Sponsored Conversations

Analyst firm Forrester published a report this morning telling corporations that it's a good idea to engage bloggers in "sponsored conversations," or the exchange of goods or credit in exchange for blog coverage. The report, titled "Add Sponsored Conversations to Your Toolbox", is 8 pages long, focuses on a number of high profile examples like the case of KMart and Chris Brogan, and sells for $795.

We respectfully disagree with Forrester's recommendations on this topic. In fact, we think that paying bloggers to write about your company is a dangerous and unsavory path for new media and advertisers to go down. We recognize that it's a complicated question, but we don't feel convinced by Forrester's conclusions regarding those complications.

Forrester is Wrong About Paying Bloggers

Forrester is promoting a very dangerous idea. It is a good short term way for bloggers to make money but, if abused, will in the long run diminish the value of the blogosphere. The flip-side to this argument is that there is a lot of pay-to-play in the print media (you buy this ad I write an article about you) and few people question the validity of print media.

Yelp is Having Problems

Yelp continues to have problems. They have an algorithm that purportedly decides which reviews are displayed and which are removed, and yet there is something not right about Yelp. I'm not the only one who has noticed that there are many "obviously" fake reviews and there is a lot of annecdotal evidence that if one buys advertising bad reviews can be removed. I have not experienced that but I have heard many first hand complaints.

According to Jeremy Stoppelman, Yelp's CEO: "It's normal for a merchant to see the number of its reviews rise or fall from day to day, and for reviews to mysteriously disappear." "That's normal. It's part of how Yelp works," he said. The reason we do that is to show only the most trusted content. It's nothing nefarious.

"The timing of reviews that appear or disappear after a merchant accepts or declines an advertising contract is purely coincidental, Stoppelman said. He acknowledged that there can be false positives, in which legitimate reviews are removed.:

Yelp's credibility problem: Blame it on algorithm?

Information Spreads Because it Must

From the author of The Meme Machine - Susan Blackmore speaks at TED. Anyone interested in marketing or technology ought to watch this. How and why do memes spread?

"Information/Technology spreads because it must." If you like Ray Kurzweil you'll love this talk - especially her description that we're at the "third replicative point". [16:50]

We become teme machines: AI merges with people. Scary and wonderful. If so we become immortal.



See the video The Birth of Computers at 15:55 (a George Dyson discussion) for another take on this topic.

Social Media and Privacy

In case you haven't seen it read the story of How Facebook Ended My Marriage.

Update: A very strange new twist has made this much more public than I ever feared. Boing Boing, the top blog on the Internet, Time Magazine’s blog, the London Standard, Libération the French newspaper founded by Jean-Paul Sartre, Fast Company have now all mentioned our experience. Is this the 21st century equivalent of a printed wedding announcement?

Yes Thomas it is the 21st C equivalent of a printed wedding announcement.

Facebook and Privacy

A week ago Mark Zuckerberg wrote a post stating thatOn Facebook, People Own and Control Their Information. And yet a few paragraphs into the post he writes:

One of the questions about our new terms of use is whether Facebook can use this information forever. When a person shares something like a message with a friend, two copies of that information are created—one in the person's sent messages box and the other in their friend's inbox. Even if the person deactivates their account, their friend still has a copy of that message. We think this is the right way for Facebook to work, and it is consistent with how other services like email work. One of the reasons we updated our terms was to make this more clear.

Mr. Zuckerberg many people disagree with you. Facebook is not perceived of as email, where you send information to others. It is perceived to be a place where you can put up information, a journal so to speak, and share parts of it with friends and other parts with the world at large. Facebook is the medium by which the sharing takes place and as such *should* not have a say in the matter any more than does a piece of paper has a say in who can see a love note written on it. The perception is wrong, of course, that is why there is outrage.

Facebook has many problems. Privacy is the worst of those problems. As with email one should not put anything on Facebook which you would not be willing to have the whole world be aware of.

When a truly private system arises Facebook will reap what is has sown and go the way of earlier social networking sites. I don't wish this on Facebook, only that they recognize the importance of privacy. Today's teenagers will become tomorrows adults and they will not want their high school angst and insecurities displayed to their adult friends.

Facebook and MySpace

In case you're wondering about which social media website to concentrate your efforts upon take a look at this graph comparing Facebook and MySpace usage.

Twitter has arrived

What was an intriguing tool a year ago is now the winner of StartUp of the Year. They doubled from 500,000 monthly users a little over a year ago to 1 million users last May and quadrupled to 4.5 million users last month.

Quoting a post from last May:

Whatever you may think of Twitter, it is here to stay. The time is now to start figuring out how to incorporate Twitter into your marketing strategy.