Cool….one of my Facebook friends is now President-elect of the United States
Kelli asked whether or not President elect Barack Obama will keep his Facebook page or provide updates on Twitter. Farhad Manjoo at Slate asks what will become of candidate Barack Obama’s social networking sites now that he is President-elect Obama.
I think it is not hyperbole to say that one change you can believe in will be that the 44th President of the United States use of the social web will forever change the relationship between the American people and our government.
Obama was elected on November 4th. On November 6th, Change.gov from the Office of the President Elect was live. Less than 2 days. And by the way, has any other President-elect so effectively used the words and the visuals of the office of the President elect to communicate leadership? Not that I recall.
Oh sure change.gov is an ordinary government web site in many ways. As noted by ArsTechnica you can read bios of the transition team and updates on cabinet positions. But there is a link to a blog and the post for November 11th has a Flickr slideshow.
There is a request to submit “your story”
and the About page ends with an invitation to “Come back often as we define new programs and possibilities to engage and be part of this administration.” Yes, “be a part of this administration.”
And the first link right under “be part of” is a contact form for the transition team. So, you really want to be a part of the transition team. Maybe you think you would like a little seat on the President-elect’s cabinet.
There are lots of jobs open through out the new administration apparently but remember, if you have an illegal nanny or smoked pot in college, “Some positions will require Senate confirmation….financial disclosure….and may include FBI background checks.
Besides “your story” you can share “your vision” Well you can share you story and you can share your vision with the President-elects transition team. But you can’t share your opinions with your fellow Americans, at least on this site. There is not a place for Comments on the blog. At least not right now. Notwithstanding, the lines of communication are open and it will be virtually impossible for future Presidents to shut them down or to just push out information via newsletters.
Yes, the site has more social “like” than social at this point….response is sought to specific issues and questions rather than open comments. “Share your story” feels social and in fact allows you to tell whatever story you want to…same with vision. Obama’s last tweet was November 5th. But then again, this is a transition period.
Perhaps the most important dynamic that could potentially be changed by social media would be diminishing the influence of lobbyists and special interests over time.. although I will emphasize the words “potential” and “over time.” It would be difficult to disregard the will of the people in favor of the desire of the powerful if the people pick up the available social media tools and start wielding them.
According to Farhad Manjoo of Slate there are “there are online petitions and Facebook groups calling on him {Barack Obama} to skip over Larry Summers and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for Cabinet positions.”
I also believe that if the American people communicate their “stories” to the president and to their fellow Americans…whether it is on the President’s site or on their own blogs or social network it will go a long way in keeping President Obama in touch with the way that what happens on Wall Street and/or in the Beltway really plays out, day to day, on Main Street.
When I graduated from college, I spent a summer working as a caseworker for the Missouri Department of Social Services as a re-investigation caseworker. Our jobs were to make sure that the mothers receiving what was then called Aid For Dependent Children (AFDC) and is now called Temporary Assistance For Needy Families (TANF) were abiding by the “guidlines” in order to continue receiving aid. Well. when I was brand new on this job, I took the “guidelines” to heart and during an investigation I “discovered” that one of my clients who had several very young children, was receiving benefits from another agency which disqualified her to continue receiving her AFDC stipend so I cancelled her benefit without giving it much of a second thought.
A few days later I received a phone call from a community agency that forever changed the way that I looked at my job or the welfare system in general….the voice on the phone confirmed my name and that I was the caseworker for Miss X. I confirmed it and then the person said well, she is here with her two babies and you cut off her support and she doesn’t have any food or milk to feed these babies. They are hungry, so we are feeding them…but you need to get them back in the program so Miss X can feed her babies.
Well I hadn’t been thinking about those babies…I had been thinking about the “law” which had been set by someone who had never been hungry and had never come face to face with any of the hungry babies when they passed the law.
So my point is? We the people are on the front lines of high gas prices, unaffordable health insurance, layoffs, usurious credit card interest rate practices, and home foreclosures. These are the stories that our elected officials need to stay in touch with…..and this day to day of life is the side of politics that we should blog about and we need to use those contact forms the same way the mortgage bankers, credit card issuers, insurance companies do their telephones and checkbooks: to influence legislation and votes. Now that’s social media.
State of the Blogosphere ‘08 Released: Who Cares? {About the Report}
You know you have been blogging for a long time if you can remember when Technorati’s State of the Blogosphere meant something and influential bloggers announced its release and listed the results with few questions asked.
A new State of the Blogosphere was released today and things are a little different in the land of Technorati….missing is Dave Sifry, although he did write about the report. Also missing is matter….as in, does it matter?
Technorati is just not reliable enough to be relevant. Tish Grier expounded on this back in July. Mack Collier switched to Feesburner to tally his weekly Top 25 Marketing Blogs. In years past, Techmeme would feature the story and dozens upon dozens of bloggers would be listed as past of the discussions and/or related.
This year, Techmeme has aggregated 5 posts about the report and Marshall Kirkpatrick, who states that the report is a great service and that he appreciates the data, also questions the Technorati conclusion that blogging is “mainstream.” Both Marshall and Mark Hopkins writing at Mashable! use the word “interesting” to describe the data. Interesting.
Duncan Riley, also using the word “interesting” espouses the opinion that Technorati is actually more reliable today than it has been for awhile. Now that I find interesting!
Duncan makes another interesting point, an important point that is a huge flaw in the Technorati data now and in the past; blogging in the classic sense may have “slowed”….He calls it “stand alone” blogging; but participation on social media has not slowed. Technorati does not track social network content sharing…they don’t even track social network blogs.
Technorati says there are 133 blogs. There are approximately the same number of people who visit MySpace or Facebook every day.and share content…..and some of them write a blog, on MySpace, a MySpace blog. Do they know they are not part of the blogosphere? As tracked by Technorati.
There are an additional myriad of niched social networks from Dogster to Saavy Auntie. some with blogs some without but all social. To not track these people in a so called “state of the blogosphere” simply does not track.
Micro-blogging such as Twitter is also not tracked by Technorati. I would float the theory that for those of us who blog and Twitter, the more we Twitter, the less we blog but yet we still “identify” as bloggers. Further, I would say that starting a blog right now almost requires Twitter, if not also a presence on several social networking sites.
So, yes it is interesting to know some stats about blogging in 2008. Stats, not state.
OK, the “State” was always lots of hype and the “number of new blogs” stat never quite made sense; but now more even than in prior years, there just isn’t enough there there to make it important. Interesting maybe….
And I don’t even have to write about method and accuracy of links and pings to know that even if they were completely accurate, that data only about blogs is infinitely limited.
Where will Dave Gray, Matt Homann, Dana Loesch and I Be This Weekend? InterPLAY St. Louis!
This weekend, September 18th and 19th, the St. Louis Bloggers’ Guild is partnering with the play:STL music festival to create InterPLAY, the first ever St. Louis interactive social media festival.
Last year’s play:STL had 90 bands on 9 stages with thousands of attendees. This year is expected to be even bigger with 99 bands PLUS 30 of St. Louis’ finest bloggers sharing their wit and wisdom in 3 separate tracks of interactive panel: Bidness, Lifestyle, and Geek Chic.
As the track names suggest, there will be panels covering a wide range of topics from Bidness basics such as The Small Business and Social Media which wil be moderated by Melody Meiners with Dave Gray, Matt Homann, Madalyn Skar and myself to Lifestyle controversy provided by Cyberbullying, moderated by Lisa Bertrand and featuring Elizabeth Helfant, Matt Homan, Kim Dorsey and Dana Loesch.
As you may know Missouri’s governor Matt Blunt recently signed a bill outlawing cyberbullying following the suicide of Megan Meier. Many support this legistlation as an important step in controlling cyberbullying…others believe that the law infringes upon First Amendment rights. Come learn and discuss this controversial topic with a panel representing all sides of the cyberbulllying spectrum of opinions.
Besides Dave Gray, Matt Homann, Dana Loesch, and me you will find Lisa Bertrand, John Combest, Kim Dorsey, Angela Reiner Downing, Dave Drebes, Mike Flynn, Ellan Gooch, Will Hanke, Elizabeth Helfant, Tanner Hobin, Todd Jordan, Jaelithe Judy, Eric Kayira, Alana Kellogg, Kurt Kerns, Chris Loesch, Kristie Love, , Mutha Mae, Craig Mayhem, Melody Meiners, Steve Patterson, Jonathan Pollack, Raquita, Madalyn Skar, Slacker Mom Bill Streeter, Ben Vierck, Kelly Wickham, and Ken Williams.
For the complete festival details, download the official program here http://www.playstlfest.com/media/PLAYSTL_online.pdf and/or visit the St. Louis Bloggers Guild blog to get the latest info on the Interactive panels.
Click here to buy a wristband….$15 admits you to the entire music and interactive festival. Is there a better value in all of social media?
This Truth Is Not Inconvenient: Girlfriend, Use Your Purse, Your Peers, & Your Posts To Co-create A Happier Sustainable, World
Mary Hunt, author of In Women We Trust and Ecolutionary Selling and blogger at In Women We Trust and Smart Solutions for Sustainable Business has written the definitive piece on how we can really (REALLY) change the world just by directing the power women already have towards a “happier, sustainable world.”
#1 “the majority of the US Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is made up of consumer goods and over 80% of them are purchased or influenced by women.”
#2 Women form groups; group of influencers: Big Green Purse author Diane MacEachern launched a one million women site.
EcoMom Alliance is organizing and educating the 82 million mothers in the US into a change agents.
The EcoMom Challenge:Â “making small changes in the way we shop, eat, drive and even clean, we can help stop global warming. ”
#3 Women are online, voicing their opinions, positive and negatice, on blogs, social network and online groups all over the web. In fact, according to a recent Pew Internet & American Life Survey on Content Creation, girls and young women are the most prolific online content creators.
So make your way over to In Women We Trust and see what Mary has to say about Changing Products, Changing Services and Changing the World and download Purse, Peers, Posts and the Power to Move Markets purses_peers_posts_and_the_power_to_move_green_markets_32508.pdf and send it to your girlfriends!
And catch Mary at Blogher Business in NYC next week along with other awesome women to trust, Toby Bloomberg, Yvonne DiVita, Susan Getgood, Connie Reece and many others.
Dot-Chris: Exceeding Customer Expectations
As I thought about writing this blog post about how wonderful Chris at Dot-Chris Development is, I started thinking that many of my blog posts about service providers are critical; unmet expectations, unsatisfactory performance, poor customer experience.
So although the purpose of this post is to recommend Chris, I thought it might be interesting to take a look at why working with Chris is such a positive experience.
OK, first the recommendations. If you need someone to work on your existing Wordpress blog…..upgrade, re-design, change themes, add plug-ins, enhance SEO, suggest improvements or anything else you can think of that I haven’t mentioned, Chris at Dot-Chris will do a fabulous job for a fair and reasonable fee
He can also move a blog to Wordpress (he moved my Typepad blog to Wordpress) and he will reluctantly even work on a Typepad blog…he just prefers Wordpress. Chris will clarify exactly what it is you want done, tell you what he thinks should be done and he will give you an estimate for dollars and time. What you get will be all the whats and the shoulds for the price he quotes on the day that he promised it.
This past weekend he even fixed my beleaguered Sony Vaio which is now running perhaps better than it did out of the box. He calls this service, Remote Services.
In his own words, ” Have you ever wished you could have someone remotely fix your computer at a time most convenient to you and without even taking the computer out of your home. Well, with Remote Services by Dot-Chris, this is now possible. We will remotely login to your pc and perform tasks such as Start-Up Optimization, Clean-up of unused programs, and organization of your system, but Dot-Chris doesn’t stop there, in most cases if you are just having general computer issues we can guide you to a solution and best of all you can sit back and relax while we guide you.
Dot-Chris also strives for complete security in any dealings with clients. First, we only use software that allows us to use random passwords that only work one time. Second, Dot-Chris computer systems use AES encryption at partition level, thus any data on our systems is encrypted to government standards. This encryption is powered by
Truecrypt.”
Now, why does Chris (who by the way is the same age as my oldest son) get the highest rating in terms of customer satisfaction? Well, let’s look at his Remote Service as an example.
My Sony Vaio has been a pain from the beginning. The original battery had a nano second of life; a new Sony battery provided through a replacement program lasted about an hour. Then one day after about 6 months the replacement battery died so I had to go back to the original battery which means I am really tethered to the outlet. Yes, I could probably get Sony to provide a replacement for the replacement but since there is no obvious place on their website or on the automated answering system and on a trip to the Sony store at a mall my inquiry was greeted with a blank stare regarding the battery replacement program and a suggestion that I call tech support. Oh please, just shoot me.
In addition to this problem (the laptop was purchased in May 2006) and other issues such as USB ports that work unpredictable hours and days, over the course of the past year it has gotten slower and slower. Oh, it looks sleak and shiny but doesn’t act sleak and shiny. Mostly, I use my MacBookbut sometimes I regress.
One night, Chris was telling me about cleaning up and fixing his grandmother’s computer. I asked if he could do that for mine. He asked me what the issues were. I told him. He suggested a date and a time to do the deed. He explained the remote service. He set my expectations. I knew what he was going to do. I knew how he was going to do it. I knew how long it was going to take and I knew how much it was going to cost.
Secretly, I was kind of skeptical that anything would change the performance of this computer. I had spent hours on the phone with Microsoft thinking that maybe the issues were software related. Microsoft troubleshot all kinds of things and “fixed” numerous “problems”. The problem was though, that in the end, the performance by my definition never improved.
The outcome from Chris was nothing short of miraculous. OK, the battery life is still laughable but that would not be Chris’ purview. Everything else is working great….faster, less buggy, and much improved.
So, back to customer experience. He set my expectations. I understood exactly what I was going to get for my money. I knew how much of my time to allocate (Lack of respect for customer’s time is one of the underreported and unlabeled causes of customer dissatisfaction….another blog post).
He then exceeded my expectations, no extra charge. This has been the case with everything Chris has done for me. Further, he provides service beyond the “sale.” He will answer any question, change something that isn’t meeting your needs and otherwise provide ongoing “promise.”
Cam Beck uses the term “promise” as the fourth “p” in a great post about the “new marketing mix.” Although he is speaking of brands marketed by companies, his words apply to Chris’ brand also.
Cam says that a brand promise needs to be set; an expectation. Then the singular focus should be on meeting and exceeding expectations.
In a post written a few years ago that focused on custmer satisfaction surveys, I noted that, “Client experience is a marketing issue….the client experience is really the operationalizing of your marketing. Operationalization means specifying the exact operations that defines the marketing promise.”
I suggested that at the beginning of a client/customer relationship one should
- Determine customer needs.
- Agreeing on how those needs will be met.
- Set measurement standards.
- Then assess satisfaction by surveying performance versus those standards.
- Meet their needs and their hearts and minds will follow…as will high ratings on surveys.
In other words, Chris rocks; I promise.
Redesigning, Recommitting and Writing
Not sure whether it was the move from Typepad to Wordpress, other social media hang outs, being preoccupied with a home construction project gone wild, or work, kids, mom, or any combination and/or permutation of these things, but I just kind of stopped regular blogging
I found myself writing imaginary blog posts in my head but not actually writing them. Oh, I missed blogging. I missed my blog. My blog, just didn’t feel like home to me any more.
So, I tried to lure myself back…maybe I would make blogging a New Years resolution. Write that as a blog post and declare it out loud. Didn’t happen.
I signed up for the Blogger Social. Surely that was something to blog about. But, still blogger’s block remained.
I searched for cures. There was great advice available: Darren Rouse had 25 tips for battling blogger’s block. Performancing had 12 Tips. Merlin Mann said to Hack Your Way Out. LifeClever had 10 Tips for beating blogger’s block.
The problem was I just couldn’t get comfortable with the blog design. Dot-Chris suggested we just start over. So, we did. And here I am blogging about it. It’s a start, right?
Is It Time To Focus on Why We Write A Blog and Move Forward from There?
Shelley Powers at Burningbird has a great, thoughtful post, called It’s All About Control and for the most part I agree with what she wrote.
Specifically, I agree that the "Be Civil" and/or "Do Not Be Mean" buttons as well as a blogger Code of Conduct are not a solution to the kind of behavior directed at Kathy Sierra, Maryam Scoble and others. Not that in the absolut sense, they are a bad idea…its just not going to stop trolls because they live outside the boundaries and constraints of civilization.
For one thing, it kind of reminds me of a comment made by a speaker at one of my children’s school…the talk was on parenting and the speaker said that most likely the people in attendance were probably doing things "right" and the people that were not in attendence were the people that probably needed to be. In other words, the people that are all ready behaving in a civil manner will probably be the ones to put the buttons on their blogs and the "uncivil" will not.
Similarily with the code of conduct recommended by Tim O’Reilly…mostly good suggestions and O’Reilly states, "A culture is a set of shared areements that allows us to live together." I just don’t believe the trolls are part of the culture so they would be unlikely to adopt or comply with a code of conduct.
Addtionally, what is the consequence for violating the code? For Blogher, or any community with guidelines, violaters theoretically will not be allowed on the site. Thus if a member of the community violates the rules their membership ends. On our own blogs, we don’t have to permit behavior (comments) that offends us either. In either case, there are no "punishments" other than removal.
We can state our guidelines of acceptable commenting behavior and probably should. And we can state what we will do if there is a violation. Hit the eject button.
At the end of the day, as we used to say as kids…you can’t make me; we can’t be made to publish a comment that we don’t want to and if we don’t monitor comments, and then are offended by something, our only recourse is to delete. There are no fines, jail sentences, or other punishments for violations of a "Code of Conduct."
It all kind of gets back to the Golden Rule, which is more of a Golden Guildeline than a Golden Law…or really an expansion of it; if you behave in a certain manner on your own blog, you will probably attract readers that behave in the same manner. If you are a mean kid, you will set that tone for your blog. So, blog onto others as you would have others blog onto you. Or something like that. But setting the tone and hitting the delete button are the enforcement tools that we have. And as Shelley states, "threat" is in the eye of the beholder. So behold.
And this brings me to Shelley’s point regarding Kathy Sierra and the police. Shelley says that we have been asked to be jury, judge and executioner and therefore we need to know what the police response was to Kathy’s complaint. Well, I agree that there have been accusations and denials but stepping even further back, we don’t know exactly what Kathy reported to the police do we?
Isn’t that one of the problems with all of this: Death threats, hideous pictures, mean things, links to mean kids. How do we get from a link to mean kids to an accusation of death threats? The response from the police probably depends on what was being reported.
So, for one thing, harassment and cyberstalking are crimes. Linking to mean kids or even unkind words and "multiple webloggers condemed purely because they did not repudiate their friends, one or more of the Four People mentioned, which included Jeneane"are not crimes that the police would be able to respond to.
Now for my last bit of two cents….a while back, I had an AOL e-mail account; or shall I say I thought it was my email account. My ex-husband (note I use no adjectives, though of course I would like to) in the final days of our marriage was able to simply call AOL and get the password to my email account because the AOL account was in his name. He then not only proceeded to read all my email but began emailing friends of mine impersonating me.
He apparently wasn’t very convincing (That wasn’t really it; he was seeking confirmation of one of his many theories but since what he wanted to be true, simply wasn’t, his questions were just too bizarre) because several people called to ask if I had lost my mind. When I called AOL I was told, too bad so sad, his account and he can do what he wants with it.
My point for this story is that it didn’t require any great hacking skills for him to get access to my email and AOL didn’t provide any kind of protection for this or for his impersonation. The AOL account was in his name….needless to say, I will never have another AOL account. That was the first hint that I got that there was only an illusion of protection in things. There have been many more. I will save that for another blog….
I have no idea what Kathy Sierra reported to the police or what they told her. It seems a huge leap from Jeneane’s mean kid link to death threats. But in my experience, sometimes it is just an illusion that we have that we can "call the police" and they will arrest the bad guys or call AOL and they will stop the bad guys.
I think it is time for everyone to take a step backwards and figure out what our individual lessons learned are in this whole debacle which might very well go back to the basics: Why we write our blogs and what we are trying to accomplish with them…and then move forward from there.
Technorati Tags: media2.0, Jeneane Sessum, Kathy Sierra, Maryam Scoble, Shelley Powers, Tim O’Reilly, cyberstalking, AOL, Blogher
March 30: Stop Cyberbullying Day
Andy Carvin has declared March 30th Stop Cyberbullying Day. He writes that he would like people to talk about cyberbullying because it is spinning out of control. Well that is certainly how it feels…that things are spinning out of control; and that feeling transcends cyberbullying.
First, as Andy states ,"he most constructive response is to talk about it." The "it" he is referring to is cyberbullying and yes, I agree that it needs to be talked about. The Internet gives the bully an even more effective add-on weapon of intimidation, anonyminity. And in this instance, it appears, another more diabolical weapon, impersonation. Kathy Sierra receives death threats and horrific pictured of her are posted on-line….the perpetrator is not only anonymous, but is pretending to be someone else.
The result has been a veritable trainwreck in the blogosphere…if the goal of the anonymous troll included disruption, along with intimidation, he/she must be quite satisfied. Not only do we have hideous behavior, we have irresponsible accusations of complicity being made and then repeated and republished. It is all hard to read…many of the people involved are bloggers I respect and some, Jeneane, is a friend and colleague also.
As I am writing this, Bill O’Reilly is interviewing Jim Gilchrist who was shouted off the stage at Columbia University in October. Gilchrist is the founder of the Minutemen, a group that patrols the Mexican in order to keep illegal aliens from entering the US.
O’Reilly, who frequently shouts down the guests he disgarees with on his show is "outraged" at the student’s behavior and their, in his opinion too lenient punishment. In the course of the discussion, O’Reilly labels Columbia President Bollinger,who is not on the show to defend himself, a "wimp," which he spells out for us for added impact.
Online and off, we seem to have lowered our standards of civility. Perhaps we all need a good hard look in the mirror. Can we make our points, based upon their merits without using a label or an insinuation to discredit those who disagree; can we listen to an oposing point of view without feeling the need to silence the voice of disagreement?
OK, so we are not cyber trolls, but are we bullies? If so, March 30th sounds like as good a day as any to clean up our own act. I prefer the blogosphere that assembled at Blogher Business and the bloggers that had a blast last Friday night in NYC. Coming back to this, to put it mildy, illustrated the extremes.
I found the accusations leveled against Blogher to be completely unfounded. Slow response? Do Lisa Stone, Jory DesJardins, and Elisa Camahort not have the right to be involved in other activities for a day without that being "evidence" that they are supportive of trolls and stalkers?
I think the fact that Lisa took the time to provide a thoughtful and acurate response speaks volumes….and the quality of her post contrasts sharply with many who were not so concerned with accuracy on their blogs and in their comments.
So, this is written with the hope that all the great bloggers that have ceased to blog because of the trolls and cyberstalkers will find their way back to their blogs….that would be a victory for the good guys.
And let’s talk about cyberbullying…but let’s talk nicely, and listen more.
Beth Kantor has more info about StopCyberbullying on her blog and Andy Carvin has put up lots of great thinking here.
Technorati Tags: media 2.0, Blogher, stopcyberbullying, Lisa Stone, Jeneane Sessum, Kathy Sierra, Jory Des Jardin, Elisa Camahort, Bill O’Reilly, Jim Gilchrist, Toby Bloomberg, CK, Beth Kantor, Ning, Andy Carvin
More Data: We Trust the People We Know
According to a new study by BIGresearch the most influential media is 100% consumer generated. This study is consistent with prior data from Yankelovich indicating that 76% of consumers in their survey don’t believe that companies tell the truth in advertising.
Of further interest, the BIGresearch study found that consumers use more than one media at a time: Over two thirds use other media while watching TV; 68 percent use other media while reading the newspaper and 70.7 percent use other media while signed into the internet.
The BIGresearch study also noted a related and important shift. In response to the question about which media most influenced purchase decisions the findings were that "consumers’ choices are rarely in line with advertisers’ expenditures." In other words you can’t buy attention with dollars; you earn attention by the value of your content, product or service. If the value is high, people point to it, link to it, recommend it and then you get attention.
So, more confirmation that consumers don’t trust advertisers but they do trust the opinions of others…plus they are not really focusing on one message, but many messages delivered at the same time by different media. The interaction of trust, technology and continuous partial attention. Tough crowd.
Marketing Vox had a post today called When User Generated Ad Campaigns Go Bad from OneParkAvenue who was making the point that Dove’s campaign dovecreamoil.com was a bust because it had only received a one star rating from the 10,000 people who had viewed it; and comments had to be closed because there were so many YouTube users who were not happy that Dove did not seem to understand their culture. Apparently the same ad did significantly better when placed on AOL. The question was posed regarding the difference in the two sites in terms of the relevance of this ad.
In the new social media world to earn attention and to generate attention you need to be relevant to those you are trying to reach…..and reach them where they are. And, while you are there, build community and trust.
Tags: Dove, YouTube, continuous partial attention, attention, Marketing Vox, BIGresearch, One Park Avenue, CGM,trust
Time Magazine Person of the Year: You (Pass the Kool Aid) but Where Do You End and Mainstream Media Begin?
The annual Time Magazine person of the year is slightly different this year….in their own words….
"But look at 2006 through a different lens and you’ll see another story, one that isn’t about conflict or great men. It’s a story about community and collaboration on a scale never seen before. It’s about the cosmic compendium of knowledge Wikipedia and the million-channel people’s network YouTube and the online metropolis MySpace. It’s about the many wresting power from the few and helping one another for nothing and how that will not only change the world, but also change the way the world changes."
Oh, but do they really like us or are they just sucking up?ÂÂ
CK, who I had the opportunity to meet at Toby’s Bipartisan Blogger’s Wonk, says, "It’s a pivotal moment to see a magazine that has boasted many presidents, philanthropists and visionaries in this annual top spot recognize the impact of a lot of "little guys" and, in so doing, relay that control is no longer in the hands of the few."
Yes, the winner is you…the content creators of the web. And I am flattered, really, to be a winning "you." I just wish they didn’t sound so….so much like us? So, Web 2.OMG! Group hug, pass the Kool-Aid.
But read on, "for working for nothing and beating the pros at their own game". If you are working for nothing, how are you beating the pros at their own game. Professional=pay; amateur= no pay. Right?
Well, Steve Rubel says that he and Robert Scoble and John Furrier have started an "important discussion" about where does citizen’s media end and mainstream media begin. Their answer is, Steve says: getting paid, in real time cash money. The mainstream media is using our stuff…blogs, wikis, podcasts and so on; they even try to write in a more casual style. On the other side, there are lots of bloggers whose blogs and podcasts and videos provide them with their primary source of income; income from advertising. So, this means just one thing: they are media. If you are passing the Kool Aid and supporting yourself from your Kool Aid stand….by Steve’s definition as well as Time’s, you are not a person of the year.
Well, I hate to have to note that there does not seem to be any diversity in this important discussion among Steve, Robert and John…we ask not "Where are the Women Bloggers?" but where is their voice in the important discussion?
Tags: Time Magazine, Person of the Year, KoolAid, Marianne Richmond, Robert Scoble, Steve Rubel, John Furrier, Toby Bloomberg, CK’s Blog, MySpace, Wikipedia, ,YouTube, Women Bloggers, Blogs, MSM, Main Stream Media, WIMN’s Voices
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