Flack's Revenge

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.

At first I was going to try to be clever and draw an analogy between the following story and other things that are happening (can vultures be metaphors for celebrity journalism?  What about vultures picking the rotting corpses of old school PR and media)?

Then, I thought, this story doesn’t need embellishing, it is just too much fun on its own.

Apparently, as the NY Times reported earlier this week in their article On Nepal Menu, Healthful Carcass Du Jour, there is a "Save the Vultures" movement in Nepal.

"Scientists say South Asia’s vultures are on the brink of extinction…
But
now a feeding center…  about 60 miles southwest of the capital,
Katmandu, is trying to ensure that vultures get a chance to eat
chemical-free cattle carcasses.

At the center, [described as a] ‘restaurant,’ sick and dying cows that have never been treated with
diclofenac are brought in, and when they die they are left for the
vultures."

While at the in laws to watch the Super Bowl yesterday, I had the chance to finally try the Wii (after  wrestling the controls away from my nephew), and learned two things:

1) It is approachable, low cost and, best of all fun!

2) Seems like I can easily justify the cost on the grounds of the aerobic benefits alone.

The in laws only had a couple of games, and I definitely need to see what other games I can get so I can play them next time I am over. My nephew was telling me about some of the games he would like to play on the Wii, like Call of Duty and Mario Kart.

I’ve heard that sometimes you can download them online for free, like this Mario Kart Wii ROM Download for Nintendo Wii, so I’ll make sure to research into this first before I spend any money on new games.

Now, I open my news reader today to discover that there is one other use for the Wii that I would never have fathomed – you can use the Wii as a way to Wiki (Aloha! Say that five times fast!)

That is, you can use the browser that comes with Wii to update Altassian Confluence or SocialText Wikis.

Now, there is contention over bragging rights for this ability.

Ross Mayfield’s blog points out  that SocialText was there first (Wiki Hand Waving), and is gracious enough to include links to the apparently thunder stealing Altassian

Anyway, those wacky Wiki guys are always one step ahead.

So we have our Lexis/Nexis, we have our Google, does PR searching
get any better?

For the intrepid infonaut (aka Newsmaster Flash), you
bet it does – and will get even more powerful, for those who want to take the
time to push the envelope and stay on the cutting edge.

Let’s face it; although Google has done a great job with
search, the iconic blank screen with a simple stark search box has dumbed down
the art of finding things on the Web.

Ever more powerful algorithms improve relevancy of results,
relieving people of the burden of actually understanding how search works (and
lessening the need to master advanced search).

In short, better search capabilities bring better search to
more people, making it seemingly unnecessary to be search experts.

Yet for the PR professional – and other knowledge workers –
this can be a dangerous thing. The
specific ways in which you enter your search (and where you go to search) can
mean big differences in the results you get.

We need to understand what search covers and what it doesn’t
(not all print hits wind up online, of course, general Web searching is not necessarily the same as blog searching, and there is no single place to
go to that I am aware of – for free, on the Web, or even from paid content
libraries – that includes everything), and how to structure search differently
for different engines to get what we want, and how to master advanced
techniques such as using search operators, wildcards, etc., and how to search
metadata.

As more and more content migrates to the Web, and
increasingly originates on the Web, and as tools get better, I truly believe we
are headed for a golden age in PR in which we can better plan strategies,
monitor buzz almost as quickly as it develops and gauge the results of our
efforts.

Advanced unstructured data searching, reporting, analysis
and content mining tools will increasingly help us make sense of the sea of
facts and opinion, take the pulse of the state of thought in certain areas,
make sense of what is being written about; track the conversations that count,
how often themes and concepts are explored, and determine the penetration and
prevalence of key messages for our clients, employers and competitors.

Armed with these capabilities, we can start answering the
following questions:

• What issues are emerging and rising in importance?
• Where are
  our clients/employers mentioned, in what context (positive, negative, neutral) and for
  which audiences?
• Which influencers are
  rising and which ones are yesterday’s news?
• Are the desired messages getting
  through?
• And are we getting our fair
  share of attention and coverage?

Of course these types of questions can all be answered
today, but with lots of heavy lifting, and/or in conjunction with specialized
services.

As Jon Udell mentions in his article Divergent
citation-indexing paths, “In the academic world, where citations are
taken very seriously, digital object
identifiers play a much more important role than they do on the web. We web
folk could learn a thing or two from our academic cousins.”

So, there are some advanced search technologies being deployed
in the world of scholarly searching, and this may give us a sign of what is to
come in general Web searching. E.g.
there are free tools on the Web for science searching, like Scirus (full
disclosure, a client). Scirus features a
hand crafted index designed to screen out sites that have no relevance to
science, and utilizes a massive scientific vocabulary to check search terms
against. Scirus thus improves relevancy for
science specific searching.

There are also subscription products, like Scopus from
Elsevier, which helps librarians and researchers navigate a sea of peer
reviewed scholarly content, giving users ways to mine citation records and thus
derive useful information about the evolution of research topics and influence
of scientists and researchers.

I will come back to issues of emerging search technologies like content mining, in the meanwhile I list
below some links I have found to be helpful.

The somewhat long title of this Online Magazine article says it all:

Blog searching for competitive intelligence, brand image,
and reputation management: do you know what is being said about you in the
blogosphere? Should you care? Aren’t blogs just for kids, political campaigns,
and geeks, of no value in business? If you think this, you’re likely missing
out on an increasingly powerful information source.

This post from Burnham’s Beat describes the persistent
search trend (basically, the art of setting search alerts).

Persistent
Search: Search’s Next Big Battleground

ResearchBuzz is a great site (with an accompanying email
newsletter) that covers cutting edge search topics.

Of course, SearchEngine Watch is the recognized authority on search related topics.

This blog post from Digital Inspiration covers the subject general Web vs. blog
searching.

Anyone worth their salt in PR these days and/or who
agrees new media and the blogosphere are forces to reckon with should master Technorati’s
various search tools.

When it comes to glory and earning power, they have us beat, so why do VCs want to hone in on our action?

VCs are often protrayed as swashbuckling risk takers, a vital engine of the tech economy.  The good ones make untold millions, for themselves and their investors.

PR folk are generally seen as hucksters, spinmeisters, handlers, fixers, and, well… flacks.  The good ones sometimes get some props, and our clients and employers (and mothers and fathers) love us, but rarely do you read or hear about this.

Yet on the PR side we often find VCs that want to play armchair flacks.

This observation really applies to any stakeholders who think they know about PR, but are operating at arms length from the PR program – the sales team, board, shareholders of public companies and the like.

And it is made all in the good spirit of wanting to improve things, we berate because we love (many of my referrals come from VCs and I by no means want to slay the golden calf or antagonize anyone).

I have written an open note to VCs, including excerpts from a clients’ email on the subject, which was written to placate the VCs and keep them at bay from the PR program.

You can read all about it on the Fusion blog.

An old upright piano given to me by my mother-in-law, and 30 years in 2 seconds – these things have led me to reflect upon the potential importance of Google and Web 2.0 worker productivity boosts.

Let me explain, you will see that these points are related.

Having neglected a hobby I once enjoyed – playing rock and jazz piano – since my college years in the early 80’s, I was thrilled to have the chance to get back into it after my mother-in-law recently gave me a piano.

However I quickly learned that the “chops” I once had were now more like freezer-burnt cutlets.  I realized that if I wanted to do this right I would need to (sigh) take lessons again.

It had been about 30 years since I had taken piano lessons, back in high school.  I studied under an extremely talented musician named John Lampkin.  At the time  I wanted to rock out and play the keyboard riffs from The Doors, Traffic and Jethro Tull; John reined me in and taught me to appreciate and play the finer piano things in life: Dave Brubeck, and songs by Miles Davis, Charlie Mingus, etc.

At any rate, I decided to go ahead and contact John after all these years to see if he still remembered me, and could recommend any good piano teachers in my area. I know that actually getting my hands on a piano to practice on might be tricky, but I’ve had a couple of places recommended to me. Plus, I know that pianomoversoftexas.com will be able to transport it securely for me if I ever move house, so at least that’s something sorted.

Not knowing where he lived, or even if he was still alive, on a whim I did a Google search and found his Web site in about 2 seconds.  In almost no time at all, I had sent him an email, he replied, and we were back in touch.  John’s Web shingle and a quick search and email exchange allowed me to traverse 30 years in seconds.

It then occurred to me that most of us take for granted the efficiencies in finding information we have gained these days, and led me to wonder whether there is some productivity dividend specifically related to search and the Web that all those economists who crunch numbers should be considering.

Let’s consider some of the factors at play.

Few would disagree that information is getting easier to find these days.

Google is the most visible driver of this, but not the only one.  People are becoming more search savvy  – getting better at searching with Google, and other tools where appropriate.  Second, it is not only Google but other facets of our online experiences which aid discoverability of online content – tags, social bookmarks, and the fact the Web 2.0 era means quick and easy blogs, Web sites and user generated content.

John’s information rose to the top was because he has his own Web site, John Lampkin.  And who (or what) doesn’t have some kind of Web presence today?

The net, I think, is that IT in general will continue to contribute to improved productivity, and that Google and Web 2.0 will be an increasingly important part of this.

Some say RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication.  Others say it means Rich Site Summary.

But it could just as easily stand for Really Smart Searching.  Or, Recognize Searching vs. Subscribing.  Or, Really, Start Subscribing!

The words are right there in the first definition – Really Simple –  so why haven’t PR folks jumped on the RSS bandwagon in droves?

It is a mystery to me, as I can say for my part that using RSS has drastically improved my ability to sift through the fire hose of daily news and online discussion and be on top of what is important to my clients and me.

It really feels good to be the first to spot a hit, important blog post or breaking news.  Since I started using RSS several years ago, I have been able to impress clients and industry peers alike with this ability.

And isn’t that what being a NewsMaster Flash is all about?

In terms of RSS basics, a good place to start would be to check out the archive of a symposium I ran last year ago for the International Association of Online Communicators’ blog on the topic (Welcome to RSS Basics Week).  Also, here is Wikipedia’s definition of RSS.

The reason I am an RSS zealot is simple: it allows me to get timely updates, sift through more information more quickly and zero in on what is important.  It does this in two ways:

1)    RSS cuts out the search middleman.   By polling the feeds I have subscribed to on a frequent basis with my newsreader (see #2, below), I can get updates as soon as they are available; there is no need to wait for the content to be indexed by a search engine.  Nor is there the need to
manually surf to each site to see what is new.

Better yet, I can combine the immediacy RSS updates with the wide net of search.  Most search engines now offer the option of making results available as RSS feeds.  By subscribing to such a feed with my newsreader, I can see what the search engines are finding for my search terms of interest.

2)    An interface built for news consumption.
At its most basic level, the news reader allows you to subscribe to, browse, and read the content of RSS feeds.  The better readers sport interfaces consisting of several panes, to give you an easy way to see what is new amongst your feeds, browse headlines, and read the content of each feed.

I have been using FeedDemon, from Bradsoft (a company that was acquired by competitor NewsGator).  It is a desktop based newsreader that does the basics but also goes further.  For example, I can define "Watch" channels that sift through all my feeds and collect the ones that match predefined search terms.  I can also define search channels that use my key words to return matching results from RSS search engines like Feedster and Blogdigger.

I typically set Watch and Search channel terms to be the names of clients, their products, competitors, and technology key words.

FeedDemon lets me easily send emails or post to my blog about news items of interest.  Its built-in browser prompts me when feeds are available at a site and gives me a number of ways to easily subscribe and build out my list of feeds.

Some feel that online newsreaders are the way to go, because you can access these from any system with Web access, and there are many good free ones out there.

TechCrunch had a great feature about the State of Online News Readers last March.

Others appreciate the advantages of desktop software – richer interfaces, and better performance that comes from using your local desktop processor to do the heavy lifting of sifting through the thousands of feeds required for intensive PR news monitoring applications.

I don’ have hard survey data but suspect, based on my discussions with other PR folks, that RSS has not been widely adopted in the profession.  I am assuming that this is because people tend to be reluctant to try new things, especially when there is a learning curve involved.

Some might object to the investment of effort required to assemble a comprehensive collection of feeds.  The fact is, this is not as hard as it seems.  Most newsreaders come already populated with a good selection of feeds. And there are a number of OPML (Wikipedia’s definition) directories that are freely and publicly available that let you pick and choose from tens of thousand of feeds, sorted by categories, and add feeds in bulk to your collection.  For example, Syndic8 and NewsIsFree are two good resources for finding feeds.

Finally, newsreaders like FeedDemon have built-in browsers that automatically discover the feeds that are available when you visit Web sites, and prompt you to select and add these.

In conclusion, if you are in PR and don’t start using RSS, you will be doing yourself and your client/employer a disservice.  And that would be a Real Sad Shame!

The NY Times just reported that humans can track scents, much in the same way as dogs can.
("Humans Can Track Like Dogs… ," December 18)

According to the article, "Researchers at the University
of California, Berkeley, have found that people can follow a scent
surprisingly well, as long as they do not mind abandoning all dignity, putting
their nose right to the ground and crawling along with their bottoms in the
air."

First I thought this was funny, but then I realized, isn’t this something that the media (and more recently, citizen journalist bloggers) have proved they can do for years?!!!

In the world of PR, we generally want to feel like we are Master of the News.

Not in an arrogant, "Masters of the Universe" sense.  Despite popular opinions about PR, most of the people in the field that I know don’t harbor illusions that we can shape or control the tide of news in any large way.

Yet we want to have some sense of being aware and in control – being on top of what is happening in the marketplace of news and ideas, instead of the other way around.

This is no small task, and is becoming harder and harder, with the proliferation of news, opinion and chatter, both online and off.

The communications battles will increasingly be dominated by those who are most adept at corralling and making sense of the fire hose of information – winnowing what is important from the noise, spotting groundswells of debate, and tuning in and listening to the influencers and dialogs that count the most.

Being a Master of the News also means acquiring newsmastering skills and tools (collaboration expert Robin Good has written extensively on this topic) .   In this context, this means being able to mix, rip, burn and repurpose the news of the day for reporting, analysis, and PR tracking and planning.  The "repurpose" part of the equation  means being able to publish news (generally harvested via RSS feeds, and provided as a headline, abstract and link back to the original site and story) in a variety of formats – email, html, etc. – for a variety of purposes.

This series will describe the tools that are out there to help you become a Master of the News.

I will start out by taking a look at RSS, a technology that is changing and improving the info consumption habits of news junkies everywhere.

I will of course cover search and its various flavors – persistent, full text, blog vs. Web searching.

I will also explore so-called meme trackers, the sites that purport to take over the heavy lifting of spotting the hot emerging stories and industry buzz.

The series will finish with a spotlight on newsmastering solutions: software that can turn you into a veritable mixing, burning, mashing, pulping, pureeing, shaking, stirring Newsmaster Flash.