Ted Leonsis, Superstar

Liveblog from Interact08

Opening session: “Shift Happens,” by Ted Leonsis, vice-chairman emeritus AOL, sage, sports franchise co-owner–all around investor, booster and mentor to many web startups. Said to have coined the phrase “new media” [fact-check that one].

Consumer currently feels “shattered”–in New York last week, it felt to him “like the week after 9/11”

Presidential race is a “turning point” for the integration of Web 2.0

New products, etc. need to be created for 3-screens

How consumers consume: Free, on-demand, mashed up, shared, raw and authentic.

“Our children are growing up in a world where free is better than paid.” Pay-based businesses will “die.”

“People ask me, ‘Where are your people?’ I don’t have people.” Part of being “authentic,” people can smell b.s. a mile away.”

Globalization: We don’t know how to translate international uniques into currency. [Chinese will develop 300,000 math PhDs this year. We’ll graduate 20,000. Marketing is increasingly for math majors. What does this mean to U.S. business?]

What do consumers give you? Money, time, pixels. You need to think in terms of those currencies.

“Ted’s Take”: I blog every day. I don’t like it anymore when people type my name into Google and see the first thing that comes up is a bad [Washington Post] article. My content is now at the top. “It’s important you take control of” your search results.

How this is blurring work and pleasure: A worker arrives at the office and logs first into fantasy football on Monday a.m., yet handled 300 e-mails on Sunday.

Discusses “filmanthropy“–movies with messages, creating a second bottom line. Just launched snagfilms.com, in partnership with Clearspring [in which he invests]. Cuts films into film widgets–now 61 million views. In U.S., there are 500 indie theaters; we have 12,000 virtual theaters.

The Internet is powerful because it enhances all of the following. It’s what all my businesses are designed around.

• relationships in communities of interest
• self-expression
• giving back
• pursuing a higher calling

Twitter’s Bridge to. . .Somewhere

Like Twitter itself, the site’s new Election2008. . .thing lives in that maddening zone between irresistible and pointless.

I guess you’d call Twitter’s Elections2008 a service–it aggregates all the Tweets on a particular topic. They spill down the screen in something like real time, one after another.

Twitter Election2008

You can choose to witness Tweets for All Candidates, or any of the Big 4 individually. The latest “official” Tweets “by” Obama and McCain appear above the fold, along with other tags you can follow. [Ron Paul, Ralph Nader and Bob Barr silenced again–this time by the fatcats at Twitter, who are clearly in the pocket of corrupt conventional politics! Wonder where Twitter’s PAC contributions are going?????]

The updates slide down the screen so quickly it’s anxiety provoking. To read one, you have to pass your mouse over an update to pause the stream. Read it, unpause and you’re back to playing Election Tetris, trying to click fast before an update disappears at the bottom.

The Tweets are, as you expect, all over the map. Brief love ‘n’ hate notes, jabs, jibes, jive and jingoism, plus people trying to viralize their own blog posts and videos.

If journalism is the first rough draft of history, Twitter’s Election08 is the synaptic spatter that proceeds coherent political thought.

I suspect something will come of this. Tweet aggregation has become a low art practiced widely around the web, and Twitter itself is trying to make sure it has a place in the studio.

The underlying functionality of Twitter is so compelling that some smart people are likely, eventually, to figure out how to use this vertical streaming of the content for good rather than harm.

But as with the election itself, let’s not raise your expectations too much.  To quote a telling Tweet that just slid by: “USA Patriot: RaquelTWG you are pretty… McCain/Palin’08”

Free Social Web Presentation: A $495 value!

I’m about to go do a presentation on social media. The topic this time: How to use various search-and-discover tools to monitor what’s being said in the socialwebosphere about you, your company, your partners or competitors, your spouse, your enemies, etc.

The audience is a group of people who do PR, marketing and communications for non-profit groups in the healthcare field. The people in attendance paid $495 to hear my presentation–though, to be fair, a lunch, dinner and a bunch of other, far more interesting speakers are part of the deal too.

But I thought I’d share the useful stuff right here in my blog, where everything is free. And–this is a guarantee–worth every penny.

The presentation lists a bunch of tools you can use to monitor what’s being said out in the social web. I know there are many others, but the ones I’m listing are both user-friendly for late adopters and likely, at least as a group, to produce a good scan of what’s being said in blogs, on Twitter, on discussion forums and hyperlocal news sites.

If any readers of this blog know good tools to supplement or replace the ones I’ve listed here, please leave a comment below. I’ll update the list and republish the full list in a later post.

Anyway, it’s about 12:30 p.m. and I’m on at 1 p.m. Better run.

Here’s the handout I’ll give out.

Learning to Listen In

The following tools help you monitor the many conversations happening all around the Internet. Some comments may involve your business, institution or key people. You may not want or need to respond. But knowing what people are saying is vital.

Listening is also an easy way to familiarize yourself with the baffling world of social media. Later on you may want to use these same techniques in marketing, branding, communication and customer service efforts. Talk like a marketer, though, and they’ll hate you.

Hints:

Most of these tools let you save your searches. Some send results to your e-mail, your iGoogle page or any RSS reader [Yahoo360, Netvibes, Bloglines, etc.]

Be sure to “listen” not only for your institution or firm’s full name, but for its nickname, short name, common misspellings, etc. Don’t forget about the names of key people.

The following tools are listed in approximate order of value. Start with Google Alerts, and see which others turn up content you’d otherwise miss.

• Google Alerts The most basic way to monitor what’s being published on important topics and events. If nothing else, set Google Alerts for keywords and have results delivered to your e-mail box. http://www.google.com/alerts
• Filtrbox Can dig deeper and help analyze content that turns up. Monthly fee for high-level use. For some, it may be worth it. http://www.filtrbox.com/
• BlogPulse A Nielsen service, it monitors blog content http://www.blogpulse.com/
• Omgili or Twing Both of these monitor the “deep web”—message boards where most search engines don’t prowl http://www.omgili.com or http://www.twing.com
• Twitter Search To listen in on what’s being said on this annoying, oddly compelling platform http://search.twitter.com/. For alerts: http://tweetbeep.com/
• Topix Aggregates local news better than most. A good way to see what your local press is reporting without having to visit their sites http://www.topix.com/

D.C. Social Media: 2.0ut in Front?

The Washington, D.C. area is boiling with action, but it’s not all about the upcoming quadrennial episode of mass hysteria. The region has become of all things, a national center–maybe the national center–for innovation in the social web.

I say this with some reluctance. I’m a lousy cheerleader and innately skeptical of any claims that carry the whiff of a chamber of commerce luncheon centerpiece.

Having said that, I believe there is something big and unexpectedly important going on in my home region, one not known for its forward thinking or brassy innovation. But D.C. 2.0 seems to be real.

Last week Twin Tech II, a party designed to bring together the Northern Virginia/D.C./Maryland tech community, drew 1,200 people, and a bunch of people were turned away. I’m not sure recent McCain rallies have had that many people. [To be fair, McCain rallies are not held in massive nightclubs with an open bar, so that may explain some of it. That may also be a good idea for the McCain campaign, but that’s another story.]

Anyway, the Twin Tech meetup was really more about bringing two different tech cultures together: The Suits and the T-shirts, the Stalwarts and the Schemers, the Arrivistes and the Artistes, the Gold and the Geeks.

The people representing the Northern Virginia Technology Council, land of defense contractors and enterprise network firms, were actually wearing suits and ties, as if they’d just come from a sales presentation [they probably had]. One of the women looked like she could easily be a great grandmother. She looked like she was having a blast. I didn’t see her dance, but then I didn’t stay until the end.

Meanwhile the t-shirts–indie 2.0 entrepreneurs, programmers, designers, marketers and even some extremely talented, reasonably priced social media consultants heroically devoted to their clients–showed up in stylish eyewear, interesting hair on their face and heads, tiny tattoos and a sort of thriftshop-Urban Outfitters-Nordstrom Rack chic. The women looked great. The open bar was well patronized.

This dual-social-group thing helps explain, I think, why the Washington area can make a plausible claim as 2.0 Central. It’s an amazing mix of grown-ups, young people, and business conditions. Among the assets:

• The rich talent pool left in the wake of the AOL diaspora
• The 2.0 enterprise network builders and sellers in Northern Virginia and the many consultants, lawyers and financiers who follow in their wake
• Legions of print journalists making the migration to digital
• Political and non-profit social mediacrats–those eye-poppingly forward-leaning 2.Obamacists ™ are among us
• Academics, think-tankers and policy-heads who are leading the way on issues of web privacy, piracy, legalities and social impacts of all this stuff
• Established Washington PR and lobbying firms, scrambling to leverage social media at risk of falling terminally behind the new social marketing firms that “get it”
• Increasingly social-media-savvy publishers and broadcasters like The Washington Post, USA Today, National Geographic, Discovery, PBS and NPR
• Government agencies which, god help us, are beginning to use social media to reach their citizen clients
• The Smithsonian, National Gallery of Art and other world-class museums that have committed to the 2.0 thing
• And hundreds of 2.0 companies, from up-and-coming national names like Clearspring, Mixx, Vidget Labs, R2i, Freewebs and Hungry Machine to scrappy startups chasing money and a clue. Some of the latter are getting a boost from a D.C. based mini-2.Incubator, LaunchBox Digital.

It’s quite a confluence of people and factors–perhaps more than you’ll find elsewhere, even in Silicon Valley or Silicon Alley–and there’s plenty of energy and, I think, even money to go around. I have every reason to believe I’ll be able to stand behind that statement five years from now.

Which brings me to the next D.C. mega-event, Interact08, a conference that will put on stage many of the luminaries representing the groups described above. Ted Leonsis, paterfamilias of many tech startups in the area and the nation, will keynote. And none other than Marissa Mayer of Google will appear on a panel.

When Google sends Mayer across the country to appear on a panel, you know something is going on.

I don’t know if the crowd will surpass 1,200, but I’m told only 35 tickets ramain at $395. I’ll be blogging from Interact, and will dutifully report on developments.

Oh, I forgot [warning: metaphor incoming] Interact08 will be held in the Ronald Reagan Building. I’m telling you, this Washington 2.0 thing is getting serious.

Web 2.D’oh! Roundup: Wikipedia Abuse, Washington Fashion, More

Why Wikipedia Must Be Stopped, Cont’d

From The Times of London:

The Wikipedia entry for Sarah Palin was overhauled substantially for the better in the 24 hours before the surprise announcement of her selection as Republican vice-presidential nominee.

A mystery Wikipedia user — under the name Young Trigg — put in about 30 edits to the biographical article on the website…..

Since the announcement the Sarah Palin page has been edited many hundreds of times more and Wikipedia has now put in place a partial block so that only established editors can change the entry. Some of Young Trigg’s entries have been amended or toned down.

The blood-n-guts back story from WikiNews. The whole hideous editing trail. Wikidashboard’s view of who’s been up to what with the Palin entry.

Death by Manolo

The Washington Post has launched FW, a fashion magazine that appears to be modeled on the NYC fashion trade rag W. [FW stands for “Fashion Washington.”]

It’s easy, and maybe necessary, to ventilate one’s populist outrage by ridiculing a publication that says it will cover such topics as “hot-yet-approachable high-end styles,” “an ambassador known for dressing well,” and “a sizzling line of cufflinks just in from Japan.”

Who knows? This could help the paper snag some of the high-gloss ads that its Sunday magazine cannot. There are now several competing Palm Beach-y publications in the Washington area that do the usual party-pictures, pretty profiles and runway shots designed to appeal to high-end jewelers and clothiers that don’t usually fool with newsprint. They’re fat with ads so glossy they could generate solar energy. I guess the Post wants its share. Fine.

I just find it astonishing that a company like the Post–which is working furiously [in both senses] to create content and business models that will let it remain a source of vital, independent news reporting on public affairs in the digital world– would spend a single erg of energy creating a new print publication.

In economics there is something known as opportunity costs–the price, essentially, of the road not taken. Among the costs of Plan A one must include the costs of not doing Plan B.

In the case of the Post, the cost of launching FW includes the cost of not devoting those same resources to building products and business in the digital environment. Every worker-hour, every meeting, every salescall, every senior executive chin-pull, every synapse fired spent in service of making FW a success is not spent on the only task that matters.

Let’s say FW ekes out a modest profit at low costs. [On a per-rich-person’s-head basis, which is how FW’s being sold, the price is similar to that charged for ads in the newspaper’s Sunday magazine, though costs of FW will likely be a fraction. Good business plan.]

But the cost is that same group of people at The Post not developing skills, content, contacts and brainspan that will power the company into the almost purely digital news landscape that likely looms ahead.

I don’t care whether it’s footwear or football, diamonds or diatribes. Any investment in ink-on-paper products–even marginally profitable ones–by a company that has to remake itself in a digital world is a wasteful diversion.

It’s opportunity wasted.

Interest revealed: I am a former employee of The Washington Post newsroom.

And finally, our latest sighting of the Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse ™

Grade your Twitter feed

Oh, wait, there goes the Horseman Again ™!

Social Networking Surpasses Porn as Leading Use of Internet

OneWebDay: Like Earth Day, But. . .No, Not Like Earth Day

It’s hard to know what to make of OneWebDay, an initiative that promotes itself as “an environmental movement for the Internet ecosystem.” It appears to be a one-day awareness-raising event devoted to keeping this former Defense Department project free from government surveillance, commercial malfeasance and anti-democratic social stratification.

Plenty to like, from where I sit.

OneWebDay is Monday, September 22, exactly six months from Earth Day–one half an an earthly orbit of the sun, the yin to the vernal equinox’s yang. (Very cerebral, if a bit creepily astrological.)

The OWD site, oddly, can use a lot of work–usability experts or WordPress programmers may want to volunteer some time for the effort, sort of like a geek squad Habitat for Humanity project.

But anyway, what should you do to participate in OWD on Monday?

The site has some pretty good ideas. I paraphrase:

Eschew Internet Explorer. Quote: “…use a standards-compliant Web browser like Firefox or Opera. They’re free, faster, and more protective of your privacy.”

Go on a virus hunt on your own computer–not only to save yourself headaches, but because what happens on your computer doesn’t stay there.

Donate a computer. “You can donate a new $100 laptop to children in impoverished countries, or donate your used computer to Goodwill or a school.”

The only really bad ideas on the list are editing a Wikipedia entry and donating to the Wikimedia Foundation.

I have previously inveighed about how the public costs of Wikipedia outweigh the public benefits–about how the scattered errors and regular acts of mischief on Wikipedia, combined with its ubiquity and dominance of search results, create a clear and present danger to the world.

So I’ll just say this: If you choose to observe OneWebDay by supporting either of those projects, my own 501(c)3 group, “Wikipedia Must Be Stopped,” will vandalize Sarah Palin’s entry again.

Trust me. You don’t want to provoke us.

Time.com’s ‘The Page’: Like a Blog, But Better

There are more things wrong with Time.com’s renovated website than befits a multimedia news-and-content monolith. Maybe that’s due to the lingering toxicities of that whole nearly fatal AOL infection. But those flaws are a subject for another day.

Today I’d like to call attention to really smart evolution of the blog and into a successful new format: The Page, Mark Halperin’s daily dose of high-quality political news scrapery.

[Sorry for the lousy cut-n-paste. Those two images should read seamlessly, as one.]

There’s so much I like about this:

The items are essentially links to the full content on Time.com and elsewhere. This makes the blog an easy scan of current relevant news items, with one-click access to the full versions.

It’s all very visual, using big images, varied typographic textures and white space to make The Page highly scannable. Essentially The Page is a compelling front end for the news.

It’s built on WordPress!

Below the big entries of the moment, the bottom of The Page is a more conventional gathering of news items, but notice again how each is presented with scannable typography and written as if the blurber actually understands the content.

The Page is also pushed out as a daily e-mail.

The Page is an excellent evolution that combines blog, well-crafted blurbified news and next-gen e-mail. It’s one of the most usable products of this type I’ve come across.

The real value-add, as they say on the business side of the operation, is not the content, but Halperin’s brain. Instead of rewriting the news, he selects and presents it.

Flaws? Halperin should be more ecumenical in his item choices, so the product remains a gateway to the political news of the day, not Time.com’s news reporting of same.

Oh, and this: Is the title “The Page” ironic, retro-cool or, for all of the product’s digital virtues, an artifact of the creators’ ink-and-paper-centric worldview?

Conflict of interest note: In a moment of weakness, Time.com several months ago declared this humble blog a Top 25 blog.

On “Thought Leaders” and Other 2.0bservations

I admit I’ve developed fairly low expectations of web 2.0 conferences. At this point, I consider them a success if:

• I take away three nuggets worth remembering
• I emerge unhurt

And so I’m pleased to report that by these standards the Tech Council of Maryland’s “Growing Your Business Through Social Media” meeting was a smashing success.

As is usually the case, the crowd was teeming with fear and hope about the social web, and eager to learn more. As usual, the panelists recommended various degrees of engagement and caution. There was plenty of coffee and free wireless.

Here are my three takeaway nuggets:

Nugget No. 1: Regarding those who wish to use social media to promote themselves as thought leaders, Mark Hausman, President & CEO of Strategic Communications Group,  issued this unsettlingly insightful remark: “If you want to be a thought leader, you need to have some thoughts.” You could almost hear the deflation in the crowd.

Nugget No. 2: Regarding those paralyzed by legal ramifications of the social web, Shashi Bellamkonda, Social Media Swami of Network Solutions, offered this simple piece of wisdom: “Take your lawyer to lunch.” [Yes, Bellamkonda’s official title is Social Media Swami. I’m guessing if he gets promoted it would be to Boddhisatva, but I’m not very good with org charts.]

Nugget No. 3: None of the panelists or audience members reported having any staff devoted exclusively to social media. Usually the responsibilities for maintaining blogs and discussion boards, working Facebook and LinkedIn for intel and monitoring the social web fell to 2 or 3 people in various departments, who do it essentially on time carved from the rest of their duties. Which is to say: For now, in most of corporate America, the social web is still treated like the idiot bastard stepchild of the communications/marketing/customer service/strategy functions.

Bonus Nugget No. 4! Jeremy Epstein, who did the keynote, is really smart and funny about this stuff. Subscribe to his Igniting the Revolution blog if you don’t believe me. His idea of “tribal marketing,” and how he used it to promote a funky post-careerist-era book by Daniel Pink, is a great illustration.

Photos by the Swami himself, coverage of the event by BisnowTech.

Dataviz of the Week: Failed States [Other than Ours]

As we brace for the hysterical doom-and-bloom rhetoric of the general election, what better time than now to explore cases of real national failure and success?

The image above is a datavisualization of The Failed States Index, a report co-published by the Fund for Peace and Foreign Policy magazine. It evaluates 177 countries in terms of how close they are to, well, failure. [More on this below.]

As I have confessed repeatedly here, I’m a big fan of “dataviz,” as it’s known in the trade. Data visualizations demonstrate the power of images to illuminate information in ways that words alone cannot. I think journalists, educators and all professional communicators ignore dataviz at their peril.

Anyhow, the Failed States map is pretty simple as these graphic explainers go. The work of a map geek who goes by the handle “Ender,” the dataviz essentially turns each country’s failure index number into a color, allowing you to eyeball the places on the world map where countries are teetering on the edge of national catastrophe.

The visuals force fascinating questions to mind:

• Is it significant that so many states near failure are located near the equator?
• Why do nations seem to be stabler the closer they are to the North and South poles–with the glaring exception of Russia?
• Why makes Ghana so much more stable than Guatemala?
• What measures of national stability rank Portugal above the U.S.?
• Why are China and Russia closer to failure than Cuba?
• What happy sauce do they drink in Chile that makes that nation as stable as our own?

Which brings us back to the underlying data.

The Failed State Index is a calculation based on information about each country regarding 12 criteria, a research-and-analysis process that’s been vetted and validated by multiple layers of academics and globalist wonks.

Measures of national stability accounted for include “Legacy of Vengeance-Seeking Group Grievance or Group Paranoia,” “Uneven Economic Development along Group Lines,” “Suspension or Arbitrary Application of the Rule of Law,” “Widespread Violation of Human Rights,” “Progressive Deterioration of Public Services,” “Rise of Factionalized Elites,” and “Sharp and/or Severe Economic Decline.”

Maybe I’ve been following the presidential race too much, but this sound a lot like the talking points of the guests on both MSNBC and Fox News.

Obviously, people in this relatively stable nation-state of ours are very polarized over the forthcoming presidential election. I’m already hearing people recite the common refrain, “If [the other guy] wins, I’m moving to Canada.”

But why choose our neighbor to the north, which is hardly more stable than Austria, for god’s sake?

Using the handy Failed States datavisualization, it’s easy to see that if you’re looking for a rock-solid haven free of political instablity to sit out an unbearable presidential administration. . . Norway is the place to go.

Rick Sanchez Direct: CNN ADD!

Well, Rick Sanchez Direct was unloosed this afternoon onto an unsuspecting world. The CNN program appears to be the first head-on, full-frontal attempt by a mainstream media organization to harness the social web, live and on the air, to report the news.

Promoted on Sanchez’s own Twitter feed as a “Twitter show,” the production turned out to be more like a FriendFeed Gone Wild.

While Sanchez presented the news of the day, he harvested real-time viewer comments streaming in via Twitter, Facebook and MySpace [what, dude, you’re like 15?]. Raw news came in via cell phone images, mobile phone calls and user-generated video. There was even a multi-culti touch, with a flamboyantly Spanish speaking correspondent from CNN Espanol.

Sanchez is full of himself as a broadcaster and 2.0h geek–a brunette Anderson Cooper with ADD and thousands of online friends. His patter was peppered with references to the whiz-bangery by which he was presenting things: “…here’s something from Twitter coming in now, just seconds ago…this is an interactive news broadcast, it’s your show…and this, from Facebook…tell us what you think, we want to hear from you….”

Sanchez clearly relished his role as info-hero, manfully maintaining control of the real-time news battlefield while taking incoming data from all sides. At the end of the broadcast he thanked people for their “openness to Twitter, Facebook”–and indeed, one suspects, to human interaction itself. It was that kind of performance.

It’s easy to ridicule Rick Sanchez Direct as hyperspeed slapdash news-spatter. But truth told I found myself sort of liking it–the hour went fast, I got quick licks of the headlines-of-the-day, and heard the [alas, predictable] voices of my fellow Americans chattering about it all. There are worse news shows, and many that are more boring.

Which is not to say RSD is substantial or of great public value. But let’s consider the context before we bemoan the shameful intellectual decay of cable news–the domain of Wolf Blitzer, Sean Hannity and those blonde women on Fox–wrought by Twitter and Facebook.

Network TV news as it is widely practiced is highly mannered, with carefully staged standups, scripted stories, well-spoken talking heads and press conference snippets, all presented with assertive declamations by people who, as they say outside major media markets, clean up real good.

The thought that this somehow constitutes “news” in its pure form is ridiculous.

The thought that adding social media to the mix could wreck it is fatuous.

News is stuff that happens that someone finds interesting. There are infinite ways to present it. As the culture changes, so does the way it’s delivered.

My biggest complaint with RSD is that the need to generate a constant stream of real-time apoplexy to fill that Twitter screen, Sanchez & Co. will have to keep baiting the hook with red meat.

In today’s Episode One, the topics included “hard to watch” cell phone video of dead civilians in Afghanistan, a bunch of loony pastors who plan to take “all the way to the Supreme Court if necessary” their God-given right to endorse Republic–er, various candidates for public office, user videos of ginormous waves crushing the coastline of Cuba, the Government Bailout of Freddie and Fannie with Your Tax Dollars, etc.

And through Twitter and Facebook and god help us MySpace the people expressed their shock and disgust and dismay!

Sure, this is phony populism–“the issues that America really cares about,” overheated for the purposes of sensation. But welcome to our century. Later in the day, World News Tonight, Fox News and even NPR covered the very same stories, but without the public feedback.

As they say in the eye doctor’s office: Worse? Or better?

Is Rick Sanchez Direct a smart move for CNN? The 3 p.m. weekday time slot isn’t particularly valuable broadcast real estate. Why not turn it into a faddish, hyperkinetic, multi-screen, multi-media playground and see what happens?

Besides, think of the sponsorship opportunities.

For CNN sales reps, I have just two words: Red Bull.

* * * *

For more, see my previous entry previewing the program.