Twitter is one of the most unique social network sites that allows an individual to express what they like and dislike to their public (followers). Many people use twitter to enhance their social presence.This is a brilliant concept for a social network, having followers see what you like or what you find interesting, however its not always all rainbows and sunshine’s when it comes to expressing oneself.

This may seem quite care free and all friendly however there have been some problems faced with people who tend to express themselves a little too much and may post something controversial on the social networking sites, which could and can “land you in an awful lot of trouble”.
A shining example and a true role model to most individuals was involved in such trouble when rapper 50 cent made a real controversial post on Twitter which implied that gay men should commit suicide.

My boy 50 received a lot of heat for this twitter post, however 50 cent did clear out the air and defended his controversial post and insisted that the comment was misinterpreted.

Even another star has been involved Malcom Lee the creator of the mini-series Westwood had made a questionable comment on his twitter page, which the comment read
“Feel like a caged pitbull that been on a chain for 2 years”
This comment sparked a lot of unwanted attention and Lee was quick to remove it the reason being “You just gotta watch what you say…I just deleted it because I didn’t want to cause any more trouble”.

So yes twitter comments can get you into some serious trouble but could it also put you in danger?

A clever website was made on the sole purpose to create awareness of over-sharing of personal information. Pleaserobme.com displayed a list of “robbing opportunities” which had a list of people posting of where they will be, or what will they be doing on that very night.

This is certainly a concern and people should be aware that there is certainly such a thing as “over-sharing”, all we got to do is just be a little bit extra care on what we post to the Globalised social public

With all the discussion on what social media is, what it’s future will be like, who will control it, I often feel we fail to see the forest for the trees.

I see it as too diverse of a phenomenon to pin down with one easy definition. Its applications go far beyond the neat capsules that can be used to pick a particular department or function that should “own” it. Social media is creating, empowering, and accompanying a paradigm shift in the way we use all media.

Are we fully there yet? Of course not. These are only the early stages, part of an evolutionary process that often comes step by step. But those steps are happening and happening and soon we’ll look back and be amazed how far we’ve traveled. Then before we know it again, we’ll be stepping again and look back again and we’ll be amazed how much we’ve come from that first time we looked back.

Yes, organizations are going to have to harness social media in ways that they can benefit from, to reach ROI. This means trying to create some sort of structure for it without “siloizing” it. Very difficult indeed.

I’ve tried to lay out what I see social media as. Not from a specific definitional standpoint, but from a several miles up point of view.

Interested in your feedback…

Social media can be a practice within itself

Social media’s possibilities extend beyond any traditional established practice (advertising, PR, sales, etc.) to the point that it can be a practice within itself. It can be spread across many departments and, thus, will often need practitioners who can implement coordinated efforts within an organization. The strategic methods used will often have enough attributes on a stand alone basis that it shouldn’t come underneath the heading of another specific department. I’d put social media on the same par as advertising and PR. Full service social media firms have sprouted up such as Abraham Harrison to meet today’s needs.

Social media can be a service

Because social media is still in its nascent stages, clients and potential clients don’t always need comprehensive solution packages. They may need to know how to set up a blog and how to get traffic for it. Simple as that. Helping a company to start a blog is a service. So is creating a podcast. Many clients look to cherry pick services to satisfy their needs. For some in social media, providing a non-coordinated menu of services is where it’s at. While social media agencies are an emerging industry, there’s not widespread demand quite yet, leaving many practitioners as service providers.

Social media is strategy based

A company decides to let go of some (but not all) control of its marketing communications message. It views its customers and users on a somewhat equal level and not as blocks of ears to be shouted at and throats to have messages shoved down.

Another company uses blogs to work with customers to improve products or come up with new ones.

These are strategic changes that are being implemented. Social media can change the nature of an organization because it changes the way an organization looks at itself and its relationships with its stakeholders.

Therefore the strategy behind social media empowers change like nothing else can.

Social media is tactically based

The many tools of social media can be designed to manage a problem or a series of problems. That’s not something that necessarily changes an organization. It’s can implemented based strictly upon need.

This can cause a lot of frustration amongst social media strategists as we see a lot of potential opportunities for business not being fulfilled. For others, applying tactics itself is an opportunity. A foot in the door.

Social media is technology based

Social media can involve a host of technologies that are often complicated to learn and understand. Setting up RSS feeds, monitoring online conversations, designing a blog for better SEM, putting together a widget. It takes technical know how to implement much of these. And that’s a reason why so many ad agencies and especially PR firms have been resistant in adopting social media.

But the technology is constantly changing, adapting, growing, as is the myriad of ways they can be used for clients. It often takes someone who is comfortable with technology to succeed.

Social Media is theory based

Authenticity. Transparency. Community. Engagement. Listening. Give up some of your control. All constantly espoused by social media strategists. These are theories that often go against the grain of traditional thought. More on engagement and less on contrived messaged, push on people. This blog post is theoretical. The theories formulate the methodologies that are behind the practices and the services.

These theories are why so many of us blog and offer our opinions and commentaries. It’s why we read one another’s blogs, friend one another on Facebook and follow one another on Twitter.

Social media is rule based

Aren’t authentic or transparent? Watch out! You’re gonna get nailed by someone in the blogosphere and it will cost you. An instant case study as to how NOT do something. The rules of the game were collectively created and enforced.

We’ve seen traditional agencies, large and small, ignore these rules and push ahead with fake blogs and such. Ask the folks at Edelman and Zipatoni.

Social media is anti-bureaucratic

This may be one of the most important points of all. Because its capabilities go beyond the silos of the current corporate communications, because the public arena can embrace it as their own, because it is always changing, and because it involves giving up a serious amount of self control, social media bucks the bureaucratic structure within organizations while it fundamentally changes the relationship between the organization and its stakeholders.

Online as a whole can shift between advertising and PR, causing disruption. Social media adds to this by bringing in customers, users, and in some cases, communities into the mix. It resists authority when the authority becomes too controlling. And authority usually wants control.

Organizational bureaucracies will be changing soon enough because of social media.

Social media can be vertical – part 1

Again, I see social media as being often a separate animal from traditional PR and advertising. For that matter, online advertising itself first created that difference. Social media extends that difference. It has its own methodologies that are totally separate from offline advertising. The divisions here may not be silo based; but often the pool of knowledge for success in the social media arena can’t be found in traditional types.

Simply sticking it under a particular division within an organization can cause stifled growth as it will be badly nurtured by people with a particular preconceived mindset.

Social media can be vertical – part 2

It’s vertical in another manner as well. And this is more of a prediction than a statement of the current conditions, but we will soon see more and more specialized firms pop up that will be geared toward certain segments of the population. Just as there are agencies that are geared toward the Latino market and PR firms that are geared toward the GLBT communities, we’ll see social media agencies that have developed the expertise in reaching out to certain segments of the population. All you have to do is listen to the many mommy bloggers that complain about their constantly getting hit by pitches from agencies that have no clue on what it’s like being a mom.

Social media can be horizontal – part 1

From what we all hear, social media will have implications in advertising, public relations, sales, customer service, human resources, investor relations etc. It will take an enterprise wide strategy to implement all of that. And it will take an actual social media strategist who understands all of those departments and who understands the technologies behind social media to devise a plan for that enterprise. He or she will have to be strong enough to lead the way and manage a lot of personalities, but gentle enough to let each department blossom.

Social media can be horizontal – part 2

Outside organizations, agencies such as Abraham Harrison and others will continue to emerge and become successful because they will stay on the forefront of all that is happening and how it should be applied. Companies won’t have the internal expertise nor will they have the time nor the personnel to implement cross functional social media strategies.

So, just as we see ad agencies and PR firms today, we’ll continue to see social media agencies. There will definitely be a need for them.

Social media is push

Yes, social media still allows you to deliver marketing messages. It can be the conversation starter. A blog can be push as can a podcast. Maybe this is obvious but I’ve heard so much talk about sitting back an listening I wanted to add this. Yes, social media can be overtly promotional. It just has to be done right.

Social media is pull

Yes, listening is important. Then engaging is important. Done right it creates trust. Trust is pull. Pull is good. Social media is good.

Social Media can be web presence centric and dispersed at the same time

No need to dis the hub of a website. Core elements of an organization’s social media efforts can emanate from but then be dispersed throughout blogs, Flickr, YouTube, etc.

Social media can be created from within

This is obvious.

Social media can be created and enhanced by others

The greatest threat. The biggest fear. The challenging factor that causes many an enterprise to resist, to delay implementations. But those on the outside aren’t waiting.

So to me, social media is so multi-dimensional that it can’t be easily defined in one definition, explained in a singular context, bottled up in a particular department.

Me too.

You want to get back to the show, the game, the newscast. See the bad guy get his ass nailed, the final two minutes of the tight game, or news on the latest scoop on the election cycle. The last thing you want to see is a series of presentations about pills that can make you pee better, a car that supposedly makes you cool, and a law firm that chases ambulances.

Me too.

But every once and a while, you’ll watch something that will catch your eye. It will make you laugh. Chuckle inside. You’ll be able to relate to it. Or you’ll be impressed because it’s impressive, not because the commercial is trying to pretend that it’s impressive with itself. Or you’ll think, shit, how did they do that?

Me too.

If that’s what happens, then that’s a commercial that will likely end up on Firebrand.

Firebrand is a client of ours. We’re proud to have them. They’re a new media outlet – literally. We’re proud to have them. They’re a new media outlet – literally. They’re on the web at ‘re on the web at http://www.firebrand.com and on the ION network on cable in 95 million homes. They seek out and get the world’s best commercials and play them, MTV style. From the States, Britain, Malaysia, Canada, Australia, India.

Now, let’s talk football. Let’s talk the Super Bowl. I could go off on a tangent and first talk about the great commercials, but I’m a lifelong fanatical New England Patriots fan so to me, this Sunday means football. I had to get that in.Allright, so lets’s talk about those about great commercials that the Super Bowl is known for. They get plenty of press beforehand. People do stop and watch them and they then talk about them the next day. They remember them. And they wish that all TV ads were that good.

We’ll, this week Firebrand will be celebrating ads of Super Bowls past all week long. Then on Monday, February 4th, they’ll be hosting “Firebrand Monday”, showing all the ads from the previous day’s Big Game. Viewers will be treated to the likes of Terry Tate, Office Linebacker and Carmen Electra

Here’s the lineup for the week.

Monday January 28th: “BIG TIME ATHLETES” in classic Big Game commercials

Tuesday January 29th: “BIG BUDGET PRODUCTIONS” for classic Big Game commercials

Wed January 30th: “CHICKS IN CHARGE” in classic Big Game commercials

Thursday January 31st: “BIG TIME CELEBRITIES” in classic Big Game commercials

Friday February 1st: “BIG TIME BRANDS” in classic Big Game commercials

Monday February 4th: IT’S FIREBRAND MONDAY, THE DAY AFTER THE BIG GAME – CELEBRATE THE HOLIEST DAY IN ADVERTISING WITH THE OFFICE LINEBACKER, CARMEN ELEKTRA AND CLASSIC BIG GAME COMMERCIALS!

One of the things that was clarified for me with all of the coverage of this recent Facebook Beacon episode was both the effectiveness and limitations of both mainstream media and the blogosphere in covering major issues of the day.

When Facebook introduced Beacon amidst much fanfare, the advertising, business, and technology communities followed the story with great interest. It seemed to offer a lot: traditional display mixed with viral word of mouth. Major brands, both online and offline were partnering with Facebook on Beacon.

Soon things started to go haywire as people suddenly found out that things they bought were showing up in their ‘friends’ Facebook’s newsfeed without their knowledge or permission. It turned out that Beacon, which had led it partners and the media to believe that was to be opt-in, was, in fact, opt-out. And it was also clear that Facebook did not let its 50,000,000 users that they’d be playing roles as marketing agents from now on. Disasters began happening and the blogosphere was first to react.

Geeks examined the technology behind the program here, here, and here. Marketing bloggers wondered if it was good strategy here, here, and here. All excellent posts. All made sense. All contributed to the conversation.

The problem here is that we all can’t act as a cohesive investigative unit, uncovering the ‘truth’ all together. We go at it from the angle we are familiar with. We get info bit by bit, some of which can be misleading and simply untrue. That’s exactly what Stefan Berteau of Computer Associates ran into in his trying to get answers from Facebook. While Stefan was apparently finding out – and thankfully telling us – he was getting his answers from a customer service rep. A possibly uninformed on the exact details customer service rep.

Bloggers often have a limited amount of time to research, confirm, and blog about these things. We have jobs to do. So, unfortunately, while we can have great impact, it can be limited in its influence.

In the meantime, much of the mainstream media looked at this from afar, with only passing interest, waiting to see if the situation blew up in Facebook’s face. And when it did – or at least when it came time for Facebook to respond – they did it mostly with press releases and shut off communications channels. And most of their responses were to the mainstream business and technology press. The problem there is that their explanations were often covered in PR spinspeak and technobabble. The very points that key people in the blogosphere raised weren’t answered. The mainstream media simply reported how Facebook says it will now carry on their Beacon program.

This is a classic way of responding. Assure the media that you’ve heard the complaints and that changes are coming. A mea culpa with a smiley face. The mainstream media may not know all the details and therefore not ask the key questions. So we may never know as a whole what the real deal is. Unless we keep up on those blogs. But then again…we’ve all got jobs to do…and other things to blog about.

This past Wednesday I attended an excellent forum on Capitol Hill put on by the New Politics Institute. Entitled “Social Networking Tools in Politics”, it featured both excellent speakers and content. The Institute bills itself as a think tank dedicated to helping progressives better understand today’s politics in todays everchaning technology, media, and demographics.

Director Peter Leyden handled the event featuring Facebook Chief Security Officer Chris Kelly, Grassroots.com President and CEO John Hlinko, Cheryl Contee of Flieshman Hillard’s San Francisco office, Change.org’s Ben Rattay, and Simon Rosenberg, head of the New Democratic Network and a founder and officer of NPI.

The crux of the program was part how-to and part what’s-in-store for 2008 and beyond.

Two themes that I took out the session was that, since politics is an original form of social networking, the concepts behind online social networking are a perfect fit for politics. Now, that’s obvious, but they were able to break it down.

Rosenberg stressed that campaigns and causes need to adopt tools and strategies – blogger outreach, mobile, cable TV, online video, and the use of social netorks. This was echoed by Ben Rattay, who has set up Change.org to do just that. There are a series of caused that one can join to mobilize, spread the word, fundraise.

Cheryl Contee also weighed in from the strategy side, pointing out how traditional efforts slumber on while online efforts can be much more nimble.

John Hlinko showed us that he hasn’t lost his sense of humor. He’s a message creator and feels – as I do – that messaging often needs something clever. It can’t be the false sense of outrage that we so often see. An effective message will cause people to take notice and pass it around – making it more viral.

Chris Kelly, who I would imaging will be very busy over the next few years came up with several key points how leveraging social media will benefit political campaigns. He wrote this paper, pointing out how Facebook, MySpace, etc. will be used for branding, voter registration, fundraising, volunteering, and voter turnout. He seemed a bit at unease at making forecasts regarding privacy. My guess is that’s more likely an evolving process with more than a few bumps and detours in the road.

Millions of netizens – including me – have taken a great liking to YouTube. And for good reason. You can find videos of practically anything you want. It’s given us the hilarious, the creative, the intriguing. I’ve learned a lot from watching some old videos and have found scenes of old movies that I loved and wanted to see again.

That being said, NBC’s recent closing of its channel on YouTube and pulling of its videos content show us that YouTube, as an entity, is far from being completely vital to content distribution. When push comes to shove, it is actually expendable. At least, that is, to big media companies that have significant amounts of valuable content.

NBC shut down its channel because they’re launching their own service, Hulu. A joint venture with News Corp., Hulu is set to launch in late October.

I’d say this is a good move by NBC.  While it may initially cause some confusion at first, once it’s up an running, it will easily be found.  The traffic that goes to Hulu will be 100% traffic for the site.  On YouTube, someone can watch 10 minutes of something and then hop over to a video of a guy picking his nose.  NBC will essentially own their traffic.  They can measure it better, the can monetize it better.  They’ll be able to create greater brand affinity and loyal communities of interest.  The ROI could be excellent.  The model is unproven at this point, but so is YouTube.

This past Thursday featured what looks to be the first of several “Presidential Candidate Dialogues” jointly hosted by MySpace and MTV. The event, held at the University of New Hampshre, featured former U.S. Sen. John Edwards talking to and taking questions from and audience of up to 300 attenedees, primarily made up of Univesity of New Hampshire Students, MTV viewers, and MySpace users.But that wasn’t all. It allowed for an online audience to submit questions via instant messager and also express opinions on Edwards’ performance. These opinions could be gathered collectively to create a consensus and then this consensus could be reported back in real time to the candidate. The whole lasted for about an hour and had a definite energetic feel to it.

Washington Post political blogger moderated the event along with MTV correspondents Gideon Yago and SuChin Park. I’ve always like Cilizza. He seems to have a pretty deep insight yet maintain a down to earth approach about him. And two veteran pollsters were brought in, John McLaughlin, a Republican, and Geoffrey Garin, a Democrat to handle the polling and online audience response feedback.

But here’s what I liked abut the event itself:

1) The continued dispersement of news and informational media delivery
While we’re beyond the period in which the vast majority of people (or at least those that are not directly involved in politics) get the vast majority of their news from traditional news sources – TV broadcast networks and their nightly newspapers and more recently, news oragnizational websites, we still haven’t quite reached a phase were the fragmentation of media outlets and delivery systems makes non-traditional outlets players. The CNN/YouTube debates held for the Democrats made YouTube a player, but the presence of CNN made it all the more legit.

What’s great abut this effort is that it involves two entities that are neither traditional media nor “news-centric”. Granted, MTV has a news bureau and has gotten involved in the political arena. But that isn’t it’s central mission. And MySpace was barely a blip on the nation’s consciousness at this point in the last election cycle.

Here we have two non-traditional players work together to host a forum in which is both both broadcast and webcast to potentially millions. Traditional media has a slight presence (Chris Cilizza of the Post), but it is MySpace and MTV that not only make it possible, but make it sizzle. And I bet this change is permanent.

2) Interactive audience feedback

While I wasn’t necessarily impressed with how it came out – it was mostly generic positive feedback – I like the idea that feedback can be made possible in real time. As this evolves, it should get more complex and may be used in future presidential debates between the two nominees. Can you imagine a candidate who gets too nasty or one who is constantly avoiding answering a question getting feedback live that he or she is looking idiotic or poor? It will probably happen. A major improvement over the tightly controlled events that we’ve had for the past few decades.

3) Candidate interaction to a targeted demographic in an interactive setting.

This might seem to be a combination of the first two and in a way it is. But this format can now be transferred to other non-traditonal media partners who can reach out to their targeted demographics. This means candidates will have to forego stump speeches from time to time.

I asked Kevin to write a blog post (which rocked) based on my assumption that the US is headed towards a recession based on the devaluation of the dollar, the housing market slump, and the war in Iraq. I believe that marketing and advertising online is recession-proof, especially as attention profiling and behavioral targeting strategies improve and ads become customized to each the unique hopes, dreams, needs, wants, and context of users online.

My premise, in short, is that folks will hunker down during this recession with only the “Internet” to keep them company, in the form of VOIP, IPTV, social media, MMORPGs, and networked video games.

Essentially, folks will spend all of their attention online so there will be more ad and marketing dollars spent online in order to reach them. During the upcoming recession, search engine marketing (SEM), search engine optimization (SEO), new marketing, online outreach, online engagement, online advocacy, viral and word-of-mouth marketing, targeted direct marketing, and laser-targets online ad buys will thrive because they’re relatively cheap, focused, and where the people are, while print ads, commercials, and radio spots will plummet: too much buck for the bang.

We’re going to have a recession. let’s just make that assumption.

Usually, during a recession, ad revenues drop. My argument is that during a recession, people stay home more. Web surfing is cheap, amusing, plentiful, and also most amusing with broadband. While people may cut down cable, they will keep their Internet connection — and will hunker-down on the Internet while they’re low on personal spending money, on discretionary income.

My dad was an photographer and ad man in Hawaii during a recession in Japan that totally gutted the the Hawaiian economy. Traditionally, the first thing companies do when the shit hits the fan is pull ad dollars.

In that scenario, my dad’s company almost shuttered. What this shakedown did, however, was created stock photography and video, killing the bespoke day-rate on-site corporate photographer. Something always comes out in the end.

Downturns result in a need to make systems more efficient and more effective. It just wasn’t affordable for agencies to hire shooters to do shoots, bespoke. There were too many variables and all the risk was on the shoulders of the client. Stock photography changed all of that: cheaper and oftentimes better, since the shooter incurs the risk and the stock is “all the best of all time” and not the best that a particular day, week, or season had to offer.

How effective is plastering walls with bills or standing on a soap box when people are at home and online? How effective are commercials on cable channels people drop as a “luxury?” How worthwhile are those magazine ads when people drop their subscriptions to GQ and O?

The Internet is a commodity. Broadband is no longer a luxury — people are not willing to either go back to “rabbit ears” or to dial up. Folks will keep their basic cable, I am sure — it is a commodity — and they will keep their Internet, another commodity.

Is it very interesting time. I guess this is sort of a prediction. We’ll see if it all comes true. Check out that Canadian Loonie, eh?

Well, at the end of the day, I will always quote Kevin Donlan quoting someone else:

“When times are good, you should advertise. When times are bad, you must advertise.”

I sort of like the new My Times offered by the New York Times. It is basically iNYT, I guess, and it feels like it is based on the iGoogle platform. I am going to mess around with it over the next few days. This News Aggregator Portal pretty much leaves the Post, the FT, and the Journal in the dust.

The best thing about http://my.nytimes.com is that it is an agnostic, neutral, platform that not only allows you to subscribe to any new and feed source, but it also helps you along by allowing you to choose the sources, news, and feeds suggested by the editors, writers, and columnists from the staff of the New York Times, called Journalists’ Suggestions. Very cool.

This is the sort of selfless act that will help the NYT survive any painful evolutions, conversions, or shifts that result from the aggressive changes enforced by social media, citizen journalism, decontextualized content, and universal RSS-powered online content. Bravo!

I love the Wall Street Journal newspaper as it is, on my porch, every morning. I also love it on XM Radio. The only reason I support the purchase of the Wall Street Journal by Rupert Murdoch is because the online Wall Street Journal really sucks, even as a paid member. It makes Jesus cry. It makes me cry. I am crying right now. I should post a photo.

The site is slow, heavy, inelegant, unresponsive, and poorly-optimized. The site also kills my browsers, both Firefox and IE7. And that’s coming from a daily-reader, a dead-tree subscriber, and a total fan! If you’re not a subscriber, things get worse. Permalinks lead to teasers and dead-ends, and there is zero-semblance of any development past Web 1.0. I am appalled. I am disgusted, and I am willing to sacrifice the WSJ to the altar of News Corp!

Okay, okay, the Financial Times web site makes me cry too (I am a daily subscriber to the FT as well and love it so much, as well) . So, here’s hoping that Rupurt Murdoch buys the FT soon, as well.

I wrote this article back in October 2005, The Misplaced Journalistic Priesthood, and I thought about it after writing The Mainstream Media is Scared Senseless:

“Reporters, journalists, and anchors are all employees of profit-motivated organizations that have investors, sponsors and advertisers. Reporters are ambitious, competitive, and can be fired. Sounds like an unholy priesthood to me.”

I don’t know who wrote this painfully-defensive editorial on the LA Times, but he doth protest loudly and irrationally that he unintentionally put another nail in the MSM coffin and put the mainstream media doomsday clock at five-minutes to midnight. Very sad; no, rather pathetic… Via USC Annenberg School for Communication’s Online Journalism Review

“The essence of good journalism is asking the right questions. Google, however, won’t ask anything of those who submit comments. According to the company’s announcement, its only interest is that the submissions are authentic, not that they’re relevant or even truthful. As a result, the comments section is likely to be larded with spin, hype and obfuscation. A seemingly heartfelt comment may carry the CEO’s name, but the words will probably have been typed by corporate flacks.”

“There will be some valuable responses too, plugging holes in stories or correcting mistaken impressions. Google, however, won’t help readers separate the factual wheat from the public-relations chaff — a reminder that Google may strive to be the world’s index, but it’s not journalism.”

Those poor journalists and reporters said the same thing about popular papers, tabloids, the radio, television, and now the Internet. Same shit, different decade.

So, how indignant is he going to get when he finds himself or herself put out to pasture out of irrelevance.

What happens to professors, reporters, priests, rabbis, and experts when people cease to ask their opinion?

When a quick Google search and a Wikipedia look-see offers better, quicker, and more satisfying results than anywhere else?

Here is the panacea: professors, reporters, priests, rabbis, and experts actually need to start adding value. They need to earn their keep. They need to attract a readership, they need to learn to communicate more completely. These experts can no longer rely on their affiliation or their degrees to bolster their relevance and importance.

Carl Sagan, Richard Dawkins, Douglas Rushkoff, Malcom Gladwell, and Stephen Hawking are all media darlings because, although they deserved to be completely entitled, they didn’t act that way. They wrote accessible books for regular folks.

Stop complaining and start performing and competing. Your industry, expertise, has become privatized, and you really need to compete with everyone else, even Pink is the New Blog.

Sorry mate.

One of the biggest complaints I’ve had when it comes to political coverage is that reporters seem to get all caught up in insider games of personality, orfwho’s hot and who’s not, of silly battles. They don’t discuss issues from the trees or the forest perspective. They don’t cover deeper strategy. They don’t understand online strategies. All of this is evident in an article yesterday’s New York Times. Written by Adam Nagourney, it’s called Edwards Campaign Tries to Harness Internet.

It is basically a puff piece focusing on celebrity – Joe Trippi and Elizabeth Edwards – and not what they’re actually doing. I doesn’t talk much about the hows and whys of digital political strategy.

Colin Delaney of epolitics wrote an excellent piece on it. A cut and paste from his blog:

Ah, a celebrity puff piece! Now I have a framework for understanding an article about online politics that says almost nothing about online politics. Instead, we’re treated to discussions about how much Joe Trippi knows, how John Edwards and his wife “get it,” …What you won’t see: any discussion of social networking outreach, which the Edwards campaign embraced early on, or on the relative effectivess of Edwards’s videos compared with the Clinton Sopranos spoof and Bill Richardson’s job interview clips. Nor will you read much about online fundraising, a pastime in which I hear the campaigns are somewhat interested. I.e., you won’t see any actual analysis or context, and neither will you see any discussion of the campaign’s one unmistakeable success, their SMS fundraising effort.

Colin nails but good.

“News Corp.’s $5 billion purchase of Dow Jones has been approved by the boards of both companies, which met separately over the past few hours. After three months of drama in the Bancroft family and public debate about journalistic values, the two companies are expected to sign a merger agreement and issue statements in the next few hours. The deal ends a century of Bancroft-family ownership at Dow Jones.” Via WSJ

I look forward to seeing how this all shakes out. There have been so many changes already in the Wall Street Journal’s look-and-feel, I look forward to seeing what News Corporate does with the Wall Street Journal. I think it is essential to make the WSJ web site suck less and be less walled-off.

People love to hate Rupert Murdoch because of how he is destroying the media and the press. What a pile of shit. We blame him, is all. If that makes you feel smug, then fine.

“Murdoch isn’t an agent for evil or good, he’s a very efficient agent for change. The media industry is rapidly transforming, and Murdoch is one of the few in the business to have sense enough to clean up from it.” Via TheStreet.com

Instead, what Rupert Murdoch is doing is simply shamelessly and fearlessly profiting from a drastic shift in the market.

Since Murdoch doesn’t fancy the press as Holy, he doesn’t give a toss about journalistic integrity or objectivity. He’s smart and I admire him.

If Rupert Murdoch ends up buying the Wall Street Journal, my fave paper, he will have completed his goal of noting about the media, like the child in The Emperor’s New Clothes, “But he has nothing on!”

I love seeing a mainstream expert get all defensive when it comes to being a critic. In short, according to Mr. Richard Schicke of the Los Angeles Times, being a critic is being expert while having an opinion is being a blogger. Such sweet hubris. Sweet Richard Schicke, poor dinosaur!

Let me put this bluntly, in language even a busy blogger can understand: Criticism — and its humble cousin, reviewing — is not a democratic activity. It is, or should be, an elite enterprise, ideally undertaken by individuals who bring something to the party beyond their hasty, instinctive opinions of a book (or any other cultural object). It is work that requires disciplined taste, historical and theoretical knowledge and a fairly deep sense of the author’s (or filmmaker’s or painter’s) entire body of work, among other qualities. (via Los Angeles Times)

Why so newspapers still believe they can coerce readers into buying papers by keeping the most popular content items offline? I found this over at the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel: “Other familiar print edition features not online at this time include birth announcements, wedding, engagement announcements and comics.”

After reading the New York Times review of The Cult of the Amateur, I now have the opinion of Andrew Keen as an insufferable, priggish, elitist, schoolmarm. The Cult of the Amateur is, in fact, a very good sign to us new media types because it means that the “carriers of the cultural torch” are bloody well scared.

They’re not sad, indignant, disappointed, or even frustrated. This is the rarefied fear of those who are sure they’re being made redundant soon. Their mastery, specialty, and interest is no longer relevant.

Don’t tell Mr. Keen because he doesn’t know any of this consciously. Andrew Keen is still in denial and still believes that culture will indeed eventually find its way back out of the ivory tower and into mainstream society.

It won’t. Pop culture has never been reflected in the peach pages of the Financial Times or the sticky pages of the New Yorker. All the content on the Internet, the Blogosphere, and inert Web 2.0 platforms have been around since the 50s; however, until recently, the mediasphere wasn’t flat, wasn’t horizontal. The media wasn’t a free market, it was a global, intentional, civics lesson from the elite for the benefit of the common man, whatever that is. I think it may be a secret code for “masses of fucking morons with sixth grade education who chew tobacco” but I am not certain.

Until the Internet, the media elite took it upon themselves to be stewards of us, the “normal folks.” It was their holy responsibility to train us up, to deliver us our culture the way many take the Host on Sunday. It didn’t need to be attractive, it didn’t need to be delicious, and it didn’t need to include a relationship, but it was fortifying. It was the responsibility of High Culture to help us pick ourselves up.

If you’re vulnerable to being insulted, you can even call what they were doing noblesse oblige. Vraiment!

noblesse oblige – a moral economy wherein privilege must be balanced by duty towards those who lack such privilege or who cannot perform such duty

Andrew Keen and his ilk need a wake-up call. Why? Well, because he doesn’t realize that in the horrible reflection, as described in his book “The Cult of the Amateur,” he is seeing in Web 2.0 of America is actually crystal clear.

While his subtitle states that “today’s Internet is killing our culture,” I argue that the Internet — and Web 2.0 especially — is actually reflecting our native American culture (the way we act when at home alone) instead of the false airs we put on when guests are over.

Keen doesn’t like what he sees. So, instead of blaming public education, television, the news media, or parenting, he blames something that is intentionally agnostic, that does its best to act as a catalyst and then get out of the way. Again, a mirror.

Schoolmarms like Andrew Keen have always existed. In recent history, tabloids, private radio, and commercial television, blockbuster cinema, rap music, and video games have all been blamed for “killing our culture;” in more distant history, the same was said about the printing press, Newtonian physics, Jazz, racial integration, Rock and Roll, etc…

Talk Radio is America. Reality TV is America. MySpace is America. Born Again is America. Creationism is America. Wal-Mart is America. NASCAR is America. Pornography and gambling is America. Vegas and Texas and Florida is America; NYC, DC and SFO are like those folks who are embarrassed/ashamed by where/who they’re from.

If we want to “fix” citizen journalism we first have to fix the department of education and parenting! Until you make the Western Canon, Classicism, Poetry, Philosophy, History, Traveling, and a Liberal Education more attractive and relevant than money, then you will never be able to do much more than making sure that your kids and your schools continue to value and teach Classic Greek, Latin, and French instead of Spanish.

There will always be people who are attracted to design, to architecture, to history, to the sciences, to medicine, to foreign affairs, and to art, poetry, and philosophy.

Things aren’t getting worse for us intellectuals, we’re just getting a better idea as to how bad they have become by looking deeply into the mirror of Web 2.0.

Don’t worry. As I told a class of graduate history students at American University, “as long as Colleges and Universities can convince enough rich parents that there is value in spending the price of a car-per-year for their children to learn History, there will always be a place for you in Academia.

In Web 2.0 vs. Traditional: The inability to think outside of one’s self, Jonathan Trenn talks about “upfront” and “upfronting” and I didn’t know what that meant, so I asked and Jonathan enlightened me, “Upfront is a time period when the TV networks display their schedules for the upcoming season to major marketing decision makers. This gives top marketers the chance to bid on slots that they think would serve them well. Often the rates can seem to be favorable.” Very interesting.

Joe Jaffe is frustrated after reading that, yes, upfront is supposedly on the upswing. That’s understandable…although to me, it’s not about numbers, its about the attitude that upfront is back. It never left. It’s just not as strong. And it isn’t bouncing back. But it still exists and it will continue to exist.

But what got me thinking was the larger conversation that was brought upon in the comments. Two things actually.

A debate began to develop between Tangerine Toad and Paul.

Paul says that “Advertising is dead – the advertising that bombards you with crap you don’t need and brands you don’t care about. Any online advertising that does this is also dead.”

Well, yeah. But when was this not true?

He then adds “people don’t mind being advertised to at all! As long as it is relevant, interesting and engaging (the key one being relevant).” Bingo!! I’d add as long as it’s convenient. Not too disruptive. We have come to expect that advertising can be disruptive to an extent. Especially when the content is free or cheap. But if we’ve gotta completely change our experience to deal with it, then it now sucks.

Toad however, is more absolutist. He calls out Paul, saying his view on advertising is a “clichéd mindless crock you should be embarassed to repeat.”

WTF?

Sorry, Toad, but your above-it-all blather doesn’t work. You contradict yourself a bit later by quoting Howard Gossage. “‘People don’t read advertising, they read what they are interested in”…To Gossage’s point, it doesn’t matter what media your message runs in so long as it’s interesting.”

Interesting. Compelling. Relavent.

I then headed over to Toad’s blog where he has a very interesting and insightful series going on, here, here, and here.

From Part 1…one thing he points out makes total sense…

“Yet to listen to all the self-appointed Web 2.0 gurus, this is the wave of the future, it’s a matter of years before every single American- nay every single denizen of the planet- has a MySpace site and that hanging out on MySpace will replace watching television and anyone who disagrees with them is a fucking Luddite.

Okay.

Only there’s one thing they keep forgetting: The whole world is not made up of people EXACTLY LIKE THEM.”

Yes, how true. Everyone uses Skype, has a blackberry, blogs, has profiles on MySpace and Facebook. And of course owns a Tivo.

So not true. Not everyone is an pioneer or an early adapter. Right on, Toad.

But what gets me is what he says later…

“most people aren’t living in a city they weren’t brought up in, thousands of miles from their closest friends. They’re living with spouses and children who actually get offended if they spend a few hours online, which is a solitary activity, rather than joining the rest of the family watching “American Idol.” Which mindless though it may be, is still a group activity.”

Hmmm…seems to me that Toad is making the same mistake as he accuses the Web 2.0 gurus. Making the assumption that everyone is like them. Which is exactly what the decision makers dedicated to the upfront are doing.

Comes full circle, don’t you think?

FOX News chief Roger Ailes said, “Bloggers are not only checking the accuracy of CBS, they’re checking the accuracy of each other. We know which bloggers — within a very short period of time — are generally credible and which ones are not.” Via Blogs for Bush.

According to the What’s Next Blog, the latency between the blogosphere and the New York Times seems to be around 5 months. That is the gestation period of the domestic sheep.

Bloggers Aren’t Ethical is a thoughtful essay about the artifice surrounding the rift between journalists and their journals and bloggers and their blogs.

Journalists like to cry foul that they have integrity, ethics, standard, and objectivity and bloggers just don’t. Whether journalist or blogger, there is one cardinal rule: “protect your words, protect your readers and honor the trust you have been given.”

If there is anything that Jeremy C. Wright did wrong in his article it would be his cheekiness. He doesn’t mellow his argument to include the essential concept of the reader and the writer having a bond based on trust. And the written doesn’t matter, “be they blogger, journalist, poet or playwright.”

What one really must do, whether your daddy is the NYTimes and your J-School was Chicago or not, “to violate that trust is the cardinal sin of everyone who values the written word.”

Out of the 20 paragraphs that make up the very thoughtful article, Mr. Wright only makes his own authentic and honest point in the eighteenth paragraph, which is, “Thankfully, there are some things that are obvious ethics “violations” even across the chasm that divides journalists and bloggers. Taking money in order to express a certain opinion is sure to damage a journalist’s credibility, as well as a blogger’s authenticity. Likewise, covering up a scandal wouldn’t be honest on the part of a blogger nor would it be objective on the part of a journalist.”

So, what he means is that the writer, be he a proper journalist or an improper blogger, is judged of course what he writes but also by what he does.