Category Archives: Internet

Blogs, social media and digital ethics

Why #NBCFail matters beyond the Olympics

August 2, 2012Internet, MediaNBC, olympics, television, twitterScott Smith

Listen to me discuss NBC’s Olympics coverage and other news of the week on WBEZ’s “848” program here.

While most consumers have been perfectly happy with NBC’s Olympics coverage on prime time cable, broadcast TV and online via livestreams and apps, a largely social-media powered stream of objections has converged around the #NBCFail hashtag. There are as many complaints as there are Olympics sports but the biggest objections related to NBC’s tape-delayed coverage and its shutdown of Independent correspondent Guy Adams’s Twitter account. While Simon Dumenco of Ad Age and Megan Garber of The Atlantic have great takedowns of some of the other arguments, there are a few points in this kerfuffle that bear some discussion. These are a few that occurred to me. Fair warning: There’s been so much discussion of this, I’m skipping over some of the bedrock arguments and backstory to get to some of the “where do we go from here” ideas. This is a bit rough and open-ended so bear that in mind.

1. If it’s “just sports” then it can be “just _____.”

One comment I’ve heard often in this conversation is #NBCFail is mostly a “first-world problem” because the discussion is about the coverage of sports and sports isn’t “real news.” But one person’s distraction is another person’s “real news.” Once we say sports is not worthy of real news coverage it becomes easier to say books, consumer tech, music or movies are mere distractions and not worthy of serious consideration either. And once we say something isn’t deserving of careful consideration it makes it easier for publishers to talk less about how it can be covered well and more about how it should be packaged and sold.

2. Is NBC tarnishing its news brand and ultimately making it less likely to monetize those users?

NBC is leveraging its full news power only when it can do the most good for its business interests, not for its consumers. NBC’s tape delay strategy is moot in years when the Olympics are in the same time zone as the U.S. because NBC carries these events live. So it’s not as if it always chooses to emphasize its news interests over its business interests but in the case of sports, or at least the 2012 Olympics, it chooses the latter.

If you’re to be taken seriously as a news publisher, you have a requirement to publish as complete a news experience as possible at the moment when the information will have the most value to your audience. The consumer is paying you – or subscribing to a platform that includes your content – based on the perceived value of that news as well as for the convenience factor of acquiring it. The friction here seems to be that many people want a la carte coverage they can pay for without having to subscribe to a major cable provider. It will be interesting to see NBC explores the creation of raw news feed channels via something like Roku (as well as online) and provides the packaged version on its other more-established channels. It may find its building an entirely new audience segment. Perhaps it doesn’t make sense economically, but might in years (months?) to come. But NBC seems to be losing the opportunity to build this audience in its owned channels and finds some of that digital audience doing elsewhere (see #4 below).

3. What gets treated as the news and what gets treated as entertainment?

NBC doesn’t seem to think providing the big screen/HD TV experience several hours later is a problem. That seems less like a strategy you employ for news and more like one you employ for entertainment. If it’s entertainment, it generally doesn’t matter when it’s broadcast or consumed. But news certainly has a time-sensitive component to it (the dismissive phrase “That’s old news” comes to mind here). The weight of that news is relative to the timing of it.

What stops a publisher from waiting to tell you about news until it can maximize the profit in the telling of it? If you have a big scoop and can figure out how to package it as a multi-day event, why not wait until you have an advertiser to run ads around that coverage before releasing it? There’s an argument to be made that NBC is doing exactly that but I’d hate to see what the end result of that strategy means for news consumers.

4. News coverage is mostly determined by who controls and publishes on the platform

For years now, users have been determining what news is and how it is published, largely through Web and social media channels. It’s no longer the sole province of large print and TV publishers.The conversation sparked by the #NBCFail hashtag has made this more obvious than ever but also showed just how much control big news organizations that A) partner with or B) own the platforms have over the platforms with the biggest reach.

Many people will bootleg news content (like providing an overseas livestream of the Olympics opening ceremonies) not because they want to hijack a revenue stream for themselves but just because they don’t like the idea of a closed system. With a platform like Twitter, it’s easier than ever to find raw feeds which satisfy those whose desire for news of an event outweighs the number of easily-available news sources. (I didn’t have to seek out a livestream of the opening ceremonies; I saw a link for it on Twitter from people I already follow.)

Barriers or inconveniences to the consumption of news (like having to download special equipment, make changes to obscure computer settings or watch a poor quality, buffering livestream) will start to seem like less of an issue to consumers as the real-time value of a news event increases. For me, the value of watching the opening ceremonies live seemed greater because people I followed on Twitter were discussing it. Unfortunately for publishers, the real-time news value is different for each person so it’s tough to know what publishing streams are monetizable and which ones aren’t without either experimentation or waiting to see how users themselves innovate.

As for the Guy Adams temporary Twitter account shutdown, Alexis Madrigal of The Atlantic has a good summary.

NBC may not have known this tweet existed were it not for someone at Twitter who notified NBC of both the tweet and a remedy. Whether the information is public or private is debatable but NBC’s proximity to power, due to its (non-monetary) Twitter partnership, allowed it to get the account suspended without a thorough consideration of this point. Twitter acknowledged it should not have done this, but with the service already looking for more ways to monetize its product for publishers it’s clear they’re interested in hyper-serving this particular user base.

Let’s say an upstart publisher decides to start covering the heck out of the Olympics. Maybe it’s a traditional television channel, maybe it’s Web-only. Perhaps they find a way to provide a broadcast-quality stream of the BBC through fair use. Or they find a way to leverage content from athletes’ personal social media accounts to provide unique value. What’s to stop NBC – which is owned by Comcast – from shutting down that publisher on its Web and cable television systems? Nothing. Or what if NBC develops a “strategic partnership” with iTunes and asks Apple to remove another news publisher’s app because it feels that app infringes on its exclusivity agreement with the Olympics?

As with most issues surrounding social media and news distribution, the best practices in these scenarios are still being sorted out.

Why I killed my Klout account (and how you can too)

November 15, 2011InternetKloutScott Smith

As you’ll soon read, one of my issues with Klout is that it asks for too much and gives too little. In that spirit, I’m going to give you an incentive to read this 2000+ word blog post on why Klout isn’t worth your time, thought or data. Here’s how to remove yourself from Klout:

1. If you’re not yet signed up for Klout – as you’ll soon read, this doesn’t prevent Klout from creating a profile on you – go to this link and scroll to the bottom. Click the opt-out links there. Unfortunately, you still have to sign in to Klout via a social network to opt-out of it. (Yes, that’s weird.)

2. If you’re already signed up for Klout, click the button that looks like a gear in the top right. select Unlink Networks. On the page that opens, click Unlink next to each account. Click the gear again and select Profile settings then scroll to the bottom and click the words “click here” after the words “If you would like to delete your account…”

If you did it correctly, you’ll see this cute little guy:

UPDATE: A commenter notes that Klout has removed the opt-opt link from the Profile Settings page. Try this link to opt-out (which in my late-night posting hours was missing from the above graf as well).

Now, here’s why you might want to do all that:

Last week, I decided to delete my Klout account. Doing so was something I’d considered for a while now but the inciting incident was a tweet from @misterjayem that linked here. The post doesn’t make an airtight argument, but it did make me realize my own problems with Klout:

1. Little about Klout is transparent

Consider this: You stumble on a website that asks you to tell it who you talk to on a regular basis, where you go out to eat, who your friends are and where in Chicago you spend the most time. In exchange, it will tell you how truly Chicago you are. It will also rate your Chicagoness on a scale from 1 to 100 and tell you how much you affect how others in your social networks move through the city. But you have to agree to let it store and use the data you give it and can’t object to how it might use it in the future. Otherwise, it will stop telling you or anyone else how much of a real Chicagoan you are. What would you do?

What does Klout do with the data it gets from you? What will it do in the future?

If you can’t answer the questions I posed above – I can’t despite reading its Privacy Policy – but are OK with using Klout, you are more trusting than I am.

Moreover, it’s not clear to me why Klout wants me to link all my social media accounts to its service if it already creates profiles for people based on their social media usage (more on the problematic nature later). Perhaps it’s to make it a more accurate rating but I never noticed my Klout score change even when I added several new streams to it. If I contribute content to those streams and link them to my account, Klout should be able to adjust my score up or down. It did neither. But it’s obvious they’re collecting a lot of data on me and not giving me anything in return.

When Klout recently made changes to its ranking system, it touted “a more accurate, transparent Klout score.” On the issue of transparency, Klout said:

We’ve always been transparent about the various activities that could impact your Klout Score but we now have the power to share the specific actions that are helping or hurting your score. When your Klout Score changes you will be able to match it to a corresponding change in one of these subscores and understand why the change has occurred.

It was never clear to me how the old system worked – it was good about saying what changed but not why – and the definitions of amplification, reach, etc. were what you’d find in an average dictionary and not specific to Klout. The new system didn’t offer any additional clarity either in its blog or in the system itself. And I’m speaking as a savvy user.

Granted, you can’t give people all the details behind your secret sauce; if you do then they’ll either game it or steal it – Google is similarly tight-lipped about its algorithms. But if you tout yourself as the leader of determining influence you need to either show people how it’s done or display great results. Klout did neither, as I explain below.

(I’ll note here that under the new system my Klout score went down ten points but this has nothing to do with why I left. In fact, I was OK with with the downgrade. It felt more accurate to me and the people I consider most influential had a similar drop.)

2. What I was giving Klout was greater than what it was giving me

I was giving Klout quite a bit of information about my online identity. What did I get out of it? Perks (theoretically) and information about who I interact with online.

How’d that work out for me? Well, the only perk I took advantage of was a discounted bottle of wine from One Hope. And, admittedly, it was pretty good. But for the most part, the few things offered to me through Klout were like the free t-shirts you get when you sign up for a credit card: you don’t really want them and what you gave up to get them is worth far more.

As for its list of who I influence or am influenced by, it was filled with people I was already familiar with or people with whom I had little in common. It included few people who tweet about the same kinds of things I do or might be interesting to follow. Plus, the people I am most influenced by online never showed up in Klout whether they were people I @-replied to or people whose links I often clicked on (a true influence measure) but did not retweet.

I know there are ways to discover more people via Klout (here’s one from the company’s blog) but very little of it was a service unique to Klout or very accurate.

Now, you might be asking yourself why I stay on Facebook or Twitter or any other site that takes user data and builds a business on top of it. Simply put, I get much more out of those services and am – for the time being – still getting a fair deal from them in the exchange since they provide me with the best news of the day and updates on the lives of my friends And speaking of friends…

3. Klout depends on you to do its dirty work

Anyone who uses Klout is familiar with the message “You influence [WHOMEVER] but they’re not on Klout yet. Invite them now!” (I’m paraphrasing since I can’t get the exact wording unless I sign up for Klout again). As anyone knows, social networks are only as good as the number of friends you have there. But unlike other social networks, you aren’t asked to convince them to sign up like some social media Ponzi scheme. This is a small matter compared to the rest but rather than just track influence, Klout wants you to use yours to make their service better.

Still, the biggest advantage of Klout for someone in the social space should be the measure of influence. But not all influence is the same…

4. Klout’s ability to measure influence is questionable, at best

For a while, my Klout list of topics I was influential about included the NBA. To this day, I have no idea why. I know nothing about the NBA, never discussed it in my social spaces, didn’t follow any NBA players or link to news about it. On the other hand, I was able to game Klout by tweeting about booze enough over a couple of days that for a while I was influential about “alcohol” and “hangover.”

Klout’s measure of influence is only for people who don’t know any better. Despite all the streams of data it reads, Klout doesn’t do a very good job of providing influence insight beyond what can be gleaned through a learned read of someone’s social media streams. In essence, it’s just a self-disclosed social media profile…of social media profiles. If someone is really accomplished in social media, his or her footprint will be easy to find and discern. Someone who knows what to look for on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc. will get a much better read on a person’s influence in the overall social space as well as on a particular topic. And as the graf above illustrates, the data Klout gets from all the profiles it tracks isn’t turned into anything useful (which really ought to make you wonder why they want so much of it).

All this explains why Klout’s biggest failing as a service is its inability to provide useful influence information on topics, particularly niche topics. For example, let’s say you want to discover who is influential about the topics “Chicago” and “journalism.” Take a look at the Klout topic pages for those topics.

Right now, when it comes to the top influencers on Chicago, you get Red Eye, Chicagoist and Time Out Chicago. On journalism, it’s Jay Rosen, Nick Kristof and Nieman Labs. If you’re at all knowledgeable about these topics, your response is likely along the lines of “No shit, Sherlock.” If you know even the basics about a topic, Klout won’t direct you to anyone influential about it.

Looking at the top Klout-getters (or “top +K recipients” in Klout’s vernacular) it seems each topic lends itself to people with engaged, active audiences but not necessarily those engaged and active about the topic in question.

“Chicago” and “journalism” were topics Klout said I was influential about. I’m not, really (take my word for it) . But you could make a good argument that I’m influential about “Chicago journalism” (again, take my word for it). And Klout can’t measure that:

http://klout.com/topic/chicago-journalism

(If you’re a Klout user, you just got bounced back to your profile. If you’re not, you got a Not Found page.)

So instead it just breaks the larger topics up into separate components which overstates my knowledge/influence about the general topic and understates my knowledge about the specific topic. More to the point, Klout can’t measure this niche topic, even though much of the Web is about niche topics. Weird, huh?

But none of this matters as much as my last point:

5. Klout – unlike every other social network with any claim to integrity – is opt-out, not opt-in.

That’s a complicated way of saying if you aren’t using Klout, it doesn’t matter: it’s using you. The service probably has a profile on you, your friends or your family if they’re connected to people who do use Klout. Even your kids. This New York Times article goes into detail on this point. Even if your social media profiles are private, Klout might have built a profile from them. (A friend of mine tweeted today that Klout created a profile on his 7 year old even though the kid’s Twitter account is private.)

Imagine Twitter building a profile and bio of you without you ever sending a Tweet. Imagine Facebook saying who your friends are even if you’ve never accepted a friend request.

Until very recently, you had no choice about this. Klout had a profile on you, like it or not. It was only recently that it created the ability to opt-out.

All of this means Klout – which is supposed to be a service for people who are serious about social media influence – isn’t very serious at all about how it measures social influence. If people whose opinions I respect didn’t care about Klout, I wouldn’t either. But they do. And it’s time they stopped.

The facts are these: No serious social media service makes people who don’t use it, opt-out of it. No serious social media measurement tool asks for so much data but seemingly uses so little of it or is so prone to major mistakes or gaps in measurement. And no serious measurement would try to convince you that using it would mean you’ll be treated like a high roller in a casino. When casinos do this, it’s because they’re trying to convince you to part with something valuable: money, time and good judgment. Why does Klout do it?

When it comes right down to it, Klout is little more than a game, like Foursquare. But the sum total of data about your online identity isn’t something serious people take for granted. And just like you can’t learn much about what it’s like to have a job or a family from the Game of Life, you can’t learn much about a person’s influence from Klout.

Is there any benefit to staying on Klout? It’s as I said above: Only if you want to demonstrate your supposed influence to people who don’t know any better.

UPDATE: A friend of mine noted that even after she opt’ed-out of Klout she still had a Klout app in the Applications section of Facebook. I checked mine and I did too. Even more curious? It said the app accessed my account yesterday even though I left Klout last week. Very strange. To check this yourself, click the arrow in the top right hand corner of Facebook, select Privacy Settings then click Edit Settings under Apps and Websites. Click it again on the page that opens and click the X next to Klout.

Top five moments from last night’s @MayorEmanuel event at Hideout

September 7, 2011Internet, Music, Politics@MayorEmanuel, books, chicago, Dan Sinker, Hideout, Jeff Tweedy, John Tolva, Rahm EmanuelScott Smith

Jeff Tweedy recites “My Humps” from Jasmine D on Vimeo.

A totally subjective list but…

5. The Chief Technology Officer of the city of Chicago, John Tolva (@Immerito), DJ’ed the party last night which is probably the best commentary on how this whole project brought the Chicago tech and arts scenes together in one crazy mashup.

4. The Young Chicago Authors kids from Louder Than A Bomb who turned in one of the best live poetry performances I’ve ever seen. In particular, were two girls around 16-17 whose piece on sexuality, body image and adolescent relationships was wisdom so far beyond their years I felt as if they knew more about life than I do, twenty years their senior.

3.The actual Mayor Emanuel showing up, shaking hands and doing an Entourage-like walk through the club before signing @MayorEmanuel author Dan Sinker’s book with “You are an asshole. Mayor Emanuel.” *

2. Jeff Tweedy singing “I Gotta Feeling” and reciting the lyrics to “My Humps” (above via). Just go watch those videos now and be in a good mood the rest of the day.

1. Dan reading the fermented baby food in the crawlspace bit where @MayorEmanuel meets Sweetness, hugs Studs Terkel’s heart and talks with Curtis Mayfield. If anyone still thinks this whole project was just a bunch of vulgar tweets, the literary passion Dan poured into that reading – and this whole event – put the lie to that notion.

I was so proud to be a Chicagoan last night.

* A couple other folks I know got the actual mayor** to sign their books and he signed all of them “Mayor Emanuel” as if to say “No, motherfucker, I’M THE MAYOR. It takes more to get this shit than starting a fucking Twitter account.” @AnnaTarkov told me she asked the mayor if he was a fan of the book and he said no. That answer may have been more persona than anything else (another friend of mine said the mayor exchanged good-natured f-bombs with Hideout co-owner Tim Tuten) but it’s also worth noting how he goes out of his way to show he’s a good sport about the whole thing.

** I love how I keep having to say “the actual mayor” to avoid confusion.

Pardon my dust

September 1, 2011InternetScott Smith

I’m in the process of moving my old Blogger site to this (not-yet-)very fancy WordPress site. Why? I wanted more of a hub for all aspects of my online identity and any projects I’d work on and will eventually have that here.

So why ourmaninchicago.net instead of .com? Well, some other guy is already using the OMIC name at .com. Frankly, that’s largely what stopped me from making the switch until now. But I figured, what they heck? .Net will do.

There’s a bunch of stuff I want to change/fix but for now this is the new home.

Break time

September 25, 2010InternetemoScott Smith

I realized last night that I need to take a break from Twitter for the weekend.

It’s been a pretty ugly couple of days in certain corners of Chicago’s online world and that’s led to a bout of intense personal stress and anger, in part because I’m too conflicted – personally and professionally – to write about any of it in detail or even do much about it right now. I love, respect and admire pretty much everyone involved, which is what really hurts. My feelings might be ill-informed by reality but after two days of watching good people tear at each other over ill-informed conclusions brought on by a lack of information I can’t help but think “If I could just get everyone together and talk this out, it would be fine.” (I’m a fixer by nature and that’s how your mind works when you’re the oldest child in a divorced family and you have a Superman tattoo on your arm.) Then an e-mail I got Friday afternoon from yet another person I admire and respect – completely unrelated to all this – almost sent me off the deep end because of how territorial it seemed over a battle that was…well, imagined.

I believe Leah Jones once said something to the effect that these electronic tools we use are just that: tools. So if the tools stop working for us, we either need to get new tools or take a step back from them and wonder if we’ve uh…got the wrong blueprints or…we took our measurements wrong? I’ve fallen into a metaphorical hole here but you get what I’m saying.

Anyway, I’m noting this here in defense of the medium. The problems of the last couple days didn’t result from Twitter or blogs or e-mail. They were the result of good people making some bad choices. And if I, Scott Smith, need to take a break from them in order to get some perspective and peace then that’s my thing. It’s not anyone’s fault. It’s not Twitter’s fault* or the lead item in a NY Times trend piece about the problem of a society too interconnected for its own good.

I just need a break for a couple days.

* Although I bet I wouldn’t be feeling this way if I had New Twitter by now like everyone else for crying out loud! Seriously, who do you have to screw to get a New Twitter around here?

The Evolution of Professional Social Media or Why Twitter is Great-Tasting and Good For You

March 25, 2010Internetsocial media, Tweetcamp Chicago, twitter, writingScott Smith

On October 10, 2009, I gave the following talk at TweetCamp Chicago, “a day-long “unconference” for anyone interested in utilizing Twitter professionally, or just learning more about it.” I’m just now getting around to posting it because:

A) Life previously got in the way and
B) I just got laid off so I’m burnishing my professional reputation in various spaces, not the least of which is social media.

I gave this talk to a varied group of newbies and Twitter power users; business-minded individuals who wanted new ways to promote themselves; journalists and writers of various stripes; and folks who were just interested in learning more about Twitter. If you fall into any one of those categories, there’s something in here for you.

And if you like what you see here and you think “Gosh, we could use someone like this in our organization” then peruse my resume and if I look like the right person for the job, send me an e-mail at ourmaninchicago at gmail.com.

—
Good afternoon. Thanks for coming back from lunch. I will do all I can to keep you from feeling like a nap.

First, I’d like to thank Maura Hernandez and Keidra Chaney for asking me to deliver the keynote address here at Tweetcamp Chicago. Having recently organized a conference of this size, I know the work that goes into such an endeavor and they deserve a lot of credit for giving so freely of their free time. Many are quick to complain about the lack of women and persons of color here in Chicago, but few do anything about it. So they deserve a lot of credit for filling a need.

Second, allow me to apologize for reading from prepared remarks for this talk. While I can extemporaneously talk a blue streak given the opportunity, you’ve all paid good money to be here and therefore deserve organized thoughts and salient points rather than a verbal stopped clock that’s only right twice a day.

To give you some quick background on me, I’m the editor and director of content at Playboy.com. I walk into work every day hoping and praying that people do still read us for the articles. As for how I got here, I’ve had a few different careers in radio promotions, tech support and social work – with a brief tenure as a substitute teacher – before starting a freelance career as a writer at Chicagoist.com, a local news and culture blog. From there, I landed at Time Out Chicago as its Web Editor, which is where I first started using Twitter. After two years at TOC, I moved to Playboy.com as a senior editor and was made editor in July of this year.

What I learned in each of these jobs was how to convey information or an experience to someone in a way that feels real, that feels personal. And that is exactly what the best social media does.

The title of this keynote address is The Evolution of Professional Social Media. At first glance, the title suggests that social media has finished evolving, that it has come into its own as a medium, as a platform, as a mature means of communication. Nothing could be further from the truth. For those of us who’ve spent a lot of time in the digital space, this becomes painfully obvious anytime you try to explain things like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube or Digg to someone who doesn’t use these services on a regular basis. Let’s be honest: The easiest explanation of how you use them sounds a lot like dicking around to most people.

When I first heard about Twitter, I thought it was a really dumb idea. As much as I’ve made a career online, I didn’t feel like the world needed one more way to exchange IMs with each other. Plus, 140 characters? What could you possibly say in 140 characters? And what use would I have in sending a message to a whole bunch of people at once or hearing about what people had for breakfast?

(By the way, you’ll hear that line about breakfast a lot from people who, at best, misunderstand Twitter or, at worst, fear it. I’ll return to this point later but for now trust me when I say it’s a crock. I’m on Twitter all the time and I could count on one hand the number of times I’ve read “These scrambled eggs are a great start to my day!” or “Just eating my Fruit Loops!” I will, however, admit to extolling the virtues of my morning coffee on several occasions but that has more to do with the devil’s bargain I have with caffeine.)

ANYWAY!

What I didn’t realize – and what few people other than Twitter’s founders probably realized at the beginning – was the power of it to convey a larger picture, one short update at a time.

In April of 2007, TOC ran a story on Twitter. Creator Jack Dorsey was quoted at the end of the article this way: “I think text as a medium is not as explored as it could be. In a short message, in those tiny details, there’s a lot of meaning there and a lot of our personality.”

And that’s exactly it. Social media thrives because it brings personalities to the fore, yours, mine and even the personalities of businesses. It’s about a diversity of voices and if you’re not adding your voice to the mix…well, it’s just not as interesting. Have you ever gone to a party and just stayed in the background not engaging with anyone? Not dropping into a conversation, not speaking up, not injecting yourself into the discussion? That’s Twitter before you sign up, log in and hit send. It is absolutely pointless and boring…until you contribute.

Twitter and other forms of social media are already affecting you personally. They’re also changing the way businesses create a brand identity, and the way journalism works. But it’s nothing more than a tool for communication that is no more or less fallible than the people using it. The nature of it means it has not finished evolving and probably never will.

Now then: How does Twitter work for you as an individual? On two levels: as a way to enhance communication within a community and as an information resource.

One of the frequent knocks against Twitter is the suggestion that there are all these people out there that you HAVE to pay attention to and read and etc. etc. Let me ask you something: Between the moment you walked out of your house this morning and the moment you walked in the door here at Tweetcamp, how many strangers tried to tell you about their day or made you listen to their thoughts on Obama’s Nobel peace prize or told you “Hey you need to check out this link! OMGROFL!” Not that many, right? This is exactly how Twitter works: you choose whom you’d like to read or follow. Sure, there’s the occasional spammer or some other annoying person trying to get you to pay attention to their blatherings. But you run into Crazy People on the bus all the time and it doesn’t make you stop taking the CTA does it?

Most – if not all – of us are very busy people. We frequently lament our inability to keep in touch with friends and acquaintances or to do all that networking that we all know is important, particularly as journalists, writers and media types. The people on Twitter are not strangers you’d like to avoid, they’re the people with whom you wish you could spend more time. Twitter not only makes it easy to find out what people are working on and what they’re up to, it makes it easier to find time to do it. Rather than having to find a few hours out of your week to catch up with an old friend or trade professional tips, you’re able to do so a few minutes each day, several friends and associates at a time, replying to their questions, seeing pictures of their kids, and telling old jokes. It’s as if a huge group of important people in your life are at one cocktail party that you can drift into and out of at your leisure.

This cocktail party is like a series of concentric circles filled with friends, acquaintances, influencers, problem-solvers, and, yes, even celebrities. The information I get from the people I follow on Twitter creates a road map of the world for me. Spending a few minutes each morning checking my Twitter feed gives me a sense of which bus lines are running slow, how my friend Mike’s home-brewing project is going, what the weather’s like, the big local news stories and what Alyssa Milano is doing right now.

So how does all this affect businesses?

Twitter allows businesses to apply this level of personal engagement to their brand identities. That sounds like a lot of corporate BS so let me say it this way: Twitter allows businesses to seem human.

To illustrate this, let me share with you an experience I had at Time Out Chicago. I started a Twitter feed for Time Out Chicago in March of 2008 so we could report from the South by Southwest music festival. When I returned, I connected TOC’s blog to our Twitter feed so that every time we posted something, it would automatically send the headline of the post and a link to all our followers so they could click through it, our blog would get more traffic, etc. While not exactly a failure, it didn’t really succeed either. It would be like you coming into this auditorium expecting to hear me – a living, breathing person – give a talk on the professional use of social media and instead having me hand you a few sheets of paper with my talk written on it. It’s flat, there’s no personality. Once I started including questions or comments for our followers in our Tweets, and started responding to their replies to our content – along with those links – our followers grew. And people started to share the links among themselves and develop a relationship with us.

So let’s all agree to stop describing Twitter as “what I ate for breakfast.” Even as a joke. What Twitter proves is that more personal engagement is something people want. Not just with people they know, but with businesses they patronize. How many times have you rolled your eyes as you punched your way through a menu tree when calling a customer service line? Or sighed when you realized someone was working off a script instead of really listening to you? People want to know that the businesses they deal with are staffed by be people who are real. By people who seem like they eat breakfast.

Once businesses understand that Twitter is a form of two-way communication, myriad possibilities emerge. Want to know what your customers think about your product? Go on Twitter, search for the name of your product and see what people are saying. Yes, it’s a self-selected sample. But it’s immediate, costs nothing and allows you to follow up with people in a way that traditional customer surveys don’t allow. If you want to start a buzz, drop hints about what you’re working on. Or, better yet, bring them behind the scenes of aspects of your business they wouldn’t normally see.

We’ve had a lot of success with this at Playboy in live-Tweeting from parties at the Mansion, the Casting Call photo sessions or even goings-on in our office. (As you might imagine, this coverage usually comes with links to photos and I’m not ignorant enough to suggest that this doesn’t do most of the heavy lifting for us). The inner workings of our business are now open to the public in a way that was not previously available. The best part about it is these updates come to people via their laptop or their cell phone. It’s the embodiment of something I learned when I was in social work which is to meet the client where they’re at.

This isn’t insidious. Remember: These folks have invited your brand, your business into their personal lives by following your Twitter stream. You’d be foolish not to take advantage of those possibilities.

Now, this isn’t without its own set of challenges. It’s easy to sometimes overestimate the influence of the conversation that’s happening on Twitter, especially if the things people are saying aren’t positive. But there are case studies involving some of the most-groused-about industries out there like airlines or cable companies who have used Twitter to reach out to their customers, resolve their problems quickly and end up with happier and more loyal customers.

Still, you’ll need to make peace with the fact that your online brand messaging is no longer something you can fully control. Perhaps even within your own company. For example, how many people have heard that we’re putting Marge Simpson on the cover of next month’s Playboy? Most of you probably heard yesterday thanks the way we got the word out on Twitter. We did such a good job that even now Marge Simpson is still one of the most-discussed trending topics on Twitter.

But guess what? The word leaked out about this back in August. Guess who leaked it? Our founder and editor-in-chief: Hugh Hefner. On his Twitter feed. But it got picked up by a couple of blogs, and ended up building a small buzz that we capitalized on later with a larger push.

One of the challenges we have in using social media at Playboy stems from its very personal nature. But you have to allow the people who work for you the freedom to develop a voice that speaks to your specific audience and you can’t expect that the way you communicate in one part of your business will apply everywhere. We have a lot of different aspects of our brand from the magazine to the website to Playboy TV to Playboy Radio to the Girls Next Door show to our extensive licensing division which works very hard to slap the Bunny head logo on everything we possibly can. But this means the group of people who count themselves as fans of Playboy – and we have 1.3 million people on Facebook alone who say they are – all have a different experience with the brand. So we need to find a different way to personally engage with those people based on their individual experience with Playboy. Twitter is a great way to do this for all the reasons I’ve already outlined. Plus, we have a huge coterie of Cyber Girls, Playmates, various other Playboy models and even Playboy employees on Twitter who are all contributing to the discussion.

I want to wrap this up by talking about how Twitter can be valuable for journalists, personally and professionally.

It’s no secret that the many of the people in the newspaper-slash-publishing industry are wetting themselves with fear over where the industry is headed. It is entirely possible that gainfully employed people in this room could be laid off next week. How can Twitter prevent this? Well, it can’t. But what it can help you do is start expanding your personal and professional profile now.

Speaking as someone who has not been pursuing a writing career his entire life, I can tell you that there is a large group of folks – outside of the industry – who follow the careers of writers and journalists like other people follow Brad and Angelina. It used to be that a newspaper or magazine writer’s following was hard to judge. Perhaps a column would spur several letters to the editor or result in an angry follow-up quote from Mayor Daley at a press conference.

But if you’re a writer or journalist with a Twitter account, it’s very easy to see how many literal followers you have. What do editors and publishers see when they see that number? They see web traffic, they see potential press mentions. In short, they see money. And you making money for them means they’re more likely to spend money to hire you.

Let me give you a tip when you’re setting up that Twitter account. Do include your professional affiliations in your bio but don’t let your boss be the boss of your Twitter feed. Create your own personal Twitter account and tweet about your work there. It might be harder to get followers at first, but unlike other work assets, it can’t be taken away from you when you leave that job. And if your company is smart, they’ll want to leverage your presence by linking to it often anyway.

In our jobs as journalists, we are often only as good as our reporting. And in reporting, we are often only as good as our sources. Guess what Twitter is? A direct line to thousands of sources who are revealing breaking news every day. Food writers follow the many chefs on Twitter discussing their restaurants’ operations. Political beat reporters are familiar with Cook County Board commissioner Tony Peraica’s tendency to tweet whatever is on his mind at any given moment. Following several prominent people who make up your beat is a very efficient way to stay on top of the local and national trends that influence them. This makes you smarter and better at your job.

If you’re looking for an expert on a particular topic, Twitter is good for this, too. Even better, the transparency of Twitter and the Web lets you research a source before you pull out your notebook. That source’s Twitter feed likely contains several links to their blog, their other media appearances, and what primary sources they’re reading. Plus, you’ll get a very good sense of how they speak from their Tweets. I guarantee that someone who can consistently make a sharp, witty observation in 140 characters will be a quote machine for your piece.

At the beginning of this talk, I said we’d be discussing the Evolution of Professional Social Media. If I’ve done my job, you’re walking away from this with two ideas in your head. 1) The evolution of professional social media depends largely on personal interactions and 2) it is impossible for you to fully experience and understand social media without involving yourself in it. Luckily, the barriers to such involvement are low. And for those of you still worried that you’ll make a mistake as you put yourself, your business or your journalism career into the world of social media…well, mistakes are a part of life. And social media is life evolving because of them. One update, or one moment, at a time.

Playing catch-up on Chicago media

November 15, 2009Internet, Mediachicago community trust, chicago current, chicago now, chicago reader, james warren, journalism, Robert Feder, television, vocalo, WBEZScott Smith

Disclosure: I’ve had past business or personal interactions with most of the people or entities named above and plan to have them in the future. To the best of my ability, I try not to let the above color my opinions. Where such interactions might cloud my judgment on an issue, I tend to avoid writing about the topic altogether or confess to a specific bias or association so the reader can judge for him or herself.

Between work-related matters and our impending move to the South Side, I haven’t had much brainpower or free time to spare here. But there have been some significant events in Chicago’s media landscape recently so I figured it made sense to do a quick roundup. Here’s a month’s worth of posts:

Chi-Town Daily News folds and becomes Chicago Current: The first issue hit the streets this week. Creating a niche publication is smart (are you listening….um, everybody?), and an integrated web-print model is too. The full-page Mercedes-Benz ad that ran on the back page suggests support from the ad market. But here’s what I don’t get about CC’s plans: From a Crain’s story about the new publication:

“Chicago Current will be distributed to about 2,000 aldermen, City Hall department heads, judges and other public officials; it will also be available free at downtown Chicago Transit Authority train stations. The targeted readership of elected officials and bureaucrats will give advertisers — including contractors and advocacy groups — reason to pay for ads, he says.”

[Emphasis mine]

From the Chicago Current‘s “About Us” page:

From incisive coverage of City Hall, the CTA and other agencies, to the nitty gritty on topics like lobbying and campaign finance, the Current brings you vitally important information you won’t find anywhere else.

[Emphasis mine]

Based on the new website and the first edition of the paper, Chicago Current is trodding much the same ground as the Chi-Town Daily News did. Nothing wrong with that, but add it to the above text about “the nitty gritty” of dealings that most pols would rather see hidden from view and it looks like the Current wants to reveal the insider deals of politicians – the same people it wants as its audience. To quote Chasing Amy: “Can I explain the audience principle to you? If you insult and accost them, then we have no audience!” Those same pols would probably take a dim view of any advertisers – who depend on those same folks for their business – supporting such a publication.

Maybe I’m off-base about Chicago Current‘s plans but there’s not a lot of evidence to the contrary. While Geoff Dougherty deserves a lot of credit for quickly launching another new business venture, my friend and Chicago Media Future Conference co-organizer Mike Fourcher rightly points out that new media ventures need to work harder on their brands than anything else and perhaps more time spent defining audience and content would have worked to the Current‘s advantage. Still, the marketplace is getting crowded, which leads to…

Chicago News Co-operative launches, Chicago Community Trust puts its money where the names are: If I’m fuzzy on the plans for Chicago Current, I’m even more vague on the Chicago News Co-operative. And I’m not alone. As the former Mayor Daley used to say “Where’s their program?”

What I do know is they’ve got a lot of big names, many of whom used to work at the Chicago Tribune. But if we’re all agreed that the Web will play a vital role in the future of news, then this isn’t the team you want leading that charge. The Tribune‘s leadership in the online space came after those folks left. Plus, the media spaces the CNC said they’ll work in are organizations like WTTW and WBEZ. I’m a frequent viewer/listener or both, but where’s the innovation there? (The CNC says it will launch a site called Chicago Scoop in January.)

On a side note, the CNC was the recipient of $50,000 in grant money from the Chicago Community Trust. Later, Chicago Tonight contributor Rich Samuels tweeted that the Community Trust would no longer fund the Chicago Matters series, a joint venture between WTTW and WBEZ. As the CNC is currently using office space at WTTW, I bet there were a few awkward moments around the coffee maker that morning.

As for the Chicago Community Trust’s other funding decisions, I question why the CNC, so flush with connections and resources, had a greater need for cash than smaller, more innovative shops like Gapers Block, Windy Citizen and Beachwood Reporter, which only received $35,000. Perhaps it’s because the CNC’s plans are more ambitious. But according to the Community Trust’s press release, the money will be used “to support development of a new L3C cooperative business model providing enterprising journalistic coverage of the Chicago area using various Web, print and broadcast platforms, including a new Web site called “The Chicago Scoop.” From that description, the ambition is hard to intuit.

The takeaway for the Current and CNC is this: In the absence of actual evidence, people tend to fill in the blanks – or create your brand’s identity – themselves. Why would you want to give away control of such a valuable resource?

James Warren becomes publisher of the Chicago Reader: I don’t have much to say here, but from where I sit it would seem to be good news that the Chicago Reader‘s survived the questionable direction of Tampa’s Ben Eason and that a person steeped in Chicago journalism is at the helm. But to hear Reader editor Alison True tell it, this could be a potential minefield:

“It’s good to hear the board and Warren acknowledging how important journalism is to the success of the company,” says Reader editor Alison True. “Because we’re looking forward to getting the resources to support it. But if that wall disappears, so does our credibility.”

In the past year, the Reader‘s done some vital work, in spite of the perceived threat from Team Eason. Perhaps True knows her team does its best work when it’s got something to fight against, whether that enemy is real or imagined.

The rise of Chicago Now: It’s been interesting to watch the direction of Chicago Now. They’ve adopted a startup mentality, despite the appearance of the full force of TribCo resources behind them. (I cracked up at this tweet from RedEye’s web editor, which suggested there was something serendipitous, not synergistic, about a Tribune marketing project getting prominent placement on a Tribune blogging platform.) As Marcus Gilmer points out on Chicagoist:

There’s no denying there are quality reads on the site: the Parking Ticket Geek has become particularly notable in the wake of the parking meter privatization, the CTA Tattler is still a go-to for us, our pals at Gapers Block have a page, and there’s some good sports coverage. But at 126 blogs and counting, the site still feels unwieldy, making it more difficult to find other potential quality reads.”

I’ve joked that by 2010, one out of three people you meet in Chicago will have a blog at Chicago Now. The site wants to be all things to all people, to provide blogs that run the gamut of Chicagoans’ interests. It’s a clear goal, designed to take advantage of local advertising dollars. It’s important to note they’re not trying to be a publication, just an agnostic platform (like HuffPo), so this broad effort may pay off, especially with other TribCo entities like WGN Radio offering them broadcast space on its airwaves. To truly succeed, they’ll need to embrace these opportunities, not pretend like they lucked into them and ensure that audiences can easily find what they have to offer.

Robert Feder joins Vocalo, Vocalo comes in from the cold: Before the launch of Vocalo, a joint radio-and-web venture from Chicago Public Radio, some of WBEZ’s best talent worked behind-the-scenes to help make the project a reality. They brought the same passion to this project that they brought to WBEZ. Then Chicago Public Radio decided it wanted to divorce itself from Vocalo, making it completely user-generated, except when it came to funding. CPR quietly funded the program, hiding its true intention from its subscribers and siphoning off resources to keep it afloat. The product didn’t improve – the passion just wasn’t there – and WBEZ subscribers were upset. Finally realizing that a little professionalism wouldn’t hurt the product, Chicago Public Radio brought WBEZ and Vocalo together online. (Clicking the Blog button on ‘BEZ’s website takes you to Vocalo.org.)

In a further indictment of the anything-goes style of the early days of the site, CPR also brought in former Sun-Times media columnist Robert Feder as a blogger for Vocalo (or is it WBEZ? It’s hard to tell…). Feder’s work at the Sun-Times was indispensible, but his recent comments about Chicago Now – despite having a ring of truth – suggest he’s blinding himself to the reality of the problems in his new neighborhood. It would also help his cause if the material of his columns (Sneed, Bill Kurtis’s wacky commercials, retreads of his previous work) wasn’t so weak. Vocalo’s become more transparent lately, but whether more professionalism is the key to its success remains to be seen.

Bill Kurtis and Walter Jacobson return to CBS2: On Friday night, Kurtis and Jacobson anchored the CBS2 10 p.m. newscast together for the first time in the last 20 years. It’s clear CBS2 wants viewers to associate its current newscast with the groundbreaking reporting efforts of its heyday. The first half of the broadcast delivered on that score, offering up stories like a Pam Zekman investigation of the inability of Chicago police offers to properly meet the demand of 911 calls. But the constant references to days gone by, not to mention a Friday night appearance, made the whole affair feel like Old Timers’ Day at the ballpark. Moreover, the news of this supposedly monumental event didn’t break until the day before, robbing CBS2 of a potential ratings boost.

If CBS2 wants to convince people that they’re still doing hard-hitting news at 10 p.m., it could dump the lame “Cold Case” moments it’s been doing with Kurtis, sign him and Jacobson to short-term contracts, pair them with up-and-coming reporters and build on the future promise of their past gravitas.

Moreover, CBS2 ought to pick a neighborhood in Chicago, open up a local bureau there, and do some Web-only reporting. This venture could be accomplished with a skeleton crew investment, but the returns would be significant. They’d be the only local television station doing this, and it would show they were committed to not being pretty, but being realinnovators.

When online ads attack

October 8, 2009Internetjon and kate make the baby jesus cry, online ads, people.comScott Smith

This unholy mess is on People.com* right now:

(Click to embiggen)

I hate rollover ads to begin with since they inevitably (purposely?) cause the user to accidentally expand the ad, covering the content of the page (where the real value resides).

But this ad from American Cancer Society (which isn’t even in its expanded state) coupled with the subscription ad prevents me from reading the headline and what looks to be the first 2.5 paragraphs of the story. That’s bad enough, but there’s nothing I can do to get rid of the subscription ad since the American Cancer Society ad is covering the Close button I assume is in the top right corner of the subscription ad. You can’t click-and-drag the People ad anywhere and can’t shrink the ACS ad to get access to the close button.

Does refreshing the page get rid of both ads? Yes. But that’s a lousy user experience, I’d say.

Yeesh.
* Save your judgment. I clicked a friend’s link via Twitter, I wasn’t looking for the latest Jon and Kate update.

Twitter doesn't leak off the record comments, people do

September 17, 2009Internet, Mediajournalism, lost remote, twitterScott Smith

“There’s no such thing as ‘off the record’ with Twitter.”
– Lost Remote*

I don’t know if Cory Bergman is serious about that statement or using it for a clever headline, but he’s wrong. That’s like saying “There’s no such thing as ‘off the record’ with notebooks.” Or typewriters. Or computers. Or vocal chords.

Twitter is a tool for journalism. When you’re a journalist acting in said capacity, you’re operating under the same set of ethics as when you’re in the newsroom, on the phone with a source or in any of other traditional setting.

Our Man In Chicago

Work. In progress.