Or, press release, for that matter. This past week, Adobe announced that it was opening up parts of its Flex platform under an open source license, with the intent to release its entire code sometime by the end of the year. Pretty interesting stuff, right? Somewhat important, no?
But you know how the tech community found out?
Through a video interview by Robert Scoble on PodTech.
If you monitored the blogging / news-osphere thereafter, a number of other posts started to surface, with Adobe’s official release over here.
But, ironically, the most useful post, I found, was neither of these posts (it was Nik Cubrilovic’s over at TechCrunch).
In fact, I found the entire situation frustating because:
- I knew Flex was important
- I’m not geeked up technically savvy enough to know what Flex was
- In general, I need information fast
- I didn’t feel like trawling through different posts to find out what I wanted to know
What would have been really nice would have been a central repository for some nice, quick, facts in an every-day kind of language, with a bunch of *annotated* links to a variety of important resources on the web, such as interviews, videos, opinions, and examples.
Wait — I just described a social media news room! This is an idea that was championed by Todd Defren of SHIFT Communications a little while ago, and I think it might have been useful in Flex’s launch. Really Useful.
Here’s why.
Listen, I think its great that Adobe decided to go “cutting edge” with a video interview on PodTech. Scoble’s got a huge audience, and on the whole, has their attention because of the credibility he’s got.
But did anyone not find it terribly ironic that the news was all about going “open source”, while the content on the interview was “locked” into the video? I’m stretching the metaphor here, but what I mean is that it was simply maddening that the bloody show had no show notes!
Sure, there’s an argument to be made that “if they’re interested they’ll watch all the way through — and that’s good for PodTech and Adobe”. But isn’t that a kind of command-and-control attitude that is the anti-thesis of the “transparency” and “open-source” ethos?
I still haven’t watched the interview, not because its *bad* per se, but I just don’t have the time to sit down and watch something for 25 minute when I could glean the same information (which is all I’m looking for — *information*) in less than two on a single, well constructed site.
And I think this is where Adobe really could have gotten it together.
Rather (or, perhaps, in *addition* to stringing) together a traditional press release over here, which is full of jargony technical speak, forcing people to find *other* resources online, it could create a single page with a few simple lines describing a) what the technology was and b) why its important, and add a whole bunch of annotated links to other important resources on the web.
I think the word “annotated” is important, because rather than just a long list of links, it gives the reader some idea of what each link means, and more importantly, how it contributes to the over all message of the page.
Robert Scoble’s interview, for example is more than just a “PodTech Interview”, but rather “Robert Scoble Interviews David Wadhwani, VP Engineering and Ely Greenfield, Flex Architect” and another sentence or three on why its important, or different, or why it adds to the “conversation”. Other examples?
- How about Michael Cote’s extensive video and analysis over what Flex means?
- What about how one of Adobe’s own senior engineers feels about Flex going open sourcem, over at Kuwamoto.org?
- How about a man-on-the-street perspective from a long time Flash developer, over at ZeusLabs?
The best part? It doesn’t need to be static. Like any good “new media” document it could be an evolving “document”, with new links added all the time as more stuff comes on board.
Now, the scary part is exactly what new media pundits will be clamoring over, which is that there’s nothing’s authentic about this kind of bit of communication, where’s the conversation, and for the love of pete, why not just start a blog?!
Hey, I love blogging just as much as the next man / woman / person, but as you can see in Flex’s case, sometimes it just makes no sense. Starting a blog for the purposes of promoting “awareness” about a product seems fairly disingenuous, and furthermore, while there’s an argument to be made for starting a product/service oriented blog at *the beginning*, you can see here that Adobe wanted to keep things under wraps for a little while.
Note — they didn’t want to *lie* … but they wanted to keep things secret.
I think I see the flip side of this. If done the “right” way, social media news rooms (or press releases) allows for the congregation of *many* different kinds of voices, and yes, if it sticks to the transparent and open source ethos, it would even list dissenting opinions as well. Furthermore, its something that stays on a host company’s site, and would not be something “pushed” on to journalists (or bloggers), but rather, something more of a resource.
Having blogs is good. Having video is good. Podcasts are useful as well, in their own way. The announcement of Flex was interesting in the seemingly haphazard way it was done, and I think, might have served as a great example of what social news room could be. Furthermore, given the kind of technology that they were dealing with and the kinds of opinions that were proliferating in and around the blogosphere, I think it would have really been a great opportunity for Adobe. Since they didn’t have a “Flex” blog, it would have been an opportunity to at least *collect* important opinions, so as to acknowledge the conversations that were going on in a way that would have been helpful to everyone.
Resources:
- Todd Defren’s Social Media News Room Template [pdf]
- NeatReceipts: An example of a SMNR (a client of SHIFT Communications)
- GM Europe: Another example of SMNR
- Marcom Blog: The case against SMNR’s wild proliferation
- A recent forum on Social Media Press Releases (a cousin of SMNR), courtesy of Brian Solis
15 Comments
I’m sure you’re all up to speed now, but I thought I’d point out that Adobe created a more informative page on Adobe Labs that is a little less press release-like. There’s a FAQ, information on system requirements, and links to information about the MPL.
[hmm, I found this item within an hour of publishing, and Josh's comment subsequently came through the moderation queue, but it's four hours later and I want to get out of the house, so please delete this duplicate if the original wasn't actually lost-in-transit, thanks.]
Hi Tony, thanks for the post, I’ve already flagged it for attention by my partners. Here are some resources which may have gotten buried in the resulting conversation:
Info on the Open Flex announcement itself:
http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Flex:Open_Source
http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Flex:Open_Source:FAQ
“What is Flex?” (varied resources, ways of looking):
http://www.adobe.com/products/flex/
Annotated links:
http://weblogs.macromedia.com/jd/archives/2007/04/open_flex_links.cfm
http://weblogs.macromedia.com/jd/archives/2007/04/open_flex_links_1.cfm
http://weblogs.macromedia.com/jd/archives/2007/04/open_flex_links_2.cfm
http://weblogs.macromedia.com/jd/archives/2007/04/open_flex_links_3.cfm
http://weblogs.macromedia.com/jd/archives/2007/04/open_flex_links_4.cfm
jd/adobe
The “news” was NOT just released through my video. They talked with dozens of journalists and had dozens of news articles out. They also had text information that explained what was done.
The video interview goes a lot further and lets you see the people behind the decision and hear it FROM THEIR OWN MOUTHS. I think that’s valueable. But, you didn’t need to watch the video to understand what the news was. In fact, seems that you got the point of what they announced pretty damn well without watching my video.
Ryan Stewart, for instance, posted the news at the same time as me, and then linked to everyone else too. He was faster than TechCrunch was too.
JD’s links were even better. And the Adobe links he put up were up BEFORE my video went up. So, no one needed to watch the video I put up to get the news. That all said, you should watch the second video I did — the one about Flash Architecture. I think it does a better job of explaining what the Flash ecosystem does and what was open sourced than any of the text I’ve read. But then I’m an auditory learner. Some things are easier to grok when you hear them or see them than by reading. At least for me.
The video you should take time to watch is this one: http://www.podtech.net/scobleshow/technology/1465/the-architecture-of-flash
It goes into the architecture and is a good use of the video format. For me I understood a LOT more about Flash and Flex after sitting through this little talk than before.
Oh, and while you might want the news fast, UNDERSTANDING something and getting mastery over it takes more time. For that, video is a far better medium than text. At least for me.
So, first off – cool stuff, Tony. Welcome to the land of the converted: the reasons you’ve identified for “why” Social Media News Releases & Newsrooms make sense are spot-on. There’s room for all sorts of approaches, and all types of learning styles (per Robert).
For my part, like you I sometimes want to skim and/or skip to the “good” parts; the ones that I determine will be most useful for me. Sometimes that’s video, sometimes links, sometimes a PPT. The SMNR allows for ALL of that. It’s really just about exploiting all that HTML and Multimedia in one convenient spot, not only for context and content but also as a convenient spot for ensuing conversations (via comments and trackbacks).
Know what might have been cool? And maybe to Robert’s liking, as well? What if Adobe had done an exclusive Podtech video with Robert, and then embedded it within their SMNR – which could have gone out within minutes after the Scoble interview? True, Robert might not choose to become “part of the news” in this way, but it is an interesting idea to noodle over.
Anyway, thanks for the linklove and kind words.
Todd: we would have loved for Adobe to do that. It’s one reason we made our video player embeddable — so that bloggers and corporations wouldn’t need to send their viewers away just to watch a video.
Robert,
We can debate the merits of what kinds of media are good for what, but I think we can both agree that, for the most part, its different for different people. I don’t disagree that a video of someone explaining something is valuable; on the other hand, I didn’t need that right away when I’d heard the news.
Second, I realize that Adobe sent out lots of stuff, and didin’t “launch” through Scobleizer.com — what I wrote was “how the tech community found out”. You’re right — pretty presumptuous of me to think that I speak for the tech community; on the other hand, your blog is probably the largest blog of the bunch, and techies as they are probably don’t read press releases much.
While I’m not blaming you for spreading the news as you saw fit because, well, its your blog, my point wasn’t so much about video vs. text vs. audio, so much as there was a better way of disseminating, distributing, and participating in the conversation.
JD’s blog did an excellent job of annotating links (way to go, JD!) and I’m sorry I didn’t find it first.
But don’t you think that having that altogether, PLUS some embeds of the videos you did would provide one helluva resource? And wouldn’t it make sense for Adobe to “own” that _part_ of the conversation since its their press announcement? (I know JD is part of Macromedia/Adobe, but you know what I mean)
t
>But don’t you think that having that altogether, PLUS some embeds of the videos you did would provide one helluva resource?
Sure, but JD did just that.
See, why do you need to know something in the first five minutes of something happening? The only reason really is because you want to be the first one to tell other people about the news. In other words, you want to write a blog and be among the first sites that report on it. If that’s true, then you want a LOT more information than just a press release.
Anyway, I TOTALLY DISAGREE that my blog is how people first learned of this news. TechMeme, Digg, and Stumbleupon are how most of my traffic came to me. TechMeme, in particular, didn’t link to my stuff highest for quite a while. Instead Ryan Stewart’s blog came up highest, along with Adobe’s press release.
Mine only moved higher later in the day as more bloggers had time to watch the video and see that it contained some good information.
Why is that? Cause I’m a good reporter and am going to ask things that Adobe’s PR team didn’t think about doing.
It was my idea to do an architectural diagram on a whiteboard. Why did that work so well? Because it was information that no one really had tried to get down before.
Company Websites will never include all the information that customers need.
The best thing that they could do is EXACTLY what JD did: link to everything that moves. Pro, con, or otherwise about your news.
By the way. I do my videos for influencers. I know that many of them will be looking for a new angle on a story. Repeating what you read on someone else’s feed is just dreadful. But getting some new angle, or some new information means adding value for your readers.
Robert — take it down, a notch buddy! :)
1) Until we actually poll people where they first heard about it, I guess we’ll never really know; I don’t count stumbleupon, Digg, or Techmeme as a “first place” as all you’ll get is the headline — and yes, even that is too brief for me. Furthermore …
2) I think me looking for information fast is how i look for *all* information — and it has nothing to do with looking to “scoop” for a story. I guess its just how I’ve learned to deal with and parse information being a medical resident and all. We all learn material differently as you’ve pointed out. Am I the only one who tries to figure out things quickly and then rescan things for depth?
3)
I’m sorry — are you suggesting that what I do is parrot what I read on someone else’s feed? Or, are you suggesting you *never* do? ;)
You know what? I haven’t written a book on blogging, but I have picked up a thing or three about it in the year or so I’ve been doing it. I must have touched a nerve, because I rarely see you this condescending to other bloggers.
4)
Of course, Robert and that’s the whole point of a social media newsroom. I was suggesting that rather than have one of your employees pick up the slack who may or may not be directly involved with a project (whose blog says “I’m employed by Adobe Systems but views are my own.”), why not have Adobe do it directly? I think we actually agree on this.
5) You doth protest too much: I am not disparaging the actual content of your videos — I haven’t watched them, but from your own descriptions they sound very good. They must be, right? Millions of downloads and so on. You’ve said so yourself.
My original points was that i) my opinion was that many people were getting their first hand look at this bit of news through scobleizer.com ii) there was only a video with no show notes, which led to me saying iii) this was an opportunity for a more concise collection of ideas.
Cheers
t
Interesting that you think I’m being condescending. That’s not my intent. It’s also not about +you.+ More than 100 bloggers wrote about the Adobe Flex news.
>Or, are you suggesting you *never* do? ;)
No, I repeat other people’s news all the time. In fact I do a link blog where I simply just repost the best blog posts (including this one).
>why not have Adobe do it directly?
Because corporate employees rarely have all the skills they need to fulfill every need.
>I haven’t watched them, but from your own descriptions they sound very good.
You really should. Then we would have been able to have a much more complete conversation. Telling me to do a transcript of a chart on a whiteboard demonstrates you didn’t understand the value of what the videos brought.
You seem to want only the raw news. You know, Adobe open sources Flex. Well, you’ll be happier going to Google News or seeing a press release.
If you want more than that you’ll need to have a professional reporter go inside with a video camera and a video journalist won’t have time to do all that other stuff you ask for.
>Am I the only one who tries to figure out things quickly and then rescan things for depth?
No, you’re not. But what you said above is that you only saw my video as a source of news. What I was saying was there were DOZENS of other sources of this news within a few minutes of its release. Adobe didn’t just talk with me. Google News had TONS of reports. So did TechMeme. So did TailRank. So did Digg. So did Twitter.
The entire thesis of this post is that something was broken that needed to be fixed. I think your thesis is broken because you didn’t do your homework and find all the original sources of the news.
>Robert — take it down, a notch buddy! :)
You’re the one who posted a post with a false thesis. I’m just trying to point that out to you. If there’s someone who should have taken it down a notch it was you. But to say that would have been condescending. Oh, wait, you’re the only one allowed to be condescending, not me. Sigh.
Well, Robert it seems like we’ll have to agree to disagree. I’m not sure if this means we’ll have to be condescending to each other though.
But regarding your assertion that this post was based on false assertion? Well, I call bullshit on that one.
Look, it seems like you’re intent on defending PodTech’s value prop — that’s fine, but that wasn’t the premise of my original post. Nor was it that your blog and your podcast was the only source of news. Rather, that it was that your blog, because it was so large, was one of the *first* (’how the tech community found out about it’).
You say that dozens of sources of news within a few minutes of release? You say that Google News had “dozens” of reports?
Look it up yourself. Or perhaps over here
There’s no question that more news came out — but they all came out a day later than you. Depending on where you look, there are barely a handful of outlets that announced it on April 25. Sure there are a number of bloggers, but that’s hardly “dozens”.
The thesis wasn’t “Adobe chose to break the news through Robert Scoble’s blog and PodTech”, but rather “The Tech community found out about Adobe’s annoucement through Scoble’s Blog and PodTech” — because your blog was amongst the first, and amongst the biggest outlets of news.
I’ll agree that it isn’t bulletproof. But on the other hand, if you look at most news outlets they “broke” the news the next day. They had to. And that’s probably because the news that you broke on April 25 was after hours (9pm).
Cheers
t
Let’s not lose sight of this post’s original premise: Adobe might have better served all of its audiences if they had issued a Social Media News Release that incorporated any/all links, multimedia, etc. that might have caught the varied interests of their varied readership/viewers.
Their strategy of approaching Robert first – that’s PR 101 stuff. “Influence the influencers.” It often works this way. This debate should be less about the timing and target than it should be about the means of disseminating the content in one general-purpose way. I think.
Thanks Tony, it was my error on the first post, page never finished loading. When I copied the (saved) message back in to a fresh window it took again.
We spoke on a similar issue awhile back, didn’t we, about providing a canonical “about” page on any issue which may get high blogosphere interest, which could link to relevant FAQs, updated staff blogs, other resources, thinks like that? The paper-based storytellers used a press release as the canonical document, but in today’s journalism we need a little more, an updated set of links to relevant assets, easily discovered by a naive web search. Does this seem like an accurate understanding to you, that you sought an obvious adobe.com page which went beyond the press release?
I’ll forward this thread to my partners in various groups inside Adobe, see how we might be able to do similar things in the future….
tx, jd/adobe
Tony, Robert, Todd, excellent discussion and for the most part, what marketers should walk away with is that all forms of media will help carry a company’s message across the multiple platforms of new and traditional media. Social Media Releases (New Media Releases), video demos/interviews, blogger, community, and media relations, etc., all help tell the story to the specific targets, the way they want to hear/see the news before, during, and after launch.
The rest is just about the tools of the trade…and in almost every case, it’s my opinion that today’s successful launches will include a myriad of new+proven tools and messages that can traverse through (insert designated marketing chart here) the ladders of social media, the pyramids of markets, the bell curves and chasms of marketing, and the long tail of specific customer bases.
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