Open The Dialogue

Happy Friday everyone!  There are only 15 days until Halloween or more importantly only 68 shopping days until Christmas.  Until then, enjoy these links of the day.

• The Internet Advertising Bureau has come out against the recent FTC guidelines. The IAB argues that new rules unfairly regulate the online media more than offline.

• In other FTC guideline news, one service called CMP.ly is attempting to establish a standard format for all disclosures by using their 6 different disclosure links.  For more on CMP.ly make sure to check out PRNewser’s recent interview with the co-founder, Tom Chernaik.
• The Official Google blog shares tips on Managing Your Reputation through Search Results. The first idea? Make sure you want your personal info online.
• Finally, as the fervor around the Balloon Boy continues to swell as the “it” viral discussion of the moment, make sure to take the time to check out such gem’s as the T-shirt, the Fresh Prince Rap and of course this stunning re-enactment (See below).

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Here are some “back-to-school” links of note from Twitter & FriendFeed.  Later this week we’ll be publishing a handy guide for things you can do to start the “school year” off right.

• Facebook Adding Stream Clicks to Page Insights – no individual clicks just yet, but we’re getting there.  This is certainly an important metric to have.

• SEO lessons from Google News – insight from Google themselves on how items for Google News are ranked.  Important from a PR POV when helping clients craft news and announcements.

• MSNBC acquires EveryBlock – first Newsvine, now EB (a major player in the hyperlocal news/aggregation world).  Some pretty interesting moves.

• Google and their systems – Domestic Trends gives us a cool way to analyze economic data and now PageRank helps scientists study ecosystems.

• WordPress.com becomes real-time – RSS muscles back on to the scene and now millions of blogs can push their updates into the social web.  Pretty big step in terms of tech with a lot more, I’m sure, to come.

• 9 Ways People Respond to Your Content Online:  the great article that goes with the image above.  Rajesh Setty maps out how people pereceive and value content online.

• Sometimes focusing deeper on your customer base is much better than widening product offerings.

• Mediaite launched to bruising traffic and much debate.  A fresh new look at the media industry as a whole.

• John Cass on measurement strategies and social media goals.  Some good discussion surrounding the disconnect between value on the web and direct business results.

• Facebook unlocks the live streaming application that was made famous during CNN’s inaguration web coverage.

• Don’t have a blog?  Some great ways to be active online that don’t require a long-form base.

• The recent Morgan Stanley study on teenage social media use generated lots of feedback.  Mashable points to the importance of anecdotal vs. factual evidence whenver doing these kinds of reports (which is embedded there to read as well).

• David Finch on what social media is not.  Most importantly?  It’s not a short-term fix, a solid business culture commitment is required.

• Micah Baldwin on the lie of community.  Technology and modern marketing has shifted our perceptions of what a community is in the digital world.  Good lessons on getting back to basics.

Time to turn all these open tabs in Google Chrome into fun links for you!  As always, we’re sharing these on Twitter and FriendFeed.

• Vanity metrics vs. Actionable metrics – Eric Ries talks about really making measurement work and solving problems, not just finding numbers that don’t mean a whole lot.  For example, you have 5 billion page views?  Great.  Why?  How?

• Human Motivation & Your Brand – I’m glad more people are looking at the psychology behind marketing.  It helps us do our jobs better and more effectively.  There are reasons behind why people share things on Facebook.  Match these needs up first with your objectives and then go from there.

• Want to slap a Creative Commons license on your Facebook content?  There’s an app for that.

• The GOOG is riding the Wave and re-thinking how we communicate on the web.  It makes sense, things like IM and e-mail are relatively archaic.  OR:  is this the “Google Operating System”?

• More legal fun.  Can you copyright a tweet?  Maybe.

• State of the Hispanic blogosphere report 2009.  Spain leads the pack.

• Be there before the sale.  Why are we still using the word “campaigns” if this world is supposed to be built on long-term, sustained relationships?

• Some Wikipedia-foo on interpersonal ties (via dave):

In mathematical sociology, interpersonal ties are defined as information-carrying connections between people. Interpersonal ties, generally, come in three varieties: strong, weak, or absent. Weak social ties, it is argued, are responsible for the majority of the embeddedness and structure of social networks in society as well as the transmission of information through these networks. Specifically, more novel information flows to individuals through weak rather than strong ties. Because our close friends tend to move in the same circles that we do, the information they receive overlaps considerably with what we already know. Acquaintances, by contrast, know people that we do not, and thus receive more novel information.

• The Grey Lady hired a “social media editor” to be a guiding light for their journalists on the web.  The cynics (myself included) were loud on this one.  Thankfully, David Kaplan took some time to give Jennifer Preston some solid advice.

• Facebook crosses 60mm monthly U.S. users but fewer people over 55 are using the site on a regular basis.

• GigaOm throws their hat into the premium content ring with GigaOm Pro:  ”created to address the gap that exists in real-time expert industry analysis on emerging technology markets.”  Seems moderately attractive for only $79.  See also ReadWriteWeb’s Guide to Community Management & TechCrunch’s trend reporting.

Some can’t-miss stuff from the past month (as always, we’re sharing these on our FriendFeed & Twitter):

• Mack gets serious about community building and lays out why no one is paying attention to yours.

• The FTC is reviewing the mommy-blogger & brand relationship this summer, trying to guidelines for endorsements & testimonials.

• CubeTree launched yesterday.  The internal comms. sector is heating up.  We’re keeping an eye out for early returns on how it stacks up against services like ClearSpace & SocialText.

• Geoff Livingston has a great post over on The Buzz Bin about what’s really valuable to a community.  He highlights a week where he didn’t have any great blog posts but the photos he put on Flickr for SOBcon ended up being super-popular.  Great lessons:  don’t always “follow the herd,” do what you do best and – most importantly – make sure other people find it useful.

• David Armano talks about developing trust & attention.  Information overload makes you dedicate more attention to people and sources that you trust.  As a marketer, it’s important to focus on this relationship.

• Journalists on Twitter (via Rex).

• Chris Brogan somehow opened up my head and did a post on social media and the sales cycle.  He argues that social media is most valuable during the awareness process.  I disagree.

• Facebook introduces “Post Quality Score” for Pages.  It measures “how engaging your content is to Facebook users.”  This is definitely a step in the right direction for analytics on Pages which have been notoriously weak.  Although, it also seems like a trend.  Tumblr is trying to leverage all the content in their community by providing their own version of analytics.  While pretty-looking, at this point in time, it’s a bit self-serving.

• PBS ups its video game and puts all of its shows on the web (note:  PBS is an MWW client).

• Like podcasts?  Like social media?  Here are a few to subscribe to.

The day after April Fools on the web always seems like a bad hangover. Everyone is struggling to right themselves and get back to work after a day full of bad jokes and tip-toeing around the web unsure if all the tweets they’re reading are actually true or not. The few that caught my eye:

• HarperStudio promised free eBooks to anyone who wrote a “Twitter review.”
• Josh Hallett came into the office and was greeted with an early Christmas present:  all his stuff.  Thinking about the noise his chair made with all that wrapping paper still on it just cracks me up.
• CW11 actually fell for Improv Everywhere’s funeral spoof (hat tip Alex).
• Retribution for CollegeHumor’s Ricky Van Veen.  After he convinced his staff that MTV picked up a second season, they got him over a thousand followers on a fake Twitter account.

Moving on…

The fun ‘n games are over.  Here are some posts that we’ve been tracking.  Pardon the volume, there has been a lot of good stuff bouncing around:

• Matt Haughey gives a great snapshot on how the web works for most people vs. how most marketers are approaching it.
• Facebook is looking to lock-in the older demographics who are flooding onto the social network.  They’ve created a private groups for families wizard that helps anyone easily get their family in one, private place on Facebook.
• Not watching home base – Seth Godin talks about the value of searching for more vs. the value of catering to those whom already pay attention to you.
• Peter Kim points to a solid debate about the value of Twittering during conferences and how it might affect our memory.
• Merlin Mann on why people matter.
• Ryan Carson nails it – building communities from scratch on the web is hard work and it takes time.  Plain and simple.
• A quick & dirty comparison of Twitter vs. a Facebook ad – take a wild guess at who wins (via Neal).
• Convinced writing something isn’t the best way to get your point across and help people understand something?  You’re probably right.
• Mark Cuban is pretty curious about where all the time comes from that lets people sit on Twitter all day.
• Valeria Maltoni writes up a very thorough guide to micro interactions in PR.  The big power of PR, when using social media, is the ability to hone in on single interactions that often translate to strong relationships.
• Gina Trapani takes a look at what crowdsourcing really means on her excellent new blog, Smarterware.

Miss LOTD?  Want More?  We’re always sharing stuff on FriendFeed and Twitter.

Since March came in like a lion and left the East Coast with some snow overnight, we’re catching up on some notable reading here at OTD.  What about the meta?  Well, two new features:  FriendFeed & Skribit.  We’re trying out FriendFeed to not only aggregate all of our content around the web but give you an easier way to keep track of the stuff we find noteworthy (usually, in the past, what would make up these daily LOTD posts).  Not to worry, when the time is right, we’ll still call out important items but always keep an eye out in the sidebar for everything hot off the presses.

We’re also testing out Skribit.  Ever want to suggest that we write about something here on OTD?  See something we missed?  Now you can suggest it!  Check it out here or in the sidebar.  On to the links…

• Gearing up for SXSW?  Check-out Jake’s awesome survival guide.

• Gary Vaynerchuk launched a new show:  Obsessed TV.  Shooting for a different demo that is pretty un-touched by focused web video endeavors. 

• Skittles jumped off the deep-end over the weekend.  Their homepage is now Twitter’s search function, bringing up whatever people are saying that involves the word “skittles.”  A big step, yes, but it’ll be more important to see what happens from here on out after the novelty wears off.  I bet this experiment, for Skittles, is more about a correlation between other brand activity they do and how people talk about them.  Capturing the love and the ephemera conversation is a biproduct.  The real test is the tone of these responses up against how Skittles markets themselves elsewhere.

• Media 2.0 Best Practices:  we’ll keep an eye on how this evolves.  Trying to standardize the ethics of participation is equally important as trying to figure out how to measure it.  I hope by this time next year, these big questions are a lot closer to being answered.

• News as a hook for context:  the media industry is knocking down doors trying to figure out ways to make news, itself, the vehicle that brings in gobs of traffic.  If we’re dealing with empowering the community as a goal (which it should be in almost every execution on the web) – think about context.  That is where the long-term value lies.

• Facebook & tribes:  proof positive that broadcasting isn’t the same as engaging.  These usage stats confirm that social media might be expanding our reach but, at the same time, it’s not expanding our actual circles of interaction.  For example, an average female on Facebook who might be friends with at least 500 people?  Usually only messages and chats with 16 people while commenting on content for only 26 of her friends.

Photo credit, hamed.

• The pretty cool Obamameter has been making it’s way around the web for all the right reasons and, believe it or not, actually strikes a pretty strong chord about the future of journalism.  Matt Waite, one of its creators, talks about how they’re viewing content as data and how the process of organizing it all actually makes up the story.

• A very sound process:  how the Air Force responds to blog posts.

• 1,000 true fans:  Matt Thompson makes a solid case for this approach to a viable business models on the web.  Especially in relation to how the news industry can pick up the slack.

• If you’re into this kinda thing:  NPR now lets you roll your own podcast feed.

• Reviewing new media sure can be stressful, Virginia Heffernan recaps her adventures with a one Mr. Fallon.  Choice quote:  ”There’s no way to maintain an ex cathedra advantage when you’re cavorting in a circus ring.”

• The world’s first daily newspaper comprised entirely of blogs and other user-generated content.  Coming to a newsstand near you soon, hopefully.

• 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.