“ Speaking as the last stegosaurus, I hope that we dinosaurs [journalists] continue to stagger along. We need to try to evolve, and so that’s one reason why I shoot videos for the New York Times website, why I blog, why I Twitter, why I Facebook, why I have a YouTube channel.
Nicholas Kristof in Time Out New York
Since the FTC was pretty vague in its new(ish) regulations, brands and bloggers alike were pretty confused about what exactly they’d have to do to stay on the right side of the law. Luckily, WOMMA has got our backs, and they’ve developed a Social Media Marketing Disclosure Guide in an effort to standardize the disclosing process. They outline exactly what a blogger must do to disclose their material connections, whether it’s on a blog, forum, social network, video- and photo-sharing Web site or podcast.
We’ve previously written about how disclosure can be tricky when posting in status updates where the number of characters is limited, but WOMMA suggests using hashtags such as #spon (sponsored), #paid or #samp (sample). I’ve also seen some people use the hashtag #ad for a paid tweet. It should be interesting to see how these catch on, especially in comparison to a tool like CMP.ly. Now WOMMA just needs to develop an industry standard for how public relations professionals should disclose posts or tweets about clients!
“Twitter squatters” — users who register a brand’s Twitter name so the company itself can’t have it — are the bane of many a brand’s existence. In an effort to find out what Twitter does to squatters, social media consultant Mike Werch registered the Twitter name @HJ_Heinz and began to twitter about how much he enjoyed Heinz products. Two weeks later, Twitter took over the name on behalf of the real Heinz and changed Mike’s handle to @NotHJ_Heinz. So far, Heinz has locked the account and continues to have no Twitter presence.
This is a far cry from the Coca-Cola Facebook Page, which was started by fans of the brand, who were given Coke’s blessing to continue running the page in partnership with the company. Today, Coke has more fans on Facebook than any other brand but Starbucks (and Facebook itself, which doesn’t count). Although taking over a squatter’s account is within a brand’s rights according to Facebook and Twitter policies, how you treat your brand advocates matters.
In honor of Social Media Week, February’s NY Tech Meetup was extra special…and extra long. It was $20 this time and all the proceeds ($14,000) went to Partners in Health for Haiti relief, which was nice. Although most of the presentations focused on the somewhat vague theme the “future of tech” rather than app demos, I thought it was a nice change of pace. Some of my favorite presentations included:
SeeClickFix, a site that allows people to report local issues in their communities — basically, like 311, but online (and better)
Our old friend Tony Bacigalupo (remember our interview with him?), who talked about the future of coworking
Clay Shirky, who looked exactly like Tom Hanks with a shaved head and a Three Wolf Moon shirt, and talked about the power of social networks
Jacqueline Novogratz, CEO of the Acumen Fund, who briefly discussed entrepreneurial approaches to solve the problems of global poverty
Dr. Jay Parkinson, who wants to change the health care industry through his organization The Future Well (you may have previously heard about his very intriguing work with Hello Health)
When I logged into Twitter tonight, I was surprised by a little pop-up window telling me about Twitter’s new location-based trending topics feature and asking me to set my location. Right now, the feature is only available in five countries and 15 cities, but apparently Twitter is working on expanding that list.
So now I can see what people in New York City are twittering about, although it mostly just tells you what people are currently watching on television. Which I guess is sort of helpful for someone like me, who doesn’t have a TV? For instance, I know that most New Yorkers right now are watching a rerun of the Jersey Shore reunion on MTV, the Lifetime TV movie The Pregnancy Pact, Diary of a Mad Black Woman on BET, Kristin Kreuk making her TV comeback on Chuck,or someone named James Roday on WWE Raw. Who needs Nielsen when you’ve got Twitter?
However, I think the most interesting thing I learned is that there are a lot of NYC-area high-schoolers on Twitter who are apparently taking the Regents exams tomorrow. Sharpen those No. 2 pencils, kiddies!
“ Social media is not ‘Field of Dreams.’ If you build it, they won’t necessarily come.
Adam Brown, Director of Digital Media at Coca-Cola (via @PRWeekUS)
I don’t know how I missed this viral ad from Samsung, but it is one of the best ones I have ever seen and I’m so jealous I didn’t think of it. Tapping into our cultural obsession with cuteness, the video shows various adorable baby animals and how they creatively use the Samsung Ultratouch cellphone (hint: not as an actual phone). This ad combines two of my favorite things: cute animals and miniature dioramas. What could be better?
Last night, I went to the first New York Tech Meetup of the decade, and it looks like all my favorite NYC geeks survived the holidays. Here are some highlights:
SpeakerText was the clear standout of the night, judging by the spontaneous applause and number of audience questions. The site aims to provide searchable text transcripts of online videos, and even allows you to link to a specific point in the video with a “quotelink.” Wouldn’t this sort of magic make all of our lives so much easier? Yes, yes it would.
I was pretty excited about PressLift, since it’s designed for communications professionals. It’s basically like drop.io for PR folks, allowing you to create an online pressroom with analytics. I definitely need to sign up and check out the beta site when I get a second…which will probably be around March, at this rate.
I was also really excited that WNYC came out to present. Even though they didn’t have a cool new app to offer, they wanted to appeal to the New York tech community for help in marrying journalism and technology, two of my favorite things! It warmed the cockles.
Taxi Hack is an app that allows people to review and provide information about various taxi drivers and companies. I really liked this idea when I first heard about it a while ago, but then I realized that if a taxi pulled up and the driver got a bad review on Taxi Hack, I would probably still jump in. Beggars, choosers, you know the deal.
I was excited to finally see a lady presenter for Yogoer, since girls are usually the ones moving the mouse onstage at NYTM…or not on stage at all. And we can all use a little more girl power in our technology-filled lives.
Lastly, I wanted to let all you New Yorkers know about NYClothingDrive.org. In order to give back to the community, TechiesGiveBack and some other charitable souls will come pick up your unwanted clothing on February 6 and deliver it to charity. They only ask that you make a small donation, which all goes to New York Cares.
Last night, the Facebook Data Team posted some new information about the diversity of its user base. The note describes the roundabout way in which the team determined the ethnicity of Facebook users — they used Census Bureau data about the typical ethnicity of the most common American surnames.
Many commenters have pointed out the possible errors in this method, although the researchers themselves also addressed them in the post. I have a few additional questions of my own. For instance, what would they make of Whoopi Goldberg? Or people whose last names are so rare that they don’t even rank on the Census Bureau’s chart (coughGalellacough)?
Obviously any sort of demographic data is useful to brands, but Facebook could have collected much more accurate stats if they had just asked. Several commenters suggested that Facebook have an “Ethnicity” field in profiles that could be hidden if desired (like how Facebook allows you to hide your birth year). Sure, there’s the possibility not everyone would want to answer, but it seems like a more accurate — and easier — solution than the current one, right?
When I first heard about Coke Zero’s Facial Profiler on Facebook a few months ago, I thought it was a really cool idea, so I uploaded my photo. The app aims to find your doppelganger via Facebook using face recognition technology. People I’ve never met before often tell me I look familiar, ask me if I have a sister (I don’t) or say I look like some girl they knew from camp (I didn’t even go to sleepaway camp). So I figured Coke Zero might be able to help me find this mysterious army of Alyssa clones. Or, at the very least, match me up with my own brother, since we look exactly alike.
It turns out, face recognition technology still needs a little work. The app did find me a match — her name is even Alyssa! — but she doesn’t look much like me. Our facial features are sort of in the same places and our heads are certainly turned at the same angle, but other than that, I don’t see the resemblance. In fact, I felt pretty good about the photo I uploaded until I saw it side-by-side with her professional headshot, and now I just kind of feel like the ugly sister. But it seems like others using the app have fared better - some of the “Top Matches” they show are uncanny in their resemblance, and make me think some of them might actually just be the exact same person with multiple Facebook profiles. Maybe I’ll try uploading another photo and see what other twinsies Coke can come up with for me.
—Alyssa
[Update: I tried again, and my new match was even worse. Bummer.]
Since the FTC’s new endorsement regulations go into effect today, I figured now would be a good time to blog about something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately — how do you provide proper disclosure in tweets, with only 140 characters to do so? Most recently, tennis player Serena Williamscame under fire for twittering about Nabisco without saying she was shooting a commercial for them in one of her tweets.
However, the issue for PR professionals is more about how to disclose when we’re twittering about clients. In a Forbes.comvideo, O’Reilly Media consultant Joshua-Michele Ross says that as long as publicists state in their Twitter bios that they tweet about clients, that should be enough. However, bios are limited to just 160 characters, and I couldn’t even fit all of my clients’ names in there if I tried.
Common practice has been to include “(client)” in a tweet about one of the companies you represent, which I usually try to do — unless it doesn’t fit in the allotted space. In fact, Twitter’s new retweeting system makes this even more difficult, since it doesn’t allow retweeters to modify the text of the original tweet. In the past, when I’ve retweeted a client, I’ve added “(client)” into the tweet after their username, but Twitter no longer allows you to do that. I’ve also wondered about what to do when colleagues ask me to twitter about their clients — do I have to specify that the company mentioned is represented by my firm, but not me personally? Where do we draw the line?
I think CMP.ly offers an interesting solution to this predicament. It allows Twitter users to append a 16-character link to their tweets, which brings visitors to a Web page that further specifies the relationship between the twitterer and the subject of the tweet. So if I twittered about a client, I would include the link “http://cmp.ly/4” in my tweet, and curious clickers would see that I have a business relationship with the brand I mentioned. Except for the retweeting issue, CMP.ly seems like a good answer to me. But for now, the answer seems to be that nobody really has the answer.
When I don’t Twitter for a while (“a while” meaning, like, 12 hours), I usually just get a worried text message from my mom. But can you imagine being arrested for not Twittering? Well, that’s what happened to a VP from Island Def Jam Records this weekend.
Let’s start at the beginning — apparently, there’s a hot new 15-year-old singer called Justin Bieber who’s giving the Jonas Brothers a run for their money. When Justin (who kind of looks like Miley Cyrus with a haircut) was scheduled to appear at the Roosevelt Field Mall on Long Island this weekend, over 3,000 tweens and their moms showed up. People started getting rowdy two hours before Justin was even supposed to arrive, and some fans and moms got trampled and had to go to the hospital.
In an effort to break up the crowd, local police ordered Island Def Jam VP James Roppo to Twitter that the event had been canceled, but he refused. They subsequently arrested him for endangering the welfare of children and obstructing governmental administration, and even threatened to throw little Justin in the slammer too, if he came near the mall. The moral of the story? If the cops tell you to Twitter, you should probably just do it.
Now that AOL is spinning off from Time Warner, it has of course decided to rebrand itself. The company just released these new sneak peeks at its new look, and I’m not sure I like what they’re going for. Obviously that tired blue triangle had to go, but calling the company “Aol.” (yep, period and all) instead of “AOL” gives the impression that it should be pronounced as a phonetic word that sounds similar to “owl,” rather than being an acronym.
Minus the whole massive layoffs thing, I like the direction AOL has been going in as a company (less about e-mail for your grandma, more about editorial publishing), but I think they need to go back to the drawing board on this one. The new branding will be fully revealed on December 10. I’m kind of scared.
TechCrunchposted today about an interesting new iPhone application called iCurfew, which allows kids to send their parents an e-mail showing their location. Sort of like FourSquare, but that only the ‘rents can see. It’s certainly an interesting idea — when my brother and I were in high school, we usually preferred to check in with my mom via text message rather than a phone call. I suppose this would be one step easier and makes it harder for teens to be dishonest about their whereabouts (not that I ever was, since I was — and am — a total goody two-shoes). However, TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington suggests that kids will find loopholes, like “pay[ing] off someone to hold onto your phone and hang out at the movie theater messaging nice things to your parents while you are off doing God knows what.”
Does this app build trust and encourage communication between parents and children like it claims, or is it too “Big Brother“-ish and will make kids go to greater lengths to conceal their whereabouts? Either way, I think the more important question here is, “Why does your 16-year-old have an iPhone in the first place?”
![When I first heard about Coke Zero’s Facial Profiler on Facebook a few months ago, I thought it was a really cool idea, so I uploaded my photo. The app aims to find your doppelganger via Facebook using face recognition technology. People I’ve never met before often tell me I look familiar, ask me if I have a sister (I don’t) or say I look like some girl they knew from camp (I didn’t even go to sleepaway camp). So I figured Coke Zero might be able to help me find this mysterious army of Alyssa clones. Or, at the very least, match me up with my own brother, since we look exactly alike.
It turns out, face recognition technology still needs a little work. The app did find me a match — her name is even Alyssa! — but she doesn’t look much like me. Our facial features are sort of in the same places and our heads are certainly turned at the same angle, but other than that, I don’t see the resemblance. In fact, I felt pretty good about the photo I uploaded until I saw it side-by-side with her professional headshot, and now I just kind of feel like the ugly sister. But it seems like others using the app have fared better - some of the “Top Matches” they show are uncanny in their resemblance, and make me think some of them might actually just be the exact same person with multiple Facebook profiles. Maybe I’ll try uploading another photo and see what other twinsies Coke can come up with for me.
—Alyssa
[Update: I tried again, and my new match was even worse. Bummer.]](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_kub9xsDBeD1qznz4co1_500.png)
