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.
Last week TreeHugger blogger Jaymi Heimbuch stopped by our San Francisco office to discuss the environment, green washing, social media green technology and how businesses and people can become more environmental conscious in everyday life. Afterwards she was kind enough to answer a few additional questions for our blog. If you’re not already following Jaymi on Twitter you can follow her at @JaymiHeimbuch.
RaceTalk: We have seen interest in green technology continue to grow through the first half of this year. What should trends should we expect to see over the next 6-9 months?
Jaymi Heimbuch: I think that platforms for home energy monitoring are going to really proliferate and that’s pretty consumer orientated as well as for larger corporations. There are pretty amazing companies that are doing cool things – including start ups – it’s important to the economy and everything, like linking utilities to consumers and consumers to a broader understanding of energy consumption. The way that these platforms are designed, it’s going to be interesting to watch in the next six months, because it’s going to be important to make the information that the consumers can see is relevant, as well as have it be automated so that consumers don’t necessarily have to say, “Okay, well I see that I’m spending more carbon right now than I want to because of my energy consumption so I’m going to change my thermostat.” Instead they can set the level that they want it to be, or have it automated based on what the utility wants to see, that kind of thing. So that’s what I see for platforms for home atomization.
In terms of gadget stuff, I see a switch to smaller, lighter, more energy efficient devices. The netbooks are kind of a big deal right now, and over the next six months they’re going to continue to be a big deal, and having people become really comfortable with not having this big bad laptop or desktop but actually this highly functional, highly portable, useful device. I’m hoping that people will think that it is a cool thing to have and think, “I don’t need all of that stuff! What else don’t I need?” We will see where that goes, but I’m hoping that in terms of netbooks, something that we look at is disposability. So making it be this really cool, lower energy consuming device, but also not disposable where people think that it’s just like “Oh, well it’s so cheap that I can just use it for now and just ditch it in a year because I’ll get something better,” or whatever it might be. So that’s a worry that I have.
Another trend is getting gadgets off grid where you can. Solar integrated into chargers might become more consumer-friendly. Right now the trend is to just slap a solar cell on something and call it useful, even if it really isn’t. When someone puts a solar cell on the back of a phone and says “Here, charge it,” nobody’s going to put their phone in the sun for an hour to get five minutes of talk time. It’s ridiculous – but it’s a trend. So trying to figure out off-grid charging capabilities that people will actually use, that’s something that I want to keep an eye out for.
RaceTalk: What are some of the most impressive green technologies that could have a real impact on the environment over the next year or so?
Jaymi: I would say carbon accounting. So whatever is happening in the clean-tech sphere in terms of helping businesses – as well as the general population – track and accurately account for carbon. For businesses through the supply chain the big issue is, “How far down the supply chain do we go?” If you’re consuming it you do need to account for the ‘XYZ’ part of your supply chain. Having it be accurate and having it be measurable (is important) and we should have software that allows you to track water, energy, office products that you’re consuming, how that affects your carbon footprint, that sort of thing.
I also think that virtual technologies and virtual conferencing is really cool. I know that over the next six months people will realize that telecommuting is a pretty legit thing for businesses to look into. What technologies surround the ability to teleconference is important. Skype is one of the most invaluable tools I could possibly have in my artillery and it’s almost free. I pay $30 a year in order to have phone calls, but essentially it’s a free service and it allows us so much flexibility in working with this group of people spread out across the nation and across the world, and to be effective as if we were in an office together, so that’s a really big deal one. And then accurate carbon footprint calculators for people to do quick references are great, so that that they can know it’s accurate and can determine really quickly, “Okay, what’s my carbon footprint for this flight that I want to take? What do I offset? Is that an accurate amount to offset?”
RaceTalk: Do you use Skype for your editorial meetings?
Jaymi: Yes, we use Skype all day, every day. We even have a special chat room that, the name of it changes constantly, but it’s essentially our water cooler and we hang out all day long, and we’ll swap links and other things. We’ll just chit chat and it makes it feel like we’re in an office setting.
RaceTalk: So you’re communicating with your colleagues all the time?
Jaymi: Yeah, constantly.
RaceTalk: What are some of your favorite topics to cover?
Jaymi: I get really excited about big deal subjects like water issues and technology around water issues. I get excited about when technology will and won’t help, and talking about that. I get very excited about gadgets and the way consumer gadgets can be greener such as consolidation. I think about cool ways to do that, how can we fix them, how can we make them obsolete, how we can (get to a point where we don’t have) devices anymore, or just get away with one device. (I look at) How are they being built, how are they being manufactured, how can that be improved, or what cool designs are going on to be able to green up what we are doing. I get pretty excited about the big deal topics in clean tech which includes the smart grid – that’s revolutionizing how we consume energy. And once we have a smart grid in place, how that can get us off of coal energy and onto renewable energy.
RaceTalk: How do you think social media can play into creating green activism?
Jaymi: It’s huge! It can’t be understated how important online social media is to green activism. There are tools that we use all the time. For instance, within Twitter hash tags or something to help people filter in green information (is important to) having it spread really rapidly. We use Facebook to (connect with) people who are using it on a daily basis. The way that social media connects people instantly and connects them to (additional) people down the line instantly allows you to access really high profile people. You can just be twittering and all of a sudden you can get connected to someone who’s way high up on the influential chain. It’s huge. Charity Water is a really good example of how Twitter can help out with green activism. They had a “twestival” back in March and it was basically getting people, via Twitter, to get together and tweet about events and go to these events and donate. They were able to raise tons of money to help start Wells in Africa – direct results from social online media.
RaceTalk: Do you see Twitter and Facebook having the largest impact, at least right now?
Jaymi: Probably, just because so many people use it. Twitter is really for networking people who already care and have an eye out for it anyway. Sometimes it will reach other people, but sometimes not so much. Digg is a really good tool for getting stories out to people. Facebook is kind of a hybrid of the two, so you can get stories out to people and you can get it to be a little bit more viral, but you also have a stronger connection to the people who can leave comments about a story or who can fan something or who can spread it and track it. From a media side, being able to track what people are saying about the stories you’re putting out there and how it impacts them is really important.
RaceTalk: Do you use the Twitter trends to see which topics “green” people are discussing most?
Jaymi: I don’t use it terribly often. It helps sometimes, but I have a beat so it doesn’t really do much for me. It would need to be honed down into the trending topics for my specific area. Other people in our organization do pay attention to that, they’re like “Hey, this is what people seem to be really interested in. Let’s write about it, let’s talk about it. Let’s put some value-added into the conversation, somehow.” So we will grab things. Also, Google (can tell us) whatever word is being searched, so we have people who will monitor that and say “Hey! Everyone’s talking about this. We’ve got something important to say about it, let’s talk about it and have that be something that pops up on searches.”
Ben: So your editors definitely pay attention to it?
Jaymi: Oh, we pay very close attention to whatever the heartbeat of green is, or how we can take what’s popular right then and show people how it can be green, because our whole thing is making green feel very accessible and practical and inviting to everyone. We don’t want to say “Oh, that’s awful, that’s not green,” but we point out when it’s not. We like to say “Hey, look at this crazy concept! Yeah, it’s crazy, but it could be kind of cool.” And then everybody loves crazy concepts and they latch on to this weird concept idea, and then through us see how that can be green or how it could be improved or however it is.
RaceTalk: What online green communities do you find most valuable?
Jaymi: For me, Twitter is pretty huge. I used to think that Twitter was the weirdest thing you could possibly get involved in. I had no idea why anyone would care about me and what I’m cooking for dinner. Now that I use it as an actual tool to network with people I work with, it’s pretty amazing. I’ve met wonderful people, I have been able to solidify good relationships with peers within the industry, you can keep track of what’s happening really easily and people know about what you’re doing really easily, so it’s been a great social networking tool for me personally. Facebook I keep for my friends and family, but other people I know use it as a way to really spread and network with people and have thousands of friends so that they can spread information. That could be an important tool for a lot of people as well. Personally, that’s my one private area online.
RaceTalk: What should PR people know before pitching a story to you?
Jaymi: Okay, there are probably a couple of things. One, please, please, please know what’s green and what’s not! I got something in my email today that was about an electronic cigarette or something and it’s green because “people won’t throw away their cigarette butts!” I said, “Well, no, it’s not. It’s a thing, but it’s not necessarily a green thing. You’re trying to find this green angle to it and it doesn’t pull it off.” They could’ve pulled that off with really light green websites, but they obviously weren’t savvy to how serious we are about genuine green stuff. So that didn’t get past my delete button.
(It’s important to) know what my beat is and what I tend to cover. I am super impressed when a PR person has read what I’ve written before and has a legitimate opinion about it. When they can say “Hey, I read this and I thought it was interesting because of XYZ. This thing that I’m promoting ties into that, and I think that you would be interested.” Then (I like) when they have a really great press release and make it really quick to scan with the really important information up front. Sometimes they do these really flowery intros and it’s like, “What’s your point?” I need to know very quickly what your green angle is, what your product is, is it legit, and then let’s move on. So those are really important, and I really don’t like when they get too efficient so that it seems very impersonal. Sometimes people will say “I think this is of interest to you. Please see below.” Then it’s the press release pasted in. I will see below because I want to know what it is, but it doesn’t make me want to cover it for you. So (it’s important to) know that balance. There are some PR people that I’ve worked with who I think are amazing at what they do because they have that balance between being really friendly and wonderful, but never in my face, and they always bring me cool stuff. And part of it is, that’s who your clients are, but part of it is that they just know how to show it to me.
RaceTalk: So I’m guessing email is the best way to pitch you, but are you also into the pitching via Twitter?
Jaymi: I’ve never been pitched via Twitter!
RaceTalk: Really?
Jaymi: Yeah, which is very interesting! I wonder why I haven’t? Email is a big deal to me, because I’m online. I’m sure that there are other people who are used to being on the phone and stuff. Personally, I really hate phone conversations, they just are annoying. All I can think of is that I’m using my cell phone minutes, and I don’t hear well so I don’t even want to be on the phone, so I tend to be very short. Email is great because it gives me the time to see the information and prioritize it throughout the day. I might think it’s interesting but I can’t get to it right away, I’ll get to it at six o’clock tonight, so it gives me that flexibility and gives me time to read it. So when I do pick up the phone and PR person calls and says “I have something that I think would be interesting,” my reaction is always, “Okay, send it to me in an email and I’ll look at it, and I’ll see what we can do for you and if it’s something we want to promote.” But I always want to see it and to have some time to myself to know it’s legit. When you’re on the phone, you can pitch something that sounds awesome, and then you see it in writing and you’re like “Crap, I said I’d cover that, and I don’t really want to.”
RaceTalk: We have seen interest in green technology continue to grow through the first half of this year. What should trends should we expect to see over the next 6-9 months?
Jaymi Heimbuch: I think that platforms for home energy monitoring are going to really proliferate and that’s pretty consumer orientated as well as for larger corporations. There are pretty amazing companies that are doing cool things – including start ups – it’s important to the economy and everything, like linking utilities to consumers and consumers to a broader understanding of energy consumption. The way that these platforms are designed, it’s going to be interesting to watch in the next six months, because it’s going to be important to make the information that the consumers can see is relevant, as well as have it be automated so that consumers don’t necessarily have to say, “Okay, well I see that I’m spending more carbon right now than I want to because of my energy consumption so I’m going to change my thermostat.” Instead they can set the level that they want it to be, or have it automated based on what the utility wants to see, that kind of thing. So that’s what I see for platforms for home atomization.
In terms of gadget stuff, I see a switch to smaller, lighter, more energy efficient devices. The netbooks are kind of a big deal right now, and over the next six months they’re going to continue to be a big deal, and having people become really comfortable with not having this big bad laptop or desktop but actually this highly functional, highly portable, useful device. I’m hoping that people will think that it is a cool thing to have and think, “I don’t need all of that stuff! What else don’t I need?” We will see where that goes, but I’m hoping that in terms of netbooks, something that we look at is disposability. So making it be this really cool, lower energy consuming device, but also not disposable where people think that it’s just like “Oh, well it’s so cheap that I can just use it for now and just ditch it in a year because I’ll get something better,” or whatever it might be. So that’s a worry that I have.
Another trend is getting gadgets off grid where you can. Solar integrated into chargers might become more consumer-friendly. Right now the trend is to just slap a solar cell on something and call it useful, even if it really isn’t. When someone puts a solar cell on the back of a phone and says “Here, charge it,” nobody’s going to put their phone in the sun for an hour to get five minutes of talk time. It’s ridiculous – but it’s a trend. So trying to figure out off-grid charging capabilities that people will actually use, that’s something that I want to keep an eye out for.
RaceTalk: What are some of the most impressive green technologies that could have a real impact on the environment over the next year or so?
JH: I would say carbon accounting. So whatever is happening in the clean-tech sphere in terms of helping businesses – as well as the general population – track and accurately account for carbon. For businesses through the supply chain the big issue is, “How far down the supply chain do we go?” If you’re consuming it you do need to account for the ‘XYZ’ part of your supply chain. Having it be accurate and having it be measurable (is important) and we should have software that allows you to track water, energy, office products that you’re consuming, how that affects your carbon footprint, that sort of thing.
I also think that virtual technologies and virtual conferencing is really cool. I know that over the next six months people will realize that telecommuting is a pretty legit thing for businesses to look into. What technologies surround the ability to teleconference is important. Skype is one of the most invaluable tools I could possibly have in my artillery and it’s almost free. I pay $30 a year in order to have phone calls, but essentially it’s a free service and it allows us so much flexibility in working with this group of people spread out across the nation and across the world, and to be effective as if we were in an office together, so that’s a really big deal one. And then accurate carbon footprint calculators for people to do quick references are great, so that that they can know it’s accurate and can determine really quickly, “Okay, what’s my carbon footprint for this flight that I want to take? What do I offset? Is that an accurate amount to offset?”
RaceTalk: Do you use Skype for your editorial meetings?
JH: Yes, we use Skype all day, every day. We even have a special chat room that, the name of it changes constantly, but it’s essentially our water cooler and we hang out all day long, and we’ll swap links and other things. We’ll just chit chat and it makes it feel like we’re in an office setting.
RaceTalk: So you’re communicating with your colleagues all the time?
JH: Yeah, constantly.
RaceTalk: What are some of your favorite topics to cover?
JH: I get really excited about big deal subjects like water issues and technology around water issues. I get excited about when technology will and won’t help, and talking about that. I get very excited about gadgets and the way consumer gadgets can be greener such as consolidation. I think about cool ways to do that, how can we fix them, how can we make them obsolete, how we can (get to a point where we don’t have) devices anymore, or just get away with one device. (I look at) How are they being built, how are they being manufactured, how can that be improved, or what cool designs are going on to be able to green up what we are doing. I get pretty excited about the big deal topics in clean tech which includes the smart grid – that’s revolutionizing how we consume energy. And once we have a smart grid in place, how that can get us off of coal energy and onto renewable energy.
RaceTalk: How do you think social media can play into creating green activism?
JH: It’s huge! It can’t be understated how important online social media is to green activism. There are tools that we use all the time. For instance, within Twitter hash tags or something to help people filter in green information (is important to) having it spread really rapidly. We use Facebook to (connect with) people who are using it on a daily basis. The way that social media connects people instantly and connects them to (additional) people down the line instantly allows you to access really high profile people. You can just be twittering and all of a sudden you can get connected to someone who’s way high up on the influential chain. It’s huge. Charity Water is a really good example of how Twitter can help out with green activism. They had a “twestival” back in March and it was basically getting people, via Twitter, to get together and tweet about events and go to these events and donate. They were able to raise tons of money to help start Wells in Africa – direct results from social online media.
RaceTalk: Do you see Twitter and Facebook having the largest impact, at least right now?
JH: Probably, just because so many people use it. Twitter is really for networking people who already care and have an eye out for it anyway. Sometimes it will reach other people, but sometimes not so much. Digg is a really good tool for getting stories out to people. Facebook is kind of a hybrid of the two, so you can get stories out to people and you can get it to be a little bit more viral, but you also have a stronger connection to the people who can leave comments about a story or who can fan something or who can spread it and track it. From a media side, being able to track what people are saying about the stories you’re putting out there and how it impacts them is really important.
RaceTalk: Do you use the Twitter trends to see which topics “green” people are discussing most?
JH: I don’t use it terribly often. It helps sometimes, but I have a beat so it doesn’t really do much for me. It would need to be honed down into the trending topics for my specific area. Other people in our organization do pay attention to that, they’re like “Hey, this is what people seem to be really interested in. Let’s write about it, let’s talk about it. Let’s put some value-added into the conversation, somehow.” So we will grab things. Also, Google (can tell us) whatever word is being searched, so we have people who will monitor that and say “Hey! Everyone’s talking about this. We’ve got something important to say about it, let’s talk about it and have that be something that pops up on searches.”
RaceTalk: So your editors definitely pay attention to it?
JH: Oh, we pay very close attention to whatever the heartbeat of green is, or how we can take what’s popular right then and show people how it can be green, because our whole thing is making green feel very accessible and practical and inviting to everyone. We don’t want to say “Oh, that’s awful, that’s not green,” but we point out when it’s not. We like to say “Hey, look at this crazy concept! Yeah, it’s crazy, but it could be kind of cool.” And then everybody loves crazy concepts and they latch on to this weird concept idea, and then through us see how that can be green or how it could be improved or however it is.
RaceTalk: What online green communities do you find most valuable?
JH: For me, Twitter is pretty huge. I used to think that Twitter was the weirdest thing you could possibly get involved in. I had no idea why anyone would care about me and what I’m cooking for dinner. Now that I use it as an actual tool to network with people I work with, it’s pretty amazing. I’ve met wonderful people, I have been able to solidify good relationships with peers within the industry, you can keep track of what’s happening really easily and people know about what you’re doing really easily, so it’s been a great social networking tool for me personally. Facebook I keep for my friends and family, but other people I know use it as a way to really spread and network with people and have thousands of friends so that they can spread information. That could be an important tool for a lot of people as well. Personally, that’s my one private area online.
RaceTalk: What should PR people know before pitching a story to you?
JH: Okay, there are probably a couple of things. One, please, please, please know what’s green and what’s not! I got something in my email today that was about an electronic cigarette or something and it’s green because “people won’t throw away their cigarette butts!” I said, “Well, no, it’s not. It’s a thing, but it’s not necessarily a green thing. You’re trying to find this green angle to it and it doesn’t pull it off.” They could’ve pulled that off with really light green websites, but they obviously weren’t savvy to how serious we are about genuine green stuff. So that didn’t get past my delete button.
(It’s important to) know what my beat is and what I tend to cover. I am super impressed when a PR person has read what I’ve written before and has a legitimate opinion about it. When they can say “Hey, I read this and I thought it was interesting because of XYZ. This thing that I’m promoting ties into that, and I think that you would be interested.” Then (I like) when they have a really great press release and make it really quick to scan with the really important information up front. Sometimes they do these really flowery intros and it’s like, “What’s your point?” I need to know very quickly what your green angle is, what your product is, is it legit, and then let’s move on. So those are really important, and I really don’t like when they get too efficient so that it seems very impersonal. Sometimes people will say “I think this is of interest to you. Please see below.” Then it’s the press release pasted in. I will see below because I want to know what it is, but it doesn’t make me want to cover it for you. So (it’s important to) know that balance. There are some PR people that I’ve worked with who I think are amazing at what they do because they have that balance between being really friendly and wonderful, but never in my face, and they always bring me cool stuff. And part of it is, that’s who your clients are, but part of it is that they just know how to show it to me.
RaceTalk: So I’m guessing email is the best way to pitch you, but are you also into the pitching via Twitter?
JH: I’ve never been pitched via Twitter!
RaceTalk: Really?
JH: Yeah, which is very interesting! I wonder why I haven’t? Email is a big deal to me, because I’m online. I’m sure that there are other people who are used to being on the phone and stuff. Personally, I really hate phone conversations, they just are annoying. All I can think of is that I’m using my cell phone minutes, and I don’t hear well so I don’t even want to be on the phone, so I tend to be very short. Email is great because it gives me the time to see the information and prioritize it throughout the day. I might think it’s interesting but I can’t get to it right away, I’ll get to it at six o’clock tonight, so it gives me that flexibility and gives me time to read it. So when I do pick up the phone and PR person calls and says “I have something that I think would be interesting,” my reaction is always, “Okay, send it to me in an email and I’ll look at it, and I’ll see what we can do for you and if it’s something we want to promote.” But I always want to see it and to have some time to myself to know it’s legit. When you’re on the phone, you can pitch something that sounds awesome, and then you see it in writing and you’re like “Crap, I said I’d cover that, and I don’t really want to.”
On Wednesday we found out (through a post by Mark Zuckerberg) that Facebook hit a quarter billion users, putting it past Indonesia as the world’s fourth populous “country.” One person who was certainly not surprised by the news was David Kirkpatrick. Although he’s currently residing in the hills of the Berkshires, there’s probably no person further inside Facebook right now than Kirkpatrick. Other than, maybe, Justin Smith of Inside Facebook.
Kirkpatrick, who I had the chance to catch-up with earlier this week for our annual pre-Brainstorm: Tech discussion, is writing six hours a day as he pushes towards a Spring 2010 publishing date for his Facebook book entitled The Facebook Effect.
Although Kirkpatrick has been open in pulling together his book through the aptly named Facebook Effect blog on Facebook, his project has been overshadowed this week by the publishing of Ben Mezrich’s Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook, A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal.
Mezrich, the former Harvard student who was also the author behindBringing Down the House (adapted into the motion picture 21), has been somewhat lampooned for his fictional take on factual events by Facebook – who have resorted to calling him the “Danielle Steele of Silicon Valley.“
In fact, Elliot Schrage, Facebook’s vice president of communications, has pointed to Kirkpatrick’s upcoming book on Facebook as the “real story” behind the birth and history of the company:
“This book (Mezrich’s) appears to fall in the ‘others’ category. We think future efforts will tell a better and more accurate story.”
In already reading through much of Mezrich’s take on Facebook, Kirkpatrick had some interesting views on Accidental Billionaires in comparing it with his upcoming book and the conversations he’s had with Facebook’s founder (Mezrich wasn’t granted a single conversation with Zuckerberg).
Here’s some highlights from the first part of our conversation. A second post will follow in previewing Fortune’s upcoming Brainstorm: Tech conference, which begins next Tuesday.
David Kirkpatrick: It’s moderately fun to read, and it’s also loaded with errors. I’ll provide my full point of view with more details on my blog. He’s a very diverting novelist. He’s selling something as non-fiction, but it’s only partially reported.
Portions that have not been previously reported are imagined heavily. He doesn’t actually claim to know the things that he doesn’t know very much about, and I don’t think that he has multiple sources on very many facts in general. Even some of the ones he gets right I think he lucked out on.
I mean, in the most idiotic way, it takes the angle that Sex was behind all this. Of course they started it for sex! I mean, that seems to be his attitude. But I can say gladly that Mark Zuckerberg did not start Facebook for sex.
In addition, Eduardo Saverin did not start Facebook. Eduardo was a fortunate hanger-on. He’s treated by Mezrich, as a major player. I think Mezrich does get it right with Zuckerberg, in that he doesn’t downplay his role in all of this.
RaceTalk: And there was no eating of Koala on Yachts?
DK: No, and actually I think Zuckerberg would state unequivocally that he has never eaten Koala. By the way, do you know anyone who has?
RaceTalk: No, I’m guessing that is why everyone latched onto it.
DK: If you are familiar with the story of Facebook, you won’t learn much of anything new. He accepts a lot of conventional wisdom unquestioningly, and a lot of the conventional wisdom is incorrect.
RaceTalk: How much of your book will go back this far?
DK: My book is very much going to be a thorough, definitive history. That’s one thing my book will be (I hope anyways) the definitive, authoritative, story of the company. The history of the company is fascinating, loaded with incidents and unexpected happenings – most of it unknown to Mezrich. That will be a very large portion of my book.
RaceTalk: How much time have you spent with Mark?
DK: Oh, I don’t know, hours. I’ve interviewed him five times so far.
RaceTalk: So has he changed? I mean, you’ve been interviewing him for a while, back to your Fortune stories. Have you seen a change? Not only personally but professionally?
DK: Well, he’s gotten smarter and more mature. I haven’t seen any fundamental change in his attitude. He’s had a very clear-minded view of what he was trying to do for a long time, and he understands how to do it better as time goes on.
RaceTalk: Have you ever seen a company that has innovated like this? In the last year since we talked about you launching your book project look what they’ve done with the stream, fan pages, vanity URLs. It seems they have a new innovation to introduce every week.
DK: No, they are EXTREMELY ambitious in the pace of evolution with their service. I think you would probably say for any product for this scale, in history, in ANY industry, they make more changes more rapidly than anybody ever has. It shows both a willingness to take risks and a recognition that if they don’t keep evolving rapidly, they risk irrelevancy. They don’t have any interest in becoming irrelevant, and they probably won’t. If you look, the growth has continued regardless and it continues to spread out globally to a wider and wider audience.
RaceTalk: What effect have you seen with Twitter on their efforts? Are they reactionary at all to Twitter?
DK: Well, they’re interested in Twitter, they did try to buy it. Or they were talking about buying it. I don’t know how hard they tried in truth. Really, if you look at Facebook’s evolution, it is increasingly encompassing, among the many things it does with what Twitter does. If I were Twitter, I would be deeply uncomfortable by that. Not because it’s unfair but because it could very well lead to there being very little that Twitter does uniquely well. There is an astonishing number of near-religious advocates of Twitter in the technology industry, however I don’t think that what Twitter does is that hard for others to do, especially Facebook.
When Facebook completes the replication of Twitter’s functionality the advantage they will have with 250 million users versus 20 million Twitter users will be overwhelming. Don’t get me wrong, I think Twitter is a great service. I think Twitter is an important service and I think they think the same thing about Facebook.
RaceTalk: I did think it was interesting how Twitter became the tool of the Iran uprising.
DK: I actually think Facebook was used more in Iran.
RaceTalk: Really?
DK: Twitter is used by the press therefore they assume a lot about Twitter in this foreign context, because that’s how they are getting their information.
RaceTalk: But you saw more use of Facebook?
DK: From what I understand from Iran there was extensive use of Facebook. I think there was use of both.
I think the press coverage of Twitter over the last six months has been basically categorized by a lot of bad reporting that arises from the fact that the press itself is enamored with twitter. Journalists use it for themselves. They learn about the things they write about through Twitter, especially when they are remote things. Therefore, they assume the same thing is happening for everyone else more than they can document. They report it as if they know it for a fact.
RaceTalk: That makes sense, especially when you look at what Twitter means to journalists and media companies as a publishing tool. Even on RaceTalk we see the large traffic that is driven here through Twitter.
DK: For individual journalists Twitter is a dream come true. I will say that Facebook is going to have those same capabilities, and possiblity in a more functional manner, in the not so distant future. But any journalist that doesn’t like Twitter is stupid. Any journalist that doesn’t use Twitter is probably stupid as well.
RaceTalk: What do you think about how brands are starting to use Facebook with these vanity URL’s and fan pages? I did a story awhile back about how VitaminWater is using their Facebook page as their de-facto home page.
DK: For some consumer oriented brands they get more traffic on their Facebook page than their homepage, so they are wisely putting more and more resources into it. On the other hand, if they are intelligent users of Facebook Connect they can replicate a lot of the same functionality outside of Facebook. If I were a brand I would be doing both.It’s amazing to see the success that some of these brands are having on their Facebook pages.
RaceTalk: Do you see advertisements on Facebook tying into this? What are Facebook’s monetization plans moving forward? Are brand pages mixed with display ads a part of those plans?
DK: What you and I see on our profile pages and news feedsare very, very lucrative for them and a rapidly growing revenue stream. Facebook does not have any fundamental financial difficulty. Their revenues are growing rapidly as they have openly and repeatedly said. They’ve stated that revenues have grown seventy percent this year. There is no reason not to believe this. I don’t think monetization will be any problem for Facebook.
The Boston Globe has been a regular in the news lately, as financial problems lead to a $20 million concession demand from their owner, the New York Times Company. Boston Globe staff reporter Sean P. Murphy took some time out of his busy schedule to discuss a few topics including the concession demand, the current state of the Globe, and what the future may hold for the paper.
RaceTalk: While I knew the Boston Globe was having some financial problems, I was shocked to see the headline “Times Co. threatens to shut Globe; seeks $20m in cuts from unions” on April 4th. What was your initial reaction when you learned about the Times’ concession demands?
Sean Murphy: I didn’t believe it could ever happen, and that it was [actually] a bargaining tactic. As a mater of fact, it was a Friday afternoon and I was writing on deadline so my concentration was on my story, and that was probably a good thing. It seems unimaginable that things should get this bad so quickly and I’m very much still very optimistic that things will go on.
RaceTalk: Meeting the Times’ $20 million concession demand obviously seemed like a very difficult process. What are union and management relations like following that process?
SM: The representatives that the New York Times Co. sent to Boston took a very hard line with the union negotiators. It’s not a warm and fuzzy relationship, it usually isn’t at the best of times. But these people dug in, and there is no animosity, everyone knows there’s a job going on here and everyone is doing their job. But, at the same time, there are few breaks of humor or displays of any warmth at all.
RaceTalk: I think it’d be pretty much impossible to find someone that doesn’t value what the Boston Globe brings to New England, but it would seem that many of these people aren’t subscribing to the Globe because the content is available online. Going forward, do you think it’s more important to charge online readers or put new online advertising models in place?
SM: Well, I haven’t really given that a lot of thought. I’ve taken my job really seriously as a journalist and an investigative reporter. I’ve covered things like casinos, the Big Dig, no-show employees and now public penchants, so I haven’t really thought about that. I’m flattered to think that I have more readers then ever because of the availability of my stories online, and I know that some stories have 200 or more comments posted, which is flattering. I do get emails from people all over the country like ex-Massachusetts residents or family. So I think if I’m pressed for an answer that I’d have to say yes, we have to charge some kind of micro-payment online. People have approached me and said that they’re willing to pay and so am I. When I consume some really valuable, documented and well-edited journalism, I know that I have to pay for that.
RaceTalk: Has becoming an online-only outlet been discussed at all, or is the focus on maintaining the print edition?
SM: Well I think it’s a duel approach. The circulation price has gone up. There are people who are 50 and over who need to have that Globe newspaper on their front doorstep to start their day and I am one of them. At the same time we know that people under 50, my children included, won’t read it except online. There’s a strong desire to keep both going through the next transition period, 10-15 years. There are some people that really love to have a newspaper in their hands. It may be that it becomes a luxury item and is very expensive, but those that insist on it will get it. We hope that people begin paying for it online and that we pick-up more advertising revenue online as well.
RaceTalk: Investigative reporting, such as your story on pensions from Sunday’s paper, is probably the most important part of the Globe. What would happen in Massachusetts without these types of checks and balances?
SM: The inmates would be running the asylum, that’s one way to put it. I think that there would be a longer leash for politicians and other who may want to bend the rules in their favor. I’ve written stories after surveying the U.S. Marshall and the State Secretary of Transportation, and in both cases they have lost their jobs. I also think there is a deterrent affect as well. People that read these things certainly don’t want the Globe following them around and might clean up their act a little bit. So I think it’s very important to check state and local government and it’s a very important monitor of state politics and state government as well.
RaceTalk: President Obama recently said “a government without newspapers, a government without a tough and vibrant media of all sorts is not an option for the United States of America.” Has there been any internal discussion about a potential bailout for newspapers?
SM: Honestly I don’t know. There are other proposals like becoming not-for profit, being endowed like a University and living off the earnings of the endowment. We’re clearly in a period of possible and likely innovation. Thomas Jefferson said that with the choice between a government with no newspapers or newspapers with no a government, he’d take newspapers with no government. So it’s obviously a very valued component of our society.
RaceTalk: The Wall Street Journal recently launched Kindle newspaper subscriptions. Do you think something like the Kindle can help provide some financial stability to the newspaper industry in the future?
SM: As a matter of fact I do. I’m hoping that technology, which has cost us so much heartache in terms of effort, the Internet, and the migration of readers and advertisers away from newspapers, becomes a great beneficiary to us. People can gravitate to the Kindle and other devices to find really well-reported content that they can read and take to the bank. I think we’re in a difficult shakeout period and that could happen soon.
RaceTalk: I hate to ask this question, but how much time do you think it will be until the Times Co. demands more cuts?
SM: Well they certainly appear poised to make more cuts, even after the concessions made. But I do find slimmer of hope in the idea of a moving economy.
Damon Darlin recently visited the Racepoint Group to share some thoughts about what it’s like to be technology editor of one of the most influential newspapers in the country and now the fifth most-popular online news destination.
While the New York Times like most major news organizations grapple with the ever-changing media environment, its early investment in online news is helping to keep its leadership position and enables the technology reporting team to “tell better stories.” According to Darlin, surprisingly many people still have a narrow and outdated view, thinking of the New York Times in only one dimension as a daily newspaper – a missed opportunity for companies that can now be featured in one of the publication’s many blogs, videos, online features and podcasts.
Given the influence and high credibility of the New York Times, reporters also have the added burden of ensuring their coverage does not appear to endorse or validate the companies they cover. This makes it sometimes challenging for start-ups and smaller companies, but Darlin confirms that they are still interested in great storytelling and that smaller companies should not be discouraged, especially if they have an offering that is truly game-changing and innovative.
Darlin also offered some key words of advice for technology companies targeting media coverage in the New York Times:
Relationships continue to be important, now more than ever. With reporters receiving 200+ emails a day from eager PR reps and companies looking to attract coverage, and more distractions with social networking tools, it’s critical to have trusted sources with a reliable track record.
Company spokespeople need to share a vision and tell a compelling story. Technology spokespeople, in particular, have a habit of just focusing on the product or marketing plan and would be better-served by telling the reporter what’s going to change as a result of their offering.
Background briefings, while sometimes more difficult due to time constraints, are still helpful – especially if you have a market expert who is “plugged-in” to an industry.
Think beyond the story. With multimedia options now available via the online news site, there are more angles and visual opportunities to enrich a perspective.
While Darlin leaves the frequent tweets to the reporting staff, you can follow him @ddarlin.
Last week we published part 1 of our Q&A with Wade Roush, the Chief Correspondent for Xconomy. Below is the second part of our conversation, which looks at the explosion of Twitter.
(note: this interview occurred on 4/17)
RaceTalk: As Twitter has become more mainstream (with so many celebrities joining it) there have been a lot of individuals breaking stories themselves before the larger news outlets have been able to, such as earthquakes and eye-witness stories. While being first to a story has always mattered in the media, is it important to beat the Twitter universe to a story?
Wade Roush: I don’t think it’s possible to beat the Twitter universe to a story when in an age of mobile technology, basically everyone with a wireless phone has become a walking newsroom, in a way. I mean, you’re absolutely right. Things like the splashdown of Contintental Airlines Flight 1549. So the first accounts of that crash in the Hudson River came from people who sent notices to Twitter from their cell phones, and the first picture was not from a TV camera. It was from somebody who took a picture and uploaded it to TwitPic.
So that was basically the world’s first notice this thing had happened. And when you’ve got everybody out there basically carrying around a news-gathering tool, like today’s camera phones, they in essence become this giant nerve network for the whole world. So how could a news organization possibly hope to out-compete this population of billions of people equipped with mobile news-gathering devices? They couldn’t.
I don’t think that any particular journalist’s reputation or any particular publication’s reputation rests on whether they are necessarily the first to break a story. And I think it’s getting harder and harder to be the first to “break” a story. I think that what’s emerging is a different kind of world where journalists, because they ideally have a background and experience writing about news events in particular spheres of interests, can immediately bring some context to the stories that are breaking and help people understand what’s going on and bring a lot of threads together from different places, and help people understand not just the immediate breaking event but the bigger picture and how this relates to other parts of the same story.
I think at the same time people who are out there with cell phones are starting to think of themselves as the front lines in journalism in a way. They don’t think of themselves as reporters necessarily, but they know there are these ways to contribute pictures they might snap, or contribute first-hand eyewitness reports back into the mainstream media. There are organizations like CNN that have been pretty aggressive about explaining how people can contact them with tips, pictures and eyewitness accounts. There’s this sort of interesting synergy, almost, an interesting sort of crowdsourcing of news that is going on. That’s one way that I think the mainstream media is trying to cope with this, and they’re doing an OK job of it, but I think they’re probably being outstripped by the pace of technology and how quickly camera phones have made their way out into society.
RaceTalk: It will be even more interesting once video is out there and people can just pull out a video camera and start recording.
WR: 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.
WR: 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.
RaceTalk: What’s your general opinion on Twitter?
WR: I think Twitter as a technology is amazing and unexpected, but wonderful. It’s one of these technologies that comes along every three or four years and completely changes the way we think about the internet and what the internet is good for. Sort of the same way blogs did eight years ago. Twitter comes along and suddenly we can’t imagine how we were able to get along without this ability to send out 140-character updates 12 times a day to all of our friends, or to share news instantly, or to get debates going about immediate controversies. I find Twitter as a technology really energizing. I’m making more and more use of it myself to alert my followers about what I’m working on and what stories are coming up.
But then there is also Twitter the company. Twitter the company, I think, has a lot of growing up to do and has a giant task ahead of it. Your readers probably know that today was the day when Oprah made her first Tweet. Instantly Oprah had over like 100,000 followers. Whenever Oprah turns her audience onto something, it immediately becomes part of the mainstream. That’s what she did with the Kindle, basically. I think it was Oprah’s endorsement that helped Amazon put Kindle on the map for real. That’s probably going to happen with Twitter. You’re probably going to have millions of more people flooding into Twitter at a time when they were already struggling to keep up with the load in terms of infrastructure, the number of servers they have, and how they handle all of these messages.
They are an incredibly small company and I think they are kind of overwhelmed right now by the magnitude of the uptake and the adoption. You can tell from the state of their customer service operation that they are just not prepared for the new role that they are being asked to take on. I think there are going to be serious questions that will have to be asked down the road about whether one company, especially a company as small as Twitter, can really be trusted to operate a global communications network that has become as central and as crucial as Twitter. I’m not sure what the solution is.
RaceTalk: Do you think they’re facing some of the same growing pains as Facebook?
WR: No, I think a lot of Facebook’s growing pains have been self-inflicted pains around policy changes and design changes. It seems like every time Facebook changes their terms of service or the look and feel of their home page they piss off half of their user base and they spend the next two months trying to calm everyone down. Then they make another bone-headed change that half of their users hate and they have to start all over. As far as I know, Facebook never really had an infrastructure problem keeping up with the number of users they had. Or at least that was never the main story with Facebook.
RaceTalk: They did bring it along very slowly, first just for colleges and then later expanding it to high school and everyone else.
WR: Exactly. Whereas Twitter has consistently been sort of unable to provide a basic level of service that is acceptable. The fail whale is famous. I think its just going to get worse. They raised a lot of money recently. I think they will have to spend a lot of that just buying servers. I hope they spend some of it upgrading their customer service. I hope they spend some of it making the tools even easier to use.
But I think in a way, that Twitter is headed to being so important, such a fundamental part of the Internet, that people will start to see it the same way they see e-mail. You wouldn’t want any one company to control how email works. [Just think back to the] era in the early 1990s when individual companies like Prodigy, CompuServe and AOL actually did control how e-mail worked, and what your email address looked like, and whether you could even e-mail people on other networks. That was a problem, and we outgrew that era and the Internet standards that were in place for things like e-mail became true standards of interoperability. Now we think of e-mail as just part of the infrastructure of the Internet that no one in particular owns and everyone is partly responsible for maintaining. I wonder whether we’re going to have to go in that direction eventually with Twitter. You don’t want to take away a great idea from an entrepreneurial, young company that had that idea. But I think it is going to be interesting to see if Twitter can keep up with the level of demand that they’re tapping into. I think they stumbled across an idea that turned out to be incredibly infectious and useful, much more than they even themselves imagined, and now they’re in the position of having to keep up with this phenomenon they’ve created. I’m not sure they can.
RaceTalk: When your readers comment on your stories, what method do you find most valuable? When they do it through Twitter, e-mail, or in the comments section?
WR: By far the most useful thing to get a conversation going is for people to come to Xconomy and actually leave a written comment. That way I can reply and everyone can see our conversation. If they do it by e-mail, I can respond to them one-on-one, but the conversation doesn’t grow and spread. If they do it by Twitter and they reply in public to something I tweeted, then the conversation is more public but it is limited to little 140-character chunks. So one push I’m trying to make with my stories and within Xconomy in general is for all of us on the staff to be more active engaging with people who leave comments, more active inviting people to comment, and getting more conversations going around our stories. I would definitely encourage anyone who has an opinion about an Xconomy story to go and leave it there on the website. We will go and engage with you.
Last week we had a chance to talk with Wade Roush, the Chief Correspondent for Xconomy. Wade is a veteran science and technology writer and previously worked for Technology Review. He has a weekly column called World Wide Wade and you can also follow him on Twitter at @wroush.
We spoke with Wade about two topics: the future for newspapers and the evolution of Twitter. Below is the transcript of the first half of our conversation – we’ll post the second half next week.
RaceTalk: Since the news that the New York Timeshas demanded $20 million in concessions from the Boston Globe, there has been a lot of news, especially in the Boston area, about how they can survive. While I don’t think it’s a surprise to anyone that the Globe has been in some deep financial trouble, hearing that the largest newspaper in our area might not be around much longer was a little shocking. What was your initial response when you heard the news?
Wade Roush: I wasn’t surprised about the extent of the Globe’s financial troubles, what surprised me was the public way it played out on the pages of the Boston Globe and the New York Times. What also surprised me was that of all of the things that the Times Co. managers could get really aggressive about, they chose to get aggressive about pursuing concessions from unions. I don’t hear such sort of aggressive language about how the Globe needs to do a better job for its readers or explore new revenue streams or become a nimbler or more flexible operation – all the things that are probably going to have to happen if the Globe is going to survive. That’s what surprised me.
RaceTalk: There has been a lot of discussion about how newspapers can increase their revenue, and one idea that has been heavily talked about is charging readers. After reading your story “Boston Can Survive, Even Thrive, Without Today’s Globe” and another story in Media Nation I was convinced that enough people will turn to other sites or news outlets if the Globe begins charging online subscription fees. Do you think Boston, and other areas around the country will see more niche sites develop as their regional newspapers struggle to survive?
WR: I think you’re right that 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, and obviously with The Wall Street Journal the captive audience is the financial industry. So I think that’s not a model that would really be transferable to a lot of other newspapers or publications. I do think that you’re going to see the journalism business breaking up, fragmenting in a way into lots of smaller publications, each employing a smaller number of journalists, publishing most of their content for free, and having to search around for a combination of other income sources to sustain themselves.
RaceTalk: What do you think about the way the Boston Herald charges for content that’s outdated by a week or so?
WR: That’s a really interesting practice that they have there. What that does for me personally, is when ever I go to the Herald looking for an old article and I run into that paid firewall, I stop. It stops me from searching the Herald. I don’t go further. It’s not worth it to me to pay for access to an article when I can’t really tell in advance if it’s something I need. There is no way to give a preview of the whole article without making you pay for it first so I think it retards people from having access to your content. I’d be really curious to know how that works out for the Herald; what percentage of people who hit that point where they’re asked to pay for something really do pay. I would be really surprised if it was more than ten percent. I’d be surprised if it was more than two or three percent. So I think the net affect is to drive people away.
RaceTalk: It seems like some newspapers are so used to the same revenue models that they have trouble adapting to the Internet and. Do you think newspapers will be able to find a successful online revenue model, or are they beyond that point?
WR: I think you need to separate out newspaper websites like Boston.com from their newspaper overlords in this question because I do think that there are a lot of newspapers that have a lot of smart people working on the website, who understand social media and have started to make use of it, and who have picked up on the more conversational and social nature of blogosphere and have emulated that and adapted it back to the newspaper setting in a way that also reflects the standards of journalism and objectivity. There are some promising examples of newspaper-owned websites that could well survive on their own as websites with a much smaller staff then the staff of the overall newspaper. So if you’re asking whether newspapers can find online revenues that would make up for the decline in print advertising and the decline in print subscriptions I think the answer is definitely no, there is no way that the Web is going to help newspapers survive as print newspapers. The print side is gradually going away, unless the newspapers can figure out some way that no one has seen yet to make print advertising more appealing to advertisers and to make paying hundreds of dollars a year to get a bunch of dead trees on your doorstep every day appealing to customers.
RaceTalk: It seems that some newspapers are reluctant to go online only. Do you think that they can learn something from Xconomy about becoming a successful online-only news outlet?
WR: I think Xconomy is just one example along a whole spectrum of examples of journalistic organizations that are making the decision to stay online only and looking for a number of ways to support that financially. In our case, we have a combination of venture and angel-type investing that’s backing us up, and relationships with local underwriters. Underwriters are basically companies that we have a long-term relationship with whom we promote by putting their logos on the site and we receive resources from them in return. It’s a very different kind of relationship than the very shallow relationship that a publication would have with its providers of display advertising. So that’s one way to do it. We’re only two years old and like most other start-ups, we have an idea, a proposition that we make to our readers and to our underwriters, and we’re still working really hard to show that our model can succeed. To be perfectly honest, it remains to be seen whether this model can succeed. We’re all going to work really hard to make sure it does, but I’m not sure that Xconomy in particular provides a solid model for newspapers to look to. I think it’s going to take lots of different experiments and lots of different types of revenue streams. Newspapers are going to have to look at lots of different ways of supporting themselves before they find a combination that works.
In this age of media convergence, journalist Darren Garnick is a jack-of-all-trades, simultaneously pursuing careers as a newspaper columnist, TV field producer and documentary filmmaker. He is the Boston Herald’s “Working Stiff” business columnist, has written political and history specials for PBS and field produced for CNN, ESPN, Lifetime and The Travel Channel, and also blogs about pop culture at cultureschlock.com. We had a chance to catch up with Darren recently and ask a few questions about himself and the newspaper industry.
RaceTalk: What types of stories do you like to cover in your column for the Boston Herald? Are there specific topics that you really enjoy writing about?
Darren Garnick: My official beat is the American workplace. I mock outrageous corporate memos, stick up for the cubicle guys and search the universe for unorthodox careers, offbeat characters and inspirational stories. The business pages have a reputation of being boring, and lately, depressing. I strive to make business relevant to the average person, someone who might otherwise flip or click past biz stories for sports or empty celebrity entertainment.
I understand these readers, because I personally dread sitting through Chamber of Commerce and Rotary Club meetings. However, business is deeply relevant to everyone, regardless of income or social status. It’s what we eat, wear, drive and breathe.
RaceTalk: What is the most memorable column you have written?
DG: What I enjoy most about journalism is the excuse to experience the most outrageous things — subjects that most people would never have an opportunity to experience — just for the sake of good copy. I once slipped into big clunky alligator claws for a few hours as the mascot of the Lowell Spinners (Single A Red Sox). The claustrophobia made me appreciate the amazing limberness and agility of college student interns.
I’d never profess to understand the challenges of being a working mother, but I also lasted 24 hours in a pregnancy simulation suit called “The Empathy Belly.” The suit’s inventor told me I held the longevity record for fake pregnancy, but I cannot confirm this.
RaceTalk: You have written about some very interesting topics on your blog. What have you enjoyed most about blogging?
DG: Freelance writing is a daunting exercise, and requires a willingness to accept a lot of rejection. With my blog, there is no rejection. Every single one of my ideas is brilliant and gets eagerly snapped by the editor-in-chief, who yes, happens to be me. It also allows me to track, for my own amusement, how many people are interested in my old work. I’m quite delighted, for example, that there is a small underground cult that worships the Costa Rican sloth.
RaceTalk: You’ve been involved with all different types of media (newspapers, blogs, TV). Which do you enjoy most, and which do you think has the most advantages?
DG: I am in love with newspapers and am mourning their national decline. My grandfather drove a delivery truck for the Boston Herald and he used to save all the front pages from the 1969 moon landing and the Watergate scandal and even the 1967 “Impossible Dream” Red Sox. My basement is filled with newspaper headlines (hope my fire insurance people don’t read this) and I’ve had fun photographing my children with famous headlines so they can later remember what they looked like when they were totally oblivious to world events.
But I also love YouTube. Being able to post short films there have opened up enormous opportunities I would never have in the pre-Internet era. I think that once enough newspapers collapse and the bloggers have nothing to write about or link to, there will be smart business people who will rehire the best journalists and launch more on-line mags like Slate and Salon.
RaceTalk: What do you think of the whole Twitter craze? Have you been tempted to begin tweeting?
DG: Funny you ask. I’ve been a holdout for a long time on Twitter. I never understood the appeal of updating your Facebook status every 10 minutes and Twitter just takes it to the extreme. That being said, I’ve found my Facebook status to be one of the most effective, low-pressure ways to send out article links. I can still blitz the masses, but it is less intrusive than an email because people can choose not to click on it. Sure, people can also choose not to open an email, but the Facebook status just seems more of a soft sell to me.
As for Twitter, I recently signed up figuring it “can’t hurt.” But I’m not sure how it helps more than the Facebook status, quite frankly. I am NOT someone who carries around a BlackBerry. I’m glued to the keyboard at my desk enough, I need to be off the grid for at least 10 minutes a day. But what the heck, please “follow me” @darrengarnick.
RaceTalk: Time Magazine recently published a list of the ten most endangered newspapers in the United States. What was your reaction when you saw some of the names on the list (i.e.: Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle)?
DG: Time got a lot of credit and buzz for this doomsday list, but it actually was first compiled by 24/7WallSt.com. That being said, it was a list that frightened the hell out of me and every breathing journalist. How can the Globe, the paper that used to weigh 250 pounds on Sundays, possibly go out of business?
Then again, how could Ford or GM possibly disappear?
Ben Affleck, who stars in that new newspaper movie apparently has figured out the whole circulation crisis. He just told the Globe that newspapers kinda deserve their fate because they didn’t ask “tough questions” about the Iraq war and the subprime mortgage crisis!
Aside from Affleck’s dubious credentials as a media analyst, this is laughable because most of the print media was anti-war after an initial honeymoon period with Bush and Rumsfeld. Google “Mission Accomplished” and “Iraq” and my point is proven. And newspapers declining because of inadequate early coverage of the subprime mortgage crisis? Are you kidding me? Newspapers were losing ads to Craigslist and Monster.com YEARS before anyone paid attention to careless loans, Bernie Madoff or U-Pick-the-Scandal.
The most convincing evidence I’ve witnessed about newspaper woes happened before a recent breakfast at the Holiday Inn Express. Like many hotels, this one provides a free USA Today at your doorstep. I always swoop in like a vulture on my paper, eagerly devouring the box scores first, then swinging over to world and national news, following up with “Life” for dessert. As I walked the halls at around 9 a.m., when most people are awake on a weekday, I noticed that maybe only half the newspapers were taken. My friends, a 20-something and a 30-something, left their papers on the floor.
If you can’t convince people to read the colorful, mind-candy newspaper for free, then well, the newspaper industry has a huge marketing problem.
However, I do think that newspapers will survive and eventually thrive again. Just in a different form. Maybe there will be a once-or-twice-a-week print edition that contains magazine-style stories and columnists who you can cozy up to on the couch, leaving all the breaking news to the Net.
Journalists disappearing? Who else is going to show up to those Zoning Board of Appeals meetings?
This is the second part of our conversation with Marc Gunther, which took place on Tuesday. Part 1 can be found here.
RaceTalk: Marc, I noticed one company speaking at Brainstorm: Green is Better Place. I also caught that you’ve written about them recently. They’ve had a lot of media attention and I was wondering if you could try explaining what it is about them that makes them so interesting. Especially with so many other start-ups in the green space competing for the same media attention.
Marc Gunther: They have a charismatic CEO ,who’s a great salesman for the company in Shai Agassi. They also have a mass model. So I’m more interested in Better Place than I am in, say Tesla. If you believe Shai he’s going to put cars on the road for a lower price comparable to today’s cars, maybe even less. Also his model is – if you’re interested in business – really interesting; because he wants to not only make the biggest change ever since the invention of the combustion engine or air conditioning, he also wants to totally rewrite the model of the automobile industry. Making it look like a cell phone model, where you’re basically not exactly owning the car battery – you’re kind of leasing it, paying for minutes. It’s a little hard to explain. He would do it much better than I would. But, it’s a very intriguing idea. I’m also really interested in other electric car companies, but more those that have the ability to scale up. I’m really interested in the Chinese company BYD. We’re actually going to have a major shareholder of BYD at the conference. A guy named Li Lu who is absolutely fascinating. Li Lu was one of the leaders of the Tienanmen square uprising twenty years ago this June, I think it was. Came to the US for school, became a venture capitalist and a private equity investor, and ended up being the guy who connected Warren Buffett to BYD. He hasn’t really spoken in public before, so he’s going to be a great addition to the event.
RT: So I know we talked about Bill ford. I was going to get your thoughts around Detroit. Going way back, you worked at the Detroit News and Detroit Free Press.
MG: But I didn’t know anything about cars then, and I still don’t know anything about cars.
RT: My question is around Detroit’s newspapers – do you have thoughts around the Detroit Free Press ending deliveries on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays?
MG: I don’t think it’s a good sign when any company tells consumers what day they can get its product. I mean it’s just not a good thing. Imagine if, pick a company, HP said we’re only going to sell you our computers on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays because that’s when we sell a lot of them and we’re just going to shut down the other days of the week.
RT: Richard Perez-Pena of the New York Times had a good piece today basically saying that there were no newspapers delivered yesterday in Detroit on one of the biggest news days in the city’s history.
MG: If you say its kind of a transition to an all-digital model then you could think about what it means. But it clearly can’t be a – it doesn’t work as a long-term model. You’ve still got huge infrastructure, presses, all that kind of stuff. If anything, the model at work is the model where newspapers print their own paper and print the national edition of the Wall Street Journal and then they print some competitor’s publication. You know, you can’t – it can’t work long-term. But maybe it’s a way to get people used to the idea of reading online.
RT: Finally I caught that Google officially launched their VC ARM today with Google Ventures.
MG: That’s really interesting – isn’t it?
RT: Yes, they’ve pledged to make this their new venture arm for some of their Google.org interests and it sounds like they’re planning to invest at least 100 million in green tech and clean tech over this year. I was wondering what your thoughts around that are? With a lack of current exit strategies, VC’s strapped, is this going to be a big deal for the clean tech and green tech sector?
MG: I don’t think it’s financially a huge deal. It’s not a large amount of money and I don’t think they said all of it would go to clean tech. But it will be a part of that. The value that Google has is when they invest in something, they automatically make it cool because they’re just such a cool company. So, interestingly, in my blog, a week or so ago, I ran a story about Bill Gross’ car company called Aptera and the headline on it was “Google’s favorite car company”. The traffic was huge. If I said “Here’s Aptera”, the traffic would have been very small. So the value for Google – they have fascinating investments. They’re in this company call Makani Power, which is sort of some kind of combination of kite and wind power company.
RT: Yeah, high altitude wind power.
MG: Yeah, that’s what I guess they call it. When Google invested in geothermal that personally got me interested in geothermal so I think their cache is really worth a lot and that’s why Google interests me.
RT: So like you said, it could potentially create more buzz around these green tech projects and a bigger umbrella for them.
MG: Yea and also it’s possible if Google’s smart, that they’ll do what other VCs do and connect these companies up with one another. I’m sure they will do that. I mean Google’s energy story I think is one of the really interesting kind of under-reported stories out there. I actually did pitch it a couple of times to Fortune, and couldn’t quite get them to go for it. But I would really like to know how and why that’s happening and how they’re doing it all.
I was shocked (as was everyone else at Racepoint) last December when I found out that Marc Gunther was being let go from Fortune. At the time, Gunther had been with the magazine for more than 12 years. During that time he penned cover stories on the greening of Wal-Mart, Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and spirituality in the workplace. He has also by-lined feature stories on CEO Jeff Immelt’s efforts to reshape the values of General Electric, the business of carbon finance, the rise of corporate social responsibility, the zero-waste movement, genetically-modified rice, environmental activism, corporate governance, AIDS and gay rights in corporate America. However, he became most well known during his last several years there for his weekly column on sustainability.
The timing of his exit was especially baffling given President Obama’s recent election, which foreshadowed green becoming an even bigger storyline for businesses and the country as a whole. While Gunther still contributes to Fortune from time-to-time he’s moved onto “greener” pastures in growing the online distribution of his stories on sustainability.
Yesterday, Ben and I got a chance to catch up with Marc, who is in the process of penning a likely cover story for Fortune, to find out what he’s up to these days, his thoughts the upcoming FortuneBrainstorm: Green show and how he’s utilizing his blog as a sustainable-news wire.
Here’s part 1 of our conversation.
RaceTalk: On December 16th you wrote an eloquent post for the Huffington Post, entitled “The Recession Hits Home,” in which you discussed being scooped on your own layoff from Fortune and the current perils of the media industry. The news came as a shock to many as the demand for news around green has skyrocketed – and Fortune had been leading the charge with you and Todd Woody (who was also let go as well, but still contributes). I thought you made some interesting points in your post, and I know one of the first bloggers , who scooped you on your exit, shed light on the possibility of environmental reporters being endangered. Wondering your thoughts, as it seemed to be a strange move on Fortune’s end with the focus on green stories only growing.
Marc Gunther: I mean, was I surprised that Fortune let go of the 2 people who had most focused on business and the environment? Yeah, I think it’s obviously a big important issue both on a kind of global, social level, which should matter, but perhaps even more importantly for a business magazine, I think it’s becoming a really core business issue as well. I also think it’s a job of newspapers and magazines to write about things that are really important and I don’t think there’s much that’s more important than the climate change issue. Even if the midst of this terrible economy.
RT: I guess one of the things that crossed my mind is, is that it’s obviously a horrible time for the media, too, so you know they’re thinking of their magazines as businesses. Do you think it’s still hard, to sell advertisers around leading edge, green, story-lines?
MG: I don’t get involved in the sales side of the magazine at all. However, I actually don’t think it’s that hard. I think there is advertising that’s ready to be paired up with reporting around environmental issues. That should be a help to people who want to write about the environment – the fact that there are advertisers out there who want to associate themselves with that. I do think there’s advertising interest in the topic and you can tell that just by watching even broadcast television, cable television or looking at magazines and newspapers. I mean look at the huge branding campaign IBM has been running for months around a Smarter Planet. I think it’s really a good campaign and fortunately for them it actually matches up with what they’re doing.
RT: It matches up with what the administration is saying, too.
MG: That’s the other reason it seems to me that newspapers and magazines should be paying more attention to this set of issues because of what’s happening in DC.
RT: Right, it’s on the front of the agenda.
MG: It really is. I mean in a way that it has literally never has been before.
MG: I’m not actually. I’m writing, speaking and consulting for a variety of people, but I do have a great relationship with Greener World Media. They’ve given me a title of Senior Writer and I’m doing some work for them, but it’s not my employer. I’ll tell you what the model is because there’s nothing secret about it. Basically what I did was, I went to Joel McCauer, who runs the editorial side of Greener World Media, and I basically said I’d like to license my blog to you because the blog is mostly now about sustainability. In exchange for having the ability to run my blog content I would like you to pay me $x per month. We had some negations and in both cases, we worked it out in a really good way where they’re paying me a certain fee per month to run my blog, and then I’m also going to do some original content for each of their sites. But, I’m not an employee of anyone. Other than myself.
RT: That makes sense.
MG: I’m actually hoping to expand the model and be as widely distributed as possible with anything I write on the internet and supplement that with some exclusive content.
RT: So you’re continuing to kind of choose your own beat. Are you trying to stay focused solely on sustainability?
MG: Yes, definitely. Not only trying to. I’m going to.
RT: How often are you still contributing to Fortune?
MG: I have what I believe will be the cover story of the next issue, because it’s an issue tied to the environment and the Brainstorm: Green conference in April. I’m still working on Brainstorm: Green as a sort co-chair of and helped to create the agenda. I’m really leading with Brian Dumane – the guy who is the environment editor there. Beyond this story though it’s not clear what, if anything, I’m going to be doing for them. We haven’t really worked anything out. I’m hoping to do more writing for them, but the challenge is, again, it’s a skinny magazine these days. They have a good staff of talented people and we just don’t know what the appetite will be for freelancers. We have a good relationship and everything – it’s just a question of what they need.
RT: As far as the conference this year, I was reading that you have Former President Clinton speaking as well as Bill Ford. Who do you think is going to create the big buzz there? What major themes for the conference should we expect?
MG: In terms of the big buzz, let’s just say I managed to avoid moderating the panel that comes on after Bill Clinton. That was my major accomplishment having to do with the conference. It was not doing that.
RT: Who’s interviewing him? Andy (Andy Sewer, Managing Editor of Fortune)?
MG: Andy is going to interview Clinton. Although I don’t think it’s really going to be an interview. I think he’s just going to talk. I mean I’m really happy with the event and how it’s shaping up. I think we have the right auto chairman in Bill Ford because Ford could end up being the last US automaker standing and I think they haven’t gotten as much recognition around environmentally friendly cars as they should have. I also think he’s a fascinating guy because he wanted to do a lot more with Ford than he was able to. So I’m hoping he will be able to talk about what the forces were that stopped him from making Ford more the green car company 5, 6, 7 years ago when it wasn’t just rhetoric on his part. It was a really sincere desire to make that happen and he didn’t make it happen and I want to know why. So that will be good. We’re going to do a lot of Washington stuff. We haven’t yet got confirmation, but I’m pretty confident we’ll have some administration people there to talk. I mean I’m interested in a lot of things. I’m doing a panel called Sustainable Consumption, which is going to include the CEO of SC Johnson, Smith Johnson, who’s a really progressive environmentalist; Carl Bass from Autodesk; the CEO of the big architectural firm HOK; Bill Valentine, who also is very passionate about the environment. I really want to dig down there into the question of how do you have growth companies that want to sell more stuff and do it in an environmentally sustainable way. That to me is sort of the core challenge for business, which is how do you mesh the growth imperative with the sustainability imperative? That’s what I’m going to talk to Paul Hawken about at our first night dinner. Sort of why going green isn’t enough. What the difference is between green, a term that really doesn’t mean anything, and sustainability, a term, which actually has a specific meaning, which should be the goal companies. That means, essentially using all renewable resources, all renewable energy, zero waste. That should be the model. Throw nothing away. Don’t use anything that can’t grow again.
