Flack's Revenge

Billion Dollar Baby (Twitter and the Value of Buzz)

Twitter is raising new money in an effort that would assign a value of $1 billion to the company.  This, for a company that seems remarkably unconcerned about beating a path to any realistic business model. 

What does such a valuation mean? As the NY Times reported today:

For context, that is almost double the market capitalization of Domino’s Pizza, which has 10,500 employees and had $1.4 billion in sales last year. Twitter has some 60 employees, and although it is experimenting with running advertisements on its Web site, Biz Stone, a Twitter founder, said this week at an industry conference that the company had no plans to begin widely running ads until 2010...  In its three and a half years, Twitter has become a magnet for media attention

To me there is no clearer demonstration about the sheer value of buzz and media coverage - not that there is not intrinsic value in Twitter and it service.  The value from a bottom line business standpoint is based on the intangible good will of enthusiastic users - a community that growths with every article, news mention and celebrity Tweet.

Press Embargoes - Just say No! (or "No Thank You")

Well, Arrington has once again voiced his disapproval for embargoes.

For the uninitiated, embargoes and exclusives are deals that PR firms strike with media regarding advanced notice about news and timing of publication for related stories.

In his post on TechCrunch he refers to similar WSJ policy and states that he will no longer entertain any type of embargo proposal.

It occurred to me that in all fairness to my readers (and their PR firms) I really need to come out with a firm statement on the policy for exclusives and embargoes for Flack's Revenge.

And here it is - I just won't do it.  In fact, I'll go one better than Arrington - I won't just eschew embargos and exclude exclusives, I will evade any PR tactic starting with "e".

So, meet with your clients at events? Forget it.  Respond to email pitches?  No way. Write about early stage companies? Not a chance. Cover product entroductions? Hah! You know the answer.

What's this you say?  You are a large and important vendor?  Your news is just too big to ignore? 

Did you read my policy?  I am serious about this.

OK, I'll do it, just this once.

In all seriousness, Arrington's post is just the latest salvo in an ongoing debate on news embargoes and exclusives.  If you are a PR professional, you may well be wondering what this means - what are the implications of these policies for your clients and campaigns?  How should this effect the advice you give them?

I go into more detail today on the topic and attempt to answer these questions in my post on the Fusion Forum blog.

Slang vs. Tech Jargon: So different? (I'm Just Sayin')

An article in the NY Times last month described how the Internet is the shortening the shelf life of slang. According to the story:

The number of slang dictionaries is growing, both online and off, not to mention social networking media that invent and discard words, phrases and memes at the speed of broadband. The life of slang is now shorter than ever, say linguists, and what was once a reliable code for identifying members of an in-group or subculture is losing some of its magic... The Internet “is robbing slang of a lot of its sociolinguistic exclusionary power,” said Robert A. Leonard, a linguistics professor at Hofstra in Hempstead, N.Y... widespread understanding is the opposite of what slang is about. 

This got me to wondering whether the same thing might be happening with tech jargon.  After all, don't us industry folk use jargon as "a reliable code for identifying members of an in-group?"  One could also argue that tech jargon runs through the mill much more quickly these days.

The great big elephant in the room in tech is that words are used to exclude and impress.  People have conversations and feel each other out in terms of what they know and what they can get away with saying.  It is equal part bluffer's game, showboating, and obfuscation.

Charting the trajectory of specific words is not easy, according to the article.

Tracking a word’s arc from hip to lame is notoriously difficult, especially because different social groups grab hold of different terms at different times.

It described words and phrases that are in decline:

And the site Gawker recently tried without success to ban the phrase “I’m just sayin,’ ” which has become ubiquitous on blogs and Twitter as a way of defanging — disingenuously, perhaps — a potentially confrontational statement.

I reflected on a conversation I had with my daughter the other day about pop music.  It seems that many lame songs these days have over-produced sound effects thrown in that are very irritating.  I told her that, just like good steak, songs that are really good should not need such spicing up.

Similarly, marketers with quality products should not have to rely on jargon or marketing speak to jazz up what they are selling. 

Instead of taking pains to ensure you are using the jargon d' jour, why not just speak plainly? Would this be such a bad thing?  I'm just sayin.

The Pro, the Shmoe and the Joe: Icons Behaving Badly

We had a couple of weeks packed with celebrity meltdowns and rehabilitation attempts.

By now everyone is familiar with tennis pro Serena William's meltdown at the US Open, rapper Kanye West's MTV VMA outburst, and South Carolina Congressman Joe Wilson's rant. There's already been lots of media coverage this week about these episodes and the efforts of each at redemption.  My focus as always will be on the PR side of things.

Some cynically call the tirades calculated PR ploys.  The NY Daily News wrote:

"Is rude the new normal?" No, PR is the new normal.

Kanye got so much publicity out of his stunt that it eclipsed the solemn homage [at the MTV VMA show] by Madonna and Janet Jackson to Janet's brother Michael.

There's no question that the episodes captivated us and I suppose there was a ratings bonanza for some shows as a result.  The NY Times wrote in a recent story "The Swift-West Spectacle, Stoked on Screen:"

The story played out across three days on three networks, a publicity windfall... Viacom got the first and in some ways least dramatic act, when Kanye West snatched the microphone from Ms. Swift’s hands at the Video Music Awards on MTV on Sunday. Monday night it was NBC Universal’s turn, with Mr. West’s contrite appearance on the premiere of “The Jay Leno Show.”

...It’s clear by now that all the participants in the contretemps — Mr. West, Ms. Swift, Beyoncé, MTV, NBC, ABC — are net winners.

But what did the outbursts do for the personal brands of each celebrity?

I had always thought that Serena was a class act.  I remember a major tennis match in which she handled a series of unfair calls much more gracefully.  Her press conference and statement were jokes (see Zen and the Art of the Sports Cliche').  There is no question that her image has been sullied.

Joe Wilson has been variously called a racist and folk hero in the days following his interruption of Obama's address to Congress about health care.  Both parties have benefited from improved contributions (someone please explain to me the thought process driving people to support parties and politicians following situations like this one, and why there's a linkage).

And Kanye "It's not my party but I'll cry if I want to" West?  I just don't see how his display of rudeness has helped his image.  The normally unflappable Obama was overheard calling Kanye a jackass.

"There's no such thing as bad PR" is a sad and untrue cliche'.

Interview with Gilad Lotan ("Retweeting the Iranian Revolution" Dude)

MIT Technology Review covered an effort by developer Gilad Lotan that visually charted the spread of Twitter buzz caused by the recent unrest in Iran.  According to the article:

During the Iranian elections in June, microblogging site Twitter became a way for protesters to communicate with each other and with the rest of the world. Stories of oppression, police brutality, and violence spread via 140-character tweets despite the government's efforts to filter Web content and control Web traffic inside the country.

A new visualization tool developed by Gilad Lotan, a programmer and designer at Microsoft Startup Labs, shows just how information related to the elections spread through Twitter, via the most popular Twitter conversations and retweets.

I found this to be fascinating on a number of levels.  It illustrates the ability of social media to play a starring role in events (and influence them) as they unfold. Also, the tool he developed shows what is possible when it comes tracking the spread of buzz.

I have been blogging about improved tools for tracking online info, and the story definitely caught my attention.  So I sent Gilad an email and had the following exchange with him.  Please read and enjoy.  And feel free to comment if you are aware of any metrics, analysis and reporting tools for Twitter.

Q (Bob Geller): I know your effrot is a work in progress and possibly won’t be packaged or commercialized.   Are you aware of any existing commercial products or Web utilities that report on and help analyze Tweeting and Retweeting activity?

A (Gilad Lotan): My work is definitely in progress and will not be commercialized. I’m looking at the possibility of releasing the code to other developers or creating an online service where people can subscribe to personalized queries, which would be free. However, I would need to change the UI quite a bit, as this project is designed to fit the Iranian Elections content. An actual tool would need to be much more functional, and probably not written in JAVA.

There exist a variety of web “trending tools” that follow twitter and highlight retweeted messages (i.e. http://www.retweet.com/), however none that I found do the type of analysis that my visualization enables. None make matches between similar texts and highlight differences in words authors used to portray the same message.  

I imagine that with the upcoming rollout of Twitter retweet API support, it will be substantially easier to follow retweet trails to the originating tweet, and have similar analysis, without the need for the more complex set of Natural Language Processing queries that I am performing.

Q: I found a site called Retweetist.com that could help too.  In addition to the advanced functionality you cite – visualization, NLP content matching – it would be great to find a dashboard that enables basic Twitter metrics, and provides reports on who replies, Retweets, how many followers they have, etc. to see the reach of Tweets, replies and RTs without jumping through hoops.  Are you aware of any such tool?

A: I am not aware of a tool similar to what you’re describing. I feel like I have stumbled upon subscription based tools that do some metrics/analytics, but none attempt to tackle any of the NLP problems.

Advances in Online News Analysis & Classification

The NY Times recently covered promising developments in the area of tools that help analyze online news and information.

The article Hot Story to Has Been described several efforts under way that aim to chart the evolution and propagation of stories.  I will be writing in more detail about the Web-based tools listed that are publicly accessible in a future post.

The article Mining the Web for Feelings reported on advances in the ability to automatically detect the tone of a story.  These tools are variously called sentiment analysis or opinion mining because they go beyond mere facts to infer the tone of articles (actually my wife and I did a lot of opinion mining before the relationship went south - as in when it came to opinions, they were always mine mine mine or hers hers hers and very little compromise).

This has been kind of a holy grail for online monitoring and artificial intelligence.  It requires analysis of words and context to detect the nuances of sarcasm, for example, and "understand" the sentiment of the writer.  There are a variety of services that are great at culling information, but the ability to accurately classify articles according to tone without manual intervention will be a tremendous step forward for PR monitoring and reporting efforts.

I visited the websites (where available) for each service and plan to eventually kick their tires, write about them, follow their progress and share this info.

The one that seemed most accessible and thus easy to check out and review was Newssift, from the Financial Times Group.  The information on the site did not make clear how many sources it searches across.  But my quick look and a few searches convinced me that this is a tool worth spending some time with and checking out further.

E.g., plugging in a generic tech term like "cloud computing" revealed overwhelmingly positive sentiments about the topic (see below).  Along the left panel it shows the frequency of the term by source type, and shows the top people, companies, themes and regions associated with the term.  You can refine the search by selecting specific people, companies, topics etc. that are suggested and displayed along the top panel.

If you select a company, you can see a chart of sentiment trends, making this a great tool for exploring the evolution of brand perceptions.  Very cool indeed!

From Journos Unplugged to Paid Blogger Plugs: Whom Do you Trust?

The NY Times public editor (an ombudsman for the paper) wrote about potential conflicts of interest regarding tech gadget writer David Pogue.  The article describes Pogue's many and varied activities:

In addition to his weekly “State of the Art” column in The Times, and his blog and videos on the newspaper’s Web site, and his weekly e-mail newsletter, he appears regularly on “CBS News Sunday Morning,” CNBC and NPR. He also entertains lecture audiences with satirical ditties on the piano — he once aspired to be a Broadway composer — while informing them about the latest gadgets... Pogue originated “The Missing Manual” series of help books for the technologically challenged

I learned a lot from this article.  E.g., I have always found Pogue to be informative as well as entertaining.  But who knew that he's a real entertainer?

Oh, and one more thing: did I mention (as the article did) that Pogue has two books out on Apple Snow Leopard, a product that he has reviewed for the NY Times?  Hence the ethical conundrum that is the subject of the piece.

As the article says:

... The Times and other news organizations are going to face more of these situations as journalists worried about the economic health of their employers seek outside sources of income and as the companies turn to independent contractors, like Pogue, for more of their content.

That is why the brand is so important - the personal brand, as well as the publisher imprimatur.  People generally respect the NY Times' reputation as a trusted source for news.  Anyone who reads Pogue knows that he's a straight shooter.

On a related topic, the FTC is causing many to reevaluate the trustworthiness of online media as the agency mulls updating its guidelines on paid endorsements to include social media and blogs.

Kevin Grossman noted his concerns about this on HRMarketer .

The Marketing Roadmaps blog has a post on this, and is also hosting a webinar today on the topic of Blogging with Integrity that promises to shed light on what is happening and what to expect regarding FTC disclosure rules.

Although most of the focus has been on reviewers that get paid with cash and/or swag, others are getting caught up in the debate.

One prominent blogger - Anne Giles Clelland - is responding via the first ever (that I am aware of) completely transparent and legally vetted policy.

Her blog Handshake 2.0 (as her tag line says, Even online, it's still who you know) is a forum in which businesses can promote themselves and connect with others.  Although clients pay to get featured on the blog, Handshake Media is completely upfront about its model.

Please see this link to Handshake 2.0's Authenticity Policy.

 

It's an App, App, App, App, App, App World

It's occurred to me that there has been a shift in how we think about and use software.

The growth of the iPhone, it's app store and myriad others, of smart phones in general and all the apps that go along, has caused software to pervade our culture and transformed it from something utilitarian into cute, bite-sized and cuddly things.

Software has become applications have become apps.   There are apps for every need and all walks of life ("we've got an app for that!" says the Apple commercial)

The boom in apps has led to a growing interest in and demand for software. There have been many stories about app developers striking it rich with humble offerings priced to move.

Apps provide welcome relief from bloatware (I just upgraded from MS Office 2003 to 2007 and my head hurts).  Meanwhile, in the realm of low cost and simple productivity suites, vendors like Zoho have quietly built a large following and $50M in revenue without any big VC backers.

This NY Times article covered Evernote, a great note taking and content clipping app that is proving that you can make a successful business from the so-called freemium model ("charging a few customers for premium service, in the hope that revenue from dedicated users will cover everyone else," according to the article).

Marketers are jumping on board, developing free apps to engage consumers.

Where does this leave enterprise users and software developers?

Will the "appification" of software pervade enterprise suites and solutions? 

That remains to be seen. Just like with cloud computing, there are threats and opportunities when compared with more traditional models of developing and marketing software.

While apps can have the effect of trivializing and perhaps commoditizing software, I personally feel that the trend can be a good thing because apps make software more accessible and user friendly.  Perhaps the growth in apps will lead to modularization and a shift from monolithic software suites to programs that are inexpensive and that people actually enjoy using.

I just saw that SalesForce.com announced an app-syle plan, priced to move subscriptions for the micro-business at just $9 per seat per month.

Multitasking is Like Functioning on a 0.16 Blood Alcohol Level

I am fresh back from not quite a full week away from the office.  It was as a nice break, although I am not sure you could call it a vacation.  I took my daughter, who is now a high school senior, to see some colleges in the greater Washington D.C. area.   It was also nice to visit with family there over the weekend.

While I blissfully shut myself off from social networking and social media for most of the time, my daughter compiled a veritable text messaging travelogue, documenting every step along the way (I force fed her some culture and history as we visited the National Mall, Smithsonian, etc.) by furiously typing on her cell phone.

It  has become part of our lore, how kids zoom past their parents in adopting technology.  I often watch in amazement as my two teen daughters sit in front of the TV, with MacBooks in their laps and cell phones in hands (sometimes a land line phone too, when they lower themselves to having an actual spoken conversation), attention darting between the devices. 

Similarly, lately these days, people seem to take pride in their ability to shift between Tweeting, Facebooking, emailing, texting, etc. while simultaneously staying engaged with home and work projects.

Is all this multitasking a good thing?

There's been tons of press lately about the dangers of texting while driving.  This NY Times article points out that some states are passing laws against texting while driving that come with penalties akin to those for drunk driving.  According to the article:

After a crash here that killed two scientists — and prompted a dogged investigation by a police officer and local victim’s advocate — Utah passed the nation’s toughest law to crack down on texting behind the wheel. Offenders now face up to 15 years in prison

It goes on to say:

Studies show that talking on a cellphone while driving is as risky as driving with a .08 blood alcohol level — generally the standard for drunken driving — and that the risk of driving while texting is at least twice that dangerous.

Another NY Times article described research from Stanford University on the subject of multitasking.

"Heavy multitaskers are lousy at multitasking... The more you do it, the worse you get," said Stanford communications professor Clifford Nass... Compulsive media multitaskers are worse at focusing their attention, worse at organizing information, and worse at quickly switching between tasks, the Stanford scientists wrote.

There's a bright side to all this. Some have said that the growth in social media means a loss of serendipity when it comes to discovering information, because we are spoon fed streams, feeds, and alerts according to our specifications and keywords and limit ourselves to our social circles and search terms.

But the research found that multitaskers have a harder time ignoring spurious information.  According to the article:

A bright side to such distraction may mean that the media multitaskers will be first to notice anything new