Maura Welch's blog

Kill the press release

I'm up late tonight working on a press release that's not a press release. It's a "social media release." Sure I wish I was sleeping. But it could be worse. I could be working on a press release.

A social media release recognizes that the web has changed the game and journalists don't want to get a heavily canned press release that's dense with run on sentences like this one that contain a million bits of jargon all awkwardly architected in language that pushes the bounds of grammar and often never seems to get to the freaking point already.

When I was writing for the Globe, the releases I received largely went unread. The pitches I really payed attention to were very short interesting emails. But even then, if they didn't contain a link directly to more info, I just passed them by.

Social media releases have a headline, a short summary and then bulleted lists below that contain key facts, approved quotes, and links to media (blog, site, video, image, etc.).

Mark Glaser has a nice piece on the current state of the social media release.

Help to kill the press release!

Personal paparazzi

Source: Springwise

Call NY-based MethodIzaz and hire your own paparazzi:

The service "will send an anonymous photographer to surreptitiously capture select moments in a consumer's life and immortalize them with a portfolio of professionally produced photos. To arrange the service, the consumer provides a self photograph ahead of time along with details of their schedule and any specific emotion, mood or theme they hope to capture."

Makes a nice gift. Or ego trip.

"It's the people, not the technology"

Source: Fast Company via YPulse

Anastasia Goodstein says it right. I work with technology all day long. But all the technology in the world won't help you unless you have a flexible, smart and creative team that understand how to work and accomplish goals with other humans.

Fast Company uses IBM as an example of a company actively encouraging this behavior.

“IBM puts emphasis on employee contributions of ideas, collaboration, and motivating people to engage in…pro-social behavior.” The company seeks out instances where employees help others succeed. “Too often, we have measurement and reward systems that are focused on how many transactions did you process, how many orders did you ship, and how many deals did you close -- rather than who helped these other people succeed.” 

Povo Boston

Today there's a new local site on the block - Povo Boston. They're taking a Wikipedia approach to all things Boston, aiming to bottle the authentic, insider knowledge you know when you live here.

They need us to make it happen. So will we show up?

Given my love of maps, they pinged me about their cool heat map feature. So here you go, a heat map of all the pizza in Cambridge (so far) listed on Povo.

Head over to Povo and add your favorite pizza joint or bar or parking spot...what goes around comes around and some day you might benefit from the collective knowledge.

Free South Park

Source: NewTeeVee

Given that kids and many adults are trending more toward YouTube than TV, South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker and Comedy Central will split the ad revenue 50/50 on a new site - South Park Digital Studios – where you can watch every single South Park episode for FREE. While you can’t embed whole episodes on your blog you can embed clips like the one below and also make your South Park avatar. Heh. Cool.

Starbucks wants you

Source: The Viral Garden

…and not just because you're addicted to those grande half-caf soy lattes. Mack Collier points us to a new site, MyStarbucksIdea which is closely patterned after Dell's Ideastorm community. The big idea? Starbucks takes "suggestions from customers on what changes they would like to see Starbucks make. The community then votes on their favorites, and comments on them."

The Starbucks idea with the most votes? A Starbucks card system that offers customers a free drink, after purchasing a set number of drinks. Also, free drinks on your birthday. These are loyal customers looking for rewards.

Starbucks, like Dell, is looking to tap into the collectiv e intelligence of their customers. It can be scary and unpredictable to give your customers a public voice, but companies like Dell, Lego and others are discovering just how powerful it can be.

At WeeWorld we start every day reading and charting our user feedback and checking the conversation flow (while sipping our Starbucks coffee).

Your customers are out there having conversations. Make it easy for them to talk to you.

Mack – it was great to meet you in person at SXSW!

Henry had me at Hello

Henry Jenkins is my favorite academic working on the issues of media and online and how it intersects with our lives. OK, danah boyd too. (When I saw danah and Jenkins speak at YPulse, Anastasia Goodstein's fab Youth Culture conference last July, it was heaven.)

So no surprise that the high point of my trip to SXSW this month was the opening remarks by Henry Jenkins.

Here are some highlights:

• He discussed a book called Bowling Alone which made the argument that the 1950s and 60s damaged our society. Between corporate transfers, divorce, television, two-career families, suburban sprawl, generational changes in values created a breakdown in civil society as Americans became more disconnected from their families, neighbors, communities, and the republic itself. But the thing that's bringing it together again? The Internet. Regardless of all the naysayers who fear that it's isolating us.
• That most adults are in a moral panic and have started a trend he called “The Dumbest Generation.” That adults not clear on what’s happening online and in social networks, so they are in a “moral panic.” That’s when you stop asking questions and assume you already know the answers. Jenkins encourages us to have different starting point. Namely to start with the premise that people (and kids) aren’t idiots.
• That education and business do a miserable job of capturing the collective intelligence of individuals. That professionals go to school and learn huge amounts of information - consider doctors and nurses and teachers - but on the job they are only using miniscule amounts of information at a time. That we need to design systems that allow that info to be accessed by the collective organization.
• That the skills required to prepare you for life are not being taught in school where the teacher sits at the front of the class and downloads information in a one-way dialog and then rote information is memorized and regurgitated back. That now we are living in an era of collective intelligence. And for once, not everyone needs to know everything. So education needs to teach us how to pool and gather knowledge and work collectively to find solutions. And unfortunately we are still doing individual testing and knowledge acquisition.

There was so much more. And there always is with Jenkins. It's truly a gift to be able to sit and spew all of these incredible insights without any pause.

Here's a short clip:

SXSW

I'm heading off to South by Southwest (SXSW)this week. SXSW is a collection of Film, Music and Interactive Festivals and Conferences held in Austin, Texas every March. It's packed with more parties, conference sessions and meetups than it's possible to attend and the place wildly popular with the technorati, er...geeks.

Being a geek at heart and this being my first time - I can't wait.

Here are just a few of the sessions I'm looking forward to:

Managing Communities that Work
Henry Jenkins and Steven Johnson
Future of Corporate Blogs
Social Strategies for Revolutionaries

I'll be hosting a Core Conversation called Do Virtual Worlds need to be 3D?

And I'll be seen bopping around all over Austin with giant WeeMees in tow...which should be pretty entertaining.

If you're going to be at SXSW - send me a note and we can connect!

LinkedIn goes all Facebook

Source: TechCrunch and my LinkedIn page

OK I know neither site has been around that long. But, it used to be that LinkedIn was was your professional spot and Facebook was your personal spot. Now the lines are blurring.

Today LinkedIn launched Facebook-style Status Updates (ie: Maura is...) and the new design mimics Facebook’s (header, narrow left col and a wide right col).

I still think most professionals use LinkedIn for what it is - your resume live at all times, there whenever you need it. Also, LinkedIn sits out there like a bobber in the lake just in case an interesting fish swims by. The status messages are good if you're actively looking for a gig, I bet .

Obviously LinkedIn and Facebook compete, but they also share a common investor. One of LinkedIn's angel investors is Peter Thiel, Co-Founder of PayPal, who is now managing partner at the Founders Fund.

Makes me think that combined, Facebook and LinkedIn would be pretty potent indeed.

Pop vs. Soda

Speaking of maps, here's a favorite of mine.

I grew up in Rochester, NY, where we call it pop. Now I've been in Massachusetts so long I've crossed over and call it soda. Take a look at this fascinating map (click to see it up close).

Look at all the soda transplants in the Midwestern university towns. And what's with the south calling it Coke?

What do you call it? Take the poll on the side bar.

The site where I originally got this map is not active anymore, but here's a link to a blogger that wrote about some interesting soda/pop research.