Final Spin

Social media watcher Prof. Bill Sledzik and a colleague interviewed Brian Connolly, one of the creators of the blog character of Amanda Chapel, the fictional PR professional who allegedly wrote the Strumpette blog.

Those of us who were lurking in the dark recesses of PR blogs way back in 2006 have to remember Chapel. After all, she was custom-made to draw the attention of geeky flacks, she was loud and provocative, she was alluring and she wrote good copy (at least at first). The authors did their best to fuel the speculations about her identity, although the fact that ‘she’ was an experiment in social media was fairly obvious – I always felt sorry for the few poor gullible souls who believed in her existence. I stopped following the Strumpette’s adventures after a couple of months as the novelty wore off and quality declined, but Chapel’s production team kept the show going for a lot longer.

Anyway, Sledzik posted portions of the interview on his blog. They are much too short, but it still does a good job of documenting a small piece of seedy PR social media history. As a bonus, you get Connolly’s musings about the current state of the PR social media practices. The journey starts here.