Atlanta Media Bloggers

Too Funny not to Share

So, I am going through the 50+ Google Alerts in my inbox...and in one Google Alerts email I find these three articles;

House Bill Blocks Social Networks, Chat Rooms
Marketing Vox News - USA
The House, by a 410-15 vote, on Thursday approved a bill to make "chat rooms" and "social networking sites" inaccessible to minors who use terminals at ...
See all stories on this topic

Catching Up With the MySpace Generation
TechLINKS (press release) - Atlanta,GA,USA
... While much of the discussion regarding social networks in the business community is focused on word of mouth marketing and user generated content, this trend ...

GOP's "Suburban Caucus" Takes On Social Networks
MIT Technology Review - Cambridge,MA,USA
Public spaces that offer general computer use, such as libraries, may be forced to restrict access to sites that enable people to post user profiles, according ...

Tim's article highlighting the need to pay attention and catch up to the MySpace Generation is between two articles of the GOP trying to ban Social Networking. Fun!

Our official URL is LIVE!

Hey y'all, I just wanted to give you a heads up. We've finally finished adjusting the domain mapping for this site. The URL you have always been using will still work just fine, but the site is now also fully mapped to www.atlantamediabloggers.com.

So if you want to give out that URL to people in the future, because it is easier to remember, have at it!

Chris

p.s. doesn't anybody else have a Flickr account badge they'd like to share for the menu item at the right? Just send it to me and I'll put it up.

Special Guest to Lead the Atlanta Media Bloggers in August

Dan Greenfield, Vice President, Corporate Communications for Earthlink will be leading the discussion on August 17th.

Dan recently published an article in iMedia, "Why Earthlink Embraces Social Media."

Customer voices are being heard and companies need to listen and participate in the conversation or find themselves standing on unstable ground.

We have the honor of learning about the challenges and opportunities Earthlink has found by embracing this drastic, disruptive change in business.

Free downloadable e-book on PR and interactive media

I think I originally followed this link to PR Squared from Sherry's site (now I can't find the original link), reading stuff about a social media press release template. Anyway, so I was checking back in to show the template to a friend, and came across this as well, the PR 2.0 Essentials Guide. Downloaded it and have read a bit. Thought it might appeal to some of y'all. What do you think? Did they get it right?

Chris

Link: PR Squared: SHIFT Releases "PR 2.0 Essentials" Guidebook.

Link: Shift Communications | Public Relations Services.

This is from the site:

"PR 2.0 Essentials Guide," which examines a range of social media innovations (such as social bookmarking, RSS, etc.). This is for all in-house and Agency PR Professionals who need to bone up on the latest Social Media tools that are changing how we communicate on behalf of our respective companies and clients.

 

 

Mark Chernesky and Podcasts

Dave Winer and Mark Chernesky in dialogue about podcast directories, New York Times podcasts, and CNN.

Will Digg for money

Netscape boss Jason Calacanis is showing the money to the top users on Digg, Delicious, Flickr, MySpace, and Reddit for $1000.00 per month. Check out this lil' snippet from his blog...

..snip-snip..

Before launching the new Netscape I realized that Reddit, NewsVine, Delicious, and DIGG were all driven by a small number of highly-active users. I wrote a blog post about what drives these folks to do an hour to three hours a day of work for these sites which are not paying them for their time. In other words, they are volunteering their services. The response most of these folks gave back to me were that they enjoyed sharing the links they found and that they got satisfaction out of being an "expert" or "leader" in their communities.

Excellent... excellent (say that in a Darth Vadar/Darth Calacanis voice for extra impact).

That is exactly what bloggers told Brian and I three years ago when we started. Given that, I have an offer to the top 50 users on any of the major social news/bookmarking sites:

We will pay you $1,000 a month for your "social bookmarking" rights. Put in at least 150 stories a month and we'll give you $12,000 a year. (note: most of these folks put in 250-400 stories a month, so that 150 baseline is just that--a baseline).

Read: Paying the top DIGG/REDDIT/Flickr/Newsvine users (or "$1,000 a month for doing what you're already doing.")

Woman fired for blogging (Keep an eye on this one)

A 33-year-old British secretary has launched a test case before a French employment tribunal after bring sacked from her company for writing a blog about her day-to-day life in Paris.

The blog - written under the pseudonym "La Petite Anglaise" - has built up a sizeable international following over the last two years, with up to 3000 people a day reading diary-style accounts about work, relationships and the travails of single-motherhood.

But in April Catherine - she refuses to give her family name - was called in by superiors at the Paris office of British accounting firm Dixon Wilson and told she was being dismissed for gross misconduct.

After working out her notice, Catherine today posted news of her dismissal and impending legal case for the first time on her blog - http://www.petiteanglaise.com - prompting a flood of sympathetic comments from readers.

"In the dismissal letter they told me I had brought the company into disrepute, but I never once referred to it or the people there by name," Catherine told AFP.

Managers had also discovered from reading the blog that on two occasions she had lied about having nanny problems to take the afternoon off, Catherine said. And they objected to her using the computer in office hours to write the blog.

"I can understand why they might have felt a little aggrieved, but I cannot accept that it is a sackable offence. It was a gross over-reaction. Only a few days before I'd been told how good my work was," she said.

The case - one of the first of its kind in France - will be brought before the "prud'hommes" or labour tribunals later this year, and Catherine's lawyer is pressing for an award of two years' salary.

READ: Secretary sacked for blogging

The Rule of 1%

After our discussions on user-generated conent, I thought my fellow Atlanta Media Bloggers would find this interesting. (I wonder how many will interact with this post?)

***

It's an emerging rule of thumb that suggests that if you get a group of 100 people online then one will create content, 10 will "interact" with it (commenting or offering improvements) and the other 89 will just view it.

It's a meme that emerges strongly in statistics from YouTube, which in just 18 months has gone from zero to 60% of all online video viewing.

The numbers are revealing: each day there are 100 million downloads and 65,000 uploads - which as Antony Mayfield (at http://open.typepad.com/open) points out, is 1,538 downloads per upload - and 20m unique users per month.

That puts the "creator to consumer" ratio at just 0.5%, but it's early days yet; not everyone has discovered YouTube (and it does make downloading much easier than uploading, because any web page can host a YouTube link).

Consider, too, some statistics from that other community content generation project, Wikipedia: 50% of all Wikipedia article edits are done by 0.7% of users, and more than 70% of all articles have been written by just 1.8% of all users, according to the Church of the Customer blog (http://customerevangelists.typepad.com/blog/).

Earlier metrics garnered from community sites suggested that about 80% of content was produced by 20% of the users, but the growing number of data points is creating a clearer picture of how Web 2.0 groups need to think. For instance, a site that demands too much interaction and content generation from users will see nine out of 10 people just pass by.

***

READ: What is the 1% rule?

Josh Darn It All

Wouldn't ya know... miss one meeting and the heavies come out. We were out and about, the other day at least, with the TrueGritz cameras talking to the BBC about the future of media. The Swingin' Special Report should be of interest to you media bloggers:

http://www.truegritz.com/

The Stars Were Out Last Night

The Atlanta Media Bloggers Group met last night and discussed how mainstream media is shifting toward user generated content, the importance of a blogger as a citizen journalist to a mainstream journalist trying to break a story, building readership through social connections, technology and so much more.

We had an impressive role call!

Josh Hallet with hyku was visiting GA and made an appearance and answered several questions that were put on the table.

Toby Bloomberg, the Diva of blogging and President  of Bloomberg Marketing shared her stories as well as made us aware of her latest blog where she ask others to share their stories of how blogging has affected their lives at http://bloombergmarketing.blogs.com/bloggerstories/.

Chris Boese creator of this blog and author on many more.

Kevin Howarth was there representing TechLINKS.

Mark who blogs at timeshifted.org.

We welcomed several newcomers who were there to learn more, CJ and Jermaine who are looking into beginning a social networking site for entertainers.

Pete Mastin who recently joined Multicast Media.

We also had a special guest arrive that may show up in the near future as a key note speaker, Dan Greenfield, Vice President, Corporate Communications for Earthlink who blogs at Bernaise Source, Mapping the brave new world of new media, the PR profession, news, and web 2.0.

Jim Stroud arrived after one of his many speaking engagements he has been booked on lately.

Representing What a Concept! was Myself, Tim Moenk, and Judy Knight.

Sherry Heyl Reporting