Open The Dialogue

• Both Jesper Andersen and Farhad Manjoo - the latter in his first column at Slate - engage in the Internet’s favorite pasttime, the questioning of the accuracy of Chris Anderson’s “Long Tail” notion.
• Jeremiah Owyang rightly points out that not every company needs to be part of the online conversation. It all depends on the audience the company is trying to reach and the stories they have to tell, but that research needs to be at the forefront of any tactics.
• An interesting diagram on how social media is beginning to invade the enterprise infrastructure.
• David Griner has one of the most common-sensical and persuasive posts on the Internet’s second favorite recent activity, talking about how the conversation has shifted off of blogs and onto things like Twitter and FriendFeed.
• The issue of who owns a company blog when the sole writer leaves is something I have some interest in, and I admire Gia’s take on it.
• PaidContent gets bought by The Guardian and MenuPages gets bought by New York Magazine.

• Chris O’Brien at PBS’ Idea Lab blog takes us through the process of inventing a Second Life presence from scratch, including acclimating an entire team to just what being in a virtual world means to begin with.
• If you’re a talented photographer looking to get some additional exposure, that could come in the form of a deal between the site and Getty Images that will allow the latter to check out the photos on Flickr for potential licensing.
• Google has launched Lively, a new virtual world/visual chat engine that…well…I’m not quite sure. It’s got some cool potential, especially in the ways it can be integrated with the rest of the Web. Adverlab has a good write-up of how it works and what it could all mean.
• The shortening of URLs - something that’s useful when you’re doing things like pasting links on Twitter - may not seem like it needs a lot of functionality, but I’ll admit that what Bit.ly can do appears to be pretty darn useful in terms of tracking histories and such.
• And speaking of Twitter, everyone’s favorite digital media writer/PR commentator Brian Morrisey gets interviewed on The Bad Pitch Blog.
• Fred Wilson questions the actual value of some commonly cited new media stats.
• An interesting case study-let of how Toyota has used social media for a campaign for the Scion. [via JD]
• Now that Google is extending its advertising reach to offline media it’s only natural they would launch a Traditional Media Blog, no?

Josh has announced the dates for this year’s BlogOrlando: September 25th - 27th. Registration will be happening soon. Having attended last year’s version this is one I’m looking forward to quite a bit, especially since this year Josh says there’s some even cooler stuff going on down there. Reconnecting with the people I saw last year and meeting new folks is also going to be the big plus from this. More details, as he says, to come.

• Both Greg Verdino and David Berkowitz are quoted in this MediaPost article on how social media marketing efforts have the potential to significantly drive down media spending. Since these efforts cost less than traditional media programs - and we’re including everything from straight ad buys to outreach here - and they begin to move to the front of the line for available dollars, it’s completely likely overall spending numbers will come down quite a bit.
• Another story about how search marketing is doing what PR isn’t and how that’s going to wind up destroying PR. Let’s make this clear: Search marketing is, in large part, all about the same reputation management that PR is. If you’re doing PR and you’re not at least thinking about how search, either paid or organic, is impacting your company/client you should probably start doing that….now. 
• Oh, and it’s a problem in advertising shops as well, just so we don’t feel like it’s all on us. 
• The Chicago Tribune writes about microblogging and manages to use the words “detritus” and “mundane” within the first 25 words or so, meaning I once again win the pool. 
• Businessweek is absolutely right - the growth of content recognition software by media companies to find where they’re stuff is appearing online is only going to continue. And that growth is only going to mean more throwdowns between the companies and bloggers who want to grab a few quotes to make or reinforce a point. (And Shel Holtz is right - if the AP is going to make such a stink about how many words are being used elsewhere, it’s only intellectually consistent that they should have the same level of problems with their customers arbitrarily altering text.)
  
• Charlene Li is leaving Forrester, prompting more than a few “wow”’s on Twitter.
• Just because I thought it was funny I created a Social Media Yellow Card for people to use in meetings, prompting David Griner of AdFreak to create his own Social Media Red Card. Yeah, we’re insane.