Global Neighbourhoods

A few clarifications about FastCompany TV & GNTV

I got hit with a firehose of questions regarding FastCompany.TV, GlobalNeighborhoodsTV (GNTV) and my new collaboration with Scoble. A few drill down further than I can answer, but I'll try to answer a few that I was frequently asked.

• FastCompany.TV (FCTV) is intended to be a video blogging network. Scoble.TV is the first node and he is a FastCompany.TV employee who's show launches March 3 as does GNTV. They are separate shows. Robert and I would like to do something together, but that is a future show possibility.
• GNTV will have it's own page on the FCTV site as will Scoble.TV.
• Robert and I may cover the same people and companies. We may even interview the same person at the same time when that is easier for all parties. But he and I have different styles and ask different questions.
• I am not a FastCompany employee and I have no plans to become one. I am contract talent. My focus is to produce great content on GNTV. While Robert and I will talk and plan, his job is to do what he has always done and to build an FCTV network. He has a ton of ideas for programs but will build slowly at first. His goal is to have six GNTV programs by year end.
• FCTV is a separate, but related, entity to Fast Company and FastCompany.com. We are the same brand, but I have not had any contact with FC editorial staff. I cannot help you or your clients get interviews there. If you have something that is not right for my show, but I think Scoble might like, I'll forward it to him.
• I plan to produce a minimum of 15 clips per month, hopefully more. I will vary the length greatly and let viewers tell me the length they prefer.
• The best way to pitch me is through email. A direct Twitter to shelisrael also works. I do not take phone calls from people I do not know. I will try to get back to anyone who requests an interview, but it may take me a few days.
• I will travel for GNTV but it limited by time and budget. The best way to see me is when you are in the SF Bay Area.
• Like any media person, I'm interested in exclusive breaking news, but that is not my central focus. I will show some product demo, but that again is not my central focus. I am interested in telling people, mostly how social media is changing life, customer relationships and life.
• The best style to use with me is a naked converstaion. If I find you using talking points that were refined in committee. I may be polite, but it is unlikely that I will post your interview.

Got more questions? Send them in. What you ask me helps me figure out this new endeavor of mine.

DEMO & The normalization of social media

I'm killing airport wait time after 3 great days at DEMO 08. I think it is my 15th DEMO, but I'm not sure. I've lost count. It was a good conference, as it always is and a personal favorite of mine. For me it has been a place of many firsts. When I started my own PR agency, it was the 1st place I launched a client. In 2005, it was where Scopble and I signed our book deal with the Wiley guys who flew down to meet us. This time it was where I launched my 345th career, this time as a Video Blogger for FastCompany TV.

This year was as different as for me as it was the same. It was the same because I have this aging circle of friends who get together at this event twice each year and most of us have been doing it for a good many years. We used to be the young disruptors in the back of the room. Now we sit up front where connection is better. It was different because I was my debut as a video blogger. I interviewed about 20 people all of whom connected with my core topic of social media's impact on business and culture. I won't really know how well I did until I watch the clips over the next two days.

I'm old enough to know that however good or bad they turn out. I will get better. But there was one paragraph in all the interviews I conducted that is resonating with me. It came in my very last interview, which happened to be Chris Shipley, the respected executive producer of the past 20-something DEMOs.

I asked her what takeaway trends she saw from this year and she told me that it would be the last year that DEMO would have a special segment focused on social media. This from the person credited with introducing the term, several DEMOs back.

Does ths mean that I'm getting into producing a program on a topic that is already becoming passe? Not it all. Chris put it another way and I can restate here without checking the clip. But her key point is that social media was normalizing. It was becoming a part of nearly all 77 companies presenting at DEMO and it can be expected to be part of most of the new technologies introduced at DEMOs moving forward.

But the social media elements, the community functionality, polling, blog, video pieces are no longer the news.  They are just as normal as the line f a decade ago when presenter would boast with enthusiasm that "IT'S ONLINE!!!" One year it bacame a "so what," and we moved on.

What this means is that most innovation is now social in some sense and that has enormous implications for where society and culture and business are going. Social media is doing what all good technologies should do. They should fade into background as we become accustomed to them.

In the foreground should be people and that is my take-away from this most enjoyable event.

Demo 08 Day #1 was great as best I recall

I had planned to give an extensive report on companies I liked on Day #1, using my abundant Twitter entries as my notebook. This is difficult, because I cannot access Twitter this morning. Instead of railing about that, I'm going to try from memory to name the companies that impressed me most. Since I've been waiting for Twitter for over half an hour I'll be shorter than I wanted to be.
Here are some of the ones that I think will endure and change the marketplace in social media. Links are too sites:

• Livescribe of Oakland, CA has created a magic pen that may change the world for a few reasons. The device is a record, optical recognizer and translator. It uses regular paper that has been treated. You can copy the paper or make a PDX. If I'm interviewing you, I use the LiveScribe devise and write down a single word to remember the section. After the talk, I tap on the word and get a recording f what was said at the moment I write down the word. It translates between English, Spanish and Arabic as well as other languages. Which means I could use it to condust a conversation with another person who speaks none of the languages I speak and LiveScribe serves as a translator. The 1 Gig version is priced at $149 from their site in March and retail deals are allegedly imminent.
• Seesmic Maybe it was seeing friends Loic LeMeur and Cathy Brooks presenting that got me so excited, but I think not. Seesmic got it's start in the last half of last year simply by using Twitter (on good days) to attract it's 1st 2000 enthusiastic fans who have been spreading the word ever since. Seesmic is a clean, simple video producing platform that gives you a 5 minute maximum for content. The company introduced two new feature: (1) the ability to track conversations on each Seesmic post and (2) mobile capability, which I think greatly enhances the appeal of the service.
• Skyfire  Is a fast, tight mobile browser. In the demo it let you click and watch Videos and all sorts of stuff that today feels like your wwatching paint dry while waiting for. If it is that fast and clean in the hands of real people in realtime environments, then we all want it. At least the "we all" that have become mobile devoce dependent and see the day when that device is our primary computer on the road often travelled.
• iVideotunes Is a music teaching system. People more musically adept than me say it is really great. But it scored a high note for me at DEMO because they brought John Oates of Hall & Oates onstage to demo it. He sang a few bars of "She's Gone" and then joined n on the DEMO jam session last night, whoch I skipped because I'm getting on in years and I need my sleep.
• SceneCaster introduced DreamWeaver, which allows people to easily embed virtual reality elements into a flat website. You can also use the 3D technology to wander from scene to scene by clicking on doors. I think that the promise of virtual world technology is still nascent. It's nice to see it starting to move beyond the realm of SecondLife into other applications.
• GreenPlug Green technologies are just starting to come into the marketplace. This is the best and most financially viable I've seen so far. GreenPlug is really a chip the creates a universal AC/DC power adapter than (I think) goes into the cord. Fr mobile users it means you'll have one charge chord for the 97 devices you travel with. For the planet, it means less electricity usage. For the company, I think it means money and lots of it.
• Flypaper of Phoenix lets anyone create a Flash Demo without programming which should appeal to anyone who wants to look cool online. The core tools are simple drag and drop that you can customize. PowerPoint was introduced in 1987. It hasn't much changed. Flypaper may be the one that finally kicks it aside.
• Vidyo is a teleconferencing system that lets people using disperate technology to all videochat in HD Quality. I liked it, but am not convinced that it is "more better" enough to replace Skype. They would argue they are after different customers: workgroups, collaborators, but it remains to be seen if the market will agree.

• Voyant is not a social media company and I wasn't really that fond of its presentation. But it allows a simple personal finance management system that I need and I think a whole lot of other people need. This product should be acquired by the Quicken folk at Intuit and hopefully soon.

I'm out of time. Please realize that this list is incomplete and is focused on social media. I hope the Twitter gods will allow me to report on the morning session of DEMO Day 2 which starts in 20 minutes.

I'm at DEMO 08, awash in Social Media Tools

Me, not the conference.

I've been trying to figure out how to manage what I do during my two days her in Palm Springs for the DEMO. Here's what I plan to do. Of course, it may not come out this way:

• I will be reporting in little nuggets all day on Twitter.  You can sign in there then follow me at shelisrael for instant updates. You can also send me questions on Twitter that I will answer. If you are at DEMO we can use Twitter to have a back channel conversation about our experience.
• At the end of the day, I will use my Twitter feeds as a notebook, to write a longer pieve on what happened, then add my analysis.
• For Global Neighborhoods TV (GNTV), I will be video interviewing several people.  Chris Shipley, the conference executive producer, and inventor of the phrase "social media" has agreed to talk with me as has Loic LeMeur who will be launching Seesmic from the DEMO dais today.

So many tools. I hope I don't get confused and blog about me video recording my Twitter feeds.

Pat Phelan Videos from my Living Room

      

      [ Pat Phelan cozying up to my wife Paula on our living room couch. Photo by Shel]

I forgot that Pat used his Nokia and Qik to interview my entire family while a dinner guest in my home last week. It's a great lesson for me to keep other people in front of the camera and me out of red t-shirts.

He kindly omitted to mention that he was the subject of my very first GlobalNeighborhoods TV (GNTV) and I botched it badly.  The good news is he'll be back next month and I'll be able to interview him a second time, then.

Anyway, my first GNTV posts won't be up for another five weeks. Kill some time by watching me refuse to let Pat Livestream the news. Now it can be told.

I'm Joining Scoble at FastCompany TV

In November 2003, I put up my first blog post: "Old dogs & New tricks." I had  not a clue how my life was about to change. Maybe I should call this one: "Older dog. Newer trick."

I am about to become a video blogger. As of today, it is my main gig.

I'm joining Robert Scoble at FastCompany.TV. My show will be called GlobalNeighbourhoods TV (GNTV). I'll be covering social media's impact on culture and business. I hope to speak with people from all over the world, people in start ups and in the enterprise, people who are changing the world or are being changed by what is happening. While my primary focus will be business, I'll also look at government, academia, education, youth and assorted institutions.

GNTV premiers March 3, the same day as Scoble TV. Between now and then, starting tonight at the DEMO conference, I will be interviewing people for my new program. Beyond that, I'm looking for people everywhere who can address any aspect of social media's impact on culture and business. If you think you can help, please email me.

It's going to be great to once again to work with Robert Scoble. Naked Conversations is the child of the best professional collaboration I've had. Scoble is an online video pioneer who has twice opened my eyes and imagination to its incredible potential.

The first time was when we were working on the book. Robert's day job at Microsoft was to walk around with a video camera, talking to geeks about their jobs. The result showed how video could find and extract humanity where none was perceived to exist.

Then he did it again last week at Davos. Holding a tiny Nokia in his hand, we could watch him chat with significant makers of contemporary history.

 

Scoble's video is the opposite of what broadcast TV news has always been. I was a newspaper reporter in the 60s when I saw my first mobile TV news van intrude onto a news set. I was interviewing a politician in a parking lot, when the van halted about six feet from us, lights shining on us. Out stepped some guy in a suit and tan followed by an entourage of sound, lighting and even  a makeup technicians.

Even I could feel the excitement. I wondered if newspaper reporters would soon be obsolete. I knew I could write well about events. I could tell you what it was like to have been there. I could write circles around this suit with a tan. But that camera.That camera could actually show you what it was like and I simply could not beat that with mere written words.

It didn't turn out that way. It might have but it did not. Broadcast news was to intrusive to the scenes that it covered. It's very presence changed the event. A reporter with a spiral notebook and a Bic pen just walked in where news was happening. The scene changed little or not at all.

Not so with the TV camera. It's arrival changes the scene. Real people stop conversing and they start performing. The camera became the event.

Now comes online video. Video reporters hold tinmier less obtrusive tools. We shoot in natural light. Our microsphones do not resemble construction site equipment. We don't cover our wrinkles because you'll probably miss them on the tiny screens where we will be viewed.

We are bringing reality back into video, at least in many cases. We are more like the reporter of my youth than the TV guy. But we add yet another asset. We don't intrude on the scene but we participate in it. We use our cameras to extend it. To let others who are geographically seperated participate and as I am about to demonstrate, almost anyone can do it. Some of you already do. More of you will.

For Scoble and me, this is still about Naked Conversations and I am extremely excited about the possibilities.

Wish me luck.

Is Bob attempting a malicious attack?

Ever since I banned Bob, not once but twice (He cam back as Fake Ken with a new IP address), my register has been filling with this:"   escape(location.href)   ' " I have never seen this before and I have dozens of them.

Is this a malicious attack of some kind? Does anyone know?

My Living Room Policy--or why I banned Bob

Every six months or so, I find I have to repost my Living Room Policy, first stated in October 2006. If you want the executive summary it goes like this:

I treat people who come here with courtesy and respect, but if you are rude to me and my guests, I'll ask you to be nice, If you get rude again I will toss you out and never let you back in. I also do not let people into my home, who won't let me know who they are, then I am going to throw them out and not let them back in.

The most recent one is from someone calling himself Bob. No last name, no URL, just Bob. He put down his email as: anontroll07@gmail.com. Get it: "Anonymous troll."

You can see Bob's first two comments on my recent Open Letter to the Twitter Guys. The rest are cyberdust.

Bob has not been rude at all, even though we disagreed. He thought that since I am not a developer I did not have the right to comment on the scalability of Ruby on Rails. Now, I will submit that I may not know what I am talking about when it comes to the tech problems with Twitter, the subject we were discussing. But I maintain that on my own site I have every right to make a fool of myself intentionally or accidentally.

I told Bob about the living room policy and that if he did not identify himself I would ban him. He didn't like that and told me why I was a hypocrite demanding my own freedom of speech and demanding his right to speak in my virtual livingroom.

So I blocked him. 86. Poof. No more Bob. Bob, who claims to be a veteran developer with more than 20 years creds is now sending comments every few minutes. I may be no technical wizard and I do know how to tell Typepad to ban all comments from this anonymous troll. Typepad is sometimes slow to get it going and that means I need to play the silly takedown game tonight, but by tomorrow, Bob will be gone.

I feel good about this.

SAP Global Survey: Montreal's Michel LeBlanc

    

Candor on Montreal Culture and Radical Transparency   

 

                           [Michel LeBlanc File Photo.]

Michel LeBlanc is the most prominent French-Language blogger in Quebec Province, and probably all Canada's most popular French language business blogger. I invited him to participate in my SAP Global Survey of Social Media's Impact on Business and Culture because language is a continuously reemerging issue, and in North America, that triangulates to Montreal, our most bilingual city, and where there is a history of strain over language and culture.

But in speaking with Michel, I was surprised to discover that his personal life had traversed onto a significantly more controversial issue than just language. In so doing, this interview provides the best example so far of the benefits and influence of what he calls, "radical transparency."

A respected Internet enterprise consultant, Michel has impressive educational credentials. He holds an M.Sc. in eCommerce from HEC Montreal/U, an interdisciplinary program involving Law School, Computer School and HEC, Quebec's premier business school. He specialized in web management and conducted extensive research in Web marketing. He published extensively related to that.

His masters research was published at the Center for Interuniversity Research (CIRANO) on analysis of the organization which is usually only for PhD candidates. In connection with that degree, he presented his first of many keynotes on the impact of web services on businesses.

After graduating, he founded Adviso inc., Canada's first French-language Internet business consulting service, which he sold in 2005. More recently, he started Analyweb. Despite the corporate name, Analyweb is simply Michel Leblanc.  He works alone as a consultant, speaker and writer on Web marketing, web strategies and the use of innovative technologies in business settings. His clients are mostly North American and French blue chips, but he also works with small and medium enterprises that have a strong Web presence.

Here are his answers to my questions. I have taken some liberties, by inserting some of his comments from subsequent email:

1. Montreal is considered the most bi-lingual major City in North America. What percentage of Montreal speaks English and what percentage speaks French?  What percentage of Montreal is bilingual?

I do not have official statistics, but I estimate Montreal is 20% unilingual English; 80% French; and 40% bilingual. The French, of course, are a minority in our country and on our continent. Sometimes, the Anglos are so powerful that we feel we are a minority event in Montreal. Anyhow, we are submerged by Anglo culture and media on a regular basis.

2. Culturally, how much do the French and English speaking populations mix together? Would you say Montreal is a culturally integrated or separated society?  Is their much prejudice between the two cultures?

Historically Montreal is divided in two at Saint Laurent Blvd. West of it is English and East of it is French. Both cultures connect and mix on the boulevard.

There is still some prejudice and misunderstanding between French and Anglos. There is still a separatist movement in Quebec Province, but the clashes are coming mostly from outside Montreal and are rhetorical rather than actual physical confrontations.

3. When I met you a year ago at a wonderful blogger dinner there were more than 30 bloggers in the room, about half French speaking. I was later told that this was the first time French and English language bloggers had a dinner together. Have their been more in the last year?  Why or why not?

The dinner where you came is called Yulbiz and it is a meeting of business people interested in technologies such as blogs, and bloggers who are interested in business. This concept has been exported to other places and is now in five countries. I started it nearly two years ago.

Occasionally, English and French speaking bloggers get together and at another event called Yulblog (for any type of bloggers). Both communities mix well. But at Yulbiz, we still have problems attracting the core of English-speaking business bloggers. They started their own thing, the Montreal Tech Entrepreneur Breakfasts. Both communities interact at events such as basecamp, casecamp or facebookcamp. But those events were started in the English world first and it is the French who joined in rather than the opposite.

 

 

4. Tell me about business. Do the French and English-speaking communities conduct business together? what language is used?

 

French and English business people are working together but it is always in English. I presume it would be the same scenario as with the Spanish speaking community in California. Minorities are the one that have to adapt.

 

5. Let's talk about you.  What social media tools do you use? Are they for business for personal use?

My blog really changed my business.

Right now, more than half my business has come directly from my blog and the other half comes from the perceived notion that I am "the" expert. My blog has attracted a lot of media attention. I am regularly asked as an expert guest by media that wants to discuss e-economy, the web in business context and innovation. This contributes to my "aura" of being an expert and helps me sell speaking engagements that again, brings water to the mill.

So it is all interconnected. I also am using LinkedIn to gather positive feedback from client and I use Facebook to get to know my clients on a more personal level.


6. How has social media changed your personal reputation?

 

I recently used my blog to reveal a condition from which I am suffering. I have Gender Identity Dysphoria and the only way to cure myself, is to become a woman. I started hormone therapy two months age and will change everything else in the following months.

Since I told my readers (Michel's English translation) customers and friends, I have received a wave of support like you could not believe. I have retained all my customers and even gained new ones because of the perceived truthfulness and courage they saw in my disclosure (In fact, it was rather survival and the belief in radical transparency on my part, but I am very happy about how it has come out). I also created a Myspace Account under a pseudonym where I am connected to two hundred transsexuals worldwide and it is, in fact, my personal virtual support network.

7. You must have had a great deal of faith in your readers and your clients to make that post.

It is a bit more complicated than that. I did not have faith in my readership support. As a matter of fact I was flabbergasted by it. I did it more out of conviction and because I did not want to lie about my physical changes than anything else.

 

8. Let's return to the issues of language and culture. You blog in French and you don't translate, although you speak English extremely well. Why do you not post in two languages the way Loic Le Meur does it?

 

It is a matter of time and resources. Loïc does not blog alone. His wife is by his side and he has a team that works with him. In fact, I also have an English blog www.web-marketing-frog.blogspot.com, but I do not maintain it anymore, except for the recent translation. Perhaps that will motivate me to return to it when I have more resources.

I am proud of my French origins and I know I can be of great help to my fellow French-speaking readers as in English, I would be lost in the sea of the Web and there are far more pertinent resources in English than there are in French.

9. What impact do you think social media has had on Canadians in business? How do you see that changing?

Facebook has been widely adopted by Canadians but business people are still scared of it. Several businesses are trying to firewall it and they do not see the potential benefit of knowing your business contacts on a more personal level. Although personal blogs have a very long history in Canada, business blogs are still just emerging.

In several ways, Canadians are not that innovative on the online scene (except for developers, Facebook is a Canadian product. So is Blackberry). My explanation for it is that while France was still playing with Minitel, Canadians were investing in mainframes and heavy business applications.

Then France caught up with the Web and started with a clean slate. Here, the traditional integrators are very powerful and are still "the" reference for major clients. Furthermore, they are still thinking of leveraging their old investments (in the wrong way with old school integration) rather than trying to see what else they could be doing. I wrote 5 years ago about how Web Services could change the way we integrate business applications and how much money it could save and five years later, I could count on one hand, the projects that are being developed.

 

 

Scrabulous Founders Post an Update

The big news at Scrabulous for me is that I am finally beating Arik Hesseldahl from BusinessWeek for a change.  Score one for the Social Media guys. But when I logged in to enjoy the 56 point margin I'm enjoying,

I noticed this note from the founders, who have received a Cease & Desist Letter from Scrabble owners Hasbro & Mattel:

We are really grateful to the entire Scrabulous community for the exceptional support that has been provided. It is amazing to see that a small application has touched so many people across the world! There has been a lot of speculation about the future of Scrabulous and it is currently impossible for us to comment on this matter. However, like always, we shall update you as soon as we can.

In the meantime, please click here to enjoy a song created by an anonymous Scrabulous fan. :)

Best Regards,
Rajat & Jayant

It really doesn't say much, but it's nice to see the founders trying to have a conversation with their customers., don't you think?

Scoble reports on Zuckerberg at Davos

Okay, I'm writing a lot about Robert these days. But that's because I think he's producing some of the finest work he has ever done, both in his video and text posts. Robert had the good fortune to spend several hours with Mark Zuckerberg and managed to get an armful of new and relevant information.

He posted about it this morning in what I think is one of Robert's most journalistic reports ever.  He portrays a very human, down-to-earth team oriented who is chornically shy. He says that Facebook plans to remve the "5,000-friend limit," that Scoble has so anguished over. But more than that, Zuckerberg shows he understands what concerns his users and knows he has screwed up a couple of times.

It's well worth the read.

Like Scoble, I have become more than a little jaded about Facebook. Scoble, has obviously softened his views on the company because of the time he spent walking around with this young, bright, paper billionaire in one of the most pastoral communities of Europe. I am influence to soften my own judgement of the company as well, because I think Robert is a top-notch judge of character, and understands social product as well as anyone.

But my softening may be softer than Robert's. I wasn't there. I didn't see and hear on my own. And like Robert, I will just have to wait and see.

Sam Lawrence Summarizes Twitterville Resident Complaints

There's been a lot said since I posted my Open Letter to the Twitter guys yesterday. Sam Lawrence points out that there'd been much of significance said before I posted and has what seems to me to be the best summary and analysis I've seen.

Scoble's Davos Photostream

Scoble is livestreaming from Davos and most of you know that. But what you may not know is that he has produced a really awesome photostream on Flickr. He was loaned this professional-quality camera, I think from Nikon, but I could have that part wrong.  In any case, I never knew until Scoble clicked her, that the Queen of Jordan is more than slightly cute and has worked for Apple Computer.

An Open Letter to the Twitter Guys

To: Evan Williams & Biz Stone
RE: Fix it before we nix it

I am a huge fan. You are two good guys. Twitter is the most addictive thing I've experienced since I quit smoking in 1987, and it's so much better for my health. I have built a multinational circle of friends because of Twitter. We care about each other even if many times we have never met.

I could extol your virtues at length. In fact, I often have. As a writer, I love the Twitter story.

Late one night, while an exhausted, enthusiastic team slaves away, one absent founder uses the SMS hack to send a photo link of himself gloating over a glass of wine. That photo spawns an epiphany. The hack is more valuable than the company. They give investors their money back and start over again. Twitter is born. The team shares it with a few friends who share it...you've heard this part before... .

We're up to the part where Twitter goes viral, where growth accelerates, where most users have never met you and many have never even heard of you. We'e at the part where servers are straining and those who do know and like and respect and appreciate what you have done are getting frustrated with crashes and glitches and lost tweets and unexplained weirdities.

You two are on a fast track, moving at a breath taking pace, but you've just come around a sharp turn and discovered you've hit a tough patch of mud. It can slow you down, cause you to slip and fall on your butts or even get you stuck. The patch is more dangerous than you think and it requires your immediate attention.

Social media people are a fickle lot. We are more loyal t each other than we are to the sites we visit. If some of us leave and find somewhere else to hang out there can be unexpected stampedes of friends. The good news, is that will ease the obvious strain on your current system. The bad news is you can very rapidly become yesterday's news

Ev/Biz, people are talking. This last "scheduled maintenance schedule for prime time i your prime market, got moved and when you finally did it, the end result was that things were more of a mess than they were before. Tweeters are talking mostly about Twitter and they are not singing praise. Some folks say you should be bought, bring in adult supervisors to manage things or that maybe a circle of friends should go give Pownce a try. I do know of such a case, but I'll wager that somewhere this week a couple of young entrepreneurs started working on a business plan to replace you.

I hope not. I'm still hopeful and joyful about Twitter. I like it there. I have a wish list a mile long for Twitter, but before I start gushing about that stuff, I need to feel confident that Twitter can walk solidly for a while without limping or stumbling.

Here are just a few ideas, you might want to mull over:

• Fix what's broken. OK, Twitter is a hack built on thin Rails. It was neat for a few dozen people, but you have gone viral and can be potentially huge very quickly. You need to rebuild the whole thing. My technical friends say you should use PHP, not as a patch in a few places, but you need to build the foundation so that it is solid and scalable and you need to do it fast because you have fallen behind. How do you do this in transition? You talk with your userbase.  You keep them informed. You kill yourselves to do what you say you will do.

 

• Reveal monetization plan. If you have it, share it. We users need to understand how it will impact us. Biz, I loved the time we shared in Spain, but it disturbed me when you smiled and said, "there's so many things that we can do." Silicon Valley graveyards are filled with startup corpses, whose founders uttered the same words. My 25 years of consulting companies taught me the #1 cause of death is not lack of financing. Its lack of focus. I have heard so many gushes of what a startup COULD do. The trick is to figure out what you SHOULD do.

• Share your data. Like Facebook, Twitter seems to be a bit squirrelly with its numbers. A little more transparency might help you. It is useful to a great many people to know how many users you have, how often the average Tweeter posts, what the average number of followers a Tweeter has, how many messages a day, geographic distribution, etc. I simply do not understand why you are not willing to share such data. How can sharing it hurt you? Sharing it will allow the crowd to share wisdom with you on what it means.

• Don't sell while broken. You'll suffer the same loss of return that you woud selling a Mercedes with a bashed in fender.

• Start a Twitter blog. You both have decent blogs but you need one that is focused on talking to Twitterville. Hell Evan, you of all people do not need advice on the value of blogging. But there is a need for conversations deeper than 140 characters allows. Share a few aspirations and fears. We are a passionate and knowledgeable community. But neither of you appear to me to be particularly interested in having an ongoing dialogue with customers and that is a bit disappointing from my perspective.

I believe that the two of you have an opportunity of a lifetime and right now you are at a crossroads, one direction puts you on an interactive superhighway and the other will give you an ending like Thelma & Louise.

Sincerely,

ShelIsrael

SAP Global Survey: Lionbridge's Aaron Dun

Resolving the problems of Translation

[Lily & Aaron Dun outside Fenway Park, one of America's most hallowed institutions]

My interim report on the SAP Survey of Social Media's Impact on Culture and Business noted that language was among the most vexing problems toward turning the vision of an online world where all people in all places could speak each other into a reality. Yet every day, I see and hear reports of how little baby steps are being taken in that direction.

Still, I wonder how many little baby steps are needed.  To better understand the state of translation technologies, I turned to Aaron Dun, VP Marketing at Lionbridge Technologies, the world leader in online translation technologies.

1. There's a general perception that most translation software sucks. Why it is so hard to make it accurate?  Why would you say Lionbridge's software is more reliable than say, Babblefish or Google Translate?

Let me make a very important clarification. What you are referring to as translation software is actually machine translation (MT) software.  Generally, MT quality is not something you would use as a finished product in a true business setting.  There are a few examples where MT has been used practically and effectively, but those are usually in combination with a human post-editing process.  We could spend our entire dialog on MT strategies, but it would be a deeply technical discussion, perhaps better reserved for another day.

The majority of Lionbridge’s work is based on human translation services that we support with MT, as well as other technologies to deliver a high quality end product.  Our Freeway™ online language management platform helps companies efficiently manage the translation process—getting us content easily, tracking it as it moves through the translation process, and then getting it back into their systems for publishing.

2. How does your system work and what are it's benefits?

In its simplest form, clients send us files of any type in one language, and we send them back 5, 20, 40, 100+ language versions in the same format.

Freeway is effective for our customers for three key reasons:

    (1) It’s free. Our customers don't have to invest several hundred thousand dollars in software licenses.

    (2) It’s fast.  We automate the process of handing content off and streamline how clients get us the files, cutting days or weeks out of the process.  Since it’s all online, it’s fast to set up.

    (3) It’s flexible.  We don’t require our clients to rearchitect their workflow to fit our needs. We can work with just about any data type or content management system (CMS).

These three attributes give our clients the operational agility to meet global objectives.

3. Lionbridge has been around a long time. It only recently turned attention to social media companies. Was this a strategic decision or did an opportunity just pop up? Can you tell me how important social media is to Lionbridge moving forward?

The phenomenon of social media is a relatively recent development and we were pretty early into it.  As the largest translation services provider, our clients bring us complex challenge and social media is no different. We work with nearly every major social networking community to assist them with localizations.

4. Is the technology you use for social media the same or different from Freeway, your corporate translation platform? What are the technology challenges you face in social media platforms that are different than what you face with corporate customers?

Freeway is our central platform, so we use it across our business.  Social media platforms have two main challenges. First they are highly complex web sites.  But in that way, they are no different from eBay or Expedia, two of our clients

The second challenge centers on what to do with all of that user-generated content (UGC). Should it be translated? Are truly personal connections happening cross-culturally in ways that would require translation?  For example, if I post on my friend’s page in German, ostensibly that friend also speaks German.  Where this issue is starting to play out more urgently is in the retail sector where it is conceivable that a German review of a camera might be relevant to someone shopping in the US.

Once the need for translated UGC is firmly established, the “how” gets a bit tricky. Many people think that some sort of MT tool will be the answer; but your own personal experience is pretty indicative of the state of the technology today. MT generally works best in a structured environment where content is uniform and well-defined. That is, of course, the complete opposite of the typical content posted online by users.

At the same time, there is a general trend toward acceptance of less-than-perfect content. We are already sensitized to very casual conversations conducted over IM or through text messages. As a result, we do expect that a higher tolerance for relatively lower quality MT output is emerging in some well-defined settings.

Taken together, we expect a hybrid solution will evolve where there are levels of content on these sites, and levels of translation quality that match those levels, supported by an easy escalation path. So, perhaps the site structure will be professionally translated, the dynamic content will be translated by the community, and UGC will be translated on-demand through MT, or perhaps MT aided by translation memories.

5. You have deals with Hi5, MySpace, LiveMocha and Habbo. Can you give me a brief capsule of what Lionbridge does for each?

Generally, we help these companies localize the framework of the platform to push deeper into the global community.  Jupiter Research just put out a report on Web Globalization, and one of the key graphics in it centers on where the world’s online population can be found. Clearly, China and other countries and languages are reducing English’s Web prominence.  We are helping the communities push further into these world geographies.

In some cases, we are beginning to explore the UGC question and thinking deeply about the right model for this translation process. In other cases, not yet public, we are exploring ways to help social media companies engage their communities to participate in the translation process.

6. What are the particular challenges of social media translation technology?

The sites themselves are not terribly difficult. It’s the distributed nature of the content that is challenging. I don’t mean to oversimplify the problem, because the complexity of these sites is daunting. We just we have so much experience with them, we are well-versed in the challenges they present. In all cases, you need to deal with text expansion and shrinkage for different languages, and of course, right-to-left languages present different challenges, among many other specific web globalization challenges.

But with social media, you have dynamic content being developed across the platform and posted with dizzying speed. This often changes the dynamics of the pages themselves and impacts how the pages are set up, which impacts the localization process.

In addition, the sites tend to be updating and shifting structures rapidly. If the changes are developed with localization in mind, than these can be straightforward to manage, but if they are not, it can become very complex.

7. You use a human element in your service. How does this work in dynamic environments like MySpace?

While we use MT elements, nearly all of our projects are executed by professional translators. That means we engage a group of translators for a project based on their skills and experience. For ongoing engagements with social media clients, we may use the same group for consistency of tone and expertise.

We have a carefully culled “army” of around 25,000 translators in well over 100 languages. Last year, our army translated content into 145 languages.  We are constantly evaluating their performance and expertise to make sure we have a high-quality pool from which to draw for any given project.

8. MySpace has announced a comeback and one of it's first forays is a brave one, and that is a Portuguese language version which will be heavily marketed in Brazil, where the conventional wisdom is that Google Orkut owns the social network. Does Lionbridge contribute something to the new MySpace that you think will give it a fighting chance in Brazil?

I am amused by your notion of MySpace making a comeback. Did they ever leave?  Certainly Facebook has captured a great deal of buzz recently, but with 105 million unique global visitors in December 2007 (ComScore), I don’t think MySpace is going anywhere anytime soon.

I think the success of MySpace in Brazil will be much more determined by the power of what they have to provide to the Brazilians and how that resonates with the people. Certainly, the quality of the translation we provide is a key component of that experience, but these sites are so experiential. It’s hard to judge where or why one will be successful over another.

9.  Do you see a day when all people can talk to all people over the Internet? How far away is that day? What are the most formidable barriers?

Is the Internet the great Rosetta Stone?

I don’t think I am qualified to really address that question.  That gets more to the heart of culture and cultural difference than anything else.  Certainly, the web has grown up as an English-led experience, but that is changing rapidly. I suppose it’s possible to envision a day where like-minded individuals can congregate around a topic or a concept or an ideal online—regardless of language—but that day doesn’t seem near to me.

If anything, I think we might be going the other way where users retrench a little bit as more content is made available to them in their own language. But that should be relatively short lived, as the power of the collective global experience continues to flourish.

10. There are cases of localized social media companies that have over 90% market share. This sounds great except they have nowhere to grow. How could translation software solve this problem?

90% share of what I would have to ask?  We translated content for our clients into 145 languages last year and didn’t come anywhere close to covering 100% of the Worlds population.  If the World’s population is currently over 6.5 Billion people, and some 1.2 billion of those are online, these sites have a long way to go to reach saturation globally.

And that is really the key distinction.  Clearly, this is a global phenomenon.  If these sites can continue to paint a compelling value proposition for consumers around the world, and remain adept at tapping into the inherent need of people to connect with each other, then that 1.2 billion online (today) is their total market opportunity.  They won’t get there in English alone.

11. I could not help but notice the Lionbridge and its representatives do not seem to participate in social media--no blogs, picture; no Facebook group or Twitter account. Not even MySpace or Hi5, your customers. Why is this? Does Lionbridge use social media behind the firewall for either employee collaboration or to work with Content Management System partners? Does Lionbridge plan to join the conversation in the future?

While not necessarily widely visible, we are doing many, many things in the medium as we define our approach.

We have quietly launched our company blog in December. Several employees have personal blogs where they discuss technology issues relevant to their work, or their interests.  Our interpreter recruiting team in Washington DC is actively using Facebook to recruit people who speak a number of different languages.  This is a perfect medium to find folks in, or just out of college, who may be native speakers of the languages we are trying to source, and are currently living in the US.

We are hard at work in other key networks to understand how to use the medium to meet our objectives, but it would be premature to disclose too many details on our plans.  We are rapidly identifying areas where we can use the Social Media to impact our business. Suffice to say, we are active, if not entirely visible.

The reality of these communities is that they are not terribly relevant as a channel for someone marketing a B-to-B service…yet.  The vast majority of our customers are just plain not present in these communities today.

12. Additional comments?

I would just say this is an amazing time to be considering global issues. With the weakness of the dollar and the slowing US economy, clearly companies are going to be talking more about their geo-diversification as a hedge against the US economy.

What we are already seeing is major US companies starting to disclose their percentages of global revenue and it’s staggering.  This isn’t that it’s new revenue, it’s just the level of reporting is much clearer.  We have inherently known much of this through our direct work in getting these companies to global markets, but to see publicly how that work is paying off in revenue is quite impressive.

The notion of a truly global economy has clearly arrived.

The finer threads of Internet Connection

Steve Clayton that Geek in disguise, points to an English Cut post, by Thomas Mahon, the Saville Row blogging tailor we wrote about in Naked Conversations, who is in turn pointing to Victor, a Nigerian custom tailor.

Observes Steve, one of Microsoft's most popular bloggers:

"These stories are what the web and blogging is all about - Thomas Mahon of English Cut fame connects with Victor, a tailor in Nigeria. The chance of this happening pre-web (or pre-blog) are remote to say the least. Here are two things that are likely (read inevitable) to happen now:

   

1. Thomas's widespread appeal is likely to generate further coverage of this story. perhaps even mainstream media. Thomas will get more trade (even though he doesn't need it)
2. Victor is likely to get some trade from people he's never met before as Thomas just helped put him on the map (the web map that is)

 

Neither of these guys are intentionally pimping each other. They found a common link via the web and it's likely to be of benefit to both of them simply because they're fond of each others works. Imagine that in traditional, non web based business.

   

I can't imagine a car manufacturer in Detroit saying "hey take a look at those great little Fiat's in Italy. Man we make GREAT cars but if you're in Italy and you need a motor, they're the puppies"

But there's more connection than that. How do Steve, a Microsoft executive and a British suit-maker link together? They both have benefited from the creative marketing brilliance of a formerly barely employed illustrator named Hugh MacLeod. Hugh created the Microsoft Blue Monster while consulting Steve's Microsoft group.

But, wait there's more. I got to write about Thomas through Hugh, who was already pals with co-author Robert Scoble, who, at the time, was a pretty popular Microsoft blogger himself.

My point is this: There's a whole lot of weaviong going on in the blogosphere.

Intel & Johnny Bloggerseed

I spent a pleasant day yesterday in Las Vegas at the surrealistic Venetian Hotel as the guest of Intel's Sales & Marketing Group (SMG). I think it is the first time I ever had lunch with 5400 people in one room.

I was on what was called, "The external panel." There were three of us asked to address the subject of marketing and social media. We presented twice, both times to a filled room of about 200 fairly engaged audience members from all aspects of marketing and from all over the world.

While Intel has a good number of blogs going on, some of them quite good, the Intel folk who are either immersed or engaged in social media come from other sectors of this vast global enterprise. These were the people who wanted to get message out. They were not exactly champions of social media. Extremely few of them had ever heard of Naked Conversations or even my co-author. I could see on their faces that many had never heard of Twitter, when I used the word as if it were as generic as say "Kleenex."

But what was interesting to me is that audience was entirely engaged. They understood that the tide of social media was rising and they had little choice but to get their feet wet, and would soon need to at least dog paddle or face being swept away by sea change.

They hung on a great many words from the panel.  They asked questions. They asked for good old-fashioned business cards. Social Media was not in the center of their world, but it was acknowledged and respected by an audience that perhaps one brief year earlier would have been totally disdained.

For nearly three years I've been bopping around North America & Europe, in sort of a virtual Johnny Bloggerseed role. It is encouraging to see little sprout rising from the dirt. Things are starting to grow wherever I look and it feels good.

New thoughts on blogger journalism

The same thing has happened twice in a week and it tends to piss me off. I request interviews for the SAP Global Survey and someone asks if I would be willing to submit my questions in advance.

The answer is no, resoundingly so. You would not ask the NY Times or ABC or your hometown newspaper to do that? Why would you ask me?

The implicit answer is that I blog my interviews, and therefore, I must be less than a full journalist. I want the interview to increase my readership and therefore I should conduct them with an implicit wink and a nod. I'll get back to that in just a second.

In the interest of transparency, let me state a few things that regular readers of the survey probably already know. I conduct most of my interviews by email. So the recipient gets to see and consider the questions for a week or so before answering them. The recipient can easily fool me, and get help from internal people. I will never know.But I insist on naked conversations. If an interviewee sends me back Corpspeak or standard talking points,I will not publish it. This has happened only once. I have had respondents decline to answers a question, and the only way it shows, is that there are fewer questions to the interview. This is also fine with me.

Finally, the likelihood of getting burned is small. Why? Because SAP my sponsors and I are looking for insights and information that will add to the body of knowledge on social media's impact on culture and business. I ask people for interviews because I think they have something to contribute.

So far there have been 58 interviews. I have posted a few broken links and in one case, I posted the wrong middle name of an interviewee (my worst mistake so far). No one has contacted me to claim I misrepresented them.

I am educated and experienced as a journalist. I have worked for newspapers, email newsletters and briefly as a radio commentator. I am now practicing journalism as a blogger. The rules have changed slightly. I get to stick my opinion in when reporting. I am obliged to make clear when it is opinion and when it is reporting.

Bloggers as journalists are just evolving. We bloggers have brought much of this on ourselves.  When I am interviewed by other bloggers, they often ask me to promote that I am on their sites. I rarely do this and when I do, it is because I feel new ground was covered, that contributes something to the body of knowledge. I did it twice recently and felt uncomfortable, so it will probably be a while before I do it again.

As a reporter, I never asked an interviewee to promote what I wrote. If she or he liked it, then they might cut and copy a newspaper clip, or forward my email newsletter or in blogs, link to it. But to collaborate in the promotion of those materials, to me is as unjournalistic as asking me for questions in advance.

I also have the issue of interviewing friends on my blog. I will always be transparent. This is not new to blogging. I had friends who were part of my state house beat as a yong reporter. I once dated a young woman whose father served on the local Council for the Elderly  When that council came under scrutiny for questionable practices, I had to recuse myself and that is the way it should be.

Blogging is breaking new ground in so many days.  For me, it is difficult to keep straight, that one day I am a speaker, another I am a blogging reporter and very recently I was a consulting blogger who sometimes wrote about clients. New ground is often shaky and it requires a few hops and occasional stumbles.

The way I try to keep it straight is to remember my customer is my reader and that is where my loyalty rests when I blog.

SAP Global Survey: KD Paine

Measuring conversation is Difficult;
a talk with KD is Priceless

        [KDPaine with admirer at Measurement Summit. File Photo]

In the interest of transparency I need to tell you that KD Paine is my friend. She has been my friend for a very long time. We have both hung out in the tech-journalism-marketing-consulting communities for several decades. We both recall when once-weekly tabloids were fast enough and the state of personal communications art was the FAX machine.

I have always admired KD for her temerity, her ability to pick herself up, dust herself off and just get on with life, even when it deals you a blow. She is a breast cancer survivor who started running marathons to raise money to defeat the beast. When her 100-year-old family farmhouse burned down on a cold New Hampshire night, she built a new one that was true to the spirit of the cinders that had housed her parents and grandparents but embraced the comforts of modern times, including a kitchen that can easily feed 100 people, which happens with regularity. When I spoke at the Measurement Summit that she founded, my wife and I were guests in her home. 

She would have none of our talk about "Oh, we'll-just-get-a-hotel room." She gave us a tour of her amazing acreage and I discovered it really was a farm.  She showed us her bulldozer, the cellar where she preserves her jellied fruit  and the river house, where she wrote her latest book, "Measuring Public Relationships" and has already started on another.

This makes it difficult for me to formally interview KD. As the picture above shows, our relationship is up close and personal, but the issue of measurement is among the most complex flex points of social media and business right now. KD is the undisputed expert on this topic, and to NOT interview KD Paine because I know her too well, would be to a disservice to the readers of this survey.

And now, I give you KD Paine.

1. You have been called the Measurement Queen. Just what is that you measure and for whom do you do the measuring?

First of all, I prefer Goddess to Queen, since Queen implies a command and control society  and Goddesses are typically credited with giving birth to belief systems and are more inspirational.  Besides, there really is a Goddess of all things Measurement named Seshat.

What do we measure?

We measure the impact that media has on the reputation, positioning, messaging, relationships and business interests of our clients. By media we mean everything from Fortune to Salon to Global Neighbourhoods to BizRate to YouTube and Facebook. Typically we look at competitors or peer organizations so the clients understand the relative importance of that impact.

About half our clients are nonprofit and government organizations such as the ASPCA , the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, Georgia Tech and Bonneville Power. The other half are high tech, business to business and business to consumer companies like Facebook, Epson, Raytheon and Georgia Pacific. Our clients typically have titles like VP of Communications, VP of External Affairs, VP of Public or Media Relations.

2.  Measurement is one of the enterprise flex point issues when it comes to social media these days. Do you get asked about such issues as the ROI of a blog? How do you answer that question?

Yes, we get asked that all the time. The problem is that the “R” of ROI really depends on the organization.  For the ASPCA the ROI can be measured in how many new members are engaged in the organization because of the blog, and ultimately the “R” is the number of new members as well as the amount of new contributions.

For Ingres or SAS, they may or may not be able to draw a straight line from their blog to the sale of a $100,000 software system, but  they can certainly track the proliferation of ideas and concepts from the blog into social media and perhaps into mainstream media or directly to customers who subscribe to the blog.

For high tech companies and advocacy groups, I’d argue that the ROI doesn’t matter. Not having a conversation with your customers is no longer an option. It’s like an email or the fax machine. At some point you realize you no longer care about the ROI, you simply can’t do business without it.

For an internal blog the “R” might be lower recruitment costs or reduced turnover or higher morale. It depends on the purpose or goal of the blog. The reality, in far too many cases, is that the reason the organization started the blog was because the CEO or a board member said they had to do it. There are no clear objectives, so the demand to  measure ROI becomes a political football tossed back and forth between proponents of social media and the old-line command and control types that once said the internet was a fad that would quickly pass.

3. Media is all about the conversation, which I imagine makes it more difficult to measure than say, a press release. How do you measure social media?

You know the old adage “Measure twice, cut once?”  I think today you have to listen a lot, and measure once. It’s all about listening to what your constituencies have to say.

If you video taped a real conversation, you’d capture body language, you’d know who the players were talking to, and who they were going to talk to next. Computers are only beginning to do that. They can count the people in the room, but they have no way of knowing what those people are going to do next. What is a complete waste of time are those organizations that are still counting eyeballs and using text mining to just measure the words used.   

To evaluate social media conversations, you listen. You hear the tone. You note what subjects are being discussed, what words are used, what battles are being fought,  who is saying what to whom. The only thing you’re missing is the  body language, and the social media equivalent of body language is the avatar or photos you use to identify yourself.

What is most interesting to me is that measuring social media draws on research methodologies that are decades old. Basic sociological and psychological research techniques that have been around for decades are being dusted off and put to work measuring social media.

Jim and Laurie Grunig defined how you measure relationships a decade ago. It’s just been easier to measure column inches and impressions than to actually figure out what people think about you as a result of your actions and words. However today, there are no “column inches and impressions” for social media. There are just conversations and relationships. So we are going back to measuring people rather than ink and bits and bytes.

What technology has brought us is the ability to track not just this conversation, but the next conversation and the next. Social mapping systems like BuzzLogic enable you to follow the conversation wherever it goes. That’s the really exciting piece of measuring social media. We’ve been able to evaluate one conversation (think of focus groups) but we’ve never had the tools to be able to track what happens after the participants leave the room. Now we have that technology. It used to be that we measured reach and frequency. We are still measuring frequency, but social network mapping is the new reach.

The biggest problem are all those people out there that are trying to measure social media with tools that were invented in the 1940s to measure TV – panels and eyeball counting mechanisms that are meaningless to today’s consumer. 

4. Can you give me a good case study of how you've helped a company evaluate a social media program?

Before there was social media, there was consumer generated media and before that there were newsgroups. We began doing competitive analysis in newsgroups for a leading printer manufacturer (not HP) back in 1995.

At the time, we learned that even though the client was worried about negative newsgroup discussion winding up in mainstream media, the information was, in fact, flowing the other way. After PR launched a product, customers were picking it up and discussing it in newsgroups about two weeks later. This allowed them to determine which messages were actually being heard by their customers. A decade later, our measurement program for them now includes blogs, structured review sites like Amazon as well as traditional media and  online sites like Engadget.

We compare the impact that all these forms of outreach have on purchase patterns and what we’re learning is that the greatest influence comes from customers talking to other potential customers in Amazon and BizRate reviews.

We also do extensive research into the impact of social media for Georgia Tech. We look at the discussion about Georgia Tech as well as nearly a dozen other major research universities and determine what’s being discussed, and more importantly, what’s being shared. We look at what Georgia Tech bloggers are saying and what others are saying about Georgia Tech. We also examine the degree to which people are bookmarking and sharing information, so we can identify hot button areas that lend themselves to advancing Georgia Tech’s reputation. Ultimately we’ll be  looking at the impact that it all has on applications and requests for information.

For the ASPCA we measure traditional as well as social media and analyze it to determine which topics and which media are having the greatest impact on memberships and donations.

For a major computer manufacturer we did a social media analysis of their bloggers vs. the competitor’s bloggers. What we found was that their bloggers weren’t blogging as frequently as the competition, nor were people commenting as often on their blogs. So they revamped their internal blogging policy as a result.

5. How would you assess the current crop of social media tools. What do you recommend for an individual to use? Is there a different set of tools for an enterprise? How do you see them evolving?

We’ve gotten very good at teaching computers to understand words, the problems is that they don’t understand the nuances of conversations. Computers still can’t tell the difference between sarcasm and irony. And throw in slang and you have an even bigger problem. So computers are good at categorizing conversations as to what they are primarily about, or where they’re appearing, but as to the real impact of the conversation, it still needs a human.

Personally, I use Google Analytics to track the success of my own blog and IceRocket and Sphere to see how well I’m getting my messages out there.  We use Compete to determine “reach” Then I put the results into our own DIY Dashboard so I can keep track of trends over time. For my clients we use a variety of capture tools like Critical Mention, Cyberalert and BuzzLogic. depending on the nature  and market that the client is trying to measure.

Far more important is the tool that you use to measure relationships. The standard methodology is to present your stakeholders with a series of statements and ask them to what degree they agree or disagree.

This can be accomplished via free resources like SurveyMoney and Zoomerang or even by phone. In an enterprise where you’ve got a significant number of different elements to track and run correlations, you really need some sort of sophisticated database tools like SPSS or SAS. For an enterprise to truly measure its reputation in social media you need a solid mix of human analysts and interpretation with very sophisticated tools. Facebook, HP  and Microsoft did extensive research before selecting measurement tools and all three  insisted on human analysts. So I ask you if some of the leading players in technology don’t trust computers, why should you?

6. Why do you think an enterprise should allow employees to blog or engage in social networking sites such as Twitter or Facebook?

Because it will make them smarter and it increases social capital. Robert Putnam in Bowling Alone credited World War II and the draft for boosting social capital by forcing people to interact outside of their comfort zone.  Facebook and Twitter are today’s version of the draft and life in the trenches. They enable you to see and hear different points of view and perspectives from around the world. It brings you different perspectives – instantly. Besides in Facebook, the ability to ask questions and share ideas is a great way to listen to your customers.

7.  I've written that blogging helps companies get closer to customers. How do you measure something like that? 

Don’t ask me, ask your customers.

Do a survey and ask them how they feel about your brand or organization. Ask them whether they agree or disagree with a statement like “This is an organization that listens to people like me” or “this is an organization that likes to throw its weight around." Tally up the answers and you get a measure of the health of your relationships. Ultimately, do they feel closer or more alienated? You’ll only know if you ask.

8. Corporate reputation often comes up as one of the issues related to social media and the enterprise. How do you see social media impacting an enterprise that engages in it?

   

If you accept the premise that engaging in social media enables you to listen more closely to your customers, then it can only improve your relationships and ultimately your reputation. Blogging and social media imply, assuming you do it right, and that you are open and willing to listen. If society believes that you are open and transparent and authentic, research shows that more people will trust you. While trust is only one component of a reputation, I would argue it is one of the most important. Secondarily, depending on what the enterprise is blogging about, social media can help convey other reputation attributes like innovation, good corporate citizenship and community concern.

9. How do you think social media impacts brand?

That depends on what you’re trying to convey with your brand and how you implement your social media strategy.  Does being in SecondLife or on Facebook help Coca Cola’s brand?  Yes, it conveys that they’re hip and cool. Do they sell more Coke because of it? Probably not, but simply being there says something about their brand. Did being first in Social Media  help John Edward’s brand as the first candidate to Twitter? It might have had he actually been doing it, and not faking it. But because it became quickly apparent that it was Joe Trippi twittering and hired bloggers blogging for him, people stopped caring.

It also depends on who your customers are. If your customers are non-techie types raised in the 50s and 60s, social media will have a lot less impact than if your customers are Gen Y-ers.  Take a company like Lockheed Martin or Northrup Grumman. It seems inconceivable that they’d blog, since arms dealers probably don’t do a lot with social media. But if they’re trying to hire the best and brightest of today’s college students, participating in social media would do wonders for their brand.

10 Additional comments.

Measuring social media all comes down to measuring relationships. There are far too many media options and far too many messages to try to track what’s being sent out there. If people instead focused on what’s being received, and the impact that has on their constituencies, they’d know a lot more.

--
Shel Israel
writer. consultant. nice guy.
http://globalneighbourhoods.net
650 430 4042

A Message from Scrabulous

The Splash page on Scrabulous reads tonight: "Amazing new features coming soon! Stay tuned."

I wonder if it's handcuffs or the famous disappearing act.

The challenges of Twittering Steve Jobs

ZDNet's Larry Dignan (not Dan Farber) has an interesting piece on the problems micro bloggers had using Twitter while Steve Jobs was delivering his keynote yesterday. It's the challenge of scale that inevitable confronts a technology that becomes something it was not originally intended to be.

This is not new. Since I arrived in Silicon Vallety, I have heard similar stories from the developer's of some of our finest products. I remember Bill Joy, at Sun Microsystems, when that company had 12 employees, telling me the story of the Sun 50. "We built these things because we were unhappy with what was out there and we thought they would be cool. So then we thought we'd share them with a few of our friends, who in turn ..."

It's funny but viral and word of mouth are considered marketing terms. In fact, it's what happens when geeks find a good thing. Twitter was an internal way to communicate. It's roots were in another company that fell in love with a little hack that made SMS more portable. Word of mouth made it popular.  Now, it's starting to go viral.

Will it scale. My guess is yes.  Entrepreneurs are usually good at solving technology problems. My bigger concern remains: How will it monetize without pissing off a growing userbase? Entrepreneurs are not always as adept at solving business problems.

BTW, I figured out how I attributed my Gizmodo post to Farber when it was Dignan. On Google Reader, I see Dan Farber's name, not not Larry Dignan's. In the old days, I used to blame Microsoft. Can I now blame my best recent goof on Google?

Techno Marketer's Advice to Scrabble folk

TechnoMarketer looks like he's having a bad hair day. Still he has some great advice to the folks at Hasbro & Mattel on what they really should do about Scrabulous. Of course, this is about as likely to haopen as my beating Huckabee as a write in candidate for president this November. Also, I think he's being mean to the accounting Hasbro folks by pointing the lawyers at them.  he should have the lawyers go to the window, open it up an take  dive instead.

Facebook asked to take down Scrabulous

Facebook is being asked to take down the one thing on its site that I still love: Scrabulous.

It turns out that the online game that closely emulates the Scrabble Board Game, owned by the world's two largest toy makers has no rights to the name or the intellectual property it is using. As is often the case, no one for Facebook was available for comment.

For the past few months, I've been engaged in a Scrabulous tournament with Arik Hesseldahl of Businessweek who has been generally whupping my butt at the game. Now, when I have a 21 point lead in a game, now it may be called off on kind of infringement suit threats. Arik, it's your turn. Play fast. Please.

New Pro Blogger Give good advice from Mark Twain

Leo Babauta becomes Guam's first pro-blogger today as he quits his day job to dedicate himself fulltime to ZenHabits, a blog of rising popularity. He embarks on this new career with a Mark Twain quote that I have always loved:

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."

>This is the same philosophy This is the same philosophy that comes through in the currently popular movie the Bucket List. It is pretty much my own.  Every few years I've tended to shake off that which os comfortable and try something new. It keeps me scared, young and productive. Now that I think about it, I'm pretty much due for a change pretty soon. Good luck Leo. May ZenHost grow and you prosper as a result.

Henry Blodget: Why Apple position still rocks

[MacBook Air. Will world's thinnest PC thicken Apple profits? Photo by Shel]

As an Apple Computer stock holder, I've been getting nervous lately. I hear news and think it's good, and still stock traders are seling & selling. Personally, I see Apple as in an extremely strong position, but I am far from an expert in picking stocks. So I'm in the herd these days and the herd is restless.

It is somewhat calming, to read Henry Blodget's analysis of while Apple Computer is in the kind of business sweet spot that I think it is. At least one analyst see it the way I do. Some say the new MacBook Air is too expensive. As I recall, that's what they just said about the iPhone. I have a hunch those who argue it's too expensive have not yet seen and touched one as I have. Do I need one? Probably not. But I'm pretty certain, the next time I have some discretionary money laying around, I will buy one.

Scoble to join FastCompany.TV

     [Robert Scoble & his camera. Moving to FastCompany.TV. Photo by Shel]

In an announcement that was leakier than the Titanic after the iceberg incident, Robert Scoble has announced he will be joining the newly formed FastCompany.TV as it's first managing director. I wish him well and I think Mansueto Digital was wise to select Robert for this post. I also think this news is significant for the online video community as a whole, because it legitimizes what has been a grassroots movement until now.

FastCompany is a highly respected traditional media brand and it's commitment to starting a sponsor-based series of online video programs elevate our industry. I predict that where FastCompany is leading, other traditional media companies will follow.

Scoble is the perfect choice to start this network. His Channel 9 video at Microsoft, seemed to me, to do more to humanize Microsoft than any of the many subsequent events that have softened people's view of Redmond. At Podtech, he built a prototype for how conversational video can be effective in business reporting. With about a million-views-a-month, he also has roved it camn be successful.

Now Scoble joins a real media company, one with a respected brand and a significant following on its own. I think this is important, not just for those of us who champion online video, but for media companies understanding how social media can successfully replace old school broadcast media.

I wish Scoble the very best in this new gig. It is a Golden Opportunity.

Macworld: The joint was jumpin'

[Very Interesting. MacBookAir was this year's show stopper.
Photo by Shel]

The last tme I walked a MacWorld Show floor was the year they introduced the iMac that looked like a desklamp.  The crowds were relatively sparse, dominated by middle aged men with graying pony tails. Steve Jobs had returned relatively recently and there was a buzz of hope that this new Mac in that festering anti-Microsoft Era just might pave the way to a revitalized Mac.

Even the most wide-eyed optimists of that day had no idea just what a half-decade could deliver. This was a jammed, crammed, vibrant MacWorld. Still consumer dominated, with nary a necktie on the exhibit floor, the aisles of tqo gargantuan halls were filled, the booths crammed, the dais exhibitors speaking to filled seats.

The joint was jumping. Apple has gone from the cool alternative for a Redmond-haters to the coolest thing in consumer electronics. Still not a place that  my two-hour stroll could discern as an enterprise hang, it was filled with all others sorts of business people from probably all continents not covered with snow.

That first desklamp iMac turned out to be a hit, even if it's stage setting wifi enabling Airport seemed silly for a non-portable desktop unit, it began a string of design genius hits that just keep getting better. Jobs in his Keynote named about a halff dozen, but one stood out.

The new 3 lb, 10-hour, .8 inch ultra portable MacBook Air is quite simple the most beautiful personal computer ever made. It is the apple of every road warrior's eye and I have little doubt that it will be a most significant hit, even with a $1799 price tag on it; even with no dock; even with some questions of compatibility with non-Apple peripherals.

This is a must-have for the intensive traveller. And that is important for the world of computers for the rest of people. Mac, I have been told by someone who knows, is growing more significantly than people realize in new buys inside the enterprise.  Road warriors are very often Enterprise people who influence the pourchase and desires of others.

I think this new Mac is  very important next step on what has been a relentless march of genius.  nd it really did start with that desklamp iMac, which looks these days pretty silly and clunky compared with the Macs of today.

[Seats filled. Audience engaged. No neckties.Macworld shows a flourishing
environment. Photo by Shel]

Jennifer Jones Interviews me on Marketing Voices

This is the 2nd time I recently pointed to an interview with me and I promise not to make a habot of it, but I think Podtech's Jennifer Jones did a great job of asking me about the finding of the SAP Global Report on her Marketing Voices program. I think Jen is the Internet's answer to Barbara Walthers.  She has a soft style that just makes you want to talk with her.

The interview took place nearly two months ago before the SAP Report was released. It's now of course been published here in the SAP Report category, if you want to read the 8400 word version instead of Jen's pleasant 12 minutes.

Twitterville Mayor? Jay Fresh says where I should go

Yesterday was a slow news day in social media, except for the Paul Walsh report that his blog had been banned in China after he reported that Chinese officials beat a blogger to death. I wrote about that and got a few responses, mainly that my problems subscribing to Paul on Google reader were my own anomolies, and not a Google block. But there was no flood of outrage about the Chinse blogger; nor was there any response when I wrote about the incarceration of a popular Saudi Arabian blogger; nor did people much care about Wael Abbas who posts videos showing police brutality in Egypt.

But then I really stirred it up. I wrote a light-hearted, off-the wall addendum to Laura Fitton's outstanding post on a Twitter Village. I suggested we pick a mayor and tossed out a few silly titles for people who are well known in my particular neighborhood of the 700,00 resident megalopolus of Twitter. That should have been obvious for the titles. Do I really aspire to run a virtual senior center? Just what Loic be doing as Secretary of Tweesmic?

And most people saw the humor. They added nominees in comments. They made jokes. Hell, it was a slow news day in Twitterville.

Not since I asked the equally meaningful question over a year ago of: "What washer & dryer should I buy," have I received so many Comments. About one in five are alarmed or irate. They somehow think that (1) I have authority to do such a thing, and (2) I would actually want to do such a thing, or (3) there are enough old people to need a senior center.

I answered the first couple of concerned comments with polite private email. Then I posted a comment that said I was only kidding and now Jay Fresh has suggested I just put myself into a dark and hairy place.

Be serious. (Oops that's the problem.) So let me drag out some dreds: I've been involved in social media for a pretty long time now. I'm pretty much on the record favoring transfer of power from top to bottom. I've co-written a book on the topic; made speeches; written tens of thousands of words on the subject.

If anyone thinks that I really believe we should install government to rule in Twitterville, I think they should take a little Loosen-Up pill. Seriously.

Astroturfing & getting slimed inside the beltway

Geoff Livingston, whose PR practice inside the beltway is primarily for technology clients talks about astroturfing and ther slimey practices of political PR practtitoners inside the Washington DC beltway.

For you youngsters out there, astroturfing is a term coined by one Charles Colson who worked in the White House for Richard Nixon.  Whenever a newspaper or broadcast station said something unfavorable about the President, the news organization would be inundated with calls and letters in defense of the president--all produced by a small handful of paid Colson Lieutenants.

Colson called it "astroturfing." The campaign looked like grassroots, but in fact it was artificial like the stuff at the Houston Astrodome.

Geoff reports that the practice remains widespread among DC PR practitioners, news that I find far from shocking, but still depressing.  To date politicians have used social media to get the word out and to get money in. Some day, I hope they learn about its conversational value.

Zuckerberg a ClosedBook on 60 minutes

I spent the evening with some good friends, eating lasagna and enjoying a really nice old Caymus. It would have been rude to sneak upstairs to watch young Zuckerberg on 60 minutes.  I'm just now reading the blog reviews.

I had been hoping for something out of him, the way I keep hoping to see from John Edwards what I thought I saw from him earlier in that campaign. Duncan Riley seemed to give one of the most comprehensive reviews.  Executive summary: He sucked once again. He has become a suit at an early age.  He still thinks his business is about feeding employees rather than serving customers, which will continue to make it hard to feed employees. He defended Beacon, a horse than many of us thought was dead.

I keep writing that I am losing hope for faceBook. I guess the tense has now changed. I have lost it. If you are a Facebook friend, please come find me on Twitter (shelisrael). I will only now use FaceBook to plar Arik Hesseldahl in Scrabulous.  Why Ari? Because he consistently beats e and my ego needs the deflating.

Twitter Village? Should Brogan be Mayor? Nominate your choice.

Last week Laura Fitton, aka Pistachio posted a well-received blog about the Twitter Village. It's more than a cute thought. It explains how a virtual community, managed by no one, designed to serve no brand or commercial interest self organizes.

In reality, the Twitter Village is fast becoming a megalopolis. Unofficial census takers say there are now over 700,000 denizens to the virtual place and it is growing rapidly. In fact, this doesn't really matter to the people who go there. Thanks to the self-organizing attributes, we keep subdividing into smaller "global neighborhoods," sorted by diverse interests. Laura and I belong to one of the largest of these neighborhoods, the one whose shared passion is social media itself.  We occasionally meander into other neighborhoods where the residents are more passionate about politics, sports, entertainment, cooking, etc.

But for the most part most of my closest Twitter friends are social about social media.

A couple hours ago, in some old fashioned email conversation, Connie Reece, an extremely well-respected and frequent Tweeter, as we call each other in the 'hood, suggested that Chris Brogan (chrisbrogan on Twitter) should be the Mayor of our Tweeter Village. In fact, Chris has lots of the attributes. To begin with, he's Boston. He's Irish. He knows just about everyone. He's a great virtual glad-hander. But, it is not for Connie and I to decide. Neither of us like that top-down approach. It is for all the residents to decide.

So I am now accepting nominations for who should be Twitter Village mayor.

In fact, let's nominate a whole slate of Twitter Village officers. Because it is virtual, not all out titles need to be the same as in a city.  For example, I don't think we need a fire chief. But here are a few titles that come to mind, for people in my neighborhood.

I nominate:

Connie Reece (conniereece on Twitter) Secretary of Health, for the work she has done building the Pea Foundation

Jeremiah Owyang (jowyang), secretary of community development, although I reserve the right to occasionally heckle him.

I (shelisrael) nominate me to be the Director of the Twitter Village Senior Center. I have seniority.
Scoble (scobleizer), of course, is the press secretary because of his hyperactive communications gene.

KD Paine as director of weights and measures. This, of course, is a step down from her current position of Measurement Queen, but it could pay better.

Hugh MacLeod (gapingvoid) is clearly our Illustrator in Chief.

Paul Walsh (paulwalsh). Secretary of State, For speaking out about doing evil in China and getting banned in one or two places.

Loic LeMeur (loiclmeur), Secretary of Tweesmic, a new bi-lingual post.

These are just my nominations. You can make yours. Do it on your own blog or in Twitter.  You can leave your nominations here, but warning: I learned to count ballots in Boston.

Chinese beat blogger to death; ban Paul Walsh for reporting it

Yesterday, Paul Walsh reported that Wei Wenhau, 41, a Chinese construction company executive, was beaten to death by Chinese authorities for unauthorized video blogging. This, he reported has led to thousands of Chinese expressing outrage on internet chatrooms. He also admonished Google's "disgraceful behavior" in it's policy of complicity with the Chinese government while touting a slogan of "Do no evil."

Today, Paul reports that his blog, Segala has been banned in China. Paula writes that he is doing precisely what many Chinese bloggers do. He is using a proxy server to bypass the Chinese censors.

But there may be a curve ball, that would be a new one on me. I just tried to subscribe to Segala with my Google Reader and could not.  This could be some sort of tech glitch, but I tried three times. Coincidence, perhaps. Perhaps not. A few weeks ago, when I was writing about Egypt's Wael Abbas, who posts videos on YouTube about police briutality, YouTube temporarily took his videos down before restoring them. youTube is of course, owned by Google.

Walking with the Dinosaurs

[Walking with the Dinosaurs at HP Pavillion. Photo by Shel]

Paula and I went to the Walking with the Dinosaurs show at San Jose's HP Pavillion. We were afraid that it would be hoaky and it borders on it from time to time. But overall it is a fabulous show and you may learn a few things that you didn't learn watching Jurassic Park.

The show is designed to be kid friendly, and the fights are mostly the roaring sound effects and flashing lights that accompany these behometh stage creatures.Two-thirds of the audience were under Age 12, I would guess and they jumped up and down with the sheer joy of it.

Times change fast. I did not hear a single kid shout out for Barney.

Dan Farber [No Larry Dignan] says Loosen Up on Gizmodo Stunt

[Dan Farber seeing humor in Gizmostunt. Photo by Shel)

[CORRECTION: Well, I screwed this post up entirely, as _ryan Comments below. The author is Larry Dignan, not Dan Farber, and much of this post thus makes no sense whatsoever. I can't wait to see how certain Valleywaggers have their fun with this.]

ZDNet's Dan Farber posts this morning that bloggers like his colleague Rafe Needleman and I should loosen up on the Gizmodo stunt. He says that if he had gotten his hand on the remote he might have done the same thing because it was funny. He says that if bloggers got banned from the front door of CES, the best of us would simply sneak in the back way. He says that the stunt loosened up a week in which there really wasn't any big news anyhow. He suspects that most people who heard about do not share blogosphere concerns. It was no big deal and they smiled and went on with life.

There are few people I respect more than Dan Farber. I have never known him to write anything erroneous and I've been following him more than 20 years. I sit next to him at conferences whenever I can and we've shared more than a few wisecrack jokes. Actually, I do the same with Rafe. This time two out of three of us are not laughing.

I think he's right that some of us may have raised the alarm bell a bit too far. Bloggers are too important to companies delivering CE products to market to be banned.  CEA would never be foolish enough to cut of the supply of coverage for paying exhibitors.

But from what I can see, most bloggers consider Gizmodo stunt to be classically unfunny. We are becoming mainstream and getting through the front door is important to us.  Having access to the news is important to us. Gizmodo is one of the biggest and most influential product blogs and we generally expect them to behave like professionals. And in this case, what they did seems to me to be less than that.

I've shared many a good laugh with Dan and I will again. But this time, Dan, I think you may be one of the very few in the room enjoying the humor.

Denton's recent vow: Make Gawker more journalistic

Chris Baskind just tweeted me a link to this Huffington Post piece from three weeks ago, in which Nick Denton said he hired himself to take the reigns of Gawker so that his flagship blogsite would become "more journalistic."

Earlier today, I posted about problems with short term memory. Perhaps Nick suffers the same affliction and didn't remember what he told Huffington three weeks ago, when he decided not to do very much about staffer pulling a lame stunt today at CES.

But my question remains: By 'more journalistic,' do you mean more like the NY Times or the NY Post, Nick?

Come to think of it, neither the Times nor the Post would allow employees to pull a prank at a national show of the nature that Gawkers staffers pulled today.

Gizmodo Prank at CES. Victims may be bloggers

The clever hacks at Gizmodo pulled a prank at CES making all those TV screens go blank all at once, then filming and posting it, I assume very much to their own sophomoric satisfaction. As Webware Rafe Needleman put it:

"The video is funny. The ramifications of prank will not be. The CES organizers only grudgingly gave bloggers press credentials to the conference, and even then kept them segregated into a working lounge that was a step down in amenity and luxury from the "press" lounge and work area. This prank will not endear the blogging class to either the CEA, which produces CES, or the companies that paid dearly for the right to occupy CES floorspace and show off their products."

A did a short stint doing PR for CEA. It gets press requests from thousands of people all over the world. It has an historic preference for traditional media that has been slowly, slowly melting over the past decade. CES is their event and they have the right to admit or prohibit bloggers. Even if you concede that bloggers are journalists, CES has the option of picking and choosing who gets admitted for free and who does not.

Gizmodo's poor judgement amazes me. Not only do they give bloggers in general a black eye. But they are gadget guys and this is the biggest show of the year for them. I would guess that next year, they will pay retail to get through the door and once through it, they will not be credentialed to attend events where news they should cover will unfold.

On the other hand, they probably will think up a clever ruse to get through the door anyhow.

Once more with the Hughtrain?

[Hugh MacLeod & some other guys in some gin joint somewhere. Photo by hmmm]

That Hugh MacLeod, boy oh boy.

Every now and then while bending an elbow at the bar he seems to have nothing to say. So he hauls out that aging cartoon and that aging post that have come to be universally known as the Hughtrain Manifesto.

I know about aging. And when I read something I already read I have to wonder: 'Am I having a senior moment?' And if I am, have I had that moment before? That's how I felt when he hauled out this oldie from 2004 (They didn't have tweets back then, young man).
 

I reread it again a few minutes ago. I looked at the cartoon with the same curiosity about the lines on the left and where they would lead to.

And every time I read the Hughtrain Manifesto, I am stopped absolutely cold by the sheer brilliance of it, at the mixture of softness and edginess; at the brilliance and the simplicity. IMHO it is on a short list of the greatest posts ever blogged. Or is it greatest blogs ever posted?

But I gush too much.

If you have never seen it, go read it. If you think you remember it, go read it and begin refreshed in your personal search for things to believe in. And if, like me, you have an aging memory (My kids have this joke about 'old Shel, he don't remember so well, no more...), take notes and leave them in a conspicuous place.

Thank you, Hugh. And if I've already written this to you, please disregard. Nw where did I leave my spectacles.

More on the Twitter Community

Jim Benson, who Tweets as OurFounder adds some good thoughts to Pistachio's earlier post on the Twitter Village.

Michael Krigsman & Naked IT

Michael Krigsman who writes ZDNet's IT Failures blog has started a new series called Naked IT. In it, Michael features a podcast interview that he integrates with a text blog.  In the text blog, he adds in his take on what was said during the podcast. This is a novel approach and I like it. It very much emulates the format of Naked Conversations, where we reported on what interviewees had to say, then tiold readers what we thought about it.

Mike's first interview was with the inimitable Loic LeMeur. His second came out yesterday and it is with me. It runs a bit long--I listened in two sessions, as I did. But I very much like the way it came out because it addresses a new and important issue, which I have not previously discussed before: "What is IT's role in social media, as social media pervades the enterprise?"

I take a minimalist view. I see IT as already overworked with other complex issues and he or she would do best to step aside and into an advisory role when it comes to social media. Social media is not a security risk for the most part. It does not require all members of the organization to adopt the same version of the same software on a set schedule. People can pretty much figure out what to do on their own.

As an advisor, the IT department may take a look at social media and suggest what sites are best for various groups.  It may suggest what tools to use with Twitter, or the pluses and minuses of Moveable Type and Wordpress or Typepad. But, it seems to me that IT has no need to play a central role in corporate adoption of social media and the enterprise would best be served if their departments continue to focus on the myriad issues they already handle and just step aside when it comes to social media.

Mike mildly disagrees and points out the IT's obligation to set standards, to protect it and so on. Go read his post and he will tell you better than I can.

I think the time has come for an open discussion on this topic. Now, as blogging and social media enter it's second decade, the enterprise is open to adoption.  There are many issues whch have been discussed here many times, but the role of IT has not been probed. It is altogether fitting and proper that it start being discussed, and Michael's Naked IT is an altogether fitting and proper venue to spur the discussion.

Pistachio Talks about her Twitter Village

Laura Fitton has a fine post this morning called "Twitter is my Village." Go read it, then if you feel like it, come back here,

Are you back? I couldn't agree more with what Laura has to say. In fact, I got to know her as @Pistachio in Twitter and we became acquaintances a full month before I actually met her in Boston last month. The we became pals.

I've been using Twitter since September, and like she said, for a while, I could not get what it was all about. I was new in the village.  people said hello to me and exchanged niceties. The language and content of the 140-character spoonfuls of conversation seemed to me to be kind of shallow. Yep, people really do publish what they had for lunch and say good night before signing off.

But over a period of less than four months, I find I am more intimate with the people I'm talking with on Twitter. I'm closer and more personal with them than I am in any other social media format. Here, on this blog, I adopt a casual business voice. In the real world, a blogger is like someone presenting from the front of the room. We may take questions and answer them, so it's conversational, but still most of us maintain a certain business decorum.

Twitter is more like the after-presentation talk at the bar. People say what they really think. There is no presenter--just conversation. It's more up close and personal.  There's more joking, teasing and even flirting.

Pistachio calls it a village. I like to think of Twitter as the town commons of my particular Global Neighborhood. This is where I hang out when I have time to hang out. It is most certainly global. I wake up talking to Irish Bloggers and go to sleep listening to the Aussies. Yet we share common interests from technology to politics to travel to humor. All my favorite Tweeters make me smile at least from time to time.

Yes, it has been extremely good for business. I have been pointed to all sorts of vital information. I have been given good leads for my SAP survey. I have been invited to do business projects. I have been invited to speak--all in a space of less than four months.

The Village (or neighborhood) joins closer when one of its own has a crisis.  When Susan Reynolds got diagnosed with breast cancer, the community united.  She had written about the only relief from the pain of biopsy was a bag of frozen peas, so we all changed our icons to contain peas i a show of support. Connie Reece, on of Twitters most frequent and popular contributors started a fund raising program that has raised thousands of dollars.  Along the way, others shared their experiences.  Some of us learned things we did not know about breast cancer.
yesterday, the Washington Post picked up the story and I was among several quoted in it. That was a kick for us all.

A bigger kick was to learn how the best nature of the many can be used through social media to give support to the one.

I was hesitant to write this endorsement of Twitter because not so long ago, I gushed about Facebook, a place where I now barely hang out at all. In my opinion, Facebook has become tainted by awkward ways of trying to monetize itself, ways that do not respect its users. Will this happen at Twitter? I don't know. I hope not because I really love and value it the way it is now.

I hope it's founders figure this one out.

My thoughts on voting in the primaries

My friend KD Paine, an ardent Obama supporter from NH, emailed me that she's working on her analysis of what happened in the primary there. I started an email on my thoughts to her, then decided, Hell, I'll share it with the rest of you as well.

We Americans have started outsmarting ourselves and treating the primaries like a sporting event. We've started voting for candidates because newspapers and pundits tell us who's going to win, or who can win, or who is the best bet to beat the person the other side who may not want to win.

I began to turn against Hillary Clinton when her initial message to us Democrats was: "Because she can win." That is not good enough for me. Our current president is a poster child for demonstrating that the wrong guy can win and very often does.

I want to know if a candidate can lead and if he or she can lead, where will that leadership take us and how will that leadership change the world. There are those who think that abortion is the largest single issue and they may elect to vote for a candidate solely over that issue. I think that is unfortunate, because to me the presidency is larger than that, very much larger than that and in fact, the abortion issue barely touches upon the duties of the US president. But their right to cast their vote that way is a large issue and has to do with how this country works.

I think people are supposed to go into the booth and vote for the person we think will make the best president. We cheat ourselves when we start trying to figure out who's best in an undetermined matchup and cast a vote for someone who is leading in the polls at that moment. We waste our chance to change a direction if we vote for a front runner because the person is the front runner.

I have a friend, located in California, who really thinks Bill Richardson is the best candidate. But she's voting for Hillary because Hillary has the best chance of winning.  How do we know that? If my friend votes for the pollsters choice rather than her own choice, she is helping the pollsters prove prophetic She is not helping Democracy very much or so it seems to me.

I personally think Barak Obama is the best candidate for the America I would like to see. I don't care about his sex, age, racial makeup. I care about his vision, his energy, his style. I think about where he would try to take us. I think about the coalition of people who would join his administration. I do think it is time for a change. We have done well with young and relatively inexperienced presidents before. They include Kennedy, T. Roosevelt, Ford and oh yes, Clinton.

Conversely, the most experience presidents of my life included Richard Nixon, Lyndon Johnson and George Bush Sr.

I like Obama better than any other candidate and I tell people that. Some agree and thers don't and that is fine and the way it should be. I don't dislike people because they disagree. I don't try to beat them in a dinner room debate. I used to really love such discussions, but over the years they seem to have gotten mean-spirited.

I don't see Republicans as my enemy. I see them as sincere and dedicated as my friends who are Democratic. I understand their distrust of a big government who usually screws it up. I understand their loyalty of a free market economy. I believe this country has little choice these days but to maintain a strong military. I think they should go out and vote their hearts and minds, and I hope that this year, for this presidency, they will be soundly thrashed because more people believe the way I do about the war, the economy, the planet, health and education.

Like most Democrats, I believe that it is our turn to gain the White House and maybe both houses of Congress. I just hope we don't blow our turn as badly as I think the Republicans have blown there's under our current lame duck president.      

Communities: Doing it wrong & Doing it right

Over on Jive Talk, Sam Lawrence, a Twitter pal, picks up the community conversations with a good piece on how Xerox's new community becomes an instant example of how to get it wrong. He writes:

"Many of those companies marginalize the effort as some sort of "feel good" check-box they know they need but aren't sure why. Worse case, they really just want another place to Market their stuff. In these situations, the initiative is never connected to their business strategy or seen as core."

But he also points to a company that gets it right, one whose users are loyal to their product and help the company improve it. "These community managers (and their bossess bosses boss) can learn a little from our beefy friends at Orange County Chopper," then gives readers five things to learn from the motorcycle company, ll of which would apply for companies even as conservative as, well, Xerox.

Nice piece.

The weight of unwanted marketing

Ben McConnell at Church of the customer weighs unwanted marketing in 2008.. It came in at 21.5 pounds a new record. Multiply it times every household in the US and elsewhere and you find entire forests taken down to send us this crap. A fleet of supertankers delivering the fuel to fly it and deliver the drivel to our mail boxes, then into our regional landfills.

SAP Global Survey: Dr. Nora Barnes

               [Dr. Nora Barnes. Photo from her file]

I didn't hear Dr. Nora Barnes' keynote talk at the SNCR Symposium in Boston, last month. Other business took me out of the room. But for the next day-and-a-half, I regretted that. Just about evry attendee I met told me how interesting she had been.

A recognized consumer behavior expert, Dr. Barnes is chancellor professor of marketing and director of the Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth.  Additionally, she consults a diverse portfolio of clients that includes the National Pharmaceutical Council, the Board of Inquiry of the British Parliament, the US Distilled Spirits Council and Scotts Lawn Care. In all she and her students have provided marketing research for over 200 small businesses and in her spare time, she has pumped out over 125 articles for professional and academic journals.

She addressed none of that in her talk to SNCR Symposium attendees. There she told the audience comprised mostly of marketing professionals about an area that the private sector often overlooks: charities. Barnes and colleague Eric Mattson surveyed 76 of America's largest charities regarding social media and came up with a very surprising result. In terms of social media, the charities are well ahead of the private sector in engaging their communities.

Here are my questions and her answers: 

Q1. You and your students generally consult businesses.   What made you undertake this study of charities?

Actually, we studied businesses first.  In the fall of 2006, Eric and I surveyed the Inc. 500, the fastest growing private businesses in the US. Our thought was that they might be the leading edge of social media adoption, and that turned out to be true. 

While about 9% of the Fortune 500 were blogging, 19% of the Inc. 500 companies had a
corporate, public facing blog.  We were excited and curious about what was happening in other sectors of the economy.  The list of Forbes top 200 came out and we decided to survey them in the Spring of 2007.
 

Q2 Can you give me a quick summary of how familiar you found charities were with social media in general? What tools do they favor?

While these organizations are known for their nonprofit status and their fundraising campaigns, they demonstrate an acute awareness of the importance of Web 2.0 strategies in meeting their objectives.

Seventy-five percent of the charitable organizations studied are using some form of social media including blogs, podcasts, message boards, social networking, video blogging and wikis.  More than a third are blogging. Forty-six percent of those studied report social media is very important to their fundraising strategy.

The social media that is most familiar to the Forbes 200 charities is blogging with 62% of respondents claiming to be very familiar with it. It is interesting to note that US businesses as well as colleges and universities tended to be far less familiar with podcasting than the charities studied here. Charities are very likely to have video blogging, blogging, podcasting and social networking sites.

Q3 Can you generally describe how charities use social media? Is it primarily for fund raising?

It is NOT primarily for fund raising.  The blogs  serve many purposes. Many post about their work, tell stories about recent assistance provided or special events they have hosted.  There are also blogs dedicated to patients, victims, their families etc. where those groups can talk to each other.  The blogs are used as conversation mechanisms and to help create awareness.

Q4 You generally studied America's largest charities. How do you see social media applying to global NGOs and local fundraising drives?

I see social media as a realtime, multifaceted, audio and visual communications opportunity that connects with a constituency in a totally different way than we have become accustomed to.  When social media tools are used effectively, they have credibility, passion and power. 

These tools can be as effective in the hands of large corporations as they are for NGOs.  In order to raise funds, people must understand what it is you do and must feel moved by it.  Social
media tools provide a wonderful way to make that happen.

Q5 One of the surprises of your study was the finding that four times as many Forbes 200 charities use blogging as do Fortune 500 corporations. How do you account for this?  Isn't the "conventional wisdom" that most non-profits lag in technology adoption?

 

I’m not sure about conventional wisdom, but I grew up on the East Coast where the sayings is “it’s very slow to turn a big boat around”.  In my mind the Fortune 500 are the big boats.  They
have a lot of forward momentum and need the help of quite a large staff to change direction. 

Charities have worked in the trenches for a long time now and have, over time, become increasingly more sophisticated in their business plans and execution. They have evolved into very respectable business organizations that understand the value of changing direction
quickly. Typically their web sites contain video, podcasts and links to blogs. They appear to really understand the value of social media to their cause.

 

Q6 Yours was a spot survey, taken over a short period of time.  What longterm trends do you detect? How will charities be using social media 2, 5 or 10 years hence?

 

I’ve always been reluctant to forecast consumer behavior since it is so very dependent of so many other social facets.  I think it is safe to say that the American public has embraced the concept of social media and will continue to seek out ways to have meaningful, honest and timely conversations at all levels.

For those of us who have seen the power of these new technologies, it would be hard to retreat.  My best guess is that all organizations will need to incorporate social media over the next few years to effectively compete in this environment with newly empowered consumers. Charities
appear to understand that and I think they will set the pace.

Q7 What lessons do you see for the private sector in your findings? What can business learn from your findings?

 

Businesses need to move forward with social media.  Their hesitation is understandable, but all their concerns about lawsuits, managing feedback, measuring success, ROI etc. needs to be addressed and mitigated. 

The parade is moving past them.  Soon they will be spectators watching no one.  There are now examples, research, workshops, best practices, case studies and more on how organizations are using social media.  Businesses need to join the conversation or risk becoming
irrelevant.

Q8. What about academia? Not students but teaching institutions? How could they better use social media?

 

There are at least two issues here.  First, higher ed is utilizing social media in its admissions process at almost the same rate as charities according to our latest study of 453 institutions of higher education in the US.  About one third of the admissions offices have public facing blogs. 

Some have several published by students, faculty and/or the administration.  Again, this group is far more involved with social media than are the businesses we’ve studied.  The shortcoming
here is in the actual implementation of their admissions blogs, however.  We found that only about 60% allowed comments, many did not promote their blog or have plans for the future of their blogs.  So while we are seeing adoption of social media in colleges and universities, the actual use may be less than optimal.

The second issue I see at academic institutions is that faculty who study social media and publish results on line, are having some difficulty getting recognized or rewarded for that work under the
traditional guidelines for tenure and promotion.  Most schools still look for the traditional, hard copy, academic publication as well as citations in journals or books.  For those of us who are linked, pinged, commented on, post or publish in online journals, there is
little or no credit.  This creates a barrier for enlisting academic help in the research of social media.

Q9 Is there a next step to your study?

We have decided to circle back around and conduct what will be the first longitudinal study of its kind by taking a second look at the Inc. 500.  That study is now a year old.  It will be fun to do the
first statistically valid longitudinal study on social media adoption. The plan is to begin calling the new list of the Inc. 500 in February of 2008 with results in early spring.

Q10 Additional comments?

I often feel evangelical about social media.  I not only see its power through my studies, but I feel it when I meet at conferences and workshops with others involved in this new communications arena.  I have not seen so much excitement and passion about our ability to reach out to others around the globe as I see now.  I am absolutely
re-energized about my research and the opportunity I have to work with
people who share a passion and vision for social media..

SAP Global Survey: Like.com's Munjal Shah

[Munjal Shah, CEO of Like.com Photo by Miss Rogue (Tara Hunt)]

[NOTE: I have been retained by SAP to conduct a survey of people all over the world on the issues of social media and it's impact on culture and business. This is the 52nd interview in the ongoing series since it began last June.You can review earlier reports here, by going to the SAP Research Report category]

Munjal Shah was my first client after Naked Conversations was completed. My job was to help him get ready to launch his company Riya at the Feb 2006 DEMO conference, where the company would receive a DEMOGod Award. Riya, at the time would become among the most blog-covered startups of all times. In July 2006, it had a TechCrunch coming out party in Michael Arrington's backyard.  This would all sound like an incredible success story, except that it did not turn out that way. Within a year, Riya would be renamed Like.com and it's entire business model and market strategy would be changed. Anther significant shift was that the new company started with a large tech team in Bangalore. Subsequently, the company disengaged in India and built up its team in the SF Bay Area.

I was interested in two issues: (1) Why is social media less relevant for this former Blogger darling company. Had blogging as a strategy failed? and (2) Had the costs changed so much, that it no longer made sense to build a Bangalore tech team.

I'll let Munjal pick up from here.

1. Munjal, you were my biggest success story. You were the darling of the Blogosphere. Virtually every prominent blogger was writing about you in late 2005 and early 2006. What happened?

Bloggers were not writing about Riya because it was a cool social
media company.  Almost every post on Riya was about the technology's ability to search inside photos. That was the true blogworthy news.  Our core focus has always been on the technology of search.  Frankly, Riya was just not how people wanted to use this technology.  So we tried again with Like and now we are on to something.

2. When did you transform the company into Like.com.What's the new strategy?  Is it working any better now?

Like.com is approaching a $10MM revenue run rate after just 1 year of being live, so yes, it is probably working.  Our core focus was on using the technology in a way that people would like and in a way that had a business model. Like.com has both of these.  Riya had neither.

There are many ways to build a good business. Like.com has a higher click-through rate than any other soft goods shopping engines.  What that means is that our search technology is connecting people with the item they are looking for better than others.  This is what we do better than anyone else.  This is all we care to do better.  We work everyday to improve this.  Visual search is the core of how we achieve this.

3. Why doesn't Like.com use more social media to have conversations with customers?

Social shopping doesn't work.  Shopping is largely an isolated activity for soft good items (clothing, shoes, handbags, etc). Everybody thinks that women will chat with their friend about this dress or that shoe, but frankly, most online soft goods shopping is conducted by women at work in between meetings or late at night when the kids are asleep (our log files and data show this in spades).  Our customers just want to get in and get out. 

I would be careful in thinking that social media is the next generation of all types of sites.  In the case of commerce sites like thisnext.com and even Kaboodle have only gotten a fraction of the revenues that a non-social site like ours has.

4. What advice do you have for startups regarding social media?

Blog about the process of building a company and about your company,
there are many people who are interested in this story and they will
help you build momentum, but in terms of your customers, use it only
if truly appropriate.  There are many businesses on the web that are
about deep relationships, but not all sites fit that profile.  Think
of a weather site, are you really going to create a profile deeply
invest in that site no matter how many social features they have.
Think about a stock picking social networks.  I recently heard that
people are reluctant to discuss their picks online since too many
others can trade on it.  Even though stock picking groups and clubs
offline are very popular amongst day traders, online the speed of
information distribution makes folks want to share less.

5.  Do people use cell phones or PCs? ? What can you tell me about growth?

In general, Internet usage is limited but growing fast.  Mobile usage is much larger.

6. Another big change from Riya's early days is that at least half the team was in Bangalore. What were the advantages of setting up there at that time? How did they change?

Bangalore made sense when it was cheaper than Silicon Valley by enough of a margin to account for the costs of dealing with a remote office.

7. Has inflation really ruined the India advantage, or just bangalore. Why not just move to Chennai, Hyderbad or another emerging Indian City?

Like.com hit the inflation curve early.  We were only hiring the top guys in India and the number of these guys is very limited.  Hence no matter where you went the costs were rising or would rise in the near future. 

Others in India will see the effect, but they will likely be a few years behind us on that curve.  For many big companies cost is irrelevant.  I recently heard an engineer in Silicon valley say he would never work for a certain big tech company.  He would only work for a startup or for Google (the
current market darling).  Microsoft is loosing a ton of people to Google.  Company's like MSFT might not care if the cost in Bangalore is any lower, so long as they can get the volume of high quality engineers that they might have a hard time hiring here.

8. The 'Conventional Wisdom' is that social media is making the world at least a little flatter. Would you agree or disagree? Why?

In terms of startups, I'm not sure about this.  Facebook, Youtube, Myspace, Bebo, iLike, Hi5, Twitter, Digg, ... all are still companies that were started or really sprouted in the Bay Area.

9. What advice would you have to global companies regarding social media and diverse cultures?

Come to Silicon Valley if you are building for the US or global market.  Stay were you are if you are building for the local market.

Happy Birthday Naked Conversations

[Child of the Marriage. Israel & Scoble with 1st Copy of Naked Conversations, Jan. 5 2006, Las Vegas. Photo by Buzz Bruggeman]

Naked Conversations celebrated it's second birthday this past Saturday.  Robert and I both seem to have missed it. We touched our first copy of the book at CES at a presentation to Booksellers meeting arranged by our publisher John Wiley in the New York, New York Hotel.

The day was among the best of my life. It was a highlight of what has been the best phase of my life. Working with Scobe was the best collaboration of my life.

It's hard to believe it has only been two years since the book was introduced.  Sometimes it seems the writing of Naked Conversations happened a very long time ago.  Sometimes I think the stories we told are ancient. Yet the book is still selling moderately well, which please me almost as much as it surprises me.

Then I realize that the stories are old only if you have already heard them.  Blogging has, of course, become only a single tool in an enormous social media tool shed. It has also become fruitful and multiplied.  We wrote when there were about 14 million bloggers.  Now there are more than 100 million. There may be as many as a half-billion people involved in social media worldwide.

What has remained intact, I think, is our key point.  There is a revolution going on that is transforming the way businesses talk with customers. That revolution has a key attribute. It's about the conversation, not any one tool.

To all of you who have bought the book, recommended the book, or just heard about it and in some way, what we had to say, impacted you, thanks so much.

Beth Dunn: 'A brand isn't a person'

Beth Dunn, says she's reading Naked Conversations right now, something I haven't done for a couple of years.  She makes reference to Claire, the fictitious character who blogged for Vichy, a L'Oreal Cosmetics brand. I had forgotten about old Claire, who we covered in a Chapter Called Doing it Wrong.

Beth used Claire to illustrate her views on what brands are and are not, a conversation that keeps popping coming up over here. I loved not only the clarity of her thinking, but the way she articulates.  For example:

"A brand isn’t my friend (or fan) on FaceBook. A brand isn’t someone I will follow on Twitter. A brand isn’t, in short, a person. It’s an abstract idea. Same goes for a product. A car is a car. A pipe is a pipe. A cigar is, in fact, just a cigar.'

I wish I had been so articulate when I was debating with a couple of weeks back when I was debating with Jeremiah Owyang. I objected to his even asking if brands should have Twitter accounts. My simple answer is: "Of course not. The entire concept is entirely lame.

Beth does an excellent job of telling you why.

Twitter--Is it killing the global economy by $13.5b ?

Pat Phelan has picked up on the ongoing speculation of what Twitter is worth, how it should make its first dime and how it should monetize with an interesting twist. He did some number crunching on what the cost in productivity is to all of us hundreds of thousands of tweeters spending an average, he estimates, an hour a day each on Twitter.

He says it will cost the global economy $13.5 billion dollars.

I know he's having some fun. Pat's the guy who got me Twittering to begin with and the experience has been--forgive me KD and Kami, immeasurable for the information, recommendations and networking it has provided.

All those employers of all those Tweeters may ot be getting a clear ROI, but a great many are.

But on the other and,I remain concerned that Seesmic and Tweeter, two of my favorite companies have nt yet figured out how to monetize.  I don't like very many f the ideas that have been shoveled up this week and I Silicon Valley graveyards are filled with companies that marvelled at all the ways they could make money and never figured out the one way they should make it.

Meanwhile Pat, my question to you is this. If we Tweeters are costing all that money, is there someone who will pay us--or just me--not to Twitter? Please answer in USDs and don't confused me with that overpriced Euro stuff.

Facebook-Scoble: An Executive summary

For those of you who went back to work today or played with your kids (or parents) here a summary of what occupied the attention of a great many people in my Neighborhood.

1.The incident began on late-night Twitter where Scobleizer often hangs out with his international crony collection.  For him it was rather intimate. Only a few hundred of his closest fans were there.  When he announced he was banished from Facebook, this group was outraged on his behalf.  This is a bit strange, since a majority of these people have abandoned Facebook for Twitter anyhow.

2. People woke up and more detached observers started noting that Facebook had acted precisely in accordance with its rules of engagement. They started arguing that Scoble broke the rules and Facebook was right to banish him. One commenter said "banned for life."

3. TechCrunch chimed in saying that Scoble had foolishly become the inadvertent flunky for Plaxo, which had a pretty solid ring of truth to it, I thought. TC then focused it's wrath on Plaxo for the desperate act of manipulation against Facebook who continues to whoop Plaxo's tush in terms of user adoption. Most everyone thought that these were valid additions to the conversation.

4. Facebook surprised many, including me, by responding in a reasoned, standard way, precisely as they would any other customer. Facebook sent Scoble a letter telling him what he had done wrong, asking him not to do it again and reinstating his account. It took them less than a day to do it

5. Scoble got to break the news in a livestream.

Summary of Summary:

• Scoble did something goofy, but no one suspects him of being a data scraper. He got lots of attention, which he's very fond of and suffered no loss of credibility or stature. A week from now his audience will have almost forgotten this incident which was heavily watched, but it was a slow news day.
• Plaxo got another black eye, but the face of the company is already so bruised it's pretty hard to notice--except that TechCrunch guy hits pretty hard.
• Facebook comes out looking pretty good, but gained no ground in overall perception. They still aren't talking much to customers and they seem to be embracing the crap that says their customers are the advertisers. If the users leave, the advertisers will follow. Piss off your most popular user-customers and there's a mass migration. But in te shorterm, score one for them.
• Overall impact on anything is nearly nil, but it did make the day go faster.