The Bigger Tent

Wednesday, 9/24 in NYC, Social Media Club is going to welcome Dan Patterson, a blogger, podcaster, and professional journalist, and Ann Cooper, who teaches at Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism. Ann has worked as a reporter for newspapers, magazines, and National Public Radio, and was the executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Recently, Ann published this article at the Columbia Journalism Review:

CJR: The Bigger Tent

And so it went for a few years, bloggers versus journalists; a fight over much more than semantics, a fight to see whether the big tent of American journalism would become a bigger tent to accommodate the newcomers and their new ideas. Who belongs in that tent, and who gets to decide who’s in it? Put another way: Who is a journalist? It’s a tantalizing question, but it’s hardly worth asking anymore.

This is the subject of our meeting tomorrow night. There are journalistic acts happening everywhere online, by bloggers and journalists alike. How do we know the difference, when is the difference important, and who decides?

On a side note, I’ve been blogging for 10 years, but not until I got picked up by a mainstream business publication did I start getting offers of “press passes.” So it seems the lines are still pretty blurry.

UPDATE: More food for thought from Max Gladwell:BlogWorld 2008: The Line Between Blogging and Journalism 
This is an important question, and I hope you’ll attend if you’re in NYC, and support our chapter there.

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Finally! WordPress Reveals Favorite Plugins

Per Matt’s request, I held this under embargo until he started his address - may need to update wiht more facts once he explains the whole story

One of the things that struck me when I started using WordPress was that the Plugin and Theme universe was extremely vast. So vast, that I could never tell very easily which Plugin I should use, especially when there are 7 flavors of “recent comments”. So at the first WordCamp (or sometime around there) I was talking with Matt Mullenweg about this need.

I was thinking this might be a neat side business as a site to run, but Matt told me about this idea that he just announced as a reality during the “State of the Word” today - where WordPress would be actually looking at the statistics of which plugins people are actually using, rather than what people explicitly rate. This is a unique side benefit of the auto-update feature of the latest version of WordPress.

This new reality opens a new path to easier WordPress configuration. More importantly, it is a path to learning our collective best practices, doing what Web 2.0 and Social Media is best at, making things visible that previously were not.

While I anticipate some people in a privacy uproar over this, I don’t really see a problem with the fact that they have been collecting these statistics. The reason is very simple. I know Matt personally. I know Tony personally. I trust them to do the right thing. I trust they thought of this issue. In fact, when Matt told me about this announcement a short while ago, we both laughed nervously and expressed that, “oh shit, what are people gonna say when they find this out” look to each other.

This is just so cool, I am so happy to finally be able to see what other WordPress users are doing with their plugins. In fact, on the way here to WordCamp, I twittered a question for the people in attendance, asking which are the essential plugins? The answers I got are below. The real answers will soon be seen through WordPress’ new feature - I can’t wait to play with it…

• 
  jjtoothman: @chrisheuer wrote a post on that exact subject earlier this week: http://snurl.com/3fqrj (expand)
  about 1 hour ago · View Tweet
• 
  thornley: @chrisheuer Essential WordPress plug http://www.friendsroll.com - at least I’d like it to become essential
  about 1 hour ago · View Tweet
• 
  mabernathy: @chrisheuer headspace 2
  about 1 hour ago · View Tweet
• 
  sfdesigner: @chrisheuer CodeBox for me — I blog about coding and teach programming, so it is essential for me.
  about 2 hours ago · View Tweet
• 
  chrisheuer: Hey #wordcamp, quick poll - what are your essential plugins? Compiling a list for @socialmediaclub
  about 2 hours ago · View Tweet

Technorati Tags: wordpress, wordcamp, plugins,

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Social Media Club NY Meeting, 12/11/07

Last night, Business Wire hosted SMC New York for a panel on “What Worked and What Didn’t in Social Media in 2007.”

I moderated a panel with Jack Myers, Founder and CEO of Myers Publishing, Joel Smernoff, President and COO of Paltalk, and Peter Himler, Founder and principal of Flatiron Communications LLC. Being moderator, I couldn’t really take too many notes, but thankfully2 intrepid bloggers captured some of the action.

Jenny Ambrozek posted in “Social Media Club Gathering 20071211: A Gorilla on YouTube” a thought from panelist Jack Myers:

“Jack proposed a potential outcome of the current writers strike is fundamentally changing the traditional television broadcasting industry. Given the impact of digital technology on transforming the recording industry, an entirely reasonable prediction.”

Les Blatt wrote some comments about the other Gorilla in Social Media, Facebook:

“There was a long discussion of Facebook’s Beacon conflict. Did Facebook hurt itself with Beacon? Possibly, although they do seem to be trying to fix it – the move from opt-out to opt-in, while perhaps not handled as smoothly as it should have been, is at least a move in the right direction.”

I know that the intrepid Steve Eisenberg, who helped organize the meeting, has recorded audio and we’ll link to it when it’s posted.

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Join us Today for Social Media Club Hour - a Show on Blog Talk Radio

After speaking with Lisa Padilla from Blog Talk Radio and Mike McGrath from Tacit Partners (also one of of the Silicon Valley chapter leaders) at last week’s Silicon Valley gathering, we decided to move forward with a new show for Social Media Club on Blog Talk Radio. In a short while, at 10am PST today on Friday August 31, we will be doing the first episode, with Robert Scoble as our special guest.

This show’s focus is Authenticity, Credibility and Authority in Social Media. From my personal perspective, I was thinking that the blessings of our tool’s capabilities for instant publishing have the potential to be a curse. Of course, I experienced a somewhat funnier (and slightly different) version of this double edged sword last week, showing up on Valleywag for a short video interview I did which was dubbed “Geeks Gone Wild“. In agreeing to do an on camera interview for a topic I was not prepared to really discuss, I ended up looking a bit silly, requiring me to do several hours of research and writing to clearly illuminate what I was trying to say. Of course video is completely different from writing, but it is an interesting parallel in some ways, especially in light of the need to do so much research in forming a coherent explanation of my point.

In the early days of the Web, when email was just going mainstream, we used to talk about the need to walk away for a bit after writing something important to consider what was written and come back to it with fresh eyes. I don’t hear that discussion all that often around Blogging - whether it is reporting, opinion or deeper thought pieces. While everyone is different, there are clearly many who think that the key to success in Blogging is publishing first and fast to “just get it out there”. I have had several discussions with Robert Scoble about this over the last couple years and I think this is going to be a great talk today, delving into the deeper issues surrounding the importance of “how we approach our use of social media tools”.

While we still need to figure things out with regards to the show’s format, I think this is going to be a great experiment and ongoing effort of the club. It begins to move forward one of my original visions for the club - finding ways for those of us who care about Social Media to collaborate globally in an effort to share best practices and learn from one another. We are approaching this show differently than others you may have seen out there - each episode will be hosted by a different person from one of our many Social Media Club chapters around the world… So in essence, the members of the club will be creating this show together!

So join us today for the Social Media Club Hour on Blog Talk Radio, and call in even to share your thoughts, we would love to hear from you!

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Bloggers Wanted Here - Important Survey

Good morning! Back from Las Vegas in one piece, without a hangover and ready to get to work.

The Social Media Workshop and the FAST Track Future of Media events I helped facilitate last week were filled with excellent conversations that touched upon trust as crucial to the success of Social Media and the need for social media and traditional media to work together.  From my perspective, it is very important to understand these essential aspects of our new world better.  Which is why I was excited to learn from my friend Sally Falkow about a new survey from our organization partner (and good friends) at the Society for New Communications Research.  Its’ goal is to better understand “How Bloggers Source and Use News Content.”

If you blog, I strongly encourage you to complete this survey, to help us all gain more respect and understand where we can improve in our educational efforts.

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Dell Gets It

Rather than reposting the original here, I want to direct your attention to the Social Media Workshop blog for a podcast interview I did with Lionel Mechaca, Digital Media Manager for Dell.  It is a great insight into what it takes to make lemons from lemonade, or should I say to move from Hell to Heaven…

PS - yes I posted it on the workshop blog to get more awareness for the event, which will now also be available in part on UStream!

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Conversations take time, managing them takes energy

There are a lot of people I have met over the past few years who have asked the proverbial question, “Who has time to blog?”

For me, the answer lately has been ‘not me’ - though I continue link blogging here, photo blogging and Twittering because it takes little effort and can be fit in between other tasks and activities. In a meeting with Shel Israel this afternoon, Shel pointed out how woefully out of touch I am with what he has been writing about lately - which is embarrasing because I am working with him on our first Social Media Club Workshop series and I genuinely find his blog well written and insightful.

As some of you know, I don’t regularly use an RSS reader, though I probably should - the thing is, not being a regular RSS Feed Reader works as a blanket excuse for why I am not up to date on the happenings of the 1,000+ people I have met and would like to follow if I had the time. For the past few months, I have not had the time to do 80% of what I would like to be doing and about 60% of what I must be doing. In fact, I had a conversation yesterday with some friends about how we have had to expend so much energy in managing the Club to host conversations about Social Media, that we have little time to actually produce it or to be fully engaged in the conversations about it, eventhough it is all around me every day.

This brings me back to one of the drums I have been beating for a long time - the purpose of an organization is to organize resources (human, capital and systemic) to complete tasks that serve the needs of a group of people. The organization should be managing resources to complete activities that ensure desired outcomes. The trouble is, that most organizations are managing too few resources in support of too many activities, resulting in the inevitable opportunities slipping through the cracks, and a lower level of quality in the outcomes being produced. This requires decreasing the number of expected outcomes (focus) and gaining better utilization of the resources at your disposal, which actually takes more time to do effectively…

So this is where I come to the title of my post - the conversations take time, which there is little of while investing the majority of your energy in the management (and development) of a (fledgling) organization. This is ultimately one of the main reasons why many business people ask the question about having time to blog. Given the fact that they are already employing too few resources against too many activities, how can another communications channel, that takes real time to cultivate, be properly engaged?

From my perspective, this points to a real need to ensure that everyone understands the roles they fulfill, and that they are part of a team with adequate authority and available time to participate in the conversation, with enough energy dedicated to manage where and when and with whom conversations should be taking place. I know of a few companies out there that are starting to properly staff and realign their management responsibilities to do this right such as Lenovo and Dell, but am wondering who else is out there investing the time and energy it takes to not only do this, but to do it right.

Do you know of any good case studies in regards to staffing for conversations with customers? What about organizations that understand the value of conversations with customers and the need to invest the management energy in cultivating better conversations?

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Storytelling and the Blogospehere -Third Thursday April 2007

This is the recording from Third Thursday’s monthly meetup in Silicon Valley on April 19, 2007. This month’s discussion featured a great presentation from Elisa Camahort and Kathy Klotz-Guest called “How Storytelling is (Still) Critical to Communications in the Blogosphere”. There are really some wonderful insights here that get at the heart of branding, engagement and blogging’s role facilitating both. From the event’s description:

As companies try to figure out how to use blogs and other social media tools to engage with customers, successfully participating in the blogosphere remains a bit of mystery to many marketing and PR professionals. Social media initiatives can’t be spin, but companies must have a compelling story to tell about their brand, culture, products, and customers in their online activities. At the heart of every communications effort must be a story. Storytelling can be an organic process that comes from open dialog with customers.

More feedback on the Meetup from attendees and a full description of the event is available on the group’s Meetup page.

Many thanks to Jen McClure and the Society of New Communications Research for sponsoring this month’s Meetup.

Download MP3 File

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Social Media Now: Deflating the Blogosphere, Sony Share

Maybe it’s time for Blogspotting to change it’s name. In the Newsweek online column of that title, Heather Green takes a closer look at numbers provided by Dave Sifry at Technorati. The numbers, first reported early this month in Sifry’s State of the Live Web, suggest that the practice of blogging has plateaued.

Picking up threads from Matthew Hurst and Steve Rubel, Green emphasizes active posting, not the sheer number of blogs,  as the best measure of the blogosphere’s health. Technorati’s threshold for counting a blog as active isn’t a high one–at least one post within 90 days. According to numbers provided to Green, the number of active blogs tracked by Technorati is around 15.5 million. The total number of blogs is 70 million. So only 22% of blogs are active ones.

We already calculated back at the beginning of the month that the rate of daily blog posting per blog has declined slightly– from 2.3% in October to  2.1% at the end of March 2007.  Green finds that the percentage of blogs that are active has also been declining from 36.7% in May 2006 to 20.9% in March 2007.

And, interestingly, the English language blogosphere in particular is shrinking. In October 2006 39% of blog posts were in English. In March 2007 only 33% were.

In other words, in October 2006, 39% of blog posts were in English. In March 2007, only 33% were in in English.
Sony Shares: The videosharing battle between GooTube and big media is getting a new competitor.  Tomorrow Sony will launch a video sharing site. The unnamed site will be Japanese only, but Sony has said that it will decided about an overseas launch schedule based the Japanese experience. Last August Sony spent $65 million to acquire video-sharing site Grouper. It’s unclear if Grouper technology will power Sony’s new effort.

More social media acquisitions: TheStreet.com has purchased the remaining 50.1% of socially-enabled, and vowelly-challenged financial advice site Stockpickr; and NBC has purchased Rmail, a service provider that integrates RSS feeds into email. Terms of neither deal were announced.

 

 

 

 

 

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Can’t We All Just Get Along?

Saw a Tweet from Jeremiah Owyang giving a nod to his boss John Furrier for standing up for his team, and then saw Robert Scoble’s post at the heart of it all, telling people he was going to hang out in the hallway at Microsoft’s Mix 07 Conference since he did not have a conference pass. Apparently, Alfred Thompson thinks that conferences like Mix 07 should only be attended by and reported on, by “people inside the trenches”, “whose business it is to not only understand but use this technology?” He sees little value to the media, and thinks Robert “is a writer for the popular press no real different from some reporter from Wired magazine.” (he also thinks Robert is a nice guy, so don’t go jumping on him for expressing his opinion)

You can think whatever you want about Robert, even insist that he has no real influence in the mainstream portions of society and that he is only important within the Blogosphere’s echo chamber, but that is missing the real point. You can’t marginalize anyone based on the role they are serving in society, especially when that someone has proven themselves to be a good person, worthy and deserving of the trust placed in them by others to shape their opinions of the world. Einstein was famously a patent clerk. Hundreds of important contributors to the advancement of society have held mundane, or even ‘dirty’ jobs.

This is not about Robert and Alfred though, this is about the need to respect other people and not be dismissive of the potential value they can contribute out of hand, for the title they hold or role they serve. For too long we have easily dismissed ‘the media’, ‘the marketing people’, ‘the geeks’ and, as Mary Hodder talked about on her panel at Podcast Hotel the other day, ‘the others’ because they are not like us.

Now, from reading the conversation (via the comments), it seems that Alfred is a pretty decent guy, honest and genuine - but when I read statements such as “Don’t you really want to hear from someone like you?”, it makes me cringe. This is, of course, ok because we like hanging out with people like us, they are our friends, our tribes and our families generally, but we should really find a better way to include more diverse perspectives within the context of conferences such as Mix, Web 2.0 and others. To be clear, I don’t feel the same way about conferences on the latest advances in neuroscience, or white-hat hacking or other very focused professional topics. This is not to say that programming is not a professional topic, it is, but the profession of programming includes many levels of skills and areas of expertise that are important for everyone’s success. (DBA, SYSADMIN, CODE, ARCHITECT, UI, QA and ACTIVE USER to name a few)

Over the past several years, one of the things I have been talking to people about is how much economic value (and hard cash) has been wasted as a result of the marketing people and the technical people not getting along. Trillions of dollars have probably been lost as a result of the fact that these two roles are filled by different types of people - people who are not like each other in many ways (not all the time, I know plenty of people who successfully translate between the two groups or who serve both roles). As I have constantly stated, in the knowledge economy the most important aspect of creating value is the ability of smart people to collaborate with one another. The value of cultural diversity is widely known and lauded, but many people often insist on only hearing and participating in monocultural discussions.

BTW - This is not to say that there can be some really silly things that come from people who don’t understand what we are talking about, which is what I believe Alfred is trying to protect against - along with preventing media from misreporting the story. Indeed, we should create contexts in which experts can gather and explore their expertise, going deeper and advancing their industry/market - this is in fact, a part of our vision with Social Media Club as well. The real issue though is that we should work to create contexts for all of these types of conversations to take place and create good signals about them (via tags and syndicated distribution) so that the right sort of people, with similar expectations participate.
From my perspective, Alfred’s point about Blogs (and direct reporting from ‘experts in the trenches’) replacing the need for mainstream media, actually supports the inclusion of people like Robert and other’s who are ‘not like him’ (Alfred). By this I mean to say, that Blogging is transforming the very nature in which we interact with news and knowledge and each other. It is no longer the one way communications of a static newspaper article, but it is a conversation, with ebb and flow, moving the participants to a deeper understanding through the back and forth exchange and thereby correcting mistakes in early reporting and resolving misinterpretations for the benefit of all.
What is it going to take to open up our discussions and our perspectives, to include more divergent observations, insights and points of view?

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Social Media Now: Blogger Code of Conduct is DOA

There are few things worse than media self-examination. It’s freighted with the kind of navel-gazing self importance that turns off all but the most egotistic insiders.

The mishugas surrounding Tim O’Reilly’s attempt to get a bloggers to adopt a code of conduct (his is modeled on the guidelines adopted by the BlogHer group) smacks a little bit of this kind of self-involvement.

I get civility. I practice it. Always will. But the kind of code O’Reilly’s is proposing is the kind of feel-good measure that will have no effect on the “problem,” to the extent that there is a problem at all.

As Duncan Riley wrote on the 901am blog: 

….those who think that a blogging code of conduct is the antidote to death threats and misogyny have about as much hope of success as I’ve got of space walking on Jupiter next year….

Reaction among the digerati has largely been strongly negative. People seem to feel there’s a mob mentality developing. Michael Arrington writes: 

…whenever someone, no matter how much I respect them, tries to tell me what I can and cannot do by defining “civility” around their own ideals, I tense up. It feels like a big angry mob is arming itself to the teeth and looking for targets, and I need to choose whether I’m with them or against them.

…The code of conduct and the mass of bloggers lining up behind it scares me a lot more than the hate comments and death threats
I’ve received in the past.

Robert Scoble had a similar reaction:

I do find disquieting the social pressure to get on board with this program. Tim O’Reilly is a guy who really can affect one’s career online (and off, too). I do have to admit that I feel some pressure just to get on board here and that makes me feel very uneasy.

Well, with this much opposition it hardly seems like the villagers are at the door with torches and pitchforks. In fact, it looks to me that the code is dead on arrival.

O’Reilly’s code would require bloggers to police themselves and the conversations that take place on their blogs for threatening language, libelous language, copyright infringement, and violations of privacy. But, except for the last matter, bloggers are already under a legal obligation to do these things or face potential civil or even criminal action. Contrary to popular belief, blog publishing is subject to the same legal standards of print publishing. There’s really no need for an extra code on this score.

Interestingly the only measure in O’Reilly’s code that would likely have an effect on blog incivility is the one that has met with the most opposition from the uber bloggers–banning anonymous comments.

I despise anonymous comments. Too often they function as a shield for precisely the kind of vitriol that creates problems, driving the level of discourse down to something that resembles a graffiti chain on a junior high school bathroom stall. Furthermore if the ethos of the social Internet is centered on personal responsibility, then taking responsibility for what you post–either on a blog or in comments–requires an openly declared identity. As a journalist, I was trained by both educators and editors, to allow source anonymity judiciously. It is an essential tool for reporting policy from the inside, for example, but it functions poorly in sport reporting when anonymous locker room sources pile on a coach or manager. Arrington and Scoble both refuse to ban anonymous comments. Fine. And certainly O’Reilly’s requirement that bloggers confirm the e-mail addresses of people posting comments is impractical. But anyone who accepts anonymous comments should be conscious of the potential for abuse.

 

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Social Media Club, NYC, 3/27/07

A fascinating Social Media Club meeting in NYC last night, covered well by Jason who led the discussion after Jay Rosen’s discussion of NewAssignment.net. Thanks to Jay for coming and for sharing what’s going on in this groundbreaking experiment.

I don’t have much time to do a full recap, but thanks to posts by Joshua Mack and Rachel Clarke  you don’t have to read what I thought about it.

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We’re all hardwired for Music

Tomorrow at the London Club, Michael Spencer and I will show you that we are all hardwired for music.  It’s in our very heartbeat.  Naturally, we want to walk the talk and include appropriate sound effects in the accompanying podcast.

There are several ways to include message-appropriate, cost-effective, and life-giving music and sound in social media. YouTubers record it themselves.  The exact mood or effect that you are looking for may be freely available and one link away, if you can find it! SOUNDDOGS.COM would have sold me 63 seconds of ‘pristing feature film quality’ heartbeat for $6.75 from its awsome collection.  Turbo Squid made no such claims, but would still have charged a round $5.

In the end, I followed a recommendation from Lars Ploughmann, whom I met last week while we learned how to podcast from the London Club’s usual master of ceremonies, Lloyd Davis.  Lars’ friend, Martin Christensen, provided me with several sound effects in easy-to-use MP3 format free gratis - for which I give my thanks.

So where are the results?  You’ll have to listen to tomorrow’s podcast to hear them.  There’s still time to input your thoughts and questions to make it a truly interactive evening.

 

  

 

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Social Media Now: USA Today’s Leap Across the Chasm

USA Today took a bold leap across the proverbial Social Media chasm today with the launch of their redesigned Web site. (Letter To Our Readers, New Features Explained) Opinions are mixed with more negative than positive reactions - Don Doge points out that most readers don’t like it, Steve Rubel says it does not go far enough, Tony Hung comments that their audience may not not ready for the technology.

Michael Arrington was right to commend the leadership, saying “[their effort] show[s] an intelligent commitment to building community at the site.” I join him in his praise, despite some concerns with their tactical execution and some more serious strategic issues with how they are attempting to engage their readers. Don Dodge points out the biggest problem with getting a clear assessment of the initial feelings, which he believes came from “readers with negative comments [who] were reacting to the layout changes, not the feature enhancements.” There are just too many variables that have changed to know how well the audience will feel about this within a month or two (though I also find the design awkward). My hope is that the leadership at USA Today will stick with this and follow the great advice of Forrester Analyst Josh Bernoff who says “Don’t look back. [...] But don’t stand pat. [...] Bring the readers into the print paper.”

From my perspective, Scott Karp asks the most interesting question though, which is “Who is right about the Social Media Revolution - The People or The Revolutionaries?“  There are three very important things to consider in all of this.

1. USA Today audience is largely aligned with “fast food oriented media consumption”

Simply put, there are not enough people in the early majority (chasm crossing analysis) of the general population yet who look, act, think and feel like social media champions do about this ‘revolution in media”. David Watson of Disney gave a great presentation at the workshop we helped facilitate during Fast Forward 07 where he used the metaphor of Social Media Producer/Consumers as floaters, swimmers and divers.

Floaters. They will float through whatever river of media they are presented from the comfort of their lean back experience.

Swimmers. The organizers, taggers and aggregators of information, swimming through the river and reporting on their experience

Divers. Those who go deep into the issue with philosophical and strategic insights, often backed by extensive research.

It is seemingly obvious that USA Today’s audience is made up of mostly floaters, as most of the nutritional value of their editorial comes in small bites, as opposed to more detailed examinations of current events. I recall former CEO Al Neuharth once saying something along the lines of “people don’t have time for the news any more, give them what they need most and give it to them quick” [paraphrasing for lack of a quote source on this]. Of course, in an attempt to “go to where the puck is going to be”, they are challenging the very core of their legacy values, which is bound to raise conflicts between the current readership and the citizen journalists they are ultimately trying to reach as part of their broader initiative to transform the company. Perhaps they will ultimately buy NowPublic once things get further along, pas the early stages of confronting the Innovator’s Dilemma.

2. Participation is largely situational and personal, just as with all volunteerism and social activism

At present, they don’t have a very strong context being presented that will give people a reason to participate (other than the complaints about the changes at least, or for some individual’s desire to promote racism). The values of the community must connect with individual passions and a higher purpose for being there and particiapting. It also needs a better answer to the age old question What’s In it For Me (WIIFM)? This is one of the reasons why I have long warned against anyone thinking that the growth of Social Media will be like a hockey stick. It will be more gradual and flatten out over time with occasional big jumps resulting from UI/technology advancements or major news events that touch us all and invokes an impassioned response.

Where is the demand/need coming from for the shifting media landscape? A lot of people still trust Main Stream Media, and distrust the “Bloggers” as much if not more then they distrust technology itself. Cultural and language barriers between early adopters of technology and everyday people are key inhibitors, but we must not underestimate previous smear campaigns such as Forbes’ widely reviled “Attack of the Bloggers”

Of course, we also need to take into account the lack of time available for people to participate, as work life balance has shifted to an all-in-one worklife, with no balance and no separation for many (like me). This is further compounded by an economic boom that prevents many from having time to contribute or even from finding the value from learning how to participate. Most folks I know who have a regular day job (as opposed to one ‘in the industry’) who are creating media and participating in the conversation, are replacing previous media consumption activities with media production and YouTube surfing…

So USA Today has not made a compelling argument to their readers as to why they would want to participate in this new way. There needs to be a stronger appeal that taps into their readership’s personal passions and they need to present a better context in which readers will be encouraged to become active.

3. Media Companies need to “become the Town Hall, and stop thinking like the Town Crier”

I have shared this with some folks I met from USA Today and many other media people over the past two years, but with this move from USA Today, it seems more organizations understand this and are heading in that direction. Until we get more real world experiments from companies brave enough to test the waters, how this manifests appropriately will largely be unknown. My chief complaint with USA Today’s tactical execution here is that they largely embraced the ideals of Socil Media strategy without practically adapting them to the specific situation of their readership, their brand and their strengths/weaknesses.

The walled gardens of Web 1.0 communities, Web 1.2 portals and early Web 2.0 variants like Ryze and even LinkedIn will be torn down. It is only a matter of time as Stowe Boyd demands “What I want is a social news application not limited to the content of any particular media company.” Communities need to look out for the interests of their community members, which means they need to make it easy for people to come and go as they choose, as they do from real town halls and town squares. This should mean it is easy to go back and forth between USA Today and the NY Times as much as between LinkedIn and tribe. Marc Canter is surely right about making social networking, identity, profiles, reputation and relationships open and more portable, I wish more people grokked that important point.

The Town Hall may be administered by a ‘benevolent dictator’ as Dave Winer is fond of saying, but it is operated for the benefit of everyone in the town, so take care of everyone and stop trying to lock people in artificially and focus more energy on keeping people around by offering a better product/service, a better perspective and a better experience. This reminds me of my favorite saying from the dotcom era via Fast Company which went something like “It’s not the first one that wins, but the first one to do it right that wins.” So kudos to USA Today for trying, lets hope they keep working on making it right…

So in response to Scott Karp’s question, I am in agreement with his assesment that the answer lies somewhere in the middle, but ultimately, it will be a matter of individual, situational and contextual relevance.  Not everyone needs to  participate in this way, but the systems utilized by media companies should allow for it and the people who operate those systems should encourage active participation by those who want to be heard.

[Interesting side note, Knochic points out that "The diggers are pissed...again"]

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Social Media Club San Francisco Tonight - 20FEB2007

If you were not aware of our meeting tonight here in San Francisco and are not busy somewhere else, we hope you can join us for a very interesting round table / workshop. We are very pleased to have our friends Tom Abate and Tom Foremski leading a discussion about what makes a good interview, and more broadly how to be better journalists. Tom Abate has written up a good post called “How to make friends and interview people” which you can read before coming down to CNet HQ tonight at 6pm. Please register here if you are coming…

My inspiration behind this topic was the realization that I often spend too much effort trying to get out my own thoughts and ideas, rather than giving my full undivided attention to the person I am interviewing. While that may just be symptomatic of the fact I am interviewing my peers, I guess I should have gone for the Major in Communications while at American University instead of the Minor. Ultimately, my hope is that we can all learn a thing or two about the process of interviewing someone and are able to improve the quality of of our blogs and podcasts. (if you want to bring a podcast rig, or video camera for your interviews, please do so!)

6:00pm - Registration opens, beers are cold
6:30pm - Kickoff
6:35pm - Introductions, share a new resource, tool or site you are now using
6:50 (or so) - Tom and Tom will be speaking for about 30 minutes, after which we will have a short break
7:30pm - Workshop - I propose that we break into pairs to do practice interviews for 5 minutes each focused on using some of the techniques and tips you learned, questions to be discussed
7:50pm - Reconvene as a group to discuss what worked, what didn’t work and what you learned
8:15pm - Wrap up

We will have beers and waters on hand to quench your thirst and a few light snacks while you soak in the good conversation.

We are getting busier and busier helping people all over the country and the world, which means we could really use some more help locally in San Francisco and Silicon Valley to assist things in running more smoothly here. If you are interested in helping organize future San Francisco gatherings, please let us know and/or just edit our San Francisco Wiki page, which is one of the things that needs help in getting updated at the moment…

BTW - the tag for the event is smc:interviewing

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