NOVEMBER 12, 2008

The last time I really picked up a newspaper was in August 2007. That was when I used several bundles of newspapers to wrap my colleague Neal’s cubicle in what stands to be the greatest TMG birthday prank on record. I obviously don’t read the paper. And, based on the latest numbers on newspaper circulation, I’m not alone. I don’t consider myself an uninformed person- I just get my news from television and the internet- the two biggest competitors to newspapers.

However, last Wednesday was different, and not just for me. People all across the country raced to get the daily paper, especially those sporting front page headlines about Barack Obama’s victory.

So does this mean that print is back? Of course not. Joe Strupp over at Editor & Publisher agrees:

…a lot more people will have a lot more newspapers to look back through some day and remember when. Remember not only when voters first elected a black president, but also when the daily paper was still around.

People weren’t buying the paper last week as a source of news- they were grabbing copies as a memento, a keepsake, a piece of history. You can’t frame a website or video story. In this way, papers have seemingly been reduced to the same category as concert ticket stubs or the program from a baseball game. In my opinion, newspapers will continue to serve a purpose, but more as an artifact of time than a physical representation of our current times.

I bought into the frenzy, too: I stopped by the local 7/11 and bought four copies of The Washington Post. I’m going to send the copies to my parents and siblings. History was made on November 4th and I want to hold onto a little piece of it. So for the first time in a long time, I’m thankful for the newspaper.

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NOVEMBER 10, 2008

Starbucks Shared Planet is a new site aimed at promoting corporate responsibility and environmental stewardship. This is a great example of a company being directly inspired by consumers to be more transparent about its operations. Michelle Gass, the senior vice president of the company, even outlined specific goals the company hopes to achieve by 2015. By inviting customers to suggest ways for the company to become a better community leader, Starbucks is really investing in long-term relationships with them.

The presidential election this year was definitely a historic one in many ways, not the least of which was the use of social media to mobilize voters. Another example was PBS and YouTube’s collaboration on “video your vote”, a site for user-submitted videos documenting peoples’ experiences with voting. YouTube has been very active this year in collaborating with various companies to cover the election; it co-sponsored the first Democratic debate, formed an election center called YouChoose, and debuted many popular videos such as will.i.am’s “Yes We Can”. It’s no wonder than many people have dubbed this election the “YouTube Election”.

I’ve written about Barack Obama’s use of social media before. After the election, the Obama team set up a website at Change.gov to set the tone for the new administration. The website asks visitors to share their own experiences with the election, as well as their hopes for the future. Although the website does not have many social media components yet, it seems that some will be added in the future. Adam Ostrow from Mashable wrote an excellent post on the unprecedented potential of social media as a communication tool for the presidency; I particularly agree with his point that social media can encourage citizens to get more involved and informed about policy making.

Yammer is a new tool based on Twitter that won top prize at this year’s TechCrunch50, where 50 new tech start-ups were presented and officially launched before an audience of “influential VCs, corporations, fellow entrepreneurs and press.” Like Twitter, Yammer allows people post short “tweets” to share links and hold brief exchanges, but it focuses on internal corporate communications. Every company on the Yammer network is a closed group; you must have a work email at that company to be able to talk in the group. It seems like there’s a very real need for an enterprise version of Twitter, as Yammer adopters have noted its usefulness for enhancing office culture. Maybe we’ll even try it out at TMG!

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NOVEMBER 3, 2008

“…and I don’t know what to do, ‘Cause I’ll never be with you.” 

James Blunt obviously craves a meaningful life - and, like many others, he finds it through romance.  For the rest of us, all we really have to do is browse through the “Missed Connections” page on Craigslist.

Last week I read an article on CNN.com entitled “‘I saw you’ romance ads wildly popular.”  The author writes,

Craigslist, Kizmeet.com, ISawYou.com, SubwayCrush.com – these missed-opportunity matchmakers have become a staple of online modern love.  They’ve also become a way for some singles to fantasize about the people they’d like to meet and those they hope will want to meet them.

Mary Robertson, a documentary filmmaker in New York City, isn’t surprised by the appeal of the missed connection.  She’s been working on a film about the phenomenon for almost a year. “What inspires me about these ads is the density of the narrative,” Robertson says.  “The longing, the romance – all in this small space.  They’re like haikus.”

Blogger J. Stone at That’s So Fetch does not feel so inspired.  Stone writes,

Craigslist’s ‘missed connections’ gives soft-spoken people with a self-aware cowardice the chance to reconnect with a girl/guy they saw perusing the cereal aisle or the buxom blond who smiled back at them at the airport. . . . I would really like to know the average IQ of these people.  Instead of posting anonymously on the internet about some chick you missed out on, how about you work on your interpersonal skills?

One could certainly argue that the growing popularity of “missed connections” and “ambient awareness” is actually a reaction to social isolation – the modern American disconnectedness that Robert Putnam explored in his book Bowling Alone.

Indeed, have the internet and accompanying communications technologies actually made us feel lonelier than ever?  More socially inept than ever?  Are we purposely, purposefully - and, yes, perhaps cowardly - “missing the connection” in hopes of a fatalistic reunion on the internet?  Some believe fantasy love is better than real love, after all.

Ultimately, whether you admire or pity people who track down alleged “missed connections,” you have to admit that the appeal of missed-connection Web sites may indicate a shift in how people approach the search for love.

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OCTOBER 27, 2008

Once again, here’s a brief summary of some interesting news and up-and-coming developments in social media! As always, you can also check out previous social media summaries here.

Dell has created a Facebook page that focuses on providing social media tips and strategies for small businesses looking to get started with using social media in their communications work. This is a very simple, yet valuable resource that really enhances Dell’s image as an industry leader among large companies using social media. Ever since the “Dell Hell” blogger uproar in 2005, Dell has really stepped up to the plate and implemented better blogger relations, multiple blogs, Twitter accounts, and a useful crowdsourcing site.

Plum has launched its Share Space Pro platform, which can add social networking features to a company’s website. Share Space is similar to Ning, a popular platform for creating standalone social networks, but it is more geared towards adding features to an existing website in a clean, easy process. I agree with Jeremiah Owyang’s prediction that demand for products to “socialize” a page with minimal fuss will increase in the near future– I can imagine that there is a need for products that simplify the process of tweaking software to add social networking features to a site.

Fat Muffin is a new crowdsourcing site with an interesting focus: it crowdsources ideas for advertisement campaigns. The community is semi-closed, meaning that those who want to sign up must first receive an invitation from a friend already in the community. Currently, the site has three clients: Prometheus Springs, Babyspot.com, and Ayrwolf. Although the site is still in a closed beta state, it’s a great example of how versatile crowdsourcing can be, with the right management system in place. Unlike social networks that serve to let people communicate directly with each other, these idea-focused websites need a system in place to condense and select the best ideas for serious consideration from the companies.

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OCTOBER 24, 2008

I am not a particularly nosy person. I like to think of myself as well-informed and proactive. Okay… who am I kidding? It’s so easy to be nosy nowadays! (And as David referenced in his post a few months ago, I’m not the only one.)

Google serves as a wonderful little sidekick that can give me juicy tidbits about people, places, and things whenever I want them. Thanks to Yelp, I can research the service at the restaurant I’m thinking of going to and read reviews from real patrons. Sites like Rate My Professor prepare me for what to expect from instructors, as well evaluate my books before I buy them for a class. Rate My Cop evaluates police officers based on personal accounts of interactions by people online. (As you might imagine, some people have not-so-nice things to say about the officer that just wrote them a ticket hours earlier.) A friend of mine even showed me how to look up county information to find out if people have traffic tickets or arrests. All you need is a name and a county to search in.

When I recently moved to a new house, Rotten Neighbors took the mystery out of the situation - it gave me the chance to screen my neighbors before even meeting them. And, I admit that after I finished checking out my own neighborhood, I had fun plugging in the addresses of my family and friends.

But, does this knowing all information, especially information about the people around us, make us safer? Happier? Probably not. In many cases, it just give us another thing to worry about. And let’s face it, for most of us, our list of worries is already pretty long as it is. Do we really need to think about that crazy write-up that someone posted online about our neighbor that may or may not be true?

When all is said and done, we should use these tools when necessary, but not go overboard. I am learning to take the information and reviews I read online with a grain of salt and focus more on the number and quantity of bad reviews more than the specific details of one person’s account. This keeps me from stewing over something that may or may not be biased, and unnecessarily ruining my perception of a restaurant, neighbor, cop, or person unfairly. Then both technology and my conscience will be on my side.

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OCTOBER 21, 2008

Here at TMG Strategies, we place a lot of value on public opinion research as a tool to help our clients understand how their products and issues are being perceived and understood by the average consumer.  And, as the social media team here at TMG often says, social media provides some of the best market research out there - it’s free, it’s authentic, and it can be accessed by anyone.

One of my favorite sites for free, authentic public opinion research is the Compete blog, which takes a look at traffic metrics across the Internet to answer various questions, like: 1) how is a particular marketing campaign doing?; 2) how do two companies’ marketing strategies compare, in terms of success?; 3) how effective are various online tools at driving sales or traffic?; or even 4) what’s on people’s minds these days?

A recent Compete post addressed question #4, above. Given the news of late, it’s not surprising that people are worried about the economy and are keenly interested in the presidential election.  But, according to Compete’s list of the fastest growing sites for September traffic, last month people were also interested in storms (the second fastest growing site was stormpulse.com and the fourth was FEMA’s home page); Halloween (costume stores held the sixth and seventh places on the list); and tennis (usopen.org was #11).

Maybe it’s just me, but I find this kind of information fascinating. How are we coping with all of the bad news around us? Are we bravely, solemnly trying to understand the crux of the problem, thus propelling the FDIC site to #5 on the list? Or are we escaping into fanciful traditions like Halloween or old standbys like sports? Or is it some combination of both?

I believe that people are in a natural state when they are online, meaning they do pretty much what they want and spend time in the places and communities that truly interest them. The Compete list is just one small piece of a world of online data waiting to be explored and analyzed.

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OCTOBER 9, 2008

WARNING!  Your computer has been infected with a Trojan virus.  Critical files could be lost.  Click HERE to download an anti-virus program that will fix your system!

This is just one of a slew of pop-up warnings that spyware and malware creators use to try to mislead unsuspecting Internet users into downloading potentially harmful software.

A new study by researchers at North Carolina State University shows that most Internet users are still unable to distinguish genuine pop-up warnings from fake ones – even after repeated mistakes.  (Is there a Pavlov in the house?)

The study examined the responses of undergraduate students to real and fake warning messages while they conducted a series of Internet searches on a personal computer.   The real warning messages simulated local Windows operating system warnings, whereas the fake messages were from an external source and designed to trick users into downloading a harmful virus or malicious software.

Participants were fooled by the fake messages 63 percent of the time, hitting the “OK” button in the message box when it appeared on the screen despite being told that some of what they would be seeing would be fake.

“This study demonstrates how easy it is to fool people on the Web,” says study co-author Dr. Michael S. Wogalter, professor of psychology at NC State.

Most telling of all, however, was that, after interviewing the participants, researchers found that the students were so eager to get the pop-up boxes out of the way that they clicked right through obvious warning signs.  In other words, after being saturated by so many advertisements and marketing tools, the students had become too desensitized to notice the actual risks - and perhaps even the benefits - associated with the ads.

You should know that the most prevalent scareware program in circulation today is called Antivirus XP 2008.  Often installed on a PC without proper notification, the software bombards victims with fake security warnings, trying to convince them to buy worthless programs that sometimes even harm their PCs.

The good news is that Microsoft is working with the state of Washington to sue companies that exploit Windows to deliver these misleading popups.  Microsoft, after all, has a strong incentive to curtail spyware: about 50% of its customer-support calls come from spyware-related crashes.  A few times a year, I too am forced to spend an uncomfortable evening resolving a spyware problem.  What about you?

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OCTOBER 8, 2008

As you might imagine, business travel doesn’t do much for my workout routine. I recently took my quest to stay fit online and finally found a site I’m excited about. When I discovered Gyminee about a week ago (thanks Somewhat Frank!), it caught my attention because it was free, simple, offered many levels of involvement, and most importantly, looked a lot like the social networks I’m already using.

Gyminee’s easy-to-navigate layout allows me to track my workouts, explore workout programs other people are trying, search for the perfect way to work my triceps, keep a nutrition log, and even join a fitness challenge (sorry - must login to view some links). But, even more important than the resources available on the site is the easily accessible community, which makes this site social. In addition to the forums and GymBuddies search function, the home page features a running feed of Gyminee user updates, perfect for when I’m lacking the motivation to move.

Of course, there are countless other programs and groups online to help me stay fit – several of my running friends swear by Nike+; I follow people who track their workouts via Twitter; and there also is a large community of bloggers focused on every facet of this topic.

But for me, Gyminee seems to make the most sense. After all, social networking is already helping me stay connected with friends, network with colleagues, and even increase my productivity at work — why shouldn’t it also help me stay fit?

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OCTOBER 7, 2008

Recently, Tina Brown embarked on a new online project: The Daily Beast. This site mirrors The Huffington Post in its method of aggregating current news stories, but also stands out because it’s simpler and more concise. Every day, the editors pick and choose articles they find interesting and categorize them based on editorial style. For instance, they may pick a slew of articles that present different angles of one story to bundle into a “Big Fat Story”.  Another section called the “Cheat Sheet” ranks the 14 hottest stories and allows users to promote or bury a story (a la Digg).

The Daily Beast is the latest example of a website that works as a filter for all the raw information out there. A team of editors constantly sifts through the web in order to produce a coherent front page. This isn’t just a blogger picking out a few interesting topics to share each day, or even a team of writers continuously following a specific subject area. The Daily Beast compresses and distills a broad range of articles and orders them, often with a purpose. Tina Brown probably says it best when she answers this question on the site:

[Q:] Why should I visit you when there’s already Slate/Drudge/Huffington Post/TPM/Google News and every other magazine and newspaper?

[A:] Sensibility, darling.

… we all have only one pair of eyes and ears. We’re hoping that if you like the sensibility The Daily Beast brings to choosing news and opinion then you’ll trust us to be the lens you view it through.

Sifting through the massive amount of news and information online every day is a full-blown job for these editors. Let’s face it: not all of us have the time or patience to read and process all this news every day. The internet allows news to proliferate alarmingly fast through a multitude of sources. Sites like the Huffington Post have even become somewhat unwieldy, drowning the reader in articles. I’d rather leave the job of sifting to the people who truly love it and want to do it every day, so they can guide me through it later. The Daily Beast won’t by any means replace all the other sources of news I frequent online, but it will offer me a way to easily digest popular topics and issues with a healthy dose of editorial insight.

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SEPTEMBER 26, 2008

I recently identified the single biggest source of stress in my life. No, it’s not the work/family balance. It’s not the status of my retirement savings, either (though that may be because I haven’t looked at my account balances since the collapse of the banking industry this month). It isn’t even the terrorism-global warming-general state of disaster trifecta that the world is currently facing.

No, the biggest source of stress is my complete inability to keep up with email.

My work email, for one, is out of control.  Yes, I know it’s a cliche these days to complain about how many emails you get - people seem to trumpet those numbers like battle wounds. (”I went to lunch yesterday and came back to 200 new emails!”)  But the reality is that the amount of email we all send and receive is exploding. Some days, I don’t actually do any work - I just respond to emails, half the time asking other people via email to do things, and the other half trying to find the right folder to file away the rest of my emails so that I can find them later, when I do finally get to the work.

But my problem goes way beyond my work email. There’s my personal gmail account, which is connected to my blog, and which seems to expand exponentially every week. Gmail has its good points, but the fact that I can’t move emails into files doesn’t help my mental state. The number on the inbox never goes down, it only goes up.  Getting through that account is a never ending task.

And now there’s Facebook. I get messages on Facebook, plus comments on my status and posts on my wall. That’s three separate places for me to accumulate unreturned email, all of which need to be checked individually. Don’t get me wrong - I am not complaining that people are contacting me. I am grateful to friends who take the time to get in touch with me, and I am happy to hear from them. I just get stressed about when I will find the time to write them back.

Unclutterer has some advice for how to get email under control. This is my favorite piece: “Starting right here and right now, you’re going to process your email as it comes in, and as you’re done with each message, you’re going to either delete it or file it away in a folder separate from your inbox.” Great advice - if you can follow it. But if you’re reading email on the road, or you work part-time, then this is tough to adhere to. For one thing, deleting emails on my Blackberry doesn’t delete them on my desktop, so I can’t delete-as-I-go.

Here’s some even better advice:

Ask yourself: if an email is older than a month, does the sender really still expect a response? Be honest. Most likely, the answer is no. If it was that important, the sender probably contacted you again more recently, or using another method. This may seem scary to some folks, but I recommend taking all the messages older than a month (or even two or three weeks, for the brave!) and simply moving them into your email archive.

That definitely does take some nerve.

Missionary Geek, who says that most of us feel “vaguely sick” when we look at our inboxes, also has some recommendations for how to keep them under control.

Unless I do something drastic - and soon - I am in danger of email meltdown. What do you do to keep your inbox under control?

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