The Daily Lark

Dell is exploiting social networks in a new marketing scheme being tried out in Singapore. If you agree to buy a laptop on Dell Swarm, the discounted price drops as others join your “swarm” and also buy. Here’s how Dell describes it:

Start by picking the laptop you would like to purchase. Be the first buyer [...]

This is interesting… faking community participation, not good…
Rich Kulawiec writes in to let us know that Sears.com and Kmart.com (owned by Sears) have been inviting visitors to those sites to “join our community.” However, rather than joining any actual community, what you appear to be doing is installing spyware that reports on your every move [...]

You can’t buy reputation either… That’s one of Richard’s thesis I really agree with…
My central thesis is that corporations can’t buy reputation or brand loyalty any more. These are earned through performance over the long-term. The dispersion of media; people’s continuous partial attention from a surfeit of daily impressions; and the lack of trust in [...]

Stowe flags a contender for word (or phrase) of the week: Corporate Journalism.

[...] In conversations with another McKinsey colleague, Tom Hayes, a former NYT reporter, we came up with the term “corporate journalism” to describe what we were doing inside of the Firm: applying classic reporting techniques inside of an organization to determine what, if anything, [...]

Big speeches require a massive amount of effort.
Good communicators know this and smart executives commit to it.
The Wall Street Journal has a piece this morning on how Bill Gates developed his commencement address for Harvard.
What’s intriguing is how committed Bill is to the process – this is rare in an executive.
A [...]

Jon Beattie of Marker is up at the Future of Online Advertising Conference – he’s put together a great summary of a keynote on why 47% of campaigns fail – a summary of the presentation by Greg Stuart at the Future of Online Advertising conference today in New York. Greg is the former CEO, IAB [...]

Another interesting piece, this time on how opinion leaders drive buzz…
Bloggers, discussion-board denizens, and social networkers are courted by marketers, who believe they build buzz that can make or break new products and Web sites. But there’s growing controversy surrounding such efforts, and debate over just how much sway these opinion leaders really have…
… [...]

It’s simple really, because it is a conversation and conversations by there very nature should be free ranging expressions of interest.
While I do believe that anonymity breeds irresponsibility, leave that up to the Blogger to decide. Some blogs might benefit from anonymous posts.
I have a real problem with any formal codes of conduct. And [...]

This great piece on the value of transparency and pretty much a must read for communicators. Clive’s blog is worth a look as well.
As with most pieces on the rise of blogging and participatory media, Clive can’t help but take a swing at PR folks and their craft. This marrs the story with causal assumptions. [...]

There is no question in my mind that we are at the beginning of the end for newspapers. Tim O’Reilly jumps in this morning:
[from SF Chronicle in Trouble?]
I hate to play Valleywag, but I’m hearing rumors that the San Francisco Chronicle is in big trouble. Apparently, Phil Bronstein, the editor-in-chief, told staff in a recent [...]