Monday, February 08, 2010

Blocking access isn’t the only way to protect your company

In a comment left recently to a post I wrote for Stop Blocking back in October 2007 about malware on Facebook, David Jones with CommerceMicro wrote:

Stupid, out dated information.

We have users that repeatedly get infected with viruses and spyware no matter what level or type of antivirus and antispyware software we install. It’s rather odd that ONLY THOSE particular users get re-infected day after day and that they all have MySpace accounts, FaceBook accounts, or whatever. Their employers have to continually pay us to come and clean these infections.

My reply was a bit terse. I asked Jones if he believed all the companies that don’t block access were lying about not encountering the problems he cited. (And no, I wasn’t snarky enough to point out that “outdated” is one word.)

The security issue does, however, appear to be supplanting productivity concerns as the main reason companies block access to Facebook and other social media sites. Among the dominant social networks, Facebook presents the biggest risk to company security, according to 60% of the respondents to a survey of 500 companies conducted by Sophos, an IT security organization. No other network comes close. MySpace ranks second, with 18% of companies identifying it as a concern, followed by Twitter (17%) and LinkedIn (4%).

The concerns are not illegitimate. The incidents of reported malware and spam attacks through social networks has jumped 70% since April of last year. Social networks have become common launching pads fore a couple of particularly nasty worms. The risk of infection, though, is not the only security issue that keeps IT staff up at night. Employees’ individual behavior represents a risk, particularly as web-unsavvy employees fall prey to phishing and other devious ploys. And then there’s the fear that employees will share information they shouldn’t.

Sarah Perez goes into considerable detail on the Sophos report in her post on ReadWriteWeb. Perez also notes that even Sophos isn’t advocating an outright block, despite the study’s findings:

Unfortunately for those in charge of enforcing corporate security, simply blocking Facebook and other social networks via URL is not a realistic solution anymore. The networks are often a large part of a company’s marketing and sales strategies, notes Sophos, meaning they cannot be blocked outright. Instead, companies are encouraged to use a unified approach for mitigating threats that combines data monitoring, malware protection and granular access for their employees.

A Financial Times article (free registration required) has the same advice, noting that organizations have too much to gain from employee interactions on social networks. The article, penned by the head of an information risk management and e-discovery firm, rightly notes that leetting employees access social networks from work gives them “the ability to locate the right people, information and expertise quickly, but they also greatly aid external networking, sales and marketing activities.”

The article (which I discovered on the Idea Peepshow blog, notes thyat 89% of businesses in the UK have no policies governing employee use of social networks and calls for companies to establish and enforce such policies.

As I’ve noted before, protecting the company is a matter of ensuring the proper network safeguards are in place (such as anti-malware/spyware software and the latest virus definitions) and that employees understand their responsibilities.

It works in a lot of companies that don’t block access. It can work in yours.

The Hobson & Holtz Report - Podcast #524: February 8, 2010

Content summary: MediaFunnel FIR interview is up; Help A PR Pro Out; Michael Netzley reports from Singapore; the Media Monitoring Minute with CustomScoop; News That Fits: what Vodafone did when an employee tweeted obscenely, wide and mostly negative reaction to Forrester Research plans to stop analysts from blogging personally; listener comments discussion and FIR Friendfeed Room round-up; news about Thursday’s show; music from Antiqcool; and more.

Get FIR:

• Download the MP3 file (26.2Mb, 65:26)
• Subscribe to the RSS feed
• Get the show at iTunes

Messages from our sponsors: FIR is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years, www.ragan.com; Save time with the CustomScoop online clipping service: sign up for your free two-week trial, at www.customscoop.com/fir.

For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report, for February 8, 2010: A 65-minute podcast recorded live from Wokingham, Berkshire, England, and Concord, California, USA.

Links for the blogs, individuals, companies and organizations we discussed or mentioned in the show are posted to the FIR Show Links pages at The New PR Wiki. You can contribute - see the show notes home page for info.

• FIR #524 show notes at The New PR Wiki

Share your comments or questions about this show, or suggestions for future shows, in the FIR FriendFeed Room. You can also email us at fircomments@gmail.com; call the Comment Line at +1 206 222 2803 (North America), +44 20 8133 9844 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments; comment at Twitter: twitter.com/FIR, or at Jaiku: fir.jaiku.com. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

Join the FIR Discussion Forum and extend your conversations with the FIR community. You can also join the FIR Facebook Community and become an FIR friend.

To stay informed about occasional FIR events (eg, FIR Live), sign up for FIR Update email news.

So, until Thursday February 11…

Saturday, February 06, 2010

Are we overvaluing real-time feedback?

Warning: Lost post follows

Back in 1995, “Snow Crash” author Neal Stephenson teamed up with his uncle George Jewsbury under the pseudonym Stephen Bury to produce a potboiler titled “Interface.” The premise: A presidential candidate suffers a stroke and has a chip implanted in his brain. The chip features a wireless connection to feedback from thousands of watch-like devices distributed to a representative sample of Americans. These devices gauge the wearer’s reaction to political speeches, allowing the candidate to make mid-course adjustments and bolster public reaction to his candidacy.

To me, this bit of speculative fiction defines the notion of a real-time feedback loop.

As the Web proceeds along its evolution into a more real-time network, a idea of a real-time feedback loop is becoming a popular topic of discussion. I attended a panel discussion on Thursday night, part of Social Media Week here in San Francisco, that focused on these loops, defining them as “a method for capturing ideas as they arise and bringing them back into the group for examination through the use of social media.” Promotional copy for the event asserted:

When an idea’s expression generates a creatively relevant or insightful response, a well-organized listening/engagement practitioner captures that flash of brilliance, and feeds it back to the originator as an enriched question, thus creating a real-time feedback loop.  In this transformational moment, a thought-leader may have a second opportunity to be heard and have their expression innovatively re-cast. 

With social media we facilitate this process ever more effectively. It is like cold fusion—when used properly, it creates more value than it consumes, lowering the carbon footprint of innovation.

The idea of real-time feedback loops have been rattling around in my brain since Thursday night’s discussion. Then it occurred to me: What better place to organize my thoughts than my blog?

Where do real-time feedback loops begin?

The Internet didn’t invent real-time feedback loops. The thunderous applause of an audience that leads to a multiple curtain calls is a real-time feedback loop; so is tepid applause followed by a rush for the exits. The Grateful Dead’s symbiotic relationship with its audience influenced the band’s live improvisational music. The crowd’s response almost always affects a standup comic’s routine.

The Net, however, has added two dimensions to real-time feedback loops: specificity and reach.

Specificity—The aggregate response of the crowd is pretty simple. They love it, they’re into it, they disagree, they don’t think it’s funny, they hate it. The Net has provided individuals a voice that allow the performer or communicator to analyze why the crowd is reacting the way it is and respond to specific observations or alter behaviors in order to influence opinions. This is nothing new: For at least a decade, probably longer, Internet Relay Chat (IRC) has provided the infrastructure for backchannels, on which conference attendees discuss presentations with one another in real time. In some instances, these backchannels have been projected on a screen where a speaker can see and react to it. Now, Twitter’s hashtag convention—along with some other tools—have made backchannels available to more people than just the geek crowd who knew how to tap into IRC.

Reach—Streaming media and Twitter have expanded the reach of events—from keynotes and panel discussions to product launches and press conferences—to people who can’t be there in person. Again, this is nothing new. The presidential State of the Union address is one example of a speech that is available to larger audiences than just those who can squeeze into the chamber of the House of Representatives. The Net’s streaming capabilities, though, have made it possible to extend this ability to speakers and events that don’t warrant mainstream television network coverage. The most recent LeWeb, for example, was streamed to an audience hungry for presentations they couldn’t see in person due to the event’s cost (expensive) and location (Paris).

Combine these factors and the significance of real-time feedback loops becomes clear. Not only can an executive speaking at a product launch hear specific feedback in real time, but the audience is now expanded to customers or stakeholders from anywhere in the world.

Generally, this feedback comes in two forms: the general chatter of individuals expressing their opinions or talking with one another and targeted questions from individuals to the speaker. Both were in play last Thursday night as people watching a live stream of the presentation (courtesy of Justin.tv) talked among themselves and posed questions for panelists that were relayed by an in-person moderator.

All eyes on real-time

It’s clear that the Net has altered and expanded realt-time feedback loops. Google has incorporated real-time results into its search results. A new category of real-time search engines has emerged sporting names such as Collecta, Topsy and Scoopler.

Prominent people are writing about the real-time web, including the authors of influential outlets like ReadWrite Web, GigaOn, Mashable and TechCrunch. Jeff Pulver, Stowe Boyd and Jeremiah Owyang have written about it. It found its way onto many 2010 prediction lists.

Protocols are being developed to support it. RealTime RSS—from RSS godfather Dave Winer—sends updates when they’re added to a site rather than waiting for an RSS reader or other utility to poll feeds to find what’s new. Google’s PubSubHubbub is similar although not necewssarily a competing standard; the two can work together. Chris Messina described PubSubHubbub’s function this way: “Let’s say (you write) a new blog post; the blogging software then pings any number of hubs with a message: ‘Hey, new content here.’ The hub says, ‘Great thanks,’ grabs the content, and then pushes the content to everyone on its ‘subscriber” list.’

These two protocols expand the opportunity for anyone to get real-time feedback. A marketing executive introducing a new product to a live audience and a virtual one watching the stream can hear back instantly from those engaged over conversational channels (Twitter and IRC, for example) as well as those writing for online news outlets and blogs.

As a result, the focus on real-time feedback has become intense. Some have proclaimed the ability to assess sentiment through real-time search a replacement for costly polling that has been the province of organizations like Harris and Gallup.

But how important is all this real-time feedback?

Is it accurate?

What you think at the instant you hear something may not be what you think after you’ve had time to digest it. Consequently, your immediate feedback may not reflect your long-term view.

This is one of the issues many speakers have with members of the audience live-tweeting their talks or with journalists live-tweeting events.

Much of the tweeting of live events is objective, though, rather than subjective. It’s more like note-taking than analysis. And even the opinions tweeted in real time have value. After all, you’re presenting in real time and people are reacting. Before, you could only see them shifting uncomfortably in their seats, or maybe actively booing or walking out. Now you can assess exactly why they’re reacting the way they are.

But in some respects, the critics have a point. Consider the widely-covered Apple iPad announcement. Information from Steve Jobs’ presentation was made available in real time through a number of channels and a lot (though certainly not all) of the real-time feedback suggested Apple had another sure-fire hit on its hands. But then came the analysis. Tech journalists, bloggers and others began producing the more thoughtful, detailed reviews after they had a chance to internalize the information, consider it, chew on it. FOr many members of the audience, digesting these views, then sharing them and discussing them with each other, led to a shift in their opinions. In the end, their early tweets didn’t reflect their ultimate views.

Is it representative?

During Thursday night’s panel, the point was made repeatedly that only about 10 percent of your audience will offer real-time feedback. And your larger audience—the customers for the product you’re launching, for instance—won’t even watch the event.

Reacting to real-time feedback, then, could mean that you’re taking action on information that isn’t representative of your customer base. In fact, those who pay attention to the live stream or real-time tweets of your message could be as far from a statistically valid sample of your population as you can get.

Is it contextual?

As I sat in the room where the panel was presented on Thursday, I was able to take in everything at once. There was the reaction of other panelists to what one panelist was saying, panel moderator Jennifer Lindsay‘s reaction, the panel’s reaction to Lindsay’s questions and the reaqction of the audience.

Those watching the stream, on the other hand, saw only what the camera allowed, and the camera was almost always focused on whoever was speaking. Those watching the stream got only a sliver of the experience had by those in attendance. IT’s even worse with those who see only the 140 characters broadcast by those who are live-tweeting the event. The reactions of those receiving these messages, then, could be based on incomplete or out-of-context information. It could conflict with the opinions of the people whose opinions you’re really trying to understand.

Because of these realities, the rush to embrace the real-time web can easily lead us to overvalue real-time feedback and make inappropriate decisions based on it.

When real-time feedback matters

Of course, recognizing the limits of real-time feedback doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be paying attention to it, only that you should be cirumspect in terms of what you do with it.

In a crisis, for example, you’d be foolish to ignore commentary emerging in real time. By monitoring public sentiment, you can determine the depth of reaction to the situation and quickly develop a response strategy. Real-time feedback in response to change initiatives is equally important. People resist change for a variety of reasons and listening to feedback can help you shape your efforts to overcome that resistance.

As for other feedback—to speeches, to announcements, to events—organizations will have to develop processes to determine which feedback requires immediate internalization and action and which becomes just additional information to factor into longer-term thinking. After all, how much can you really do with real-time feedback? We have no brain-implantable chips to help us adjust our comments in real time based on listener feedback. We can’t alter the presentation in mid-course when CNN’s cameras are on you. You can’t redesign the product if it’s already on trucks heading to retail stores. In most instances, real-time feedback won’t be more important than other forms of input, including the articles, reviews, blog posts, tweets and other consumer-generated content that will trickle out over days, weeks and months in response to your company’s message. Your best bet will be to add it to the mix in order to figure out your next steps, whether it’s a version 2.0 of your product, an enhancement to a program or a response to a query or criticism.

None of which means that engaging people through social channels is less important than it was before the real-time web became a hot topic. Engaging individuals through social channels isn’t necessarily the same as participating in a real-time feedback loop. Engaging in conversations, responding to questions and participating in communities is all part of an effort to establish strong relationships that will pay off over the long term.

Nor does this suggest that the real-time web isn’t important. The instant delivery of news means organizations have less time to prepare and more information through which to sift.

But when it comes to taking immediate action on the instant feedback to your message, tread with care. You could be solving a problem that doesn’t really exist.

Related post from Tom Foremski, who was on the panel (and is in the photo above): The Real-Time Web Turns ‘Conversational’ Media Into Noise

Friday, February 05, 2010

FIR Interview: Andreas Wilkens and Michele Macpherson of MediaFunnel

MediaFunnel is a web-based platform for managing team contributions to an organization’s social media output. Initially developed for teams contributing content to branded Twitter accounts, it is expanding into Facebook and other social media channels.

In this FIR Interview, co-host Shel Holtz speaks with one of the platform’s co-founders and its business development adviser about the potential uses of the platform and how it works.

Get this podcast:

• Download the MP3 file (10.3Mb, 25:42)
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• Subscribe to the FIR Interviews RSS feed

About our Conversation Partners

Andreas Wilkens is the founder and Managing Partner of Companity Group. Companity Group specializes in SaaS software development, IT outsourcing and consulting as well as VPN solutions

Michele Dundas Macpherson is Managing Partner of Macpherson & Associates, a firm that provides strategic positioning, fundraising and general management for clients in retail, entertainment, self-serve kiosks, technology and social media.  With over 12 years of general management consulting and venture capital experience, she has been instrumental in defining and implementing strategy for dozens of clients. Previous, she was Vice President of Entertainment for NCR Corporation, where she served as the general manager of the retail consumer business operating more than 2,000 DVD/media rental kiosks across North America.

Share your comments or questions about this podcast, or suggestions for future interviews, in the FIR FriendFeed Room. You can also email us at fircomments@gmail.com; call the Comment Line at +1 206 222 2803 (North America), +44 20 8133 9844 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments; comment at Twitter: twitter.com/FIR or at Jaiku: fir.jaiku.com. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

To receive all For Immediate Release podcasts including the twice-weekly Hobson & Holtz Report, subscribe to the full RSS feed.

This FIR Interview is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years. Information: www.ragan.com.

Podsafe music - On A Podcast Instrumental Mix (MP3, 5Mb) by Cruisebox.

Evidence exists for the “high-school” notion of admitting mistakes

In an interview on NPR’s “Talk of the Nation” broadcast addressing Toyota’s PR woes, a crisis management executive dismissed the notion of a company quickly admitting when it has done something wrong.  Eric Dezenhall, CEO of Washington, D.C.-based Dezenhall Resources, responded to a question from host Rebecca Roberts:

Roberts: ...when a consumer base needs some compassion and needs some hand-holding, as you say, that conflicts with legal advice to admit no wrong. So how do you tread that line between admitting error but also apologizing to your consumers?

Dezenhall: You’re hitting what the great tension is. I mean, whether it’s Tiger Woods or anything, you’re always hearing these very silly PR people when a crisis hits dive in front of the camera and dish out this ridiculous cliche that if you just fessed up, the problem would go away.I see absolutely no evidence whatsoever that that’s true. Okay, it sounds wonderful in a high school PR class. I don’t see evidence that it’s true. If all of these people start confessing to things and apologizing to things, you’re vulnerable legally.

Well, I suppose if you shut your eyes really, really tight, you won’t see any evidence. My question to Mr. Dezenhall is simple: Have you ever looked for such evidence?

Here are a couple nuggets from a post I wrote last June:

In a study conducted 12 years ago, the year-end closing stock prices of companies that experienced crises were compared. Those that responded well saw their share value 4%, then rebound and remain 7% above their pre-crisis close, while those responded badly (that is, did what their lawyers told them to do) experienced initial declines of 10% with share prices remaining down, closing the year 15% below pre-crisis levels. That’s a 22% difference in year-end share value between companies that responded honestly and candidly versus those lawyered up over the possibility of lawsuits.

(The Oxford Executive Research Briefing that reported these findings is detailed in this Wharton Leadership Digest, a PDF file.)

Another study, this one from the Stanford Graduate School of Business, found that companies taking responsibility in a crisis outperformed those that blamed someone else by 14-19%.

(Note to Mr. Dezenhall: The “American Heritage Dictionary” defines “evidence” as “a thing or things helpful in forming a conclusion or judgment.”)

In the same blog post, I referenced Jim Golden, a negotiation counsel for a Tennessee law firm, who said that doing the right thing and telling the truth results in fewer cases going to trial and smaller judgments from those cases that do make it to the inside of a courtroom. Why? Because the truth that was hidden and denied on advice of counsel is revealed in court to a judge and jury who then perceive the organization as the bad guy. As I wrote in June, when companies “fess up” (as Dezenhall puts it) “there’s nothing left to be proven in court. Golden’s clients that have taken this approach have had their insurance premiums reduced by up to 30%.”

See? If you look for evidence, you’ll have a much better shot at finding it.

There’s even more evidence in FIR Live featuring Golden and New York-based crisis expert Fred Garcia.

To be clear, neither Golden nor Garcia recommend an organization take responsibility for something it didn’t do. But if they know they screwed up, they’re able to get it behind them faster by just admitting it, rather than allow information to continue to dribble out over weeks or months.

Thursday, February 04, 2010

The Hobson & Holtz Report - Podcast #523: February 4, 2010

Content summary: New FIR Speakers & Speeches podcast is up; upcoming FIR Interview with Marc Wright; Dan York’s report; the Media Monitoring Minute with CustomScoop; News That Fits: new Pew study on social media/mobile internet use among teens and young adults, where does social media fit into Toyota’s global recall crisis?, trust in peers plunges and bad news for social media mavens says Tom Foremski, Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz tweets his farewell; listener comments discussion including a CIPR statement on the ‘An Inconvenient PR Truth’ campaign; music from Billy; and more.

Get FIR:

• Download the MP3 file (24.8Mb, 61:48)
• Subscribe to the RSS feed
• Get the show at iTunes

Messages from our sponsors: FIR is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years, www.ragan.com; Save time with the CustomScoop online clipping service: sign up for your free two-week trial, at www.customscoop.com/fir.

For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report, for February 4, 2010: A 62-minute podcast recorded live from Concord, California, USA, and Wokingham, Berkshire, England.

Links for the blogs, individuals, companies and organizations we discussed or mentioned in the show are posted to the FIR Show Links pages at The New PR Wiki. You can contribute - see the show notes home page for info.

• FIR #523 show notes at The New PR Wiki

Share your comments or questions about this show, or suggestions for future shows, in the FIR FriendFeed Room. You can also email us at fircomments@gmail.com; call the Comment Line at +1 206 222 2803 (North America), +44 20 8133 9844 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments; comment at Twitter: twitter.com/FIR, or at Jaiku: fir.jaiku.com. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

Join the FIR Discussion Forum and extend your conversations with the FIR community. You can also join the FIR Facebook Community and become an FIR friend.

To stay informed about occasional FIR events (eg, FIR Live), sign up for FIR Update email news.

So, until Monday February 8…

Wednesday, February 03, 2010

Speakers & Speeches: Chris Christensen on online business communities

Content summary: Chris Christensen, former Executive Vice President of Engineering and Operations for LiveWorld and host of the Amateur Traveler podcast, spoke at the February 3, 2010 Social Media Breakfast/East Bay. His remarks focused on the various approaches different organizations and brands take to building online communities focused on their products. Among the companies he addressed were Campbell’s Soup, HBO, TVGuide.com and Mini Cooper.

Chris’s remarks were recorded using the Griffin iTalk app for the iPhone.

• Download the file here (MP3, 10.8Mb, 26:54).

Share your comments or questions about this podcast, or suggestions for future shows, in the FIR FriendFeed Room. You can also email us at fircomments@gmail.com; call the Comment Line at +1 206 222 2803 (North America), +44 20 8133 9844 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments; comment at Twitter: twitter.com/FIR. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

To receive all For Immediate Release podcasts including the twice-weekly Hobson & Holtz Report, subscribe to the full RSS feed.

This FIR Speakers & Speeches podcast is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years. Information: www.ragan.com.