sxc.hu

I’ve lost count of the number of newspapers which have gone under since the beginning of the year. We’re not even through the first quarter of the year and yet, many (except those in the business who are desperately staying on top of every single death)  have simply stopped counting the number of traditional news outlets that have disappeared.

The latest in the series of death knells is the Rocky Mountain News - Denver’s 150-year-old daily newspaper. They are shutting the doors today and limping off into the sunset.

There’s lots and lots of people who are jumping up and down and claiming either that the traditional newspaper is not dead yet goddammit!!! or that it is! and that we should all just give up, pack up and never print anything on paper, ever again.

So ok, where’s the actual truth? I think it’s somewhere in between. Yes, advertising revenue - the old standby that kept many print editions afloat - is on a rapid decline. Newspapers are losing money and many are still adamant that they’re not ready or able to make the leap to an entirely digital format. That would require a complete overhaul of their entire business model, from top to bottom and would also likely create quite a dip in revenue that they’d have to dig out of.

I’m still waiting for the actual solution, if they don’t want to do either.

Time Magazine printed an article recently about whether or not the Newspaper industry needed a bail out. I say hell no, they don’t, what they need is a swift kick in the ass to move forward into the now and to listen to what their customers want!

When was the last time you bought an actual newspaper? We stopped daily delivery of the paper about 6 years ago. I, and most of my peers get all of our news online and from friends. Even the venerable Pew Industry recently released a report that says for the first time in history, more people say they get their national and international news from the internet.

The Daily Beast has a fantastic suggestion from yesterday’s column:

Forget the newspaper industry. Let’s launch the News Industry. Say hello to News Inc. Let’s do what every industry does: Identify consumer demand and meet it.The good news is that consumers are just learning all the new ways they can get news and are still figuring out what works best for them. There is still time for those of us in the news industry to work with them and find out at the same time. [source]

Hear hear! There’s a lot more room to move in a News Industry than there is in the newspaper industry. Think about it.

Yes, it will require a drastic change to how the news industry is run, and yes, it’ll probably bleed money for the first little while, but every other industry can adapt and change to consumer demands, why can’t the news industry adapt?

A piece of advice for anyone wanting to participate in the social media world. Although it may be tempting to make friends with everyone in the scene, resist, and get out into the world, not just the industry, and talk to people in complimentary and completely different fields.

I know from experience that the social media scene will fall into distinct echo chambers, no matter what happens, and then what happens is we all talk to each other, about the same things. Agreeing, disagreeing, repeating, saying the same thing but using different words. It becomes one big circle of noise.

The only way to break out of this, that I’ve personally seen, is to engage in other friendships, hang out with different groups of people, go to unrelated conferences and make sure that when you do show up to an event, that you make an impact with people you see there. Do your absolute best to diversify your world, your events, your experience, and ensure that everything you do, everywhere you go, you bring value to the conversation.

This happens everywhere, and frankly, in every industry. And the inevitable begins to happen - the comparisons to high school begin, and the next thing you know, people are badmouthing each other, having public fights and creating unnecessary drama where none needs to be. It becomes, in the immortal words of a good friend, “all kinds of f’d up.”

Pick your events to attend that occur in the social media world. Here in Vancouver, there are a million and one events, all with, more or less the same people. Judge the events you want to attend not by who will be there - that’s generally a given, and you’ll run into that person another time, guaranteed. Judge them by who is speaking, what the topic is and when and where it will take place. If you’ve got to go far out of your way for an event that is only mildly interesting, your heart won’t be in it and you won’t want to be there.

I was told this weekend that a friend in the scene respected me because I exist outside of the Vancouver Echo Chamber (ok, the phrase he used was a little more graphic than that, but this is a family friendly website for the most part), and the reason I manage to do so is because I’m careful about where I go, when I go and what I do. I show up for certain events, skip others and make sure that I’ve got other things going on outside of the standard social media circle.

Just like in a marriage, you’ve got to have outside interests to have other things to talk about and make things interesting, in an industry like social media, you’ve got to do the same. Otherwise, you’re just talking to yourself, over and over again.

[image source: sxc.hu]

Where do you draw the line between opinon and defemation & libel? Model Liskula Cohen is asking a New York court to force Google to reveal the identity of the anonymous blogger behind “Skanks in NYC“. 

The site is composed of exactly five posts, all aimed at snarking at Cohen, with images that had to have come from friends or friends of friends. All of the pictures were of Cohen, with friends or at a small party with what looks like close friends. Maybe Cohen should be trying to track down where those photos came from rather than trying to get the courts to force Google to reveal anything? 

The court itself isn’t giving any indication as to which way they will rule. 

“…convincing a judge to unmask the blogger might prove difficult, because courts often protect Web users’ right to remain anonymous online. While there are exceptions for libel, it’s not clear whether the posts in this case would qualify. That’s because only facts can be defamatory, and the statements at Skanks in NYC might be deemed opinions rather than facts.” [source]

To me, this looks like a straight up case of cyberbullying. Many of us have been on the receiving end of these trolls, but we haven’t taken the perpetrators to court. 

Cohen is claiming that she’s had potential jobs bring this site up and question whether or not she is an appropriate representative of their product. If that’s really the case, the brands questioning her really aren’t looking closely at this site. It’s obvious to anyone paying attention that this is a blatant attempt to bully Cohen. 

I googled Ms Cohen to see if this apparently libelous site even had any Google juice whatsoever, and all that came up were references to this law suit and to one from last year when she made headlines because a bouncer alledgedly threw a glass (or glasses. It’s unclear) into her face, apparently disfiguring her. 

This lawsuit, put together with the headlines she made last year from the suit over the bouncer incident makes me wonder if this, like the porn industry asking for a federal bail out, isn’t just another PR stunt. A way to keep her name in the news in order to garner interest in her (perhaps flagging) career. Every article I’ve been able to find called her an “ex-Vogue” model. You don’t see working models with actual contracts being called that, even if they have graced the cover of the iconic magazine. 

It’s time for Cohen to find a new career I think. The model thing seems to be over, and her new choice of professional plaintiff isn’t exactly going gangbusters.

You’ve heard every single social media/web 2.0 expert/pundit/blabbermouth/evangelist repeat it ad naseum:

Companies in this new world must be honest and transparent with their publics or face the wrath of their consumers. 

In this case though, the “wrath” might just be mere annoyance. 

Apple said that the reason they were pulling out of MacWorld is because they were scaling back on conferences. The direct quote from their initial release is: “Apple has been steadily scaling back on trade shows in recent years, including NAB, Macworld New York, Macworld Tokyo and Apple Expo in Paris.” 

Speculation about the ‘real reason’ Apple had pulled out was because of the rumours swirling around CEO Steve Job’s health, and yet today, Jobs sent out an open letter to the Apple Community.

Dear Apple Community,

For the first time in a decade, I’m getting to spend the holiday season with my family, rather than intensely preparing for a Macworld keynote.

Unfortunately, my decision to have Phil deliver the Macworld keynote set off another flurry of rumors about my health, with some even publishing stories of me on my deathbed. [source]

Apple now claims that it was a political decision not to have Jobs to deliver the keynote. All of which means that yet again, Apple isn’t being completely honest and upfront about Jobs’ health. 

What’s up with Steve, how he’s feeling, or why that even matters is of no consequence to me. Apple will be fine, with or without Jobs at the helm.

What’s bugging me about this is that the company couldn’t, or didn’t anticipate their community’s response to the other guy giving the MacWorld Keynote, when it’s always been up to Jobs, and then they pulled out of MacWorld all together after this year? And they didn’t anticipate that this would cause any kerfuffle at all? That the tech reporters, Apple reporters and pundits and the entire fanatical Apple community wouldn’t put all of this together and wonder what was really up?

Apple has built a large, loyal fanbase. They’ve created their own little cult, and have had years and years to get to know this group, to understand how they internalize information and repeat it, and yet, they’re still stumbling, the way they always have, over some pretty basic tenets. 

(image source: Wikimedia Commons)

Not only is it a sad day at JPG Magazine and 8020 Media, it’s a sad day for the rest of us too, and the news is burning up my Twitter stream. 

JPG Magazine is closing their doors, after spending months trying to make the buisness sustain itself. In these economic times, people simply aren’t spending the money they used to on anything that’s not food, shelter, and necessary clothing.  It sucks, because Jpg Magazine did some amazing things for professional and amateur photographers both, but perhaps we’re not strong enough to sustain something like JPG Magazine. 

Laura Brunow Miner, one of the founders of JPG Magazine said, in a statement released on their blog, “We wish we could have found a way to leave the site running for the benefit of the amazing folks who have made JPG what it is, and we have spent sleepless nights trying to figure something out, all to no avail.”

I’m thinking, personally, that the saddest part of this is that 1) a major creative force in our community is closing it’s doors, and 2) that this is a sign of many many more closures of amazing properties to come, and that makes me sad. 

The Flickr site will live on, but for me, it’s just not the same.

There’s some speculation around the web regarding the pulse of Web 2.0, and some are wondering if it’s time for the whole phenomenon to die off.

I am here to tell you: SOCIAL MEDIA IS HERE TO STAY. Yes, there have been companies bought up (Values of n which had I Want Sandy and Stikkit, bought up by Twitter) and companies who have closed up their doors (Hi5 cut 15-20% of their staff and Pownce closed down - they’re two of the most prominent and recent ones), but the end result is that consumers, the ones who are the really matter, have embraced social media and are here to stay. We’re Twittering (tweeting?), we’re facebooking, we’re on IM . We will not let the social media we want die.

I think that the purchase of Values of n is something that Twitter has done because they’ve got plans. I’ve talked to Ev a few times about the state of the union, and he’s mysterious, holds his cards close to his chest and has plans. Serious plans. So at this point, I can’t imagine that this purchase was made without a plan in mind.

Pownce on the other hand, well, I don’t know a whole lot about the backers of Pownce, (not nearly as much has been published about them, and I haven’t talked to them face to face like I have Ev) and so I’m left to think that perhaps Pownce was just not used often enough to sustain business.

I think at this point, we just all need to chill, and see what will happen. Yes, social media companies, even the promising ones,  come and go, but there are several who are here to stay. Social networking isn’t going anywhere…. people need to just deal with it.

Motrin. Exxon. American Airlines. These are just a few of the great big giant brands which have been “twitter-jacked” in the past year, and that doesn’t count the sheer volume of “fake” celebrities, politicians and others who have had their names co-opted. Anyone remember Sarah Silverman??

Like I discussed in Personal Brand or Reputation, if you don’t already own your Twitter name, your domain name, your facebook name - you name it - you run the serious risk of your name being taken over by someone with less than virtuous ambitions.

Take Shaquille O’Neal. he recently took back his own Twitter account because someone had registered ShaquilleONeal and was impersonating him. Through some savvy communications management, and Shaq creating The_Real_Shaq on the heels of discovering the impostor.

On the flip side of that was the whole Vancouver mayoral politics twitter debacle, that got exposed in the local paper, and blew up all over the local blogs and Twitter streams.

@Motrin is just yet one more in a long series of brand jackings. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again - go out now and register or buy all of the iterations of your name, your brand, the misspellings, and the negative connotations of each.

Without them, you run serious PR risks.

(image source: Wikimedia Commons)

Hi again! I’m back from my whirlwind trip to the south, (or the upper south as some referred to it as), and I’m getting back into the swing of things!

I was on the flight home last night and going through my usual pre- and post-trip blogging workflow practice, and came across and article on CNet about Evan William’s presentation at Web 2.0 recently. While Williams didn’t give a straight answer to The Valley’s biggest question (though, did you really expect he would? He never gives a straight answer, always holding his cards close to his chest): ‘How will you make money??’ Caroline McCarthy reports that Williams gave some strong hint, and that hint didn’t include advertising.

Overall, it’s looking like Twitter is going to look at a corporate model, where companies like Woot and Zappos, who are already using the service, will be charged for a corporate account.

Williams is still maintaining that Twitter is simply a communications channel, and not a community, which still bugs me. I am of the mind that he’s not really seeing the big picture - sure, Twitter may have started out as a simple communications tool, but it’s morphed into something much more.

Twitter could give corporations access to analytics and data unavailable in free Twitter accounts, something that could undoubtedly be enhanced by its acquisition of search app Summize earlier this year. [source]

However Twitter decides they’re going to start making money, I’m thinking that perhaps the sooner they roll out that model, the better, at least so the naysayers and pundits stop speculating, which is resulting in some slightly bad press.

Jack Dorsey and Evan Williams are doing a bit of a dosado. @Ev is taking @Jack’s spot and moving into the CEO role, while @Jack becomes Chairman of the Board.

“We’re entering a new phase now and there are new kinds of challenges ahead. Healthy companies acknowledge the need for change even during the best of times,” Williams wrote. “As Twitter grows both internally and externally, we took a good look at our path forward and saw the need for a focused approach from a single leader.” [source]

Hrm. Translation? Time to actually start playing the game for real. Step up to the plate. Man up. Grow some balls. Pick your cliche.  Any of them will work.

Twitter is still Silicon Valley’s poster child for “cool service, but um, how’ya gonna make money!?”

According to Caroline McCarthy at The Social, “Twitter is growing fast, and closed a $15 million funding round in May. It weathered an engineering shake-up this spring and has managed to largely overcome its well-publicized server problems. Plus, Twitter has become a staple in tracking political zeitgeist–cable network Current TV displayed real-time “tweets” onscreen during the presidential debates.” [source]

All that’s true, but in the end, Twitter’s going to have to step up and get it done. No more of this random, fluffy stuff. They still need a community manager, and they have to figure out exactly how it is they’re going to monetize.

Now, Ev is the guy who invented Blogger, which, granted, has become a wasteland of temporary sites, spammers, link sites and companies who aren’t really into blogging enough to actually put their blog on their own site, at one point, that was the height of blogging technology. I have faith, based on Ev’s track record, that he’ll get something sorted out, but in the meantime, we’re all wondering exactly where this is gonna go. (image source: Twitter blog)

Om Malik, one of the few uber-A-listers I haven’t met or hung out with yet, has a fantastic post about the economy, VC Funding and start ups. With the economy heading so completely south, start ups are starting to tighten their belts.

Heck, look at Jeremiah Owyang’s tally of the Social Media layoffs recently:

Oct 10: Fast Company, which has social network for website and popular videoblogger, lays off 20

Oct 10: Seesmic, a video conversation player lays off 7

Oct 6: eBay to lay off 10% of workforce to streamline after recession.

Oct 3: Gawker blog network lays off 19, and brags about it.

Om goes on to say that because of this meeting, Sequoia is telling its companies to put survival strategies in place and figure out ways to outlast the broader market troubles. (image source: GigaOm)

Sequoia isn’t the only one advising its startups to tighten their belts and prepare for a roller coaster ride. Ron Conway, a well-known angel investor in the Valley who has invested in companies like Google, offered very sobering advice to his companies via email earlier today. (from Om)

Raising capital will be much more difficult now. You should lower your “burn rate” to raise at least 3-6 months or more of funding via cost reductions, even if it means staff reductions and reduced marketing and G&A expenses. This is the equivalent to “raising an internal round” through cost reductions to buy you more time until you need to raise money again; hopefully when fund raising is more feasible.

Letting go of staff is hard and frequently sickening.  A re-evaluation of timelines and re-focus on milestones with an eye to doing more with less will allow you to live many more days, and the name of the game in this environment in some respects is survival — survival until conditions change. If you are in a funding cycle, you should raise your funding as soon as possible and raise as much as possible but face the fact that if you can’t raise money now you must cut costs. [source]