It’s been a while, but SXSW finally got my 2008 panel titled Blogs, Buzz, and Buddy Lists posted online.

Here’s the description:

Blogs, Buzz, and Buddy Lists

SXSW Interactive PodcastsUse the Internet before the Internet uses you. Thanks to blogs, web-video, and social networking sites, the online universe is a valuable (but no less intimidating) landscape for artists. How do you get the best out of blogs and other sites, to maximize your potential for an audience. Or, how do you get yourself introduced to the booming industry of online journalism and video sharing? These experts dig deep into these ever-changing trends.

Paul Harrill Lovell Films

Karina Longworth Film Blogger, Spout.com

Alison Willmore IFC

Ian Schafer CEO, Deep Focus

Victor Pineiro Writer/Producer, Second Skin

Listen to the panel here! It was most definitely a good one.

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The onset of digital media has enabled communication, information, and news to flow quicker than ever before. The sheer velocity of information has had devastating effects on the newspaper industry (at least the printed elements) and consumers have changed their behavior to adapt.

No longer do we have to wait until the 11pm local newscast to find out what happened in our city. We don’t even have to respect the anchorperson’s request to stay tuned until after the commercial break to hear about a news story. We can just go to any number of websites to get that news before that brief break is over.

When an online news source breaks some piece of information (with our without fact-checking), blogs swoop in to comment, and news aggregator (i.e. Digg) users vote stories up, and they become ‘the news’. And the more news becomes endorsed by the people reading it, the more ‘true’ it feels. Fact-checked or not.

I recently saw a panel at SXSW on the online behavior of teens and tweens, and when a few of the teenaged panelists mentioned that they got their news from Digg, it made me shudder. As great of a tool as Digg is for finding interesting pieces of online content, it’s not a news source. Just an ‘interesting content’ recommendation engine.

But even journalists and professional bloggers use recommendation engines. They’re out there; techmeme is an example. And sometimes those recommendation engines are other journalists and bloggers. In this new era of online journalism, these recommendations have become known as ‘memes’. Wikipedia defines a ‘meme’ as consisting of any unit of cultural information, such as a practice or idea, that gets transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another. Examples include thoughts, ideas, theories, practices, habits, songs, dances and moods and terms such as race, culture, and ethnicity. Memes propagate themselves and can move through a “culture” in a manner similar to the behavior of a virus.

While memes often reflect important topics, they also have the potential to create stagnant monologues that doesn’t necessarily get us anywhere — eventually just turning what should be solution-deriving conversations, into noise. That’s when memes make the leap from becoming units of cultural information and legitimate conversation to being momentum-generated waves of propaganda. Or, as I will business cliche-ify, memeoganda.

What used to be called ‘trend pieces’ are now being ripped from the headlines of blogs and even other publications. The biggest culprits tend to be traditional (especially print) media, and overzealous bloggers (in fact, I randomly stumbled upon this post by Mark Evans on the topic of blog topics via Techmeme) looking to capitalize on popular conversations/memes.

When journalists in traditional publications stop having original things to say, or just have the same ruminations on existing problems without offering up solutions, we get classic memeoganda. Lately, I’ve seen examples of memoganda regarding the ad industry ranging from the ‘death of ad networks’ to ‘facebook’s demise’ to ‘google click volume’ to ‘the death of the music industry’ to even the state of the economy/recession.

These trend pieces get written so quickly and so close to each other, that while they may raise awareness of important topics, they water down the depth of the coverage, and result in a stream of ‘also-ran’ stories.

I started writing this blog post last night, and right on cue, this morning Techcrunch tells us about a new startup called Publish2 that will make memoganda even easier by providing journalists and newsrooms with their own Digg-like resource for finding out what’s hot.

You know, maybe it’s just me, but I yearn for the days when journalists broke hot stories rather than write about stories that are already hot. Memeoganda is sucking the life out of investigative journalism and seems to be more about finding new and exciting ways to conjure up ad inventory than to publish content with depth and meaning. And while stories that yield more ad inventory (read: linkbaiting) can be good bottom-line revenue band-aid, they are not the solution to mainstream journalism’s woes.

The long-term answer is to strive to be the best at what you do. Break the news that matters. Investigate the broken news deeper. Don’t fall prey to the easiness of spreading memeoganda.

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A group of internet users (some call them hackers) known as ‘Anonymous’, have basically launched denial-of-service (DoS) attacks against the Church of Scientology, and have gotten their hands on, and subsequently released confidential, highly-sensitive Scientology documents.

A great recap of the story can be found here.

My contemporary, Tom Hespos weighs in on this via his blog, and calls it a ‘crowdwar’, that it will prepare us for cyberwarfare, and that ‘we will be talking about this for years to come’. AdRants commented on this issue as well.

And I agree.

But I will also add that while there are bits and pieces of this effort that have the air of what we traditionally think of as ‘cyberterrorism’, e.g. DoS attacks, we can not underestimate how the internet can be used for propagandism and the spread of (dis)information.

In addition to attacks targeting servers, cyberwarfare can also make use of web properties and communities, specifically, various forms of social media, like blogs, social networks, and social news aggregators. All of these tools can be — and have been — used for the spread of love, hate, patriotism, jingoism, rhetoric, dissemination of facts, and the manipulation of the truth.

Lets take a look at what Anonymous has done:

* YouTube
Almost 400 videos mentioning Anonymous + Scientology. Here’s Anonymous’ ‘coming out’ video…

* News Aggregators
Numerous ‘Dugg’ stories on Digg, each with an average of about 4,000 ‘diggs’. And thousands of comments in total, with each one making the prized ‘front page’ of Digg.

* File Sharing Services
I won’t link to them here, but if you reference the aforementioned Digg search results, you can see how Anonymous is disseminating all the top-secret Scientology documents they can get their hands on, using outlets like BitTorrent (via PirateBay) and MediaFire.

If you are a user that frequents any of the social media sites referenced above, you have no doubt been exposed to the ways that these properties (and utilities) have been used to spread both factual information and propaganda. But don’t think this is just the realm of Scientology-haters. It’s the realm of Ron Paul supporters, Hilary Clinton bashers, war crime accusers, environmental crusaders, and liberals, independents, and conservatives alike.

Just as social media is a wonderful tool to find like-minded peers with similar beliefs, it’s also a way to convince others to share our beliefs. As marketers and advertisers, we’re trying to figure out how do this ourselves, albeit usually with less serious consequences.

Anti-terrorism experts learn from the volume of ‘chatter’ on message boards and communities. Presidential fund-raising can reach record one-day levels via social mediab. Two polar extremes, both using similar methods.

What social media allows groups from Al-Qaeda, to Anonymous, from Democrats, to Republicans, to do is provide supporters and potential converts unprecedented access to information. It has never before been easier to get access to hour-long videos or 300-page documents. What used to be underground rallies in clandestine locations have become groups on Facebook, channels on YouTube, and comment threads on Digg. Heck you can even use social media to facilitate those same in-person clandestine meetings (Meetup).

Social media, as wonderful a tool as it can be, can also be used to wage war, spread propaganda, or liberate information. What ‘Anonymous’ is doing is probably a combination of all three. And as Tom Hespos stated, yes — we will be talking about this for a long time, because this war is nowhere near over.

But it should be noted that social media doesn’t fight wars. People do. And it’s what people do with social media that matters. People, by nature, are joiners. Joiners of causes, groups, movements, lifestyles. Social media facilitates it all. In a way, it makes us hyper-joiners.

What this particular ‘cyberwar’ can teach us is that as marketers, we must remember this propensity to join, and figure out how to use social media to better galvanize audiences. As consumers, we need to remember just how easy it is to join something — and determine what is propaganda, what is noise, and what we believe in.

Information and disinformation are equally as easily spread via social media, but it is up to us, as individuals, to determine which one is which. What is a malicious ‘hacker’ to one can be the exposing and enlightening bearer of truth to another.

Which one is ‘Anonymous’? That’s up to you to decide. But what we can all agree upon is that social media represents part of the evolution of communication. Free communication should never be limited — but we must thoroughly understand all methods of communication if we expect to be able to separate information from disinformation.

And social media is no exception.

Heck, most advertising can usually be defined as propaganda. Consumers choose which advertising to believe hundreds of times a day. But hmmmmm…If social media makes the spread of propaganda so easy, why are advertisers having such a tough time figuring it out?

Maybe we need to become better propagandists. Or maybe we need to stop spreading disinformation.

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The Wall Street Journal recently profiled an effort in France by Nescafe’s Dolce Gusto brand to incentivize bloggers to cover a new initiative, an interactive game. The way bloggers were incentivized was via a website called BlogBang.com.

Members of the BlogBang.com community (bloggers) were notified of the campaign via the site, and if they chose to write about the campaign, they would receive a link to their blog from Dolce Gusto’s homepage (this campaign may have come and gone, because these links are nowhere to be found on dolce-gusto.fr).

BlogBang, owned by ad agency holding company Publicis, has also tried other ways to get bloggers involved. Per the WSJ article:

BlogBang also has tried to draw bloggers into the creative process. Companies looking for new ways to pitch their products can post requests for bloggers to develop their own campaigns. BlogBang’s members can then put their homemade ads on the site. The one that gets the most clicks is spread around the bloggers’ Web sites, and the author of the winning ad earns a fee. Garnier, a division of cosmetics group L’Oréal, advertised its Fructis hair gel this way. Garnier couldn’t be reached for comment.

While this kind of effort may have the scent of good intentions, a long whiff of BlogBang doesn’t smell much different than PayPerPost (now called IZEA). Anytime the editorial content of blogs is tainted with cash, it de-legitimizes the medium. Even the promise of links is promising traffic which translates into potential ad revenue for the blog. Getting bloggers to create their own ads seems to take them away from what they are (probably) doing best: writing content for their readers. Collectively, readers are smart. They can smell a rat a mile away. Once they realize the content of the blog they are reading is influenced by money, they will move on.

Of course, bloggers receive free products for review all the time. But as long as those products come with the understanding that a) they may not be written about at all, or b) a review may, in fact, be negative, then it is on the up and up.

Publicis may thing they’ve got this blog thing figured out (BlogBang is losing $1 million/year), but the irony of the situation is that if they just employed the use of highly trained, skilled publicists, they might have better, more efficient (albeit not as easy) results.

Coincidentally, the day before the Blog Bang story in the WSJ, TechCrunch published a guest column by a gentleman named Dan Ackerman Greenberg, co-founder of a "viral video marketing company" called The Comotion Group. This column basically explains, in detail, how companies like Dan’s "game" video-sharing websites like YouTube. There are several unscrupulous ways of getting videos more views including fake headlines, paid links on blogs, infiltrating and seeding forums using fake accounts, spam, and numerous other cringe-inducing methods.

After receiving LOTS of negative feedback from the TechCrunch readership (understandably so), Dan was given the opportunity to do a follow-up post . In that post, he basically he doesn’t endorse all the methods he explained in his first post. Regardless, these ways exist, and even if you claim you are just serving them up to facilitate a "discussion", what you’re doing is poisoning the user experience.

What is becoming increasingly apparent to me is that as long as there are trends in online media, there are going to be people and companies looking to game the system, and trying to get rich quick — or at least make easy money. The problem is that with a practically infinite canvas, there are always going to be clicks to be bought.

There are numerous governmental agencies and consumer groups that serve to catch unscrupulousness in the act, but there has been an alarming lack of presence online. While groups like the Word of Mouth Marketing Association exist that set standards, who will enforce them? As much as I don’t want to see the government get involved with the web, how can we prevent spammers, scammers, and blammers from ruining the user experience?

Penny for your thoughts…

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On the same day that Interpublic signed a non-exclusive deal with word-of-mouth marketing firm BzzAgent, another story ran about how consumers are becoming increasingly wary of fake reviews and testimonials (30% of online users today vs. 20% in 2001).

If there’s anyone that believes in the power of word-of-mouth marketing it’s me. The power of getting the right information into the hands of the right people (influencers) and arming them with everything they need to make a decision to consume a brand or product can not be underestimated. But if the trust between brands and the consumer is in any way compromised, then the communication channels break down and you create antagonistic, skeptical consumers that will shun you — and tell everyone else to as well.

The travel industry is feeling the effects of this right now.

BzzAgent, I know you won’t let this happen, and you will fight potential primal urges of the big agencies — protecting the integrity of what we do.

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According to a recent report by Nielsen BuzzMetrics and BASES, “there is a strong correlation between ad spending and buzz generated in the blogosphere, one that shouldn’t be ignored when it comes to making media planning decisions.”

Among 80 consumer packaged goods brands launched in 2005 and 2006 that Nielsen studied, the top 10 percent of products with the most buzz spend nearly $20 million in advertising. In contrast, the products that accounted for the bottom 50 percent of buzz generated spent roughly $5 million, or a quarter of what the most buzz-generating brands spent.

That means that the more money is spent on online media, the more likely there is to be “buzz” around that new brand or product.

The study does caveat this statement by saying that some brands are just prone to more buzz.

While some of this is common sense (heavy online spend = more online awareness), the conclusion can be drawn that if paid media and word-of-mouth management are both managed by the same entity, the resultant buzz can be much greater than if these tactics were executed individually, by different entities.

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Joe Jaffe raises an interesting point, regarding analysis of a recent Ray Ban viral video “campaign”:

Could it be that vomitous viral has peaked and/or entered the black hole of cluttered forgetfulness? I disagree with Fabio’s contention - as evidenced by the Technorati chart - Ray-Ban did not become part of the conversation, but rather just a freaky viral video, remembered for the wrong reasons.

This is the reality of the two extremes of video today:

The 30-second TV spot sells too hard and the viral video doesn’t sell hard enough.

Can we all agree on one thing? That “viral” is an effect, not an ad (or a campaign). When clients say that they want something “viral”, what I say is that they want something really good. Good content goes viral. Sure, there are hooks to raise the likelihood of that happening, but “viral” is a side-effect. The trick is, how do you make good content a good ad?

There’s the rub. And that rub will separate agencies that create ads from agencies that create content that deliver a message in a way that makes consumers actually want to watch, listen, and participate. I get the feeling that we’re already living in those days of reckoning.

Bring ‘em on.

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The world of online public relations and publicity is a strange one to many - even to publicists and PR professionals.

I get calls all the time from companies looking to change or shape the perception of consumers via online PR strategies. I often have to clear the air and explain just what it is that we do. So what better way than to do it in a public forum.

At Deep Focus, we’ve pioneered the adaptation of the “old” publicity model and have made it more relevant. In doing so, we’ve adopted a set of beliefs.
(more…)

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There was another panel at Search Engine Strategies today that brought up the concept of the ‘News Peg’ and how timely video creation can be used to take advantage of the search zeitgeist.

Steve Bryant at NewTeeVee nails it with this post.

From the post:

Online video will make all of us– from bloggers to executives to musicians — better journalists. The reason is simple. Everyone is learning what a news peg is and how to exploit it.

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As stated in my earlier post, niche social networks can have significant amounts of advertising leverage, and should be paid attention to by ALL advertisers, and here’s a perfect example.

Playskool will be sending 2,500 toy kits to members of CafeMom to (hopefully) encourage positive reviews and word-of-mouth. It’s putting your product where the mouths are, and an effort that should be applauded (via Mashable).

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