I am the mayor of NBC News Washington on Foursquare

Late Development

Foursquare testing analytics dashboard for restaurants.  Details appeared in The Next Web after surfacing in  restaurant trade publication  Nation’s Restaurant News.  Next Web US editor Alex Wilhelm posted the news on Twitter.

If Twitter’s raison d’etre is  “what are you doing?”, then location based social network apps like Gowalla and Foursquare refine that to “where are you doing it?”  And as SXSWi fast approaches, people like Robert Scoble are dubbing this years’ web-geek spring break “the location based SXSW” Until recently, I’ve been reluctant to jump into these networks, letting others find utility before I take the plunge.  When Twitter first began to percolate up in the public lexicon, many thought it was dumb, and back in 2006, I was a skeptic as well.   I’m operating under the premise that if you’re reading this, you don’t doubt Twitter’s importance.  But now, why check in throughout the day and share the geographic details of your travels with your various social networks?  What precisely is the point? Still somewhat dubious myself, I polled my Twitter network.  How important are place based networks like foursquare and gowalla to businesses and users? What are their impact on  the social web? Are they moving the dial?  My always savvy and diverse Twitter friends came up with some very interesting answers.  What unfolds is a tale of risk, reward, and redemption.

Redemption – Opportunites for Consumers and Business with Brand Loyalty Programs.

The social storefront.

As Gowalla investor Chris Sacca pointed out to me, these apps are a big deal to brands.

sacca @newmediajim With @gowalla we’ve seen that brands are thrilled an app can finally show them if consumers show up somewhere. That’s huge.

Brand loyalty programs are a no-brainer for these mobile social network apps.  Remember those cards you’d get from your favorite coffee shop?  They’d punch or stamp the back, and after a certain number of visits you’d get a free coffee.  Now with these apps, the business gets your repeat traffic, plus the added benefit of their brand being promoted and amplified to your networks.  Win Win.

Web strategist Nate Riggs calls this a “low hanging fruit” strategy, emphasizing how this one just stares you in the face.

Serious potential falls into the lap of small businesses who are motivated (and brave enough) to begin experimenting with how they can utilize the application to tap into their mavens – the loyal customers who visit often and tell their real friends about the experience.

He outlines a strategy to drive customer retention, foot traffic, and return customers here – simple and useful.

Caitlin Thayer of the Mark Twain House and Museum plans on starting a Foursquare effort for the historic landmark.

CTinCT @newmediajim I’m just starting to promote/push @foursquare usage with @TwainHouse visitors. Excited about the possibilties!

CTinCT @newmediajim encouraging visitors to check in, I have a sign at the front desk with that, Twitter name and FB link. Thinking now about..

CTinCT @newmediajim ..giving free admission to whoever is the Mayor, or something similar. Haven’t advertised that yet. Great opp for brand recog.

Reward – You Have to Play to Win

The social gaming aspect of apps like foursquare,  silly to me at first, is a narcotic to me now.  I’m currently the mayor of nine venues on Foursquare – my jewel in the crown – my “mayor of the White House” crown.  Now, while no executive powers confer with this mayorship, it sure is a nice little feather in the cap.  Of course, now that it’s public that I’m the mayor, I’m sure to be ousted.  Incidentally, I ousted @Daroff from the White House.  He and I are now locked in mortal combat to be mayor of our local Starbucks.  Game on!

But frankly, people lose interest in games.  These platforms will only retain users if brands implement reward redemption programs for their mobile, networked consumers.

Risk – Are We Opting Out of Privacy and Safety?

In an interview with Gigaom’s Liz Gannes, Google’s engineering director David Glazer posits “Everything is better when it knows who I am,” – which immediately brings to mind this scene from Minority Report.

A potential, and even more nefarious risk of oversharing and geotagging is tech savvy, networked crooks.  By now, most of us who use Foursquare and Gowalla have been hipped to the Rob Me Now web site.

Moving Forward

Still, all of this is just an indicator of the explosive growth of the mobile web and apps that support it.  While everybody was crowing about Facebook’s patent of their news feed, there was not nearly as much fanfare for Google’s patent on location based advertising.  Gowalla and Foursquare are the two new shiny players in this space.  Brightkite has been around for a while and is currently developing a universal, location based checkin app that will allow you to update all three platforms.  Here’s how they shape up traffic-wise.

Ultimately, as with Twitter, success will be directly linked to mainstream adoption, which as in Twitter’s case required mainstream press, celebrity adoption and the like.  We’ll see if this years SXSWi conference will give these apps a bump.

So is this the time for these location based social networks to take off?  What do you think?

Further Reading

How Local Businesses Can Benefit From Mobile Social Networks

The Socialization of Small Business

You Are Now the Mayor of Starbucks!

A Few Ways Journalists Can Use Foursquare

Restaurant Owner Increases Sales by 110% with Foursquare Swarm Badge Party

Foursquare Introduces Minority Report-Like Analytics

Foursquare Introduces New Tools For Business

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.

On the Road Again

In a few hours I’ll be wheels up from Joint Base Andrews on a chartered 747 bound for Asia.  I’ll be accompanied by my colleagues and contemporaries from the worlds of broadcast, print, and online journalism.  We’ll be keeping tabs on President Obama has he participates in the APEC summit in Singapore, and visits regional powers China, Korea, and Japan.  And as the Fifth Estate – you guys, readers of this blog, Twitter friends -  I’m hoping you keep tabs on US.  When I get to Andrews I’m going to put together a Twitter list of journos going on the trip and I hope to share that here before we take off.  If I’m unable to turn it around that fast I’ll get it to you when we land.

AS PROMISED, HERE IS THE LIST

Work Shifters

David Baeza of Citrix Online considers the White House traveling press to be the “ultimate workshifters”.  Workshifting – the notion of working from hotels, coffee shops, or anywhere that isn’t a cubicle in an office building.  I met David and his colleague Lisa Horner when I spoke at the Inbound Marketing Summit in Boston.  After hearing my story, they knew they’d found a real workshifter.

Our office is wherever we set up our workspace and transmission facility.  The logistics involved in covering the President on a global trip are dizzying , especially for television.  We will parachute into each stop on this trip and work out of a pool transmission facility/workspace that has been set up in advance.  Each stop will be abuzz with activity as crews and reporters are transported to and from various events.  No one will be getting much sleep on this trip.  I think my last best chance of that will be on the plane.

Adventures in Sleep Deprivation

While covering the Clinton White House,  The Discovery Channel followed the White House press corps as they traveled with the President on a trip that included stops in Turkey, Greece and other countries hidden in the cobwebs of my memory.  They were shooting a documentary about sleep deprivation and we proved to be the perfect subjects.  Here is  a preview video of the documentary, and if you don’t blink, you’ll catch a glimpse of me two pairs of glasses ago.

These trips are grueling, and this one will prove to be no different.  If you want to see what it’s really to cover VIP trips, take a look at these videos.  I produced a two part web series on an around-the-world trip we did with Defense Secretary Gates back in 2007.  This will give you an idea of the schedules and workloads we endure.

Round-the-world with the SecDef

Inside the Pentagon travel pool

The Fifth Estate

So I hope you’re able to keep track of us as we travel with the President throughout Asia.  Before we head out is there anything you’d like to ask me or some of my colleagues?  Please do so in the comments below! You always know where to find me and I’m grateful that you all keep me company when I’m on the road. Look forward to hearing from you guys.

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

Politico, Newschannel 8, and WJLA TV Parent company, Allbritton Communications, has announced that it is jumping into local media here in the Washington DC metro area. Planned for launch next spring, the yet unnamed site hopes to leverage social web technology to lure audiences who have become disenchanted with traditional media. They also hope replicate the success of the reportedly profitable Politico.

GAME CHANGER

So is this a game changer for local media in the Washington area? The New Republic’s website, TNR.com, who originally broke the story, framed this as a direct challenge to the Washington Post. But as more local TV stations place greater emphasis on their web presence, this “local Politico” will pose a challenge to TV stations as well. So I asked Twitter the following:

HEY DC PEEPS!! what are your thoughts on Politico’s foray into the online local news space??

Predictably,  there was no shortage of opinion.  Here are just a few.

Faryna

@newmediajim Considering WP’s gestapo tact on the opinion of their own journalists, is Jim Brady prepared to get out of the box? We’ll see.

anamariecox

RT @newmediajim: HEY DC PEEPS!! what are your thoughts on Politico’s foray into the local news space? http://is.gd/4H4We // SUPER PSYCHED!

Audreyforshey

@newmediajim I would subscribe, listen to POLITICO interviews on WTOP and they appeal to me. Like my news on the go.

loudoun

@newmediajim Politico local news…they should read this…http://bit.ly/3kjwhf – and then curate/cultivate relationships with the locals

ScottEblin

@newmediajim Means that the future is here. If they do as good a job as they did with Politico, the WaPo should be worried.

chrisobrooks

Just got this WAPO email re: redesign of their local news site. 1 day aftr Politico scare, coincidence? http://twurl.nl/k80fr7

Jim Brady At The Helm

Courtesey Michael Schwarz - Politico

Jim Brady, former WashingtonPost.com editor, will oversee a staff of 50 at the operation. In his presentation this past week at an Online News Association confab, entitled – Mobile: The Future is Now – Brady may have betrayed the strategy of the new site. I suspect there will be a very strong emphasis on mobile apps and geolocation, which makes sense. Mobile strategy is timely.  ComScore data indicates daily mobile news consumption has more than doubled in the past year. And if he believes what he preaches, not only will he staff the newsroom well, but he’ll bring on a strong mobile app development team. I also suspect that these mobile apps will be bi-directional, meaning users will be able to consume stories and upload their own content to the site. Another interesting data point from a Universal McCann study shows that 53% of smartphone users are clicking on mobile ads.

Catalyst For Change

So now that the story is out, it will be interesting to see how other local media respond. Competition is good, and hopefully better multimedia/online journalism should result from this. This could be a catalyst for great change for local media in the DC metro area. Will this new site embrace social tools and encourage networked journalism, crowdsourcing, hyperlocal news? While all of that “webby goodness” appeals to the web 2.0 evangelists, it’s noteworthy and encouraging to this media worker that, according to this NY Times piece, Allbritton plans on paying competitive, large market newspaper salaries for seasoned pros.

Ultimately, a site like this will live or die on how it serves the needs of the local community. So assembled readers, what is it that will make a site like this work, for the publisher and the community. Why have so many other hyperlocal, local web plays failed? What would you like to see from a local web news provider? Please discuss in the comments below!

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)

Yesterday I had the opportunity to chat with the folks at TV Newser on their podast Morning Media Menu, as a preview of my panel participation at today’s TV Newser Summit in New York City.  We covered a wide range of topics, from how I began exploring emergent, social media, to how traditional media has taken a shine to new media tools like Twitter.  Steve Garfield called into the show and talked about the Today Show’s Jamie Gangel and her introduction to Twitter last week.

You can see @jamiegangel’s interaction with the Twitter community here.  I’ve added some of the comments to my favorites.  As part of that story, Jamie spoke with David Gregory who has really embraced the spirit of dialogue and smart community on Twitter.  I’m guessing my most quotable soundbite from the podcast is:

“We’re Moving From Meet the Press, and Now We Can Meet the People”

Follow Meet the Press moderator @davidgregory and you’ll watch it happen.  He understands the value of tapping into the collective intelligence of the very smart group of people on Twitter.  Twitter is a tremendous equalizer.  The community there will give corporate titans, rock stars, Hollywood celebrities, media notables, and politicians one chance to listen and contribute, and get it right.  If they fail in those areas they get called on it. In a recent Howard Kurtz article, ABC newser Terry Moran crows about how Twitter counters:

the whole notion that newscasters speak from Olympus

- Terry Moran, ABC News

I really don’t think the folks on Twitter ever suffered from that misapprehension.

i’m really sad that I’m not able to make SXSW this year,  because it’s a great conference to discover where much of this is heading.  But last year at that very conference I witnessed first hand the challenge faced by traditional media.  As I ate breakfast at the hotel restaurant a waiter – transfixed by the talking head on the cable news show, and apparently at odds with the pundit – began shouting at the TV.  It occurred  to me that this was a rather inefficient feedback loop.  Social web tools like Twitter now give mainstream media the opportunity to do something they haven’t always been in a position to do that well.. LISTEN.  But as Twitter friend Adele McAlear put it, traditional media must understand this is about  JOINING the conversation, not controlling it.

Did you ever have control of the conversation? No. It always went on in people’s living rooms. Difference: Now you can hear it

@adelemcalear via Twitter

Still, these are turbulent times for media. Part of my motivation for embracing social web technology is precisely because it has shown to be a tremendous disruptor of traditional media and I need to watch where all of this is heading and determine where I fit in.  And as serial consultants like Michael Rosenblum, the architects of what may be the sunset of my craft, engage in schadenfreude tinged rhetoric on the web,  I’m left feeling both hopeful and fearful of what lies ahead for media workers like me.

Being asked to sit aside a panel of very savvy media influencers is a very great honor indeed.  I just hope I live up to the billing.  At the end of the day, I’m just a news cameraman try to stay relevant in a rapidly changing media landscape.

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”.

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Albert Einstein

Let’s operate under the premise that Einstein was right about this. Why then, do I, and nearly everyone else on Twitter continue to keep coming back to this infuriatingly unstable platform to connect with our communities? It’s likely because, for now, that’s where the people are, and while most users are getting frustrated with nearly daily outages, no one is taking that first step toward migration. That seems to be the million dollar question – why do we keep coming back? To be more precise, it could soon become the $250 a year question if Jason Calacanis holds sway with the folks at Twitter. Recently there has been a chorus of people from Om Malik to Pat Phelan calling for some type of metered/pay service.

Om Malik’s post is essentially an indictment of the users, “extreme users” specifically. Let me get this straight… it’s the users “fault” that Twitter keeps going down?? This is how you want to introduce a pay/metered system on Twitter?? I have a difficult time reconciling Twitter’s desire to scale with imposing a fee structure on those who help drive growth in order to solve underlying technology issues that they didn’t anticipate. This smacks of hubris to me, the kind of hubris attendant in a brand that thinks they’re the only game in town (think cable company only with hipsters at the helm). This has already driven to a contest to build a better mousetrap and in the interem, I wonder if folks will simply migrate to an equally useful existing platform like Jaiku or Pownce. If Twitter offered added value and created REAL pro accounts, offering tools to organize friends, send messages to groups etc, then I’d consider paying.

Under the Om Malik plan I would pay around $60 a month. It’s important to note here that none of this discussion has come directly from the Twitter team themselves. But given the uniformity of the this pricing structure amongst the bloggerati, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if this turd in the pool has been floated with at least the implicit aknowledgement of Twitter and/or their investors. Now, $60 may not seem like much to some people. But let’s get real for a minute, as our buying power diminishes daily $60 is not insignificant to me. That’s a weeks worth of gas in my Honda Element. For that $60, all that is being currently discussed is platform stability.

Imagine buying a car, driving it off the lot only to find that the engine routinely dies. Imagine taking the car to get fixed over and over again until the dealer finally tells you he’ll fix it for good for an extra $5000. What chaps my hide a bit here is that the early adopters (I joined in Nov. 2006), helped grow Twitter’s mainstream adoption. Nearly everyone on the service has evangelized the platform by either word of mouth, blog posts, mainstream media mentions, or workplace use. In many respects they wouldn’t be where they are today without the very people that proposed fee plans would penalize. Perhaps if I try to glean as much potential financial/professional benefit from every Twitter post, I’ll soon grow more tiresome than I already am. Then people will drop me in droves leaving Twitter more affordable to me. That should make Twitter AWESOME! It’s the people that make Twitter what it is. It is CLEARLY not the platform in and of itself.

Over the weekend, I engaged in an ideological video tete a tete with Seesmic CEO Loic Lemeur on the topic of paying for Twitter. The videos are short, but it’s clear that I don’t come at this unemotionally.

Drops in ad spending forecasts for social networks are likely drivers in the push for pay-for-use and I wouldn’t be surprised to see more of this in places other than Twitter. Overall, I have no problem with paying for something I find useful, or that simplifies my life. I do take issue with the suggestion that Twitter hold stability for ransom. So to those forced with re-examining revenue models and premium” plans, I would humbly suggest creating an added value transaction, not penalizing the community that has helped build your brand.

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.