Fine Print

Chris Brogan is hosting a free webinar today; see you there!

- How some of the world’s leading organizations are successfully leveraging social media for their marketing programs.
- Case studies and real life examples of successful social media programs.
- The strategies and tactics behind social media initiatives.
- How to implement a solid social media strategy in your company.
- 5 ways you can begin using social media in your company tomorrow!

Register here.

~ John Carson, Senior Digital Media Specialist, GCI Canada

Mashable and TechCrunch recently had redesigns, and are now cleaner, load faster (probably due to less cluttered ad areas) and are easier on the eye. I think they look pretty similar though in their layout; maybe it’s the nav bar and search box placement.

~ John Carson, Senior Digital Media Specialist, GCI Canada

BusinessWeek had a story last Saturday about how companies are using Twitter to monitor themselves online, find out who is tweeting about them, and then jumping into the conversation to address those (usually negative) issues. “Is this a creepy trend?” asks the article.

No! Is my resounding answer. It’s about time companies started listening to their customers for a change instead of selling to them. The ROI will come in time; people like to be respected.

The story mentions Jonathan Fields’ experience of spotting William Shatner waiting to board a JetBlue flight. Fields wrote about it on Twitter, and within 10 seconds (I find that part hard to believe, it’s an ultra-fast response!) was being “followed” by JetBlue.

[cut] “It totally startled me,” says the 42-year-old author, who initially worried that JetBlue might be monitoring his use of the Wi-Fi connection. JetBlue employee Morgan Johnston quickly explained that wasn’t the case. JetBlue keeps tabs on what Twitter users say about it, using a scanning tool, to find customers who might need information, say, on flight delays or cancellations, Johnston said. [paste]

If users of these microblogging services realise that anything they put out there is in the public domain, searchable and fair game for comment, then the element of being surprised — if a company or person chooses to pick it up and run with it, or follow them, or link to them, or lambast them, or refer them to others — … on and on … — is totally gone.

In fact, these days, if someone doesn’t react to what you’ve said, then, that is surprising. It’s turning 180 and customers better get used to it and get excited by it.

[Hat tip for the lead to Laura Fitton.]

So, if you’re now prepared and comfortable with being “followed,” you better learn about personal branding. This could be the best 15 pages you’ll read today on that front.

~ John Carson, Senior Digital Media Specialist, GCI Canada

CNN has an interesting story today about a social network for spies. The program is called A-Space, and it’s a site for analysts within the 16 U.S. intelligence agencies to swap intel and other information detrimental to national security. Unfortunately, only intelligence personnel with the proper security clearance can access the site, so Mashable won’t be sending out beta invites any time soon.

An interesting tactic, with a launch date of September 22, so expect hackers across the world to start polishing their keyboards in anticipation.

Seguing nicely from people stealing secrets to people stealing ideas, I heard about You Thought We Wouldn’t Notice from the girl Riot™. (A great blog by the way.)

YTWWN is a blog full of ad campaigns, websites, designs and other original ideas that — you guessed it — have been ripped off and used elsewhere, sometimes blatantly outright or in a slightly more subtle way. Look at this! And this! And this!

~ John Carson, Senior Digital Media Specialist, GCI Canada

If you recall, a few years ago Metallica’s Lars Ulrich was up in arms about online music services, equating them to nothing more than online piracy.

How times have changed! It seems that nothing else matters for him apart from getting some buzz for their latest music, and offering fans the ability to download high-quality tracks before their new CD is actually released: “If this thing leaks all over the world today or tomorrow, happy days. Happy days.”

The band also held some listening parties for bloggers, and weren’t happy with the feedback. You can’t have it both ways, Lars.

Matthew Ingram has the full story.

~ John Carson, Senior Digital Media Specialist, GCI Canada

Had meetings most of the day today, inlcuding a very comprehensive PR Boot Camp, so picked a quick couple of links for the blog.

Twitter Grader. I got 65, disappointed, thought I was at least a 67 or something.

At least we treat our interns with respect.

~ John Carson, Senior Digital Media Specialist, GCI Canada

Google’s Chrome browser.

For busy PR people who need to pop out at lunch and make a quick viral video for their clients, you can now shoot the video and upload it to YouTube, using this snazzy piece of hardware, or this one.

~ John Carson, Senior Digital Media Specialist, GCI Canada

Mozilla Labs has been playing around with trying a next-gen user interface for the way we communicate online. It goes a long way beyond just inserting a link into an e-mail. Very cool video, suggest you watch it.

Here’s the buzz for it.

~ John Carson, Senior Digital Media Specialist, GCI Canada

For those of us working in the sideshow attraction of social media, news today of an abrupt change of heart in the acquisition of Livingston Communications by the Social Media Group. After the realization that their management styles wouldn’t really gel, it’s nice to see full and open disclosure of why it’s not taking place. Better to find out sooner rather than later.

Heard here, watched here, read here.

~ John Carson, Senior Digital Media Specialist, GCI Canada

I came across CityMama a few months ago after doing some research on mompreneurs = a very large, influential, active and opinionated group of people. These guys gals do their own WOM marketing and throw out bad pitches with the soiled diapers, so it takes a while to build a relationship with them.

Blogger Stefania posted a year ago (yes, 2007) on her views about getting insincere PR pitches, and how she handles them. This quote from a couple of Blogher attendees made me cringe: “I listened as not one, but two PR guys stood up to tell us mothers how proud they were of their strategy to ‘hook’ moms into trying their products by pretending to read our blogs (so we’ll trust them) before offering up whatever it is that they’d like us to blog for free.”

She quite rightly, in her own words, laid a “smackdown” on them, and also touches on the issue of pitching to mommy bloggers from a different demographic. Well worth a read, and also stay tuned for the comments section, more insights to be had there.

On a different tack, I got quite excited when driving to work this morning as I thought Pink Floyd were finally planning a tour. Did you see any of these in Toronto?

Thanks (I think?) to Adrants for bursting my bubble and revealing that they were nothing more than a Fido campaign involving Fidolls, or flogos, or something or other.

~ John Carson, Senior Digital Media Specialist, GCI Canada

We’d like to welcome Emily as our newest member of the team, she handles accounts:

And say hello to Lee, he’s in charge of client relations:

Actually, don’t bother. They’re not real and won’t reply.

The first “person” is totally computer-generated, and demonstrates the next level that photo-realistic characters have reached for use in video games, films and other applications. The other is an android developed by a Japanese robotics professor. The realism in both — especially “Emily” — is quite stunning, and perhaps, a little bit freaky too if you were ever scared of dolls as a kid.

My point? Loads of potential for the social media/network scene in a few years, when your online avatar will be as realistic as you, for when you hold a virtual seminar, need to give a few presentations at the same time, or just need a webcam stand-in for when the golf course beckons.

And talking of things that aren’t as they seem, the Enfartico spoofer has been unveiled.

~ John Carson, Senior Digital Media Specialist, GCI Canada

A bit tied up on new biz pitches today, which is probably for the best, as I was going to write some very contentious content. Then I saw this.

~ John Carson, Senior Digital Media Specialist, GCI Canada

The old chestnut of whether it’s time to look for a new job has surfaced again — whether PR is on its last legs, or just going through a transitional phase.

In the red corner we have Brian Solis, and in the blue, we have Steve Rubel. Both are heavy hitters so it will be interesting to see how this plays out.

If PR does get handed to the general online population, then here’s a great opportunity from an airline that’s handing it’s next PR campaign to one lucky blogger.

With all due respect to the number-crunchers out there, accounting has always been a bit of a dry area when it comes to exciting PR. Seems that all it needed was a catchy jingle, thanks to this excellent viral from Intuit QuickBooks. That is really the silky smooth sound of small business success!

Hat tip for that one to BizLaunch.ca.

~ John Carson, Senior Digital Media Specialist, GCI Canada

The Department of State’s first blog, Dipnote, was launched as a way to encourage dialogue between a U.S. government agency and its citizens. WebGuild’s headline — U.S. Government Using Social Media For Counter-Intelligence — is a bit strong, I think, but if a country is using a blog to “influence foreign policy and to change the perception of the United States with the rest of the world,” then maybe that is akin to heading off subversive influence by enemy states.

The Department recently launched a Facebook page and has 444 fans. That intrigues me. Who joins these type of groups? Are they fans of the policies? Or a meeting place for historians and politics-lovers to congregate?

I applaud their initiative in trying to be more transparent. If Number 10 Downing Street can have a Twitter account, then it’s open season on more government immersion in social media.

~ John Carson, Senior Digital Media Specialist, GCI Canada

A regular posting from some of my feeds about who is saying what out there …

“The #080808 campaign allows microbloggers to participate in a worldwide timeline of online Twitter chatter about August 8, 2008, the start of the Beijing Olympics games.”
http://www.tag080808.com/

“Hate to tell you, but Web 1.0 was social too.”
http://gregverdino.typepad.com/greg_verdinos_blog/2008/08/hate-to-tell-yo.html

“Of course, ‘web version’ hints at the problem, because most editorial workflows are still built around print publishing and so are blind to all of the web value being figuratively left on the cutting room floor or literally tossed in the trash.”
http://publishing2.com/2008/08/07/how-newsrooms-throw-away-value-by-not-linking-to-sources-on-the-web/

“You are killing the paper. You might as well just burn the place down. You’re setting a match to it. This is insane. Even the slowest, most curmudgeonly, most backward in your dying, suffering industry would not be this stupid anymore. They know that the internet is the present and the future and the paper is the past. Protecting the past is no strategy for the future. It is suicide. It is murder. You should be ashamed of yourselves.”
http://www.buzzmachine.com/2008/08/07/a-stake-through-the-heart-of-the-has-been-inquirer/

“The thing about social media isn’t about the cool enhancements that Flash allows, or the greater stability and scalability of PHP over Ruby on Rails. The thing about social is that it is … social.”
http://redcouch.typepad.com/weblog/2008/08/why-im-the-late.html

“Saying ‘I don’t know’ or ‘I’ll have to check’ or words to that effect is critically important when it comes to being able to build trust, understanding, etc, between the VC and company.  I respect, admire, and appreciate ‘I don’t know’ and ‘I’ll check’ as signs of maturity and professionalism.”
http://ricksegal.typepad.com/pmv/2008/08/ruh-oh—time-for-a-butt-whoppin-mine.html

~ John Carson, Senior Digital Media Specialist, GCI Canada

1) A nice witty take on how Facebook would have been used in Shakespeare’s day: The King sent Hamlet a goblet of wine.

For the record, I’m not a fan of the new FB layout. I have been avoiding trying it out, but they caught up with me last night and switched me over. But then again, I wasn’t a fan of the new LinkedIn layout when that was introduced — now I love it.

2) The Flickr guys want to meet you for a drink tomorrow (8-8-8) at C’est What, 67 Front Street East, Toronto. Would be cool to bring your camera too.

3) I’m all about the humane treatment of animals, and sometimes think the shock effect of some of PETA’s campaigns do get results, but I think this is taking it much too far. Not a good comparison at all.

~ John Carson, Senior Digital Media Specialist, GCI Canada

It’s true. I’m cheap, let’s face it. Still using the free version of LinkedIn, Blogger for my personal blog, and Google AdSense to cover my hosting costs. All free and doing the jobs I need them for.

But yesterday I bought my way into a social network for $20, which is something I never thought I’d do. Not to be part of the “in crowd,” but for one simple reason: curiosity. After pre-ordering a copy of Tribes I got an invite code to Triiibes which apart from giving me an extra pair of i’s for my investment, enables me — as member #160 = 159 keener people than me — to join an exclusive social network, for a while, at least. My curiosity spurred me on to find out who else was in there. It’s an interesting move by Seth Godin, or a blatant money-making exercise. I will participate for a while and let you know what value it brings …

So, to balance things up, I also joined the specifically-numbered alpha 0.1a version of PitchEngine which launched yesterday. And is FREE. I did this for two reasons: (1) I am already a member of the PitchEngine social network which I think is pretty useful, and (2) creator Jason Kintzler has always been helpful, polite and prompt in his replies to my questions, and that goes a long way in my book. The site offers a social media release builder which I’ll test out, and also a (coming soon!) custom media newsroom which, as it’s an upgrade, suggests will carry a fee for using that.

Jim Tobin is predicting that social networks will become portable, so I hope that Godin and Kintzler have that aspect built in for the future. I can’t wait to send out social media press releases from a beach in Hawaii on my mobile device. There’s a joke in there somewhere.

And if you want to leave me a message on today’s post, give me a quick call on Slydial to guarantee that you won’t reach me.

On that note, it’s a long weekend here in Canada, so see you Tuesday; have a good one!

~ John Carson, Senior Digital Media Specialist, GCI Canada

Cuil launched today and is already taking a pummelling in the blogosphere, so its black and blue colour scheme seems apt at the moment. It claims to index “120 billion Web pages, three times more than any other search engine.” I’m not sure Google would agree with that, but I personally think it’s more important to boast about quality rather than quantity.

Cuil is the brainchild of former Googler Anna Patterson, her husband Tom Costello, and two other former Google engineers: Russell Power and Louis Monier. It is backed by $33 million in venture capital, no small change.

I played around with it for a while this morning, but it took ages to return results, so I gave up. Seems like a lot of Tweeters did too. Ah well, it is Day One — maybe we’re being a bit harsh in proclaiming it a Google Killer so soon. Time will tell.

But, it’s a good idea to at least put your own brand at #1 in the search results:

~ John Carson, Senior Digital Media Specialist, GCI Canada

“The University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Center for Marketing Research recently conducted one of the first statistically significant, longitudinal studies on the usage of social media in corporations.”

Stats.

Thanks.

~ John Carson, Senior Digital Media Specialist, GCI Canada

OK, the above title was a stretch, but it sums up the randomness of today’s blog items.

1) I’ve been playing around with a new media monitoring service called Filtrbox (yes, missing an ”e” again, grrrr!) that has a really great user interface that’s easy to use. I am trying the free service at the moment, which only lets me filter five keywords or phrases; you can upgrade to more for $20/month (25 filters) or $100/month (100 filters).

The aspect that interests me is that you can use a sliding scale to — you guessed it — filter out the noise, and separate the vague stuff from the very specific. That’s a boon as I tend to read all my RSS feeds religiously in case I miss something. Now I can hone in on what matters in a short space of time.

Here’s a screenshot of my test feed:

2) The open secret was finally announced that Twitter has bought Summize. I am a big fan of the latter service; again, another quick way to get info I need fast.

More info: http://blog.twitter.com/2008/07/finding-perfect-match.html

3) And, if you’re a word of mouth marketer, you should take Buzz Canuck’s survey. The more stats the better, for all of us. Time to share.

http://buzzcanuck.typepad.com/agentwildfire/2008/07/the-11-deadly-s.html

~ John Carson, Senior Digital Media Specialist, GCI Canada

Further to yesterday’s post, Melanie Baker, the Community Manager of AideRSS, just e-mailed me that PostRank has been launched today as a service.

http://postrank.com/

Melanie’s thoughts here.

~ John Carson, Senior Digital Media Specialist, GCI Canada

A few weeks ago, we hosted a planting day and BBQ to celebrate the completion of a community project between Lowe’s Canada and the City of Brampton. Working with the city, Lowe’s donated a $15,000 grant to build a community garden at a local seniors recreation centre.

Since so many seniors now live in condos and apartments, many no longer have a garden of their own. This project helped to fulfil this need by creating a space for them to be able to enjoy the pleasures of gardening. Being onsite for the opening of the garden and helping plant the first flowers alongside Lowe’s staff and seniors was a great experience. It made it even more worthwhile to hear directly from the seniors how much they appreciate the new garden.

One of the things that I love about working in public relations is the variety of work we get to do and this was one of those projects that was really rewarding to work on. I’m looking forward to the next one.

~ Ashley Curran, Consultant, GCI Canada

Lots of rumours and speculation about the latest Rogers/Apple spat today.

From TechCrunch: “Now it looks like Apple won’t sell the iPhone 3G at its Canadian retail stores, leaving Rogers (and Fido, its partner is crime) flapping in the wind.”

From iPhone Atlas: “Speculation regarding a conflict between Apple and Canadian iPhone 3G carrier Rogers appear to be overblown, if such a quarrel exists at all. … However, Apple never planned to sell the iPhone 3G at its retail locations in Canada.”

Whatever the final outcome of all this, it’s still a PR nightmare for Ted.

~ John Carson, Senior Digital Media Specialist, GCI Canada

Announced yesterday:

Cohn & Wolfe and GCI Group Merge to Create “Top Ten” Agency for the New Era in Communications

WPP public relations agencies Cohn & Wolfe and GCI Group have merged to create a dynamic global agency singularly-suited to the transformed communications environment. The new firm, to be called Cohn & Wolfe, offers a powerful combination of breakthrough, brand-building creativity and pioneering digital and social media strategies. Cohn & Wolfe will be led by industry veterans Donna Imperato as Chief Executive Officer and Jeff Hunt as President.

“This is an exciting time in our industry where movements in social and digital media, corporate social responsibility and the power of the consumer are all changing the communication landscape,” said Imperato. “To succeed in this environment, clients need an agency with a great range of expertise and bold, original thinking. By combining our resources, Cohn & Wolfe instantly becomes one of the few agencies in the world with the breadth, depth and creativity to turn any communications challenge into a powerful idea.”

Full release here.

~ John Carson, Senior Digital Media Specialist, GCI Canada

Twitter is sooo June 2008.

I found some news today about an interesting open source project — from Canada — to make a Twitter-type service. It’s classed as “microblogging” and could alleviate some of the server outages/downtime that Twitter seems to suffer from. (It took me about 10 tries to follow someone today using Twitter, very frustrating.)

Identi.ca

Spotted at StartupNorth, another great blog I regularly read.

~ John Carson, Senior Digital Media Specialist, GCI Canada

The world of Web 2.0 and the explosion of social media have meant serious changes, not only to the speed and depth of communication, but in the way that companies are being forced to relate to their customers. Social media has made it possible for consumers to have a real affect, whether positive or negative, on the reputation of a brand or organization. In fact, even one person can cause a ripple effect using word of mouth that can trigger alarms in the most powerful of companies.

In the past, consumers were often marketed to in a one-way stream, leaving them with very few options to respond. Discontent about a product or service could be ignored by organizations at their leisure because it was difficult and time-consuming for consumers to mobilize themselves. Not anymore.

A great example of this is the wave of discontent or “indignation” being felt by potential iPhone users in Canada. An article today in the Globe and Mail reports on a new site called www.ruinediphone.com that is protesting the pricing Rogers Wireless will be offering customers when the iPhone comes to town July 11.

The site, which contains a petition, has gained over 18,000 signatures since Friday and has received over 2,300 “diggs.”  This is a fantastic example of grass-roots consumer power mobilizing itself quickly and effectively against a massive company. I find it surprising that Rogers didn’t think this one through a bit more – i-fans are a pretty rabid bunch who are young, tech savvy and Apple loyal.

Does anyone else have any opinions? I think the escalating power of the consumer activist is a great thing, but I’m sure there are those who disagree. Please, feel free to share your thoughts!

~ Stephanie Sayer, Account Coordinator, GCI Canada

Maybe the Toronto humidity has gone to my head, but I think Bill Gates is a cool guy. Did I just publicly say that?

Today he officially leaves Microsoft to concentrate on his charitable foundation. A lot of people will say “Good riddance!” but if it wasn’t for him, I believe, the technology industry wouldn’t be so accessible as it is today.  PCs used to be a luxury item; nowadays, you choose one to match your living arrangements, or style. Just this morning, some colleagues and myself were brainstorming various tech ideas and discussing this subject.

Gates had a vision of what he believed, and — to all accounts and purposes — stuck to it, fended off harsh criticism, and became ultra-rich in the process. Forget the annoying little Office paperclip, that was a blip. People who stand up to be counted are few and far between, so let’s all CTRL-ALT-DLT and wish him a charitable future.

[Disclaimer: I do like Macs, Microsoft are not a client, and I have experienced the Blue Screen Of Death on many occasions.]

And, to wish you all a great Canadian long weekend, here’s where I’ll be spending my social networking from now on!

~ John Carson, Senior Digital Media Specialist, GCI Canada

As I was eating a bagel this morning — we have Bagel Tuesdays in the office — a news item caught my eye about Visa launching a small business application today using Facebook, and pumping in $2 million of advertising to support it. Visa is also promoting the initiative in a multimedia campaign starting next month.

The interesting hook is that the company is offering the first 20,000 small U.S. businesses that add the application a $100 advertising credit to use on Facebook. That’s great news for the social networking site because if the small businesses see returns on their “test” advertising slots, then they will probably sign up for more, and spend ad dollars in a channel that they might not have considered. It could open their eyes to the possibilities of using this type of network to increase revenues.

[As an aside, I wonder what message the 20,001st small business gets on its screen when it signs up?]

Full story here.

Totally unrelated, here’s a world mosaic created from 1,001 different clickable Web 2.0 logos.

~ John Carson, Senior Digital Media Specialist, GCI Canada

I am a huge Digitaljournal.com fan and I thought I’d spread the word about a great video synopsis of the “AP-blogger scandal.” For those of you that haven’t heard, the Associated Press has asked that bloggers and citizen journalists pay AP for quoting or referencing its articles in posts etc.

This video features Dave Silverberg’s “interview with the Harvard Citizen Media Project to find out what bloggers should do to protect themselves legally.”

Video link here.

It will certainly be interesting to see how this saga plays out in the coming weeks and months, as the lines between bloggers and journalists continue to blur.

~ Sarah Van Lange, Consultant, GCI Canada

The geeks out there will know that it’s download day for the long-awaited Firefox 3 browser. Creator Mozilla is trying to break the world record for a software application download — seems to be working as its site was down a minute ago.

Anyway, there’s a Firefox 3 launch party in Toronto (Bloor/Spadina) tonight that should be a pretty good networking opp.

Details:

Facebook group

Registration page

Update: Here’s some coverage of the event, pretty fun. Even more here.

New world record.

(Photo taken using my friend Lee Fay’s camera: shout out!)

~ John Carson, Senior Digital Media Specialist, GCI Canada