Two years we highlighted the UK government’s decision to shun social media and opt for magazines and television in educating the young of Britain about the dangers of Chlamydia, Gonorrhoea and other sexual diseases. This decision flew in the face of research showing that most young people took advice about sexual matters from their peers (=social networks) rather than from information campaigns of any kind. The decision has had disastrous consequences for many young Britons. A report now highlights that sexually transmitted diseases are running at their highest rates since the 1970’s, particularly amongst the under-25s.

[Update] More on the woeful uptake of Chlamydia testing. “The shortfall has been blamed on … problems engaging young people,” writes the BBC’s Nick Triggle.

After a few informal trials, the UK Conservative party leader David Cameron has - according to the Guardian - started blogging - video blogging - about what the Conservatives are doing. Since the link they point at is down, and giving a Bad Request, invalid hostname error, it is hard to judge their efforts. Webcameron.org.uk seems to be valid, so it must be a screw-up. Perfect Day of 14-15 D’Arblay Street, London, W1F 8DZ are the registrants. Googling them gives you this flash-heavy Pilates site.

Technical boo-boos aside, you have to applaud the initiative. I was particularly struck by Cameron in the Guardian’s account describing what they are doing as “shaky and wobbly”. It certainly is. It is hard to communicate in a new medium and Cameron is right to massage expectations downwards. He will get attacked for doing it, but the people who attack him for it will be exactly the right kinds of enemies to make … crusty old hacks from the mainstream media. It is a good plan to go direct to the public, if you can. And thanks to the web, now you can.

Speaking at AD:tech this week I was struck by how much the currency of this new world is indeed the currency of politicians - opinions, polls, samples. The big brands now have to behave like political brands, which is what they are. They have to test opinion, engage in dialogue and build consensus around what they are doing.

[Update]  The site is now live and the url working.  And it is pretty good - not too long waiting for the videos to cue.  The open blog feature seems popular.

Next week, Market Sentinel is taking on a work experience student (summer intern). He is Amnon Ferber from University College School in North London. We do this as often as we can. We find school leavers are best, because they haven’t learnt bad habits! We give them reading lists, encourage them to get involved in open source programming, teach them how software development works and how to marshall their thoughts. One of our work experience guys from a previous incarnation, Adam Langley, has ended up working for Google. We tend to end up employing our work experience students irregularly during their college years, giving them interesting problems to solve, pieces of programming, systems administration conundrums to solve. Our ambition is to give them work indefinitely.

I took my approach to talent spotting from working at Amazon. At Amazon I was staggered by the amount of time devoted to head-hunting the most talented programmers. Frequently very senior executives would spend 50% of their working day locating and interviewing talented people. It is an approach that pays dividends. Wealth creation in high technology business is all about finding brilliant people and persuading them to come work with you.

Given what I know about the prospects for this company and those like it I am frequently surprised by how few students are interested in programming. This is a finding confirmed by a UK report, which announces: “a 50% drop in applications for computer-related degrees, a 60% drop in software engineering students and a 47% drop in systems engineering students”.

Market Sentinel already uses a variety of software designers in Ukraine, New Zealand, the Philippines and Sri Lanka for our work. The lack of a UK skills base in programming will result in more and more of this kind of work going overseas, but much more seriously it will mean that there is less likelihood of the Market Sentinels of the future being developed here. This is a bad thing for the UK economy.

UK government minister David Milliband has announced plans for a blog. Several European politicians blog including Margot Wallstrom and (allegedly - although I can’t find a link) Romano Prodi.

Mark Rogers, CEO of Market Sentinel, will be talking to Tyler Brule of BBC4’s The Desk on Tuesday 3rd May 2005. The interview will cover buzz tracking during this UK election, and to how the same techniques are being employed in corporate monitoring. Tune in at 10pm.