The Static Web is Dead

Let me add my twist to the WIRED issue of earlier this fall with a couple of realizations for social media. Pelting media outlets with press release after press release was considered annoying and counterproductive. In the early days of digital media, that was considered spamming.

Those who do not regularly use social media tools -- real-time like Twitter or social graph like Facebook -- fear those standbys of static PR. Say it once. Say it well. Say it in a clear corporate voice.

That thinking is so 2000.

The social media is like the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam:

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on

If you have something important to message and you do it only once a day, you are counting on having caught your target audience in front of the screen when you sent it. Take a look at your tools. How fast does your wall move? How may visible Tweets are on your deck?

The moving fingers of your keyboard must repeat, and not be fearful of that. What gets you classed as spamming is saying the same thing, the same way, from the same source every time. The worst thing -- the most corporate thing -- is to have three or four different accounts/tools sending out the exact same message.

It looks programmed. It shows no imagination. It is not personal.

You are the soulless automaton in the 1984 Apple commercials. The difference is there are no drones standing there to listen. Because the web is now personalized, it is mobile and it is not, as WIRED was trying to tell us, locked inside a browser world.

I could stack you up with a bunch of links and bore you with more of my own experience (which, unfortunately I will when time permits -- two case studies to support this from recent campaigns, complete with control counter-points).

Think about yourself. If you have even a casual sized friend base for your social graph, doesn't it turn over four or five times a day? If you're following more than 50 really active news sources, how many times is something you were looking for two, three, ten screens back?

Be the moving finger.

More Tweet Driven News

Sports by Brooks gives us another edition of digital-only news that spills over this time into real life. If you've not followed him, SbB released that he had Kentucky's AD in the hunt for the job at Kansas. The days of simply ignoring internet rumors has passed, and UK came out to counter on-line. Solid PR and a timely response. SbB trumps yesterday, calling out UK. Here's where it gets interesting. It's not the he said, he said exchange; its the pelt that SbB is trying to nail to the wall. Traffic is vital to digital media websites, but by putting itself into the back-and-forth with UK, is SbB doing infotainment or sports journalism? Different from the pay-for-texts Farve story? Welcome your opinions.

One Tweet Can Be Trouble

Following on yesterday's events, two new stories of Twitter. Right here at home, a single tweet by the co-host of a radio show launched a thousand (OK, maybe just five or 10) media inquiries if Arkansas' football coach had a new contract. The thought that our football coach might be locked up also set off a wave of positive reaction on social and participatory media.

In response, within several hours, a media statement. How different from the Ole Miss situation? The radio show's other co-host is the sports editor of the statewide newspaper -- thus it had a gravitas that commanded reply.

Why not put it in the paper instead, or was it a deliberate float? To answer A) the paper hasn't come out yet for tomorrow -- perhaps it will. Then B) if you have that kind of info, and as a serious journalist you are willing to put your name behind it, can you in a race to the public's attention can you afford to wait for the print edition.

Notice, I didn't say we on the receiving end were OK with the speculation in the tweet. Let me go further to be clear -- I am saying I understand why it would be done in the digital landscape we live in. Not saying I support it, or validate it.

Second point -- it could all be much, much worse. None of the last two or three days Tweetsters is getting ready for a year of "re-education through labor". News from across the great firewall of China that Cheng Jianping had the misfortune of retweeting a message and adding a sarcastic twist. It's all over the internet, almost to the point that you get a sense that maybe it's a bit apocryphal or what other issue underlies that we don't know about.

Then again, maybe the Chinese government is just dead serious about enforcing its social media policies.

Twitterific Weekend

The good Lord causes dropped touchdowns, players are quitting major programs and Houston Nutt is on his way to another job. How do I know that? Twitter, of course. In a quick round-up of the fun with 140, Steve Johnson who Sunday appeared to have blamed God for his dropped pass and eventual loss to the Steelers recanted today that he never meant the Lord was his defensive back. You be the judge.

Journal of Sports Media brings us the shocking news that real-time digital reporting services force traditional media to go out and do the dirty work of discovering truth. I think I called it force multiplier about three years ago. Nevertheless, intriguing as the Ole Miss based blog has its own fun as a sports blogger restarted a several month dormant Twitter feed to put the word out that Houston Nutt was leaving for Colorado (or the Dallas Cowboys, you pick). That got shot down this afternoon by a series of -- you guessed it -- tweets from beat reporters of the Rebels.

Pretty definitive on Sunday:
Houston Nutt will be named head coach at Colorado at 3 p.m. press conference on Monday.

Pretty defiant on Monday:
At 1p.m. Today he met with CU. I have never written or reported info I knew was false. I know why it didn't work out.

Today, Nutt was pretty specific in his press conference about not being involved with Colorado.

Rowher Today

My video editing skills are rudimentary, but the photos and video of the disrepair of the Rowher monument should come through in spite of my work. I stopped by after driving through Arkansas City for my blog entry Thanksgiving week, and what I discovered was really disturbing. I remember the monument from visits to grandmother's house, and it along with the POW camps in the area were subjects of quiet conversations in the past. I'm forwarding links to some of our veteran oriented politicians in hopes they can shake loose some funding to halt the decay.

Giving Thanks

I had hoped that when this blog reached its 1,000th post, it would have some meaning beyond an anniversary. When I sat down today to chronicle the latest social campaign -- and its overwhelming unintended emotional impact -- I was quite pleased to note it would be the millennium.

After this month's earlier success with Vote Mallett, I considered a couple of problems coming up with our weekly ticket giveaway through the Twitter feed. If you didn't know, I use my personal tickets that the athletic department provides for a weekly contest I've called TwitTix. I know that there will be a HUGE demand for these two tickets. It's been a hard sellout for weeks, and with the BCS implications added to a series that has become one of the wildest in the SEC, two ducats for the Battle for the Boot would be extremely valuable.

Since CBS didn't move us onto the Friday we've played for many years after Thanksgiving, I knew I had an open window on the holiday. By the way, SID-types, ever notice you can get massive placements of stories that normally would not get big inches if you can provide them on holidays? Why? Nothing makes the skeleton shift happier than quality copy to fill space that comes in EARLY to help them meet the deadlines and go home to enjoy their holiday.

I had planned my regular pre-weekend blog column to focus on the story of my family's Arkansas roots. Being in Starkville allowed me to drive back through my mother's home town to pick up some art at no cost -- re-purpose the mileage! -- and in writing the story, it hit me that I had the set-up for a perfect Twitter contest. The gist of the column was being thankful for a divided house -- mom from Arkansas and big Razorback fans and dad from Louisiana and close to LSU types like Billy Cannon -- and telling the story of my own very personal connection to Arkansas City.

Now I've got the tie in. Have the fans tell me -- through Twitter -- what they are thankful for today. I'll pick the winner that way rather than show up at some spot and show me a tweet or retweet the Follow Friday message, etc.

The hash tag I created was #ThanksArk. Within the first hour, I've got 35-40 entries. Some are funny. Many bring tears to your eyes.

Social media allows us to make a connection -- we have to keep remember it is about a conversation with our fans, not speeches and pronouncements for them to consume.

A sampling of a few early ones:

Just passed an accident with fatalities, made the whole family stop and realize how thankful we really are #ThanksArk

I am thankful this year that I walked across a stage in Bud Walton Arena and joined the best family in the world - as a UA grad #ThanksArk

I'm thankful for military that makes us the greatest country. Especially those who cannot be with their family this Thanksgiving. #ThanksArk

I'm thankful to be a cancer survivor, a Razorback, a fighter & a winner! Pepper Jelly, Macy's Thanksgiving Parade, & the RAIN! #ThanksArk

#ThanksArk my dad and I dont speak much and havent for a while. I'm hopin that the tixs will bring us together,I'd b thankful 4 that

Seriously, even if you could care flippin' less about the Razorbacks, use your Twitter tool of choice to search that hashtag today. It will touch you.

Back to the business at hand -- which seems a little less important after that -- I've set a reminder tweet at two to three hour intervals today, and cross promoted it on our Facebook (where the 100K might help boost up our about 8K Twitter main feed). Again, the only traditional web this time through is the not-so-conventional personal column.

I am a firm believer that the goal in all the social media work cannot be to drive some kind of incremental revenue into the athletic department. First, aside from raw click through on sales, how are you really going to get a firm metric on that and people will see through it for what it is -- shilling.

The goal is to convert your fans into friends; your brand into a bond with the family that surrounds your programs. From there, those other kinds of support -- including monetary -- will flow.

By the way, there are some very striking results and numbers within the Vote Mallett effort -- I am working those into a presentation format as well as including them into my notes for presentation at the NCAA Convention on Ronnie Ramos' panel. The campaign was effective, even when it was slightly derailed -- and that bump in the road helps prove the strength of the social effort.

In closing, this has been a rough year. Actually, a rough couple of years. Those close know, I won't bore the rest. I'm thankful for those of you out there who have been supportive and understanding.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Facebook Strikes Again

A must listen segment for all who work with college students (not just student-athletes) to help them understand the risks of their very public lifestyles. Then again, looking at the fact that 45-plus females are the fastest growing segment of new users on Facebook, perhaps this a post for all.

Dan Gillmor is the guest, and the new Facebook Messages tool is the subject. I'll let Dan distill it into a Tweetable quote:

My understanding is if you have decided to import everything into your Facebook Messaging that all of these conversations that you have will be saved for posterity, police and divorce lawyers.

OK, that's actually a Tweet and a third, but you get the point.

Facebook is in the business of aggregating data, sifting it and sorting it. They're not any different than Axiom, a home state business that is one of the world wide leaders in data mining. All sorts of black helicopter fears are assigned to that -- it's Echelon for the business class. The Googleplex is out there, vacuuming up the Matrix of your digital lives.

Why again do we not see Facebook in that way? Because we friend each other and we just heart the system!

Let's be clear -- I use it, I like it, but I also know that I can't trust it. Dan, as usual, is spot on and it bears repeating: "saved for posterity, police and divorce lawyers."

Said it once, say it again: Digital assets are easily copied, imminently portable and last forever.

Worst Travel Day of the Year

Couple of in-state media colleagues found this report from a Montana CBS affiliate in which the simple question was asked of the Department of Transportation -- is today the busiest travel day of the year? The answer was no, summer beats it routinely.

The point of Max Brantley not withstanding -- we'll here this story repeated all weekend -- personal experience says the raw numbers are missing the story.

I've been in those summer whirlwinds when a single flight cancellation can ripple into a 15 hour nightmare. Here's my counter point: in summer, the industry is ramped up to deal with the flow. This weekend, there are three factors that certainly make this window the worst of the year:

Capacity: manpower is down as people ask for time off, airlines are loath to pay double and triple overtime; there are fewer flights as a result and the plane are almost always operating at oversold status as a result.

Weather: you're not going to get a snowstorm over O'Hare in August. Granted, you can get a severe thunderstorm over DFW or ATL to ruin your day, but refer back to point one. There is usually another flight, or the whole schedule slips because there is too much at stake to not send the flights.

John Candy: The emotional ties of traveling this weekend are huge; only exceeded by Christmas season -- with one exception. Lots of people are somewhat flexible around Christmas, they might go on the 20th and come back the 26th or on 24th and come back after the first of the year. As a solo holiday about home and hearth, Thanksgiving weekend is a lot more focused -- and unlike Christmas, we find it acceptable to have commerce (black Friday) and entertainment (check out how many college basketball tournaments are taking place) around T-Day.

Reader thinks -- you forgot your point -- no, I was setting up the Planes, Trains and Automobiles epic from the 1987 that set the legend in stone. It gives us the two sides of that coin. Steve Martin as the business man trying to be home but still conduct commerce. And John Candy as the person with no home adrift -- and both stuck in travel hell.

Put the three together and you have an American truth that may not exactly be supported by statistics.

As they say, when the legend becomes fact, print the legend.

Miller on Nye and Twitter

Dennis Miller talks about Bill Nye's collapse at a speech. No one checked on Nye, but hundreds pulled out mobiles to tweet and facebook the event.

Miller points out the tweet storm, particularly how people then began to send out updates about the fact everyone was obsessed with getting the word out.

Nobody is actually at the scene of their own life anymore. They are always somewhere else telling people about their life, but there is nothing going on in their life because no one is talking to anybody next to them anymore.

The L.A. Times blog referenced above had the nut quote:

Nobody went to his aid at the very beginning when he first collapsed -- that just perplexed me beyond reason, USC senior Alastair Fairbanks said. Instead, I saw students texting and updating their Twitter statuses. It was just all a very bizarre evening.

More here from the Mercury News blog.

Visuals are the Key

A nugget of Gruen magic I came across in iPad notes. Todd Sampson was speaking of how to build an effective political commercial.

When you can graphically represent something, that is the image that will stick with everyone. Todd follows up with the nut graph:

They say with the spoken word, only 10 percent of it will stay with you for three days. If you add a visual and you will remember 65 percent of it.

Remember the best commercials that stick with you? They have a compelling visual element, an eye-catching hook. Not just a talking head. Not a bunch of B-roll video either. A message that is conveyed by the symbiotic marriage of the two.

Consider that the next time someone is asking you to scrimp on the graphics budget for any project.

Wayback Machine Rolls Out

If you're reading this on Friday, I'm likely looking out the windshield of my Mini Cooper headed to Starkville, Miss.

You're driving?

I get that a lot. Frankly, I can do my job better outside the team charters -- I get there earlier to shoot background shots and video and stay late to make the website posts so the SIDs attached to the team can depart in a hurry. Besides, I like the road.

There is something to be said for seeing America, stopping at the local mom-and-pop, meat-and-three spots; the local burger and BBQ joints. And considering the amount of gear I'm carrying, I get really tired of being TSA's favorite customer. The cost with short notice tickets is about the same, particularly once mileage is put against rental vehicles and staying an extra day sometimes for a flight. We came out slightly ahead driving to Auburn over flying anywhere near earlier this season.

Plus, I get the chance to catch up on podcasts -- you can bet there will be a series of new blog entries based on some of the ones I've saved up. And unless I get the chance to finish out that pilot's license started years ago AND the university wants to pick up charter fees, I can usually get anywhere our teams are going via commercial means within two or three hours of them. If it's a short hop trip with a change over, I can almost make it even.

For example, I'll not go direct all the way to Starkville because of hotel bookings, but that would be drive to XNA, fly most likely to Atlanta, change planes, sit in the airport, fly to Golden Triangle, get a rental, head to Starkville. Same for Birmingham or Nashville. I can drive almost all of them in 8-9 hours. Good luck flying to them in less than 6-7 hours. Remember, in addition to the hour or so flight hops, it's a 40 minute drive from the house to XNA here to factor, plus the hour for TSA.

So, if you're rolling around north Mississippi on Friday or the Arkansas Delta on Sunday morning and you see the WAYBACK plates on a Mini (and Mr. Peabody's decal next to the license), don't for get to wave.

The Wall of Noise

Phil specter may have come up with the phrase Wall of Sound to describe his unique way of mixing music in the 1960s. In 21st century messaging, I see a variation -- the Wall of Noise -- and it has a very different meaning.

Instead of creating a distinct vision and sound like Spector, an organization deliberately generates so many messages that it becomes an overload of information flowing outward. This can satisfy many purposes. For the consumers of the organization that cannot get enough about the group - from a rock star to an athletic department - this is a modern miracle. As a strategic communication tool it will often dull the overall message, too much of a good thing, and lead to an inability to articulate a clear message.

Unless that exactly what you want to do.

The Wall of Noise can also serve as a masking agent for other issues. Just like audio engineering, by raising the background level -- injecting static -- it becomes harder to hear individual items. White noise, that roaring whoosh that once upon an analog time was accompanied by visual haze on the old television screen.

This becomes a variation on the hide in plain sight strategy. The answers were right there all along, but you didn't notice them. The Gorilla Effect on steroids.

Lots of organizations stumble into creating Walls of Noise. It's so easy with the digital tools at our disposal to crank out more and more content. In the past, one, maybe two, press releases a week. The occasional video update or audio file. Active real-time reporting tools can create that in half a day, much less a week. Without realizing, the organization has reset it's noise floor.

The downside becomes changes in that stream of information become alerts those who you don't want noticing something. The change in pattern alone by the organization is the trigger for even more attention. A group who is very limited in info that suddenly starts to churn out content like mad is revealing it is in trouble. It's like chaff, the bursts of aluminum shards spewed out to avoid anti-aircraft missiles.

Far more common is the opposite; the unit that suddenly goes quiet after being very open and accommodating. They become consumed with fear of saying or doing the wrong thing, and like the proverbial deer in the headlights, freezes; hoping by being still to avoid the on-rushing crisis.

It is the change in pattern, and it takes real discipline to not vary of the standard operating procedure.

A group that creates a ton of info is best served by finding ways to keep that flow moving during a crisis, and keeping it going in the area of concern. This will raise the least suspicion. Human nature is to clam up during a crisis. In extreme events, it may become necessary to do so - for example in the middle of a life safety event is no time to push out feature stories. Prepackaged stories that detail what to do during the crisis - absolutely.

One can certainly mask a negative event within a flow of other messages. It was a tool of "self-inoculation" against bad news that many politicians use; revealing something bad about themselves before the opponent gets the chance go do so and put their spin on it. The Clinton White House appeared to master the technique, and gain a large amount of message control as a result. After all, if given the opportunity, everyone would like to be the one telling their own bad news.

WaPo for iPad

People ask a lot about iHog and I tell them, the first generation we created last year was inspired by the clean layout used by New York Times with their first app.

I've seen the future for Flatland -- Washington Post has it. It was first attracted by a snarky on-line media outlet's post picking fun at the video used to promote the app. Actually, I find it quite refreshing, including Ben Bradlee's closing line:

"These kids think Tweets twit themselves"

Which I dutifully tweeted myself last week. Since, I've downloaded the app and find it a very nice "newspaper" presentation. I wonder if that will work with a rising generation that can't appreciate a nice three column layout and the WSJ-like divided sections and the little wood-cut like illustrations. Quaint for us old folks.

More significant is the pricing structure. You get WaPo for free until February 2011 -- typical and proven drug dealer marketing, the first taste is free -- but the costs are reasonable. Far more so than WSJ or NYT, and I'd actually consider paying the rates. I wish my area papers would follow suit with this format.

Not a Good Sign of the Times

Earlier this summer, I commented about the broadening of the coverage of college sports into more of the entertainment world. Notably, TMZ's entry into "sports" coverage which ads another investigative unit on the national scene to the work being done out of Yahoo Sports. Recall it was TMZ that broke open the Oklahoma basketball business, first gaining attention for it's college effort. Previously, TMZ stuck to the celebrity news around pro sports, and usually the glitz capital (LA, NY) teams. This afternoon, welcome to the SEC as TMZ made its second foray into the Newton business.

Social Campaign for Social Results

For the past two weeks, we've carried a "widget" on our website provided by Davey O'Brien Award to promote Ryan Mallett in the fan voting. And with that passive little button, Ryan stayed firmly mired below 10th, hovering near 12 most of the time. What to do -- let's build a big banner ad and run it on the front page was the suggestion that had early momentum. That will get the attention of our huge fan base.

My counter was -- different from the widget how? Yes, larger. Yes, higher up the page. But during the discussion, the point became understood. After a while, it was conceded, you just don't notice the display ads. They don't change. They're just there. They become part of the background.

So change it every day! Sound of teeth gnashing.

Can we try this instead -- we want a specific action from our fans, who we need to interact with to achieve. The plan was simple. Go to all our social tools -- Facebook, Twitter -- and all our participatory places -- blogs, message boards, born digital media -- and give them a simple message.

O'Brien counts your vote in the overall. We want Ryan Mallett to make it to the finals. You can be a part of that process. Please go vote. Ask your friends to vote. And you can watch your progress at this website.

Mallett started the weekend at just over 1,000 votes. Starting with the on-line interactive blog for the game (adding a "Vote Mallett" button to our standing links) and promoting it several times in the blog, we began to move the needle. Changing over our Facebook friend page image to a "Vote Mallett" graphic, I started making regular posts and interacting with our fans to encourage them to vote.

Same by reaching out, under my real name, to the larger message boards on Sunday into Monday. Today, we started integrating the campus (alumni association, university relations) social tools to amplify the message.

As I type this update -- Monday evening at 9 p.m., Mallett crossed 4,500 votes. Nothing new on the website. Pure social outlets.

Pick the right tool for the right outcome.

Crisis Policy Work

Defining a crisis for a standing department policy is no small effort. The common language of FEMA/ICS and the life-safety side of critical incidents does not translate well in athletics. Personally, I see a lot of people intimidated by saying the reality out loud, and with the federal mandate for clear language, there's no euphemistic terms allowed. Followers know this was my 2009 CoSIDA Convention topic, and a regular item in this space for years.

Several weeks ago, we managed to work out what defined a crisis (since there was a dislike for the more common term in the business of "critical incident") was:

A situation that threatens to dramatically affect the lives or well-being of student-athletes or staff, significantly damage the property or operations of the athletic department, or may negatively impact the events, reputation or normal activities of the athletic department.

I'm pleased with it because the goal should be to create a policy and operational standards that can be plugged into any "crisis" -- from a tornado to a player suspension, from a life-safety incident at a practice to a major policy announcement, from a water main break that floods the stadium to a national championship celebration parade. They are all crisis -- and not all crisis are negative. Think about planning for success: what will you do if your team wins it all?

So the next step becomes separating out response levels. Most of the plans out there look at three levels; I'm going to advocate understanding that there really are four. From draft language -- and yes I'm looking for feedback here:

A routine event that has the potential to disrupt daily operations, negatively impact the department or require the communication of information internally or externally defines the difference between day-to-day events and an incident that would invoke the policy. This is an administrative decision unless the incident involves health and welfare of a student-athlete, member of the department or patron of an event.

Routine events are level zero within the critical event policy. Level one events are incidents which are limited in scope - both in time frame to resolve and overall impact on the department. Level two events are emergencies which last longer than a day in their impact on the entirety of the athletic department. Level three events are catastrophic, with impacts that are long lasting or permanent, reaching beyond the scope of the athletic department into the university and overall community as a whole.

What is your take on the "level zero" concept?

Speed Necessary for Viral?

Interesting case that I'm curious about feedback. Five of our football players were making a surprise visit to the Razorback Marching Band Spectacular to do a drum line performance. We sent our New Media crew to shoot the event, and got great HD video. We planned on building a package. That took us a day. In the meantime, we were beat to YouTube by, of course, a cell phone video.

Compare. RazorVision vs. cell phone. Obviously, we have interviews and a better angle. But in the world of viral video, we can't catch the cell phone. As of this post, we're at about 4,500 views; the cell phone video is at 15,000. They got a 10K view head start in one day.

We did all the right things -- took our video that was bound for RazorVision inside our web presence and "freed" it to YouTube. Tweets, facebooks, encouraging sharing.

So my question is this -- does it become better in the viral to get something out there and be first, or take the time to build something that shapes to what you wanted to portray. Obviously our video quality gets it another bump by inclusion in this week's ESPNU telecast.

Wildland Fire Approach to Social Media

I'd been working on this analogy of how fighting social media problems can sometimes be like fighting fires in the forests, and that sometimes you find yourself surrounded by flames. Sometimes, you have to set a rescue fire to keep from being consumed by the larger conflagration. To the old school spinners, allowing out details that set a fire -- a huge dose of truth at the right moment -- seems wrong.

I picked back up on this in Mark Drapeau's piece where he noted that in his Four Tenets of Modern Communication that "information spreads within communities like wildfire, on and off line. It has never been more important to acknowledge and try to help communities. If you're not bringing your community of stakeholders up with you as you rise, you will fall and you're gone."

Interesting.

My thoughts were more tactical, looking at how both wildfire and rumor share certain similar attributes.

Single spark or lightning sets it off, also sometimes done by arson. It grows often unnoticed in the wilderness. We send resources out to control it, or to put it out in urban areas.

The pros can try to attack it, but once it gets to a certain size, they can't stop it.

We think we can prevent it. Sometimes, we do controlled burns to limit the future scope. In the end, the ability to fight it is an illusion, and the forest fire will simply run its course.

Food for thought.

Getting Lawyered Up on Facebook

News from Connecticut today as a National Labor Relations Board backed case is set for a hearing regarding a plaintiff who was claims to have been fired for making comments about the work place on her personal Facebook account. The details include some key hurdles: she posted on her own time, from her home computer; however, business had a policy in place she was aware of.

The first major takeaway on this: there is no ruling. The item that started today's media frenzy was the announcement that the case would be heard by the NLRB. Kashmir Hill at Forbes has a solid one-stop blog post with most of the details and cautions against thinking this is settled law. Far from it, and if NLRB finds for the new case, it will be going against it's own previous ruling in a case filed against Sears. From Hill's blog:

Sears’s policy is designed to “maintain the company’s reputation and legal standing.” On a list of topics that associates can’t discuss on social media was, “Disparagement of company’s or competitors’ products, services, executive leadership, employees, strategy, and business prospects.” It also advised employees not to talk about drugs or to use profanity.


To see the actual NLRB memo on the Sears case, jump here.

The questions become: was the policy overly broad in the Connecticut case announced today, did it limit free speech, was it a legal condition of employment.

Based on the first media accounts, this does not look like a blanket endorsement of going home tonight and telling the world exactly what you think of your boss/coach/co-workers/etc. Nor an across the board blow to social media policies, either on campus or at the workplace.

There is a very interesting difference in how the story is being handled by legacy media and networked or computer industry media. The "regular" media is trumpeting the first amendment side of this hearing. One example of the breathless victory:

In what has been called a ground-breaking case, the United States National Labour Relations Board has accused a company of illegally sacking an employee after she criticised her supervisor on her Facebook page.

The AP story follows similarly on many legacy media:

A Connecticut woman who was fired after she posted disparaging remarks about her boss on Facebook has prompted a first-of-its-kind legal case by federal authorities who say her comments are protected speech under labor laws.

Same for Washington Post.

Those with more time around social media are quick to point out it is not. As today's CNET first coverage noted:

Invoking scatological language when describing the relative merits of your job is, of course, a time-honored American tradition. So is firing employees who do it to your face.

Interesting that one of the "traditional" news links was NPR and their AP story, another NPR blogger falls more in line with the networked media by pointing out if you hate your boss on Facebook, NLRB may back you but you could still be in plenty of trouble.

Among the items I noted so far:

It is an NLRB hearing. It isn't in a "regular" court of law.

It's getting a lot of coverage today like it is a first amendment case. It clearly is not. The worker is saying she was fired for the comments; the employer is saying it was a series of events. Can anyone say "Juan Williams"?

Most interesting -- and missing from the first AP stories -- was the repercussions on the poster. The item that led to trouble included the assertion that the supervisor she was mad at was a "17" which was code/jargon for a psychological patient. (Hello, Juan Williams, part deux). I pose the question for my more legal followers, does the supervisor now have a slander/libel action for being accused of being crazy (and I deliberately list both -- is Facebook "spoken" or published). As the producer of content and the publisher of the content, the worker would appear in my opinion to be "media" now.

Several lawyers have come out to say they believe it reinforces the worker position, but none have said that if you are asked as a condition of employment to sign a social media policy or confidential information policy that it would not be trumped by today's ruling.

The one thing I can say with certainty today -- this will be just the starting point -- a case to launch a thousand briefs.

And, for the record, I composed and wrote today during my "lunch hour" as I'll be working through the traditional noon time frame.

Focus Group This

Ah, a little catch-up time on quotes found out there on the internets.

John C. Dvorak tells us what he thinks about focus groups:

You can't focus group new ideas (because) there is no frame of reference.

To which Leo Laporte chimed in:

You get the best creative result if you let someone with a great vision create his vision.


Finally, J.P. Barlow:

Revolution requires persistence in intention, connection & conceptual integrity; it requires an attention span

All, by the way, came from a This Week in Tech episode. I've mentioned it before, but if you are in this business and you are not downloading that podcast -- let me be as gentle as I can, you're not being a serious Culture Officer for your group.

Listen But Understand

Comment areas on blogs and email response boxes are important. These folks define our institutions and our reputations, and answering them quickly is important. Listening to them is also, but we need to take some time to understand they may not be typical of the fans or consumer at large.

Jay Adelson, late of Digg, was speaking of his old company on a recent This Week in Tech special. He was recalling the way they had brought in some of the power users, the most active in the community, and listened to them to make some pretty wide ranging changes. They were a flop among the users at large. It brought Jay to this conclusion:

The vocal minority does not represent the interests (of the whole) they are important because they are evangelists and you have to make them content an satisfied with their experience but what they like may not be appropriate for everybody

Sage words. Adelson added something else later about how one should approach a successful on-line venture, and it hearkened back to earlier words regarding Steve Jobs' approach (ie, how do you focus group the new, because if it is genuinely out there, what point of reference does the past provide the focus group).

You are trying to delight users with product, not trying to squeeze every last penny

Drapeau Notes on Gen Y

Continuing with Mark Drapeau's Five Cultural Trends Shaping Business Communications and Public Service, he gives us some very interesting notes on how Gen Y views the public authority -- for the purposes of this blog, let's say athletic departments.

The youth are very connected, very desirous of giving back to communities, but also very distrusting of authority. That's a challenging combination. On the one hand, young fans who want to support you, yet they are going to be the first to call out any lack of transparency.

He weaves this together with another of his five points -- Web 2.0 and Open Government. Drapeau views it as a cultural shift, and he relates this to the growing desire for community among all.

". . . what was once public relations to an audience now looks a lot like public service to a community. And anecdotally, the new public relations influencers, gurus and tacticians are those who weave 'community' into their work."

Huh. So that whole interactive blogging thing, good. Well, only if you are genuine. Drapeau closes with several points about how public service is a unifier.

I think you win by showing that you care more than other companies, organizations, entities. That caring can come in many forms - thought leadership, great customer service, empowering communities to help themselves, being more transparent about decisions.

Or to distill to one line:

They just want to know that you also care about the people you're selling to and that you're not entirely selfish.

Or to a pithy aphorism, which he points out is original to Gary Vaynerchuk:

Sharing is caring.

Eye of the Hurricane

The last great twitter storm surrounded the Pac-16, and we were collectively amused. That is, if you were not a Big 12 member.

The next great unsourced event is underway with Cam Newton. We see a rush to judgment -- fueled perhaps by fear of the revelations of Reggie Bush -- and real-time reporting is right in the middle.

This is troubling on many levels in the collegiate realm. Today, by laying out an academic accusation, those that could quickly deal with this are put at some jeopardy via FERPA. Nature and the Internet abhor a vacuum, it will be filled.

That said, Auburn has taken steps to aggressively counter, including the athletic director Jay Jacobs and football coach Gene Chizik making strong statements to the media. After last week's NCAA rumors, Newton himself was made available. For its part, Florida, via Urban Meyer, has done the same. Interestingly, Auburn's official feed is only retweeting other media. That should not be read into, however, as their feed has traditionally been promotions based for it's original material. The fact they are making sure message gets out to fan base by retweeting stories shows they are engaging.

There has to be a little understanding of the demand on the media, and all sides are ratcheting up rhetoric. As an example, Chris Dufresne of the L.A. Times is getting hit pretty hard by fans. Dick Weiss with New York Dailey News points out both sides -- noting the FERPA issues and statements from Jay Jacobs -- The people you would expect like Paul Finebaum are in the eye of the storm.

In light of being burned on Farve via paid sources, are national outlets moving faster than normal in ways that are over compensating for that miss, or are we simply in the heart of a new paradigm that will require institutions to have rapid response and monitoring teams that can move quickly.

Again, we are not talking professional sports or professional entertainment -- for that matter, even government crisis events -- where once the problem unfolds there can be rapid reactions. Colleges are both academic institutions and state governing bodies. Legally and culturally, they are not rapid reaction targets.

Before the next Pac-16 or Cam, have you assessed your organization's ability to react at the speed that a university is being forced to move?

Drapeau's Five Cultural Trends

An earlier tweet that now gets some more in-depth review. Mark Drapeau is one of the public sector engagement folks at Microsoft. Not that long ago, we'd have ascribed to him the more hip title of a chief evangelist. He wrote a solid essay on the Five Cultural Trends Shaping Business Communications and Public Service at the end of October. Many of you saw my retweet of CoSIDA News on this.

He skewers the public sector (read: academica/athletics/government) with some pretty strong points.

Large organizations are often out of touch with such changes in the culture.

In his five areas, he hits one that bears closer observation for the college sports world: "Nobodies as Influencers." While Drapeau is thinking very specifically of The Situation and other made for reality stars that lack "talent" as we may have previously defined as important for celebrity, I'm reading something else.

Hearkening back to our general lack of control over our brand reputations, it is hundreds of similar "nobodies" who by virtue of the extraordinary low cost of entry into media that become some our most important clients for information. As Drapeau wrote:

Everybody has the potential to be a celebrity and therefore everyone is a potential influencer.

I found one of the comments on Drapeau's post one of the most important items, and it reminded me about who increasingly is the person of trust within one's life.

We trust the 'nobody' down the street more than any superjock making a gazillion dollars a year because it seems more genuine.

Spoke Too Soon

Yep. This flight had changed to C47; back down the terminal. But, I learn from fellow refugee from Columbia that the original first flight of the day is still on the ground.

Remembering History Class

An important realization today that three of the most valuable lessons I've learned in life came from small parts of one teacher's courses. Anyone who attended Northeast Louisiana from the late 1970s into the early 1990s encountered or knew about H. Perry Jones. An irascible teacher, his classroom exploits were legend. One of his favorites was to have graduate students carry him into class near Halloween in a coffin, from which he would rise in full Dracula costume to hand out his exam.

H. Perry was a western civ instructor, and so it made sense for him to be the first to have introduced the myth of Sisyphus and the great quote of Omar Khyaam. It was in his moonlighting as intro to U.S. that he worked in the legend of taking a message to Garcia.

Jones loved to draw on the board, and in the pre-PowerPoint era, his presentations were epic. Cartoons, stylized text, lists - all assembled on the blackboards in the 10 minute time he had between classes then erased away by the next instructor; in part to be able to use the board but I'm convinced for several intimidated by e master instructor (and showman) that was H. Perry.

Each semester - regardless of Western Civ or U.S. History - at some point he would make reference to his notes and with grandiloquent gestures say at these we the type of works that Omar Khayyam meant when he wrote his poetry; that it was like history itself, the very sands of time, that would disappear once the class was over - the moving hand of History having writ, moves on, Jones would say in his "interpretation" of the passage.

Similarly, when he sensed the students were grinding away in the middle of the semester, he would remind them that they were condemned only in the short term to their own rock of Sisyphus. That life would likely present them with challenges that would be the same eternal struggle. That the beauty of life was both the struggle, and the short period of time walking back down the hill when you are temporarily freed of the burden.

Unless you caught him for U.S. two, you missed the performance of the entire A Message to Garcia - the story of the president sending his man Rowan into Cuba to contact one of the insurgents. A staple of he U.S. Army, Perry brought it alive with his dramatic reading. His voice still echoes, his scratchy Applachian coming out when he bellowed "By the Eternal! there is a man whose form should be cast in deathless bronze . . ." as he performed. You left almost eager to be called upon to not fail, to face that challenge and against all odds and without micromanaged direction carrying the message to Garcia.

Performed. That's the right word for H. Perry. Or maybe, transformed.

Enough to Drive

Shifting gates. Closed paths. Happy shining people. Oh yes, please, I want me some more commercial travel.

Land in the far end of D concourse (coffee now, or later - opt for not carrying scalding water long distance) and get high-number C.

Around the detours for tram loading in D, on to C - as in, crap, this is the one concourse without Starbucks. That's OK, I'll use the old B-C underground connector. Walk the length of C and . . . What tha . . . sealed off like some abandoned mine shaft. Nice.

Settle for brew in C - that was halfway back up the concourse. Sit down at C55 - yep, end of the terminal - and five minutes later, we have a gate change announcement. Back to 33. At least I have two things going for me. A) unlike the lone ESPN-type who managed to get on my plane, I'm still not in Columbia with Holly Rowe and Co. His seat, however, cost the airline a $600 voucher. No one would budge for $400, and one passenger bid it up to $600 (sure, if you'll do it, the exasperated gate agent said). B) After schlepping my 40 pounds of gear and clothes split into these two backpacks for a couple of miles today, no need to ride when I get home.

Notice, when I get home. Continuing to have faith. Even though gate 33 says White Planes, NY.

Travel Fun

Nothing like a long day at the airport, compounded by time change and over sold. Looks like the plane in front of me this morning was oversold to start, and now has mechanical issues. The local staff is short, and the supervisor is way overloaded (I need you to stand at the service center NOW).

Of course, you'd be a little testy too if passengers were self-deplaning. Yep. Just helping themselves to the jetway. Oops. There's one blocking open the gate nine door so he can go back and forth.

I swear, there's the Maya Elliott character from Bronx Beat, complete with pink fleece, in the face of the gate agent.

Oh my, I'm boarding and this should be fun.

Cash for Sports Stories

A.J. Daulereo appeared on the stage at the Indiana University Sports Journalism forum to discuss the payment of a mystery source for the key info that led to the breaking of the Brett Farve story. He was holding the cash -- "more than I'd ever seen" -- before the delivery.

That might infer a moment of angst. That would be no.

While the sports journalism world is shocked, shocked that there is gambling at Rick's, those with a memory for the history of celebrity journalism were not surprised.

Paying for "exclusives" or providing "expenses" to travel to network television shows are standard in today's media world. The National Enquirer, who paid a hefty fee for the coffin photos of Elvis among others, finds itself considered for eligibility for the 2010 Pulitzer Prize.

The coverage and video of Daulereo's talk are very important as a guide to where this heads next. Recall, TMZ is now in the game (the Oklahoma basketball story) or the Gizmodo move over the iPhone4 and this will not go away anytime soon.

Road Weary But Worth It

There are a few things that make travel exciting -- meeting interesting people, seeing new places, great meals in different areas. So far, this one is batting 1-for-3. Missing hotel reservations, bad airline personnel, rough flight connections and one of the most wholly unremarkable plates of ribs ever.

I did have a nice chat with a woman who was visiting in the NWA area. She was from DC and had been at a corporate event (no, not for THE corporate entity in NWA). Her time was spent at Carnall Hall and she had walked around the campus. A lot of the usual things we hear -- gosh, its so much nicer than we thought, etc.

My seatmate reminded me of something really important about what I do these days, and how extremely valuable one-on-one interaction is for our overall efforts. I hear the gnashing of teeth in the background of the mass market mentality. You're wasting your time with one person.

Really?

You know the butterfly effect, yes? You've read The Long Tail. How do I not know that the one person I've talked to -- who swears that even though her only connection to Arkansas was this conference is now going to log in and read the interactive blog tonight -- won't lead to something important in the future for the Razorbacks.

And that's just it -- I don't. She didn't seem like she was just being polite, and was quite adamant to make sure she was remembering the website name. But if she doesn't, I know that several hundred will be there. Taking long periods of time to stay and discuss the game; to get the updates and descriptions.

I do know what happens if I'm not there. We don't have a connection to New York City, or Seattle, or Doha, or Yokosuka. And the positive impressions and time together reinforces the bond that we want. Said it before, say it many times again, I don't want fans for the University of Arkansas; I want friends.

Fans come and go; friends stay with you. They do favors for you, and you do them in return. The day what we do gets reduced to pure commerce, to spread sheets of return on investment is the day people wake up and realize college sports are not worth what is spent upon them.

Alchemist! Blasphemer! Communist! I could continue down the alphabet, but its true. How do I know so? Look in the major metropolitan areas. Pro sports dominate because at the highest level of pure sport, the skill and artistry will always trump the amateurs. And we'll pay more to see The Rolling Stones than an up-and-coming plucky band of young Brits, well, because they are The Rolling Stones.

Think I'm wrong? Consider the following. What makes last year's Final Four compelling was the battle between the established men of the game, Duke, and the upstarts from Butler. Was there more sheer athleticism on the court than a regular season game shortly before or after featuring the Indiana Pacers? No.

The connection we gained to both sides -- to the legend of Coach K and the underdogs from Butler -- is what made it compelling. And memorable.

At the end of the day, that's my job. It's why I keep showing up out here on the road, plying the story with whatever the latest technology might be to bring it home, but never, ever forgetting what is the most important part.

Serving as the connection between the Razorbacks and their nation.

Chief Content Officers

I like this concept advanced by Bob Rumpza at PR News Online, and it syncs perfectly with my own experience. Compelling content is the long-term solution to what ails you -- whether it is a legacy journalism enterprise trying to transition into a networked world or a public relations/sports information/sports marketing person trying to have impact.

Good content=traffic

Traffic=advertisers

Advertisers=exchange of green rectangles for your services

Rumpza has several great takeaway quotes in this piece, starting with this one that should be bronzed on every college marketing person's desk:

"And consumers told us that when it comes to online advertising, they prefer content-rich articles and information compared to banner ads, or other online ad techniques."

This is at the heart of what I have been preaching for about a year: integrate your marketing messages into the content. Use "buy now" buttons, stories that explain promotions and giveaways, things that translate the old display advertising of the newspaper days into social exchange.

The other great passage is about the value of the content to the end user:

"As reputation management, marketing and brand-building have undergone transformation, the element that has survived untouched is the ability -- and necessity -- to tell a great story efficiently, yet eloquently, that stirs action and favorability among business people and consumers."

The bold is my emphasis.

Now before I hear back from a bunch of number crunchers that I'm just regurging a bunch of anecdotal to support my positions, I'd like to close by reminding you Rumpza's conclusions are supported by a national study looking into that oh-so-precious demo of the young, affluent and highly educated.

In other words, our sports' programs top boosters -- our alums.

Make The BeeGees Stop

I'm not completely certain, but right up there with double digit unemployment, seismic house of representative changes, and that the next incarnation of Call of Duty apparently incorporates a zombie phase in the Pentagon that involves four dead Presidents, the fact that Starbucks is now featuring the BeeGees and playing their greatest hits over, and over, and over in store IS one of the final si guns of the apocalypse.

Oh, please hurry up person with the records you are dropping off to me here.

Remembering Mr. Dunn

Walter Dunn was that teacher. The one that inspired you later in life that you misunderstood. Maybe detested.

Personally, I never had a problem with Mr. Dunn. Others weren't much for his all-essay tests in American History and Advanced Social Studies. I'm sure it's no big surprise that I relished the open-ended nature of the questions. Usually there were two, maybe three. That's 50 points a pop -- 33 if you got three. High risk, high reward.

I still have my handwritten tests, folded length-ways with your name and date on the right side please, from his classes. One of the moments that made me most proud -- and showed me maybe I was pretty smart and not just a class clown jock-type from the wrong kind of family at the private school -- was when I got bonus points for my answer on World War II. Told later by seniors that they'd heard of only one other person that got bonus points from Dunn.

Enough self-congratulations, the reasons I'm thinking of Mr. Dunn today are two-fold. First, he was not a traditional teacher. Really, very few of the teachers at River Oaks during this period were cookie-cutter educationists. He was a former haberdasher, retired; who loved raising roses with his dear wife of who knows now many years. And, he knew his history. I look back on the old-school lecture and essay question format, and he gifted those who survived his headmaster rules strict attitude with incredible confidence and knowledge.

As for the knowledge, let me spread a little Mr. Dunn. On election day during my senior year, someone in the class asked Mr. Dunn who he voted for today. He looked up from his desk and a disgusted frown moved across his face. With an even more stern tone than usual, he looked the person who asked straight in the eye and said "Don't you ever ask anyone that question again."

He went on to lecture the class. This is America, and you have the right to walk into a private place and make your vote. That is your vote, and don't you ever, ever tell anyone how you voted.

You could tell that a very sacred thing had been disturbed, as if you had decided to wipe down the church alter with urine.

So on this election day, here's to you Mr. Dunn. I've got to go do that solemn, and private, duty this morning.

Go Vote Tomorrow

Seriously. This is the inner history professor lecturing you.

I don't care how you vote tomorrow, but don't come to class (talking to you guys that have your test) or work Wednesday to carp about the results one way or the other unless you have at least put some skin in the game.

A Sharp Dressed Man

ZZ Top may have wrote it, but how many times have we heard that the clothes make the man. Noemie Emery wrote this in the Weekly Standard, making political points against the President as she concludes:

He’s your ideal, and if he fails, it means that the things that you value—the smoothness, the snark, the verbal facility, the elevation of talk as against thought and action, the veneer of worldliness; the right schools, the right clothes, the right frame of reference; the nuance; the sophistication—that these things are, in the real world, not all that important.

And then, of course, neither are you.

Political vitriol aside, how often do we find the same in athletics? And see the ever-so-hard crash of the once triumphant Adonis we build. I've been part of that process -- insider and outsider -- and sensed the impact. Emery's last line is telling, something so obvious that I'd never seen it before. It is why fans get so crushed when they have invested so much in a person or team. Many times, we want to see ourselves in them, and we forget, they are playing the games for them -- not us -- at the end of the day.

Oh Sheep, Drop the WiFi

Thanks to Jill Geer on my Facebook page for the heads up to a Peter Shankman rant about the dangers of "Free" public WiFi. Shankman is relating his personal experience with a new plug in for Firefox called Firesheep. It basically allows the user to see anything non-encrypted floating across a public WiFi.

Must read as he describes how easy it is for anyone to steal your passwords and begin to create massive amounts of trouble.

Firesheep is not some wanton script-kiddie black-hat shot at the man. It's a pretty serious move by a programmer named Eric Butler who became concerned about the privacy issue. He made the plug in to reveal the weakness.

I'll confess to having used public WiFi in the past for a quick check in. Not any more. Ever.

Seriously -- read the Shankman story right now.

Don't Forget It's a Conversation

Few things less pleasant than going back through customer service logs when you know there has been a problem. Certainly the case yesterday when no fault to us or our internet provider we lost audio stream.

I know I do the same thing -- "yell" and "scream" at the computer via email. And it's easy to do when you don't think there is a human on the other end of the email.

This is why I am pretty firm about asking fans to not use screen names or handles on interactive blogs, and why I'll be far more tolerant of opinions that seem to come from people with names; Facebook comments being a good example of this, too. If you're that mad and willing to put your name on it -- hearkens back to the old letter to the editor days and the pre-handles days of talk radio.

So I take the time this morning to send each of those very upset -- rightfully so -- fans that had their audio interrupted. Once they are in the conversation with a human, things almost always change. As one person put it:

It's nice to know that my complaints didn't fall on deaf ears...or no ears at all, as is so often the case with internet services.

Indeed.

Case Study in Why Live Blogs Matter

"You're going to do what?"

That's the typical reaction to CoverItLive and other real-time live reporting tools (don't discount Twitter for certain applications) by some administrators and media relations personnel at other schools that haven't tried it. It's often quickly followed by either:

"What good is that going to do?"

And/or:

"That's a waste of time."

Really? In the socially connected world in which we now live, the messaging is micro. It's targeted. It's one-v-one. What better use of your time than to connect with our fans. As I've preached here before, it is about converting fans into friends, going from a brand to a bond. (As an aside, I consider "Brand-to-Bond" a trademark concept, please cite properly -- thanks!)

Today, one of our interns, John Thomas, provides a fantastic example of what the live blog means. He's over at the Billingsly Tennis Courts, dutifully live blogging the ITA Central Regionals.

Huh? He what?

Here was the concept -- one that many SIDs can relate to. You're going to be there all day long. You're going to have very little to do other than keep up with the comings and goings of your team's players. There is too much chaos to run live stats and it's not the NCAA Championships where you'll have demand for all those courts streaming and scoring.

So, I suggested, why not sit by the tournament official (which you're going to likely do anyway) and keep up a live blog of who's going out to the courts and the results when you can get them coming back in. If they use the manual tenders (no umpires in the chairs in the first rounds to operate the scoring system), you can post the occasional "here's the unofficial scores on court X, Y and Z and as we have it A & B are on court X, etc."

OK, say the tennis contacts that will work this weekend. Sounds like fun. And off we go for the weekend.

The image at the bottom is from Day Two - today's blog - is the payoff. One of our European players, Anouk Tigu, is being followed by her dad Sabin from Holland. He was able to ask if his daughter was on the court, and get an answer.

Well, he could have seen that with live stats if you'd cared to set that up, or a live video stream. Yes to the second, and not the same to the first.

I want to belabor this point: Sabin Tigu was able to ask John Thomas how is daughter is doing halfway around the world and John Thomas on behalf of the University of Arkansas was able to interact with Sabin about Anouk.

That's a brand attempting to become a bond with Sabin Tigu.

Live stats posted without interaction -- that's a computer providing information.

Don't get me wrong, live stats have their place, along with that video stream and audio streams. Far too often we let our technology take the place of our humanity.

I see it every week on the football interactive blog -- most of the folks involved cannot reach us in any other way: overseas, military, travelers. They are very appreciative of the effort. You never know where that kindness may lead.

On the technical labor side, let's repeat my number one point about the interactive and live reporting -- you're going to be there anyway. Unless there is a pressing demand for other work (like being on the radio) you can use that time to interact with fans, and help convert them into friends.

At least this morning, I'll bet John's got a new friend named Sabin.

More on College Legal Limits On-Line

The Chronicle's Wired Campus feed provides an interesting review of the legal abilities of a university to discipline students in on-line behavior. It is in relation to the tragedy at Rutgers earlier this month.

I remind again our athletics colleagues of the opinion that as participants in student activities campus has more of an ability to sanction on the grounds they are quasi-representatives of the institution and as voluntary participants in our activities have signed off on regulation.

Thinking Android, Not Blackberry

Curious to hear your feedback on this question: after building an iSpace app, what is next - Android or Blackberry?

One clue overheard on This Week in Tech. Leo Laporte makes the off-hand comment that in spite of improvements lately, a Blackberry "is the phone they hand you along with your ID card" at a job and iPhone or Android "is the phone you'll buy at the cell phone store."

Along with previous posts about the growth in Android platform share in the market via Nielsen Line, consider this further twist off Leo's point. If Android is the one you'd buy for yourself, it is more likely to be a reflection of your personal life. Bonding to the personal social graph is the future for athletic media relations. Again, advantage Android.

One last one: who is your target audience? Business types that might be ticket buyers or boosters or future students (and student-athletes). No big shakes of which phone fits which group.

What is Public Property

You may have read about the mild dust-up on our campus regarding the taping of a U.S. Senate campaign ad by a former Razorback football player who is one of the two candidates in the race. Part of that story line was what is public property and what constitutes an endorsement.

From The Chronicle we get alert to a brewing First Amendment challenge to the University of Kentucky's rights package. The interesting twist that reminds me of the Razorbacks is down in the student paper's coverage:

UK is a state-funded university and owns Commonwealth Stadium, making the venue a public place.

This was one of the items that came up in our events. Read through all the points of view here -- notably that the local newspaper once distributed papers at games but had also been stopped. The student paper seems to be reviving a battle already fought and decided.

A compromise allowed the students fixed locations to distribute, but could not roam the parking lots.

One gets the clear sense from the media coverage that it is far from over. The lawyer for the students tells the local Lexington newspaper:

Jon Fleischaker, a Louisville lawyer who is an expert on the First Amendment, said that prohibiting the distribution of publications at Commonwealth Stadium, which is part of a publicly funded institution, violates the U.S. Constitution.

"Anybody — not just the students — anybody has the right to go onto public property and distribute information," Fleischaker said. And, he said, they don't have to have permission from anyone to do so.

"It's a public facility. It's an open-forum public facility," he said. "I just think a public university ought to know better."

Athletic Director Twitters

Certainly I speak a lot about our own achievements here, and Jeff Long has certainly been a prolific tweet -- his engagement with students and fans over new style NIKE uniforms in the college football season opener gained him some national attention.

However, I'd like to take a moment to point out some kudos for a really nice use of the medium by Miss State's Scott Stricklin. After his Bulldogs pulled off the win at Florida, his tweets touched the three keys to successful engagement.

First, they were informative. His first post-game tweet was:

Team should arrive on campus (at Templeton Academic center) at 1 AM. I'll update as we get ready to leave Fla

And that got updated right before the plane departed.

Second, they provided something a little personal. Two in particular spoke to the emotions of the event:

Gave game ball to @CoachDanMullen postgm. Told team "u don't win cause you're at a special place, you win cause u have special people."

And:

We talk in Ath Dept that our goal is to create great experiences for all Mississippians. Tonight was a GREAT experience!

Through the event, Stricklin brings attention back to some of the core values MSU has been pushing all year. It's not preachy, but it's a nice chance to remind folks that the goals can yield results.

Finally, they were social. In the midst of his props for the team, he gave a retweet to one of his beat writers, Brandon Marcello (yes, as in former NW Arkansas Times/ADG on-line editor):

True. RT @bmarcello: Dan Mullen had Chinese food Wed; fortune cookie read, "You're heading south to experience much happiness."

Clocking 3,600-plus followers, Stricklin has built a nice base with pretty consistent work. He's averaging four to six tweets a day in his messaging, and in a reasonably short time pushed out over 1,100 messages.

From the outside, it appears MSU had put their young AD out front as the primary messenger. In contrast, the department's feed is not far ahead of Stricklin at 3,900 follow but only 262 tweets.

Let's not forget where Stricklin cut his teeth -- sports info.

Hey A Week On the Road Will Do That

Apologies for the lag here -- nothing like the 24-hours of Le Auburn to put a crimp in the blog. And I might add a nice stone bruise from the MINI steering wheel on that 12 hour drive down and back. Working on some new things in the background that should be pretty exciting. Back with more soon.

One Does Wonder

NPR has a provocative piece today about whether it makes any sense to attend journalism school. Talking with faculty and students at Southern Cal's Annenberg School, it does give one pause at items like:

At USC, undergraduate tuition alone reaches $40,000, and, when taken with fees, books, room, board and other charges, a year’s cost can exceed $55,000. These days journalism schools around the country are often challenged to justify a mission that trains students at such a high cost for a collapsing industry that doesn't even require a degree.

Ouch.

Look, this isn't something that hasn't been discussed here (Picking up on NYU's Jay Rosen | John Dvorak's similar rant | And my own takes on creative destruction and a brave new j-world) The Age of Watergate gave us the desire to "professionalize" the education of journalists. H.L. Mencken did just fine without J-School, as did many of the legends of the Golden Age in the 1950s and 1960s.

This is not to say the Annenberg School is sitting still. Say, does this quote in the story sound familiar:

Among Annenberg's new projects: giving flip cameras and cell phones to migrant workers so they can post blog entries about their own experiences.

That's convergence and P.O.V. -- coin of a content driven realm. They quote one of the stars of the USC program, Callie Schweitzer:

"We need reliable journalists who are trustworthy and credible," Schweitzer said. "I look at people on Twitter who build followings; it's because they're reputable."

Bingo -- and heavy on the last four words: it's because they're reputable.

Keep that thought in mind on your own real-time reporting and blogs.

End of Yet Another Era

In a year that's been filled with disappointing endings, today's was a bittersweet realization. Coming out of my son's apartment, I look up to see the Lewis Soccer Fields.

Oh. Yeah, it's about 5:45 p.m. Game time. But not anymore for me. Fayetteville Youth Soccer - no more for the Smith family.

That's about 14 years through our two children, and most of that time serving as a coach. I really enjoyed it, not only for the chance to be Will and Ashley, but also helping bring the sport up from a somewhat niche activity for youngsters to one of the activities.

It also went a long way toward building my love for the beautiful game. When I started with the kids, I was still working a lot with our women's soccer team as heir sports information director. Helped design and build the first women's only field, then stadium, in Division I. The first televised SEC soccer match. First video streaming.

Even in the years after handing off the sport to other SIDs, I still had a hand in hiring two coaching staffs, traveling to England with one of them for our only foreign tour in 2000. Until this fall, I'd been the play-by-play for soccer, either for radio or video steaming.

But through it all, there was the Lewis Fields.

In all the changes this fall, I'd just forgotten. And now the once six-year-old first-touch player as a 19-year-old young man has it first on-his-own apartment overlooking those youth pitches.

Time marches on, but we don't have to like it.

From the Twitterverse

A couple of Chronicle articles catch the eye this week. The first one is about the future of archiving social media, thinking first of the great Library of Congress project with Twitter generally and of the Iranian revolution specifically. Interesting read, and one very telling passage:

Web users have voiced concern that their personal online footprints will be kept open for all to see in perpetuity. As much fun as, say, that drunken tweet from your weekend in Vegas may have been at the time, you may not want a possible employer reading through your indiscretions on the Library of Congress Web site in a few years. The solution may be keeping archives "dark"—that is, restricting archive access to researchers or sealing the records for a set amount of time.

First, you just better assume that your life in Vegas doesn't stay in Vegas anymore, it will live in some form of perpetuity on Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, etc. Second, the idea of an arbitrary "dark" gives me a creepy non-FOI feel, or worse, access for those that know how to work (even more worse, can afford to) the system.

The next article was more about professor's use of Twitter, and had some of the usual stereotype comments about the lack of teens and college age using Twitter versus Facebook until the very bottom:

“Now I hear students say, 'Facebook is where I go to socialize, and Twitter is where I go to work,'” Mr. Junco says.

Bingo. Twitter is real-time reporting, just like CoverItLive (kind of), SMS text-messaging (exactly, but costly) or any future short-form burst of info system. Facebook is the social aspect -- Twitter is news.

Social Media Killed the Public Relations Star?

An alert from the front lines and a shameless Buggles reference. On Bulldog Reporter today, a provocative piece on the demise of media relations as we know it. The dire prediction is social media overruns all within two years.

Two years? Could be sooner than that.

Don Bates is the head of the study -- Bulldog has transcribed interview today. Three important nut quotes:

In 10 years, it will all come back around — there won't be distinctions like "traditional" and "social": there will just be "media." Right now, it's not that way — but some people are having a hard time with the distinctions.

Twitter can be quick and dirty and get people to link to you, and the notion of 140 characters linking to a larger story is certainly going to get more popular. But you have to focus on the content and links to the larger story to keep people's interest.

You also have to craft a personality online so people can know you.

Invest the time today in this story. It's far more than those three blurbs.

And On Cue, NFL Weighs In

Missed in the week's work was this supporting tidbit to my earlier comment about On The Media's story regarding licensing of news footage in campaign material. Seems Russ Feingold of Minnesota was trying to make a joke with Vikings footage. Guess what happened next:

The National Football League has thrown a yellow flag at the campaign of Sen. Russ Feingold, saying a newly released campaign ad featuring a snippet of NFL footage was not properly licensed.

Our own mini-tempest about Razorback Stadium not withstanding, I think that only reinforces the point that while Professor Sonia Kaytal's concerns about the potential infringement of political speech via ads is valid, copyright is going to trump.

I have to give props to the quote of the morning on the commercial, posted by Tom Blumer at Media Busters:

The National Football League is whistling incumbent Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold's campaign team for illegal use of film.

Classic.

Digital Content Rights

A very interesting discussion of a political fight that resembles some of the arguments tossed around last fall when the Southeastern Conference began to enforce new digital copyright regulations. In this case, Fox News has gone to court to recover damages because a political campaign used footage from a show without compensation or permission. On the Media brings the details of the story, and I'd recommend listening to the piece at the embed above. Stay with it to the very end, and you'll hear Sonia Katyal make this point:

(i)f a court decided to rule in favor of FOX would be that suddenly individuals who are making campaign commercials would have to consider licensing all news clips that they relied on, potentially all headlines, potentially all content that drew on news organizations. And the consequences of that would be staggering.

Really, Sonia. Welcome to the world of sports and entertainment.

There are some good arguments regarding how political speech is different, but Katayl admits that musicians often exert their copyright privileges when they are not pleased with a particular candidate using a song without permission.

Hmmm. Sort of like what would happen to anyone else who used digital content without permission.

I fully understand the political angles being worked here. But we're talking law now, and whether you like Fox or not, there is real cost involved in making footage, and lifting it without compensation for a political ad is no different than if a television station decided to re-air highlights in the sports broadcast from another outlet without attribution. Or these days, violated any of the pro sports limits on video. Or, closer to home, the SEC content rules.

Bono can own the copyright to his performance. The SEC certainly has exerted it's position regarding athletic events. Why not a cable news network?

Where Next, Columbus?

OK, so you have your iSpace app. Now what? Assuming you already have a WAP in place, is the next system Android or Blackberry for that costly application development?

Nielsen Wire has some interesting, and conflicting, advice. In the last six months, Android devices have taken the lead. Over time, the installed base of users is still Blackberry.

With Blackberry's renewed enthusiasm for smart-phone market share, the bet may be to go with the tried and true. The RIM market is business types and high-dollar users.

Android (and more important, the Google mothership behind it) may be the future. The easy answer is: Yes, as in, develop all three applications. That might not be an option for cash-strapped budgets or budget-minded rights holders.

Forcing a call from me? I'd hold for three months until we see Q3 numbers and some key announcements from both cell phone makers and telcos. The Nielsen story only reinforces that we are at a tipping point, and it is a coin-flip choice until the trends reveal more.

The only sure thing here -- as WIRED declared last month -- the future is more app, less HTML. Don't get caught up in the hype line of "the web is dead" and think that's a Luddite position that means you really can pack up this social network silliness and go back to serious things.

If Chris Anderson is right -- and hmm, can anyone remember his last supposedly crazy position: The Long Tail -- this reinforces the need to understand: the future is closed (which could tilt Blackberry along side Apple).

Painful Fingers

OK, way off topic, but this Is the time of year when I'm getting these cracked fingertips - somewhat dry skin, maybe, but partially from keyboard pounding. What was the song - I've got blisters on my fingers.

Any ideas to help? It really hurts and makes the speed typing for blogging tough.

Hooray for Fall

Personal side note: when the windows can stay open at night and the Acorns are needed to pad around the house in the morning -- yes!

The Unasked Question

Tying together a series of tweets from Friday, Gallup finds distrust in the traditional or "mainstream" media at an all-time low. Only 43% according to the polling believe the media "report the news fully, accurately, and fairly."

At the same time, Pew informs us of record growth in demographics that many believe had no interest in social media. Nearly half of the 50-64 demo (47%) now frequent social media, and a quarter of the oldest (65+) are on-line. Pew is quick to point out that still pales to the younger cohorts, but considering the 50-64 group represents that younger half of the aging Boomer generation, those are numbers to be ignored at marketer and media peril.

What does it mean? Sea change.

The unasked question for Gallup that Pew infers is this: do you believe social media instead?

How do I make that leap? Based on my own views into the dynamic between the legacy and social media and other surveys that have shown higher percentages for veracity for social graph-based information.

Increasingly, the legacy media is seen as outsider or worse, co-opted insiders. Here's how I explain the Gallup numbers. Tracking backwards, Gallup did not ask the same question regularly over the past decades, but in 1976, faith in the media was at an all-time high of 72%. The next polling was 1997, and the number was down to 53%.

In the 13 years since, that belief figure drops another 10%. Gallup points out in its 2010 survey that believe in all institutions is heading down, so a certain amount of "disenchantment creep" can be in the numbers.

Think for yourself about the last time you were involved in a story that was written or covered by the traditional media. The brick-and-mortar media in particular, who have hard assets at risk and reputations to maintain from the pre-networked era. Was the "whole" story in that account? Were there inaccuracies? Think now about a distant situation, one at which you may know a colleague. Did all the news get into the story? Were key details left out or overlooked? Were certain stories going unreported?

And did you share that lack of veracity with your friends, neighbors or family?

Look, it is hard to separate your personal knowledge of an event -- and its coverage -- from news you read and think, well, what are they not telling me?

Now, what does that have to do with the other two tweets?

For all the faith one might want to invest in the people and their ability to report situations, these other two hoaxes reveal the very real need for that professional filter to remain in place. In the space of a week, social media -- Facebook or Twitter -- led to a series of potentially hurtful stories.

Brooklyn had its first big severe thunderstorm in some time, and an unknown person grabbed a decades-old image of a funnel cloud near the Statue of Liberty and posted it as evidence that the straight-line winds that tore through parts of the city was really a tornado. Media bit, social media bit hard, and a legend was born. Should remind followers here of the Bella Vista tornado hoax.

Soon after, a hoax story spun up that a major earthquake was being predicted on Twitter for California.

So much for unshaking faith in the social side of things, too.

What it means for those of us in a branded media situation -- those that represent institutions and in turn become both media and source -- is that there is the potential for an awesome power. Your social graph wants to believe you, not necessarily the media. At the same time, if you are not learning from the legacy media -- an extreme amount of transparency may be necessary -- you'll find yourself right there on the truthy-ness scale.

As Gallup points out, at least the media is doing better than record low 36% for Congress.

More Silence Than a Moment

I applaud their gesture of the moment of silence today for Tyler Clementi.

Interesting the reactions that have come out of the participatory media at Rutgers, and the outpouring of general news coverage. Google can map that for you with trending topics and key facts. I don't have to look for the Wikipedia entries; I have total faith they are already there.

At the center of it, is a family that is now destroyed by the networked media. The Borg that is our information nexus has consumed first their precious talented boy, and now threatens to do the same with his family.

We won't mean to destroy them. We'll say the investigations into how it happened are necessary, will honor his memory, will make his death have meaning, will bring justice to those who did the deed.

It's all crap. Even sitting here attempting to bring some sense into the broader impact, I feel at best voyeuristic and in my heart, an opportunist using the Clementi's tragedy as an intellectual fulcrum.

Perhaps the silence we need isn't a moment. As Luddite as it sounds, tolerance for sexual preference shouldn't be what we are mourning or considering -- acceptance of the small slivers of privacy left to us by an increasingly limitless world.

I hazard to guess that 20 years ago, Tyler would not be dead. He would be terribly wounded by the actions of his dorm mates -- if they had managed to make a film or video tape of him. But the chances of that happening would be reduced by the lack of stealth of late 80s, early 90s equipment.

His reaction could have been the same to this brutal outing, but the likelihood that anyone beyond the immediate dorm or Rutgers community would have known about it in that pre-network time would be nil. Today, it approaches a virtual infinity.

We have done it to ourselves. Many volunteer for the kind of invasive public life through Facebook, by Tweeting out thoughts, by dropping Four-Square location details. We overshare our Flickr and YouTube private moments, and join with digital companions scattered across the country in on-line games.

In a mad, head-long pursuit of community and belonging, we overlook the way that our new "social-ism" has this dark side. What a rush we get from our networked world, where we can say things, and do things, and be people we aren't behind screen names and avatars. No wonder the comedy cliche rings true -- there are only two business that call their customers "users": drug dealers and computer manufacturers.

Oh we celebrate The Social Network movie coming out this weekend. The sickening irony of that -- Tyler's last words posted on Mark Zuckerberg's great invention. A movie that is fiction, but we will believe it to be true; like so many convinced that Oliver Stone's JFK is gospel. Tyler's feelings weren't virtual; he was face-to-face with embarrassment in the real world.

At the end of the day, the difference between these two talented young men? Mark's still with his pre-college girlfriend, not the high-life Playmates of the movie. He also has about a $1 billion reasons to compensate for the loss of his privacy and the distortions of his real life.

Tyler has a moment of silence. An empty orchestra chair. A grieving family.

Mark -- and all of us digiratti -- get one more thing.

Tyler's blood on our hands.