Study: Still waiting on that online advocacy revolution

October 15, 2009October 15, 2009 ~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

A new study released by a troika of new media firms (2ndSix, TribeEffect, and Chris Lisi Communications) charts some surprising trends in online advocacy – more accurately, the lack thereof.

The study evaluates 102 top trade associations, membership organizations, and other groups with political advocacy goals and charts their use of a number of online tools – everything from collecting email sign ups to Twitter to blog badges to Facebook and everything in between. Most of the tools considered were either free or low-cost; yet the study found a surprising lack of use:

Overall, there is a lag in the implementation of the new media tools. Many of the organizations reviewed in this report have not yet embraced or employed many of the readily accessible online communication and social media tools… 76% of the most commonly used social media tools are not being utilized to communicate with members, voters and other constituencies.

On the heels of the Obama Campaign, Washington D.C. was abuzz with the possibilities of online campaigns. So what gives?

There are three things to consider when wondering why the digital wave hasn’t crashed the banks of the Potomac. First, online and social media are new, and some of the key decision-makers in these groups may not understand them fully. Being fully committed to online activity means surrendering some message control and directly engaging people who have negative comments. That may resonate with the front line folks, but senior management will usually have to deeply consider what amounts to a change of strategy.

The second item to consider – which draws a bit from the first – is that social media activity can be difficult to quantify to important stakeholders. Anyone can build a Facebook page with 5,000 fans given the resources; but translating that to action can be difficult. In other words: if you work for a health insurance trade group, and you recruit 5,000 Facebook fans or Twitter followers from all over the country, how many are going to be able to call Sen. Olympia Snowe’s office to tell her she shouldn’t bow down to the Democrats’ health care overhaul?

There’s a third and final item to keep in mind. The study itself admits that it doesn’t evaluate the effectiveness of the various tactics employed by each organization – in other words, the study simply charts charted whether a group has a presence on Facebook, but not whether that presence helped further their policy goals. Just like a real-world toolbox, and online toolbox has implements for a variety of uses. But just as you wouldn’t use a screw driver to pound nails into a plank of wood, you might look at your online goals and decide that Twitter or LinkedIn just isn’t right for you.

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.

Facebook and FriendFeed: Boardwalk and Park Place

August 11, 2009August 11, 2009 ~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

The news which broke yesterday about Facebook acquiring FriendFeed makes good business sense, but it won’t be the last big deal of its kind where two online properties merge. And once those deals and mergers become more common, you can be sure that Washington, DC will start looking at social networks in a whole new way.

With rumblings already beginning that Google’s near-ubiquitous nature may create trust concerns among federal regulators, Facebook is moving toward it’s own kind of ubiquity. For example, FriendFeed used to be a central place to aggregate your social network activity; once the details of the merger are worked out, you’ll be doing that on Facebook. Facebook won’t just be one place where you share your life online, it will have the ability to be the central hub.

And that seems to be the ultimate goal for Facebook – to be the internet extension of your life. Just as you might walk out the front door to enter the real world (assuming you live outside of Washington, DC) Facebook would be the place where you start your activity on the web – whether connecting with friends, shopping, or catching up on the news.

If it sounds ambitious, think about Google’s current online dominance. How many people do you know who have a Gmail account? How many have Google as their home page, or check current events through Google News? When you want to find out about someone’s background, how do you start? By Googling them, of course. Considering that, 10 years ago, no one knew anything about Google other than it was a 1 with 100 zeroes after it, that makes Facebook’s apparent ambitions pretty reasonable.

That is, until someone at the Securities and Exchange Commission who understands technology starts asking whether losing niche social networks/social media services (like FriendFeed) hurts consumers through a shrinking marketplace where the currency is personal data. If the current administration isn’t thinking about this yet, it will almost definitely be on the radar screen of the next. And then the online mergers and acquisitions may be come very big deals.

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.)

Did you see that story on anything but Michael Jackson?

June 26, 2009June 26, 2009 ~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

In the 17 hours or so since Michael Jackson’s death has been reported, an interesting rift has developed in online communications. Apparently, some folks who have been discussing the Iran elections are upset that so many people are discussing celebrity deaths:

This is probably a reflection of a few things. First, there is an age gap in appreciating Michael Jackson’s career. If you were born after 1985, your first memories of Michael Jackson are probably the world premiere of the “Black or White” video, and increasingly fragile physique, and a series of bizarre controversies and allegations of inappropriate conduct around young boys. But it you are in the first generation to have MTV (back when it was ’round-the-clock music videos) or older, you remember that Michael Jackson almost single-glovedly invented the concept of pop music entertainment.

There’s also the fact that news, like politics, is local. The loss of an iconic American pop culture figure is naturally going to mean more to Americans than election protests halfway around the world. (And it’s worth noting that the folks who decide what news gets on TV have a role to play. This week’s DC Metro crash probably wouldn’t have had the same coverage if it happened on a public transportation system for a city that doesn’t host a major bureau for every news organization in the known universe.)

They have a point, and it isn’t the only story getting swept under a rug. Mark Sanford’s Argentinian dalliances have been muted outside South Carolina, and the Barack Obama health care debate is moving along on Capitol Hill in the background of the national consciousness.

The great thing about modern media is that, even if the “mainstream” press is obsessed with one story, an avid reader can seek out information from other sources. And it for media analysis junkies, it provides a platform for discussions that simply don’t happen in one-way broadcast media. In no other environment could the worlds of Michael Jackson and Iranian Fundamentalists collide in quite the same way.

If only there was some way to combine the issues…