There are major companies out there that have entire teams dedicated to social media. The question is – what do folks who work on those teams do all day? We find out from Intel’s Social Media Strategist, Kelly Feller.
Whenever I see a new ad on TV for a company I like, I always try finding the meaning behind the meaning then I ask: did they say what they meant?
Today it’s about relating and being real while standing comfortably in your own shoes talking about yourself, what you do and what you’re all about. I think social media has been an enormously helpful vehicle helping people express ourselves, build capital in ourselves through what they do, what we share and how they comport themselves. This blog has helped me evolve in many ways.
That’s what I like most about the Sponsors of Tomorrow, the ad campaign that I got to help share with people interested in Intel. My favorite of the two videos is this one:
From the get go, the music cracks me up. Then I totally get all empathetic — or pathetic — because I think how geek-fired up I get walking down the hall at Intel headquarters on any given day and bumping into Pat Gelsinger or Silicon Photonics guru Mario Paniccia. They always stop, look me in the eyes, ask “how are you doing?” and reach out to give me a firm hand shake. A handshake from Pat nearly lifts anyone off of their feet like Bam-Bam from the Flinstone’s cartoons.
Tomorrow is not a waiting game. It’s a “let’s give it all we’ve got today” ideal for creative and innovative people I work with inside Intel. Yes we get to see scientists revolutionize transistors, shrinking them down, packing more into computer chips. Maybe it’s for the sake of keeping Moore’s Law alive, but I really think it’s because…well, we just can’t help it. We’re wired that way. We want to stimulate change that will improve what we already made. We’re restless about today, but confident we’re doing all we can to make the most of it.
That’s what makes Intel different from anywhere I’ve worked before. That’s what makes the place special and useful to so many industries. More things have Intel inside, from big computers to tiny MIDs, from local school districts to government agencies on up to NASA and other research centers around the world. More than anything, this is because our confrontational collaboration with ourselves, teammates, goals and resources. Make a mistake, fix if quickly and prepare better for next time. Or, sucessfully meet your goal, look for how to fix something then prepare for doing better next time. Relentless, but for some, for many reasons its worth it. Intel is worth it, thanks to the people inside.
As a father of two, it reminds me of my internal desire to lead by example, learn more by teaching, invest in future education and devote time and resources to making the most of today. That happens inside Intel every day, with an eye and value on tomorrow.
This or the “Oops” 30-second commercial certainly didn’t evoke all of this, but the meaning behind the meaning did get my wheels spinning. I think the Sponsors of Tomorrow theme struck a chord in me that is real, and promising. We all have heroes, but to become one requires being yourself, your best self, and sharing it with others, especially those with whom you share a common drive.
Intel culture and abilities are different, but the people inside for the most part share the same drive that motivates others to build a better tomorrow.
Jeremiah Owyag ignited a Super Bowl Twitterthon and many are stepping in to use social media to engage more with the Super Bowl. Join the fun and Twitter your take on the TV ads hitting you on Super Bowl Sunday.
1) Sign up: Get a twitter account, got that? Good.
2) Send your vote to @superbowlads: When we’re watching the game in real time, simply send a reply to superbowlads. I created this Twitter account just for this virtual event. Reply to the superbowlads account, name the commerical, and give it a rating of 1-5 stars, 5 being the best.
examples:
“@superbowlads That Pepsi commercial was funny 4 stars”
“@superbowlads The Hillary Clinton advertisement was bunko 2 stars”
“@superbowlads Bud-wise-er, that was so 10 years ago, weak. 1 star”
I came across this on YouTube this weekend. I think I first saw this about a year ago and I have talked about it many time ssince. It was an ad that aired in Latin American countries promoting Intel’s Centrino Mobile Technology (now Duo Processor technology) for laptops. I wish this played in America, but I guess there are so many reasons why it didn’t. Heck, maybe it can be “re-purposed” somehow! Well, I’m thankful that at least we have YouTube!!
Politics is one good reason for local TV stations to invite bloggers to participate. Check this out, from the TV industry newsletter ShopTalk.
WMUR-TV, the Hearst-Argyle Television station in Manchester, NH, which has been cited in National Journal as “The most important local TV station in Politics,” has partnered with popular blogging community Gather.com to empower American voters in the forthcoming Presidential debates.
Throughout May, WMUR will sponsor an open writing competition hosted by Gather.com and judged by the blogging community at large. The competition will yield 15 citizen journalists from New Hampshire (five each of Republicans, Democrats and Independents) who will cover the June 3 Democratic and June 5 Republican debates, which will also be simulcast on WMUR, CNN, and their respective Web sites.
Entitled “Your Voice, Your Vote, Your Next President”, the competition, part of WMUR’s and Hearst-Argyle’s Commitment 2008 election-coverage effort, can be accessed at www.wmur.com by entering the Politics section, which will take visitors to the special site wmur.gather.com (more)
The Virginia Tech killings showed how mainstream and social media, like the social networking site Facebook, are fitting together to cover news that has a broad audience. It also reveals a major divide between those embracing technology and those who are trying to first understand it better.We need both. San Francisco Chronicle writer Joe Garofoli on April 20, 2007 wrote:“The questions and concerns about the boundaries of openness are being raised not just by traditional media fuddy-duddies but by leaders of new media, those who often praise the virtues of a “democratized” media world in which anyone can publish his own writing, video or photos.”
There is a lot of learning ahead of us – ethics, potentially dangerous uses – but there’s no need to reinvent the wheel.Rather, many are building on lessons learned from the printing press, birth of radio, TV, cable, Internet and now the people at-large who are media producers and worldwide distributors news, information and babble. Garofoli shows the audience for Fox and CNN on Tuesday, April 17:
The 1.8 million people who watched Fox on Monday, the day the shooting occurred, represented a 115 percent jump in ratings over Fox’s average for the first part of this year.
CNN’s 1.4 million viewers were a ratings jump of 186 percent for that same period. MSNBC.com had 108.8 million page views Tuesday, a record for the site.
Garofoli provides a variety of soundbites that show how different people and professions are looking at this. Reading some of these (pasted below), I get the sense that many people are not watching primetime TV shows like CSI, Law&Order and other crime-themed programs.These shows explore many of the ethical and potentially harmful possibilities that come from a society living with more technology-powered capabilities than ever before.Most of the storylines may seem fear or protectionist-based, but they allow us to explore possibilities.
Jeff Jarvis wrote on his BuzzMachine.com blog, “There is no control point anymore. When anyone and everyone — witnesses, criminals, victims, commentators, officials and journalists — can publish and broadcast as events happen, there is no longer any guarantee that news and society itself can be filtered, packaged, edited, sanitized, polished, secured.”
“It is future shock,” said Micah Sifry, executive editor of the Personal Democracy Forum, a
New York think-tank that explores the intersections of technology and politics. “The technology has developed so fast that the culture hasn’t caught up with all of it. On one hand, you have the advocates, who want NBC to release all of (Cho’s manifesto). On the other, you have people who are saying, ‘Wait a minute.’ This is a very challenging moment. What works best is an open-networked system. It’s the difference between trusting a few people to make decisions for everyone and trusting many people.”
“Conflicted is the right word,” said Dave Winer, a pioneering blogger and influential figure in new media. “Yes, I realize that it’s unfortunate right now that this guy gets to control the discussion. We hadn’t foreseen this use of the technology because, as utopians, we tend to look for the good stuff. I liked to think I had a balanced view, and could see where bloggers weren’t doing good, but I hadn’t seriously considered our tools used to further such a bad cause.
“The lesson for this week is that the news is everywhere. The news is on Facebook,” said Jennifer Sizemore, editor in chief of MSNBC.com. Like other news outlets, MSNBC turned to social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook to find students to interview about the Virginia Tech slayings. “I don’t view them as the competition,” said Sizemore. “I see them as enlarging the conversation.”
“In the end, it’s going to get out there,” said Jay Wallace, executive producer for news at Fox News Channel. “Even if every newspaper and cable news channel doesn’t put it out there, somebody will.In those early hours, it is a feeding frenzy. We know that people are flipping around everywhere for news.”
People who are keenly interested will flip through TV, Radio and the Internet, where social media sites offer insight into people’s daily lives. Sometimes people are flipping through all of these at the same time.
We have more people participating than ever, and lots of interesting viewpoints on how we can move ahead in our rapidly changing, technology-driven, new media-filled lives. PodTech’s Rio Pesino talks with a good collection of mainstream and new media pros in this vidoe mashup where he asks, “What’s missing form local media?”
The Radio and Television News Directors Association (RTNDA) is happening this week in Las Vegas along side the annual gathering of the National Association of Broadcasters.
Well respected KGO-TV tech and business reporter David Louie is hosting a panel to help TV reporters file stories from wireless cafes. A laptop with Wi-Fi connection to the Internet allows a reporter to edit and “file” a story or b-roll from the field. The technology keeps getting better. Maybe the wonders of WiMAX could someday soon take things to a new level.
Today I read in the broadcast industry newsletter, ShopTalk, a Television Week story by Elizabeth Jensen. Seeing and embracing change — here are some excerpts from Jensen:
“The digital revolution is really hitting home in newsrooms, we find this year, even more than in previous years,” said RTNDA President Barbara Cochran.
…the convention played on some of the newsroom’s technology fears with its slogan “Don’t let the digital revolution leave you behind,” Bill Roswell, RTNDA’s chairman-elect and convention producer, has a more embracing outlook. “There’s a brave new world out there that is very exciting,” he said. “We’re not just radio or television stations anymore; we’re information providers.”
this year, the topics of interest that came up over and over were such technology challenges as the conversion to high-definition, deciding what material to make available for podcasts or cell phone-casts, how newsrooms can best use Web platforms, the impact of one-person newsgathering, how to bring the audience into the newsgathering process, even the thorny legal issues raised by repurposing material for outlets other than traditional radio and TV broadcasts.
Players involved this year are a nice mix of seasoned journalists, new media pros and technology experts (from Jensen’s story):
ABC News video blogger Amanda Congdon: examine “what the next generation of news will look like. [Almost] all the people who are on that panel … come from media organizations or are doing jobs that we wouldn’t have imagined three or four years ago.”
Congdon’s session is moderated by CNN’s chief technology correspondent Miles O’Brien, and they’re joined by Zadi Diaz, new-media producer and co-founder of Smashface Productions; Terry Heaton, senior VP, Media 2.0, audience research and development; Elizabeth Osder, senior director of product for Yahoo News; and Michael Rosenblum of Rosenblum Associates, a pioneer in the single-person video journalism world.
For better or worse, in the Bay Area we’ve seen and felt the revolution for quiet some time. At KRON-TV in the early to mid 1990s, launched their Website and were among the first broadcasters to make news video stories available online. The station also launched a cable channel called BayTV, where I saw for the first time a “one man band” daily news pro producing, scripting, shooting, editing and reporting. That was crazy to me! In 2000, thing began changing even more dramatically and today we’re seeing “single person video journalism” on the flagship KRON newscasts inspired by Rosenblum.
Those may be fundamental changes, but what I learned visiting KNTV this month is even more exciting. How can boradcasters work together with people — bloggers, citizen journalists — to make the daily news more meaningful to the community. That pursuit has always driven the best local TV and radio newsrooms. More people seem to agree that there may be potential benefits to “building community” “reaching out” “involving” the community, rather than just reporting on the community. This was a major topic exlpored duing the first Silicon Valley Chapter of the Social Media Club, hosted at KNTV. Here’s a link to my earlier post and links to more info from that meeting from Mario Sundar.
Lots of momentum for change and it’s inspiring to see professionals from different industries come together. Maybe the real things to observe here:
Technology is ever more important to every industry
Social media is allowing more people to try new things, getting more people involved and participating
I saw several stories today about business reporter Bambi Francisco (her blog) leaving MarketWatch for her video start-up Vator.tv. It’s become another story on journalism ethics and new rules for communications as mainstream media and new/social media fuse. Full disclosure and fair agreements are essential, but mistakes will be made that bring consequences. Consequences that are opportunities for movin’ ahead better together.
CNET provided some analysis on the Bambi story. Their story was titled “Rewriting ethics rules for the new media…”Some members of the so-called old-media establishment may no longer be able to wag a finger at what they say is questionable ethics among bloggers.” Here are some interesting soundbites from the CNET story that show how things are movin’ ahead…sometimes boldly, sometime kickin’ and screamin’.
Bob Steele is an ethics adviser at journalism think tank Poynter Institute speaking generally here:
“Good news organizations have checks and balances that protect the independence of the journalist. Editors challenge reporters who might get too close to sources. Organizational guidelines restrict financial investments to protect against conflicts and competing loyalties. Those standards, practices and guidelines, while imperfect, are still important.”
MarketWatch Editor In Chief David Callaway gave Francisco his blessing before she accepted the Vator.tv offer:
“Conflicts and potential conflicts are something that journalists deal with every day. We often have to deal with them on a case-by-case basis and find separate solutions. We feel that the guidelines we set up work. (Francisco is not allowed to write about any of the companies that make pitches through Vator, and she was supposed to steer clear of writing in favor of Vator’s interests.) You can’t just totally rewrite the rules, but there needs to be some happy medium…the rigid rules of the past may not always apply to new media. Is there a potential for a conflict in Bambi’s case? Yes. Do I think we can avoid it? Yes.”
Maybe this is the part where “transparency” might’ve helped Bambi?
Francisco said she has not revealed her relationship with Vator to MarketWatch readers, nor on her personal blog because she was waiting for the company to “truly get off the ground.” She said she has not written about any of the companies that have posted business ideas to Vator and that she would never give Thiel or his companies favorable treatment. Francisco added that “old-media rules” are still important but that there has “always been a problem with judging objectivity.”
“Why would you give stock to a journalist? Put it this way: I’ve stopped accepting jobs as an adviser for companies. These companies don’t want me to be an adviser. They don’t need me advising them. What they want is coverage on TechCrunch.”
Craig Newmark, founder of online-classifieds powerhouse Craigslist and the member of an investment group that’s starting a news aggregation site called DayLife.
“Part of fairness involves disclosure of the relationships between the reporter and the reported, particularly if payment in money or influence is involved. I’d suggest anyone just state it, and leave judgment to the mass of readers who are smarter than usually credited.”
MSM journalist embracing citizen journalism? Here’s an abbreviated post I saw on Bambi’s MarketWatch blog that shows what happens when MSM journalists participate in dialogues with new media enthusiasts.
Refering to “Confronting the Citizen Journalist,” a panel at the iHollywood Forum, where Bambi was joined by Leonard Brody, CEO and co-founder of NowPublic, and FeedBurner’s vice president, Don Loeb. They talked about the book “The Wisdom of Crowds” (audio excerpts of the book).
Maybe we ought to begin trusting “information viewed and vetted by more people than a few editors. In the process of collaborating, people are accountable to one another. If an editor gets a story wrong, he’s disciplined internally. If someone in a collaborative process gets a story wrong, he’s publicly humiliated, Brody said. Moderator Michael Stroud, a co-founder of the iHollywood Forum, ended that discussion by saying that perhaps it’s not flawed facts that citizen journalists would provide but different information.Indeed, it’s different, but that doesn’t mean it’s false. It’s just a different perspective. And, at the end of the day, people are voting for this type of journalism. A recent study conducted by Piper Jaffray and comScore showed that 31% of traffic in October 2006 went to sites built around user-generated content, such as MySpace, operated by News Corp. (NWS); Facebook; Metacafe; and Google’s (GOOG) YouTube. That was up from just 3% in April 2005.Now, whether that percentage will continue to rise is unknown. It does seem that many attractive new ideas are quickly embraced by adherents, but people often lose interest. We cannot extrapolate that traffic growth — certainly not at its 2005-06 pace — because one contributor to the increased popularity is curiosity, not true demand or need. Additionally, the fusion of user-generated content and traditional content makes it difficult for anyone to know what users are going after. It’s likely a bit of both.Nonetheless, I believe that we’ll see more of it in journalism and across the Web. The Web has become an archipelago of tiny villages tied together not by proximity but by interests. In the old-style town square, passionate, informed people came together to debate and share news and create dialogue. Today the Web is that square.Traditional media have lost their monopoly on journalism, most people agree. And more and more, everyday citizens will be plying the trade — once they find the village they want to be part of.
The Vatican has been worldwide media savvy with print, radio and is now starting it’s own broadcast network. Sure those are “traditional” media, but all media — old, new, social — is media. And this is the age when we can all participate like media, maybe just not like some of the world’s wealthy media giants.
I found this story in the broadcast daily newsletter, ShopTalk. It struck me for what it says and doen’t say. The Vatican is making a big investment to create ways to share their voices, passions and stories past, present and future. But like an earlier post in this blog, Robert Scoble interviewed a Catholic Sisiter who is a top ranking IT guru for the Vatican. That interview showed that the Vatican — like companies, individuals, families…good and bad — have strong desires to show and tell stories.
This is the age of expression! It’s best to invest so that you can show and tell your stories clearly, intelligently, with passion and insight. If you have the insider’s view, you get to present it first hand to the world. Doing it with full disclosure, consideration for audiences and good storytelling skills will allow everyone to get information from “the source” and make their own decisions about what they believe.
Here’s the story:
Eric J. Lyman at Reuters/Hollywood Reporter,the Vatican plans new TV network:
Days after Pope Benedict XVI criticised the media for its “destructive” influence, the Vatican on Monday announced plans to launch its first television network by the end of the year.
Pope Benedict XVI greets the crowd at the start of his weekly Angelus address over St Peter’s square at the Vatican REUTERS/Tony Gentile
H2O will broadcast news and original entertainment programming worldwide in seven languages, according to a statement. Additional details were sketchy.Over the years, the Vatican has been quick to adopt new technologies in its efforts to communicate with the world’s more than 1 billion Catholics. In 1996, the Vatican introduced its Web portal nearly three years before the Italian state unveiled its own Web site. And it has embraced digital and satellite technology. (more)
Movin' Ahead 