Atlanta Media Bloggers

Where to go to get your Social Media Fix

Well, if you have not noticed - the Atlanta Media Bloggers Group does not 'officially' meet anymore.

There are several other groups that have sprung up since SoCon07 and Podcamp Atlanta - both of which are scheduled to return in 2008

For nonprofits, Tim Moenk has organized a monthly NetSquare meetup

I have two groups running
Social Media for PR professionals
Connecting Writers

There is the Atlanta chapter of Social Media Club

and MANY of the other associations around town have started exploring and discussing social media.

Please add your comment here if I missed anything.

We are Bloggers, hear us roar?

Link: Blogs becoming force in advertising | Reuters.com.

Whoo hoo! How about this new research in the Reuters article below?

What does this mean, tho? My immediate thought is that there is a great warning embedded here. Take a study like this and mindlessly apply the results to your thinking, and shift the massive advertising persuasion push to blogs, and you risk killing the goose that laid the golden egg.

You see this happen all the time in television. They get a piece of research that says audiences like "X," and without thinking about WHY audiences like "X," they just turn around and run "X" into the ground, until audiences absolutely HATE "X."

So here's my logic. Advertising is wholeheartedly NOT persuasive. With emotional branding (pathos), it does OK, but audiences are far too savvy to expect advertising to be logical (logos), and most importantly, audiences have been conditioned over time to distrust the source (ethos).

Audiences DO trust close family and friends, word of mouth, MORE THAN ANYTHING.

Insofar as blogs appear to be as trustworthy as close family and friends, audiences will treat them on par with word of mouth recommendations.

However, if bloggers by and large sell out, or if the trust/credibility link-love system fails, if scam-blogs and splogs proliferate and drown out all the signal for their noise, the truths of this study will evaporate as surely as people stopped believing the boy who cried wolf.

It always amazes me how business these days takes a scorched earth approach in pursuit of profit, instead of looking at how longevity and trust matter more than quarterly returns. I mean, what self-respecting capitalist would actually hype a lie or corrupt a source that reaches an actual audience (what should we call blogging payola? blogola?) if it means destroying his or her own future customer base or ability to reach that customer base?

What this research tells me is that when given a choice, people choose authenticity. Sales pitches don't feel authentic, so they are disregarded. Blogs feel authentic, so they are tentatively trusted. Those who promote rampant pitching without regard for authenticity will probably rush in and exploit this source.

Will authenticity be strong enough to win, or will the pitches drive the real audience out of the blogosphere?

Link: Blogs becoming force in advertising�| Reuters.com.

Blogs becoming force in advertising

Fri Nov 10, 2006 7:27pm ET

 

LONDON (Reuters) - Blogs are becoming a force to be reckoned with as a means of advertising products, according to a survey.

An Ipsos MORI poll found that the Internet journals are a more trusted source of information than TV advertising or e-mail marketing.

[...]

Ipsos MORI found a direct link between blogs, or user-generated content, and people's intentions to buy goods or services.

Any company that fails to come up to standard should beware. The blog is replacing word of mouth for endorsing or condemning a product or service.

[...]

Blogs, or weblogs, are a more trusted source of information (24 percent) than television advertising (17 percent) and email marketing (14 percent), the survey commissioned by Hotwire, a technology public relations consultancy, said.

But they still lag behind newspapers (30 percent).

[...]

"Word of mouth is no longer restricted to close friends and family, it can have the same level of influence upon millions of people across the world."

wikiHow - The How-To Manual That Anyone Can Write or Edit

Link: wikiHow - The How-To Manual That Anyone Can Write or Edit.

This is cool - but when you get into things like car repairs or home repairs there could be consequences for following the wrong information. I mean using a word incorrectly is one thing, hooking the wrong electrical thing up - quite different.

What do you all think about this project?

Praising company blogs

Does anyone here remember the meeting when the idea of Walmart blogging came up. It was before Walmart was actually blogging. Someone made some off topic comment about Walmart was going to start having drive thrus, then the idea of a Walmart blog came up, and the question was posed, who would read Walmart's blog.

I responded that I would be interested in a Walmart blog if it was an insight into the decision making process, such as why do they think a drive thrus was a good idea.

Well, unfortunately Walmart hired Edelman and not me...but in light of everything going on, I want to highlight two company blogs that I do enjoy reading.

Honeywell has two girl that blog regularly and from what I can tell, pretty much uncensored and from the heart. They are blogs I have in my RSS reader for research purposes - to see what other companies are doing, but I find myself actually reading some of what they say. Why? Because it is almost like listening to a co-worker coming over to talk. Good Job!

The other blog I catch is Amazon.com. I have always been interested in how Amazon.com continues to innovate by building a community. Although the blog lacks a personal touch, it is always full of useful information that makes me go hmmmm?

That's all just wanted to show that companies can do it right.
 

Walmart v the Blogosphere

Link: BusinessWeek.

This can also be stated as PR vs the Community. I think that bloggers and all other communities should and do welcome business into their conversations. "Please join in and learn how you can better serve us, but do not insult our intelligence or think that being cute or entertaining is providing a service."

But let's pick this apart a bit and see who is being over-sensitive about Walmart's efforts and where thier efforts could be improved upon. I mean really - I applaud and respect Edelman for jumping into this so quickly and being willing to make mistake and then educate others about what they have learned. So, as bloggers, let's talk about how can someone with a personal interest also build an authentic community.

Once bloggers heard that Jim and Laura had undisclosed benefactors, they were furious.

Should people be paid to blog? Well, our lunch sponsor for the conference might have a few thoughts on that.

These are people with jobs and lives to support, why shouldn't they get paid? They are not actors or spokespeople, they are real people who took the job. As someone who has become very particular about who I will work for and what I will do for a living, I choose to look at this as a choice they made in good conscious. Alright, perhaps I am being a bit Idealistic, but that's what keeps me going sometimes.

What bothers me is that the article suggest that Edelman will suffer more than Walmart for this campaign. A campaign funded by Walmart, although the spokeperson for Walmart states;

"We won't comment on the RV tour, since it was a Working Families for Wal-Mart initiative and we didn't have anything to do with it," says Wal-Mart spokesman David Tovar.

Yeah. Well, I think the comment could have been more along the lines of we are focused on building a community and letting people have an insight to what we do and who we are. But, it's a learning process, right?

As the competing PR firm stated;

"Today, there's nowhere to run and nowhere to hide," says Paul Rand, a partner at Ketchum public relations. "The moment you hide something, you will end up being exposed and picked apart."

Let's have a virtual meeting this month!

Hey y'all!

Yeah, it's been cooooollld out, and rainy enough to curl your hair. And yeah, a whole bunch of us have conflicts up the wazoo, preventing us from making a goodly quorum for our monthly mind meld.

And yeeeaaah, SOME of us got to go on a cool road trip, and they need to be telling the rest of us who didn't go some wacky stories, amazing anecdotes, and tortured theories about Web 2.0 and unConferences (what the hell is an unConference, anyway? I'm asking this on behalf of the peanut gallery. There are no stupid questions around here).

The topic for our meeting, if we had been able to hold it, was going to be Online Communities, and the intangible something that makes them hold together, that gives them power, that structures cyberspace perhaps more strongly than in some of our real lives.

What is it? One friend once told me that online communities were fake, no more real than the people who gather at around the piano in the lounge at an airport bar. He said there's nothing that really ties the people together, no strong ties, no obligations. People come, and they go.

And some of us actually like communities that have that kind of freedom, the freedom from guilt and obligation, the knowledge that the people who are present are there because they want to be, not because anyone is making them. That was one of the beautiful things I discovered in my online ethnography of the very strong communities of the Xenaverse, the fandom groups centered around the TV show "Xena: Warrior Princess."

I think of it like gravity, the so-called "strength of weak ties." Of all the forces in physics (electromagnetic, strong nuclear force, weak nuclear force), gravity appears to be the weakest, the easiest to overcome (don't believe me? Jump!). But gravity is like a prevailing wind. You can stand against it, but it ends up shaping everything (even the shape of the cellulite in our legs!). Gravity holds entire solar systems in orbit, and more. I think the weakest force field can actually be the strongest.

Businesses look at the blogosphere and social media as an opportunity, but often they see it as a top-down opportunity for them, rather than a chance to harness real bottom-up grassroots force.

But is that a real force? Or is it like herding cats?

Or maybe the mindset is all wrong. Maybe its wrong to even think that cats should be herded in the first place.

Soooo, what are we doing here? Do you want to be here? Are you obligated to be here? Do you get something of value out of being here? Is this a cool community to be a part of?

If so, I hope some more of you will chime in in this space. It's been a while since I sent out invitations on how to use this site, but I am happy to resend any invitations that got lost or misplaced. Just zap me a note.

If you have a blog or blogs, a good blog promotion strategy is to get hooked in with an existing community, so that people start reading your blog, and folks comment back and forth on each others' blogs, and we can spread some link love around.

I SURE WOULD LIKE TO BE SPREADING SOME MORE LINK LOVE AROUND!

So if you've got a blog, post up a little introduction to it here on this site, with your link. Tell us why we should peek in, check your blog out. Maybe you're feeling shy, just getting your blog legs. We'll hold your hand. That's what link love is all about.

We're Atlanta Media Bloggers. We're into blogs. We have blogs. OK, all together now:

Send us your links, your huddled URLs longing to breathe free...

Ahhh. Isn't that better?

Let the virtual meeting commence.

All in flavor? Up hosed?

respectfully submitted,

Chris Boese

A good reason to be careful what you say

Link: Courts are asked to crack down on bloggers *

Maybe Libel Law would be a good topic for one of our future monthly meetings. I'm not trying to scare anyone, because you really don't need to fear threats of libel if you don't say bad things about people that you can't prove to be true.

The beauty of libel law is that Truth is the primary defense against libel. That's how you CYA. Just don't make things up.

And Fair Comment and Criticism (which allows you to review a film and say nasty things about how badly it sucks) is PROTECTED SPEECH. That allows you to have nasty opinions about things.

Good ethics would require you back up hasty generalizations with support, reasons for why you think the film sucks, for instance.

PARODY is generally considered Fair Comment and Criticism. I do believe that usually includes filksongs (bastardized song lyrics) and Fark.com-style "photoshopping" joke sites.

But with the heated nature of online discourse, where folks get sloppy is when they're busy flaming someone who maybe isn't wearing asbestos underwear, and instead of criticism, they start playing the "dozens," or an online variant, essentially saying bad things about someone's mother or parentage, or other exaggerations that are made up completely of whole cloth.

I dunno. Don Rickles gets away with that style of insult, but if it is something that can be fact-checked, it had better be true. If Don Rickles says out loud that someone's mother wears army boots, it is aural and generally considered slander. Libel is a bigger deal, because it has more permanence, and if etched forever on the ethers, Google-searchable, that could add up to a sizable settlement.

So an exaggerated insult COULD be construed as taking from a person her or his good name or reputation, and if it ain't true, that's libel.

For those of you for whom this is pretty basic stuff, or old news, please forgive me for going over old ground. I just figure it's better safe than sorry.

Chris

Link: Courts are asked to crack down on bloggers *

Link: USATODAY.com - Courts are asked to crack down on bloggers, websites.

Link: AsiaMedia :: US: Blogs hit by libel suits.

US: Blogs hit by libel suits

People criticised in online journals fight back, experts fear the impact on free speech

Singapore Straits Times
Thursday, October 5, 2006

New York --- Mr Rafe Banks, a lawyer in Georgia, took his ex-client David Milum to court when the latter wrote on his blog that Mr Banks had bribed judges on behalf of drug dealers.

Last January, Mr Milum became the first blogger to lose a libel case in the United States and was ordered to pay US$50,000 (S$79,000) in damages to Mr Banks.

The case is just an example of how blogs are increasingly being targeted by those who feel harmed by attacks on the online journals.

In the past two years, more than 50 lawsuits stemming from postings on blogs and website message boards have been filed in the US, reported USA Today.

The suits have sparked a debate over how the "blogosphere" and its impact on speech and publishing might change libel law.

Legal experts say the lawsuits are challenging a mindset that has long surrounded blogging -- that most bloggers are "judgment-proof" because they are often ordinary citizens who do not have money.

This is unlike traditional media such as newspapers, magazines and television stations.

But the lawsuits by Mr Banks and others were undertaken not with the sole purpose of claiming damages, but also to silence their critics.

"Bloggers did not think they could be subject to libel," said Mr Eric Robinson, a Media Law Resource Centre attorney. "You take what is on your mind, type it and post it."

Mr Robert Cox, founder and president of the Media Bloggers Association, which has 1,000 members, told USA Today the recent wave of lawsuits means that bloggers should learn libel law.

"It has not happened yet, but soon, there will be a blogger who is successfully sued and who loses his home," he said.

[...]

Should interactive media be doing a better job of managing expectations?

First, this article just struck me as counter-intuitive, because all the numbers have been running high precisely in the opposite direction.

Then, I wondered if it is linked to the expectations game, the land-rush mentality that turned the Internet into Oklahoma in the late 1990s, with ripe money poised at the border, wanting to be a Sooner.

The money rushes in, the money rushes out, all because interactive media won't immediately transform itself into a push-button marketing free cash bonanza? Like with old media companies, will a slower than 28% growth spawn a shareholder exodus?

That sounds too easy, tho, given the massive Ford cutbacks announced recently.

And why is there a decline in financial advert money? Mortgage market slump? Too soon, or is it? Why would one of the most profitable industries in U.S history (credit industry) back off? I know there's a mortgage adjustment going on, but could there be a trimming back on consumer credit too? Larger economic trends that capital gains and investment machinations of the super-rich can't disguise?

Hey, don't ask me. I'm not a broker. I just know Yahoo! has had an aggressive and intensely creative year, and it surprised me more often than once in the past year, with interesting content and interactivity plays. Generally, I'd consider that a good thing. I dunno. Maybe Yahoo! was sucking in some more traditional old media investors, and they got cold feet quick.

Link: Yahoo Says Ad Growth Is Slowing; Stock Dives - New York Times.

Yahoo Says Ad Growth Is Slowing; Stock Dives

By SAUL HANSELL

Published: September 19, 2006

Shares of  Yahoo fell more than 11 percent today after the company disclosed that it had sold less advertising in the last few weeks than it expected, largely because of a slowdown in automobile and financial advertising.

Speaking to a conference held in New York by  Goldman Sachs, Terry S. Semel, Yahoo’s chief executive, said that while advertising continued to grow from these industries, “they’re not growing as quickly as we might have hoped at this point in time.”

Yahoo said that it would still meet its financial targets for the third quarter, but that its profit and revenue will be toward the bottom of the range it had estimated.

[...]

The bottom of that range represents a 20 percent growth in revenue and a 16 percent growth on operating cash flow.

That would represent a further slowing of Yahoo’s growth. In the second quarter its revenue grew by 28 percent. And that result was lower than analysts expected, causing the company’s shares to slide. Over the summer, Yahoo’s stock had regained all of that loss until today’s disclosure.

[...]

Still, Wall Street analysts said it appeared that Yahoo’s problems were  not widespread in the industry.

“Not everything is hunky-dory in Yahoo land,” said Jordan Rohan, an analyst with RBC Capital Markets. “Yahoo’s audience is not growing as fast as it once did.” Mr. Rohan added that Yahoo appeared to have unusual turnover among its executives and that this might have hurt its ability to sell advertising.

Susan Decker, Yahoo’s chief financial officer, told the investors that the advertising slowdown affected both text-based search advertising and graphical display advertising, an area in which Yahoo is the leader.

[...]

A delightful parable by Nick Carr

This whole topic has generated much kerfuffle in the blogosphere, but it's the kind of kerfuffle I like, because it forces introspection, forces one to examine unquestioned assumptions about whether online interfaces are as democratizing as the spin often claims, whether there could be political/social biases embedded in deep structure interfaces.

The folks who have roundly spanked Carr for claiming things that they say the open "Home on the Range" of the Internet makes impossible have a point, but still, Carr's humorous parable rings true more often than not, particularly in the opening bit, and the epilogue.

Link: Rough Type: Nicholas Carr's Blog: The Great Unread.

The Great Unread

Prelude

Once upon a time there was an island named Blogosphere, and at the very center of that island stood a great castle built of stone, and spreading out from that castle for miles in every direction was a vast settlement of peasants who lived in shacks fashioned of tin and cardboard and straw.

Part one:
On the nature of innocent fraud

I've been reading a short book - an essay, really - by John Kenneth Galbraith called The Economics of Innocent Fraud. It's his last work, written while he was in his nineties, not long before he died. In it, he explains how we, as a society, have come to use the term "market economy" in place of the term "capitalism." The new term is a kinder and gentler one, with its implication that economic power lies with consumers rather than with the owners of capital or with the managers who have taken over the work of the owners. It's a fine example, says Galbraith, of innocent fraud.

An innocent fraud is a lie, but it's a lie that's more white than black. It's a lie that makes most everyone happy. It suits the purposes of the powerful because it masks the full extent of their power, and it suits the purposes of the powerless because it masks the full extent of their powerlessness.

What we tell ourselves about the blogosphere - that it's open and democratic and egalitarian, that it stands in contrast and in opposition to the controlled and controlling mass media - is an innocent fraud.

Part two:
The loneliness of the long-tail blogger

The thing about an innocent fraud, though, is that it's not that hard to see through. Often, in fact, you have to make an effort not to see through it, and at some point, for some people, the effort no longer seems worth it. A few days back, the blogger Kent Newsome asked, "Who are the readers of our blogs?" His answer had a melancholy tone:

The number of bloggers competing for attention makes it seem like the blogosphere is a huge, chaotic place. But it only seems that way because we have all ended up in a small room at the end of the hall. When people refuse to converse with me or go out of their way to link around me, it hurts a little. Until I remember that while they aren't listening to me, no one in the real world is listening to them either ...

[...]

The best way, by far, to get a link from an A List blogger is to provide a link to the A List blogger. As the blogophere has become more rigidly hierarchical, not by design but as a natural consequence of hyperlinking patterns, filtering algorithms, aggregation engines, and subscription and syndication technologies, not to mention human nature, it has turned into a grand system of patronage operated - with the best of intentions, mind you - by a tiny, self-perpetuating elite. A blog-peasant, one of the Great Unread, comes to the wall of the castle to offer a tribute to a royal, and the royal drops a couple of coins of attention into the peasant's little purse. The peasant is happy, and the royal's hold over his position in the castle is a little bit stronger.

[...]

Epilogue

One day, a blog-peasant boy found buried in the dust beside his shack a sphere of flawless crystal. When he looked into the ball he was astounded see a moving picture. It was an image of a fleet of merchant ships sailing into the harbor of the island of Blogosphere. The ships bore names that had long been hated throughout the island, names like Time-Warner and News Corp and Pearson and New York Times and Wall Street Journal and Conde Nast and McGraw-Hill. The blog-peasants gathered along the shore, jeering at the ships and telling the invaders that they would soon be vanquished by the brave royals in the great castle. But when the captains of the merchant ships made their way to the gates of the castle, bearing crates of gold, they were not repelled by the royals with cannons but rather welcomed with fanfares. And all through the night the blog-peasants could hear the sounds of a great feast inside the castle walls.

   

How seriously do you take citizen journalism?

Blogger Jailed After Defying Court Orders

By JESSE McKINLEY
New York Times
Published: August 2, 2006

A freelance journalist and blogger was jailed on Tuesday after refusing to turn over video he took at an anticapitalist protest here last summer and after refusing to testify before a grand jury looking into accusations that crimes were committed at the protest.

The freelancer, Josh Wolf, 24, was taken into custody just before noon after a hearing in front of Judge William Alsup of Federal District Court. Found in contempt, Mr. Wolf was later moved to a federal prison in Dublin, Calif., and could be imprisoned until next summer, when the grand jury term expires, said his lawyer, Jose Luis Fuentes.

Earlier this year, federal prosecutors subpoenaed Mr. Wolf to testify before a grand jury and turn over video from the demonstration, held in the Mission District on July 8, 2005. The protest, tied to a Group of 8 meeting of world economic leaders in Scotland, ended in a clash between demonstrators and the San Francisco police, with one officer sustaining a fractured skull.

A smoke bomb or a firework was also put under a police car, and investigators are looking into whether arson was attempted on a government-financed vehicle.

Mr. Wolf, who posted some of the edited video on his Web site, www.joshwolf.net, and sold some of it to local television stations, met with investigators, who wanted to see the raw video. But Mr. Wolf refused to hand over the tapes, arguing that he had the right as a journalist to shield his sources.

On Tuesday, Judge Alsup disagreed, ruling that the grand jury “has a legitimate need” to see what Mr. Wolf filmed.

READ: NYTimes: Blogger Jailed After Defying Court Orders