Open The Dialogue

• My buddy Rick Klau from Feedburner gets interviewed by Eric Enge about RSS penetration, measurement and other such topics. (CT)
• Eric Eggertson has some good tips for employers about to bring young adults into the fold. Bottom line: Give them outlets where they can channel their passion, interest and intellect for the corporate good. (CT)
• Max Kalehoff reminds us that just because people love the content it's not necessarily true that they love the ads around it. The ads need to work WITH the content, not against it. (CT)
• Chris Anderson is announcing his latest startup, BookTour.com. He's being cagey with the details, though, waiting till 6/1 for the official launch. (CT)
• Kevin Burton says if you want to kill Google you have to go after its advertising revenue. Not exactly new, but I like the way he positions Google against Microsoft.
• Susan Merrit compares signing up for all sorts of social networks to filling out your dance card in turn of the century (19th to 20th, that is) society. (CT)
• Jason Calacanis is ranting (rightly, I feel) about his ISP's decision to block his access to ESPN.com because the sports network isn't paying them. (CT)
• Todd is beginning a series of regular profiles on members of his "Power 150" ranking list. (CT)
• Joe Thornley is live-blogging in his usual fantastic manner from the mesh conference. (CT)
• Twitter's Evan Williams is raising some VC funds. All proposals need to be 140 characters or less in length. (CT)
• The Encyclopedia Britannica is suing navigational system company TomTom, claiming it infringes on copyrights they own. (From TB)
• As Steve Johnson says, it's sometimes unfortunate how so much of the online conversation resembles a fraternity common room in its level of discourse. (From TB)

Posted by Chris Thilk at 12:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

• The White House is working on a team of "rapid response" individuals to counter criticism on blogs and other online media. The team is primarily tasked on dealing with the current immigration debate but I wouldn't be surprised to see this built out in the future. (CT)
• The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation handed out over $11 million in prize money to people involved in new media to allow them to do that digital voodoo that they do so well even better. (CT)
• Jackie Huba is updating us on just how well the 40-city book tour she and Ben McConnell engaged in to support Citizen Marketers went. (CT)
• Of all the write-ups I saw yesterday on the redesign of Technorati (cough vaporware /cough) this post by Kami Huyse does the best job of how it's going to impact the PR industry. (CT)
• For some almost-the-weekend humor, you've got to love it when LOLcats evolves, and it has with LOLJeremyPepper. Look for further non-Creative Commons-sanctioned behavior of this nature coming soon, I'm sure. (TB)

Posted by Chris Thilk at 01:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

• Phil Gomes has his say about Mike Arrington's comments on the latest in Silicon Valley. Well said, Phil. (TB)
• Scott Monty is the newest member of the crayon team. Congrats, Scott! [via Scott on Twitter] (TB)
• A colleague of mine passed along this gem from Styledash, the Internet Umbrella. Go figure. [thanks, Brian!] (TB)
• Who knew mistaken domain typing could be so profitable? [via MediaPost] (TB)
• Further proving that there is a Mac widget for everything, check out this one from last week, and you'll now be on tap with whatever Google's latest logo adjustment is. (TB)
• Cory Doctorow points to how Live Earth is trying to drum up support by getting groups to hold events in conjunction with Live Earth, but that any mention of Live Earth has to be very specifically detailed, as part of eight screens of EULA. I understand the point here, but isn't that a little overboard? (TB)
• Mike Arrington is saying that the Google / FeedBurner deal is done. [via Techmeme] (TB)
• Seems like newspaper publisher are the only people on the planet who don't want to be in Google News. I always wondered what their problem was and why a simple robots.txt film seemed to elude them. (CT)

Posted by Tom Biro at 02:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

• CBS has bought Wallstrip, a Rocketboom-esque take on Wall St. news. (CT)
• Google has changed its Trends tool to show hot topics. Could anything BE more Technorati-ey? (CT)
• Long Tail author Chris Anderson is teasing his new book, Free, and asking for input in choosing a subtitle. (CT)
• Keith O'Brien calls shenanigans on a Fortune article that reduces Generation Y into a few worn out and largely incorrect stereotypes. I think Keith is missing the point - the article was written for an audience of marketers who don't want to drill down past the surface. The intent behind the article was to make those folks all warm and fuzzy. (CT)
• Google has started a new blog focused on online security. (CT)
• Tom Foremski is wondering whether, since it's now all about the ad revenue chase, we might be in need of some new media ownership rules. (CT)
• If you're a sex offender using MySpace, you might be in trouble. (TB)

Posted by Chris Thilk at 09:15 PM | Permalink

• Ryan Block shares his side of the story behind the fake email inside Apple regarding iPhone delays. (TB)
• The Deal's VC Ratings blog points us to a Wired News interview with Gabe Rivera, where Rivera tells us all about the inception of TechMeme. (TB)
• According to SEOpedia.org's Christian Mezei, Dreamhost has asked customers to block Google's search robot from indexing their sites, and in some case acted on its own to block it, citing high CPU levels, among other things. It's a little disconcerting that someone would have the Google bot hitting it often enough to drive up a CPU to a level where it hurt other shared services customers, but to have it happen more than once says something else. (TB)
• Earlier this morning, Thilk let me know about this gem from the AP's Scott Lindlaw, who points out the "challenge" from the folks behind YouTube to the military regarding its blocking of the service because of bandwidth concerns. Seems that Chad Hurley says that since "they created the Internet," he doesn't "know what the problem is." (TB)
• If you're downloading torrents, there's a good chance you're downloading television series programming, or say some recent stats. [via TechMeme] (TB)

Posted by Tom Biro at 10:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

• "No sir, I didn't need market cap at all. Really, you take it." Looks like Apple's iPhone better show up on time or there'll be some 'splainin sellin' to do. (TB)
• I'm intrigued by Pitchwire, which claims to connect writers and publicists, but I'm not quite sure I know what to do with it yet. (CT)
• Robert Niles writes a great piece for OJR on the importance of a "breaking news" blog for newspaper and other media websites. (CT)
• CBS has debuted their "Blogger toolkit," complete with embeddable video code and other...umm...tools that writers can grab to spread CBS content on their own sites. (CT)

Posted by Tom Biro at 04:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

So, while the Pentagon has blocked MySpace and YouTube, along with Photobucket, MTV, Metacafe, Pandora, Live365, hi5, IFILM, BlackPlanet, StupidVideos, and FileCabi from being accessed on its DoD computer network, it is still into promoting itself on these social sharing sites, even to its own. And, as the Think Progress-linked IraqSlogger notes:

Unless the Department of Defense lifts (or doesn't fully apply) its YouTube ban, US military personnel won't be able to watch their own Iraq-focused YouTube channel unless they do so on non-DoD computers and via non-DoD Web connectivity.

I'm not going to use this space to say whether or not the DoD is doing the "right" thing by blocking access to these sites, for reasons such as the one that Wired is citing, bandwidth. I thought it much more interesting to note the conundrum between something like the Multi-National Forces-Iraq (MNF-I) promoting its own YouTube channel at like the same time that the military was banned from using its own government owned computers - or network - to reach it.

On top of that, a friend of mine noted to me today that a relative had just emailed, stating that two days ago, there were updates made to a resume online, at Monster and CareerBuilder, mentioning recent experience using MySpace and other social networking sites for marketing purposes. That was followed by phone calls from not one, but two Army recruiters on Wednesday who were inquiring about those particular services, and if there was any interest in working with the Army on marketing through those channels. If that's not a testament to the success of something, then nothing is.

[ed: thanks to Luther Campbell for the inspiration for the title of this post]

Posted by Tom Biro at 03:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Yikes am I behind. Let's clear out the "OTD" folder in Newsgator and start fresh tomorrow.

• A study by the Keller Fay Group says that word-of-mouth is the biggest factor when making a purchase decision, with business execs carrying more influence than others. (CT)
• David Armano expands on the "we are the brand" theme in a post that absolutely must be read. (CT)
• MySpace News is apparently not getting much usage. This would be shocking if it weren't for the fact that just about everyone who looked at it predicted this exact outcome. So it's not. I was going for irony. Oh be quiet. (CT)
• Am I the only one who thinks Microsoft filing all sorts of overly aggressive patent lawsuits is going to backfire on them so badly it will make soccer riots look like a Smurf picnic? (CT)
• Mark Glaser looks at micro-blogging. (CT)
• Search engines are increasingly pointing people towards blogs and other "alternative" news sources as they look for information, with gossip blogs playing a large role in how people are consuming media. (CT)
• If marketers are looking for ways to leverage social news sites, Search Engine Land recommends looking beyond Digg as competitors in that space pop up seemingly hourly. (CT)

Posted by Chris Thilk at 08:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

• Monster, up for grabs, maybe? (TB)
• I can't help but echo Dave Winer's mention of this great item from Matt Mullenweg regarding the use of WordPress. (TB)
• As hard as I tried, I couldn't resist posting a link to something about HBO's Bob Zitter saying that DRM just needs a new name for it to be successful. In any case, I give you this from Good Morning Silicon Valley. (TB)
• ClickZ is getting tongues a-wagging about a rumored ad network purchase made by Google that hasn't been made public yet. (CT)

Posted by Tom Biro at 03:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The fact that my youngest son was born with severe kidney problems that eventually led to him receiving a transplant isn't something that I talk about a lot, at least not online. It's a personal matter and best left offline for the most part. But I would like to take a minute and do tell his story here.

Before he was born the doctors determined he had two essentially useless kidneys that had just never developed. At the young age of one and half years he was (after successfully avoiding dialysis) old enough and strong enough to receive a transplanted kidney, a kidney I was more than happy to part with. That was almost two years ago and he is doing better than either myself or my wife could have imagined. Life is different when you have a transplant patient but the kidney is doing well and my wife is on top of all his medical needs.

To celebrate how well he is doing, my family and I are participating in The National Kidney Foundation of Illinois' Gift of Life Walk this July and we're raising money for that organization. I hate to ask for donations but if you feel so moved we - and the group the money goes toward - would be most appreciative. It's groups like this that allow doctors to diagnose problems early, something that saved my son's life before he was even born.

Sentimentality aside, I wanted to point out something kind of cool about all this. The NKFI, when you sign up as a team for the event, has a section where you can spread the word of your fund raising efforts. And on that page is code for you to create and publish your own widget, something I immediately grabbed and put on my personal site. That's great that an organization like this has embraced such a simple way to help people spread the word. My publishing that on MMM resulted in $150 being donated in the first two hours alone, something that far exceeded my expectations.

Thanks for indulging this personal note.

--Chris

Posted by Chris Thilk at 03:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

We PR bloggers are in a unique situation. On the one hand we feel it our responsibility to point out how some companies are failing to fully embrace the world of online media and such. Sometimes we do that in the form of blog posts, sometimes it's on things like Twitter where there's a conversation going on.

But on the other hand I think there's a certain amount of empathizing that needs to occur before we take a company to task publicly. Put yourself in someone else's shoes for 30 seconds (you might call that putting yourself in a 30-second spot, but then Jaffe would have to slap you) and think about how you would feel if your client were the one about to be trashed. Wouldn't you appreciate a quick email if someone was having a problem? I know I would - and have.

I think it's important that we remember, as our reliance on web-based services increases, that problems and hiccups are going to occur. Gmail will go down. Newsgator will occasionally eat some feeds. Twitter might not update immediately. We all throw out little comments - more like heads-up alerts than anything, and lately especially on Twitter - when something goes down. When these things happen we have three options:

1) Go get a cup of coffee and wait it out
2) If we think it's a serious problem we can use the contact form on the website
3) If we know they have a community evangelist out there in the...ummm...community we could contact them
4) Blog about every single outage like we're the only person to whom the company should be answerable

I usually choose #1. If I know a person who fits the #3 bill I might do that. But I try not to resort to #4 unless things have not gone well with the other options.

I wouldn't want my clients getting trashed over what are, essentially, growing pains (or stupid happenings - hey, it's software). I therefore try not to do that because I can imagine how lousy I would feel. Plus I wouldn't want to do that to the people I know. Jeremy and I seem to be in agreement on this point based on his comment. I just think it's more polite to everyone involved to handle this privately first before publicly embarrassing a company and its agents, but that's just me.

Posted by Chris Thilk at 10:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

• Fast Company is Twittering. Countdown to Twitter being done is ticking away pretty quickly so now's the time if you want in. (CT)
• The Street Census blog lists the top ten worst things you can do if you're reaching out to music bloggers and writers. [via] (CT)
• Cory Bergman has the details on a blogging competition being put together by WMUR-TV and Gather.com. (CT)
• Old media companies are just about one Metamucil away from pulling out the collapsible chair and yelling at the new media kids to get off of their lawn. (CT)
• I'm pretty sure the fact that people are Googleing potential baby names to see how common they are before the child is born is a sign of something bad - bad like afterwards there needs to be a rainbow in the sky as a promise it will never happen again bad. (CT)
• Oh sure, blog empires are fun and profitable now but then those pesky teenagers come and you have to worry about how protected your thermal exhaust port is. (CT)
• My colleague Brian sent along this excellent link last night defending the use of PowerPoint in general, and in business. Definitely worth a read. (TB)
• If you want to talk to the folks behind ExpressionEngine, EllisLab, make sure you don't talk to them as if they're some "big corporate with 100s of employees." That would be bad. I think that if a company wants to close a thread because they believe it's getting hostile towards itself, an individual, or is completely off-topic is one thing, but closing it because you believe that what the users are saying is "a big distraction," I'm not sure that makes sense. Then again, it's their forum, so what do I know. (TB)
• Oh, one last thing. While Gawker is obviously at its snarktasticly best here, a lot of this stuff should be taken very seriously, PR people. [Thanks, Joy!] (TB)

Posted by Chris Thilk at 04:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

• According to Valleywag, MySpace has acquired Photobucket. [via Mashable via Webtickle on Twitter] (TB)
• I agree that it's a mistake to write off older professionals in the new media realm. They often bring with them not only experience but also perspective younger people, even those who have been doing it for a while. (CT)
• David Armano, I think, provides the best analysis of the redesign Technorati has undergone of all the write-ups I've seen. That's because he actually looks at it from a user perspective, something lacking from most of the others. (CT)

Posted by Tom Biro at 02:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

• Oh my gosh - You mean getting accurate numbers on web traffic is important? Now there's something I'll have to think more about. (CT)
• Am I the only one who thinks AdAge covering Lolcats is just about the funniest thing ever? (CT)
• Old-school media publishers are increasingly cutting in on agency territory and offering marketing services themselves. (CT)
• Search Engine Watch has a great analysis of news and media consumption that needs to be printed out and tacked to your office/cubicle wall. (CT)
• BusinessWire is blogging. Great, another must read. That makes 572. (CT)

Posted by Chris Thilk at 03:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It's hard to read Kevin Rose's complete capitulation to the digg mob as anything but the first chink in the armor of social news.

Let's back up and go over what happened. A story appeared on digg that contained code that would allow people to break the encryption on HD-DVDs, something the owners of that particular bit of intellectual property didn't take kindly to. That led them to send a cease-and-desist order to Digg, which the site complied with by taking down the item in question.

That's when things got out of hand.

People responded by flooding the site with items containing the code, effectively telling everyone else to go take a hike - they'll do what they like. Kevin Rose then decided it wasn't worth honking off the entire community and said they'll fight the C&D, even if it leads to the eventual downfall of digg.

It's tempting to read Rose's position as brave, like he's standing up to the big bad man. But to me it seems more like a "please, please don't hurt me angry mob" position he's assuming. He knows that the future of digg lies in its user base and, putting his finger to the wind, he changed course based on the prevailing attitude.

What digg went through yesterday is the same kind of thing any company has to be prepared for: a crisis. If you make lawnmowers you need to be prepared for a rash of accidents and a recall. If you make bike locks you need to be prepared if someone posts an easy how-to on picking those supposedly tamper-proof locks. And if you run a social news site you need to be prepared for when the community you rely on to decide what's noteworthy picks something that isn't going to be popular with the subject of the story. This needs to be right there in the crisis communications playbook that every company should have handy.

When in a crisis a company should have one strong and solid voice speaking for it. Having a "bad cop/good cop" dynamic going, as in this case, only serves to confuse the audience and make final decisions look like they're not motivated by strong principles but by calculation.

Look at Google's "...and the horse you came in on" response to Viacom. While Google did take down Viacom videos from YouTube, something it did in good faith, it has said that Viacom's suit alleging copyright violation has no merit. It would have been easy for Google to follow the conventional wisdom and engage Viacom in negotiations, something many felt the suit was designed to trigger. Instead it has picked up its trident ("Brick killed a guy. Did you throw a trident?") and said it will meet Viacom on the field of battle. There wasn't a news conference at 10AM saying they wouldn't fight the lawsuit followed by on at 2PM with Eric Schmidt saying the community had spoken and they would fight it. They got their ducks in order and decided on a path.

Effective public relations should lead to less - not more - confusion among the public and a company's stakeholders. Even if it takes a little while longer to make sure everyone's singing the same song it's worth it since it makes the company look a little less like they're bumbling along.

Posted by Chris Thilk at 02:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

While the folks in this story on "The Big Shots of Blogdom" are great and absolutely need to be paid attention to, there are also dozens of other smaller ones that are - or, more to the point, could be - talking about your company that you also need to plug into. Not doing so could result in:
-You not knowing about a crisis until it's big enough to get the big guy's attention.
-You missing the opportunity to reach a small but passionate audience, outreach that could potentially percolate up to the bigshots.
Please keep that in mind when trying to do blog outreach and monitoring. It's not always about size - it's also largely about passion.

Regards,
--Chris Thilk

P.S. - Also make sure you're setting expectations correctly. A hit on TechCrunch is huge, but if you're a topsoil company it's probably not going to happen no matter how much your client/CEO might want it to.

Posted by Chris Thilk at 01:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)