Social Media

Copyright discussion through blatant copying

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

This video about ‘fair use’ using the most copyrighted characters in the world, is remarkable.

There are visible traces of Lawrence Lessig (who appears in the credits.)

The whole fair use debate is something that needs to be kept alive. Based on the original Fair Use Doctrine, various interpretations have been made on the four pillars of that doctrine: the intent, nature, ‘substantiality‘ (a terrible word that describes how much of content is used) and  the commercial impact of copying/use.

Not too long ago the Associated Press roiled up a lot of people when it declared fair use meant  the right to use just four words, beyond which they had to pay them! After much criticism, AP came to a setlement with the Drudge Report, and bloggers in general.

But as Clarlotte-Anne Lucas, a former journalist, noted, (See no AP, speak no AP, link no AP) there is a double standard, in that the AP can quote a blogger without making a payment for content pulled off a blog, but it wants bloggers to pay them for using AP content.

These issues will keep coming back, whether it is the intellectual property grandstanding of music companies, media companies, or … who knows, blog aggregator companies who could soon realize that there is gold in them posts. That’s why ongoing discourses like the video above matter.

Crowdsourcing a textbook, Wikinomics experiment in the making

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This is not the textbook approach to writing a textbook.  But then again, it’s a book on the topic of ‘Management through collaboration‘ so it would be a missed opportunity -dumb, almost– not to tap into the collaborative potential of social media.

Charles Wankel, calling himself ‘author and organizer’ describes this task as “a new authoring structure,” a 640-page book that will be “produced using an immense network of coauthors” –926 co-authors to be precise.

The web site, features a deep list of academics from all corners of the world (Botswana, Bangladesh, , Greece, India, Turkey, Slovak Republic etc)

It’s a social media experiment on a grand scale. The authors are supposed to contribute via an invitation-only wiki. They were sourced via LinkedIn. The book has an accompanying blog that for the moment, however, is not well updated. But it is indeed a demonstration of the principle of Wikinomics. The idea that mass collaboration will become the new normal, where ‘static, immovable, noneditable items will be anathema…”

Quotes for the week ending 13 Sept, 2008

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“Google is the oxygen in this ecosystem”

John Battelle, journalist and author, commenting on the company called Google that started out in this garage on 7 September, 2008.

“I had thought 51 years of rough-and-tumble journalism in Washington made me more enemies than friends, but my recent experience suggests the opposite may be the case.”

Robert Novak, longtime journalist, columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times who was disgnosed with brain cancer.

“In an age when politics is choreographed, voters watch out for the moments when the public-relations facade breaks down and venom pours through the cracks.”

Nick Cohen, The observer, UK

“Colgate University Has an Official Twitterer. World Yawns.”

Headline for article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, about how the university is using micro-blogging.

“The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.”

Steve Jobs, using the Mark Twain line to open his address at a Mac event.

“It works like predictive texting. You start to type in a word…it suggests what you might mean to say. Like….you start to type in “stre”, and it might suggest “street view” or “utter lack of privacy” or “you only need to sign off 3,793 papers to get your face off our program”

Jodie Andrefsky, with a cynical take on Google’s claim to ‘anonymize’ people’s searches on the new web browser, Chrome.

“Houston, we have a PR problem! I’d offer the McCain campaign some PR advice, but I can’t seem to stop laughing…”

Len Gutman, at ValleyPRBlog, a on Saragh Palin’s PR nightmares.

“Good journalism is essential to democracy. With good journalism, you have good government.”

Calvin Trillin, hournalist, poet and author (A Heckuva Job: More of the Bush Administration in Rhyme), who will speak at ASU on 30 September, 2008

“We become the proverbial, ‘just stopping in for a cup of coffee don’t have time to chat social network user’.”

Mark Meyer, Director of e-commerce and interactive marketing for Emerson Direct, a fellow blogger at SocialMediaToday.com“

Cut to the chase with visualization

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Despite what your position may be on Shell, you have to admit it invests a lot on visualizing the energy future –“more energy, less carbon dioxide”–it is grappling with, for good or ill. This is the stuff that gets churned out in white papers, and high-brow academic gatherings, but doesn’t often trickle down to the hoi polloi. We know by now that spreadsheets and PPT decks make people’s eyes glaze over..

In Shell’s 2050, post-Kyoto energy scenario, the visualization lets you pick a year from 2015 through 2050, and look at several factors that come into play in a planet that will be home to 9.5 billion in 2050; the ‘picture’ looks grim/complicated, even from within the cheerful graphics. It makes you want to do something whether it is to invest in fuel cells or reduce your carbon footprint.

Visualization is that great lens that puts data in context, and moves us to take action, even if it starts off with clicking a button. It can be as simple as being a dynamic feed. Check WorldoMeters.info. The speed at which you ‘see’ top-soil erosion taking place, and ‘dollars spent on dieting in the USA’ will give you a jolt!

We use similar, but more complex visualization tools to create scenarios like this at the Decision Theater. The most interesting one, WaterSim, lets people simulate a drought and see the effects on agriculture and lifestyle choices. The challenge is to take this complexity that works well in our immersive environment (the ‘drum’) and render it in a webified environment.

Looking around at so many data-rich web sites, I could see why many sites are begging to be rendered with more visualization. Those of us writing or designing data sheets and white papers will have to recognize some hard realities:

  • New platforms. People will use new devices and platforms to interact with our information via small screens, on high-res devices, and those capable of and hungry for animation.
  • Audience habits: Readers will demand to ‘snack’ on information, before they dig deep. Will our web pages and PDF’s cut to the chase? What’s a ‘media snack?” Check this out.
  • Time shifting. Information might be accessed (downloaded, snacked on) via one platform, consumed on another. Will the visual appeal transfer? Quality isn’t the issue, but compatibility. CNN stories watched on a high-def monitor still transfer to grainy formats on YouTube.

Visualization poses many challenges, but they are grood ones, because they force us to distil information, and give it more context.

This Twitter song’s destined to go viral

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

Here’s a hilarious song that’s going to spread because, well, it’s all about how things spread via social media.

The writer is Ben Walker, who makes wry comments on where all this is going. Such as:

“Now you need to publish every movement
And every single thought to cross your mind
I’m told the Twitterverse is full of rubbish
But most of us are actually quite refined”

And there’s the dig at self-promotion:

”We validate each other’s insecurities
And brag about the gadgets that we’ve bought
We laugh out loud at every hint of jolliness
And try to self-promote without being caught.”

Listen to it here.

..and Sarah gets a fake blog

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

You’re not someone until you get a fake blog. Sarah Palin has joined the ranks of CEO’s who’ve had the dubious honor of having fake blogs after them.

Palin has not just one parody site, whatssarahthinking.com, but two: Palindrome.

And what’s a fake blog without a fake Twitter account? There’s the Fake SarahPalinTwitter, and the other Twitter account on her behalf by an ardent fan.

With so much social media around McCain’s VP, who needs the facts?

“Rumor” about Jobs, a symptom of things to come

/ Angelo Fernando / 1 Comment

Steve Jobs brushed it off with a slide. He used the Mark Twain line to note that the rumor of his death had been greatly exaggerated.

The rumor, was not a rumor but a publishing mistake –going live with a story that should have been behind a firewall. Bloomberg is not the first to make this new-media error.

The copy had the usual safeguards: “HOLD FOR RELEASE – DO NOT USE – HOLD FOR RELEASE – DO NOT USE.” There were placeholders such as “IF STOCK DROPS” leading into a sentence “…The decline is no surprise to investors…” All good intentioned.

But in the rush to do things to meet unforgiving deadlines, to hit the newsstands, and sate the digital newsfeeds, publishing must take these risks. Are we moving too fast, where we might accidentally push the button that could affect the stock price of a company?

Rumors –especially the online kind– are nothing new. United Airlines’ stock was a victim of a rumor just this week, while Yahoo! (temporarily) benefitted from the Microsoft takeover rumor that turned out to be more than a rumor.

Rumor is being slipped into the PR toolbox because it goes well with viral. Recently, there was one about the –ready for this?- Apple Nano iPhone. If you replace “rumor” with “forecast” a lot of this might make sense. The Nano iPhone story was based on a “forecast” using “unnamed sources in the supply channel.”

As we accelerate our marketing, our PR and how we generate news about organizations we represent, news, forecasting and speculating could begin to blur.

Dan Lyons, who once created the now-retired Fake Steve blog, didn’t mince his words describing Gawker, which republished the Bloomberg gaffe as “filthy hacks,” ending also with “Great work, Bloomberg. You dopes.”

Quotes for the week ending 6 September, 2008

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“Most people know the staff at the local Starbucks better than McCain knows Palin”

David Mark and Fred Barbash, of Politico, about John McCain’s Vice Presidential pick.

“It won’t work. This is a nation that elected men with such middle names as Gamaliel, Milhous and Rudolph. This also is the home of Elvis, Madonna, Oprah and Rush. We love unusual names.”

David Walters, at the Washington Post, commenting on Ann Coulter’s attempt to make Barack Obama look dangerous by calling him B. Husein Obama.

“Apparently tweeting, friending and linking have not infiltrated popular culture as much as one might think.”

Tanya Irwin, of Online Media Daily, commenting on a global study by Synovate that found that 58% of people aren’t familiar with social networking.

“You actually spend more time in your browser than you do in your car.”

Brian Rakowski, a Google group product manager, commenting on its new browser, Chrome.

“fashion is no longer a rich man’s privilege”.

Priya Tanna, editor of Vogue India, who draped flashy fashion accessories on ordinary Indians for a photo shoot for the August issue, responding to New York Times, which criticized the effort.

“Standing on that stage, I saw past the balloons, confetti and cheers. I was left with a singular image. One of a man who will take his improbable journey and draw from it at every turn to change our country and our world for the better.”

Meghan McCain, daughter of John McCain, on her blog that chronicles the presidential campaign from the inside.


Attacking journalists, sign of times

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In the lead up to the hurricane that never was, even as other social media came on board,  Craigslist became a place for questions and answers, even debate. A Canadian news crew was looking for a boat, but I noticed how one post from a journalist looking for accommodation received a very rude response. It seemed out of place in the flood of generosity pouring in through the site.

But it was not really out of context at this particular time, when some sectors of the media appear to paint themselves into a corner. Great example of this was in the coverage of Sarah Palin.

In an attempt to give depth, the media is perceived always sniffing around for the scandal, the conspiracy, the skeleton in the closet.

I watched a news item on CNN, where Anderson Cooper asked if it was relevant to for the media to go after the story about Palin’s daughter’s pregnancy. Cooper gave it his best concerned look, as if he was standing outside of “the media” –as if his rhetorical question was not a thinly disguised attempt to open that can of worms. They opened that can much earlier, even while using iReport.com to ask people to comment on Palin, and then by promptly doing a story on the ’emotional’ response to the out-of-wedlock baby.

So no wonder that people ridicule the genuine reporter’s attempts to go after the news. No wonder the cry against sexism, and indecency, and that direct attack by Palin last evening. She obviously had the standard ‘liberal media’ talking points, but at this moment in time, they were quite relevant.