Open The Dialogue

• Lessons and learnings from the pros - George Oates talks about how Flickr has grown into the consummate community it is today. As Jake mentioned, a must-read.

• Can’t wait for the new season of Mad Men to start up again? Calm your nerves with this great report on the characters coming to life on Twitter.

• Not the first and certainly not the last (but maybe the one w/ the most promise so far?):  snaps to MTV for picking up/developing a show w/ the crew from CollegeHumor.

• Another case of Twitter users making money before Twitter can actually figure out how to do it for themselves:  ”Dell says Twitter has produced $1 million in revenue over the past year and a half through sale alerts.”
  • Nota bene - Before moving your entire sales operation to the big blue whale in the sky, Joe Lazarus notes that that “$1M is about 1/1000th a percent of total sales ($60B+ last year) and that they are selling mostly low margin, clearance items through the service.”

• Need some good books to start 2009 with? Lee Odden put together a great list of some standards in the social media marketing world (via thilk’s shared).

• Consumer Reports Buzzword Feature - breaking down the “what” and “why” about oft-used buzzwords with many of today’s consumer products.

• Virginia Heffernan takes a close look at the type of content today’s media world is generating and, quite frankly, why a lot of it isn’t working (see also - Kevin Kelly discussing the generative value of content):

Then there’s the troublesome third argument, the one we know is true. This is the one that admits that the content that thrives in the new distribution-and-display systems is suspiciously different from the American popular culture we used to love even 10 years ago. Thrillers, it seems, don’t flourish on Hulu. No one is reading a six-part investigative series about mayoral malfeasance on Twitter. And if it’s the afterthought message boards — the ones moderated by interns — that draw all the traffic, why are we in old media pouring so much money and time into “main event” programming that goes unread and unviewed?

• Using Barack Obama’s successful presidential campagin as a case study for engagement levels:   why blogs and Twitter are still very small pieces of the digital media pie.

A hearty dose of links to start off the last month of 2008 with.

• Wondering if 2008 changed anything, online, for the college set?  Nope.  Facebook still rules the coop.
• Now that Pownce has gone to that great doghouse in the sky, you’ve got one less social network/application to update.  Still overwhelmed?  Check out tarpipe.  Lets you spread the wealth, easily, via single e-mails.  Similar to switchabit.
• Interesting look at the state of the internet in Canada.
• Give me something to read.  Exactly what it says.  Quality stuff from around the web.
• Samir has a great wrap-up of some of the best social media videos around the web this past year (via dave surgan).
• Full-text indexing of over 50,000 popular magazines & newspapers from around the world (via steve).
• SmartBrief’s new social media newsletter.
• Bloggers are people too.  Just develop strong relationships, use common sense and the rest will follow.
• We’ll close with a terrific explanation of “viral” from Faris:

What we mean when something goes ‘viral’ is that LOTS OF PEOPLE CHOOSE TO PROPAGATE IT. It requires people to do something. Voluntarily. For their own reasons. It is not simply a new way to broadcast our messages through populations. It suggests we push, when in fact they pull.

P.S:  Check OTD out on Alltop!  We also made some small site enhancements over the break.  Most notably, upgrading comments to use DISQUS.  Leave us some video comments!

• Joel Johnson calls out some excessive, “viral” commenting on Boing Boing Gadgets.
• Brian Solis unveils @MicroPR, using Twitter as a tool to connect the media community.  Very similar to how HARO is using e-mail.
• Sling puts their hat in the online video ring and launches a video portal, going up against Joost & Hulu.  Early returns say that this is the real deal:  good content, design and most importantly - a hardware tie-in, letting you stream from any Sling box you own (giving access to Live TV and premium saved content).
• Amazon.com is trying to break the mold a bit this holiday season:  user-generated PR.  They’ve assembled a team of customers to actively write reviews for hot gifts being pitched to reporters.  Keep a close eye on this one, surely more to come.
• Have some downtime this weekend?  Rex’s list-mecca for 2008.   

• Both via John Gruber:
  • Values of n is shutting down, leaving Stikkit and I Want Sandy users in the dust on 12/8.  Both properties, intellectually, have been aquired by Twitter but there aren’t any plans to integreate just yet.  Hmm…money might be behind the recent spurn of Facebook but could this be Twitter shuffling the deck a bit?
  • It Died:  ”A compendium of what services and companies are no longer available for our Internet pleasure and use.”
• Still on the e-mail kick a bit, Racked has a great feature that summarizes most of the major daily missives into an easy-to-digest post:  Email Scan.
• Even though this is a paid spot, Microsoft hired the team at Common Craft to explain lifestreaming.  Great high level benefits explanation (via mark).

• Mike Arauz reminds us that e-mail is still king.  Great points about the quality of attention vs. other popular tools (Twitter, Facebook, etc.), letting the actual content take center stage (via amit).
• Rafe keeps it fresh with a new pro PR tip every day.  Ranges from the blatantly obvious to the stuff you shouldn’t forget.  Great for anyone in the PR industry (via veronica).
• In NYC?  Check out Creative Mornings!  I’ll be attending the 12/12 session (JRL).
• Flashy tracking.
• EveryBlock pumps out another highly functional redesign.  We’re bullish on hyper-local here at OTD (via will).

Hot off the presses and certainly deserving of its own call-out is a great article that will be appearing in The Screens Issue of this weekend’s New York Times Magainze.

In Multiscreen Mad Men, Jack Hitt moderates a discussion about digital media and the direction it’s heading:

Palmer: There’s a difference. A Super Bowl ad is broadcast and everybody sees the same ad, and it comes from a single source. And so you may have a preference as to whether you liked this ad in comparison to this other ad in the block of ads that you just saw. But when you feel like you’ve discovered something on the Internet, it’s a different relationship to the brand. Say I was one of the first thousand people who saw that Cadbury gorilla ad — where he drums along to Phil Collins — and I send that out to all my friends. There’s a pride that I have in having discovered that, a connection that you actually can’t get with broadcast advertising.

Some great stuff in the issue all-around, eagerly awaiting your Saturday morning coffee.

• 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?

• 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.