February 11, 2009

Keywords and data mining

There's a different feel in the air at SMX West, the Search Marketing Expo, taking place at the Santa Clara Convention Center this week, than at most of the other tech conferences I attend like Web 2.0, TechCrunch 50, Supernova or Pop!Tech. Namely this: People aren't sharing. I've been enjoying the sessions as a member of the press. But it's as if these hundreds of marketing professionals, SEO gurus and webmeisters have individually decided not to blog about the sessions they're attending, instead choosing to scrupulously record notes and disseminate their findings only to the inner sanctum back at corporate HQ.

That, at any rate, is how I interpret the fact that 200 to 300 people attended Tuesday's session on SMX Boot Camp: Keyword Research Tools & Techniques -- yet no one wrote about it on their blogs. Or maybe Twitter has made everyone lazy.

With that in mind, I'll provide a detailed synopsis of the excellent presentation given by Christine Churchill, founder and CEO of KeyRelevance. Because I believe that the community becomes richer as we become better informed about the tools at our disposal.

Keyword marketing

"Keywords are the bedrock of search marketing," Churchill told the audience. After all, she pointed out, we still live in a text-based world. How often do you type terms into a Google search box? Yes, exactly.

Why do keyword research? She listed several reasons:

It's a fundamental step in search marketing.
It's a way to correct bad keyword choices.
You increase conversion by speaking the customer's language.
You develop a list of relevant terms to target in SEO (search engine optimization), pay-per-click, blogs, images, videos, press releases and social media marketing. (Yes, you should add a descriptor to your images and videos and include a keyword in the headline of your press release.)
You can glean competitive intelligence: see what the competition is doing.
Keywords can provide insights for your site design and navigation.
Knowing traffic potential helps plan budgeting (mostly for pay per click).
You can discover new keyword opportunities.
Consider going beyond well-known keywords. "There's a long tail for popular keyword searches, too."

Keyword sources

Churchill recommended creating a keyword list using diverse sources:

online and traditional print magazines
company and product reviews
online thesauruses like thesaurus.reference.com
talk to focus groups, customer interviews, support or sales personnel
discussion forums, user-generated content and blogs
analytics
and this: look at keywords your competitors are buying in pay per click and in SEO.

Keyword research tools

Here are some of the leading research tools that social media marketers should keep top of mind:

Google keyword tool
Wordtracker (paid service)
Trellian keyword discovery (paid service)
Google Webmaster tools (it's a good way to find out how Google perceives your site
Google Insights
Google Trends (allows you to compare popular phrases — you can see which terms are popular by state or region, and you can even look back at specific date and see what was popular a year ago)
Google's Search based keyword tool (free)
Hitwise (a high-end competitive information tool)
Keyword Discovery (searches multiple databases: global premium, historical global, international, news, shopping, eBay. By entering a key phrase, you can see questions related to the search term, which helps you come up with new content ideas.)

I'll work with my colleague Joanna Lord to provide a deeper look at these at a later date.

More search and data mining tools

adCenter Labs (an advertising and data mining toolet from Microsoft)
Clusty (a search engine that offers clustered search allowing users can see related terms)
Quintura (it works by navigating by "clouds"; bold words are most related, good for brainstorming and broadening keyword buckets)
Ask.com (provides keyword suggestions and shows related searches)
Google Suggest (as you type in a phrase, Google offers keyword suggestions in real time)
Yahoo! (Churchill says she likes Yahoo's keyword selection tool the best but didn't explain why)
SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tool (learn which keywords you should be targeting to increase your website rankings and traffic)
SEOBook's Permutation Tool (free)
Mirosoft's Ad Intelligence (a new plug-in for Excel 2007)
Technorati (the blog search engine -- type in a phrase and below posts it will show related tags)
Flickr (explore popular tags on Flickr)
Amazon's most popular tags

Best line of the morning, from Churchill: "Traffic alone isn't the goal. You want targeted traffic that resonates with your audience and will lead to greater sales of your products."

Interesting factoid: 80% of searches on the web are noncommercial, says Churchill. People conduct three kinds of searches: navigational (I want to find your site), informational (what's in a Mai Tai?) and transactional (buying a product, subscribing to a service).

Postscript: I'm relaunching Socialmedia.biz in a few days so blogging will be light until then. TypePad has become largely broken -- it wiped out this post twice tonight -- so I'll be posting at my beta site until this domain is forwarded to the new site. Here's the post at my upcoming site.

February 11 at 10:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (8) | |

February 07, 2009

Social media and health

I asked my Twitter friends about upcoming social media conferences that focus on health issues. It's more likely that health conferences have a social media track than the reverse.

Here are some upcoming events:

First Virtual World Otology Conference
March 25-27, 2009, online

Health Camp Philadelphia
March 28, Philadelphia

Health 2.0 conference
April 22-23, 2009, Boston Park Plaza Hotel

Society for Healthcare Strategy & Market Development | American Hospital Association
Sept. 17-20, San Francisco
(alas, another appearance by Andrew Keen, who has nothing of great value to offer the healthcare industry that I can see)

Here's my comprehensive list of 2009 social media and technology conferences.

February 7 at 01:59 PM in Social-media | Permalink | Comments (0)

February 05, 2009

Roundup: Journalists atwitter about social media

Roundup:

• Alana Taylor at PBS's MediaShift blog: Journalists Still a-Twitter About Social Media. Excerpt:

Twitter is popular not just because it allows journalists to crowdsource with thousands of people or because it's a fun way of amassing followers and inflating egos. It also gives reporters a chance to create a new system of reporting. In the past, journalists were confined to their words and research methods, all dictated by traditional routines. Now they can create new strategies, use different tools, brand themselves differently, and propose new ideas. Twitter has given them hope and direction to do this because it has given them a public forum in which to loudly speak their ideas. Twitter is hope for the future. It is promise of change. Twitter is journalism's Obama.

Alana's done some great reporting over there.

• Mark Glaser at the MediaShift blog talks with Rufus Griscom, founder of literate smut site Nerve.com and hipster parenting site Babble.com. In a down economy, Griscom managed to snag $2 million in venture funding for Babble and hopes to create SEO-friendly resource pages for parents to help it become the leading parenting site online.

• Julie Posetti at MediaShift: How Journalism Students Used Twitter to Report on Australian Elections.

• David Coursey at PC World: Five years of Facebook: A retrospective.

• David Sasaki at the IdeaLab blog: Protests in Madagascar and the Importance of Citizen Journalism Training.

• Dan Gillmor at the IdeaLab blog: Endow Newspapers? Wrong Question.

• I'm just getting grounded again after a quick trip to New York, so if you've tried to contact me in the past week without success, try again. You may have noticed I haven't been posting daily here lately. That's because I'm working on a relaunch of Socialmedia.biz — and it's a lot of work.

February 5 at 01:22 PM in Citizen media, New media, Social networks, Social-media | Permalink | Comments (1) | |

January 29, 2009

Overrelying on Facebook or Twitter could jeopardize your business

Mark Glaser at PBS's MediaShift blog: Warning: Dependence on Facebook, Twitter Could Be Hazardous to Your Business. Excerpt:

"Depending on a third-party service for your livelihood is folly. If they change one component or policy, you could be out of business (or forced to change your business model, which may prove expensive). You can and should use the services for what they provide, but never invest too much time and attention into one platform or another. You never know what's going to happen tomorrow." -- tech blogger Chris Pirillo

January 29 at 09:43 PM in Social networks | Permalink | Comments (1) | |

January 28, 2009

B-to-B social media

Paul Gillin on business-to-business social media. Excerpt:

Some of the most ambitious corporate blogging campaigns have been primarily aimed at B2B uses. Microsoft and Sun, which between them have about 10,000 corporate bloggers, use this tool to reach developers, business customers and prospective employees. The blogs are easily searchable and they allow readers to pose questions to the best sources of information.
Among other b-to-b companies that are using blogs effectively are Emerson Process Management, the New York Stock Exchange, Marriott, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Boeing and Accenture, to name just a few. You won’t find a lot of playful repartee and trivia contests here. These blogs are intended to communicate useful information and reinforce their authors and their companies as authorities in their fields. ...

January 28 at 02:40 AM in Business use | Permalink | Comments (1) | |

January 27, 2009

KQED offers free storytelling workshops

Longtime readers know I'm a huge fan of digital storytelling. We all have stories to tell, about our lives, our friends, our communities.

The KQED Digital Media Center is putting on a series of free digital storytelling workshops over the next few weeks. Says KQED's Leslie Rule:

We've revised our workshop schedule, streamlining our traditional digital storytelling workshop and expanding our offerings by developing a place-based digital storytelling workshop using geo-apps like Google Earth and Google Maps. We also offer a train-the-trainers workshop.

Sessions will be held Feb. 5, 7, 26, 28, March 5, 7, 12, 14 and 21 at KQED in San Francisco, sponsored by Youth Voices. Download the application here.

January 27 at 01:20 AM in Digital storytelling | Permalink | Comments (0) | |

January 24, 2009

How YouTube helps video journalists get a start

Simon Owens at the MediaShift blog looks at how YouTube helps video journalists get a start. The piece quotes Olivia Ma, news manager for YouTube, and looks at the recent DC screening for Project Report, a journalism competition sponsored by both YouTube and the Pulitzer Center.

January 24 at 01:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | |

Video debate: Rough or slick?

Roland Legrand at PBS's MediaShift blog: The Big Video Debate: Rough or Slick?

Video is one of those new practices we have to get used to as newspaper journalists now working in a Web 2.0 world. One of the key issues is the quality of the video. Do we always need slick, television-style video, which require more specialized skills, or will our community accept "rougher" video, made by amateurs using less sophisticated cameras?

January 24 at 01:28 AM in Video | Permalink | Comments (1) | |

January 23, 2009

Worldwide Inauguration via Twitter

At noon EST, Barack H. Obama became the 44th president of the United States. In this short video, watch as the (Twitter) world watched.

January 23 at 12:50 AM in Social networks | Permalink | Comments (1) | |

January 22, 2009

The four personas when shooting a portrait

I loved this wise passage — from the Sunday New York Times Magazine in Behind 'Obama's People' — about the nature of portrait photography, which I've been slowly getting into:

In "Camera Lucida: [Reflections on Photography]," his searching reflection on how photographs convey their meaning and emotional power, Roland Barthes suggests that any time a subject steps in front of a camera to have his portrait taken, four people show up: who that individual thinks he is, who he wants others to think he is, who the photographer thinks the subject is and whom the photographer will try to make use of to bring about his art.

January 22 at 12:02 AM in Photography | Permalink | Comments (0) | |

January 21, 2009

Obama: transparency in government for you and me, too

I was thrilled today to see that, as one of his first official acts of business, President Obama signed an executive order that effectively reversed eight years of government secrecy by interpreting the Freedom of Information Act as favoring disclosure and transparency by default.

Remember, we should all cheer this, because citizens are the media, too -- you don't have to be a newspaper journalist to use FOIA. Here's a reminder from Dan Gillmor in the package I edited on citizen journalism: Freedom of information: It's for everyone.

Washington Post: New Obama Orders on Transparency, FOIA Requests.

CNET News.com: Obama to .gov agencies: More Internet openness

Broadcasting & Cable: Media Praise Obama FOIA Fixes.

Business & Media Institute: Obama 'Openness' Announcement Greeted with Cheers in CNBC Studio Says Anchor.

Here's an excerpt from the FOIA memo (and scroll down for the full memo):

The Freedom of Information Act should be administered with a clear presumption: In the face of doubt, openness prevails. The Government should not keep information confidential merely because public officials might be embarrassed by disclosure, because errors and failures might be revealed, or because of speculative or abstract fears... All agencies should adopt a presumption in favor of disclosure, in order to renew their commitment to the principles embodied in FOIA, and to usher in a new era of open government. The presumption of disclosure should be applied to all decisions involving FOIA.

January 21 at 05:46 PM in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (0) | |

January 20, 2009

A snapshot of history

Lincoln

The brilliant Mike Luckovich of the Atlanta Journal Constitution says it all.

January 20 at 08:21 PM in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (0) | |

Middle schoolers as citizen reporters

Just watched the Inauguration and inaugural address. I'll let the blogosphere's version of the punditocracy dissect it (I've confined my remarks to Twitter.) Meantime, back in the social media/citizen media space:

Taking the media into your own hands has filtered down to the middle school level. I bumped into the reporting team from the Santa Barbara Middle School Teen Press a couple of times at Macworld Expo but others where interviewing them so I decided not to distract them with another interview request.

Michael Aivaliotis at VI Shots has the lowdown on these young media makers.

January 20 at 10:28 AM in Citizen media, Youth culture | Permalink | Comments (0) | |

January 18, 2009

Dell features Socialmedia.biz

I've been following the social media work of Bob Pearson, VP of communities and conversations for Dell, for some time (he's @bobpdell on Twitter).

So it came as a surprise when a friend IM'd to say, Hey, did you know Dell is promoting your blog? Well, no. But a look at their lead 58-second introductory video on Facebook about Dell's efforts with social media has Pearson showing off a blog about social media — this one.

Thanks, Bob! I've been aware of Dell's efforts to make social media more accessible to regular folks through its written guides and video screencasts, and I hope to highlight those in a new social media learning center I'm starting to put together.

You can join the Facebook group Social Media for Small Business, powered by Dell, here.

January 18 at 06:45 PM in Social-media | Permalink | Comments (2) | |

January 17, 2009

Occupation 101: Hebron (an exclusive report)

Occupation 101: Hebron from JD Lasica on Vimeo.

Here's a 22-minute video of life in Hebron, the history-rich ancient city in the West Bank that is now a source of conflict between Palestinians and Israeli settlers, with Israeli security forces placed squarely in the middle.

I took out an afternoon during the weeklong Traveling Geeks trip in April 2008 to visit the West Bank. I was not able to produce it earlier for various reasons, but it's particularly timely now with the conflict in Gaza bringing to public attention once again the treatment of Palestinians in the occupied territories.

Serving as tour guide was Mikhael Manekin, co-founder of Breaking the Silence, a human rights group made up of former Israeli soldiers who participated in the occupation. Accompanying Mikhael and me was Naomi Schacter, director of development of Shatil.

The documentary short offers a fascinating behind-the-scenes glimpse into the obstacles that many Palestinians face in their day-to-day lives under Israeli occupation.

Highlights

Some highlights from the piece:

• The video shows Palestinian houses where the residents have not been allowed to leave through the front doors of their own houses for the past seven years. They've had to crawl through the roof or a hole in the back walls.

• During the military curfew imposed during the second intifada, soliders in Manekin's Golani unit were ordered to kill any Palestinians who were out in the street between 8 at night and 6 in the morning. A few soldiers have come forward to discuss the murder, torture and harassment of Palestinian civilians.

• At all times during our visit, the Israeli soldiers were friendly and convivial. I was fascinated to learn that the unit that patrols Hebron — the 50th Batallion of the Nahal Brigade — are made up of soldiers with the greatest sympathy to Palestinians and who come from socialist or semi-socialist youth movements that generally oppose the occupation.

• Manekin and his colleague, Breaking the Silence executive director Yehuda Shaeul, are routinely subjected to harassment by by the activist settlers of Hebron. Manekin says in the piece: "I've actually been attacked as a soldier and as an activist, by settlers when the father actually yells, 'Only kids under 14 can attack.' Under Israeli law, youths under 14 cannot be held accountable for their actions in a court of law. On this afternoon, Shaeul and his group of German members of Parliament were attacked by rock-throwing settlers. (At night, Manekin added, the settlers come with sledgehammers to ruin Palestinian buildings.)

• The Breaking the Silence organization took off after a public exhibition of photos that soldiers took during their occupation of Hebron and the occupied territories, leading the veterans to begin collecting testimonials from other soldiers. "We wanted our parents to know about" what the soldiers had been subjected to, Manekin says.

This work of citizen journalism serves to throw a spotlight on what's happening; fashioning a solution is much more complicated. I set off for this highly unusual personal tour (Manekin usually takes busloads of 30 Israelis, not a lone independent U.S. journalist) with just a Samsung palmcorder, with no lights, no wind guard and no spare battery pack, so I captured as much as I could in 90 minutes of footage, edited down to:

Part 1: A drive through the occupied territories (19 minutes)
On Vimeo (Flash)
On Ourmedia (H. 264 QuickTime)

Part 2: Occupation 101: Hebron (22 minutes)
On Vimeo (embedded above)
On Ourmedia (H.264 QuickTime)

Additional background

Breaking the Silence has collected thousands of testimonies from soldiers who serve and have served in the occupied territories from the second intifada through today. Through these testimonies, the organization seeks to add a much needed perspective on the moral repercussions of serving in the territories. As part of the process of raising awareness, Breaking the Silence conducts regular guided tours to the city of Hebron, which gives a combination of historical, legal and political information regarding the reality in Hebron and most importantly, a true glimpse into the implications of the occupation on people’s lives.

Mikhael Manekin of Breaking the Silence was born in New York and immigrated to Israel at the age of 12 with his family. He was recruited in November 1998 to the Israel Defense Forces and served in the infantry (Golani Brigade) as a platoon commander in the West Bank. He spent a year and a half securing check-points all over the West Bank as lieutenant. In 2002, Manekin was discharged from the army and left Israel briefly to work with HIV/AIDS patients in South Africa. Manekin received his bachelor’s degree in Middle Eastern Studies and History from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Related:

• Flickr photo set of our afternoon in Hebron.
• Part 1 of this series, providing context on the trip to the West Bank
• TPMCafe: Hamas is growing in power--in the West Bank, too--directly as a result of this grotesquerie [in Hebron]. It is absurd to think of Gaza as a separate matter.

Note: This will be my last citizen journalism post on this blog, as I'm splitting it off into three parts in the next two weeks: Socialmedia.biz to cover social media, Socialbrite.org to cover causes, and jdlasica.com to cover citizen journalism and everything else that falls outside the scope of the other two blogs.

January 17 at 06:15 PM in Citizen media, Current Affairs, International, Podcasts & interviews | Permalink | Comments (0) | |

Real-time photo gallery of Inauguration events

At Magnify.net, founder Steve Rosenbaum has created a live Flickr stream of Inauguration events & photos. The photo gallery will constantly change over the coming days as Flickr users upload images tagged with the word "inauguration." You can grab the embed code and place the Flash player on your own blog and resize it; I kicked it up to 600 pixels wide. Interesting that short video clips also play.

It's easy to do. At the top of a set or tags page in Flickr, click "Create Slideshow," then "Share," grab the embed code, and change the width and height (you may need to do a litle high school math) to the dimensions you prefer. Paste the code into your blog and, voila! Steve adds: "The code can be modified to search either your stream or search for public tags."

January 17 at 04:04 PM in Current Affairs, Photography | Permalink | Comments (0) | |

Slash the cost of international calls

At Macworld Expo's Showstoppers press gathering last week I got an advance peek at a new feature that was rolled out this week. Truphone has just introduced a new Skype feature that allows iPhone and iPod Touch users to make calls and instant message other Skype users. You just need is a free Truphone account (because you already have a Skype account, right?).

Truphone-to-Skype communications are free over the Internet, and iPhone users can also place and receive Skype calls and messages when not in a Wi-Fi-accessible location for the cost of a local call, using the Truphone Anywhere feature. With Truophone, you can call other Truphone users for free.

Americans still haven't gotten into the habit of "topping off" their mobile handsets, but a $15 advance payment will get you a long way. (See call rates here.) I suspect I'll be using the Truphone applications regularly when I'm in London this summer.

January 17 at 12:42 AM in Mobile | Permalink | Comments (0) | |

January 16, 2009

Legal guide for citizen media covering the Presidential Inauguration

David Ardia at PBS's IdeaLab blog:

The Citizen Media Law Project has just published a legal primer to assist those interested in documenting the Inauguration events next week. During the Inauguration, strict security measures will be in place across the Washington area, particularly where official events are taking place. These security measures, as well as tickets, permits, and credentialing requirements, will impact what non-traditional journalists and other attendees can do to document the events.

The complete guide is available at the Citizen Media Law Project.

January 16 at 10:54 PM in Citizen media | Permalink | Comments (0) | |

A 20something on social media and today's news

Lauren on social media & modern news from JD Lasica on Vimeo.

Here's one of a series of interviews I'm doing on social media and the future of news and journalism. Those in the news business and journalism educators can learn a lot from Lauren of San Francisco, who sat down with me last month to discuss how she uses social networks and how she and her 20something friends are getting their news today. Young people's media habits are rapidly changing and traditional media organizations haven't kept pace. The video is 7 minutes long and was shot on a noisy street in San Francisco.

Watch video in H.264 QuickTime on Ourmedia
Watch video in Flash on Vimeo (embedded above)

January 16 at 05:24 PM in Media, New media, Social networks, Social-media, Youth culture | Permalink | Comments (1) | |

January 15, 2009

At the first Public Media Collaborative

Earlier this evening we wrapped up the kickoff meeting of the Public Media Collaborative (no website yet, private wiki coming, Facebook group here) at TechSoup in San Francisco. The idea, spawned by Susan Mernit, initially drew eight of us (folks like David Cohn, Margaret Rosas, Joyce Kim) to a restaurant last month to plan a gathering around collaboration to promote community building at the local level with social media and technology.

It reminded me in some ways of the citizens media summit I organized in 2005 that drew 40 people to the offices of the Internet Archive a couple of miles from here -- with some important differences: Where the summit drew public-spirited citizen publishers from around the country who were running Web publications, this gathering represented a much broader slice of local participants: social media entrepreneurs, nonprofit employees, political activists, journalists, video producers, philanthropists and others.

Some 40 people turned out for this inaugural meeting. Amy Gahran live-tweeted the event on Twitter (hash tag: #PMC). Among those who turned out: David Siskin, Dave Toole, Chris Heuer, Julian Darley, Brian Shields, Austin Heap, Jen Myronuk, Marnie Webb, Amy Gahran, Joyce Kim, Kristy Graves, George Kelly, Raines Cohen, Heather Gold, Richard Landry, David Cohn, Adina Levin, Michael Stoll, Margaret Rosas and many others.

In short, we're a monthly meet-up and working group whose mission is to use media & technology to build democracy and educate and empower local and virtual communities. A few highlights:

Susan Mernit told the gathering she was "struck by how content and video have become more accessible" to users, and that the impetus to engage with media cuts across different communities, like journalists and advocates of public housing. Public Media Collaborative's goal is not to do one big thing but rather to support more "episodic and bursty" efforts based on efforts and interests that overlap.

Someone suggested that the group's purpose was to "create a solutions ecology," a shorthand description that I like a lot. I mentioned that it seemed that the group's purpose, in essence, was to connect the connectors, though Richard Landry pointed out that we can also serve a bridging function in reaching out to organizations that need guidance in the social media sphere.

After a lot of folks' input, I suggested that the organization seemed to be circling in on three main components:

• As a digital salon, with monthly meetings that center on a particular topic or cause, with smaller breakout groups to support each other's efforts.

• As a cross-disciplinary support group with a communication channel to clue in each other about timely efforts.

• As a resource center with a pooled knowledge base and ongoing workshops/bootcamps around social and public media. (More on this soon, as the launch of Socialbrite approaches.) Or, as Joyce Kim says, the Collaborative can serve "as a resource bank where we can build upon each other's expertise to help on our own community projects."

If you live in the Bay Area and are interested in joining up, drop me a line or just pop into our next gathering.

January 15 at 03:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | |

January 14, 2009

If newspapers disappear, will it matter?

Author and marketer extraordinaire Seth Godin has a provocative new post: When newspapers are gone, what will you miss?

As regular readers know, I worked in print newsrooms for the better part of 20 years before transitioning to the online medium, and I've been harsh in my criticism of news organizations for not embracing the digital medium faster and smarter. But I can't agree with Seth's bottom line, and here's why:

Comics are even better online, and I don't think we'll run out of those.

We won't run out of comics, but we will run out of the most talented comics, who will choose to do something else rather than draw for an audience of thousands rather than millions, especially when they'll have to do it for free rather than as a career.

After several other items where the online medium is better suited than print -- I agree with Seth there -- he gets to the heart of things:

What's left is local news, investigative journalism and intelligent coverage of national news. Perhaps 2% of the cost of a typical paper. I worry about the quality of a democracy when the the state government or the local government can do what it wants without intelligent coverage. I worry about the abuse of power when the only thing a corrupt official needs to worry about is the TV news. I worry about the quality of legislation when there isn't a passionate, unbiased reporter there to explain it to us.

But then I see the in depth stories about the gowns to be worn to the inauguration or the selection of the White House dog and I wonder if newspapers are the most efficient way to do this anyway.

This is a familiar lament. But the truth is that the flash and trash of dumbed-down coverage is what we're already getting in spades on the Web, and it's not fair to lump the hundreds and thousands of quality, solidly reported local stories and dozens of in-depth pieces, national stories and investigative reports with the fluffy stories that make all of this go down easier.

Punchline: if we really care about the investigation and the analysis, we'll pay for it one way or another. Maybe it's a public good, a non profit function. Maybe a philanthropist puts up money for prizes. Maybe the Woodward and Bernstein of 2017 make so much money from breaking a story that it leads to a whole new generation of journalists.

The reality is that this sort of journalism is relatively cheap (compared to everything else the newspaper had to do in order to bring it to us.)

Here's where I think Seth's argument is seriously off-base. The reality is that this kind of public-interest journalism has never been supported by the public. The investigative reporting and in-depth reports produced in the modern era (from Edward R. Murrow's Harvest of Shame reports right up to modern coverage) have been loss leaders for news networks and newspapers, which is why they have been the first thing cut in recent years as media consolidation works in favor of shareholders' returns rather than the public interest.

We won't pay for it, because we never have.

Nor is it cheap. Investigative and enterprise reporting are the most expensive forms of journalism in almost any newsroom, column inch for column inch, because the projects require weeks or months of sustained reporting and result in a single splash or a short-lived series.

Ask any journalist who's done in-depth or investigative reporting about budget cuts, and the kinds of stories that are going uncovered, and you'll get an earful, I promise you. And this doesn't even take into account the closing of foreign news bureaus.

Yes, there will continue to be coverage of the billions of dollars in fraud and waste in reconstruction boondoggles in Iraq by AlterNet and similar publications, but their readership will be in the tens or hundreds of thousands rather than the hundreds of millions that a big story would command in the mainstream press. When newspapers are gone, accountability will suffer, abuses will grow, and our democracy will be the poorer.

Is there an answer? No one has found one yet. My experience with foundations is that they are even more ultra-conservative than news institutions and can hardly afford to rock the boat of corporate America or state or federal governments. I'm about to meet up with David Cohn, the founder of Spot.us, which is crowd-sourcing investigative and local journalism, but even if such a praiseworthy effort grows and expands, there is not a chance that it can replace the kind of in-depth and investigative journalism found in the best American newspapers on a daily basis. (I know David agrees on that score.) A few online publications will flourish (the Huffington Post, but only because it adds celebrity trash to its bread and butter of politics and public policy), and individual bloggers will commit terrific random acts of journalism that command widespread attention, but these will prove to be sporadic rather than sustained.

I believe that more than half of the 1,440 or so daily U.S. newspapers will disappear in the next seven to 10 years -- on my more pessimistic days, I put the death rate in the three- to five-year range. And despite the myopia of a generation of print editors and the unalloyed greed of many publishers and corporate chains, we'll be less informed about issues in our local communities and on the national stage than we are today. Newspapers don't matter, but journalism does, and we haven't come up with a sustainable business model to report journalism that matters.

January 14 at 05:37 PM in Media | Permalink | Comments (8) | |

January 13, 2009

Legendary magazine publisher Ziff Davis abandons print

Popular Aviation

It's worth noting this passing of an era, given that we'll see many more headlines like this in the years ahead. From Harry McCracken at Technologizer last week: Ziff-Davis: The Legendary Magazine Publisher Publishes Magazines No More. Excerpt:

This news has more to do with dead trees than electrons, but I can’t resist: Ziff Davis has announced that it’s selling its 1Up network of gaming sites to Hearst and shutting down Electronic Gaming Monthly magazine. Coming around six weeks after the company discontinued the print version of PC Magazine, the news leaves ZD with no paper-based publications at all.

Which is a big deal, since the 82-year-old publisher had as long, influential, and impressive a history of consumer publishing as any company on the planet. Among its titles over the years, other than EGM and PC Mag: Amazing Stories, Car and Driver, Computer Shopper, Creative Computing, MacUser, MacWeek, PC/Computing, PC Week, Popular Electronics, Popular Photography, Stereo Review, Yahoo Internet Life., and many others I’m not thinking of right now. Nobody published more successful mags read by more enthusiasts with a wider range of passions, or made more money doing so.

January 13 at 06:31 PM in Media | Permalink | Comments (0) | |

Ford's CEO on social media and innovation

From JD Lasica on Vimeo.

At the Ultimate Bloggers Dinner on the opening night of the 2009 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last Wednesday, Alan Mulally, CEO of Ford Motor Company, took out time to sit down with a few bloggers for a live Webcast, a couple of cell phone interviews, and the interview above, which I captured with a Canon HV20 hi-def camcorder.

Chris Heuer of AdHocnium (and the Social Media Club) and I interviewed Mulally about how Ford is using social media to drive innovation and transformation inside the company. Chris and I both found Mulally to be incredibly personable and knowledgeable about the social forces swirling through the economy.

The video is 10 minutes long and a bit noisy because we didn't have a lavalier mic, but you can hear Mulally throughout.

Watch in H.264 QuickTime on Ourmedia (or download it)
Watch in Flash on Vimeo (embedded above)

Bonus: Flickr photo set of Mulally (at bottom) and others at CES.

January 13 at 04:18 PM in Podcasts & interviews, Social-media | Permalink | Comments (3) | |

Crowdsourcing a WP tech issue

I originally intended to ask my Twitter friends for a solution to this, but I don't want to inundate them with dozens of tweets, so here's the problem I'm having:

In early 2008 I created the TravelingGeeks site on WordPress in advance of our trip to Israel last April. After our return, I transfered the domain control on GoDaddy to Renee Blodgett, who hired a programmer to make some fixes. I believe, but am not certain, that they copied over my files and did their own installation and pointed their DNS servers for the domain to their WordPress installation.

Fast forward to January 2009. We're planning a new TravelingGeeks trip to London this June (more on that soon). I just downloaded the new WP 2.7 and uploaded it to my GoDaddy premium account to replace the original installation. The installation resides on jdlasica.com in the "travelinggeeks" folder at the same level as my index.html file for jdlasica.com.

Once I get this completely new blog set up, I know I'll need to get Renee to point the DNS servers to it. And I do know how to upload new themes and a revised CSS Stylesheet. But here are my two questions:

1. During development, how do I actually see the new site? (since jdlasica.com/travelinggeeks.index.php doesn't show it; http://jdlasica.com/wp-admin/install.php doesn't work; and http://jdlasica.com/travelinggeeks/wp-admin/install.php says: "WordPress already installed"; if i go to travelinggeeks/wp-admin/install.php, that's the installation on Renee's server)

2. How do I log into the administration panel? (url = yoursite.com/wp-login.php but I don't know what to put in for "yoursite" during development)

January 13 at 04:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (10) | |

McCann Digital turns to social media to tout Samsung Omnia

Samsung has been dipping its toe into the social media waters of late. Last year they sent me the Samsung SC HMX10 high-def camcorder to blog about and try out for a year. My interviews with author Sarah Lacy and the co-founder of Breaking the Silence were conducted with the ultra-portable HMX10, which I reviewed here.

Now my good friend Ayelet Noff, aka Blonde 2.0, tells me that Samsung is working with McCann Digital on a campaign to promote their new phone, the Samsung Omnia i900 . (The i900 is the latest "it" phone; see a review here and specs here.) As a big part of their campaign, they are giving the phone to bloggers for free — that's right, to keep, not as a loan — to try out the features and use in their everyday lives. (If you're interested, post a comment to Ayelet's blog.)

One of the things Ayelet, Chris Heuer, I and others are doing at AdHocnium is to help companies turn to bloggers and other social media influencers to establish a real, genuine connection with the users of their products. We're seeing firms like McCann Digital increasingly turn to the tools of the social Web to help advance their campaign by recruiting bloggers to become customers and in turn potentially reach millions of users. I'll be watching to see how McCann Digital's effort progresses.

January 13 at 02:34 PM in Social marketing | Permalink | Comments (4) | |

January 12, 2009

Harder to spin police violence in Web 2.0 era

Raj Jayadev, executive director of Silicon Valley De-Bug, a youth-serving community organization, in an op-ed in the San Jose Mercury News: Much harder to spin police violence in Web 2.0 era — a look at social media's response to the fatal shooting of an Oakland man by BART police on Jan. 1.

January 12 at 11:59 PM in Current Affairs, Social-media | Permalink | Comments (0) | |

'49 amazing social media, Web 2.0 and Internet stats'

Adam Singer at The Future Buzz: 49 Amazing Social Media, Web 2.0 And Internet Stats. Excerpt:

1 trillion: approximate number of unique URLs in Google’s index.

Wikipedia

2,695,205 - the number of articles in English on Wikipedia

684,000,000 - the number of visitors to Wikipedia in the last year

75,000 - the number of active contributors to Wikipedia

YouTube

70,000,000 - number of total videos on YouTube (March 2008)

200,000 - number of video publishers on YouTube (March 2008)

100,000,000 - number of YouTube videos viewed per day

Blogosphere

133,000,000 - number of blogs indexed by Technorati since 2002

346,000,000 - number of people globally who read blogs (comScore March 2008)

900,000 - average number of blog posts in a 24 hour period

77% - percentage of active Internet users who read blogs

Twitter

1,111,991,000 - number of Tweets to date (see an up to the minute count here)

3,000,000 - number of Tweets/day

Facebook

150,000,000 - number of active users

170 - number of countries/territories that use Facebook

2,600,000,000 - number of minutes global users in aggregate spend on Facebook daily

100 - number of friends the average user has

700,000,000 - number of photos added to Facebook monthly

52,000 - number of applications currently available on Facebook

January 12 at 11:53 PM in Social-media | Permalink | Comments (1) | |

CES 2009 in 1 minute on Animoto

Here's a one-minute music video on Animoto of some photos I took at last week's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. (And here's the remix, which I like a bit better and shown above.)

Among those featured: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, Ford Motors CEO Alan Mulally, Cathy Brooks, Maggie Fox of Social Media Club, Kiesha Cochrane, Chris Heuer of Adhocnium and Social Media Club, Sarah Austin of techku, Rohit Bhargava of Girl Gamer, the band Tripod and a pretty gal from the Sapphire nightclub.

The Animoto experience

This was the first time I've had a free moment to use Animoto, and I was surprised by how easy it was to create a music video. It took me less than half an hour to upload my Flickr set, select the shots I wanted to use, and select the music I wanted to incorporate into the video.

I had too many photos to pack into a 30-second clip (the service included only 8 shots in 30 seconds in the first go-round), so I plunked down $3 for a full-length video. I'll soon pony up $30 for a one-year subscription, because I can see using this quite often.

The terrific music selection also surprised me. I'll need to dig into this deeper to find out whether Animoto signed licensing deals with the various bands' labels or if they're using Creative Commons licensed music as well. In the end, there were a half-dozen indie/alt-rock tracks I liked enough to use as the soundtrack for the piece. I wound up using Adam Burns' Master Criminal.

Brock Meeks informed me that I could remix the video by clicking the Remix button (worry not, you don't lose the original mix), and I tried that, too, to good effect.

All in all? Animoto is perhaps the smartest, easiest-to-use mashup tool on the planet.

January 12 at 08:25 PM in Citizen media, Music, Video | Permalink | Comments (4) | |

Managing your online reputation

AOL's Switched: Your Online Reputation Is More Important Than You Think

If you are a relatively good person and are finding it impossible to get a job — or a date — you may want to Google yourself.
Approximately 70-percent of employers look up job applicants online. 50-percent admit information they have dug up on the Internet has resulted in them not hiring a person. The threat to your reputation and livelihood is real. Luckily, there are steps you can take to ensure that people find more good then bad when they type in your name. ...

January 12 at 08:12 PM in Search engines, Social-media | Permalink | Comments (0) | |

January 11, 2009

On the lighter side at CES

Some of these "messages" to Steve Ballmer, shown at the start of his keynote at the Consumer Electronics Show on Wednesday night, cracked me up. (Yes, I know they were written by Microsoft's marketing team. Doesn't matter.)

From: Jerry Yang
Steve. Why do you keep ignoring my Facebook requests?

From: Rod Blagojevich
How do you delete email that's already been sent?

From: Barack Obama
AirforceOne needs an XBOX. Hint, Hint.

January 11 at 06:38 PM in Amusing, Consumer | Permalink | Comments (0) | |

A new beginning for the media

Time

James Poniewozik in Time magazine: An End, and a Beginning, for the Media. Excerpt:

Like the car companies, individual media outlets will probably have to learn to be smaller. And they'll need to see their new-media "problems" as part of the solution. Internet users don't hate the media. In fact, when given the tools by something like Twitter or YouTube, they want to be the media. People want the vetted information the news media offer — and they want to riff on it, respond to it and even, as in Mumbai, add to it. Journalists should embrace that rather than futilely fight it.

This means offering users more ways of interacting, commenting and contributing. It means seeing new media not as the dumbing down of civilization but as a new way of telling stories and even finding stories. And it means recognizing that the audience is no longer passive--it wants and expects to participate, even as it wants help in making sense of the info deluge. ...

January 11 at 06:02 PM in Media, New media | Permalink | Comments (0) | |

Smashwords tries to democratize book industry

Smashwords

San Jose Mercury News: Written any good e-books lately? A Q&A with Mark Coker, the founder of Smashwords, a free digital publishing platform launched last year that allows anyone to become an e-book author.

As regular readers know, I've been an advocate of pushing the book industry into the digital age long before my book Darknet was published by Wiley. Excerpt:

With Smashwords we help independent self-published authors publish e-books on their own so they simply upload their finished manuscript as a Microsoft Word file into our system and then we automatically convert that file into about 10 different e-book formats so these books can be read on the iPhone, on the Amazon Kindle and on virtually any other e-book reading device.

How is Smashwords different from self-publishing services like Lulu, Wordclay or Createspace?

With those services you go to their Web sites and you upload your manuscript as a Microsoft Word file and they allow you to publish in print, very quickly, within days. I think those are great services and I recommend those services. The difference with Smashwords is Smashwords is focused entirely on electronic books, digital books.

January 11 at 03:17 PM in Books | Permalink | Comments (0) | |

January 10, 2009

Summing up CES 2009

I'm back home after a crazy-busy week at Macworld Expo in San Francisco (Monday-Tuesday) and the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas (Wednesday to Friday). I blogged earlier about my panel at the P2P Media Summit on Wednesday.

I'm not covering this as a journalist covering the electronics space. Rather, capturing media snippets (chiefly through video, coming soon, and photos, above) relevant to the social media and tech worlds. So if you're looking for traditional coverage of CES, head to Engadget, Gizmodo, Fast Company, CNET, Revision 3, Geek Brief or other outlets that cover gadgets.

Here are a few random tidbits from CES:

• Photos: Here's a Flickr photo set I took of CES; I'll add my shots of Steve Ballmer tomorrow. (Update: The set now contains more than 75 photos, including some nice shots of Steve Ballmer and Ford CEO Alan Mulally.) Alas, I lost a compact flash card on the tradeshow floor with more than 100 photos taken on Friday.

• The action's on Twitter: While I haven't been blogging CES the past couple of days, I've been Twittering it since Wednesday evening, so you can see my Twitter stream here.

• Citizen media: While there were many of the established citizen media sites covering the conference (Revision 3, Geek Brief TV), and lots of folks capturing video on their cell phones, and the blogger lounges were packed, I was surprised I didn't see more citizen media outlets swarming over the place. Perhaps the low barrier to entry for bloggers inhibits many from attempting something more ambitious?

• techku: One Internet video site that did launch was techku, Sarah Austin's new venture, which strreams live and recorded footage 24/7 on Mogulus. I appeared on the first day alongside CrunchGear editor John Biggs.

• Disclosure: I'm part of the Intel Insiders social media consulting group, and Intel paid for my trip.

• Highlights: The Ultimate Bloggers Dinner hosted by Social Media Club and Lenovo, where Chris Heuer and I interviewed Ford CEO Alan Mulally; I'll post the video within a week. ... Was great to finally meet Maggie Fox of Canada's Social Media Group and Scott Monty, ~~a social media consultant to~~ global head of social media for Ford. ... Loved spending time with Meghan Asha of Nonsociety.com. ... I attended an outstanding blogger dinner Thursday hosted by Symantec, where I met some outstanding people. Amazing food and presentation at the Mario Batali's B&B Ristorante in the Venetian Hotel. Will be following up with Chris Noble, CEO of the causes site Kompolt, about my upcoming new site. ... Wonderful to catch up with Steve Rosenbaum of Magnify.net and Staci Kramer of PaidContent.org.

• Learning: I didn't get to take in many presentations but was impressed by the unveiling of the new Intel Learning Series, a new classroom-based education initiative that's intended to bring the conversation away from the device and toward instruction. Some highlights from the session: There are only 20 million student PCs in the United States today. ... Intel announced the new convertible classmate PC design to meet the variety of elementary school students' needs worldwide; it converts from a clamshell to tablet mode with a touch screen and was designed based on social scientists' observations in the classroom. ... A representative from Portugal's Magellan Initiative attended the session and gave an update on the collaborative project, which is putting PCs into the hands of 500,000 students during the current school year.

• PC.com: The resource site PC.com, which launched in July and lets people explore, learn and ask questions about PC technology and purchasing options, is on course to reach 1.4 million hits during CES.

• Small Things Challenge: Intel, Kiva.org and Save the children kicked off a yearlong effort yesterday called the Small Things Challenge (coverage here). The program will appeal directly to individuals worldwide and encourage them to get involved by donating money to Save the Children's Rewrite the Future program, which is focused on securing quality education for the millions of children out of school because of war and armed conflict.

• Green: I was happy to see the latest green efforts by Fuji. I used eight Fuji EnviroMax AA digital alkaline batteries in my Nikon D300 battery grip and was impressed by how they held up under hours of shooting. They're 80 percent more eco-friendly than traditional batteries, at comparable price, says the folks at the Fuji booth.

• Lodging: It's the first time I stayed at the Luxor and would return again, though could do without the hourlong waits for a taxi during CES. Attendance was down over past years, but I still prefer much smaller conferences than the spectable that is CES.

January 10 at 10:57 PM in Gadgets, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (4) | |

January 09, 2009

Updated post on a drive through the occupied West Bank

I'm still thick in the middle of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES09), but my citizen journalism post, A drive through the occupied West Bank, just went live on the Huffington Post.

Here's the updated post. Here's my new "author archive."

January 9 at 03:34 PM in Citizen media, International | Permalink | Comments (0) | |

January 08, 2009

P2P Media Summit at CES

Here's the thing about Macworld Expo (in San Francisco) and the Consumer Electronics Show (in Las Vegas) being held on the same week: It drives tech fanatics like me crazy because you only have time to record media and take in a handful of product announcements or interesting events because much of your time is spent socializing with friends, meeting new people, traveling and trying to navigate the logistics of a show, like CES, that is so physically draining.

I've been hitting a few of the high points over at Twitter (and actually made a number of new Twitter friends as well as met several folks, like Scott Monty and Joseph Jaffe, whom I've already been following).

I just remarked to @stevegarfield that this is the first conference I've attended where people are exchanging Twitter IDs rather than email addresses. Actually, that's not an insignificant shift.

After I arrived yesterday, I made straight for the P2P Media Summit organized by Marty Lafferty and the Distributed Computing Industry Association. The gathering brought together some of the thought leaders around digital media, but as I said on the panel, I get worried whenever I'm at a conference where the most frequently used terms are "distribution," "content," "consumers," "monetize" and "protection." If this were a drinking game, we would have all hit the sauce heavily.

I'll briefly mention the points I raised during our panel on Creating the Commercial P2P Ecosystem with Dave Ulmer of Motorola, Boh Dupree of Verizon Communications, Mike King of Abacast, Jonathan Lee of PiCAST Streaming Solutions and Neerav Shah of Verimatrix.

I suggested that rarely have we seen such a clear demarcation between eras as when the Obama administration begins in 12 days, and that new approach to politics and governing also applies to similar advances happening in social media, Web 2.0 and cloud computing. Echoing Ulmer's good point that the technology should be secondary to what the end user wants to accomplish, I suggested that the plumbing (P2P, Content Delivery Networks (CDNs), cloud computing) shouldn't determine a startup's choice of business models, and that the opportunities provided by the cloud dramatically reduces the cost of a startup when IT infrastructure costs are offloaded. The cloud holds out transformative possibilities in culture, commerce, public policy, national security and personal interaction.

The panel was cut short before I could make my prediction for 2009: that commercial interactions will begin to transform from impersonal experiences to more personal, social and contextual relationships that foster deeper commercial connections. Reputation and identity will begin to play a greater role (in addition to perpetual considerations like price and convenience) in online transactions.

Took some nice photos today, will see if I'll upload them Friday or Saturday.

January 8 at 10:14 PM in Social-media, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0) | |

January 07, 2009

Macworld Expo 2009

Here's a small Flickr photo set from the tradeshow floor on Tuesday's opening day of Macworld Expo. I edited this photos late last night with Aperture and didn't do a very good job — just beginning to learn the program. (In fact, I spent Monday and Tuesday at an Aperture class taught by Derrick Story thanks to the generosity of IGG.) I'll add IDs and probably re-edit some of these later.

• San Jose Mercury News: Apple announces new iTunes prices.

What's more important than the new tiered pricing at the iTunes Store was the news that DRM (digital rights management) in the music world is dead.

• Macworld Keynote video

January 7 at 09:20 AM in Computing | Permalink | Comments (0) | |

January 05, 2009

Documentary short: A drive through the occupied West Bank

A drive through the occupied territories from JD Lasica on Vimeo.

I love Israel, and have loved it even before my visit there last April as a member of the Traveling Geeks. (Here were my dispatches, including a video of our visit to a Bedouin Arab family's village of Khawalid in northern Israel.) So it's always difficult as a journalist to report about something you have an emotional stake in.

During my trip I took a solo journey into the Israeli-occupied city of Hebron. My tour guide was Mikhael Manekin of Breaking the Silence, an extraordinary human rights organization founded by veterans of the Israeli military. Mikhael himself served as a lieutenant during the second intifada. The organization chiefly focuses on documenting testimonial accounts of the occupation by 20something Israeli ex-soldiers themselves.

Manekin usually takes a busload of 30 Israelis through Hebron for the tour, but he gave me a personal tour alongside Naomi Schacter, Development Director of Shatil. I owe a debt of thanks to Becky Buckwald, Associate Director, San Francisco Region, of New Israel Fund (NIF), which arranged the trip for me.

In this 19-minute video, the first of a two-part documentary, we began our trip in Jerusalem, drove through the West Bank on Route 60 past Bethlehem and the astonishing Separation Barrier being erected, into the settlement of Kiriath Arba/Qiriat Arba, and into Hebron, a city of 166,000 Palestinians and the only Palestinian city with a Jewish settlement in the city center. More than 500 Jewish settlers, protected by Israel Defense Forces, have established an outpost there. Hebron has important historical ties to both the Jewish and Muslim traditions, not the least of which is because it is the biblical resting place of Abraham and Sarah and Isaac and Rebekah. Here is Wikipedia's entry on Hebron.

Manekin explains the settlers' strategy this way: "It's all a battle for centimeters." He says of his small Breaking the Silence's mission: "As an organization, human rights is our top priority."

News reports on the occupation

I just finished watching a series of BBC News reports, assembled by the New Israel Fund-financed organization B'Tselem, that Manekin handed me as we left (I couldn't find the videos online). They were riveting. The BBC reports that the army has severely restricted the movement of Palestinians. Israeli policies have radically changed the face of Hebron's city center. For the most part, due to security concerns, only Jewish settlers are allowed to use main streets in the city. Palestinians are not allowed to walk freely on the main streets of their own city and are typically not allowed to leave through the front doors of their houses. "What was once a lively a commercial and residential center is now a ghost town," the BBC report said. The army arrests and blindfolds Palestinians if they break curfew. In 2003-2004, curfews were imposed on 520 days.

In 2000, the army closed a-Shuhada Street, the main street in Hebron's commercial area, to Palestianians and sealed the entrances to the houses on the street. As we walked down a-Shuhada Street, Manekin showed me how Palestinians residents are forced to climb up through the roofs of neighboring houses or to exit their houses through back doors and windows (coming in part 2).

I also got to meet Yehuda Shaeul, Breaking the Silence's executive director and 24-year-old co-founder. (Do a search on Breaking the Silence to see accounts of his talk at Harvard Hillel; here's the video of his talk at the Internet Archive.)

As our trio met up with Shaeul at the end of the tour outside the Tomb of the Patriarchs, Shaeul told us that his group has just been attacked by a dozen or so settlers who assaulted them with stones, bricks and eggs. The extraordinary thing was that Shaeul's party consisted of members of the German Parliament.

Certainly the situation today in Gaza gives this report added resonance and timeliness. People get a little bit crazy when taking "sides" in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This video's intent is merely to shed light on the ongoing plight of Palestinians who are forced to abandon their homeland or who continue to live in Hebron under massively trying circumstances.

Today I received this update from Manekin: "It is a bit hectic here because of Gaza. Both Yehuda and I are still doing our thing, though the settlers have been making it increasingly difficult to do the tours. When we are allowed to enter, more than 70 policemen protect us from settler violence."

A quick note: I did not have the proper equipment — just a small handheld Samsung camcorder with no remote mike and no lighting — so you'll notice some production lapses. But the 19-minute video still came out well.

Watch video in H.264 QuickTime on Ourmedia

Watch video in Flash on Vimeo

Photo essay of life in Hebron

Here is my 70-photo Flickr set of Hebron that captures a slice of life in the ancient city, which is increasingly becoming the story of fundamentalist settlers clashing with Palestinians who have lived there for centuries. I think it's this report is the best work of citizen journalism I've ever done.

Coming next week, the second and final part: Hebron: Occupation 101.

January 5 at 10:02 AM in Citizen media, Current Affairs, International, Photography | Permalink | Comments (3) | |

January 04, 2009

Book review of 'Viral Spiral'

Viralspiral

We needed someone to chronicle the creative ferment and astonishing changes whipping around us in the Web 2.0-enabled commons.

And now David Bollier has done so in his meticulous and very readable new book, Viral Spiral (New Press, $27 hardcover), whose publication date is either tomorrow or next week. (Disclosure: I've known the author since we were 17 and recruited him for the Advisory Board of Ourmedia.org.)

For newcomers to the world of Web 2.0, the Long Tail and crowdsourcing — the social Web would have been a more apt term for the phenomenon Bollier describes — Viral Spiral serves as an indispensable primer, laying out in rich detail the birth of Creative Commons, the role played by such seminal figures as Lawrence Lessig, Jimmy Wales, Hal Abelson, Tim O'Reilly and others, and the underlying dynamics of law and culture that are powering the rise of user-created media.

But even those of us deeply familiar with these subjects will come away with a deeper understanding of the social Web and the critical role that the commons — the notion that we all benefit when we're free to build upon others' works — plays in the massive upheaval now taking place in media, business and politics.

Bollier is perfectly suited to assay this landscape as the editor of OntheCommons.org and co-founder of Public Knowledge. He writes early in the book:

Individuals working with one another via social networks are a growing force in our economy and society. The phenomenon has many manifestations, and goes by many names—"peer production," "social production," "smart mobs," the "wisdom of crowds," "crowdsourcing," and "the commons." The basic point is that socially created value is increasingly competing with conventional markets, as GNU/Linux has famously shown. Through an open, accessible commons, one can efficiently tap into the "wisdom of the crowd," nurture experimentation, accelerate innovation, and foster new forms of democratic practice.

This is why so many ordinary people—without necessarily having degrees, institutional affiliations or wealth—are embarking upon projects that, in big and small ways, are building a new order of culture and commerce.

Bollier provides a broad lens to the commons, taking it out of its legalistic straitjacket and showing how it's relevant to our daily lives. And he brings us up to date, outlining the important new initiatives that Science Commons is bringing to the scientific community and that Open Education is bringing to the cloistered, often stultifying world of academia.

Bollier's previous books, Brand Name Bullies and Silent Theft, were important contributions to the ongoing policy debates over intellectual property and creative freedom. Viral Spiral provides the overarching framework that helps us appreciate how and why the forces of disruption are changing our lives — mostly for the better.

January 4 at 06:49 PM in Books, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0) | |

'We're living in a media democracy'

Bill Ives at FASTForward Blog:

Dean Takahashi at Venture Beat shared with us a summary of a recent Deloitte survey on the state of media. The report concludes that, “We’re living in a media democracy, where no single form of media dominates the attention of Americans. It’s also an age where everyone contributes to the media, not just traditional media companies.” The last part is old news but I find the first part more interesting.

There has been discussion about whether blogging will continue in the age of Twitter. I have mentioned, as have others, that they have different functions and complement each other. Twitter may take away a few of the functions of blogs but there are many left that cannot be handled by Twitter.

January 4 at 06:40 PM in Citizen media, Media | Permalink | Comments (0) | |

January 02, 2009

'20 ways to being a bigger Friendfeed monster'

Robert Scoble: 20 ways to being a bigger Friendfeed monster. He writes:

Just watch this video where I show you the 20 key features of friendfeed and how to use them to be an aggregating social media monster!

Robert's become a terrific advocate for Friendfeed in the past year. Like Guy Kawasaki, I'm a dabbler, but so far still prefer Twitter and Facebook.

January 2 at 11:05 PM in Social networks | Permalink | Comments (0) | |

The Best of 2008 in Social Media

From Paul Gillin: The Best of 2008 in Social Media (though the images won't load for me).

January 2 at 10:33 PM in Social-media | Permalink | Comments (0) | |

Guide to content tagging in social bookmarking

Jason Falls at Social Media Explorer: The Practical Guide To Content Tagging In Social Bookmarking. Principal points:

Keep It Simple

I would recommend using no more than 2-3 tags per piece of content and keep the words very generic. If it’s about social media measurement then maybe tag it “socialmedia” and “measurement”. If you’re ever tempted to get into monitoring, ROI, quantifying success, etc., default to “socialmedia” and “measurement”. And remember that tagging, especially in Delicious, is space sensitive. Thus “social media” will be tagged as “social” and then also as “media.” Be sure to eliminate the space and make it “socialmedia.”

Keep It The Same

Periodically Review

Don’t Bookmark Everything

January 2 at 09:50 PM in Social-media | Permalink | Comments (1) | |

A new service for cause organizations

My longtime friend Tom Watson, author of CauseWired, launched a new venture on Thursday: CauseWired Communications LLC. Tom writes on Facebook:

Susan Carey Dempsey, my longtime partner in publishing onPhilanthropy.com, is joining me in launching the new firm, which will assist organizations and campaigns in creating inspiring messages for causes that change the world. ...

What will CauseWired Communications do? Two things:

1. We will work with nonprofit organizations, foundations, companies and individuals on communications and development assignments - using story-telling, social networks, strategic planning, management and communications expertise to turn great programs into actionable causes.

2. We will publish onPhilanthropy.com, the global resource for philanthropy professionals, and run the annual Summit onPhilanthropy conference in New York each year.

I hope to collaborate on some projects with Tom and his partner Susan in the year ahead. Congrats on the launch, Tom!

January 2 at 02:10 AM in Causes | Permalink | Comments (1) | |

January 01, 2009

Who isn't a social media strategist?

TwistImage: Who isn't a new media/social media strategist?

If you look at many of the profiles found on Blogs and people's ultra-short/sharp bios on Twitter, you will notice something very interesting: almost everybody says that they are either a New Media Strategist or a Social Media Strategist. What, exactly, does that mean and how can you better understand just how good they are at online strategy? ...

BL Ochman and Chris Heuer were just talking about this earlier this week. It's interesting to see the proliferation of social media experts on Twitter. I guess it's nice to be in a field that's growing exponentially — after years when people would grasp you by the shoulders and say, "It'll be all right" when you tell them you're a journalist.

January 1 at 09:33 PM in New media, Social-media | Permalink | Comments (5) | |

Welcome to the empowerment age

John Eckman at Open Parenthesis: Welcome to the empowerment age.

January 1 at 08:21 PM in Politics | Permalink | Comments (0) | |

2009 conferences: Social media, tech, marketing (updated)

I published this a week ago but am republishing it now because it's quite timely on Jan. 1 and because I added several additional events to the calendar.

For the past two years I put together a calendar of some of the best social media, technology, media and marketing conferences for the upcoming year. Here's the list for 2009pologies, I had to leave out events outside the U.S. or the list would triple in size, and I left out newspaper conferences. This also doesn't include the many worthy BarCamps, PodCamps and Social Media Club gatherings around the country.

If you know of other must-attend events, please add them by posting in the comments at the bottom.

2009 conferences: Social media, tech, marketing

Conference	Date	Place
* indicates conferences I'll be attending or speaking at.
January
Macworld Expo*	Jan. 5-9	San Francisco
Apple says this will be the last Macworld Expo it will participate in. No Uncle Steve this year.
Consumer Electronics Show*	Jan. 8-11	Las Vegas
Still the largest electronics show on the planet. I'll be there as part of the Intel Insiders, and speaking at the P2P Media Summit there.
Agency of the Year	Jan. 20-21	New York City
OMMA's Agency of the Year Awards celebrates the agencies that were able to rise above the rest. MEDIA's Agency of the Year Awards pays tribute to the agencies that set the gold standard in the business of media planning and buying.
BlogWell Chicago	Jan. 22	Chicago
The second in a series of events exploring social media in the enterprise, put on by GasPedal and the Blog Council.
Social Media Conference	Jan. 22-23	Miami
The event focuses on business management for the social networking industry.
OMMA Social	Jan. 26	New York City
OMMA Social is designed to guide you through the terrain of social media and how it relates to your brand or web property. MediaPost organizes the Online Media, Marketing & Advertising (OMMA) events.
Teens in Tech*	Jan. 31	San Francisco
Smart young people talk technology and culture.
February
AlwaysOn: OnMedia NYC	Feb. 2-4	New York City
"Meet the disruptors of marketing, advertising, branding and PR."
O'Reilly Money:Tech	Feb. 4-6	New York City
Theme: "After the Goldrush: Financial Tools for New Times."
UGCX: User Generated Content	Feb. 9-10	San Jose
UGCX, a new mediabistro.com event, is the first conference and expo to bring together content-trendsetters and business leaders in various fields to examine how these worlds collide and what the future holds.
O'Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing	Feb. 9-11	New York City
A conference on emerging trends around digital publishing, including ebooks, digital printing, mobile content, new authoring tools, alternative business models for paid content, etc.
FASTforward '09	Feb. 9-11	Las Vegas
The largest business and technology conference dedicated to search-driven innovation, put on by Microsoft.
SMX West	Feb. 10-12	Santa Clara, Calif.
SMX West features three days of educational sessions, keynotes and access to the leading vendors in search marketing. Other events include SMX Social Media Marketing in New York, SMX Search Analytics in Toronto and SMX Advanced in Seattle.
Web Content: Tampa Bay	Feb. 17-18	Clearwater, Fla.
Industry leaders and experienced web professionals will deliver presentations, offer case studies and lead discussions designed to demystify the impact of social media on Web marketing strategies. Other conferences are scheduled for Chicago and Austin.
Public Media '09	Feb. 17-21	Atlanta
Put on by the Integrated Media Association, this may be the largest public media gathering of the year, with panels featuring representatives from NPR, PBS, et al.
edSocialMedia Bootcamp	Feb. 19	Montclair, NJ
A one-day in-depth introduction to social media technology for school leaders, administrators and teachers at the Montclair Kimberley Academy.
Future of Web Apps	Feb. 23-24	Miami
Speakers on the future of the browser, how to build community, how to use video and podcasting for increased success.
We Media Miami	Feb. 24-26	Miami
Engage with leaders and ideas shaping media, business, communication, technology, education and participation in the connected society.
March
Social Enterprise Conference	March 1	Cambridge, Mass.
The Social Enterprise conference at Harvard Business School brings together the nonprofit, private, and public sectors to work toward the common good. Conference site needs updating.
DEMO	March 1-3	Palm Desert, Calif.
More than 20,000 innovative technologies have been reviewed and 1,500 companies selected to launch on the DEMO stage over the past 18 years.
Emerging Communications (eComm)	March 3-5	San Francisco
The second annual forum dedicated to defining and profiting from the post-telecom era.
MediaXchange	March 9-11	Las Vegas
MediaXchange replaces Newspaper Association of America's Marketing and NEXPO, and the new gathering marks an increased focus on emerging digital platforms.
GoingGreen East	March 9-11	Boston
"Where green entrepreneurs take on Big Business."
O'Reilly Emerging Technology (ETech)*	March 9-12	San Jose
Since 2002, ETech has brought to light the disruptive yet important innovations that we see on the horizon, rather than the ones that have already arrived.
Mashup/Remix Culture*	March 12-13	Columbus, Ohio
I'm speaking at this two-day conference at The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law on "Mashup/Remix Culture: Law, Politics, Art and Society."
South by Southwest	March 13-22	Austin
This year's SXSW schedule: Interactive March 13-17, Film March 13-21, Music March 18-22.
New America Media LA*	March 14	Los Angeles
I hope to put on the first Social Media Camp workshop in conjunction with New America Media.
Media Summit	March 18-19	New York City
Over 1,200 of the country's top media, entertainment and technology executives are expected to attend this gathering to discuss broadband, wireless, advertising, TV, film, cable, satellite, publishing, news and other media.
New America Media SF*	March 21	San Francisco
We're targeting ethnic media publishers in San Francisco for our second Social Media one-day bootcamp.
Sex::Tech 2009	March 22-23	San Francisco
ISIS presents Sexual Health + Tech + Youth = Sex::Tech 2009
Tech Policy Summit	March 23-25	San Mateo, Calif.
The summit brings together prominent leaders from the private and public sectors to examine critical policy issues impacting technology innovation and adoption.
OMMA Global: Hollywood	March 23-24	San Francisco
This biannual conference and trade show for the business of Online Media, Marketing and Advertising attracts about 4,000 people.
Web 2.0 Expo*	Mar 31-Apr 3	San Francisco
Web 2.0 Expo provides insight into the new generation of services and opportunities offered by Web 2.0.
April
Politics Online*	April 7-9	Washington, DC
Roll your own conference panel.
eM9	April 21-22	San Francisco
The eMarketing conference brings together marketers from around the world in a sophisticated forum of presentations, networking opportunities and sessions.
Nonprofit Technology*	April 26-28	San Francisco
Nonprofit Technology Network (NTEN) kicks off with a Day of Service to give back to the community.
OnHollywood	April 27-29	Hollywood
Silicon Valley goes to Hollywood.
New Marketing Summit - SF	April 28-29	San Francisco
This new conference geared chiefly to marketers is being created by Chris Brogan, David Meerman Scott and Paul Gillin.
SMX Social Media Marketing	April 29-30	New York City
Internet marketers will learn to harness the power of user engagement from YouTube to Digg in this two-day gathering with a focus on real-life tactical advice.
May
SOBCon	May 1-3	Chicago
SOBCon09 is “Biz School for Blogging,” focusing on the ROI of relationships in the enterprise. The conference is designed to build solid action plans tailored to attendees' individual needs.
Digital Hollywood Spring*	May 4-7	Santa Monica
I've spoken at several sessions at Digital Hollywood, one of the nation's premier entertainment and technology conferences. Other Digital Hollywood productions, such as Advertising 2.0 New York and Building Blocks and Digital Hollywood Fall, will likely be held again in 2009.
Streaming Media East	May 12-13	New York City
Content owners, viral video creators, online marketers, enterprise corporations, broadcast professionals, ad agencies, educators and others gather to hear the latest on online video technology. Streaming Media West will likely repeat in September 2009 in San Jose, Calif.
Word of Mouth Marketing University	May 14-15	Miami
WOMM-U is a two-day comprehensive and interactive educational experience built around giving you the real-world knowledge you need to execute exceptional word of mouth marketing programs.
Media Relations Summit	May 17-19	New York City
Bulldog Reporter puts on a conference for PR and corporate communications professionals who want to learn skills and techniques that are transforming media and the PR profession.
Where 2.0	May 19-21	San Jose, Calif.
Where 2.0 2009 delves into the emerging technologies surrounding the geospatial industry, particularly the way our lives are organized, from finding a restaurant to finding the source of a new millennium plague.
Winning Media Strategies	May 20-22	Washington, D.C.
"Battling Competitive Economic and Market Forces," from the Kelsey Group.
NetSquared*	May 26-27	San Jose, Calif.
N2Y4 will be the can't-miss gathering of nonprofits and social change agents.
D Conference	May 26-28	Carlsbad, Calif.
The seventh edition of D, put on by the WSJ's Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg, will again features executives and thinkers driving the digital revolution.
New Marketing Summit - Dallas	May 27-28	Dallas
The third in a series of conferences geared chiefly to marketers.
June
Conversational Marketing Summit	June 1-2	New York City
Federated Media's CM Summit makes its second NYC appearance discussing how marketing and social media intersect.
Ypulse Youth Marketing Mashup*	June 1-2	San Francisco
YPulse, which tracks how youths use emerging media, will mark its fifth anniversary this year. YPulse will hold a second event in November 2009 in New York.
NewComm Forum*	??	Sonoma, Calif.
Hope to speak at the Society for New Communications Research. Date will be determined soon.
Connections	June 2-4	Santa Clara, Calif.
From Park Associates: Connections: the digital living conference and showcase.
New America Media*	June 4-5	Atlanta
I hope to put on a Social Media Camp workshop at the national conference of New America Media.
Supernova*	June 9-11	San Francisco
At Supernova, CEOs and bloggers, entrepreneurs and academics, practitioners and visionaries, policy experts and industry thought leaders share insights and build relationships.
Focus on Mobile & Enterprise Social Networking	June 11-12	San Francisco
Social networking in the enterprise.
OMMA Video & Publish	June 16-17	New York City
OMMA Video is designed for content producers, brand marketers and agency professionals to discuss the latest trends on online video advertising, content production, syndication and delivery. OMMA Publish follows on June 17 and OMMA Adnets on June 18.
Enterprise 2.0	June 22-25	Boston
E2 brings together the leading enterprise social software companies. Put on by the same folks who put on the famous Web 2.0 conferences, E2 is producing a tutorial dedicated to Media 2.0 at this gathering.
Digital Media	June 25	Northern Virginia
A gathering of digital communicators and content providers from the Washington, DC, region.
July
NewTeeVee Pier Screenings*	Summer	SF, NY, LA
NewTeeVee Pier Screenings are expected to return in summer '09.
Open Source (OSCON)	July 20-24	San Jose, Calif.
The premier open source gathering around.
Fortune Brainstorm Tech	July 22-24	Pasadena, Calif.
Fortune's "conference for the thinking person," held in Half Moon Bay last summer, moves to Pasadena.
BlogHer	July 23-25	Chicago
BlogHer's fifth annual conference will be held in conjunction with BlogHer Business.
Stanford Summit*	July 28-30	Palo Alto, Calif.
The annual tech gathering, introducing the new captains of industry, organized by AlwaysOn at Stanford.
August
Gnomedex*	??	Seattle?
Gnomedex, a top gathering of geeks, open source pioneers and cool kids, is generally held in the summer in Seattle.
September
TechCrunch50*	??	San Francisco
TechCrunch has not yet announced the date of its annual event. Last year it counterprogrammed against DEMO.
Social Capital Markets*	??	??
Social Capital Markets, which had a sensational kickoff in May 2008, is planning its second gathering for fall 2009 to bring together social entrepreneurs and other change-makers.
GoingGreen West	Sept. 14-16	Sausalito, Calif.
The second year of the green technologies conference organized by AlwaysOn.
Office 2.0*	Sept. 21-23	San Francisco
How to get things done at the office, at home and on the go — speakers, vendors and attendees suss out the future of online productivity and collaboration.
VON Conference & Expo	Sept. 21-23	Miami
VON: The Voice of Network Convergence showcases the best of the global IP communications world for service providers and large enterprises.
DEMOfall	Sept. 21-23	San Diego
The fall edition of the august tech innovation conference.
New Marketing Summit - Boston	Sept. 30-Oct. 1	Boston
The fourth in a series of conferences geared chiefly to marketers.
Creating Technology for Social Good	Sept. 30-Oct. 3	Tucson, Ariz.
Put on by Women in Computing, a program of the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology, this gathering is designed to advance the research and career interests of women in computing.
October
Online News Association*	Oct. 1-3	San Francisco
I just renewed at ONA for the next three years — it'll be nice to see this gathering of new media movers and shakers return to the West Coast.
BlogWorld & New Media Expo*	Oct. 15-17	Las Vegas
BlogWorldExpo and New Media Expo both put on trade shows last August. Problem solved: BWE acquired NME. The combined new show will move to October.
Web 2.0 Summit*	Oct. 20-22	San Francisco
Where tech luminaries gather.
Pop!Tech	Oct. 21-23	Camden, Maine
Pop!Tech is a newtwork of remarkable people, extraordinary conferences, powerful ideas and innovative projects that are changing the world. I attended one year — it's a remarkable gathering.
Social Networking World Forum - North America	Oct. 26-27	Santa Clara, Calif.
A conference dedicated to social networking with a focus on mobile social networking and social media.
Alliance for Community Media - West	??	??
ACM West will be held around October 2009. Past venues include Denver and Monterey.
November
Web 2.0 Expo NY	Nov. 16-19	New York City
The NYC edition of Web 2.0 Expo.
Interactive Local Media*	??	SF Bay Area
Date and location of the next Kelsey Group's ILM Conference to be determined.

You probably arrived here from a retweet on Twitter (or a Google search), so follow me here: http://www.twitter.com/jdlasica.

For an even more comprehensive list of all things geek, check out Robert Scoble's Upcoming events list. In addition, Conference Alerts seems to have a pretty good listing of 2009 academic conferences by subject category, including Politics (apologies to TechPresident and Netroots Nation for not including them in this listing) and Communications and Media.

Postscript: Anita Kuno is assembling a list of social media events in Canada. Canadian readers can forward event info to ay dot kuno at gmail dot com.

Update: Susan Mernit has a good list of 2009 women and technology conferences.

January 1 at 01:05 AM in Business use, Computing, Media, New media, Social-media, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (45) | |

Beth: harnessing the power of the crowd

Beth Kanter talks about harnessing the power of the crowd (her friends and social network) on behalf of a wothy social cause — in this case, to help children in Cambodia — with her upcoming birthday as the trigger on Facebook Causes. I adore Beth so readily contributed $52 (Beth, you look much younger!).

We'll get much better at this in the months and years ahead, but Beth takes us through the steps of where we are today, and she offers some unsolicited advice to Facebook Causes.

January 1 at 01:00 AM in Causes | Permalink | Comments (1) | |

Embracing our social, microlocal world

Society for News Design: Embracing our social, microlocal world.

January 1 at 12:45 AM in Social-media | Permalink | Comments (0) | |

December 31, 2008

Top Social Media Sites of 2008

TechCrunch reports on the Top Social Media Sites of 2008 from a report by ComScore. Excerpt:

What were the top social media sites of 2008? ComScore came out with its worldwide traffic stats for November a few days ago (so these don’t include December). They are a mix of social networks and blogging platforms. Blogger ... still rules the roost with an estimated 222 million unique worldwide visitors in November (up 44 percent from November, 2007). Facebook ... is on pace to pass it soon with 200 million unique visitors (up 116 percent). (Note, though, that this is more than the 140 million active users Facebook itself reports—go figure). MySpace is pretty steady at 126 million uniques. Wordpress is a close fourth and gaining with 114 million (up 68 percent). And Windows Live Spaces is down 22 percent to 87 million uniques.

ComScore keeps a list of what it calls “social networking” sites, but these include blogging platforms and other social media sites as well. While the audience for blogs is still showing healthy growth overall, Facebook stands out as the social gorilla taking share from not only other social networks but blogs and other social media as well.

Below are the top 20 sites on comScore’s social networking list. It is really more of a social media site list, which is what I’m renaming it for this post. It is not definitive, but it gives a good lay of the land. (Here is a similar ranking from 2007). ...

Top Social Media Sites

Blogger (222 million)

Facebook (200 million)

MySpace (126 million)

Wordpress (114 million)

Windows Live Spaces (87 million)

Yahoo Geocities (69 million)

Flickr (64 million)

hi5 (58 million)

Orkut (46 million)

Six Apart (46 million)

Baidu Space (40 million)

Friendster (31 million)

56.com (29 million)

Webs.com (24 million)

Bebo (24 million)

Scribd (23 million)

Lycos Tripod (23 million)

Tagged (22 million)

imeem (22 million)

Netlog (21 million)

(ranked by unique worldwide visitors November, 2008; comScore)