Digital Influence Mapping Project

WeMedia 08 Sound Bites: Real Voices & Social Networks

Young Bloggers & Social Media at last week's WeMedia Buenos Aires event

Four "youths" were on stage at WeMedia 08 which has been dominated by media, business and marketing leaders (adults). It's refreshing to hear from those who are not caught up in the professions. Each is deeply engaged with social media. Some are even celebrities. When Cumbio entered the auditorium, the Twitter stream exclaimed "Cumbio is in the house!"

They are here to share their digital lives. Cumbio sounds like a regular teen.I love that she leads real-world meet-ups at the mall. Milton runs a popular blog. Pablo brought his own PowerPoint presentatuion of teens and social media.

Myths and Reality

• Each has a perfectly normal sounding life with lots of digital sprinkled in throughout the day. They are not on the computer all day. That is clearly a myth for these people. They weave it in with tremendous facility. Cumbio can post a half dozen images on her photo log in less than an hour (and recieves 100,000 visits (a day?).  I am certian that I am online far more hours than any of them (and have no more to show for it, I think)
• Pablo: "TV is only used for movies, I like...TV s not my favorite medium"
• At least two of them don't understand the appeal of Facebook. The audience of adults cheer that one on. 
• Cumbio's pretty sober about the difference between core friends - 5-10 - and the extended network of aquaintances that the Facebook software chooses to call "friends."
• Cumbio champions a new kind of media literacy - how to best use Fotolog and retain your privacy. very smart.

WeMedia08: Sound Bites from Traditional Media in Transformation

As usual, an eclectic mix of media, bloggers, marketers and business people came together at MALBA in Buenos Aires to talk about how media is changing at WeMediaBuenas Aires. There is a fair amount of tension between the traditional media folks onstage and the social media natives in the audience. For every newspapaer journalist who comments from the stage about their discovery of blogging, there is a Tweet about their "newness" to the medium. This tension is not unusual. I am with the Twitterers on this one. many of the journalists are going through the motions but have not really embraced social media.

My Theory: the traditional media companies feel confident in their leadership position due to the 'reach'they command at the head of the tail. When they look at social media, they see technology. they adopt technology and expect they have changed. Change is more constant. media companies did not just temporarily lose their monolithic status in our society. Those days are gone forever. 

Newspapers Transform Everywhere
Roberto Roja (sp?) from Clarin.com (large media company in Argentina) launched the conference by sharing about the violent disruption for print media (their foundation is built on their newspaper but they own TV, internet connectivity and more). Five years ago, they introduced color to the disbelief of the newspaper purists.

They added an online "version" of the paper to reach new audiences. He feels very bullish not just about newspaper readership but also about the leadership of newspaper Web sites. Users of their sites have doubled since 2003. The big questions are how to grow print readership and increase online revenues. 

He certainly seems like a man who sees the writing on the wall while dragging a traditional print-based media company to its obvious future. I wonder if he is more optimistic about the future of the print paper than is warranted. 

Eduardo Hauser CEO of Dailyme.com - His 6 Trends
Dailyme.com offers personalized news in a crowded market.

1. Fragmentation: Records (aka "albums") vs. iTunes
2. Atemporal (time-shifted): cable box vs. TIVO - growth of new advertising models including a 3:00 segment
3. Form of Payment: micropayment a la the $1.99 song on iTunes
4. User Participation: Election 08 Twitter feed
5. Distributed Experiences: he uses an example of DailyMe which aggregates content from everywhere including Clarin.
6. More Devices: iPhones and Blackberries and Kindles, Oh My! The Kindle is a platform that you pay a regular fee (subscription) - this represents a new business model.

Mariano Martino: Blogger vs. Journalist vs. Both
Blogging since 2001, Mariano and I spoke before the conference. He is outspoken and spends his time bridging traditional media and advertisers with social media. He is running a panel of journalist bloggers incuding

• Leandro Zanoni from tercerclick.com is giving a simple overview of social media including Facebook, wikipedia and the slide with all of the Web2.0 logos. He is teeing up the premise that I will cover tomorrow when I speak about my version of "perpetual beta" - test, try and train and allow for failure.
• Ernesto Tenembaum, journalist and blogger
• Daniel Fernandez Caneda, journliast and editor

Working with Blogs

Lilian Beriro, Development Manager for Telecom portals - Brands create stories so that they remember us and choose us. She is championing "listening" - we listen to how consumers "react." She shared three examples of ad agency created video programs - funny, fake videos. The question remains is embracing the  vocabulary of social media as powerful as actually engaging with social media (and the people amidst it)?

Esteban Panzeri/Lenovo - Esteban worked with us on the Lenovo Olympics. He is a smart guy and is actually sharing something of substance. He talks about the needs and wants of the consumer. First time today that we are talking about what the consumer needs vs. what journalists need or what advertisers need.

Must-Attend Events #1: We Media Buenos Aires

There are 3 events coming up this year that are truly must-attend events for me. I play a role in each which isn't the full explanation of why I "must attend." Each is compelling as it pulls unusual and smart  people together for conversation that can actually push our business forward this year. Each engages that part of my brain that longs for fresh thinking and apreciates the power of divergent groups.

The first is put on by ifocos.org and is part of the WeMedia summit series. here is the skinny:

We Media 2008 Buenos Aires

October 14-15 Buenos Aires, Argentina at MALBA

Why it's compelling: The conference brings together smart thinkers from media, technology, marketing and non profits to discuss how our world and our businesses are transforming in light of social media, user engagement and the Internet as a whole. Not the usual echo-chamber of tech-heads, this experience forces us to make connections/comparisons with different businesses and always injects new thinking. It is like a great dinner party that puts together interesting strangers for a reason. I inevitably apply many things I learn to my work with a week or two.

Who is participating/speaking (besides myself):

• Eduardo Hauser, CEO, DailyMe.com
• Josh Cohen, Business Product Manager, Google News
• Steve Herrmann, Editor BBCNews.com
• Victor Kong, VP and managing director, MySpace Latin America
• Florencia Pettigrew, International Marketing Manager LinkedIn
• Esteban Panzeri, Lenovo
• Martín Tinghitella, Director de Movilización Pública y FR de Greenpeace
• Sergio Hernández,  Negocios Digitales Infomedia - Intel Social Media

Come if you can. Or tell your Latin American colleagues to come.

Do You Want To Belong to a Social Network Inside a Media Property?

I love Sugar. I love Fast Company, the magazine. I read FC more often. Both are great media companies for different reasons. Sugar has developed a broad network of different web properties delivering content from celebrity to fashion. They have always been a digital brand. Fast Company has always been a great magazine and is one of main 3 business reads.

Sugar just launched OnSugar - a simple blogging platform within their network that allows anyone who wants to to establish a blog. Fast Company has had similar functionality for a while now wrapped inside an overly complex social network model complete with profiles.

For these media properties the benefits are clear:

• Create a bond between "reader" and the property that keeps us coming back routinely and becoming word fo mouth ambassadors for the brand
• Build in a content creation mechanism that is scaleable because the content comes from "volunteers" aka site members

It begs the question of what the benefit to the member is.

OnSUGAR
The blogging platform is easy-to-use and based upon drupal. Ease-of-use is more like green-fees than a USP. The key feature benefits seem to be access to free imagery via a deal with Corbis and access to product imagery. That latter feature is another potential bonanza for SUGAR as users start publishing and sharing pictures of Juicy Couture hoodies or JCrew khakis. But is that a truly great deal for potential bloggers. I could go on but...I cannot go on as all of the other features are standards for blogging platforms. Oh, it's free. As are many platforms out there.

Is that enough to make a lot of people want to take up residence within the Sugar walls? (Did I just say that?) Blogging platforms and social networks inside media properties may not be walled gardens but there surely is one of those knee-high fences that make it awkward to get in and out. And how will your OnSUGAR blog do in search engines?

This model seems to cater to those who would be casual bloggers. Maybe you want to jot down a few thoughts every once in a while or upload a video. That kind of light-hearted approach is fine but may not lead to a vibrant "community" nor much worthy content to pull into the main sites.

And what does it have to do with TeamSUGAR, the social network with the SUGAR world? There are blogs there as well. This is confusing.

Which is a great segue to FastCompany.com

FastCompany.com
FC launched a social network like thing about a year ago. I joined up immediately. Like I said, I love the magazine and the chance to be a part of it seemed great. My hope was that I could connect my very active blog to their network and build a strong audience. The FC site has a lot of functionality. I can start a blog, upload multimedia, connect with other members - sort of, save lists like events. I do not seem to have a public profile like most socnets but merely this custom homepage which you will not likely see upon clicking through.

Seems like a lot of stuff but there are two big problems:

1. It is all walled garden-activity using their platform. This requires me to want to do all the things I already do inside the Fast Company socnet. While I love FC, my life is bigger than that. I would guess that is true of many of their fans. 
2. Second problem is user experience. I am sorry but the place is a mess. Try connecting to other members and you will be forced to browse through meta-topic lists that make sense to their editorial board but are not specific enough for most of us AND the names are not organized in any recognizable or accessible way.

I would presume that I would join FC for the "Company" - the other people in business like me who dig the culture of the brand. Or the opportuntiy to be embraced by the brand by having my content featured. Can't happen.

Can it work? 

Can media properties successfully integrate social media and social networks in such a way as to build a bond that is actually useful to their "formerly-known-as-readers?" In the age of lifestreaming, is building a new blogging platform or a closed social network really the way to go?

I love these brands and applaud them for trying but I don't think they have found teh right solution yet...

Your Social Media Score - ATL

Social Media Score V2 1 Atl2008

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: socialmedia socialnetworks)

We had a great session today in Atlanta with the local PRSA - comms experts from brands, non-profits, government, agencies and more. For two hours we had a lively discussion anchored in the attached "quiz" intended to diagnose where an organization might be in terms of "readiness" to engage with social media.

Thanks to our Ogilvy leader in ATL - Mickey Nall - for making this event happen from the Ogilvy side. I started with the "this-is-your-brain-thanks-to-social-media" image that I have shared before. The point was to frame up what I think our collective jobs will become in the future. From there we went into the quiz. I have not annotated the deck - sorry about that. If you were at the event, it will all come back to you. Those of you in the space (social media, digital marketing, word of mouth) the significance of the examples will likely make sense with out the notes.

We followed it up with a great panel discussion with Mike Haines from Facebook and David Santucci from The new Georgia Aquarium. Both had a tremendously valuable POV from their own different experiences. You should keep an eye out for them speaking or connect online as they are both smart guys.

Three ways to use Social Media Score:
I have clearly added to Slideshare.
Here is a pdf file for download Download social_media_score_v2_1_atl2008.pdf
And here is a live interactive site that we just re-launched today: http://www.yoursocialmediascore.com

From Web 2.0 Olympics to Web 2.0 Democratic Convention

We're on a roll with these mega-events in terms of Web2.0 and social media integrating into the experiences to add unique value. And these aren't even geek conferences - they are mainstream. While we wind down our Olympics blogging  and vlogging activity, the Democratic Convention is in it's final build-and-prep stages in Denver (just came back from Denver last night - the corporate parties are heating up - we're helping out a couple of doozies).

Thanks to NewTeeVee - my favorite feed on Web video, I found Ustream's live feed from the conference floor. Right now you can watch the construction of the Big Tent. But once that tent is up here's what you can expect:

"The Big Tent will be a gathering place for new media journalists and bloggers, as well as home to the Digg stage, which will feature speakers such as T. Boone Pickens, John Conyers and DailyKos’ Markos Moulitsas."

Other coverage:

C-Span has a new video site  calleed the Convention Hub featuring cgm (check out this cool Qik video of them installing the "Hope" sculpture which I didn't even know existed)

ABC News (another sign things have changed is the focus on teh medium - check out how all the in-crowd waits for a text message of the VP selection) and MSNBC.com (check out their Decision Dashboard)  will have live coverage

The Huffington Post is going upsacle by hosting a panel at The Brown Palace featuring: Chad Hurley, Will.i.am; Arianna, George Stephanopoulos, Katharine Weymouth, Rep. Rahm Emanuel and  Saturday Night Live's Fred Arminsen

The DNCC blog site will have coverage and on top of that, they held a video contest - Why Are You  A Democrat in 2008. The winner - Rich Peters - is going to teh convention and his video will be shown on teh big screen!

Good Changes

The added dimension of bloggers, vloggers, side-events through multiple voices is doing a tremendous amount to make these events more intersting, personal and in an unexpected way, may be filling the hole left behind by the market consolidation of media. We can actually hear multiple POVs again.

Up Close and Personal at the Olympics

A lot has been written about this particular Olympics being the first "Web 2.0 Olympics." Considering that the Olympics happen every 4 years, it's not surprising that consumer generated media hasn't overtaken the games before now. On the other hand, it is surprising as the games are happening in China and most westerners see China as a restrictive state. Our own experiences in China reveal how much social media conversation and activity there really is. Pictures, videos, and blogs tell a different story than our media would suggest.   They also offer access to a world's worth of personalities.

I love an insider's view of the Olympics. Here are my favorite bits (many made possible by our work with Lenovo - aggregated at Voices of the Olympic Games):

Athletes' photo galleries: when they all marched into the stadium at the beginning of the month, they snapped lots of photos from the parade. Now we can all see them (see Carissa Gump - US Weightlifter left). Flickr: See some neat in-the-stands and on-the-floor shots from Lenovo's team here. 

Blogs: Heather Patri - US Women's Water Polo gives us the skinny on her experiences in the athlete's lounge. Read Josiah NG - track cyclist for Malyasia - his  frank assesment fo his own performance.

Rohit's Video Blog: A walk through of the Olympic Athletes Village - enjoy a behind the scenes stroll on a rainy day last week and visit the special athletes-only store (yum - merch!)

BlogHer 08: The Next Evolution of Media

My money is on BlogHer as a driving force in the evolution of media and advertising towards a new definition of "engagement."  Because they walk in with an deep and genuine respect for content creators and readers from all walks of life and an empowering attitude towards their members, they are better prepared now to explore the best meet-up of social media and advertising. That is where the best engagement will happen - when the value to the reader or participant, the creator and the advertiser are all kept in some type of balance.

There's a connection between the following:

• BlogHer's recent funding and partnership deal with NBC and iVillage ($5m)
• The current Blogher 08 conference winding down in SanFrancisco (follow the action on Twitter now)
• Trend by marketers to use blogger outreach as a blunt instrument
• P&G's conclusion that mombloggers are influential
• BabyCenter's conclusion that they had better embrace social media
• How media is changing a la Clay Shirky's great book Here Comes Everybody and ifocos.org's equally great report on new "media."

Blogher is a great organization, social network, ad network and business. They are a vanguard connecting the independent, grass roots voices of women with brands. They amplify the voices of women outside of traditional media channels by offering them visibility and income (the ad network) and over the past few years, by connecting them with brands who want to market to and through them. They stay true to the ".org" in their name, the community celebrating in San Francisco now, and their desire to see brands support this community in mutually beneficial ways.

iVillage wants more than new page inventory to slap ads against. Unlike the NYTimes acquision of About.com which increased their ad inventory considerably. NBCU and iVillage must know that the value of the content from BlogHer members and the level of engagement as represented by the event and the average number of comments on any member's blog will increase in value over time. They also know that you cannot look at what BlogHer has done as a media brand and try to replicate it without them.

BabyCenter & P&G

BabyCenter has tried to do that. They saw the light a while back about adding blogs and did so via a section of their monolithic site called Momformation. That was a simple approach to treating blogs like just more content (vs. conversations) Now they have struck a deal with the leader in blog advertising - Federated Media - to essentially harness the most valuable voices in the FM network and display their content within the Babycenter/Parentcenter "space." They call it the BabyCenter Parenting Federation. This is the equivalent of still trying to add more content but achieve the reach of the most popular bloggers in their category (and deliver advertising to those blogs).

Women bloggers are coveted by marketers. P&G has come to the conclusion that Mombloggers are influential - something I know that they knew before now. Perhaps they felt they needed and announcement around the Blogher conference. We work with women and mombloggers regularly and have built up good relationships because we do not bludgeon them with silly outreach requests. We even revised our open source Ogilvy Blogger Outreach Ethics Code when we saw that other marketers were spoiling everyone's relationships with indiscriminate "pitching."

BlogHer is Different

BlogHer offers something different. They offer a long tail community brought together by something deeper than commerce (i.e. ad revenue). They do represent a democratization of media in a more thorough sense. Brands who engage with BlogHer either directly or via iVillage will benefit from the word of mouth spread through that community as well as the collective reach of their 1300 or so members. The only warning I feel is that the partnership must go beyond just new pages for the NBC/iVillage network to deliver targeted ads to. Here's a snippet of what each side of the partnership said:

""We're excited to work with NBC Universal to raise the profile, voices and earning potential of the extraordinary bloggers in our network, and we cannot imagine better partners than iVillage, Bravo and Oxygen, with their superior programming and tools, both online and on-air," said BlogHer co-founders Elisa Camahort Page, Jory Des Jardins and Lisa Stone in a joint statement.

Zalaznick also announced the formation of a female-targeted digital ad sales network, as part of the overall strategy for Women@NBCU, the company's new content and marketing initiative geared to women. The sales network, comprised of BravoTV.com, Oxygen.com, iVillage and Sugar Inc, creates the largest online aggregation of top-tier women's media brands."

A Phase In Social Media Marketing

Jeremiah Owyang from Forrester raises some of the same concerns. Will indiscriminate pitching and what it leads to spoil the community (and the marketplace)? It is really just a phase. Bad or lazy marketers who flood online influencers with products and pitches will die off through the failure of their ways. Those who understand the "success equilibrium" and are willing to make the effort to find new, innovative ways to stay balanced and sell - will rise up.

"Success equilibrium" - this means that an advertiser must deliver on the following equally to reap meaningful benefit from their marketing effort:

• a commitment to ethical marketing in the social media and word of mouth space
• provide value to the community - both to the author and the reader (host and participant)
• provide a marketing impact back to the brand (i.e. "sell")

We are in a phase. Two years ago, when we were at BlogHer, marketers were just beginning to discover the power of women bloggers. Now they know and are using what they know to exploit that power. Soon they will learn from some of their ineffective ways and dig deeper into custom engagment programs supported from smart advertising wrap-arounds. BlogHer will lead the way.

Final Word - Clay Shirky

So what does Clay Shirky's book - Here Comes Everybody - have do with any of this? First of all, it's the first book that I have read in the social media "space" in a long time with an insightful POV.  Mr. Shirky sheds light on the rise of BlogHer - not literally but the change happening between traditional media (NBC and iVillage) and "everybody." The means of production and distribution was once confined and somewhat precious. Now, everyone can publish leading to a volume (firehose, really) of content relevant to many or few. This, by itself, is not a new obeservation but I find his description of the changes going on in media to be clarifying. He also points out the annoying folly of marketers trying to wrap themselves in the garments of true personalized dialogue. You either do it or you don't. I haven't finishd the book but it feels insightful and optimistic. To me it outlines many of the reasons BlogHer will lead the way to the next evolution of media. They are the best of the new digital influence that respects the individual and applies a business discipline to benefit everyone.

(photo by Josh Hallet used under CC and with deep appreciation for his talents and knack for being everywhere. ) 

Charlie Rose Names Names

Charlie Rose was interviewed by Howard Rubenstein to kickoff the Media Relations Summit 2008 in SF today. They spoke as friends so no hard, fastballs here.

He spoke about how he gets folks to open up on the show (comparing it to Bob Woodward's chipping away at the story model). "A great guest is one with opinions." Yet they realized that they had been hosting too many known business leaders. They are trying to get more diverse.

Good, solid quote "Don't try and sell product. Sell authenticity."

All in all, it was a great Charlie Rose lovefest. He's very proud of his Web site. He is very excited about getting all of his content up there and reaching people that way. He wants to make his show easier to use on the web site and available everywhere. He has 17 years of interviews - long form - on teh most interesting people in teh world. He quoted a fan who watches the show on YouTube. 

His favorite interviews:
Rupert Murdoch
Sophia Loren
Warren Buffett
Bruce Springsteen
Bill Gates
Bill Buckley

The one he would like to do:
Johnny Depp

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."