Ok, celebration time again, this time as a fundraiser – NEMO presents Mixed Mania, a benefit exhibit for Burnside Skate Park, opening Friday, June 26, 2009, 7-11pm. The show will run through Monday, July 31, 2009 at NEMO: 1875 SE Belmont Street in Portland, OR.
Artists include: Jon Humphries, Chet Childress, Gus Van Sant, Rick Charnowski
Reception follows Red Bull Manny Mania Amateur Finals, 1pm at Pioneer Square
Bryce Kanights- Part 1 of 3 from Nemo Design on Vimeo.
Bryce’s work will be part of the Mixed Mania exhibition at Nemo Friday June 26th – details here.
Once again, Twitter leads me to a great article. It is hard to believe that some people still “don’t get” Twitter but when I use it as I feel it is best used, as a business tool, it is incomparable for exposing me to some great thought leaders. Unlike RSS feeds, by following certain people on Twitter I find the good stuff that’s important to me more directly.
Today’s example is via Jay Rosen @jayrosen_nyu – here’s his Twitter profile – “I teach journalism at NYU, write the blog PressThink, direct NewAssignment.Net, and try to grok new media. I don’t do lifecasting but mindcasting on Twitter.” In the somewhat twisted vernacular of 140 characters he tweeted the following – “Right on, @AmandaRMichel. “Redundancy is a network fact-checking tool.” See her essay on OffTheBus: http://tr.im/pJu3 Learn, @ivortossell.”
I followed the link. The article that was linked to at the Columbia Journalism Review is called Get Off The Bus and it is a fascinating overview of the future of journalism. As Amanda Michel writes – “OffTheBus (OTB) [is] a citizen-powered campaign news site co-sponsored by The Huffington Post and Jay Rosen’s NewAssignment, at New York University’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. Inspired by Timothy Crouse’s The Boys on the Bus, which chronicled a campaign’s ability to manipulate the press, we instructed our citizen journalists to steer clear of the horse race and the top-down coverage that dominates the mainstream press.”
For anyone interested in the decline of newspapers and how journalism will morph into the future you could do worse than follow Rosen. Insights like this are worth following him for – another tweet of his – “In 1976, 27% had a great deal of confidence in our press; in 2006, 4.5% did. During this time journalists became far more educated. So: WTF?”
Get Off The Bus is a must read too.
Follow me on Twitter and Nemo on Twitter.
The world lost a wonderfully acerbic writer this week – Steven Wells. I knew Steve back in the late 70’s as he was friends with all of us in Gang of Four and was a regular contributor to the Leeds post-punk scene. In later years he wrote for the New Musical Press [fortunately before it became a shallow imitation of itself] and up until his death he had written a weekly column for the UK’s Guardian Newspaper.
Here is the Guardian’s farewell to him – in it are links to some of his best writing.
And here is another eulogy from Clash Music.
He will be missed.
I have only ever been to Cannes for the MIDEM Music Conference so obviously I have missed out on the advertising world’s shenanigans during Cannes Lions 56th International Advertising Festival. Not to worry though, it appears that the folks at the Duffy Agency are covering things on their blog and from what I have read today they have saved me at least 2,600 Euros, not to mention the cost of flying from Portland, Oregon.
Case in point – here’s the list of 10 things that The Duffy folks don’t want to hear again next year. [In fact Nemo's Interactive Director Justin Spohn, said on Twitter "that those are 10 things I don't want to hear ever, anywhere...!"]:
1. ”It’s not about advertising, it’s about engagement.”
2. ”Print’s days are numbered.”
3. ”You don’t want to advertise, you want to have a conversation.”
4. ”It’s about having a great narrative, a great story.”
5. ”Advertising is no longer a one-way process. The consumer can now talk back to you.”
6. ”You have to let go when it comes to the controls for your brand online. Consumers will take it anyway.”
7. ”Online banner and display advertising is a broken model.”
8. ”The next big breakthrough will be centered around mobile devices.”
9. ”Social media is not a fad, it’s here to stay.”
10. ”Consumers are ’always on’.”
Read their whole post here. Follow The Duffy Agency on Twitter here.
Hopefully by this time next year that sad list of worn out phrases will get a fresh coat of paint although I suspect there may well be some papering over the cracks instead.
Let’s keep this simple – the scenario that is unfolding in the battle between the big three internet companies that matter, Google, Twitter and Facebook, is about access to personal data; what you care to share with Facebook and Twitter is important and Google wants in on it. With Twitter and Facebook it lies in the data surrounding experiential awareness and reputation management; the who, the what, the where. In Google’s case it is, in the words of Fred Vogelstein, about how “for the last decade or so, the Web has been defined by Google’s algorithms—rigorous and efficient equations that parse practically every byte of online activity to build a dispassionate atlas of the online world.”
Dispassionate atlas versus he says, she says.
That’s not a pithy statement; what you and I say about a brand online is becoming more important than indexing – Vogelstein again – “Internet users behave[d] differently on Facebook than anywhere else online: They use[d] their real names, connect[ed] with their real friends, link[ed] to their real email addresses, and share[d] their real thoughts, tastes, and news. Google, on the other hand, knows [knew] relatively little about most of its users other than their search histories and some browsing activity.” Characters in [ ] my edits.
He goes on – “In [Facebook CEO] Zuckerberg’s vision, users will query this “social graph” to find a doctor, the best camera, or someone to hire—rather than tapping the cold mathematics of a Google search. It is a complete rethinking of how we navigate the online world, one that places Facebook right at the center. In other words, right where Google is now.” Google can currently search and index your tweets but Facebook is a walled garden and unless Facebook grants access to that data within, then Google is out of luck. The battle for dominance in the “promised land of online brand advertising” has been engaged.
In the past Facebook users have spoken out angrily about any perceived misuse of their personal data and Facebook has always backed down. Last April Google announced the ability to create detailed profiles so that anyone searching for a persons name could find that profile – it remains to be seen if there was a heavy take up of that service offering.
What does this intercine warfare between Facebook and Google mean for you and I? I’d say that now, more than ever, we have to pay attention to our personal brand reputation and brands must monitor all instances of conversations, both positive and negative, online.
Related posts:
John Battelle – Google Vs Facebook? What we Learn from Twitter
SEO and SEM will be Dead As You Know It in 6 Months
Tony “Frosty” Welch – Who Killed Social Media?
Update June 24th 09 – Facebook Messages to Become Public by Default
