Silicon Valley Watcher - reporting on the business of technology and media: New Rules Communications Archives

NYU is tracking newspaper bloggers

A very good resource for watching what is going on in newspapers and their struggle to come to terms with blogging is BluePlateSpecial.net, put together by Jay Rosen and his students at NYU.

I was at NYU last September at the Impact '05 conference. I was on a panel alongside Joe Trippi, Howard Dean's political strategist . Since then, the work being done at NYU by its journalism school has been popping up regularly on my radar screen. For example, the excellent IWantMedia is put together by Patrick Philips, an adjunct professor at NYU.

Facts About the State of Blogging at America's 100 Biggest Newspapers
Blue Plate Special combed through the 100 largest sites. The results show who's blogging, who's not, and which newsrooms are doing what. Look up your newspaper, and compare. (And please: help us fact check this chart!)
By Trisha Chang, Kat Ocampo, Kaitlin Jessing-Butz
Alexis Krase, Toli Galanis and Sara Williams

. . .

Also, notable on the site is Renee Alfuso's article on journalists who blog, and how obsessive it can become. She interviewed the Philadelphia Inquirer's full-time journalist blogger Daniel Rubin, a 25 year newsroom veteran and George K. Polk award winner.

Continue reading "NYU is tracking newspaper bloggers" »

Posted by Tom Foremski on March 10, 2006 9:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The metrics of influence--the mania for measuring the blogosphere

By Tom Foremski for SiliconValleyWatcher

There is a current mania among corporations and PR companies to figure out which tools to use to find the influencers in the blogosphere. They are combing through the PageRank and Alexa rankings of online news sites and blog sites, figuring out who has the audience, who do they try to engage in a conversation about their clients. It's PR 101.

I am often asked "which blogs are the important ones, which ones should we be paying attention to, which ones should we be reading?" I can give you a decent list, but you should be able to figure that out yourselves.

In fact, you will come to know the important bloggers because they will be the ones that your peers share with you. As blogging moves out of the Geek communities and into many more sectors, that sharing principle is how influential blogs become created and distributed and that is how you will recognize the leaders.

Finding the right metrics to measure a blog's value as an influencer will never be as simple as measuring numbers of links, comments, trackbacks, Alexa rank, Technorati rank, etc. Because you have to understand the context of each blog and how it fits into its online communities. And you can only do that by being involved in those communities, online and offline.

Let me say it again: the best way to figure out who the important bloggers are in your sector is to go into the online communities as a participant. It'll become apparent very quickly.

I'm lucky to be be publishing a popular and influential news blog. Yes, I'm happy that the numbers are very good, but I don't look at them that often. The metrics that please me the most is when I hear back from readers, from emails, from comments.

What I love the best is when I meet people, from the trenches to the boardroom, and they tell me "I read you and I share you with my team." That's the kind of feedback that energizes me and makes me feel that I have one the best jobs in the valley.

Posted by Tom Foremski on March 10, 2006 4:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (4)

You know you are a journalist and not a blogger when...

. . .You start getting pitches from PR folk and companies.

Here is Robert Scoble--Microsoft's A-list blogger:

Who made me a gatekeeper? I don’t want that job.

Don’t send me more email pitches please. Don’t beg for me to try out your software. Don’t wait for me to blog about your company or your team or your product or you. That’s what comments here are for. You have direct access to anyone who is reading this post. Pitch in the comments! If your stuff is good, someone will try it out and say so. Maybe even me.

Please read more at Scobleizer...

BTW, I am always amazed when bloggers such as Mr Scoble and others, start becoming very irritated at the hundreds of emails they start getting from PR people and others wanting a plug. Welcome to the world of the journalist--we have to deal with this stuff every day, it comes with the territory.

And as for journalists who now have to blog for their employer:

Editors at the Washington Post are wrestling with discontent from reporters who think they should be paid extra for contributing to a group Web log. The Washington City Paper reported staffers on the Post's metro section asked for extra money after learning some prominent byliners were being paid for Web logs while they would not be.

Please read more at Bloggersblog...

I used to tell my colleagues in the mainstream media "start blogging as soon as you can otherwise you will have to blog for your employer and build its media brand instead of yours!" I don't like to have to say I told you so...

And as for extra cash for extra work? Forgetaboutit. It would just accelerate the decline of your newspaper because your newspaper cannot monetise your extra work anyway.

Posted by Tom Foremski on March 19, 2006 1:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Sunday CyberSalon: Blogger/Journalist elite discuss elitism...

By Tom Foremski for SiliconValleyWatcher

It was a glorious Sunday afternoon and I was taking a rare trip across to the East Bay to catch a panel on elitism in the media. Normally I try to stay away from such things on a sunny Sunday but my friend Suzanne Hartman, a well respected top PR maven from Seattle was in town, and she was delighted to take part in this gathering of our local blogger/media elite, discussing the elitism of mainstream media and the challenge from blogging.

I have to say that Sylvia Paull, the organiser of the CyberSalon, was very impressive in how she handled what very nearly became an anarchic free for all...:-)

Here is the setting, 5pm at the Hillside Club, open to anybody with $10, and hosting a collection of some of the most influential people in the mediasphere--on and off the podium:

A Cybersalon panel of experts – including NY Times technology reporter and author John Markoff, BlogHer cofounders and bloggers Jory des Jardins and Lisa Stone, blogger/podcaster/digital reporter Steve Gillmor, and freelance trade journalist Joshua Greenbaum -- takes a critical look at the concepts of expertise and elitism in the dynamic Web 2.0 world. Our moderator is Andrew Keen, founder of the AfterTV.com podcast.

But we could have picked randomly from the audience and assembled 20 similar panels from the people in the room.

Continue reading "Sunday CyberSalon: Blogger/Journalist elite discuss elitism..." »

Posted by Tom Foremski on March 20, 2006 2:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (1)

New rules: emerging mashups in C-level strategy and corporate comms

There is a very interesting trend emerging in how companies are dealing with the key issue of business strategy. The savvy ones are beginning to realize the benefits of combining the roles of business strategy with corporate communications.

And if you think about it--it makes perfect sense because strategy and communications are naturally linked. Yet in most organizations the corporate communications is run by the marketing group. In my opinion, corporate communications and business strategy should be one and the same. And I'm beginning to see some examples of companies implementing such positions.

Here are some examples of strategic and corporate communications roles being combined:

Continue reading "New rules: emerging mashups in C-level strategy and corporate comms" »

Posted by Tom Foremski on March 21, 2006 2:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Defending MySpace: WTF!!! Stay away from the kids let them express themselves any damn way they want!!!!!!

By Tom Foremski for SiliconValleyWatcher

say_what?.jpg I'm sick of all this criticism of the content on MySpace.com. All the fuddy duddies are warning of hell in a hand basket again.

I peeked in on MySpace more than a year ago and I was very impressed with the writing, the tone that teenagers could set with very few words. I found some great writing and I found some writing that could only be described as Joyceian in its form and ambition. I was super impressed. Yes, I didn't understand a lot of it--but I'm not the target audience.

Let the kids express themselves in the manner and way they want to. We are lucky that they feel able to express themselves in such a public way that we can occasionally look at it. They could lock it up and share it only among themselves.

I wonder what they would say if they read our ramblings about Web 2.0, and online business models, and Google this, that and the other?

Here is Scott Karp: Ticking time bomb.

Here is Nick Carr.

Update: Here is Dana Boyd on MySpace.

Here is some wisdom from a Lebanese writer K. Gibran:

Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you,

And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts.

For they have their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies but not their souls,

For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.

For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

Posted by Tom Foremski on March 21, 2006 1:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

How does public relations work in the blogosphere?

By Tom Foremski for SiliconValleyWatcher

I took part in a Bulldog Reporter teleconference this morning, on the subject of Blogger PR and it was a record turnout, more than 80 leading PR agencies and corporate communications organizations called in, each with maybe two dozen people or more at each location.

The panel included Shel Israel of It Seems to me, Alice Marie Marshall of Technoflak and Jeremy Pepper of Pop!PR blog. We covered a lot of ground in the ninety or so minutes and we were all agreed on most points. And that was because we all have extensive experience of being involved in the blogosphere (I prefer mediasphere).

We heard a lot of the same questions I hear wherever I go, such as: who are the influential bloggers? How do we deal with negative posts? How do we measure how we influence the influencers? And many more...

I was the only one on the panel that is working as a journalist blogger. I do not work in public relations, I am the target of public relations. And in that capacity I am happy to share what works, what doesn't, and offer some good practices for PR.

And we all agreed on one key point: the best way to find out who is influential in your sector is to get involved in the online conversations either by blogging, monitoring, or commenting.
(Please see SVW: The metrics of influence.)

Every company to some degree, is now a media company. Every company constantly publishes stories and has conversations: within its own organization, with its peers, with its communities, with its potential hires, with its customers. Make sure that those conversations are honest and truthful.

And let go of the out dated attitude of control, or the idea of controlling a message. You have no control over how the world will "tag" you or your company. The only place you have control is with yourself, and that means that you are consistent in the things that you say, the things that you converse with the world.

I love this blogging format and I love sharing what I've learned so far. And there is a tremendous amount that we are still learning, and a tremendous amount of answers that we don't yet have--and that adds to the fun part.

I will help individuals, non-profits and educational organizations become more effective communicators. And I will help PR agencies, corporations--any commercial organizations-- figure out how to tell their stories, and have honest, truthful conversations. And also how to best use these media technologies, such as blogging, RSS, and wikis, to enable direct communications.

I have no interest in spin or marketing: those are concepts that belong in the last century.

If you need me to give a talk, or come in and speak with your teams about the many questions and issues out there, then please contact the non-profit think tank, of which I am a founding fellow, at the Palo Alto based Society for New Communications Research and its founder, Jen McClure, at 650-387-8590. There is a fee for commercial organizations, which helps to fund our work with non-profits and educational institutes.

Posted by Tom Foremski on March 23, 2006 1:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (11) | TrackBacks (1)

Scoble and the A-list; a beatblog Howl; Strumpette launches with a trail of breadcrumbs...

By Tom Foremski for SiliconValleyWatcher

Microsoft A-list blogger Robert Scoble says he wants to be off the A-list blog roll--things are getting way too mean. Yep, that's true. I try not to be, it's too easy.

http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/2006/03/16/the-new-a-list/

. . .

I went to the "6 Poets at 6 Gallery" event Friday in North Beach because of my interest in the Beat Generation and its historic lineage to blogging, and thanks to Allison and Erica who got there early, we had the best standing room in the house, right next to the poets. It was a fun event and I met a lot of interesting people.

The rest of the evening, however, is less easily recalled. I remember something about expressing my own personal "Howl" at the world towards the end of the night...

I could claim to have been aroused by the passionate poetic visions so wonderfully recreated. But I think forgetting to eat during the extended social part of the evening had something to do with an interesting, but highly unrecommended odyssey back home.

Let it roll: A celebration of beat and blog literature; shoot-from-the-hip-one-take-journalism

The Beats: celebrating the obscenity of literature

. . .

Strumpette: A naked journal of the PR business is the new chick on the blogging block, smart and se.x.y, and that's just her writing. Her physical description of herself promises pert parts and other fine qualities of a pertinent nature.

And she has the top male PR bloggers eating out of her hand and she just launched(!) Amanda, don't you just feel some days that it is all just too easy :-) Or, are you really A-Man-Da!

Personally, I try to go for the more challenging muckraking--I figure I can do the easy stuff later...

[BTW, Steve Rubel couldn't, wouldn't, and doesn't need to take on Richard Edelman. He'll be there a long time...that's where I'd put my 25 bucks. I'll even put 25 on you making it to Edelman within the year, if you can build your pagerank :-)]

Posted by Tom Foremski on March 27, 2006 5:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Every company is now partly a technology-enabled media company--I explain in moving pictures

Andy Plesser, who organized the impressive Impact '05 conference at New York University in September, sent me this note about his plunge into blogging.

It includes a link to a video clip of myself (blush), I was on a panel with Joe Trippi, Howard Dean's political consultant and probably the most high profile political consultant in the US right now because of his experience with blogging and other media technologies, used to great effect during Mr Dean's presidential bid.

[Andy is a consumate professional and has been one of my earliest and staunchest supporters especially when I left the FT and ventured forth to test out the new media waters nearly two years ago...He and his family are also wonderful hosts whenever I'm in New York, which is not often enough.]

Continue reading "Every company is now partly a technology-enabled media company--I explain in moving pictures" »

Posted by Tom Foremski on March 27, 2006 3:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The importance of not being Earnest...

By Tom Foremski for SiliconValleyWatcher

Giovanni Rodriguez from Eastwick Communications, seems to think that Strumpette, the latest out-of-left-field blogging sensation written as a stylishly erotic PR blog, by Amanda Chapel--is a fake.

Maybe, but...does it matter? It is wonderfully entertaining and I sent a personal email of encouragement with some of my top blogging tips and said I'm happy to help out with any advice needed. I also said that I would respectfully keep confidential any private correspondence between us--unless agreed otherwise by both parties. [This has to become a basic rule of social etiquette in this day and age when anyone can publish.]

And, I would also keep quiet if Amanda were to be a single or group project. Either way my blogging advice remains the same.

Here is Giovanni's comment and my reply. Let me know what you think about my idea for creating a persona that several writers could share on a weekly basis...I might enjoy it, I'd give it a try, anybody else?

by: Giovanni Rodriguez on March 27, 2006 06:20 PM
Strumpette is a H-O-A-X. Sez me.

Do we have any evidence that "she" exists? Yes, there's a blog. Yes, there's email. What else?

Reply by: Tom Foremski - Silicon Valley Watcher
That's what you said last time G. You said SandhillSlave was a man and I said no way and I betcha I'm right.

Strumpette's Amanda might very well turn out to be a group hybrid personality--it would be fun either way. It is certainly entertaining so far. Maybe we could all take turns to be SandhillSlave or Amanda and play out a persona. Perhaps the real person could be hidden among a flurry of writers and able to protect their insider identity...?

What if we were to adopt a real or imaginary persona, one with a distinct blog voice/online personality, and several people agreed to write one blog post per day within the character of the blog persona? That could be interesting, and maybe even compelling content...

So for example, if Amanda is a composite of several persons then we could have several writers randomly writing as Amanda... They could be semi-fictional semi-factual stories for entertainment purposes only...and they might even protect the anonymity of insiders?

What do you think G? Could you pretend to be Amanda, or an Angela or an Angus, for one day? I bet you could do it with your theatrical background... you could probably manage all three :-)

Posted by Tom Foremski on March 28, 2006 1:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (2)

Case study: The elegant social engineering design of Strumpette wreaks havoc in the PR BlogoSphere

Amanda Chapel is a real character if not a real person, and the content on Strumpette is real. In an inaugural post, Ms Chapel baited the top PR blogger Steve Rubel who works at Edelman.

This is becoming an interesting case study on how to react to negative news/opinions, especially if one or more of the participants are fictional. Usually, the strategy would be to focus on the source (Strumpette) and correct any inaccuracies, address any negative comments right there at the source through comments and trackbacks.

Edelman's people have tried to do that but so far, have failed to do much that isn't fueling things the wrong way. And that is largely because of the marvelous social engineering design of Strumpette. Take a look at "Edelman Gang Gets Rough with Strumpette"

We could get some best practices out of this very interesting situation, one that has an array of moral and ethical high grounds occupied and fought over with zest and extra-hardened fingernail polish...:-) In which some of the participants could be of questionable gender and questionable morals. Let the questions continue--it is marvelously entertaining--but is anybody working in PR?

Posted by Tom Foremski on March 29, 2006 4:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

We need a Google AdSense on steroids: The Grand Challenge of Internet 2.0

By Tom Foremski for SiliconValleyWatcher

I've been really enjoying my job lately. I've been writing a lot about the open source movement and the changes it is having on the enterprise software market. Ingres is an excellent example of how the most innovative business model thinkers are taking advantage of the market opportunities.

I feel that I am often in a unique and fortunate position to move quickly on stories. And that is great for a journalist blogger--which is how I define myself.

What is also very interesting is that I don't have a business model to defend, or a boss looking over my shoulder. That means I am free to call things as I see them.

For example, I've been taking on the least progressive elements of the PR industry in my attack on the press release in its current format. I've offered a design for "new media" press release which has inspired many people to create totally new types of news releases.

The role of journalism - professional and citizen

It's not that I'm the only one that sees things "as I see them" because many others understand my positions. But I often am able to give voice to those that cannot speak directly. And that is one of the major failings of "citizen journalism."

There are members of our society that need to have independent journalists tell their stories. And that is what professional journalists do every day--they help our communities tell their stories.

That is our mandate as journalists and nothing has changed in this new media world--except that the delivery mechanism doesn't rely on a newspaper delivery. It's all about the content not the delivery mechanism: paper or plastic (or digital)? It sounds ridiculous to make such distinctions when you think about it.

Dan Gillmor, the great champion of citizen journalism is right when he says his audience knows more about a news subject than he does. But they cannot tell the story. They would get in so much trouble if they wrote about what goes on at work under their own names. That is why journalists cultivate contacts over many years, so that those contacts feel safe in telling their stories.

Yes, there is no transparency in such cases, I will not reveal sources to whom I have pledged anonymity. But it is an important way that journalists can communicate news and information that could not come out into the open in any other way. And the more information is open and shared, the better it is for all.

Media is how society solves big problems

Media is how society thinks, it is how it debates and discusses important issues. That is why it is important to have a professional media class--supported by a citizens media army in the form of blogging and fact checking. That is a scenario for a high quality mediasphere.

And we need a high quality mediasphere because we have some towering problems ahead to solve. Avian flu is the most immediate, but there is a long line of equally disturbing challenges ahead for us that require high quality information widely distributed.

We have one Mediasphere

A couple of Sundays ago, Al Saracevic, deputy business editor at the San Francisco Chronicle was at the CyberSalon in Berkeley. He asked the assembly, [which featured many of the blog/media demi-gods of our times,] can you figure out a way to pay for him and his editorial teams? Al is now a blogger, and he understands that both blogging and newspaper journalism share one mediasphere--and they share the lack of a viable business model.

Blogging is not disrupting journalism--that is a false comparison. Blogging enhances journalism, it contributes to journalism, and it helps disseminate important information in a way that no other way has managed before. This combines to produce a higher quality mediasphere -- at least for now. The problem is the decimation of the professional media by the marketing money flooding toward search engine marketing.

Our current media business models cannot carry the information load because they are being decimated faster than the ice caps are melting. What happens if the old media dies before the new media learns to walk is something that I have been warning about (thanks to Sam Whitmore) for almost nine months. And it is getting worse.

I know we can solve the challenges that face us, because humanity has incredible capabilities. But we must solve the most important Internet problem: how do we recover (pay for) the value of high quality media content? Right now, all the money is in aggregation of news/content, such as Google News, and pennies for the creators of content.

This is the Gordian knot of the Internet, figure out the value-recovery-mechanism that rewards high quality content and pays for more high-quality-content. Are there any Alexanders out there?

This is a virtuous cycle--one that Google AdSense took a baby step towards solving and then stopped.

We need a Super-duper-supercalafragalistic-AdSense that can reward quality content with real $$$ that can lead to investment in yet more quality content.

We don't have that value-recovery-mechanism and without that we are in serious trouble. Because we have no sponsor for journalism.

Selling products by advertising around journalism used to be a cost of sales. Now, it is far, far cheaper to sell products/services around the search box.

How will we pay for the professional journalism that we need? Solve this problem and you will inherit a chapter in Wikipedia. And I'll commision a statue in your (best) likeness.

- - -
Update:

- What about a virtuous trackback? - Could this be one way to pay for content?[Read]

- - -

Posted by Tom Foremski on April 4, 2006 2:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (12) | TrackBacks (0)

The virtuous trackback: A proposal for paying for content

By Tom Foremski for SiliconValleyWatcher

SVW reader Todd Defren has proposed a micropayments system for content, but I don't think such a thing would work because people don't like being nickel-and-dimed for content.
[Please see SVW: We need a Google AdSense on Steroids to pay for content.]
Also, payment for content implies that if you don't pay you don't get to read the content. I wouldn't want to lock up my content behind a subscription firewall I'd like it to be free to roam the internet.

However, what about a type of commercial trackback? What if linking to a blog post you agreed to run a small text link advert at the bottom of the post as part of the blog link policy?

For example, if someone were to write a blog post and link to this post. The blog software would ping this post and then send back a text advert link. So at the bottom of the post linking to this one would be something like this:

[Links in this post are from: Silicon Valley Watcher, Scripting.com, WikiPedia.

These links are sponsored by: Dreamhost--for all your web hosting needs.; "The Power to Predict : How Real Time Businesses Anticipate Customer Needs". ]

The blog software would assemble this bottom panel automatically. It would be a type of Google AdSense advertising network that is "stuck" to the content and follows the content wherever it is reffered to or quoted from. And, it could be done in such a way that everybody could share in the revenues.

For example, if one of my readers writes a blog post and refrences my post which might be sponsored by Amazon and thus an Amazon text link appears on any reffering blog post. If that link on the other blog post generates a sale for Amazon, I get a piece of the sale but so does the other blog site, and so on down and up the line.

In this way, a popular blog post would be able to have broad distribution of its content and its associated text advertising link. Those blogs reffering to the original post would bring attention to the original post and thus are creating value. They get to share in the monetisation of that value through any clicks/sales on the text ad link.

The virtuous trackback

Could you scam/spam something like this? I don't know. There would be nothing gained from just blogging other posts hoping to get affiliate clicks/sales unless those original posts carried some intrinsic value. And bloggers agreeing to such a setup would know that they are helping support the creation of the original content, thus creating a virtuous cycle in which good/great content is rewarded and monetised and reinvested in producing yet more content. It's the virtuous trackback :-)

Another aspect is that because of permalink, one popular blog post would essentially create an advertising network across many pages on the internet and it would be permanently there. Thus, the original sponsor of the original blog post could be changed, and that would be reflected in all the other, connected blog posts.

What do you think? Maybe we can get Dave Winer to comment on this since he is the inventor of RSS and trackbacks. What do you say Dave? Can you give us a commercial virtuous trackback so that we can pay for content without going to micropayments?

Links in this post are from: Silicon Valley Watcher, Scripting.com, WikiPedia.

These links are sponsored by: Dreamhost--for all your web hosting needs.; "The Power to Predict : How Real Time Businesses Anticipate Customer Needs".

Posted by Tom Foremski on April 7, 2006 12:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

Are PR companies tempted to make false promises on "new media" communications?

By Tom Foremski for SiliconValleyWatcher

Startups and large corporations are crying out for "new media communications" and PR companies are happy to offer their services. However, very, very few of them have the domain expertise in-house to work in the new media world of blogging, and other online "conversations."

Mike Manuel, from Voce Communications states things well in this article on Media Guerrilla: The Social Media Services Gap

Bottom line, while there are some exceptions, IMHO *very* few PR firms today can effectively balance and execute an integrated comms program -- meaning one that blends new and old media. It's not a dig, I just think a lot of people, a lot of firms are grappling with a changing media environment, a dearth of in-house expertise and evolving client needs/expectations -- basically, industry transition.

A related link from Tom Murphy on PR Opinions: Do PR people need new media skills?

Some questions to ask your PR company to evaluate its ability to work in new media communications:

Continue reading "Are PR companies tempted to make false promises on "new media" communications?" »

Posted by Tom Foremski on April 9, 2006 4:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

The new rules of newspapers. . . and some of the old rules

By Tom Foremski for SiliconValleyWatcher

Newspapers need to get away from thinking that their distribution mechanism (newsprint) defines them. The distinction between print and online has to go away.

News organizations should see themselves as content creators. Print and electronic media are the distribution channels for their news content.

And there is no sense in locking up the content by asking readers to pay for it because we live in a world that is one big scramble for attention. We've realized that in a world with 500 cable channels, a gazillion Internet channels (web sites) and our families, friends, boss, colleagues, (and our internal) clamor for our attention is huge.

That is why if I can get two minutes of your daily attention on Silicon Valley Watcher that is great. But there is a responsibility here. Attention is a scarce resource that is why I feel a responsibility to provide something of value because I am taking time away from your family, friends, boss, etc--all these very important people in your life.

I don't want a "sticky site" I want readers to come in and out as quickly as possible. I want them to always leave feeling they got more than their time investment.

Old rules still apply

I don't want to add to the noise, I want to provide original, you-can-only-get-it-here scoops, interviews, insight and sometimes, fun stuff. And I want it available to everyone and anyone with an interest in such things.

These have been the traditional goals of newspapers for hundreds of years. The new media operates on the same principles, it is just that the distribution channels have multiplied; newsprint or online--it should not matter.

Yet in most newspapers or news magazines--the online journalists and editors have been a separate group and very much second-class citizens. That is changing rapidly but the ingrained discrimination means that many print journalists dislike becoming "online" journalists. And the blogging revolution now means that these journalists have to interact with their communities--which is even more work on top of already low salaries.That is why this transition to the new media world is tearing apart the professional media sector.

It will regroup, and it will reform, and it will become a better professional media sector because we will realize media is all about the battle for attention and professional media people are good at grabbing attention. This is a valuable talent for any business and that is why news groups will be valuable businesses--once we've gone through this transition.

Some of the new rules

In order to grab attention you need unfettered distribution and easy access. Newspapers should be available for free in public places such as restaurants and coffee shops. In fact, they already are--a lot of diners and coffee shops have a central basket of newspapers that were left behind by patrons.

But the format of newspapers and news magazines will have to change. They have to become showcases of their overall content available through any and many electronic means of distribution.

The business model can still include subscriptions, and news stands can still sell newspapers and magazines but that will be just one avenue for revenues. The business model will include many different revenue streams, of which some we know and others will be invented.

News organisations will sell attention instead of papers. And the electronic forms of distribution will enable them to sell far more different types of products and services than just printed adverts...(that's the secret of the new media :-)

- - -
[PS: I'm away most of this week at Tibco's user conference in Florida--full report when I get back.]

Posted by Tom Foremski on April 11, 2006 1:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

PageRank assassination and other nefarious online activities

By Tom Foremski for SiliconValleyWatcher

I've been thinking a lot about the many ways companies can engage in new types of competitive battles for the pole position on that first page of Google's search engine results--which is defined by your PageRank.

Over on ZDNet, I've been writing about the potential for PageRank assassination and other nefarious acts of information warfare:

I'm not an advocate of search engine optimization techniques--beyond the basics. Because I believe you should optimize your site for your customers and not the spiderbots. Let the search engines optimize themselves to find the right content--it's their job.

However, the techniques of search engine optimization have potential application in the reverse: they can be used for PageRank assassination. [PageRank is the relative importance Google assigns to a web site] You can apply SEO techniques to potentially cripple an online competitor by making it seem as if it is engaging in forbidden SEO practices.

Google has strict policies on what you can and cannot do to make yourself visible to its spiderbots. And other search engines also try to root out web sites that are using SEO techniques to try and trick them into a higher PageRank.

Google will dumb-down the PageRank of a web site if it believes it is engaging in non-prescribed SEO practices. And it has even banned the web site of a large corporation, BMW in Germany, to show that small and large companies can be banned from its index.

The potential for competitors taking potshots at each others' online reputation is just too tempting. And such activities can be easily disguised.

And there are many other strategies of online competitive warfare that could tempt companies, such as renting a zombie network for an afternoon or two to mount a DNS attack on a competitor.

But it doesn't have to be sneaky. Public companies are vulnerable to scrutiny by the media and investors. A competitor could encourage the scrutiny of certain weak business groups, as an example. Bringing attention to problem business groups within a competitor can be easily done in many ways . . .
[Please continue reading . . .]

Posted by Tom Foremski on April 23, 2006 11:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

New media analysts are slow to embrace new media

By Tom Foremski for SiliconValleyWatcher

Wednesday morning I took part in a PRSA (Public Relations Society of America) teleconference organized by Barbara French of the head of Tekrati, which tracks industry analyst firms. On the panel with me was David Schatsky, president of JupiterKagan--the new company recently formed when KaganResearch acquired JupiterResearch.

The topic was: The Changing Influence Of High Tech Analysts in a New Media Age and we discussed some of the blurring distinctions between analyst, journalist, and industry bloggers. Ms French shared some interesting statistics: only about 5 per cent of the analyst community are engaged in blogging out of more than 4,000 analysts.

The number of analysts blogging seems very low to me and indicative that the analyst community does not appreciate the value of publishing their own blogs. I'm sure that will change over time, but for now, Ms French says that the number of blogs is steady although there is some churn as new blogs replace ones that have become dormant.

I'm surprised that more analysts are not blogging because it is by far the best way to establish your thought leadership and expertise. And I think that the analyst community does not yet understand this fact: blogging is by far and away the most honest form of self-promotion because if you can't walk the walk, talk the talk then it will be very readily apparent.

So is it that many analysts are afraid of being "found out" as being less expert than they really are?

Continue reading "New media analysts are slow to embrace new media" »

Posted by Tom Foremski on April 26, 2006 1:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

The new media press release is coming!

By Tom Foremski for SiliconValleyWatcher

Yes!!! Put-this-in-your-pipe all you "Die! Press Release Die! Die! Die!" reactionaries...

This just in from Todd Defren over at Shift Communications' PR Squared blog.

I received a note from the "rising star" staffer who's in the graduate PR program at Boston University, in response to the latest series of posts.
She wanted me to know that our "Press Release of the Future" (and Tom Foremski's inspirational rant) had been passed around and discussed in class, and that the professor recently informed his students that their Final Exam would include questions on this "PR 2.0" topic.

From: Already making a difference.

Silicon Valley Watcher - reporting on the business of technology and media

Former Financial Times journalist Tom Foremski and team reporting on the business of technology and media . Silicon Valley is becoming a Tech Media Valley.

New Rules Communications Archives

March 10, 2006

NYU is tracking newspaper bloggers

The metrics of influence--the mania for measuring the blogosphere

March 19, 2006

You know you are a journalist and not a blogger when...

March 20, 2006

Sunday CyberSalon: Blogger/Journalist elite discuss elitism...

March 21, 2006

New rules: emerging mashups in C-level strategy and corporate comms

Defending MySpace: WTF!!! Stay away from the kids let them express themselves any damn way they want!!!!!!

March 23, 2006

How does public relations work in the blogosphere?

March 27, 2006

Scoble and the A-list; a beatblog Howl; Strumpette launches with a trail of breadcrumbs...

Every company is now partly a technology-enabled media company--I explain in moving pictures

March 28, 2006

The importance of not being Earnest...

March 29, 2006

Case study: The elegant social engineering design of Strumpette wreaks havoc in the PR BlogoSphere

April 4, 2006

We need a Google AdSense on steroids: The Grand Challenge of Internet 2.0

April 7, 2006

The virtuous trackback: A proposal for paying for content

April 9, 2006

Are PR companies tempted to make false promises on "new media" communications?

April 11, 2006

The new rules of newspapers. . . and some of the old rules

April 23, 2006

PageRank assassination and other nefarious online activities

April 26, 2006

New media analysts are slow to embrace new media

The new media press release is coming!