Social Media

Quotes for the week ending 19 Jan, 2008

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

“I am particularly glad that The Future of Ideas is now freely licensed.  … I’m glad it now has a chance to flow a bit more freely.”

Larry Lessig, on news that his book (published by Random House in September last year), is now available as a free download under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license.

“I know you are supposed to put the “5 W’s” in the first paragraph of a release, but if it was me, I’d want to see this right off the top.”

Charlote Risch, at ValleyPRBlog, on an announcement of a partnership between CBS Radio and North Central News, a local newspaper in Phoenix.

“We call them lifeaholics.”

Hillary Benjamin, senior marketing director at Equinox Fitness Club, on the provocative ad campaign it launched through Fallon Worldwide, aimed an a professional, urban audience with high household income.

“Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.”

The new definition of marketing, as defined by the American Marketing Association.

“… they followed the rules of the game – but the game had changed. It went from billiards to soccer.”

Jeremy Pepper, on POP! PR Jots on “truth versus blogosphere truth,” commenting on the often misrepresented case about Kryptonite’s PR, and how bloggers rush to contribute to the echo chamber without checking their facts.

“This is a chance for writers to do what they do best–be original and tell stories.”

Writers Guild of America, quoted in MediaPost, on an online site StrikeTV, to be launched in February.

“We are at a huge crossroads in this industry, and they know it. They want to take our entire body of work, and give us this (makes gesture) give us zero for it.”

Luisa Leschin, via video, who worked on all 120 episodes of The George Lopez Show, and was co-exec producer.

“Flickr Commons” needs your help

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

This should have been included in my previous post.

Flickr has partnered with the Library of Congress in something called the Flickr Commons. The LOC has team allowed the photo sharing site to use 1,500 of its photographs (from its 1 million page catalog) on Flickr.

The more important part of this is the fact that the LOC is asking for your collaboration –to tag the photos.

This particular photograph is from a series from the Bain News Service, from 1910-1912.

Thanks for Hyperbio for this.

Rewriting your job description?

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The new media will rewrite your job description before your boss does. That’s the reality of many professions, particularly those connected to or dependent on information industries –and which aren’t?

Change is hard, and threatening. Digital culture is fraught with problems as I noted in my assessment of The Cult of the Amateur, but that does not mean we ought to fear or reject it.

Jeff Jarvis, a professor in journalism makes an interesting point (Fighting the future) about naive and dangerous thinking within J-schools right now, about the kind of experimentation newsrooms in print and electronic media need to indulge in to participate in the era of democratized content.

Most jobs today require collaboration and sharing, but digital culture is making us do it in newer ways. Almost every meeting I sit in includes a discussion about setting up a wiki. Photo sharing isn’t just for amateurs or for building albums to share with grandma. Many of the Pros are on to this. I found this picture (on the left) covering the recent California fires. It’s from a collection of images by Alex Miroshnichenko, a freelance photographer based in Southern California, who’s made them available on Flickr. In case you cannot recognize it, it’s a melted stop sign.

Speaking of sharing, Christopher Sessums director of the office of distance education at the University of Florida is someone who blogs on EduSpaces, a social networking site around education. His job description goes as: “Coordinating resources for faculty & administrators to produce online degree programs & courses.” But he refers to himself by two words: “change agent.” His thinking is indeed all about adapting to change, writing on topics such as the future of knowledge portals – how library web sites need to be a cross between Wikipedia and Amazon.

“Imagine a space where librarians upload mp3s, pictures (png, jpg), text (links to texts, outside sources/links), movies (mpg, mov, wmv). Associated with each file “pile” is a place for users/librarians to add comments, additional links, photos, user feedback/conversation.”

More like chief disruptor.

What does your job title say about you? Seat warmer or change agent?

“I have good news, and bad news. Which do you want to hear first?”

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We’re all too familiar with the “give me the bad news first” scenario.

Kathy Kerchner’s post about Wells Fargo is worth looking at from a communications standpoint. As Kerchner observed, “never underestimate the media’s desire to focus on ‘what’s wrong,’ not on ‘what’s right.’ ” Wells Fargo essentially had a good news story that got upstaged by a bad news scenario framed by a loaded reference (to the Great Depression.) We communicators always push people in the organization to use colorful examples –stripped of insider jargon– when speaking to the media. But how they use the quote is never within our control.

If I am to switch hats for a moment, as a writer I always look for those colorful quotes because they tell me something about the problem of opportunity, often the back story. A metaphor sometimes humanizes a very complex topic. (For an example of this, see my weekly roundup of quotes for the week, that I pick because they succinctly describe in a few words the issue.) It is very tempting to lead with a negative statement, and follow it up with a positive one. This does not necessarily mean the writer is obsessed with bad news, just that he/she is seeing the story in a problem/solution format.

Here’s a story from NPR yesterday about “dozens of bald eagles” that died when they dove into a truck loaded with fish guts, and got into a feeding frenzy. Terrible story, but guess what? Although 20 eagles died in the mishap, 30 were rescued. Was this a good news or a bad news story? The headline was “20 eagles die, 30 recovering after feeding frenzy.” It could have been worse, in the Wells Fargo story approach: “Alaska cannery blamed for death of 20 bald eagles.”

Combative use of social media in Writer’s Strike

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Just like anything else in the mass- and narrow media world, the Writers’ strike has some interesting ripple effects . The Golden Globes was canceled, NBC has to refund up to $15 million in advertising, and has got creative with promos, while affiliated industries and their supporting artists –hair dressers, limo drivers, party organizers etc are losing out too.

Of course, everything’s connected to everything else –nothing new if you’re dabbling in social media. BBC is now reporting that YouTube and other video sites are seeing a lift in. viewership.

Which brings me to United Hollywood, the blog for the Writers Guild of America. They have a YouTube site where they chronicle everything they are fighting about, most of which is about being paid for content distributed online.

It gets better. One video, featuring the exec producer of Private Practice announces that WGA is ‘hosting’ an annual short film contest -basically soliciting user generated content (think of the irony here!) on themes such as –are you ready for this?– “why sharing is nice,” “show the moguls why the internet has value..” “why animation writing is writing,” etc. Videos need to be a maximum length of 4 minutes, could be from any genre (even mockumentary!) and needs to end with the line “We’re all on the same page.” The contest ends Feb 20th.

So far there are 92 videos, including this one addressing Rupert Murdock and his “holy grail” quote. Brilliant!

Visualization meets communication – my new job

/ Angelo Fernando / 2 Comments

A new phase of my career kicked in this week at ASU. I’ve joined the Decision Theater. A perfect fit for my deep interest in technology and collaborative media.

Excuse the brochure-speak, but if you’ve never stepped into an “immersive environment” on the edge of information technology this is it. The thing that strikes me is how useful it would be to apply this blend of informatics and visualization to other disciplines. Marketers and analysts who value pattern recognition will relate to this high end visualization.

If you’ve dabbled in database mismanagement, you know that spreadsheets and bar charts in spiral-bound books don’t quite set people’s heartbeats racing. Which would you prefer: reading a 90-page document on the ‘water atlas’ or moving a slider to see what happens to the community when reservoir levels dip? Data in 3D, and information presented as alternative scenarios make us want to do something, because we don’t live in one dimensional worlds.

Speaking of which, there was a lot of talk in the last year that the web as we know it is quietly gravitating to a “3D web.” For now it’s a visually interactive web, but the visualization part is making quantum leaps.

Let me know if you would like to see what the future of decision making looks like.

Quotes for the week ending 5 Jan, 2008

/ Angelo Fernando / 1 Comment

“You and I will heal this nation and repair the world and finally have an America that we can believe in again in four days time.”

Barack Obama, in New Hampshire, following his win in Iowa. (Quoted in The New York Times)

“Though it’s tempting to get into a race where your aim becomes to reach 1000 followers on Twitter or and equally high number of Facebook friends, it doesn’t offer anything more than a temporary ego boost. “

Rohit Bhargava of Influential Marketing, on one of the three things he plans to do in 2008, including “making better friends.”

“The key is little ‘m’ media – the information, the experiences, and the stuff that we consume and share every day.”

Brian Reich, on how organizations need to change the way they approach media.

“Make no mistake, the Web is taking over. Applications are moving to browsers en masse…”

Washington Post’s 25 most innovative products of the year.

“I equate social networks to snowflakes, no two are the same.”

Tom Whittaker, responding to post by Krishna De on Facebook (which she calls relaxed and eclectic) and LinkedIn (which she says is used by people in Leadership roles.

“It’s very ‘fudgable’ “

Dan Wool, on the Business Journal’s top 10 list of PR agencies in Phoenix using head count as one of the criteria, being flawed.

“Users can restrict who sees their information, and block users”

“Computing Which?” magazine, quoted in Media Guardian, on why Bebo beat Facebook and MySpace among social networking sites.

“Sack the political thug!”

Editorial in Leader Newspapers on Sri Lankan Cabinet minister Mervyn Silva who stormed a government TV station and had red paint thrown on him as he was ‘rescued’ by police. The station broadcast the embarrassing saga live.

Technologies I’ll be watching

/ Angelo Fernando / 2 Comments

What’s a “cross browser?” Heard of Wikiversity? How would you operate a virtual office?

For my technology coverage this year I plan to pay some attention to Microsoft Silverlight, or what they refer as to the next generation media experience using a cross browser. Wikiversity, by the folks who gave us Wikimedia bears watching for anyone involved in education and knowledge management.

The virtual office is coming of age. Zoho offers online-offline virtual office features that make Google docs (something I have used a lot) look quite tame. Zohomail has multi language support, apart from calendaring, groupspace etc.

What to look for in social media in 2008

/ Angelo Fernando / 2 Comments

After the mixed bag of social media triumphs and hiccups last year, here are some positive things to watch out for in the new year:

1. Coming clean. Wal-mart’s site, Working Families for Walmart, has moved the project in house, out of PR Agency Edelman. You may recall astroturfing issue over the original fake blog, or flog.

2. Publishing and Crowdsourcing. The book on Crowdsourcing by Jeff Howe (to be published by Random House early 2008) used the concept of wisdom of the crowds to create a book jacket.They call it ‘coversourcing‘ and you can participate. Entries close on 10 February 2008.

3. Intranet makeovers. Social networks have given organizations a taste of how to (un)manage employee communications. Marc Wright has a great how to article in the Jan-Feb issue of CW (membership required) about how to dip ones toes into web 2.0 with what organizations already have: the staff directory, video library, a project wiki and a user group.

4. Social media knowledge distribution: Combine the spark generated by wireless book readers such as Kindle and the trends such as the OpenCourseWare initiative (by MIT,) and it is entirely possible for knowledge industries to give users new ways to access content.

5. Niche marketing to cell phones. This is a wild card. A lot depends on how much of social media nodes and features cell phone carriers incorporate into handsets and service plans. Even without their help, as we have more points of access via Bluetooth and WiFi, we could be using our phones to do more. We could ‘attend’ events targeted at small groups, and participate/collaborate live via phones rather than laptops.