December 2008 Archive

Inspired by annual prediction and end-of-year reviews, here are a few things which I hope will not happen next year within our industry:

• More new niche “beta” social networks that do not work
• SPAM hitting Twitter
• A new free web analytics solution
• A hyped comeback of Cuil
• Either a way to monetize Facebook or a government bailout
• Microblogging affecting the course of history

And last but not least…

• More irrelevant thought leadership pieces from the “experts”

It can be a decent year if these things can be avoided, but we shall see….

I’m a PR guy who blogs on digital trends. My wife is a midwife.

Yesterday, our world’s were mashed in the following story from BoingBoing:

Youngest Twitterer EVAR?
Corey Menscher, an ITP student, has designed a kick sensor which monitors his pregnant wife’s belly, and generates a fetal tweet whenever the baby kicks.

Here are some of @kickbee‘s latest tweets:

Here are some photos of the device:

http://portfolio.menscher.com/itp/kickbee/

Can you imagine wearing one of these for the sake of digital trends?

Ruder Finn co-CEO Kathy Bloomgarden recently penned an article for Harvard Business School blog Conversation Starter, talking about PR lessons from the congressional testimony of the "Big Three" automaker CEOs:

Detroit’s PR Lessons and the Right Way to Ask for Help

Her main points:

1) Be sincerely willing to talk–and act–differently
2) Understand the context and present a fact-based case
3) Admit mistakes and take the blame

From a digital trends perspective, it’s interesting to note that the Big 3 have taken their case to the web with sites like Ford’s The Ford Story and GM’s GMFactsandFiction.com that address their respective cases for federal aid.

(via PR Week US)

Are you swayed by these online efforts?

Twitter founder Ev Williams spoke at a conference last night where he partly detailed his outlook for Twitter, explaining his reasoning for turning down an offer from Facebook, and how their business model could be developed.

Here’s a digest of three articles on it:

Twitter CEO: The revenue’s coming soon, but I won’t tell you how (CNET)
"…[Williams] revealed that the company is in talks with large consumer packaged good companies, and whether that’s to sell the company internal services or to help the company monetize its own Twitter feeds, it’s promising."

Why Twitter Turned Down Facebook (NYT)
"…Mr. Williams said that Twitter gets daily calls from companies who want to pay for sponsorships, but it plans to avoid making money from ads. Instead, it will figure out a way to charge businesses who use Twitter to talk with customers or sell products. Companies like JetBlue Airways, Dell and Whole Foods Market have used Twitter in these ways."

A Tweet Time with Ev Williams (Portfolio)
"…He still isn’t saying exactly how Twitter will make money, but says he is confident THAT it will make money. Thanks to the downturn, he’s focusing on revenue earlier than he would’ve otherwise, and thinks Twitter will have real revenue by early 2009."

Most interesting for those pushing corporate involvement in digital media is the prospect of a business model funded by corporations.

Will corporations be less likely to engage in Web 2.0 if they have to pay to do so?

I think Twitter was smart to turn down the offer from Facebook. Mostly because there are bigger fish out there to sell to. If Twitter is looking to generate revenue outside of advertising, then it might be a very attractive acquisition for Google to diversify its revenue stream. Not to mention Ev was with Blogger when it sold to Google.

Some of my colleagues at Ruder Finn had this to say:

Given that Facebook seems a bit shaky in terms of revenue generation, they might be smart to turn it down. But it’s not as if they have their own revenue-generating idea just yet. I think Twitter is surviving on a hope and a prayer, at least as a business, and is far from unique as a service. (Eric)

I think we’ll see Twitter copy Yammer (which copied Twitter) and really focus on a subscription-based, secure "behind the firewall" version of Twitter for enterprise connectivity and collaboration. (Tyler)

"No crowd surfing" via clagnut

Vote for crowdSPRING today! (more on that at the end)

I recently predicted that:

Creativity will be crowd-sourced, redefining the role of the professional creative mind. PR will be tasked with orchestrating the crowd talking to itself.

A few questions came in on what crowdsourcing is, and I was surprised to find that the term wasn’t as self-explanatory as I had thought.

According to Wikipedia, crowdsourcing is the:

Act of taking a task traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people, in the form of an open call.

One might consider Wikipedia itself an experiment in crowdsourcing, although its founder Jimmy Wales is cited in the very same article as having said that:

"I find the term ‘crowdsourcing’ incredibly irritating," Wales says. "Any company that thinks it’s going to build a site by outsourcing all the work to its users not only disrespects the users but completely misunderstands what it should be doing. Your job is to provide a structure for your users to collaborate, and that takes a lot of work."

(source: "The Wales Rules for Web 2.0", Business 2.0)

His distinction would be that Wikipedia has enough of a framework in place to foster productive collaboration rather than willy nilly idea stealing and general run-amokedness.

Despite the controversy around crowd sourcing, Ruder Finn client crowdSPRING has been able to show success in an area particularly prone to debate, creative crowd-sourcing. They are self-described as:

an online marketplace for creative services. For buyers, crowdSPRING is a place to post a creative project, watch the world contribute ideas and choose the one they like. For creatives, crowdSPRING is a global stage for creativity where title and experience don’t matter.

The process is facilitated by a framework established by crowdSPRING to ensure that creators own their ideas, are paid, and have tools at their disposal to ensure that they are protected.

Incidentally, the WIRED Small Biz program is hosting a contest for one of five businesses they’ve selected to win $40,000. Voting is open through this month, so:

Vote for crowdSPRING today!

Have you ever crowdsourced something?

**UPDATE 1**

crowdSPRING is currently in second. Get thee to the polls, readers!

**UPDATE 2**

WIRED contributing editor Jeff Howe has a blog on his book about crowd-sourcing:

Crowdsourcing Blog

Also, the WIRED Small Biz program has a forum for small business owners to pose problems and collaborate to solve them:

WIRED Small Biz forum