February 2007

Remember that great conversation with a bunch of geeks I blogged about last week? Well, our good buddy Andru Edwards of Gear Live Media happened to be there with his camera. Here’s the video. It’s full of useful tips — including some from our very own Steve Broback — about businesses and social media.

Enjoy!

Open source is an under discussed piece of the social media revolution because you need special skills to be involved. Nevertheless, it represents a real value add in the online world for a non-trivial subset of companies. This begs the question, if your development team has been making modifications or upgrades to any open-source blogging platform and/or its plugins, is it worth sharing those upgrades with the open-source community?

Some would say that sharing work that you’ve paid good money for so that others can use it for free is an unsound business practice. Others would argue that you’ve reaped immense benefit from the open-source community and that you should give back.

I would agree with the latter statement, primarily because you have a lot more to gain in terms of goodwill than you do to to lose in terms of proprietary information. Unless the plugin that your engineers wrote is something that would be of direct and exclusive benefit to your competition, you should post it for other geeks to tinker with. Others might be able to innovate and expand in ways that could give you additional benefit down the line.

If you’re a company that provides a product or service to a geeky audience, your benefits grow further. The goodwill you will generate by participating in the open source community will probably get you a few new customers. And don’t underestimate the power of contributing to open source communities when it comes to recruiting. There are lots of smart geeks out there who want to make career moves, and if they see that your engineers know what they’re doing, they’ll be more likely to want to join your team.

The ever exciting world of social network APIs took a giant leap forward over the weekend with the announcement of Facebook’s FQL, which stands for “Facebook Query Language.”

Basically, this allows developers to string together scripts that can query the Facebook databases for all kinds of information. Here are a few ways the language could be used within Facebook:

• Play Yente. Find out if any of your single friends share interests. Then fix them up.
• Suggest Media. Find out which of your friends you have the most in common with when it comes to movies, music and books. Then rely on their other preferences when deciding which media to consume.
• Stalk Rivals. Think your current S.O. might still carry a torch for a former flame? Keep track of her relationship status and pay attention if he starts acting weird when she breaks up with her boyfriend. ::inserts tongue in cheek::

Those are just a few ideas that come readily to mind, based on what I know of the language. Although I think that last one might be a little farfetched. But there’s already a script that will tell you which of your friends are in relationships.

I don’t need to tell you that the more cool little functions like this a social network has, the more of a draw it becomes for users. These features also empower exisiting users to talk about your products in completely new ways. If you’re in any facet of media right now, you want to be especially aware of how this could play out because Facebook’s profile features focus heavily on media preferences.

And if you’re a politico of any stripe, you want to be paying special attention to the election features that Facebook implemeted before last year’s midterm. The query language could be a way to identify and court potential supporters on a large scale based on who they supported last time around.

A big group of geeks was sitting around in Chris and Ponzi Pirillo’s new basement last night talking about social media and why businesses should care.

Robert said that bloggers are “spitters” who spray pieces of information to lots of other people when we open our mouths. And just like spitting in public is a great way to spread disease, virtual “spitting” is a great way to spread information.

And of course social networks like Facebook and MySpace make it easier to “spit” information with sharing features and bulletins. You don’t even have to be a blogger anymore to spit.

And of course, the next wave of this whole phenomenon is the interoperability phenomenon. Even your non-blogging customers will have giant megaphones to address the world without starting their own blogs.

More disintermediation in the works!

Sometimes, social media can be used as a crisis management tool even when the crisis didn’t get its start in social media. Case in point, JetBlue CEO Dave Neeleman’s public apology via YouTube for the major screwup at JFK that left one group of passengers stranded on the tarmac for 10 ½ hours.

“There are a couple thing you can do [when challenges come your way],” said Neeleman in his video. “You can ignore it and pretend like it was an aberration. Or you can do an examination and determine if there’s something you can do internally to make sure that it never happens again.”

It’s hard to get out there and admit you’re wrong. That’s why it’s so rare that someone at the top of an organization apologizes.

As Hal Halladay wrote:

I have been delayed before and been stuck on the tarmac in a plane on other airlines. While my experience was not 10 ½ hours, I never received an apology from the CEO or any payment for my inconvenience.

Problems like this are a bit like finding a bomb that’s about to go off. You can either back off and let the bomb go off and do a lot of damage, or you can take a risk, bring in the S.W.A.T. team and explode the bomb under controlled circumstances. Yes, there’s still an explosion, but the damage is much less severe and long-lasting.

Neeleman did the latter, and it was exactly the right thing. It demonstrates his integrity and I admire him for it.

Google’s recent struggles with CBS in getting video content online (WSJ, subscription required) illustrates just how far the traditional media still has to go in ending its resistence to change.

Everyone knows that the emergence and continue growth of the Web has broad, sweeping implications for copyright holders. From Napster to Google’s YouTube, copying protected content has never been easier. But the media companies haven’t been willing to step up to the plate and deal with the most effective and popular online distribution platforms.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt told the Wall Street Journal “he was sure Google ‘will eventually do some very significant deals’ with TV companies, but suggested that none were imminent. ‘I’m not in a great hurry on this issue. It’s more important to get it right.’”

I’m not so sure that Schmidt would be taking the same conservative stance if the media companies were ready to stop dragging their feet. They have to be aware that long-term, there’s absolutely nothing the media industry can do to stop people from using the Web to share their content.

Yes, they can sue and stifle innovation in online media distribution technologies. They can tie things up for years in the courts, slowing progress in the process.

And even if they were able to come up with a foolproof DRM software that would prevent unauthorized online sharing, it would be to their own detrmient. People are getting used to watching content how they want it and when they want it. That’s only going to become more the case. And no matter how compelling their storytelling, their media offerings will increase in irrelevancy unless they face those facts.

This is the same basic fear we’re seeing with public relations/brand management and the blogosphere, althought we’re heartened to see that businesses seem to be getting over that fear in recent months. I hope that the media industry is soon to follow.

David Armano has a great post that details the ways Twitter could be used commercially.

For those of you who don’t know, Twitter is a site that allows users to update friends and strangers alike on your whereabouts and activities. I’m just getting into Twitter myself. I remember using AOL Instant Messenger for the exact same thing in college. Almost everyone stayed signed on 24/7 and would always have some clever away message up if they weren’t at the computer. Twitter seems like a fun extension of that.

Armano writes that he hopes Twitter doesn’t become commercialized in the pay-per-post sense. That is, he doesn’t like the idea of a celebrity being paid to mention certain brands in their Twitter entries. He is quick to point out that specificity makes for a more compelling story, but not if it’s paid for.

I tend to disagree. As we all know, some commercials are also compelling stories. Some ad campaigns have even had cult followings. I would argue that advertising in all its ubiquity has become a medium for telling interesting stories.

On the other end of the ethical advertising spectrum, I find fake blogs and undisclosed pay-per-post troublesome. Undisclosed pay-per-Twitter presents its own unique problems. Twitter messages may be 140 characters or less, that doesn’t leave much room for disclosure.

Also, the only people who are likely to make any money from such endeavors are Hollywood stars. We already know that their time is basically for sale when it comes to product endorsements. It’s practically expected that if tabloid fodder like Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, etc. are recorded doing, wearing or saying something, they’ve probably been compensated. For any of these celebrities, joining Twitter would be just one more way for them to monetize themselves.

The great thing about a site like Twitter is that you can pay attention to Paris Hilton’s channel, or you can ignore it and only Twitter with your friends. But it would be a different story if a prominent user of Twitter decided to start taking money without disclosing it. That would be a real ethics violation.

Maybe I’m splitting hairs here. Either way, I see the commercialization of Twitter and services like it as inevitable. What do you guys think?

Via the Scobleizer.

Of India’s estimated 1.2 million bloggers, about 100,000 blog from their cellular phones some or all of the time. That number is estimated to be growing, and because of that Times of India is reaching out to the MoBloggers or m-bloggers as they call them in India.

The goal here is for them to become a blogging portal in the same way that MySpace is a “blogging portal.” Let’s hope they have cleaner code and a better UI.

A recent survey by Global Reasearch Center stated that 68% of the real estate agents they polled planned to include the blogosphere in their 2007 marketing efforts. This is according to an e-mail originally from Blogging Systems CEO Richard Nacht that was forwarded to me by my colleague Kim Larsen.

I’m not surprised by this statistic in the least. Real Estate is an ideal field for blogosphere engagement because a successful career in real estate revolves around a person’s ability to gain the trust, respect and admiration of a community.

We live in an era where technology is rapidly changing the way we engage with our local communities. People spend more time inside engaging with televisions and the Web, so they don’t have the same kinds of relationships with their neighbors that they did 50 years ago. Those same technological obsessions make us more likely to know the intimate details of the lives of people halfway around the world based on something we have in common.

That said, there are a number of blogs (like West Seattle Blog) that cater to specific communities. These blogs do prove to be popular and readable.

All of this puts realtors in a uniquely advantageous position. Because of your job, you have an intimate knowledge of the community you serve. You can fill a unique need in that community by putting your knowledge into a digital, syndicated, database-driven format. And when people see you — the real estate agent cum community blogger — as their digital tie to their real-life community, they’re going to be more willing to come to you when they want to buy or sell their home.

That’s a big topic. Frankly, it’s a billion dollar question and if I had all the answers to it, I’d be a billionaire.

What I do know is that your outreach has to be about more than just selling your product. You have to genuinely want to get in touch with the people that care about your company. And you have to relate to them on their terms.

I get a lot of invitations on MySpace to clubs that I would never go to. I’ve been “friended” by a lot of bands that I have no interest in listening to. That’s why I made my profile private and made it impossible for people to friend me unless they know my REAL name. I know that people are just trying to self-promote, and I do understand. But if the marketers in question had taken the time to read my profile, they would have seen that I really don’t want to listen to their Metallica rip-off band. So pay attention to people’s interests before you contact them.

Because despite the friend-gathering behavior you sometimes see on Web-based social networks, it’s important to remember that quality of relationships is a lot more important than quantity of “friends.” Especially when you’re promoting your organization.

Why is this true? Because you and the group of contacts you develop are only the starting point for the message you are trying to send. If people truly enjoy interacting with you, they will talk to their contacts about you. If they have an inkling that one of their friends might enjoy your product, they’ll be more likely to mention it if they don’t think you’re a tool for pinging them with corporate jargon that’s irrelevant to their lives.

So once you have contacted them, don’t just send them a form e-mail. Pay attention to what you, a unique individual, have in common with them, another unique individual. Don’t go into a sales spiel. Focus on making a connection.

I once explained social network marketing to Steve as being like randomly sitting down at a nightclub with a group of people who all know each other well. You have to be able to connect with them as more than just a marketer, or they’ll think of you as a pest. This happened to me in Puerto Vallarta when the owner of the Collage Nightclub sat down with my cousin and I while we were out at another club. We knew he was promoting his nightclub, but he was a cool guy and he was more interested in talking about good music and the town itself.

That’s how you have to be when you’re trying to engage with online social networks.

There’s an article in the LA Times today about a 13-year old girl in Texas, whose parents recently sued Myspace for the alleged sexual assault she experienced:

Whose fault is it that 13-year-old “Julie Doe” lied about her age, met a guy on MySpace.com and was allegedly sexually assaulted by him in a Texas parking lot?

Not MySpace’s, a federal judge said in a decision released Wednesday. The ruling appears to be the first time a federal court has extended to social-networking sites the same broad free-speech protections granted to Internet service providers.

The only thing I know about this case is what I read in this article, but I think the Judge made the only sensible ruling possible. MySpace, like any message board host or “content enabler” cannot and should not be held liable for content that they do not create–just like bloggers should not be held liable for the comments other people leave on their blogs.

I know that sounds a little harsh, and I’m sorry that things like this really do happen, but the burden is still on parents and individuals to treat the internet with the caution it warrants.

Senator “Series of Tubes” Stevens (R-AK) has called for a Federal ban on Wikipedia and other interactive Web tools in schools, libraries and other places that receive Federal financial support and provide public access to the Web.

Apart from the obvious stupidity that Sen. Stevens has when it comes to all things Web, there’s another reason why this bill really scares me. It will further exacerbate the digital divide between those who can afford high-speed access at home and those who cannot.

After all, publicly funded Web access is what allows homeless bloggers like Crystal Evans to blog about their experiences and draw awareness to the problem of homelessness.

Now, everyone knows that school kids rely way too much on WikiPedia and other online sources for school projects. The plethora of searchable content on the Web makes fact-finding for any assignment unbelievably easy to do. And yes, there is the problem of online predators.

To use a Brobackian analogy, what Senator Stevens is proposing is kind of like banning airplanes because they crash once in a very great while. Yes, the Web can be a dangerous place for kids. But so can playgrounds, swimming pools and amusement parks. You don’t see Federal bans on those, do you?

I don’t normally make a practice of espousing politically related opinions on this blog. But in this case, I thought it was pertinent to our business audience as well. Why? Because your core constituencies read your company’s blog from the public library. Your customers network socially and spread information about your products within and between their groups of friends during school breaks. Shutting down public access to all parts of the Web would keep your fan base from spreading the word about you.

According to Business Week, when Friendster opened their technological kimono to a dozen select developers, their unique visitors jumped 17. 76%. “This is our biggest [month-over-month] growth since launch,” Friendster marketing director Jeff Roberto told BizWeek.

Public or semi-public API’s seem to be all the rage in social networking this year. As we saw with Friendster, more flexibility, community involvement and innovation in social networking means more people coming on board. In 2007, businesses will need to start paying attention to social networks the way that they’ve been paying more and more attention to blogs.

This is not only true because more people will be using social networks. Yes, the increase in the number of users is important. But the real story here is about ease of dissemination. As users are able to add their own functions to popular sites, we’ll see a second-wave steroid effect on user-generated content. As we’ve seen in the past, increased interoperability and potential for customization in social media means that what your customers are saying about your products and services will go further, last longer and speak louder than it does already. That means even more loss of control of your traditional messaging.

There are no easy answers to the issue that John Edwards faced last week when he was forced to fire two of his campaign bloggers due to comments they had made on their personal blogs that were sarcastic and disrespectful toward the Catholic Church’s stance on birth control and abortion.

One of the major fears that companies and other organizations have about getting involved with the blogosphere is the possibility of this kind of a blowup. Companies and political candidates alike have legitimate reason to fear credibility-damaging associations with incendiary bloggers.

That said, almost all bloggers have said something that pissed someone off at one point or another. Even Robert Scoble — who is a well-regarded paragon of business blogginess — has created scandal with his remarks.

Perhaps it’s time for companies and political candidates to distance themselves from actions and remarks, rather than the individuals who made them. I’ve always held that Al Gore would have won the 2000 presidential election had he opted to acknowledge Bill Clinton’s womanizing as an unfortunate personality flaw in an otherwise great man. Instead, Gore distanced himself from Clinton when he needed his charisma most. The rest is history.

Perhaps, Edwards would have been well-served by distancing himself from the specific statements, rather than firing the bloggers outright.

If I were advising Edwards, these are the talking points I would have advised him to use:

• We all work with and respect people whose views don’t always reflect our own. Even John Kerry — who, incidentally is Catholic — and I did not agree on every single policy point, and we ran for President together!
• I have asked the bloggers in question to correct all factual inaccuracies in their blog posts about Catholic theology.
• There is nobody in the liberal blogosphere whose views on all issues overlap exactly with my own. In the absence of such an intellectual doppleganger, I am reaching out to a broad base of bloggers whose audiences I hope to court as supporters. Some of these bloggers may articulate views that I disagree with or even deplore. Nevertheless, they are on the whole decent people who have the right to speak freely.

And of course, Scoble’s advice to “take the heat and overcommunicate,” would be wise to follow as well.

The Wall Street Journal’s Informed Reader column reports today that Hollywood studios are enlisting bloggers to talk up nominated movies, which is “Ruffling Feathers in (the) Hollywood Hierarchy.”

As we saw with electronics firms at CES this year, the article reports that:

Movie studios have embraced bloggers as a cost-effective route for launching all-important Oscar campaigns. Studios frequently give a handful of high-profile Web sites a first look at trailers or rough cuts of movies. The new dynamic has ruffled some feathers in Hollywood, where for years studios focused their outreach on trade publications and other mainstream media.

Jeff Jarvis has introduced the idea of a measurement summit to bring together all the companies that offer blogosphere monitoring and measurement services.

I know this is something Steve is interested in and being in Mexico, I haven’t had the opportunity to chat with him about it.

Steve, I’d love to hear your thoughts on Jeff’s argument.

One of the issues we hear about most frequently from business bloggers is comment moderation. Apart from the chore of wading through hundreds of spam comments daily (Akismet helps, guys!) a lot of business folks aren’t sure they want to put in the time and effort to effectively guide the conversation going on in the comments.

A recent discussion surrounding my personal blog reminded me of the importance of getting involved in the conversation at a deeper level than just clicking the “spam” and “not spam” buttons and responding when you have something to say. This is not to say that you need to make sure everyone is playing nicely, but you do have to set the tone.

Cliquishness — particularly if your blog targets a niche of industry insiders — can be a huge problem on a blog. New commenters may feel that the entrenched relationships between the bloggers and the existing community are too impenetrable to effectively join the conversation. This can become even more pronounced when longtime commenters or real-life contacts of the blogger become sarcastic or mocking in their tone.

Again, I don’t think it’s a blogger’s responsibility to protect commenters from criticism, debate, or even the occasional ribbing. But if your blog projects an overall climate of cliquishness, it can stifle intelligent conversation and alienate readers. That’s the last thing you want.

My response to this problem was to post a new comment policy that included guidelines discouraging sarcasm and mocking. I hope that goes a long way to solving the problem. Going out of your way to make new commenters feel welcome can also help, and I intend to do more of this in the future.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

I’ve been out of the loop in the blogosphere the past few days due to my Mexican vacation. But I couldn’t keep myself away from the Web enough to stop checking out the blogs of some people I really respect.

Steve often asks the prominent bloggers we talk to whether or not they think that the so-called “A-list” is a self-reinforcing phenomenon. Because PageRank/Technorati Rank etc. are so tied up with existing levels of authority, and because A-listers seem to know and link to one another a great deal, it might be hard for a third wave adopted to break into the upper echelons of the blogosphere.

Jeremiah Owyang seems to concur with that philosophy. I respect him tremendously for speaking out about his objections to the Top 2000 bloggers initiative that Loic Le Meur lauded as a “cool initiative.”

The problem is that, as it spreads, the “top 2000″ collage basically turns into a link exchange that only benefits those already at the top.

I’m normally not a blogging purist. I don’t see the blogosphere as sacred, but I do very much enjoy the unfolding of a culture that revolves so much around conversation. All cultures have their objects of value, and in the online world, an inbound link is highly prized. Jeremiah is right to say that aggregations of links to top bloggers is an inflationary force on the value of an inbound link. But in all economies, we must also be aware that those with the most objects of value are best enabled to continually enrich themselves.

Still, I agree with Jeremiah that in this instance. Yes, top bloggers are going to get more inbound links because they are more widely read. That is a self-reinforcing elite group, just like the very wealthy. This is an organic phenomenon. Creating a collage of outbound links to the “top 2000″ bloggers is not organic, it’s pure link farming.

I’ve been spending some time lately researching the brand monitoring space. A portion of the various vendors of these services (Biz360, Brandimensions, Cymfony, Factiva, MotiveQuest, Nielsen BuzzMetrics, and Umbria) have approached us to ask about potential conference sponsorships over the years, and a few have presented at one or more Blog Business Summits.

I read that Peter Kim of Forrester had conducted in-depth evaluations in Q3 2006 of the main players in this space, and also “conducted client reference interviews with 17 user companies, including ABC, Activision, BP, Citigroup, CNN, DaimlerChrysler, Fleishman-Hillard, Hewlett-Packard, Nike, SAP, Sun Microsystems, Toyota, VeriSign, Verizon, and Xerox.”

The result is a PDF file available for $995.00 here, or for free(!) here.

After reading the report, I still had a few questions, so I called Peter Kim up and grilled him. He was very patient with my ignorance, and very generous with his time. Here is the short synopsis of what I concluded from the call:

To get an analysis across all major media (Web, Television, Print) that reveals what is being said (and how often) about you or your products — you’re talking a price tag of around $75,000.00. The alternative is do it yourself ad hoc (Google searches, Technorati, etc.) for “free.” Of course “free” means a ton of staff/your time.

How much of this stuff is algorithmic? It varies, but non-trivial human involvement is essential for all of the profiled services. At least one company (Brandimensions) employs an army of 400 part-time humans to manually catalog and tag news etc.

Another interesting note is that the market for these services appears to be booming. Kim said that many of the services were growing their client lists at a rapid clip, and based on the recent coverage of VC funding for buzz monitoring firms, there seems to be no lack of investor enthusiasm.