Archive for August, 2009
By Kyle Austin
Are you a Florida Gator fan planning on tweeting your way to a Tebow-led, perfect season? Well, luckily, it seems you’ll be able to tweet from The Swamp this year. However, you soon may have to leave your mobile phone at home. The SEC is revising one of the most ludicrous social media policies to date, which was seeking to ban tweeting, facebooking and mobile video taking from the stands of college football games this year.
From the St. Petersburg Times last weekend:
“The SEC, one of college sports’ biggest, richest, most prominent conferences, earlier this month sent to its 12 schools an eye-opening new media policy. It places increasingly stringent limits on reporters and how much audio, video and “real-time” blogging they can do at games, practices and news conferences.
But even more interesting is that the policy also includes rules for fans in the stands. No updating Twitter feeds. No taking photos with phones and posting them on Facebook or Flickr. No taking videos and putting them on YouTube.”
The reasoning behind this move you ask? The SEC wants to keep eyes on televisions, given the $3 billion deal they made with ESPN and CBS to exclusively cover SEC football games.
However, Jeff Edler of the Charlotte Observer notes today that the SEC is planning to relax its Facebook and Twitter bans, which would have been completely un-inforcebable in a crowd of 90,000 college students. The real hot button issue among SEC officials is obviously video and even pictures being distributed over the Internet from the stands of games. This practice will likely remain off-limits to ticketed fans, while “text” policies will be relaxed.
This, of course, is equally hard to police with thousands of fans equipped with iPhones and other video-ready, smart phones, which can snap high-quality video at a moments notice. In fact, it could lead to an all-together ban on mobile phones at all sporting events down the road. Remember, the US Open banned all mobile phones from one of the nation’s most prestigious golfing events earlier this year.
In truth, the SEC and other sporting associations are battling the same issues that “old media” are battling, as they try to continue the long-standing practice of awarding lucrative, exclusive deals with television networks. Exclusivity is no longer an option in the digital age and you wonder how long incumbents will try to fight it.
Why not try to embrace the media shift with SEC-owned digital properties, which aggregate video and other content from the stands – bringing in online advertising revenue? What if the SEC partnered with ESPN, CBS and a corporate sponsor to do something similar to what the NCAA did with AT&T during March Madness? Maybe a similar type of mash-up for a paid YouTube channel?
I’d look at the uptick of mobile video from the stands as an opportunity rather than competition for these associations and conferences. What rapid SEC football fan is going to sit around on their computer at home waiting for the most recent tweet or online video uploaded from the stands as an alternative to watching Tebow run all-over secondaries on a 42 inch, HD screen? Not me.
If anything, I’m going to be watching that screen, with the computer in my lap to catch other reactions to the play. I’m not alone. Men between the ages of 15 – 29 spend somewhere between 16-22 minutes each day with a laptop in their hands while watching television (likely sports). Here’s guessing that number dramatically increases over weekends (during sporting events) and throughout Fantasy Football season.
August 18th, 2009
By Ben Haber
Over the past few years PR pros have taken a lot of criticism from some members of the media, such as WIRED‘s Chris Anderson, Lifehacker‘s Gina Trapani, and TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington. However, much of this criticism may be unjust.
A study in the July 2009 Journal of Public Relations Research shows that PR pros are very ethical thinkers. The report was conducted by Renita Coleman, a Legacy Scholar at Penn State’s Arthur W. Page Center for Integrity in Public Communication and her colleague Lee Wilkins. In the report Coleman and Wilkins write:
“Public relations professionals see their role as connecting clients to the larger world, primarily though journalists or to the news media. To accomplish this function, they need to maintain the trust of both parties, but particularly the trust of journalists who are already skeptical of their institutional role and their individual motives. Consequently, honesty and a lack of willingness to deceive those who receive information are critical in effective public relations practice.”
While I agree with this report, I don’t understand why these results would be surprising. Public relations is about helping companies share information and tell their story. Yes, there are certain messages that companies can highlight while telling their story and sharing their news, but PR people never encourage their clients to lie. When a company has an announcement to make, it is the job of PR people to analyze how noteworthy the news is and set realistic goals and expectations, and there are absolutely no circumstances where lying to a reporter will benefit an individual or a company.
Back to the study, the results show that PR people have similar ethics to other professionals such as journalists, nurses and dental students. In fact, PR people scored better than orthopedic surgeons, business professionals, accounting students and veterinary students.
So next time Anderson, Trapani or Arrington write a critical blog post, maybe it will be about their veterinarian.
August 14th, 2009
By Ben Haber
Social media isn’t anything new, but the lessons people keep learning are. While it’s amazing some of these mistakes were even made to begin with, here five things that you should not do on Facebook, Twitter, or any other social network site, along with some real-life examples to show what happens if you do make these mistakes.
1. Don’t talk bad about your boss
- As this woman learned, calling your boss a “wanker” in your Facebook status update isn’t a good move – especially if you if you are Facebook friends with them. Her boss left a public comment on her status update telling her to pack up her things and head home.
2. Don’t insult your company (or your client)
- UK resident James Brennan was fired after writing “F*** the Partnership” (referring to his employer) on his Facebook wall. He was quickly handed a pink slip.
- Philadelphia Eagles stadium worker Dan Leone was upset when this team didn’t re-sign Brian Dawkins and wrote “Dan is ******* devastated about Dawkins signing with Denver…Dam Eagles are Retarded,” on Facebook. He was soon fired.
- After being offered a job at Cisco, @theconnon wrote on Twitter, “Cisco just offered me a job! Now I have to weigh the utility of a fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work.” Someone at Cisco saw the tweet and her offer was quickly rescinded.
- Ketchum VP James Andrews wrote on Twitter that he would die if he lived in Mephis, the location of his client, FedEx. Some FedEx employees saw his tweet and wrote a letter to management, attracting attention across the Internet and forcing both Andrews and Ketcheum to issue apologies.
3. Don’t let compromising photos end up online
- Anglo Irish Bank intern Kevin Colvin took a day off from work because of a family emergency – which was actually a Halloween party. When his boss saw some interesting photos posted on Facebook he left a sarcastic comment for the whole office to see.
- After seriously injuring a woman in a car accident, Joshua Lipton attended a halloween party dressed in a prison uniform. His judge didn’t see the humor and sentences him to two years in prison, admitting that the picture (which was used as evidence during trial) was a factor in his decision.
4. Students: Don’t offer to pay others to do your work
- University of Buffalo basketball player Andy Robinson didn’t feel like writing a paper, so he wrote a post on Facebook offering to pay someone else to write it for him. As you can image, this didn’t go over very well with the University.
5. Don’t be a bully
- Former National Post reporter David George-Cosh had a complete meltdown on Twitter when he confronted marketing consultant April Dunford about not returning his phone call. David ended up leaving the Post almost immediately and is now based in Abu Dhabi, UAE for The National newspaper.
What other lessons can you think you?
August 12th, 2009
By Ben Haber
You may have already seen the major Facebook mistake circulating the Internet: A woman that was unhappy with her job decided write a negative “status update” about her boss and her job. The problem – she was Facebook friends with her boss. He ended up firing her (via Facebook’s comment section) and explained why she was a bad employee.
I think it’s pretty clear here that both parties were in the wrong. Common sense should tell you not to post negative things about your boss and your job on Facebook or any other social network, and a public response certainly doesn’t take the high road.
August 11th, 2009
By Kyle Austin
The Valley is still buzzing from yesterday’s news (TechCrunch broke it, before Facebook confirmed it) that Facebook acquired FriendFeed. Although financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, folks are speculating that the price tag was around $50 million.
While it would seem logical to contribute the acquisition to Facebook’s desire to replicate Twitter’s functionality – the real story is the bigger battle that is heating up between Facebook and Google.
From Robert Scoble, the #1 FriendFeed user according to FriendFeed co-founder Paul Buchheit:
This is Facebook firing a shot at Google, not at Twitter. Twitter is mere collateral damage but Facebook knows the real money in real time is in search. FriendFeed has real time search. Google does not (although it’s bootstrapping there very fast, some of my FriendFeed items are showing up in Google within seconds now). Facebook has 300 million users. FriendFeed and Twitter do not. Google has Wave coming, along with some other things this fall and that forced a shotgun marriage between FriendFeed and Facebook.
As Facebook continues its rapid innovation (for any product for this scale, in history, in ANY industry, they make more changes more rapidly than anybody ever has), the second acquisition in the company’s history made logical sense. From all accounts, FriendFeed’s team of 12 is one of the strongest (for its size) in the Valley and they will all be joining Facebook’s Palo Alto offices (likely on the platform team).
From Facebook’s release:
“Since I first tried FriendFeed, I’ve admired their team for creating such a simple and elegant service for people to share information,” said Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder and CEO. “As this shows, our culture continues to make Facebook a place where the best engineers come to build things quickly that lots of people will use.”
With these additions Facebook’s quest for real-time search may have a driver. It probably wasn’t a coincidence that Akhil Wable of Facebook announced improved Facebook search functions last night on Facebook’s blog, while using the FriendFeed announcement as an example of these new functions.
FriendFeed, appears to share the same aspirations, although they’d rather talk about open, innovative communication’s platforms for the time being. Their service will remain open to its users, but their founders were very clear to note that this is for the “time being.” The engineering team will likely be working on bigger things than the FriendFeed platform.
FriendFeed’s growth has been flat over the summer, and although they have not disclosed actual users (Likely around 100,000) , their unique traffic has been stuck around 1 million for the last several months. Running into these issues with scaling may have opened the eyes of their founders to the opportunity to work with Facebook’s 250 million + users.
It’s also something the industry should look closely at when considering the future path of Twitter and its ability to scale. Even investors in Twitter have been heard saying that it may never scale close to the size of Facebook. However, they also note in passing that it could be as valuable as Facebook, in the sense of providing a valuable service to a smaller user-base (think Craigslist).
This post first appeared on FastCompany.com.
August 11th, 2009
By Ben Haber
The Boston Globe will soon begin charging for its Web site, publisher P. Steven Ainsley told the paper’s union bosses yesterday as the Globe’s parent New York Times [NYT] Co. confirmed in a regulatory filing that the money-losing Hub broadsheet is for sale.
These words, taken directly from the Boston Herald, finally offer insight into the Boston Globe’s plan to increase revenue. After a drawn-out cost-cutting process that reduced salaries and took away various benefits from Globe employees, this decision should provide some financial relief – if it is successful. While there is no information as to when this model will begin or how much a subscription will cost, it has already become a heavily discussed topic. In fact, this news has generated 70 comments (and counting) on one bog post by Mike Reiss, a New England Patriots reporter (the post was about the Pats’ acquisition of Derrick Burgess).
The Globe is entering some tricky territory here, as many current readers object to the idea of paying to read Boston.com. In a conversation with Xconomy’s Wade Roush back in April, he acknowledged that a fee-based model could result in some angry readers:
Charging people for content, even if you have a system where some content is free and some is behind a firewall, is a tricky and hazardous route to go. I think that has only really worked for publications like The Wall Street Journal, where the publication is indisputably the only place to get certain kinds of information and they have a captive audience in a particular industry.
While the Globe has valuable regional coverage, there have been other news sources (websites, blogs, etc) that have emerged in the Boston area and offer readers great information on vertical topics. So while Boston.com is a complete local/regional/national information hub, there are other places that don’t charge for readership where people can access the same information – a big advantage in today’s economy.
What do you think of the Globe’s decision to charge for access to Boston.com?
August 10th, 2009
By Ben Haber
Are you having trouble figuring out which search engine is best? There is now an easy way to decide between Google, Yahoo! and Bing – a blind test. A new site called BlindSearch allows you to enter a search term and see the results from each engine, side by side. Once you go through the list and decide which result column you like the most, you can click “vote for this search engine” and it will tell you which one you selected.
I tried this for the NYC Half Marathon and ended up with these results. Only once of the three columns offered the best link at the top of the results page (www.nyrr.org/races/2009/nychalf/index.asp) which happened to be Google. I tried a few additional searches as well (the search engines change columns so it keeps you guessing) and ended up selecting Google again, and again.
TechCrunch noted that other tests in the past have showed that people often select Google as the best search engine just because it’s Google. So while that may be true for some, give it a shot and see which search engine is best for you.
Image: www.populicio.us
August 10th, 2009
By Ben Haber
In April RaceTalk reported that The Wall Street Journal decided to follow TechCrunch and no longer accept embargoed news. Today, paidContent.org reported that the WSJ will in fact accept exclusive embargoed news, but will not take herd embargoes:
The Wall Street Journal has a new policy for its editorial staff, we have learned: it will not accept embargoes for stories, but will take exclusives if handed to them. We have confirmed the policy from various sources, although a WSJ spokesman told us: “There is no change with our embargo policy. We honor deals when we make them.” Not all embargoes are identical—according to our sources, the WSJ will accept embargoes for exclusives but not when other media outlets are involved unless the story is considered big enough.
While the WSJ has this policy in place, paidContent.org reports that there are some exceptions if the story is big enough.
When a Racepoint Group employee contacted TechCrunch this morning, a TechCrunch blogger noted that the WSJ had adopted their policy and suggested it may be best to steer clear of the publication going forward – a tongue-in-cheek reference to the controversy that TechCrunch caused throughout the media and PR world after instituting their own embargo policy back in December 2008.
August 5th, 2009
By Ben Haber
One might consider keeping up with all of the new products that Google develops a full time job, and for Brittany Bohnet, it is. As Google’s product marketer, Brittany leads the charge in marketing Google’s impressive – and long – list of products. Even with all this on her plate, Brittany was kind enough to answer a few questions for us about her busy life at Google and marketing in a social world. You can also follow her on Twitter at @brit.
RaceTalk: What are some of the challenges in marketing products that are already so widely known and used (like Google Maps)?
Brittany Bohnet: While some may think that our products are “widely known”, we actually have several competitors on the market. For instance, Google Maps has only overtaken Mapquest in market share (in the United States) as of this year. And globally, we have dozens of other competitors. So, there is in fact a marketing challenge in terms of trying to persuade users to switch over to Google products.
For our users who are loyal Google fans, the marketing challenge is to teach them how to use all of the new product features we are constantly launching — things like draggable driving directions, My Maps, and Street View are all terrific product features, but many do not know they exist and/or do not know how to use them.
RaceTalk: Even since you joined Google, the Web has continued to evolve and we have seen social networks such as Twitter become mainstream and extremely influential. How have social networks affected changed the way marketers must think and strategize?
BB: Social networks have only deepened our relationships with consumers. Now, we can interface with them across several channels on the web. Marketers must understand how to build communities and have conversations on these channels. If you can do that, you’re likely to have thousands of evangelists that will continue to spread your message and effectively market your product for you.
RaceTalk: It seems like there are so many cool features to Google Maps that most people don’t even know exist. What’s your favorite feature that everyone should know about, but probably don’t?
BB: My first favorite feature is Street View, but I’m under the impression that it’s fairly widely known. So in that case, I’ll have to choose My Maps, a feature that allows users to create and share customized maps. We recently launched a campaign called Favorite Places, where we asked notable local experts and thought leaders to create a My Map of their favorite places around town. The hope is that our users will follow suit and create their own map of favorite places. You can check out my custom map of San Francisco here.
RaceTalk: What’s one Google product that you just can’t live without, and why?
BB: Search is a given, so I’ll choose iGoogle because it helps me maximize my efficiency on the web. I’ve set up my homepage with utility apps (Gmail, stock, weather), my favorite news and blogs (New York Times, Seth Godin’s blog, the Official Google Blog, Huffington Post), and of course, Facebook and Twitter.
RaceTalk: When we got a preview of Google Wave a few months ago it looked pretty amazing. Have you had a chance to play around with it at all, and if so, what do you think of it so far?
BB: Yes, I have access to the Google Wave sandbox. It’s a very exciting product and I think it has huge potential to change the way people communicate online.
RaceTalk: Do you have anything else to add about life as Google’s product marketer?
BB: Nothing great happens without a team of smart people surrounding you. Google is a company full of some of the best and brightest minds that I know, all of whom want nothing more than to make the web a more informative and resourceful place for our users. That alone is reason enough to make me love what I do.
(photo: brittanybohnet.com)
August 3rd, 2009
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