It appears that there is exciting social media action happening out in Ohio.  Public broadcaster WOSU and COSI, an area science museum, in Columbus are now hosting the Columbus Social Media Cafe group in their WOSU@COSI center.

According to the Columbus Social Media Cafe blog, the mission of this group centers around the following question that WOSU and COSI asked themselves:

What if we — your local public broadcaster and science museum — and those of you who are the local blogging experts got together and learned how to use Social Media to bring back that great American tradition of the community taking charge of its own problems?

The group has already met a couple of times this month with great attendance and participation. 

What I find interesting about this group is how much they're using social media.  They have a blog, a mini social network (ning based), and use Twitter.  However, they rely use these tools to complement interaction in the real world.  We'll see if this collaboration between a traditional news organization, museum, and area residents will indeed usher in a better community through the help of social media.

With Thanksgiving tomorrow, tis the season for sweets and treats.  A newspaper article about cookies sounds like a great idea.

Stuart Elliott of the New York Times has just an article today, but not one about recipes.  It is about Pepperidge Farm, the cookie company, which is employing social networking in a new advertising campaign.  While other companies establish a presence on an existing social network site by setting up a group, profile, or buying ads, Pepperidge Farm has launched artofthecookie.com.

The Art of the Cookie site is aimed at woman and helping them make connections through cookies. Sally Horchow, co-author of The Art of Friendship: 70 Simple Rules for Making Meaningful Connections, is a key spokesperson for the campaign.  On the site she posted a diary of a cross country trip she made this summer during which she spoke with women about friendships.  The site offers other tips about friendships.

Companies have taken a more serious look at social networking as many are either creating niche social network sites or participate on existing networks.  Clearly the notion of connecting customers with each other is gaining traction with the common practice of a company speaking to its customers.  

Pepperidge Farm didn't haphazardly decide to pursue a social networking centric campaign.  After conducting research in the homes of its customers, vice president and general manager Michael Simon explained to the NYT that "this notion of connection came up again and again…hectic lifestyles, life in general, has gotten in the way" of fostering friendships.  He expects positive results from portraying the sharing of cookies with others as a great way to make and strengthen relationships. 

It'll be interesting to see how this new campaign works out.  I wonder if a poultry company will launch a campaign about forging business deals over steak… 

MySpace (do I really need to link there?) is going to be offering a pay-for-friend model to record distributors. The catch for the record distributor? Give them the user the music for free. We're talking about commercial music that is also distributed in record stores here, not music from some obscure band.

So how does this work exactly? A user "friends" a record label and in exchange they can download an album. The user has the music they want, the record label has an audience for their brands that they can capitalize on, and MySpace gets a little change in it's pocket. Win, win, win? Maybe. I have my doubts as to whether people are really going buy in to an unfamiliar brand because they were able to download some music for free. But it's an interesting idea and definitely worth a shot. Frankly anything that takes current music business models in a different direction is worth a shot. Hats off to MySpace for the imaginativeness.

Speaking of obscure bands, the first band to try this out on MySpace is a band called Pennywise, via their record label Textango's MySpace profile. This will happen sometime next March.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Via AdWeek.

Last week the New York Times Public Editor Clark Hoyt announced that the Times had begun allowing user comments on select editorials and news stories appearing on the website (via CyberJournalist). The Times has long allowed commenting on its blogs, but this marks the first time it will allow visitors to comment on stories that actually make it into the print version of the newspaper. All comments will be moderated by Times’ staffers. Hoyt writes about that decision: “The paper is creating a comment desk, starting with the hiring of four part-time staffers, to screen all reader submissions before posting them, an investment unheard of in today’s depressed newspaper business environment.” You can view an example of how comments on the Times site will work here.

In reading Hoyt, it is clear that this is a decision the Times came to very reluctantly. On the one hand, the Times acknowledges the contribution that commenters can make to a site:

“We have two great assets,” said Jonathan Landman, the deputy managing editor who is in charge of the newsroom’s online efforts. “One is the quality of the material we produce; the other is the quality of our readers, some of the most curious, intelligent and sophisticated people on earth.” Putting the knowledge of readers together with the journalism of The Times, he said, could result in “news and information of greater power, reach and quality than even a great newsroom can produce on its own.”

On the other hand, Hoyt provides multiple examples of commenters on the Times’ website run amok and closes with this:

Many major newspapers, like The Washington Post and USA Today, do not have an editor screen comments before posting them. Those two papers allow other readers to object to a comment as abusive, and then an editor will check it.

But Landman said The Times never considered unmoderated comments.

Martin Nisenholtz, senior vice president for digital operations of The New York Times Company, said: “A pure free-for-all doesn’t, in my opinion, equal good. It can equal bad.”

I believe that’s especially true if you’re The New York Times and you are trying to maintain a rare tradition of civility. A site with many Rays in Mexican Colony of LA might carry the name of The New York Times, but it would no longer be The New York Times.

I think the solution of allowing comments on select articles is a good one. I also think the decision to allow only pre-screened isn’t going to work for the 99% of newspapers that simply don’t have the resources to devote four full time people to screening comments, as the Times does. The solution simply isn’t scaleable.

If I were running a newspaper website, I would not pre-screen comments. But I would take the following steps to help ensure the conversation maintains a minimum level of quality:

1. Only allow users who have registered with a site to post comments.
2. Screen the first comment a user makes. If the first comment is acceptable then let the user post without screening. If it is objectionable or off topic, then don’t allow the user to comment. This will help prevent the trolls seeking to sidetrack conversations from getting through.
3. Automatically delete all comments that contain profanity.
4. Create a mechanism that allows users to report comments that are objectionable. If a comment is flagged by enough users, it would then be sent into a moderation queue for review by an editor.
5. Give users the ability to hide the comments of users they find objectionable.
6. Provide active oversight of the community. Have editors leave comments themselves. Ban users who are out of line. Delete objectionable comments. You’ll find communities tend to be more civil when administrators maintain an active presence on their site instead of being distant figures.

What do you think is the best way for high volume sites to handle comments?

Update: Thought of one more: (7) Close comments on articles after one week of discussion.  This will free you from having to manage comments on old stories and focus on the new stuff.

I went to the New New Internet conference in Reston, VA last week. It was an enjoyable conference that I feel like I got something out of.

But, having been to a couple of tech conferences this year, I think there are some topics and parlor tricks that simply need to be retired They have entered the realm of cliche. So here’s my list of things that made me groan a bit and that I think panelists should avoid doing in the future.

Unless you are Jeff Jarvis, don’t mention Dell Hell. This example was mentioned during three consecutive panels at the New New Internet. Shockingly, I’d heard about it a few times before. Can we please find a new example? Please? I’d also avoid using Robert Scoble as an example of exceptional corporate blogging. His Microsoft work was mentioned on two panels despite the fact that he left there over a year ago. Can’t we find some new stories to tell?

Personally, I think panelists are most interesting when they bring their own experiences to bear instead of retelling anecdotes they’ve accrued from reading lots of blogs. That is why the Wine Library TV guy was one of the more entertaining panelists at the conference - he told his own story.

Please don’t poll the audience about anything. In four of the panels I attended, someone asked the audience a question and asked for a show of hands. Raise your hand if you have a blog. Raise your hand if you have a Facebook account. Raise your hand if you’ve heard of Twitter. Maybe I’m alone here, but I really, really don’t want to raise my hand anymore. Generally, the response you get isn’t going to change what you have to say anyway so why bother? As Chuck told me after, why make your audience answer clearly rhetorical questions?

Please don’t Twitter from the stage (or at the very least don’t talk about it if you are). Look at me. I’m crazy. I’m using Twitter on my cell phone while sitting on a panel.  I saw this in two panels, plus in another someone did the trick where he had someone call him during the panel with “news.”  Twitter has been around for a while now. People at these conferences know what it is. Most of the audience would rather have you focus on what you are saying than pounding away on your cell phone.

Frankly, I think I sort of deserved to listen to some of this stuff as I spent the first part of the conference sitting in the main hall listening to panels on topics with which I am already pretty familiar. I had a much better experience later in the day when I sought out panelists and speakers I hadn’t heard before talking about topics that were new to me. Chalk it up to lessons learned.

Startup Weekend is a project founded by Andrew Hyde, who came up with the idea to connect a "highly motivated group of small business entrepreneurs to build a community and company in a weekend."  Basically, Startup Weekend groups together web developers, designers, marketers, and entrepreneurs for a weekend to see what kind of Internet company they can come up with.  Groups have a weekend to complete their project from start to finish, which includes deciding on a concept and launching the actual project. 

From the various Startup Weekends that have been held throughout the country recently, it seems that the answer to my initial question, "Can an Internet Company be Built in a Weekend?", the answer is yes.  Most Some of the Startup Weekends have resulted in the launching of a website.  The more important question might be, "Can a viable business be built in a weekend?", to which the answer, judging from the sites launched by Startup Weekend, is probably no.

Here's a list of some of Startup Weekend's results:

VoSnap -Boulder team
Favoreats -NYC team
TipDish -Houston team
ScrollTalk -West Lafayette team
DeskHappy -Boston Team
Hola Neighbor -DC team
WorkPerch -Chapel Hill team 

These websites range from confusing without a clear purpose (TipDish and ScrollTalk) to founded on good ideas, but lacking in capabilities (HolaNeighbor), to just plain bizarre (DeskHappy).   

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Mike Shields of MediaWeek reports that CondéNet, the Internet arm of magazine publisher CondéNast, has aggressively used Facebook applications.

The article mentions that in June the company acquired the "What Are You Wearing?" application, which CondéNet executives claim that about 1,000 users are joining each day the over 90,000 others who are revealing their wardrobe on Facebook. 

Further, a few weeks ago, the more festive "What Are You Wearing for Halloween?" application was also launched and currently has about 4,000 users.

While CondéNet hasn't branded either application, it started to display ads from Guess in its application.  That's the great thing about widgets and other applications, companies who develop them can also use them for ad space as well.

One of the most interesting tidbits from this article to me was when CondéNet president Sarah Chubb mentioned that the "What Are You Wearing?" application has been the most viral and fastest growing widget or application that the company has developed over the years. 

I guess deploying an application on a site where people already divulge information helps give these two applications gusto.

Back on Oct. 3rd through the 5th Alex and I attended the Institue for Public Relations’ 5th annual Summit on Measurement in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Overall the event was fantastic. I spend all day working on ImpactWatch, the media measurement platform created by The Bivings Group, so it was great to meet with a group of 100+ media measurement, media research, and social network gurus.

The session I was most interested in attending was “How to Measure the Impact of Blogs and Other Consumer-Generated Media.” This was a panel discussion including Shel Israel , Kami Huyse , Todd Parsons, Donald McLagan from Compete Inc, and moderated by KD Paine . Unfortunately I set my expectations too high. Not that the session was bad, it just wasn’t what I expected. I think Shel summed it up best when he said that we haven’t been doing this long enough to have best practices “We’re just at the ‘good ideas’ stage.” As such, it seemed like the discussion took a turn towards the merits of doing social media measurement at all. Todd and Donald (and I) think there is absolutely value in it, that’s why we provide products and services doing exactly that. Some thought that it was a waste of time. It was also suggested that the whole point of social media is the conversations it creates which are hard to measure at all. I agree that it’s ideal to have blogs and social networks facilitate conversations and generate engagement, and it is something that is hard to measure. I don’t think that’s what it’s all about. This was confirmed when the audience was asked to raise their hands if they had a personal or corporate blog. Almost everybody raised their hands. When asked if they comment on other blogs, the hands dropped to about a third of the audience.

Most readers are still going to blogs to learn more about subjects they are interested in. They aren’t necessarily interested in joining the conversation. Therefore, many traditional web metrics still apply.

In conclusion, it was certainly valuable to learn that blog measurement is something everybody is still trying to get a handle on right now. In fact, the direction we’re headed with ImpactWatch looks pretty advanced compared to what other folks are doing.

I got an interesting e-mail today from MediaPost's Just an Online Minute… blog.  Today, Wendy Davis reports that Facebook is working on setting up profile pages tailored to music groups, which is how MySpace gained traction, and allowing users to differentiate "friends" based upon professional and personal circumstances — a la LinkedIn — and granting different access levels to personal profiles.

Personally, I hope both of these developments are true since they'll improve Facebook.  However, why did it take so long?  Granted, opening up itself to external developers to produce a plethora of applications was unique, but it seems like Facebook is playing catch up when it comes to music and defining "friends" better.

Better late than never I guess.

I attended a blogger lunch at The Heritage Foundation this afternoon.  While the event was about a topic not relevant to The Bivings Report, I did get something out of it for the blog.  At the meeting I overheard two people who have known each other for years on the Internet but met today for the first time in person.

Certainly not everyone who forms relationships (friendships, professional associations, etc.) on the Internet has a chance to interact in the real world, but meeting and interacting off-line cements on-line relationships.  In fact, while I may communicate and track people I knew years ago on the Internet, the strength of the relationship is derived from our interpersonal interaction with each other.  Regardless if a relationship started on-line or off-line, both realms can help cement and strength the relationship.

Thus, while this is pretty obvious, I think it is important to remember every once in a while how helpful meeting on-line friends in the real world and vice versa is.   

This morning I attended a breakfast discussion (thanks, Kara Kelch for inviting me) put on by Potomac ExecutveBiz at the Tower Club in Vienna, VA.  About 20 persons from various organizations, consulting shops, technology firms and start-ups showed up to throw around ideas and experience regarding Web 2.0.

It was well worth the time spent (The food was way better than most places!) and great to hear from others in the field.  Jim Garrettson of ExecutiveBiz led the discussion.  Here are a few comments of my own – my idiosyncratic take-way.  Sorry if I missed any important points (I’m over 50); you can add them in the comments section.

As we all know, the consensus was that there is no firm definition of Web 2.0.  Blogs, wikis, RSS feeds, YouTube and Flickr all got their due.

In a general way, Web 2.0 is about giving more power to the individual to express, explore and collaborate with others on the web for personal, professional and organizational advantage.  Many more voices, connections to friends, associates and strangers, and fleeting, at times, or lasting relationships for many reasons, at others, on a local, regional and global scale. (For a contrarian view, see Mark Cuban’s posting on how boring the web has become.)

• Vishal Gupta talked about how Cisco is harnessing wikis (following the model set out by James Surowelski , to spur innovation through collaboration, and how Jeff Crites at Fellowforce.com has built a start-up around the notion.

• Thomas Wallace from Ecofusion and Chase Warmington from emPivot.com described their new start-up to leverage the power of user-generated video in the sustainable development space.
• David Gorodetski at Sage Communications raised the important distinction between the technology itself and the social aspects, and Brian Reed at Boxtone talked about the strategy of implementing 2.0 tactics.  (This to me is critical: the strategy must dictate the application of the technology.  It matters that we’re clear about what we want to achieve before we select the technologies.)
• Brands are evolving.  As Andrea Morris of Hinge, Inc.  (I think) paraphrased Jeff Bezos, “Brands are what people say when you are not in the room.”  How true.  And companies are finally coming to the realization that they can’t control the message, the word of mouth, or customer interactions.  Phil Zalewski at Pulse Media Group mentioned Nike’s efforts in this arena, and the example of Dell was brought up.
• As Arthur Clarke once said,” The future is here but it’s not evenly distributed.”  There was lots of talk about how everyone is an organization can and should (?) make use of the evolving web.  As Martin Ringlein of nclud noted, not everyone has the temperament, skills or inclination to participate.  Others disagreed, saying that there’s probably a place for everyone on the new web.  (I’m not convinced).  And the same goes for organizations.  Some still try to limit the use of the web, and others are very slow to adopt.  Carie Lewis was surprised to learn that Instant Messaging was not available in her new organization.
• The World Bank’s Irakli Nadareishvili brought up what I thought was an under-appreciated idea.  Making new applications (software, databases, widgets, etc.) available to others for their blog and websites will push the boundaries of Web 2.0.  Facebook is doing this, and so is The Washington Post, as is The World Bank with its blog tracker, very much like our own ImpactWatch (but which isn’t free).

These new things – mixtures of data, visuals, interfaces, etc. – much like Google maps and restaurants on your mobile phone – called "mash-ups" will truly push to the next level.  It’s one thing to have a platform to say something; it’s truly another to offer services that help find people (the current search for Steve Fossett), offer services to the aged, and transform our health care system, alleviate poverty and reduce violence (those elusive goals founders of the Internet keep aiming for.)

We were asked at the end to say who’s the winner of Web 2.0.  The consensus favorite was the individual.  I don’t know about you, but I’m not sure we're all equal winners.  I'd feel differently if I had been a founder of Youtube or MySpace.  

Marketing and grassroots activity on social media sites like Facebook is a burgeoning field.  More and more people are recognizing the power and the variety of ways an organization can harness or benefit (or suffer, for that matter) from social media action.

The news today provides an example about why this trend is important.  According to The New York Times, Time Warner is closing its new economy magazine Business 2.0. 

What I find most interesting in the article is that it states: "A report in The New York Times in July that Time Inc. executives were considering closing the magazine mobilized some support among readers, who started a group on the social networking Web site Facebook."

The Huffington Post's media page linked to an Adage article with the headline: "Facebook Group Not Enough To Save 'Business 2.0'."  While this headline is true, it is very imprtant to note that one of the most read newspapers in the country, the Times, mentioned the Facebook group supporting the magazine.

The moral of the story is that the mainstream media organizations pay attention to social media — particularly the larger and better known sites.  Creative efforts, embarked by organizations or their supporters and detractors, may get significant media attention.  Therefore, it is important for organizations to pay attention to this part of the web as well. 

When the CIA began advertising and recruiting via the social network facebook, I kind of laughed since someone working in the clandestine services should keep information safe and not freely divulge it.  However, the whole point of social networking sites is to share information with your "closest friends."

Interesting, the Financial Times reports today that the intelligence community within the United States government sees more use to social networking sites than just recruitment.  As the government is trying to improve inter-agency communication that plagued it before the 9/11 attacks, the paper reports that, "Thomas Fingar, the deputy director of national intelligence for analysis, believes the common workspace – a kind of 'MySpace for analysts' – will generate better analysis by breaking down firewalls across the traditionally stove-piped intelligence community." 

According to this article, the government expects to deploy the social network – named "A-Space" – to all of its intelligence agencies by December.  This is a rather interesting development in the world of social networking sites; it's a bummer that most of us can't observe how it functions. 

At first it was the Red Coats, then The Beatles, and now BBC employees are the British Invasion.  This time they're invading one of America's most popular web sites.

As of this posting, the British Broadcasting Corporation facebook network has 14,726 members.  For an imperfect comparison's sake, I've checked the CNN network, and it only has a 311 members while the Turner Broadcasting (CNN's group in the AOL TimeWarner empire) network has 1,843 members.

Back on June 6th, Richard Sambrook, the social media savvy and friendly Director of BBC Global News, wrote on his personal blog SacredFacts that "[t]here are over 10,000 members of the BBC group (for which you have to have a bbc email) alone. That's about half the entire organsiation."  The BBC has invaded facebook!

Today I had lunch with a friend who works for the organization and asked him if there is some directive from management to join.  He said that there wasn't and reckons membership went viral as people kept inviting their colleagues to join.  However, people have joined; how many actively use it is another question.

For awhile some regular facebook denizens created groups for specific programs, but now a few BBC employees are creating groups around programs and other features so that they can use the site for more than personal reasons.  For instance, the domestic BBC Two news magazine show Newsnight and the BBC Mundo ¿Hablas español? blog created official groups to connect with their audiences; the prior has asked its group members for story ideas with an invitation in the title, "Get Yourself on Newsnight!"  Further, the new iPlayer — which is in beta — now has an application on the social networking site that allows users to rate and share their favorite BBC programs.

While there is no directive to join or use the site, my friend also told me that he plans to use it to promote his program soon.  Hopefully, the site will help the show connect with its audience better and perhaps use its audience to promote it to their friends.

Of course, only programs and BBC features that lend themselves well to social media — based upon format and audience demographics – will benefit from facebook, but it seems that many Beeb employees are keen to try.

At the very least, as Sambrook wrote in his facebook post, "it's fun. If you havn't [sic] jumped yet with facebook, twitter or any of the others, come on in, the water's fine."

Let's stop and think for a moment.  When was the last time you heard a song on the radio and thought to yourself, "I have just got to get to the store and buy this CD!"?  I honestly cannot remember the last time this happened to me.  Now, it's much more likely for me to browse the net, see a song on a friend's Facebook or MySpace profile, and head over to iTunes to download a digital copy of that song.  Times have changed, haven't they?

According to a recent study by Entertainment Media Research, this pattern of browsing and buying digital music is becoming more and more commonplace.  This company argues that social networks are in essence changing the way people browse and purchase music.

In June, Entertainment Media Research (from now on, EMR), conducted an online survey of 1,700 people in the UK to judge how music consumers use social networks to obtain music.  Here are some important points from the research:

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