The Silicon Valley Rap
By Kyle Austin
greetbeatz on behalf of all tech geeks that dream of being cool.
3 comments February 4th, 2010
Facebook: The 6 Year Old Prodigy
By Molly Galler
Don’t forget to make a wish!
Today Facebook turns 6 years old. While most 6 year olds are navigating the perilous world of first grade and still learning to dress themselves, Facebook is a prodigy.
It’s hard to remember a time when Facebook wasn’t a part of our every day lives. Now when you meet someone new, you “friend” them. When you want to keep someone from knowing what’s happening in your life, you “defriend” them. When you take pictures at a celebration or on vacation you exclaim, “Don’t worry, I’ll tag you!” When you want to wish a friend a happy birthday, you post to their Facebook wall, maybe you even send a Facebook gift (maybe you even rely on Facebook to tell you when their birthday is).
It’s hard to recall those early days when you had to be a Harvard student to access the site. The gates slowly began to creep open allowing other Ivy League students, and finally anyone with a college email address. Now people of all ages, across the globe need only their email address to access the world’s most talked about social networking site.
What is perhaps the most surprising development in the past 6 years is the way Facebook has impacted business. If you are a consumer facing brand and you do not have a Facebook group or fan page, you do not exist. Consumers are searching for companies and services via Facebook because that is where they spend most of their time online. Businesses have begun to push out major news via Facebook, drive traffic to their Facebook page via television commercials, and even offer special Facebook-only promotions.
Technology writer Jessi Hempel wrote a superb piece for Fortune Magazine, “Facebook Turns 6!” on the six ways Facebook has dramatically impacted our lives.
What is your topic pick for how Facebook has changed the game?
2 comments February 4th, 2010
Jonathan Schwartz Tweets his Resignation with a Haiku
By Kyle Austin
Jonathan Schwartz was a trailblazer in leveraging the Internet as the platform for influencing others with his ideas. As CEO at Sun Microsystems, he was the first Fortune 500 CEO to open up his own blog. It seems fitting then that he’s the first Fortune 200 CEO to resign via Twitter.
His short Haiku tweet (pictured above) illustrates both the good and bad of having visionary leaders at the control of their own digital communications. In one sense, it’s incredibly authentic for his former employees and customers. On the other hand, the communications folks at the newly merged Oracle-Sun are probably less than pleased that Mr. Schwart’z haiku beat an amicable separation statement.
As the Internet continues to push ahead as the leading thought leadership platform for both Internet visionaries (have you seen The Gates Notes?), and those looking to leverage the Internet for more power, the question remains – what role do communicators play? Would Schwartz have benefited from communicators that could contribute, shape context and augment his opinions? Maybe and maybe not (At least up until his last tweet). However, there aren’t too many CEO’s willing and able to take the time and effort needed to build the following that Schwartz did online.
5 comments February 4th, 2010
Sheldon Williams Tweet Shines On Media Inaccuracies
By Ben Haber
Yesterday Boston Celtics forward Sheldon Williams sent out a tweet with very little information: “Man when it rains it pours!!! Yall will find out what I mean soon!!!!”
Within minutes, NBC and Celtics blogs began speculating what he could be talking about. The first assumption that quickly picked up steam and David Aldridge of NBA.com soon reported that Paul Pierce had a broken foot and would miss a large part of the remainder of the season. People on Twitter were RT’ing each other recklessly, blogs were posting this information at reckless speeds, and this had all come from one very vague tweet.
The something happened – the Celtics put out a statement contradicting the Twitter buzz. It said that Pierce strained his foot and was listed day-to-day. This news was quite different from what was being circulated on the Internet.
Maybe Sheldon Williams was indeed talking about Pierce’s injury – just for the mere fact that he was hurt. Maybe he was talking about something else basketball related, or maybe it was a totally separate subject. In any case, many media members have become so focused on breaking the story first that the accuracy of what they’re reporting suffers.
I don’t blame the reporters for this – they’re just trying to earn a living and make a name for themselves. It’s the structure of reporting that has initiated this change. Twitter’s popularity and 140 character posts have simplified reporting to quick announcements that don’t need sources attached to them. It’s allowed reporters to broadcast news to a large audience quickly and claim their dominance of the story before getting into the details and writing a full article. Often times this is great – it enables people to get information so quickly, like during Apple’s iPad announcement. However, as we saw in this case yesterday, it also increases blind assumptions sacrifices accuracy.
2 comments February 3rd, 2010
Inc. Magazine: “We’re Leaving New York”
By Kyle Austin
In what may be a sign of things to come, Inc. magazine is leaving its plush Greenwich Street digs in Manhattan (which includes one of the best views on the island), and hitting the virtual road – at least for the foreseeable future.
In what the magazine is promoting as “a little experiment” to see if an established business can become a virtual office, Mansueto Ventures (parent company to Inc. and Fast Company) is kicking its Inc. staffers to home or nearby hotels.
One wonders if the move is really “a little experiment” to see if a virtual news room can work; with an eye towards ridding themselves of what must be very expensive property in Wall Street. However, there is no word of Fast Company staffers making the move as well (they share the space).
Mansueto isn’t the only media owner conscious of high-figure “space” costs, which can no longer be offset by media revenues. Steve Forbes just unloaded Forbes iconic 5th street offices to NYU and the New York Times has been executing on sales-leaseback plans with its new New York Times building.
Although it puts a damper on desk side chats and media tours, fans of the Inc. (like myself) should root for the experiment to succeed. If they can’t make it outside New York, they can’t make it anywhere.
3 comments February 3rd, 2010
Running A Hospital, Social Media Style
By Molly Galler
Paul Levy is the CEO of the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) in Boston, but that is probably not why you recognize his name.
In addition to his post as Chief Executive Officer of a major teaching hospital in a world renowned medical hub, he is also the founder and author of a health care blog called Running a Hospital and is an active Twitter user from the handle @PaulFLevy.
We met with Paul yesterday afternoon to hear about his social media success and naturally, to pick his brain.
Paul began his talk by saying, “All communications from a company should reflect that company’s values.” Agree.
He went on to say that, “At our place, the mission is to treat our patients the way we would want a member of our own family treated.” Agree again. As a side note, Paul continually referred to BIDMC as “our place,” giving a sincere sense of responsibility, community and family to the place he drives into each morning for work.
Given his position on corporate communication, and his company’s mission, in 2006 he decided he’d like to start a blog; a blog that reflected the company’s values and furthered their mission. Thus, Running a Hospital was born.
9 comments February 2nd, 2010
Went to Social Media Week and Got Stuck on an Elevator with Ann Curry
By Kyle Austin
Tis the story of Jeff Pulver, the technology anthropologist (he doesn’t like social media guru), who was headlining a talk at the Times to kick-off social media week when he got stuck on an elevator with Today’s Ann Curry (also on the panel) and Jennifer Preston, the Times social media editor. Gawker has their full, harrowing tale (with videos and tweets) here.
1 comment February 2nd, 2010
Ustream Raises $20 Million, Eyes $55 Million More and Asian Expansion
By Kyle Austin
Ustream, the Silicon Valley based live-streaming service, has taken in 20 million in funding from Japan’s Softbank Corp. Softbank is aiming to invest an additional $55 million in exercised shares, which would make them to top shareholder in the company by July 2011.
“Assuming all available options granted to the Company to acquire additional shares are exercised by July 2011, the Company’s total investment is expected to be approximately USD 75 million (investment ratio expected over 30%) and will result in the Company becoming Ustream’s top shareholder.”
According to the press release, and comments by the founders in the mainstream press, Ustream will use the funding to move into Japan, China, Korea and India. All of which represent a huge opportunity based on consumers use of video-equipped smart-phones in those countries.
2 comments February 2nd, 2010
Live-Blogging Gets Some Polish with Apple iPad Announcement
By Kyle Austin
Live-blogging has become an important aspect of launching products and services at media events. The 1440-minute news cycle is influenced on a tweet-by-tweet basis and if you can maximize “live buzz” the chances of your news sticking around for more than a Hollywood-minute are pretty good.
Apple has mastered the craft of creating venues for live-blogging. They set up venues with stadium style seating and fast connections, while always saving the biggest piece of news for last. This creates the need to hang on every word, sentence and slide they present.
Despite Apple’s polish though; live-blogging has struggled to become enjoyable to follow for tech fanboys. In fact, mainstream publications like the New York Times proved again yesterday that they don’t quite get what readers are looking for in a live-blog. Namely, speed and visuals.
That said, tech blogs used yesterday’s event as a coming out party to illustrate that they’ve come a long way since the live-blogging of 2006. Today, live-blogging produces several high-quality photos a minute and real-time updates. There were probably too many live-blogs to count yesterday, but I happened to stumble across a few of the best as Leo Laporte and Ustream managed to loose me with their inconsistent audio. Here’s my thoughts on the best:
#1: gdgt: Ryan Block kept my attention the best. His posts appeared to be faster than anyone else that I saw and picture updates were seamless. Or as Nick Bilton of the Times’ Bits Blog called their posting “like an Olympic diver; not even a splash.” It sounds like Ryan may have had the Rackspace hosting guys working a little overtime to make it happen.
#2: Gizmodo: Jason Chen and Brian Lam took the live-blogging on in tandem, which was unique. True to their nature their sarcasm was a little stronger than engadget’s or gdgt’s and their pictures were just about the same. However, it appeared that Gizmodo may have been better prepared for the lighting than engadget.
#3: engadget: Joshua Topolsky, who pals around with Jimmy Fallon in his spare time, did almost as well, although he did seem to lag behind Ryan on speed of posting information. He was on pace with posting pictures but they appeared to be of slightly less quality and darker than Gizmodo’s (may have been his angle). Topolsky stayed focused on bits of information and direct quotes from Jobs’ himself. Engadget’s servers also appeared to be less prepared as the site struggled with traffic.
4 comments January 28th, 2010
Coke prepares for the Superbowl with teaser ad on Facebook
By Ben Haber
It’s almost time for the Superbowl again, which means companies are getting ready to shell out significant money for a 30-second commercial spot on the one day people actually watch – and look forward to – the commercials. This year’s estimated cost for 30 seconds of airtime: $2.5 million (if only that could go toward creating jobs).
In preparation for the big game, Coca-Cola has debut a sneak preview of a Superbowl add (well, part of one anyway) on their Facebook fan page in order to raise money for the Boys & Girls Club of America (and get some consumer attention). The add can be viewed in the Live Positively tab of the page.
In order to see the commercial – which features the Simpson’s – users must post a gift (a.k.a. post/note) to a friend’s wall. Each gift results in a $1 donation from Coke to the Boys & Girls Club of America, and Coke will donate up to $250,000 total (the equivalent of a 3 second add during the Superbowl).
After sending a gift, users are able to watch a sneak peak of the commercial. While it seems promising (it’s about the country’s economic problems – what else!), I have no idea how it ties into Coke (however, the currently Blackberry commercial on TV has more to do with purchasing a Beatles album on iTunes then it has to do with the Blackberry).
2 comments January 28th, 2010
