Gridley & Co. provides financial advisory to companies in the Information Services industry with a specific focus on financial technology, marketing services, data services, outsourcing, and internet services. Linda has more than twenty years of investment banking experience at several major financial firms including ABN Amro and Lehman Brothers.
Has Twitter made the iconic Web 2.0 jump from noun to verb? It’s hard to pinpoint, but just as Google made the jump, and similar to how Facebook crossed over, it appears that Twitter has become an action word – at least for the broadcast media.
As several folks have commented about recently, Twitter made its first appearance in the AP Stylebook (the writing bible for most newspapers and online publications) – within the new 2009 edition – and it seems broadcast networks have taken notice. The new entry on Twitter as a verb notes:
The verb forms are “to Twitter” or “to Tweet.”
However, while “to Twitter” may be grammatically correct, it doesn’t necessarily flow off the tip of your tongue like “Google us,” “Facebook us,” or even “Bing us.” In fact, using “Twitter us” over “Tweet us” almost makes them sound, not surprisingly, totally out of the Twittersphere.
Nevertheless, broadcasters have adopted it. On a cross-country Jetblue flight on Friday, I caught the phrase “Don’t forget to Twitter us” from every possible station, network and anchor you could imagine on DirecTV. The Weather Channel‘s Weather Center, check. Sports Center, check. And of course CNN (Daily Show rip embedded above).
This week RaceTalk went to a couple of local Massachusetts technology industry events where innovation was on display – even in a recession. At the Massachusetts Innovation & Technology Awards (MITX), the organization shared research highlights that were astounding. The New England tech innovation ecosystem contributed $23+ billion to the region’s economy in 2008, up 20% over the previous year. There were lots of cool companies in the audience including LogMeIn, Vitality, SwapTree, Ember, and more. MITX’s annual lifetime achievement award went to Helen Grenier, CEO, The Droid Works and Co-Founder and Director of iRobot.
At this week’s MassNetComm’s Innovation Summit we heard an interesting panel that included serial entrepreneurs and an ex-governor. All were bullish about innovation and technology – and even more so in a recession. The panel noted, however, that this recession presents some new challenges such as more global competition and more government regulation. Open source and outsourcing, however, open up new opportunities. 16 companies in mobile, video, broadband infrastructure and cloud computing did one minute (!) fast pitches to judges from IBM, Cisco, Charles River Ventures, EMC, PwC, etc. The entrepreneurs did a fantastic job.
We left these two events feeling very upbeat and proud of our regional economy. No reason to feel inferior to Silicon Valley. NetApp, pay attention and stop bemoaning East Coast culture.
We have already witnessed newspapers collapse at the feet of the Internet. While many are hanging on (by a thread) some have already given up and become online-only or closed down completely.
Next in line are the news stations.
On June 19th our entire media structure will change with the release of the iPhone 3G S. The ability to record, edit and post video online within seconds may be the largest difference-maker since email. While it’s going to use social media as tools, mobile video is going to catch on faster the Facebook and have a larger impact then Twitter – it’s going to be massive.
When I learned that the new iPhone would support video I thought back to a Q&A I did in April with Xconomy’s Wade Roush. Here is an excerpt:
RaceTalk: It will be even more interesting once video is out there and people can just pull out a video camera and start recording.
Wade Roush: That’s happening already. Although the trick there is its not very easy yet to get the video off your phone. It’s a lot easier to e-mail a photograph to TwitPic or CNN than it would be to e-mail a video.
RaceTalk: But if you can do live video from your phone that changes things even more.
Wade Roush: Oh live video, absolutely. Oh wow, just think. It’s a world where everyone is sensing in a way. Everyone is carrying around a TV camera.
Wade said it perfectly – as of June 19th everyone and anyone can carry around a TV camera and instantly make their video available to the world. Instead of taking a picture of the plane crash in the Hudson River people will be able to record video of the crash, and rescue and have it immediately available to a world-wide audience. The content won’t have to go through an editor or a producer. Just quickly post it to YouTube then blast it out on Facebook and Twitter and suddenly it’s more accessible than the common cold.
So beginning on June 19th everything that happens – anywhere – is fair game. When Michael Phelps decides to smoke at a college campus police officers aren’t going to find a picture online – they’re going to find a video of the whole thing taking place.
Every athlete and celebrity should prepare to have their actions documented in video when they are in public, and any type of event will be publicly broadcast on YouTube just seconds after it happens – which is where TV stations get hit. From this point forward, citizens are now the leading news reporters. Sure, Twitter had the news before CNN, but Twitter didn’t have video, and there is nothing quite like seeing something unfolding as it happens. When the UF student was tasered during Senator Kerry’s speach the video was available shortly afterwords and was posted everywhere the next day. If something like that happens the video will be posted on YouTube within 90 seconds of the incident.
TV Stations are now behind the curve and will begin to join newspapers in line at the history museum unless they adapt with the times. They will need to embrace mobile video, not shy away from it and ignore it. They will need to engage with their viewers and talk with them, work with them, and embrace them. Finally, they need to offer additional insight and analysis that we can’t find on YouTube.
While the BBC is having its sattelite signals blocked by Iranian authorities and CNN is being openly critisized – across the Web and throughout the Twitterspere (#CNNFail) - for their lack of coverage on the fallout following the Iraninian election victory claim by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his party; information continues to stream out across the Web from online global “correspondents” (including citizen journalists).
Nico Pitney, National Editor for the Huffington Post, is “live-blogging” the events from Tehran by pulling together content and information from people on the ground and others aggregating it across the Web.
There is no doubt the Social Web has made it easier for these modern-day “correspondents” and “international editors” as they aggregate the news of the disputed elections with hashtags such as #IranElection on Twitter, and bring video and pictures to the masses through YouTube and Flickr.
“That a new information technology could be improvised for this purpose so swiftly is a sign of the times. It reveals in Iran what the Obama campaign revealed in the United States. You cannot stop people any longer. You cannot control them any longer. They can bypass your established media; they can broadcast to one another; they can organize as never before.”
To be fair to the mainstream media, we can’t blame their lack of coverage or lack of portraying actual events (as they happen in Tehran) on their closure of foreign bureaus. They’ve made an effort to cover this. While people are criticizing CNN.com, their best international correspondent is directly addressing Ahmadinejad on the status of his rival, Mir Hossein Moussavi.
The New York Times is dedicating their The Lede blog to the discussion and has correspondents and even columnists taking a look at the happenings on the ground in Tehran.
This is really a case of the mainstream media being hampered by authorities that want to vastly limit the information coming out of Tehran, especially from the international free press. But they can’t cut off all communications in this information age.
Citizen journalists aren’t waiting for the mainstream media. They’re taking to every communication technology available and filling in ”pieces of the puzzle,” as Iranian authorities scramble to take down telecommunications, Internet and mobile access. Mir Hossein Moussavi , himself, is taking to Twitter to update “his people” on his location and safety.
Iran, although closed off from the world in some respects by its regime, has embraced the Internet-age. Even with talk of the death penalty for those that oppose the regime through blogs on the Web, Iran is home to the 3rd largest group of bloggers in the world. They are driving this crowd-sourced news story through small tweets of information.
So while we should still fear the death of publications like the New York Times, this event offers hope in citizen journalism and processing through some type objective, free press outlet. The Times, itself, has been outspoken against the act of “process journalism,” but this type of process journalism is crucial to the future of democracy.
The Facebook vanity URL gold rush is almost upon us with folks across the world setting their iPhone’s for 12:01 a.m. ET Saturday. Well, actually, that’s for most of us.
While Facebook is promoting that everyone will be able to choose a custom URL for their Facebook account at the same time – to easily direct friends, family, colleagues and business contacts to their Facebook profile – they’re giving URL’s away in advance to media and analysts that cover the company.
Unlike a demo in advance of a public announcement, there isn’t really anything for journalists to try out here, so Facebook is really just throwing influencers a bone. In return, they get to improve the relationship and can bet on more coverage around their already-hyped announcement. Caroline McCarthy at Cnet has her new Facebook URL set to go live www.facebook.com/carolinemccarthy (although she didn’t have much say in what it was), and of course Michael Arrington does as well. While it seems like a sweet PR throw-in, statements from Arrington like this, don’t exactly endear themselves to the 200 million plus people that are still waiting in line:
“I feel sort of bad about posting this, since Facebook is actually doing us a favor. But I also think it’s kind of BS that Facebook is giving some people, employees included, first shot at the names. My guilt only extends so far, though. You suckers wait in line. I’m grabbing my name in advance.”
Many of those people still waiting in line are marketers operating brand pages on Facebook (for who, this announcement is a bigger deal). Consumers have been able to personalize their URL’s for LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube and other sites for some time. While Facebook may be important to them as well, it doesn’t have the marketing implications for them that it carries for brands.
I wrote back in March how valuable the new Facebook fan pages would be for marketers. However, the big thing missing at the time was easily identifiable URL’s. Sure, Microsoft had one and Vitaminwater used their vanity URL incredibly effectively with their TV campaign during March Madness, but these companies had existing business relationships with Facebook (investors & ad buyers). Even a company the size of Cisco, which apparently didn’t have that relationship with Facebook, didn’t have a custom URL for their fan page.
That all changes tomorrow at 12:01 a.m. ET, assuming you have more than 1,000 fans following your page (and did so before May 31). From Facebook:
“Your Facebook Page must meet two requirements: it must have been live on Facebook prior to the May 31, 2009 cut-off date and have had a minimum 1,000 fans at that time. This limitation is temporary. All Pages created after May 31, 2009 or that had less than 1,000 fans on that day will be eligible to claim usernames on Sunday, June 28, 2009.”
So while the Facebook fan page managers for Cisco, Salesforce.com and Mint.com can create a vanity URL at 12:01 a.m. ET tomorrow, other brands will have to wait until June 28th. It does seem fair in most senses. Those that have taken advantage of pages for their marketing since March and have a grown a real following are being rewarded in advance.
However – on the other hand – some brands that have been very active, but may not have huge followings (b-b brands rather than b-c brands) are being penalized. Those that are being forced to wait can protect their company against brand infringement by filling out this form, which Facebook is providing.
The companies making the move to an identifiable URL tomorrow with the masses will find it much easier to market their destination within Facebook, which will likely lead to more companies using the interactive experience as their de-facto corporate Website.
In April, I took a look at new research on Fortune 500 companies blogging.
The research was conducted by the Society for New Communications Research (SNCR) and carried out by Nora Ganim Barnes, Ph.D. and Eric Mattson CEO of Financial Insite.
This week Larry had a chance to sit down with Nora, who is the current Chancellor Professor of Marketing at Umass Dartmouth, to discuss those findings further and other insight she has on the social media space. Listen to the Market Edge interview here.
The Media Meltdown was in the Spotlight at the T3PR Conference; As was the Publicist-Journalist Relationship - Video Courtesy of LMcDuff08
Getting a group of public relations professionals in a room to get feedback from journalists they interact with is always a good thing. While social media has spawned the era of two-way conversations, most journalist and publicist dialogue is still like two ships passing in the night – they’re both trying to get somewhere (vastly different places) and never establish baseline communication.
While it wasn’t the overt theme of Tuesday’s event (Twitter dialogue here),the public relations industry – like the marketing industry as a whole – is tied to the media industry, witnessing a potentially deadly mixture of a market meltdown combined with a digital evolution. With the media industry’s back up against the wall, the public relations industry finds itself in its shadow. Forced to evolve or die, just like newspapers.
With that in mind, it wasn’t a surprise that those of us in attendance saw some great presentations from David, Josh Hallett, Shonali Burke , Beth Murphy and others on the true power of connecting directly with consumers through social media (downplaying PR’s reliance on traditional media to get messages across).
This disjointed dialogue gives the appearance that social media is actually distancing journalists and publicists even further. However, as John Geddes of the New York Times noted in a recent newsroom interview – “The best of each group (still) need one another.”
The truth is, now is the perfect opportunity for publicists and journalists to foster better relationships in tackling social media. We’re all arbiters of the news and members of the online community after all.
Just as Tom Foremski collaborated with Brian Solis on outlining how to reshape the PR industry, the PR industry can support and assist the traditional media as they try to move their content and reader engagement online.
In addition to solving real problems, it could improve perceptions and relationships on both sides of the equation. As they say, don’t waste a crisis.
Well nearly two years later, the new it company is Twitter and in case you’ve been living under a rock, the media LOVE them.
They love them so much they can’t resist writing the story within Twitter (I mean look at the picture above and this picture – literally within Twitter). They’re tweeting about possible television series based on Twitter and I’m sure there are feature films in the works.
While Microsoft announced the launch of Bing last week, the company should have saved the news for when the site was actually live (June 1). After all, AdAge reported that the original announcement (and Steve Ballmer’s speech) generated about 1,500 news stories, or 1.7 percent of all Internet traffic two days before the launch, while news coverage on the day of the launch “only” produced 0.9 percent of all Internet traffic.
Of course when you’re Microsoft, you can afford to spend millions and millions of dollars on marketing instead of capitalizing on PR. In fact, Microsoft has put aside approximately $100 million for Bing’s marketing efforts, which position the site as a decision engine.
Microsoft’s first advertisement is now on YouTube, and while it doesn’t mention Google by name, the ad resembles one of the Mac vs. PC ads in the way that it attacks Google. The video refers to Google as “search overload” and even ties the search engine to the economy’s collapse. Wait – seriously?
Two exact lines from the advertisement are “While everyone was searching there were bailouts” and “While everyone was lost in the links there was collapse.” So everything you Google something Microsoft wants you to picture layoffs, GM and AIG so that you will go running to Bing where they will help you make decisions and simplify your life.
I’ve tested out Bing for the past few days and have found there is a lot to like about the search engine, such as the way the search results are organized and the quality of the results. I also found myself enjoying the Bing’s home page page, and check it out each morning to see which image they will have up. While I’m not a big fan of their image results, their video results are amazing and the site seems like a great tool for planning trips.
So while these factors will ultimately determine whether or not Bing will be a success, you can bet on Microsoft pouring millions of dollars into marketing to push it along.
Of course, Microsoft can afford the hefty budget since Bing is tied to the economic recovery and prosperity!
When I learned that the new iPhone would support video I thought back to a 
