It’s in the dictionary now, and can’t be “unworded”

November 17, 2009November 17, 2009 ~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

The verb “unfriend” is in the Oxford American Dictionary Word of the Year. (It is also now officially a word.)

Of all the verbiage to come out of social networking and new online environments, it’s interesting that unfriend – the negative act of rescinding a connection – takes this honor. The inclusion and exclusion of words in dictionaries is more a measure of culture than technology – technology creates new terms every day, but to be included in popular language those terms must have a crossover appeal that removes them from the realm of technical jargon and into the realm of word you might read in a newspaper article.

When most of us “unfriend” someone, it’s not because of an offline relationship that has gone south, but because the online relationship was more than we could handle. Anyone with a Facebook account has had the friend who constantly sends requests or shares too much information. Most people on Twitter have followed a friend who peppered their feeds with such witticisms as, “Making a sandwich and can’t decide – grape or strawberry jelly?!?” Speaking of Twitter, after a spike earlier this year their new user numbers seem to be leveling off,and big companies that were excited to enter the medium have become absentee Tweeters.

In other words, we are settling into these new online environments by shifting from the mindset of signing up every new and shiny community or connecting with every long-lost high school class. Perhaps we are getting better, both in terms of who we connect with and where we connect, at prioritizing what is best and most useful for us individually – and unfriending the rest.

One BILLION hits… per day

October 9, 2009October 9, 2009 ~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

On the third anniversary of its acquisition by Google, YouTube is celebrating that it now averages a billion views each day.

There’s another way to measure their success, though: The term “YouTube video” has also entered the cultural lexicon to define short, viral, online video – the same way “Xerox” was used for years as a synonym for photocopies. YouTube isn’t just on your computer screen, it’s in your head.

Angry skanks are why I don’t use Blogger anymore

August 19, 2009August 19, 2009 ~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

Manhattan’s Supreme Court has ruled that Google must surrender the name of the blogger behind Skanks in NYC, which was hosted on their Blogger platform (but is no longer active). The ruling came in response to Canadian model Liskula Cohen, who the blogger allegedly accused of being a skank (apparently while she was in NYC).

The first reaction of many freedom-loving people upon seeing a story like this is to worry about limits to the first amendment – especially as it pertains to emerging online environments. After all, doesn’t an individual have the right to post anonymous speech? This particular case, however, isn’t quite so simple.

First, the blogger in question was posting on someone else’s platform – in this case, Google’s – so they transfer many of their rights to that host. Google fighting to keep their identity private was probably a good business decision, but in no way an obligation.

Second, the court ruling did not force the blog to stop publishing or stay down (which could have violated the US Supreme Court’s ban on prior restraint of speech). All it did was ask the person to come from behind the curtain.

Cohen and her legal team will likely pursue a defamation of character suit against the blog – claiming that she is not, in fact, “a psychotic, lying, whoring, still going to clubs at her age, skank” – as the blog describes her.

The Manhattan Supreme Court Ruling doesn’t judge Cohen’s defamation case – and, based on previous US Supreme Court case law, as a public figure her burden of proof is high. Essentially, Cohen must prove that Skanks in NYC acted with “actual malice” – that they knowingly portrayed her as a skank even though they knew, factually, that she was in fact not a skank.

It’s a tough case but one Cohen has every right to pursue – but there can’t be a case without a defendant, and the identity of that defendant has implication on their knowledge of Cohen’s skankiness or lack thereof. The Manhattan ruling is the equivalent of a search or arrest warrant – since there may have been an offense committed, they are allowing Cohen’s legal team to pull back the curtain and investigate.

Depending on the circumstances, I would tend to side with the blogger – for many of the reasons outlined by his or her attorney, according to CNET:

The lawyer also offered the view that blogs have “mere venting purposes, affording the less outspoken a protected forum for voicing gripes, leveling invective, and ranting about anything at all.”

I doubt anyone will look at Cohen any differently because of this blog. Most smart people take blogs with a grain of salt commensurate in size with the reputation of the blogger. I never saw Skanks in NYC (at least, not the blog) but would imagine most of its fan base read the posts to laugh.

The US Supreme Court has warned about the “chilling effect” limits on free speech would have, and for that reason all courts must be careful – especially when considering cases like this. Popular free speech rarely has to be defended; it’s the unpopular speech that tests our societal resolve for open discussion.

The Manhattan Supreme Court has ruled that the case is at least worth taking a look at – and that Cohen deserves her day in court, regardless of the outcome. And, so far, that is all they have ruled.

Blogging about blogs: we’re through the looking glass, people

July 31, 2009July 31, 2009 ~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

Wrap your head around this one: this blog post is about a blog post about blogs. (It’s also about newspapers and journalism, though, so rest easy.)

Writing for one of my favorite blogs, Mashable, Stan Schroeder takes on the common theme among “real” journalists that blogs muddy the water of news reporting. Schroeder correctly points out that old models of news reporting simply can’t assemble all the information out there:

I’ll tell you what’s also news. When someone notices that Digg’s algorithm has changed and that tiny blogs will have a harder time getting on the front page. When someone finds a vulnerability in the iPhone’s latest firmware. When someone digs through Google Trends data and finds that no one is searching for “sex” anymore (yeah, that’s likely to happen).

I’ll also tell you who writes about these things: blogs. This is why blogs are popular, not because they’re rehashing news from big media publications, writing their opinions without contributing with facts. They’re popular because somewhere there’s a guy who took great interest in figuring out which airplane seats are the best to be seated in and he started a blog writing about it, and you cannot find this information in any major newspaper.

This is astute analysis. I would add that blogs allow news segmentation – in other words, you can get information in the hands of the people to whom it is most relevant much easier.

After a softball game a few weeks ago, I had a conversation with a pair of fellow UMass journalism alums about Politico, which had just recently become profitable. The shortstop, who works for an education newspaper, made the comment that media outlets like his and Politico were the future of media. “News should be organized around a topic, not a geographic region,” he wisely said.

I discussed that theme from a different angle last week when talking to a group at the Leadership Institute’s Public Relations School about writing press releases. The old ways of doing PR have changed; press releases have to be blog friendly – which may include having supporting information, like pictures and video, more available. From an organizational perspective, this is good for two reasons. First, it means more avenues for getting news out there. Second – and more importantly – it means your target audience is easier to reach than ever.

For instance, if I’m releasing a new social networking platform, I’ll attract more attention – at least, more of the right attention – if it’s covered on a blog like Mashable than if it’s on the front page of the New York Times. The developing media landscape helps channel the flow of information.

And if you still feel like you need “professional” journalism… well, watch The Today Show every morning for a week, and tell me if you’re still as confident in “professional news.”

Reach out and touch a hornet’s nest

July 27, 2009 ~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

A simple move by AT&T to block part of a website which most of us have never seen may spark a broad debate over how we get access to the internet.

4chan is more than a home for crude images; it is also a hub of online mavens and connectors – part community, part cultural incubator. Now-ubiquitous internet themes and memes – like the phrase “epic fail,” those “I can has cheezburger?” LOL cats, and of course, the Rickroll – all originated on 4chan’s message boards before spreading to all corners of the internet. So when AT&T partially pulled the plug on access to some parts of 4chan for their DSL subscribers, it was only a matter of time before word was spread far and wide (digitally, at least).

DailyKos actually has a pretty good timeline on what happened as well as the ongoing conversation – much of which includes calls to action against AT&T. Lost among the various accounts is a report – mentioned in a 4chan community alert on YouTube – that AT&T may have blocked sections of the site due to child pornography. And when AT&T finally announced the reasoning behind the shutdown, they blamed hacker attacks that appeared to be originating from a 4chan IP address.

Either way, the controversy has stirred up the debate over net neutrality – the idea that the government would make it illegal for an internet provider, like AT&T, to regulate internet traffic by prioritizing some destinations or users. Of course, if the service provider isn’t acting as the traffic cop, someone will – which will make entities like Google and Facebook more influential in what content you see (which is a big reason companies like Google tend to love net neutrality).

The debate is, however, moot in many ways. Very passionate members of the 4chan community – as well as their sympathizers – discussed ways to take action and make their voices heard, including the contact information of top AT&T executives. Regardless of what federal regulations are or are not in place, nothing moves a company like dissatisfied customers.

(In the interest of full disclosure, I work for a company whose parent company has AT&T as a client. Though I have offered strategic advice on the account, including offering my take on some of the issues discussed above, I’ve never executed any actual projects for them.)

They’ll tell you what’s “fit to print”

July 24, 2009 ~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

Reader click-throughs have nothing to do with what stories make it to the New York Times online front page. Much like the print edition of any newspaper, the editors determine what the most important stories of the day are and print those – which was a great model before everyone had all the information at their fingertips. Now, the admission further diminishes the relevance of what used to be our nation’s newspaper of record.

Maybe news reporting will never be a “clear pane of glass,” showing readers the world’s events without bias, but that should be a goal. And the decision about what to cover matters just as much as the tone of the coverage itself. Basing the news on personal choice means less opportunity for bias to creep in.

The New York Times’s editorial decision to prioritze their news isn’t a political decision, though – it’s a business decision. Unfortunately for them, it’s a business decision consistent with a one-way newsmedia – a concept which gets more dated every day.

This will make it harder to watch them flush your money

July 14, 2009 ~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

Read this, then let’s talk about why it’s funny:

“The Board shall establish and maintain…a user-friendly, public-facing website to foster greater accountability and transparency in the use of covered funds. The website…shall be a portal or gateway to key information relating to the Act and provide connections to other government websites with related information.” — American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009

Here’s the punchline: The Obama Administration’s Recovery.gov website will cost you and me $18 million to redesign – not design, but re-design. In fairness, the redesign itself costs only $9.5 million, with $8.5 million set aside for site upkeep over the next five years (a little over $14,000 per month).

No one can figure out how the company that received the contract received the contract – according to TechPresident, no government entity knows.

The most expensive website design project I’ve ever led cost $60,000 – and that was because the vendor I worked with gave me a few breaks. But the point is that I know people who could easily design and build a nice looking website that would do all that Recovery.gov needs to do for less than a $1 million, and maybe for less than half that. It’s the technological equivalent of the famed $500 hammers used by the Pentagon: it simply doesn’t make sense. Given the expense, transparency in the bidding process is that much more important.

Proficient in Facebook, working knowledge of Twitter

June 22, 2009June 22, 2009 ~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

A few weeks back, my office was going through a search process for hiring interns. One resume item caught my eye: under special skills, one applicant had listed his familiarity with various blogging and social media platforms.

Three years ago, the last time I had a job search, I could not have boasted in an interview – let alone in writing on my resume – about my expertise at looking up old high school friends, joining online groups, and staring at videos of portly adolescents staging lightsaber duels. In 2009, that’s an asset.

Via TechRepublican, I stumbled across a Path101 post that discusses this very phenomenon – and draws what I think is an apt parallel. While there are workers who refuse to learn these tools but recognize their importance, there’s a generation of college graduates who use social networks every day the way other people use telephones – meaning, according to Path, that in five or ten years knowledge of certain online environments could become as standard among job seekers as knowledge of standard word processing software is today.

That also puts a short life span on the “social media expert” occupation that many in the consulting world are looking to carve out as their own.

Iranians can still Tweet – thanks, W!

June 18, 2009June 18, 2009 ~ Jim Eltringham ~ 2 Comments

Maybe Hillary Clinton “wouldn’t know a twitter from a tweeter,” but Jared Cohen does. He’s the 27-year-old State Department official who, realizing the need to keep lines of communication open among Iran’s protest movement, picked up the phone and asked Twitter to delay their scheduled service interruption. He had established a relationship with Twitter executives at least since he organized a State Department envoy of new media crepresentatives earlier this year.

MTV lauded the foresight with the headline, “Iranians Keep Twittering Thanks To Young Obama Official.” Unfortunately, MTV disproves its own headline with its story, revealing the shocking truth that Cohen was actually hired by Condoleeza Rice three years ago.

The guy hired by George W. Bush’s administration kept Iran talking using technology and new media. The Obama appointee doesn’t even know the name of the technology.