Jonathan Trenn popped this insightful article about Yelp over on Marketing Conversation, The contorversy about Yelp (and be sure to check out David Gelles’ article on a similar topic over at the Financial Times, Yelp rejects claims of extortion):

Ah, controversy.

Now, it’s with Yelp, the mega online review site.  On Wednesday, the East Bay Express, an alternative newspaper that covers Alameda and Contra Costa counties in California, published a very provocative article , “Yelp and the business of extortion 2.0″ on the sales operations and tactics of Yelp.  The paper made some very pointed accusations, some of them seemingly legitimate while others sounding too nebulous.  They state that Yelp is both maniupulating the placements of restaurants reviews as sales tools and then using scare tactics to then solicit advertising sales from these same restaurants.

The accusations are alarming but, because I think the article was poorly presented, it’s left me thinking that Yelp perhaps had a major sales problem in one office as opposed to a company wide sleaze factor policy.

Yelp’s initial response, written on the company blog by CEO Jeremy Stoppleman is inept and insufficient.  He’s likely satisfied that his blog posts are enough…and it may appear to be just that for the time being…but controversies such as this, be they true or just speculation, have a way of undermining a company’s integrity in a hurry.  Especially a site that 1)  is about user generated online reviews, and 2) has trust as a hallmark of its standing.

Oddly, the Yelp blog doesn’t allow comments.  That’s not a good idea…especially for a site that’s about online reviews and citizen participation.

Here’s the gist of the article.  Writer Kathleen Richards talked to “dozens” of business owners over the “past several months” and found that six of them said that Yelp sales reps promised to remove or move bad reviews if the business chose to advertise.  And these businesses would often get sales calls from Yelp reps soon after they mysteriously started getting a rash of negative reviews.  The theory here is that Yelp employees would start to or enlist others to write negative reviews on a company, those reviews would then appear at the top of a company’s page, and the company would get a phone call from a rep looking for an advertising by so those reviews can “go away”…usually to the tune of $300 a month.

For those that declined, positive reviews seemed to begin to disappear.  For those that did manage to buy, negative ones began disappearing.

This is pretty damning stuff.  If true, it shows a coordinted effort between people in sales those on the back end tech team.  It made some establishments feel as if Yelp was acting as if it was the “mafia” in that Yelp was threatening establishments to pay (advertise) in order to not be damaged.  That’s called “protection money” in organized crime.

But as I red between the lines I ended up scratching my head.   Over several months, after talking to “dozens” of businesses, Richards found six restaurants that felt that either they were being offered a quid-pro-qo for advertising to reduce or eliminate bad reviews; or some felt that this extended to manipulative threats of the placement of poor reviews and the elimination of postive reviews.

“Dozens.  “What does that mean?  36?  60?  84?  How did Richards find these restaurants?  Did she talk to one and then ask the owner/manager if he or she knew of any others that had similar stories?  Both questions are important.   The first because it leads to how widespread the problem actually is in the Bay Area and the second, because if there is a lack or randomness to all this, then the sample restaurants are self selected by the reporter.

The article relies on the how some of the restaurant owners “feel”.  These feelings may be completely legitimate.  But it is hard to counter a “feelings”e of another is the one with the feelings remain anonymous.  I fully believe in using anonymous sources, but there should be greater evidence used.  That is, if one is trying to prove that this is a consistent sales tactic used by the company as a whole.

And speaking of as a whole.  This article seems to be focusing soley on the East Bay restaurant seen.  True, it is an East Bay pub, but the article is written as if it is a widespread problem and the issue here is “the business of extortion”.  It fully damns the Yelp based on a small sample of local business’ feelings.

Stoppleman has since written a few more blog posts, but he could use a change of attitude.  There’s been enough discussion on the net about this article denigrating Yelp.  Hundreds of tweets on Twitter, negative mentions on Technorati, and articles in substantial online pubs.

The reason why I say that Stoppleman could use a change of attitude is because he’s treating all of this as an illegitimate attack.  The accusations, regardless of their veracity, at least sound reasonable.  And his defensiveness doesn’t really address the issue.

He does have on post that does work, at bit, in my opinion.  “Nine Myths About Yelp” is designed to negate what he feels are falsehoods.  The most important one he lists is #3 (it should be #1, but he doesn’t seem to realize it).  It is stated here:

Myth #3: Yelp salespeople manipulate reviews for prospective advertisers (for example, offers to remove a negative review if a new client signs up, or a threat to remove positive reviews if the business owner does not choose to advertise with Yelp)

Reality: We have every reason to trust the smart, hard-working and ethical salespeople who work at Yelp.  Beyond this, to avoid even an appearance of impropriety, we’ve taken several steps to ensure no member of our team is tempted to game the system.  Specifically:
1. Yelp salespeople do not have access to the system that deletes reviews; only a few members of Yelp engineering and user support team have this access, and they literally work on different floors within the office.
2. Every Yelp salesperson signs an agreement that s/he will not write reviews of any business while employed by Yelp.  We trust our teammates in sales to live up to this commitment.  We also have several monitoring systems in place to ensure nobody (accidentally or otherwise) crosses this line.
3. Through our vigilance, we once did find a salesperson who encouraged a friend to write a positive review for a prospective client (that the friend had actually patronized). The salesperson’s role at Yelp ended that day.
4. When a new advertiser signs up with Yelp, the relationship is handed off to an Account Manager.  The Account Manager then takes the client through a 30 minute phone training session — and confirms that reviews have nothing to do with advertising.
5. After the training call, the Account Manager sends a follow up survey that asks each client how much s/he agrees with the following statement: “I understand that Reviews are completely separate from the Yelp Ad Program, and that there is an automated filter that may suppress some of my reviews whether or not I am a client.”  Any client who does not click “Completely Agree” in this case gets yet another follow-up call for clarification.

Myth #4: Yelp removes positive reviews from businesses its staff does not like, or from businesses that do not pay for advertising

Reality: A review you may have seen on Yelp previously is no longer there; this happens.  The review in question may have “disappeared” for one of three reasons:
1. The review may have been suppressed by Yelp’s automated Review Filter, which is always out there looking for suspicious reviewing activity (like those anonymous rants and raves you see on other sites).
2. The writer may have removed her own review; she has the right to do that at any time
3. Another user believed the review violated Yelp’s Review Guidelines and sent it to our customer service team for review. The customer service team agreed, then manually removed the review.

Both our customer service team and the Review Filter work exactly the same way for advertisers as they do for non-advertisers.

This is how he should have addressed the issue at the very beginning.  Blown opportunity and his company has suffered and will continue to suffer as a result.  And he has to go beyond stating that the sales people and the tech people with access to placement of reviews work on different floors.

My guess is what happened is that a few sales reps in that particular office would scour the reviews on Yelp, and when they found some recent newly written negative ones, they then picked up the phone and made a sales call, offering the package that places a selected postive review on top – one that is visibly marked as being sponsored.  Some pitches probably went far beyond this…saying that they could make the negative one “disappear”.  Sales people will say sleazy things.  Stoppleman should understand this and not discount this.  He should then conduct some sort of internal audit that would show the public that he is trying to address the problem and root it out if it exists.  Retrain.  Resolve.

Now is it possible that some sales types had relationships with the tech people.  Absolutely.  Different floors – HA!  So the problem may have been more than a poorly written article.  Yelp needs to look into that because, as Yelp knows, online reputations matter.

And to Jeremy Stoppleman…you should allow people to comment on your blog posts.

Here’s a smashing list from Lee Odden over on Online Marketing Blog, Best and Worst Practices Social Media Marketing:

• Start with a plan, not tactics.  Research and build a Social Media Roadmap involving:  Audience, Objectives, Strategy, Tactics, Tools/Technology and Metrics.

• “Give to get” – Successful social media marketing programs involve listening and participation. That participation centers around giving value before expecting anything in return. This is not “sales” as you know it. But companies can definitely increase sales as a result.

• Commit resources & time to be successful or you may very well fail. It’s important to forecast labor hours, who, what, when, how and where with the intention of succeeding, not just experimenting. If a social media effort is successful, scalability will be an even bigger issue if you don’t plan for it.  Hiring a community manager for example, may not be justified when a social media monitoring program is started or with a new company, but a job req and understanding of the role should be ready in case it’s called for.

• Be transparent with intentions & your identity or you may alienate the very audiences you’re trying to connect with.  Objectives, strategy and doing your homework about a community should make it pretty obvious what types of commercial messages are appropriate.  Being transparent about intentions might come in the form of stating a purpose:  ”Brand XYZ has created this Facebook page to help consumers make better choices about Topic XYZ”.  It’s fine if goals are to increase sales, but participation should be focused on providing the kind of value that facilitates sales – not attempting to make sales directly. When is the last time you purchased something other than a virtual cupcake on Facebook?

• Understand, you do not control the message.  Old habits die hard and there’s a tendency to want to treat social media participation like advertising where the ability to control messaging is the norm. Once information or media is available on the social web, people will inevitably mash it up, stretch it, pull it and reshape it according to their interests. Brands need to protect their identities, copyright and intellectual property for sure, but rather than “controlling the message” marketers should encourage the mashup and creativity.

• Welcome participation, feedback and co-creation. As comfort levels rise with social web participation, companies will see opportunties to encourage participation with communications, especially with brand evangelists. Developing relationships and community within social communities on the web can facilitate buy in, provide invaluable feedback and crowdsourcing opportunities.

• Metrics should roll up to objectives and objectives should be relevant to the channel.  More than a few companies see evidence of other social media efforts ranging from Superbowl commercials on YouTube to social participation during and after President Obama’s campaign, and “want that too”.  Direct marketing is the lens through which many social media efforts are first viewed, with a tendency to focus on action “A” resulting in “B” outcome. Social media marketing is more like public relations than direct marketing. It’s more like providing resource “A” results in “action “B” that influences outcome “C”. Metrics for success need to consider the pre-goal performance indicators like number of “friends”, comments, links, etc as well as commercial outcomes influenced by social media participation.

Check out his worst practices as well over at: Best and Worst Practices Social Media Marketing.

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!)

My buddy David Gelles writes for the Tech section of the FT, my favorite paper. Check out his latest article, New corporate firefighters. Sadly for me, he can’t shamelessly promote my company, Abraham Harrison LLC, because he has ‘journalistic integrity;’ however, it is awesome he works there because he writes awesomely-accessible articles about my space, including social media marketing, social media PR, blogger engagement, Twitter, and also the world of online and social media crisis-response.  It is amazing!  I beat up Pepsi Max over on AdAge and a couple weeks later, Gelles writes an article about the space.  I am both amazingly proud and a little paranoid!

New corporate firefighters By David Gelles

When advertisers launched a campaign last September for the pain reliever Motrin, they hoped to attract the attention of mothers whose backs might be sore from wearing baby-carriers. The advertisements implied that while baby-carriers might be fashionable, hauling a child around could be painful.

Mothers were not amused. Soon after the ads were released, anti-Motrin campaigns appeared on Facebook and blogs. Outraged mums, furious at the suggestion that their babies were a hassle, posted rebuttal videos on YouTube. Through Twitter, the micro-blogging service, thousands of people attacked the company.

Motrin was caught off-guard. For days, no company representative replied. Critics accused the company of being not only insensitive but also unresponsive.

Eventually a marketing executive at McNeil Consumer Healthcare, the subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson that markets Motrin, e-mailed individual bloggers to apologise for the campaign. But the damage was done.

Jeanette Gibson of CiscoThe “Motrin moms” episode illustrates the power of social media — the expanding network of websites that allow users to interact with each other and, increasingly, with companies. It also demonstrates the perils for enterprises that are unprepared to interact with social media.

But now a growing number of companies, including Ford Motor, PepsiCo, Wells Fargo and Dell, are creating new high-level jobs to ready themselves for engagement with social media, with titles such as director of social media, head of communities and conversation, vice-president of experiential marketing and digital communications manager. The role of these new executives is to monitor and influence what is being said about their companies on the internet.

Johnson & Johnson made its own appointment in the wake of the Motrin debacle. Having already dabbled in social media, in December the company promoted Marc Monseau, a 10-year company veteran and former director of media relations, to director of social media. “My responsibility is to work with the corporate office and the individual companies to better interact online,” Mr Monseau says. “It underscores the fact that we realise this is an important audience and one that we need to develop relationships with.”

These new jobs represent a broad shift in media relations strategy at large companies. “Corporate communications has radically changed,” says Andy Sernovitz, chief executive of the Blog Council, an organisation for heads of social media at big companies. “It’s no longer just companies talking to the press, and customer service talking to customers. All these other people showed up in the ­middle. They may not be press and they may not be customers, but suddenly their collective voice is bigger than the traditional channels.”

The essence of social media is conversation. Rather than a one-way stream of information, where companies make announcements to the press and customers, social media enables a great deal of interaction, where companies are in constant dialogue with the public. “We’ve seen a shift from doing things the old way to now having conversations with our customers,” says Jeanette Gibson, director of new media for Cisco Systems (pictured).

Ms Gibson, who began her job in 2007, says there is now a mandate at Cisco that all staff be attuned to what is being said about Cisco online. “It has definitely shifted how we’ve done communications,” she says. “Our executives are video blogging every day. Everybody’s job is now social media.”

Dell, the computer maker, has one of the most robust corporate social media programmes. Bob Pearson, former senior vice-president of corporate communications, became vice-president of communities and conversation for Dell in 2007.

He now has 45 people working for him. The core team works on “blog resolution” — trawling the web for dissatisfied customers, then attempting to contact them to make amends. Others on Dell’s social media team manage the company’s 80 Twitter accounts and 20 Facebook pages. Still others manage IdeaStorm, Dell’s forum for customer feedback.

Dell is taking its customer feedback seriously. When the company launched the Latitude laptop last summer, six of the features, including backlit keyboard and fingerprint reader, were ideas that came from IdeaStorm. “It’s always worth talking directly with your customers. It’s always worth listening to them,” says Mr Pearson. “It’s the wisdom of crowds.”

Peter Shankman, a social media expert and founder of Help a Reporter Out, a service that broadcasts reporters’ requests to a network of experts, says many companies are still reluctant to get involved: “Companies are slow to adapt because they’re still not 100 per cent sure they can make money with social media,” he says.

Yet Dell, for one, has made a business of it. By broadcasting discount alerts on Twitter, it says, it has generated more than $1m in sales. And in the US, 59 of the 100 leading retailers, including Best Buy and Wal-Mart, now have a fan page on Facebook, according to Rosetta, an interactive marketing agency.

Other savings can be realised through the Web’s ability to reach many people at once. “If you solve someone’s problem on the phone, nobody knows,” says Mr Sernovitz. “If you solve that same problem in writing on a blog, it costs you no more, but thousands of people are satisfied. And then, if 100 people never call because they found the answer, you very, very quickly get to multimillion-dollar savings.”

Other companies are using Twitter to douse public relations fires before they erupt. Scott Monty, head of social media for Ford Motors, used Twitter to appease users who were angry after the carmaker sued an enthusiast website that was selling unauthorised Ford merchandise. When fans of the enthusiast site posted angry messages, Mr Monty “tweeted back” to explain the company’s position.

Bonin Bough, who was appointed director of social media for PepsiCo last year, also used Twitter to defuse a brewing crisis after the company released a series of advertisements depicting a cartoon calorie character committing suicide.

“Social media is much more than getting out there and having conversations,” says Mr Pearson of Dell. “It transforms a business if you use it correctly.”

My buddy David Gelles is now a Technology reporter and blogger for the Financial Times and I was so happy to see David writing about Twitter PR, something very dear to my heart, Companies use Twitter to pack PR punch, including Scott Monty of Ford as well as the gang from PepsiCo’s Pepsi Max controversy:

Companies use Twitter to pack PR punch 
By David Gelles in San Francisco

Published: December 30 2008 19:16 | Last updated: December 30 2008 19:16

Twitter, a booming micro-blogging service, is inspiring business to manage its message in 140 characters or less.

Its streams of short text messages, publicly broadcast over the web, are being treated as the new frontline of internet conversation. Companies including Ford and PepsiCo have been dousing public relations fires with pithy communication bursts to the Twitter community.

“There’s a rapid-fire element to Twitter that causes conversations to go viral when something bad happens with a company,” says Jackie Huba, co-founder of the Society for Word of Mouth, an organisation that monitors social media. “Companies that have a Twitter account are prepared. If something goes wrong they can respond.”

PepsiCo turned to Twitter this month after users began posting criticisms of a Pepsi Max advertisement, which depicted a cartoon calorie committing suicide.

Huw Gilbert, communications manager for PepsiCo International, “tweeted”, or posted a public message, in reply. “Huw from Pepsi here,” he wrote. “We agree this creative is totally inappropriate; we apologise and please know it won’t run again.”

Critics saw Mr Gilbert’s post, with one “tweeting” back: “Thank you?.?.?.?for having the guts to get on Twitter on behalf of Pepsi and give us an update on the suicide ad.”

Such personal interaction from a company representative helps defuse a crisis, says Ms Huba. “People like feeling like they’re being heard,” she says.

Scott Monty, head of social media for Ford Motors, used Twitter to deflect criticism away from the carmaker after it filed suit against an enthusiast website that was selling unauthorised Ford decals. Fans of the site posted angry messages but Mr Monty used Twitter to explain the company’s position.

“Part of my job is to humanise the company – you want to interact,” Mr Monty says.

Starbucks, Comcast, JetBlue and Home Depot are among companies using Twitter accounts to promote products and provide customer service.

Bob Pearson, head of communities and conversation for Dell, said his company had generated $1m in computer-related sales through alerts posted to Twitter.

San Francisco-based Twitter is also becoming a platform for a range of media and social networking start-ups using its tools to develop communities and content rapidly, and at low cost.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008

I received this post to my Wall, “I fellow Kama’aina from Radford HS (not from Punahou or Iolani) wrote a really wonderful post about MyDataisMyData. Mahalo, Amy Jussel!” I don’t know if you knew it, but I grew up in Hawai`i-Nei and attended Saint Louis School and became Student Body President and wrestled and was a “Ranger” in JROTC and even visited Washington for the Government-study course, CLOSE-UP! Well, Saint Louis ’88, is the answer. Other than making me super-nostalgic, Amy Jussel wrote a really fantastic piece on MyDataIsMyData on her blog, Shaping Youth, “My Data is My Data:” Putting Choice Back into Social Media:

My Data is My Data.org is a plug-in for those of us who are not so wild about social media hubs tracking our every move for data-mining purposes like the infamous Facebook Beacon controversy I wrote about in those two posts.

Believe me, the irony doesn’t escape me that the development of this useful plug-in to bring ‘choice’ back to the internet from vested interests and corporate coffers is being sponsored by a MySpace meets CraigsList style-ad community called FlugPo. (as a name generation gal, I have to ask myself, where DO they get these names?!)

I love it when technologists and advertisers trump their own kind, offering solutions-based freebies that kids and parents can ALL benefit from in open-source good-guy style…

I’ve officially joined the My Data is My Data Facebook group to see where this is headed in the privacy/preferences arena. We’ll see. Created by Chris Abraham of Abraham Harrison (who also started ‘Facecrook’ to warn folks about the Beacon balderdash) the FB group is promoting customization of preferences to suit YOUR agenda, not the advertisers’.

Hmn. Sounds good to me…

You’d think Facebook would ‘get it’ that we want to control our own data…

…Especially after they got a strong bracer from 50,000 of us in 8 days using their own mobilization tools to tell them we were ticked about being blindsided, sending our friends our purchases and preferences without our permission.

Yet…after a few (forced) ‘mea culpas’ in the press, and shifting to an ‘opt-in’ format, Facebook still snoops, spies, tracks, and harvests our info on the back end (albeit much more stealthily) saving the info for gawdonlyknows what’s next…

Yep. I’m hoping this new My Data is My Data plug-in has some chops.

Granted, the last freakin’ thing I need is another free ‘toolbar,’ but it sounds like a logical, user-driven way to put the control of your private information back into your own hands with all kinds of alerts, notifications, and ‘cookie’ choices, (alas not the chocolate chip kind) to customize your digital footprint beyond the ‘all or nothing’ approach.

A little pop-up box warns, “you are trying to navigate a FB collaborating website, would you like to continue?” and the user can change preferences or turn off or on cookies accordingly. Seems fair.

My first instinct is to globalize it into a ‘yeah, what about Google and all the REALLY big search engine info-collectors…how can this be applied universally?’ dialog…

What about Double-Click? Double-Fusion? And every other integrated mega-mogul marketing play that’s out for kids’ eyeballs?

Even those of us who LOVE social media mobilization, HATE being sold out and commodified, especially without asking. And that’s not even counting the issue of kids! The arrogant gall of techno tools shipping data to ad partners on an “opt-out” or saturated eyeball/urban wallpaper basis is bound to have backlash…(if not from the parents, then from youth themselves!)

Guess THAT might fall into the policy arena on a much larger FCC and FTC privacy scale…

Or not. Those watchdogs haven’t been barking much…

Though today, the Center for a Digital Democracy (CDD) and members of the Children’s Media Policy Coalition, (specifically American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, the American Academy of Pediatrics, Children Now, etc.) called the feds on their lax-n-loose policies…asking the the FTC ‘powers that be’ to get with the program and update themselves regarding online behavioral advertising and the sorry state of self-regulation in the youth arena. Yay.

Self-regulation is great in theory, but let’s face it, COPPA, schmoppa…

Sure, advertisers are supposed to comply with COPPA but we all know the corporate claws have been out early on, insidiously working fast and furious to blitz tweens and teens with profiling and branding sans privacy protection, before parents, media and the snail-pace of governmental bigwigs even get a whiff of what’s goin’ on. (um, Neopets, anyone?)

Many parents are still at the ‘What is social media?’ stage, much less having any hint of awareness of data-mining kids’ behavioral patterns and online fingerprints.

Talk about a tipped scale of the fairness factor…

Even the kids themselves don’t know the degree of personal data-mining going on…

Judging by our own Shaping Youth tween and teen advisors, they get ticked off when they see their eyeballs are being harvested and sold as fast as those macabre ‘urban myth, donor kidney heists’ where someone falls asleep and wakes up with their organs gone! (ooh, a tub full of ice and kids’ eyeballs, ewww…got a horrific visual there)

On the flip side, when people DO want info tailored to them, it can be perceived as a benefit and ‘value-add’ (e.g. a coupon for a store they frequent, or sale on the same block served to them via their GPS mobile).

It’s all a matter of privacy-security, how ads are handled (opt in/opt out, invasive vs. requested, etc.) who it benefits, and how to engage consumers in the dialog to advocate for themselves, and put the power back in THEIR hands.

My data is my data outlines the FAQ very succinctly and clearly on the whole info-sharing issue, at least as it applies to Facebook.

But again…what about a more global policy here?

I’d like to know who’s capturing MY info in all arenas…ever since I read Nowhere to Hide and Generation Digital I’ve had my awareness at “level orange.”

This news report on CNET yesterday gives a glimpse of prelim industry response in this glib comment, “if you have an agenda to push, remember this phrase, ‘protect the children.”

Hmn. C’mon, now, folks. Be fair.

I’m not a child, but I deserve the right to control MY own information.

And yes, kids ARE in a ‘most vulnerable’ category, no matter how much advertisers want to ‘pooh-pooh’ it…

Besides, the Beacon outcry on FB was an amalgamation of collegiate, adult, teens of all ages, speaking to the “surveillance aspects” applicable to us ALL. Those privacy practices need disclosure for everyone…NOT just ‘for the children.’

That said, here’s today’s (14 pp pdf) from child advocates submitted to the FTC from the Institute of Public Representation at Georgetown University. And, here’s the official FTC filing (37pp) addressed to FTC Office of the Secretary, Donald Clark…

Finally, below is late-breaking news from Congressman Edward Markey’s office with an early-stage reaction to same. Perusing his site, it looks like last week he opened a hearing on virtual worlds too, so this lawmaker could be one to watch as these digital events begin to unfold.

Meanwhile, kids, teens, youth advocates, parents…What do YOU have to say on the data-mining/privacy front?

Is mandatory transparency the way to go? Plug-ins and pop-ups when you’re visiting a site that monitors you? Age-appropriate regulation? Walled-off regions within platforms that are commercial-free and/or non-traceable?

Can the ‘my data is my data’ concept be applied to a larger scale beyond social media applicable to mobile, VoIP, virtual worlds and virtual goods via cookie-setting that puts choice into the user’s hands?

What are your solutions and ideas?

Sound off…As I wrote here, the digital frontier is ‘unwritten’…

No matter what your views are, now’s the time to tap into your own gut instincts and best practices and begin to have your say, before others do it for you!

Visual Credits: eyeballs: WPClipart

Congressman Edward Markey’s comments on the FTC filing today:

MARKEY: NEW ONLINE PRIVACY SAFEGUARDS NEEDED TO PROTECT CHILDREN, TEENS

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Representative Edward J. Markey (D-MA), a senior member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and co-Chairman of the Bi-Partisan Congressional Privacy Caucus, released the following statement this afternoon in response to the Federal Trade Commission’s proposed principles for industry self-regulation of online behavioral advertising:

“The FTC has appropriately recognized the pressing need for updated online privacy protections for children that reflect the sophisticated data collection and behavioral targeting practices now used widely across the Internet. Without stronger protections, including a prohibition on collecting data on children’s and teens’ online activities, young Internet users may become unwitting targets of the ‘hidden persuaders’ of the digital age. The evolution of online behavioral advertising since the enactment of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act requires a commensurate rejuvenation of privacy safeguards. I look forward to monitoring the FTC’s work in this important area.”

Related Shaping Youth Posts on Internet Privacy/Kids’ Concerns:

Facebook: Can You Hear Me Now? Your Peepin’ is Creepin’ Me Out!

Dare to Share? What’s Your Beacon Story?

Related Posts Elsewhere:

Digital Natives/Harvard Law: Deleting Facebook (vs. Deactivating It )

Charlene Li’s Close Encounter with Facebook Beacon (Groundswell/Forrester Rsch)

Rough Seas Nearly Sink Facebook’s Beacon (CNET)

Lessons from the Beacon Backlash: iMediaConnection

Facebook Beacon Backlash Leads To Apology & Opt-Out Option: Laughing Squid blog

I have been working with Abraham Harrison, my firm, Flugpo, our client, and MyDataIsMyData.org to create a plugin, currently for IE, that would protect and alert browsers from any Facebook Beacon sneakiness. Check it out! The plugin is forthcoming but it’s not out just yet outside of the internal beta wall. We have some pretty amazing press so far, Mashable: Facebook Beacon Haters Get Their Own Plugin, and, TechCrunch: MyDataIsMyData: An Anti-Facebook Beacon Plug-In That Nobody Needs.

Mashable: Facebook Beacon Haters Get Their Own Plugin

Facebook Beacon has caught a lot of flack since its release, to the dismay of many advertisers out there. While the backlash hasn’t been as noticeable as some of Facebook’s other releases, there are still a good number of folks out there that would rather not see their faces on other people’s feeds as part of an advertisement.

My Data is My Data has beta-launched a browser plugin that will alert you when Facebook Beacon’s system tries to make a connection with a partner site, so you can determine when and where you’d like to share your third-party purchasing activity with your Facebook friends. While there are already a number of privacy options inserted into Facebook, and even more services out there that will rid you of cookie problems all together, Facebook Beacon’s mainstream press presence in itself may help My Data is My Data gain a good amount of users based on principle alone.

The plugin is still a bit buggy, but the team is working on it. Given Facebook’s restrictions to curb newsfeed abuse, and the limited growth of Beacon, there will surely be more tweaking on Facebook’s end in order to ensure that end users are more or less happy, whether this is through voluntary manipulation or oblivious bliss, with the Beacon’s implementation.

TechCrunch: MyDataIsMyData: An Anti-Facebook Beacon Plug-In That Nobody Needs

The Facebook Beacon controversy may not be making headlines any more, but the privacy concerns it raised still linger. According to this post about MyDataIsMyData, an upcoming privacy-monitoring service sponsored by classifieds site Flugpo, Beacon may still monitor traffic and personal data, even if a user has opted-out of the system. In response, MyDataIsMyData is creating a plugin for Internet Explorer that enables users to eliminate any traces of Beacon from their system.

Facebook Beacon tracks usage information by monitoring cookies on a client’s computer. As users browse various participating websites, such as Blockbuster and eBay, their activities are relayed back to Facebook, where it can be shared with friends. Many users find such notifications to be intrusive, and much of the original controversy stemmed from the automatic inclusion of all users in the system.

The MyDataIsMyData plug-in notifies users via their browser toolbar when Facebook or one of Beacon’s participating affiliates creates or accesses these cookies. The plug-in can automatically delete these cookies at regular intervals, and also allows for users to individually select which (if any) sites will still function with Beacon. Finally, the toolbar will feature a constantly-updated list of sites that participate in Beacon, allowing users to boycott them, should they choose to do so. MyDataIsMyData will soon be available for Internet Exporer, and plans to expand to offer functionality for both Firefox and Macintosh-based browsers.

It should be noted that while the plugin offers some value in terms of a sense of security, it is fairly easy to monitor cookies with a number of extensions using the Firefox browser. Furthermore, by installing the free toolbar, the users will be placing their trust in MyDataIsMyData—the same type of users who presumably would be put off by installing any sort of monitoring software on their computers.

My Data is My Data Social Media News Release

Flugpo Sponsors Development of My Data is My Data

Counters Growing Concern about the Privacy Rights of Social Network Users

News Facts

• In response to the growing concerns that users of social network sites have had over privacy, the growing social network site, MyDataIsMyData.org.

• This free plug-in (found at MyDataIsMyData.org)is a toolbar that will allow users several different options to monitor and delete cookies, offline content, and track visits to Facebook Beacon collaborator companies. Once downloaded, the toolbar allows users to decide how often he or she would like certain cookies deleted. The user can choose to delete Facebook cookies and Facebook Beacon collaborator companies’ cookies. It also includes the option to delete all cookies at once or none at all.

• Selling private information for profit unbeknownst to the users is an abuse of trust and MyDataIsMyData.org hopes to empower users by allowing them to control the amount of personal information that they make visible.

• MyDataIsMyData.org was created as a direct response to the Facebook Beacon uproar, which broached many privacy concerns for users of social network sites.

About the Facebook Beacon

The Facebook Beacon refers to the agreement that Facebook has with popular online retailers. This agreement allows Facebook to utilize their users’ private information in ways that violate their privacy. When a Facebook user purchases something with one of the participating online retailers a message is sent to the user’s “friends” on Facebook, notifying them of the his or her purchase or transaction with that online retailer.

Facebook Beacon was meant to be optional; a buyer/Facebook user could choose to opt out of letting their friends know about their latest purchase. However, several instances have emerged in which personal information from the Facebook Beacon network was sent to the user’s friends without his or her approval. This is just one example of many ways in which social network sites have been working to monetize their user’s experience.

About Flugpo

Flugpo was developed as a place where people can go to make friends, share photos, network professionally, share ideas, buy and sell items, and list and locate jobs. As an online resource for everyday people, Flugpo is a great community for people to make new friends, share common interests and reach out to like-minded individuals and discuss current topics, review top movies and share stories Flugpo also creates a space where businesses can promote their services.

Flugpo is often referred to as “Myspace meets Craigslist” by their members. Created in the 2007, Flugpo takes an interesting approach to classified listings by eliminating the anonymity features found with Craigslist and allowing the members to connect with one another. “The classifieds, as the world knows them now has no community, said David Metz, founder of Flugpo. Each classified posting is linked to the profile of the member posting the ad. Given the current landscape of Internet safety, Flugpo is quick to address safety concerns by connecting all classified listings with a “face and name.”

Contacts

For Press and PR Inquiries

Contact Dani Sevilla, Media and PR Strategist at dani@mydataismydata.us

For More Information About Flugpo

Visit http://www.flugpo.com or email David Metz, CEO at davidmetz@flugpo.com

Multimedia Elements

Download the Flugpo Logo

Download the My Data is My Data Logo (400 pixels)

Download a Screenshot of the Plug-In

Additional Resources

The My Data is My Data Group on Facebook

Information about My Data is My Data on the Flugpo Forums

The My Data is My Data Group on Flugpo

Social Media

Add to del.icio.us | Digg it | Google Bookmark | reddit | StumbleUpon | Twit This

Tags

Beacon | Facebook | Facebook Beacon | MDiMD | My Data is My Data | MyDataIsMyData.org | privacy | privacy advocates | privacy protection

Flugpo Sponsors Development of My Data is My Data

Counters Growing Concern about the Privacy Rights of Social Network Users

News Facts

• In response to the growing concerns that social network site user’s have had over privacy, growing social network, Flugpo, has sponsored the development of a plug-in to help counteract the collection and sale of personal information. This plug-in will be available through MyDataIsMyData.org

• MyDataIsMyData.org has created this free plug-in: a toolbar that will allow users several different options to monitor and delete Cookies, offline content and track visits to Facebook Beacon collaborator companies. Once downloaded, this toolbar allows a user to decide how often he or she would like certain Cookies deleted. The user can choose to delete Facebook cookies, Facebook Beacon collaborator companies’ cookies, both, all cookies, or none.

• Selling private information for profit unbeknownst to the user’s is an abuse of their trust and MyDataIsMyData.org hopes to empower these user’s by allowing them to control the amount of personal information that they make visible.

• MyDataIsMyData.org was created as a direct response to the Facebook Beacon uproar which broached many privacy concerns for users of social network sites. With this plug-in, MyDataIsMyData.org is hoping to empower the concerned social network site user by allowing them to control the amount of private information that can be seen by these sites and to stop the sale of his or her personal information.

About the Facebook Beacon

The Facebook Beacon refers to Facebook’s agreements with popular online retailers to facilitate the use of Facebook user’s information. When a Facebook user purchased something with one of the participating online retailers a message would be sent to the user’s “friends” on Facebook notifying them of the his or her endorsement of the retailer.

Facebook Beacon was meant to be optional; a buyer/Facebook user could choose to opt out of letting their friends know about their last purchase. However, several instances have emerged in which personal information from the Facebook Beacon network was sent to the user’s friends without his or her approval. This is just one example of many ways in which social network sites have been working to monetize their user’s experience.

About Flugpo

Flugpo was developed to be a place where people can go to make friends, share photos, network professionally, share ideas, buy and sell items & list and locate jobs. As an online resource for everyday people, Flugpo creates opportunities for businesses to promote their services. Aside from the professional aspect, Flugpo is a great community for people to make new friends, share common interests and reach out to like-minded individuals and discuss current topics, review top movies and share stories.

Flugpo is often referred to as “Myspace meets Craigslist” by their staff and members. Created in the 2007, Flugpo takes an interesting approach to classified listings by eliminating the anonymity features found with Craigslist and allowing the members to connect with one another. “The classifeds, as the world knows them now has no community, said David Metz, founder of Flugpo. Each classified posting is linked to the profile of the member posting the ad. Given the current landscape of Internet safety, Flugpo is quick to address safety concerns by connecting all classified listings with a “face and name.”

Contacts

For Press and PR Inquiries

Contact Dani Sevilla, Media and PR Strategist at dani@mydataismydata.us

For More Information About Flugpo

Visit http://www.flugpo.com or email David Metz, CEO at davidmetz@flugpo.com

Multimedia Elements

Download the Flugpo Logo

Download the My Data is My Data Logo (400 pixels)

Download a Screenshot of the Plug-In

Additional Resources

The My Data is My Data Group on Facebook

Information about My Data is My Data on the Flugpo Forums

The My Data is My Data Group on Flugpo

Social Media

Add to del.icio.us | Digg it | Google Bookmark | reddit | StumbleUpon | Twit This

Tags

Beacon | Facebook | Facebook Beacon | MDiMD | My Data is My Data | MyDataIsMyData.org | privacy | privacy advocates | privacy protection

I have been working with the gang over at Flugpo to put together a plug-in for Internet Explorer (IE) for Windows that will allow folks to be able to track what is going on with Facebook Beacon, your cookies, your JavaScript, and Facebook’s advertising partners. Thing is, it isn’t out of private alpha yet so if you’re interested, please join either the Flugpo MyDataisMyData group or the Facebook My Data is My Data group and we’ll let you know when it’s up! Via Memes.org and the Social Media News Room.

What is My Data is My Data?

• MyDataisMyData.org empowers users of social network sites by giving the user control over the personal information an SNS can surreptitiously collect and sell.
• Flugpo.com, an SNS that never has and never will collect or sell private information about its users, sponsored the development of a plug-in that will be available through MyDataIsMyData.org

Why Was My Data is My Data Created?

• MyDataIsMyData.org was created as a direct response to Facebook Beacon.
• Beacon is Facebook’s way of making a profit from your private information by selling it to online retailers (such as Amazon.com or Blockbuster)
• When Beacon was first introduced, whenever a Facebook user purchased something with one of the participating online retailers, a message would be sent to the users “friends” on Facebook notifying them of the his or her endorsement of the retailer

Facebook and its Advertisers are Spying on You Right Now

• Although Facebook has stopped publicizing their users personal information on purchases to their Facebook friends, it has not stopped spying on its users and selling their personal information for profit
• MyDataIsMyData.org wants to help the user be aware of which retailers are using this method of data collection so he or she can choose to avoid those retailers

Take Back Your Privacy with the My Data is My Data Plug-In

• The free plug-in is a toolbar that will allow users several different options to monitor and delete Cookies, offline content and track visits to Facebook Beacon collaborator companies.
• Once equipped with the plug-in, the user decides how often he or she would like certain Cookies deleted. The user can choose to delete Facebook cookies, Facebook Beacon collaborator companies’ cookies, both, all cookies, or none. The user may also choose to delete all or no offline content at various time intervals. The user can set up the toolbar to notify him or her of visits to Facebook Beacon collaborator website. It will also feature a drop-down list of these collaborators updated on a daily basis through the MyDataIsMyData.org website.

Protect your Own Privacy…and Help Other Victims Do the Same

• The features MyDataIsMyData.org is offering are meant to protect users privacy and allow them to be more conscious of the way their private information is being used. The plug-in is a work in progress and we need your feedback, bug reports and suggestions to make it better.
• Support for users of the toolbar will be provided though a forum on Flugpo.com.

About Flugpo

• Flugpo was developed to be a place where people can go to make friends, share photos, network professionally, share ideas, buy and sell items & list and locate jobs. As an online resource for eveyday people, Flugpo creates opportunities for businesses to promote their services. Aside from the professional aspect, Flugpo is a great community for people to make new friends, share common interests and reach out to like-minded individuals and discuss current topics, review top movies and share stories.
• Flugpo is often referred to as “Myspace meets Craigslist” by their staff and members. Created in the 2007, Flugpo takes an interesting approach to classified listings by eliminating the anonymity features found with Craigslist and allowing the members to connect with one another. “The classifeds, as the world knows them now has no community, said David Metz, founder of Flugpo. Each classified posting is linked to the profile of the member posting the ad. Given the current landscape of Internet safety, Flugpo is quick to address safety concerns by connecting all classified listings with a “face and name.”
• To learn more visit www.flugpo.com or email David Metz, CEO, at davidmetz@flugpo.com

Now that I have moved to Berlin, I get to hear VOA and NPR Worldwide and the European version of BBC Worldwide and I am pretty excited. I can finally hear US propaganda “outside the border” which is fascinating. As part of NPR Worldwide’s broadcast this AM (104.1 FM), I got to hear a show this morning about the history of Public Diplomacy, which I found amazingly interesting. From 1914, I think they said, the US has had a real desire to educate and engage the world, which ended abruptly once we won the cold war. And then it all went to pot, especially since the responsibility of Public Diplomacy has been rolled into the US Department of State. Well, I am all for Public Diplomacy as a strategy that is much more effective than either PR or a propaganda war. One of the most useful past strategies, which is being gutted because of post 9-11 paranoia, was the global encouragement of students to study in the USA. One lad from Egypt spoke of his experience in Washington State at the University of Washington, saying, “I got to experience that most Americans live the American Dream on two parents working two jobs, which is something I would never have known from my experience of the USA from TV from Cairo.” Amazingly interesting. Here’s some more info on Public Dimplomacy via Wikipedia via Memes.org

In international relations, the term public diplomacy is a term coined in the 1960s to describe aspects of international diplomacy other than the interactions between national governments. It has been closely associated with the United States Information Agency, which used the term to define its mission. It was originally a euphemism for purportedly truthful propaganda.

Standard diplomacy might be described as the ways in which government leaders communicate with each other at the highest levels, the elite diplomacy we are all familiar with. Public diplomacy, by contrast – according to the definition at the USC Center on Public Diplomacy – focuses on the ways in which a country (or multi-lateral organization such as the United Nations) communicates with citizens in other societies. A country may be acting deliberately or inadvertently, and through both official and private individuals and institutions. Effective public diplomacy starts from the premise that dialogue, rather than a sales pitch, is often central to achieving the goals of foreign policy: public diplomacy must be seen as a two-way street.

Film, television, music, sports, video games and other social/cultural activities are seen by public diplomacy advocates as enormously important avenues for otherwise diverse citizens to understand each other and integral to the international cultural understanding, which they state is a key goal of modern public diplomacy strategy. It involves not only shaping the message(s) that a country wishes to present abroad, but also analyzing and understanding the ways that the message is interpreted by diverse societies and developing the tools of listening and conversation as well as the tools of persuasion.

One of the most successful initiatives which embodies the principles of effective public diplomacy is the creation by international treaty in the 1950s of the European Coal and Steel Community which later became the European Union. Its original purpose after World War II was to tie the economies of Europe together so much that war would be impossible. Supporters of European integration see it as having achieved both this goal and the extra benefit of catalysing greater international understanding as European countries did more business together and the ties among member states’ citizens increased. Opponents of European integration are leery of a loss of national sovereignty and greater centralization of power.

Public diplomacy as beyond propaganda

After the dissolution of the USIA in 1999, the term has continued to be used within the US government, especially the US Department of State. It has been used most often as the foreign policy equivalent of the term public relations, but embodies a much broader frame than this.

Aside from the use of media like the Voice of America, it also includes other kinds of interaction with the public in other countries. Arranging student exchange programs, hosting seminars, and meeting with foreign business and academic leaders are all considered public diplomacy. Indirect public diplomacy includes the everyday activities of citizens internationally, such as everyday cultural activities and products such as films, tourism, theatre, and internet discussion.

The term public diplomacy clearly originated as a euphemism for propaganda. However, this definition is a somewhat dated definition, as more sensitive practitioners embody an intercultural, ‘learning’ approach to public diplomacy, with an emphasis on dialogue rather than propaganda.

A history of the term “public diplomacy”

Nicholas J. Cull of the USC Center on Public Diplomacy, wrote in his essay “‘Public Diplomacy’ Before Gullion: The Evolution of a Phrase:

The earliest use of the phrase “public diplomacy” to surface is actually not American at all but in a leader piece from The Times in January 1856. It is used merely as a synonym for civility in a piece criticizing the posturing of President Franklin Pierce.

According to publicdiplomacy.org, a website sponsored by the USIA Alumni Association,

The term public diplomacy was first used in 1965 by Edmund Gullion, a career diplomat, in connection with the foundation of the Edward R. Murrow Center at Tufts University‘s The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.

The Murrow Center brochure described public diplomacy as:

the influence of public attitudes on the formation and execution of foreign policies. It encompasses dimensions of international relations beyond traditional diplomacy . . . [including] the cultivation by governments of public opinion in other countries; the interaction of private groups and interests in one country with those of another . . . (and) the transnational flow of information and ideas.

While Gullion and the Murrow Center were the first to use the term public diplomacy, their definition remains contested and controversial. Today, there is no one definition of public diplomacy, there are many definitions (links to other definitions).

The dictionary definition of the word propaganda is “The systematic propagation of a doctrine or cause or of information reflecting the views and interests of those advocating such a doctrine or cause.” Notice that the definition says nothing about whether the material is or is not true; the essence of propaganda is that it is distributed with the intention of supporting a cause. The word literally means “that which ought to be propagated” and originated in the Catholic Church to describe the church agency responsible for evangelising. See the article on propaganda for more detail.

In the United States, however, the word “propaganda” carried and carries the connotation of falsehood. The USIA has always maintained that its agencies, such as the Voice of America, are truthful. In a famous remark, Edward R. Murrow, then director of the USIA, said:

Truth is the best propaganda and lies are the worst. To be persuasive we must be believable; to be believable we must be credible; to be credible we must be truthful. It is as simple as that.

Nevertheless the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 still prevents the distribution within the United States of official American information which was intended for foreign audiences, for example exempting Voice of America from releasing transcripts in response to FOIA requests.

Broadly speaking, then, until recent times, the term public diplomacy has traditionally been used by those supporting it to mean truthful propaganda. But critics, such as the editors of the National Security Archive at George Washington University, have viewed it in more nefarious terms, as a form of “covert propaganda.” They also report that “the bipartisan report of the Congressional Iran-Contra committees (November 1987, p. 34) found that ‘[i]n fact, “public diplomacy” turned out to mean public relations-lobbying, all at taxpayers’ expense.’”

See also

• Diplomacy Monitor, a tool for tracking Internet-based public diplomacy

References

• Fallows, James (2005) “Success without Victory,” The Atlantic Monthly, 295:1 p. 80 (Evera quotation)

Other relevant articles

• “A Clash of Professional Cultures:The David Kelly Affair” by Biljana Scott (Published in Hannah Slavik (ed.) Intercultural Communication and Diplomacy, DiploFoundation, 2004.)Also see conference slideshow presentation

• “Multiculturalism for the masses: social advertising and public diplomacy post 9/11″ by Biljana Scott (Published in Hannah Slavik (ed.) Intercultural Communication and Diplomacy, DiploFoundation, 2004.)

• “Public Diplomacy” by Pamela H. Smith, Minister-Counselor for Public Affairs, U.S. Embassy, London (Published in “Modern Diplomacy”)

• “Multistakeholder Public Diplomacy of Small and Medium-Sized States: Norway and Canada Compared” by Jozef Bátora (Paper presented to the International Conference on Multistakeholder Diplomacy,Malta, February 11-13, 2005)

External links

• How the World Sees America – Amar Bakshi on Washington Post/Newsweek on Public Diplomacy
• Example of term being used by President George W. Bush in relation to the Middle East – January 19, 2005 The Age
• Public Diplomacy Wiki maintained by the USC Center on Public Diplomacy
• Public Diplomacy (USIAAA)
• Journal of Place Branding and Public Diplomacy
• The Edward R. Murrow Center of Public Diplomacy at The Fletcher School
• Public Diplomacy Research Network