Source Yes, the headline isn’t really breaking news to many of us. However, I received an interesting report this week that ties numbers to the tumultuous newspaper industry and its struggle to remain relevant, today and tomorrow. I wanted to share the numbers with you… Every year, The Bivings Group, analyzes how and to what extent America’s largest newspapers are embracing the Web. With Social Media opening the flood gates for innovation in online content creation and distribution, newspapers are…
TechCrunch Kills The Embargo, But PR Holds the Smoking Gun
Disclosure, I am a contributor to TechCrunch and I have had my fair share of embargoes broken by various reporters and bloggers over the years. In some cases, we trusted the wrong people. Credit In what is sure to come as an absolute surprise to the tech PR industry, TechCrunch proclaimed that it will no longer honor embargoes, unless they’re granted exclusivity. The move was triggered by a growing pattern of underhanded and also irresponsible behavior in the backchannels of…
Saying More with Less: A Directory of Short URL Services
Source Through brevity there’s clarity. As marketers and communicators in the era of socialized media, we’re relearning how to summarize and illustrate what we represent so that we might briefly captivate the attention of those we wish to reach. Twitter, FriendFeed, Plurk, Qik, Seesmic, 12seconds, Facebook News Feeds, and all other forms of micromedia communities prosper through a concise economy of language and forethought. It is the exchange of this richer dialog that flourishes through succinctness. This introspective and empathetic…
Introducing MicroPR, A PR Resource for Journalists, Analysts and Bloggers on Twitter
In the era of the Social Web, transparency, engagement, and a commitment to authentically connect people to your story are essential principles for practicing successful and meaningful Public Relations. Concurrently, the socialization of media is creating new communities and communications channels that are empowering journalists, bloggers, analysts, as well as everyday people, to actively and passionately contribute, share, and discover the stories around us. It’s changing the information ecosystem. Media and communications professionals must stay connected and work together now…
Facebook’s Attempt to Acquire Twitter = Fail Whale
Mark Zuckerberg at Web 2.0 Expo Evan Williams at TechCrunch50 Kara Swisher has written a tremendous post on Facebook’s quiet attempt at acquiring Twitter. It inspired me to share my thoughts on the subject. During the Web 2.0 Summit, John Batelle interviewed Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg, and if you listened closely enough, it was clear that Batelle was prodding Zuckerberg to validate the rumors that Facebook was exploring the possibility of acquiring Twitter. With a teasing smile, Zuckerberg described Twitter…
Barack Obama, The Social Web, and the Future of User-Generated Government
What follows is the unedited version of my latest post for TechCrunch, “Is Obama Ready To Be a Two-Way President. Barack Obama’s flickr stream Where there’s victory, there’s also opportunity… America voted while the entire world watched and listened. Whether you supported Obama or McCain, we equally shared the hope for positive change and a new beginning towards a brighter future. This Presidential election was the first in 50 years, in which there was no incumbent President or Vice President…
Now is Gone Celebrates First Anniversary
On November 13th, 2008, Geoff Livingston and I quietly celebrated the bookversary of Now is Gone, one of the first books that tackled the subject of social media and new PR strategies for corporate marketers and communicators. As Geoff pointed over out at LivingstonBuzz, the book has earned tremendous milestones: – Thousands of people have read the book – We’ve received hundreds of thank yous from folks who said it changed their business life – Now Is Gone received more…
Al Gore on the Social Revolution for Change
While several posts have emerged recently crediting Social Networks (Social Media) with Obama’s victory, I’d like to inject another element into the discussion – people, sociology, and the communities and tools that bind them, us, together. Smart people intelligently and genuinely connected with other people to further a cause and a greater hope supreme. Social Media provided the channels to create, discover, inspire and share together…nothing less, nothing more. I attended the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco and we…
Reinventing Crisis Communications for the Social Web
Source Businesses, individuals, and organizations will, from time to time, make honest mistakes or in some unfortunate cases, intentionally support unethical decisions to dissuade or conceal something significant from its public. Whether it’s an oversight or a matter of deception, savvy companies usually employ and deploy a crises response team to prepare for, manage and attempt to positively spin the potential backlash from customers, partners, and employees related to almost anything. Crisis communications is a branch of PR that is…
In the Social Web, We Are All Brand Managers
Source Effectively organizing, curating, showcasing, and managing a strategically curated online personal, professional, and corporate brand is critical to how our peers, those we already know and the others we have yet to meet, perceive us in the real world. Everything we share online, the comments we leave, the posts we publish, the pictures and videos we upload, the updates we tweet, the statuses we broadcast in social networks and lifestreams, contribute to disparate digital recreations of how people perceive…