Both Forbes and MediaPost’s Online Spin newsletter discussed the idea of a “social nervous system” or the concept of the Hive mind that the new social media world has created, and it really got me thinking. There is a palpable, frenetic energy associated with a lot of the social networking going on. There’s always something happening on one of the networks around the world.

Chess - image: sxc.hu

Think about some of the factors that illustrate that more and more, society is developing into a hive mind. The Mumbai Attacks were twittered, and attacker movements tracked. Despite the police scolding people for revealing their positions, the fact remains, the people were connected in a way never seen before and they were able to assist, coordinate and even direct movement for emergency services.

The Hudson River crash was not only announced on Twitter, the citizen journalists beat out mainstream news by at least an hour, which, in social media time, stretched to several hours. That was also the event that took out the TwitPic servers completely, because one of those citizen journalists put their shots of the downed plane onto the service.

In a social nervous system there will be increasing pressure to be connected 24/7 to the hive mind that is Facebook, Twitter and so on. Those who do not connect, share and collaborate will have a hard time in business and in social life. [source]

I may be repeating myself here, but if the corporate world doesn’t shake off their traditional shackles and start looking in earnest at social media - not just dipping one toe in with a blog rarely updated, a cloaked twitter stream, or a facebook page for the sake of having a facebook page - they run the risk that they’ll be left in the dust, especially in light of the current recession.

The world is moving forward at a startling pace; the hive mind, (which sounds much creepier than it actually is) shares information faster than ever before, and traditional companies and news organizations don’t need to catch up - but they do need to just jump in, with a solid strategy, or find themselves completely out of the loop.

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?

Online and citizen journalism have been around for ages - you know, at least four years, which is at least a century in internet years, but it appears that a school superintendent in Minneapolis didn’t get that memo.

Students from the Fairbault, Minnesota High have taken their newspaper online in response to the demand they shut their paper down from the superindetendent when he wanted to review an article about a teacher in advance.

While there are many touting the fact that this is a win for citizen journalists and lamenting the fact that there are still need for online journalists to prove themselves, the truth is, just because the school went and did something that the rest of us have been doing for ages - going online to reach audiences we wouldn’t have otherwise - isn’t particularly earth shattering news.

Yes, I know that I’m perpetuating this "news" by writing about it, but this is kind of a thorn in my side. There are only so many qualities that make something newsworthy.  Yes, it’s news in Minnesota. That’s a localization thing - it’s more important to the people in Fairbault than it is to, clearly, me in Vancouver.

When I first started reading the article on MediaPost, I was intrigued enough to try and find the story, but then when I realized that the extent of the story was the newspaper went online because of possible censorship, well…. I just got annoyed. And then I gave it more webspace. (sigh)

So, what do you think - is it news that students are embracing citizen journalism and moving online, or should they - the so called Net Natives - already be there?

Tags: net natives, cicitzen journalism, newsworthy, censorship

On December 20th, a Continental flight slid off the runway mid-take off. There were some minor injuries, and of course, the whole thing made the news.

What’s different about this crash however, was the fact that Mike Wilson live-tweeted the whole thing.

Wilson has since been interviewed on several mainstream media stations including NBC, Fox News, and more. A Google search for “denver plane crash + Twitter” yielded more than 22,000 results.

It looks to me like 2008 was the year that Twitter started to go mainstream. It’s becomming the go-to for many for breaking news - the Denver crash was reported on Twitter before it hit mainstream news. Same goes for that F18 that crashed into a San Diego backyard a while back.

Personally, I find this fascinating. It used to be that we learned about the actual news from television news or the newspaper the next morning. Now we can get a play-by-play of events as they unfold. Usually, by the time mainstream news gets ahold of the stories, most of Twitter has already heard about it.

I’m wondering how this will change mainstream news reporting in the upcoming year. Thoughts?

(image source 2DrinksBack’s twitter stream: Twitter)

I’ve been thinking about the whole traditional media/new media thing - everyone trying to figure out will happen to traditional media in the future. I’ve been mulling over thoughts around this for a while now, but haven’t been able to gather all my thoughts into one cohesive post. And then, I came across Chris’s post entitled All Tomorrow’s Armies and realized that Chris managed to coalesce all my thoughts!

Stay with the old at your own risk. All tomorrow’s armies are equipped and ready to embed. We don’t need to gather. We have our own dial tone. We connect and disband the way waves shape the beach. [source]

Now,  although Chris does go on to say that we might also might not be or do all of those things, but I have a very good feeling that this really will be the way of the media world. If traditional media doesn’t get involved in the social media world, they’re going to get left in the dust.

The New York Times has recently realized that the aggregation of and links to things the paper didn’t produce in-house improves the audience experience and they have begun to provide additional information written by bloggers and in some cases, even their direct competitors. [source] While this isn’t anything new for those of us who are used to the social media world, it’s very cool to see the New York Times embracing our world.

Steve Outing from Editor & Publisher has offered newspaper CEOS and journalists some ‘crisis advice’ in his most recent column. Chief among his advice includes hiring a Social Media VP.

Most newspapers have a vice president of circulation in charge of print distribution. Today, you need a “circulation VP” for the Internet. A more appropriate title: vice president for social media.

A key tenet in the digital media world we now live and do business in is: Be everywhere. Any newspaper company that thinks that its Web site or sites (and maybe a few other services like e-mail newsletters, RSS feeds and mobile-phone alerts) is enough is sadly mistaken. [source]

Today’s newspapers and media outlets have got to adapt. They need to get involved with citizen journalists more, get the reporters blogging, start covering hyper-locally,  and be everywhere on line, absolutely everywhere. Check to make sure that your brand/user name isn’t being brandjacked.

In short, get on it, hire your VP of Social Media (I happen to know a few good candidates) and get started before you go extinct.

Vancouver is home to the 2010 Olympics, as much of the world is aware (and those who aren’t aware have more important things on their minds).  The city is enveloped in a flurry of activity, getting everything from buildings, athlete’s villages, and ski jumps ready for the onslaught of tourists, athletes and media that will descend onto our fair city.

Recently, the Vancouver Organizing Committee (aka VANOC - you know, the bigwigs in charge of all of the Olympic everythings in Vancouver) began a four-day “World Press Briefing” for more than 250 visiting journalists and media managers. There was some serious debate about how media coverage of the Olympics is changing dramatically due to new and emerging media.

Three local citizen journalists, under the Raincity Studios umbrella - Dave Olsen, Kris Krug & Robert Scales - have written an open letter to VANOC requesting entry into the closed-door press briefing.

DaveO, ever the eloquent one, says, “In brief, we’d like to have a conversation about how to allow fans and amateur media makers to document their Olympic experience…”.

“We are aware of your obligations to media rights holders and are seeking to provide an entirely different sort of coverage than the accredited media provide,” he wrote. “We are not looking to cover events per se but are instead interested in covering the cultural stories, athletes’ families’ stories, and stories from fans who saved and travelled from around the world for this experience. In other words, we plan to encourage and aggregate fan coverage of the individual’s on the street experience of the Games.”

Between the three of them, Scales, Krug and Olsen have covered Beijing 2008, Torino 2006, SLC 2002, and Nagano 1998, all unaccredited and on various forms of media.

DaveO goes on to explain that, in order to facilitate more citizen journalism, Raincity Studios will be “… hosting an independent, international media centre at our Gastown loft office. As part of this, we’ll organize events like photo walks and aggregate fan-made content for the enjoyment of a worldwide audience.”

This is going to happen with or without the mighty blessing of VANOC, but as DaveO pointed out,  “We’d [all] like to work with you to do this for mutual benefit.”

To date, all that I know is that the spokeswoman for VANOC told Jeff Lee, the Vancouver Sun Olympic Reporter that “The IOC is the ultimate arbiter on the representation on the press commission, and each country’s National Olympic Committee determines which media get accredited for the Games.”

She goes on to say that, “As the organizing committee, we can and will encourage both entities to recognize and facilitate the immense growth of online media, however ultimately decisions for press commission membership and Games accreditation lie with them. We have not yet responded to the open letter from the social media group but will do so in the coming days.”

So, Dave, Kris, Robert, where do we stand on this? Has VANOC gotten back to you? Have we come to any sort of conclusion here?

This evening was Vancouver’s monthly Third Tuesday, where Mhairi Petrovic, the founder of Out Smarts, explained how to sell social marketing to the traditional marketing decision makers. Raul (aka Hummingbird 604) live-blogged the event.

The information was fantastic, and I thought it needed a wider audience. The full post from Raul is here, but the salient points are below.

Some of the primary objections to social media that traditional marketers have to social media include: 

1) “We already use social media” Complete misconception -  having a website or a facebook page is not participating in social media.  

2) Perceived as a tool for only the younger set. This is a misconception. Yes, MySpace was adopted by young music lovers. The over 35 demographic is the fastest growing sector of the users of Internet. Social networks for professionals are the fastest growing social media segment. 

3) Social media does not apply to me. Technorati and its State of the Blogosphere report stated that they have 133 million blogs in 36 countries. 100 million people on MySpace, 140 million people on Facebook, 20 million photos on Flickr. You have to join in the conversation, before you get left behind.

4) Social media as simply a fad. It’s got no long term/staying power. The case of Friendster is commonly cited as the example of social media being a fad. This is only one case, but the first blog is dated 1982 so it’s not a flash in the pan. If you don’t start using these new technologies NOW you, and more importantly, your business, risk getting left behind.

5) The need for transparency and the fear of losing control of your brand. Those that need to control every press release and make sure that what is being said meets the party line think that social media is too risky. Business owners who think that participation in social media makes you vulnerable and means that you lose control of your brand need to learn this is not the case. Participating in social media means that you actually get more control than you may have had previously - you can respond to any negative comments and move the discussion to your corporate blog.

6) The need for privacy. LinkedIn and Facebook have privacy settings. Set appropriate limits both in terms of who to add and what information you put out there. You control the content. Don’t put EVERYTHING if you feel that it may infringe on your privacy. Use these tools appropriately, understand that you’re in control, and limit your risk by using these technologies in the right way.

7) “Social Media is just fluff.”  People say that Facebook is just fluff - all those zombies and bunnies and garden patches! But the sheer volume of people using it, shows that there is relevance in it. There is a lot of fluff in TV but that doesn’t stop companies from spending billions in advertisements in these media. Your company can benefit from social media if you implement the tools appropriately.

“I don’t have time for social media”  This excuse allows people to negate doing something that they have to do. You can’t afford not to at least consider what your competition is doing with social media and to find out what you can do with social media. You can reach your customers more effectively through social media and by building community. Overall, a social media campaign costs less than a traditional campaign. You may need to hire someone to help you navigate the social media waters and to do it correctly, but that cost will only be a positive investment. 

9) “The only professional way of doing it is the traditional way.” Social media tends to be seen as either “for, or by amateurs”. Social media strategists are considered snake oil salesmen still. Social media is NOT only for amateurs, it’s not an appropriate comment at all. For people who only do traditional marketing, they should transfer the budget for those projects to social media for one month to see how it effects it.

10) “Show me the money. Where is the ROI (Return On Investment)”. There is a dearth of information (publicly available - what has been the return on investment in social media?). Wal-Mart episode - got bad marketing. Mazda did a similar thing. Despite their huge presence, they still had to lay off people and cut off costs. Social media-based marketing is not the end and be all, but it is a component that you can use in your marketing arsenal. Traditional marketing campaigns are even harder to measure in terms of ROI.

Mhairi’s main and central example on huge ROI for using social media - a UK company “ WigglyWigglers” that engaged in a great social media campaign. This is a gardening company. They have a podcast, YouTube channel, a blog, a newsletter and they use them actively to share information on the worms for gardening. The result: they now have over 40,000 podcast subscribers, 43,000 newsletter subscribers, more than 800 friends on Facebook, customers in New Zealand and North America, they’ve improved their Google Page Rank massively, online sales 50% of their total sales, and they’ve done this all with a 97% reduction in their advertising costs. That really proves the ROI on these technologies.

The bottom line is that traditional marketers can no longer ignore the benefits of social media. All the results attest to the fact that traditional, old-school marketers need to learn some of these tools, and harnessing these tools can only benefit you. 

We just had a (somewhat pointless) federal election in Canada yesterday. There’s generally supposed to be a blackout ban on televising or broadcasting the results  until all of the polls across the country are closed. Because of our geographic spread, polls in Newfoundland closed more than 3 hours before those in Vancouver had. In fact, when the polls closed in Newfoundland, I still hadn’t voted in Vancouver.

The CBC is reporting today that the broadcast blackout was “broken” by the use of social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook.

Canadians with an internet connection were among those who could find their way around that particular election rule Tuesday night.

Several blogs and social networking sites that are available across the country posted comments and information about results in Eastern Canada while voters in western regions were still heading to the polls.

And satellite TV beamed Atlantic Canada’s results to the West well before the law permits.

Section 329 of the Canada Elections Act bans the transmission of election results from any electoral district where polls have closed to districts where the polls are still open. [source]

CBC reporter Susan Ormistan, who was tracking the election results, said that while it was expected that social networking sites would break Section 329, there was nothing done to counter that.

Canada is going to have to look at this “new technology” in time for the next election to prevent this from happening again, or it’s going to need to look at that Section and see how it can be updated. And the States, with their upcoming Federal election, better have a good idea on how to handle this too.  (image source, screenshot by me)

This is a follow-up post for the presentation Lisa Thomas-Tench gave this evening at Net Tuesday. Lisa has worked with community and capacity building organizations around the world and traveled to Africa last year to build schools and work in the communities.

The main thing that Lisa wanted to make sure came across during her presentation was that online supportive international projects are subject to the same challenges as standard, off-line charitable donations. Many people don’t realize this, and tend to assume that because it’s online, it’s going to be easier.

There is an absolute explosion of social networking for social causes type sites out there now, so it’s more important than ever to do your research to find out exactly where it is your money is going.

Like our mantra in social networking, make sure the organization you’re donating to is transparent. It’s vital to make sure that the right people are getting the right funds so that your donation has the right impact. You want to know how much of the organization’s donations (on or offline) are going to marketing, salaries, administration and other expenses, and how much are going to the actual projects and the people running or participating in those projects.

Be aware when you’re looking for a project to support, that you find one that supports local capacity building and has strong, two-way communication. Some projects can do both capacity building and two-way communication if they’re done well.   (image sources: Lisa Thomas-Tench)

Alberto Masetti-Zannini argues that participation mechanisms are key: “NGOs have struggled for a long time to build effective participation mechanisms in the developing world. Relevant and correct information from the bottom of the development pyramid is necessary to make knowledgeable decisions about their work.”

But, Alberto is optimistic: “Indeed, Web 2.0 tools are beginning to change this situation, by generating and disseminating local content and knowledge in an open, shared structure. But are NGOs adopting these new technologies in their knowledge management practices?”

Lisa has a few tips to share with people interested in how best to spend their online fundraising dollars:

• Keep it small by using sites like Dreambank
• Keep it personal. Micro loans from sites like Kiva keep your donation personal, and goes directly to the people you’re trying to help.
• Research and take your time before you donate. All of the projects need to have the backing of an actual charity. You can’t just throw up a project and get people to give you money. Look at sites like Give Meaning to help you find worthy projects.

There are several ways that social networking and Web 2.0 tools are helping to spread awareness, raise funds, and share knowledge.

• William Kamkwamba has a windmill blog here. My first thought was “what’s a windmill blog??”, but was soon completely impressed by the “About” page:

Starting at 14, rather than accept his fate, William started borrowing books from a small community lending library located at his former primary school. He borrowed a 5th grade American textbook called Using Energy, which depicted a wind turbine on its cover. He decided to build a windmill to power his family’s home and obviate the need for kerosene, which provided only smoky, flickering, distant and expensive light after dark. First he built a prototype, then his initial 5-meter windmill out of a broken bicycle, tractor fan blade, old shock absorber, and blue gum trees. He was able to power four light bulbs and two radios, and charge neighbors’ mobile phones. He then rebuilt a 12 meter windmill to better catch the wind above the trees, and added a car battery for storage, as well as homemade light switches and circuit breakers.

You can help William’s education and engineering projects with a secure donation via PayPal. Through a generous donor’s matching grant, contributions of $100 or more will be doubled! Payments appear as Griot Digital, LLC

• There are several sites dedicated to sharing knowledge, including: Knowledge Management for Development, Web2ForDev, and Development through Dialogue.  
• Share information via SMS and online tools with sites like TradeNet.biz. The goal of TradeNet.biz is to create a platform where farmers and traders across the world can share market information via mobile networks and the web.
• Crowdsource crisis information - who better to tell you what’s going on during a crisis than somene involved?

  Ushahidi, which means ”testimony” in Swahili, is a website that was developed to map reports of violence in Kenya after the post-election fallout at the beginning of 2008. Ushahidi’s roots are in the collaboration of Kenyan citizen journalists during a time of crisis.The new Ushahidi Engine is being created to use the lessons learned from Kenya to create a platform that allows anyone around the world to set up their own way to gather reports by mobile phone, email and the web - and map them. It is being built so that it can grow with the changing environment of the web, and to work with other websites and online tools.

Are there any tools you’ve used in the past that we’ve missed?

I’m a big proponent of Citizen Journalism - clearly, I’m one myself. Yes, I do have some journalism training, but because I’m employed as a blogger and a freelancer and do not have a mainstream outlet backing me, I’m not considered a “professional journalist”.

When my local chapter of the High Tech Communicators Exchange put on a presentation about this very topic, I was intrigued. I couldn’t make it to the actual presentation, but thankfully, they’re starting to get the hang of social media and posted a video to blip.tv. You can watch the whole thing here if you want, but it’s long, and frankly, I didn’t start actually taking notes till about 45 minutes in.

The speaker, Paul Sullivan is the editor-in-chief of Orato, a Canada-based news site and pioneer in grassroots citizen journalism through first-person reports of global news and lifestyle stories. Paul has over 30 years experience in journalism. Formerly, he was Western Editor of The Globe and Mail; the Managing Editor of The Vancouver Sun, Editor-in-Chief of the Winnipeg Sun, host of CBC Radio’s Vancouver morning show and Senior News Editor at The Journal, the highly-rated CBC-TV news program. (I find it very interesting that a citizen journalist site still uses traditional old world media titles.)

The things Paul said that made me start taking notes was that citizen journalists and citizen journalism sites are not looking to just tell the story, they’re being asked to live the story. Citizen journalists are encouraged to do the exact opposite of what “professional” journalists are taught to do - they’re encouraged to be subjective, not objective. We want to know how the experience made a person feel.

Citizen journalism is leveling the playing field between “regular” people and “professional” journalists. The civilized discourse that the news is, is going to become more civilized, less manipulative and less unbalanced.

The kind of stories that Orato is looking to tell are the kinds of stories that professional journalists either haven’t told or don’t tell. For example, the story of a guy who has been on more than 300 job interviews without getting a job and wonders what’s wrong with him; the story of living with the DC Sniper, as told by his wife or the story of a 5′9″, 140 lb man, who stopped a 6′4″ homeless man from committing suicide after the city of Seattle confiscated all of his worldly belongings.

These are the kinds of stories that will never ever get commissioned - they’re the kinds of stories you’ll never see on the 6 o’clock news. You’ll get the story that sells - rather than hearing the story and experiences of a man who makes his living by clubbing baby seals, just like his father, and his grandfather, the news hook is Paul McCartney going out and standing on the ice. McCartney didn’t do anything, but he was the news hook.

The great authenticator here is experience. People reporting their hearts out while focussing on the story. It’s having a sense of the eyes and ears on the ground, that sense of empathy, and what it’s like to be someone who is actually experiencing the news rather than just reporting it.

Like the X Files said, “the truth is out there”. It’s what’s going on in the world, on a day to day basis. Citizen journalism is the full impact of the truth. it doesn’t look like anything that we expected “the truth” to look like. There are 6.8+ billion versions of the truth. This citizen journalism, when it’s concerted, has more power and more value, more meaning and more utility than when you sample it one voice at a time, and it’s a voice that is growing in wisdom, knowledge and capacity.

The end result is that citizen journalism isn’t going to make traditional journalism die a lonely death. The volume of information that the public should be hearing about is still alive, but it’s all moving to the internet. What it does mean, which is something I’ve been discussing with other journalists, both online and off, and a post I’m working on, is that traditional newspapers are dying. If you, as a citizen journalist, can influence the discussion online, and get your story out and participate, you’re ahead of the curve.