The Business Blog at Intuitive.com

Google, why are you tracking links in my Gmail messages?

I don't know if this has always been the case or not, but I found a very worrying "feature" of Google's popular Gmail service this evening, one that should make you very concerned about your privacy if you're also a Gmail user:

Yeah, that's a problem. That's a big privacy problem.

Let me show you what I noticed when I received an email from the Hilton Honors program that had what appeared to be a very innocuous link within.

First, the message:

Innocuous enough, right? Notice within the link to "hiltonhhonors.com". I clicked on it and was surprised to see that the new tab opened in Firefox showed a Google URL for just a fraction of a second, rather than the Hilton URL which ultimately was displayed.

What the heck?

I tried a bunch of ways to capture it and finally just got a quick screenshot in. Here's the URL:

A second later, of course, the URL was as I expected:

Was Gmail rewriting the messages, I wondered? Turns out that's darn hard to ascertain because of how Gmail uses AJAX to present messages. I finally used "File" --> "Save Frame As..." to get to the source code:

As you can see, it's clean, there's nothing odd or suspicious going on. Therefore the logger must be associated with some sort of "OnExit" event, buried deep in the JavaScript of the Gmail system. I got lazy at this point, I admit, and didn't poke around any further.

Needless to say, this is highly concerning to me, as someone who has been using Google Gmail for years, and has brought literally hundreds of other people into the Gmail fold.

Google, can you tell me exactly what's going on here?

First things first: Sign up for the Blogsmart News so you can stay up to date on the latest insider tips and ideas for your Internet business and marketing efforts. Better yet, sign up right now and you'll get a free copy of my "Insider's Guide to Blogging" ebook too!

A Twitter channel you should be following: FilmBuzz

While I try to stay pretty tightly focused on business and marketing on this weblog, those of you that also read my parenting blog have noticed that every so often I'll write a film review or publish an article about something happening in the world of movie production or technology.

What you might not have realized if you haven't talked with me in person is that I'm actually a big huge fan of movies in an intellectual, business and purely visceral sense. Let's face it, a good film is a wonderful thing, a sheer delight and something that can impact your speech, thinking and even dreams for years to come.

Film also serves as a fascinating communications medium because it engages us on so many levels and with more senses than just about anything else I know. You can dabble with this by listening to a movie without watching it, or watching a movie without the sound, or even comparing the sensory experience of an evening movie in a packed, excited theater versus watching that same movie mid-afternoon at home while laying on the couch.

It's also the case, in my experience, that the more you know about editing, pacing, cinematography, soundtracks, and such, the more you can appreciate a brilliantly crafted film. Go watch the crowd scene in Alfred Hitchcock's master work North by Northwest (they're in the cafeteria at Mt. Rushmore) and freeze the frame. Then ask yourself "why are these people dressed in these clothes with these colors?". Remember, any good filmmaker composes every element in every scene of a film. From the cars that "happen to be" parked on the street to the skirt length of the lead actress, nothing -- nothing -- is just random coincidence.

Movie making is also a very unusual business because it operates on so many levels and seems to be such a crap shoot. $85 million to produce and market a film that collapses its first weekend in the box office? Is that a failure? Quite probably not, at the end of the day. You might be surprised how Hollywood can account for costs and recoup losses in many instances. From a business perspective, it's amazing to see the risks of moviemaking and the resultant risk averse strategies used by the major studios (hence, for example, the preponderance of remakes).

And finally, there's something about seeing a brilliant, heart-warming, exciting film like Slumdog Millionaire that invigorates my soul, makes me glad to be part of the greater humanity, and helps me recognize that there's a bright new tomorrow trying to peek out of the muck that we're surrounded by. Or, failing that, just makes me feel like it was a few hours very well spent!

That's some lead in to my informing you that I've launched a new business called FilmBuzz that I call "movie news for the mobile generation" built entirely upon the popular Twitter service.

Here are a few recent messages that you could have received on your computer or even your mobile device yesterday if you were following FilmBuzz:

As you can see, it's not focused on celebrity gossip but rather the industry, the business of filmmaking and cinema. If you want to be the one in your social circle who knows what films are coming out in a week, a month, a year, for example, its a great service for you.

That's all. I just wanted to invite you, dear reader, to also subscribe to FilmBuzz and feel free to spread the word too, especially with your movie industry connections, if you have any.

And don't be surprised to see FilmBuzz live-tweeting some film festivals in the next twelve months...

Is Jeremiah Owyang an analyst or is Aaron Brazell right to call him out?

Okay, today's tempest in a teapot is centered around Chris Brogan who, on his Dad blog dadomatic did what I have done at least a half dozen times: wrote a sponsored post, receiving payment from Izea (formerly Pay Per Post).

You should start your adventure by glancing at his posting: Sponsored Post: K-Mart Holiday Shopping, Dad Style.

Back? Now, did you realize it was a paid, sponsored post to the weblog, and that Chris made some $$ for doing so? Yeah, I thought so.

Apparently, some folk got into a bit of a twitter-uproar and started assailing Chris and questioning his integrity and position as a thought leader in the social media space. As a result, Chris wrote a new blog entry about the situation, entitled Advertising and Trust.

One of the people who called Chris out for his sponsored posting was Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester Research. His Twitter message on the subject stated "Transparent, yes. Authentic? debatable. Sustainable? no." People had a strong reaction to Jeremiah's tweet and he ended up writing a blog entry about the situation, entitled Understanding Izea's Sponsored Blogging Service but it's really more about the Brogan brouhaha than anything else.

Still with me?

Enter another friend of mine, Aaron Brazell, better known online as technosailor. For reasons that aren't entirely clear to me, Aaron has really gone after Jeremiah over this situation, notably in an aggressively titled blog entry Jeremiah Owyang Inserts Foot in Mouth (Again) Over IZEA Sponsored Posts.

Okay, now we're caught up. Now I'd like to add my two cents to this situation.

First off, as I insinuated earlier, I am a publisher through the Izea network and have posted a couple of blog entries that were sponsored by one of their advertisers. I have done this to see how it works, write about their service and, yes, make a few dollars in the process. I am not an idealist, I can't pay the mortgage off of good intentions and positive karma, and neither can you, dear reader. Even bloggers need to make a buck.

So fundamentally, I have no problem with Chris Brogan writing a sponsored posting on his terrific Dadomatic weblog. In fact, I'm already a subscriber to the blog, and I saw the post when it first came out. And didn't think twice about it.

Further, I have had a number of good conversations with Jeremiah Owyang, most recently over beers after the Thin Air Summit in Denver, and he's a very sharp industry analyst who understands -- and probes - the edges of the modern Internet and its intersection with commerce and business. That's his job.

I'm also friends with Aaron Brazell and find it highly ironic that as I write this blog entry, I'm also coordinating meeting Aaron for dinner while he's here in Boulder. I imagine we'll talk about this issue while we're gnawing on sushi together.

Nonetheless, this really is a tempest in a teapot and I'll say that a lot of the criticism comes from what I believe is a place of idealism, not reality. What I mean by this is that pragmatic people recognize that other people need to earn a living, so rather than complain about the ads on TV, for example, they pay to support public television or subscribe to a commercial cable channel (or skip it and go to Hulu, but that's another story).

Jeremiah was right to call Chris on this issue in the way he did. He didn't say Chris was a loser, he didn't say Chris was unprofessional, he didn't say that Chris had sacrificed his integrity and was forevermore a shill for K-Mart and he didn't say that Chris shouldn't earn money. All that I see Jeremiah said was that a pay-per-post model of online publicity is not sustainable. And I agree.

Aaron's the one I have the proverbial bone to pick with, and I started this posting by writing a comment on his blog, but realized that it was gong to be wayyyy too long and moved it here instead. So, finally, with all that said, let's get to what I want to say.

(does that qualify as the world's longest lead in to a blog entry?)

Aaron complains about Jeremiah's original tweet, saying that he "depart[s] from the typical role of an analyst, where neutrality and objectivity are key in providing unbiased advice, and instead insert[s] himself into a conversation as a subject matter expert on a topic he really knows nothing about."

Analysts analyze. And no-one is unbiased, which is why we have the "scientific method", among other things. But the fact is, Jeremiah's very job depends on him being able to both analyze and probe the edges of his area of expertise, and, yes, he is most certainly a subject matter expert on social media and marketing.

Aaron continues:

"Jeremiah is, as a representative of Forrester Research and in his function as a research analyst, expected to be a thought follower, not a thought leader. That is, his role is not to editorialize, or offer public opinion in such a way that exerts his influence outside of his Forrester client base."

I almost gasped at this comment. Jeremiah is absolutely supposed to be a thought leader in his role and indeed, every industry analyst is supposed to not just know the aggregate statistics (which is the "thought follower" part) but understand their implications and be able to draw conclusions and make recommendations based upon them. If that's not thought leadership, what is?

I don't want to pick on Aaron, though, because these guys have all scuffled enough at this point, but I do want to highlight that as leaders in the social media space, it's their (can I say "our"?) job to push the edges, to test the boundaries, to "eat their own dog food", and that not only includes doing things that might be questionable, but also criticizing and analyzing what's been done and the community response.

What I haven't seen in this entire discussion, for example, is whether the original post by Chris on behalf of K-Mart was successful by their criteria?

Go back again and read Chris' sponsored blog post: was it worth $500 (or $1000) for the company?

Now also go back and read what Jeremiah actually said in his twitter messages on the subject (start here) and ask yourself: isn't it the role of media analysts to ask questions and make pointed observations about unusual occurrences in the social media space?

Frankly, it always amazes me that bloggers have these thrashing discussions around what I see as a sense of guilt over the incursion of capitalism into the blogosphere without noting that there are plenty of bloggers who are making good coin writing not just about what they want, but what they perceive their readers -- or advertisers - want them to write about. It's just part of the landscape.

I have no strong conclusion, no great moral to this story. I just wish we'd have a bit more of a civil discourse when we are all discussing what does and doesn't work in the blogosphere.

How about you? What's your take on this whirlwind?

Nice job, Macy's! An example of how to approach bloggers for a campaign.

I have often written about the challenges of how to query bloggers and ask them to get involved with public relations campaigns, and generally tend to highlight poor examples, awkward queries, and downright stupid campaigns.

Like the email I got the other day from a company representing a really big client that started "Dear Brian". Ooops.

That's why I was so pleased to get a really good query email from Deana Burke of YouCastCorp.com on behalf of (troubled, but that's another story) client Macy's (NYSE: M).

She visited my Attachment Parenting blog and used my contact form to send her inquiry, a form that has some rather whimsical categories. Here's her message in its entirety:

Hey Dave!

I love your message choices! I wish I could've picked 'that crazy weekend in cabo' instead of 'something else, alas, not quite as exciting.' How boring!

I'm writing to you today on behalf of Macy's. This holiday season, Macy's wants everyone - from the most enthusiastic to the most cynical- to Believe in and embrace the holiday spirit of love and charity. As a parenting site, the Believe project may be of interest to you and your readers.

Writing letters to Santa Claus is an age-old tradition for children all over the world. Macy's is collecting these letters in a special Santa letterbox at all Macy's stores. For each letter received, Macy's will donate $1 to the Make-A-Wish Foundation. The Believe Meter will measure America's belief, based on our collective spirit -- including the amount of letters received and other current events that reflect the season's generosity.

We are asking bloggers to help draw attention to the Macy's Believe campaign. We are also sending out $20 Macy's Gift Certificates to interested bloggers as a thank you for considering the story.

If you do decide to post, all assets (including high res images and link to the Believe meter) can be found here: http://www.youcastcorp.com/macys/

I look forward to hearing from you!
Best,
Deana

What I like about it is that there's a nice sense of engagement and a sense that she at least spent the 30 seconds necessary to write the first paragraph before she copied and pasted in the form letter that comprises the bulk of this message.

It may not be much, but I think it's a great query, respectful, transparent, and for a good cause. In fact, I encourage you, dear reader, to click on the above link and consider adding a Believe meter to your site too if you have the space.

Oh, and the $20 certificate? I've written to Deana asking if the money or certificate can be donated to a homeless shelter instead.

Mattel finally has the chance to axe the horrid Bratz line

I'm going to guess that there's a good chance you don't track the doll market, but there's been a very interesting intellectual property case that's been brewing for a few years, pitting toy colossus Mattel (NYSE: MAT) against upstart MGA Entertainment. The dueling dolls? Barbie versus Bratz.

I've actually written about this case before, on my parenting blog, muchly because I so loath the Bratz line and all it represents for young girls and its terrible impact on both their self-image and understanding of how their sexuality allows them to fail or succeed in modern society. See: Hey Mattel! Now you can put Bratz to sleep once and for all. (yeah, it's a bit biased)

After a few months of legal arguments and deliberations, let me quote the Wall Street Journal's report of the outcome:

"U.S. District Court in Riverside, Calif., essentially handed over MGA's pouty-lipped, hip-hop-themed Bratz franchise to Mattel, the maker of the iconic Barbie, whose sales have been undercut by the upstart Bratz in recent years. Judge Stephen G. Larson's ruling came several months after a federal jury found that the Bratz dolls were originally conceived by a designer who worked at Mattel and surreptitiously took the concept to MGA."

Of course MGA is complaining and saying that they'll appeal, but I mean, come on, guys, if you want to complain about fairness, then maybe you shouldn't have hired the Mattel toy designer and started manufacturing dolls that he designed while at Mattel.

I'm really pleased at this ruling and hope that Mattel either completely shut down the entire Bratz brand or, at a minimum, retool these dolls to be a bit less pouty sluts and a bit more cute young girls that actually don't reinforce all that's messed up about our cultural view of girls and sexuality.

This can be done through Mattel ultimately licensing the Bratz line to MGA and requiring that they make it a bit more wholesome or bringing the brand in-house, but either way, now's your golden moment, Mattel Brand President Neil Friedman. Do what's right for your brand, your corporate image, and the millions of girls who enjoy the Mattel doll lines as playthings.

The Future of Blogging is the Future of Interpersonal Connectedness

I was asked by Joel Comm to write about the future of blogging for his newsletter, and here's what I came up with. I'm republishing it here with their permission.

Joel asked me to write about the future of blogging, but the more I thought about that topic, the more it felt like asking an architect to write about the future of nails or hammers. There are small technological increments in metallurgy and even the shape of nails have changed in the last hundred years (not to mention the materials science that have made better hammers) but, really, I mean, they're hammers and nails and in a hundred years the Jetsons will be using the same basic tools to make Jane her art studio, right?

Blogging is the same way. A weblog, at its most fundamental, is just a tool, a slick way to organize and manage the content on your Web site, both that which you produce and content generated by users as comments. In the biz, we call blogs content management systems (CMS) to remind us that it's not Valhalla, it's not a Brave New World, it's just a software tool just as Microsoft Word is a tool.

I am sure that in the next few years blogging tools will continue to evolve, but what will happen is that the very concept of "blog" will continue to get more and more fuzzy as more and more ideas are embodied in the software systems, notably the popular open source Wordpress utility. In the software world, evolution starts with the addition of custom hacks, then those become standardized as "widgets", little plug-in applications that extend and add functionality to your site. Finally, the most popular widgets then become a part of a subsequent release of the main software application itself.

You can predict the future of blogging, therefore, by looking at what plug-ins and hacks are popular today, and those are almost all about spam control and the addition of social networking and social media capabilities. It's no surprise that the best spam control tool in the blogging space is from the same company that produces Wordpress either: Akismet, from Automattic. Sure enough, that started out as a separate application, then was a plug-in, and is now integrated into the Wordpress (and Movable Type) blogging applications.

Social networking is still a mess, however, with lots of duplicate functionality and many, many companies trying to solve a facet of the fundamental human question of How Can We Connect? From the shared bookmarks of De.licio.us to the popularity contest of Digg, the collegiate interpersonal networking of Facebook to the ceaseless stream of trivia big and small on Twitter, all social media elements are migrating into blogging content management tools, along with the ability to register users, rate them based on community feedback votes and number of comments, and allow your blossoming community to grow through interpersonal links and connections.

The future of blogging, in other words, isn't blogging. It's a grand web of social elements that will make sense and be wonderful on some well organized sites, but overwhelming and baffling on other sites. It'll be a foundational element of the new, more highly connected Web that'll be a pervasive part of our lives, be it on our mobile devices, our transportation or our homes and offices.

Are you ready?

Why "Black Friday" fails to actually benefit retailers

Every year we suffer through the so-called "Black Friday", the day immediately after Thanksgiving that's supposed to kick off the Christmas shopping season and is also traditionally the single biggest shopping day of the year. This means it's a very important day for retailers, of course, but if you dig into the numbers, Black Friday is one of the worst days for retail establishments, not one of the best.

Let me explain...

According to the Chicago Sun-Times, average modern retailers have about a 5% margin on products, be they a pair of sneakers or a flat-screen television. The same story explains that typical Black Friday discounts are now 40-50%.

I understand the logic, that one or two extraordinary deals will bring people into the store and they'll also buy non-discounted or lesser discounted products, thereby making up the difference in profit. But what if that no longer holds true?

Read the papers, you'll see that across the United States people who went shopping at all on Black Friday were very careful about their purchases and were much more likely to go into a store and buy the one or two super-specials than a basketful of goods.

The result? Instead of getting a nice boost on profits and a good jump-start on Christmas / holiday shopping, the entire experience was more likely a complete bust for retailers, losing them, rather than earning them money.

While some analysts will doubtless peg this to the 2008 recession, I suggest instead that it's the inevitable result of the increasing commoditization of our world, the reduction of everything to its cheapest possible manifestation.

This is what Linda Sanford and I wrote about in our book Let Go To Grow [aff], and it's fascinating to see how it's become a more visible retail phenomenon in the years since we wrapped up the manuscript.

Every time we shop at Wal-Mart or Target to get our product a buck or two cheaper, every time we pop online to save on sales tax, every time we research products to identify the lowest-cost outlet, we're all contributing to the problem.

With a retail economy built on the need for a substantial profit to cover overhead and costs, pay city and county taxes, health care for employees, and offset theft and so on, this trend towards an ever-more-commoditized world is a scary one. If followed to its logical extreme, we won't have any retail stores at all or we'll have to impose online store tariffs that offset the dramatically lower overhead of online drop-ship companies. What choice will we have?

Meanwhile, we'll have to see. I predict that retailers will report that gross revenue from Black Friday sales were okay, but that profit from these sales was down significantly from prior years. And next year, even if the economy is in better shape, won't jump back.

Does The Media look for rifts and bad news? You bet it does.

Reading through the always interesting Help A Reporter Out and I bumped into the following query from an online journalist:

Summary: Gen Y's Opinion of Elders after Disaster

"How does Gen Y see the Boomers and X-ers in the wake of unprecedented screw ups (the economic meltdown, climate change etc.)? And how is this emerging generation poised to wrest control of our culture and rewrite badly warped rules?"

The subject of the query isn't too bad, but the agenda, the axe to grind, is made apparent in the query wording itself. What's "unprecedented" about what's going on? Is the new generation going to have to "wrest control" (which certainly sounds like a violent and aggressive act) and are "the rules" "badly warped"?

Understand that I'm not saying that we aren't in a troubling place in human history, but pick a previous era, dozens or hundreds of years ago, and there were also lots to be concerned about. Most people just didn't have the luxury of a) knowing about it and b) having time to contemplate it.

What bugs me about the query is that there's such a big assumption that things are indeed broken, and terribly so, and that it's going to take an act of physical or psychological violence to "wrest control" of the situation by the next generation. I just don't believe that's true and it will be no surprise at all to me if the resultant interviews and story don't reinforce this clearly biased and skewed perspective.

The old saw about "dog bites man isn't news, but man bites dog certainly is news" is all too true. In the same vein "as with every previous generation, the next generation will have challenges and will be cleaning up some of the mess of previous generations. How do you feel about that?" is much less newsworthy than "next generation screwed by excess and idiocy of current generation. are we all doomed?"

And you wonder why news = bad news.

Join me at the Angel Capital Summit this Friday!

Rather amazingly, I'm actually going to attend an event where I'm not scheduled to speak, but I am still excited about the Second Annual Angel Capital Summit coming up this Friday, Nov 21st, at the Denver Marriott City Center in Denver, Colorado!

There are some very interesting speakers I'll be listening to, including restaurant entrepreneur and Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper, Anita Burke of the Catalyst Institute and 42 presentations by Colorado startups and entrepreneurial companies throughout the state, all vetted by the Rockies Venture Club and other participating organizations. Finally, the Summit will end with a Town Hall Meeting entitled Disrupting the Recession: Colorado's entrepreneurial response to the financial crisis, election, energy and sustainability.

Note: On-line registration closes at midnight tonight, November 19. Walk-ins registrations will be available at the door. While we'll make every attempt to accommodate walk-ins quickly, please bear in mind that last year's Angel Capital Summit sold out, and some walk-ins were unable to register.

Entrepreneurial success is more important to our society now more than ever. Come to the Angel Capital Summit, and be one of those who "disrupt the recession" and build the future!

Cost: Town Hall Meeting only: $25.00. Angel Capital Summit (which includes the Town Hall Meeting); $129 RVC members, $159 non members.

For event info and registration, go to angelcapitalsummit.org.

I'll hope to see you there!

Does Social Media Really Connect You to Humanity?

I originally published this article in the Phi Kappa Phi Forum and am reprinting it here for my online friends and colleagues. I hope you enjoy it and find it thought-provoking. I realize that it's quite possible you won't agree with my viewpoint. That's good. Explain why you view it differently in the comments section please!

Let me start out with a confession. I'm about as plugged in to the computer networks as anyone you're likely to meet. I first connected to the Internet back in 1980, when it was the ARPAnet and commercial use was completely verboten. Yes, it's come a long way, and so has our society.

Nowadays professionals are just as likely to have their Facebook or LinkedIn URL on their business cards as a phone number, and entire conferences seem to be run simultaneously in the physical world and as a running, often snarky, flow of consciousness dialog on the Twitter microblogging service.

But all of this begs the question: are we really more connected? Do computer and social networks really make us more connected as human beings?

That's what I'd like to talk about in this article.

MYSPACE REDEFINED FRIENDSHIP

One of the first phenomena you notice when you start to connect with people through Web sites that are designed to memorialize connections is that the word "friend" takes on a different meaning. In the physical world -- what people in the virtual reality world of Second Life call "RL" or real life -- friends are generally defined as those people you have a personal relationship with, not anyone you happen to encounter, anyone at your college, company, or other organizations. The latter are colleagues or acquaintances or just people with whom you have something in common.

The first popular sites to delve into the world of friendship, of letting you quantify and identify your circle of friends, were Friendster (which is now essentially defunct, having long-since fallen out of the zeitgeist) and MySpace. On these sites every connection you made had a similar strength, so your best friend Mike is considered just as important in your life as Aunt Flo, to whom you've connected to stop her complaining at family gatherings.

In real life, of course, everyone has close, important friends, intimates who are privy to the highs and lows of your life, a larger circle of what we can call pretty good friends who can help out in a crunch but with whom you don't interact with regularly, and finally "almost friends" who are people with whom you feel an affinity, but geography, time or other logistical issues prevent from becoming closer. And then there are the decaying circles of acquaintances, colleagues, and so on.

ENTER THE KEVIN BACON EFFECT

Very little research in sociology has caught the public fancy as much as the early work by Harvard social psychologist Stanley Milgram, in which he hypothesized that we are all far more connected than we realize. His famous experiment of randomly choosing Midwesterners to hand-deliver letters to Bostonians they didn't know through a chain of friends produced the conclusion that people in the United States are separated by about six people on average.

There are a variety of flaws with this research, but whether we're connected through six hops, eight hops or seventeen, the basic idea that social chains are sufficiently all-encompassing that you and I can find a sequence of friends or acquaintances that connect us is fascinating. Make the end point well-known actor Kevin Bacon and you have "six degrees of Kevin Bacon" or "the Kevin Bacon effect".

It was this question of how to gain access to your friends' friends, or, more accurately, the connections of your connections, that has become the basis of LinkedIn, a social network that lets you answer the question "I wonder if any of my friends know someone who..."

The numbers quickly grow at an extraordinary rate. I have 705 connections on LinkedIn. Take one step out onto that social network and that gives me over 330,000 people in my immediate network. One further step out (we'd call this friends of friends of friends, I suppose) and the number is a staggering 8,392,600 connections.

What does that mean? Am I obligated to send holiday cards to them all or keep track of their birthdays? I sure hope not!

In fact, they're not friends. While they offer up a tremendous professional resource, they don't in any fundamental way expand your social or personal network. They don't connect you with the greater humanity.

Since I know you might be wondering, Facebook isn't any better in this regard. You can certainly join many, many different circles of common interests through mailing lists, applications, etc., but it's still a very abstract, intellectual world. I have 358 Facebook friends and at least 25% of those I wouldn't recognize if we bumped into each other at the local Starbucks.

DO ANY SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES SOLVE THE PROBLEM?

If we're trying to ascertain what helps you become less isolated rather than gaining the appearance of more friends while still leaving you just as disconnected, perhaps the answer lies in dating sites? After all, those are sites where you connect with others because of either an existing or desired personal connection. No, still, that's not right because, with the exception of novel sites like Ignighter.com, they are focused on who you want to know, not who you know.

Another possibility are lightweight social networks like Twitter, to which I admit a personal addiction (you can follow me at @DaveTaylor). The idea behind sites like Twitter are that it'd be useful and interesting to be able to keep tabs on your friends as you all go through your day. Spontaneous meetups, collaboration, and mutual support all easily flow from this sort of connectivity.

Twitter indeed fulfills some of these daily needs for people to be connected, especially with its great strength as a mobile application. It's interesting to see how this evolves too, however, particularly in light of our quest for online tools that help you truly connect with humanity: I keep track of just over 100 friends, all of whom I would recognize at a party, but over 3000 people keep track of what I am saying and doing. It's kind of weird, actually!

IS IT ABOUT MEASURING FRIENDSHIPS?

As we've traveled through the landscape of social media and social networks, whether it's the immediacy of Twitter or the business-like utility of LinkedIn, what has become clear is that these tools need to let us differentiate between close friends and acquaintances, to rate the strength of our connection. Without that capability, everyone's in the same proverbial pool and my connection with my close friend Richard is identical to my new connection with PKP magazine editor Margaret Lisi.

That being the case, you need to make a decision, preferably before you proceed to enmesh yourself in a social network, regarding whether it will capture everyone you know and have more than a passing acquaintance with or whether you will reserve it to your closest friends.

In the social network world we refer to this as quality versus quantity, and there are strong arguments for each approach. But what I want, predictably, is both. The quality gets me the connection with humanity, the ability to stay in closer touch with my intimate friends, and the quantity offers me all the benefits of our modern, highly-connected world. How to attain both? Well, we're still at the veritable infancy of social networks so I'm pushing their edges and watching it all evolve on a weekly basis.

How about you? How will you choose to utilize these many online tools to expand your own social and professional circles?

PR Tip: Exciting products should have exciting press releases too

Last week I survived my visit to the lion's den with my talk on "PR is Dead" to the Public Relations Society of America's Colorado chapter retreat. No brickbats (what the heck is a brickbat anyway?), no scars, and rather a surprising number of PR professionals from major agencies coming up to me afterward saying "you were spot on, Dave!"

My main point in the talk was that modern public relations is about getting journalists and the media (which of course includes us bloggers too) excited about products, services and companies, but while also recognizing that we need our autonomy. It's not about control, it's not about being the gatekeeper for corporate info and communications. I can't really summarize a 50 minute presentation in two sentences, but that's the gist of my main idea, at least.

In this modern world where there are thousands more "journalists" than ever before, there are nonetheless similar challenges that have faced PR since the profession was created: standing out from the crowd.

That's why I'm so amazed by the release I got this afternoon entitled "***Worlds Collide as Midway Unleashes Eagerly-Awaited Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe***".

So, with that title, you expect something at least mildly visually interesting, don't you? And yet, here's what I got:

This is so boring it's painful to even get in my inbox. We're coming into the second decade of the 21st century, guys, isn't it time to start creating communiques that are visually engaging already??

Mostly I'm just so struck that this major media news for the gaming world that's built upon dozens of very well known comic book figures has been boiled down to the most boring, uninteresting, unengaging press release possible.

Do they really expect any pickup at all??

Is PR dead? You tell me....

Hi y'all. I'm giving a talk to the Public Relations Society of America later this week, with a working title of "PR: 0, Bloggers: 1", and rather than retread the same tired examples, I'd like to ask if any of you have interesting examples of either expensive PR campaigns that were a fail or very inexpensive grassroots blog/social media-based campaigns that were a huge success.

I'll share my notes post-event.

Oh, and if you think PR is just completely dead because "we are the conversation" or whatever, or think that PR's just as essential as it has been for the last 100 years, I'd like to hear from you too!

Thanks.

What was SanDisk thinking when it introduced the SlotMusic format?

This might seem confusing, but in a world where more and more people are obtaining music through digital means, notably the iTunes Music store, a consortium of music companies have introduced a new physical music distribution format called SlotMusic. The idea is simple: a read-only MicroSD card that has an album's worth of music on it, along with - hopefully - additional digital information.

But is it the right product at the right time? I don't think so. Let me explain why...

As we have seen again and again with the introduction of new media formats in the consumer electronics industry, there's a classic chicken and egg problem when it's released. That is, the industry won't release lots of music on this new format until there are lots of players, but people won't buy players until there's lots of music available. The slow adoption of Blu-Ray and demise of HD-DVD are both examples of how this expensive problem plays out in the marketplace.

Clearly there needs to be a compelling reason for anyone to adopt a new music format like SlotMusic and while the vendors talk about simplicity and ease of use, the true key feature is that the music is available in the common MP3 format without digital rights management (DRM) restrictions.

Market penetration of MP3 players demonstrates that people really like digital music, but having a collection of tiny, fragile chips as your music library? Doesn't seem like it's going to work.

Further, there's a classic pricing error in the positioning of SlotMusic too: at $14.99 suggested retail, it's compared to the suggested retail of CD music, but a quick glance at someone like Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN) shows that in fact almost all of the most popular CDs are $9.99. Why that price point? Because that's exactly how much an album's worth of music costs on the Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) iTunes Store too.

SanDisk's SlotMusic player. Notice the tiny card: that's the MicroSD device.

The only place I can find online that's selling SlotMusic music is consumer electronics powerhouse Best Buy.com (NYSE: BBY), for, yes, $14.99/gizmo. (Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) is supposed to come online with SlotMusic material within a week or two).

To be fair, while it appears that you need to buy a new SlotMusic player to enjoy this new medium, each actually includes a USB adapter, making it easy to read them on your computer or laptop device (and then, presumably, copy it to your Mp3 player). There are cheesy low-end SanDisk (Nasdaq: SNDK) players that are cheap at $19.99, but do you really want to buy another player?

Nonetheless, even with the included USB adapter, it's hard to imagine why anyone who is sufficiently plugged in to care about copying the material to their computer wouldn't just use one of the many online music stores, skipping the MicroSD device entirely. (and note that while many users are unhappy about the DRM limitations of music downloaded from the iTunes Store, there are plenty of alternatives)

I'm not alone in being down on the future chances of SlotMusic either. A quick spin through the blogosphere will reveal that GigaOM, The NY Times, NewsOK and Technologizer and Engadget all agree that SlotMusic is destined to fail, not succeed.

I can only wonder why savvy tech company SanDisk even bothered with this half-baked technological effort that doesn't address the cost of music, the percentage of the sale that goes to the artist, or the extraordinarily inefficient distribution channels and costs imposed therein. A way to distribute and sell CDs for $4.99, where $1 would go to the artist would be revolutionary.

A SlotMusic MicroSD physical distribution device for music in the age of digital downloads that retains the $14.99 collection of songs from popular artists is dead on arrival.

How do you use social media to promote your business online?

A friend of mine sent me the following question:

"What sites do you use / recommend using to promote content (i.e. blogs, articles, etc.)? I'm re-tooling our business website and blog, and want to make sure I get the most effective (popular?) ones, along the lines of Technorati, Digg, etc. Your answers will help me pick the buttons I'll use..."

I have heard this same basic question again and again as I have gone to different conferences and it's one I think about too: how do you use all this stuff in a coherent fashion?

There are definitely some people who say "you should just do it all" and some of them even have a presence on dozens of social media sites. To me, that's not a viable answer because most people -- myself included -- want to focus on their core business, not the promotional tools. It's like someone who forgets that in addition to nice print ads, their restaurant still needs to serve a good meal. Not a good long term strategy, needless to say!

My view of things is that you need to have both a "destination" and pointers to that destination in the online world. Further, I believe that each of the major social networks (e.g., Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, etc.) is its own little universe and that you need to have some sort of presence on each of these where your potential customers participate. (let me explain that a bit further: if you have a restaurant, yes, you should have a presence on MySpace. If you're a lawyer, however, LinkedIn is more likely to be your core constituency).

Your destination is where you tell the story, where you sell your product or service (gently, please), where you actually try to close the sale. My recommendation for this is a weblog (not surprisingly) where you can create search-engine friendly content and retain control of its design and presentation. I also recommend that you have a standalone blog, rather than using, say, the "notes" section on Facebook or the crude blogging tools available in MySpace.

Once you've created the destination content, it's time to think about what additional sites can help you promote and gain traffic. There are two categories of these: bookmarking sites like Digg and Delicious and separate universes like Facebook and MySpace.

For the former, there's a never-ending wrestling match between having them be valuable and having them be polluted by people trying to game the system. In particular, Digg has had a lot of growing pains in this regard and I've spoken with "top diggers" who candidly say that they sell their popularity: you want visibility on Digg? Pay them.

Nonetheless, if your audience is sufficiently tech savvy to know what these sites actually are, then there's no reason not to include a few of those bookmarking buttons. I suggest you include Digg, Delicious and StumbleUpon, or use a consolidation bookmark tool or widget like Socialtwist, which I'm using on my busy Ask Dave Taylor site.

Don't go crazy and list ten or more of these. There are sooooo many me-too bookmark sites but listing too many causes confusion for readers, the old "embarrassment of riches" problem. It's not going to gain you additional visibility.

In terms of separate universes, of the social networking sites (as opposed, as I said earlier, to bookmarking sites), I think almost everyone should have a meaningful presence on Facebook and if it's a professional product or service, LinkedIn. If your target demographic includes the under-18 crowd then you also need to be on MySpace.

On many of these sites you can automate things so that when you post a new blog entry it shows up on these sites too (for example, see my article about How to hook your blog RSS feed to your Facebook profile) which certainly makes life easy. Automation is good.

The problem is that I don't think that every single blog entry I write is appropriate for every social community within which I'm a participant, so my suggestion is that if you write something really good, manually promote it on the other sites too.

That's a perfect use of Twitter, for example: not to think of Twitter as a purely promotional channel (which will fail) but rather to intersperse an occasional pointer back to your core content with your other Twitter comments. This is exactly applicable to, for example, your Facebook status updates (ditto MySpace, LinkedIn, etc).

If your material includes video, YouTube can drive traffic, and if you've photographs or still images, putting them up on Flickr can produce yet another traffic stream.

Finally, after this crazy long entry, I will say that my plan for promoting this particular blog entry is to mention it on Twitter with a clickable URL link included, to post the same status message on Facebook and to write a brief summary - with "read more" link - and post it to my MySpace blog area. And, hopefully, a few of you will bookmark it too, but I don't pre-bookmark my own entries.

...and the fact that you're reading this shows that the strategy works, at least at some level. :-)

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Btw, if we haven't yet hooked up in these online worlds, you can find me online quickly and easily through Dave Taylor Online.

My busy, busy next seven days

It's good that I like being busy, because I sure am right now! Tomorrow morning I'm opening up the Thin Air Summit with the keynote address on "Finding a Voice: The evolution of personal media through history", then Monday afternoon I'm a judge for the Colorado Inventor's Showcase in Denver. A few days to recharge my batteries and Friday I'm back on the podium, offering up the keynote address for the Public Relations Society of America's Colorado Chapter meeting in Denver. My topic is "Social Media 1: Public Relations 0 - Understanding, tracking and managing the message in a highly connected world".

I'm also going to be moderating a (recorded) panel discussion for Blogger & Podcaster early next week, with author Michael Webb, ClickBank Director of Marketing Bob Dunlap, and blogging affiliate marketer Miles Baker, which I'm looking forward to quite a bit: they're just the right people to discuss the challenges of commodity marketing. (the discussion will be made available through Blogger & Podcaster magazine a few weeks later)

In the midst of all of this I'll have a complete change of pace by accompanying my delightful 4yo daughter on her class Martinmas lantern walk. If you don't know what that is, the holiday is based on the legend of St. Martin of Tours, who was born in 316. He's honored for having apocryphally sharing his cloak with a beggar and represents brotherliness. According to custom, as the days become shorter and the stars appear earlier, children would walk with lanterns through the streets singing. As the world grows darker, the inner light of man wants to shine forth. That's what I'll be doing mid-week.

Then it'll be right back to business and social media and the online world, 2008AD. Kinda Jekyll/Hyde, actually. Everyone who is a parent and businessperson, however, knows what that's like!

Sheesh. I think today I should just stay in bed and sleep, so I can be caught up for what's going to be a fun and exciting, but tiring, next seven days! I hope to see you at one or more of these events.

Malaria kills a child every thirty seconds...

A bit off my usual beaten track, but I'm a big proponent of much of the work that the United Nations does, especially through UNESCO and UNICEF. If you've read my writings for a while, you've probably seen me talk about this before, and if you've ever gotten an Intuitive Systems holiday card, you won't be surprised that they're all from UNICEF too.

Generally I feel that the United Nations is misunderstood and greatly maligned in the United States and that most people have no clue about the tremendous work that the organization does above and beyond the often empty pontification of the General Assembly. Fact is, though, the UN is trying to make the world a better place through so many different avenues it can make your head swim. From sexual abuse to childhood illnesses, poverty to giving downtrodden a political voice and control over their future, there's quite a bit going on every week at UN offices throughout the world.

This week marks a very interesting conference that's the subject of this blog post: The Safer Alternatives to DDT meeting in Geneva.

The UN release describes it thusly: "Some 80 delegates from governments, industry, research institutions and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) today kicked off a three-day United Nations-backed meeting in Geneva focusing on cost effective and environmentally-friendly alternatives to DDT, a controversial chemical used to control malaria."

What you might not realize about malaria is just what a major problem it is around the world. According to the US Center for Disease Control and World Health Organization, 300-500 million cases of malaria are reported annually and over one million people each year die of malaria.

Far more shocking is that in Africa, where it's rife and mostly affects younger children (as it does throughout the globe) a child dies from malaria every thirty seconds.

It's safe to say that, yes, malaria is a major health problem, and it's really amazing that in the 21st century when we have cellphones with more technological capabilities than the original Apollo lander and a global Internet that makes sharing information unbelievably simple and efficient that a disease transmitted by mosquitoes remains such a plague around the planet.

If you're a cool-hearted businessperson and can read these statistics without any sort of emotional reaction, think about this: "Because malaria causes so much illness and death, the disease is a great drain on many national economies. Since many countries with malaria are already among the poorer nations, the disease maintains a vicious cycle of disease and poverty."

Break these cycles of poverty and the world will unquestionably be a safer and better place.

This is the perfect example of a diseases where a vaccine would be a good solution (certainly better than DDT) but, as the CDC explains: "There is currently no malaria vaccine approved for human use. The malaria parasite is a complex organism with a complicated life cycle. Its antigens are constantly changing and developing a vaccine against these varying antigens is very difficult. In addition, scientists do not yet totally understand the complex immune responses that protect humans against malaria. However, many scientists all over the world are working on developing an effective vaccine. Because other methods of fighting malaria, including drugs, insecticides, and bed nets, have not succeeded in eliminating the disease, the search for a vaccine is considered to be one of the most important research projects in public health."

I urge you to take a few minutes off today to think about the plague of malaria and what you can do to help out. Perhaps it's a donation (there are a number of charities focused on breaking the malaria cycle), perhaps its just praying for a cure and for the souls of the twenty or thirty African children that died while you were reading this blog.

In this day and age when we seem to focus most of our attention on a small number of big issues, I find it helpful to expand my mind and my attention by remembering the less glamorous problems we all face too.

Subway seized for want of a $2919 tax payment

I don't know if this is a harbinger of things to come, or whether it's just someone whose franchise dreams died, but yesterday at the Flatiron Crossing Mall in Broomfield, Colorado, I was struck by the rather alarming sign on the door of the local Subway franchise, as shown to the right.

As it happens, I had been in that particular Subway franchise and had a conversation with the owner about his experience as a franchise business owner. He was, like so many people are, retired from another profession and had invested in the Subway franchise because he thought it would be a sure fire way to make money and have a half-time job as he went into his retirement. As I recall he wasn't that old (late 40s?) but it's a very common story in the industry.

Problem was, as he explained, he didn't quite make enough to be able to hire other people to work: by doing the work himself, he avoided taxes, health care and wages, so it was a cross he was bearing, working 60+ hours/week trying to keep the business afloat.

As the sign attests, he didn't succeed and the business is not afloat, it's down in Davey Jones locker with all the other failed businesses and franchise opportunities.

What most struck me was how little he owed: $2919.00:

That was enough, however, that when he missed six weeks of tax payments to the City, Broomfield seized the business and shut him down.

Peeking inside, it's clear everything's been moved around and inventoried, and indeed, the auction house that's going to sell off hardware and equipment to try and recoup the lost tax payments has a business card on the window:

Certainly, one company's failure is another company's opportunity.

I see this as a cautionary tale and can't but feel for the owner of this particular Subway sandwich shop. He went into it with his dreams and hopes for a brighter tomorrow and somehow, year after year, the dream slipped away, it became harder and harder to make ends meet, and finally, one day, he just didn't open up shop again. He walked away. And then The Man came and for want of less than $3000 in taxes, took away any chance for him to resurrect it and come out ahead.

With that in mind, how's your business doing? Are you realistically, pragmatically assessing its state, or are you living in dreamland as your dreams slip through your fingers too?

Join us at the Thin Air Summit, get my book for free!

I'm very excited to not only have been involved in the planning process for the upcoming Thin Air Summit, coming next month in Denver at the beautiful downtown Sheraton, but to also be invited to give the opening keynote talk for the event too.

My talk is titled Finding a Voice: The evolution of personal media through history and my (working) description is:

New media isn't new at all. Whether it's a hand-cranked printer hidden in the basement, a bootleg radio station or a can of spray paint, people's need to express themselves and make an impact on their community has been a pervasive part of history. What is new is that we, the public, ARE the media too now, and that your blog might well have a greater readership than a traditional media outlet controlled by a homogenizing corporation like Clear Channel. We'll look at these topics and explore the key questions of What's going on?  How did we get here?  And how can you gain more influence in this ever-changing marketplace?

Sound interesting? I hope so!

In addition to my keynote, we also have my friend and colleague Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester Research giving the second day keynote too, entitled "The Future of Media in the Social/Digital Age", which I'm eager to hear: he's very plugged in to trends and forecasting with his position at Forrester.

Additional speakers and sessions are shown on the Thin Air Summit site, so you can read 'em yourself.

What I want to announce here is that I'm offering a special promotion: the first twenty people who sign up for the Thin Air Summit using the special registration code "dave" will get a free signed copy of my book Growing Your Business With Google. That's a good deal, and doubly so if you're joining us!

I hope this serves as a good additional incentive to join us Nov 8-9 2008 at the Sheraton Denver for the Thin Air Summit!

Microsoft Zune versus Apple iPod: Components don't make a gadget valuable!

I'm a bit baffled by this query I got from a PR agent who is working on the Microsoft Zune account:

"Between November 2006 and May 2008 Apple iPods have outsold Microsoft Zunes 38: 1. Has America chosen the best device? As the economy takes a turn for the worse, it is important for consumers to truly understand the value of a purchase. What are you getting for your money?

I have an electronics expert who can comment on the quality of each device (iPod and Zune). Aaron Vronko has recently disassembled the 4th generation iPod Nano, the 2nd generation iPod touch, the iPod Classic 120 GB, the Zune 120GB, and the Zune Flash to determine which device is in fact a better value."

I'm really trying to figure out the logic behind this query. I mean, the value of a consumer electronics product is not the sum value of its components, so what's the point of offering up an "expert" who has torn all of these gizmos apart?

Zune Internals (Image credit: zunerama.com)

It's like saying that the value of one book is greater than another because it has more pages and more words. Last I checked, however, people don't buy books because of their word count.

In terms of the Zune versus the iPod, the components are almost completely irrelevant. People don't say "I was going to buy an iPod but when I found out that the audio plug isn't robust, I bought a Zune instead".

Am I wrong? Do you care about value of the components inside your electronic gizmo or gadget? More to the point, perhaps, would you be more likely to buy a Microsoft Zune player if you knew it had better quality components inside than a comparable Apple iPod?

Public Relations in the Age of Blogging: Good Pitch, Bad Pitch

Just so happens that in my mailbox I have two lovely examples of how public relations professionals in different agencies are trying to work with bloggers, one that I believe is a poor example of how to pitch, and one that's spot-on good. I have scrubbed the names clean because it's not about the specific agency as much as the concepts here. As usual, I also have my editorial commentary like this as we go along.

Ready? Here we gooooooo....

First off, here's the initial pitch I, a daddy blogger based in Colorado, received, about a children's book signing event:

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I am following up on a previous email and my voicemail today regarding the below (and attached) event at Bloomingdales which will be taking place tomorrow.

Do you think this is something you would be interested in covering for your blog?

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Huh? Why would I care about something going on 1700 miles away, something with a 24 hour deadline? She didn't have information "below" within the text of the email she sent me either, making me have to open an attachment to even remember what we're talking about. I asked just that question...

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Nice contact, but what makes you think I’d be interested? Did you go and read my parenting blog, or am I in a contact database you have?

With regards,

Dave Taylor

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to which she responded

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Hi Dave,

Thank you for getting back to me.

We read your parenting blog and thought you may be interested in covering as it is an event geared towards children.

Do you think this is something you would be interested in?

---

I will give her points for consistency, but if she read my parenting blog she'd know that I wouldn't give a hoot about a promotional event in Manhattan on my weblog. In fact, I almost never write about anything that I'd get from a publicist or PR person. I do, however, occasionally review things, which could have been her angle (e.g. mailing me a copy of the book in question), but wasn't.

Now, contrast that with this other pitch, made to someone else, not me, by Lisa at Metzger Associates:

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Subject: CSG Systems CEO would like to talk to you

Dear Jeff,

I'm the Lisa Everitt perhaps best known in the Rocky business department as the person for whom Joe Nacchio autographed a can of paint in 1999. That was a bizarre era. Now I work for Metzger Associates. Did the paint make its way to the new building?

Peter Kalan, the new CEO of CSG Systems, would like to sit down with you, on the phone or in person at their office, to talk about CSG's broader outlook beyond billing, statements and customer service support for cable and DBS companies. He's available the week of Oct. 13, specifically Tuesday 10/14 and Friday 10/17. If those days don't
work for you, we will wrangle calendars until something does.

As you know, CSG has been an influential company in the national and local cable scene, with customers that include Comcast, Time-Warner, Charter Communications and a raft of smaller players.

What's new with CSG Systems...

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[Dave again] What Lisa's done here is explain who she is, remind Jeff of a previous interact they've had, then succinctly detail exactly what the pitch is and why it should be of interest. It takes a total of, what, 15 seconds to skim this and identify the who, what, where, when and why. That's respectful and always appreciated.

Contrast that with the email I received from the other PR person, who had none of that useful information readily accessible in her email. The only thing she included was a rather naggy reminder that she'd already emailed me and left me voicemail (which I don't actually appreciate, as it happens). How much better for her to have said "To remind you, I'm talking about person X from company Y doing event Z and inviting you to ..."

But even there, the pitch never included "would you like to interview my client?" or "would you like a copy of the book for review?" or anything that suggested that I, as a blogger presumably sufficiently interesting to be on her short list, was anyone more than an additional one-way publicity channel.

This is, as I said in the beginning, a bad way to pitch bloggers or anyone else. A journalist wouldn't be impressed either.

Meanwhile, you'll note that even with this posting I still haven't offered up much information about the event at Bloomingdale's. Because... I just don't have a clue about what's going on. Still.

So you tell me. Good pitch? Bad pitch?

Disney, Sloppy PR and "do you have a degree?"

A while back I wrote a piece about sloppy PR from Disney Corporation and it's sat there for a while, garnering comment and thoughts.

Today I got one that I thought was particularly interesting, from Kate Runyan:

"I am curious about your comments about Disney's sloppy PR. I am interning there and trying to learn as much about it as I can... from every point of view. Do you hold any degrees and if so, what field? I hope to hear from you via e-mail as soon as you get a chance out of your busy day. Thank you so much! Cheers!"

Let me tell you a bit about the original article, then answer Kate's question and make some observations about how she's structured her query...

Basically, I got a clumsy pitch from Disney's Family.com travel team that started out "Dear Apparanting, I'm contacting you to let you know about a new travel site Disney Family.com needs your help promoting!"

Even pasting it here, you can see how clumsy and lame this is. 30 seconds of work (scroll to bottom, see © notice) would have revealed my name as the author of the parenting blog, but they didn't do that. That's a cardinal sin in blogger/PR relations.

The pitch was also ridiculously long and clueless about what motivates people to want to help you join a publicity effort without pay. For example, how different it would have been if they said "We know you travel with kids: can we send you a book that highlights how to travel more easily next time?" or "We'd like to invite you to be a Disney.com VIP by helping us spread the word" or "we're focused on making travel more green. If you help us, we'll donate $20 to Plant A Tree" or, well, you get the idea.

However loved the brand, people don't generally help a commercial business out of a sense of philanthropy or noblesse oblige. Like anything else, you need to give them an incentive and of all professionals, Public Relations pros should know this. And a big corporation like Disney can afford to hire the best. That's why I wrote about that in the first place.

So, Kate, I'm glad you asked me how and why I thought the pitch was clumsy. I hope I've addressed that here. What I also want to ask you is why do you care if I have any degrees?

As it happens, I do. A BA in Computer Science, Masters in Education and an MBA. But I think it's dangerous to suggest that one person's feedback is more or less important than another's simply on the basis of how much they've spent for their education. Uh, how much they studied. Um, well, you know what I mean. :-)

Then again, PR is a profession where I think you have to create heirarchies to survive. If there's no "A List" and no "key media outlets" then it's all a quantitative game and sending out a $200 prweb release might just be more valuable with its 300 links from press release archive sites than $10,000 on pro PR to get a small mention in the Washington Post. Hmmmm.....

Anyway, dear reader, what do you think? Was Disney sloppy in its original email to me and was Kate demonstrating a perhaps dangerously hierarchical mind in her query?

YOU can help out with the DonorsChoose Blogger Challenge

First things first: I ask that you forego your next latté or bagel and instead donate a few dollars to this very worthy cause, helping out teachers and kids throughout the United States. Easily done, just click on the "Colorado Bloggers Challenge" text in the ad graphic below:

Now, let me tell you how this ended up here and in my sidebar too: My good friend Micah Baldwin of Lijit asked me to add it. Well, he asked a couple of us Colorado bloggers and we've all added the widget with the hopes we can raise some serious cash for a worthy cause.

I asked Micah for the back story on his relationship with DonorsChoose, and here's what he explained...

About a year ago, I was beginning to read VC and tech blogs. During that time, I came across Fred Wilson's blog. I had no idea who Fred Wilson was, other than a lot of people seem to read his blog. He was linked to Brad Feld, and Brad was someone I trusted, so I assumed Fred's content was equally trustworthy.

For a period of time, as I read Fred's blog, I began to find most of the content pretty interesting and on topics that I found interesting.

Then one day he had a post about joining a "blogger's challenge" by DonorsChoose. I was a new blogger, and was just learning what a widget was, etc., plus the power of blogging.

Having been an educational fundraiser for years early in my career (mostly colleges and universities), I always have held any philanthropic effort to help education in high regard, so I took a closer look at DonorsChoose.

It's a really interesting charity. It allows teachers to self-identify things that are important to them. So music teachers will choose things like new guitar stands, a history teacher might select a trip to a local museum, an English teacher might select a series of books. Then individuals can contribute to whichever cause they find particularly interesting. The amount doesn't matter, and the contributor can designate the entire donation to go directly to the cause (with DonorsChoose getting zero).

I decided to participate and help Fred out. It didn't hurt that the winning blogger would get a lunch date with Jerry Yang, which Fred had decided to give to the participant who provided the best reason for giving. My dad, having recently retired from Stanford University, would love to have lunch with Jerry, so I jumped in.

DonorsChoose allows you to pick a school by geography, and I was very excited to see that my middle school, Morrill Middle School in San Jose, CA had a fundable project. So I sent in a small amount ($500 I think), to fund that project.

Fred did win the lunch with Jerry, and selected someone extremely worthy to get the lunch, but I had found a site that I felt had all the pieces of a biz that could make a real difference. And over the next year, I made several donations, usually in the name of a family member. (In fact, for Christmas, I gave everyone a donation in their name rather than gifts.)

A couple of weeks back, I got an email from Kris Murray, DonorsChoose's Deputy Director, Northwest Region. She happened to be from Colorado and was out visiting family. She asked if we could connect, and, like a good Boulderite, we met over coffee.

She told me that DonorsChoose was going to have another Bloggers Challenge this year. She asked me to join Fred, Robert Scoble, Mike Arrington, Kara Swisher and others in the challenge. I knew that I would never be very effective on my own, so I offered to help in any way I can, which I knew was getting more people involved than just me.

In truth, its one of the best parts of the technology scene in Colorado. We are all more than happy to help one another. Unlike the coasts, where often the individual is the center, in Colorado its is usually a collective effort. TechStars is a great example of that. Lijit is a great example of that.

So, I asked the premier bloggers in the state: you, Brad Feld, Seth Levine, Ryan McIntire, Jason Mendelson, Andrew Hyde, Alex King and David Cohen; created a giving page called the Colorado Bloggers Challenge, and asked everyone to join in.

I am glad to see that everyone has decided to be part of the effort.

Thanks for the kind words, Micah, and thank you, dear reader, for your efforts to help us raise some serious money for DonorsChoose. Spread the word!