What “Goodbye, Colorado” means to us Tweeps

Whenever I talk to a new media practitioner–ok, cheerleader– I hear something along the lines of  ‘new media does not kill old media –it only complements it.’ I cheer along, being a staunch supporter of the business model that grew out of Strasbourg, Germany, and the one that grew out of Mountain View, California.

So the news that the Rocky Mountain News shuttered last week seems like an unfair blow to the head of this (romantic?) dual-platform idea. One reader comment to the last article on the RMN online site suggested that it was

demonstrating how the market is suposed to run. When a company is mismanaged and refuses to keep up with inovation and the modernation of an industry. When a news outlet makes itself biased and slants stories from a loose dog to elections. Then the outlet goes out of business … There is a differance between op/eds and news.

I have never read the paper, but I can tell you that it’s not only print media that co-mingles news and op-eds, and those darn cat (or dog) stories. But sanwiched between those silly nuggets is real information that you wouldn’t get elsewhere. More so in newspapers. They may not cover it with the speed of, say, The Drudge Report, but print journalists bring in the mind-set and passion to go deep and sideways to inform us, and perhaps connect some dots. Another RMN reader commented that “Your front page was our front door.”

Ironically, today we get news through the back door. I am a huge fan of RSS, for instance. I just got a good summary of news tips from some folk I follow on Twitter, since it is a community –whether they are journalists or not– that keeps watching out for each other. Twitter, to me, is actually the side door, the window left slightly ajar to let some air in. Occasionally someone slides relevant information through the crack. But I also get a huge dose of valuable information from my skinny, but well-put together community newspaper that isn’t being blogged about or conveyed in 140 characters.

We twitterers, voyeurs of Google alerts, and purveyors of the speeded up news cycle ought to not be so quick to write the “I told you so!” piece about the demise of Print.

Quotes for the week ending 27 February, 2009

“Orbiting swarms of junk careen into each other like billiard balls, creating unpredictable sprays of debris, which in turn meld with other space garbage to weave a moving net around the atmosphere.”

The Wall Street Journal’s Robert Lee Hotz, on the debris of space junk caused by colliding satellites.

“My love of TweetDeck just keeps growing …Love, love, love it.”

IABC Chair, Barbara Gibson, on the new features of Tweetdeck.

“Twitter users may donate their avatar and replace it with an image of the red female sign.”

“NCMFathom, which is asking Twitter users to micro-blog to raise 0.10 a tweet from March 2 – 5 this year.

“After getting a lot of angry calls at my office from frustrated customers, I realized we could do a better job of listening to and supporting you.”

Yahoo’s new CEO Carol Bartz, on her blog, Yodel Anecdotal, about her first one and a half months on the job, and the changes being made.

“Sometimes the face of a brand is a fictional character.”

Chris Brogan, on the Bigelow Tea company’s project, Constant Comments. The company’s president Cindi Bigelow is a prominent figure in its communication.

“There is a differance (sic) between op/eds and news.”

Reader comment on the Rocky Mountain News web site, in response to the last story of the newspaper, “Goodbye, Colorado.” The paper began in 1859. The reader suggested that it demonstrated market forces were doing the right thing.

My Twitter spelling lesson

Some IABC members have probably received your copy of CW. I know a few of you have already read my article, “You’re no one if you’re not on Twitter” because you sent me a tweet to say so. Thanks!

But I came across two terrible mistakes which I have to take responsibility for. The first is getting the name of a person I cited wrong. I misspelled the last name of Brendan Hodgson, the Canadian PR practitioner. Sorry Brendan! As bad as that, was my suggesting that a good way to send a direct tweet to someone was by using the @ sign in front of the name. Anyone using Twitter for a few seconds will tell you the @sign works like a trackback in blogs, alerting the person that you referred to him/her. You could only send a direct message to someone you are following if that person is nuts enough tp follow you back.

As many people I have been checking with have told me, there’s always something to learn when using Twitter. Not only does it force you not to ramble, but it makes you learn the difference between public and private conversations. Just because someone is following you does not mean they understand your general tweet, or understand the context.

I know some hard-core texters in Asia who use such cryptic language, it takes sm cnctrtng 2 fgr wht thyr syng. Twitter hard-core users have their own jargon, too. (I don’t follow those tweeps.) If by chance you do and need 2 fgr wht thyr syng, check this Twittonary. Have you heard of words like ‘tweegosearching’ and ‘twead?’ head over there now. I feel tweepish even suggesting that!

Bobby Jindal’s not ready for prime time

I don’t want this to sound political, but it might come off that way. Please skip this post if you’re disinterested in the wacky 2-party system in the US.

But the moment I started listening to the Republican response last night, I could see why Bobby Jindal, who has all the street cred of a long-shot presidential nominee, was a wrong pick.

I’m going by the communication parts of the response, remember.

• Badly needs teleprompter training
• Desperately needs a speechwriter –especially when trying to jam in a family story
• Uses wrong anecdote/case study to make the point: He used the predictable Katrina example, which would have been wonderful, had he not used it as a reason why ‘more government’ is bad. Bobby, that was Bush government, remember? Your party’s fearless leader at that time.
• Repetitive phrase tactic (as in “I have a dream”) only work for grand ideas; not suitable with grocery store analogy.

The odd thing is –perhaps being Asian, but more because I have watched him closely over the past two years– I was rooting for this guy a few months back. I just wish he studied others who bombed in front of the camera (there was, ya know, the other outsider) a bit more before making such a debut.

Webinar on social media measurement

I cannot attend this one but I just heard from Angela Sinickas about a Ragan webinar she is conducting this afternoon on measuring social media.

The idea of knowing and measuring what effect social media has on the business you are in, drives people nuts –sometimes in a good way.

Yesterday I showed a colleague in the office how I track visitors to our blog, Light Bulb Moments, and she wanted to know “where I got those from.” That it was just the built-in dashboard for WordPress blew her away. And that’s not even getting into Google analytics.

Social Media analytics has got a lot more complex, and necessary. Before diving into any social media tool, first think of what results and measures you would like to have. Start with the end in mind, I guess.

Listen to Angela describe it in a much more succing way here.

The “soft-tissue of all our consumers”

There’s an old, but relevant video from BringBackTheLove, about the failing, dysfunctional relation between two people –actually two institutions, Advertisers and Consumers.

More telling than this  story –a messy ‘breakup’– is the sequel where the advertiser, talks to his agency to try to repair the relationship.

At one point, the advertiser takes him to a flip chart and violently circles a messy diagram saying they could  “blitzkrieg the soft tissue of all our consumers!” Funny? Sure. But it’s also a sad statement of how marketers see consumers –as some thin layer of tissue.

Truth is, the consumer ain’t ’soft’ (insert other 4- and 5-letter words like ‘dumb,’ ‘easy,’ ‘loyal’ etc ) as people think. She makes hard choices, whether wanting to pay $1.75 for a cup of coffee at Starbucks, or $1.07 for a refill (by taking in her own coffee mug) at Einstein Brothers. Empathy, not advertising, intimacy not infiltration will get through the soft tissue.

As the recession deepens, marketers will have to learn how to reconnect with their customers in more intimate ways, minus the lame, expensive blitzkrieg type tactics.

Quotes for the week ending 22 February, 2009

“I would be happy to buy him a cup of coffee –decaf!”

White House Press Secretary, Robert Gibbs, to the press, on the CNBC host Rick Santelli’s rant about Obama’s housing plan. Gibbs suggested Mr. Santelli ‘download, hit print and read the report.’

“It’s a crisis that strikes at the heart of the middle class. It begins with one house at a time in Mesa, Glendale or Tempe…”

President Barack Obama, on his visit to Dobson High School in Mesa, Arizona, where he announced the details of the housing plan that intends to address the key issues at the heart of the financial crisis.

“Thank you all for watching out for my brand, I appreciate each and every message”

Jeremy Owyang, to the many people who have informed hiom about the fake Twitter accounts in his name. Reported by Jacob Morgan.

“Business journalism sources come in all shapes and sizes, and my experience is that the ones who purport to have the most explosive stories are typically exaggerating their claims.”

Chris Roush, blogging at BusinessJournalism.org, on the need to verify a source that claims to be a whistleblower, in relation to a story of one in the Bernie Madoff fraud case

“Micro-payments won’t solve newspapers’ pay-or-perish problem, at least not under current proposals.”

Marshall W. Van Alstyne, associate professor, Boston University joining the debate on how to rescue journalism

“Twitter has a lot of power to, with simple changes like that, change the ecology of the system.”

Leo Laporte, host of the podcast, This Week in tech (TWIT) on the new feature that Twitter adds that gives some users a hugs boost in followers.

My first batch of podcasts

This has been under the radar for some time, but I have been working on a series of podcasts called Light Bulb Moments for the Decision Theater blog of the same name.

Here is the link to the first, on the Pandemic ‘flu exercise.

Joe The Plumber’s fingerprints in Mesa

In less than an hour from now President Obama is coming to a school less than a mile from my home, to make the big announcement to address the housing crisis.

So I couldn’t resist driving by Dobson High a little while ago to check out the mood out here.

Contrary to what you might imagine watching some of the morning news reports, it’s not all human chaos and traffic snarls in Mesa. Traffic was moving smoothly, as people made their way with signs, lawn chairs, flags and cameras.

But along the way a little detail struck me as an example of how out of touch, or completely ignorant people are. Little signs on stakes –the kind that usually advertise weight-loss cures or ‘we buy ugly houses’ — try to lecture to Obama that ’socialism is not the answer’ with allusions to the healthcare rescue plan. Has Joe the Plumber being recruited to do some sort of poster-PR for the other side? Someone did not get the memo that the Palin-led socialism canard flopped.

The people lining the streets outside St. Timothy’s Catholic Church have more to hope for and worry about than socialism. They see the economy through a different lens.

Twitter may be the worst way to..

Fill in the blanks here, if you could.

I am sure you’ve heard of some bad etiquette and bad practice when it comes to using Twitter. I am a big fan of the this micro-messaging tool, but I occasionally come across stories where tweets are so inappropriate.

• There was that incident last year of a journalist tweeting at a funeral of a kid.
• Recently at the BBC, a possible case of someone being promoted to a top position using a tweet. When will someone get fired via a tweet, one wonders?
• Using Twitter to push TMDI –too much damn information– that might overwhelm followers. I’ve unsubscribed the right non-word is ‘un-followed’ to one famous person for this reason.
• A lazy journalist’s use of Twitter as a replacement for vox pops – - excellent analysis here.

Twitter may be a terrible way to tell your boss you are not coming to work (and forgetting to use the direct messaging function), flirt, attack someone, disclose something you should only be doing offline etc. I am sure there are dozens more examples. I like to hear.

(Image above linked to from NewsPhobia)