I feel very honored to be ranked #4 by LinkedIn as one of the "top 10 media writers of the year" in the debut of its "Top Voices of the year" list that named 80 writers across eight industry sectors.

I also feel a little uncomfortable about drawing attention to such accolades as do the majority of former newspaper reporters. We don't mind if someone else blows our horn but it feels crass doing it yourself. In today's media world that attitude is a handicap because if you can't handle a certain level of self-promotion no one will see your work.

The early Blogosphere...

When I left the Financial Times more than ten years ago to become a "journalist blogger" I suddenly fell into a very small, very strange community of writers I hardly knew before. It felt great to be part of this tiny and very feisty band of bloggers with Robert Scoble, Om Malik, Renee Blodgett, Dan Farber, Anil Dash, Doc Searls, Craig Newmark, Andy Lark, Dennis Howlett, Nick Denton, David Galbraith, Dan and Steve Gillmor, Jeff Clavier, etc (please see: Original Thinkers list).

I marveled at the variety of forms and media formats that "blogging" allowed -- it seemed as if it were a superset of all other media forms rather than a subset because it could include them all.

And I marveled at the pure meritocracy of the blogging environment. I could write something at midnight and by the time I woke seven hours later the Blogosphere -- as we called social media in those days -- had discovered it without my having to do anything, had picked it up, picked it apart and carried it further afield into other communities, other blog posts.

I marveled that if I wrote something of value the world did indeed beat a path to a better mousetrap! 

That early blogger culture certainly wasn't shy about self-promotion -- there was always a need for some braggadocio -- but it didn't matter because only the good posts rose to the top.

I came to terms with self-promotion realizing that it is OK if I have something of value. The worst self-promoters are the ones that are noisy and empty.

Blogging and bragging...

Today's online media world is far removed from those early days of blogging and the noise level requires certain level of self-promotion. But I see many people -- not just former newspaper reporters -- struggling with the most simple of promotional activities such as tweeting out a link to a recent article, or mentioning it on their Facebook and LinkedIn pages.

Blogging and bragging today go hand in hand and like it or not you have to do both. Here's how you can deal with the discomfort:

- Focus on producing content that is of value to your community. If it doesn't waste people's time but makes their life better, easier, maybe more wonderful? Is it of service to others rather than blatantly self-serving? Then it is perfectly fine to bring attention to it because you are helping others.

- I'm developing a concept called Media as a Service (MaaS) defined as: editorial content that is of service to others in some way; it doesn't waste people's time; it doesn't try to "engage" for engagement sake; it doesn't chase the fashionable content marketing trends of the day... If it passes these "MaaS" criteria then promoting it is fine and no one will complain.

- "Content marketing" fails because it looks and reads like marketing. It is self-serving rather than being of service. Every company is a media company but media companies don't focus on themselves -- they provide a media service. 

MaaS media is the best media

- When you write a blog post or column or share anything online -- make sure it offers something of real value, that it has originality, and it serves others more than it serves you. 

- If you have nothing that fits MaaS criteria wait until you do.If you have nothing original to say don't say anything. Don't waste people's time. Wait. You will come up with something good.

- Trust your instincts rather than trying to second guess what others would like. If you find something interesting and useful it is likely others will too.

- Write in the moment, write because you have to, even at 3am because you feel you'll explode/implode or you'll drive yourself crazy if you don't. 

- Write because it clears room for more ideas. Writing is an innovation engine. 

- Write for your audience and especially write for an audience of one -- yourself. Because then you've made at least one (v. important) reader happy. 

Spiritual rewards...

The more you do it the more you'll discover that the act of writing and publishing is an extraordinarily fulfilling activity. There is a professional reward but there is also a spiritual reward that is rarely spoken about. Try it and you'll see what I mean.

Maas Media is the best media!

Charlene Li, founder of the Altimeter market research group, has a new book coming out in March, "The Engaged Leader." She spoke about the book and her views on social media's impact on marketing, at an event organized by the local chapter of the American Marketing Association, at Weber Shandwick San Francisco.

Here's my notes:

Charlene Li gave a presentation that focused on a message of engagement between brands and consumers. She argued that brands should seek "intimate" relationships with people. The theme of "engagement" in marketing is a signature idea at Altimeter. Li's colleague, Brian Solis also pushes this idea in his book, "Engage!"

Li said everyone in a business should share stories because sharing helps to start a relationship with consumers and relationships lead to loyal customers. She said social media is far from dead and that we have not even begun, there is much more to be done.

She spoke about the silos inside organizations and how they are an obstacle to a gaining an accurate profile of a customer. Companies should know their customer maps — how people become customers, what was their journey?  But customer data is fragmented across silos and unavailable. And there are tens of thousands of data points and hundreds of data sources, for each potential customer, which ones matter the most? 

She said culture was the most important obstacle in transforming a company into an engaged organization. Her forthcoming book looks at the vital role that leaders have in transforming a company culture and creating a company culture that's engaged with customers.

Foremski's Take: I'm a big fan of Charlene's, and I agree on many things such as the need for businesses to use social media, I think of it all as "media" and every company is a media company. 

When Charlene speaks about the importance of creating strong, even "intimate" relationships between brands and customers, I shudder.

It's challenging enough for me to maintain my relationships with my kids, my friends, my colleagues. I can't handle anymore relationships and especially not from brands.

It seems almost unethical for marketers to demand metrics of engagement such as Facebook likes, or social shares from their customers. It takes attention away from their lives and real relationships with the people who support them everyday.

A brand is a label that's attached to something you own. People know it's not a relationship because relationships are personal.

A relationship is a friendship and friends ask favors of each other. Will a brand help me pack my things and move apartments? Will it look after my kids for a few hours in an emergency?

There is no way a CEO can have a personal relationship with every employee let alone a large brand with its customers. And a brand's biggest fans are its most engaged customers but they come for free, there's no need to engage more.

Business is a service...

Brands should not actively seek relationships, they should sit quietly and not interrupt people constantly, but always be available when you need them. Business is a service, be a humble servant.

If a brand could somehow help me strengthen my relationship with my kids, parents, neighbors, then that would be the best form of engaged relationship building. If it could help me with that — instead of competing with those relationships — I would love that brand to pieces.

Below, Luca Penati West Coast GM and Mediaco Lead at Weber Shandwick, welcomes SFAMA guests to the new "Church" meeting room.

The future of marketing...

If we take our technologies of personalization and predictive business analytics to their ultimate point, we won't need marketing or consumers.  Brands' products will just show up at your door and it will all be perfect: a perfect fit, perfect timing, perfect style, and perfect price.

Perfectly tuned to you is the ultimate future of a personal customer experience. Your brand will know all about you, and know exactly when you need it, before you knew it and all with frictionless auto-debit. 

You will marvel at the perfectly synchronized nature of this caring, observant, AI-driven world that you live in, that just now delivered exactly what you needed without you having to even think of it! You didn't even know you wanted it until it showed up!

You will gradually forget what the experience of "wanting" something feels like. That nagging frustration of wanting that thing, that brand, yet knowing it is all a hollow and manufactured desire – will be gone. Life will become a "wantless" experience and free up room for other thoughts.

In our lifetime we will see the end of materialism and the consumer experience of owning and wanting. 

We will be liberated from the onerous work of being a consumer:  having to go through the research process of finding something to want, and then thinking about having it, then searching for it, going out, going online, buying it, bringing it home, opening the box, throwing the box away. Finding the box, sending the thing in the box back, getting a new box. It's a lot of work being a consumer. 

From "want" to "get." From consumer to person. Our future predictive technologies of commerce [and healthcare] will free-up years of real life.

The end of marketing and consumerism will give us the time to explore this curious human experience of being — rather than buying.

Sam Biddle at ValleyWag from Gawker Media, confidently predicted that for the first time in five years,  Mike Arrington, the co-founder of Techcrunch Disrupt conference, would not make an appearance at this year's New York conference.

However, take a look at this video still from Techcrunch.com. That certainly looks like Mr. Arrington in the white shirt, on stage with Bill Gurley, VC with Benchmark Capital:

You wouldn't know that Mr. Arrington is there because there is no mention of him by Techcrunch reporters, or on the Disrupt web site, which is strange because he featured prominently in past Disrupt conferences.

There's no mention of him in the post by Romain Dillett about Mr. Gurley's conversation with Mr. Arrington: Benchmark's Bill Gurley: "Uber Is Growing Faster Than eBay Did"

Has there been an edict to Techcrunch writers not to mention their founder? It seems that way.

It's understandable that a professional organization such as AOL, would seek to distance itself from being associated with the very public life, of a highly personal and unpleasant nature.

Reports that Apple has purchased streaming music startup Lala is bad news for companies in the crowded streaming music sector.

Apple does not have a streaming music service and has been struggling to defend its lead in online downloads. By acquiring Lala, Apple is signaling that it intends to be a major player in the fast growing streaming music sector.

It also shows that Apple is betting on a unique approach towards streaming music services and one that better fits into its current iTunes business model.

Lala offers customers a lifetime license to stream songs from its extensive music library for 10 cents per song. This is a complimentary model to Apple's iTunes store that offers downloads of songs for 99 cents each.

Apple moves against Microsoft and Spotify

The Lala deal is Apple's first major foray into music since iTunes music store was established in April 2003. And it shows that it won't give up a leading position in the music industry to numerous competitors, such as Microsoft with its Zune music subscription plan, and Spotify, the formidable European music streaming company, which is preparing to enter the US market.

Spotify has become very popular in Europe with a monthly subscription plan and an advertising supported free-option.

Ad supported music trouble

In the US there are numerous startups offering advertising supported music streaming services. Advertising supported music streaming, however, faces challenges as license fees rise.

With a paid-model such as that offered by Lala, Apple will be able to offer better licensing deals to the hard hit music industry than revenues from competitors with advertising supported music streaming services.

This will be a key differentiator in the forthcoming battles over subscribers to music streaming services. While free services may initially win listeners, it is not a viable long term model.

Lala's user interface is already very similar to iTunes, which will make it easy for Apple to win new customers. And the 10 cent lifetime streaming license will appeal to people that like to own music, as iTunes customers like to own music downloads.

Unlike music subscription plans where access to music stops when payment stops, Lala users retain full access. Why waste $15 per month on a subscription plan when for the same money you can have lifetime access to 150 songs a month, and build a growing library of music?

Again, Apple has a key differentiator that competitors lack.

Acceptance...

The Lala acquisition is an indication that large numbers of Internet users have grown comfortable with streaming music as a viable way of listening to music. The educational effort that Lala and other startups have done, now enables Apple to use its clout and take advantage of its long partnership with the music industry.

- - -
Please see my interview with Bill Nguyen, founder of Lala Oct, 2008:

LaLa Launches Next Generation Music Web Service

Also from Dec 2006:

Lala music swap site expands into streaming live performances

The former Financial Times reporter has 9 media sites, such as the gadget oriented gizmodo, media focused gawker, and science fiction site io9.

Mr Denton has often said that these are not "blogs" but in a memo obtained by Poynter.org, he writes:

Just a shade off 400m pageviews in November. Damn. Close. To put that in perspective, Los Angeles Times is somewhere between 100m and 200m. New York Times is about 1bn. In web traffic, we're somewhere in between. Not bad for a bunch of scrappy bloggers!

What's not clear is if advertisers value the traffic to Gawker sites the same as those to the newspapers. Even so, with traffic in between the New York Times and Los Angeles Times, the Gawker Media collection is doing very well and with much lower operating costs than at the two newspapers.

Gawker's writers are rewarded based on pageviews, a model that other online news sites have also adopted. But it looks like the metric is shifting towards increasing the number of unique visitors.

In the same memo, Mr Denton writes:

...we do need to recognize that not all pageviews are created equal. A slideshow view is not worth as much as a click from Twitter or Facebook or Digg which brings a new reader to us. Expect more emphasis in 2010 on clicks through from external sites -- and the "uniques" which measure of the number of people that we reach. We can't just satisfy our existing regulars; we have to recruit new ones.

Here is a list of Gawker sites and their latest traffic numbers: Gawker Media Network

Most of traditional media remains in a complete meltdown, dragged down by high costs, old ways of thinking, and legacy work processes.

He says there is no future in these media business models:

1) Print advertising will never come back. There are just too many options for advertisers today and too much pressure on rates. Sadly, success in print will be measured in single-digit declines, forever.

2) Online advertising will never offset those declines nor save print. There's far too much competition online and far too much available inventory; and

3) Users will not pay for content, unless they're convinced it has immediate and tangible value.

Yet he points to the success of: "Huffington Post, Politico, Drudge, GigaOm, TechCrunch, and other media enterprises on the web have shown us a path forward."

The last time I looked those media companies rely heavily on advertising.

Mr Byrne does not say how his new company will make money:

It will be a network of niche products for the business audience with an emphasis on mobile applications.

Focusing on a business audience is smart because they already pay for information. But how will C-Change create a competitive advantage over Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, and other business oriented media publishers? They have considerable resources and access to timely information. He will need a real-time capability. [Please see: Groovy: Real-Time Data Could Aid Media Companies - SVW]

C-Change can move more quickly than larger publishers and it could potentially attract enough users that it might one day be a good acquisition candidate.

But matching a top BusinessWeek editor's salary (est. over $500K) with the revenues from online content will be challenging. Not to mention salaries for his team of editors and technologists.

I wish Mr Byrne well but even new media is suffering along with the old. Most new media sites have to branch out into conferences to pay the bills, plus research reports. It's not easy to make a decent living --- even if you aren't old media and loaded with legacy costs and legacy thinking.

Many of the latest new media companies are taking a low-end approach to content creation, such as Demand Media which tries to commission articles related to popular search terms and pays rock-bottom rates because that's the value in media content these days. In an advertising pageview world a pageview is a pageview whether it is quality media or low-end machine generated media.

Business media markets are far more lucrative than for general media but even there we will see companies competing heavily and undercutting each other. Because they can.

C-Change's operating costs will certainly be lower than for incumbent competitors but there is still one very large cost: marketing.

Getting attention is harder today than ever before and the noise level is going to increase exponentially because everyone has access to the same publishing tools.

As Mr Byrne says:

"We're going to see a media boom in the next three years, the launch of tens of thousands of new media entrepreneurs on the Internet."

Launching a new media startup today is very challenging. It will be interesting to see what C-Change will come up with.

It's always good to see people trying out new media business models. Because if they are successful it means others can follow and that means quality journalism is preserved -- we all win.

- - -

Please see:

Ex-BizWeek Editor John Byrne's New Company Has a Name, but No Product

John Byrne to Navigate the Stormy Media Seas - Jason Fell - Blogs emedia and Technology @ FolioMag.com

John Byrne Focused on Content, Curation and Community - Advertising and Marketing Blog - AdPulp.com

There was a time when America Online, as it was known back in the early 1990s could have become the Internet if it had opened up its platform. It was the largest online network and had incredible momentum under the leadership of Steve Case.

Later, in 2006 when AOL opened up its platform, at a time when creating a safe walled-garden for its users would have been a great service, a great time to build a social network.

And let's not mention the acquisition of Time-Warner. That was a huge disaster and its announcement in 2000 signaled the end of the dotcom boom and the start of the dotbomb.

Now AOL has a new content strategy. Emily Steel at the Wall Street Journal reports:

Instead of waiting to sell ads until an article or Web video is produced, AOL--which has scores of niche sites, such as beauty and fashion site Stylelist, in addition to its AOL brand--says it plans to offer marketers the chance to work with its editorial team to create custom content.

AOL says that its ad model will allow advertisers to be affiliated with the content but not control what is written or created.

This isn't going to work. There is no way advertisers will want to pay for being "affiliated" with content if it is critical or is negative in sentiment, and over which they have no control.

If it works at all, it will result in bland, beige content that will not get a second click from readers once they get a first look.

And this is CEO Tim Armstrong's best plan to revamp the company as a content powerhouse?

Why doesn't he just republish press releases and advertorials? There's tons of those and they are free.

A low-end content strategy

The Wall Street Journal says that sources report that Mr Armstrong owns a 20% stake in Demand Media and Associated Content. These companies are trying to produce niche media on a mass scale by paying attention to what people are search for and what advertisers on Google Adsense will pay for.

He is attempting to bring a similar system to AOL. It will pay freelancers to produce specific articles based on how much advertising it can sell next to the content.

Mr Armstrong joined AOL in March 2009. He was previously head of Google's North American and Latin American advertising group. It's not surprising that he favors an automated news gathering and production system closely coupled with advertising -- that's how Google's AdSense system works.

But Google AdSense is not that great at monetizing content. But that doesn't matter too much because it doesn't have to pay for the content it automatically matches content on third-party sites with contextual ads.

How will AOL's system improve the monetization of content? Freelancers will be expected to produce content for free and then get paid later. Will they receive more money than if they published the content themselves and used AdSense to monetize it? That's clearly the promise.

But why would advertisers pay more to advertise on the AOL platform if they can use an ad network such as AdSense and advertise next to similar content? And they wouldn't need to become involved in the creation of content, as in the AOL approach.

It doesn't make sense.

- - -
Please see:

Business Insider gets a copy of AOL email welcoming new writers:

The email, from an editor at AOL site RentedSpaces.com, encourages writers to produce 300-500 word stories fast in a style that's "colorful, concise, [and] opinionated." But he doesn't want them to go too far.
"We're not Gawker, so be friendly and authoritative."
He tells them stories don't have to be based on original reporting. He writes, "All we want to know for a pitch is: what's the story, who broke it (AP, NYT, BW, Bloomberg,etc.), and how you will advance the story if you are following someone else's reporting," reads the email.
When writers file their copy, they're expected to "Include 140 characters for a Tweet or Facebook update."
AOL wants its editors to write in a way that will help Google will find their stories -- that they're "search engine optimized." For example, the RentedSpaces editor tells his staffers to "make sure the first few words and first graf contain the critical keywords."

The impetus for the discussions came from News Corp, owner of newspapers ranging from the Wall Street Journal of the US to The Sun of the UK, said a person familiar with the situation, who warned that talks were at an early stage.

However, the Financial Times has learnt that Microsoft has also approached other big online publishers to persuade them to remove their sites from Google's search engine.

This is inline with my analysis from a week ago: Murdoch Will Negotiate Payment For Access To Basket Of Content With GOOG et al

MediaWatch Analysis Part II: Google Has More To Lose Than Murdoch

The way this story has been leaked means that Rupert Murdoch is likely setting up a bidding war between Microsoft and Google. Will Google allow Microsoft to walk away with the index to News Corp. content and quite possibly the index for other large media companies?

Google will have to bid against Microsoft because it has more to lose than News Corp and other media companies have in losing Google traffic ( it's traffic that holds little value because they can't easily convert it to revenue.)

If Google is perceived to be lacking in its index then it risks losing trust among users that it is the best place to go for search. That's risking its most valuable asset -- its brand.

For News Corp. and other newspaper companies, charging for the index and also putting some content behind a paywall, could offer a way to stop the slide in their print business. Free online newspapers are competing with their own print version.

Some newspapers are experimenting with making online subscriptions more expensive than subscriptions to the newspaper.

For example, the Newport Daily News has begun charging more for the online version of its 12,000 circulation newspaper. Nieman Journalism Lab reports:

Want home delivery of the print paper? That's $145 a year. Want home delivery and online access? That's $245. And if you want just online access -- to an electronic edition that duplicates the appearance of the print product -- it's a whopping $345.

Just because news has been free for many years doesn't mean it will remain that way. The Internet used to be advertising free and people said that users would never accept online advertising.

If charging for news content doesn't work then there will be fewer news stories being produced because free news doesn't pay the bills. The only "free" news available will be that produced by organizations representing a client -- advertorials in various disguises.

Spotify is coming to the US and it is building a war chest. Recent reports say that it is close to securing as much as $50 million in new funding, giving it a valuation of around $250 million.

The Spotify business model relies on signing up subscribers at round $15 per month for unlimited streaming access to virtually any music. It also offers a free service that's supported by advertising but has a lower quality of service.

There are already a lot of streaming music services in the US and I've spoken with representatives of some of them. The general consensus is that the Spotify model won't work here. But that's the type of response you would expect from Spotify's rivals.

The company has a lot of momentum and it already has well established relationships within the music industry. But much will depend upon its user interface since this is the prime differentiator within the music streaming services sector.

Spotify has a great UI according to Lifehacker:

Imagine a music app with instant access to any song you wanted to hear. Imagine creating a playlist from those songs and quickly, easily sharing it with friends. Such an app does exist, it's called Spotify, and it could change music forever.

All the publicity around Spotify will be good news for the entire sector attracting users to try out music streaming services for the first time.

One source says that it will take a few more months before Spotify is ready to come into the US market. In the meantime, the US music streaming services companies are bracing themselves for what promises to be a very able competitor.

- - -

Please see:

LaLa Launches Next Generation Music Web Service

Has Europe's hottest site got what it takes? Eric Auchard

Spotify wants to offer free iPhone app, if Apple lets them

Lifehacker: Spotify Is the Best Desktop Music Player We've Ever Used

Spotify commercial:

It was an interesting exercise and although MSFT executives were quick to admit they had poor relations with bloggers I question how serious the software giant is in improving relations.

For a start, there was no one from Microsoft's several hundred strong global communications team present. I recently spoke at a large internal conference of its communications team and got great feedback and great questions, so I know they are many great people within Microsoft thinking a lot about blogger relations.

Also, Microsoft pays a fortune to its long time PR firm Waggener Edstrom yet there was no representation from this firm. I mentioned this to Ron Markezich, Microsoft VP and in charge of Online Services. "There was a guy from Wagg-Ed at the back of the room but he got bored and left a while ago," he said.

Seriously not serious . . .

Which makes me think that this exercise was not a serious attempt by Microsoft to figure out how it should relate to key influencers. This is a shame because Microsoft got some excellent advice from the group. But you can lead a horse to water...

How will that advice be translated into action if the people ultimately responsible for MSFT communications weren't present?

Another reason why Microsoft is not serious about soliciting advice: If it were serious it would pay for it.

Why is this incredibly rich corporation seeking free advice on how to better promote its products and services and to tell its stories to the world? It wants us to help it continue to make huge amounts of money (nearly $6bn in operating profits in its most recent quarter.) but is MSFT helping any bloggers to pay the rent? As far as I can see MSFT does not sponsor blogs. So if it doesn't support the blogosphere how come it is asking for support in return?

Learning from Intel . . .

Intel has assembled a group of influential bloggers of which I am a member, they are called the Intel Insiders. Intel, however, does support the blogosphere. [Intel is the main sponsor of Silicon Valley Watcher and asks for nothing in return except to host its Intel widget (see sidebar).]

Also, Intel rewards its Intel Insiders and that's what Microsoft needs to do. It needs to be like Intel and use its wealth to support the blogosphere through sponsorships and pay for the advice it gets. After all, if the advice is free then that's how it will value that advice.

If we are being asked to help Microsoft pay its rent then it should help us pay our rent and support my work and those of my colleagues in the new media. That's how Microsoft can continue to engage this community.

Social media insiders . . .

From my experience with the Intel Insiders and now Microsoft's attempts to corral a similar community of influencers, there is a business opportunity here to create an independent "social media insiders" group that could provide very valuable advice to many corporations on how to communicate in this new world.

- - -

People present today:

Salim Ismael

Rod Boothby

Geva Perry

Ben Metcalfe

Chirag Mehta

Tom Foremski

Steve Wylie

Deb Schultz

Chris Heuer

Brian Solis

David Libby

Ohad Eder-Pressman

Adrian Chan

Steve Gillmor

Jeff Nolan

David Spark (as moderator)

From Microsoft:

Ron Markezich, Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Online

David Howell, Director, Microsoft Online Engineering

Bharat Shah, General Manager, Microsoft Online Engineering

Eron Kelly, Sr. Director, Microsoft Online

Alex Payne, Director, Office Client Product Management

Andrew Kisslo, Sr. Product Manager, Office Client

Jigsaw has trodden on plenty of toes because of its open data policy regarding people's personal contact info disclosed on business cards, which is part of the open data portability debates currently fashionable among the digerati.

I like Jigsaw, and I like the founders, they are tapping into an interesting vein regarding data and the issues around private and public ownership. And they are yanking a chain...

Here's Jigsaw's cheesy vid if you are in the mood, otherwise don't. (You can thank me later.)

Here is Harry McCracken talking about why he is leaving PC World to start his own venture:

It must be tough to moderate a panel when you are the smartest one on the podium. It's not yet happened to me but I imagine it must be agony knowing that the audience would rather listen to you.

If you ever find yourself in such a position it is your duty to your audience to do something about it. Yesterday, I saw an innovative approach to such a situation at the Innovation Journalism conference at Stanford University.

Faisal Rehman Malik, a TV anchor man from Pakistan, was the moderator for a panel on "Innovation in broadcast journalism for the 21st century." He spoke for 24 minutes out of a 30 minute slot about his new TV project and then asked his panel to ask him questions about it. Brilliantly innovative because as a moderator you can still include your panel for a few minutes while having spared your audience a tiresome 30 minutes.

And what is Mr Malik's new TV project? It's a talk show about innovation.

(BTW, he was chewing gum throughout his talk.)

Afterwards, I asked Mr Malik if guests would be allowed to talk on his talk show. He said yes, they would. I said good luck with that.

I think that in this crowded media world where it is so tough to keep up with so much information, it is good to know that you can rest easy when it comes to Mr Malik's new TV show.

Next time you find yourself at the St. Regis Islamabad, tune into the News One TV channel and search out Mr Malik's program. You might be rewarded with a great talk show - otherwise, I find that monologues work far better than melatonin for the jet weary.

- - -

Thursday afternoon at the Innovation Journalism Conference:

Are startup media companies better at covering innovation than traditional newspapers and magazines?

Moderator: Johan Anderberg - INJO Fellow '08 hosted by Fortune.

Panelists: Anders Olofsson - Head of Digital Media; Sydsvenskan, Sweden; Thomas Frostberg - Editor-In-Chief, Rapidus News Agency, Sweden; Tom Foremski - Founder, Silicon Valley Watcher; G. Pascal Zachary - Journalist / Visiting Lecturer, Department of Communication, Stanford University.

As part of that strategy, Buzzlogic has announced it has acquired Activeweave, which offers the browser companion application BlogRovR. (It fetches related stories while you browse.) The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Here is more info:

The acquisition adds new dimension to how BuzzLogic’s algorithms analyze online influence, enabling the company to strengthen and grow its Conversation Targeting advertising solution. Launched in the fall of 2007, Conversation Targeting surfaces connections between influential blogs and other social media as a means of predicting where to target online ad campaigns for its customers.

BuzzLogic has acquired all Activeweave assets, retaining the leadership team of chief technology officer Jean Sini and chief executive Marc Meyer.

“The Activeweave team has built user-friendly applications that complement how we analyze Web content for influence. With the help of Activeweave’s technology, we gain insight into how people interact with the blogs they care about,” said Rob Crumpler, CEO, BuzzLogic. “This deeper understanding enhances our overall abilities to locate the best spots for our customers’ social media ad campaigns.”

Founded in 2006 and funded in part by Esther Dyson and Active Starts’ Eric Di Benedetto, Activeweave has sought to make the social Web more easily organized and meaningful for users.

Activeweave management team Jean Sini and Marc Meyer are Silicon Valley veterans. Prior to co-founding Activeweave and serving as chief technologist, Sini spent the last 15 years building large-scale platforms and managing international engineering teams at companies like Oracle and Symbol Technologies (since acquired by Motorola).

Activeweave CEO Meyer brings with him more than 23 years of experience in research and management, including his early work with the renowned Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC).

Sini will board as BuzzLogic’s Chief Technology Officer. Meyer will join as BuzzLogic’s Senior Vice President of Products.

Even though Wells Fargo has a blog page "Join the conversation" it doesn't.

Last April I had a really bad experience with Wells Fargo and wrote about it. Within minutes I had people commenting on their bad experience! It was the fastest response I had ever had to a post!

I wrote about my bad experiences several times actually. I was wondering how long it would take for a Wells Fargo representative to notice and leave a comment. As I pointed out, I'll get over my rant but the search engines will continually bring up my story and you would think that Wells Fargo would want to leave it's side of the story, at least say, "Sorry about that, here's a toaster..." or something.

But nothing came from Wells Fargo.

Sure enough, every few weeks someone finds my rant and and leaves another story about Wells Fargo. You'd think after about a year, someone might notice at Wells Fargo and "Join the conversation!"

(BTW, last month I met one of the bank's directors John Chen, the CEO of Sybase and mentioned that someone at the bank should keep an eye on what is going on online.)

Here is a recent comment about Wells Fargo from NKB that I received on March 18, 2008. I've got quite a collection and I know I will get more.

I thought I would just add my 2 cents regarding the WF's outrageous policies regarding holds.

I deposited a bonus check for in excess of $5K from my employer via an ATM and received an email a day later saying that WF will hold $4900 for a week and the remainder for 2 weeks.

Facts:

1. I am WF customer of more than 30 years.

2. The deposited check is drawn on BofA.

3. The same BofA account is used to make a direct payroll deposit into my WF account twice a month.]]> Wed, 26 Mar 2008 03:15:35 -0700 https://content.presspage.com/clients/150_2054.jpeg?10000 https://content.presspage.com/clients/150_2054.jpeg?10000 https://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/i-was-troll-baiting-over-at-zdnet/ https://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/i-was-troll-baiting-over-at-zdnet/241054Over on my column/blog at ZDNet: Tom Foremski: IMHO, I asked:

Are trolls the rednecks of the social media world?

The topic of trolls, people who take time to leave inane, usually abusive comments, that kill conversation on blogs, and forums, and other types of social media is interesting.

Although I haven't snagged any trolls yet, (I've got an upcoming post that I'm sure will reap a harvest) I did get some excellent comments:

Calling a troll a 'redneck' would be entirely too gracious

While one can make the argument that trolls and rednecks might not "know no better" when it comes to minding their manners, I have a troll who deliberately visits to make pointed comments that show he's stalking my blog and collecting data on me before launching a nasty comment-missile. Trolls are, to me, the Debbie Downers and Grim Reapers of the social media space.

Posted by: dcwriterdawn

RE: Are trolls the rednecks of the social media world?

Sometimes those at enmity with us can be spun to the good.

Our friends will often spare us, cause they love us, while our enemies are often fiendishly foot loose and fancy free, savagely unfettered from any such fine sensibilities. The same trappings of civilization that most of us deliberately cultivate. Because we know where to go for the real gold. Riches still reside in the golden rule. Corny as that may or may not sound.

Slashing, sniping and shoulding on us is their standard schlock. They're happily or not mostly unmoved by the need of normative social constraints of the civil.

I've gained a lot sometimes from harsh, hateful unrelenting, unsparing, marauding, murderous criticism. I figure that where there's smoke, there's usually a fire.

Some of these storm clouds huffing and puffing impending doom have silver linings, quite contrary to the uncouth and nefarious stuff they spew and spray.

Sometimes I find it easy to love my enemies for the kindness they certainly didn't intend to do my way.

Posted by: preachjohn

RE: Are trolls the rednecks .... Oh Yes but

I think they should be called childish rednecks.

Of all the sites I read, there seems to be an inordinate amount of trolls in Zdnet.

Critism is fine, trolling is not.

I think a lot of misinformed posters "troll" in error due to their lack of knowledge and then end up defending the themselves against the trollish anti-trolls.

But then again, some bloggers write "troll" blogs as well due to their own bias.

Posted by: rtfa

trolls

]]> Tue, 25 Mar 2008 15:27:37 -0700 https://content.presspage.com/clients/150_2054.jpeg?10000 https://content.presspage.com/clients/150_2054.jpeg?10000 https://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/espn-bans-ad-networks---will-search-and-news-aggregators-be-next/ https://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/espn-bans-ad-networks---will-search-and-news-aggregators-be-next/241187Well done ESPN! It says it won't use advertising networks: From Media Week.

"We're heading down a path where it no longer suits our business needs to work with ad networks," said Eric Johnson, executive vp, multimedia sales, ESPN Customer Marketing and Sales.

Advertising networks are used by large publishers for excess inventory and that's how they pitch themselves to the publishers.

I know for a fact that the ad networks tell advertisers: We can undercut the ad rates of the large publishers!

The ad networks are not the friends of publishers. In the past, I've seen New York Times running Google ads on its front page, and at the bottom of the ads it says "If you'd like to advertise on this site click here." Click and you go to Google. NYT has handed over its advertiser relationship to Google. Madness.

The problem is that ad sales staff at the large publishers don't know how to sell online ads. They have to sell more, for less, and that means a lot more work to make the same commission.

Solution: Hire new sales people that don't have a legacy commission infrastructure to protect.

Ad networks commoditize content. And so do news aggregators.

How long before large publishers cut off news aggregators such as Google News, etc?

Sure, distribution is nice, for now. But if you rely on traffic coming from search engines and aggregators you are getting low quality traffic. It is fly-by-night traffic. It is web surfers killing time.

The best traffic is the traffic that comes to your site directly through bookmarks or RSS. People that know where you are, they don't need to find you.

That's quality traffic and that is traffic that advertisers want. I predict that advertisers will pay a lot more for sites that get their traffic direct and not through search engines and news aggregators. It's the same as advertising on free magazines compared with subscribed magazines.

However, most news sites rely on search engine traffic for as much as 60 per cent of their traffic, often more. They invest heavily in making their content discoverable through keywords, tagging, metadata, url structure, and a dozen more parameters.

This is a big burden and it does nothing to improve the quality of content, only the quality of discoverability.

When I look at my server logs I see that about 94 per cent of my traffic comes directly to me from bookmarks and RSS. The rest from search engines.

My advice: Optimize for your readers and not for the search engines.

But if 60 per cent or more of your web site traffic comes via search and news aggregators you can't change. It's an addiction.

At some point, large publishers will severely curtail the news aggregators and search bots because:

-The quality of the traffic they send is poor, it doesn't lead to ad conversions.

-The constant barrage of spiders and robots slows down the web site and harms the user experience.

It becomes very expensive to attract search engine traffic.

For example, about one third of my server resources and my bandwidth is used by a multitude of spiders and bots hitting my site every day. Yet they bring only 6 per cent of my traffic.

That 6 per cent of traffic cost one-third of my publishing resources. It's not much money for me, but for a large publisher?

At some point, a large media company such as ESPN, will notice that its traffic is stable, that search engines and aggregators are bringing lower quality traffic, and that that traffic is not worth the large hit it takes on its servers, bandwidth, and people required to SEO its content.

This scenario won't happen soon but I guarantee it will happen, and that's when GOOG, et al will pay ESPN and other content producers to carry their content.

GOOG constantly needs "new" content but it doesn't know how to create it, it just knows how to scrape it. And that's a common technology these days and it is getting to be a commodity.

Halting the commoditisation of news and journalism...

ESPN gets it and so will others. The content that media companies create is hard to do and it is expensive - it is not a commodity.

The technology of ad networks and search engines is increasingly a commodity and its value is falling at the speed of Moore's Law. Content is immune from the commoditizing power of Moore's Law.

I know where I'd rather be.]]> Mon, 24 Mar 2008 08:51:05 -0700 https://content.presspage.com/clients/150_2054.jpeg?10000 https://content.presspage.com/clients/150_2054.jpeg?10000 https://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/arringtons-roll-up-the-blogs-strategy-wont-work---you-cant-roll-up-egos/ https://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/arringtons-roll-up-the-blogs-strategy-wont-work---you-cant-roll-up-egos/241576Mike Arrington, publisher of Techcrunch says that it should be possible to roll up the top tech blogs into a "big fat CNET crushing $200 million/year in revenue business."

Dan Farber, editorial chief of CNET's News.com, says bring it on:

It's pleasing to have Mike and others targeting CNET. It must mean that we are at the top of the heap. Competitve envy comes with the territory.

In his post: The blogosphere's Napoleon Mr Farber points out a simple fact that gives CNET an edge over blogs such as Techcrunch.

...importantly, our troops across CNET News, Webware, Crave and Reviews are in the field as I speak, getting after the important stories.

Blogging is not reporting...

I agree. I'm out nearly every day and often in the evenings too, getting original content, scoops, news, and analysis. Most of the content on Techcrunch, and other blog sites is commentary on the news.

Techcrunch does get some great scoops from time to time, but that's not its main business, which is profile of web 2.0 startups. And that is true for the other high traffic blog sites.

You can't crush CNET with blog posts about news stories and profiles of online service companies.

Ego aggregator...

And there is another reason a rolling up the top layer of the blogoshpere won't work: it's a personality driven business and the egos can barely fit on the Internet let alone within a single company. Would Om Malik work for Mike Arrington, or vice versa? No way. That's true for every other A-list blogger.

Roll-ups and consolidation are a natural trend within all industries. Companies acquire other companies and reap economies of scale and other competitive advantages.

You can roll up companies but you can't roll up personalities.

Already rolled...

Also, the roll up has already been done. FM Publishing did it and continues to do it. It signed up many top blog sites to its advertising network.

And Dan Farber already did it too. When he was over on the ZDNet side of CNET, he collected some of the top bloggers in the tech sector (see my blog over on ZDNet - Tom Foremski IMHO.)

Cult of personality...

My strategy with Silicon Valley Watcher is to gradually move it away from being associated with my personality and towards building a strong editorial team staffed by media professionals - reporting on the business and culture of Silicon Valley. If that sounds like a traditional media firm that's because many traditional media principles still apply.

Today the distribution channels are different and the business models for media companies are different. But there is a lot that hasn't and won't change.

What hasn't changed is the fact that teams of media professionals create great media consistently. That's a far more effective and scalable business than personality-based media (i.e blogs).

Giant blob strategy flaw...

Also, Mr Arrington's analysis of the CNET crushing capability in creating one giant blob of a blog site is seriously flawed.

The disruption to CNET and other large media companies is coming from search engine marketing, not from blogs. Quite simply, it is more effective to advertise on a search engine than on a news site.

GOOG's quarterly financial results show this very clearly. Each quarter revenue growth from its own sites outpace revenues from content-partner sites such as the New York Times.

It is search engine marketing that might eventually crush CNET. It certainly won't be a blog site, no matter how many blogger egos are crammed into it.

]]> Wed, 19 Mar 2008 09:08:31 -0700 https://content.presspage.com/clients/150_2054.jpeg?10000 https://content.presspage.com/clients/150_2054.jpeg?10000 https://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/mediawatcher-notes-the-influence-of-the-blogosphere-boosts-salesforce-by-over-half-a-billion-dollars/ https://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/mediawatcher-notes-the-influence-of-the-blogosphere-boosts-salesforce-by-over-half-a-billion-dollars/241710It always fascinates me to see how stories move through the blogosphere and into mainstream media. It is always interesting to watch what I sometimes term the "trajectory of ideas" within the mediasphere and the ripples of influence.

I like to watch these things because they sometimes reveal an underlying nature within society. One of my observations is noticing that the timing of the publication of a news story can make a big difference in the attention it gets. And the reason can seem counter-intuitive.

For example, I published an analysis of my scoop on exploratory talks of a possible merger with Oracle, about 5.30pm on a Saturday evening.

Clearly, it's not the best time to get out in front of a large audience. Yet there were enough readers and bloggers out there to quickly bring attention to the story. Within a couple of hours 15 sites linked to the post. By Sunday morning it was approaching 40 sites, which included links from key sites such as Techcrunch, Mashable, Techmeme and also my ZDNet colleague Dennis Howlett.

Au naturel linking...

The distribution of the snews tory continued to spread throughout Sunday on numerous blogs. I especially love to watch such viral distribution when it happens au natural, without any of the many promotional techniques available.

I didn't email my blogger and journalist buddies to get their attention, or mass email my contacts, there was no "Digg" button, or any clever attempt to use keywords to attract search engine distribution.

It is always far more interesting to see how news stories get picked up and distributed by the Internet without using the promotional toolbox of technologies and techniques available. It reminds me of the early days of the blogger/journalist Internet community, when there was nothing much available to promote content except for the intrinsic value of the content itself, and the respect of your peer groups.

Buy the distribution...

These days, it is far easier to manipulate the distribution and reach of a blog post, news story, or video. These days, it can be easier to buy the traffic and the distribution reach, instead of doing the hard work in creating content that wins because its value.

We used to talk about the meritocracy of content as a core value of the blogosphere and the evolving Internet, and that now it didn't matter who could pay for the loudest voice. That is less true today and will continue to worsen over time.

Fortunately, meritocracy is still strong on the Internet, it is even there when you least expect it to find it, such as on a Saturday evening.

BTW, it's wonderful and humbling to know that there are people reading and writing about Silicon Valley Watcher news stories on a Saturday evening when they could easily be doing something else...

I'm glad that my work gets the attention that it does. And the influence it has often astounds me. Plus I'm doubly glad it happens without having to dress up my news stories with any of the many promotional techniques and technologies that are available...

By Monday morning, the blogosphere had widely distributed my news story, and there had been plenty of time to analyze and debate the merits of a potential deal. The work of the blogosphere then helped investors reassess the value of the Salesforce business. At the opening bell Salesforce [ticker:CRM] gained about 9 percent in market cap value, or more than $500m.

This was good news for CEO Marc Benioff and other Salesforce longs. Mr Benioffsells at least 10,000 shares of Salesforce every day, and has done so since mid 2006 (the power of dollar cost averaging). It was bad news for the large community of short sellers that Salesforce had recently accumulated [ticker:CRM.]

Interestingly, there is another aspect to Saturday publishing. I've noticed: the mainstream media is not very good at following up breaking stories at the weekends because of its skeleton staffing levels.

That is why the blogosphere often drives the news agenda on Saturday and Sunday because there isn't much mainstream media content to blog about and link to.

]]> Mon, 11 Feb 2008 18:59:01 -0800 https://content.presspage.com/clients/150_2054.jpeg?10000 https://content.presspage.com/clients/150_2054.jpeg?10000 https://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/magic-hobo-fights-spam-with-spam/ https://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/magic-hobo-fights-spam-with-spam/241303

For users of Facebook, inadvertently spamming your friends is one of the annoying features of using some of the Facebook apps. It is also embarrasing to share some personal stuff with a friend only to find that you sent the same message to everyone.

Plus there are things like Mortimer the travelling bear and other such nonsense that people accidentally spam their Facebook friends with. To put a stop to this, we now have the "Magic Hobo" which is an educational "spam" that explains the basic ways on how not to spam your friends.

I sent a "Magic Hobo" to my Facebook friends and now I have half-a-dozen more sitting on my walls and super walls, etc. It's funny to fight spam with spam, and the picture of the Magic Hobo is hilarious.

Here is the text that goes with it (BTW, send me a Facebook friend request, it is one way for me to get to know my readers.)

This is the Magic Hobo!



He will do STUFF ALL if you forward him on - But it's a great opportunity to send him on and spam all your Facebook Friends to say STOP sending me STUPID CRAP!



The stuffed dog does NOTHING when you forward him on...



I don't give a shit about Mortimer the Travelling Bear...



Unicef will NOT donate 5c for every forward that little starving child gets...



You CANNOT tell how many people visit your profile by spamming forward and pressing altF4 afterwards...



THINK BEFORE YOU FORWARD! Ask yourself: "Could this actually WORK?"

Chances are... No - It's just a stupid-ass ploy to clog your walls full of the same old crap again and again and again...



Join the fight against aimless spamming by spamming this forward to say "Just Say No!" to stupid-ass forwarding.

Technorati Tags: magichobo, spam

]]> Mon, 21 Jan 2008 03:38:19 -0800 https://content.presspage.com/clients/150_2054.jpeg?10000 https://content.presspage.com/clients/150_2054.jpeg?10000 https://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/ces-2008-the-great-frank-shaw/ https://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/ces-2008-the-great-frank-shaw/241438
I was fortunate to meet Frank Shaw from Waggener Edstrom. He used to work with my former boss at the Financial Times, Paul Abrahams. There is an interesting story here...

http://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/mt/archives/2006/08/microsofts_pr_a.php

Paul Abrahams works very closely with Microsoft and is in Seattle on a regular basis, advising the software giant on many strategic aspects of its operations. I haven't heard from Paul in a while, so it was a delightful surprise when he called me just an hour ago.

What he wanted to tell me was that he had written a column for the UK PR Week trade publication on blogging. "I've mentioned you in it," he said. "But I've basically said, regarding all this stuff about blogs, I just don't get it..."

Fair enough, some do, some don't. However, I asked if it was a good move on his part to advertise such a a lack of understanding of blogs!?

I saw it as an opportunity for discussion. However, Paul went on vacation for two weeks immediately after publication of his "I don't get blogging column." Clearly Paul didn't want to have a conversation about it...

Frank Shaw didn't hesitate and jumped right in, in what is now a text book case of how to deal with such situations: posting in his blog and doing all the right things to defend the reputation of WaggEd.

Even more impressive was that Frank was in the middle of moving his family from Portland to Seattle yet he dove right in...(Paul was on vacation.)

http://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/mt/archives/2006/08/microsofts_pr_a.php

http://glasshouse.waggeneredstrom.com/blogs/frankshaw/archive/2006/08/31/764.aspx

]]> Mon, 07 Jan 2008 19:47:35 -0800 https://content.presspage.com/clients/150_2054.jpeg?10000 https://content.presspage.com/clients/150_2054.jpeg?10000 https://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/chris-andersons-pr-blacklist-backlash---the-long-tail-of-bad-pr/ https://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/chris-andersons-pr-blacklist-backlash---the-long-tail-of-bad-pr/241690
I was out and about Tuesday evening at various events, Eye-Fi and UberGizmo and the subject of Chris Anderson, Wired Magazine's super talented editor came up again and again. Specifically, his outlash at PR people, publicly criticizing those that have sent him bad pitches by publishing their email addresses.

I've had it. I get more than 300 emails a day and my problem isn't spam (Cloudmark Desktop solves that nicely), it's PR people. Lazy flacks send press releases to the Editor in Chief of Wired because they can't be bothered to find out who on my staff, if anyone, might actually be interested in what they're pitching.



SORRY PR PEOPLE: YOU'RE BLOCKED

From tired to inspired

I'm a huge fan of Mr Anderson, he turned around a sickly magazine and made it into a powerhouse. No question about it, he turned Wired from tired to inspired.

Bad time of the month?

I know the pressures of a monthly magazine, you are going to press, and there are a million details to pay attention to...it is not the best time of the month to deal with useless emails, however...

I discussed Mr Anderson's reaction with many people, some PR people, but especially with many veteran journalists. We all receive bad pitches, that's part of our job. We ignore or delete, and then we move on with our day. Not for Mr Anderson, things became personal:

There is no getting off this list. If you're on it and have something appropriate to say to me, use a different email address.

The list has about 370 plus emails. What puzzled colleagues and myself, is that Mr Anderson took the time to sort through and list his long tail of misbehaving PR people, it must have taken many hours. And he felt so personally injured by their behavior that he took steps to publicly shame them. Serious stuff indeed.

However, it remains a puzzling incident. I could understand this if he were a blogger, a novice, unaccustomed to the life of a journalist--and bloggers do get upset about press releases in their e-mail box that have nothing to do with their interests. Mr Anderson is a veteran journalist, ex-Economist, these should be petty annoyances at best--we all deal with them without a second thought.

But all great achievers exhibit occasional falls from grace, which is their humble way of reminding us that they are human.

(I hope to have the opportunity to demonstrate the same one of these days.)

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Technorati Tags: Long tail of bad PR

]]> Tue, 30 Oct 2007 15:13:51 -0700 https://content.presspage.com/clients/150_2054.jpeg?10000 https://content.presspage.com/clients/150_2054.jpeg?10000 https://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/early-morning-debate-on-ethics-in-media-and-pr/ https://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/early-morning-debate-on-ethics-in-media-and-pr/241720
I was in a bit of a grumpy mood early this morning because it was early morning... I was in Palo Alto to be part of a Silicon Valley Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) panel on the subject of Ethics in Media and PR. And they had misspelled my name on everything(!)

Some coffee quickly improved my mood and we got into a spirited discussion on the panel, and among the attendees. I enjoyed it and I think we covered a lot of ground.

I also enjoyed meeting my fellow panelists:

Jerry Ceppos, former Executive Editor, SJ Mercury News; currently a fellow in media ethics at Santa Clara University's Markkula Center for Applied Ethics.



Jon Greer, media trainer and editor, 21stCenturyMediaRelations.com



Joel Postman, EVP, Eastwick Communications

I talked about my sponsors (Intel and Tibco) and said that they support what I do and don't ask for anything in return, which leaves me free to write abut anything I please. And if I do write about them, it is tagged as sponsor watch, and people can make their own judgement about the posts. I have to admit that I like the two companies a lot because they like me, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't write a juicy story if I got one related to my sponsors.

For example, I was asked by Jerry Ceppos, if someone within Intel leaked to me that Paul Ottelini, the CEO of Intel, would soon announce his resignation, would I publish the story? Heck, YES!!! That's a killer story, I'd publish it in a Silicon Valley nanosecond.

There was some discussion about a recent Wall Street Journal article that I missed, which was about Yelp, the online recommendation site based in San Francisco. The WSJ had discovered that some of its restaurant reviewers had received free meals in return for a review. I remarked that I often see top WSJ journalists at swank San Francisco restaurants being hosted by companies that they cover, at so-called "media roundtables" and other events that I attend.

Mr Ceppos was astounded and said he didn't believe it. Nevertheless, I said, it is true. He said that wouldn't fly at the San Jose Mercury.

I go to a lot of dinners, and sometimes I write about the companies and often I don't. When I do, I often say "I was having dinner with...". It would take more than a dinner at a nice restaurant to buy coverage at the WSJ, or here on SVW.

Journalists get to choose to write about companies and people because they believe it will make for a good story--there is no money exchanged. PR people have to do it because they are paid to do it not because they want to.

I also pointed out that journalists are less influenced by money than PR people because journalists chose a profession that pays very badly.

There were some very good contributions to the discussion from our audience and there was strong support for being direct and transparent in PR corporate blogging. All good things...

- - -

If you'd like to join in on the subject, Jon Greer set up a blog: http://digitalprsa.wordpress.com/2007/10/29/agenda-online-ethics-panel/

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Technorati Tags: ethics in media, New Rules Communications, ethics in PR

]]> Tue, 30 Oct 2007 10:19:54 -0700 https://content.presspage.com/clients/150_2054.jpeg?10000 https://content.presspage.com/clients/150_2054.jpeg?10000 https://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/the-road-to-sun-is-paved-with-good-intentionsan-accel-vc-party-reporta-glam-crowdthe-worlds-top-media-mogul-comes-to-town/ https://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/the-road-to-sun-is-paved-with-good-intentionsan-accel-vc-party-reporta-glam-crowdthe-worlds-top-media-mogul-comes-to-town/241281
I was running late to Sun's Java update briefing for the media at the W Hotel for 5.30pm. By the time I found parking I'm really late and that's when Tom Abate, my buddy and business reporter at the SF Chronicle calls me.

I'm just a block away I tell him. Good, he says, I'll meet you outside my office. I meet him but tell him we have to walk across Yerba Buena Gardens and pop into the Sun event, they've already called me to ask where I am...

Fine, he says, but then we get into a long discussion about the media business and it gets later and later. Finally, we are at the W and I'm bounding up the stairs to fulfill my Sun commitment. I see a table with name tags and I recognize some of the people milling around and so I walk in, Tom follows me.

Jeff Clavier's Mom

I'm running into a lot of familiar faces. First up is Jeff Clavier, a current rising star Silicon Valley investor. I recently profiled Mr Clavier as one of the most successful angel investors around ( Silicon Valley's Rising Star VC: Jeff Clavier .) He has sold 5 companies out of 20 investments in less than 4 years, some with $50m tags. Who else has recently matched that performance I asked in my post?

"You caused me a lot of embarrassment with that article," he said. "But my mom loved it, my VC buddies didn't."

Too bad for your buddies, I said, maybe one day they will make it into SVW. Jeff, did I say anything that wasn't true?

He slowly shook his head (sadly and with great humility). Let's follow up with a proper interview I said. He nodded. (Coming up on SVW...)

John Marcom and Bloomberg

Then I ran into John Marcom, who used to be my boss at the Financial Times. To be accurate, he was everyone's boss, he ran the Financial Times business group in the US. I was always really impressed with John Marcom I felt he really understand the complex cutlure of the Financial Times, and the changes in media markets.

When he left the FT to join Yahoo in a senior marketing position it was a blow to me because there seemed to be no one else that had a measure on what was going on in the media industry. And the FT needed people such as John. So it was a rare pleasure to trade views on the media business. He's currently consulting with Bloomberg on strategic projects.

The Glam Crowd

There were a lot of people from Glam.com at the party. And I ran into Samir Arora, chairman, founder and CEO of Glam.com, a truly dynamic media business that hasn't yet gotten the full attention it deserves.

I met with Mr Arora about a year ago, at the Lucky Penny Diner in San Francisco, one of my favorite meeting places. It's a true retro diner, this is not a fake diner chain.

Mr Arora is always a dapper dresser, and I spotted him right away as I walked into Lucky Penny, sitting in the corner at a booth, in an immaculately tailored dark pinstripe suit and pink shirt.

It was a great interview and I kept waiting to write it, I kept saving it for just the right slot slot when I could make a big spalsh with it, not wanting to waste such a great interview on a heavy news day. But I never wrote it, which is my loss. I apologized to Mr Arora and asked for a second chance. He said sure, but it has to be at Lucky Penny... :-)

This is not Sun...

After a couple of hours I realized that this was not the Sun event that I had been aiming for at the W Hotel. This was the VC firm Accel's party. Tom Abate said he knew all along, but didn't want to say anything because the company was good.

Kahunas don't get bigger than this...

I snuck out of the party and went home so I could write this post and then go back out to the SF Museum of Modern Art for a party celebrating the opening of the San Francisco office for MySpace. The event was due to start at 9.30pm, which is very unusual. Office openings generally don't happen at the SF MOMA, and most events stop at 9.30pm.

I had walked past SF MOMA earlier in the evening, workers were taping lush carpet to the sidewalk and wrapping the building in cloth. Then I hear Rupert Murdoch is in town. Clearly this is no normal office opening.

I'd love to interview Rupert Murdoch, he is the savviest media tycoon around. No one else can match his investment instincts when it comes to media. No one.

And he will not ruin the Wall Street Journal, the editorial pages cannot get anymore conservative. And anyway, he can scale that business across his worldwide channels. If I were the FT I'd be very worried.

I have to go now, I''l be back. Hopefully with a Rupert Murdoch interview.

Technorati Tags: Glam.com, JeffClavier, JohnMarcom, TomAbate, SamirArora

]]> Wed, 17 Oct 2007 13:16:35 -0700 https://content.presspage.com/clients/150_2054.jpeg?10000 https://content.presspage.com/clients/150_2054.jpeg?10000 https://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/a-reader-writes-the-death-of-the-press-release-wont-happen/ https://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/a-reader-writes-the-death-of-the-press-release-wont-happen/241442
[I recently received an email from a reader in reference to my infamous post: "Die! Press Release! Die! Die! Die!"]

By Harry Zane

I am retired from a career that began in journalism, turned to PR, then to marketing, and finally to consulting. And I agree wholeheartedly with what you said in your column. However, I am astonished that in 2007, PR is still slogging lower and lower into a press-release and press-conference tactical miasma.



I think the media, despite their constant carping about their dislike of press releases, are largely responsible. Many years ago, while working at a major university, I can recall a meeting of journalists and educational PR pros when the biggest complaint was that we PR folks sent out too many press releases. So we cut back, and the first complaints came only weeks later – from reporters, who couldn't understand why we were pitching stories without sending them "press releases."



I recall as well some 25 years ago working at a then major technology firm in Massachusetts when I had to fight endlessly with my peers and executives to keep the self-absorbed, self-unaware nonsense out of press releases. My "reward" was praise from the editor of the biggest industry trade journal. He really liked my releases because, as he said, they were brief and contained "no bullshit."



I took little comfort from his attaboys, however, since he ran unedited the competition's endless column inches of yammering right next to, or well above and ahead of, mine (the longer copy, rather than concise content, better fit his need for lead story layouts), creating the impression to casual readers (most trade journal readers are) that the competition had more to say than my company. Needless to say, this didn't sit well with the puffery-spouting peers and execs I'd just vanquished, either.



The reason, of course, for his actions are entirely explicable. His was a labor-intensive business, and he needed the free copy. Such is the fate of all media today: copy, no matter how untrue, uninformative, or unbecoming the author, trumps solid content.



PR people won't stop creating press releases because PR people, be they consultants, or employees will not stop serving the pleasure of their benighted bosses and clients; most media will continue to take content anywhere they can find it for little or no cost; and reader expectations for something better will continue to spiral downward with the whole sorry mess.



You are obviously a dedicated journalist with healthy amounts of skepticism and ambition. Your idea is sensible, laudable, and intelligent, but I don't see it happening. Ever.

Technorati Tags: die press release, mediasphere, PRWatch

]]> Wed, 03 Oct 2007 13:30:02 -0700 https://content.presspage.com/clients/150_2054.jpeg?10000 https://content.presspage.com/clients/150_2054.jpeg?10000 https://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/the-trajectory-of-ideas-or-why-my-older-posts-show-up-fresh-on-techmeme/ https://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/the-trajectory-of-ideas-or-why-my-older-posts-show-up-fresh-on-techmeme/241186
Todd Defren from Shift Communications dropped me a note to point out that my Die! Press Release! Die! Die! Die! post is on the front page of TechMeme. That was written in February 2006.

But the date doesn't really matter. I've noticed that happen with some of my other posts. Search engines will kick them back into view and others will reference them and they live again in the mediasphere.

It's interesting to watch what I call the trajectory of ideas. Sometimes I will write something I think is significant and 2 people will tell me they thought it was important. Yet I can write the same piece a year, sometimes two years later or more, and 20, or 200 people will pick it up and discuss it.

That's a totally understandable phenomenon because more people now understand the ideas and conversations that emanate from Silicon Valley about the changing nature of media and its changing mediums. With simple technologies such as RSS we can now create totally new forms of media, and totally new ways to distribute and generate media.

- - -

Please see:

Ross Dawson's Trends in the Living Networks: Deconstructing the press release: how tagging will change journalistic workflow



Brian Solis: Future of the Press Release - Acceptance

Technorati Tags: puppy

]]> Fri, 28 Sep 2007 05:29:36 -0700 https://content.presspage.com/clients/150_2054.jpeg?10000 https://content.presspage.com/clients/150_2054.jpeg?10000 https://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/the-holy-trinity---the-future-of-media/ https://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/the-holy-trinity---the-future-of-media/241731

For a couple of years I've been working on this idea of a Holy Trinity of media. This is my model of how the media industry is transforming itself, and also how it is being disrupted.

The Holy Trinity of media is my way of forecasting the 3 key characteristics of all future media companies. But it is not a precise prediction.

The interesting aspect is that right now, there is no media company out there that is taking advantage of all three components. Which means that there is a very good business opportunity here.

The Holy Trinity of media is represented by the combination of: professional media; citizen media, and smart machine media.

The combination of professional journalists working within their communities to bring out the citizen stories, combined with savvy algorithms harvesting Internet content, will produce very successful media companies.

This Holy Trinity of professionals, plus citizens, plus machine collected media a la Google, will become the model for every future media company.

But it is not that simple. What is the killer formula?

Is it 30 per cent professionally produced media, 30 per cent citizen/blogger media, and 40 per cent machine media such as Google News? Or as my friend Tom Abate over at the SF Chronicle points out, is the formula for a media company different in different industry sectors? We don't know, which is great because we can figure this stuff out, and in the process, figure out new types of media businesses.

A related metaphor for what is going on in the media industry is gunpowder. It consists of three simple components, each one is stable and inert on its own: Charcoal, sulphur and potassium nitrate. If you get the formula wrong, it fizzles, when you get it right it is explosive.

If you can get the 3 components of media just right, you can build very valuable media companies very quickly.

Technorati Tags: mediasphere, holy trinity of media

]]> Fri, 21 Sep 2007 14:32:38 -0700 https://content.presspage.com/clients/150_2054.jpeg?10000 https://content.presspage.com/clients/150_2054.jpeg?10000 https://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/we-live-in-a-many-media-world-with-new-forms-of-media/ https://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/we-live-in-a-many-media-world-with-new-forms-of-media/242038
We went through a multi-media world in the early 1990s, which meant documents that mixed text, with hypertext, with photos, with video, with sound.

We now live in a many-media world in which we have all of the above but fragmented into many unique media channels and formats we could not have imagined just a few years ago. YouTube, Facebook and Twitter are some of the latest but by no means the last of the new forms of media. Technologies such as RSS will create many more.

Today's media companies have to support many-media publishing: podcasts, vidcasts, sms, blogs, social networks--in addition to print, web sites, email, etc; all the traditional forms of media. That adds to the costs of doing business because print is not enough, TV is not enough, radio is not enougth.

All media companies have to become many-media companies. And what makes these times interesting is that all companies are media companies. To a greater or lesser degree, all companies are media companies because they all publish to their communities: customers, employees, etc.

And now they need to master the new media publishing, and the technologies to create the many-media formats. Video is a key one right now.

These days media comes in formats that we didn't know would exist. Toolbars are part of this many-media world. I rarely give free permission to use my quotes in a news release, however Conduit are an interesting part of this new media world. They recently announced more than 12m users for their white-label toolbar:

August 28, 2007 11:00 AM Eastern Daylight Time

Conduit Unleashes Network of 12 Million Community Toolbar Users to Publishers Worldwide

New toolbar grouping capabilities help tech bloggers unite and connect with growing network of avid blog fans

REDWOOD SHORES, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Conduit, the leading platform for building online communities via community toolbars, today announced the Conduit Network, an online community of more than 12 million users and 120,000 publishers in 112 countries that connect with each other via a Conduit-powered community toolbar. Evolving from its beginnings as a toolbar platform for site publishers, Conduit is now the de facto standard, offering unparalleled functionality and a global network of communities accessible via one click and without any download. Conduit facilitates publisher brand awareness by alerting users surfing the web to publishers in the Conduit network. Users can subscribe to publisher communities of choice with a single click, with no download and without sacrificing browser real estate.



The Conduit Network feature set includes:



• myConduit, a breakthrough toolbar interface that allows users to search and subscribe to multiple communities while occupying the space of a single toolbar. Conduit’s extensive network search capability allows users to find new communities of interest and subscribe to them with one click. Once a user downloads myConduit there is no need for subsequent downloads for new communities. Click here to get the myConduit toolbar: http://myconduit.com/Download.htm.



•Grouping, a feature that enables publishers to offer a community-rich experience to their users by grouping multiple community toolbars into a single download and interface. Users can download a single community toolbar to access multiple communities in the related categories and without sacrificing browser real-estate.



For example, Conduit recently launched the “Allmyblogs” toolbar for top tech bloggers that includes popular technology blogs such as TechCrunch, VentureBeat, WebWare, SiliconValleyWatcher, Read/WriteWeb, Mashable and the GigaOmniMedia Inc. sites: GigaOM.com, NewTeeVee, WebWorkerDaily, FoundRead, Earth2Tech, GigaOM TV. Click here for myConduit for Bloggers: http://allmyblogs.ourtoolbar.com/.



“Our Conduit-powered ‘CrunchBar’ has been a big help in persistently connecting TechCrunch fans with the fresh, hot, off-the-press content on our site,” said Michael Arrington, founder and editor of TechCrunch, a weblog dedicated to obsessively profiling and reviewing new Internet products and companies. “We are thrilled with the addition of this engaging platform and look forward to uniting with other tech blogger fans through the Conduit Network.”



“Conduit is a great tool for engaging with my readers and expanding my readership,” said Tom Foremski, founder and editor of Silicon Valley Watcher, a leading technology weblog.



“The Conduit-powered community toolbars allow me to provide a service to my readers. I like the idea of having a little branded piece on my readers' browsers, so they can be connected with the latest Silicon Valley Watcher content no matter where they are on the Web.”



Now, with the recently announced myConduit functionality, and additional grouping capabilities, Conduit has become a multi-community experience for users. Traditionally, users were required to download each and every toolbar that they wanted to access, thereby drastically reducing their browser space and inhibiting the number of different toolbar downloads they could accommodate. With the Conduit Network, users can now also benefit from a simple “click-to-add” interface, on participating publisher sites, that provides access to thousands of Conduit-powered communities with no download required. Publishers will increase their ranks of active users simply by creating a Conduit-powered community toolbar and joining the Conduit Network.



“The dramatic increase in users and publishers that have joined the Conduit Network is the single greatest compliment we could receive,” said Ronen Shilo, CEO of Conduit. “Conduit continues to show its strength as a powerful community network where millions of users can explore interests and join thousands of social networks and online communities via a community toolbar.”



To create a community toolbar for your website visit: http://www.conduit.com/Wizard.

]]> Tue, 28 Aug 2007 16:08:55 -0700 https://content.presspage.com/clients/150_2054.jpeg?10000 https://content.presspage.com/clients/150_2054.jpeg?10000 https://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/the-ironic-hand-of-god---the-need-for-a-right-to-respond-on-the-internet/ https://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/the-ironic-hand-of-god---the-need-for-a-right-to-respond-on-the-internet/241760
Earlier this year I wrote a post arguing that Google and other search engines should offer a link next to each result that offers a "right to respond." Because search engines will continually dredge up a post for ever, even if the original information is incorrect.

Even if a separate post corrects that error, if it isn't on that first page of search results individuals and companies, will have no way of clearing their names or correcting inaccurate information, because searchers rarely venture to second or third page results.

The Right to Respond Should be a Fundamental Right of the Internet

A few months ago I wrote a post about Google's hiring practices in its corporate communications team. A senior Google PR executive asked me to clarify a few points. I made the changes but he wanted more changes. Unfortunately his follow up email got lost in my inbox and I didn't see it for several months, and so I didn't make the changes.

In his email he wrote:

"I don't think the follow-up edit you posted is a sufficient recalibration of the reality in Google Communications. And leaving the original post out there simply leads the misperception to be repeated..and repeated."

He is right. If there was a "right to respond" available, and GOOG could easily offer such a service, then the problem would be solved.

- - -

Please see:

The Right to Respond Should be a Fundamental Right of the Internet

At the Newcomm Forum in Las Vegas this week, I kept hearing a lament that is all too common: how to deal with with negative or incorrect content about a company and its  products on search engine results? Especially if...

Posted by Tom Foremski on March 10, 2007 4:16 PM

Ironic Design offers better proof than Intelligent Design

Tom Foremski, Silicon Valley Watcher Blog software creator Mena Trott criticizes BlogoSphere. BlogoSphere (BS) turns on blogging software creator Mena Trott. Mena Trott Implodes Onstage. News at 11 Has the BS itself imploded? It is all marvesouly entertaining, in a... -Posted by Tom Foremski on December 9, 2005 4:31 AM

]]> Thu, 23 Aug 2007 10:44:56 -0700 https://content.presspage.com/clients/150_2054.jpeg?10000 https://content.presspage.com/clients/150_2054.jpeg?10000 https://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/the-value-of-one-news-post--55m/ https://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/the-value-of-one-news-post--55m/242081
By Tom Foremski

The conventional wisdom as espoused by the aggregators and search engines is that there is no value in news except in the aggregate, as Google News, Digg, etc.

That's why these are tough times for newspapers and news organizations.

However, I believe the long term outlook for journalism is excellent and that there is considerable value in journalism, much more than in the aggregators of news because the technology to do that is now a commodity. News is a value add that cannot be produced by algorithm and machine.

The problem is that we don't have a good way to recover the value that journalism produces. And there is considerable value in journalism.

Let me give you an example. Tuesday evening I posted a story that Wind River was for sale and IBM is the likely buyer. The story has yet to be proven but it came from an excellent source and one that has proved extremely reliable in the past.

Wind River stock jumped 9 per cent at the market open and by the end of Wednesday locked in a gain of nearly 7 per cent, or about $55m. That piece of information created a tremendous amount of value for a lot of people.

And business journalism continues to create a tremendous amount of value. It levels the playing field, it distribtes important information that is used to make business decisions that affect millions of people. There is a tremendous amount of value in professional journalism.

Yet professional journalism is under seige, the San Francisco Chronicle cut 100 newsroom jobs recently, 25 per cent of its newsroom. Because it can't recover enough of the value its journalists produce. This is true at other publications around the world.

What is the future? The future is the privatisation of news to those that can afford it--unless we can develop a way to pay for it. Google AdSense and other ad networks don't come anywhere close to covering the costs of news organizations.

Unless we can solve this problem--and it is one of the most serious issues confronting our society--the news will be financed by small groups of wealthy individuals that can make money from the news, and the news will be kept private.

This is the future: Subscribe to my 10K Silicon Valley Watcher Deal Flow Newsletter--launching soon. It's $10k per year and only 100 subscriptions are available. Call now and reserve your subscription.

]]> Thu, 16 Aug 2007 10:19:29 -0700 https://content.presspage.com/clients/150_2054.jpeg?10000 https://content.presspage.com/clients/150_2054.jpeg?10000 https://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/google-news-offers-right-to-respond/ https://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/google-news-offers-right-to-respond/242075
By Tom Foremski

In March 2007 I proposed that a fundamental right of the Internet should be a right to respond to anything on the web.

There should be a tiny Right to Respond widget or link next to any content. The widget is fed by a central Right to Respond.org server.

If there is a response filed by a company or individual, it will indicate it, in the same way as my Technorati widget found at the end of each article shows readers if there are other blogs mentioning this post.

- Companies would pay to use this service, individuals would have free access.

SVW: The Right to Respond Should be a Fundamental Right of the Interne

Google News has started to offer something similar but related to news stories. If you are mentioned in a news story or have any relationship to the news story Google will publish your response right next to the story. [Hat tip to Chris Knight...]

Josh Lowensohn over at News.com explains:

Users of the U.S. version of Google News will now be able to comment on a story, that is assuming they're somehow involved in it. The process is not for everyone, and in fact requires a lengthy verification process of sending off your comment and credentials to a special Google e-mail address, and later verifying your identity via domain name and an e-mail follow-up from Google staff.

News.com: Google News rolling out expert user comments

Foremski's Take: The verification process would likely be lengthy. News is quickly consumed. By the time a response is approved few people reading the news will see the responses.

Also, this verification process cannot be done by machine because people will spoof it. GOOG always wants to use machines rather than people. Google News is completely published by algorithm. Printed in tiny type at the bottom of Google News:

The selection and placement of stories on this page were determined automatically by a computer program.

Chris Tolles, co-founder of Topix.com said that Google got the idea from Topix. Speaking at a panel at KQED on Thursday evening, Mr Tolles said that Google would have a hard time trying to moderate comments on news stories.

Corporate advantage

Google could get pre-authorize people to comment on news stories but that would benefit corporations over individuals. It is easier to pre-authorize company spokespeople and machine-match them to a keyword in the news copy.

Individuals, and small groups and organizations, would have a weaker right to respond because their response would not be as timely as that of large business groups. They would have to go through the lengthy verification process.

Google could be trumped

News organizations could potentially trump Google by offering a similar right to respond right next to their news stories. They could pre-authorize people and organizations because they are in early contact with them during the journalistic process.

]]> Thu, 09 Aug 2007 14:25:11 -0700 https://content.presspage.com/clients/150_2054.jpeg?10000 https://content.presspage.com/clients/150_2054.jpeg?10000 https://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/stanford-summit-its-a-media-valley-says-roger-mcnamee---/ https://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/stanford-summit-its-a-media-valley-says-roger-mcnamee---/241845
I've been saying Silicon Valley has turned into media valley for more than two years. So it is good to have some backing.

Today at a fascinating VC panel, Roger McNamee, one of the top Silicon Valley investors, said Silicon Valley is doing great (despite the lack of exit strategies, and a mediocre IPO market.)

"For the first time, Silicon Valley is now represented in every form of media except television," he said.

About two years ago on a visit to New York, I wrote that someone should tell Mayor Bloomberg that the center of the media industry is moving to Silicon Valley and the West Coast. Because Google, Yahoo, EBay, (and now YouTube, FaceBook, etc) are all media companies.

New York is very cool partly because of its large media industry. The largest news and magazine companies have a heavy presence in midtown where I was staying. You can't avoid seeing their ticker tape news headlines whirl around their buildings, and their giant logos at night.



My alma mater, the Financial Times US HQ is there, and so are large offices of Reuters, CNN, Time-Warner, Hearst, etc.



But it's a shame that the center of the media industry has moved to Silicon Valley and nobody told New York :-)

http://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/mt/archives/2005/09/a_report_from_n.php



GOOG, YHOO, EBAY, etc, publish pages of content with advertising around it. They are not technology companies, they are technology-enabled media companies.

Yes, GOOG et al would rather not represent themselves as media companies because they republish content for free from media companies. Media companies will let a "technology" company do this but not another media company...

...

Please see:

A Report From New York City...

September 2005

Silicon Valley has become Media Valley - someone should tell NYC Feb 2007.

]]> Wed, 01 Aug 2007 13:34:35 -0700 https://content.presspage.com/clients/150_2054.jpeg?10000 https://content.presspage.com/clients/150_2054.jpeg?10000 https://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/stanford-summit-an-energized-mccain-msft-loves-startups-software-patents-for-vcs---/ https://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/stanford-summit-an-energized-mccain-msft-loves-startups-software-patents-for-vcs---/241890
I'm at the Stanford Summit for much of this week:

. . . I ran into Dan'l Lewin MSFT VP of emerging businesses and his sidekick, Doug Free. This dynamic duo is the face of MSFT around here, and also the eyes and ears for MSFT as to what is going on in Silicon Valley. Mr Lewin tells me he has been traveling all around the world recently, India, China and also Brazil. The goal is to involve startups in the MSFT platform. I have an interview with Mr Lewin lined up for Thursday.

. . . John McCain was surprisingly good in his keynote address. Admittedly, expectations had been set very low. Tony Perkins seemed starstruck, sitting on stage next to Senator McCain, watching him being interviewed. Can Senator McCain pull out of his dive? He could.

. . . The panel on software patents was interesting. IBM said it is a big supporter of the peer-reviewed software patent process. And also said that the software patent process needs to be reformed, adding more patent examiners is not the answer.

. . . There was much discussion about the poor quality of software patents. I had just had an interesting chat with a software patent lawyer who said: "Often when a startup gets funding, they come to us and ask us to find five software patents among what they have so that they can keep their VC investors happy. We look through their technology and try to find what can be patented, they are paying us for five patents."

]]> Wed, 01 Aug 2007 09:15:54 -0700 https://content.presspage.com/clients/150_2054.jpeg?10000 https://content.presspage.com/clients/150_2054.jpeg?10000 https://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/all-along-the-watchtower----gigaom-party-at-the-deyoung/ https://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/all-along-the-watchtower----gigaom-party-at-the-deyoung/242259
By Tom Foremski

I really need to wear my tin foil hat more often these days because I've always wanted to host an event in the tower of the fabulous DeYoung museum in Golden Gate Park. I've been hosting First Fridays with Foremski at the DeYoung but never in the tower. . .

My good buddy Om Malik (BTW I am T+Om . . . a value ad :-) beat me to it Wednesday evening.

I turned up with my friend Kathryn and rapidly ran into lots of my favorite people. First was Gaurav Dhillon, former head of Informatica, now leading Jaman.com.

Vivek Randive, CEO of Tibco (Tibco is a sponsor of SVW) turned up looking very rock star, with dark shades, in leather and black. Plus, the delightful Oceana Rain was on his arm. (The shades were related to an unfortunate dust storm on the ranch of Tom Siebel in Montana (the ranch is 25 miles from end to end. Ask Vivek for the story...)

GigaOminous

Om got up and spoke and mentioned me, and I told him to go to hell, just for the hell of it. Then Jim Louderback, the new CEO of Revision 3 (former head honcho of PC Magazine) got up on stage and said Revision 3 was sponsoring a GigaOm video show. (I'm always happy to see GigaOm following in the footsteps of SIlicon Valley Watcher . . . :-)

I teased Jim Louderback about leaving the sinking ship of media at PC Magazine. As the new CEO of Revision 3 he said he is going back to his roots. He has an MBA.

MSFT Gold

The Digg founders are behind Revision 3 and Jay Adelson was there. I managed to button hole him for a bit and ask him about the deal Digg announced today with Microsoft, ditching long time partner Federated Media for advertising services.

I asked what kind of deal MSFT was offering? Jay wouldn't say except to say that it was very competitive. Is MSFT offering 100 per cent of ad revenues? Is it more than 100 per cent? He just smiled.

My guess is that MSFT is trying to buy all the big web sites with ad revenue sharing deals that go beyond 100 per cent. Why not? Microsoft has the money. It can cut off Google AdSense ad network at the knees, or considerably higher--it is nearly 50 per cent of GOOG's revenues.

]]> Wed, 25 Jul 2007 14:29:05 -0700 https://content.presspage.com/clients/150_2054.jpeg?10000 https://content.presspage.com/clients/150_2054.jpeg?10000 https://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/from-press-release-to-news-cutting-out-the-independent-media/ https://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/from-press-release-to-news-cutting-out-the-independent-media/241958Shannon Whitley is behind the very interesting PRX Builder, a way to produce company press releases that include many-media, links, etc.

PRX Builder now has a feature that allows companies to use Google AdWords to advertise the "news headlines."

Although news releases should not be advertisements themselves, there’s nothing wrong with hawking your headlines to get peoples’ attention.  That’s why I developed NewsAds™ for PRX Builder.

What’s a NewsAd? 

NewsAds are advertisements that are published to the Google AdWords network.  You know, the ads that appear besides the Google search results and on web pages across the internet.  PRX Builder now offers NewsAds as an additional feature for each news release.  Publish your release through PRX Builder and then create a NewsAd about your release on Google AdWords.

http://www.voiceoftech.com/swhitley/?p=317

This is an interesting development because parts of the PR industry thinks it can do quite well by getting around the media and publish directly to potential customers. Yes, they can, but few people ask if this strategy makes much sense.

Morgan McLintic, over at Lewis PR recently wrote about an event discussing the successful use of search engine optimization to get a high Google ranking for a press release.

I asked a few people after the session what they thought. Everyone said you want people to find your content online. Agreed. No-one said they'd ever bought anything based on finding a press release.

Everyone agreed a PR team should know which media might be interested in a press release, and that they should be approached directly. No-one felt that media would spend much time reading releases they'd stumbled across on the web.

SEO PR - missing the target?

A high Google rank should not be confused with a successful news release. Readers know when something is from the company. Readers respect independent media articles over those from a company. Much better to promote those independent media pieces than press releases, imho.

But with independent media rapidly disappearing, what are the PR firms going to do? Publish to Google it seems...

]]> Mon, 23 Jul 2007 16:03:39 -0700 https://content.presspage.com/clients/150_2054.jpeg?10000 https://content.presspage.com/clients/150_2054.jpeg?10000 https://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/deathmatch-2007-the-andrew-keen-roadshow-comes-to-town/ https://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/deathmatch-2007-the-andrew-keen-roadshow-comes-to-town/242074This is the place to be Tuesday evening, listening to a fireside chat with Andrew Keen and his cult of the amateur...with some special guests.

Tuesday, June 19 (7:00pm): BARNES & NOBLE, CAMPBELL, CA
Debate with Keith Teare, Nick Carr and Steve Gillmor. Moderated by Dan Farber of ZDNet.

See: http://strumpette.com/archives/402-THUNDERDOME-2.0-Mad-Keen-vs.-The-Cluetrain.html

Additional info:

Barnes & Noble Booksellers
The Pruneyard

Address
The Pruneyard
1875 S. Bascom Avenue Ste 240
Campbell, CA 95008
408-559-8101

Quick Directions
On the corner of S. Bascom and E. Campbell Avenue in the Pruneyard Shopping Center.]]> Mon, 18 Jun 2007 16:14:00 -0700 https://content.presspage.com/clients/150_2054.jpeg?10000 https://content.presspage.com/clients/150_2054.jpeg?10000 https://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/al-saracevic-reporting-on-silicon-valley-tech-companies/ https://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/al-saracevic-reporting-on-silicon-valley-tech-companies/241770

Al Saracevic is the deputy business editor at the San Francisco Chronicle and responsible for tech coverage. I caught up Mr. Saracevic at a recent conference on innovation journalism at Stanford university. In this segment, he is on a panel and talks about the Silicon Valley beat and how to get original news stories. It all comes down to "follow the money."

Download From Podtech.net:

* MP3 AudioAudio MP4 VideoVideo iPod Optimized VideoiPod Posted in Enterprise 2.0, PodTech, Silicon Valley Watcher

]]> Wed, 13 Jun 2007 03:14:20 -0700 https://content.presspage.com/clients/150_2054.jpeg?10000 https://content.presspage.com/clients/150_2054.jpeg?10000 https://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/ciscos-1st-new-media-summit/ https://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/ciscos-1st-new-media-summit/242349Cisco is reinventing itself as a media technologies company...

This is where I'll be for much of Tuesday. 

Catch me on the 11am panel:

11:00-12:00
The Changing Media Landscape: Convergence of Traditional and New Media
Moderator:

• John Earnhardt - Blogger in Chief, Cisco

Panelists:

• Eric Savitz, Barron's West Coast Editor & Tech Trader Daily Blogger
• Dan Gillmor, Center for Citizen Media
• Dean Takahashi, Technology Columnist, San Jose Mercury News
• Tom Foremski, Silicon Valley Watcher

The rest of it isn't too bad either :-)

Here are details from Cisco:

Cisco and Best Practices in Corporate Communications host the first annual 2007 New Media Summit

Who:     Cisco® and Best Practices in Corporate Communications (BPCC)

What:     Web 2.0 has changed how businesses not only communicate with their customers, partners, and shareholders but also how a company communicates and collaborates with its employees. Communications is fast becoming a competitive advantage for companies to compete on a global basis.

The corporate communications team at Cisco and the organization Best Practices in Corporate Communications (http://www.bpincc.com/) invites you to join a global summit for communications professionals, journalists and bloggers to talk about the impact of new media in business communications.

Join us for a day of interactive discussions, best practice sharing, and expert speakers to learn how you can drive innovation and success using social networking and collaborative tools in your organization.

When:     Tuesday, June 5, 2007, from 9:00 a.m. - 3:00 p.m. PT

Where:     To attend live via webcast: http://newsroom.cisco.com/newmediasummit/2007/

Agenda:

9:00-9:45 AM PT
Keynote: "The Social Media Explosion,"
Dan Scheinman, SVP and GM, Media Solutions Group, Cisco

9:45-10:45
Measuring the ROI of Social Media
Moderator:

• Jen McClure, Executive Director, Society for New Communications Research, www.SCNR.org

Panelists:

• Katie Paine, President & CEO, KDPaine & Partners, LLC, Katie Paine's PR Measurement Blog
• Adam Brown, Director of Digital Communications, The Coca-Cola Company, Watch Adam's interview at Ketchum
• Jeremiah Owyang, Director of Corporate Media Strategy, PodTech.net, Web Strategy Blog

10:45-11:00
Break

11:00-12:00
The Changing Media Landscape: Convergence of Traditional and New Media
Moderator:

• John Earnhardt - Blogger in Chief, Cisco

Panelists:

• Eric Savitz, Barron's West Coast Editor & Tech Trader Daily Blogger
• Dan Gillmor, Center for Citizen Media
• Dean Takahashi, Technology Columnist, San Jose Mercury News
• Tom Foremski, Silicon Valley Watcher

12:00-1:00
Lunch

1:00-2:00
Internal Collaboration Tools & Strategies:
Moderator:

• Rick Wion, Web Strategy Director, GolinHarris

Panelists:

• William Wohl, Vice President of PTG Communications, SAP AG
• John Slavney, Director of Internal Communications, BP Americas
• Scott Wilder, Group Manager of Intuit Small Business Online Communities
• Terry McKenzie, Senior Director, Global Employee Communications and Communities Organization, Sun Microsystems

2:00-3:00
Communicating in Virtual Worlds
Moderator:

• Christian Renaud, Chief Architect of Virtual Worlds, Cisco

Panelists:

• Achim Muellers, Head of Brand Relations and Cooperations, BMW
• Doug McDavid, Business Architect at the IBM Academy of Technology, IBM
• Reuben Steiger, CEO, Millions of Us, http://www.millionsofus.com/blog/
• Paul Steinberg, Intel Software Network, Intel

About Best Practices in Corporate Communications

Best Practices in Corporate Communications (BPCC) is a member-based service and benchmarking resource for over 50 Fortune 500-level member companies. BPCC provides the opportunity for these companies to exchange best practices relating to communications issues, to benchmark corporate communications practices, and to build corporate communications management and resources.

]]> Mon, 04 Jun 2007 17:18:09 -0700 https://content.presspage.com/clients/150_2054.jpeg?10000 https://content.presspage.com/clients/150_2054.jpeg?10000 https://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/movable-type-scales-up-goes-open-source/ https://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/movable-type-scales-up-goes-open-source/242395By Tom Foremski

I use Movable Type to publish Silicon Valley Watcher although many other bloggers moved to Wordpress a long time ago. I like it because I know it and I don't want to learn another platform if I don't have to, plus it works. So I was very interested to get a briefing on the new Movable Type, Version 4.0.

I spoke with Chris Alden, EVP and General Manager of the Professional Division at Six Apart. He said that version 4.0 represents the largest investment of engineering years that the company has ever made in Movable Type. And it answers critics who said that Six Apart was spending more time building its hosted services businesses, than on Movable Type.

I can't wait to try it. It has social/community features built into the platform. Users can rate posts and each other; they can be given special publishing rights, they can be given permission to write posts without moderation, they can even publish their own blogs on the blog.

There are a lot of new content management features built in, favoring large scale deployments. It is designed for four types of users: large publications such as New York Times; Universities and academic uses; Marketing and promotional; and internal blogging within large organizations.

A lot of features, previously available as plug-ins, are integrated into the platform. And Six Apart will release "functional packs" that are targeted at different types of users, such as large media companies, that contain specialized functions that don't need to be in the base platform.

Also, the look and feel of the software has been completely redesigned--the first time in five years.

And, Movable Type will be available under an open source software license in Q3. The open source version will be based on Movable Type 3.x series with some Version 4.0 features.

"It will be a similar model to that of MySQL, which offers an open source licence as well as a commercial version that is supported," said Mr Alden.

The current Movable Type version 4 is beta, but the shipping version is just 6 to 12 weeks away.

Wordpress is a good blogging platform and popular among individual bloggers but Movable Type, with its ability to run multiple blogs from a single installation is gaining ground in enterprise applications.

I'm looking forward to trying it out and moving SVW to the new platform-- after the beta period.

---

Additional Info from Six Apart:

Six Apart Announces Movable Type 4 beta - blogging's next step toward a
flexible, extensible social media platform for individuals and
businesses
Easier to use than ever, MT4 provides the most powerful blog tools for
any size organization
San Francisco, CA - June 5, 2007  - Six Apart, the world's
leading independent blogging software and services company, today
announced the beta release of Movable Type 4, a blogging platform
designed to meet the website content management needs of growing
organizations and to serve as a social media platform that enables
businesses to create community-driven websites.
Today's announcement marks the first of a series of new products,
features, and services around Six Apart's flagship blogging platform
that will be unveiled throughout the summer
"We have a wide range of customers, such as the Washington Post, Oracle,
Boeing, Intel, TBWA/Chiat Day, NYU, and Whole Foods, using Movable Type
for publishing, marketing, and internal communications," said Chris
Alden, EVP and General Manager of the Professional Division at Six
Apart. "They demand flexibility, scalability and interactivity as they
deploy blogs throughout their organizations. MT4 has been re-designed
and re-architected as a platform to address their needs while providing
a basis to build social networking features that re-define the scope of
blogging,"
Six Apart also announced the inauguration of the Movable Type Open
Source Project, an initiative that will make an open source version of
Movable Type available in Q3 of this year. Developers and customers
interested in the project can visit www.movabletype.org for more
information.
The new Movable Type includes numerous features and improvements that
make it the easiest and most powerful way for individuals, small
businesses and companies to begin, and then scale, their blogging
initiatives:
*        MT4 includes more than 50 new features that make it easier than
ever to use, including an installation and upgrade wizard, easier and
more powerful template management tools that speed site development, all
new default templates and themes to help users create a great looking
blog in minutes, and a completely redesigned user interface focused on
streamlining common tasks. Advanced WYSIWYG composition and editing for
a dramatically improved posting experience and a system dashboard with a
dynamic graphic display that gives a powerful summary of recent activity
also contribute to ease of use.
*        MT4 is a social media platform that allows users to turn their
audiences into communities. Readers can become members of a website
through Movable Type's community management features, with rights to
post alongside authors and to add and share rich text and media posts
with photos, videos, and audio. Movable Type also has a ratings
framework to enable recommendation features. There will be more
information later in the beta period about an optional functionality
pack with community features for Movable Type.
MT4 saves users time by allowing management of many blogs and many users
in a central interface. Users can install, manage and publish an
unlimited number of blogs with one installation. The Movable Type
aggregator pulls multiple blogs into a single blog, and users can be
managed more effectively with customizable roles and groups. There will
be more information later in the beta period about an optional
functionality pack with enterprise capabilities for Movable Type.
MT4 can power an entire web site - not just a blog. MT4 provides the
power and flexibility to build web sites that are easy to manage and
easy to update, at a fraction of the cost of traditional content
management systems. New content and asset management tools make
uploading and revising photos, documents, and videos incredibly easy.
Users can create standalone web pages that automatically inherit the
design of the blog, to ensure the entire site has a consistent look and
feel. Easy-to-use template management tools put the focus where it
belongs: on content, not on code.
MT4 scales to meet the needs of growing organizations with the most
advanced technology, power and performance. Six Apart runs some of the
largest sites on the Internet, and has brought the technology that
powers these world class sites into Movable Type. MT4 leverages
technology that helps scale Vox, LiveJournal and TypePad, as well as
sites from AOL, Microsoft and Facebook. These technologies include
database caching through Memcached and Data::ObjectDriver, and
authenticating of users with OpenID. Movable Type can now be run in
multi-server environments, with broad support for operating systems
(Linux, Windows, and Solaris) and databases (MySQL, PosgreSQL, Oracle,
and SQL Server).
MT4's new component-based architecture enables solution-specific product
extensions. MT4 introduces a new architecture for the Movable Type
platform that unifies its commercial and enterprise product lines while
enabling advanced capabilities with optional functionality packs. Making
use of Movable Type's open plug-in API, Six Apart has architected the
platform to accommodate full featured packs that support enterprise
integration, community management and other solution-specific uses.
In addition, MT4 includes the world-class customer support that Six
Apart has provided since Movable Type's inception. A network of
professional consultants, developers, designers and business
professionals is available to customers to provide customization and
extra services when desired.
Pricing and Availability
Developers and customers can download a beta version of Movable Type 4.0
at www.movabletype.org, and are encouraged to provide feedback at the
beta community website at the same URL. Personal use of Movable Type
continues to be free, with no restrictions placed upon the number of
blogs or authors. Personal use customers have the option to purchase
support separately if needed. Commercial, Education, and Non-Profit
licenses for the current version of Movable Type, MT 3.35, will include
a discounted upgrade to MT 4.0 during the beta period. Existing users
may buy upgrades to MT 4.0 at a pre-release discount. For detailed
pricing information please visit www.movabletype.com/pricing. Enterprise
customers should contact sales@sixapart.com for information about
discounts on MT 4.0 during the beta period.
About Six Apart:
Six Apart Ltd. provides award-winning blogging software and services
that change the way millions of individuals, organizations, and
corporations connect and communicate across the world every day. Founded
in 2002 by husband and wife team Ben Trott and Mena G. Trott, Six Apart
has grown into a global company with its headquarters in San Francisco,
CA, and offices in Europe and Japan. The company continues to lead in
the blogging and social media industry with the Movable Type publishing
platform, the TypePad hosted blogging service, LiveJournal, an online
community organized around personal journals, and Vox, a free blogging
service for friends and families. For more information visit the Six
Apart corporate web site at http://www.sixapart.com/.
Six Apart announces easier than ever website-building features in
TypePad Blogging services provider responds to individual and business
customers' evolving requirements for all-in-one website tools
Embargoed
San Francisco, CA - June 7, 2007 - Six Apart, the world's leading
independent blogging software and services company, today announced a
combination of features in TypePad, the award-winning hosted blog
service, that make it easier than ever for users to build and maintain
professional, updateable websites in minutes. The new features, the
most-requested in a recent TypePad customer survey, include TypePad
pages, new professional themes and layouts, and enhanced visitor
statistics. The company also announced enhanced integration with Windows
Live Writer.
TypePad's new features make it easier than ever to build an entire
website. More than 20 percent of professional and business customers
already use TypePad as their primary website because of its
user-friendly interface and the ability to quickly and easily update
information. Other customers use TypePad alongside their traditional
websites to enhance customer engagement and increase search engine
traffic.
Denise Wakeman, TypePad customer and founder of The Blog Squad, said,
"I'm thrilled to have the ability to add pages to my TypePad blogs.  I
can now create stand alone pages to use on my blogs as I would on a
static website for things like contact, bio and product info. Being able
to define the URLs also helps me be more strategic with the search
engines. As I say to my clients, you really don't need a 'traditional'
website anymore when you can do everything so much more easily on a
blog."
With the introduction of TypePad pages, traditional web pages become as
easy to create and update as blog posts, giving professionals an
all-in-one, easy-to-maintain web presence.  Pages found on traditional
websites, like "About Us," "Our Products," or "Contact Us," can now be
created in TypePad using a wide variety of new themes and layouts
designed expressly for professional and business users.  These new
themes and layouts, along with TypePad's dozens of existing themes and
layouts, can be used for web pages and blog pages alike. Users can set a
page to be the home page for their blog, so it's the first thing readers
see when they go to the website.
TypePad business customers range from large media organizations like USA
Today to real estate offices, wineries, and legal and accounting firms
to smaller organizations such as crafts and clothing retailers.
 "Professionals use TypePad to promote their businesses and to easily
and frequently engage with their audiences," said Chris Alden, EVP and
General Manager of the Professional Division at Six Apart. "With the
addition of these new features, businesses can use just one service -
TypePad - to build their website, with design, hosting, blogging, and
world-class support included."
In addition to TypePad pages, Six Apart introduced enhanced support for
visitor statistics and Windows Live Writer. Every website and blog owner
needs to know how many visitors come to their site and how they arrived.
Enhanced visitor statistics give website owners this information through
a quickly readable graphical presentation showing historical visitor
information and a downloadable Excel file for deeper analysis.
Integration with Windows Live Writer means that users can compose and
post their web pages in the same way they've been able to compose blog
posts: in a rich offline editing environment, whenever and wherever they
like.
About TypePad:
TypePad is the award-winning hosted blogging service preferred by
professionals, small businesses, and enthusiasts. TypePad provides a
rich set of features for publishing, updating, and sharing information
on the Web. No installation or configuration is required. TypePad blogs
are fully hosted and managed by Six Apart.
About Six Apart:
Six Apart Ltd. provides award-winning blogging software and services
that change the way millions of individuals, organizations, and
corporations connect and communicate across the world every day. Founded
in 2002 by husband and wife team Ben Trott and Mena G. Trott, Six Apart
has grown into a global company with its headquarters in San Francisco,
CA, and offices in Europe and Japan. The company continues to lead in
the blogging and social media industry with the Movable Type publishing
platform, the TypePad hosted blogging service, LiveJournal, an online
community organized around personal journals, and Vox, a free blogging
service for friends and families. For more information visit the Six
Apart corporate website at http://www.sixapart.com/.]]> Mon, 04 Jun 2007 16:41:31 -0700 https://content.presspage.com/clients/150_2054.jpeg?10000 https://content.presspage.com/clients/150_2054.jpeg?10000 https://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/monday-bloody-monday-as-axe-swings-at-sf-chronicle/ https://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/monday-bloody-monday-as-axe-swings-at-sf-chronicle/241772By Tom Foremski

The first of 100 job cuts took place at the SF Chronicle on Monday. About 20 managers were the first to receive news they no longer have a job. 

Some had worked there for decades, some are among the top practitioners of their profession earning the respect of colleagues across the industry. Some have serious health issues within their families and now face a bleak future without healthcare.

Next in line are 80 reporters. By the end of the summer the SF Chronicle will have made one of the largest newsroom cuts of any major newspaper.

It's an extremely unpleasant 80-20 rule. Hopefully the management measured twice to cut once.

Gathering Tempest 

It was a somber scene Monday evening at The Tempest, the bar that serves as a favorite watering hole for the SF Chron workers. Editorial teams that had worked together for years gathered to say goodbye to some, while many were still awaiting their own fates.

The Tempest is an ironic name for a bar catering to our local media. It's very descriptive of how quickly change is happening in our industry.

At no other time in our lives will we be witness to such massive, disruptive changes in the media industry. And as media professionals, at no other time in our lives will we be part of such historic, disruptive changes.

Such times will deliver great opportunities for some, and great challenges for all.

I am confident that we will see rise from the ashes a soaring, roaring phoenix. Journalism will once again become a valued profession. And we will see a new enlightenment, a new Venice. New media, in its many-media forms, will usher in new age of reason and logic. We will leave behind the dark thinking of religious fundamentalism, and dark ignorance, here in the US and abroad.

300 

The movie "300" reminded me that a few people can make a big difference. The Greeks, representing the roots of our civilization, were defeated in that battle. Yet their culture of reason and logic won out over time.

And so our culture of professional journalism, in the service of reason and logic, will win out over time. And time is now highly compressed, it won't take hundreds or thousands of years.

After the cuts there will be 300 editorial staff remaining at the SF Chronicle.

What happens if the old media dies before the new media learns to walk?

Media is how society solves its problems and it requires a professional media class. A fragmented and generally lower quality media will not help us figure out our problems--and we have some big ones ahead of us.

I'm confident we will get to the new Venice, but the next few years will be scary, painful, and dramatic. Because the economic models that supported the media industry are being torn apart and the new economic models are still being formed.

The new business models can't support the cost structure of the "oldstream media" with its printing presses, pension plans, delivery trucks, administrators, office buildings...

The new media business models can barely support a blogger journalist, with a notebook, sitting in a bedroom.

- - -

Additional Info:

Media Disruption 80 newsroom jobs to go at SF Chron

The San Francisco Chronicle, reported to be losing as much as $1m per week, is to cut 25% of newsroom staff by the end of this summer.

"This is one of the biggest one-time hits we've heard about anywhere in the country," said Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, in Washington.

Eighty reporters, photographers, copy editors and others, as well as 20 employees in management positions are expected to be laid off by end of the summer.

http://www.sfgate.com/

...

 

And from SVW - September 2005:

A report from New York city . . .

 

Whenever I'm in New York I feel like I'm in the coolest city in the world...this time it also felt like the hottest and most humid city in the world.

The warm, moist air stirred up by hurricane Katrina, made me melt into a walking puddle, especially when drenched by occasional torrential downpours.

New York is very cool partly because of its large media industry. The largest news and magazine companies have a heavy presence in midtown where I was staying. You can't avoid seeing their ticker tape news headlines whirl around their buildings, and their giant logos at night.

My alma mater, the Financial Times US HQ is there, and so are large offices of Reuters, CNN, Time-Warner, Hearst, etc.

But it's a shame that the center of the media industry has moved to Silicon Valley and nobody told New York :-)

I should write Mayor Bloomberg a letter about that. It would point out that many Silicon Valley companies such as Google, Yahoo, and EBay, are in fact media companies. They are technology enabled media companies.

They publish digital rather than paper pages but they carry content and advertising just like a newspaper or magazine paper page.

And our media industry is growing like gangbusters while New York's is not. Our media industry is hiring like crazy (Yahoo has 700 new positions to fill, Google a similar number) while New York's media industry continues to cut jobs and budgets.

]]> Mon, 04 Jun 2007 14:21:32 -0700 https://content.presspage.com/clients/150_2054.jpeg?10000 https://content.presspage.com/clients/150_2054.jpeg?10000 https://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/live-innovation-journalism-conference-notes-private-equity-is-biggest-threat-to-journalism-in-silicon-valley/ https://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/live-innovation-journalism-conference-notes-private-equity-is-biggest-threat-to-journalism-in-silicon-valley/242305I am spending Tuesday afternoon at the Innovation Journalism conference at Stanford University. I spoke on a panel and am listening to many more panels, filled with a lot of my media colleagues.

Here are some quick, notes and quotes (please come back and refresh the page for more...):

Al Saracevic, deputy business editor, SF Chronicle:

• Private equity is the biggest threat to journalism, it will create a dark ages. With public companies we at least have a fighting chance to get at information, that's not true with private equity and private companies.

Other panelists and comments:

John Furrier-Founder of PodTech.net (an SVW content partner):

• We will have new hybrid forms of media emerging with business models that are clearly stated. At Podtech we have sponsorships as a business model, the long term trend is towards pay per performance.

Mats Johansson, managing editor of TT, Swedish newspaper:

• I'd like to see the traditional newsroom become less conservative and more open to using the new tools and techniques.

Michael Kanellos, Editor-at-large CNET News.com:

• If readers have something negative to say, they generally do it in the comments section. If they have some positive feedback they tend to send it in emails to the reporter.

Charles Wessner, program director, NAS Board on Science, Technology and Economic Policy:

• Media has an extremely important role as an observer and an agenda setter for technology and innovation.

Greg Pascal Zachary - Journalist and visiting lecturer, Stanford University:

• Beware of technology utopianism and also be aware that technology is often used to maintain the position of those already powerful and rich. The developing world doesn;t need a $100 laptop it needs the same type of notebook you and I use.

 Siri Schubert, freelance journalist for German publications:

• When I cover technology and talk with people, I don't have any way of knowing how good the technology is, I have to focus on who has an agenda and evaluate stories in that way. I tend to focus on the business side of stories.

Daniel Kreiss, Researcher, Stanford University:

• Journalists should know something about the technology that they cover, it would improve their journalism.

Rachel Konrad, Silicon Valley correspondent , The Associated Press:

• We get over a billion impressions per day on our stories and so it is very difficult to respond to readers. On one of my stories I received 800 emails, with some great content.

Tina Bjers: Injo Fellow 2007 from TT:

David Nordfors, program leader and one of the key organizers of the conference:

Miriam Olsson, Injo Fellow 2007  from Goteborgsposten, Swedish newspaper:

]]> Tue, 22 May 2007 07:51:23 -0700 https://content.presspage.com/clients/150_2054.jpeg?10000 https://content.presspage.com/clients/150_2054.jpeg?10000 https://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/the-greanteagirlie-mystery-and-the-viral-nature-of-mistrust/ https://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/the-greanteagirlie-mystery-and-the-viral-nature-of-mistrust/242229Last year, in the wake of the LonelyGirl15 mystery, I asked:

LonelyGirl15 was found out to be a fake video blogger--scripted by a Hollywood production team--many millions had watched it, and many thousands tried to find out who was behind it.

What happens in a future world where phishing is applied to news sources rather than spoofing banking sites? And where there aren't enough watchdogs to spot the fakes?

Link to: We badly need a way to verify sources of online content - we need a trust trackback

Today's LA Times has a front page story about the "new lonelygirl15."

GreenTeaGirlie innocent vidblogger or sinister marketing hoax - Los Angeles Times

Again, my son Matthew Foremski was involved in this story. But this time in another way, testing the viral nature of trust and mistrust. It's a fascinating account pulled together by Los Angeles Times staff writer David Sarno.

In late March, a striking young brunette going by the nom-de-Tube of 'GreenTeaGirlie' posted a 10-second video on YouTube.
"Hey YouTube viewers!" said the hopeful ingénue, "I'm new. I hope you welcome me. I'm actually going to be making some videos, and I hope they're going to be really neat, so I hope you check 'em out."
Before anyone knew what was going on, "I'm New" had rocketed to the front page of YouTube's daily Most Viewed section, where it raked in more than 170,000 hits on its first day — an extraordinary showing for a maiden video blog.

Again, it is worth asking the question, what happens when there aren't enougth watchdogs to spot fakes and test the veracity of online content?

Will the viral nature of mistrust be our only protection? Or should there be a clear way to test the source of anything published online?  Is it even possible?

]]> Fri, 04 May 2007 03:59:54 -0700 https://content.presspage.com/clients/150_2054.jpeg?10000 https://content.presspage.com/clients/150_2054.jpeg?10000 https://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/updated-zdnet-offers-sponsored-blogging--and-other-tales-from-outcast-ceo-event/ https://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/updated-zdnet-offers-sponsored-blogging--and-other-tales-from-outcast-ceo-event/242276Outcast PR's CEO Dinner was good this year, much better than last year. I didn't write about it last year because I had nothing much to say about it, this year was different.

I've got lots of interviews, lots of video to publish from the event. And I have lots of stories to tell too, which will appear over the weekend and over the following days.

Here are some teasers:

-ZDNet advertising/marketing services will unveil a new business model. Buy our marketing services and we will write your corporate blogs as part of a sponsorship deal. 

"It is going great," said Chris Jablonski, a former ZDNet blogger, who is now in the marketing department at ZDNet. "We've set up blogs for Computer Associates and other large IT companies. If they don't have a writer we will write their blogs for them." The blog posts are not identified as ZDNet authored. It is similar to how public relations companies ghost write for clients.But will it work in this context? Is it a new and viable media business model? UPDATE: The blogs are labelled as sponsored blogs. Here is an example: http://blogs.zdnet.com/Dice/ The blog is written by ZDNet on behalf of Dice.
...   

-Sam Whitmore from Sam Whitmore's Media Survey. This time I interview Sam instead of the other way around.

-Come back to hear Sam's take on the implosion of the East Coast IT trade media.

-Plus, there is an upcoming merger in the works for Sam.

Don't miss:

• -Video interview with Satish Dharmaraj, CEO of my favorite, favorite, Web 2.0 company: Zimbra.
• -Tim Turpin from Outcast interviews me and my hush hush project.

I'm still getting used to toting a video camera around with me, so some of the interviews might be a little experimental in quality. I will do better next time around, and the time after that too, I promise  :-)

]]> Thu, 03 May 2007 16:48:08 -0700 https://content.presspage.com/clients/150_2054.jpeg?10000 https://content.presspage.com/clients/150_2054.jpeg?10000 https://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/collision-media-launches/ https://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/collision-media-launches/242170James Miller From VNU Global Media launches his blog today: "Collision Media." There aren't very many perspectives in the mediasphere from people such as James, who brings with him experience in the revenue generating end of publishing. Plus a mix of European and US experience in online markets.

The first time I met James we talked non-stop for hours about media and the disruption within the industry. I'm glad he's decided to share some of his insights and launch his blog.

Collision Media]]> Sun, 29 Apr 2007 16:27:00 -0700 https://content.presspage.com/clients/150_2054.jpeg?10000 https://content.presspage.com/clients/150_2054.jpeg?10000 https://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/fast-analysis-the-advantages-of-your-own-ad-network/ https://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/fast-analysis-the-advantages-of-your-own-ad-network/242221

 FAST Search and Transfer, the leading European search firm, introduced a search based business platform for media companies and said that search traffic from its customers has surpassed Yahoo! and will overtake Google in 2 years.

European Firm Enters Battle For US Media Markets

Foremski's Take: Should media companies run their own ad networks? GOOG and YHOO will argue that joining their ad networks means greater liquidity, more customers, which means more ads.

Yes, they can sell more ads but at what price?

Not only do media companies give up a big share of the revenues but the price of online advertising is kept low because the media partners have to compete with what GOOG and YHOO charge for advertising on their own sites.

This sets the price for all ads on the same network. Which means that unless media companies can reduce their operating costs to the same level as the search giants, revenues from online advertising through the search engine ad networks will never be enough to cover their costs.

Media companies have to pay content producers, Goog and Yahoo! don't.

By running their own advertising networks media companies will have a smaller pool of potential customers but they keep more of the advertising revenues. And they can gain better control over ad prices.

There are many media companies that have local markets cornered, and are well positioned in many niche markets. GOOG and YHOO and MSFT are way behind in targeting local markets.

If media companies run their own advertising networks they will have a far more favorable ad pricing environment plus opportunities to sell additional services. I can't see the downside.

]]> Sun, 29 Apr 2007 15:00:46 -0700 https://content.presspage.com/clients/150_2054.jpeg?10000 https://content.presspage.com/clients/150_2054.jpeg?10000 https://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/fast-european-firm-enters-battle-for-us-media-markets--says-its-search-traffic-already-larger-than-yhoo-will-pass-goog-in-2-years/ https://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/fast-european-firm-enters-battle-for-us-media-markets--says-its-search-traffic-already-larger-than-yhoo-will-pass-goog-in-2-years/242264FAST Search and Transfer, the leading European search firm, introduced a search based business platform for media companies and said that search traffic from its customers has surpassed Yahoo! and will overtake Google in 2 years.

The Norwegian based company said its FASTMedia software platform is the first to match content to individual users, in addition to supporting all types of online advertising models. The suite of applications is designed specifically for media companies and enables them to run their own ad networks.

FAST said that its top 35 media customers already generate search traffic that exceeds that of Yahoo!.

The market research firm IDC estimates that 70 per cent of search queries do not come from search engines.

Instead, people are choosing to bypass search engines and are going
directly to their preferred information sources, retailers, and other
websites and searching there.

FAST recently completed a survey of its top 35 media customers:

Together this "FAST Media Network" is generating as much search traffic as Yahoo!, with search traffic growing more than twice as quickly.  At the current pace, searches within the "FAST Media Network" collectively will surpass Google in two years...

FAST wants media companies to "turn search from the disrupter of their worlds"  and use the technology to grow their businesses.

For example, newspaper publishers have stood by and watched Google and Yahoo sell massive amounts of advertising based on their content without any direct benefit--unless a reader clicks through to their news site, and then happens to click on a Google or Yahoo text ad.

FAST wants to cut out the middle-men by selling search-based business software to media companies to run within their own data centers and operate their own adverting businesses.

Global Media Warming

The battle for media markets is heating up.  Google recently acquired DoubleClick for $3.1bn and today Yahoo! acquired Right Media for $680m, to beef up their advertising services.

The competition is for a very lucrative business--running massive advertising networks for global media companies. The search giants keep about 20 per cent of total advertising revenues.

But this revenue share is skewed towards a handful of large media companies with the clout to negotiate better deals. Most publishers receive far less, between 60 and 40 per cent of ad revenues.

The FASTMedia software supports pay-per-click, contextual, classifieds and all other types of online advertising services, plus self-service, and unique features. It's  "Featured Content" technology matches content on-the-fly with online users' searches. Publishers can use this for targeted premium content services.

]]> Sun, 29 Apr 2007 14:51:51 -0700 https://content.presspage.com/clients/150_2054.jpeg?10000 https://content.presspage.com/clients/150_2054.jpeg?10000 https://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/washington-gets-a-reporters-shield-that-covers-the-net--now-its-time-for-a-federal-privilege/ https://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/washington-gets-a-reporters-shield-that-covers-the-net--now-its-time-for-a-federal-privilege/241971Tomorrow, Gov. Christine Gregoir will sign a bill adding Washington to the list of states with reporter's shield laws. California's shield was written into its Constitution into the 1970s. Washington's shield law is notable for including the Internet in its definition of news media and explictly protecting non-news sources against subpoenas. But state shields offer no protection for journalists in federal court, as the incarceration of Judith Miller - and to some degree Josh Wolf - show.

I talked today with Bruce Johnson, the Seattle-based attorney who drafted the Washington law. He said the addition of Washington to the list of states with reporter's shields is important not just for Washington state reporters but for the drive for a federal privilege for reporters.

Reporters are increasingly being jailed or under threat of jail time when under federal subpoena. Both Judy Miller and Josh Wolf went to jail because they refused to reveal sources to federal judges. The Chronicle's Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams came close to being jailed but escaped at the last moment. Certainly in the BALCO case and Wolf's case the fact that the proceeding happened in federal court is highly suspect.

"The filing of those cases in federal court was a subterfuge to get around shield laws," Johnson said. "It's an abuse of process to drag cases into federal court that really don't belong there."

"There are two ways to create a federal shield," he said. "Congress can pass a statute, but there have been bills kicking around in the House and Senate for years and Bush opposes them. Or the federal courts can recognize the reporter's privilege as a creation of common law. This second way is quite interesting," he said.

Under Federal Rule of Evidence 501:

[T]he privilege of a witness, person, government, State, or political subdivision thereof shall be governed by the principles of the common law as they may be interpreted by the courts of the United States in the light of reason and experience.

In other words, the federal system doesn't enumerate specific privileges, such as the attorny-client privilege, unlike most states. It's up to the federal courts to decide which privileges will be honored in the federal system. The Supreme Court can look around at the states and decide in one blow that the reporter's shield shall be federal law. It's happened before, Johnson said.

In the 1996 case of Jaffee v Redmond, 518 U.S. 1 (1996), the Court ruled that the psychotherapist-patient privilege existed in federal courts.

That it is appropriate for the federal courts to recognize a psychotherapist privilege under Rule 501 is confirmed by the fact that all 50 States and the District of Columbia have enacted into law some form of psychotherapist privilege. We have previously observed that the policy decisions of the States bear on the question whether federal courts should recognize a new privilege or amend the coverage of an existing one. [Citations.] Because state legislatures are fully aware of the need to protect the integrity of the factfinding functions of their courts, the existence of a consensus among the States indicates that "reason and experience" support recognition of the privilege. In addition, given the importance of the patient's understanding that her communications with her therapist will not be publicly disclosed, any State's promise of confidentiality would have little value if the patient were aware that the privilege would not be honored in a federal court. Denial of the federal privilege therefore would frustrate the purposes of the state legislation that was enacted to foster these confidential communications.

A long quote, but the sense is clear: the Court is willing to look to the states, find widespread support and create a privilege.

Would the Supreme Court do such a thing? "I don't know," Johnson said. "Scalia and Thomas have actually written some of the most pro-First Amendment decisions. And Alito wrote a pro-First Amendment decision when he was on the Court of Appeals."

Washington's law is much more up to date than California's. It defines "news media" as "any entity that is in the regular business of news gathering and disseminating news or information to the public by any means, including ... internet."

So what's an entity? It's a very straight-forward definition. If the organization has some legal status as a corporation or an LLC, etc., it's an entity. If it disseminates "news and information," its' covered. That would include SiliconValleyWatcher as well as the NRA.

While California's shield says nothing about bloggers or the Internet (it was written in the 1970s), this law encompasses publication by any means. It offers a bright line definition who is a journalist. That's a great development.

Still, young Josh Wolf probably would not be covered in Washington, either, since his footage was not done under contract for anyone; it was just his own freelance videography. If he had registered Josh Wolf LLC he probably would have been covered. It's a low bar. Johnson represented Josh Marshall, who set up TalkingPointsMemo as TPM Media LLC for a cool $100.

"At a certain point you to come up with a definition of news media. I think this is a very workable one, although it doesn't cover everyone you might like to see covered," Johnson said.]]> Thu, 26 Apr 2007 08:11:00 -0700 https://content.presspage.com/clients/150_2054.jpeg?10000 https://content.presspage.com/clients/150_2054.jpeg?10000 https://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/the-metrics-of-influence-buzzlogic-tracks-the-mediasphere/ https://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/the-metrics-of-influence-buzzlogic-tracks-the-mediasphere/242154

Brand management is a tricky thing. How do you know who is blogging or writing about your brands, and if the sentiment is positive or negative? There are millions of online "conversations" happening every day.

BuzzLogic, based in San Francisco has developed tools that allow corporations to track conversations across thousands of online sites, blogs, mainstream media and anywhere else online, in almost real-time.

And those tools can also determine how influential a site, a blogger, a writer is. And who they influence. After all, there is no sense in galvanizing a response team to an unfavorable post on a blog if its influence is zero.

The company recently completed its Series A funding, raising an impressive $9.6m after bootstrapping the venture for more than two years. "Its good to have a salary," smiles Rob Crumpler CEO. It is also good to have the validation that a VC investment brings.

BuzzLogic recently moved out of beta and in mid-April launched its BuzzLogic Enterprise service. More than 160 customers, many Fortune 500 companies, collaborated with BuzzLogic in the beta phase to refine the service.

"Companies are interested in knowing about themselves, how they are perceived and how their products are perceived," says Mr Crumpler. "And companies want to be able to spot potential problems before they grow into much larger issues."

There are many examples where a complaint online can mushroom into a major public relations disaster. Jeff Jarvis, a prominent New York blogger and his complaints about Dell is one such example.

The company's two key features are its algorithms and its visual display of the results which gives users an excellent view into the influence of a particular site on a specific topic.

Todd Parsons, the chief product officer explains: "Just because someone is influential within one sector doesn't mean that they are influential in other areas. Our algorithms can analyze influence and allow companies to focus on those sites that really matter. We can also track the rise and fall in influence of a particular site."

The algorithms cannot measure sentiment, but users can quickly tag online content according to positive or negative sentiments, which can be shared with colleagues.

Email alerts will warn of possible trouble in real-time. But each customer applies their own response. This can include contacting people and also getting involved in the online conversations.

BuzzLogic's technology also learns from its users, which should mean that the service continues to improve over time.

Foremski's Take: BuzzLogic's visual presentation of its data is excellent. The visual data is presented within a user interface that provides a view into who is participating in each conversation, over a specific period in time, alongside summaries of the content.

It is a service that could be used in many ways, not just for brand management. It could uncover new types of buzz bubbling up that could provide business opportunities for some companies. And it can also be used to test the effectiveness of a public relations campaign.

The role of search engines is one that is not yet part of BuzzLogic's measurement. Search engines can dredge up negative comments time and again, and can help sites gain influence despite other factors.

Services such as BuzzLogic's can give organizations an insight into how they are perceived without requiring focus groups. But most organizations don't yet know what to do with such data and what the appropriate response should be. But they will figure that out over time.

[Wells Fargo should take notice...]

- - -

Case studies:

• Corporate Communications
• Brand and Product Marketing
• Customer Service and Market Research
• Public Relations Agencies
• Bloggers

BuzzLogic Blog:

What's driving the U.S. Attorneys story?

Where there's folk, there's fire

Around the Buzz-o-sphere

Want to see what social media can do?

Using Social Media to Build Your Brand Buzz

Please also see:

Buzzlogic aims to untangle "Social Media"

Buzzlogic introduces on-demand software service to help companies identify key online influencers. From Buzzlogic: . . . BuzzLogic calculates and surfaces the influencers who are shaping and driving specific conversations in social media with algorithms that analyze relationships, such...

Posted by Tom Foremski on September 25, 2006 5:59 PM

 

How does public relations work in the blogosphere?

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...

Posted by Tom Foremski on March 23, 2006 1:59 PM

 

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

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...

Posted by Tom Foremski on March 10, 2006 4:00 PM

 

 

 

]]> Wed, 25 Apr 2007 06:46:15 -0700 https://content.presspage.com/clients/150_2054.jpeg?10000 https://content.presspage.com/clients/150_2054.jpeg?10000 https://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/wiredcalacanis-spat-old-media-and-new-media-battle-for-pageviews/ https://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/wiredcalacanis-spat-old-media-and-new-media-battle-for-pageviews/242312Jason Calacanis is a successful journalist turned media entrepeneur, having sold his Weblogs Inc, a collection of blog sites to AOL for a reported $20m. He was recently asked by Wired magazine to comment about Mike Arrington, publisher of TechCrunch, which has been very successful reporting on the emerging Web 2.0 startups.

Mr Calacanis, clearly not wishing his words to be misrepresented and possibly upsetting the influential Mr Arrington, and a partner in a joint conference venture, he wanted to do interview by email.

WIRED journo won't do email interviews--ironic.

A WIRED journalist pinged me for some comments on Michael Arrington and his A-list blogger status. I told the journalist to send me the questions by email and he refused.

On one of Wired's blogs, Mr Calacanis was called "Cowardly." And this unfair comment by Fred Vogelstein prompted much discussion in the comments section and on other high profile blogs.

Fortunately the matter was happily resolved within a few days.

Mr Calacanis seems to have emerged controling the highground in this particular case. He managed to use Wired's mistake in calling him cowardly to his advantage, and build his reputation as a new media prince taking on an arrogant mainstream media icon.

Did Wired unknowingly, cluelessly, lob a softball to Mr Calacanis to belt out of the park? I think so.

If this spat had originated with Business 2.0 magazine I might wonder if this was a case of linkbait designed to drive up traffic. The reporters at Business 2.0 get paid extra according to the level of traffic to their blogs. I don't know if Wired has a similar setup.

]]> Tue, 24 Apr 2007 17:08:20 -0700 https://content.presspage.com/clients/150_2054.jpeg?10000 https://content.presspage.com/clients/150_2054.jpeg?10000 https://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/case-study-wells-fargos-effective-brand-management----not/ https://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/case-study-wells-fargos-effective-brand-management----not/242372My RantWatch yesterday about Wells Fargo's poor service could become an interesting case study in how large companies manage their online reputations. Or how they don't.

The post was hardly complimentary.  I complained about depositing a check into my threadbare account and the bank sitting on my money for ten days. I was also told that the delay was longer because I had used an ATM.

I said I use an ATM because it is faster for me and faster for the bank.

I had no idea it was better to engage with a bank teller--clearly bank automation is far less efficient than we supposed. Don't be surprised if millions of ATMs start to be pulled out of walls leaving ugly patched holes along streets and on corners.

Link to RantWatch: Extremely Poor Service from Wells Fargo

I'm angry because I can't pay my family support or pay my writers. I'm angry because I know that the bank can clear the funds in a microsecond if it chose to.

With all the massive amounts of tech investments the banks have made over decades, they insist on taking ten days to clear a check. Incredible.

I even added a link to a web site that documented some shady practices by Wells Fargo.

The Wells Fargo Watch - Apr 23

Inner City Press / Community on the Move (ICP) and its Fair Finance Watch have become increasingly concerned with Wells Fargo's predatory lending, ...
www.innercitypress.org/wells.html

And this very visible online complaint is happening in its back yard, Wells Fargo is headquartered in San Francisco. Yet the bank doesn't respond in any way, doesn't even leave a comment.

Does it know what is going on? Does it care? It doesn't seem to, at least that's what any readers will clearly conclude.

I'll get over it. But my complaint will live on in the permalink concrete of the Internet for as long as the Internet exists. Search engines will dredge it up again and again and again.

You'd think that Wells Fargo would be keen to address a customer complaint at the point of complaint and leave a comment--so that its point of view would also be recorded in the permanent Internet archives.

I'm certainly not asking for special treatment or favors. I did not stride into my local branch and demand special treatment otherwise I would write about it. I think the bank should deposit funds into all of its customer accounts within a day or two of a check being presented.

And if I can help it make such a wise decision I would be extremely satisfied. In fact, that's how the bank can make things right with me.

 Brand Autopsy Would you miss Wells Fargo

Technorati tags: Wells Fargo

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