Let my start by saying that my career in media has been paying the bills since 1988.  So I firmly embrace corporate media, advertising revenue and all media endeavors that enjoy commercial success. The lure of a life in TV (i’m a news cameraman by trade) was its combined appeal of an adventurous lifestyle and comfortable livelihood.  This is what prodded me to take my plunge into TV news.  But as with many things in life, my timing was off.  I came up in the ranks of cameramen well into cable’s affront on broadcast dominance,  admiring the legendary lenslingers before me, or more precisely their glorious tales of lavish travel and limitless budgets. Those were the glory days of TV news, and I got to see the vanishing apparitions – the vestigial remnants of those times.

Disruption Past

As a child of cable’s disruptive power,  I understood that challenge, that shift, that imperative for change.  So when blogging, podcasting and social networking emerged on the radar screen of my consciousness,  I wasn’t prepared to grasp their nascent and then unrealized impact on mainstream media.  Not until an unlikely series of events prompted the purchase of an iPod, did I come to realize that great numbers of people out there were dissatisfied with passively consuming mainstream content and advertising.  They were out there creating their own content and speaking to each other and were quickly becoming disintermediated.  With revolutionary zeal, web-preneurs sprang up like weeds creating platforms empowering people to share content and ideas.  Brands, of course, took note and migrated their messaging and their spending from TV, print, radio to the then “new” media.

Join the Conver$ation

This media revolution made YOU Time magazine’s Person of the Year back in 2006 – and was at once an empowering energizing force, but at the same time, made me fear for the future of my career.  Back then, it was all about the “conversation”.  As a brand, one couldn’t just stumble in and “sell”, one had to honest, transparent, conversational.  As social media has matured,  I get the sense that we have moved beyond that – and now we’re back to where we once were.  Brands just want access to us and the transaction remains the same.  Look, I understand that companies need to make money and that investors need to get returns on hopes of 10x exits.  But i’m struck by the rapacious speed with which social media, its adherents, and platforms are pursuing the buck.  Ironic to me, considering that it was dissatisfaction with traditional media and “push” advertising that in many respects gave rise to social media.

It’s strange, but I still haven’t completely shaken my nostalgia for the salad days of old media as I begin to feel twinges of longing for new media’s simpler times.  When old media was king it was advertisers buying access to passive audiences.  Now, marketers are paying to become part of this:

Power Shift

The mantra of the Social Media Club, “If you get it, share it” has been modified by “ninjas”, “gurus”, and “experts” in the field with the following addendum: “for a fee”. Meanwhile, tech/Web 2.0 headlines point to leaner, meaner more competitive times. Here are some trends pointing to a shift in social media from being people-powered media to corporate driven:

In a move akin to ABC News recent staff slashing, popular, free social network platform Ning is free no more and has cut its staff by 40%.
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How Facebook shares private information with third party companies is being scrutinized by Washington now, prompting one Senator to urge the FTC to get involved.
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Twitter has announced “sponsored tweets” prompting some to point out – if companies were using Twitter right, they wouldn’t need sponsored tweets.
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Pepsi passed on Super Bowl ads this year in favor of a $20 million social media campaign, and it’s probably not just about meeting new Twitter and Facebook friends.

So while this post may seem wistful, and perhaps critical of the direction that “people-powered” media has taken – none of this should be terribly surprising and it is perhaps inevitable. I still believe that successful, profit-motivated media can coexist with the community/individual driven kind. For my part, I’m just trying to stay ahead of it all and finding my place in this ever evolving landscape.

Most good blog posts, or at least the ones that attract the most traffic, draw a line in the sand – taking an unequivocal position. So just on the heels of the iPad launch, scores of tech bloggers are taking that stand against the onerous, closed nature of Apple’s latest offering. And the Church of Open Media has issued it’s doctrine against the iPad decreeing it a heretical, “retrograde” device.

The iPad is retrograde. It tries to turn us back into an audience again. That is why media companies and advertisers are embracing it so fervently, because they think it returns us all to their good old days when we just consumed, we didn’t create, when they controlled our media experience and business models and we came to them.

iPad danger: app v. web, consumer v. creator -Jeff Jarvis, Buzzmachine

Update – The Chorus of Returns Begins

Your humble blogger here, updating as I sit in an airport terminal waiting for a flight to Mexico City to cover the First Lady’s visit. I felt I had to update what I published yesterday as we’re now seeing the chorus of “I’m Returning my iPod” posts.  Jeff Jarvis even made a video outlining his reasons.  Maybe this is a shift that will ultimately prod Apple to re-think pricing and exclusivity agreements with publishers.  Maybe it’s a few high profile bloggers using their influence and reach to voice concerns that are valid and point to salient shortcomings in Apple’s offering.  Maybe folks should’ve read the label before they bought it?

Why I’m Returning My Apple iPad ($AAPL)

Why I’m Returning The iPad

Look, I’m no iPad fanboy. I may eventually buy one, but I’m not suffering from the technolust that swooned those first in line to get theirs. I’m more interested in how the device will change the worlds of publishing and advertising. And now, the conversation is being framed as either/or in terms of participatory vs. walled content. I think that’s a false choice, and that there always will be choices in how we consume, create, share and interact with content. It’s perfectly fine to simply, passively consume media and that is precisely what the device is designed to do.

Lean Forward – Lean Back

I’m not sure who originally coined the terms “lean forward” and “lean back” media, but the premise is simple. If you’re not familiar with the terms, lean forward media is the kind we create, engage with, mashup, share, link to, comment on, embed in our blogs etc. Lean back is the kind we passively consume.

Examples of “lean forward” media

• blogs and the comments on them
• embeddable video
• links to content within a blog
• Twitter

Examples of “lean back” media

• books
• movies
• certain TV shows
• certain iPad content

Both of these types of media have intrinsic value and I don’t think we need to frame this as one replacing the other.  This blog falls into the category of lean-forward and I hope all of you enlightened readers here engage me and each other in a robust dialogue in the comments.  But what is it that makes people think that ALL media has to be like this blog?

What is wrong with people wanting to just be part of the audience?  I don’t buy this notion that every bit of content needs to be open to some online peer review,  or worse – the ill tempered trolls of the interwebs.  I further don’t buy the notion that all content – from blog comment, to link,  to twitter mention – is sacrosanct. Most critics of the iPad seem to hold this belief. To them I say: if you’re REALLY worried about the iPad hobbling your generativity… DON’T BUY ONE.

Walls, Windows, and Doors

Apple is building walls around it’s media empire. It want’s to set the price for apps and subscriptions and much of the content thus far doesn’t allow for much by way of sharing or commenting.  So what?  Apple is a company that’s in the business of delivering value to their shareholders.  How they get there – whether by open source or DRM ensconced walls -is up to them, not us.  The iPad is not a tool of individual media empowerment and as such, I’d equate it to a really great piece of stereo equipment.  It’s an entertainment appliance.

That’s just fine for most people.  If you’re reading this blog, you’re exceptional (on many levels).  Not just because you’re reading my blog, but that’s certainly a plus. You are part of my social graph, and I have to get your attention on Twitter or Facebook first to get you over here.   But most people aren’t this connected on the web.  In that respect, we are exceptional. We are the digerati.  But the self-ordained high priests of the Church of Open Media would have us believe that everyone is out there contributing content. That’s where I and others are given pause.

This is the place where this brand of critics fall most deeply into the same kind of echo-chambered trap as the news industry — by thinking that most people should think and behave like themselves. But most people are not and will not ever become creators of sophisticated media. Instead they’re working in bakeries and insurance offices and having babies and teaching people to play the fiddle.

Have iPad critics fallen into an echo-chambered trap like the news industry? -Howard Weaver

The social web allows us to create, collaborate and connect in ways constantly being innovated.  Social media, citizen media – whatever you want to call it – at the minimum, gives us a window into power structures like media, press and government – transparencey.  At it’s most open, we’re allowed through the doors and given an opportunity to help shape and create content.  Increasingly traditional media are opening windows and doors and extending their brands to online audiences. By and large these are good things.

But I think there will continue to be a strong desire for people like you and me to lean forward, engage, share, embed, post, comment and shout out to the world.  I also think there are more people in this world, who are just as happy to read, watch, absorb and ponder while leaning back.  Both of these approaches are just fine and I simply don’t understand all of the histrionics of this non debate – debate.  Am I missing something here?  Please lean forward in the comments below.

Related Reading

Consumers vs. Creators (or Will the iPad Destroy the World?)

Here Is Why The iPad Won’t Save The Magazine Industry

The iPad Luddites

The Employee Blogger – Manage the Risk and Reap Reward

I wrote my very first blog post here three years ago, nearly to the day.   In 2005, I had an awakening to just how disruptive the empowered social web was to my industry, and ultimately my job.   So rather than just sticking my head in the sand, and hoping all of you would stop using the interwebs and start being better TV citizens, I dove right in and began exploring new communication channels.  My blogging, Twitter and experimentation with emerging mobile trends – such as location based services – have all been a part of my continuing media eduction.  To be honest, its also about positioning myself favorably in a troubling and uncertain career landscape for those of us who still toil in legacy media.

While anonymity was my cover early on, a modicum of web notoriety and Google ranking has put me in a position where those who employ me pay attention to what I say here and on Twitter.  Whether it’s this blog, what I say when I speak publicly, or my behavior  on the job – interacting with people face to face – it’s important that I represent the brand of my employer favorably.  I hope I do that here, but while we’re on the topic, I wanted to point you to my blog disclaimer, so that you know that these are MY thoughts, observations, and views.

Disclaimer 2.0

So, as you can see, I’m hoping that this “living, breathing disclaimer” can be an opportunity to demonstrate that I’m doing it right.   Thoughtless online behavior by a CEO or the lowest ranking worker, can put brands in a negative light.  Sometimes an insightful employee’s blog, like former Forrester analyst Jeremiah Owyang’s Web Strategy,  can take the spotlight off of the employers brand.

Recently,  Forrester Research laid out new guidelines prohibiting their analysts from blogging about research ares that they cover.  To some it’s a smart move that prevents their employees from diluting the brand.  To others, it’s seen as “Epic Enterprise 2.0 Fail” – a way of jealously preventing their personal brands from getting larger and more relevant.

Forrester CEO George Colony is well aware of that savvy analysts can build their personal brands via their positions as Forrester analysts amplified by social media (see the post on “Altimeter Envy”). As a consequence, a Forrester policy that tries to restrict analysts’ personally-branded research blogs works to reduce the possibility that the analysts will build a valuable personal brand leading to their departure. -  SageCircle

Employers struggle with the notion of their workers having a voice on the web.  At the extremes, there are two tribes – one that espouses a social media utopia where every worker has open access to social networks, and another that operates in fear and pushes to silence the rank and file.  Hopefully, a more pragmatic third tribe recognizes the risks and rewards of their employees social media use and provides a set of guidelines for them.  NPR has an approach to all of this that I admire.

As NPR grows to serve the audience well beyond the radio, social media is becoming an increasingly important aspect of our interaction and our transparency with our audience and with a variety of communities. Properly used, social networking sites can also be very valuable newsgathering and reporting tools and can speed research and extend a reporter’s contacts, and we encourage our journalists to take advantage of them. – NPR Social Media Guidelines

Policy Evolution

These policies and guidelines will continue to evolve as new technologies and communications platforms further push the boundaries of openness and transparency.

I’m interested in hearing your experiences – as a worker or an employer – with disclaimers, social media policies and the like.  I’ve already gotten some good  feedback on Twitter and Facebook.

QUESTIONS:

Free Social Media Strategy Advice

Here’s some FREE social media expertise. As such, it’s likely valued similarly, but just as useful as any other “thought leadership” floating around out there. Here’s the deal: If you’re a brand using social media to field customer service complaints on Twitter or Facebook, make sure the other links in your customer service chain are as dedicated, sophisticated, responsive, and dogged as you are. What good is it if your company is out there patting the heads of us poor consumers, putting your reassuring arms around us on Twitter, just to leave us victim to your Kafkaesque customer service?  I’m not alone on this one.  Right Place Marketing asks: Are You Using Social Media as an Excuse for Poor Customer Service?

..are they merely doing good PR by handling public, highly-visible complaints with a fast, courteous response, while the rest of their customers are sitting on hold listening to the endless easy-listening loop?

- Right Place Marketing

dryer that doesn't dry.

Now much of this rant is the result of being betrayed by the dryer pictured here, my subsequent grumblings to a yet-to-respond publicly [REDACTED] and the resulting odyssey that has ensued.  While @scottfmurphy has been incredibly helpful and sincere,  the rubber meets the road part of our customer service experience has been unimpressive… infuriating in fact.   But that’s sometimes how this stuff works.   So I won’t bore you with our garden variety consumer woes.  My point is, for all the self congratulatory social media back slapping that goes on, much of it is undeserved.  Many of these efforts appear, by design, simply a means to squelch negative Twitter mentions.

And The Noisy Shall Be Heard – If They Have A Lot of Followers

Flickr photo courtesey of Carol Browne

Once a customer service complaint has reached the Twitters, your customer service team has likely failed.  It’s the online equivalent of  “I will not leave this store and I will stand here shouting at the cash register until I speak to the manager!”  The effectiveness of this strategy appears directly proportional to the number of followers you have on Twitter.  Enter Kevin Smith.

So when your social media complaints department responds with “gosh, so sorry to hear you’ve had this experience.  we’re going to get to the bottom of this.”  – that’s just PR.  That makes YOU look good in the near term, but it doesn’t make us feel good. More importantly it doesn’t make the customer whole.

Do It Right or Don’t Bother

So to all of you much blogged about, case study panel sittin’, social media – customer service darling brands – I say this: don’t write social media checks the rest of the customer service chain can’t cash.

Dryer Update

The heating element arrived from [REDACTED] yesterday (3/1) and the tech came out to make the repair not long after.  Minutes after he left, ANOTHER heating element arrived, so I’ll save that one (unless [REDACTED] asks for it back) in case this one fails.  [REDACTED] executive office of customer service called to make sure that we were satisfied with the work.

With Twitter’s recent roll-out of Lists functionality, there’s been a lot of division over their utility, measure of influence, and whether they simply serve as self-referential ego strokes for the technorati establishment.  OK, I admit I was a bit giddy to discover how many lists I was on, and YES, I made that little “I’m Listed!” image link there on the right sidebar. WordPress Bible author Aaron Brazell confirmed to me that the sidebar link does in fact qualify as social media douchebaggery, but hey I’m embracing it.. owning those bona fides if you will. Regardless, lists do give users the ability to take the firehose of their Twitter data and break it down into manageable streams.

I’m still figuring out how I’m going to use them and I’d love your advice here. In the comments below, please leave smart ideas on how people are using lists, beyond the usual “social media ninja”, “thought leader” kind of stuff.  I’m also interested in hearing your thoughts about whether you make your lists public and how Twitter might make this functionality better.

Publishing those lists is what seems dividing users. So when the functionality appeared in my stream, I shared the news and was eager to jump in. Right off the bat, one of my dearest Twitter friends, Jon Swanson, made me stop and think.

@newmediajim wait. what if we don’t WANT to be managed? -
@jnswanson

By then, interweb titans Chris Brogan and Robert Scoble were well into a debate about the misgivings and merits surrounding lists.  That conversation has been propogated and amplified on the web, and at the end of this post, I’ll provide links to some other interesting viewpoints. I did an informal poll on Twitter asking.

TWITTER LISTS – social media d-bag ego stroke?, spam opportunity?, measure of influence?, useful tool? all of the above?

Here is a sampling of the responses I received.

jillinski @newmediajim Also, ppl are hard to fit into just 1 list. So I’ve decided to bail on the whole concept. Does this make me a Twitter Luddite?

You2Gov @newmediajim Lists: some will abuse, most will make useful tool. Ego is involved, but so is altruism, transparency and flat communications.

Scobleizer @newmediajim you are on my tech news people list so you KNOW my answer is “all of the above!” Seriously, lists are crack.T

thomasknoll @newmediajim lists are for listening

SGnow @newmediajim Twitter lists… Something to use to organize and discover. Not overthink.

While lists probably aren’t something we should over think, they do merit discussion.. to a point.  I think we all know, that there will be “rock star” or “must follow” lists, which will serve little more than as self-perpetuating ego strokes.  For instance, I’m a member of two VERY elite Twitter lists.  These lists reside behind a virtual velvet rope of the ultra hip lounge called the internet.  They are:

• Orchid8′s Team-Hot-Salad-Dressing
• mikeneumann’s Might-Need-Bail-Money

Clearly, I’ve managed my online reputation well.

How Others Perceive You

If you do show up on lists, it is a unique opportunity to see how others perceive you.  Leah Jones compares Twitter lists to Johari Windows.  In her post, she describes how she was surprised a bit at peoples’ perceptions of her.  There’s an interesting web tool out there by MustExist that allows you to see a tag cloud of words that people use to describe you (or your brand) in lists.  To me, this is a much more important data set than how many lists you’re on or how many followers you have.

Measure of Influence

In his post “Using Twitter Lists to Judge Influence”, The Bivings Group’s Todd Zeigler posits that being listed is a far better metric of “influence” than simply being followed.  This post has been getting a lot of traction, re-tweets, and references, but I’m not sure I agree with it entirely.

I think Twitter Lists will end up helping separate the men from the boys when it comes to influence.  In addition to seeing a Twitter users follower count, we can now see the number of other Twitter users who have added them to lists – Todd Zeigler

Here’s why I’m a bit skeptical.  As of this writing, I’m on some 600 lists.  But if you take a look, you’ll see that the vast majority of them are followed by ZERO, bupkus, nil, naught, nuthin!  Others might have a handful of follows and are likely people that already follow me on Twitter.  Seems a bit redundant to me, so I’m not sure how accurate a measure of influence lists really are.

Real Utility

During the coverage of the horrifyingly tragic shootings at Fort Hood, journalism demonstrated the curation value of lists. The New York Times, The Huffington Post and The Today Show all created lists of a variety of sources from the center of the crisis.  Sadly, a violent shooting rampage happened just the next day in Orlando, Florida.  Again, lists were created by smart, Twitter savvy journalists like Etan Horowitz.

I think how people end up using lists privately,  might demonstrate their real utility.  From filtering out noise to geographic, and categorical organization,  these bread and butter applications will be the mainstay, yet less blogged about practices.   Again, let me know in the comment some smart ways, either publicly or privately, you plan on using lists.

Further Reading

Why Twitter Lists Change Everything

Are Lists Good for Social Media

Twitter Lists – Proof That Social Media Misunderstands Itself

Twitter Strokes Egos With a New A-List Popularity Contest

Speaking at IMS09 - Photo courtesy Steve Garfield

Earlier this month I had the opportunity to speak at the Inbound Marketing Summit in Foxborough, Massachusetts.  (video of the presentation at the end of this post)   It was back in August, in a cramped, dimly lit Jimmy Seas restaurant on Martha’s Vineyard where Justin Levy and Nick Saber first approached me about presenting at #IMS09.  Over generous pans of of pasta, we shared stories and ideas about social media, traditional media, marketing and where all of those things intersect.

This isn’t the first time I’ve been asked to speak publicly about my perch at the intersection of old and new media, but each time forces me out of my comfort zone.  As a network news cameraman, I’m far more accustomed to leaving the public speaking to the folks in my viewfinder.  Telling cocktail party stories about my life as a news camerman – flying in Chinooks over Afghanistan,  rocket attacks in Baghdad, or traveling on Air Force One – is great among friends.  But  my challenge was to create value for the few hundred marketing professionals who would be listening to the story of a news cameraman cum early adopter of social media.  It’s flattering to be asked to speak, but unless you deliver valuable, useful information to business professionals, you’re wasting their time.   So here’s the condensed version.

OVERVIEW

Organizations often cringe at the notion of employees speaking openly about the company on social networks. Many regulate, or downright ban the practice. The risks have been well established, and there are plenty of horror stories about workers going off-reservation online. But the rewards are abundant if companies provide guidelines and encourage those passionate about social media. Who are your best brand ambassadors? Believe it or not, empowering rank and file staff to engage the social web can often result in more promise than peril.  Conversely there are scant rewards for ham-fisted, clumsy, corporate social media efforts.  As Comcast’s Frank Eliason aptly put it at the Blog World Expo this past week

“Don’t force people into this social space if it’s not a natural fit for them.”

@comcastcares

I’m reminded of a story told to me by a PR person I had worked with on a shoot.  A reporter from a major national daily newspaper was told to produce a pre-determined number of Tweets per day and those Twitter posts would be “graded”.  Really???  Wow, talk about sucking the oxygen out of the experience.  We’ve got to do better than that.

DATA

A  Russell Herder and Ethos Business Law study, entitled “Social Media: Embracing the Opportunities, Averting the Risks”, surveyed over 400 marketing, HR, and management executives on their attitudes toward social media.  Some key data points:

• 73% increase in US use of social media (Neilsen)
• just over half of those surveyed believe social media is bad for productivity
• nearly half believe social media use can damage brand reputation
• 8 out of 10 believe social media, as corporate communications, can build relationships with customers and build brand reputation

OBJECTIVE

By sharing my story with the marketing professionals in attendance,  I hoped to demonstrate that empowering rank and file employees of an organization can be a useful, organic extension of a firm’s marketing and PR efforts. I wanted to show that it isn’t necessarily or SOLELY – the communications or marketing director, or the CEO who might be your best brand ambassador. 

Interestingly,  two presentations that preceded me helped frame and define my journey into social media.  Paul Gillin outlined some dismal trends in traditional media consumption in his talk entitled “World Without Media: What Will Fill the Void?”.  

He was followed by new media video visionary Steve Garfield who held a APEC sized photo-op, empowering the audience  with thier video cameras to become legions of content creators.    

It’s clear that the world of mainstream media will never be the same.  Also clear, is that I’m still figuring out how my skills mesh with that emerging landscape.  Legacy media needs to meet people where they are and engage them in the way they consume and produce media.

Below is the video of my presentation in it’s entirety. So assembled readers, did I deliver what I set out to achieve? And if you were at IMS09, did I meet your expectations? (Audio is thin, so you’ll have to strain a bit to hear it)

The Writing On The Wall

Social Network, Tv News trends

Social Network jobs | Tv News jobs

See that blue line on the graph? That represents jobs data for the TV news industry according to Simply Hired. For those of you who don’t know me, I’m a network news cameraman by trade, still clinging on to rapidly diminishing fortunes. The more appealing green line represents job data results for “Social Network”. So as that downward job trend continues across legacy media, I still believe there is tremendous opportunity in social media.

The New Television

About a year ago, I came across an interview with August Capital’s David Hornik. In this interview, Hornik refers to the sum of all of this social media as “the new television” and that “we will see increasingly specific social networks”. Both of these notions really struck me, and in my own post then, I hinted at a venture that incorporated those ideas.

The State of Social Networking Today

Since then there has been a lot of hype about social networking. From that hype has sprouted numerous white-label social networking platforms prompting this article in TechCrunch and this follow-up.
In the second post, Tech Crunch writer Mark Hendrickson looks ahead:

It will be interesting to see over the next few years whether this demand further intensifies as potential customers realize the value of niche social networks, or whether it slackens as people get over the hype surrounding this aspect of Web 2.0.

Many of these companies are targeting large, well-established organizations with deep pockets. Scan the chart and you will see big-name media companies, educational institutions, and corporations
-Mark Hendrickson, TechCrunch

Well a year later the results are in, and it doesn’t look good for corporate social networks. A recent Deloitte study, featured in the Wall Street Journal showed that the vast majority of them had failed to attract people.

One of the hot investments for businesses these days is online communities that help customers feel connected to a brand. But most of these efforts produce fancy Web sites that few people ever visit. The problem: Businesses are focusing on the value an online community can provide to themselves, not the community.
-Ben Worthen, Wall Street Journal

The article goes on to cite some staggeringly bad statistics and is pretty gloomy, but appears to put the blame sqaurely on the corporations, who just don’t get the community spirit thing. Marhsall Kirpatrick has his typically droll take on all of this, pointing to a social network built around a cat litter brand, that is emblematic of these failures.

Social networks where a brand name product is what everyone rallies around are a dumb idea. They are stupid. No one should submit themselves to the indignity of creating a user profile and friend connections based on cola or cat litter.
-Marshall Kirkpatrick, Read Write Web

Hehe.. I like Marshall. Kirkpatrick also appears to be bullish on niche market social networks.

Building A Community Around Passionate Fans

As some of you know, I’ve been working on something along these lines for some time with a business partner. We are perilously close to unleashing it upon the social web. We feel we have built the foundation for a strong web community that celebrates the passions of a creative constituency. But simply because we aren’t a corporate site, doesn’t mean that we won’t face our own EPIC FAIL. It’s all in the execution. We have partnered with white-label social network developer, Pringo, to design and develop this space and are currently in PRE-LAUNCH beta. (leave a comment here if you’re interested in taking a look)

What we’re discovering in this pre-launch phase is that the community won’t adapt to the platform, the platform has to be right for the community. As we move forward, we must be able to adapt to the needs of our community or we will share the same fate of many of these corporate social networks. Similarly, those white label social network platforms listed in the Tech Crunch post must have the flexibility and agility to keep up with how people are using the social web, or as I’ve come to call it…”the new television”.

New Communications Forum 2008

gathering the lunch gang with Shel. (photo courtesy of Lunaweb)

On the eve of my trip to the 2008 New Communications Forum in Sonoma, CA, I’m looking back at a couple of inspiring and energizing conferences that I’ve had the opportunity to attend in the past month – South By Southwest Interactive in March, and Podcamp DC this past weekend. Both very different events, by way of scale and influence, but both great forums for sharing ideas and connecting face to face with the trailblazers of emerging, participatory media. Looking ahead to Sonoma, I’ll be sharing a stage with Shel Israel and Tom Foremski as well as a panel with Steve Lubetkin.It’s encouraging to me that there are many people who see value in the story of my journey into disruptive media, from the eyes of this old media footsoldier. Yes, i know.. “disruptive” is just more conference-speak. Look, let me assure you… ALL of these social media are very disruptive, and there are real economic and human consequence of this disruption. And while social media creates kool-aid drinker evangelists, and very vocal, antagonistic, contrarian detractors, the fact of the matter is that social media simply ARE.They are just communications tools that can be adopted by many – those with useful, meaningful things to say, and those with very little value to bring to the enterprise.So it’s worthwhile to me, as an “old media” dinosaur, to examine how and why these disruptions are taking place and to see where there may be areas where these worlds collide. That, I believe is where very extraordinary things can happen, right at that intersection. At the end of the day, I come at this from a guy witnessing upheaval in the industry that pays my mortgage and feeds my family. You better believe I want to get out there and meet these agents of change.

South by Southwest Interactive

NBC News sent me and two colleagues to Austin to attend SXSW interactive back in March and our team really came away energized and inspired. There are some really great platforms out there that are built on participation and community that are very eager to integrate with traditional media companies. From a strategic standpoint, there are some very smart firms like Forrester Research that are advising big media on how to develop their social web strategies. Forrester’s Charlene Li and Jeremiah Owyang are a formidable team in this space and Charlene’s SXSW presentation is well worth examining, and is outlined here.A very fun, kind of “rock star” moment for me was being interviewed live on Qik by Robert Scoble. We talked about the impact of this technology and how audience interaction becomes the real game changer here. Pictured below the video is me, CC Chapman and Rocky Barbanica. Love both of those guys, and Rocky, like me is tasked with keeping the talent like Scoble in check. The photo was taken by friend and very savvy Canadian marketing pro Adele McAlear.

Podcamp DC

Certainly smaller in scale than SXSW, Podcamp DC makes up for it with enthusiasm, knowledge base, and grassroots community. I had an opportunity to speak with NPR’s Andy Carvin about social media tools being used as a “new journalism”. We were able to cite the Midwest earthquake of last week, where people on Twitter were sharing pretty dramatic first-person accounts of the tremors. These messages caught the attention of NBC Nightly News, and were included as an element of our coverage.I wish I’d been able to spend more time at Podcamp DC. I want to extend special thanks to Tammy Munson and Joel Mark Witt for pulling this terrific event together. Fortunately, the very savvy DC blogging community provides excellent coverage of the un-conference.Helen MosherThursday Bramcaseysoftwaretechrepublicanwireless musejoelogonIf I’ve missed any please leave links in the commments! Looking forward to connecting with people in Sonoma, and feel very enriched to know some very smart trailblazers in this field.

your humble blogger in Iraq

Just on the heels of a trip to Iraq, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, I’ve got a moment to reflect before I hop on plane for South By Southwest Interactive. As we traveled to places with names like Hawijah, Kirkuk, and Jalalabad, I observed a recurring theme. Young battle hardened commanders in both Afghanistan and Iraq were passionately, perhaps with a certain evangelism, speaking about their work there. They weren’t talking body counts or offensives though, they were talking about micro-finance, road building, infrastructure, reconciliation banking, and grass roots governance. It occurred to me that their formal military training prepared them for precious little of this. And as I spoke with a General there, he said these soldiers were learning this stuff in theater, as he put it “at the speed of the network”. The speed of the network.. that concept really stuck with me.

Media is certainly evolving at the speed of the network. New web technologies and and platforms have ushered in a new era of personal publishing. These widely available tools are evolving faster than most traditional media companies can keep up with. I really enjoy experimenting with these technologies as a way to connect with very cool, interesting people on Twitter and Facebook, among others. Like those soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, employees of companies, including mainstream media, are adopting these new technologies as a way to engage in conversation. Any more, media is how we shake hands, it’s a how we define ourselves. A nifty little Pew research study echoes these observations about early adopters (us).

These days they are just as likely to produce material. One common refrain is that they think more change lies ahead and they are eager to watch and participate.
Pew Internet and American Life Project

That’s kind of where I find myself. I LOVE how social media allows us to connect with one another across cultural, professional, and social boundaries. Recently, I was on assignment in Africa and used the Qik platform along with my Nokia N95 to do a LIVE to web video interview with Sir Bob Geldof from Ghana.

As Jeff Jarvis points out in his post dubbing me the “human satellite truck”, the cool thing about Qik is the live chat function. As you watch the video, you’ll notice that I interrupt Geldof and my producer to take a question from Twitter friend Mike Neumann. So in addition to Meet the Press, now we can have “Meet the People” To Geldof’s credit, he didn’t miss a beat and answered Mike by name. Incidentally, he seemed fascinated with both Twitter and Qik. As powerful as Qik and a Nokia N95 are, they don’t replace, nor should they in my mind, the tools that traditional broadcast media use to gather the news. It’s important to note that my Nokia’s wifi connection was coming off the US TV Pool satellite. There was no mobile data network to be found in Ghana’s capitol city, Accra. Take a look at all of this gear.

one meter uplink dish in Arusha, Tanzania

interview gear in Arusha, Tanzania

This is what it took, along with the skills of an immensely talented NBC News team, to produce this live Today show interview with Ann Curry, the President and the First Lady.

I LOVE that I can finally embed NBC News video in my blog now! That aside, I don’t subscribe to zero sum notions of one type of media replacing another. What traditional media does is still, and I suspect always will be, relevant. Simply from a technical standpoint, there isn’t wifi or mobile data networks in many parts of the world. Sometimes it takes the knowledge base and technical expertise of seasoned pros to get the story out. Social media can complement it’s traditional older sibling in tremendously useful ways though, creating a rich experience for both traditional media and its fans. The interactivity of platforms like Qik not withstanding, the fans of your media brand, given an opportunity, want to be part of the process. They want to help!

When Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager stepped down, a wire service errantly captioned a photograph of the staffer. Many sites, including MSNBC.COM ran the picture. I was one of my Twitter friends who pointed out the mistake, and after a quick google image search to confirm, I called our desk to have them alert the the web folks.

So this correction came lightning-fast, and it was all because my friends on Twitter have an open social communication channel through me.

The Conversation Agency blog excerpts this very interesting Virginia Heffernen piece in the New York Times about the demise of the critically acclaimed show “Friday Night Lights”. In it she emphasizes the imperative on media companies to give people a means to participate. While she specifically mentions “art and entertainment”, this applies to all media, including news.

art and entertainment in the digital age are highly collaborative, and none of it can thrive without engaging audiences more actively than ever before. Fans today see themselves as doing business with television shows, movies, even books. They want to rate, review, remix. They want to make tributes and parodies, create footnotes and concordances, mess with volume and color values, talk back and shout down.
New York Times, “Art in the Age of Franchising” January 20, 2008

The “how” of all this participation, and social media engagement is what leaves many companies, including media firms, scratching their heads. I think a good “un-strategy” is to to let employees who are already “operating at the speed of the network”, just keep doing what they’re doing. These people are your best brand ambassadors. Web strategist and Forrester Research analyst Jeremiah Owyang outlines three “impossible” but absolutely necessary conversations corporations need to have if they take social media seriously. He breaks them down to the following: ask for feedback, say positive things about competitors, and admit when you’re wrong. To me, the feedback conversation can reap huge rewards and social media allows for an open channel.

I’ve been ruminating these thoughts from Austin, Texas where I’ll be attending the South By Southwest Interactive festival. NBC News has given me this very unique opportunity, and I’m eager to walk amongst the new Saronoffs and Marconis of modern communication. Technology and web platforms allow people to speak with each other like never before. The question is, how do we fit in to these conversations, or foster them ourselves. This is what I’ll be asking some very smart people here in Austin. Stay tuned.

NBC’s Local Media Initiative

In a move that acknowledges the diminishing influence of one-way communication channels, NBC has renamed the Television Stations Division “Local Media Division”. There was a great deal of coverage in industry blogs. Media Week and Lost Remote have both framed the change as a fundamental shift in business.

NBC Local Media better reflects the full scope of our capabilities, as well as our ability to offer clients a fully-integrated, local media solution across the full portfolio of our assets.-John Wallace – President, NBC Local Media Division, from press release

As marketers continue to shift ad dollars from traditional media to online, it’s vital for companies like NBC to take the brand where the people are. Increasingly, that means web and mobile. As newspapers and TV move to build online, the distinction between the two becomes meaningless. Right now local “newspapers” appear to be winning online.

Creating an Engaging Experience While Building a Business

The static web sites of most TV and Radio stations have been eclipsed by the more interactive offerings of newspapers. Perhaps the economic imperative of the dying newspaper industry has forced print publishers bring online innovations to market faster. So the challenge for local media is to build an engaging, imersive, media platform that actually becomes something the community can’t live without – at the same time scaling the user base to a point where the enterprise is economically worthwhile.

What would that platform look like? What key elements would satisfy both the community and the media company? I took that question to my very smart Twitter posse and they came up with some great ideas. Here’s a small sampling:

All very smart ideas from early adopters of social web technology. Smart ideas about the evolution of local media can be found in practice and in theory, but ultimately big media companies are looking for the ones that will generate increased traffic and ad revenue. I do think it is vital for those in charge of any local media initiative to get input from outside the corporate meeting rooms. They should be talking to the local blogging, tech, and social media communities. They should be sponsoring conferences, discussions and meetups with the pioneers of the social web in their local communities.

I strongly feel that media companies need to discover and encourage the brand champions within their own organizations to use social media. While there may be some who grumble about already burdensome workloads – and believe me, TV news is a pretty thankless sausage factory – standing by and hoping that the sales and promotions departments will save careers is not a good career strategy. I’ve discovered that meeting and listening to people on the social web, through platforms like Twitter, blogging, Facebook, and meetups, has enriched my life both personally and professionally. It’s also allowed me to bring the NBC News brand into this space.

Envisioning Local Media

Mel Taylor outlines the key points of a recent speech by former CBS News chief Andrew Heyward. In it, Heyward outlines the current problems with the state of TV news, and discusses some forward-thinking approaches to building succssesful online platforms. Don Dodge, while blogging about newspaper strategy, puts forth ideas that are equally resonant in television’s web efforts. Essentially he says be local, be a marketplace, and be the best local search engine out there. A good example of very useful local search platform is the Boston local search platform Citysqaures.

I think the key to success in transforming local media is to build a platform that people can’t live without. It should be a place where people can connect around ideas and affinities, build their own social netowrk profile, network and create events, have a robust mobile component, and should recommend content and events based on the users profile. People want to share and create content and links. Making that easy and customizable, in a locally relevant way, is key to getting the Facebook generation passionate about local media.The bottom line is, of course, the bottom line. But while media companies have to focus on profits, they should not look at their web presence as a secondary effort, or simply repository for recycled newscast content.

For local media platforms to be successful, they will have to implement imersive, relevant, engaging, and useful experiences for the community. So my assembled readers, how would you build a successful local media platform? What are some good examples of ones you’ve come across?