Pic ©Losanjealous.com

We live in a world of constant updating. News moves swiftly from PDA to mobile phone to laptop to desktop in seconds. We Twitter, we text, we temper our every moment if we are not careful; we modify our immediate world-view for consumption online to passive recipients who make what they will of our digital discourse. Who owns the information that you have set free? Dwell on that a minute as I move on.

Google is your friend for research and your archenemy if you don’t own what Google’s spiders discover as they crawl every nook and cranny of the web. The information that others post about you or your company should reference content that you have delivered, written and posted yourself and preferably be content that can be verified easily from third party sites and other online sources. Own your message, if you don’t someone else will.

Today I received an email from the publicists for the indie rock band, The Airborne Toxic Event [we'll leave the Don Delillo reference aside for now,] which contained an open letter to a ‘music critic,’ Ian Cohen, who works for the indie music fans’ online bible, Pitchfork. In short, in his review of the band’s new album, he eviscerated it as a work of musical plagiarism.

Cohen is of course entitled to his opinion, his purview as a critic demands it. He is a filter and an influencer and he writes for Pitchfork which in turn operates within those same modern parameters; Pitchfork has taken on the mantle of challenging the once-hallowed print journals of music criticism and therefore its responsibility does not end at the node of an ISP. Within that responsibility lies a problem - the print magazines had editors. Editors who once were the filters and influencers, soft blocking and often hard balling writers who turned in weak copy, guiding and counseling writers who had the metaphorical fish on the line and teaching them how to land the story. The internet has swept that aside and Pitchfork has happily built and attached its business to those loose moorings.

Worse still, Pitchfork does not embrace openness - you cannot comment on any of the posts - it’s a good old-fashioned web site, so communication is restricted and readers opinions will never be taken in to consideration.

And that’s why The Toxic Airborne Events’ open letter to the music blogs of the world was a very smart move. They were able to calmly and sensibly challenge Ian Cohen’s review without stooping to the same low levels that his review had reached. They took the high road. They accept his criticism but challenge the presumptions he has formed about the band - “You’re wrong about our intentions, you’re wrong about how this band came together, you don’t seem to get the storytelling or the catharsis or the humor in the songs, and you clearly have some misconceptions about who we are as a band and who we are as people.”

And they don’t hold back as they defend the music scene in Silverlake and Los Feliz that was once much lauded by writers such as Cohen - “….it also seems to have very little to do with us. Much of your piece reads less like a record review and more like a diatribe against a set of ill-considered and borderline offensive preconceptions about Los Angeles. Los Angeles has an extremely vibrant blogging community, Silver Lake is a very close-knit scene of bands. We’re one of them. We cut our teeth at Spaceland and the Echo and have nothing to do with whatever wayward ideas you have about the Sunset Strip. That’s just bad journalism.”

In the face of a negative online story The Airborne Toxic Event did exactly right thing - they responded immediately and intelligently. No Pitchfork swift-boating for them.

On September 6th, during Portland’s annual MusicFestNW music festival, Nemo will play host to two panel discussions presented by The Recording Academy Pacific NW Chapter, Nemo Design, The Musicians Union Local 99 and Spectre. This event is Free for MusicFestNW attendees and for Recording Academy members.

From 1PM to 4PM on Saturday September 6th there will be two panels. At 1PM ‘Get In The Van! - A Survival Guide to Touring’ a panel on what to do now that gas prices are crimping bands’ touring plans will include:
Wes Howerton, Barsuk Records
Ben London, The Recording Academy
Slim Moon, Shotclock Management
Alicia J. Rose, Doug Fir Booking
Tracie Verlinde, BMI
Tom Windish, Windish Agency

At 2:30PM Get Out! - Building An Audience Online and Off a panel on using the internet wisely to build your fan base offline will include:
Dave Allen, Nemo
Amanda Diaz, YouTube
Kate Jackson, Sub Pop
Kevin Kusatsu, Sony/BMG
Frank Nieto, 230 Publicity
Julianne Shepherd, The Fader
Bekah Zietz, Suicide Squeeze

A reception follows the panels from 4PM - 6PM. For more information please call +1 206.834.1000

Nemo is located at 1875 SE Belmont St, Portland, Or 97214. +1 503.872.9631

Once the mainstream media and the more hysterical tech blogs have got over the fact that the success of the iPhone 3G launch caused Apple’s servers to be overloaded, we can sit back and take stock.

I own the iPhone v.1 and I’m currently happy without 3G access so I remain content with my device. One reason for staying put with the original model is that the new software update from Apple brings some rather cool new applications [or Apps in the vernacular,] that improve the original phone’s productivity.

I chose a couple of productivity apps, Zenbe, a list sharing tool and Jott, a voice to text tool. I got AirMe for uploading my iPhone pictures up to my Flickr account and added MPG and Spend [no link available, tsk, tsk] so if I care I can track my miles per gallon in the Element and set budgets for my gourmand extravaganzas. These apps all perform well without G3 and most were free. One app that fell into the epic fail bucket was Reqall. Couldn’t sign up on the iPhone and couldn’t load the web site either. Fail! Turns out that Jott does the same stuff anyway.

The most interesting app of all is Loopt which enables users to broadcast their whereabouts and send a status of a broad set of services and find interesting locations and reviews nearby. This could be the next breakout social networking platform as it works best from the phone [mobiles, not just the iPhone] and is simple to update ala Twitter. In fact it has a Twitter plug-in so you can post once and hit Twitter too. Follow me on Twitter here.

One problem though - Loopt could be a predators dream. In fact Loopt’s Be Safe page spells out in no uncertain terms that you need to control who has access to your location.

Anyway, here’s my thinking behind the title of this post. David Griner wrote a post entitled Are Blogs Still Good Places for Conversation? which at first glance I took as simply a Google bait tactic. The answer would seem to be “of course they are.” He raises a good point but I still believe a good, well written blog is the place for conversation. Twitter, a micro-blog, is not. I use my Twitter account to drive traffic back to my blog where the conversation can really open up. After all Twitter only allows 140 characters so truncated updates are the norm, which is fine. If I follow Marshall Kirkpatrick on Twitter I get up-to-the-minute breaking tech news from him but I prefer to read his blog at Read Write Web for a more in-depth review. On both my blogs, the other being Pampelmoose, I enjoy reading comments that can often be longer than the original post - something that is impossible with Twitter.

Joining the conversation and being invited in are two things I have stressed when it comes to advising our clients on their forays into social media advertising. A blog is the right venue for extending conversations, not a micro-blog. By all means post links to your original content stories to Twitter so that interested followers can link to your blog. Be sure to use FriendFeed to share your blog posts with others, use Tumblr too for the same reason, but understand that many of the social networking arenas, Twitter, Loopt even Facebook, are way ahead of the general online populations’ capacity to juggle all of them, and those folks not partaking in every widget, bell and whistle are your customers too.

Run a blog, embrace radical transparency, get invited in to communities that might enjoy your products and join the conversation. But whatever you decide to do, don’t do this - OHSU Director’s Blog. If you don’t immediately see why feel free to ask me.

DNCHARD and LVHARD too, why not?

Here’s the soundtrack to all that - Sébastien Tellier - Sexual Sportswear

Obama’s viral timepiece.

These days the advertising and marketing world is all abuzz with phrases such as - Social Media, Social Advertising, Facebook Ads, Mass Media Networking Advertising…..etc, etc.. In the last two weeks I have been a panelist at the L I S A seminar in Portland and the Hawaii MusicTech Conference in Honolulu. L.I.S.A., which is an acronym for Lessons In Social Advertising, was aimed at marketers and advertisers who [for some reason] don’t understand social networks or haven’t yet worked out how to advertise effectively to them. It focused on topics such as ‘What is social advertising?’ and ‘How do you get young people to recommend your brand?’ The Hawaii MusicTech panel discussed how musicians could effectively use social networks such as Facebook and MySpace to reach an audience and communicate with them.

Two sides of the table as it were. One group wants to advertise, or push, their messages to a mass audience, while the other wants to create a network of like-minded people who hopefully will pull content such as free MP3s and then “evangelize” on behalf of the musicians by spreading messages by electronic word of mouth. With no hint of schizophrenia I happily migrate between both camps.

To understand and embrace social networking is to place the idea that says “technology makes this possible” to one side and embrace the idea of the basic human need to stay in touch with other like-minded people at all times. As Clay Shirky says “The desire to be part of a group that shares, cooperates, or acts in concert is a basic human instinct.” Think about rock concerts for a minute…..

Most people that take a position on social networking and advertising come at it from a technological point of view, as in “technology has created the means for everyone to be connected and to stay in touch.” I disagree with that statement because it removes nature from the game. It is entirely natural for humans to want to interact as often as possible as we are all social animals. Cities are no more artificial (technological) than the hives of bees. Therefore the Internet is as natural as a spider’s web. People who believe that technology is driving our interactions are missing the point - we ourselves are technological devices, invented by ancient bacterial communities as a means of genetic survival. Bottom line - social media is as natural as apple pie as we all want to be as connected as possible - we can’t help it. [A really good book from which I have borrowed some thoughts is 'Straw Dogs' by John Gray, professor of European thought at LSE, published in the UK by Granta.]

Online networks might be seen as antidotes to boredom at work, school or college. These new social networks do more than transmit information about their members, they change behaviour by propagating moods. These days we can all share “news” really fast, even about ourselves - for example, my Facebook or Twitter status might say “I’m heading to the beach in Waikiki…” and the mood that simple statement makes might become very contagious.

The Internet confirms what we have all known for a long time - the world is ruled by the power of suggestion but in the case of social networking it is “influencers” that lead the suggesting. Then suggestions might become “group think.” John Gray writes - “in evolutionary prehistory, consciousness emerged as a side effect of language. Today it is a by product of media.”

So, the question currently being asked by companies and advertisers is “how do we market and advertise to social networks?” Having to ask that question suggests the rocky ground that online advertisers are standing on. For instance, Jack Myers sees nothing but doom and gloom in online marketing: He says “Advertising is simply not a sufficient revenue model to sustain content companies into the long-term future.” And goes on -

“I have preached evangelically for nearly three decades about the bifurcation of the media and advertising marketplace into 1) a transactional commodity business model and 2) a relationship-based brand-focused premium marketplace. Most media companies and agencies are investing appropriately in the technology resources required for their transactional businesses. [But] Brand building, relationship-based business models and premium-priced enterprises require completely new and innovative models, and can take years before they generate returns that justify the investments. Industry realities place enormous pressure on executives to adhere to traditional business models, and companies that foster and advance innovation are often drained of resources before they can deliver the return-on-investment demanded by the stock market, equity rights holders and VC investors. Typically, implementation of new business models must be forcefully imposed by the CEO, need the blessing of investors, and they cannot be managed by executives trained exclusively in the ways of traditional media and advertising.”

Neil Perkin in a slideshow entitled ‘What’s Next in Media’ that can be found here says that today - Social Media is counter-intuitive to communications media. Here’s one of his slides that shows just how counter-intuitive things have become for marketing online:

Meanwhile, the old way of marketing is through push messaging and therein lies the mistake of many of today’s marketing managers. Take a look at this slide to see how things don’t stack up nicely into a marketing message or ‘drop’ that has been long planned waiting its turn on the calendar.

The Linear model above reminds me of traditional TV and Print advertising. Some people in advertising and marketing today still view the Internet as a “channel” rather like TV.

Let’s consider another buzz phrase - viral marketing online. The success of YouTube in extending an advertising campaigns length and reach is now common currency. We’ve all seen the videos, perhaps even this one - My girlfriend and the Wii Fit. 2.2 million views and going strong.
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