According to a survey co-published by the BullDog Reporter and Peppercom Strategic Communications, in which over 1100 PR executives were polled, it seems while the majority acknowledge the power of blogging in communications, there continues to be a shocking disconnect with their actions.

Yes, you can file this under “talking a good game”, because the results show that while most PR executives believe in the blogging as an effective tool to share information quickly and broadly (UK 70%, US 80%), and have a role in influencing public opinion and decision making (UK 60, US 70%), the majority do not have a blogging policy (UK 82%, US 88%), and only around a third blog for their own company or clients (UK36%, US 37%).

Being immersed in the technosphere, you’re almost of the opinion that public relations companies are dying to get in front of the next big media trend for fear of looking like they’re too late to the party.

I think, what with all the hype news about Second Life we hear about (cough, cough *Crayon!), or the hubaloo around social news media releases, for tech watchers it represents a very small slice of the PR industry pie … at least that which is actually being practiced.
What does this represent? Well beyond the fear that getting into a new technologies, it may represent a fundamental disconnect between what blogging means to public relations and traditional marketing types.  Its old hat to anyone that follows “new media” news, but all of that stuff which is repeated so often it borders on “buzz” and on the edge of hackneyed such as “the customer is in control” — well, in the case of blogging, its actually true.
For marketing types who actually “get it”, it looks like a period of opportunity — the only trick, of course, is “getting it right”.

Steve O’Hear, whose blog you should read over at ZDnet on the Social Web, innocently picked up on my post yesterday, and innocently tried to run a poll about whether or not Top Diggers should be paid. Mr. O’Hear catalogued his adventures with interest, because after he set it up, he submitted it (he uses the word “dugg”, but “dugg” is more commonly used to describe “voting” … at least, that’s how I describe it). He goes on to describe what happened next:

Predictably the story quickly gathered momentum (Digg’s users enjoy stories about Digg), and after approximately 90 Diggs and 40 comments it had hit the front page …

(The odd thing is it still shows up in my profile as the only story I’ve submitted that has ever made it to the homepage.)

Now I know I’ve previously described Digg as a broken democracy, but I’ve never thought of it as a dictatorship. So what had just happened?

It turns out that my submission had been buried, but by who?

Based on this, it could simply be that Digg’s algorithm had just kicked into action; though it’s hard to understand why a story that’s been dugg 90 times in a few hours and has over 40 comments, can hit the front page before it gets buried.

Alternatively, did I witness Digg’s moderators in action?

No, Mr. O’Hear, all you saw was the Bury Brigade in action.

The “Bury Brigade” is a pejorative term that describes a group of like minded individuals of varying connections who are bound formally or informally by a desire to NOT see certain stories on Digg.

Some groups hate the thought of blogs appearing as submissions, because they believe all blog posts to be “spam”; others, don’t want to see Apple stuff, and will bury that as “lame”; others yet, will have political agendas, liberterian, republican, or democrat, and will actively start marking down as bury-able any post to the contrary.

The most notorious group of individuals making up the “Bury Brigade” were gents (and possibly ladies) who believed that the top30 diggers were gaming Digg and monopolizing the front page, about 2 months ago. There was an active movement to quickly bury any story submitted by them, without any regard for what the content of the submission was.

Of course, the largest group of people who blindly bury posts are Digg boosters and supporters, who bury everything in site that is not positive about Digg.

In more than one circumstance posts on this blog have been submitted (and not even by me), for them to get a hardy number of votes, only for them to last about 90-120 minutes before getting buried.

Mr. O’Hear says “its hard to understand why a story that’s been dugg 90 times in a few hours and has over 40 comments can hit the front page before it gets buried” — in fact, that’s probably the fastest way to get buried, as that way it will get exposed to the most people (perhaps hundreds every minute during peak hours), and therefore, the most exposure to people who have grudges and agendas.

Here’s a few pages out of my own experience.

If you search for “deepjiveinterests” for the past 7 days, you will see there are no results.

In fact, to find them, you have to switch the “buried stories” radio button “on”.

Both of these stories, in 7 days, were submitted two other diggers, got a significant amount of diggs, reached the front page, and were promptly buried.

Its no surprise that both of them are critical of Digg in some fashion — and my cynical heart was not surprised that they got buried as they did. In fact,
If you would like to see the kind of vitriol that some of Kevin’s supporters have, don’t hesitate to visit this Digg page, where the DiggNation was out in force. The funniest comment was someone calling me a “turd burglar”.

No Steve, what happened to your submission was something that will happen with EVERY submission that is potentially critical of Digg that happens to reach the front page — it will get buried. Itt wasn’t the result of an algorithmic change, and it wasn’t a moderator change either (although I wish they would act as quickly — some notes on how they need to be much sharper can be found over here).

It was the Digg community doing what it does best.

Insulating itself from criticism.

tip: Mathew Ingram

[Of course, the REAL story will be when a bury brigade buries so many of a mainstream blog’s stories — for whatever reason — that it gets the URL of that mainstream blog or news site banned automatically as “Spam” … and the blog owner tries to get it re-instated. The adventures of a certain John Chow showed that Digg doesn’t check what URL gets banned, and relies on the community, possibly with an agenda, and its algorithms to show the way. The NYTimes.com getting banned? It could happen! Wikiality, indeed.]

Well, after some thought, I am staying with the BlogHerald after all. There’s no question that there were some mistakes made in the transition, but with the direction that the BlogHerald is taking next, I think it is the best fit for what I’m looking to do in the next little while along with DeepJiveInterests.

In fact, I think all my bitching and bellyaching towards the BlogHerald and their new staff may have landed me a move up from “writer”, as I have been appointed assistant editor with Abe Olandres of Yugatech. Things are still new, but hopefully in the new year you’ll really get an idea of where the BlogHerald is going (cough cough! Its going to get a little International).

Of course, I will still be blogging here at DeepJiveInterests as well, keeping it as “fresh” and “authentic” as possible (did anyone else groan? Those two words that are quickly moving into the ‘hackneyed’ part of my dictionary) as much as I can about whatever I can. This includes Digg (of course), web2.0 hypocrisy, web app beta reviews, my own snarky opinion, and of course the BlogHerald, which will not escape my itchy blogging finger.

(I wonder if that now means this is a ‘corporate blog’?)

For example, although Mark Saunders had the best of intentions, I have no qualms in saying that the transition was done atrociously from a personal and blogger point of view. It was kept in secret, it was drawn out, and the leadership was frustratingly vague. We were all used to Matt’s hands-on-approach, and what were we dealt with? An at-arms distance ownership with some new management not used to the blogging culture at the Blog Herald.

Coupled with a curiously exuberant (well, from an North American-o-centric, view, baffling) crowd of Filipino fans dropping by to support the new management, and sometimes not in English, its all enough to make things dizzying to say the least.

Although mistakes were made, I can promise you a more mature and responsive BH is evolving starting today. In addition to contributing regularly, I see my role in terms of bridging the old guard to the new. Abe and Angelo have their own followings, but they are pro bloggers in their own right — just from the other side of the hemisphere that I’m from. They’ll be bringing their own experiences with successes, and before I choke on another buzzword, “diversity”, I think you’ll be seeing that in spades as well.

(in the ironic form of “diversity”, you will note that Abe, Angelo and myself are all Asian).

The future is still wide and big enough to support many blogs, and by expanding our focus and our blogger roster, there will be some interesting things to come.

But, as they say, the proof of the pudding is in the tasting.

If anyone has questions about the BlogHerald, you can reach me at my contact form on this website, and I reply to any questions within 12-24h, and often times, much sooner.

More BH’ish updates to come, and you can always check this website out for issues and details behind the scenes, warts and all — whether Mark likes it or not. ;)

Cheers,
Tony Hung.

PS. thanks for all the kind well wishes from everyone … its hard to imagine so many people noticed or cared!

It seems like there is a long running meme in the blogosphere about gaming Digg, and it even made it as an article on CNet the other day (despite a few inaccuracies). Despite the controversy, there is one thing that Kevin Rose has always maintained — that Diggers have never, and will never, get paid — mostly because he feels it would create an unfair sense of hierarchy in social networks, as said at the Future of Web Apps this past September. Jay Adelson has also echoed similar sentiments (although he admitted they were worth more than t-shirts).

Well, in spite of that rhetoric, it may come to absolutely no surprise that in talks with some Diggers, I have learned that some of themare routinely being spammed emailed with unsolicited requests from private companies to help them submit and promote their own stories., in exchange for money. The frequency is in around once a week or perhaps even more frequently, and is as inelegant as the following:

My name is xxxx and I have been recently promoted as xxxx at xxxx. Our company sells xxxxx . My job is to get people interested in our site, but my problem is that I have not had any success. While searching the web for possible business partners, I started to read about Digg and its popularity…that’s where you come into play. Given the fact that you are the xxxxx user at the website as well as xxxxx, I am contacting you to see if I can somehow recruit you to start getting the word out about our service.

Please check us out, see what you think and get back to me.

More shocking, perhaps, is that some Diggers have taken up some of these offers at sums that are shockingly modest. Some of the payments are structured as retainers, a set fee per month, and in other cases, they are structured much more like a pay per submission, with bonuses if a story makes it to the front page.

The rationale behind these mercenary dealings?

Again, it didn’t surprise me.

When questioned, one Digger said something to the effect of “they were things I was going to submit anyway — and if Kevin Rose isn’t going to pay me for my time, maybe someone else will“.

It sort of reminds me of the backdealings in some 3rd world countries; because officials are paid so little, they’re functions are effectively for sale — not because they’re inherently corrupt, but because the system either cannot or will not compensate them enough to make their jobs worthwhile for them.

Kevin Rose has gone on record about NOT paying diggers because he’s afraid of creating a fundamental sense of inequity between some diggers (the ones who would be paid) and the rest.

The irony, of course, is that there is already a fundamental sense of inequity between diggers, and this was shown by the simple ranking of Diggers — and the fact that top diggers’s submissions and votes are worth more than Diggers who just joined up. Changes in the algorithm has changed this somewhat, but the principle is still the same.

And if that’s not a hierarchy within a social network, what is? (more…)

It looks like Edelman has released push-button web-tool that will allow their clients to automagically create social media press releases. Is this a good idea? I think the answer is a little more complicated than a simple “yes” or “no”. The real answer lies in what the nature of Social Media really is — and how misunderstanding it or ignoring it can lead to the opposite effect of what your press release was really supposed to do.

Where do I get off on talking about social press releases?

Since the whole Edelman-Walmart thing broke a few months ago, the idea of PR and social media is an intriguing issue for me. Afterwards, for example, I had a chance to blog about a PR firm AND web2.0 issues with how Shift communications had counseled Mothersclick, prior to their hissy fit at TechCrunch (message was “don’t do it” — but they seemed to be obsessed with TechCrunch as their big white whale). It all ended amicably, but at the time (which was about a month ago or more), I noticed that Shift Communications had already released one of the first “Social Media Press Release” templates earlier in the spring (May, to be precise).

You can download it over here (caution: pdf!). Basically, its a template so that companies can break up their press release into specific areas that are easy to read; there is a ‘boilerplate’ section, an ‘text approved by CEO section’, but what is also interesting (which, I suppose, makes it a “social media” press release), is that there are areas where the press release is meant to include areas which include links to Digg, Reddit and so on. And, there are areas where the release is meant to link to a potential podcasts and so on as well, in addition, to a customized del.icio.us bookmark.

Now this template seems like a great cheat sheet if you were a PR guy who doesn’t know a thing about social media. Having said that, I think that the template, like all cheet sheets, are dangerous if you don’t know what you’re doing. Quite frankly, it could be a disaster.

Is disaster too strong word? Well, ask Richard Edelman.

At the risk of flogging a dead horse (pun intended), I think its worthwhile examining in a quick post portem on what transpired a few months ago.

In spite of having the resources of a world wide PR firm behind him and the biggest of A+ clients underneath his gilded wings, Mr. Edelman made a huge blunder (some would say “disastrous”) in the social media realm that got tons of negative coverage for weeks; it even got covered in the mainstream press and trade journals. At the end of the day, it resulted in a review of Edelman by the Word of Mouth Marketing Association, and it will probably be the fodder of case studies and textbooks for years to come.

There are probably lots of lessons to be learned out of that whole PR mess — but clearly one of the biggest ones is that social media is a very powerful and new tool; companies are trying to harness “viral marketing” with tools so new, that very few in the industry can say with confidence they can use them effectively all (or most) of the time.

Unfortunately, the tool is a double edged weapon — while there are home runs (the Dove YouTube compaign, also done by Edelman, I think), there are also some spectacular disasters (Walmart Flog).

The very long winded point is this: cheat sheets are only any good when you’ve already got the knowledge to use them as a shortcut.

(more…)

For those of you with your Christmas tree and ornaments are already up, either in the home or in the office (or maybe, in the home office) FYI: those ornaments may degrade your Wi-Fi signal by as much as 25%.  Other interesting effects ornaments may have is that they may decrease your signal distance by 10%, and given the uneven environment in your home / office, there are drops of an extra 5% that are possible as well.

So my question is — what causes the biggest interfence?  The dancing santa, the blinking Christmas lights, or that boxed robodinosaur underneath the tree?

tip: Engadget. 

The body of James Kim, a senior CNet editor who left to find help two days ago after he and his family had been stranded in the Oregon wilderness for more than a week has been found today with the help of helicopters. Mr. Kim’s family was rescued with little wear or tear two days ago, and CNet has further details of the Kim family ordeal, but suffice it to say, its a sheer tragedy.

Sadly, it seems like when news like this breaks over the blogosphere, there don’t seem to be any happy endings; Rob Scoble and Shel Israel wrote about a similar tragedy in their book, Naked Conversations, about an individual lost to the wilderness, which found its way to the blogosphere and through it, the mainstream media.

I didn’t know James Kim, but he seemed like a great guy, and the-every-geek who made good on a major tech network. There are other things floating around the blogosphere this afternoon, but today, my prayers are with him and his family.