eastwikkers

PR University -- Continued

Interesting day yesterday at the SF Hilton and Towers.  Big stars of the event were Craig Newmark of craigslist, and a panel of podcasters who made a pretty persuasive case for the technology, particularly it's easy-of-use.  Craig's best line was a set-up:  "I apologize for not being amusing enough," after paraphrasing Oscar Wilde earlier in the bit, "if you want to tell the truth, make them laugh, because otherwise they will kill you."  The audience didn't kill Craig for telling the truth (i.e., that PR will undergo a transformation).  In fact, a few lined up for photos, which Craig willingly obliged, though no one seems to have flickr'd.  Afterwards, we retired to the hotel lounge where we grilled speaker/podcaster/one-man-brand Eric Rice on a whole bunch of issues, and the man debated so admirably -- with a table of semi-jaded PR pros -- we were in awe.   

PR U

I'm speaking today at a couple of panels at Bulldog Reporter's PR University at the Hilton & Towers in San Francisco. Topic: new media, and I'm planning to introduce -- for the second time this week -- an idea we've been brewing throughout the summer at Eastwick: that the endgame of new media is collaboration, and that in the next year we will see a number of interesting experiments in community building using lightweight new-media tools. That will place a significant premium on hard knowledge of the social rules that are taking hold on Internet communities. We've submitted a short article on this subject to Global PR Blog Week and will launch a wiki next week to begin developing and vetting those rules with the PR and greater business communities. In the meantime, here are twelve rules we are submitting for review:

Twelve: be inclusive

Eleven: be open

Ten: Be purposeful with your technology

Nine: Focus on values, not selling

Eight: Don’t be groupwise/self-foolish

Seven: Leverage the wisdom of crowds

Six: Wag the “long tail”

Five: Use community to build consensus

Four: integrate the offline community into the technology. We’re calling this the Reeses principle (80’s commercial: “your peanut butter is in my chocolate … your chocolate is in my peanut butter)”

Three: integrate the technology into the offline community (the Reeses principle, part II)

Two: replicate the entire ideal social structure online … if you can

One: Because we are playing in a social world, aim for the big social causes

New World/Old World -- It Will All Be the Same

An idea we've been batting around at Eastwick has gotten a bit of attention in the last few days.  Simply put:  the success of online social experiments will force vendors to apply what they've learned to the offline world.  First we got Google maps -- the satellite edition, which literally enables Google to crawl the earth (we've always wondered if this was, in part, a PR move, signalling the direction for this company in a most surprising way).  And now we're hearing about tech companies that are helping parents to locate and monitor their teens.  And, as Jupiter's Gary Stein writes in his blog, Google is beginning to experiment with ways to apply its ad-serving technology -- the financial engine of its incredible growth -- to the print world.  And why not?  The print-ad market is much larger than the world that Google serves, and Google needs to grow.

We have our own take on what's happening here, and we will discuss it at length this Fall, here, here, here, and here (yes, we are trying our best to get the word out).  In the meantime, we'd like to float this idea: the success of the great social experiments in the new, online world (and they are, in fact, social experiments) is beginning to pay off in exports to the old world.  This new world/old world analogy came to us yesterday; we credit the semi-patriotic, bittersweet mood (homage to a more progressive, but difficult, era) that always seems to dominate this weekend. 

Happy Labor Day.  See you back in the old world, tomorow.

MSN Filter

We saw this one coming a mile away.  MSN has introduced a new service called Filter, where bloggers separate (i.e., "filter") the wheat from the chaff, based on user suggestions.  Filter is a fitting metaphor for the post-TiVo age, where  users -- for better or worse -- have greater control over what they listen to, watch, and read.  But we're wondering if the folks at MSN got this one wrong, at least from a new-media perspective.  Why should users get excited about delegating the job of filtering to someone else?  Don't we have that model for info management already?  Stay tuned ... other ideas are fast approaching.

Posner to Media Consumers: "You Can't Handle the Truth"

See Richard Posner's roundup of eight -- count 'em -- recent books on the media in this week's issue of The New York Times Book Review (the cover story).  For those of you old enough to remember, Posner is the fabled and prolific conservative academic/jurist (he sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit, and is a lecturer at the University of Chicago School of Law) who has led the "law and economics" movement since the dawn of the Reagan era.  Posner and others have used L&E to do battle with many longstanding laws and precedents, interposing the economic cost/benefit analysis as the basis for deciding all manner of legal dispute.   He's applying a similar economic lens today to the media scene, arguing that negative trends like sensationalism (think Michael Jackson) and polarization (think Fox, talking heads, and angry bloggers) are the result of "the vertiginous decline in the cost of electronic communication and the relaxation of regulatory barriers to entry, leading to the proliferation of consumer choices."   But greater choice hasn't created a competitive market for truth and accuracy, says Posner.  "[P]eople don't like being in a state of doubt, so they look for information that will support rather than undermine their existing beliefs. They're also uncomfortable seeing their beliefs challenged on issues that are bound up with their economic welfare, physical safety or religious and moral views."  It's like a page from George Lakoff -- people generally prefer to listen to what fits their views, filtering out the rest. 

A proponent of new media -- see the article for a lengthy and passionate defense of bloggers against charges from mainstream journalists -- Posner himself is a blogger, sharing a site with University of Chicago economist Gary Becker.

UPDATE, 8/1:  Fellow PR blogger Elizabeth Albrycht writes that Posner's analysis has dangerous assumptions.  Meanwhile, Slate's Jack Schafer accuses the professor of laziness, sloppiness, and verbosity ("[d]eploying four words where one will do....").

infoTalk by Podtech.net

Riding the podcasting wave is technology authority John Furrier and his neat franchise called infoTalk. Furrier has assembled some of the biggest and brightest stars of Silicon Valley and recorded about 75 intriguing and insightful interviews to date. The Podtech.net website allows visitors to either download the infoTalk interviews in mp3 format or listen to them right from the site. It appears that the interviews are also available through iTunes.  Furrier ranked the top ten infoTalk podcasts from last week on his personal blog with Mark Cuban's interview at #1 on the list.

Open Media 100 List

AlwaysOn and Technorati have joined forces to to present the first annual "Open Media 100,"  a power list of bloggers, social networkers, tool smiths, and investors leading the Open Media Revolution. Kudos to our partner and client Ross Mayfield of Socialtext for making the list.

Tagging On the Web

As Anick Jesdanun of the Associated Press points out in his article this week, tagging is "all the rage among the digerati" and we couldn't agree more. This new cataloging methodology really brings forth a new way for people to archive and retrieve important content very quickly. Moreover, it can be applied to a number of areas in the digital world, some that have not presented themselves yet. Eastwikkers will be watching this trend very closely.

Podcasts For the Masses

San Francisco's KYCY looks to be the first public radio station to broadcast podcast streams according to a press release issued today. A member of the Infinity Broadcasting Corporation, KYCY will dump its current talk radio format and rebrand as KYOURADIO. KYCY-AM will be streamed online at http://www.kyouradio.com beginning on Monday, May 16.

FreeNews Offers Mobile News

Thanks to Robin Good for pointing out FreeNews, a new mobile RSS news service offered by FreeRange. Apparently, most wireless phones that read Java VM will be able to run the FreeNews service to retrieve RSS feeds.