Sunday, November 28, 2004
HC+T Update: November 2004
The November 2004 e-mail newsletter from Holtz Communication + Technology
HC+T Update:
November 2004
In This Issue:
1) Do We Need A Blogging Code Of Ethics?
2) The Size Of The Blogosphere
3) Offshoring PR
4) The Latest Instant Messaging Research
5) CEOs Value PR, But Not Column Inches
6) Consortium Survey Defines Internal Communication Excellence
7) Microsoft Goes Straight To The Customer With MSN Search
8) Student Activism Takes Aim At Intellectual Property
9) Persuaders Available Online
10) Taking Issue With Wikipedia
11) E-mail May Not Be Adequate Employee Notification
12) I-Names Could Serve As A Deterrent To Spam
13) Rant: PR Needs Some PR
14) Sites of the Month
15) HC+T Update
16) Boilerplate And Subscription Information
I’m getting my November issue out just under the wire; it’s been a busy month! As usual, most of what you read here is taken from items I’ve published to my blog in the last month. Your feedback is most welcome! I hope you all (well, at least those of you in the US) had a restful Thanksgiving.
1. Do We Need A Blogging Code Of Ethics?
Call it blog product placement. A company called Marqui is paying 15 bloggers $800 each month to link to one of the company’s services and add its logo to their blogs. These 15 bloggers will get an additional $50 for every qualified sales lead they send to Marqui.
The “Blogosphere Program,” which appears on Marqui’s Web site, includes language that urges—but does not require—bloggers to disclose their relationship with the company. While some bloggers could clearly label their message as a paid advertisement, others could simply enter a post that makes it sound like an unsolicited endorsement.
The “product placement” analogy only goes so far. A motion picture or television show is a commercial venture from the outset. When you see a BMW featured in a James Bond movie, you assume BMW paid to have its vehicle make an appearance. A blog that maintains an appearance of impartiality, though, would never lead a reader to draw the same conclusion.
If others adopt the Marqui concept, the blogosphere could be flooded with posts that were bought and paid for about which the reader would have no clue. Any post on any blog could consequently become suspect.
Blogs’ popularity has been motivated largely by a growing mistrust of mainstream media. This skepticism has been helped along by a few professional journalists who have violated the code of ethics by which they’re supposed to abide. But at least journalists have a code of ethics and most make an effort to comply. Codes of ethics are also required of members of professional associations, including PRSA and IABC, both of which can revoke a membership if a violation is deemed egregious enough.
There is no similar code of ethics for bloggers. With over 1 million active blogs (see next item), there’s plenty of room for individuals with inappropriate agendas or suspect motives to attract readers. Bloggers belong to no common group that could even suggest what constitutes appropriate and inappropriate behavior. Each individual blogger is left to act based on his own conscience…or lack of one.
All the excitement over the potential impact of blogs could evaporate when it becomes clear that no blog can be trusted.
Perhaps an informal opt-in program would serve as a needed first step. All that’s required is a statement of an ethical code posted to a Web site where those who agree to abide by the code download a logo to appear on their sites asserting that “This blog adheres to the Blogger Code of Ethics,” or some similar language. Violations could be reported to some volunteer body that reviews the complaints with the power to revoke the right to use the logo.
I have no idea who would comprise the body or create the site. As blogging’s influence grows, though, somebody somewhere needs to take a first step.
2. The Size Of The Blogosphere
There are, to put it unscientifically, a lot of blogs out there. Technorati says the blogosphere has doubled every five months over the last 18 months. As of July, Technorati was tracking 3 million blogs. PubSub (see “Sites of the Month”) claims to monitor 6.5 million blogs. The Pew Internet & American Life Project says a new blog is started every 5.8 seconds. But, according to Jason McCabe Calcanis, founder of Weblogs Inc., only about 1 million are updated regularly. That means less than 1% of the U.S. population is blogging, although we can expect that number to increase dramatically.
What does this mean for the worlds of public relations and journalism? While only 1% of the population writes blogs, about 11% of the online population reads them, even if they don’t know that’s what they’re reading. They’re reading about 275,000 updates each day, or 11,000 an hour. These posts tend to pick up steam when something happens that is prime fodder for the kind of instant communication that comes so naturally to the Net, such as word that CBS newsman Dan Rather’s research into President George Bush’s National Guard duty was suspect. Readership increases concurrently.
So blogs will continue to present a challenge to those communicating through more traditional channels, particularly as the popularity of authoring blogs increases.
It’s worth noting, however, that more than half the blogs out there—51.5%, according to Perseus Development Co.—are authored by 13-19-year-olds. The next biggest group of authors is 20-29, accounting for 39.6% of the blogosphere. (People my age, by the way, account for 0.4%.) These stats don’t cover the demographics of the 1 million bloggers who keep their blogs up-to-date.
3. Offshoring PR
When you hear concerns about offshoring, you don’t usually think about communications jobs. High-paying computer programming jobs jump to mind first, followed by customer support positions. In the UK, however, the trend toward offshoring public relations jobs is already underway.
The first jobs to find their way into cheaper job markets like India are media monitoring and evaluation positions, according to an investigation by the Sunday Herald. Reuters has sent hundreds of these jobs to India, reducing the editorial headcount by 35 in London.
While it’s easy to feel secure in the argument that PR requires personal relationships, proximity to the client and an innate understanding of target audiences, only senior counselors are protected by this rationale. Low-paying production jobs can be handled anywhere, in most cases. One British PR rep believes that strategic communication consulting needs to remain close to the client, but that “press office PR” could easily be moved to places like India.
There could be a tendency among many in the profession to enter a state of denial over the likelihood that offshoring could hit PR. One PR blogger, Bob LeDrew, who authors FlackLife, wrote, “Frankly, I don’t buy it. A guy or a gal in Bangalore is just not going to be able to develop the relationships necessary to do good PR.”
However, it’s not the rep building the relationship who’s at risk, but rather the lower-ranking members of the team. As the online publication “Freelance UK” notes, “Only account directing and senior management is not viable overseas, with everything else adoptable offshore.” Consider media research that could be completed in India overnight and sent to the West by the time doors open in the morning.
It’ll be a trend to watch.
4. The Latest Instant Messaging Research
Companies may be reading all the paranoid research about how much trouble instant messaging (IM) can cause in the workplace, but most companies aren’t doing much about it. According to a study out of Europe, 56% of the 340 European IT managers have no plans to install enterprise IM, opting instead to let employees use the AOL, Yahoo and MSN software. Many of those surveyed say they don’t mind, since they’ve found security tools that let them use these tools safely.
Maybe they’re not implementing more restrictive software because they recognize that IM actually does increase productivity. A survey from Siemens Business Group suggests that IM has had a marked impact on how employees do their jobs. For example, Eighty-four percent of employees working in IT make fewer phone calls thanks to IM; 76% send fewer e-mails. Nearly 80% of these employees assert that IM has improved their productivity. The same number are employed by companies that encourage the use of IM as a productivity tool.
Meanwhile, META Group has released numbers that reveal (prepare to be shocked) employees use their work-hosted IM for personal conversations. The that shows 57% of the respondents from 300 organizations “admitted” using IM at work for personal reasons. Did they really “admit” they use IM for non-work purposes, like a thief admitting he robbed the bank only after the evidence leaves him no other option? Or did they shrug and say, “Well, yeah, of course I do.” The survey also found that 56% of the participants also use their home IM capabilities to do work.
If that sounds like a wash to you, Meta Group analyst Ted Tzrimis thinks it’s “alarming:”
“Companies are exposed to potential problems on both fronts, when people are trading work for private conversations in the office, and when they are using IM for business outside the control of their employers.”
Tzrimis is concerned that employees could do something “seedy” from home, like send dirty pictures to a co-worker, which reflects poorly on the company even if it’s not illegal. Of course, the study also showed 35% of companies have no policies in place regarding IM. Further, many organizations fail to acknowledge that IM has become as useful and common a communication tool as the telephone. While only 3% of companies prohibit the use of the phone for personal use, 16% ban the personal use of IM. And while 68% of companies have policies that permit limited personal use of e-mail, only 44% had a similar rule for IM.
It’s time for organizations to dispense with the notion that they should—or can—“control” employee messaging. Messaging channels need policies and guidelines that acknowledge the reality of work-life integration, which suggests that employees expected to put in long hours and take work home should also be allowed to live some of their life at work. (It also suggests that work-life balance is unattainable.) Productivity is measured in volume and quality of output and time-to-market, not hours spent in the office on non-work-related activities.
Incidentally, if you use instant messaging, you may interested in a fee (for now) service called IMStarter (http://www.imsmarter.com). Adding no software to your computer, IMSmarter logs your IM conversations so you can refer back to them later.
5. CEOs Value PR, But Not Column Inches
Torrance, California-based PR agency Power PR has issued a call for performance-based metrics for the public relations profession. In a press release posted to eMediaWire, the agency proclaims, “The day is over when a client can enlist a marketing publicity PR firm for a year, and then be confronted with an immeasurable result for his investment. Progress should be measurable after the very first month through the use of metrics. Our clients deserve no less.”
I’m not aware of anybody in PR who doesn’t use metrics to validate their efforts. Companies like K.D. Paine and Medialink Delahaye do quite well helping agencies with their measurement. While I’m certain there are hacks and charlatans out there doing what they call PR without assessing their results, most professionals take measurement for granted. It’s in every PR book and it’s taught in every PR class. Reading Power PR’s release, you’d think they came up with the idea.
What struck me, though, was the measures Power PR suggests the profession adopt. These include…
- The number of times each week an editor is contacted on a client’s behalf
- The number of editors considering a story about the client
- The number of articles scheduled per week
- The number of articles published each week
- Total published article circulation per month
- Article-generated responses (leads the client got from an article)
- Cost per lead
I was surprised column-inches and Web site hits weren’t included on the list.
No client loses sleep over the number articles generated. In fact, PR heavyweight Burson-Marstellar and PRWeek released the results of a CEO survey today that shows “a continued increase among corporate leaders who believe public relations professionals play an important role within their organizations.” According to the study of more than 100 U.S. CEOs, conducted by Impulse Research, more than 90% of the respondents rated communication as “very important” or “important” for managing reputation, safeguarding the company’s image and crisis management. These kind of results aren’t achieved by getting editors to consider a story.
One article that produces mind-boggling results is good PR. A thousand articles that produce squat is terrible PR.
I have for years defined public relations as the management of an organization’s relations with its non-customer constituent audiences. (The relationship with customers is marketing communications.) A client can’t determine the quality of those relationships based on how many articles were published. Was the strike averted? Did Congress opt not to impose new regulatory restrictions? Did shareholders vote down the hostile takeover bid? Did positive reaction to the brand increase? Did rhetoric about imagined environmental abuses subside? These are outcomes that matter to clients, the reasons they hire us. The tools we use are just that, tools. There are plenty of PR efforts that don’t involve article placement at all; public relations is not the de facto equivalent of press agentry.
I agree that the profession could use some standard metrics so prospective clients can perform apples-to-apples comparisons. They just need to be the right metrics.
6. Consortium Survey Defines Internal Communication Excellence
It’s rare to see an employee communications study that doesn’t make you say, “Well duh.” Which is pretty much the reaction I had to the results of a massive research undertaking coordinated by HR consulting firm Towers Perrin. Still, one of the nice things about studies is that they provide quantifiable research to support what you’ve known all along.
The Towers study—interestingly available as a MarketWire release but not available on the company’s own Web site—brought 17 large U.S. companies together to conduct the same study. Each company could evaluate its own results, but since employees at each company answered the same set of questions, the results could be rolled up for a view of perceptions across business. Some 25,000 responses were aggregated to produce results that, while a blinding flash of the obvious, do reinforce what we’ve been saying about internal communications all along.
For example, employees who believe their companies’ leaders who “demonstrate a sincere interest in employees’ well-being” lead employees to believe their organizations communicate effectively with them 12% more than those working for companies with leaders who, I guess, don’t give a damn. Towers’ conclusion (according to Katherine Woodall, a senior communications consultant): “The study reinforces just how important it is for senior leaders to connect with employees on a truly human level.”
The survey was designed to build an employee definition of effective communication. The results (and again, don’t expect to be floored):
- Open and honest exchange of information
- Clear, easy-to-understand materials
- Timely distributions
- Trusted sources
- Two-way feedback systems
- Clear demonstrations of senior leadership’s interest in employees
- Continual improvements in communication
- Consistent messaging across sources
The study also dug into the elements that are most influential in influencing employee opinions:
- Supervisory effectiveness in communication
- Basic communication tools
- Market understanding (competitors and customers)
- Business understanding (how the company succeeds)
- The employee-employer deal
While these elements (presented in order) are important, companies (another surprise) are doing a lousy job at them. For example, the study found 65% of employees don’t receive an adequate amount of information on competitors and 43% feel the information they do get is ineffective. Forty-eight percent don’t get adequate information on customers and only 38% believe what they get is useful and 27% say it’s ineffective. And only 39% get information that differentiates their company’s products and services from the competition.
According to Towers’ Charlie Watts, “Employees at all levels are saying that a key element of effective communication is providing a clear picture of customers and competitors. And the data tell us there is a significant gap here.”
Only about half the respondents say their supervisors take the time to explain company strategies and company developments to them, and less than half believe communication has improved in their organizations in the past couple years. Less than half say leadership communications are two-way and only about half say procedures are in place for employees to raise questions and issues with executives or for executives to inform employees quickly about major decisions and developments.
7. Microsoft Goes Straight To The Customer With MSN Search
Back to blogs and another example of how they can serve a public relations role.
The new MSN search engine that launched this month is clearly labeled “beta,” so all the rushes to judgment seem a bit premature. But at least the team behind the engine is communicating quickly and candidly with users and webmasters, and they’re using a blog to do it. According to a ClickZ news item quoting product manager Justin Osmer, the team “wanted to open more lines of communication with our users and thought that this Weblog would be a good way for us to do that.”
Initially, there were three messages on the blog: an introductory note, an announcement of the search engine’s launch, and an apology: “In the process of making our new MSN Search beta broadly available we experienced some technical difficulties that caused the beta service to function improperly or be unavailable for some users for periods of time. We’re working through these issues one by one and you should see service availability and quality improve soon if not already. We apologize for any inconvenience.”
Since then, the team has been posting regularly, at least every couple days. They’re acknowledging the feedback they get, listing the features users have told them they want to see (such as more answers from Microsoft’s encyclopedia Encarta). They cover media reviews of the engine (even when the bad ones), and answer questions coming in from users (like “Why did the MSNbot not crawl my site?”) Every post draws considerable comment from readers.
The blog wasn’t launched in response to any kind of crisis, but it’s no big stretch to recognize the value of this medium when a crisis hits. The MSNSearch blog was introduced as a means of staying close to the customer. It became something of a crisis tool when the beta failed to work properly the day it was introduced. Since then, it has returned to its original purpose. Having a blog in place for new product launches (among other uses) just seems to make good sense.
Read the MSNSearch Blog for yourself at http://blogs.msdn.com/msnsearch
8. Student Activism Takes Aim At Intellectual Property
“We refuse to accept a future of digital feudalism where we do not actually own the products we buy, but we are merely granted limited uses of them as long as we pay the rent.”
So says the Free Culture Manifesto, a brief document that states the foundations of the Free Culture movement. The open-source movement was started by two Swarthmore students—who also founded the Swarthmore Coalition for the Digital Commons (SCDC)—who sued Diebold over its effort to halt posting of internal e-mails on the Web. (Diebold relented and announced it wouldn’t fight posting of e-mails pertaining to problems with its e-voting machines.) The pair was inspired by the writings of Lawrence Lessig.
The movement is spreading. Perhaps a reaction to the draconian actions of the Recording Industry Association of America, or the threats of the RIAA’s motion picture counterpart, or the enthuasiasm of youth, 13 chapters of the Free Culture organization have taken root on campuses across the country.
Free Culture has a Web site (http://freeculture.org), a blog, and resources to help interested students start chapters on their own campuses.
It’s been a long time since the student activism of the Vietnam war era, but I’m old enough to remember it. (Hell, I’m old enough to have participated in it.) If the Free Culture movement picks up a quarter the steam of the anti-war protests of the 60’s, copyright law is in for some drastic changes despite the lobbying dollars copyright owners throw at Congress to protect their intellectual properties.
For corporations and other institutions that own intellectual property—particularly digital property—the Free Culture site is required reading.
9. “Persuaders” Available Online
In a nifty idea for dealing with television repeats, KQED has made its Frontline broadcast, “The Persuaders,” available online. It’s at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/persuaders/view/.
“The Persuaders” follows several marketing programs in an effort to show how the volume of marketing messages to which consumers are exposed every day. The result: a diminishing impact of marketing on consumers. The documentary compares consumers to roaches who have been sprayed so much they have become immune. Wired News has an article about the show. The PBS site also features information about the Frontline presentation, where you can also find the station where it’ll be shown in your market.
Wired News has an article about the documentary at http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,65640,00.html?tw=rss.TOP.
10. Taking Issue With Wikipedia
US President George Bush’s claim to have earned a “mandate” in the November 2 election struck me as funny. The claim was based on Bush’s assertion that more voters had cast their votes for him than any other presidential victor in US history. To check my theory, I turned to Wikipedia, the collaborative encyclopedia based on wiki web site technology. In a listing about US presidential elections, I found the vote totals for every winner and loser in US history. Using those numbers, I was able to make my point—that challenger John Kerry’s vote total also surpassed the previous high for a presidential winner. All the numbers meant was that more people voted than ever before, but it was still pretty damned close. The president’s 3% margin of victory is (in my personal opinion) nowhere near a mandate.
Clearly, I love Wikipedia. But I’ve had second thoughts about it since reading an essay by Robert McHenry, former editor-in-chief of Encyclopedia Britannica.
There has been no shortage of arguments against Wikipedia. Some journalists have shunned it because of the lack of accountability. Pro-Wikipedia advocates counter that massive peer review ensures accuracy on all but the most obscure entries.
McHenry’s problem, though, is based on the standards to which professional encyclopedia writers and editors are held. In response to the notion that substantial peer editing—what McHenry calls “a quasi Darwinian process”—will produce accurate content, McHenry asks, “Does someone actually believe this? Evidently so. Why? It’s very hard to say. One possibility that occurs to me is this: The combination of prolificacy and inattention to accuracy that characterizes this process is highly suggestive of the modern pedagogic technique known as ‘journaling.’”
To test the effectiveness of peer editing, McHenry selects the biography of Alexander Hamilton, whose date of birth is in dispute. McHenry finds several inconsistencies and inaccuracies.
“The article is what might be expected of a high school student, and at that it would be a C paper at best. Yet this article has been “edited” over 150 times. Some of those edits consisted of vandalism, and others were cleanups afterward. But how many Wikipedian editors have read that article and not noticed what I saw on a cursory scan? How long does it take for an article to evolve into a “polished, presentable masterpiece,” or even just into a usable workaday encyclopedia article?”
McHenry’s observations need to be added to the input about the idea of community editing and participatory journalism. There’s still something to be said for professionals who have been trained to produce accurate and authoritative content. You can read McHenry’s complete essay at http://www.techcentralstation.com/111504A.html.
11. E-mail May Not Be Adequate Employee Notification
Employee communicators take note: Your company changes a policy. Somebody communicates it to employees by sending an all-employee e-mail. You’ve satisfied the requirement to get the message across, right?
Maybe not. A Federal District Court ruled recently that General Dynamics failed to properly notify employees of a policy change even though all employees received the e-mail. In the case, Campbell v. General Dynamics Government Systems Corporation, Roderick Campbell went to court for the right to file a disability discrimination lawsuit against his employer even though the company had notified employees that employment-related legal matters would be handled by arbitration. Campbell claimed the communication was inadequate.
First off, the e-mail was sent by “Broadcaster NDHM,” the same sender line used to invite employees to birthday celebrations. The subject line, “G. MeMuro - New Dispute Resolution Policy,” didn’t convey the importance of the e-mail. The court also found that the e-mail message buried the lead and failed to convey the importance of the new policy. The company could have done more to communicate the message, according to the court, including asking employees to acknowledge receipt.
E-mail is cheap and quick. I’ve been to dozens of companies where e-mail blasts substitute for thoughtful communication. Internal communicators need to be aware of the General Dynamics judgment (currently under appeal) and make their executives understand that cheap delivery of messages could be more costly in the long run.
You can get more details on the ruling at http://www.dmb.com/news-and-events/newsletter.asp?id=72.
12. I-Names Could Serve As A Deterrent To Spam
I’m seeing an interesting trend on Web sites. Rather than list their e-mail addresses, authors are spelling the addresses out in an effort to avoid having their addresses scraped and used by spammers. Using this approach, an e-mail address reads something like “john dot doe at acme dot com.” You can’t click on the address to launch your e-mail client; you have to translate it. The Google gMail icon you get with your account automatically creates this “sounds-like” address for you.
Maybe there’s a better way. I just spent $25 for an i-name. It’s mine for 50 years. It might end up being worthless, but there’s promise to this concept. It could end up becoming a standard if the word spreads.
I learned about i-names from Mike Vincenty, a friend, colleague, co-author, and IT guy. Identity Commons is the group behind i-names. According to their site, Identity Commons “seeks to foster trusted electronic communications by creating the technological and social framework for an open global trust network. We are a creating a member-owned international federation that empowers individuals and organizations to own, control and share their online identity and profile information in an environment of mutual trust and peer governance.”
Here’s a simple explanation. Instead of putting my e-mail address into a message posted to my site, a bulletin board or even in my e-mail signature, I use my i-name address. When you click on it, you get my identity page that includes information I’m willing to share. If you want to contact me, there’s a form for you to complete. I’ll receive notification of the request.
My i-name is good even if my e-mail address changes, since I can change my e-mail address in my account settings. Give it a try; here’s my i-name link: http://public.2idi.com/=shelholtz. That’s the universal address you’d see in a plain-text e-mail or post; it would also be the link behind an HTML version that would just show my name, like this: Shel Holtz.
As it exists now, an i-name is a great way to avoid spam, since spammers can’t do anything with harvested i-names. By building the infrastructure, though, the organization hopes to allow you to use a single password for all the password-protected sites you visit and enter personal data once and use it on forms across the Web.
If it sounds a little like Microsoft’s Passport concept, it is, with the notable difference that you control your information instead of another company. You can get an i-name and read more about them at http://www.identitycommons.net. There’s a press release with more information, including details about the value of i-names to individuals, communities and businesses.
The $25 sale of 150,000 i-names is a three-month program launched October 25 to raise funds that “will be used to develop open source software and services for i-names and i-brokers, and will also be shared with organizations that help market and adopt this infrastructure.”
13. Rant: PR Needs Some PR
Late last month, San Jose Mercury News columnist Dan Gillmor told the world about a lame PR pitch he received. The pitch positioned blogs as a threat and the client’s services as a way to take action against the threat. Gillmor reacted, “This is a remarkably myopic view of the blogosphere, but it reflects what I frequently hear from PR folks. The new world isn’t about managing bloggers. It’s about working with them, having a conversation with them.”
You can read the entire Gillmor piece at http://weblog.siliconvalley.com/column/dangillmor/archives/010962.shtml.
The column sparked a flurry of comments among the public relations corner of the blogosphere, most lamenting the lack of progressive thinking and the amount of hucksterism that pervades the profession. “Instead of trying to control the message, which is what PR has become, how about working with the public to fully disseminate the message?” wrote Jeremy Pepper in his PR blog. “Our industry is PUBLIC relations, and bloggers are another facet of the public that we need to reach out to, and ensure that they are fully apprised of our message.”
Most of the people I know who work in PR are intelligent, thoughtful professionals who behave ethically, do their homework and engage in multi-directional, symmetrical communications. Why don’t they get coverage from Gillmor and others who report on the scum of the profession? Because people going about their jobs just isn’t interesting, nor is it news.
I wish we could keep people like the huckster who pitched Gillmor from ever getting into the business, but there are bastards and idiots in every line of work. Those working in public relations stand out because their efforts are designed to be visible. I don’t question that Gillmor hears a lot of stupidity from uninformed and low-rent PR people. I don’t doubt there are a lot of them out there. But can’t the profession do something to offset the impression they create that all PR people are like this?
Pete Shinbach wrote about this in his blog, The Bach Door: “If one of the reasons to hire a PR staffer or agency is to get people to better understand whatever it is that you do, why is it that so many PR people persistently whine that their business is so misunderstood?”
Part of the problem is that practitioners are busy representing their clients; they can’t bill anybody to do PR for the PR profession. On the other hand, we have two large professional associations in IABC and PRSA that are supposed to represent us. Is it asking to much to expect them to do something about the way we’re perceived by the public?
14. Sites Of The Month
>>>Most search engines, Google included, require you to enter a search term in order to retrieve content that already exists on the Web. But what about new information that is published after your search? For that, you can turn to PubSub. Enter a term and PubSub will send alerts to you via RSS when new content appears. So far, there are no news feeds, but the folks behind PubSub expect that could change with an agreement with a news syndication service. PubSub does search blogs, SEC filings, press releases, airport delays, and newsgroup posts.
>>>“Blogs are reinventing impactful content.” I hope—I really hope—you rolled your eyes at that little snippet of corporate jargon. What the hell is impactful content and how does one reinvent it? I’m not sure, but I know how to come up with drivel like this. Visit the Web Economy Bullshit Generator and come up with your own jargon. You might even impress some clueless clients by inserting it into a proposal. Now I’m gonna go scale some global synergies.
http://www.dack.com/web/bullshit.html
15. HC+T Update
- I’m making a presentation at the upcoming Ragan Communications Web conference in Chicago. I’ll speak on trends in online communication.
- I’m working with a global public relations agency on the online portion of a public service campaign.
- I’m speaking in mid-December at a financial services company meeting to address how to get develop company leaders using online tools.
- I’m conducting a competitive analysis and site audit for a retail Web site.
- I’m working with a high-tech company to develop a strategic employee communications plan.
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