Blake joins CEO/founder Jim Lanzone (former CEO of Ask.com) on the board, along with Bill Gurley of Benchmark Capital and Geoff Yang of Redpoint Ventures.  Clicker’s mission is to be the ultimate programming guide for television on the Internet, and they have the team to do it.  Of all the thing’s Blake could have done since leaving Sling (and that’s more or less whatever he wanted) he’s decided to make Clicker his first move.  That’s a heck of a vote of confidence – not to mention some personal financial investment.

I’ve known Blake since my Mediabolic days when he first saw me demo the “Digital Library” from Pioneer back in 2003. He then hired me as the first employee at Sling Media, where I worked my proverbial tail off to help bring his vision (the Slingbox) to the market.  Sling was a huge success, both by making great products and by the eventual acquisition by Echostar in 2007.  Now with Blake joining the Clicker team, he is yet in the position where he controls my fate (albeit to a slightly lesser extent than in the past).

The press release went out on the wire this morning.  Some of the coverage we’ve gotten is listed below – we’ll update the list as other coverage comes in.

• Giga Om
• NewTeeVee
• Business Insider
• Paid Content

A few folks have picked up the news, which went out via blog post on the official VUDU blog this morning. We will update the list of coverage below as we see it.

• Engadget
• Engadget HD
• Reaction Radio
• Electronista
• eHome Upgrade
• Should Be Free
• IGN

The issue that BOKU had was that it needed to draw some attention to its product even though it was a sponsor but didn’t have a booth on site. Stage Two was tasked with coming up with a quick solution that was easy to implement and could generate some positive publicity. After mulling through several options internally, including the possibility of holding a contest, conducting live interviews or utilizing Twitter, our team decided that the best way was to keep it a little simpler.

At the Virtual Goods Summit, each attendee was given a pin to wear and the ones that wore them the most creatively & were spotted by the BOKU team were awarded one of two prizes. Some received a working remote-controlled helicopter with the BOKU logo while others were given embroidered BOKU track jackets. The Stage Two team rolled into action by photographing and video recording the recipients playing with the “BOKU-copter” – which was also posted on the BOKU blog for additional promotion.

You can view some of the photos taken from the Virtual Goods Summit on the BOKU blog or their Flickr page. Additionally, videos are also on their official YouTube channel as well.

Stage Two is proud to help promote the 2010 recruiting season of EnCorps.

EnCorps is a San Francisco based non-profit that  recruits retiring engineers, scientists and technology experts to become math and science teachers in California’s under-resourced public schools state wide. Today they begin recruiting great minds to begin teaching as soon as the fall of 2010.

With math science test scores faltering in a state that is known for technological innovation,  EnCorps taps  the knowledge of experienced math and science professionals to teach a new generation. In 2009, EnCorps attracted over 1,100 applicants and recruited over 100 math and science professionals. The organization plans to recruit 200 new teachers for fall of 2010.

Doing outreach for EnCorps we got to know the stories of some of the amazing EnCorps recruits. One such recruit is Sharon White. Sharon grew up in Compton California, a notoriously rough Los Angeles neighborhood. After graduating college, she went on to work for Boeing for thirty years in a variety of fields including finance and engineering. As she headed towards retirement, Sharon realized she wanted to leave a positive legacy in her neighborhood.  She knew her success was because of those who had supported and encouraged her when she was young and she wanted to “pay forward” her gratitude. Sharon enrolled in EnCorps and is now a full time Math teacher at Locke High School in LA.

EnCorps recruits have many stories like this to tell. Some are teachers. Some on the path to become teachers all have encouraged by EnCorps to give back to their communities.
If you or someone you know has been thinking about teaching, check out the EnCorps site.

Full disclosure: EnCorps is a not-for-profit organization and a pro bono client of Stage Two.

Qualifications:

• Fast learner: you need to be able to take direction on something once, then repeat it again ever after
• Self starter: some projects will be “high level” – we’re counting on you to figure out some of the details
• Organized: you must be able to juggle many simultaneous projects, without letting a ball drop at any time
• Communicator: you should be able to talk to us, our clients, our guests, our friends, our family, strangers walking down the street, people on the bus, etc
• Detail-oriented: seriously, the little things are the ones that do matter & we care a lot about them.

Brownie points to gamers, bloggers, pop culture geeks (extra credit given for the subtle use of Arrested Development quotes)

Responsibilities:

• Organizing lots of things – we have tons of documents (digital, not the paper stuff) that need to be better organized
• Research – whether it’s poring through research reports or lots of Googling, we’ll need you to be able to find things out on the Internets
• Basic typical office stuff – filing, copying, answering the phone, operating the coffee grinder, playing lead vocals on Rock Band, etc
• Attend events – whether its our own clients or just industry events, you will be expected to attend some industry/networking activities (these typically occur in the evening, no travel will be required)

Details:

• Full-time job based in our office
• Compensation is $22-$28K plus benefits (possibly higher if you can make the case for it!)

Our office is in the amazing Jackson Square district of San Francisco.  We are close to several MUNI stops, great restaurants/bars, and fine entertainment establishments. If you’re interested, email us (yes, you’ll want to edit that email address):

1. a link to an online resume (or Word doc if needed)
2. a short bio
3. why you think this is a perfect fit for you (we recommend you do not send us the same cover letter you use everywhere else)
4. which of our clients excites you the most, and why

Any emails without all of the above will be ignored, and probably marked as spam.  Feel free to let us know if you have any questions. Otherwise, we look forward to hearing from you. If you read nothing else (you won’t get the job, but…) be sure to at least read this and this.

PLEASE NOTE: We are now in the process of screening applicants, and will no longer be accepting new resumes (though we may have some internships open in the late Fall if you’d like to get in touch for that). Thank you for your interest!

Stage Two’s productivity is in serious jeopardy here, as one of our favorite office addictions – Redux – announced today that they have enabled Facebook and Twitter feed importing, weeding through the boring status updates and bit.ly links and bringing those feeds to life right in Redux. Redux has always been a great resource for finding the best stuff on the web, whether it is great Arrested Development clips (”Her?”), One Hit Wonder music videos, funny cat pics, or links to great new sites.

Now, with Twitter and Facebook importing, Redux has become a real-time, one-stop-shop for all the entertainment shared by our friends from all over the web. These feeds are a big leap forward for Redux and a huge leap backwards for the working world.

Check out some of the coverage from the announcement (updated as it comes in):

• Read Write Web
• Mashable
• NewTeeVee
• Lifehacker

Marketing professionals now have more to do than they ever did before, more frequently, and with less preparation time. The upside is that marketers can now engage with customers much more directly and on a wider scale, but this new power comes at the expense of time, energy and requires a supreme understanding of each new nuanced tool the Internet provides.

20 years ago if you wanted to keep your brand current and in the minds of your customers you:

• Had a billboard
• Updated your brochure only when your product changed (which wasn’t very often)
• Had print, radio and TV spots that could last for months or even years.
• If you were really adventurous you sent out a newsletter every few months.

10 years ago you:

• Had a website that functioned statically, much like an online billboard with a bit more information about your company.
• Had to consider how much online vs print exposure you should have
• Sent out email as well as paper newsletters
• Faxed stuff (maybe – we’re still not sure about this whole “fax” thing)

5 years ago you:

• Started (or considered) a blog to go along with your website and started updating once every few days.
• Listed yourself on Yelp/Craigslist/LinkedIN/etc
• Began looking into SEO and wondered if social networking sites could help you get the word out about your product.
• Oh, and you didn’t get to stop sending out newsletters or advertising in the paper or having a billboard, you still had to worry about all those things too. But definitely no more faxing.

Today you must:

• Manage a Facebook page along with perhaps several other profiles, all the while wondering if there is a better way to leverage these sites
• Update your blog regularly with compelling content as well as immediately respond to news in your industry that affects your consumers
• Post on Twitter about that latest blog entry and all the news about your product, and gain a Twitter following and monitor Twitter for mentions of your brand
• Keep up on SEO, optimize SEM
• Send that newsletter and analyze the engagement it yields
• Get that iPhone app up
• Monitor your Google alerts
• Make that widget…
• and you can’t forget about you Yelp reputation and all your traditional advertising.

But beyond the sheer amount of work required to keep up with all these new channels and platforms, there are marketing challenges that occur in the dynamic of the information age. For instance, how do you stand out from all the noise? How do you compete with so much other information, some of it from your competitors, for user attention? Consumers today see more advertisements, receive more messages, juggle so much more information than they ever have before. This kind of environment demands that your product the memorable, sticky and relevant or it will be lost to the ever flowing current of noise.

Also, not all engagement with your target is equal. How do you determine the value of engagement in the interactive space? For some companies, having aFacebook page with a hundred fans measures a high level of engagement with the brand. For others this a formality at best. The same questions arise from all other social media environments. What is the value of a follower on Twitter? Or the power of a positive tweet by satisfied customer? How much interaction with an app is enough to make a lasting impression?

All the free tools the Internet offers do not create a strategy, an experienced marketing professional does.  All the different types of engagement does not bring you a string of customers, but learning from that engagement can. Blogging does not create an audience, but positioning and messaging can. Now more than ever, companies need a team of professionals that can guide them through the crowded media landscape and make sure they stand out.

Also, in order to put one topic to bed, there is unquestionably a need for a quantity of outlets. There is no single blog or news organization whose content reaches the entire potential audience a company would like to get in front of. Further, as the “business of news” has become ridiculously competitive, many news outlets will simply not cover a topic if they are not one of the absolute first to do so (which isn’t exactly great for their readers, but that’s a different story).

So let’s envision what the world of news and content distribution might look like without any embargoes whatsoever. In this world, there are NO pre-briefings done, ever. A company has news, it can choose how to disseminate it (blog, press release, twitter, video, etc). Journalists pick up on stories through the medium(s) of their choosing, and write stories as they see fit. Please note there are quite a few generalizations here, and as such there are always exceptions.

Scenario 1: HUGE BREAKING IMPORTANT STORY (e.g. Steve Jobs sick, Microsoft buys Yahoo, Twitter is down, etc)
In this case, it’s fairly likely that the news will propagate to a lot of outlets. When the content is “too big to ignore” it will get lots and lots of coverage. Note that these types of events rarely have embargoes today anyway, since it’s hard to contain/control something that’s quite so widespread.
This is a win for journalists, the company with the news, and readers all of whom get what they want out of the picture.

Scenario 2: Medium-sized news (e.g. new startup launches something interesting/innovative, new features added to existing popular site/service, Twitter is down, etc) – released by blog post (or press release). A list of selected media/journalists are also emailed about the news at the moment it is released.
Here we have a classic race situation. Those who can post fastest will do so (let’s assume 1-3 “newsbreakers” cover it), and likely with the least amount of added thought/perspective. As a result of the initial coverage, no other “newsbreaker” sites write it up (”it’s already on XXX, so we’re going to skip”). Later in the day a few more pieces are added, with some additional perspective or insight on the topic. Also, some of the initial sites’ stories are updated to include additional commentary. On rare occasion, the topic is interesting enough to get additional coverage, but for the most part it’s hit-and-run, and fades out of memory rapidly.

This is a loss for journalists (more on this in a second), the company with the news, and readers (who will be less likely to find out about new things because their news outlets of choice become less likely to cover it).

Incidentally, this is probably the primary area where embargoes are used today, as they effectively help get wider coverage for the same content, not to mention deeper thought/investigation into the topic. Due to the desire to be “first”, however, journalists simply don’t have the incentive to write more in-depth pieces (much to their chagrin, for the most part). I’d also assume that this world would create even MORE unwanted email flooding journalists’ inboxes, as the mass of PR people have virtually no other mechanism of bringing stories to their attention.

Scenario 3: Same as above, but nobody is emailed about the news, it’s only released via blog/PR/twitter/etc, and anyone who “wants to find it” can do so.
This is the ultimate “free for all” that many new media people seem to be in love with, at least in theory. Here the burden is now on the journalists to track companies they are interested in. The fundamental issue here is the natural bias (people write about content/companies they like) which develops. Further, startups who aren’t “connected” in some way have even more trouble of getting awareness about their new venture.

This is a major loss for everyone involved, other than those who are “in” and benefit even more from having connections.  Overall, less people write about less varied things, and less readers find out about less stuff.

Ultimately I keep hearing anecdotally how bloggers and other media would like to have things simply be open and freeform in this manner (get some sleep MG!!!), but in practice it seems utterly contradictory. It seems understated when I say there’s already a tremendous amount of noise out there, and I fundamentally believe that it’s the relationships built between media and quality PR folks that helps create signal out of noise.

Scenario 4: Minor news (e.g. unimportant hiring, minor technology improvement, Twitter is down, etc)
I see this playing out per #2/3 above, except with almost no coverage happening whatsoever. This is the area where I think getting rid of embargoes is probably beneficial, as it will help naturally weed out this kind of fluff and nonsense. Companies and their PR teams will have to stop with the old-school mentality of issuing press releases for the sake of issuing press releases.

This is a win mostly for readers, as journalists will still get spammed (in the short term), and companies will actually need to dig deeper into the strategy bucket than they have in the past (which is, of course, a long term good thing).

Other thought on the topic: The In Crowd gets In-ner
Let’s face it, there’s most certainly a “who do you know?” effect present in the high-tech industry, be it for deal-making, venture capital, press coverage, or all of the above. While it is very possible to insert new companies and people into these circles, it’s harder than ever to build something without some degree of connectivity. And as much as most of the people would very much like to meet new folks (I sincerely believe it is a set of extremely welcoming communities), the fact of the matter is people are just plain busy. If you aren’t lucky enough to bump into someone at a meetup or event or other random activity, it can be a big uphill battle to get any attention. By removing the ability for “new players” to work with connectors at PR firms efficiently,they will inherently have more trouble gaining any attention (and the “meh” startups from “connected” people will unfortunately gain far more attention than they truly merit). One of my greatest concerns over any concept of removing embargoes, PR teams, etc, is that I think it will ultimately hurt “the little guys” much more than anyone else.

I’m sure I’m missing a few scenarios and possibilities out there, but as far as I can see it, the relationship between companies (big and small), PR teams (internal or external), journalists, and readers is supposed to be a healthy one (we shouldn’t need Robert’s list of tricks!). Any time one of those groups makes moves to hurt the others, it ultimately hurts the system itself. And the system as we have it today could definitely use some improvement, but I’d rather see the energy spent on improving the checks & balances and accountability structure. It’s not specifically the embargo process that needs work, it’s a broader approach to how we think about the ethics and responsibility people throughout the industry should employ.  Whether it’s little blogs or huge outlets, PR firms or internal teams, everyone has a responsibility of playing by some system of rules.

- 12mail video messaging is a new type of communication – basically you can send short video messages back and forth to your friends.  It’s sort of in-between voicemail, email, Twitter, Youtube, MMS and Facebook, amalgamating a bunch of different types of communication into a new medium

- It runs on the iPhone, a device which has become a class unto itself in terms of mobile computing

- 12mail leverages your personal networks on Facebook and Twitter for your contact list – you can send private video messages to Twitter contacts (they show up as DM’s) and public video messages to specific friends (which show up as wall posts)

This app launch was what inspired last months post about promoting iPhone app launches, and the idea of using a “floating embargo.”  At 4AM this morning I received word that the app was live in the app store, and sent a message to all the press and bloggers who were interested in the news to give them the “all clear.” Not my optimal sleep schedule, but if the press are willing to work with us then we need to be willing to update them accurately and tell them in real time when the embargo lifts.

In the course of outreach, nearly everyone I spoke with was very understanding about the floating deadline, and very willing to work with us.  Maybe the frustrating and arbitrary policies Apple has instituted have an unexpected bonding effect, bringing people together in the face of this particular adversity.

In any case, coverage has been relatively strong this morning.  The normal fixed embargo generally results in a big rush of coverage all coming at once.  I think today will be different, and we will see coverage occur on a more random schedule, as people are able to fit it into their day.  We will update the list as we see things come in.

• Cult Of Mac
• Techcrunch
• ReadWriteWeb
• App Scout
• NewTeeVee
• Download Squad
• Into Mobile
• AppleTell

What started as a simple concept, allowing music lovers to track the music they play around the web or on their computers and tie it all back to one spot, has grown into a site that we think will become the go-to spot for music lovers to connect to all of the hottest music on the web.

The idea of media “ownership” is a thing of the past. Music is all over the web, spinning and being shared constantly by people just like you. Whether you spin Last.fm, imeem, HypeM, MySpace, or any of the many music services out there to discover new artists and tracks, you are consuming more music in a day than you can possibly remember. Twones solves that problem with a simple browser add-on that tracks your music and stores it in your Twones library.

Once you hit “play”, Twones gives you all of the information you could hope to find about an artist: Wikipedia bios, similar artists, Flickr pictures, YouTube videos, Twitter buzz – even upcoming concert dates!

Below are some of the blog posts and coverage from the launch.  We’ll update the list throughout the day.

• Lifehacker
• Mashable
• CNET