Open The Dialogue

Remember last year when there were concerns over the legal issues that teens were facing by putting certain information on MySpace and other social networking sites? Well, the latest concern is that MySpace was reported to have booted 29,000 sex offenders off its network after vetting its own member list against publicly available offender lists, according to an item in AdAge by Jeremy Mullman.

It's not the first time a concern such as this has come about with regard to social networking sites, but it's one of the first times we've seen a big proactive response such as this from one of the behemoths of social data.

Posted by Tom Biro at 01:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

• Well, I've got to say that I was certainly surprised to hear this news about Irina Slutsky leaving PodTech, but perhaps it shouldn't be that shocking. In any case, good luck, Irina! (TB)
• @tombiro: I especially liked her "I just got fired!" Tweet. But where's the commentary from her notable coworkers? [1 min ago from MovableType] (CT)
• The Tribune Co. and others are balking at a new rule from the NFL that would require photographers covering games to wear red vests adorned with the logo of the official camera company of the league. Between this and the 45-second rule for online video, the NFL seems to be actively searching for ways to honk off the news media. (CT)
• Speaking of the Trib, the flagship Chicago paper has been given an online overhaul that manages to amount to very little from what I've been able to see. (CT)

Posted by Tom Biro at 05:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Ross Mayfield posted today about how he's looking for the "CEO 2.0" for Socialtext, and that he'd be stepping into the Chairman and President roles, and is looking to put a new face in that driver's seat at the wiki service provider. I'm psyched to see where this goes, as it has the potential to a) show some usage of a social network in LinkedIn, which Mayfield has asked people to contact him through in this case, and b) be a solid example of publicly soliciting input on the growth of a business.

Good luck to Ross in his re-fangled role at Socialtext, and if any of you know someone (or are interested yourself) go check it out at Ross' blog / on LinkedIn.

Posted by Tom Biro at 10:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

If I were Facebook (and if Facebook were a person and not a collection of HTML code) about a month and a half I ago I probably would have felt like I was sitting on the top of the social media heap. Sure, my market share still trailed MySpace's by a significant margin but people seemed to love my cleaner interface, more efficient tools and especially my willingness to let people develop their own widgets to use with me. It was a great time to be a social network.

If I were Facebook just last week I'd be wondering where I it was I had just woken up and why I only had an extra pair of socks and a copy of Grapes of Wrath on me.

After an initial burst of positive publicity for Facebook as it became the darling of the social media space the tide seems to have shifted drastically. Where once people were praising the way it was allowing developers to add widgets and other features at will, now there's a backlash going on about how it's a "walled garden" and doesn't let people out. It's almost as if Facebook once completely open to search engines and such and then decided to shut the doors.

But that's not the case. The fact that Facebook sends you an email alerting you to the fact that someone has written on your Wall but that you have to login to see that message is not new. It's functionality that, at least to my knowledge, has been around since forever on the site. And why are we surprised by that, when so much of the discussion we have revolves around engagement value and pageviews as a sign of success?

I think the seemingly newly formed consensus that Facebook's content-in/nothing-out model is a bad thing is more a symptom of groupthink than anything else. I think it was about two weeks ago when I started seeing one or two people say they were frustrated in their attempts to export contacts or some such from Facebook into another application. That evolved quickly into people decrying the existence of such closed ecosystems, as if Facebook and other such sites were going to bring down the very Web2.0 world they helped to foster.

As participants in the discussion it's important that we make sure we're not falling victim to just piling on someone else's legitimate point in order to make ourselves appear so cutting edge or smart in a way that only we ourselves can fully appreciate. There are things that Facebook could be doing better, yeah, but let's actually discuss what they are and how the company can achieve those goals in a way that's consistent with the brand. There are things that a lot of companies could be doing better. Read TechCrunch for a week and you'll see all sorts of new start-ups that claim to do X better than MySpace or iTunes or YouTube or any of the other established heavy-hitters. If you find a deficiency in the tools you're using, take some time and peruse the alternatives to find one that more closely fits the experience you'd like to have.

Be warned, though: What you like the best might not be where the cool kids and A-listers are hanging out currently. So your choices are to hang with the in crowd or pave your own way.

Posted by Chris Thilk at 09:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

• I know it's more of an advertisement in Thrillist's Allied Info, but I'm very impressed by the fact that Wendy's was smart enough to utilize the newsletter's services to do outreach for its Baconator. (TB)
• JupiterMedia just paid $20 million in cash for MediaBistro. I hope the focus on the site's job postings service, a major reason it presented an purchase target, doesn't mean the excellent blogs it produces are ignored. (CT)
• If you participate in multiple fantasy sports leagues you'll be happy about the arrival of ScreamingSports, which lets you manage all those teams from one social-networking based interface. [via TechCrunch] (CT)

Posted by Tom Biro at 05:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

• Mario Sundar draws upon his own experience with beginning a corporate blog for LinkedIn to define the ten steps that need to be ironed out when deciding to begin a corporate blog. (CT)
• A new study has shown up that advises marketers trying to reach teens and young adults to utilize the media those in that demographic are using. The findings point out that word-of-mouth is increasingly shifting for these kids to the online world, where they leave comments on social networks and other such tools. (CT)
• The same sort of conclusions are at the heart of another study that shows newspapers are increasingly being ignored by young people. Moreover, these people aren't following the news at all, regardless of medium, but newspapers are especially taking a hit because it's a high-engagement media that doesn't allow for very much superficiality. (CT)

Posted by Chris Thilk at 04:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Zillow has unveiled a service that, quite frankly, is so obvious it's a wonder no one thought of this before. The site, which takes together publicly available information to give you an idea of how much a home is roughly worth, is now getting into the hyperlocal news game. The idea is that people who are looking at a neighborhood's home prices would also be extraordinarily interested in the happenings in that neighborhood, as well as interested in insights on businesses, churches and other features in the area.

This is the kind of service that real estate agents have provided for a long time now but this new service from Zillow brings with it the authenticity that has made consumer-generated content so attractive to people. By creating a hub that brings together home value information and insights and opinions from the people on the ground the site really has the opportunity to take its services to the next level and create an invaluable resource for home shoppers.

Posted by Chris Thilk at 08:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

• AdAge: Down is the New Flat for Magazines
• MediaBuyerPlanner: Newspapers Suffer Most in Ad Dollars Lost to the Internet
• Creative Loafing: Old media meets new realities at the AJC
• Jon Fine/BW: When Do You Stop the Presses?

I'm sure there's absolutely new trend that can be determined, no matter how hard you might look, by the appearance of these stories, which only represent what I saw in one day. Move along. Nothing to see here...

Posted by Chris Thilk at 04:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

• The idea that big radio station owners like Clear Channel are using stats related to the most popular illegally downloaded music to determine their own playlists makes me warm and fuzzy for some reason. Anyone else? (CT)
• The CEO of Whole Foods appears to have gotten himself into an all-naturally sticky situation now that it's been revealed he left comments on blogs questioning the stock valuation and overall intelligence of his chief rival. The Cycle has a good recap. (CT)
• Crowne Plaza is opening conference rooms in Second Life you can rent out for your event. This will only become truly useful if they're able to replicate the little burners that keep the virtual-reality chicken and beef sandwiches warm. (CT)
• Note to Self Next Time Lightening Starts Flashing: Don't stand under a big tree, don't go golfing even if I'm having the best game ever and take off my iPod. (CT)
• The Chicago Tribune appears to be the next major newspaper planning a Web 2.0-esque makeover, adding comments, user-submitted content and more to its online offerings. You can check out a preview here.  [via Merge] (CT)
• The appearance of a BusinessWeek story on when to fire your ad agency at the same time as Jaffe once again weighing in on how advertising broken is, I think, God trying to tell us something. (CT)

Posted by Chris Thilk at 03:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

• David Armano is promoting The Age of Conversation, a new book that features contributions from himself and a number of other online marketing folk. (CT)
• Nick Gonzalez at TechCrunch is reviewing all the different advertising solutions being explored by YouTube and bunch of the other online video sites. (CT)
• Andy Sernovitz wants us all to stop debating why our blog traffic might be dropping and go outside and get some fresh air. (CT)
• Charles Bermant at the Seattle Times looks at how YouTube links have changed the way we communicate with each other, especially when it comes to links that are e-mailed to us and the ones we send to others. (CT)
• The artistic process, like most other processes, has been changed by the advent of blogging and the transparency it provides. Painters and others are using blogs to share how they create their works and connect with their own constituencies, just like everyone else should ideally be doing. (CT)

Posted by Chris Thilk at 10:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm a big fan of recurring jokes and one of my favorites revolves around hockey. See here in Chicago we have a professional hockey team but we can't watch it on local TV because the owner feels that broadcasting games would be bad for ticket sales. You can understand his argument considering that's exactly what basketball, baseball and football leagues do, except that it's not. So I make jokes about not even knowing what Tom and others are talking about when they mention hockey since it's not something I usually even have the option of watching in the background and I chuckle to myself because my goodness am I witty.

It seems, though, that the NFL is taking a similar stance when it comes to online video. The league announced news organizations cannot post video longer than 45 seconds online, something meant to protect the interests (read: "web traffic") of the league's member teams, a policy that not even the NHL has in place. Quite the opposite, the other professional leagues allow for unlimited use by news organizations of video online. The NFL, though, wants to drive people to team sites where they're the ones who have sold advertising and where people are just a couple clicks away from buying branded items.

I have no problem with a corporate entity wanting to protect assets it feels are valuable but there comes a point, as any parent will tell you, where you have to ask if you've crossed the line into smothering. Occasionally content has to run free, has to scrape its knees and has to meet new people. By restricting usage of video on news sites, the NFL is doing little but making sure content never gets misused but I don't know if they fully realize that they run the risk of that content not being used at all.

As usual when a corporate entity attempts to over-control the media it's the customer that loses. Fans, instead of being able to see NFL video on a news site will have to go to their team's site, where the reporting will likely be less journalistic than that from a news organization.

What's also interesting to me is how the NFL is repositioning itself from being a sports league to being a content producer, the equivalent of a Hollywood movie studio. There are actually a number of parallels since the studios, too, want to exercise total control over how their content is exhibited and viewed. This in contract to niche producers like Vuguru, the company behind the online series "Prom Queen," and others that seem to believe it's not where the content is viewed that is important but the the content itself that rules all.

"How does this impact my audience's experience?" is a question all content producers should be asking themselves as they map out online strategies and then decisions made based on, not despite, the answers to that question.

Posted by Chris Thilk at 04:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

We have a bad habit in our house of moving stuff to the basement when we can't quite figure out what to do with it, when the boys don't play with something anymore or when we replace something but think that it might serve some purpose in the future. This then leads to 1) A full basement of stuff that we never or very infrequently use or even think of and 2) An eventual trip by me to Goodwill.

Right now my online identity is feeling very much to me like a cluttered basement full of stuff I never use and rarely even think about. I've got all these social networks that I belong to that I haven't quite figured out what to do with, personalized radio channels that I don't listen to and a host of other unused logins. But the latest, shiniest thing is always tempting me via TechCrunch or some other site, beckoning me to sign up and play with it.

So I'm embarking on a project I'm calling Me 2.0 this week. I'm going to try and review all the sites I've created profiles on and figure out what is actually of use or interest to me. "What does this add to my online activity and how am I going to utilize it?" will be the question that gets asked over and over again as I review my wants and needs and figure out the tools that satisfy both. That includes a serious pruning of my RSS feeds and other information inputs. I need to get over feeling simultaneously overwhelmed by the information I'm taking in and underwhelmed by tools I'm using.

I'll post updates as Me 2.0 progresses.

Posted by Chris Thilk at 01:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)