Archive for the ‘Media’ Category

In continuing to think through how we measure communications effectiveness I keep coming back to the notion of recommend – something our COO and President, Jonathan Schwartz inspired us to think about.

As communicators we get caught-up in all kinds of abstract terms. Terms like Reputation. Which normally involve substantial research to do justice to. What I like about Recommend is how practical and real it is. “Would you recommend Sun?” is much easier to get a handle on than “What do you think of Sun’s Reputation”.

You can also capture Recommend scores very quickly and cost effectively. “Social’ recommend engines are a fountain of data and insight. Pew just did some more work on their growing influence and, the increasing participation of people in them:-

Pew Internet & American Life Project: Rating systems

Twenty-six percent of adult internet users in the U.S. have rated a product, service, or person using an online rating system. That amounts to more than 33 million people. These systems, also referred to as “reputation systems” are interactive word-of-mouth networks that assist people in making decisions about which users to trust, or to compare their opinions with the opinions expressed by others. Many Web sites utilize some form of this application, including eBay, Amazon, Moviefone and Amihot.

The usage patterns the report reveals point to a future in which decisions will be increasingly made based on recommend by third parties. The informal ecosystem of unpaid reviewers.

An earlier Pew Internet & American Life survey conducted in 2003 showed that 44% of
U.S. internet users above the age of 18 have contributed their thoughts and files to the
online world. This group of users, made up of more than 53 million American adults,
has participated in posting photographs, written material, or audio files to Web sites,
maintained their own site, ran a Web cam, or undertaken some other method of adding
content to the Web. That same survey found that 13% of internet users have their own
Web site and 21% have allowed other users to download files from their computer,
including music and video files.

Ultimately we are going to have to communicate with even more influencers. This is going to require scaling communications beyond 1:few. Blogs and Wikis have much to offer here. For me this is a good thing – Lee says it well,

The more voices that are in the mix, … the better off everybody is,” said Lee Rainie, director of the Pew group. “There’s more wisdom in groups than there are in individuals no matter how expert they are.”

I’m not suggesting that online rating engines are a panacea – but they are a useful, real-time tool that communicators, for the most part, do not use today. Take a look at how you can incorporate Recommend into your dashboard using them as a source. It will also increase your relevance in the executive suite.

launches… looks like another Fast Company. Oh God save us!

Actually I’ll hold all comment until I’ve read a hard copy which should arrive by snail mail sometime this decade – unless I see one in the mail room in which case I’ll steal it (all in public interest of course). Will Worthwhile be worthwhile…?

You might get fined… I’m not sure but Mark Cuban’s fine by the NBA might be the first tangible punishment doled out to a blogger (other than gettting fired!).

(Quick segway while we are on flying… I know the flights to NZ cost a fortune but this is ridiculous.)

Anyway, Mark can’t get fired… fined yes, fired no. Here’s how the BBC covered the Queen of The Sky… A Delta employee fired for including photos of herself at work – kind of at work – but just the same…

Queen of the Sky, otherwise known as Ellen Simonetti, evolved into an anonymous semi-fictional account of life in the sky.

But after she posted pictures of herself in uniform, Delta Airlines suspended her indefinitely without pay.

Ms Simonetti was told her suspension was a result of “inappropriate” images. Delta Airlines declined to comment.

Complaint lodged

“I was really shocked, I had no warning,” Ms Simonetti told BBC News Online.

“I never thought I would get in trouble because of the blog. I thought if they had a problem, someone would have said something before taking action.”

Thank goodness we don’t have to wear uniforms. What were the NBA thinking! The one thing they need is buzz and they seem determined to kill it… It really wasn’t that bad. Really. And you can guess where I sand on the firing…

All this points to is the need for companies to have a widely published and simple blog policy. Like, “don’t do anything stupid or disclose anything that is confidential – but if you want to support us in your free time, have at it”.

More to come.

One of my team (thanks for the heads-up Steph) was just asked by a hack if an event we’re holding is ‘off-the-record’, NDA, or NFB? …NFB?

That’s “Not for Blogging” folks. And I am sure it’s going to be asked more and more. Apparently this jounro had just been instructed that an event was NFB – which is totally understandable if it was under NDA or OTR. If you know what I mean.

Seems companies are not just worried about something appearing in print over time – an event that might actually, dare I say it, be able to be ‘managed’. Now they are also worried about an event being spontaneously blogged, live from the floor.

My view is in general, lets leave it up to the media – if they feel a blog can offer a new or different perspective, have at it. This is less of an issue with a formal event where the real-time view from the floor is better than reading about it three weeks later. Say a JavaOne or a SunNetwork.

It’s more of an issue with the informal get-together. Here you’ve got to have the the confidence that journos will exercise common sense as to the appropriateness of blogging a portion of any event – however big or small, formal or informal. Information taken and delivered out of context is as bad as lies, drivel and misrepresentation.

It’s going to be a real challenge for PR to define a NFB policy. OK, we can just say it. But doesn’t that undermine the value of blogs in the first place? Why hold an event and not allow blogging? In fact, as I discovered a year or so ago, you’d better have a WiFi network in place to enable it. Wouldn’t a ABP (Always Blog Please) be better for transparency?

But now that you’ve asked, our events are totally blogable… unless we say otherwise 🙂

If you haven’t read Chris Anderson’s piece on the Long Tail you’d better… Usage of the phrase are popping up everywhere. The Long Tail has many other names – like, “The Network Effect”. Or, is it “Viral Marketing”.

Actually, Chris has crafted a very unique view of how the web coupled with the infinite inventory and access of the web are driving new purchasing behaviors and market phenomenon. This is actually incredibly stimulating as a notion for all marketers. It points to the need to look beyond the 20% that account for 80% of the revenue towards the massive incremental revenue potential of scaling the 80%.

To get a sense of our true taste, unfiltered by the economics of scarcity, look at Rhapsody, a subscription-based streaming music service (owned by RealNetworks) that currently offers more than 735,000 tracks.

Chart Rhapsody’s monthly statistics and you get a “power law” demand curve that looks much like any record store’s, with huge appeal for the top tracks, tailing off quickly for less popular ones. But a really interesting thing happens once you dig below the top 40,000 tracks, which is about the amount of the fluid inventory (the albums carried that will eventually be sold) of the average real-world record store. Here, the Wal-Marts of the world go to zero – either they don’t carry any more CDs, or the few potential local takers for such fringy fare never find it or never even enter the store.

The Rhapsody demand, however, keeps going. Not only is every one of Rhapsody’s top 100,000 tracks streamed at least once each month, the same is true for its top 200,000, top 300,000, and top 400,000. As fast as Rhapsody adds tracks to its library, those songs find an audience, even if it’s just a few people a month, somewhere in the country.

This is the Long Tail.