I love digg.  I watch diggnation religiously. Back in 2005 when I was learning about social media, I farted around digg in such a way that this blog, my blog, Chris Abraham, was banned — and it is banned still in 2009, well after I cleaned up my act (go ahead and try to submit this article to digg, I dare you!)

Says the digg community admin:

Thanks for taking the time to contact us at Digg.com regarding your website. As you know, Digg is a community-driven website — our community has consistently reported the domain to which you refer as spam. Because unblocking your domain would not be in line with the best interests of the larger Digg community, we will not reverse this decision.

I appreciate their respect for their community and I respect the quality of the content, so no complaints.

That said, however, I think digg has become too much of a stickler and has become too structured, exclusive, and restrictive. When enough people feel like their digg or their submissions are meaningless, they’ll go elsewhere — to places such as Facebook and, especially, twitter — environments that are much more self-policing, more forgiving, and less structured.

In its attempt to get it right, I think digg ratched the site too far, limited to a relatively few of the elite.

In Can Digg Keep Up With Facebook, Frederic Lardinois explores the issues surrounding the war between Facebook and digg:

In a way, though, comparing Digg to Facebook isn’t even necessarily fair, as they provide two completely different services, but in terms of the users they want to reach, both have very similar aspirations. For now, Digg, however, hasn’t been able to break into the mainstream (even though Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht made an appearance on Jimmy Fallon last week), while there is a good chance that even your mother is now joining Facebook. If Digg wants to continue its growth, it will have to find a way to attract more mainstream users without alienating its base.

I wonder if digg is alienating mainstream users anyway but being too much of a secret society. Maybe digg does not trust its community enough, that the chaff and the wheat won’t sort themselves out well enough.

I personally don’t care if my blog is ever brought back into the fold, but I do think this corporate shunning might be indicative of something more sinister and more likely to result in digg’s demise (or failure) than Facebook or Twitter or MySpace will, to be sure.

Let me know what you think.

I knew it sucked — and I knew it would fail. And it has, according to Shopper Culture,  Poor Shoppability Sinks Tropicana’s New Packaging:

Find it quick, though, because they’re bringing back the old.

Why the about face? An apparently small but vocal group decried the new packaging. According to Neil Campbell, president of Tropicana North America, “We underestimated the deep emotional bond” their most loyal customers have with the brand. Really? Blogs, news, and Twitter reveal two other hypotheses.

First, the new packaging is just not shoppable. People have a hard time finding the brand, and when they do, they can’t differentiate among the varieties (no pulp, calcium, etc.). The words are small, and the color coding along the top edge can be hidden by the shelf above (see below).

Second, the new packaging “looks like a store brand”. Why is this a criticism, when these days private labels are seen as good values (Kirkland), good quality (365, Trader Joe’s), or even premium (Safeway O Organics)? Maybe a high-priced, market leading brand like Tropicana shouldn’t look like a private label–at least not yet.

Should Tropicana (or Arnell, who did the new design) have found a way to evolve the look rather than revolutionize it? Should they have resisted the outcry of the small, vocal minority? After all, they may alienate old customers, but could they gain a new generation of customers with the new look? At the least, they should have made the design more shoppable. Testing it in less-than-ideal environments (like the tightly spaced shelving above) might have helped.

They are keeping one change: the orange-shaped cap. Nice touch.

More of the story at the New York TImes. And watch Peter Arnell describe the rationale behind the new design at AdAge.

When I realized that I could download the OPML file from the Power 150 site and then hack it around into a contact list of over 900 of the top advertising, marketing, PR, and SEO bloggers on the planet, I did so.

Ever since, I have been scheduling calls with all of the folks I have been admiring on a daily basis. Two days ago I spent an hour on the horn with Lee Hopkins, “one of Australia’s leading thinkers on communication strategy in an online environment,” who is, in fact, one of the World’s leading thinkers on communication strategy in an online environment.  We had a great chat — and amazing talk!

At the end, Lee asked me if he could blog the conversation and I jumped at the opportunity and late last night Lee published Is email marketing still relevant in a 2.0 world? which is not only the most complete description of what we at Abraham Harrison LLC do on a daily basis but it is said in a better, more comprehensive, way than I could even conceive of doing myself.  Here it is, in full.  Be sure to visit (and subscribe to) Better Communication Results, Lee Hopkin’s blog.

Is email marketing still relevant in a 2.0 world?

G’day – thanks for returning!

I just finished a fantastic conversation with Chris Abraham, the President and COO of AbrahamHarrison.

If you’ve been around the internet for a while, especially in the ‘marcoms’ (marketing communications) space, you would certainly have heard of Chris; if not of the man himself then certainly of one of his marketing and outreach programs.

Chris is one of those select few online marketers who’s text doesn’t read like a traditional online direct mail piece – you know, with LOTS OF CAPITALS and heaps of bold text and yellow highlighting and italics and

• bullet
• points
• a-
• plenty

and testimonials by the kazillion…

I could point you to a zillion of those sites – which is not to say that the style of marketing they use is not successful; it is, otherwise they wouldn’t keep doing it. But you know as soon as you see the huge, bold, bright red and often in CAPS headline what to expect for the rest of the (very) long toilet roll of a page.

Chris takes a much softer approach, always has done, and it seems to work for him and his style of copywriting.

Video, the radio star and plain ol’ bandwagon idjuts

With the advent of Web2.0/Social Media there were many ill-informed and just plain ‘bandwagon’ pundits who hailed the death of traditional communication tools such as email, web1.0 sites and – gasp – newspaper, magazine, radio and television.

Much as television didn’t kill radio as force it to rethink its place and find its niche, so too with Social Media. Every new technology platform or societal change brings with it a change in how all that came before it must view themselves and continue to offer relevancy.

Radio didn’t die, newspapers haven’t been killed off, I can still pick up plenty of magazines that appeal to all demographics and both genders from my local newsagent, and email hasn’t disappeared off the radar (if my bulging inbox every morning is anything to go by).

So it was fantastic to finally chat with someone who, like me, believes that email is STILL a fundamental part of the marketing toolkit.

In talking with Chris today, he was genuinely flattered that a fellow copywriter would find his material engaging; I thought it was brilliant reading and his deployment strategies for his clients brilliantly executed.

You see, Chris, like me, believes that email won’t go away, but WILL have to change in order to survive in the new communication landscape. Our shared view is that it will have to evolve in a couple of ways:

1. Shorter emails will be the best way of getting people’s attention
2. Long-form emails are best saved for newsletters; trying to ‘sell’ via email will become even harder to excel at.

If you’ve ever received one of Chris’ emails, you will be stunned by several things:

1. They are short – only 2-3 paragraphs
2. They link off to a SMNR (Social Media News Release) that gives a far more in-depth level of information (and all the material you might need to help you spread the word or get involved)
3. If you email Chris or anyone of his team back you WILL get a response, usually within 24 hours (Chris says they try to get back within the hour, but time zones can sometime defeat them)
4. The emails ‘read’ like they were written by a human being, not by a ‘PR’ flack or a ex-journalist hack; they aren’t full of ‘me, me, me’ stuff telling you how wonderful I (the company) am, but neither do they ‘strip-tease tantalise’ you so that when you do click on the link you end up feeling cheated
5. You get the very real feeling that there’s someone real at the end of the email.

Here’s an example (taken from my post about the Fresh Air Fund):

Hello again, Lee

On Sunday I asked if you would kindly help me spread the word about 200 inner-city children I have yet to place with host families in August. I apologize for following up so soon, but time is of the essence and you know how funny email can be. To make things simple, everything is collected into an online resource page http://freshair.smnr.us

This appeal comes straight from the top, so please do not hesitate to contact me directly.

Yours sincerely,

Sara

–
Sara Wilson
Fresh Air Fund
sara@freshair.org
www.freshair.org

Sara is a real person, not a ‘fake’ character. I sent her an email yesterday, wondering if her ears were burning, because Chris and I were talking about her:

G’day Sara,
Just finished the phone call with Chris — oh boy! Were your ears burning? They should have been!!!
Kindests,
Lee

From: Sara Wilson [mailto:swilson@abrahamharrison.com]
Sent: Tuesday, 24 February 2009 2:02 AM
To: Lee@leehopkins.com
Subject: Re: Fellow Power 150 blogger

Hello Lee,
Just a quick note to re-confirm that Chris will be calling you at 10 am, your time, tomorrow (Tuesday).
No need to reply unless something has come up on your end, otherwise he will speak to you in about 7.5 hours!
Best,
Sara

In reply, Sara said,

Lee,
And I thought it was just hot where I was last night … 
It’s very kind of you to mention it, thanks.   Chris is a great guy to work for, and generous with compliments, but it’s always nice to know that someone appreciates you, isn’t it?
Cheers,
Sara

Controversy

Because Chris and his team start any campaign with an email-based blogger outreach, some of the ‘holier than thou’ social media purists occasionally give him ‘stick’, or snicker behind his back and call him a ‘spammer’. Not true – the team are very hot on ensuring only a good taste remains in the mouth of any blogger they contact, and of only offering bloggers something of actual value to the blogger.

Which is a behaviour totally unlike the hapless, clueless and insulting PR flacks who regularly show up on The Bad Pitch Blog and who attempt to fill my inbox with material about electronics, or sanitary napkins, or (ahem) extension kits, or pharmaceuticals shipped from Canada. Thank goodness I have SpamArrest to filter them out before they hit my inbox!

Chris and his team have painstakingly built up a list of nearly 35,000 bloggers across several different demographics and topic areas of interest. Visiting their blogs, they harvest their email address. They then politely email them once to offer them something of interest – if the blogger likes it, they very often blog about it; it they don’t then they don’t. What is fascinating is the response rate Chris gets for his clients.

Word of mouth and gossip-sharing amongst internet marketers has the average rate of sales of anything (be it a blog post or an ebook or a ‘course you cannot live without’) as around 0.01-0.05% from an initial mailing, with the follow-up mailings increasing that to, perhaps, 1.0-2.0%…

Chris and his team regularly get a takeup in the order of 5%, which is phenomenal. In addition, once you start developing an email relationship with anyone in their team (as I have with Sara Wilson) then all future mailings will receive much more attention than would otherwise be the case. A case in point is my own, later, post on the illegal cluster bombing being carried out in South Ossetia and The Survivor Corps run by activist and author of the very powerful book,  I Will Not Be Broken, Jerry White. It is only because Sara had taken the time to develop a relationship with me over previous months that I read and responded to the material from Jerry White. Without that relationship I would never have bothered with a topic outside of my normal areas of interest.

It is the classic ‘relationship marketing’ that Social Media Marketing pundits claim to aim for but rarely achieve.

Goodness, if I could have a dollar for every new ‘expert’ that’s popped up in the Social Media space I would retire a very rich trillionaire (and at the same time wondering how you could be a trillionaire and not be very rich – I guess if you were living in Zimbabwe you wouldn’t be…).

You wouldn’t believe the number of ‘leading social networking and social media marketing experts’ who have suddenly come out of the woodwork and set up communities in places like LinkedIn, Plaxo, Facebook, etc. Curiously, I’ve never heard of these folks before. Most of them don’t even have blogs, or if they do those blogs have only been around for less than a year. Curious, hey?

But Chris, on the other hand, has been around for a long time, has figured out what works and what doesn’t, and as evidence offers the following case studies:

• Energy Bill 2007 Case Study
• Financial Services Reputation Defense Case Study
• Firebrand TV Case Study
• Fresh Air Fund Case Study
• International Medical Corps Case Study
• Movie Producer Reputation Defense Case Study
• Snapple Antioxidant Water Case Study
• Survivor Corps Book Promotion Case Study

If you want to see the sort of posts that are associated with Chris’ kind of blogger PR pitch outreach, here are some examples:

• Thank You Operation Survivor Bloggers
• Thank You All Who Supported International Medical Corps!
• Thank You Again Survivor Corps Bloggers
• Thank You International Medical Corps Bloggers
• Thank You Fresh Air Fund Holiday Bloggers
• Thank You Fresh Air Fund Bloggers
• Thank You Fresh Air Fund Camp Counselor Bloggers!
• The Powerful SEO Benefits of Blogger PR Outreach
• Happy Thanksgiving from Abraham Harrison

Here are some examples of client SMNRs from Chris and his team that I especially like:

• http://anamigo.smnr.us
• http://freshair.smnr.us
• http://banclusterbombs.smnr.us
• http://freshairfundcounselors.smnr.us
• http://survivorcorps.smnr.us
• http://iwillnotbebroken.smnr.us
• http://internationalmedicalcorps.smnr.us

So what???

The whole point of this post is NOT to fawn at the feet of someone who clearly knows what he is doing.

The whole point IS to let you know that you don’t need to throw out your baby with the bathwater:

• Don’t jump on the Social Media bandwagon without educated advice
• Don’t take advice from a pimply 17 year old fresh out of high school
• Don’t take advice from a less-pimply 23 year old fresh out of university
• Don’t ditch all of your understanding of how ‘people’ and networks work
• Don’t take advice from someone who doesn’t even blog themselves, or Twitter, or Facebook… (see my post about Social Media Gurus)
• Don’t take advice from someone who has been blogging less than 24 months

Instead:

1. Download Todd Defren’s absolutely superb ‘Brink’ guide to Social Media and Richard Meyer’s great presentation, ‘Social Media : What you’re afraid to admit you didn’t know’ (he also has a great pharma and biotech-focused pdf presentation). Download and read Trevor Cook’s and my ‘Social Media Report’.
2. Talk to someone who actually knows what they are doing – in Australia that means folks like Stephen Collins, Laurel Papworth, Trevor Cook, Darren Rowse, Gavin Heaton and, humbly, yours truly. If WE can’t help you, we can certainly put you in touch with someone who can. Unlike the USA, where there seems to be a spirit of “You’ll prize my rolodex out of my frozen dead fingers!”, there is no fierce spirit of competition here in Australia – we have  ‘co-opertition’ wherein we all help each other out if the ‘fit’ seems better for the client.
3. Stick to reading the seasoned ‘pros’ of the online marketing and/or business communication space: you cannot go wrong if you start at folks like any of the above, or Shel Holtz, Neville Hobson, Chris Brogan, Darren Rowse, Mitch Joel, Joe Jaffe , Laura Fitton and Chris Abraham himself; see who they link to. Follow your nose from them – all the way along the path you will be reading ‘the good oil’ as we say here in Australia
4. Examine Chris’ examples above and see for yourself how simple but effective your online marketing can be if you do it with the right intention – of helping out the blogger, not flogging stuff for your client. Get the relationship right and you will flog stuff for your client anyway, trust me!

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Currently listening to ‘Next’ by The Necks from the album ‘Next’. Superb jazz funk from one of Australia’s great cult bands.

Tom Smith wrote a smashing article that really gets why big brands are having such a big problem with social media.  The article is over at Mashable and deserves a read because I am only excerpting the list here,  Why Big Brands Struggle With Social Media.  Number one, “social Media is often viewed as just another marketing channel,” deserves number one because the biggest mistake that brands and their agencies of record constantly make is they forge that these social media “marketing channels” are real people with real lives and real friendships and a real voice.

1. Social Media is often viewed as just another marketing channel: It is of course so much more; it is a completely different approach to interacting with consumers and customers. Of course, you can advertise in a social media environment, but the true return on investment comes from developing communities, creating content to be shared, and talking and listening directly with consumers.

2. It does not fit into current structures: True social media falls somewhere between marketing, PR, communications, content production and web development. No one is quite sure whose responsibility it is and who should ultimately deliver their organisation’s social media strategy.

3. Communities and content are global: Users of social media connect, consume, and share content globally with little care for international borders. Marketing and PR departments and objectives are set up nationally or regionally. Very few organisations have a truly international structure and perspective.

4. Social media needs a long term approach: To build community, distribute content, or get people actively involved in an application takes time. Marketing and PR work on short time frames and are wedded to sets of individual campaigns or short term objectives. Social media is not a campaign, it’s a permanent approach.

5. No guaranteed results: You book advertising and it’s guaranteed to work. For, example you book a web campaign on page views and you keep going until you reach your goal. This is what advertisers call a push medium, i.e. you choose when people see it. Social media is a pull medium; usage and interaction is totally dependent on the user choosing to do so. If it’s not relevant or lacks creative brilliance it will not work. This makes it hard.

6. The metrics are new: Companies are used to the big numbers of advertising, but these numbers are different. Advertising is measured in booked exposures, i.e. page views, while social media is measured in direct interactions, i.e. number of friends, number of views or number of users. These numbers will always be smaller, but not necessarily any less measure of success.

My friend Mike Signer is running for Lieutenant Governor of Virginia and has started his campaign. Please be sure to support this fine gentleman in his campaign — please check out Mike Signer’s web site and read the information I just received from him via email, announcing his campaign:

This weekend in Richmond, I’ll join Democrats from across Virginia at our annual Jefferson-Jackson dinner.  From the decade-plus I’ve been working in the trenches of Democratic politics around the Commonwealth, I know the JJ is one of Virginia Democrats’ favorite events.  But this year in particular – on the heels of the victories of President Obama, Senator Warner and Representatives Perriello, Nye and Connolly – the JJ will be a particularly exciting opportunity to share my vision for the future of the Commonwealth with activists from across Virginia.

As you may know, I recently decided to run for Lieutenant Governor of Virginia.  I’m running because I strongly believe that our problems today are so urgent they demand something more from the office of Lieutenant Governor.  If we turn this office into a public advocate for all Virginians rather than just a placeholder it’s been under the Republican incumbent, Bill Bolling, we can take on great challenges together, including:

• Strengthening our economy while cracking down on predatory practices,
• Getting our priorities on energy and the environment right and creating thousands of new green jobs,
• Meeting the sacred contract we have with veterans and their families and
• Strengthening our democracy here in Virginia.

Although the Lieutenant Governor candidates will not be speaking, I wanted to make sure you know about the event and – most importantly – that you’re invited to our reception afterward.  Immediately following the dinner, we’ll be hosting a hospitality suite with a great band and refreshments in the Greater Richmond Convention Center, room E22-A.

If you’re attending the dinner, I hope you’ll join us – and encourage others you meet at the dinner to do the same – to stop by, meet me, and make the acquaintance of other Virginia Democrats who will be joining our fresh, exciting new campaign.

After JJ Reception with Mike Signer
Greater Richmond Convention Center – Room E22-A
February 7, 2009 – Immediately following the conclusion of the dinner
RSVP today for the reception so that we know you’re coming

I hope you’ll join this cause.  I’d also be grateful for early investors in this exciting venture.  Even your $5 donation today will help with critical early steps such as purchasing lapel stickers and our banner for the convention hall.

                   

Thanks and hope to see you soon.  I’ll be in touch with more news about the campaign in the coming days.

The future of Social Network Services (SNS) can be discovered on High School and College campuses. I believe that topic-specific “vertical” SNS’s are very important, but I also think that the model needs to be University-like – a modularized SNS. There needs to be a campus “brand” (or University) within which the topic-specific “clubs,” “houses,” “fraternities,” “dorms,” and “interest groups” can interact – somewhere where crossovers, cross-fertilization, and aggregation are encouraged – no, needs – to happen. I hate SNS sites like boompa.com – a site devoted to your favorite cars – because I am not JUST a car guy.

I am a car guy for sure but I am also interested in rowing, in biking, in Thomas Pynchon, and in talk radio – Boompa might be successful in the short term, but in the long-term, the real power would come from creating a open, creative, resource-rich platform/campus/university/high school and maybe create a school of engineering, a liberal arts school, a law school, a dining hall, and so forth, but then allow the SNS to find itself.

To allow the SNS and its members to find their own voice, their own interests, and their own passions – which may well be very different from what is first assumed by the creator. Google gets this, though not yet within the construct of the SNS’s. What Google did do successfully was to buy USENET – the original newsgroups – and then build an superstructure on top of that – make it modern, sustainable, durable, and more readable.

Google returned USENET to relevance in a world that considered newsgroups and IRC to be dead or dying. Each and every one of communities on USENET is amazingly vertical, but they could all back up and back out to the larger USENET community – to the equivalent of the “welcome new students??? meetings and gatherings colleges offer to entering Freshmen.

Communities that are too vertical tend to shoe horn the “general topics??? conversations into hidden “off topic??? eddies. That is just the opposite of what should be done. The conversation should be general, cross-pollinating, and then move, after a conversation starts, into another room.

Start with an amazing platform, collect users, listen and watch them to see how they’re playing with the software application objects, widgets, and tools (are they playing with the toy or the box?), and then build for the users base, withholding judgment. Digg is a case study for this: start small, grow organically, and allow your members to find themselves.

The developers of Digg realized that after initial vertical growth based on the general members of Slashdot (techie, geeky, teens, boys), digg would suffer from the same sort of vulnerabilities that Slashdot suffered when Slashdot didn’t evolve and grow and broaden itself.

People love talking about Linux, but when happens when the Dow drops or the elections come? Where will the conversation happen? Where is the “kitchen??? at the party where every eventually goes to just talk about general interest stuff? Unless there are opportunities to express and share so-called “off-topic??? conversation right there, within the community in which members are already committed, with members to whom they’re already committed, then they are bound to go elsewhere.

Starting small and allowing the community to design itself is much different than starting big and losing one’s focus. Other mistakes happen when community builders make assumptions as to what participants, members, and lurkers want. Another mistake is putting a wall up around the community so that non-members cannot get a full feeling for the community from without.

The best SNS’s, virtual worlds, and online communities are honeypots. By honeypot, I am not suggesting, “a server that is configured to detect an intruder by mirroring a real production system. It appears as an ordinary server doing work, but all the data and transactions are phony. Located either in or outside the firewall, the honeypot is used to learn about an intruder’s techniques as well as determine vulnerabilities in the real system.” Although I am, sort of. The best SNS needs to be appealing, attractive, sweet, and compelling. Community-builders and SNS ASP developers need to be willing learn about member techniques, interests, processes, and needs, as well as determine “vulnerabilities” in the SNS platform that may repel, turn off, or limit the evolution and growth of the community.

To channel Chauncey Gardener for a second, one must do whatever one must to make sure that the earth in the garden is moist and well fed, one must seed well and completely, one must keep the garden in sun and water, one must encourage the garden to grow as it will for only in its growth will the garden be successful, and then, after rigorous growth, pruning and weeding must be done, only in order to allow the garden to be healthy, not to turn the garden into topiary. Okay, I am done.

Digg allows all of these things. Digg is perfectly useful and compelling even as an alien, but it is way more fun and interesting when you’re a citizen, that’s for sure. An SNS community needs to be as attractive as possible because exclusivity is no longer essential or even valuable. What is valuable is “useful,??? “interesting,??? and “authentic.??? They also have to have community buy-in and the best enjoy a certain fanatical devotion. Just like the best Universities and Colleges.

And Digg allowed its member to tell it when it was time to evolve past tech and geek news. Digg did not limit its scope or define itself too tightly with being “gear for geeks??? or “news for nerds.??? That would have ultimately been the death of Digg.

What the best Universities (such as Yale) understand is that it is not the student who is blessed and honored by being accepted by a top college (Yale College) but rather it is the college that should be blessed and honored (and should be grateful) that such a quality student is accepting its offers and actually attending – choosing – their particular school: Yale instead of Princeton, Brown, Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge, Dartmouth, Stanford, Columbia, Berkeley, etc…

Harvard, too, is aware that although in the short-term Harvard makes the Harvard Man, over the long term, it is Harvard Men who made Harvard and continue to make Harvard. “Who have you graduated recently???? Unless the quality and character of its students and alumni remain top-drawer, Harvard is not guaranteed its position as “top three??? in USA Today alongside Princeton and Yale. No matter how grand its endowment.

So, Harvard and Yale spoil their students rotten! My friends who attended Harvard or Yale college swoon over those 4 years like I swoon over my first love.

Likewise, SNS’s, virtual worlds, and virtual communities need to realize that at any one point, their brand is only as good as the collective that is manifest in the users, the members, the lurkers, the stewards, and the alumni of the property.

This isn’t only true in SNS’s. The same thing can be said of the most successful message boards and online communities. The most important distinction, I think, is that all of these “rooms” and all of these “clubs” and all of these spaces where (and are) defined and created by the communities themselves. Sui generis. And this sort of ownership – “for us by us,??? as the slogan goes over as Howard Rheingold’s Brainstorms community – should never be underestimated.

The Well has Howard Rheingold as a member and alumnus, for example, and the credibility of all that he has made and done; over time, more and more virtual communities, virtual worlds, and SNS will be known for their members as well: who studies, who studied, and who wants to join.

“What’s in it for me??? (WIIFM) and the concept of pride of ownership are important – essential – ingredients of a sustainable, deep, thriving, and healthy community. The success of MySpace and of Facebook is that the verticals are not (were not) defined for them by their grand architects – they are self-creating, self-forming, and also self-destructing. They form, reform, mutate and disperse after they hit a limit of general conversation and then either break off and reform into an “interest group” or “club” or they self-check and work to “get back on topic.”

SNS’s and communities in general tend to be formed in one of two ways: like Paris or like London. Intelligence Design (architecture) or Emergent Design. The later never looks very beautiful or the way people – or the creators, investors, and architects – expect (or want) it to look, because investors and designers tend to not be able to control it – and when they do try to impost order, often in a heavy-handed way, they also tend to scare off all of their members, too.

This organic revolution has proven its success online time and time again. The Internet does not respond (well or at all) to command and control. The smartest Web 2.0 platforms allow the “masses of asses” (yes, the customer; yes, us) to define the platform and the experience – their own and collective environment and experience.

MySpace does this amazingly well and so does Facebook. Until recently, Friendster suffered from a vision and used command and control tactics to try to coerce its users that “it didn’t really want to do things that way??? and Friendster members abandoned in droves to platforms and experiences not so monitored by “mom and dad.???

A command and control grand vision doesn’t work when you develop an environment that needs to be truly both attractive and compelling much more than it needs to be informational or instructional. An SNS needs to be attractive, diversional, compelling, amusing, and entertaining – never limiting.

My analogy of college and high school never mentioned classrooms or classes for training or learning. People do enough of that at school and at work. An SNS needs to give its users a university campus without any expectations or concepts of dropping out, getting judged, doing homework, or being held accountable for anything.

A good SNS should be all late-night wine-influenced discussions of Descartes and Plato and the summer afternoons on the quad and the time playing Xbox with your roommates.

When I go onto my long-term online communities, the Well, The Meta Network, USENET, and Brainstorms, there are many very deep and very vertical communities, discussing things as frivolous as fashion and video games and as deep as how to survive cancer, how to get a post doc grant, and very deep discussions on “spirit,” “chaos theory,” and “world politics.”

What makes this amazing and sustainable is that there are an infinite number of ways to get along, to move into a space of intense conversation, and then to pull back into common areas, just to see who’s around. In a university setting, this could be the dining hall, the quad, the commons, etc. These spaces are very important.

If you think about all of this in terms of evolution, then we can think about the way things evolve in the most perverse ways when isolated from others of its kinds. So, if there are impervious walls – gaps or voids, mountains or ridges – between these vertical markets, SNS’s, and communities, then there may be an initial success, but there can also be a terrible volatility. One plague or drought can decimate a population completely.

Having a commons allows members and visitors to have a place to meet new people, have new experiences, and learn of new clubs, new opportunities, and new places – inbreeding versus crossbreeding. Ultimately, a diversity of visitors helps build a more resilient, invested, and self-identifing community. They will become “students for life??? at best and proud alums at worst. They will carry the brand awareness, even if their lives become too busy to participate any more.

They will become life long brand ambassadors for your community. Proud alumni.

And, in terms of “viral marketing,” it is also important when it comes to a member of an SNS “inviting his friends” – not all of my friends have the same vertical interests that I do… They could have very different interests – but as I explore the “commons” of an SNS, I can note that there are things happening online that “friend x” and “friend y” would love, and that would be my incentive to invite them on board.

Boompa? I am the only person I know in my entire community – that is not true, my buddy has an Audi S4 – who is into cars. My buddy is an Audi driver and I am a BMW driver. Does that mean we’re both drivers? Does that mean we love cars or our particular car? Do we cross over on performance sedans? On German cars? On luxury cars?

You have to offer the tools to allow the market to choose for itself, otherwise, you might never find out that the SNS needs all three, or none at all.

A “Modularized SNS” should be neutral like a university (unlike MySpace, which is pretty pre-defined as to what the demographic is), and there are lots of “vertical niche SNS’s” (e.g. car enthusiasts, gourmet cooking, travel, Rolex fans, Republican politicos, etc.) That way, everyone can form a SNS experience that actually fits them by modularly assembling the groups of people who have similar interests, (not just friends-in-common!)

This news is from the hasn’t this already happened before department?  Also, from the I can’t believe it took this long department. Via the Washington Post.

Yahoo chief executive Jerry Yang will step down, the company announced last night, as the once-highflying Internet portal struggles to steady itself in the turbulent environment for Web media.

Yahoo! should be one of the coolest brands on the block.  With Flickr and del.icio.us, Yahoo really should be #2 — and it could be #1 if it would stop with the self-loathing — and it is not. Why?  Because Yahoo isn’t nearly shameless enough to survive in the 2008 Internet.  It is no longer the world of wizened Unix gurus who would easily define what is and isn’t couth on the Internet. Yahoo! is stuck in the days when it was uncool to splash your own brand on the brands you own (so is AOL); Yahoo! is stuck in the Internet of the 90s, an Internet wherein being good enough was good enough.

If Yahoo! was trying not to become gauche or become an ugly American in the Europe of the Internet, then it was successful! Yahoo! has become irrelevant. At least people hate Microsoft & AOL. Hell, I have nothing at all to say about Yahoo! except I adore del.icio.us and Flickr.  How could the owner of two of the Internet’s coolest properties never be able to harnest the gravity of these two major celestial bodies and slingshot themselves into #1?

Maybe there is too much modesty, not enough braggadocio, in the halls of Yahoo!  Maybe if you look closely, Yahoo! is the company that does no harm and does no evil.  Maybe the company who’s motto is “Don’t Be Evil,” is actually pretty shameless and far from modest. Maybe on the modern Internet (and in modern business) it is more important to say you’re doing good, being good, and being modest than it is to actually be modest.

Yahoo!, Yahoo!, Yahoo! please try your darnedest to spend more time sharing yourself with the world and less time being the best of the good citizens.  Google is absolutely shameless when it comes to all the good work they’re doing.  They are not keeping their religion to themselves, they’re not praying quietly to themselves in a bare cell, away from prying eyes!  Google is on the soapbox!  Google is bragging!  Google is sharing the Holy Spirit with the world!

If you keep on slipping those alms into the alms box of Internet Good Works by dark of night you will actually become irrelevant.  Nobody is against you but nobody is for you, either. Nobody cares.

What’s worse, I don’t think enough people even really think much about Flickr and del.icio.us being Yahoo! properties.

Yes, you make folks become Yahoo! members, but that’s not enough. In DC and Virginia, everyone has a Safeway card but nobody like to shop at Safeway — it’s only because Safeway makes it super-easy to become a member.  There is no brand loyalty, there is no passion behind the brand (OK, OK, Safeway Select pasta sauce is awesome — it is like Safeway’s Flickr), even if everyone has a Safeway scan card on their key ring.

Anyway, Yahoo!, I am so sorry for the rant.  Oh, also, why is it that all of my geeky friends in the Zope and Python world all want to work for Google and not for Yahoo!?  How come all of my PHP and MySQL friends ache to work for Google and not for Yahoo!  How pissed you must be to suffer that Google drank your milkshake.  They took you toys!  You, Yahoo!, where supposed to be that success story!  I mean, you were the first search engine, after all!  You were the first directory, right?

Well, it is time to get off your pity pot, kick Jerry to the curb, and again become the Yahoo! I have known you since 1994 and have loved you (although I have not used your email address since Gmail came out, sorry) and I really want you to get you some smarts.  Give me a call at +1 (202) 352-5051 or +49 (0)151 52579077 — I would be more than happy to try to help you turn this ship around!

Viel Glück

I just received this moving tribute from Jerry White of Survivor Corps to what the election of Barack Obama means — the end of the American Civil War — and a bold move towards “breaking through historic barriers of discrimination and promoting true inclusion, participation and equality around the world.”

A Hopeful Look Forward By Jerry White

Here at Survivor Corps we often talk about dates–before-and-after moments that change our lives forever.  No matter if you are a Democrat or Republican, I think we can all agree the life of our nation is changed by the historic election of Barack Hussein Obama as the 44th President of the United States of America.

I read Thomas Friedman’s article “Finishing Our Work” this morning in The New York Times, he writes, “And so it came to pass that on Nov. 4, 2008, shortly after 11pm Eastern time, the American Civil War ended…that is why we awake this morning to a different country. The struggle for equal rights is far from over, but we start afresh now from a whole new baseline.”  Friedman’s words struck a chord that harmonizes with our perspective at Survivor Corps as a global network helping people recover from war.  It takes decades.

This election rings true to the founding principles of Survivor Corps, breaking barriers and promoting inclusion, participation and equality.  Whether we are drafting legislation to protect the rights of 650 million people with disabilities or bringing survivors together to rebuild communities destroyed by war, landmines and hatred, we are creating the hope and change in the world that we all wish to see.  This morning the Survivor Corps staff took a moment to reflect on this historic day; and we discussed how this election would impact our daily work with survivors in the United States and abroad.

US Army Captain (Retired) Scott Quilty pointed out Senator Obama’s longstanding campaign pledge to bring home combat troops from Iraq within 16 months, and what that may mean for service members reintegrating into families, work, school and communities upon return.  ”At Survivor Corps we’re working with government, businesses and veteran service organizations to develop a strategy for homecoming and reintegration, and with this potential ‘reverse surge’ of returning service members, it seems that the urgency of that work just increased,” stated Quilty.

Tirza Leibowitz, an Israeli who serves as our Director of Rights Advocacy, spoke of the new expectations we need to set for the three major treaties we are working on: the ban of landmines and cluster bombs and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. “Now we will be able to advocate for the United States to sign onto these multilateral treaties, when before the political environment made that an impossible dream.”

Robert Mugisha, a Rwandan who works as our Africa Program Associate, spoke of his previous experience lobbying the President and Vice President Elect, Barack Obama and Joe Biden, on issues related to survivors in Darfur to Congo.  Mugisha added, “There is a strong possibility we will now have leaders in the White House who have pro-African foreign policies. This could really change how the United States interacts with the entire world.”

Yes, hope is rising in tandem with survivor expectations.  Survivor Corps is more dedicated than ever to breaking through historic barriers of discrimination and promoting true inclusion, participation and equality around the world.  We join you in this time of hope and survivorship as we create history, break cycles of violence and build a peaceful future for survivors worldwide.  

Visit Survivor Corps at http://www.survivorcorps.org

On behalf of the International Medical Corps and Abraham Harrison, thank you so much for all of your support over the last four weeks to get the vote out to help get the International Medical Corps into the top-five of the Members Project and then for securing the $100,000 from American Express, to be used to feed hungry children worldwide. Here’s a thank you video blog entry from Paige Strackman, who was the PaigeS who submitted IMC in the first place under the title, Saving the Lives of Malnourished Children.

Here’s the official, final, press release you can read, directly from International Medical Corps:

International Medical Corps Wins $100,000 Grant from American Express to Save Malnourished Children

October 14, 2008, Los Angeles, Calif. –International Medical Corps (IMC) has been awarded $100,000 through the American Express Members Project. The grant will be used to treat malnourished children worldwide. IMC is one of five organizations to receive funding in the nationwide campaign where American Express Card members submit and vote for projects that are meant to bring people and organizations together for positive change.

The funding will be used to implement the project, ‘Saving the Lives of Malnourished Children.’ Submitted by American Express cardmember Paige Strackman, the project focuses on treating malnutrition through nutrient-rich, ready-to-eat food, which International Medical Corps provides to more than 35,000 children every month through a network of 215 supplementary and therapeutic feeding sites in some of the world’s most food-insecure environments, including Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Sudan, and Somalia. The project was selected by an elite panel out of 1,190 others and received more than 14,000 votes in the final round of competition.

“I submitted this project because, as a mother, I cannot ignore that five million children under five die every year due to malnutrition,” says Paige. “This funding will save thousands of malnourished children around the world who otherwise may not have been reached. I am so grateful to everyone who supported this project and helped make it a reality.”

While the project was submitted by one individual hoping to make a difference, it gathered public momentum. The project’s message was shared in the media from Los Angeles to New York, on nearly 200 blogs across the Internet, through thousands of emails and on social networking sites, including Facebook, My Space and Twitter.

The grant from American Express comes at an opportune time when rising food costs are driving millions deeper into poverty everyday while trying to afford basic staples. As a result, hunger and malnutrition kill more people each year than HIV, tuberculosis, and malaria combined.

“We are incredibly grateful to Paige for not only submitting the project, but also for fueling it with the passion to make it so successful,” says Rebecca Milner, Vice President of Institutional Advancement. “There are approximately 178 million children around the world who are malnourished and only 3 percent get treatment. This funding makes it possible for International Medical Corps to reach more of those children who desperately need our help.”

In Democratic Republic of Congo alone, International Medical Corps’ supplementary feeding centers admitted 3,500 new children in the past two months. At one center for severely malnourished children, IMC has a 35-bed capacity, but is accommodating 82. Another 30 children await treatment. This trend is symptomatic of the food insecurity affecting East Africa and much of the developing world. The World Food Program estimates that 15.7 million of those in need are in East Africa, and another 8.6 million are in Afghanistan.

With a mission that focuses on training, International Medical Corps works to empower individuals and communities, providing education on how to treat malnutrition, identify warnings signs, and intervene before malnutrition worsens. Health care workers and parents are educated on proper diet and hygiene, and communities are equipped to grow their own food and reduce their vulnerability to rising prices.

*The ‘Saving the Lives of Malnourished Children’ project can be viewed here: http://www.membersproject.com/project/view/OZH1P1
**Videos of children’s dramatic recoveries from malnutrition can be seen on International Medical Corps’ YouTube Channel: http://ca.youtube.com/user/IMCMembersProject

For more information visit our website at www.imcworldwide.org.

Also, thank you to every single blogger and social media maven who was so generous as to help us spread the word out and get as much attention as possible for both the Members Project as well as for International Medical Corps as well. You were all more than generous and all of us at IMC and AHLLC would love to thank you for being so generous and selfless.

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• Fighting Deadly Malnutrition: This Time, A Morally Imperative Rescue via The Cogitamus Blog.
• Fighting Deadly Malnutrition: This Time, A Morally Imperative Rescue via litbrit .
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• This won’t take a minute. via Miss Cellania.
• People Watching in Lipscani via Writers Bloc.
• A Good Deed via My Boyfriend is a twat.
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• Please consider voting via Living in shkoder Albania.
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• Another AmEx Submission… via Fat Doctor.
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• Members Project by AmEx is amazing. Vote to send their money to help children here. via Craphammer.
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• Vote for International MedicalCorps to Help Children in Need. via humorgrafe .
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• Revealing myself as a LOTR nerd via Journey Mama.
• Thank You for Blogging About International Medical Corps! via Chris Abraham Because the Medium is the Message.
• Dora, the sheep droppings explorer via The French Mountain Dweller.
• Int’l NGO Needs Our Help To Win $1.5 M For Starving Children via Daily Kos.
• Thank You Bloggers for Blogging about International Medical Corps via Memes.org.
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• Feeding Hungry Children via Kuru Lounge.
• Your click could mean $1.5 million for malnourished children around the world via Pirate Pappa.
• One Click to Save Lives via So a Blonde Walks Into a Review.
• Members Projects via OBVI.
• With One Click You Can Save Thousands Of Malnourished Children via Blogher.
• Help International Medical Corps Feed Hungry Children via Chrisfernando.net.
• Thursday, September 25, 2008 via Island In the Pacific.
• Your click could mean $1.5 million for malnourished children around the world. via Fresh Motivation.
• Click for $1.5 million – A win-win-win situation via Stet.
• Vote to make a difference via Onlinefundraisingblog.
• Something About Saving Lives? via NDAGHA.
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• Time is Running Out!!! via Pre School Mama.
• “The International Medical Corps: Please Consider This Good Cause” via Working With Word.
• Saving the Lives of Malnourished Children via javajive.
• Things I should have avoided whilst pregnant via Whitterer on Autism.
• American Express Members Project: Join me in voting for the project, “Saving the Lives of Malnourished Children.” via Make College Pay Off.
• Interested in Saving a Child From Malnutrition? via Reservoir.
• Go Vote for the International Medical Corps via Christian Spirituality w/ Edges.
• Vote for the International Medical Corps! via Understanding The Psychology and Effects of Abandonment Issues.
• International Medical Corps via Stories on Malawi.
• The Least of These via Paravanes: Christian Meditations .
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• Please support International Medical Corps and help feed hungry children via The Sreisaat Adventures in cambodia.
• Tela’s Finds via Working Moms Against Guilt.
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• Vote AGAIN!!! for “Saving the Lives of Malnourished Children” via finding joy in Liberia .
• International Medical Corps needs your vote ! 4 days left “ via Ben Heine.
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• Hello guys! via Halo Scan.
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Attention to everyone in Berlin, Germany — Americans, Brits, English-speakers, and those who want to learn — National Public Radio has just opened up a 24-hour radio station right here in Berlin, NPR Worldwide Berlin, 104,1 FM!

Probably the only reason I spent 17+ years in Washington is because of WAMU, 88.5 FM, the local NPR radio station. At one point WETA, 90.9, moved from Classical to NPR talk programing, and it was bliss. When I moved to Berlin, Germany, in November, I loaded up every day on NPR and PRI podcasts because I did not want to do without Car Talk, Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me, Studio 360, Speaking of Faith, This American Life, Fair Game with Faith Salie — the lot!

Well, I was farting around with my Nokia n95 8GB cell phone last week, and using the Radio feature, and happened upon 104,1 FM, and there was NPR programming! I thought it was a podcast, which I also listen on this amazing little device, and it wasn’t.

For some reason, the stations I had mapped for Washington opened me up to a station I had had programmed in Washington (Nokia checks the city and then populates all the sations) — WXGG, a Gospel station in Washington! Well, it wasn’t Gospel, it wasn’t German-language, and it wasn’t BBC World Service Berlin.

Well, my heart leapt!

There isn’t a lot of local programming yet but there is a pretty cool feeling of programming going on — there is a little more content focused on the Foreign Service and Diplomatic Corps, which is cool, but all your faves are there: Marketplace, Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me!, All Things Considered, On the Media, Car Talk, Fresh Air Weekend, Morning Edition, The Diane Rehm Show, Hot Jazz Saturday Night, Speaking of Faith, and — wait for it — A Prairie Home Companion!

Lake Wobegon and Garrison Keillor are the most important here because the entire radio show isn’t available via podcast, only the sweet Report from Lake Wobegon, not the entire radio show.

24 Hour Satellite and Cable Schedule

Live Program

Recorded with Live Newscast