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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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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Is SxSW going to be the death of Twitter?

Just about 6 weeks ago, I wrote a post about Twitter being a great evolution of IM, moving to EM, which I called “everywhere messaging”. Well, in the weeks since, I have come to realize it is really about EP, “everywhere publishing” - but not just publishing in the broad sense, but rather, it is a functionally restricted form of micro-blogging. If you look at my Twitter feed, you will see that this is generally how I use it.

Unfortunately, it feels like Fonzi is getting his swim trunks on, and the sharks are looking ferocious. Why would I suggest that this great channel that I have been touting for the last few weeks is about to jump the shark? Because of the amount of focus on the use of Twitter as a communications channel down at SxSW (did I mention how bummed I am that I am not there?). BTW, I am seriously asking the question of whether SxSW will be the death of Twitter? The reason being that we must cross over and bump up against barriers in order for us to realize they exist in new realms - the amount of traffic coming through Twitterific is just overwhelming and causing it to lose its’ intimacy for me.

Tonight, I came back to the Social Media Clubhouse from dinner with Kristie and Tom Foremski to see that my last 20+ Twitters were a back and forth conversation between my friends Chris Pirillo and Robert Scoble about Twitter. In fact, Kristie, Tom and I were just having a conversation in the car no more then 60 minutes ago about the same problem. I already can’t keep track of the friends I really care about staying connected to with the increase in usage, and now I am feeling guilty every time someone adds me as a friend when I don’t add them in return. But I can’t add everyone - I just don’t have the extra attention to invest, and to Chris Pirillo’s point

what happens when you have 10,000 followers - and their responses get buried because you can’t reciprocate?

The thing is, the very nature of Twitter, which Kristie pointed out mirrors the addictive nature of Flickr, will lead to a natural increase in the frequency in usage, the scope of usage and the number of people using the service. In the last week, I have received at least 30 friend requests, and I am not really that well known or popular. Scoble is over 1,000 already and climbing fast. Pirillo is right, but he need not go out to 10,000 followers - Scoble is already having responses and more get buried - it has happened in his voicemail where he directs you to email, and even in email and other channels, he is always going to fight to keep up, despite all his very hard work and great intentions.
The thing about Twitter, Flickr and other similarly architected services is that we like staying in touch with the people we care about, the people we WANT to have connecttions with. Unfortunately, and as I have been saying a lot lately - Humans Don’t Scale. Dunbar was really right - I am pretty much putting the Dunbar number in the same category as Newton’s laws of gravity. It is important to note that I am not hoping for its demise - far from it. I am however wondering what can be done about those of us that care about such things in thinking about some sort of guideliness to prevent usage patterns from destroying the incredible value we find in staying connected to the people we care about most.

So what are the limits of Twitter, what are the best uses? Can we put this altogether in a wiki? Am I just crazy? Or is the usage of it morphing in ways that are really decreasing the value of the channel instead of increasing it? Is there any possibility to save Twitter from Twittering itself to death?

Mea Culpa: Occasionally, I do use the dreaded @ myfriend message myself. At this time, I want to apologize to everyone for this terrible, terrible assault on your attention. Direct messages should be sent directly - or if it was/is necessary to build upon a conversational thread, I should have made the slight additional effort to have blogged it myself on my full site. Perhaps Twitter could make a C messageID, or C myfriend feature to redirect some of this additional traffic. But honestly, I think the additional volume, the experimentation and the morphing of this great everywhere publishing must give us all pause, to rethink what works well and what doesn’t - to then start modeling the behaviour we hope to see from others…

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Chris Heuer Video on Social Media

On Thursday March 1, 2007, Chris Heuer opened up the Revolution in Marketing Conference in Phoenix, AZ with these remarks about Social Media and Social Media Club (please note, first 10 minutes is not on this video). This conference was organized by Francine Hardaway and a great team of volunteers we met as part of National Entrepreneurship Week. She has been working to organize Social Media Club in the Phoenix, AZ area, and regularly brings together 40+ people to discuss what is happening in Social Media locally. In addition to 2 great panels after my talk, Robert Scoble closed the conference with a great keynote. Robert showed everyone how he uses Google Reader and delved deeper into some of the important tactics needed to make the most of the opportunity that Social Media, and blogging in particular, represents. Kristie Wells, ran this camera for us, Steve Groves Rhodes has posted other audio and video from the conference.

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The Discussion About “Social Media” as a Meme

Once again, the use of the term Social Media is under scrutiny by some of the loudest voices in the blogosphere. Robert Scoble’s post “what is social media” seems to have reignited a thread that Jeremiah Owyang started a couple of weeks ago that I responded to with my post, Is It Really Called Social Media, Yes!. Yes Dare Obasanjo is right, the Social Media entry in Wikipedia is woefully lacking, and there are many other very insightful points to consider in that conversation which point out reasons to be vigilant. Rather than diving in to a tit for tat on everyone’s points which would take me all day, I had a great conversation with Brian Solis this morning about a post he is writing which lead me to write this comment for Robert’s blog, which I decided to post here as well…

Many early adopters are worried that the very idea of authentic human engagement, based on trust and conversations between individual’s via the Internet will be corrupted in the way that the original spirit of netiquette was corrupted by spammers – that real world social problems like greed and predatory behaviour will infect our idealistic utopia, ruining it for everyone. They surely have reason to be concerned, even though they are not being completely practical - nor are many focusing their anger at the right people. As Brian Solis pointed out to me this morning “most of the people that need to hear these things, are not even participants in this conversation, and therein lies the problem.” Worse, those other people will see many of the angriest voices as indicative of a more serious problem with how things are today and won’t ever respond in a way that will let them really understand why it is important.

This is why we need to come together, acting like paramedia, in groups like ours and others with their different and overlapping interests, to illuminate what is right and and to point out what is wrong – to have conversations like this in our global neighborhood around the question of why things are and how we think they should really be. To hold up those who really ‘get it’ as examples to be followed and analyze things like WalMarting Across America for why it is so wrong.

We need not throw out the term Social Media for the mere fact that some people will sour its intention and purpose during the course of socializing the deeper understanding of what is happening and what it means. The worst of the arguments I see against the term is seemingly inspired by a desire to be a part of a select group of early adopters associated with a phrase that is only being used on the edge by the cool kids – ie, our clique has no room for all you ‘squares’. There is much value in this bath water, and I think our baby on this journey across the chasm is called Social Media.

Let’s stand up for what is right about “social media” rather than tearing it down just because a few misguided folks are misappropriating the meme. Better still, let’s not get all caught up in trying to control the message around the phrase – isn’t that part of what many are fighting against anyway – the right of people in the world to choose how they tell the story? Kind of ironic that so many ‘defenders’ of the spirit of what we are doing are in fact engaging with the same controlling mindset as those they are attacking. We can get all caught up in the semantic analysis and attempt to create a taxonomy for “social media” or we can stop trying to control it all and watch what emerges, accelerating the good bits and putting the kebosh on the bad.  The world is often grey and mushy, especially when it comes to emergent memes such as this…

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The Social Media Release Under Attack

Earlier this week at Third Thursday, we talked about the Social Media Release and thankfully recorded the next NMRCast, so the full conversation will soon be online.  Stowe Boyd was in attendance and had some very pointed questions, which we felt we answered to a degree, but did not dive into more deeply so as to hear other voices in attendance.  His blog post entitled “Enough Already: Getting Social Media all wrong” was a one-sided commentary that failed to even link to this site or  Social Media Release Blog and has now been picked up by Robert Scoble and others.  Our response was posted over here, so please join in on the conversation and let us know your thoughts…   BTW, if you really want to know about this subject, please read the draft of the requirements we wrote.

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Social Media Club Phoenix:Revolution in Marketing Mini-Conference

Damn, we did it again! Although about five people who had signed up called in sick, about fifty people who hadn’t registered in advance showed up, and we blew the doors off the room for the third month in a row. When I asked people to raise their hands and tell me if they were producers or consumers of social media (by which I meant “do you already participate, or are you hear to learn?”), the room was divided almost equally in half.

Because of the enormous amount of interest in social media, we are holding a mini-conference the morning of March 1 at Grand Canyon University in Phoenix. Chris Heuer will come down to give us some good definitions of social media, followed by three case studies of Arizona organizations who are heavily involved, and keynoted by the grand old man of the space,  Robert Scoble and his better half. You will be able to sign up next week, but in the mean time you can save a spot by emailing me at francine@stealthmode.com.

Because we were talking about the Social Media Press release tonight, we had many PR people in the room, and one former BusinessWire employee who defended the traditional wire service method of distribution. We also had a radio talk show host who said she had never received anything but the traditional press release, and she reminded us that the revolution may not have really begun. I think some of us needed to hear that.  We live in our own little word of podcasts and BlogHauses.
We talked a bit about the elements of the press release–which of them were new and which were just additive to traditional releases. It then became clear that while most PR practitioners now felt comfortable with links in a press release, most still weren’t familiar with services like Digg, Technorati, or Deli.cio.us (sic), nor would it occur to them to, say, embed a video in a press release. Moreover, many people felt uncomfortable with giving the media “too much” information, which could mean losing control of the corporate messages.
Unfortunately, I’m a horrible moderator because I like to hear myself talk and I lectured on far too long about why everyone needed to know about what’s “out there” in the social media space and how it could be used to communicate with more than just media — with customers, constituents, shareholders, etc. But finally I shut up and let everyone network, and when I left, the room was still full.

We are begging everyone from Phoenix to sign up in advance for Feb. 8. We may have to cut off reservations.

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