As Google Blogoscoped points out, there are at least two examples of Google News commenting, and I have to say its pretty darn cool.  One of them involves how branding influences children’s choices, with the example being that the McDonald’s brand caused children to choose healthier choices just by bring wrapped up in a McDonald’s package.

The AP (Associated Press) report quotes a Dr. Strasburger , who is an “an author of an American Academy of Pediatrics policy”, and the Google Comments has Dr. Strasburger making his own comment over here.  What’s interesting is that the AP report distills Dr. Strasburger’s opinion into a two or three sentence sound bite.  Google News’ Comments allows Dr. Strasburger to have a fully developed opinion (and boy, is it an opinion) about the issue.  I think this is a great example of comments adding a good layer of complexity to the topic, because it really allows people to get a bigger, fuller, picture around the story.

And by that, I know that Phillip Lennsen queries as to whether having Google Comments will dilute the power of the story — but that will only happen if its a one -sided comment, or that there is only one comment.  To get a good appreciation of any story is to understand both sides, and what better way is there to do that than actually hear (or, in this case read) what both sides are saying, quite literally, without the hindrance of a filter, or the artificial limitations of what a story is?  And this is even without the regular audience stepping in (which will no doubt come at a later point).

Which leads me to the other interesting issue.

Of course I fully expect someone from McDonald’s to post something — and as the PR part of the blogosphere gears up for this new change in Google News, I expect that its probably filtering through layers of bureaucracy if its reached anyone’s ears at all.  But, getting corporations to think about this issue is another Good Thing.

In order for this to work, Google Comments must (and there’s no reason not to) allow all sides to have their say, including corporations, and other large seemingly faceless entities.  In this case, I fully expect McDonald’s to trot out some kind of PR-flackery.  But maybe they won’t.  Maybe they’ll suprise us with a refreshingly honest answer, and use the Google News Comment system in the same vein and in the same ethos as blogging.

I wonder if this — and not, say, Second Life — is PR’s next greatest frontier?

When corporations are forced to respond on Google News, perhaps we’ll hear disarmingly real and honest answers about the issue — and perhaps that will be the greatest PR lesson that could come from blogging.  Hey, I love blogging as much as the next bloke (or gal), but Google News has the kind of reach that blogging just doesn’t have. 

Lots of unexplored issues here, and the story’s just hours old.  As I said previously, this is something I say with only a dash of hyperbole:  This ‘addition’ to Google News has the potential to be something big, whether its affecting how stories are written, how they are perceived, allowing the development of a lively debate that encourages people to understand the complexities behind the stories … and perhaps even more exciting, how large corporations — and governments? — are held accountable to stories that move across its “desk”, and what they might be encouraged to say when their proverbial feet are held to the metaphorical fire.

I’m going to yak about Yahoo! SmartAds in a moment, but I’d just like to take a second and rant about yet another plain vanilla press release.  Right now, at the top of Techmeme, is the Yahoo Press Release for SmartAds.  Once you take a look at it, maybe you’ll do what I did, and have your eyes glaze over while you almost fall out of your chair in a somnolent stupor.

BOOOOOORING.

Disengaged.

Out of the conversation.

Dammit, why can’t we see more press releases or news rooms that are smartly integrated with social media?

Hell, isn’t Yahoo! trying to take a more social media bent, what with its Web2.0 acquisitions?  I know, I know — PR is different, and yes, maybe I am hallucinating about Yahoo!’s future.

But jeebus, why can’t we for once see a major product launch (or service launch) with

a) Just the facts: You could pare down the Press release into about 5 or 6 bullet points.  And the most important point in the Press Release is actually buried somewhere in the middle.  Did you read it?  It said “SmartAds generally resulted in click through rates of two to three times higher than static, non-customized display ads using the same targeting and placement.”  But I’ll bet most DIDN’T because its buried in paragraph SIX.

b) Links to ongoing blog “reactions”: Technorati — are you listening?

c) Examples: Why not show exactly what SmartAds does?  Either link out to sites that are doing it, or actually show demos and case studies.  The first — fine, they’re still testing it.  But jeebus, man, instead of telling us, just show us.  Or get Scoble to do a video on it! (PodTech, are you listening?)  In fact, I’m kind of surprised Scoble *hasn’t* done a video on it.

Yes, I know, I know. Press Releases have their time and place.  You need to get everyone on board and have the important principles to sign off.  Its a corporate statement.  And so on.

But for the love of pete, this was a great opportunity!  Yahoo! could have really gotten with the Peanut Butter to create something that people would go back to — as social media news rooms act like a hub *for* conversations.  I love Techmeme like everyone else, but why let Techmeme have all the fun?  Yahoo! started the conversation — why not let host it for real?

Ok … ok … I’ll get of my soapbox now. ;)

Update: Looks like Kevin Rose has capitulated and has finally fallen inline with his fellow Diggers.  It will be interesting to see where this will go from a legal point of view. 

So in a bid to keep the codes that enable one to encrypt HD-DVD’s in Linux out of public knowledge, it seems like Kevin Rose and Jay Adelson have repeated taken down Digg submissions to keep themselves out of hot water. Unfortunately, they’ve subsequently set themselves up for a classic showdown that — quite frankly — I’m surprised hasn’t happeend sooner. I only say “classic” because its so deliciously dripping in irony.

On one end you have a Digg, the prototypical Web2.0 story made good, Kevin Rose appearing on the cover of BusinessWeek, yes, I started Digg with some rent-a-coder and some shared hosting (not quite the case, but you get the idea). Kevin builds Digg based on his reputation as the “dark-tipper” alpha-geek on G4TV, and its no surprise that it takes off — but, like any social anything, is built upon the backs of its users. Diggers need to submit news. Diggers need to promote that news.

Kevin and Jay, flush with success, take some VC funding — and have dollar signs in their eyes a-la Scrooge McDuck. They try and build a genuine business, branching out into multi-media/niche video productions (”we’re pulling 5 figures a month in advertising alone!”) that — wait for it — are actually sponsored by the HD-DVD group.

Ignoring that glaring conflict of interest for a second, in their bid to become corporate and “legitimate”, what have they done time and time again? Turned their backs on their community. Some have argued, as I have, that it makes perfect sense, in a Machiavellian way, to eschew their top Diggers since they only make a tiny percentage of the population.

What’s gone on now? Only that they taken the same approach and applied it to the Digg population at large.

I was criticized some months ago about my critical stance on Digg. Principally because of the way they were treating its top users. One of my principal arguments was that if they could do this to its most loyal boosters, what could they do to the rest of any of you? “Its his site”, some shouted. “Its free — why are you complaining”, others brayed.

Well, now we know.

Rightly or wrongly, for what many staid business types will regard as legitimate business and legal reasons has to now turn his back on this community — the same one that created Digg. And while I certainly understand Digg’s position, what I find deliciously ironic is that it was started out for geeks and had a geek-centered ethos; now, when there’s a geek-related issue that many of Digg’s fans want to take a stand on the best Digg can do is shut the conversation down.

Ok, let’s try it a little more concisely.

Kevin Rose creates Digg and wants to take advantage exploit target geek-centric issues? Then, in the guise of self-moderation and “social policing”, he introduces the “spam” button so that he doesn’t have to employ a serious number of moderators? He’s *depending* on the community to “police” itself, because he doesn’t have the will to hire enough people to police itself? (or the cash. Or, rather, the VCs don’t want to foot the bill to hire folks to do this).

Now, after he’s taken in millions of VC cash build on the backs of those same-said geeks he can’t moderate things fast enough for his VC overlords?

Kevin — you made your bed.

Dude … time to lie in it.

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:

1. I knew Flex was important
2. I’m not geeked up technically savvy enough to know what Flex was
3. In general, I need information fast
4. 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