So, where are we with the platform and the two contenders Threads and Bluesky?
UKOM Ipsos Iris has published some data which was gathered in September.
You can see that here:
You can look at the Bluesky data and say that the platform is booming – there’s a 445 per cent rise in three months. Time spent on the platform has also increased by more than 200 per cent. So, the trends are upwards. But the overall numbers are still low in comparison to other sites with 500,000 UK users.
For Threads, there’s a rise of almost 40 per cent with 6.9 million UK users since June. This puts the Meta-owned platform in a strong position.
For X, formerly Twitter, there are 22.3 million UK users with a 6.1 percent drop since the summer. Strategically, this is a large drop but this is by no measure a platform killer. The bottom has not fallen out of the market while the trend is there.
An important summary paper on where AI is heading with NHS communications has been published.
In many ways, health is the prime sector for AI, as there are advances in how AI can be used to diagnose and treat patients. Data from the Ada Lovelace Foundation shows that people are happier with AI in health than they are with any other area.
But these clinical advances are not something that stay in the domain of medics. They need to be communicated. Not only that but there are tools and approaches that NHS comms can start to work with.
It’s a document of reassurance just as much as it is forward looking.
What’s particularly encouraging is that the door is open to get involved. If you work in NHS communications this would be something to explore. It’s always better to help the process of change than be changed at.
Here’s the summary from Google Notebook.
20 Key Points for NHS Communications and PR Professionals About AI
Here is a summary of 20 key points about AI for NHS communication and PR professionals, tailored for an audience that may be apprehensive and not well informed about the topic:
1. AI is Here to Stay: AI is rapidly changing healthcare communication. The NHS is committed to using AI to improve communication with staff, patients, and communities.
2. AI is a Tool, Not a Replacement:AI willaugment human capabilities, not replace jobs. The goal is to enhance efficiency and effectiveness, allowing professionals to focus on more complex tasks.
3. Human Touch Remains Essential: AI will never replace the human elements of communication, like empathy and compassion.
4. Benefits for Everyone: AI can personalise communication, improve accessibility and inclusivity, facilitate better collaboration, and empower patients and communities.
5. Real-World Applications: AI is already used in chatbots, content creation, media monitoring, and personalised messaging.
6. Future Trends: AI is expected to further enhance multilingual communication, storytelling, and personalised patient communication.
7. Tailored Communication: AI will help deliver personalised messages based on individual preferences and needs.
8. Breaking Barriers: AI can overcome language barriers and make healthcare information more accessible to diverse populations.
9. Enhanced Efficiency: AI can automate routine tasks, freeing up communicators for more strategic work.
10. Data-Driven Decisions: AI analytics can provide deeper insights into audience behaviour and campaign effectiveness.
11. Improved Crisis Management: AI can monitor potential issues and enable rapid responses during emergencies.
12. 24/7 Availability: Chatbots powered by AI can provide information to patients, staff, and stakeholders around the clock.
13. Addressing Challenges: The NHS recognises the challenges associated with AI, such as ensuring safety, quality, and reliability.
14. Data Privacy is Paramount: The NHS is committed to protecting data privacy and security, complying with all relevant regulations.
15. Ethical Considerations: The NHS will develop AI systems that are fair, transparent, and trustworthy, addressing potential biases.
16. Workforce Support: The NHS will provide training and support to equip communication staff with the skills needed to work effectively with AI.
17. National Framework: A national operating framework will guide the use of AI in NHS communications, ensuring consistency and best practices.
18. Collaboration is Key: The NHS will collaborate with stakeholders, including staff, patients, regulators, and industry partners.
19. Continuous Learning: The NHS will stay informed about advancements in AI and adapt its approach based on feedback and best practices.
20. Your Input Matters: The NHS values feedback from communications and PR professionals to shape the future of AI in healthcare communication.
Firstly, it is possible to be excited and worried by something all at the same time.
The Romantic poets knew this is the sublime that things are beautiful and terrifying at the same time. William Wordsworth in ‘The Prelude’ captures these feelings from an early memory stealing a boat, rowing onto the lake and being aware of a towering cliff above him in the dark as he rowed.
I struck and struck again, And growing still in stature the grim shape Towered up between me and the stars, and still, For so it seemed, with purpose of its own And measured motion like a living thing, Strode after me.
So, as with Romantic poetry and AI.
The Martech Map has been a consistently useful document in previous iterations. It is useful for tracing progress and trends in what they describe as marketing technology. Hence portmanteu martech.
I thought it would be an idea to run their 2025 report through Google Notebook with the instruction to summarise it for a comms and PR audience who were not familiar with the topic.
Treat this as a starter for 10 and if you’re interested head back to look at what you’ve got.
For me, this is useful and the stand-out here is the speed of change and that people will need to get a hold of their data. The information being put into the AI tool will influence what it comes up with.
20 Key Points About AI in Martech for PR and Comms Professionals
Here are 20 points summarising the impact of AI on marketing technology (martech). This summary prioritises clear, plain English to address the needs of PR and comms professionals with limited knowledge of the subject:
1. AI is rapidly transforming martech. The rate of change is much faster than with previous technological innovations.
2. The hype around AI, particularly Generative AI (GenAI), is real but the underlying technology is steadily advancing. As AI improves and finds new applications, its impact will continue to grow.
3. AI in martech isn’t just a single trend, but a multitude of interwoven trends at different stages of development. This complexity makes it challenging to make sweeping statements about AI’s overhype.
4. AI is creating five key segments within martech: Indie Tools, Challenger Platforms, Incumbent Platforms, Custom Apps, and Service-as-a-Software.
5. Indie Tools are small, specialised AI tools that excel in specific tasks. They offer a way to experiment with new AI capabilities quickly and inexpensively.
6. Challenger Platforms are AI-native companies aiming to disrupt existing platforms. They offer innovative approaches but face challenges in displacing established players.
7. Incumbent Platforms are dominant martech companies rapidly embedding AI into their products. They leverage their large user bases and resources to compete with startups.
8. Custom Apps, often built with no-code AI tools, are enabling businesses to create tailored solutions. This trend is expected to reshape tech stacks and potentially surpass commercial apps in quantity.
9. Service-as-a-Software is emerging where AI turns labour into software. This opens up a market potentially worth trillions of dollars.
10. A strong data strategy is essential for any successful AI strategy. Businesses need high-quality, well-governed data to fuel AI algorithms and achieve differentiation.
11. The modern data stack, with cloud data warehouses at its core, enables a universal data layer for martech. This provides marketers with richer customer insights by accessing data across departments.
12. A universal content layer is emerging to complement the data layer. GenAI can leverage diverse content sources to enable hyper-personalised customer engagement.
13. APIs are becoming crucial for AI agents to interact with software and achieve their goals. Martech products with strong API capabilities will be better positioned in the AI era.
14. Marketers are primarily using GenAI for content-related tasks, such as content ideation and production. Accelerating the content development pipeline is a key driver of GenAI adoption.
15. GenAI is also being used to enhance data analysis and consumption. Features like summarization and “chat with data” are empowering marketers to leverage data more effectively.
16. Governance and ethical considerations are paramount in AI adoption. Businesses need clear policies to address concerns around data privacy, security, and responsible AI usage.
17. Marketers should focus on practical use cases and resist the temptation of “AI for AI’s sake”. AI should solve real business problems and contribute to tangible outcomes.
18. Collaboration between marketing and IT is essential for successful AI implementation. Data teams can provide valuable expertise and support to marketing teams.
19. Experimentation and continuous learning are key to navigating the evolving AI landscape. Marketers should adopt an agile mindset and be willing to adapt to new developments.
20. Businesses should prioritise ownership and control over their data. This will enable them to leverage AI effectively and adapt to changing industry dynamics. Head to martech.com for the more detailed document.
In the UK, social media is evolving and it pays as a communicator to be across this.
So, bravo Ofcom who have published their Online Nation data which sets out in some glorious detail the numbers.
I’ll return to this data dump in the coming weeks to upgrade training slides and I’ll try and blog a snapshot for you.
I’ve used the Ofcom data to create a visualisation of the direction of travel with UK social media.
I’ve taken the data and represented it as a percentage of the UK population rather than simply users.
You can see it here:
Honestly, datamapper is an absolutely brilliant tool.
The question behind the data was ‘what platforms have you used in the previous month?’
Here’s five points on what it all means.
YouTube is the largest and gets criminally ignored
YouTube is the largest social platform in the UK. Yet, often organisation’s YouTube channels can best be described as a rag tag after thought where video gets sent to expire. At worst, they are poorly tagged, poorly labelled historic mishmash with a handful of views.
It demands the question, how can you improve what you are doing with YouTube? There’s an entire blog post in that alone.
70 per cent use Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp
Elsewhere in the report, is the gem that seven in ten in the UK are using the Meta triumverate of Facebook, Insta and WhatsApp.
Frustratingly, Ofcom have stopped including messenging apps in the numbers which isn’t ideal. So, WhatsApp aren’t in this top 10. Elsewhere in the report, data shows that 87 per cent of UK people use WhatsApp monthly and 64 per cent use it daily.
That makes WhatsApp the most used messenger – or social – app in the UK.
X, formerly Twitter is falling
The decline is real. Year on year Elon Musk’s platform has dropped by eight per cent. The data for this report is from May 2024 so it predates the UK and US elections. I would not be surprised if the figures heralded a larger drop next year.
The only surprise I have at this is that it hasn’t fallen further.
No Nextdoor
In previous years, I’ve seen Nextdoor in the top 10 but in 2024 that’s not the case. Nextdoor is a community-based platform that has some advantages for public sector organisations.
Not cropping up in this list would suggest the platform may be in decline.
In the past, I’ve heard of great strides in creating ads on Reddit. I’d be interested to see how this goes for people.
TikTok is up
The rise of TikTok continues. After Reddit, it has the largest rise in Ofcom’s table of stats up 13 per cent. A third of the UK uses this vertical video platform.
The fact it is not longer the sexiest on the block in 2024 – BlueSky may have that – in a curious way makes it more of a proposition. Things often get interesting when they are boring.
Snapchat is still here
One of the biggest strategic mistakes you can make is to base your organisation’s output based on what you or the chief exec likes. It can be the block to TikTok in many places. For me, this can be folly as you skew your channels away from your audience.
I don’t use Snapchat but if I was trying to reach young people that’s a platform I’d be looking at. The numbers here remain strong for the platform used most by teenagers.
Whatabout Threads and BlueSky?
Whatabout them indeed. The cool kids are all about BlueSky but neither they or Meta’s Threads are in the top 10. Both were launched as being Twitter killers.
Buried in the Ofcom report is the insight that there are 5.3 million active Threads users in the UK in May 2024. There’s no data I’ve come across yet for BlueSky.
I hope this list helps you think of what your comms needs to look like in 2025.
I’ve been asked a few times around BlueSky and whether or not that’s the new Twitter for the public sector.
It’s a reasonable question to ask.
But I’m going to be slightly less on the excitement gauge than others.
Firstly, the data argument. The numbers are not yet there to compare it to X, formerly Twitter. BlueSky is not in the top 10 of social accounts used by UK people.
Secondly, there’s the subjective yardstick of the question ‘is this the new Twitter?’. Well, if it was, we wouldn’t be asking ourselves that question.
In the 1990s, when cricketing all-rounder Ian Botham’s powers were on the wane a platoon of candidates were wheeled in and out as ‘the new Ian Botham’. So we had David Capel, Phil deFreitas and Derek Pringle all hyped as the next big thing only to fall below that once-in-a-generation benchmark.
It was only when we stopped looking for the new Botham that we got Andrew Flintoff. And he was his own person.
How to approach a new channel like BlueSky
I’m going to fall back on some good advice when dealing with BlueSky. I’d recommend the same to you.
It’s the same advice I used for Google Plus, Google Wave, Mastodon and other next big things. I’m going to spend some time with them under my own steam to see how they work and suggest you do too. A month minimum. Only when the smoke and mirrors clears I’d think about using it in earnest as a corporate account.
While you spend time off your own bat with BlueSky you can start to see if there’s value for you. If there is, fantastic. You may connect with some really interesting people and you’ll tap into good knowledge. This may be as far as it goes.
The watching brief approach also gives you the chance to be on the front foot with the organisation. You will get the chief executive or some senior person asking about what you’re doing with BlueSky. They’ll have read something, you see,
So, get ahead of that, be proactive, do the research and tell them you’re doing the research. You don’t want to be put on the spot. You absolutely don’t want to be ordered to do something you don’t think has value.
If you’re used to old Twitter you’ll find some features are familiar.
By all means reserve a corporate BlueSky account in the meantime but I wouldn’t be investing serious time into it just yet. If you do, do so as a trial.
I go through phases with my news consumption, do you?
Some weeks I’ll consume everything. All the news all the commentary and all the opinion on the commentary. A whirling gyre of thoughts and impressions that never fully resolves itself. It just gets taken over by the next one.
Other times, I hang back. Part of lockdown was like that. I’d maybe check the BBC headlines once a day and then leave it at that.
Right now, I’m largely switched off from news. Gaza, Israel, Ukraine. It’s all bad. The news that America has voted for, lets face it, fascism, is just enough. It feels as though I need to save my resilience.
“The notion that you need to know about world events right when they happen is a marketing creation of media brands. And yet, those news stories mingle in the same lock screen with the personal reminders and calls from your mom. The stuff that has something to do with you is now almost impossible to distinguish from the stuff that doesn’t. Trust me, that news alert can wait until later. Like most things on the internet, it can wait until never. You’re not Batman. You’re not going to do anything about the news alerts, so they can wait. As a general rule, you don’t need to be immediately notified of any breaking news that’s happening more than about eighteen feet from where you are right now. At most, your alerts should only cover your locality. Even Bruce Wayne only covers Gotham.”
There’s been a lot of debate about how organisations use X/Twitter in recent months but what are the numbers?
Now, any data around any social media platform are notoriously opaque and in the coming months Ofcom will no doubt publish annual UK data.
Ahead of all that, I ran a survey to see where people are in the public sector and third sector with their corporate accounts.
The numbers while unscientific are fascinating.
In the public sector, a quarter are heading for the exit
It’s clear that there is a lot of reflection going on with the public sector corporate account.
For the public sector, a quarter are going or have gone. That’s a similar number for those who are staying put.
Those who have departed are three times as likely to do so on the quiet by simply stopping using it rather than making a grand public announcement.
For me, that’s a canny bit of judgement given the wall of abuse some organisations have been met with when they’ve publicly quit.
But just over half of organisations have yet to make their minds up.
In the third sector, two thirds are evaluating
There’s even more head scratching going on in the charity sector with X, formerly Twitter.
More than 60 per cent are evaluating their corporate presence. On top of that, one in 10 have decided to stay with almost a quarter going or gone.
Is this the right decision?
Of course, there is no universal correct decision for a corporate account. There is a trend to head to the exits for UK public sector and third sector but this was never going to be an overnight event. Platforms don’t work like that. They tend to grow slowly and then fade away.
So, would these numbers suggest there’s still a role for connecting with journalists and MPs? Absolutely. There’s been some talk about journos moving to Bluesky. It’ll be interesting to see how this pans out.
In any event, I’d be highly surprised if prominent MPs or Government departments left X/Twitter. This would leave the field clear for their political opponents.
What the data absolutely shows is that the tectonic plates of the internet are on the move.
A few months back, I blogged about the conversations now taking place in comms team about leaving X, formerly Twitter.
As with anything with social media there were some strong opinions so I tried to keep it as dispassionate as possible. You can read the post here.
The Guardian has now re-fired the debate with their news they were stopping using the platform and in turn that has led to people to take a fresh look at how their organisation uses the platform.
So, I thought I’d take a look at an additional question. How many are actually SEEING what’s being posted onto X, formerly Twitter?
Using publicly available data I pulled together this list.
I worked out the total number of people who had seen the last 20 tweets the account had posted, worked out an average and then measured that as a percentage of their follower numbers.
Here’s a datamapper visualisation…
What’s clear is that journalists and politicians are still getting their content seen.
After all, social media loves the new, loves opinions and loves outrage. So, journos and political leaders perform well.
But what about the public sector? Well, that’s a different case.
I’ve tried to reflect at random elements of local government, fire & rescue, police and NHS. How do they perform? Not so great.
One council has 0.1 percent of their follower numbers seeing their tweets.
There’s no implied criticism of any of those account admins. Who knows, if there’s a busy week those figures may rise. During the awful murders in Southport and the following riots across towns in England its possible that those tweets travelled far further. Should X, formerly Twitter be reserved for just emergencies?
What’s clear, is that the audience for many accounts has moved on.
I carry out social media reviews for bright people looking to make sense of a changing landscape.
Because the pace of change is increasing and because I’ve been playing with Google Notebook I thought I’d ask the tool to summarise the new Reuters whitepaper.
This document Powering Trust News With AI: Navigating the Present and Trusting the Future looks at how artificial intelligence with affect news rooms, or rather, what’s left of them.
So, in the spirit of AI, here is a summary of how AI can be used in news and communications, in 10 bullet points, for an audience of communications and public relations people:
● AI presents both opportunities and risks for the news and media industry. While it can enhance news reporting and delivery, there are concerns about misinformation, the rapid pace of AI development, and potential threats to intellectual property.
● AI can revolutionise newsrooms by improving workflow efficiencies. One example is Avista, an AI-powered tool developed by Reuters that helps clients quickly find specific video segments.
● Maintaining trust and journalistic integrity in the age of AI is crucial. At Reuters, AI tools are evaluated based on their ability to support the company’s mission of delivering unbiased and important news stories.
● Human oversight remains essential. Editors and journalists should retain control and carefully review AI-generated content to ensure accuracy and ethical standards.
● There are three key ways AI can be integrated into workflows: replacing tasks humans don’t need to do, augmenting existing work, and facilitating innovative experiments.
● Combating misinformation is a top priority. AI algorithms can help detect fake news, images, and videos.
● AI literacy is essential for navigating the evolving media landscape. News organisations and consumers need to be aware of the capabilities and limitations of AI.
● Generative AI tools like ChatGPT are changing audience expectations. The media industry must adapt to meet the demand for faster and more personalised content delivery.
● AI can help news organisations stay relevant in a changing media landscape. This includes using AI to optimise content discoverability and deliver information efficiently while maintaining safeguards.
● The future of AI in media will likely involve increased automation to handle tasks such as translation and transcription. This will free up journalists to focus on in-depth, unbiased reporting from trusted sources.
Firstly, a useful summary using Google Notebook which I increasingly love. Its benefit is that it works with what you give it rather than pulling things from across the internet like ChatGPT.
What this means for comms and PR
Firstly, it’s clear that thev relationship between reporters and media relations is evolving. Some things still stay the same. For me, the definition of news remains information that somebody somewhere doesn’t want you to know.
But beyond that definition, the landscape is changing. With misinformation, we can rightly be focused on what bad actors may try and do with content. We are looking to respected news titles to be a major bullwark against misinformation. It’s try they are a bullwark. But I don’t think communications needs to sit back and relax.
So, if news titles, and sorry I’m calling them that rather than news brands, are looking to invest in tools to weed out misinformation and disinformation then that’s something public sector comms needs to look at.
What’s also really interesting is the line that AI tools are changing audience expectation. If they think news titles should be getting better at delivering targeted information that’s something the institutions of state need to look at. That includes the NHS, councils, fire and police, too.
People talk about the importance of fresh air and exercise and then often don’t follow it up. The OS app was my discovery in lockdown when we couldn’t travel far.
