February, 2009

When the social media groundswell turns altruistic, the results can be amazing. Here are two examples of both large and small differences made with a few simple connections. Connections made all the more quickly and with a higher rate of trust with the use of social media tools like social networks and Twitter.

Wanted: Good Home for Good Dog

Photo credit: Jim Sneddon on Flickr found using Flickr-Storm.

Scott Abel recently moved from the midwest to the west coast, and the move meant a change of housing that prevented him from bringing his four-legged companion with him. He says,

I recently posted a brief note to Smaller Indiana (a social network for people in Indiana) indicating I was looking for a loving home for my dog. As I was moving from Indiana to California (and could not take my dog with me) I wanted to see if I could find a local family to adopt her. One brief post was all it took. A member of the community with which I had previously interacted had a dog like mine who they thought would enjoy a companion of the same age. As it turned out, the dogs got along swimmingly and the family adopted my dog. The adopted family’s father, Doug, had previously met me online and I interviewed him for an article I wrote on data centers. Because we had previously interacted, Doug felt comfortable reaching out to me. Without a social network like Smaller Indiana I would have had to rely on traditional newspaper advertising, flyers and word of mouth. It was a great use of a tool that is gaining in popularity.

New home found! The new dog’s family posted the story to Smaller Indiana showing the two dogs, Bailey and Cricket, having a grand time together. Powerful beyond the reach of a newspaper’s want ads, these kinds of stories help the community members realize that there’s more to the community than just trying to market products to each other. The goodwill goes on and on.

Now, danah boyd would say that social networking is simply modeling and maintaining your pre-existing networks, but today’s online social networking tools make it easier to model and maintain a large network. There is less paper to print and legwork to do when all the efforts – posting a “Wanted: Home for Good Dog” poster, receiving communications about candidate homes, and even keeping up with your dog after he goes to a new home – can be done online.

Twitter plus Festival = Twestival?

A Twestival is a global event organized by people on Twitter for others on Twitter. Their tagline is “Connecting amazing people on one night for a great cause: charity:water” In Austin, Texas, Michelle Greer helped raise nearly $9,000 in a single evening event in mid-Februrary. She’s still offering t-shirts in Austin for $10 with all proceeds going to charity:water. The Twestival group as a whole ain’t foolin’ – they’ve raised more $250,000 with only eight weeks of planning.

Making a difference in the life of one dog and two families, or collecting donations upwards of a quarter million dollars – it’s all good.

Here I am at the 2009 FoodNetwork South Beach Wine and Food Festival (Presented by Food & Wine) and I am dumbfounded at their complete lack of social networking adoption.

This festival is huge:  100′s to 1000′s of attendees.  It is at least 5 blocks long (on the beach in Florida.)  Arguably, it will be under-attended.  (Note: my wife visited Miami a few weeks back and spoke to the hotels.  They are not as full as they would have expected.)

They have zero social media presence.  For those attendees Tweeting, how about establishing the #tag that might draw our community.  For those who use Flickr, how about establishing the photo Group for all the attendees to use.  They have probably hired the finest photographers to capture the event’s festivities.  But they can’t compete with the volume of visitor generated images captured by all the attendees with iPhone, Androids and Blackberries.

Are you planning an event? Remember to leverage your PAYING attendees via  the PR value of social media to help market your event.  The social media planning and investment you commit will help your event live on and carry its momentum into next year.

Last night, the Chicago Chapter of the Legal Marketing Association held their annual “Your Honor Awards” recognition dinner. Like every event the Chicago LMA Chapter conducts, this event, held at Scoozi in Chicago, was top flight. Megan McKeon of McDonnell Boehnen Hulbert & Berghoff LLP made organizing the well-produced awards presentations and dinner appear effortless. And the Wall Street Journal footed the bill for this private party whose bar never closed. I was there to confirm it.

Chicago LMA Awards Judges' Innovation Award to Valorem Law website

What really made the evening special for us was the recognition of our client, Valorem Law.  Valorem, a one-year-old firm, is comprised of expatriates (yes, I once spelled this ex-patriots) of BigLaw.  These thought leaders long ago recognized the sea change occurring in the legal industry and founded their firm on the premise of, among other innovative factors, the “billable hour is dead.”

Recognizing the firm’s innovative culture and business proposition, the LMA honored Valorem’s website with the Judges’ Innovation Award, unique recognition issued at the discretion of LMA. Innovation. It’s great to hear that term in the legal market. While we are thrilled to share in some of the glow cast by Valorem’s achievement, more importantly, this Innovation Award illuminates how lawyers who have worked hard to understand the Internet leveraged it in pursuit of their business.

The Valorem Law website has also been recognized by the Web Marketing Association with a 2008 Legal Standard of Excellence WebAward.

By now you may have read about Recovery.gov, the web site the Obama administration launched simultaneously with the president’s signing of the economic stimulus bill.  The site boasts transparency and its desire to hear our stories and suggestions. You know, be part of the process, like all good new media projects. How exciting! That’s the kind of change we voted for. Yes we did!

But Recovery.gov is already receiving criticism on its inability to fulfill its own promises.  The AP reports that the site was hoping to give regular folks the ability to track the government spending down to their local level. However, the story reports that’s a nearly impossible task.

“At least for now there’s no way to track spending down to the town level, as Obama promised, especially on statewide projects such as installing high-speed Internet lines to rural areas that don’t have street addresses, let alone local governments.”

The administration claims as it gets more information it will be posted on the site but admits that some types of information isn’t possible to report on such a micro level. So states will have to be the ones to report on local spending projects like bridges and roads. Hmmm. I see money to be made using some of the economic stimulus dollars to build  economic stimulus reporting web sites for state and local governments (if you know anyone).

As impossible a task as this whole transparency thing seems to be, I do have to agree with Macon Phillips, White House director of new media, who told the AP they should be applauded for their efforts.

“This sort of effort is unprecedented, in trying to create an online platform for everyone to get information. This URL represents a much larger effort within government.”

This URL?

The ideas behind the site are innovative for government, to be sure; let the people see how the money is being spent, let us know if something smells rotten, tell us your story, yadda, yadda. It’s just that the site itself isn’t any different from any other government site.

The new administration says it wants to hear our recovery stories—well sort of.  Want to share your story?  You’ll have to fill out a form with your real name and submit it to some empty space, much like every other government site where the form comments get printed out and land in a heap on an interns desk where they lay for several months until someone gets around to reading them. I know this happens because it was my job when I was an intern.

Who in the administration thought this would be a great way to communicate with Americans during this most difficult time for so many? People want to be heard . . now!   Not fill out a form. And they want their story to be read and understood by the whole world . . . immediately!

Today I sent a comment asking if the site was moderated and asking why the recovery stories weren’t posted blog style. I didn’t even get the obligatory “we got your message” reply. So I guess the answers are “No.” and “Why didn’t we think of that?”

So disappointing.

I’m also a bit disappointed that the president isn’t taking ownership of the information on this site. On the home page is a YouTube video of Obama telling users the purpose of the site. Sounds like ownership there. The language on the home page sure makes us feel a part of this process, part of the plan:

“Learn what steps we’re taking to ensure you can track our progress every step of the way.” “We want to hear from you.”

But one click away from the homepage the language changes to “the president this” and “the president that.”  What happened to we?  Where’s the brand consistency?

Recovery.gov is a start, but I guess I expected more from the guy who emailed me when he chose a running mate and tweeted me on election returns. Can’t his team come up with something better than this web site on somthing as important as how they are spending our $787 billion?  Yes they can! And yes they should.

Well, Duo is moving its office one more time. But I can tell you it’s not because, as some have noted, that we’re tired of the restaurants around our office. Nor is it because we’re overdue for a nice friends, family and clients openhouse. Over our ten year history, we’ve enjoyed steady measured growth. Now, once again, we find ourselves a little cramped for space in our 7,500 sq. ft. and moving to 12,000 sq. ft.

But our move is not just about more space but, rather, different space. At Duo, we place a high value on collaboration. Our new location will provide us the additional rooms we need to meet with our clients in person as well as through webinars and phone conferences.  But the real advantage is that our project teams, what we call “studios,” will now have space dedicated to collaborating on projects.

Our new space will have permanent studio rooms where our teams of interaction designers, developers, online marketers and project managers can gather to share our skills and achieve some synergy as we execute client projects. Some may view our extra space as a luxury in a business environment where austerity is the watchword. But in truth, properly done, collaboration achieves a higher level of efficiency and a better product for our client. So if we can invest in a little extra space to produce a better client product more efficiently, I think it is worth it.

Everyone is on board with the plan. So on Friday, February 20, Duo will relocate to  20 W. Kinzie in the River North neighborhood in Chicago. I hear the restaurants are better over there.

Bzzzzz went the internet when Compete.com published their social media website rankings.  Ok, here they are:

Top 25 Social Networks in January 2009

But that’s not my point. My point is that there is a large universe of people who reside in categories from intrigued to clueless about social media. While some are breathless at Facebook’s 1 billion-plus monthly visits, there is a large universe that doesn’t care. These statistics mean little to them. More than one social media aficionado has noted that nobody’s an expert on social media. But for many “expertise” is not even on their horizon.

I met recently with a non-profit organization looking to get more value from their web presence. I fall in love with the mission of almost every non-profit organization with which we work. I enjoy the passion those involved bring to their endeavor. Yet even these smart, passionate and internet aware people had not yet grasped the strategic value of social media to their mission. For example, wonderful videos they had produced were entombed on their website hidden from the much greater reach of YouTube. And while Facebook was rampant with groups of similar mission, this regionally focused organization did not enjoy the embrace of a similar community.

But the landscape is changing rapidly. Even more telling than the social media site rankings is the rate of change with most social sites experiencing double digit growth month over month.  The adoption curve is taking shape. Whether or not you are monitoring social media site stats, the Internet is changing yet one more time. If you or your organization is not on the train, hop on.  If you are, keeping working at it

What? IBM hasn't called back?

We’ve heard the anecdotal stories about colleges and employers checking out FaceBook and MySpace pages to vet potential applicants, but I’ve often wondered just how true those stories are. Being human, our defense mechanisms tend to kick in when faced with disappointment, and this always sounded like one to me. Did you really miss out on that job with PepsiCo because your FaceBook page said something disparaging about FunYuns?   But apparently a recently released study says it’s true.

The study, conducted by UMass Dartmouth Center for Marketing Research and led by Eric Mattson and  Nora Ganim Barnes, Ph.D.,  is the  first longitudinal study of social media in US college admissions offices. Just as last year’s study revealed, not only are schools using social media to engage students, a number of schools are also using it to research students. Twenty-three percent use search engines and seventeen percent use social networks. The admissions offices interviewed admitted to using Google, Yahoo, MySpace, and FaceBook to research students and verify information about them, typically when they were candidates for scholarships and high-demand spots in programs with limited space.

“In all these cases the intent was to protect the school from potential embarrassment. No school wants to announce the winner of a prestigious scholarship only to have compromising pictures be discovered on the Internet the next day. There were no reports of checking every applicant to an institution, no matter how small the school. Online research appears to be more of a precaution at this point or a source of additional information for critical decision making.”

That’s good news.  Schools will still be using tradition determining factors for admission, too, so don’t cancel payment on SAT prep class yet.

But the study was really about much more than checking up on students. It revisits college admissions offices one year after the group’s first study to compare current use of social media by college admissions offices in areas familiarity, usage, and importance of social media.  College admissions offices still lead Fortune and Inc. 500 companies in blogging, with 39% of colleges using them compared to 13% (Fortune 500) and 39% (Inc. 500).

Colleges still leading companies in social media use

It’s not surprising that colleges who are trying to reach the wired generation are still leading Fortune 500 and Inc 500 companies at adopting social media, but the increase in the adoption rate in one year is pretty amazing. Usage of at least one form of social media in college admissions offices is up from 61% to 84% with social networking being the top tool, though all tools studied saw an increase in usage. Videoblogging and blogging were numbers two and three. However, when looking at effectiveness of using these tools, the study has this to say:

“There is evidence of enthusiasm and eagerness to embrace these new communications tools but there is also evidence that these powerful tools are not being utilized to their potential. Schools using social media must learn the “rules of engagement” in the online world in order to maximize their effectiveness.”

We’ve mentioned in the past the ongoing debate about conversing with customers (in this case students) versus talking at them.  This study seems to support the notion that successful blogging is more about engaging in conversation than search engine referrals.

“The mantra of the blogosphere is “conversation.” Blogs that are unattended lose their audience. In the 2007 study 37% of those schools with blogs did not accept comments. By any measure, this is a problem if the goal is to connect with prospective students through ongoing conversation with the school. In 2008 that figure dropped to 22%.

“For students and their parents looking to have a conversation online about particular aspects of university life, this increased interaction through comments can be significant. With more and more schools moving into multiple channels of social media, schools that don’t allow for conversation will quickly be passed by. Schools are clearly learning to use social media more effectively. “

There’s much more about this in the free executive summary you can download. But another interesting observation reveals that schools are also monitoring the internet for chatter about their institutions. About half the US schools used a simple Google search to keep up with the buzz.  The ones that did monitor the buzz tended to be smaller, private schools with higher tuition, (i.e., the ones you need more free money to attend), the same schools that were also using social media to research potential students and scholarship applicants. Bummer.

MCATs 8am sharp

So before you (or your kid) post that picture of yourself half-naked and drunk on your dorm room floor, ask yourself how bad you want that medical school scholarship and keep in mind what us old people learned about sexual harassment in the ‘90s. If you wouldn’t say it, do it, or show it, in front of your mother, your sister, or your wife (or in his case, your college admissions director), don’t say it, do it, or post it on your MySpace page—assuming certain dysfunctional family situations don’t apply.

This was merely a training exercise.

Did you happen to see the episode of The Office after Sunday night’s Superbowl? Safety officer Dwight jammed all the doors and faked a fire just to test the staff’s reaction. Panic ensued and before it was over Stanley fell to the floor clutching his chest.

Apparently, in January the US Dept of Justice attempted a similar hoax when it sent a fake email scam out to several employees—just to test the “security posture of our information users,” according to Cnet News.

Justice Department spokeswoman Gina Talamona called the phony e-mail a security test. “This specific exercise was successfully completed within the defined time period,” said Talamona, who works out of the agency’s Washington headquarters.
“Scenarios are intended to represent an example of persistent cyber threats facing today’s Internet users,” she said.

Spoken  like a spokesperson.

The hoax involved Federal employees’ Thrift Savings Plan retirement account. The email directed employees to a web site to enter account information, and  was signed by the “Thrift Savings Plan Account Coordinator.”

In light of all the mini-Madoff scandals, it’s easy to understand why this email evoked a bit of anxiety among public employees. According to the AP, at the U.S. attorney’s office in Portland, Oregon, the email prompted another mass email. This time, a warning by the office security specialist.

“DO NOT respond to this message. DO NOT provide your user ID or password.” The subject line read, “URGENT – TSP hoax.”

Shortly thereafter, a memo was circulated by assistant director IS security, Ted Shelkey, to mitigate the anxiety and loss of productivity.

Who prosecutes on behalf of justice.

“The message and the site purported to be the bailout Web site are not malicious,” Shelkey said in his memo. “There is no need to distribute warning messages to colleagues and law enforcement contacts. Please delete all such messages and associated alerts.”

Does anyone smell anything smokey?

Hundreds try to capture the moment at the 2009 Inaugural Youth Ball

Just in case you never really believed the wired generation existed, these pics ought to convince you.  They were snipped from the MTV Youth Inaugural Ball coverage at MTV.com.

However, maybe a better name for this crowd would be the wireless generation. Obama credits “young people all across America” for winning his campaign.

I want my WAP.

In his short address to the audience at the Youth Ball he said, “What started out as an improbable journey where nobody gave us a chance was carried forward by, was inspired by, was driven by, was energized by young people all across America” (Obama). Them, and a few wireless devices, maybe.

If Millennials can do that with a little faith and a couple of million iPhones, what’s next for them? Could they be the next Greatest Generation?

The wireless generation

Just some interesting eye candy to give you food for thought. Like, maybe we all ought to pay better attention to what tools the up-and-comers are using to communicate and start creating apps they will use for conducting business in the very near future. You can watch the entire MTV Be the Change Youth Inaugural Ball speech here.