the Constant Observer

Small Business Blogs: Good for Goosing Google, Better for Customer Communications

2009-11-14T14:11:00.000-05:00

Good thing I wasn't lighting a match the other day when a guy told me that small business owners (businesses with <100 employees) really don't care to connect with customers through their blogs--because I certainly would have lit my hair on fire with that one!

Yes, this particular social media consultant told me that blogging fits in two categories: business blogging and personal blogging. According to the guy, business blogging, and business bloggers, really don't care about comments or connecting with customers though blogs. What they're concerned about is getting more results in search and that's all they really want their blogs to do.

I was then called a "social media purist" for advocating that even small business owners should want to connect with customers through their blogs, I just about hung up on the guy. Perhaps it was morbid curiosity that kept me on the line and listening to what he had to say....

Still, I was really shocked by this way of thinking. Sure, you can goose Google by tweaking headlines and the first 200 characters in your blog to reflect the keywords that you want associated with your business. You can even create more links for yourself by having a number of keyword and content oriented blogs connected back to your website in some way.

But if that's all you're doing, and you're not connecting with other blogs or websites or bloggers--who, believe it or not, are also potential customers-- then that alone won't get you a substantial result in Google.

See, links from others help to draw your blog into search and help to "feed" Google. You get links not just by asking people to link to you or because you bought them. You get links to your blog by linking to others, by adding them to blogrolls and the like. Google used to penalize sites for paid links anyway--and even though the jury's still out on paid links, even if Google doesn't catch you the paid link might not give good return on investment.

Still, when your money is limited, buying links probably isn't as good as a small but efficient PPC ad strategy--perhaps even a PPC campaign on Facebook. Or advertising on a local TV website or an independent hyperlocal blog.

IMHO, the aim and intention for small businesses in social media should be to connect with customers. When you think about it, social media is like old fashioned retail--where chatting with your customers & potential customers created long-lasting relationships and continued sales.

And if small businesses do not want to connect socially with their customers, perhaps they should re-think getting into social media at all. It may simply not be the place for some kinds of businesses, and that's okay. In fact, more damage can be done by neglected social media than by no social media (think: old information in search.)

Think about it....

Why You Shouldn't Hire Someone to Manage Your LinkedIn Profile

2009-11-11T17:10:00.007-05:00

Lately, I've noticed a rash of social media consultants offering to manage the LinkedIn profiles of busy professionals. It's one thing to hire someone to help write your profile out--that's like resume writing or having some good p.r. writing done. But to manage it?? You've *got* to be kidding me.

I think the idea comes from the old days of having a secretary. Having been one of those in the 1980's, I remember when The Boss would come in from a business lunch, hand me a card and say "Add this guy to the rollodex, will you?" Like a good little secretary, that's what I did...

Now, I know that a good analogy for describing what LinkedIn can be is that it is a kind of rolodex online. Well, it is, and it isn't. It is in that it's a way to keep your contacts in a place online. It isn't in that it your rolodex never left your office, and it didn't require you to have a password to get into it. Further, people in your rolodex ever able to see the other people in your rolodex? Could anybody off the street come in and search your rolodex (which could happen with LinkedIn, if you do not manage your privacy settings accordingly?)

When a businessperson hires someone to keep a LinkedIn profile, or has someone in his/her office keep track of that profile, they must first hand over a password. For some, this might not be a big deal, and they will change the password when and if that person leaves.

What, though, if that person has changed the password without telling you? What if that person has edited your information in a certain way, or added people they believe you should be connected with.

Businesspeople who do not fully understand social networking but feel they must be there may be far too trusting with the information they allow others to manage for them.

It's like I always say--if you refuse to be responsible for your online identity and who you are in social networking, then perhaps it's not the place for you. The Internet is not analogous to the old paper-and-filing-cabinet world. It is a web and everything put there has the potential to be linked everywhere else...

Further, the old paper-and-filing-cabinet world gave us a false sense of security. It was difficult to break into those places and to get information out of them. It lead us to believe that things like an office rolodex were private. But the Internet is different, and what you put there, even you are mindful of security settings, even if it is behind a password-protected wall, is, potentially, public information. (hence one must be careful with social security numbers, driver's license numbers and the like--which are not meant to be public information.) So, one has to be more responsible for one's own social identity information on the Internet than they were in the paper world.

Because, in the past, if a secretary got fired, he couldn't necessarily mess with your information. Now, he can. Ad in ways you might not even know.

So, while I can give you a whole bunch of links on the deeper and techological reasons why one should manage one's own LinkedIn profile, and not give it to a social media person nor to one's secretary, I'll simply borrow a phrase from Doc Searls which might apply: participating in LinkedIn could be said to be a public activity under private control When you give the management to someone else, you are giving away control over private real estate online.

And are you really ok with giving away the control of your business contacts and your business persona (which is contained in that profile) to someone else? Do you really want to be, on a social networking site, a lot of spin with a plethora of connections that might mean less to you than if they were sitting in a file on your desk?

And, if all you really want to do is keep track of the business cards you acquire, because they may be potential new business contacts, there are a whole host of tools to help you with that--all kinds of card readers and such. So you don't even need LinkedIn for that purpose.

Think about it....about what you want from social media. Assess whether or not you have the time for it--don't just hire someone to do it for you. Do it for yourself.

Wall St. Journal Disses Women in its "Future of Journalism" Twitter list

2009-11-05T15:18:00.004-05:00

My good buddy Lisa Williams (founder of Placeblogger.com) found something very interesting today when she checked out @WSJ's Alan Murray's new Twitter list for The Future of Journalism: there are no women on this list.

What gives, @WSJ? There are loads of women news innovators, who are creating the future of the news NOW, not just postulating about it. And it's not just Lisa, but

Amy Gahran who also won a Knight grant and edited Poynter's EMedia Tid-Bits column
Stacy Kramer of PaidContent
Susan Mernit (founder of Oakland Local)
Geneva Overholser
Shirley Brady who does a fab job for BusinessWeek...

Not to mention the numerous women who are creating journalism daily, even hourly, on their own hyperlocal news sites.

Why is it that women keep getting overlooked by the journalism establishment when it comes to who's doing the innovating? Why does there seem to be a wholesale ignoring of women's accomplishments and achievements in the brave new world of journalism on the Internet.

Or is journalism such a "priestly class" that they can't acknowledge the Mothers Superior that are keeping dialogues and their "churches" alive and growing out here in this land of unwashed journalistic barbarians (read: bloggers.)

Too many women are being overlooked by an establishment that is doing very little, too slowly, to get with the new program that is kicking the ass of newspapers and journalism overall. Too many projects and the women who are creating them are being passed by in favor of the "boy wunderkind."

If this continues, perhaps some of the most forward-thinking projects, and great lessons-learned out here will be nothing more than links on someone's blog...

Of course, the mistakes will continue to be made because nobody bothered to take a look at those lessons learned...

And if we're giving journalism the Sicilian Kiss in the next couple of years, the hegemony that ignores the women will only have themselves to blame.

When all they had to do was look around, and include some of the best, brightest and most innovative women helping the cause of journalism today.

Will the FTC now help the newspaper industry get its government bailout

2009-10-12T11:02:00.002-05:00

Last week, the FTC laid down the law when it came to bloggers and others who are not just outright paid to endorse products, but who also receive products to review. There was a lot of hoo-ha about that(with some discussion on how these new regs might impact free speech.) But no one seems to be talking just yet about the upcoming two-day public workshop on the state of journalism in the Internet Age: "From Town Crier to Bloggers:
How Will Journalism Survive the Internet Age?"

The workshop will take place on December 1-2, 2009 in Washington D.C. Questions must be submitted by November 6....

Now, this all seems well and good, on the one hand: as the announcement notes, there have been many changes to the advertising-supported business model, most of which have driven the price of ads down, thus causing a ripple effect that has made it very difficult for newspapers to make money from advertising....

And I'm glad to see that they want to have a government-level discussion on this...

But still, what's troubling is Issue #5 that will be considered at the workshop:

"changes in
governmental policies that have been proposed as ways to support
journalism."

Ok. The government is already in the car industry because the car guys put their fingers in their ears and didn't listen to the consumers. And the government is trying to re-tool consumer-friendly regulations to stop the banks and other financial institutions from wholesale ripping people off with fancy fiscal engineering that would baffle Einstein. So, now it appears that the government is willing to possibly find a way to stick itself in the newspaper industry because the C-suite made some serious boo-boos and didn't see the innovative writing on the wall all those years ago (1981!) when 1/4 of the subscribers to the San Francisco Examiner subscribed to a crappy dial up version of the paper:

oh, no! that Internet thing--it's only a fad!! We'll use the Internet to drive people to subscribe to the print version!!

I find the idea of the government in all of the news media far more troubling than the government fining some bloggers because they didn't disclose that they were given products to review. The latter should have been a no-brainer from the very beginning, and is a "free trade" & ethics issue. The former...well...is really scary, and most certainly has implications for "free speech."

Now, I know lots of people who've already talked about the benign government intervention that we see with NPR. Don't get me wrong: I like NPR. I think some of their reporting is the best. And they saw their way to hire my friend Andy Carvin to help them work out the social media stuff (a really smart move.) Yet if all of the newspaper industry in some way becomes beholden to the government...

Wow. We thought it was bad when "W" moved Helen Thomas to the back of the room and allowed Jeff Gannon to lob softballs...well, let's just say that "we ain't seen nothing yet!" maybe. If there's wholesale government intervention in the newspaper industry...

It was bad enough when the proposed shield law mentioned that to be a journalist one must appear in print.....

While I trust the government in a lot of ways--this is one way where I really don't. I don't think the NPR model should be the model for all of journalism in the U.S. NPR was always an *alternative* to commercial. If all is NPR, will commercial then be the "alternative"?

Doesn't that seem kind of topsy-turvy for a country that's supposed to be all about the "free market"?

John Cook's post at Gawker raises some questions about where the government might draw the line on what kind of "newspaper industry" might receive government aid:

Would Gawker be eligible for a "new tax treatment"? Hell, we're a news organization—we even called an FTC spokeswoman for comment on this very blog post. What about TMZ? They break news every day. Do they need a tax break? Or does Andrew Breitbart's budding empire at BigGovernment.com, which recently broke a couple compelling stories about ACORN and the National Endowment for the Arts that certainly qualify as "public affairs news," need any public funding? How about Politico?

We presume that the answers to the above questions in any proposed FTC scheme for rescuing the newspaper industry would be no. But the distinctions and conceptual gerrymandering required to find a way to subsidize the lumbering giants at the expense of their upstart competitors—to find a reason that Rupert Murdoch, whose Fox News Channel is firing on all cylinders as the Wall Street Journal faces secular decline, merits consideration while Talking Points Memo's Josh Marshall doesn't—will, we suspect, render the whole project foul and reactionary. The simple fact that some news organizations are facing competitive pressure and shifting business models isn't an argument for government intervention into the content business.

It makes me think, too, about the hyperlocal scene, both independent and mainstream: will local newspapers be eligible for government funding? will independent hyperlocal news sites be given government funding, or will they be excluded because of another provision in the shield law that will define who is/isn't a journalist? Will local advertisers flock to hyperlocal sites, or will they continue to advertise in local papers if local papers are receiving government funds? What about local broadcast news? Will anything the FTC does impact local brodcast, or will broadcast be considered less a form of journalism and more a form of info-tainment than it already is considered?

But think about it: is it really the fault of bloggers and the Internet for screwing up the business models of the newspapers? or is that just a failure of one time honored business to innovate fast enough? And do We the People have to step in and bail out every ossified industry that has dragged its feet on innovation?

I'm not so sure of that....

When a P.R. Company Gets Social Media Wrong

2009-10-07T12:09:00.003-05:00

A few months back, I ended up on the mailing list of Ragan Communications, a "publisher of corporate communications, public relations, and leadership development newsletters" firm located in Chicago. I didn't get my knickers in a bunch over it, as I'm interested in knowing how the p.r. community is understanding how and what social media is about. And I don't doubt that Ragan Communications, which has been in existence since 1971, is very good at what they do, is well-respected, and has extensive knowledge of the field in which the staff is writing about....

But...

The other day I received an email from Mark Ragan, Publisher and CEO of Ragan Communications. The subject line read "Would you be interested in this?" I thought maybe that Mark Ragan was actually contacting me about something....

Now, I may be small potatoes in the social media consulting world (oh, I've just worked on some pioneering projects in social media and journalism, but what does that matter?), but I was floored to receive what looked like an email from a CEO, someone who might actually contact me about social media, turn out to be nothing more than an impersonal pitch to sign up for their Ragan Select program. Here's the letter:

You have been a customer and reader of mine for years. But I haven't been successful in recruiting you as a member of Ragan Select. Can I try to change that?

I'm writing to a few long-time Ragan readers to offer them a free two-week trial to Ragan Select.

So what does that mean?

It's pretty simple to explain: You'll get unlimited access to 15,000 searchable case studies in our archives. And, you'll get huge discounts on Ragan products, including all Ragan events and webinars. If you have plans to register for any of my conferences, webinars or workshops, you're trial membership will give you access to hundreds of dollars in savings.

But enough selling.

It takes about two minutes to sign up for the trial. Just go here. I'll handle the rest.

Thanks for considering this. And keep in touch.

Sincerely,

Mark Ragan
CEO
111 E. Wacker Dr.
Ste. 500
Chicago, IL 60647
mark@ragan.com
unsubscribe

P.S. I know I say this all the time, but it's true. I want to hear from you. If you've made any communication breakthroughs at your company, hit reply to this e-mail and send me a quick note. I personally read all of my mail and will forward any interesting story ideas to our managing editor at Ragan.com. Thanks again, Tish. Hope to hear from you soon.

P.P.S. Also, feel free to forward this e-mail to any other communicators you work with. They can sign up for the free trial as well. Again, here is the link to the sign up page.

P.P.P.S. I shot a video explaining this free trial program. Take a look and let me know what you think.

Ok...so here I've got this email that also has several P.S's where the CEO is saying that he *really* wants to hear from me. Really?!? I sent a response to this email a couple of days ago and haven't heard a thing yet. Sure, Mark's a busy CEO, and maybe he hasn't gotten to it yet. Then again, maybe the bit about really wanting to hear from me is just another bit of marketing b.s. Make the "customer" feel as if he/she is being listened to...

This is not to say that Ragan Communications doesn't value their long-standing customers. They probably do--they probably wouldn't be in business as long as they have. I have no idea of knowing exactly, although their site is rather extensive....

But this isn't the way to handle things in the new social media world....

What this email tells me is that my business card went into some mailing list and my identity as a social media consultant--and maybe as a potential help to Ragan's own social media efforts--has not once ever been considered. I probably wasted a whole lot of breath talking to someone from Ragan, who probably has no idea what it is that I do in social media.

Which is pretty sad.

Am I insulted? A little-but hey, it's happened before and it probably won't be the last time, and I know I've got some image issues to work on. Yet I think Ragan Communications needs to not spend so much time developing content about social media inasmuch as it may need to better understand what social media is really about....

Social media isn't about content. It's about connections. It's about people. Not about your newsletters and how great you may be. It's about whether or not you are providing something of real value. And if you don't know your stuff, someone will bust you on it..

BTW, it was on Ragan's site that I read an horrific blog post that talked about "managing" negative or critical blog posts by discrediting the blogger, firing the employee who tried to put out positive responses to negative blog posts, and basically treat the whole social media scene as if it's one giant war zone. If that's the attitude of people in the P.R. industry (the poster wasn't from Ragan), I think they just might be doing more harm than good for their clients with social media.

MySpace: Perhaps the problems have less to do with innovation and technology...

2009-09-21T19:32:00.005-05:00

This morning at OMAA Global, Jonathan Miller, new CEO of the digital media group at NewsCorp stated that it was a lack of innovation that has tripped up MySpace the once-most-popular social networking site on the net:

"There's no question that [MySpace] fell behind on the technology front and on the product front," Miller said. "This business is one of continual innovation, and we're very focused on building a product and technology organization that innovates."

What Miller did not address, however, is what people actually *say* about MySpace, as well as the audience MySpace has neglected, which is what may have contributed to the precipitous drop in unique visitor count in July to 68.4 million.

People overall have lost interest in MySpace--not because of the technology, but because of the community and its inability to mature along with the people who created it. When NewsCorp bought MySpace back in 2005, it concentrated its marketing efforts on young people (13 and over.) A heretofore network for the party-hearty crowd (I had a profile there in late 2004 at the end of my rather non-existent goth dj career) began to be promoted a place to meet "friends." But they also found that they could find just their local friends, but friends all over the country/world as well as their favorite bands, wannabe porn queens, various club nites, parties, wild self-promoters, and anyone else who'd been booted out of Friendster.

They could also post naughty pictures of themselves, construct alternative identities, and bully others. There were no grown-ups there to tell them what to do.

Since then, the young people who flocked to MySpace in 2005 (with, perhaps, a median age of 17) ended up going to College and desiring to put some distance between themselves and those friends who didn't seem to quite grow up,and the alternative identites that didn't fit anymore.

In a short time after MySpace was bought by Newscorp, upstart competitor Facebook opened itself up to the high-school crowd and with a clean, well-lit, uncustomizable community. It was a welcome change to. It established a certain cachet apart from the hurly burly of MySpace.

Facebook started as invitation only to the Ivy League.
MySpace started with the partying crowd of L.A.
Facbook was for those who went on Spring Break, not Easter Vacation.
Facebook had class.

If anything, at its height, and with people like Tila Tequila and Christine Dolce battling it out for the most "friends," MySpace had crass. Lots and lots of it.

In many, many ways beyond Tila and Christine,and Emo boys and would-be singers cum Governor-trashing escorts, MySpace made parents nervous because it of its openness-- which also allowed for the infamous "online predators."

We can't really forget all *that* particular bad MySpace press now, can we?

At that time, Facebook just seemed safer (even though everything on it is public information that organizations esp. can find one way or another, if they want.) And when Facebook decided to open up to the general public in 2006, it scored as big with the grown-up professionals as it had with Ivy Leaguers.

Adults--unless they had particular reasons for being on MySpace--weren't given to putting up MySpace profiles. But they sure did go for Facebook's clean and fun social space that didn't require customizing and didn't offer garish colors nor carry tasteless flashing banner ads.

Along the way, there would a lot on Facebook for professional adults and college kids to kvetch about with Facebook, but Facebook tends to listen to the kvetches, and makes changes when the protests or requests are vocal (hence the Twitter interface--and don't think it was the kids who were jumping for joy about *that* one.) Facebook overall is still quite fine for professionals who don't mind having others in their professional networks see a silly picture or two or know that they listen to Lady GaGa. It has also done a lot to beef up its Fan pages, making it easier for businesses to have a Facebook presence--an important thing when you consider that some very good word-of-mouth/social media marketing could be done on Facebook.

So, think about it: is it really lack of innovation or bad techology that has tripped up MySpace? Honestly, it was more of a bad community strategy, a lack of ability to understand what those who don't want to show off their belly button piercings might want from a social network. As its audience began to mature, MySpace's attitude didn't change. The folks who might have been fans of some goth emo band at 17 just might have given that band up by 22, and also got their first jobs and some responsibility that might require a little less heavy sighing and posturing.

MySpace kept its loudmouth party-heartiness, but, when the party moves on, it just wasn't up to the task. Like the guy who's still wearing a mullet and listening to Whitesnake, MySpace as a community--as an entity--is a bit out of step these days.

And I'm not sure the mullet's going to be coming back any time soon.

A few comments on coming back to blogging....

2009-09-02T14:14:00.002-05:00

In June, I abruptly stopped blogging--and with no explanation. I didn't hear any particular hue and cry about my not-blogging. I figured that I really didn't have all that many readers, or that people were just giving me my space.

Because I really needed the space--to wrap my brain around what I'm really interested, in what my career is, and in what I'm doing with my life. Summer always seems to be a good time to do this, as lots of people take various bits of time off during the summer.

I just took three months off. Much needed. And here's what happened:

What many people may not know about me is that I've been living and breathing this social media stuff since the summer of 2005 when I attended the first BlogHer conference (which Staci Kramer wrote about in OJR, capturing some of the important highlights of that first conference.) I've traveled a lot in this space since then: from my first "professional" job blogging for Corante, to crowdsourcing with Assignment Zero, to a couple of somewhat-disastrous "conversational marketing" efforts, and now to working on my own first full-fledged social media business client.

In the meantime, I also traveled to a staggering number of conferences across journalism, marketing and technology. I spoke at my fair share of them--odd since I don't have a background in marketing, tech nor journalism.

But I use my brain. And I shoot my mouth off alot.

Still, there were parts of my life that were falling apart as I was trying to build up my professional life. My health for one thing. It seems that I have a number of chronic but not life-threatening, just annoying, health conditions. Running hither and yon, eating food that was terrible for me, having allergic reactions all over the place, drinking too much coffee and all that took a toll on my body and my nervous system. I spent a lot of time in pain, under-productive, and extremely cranky. I had a kidney stone and shingles. It was when my hair started to hurt that I realized I had to do something about all of this. And I did. I slowed down and started paying attention to what my body needed and didn't need. How my mind felt. If I was biting off too much and why.

So, my health is, well, a lot healthier than it was before. I'm much less of a bitch than I was--but that still doesn't stop me from pointing out when the Emperor (or Empress) has no clothes. That's just my nature.

My relationships too were pretty crap-tastic. After my divorce in 2001, I was pretty much a wreck, and got involved with a very nice man who has become an important part of my life. Essentially, he's more family than my "family." Thing is, we have a lot of things NOT in common. Love can heal a lot of things, but we are only human and sometimes we need more than just a love that translates into warm silences, caring, and a cuddle on the couch...

Now, some might think that relationships shouldn't be all that important when one is building a new profession and a small business. That should be exciting enough However, the woman-side of me finds relationships far more important than career-related accomplishments. If I was such a dismal failure at relationships, and totally un-desirable to the opposite sex, how could I go about being successful in my career.

Yeah, I know, go ahead and call me shallow. Or just accept me and realize I'm wired differently than you.

I digress....

Because I got tired of feeling like a relationship failure, and feeling that no man in his right mind would want overweight middle aged little me with baggage the size of King Kong, I decided to look into online dating again. I had an absolutely disastrous experience with eHarmony--where the only guys who seemed to like me were in the South (go figure) and I found their method to be passive-aggressive (not to mention the branded "dear John" emails that a person can send: "I'm pursuing another relationship on e-Harmony.com!" to be totally tasteless.) Eventually, after figuring out what I wanted--basically, to make friends with some interesting guys, and to get laid regularly with no big relationships and no proposals of marriage thankyouverymuch--I decided on a site that I felt would work for me....

Now, I won't disclose the name of the site, as I don't want people scrambling to find it or me on it--and knowing how judgmental others can be, it's best if I keep mum. Suffice to say that I've met and cultivated a nice little coterie of very interesting Alpha Males to whom I am extraordinarily special.

I am a success in the types of relationships that I am best--as a companion and a lover; a teacher and student of life. A woman who does her own thing, makes her own rules, and is comfortable in her own skin. I can't be who others want nor expect me to be. I defy conventions and shatter stereotypes and sometimes it's so hard I want to cry.

The thing is, even though I might have moments when I cry, and when I question my decisions that are so far afield of the conventional, I realize that I am happier now than I ever was in my life.

With success in relationships, and much better heath, I feel like I can come back to blogging--and in different ways. I'm keeping this blog, but will be starting a marketing-focused blog specifically on some of the developments going on now in that field. That will also be my business "website." I'm toying with the idea of personal blogging again, and have set up an anonymous blog, but I have no idea if I'll have the time for that as well. Writing, for me, is a giant pain in the ass. I'd rather be social Had to accept that one too--not easy when I've been writing stories pretty much since I could hold a pencil.

Then again, before I could hold a pencil, I was holding court. I'd always been far more social than not--it just got buried under a bad family situation and admonitions not to talk to others about anything ever.

In any event, there seems to be more balance in my life now than there was back in April and May, when I could see myself sputtering and limping along like a Chevy with a flat tire and a blown piston, not happy with anything, barely able to blog, and not really knowing why.

Turning it off was the best decision I could have made for myself--and with no fanfare nor grand declarations.

Until I became balanced and ready to turn it back on again....

What will you do if your local newspaper shuts down?

2009-06-05T20:24:00.002-05:00

I first heard about the dire straits of central Connecticut's newspapers when I attended a journalism conference at Central Connecticut State University last November. The story wasn't making the national news, but the consequences--the threatened closing of several central Connecticut newspapers that are the "only games in town"--were potentially devastating. By January, lawmakers met with state officials to discuss what might save some of the papers in the Journal Register chain. The Bristol Press and the New Britain Herald were saved when a new owner stepped up. But other newspapers around the country haven't been as lucky.....

The Ann Arbor News, a paper in the massive Advance/Newhouse chain is slated to cease daily publication and focus mainly on their web presence, AnnArbor.com with a twice-weekly print publication starting in July. Other papers in large urban areas, Seattle Post-Intelligencer and The Rocky Mountain News closed up print-shop altogether and are now web-only.

That's not to mention the huge numbers of weeklies all over the country that have closed up shop altogether.

So, what if legislators don't step in? What if it's not cost-effective to shut down the print product and go web-only? I asked Placebloggers about the newspaper-death watch in their regions and what they might be doing about it....

Barry Rafkind of SomervilleVoices.org , a "new media collaborative" of Somerville, MA residents, wrote about what's going on in Boston, where the GateHouse New England papers have experienced major cutbacks, and the situation between The Boston Globe and its parent company (NYTimes Co.) remains precarious. Barry told our Placeblogger group: "These cutbacks motivate our team behind SomervilleVoices.org to work harder and faster on setting up our own community-funded journalism similar to Spot.Us but using ThePoint instead. We have solicited story ideas on the blog and are looking for fiscal sponsorship from a non-profit to allow us to collect donations. "

Ross Nunamaker in Nazareth, PA, whose placeblog NewsOverCoffe is a "one and a half person show" that currently doesn't make money, said that his community " is situated in the 'overlap' area of two daily publications and gets more recognition than it probably should in the fight for subscriptions. My placeblog benefits from this because both work well with me and I recognize their coverage for potential subscribers.

"One is more 'bloated' and the other 'leaner', needless to say bloat is getting cut and lean is doing as well as can be expected."

Steve Thurston who keeps the Buckingham Herald Tribblog in Arlington, VA noted that the weekly Arlington Connection may be in "bad shape," as it is the smallest paper in a 19-paper chain, and may be treading water with a small staff of seven.

On the other hand, Steve observed some interesting things going in back in his hometown of Glens Falls, NY with its local weekly, The Chronicle: "They've always been a lean corporation and have never had a website of any real value. Everyone up there reads the Chronicle, and they run almost exclusively the ads of small, local businesses. They have I think one car dealership and occasionally an insert for a pharmacy or grocery chain. Mostly it's the local roofers, law offices, business supplies, boutiques of whatever type, restaurants, etc. "

Perhaps the solution to the problem with local newspapers isn't a singular solution. It could be that each paper has to take into consideration not just how to help it run "leaner and meaner" but also must consider the cultural landscape that it exists within. The solutions to the survival of local papers may be as distinct as local cuisine. And in that mix, placebloggers can come in and add their own particular spice to the mix to help maintain a vibrant and vital news community.

Further reading: Ross Nunamaker has created some great lenses on Squidoo on starting and maintaining a placeblog. Check out his Placeblogging 101 "Connect Neighbors to Build better Communities" lens and Placeblogging 201: "Technical and Legal Considerations" lens for some great info.

This post originally published at Placeblogger.com

On Knowing the Rare Circumstance of Falling in Love

2009-05-30T11:34:00.003-05:00

This a.m., @agahran tweeted a link to a story in the NYTimes by Louise Rafkin on Rafkin's work interviewing couples on how they met. Amy was a bit peeved that Rafkin's assignment didn't include polyamourous couples. Yet poliamory aside, Rafkin's meditation on her work, (as it is more than an essay) and her own troubles with finding love, struck a chord with me on so many levels....

I, too, have often found myself on the outside of love, looking in at the relationships of others, trying to discern what it is that makes their relationships work over the long haul. It's true that some are in a "staying together for the kids" kind of thing, but some of the couples that I've known over 20-odd years have gone thru that and come to the other side with many becoming stronger for what they went through.

Granted, a few have divorced--mostly because one or the other partner realized that she/he had "outgrown" the other. In other words, that their lives and values had changed so dramatically that they were no longer on the same page.

That's the thing--sometimes our values do indeed change from 20-somethings to Middle-Agers. We want more children or less children. One emerges a raging conservative, while the other slides into born-again liberalism. One 'fesses up, finally, that he's gay, while she decides she needs some younger stuff to keep up with her sex drive. One can no longer deal with the penny-wise, pound-foolishness or paranoid thriftyness of the other.

Life happens and changes us, this is true. But what of the whole "love" thing? Rafkin, like me, wonders how we know when we've found it, if so many people have such odd and unconventional falling in love stories.

Some of us just never had a good template to begin with. Like Rafkin, I didn't have good home role models to understand what love looked like in action, let alone what it might feel like. When I did fall in love, with my first husband, as I now know I was in retrospect, I didn't believe it nor did I understand what I was feeling. There was all this fear, all the time--this butterflies-in-my-stomach feeling. We shared so many interests, taught each other so much about art and music and all sorts of things at such a young age (I was 19, he was 21 when we met)but had no clue how to take all this love and build it into something that would sustain us over the long haul.

There weren't any parents to help. In fact, the parents were more willing to break us up than help us stay together....

How could love feel like fear? Well, when you've never really known love, or have seen something that was pretty horrid, and told it was love, then you can easily have a bellyfull of fear when love comes into your life. At least that's what I've figured out about my life in relation to love.

I've sat for a lot of tarot card readings in my life. Growing up with a lot of superstitions and a weird kind of Sicilian Catholicism married with oddbal Fundamentalist Doctrine of Predestination, the idea of fortune tellers as true seers of our life paths was presented as more plausible than the ideas of free will and mastery over one's own life. I've had a lot of fortune tellers tell me I'd have multiple soul mates. That idea doesn't give me the warm fuzzies. And makes me wonder about the veracity of fortune tellers anyway.

Esp. since I believe that if I can figure out what's "wrong" with my decision making on the mate thing that I'd find the right one.

But, like Rafkin, when I hear other people's stories, I'm not so sure that tactic will work any more than listening to fortune tellers.

I'm thinking more about this these days because I've decided to get out there and start dating again--because while I'm very independent and like my own space, I'd really like to share some of my secrets with someone who will understand, and will go crazy wild places with me, who knows pop culture, and may even find rollerball and Blade Runner to be his favorite movies as well. I've had a relationship for about 8 years, but we are a City Mouse, Country Mouse temperament combination that just will not work over the long haul. Lovely man, really, but as I become more comfortable with my essential adventure-geek nature, I see how we can't work unless we're living separate lives, with him on the mountains, observing me appreciatively when I cruise into his world from a drive on Adventure Road.

I've wondered about this, too. If I'm not being too shallow and wanting someone who shares what some might think are "superficial interests." So many of the long-term loving couples I've known share a foundation of religious beliefs, attend a church, and all that. While I studied religion in college, and have a love of it, I'm not a church attender. Church, no matter the denomination, isn't all that welcoming to single folk. And yes, there's the whole church-lady-with-single-son thing, but that doesn't mean he's going to be the kind of guy who can spend hours in funky comic book shops looking for British horror novels and enjoy art books with titles like "Robots and Donuts."

Doesn't mean he's going to go for a good martini and pizza dinner either.

One good thing though that I've learned in all my examination of myself and my reactions is that when I meet certain types of guys, I hear bells. Literally. Now, most of y'all might think that this means I've found that True Love Soul Mate. Hardly. As I've recently discovered about my relationship with my Dad, the bells are really alarms, telling me I've met a guy like my Dad, who's very charming on the outside and very messed up on the inside. The bells mean "stay away!"

At least I know now.

Character is something I know more about, too. I can tell a guy's values through conversation--if he's hard-working and has empathy, or is superficial and judging me by superficials rather than listening to what I'm saying. So, it's a combination of senses and observations....

Knowing all this, and no longer apologizing for who I am and the geeky things I like (although IMO, in some ways, by saying the things I like are "geeky" or "weird", I may still be apologizing) I'm looking at different things. I'm looking at cues of character. I remember meeting my first husband, and there weren't huge clanging bells at first (as there was with the second, which I now know was a big warning.) I thought he was cute, and we liked the same kind of music. It grew from there. (caveat: that doesn't mean it was all peaches and cream and other people's fault that we split up. he had a pot-smoking problem, and I had some other issues, too. marriage was too much for us. so much that love couldn't conquer all.)

So, like Rafkin, I'm wondering if love will ever happen (again) and not when. I wonder if I've examined things too well, and if I'm expecting some kind of perfection. Not really. I'm not looking for a 1970's Robert Redford look-alike who's got a shelf full of collector SpiderMan comics and works as an art restoration specialist, has never been married and exudes empathy. No, not at all. Prince Charming doesn't necessarily exist, and waiting for him is a living death. I also know that, as I slowly careen towards 50 (it's two years away) that the pool is getting more and more shallow (boy! is it shallow in W. Mass), or the baggage is getting larger and larger. We all have baggage, just as long as it's reasonable and not held together with emotional duct tape, then we're good.

Ultimately, it comes down to the fact that I have to get out more. That's something that's very different from when I was younger. I used to be out and about a lot, which made it easier to meet guys. I used to yell at my friend Marge that she wasn't going to meet anyone sitting on her couch in her fuzzy slippers watching a Yankee game with her cats in her lap. Well, I'm not going to meet anyone in sweat pants flip-flops, eating a stake and drinking leftover wine while watching CSI. There's fear of getting out and about, for sure, as I'm not the slimmest or cutest any more (as I once was, trust me on that.) But unless I'm perfectly happy alone, and I'm not, I can't settle for a life of books, tv, and good friends.

There is more to me than that, and I want more.

I have to stop observing. I'm not like Rafkin, where observing and writing is her SF Chron assignment. It's not mine.

I'll never know if I don't jump in.

I have to jump in, no matter how fearful I am, and no matter how much the despair of being "too old" and never finding anyone might grab me by the throat and throttle me into senselessness.

I've got to shake that off like Chev Chelios and keep going...

I have to find my heart too.

That's all there is to it....

Busy, Busy, Busy (and then some)

2009-05-19T20:42:00.005-05:00

From time to time I have to take a blogging hiatus. It usually happens because I'm up to my eyeballs in things and can't seem to dig myself out...and that I need to engage more in the f2f world....

Well, it's one of those times again.

I seem to be quite busy with a number of projects, including some teaching about social media--from which I've learned that I absolutely love teaching about social media and new media. It's actually fun to convey my love of all this great stuff to a bunch of people who want to learn about it.

Recently, I had something of a work-vacation. Was out in L.A., S.F. and New Orleans. While I was on the road, I realized I really like being on the road. I like being able to take a day and see a city, and I'm learning, that if I'm staying in a good hotel, to go to the bar and find out from the bartender the cool places (I don't have to know all of this in advance.)

Here I am, on a rare off-day vacation day, standing in the courtyard of the Egyptian Theater in L.A. I was tired, but I felt good. I was where I wanted to be, exploring Hollywood Boulevard, being myself for a change.

It's been a very long time since I've taken a vacation to places where I've wanted to go (not where someone else wants to go), it's been a long time since I've met interesting people who were artists and musicians and bouncers and tattoo artists. A long time since I met guys who found me attractive(yes, that's been an issue for awhile, believe it or not.) It's been a long time since I've had fun for any length of time, that wasn't punctuated with some sort of media.

I'm talking about the kinds of fun I like to have: art shows and good movies in incredible theaters and music and friendship. Even maybe dating again at some point...

And it's been a long time since I've been really, really me.

I had to go on a long journey to find me. In that journey, I had to come inside this space of social media, feel it out, make connections, re-form me, start something of a career in here, one that would be in tune with me. I have, in many ways, done that and on my terms...

So, in some way, the break from blogging is because there are other places for me to be in the social media space. There are also other places for me to be in the f2f world, where there are experiences that delight all of my senses, and people who want to talk with me and hear my voice, not just thru a device of some kind.

What may result is some re-branding. A new look, a new image, a new something. Maybe I'll come back to this. I don't know.

We'll just have to wait and see.

SIIA Afternoon Keynote: Brewster Kahle on Universal access to knowledge

2009-05-04T16:30:00.005-05:00

This afternoon at the SIIA NetGain Convergence of Content and Technology conference, Brewster Kahle, the Founder & Digital Librarian of the Internet Archive is speaking. I am most interested in hearing what Kahle has to say, esp. with regard to the work that's done at Placeblogger, and with numbers of sites that simply vanished when web hosting services like Geocities have been shut down.

I asked Kahle about this before he spoke, and he and I agreed that, unfortunately, a lot of it will just go away. Some is archived and could be found via the WayBack Machine. Still, some is lost forever.

Kahle begins that we could indeed have universal access to all knowledge. He's going to show how technological, copyright, etc issues are coming together...

Looking at Text, if we try to put everything online, how much is there already? and what needs to be added? the 26million books in the Library of Congress? and how hard is that to get online. One book is about 1MB. It would cost too much to put all of the Library of Congress online. But what would you get for it and would anyone care??

We're starting to get print on demand services, as well as things that let you read online in a manner similar to turning pages in a book. So, we can go from digital to print, and then from print back to digital.

When print on demand went to countries such as Egypt, they found they had lots of old books, but not a lot of new books...

Amazon does much print on demand--we just don't know it!

One Laptop Per Child devices can be used like Kindle. Kahle shows us one used in this manner.

How do we get all those books online? Shipped to India and China, but found that scan-your-own was better. Robots broke down. Created a special scanner with two mirrors that, while looking primitive, is highly effective at $0.10 per page! It takes about 12 hours for the computer to do the processing to a PDF (very time consuming but effective.)

There are 18 scanning centers across the U.S., with 200 people working for the Internet Archive and 50 scanning books. They get about 1,000 books scanned a day!

There are about 1 million books in 8 collections. All are out-of-copyright books. Copyright raises issues.

Audio: how much audio is there? and how does it get processed? About 2-3 million. and could be easily put online, but it is highly litigious. So, they stay away from highly commercial works.

One big success is among rock musicians. Greatful Dead in particular. Allows for trading of music as long as *no money is made from the activity!* But as stuff got online, trading became harder. Internet Archive offered unlimited storage, bandwidth for free. Turns out there are other bands that do what the Dead does. One to three bands a day signed up, and now there's 3,000 plus bands and their live recordings. Some communities can be helped and supported, like this community, in open ways.

Internet Archive has 200,000 audio items in over 100 collections!

It's smaller than text and different legally, so not handled the same as text

Moving Images There are about 150,000 around, and about 1,000 that are not copyrighted. 50 percent of the 150,000 are from India (!?!?!) Formats of moving images keep changing. Movies that are in IA were converted and re-coded to make it easier to find. There's maintenance of moving image archiving.

The Internet Archive has tons of old public service films and educational films that are out of copyright and uploaded regularly. But, however, IA doesn't know why people would want these films ;-)

Moving Images also include television programs. Tons of TV programs are recorded daily. See the Television ArchiveS

On site staff at the Presidio (where the IA is localted) is about 35 people. That's very small

Software has lots of difficulties in archiving. Copyright, platforms, etc. Lots of the storage of this is difficult becuase of these issues.

Started collecting the WWW around 1980's Nowadays, 4 billiion pages are archived.

Want to see your old website: go to the WayBack machine to find old sites.

If you're doing something to help people, they won't get angry at what you do with content online. If you do something wrong, you'll get in trouble.

If we're working to create the Library of Alexandria 1, might not be a great idea.If we build this thing up, what should be do differently: MAKE COPIES! Digital copies are easy to make.

They designed their own computer! (I'm very impressed)

So, we can collect up, and preserve all kinds of media over the long haul

But the library industry is imploding like many other industries. Monopolies forming--which isn't good. Libraries are getting to be central controlled, not local controlled. They are ruled by contract now, raterh than ruled by Law. They aer for-profit and not non profit.

What about the future of books? Books play a different role in our lives than other forms of media. They are like the mind. They are written by one person and are one person's idea.

What's going on with books: Book publishers having trouble making money. A couple of big players are controlling aggregation of works, as well as distribution in order to try to control the distribution on media. Google is aggregating libraries (public domain works) and putting restrictions on what they aggregate! (how awful!)

Class action law that was used to control digitizing of content--so that Google can lock up content. To Kahle, it doesn't seem right that literary "orphan" books should. Class action settlements are making changes in content. Secretly negotiated class actions effective in making legislative decisions without legislating.

What we need is a set of standards. We're also missing distance lending of copyright.

If we keep our eye on the ball (on the potential monopolies), we can have all this knowledge at our disposal.

At the end, someone confuses Kahle with the digital utopians who believe all content should be free. That's not what he was saying. What he said was how we should be careful that content doesn't get owned and monetized by monopolies--esp. "orphan" books, which no one has made money off of for a very long time. But he is not against paid-for content. Just that the payment goes to the right people

It takes more than a village to protect kids online

2009-04-22T11:38:00.002-05:00

Every now and then I get to talk with college-age students about social media and all the stuff going with privacy, identity, and security on the Internet (most recently at Smith College, my Alma Mater.) More often than not, I find that they really don't know too much about how to protect themselves from fraud, let alone how to construct online identities that won't hurt their job chances. Yet, the assumption continues among lazy adults that "kids know it all" about the Internet....

Well, finally, the Government and tech giants have realized the inanity of believing "kids know it all" and have teamed up in an new program that will teach kids not just how to handle cyber bullies, but also how to deal with online frauds and scam artists.

Now, I'm not thrilled that this is coming out of the Department of Homeland Security, but, when I think about it, what goes on in our little machines on our desks or in our laps could impact the larger network of computers out there.

We're never really alone with our machines, if you think about it.

The program will be administered by the non-profit National Cyber Security Alliance, has a curriculum, and will send to the schools volunteers from companies such as EMC and Science Applications International Corp. Support will come from Symantec, Cisco, and Microsoft, to name a few of the companies involved.

Apparently, one of the motivators for starting the program was the results of a study done by the Pew Internet and American Life Project which found that only 3 percent of state school curriculums instructed students on proper use of social networks and chat rooms. Yet schools are often giving assignments that require Internet use.

I guess the assumption was that kids were getting taught *something* about the Internet at home. But think about it: how many of us have heard stories of parents who plop computers in kids' rooms, and then allow the kids to just close the bedroom door? How many of us have heard parents say how they want to "spy" on their kids' activities online, rather than find out how things work or what's going on in the greater world of life online?

So, I'd hazard a guess that there are indeed bigtime security reasons that may go beyond "identity theft" and "stalkers" that have become reasons for the government to create a program like this to teach kids the things they're not getting taught anywhere else.

Think about it.

Never Ask a Teen-Ager How To Use Twitter

2009-04-08T17:10:00.002-05:00

Update 6/1/09 A new study from Pace University and the Participatory Marketing Project shows that only 22 percent of Gen Y (The Millenials) are using Twitter The blurb on the study goes on to say that Gen Y has to be convinced of the value of Twitter Um, if you have to convince them so hard, then maybe it's a medium that they don't need right now--they may need it as they get older and can't text from their workplace. Sheesh! Apps, though, are hot for everyone Thanx C-Net for the link end

Ask a middle-aged early adopter! Seriously....

In a post today on the Comscore blog, blogger Sarah Radwanik notes how Comscore has observed a huge spike in Twitter traffic over the past months including an increase in U.S. traffic, with users reaching 4 million...

Comscore hasn't released their official analysis of the Twitter numbers, but Radwanik points to a post by Reuters reporter Alexei Oreskovic who recently posted about the demographics of Twitter users. Radwanik extrapolated on Oreskovic's bare-bones figures and found that "18-24 year olds, the traditional social media early adopters, are actually 12 percent less likely than average to visit Twitter (Index of 88). It is the 25-54 year old crowd that is actually driving this trend. More specifically, 45-54 year olds are 36 percent more likely than average to visit Twitter, making them the highest indexing age group, followed by 25-34 year olds, who are 30 percent more likely." Check out the following two graphs showing the rise in traffic and rise in age demographic usage:

So, when Joe Blundo of The Columbus Dispatch asked his teen-aged daughter about Twitter and she told him he wouldn't like it, he should have gone to the more tech savvy folks he (maybe doesn't) know and ask one of them about Twitter.
He would have gotten a far better answer about it, and perhaps wouldn't be still scratching his head over it.

Ian Paul at PC World suggests that "[T]his means the concept of the technologically inclined "early adopter" as a young, predominately male demographic may have to be revisited."

MAY HAVE TO BE REVISITED!?!? My god! I've been screaming about this one for some time now. This just goes to show me so many in mainstream media are so in love with the hype around the youth demographic that they have failed to see what is happening right under their noses among people their own age.

How bloody insulting!

What might account for the rise of Twitter use among a not-so-youthful demographic? As a constant and continual observer of patters in online use among the marketing and journalism communities I've seen how the message of Twitter's effectiveness has not gone unheeded. And while there are many great, fun, and not overbearing uses of Twitter in marketing like @DaveTheShoeGuy, there are also a cadre of dorky, dimwitted, and egotistical multi-level-marketers and other assorted snake-oil salespeople spamming us daily with their "follows." Among journalists--many of them middle-aged--there is a high, and highly effective, use of Twitter. The journalists who use it are so good at it, I had to write a post about it.

My observations have lead me to conclude that a good understanding of how to use Twitter comes from the adept use of both online and face to face communication. Far from being the closeted geeks of old, the middle-aged Early Adopter crowd are the people who have those skills down pat. Is it any wonder that they're doing so well on Twitter (when you tease out the dorks, that is.)? Perhaps only to those dazzled by youth--but not to the truly social media savvy of us out there.

Blockbuster's Woes are Local DVD Rental's Potential Gain

2009-04-07T09:00:00.001-05:00

As more old-school media business models fail, and retail takes a nosedive in our crappy enconomy, is it any wonder that Blockbuster--the company that gobbled up the local video rental business-- is facing the prospect of bankruptcy?

Some of this, as Ed Oswald points out in his post, has to do with the pricing war between Blockbuster and Netflix, which also did some damage to Netflix. Netflix, however, doesn't have Blockbuster's retail space overhead, so, while impacted, didn't get totally destroyed.

There's more to it than the ascendancy of Netflix--although Netflix's community and convenience features speak boatloads about the service's value to its customers. There's also been the rise in DVR use. I'm sure lots of folks don't use TiVo just to tape the latest episode of Gray's Anatomy or Hannah Montana. They're also hooking it up to HBO and other networks, TiVo'ing movies as well as premium content series like Six Feet Under.

Yet there's opportunity in the death of Blockbuster to bring back something vital to neighborhoods: the local DVD rental store. We used to call them "video stores" and often they were run by a cast of characters that knew something about movies. And I don't mean like the condescending jerks in Kevin Smith's "Clerks." Some of my best memories were of when, in the '80's, I worked for a local "video store," where the movie geek in me got to talk with customers about movies. I could recommend movies because I'd seen most of them (a benefit from working there.) Seeing a regular group of customers, I got to know their likes and dislikes and could help them choose. I'll never forget being able to help a harried Father with a bratty son pick out something comparable to "Ghostbusters" or help someone's wife pick the best of "sword and sorcery" b-flicks (yeah, I used to watch those. Liam Neeson was in a bunch of them) for her husband.

We even used to have an old guy who used to keep a notebook of reviews of porn flicks. He had a whole system, with recommendations! His notebook was amazing, and his info, believe it or not, quite valuable to our business (Saturday night was big for couples renting porno.)

Local video rental stores were replaced by Blockbuster because of the sheer volume of new releases that Blockbuster stores could keep in stock at any given time. That, however, was easily countered when Netflix, with its almost-endless supply, could mail 'em quicker than Blockbuster could rent 'em. What Blockbuster couldn't replace, and what people are beginning to value again, is the interaction with other film afficionados. Netflix does this online through its various rating and sharing mechanisms, while stores like Pick Your Flick, the DVD rental store up the street from where I live, does it through face to face community building and interaction.

Let me tell you something about Pick Your Flick: there's *people* there. It's owned by Tim and Liz Jenks, who used to be neighbors of mine. Both Tim and Liz are huge movie lovers. They have a great sensibility about film--any kind of film. They get the reasons why Quentin Tarantino's "Death Proof" is a great chick flick, as much as they get how "Atonement" was kinda boring....

Tim and Liz bring to their store a relationship to their customers that continues to be sorely lacking amongst the blue shirted, khaki wearing worker bees of Blockbuster.

I'll never forget when a chick at Blockbuster recommended "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" to a customer. I wouldn't have recommended that turkey without a serious caveat and a recommendation to have a stiff cup of coffee first. And Tim and Liz wouldn't recommend it either without a raised eyebrow and a possible suggestion of something better--or a cheeky comment about Sean Connery. And on their MySpace page, they've put together a list of Top Ten Reasons why Pick Your Flick is better than Netflix

So, while another big corporate movie rental business goes bust, there just might be a very good opportunity for the small local movie rental place to boom.

Think about it.

The death of User Generated Content may be greatly exaggerated

2009-04-07T08:08:00.005-05:00

I wonder sometimes about Sarah Lacey. On TechCrunch, she goes into great detail about how "user generated content" doesn't make money, and how its promise to help talented people hasn't come to fruition....

Oh, really? Lacey's analysis doesn't make sense in that its view of UGC comes through a lens filtered by the old-school media's judgment of value based on currently failing business models.

The thing about UGC is that what one expects from it is far broader than Lacey's claim that it must make money or lead directly to some fairy tale of overnight success. That's not what most UGC producers think of their work, and not what most UGC producers get from their efforts.

Now, I've been in the UGC business for a bit here, with my blog and various contributions to publications like Huffington Post and Silicon Alley Insider and syndication through Newtex. I'm not looking to make money from any of these ventures, although I do make a small bit from Newstex. What I get from this is influence and jobs. And had I been a bit wiser, and really liked doing journalism of some form, I'd probably be writing a column like Lacey's by now. In one respect, that's maybe where I wasn't so smart, but who knows what the future holds.

The true value of UGC is determined by the creator, and not necessarily by those curating it. The value of UGC is not determined by how much money YouTube makes, or what Twitter's business model happens to be. The value of UGC is determined by the "user" who is creating it, at any point in time, in any medium that person chooses.

The value of UGC cannot be determined by externals--but only by the ones who are creating. It may shatter some dreams if it isn't creating the overnight success, but it is also helping those who want to actualize realistic dreams and goals, as well as those who are overqualified and under-employed who simply want to share content with others.

However, in a recent conversation with Mark Ranalli of Helium.com, I've seen how properly managed UGC (he hates the term too) can create value for both the UGC producer and the site that curates UGC. And I'm working on a new venture that has a strong UGC component to it (can't say much more now.) What I can say is that if UGC is managed properly by a "broker" or third-party, it can make money. The key is to understand why it is produced, and to reward UGC that is of value--the value to be determined by the community. Most who've been in the MSM, who are looking at the outside of the UGC busienss, really don't get it, don't get the reasons why people do it, how to filter it, the value of community in helping to determine value, and then how to turn the filtered content around to the benefit of everyone involved.

Mainstream media just doesn't get the process of creating value from UGC. Perhaps it's because it's swallowed its own hype and Horatio Alger stories, and has a need to create value *right away* to shore up sagging profit margins. Maybe the creation of media isn't meant to make a big profit for a bunch of other people who have nothing to do with it.

I'm just sayin'....

A note about Steve Outing's UGC venture: yes, Steve's venture didn't make money. IMO, it was a bit ahead of its time, and may not have reached the right niche audience. There are so many variables to the UGC equation and its hard to know where communities that produce strong content will congregate, as well as the time it will take to create that community. We're only seeing some of the answers to those variables now and on small scales.

Small is Beautiful: PodCamp Western Mass

2009-04-01T17:18:00.005-05:00

Who said it couldn't happen in Western Mass?? Last Saturday (3/28), Morriss Partee, Jacklyn Stevenson Archer, yours truly, and a group of about 36-or-so cool folk pulled together and made the first PodCamp Western Mass happen at Open Square in Holyoke, MA.

And it was a great success! Check the PCWM Flickr stream to see all the happy PodCampers....

If there's one thing I kept hearing from folks was how much they were getting out of each and every session. Sessions were small (that's the great thing about a small PodCamp) which allowed for lots of questions and cross-talk. None of this top-down stuff.

Here are what were important highlights for me:

Bill Dusty of Springfield Intruder, a hyperlocal site for Springfield MA and Mike Dodds, managing editor for Reminder Publications (a hyperlocal newspaper) and blogger at Out of the Inkwell came and sat in on they hyperlocal journalism session I conducted. It was good to have some non-marketing folks at a PodCamp! IMO, the journalism community has to get out and breathe the air in other spaces besides those where the ink resides, and no better place is a PodCamp. Mike and Bill got to meet my friend Aldon Hynes who told them about CT Newswire, a project down in CT that pulls in all the press releases and distributes them on a Google group to those signed up on the group list. Aldon said that the reason for starting this group was that communications depts in local government have lost connection with the folks they should be sending press releases to, and with this group, it is easier to get information out to those who not only want it, but need it.

This is extremely important for hyperlocals like the Springfield Intruder, that are sometimes more on-the-ball (so to say) then the local newspaper.

I hope that Bill and Mike can get a list like this going for Western Mass! All three of them sat down after the session and did some serious talking.

IMO, the only way the news is going to change is by getting in touch with the grassroots--and the grassroots aren't necessarily going to come to the news, in special journalism gatherings. It's got to be the other way for new ideas to get into the stuffy old newsroom.

And Mike's a great guy! He really, really understands online community--how it functions, what it takes to do it right and maintain civility. He also gets that it is the responsibility of editorial staff or whoever is in charge of the community to enforce policies and NOT administer them according to who they do or don't like.

And a big, super-special shout-out to Steve Sherlock, blogger at Franklin Matters (and other sites), who came out from the eastern part of the state to help us with registration (and who helped us with Eventbrite when we got all throw-up-our-hands frustrated with it.) I've known Steve for a couple of years now, from seeing him at a number of events out Boston way. And now he's an honorary Western Mass'er!!

I had great conversations with Jeff Rutherford, who was/is a journalist now doing p.r. and related stuff. Jeff gets social media. Really gets it. And John Elder Robison, Asperger's researcher and author of "Look Me in the Eye"--who I had a very interesting conversation with about mommybloggers and geneology. Seems that John and I see different sides of the mommyblogger spectrum. He sees women looking to help their children with Asperger's. I see women who are interested in using their mommyblogger status to promote themselves. Ah, there are all kinds in this fascinating blogosphere!

Another great take-away was how many people are interested in bringing PodCamps to other parts of Mass. There was some talk of one out in the Berkshires and AuctionWally and I got to talking about doing one out in Barre, MA.

And that's the great thing about PodCamps. They don't need to be in major cities, with crowds of hundreds. They can be small. And small is beautiful!

Social Media as the Virtual Ten-Foot Pole

2009-03-27T13:34:00.002-05:00

Lots of folks on Twitter this morning seemed to be shocked by this story in the New York Times informing us that not everyone is who they say they are on Twitter--esp. high profile celebrities....Well, duh!

I've known for a very long time that many company blogs, and celebrity blogs, and micro-blogs, were being ghost-written. I've also known for a long time that many "blog" aren't being kept by who they say is keeping them--and that the faux bloggers are pretty darned proud that they can be, oh, say, a 26-year old consultant blogging as 60 year old grandmother or teen-age boy.

I've also known for some time that ghost writers are routinely hired to keep social networking profiles on LinkedIn and Facebook for their clients or bosses.

A month or so ago, I was at a social media conference in NYC, where a young consultant yammered on and on about how she managed her D-list celebrity client's social media persona. It was annoying, to say the least. Esp. since she didn't even acknowledge that some of those fans could cross the line into stalker-dom. The consultant had never heard of a troll either....

As Tameka Kee wrote in Paid Content, there's an "erosion of Twitter's perceived authenticity." But do the celebrities really care?? Probably not.

As the young consultant said over and over,fans *crave* interaction with their celebrities. That's totally pathetic, but that's the way some fans are....although I think they'd get over their *craving* after awhile....

So, while many of us agree that there's nothing wrong with one person in a company doing the blogging or tweeting for the company, there's something really jerky/phony/creepy/insincere about ghosting....

The funny--or, maybe not so funny--thing in the Times piece was what 50Cent's web manager had to say about his client's (non)use of Twitter "He doesn’t actually use Twitter,” Mr. Romero said of 50 Cent, whose real name is Curtis Jackson III, “but the energy of it is all him.”

The energy. Wow. To be able to channel one's "energy" thru another person, from a distance, and have it "touch" one's fans....

wow. isn't that the old ten-foot pole??

Senator Proposes Newspapers Re-Structure, Become Non-Profits

2009-03-25T22:24:00.004-05:00

Apparently, U.S. Senator Benjamin Cardin(D-Maryland) has proposed something called the "Newspaper Revitalization Act"....

According to a post on the Editor's Weblog, under the Newspaper Revitalization Act, newspapers would be organizations eligible for 501(c)(3) status, the same status public radio and television have now, and could adopt the Low Profit Limited Liability Company business model (L3C).

"We are losing our newspaper industry," Cardin said in a statement. "The economy has caused an immediate problem, but the business model for newspapers, based on circulation and advertising revenue, is broken, and that is a real tragedy for communities across the nation and for our democracy.

The new legislation would make advertising and subscription revenue tax exempt and contributions to newspapers tax deductible. Cardin says the bill is to help local newspapers, not big conglomerates...and does not apply to radio or other media (this means *you* New Media interlopers!)

OK...so what sort of "local newspaper" would fit Cardin's definition? Since most newspapers are owned by corporations of some sort, what are the qualificaitons for a a newspaper corporation to be considered a "big conglomerate"? There are some obvious ones, like Tribune, McClatchy, NYTCo. and Gannett. But what about Advance? What about some of the other regionals? And what if your local newspaper--your only local newspaper--is controlled by a conglomerate? Or are we talking small local papers with very limited ownership--like the Journal Register Co., which closed several papers in Connecticut because buyers could not be sought for them.

Over at the Boston Globe, readers had some rather irate comments to the bill. Says one commenter:"Newspapers aren't failing because of incompentence. Would you say that horse-drawn carriage manufacuturers were incompetent because they couldn't compete with Ford automobiles? Newspapers are failing because they have to adjust to completely new business model, customer base, and production.

According to an AP report John Sturn, President and chief executive officer of the Newspaper Association of America voiced support for the bill, saying it "recognizes changes in the law might be necessary to provide a boost to newspapers trying to weather this difficult economic period."

Yes, newspapers *may* be vital for democracy--but what about the massive incompetence that allowed them to run up huge debit? Perhaps before a bill is passed, what needs to be looked at is exactly why smaller newspapers are failing. Is it because of huge amounts of debit--like at some of the conglomo-papers? or is it some form of financial mis-management, or an inability to monetize web offerings, or some other reason?

Nobody wants to see newspapers close, that's for sure, but is a piece of legislation necessary to help another ailing business? And what sorts of give-backs will be asked from newspaper employees (the way that they were asked from GM employees)? What about newspaper profit margins? Perhaps before doling out money, legislators should look at what's going on with profit margins, with debit, and other aspects of the business model before being so certain that government intervention is needed to keep them in business.

Although, Cardin's proposal makes a bit more sense than Nancy Pelosi's proposed legislation which would allow for relaxing of anti-trust laws, and thus favor the large conglomerates.

Still, to rely on government intervention at this point is perhaps a bit premature. Yes, small regional dailies are closing, and some larger papers (like the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and the Rocky Mountain News) have moved completely online. But what would throwing government money at newspapers do for them, if there have been no substantial changes in the business model and just a lot of wishful thinking that we'll simply go back to our pre-internet days of relying on the presses?

And then there's the idea of state-owned newspapers....can you say Pravda??

'Nuff said.

(hat tip to Techmeme!)

Update 3/26/09 For some time, I had an inkling that there was something fundamentally wrong with the way the journalism establishment has been whining and moaning about how the death of newspapers will be the sure death of democracy. David Eaves excellent post posits the notion that it's Free Speech that's protected by the Constitution, not newspapers or journalism. Eaves goes on to speak about how newspapers themselves are not democratic (very good point)and that the "Diversity of content and access to it, made possible by the internet, has strengthened our civic engagement." Bravo, Mr. Eaves! Bravo!

Ada Lovelace Day--and Women In Hyperlocal Journalism

2009-03-24T11:12:00.007-05:00

This a.m. I got a reminder from some of my U.K. twitter folks that today is Ada Lovelace Day: a day of international blogging established to draw attention to the achievements of women in techology. Technology, however, is defined rather broadly to include innovators, entrepreurs and tech journalists. I'd like to take this one step further to acknowedge the women who create hyperlocal journalism online, for many of them are not just writing about their towns and cities, but are also building the sites (yes, the dreadded "back end"), doing podcasts, and creating video. While some men are sitting around wringing their hands and kvetching that there's "no business model" and "you can't make money on hyperlocal" these women are out there doing the work of hyperlocal. Some are making money, while others are creating incredible influence in both big and small ways. Here's a list of ten that I know who've been constants in hyperlocal but still do not receive the requisite national attention that men whose efforts are half as successful have received...

1. Debra Gallant & Liz George of Baristanet who took a simple Wordpress blog and built it out into a highly successful (yes, moneymaking) hyperlocal site covering Bloomfielded, NJ and surrounding suburbs.

2. Lise LePage founder of iBrattleboro Along w/partner Chris Grotke, Lise works on back end, community building, and article writing for a site that has become a go-to for news in Brattleboro, VT.

3. Maureen Mann, former managing editor of The Forum (Deerfield, NH) What happens when the place you live has absolutely no news coverage? Maureen and several other "citizens" got together and created this hyperlocal site. There are a number of women on the staff as well as Maureen who keep the folks off Deerfield and the surrounding areas informed.

4. Ruby Sinreich of Orange Politics At the hyperlocal panel at BlogWorld Expo, Ruby made a point that sometimes you don't do hyperlocal for the money but for the influence. OP has a major influence not just on bloggers but on the politics of Chapel Hill, NC. Oh, and she also works on the "back end" maintaining this Drupal-based site.

5. Heather Brandon of Urban Compass I met Heather close to 5 years ago now, when she was keeping Urban Compass, a blog about Springfield, MA for the Springfield Republican's Masslive.com site. Since then, she's taken this important hyperlocal blog out from under the auspices of the msm, and has also moved to Hartford, CT--where she now blogs on both Springfiled, MA and Hartford, CT. She's had some of the best coverage on the flap at the Hartford Courant over incivility in their forums...and the criminal charges against the Mayor of Hartford (who was the most vocal critic of the Courant's forums, including a protest on the steps of the paper. such drama!) Oh, and Heather also does the artwork and "back end" of her site as well.

6. Christine Stuart of CT NewsJunkie The place to go for the scoop on the Connecticut political scene. Christine has also done some work for Fox 61, the Hartford Fox affiliate.

7. Gena Haskett of Out on the Stoop Since 2004, Genia has kept this modest blog filled with thoughtful commentary on the political scene, being a woman, and life in Los Angeles. Witty, wise, smart and down to earth.

8. Tracy Record of West Seattle Blog This is the little blog that really, really could! In a (relatively) short period of time, Tracy's built this site into something really special (and money-making) Oh, and she's also great at using Twitter.

9. Borges of KickTime and companion wiki Kickapedia
Kicktime is a huge hyperlocal site serving the Kickapoo Valley, Wisconsin. It's companion site Kickapedia, provides a listing of local businesses, farms, etc. Borges is also the site admin, who's in charge of the "back end"

10. And, last but not least, my compadre Lisa Williams, founder of Placeblogger.com and H2otown What can I say about Lisa that I haven't already said? When it comes to Placeblogger, Lisa and I are out there with the Big Boys of aggregation, probably the only women doing hyperlocal aggregation, that's for sure.

I know that there are a whole lot more women that I could add to this list, all over the country, who are making hyperlocal happen. If you know of other women who are making hyperlocal happen, please add them in the comments.

Happy Ada Lovelace Day everybody!

Note: There are so many women doing hyperlocal--and I have to apologize to all the women I couldn't include in this post....

How Big Corporate Newspapers Fail Community (and a little about why)

2009-03-03T22:52:00.004-05:00

I've been sitting on this post a couple of days because I wasn't quite sure how to start it--but tonight, I read Mike Masnick's TechDirt post commenting on Howard Owens' defense of GateHouse's suit against NYTimes Co. (the post has been removed.) Mike contends that if the only thing of value a newspaper is providing its community is headlines and ledes that are easily stolen by a competitor, then the newspaper has somehow failed the community. Now, I can't speak to Gatehouse's properties or Howard's work with them because I have not witnessed them firsthand or spoken directly with Howard about them, but I can speak to the ways that other newspapers fail their communities....and why.

One of the main ways in which newspapers fail communities is by not maintaining civil environments in their forums and comments sections. This has been a bugaboo of mine for some time now, and when I read about the recent flare-up at a Scripps property, where the defendant in a carjacking case complained to the court about anonymous commenters on several newspaper forums and comments sections and I keep hearing the same excuses (some call them "reasons") Here they are, in no particular order:

1. moderating comments is censoring "free speech"--even if the comments are uncivil.
2. moderating stifles participation--people need "instant gratification"
3. moderation is only done *after* someone complains about the comments
4. moderation isn't done in-house but by a bot that manages the site
5. too many comments come in too fast to moderate each one
6. the proper number of staff needed to moderate the volume of comments would be too costly.

Of these six commonly cited reasons, only numbers 5 and 6 make sense. When thousands of comments come in on a daily basis, and there are only one or two (if lucky) staff members to moderate them, then proper moderation can't be done. This is unfortunate, given that it takes a long time for a community to begin to police itself.

In effect, moderation just doesn't scale for most newspapers. There's little income generated from communities (from what I understand) to justify paying for extra staff, yet extra staff is needed if comments are going to be properly moderated to create civil environments and constructive conversation.

As for the other reasons--they are definitely excuses for community neglect and result in poor-quality conversation and sentiments among staff members that range from simply negative to outwardly hostile. Staff begins to get the perception that "the people" only want to verbally assault them (can you blame staff for feeling this way? I can't.) Some staff folks begin to feel that those commenting aren't "our readers" (esp. if a board is not administered locally) while other staff at other papers begin to single out particular readers whose views they do not agree with and ban or do other things to their accounts (as well as not respond to their complaints.)

Not moderating properly has nothing to do with "free speech" and it has nothing to do with "stifling" conversation or that people need immediate gratification.

When I've asked about verification software--to make sure that posters have real identities and valid email addys--I hear that these moderation options are often used. But since many of them are automated, there's little direct viewing of the registration materials by staff.

Still, the problem of insufficient staff would make it impossible to properly review every registration.

Once again, it's a problem of scale.....newspaper "communities" don't scale. And if they don't scale, they are failing any attempt to create a cohesive community for a newspaper.

Community isn't just the physical space--the boundaries of a town or its businesses. Communities, esp. for newspapers, are occurring online. And if there is no moderation within those burgeoning communities to set the tone and then find the right people to police them, those who do not care about them will run them. This dynamic occurs in improperly moderated face to face communities, and bleeds over into online (see Clay Shirky on this one.)

Because no matter how great the technology, it's people that make a community. If a newspaper doesn't properly moderate, and the trolls and other disruptors take over, it is not the people's fault--it's that nobody bothered to lay the foundation for a good community. That may not be the people who constitute the staff, but the fact that there just isn't enough staff to properly police the community....

And maybe this is where, once again, hyperlocal can be better than corporate...

Just a thought.

Just to clarify: moderation doesn't mean that people cannot be anonymous nor use pseudonyms and a recent court in Maryland ruled that, in lawsuits, media companies need not reveal the names of anonymous posters: "It seems to be pretty much following a recent trend that we've been seeing -- that there is at least a qualified right to speak anonymously on the Internet," Bayard said. "Courts are going to require the plaintiff or others seeking identities to make a heightened showing that they have a valid cause of action." This is great as far as anonymity is concerned, but does not address the issues of community policing and if withholding a comment from posting constitutes a form of "censorship." No anonymous, hyperbolic or ad hominem poster has ever argued this one, and it's doubtful that they ever will.

Note Over at The Noisy Channel, there's some discussion about putting comments behind a pay wall. This just might lead to more civil and productive conversation. Would people pay for conversation? It would also show who *wants* conversaton. IMO, though, conversation is better handled in small communities, on hyperlocal sites, where they scale and someone can be paid to properly moderate.

A few late words on SocComm09

2009-02-16T12:42:00.006-05:00

Last week I had the opportunity to attend Jeff Pulver's social media summit, SocComm '09....here's what I took away from it....

Jeff really is, as Chris Brogan said, a true thought leader. And it's not just because of what Jeff's already done, it's how he thinks about things that may happen in the future. He's one of those guys I've wanted to spend some time around for awhile (and one of the reasons I'd like to get back to NYC--just to occasionally hit his Social Media breakfasts.)

And as Chris and I said to each other in the hallway, "why is it that I have to go away from Massachusetts to run into you?" so odd how we live in the same state but rarely at the same functions in state. Life's funny that way sometimes...

High points of the day were, for me:

Jeff Jarvis interacting with the crowd during his presentation. I've seen Jeff a number of times since 2005, and this was the first time I'd seen him have fun with the crowd. He treated the crowd as if we were (and are)peers, skipping over some of his powerpoint slides saying "you probably already know this" and then had a great back and forth with the audience over the question "how would Google run a restaurant?" The energy was so positive and so good that it made me think he must be pretty fun as a professor...

Shelly Palmer was also fantastic! I've been reading Shelly off and on for about 2 years now, in various places, and on his blog and he was refreshingly no B.S. when it came to the idea of "social networking" (and that it's been around forever.) Shelly wrote his own take on Twitter at SocCom here. Shelly's also one of the few people I've allowed to put me on a newsletter mailing list that I haven't kvetched about. Usually, I find the automatic placing on newsletter lists of people whose business cards you get to be a little presumptuous, but with Shelly, since I read him anyway, it really is a decent way of keeping up with him (although I wouldn't advise too many other people to do that with me--you may end up with a snarky email, as I hate spam.)

Brock Meeks from the Center for Democracy and Technology provided vital counterpoints to a discussion on anonymity that was veering into the absurd. I am always shocked how so many people in the United States do not understand the importance of anonymity (or, more appropriately, pseudonumity) in U.S. history--and are so quick to want to throw away pseudonumity/anonymity as some sort of remedy for online incivility. While we may not suffer from political prosecution for our views (not at this time in history anyway) there are many other reasons for using pseudonymns or being anonymous. We have a long way to go with privacy online to dismiss the importance of anonymity or pseudonumity.

The discussion between Sandra Fathi and Rob Key on "Social Media and Multiple Personality Disorder" also brought up many good points about privacy and protecting one's privacy online. Lots of good thoughts about the blurry line between employees and employers, between one's private online life and if the company one works for should be part of that life. It's another area where the law and people's perceptions of their privacy online have not caught up with the realities of the Internet.

And now for the not so great stuff:

I hesitate to write this because, I've noticed recently, that people are far more aggressive to those critical of their work than they were in the past. The old social media advice used to be to just read the criticism and take it into account--don't necessarily respond. Have a thick skin and get on with life. But now, it's not just responding, but in some cases also suing: using the provisions of the DMCA to stifle speech (as in the case of a rodeo group v. an animal rights group) or claiming defamation (as when an SF chiropractor sued a local artist for a negative review on Yelp) I'm really peeved by this, and will just post my thoughts anyway....

The Mommyblogger panel wasn't that interesting. The panel leader didn't need to explain what a mommyblogger is, and most of what the panel said had to do with "the purchasing power of moms"--a party line I'd heard so many times before over the past four years that, when I start to hear it, I go to my "happy space." Later, in comparing notes with other audience members, we were all rather bothered that the mommyblogger panel didn't address issues around their children's use of social networks or the impact of what they do on their children's privacy --two very important issues that mothers *should* be concerned about.

IMO, the emphasis on mommyblogging diminishes the contributions of women overall to the blogosphere and social media. We are not all mommies, and being a mommy may give one perspective, but not the only perspective held by women vis a vis social media.

and I'm sorry, but while some folks may find him funny, I really wasn't impressed by Gary Vaynerchuck (and know he's now following me on Twitter.) Much of what Gary was saying, around the F-bombs and other sundry swears--wasn't anything new and revolutionary to the bulk of us in the crowd (maybe to a few young guns, but not overall.) I've been both attending and speaking at "social media" conferences of one stripe or another since 2005, and so many times I've heard "you can make money being a content producer!" that I just want to throw up. It used to be "you can make money from blogging!" now the old hype is extended out to all other kinds of social media. Please! it's very difficult for the majority of people to make money strictly from their user-generated content: reasons range from lack of "popular appeal" (let's face it: frat boy behavior and young chicks with big boobs will always get more attention than most other folks) to invisibility in Google. One can make money from a variety of resources connected to their online personae, but when it comes to UGC, the eggs-in-one-basket adage holds true.

Also, enough with "Old media's dead!" stuff. Man! We've been hearing that one for years as well and it's really not quite dead yet (to quote the old man in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.) It was esp. weird coming from a guy who, the day after the conference, I saw being very civil on the Today Show. A note to Gary: if you are leveraging old media, as it appears, to bolster new media, then say so. Nothing wrong with that--everybody does it to one degree or another. Don't commit "sins of omission"--just be transparent! (although props again to Shelly Palmer for pointing out that GV makes money from his wine concern as well...)

Maybe it was meant to be comedic relief...but, well, I felt the same way when, at the PDF a couple of years ago, I heard Tom Friedman tell an anecdote I'd heard innumerable times on TV. It was, well, kind of boring....

Another disappointment was the lack of women presenters. Yes, there was one--who seemed a little naive about what she was doing, and that was a little disappointing too. There are many other highly qualified women working in social media--like Sandra Fathi--that it would have been nice to hear one of them address larger issues of social media pertaining to marketing, media, and communications.

Or are women just not there yet in the numbers that men are--and, therefore, give the impression of being "invisible"?

I don't know, but, Jeff Pulver, if you're reading this, let's chat (not that I'm the most qualified, but I might have some really good connections--after all, "I know everybody" ;-) )

So, that's my take on SocComm. Whether you like it or not. It just is--transparent and truthful.

Update Jeff Pulver has a full list of related SocComm blog posts

SocComm social media socialnetworking

On the Twitter Team for SocComm09

2009-02-09T23:49:00.002-05:00

I'm in New York again (my favorite city in the whole world)and this time to be part of the "Twitter Team" for Jeff Pulver's SocComm09.

Along with finally getting to meet Jeff (another one of those guys I've known off and on for a couple of years and through other folks and a myriad of conversations) I'm very interested in hearing Fred Wilson, as well as Shelley Palmer. Can't wait to catch up with Howard Greenstein
--who I've also known for a few years, off and on, both f2f and thru online and *should* have a chat with as it's been awhile-- and to say hi to Jeff Jarvis (if he's going to have a chance to say "hi" to any of the Twitter Team, or if he'll be bombarded by admirers....seen that happen a time or two...)

There's only one session that I have no interest in. I won't make any scathing notes about it though. As I discovered, there are some issues where I'm just better off saving my breath.

But I might also not stick around for Gary Vaynerchuck. Sure, lots of people like what he does--and I do indeed love a good wine and appreciate recommendations--but Gary's hyper-testosterone-induced delivery isn't fun for me. Perhaps I'm just not his audience...

I wonder, though, who's on the rest of the Twitter team. I have a few ideas, and it's a pretty good guess that I already know some of them. While I'm not NY-based, I'm around in lots of different circles (you'd be surprised the places I go and the people I know :) ) so there's a very good chance of previous acquaintance.

Well, I'll know for sure tomorrow...

If you're interested, you can follow me on twitter: @tishgrier and the hastag is #soccomm09

See you there!

Five Steps for Keeping Your Twitter Stream Spam Free

2009-02-05T11:13:00.006-05:00

It was bad enough that some of us have noticed a rise in "Twitter zombies"--now, thanks to a new commercial tool (tweettornado.com) you may have to block more than you follow. Dancho Danchev in ZDNet describes this pesky pollution device as having the potential to "empower(ing) phishers, spammers, malware authors and everyone in between with the ability to generate bogus Twitter accounts and spread their campaigns across the micro-blogging service."

How does TweetTornado do its dirty deeds? Danchev says that it "allows users to create unlimited Twitter accounts, add unlimited number of followers, which combined with its ability to automatically update all of bogus accounts through proxy servers with an identical message make it the perfect Twitter spam tool." It essentially exploits a flaw in Twitter's new registration system that doesn't require valid email addresses for new subscribers. (see Danchev's post for more tech-oriented details.)

Oh, thanks a lot Twitter. How hard can it be to send out an automated message to validate new subscribers--and keep the rest of us safe?

Now, there may be a ton of aggressive marketers (as well as nefarious spammers, phishers, etc.) that will think TweetTornado is a cool tool for helping them get their messages into *your* unsuspecting Twitter stream. That's where the best defense is a good offense. Here are a five short steps for keeping your Twitter stream spam-free:

1. Never automatically follow anyone!

2. Read the tweets. What's the content? are they saying anything cool? Linking to anything good? (but be careful of the links! they could take you somewhere you don't want to go.)

3. Check how many followers they have. If they are following tons of people, but few are following back, something's not cool.

4. Read profiles. What does the profile tell you about the follower?

5. Feel free to block! Twitter isn't a contest. It doesn't help you to have as many people follow you as you can get. Esp. if those followers are doing nothing for your stream--and might even be polluting it with spam and phishing schemes.

And if you inadvertently end up following a spammer, or even if somebody you think is ok begins to overly-self promote (or some other weirdness starts to occur), there's nothing wrong with un-following and even blocking. I will un-follow someone if I get a "gut feeling" about them, and I will definitely block a spammer. Whether it's a porn spammer, a phisher, or an overly aggressive marketer, spam is spam. Do away with it a.s.a.p.!

The key is to use your good judgment. And eventually, TweetTornado will end up in the deadpool.

Further: TechCrunch IT mentions "twitter squatting" The Twitter equivalent of domain squatting. And it was bound to happen.

Scoopt shuts down, Pajamas Media quits blogs

2009-02-03T12:09:00.003-05:00

Two upheavals in the citizen-generated media world: Scoopt, which sold "amateur" pics to news agencies is shutting down and right-wing blog network Pajamas Media is shuttering its blogging arm in favor of Pajamas TV (a talking-head video franchise)

Scoopt was the first agency to sell citizen generated photo-journalism. Scoopt gave owners of sold photos 40% of what they made and held a 12-month exclusivity on photos. Founder Kyle MacRae says Scoopt was the first agency to "monetise citizen journalism"--not sure of that claim when it comes to print, but they may indeed have been the first to pay for citizen-generate news photos (London bombing photos being the first.) Scoopt was purchased by Getty Images, so it makes me wonder if Getty Images is planning to accept "citizen" photo-journalism directly from citizens. If Getty moves in this direction, will they pay for the photos, and what sort of terms will they have on exclusivity?

Meanwhile, Pajamas Media really is stabbing right-wing bloggers where they live--sadly--and putting its efforts into Pajamas TV. I saw the Pajamas TV people pitching pretty heavily in the exhibitors' hall at BlogWorld Expo, but had no idea they'd be shutting down their blogs in favor of the video end of things. Pam Gellar at Atlas Shrugs, an original PJM blogger registers deep frustration:

I was one of the original pajama bloggers. I thought PJM was going to rival AP, UPI, Reuters. Finally, a news portal of citizen bloggers and journalists that would counter the Pali stringers and left wing biased journalists of the news gathering agencies. But PJM went off the rails. Simon decided to chase big names for big money, but to what end? Who needed another NRO or WSJ Best of the Web? And unlike the left, where Soros, Hollywood libtards and Google-type asshats embarrassingly fund the leftwing sites vis a vis Moveon.org et al, the right has none of that. None. We live on fumes. G-d bless our small advertisers and our readers who contribute.

And Ann Althouse raises some important points about video:must say, I can barely stand to watch any political talking heads TV shows, even on network TV and cable TV. I just have no patience waiting for people to say something that I could read in 1/10 the time. . ." True! very true! Ann then notes Instapundit's remarks re Pajamas TV, and wonders "But do you want to watch him on web TV?

For me, Instapundit was always a quick read--and most interesting for the links he gave to lesser-known bloggers. How does linking translate into video? It doesn't!

Linking aside, IMO, moving to an all-video platform this is a *really* stupid move, as not everyone wants to be doing video. Not everyone has the face for video. The old saying used to be "you have a face for radio." Well, in new media, you could have a "face for blogs" without having to go into the video space.

And not everyone has the time to sit and listen to a talking head--let alone find a way to reference a talking head to comment on said talking head's prattle.

So, while there were never enough catastrophes to help keep Scoopt afloat, the collapse of Pajamas seems to be predicated on mismanagement. I hate to see anything shut down, but we are indeed in a time of experimentation, and we are learning as we go along. As Scoopt's MacRae wrote in a piece for the Press-Gazette in 2006: "The trouble with any start-up, especially a dotcom start-up in a brand new media space, is that you don't know any of the answers before you have to sell your house to find out."

There are lessons to be learned from both Scoopt and Pajamas' closings--but the lesson isn't that "citizen journalism doesn't work," as I'm sure old media would like to say. It's more that we are in a transition, and that we haven't found the right business model yet for new media any more than we have for old media like newspapers and TV (which is also having its problems with a failing business model.)

It would be nice if someone would do a post-mortem on Scoopt and Pajamas. Would be interesting to hear the lessons learned from folks in the know....

Just a thought...

(hat tip to @gmarkham for the Scoopt scoop)

The Newspaper Industry Can't Say They Weren't Warned...

2009-01-30T10:20:00.003-05:00

Take a look at this news report on "electronic newspapers" from 1981 (via @johncabell)

I was stunned by the editor of the S.F. Examiner who said that it was just an experiment and they didn't plan to make any money from it. Well, maybe not in 1981, but the fact that 500 of the 2,000 people in the Bay Area with computers subscribed to the "electronic" version should have been a bit of a clue that things just might shift if computers became cheap and ubiquitous.

Guess nobody thought the technology would change. Wow. You'd think we were still using crystal sets rather than transistor radios or something....

If there's one thing that's constant, it's that technology changes. Think about it...