PR Tech Leader Doesn’t Get the Blog Thing…
Paul Abrahams, ex FT hack turned flack at Wag-ED really doesn’t understand what all the fuss is about…
Is blogging the 21st-century equivalent of citizen band radio, the personal radio technology that became so popular in the late 1970s that it was included in a Coronation Street plotline and spawned a generation of bad Burt Reynolds ‘Good Ol’ Boy’ movies?
Mr Scoble created many millions of dollars in positive publicity for Microsoft, on a salary of less than $100K. I don’t think WaggEd could have done a fraction of that, for 100 times the payment Mr Scoble received.
It is pretty remarkable that any communicator doesn’t quite grasp the impact of participatory communications and social media – it is even more remarkable to go public with it in such a way. Don’t think bad of Wag-ED though, Frank Shaw has a pretty good blog running which I follow.
If all Paul was trying to do was ignite the debate with a contrarian view – and goodness knows we need them right now – he has done a great job.
Blogs a Powerful B2B Presence @ Media Buyer Planner
Well worth a look. According to the study, Blogs have made inroads into B2B technology companies with more than 53 percent of respondents saying the content they read in blogs has an impact on their work-related purchasing decisions. Some 80 percent of respondents say they read blogs, with 51 saying they read them at least once a week.
The Cascade Of Influence
Tom highlights how the cascade of influence is changing – using the LonelyGirl15 (LG15) story. Turns out that LonelyGirl15 (LG15) is in fact and aspiring NZ actress – and – that the videos were anything but amateur.
The first parts of the story were published in online sites, then came the major newspapers: New York Times, Chicago Tribune, LA Times with their coverage. Their stories then helped spark the interest of TV and radio news crews.
The LG15 story is not an important story in itself, but it is an important news story. This is not a contradiction, it is a description of its place in our culture.
The LG15 story shows how the media functions, how they influence each other. It shows how the media networks: blogger, citizen, mainstream, and anything in-between — push/pull news stories up into the broader mediasphere.
To get into the broader mediasphere, it seems news stories often have to make it into flagship publications of journalist rigor, such as the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, LA Times, the Wall Street Journal, and The Times (London.)
Tom says it well in an earlier post.
Yes, the subject matter of this story was not about anything that matters that much. But imagine this same type of cooperation on really important stories–that’s what excites me.
There is always intense competition to be first with a story–but that is good. And it is complimentary competition rather than adversarial. There is no such thing as bloggers versus mainstream media.
This is the media model for the future: a mediasphere that uses the best qualities of professional media combined with relentless pursuit of information by citizen journalists. That’s a potent formula that bodes well for our society, IMHO
New Influencers book
Thanks to Steve for the pointer. Looks like this could be an interesting read and the draft’s are worth a scan. Steve is featured in the book along with other pundits such as Scoble… Would love to see some of the influencers that are using participatory media and that aren’t ‘A-List’ bloggers – this includes the new media.
Rivers Of News To Go
Dave Winer’s notion of “Rivers Of News” gets picked-up in The Guardian – a good overall summary of a powerful concept.
“As the name suggests, it’s a simple idea. Each news item arrives in plain text and consists of a date and time, a headline, and usually one sentence…
New items arrive when they are posted, and old ones are automatically deleted to make room. You can dip into the river whenever you like, and click on any headline to get the full story from the original site…
… As Winer commented on his blog: “Predictable backlash from people who say that reading news on a BlackBerry is nothing new, they’ve been doing it for years. I’m sure they have, and people were listening to MP3s on Macs and PCs before podcasting, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a turning point for audio on the Internet.”
Dave is right – and this concept is different in its inherent simplicity and speed. Rivers are reverse chronologies, like weblogs. Current offerings attempt to transport the desktop to the device, are typically slowed by ads and other crap, and are an amalgamation of links that force you to keep on soaking-up bandwidth and minutes. “Rivers Of News” work. Current approaches don’t.
Also, take a look at the NTTimes new mobile site.
