Flack's Revenge

Crowdsourcing News Du Jour

Using MySyndicaat from KipCast, It took me just a few minutes to generate (or "newsmaster") a post featuring recent Web and blog mentions that included the term "crowdsourcing."

Please see below.

More info about how I did this, how it works, and how it can help your Web site or blog will follow (for background, please refer to yesterday's post on my blog).


Wed, 28 Mar 2007 18:04:45 GMT+0000

Creating Successful Niche Content Spaces on the Web:...

The FASTForward Blog

CNN offered an interesting article, Why commercial Wikis don’t work: Crowdsourcing has been a giant hit for the Web 2....By tirelessly nurturing their specific communities, not by randomly “crowdsourcing,”...  Read more...

CNN offered an interesting article, Why commercial Wikis don’t work: Crowdsourcing has been a giant hit for the Web 2....By tirelessly nurturing their specific communities, not by randomly “crowdsourcing,”...

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Wed, 28 Mar 2007 00:11:30 GMT+0000

Techdirt: People Powered Buzzword Du Jour: Crowdsourcing

Yahoo Web Search

... describing the concept of "crowdsourcing." Basically it's not that different ... that talk up how they're leveraging "crowdsourcing" when the truth will be that ...  Read more...

... describing the concept of "crowdsourcing." Basically it's not that different ... that talk up how they're leveraging "crowdsourcing" when the truth will be that ...

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Wed, 28 Mar 2007 00:11:30 GMT+0000

Pages tagged with "crowdsourcing" on del.icio.us

Yahoo Web Search

... to creativecommons opensource movies collaboration crowdsourcing ... to wiki writing books collaboration penguin literature community crowdsourcing ...  Read more...

... to creativecommons opensource movies collaboration crowdsourcing ... to wiki writing books collaboration penguin literature community crowdsourcing ...

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Wed, 28 Mar 2007 00:11:30 GMT+0000

Crowdsourcing: Gannett: The Seven Desks

Yahoo Web Search

I like to use two definitions for crowdsourcing: ... TPM Muckraker's Paul Kiel about the site's recent experiment in crowdsourcing. ...  Read more...

I like to use two definitions for crowdsourcing: ... TPM Muckraker's Paul Kiel about the site's recent experiment in crowdsourcing. ...

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Wed, 28 Mar 2007 00:11:30 GMT+0000

Wired 14.06: The Rise of Crowdsourcing

Yahoo Web Search

The Rise of Crowdsourcing. Remember outsourcing? Sending jobs to India and China is so 2003. ... It's not outsourcing; it's crowdsourcing. ...  Read more...

owdsourcing. ...  Read more...

Tracking Buzzwords in the Wild

In my post “Newsmaster Flash” I promised that I would describe ways to corral the great fire hose of Web news and commentary that is generated every day.

On this subject, so far, I have explored Power Searching for PR Professionals, and RSS.

Then, last week, I wrote about the emergence of "crowdsourcing," a technology and approach that could impact online journalism by tapping into the wisdom of crowds and the collaborative power of open source efforts.

In the days since I have noted some uptake for this term, and thought: what better time to cover newsmastering? 

Newsmastering provides you with the tools needed to monitor, remix and publish the news of the day. 

Looking beyond the obvious applications of PR results tracking and competitive monitoring, newsmastering can also offer a way to monitor the evolution of buzz and give you a way to generate a news section for your blog or Web site.  

In this case I turn my attention to the aforementioned term, “crowdsourcing,” and utilize a hosted newsmastering solution from Kipcast.

If all goes as planned, I should be able to publish here later or tomorrow news stories and blog posts that mention crowdsourcing.   I will then explain how (hopefully) easy this all is.

So, I know that I am regrettably leaving you in a heightened state of suspense, and that your browsers will remain loyally tuned to this very site in anticipation.

Please don't forget to periodically hit refresh so that you will see when the magic happens!

Mobile OS Smackdown

I suppose it makes sense, the idea the handset vendors are winnowing the list of 3rd part OSes they support.

The natural trends seems to be that these devices are becoming ever more software driven.  So it seems logical that the handset vendors get out of the OS business and leave it to the experts.  And fewer operating systems overall are healthy for the ecosystem because it becomes easier to ensure compatibility, and makes life easier for everyone building mobile applications.

Yet I was still very disappointed to not see a mention of the Palm OS in the recent NY Times piece As Mobile Phones Grow More Complex, Carriers Insist on Fewer Operating Systems.

"Last year, two-thirds of smart phones sold ran on Symbian's operating system, an increase of about four percentage points from 2005, according to Canalys, a consultant and market research firm based near London. Microsoft was second last year with a 14 percent market share, slightly less than the year before, followed by Research in Motion, which makes the BlackBerry, with 7 percent, and Linux, with 6 percent, according to Canalys."

I have been a loyal Palm OS smartphone user, and have enjoyed my Palm PDAs and phones for years, while many I know have grumbled about their Windows-based phones.

Despite the great media reviews of Palm systems and tepid reviews I have seen for Windows-based phones, mediocrity is apparently (yet again) prevailing.  I suppose before long I will be forced to join the crowd.

Wisdom of Crowdsourcing (Social Media meets the Network Effect)

In my post “Web 2.0 Press Release an Oxymoron?” on the Fusion blog I questioned the wisdom of a Web 2.0 (or social media) press release.

As I mentioned in that post, I don't think that slapping Web 2.0 bells and whistles on aging metaphors is the right way forward. I would love to be proved wrong, and hear about social media press release success stories.

Those in the press release distribution business have also been seeking to embrace Web 2.0 elements like RSS. This approach combines two aging metaphors with the new. Which is all well and good, however if you look carefully you will see that most online conversations do not focus on the press release "news du jour," at least not in the way that PR practitioners likely intended. 

Similarly, when it comes to journalism, many in MSM are seeking to rescue their franchises by co-opting new media.

A year or two ago the L.A. Times famously tried to open its editorial pages as a Wiki with disastrous results (as reported in the CNET piece "L.A. Times shuts reader-editorial Web site").

Journalists are blogging in growing numbers, sometimes under the banners of their publications and sometimes independently.

Publications are seeking to use bloggers as sources, and there have been attempts to package and syndicate blog content as sort of a new age wire service (see Marketing Vox post "Newspapers to Syndicate Blog Content.")

Some have tried to leverage the boon in user generated content, seeking to extend the eyes and ears of the publication by accepting images from cell phones (see PDN Online . "AP Joins User-Generated Content Bandwagon")

Although some if not many of these approaches could have merit and could work, I think the better ideas are not just superficial attempts to graft new media onto old but instead tap into the truly disruptive nature of the read/write Web. 

Here is one particularly interesting example of a bold idea that might actually be possible and might actually work.

There has been much online discussion about the blogosphere and other new technologies enabling an age of participatory, citizen journalism. 

Open source efforts like Wikipedia and Linux have proven that people can and will work together to build a quality product, gratis.

And it has been shown time and again that online markets correctly guess the outcomes of things like elections, sports competitions, etc. (see Smart Mobs " NYT on online prediction markets on political futures")

So why not combine these ideas? Is it possible to build a better news story by leveraging the reach of the masses, the inertia (and error correcting behavior) of an open source group effort, and the almost uncanny wisdom of crowds?

I had in fact recently been contemplating this very possibility when I in fact noted the NY Times article on Monday, “All the World’s A Story,” by one of my favorite journalists, David Carr.

He writes:

"A new experiment wants to broaden the network to include readers and their sources. Assignment Zero (zero.newassignment.net/), a collaboration between Wired magazine and NewAssignment.Net, the experimental journalism site established by Jay Rosen, a professor of journalism at New York University, intends to use not only the wisdom of the crowd, but their combined reporting efforts — an approach that has come to be called “crowdsourcing.”

The idea is to apply to journalism the same open-source model of Web-enabled collaboration that produced the operating system Linux, the Web browser Mozilla and the online encyclopedia Wikipedia."

PR By the Numbers

There have been some existential musings on the Fusion PR blog about the state of PR, which I gladly chimed in on with my post "PR Props"

Check it out here.

Anti-social Networking

Just leave me alone.

I am being overtaken by technology. No, I am not a Luddite.

Far from it. I have devoted my career to technology.

I majored in electrical engineering, writing off any chance of having fun at party school Boston University.

I have spent the past twenty years or so in various areas of tech. Although my job descriptions have not been technical (after a short stint as an engineer), I have worked exclusively for technology companies in sales, marketing and PR before joining Fusion PR, a tech PR agency and my current employer, in 1998.

I have always prided myself at being as equally adept with technology marketing and marketing technologies, i.e. understanding and using technologies that impact marketing.

I am most definitely a people person, which is why I have focused on the marketing side rather than on pure technology.

Yet there is nothing that made me feel older than when I sat down with my 14 year old daughter last night to take a look at the latest social networking tools.

This was not to police her activities online, although I was pleased that she so willingly took me into this world, and that I did not find borderline content on hers or her friends’ spaces. It was to prepare an educational seminar for the agency on social networking technologies.

My head spinned as I took in the MySpace and Facebook experiences. So many links to click on. So many friends to connect with. So much content to view.  It was actually very disorienting, and hard to know where to start and how it all works.

The experience was akin to going to a rock concert and noticing everyone there is twenty years younger.

Kids are very comfortable in this world, and take to it naturally, which I suppose is the natural order of things.

Although I feel a professional obligation to experiment with these new technologies that can have applications for PR and marketing, it really seems like quite an effort.

Isn’t social technology an oxymoron? I routinely ignore Plaxo requests to update contact records. I eschew LinkedIn invitations. And somehow, although I feel a professional obligation, I don’t see myself jumping into the world of social networking anytime soon.

Perhaps I am not quite the people person I thought I was.

Croquet, Anyone?

Here' a light topic to consider for the approaching weekend.

I love those Bud Light commercials - Real Men of Genius

Perhaps they should do one for those extreme kite flyers in Pakistan.

"Who?" you ask.

Did you know that competitive kite flying is a death inviting sport?  Or, so says this NY Times article from last week:

Pakistan: 11 Die In Kite Festival
"At least 11 people died in an annual two-day kite festival in Punjab Province. Officials said two died after their throats were cut by kite strings made of wire, used to damage rival kites. Five died after being hit by celebratory gunshots, and two people were electrocuted trying to untangle kites from overhead power cables."

Oh, yeah, forgot to mention that two more died after falling off a roof.

Now, why isn't this story getting more play than Anna Nicole Smith or Scooter Libby?  That is the supreme injustice and irony.

I can hear the Bud Light commercial for these kite flying maniacs (they say user generated ads are all the rage - hey, I am game.  Stay tuned for the YouTube video):

Mr.  Pakistani Competitive kite flyer:

"Get your entrails off my kite string!"
"I need an ER doc, stat!"
"Croquet, anyone?"

Bud Light celebrates Real Men of Genius!

Is there an email generation gap?

My two daughters, ages twelve and fourteen, are immersed in technology.

They are almost always on IM. When away from the computer and on-the-go, they text message their friends with their cell phones.

They both frequent social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace. They have multiple online personas. They play games online.

They are all about having the latest ring tones for their cell phones, and iTunes songs for their iPods. 

Yet one thing I have not seen them adopt to any great degree is email.

Sure, they have multiple email accounts. But notes from friends and family languish in their email systems unread.

Could it be that email is too slow (or broken) for this new generation?

Thinking that I was on to something, I decided to employ the latest in multivariate statistical analysis to confirm my theory. Said another way, I wanted to elucidate the apparent phenomenological connection and do so through sophisticated stochastic processes.

Or perhaps I could just ask them.

The conversation with my younger daughter went something like this:

Dad:    Do you find email useful?
Daughter:     It's OK
Dad:    How often do you check your email?
Daughter:    Why are you asking me this?
Dad:    Market research on the cheap, please answer the question.
Daughter:     About once a day.
Dad:    Is that it?  Why not more often?
Daughter:    I dunno

The dialog was much the same as my older daughter (they are both a little amused, curious and sometimes irritated by being my most convenient new generation focus group), except it turns out she checks her email once every three days.

Although these two have not totally abandoned email,  frequencies of checking email once every three days, or even daily seems light for  the majority of us who live in email these days.

And I have a feeling that their experiences are not atypical; email is an inherently social communications technology.  If their friends were using email more, and if they needed to communicate via email for school, I am sure they would be sending and accessing email more often.

They say the youth are setting the pace in technology these days, so I believe this is a phenomenon worth watching closely.