Monday Morning

Closing this blog, but not the dialogue

Back in February 2006, I started this blog, because I believed in the importance of social media for corporate communications and wanted to gain some experience first hand. And boy did I gain some experience :-). I experienced its value when I interacted with clients, industry peers and employees. I experienced the risks of blogging when I had to deal with a troll. And I experienced the challenge of finding enough time to meet the commitment of blogging regularly.

I blogged about the need for a CEO and the business he/she serves to find the right voice. I still hold true to the view that a company should already have an established efficient mix of public conversations with its stakeholders and then determine how a CEO can participate in that and get engaged in peer to peer media. Exactly how that is done can change and will depend on the business priorities at the time.

So, while I found there were many advantages to having my blog I found that the lack of time was a serious enough issue to make me need to change the format. I had to find a way that supported my existing work schedule rather than just adding to it. I've decided that the most effective way to share my thoughts is by contributing occasional posts to the Text 100 blog Hypertext and by setting up an internal blog that will help to speak more often with our employees across the globe rather than just speaking at them.

I've gained a tremendous amount from the experience and look forward to continuing the conversation in other formats. In the meantime, many thanks for your interest, your patience and your thoughts!

Two readings of the nail house story

A couple of weeks ago, the New York Times came out with a surprising story on civil disobedience in China. A homeowner in Chongqing dared to resist the forces of one of the huge redevelopment projects that have become a common part of China's breakneck story on growth. People are often uprooted to make room for new commercial zones, without being fairly compensated. They regularly vent their discontent in riots and demonstrations, but the state-controlled media never reports it.

This case was different. Bloggers broke the news. The blogs were soon followed by cell phone photos showing a small house sitting on a high pile of earth in the middle of a huge construction site. The Chinese metaphor “standing out like a nail” means someone who stands up against authority. This house quickly became known as the nail house. The story even made its way into newspapers and Chinese national TV. It received continual attention until recently when the case was settled. A court determined that the owner would get money, a new place to live, and a new space for business. After that, everyone, including the owner, fell silent.There are many interesting angles to this incident. Dan Southerland’s balanced and detailed wrap up in the China Brief is a great read and details the entire event. But there two aspects that particularly caught my attention:

Bloggers and citizen journalists with their cell phones clearly had a significant impact on the development of this story. While the Chinese government is putting a lot of effort into the control of the Internet, it’s not as easily managed as traditional media. The number of blogs in China is expected to grow from 33 m in 2005 to 60 m in 2006 and an astounding 100 m in 2007! So it’s not getting any easier. No wonder that one analysis of the nail house story is that the Internet is undermining the Chinese government’s media controls. There is another interpretation, though, that the story actually helped the government. It illustrated that they respect private property. In his story for the Times, Howard French pointed out that in March “the National People’s Congress passed a historic law guaranteeing private property rights to  China's swelling ranks of urban middle-class homeowners.” The nail house story seems to confirm that they are serious about that. The authorities must have seen the upside to this story. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have allowed it to make its way from the blogs into national media.

The second aspect that caught my attention is even more interesting than the first. It indicates that – at least in this specific case – the Chinese government made the step from the guarantee of individual rights to the empowerment of an individual voice. While this might have been a completely opportunistic move to support the government agenda, it none the less broke from their total-command-and-control approach to communications. For just a moment a nail stood out when usually it’s hammered down. Implicitly they acknowledged that the voice of a specific individual can be more credible than the voice of official announcements. Did they open Pandora’s Box?

 

The public and the private redefined

The article “Say Everything” in New York Magazine caught the attention of those of us who are intent on understanding the difference between growing up a digital native versus a digital immigrant.  What I like about this piece is its pragmatic approach.  The story makes observations and asks questions, rather than rushing to judgment.

The article paints a picture of a vast chasm between two generations.  A disconnect that is causing alarm and misapprehension not seen since the early days of rock and roll.  I’ll tell you that, even with a 14-year-old daughter who spends a disproportionate amount of time online, I don’t worry that it is in some way destructive.  In fact, I think quite the opposite.   The same factors that paralyzed past generations paralyze my generation: fear, uncertainty and a lack of understanding.  The focus may be different, but the emotions are the same.  You need to keep your mind open.

So while the concept of misunderstanding between the generations may have always existed, the cause of concern for today’s parents is new.  Digital natives are willing to “say everything” about themselves in public, and Internet technologies empower them with a powerful voice.  What used to be private is becoming increasingly public. As a result, a kind of celebrity effect takes hold: ordinary people are able to attract fan communities. The blade cuts two ways though, because there is potential to be publicly exposed in terrible ways.  The article provides examples of both. Let’s leave it to sociologists to explore the broader societal ramifications of this development.  What is already clear is that it has a significant impact on the way we communicate. Whatever you do online becomes an element of your public profile, and will likely stay there forever.

“Reputation will be the rule of law,” says Jakob Lodwick, a 25-year-old Internet entrepreneur quoted in the article.  As an industry, we need to better understand how reputation is built and sustained in this environment, both on individual and institutional levels.  The scope, role and complexity of public relations will exponentially grow with a generation that more than any before is willing, wanting and empowered to be public.

The second phase of our Second Life

As many of you know, we established a presence in the virtual world of Second Life (SL) a couple of months ago. Since then, we have used our SL space for internal events such as the celebration of Text 100’s 25^th anniversary, presentations and staff meetings. We have also hosted some external discussions on communications in SL, like our talk on “New Publics” with the Kuurian Expedition as well as our presentation for Second Thursday’s PR meet-up, “Communications in Second Life: Business Unusual”. Today, within our own company, we have 100 avatars in SL from around the world, and we have learned a lot about the business value of virtual worlds, as well as about the logistics of operating within one. We have experienced firsthand how it can be useful for education, collaboration, spurring innovation and for marketing. Based on these experiences, we worked with some clients in introducing them to this new platform.

All of this said, one of the lessons we have also learnt is that there is still a lot to explore with the SL communities. While we have had some engagement with them, we want to participate in a more interactive way. The best way of doing that is to offer something that is of value both to the community and to our business. We determined that the creation of an exhibition space on Text 100 Island could fit this bill. The first expo we just started is on games that were created in SL for SL residents. While SL is not a game in itself, we still know that the residents spend a large amount of time playing games, and – some of them – creating games. Our expo is an opportunity for both groups to connect and to showcase some of the talent developed within the game community.

And what will we gain from this? Well, we will clearly have fun with these exhibits and the people visiting. We have developed a little networking game ourselves and if you’re in SL, I hope you’ll give it a try :-). But we will also gather valuable insights on the logistics of exhibitions in SL, on the dynamic of the community and what resonates with it, and on the specific market segments on which we are focusing. After all, SL is about bringing people together in one place around a common interest, regardless of time or geography. So is communications, and that is our business.

Finally, I have to say that it is just really cool that something like this can be done so easily in SL. In the real world, we would have found it far more challenging to create an exhibition space next to our office!

I’m excited that we launched this second phase of our Second Life and look forward to sharing with you what we learn.

Rewiring The Corporation

‘Rewiring The Spy’ by Clive Thompson, the cover article of the New York Times Magazine made for some interesting reading this Sunday.  The question posed was, ‘Could wikis and blogs prevent a terrorist attack? Inside Washington’s new cybertelligence community.’  The article examined the emerging use of peer-to-peer technologies and in particular the growth of the Intellipedia, the intelligence community’s own version of Wikipedia.

The intelligence agencies command vast sources of information, but do have the challenge that the different pieces needed to get the full picture about something like a terrorist plot might be caged within silos of departments or hierarchies. Peer-to-peer platforms like blogs and wikis can help to connect the dots in an elegant way. They create a location where people who hold the pieces of the jigsaw can come together and collaborate.

They also make it much easier to find the information needed. If an analyst is working on the funding structure of an international terrorist network and puts his thoughts up on a blog or wiki, others, who otherwise might not have known of this work, can chime in. For example, one of the contributors to the conversation might be the field agent in a country across the globe who just made on observation or the analyst at another agency in a nearby city who is trying to make sense of some obscure money transactions.

Plus, peer-to-peer platforms allow for a quick response system. Only minutes after a small plane crashed into a Manhattan skyscraper a couple of months ago, agents had created a page on their Intellipedia wiki that was quickly filled with information from across the network. So, after a very short time, it became clear that this was an accident rather than a terrorist attack.

Of course, there are also voices who point out how the use of blogs and wikis at intelligence agencies can fail or even be a threat. The article highlights two critical success factors. 1) The knowledge built on a peer-to-peer platform will only become meaningful and true, if there are actually enough people across the organization connecting on the topic. 2) In organizations built around secrets it can be very counterproductive to put a project up in the open.

The intelligence agencies are aware of both. A blogging initiative they started three years ago dried out, because it didn’t gain enough traction. And information leaks have always been a threat to intelligence agencies, even without social networking tools. So, the openness of discussions will have to be balanced with the use of classified information.

There are many parallels here with the corporate world.  Despite the many attempts at ‘flattening organizations’ and ‘empowering the workforce,’ the vast majority of corporations are still extremely hierarchical, rely on command and control and have limited information dissemination.  Blogs, wikis and other peer-to-peer tools and environments have no respect for chains of command or departmental divisions.  They will thrive in the most open, collaborative and team-driven organizations. Clearly the business model and the culture of an organization will have a huge impact on the value these tools can provide to a business. But if intelligence agencies - arguably the most hierarchical and secretive organizations in the world – can get value out of it, there should be few who can’t.

Are you allowed to read the news over your neighbor’s shoulder?

I was interested to read of Jon Fine’s decision to spend time at The Guardian newspaper in London as reported in his article, London’s New Media Lessons in this week’s Business Week, to see how, in his words, a serious newspaper is grappling with the mediums litany of ills.  His assumption in the article is that the British are dealing with the changes in a different way to the Americans.  It reminded me of a conversation I had in India recently with Josey Puliyenthuruthel John, a journalist with The Hindustan Times.  He, along with Raju Narisetti whom many of you will remember for his tremendous journalism when he was editor of The Wall Street Journal Europe in the 1990s, is about to launch a new newspaper in New Delhi. With readership numbers and profitability of newspapers in decline, I was amazed to find that the opposite is true in India.In fact readership of magazines and newspapers has increased by 12% since 2002 and continues to grow at a staggering pace – which has more to do with the growth rates in literacy than the battle between online and main stream media which exists elsewhere. 

What was even more intriguing was our observation that different cultures have different accepted norms when it comes to their relationship with the newspaper as an artifact.  In India for example when reading your newspaper on public transport its commonplace to find the person on your right and the person on your left booth peering over your shoulder to read along with you.  So much so, that it’s considered only polite to ask them if they are ready, when you wish to turn to the next page.  I still smile when I think about this scene and its stark contrast with my travels on Metro North into New York most days. You can probably all empathize with the embarrassment I’ve felt when caught reading my neighbors newspaper having been captivated by an article or a headline. The reaction to such a social faux pas is far from polite!  In India the newspaper is coveted – the purchase is considered a lavish expense and many content themselves with reading others, passing it along when done or reading yesterdays news.  In New York the newspaper is more dispensable – the platform in Grand Central is littered with large crates stacked high with recycled daily newspapers hastily read and discarded before 8am every morning.  As Josey commented “the notion of people dumping their newspapers so early in the day pulls the plug on the 'stickiness' newspaper managers and print journalists think they have with their readers.” And I suspect from my time living in London, that the relationship with newspapers there lies somewhere in between – most people carry it around with them until the end of the day before they decide it’s expendable. 

The question is will major media groups even consider the cultural differences and how they might impact the newspaper of the future?  Is Jon Fine’s observation from his time in London that readers are as interested in talking to each other and publishing themselves, the same in New York and New Delhi?  Either way his decision to spend time there was smart. Understanding the different approaches in different countries could be of huge help to the media industry. Let’s hope they’re listening!

First lessons from our Second Life

I have spent the last few weeks traveling outside the USin Asia, Europeand of course, in the virtual world of Second Life.  As I toured the real world, the focus of many presentations and discussions was Text 100’s involvement in peer-to-peer media, specifically what our experience and the experience of our clients has been like in virtual worlds.  It’s been three months now since we set up Text 100 Island in Second Life and it’s interesting to reflect on how it seemed crazy to many that we would embark on such a venture.  In the meantime, Second Life has enjoyed a tremendous amount of public attention, so that some people now even find it over-hyped. Our first months in the virtual world have certainly confirmed that there are good reasons for corporations to consider activities there, but we have also learned that it’s not enough to just be there.

It’s not a game

Second Life is not a game, simply because its use is not determined by any game script. But also the impressive investments of major corporations such as IBM, Sony BMG, Dell, Sun, Toyota, Nissan, Starwood and Reuters clearly indicate that they don’t view it as a playground. They are there for many different business reasons, like getting closer to customers, better understanding digital natives, accessing a new tech savvy audience, testing new offerings, showcasing company innovation and more. With IBM’s Sam Palmisano making his appearance in Second Life  virtual worlds have been visibly put on the business agenda.

The corporate train to Second Life was also accompanied by whistles of many major media, including the Economist  , the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal Business Week in particular followed the development closely. They put Second Life on their cover as early as in April  and they are now exploring the challenges setting up shop in a virtual world. All of this boosted the growth of Second Life at an amazing pace. At last week’s Town Hall, Linden Lab CEO Philip Rosedale revealed the latest statistics. Among them:

• Over 75,000 unique users log in each day
• They spend over 250,000 hours per day (that averages out to over 3 hours per person)
• There were over US$9 million of in-world transactions during the month of October

The quality of interaction is unique

Having now held a series of Text 100 internal meetings – like our 25^th anniversary celebration - in Second Life, we have experienced first hand that the quality of interactions in virtual 3D worlds is engaging in a unique way. For many of our people who are dispersed across the world, they’ve felt it’s been the nearest thing to generating a sense of camaraderie without physically gathering people together in one room.  The cool factor hasn’t gone unnoticed, either. And we discovered how much there is to learn about details such as event logistics, just like in real life. Today, we have 100 avatars. 

At a time when the social behavior of our publics is changing with pace, virtual worlds give us the opportunity to engage with and understand this community dynamic in a unique way.  We can see first hand the implications of changes in levels of trust, authenticity of messages, transparency and immediate feedback and ensure we’re adjusting our work accordingly.  Our recent work with The MacArthur Foundation was a great example of this.

The Second Life should be more than the first

Second Life holds a lot of potential for real world companies as a tool for education, collaboration, innovation and marketing. But I caution against entering this space without an engagement strategy. Being first is not enough. In fact, corporations, media and PR people have already been criticized to claim doing something first while long-time Second Life residents felt they had done these things already a long time ago and in a much more creative way.

What’s more important is the way that companies use Second Life as a tool to communicate and interact with their constituencies. How are you going to differentiate your company from the competition to this new public? What’s going to make your presence compelling or how will it add value to your company and to the communities you want to engage with? These are tough questions, and we are still learning as we go. What’s clear is that Second Life is not best used when you simply replicate what you do in the real world. It offers the opportunity to be much more dynamic and imaginative.

checkback signal

Dear readers,

I know I neglected you for a while, and I apologize for that. I am alive and kicking, just very busy. All of you who aren't full-time bloggers will know this challenge. That said, I do owe you and want to thank you for staying with me. The next Monday is not far out.

Sincerely,
Aedhmar

Is there a YouTubification of public speaking?

A recent NYT article examines the impact of video sharing sites like YouTube on politicians’ public speaking.  The influx of these sites easily makes anything public, because the publishing tools are now in anyone’s hands. That applies not only to politics, but also to corporate communications.

Public speakers “have to assume they are on live TV all the time … you can't get away with making an offensive or dumb remark and assume it won't get out.” So, how does that change our approach to public speaking?

According to the article, political analysts have differing views. Some say “that YouTube could force candidates to stop being so artificial, since they know their true personalities will come out anyway. … But others see a future where politicians are more vapid and risk averse than ever.”  They would need polished messages on every occasion. So, rather than becoming more authentic, they become more artificial.

While it is certainly possible that some speakers will try to control themselves and situations even more, so as not to be caught off guard, I would argue that increased control will generate increased scrutiny.  Someone who looks too perfect will attract more snoopers than someone who looks less remote-controlled by pre-set scripts. This is nothing new, but the pressure to be authentic is certainly increased when every cell phone with a camera could be recording you.

Ironically, being more authentic should provide more protection than being scripted. This makes public speaking more challenging, though, because more than ever you will need the skills and the confidence to speak off script, but keep on track. Even then, you won’t be completely protected against the potential for new media to intrude on your privacy or to present you in a negative light. More than ever it’s crucial that your last shield against attacks remains intact: your reputation.

Hold on to your hats!

My apologies for the late post.  It proves the commenter’s points on my last post about the scarcity of time.  I’ve been temporarily based in San Francisco following an inspiring meeting at The Aspen Institute about The Mobile Generation of 2015.  I’ll write more about that in a future blog.  In addition, we’ve been busy establishing a presence in Second Life.  That move has prompted some terrific commentary on the blogosphere.  I’ve drawn some conclusions based on the commentary and the Aug. 6, NY Times article, Big (media) Players making Bold Moves

The New York Times piece begins with AOL’s move to remove subscription fees, but then focuses on other strategic acquisitions, mergers and impending developments in the media and entertainment industry.  The developments are predominantly catalyzed by the technology developments that are revolutionizing the respective industries. I particularly was encouraged by the penultimate and last sentences “….bold is back and staying the course is no longer an option. Hold on to your hats.” 

I am not, of course, comparing Text 100 to News Corporation, but the article put a smile on my face as I thought about the criticisms around our move to open an office in Second Life. There are arguments that our move is hype, crazy, a publicity stunt or a variety of other criticisms. But, there are many of us who view virtual worlds, like Second Life, as the next stage in the peer media evolution. We are becoming pioneers in this new world.  We see the same peer-to-peer communication and social networking capability, but in an immersive 3-D environment.  This makes it more illustrative and inspiring than other platforms to date. Virtual worlds will evolve and change over time, just like the peer-to-peer media we’ve come to know. As large media and other consumer-focused giants move aggressively into peer media, (a fact we cannot deny) the need for authentic and experienced Public Relations advice and consultancy will be significant.  So, yes, it is a leap into the dark in many ways. It may seem foolhardy to some – but given the tremendous consumer behavior change that’s taking place – we believe it’s something that we need to be part of and learn as we go. 

I will report back after a few months and your dialogue, as always, is sincerely appreciated.  It will improve our chances of an effective and elegant leap.