links for 2007-04-22
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What if out brand was about helping people reach their goals?
Social Media, Technology and Tragedy: On YouTube, Facebook, MySpace Today We Are All Hokies
While people cope with the tragic events at Virginia Tech in many different ways. On YouTube, Facebook, and MySpace, Virgnnia Tech students and alumni and students from other schools and universities are organizing groups, creating heart wrenching videos, sharing stories and memories, and otherwise embracing each other by embracing the technology that enables Today We Are All Hokies.
One blog lists the shooting victims and their MySpace pages….it received 26 Diggs. Students set up a web sites that memorializes the victims and invites students to share their thoughts and feelings and provides information about where to find support.
One Facebook group with 4004 members was created to petition Facebook to change the colors to the Virginia Tech schools colors for 62 days. There are two asterisks for this group. One, a reminder that there is lots of pain in the world and a wish that "there be a change forever in our hearts as we promise to not ignore the world’s pain."
And the second,ﾃつ **Does anyone know how to send a message to facebook to actually request this? If so, please do so; we’d appreciate it!
Ellen Lee, posting on The Tech Chronicles at SFGate.com, writes that the Palo Alto’s Facebook group has become a place to not only debate the issues of gun control, race and alienation but also the appropriateness of creating online groups about thr Virginia Tech shootings. However she notes that one of the most popular groups isﾃつ A tribute to those who passed at Virginia Tech; as of today that group has 343, 635 members.
Most of the over 500 Facebook groups have names such as Boston Candlelight Vigil for our friends at Virginia Tech, Canada Supports Virginia Tech, Columbine, Virginia Tech!!! School Shoots Our Hearts.
The tragic events at Virginia Tech have highlighted the way that technology is changing every aspect of the way that we communicate with each other from being a lightening fast source of information to the more personal side of the personal web, helping people cope with the incomprehensible events and aftermath of 32 murders.
Technology brings these events to us like never before through live images from mobile devices and video cameras. Amanda Lenhart a senior researcher at the Pew Internet & American Life Project notes that "Thanks to the portability and speed of today’s technology, the students’ shots are likely to become some of the "defining images" of the tragedy, says Amanda Lenhart, a senior researcher at the Pew Internet & American Life Project, which monitors high-tech culture.
But then as we have to process this and seek to understand, technology also allows us to reach out and express ourﾃつ thoughts and feelings while listening to others where physical proximity is not a requirement.ﾃつ This is the personal web. Dion Hinchliffe’s definitive blog post from January, Social Media Goes Mainstream defines mainstream as when his grandparents and their grandchildren are doing whatever is under discussion. He asks "what are the compelling data points that tell us that social media is changing the landscape of communication, collaboration, and personal interaction."
The murders at Virginia Tech were horrific, the senseless loss of life an epic tragedy that makes us all weep as we watch, listen and read. The way this tragedy was experienced is one of the compelling data points.
Tags: Dion Hinchliffe, YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, media2.0, Amanda Lenhart, Pew Internet, Tags: Virginia Tech, social media, mobile,ﾃつ Hokies, Digg, SF Gate, technology
links for 2007-04-21
In Memory: April 19th 1995, April 20th 1999, April 16, 2007
This week has evoked so much emotion in all of us, not the least of it has been concern for our own children combined with that ice cold chiller of a thought, what if it was my child. A parent’s perspective of Virginia Tech was expressed so well by Dorothy at Blogher.
But of course this week in April for some odd reason is also the anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing (planned around the anniversary of Waco) and the Columbine High School shooting; the other too recent moments that served also to prompt those thoughts of our own children.
ﾃつ A few weeks ago I was reading an interview with Elizabeth Edwards in Newsweek where she was speaking both about the death of her son, Wade, as well as about her cancer prognosis. Her announcement about the spread of her cancer evoked similar personal thoughts as the other events, though from a different perspective: What if that was me? What would it mean for my children?
She said,
"We just assume we’ll be able to do something next year or 10 years from now. How many of us have said, "I’m going to work in a soup kitchen next Christmas, I’m going to do that good thing"? And we all put it off. And one of the things that Wade’s death taught us is that we can control what we do during the day, during each day. Other than that, we really can’t control very much. Nothing we could do could change that one fact we wanted to change more than anything…..
…There’s going to be a day before each of us die, and you have to think a little bit about how you want that day filled. Maybe when you’re doing that judging thing, think about how you want the day before you die to look. I want that to be a productive day about which I am enormously proud, as opposed to a day where I had the covers pulled up over my head. That’s unbelievably important to me. And if somebody is judging me, and doesn’t hear me say that, maybe it’s partly my fault for not saying it clearly and maybe it’s their fault for not thinking about it."
So, the lesson seem to be, today could be the day before….hug your kids and call the soup kitchen. Remember the victims.
Tags: Virginia Tech, Columbine, Waco, Elizabeth Edwards, Oklahoma City,ﾃつ Blogher, Rita Ahrens, Newsweek
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links for 2007-04-19
Professor Kim Pearson: Lessons From Virginia Tech
Professor Kim Pearson at Blogher has written an awesome post on lessons to date from the Virginia Tech shootings. It provides a perspective through which to view the firestorm of information that is heading our way.
Her number nine:
ﾃつ 9. Above all, remember that this is a story about people. Be humane when interviewing victims and families. Give people space. Don’t ask traumatized people to assign blame — save that analysis for the experts when there is evidence to examine. And keep in mind that the aftershocks of an event like Monday’s run deep and wide
How can any of us fathom what the moment must have been like as each mother and father of a murdered student realized that one of those murdered was their own child…and knowing that the moment was going to be the rest of their lives.
NPR puts faces and stories to the words, Virginia Tech Massacre.
Tags: Blogher, Virginia Tech, Kim Pearson, NPR
Virginia Tech: Social Media in Crisis Planning
One of the topics discussed at the CDC panel on public healthcare blogging was the way in a social media world that information is disseminated in the time of a crisis.
As Craig Lefebvre highlighted, if a situation like the Anthrax scare occurred today information would be communicated through blogs, mobile phones, social networks, IMs. It would be important for an organization such as the CDC to be able to actively participate within this environment and for people to be aware that they were providing accurate, timely, and informed news and recommendations. This issue was noted by Susan Promislo on the Pioneering Blog write up of the CDC Event.
Yesterday’s incomprehensible tragic events at Virginia Tech also highlight the way the information is disseminated during a crisis and the need for "official" sources to use social media tools as part of their crisis management plan. I think one of the thoughts that became crystallized for me during the CDC panel and the Forrester Marketing Forum is that if social media was viewed in light of this is a tool, what can I use it for to enhance my communications (which is of course dependent upon what the goal is) the very real benefits of social media would be recognized and adoption would be more widespread.
Stephen Crowley NYT
The New York Times documents the "official" university communication:
The school did not notify students by e-mail of the first shootings until 9:26 a.m., said Matt Dixon, who lives in the dorm. Mr. Dixon did not receive the e-mail message until he returned from his 9:05 class. When he left for that class, he said, a resident adviser told him not to use the central stairs, so he left another way.
On dry erase boards, advisers had written, ﾃ｢竄ｬﾅ鉄tay in your rooms,ﾃ｢竄ｬﾂ Mr. Dixon said.
The Washington Post notes a 2 Hour Time Gap and asks this: A single question stood out yesterday at Virginia Tech: Would more students be alive if the university had stopped them from going to class after a shooting occurred in a campus dorm?
Steve Helber-AP
The campus newspaper, The Collegiate Times began filing blog posts at 9:47AM, 2 minutes after the shooting began at Norris Hall according to Information Week. The very first shooting occured at 7:15AM at West Ambler Johnston Hall.
Students at Virginia Tech used mobile phones, digital cameras, social networks such as Flickr, Facebook and MySpace, blogs and video to communicate with each other and to document the tragedy in real time.
The question is, why weren’t the instant tools: Text and voice messages used by the university to notify students? These students are wired….this is the way to communicate with them. It can save lives and that is not hyperbole. Every organization, business, schools and universities ( and even families) should give serious thought to using these tools as part of their crisis planning.
And one headline notes that in the absence of "official news", "Internet Names the Wrong Killer". It is important that official news be available. In the absence, just as was discussed at the CDC panel, information will be provided by anyone with a mobile phone, internet access, blog, social network or Twitter.
So, instead of asking "Why weren’t" looking at social media as an opportunity to enhance communications and developing a social media strategy makes complete sense. Toby Bloomberg notes 10 Benefits of a Social Media Strategy in her write up of the CDC panel.
Tags: media2.0, Virginia Tech, Washington post, New York Times, Craig Lefebrve, Toby Bloomberg, Twitter, social media, mobile, text messages, Facebook, social networks, Flickr, MySpace, Tags: public healthcare blogging, Tags: Susan Promislo Forrester Marketing Forum
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Virginia Tech: If You Are OK, Please Update Your Facebook Profile
ABC News has aggregated comments posted by students on Facebook and MySpace highlighting the role social networks have in connecting people with information and with each other..also noteworthy is the fact that mainstream media is using social networks as a major source of "breaking news" in this tragedy.
"An 18-year-old woman in California asked people on MySpace.com if they knew any of the six people she’d listed and asked them to instant message her.
One user on Facebook.com suggested that all others update their profiles to say "I’m OK."
There is an entry on Wikipedia, and according to Search Views there are 160 tributes on Facebook and a student made video at CNN has been viewed over a 1000 times. Tom Markiewicz posts his Twitter updates.
Tags: Virginia Tech, Facebook, social networks, MySpace, Wikipedia, Search Views, Tom Markiewicz, Twitter
PART 1: Conversation with Charlene Li
I had the opportunity to spend some time talking to Charlene Li in between sessions at the recent Forrester Marketing Forum.ﾃつ Charlene, along with Josh Bernoff,ﾃつ is in the process of writing a book, The Groundswell: How People with Social Technologies are Changing Everything. Its a great title and really the title and the other eight words in the subtitle capture so many thoughts about the current and future state of corporate marketing and marketers.
ﾃつ They explain that a groundswell is "a spontaneous movement of people connecting, using online tools, taking charge of their own experience, and getting what they need ﾃ｢竄ｬ窶 information, support, ideas, products, and bargaining power ﾃ｢竄ｬ窶 from each other;" it’s about change whether it is called social computing, the social web, web 2.0 or the conversation economy.
The most important message in a long list of important messages is that social technologies have already changed everything and to quote Business Week from May 2005: Look past the yakkers, hobbyists, and political mobs. Your customers and rivals are figuring blogs out. Our advice: Catch up…or catch you later"
Now, having said that, Charlene and Josh say that their book will help make sense of the Groundswell and help you (yes YOU) "deal with it." And this "understand it and help you deal with it" is what will make the difference between this book and most of the other books on blogging and social media and what makes Forrester Research and Forrester Conferences so valuable….not only do you walk away learning something, you walk away knowing how to use what you have learned.
So, I mentioned to Charlene that I had noticed that there were virtually no package goods marketers attending the Marketing Forum which in my opinion seemed to reflect their slow adoption of social media. This led to a discussion about corporate social media adoption in general in light of the reality of the groundswell. What is the hurdle that corporations must cross to participate in social media in a meaningful way?
Charlene articulates some of this as simplyﾃつ a failure to understand the value of social media….taking this a step further, to being able to understand how to develop an ROI of blogging; Charlene has published a report which addresses this aptly named, The ROI of Blogging. The truly outstanding part of this is that she applies a perspective that demystifies social media measurement: Begin with your goals, quantify actual costs, assign value to the benefits, evaluate risks, determine liklihood for the risks and estimate costs. Yes of course, its conversational media, relationship building, and you can’t buy eyeballs anymore BUT there are real costs to setting up and writing a blog (time is money), the benefits (such as lowered call center costs) can be measured as can risks (employee reveals trade secret, stock price drops).
The statement that the costs of social media cannot be determined and that the results cannot be measured is one of my "hot buttons"….its really basic: decide what you are trying to accomplish and how you will determine success or failure and assign a value. Social media is different than traditional media, and that cannot be stressed enough….however blogs still need a target, a message, and content that drives readership.
However, with that thought in mind, we discussed corporate blog resistance and our shared belief that everything has already changed so corporations need to figure out how they are going to participate, not if.
Charlene has developed a very compelling visual, the Participation Ladder and the term Social Technographics to help corporations understand the way that consumers are already participating in social media and how they will continue to participate in social media..
To Be Continued in Part 2….
Tags: media2.0, Charlene Li, Forrester Marketing Forum, social media, ROI, blogging, social Technographics,ﾃつ Groundswell, Josh Bernoff
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links for 2007-04-16
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Does it matter?
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Great resourse
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more than 70 percent of companies do not use technological tools and analytics to guide their marketing campaigns.
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technology has become such a driving force in the loyalty marketplace
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