It's been years since I've been "tagged" in a meme, and that's a bummer because I do love a meme. It's like Mad Libs for Bloggers. Prefab content you customize. Loves it.

So, thank you Brian Branca, for tagging me! This meme requires you to post seven things about yourself that others might not know. Here I go:

1. I was a Research Assistant in the British House of Commons. I worked for Tory MP Piers Merchant. During one of the IRA bomb scares there at that time, I was sheltered in 1 Parliment St., provided a phone to call my parents overseas to let them know about the situation and shown what to do in the event of an explosion. I was 20 ys old.
   
2. I was on MTV's "Choose or Lose" in the 90's. Al Gore was the candidate/guest. During a commercial break, I was able to get Gore's attention. He came over to me and asked me if I wanted to be a politician. I said no and he told me I should consider it because I had a knack getting myself noticed. He also autographed my copy of his book.
3. I was afraid of men with beards and booming voices when I was a child.
   
4. I was removed from a car by the jaws of life after a bad accident in high School.
   
5. For most of my childhood, I wanted to be an archeologist when I grew up. My favorite book as a child was a book my parents bought for me in the museum shop at University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology after we saw the mummy exhibit. I was 6 or 7, too young to be able to read or understand all of the adult text, but I pored over the book for years.
   
6. Michael Jackson invited me to meet him/take my photo with him when I was 11 (it was "Victory Tour"). In a private event prior to his show at the VET, my family was baffled when I refused the offer to meet him with no explanation why, because I couldn't find words to explain that he freaked me out. I've since learned to trust my instincts.
   
7. When I was a child, I swallowed a purple litebright peg. I'd hoped that once inside of me, it would light up my tummy like it lit up the screen. I'm still disappointed that it didn't work.

And now I have to tag 5 other bloggers that I'd like to respond to this meme. I choose:

Valeria Maltoni
Scott McNulty
Dave Parmet
Beth Harte
Leah Jones

(Sorry if any of you have done this meme before.)

No time for blogging. This should explain everything:

Charlie Brown Ad Agency

Of the importance of monitoring online conversations

I was just looking up ComCast Cares, the Twitter account of Frank Eliason, ComCast's Director of Digital Care, when I came across this wonderful Flash animation on his personal blog. It's an interactive presentation on the need for companies to monitor online chatter and respond to it in a timely fashion. The presentation was done by VizEdu.com. While you're there also check out their animations on social bookmarking, companies that use Twitter, and Lifestreaming - all concepts that pertain to class. Kind of like an interactive Flash version of the Common Craft Show.

This post details two important causes that you can help support just by using social media:

The first, is a project that my friend Geoff Livingston's agency is working on. Here's what Geoff says about it on his blog:

The Save Darfur Coalition’s "Be A Voice For Darfur" postcard campaign seeks to ensure that Darfur is a top priority for the Obama Administration. Obama has already promised “unstinting resolve” to end the Darfur Genocide. The effort, which aims for no less than 1 million postcards to be emailed, blogged and snail-mailed to President-elect Obama within his first 100 days in office.

The hottest part is the unveiling of a petition application developed in conjunction with Facebook Causes. Other social media components include an influencer relations campaign, and a Darfur Blogger Toolkit with videos, photos, and other resources at http://www.addyourvoice.org/pages/blogger_toolkit.

So please, send a postcard and help encourage the new President to keep his promise to Darfur.

This next cause is a charity that is close to my heart, The Salvation Army. Growing up, my mom always had us donate our outgrown clothing to The Salvation Army. Years later, in college, I enjoyed the spoils of The Salvation Army, when I started vintage shopping there.

But what brought The Salvation Army deep into my heart, was when they helped me and other NYCer's through the terrorist attacks on September 11th. Like many, many other people, I was the immediate on-site family friend filing missing reports for several friends who were killed in the WTC. Those first 24-hrs after the attacks in Manhattan, were darker and more heartbreaking than words can describe, but The Salvation Army was there for us. The news was bleak even in the first 24 hrs, but The Salvation Army was there with blankets, hot chocolate and food - the only warmth we had going through a grueling and cold time. I will never forget their smiles and their unconditional kindness.

So, do a little more for The Salvation Army this year, by starting your own online Red Kettle. I know times are tough, but if we all give a little, it will mean a lot.

Call for Papers on Social Media in the Communication Classroom

I know that there are some academics who read this blog, so this post is for you - please feel free to share this call for papers with your peers. 

CALL FOR PAPERS

Electronic Journal of Communication (EJC)

Special Issue:

Communication Pedagogy in the Age of Social Media

Over the course of the last few years, social media technologies such as blogs, microblogs, digital videos, podcasts, wikis, and social networks, have seen a dramatic increase in adoption rates. To date, Internet users have uploaded roughly 80 million videos to YouTube and launched approximately 133 million blogs worldwide. Because of their ability to connect people and to facilitate the exchange of information and web content, social media technologies not only provide a powerful new way to interact with one another, but they also present exciting new pedagogical opportunities.

Earlier this year, the New Media Consortium and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative released the 2008 Horizon Report, which seeks to identify new technologies capable of affecting the way we teach and learn. Among the critical challenges outlined by this year’s report is the need for universities to equip students with new media literacy skills and to develop curricula that “address not only traditional capabilities like developing an argument over the course of a long paper”, but also “how to create meaningful content with today’s tools.” (The New Media Consortium, 2008, p. 6).

Considering that these tools center around the ideas of collaboration, participation, and conversation, they should hold special interest to communication researchers and educators alike. As a result, this special issue seeks to examine the pedagogical applications of social media technologies, especially with regard to the communication classroom. Examples of best practices in social media adoption in all areas of communication education are welcome, as are case studies or empirical research analyzing the effectiveness and/or effects of incorporating social media technologies into the communication classroom. Research examining the role these technologies play in the social construction of a collective knowledge pool would also fit within the scope of this special issue.

The special issue is scheduled for publication in the first half of 2010. Deadline for completed manuscripts is April 1, 2009. Submissions should be electronic (.doc or .rtf format) and must conform to the specifications of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 5th ed. Place author’s contact information in an email to the editor only, not on the title page of the submission.

Issue Editors:
Corinne Weisgerber, Ph.D. and Shannan H. Butler, Ph.D.
St. Edward’s University

Send inquiries and submissions to: corinnew AT stedwards DOT edu

More on Social Media & the Mumbai Attacks

I had planned to discuss the Cluetrain Manifesto in class tomorrow, but the events of last week in India have lead to a slight change in plans. As Twitter user naomieve observed a few days ago, Mumbai is a social media experiment in action and because it is such a great case study, I figured that we should take a closer look at the role social media played during the live-reporting of the Mumbai attacks. I've put together a slideshow that covers the types of social media used by citizen journalists during this tragic event:

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: citizen mumbai)

Social media sites cover Mumbai attacks in real time

I just learned about the horrible terrorist attacks in Mumbai. I've been following the developments on Twitter - weird how just a few months ago I would have immediately turned on the TV and set it on CNN. Another good example of the effectiveness of social media in times of crises.

Poynter has a good summary of all the social media sites currently covering this tragedy.

11/27: CNN and Gauravonomics also have detailed accounts of the real time citizen journalism that took place during the attacks.

This is a VERY IMPORTANT blog post.

Please watch the embedded digital short created/produced by colleagues at Red Tettemer. It's not often in the world of consumer marketing/advertising that we have an opportunity to work on campaign that is so important, so meaningful, to so many people.

It is my honor and my privilege to be a part of this educational, technologically-groundbreaking campaign.



PS - If you liked this and want to see more, go to RedTettemer.com and click the "droppy" on the home page. Then click thru the icons at the bottom of the next page to see all the interactive fun.

Making a YouTube video that's worth watching

Here are a few additional guidelines for your upcoming video project :-)


YouTube Contest Challenges Users To Make A 'Good' Video

Tweeting about layoffs at Zappos

Very emotional day for everyone at Zappos. I’ll be sending out an update later today with details of what’s going on.

That's the message Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh sent out over Twitter today. The details he would later reveal were plans to lay off 8% of the company's workforce in order to deal with the economic slowdown. The company, which has more than 400 employees on Twitter openly discussed the layoffs on its employee Twitter page. Asked if it was okay to tweet about the layoffs, Hsieh responded: "Our Twitter policy remains the same as it's always been: just be real, and use your best judgement." Nice to see a company being that transparent about bad news for once.

Obama Takes the Presidential Transition Process to the Web

Looks like president-elect Obama isn't losing any time preparing to take office in January. Today, his campaign launched change.gov, a website supposed to chronicle the presidential transition process. Most interesting to me is the part of the website that allows users to share their vision for the country. To do so, users fill out a short form and can then input their ideas into a form field and upload a picture or video.

Start right now. Share your vision for what America can be, where President-Elect Obama should lead this country. Where should we start together?

I've always been convinced that the Obama campaign really understood the power of social media. I think the campaign results and the money raised speak for themselves. What's nice to see now, is that they seem to be planning on keeping those social media tools in place even after winning the election. To me, the webpage shows a desire to stay connected with voters and a willingness to listen to them. Change.gov seems to be all about transparency and dialogue - a true web2.0 site.

Actually, the idea behind this site reminds me a bit of Dell's Ideastorm site - a site which encourages users to post ideas for Dell products and services and which has received a lot of acclaim.

The Internet & Social Networks: A museum of personal mistakes?

I came across this excellent video via the OpinionWatch blog. It's an hour long documentary on reputation management and personal branding in a hyper-connected world. The documentary is in French (hey, a good time to practice those French skills!) and was produced by 13ème Rue, a NBC Universal Global Networks channel.

The first part of the video focuses on the problems the net poses for public figures and celebrities who see their every move captured on video or in pictures and broadcast in near real-time to the whole world. When those moves include off-the-record remarks, revealing personal pictures, and troublesome video, the Net's promise of increased transparency suddenly turns into a grave danger to a person's reputation as illustrated by numerous examples. Any carelessly spoken word or inadvertent gesture has the potential to become a lasting liability. In the case of politicians, video that captures these "personal glitches" becomes a campaign weapon, used and released by enemies at an opportune moment.

Instead of 15 minutes of fame, the Internet now offers 15 minutes of shame to people who have to watch their mistakes broadcast to hundreds if not thousands (or sometimes even millions) of people. The documentary does a nice job showing how our digital footprint creates our personal brand and why this brand may need to be carefully watched and managed. It also introduces a powerful new idea with regards to social networks: that of the "droit à l'oubli" - the right to oblivion, or more specifically, the right to erasure of data. According to the documentary, our current society ignores that right by following people both in space (through videotaping) and in time (through social networks). Our lives are constantly recorded digitally and then shared online where the pictures and video may live on indefinitely. Hence the idea proposed at the end of the documentary: that the Internet has become a museum of human mistakes.

So what to do about all this? The documentary suggests that we need to set boundaries but stops short of offering a viable solution. Are there any?

Student Podcasts

This semester's student podcasts are finally in! For this project students worked in teams to produce a 5-10 minute podcast on an issue pertaining to class. Each team was given the option of either interviewing an expert on the topic of social media or organizing a panel discussion on a social media and PR issue. Here are their podcasts:

• Interview with Kristine Gloria, an Account Executive at Waggener Edstrom, Austin - Ashley, Adam, Sloan

• Panel on social media usage differences between generation Y and generation Z/C - Christine, Wiltson, Ceci, Shannon

• Panel on adolescent bloggers - Sherry, Bradley, Cori, Analee

• Panel on digital Footprints - Melanie, Denise, Mandi

• Panel on Twitter vs. Yammer - Nyla, Jessica
  

"I Voted" Sticker Photo Contest

Voted yet? If so, don't throw away that "I Voted" sticker. Mercury Mambo, a local hispanic marketing firm, has launched a photo contest, which asks voters to submit a creative picture of them and their “I Voted” sticker.

Web2.0 Video Assignment: Creating Video Without Commercial Software

When I first designed this class I felt that it should contain a web video component so students would learn to communicate a message in a number of formats, including digital video. I therefore covered basic iMovie video editing skills in class, stressing the video editing techniques rather than how to execute them on a particular software package. I didn't want students to think they needed to have access to the same software package we used in class to create another digital video. I'm afraid some of them may have walked away with just that idea.

To (hopefully) correct this misconception, I have decided to rely entirely on Web 2.0 video creation tools this semester. Students will each pick a tool from the list below and use it to complete their video project. We'll still cover basic video editing techniques in class, but students will have to figure out on their own how to apply that knowledge to the particular tool they picked. Here's what we will use:

• Flowgram - Mashup of web-based tools and voiceover narrative enables people to create a brand new type of webcasting multimedia experience.
• StoryMaker - A simple tool for creating digital stories. Using audio, pictures and text you can create storyboards, slideshows and much much more.
• Sprout - A quick and easy way for anyone to build, publish, and manage widgets, mini-sites, mashups, banners and more. Any size, any number of pages. Include video, audio, images and newsfeeds and choose from dozens of pre-built components and web services.
• TVNima - One of my favorites! An online machinima application that lets you create TV shows with your own images, videos, music, voice, sound effects etc.
• RemixAmerica - Allows users to create remixes by uploading their own video footage and sound clips to the site, searching YouTube for footage, or using video clips already uploaded to Remix America. Wired story on the RemixAmerica.
• VIDDIX - A new video platform that allows users to add all kinds of webcontent to their video timeline.
• muveeMix - Allows users to create their own short personal videos from raw footage, music and pictures. The result, called a muvee, can then be embedded in your blog or shared with your friends via email. The service comes free of charge (for limited accounts), though registration is required.
• Animoto - web application for making videos. Matches the video to your pics & music.
  
• JayCut - Create your own movies and slideshows, so called mixes.
• Brightcove Storymaker - Produce and publish professional slideshows, podcasts, and custom rich media

For even more Web 2.0 video editing sites, go to "go2web20" and select the video tag, or check out the tools listed on the 50 Web 2.0 Ways to Tell a Story wiki.

Additional Resources:

• CurrentTV assignments - List of all the news & commercial assignments on CurrentTV
  
• FixMyMovie - If the quality of your video footage is low, run it through this first. Automatically cleans your movies with MotionDSP's advanced video technology.
  
• Public Domain Pictures - Repository for public domain pictures
  
• Wikimedia Commons - A media file repository making available public domain and freely-licensed educational media content (images, sound and video clips) to all
  
• Resources previously listed on the course blog

The Dark Side of Twitter: Terrorist Tweets

Seems like I forgot to mention that twitter also makes a good terrorism tool according to a military newsletter supplement discussed in a recent Wired post.

Maybe this is Goodbye

Here's something that may surprise you: I've been thinking about shutting down my twitter account. I've been looking at it a number of different ways. I could go on hiatus from my account, delete the account, or start a new anonymous account following new people.

It's no secret that I am anti-hashtag and that has always been something that aggravates me about twitter. It's also not a secret that I was repelled by AMC's agency's use of Twitter to fanjack and promote the TV show "Mad Men." What's been eating at me lately in twitter is the echochamber. The same social media voices tweeting the same social media cliches. People interested in building "personal brands" rather than just being people. Evangelists who petulantly bang their fists that clients should stop demanding metrics for social media because conversation can't be measured. Really? Conversation can't be measured? Then make it measurable. Attach an action or metric. Setting goals and defining success are part of our jobs, regardless of those who think social media is about winning a Facebook or Twitter popularity contest or gathering the shiniest collection of widgets and gadgets.

Maybe this is part of a Phillies malaise, but it is something that's been on my mind for some time now. I just want a community where people communicate like real people to other people and not as "experts" or "authorities" or as "knowledge centers" doing their personal note-taking using a # sign and an abbrevation. I just want twitter to be what it used to be when I joined in February 2007: a place where I meet people near and far, learn what they are doing/thinking, find or lend support, and sometimes, just a place to escape - like that rabbit hole into Wonderland.

The Wall Street Journal covers Twitter today, covering the same old businesses that always get covered - zappos and comcast. Yes, they both do a great job, so do the tons of other businesses on twitter. Don't know who they are? Check this twitter Brand Index.

And of course, a plug for the Phillies! Go Phils! Check out these shots on Deadspin. That's Broad street, you can see my office building in the shot, at 1am this morning.

1. More. Game.

Twitter and its uses in PR, journalism, crisis communication...

Now that your blogs are all up and running, it's time to give microblogging a try! Since Twitter is the most popular microblogging tool, that's what we will focus on in class. I've created the slideshow below to introduce you to both the technology and its many uses. The slideshow contains a lot of embedded links to examples. Please note that sometimes you have to position your cursor just right to be able to click on the link.

Twitter for Public Relations

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: twitter pr)

Links to the videos contained in the slideshow:

• Twitter in plain English
  
• Comcast technician sleeping on couch
• Rick Sanchez using twitter while on the air

Blog Action Day 08: Of bloggers, muckrakers and a worldwide financial crisis

Today is Blog Action Day and I wanted to take a moment to contribute to this great project by blogging about the subject of poverty. 

I’ve been fortunate enough to never have experienced poverty on a personal level but the global financial crisis has certainly brought the topic to mind more than once over the course of the last couple of weeks. A segment of my Intro to Public Relations class focuses on the history of PR and as luck would have it, I happened to cover that topic at the height of the global financial crisis. Having just covered the industrial revolution, the robber barons, and the social injustices of that time period in class, I can’t help but to examine the current financial crisis in light of those events.

There’s been a lot of talk of another great depression lately. We’ve been bombarded with news of increasing unemployment and inflation rates, a global economic slowdown, major bank collapses and even national bankruptcies.

The gap between the rich and the poor seems to be growing dramatically again, just like it was during the industrial revolution. The middle class feels trapped in the middle of this global mess and is angry at overpaid CEOs and corrupt politicians who’ve been compromising their financial future through irresponsible actions and policies. Replace the CEOs and politicians with the robber barons (i.e. the Rockefellers, Vanderbilts) and again, it is easy to draw parallels to the industrial revolution. Back then, it was the muckrakers who drew attention to these social injustices by writing books, newspaper and magazine articles designed to expose the oftentimes unbearable conditions people lived in. Nowadays it is bloggers who are uniting in a concerted effort to raise awareness of social problems such as global poverty. After all, isn’t this the point of initiatives such as Blog Action Day?

There's plenty of people living in poverty right now who need our voice, but there's also plenty of people who for the first time in their lives find themselves at the brink of poverty due to the events of the last couple of weeks/months. I want to include them in this post. Unfortunately, I think the threat of poverty has become a lot more real to a lot more people lately. 

Tips for your upcoming podcast assignment

Check out these podcasting tips from Len Edgerly. His post contains good advice for all you budding podcasters!

I'm updating my blog because some people have been harassing me about it.

Honestly, I'm just not that into blogs anymore. They seem some old fashioned and long form now, in comparison to some other formats/platforms online.

That said, I should use this space to thank Josh Hallett for creating and hosting BlogOrlando a few weeks ago.

BlogOrlando is my favorite social media event of the year because it always draws an eclectic group of people working with social media in different ways for different industries or causes. Each year it's a varied group of speakers that consist mostly of the people working with social media and not the academics who study it or write about it. It can be a bit like listening to the engineers who design a car, versus automotive analysts, which is great because the engineers can share some of what happened behind the curtain and the key learnings that followed.

One thing that I observed at BlogOrlando is that a disproportionate number of people interested in social media haven't read The Cluetrain. Because the Cluetrain is 10 years old this year, I guess I assume that we've all read it.

We haven't all read it.

So go to amazon and order the book or go here, NOW and start by reading the 95 Theses. Then go here and read it online, if you're a cheap bastard who doesn't believe in paying authors for their work. I don't care where you read it, just do it!

Go on then. Come back when you're done. I'll be waiting here.

New Global Warming Awareness Campaign features Suicidal Wildlife

I just saw this video and had to share it. It's a powerful new global warming awareness campaign for a Portuguese environmental organization named Quercus. The PSA was created by McCann Erickson Portugal.



The tag line at the end of the video reads "Global Warming - If you give up, they give up."

The history of public relations practice - A student project

My intro to PR class just finished its PR history project and since I've been trying out a brand-new assignment this semester, I thought I'd share the end product here. The assignment required each student to research a particular time period and to upload the findings into a digital timeline created on Dipity. Students had to write a short narrative to summarize each event and locate multimedia files (pictures, links, videos) that would illustrate those events. Each student was responsible for identifying at least 5 events within a given time period. 

The result is a pretty neat (okay, so I'm biased...) little timeline of the history of the PR profession which we will hopefully build on in future classes. We found out the hard way that Dipity doesn't allow for B.C. dates, so you'll need to excuse the ancient Greeks and Cicero showing up on the wrong date. Take a look, and if you like it, let them know - they've done a lot of work on this.

Gov. Perry launches YouTube Channel to spread Hurricane Relief Message

Looks like the governor's office created a YouTube channel today to appeal to people to donate to the Texas disaster relief fund - a fund intended to help communities affected by disasters such as Hurricane Ike. Gov. Perry's YouTube channel currently contains a single video - an emotional PSA developed by Idea City. The 30-second spot is also expected to air on cable and broadcast stations across Texas.

Social Bookmarking Assignment

Now that we have discussed what social bookmarks are and how they could be used as a PR tool, it's time to start bookmarking. For next class (09/23), please set up an account in Blackboard Scholar and add a bookmark (related to PR and/or social media) to the Scholar Course Home. See the slideshow below for instructions on how to set up Scholar:

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: scholar socialbookmarking)

Social bookmarks do not only carry important PR applications, but they also constitute a powerful pedagogical tool. For that reason, we will be using them as a way to get everyone to actively contribute course resources and to share them with the class.

Social Bookmarking Assignment:
You will be expected to contribute 10 high quality resources on the topic of social media and PR to Blackboard Scholar by November 18th. These can be links to blog posts, videos, podcasts, slideshows, etc. The important thing is that they provide quality information for your peers as well as others interested in the study of social media and its PR applications. We will occasionally review these bookmarks in class. During those reviews, you will be expected to tell your classmates about the resource and why you decided to include it in our course resources repository.

We will spend some time in class learning how to add resources to Blackboard Scholar. If you are absent that day, or if you need further instruction, you will need to make arrangements with me to learn how to post your content to it. If you encounter technical difficulties adding your resources, you need to let me know before the due date. There will be no extensions given for content added late. Also be sure not to duplicate resources that have already been added by your classmates or me.

For each resource you add to Blackboard Scholar, you need to fill out the following fields:

• Bookmark Name: Give your bookmark a name if it doesn’t already have one
  
• URL: The URL should be added automatically. If it isn’t be sure to add it
  
• Description: Summarize the resource and explain why it is a good source to include
  
• Tags: Include a number of tags that describe the resource you’ve added (the same way you would tag your blog posts)
  
• Discipline Tag(s): Select “Communication studies” as the discipline tag
  
• Course Tag(s): Select the Course Tag for our class 
• Status: Select “public”

Grading criteria:

1. Included 10 resources by the deadline (to make sure you don’t add all 10 at once, you can only add 2 links on any given day)
   
2. Resources contain all necessary fields
   
3. Tags appropriately describe resources
   
4. Summary is comprehensive and clear
   
5. Rationale for inclusion of the resource is sound

Extra-credit opportunity: (this is optional)
Pick any topic you are personally interested in. This can be anything: a hobby, an issue you are researching for a paper, a concept you’d like to explore, etc. Using Scholar or a different social bookmarking service (i.e. del.icio.us, Diigo, etc.), locate someone who shares that interest.

To do that:

1. Bookmark a resource on your topic of interest. Pick a good one here. The more specific the resource, the easier the rest of the assignment will be
   
2. In your list of social bookmarks, look to see who else has bookmarked that resource and what else they tend to tag. Examining their tag cloud will give you a good idea of what their interests are.
   
3. Keep looking until you identify someone who really fits your interests (i.e. who tags resources you would tag). This person should have bookmarked lots of pages on the topic of interest to you, and not just one or two. You may have to repeat steps 1-3 a few times to find that “perfect match” ☺
   
4. Write a one page profile of that person. What are their other tags? What interest categories does the tag cloud reveal? What do these tags suggest that person does for a living? Can you tell what field or profession they might be in? 

Timeline of Memes

Since we just talked about memes, take a look at this Internet meme timeline:

Listening - the new consumer research method?

In class yesterday we discussed Paul Gillin's idea that enthusiasts can be seen as a "global online focus group that works for free" and that businesses stand to learn a lot by simply listening to their online conversations (from Gillin's book The New Influencers). It seems like Procter & Gamble and Unilever have taken Gillin's advice to heart. In an Advertising Age article published Monday, Kim Dedeker, VP of external capability leadership, global consumer and market knowledge at P&G, is calling for the end of consumer research as we know it. The article, appropriately titled The End of Consumer Surveys? questions the viability of "boring and antiquated" survey research and argues that it is time for companies to get serious about mining consumer feedback online. Definitely a lot of food for thought here. Also check out the Advertising Research Foundation page which has partnered with P&G and Unilever in their quest to devise new ways to harvest online chatter.

Houston media relies on social media technologies in the wake of Ike

As a former Houstonian I have been following the news coverage of hurricane Ike with great interest. Looking back on my media consumption over the last couple of days, I've come to realize that I switched from TV to online media pretty much as soon as Ike came onshore. Yes, I watched the hurricane make landfall on CNN but since then I've been relying mostly on the online version of the Houston Chronicle and on KHOU for my information needs. What I've noticed is something a number of other crisis situations before this one have brought to our attention - namely the power of social media as a crisis communication tool. 

I've used Twitter search to see how my old neighbourhood fared, scanned Facebook for updates from friends in the Houston area, and caught a glimpse of the devastation from citizen journalists reporting their stories, uploading videos and sharing pictures. 

There is a lot of talk these days about the impending death of newspapers, but I think the type of reporting the Houston Chronicle pulled off this week in the wake of hurricane Ike shows that there is a lot of potential for media outlets who learn to harness the power of social media. Today, the Chronicle released a note to its readers, which lays out their approach to online journalism: 

If you’re visiting us because of Hurricane Ike, we hope you’ll stay awhile. We’re proud of our rich Web site with all kinds of nooks and crannies. You’ll find a formidable list of bloggers, including experts in science and technology, interesting databases, interactive features, photo galleries, lots of fun video and the best darn reporting of events in this part of Texas.

The Web has created a space where reporting is a partnership (emphasis added) between a news organization and its readers. Thank you for contributing to our coverage - whether it’s commenting on a story, uploading an image or sending us a tip. Your participation is much appreciated.

Thus far the Chronicle's hurricane reporting has made ample use of social media technologies. Below are just a few that I am aware of:

• Houston electricity map - allows Houstonians to report which neighbourhoods have power and which don't. Mapped on a Yahoo map.
• Damage report database - allows users to locate spots where flooding and damage has been reported. 
• Houston gas station database - allows users to "find which gas stations are open and supplying fuel, based on accounts from eyewitnesses, Houston Chronicle staff, official accounts and reports in other news media." (I remember that 3 years ago, during the hurricane Rita evacuation, people called into radio stations to share this info)
• Open businesses database - lists businesses that have reopened and allows users to submit additional openings.
• Ike Answers blog - allows users to post a hurricane related question in the comments section and wait for Houston Chronicle staff or other users to answer it.
• Free access to the electronic edition of the Chronicle - because of problems distributing the paper copy of the newspaper, the Chronicle has made its e-version available for free (user name & password=ike)

I think all of these examples show that the Houston Chronicle definitely "gets it" when it comes to social media. Their reporting and use of social media in this time of crisis has given us a glimpse of what the future of online journalism could look like.

Spotting Spin now easier than ever

Just saw this on ReadWriteWeb: a Firefox plugin that allows users to spot media bias and mark it as spin.

SpinSpotter is also expected to add a feature that will let readers know if a story uses language that resembles that of a press release.

Indeed, Google has a long memory

We ended today's class on blogging and personal brand management discussing the idea that Google has a really good memory. When I came back to my office and opened my RSS reader, I thought what better example to illustrate this point than the United Airlines Bankruptcy story. Granted, this story doesn't pertain to a personal brand, but it definitely shows that information on the Internet lives on long after it isn't news any longer. Here's a timeline of what happened (as I understand it):

2002: The Chicago Tribune publishes an article announcing that United Airlines will be filing for bankruptcy.

Sept. 06, 2008: 

1. The 2002 story reappears on the Florida's Sun-Sentinel's website. According to Gawker, the page also contained a map of hurricane Ike giving the impression that this was a new story
2. According to Google's blog: Google crawler discovered a new link on the Florida Sun-Sentinel website in a section of the most viewed stories labeled "Popular Stories: Business" and followed it to an article on United Airlines filing for bankruptcy. It concluded that the article date was Sept. 7th, 2008, indexed the page and made it available through Google News search

Sept. 8, 2008:

1. A reporter googling bankruptcies on Google's News search picks up the story from the Florida Sun Sentinel and supplies it to the Bloomberg news service
   
2. Bloomberg sends out the story
3. Within minutes United Airlines' shares sink 75% 
4. Oops!

This should go to show that even 6-year-old information can still come to hurt you...

Ps: Steve Rubel just published an interesting post discussing the role of news aggregators in this debacle.

As social media adoption increases, do ethics get left at the doorstep?

I've been fascinated with social media for a while now and for a number of reasons. What has fascinated me the most about these technologies with regards to public relations practice is the promise they hold to topple old one-way models of communication and to increase transparency. I figured these changes would be good for the PR profession - I figured they would help the profession regain some of its credibility. That's one of the reasons I wanted to teach a class on this topic and support the push for the corporate adoption of social media. However, my optimism about the power of social media to change our field took a little hit last week when I was reminded not once, but twice, that there are an increasing number of people out there who "don't play by the rules".

Earlier last week one of my former students contacted me to tell me about her (and I quote) "horrible internship experience". I won't identify who she worked for here, but in essence she was asked to violate basic rules of social media transparency in order to publicize companies and events. Fortunately, she decided to stand by her ethics and quit her internship!

Just a few days later, my husband received a package of nutritional supplements he had ordered online along with an interesting offer: "Want a $10 rebate in this order? Write about your Vitabase experience on your website, blog or somewhere else on the Internet." In order to receive the rebate, a customer has to complete the following steps:

1. Write a short testimonial about Vitabase or our products and put it on your personal website or blog or any public place on the web. Include a link to any page on www.vitabase.com. 
   
2. Send an email to story@vitabase.com telling us the page that you posted your information
   

Vitabase does offer some blogging tips, such as "avoid sounding like a commercial or like you are biased toward Vitabase", but nowhere does the company even suggest mentioning that the blogger is receiving financial compensation for his/her "unbiased" Vitabase review. Adding insult to injury is the requirement that bloggers link back to the company website - in essence paying people to add inbound links to their site and thereby increase the site's Google ranking. 

I know we are only talking about $10 here, but to me such initiatives seem to be violating basic ethics guidelines, such as the Social Media Guidelines set forth by the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR):

Members' use of social media must be transparent, and they must make extra effort to disclose any potential conflicts of interest. They should, if writing or contributing to a blog which recommends a service supplier, make clear any financial interest they or their client might have in doing so.

or the PRSA Member Code of Ethics which calls for the disclosure of information and conflicts of interest in its code provisions and reminds its members that "avoiding real, potential or perceived conflicts of interest builds the trust of clients, employers, and the publics." 

Also worth mentioning in this regard is the PRSA Professional standards advisory PS-6 (April 2005) on disclosure by expert commentators and professional spokespersons of payment or financial interests. Although that advisory was mostly geared towards media commentators, it nonetheless provides important guidelines for disclosing financial interest when promoting a product or cause that could be easily applied to bloggers - especially when considering that social media empowers us all to become a sort of media commentator.

What really bothered me about both these examples is that I believe that there are many more of these out there. Is it possible that paying customers to write positive reviews is becoming the norm? Are companies leaving their ethics at the doorstep as they are embarking on their social media endeavors?

We just covered the findings from Edelman's Trust Barometer survey in my campaigns class the other day. I wonder how long peers will remain the number one trusted source of information with ethically questionable promotions such as these on the rise...

Guide to blogging, commenting & managing your personal brand

Since we will start setting up blogs in class next week, it's time to address blogging etiquette, reputation management and personal branding. That's why I've put together a slideshow on the topic. Take a look:

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: blogging reputation)

Just saw this post by twitter pal JJ Toothman and had to share. I've been dormant here for a while because to be honest, blogging has become somewhat tedious for me anymore. Now that I am so deeply connected to the microblogging community in twitter, anything beyond 140 characters seems superfluous. Additionally, social media and marketing blogs have become tiresome for me. They seem to be all saying the same thing.

And that's part of what led to my conversation with JJ about the tech/social media conference gamut seeming to become the new Dead Show. If you've never been to a Dead Show, understand that seeing the Dead was started by the music but later housed by the community. Going to see the Dead was about seeing your friends at the next show. Oh yeah, and seeing the band. And a great tailgate. And that's kinda what all of these gnomeblogsocialmediapodbarcampinteractive's have become. A place to gather and see your friends, have a great tailgate and listen to the same songs (or in this case topics/sessions) you know so well by heart that you often karaoke them locally. And when you karaoke them, for the record, all your friends think you sound JUST like them!

Don't get me wrong - I think there's value to gain from conferencing, however, I think there may be even more value to gain by taking what you know and applying it outside the echochamber.

So while I'd love to go back "on tour" and hang with my friends on the SM party circuit (I'm imagining myself screaming "Twitter" instead of "Eyes" here, and I am scared), I'm being very selective of my SM conference attendance moving forward. For the most part, I'll stick to trading (tweets, not tapes) online.

Class Participation in Blog Action Day 08

Last year, the students in my fall social media class participated in Blog Action Day, an "event that aims to unite the world’s bloggers, podcasters and videocasters, to post about the same issue on the same day." The goal is to raise awareness and trigger a global discussion on critical issues facing society. This year's Blog Action Day will focus on the issue of poverty and will take place on October 15th. I plan on getting my class involved again this year. So stop by again later this semester to check out their October 15th posts!


Blog Action Day 2008 Poverty from Blog Action Day on Vimeo

Resources on blogging etiquette, personal branding, and online identity management

Today was the first day of the fall semester and soon the students in my social media class will begin blogging. For a lot of them, it will be their first time to do so. To help them get ready to enter the blogosphere, I have compiled a number of resources which I thought would be worth sharing here:

Blogging & Blogging Etiquette:
Guidelines for PR student blogs -- Richard Bailey
Etiquette in the Age of Social Media -- Chris Brogan
Call for a Blogger's Code of Conduct -- O'Reilly Radar
Bloggers' FAQ: legal issues arising from student blogging -- Electronic Frontier Foundation
Disclosure Best Practices Toolkit -- The Blog Council

1000 things I've learned about blogging -- Paul Bradshaw

Commenting on a Blog:
Comments about comments -- Karen Russell
Geek to Live: Lifehacker's guide to weblog comments -- Lifehacker

Promoting your Blog:
Tips for promoting PR student blogs - Karen Russell

Types of Blogs:
A compilation of 25 basic styles of blogging including tips on how -- Rohit Bhargava

Building your Personal Brand:
The Socialization of Your Personal Brand - Part I - Brian Solis
The Socialization of Your Personal Brand - Part II - Brian Solis

Managing your Online Reputation:

Putting your Best Cyberface Forward -- New York Times
How To Manage Your Online Reputation -- ReadWriteWeb

The College Student's Guide to Managing Online Reputation -- Tom Drugan

Managing your Online Identity:
Digital Footprints: Online identity management and search in the age of transparency -- Pew Internet Study
Kids, the Internet, and the End of Privacy: The Greatest Generation Gap Since Rock and Roll -- New York Magazine

Update 9/11: Chris Brogan just published a free e-book on personal branding that is worth checking out

Facebook to give social ads another try

There's an interesting post on Wired's blog today which looks at some of the new social advertising schemes Facebook plans to roll out in the near future. 

I covered Facebook's previous attempts at social advertising in an earlier post.

Video on the digital footprint we leave behind on the web

I seem to be having a footprint theme going on on this blog lately: Here's a great new video from the digital native on the digital footprints we leave behind on the Internet. Interesting to think that we start leaving those footprints long before we are born and that they may follow us even after our death.

Another Step towards the Adoption of Social Media Releases?

The Swiss blog "das Wortgefecht" today reported that PR firm Burson-Marsteller just launched a Social Media Release (SMR) distribution service named OurSocialMedia.com. Although the site currently only houses a few examples, it shows that the PR industry is getting serious about SMRs. 

I took a closer look at the only publicly available English language SMR on the site (yes - there's a password protected Social Media Release on the site - not very social if you ask me...). The publicly accessible SMR announces fashion icon Karl Lagerfeld's decision to design 80 limited edition homes on an island in Dubai. 

The layout of the page is simple and clean (especially when compared to some of the early SMRs), but the site itself seems to be lacking some elements that would make it a truly interactive and social site. SHIFT Communications' latest SMR template called for the integration of a commenting feature and pointed out the importance of offering an easy way to embed multimedia files. Neither of these features seem to be present in the Lagerfeld SMR however. Add those features to the site and I think you'd have a really nice example of a news release worthy of the 21st century.

Update (8/19): Turns out the service does allow you to grab the embed code by using the video contained in the body of the release instead of the one listed on the sidebar.

Update (8/19): The CNW group, a Canadian news and information distribution provider, also just launched a very nice SMR distribution tool. Their service allows for user comments and displays the video embed code right under the video.

Web 2.0 Course Resource for the Upcoming Semester

Here's a great resource on Web 2.0 created by David Wiley, a professor at Utah State University. Contains lots of links to resources on blogging, tagging, podcasting, wikis, RSS feeds, etc. Check it out!

PR Crisis brewing online for the National Communication Association

There's an old joke floating around the communication discipline which implies that the people who are attracted to the study of communication tend to be the worst communicators. Judging by the National Communication Association's (NCA) latest actions (or inactions), this may very well be the case.

Here's a case study in PR crisis management courtesy of our own disciplinary organization: NCA is "the oldest and largest national organization to promote communication scholarship and education" and counts roughly 7,700 members. Last year, the NCA Executive Committee approved a new registration policy for its annual convention, which is usually held at the end of November. The new policy requires all designated presenters, panelists, chairs, and responders to pre-register for the conference by August 6, 2008 or be removed from both the printed and online convention program. This new policy and the way NCA has attempted to enforce it, have unleashed a backlash of angry comments and calls for a boycott of the convention on CRTNET, a daily e-mail listserv managed by NCA.

The anger seems to stem not only from the policy itself, but also from the harassing tone and the exaggerated number of reminder emails and announcements NCA has been sending out during the last few weeks. Below are just a few sample messages sent out to members:

1. If you are a solo author, chair, or respondent and are not registered for the convention by August, 6, your paper/panel will be removed from the printed and online program.

2. Are you a listed participant in the 2008 Convention Program?
Program Participant Registration Deadline: Wed., August 6, 2008
Hurry Register Today! Don't Wait Until the Last Day!

3. There are two ways to register.
Mail/Fax – ALL PROGRAM PARTICIPANT REGISTRATION FORMS MUST BE RECEIVED IN THE NCA NATIONAL OFFICE BY AUGUST 1st FOR PROCESSING! (Doesn't NCA know all caps means shouting?)

4. Dear NCA member,
Q: What do the following books have in common?
- Cat in the Hat
- Guinness Book of World Records
- War and Peace

A: No one will find your name in these books.

Please don't let this happen with the NCA Annual Convention Program Book. Register by August 6!"

When you consider that most of NCA's members are communication professors who examine messages and their effects on an audience for a living, it goes without saying that these nagging reminders received a thorough critical review. As one professor put in on CRNET:

Note to the NCA office: You people may want to start reading some of the research published in your journals. Generating reactance and animosity from condescending, pushy, and annoying email messages---high in controlling language and low in positive and negative politeness---may gain you a short burst in compliance, but it will likely result in source derogation and a serious loss of referent power.

What is amazing is that although NCA manages the CRNET listserv and should therefore be well aware of the storm that's brewing online, it has yet to respond to the growing criticism and animosity. Could it be that NCA isn't listening and monitoring online conversations? Surely, they would have to. They're the National Communication Association after all! Why they haven't joined the conversation is beyond me. From a PR perspective this seems rather foolish. Why not respond to NCA members who've vented on CRNET, or at least explain their side of the story? Seems like there might be some truth to that old communication joke after all...

Another good Example of the Risks of Guerilla Marketing in a Post-9/11 World

KENS-TV station in San Antonio was evacuated Tuesday morning after receiving a suspicious looking cake with wires and a cell phone charger sticking out of it. As it turns out, the cake was part of a viral marketing campaign designed by a local theater chain to get anchors and DJs excited about the new Batman movie "The Dark Knight". See the KSAT report for more details. Although the cake campaign wasn't all that new, this seems to be the first time the bomb squad was called in on a cake delivery.

We've already discussed the Aqua Teen Hungerforce guerilla marketing campaign that let to a partial shut-down of the city of Boston in  January 2007 and the ING promo that triggered a similar scare and traffic chaos in Luxembourg city just a week later.

This latest example serves as just another reminder that you have to carefully implement guerilla marketing campaigns in this post-9/11 world - unless of course you want the bomb squad to come blow up your promotional materials. 

Hey there!

Several weeks ago on twitter, I tweeted about the Red Tettemer retreat. We were given several challenging pre-retreat assignments that we had to complete pre-retreat and were scheduled for review at the retreat, which was held over several days at the Gatsby-esque Shawnee Inn. Being relatively new at the agency, my only knowledge of what to expect at the retreat were the *many* legendary tales I was told of past retreats and my own awareness of the enormous collective of top talent under the roof at 1 S. Broad St. The word "nervous" doesn't cover what I was feeling leading up to the retreat.

One of our several assignments, as provided by our iconic and much-loved leader, Prez Steve Red, was to bring something that represented our badass selves. Whatever concept/form that may be.

Of course, a ton of the representations blew my concept away. What do you expect, we're an ad agency, with effing awesome creatives;)

Some of my friends on twitter, asked me to post my "badass self" assignment when I could, so here it is.

This is what I see/hear when I think of myself as a baddass.



If you want to see some of the other "badass" submissions, you can go here: RT on Youtube. Sorry it's not better organized on You Tube for you. We'll work on that;)

PRSA to launch monthly podcast on diversity

I just received an email from the Public Relations Society of America announcing the launch of a new monthly podcast series that will feature in-depth and frank discussions on the role diversity plays in our profession.

“PRSA Diversity Today,” which launches on July 21, 2008, will delve into diversity theory and practice and will feature best practices and interviews with PRSA and diversity professionals that can help prepare PRSSA members for a rapidly changing business environment.

This would be a good series to add to your feed reader/aggregator!

Exciting news today from Social Media Club. I'm delighted to be one of 40+ other social media practictioners/enthusiasts who are serving as part of an interim board created to establish the guidelines of this association.

We'll be working collaboratively to create the framework that is necessary for SMC to take off on a national, local and global level. Once this framework is in place, local boards will be established using local, interested corporate and non-corporate members.

So basically, I guess my favorite work-phone greeting "Annie Heckenberger, workin' on your business," rings true here now for any of you reading this and part of the social media community. I'm working on all y'allz business:)

I'm excited to work collaboratively with the other board members; this is a unique opportunity to work with peers whose work I follow and often admire.

I'm also energized to help set up this framework so that more social media enthusiasts can jump in and have a more defined direction to take our emerging field to new, and probably mind-blowing new places.

There's so much talent working in technology, development, social media right now. Everyday as I surf the web, my officemates hear me saying "oh my god. this is freakin' awesome!" And I mean it. I'm regularly wowed with the products and services launching online and via mobile. My hope is that our work for SMC helps support all of that talent and innovation you are putting out there.

Stay tuned for more to come on this!

Lively: Google's answer to Second Life

Yesterday Google officially launched Lively - a Google version of Second Life. I just checked it out. Had to switch to a PC to do it though since Lively currently only supports Windows XP or Vista.The avatars remind me a bit of a mixture of Bratz dolls and Pet Shop animals... Anyways, here's the office I created:

Drupal troubleshooting tutorial

This post is a little out of the ordinary since I don't normally focus on the technical aspects of web 2.0 technologies on this blog or in class. Our class really focuses more on the practical applications of these new technologies and their impact on the PR industry. We're currently on summer break though, and that has given me an opportunity to catch up with research and to finally get around to playing with some new social media technologies and web 2.0 applications.

Since I've been needing to revamp an old webpage for a while, figuring out Drupal was on top of my summer to-do list. I won't lie and say that getting to know Drupal was a breeze, but I do believe that the initial frustration is well worth the effort. Most of the problems I encountered while installing Drupal and setting up the website seem to be fairly common, so I've decided to list them all here together with their solutions.

Installing Drupal 6:
This Lullabot video is the best installation tutorial I found. Pay special attention to the discussion of the invisible .htaccess file. That file has come to haunt me several times!

Making the invisible .htaccess file visible:
I use Fugu as my FTP program and it allows you to view hidden files by selecting "show hidden files" from the SFTP menu. You'll also need a way to edit the invisible file - I downloaded the free trial version of BBEdit.

Fixing the Register_Globals error (on 1and1):
After following the installation instructions, I received the following error:
"The following error must be resolved before you can continue the installation process: register_globals is enabled. Drupal requires this configuration directive to be disabled. Your site may not be secure when register_globals is enabled."

My web host is 1and1, and in order to fix this problem, you need to pull up that invisible .htaccess file and place the following line AddType x-mapp-php5 .php in it. I put it on the top of the page. Now upload the corrected .htacess file.

Enabling Clean URLs (on 1and1):
Clean URLs eliminate the "?q=" in internal URLs. This is important for search engines and SEO. I kept getting the message: "Your system configuration does not currently support this feature"

This doesn't necessarily mean you can't enable them. In some cases, you just need to tweak the code a little. To enable clean URLs on 1and1 it's back to the .htaccess file. You need to uncomment the following line:

# RewriteBase /
should become
RewriteBase /

In other words, remove the # symbol.

Configuring the cron so you don't have to run it manually:
For an explanation of what it is and why you need it, check this Drupal page.

1. You'll need a way to get "shell access", which means that you need to be able to connect to your web host using telnet or SSH. I switched to my husband's PC and downloaded Putty (Windows only). There's a way to do it on the Mac terminal but I couldn't figure out how.
2. Launch Putty and log in. For screenshots, check this tutorial.
3. Type "whereis lynx" or "whereis wget" (without the quotation marks) to see where lynx or wget is located. This should return something like: /usr/bin/lynx or /usr/bin/wget. Check this tutorial for why you need to know this.
4. Type "crontab -e" (without the quotation marks)
5. If the "whereis wget" command returned "/usr/bin/wget", enter the following line:
   45 * * * * /usr/bin/wget -O - -q http://example.com/cron.php
   to have a wget browser pull up your cron page 45 minutes after every hour. Replace example.com with your domain name. You can of course customize the schedule for your crontab (check this tutorial). Note that you need to enter the letter O in the above example and not a zero. (I've learned that lesson the hard way).
6. To save, hit ESCAPE and type ":wq" (without quotation marks), then hit ENTER

To see if the crontab was saved correctly enter "crontab -l" to see a list of schedules. Your schedule should now be displayed.

If you don't want to deal with all this, try the poormanscron module. It basically simulates a cron job.

Hiding the link to the homepage on nodes:
This is relatively easy to do, but it took me a while to find the solution. Simply download the Menu Breadcrumb module. It allows you to hide the breadcrumb if all it contains is a link to the front page.

Warning: Cannot modify header information error:
This error was caused by a line of white space I accidentally left after the opening and closing PHP tags in the template.php file in my theme's directory. So, don't leave any extra spaces!

Hiding the authoring information on some pages/content types:
Go to Administer >> Themes >> Configure to configure the global settings. Check or uncheck which content types should display the authoring information (see also).

Turning the Statistics module on in Drupal 6:
Go to Administer >> reports >> access logs settings

Creating a sitemap for your Drupal site to submit to Google:
I used the XML Sitemaps Generator and submitted it to Google.

Setting up a file sharing application:
I needed a way for users to be able to upload and download a particular file type. I used the Web File Manager module to do so. It's easy to set up and seems to work well (needs Javascript to run though).

So much going on the social media world!

A few weeks back, my favorite new part-time ninja Judson Collier, launched the fun twitter app twitterbash. Check it out, it's fun to rate your favorite tweets.

The much talked about news of the last 24 hours is the launch of potential twitter-killer identi.ca, whose clean, green design is a breathe of fresh air for this social media enthusiast who is tired of social sites weighing themselves down trying to be everything to everyone and designing in blue. Enough with blue already! Use another color! Sadly, identi.ca is already having capacity problems from the legions of twitter users whom have defected, hoping that this will be a microblogging service that may actually *work* rather than be down daily.

Last for now, I'm trying out twitterphone, a phone that lets you phone in your tweets and sends them in text and audio files to your twitter. It's actually working at the moment, I'm impressed, but it should be interesting to see what it does when a user talks over 140 characters. I'll keep you posted on that!

More to come soon...

As the 4 (including me) readers to this often at-rest blog know, I have an obsession with Twitter. Fortunately, being in this community is a part of my job, so fueling this obsession is actually beneficial to my career.

That said, for all the time I spend tweeting and keeping up with the 650+ people I follow on there, I never seem to make any of the twitter app stats that my colleagues are on. I'll admit, it's shallow, but when I first started tweeting about 17 months ago, I coveted a position on Twitterholic. I marveled at those with huge followings who seemed to tweet golden eggs with every character. Later came Tweeterboard, which I never made either, but the people I tweeted with made it!

One day last week, my friend Brennen tweeted that I made
Dave Winer's Twitter Spewage List. Honestly, I wasn't sure if I should be excited or concerned about making Winer's Spewage, the word "spew" means vomit and that's really not so nice. That said, Dave's intro made it seem less hateful and hell, a lot of people I respect are on the list; I'm stoked anytime I'm in their company. (BTW: pls note that I am now BEATING Barak Obama on that list. Vote Heckenberger in 2012! w00t!)

Today, however, marks a very exciting day in my shallow social media life, because I made Guy Kawasaki's list of Twitterati on Alltop. Now first, I should note, there is no algorithm to Twitterati. I didn't tweet the most (although some people may contest that), don't have the most followers, don't follow the most people. None of that. Alltop's Twitterati is based on their "gut" and thhe feedback/nominations of the twitter community.

And that's why I'm so stoked about making this "list." Because someone in the community actually took the time to nominate me and somehow, Guy and the people at Alltop listened!

This is what community is all about. Thanks you guys. You made my day.