networks to add value to the social media work of others.

In delivering these three objectives, established cultural relations agencies have two great strengths (and others, I’m sure). The first is their long experience in managing intercultural dialogue and mediating between peoples of different cultures. The second is the physical, boots-on-the-ground infrastructure, which uniquely positions them to fulfil the aspirations that people who engage online often have: to meet face to face.

A bewildering array of new partners, tools and communities

The landscape comprising potential partners, the tools to create and manage dialogue, and the communities who are ready to participate, are still a foreign country to many cultural relations practitioners. Sadly, a lot of senior managers who understand the potential of social media still find themselves in a position akin to arriving in a country with no induction, unable to speak the language and with no one available to show them around the new city. Knowledge is needed in addition to understanding. This has significant implications for the development of senior staff.

Inevitably, false expectations arise: it is assumed that all social media will go viral and reach millions, that it needs to take place on Facebook, You Tube or similar. Actually, a lot of social media work will make use of well known websites and communities but a lot of it will also involve specialist tools that bring more subtle outcomes that can’t be measured simply by hits and page impressions.

In the next post, we'll look at how one such specialist tool, Yoosk, can bring some quite distinct outcomes through innovative approaches to online dialogue.

Lord Mandelson on illegal file sharing: ‘it’s wrong and it is that simple’. Well yes, but...

2009-08-30T19:12:00.005+01:00

By Tim

Overall, I think Lord Mandelson’s article in the Sunday Times today is encouraging for those of us who fear the intentions of big business, who in the words of Tom Watson (in a reply on his blog):

...want the government to enforce scarcity on the Internet where it simply can’t be enforced.

It’s good to read Lord Mandelson saying:

The age of flogging a CD in HMV for £20 is well and truly over

And his stated aims sound entirely reasonable:

Provide customers with a good quality, cheap, safe and efficient experience, and they will ditch illegal downloading. If the threat of temporary account suspension and its implementation in a small number of cases helps to build a market to make this happen, then I believe it is worth our serious consideration.

However, he must understand that to many, it looks as if the lobbying power of the big content owners is getting them preferential treatment and there is also some irony attached to one or two of Mandelson’s statements.

‘Wrong’ is a fact of business life

“First, taking something for nothing, without permission, and with no compensation for the person who created and owns it, is wrong.”

Yes it is. But lots of things are wrong. Here are some well known examples:

-Bankers accepting large sums of public money and then awarding themselves unreasonably large bonuses in the face of public and government condemnation is wrong.

-Using UK taxpayers money to bail out established businesses in the car industry, which are owned by highly profitable foreign companies is wrong.

-It is wrong that the perpetrator of the UK’s biggest mass murder, someone who left hundreds of people bereaved, returned to Libya to a hero’s welcome. If UK trade with Libya suddenly increases as a result, that is wrong too.

Hard choices in the face of overwhelming social, financial and political forces have to be made by Government all the time. Lord Mandelson says it is wrong, he says ‘it’s that simple’. Well, like the examples above, Lord Mandelson knows full well it is not that simple, governing is almost never about simple choices between right and wrong.

One rule for banking?

“I was shocked to hear that as much as half of all internet traffic in the UK is for the carriage of unlawful content.”

Yes, it is shocking. But most of us were shocked when we realised banks were too big to fail and saw just how irresponsibly they were behaving.

“If technical solutions can discourage piracy, then as a Government we are obliged to consider them.”

So if very serious regulatory frameworks for banks are required, then the Government are obliged to consider those too? In fact, consider them they did, and then discounted them because even though it is the right thing to do ethically and in terms of short term public opinion, it is not practically possible and may damage the UK’s interests even more in the long term.

Unintended consequences

Lord Mandelson continues:

“Our creative businesses drive much of our economy... we should create a regulatory environment where they can operate without having to deal with illegal competition.”

This is going to be very complex and too tight a regulatory framework might have unintended consequences, the least of which is criminalising six million internet users. For example, I am just about to buy a DVD of the comedians Mitchell and Webb’s last TV series. I didn’t realise they were so good until I saw a number of clips on YouTube which were forwarded to me by a friend. I’m also about to buy a Sky+ box, and if there is another series, I’ll record the lot legally and won’t bother with the DVD next time.

Tom Watson finishes by listing six individuals and organisations that officials would do well to consult. It will be very interesting to see if Lord Mandelson follows up on Tom’s suggestions and if so, what kind of face time they get with him.

Social media: what are we asking of our politicians? Too much maybe?

2009-08-29T18:11:00.008+01:00

By Tim

We will shortly be launching a beta version of the Yoosk Performance Index and it has got me thinking about not only how useful it will be, but also how sensitively we will need to approach its launch.

The YPI is a league table that aggregates the ratings given by Yooks users, after they have viewed answers to their questions given by public figures. It then ranks the public figures in a league table accordingly. At the top of this post is an idea of what it will look like- the 'See how they compare' table on the right hand side.

The Internet presents a massive challenge to MPs and leaders who find themselves under constant scrutiny. It’s no secret that Yoosk believes our MPs should be more accessible and accountable and use social media to achieve this.

But sometimes I think we expect a little too much because the new kinds of dialogue that are happening on social media channels are in some ways contradictory to certain aspects of human nature.

True, humans like showing off, we like eavesdropping, we like chat and gossip and there is plenty of all of this online. I suspect these behaviours are hard-wired. At the same time, we also value our privacy and our reputation, which I think are also probably hard-wired, and the web can be quite a threat to both.

So here’s where the openness of the web runs crash bang into the reality of human nature- and it presents a new problem to those who put themselves forward as leaders. They are on new ground: tempted on the one hand by the opportunities to raise their profile and be seen as a living breathing human being, but on the other threatened with having their basic human frailty and proneness to error held up and ruthlessly dissected.

People in high risk jobs thrive on support. They develop very close and closed networks. Fraternities, formal and informal, are as old as civilization itself. And they are by their very nature, secretive, self-supporting and self regulating. These become learnt behaviours for those in power, because they work and because everyone around them is behaving in the same way.

Leaders who go on the web are leaving this comfortable world and entering one where they will quickly become the subject of gossip, unfounded criticism and open speculation. At the same time, they will be expected to sacrifice a significant amount of privacy, to give up a lot of the protection of their closed network and take some significant risks with their reputation.

Let’s be clear of how much we are expecting of politicians when we ask them to engage on social media.

It’s a big ask. Communicating online effectively requires time, discipline, creativity and courage. Not everyone can replicate Obama- the point about him is that he is a remarkable communicator. It is instructive that those who do engage online regularly and in a full spirit of openness, are still a minority.

So we the public need to help them. We need to understand that it is reasonable to expect them to manage these conversations, at least to a degree. We should encourage them to be open by not lambasting them for their mistakes when they admit to them, but by applauding their honesty.

Let’s see how they react to the Yoosk Performance Index.

Two and half years on: what I have learnt as an entrepreneur

2009-08-29T15:32:00.006+01:00

By Tim

Two and a half years ago Keith and I started Yoosk, a participative media platform which exists to make open and constructive conversations with our leaders a part of everyday life. Why on earth I did, I often wonder but I think I have an idea and I’ll write about it soon.

We are still going and starting to thrive. The number of start ups that make it through the two year barrier is, I believe, about 10%. So the odds have been stacked against us as a business.

The odds against Yoosk’s success as a product have been even greater: we were the first dedicated platform for holding large scale Q and As between our leaders and the public. How could a tiny two man team get a good number of senior ministers and scores of MPs and other public figures to agree to hold direct online conversations with the public? Persistence, luck and love.

There are broadly two types of entrepreneur: those who have funds they can afford to lose and those who don’t.

Truly innovative ideas often need a long time to get in the air and well funded entrepreneurs clearly have the advantages of more thrust and a longer runway. But there are certain things an underfunded entrepreneur can do to keep laying runway in front of them while they are waiting for the revenue or funding tanker in the distance to arrive. Too often of course, the tanker stays a far off speck and then it is time to call it a day. Knowing when is the trick.

When I’m asked how we have managed to get to where we are now, I usually give the answer: persistence, luck and my wife’s salary and love. Sorry if that sounds corny but they are probably the most concrete facts I can give.

But on top of these, I think there are five other factors that are essential to the success of an underfunded entrepreneur. In brackets below, I have added their close cousins: bullshitting, narcissm, ligging, incompetence and denial.

There's a thin line separating the two and about once a week, I wake up at 4am in the morning and spend the next few hours convinced I am a bullshitting narcissist, desperately ligging around town in a state of utter denial without a real clue as to what I am doing.....

1. The ability to build credibility (bullshitting)

If you don’t have an existing reputation within your market (your potential customers) or your industry (your competitors and potential investors), then do not underestimate the size of the mountain you have to climb in earning one.

The low barriers to entry in digital media especially, mean that entrepreneurs with no background in their chosen market or industry are able to innovate and deploy products which while they might be great ideas, do not have easy access to buyers or investors. That was us to a certain extent: we had limited background in government communications or IT (our market) and no real news industry experience when we first started .

It doesn’t necessarily mean that we don’t have the talent or insight of people who do come from those backgrounds. It doesn’t mean we haven’t been able to learn quickly about a new area (which frankly, no one quite yet understands anyway). It does mean that we couldn’t readily prove we have the knowledge and talent: we had no track record. Now we do, two years of runway later.

Mistake: not trading equity for a credible team member at an earlier stage.

Success: building a knowledge base and track record in a new and growing industry, finally attracting credible advisers.

2. The ability to build visibility (narcissism)

Here’s where well funded entrepreneurs have a key advantage, even if they do not have a significant reputation in their chosen market or industry. They can splurge on the promotion of their new product at an early stage and attain visibility. Underfunded entrepreneurs who have credibility can usually leverage this to attain a degree of early visibility too. The media understandably like experts, they like track records. For those who are both unfunded and without credibility, attaining visibility is very difficult.

Why is visibility good? It might bring you a user base at an early stage but there are many examples of early growth in traffic that never materialise into a sustainable model. The main initial gain to be made from visibility is connectedness, plus a bit of credibility.

So how to get visibility? Here are the options I’ve identified, although there may be more:

1. Splurge and be damned. The results never seem worth the money but PR people have the contacts and are more likely to get coverage than you are, no matter how good you might be at writing press releases. Avoid press release services that write a release for you and send out to a database with no follow up like the plague.

2. Write to the journalists and bloggers yourself. Very few will answer, you will probably get branded a spammer and you could waste huge amounts of time and morale better spent writing to customers. You’ll get a couple of articles though- how you take advantage of that coverage is important.

3. Self-publish and network like there’s no tomorrow. Use Twitter, blog about your market and industry. This too can take an enormous amount of time away from contacting customers. You’ll get noticed in time but will it be worth it?

4. Cultivate a handful of friendly journalists. Treat them as customers for new angles they can sell to their editor. They are not duty bound to buy your story not matter how ‘new’ and groundbreaking you think it is.

5. Get a really good publicist interested in your business and give them equity

Mistake: we haven’t really focused on any of the above, or found the right combination. We’ve wasted a lot of time and still haven’t cracked it.

Success: only the fact that I now understand the above options a little more clearly after two years. We’ve got some coverage but nothing game changing.

3. The ability to build connectedness (ligging)

To steal a bit from Nick Hornby...Some people have a natural disposition for networking: they are just plain nice, energetic and good to be with and to know. People who brood on ideas, who have a rage inside them strong enough to risk their livelihoods shoving those ideas down the throats are others, are not generally of this disposition. I am not of this disposition. A very small number of entrepreneurs are and you can now watch them with envy doing their stuff on Twitter every day. Don’t get envious like me, just watch and learn.

Mistakes: Not learning more quickly the value of strong networks and how they work.

Success: I’m getting better as I become more credible in the eyes of those I seek to network with.

4. Learning (incompetence)

It’s difficult to say anything about this without stating the obvious. Or getting lost in clichés: but here are two anyway:

1. The success of any start up depends on you being able to fall forwards continually and learn every time.

2. It is the mistakes that you don’t know you are making, that are the biggest danger: Donald Rumsfeld’s unknown unknowns or Nicholas Nassim Taleb’s Black Swans.

Mistake: the same depressing mistake of recruiting people who couldn’t or wouldn’t deliver.

Success: after some howlers, we’ve found a convincing business model and are getting better at recruitment.

5. Stamina (denial)

It’s a long haul. It is only persistence which will enable you to find the very precious few openings or the handful of wonderful open-minded people willing to give you a chance. There must be any number of start ups that have given up when success was around the corner. But these will always be outnumbered by the hapless entrepreneurs who lost far more time and money than they needed to on businesses that were never going to work.

This is what keeps me awake at 4am for the other six nights a week: that I might be one of the 'hapless' .

Mistake: getting my family into this mess

Success: keeping them in it

Four reactions when a business faces inevitable change

2009-08-29T14:58:00.013+01:00

By Tim

I'm following Editor Marc Reeve's consultation exercise on the future of the Birmingham Post with a mixture of fascination, frustration and hope, as well as admiration for the way Marc is handling it. Marc's appeal for views on how the Post needs to change has so far received 39 comments on his blog and I suspect there are many more private views in his inbox.

Below, I've tried to analyse and make sense of the comments sent in by Post readers but first, here is one clip from a longer interview with Marc answering Yoosk users' questions on the decline of print media:

Looking at the responses to Marc's appeal in detail, there were a variety of suggestions or comments which fell into four braod categories:

1. A daily edition of the Birmingham Post is nothing that can’t be fixed with the right management, ownership or customer loyalty

-Strategy of aggressive growth, going after new audiences with innovative products and content

-Invest in quality and web presence, do the same but better

-Take voluntarily submitted content: become a curator of quality user generated content

-Expand geographic and demographic coverage, gain new readers with new content

-Focus entirely on business, up circulation figures within that core sector, add supplements

-Rely on business readers to rally round, increase sales by 10,000, increase the cover price

2. It’s possible to achieve ultimate success as a viable business but in a very different form

-Less is more, consolidate, adopt the weekly model and focus on quality

-Adopt an FT-like online subscription model, with daily web publication and a weekly print edition

-Merge with the Mail, rationalise, concentrate on the online business brand

-Concentrate more on local communities and key target groups, introducing supplements and an expanded web presence

-Leverage the brand in the areas of business information, analysis and networking and explore other revenues beyond cover price and advertising, such as events etc.

3. The model is broken, news will live on but not newspapers like the Post, that’s just the way of things

-12,000 readers is small and irrelevant figure, it’s all over, there’s no point in bidding back the tide

-Going weekly is equivalent to death by a thousand cuts, doing irreparable damage to the brand and the precursor of inevitable closure

4. It’s too important to be left as a business decision, it’s a political issue

-Return to local ownership, either through selling to a philanthropist or by community buy-out or syndicate of local business

-The Post is an advertising vehicle for the region and its businesses, it is a civic good which if lost, may signal the decline of Birmingham towards a parochial backwater

-Confront the council head on, on ethical and business grounds, especially about their advertising spend on jobs. The public sector is competing unfairly with private business.

Four predictable responses?

I'd say yes: these very positive and well intentioned suggestions all seem depressingly familiar. The West Midlands has seen the decline of many of its flagship industries and companies in the last 40 years (and some in the last year) and these are the traditional positions adopted whenever a large, well established company falls on hard times:

1. “It’s the fault of the owners and managers, there’s nothing wrong that can’t be fixed by doing things better. Management haven’t invested enough, or in the right equipment, the right factories, they aren’t marketing the product well enough. We can find new markets and recover with different managers and owners.”

2. “This came from nowhere and while serious, can be fixed. We can still succeed, we just need to restructure, redesign our products, consolidate and focus.”

3. “We are the subject of market, technological and social forces beyond our control, no one can be profitable in this environment, it’s time for everyone associated with this to take their money, labour and skills elsewhere.”

4. “This is too big to be left to market forces: at stake are the fundamental wellbeing of the region, the community and the people who live within it. Public money must be used and political forces mobilised to solve the problem.”

Lenin said the only real questions that matter are, “who?” and “to whom?” Who exercises power and over whom do they exercise it? In these situations, this can be rephrased as:

Whose responsibility is it? Who stays? Who goes?

For the four basic views described above, the answers are:

1. Managers’ fault, workers stay, managers go.

2. No one’s fault, (some) managers stay, (some) workers go.

3. No one’s fault, no one stays, workers and managers go.

4. Everyone’s fault, everyone stays, no one goes.

What do I think?

I'm firmly in the number two camp.

I think I support Marc's plan to go for the weekly edition, supported by increased investment in a daily site- but it's clear it'll have to be accompanied by a painful reduction in overheads. My sympathies got out to the staff who'll inevitably lose their jobs.

At the same time, I have huge personal sympathy for the challenge Marc and his fellow senior managers face- I've been there and soon I'll write about what happened and what I learnt. I have only met Marc briefly once but it is clear to me that he cares deeply about the Post and the people who work there.

Yoosk Birmingham Case Study

2009-08-29T12:27:00.004+01:00

By Tim

Yoosk recently completed a public engagement exercise for Birmingham councillors and MPs, run in partnership with the Birmingham Post and Mail. Here's the case study...

Yoosk Birmingham case study

Visualising data.

2009-05-13T12:03:00.006+01:00

By Keith

Many Thanks to yoosklondonsummit user PatNInterrupt for highlighting the site Many Eyes for us. Many Eyes allows people to make visualisations of either text streams or data sets. Very useful for highlighting key information and also for comparing. Just for fun, I did a quick Wordle exercise with the Inaugural speeches of JFK, GWB Jnr and Obama, results below:

Bush Jnr:

Obama:

JFK:

This is just a quick example of what can be done - the potential is there for much more interesting visualisations to be made and I'm looking forward to trying this out with a few Gordon Brown and David Cameron speeches.

Votematch Launch

2009-05-13T09:31:00.008+01:00

By Keith

Yoosk recently attended the launch of Votematch, a site designed to match you with the political party which is most closely aligned with your views.

Its a bit like the facebook apps which ask you a few questions and then tell you which country/old lady name/sexual position you are (Yoosk is Switzerland, Ethel and missionary btw - but I'll leave you to guess where we came out on votematch.)

50,000 people used the site during the London Mayoral elections and they are aiming for 5,000,000 users during upcoming elections Europe-wide. Its a great site and is doing its bit to get people involved in politics and make politics a bit more fun - objectives we share at Yoosk.

Also at the launch were James Evans and William Carey from Hustings, Tony Parsons fom Votewise and Andy Bookless from NetworkMe and it was interesting to share some ideas with them - we are all climbing the same hill - and it would be good if we could help each other along a little.

Some final thoughts for Votematch - now that I know which party's ideology I most closely match, will you be developing a tool which makes sure that the candidates follow their own party manifesto's? And will you be sharing stats on user numbers and which parties they have been advised to vote for?

Yoosk goes to Jordan.

2009-05-11T08:00:00.007+01:00

By Keith

Recent visitors to yoosk may have been suprised to see a few questions appearing in Arabic script. These were part of a project we ran in conjunction with the British Embassy in Jordan.

Prior to a visit from David Miliband, the Embassy wanted to give the Jordanian public a chance to put questions to the Foreign Secretary and they chose Yoosk as the platform to enable them to do this.

In total, 43 questions were posted and David Miliband answered the top 5. You can see what he was asked, and his answers here. At a time when we clearly need to be opening up dialogue with the people of Middle Eastern countries, we are pleased that the FCO chose Yoosk as their partner.

We are also pleased with how smoothly the event went and for this we need to thank Rana Nejem at the Embassy in Amman who organised the Jordanian side of things and also Manal Nakli for giving up her holiday weekend to help with adding the Arabian subtitles on the video clips. Thanks All!!

What is happiness?

2009-05-11T07:37:00.003+01:00

By Keith

What makes you happy? It is an interesting question and one which Matthew Taylor answered rather well here on Yoosk.

This paragraph from a Kezia Dugdale blog post was enough to make us at yoosk happy:

'The beauty of the tools of new media, whether it's twitter, youtube, facebook, yoosk, or blogs is the ability of people to organise, empower and affect change - or simply join a debate about the past, present and future of our country from the comfort of their armchair.'

Thanks Kezia, I hope the founders of twitter, facebook and youtube were similarly proud to be mentioned alongside us!! You can read the whole of Kezia's blog post on the role of blogging and the internet in politics here.

Yoosk win 4IP funding.

2009-05-10T09:29:00.006+01:00

By Keith

Yoosk has come a long way since its first incarnation 2 years ago - we've added many new features and improved the original design - we recognise though that there is still much to be done to make Yoosk a truly user-friendly platform.

That is why we are particularly excited to have been chosen as one of the projects 4ip are investing in. Together with Screen West Midlands, 4ip have injected some development cash which is being used to give Yoosk a total makeover.

Made Media are the people we are working with on this and already we are in the process of outlining a new look and planning an easier user journey to asking a question. There's nothing better than having fresh pairs of eyes looking at what we're doing to get us focussed again on the direction we need to be heading.

We hope to get the changes rolling out soon, so, as they say, watch this space...

Yoosklondonsummit.com evaluation.

2009-05-09T11:22:00.003+01:00

Well, The London Summit is well and truly over, so time to look back on our summit portal and think about some of the things which worked and some of the things where we can aim to improve.

On the success side, we managed to get answers from 10 of the 15 people we featured on the site, including 6 Ministers. We should also say a big 'Thank You' here to BSN who did an excellent job of filming all the interviews and at sometimes very short notice. Overall there were 491 questions posted on the site and 53 were answered - and this probably amounted to the widest ranging digital engagement exercise of its kind with the UK govt involved.

Disappointments? Yes - two in particular:

1. Gordon Brown declined to answer his questions.
2. We didn't get the level of traffic we would like to have seen.

Some criticisms from various people:

1. We did not provide a balanced cross section of opinion - there were no opposition MP's there.

Yes, this is true but the site was open to anybody to express their opinion and to challenge that of the Govt Ministers who we were questioning. We also had 4 non-govt people who did not represent govt thinking.

2. The Yoosk platform is not as user-friendly as it could be.

Yes, guilty - and this is something we are working on making better.

So, overall, it was an extremely busy time for us and a fantastic opportunity to give the yoosk platform its first real test - we've learnt some important lessons (number one being the value of video-answers) and are looking forward to our next opportunity to put what we've learnt into practice.

We had some intersting and insightful answers along the way and if you would like to see a cross section of some of them, take a look at the video below. If you were one of the online community who used/use yoosk, Thanks to you too, please keep coming back and also tell your friends about us.

If you have any feedback, feel free to add in the comments here or to contact us via the 'contact' form.

Yoosk launches dedicated G20 London Summit site.

2009-02-02T03:50:00.006Z

Yoosk continues to play a part in promoting Government engagement with its new London Summit website.

In his blog for the FCO, Stephen Hale says of their LondonSummit site:

"This will be where we encourage and present the debate, on and off the website. At the moment, we are promoting content from our partnerships with VoxEU, Yoosk, and the World Economic Forum as well as surfacing the debate from around the world....

Launching a website often feels like an end in itself, but the London Summit website is clearly only the start something - our efforts to stimulate online conversations will undoubtedly increase over the next 2 months."

Gordon Brown is committed to answering questions from the Public (his introductory video to the Government's new website can be seen below) and, as Stephen says, this is only the start, we hope to have more names appearing and agreeing to be interviewed over the next 2 months.

This kind of engagement is something the Americans are very good at (if you don't believe me, check out Barack Obama's YouTube page) and something the government here in the UK appears to want to get better at. There has been some cynicism in the past about the value of these kinds of exercises - "Does anybody listen?" "Does it make a difference?" - well, maybe and maybe not, but clearly, if we want to be involved in the democratic process, we have to ask questions of our Leaders and have to try any means possible to get our ideas across.

Naturally, asking questions of people in power is something we at Yoosk are very passionate about and we would love to hear from you if you have any suggestions for how we can improve the way we go about it. You can leave comments here, or contact us through our "contact" page.

Yoosk Vietnam is launched.

2009-01-30T08:37:00.002Z

Yoosk is spreading its wings and the first overseas site has been launched. Those of you who have been following the progress of Yoosk will know that we have strong ties with Vietnam and this is the country we have chosen for our first overseas site.

The site is being run in partnership with the British Embassy Hanoi and www.vietnamnet.com as part of the celebration of 35 years of diplomatic ties between the two countries and the aim is to allow Vietnamese people to ask questions of people in the public eye in the UK.

The site can be found here.

Already the site has 230 members and has gathered over 100 questions - more than 50% of which have been answered.The site has generated a lot of interest in the Vietnamese Press and we have high hopes that this will kick start a completely Vietnamese version of the site with Vietnamese celebrities and politicians answering the questions.

Watch this space - we'll keep you posted on any developments. Meanwhile British Foreign Secretary David Miliband will be the next public figure to be in the interview spotlight - we're looking forward to seeing what the Vietnamese public will want to ask him!

Yoosk and FCO

2008-11-03T08:43:00.003Z

Last week Yoosk ran an experiment with the FCO in which the FCO used Yoosk to gather questions from people in Wales. There were some interesting questions and David Miliband answered the top nine of them. You can see the answers here.

Stephen Hale, Head of Engagement, Digital Diplomacy gives the FCO thoughts on the experiment in his blog here.

For Yoosk it was an exciting challenge and we are proud to have given a voice to the ordinary person and enabled them to have a question put to, and answered by the Foreign Secretary.

We can't claim that it was a total success though as the response - in the number of questions - was disappointing - and some of our coverage on Welsh blogs was negative to say the least. Here I should hold my hands up and say that I am partly responsible as I did send out the same message to several bloggers asking them if they would like to offer their readers a chance to post a question - but lesson learned for me, it won't happen again! Miss Wagstaff was one person who didn't appreciate my email although if you read the comments you can see that she did soften a little..

So where do we go from here? We hope that we can continue giving Yoosk users the chance to put questions to the people in power - it's something which we passionately believe is both necessary and ultimately beneficial to all sides.

!0 Downing Street YouTube

2008-08-11T15:43:00.008+01:00

Gordon Brown's second YouTube exercise asking for questions from the public has come to a close. It's great to see that the PM wants to respond personally to issues raised by people like you and me.

But is this really the best way to do it? Submission of questions has ended and the answers aren't due to be published until September - an exercise like this really needs to be immediate or it will lose its impact. Then, if you're interested in what people have been asking the PM and want to browse the questions, as far as I can see, there is no easy way to do it - you have to go through the questions one by one. Quite simply, nobody is going to bother.

And finally, how does the PM choose which questions to answer? Will he choose to answer the trickiest questions or will his people cherry pick the easy ones? In the end it doesn't matter which option he chooses because regardless, people are naturally going to think he's chosen the easy ones.

An exercise like this must be transparent or it will have no value. Naturally, we at Yoosk can think of a much better way of carrying out a public engagement exercise like this......we just need somebody at Downing Street to listen to our ideas.

Facebook App

2008-08-09T09:14:00.000+01:00

This is a quick taster of what our new facebook app will look like. Users will be able to browse and vote for questions from within facebook and even post their own questions without leaving facebook! In the meantime, if you're on facebook, why not join our facebook group here?

Widgets

2008-08-09T05:18:00.001+01:00

A recent development for Yoosk are our two new widgets. The widgets are a practical and easy way of gathering questions from sources as diverse as local media sites to personal blogs. This is an example of our "super" widget:

and a "live" version of this can be seen on Jo Swinson's personal website here.

...and our smaller version:

which can be seen being used by Johnstone Press newspaper the Halifax Courier here.

Summer of Networking

2008-08-09T04:28:00.001+01:00

Early summer saw Tim in London on a quest to secure some investment for Yoosk - several promising leads have come of his visit and Tim had the chance to take part in some interesting events.

One of these was the Channel 4 sponsored 2gether08 event in Shoreditch, held over the 2nd and 3rd of July.

Whilst there, Tim was interviewed by Intruders TV:

July also saw Yoosk nominated for its first award - The Catalyst Awards - OK, we didn't win, but its the taking part that's important isn't it...isn't it? Anyway there was some stiff opposition and the eventual winners were great sites being run by some very bright and innovative people.

There were also meetings with MP's and local councils about how best to use Yoosk to help politicians and councillors engage with the public - more on this later when we have finalised some details.

Back to Blogging

2008-08-09T04:23:00.000+01:00

The Yoosk blog is back with a new address and a new resolve to keep it going this time. We'll try and use this space to highlight anything of interest we see out there in the social media world and keep you updated with anything new on Yoosk.