In February 2010 the leading Sustainable Business and CSR thinker, Fabian Pattburg, wrote a blog entitled, Facebook – A useful Sustainability and CSR platform?  In it he concluded that Facebook wasn’t a great platform for sustainability. 

February 2010.  In the world of social media that’s a lifetime ago.  Or even two.  So I want to suggest that in 2012 Facebook will become the central place for communications, information sharing and discussion about sustainability.  And that will be true for NGO’s, businesses, the media and journalist.  In fact anyone who is interested in the issues and wants to further their impact and profile.  So if you’ve not got a presence on Facebook you’d better get one; and fast.

It’s been a good couple of weeks for communicators who happen to be fans of The Archers on BBC Radio 4.  Hasn’t the on-going story line of Pat and Tony Archers’ business falling off the cliff and almost taking Tom’s – their son – sausage business with it been fascinating?

For those of you who are not quite up to speed on this here is a short résumé.   Thanks to Clarrie Grundy returning to work in the dairy too soon after an illness, some of Pat and Tony’s customers picked up an e-coli infection from eating Bridge Farm yoghurt.  Two children ended up seriously ill in hospital.  It was big news.  Sales dropped, customers deserted them and supermarket contracts were cancelled.  The Bridge Farm brand became toxic, and infected their veg business and Tom’s sausages.

What a week it’s been.  From a story that has bubbled around for a couple of year and stayed in the realms of politicians and celebrities to an explosion of industry rocking proportions.  At the end of which the 168 year old title which was the News of the World is closed.  And hasn’t it been exciting with so much of the drama being played out on Twitter.  From tracking the news as it broke – even before it broke – to seeing the speed and impact of the campaigns against advertisers as they started, gained traction and had impact within a matter of hours.  But to claim it was “Twitter what won it”, as so many have, over plays its role and in a small way shows that while Twitter is a serious news tool, it is also ephemeral and prone to over blown hyperbole.

For any travel PRs out there, the World Travel Market (WTM) at the Excel in London is a biggie.  With over 3,000 attending journalists, it’s the perfect opportunity for a bit of old fashioned networking. 

But gone are the days of sending out press notices and ringing round journalists to see if anyone is interested in meeting up. This year it was all about Twitter. In fact, whilst WTM was all about discovering journeys to far off places, for me it became a journey of discovery to not only the usefulness of social media tools such as Twitter, but also the addictiveness of it!