Check the Brian Lehrer show report the results here.
Quotes of the week: 6th October 2007
“People treat the New Marketing like a kid with a twenty-dollar bill at an ice cream parlor. They keep wanting to add more stuff—more candy bits and sprinkles and cream and cherries. The dream is simple: “If we can just add enough of [today’s hot topping], everything will take care of itself.”
Seth Godin on Meatball Mondae, a weekly post about Meatball Sundae, a book on making wise new media choices that will be published in December.
“Guantánamo Bay is the anti-Statue of Liberty.”
Thomas Friedman, on why the US should start exporting hope, not fear.
“Demographics are what media is bought by and what media properties define themselves by … targeting by customer passion rather than demographics can make your marketing messages more relevant.”
Rohit Bhargava, on the need to think outside the demographic.
“The advertising industry can only benefit from an image that’s a lot less country club and a little more Facebook.”
Editorial in Advertising Age, on why the just concluded Advertising Week showcasing veterans, mascots and luminaries has hit a wall.
Citizendium, Mahalo, Wikispaces: alternatives worth looking at
If all you’ve been hearing lately (even here!) is news about Facebook, Google, and Wikipedia, it’s about time to mention some alternatives I’ve been tracking.
Citizendium: a wiki for people who can’t stand the rules of engagement established by Wikipedia’s founders about NPOV or” neutral point of view.” This alternative doesn’t let people use pseudonyms such as “WizardDuck,” and welcomes the general public and experts –meaning those who represent organizations, including professional communicators, PR agencies etc. It has lofty goals, to “soon attempt to unseat Wikipedia.”
Mahalo: The human-powered search engine as it calls itself. “Say goodbye to spam, mediocre content and deceptive sites,” it says, taking a thinly-disguised whack at Google. Search results are built in a “greenhouse” where style guides and part-time guides manage content.
One more alternative if you’re thinking about creating your own Wiki.
WikiSpaces: Despite the goofy logo, it’s an easy to create wiki for any personal project. Just like PBWiki, and Wetpaint, but with a lot more intuitive functions.
Facebook profiles: proceed with caution
File this under “what were they thinking.”
People, or even organizations –or someone creating a Facebook profile on behalf of one– uploading stupid pictures of themselves. I am sure many universities see a lot of this, and you have to wonder how these kids expect to enter the job market in a few years when every HR person will conduct some due diligence on social networks. (BTW, good article in WIRED this month on border agents using Google!)
A recent case makes the point. Recruits of the Canadian Border Services in Quebec posted images of themselves, um, imbibing, posting lots of comments unbecoming of any organization, let alone a government agency. An investigation is going on.
Earlier this year an RA at Ohio State University found out that his Facebook pictures could cost him his job and his dorm room.
And we haven’t even touched on the stupid things people upload to YouTube.
Interesting crowdsourcing experiment on radio
I am working on an article on citizen journalism, and came across this experiment being conducted on the Brian Lehrer show on WNYC.
They’re doing a story on price gouging, and put out a call to people to “report” back on the price of three simple items at the grocery store: milk, beer and lettuce. The request went out on Sept 24th, and they have until tomorrow, Oct 4th, to file their reports in, via the web site.
They have to give the following details:
-The prices of these goods
-The neighborhood where you bought them (please give exact address, or at least the block and cross street)
-The name of the supermarket
-Any distinguishing characteristic (e.g. local bodega, high-end retailer, etc.)
-Whether or not you were surprised (yes or no)?
In a previous crowdsourced story in August, they asked listeners to report back on the number of SUVs they saw on their block. See results here. They mapped the data with pin-cushions on a Google map.
A great way to take radio into the web 2.0 era!
T-shirt protest of typeface
This is what happens when you let people who don’t actually understand branding or visual identity take a couple meetings with their overpriced design agency and then start “deciding.”
Sounds familiar?
This was a comment on the web site called Trajan Sucks, protesting the use of the typeface Trajan on the University of Kansas basketball shirts. It was brought in to replace an older serif typeface.
They had this to say about their loyalty to the game and their disloyalty to the typography police:
“We disenfranchised students, alumni, and fans need not acquiesce to this blunder. Make no mistake, we will support our team with zeal, but we need not accept the administration’s sartorial tastes”
FaceBook’s social surveillance
Facebook is on everyone’s agenda. I am attending a 5-part webinar hosted by HigherEd Experts on everything Facebook. It covers a lot of the basics, but Fred Stutzman, a PhD student-turned-lecturer comes at it with a deep understanding of what’s going on in this space, in terms of offline-to-online socialization, identity production, privacy and that tricky beast called “social surveillance.”
What’s that?
It’s a phrase that has its origins in deep surveillance methods that include location monitoring and data mining. Which is what social networks have a potential to do, when you think about it. Students are using social networks to do more than upload photos of their dorm. They keep tabs on their circle of friends in a form of benign surveillance.
Because of the rapid shift in demographics, there seems to be two Facebooks separated by an invisible line. Tread carefully when crossing over from your domain into theirs. Last year, a group calling themselves “Students against Facebook” created a sort of a backlash – using Facebook! – against its tracking/surveillance feature.
We’ve got ranked
AdAge has given this blog a 362 ranking in its Power 150 top media and marketing blogs.
ValleyPRBlog is also ranked!
Quotes of the week 09/29/07
“The Internet has so much more potential than that, if only we free ourselves from the idea that it is just another medium for messages, like television, radio and print.”
Tim Manners, in Fast Company. “Socialized Media:” On the problem of marketers attempting to create a medium out of every conceivable space.
“By digitising the whole collection, we give access to the books without the filter of later judgments, whether based on taste or on the economics of printing and publishing”
Dr. Jensen of the British Library, on the news that they will digitise100,000 books from the 19th Century, and one million pages of 18th Century newspapers. These will be text searchable.
“Increasingly social networks are becoming a theater of operations for PR. So we need ways to track our interactions over time.”
Steve Rubel, on using a Gmail account as a social media hub.
“You’ve got people on cell phones, their Blackberries, and iPods while driving. Those are all distractions. Hopefully, when they see a sign they’re not expecting, it might make them stop.”
Mayor of Oak Lawn, Illinois, on putting up double-octagonal stop signs, with the bottom one displaying messages such as “Stop…and smell the roses.”
“There is no better way to keep embarrassing secrets under wraps than to chill those who expose them.”
Editorial in Arizona Republic on the need for AZ Senator Jon Kyl to support the Schumer-Specter bill that going before the US Senate that could protect journalists.
“They don’t want the world to see what is going on there.”
White House spokesman, Scott Stanzel, commenting on Myanmar cutting off Internet access, and hence, news filtering out of the country.
“It’s not a Mona Lisa painting, it’s a car”
US District Court judge, Richard Berman on a ruling that requires New York City cab drivers to install GPS and credit card reader technology in the vehicles. Drivers protested that it would amount to giving away trade secrets.
Burma horror seeps out via social media
“And it’s true we are immune
When fact is fiction and TV reality.
And today the millions cry
We eat and drink while tomorrow they die.”
Journalism in the age of social media has moved along at a fast clip since, say, blog reporting after the tsunami of 2004. The news this week out of Burma of the beatings, protests and killing of the Japanese journalist, Kenji Nagai (yesterday) have all been captured and transmitted via social media at an amazing pace.
Yesterday, I noted the appearance of a Facebook protest group (grown since by more than 500 members.) Today, there is a BBC report on YouTube, that is available on several blogs, and online newspapers capturing the horrible shooting of Mr. Nagai.
There’s a Flickr image where people have posted comments and links to the video and news reports –one uses the U2 lyrics above.
And the best instance of citizen journalism out of Burma is this blog, where the author is uploading images probably taken on a mobile phone, with commentary. A word of caution: some images are graphic.
The person is obviously risking his/her life to do this, using a proxy server. Today’s message: “Now the internet is back but it is difficult to use proxy server.” On the right side of the blog, a text chat area has someone imploring another to “pls tell my brother who can use internet , abt not to enter blogger page without bypass, i think they r tacking who use those websites.”
YouTube. Flickr. Blogs. Proxy servers. Traditional media. Cell phone photo-journalism and people taking a lot of risk to get information out. That in spite of the age old tactic, the media censorship.
Hoipolloireport 