“This decade’s over. Let’s get a better one going”
Reveler, David Fraley, in Las Vegas
“AT&T latest to end sponsorship of Tiger Woods”
Social Media
One way to connect with customers
I love how Discount Tire let’s you do a free tire pressure check.
Makes me think of them as ‘helpful’ not ‘cheap.’
Crowd-sourcing: we are smarter than me
On to the second C I talk about: the wisdom of the crowds concept, and the belief that “the people formerly known as incompetent” can actually make great contributions.
I see this in organizations where everyone may not be a ‘communicator’ but there are many who can be Antennas, Filters or Connectors.
The best examples of crowd sourcing tend to be in journalism. Two great sites come to mind:
- Oh My News – the earliest citizen journalism site that began in South Korea.
- Spot.Us – a community-funded news site I came to discover this year and support.
However, in two other very different areas we see it in action:
- Google used our collective results for influenza related searches and came up with the Google Flu tracker.
- Starbucks tapped into its customer base with MyStarbiucksIdea
Bottom line: People will contribute their ideas and when they do it is up to someone in the organization to recognize it, map it, use it.
Collaboration: It’s flowing in our veins
This is about the first of the 4Cs –the power (and the potential) to collaborate.
Like you, I occasionally come across people who find it hard to work in the same sand box. But the good thing is these people and these instances are few and far between.
They are typically suspicious of newbies, protective of their work (or job description), or have an inflated opinion of their contribution to the big picture. (Someone down the road handed them the biggest crayon in the box, and they’re still holding onto it!)
But just looking around, we see plenty of examples and tools that enable collaboration. My favorite examples are how easy it is to work together on a document, via a wiki such as WetPaint, or a sharing tool such as Google docs.
Collaboration is much more than the ‘two heads are better than one’ concept, even though that’s at its core. It’s not something that only came about with the Facebook generation, either.
Two very different examples:
1. Butterflies:
I recall a project called Journey North that began somewhere in 2002. One of the collaborative projects involved students from Canada, the U.S. and Mexico collaborating on collecting data to track the journey of the Monarch butterfly. Some 300,000 students from 6,000 schools have taken part in this!
2. Media coverage
In 2008, for four days gunmen took over and terrorised hotels and other building sin the heart of Mumbai, India. Cell phone networks were overloaded, media were unable to get close to the shootings, and the bets reports were coming via text messages and via Twitter.
Within minutes, a journalism professor Sree Sreenivasan from Columbia University pulled together a radio show via a blog platform called BlogTalkRadio to cover the event using Mumbai-based media people, experts on Homeland Security and others.
So whether it is GoogleWave today, or BlogTalkRadio last year, we know that we all have the collaborative gene in us. The organizations we work for often urge us to be involved. In the past that has meant ‘anything but PR/marketing, corporate communications’ since they employed special people for that. Today, many employers —and government–realize that unless they tap into the collective brainpower through collaborative policies and tools, they could be left behind.
Summing up 2009: 4Cs of Communication
It’s been a totally unpredictable year for me, as I am sure it was for you.
While I wanted to say Thank You to my readers, friends and family, former colleagues at ASU, I also wanted to share with all of you the core of what I believe in when it comes to the intersection of traditional and new media.
I call it the Four Cs. I realize there may be five, or seven. But think of these as four lenses through which you could clarify what’s happening to marketing, PR, media and advertising. It was a result of a mixed year.
- It was an exciting year. I had a front seat in seeing communication change at a once top-down, yet collaborative environment such as Arizona State University (population 68,000 +) as faculty, staff and naysayers shifted gears to experiment with and then embrace social media.
- It was a tough year. I travelled to Sri Lanka for a final goodbye to my dear sister, and experienced how the real power of community works minus Facebook and Tweetdeck.
- It was a landmark year, when took the bold –some say much belated– step of hanging out my own shingle with Public Radius.
- It was a year of experimentation. I’ve recorded conversations with people in coffee shops, interviewed others via Skype, done a series of ‘Twinterviews,’ and even conducted a video conference for the State Department. While at ASU, I got into podcasting (covered topics such as the outbreak of swine flu), helped organizations and individuals start blogging for a variety of reasons –from job seeking to external communications.
So as we close out on 2009, I plan to condense the four things that I have learned. The starting Monday, I will cover them:
Collaboration. Crowd-sourcing. Content Curation. Community.
I hope they are valuable. Enjoy!
Quotes for the week ending 26 Dec, 2009
“Easily mistaken for a universal remote, the Pepper Pad was really just a Linux-based mobile computer … that was purported to make it easy to operate from non-traditional work spaces (like poolside or in your favorite armchair).”
Fast Company, on the smart watches, remotes, control devices and laptops that didn’t make it in the ‘Aughties’
“I’m going on record and saying it –Hewlett Packard computers are racist.”
Store employee, Desi, in purported demo, about the facial tracking technology of an HP computer webcam that doesn’t follow him, a Black, while it does so when a White colleague enters the frame.”
“We believe that the camera might have difficulty “seeing” contrast in conditions where there is insufficient foreground lighting.”
HP’s Frosty, on Voodoo Blog, about the flap over its Media Smart cameras being ‘racist’.
“We invite you to connect with us on the discussion boards and forums here on The Next Bench or on Twitter at @HP_PC.”
Hewlett Packard’s response, attempting to manage the PR fallout, using social media
“Meanwhile, the tech-bloggers trembled all year at (as yet unfulfilled) rumors of an Apple tablet.”
Fast Company, on the Amazon Kindle –one of the top gadgets of the decade.
Video can be great. Cameras can be dangerous…
When I talk to people about why video can be a powerful tool, it’s easy to oversimplify and talk about producing in-house vlogs. But if you look at the variations, you’ll see they could range from citizen journalism submissions, to ‘anonymous’ viral stories, to damaging claims, to pranks. Hers are three uses of video that can make or break a brand’s reputation.
These two will go down in the books as the best and worst of how video mined social media in 2009.
Samsung created this contrived piece for Smart Led technology:
Hewlett Packard, on the other hand is at the receiving end, responding to this direct, damaging claim about its facial tracking technology in its web cams
And speaking of being at the receiving end, here’s how another brand faced the music, so to speak. My all time favorite this year.
What are your most memorable videos for 2009? Share a link with my readers, and us why video matters.
Testing Flickr-to-blog option
This is a test post from 
, a fancy photo sharing thing.
The above line was sent via the Flickr site.
Tiger endorsement – not!
Is this one of the worst puns, or what?
Quotes for the week ending 12 Dec, 09
“However Mr. Jobs, now that you got into this mess …You are the only person who can get our APPS ‘everywhere.’ despite the fact that their MAPS have blanketed the country.
Commenter named Gary of Chicago, on the Advertising Age story on how Verizon Wireless created buzz for the Droid phone –a distinct shift in the way a carrier is advancing the popularity of a handset.
“And, the warning? Don’t read too many blog posts like this.”
43 Folders, on NaNoWriMo
“Living Stories,”
Google’s experimental project to save newspapers, featuring content from New York Times and the Washington Post
“Our role is actually stronger than ever, because we are more than just a magazine … to promote travel around the state.”
Robert Stieve, editor of Arizona Highways magazine
“When you’re using search engines, you’ve got to be diligent. You can’t trust that just because it’s Number 2 or Number 1, it really is…”
Jim Stickey, on how fake web sites trick search engines which become ‘unwitting accomplices’ of Google, Yahoo and Microsoft.
“Industry Listening Program”
Hoipolloireport 