Digital Influence Mapping Project

Social Media Makes McDonald's Employees Stars

How many companies think about celebrating their employees publicly? We still live in the marcom world where we agonize and spend millions crafting and communicating the essence of a brand. No wonder the general attribute of social media - lack of control - is anathema to marketers. Now imagine  publicly spotlighting employees who may or may not reflect that precious brand personality.

McDonalds - yes, MickeyD's - has taken a bold move with their Voice of McDonald's II contest. This April, while we in the US tune in to this generation's Ed Sullivan show - American Idol - 14 McDonald's staff will be battling it out in Orlando for the top $25,000 prize in their employee singing contest. (In regards to American Idol - David Cook should win not just for his talent but for his guts at quoting Patrick Swayze from Roadhouse on his profile)

The contest has been going on for  some months with over 3500 entrants from the 1.6 million member workforce. Thanks to Springwise for a pretty succinct description of the program. McDonald's has gotten some great traditional media coverage. This article in the NYTimes describes the contest:

"For the second competition, the company added online voting for the semifinalists as a way to get employees and customers more involved, Mr. Floersch said.

Once the 35 semifinalists were selected in late September, they were given a list of 38 songs from which to choose. It includes British and American standards, including 16 Beatles songs, “The Gambler” by Kenny Rogers and “Sugar, Sugar” by The Archies.

“I preferred ‘Yesterday,’ but I imagined a lot of people would sing it,” said Axel Gaston Rivero, 20, a finalist from Argentina, speaking through a translator. Indeed, three finalists sing “Yesterday,” while Mr. Rivero is alone in offering “Hey Jude.”

The list of semifinalists was pared to 14 in December, with online voting accounting for 25 percent of the score. At the finals competition in April, contestants can choose any song, and will be able to work with voice coaches."

The Magic Isn't The Traditional Media
The magic for me is in the online voting. We have a model to help contestants promote their entries in contests via a virtual BuzzKit. Online tools help them invite friends and families to vote in support of their performer. This turns every contestant into a WOM ambassador. I would guess that something similar happened here. What a great way to build a connection between the brand and individual customers - invite those customers to vote for their favorite employee/performer. This is also a great way to bring real personality to the McDonald's brand - something far beyond what Ronald or HamBurglar can ever do.

I am guessing that the communications team at McDonald's sees the value in the big media coverage they nailed. And while that has it's value, I am hoping they continue with the contest yet embrace the value in word of mouth by adding any of the following:

• BuzzKits for any entrant to help promote their perfomance and garner more consumer votes
• A social media optimized experience that makes it easy to share, bookmark and cross-post video
• Google maps mash-up locating entrants with their store locations
• Videoblog entries from the finalists
• Aggregate all the conversation in blogs about the contest into a single display. This is like what we are doing for Select Comfort via beds.com. This unbiased collection rewards blog coverage demonstrates the power of word of mouth

While part of me pines for employers to engage their employees to talk about the brands they work for and the issues related to their business - relevant, sustained conversation - I know that is generally unrealistic. Empowering 3600 staffers - never mind 1.5 million employees - to talk about the benefits of McDonald's in relation to childhood obesity or nutritional health is not going to happen. (although, preparing those employees to have balanced discussions about these issues could actually happen).

McDonald's has taken a great step in celebrating their employees in a way that doesn't put them at much risk. "Working at McDonald's" has too long been maligned as the lowest profession. This contest demonstrates that McD's is proud of their employees not for their robotic compliance to the tenants of Hamburger U. but for their individuality and considerable talents. Just listen to Natericia Pintor, finalist from Portugal:

Is it easier for small business to "get" social media?

Frank Almeida started a business with his wife a few years ago. Sugar and Spice bakes high-end cookies, biscotti, budin and more based upon Frank's wife's recipes. They sell them via retail partners and do some white label sales, as well.

One of the things he likes about Buenos Aires is that in post-economic crisis BA, it's a good environment for a very driven entrepeneur. It may not be easy to start and run a business (where is it ever easy) but something about the city shines down on the little guy trying to create some value.

First things first - the cookies are to die for. He gave me a bag - a shopping bag - full of them when I left his shop. So, it helps to have a good product. I met Frank online when I was planning on coming to Argentina. I noticed that he a had an English-language blog connected to his cookie business. Judging from his blogroll, he was connected with the core of BA bloggers - some expats, some Argentinians. He has been blogging for about a year. I don't know if I was expecting the same type of blog-snobbery we see some time in the US. But what I got was very different.

Frank started his blog to help his business Web site appear better in search engine results. Plan and simple. He was not consciously pining for a new way to express himself, nor even trying to make "an authentic connection" with his customers. He started the blog to rank better in Google.com.ar and Yahoo. And it worked. 

In the process he discovered other bloggers and maintains a connection with them. But he is a family guy and a small businessman to boot. That means he is as time-starved as the rest of us and not spending his evenings at whatever passes for Barcamp in Buenos Aires.  I think he is scratching his head a little wondering how else he can get his blog to impact his business.

He may find ways to connect with potential customers as his business grows across borders in the region. Customers in Peru or Uruguay may feel more comfortable doing business with a guy who honestly writes a blog. I am not sure Frank can measure that type of impact. All he really needs are a couple of anecdotal mentions from clients that they browsed his blog and felt better about signing a contract to make him feel its value. here are two posts that - for different reasons - tell me he understands the potential:

• The first is a drama that unfolded when his street flooded beyond all expectation. He posted a video of how his staff helped keep the business from damage.
• The second is a promotion he ran with a popular wine in Argentina in celebration of International Women's Day. It just shows that he remains connected to his company's identity (his wife is responsible for the recipes and many other aspects fo the business) and what is going on in the world.  (and that he understands the "halo" effect of established brands on up-and-comers)

Even his simple decision to use the blog to help search rankings is refreshingly simple. i think about that and then I think about the social media-based programs we develop for major brands. It seems so much easier for small business to try and learn from using social media than big organizations with so many more resources. Part of it is entrepeneurship at play. Although I would like to argue that there are as many entrepeneurs at big companies than small. I am not sure that is true.

Small business understands the benefits of social media quicker. Social media can improve search engine performance for them quickly. It can serve as a natural outlet for their personalized approach to business. And most small businesspeople don't walk into marketing with a bias towards measureable advertising. In fact, they'll do anything before spending cash on ad buys.

So, it seems that small business has some terrific advantages over large brands to using social media for marketing. (Check out this post from Virginia Miracle on another small business social media boost)

Sugar and Spice is a great example of a worthy business that understands the basics of what social media can do to help the bottom line. They are also open to discovering through "doing" how else social media can help their business. Frank may get tired of posting but then someone will call him up for an order and mention how they enjoyed the blog. I bet that'll get him posting pretty quick.

In the meantime, they have the best cookies in Buenos Aires. Tell your friends. Tell your branch office in BA. Tell anyone who cares about cookies, is anywhere near Argentina, and cares about the success of a worthy business with a great product.

Influence vs. Desire

A lot of advertising tries to trigger desire. We portray products as critical to filling a painful gap. e.g. that toothpaste will make my smile whiter at the same time as preventing cavities; a whiter smile will make me more attractive to people, etc and so forth. With an abundance of choices - products, services, issues - "brand" is more important than ever. What a product or service promises to its customers beyond the price-for-perfomance often becomes the deciding factor in purchase decisions. All basic stuff. But what about the scientific understanding of influence? Has that changed at all with the explosion of digital media?

At the recent Verge conference in NYC, we were talking about new measurement models. I had John Batelle from Federated Media, Nick Denton from Gawker, and Owen Van Natta from Facebook on the panel. Most of them catering to the existing advertising media-based model. John Batelle - especially - is trying to go beyond that with different ways to value ...eek, that word....engagement.

Old Models

Our old models of what people find persuasive need to be recalibrated. In a frequency-based world we count on repetition to make an impression.  That and the relevance of the message may drive customers to buy or take an action (or prefer the brand). In a click-through world, we operate based upon direct-response principles which appear a little cruder at the surface but with a hardcore "conversion" result.

In the word of mouth or peer-recomendation world - what is the best way to measure effectiveness of marketing efforts? Like a lot of marketing, we have a brand benefit as well as a sales benefit. In the former, we establish a stronger connection with customers by participating with them on some level - conversation, co-creation, being of-use. In the latter, when 81% of US customers find WOM more trustworthy for purchase decisions - we have a powerful conversion story. So why is it so hard to tell the marketing value story to trained brand marketers?

As described before, there is a great temptation to compare WOM to advertising to try and simplify the brand marketers dilemma: how to compare strategic approaches to make wise marketing budget decisions.

We need to get back to the science of persuasion
I'm talking Maslow's hierarchy of needs. I am talking about books like Robert Cialdini's Influence: Science and Practice. To some extent, Made to Stick, offers a contemporized digest of ideas that motivate people - kind of like public relations-lite.

There was a time when advertising agencies employed academic types: anthropologists, psychologists, deomographic number-crunchers. It's hard to see that this was anything but a fad. But now, we need to get back to the science of influence. If we are truly going to understand how the vast array of word of mouth approaches can motivate people to buy or act and how they can spread, we need to also be able to document how different types of word of mouth from different sources actually forms opinion and drives action in others.   

Are marketers ready to talk psychology or do we all just want a simple way to count like the one proposed by BzzAgent? They cam out with a little white paper a month ago that basically said, "let's just call WOM a $300 cpm." I am not sure I disagree with their approach. But it is sacrificing some very interesting learnings about how WOM can be persuasive for the benefits of actionable simplicity.

How can we re-examine our assumptions about how influence is applied in today's social media-infused marketing without getting mired in an academic black hole for the next 5 years?

Social Media Visualizations

I have become a quick fan of MITs Technology Review. Not sure why I am just paying attention now, but I picked it up a few months back in an airport and rediscovered a great pub (nicely designed to thanks to Art Director Lee Caulfield).

Erica Naone has a great article in the April edition about different schemes for social media visualizations. As a Creative Director, information design has been a long-time love. Now, with digital data, we are seeing interesting approaches to creating pictures of the abstract dynamic of social connectedness. Tools like Visible Technologies help us understand the network path of ideas across bloggers by showing graphics - bubbles, lines, connections.

New Visualizations
Two visual schemes that stand out to me include the work of Mathew Hurst at Microsoft's Live Labs ( I am a regular reader of his Datamining blog)  and the Comment Flow visualization from Dietmar Offenhuber and Judith Donath at MIT Media Labs. The Live Labs work demonstrates the clustering we all sense exists amongst blogs. The image below shows even more centralization than I would have guessed. Is it a 'blogosphere' or a 'blogoclump'?

Comment Flow displays that wonderful mosaic of pics and favicons connected in hubs of comments around core posts or conversations.

On the MIT site, Dietmar describes it as such:

"We have designed and implemented a flexible tool for the content driven exploration and visualisation of a social network. Building upon a traditional force-directed network layout consisting of nodes (profiles) and edges (friend-links), our system shows the activity and the information exchange (postings in the comment box) between nodes, taking the sequence and age of the messages into account."

They have a movie (64Mb) and an application file for download (26Mb) here - could be interesting.

It reminds me of the display of the Vizster project that Danah Boyd had a hand in.

   So where is all thi sgoing? These research-based and somewhat academic models must become the tools for us marketers tomorrow. If we want to track, demonstrate and prove the flow of WOM and the influence of person X over person Y in a particular conversation, having visual displays of the network and the spread of an idea will be very compelling.

As marketers, we live in a world of 'dashboards' that try to make complex data around campaign performance easy to get quickly and to provide meaning if not insight that can be acted upon. 

Portuguese Social Media: Two Stories of Success

Having spent a few days in Lisbon with some of our top communications pros (locked in a hotel meeting room), I was lucky enough to get out and hook up with two people who know more about what is going on with social media in Portugal than all the pundits in the social media chatterfest.

Seriously, sometimes I get sick and tired of the "analysts" and other self-appointed experts. I just want to connect with folks who are using social media and living their lives. Last year, France was the leading blogging community in EU. Now, Spain is where a lot of the action is. Each market in EU is developing different social media behaviors. Portugal loves on Hi5 and  has a solid core of enthusiast bloggers. I had  a chance  to meet up with two guys who are each successes in social media even though they both work in tiny, boot-strapped start-ups.

What does success look like?

Hugo and Andre share more than being bloggers. Both love Portugal. Andre seems like the cat who ate the canary - like he knows the secret to living well and that happens in Portugal. Hugo has a 3 month old daughter and lives in what sounds like a super sweet apartment with view to die for in downtown Lisbon. That's why I call them 'successes' - they love their lives. They have a passion for their business and their lives outside of that dream. They don't strike me as people who are putting off life while they build a business.

Hugo & The State of Social Media in Portugal

Hugo Neves de Silva started blogging in 2005 when he began writing his master' thesis. His thesis remains perpetually in the future but he continues to blog here. he has promised to translate his recent post cataolguing the state of the blogosphere in Portugal. You can read the originial here and I wll absolutely link to the English version when he gets it together (hint, hint, Hugo). He worked in local goverment on the tech side for 8 years and is now launching a start-up consultancy called Wingman. There focus is in optmizing business' use of the Web - actually getting their sites and initiatives to make more money and produce better business results. Both he and Andre were skeptical of the interactive agency scene in Lisbon - too many folks claiming capabilities that may be just too shallow.

Portugal has geek bloggers who are on Twitter and Jaiku. But business has yet to really embrace the social Web. Corporate blogging is at its infancy and I get the feeling that Hugo has some ideas about how corporations in Portugal can start developing blog strategies. The country is widely connected and there is a wide-spread  bilingual population (English is taught in grade school). people do not access the Internet via their mobile phones even though everyone has one.

Andre & A Way Cool Start-up

Andre Ribeirinho worked at Sapo, the Yahoo of Lisbon,  until one day, he did the unthinkable, what no one does - he left. And he left to create Adegga - a social wine discovery site. The site allows users to see what others think about wines and trades on the natural affinity that wine lovers have. Wine producers (paying member/sponsors) can see member wish lists and other brand-specific information. they can also connect with their fans. Very Web2.0. But with a business model. I love that he is boostrapping and resisting investment until he iterates new language-versions and acquires more registered users. I don't drink wine but if ever there was a category that had a built in "community" - it's wine. His simple design (he did it himself even though he's a techie) and the clear UI and value to both the wine lover and the wine producer is admirable.  Mashable covered their launch as did Stowe Boyd. You can read a pretty good interview at Chaminc, a Portuguese marketing blog. 

While there are other wine communities, I woudl bet on Andre's business success. His smart insight about what people want is impressive. I love that he has 100 stores signed up from Argentina to Italy and a dozen other countries.

From Hugo and Andre, I got the sense that Portugal is not a hotbed of Web 2.0 entrepeneurial activity. What they may not fully realize is how they may be the ones to inspire the next wave. Andre says that people who knew he left the comfy confines of Sapo were stunned but also openly rooting for his success. If more knew that Hugo left a career in public service to work at a startup of 5 people while he has a 3 month old daughter at home and a wife - they would cheer him on as well.

I wish them even greater success and have no doubt it will find them. Thanks guys for a great afternoon. And let;s all try to meetup at Shift 08 in Lisbon this October (both Andre and Hugo have a hand in organizing this conference)

(photos from Hugo and Stephanie Booth)

Verge NYC 08: Hightlights from the Morning

Somewhere between 300-500 people are on hand this morning for the Ogilvy Verge conference at the Times Center in NYC. A collection of marketers from client brands, friends of the family and Ogilvy marketeers mill about the atrium waiting for the auditorium to open.

Lobby Highlight:
There is a great touch screen table from TacTable. About 4x6 feet, the table was designed and created for use in the Sprint stores to tantalize customers regarding content options for their phone. It works brilliantly. I love having such a big work surface. I wonder if I would leave it cluttered like my real desk or my current desktop....

Introduction:
Before we get to Carla's intro, we have a very funky/artsy quartet jamming to a sound sensitive projector. they look up from time to time to see the impact of the their music.

Carla Hendra, Co-CEO of Ogilvy kicked off the event by introducing the essence of "perpetual beta" - following that spark of inspiration, trying something, getting it out there, asking for feedback (or getting it anyhow) and tweaking. That's a far cry from my days producing TV commercials back in the day when we would agonize for 2 hours on the placement of a "sweat" on a can of refreshing Coke.

Dada, Data, Alpha, Beta - that's the theme this year. I could tell you what it means but then I'd have to kill you.

George Bodenheimer - President ESPN & ABC Sports

• George took us through the evolution of ESPN in the spirit of Perpetual Beta. When they aired Australian Rules Footbal, they invited viewers to send in a postcard to get the rules. 45,000 viewers sent in a postcard.
• Now they are launching "ScoreCenter" which aspires to capture and display live sports scores from every game on the planet.
• Of course, they also have the WidgetCenter with over 1000 available widgets.
• George also talked about their briadband offering - ESPN 360 - and their mobile initiatives: WAP, ESPN MVP (a phone that didn't take off), EXPN MobileTV

Their mission is to serve fans - I love that.
"You have to be prepared to fail" - luv that, too.

MashMeet DC & Mashable the Brand

We held a Mashmeet at our offices last night in DC. Pete Cashmore flew in from Scotland and hosted a group of 5 or so startups. First, I want to share some observations about the strtups and then a little about my feelings about the Mashable brand (disclosure: Mashable recently became an OgilvyPR client).

The "buzz" from me happened around Kluster and Mixx. Kluster was full of fun bluster as they landed from a whirlwind gig finishing their product enough that they could demo it at TED which is clearly a great venue for a young, VC-backed start-up.

A Message Platform Side-note

Each of the five startups delivered a lightening round preso in front of about 100-150 people jammed into our space. I wish I could work with each on their message platform - help them tell the crowd in a couple of compelling sentences what their service/software was all about. Each suffered from describing features without ever setting the stage as to the relevance or essential power of their idea. Part of me believes that the geekfest setting of Web 2.0 meetups is a lazy setting with a forgiving audience.  (I'm a geek, so don't get upset). Part of me believes that these presentations are a conscious program to help give the entrepeneurs behind them some experience presenting in a non-threatening environment. Anyhow, I would love to see them sharpen their story.

Kluster

Kluster is a co-creation, collaboration marketplace with a twist. Unlike Cambrian House, they encourage participants to collaborate and invite deeper investment in ideas. They do this by allowing contributors to up their stake in their idea by investing "watts". It is a wee bit complicated but it does look promising. There is a video that describes them here.  They have this age's 'black box' - an algorithm - that helps decide winning ideas (ones with "spark"). Usually, services that create a whole new vocabulary and require a glossary just to get it are annoying. Still, I know Kluster wants to carve out some of its own blue ocean strategy so why shouldn't they have their own language. You should be able to see the exercise they did for TED - The Game of Global Awareness - at their core site here >

Mixx

Mixx is a well known bookmarking aggregator feed reader thingee. By using tags, they create a segmented collection of 'what's interesting' and then display in a very clean, easy to read interface. I am sure I am shortchanging the service in terms of all its value but still I like it and plan to add their icon to our own Web site. I think of it as a tag-based Digg. 

Mashable the Brand
I have always liked Mashable and have waxed poetic here. Having interviewed Pete Cashmore, the CEO and founder, and watched him diligently meet and hand out cards at the MashMeet, I remain a fan. I appreciate that they focus on positive stories. I have never appreciated the snarky side of the Web. Part of it is that they are good - prolific coverage, tell a story via pictures (screen grabs, usually) and yet they have some sort of humility (I mean - the colors of the interface - they are charmingly weird).

I probably gravitated to them because Pete and his team have been looking from the outside of Silicon Valley in. That makes them underdogs in a space dominated by those who can hold parties in the bay area to their hearts content. Pete is from Scotland and while he has a full legion of doom in terms of employees, most are not based in SF. That is changing soon though.

The brand for me is about a relentlessly curious, optimistic group of enthusiasts who value hard work over cocktails (mostly). Pete admitted that most of the time he is holed up working. He remains surprised when he comes to the MashMeets and sees all this enthusiasm and attention from real people.

We will be seeing some interesting upgrades in the near future. Between the core blog, the Marketplace, and the bubbling social network, I think Mashable is a great source of content, community with a human soul. 

Social Media 201, 301 and AP-level

David Churbuck had a great post this past week decrying the need for deeper nutcracking in social media marketing. (No, not that kind of nutcracking. Okay, maybe a little of that kind.) Enough flag-waving about openness, conversations, and how we should all be blogging - enough fundamental basics. The bar for rigorous social media marketing or word of mouth marketing is much, much higher. He lists 10 things that need more deep thinking (and doing).

I like this one 'cause it challenges the organizational voice that we all use to deflect focus on the "me" sometimes for generous reasons ("we, the team, did this great successful program") sometimes to deflect accountability. He really found the granular behavior that is telling of one of the challenges of getting into "personal media".

"2. Pronouns: I have a bug up my you-know-what about the overuse of the Royal We in addressing one’s audience. Am I alone in viewing “we” as an attempt to dilute personal accountability for an organization’s actions? How many corporate SMM, community managers take accountability and responsibility on their shoulders by using “me” and “I?” "

And this point is close to my heart (almost said "our hearts") as you will see by my comment on his blog:

"Metrics: this is a 101 topic that is a 301 headache. SMM has no Internet Advertising Bureau or Web Analytics Association to codify a set of uniform measurements, and as all of us have to bow to the God of Accountability, how ROI is proven is going to be debated forever and ever. Let’s get off the “engagement” thing and go to the next level. Is it comment counts? Rank and influence? Pageviews and gross tonnage? Net Promoter Scores gathered through surveys?"

Check out his whole list. It's good. Hallelujah, brother.

Inside the Centocor Blog

Melissa Katz and Michael Parks from Centocor talked with a few of us and John Mack (thanks to JM) about their new blog:CNTO411 . It follows in the footsteps of very few, most notably Marc Monseau at J&J. That means they are still on the leading edge. Injecting social media into the communications practices (forget about the marketing side) remains a huge challenge throughout the industry. I remain convinced that a few fearless folks like Melissa and Michael are the key to introducing change. I mean not only do they likely have legal and their internal stakeholders nervously watching but they will inevitably be a lightening rod for the social media purists who will analyze their every move and comment vociferously.

Why now?
Melissa referred to their experience launching the film InnerStates and hearing a little bit of noise from John Mack about inviting him and other bloggers. This and other experiences convinced them there was a valuable collection of conversations and influencers and it was time to jump in.

The name?
CNTO411 - that's how they mark product launches - "CNTO". The 411 is "information."

What do they want to achieve?
The site is a corporate site. They may talk about products but it's not the core intent. They do not plan on using it as a marketing site at all. It should be a discussion about disease and conditions. Melissa will be the primary blogger (this is her primary job). They may have guest bloggers.

What might success look like?
Having a pretty fluid conversation going, gaining credibility in the blogosphere. They really want to walk-the-walk of social media.

Summary
It sounds like they are using this as a first step to get experience with social media within the organization. I asked Melissa whether the blog was a conscious attempt to give others within the organization some feel for social media - to gain confidence and understanding. The answer was simple - "absolutely" 

Neither Michael nor Melissa were very specific about the audiences they are trying to reach or how the blog will focus on topics. Sounds about right for a pharma. I love their openness about where this might go. Seemingly little efforts like this (I know it was probably a big lift to sell-in) will go a long way to introducing innovation in the pharmas not just communicate but behave. 

   

Community Journalism: Two Innovative Efforts

At the WeMedia08 Conference, I had the chance to hear about two different yet very complimentary initiaves to jumpstart community journalism in the face of traditional journalism "shrinkage."

Representative Journalism

The first came from Leonard Witt, Robert D. Fowler Distinguished Chair in Robert D. Fowler Distinguished Chair in Communication Department of Communication Kennesaw State University (third largest university in Georgia!). I shared a cab over to the University of Miami this morning with him and heard about a great program they are piloting (small grant) in Minnesota. It is all about creating journalists for hire by communities - any kind of community or affinity group. He calls it representative journalism. It might be a local, region-defined community who feels that there should be more coverage of education issues. It might be a group who share an interest in the fate of manatees (his example) and feel it deserves the coverage of a journalist. Would a 100 people in a community pay $100 a year for the efforts and output of said journalist? How much different is that then parents coming together to fund programs at their local public school? 

The James L. Knight Foundation
The second came from Alberto Ibarguen, President, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation with anew $3m grant to Ashoka, an organization dedicated to activating and supporting social entrepeneurship. Bill Drayton started Ashoka 25 years ago on the belief that social change can happen via single entrepeneurs.

Alberto Ibarguen saw an opportunity to engage a community organization (vs. a journalism organization) to help define a new form of journalism to help communities get and distribute information that is "hyperlocal" in the sense of hyper-relevant.

I am not sure this is their conscious intent, but it seems that the Knight Foundation is smartly using their philanthropic strength to explore possibilities for how the local news business (i.e. newspaper) can be razed and rebuilt. Think about what is happening in the music business. The old music business model is being rebuilt from the ground up on thousands of MySpace pages and millions of iTunes downloads. The new model won't support the existing infrastucture. Same-same with newspapers. That "business" (actually a collection of businesses - news, marketplace, local information) can't support the established infrastructure (leading to painful, serial, drawn out downsizings of newsrooms et al).

Mr. Ibarguen did outright say that he is seeking to fulfill on the role newspapers played in the 60's and 70's in terms of social bonding. While I absolutely believe in his conviction, it is clear that the Knight Foundation is practicing outside innovation to apply to their businesses. One more way smart people brought together by WeMedia are re-inventing "media."