twopointouch

Twitter is about the real-time web; being in the flow. Once you’re following more than 100 people, it becomes an entirely different experience to instant messaging or Facebook. It feels like one of those adverts for the Information Superhighway in the 1990s: people and objects and destinations rush by. Sometimes you’ll stop and check in, by clicking on a mystery link, or catch up on a relationship by clicking on a username to see their last dozen updates. In the time you’ve spent doing that, though, a whole new page of updates has magically appeared.

The user experience changes radically depending on the client you use:

• The twitter web page doesn’t automatically poll its source and change. Yet every time you hit Refresh, it’s different. It’s always a reminder that the world keeps turning no-matter what’s happening in your own little portion. As much as it lets you see into the world of the people in your network, it’s a reminder of your anonymity. At the same time, the prominence of the edit box at the top of the page is an invitation to poke the world; to let people know.
• ‘Pro’ clients like Tweetdeck and Twhirl change the proposition substantially. You won’t miss that @ message or the mentions of your brand or interests. For this reason, they’ve become favourites among egocentrics and those with marketing or PR interests in the network. In these client applications, the edit box has less prominence. It’s dipping your head into a rushing river, but also checking to see if any of your fishing nets have reeled in a catch; and resetting the bait with another update. These clients automatically update every few seconds, you see the real time web rush past; but the nets into search terms and messages mean that the feeling of control is not so lost.
• The mobile experience is different again. You’re less likely to participate in some respects, because data entry on a phone is trickier than from a keyboard. You’re less likely to click a link because you know that your device has a 50% chance of timing-out or failing to render the resulting page properly. The mobile experience is thus likely to be more about observation: checking in on your network – the ambient intimacy of it all.

Where am I going with this? A couple of places.

1. Leaving Las Twitteros

First, it turns out that, contrary to the propaganda, Twitter is an enormous, blue FAIL WHALE when it comes to retention, Mashable reported yesterday. Most people leave after a month, it seems:

…growth from February 2008 to February 2009 was reportedly 1382%, with the incline increasing yet further in recent months.

But like many social networks, it seems many people lose steam with the service. Stat tracking firm Nielsen reports today that a full 60% of users who sign up fail to return the following month. And in the 12 months “pre-Oprah”, retention rates were even lower: only 30% returned the next month.

There is more than one explanation for the massive drop-off in the last paragraph. The statistics given only track web page usage. It’s reasonable to suppose that a substantial number of users graduate from using the web page to using a different client, like Tweetdeck. In the discussion of the article, author Pete Cashmore links to another showing that only 30% of updates come via. the page – the rest using other clients.

I don’t think that this explanation explains the Nielsen figures entirely, though. I know a lot of very articulate and intelligent people to whom Twitter simply does not appeal. They gave it a go and didn’t see the point. That’s OK. Saying that this is because they haven’t given it enough time and effort, as I’ve heard before, is an odd argument. It’s a bit like saying I could come to love self-flagellation if I put my back into it, and my nether regions.

The recent celebrity endorsements of Twitter which have led to such rapid growth won’t help matters. Listening to the prattle from @stephenfry & co is a less engaging experience than being in touch with people you really know and sharing with them, I would suggest. If you use Twitter in order to keep up with certain celebrities, it must be very frustrating when they’re getting on with their jobs rather than providing updates. I’m not saying there are right and wrong ways to use Twitter – there aren’t – but there are ways that are likely to lead to more engagement than others.

The rushing passage of stuff is fine in a 30-second commercial, but hardly everyone’s cup-of-tea when they actually come to use the Internet. Point One is that Twitter is quite important but is not and will never be the next generation of the web, etc. etc.

2. Whispers in the Wind

The second matter I wanted to briefly explore was the viability of Twitter as a publishing or attention mechanism for media owners and institutions. Nearly every publisher does this (including NMK and its Lords and Masters at the University of Westminster). Maybe you hand-craft your tweets or automate them – it’s easy, using twitterfeed from your RSS, but err… it’s not very good, is it?

Your institution or organisation will not produce that many updates a day. That’s good in some ways – people will quickly unsubscribe from feeds that talk too much – especially if they have a corporate or robotic feel. At the same time, because you don’t update so often, your reach is tiny compared to almost any other medium. It’s a nudge, a poke, a pebble tossed into the river, a piece of flotsam that people might nudge into from time to time. It’s worth doing only because it’s easy. But because the social media marketing experts are using Tweetdeck or something, then they get an illusionary experience of the impact of their posts – their net full of retweets and @s at the end of the day looks full even for a tiny organisation like the one for which I work. At the same time, when I dip my head into the live stream, I see scarcely any interaction with tweets from ‘official’ media or institutional feeds. And there’s another problem that augments this…

If you open up a new channel of communication in the social media space, then there needs to be an ear on the other end listening and responding to the feedback. Social media, by definition, is not about broadcasting, but is two-way. You start a blog, you need a comments person. You send an email; you need a reply-address that works. Carefully writing your Blog T&Cs or Twitter bio or Email newsletter subscript can allow you to redirect responses somewhere else, but by entering into a communications arena that is entirely two-way with a one-way methodology, you’re asking for problems. (Skittles and The Telegraph’s brave – you may have other words – experiments with posting unmoderated twitter feeds illustrate this handsomely). Point Two is that Twitter is for people, not things.

On the one hand, I am obviously and unashamedly biased. I run a network for the digital industry. I believe that digital people are the cleverest, most capable, most focused and honest that the media industry has to offer.

On the other, crikey, there are an awful lot of digital folk working in PR nowadays. And digital outfits that ‘do’ PR. And journalists who’ve crossed over to both, for that matter.

So I am less biased than you might imagine.

Last night’s NMK event – What Happens to Online PR? – covered a lot of bases. What exactly is PR; what is Online; and what is needed for the industry to gain some leadership in the online space?

The room was heavily dominated by people at the forefront of reinventing PR. People who are already moving well beyond press relations into the guardianship of reputation and the formation of real relationships – both in digital and analogue. Or is that backwards in time? Panellist Stuart Bruce maintained that PR was never about the press, and always about looking after and promoting reputations and establishing and growing relationships.

There is, as everyone knows, a land-grab going on. Everyone in the marcomms space, from designers to planners, is on their toes (unless they’re rubbish) to find a reason to suggest that it is they who should lead in digital. The people who gain a credible early lead will probably be able to maintain that, and the people who don’t will wither away.

For pure digital agencies, their case is clear: we grew up in this space; we know and understand it best; we’re the geeks that you used to call the back-room boys (and girls). But now things have changed. Now online isn’t something separate, it’s everything. If you want the best skills and insight in everything, then call us.

On the PR side the case is clear but muddied by 100 years of history and culture. At its purest, Public Relations is about reputation management and relationship management. It’s about the strategy behind communications policies as much as executing those policies.

At the execution level, it’s about crafting, creating and sustaining stories which will work with those relationships and bolster or protect that reputation.

At its not so pure, PR is about coverage and column inches; it’s about billing on AEV; it’s about hitting the front page of the FT; it’s about whacking out a press release every 2 minutes about anything that you can loosely associate with a client (I received about 10 budget-related press releases today, most of which were totally spurious).

As everyone who works in media knows, sadly, you get ten times as much contact from the bad end of the scale than you do from the shining knights. That’s how spam works: if the conversion rate is 0.000001%, then you send 1,000,000 emails. If it’s lower, you simply send more.

As both sides of the panel last night agreed, this is not sustainable. Maintaining relationships and building reputation depends on adding value, not taking it away. There are agencies that I (and presumably a lot of other journalists) have blacklisted – and they will never be able to recover from that.

So, the way forward for PR agencies: stay still, integrate, specialise or outsource?

Stay still: you die. And you deserve to. You shouldn’t be on this blog. Go away.

Lots of agencies are integrating. Bringing in digital media people, or hiring PR graduates with that inclination: bunch them together and call them the digital team; maybe bringing in a heavy-hitter who’s well-known in the pure digital space; maybe even buying out a digital agency to call their own. (You know I could name and shame here, but I won’t). Problem: 80% of your agency has no clue what the hell you do. They won’t be able to sell, explain or justify your projects to clients. You’ll be working 24/7 to stay still.

Or specialise. Become an online PR agency. Lots of geeks; lots of analytics; project managers. This has been a good model for the last couple of years. The problem? The people who hold the purse strings don’t trust you johnny-come-latelies with your flip-flops and skateboards one bit. Especially when it comes to reputation. A bunch of internet guys? Are you having me on? Sure you can do my website, but corporate reputation? Yeah, riiight.

Or outsource. You do your bit on strategy and then outsource the bits you haven’t got the skillz for to the best pure digital players available. This agency for your SEO, that one for your design and the other for your social strategy. There’s lots of danger here, too. Your outsourced agencies are also your competitors. Because they all want your lunch money. Also, you’ve increased your costs massively in most cases. You’ve also got a whole bunch of communication issues to resolve – not easy ones, either, because everyone in marcomms has an ego the size of a planet.

So not any of those things, really.

Start again. No, really.

Start again.

Integration, specialisation and outsourcing aren’t going to work as plausible business models in the long term. I think we all know that. You need an agency that is Digital and PR. An agency focused on relationships and reputation, but wholly grounded in today’s arena of communications. Then you win.

I’m not an entrepreneur, I’m a hack, but I hear all the arguments, all the time; I hear all the stories, every day. A lot of you have already started again. The rest of you will not survive except through brute force and a lot of that will involve layoffs.

Start again.

[I'll create a post on NMK collating discussion so far, but in the meantime:

Steven Waddington published before the debate but agrees "real threat is not the contraction of the industry but the army of new digital agencies that is capitalising on the disruption in the market"

Gerel Orgil offers the two-minute version - very useful indeed - I'd forgotten half of what she recorded.

Roger Warner great summary and a real call to learning and education - you risk losing the opportunity to learn! "the threat to a traditional PR agency isn’t just in losing a slice of Online business, it’s in losing the right to learn about it."

Lloyd Gofton says the winning agencies will have the right blend of skills.

Jo-Rosie Haffenden condemns "an industry which is not as excited as it should be about change".

Danny Whatmough didn't turn up but favours a media mix: "no one group will dominate and that there will be plenty of new tricks to learn and plenty for everyone to practice".

Jed Hallam promised to help with the hats and coats, didn't, but instead offers a great post on "influence and social mechanics".

Peter Hay crikey - old media loves us too.]

When you have this sort of team on your side.

Only about 20 months late on this.

(And yes – I wish I could shut off that frickin’ tweeting from the Cooking Mama post below. I’ll replace the widget with a link v.soon.

I never quote Seth Godin. I find his stuff far too happy-clappy for my comfort zone (ach- another americanism!) Yet here I am: Seth on America choosing Neil Armstrong as their ‘moon landing guy’:

NASA did what many organizations do when picking someone to act as company spokesperson. They avoided risk, played it safe and chose someone who wouldn’t make a ruckus.

What a shame.

Armstrong could have taught the world about science. He could have done work that would have won him a Nobel Peace Prize. He could have had a huge impact on his country and the world. Instead, he mostly disappeared.

Many organizations worry that if they put their clout behind an individual, he or she will gain notoriety and power and eventually double-cross the organization. So, instead, they go for bland.

Bland is a tad harsh, though I wish they’d chosen Buzz for the first man on the moon. He’s got a much cooler name. There’s another reason as well – because I continually get to tease my wife for confusing him with Buzz Lightyear on one occasion. (Buzz Lightyear apparently trained on Lanzarote’s volcanos for his moon trip).

Speaking in my capacity as a has-been journalist, bland won’t get you a headline in a magazine or newspaper. But hang on… Neither will the out-spoken fool.

No journalist is going to publish a story that says ‘Dave Colossus, mega-spokesperson for XCorp, today said they’d be curing cancer within a year using the power of social networking’. Dave Colossus (not his real name) is out of a job within a week, and the fools that did print the story, well, probably they keep their jobs in my experience.

Stick to bland, and true. And bollocks to you, Godin: I’m not sure I’ve come across a better quote in the last forty years than ‘One small step for man; one giant leap for mankind’. If that’s bland (and even if he got it wrong), it’s still pretty magical.

But I still wish it was Buzz.

I left a comment on a blog that wouldn’t leave me alone all day. So here’s a fuller response, and I hope it breaks my blogger’s block.

Antony Mayfield is delighted with Dell’s approach to social media, as represented in this video interview, in particular. Even without that, it’s clear that the company has embraced many of the concepts wholeheartedly through initiatives like IdeaStorm. As Antony the interviewee, Andy Lark, Dell’s head of Global Marketing, points out, the company’s commitment to social tools is pretty thorough:

The social media stuff is probably the most important we do today, from a marketing stand point. The other elements of marketing mix has sort of become more and more transactional and more and more tactical in nature. Social media stuff is much more strategic… Use social media to power the fundamental of the business. That’s what we’re focused on. [Mayfield's transcription - thank you]

Great stuff. And here’s that interview in full:

To be clear, Antony is one of the good guys – I just disagree with his opinion on this one.

The part where I started to become anxious comes late in the piece, at about 4:00. Lark contrasts the approach taken by new media journalists with the old school. BBC journalists apparently now come along with a digital recorder and immediately ask if they can podcast the interview. The old school – regional journalists, he says – turn up with a notepad and pen. That’s a failure on the part of the latter group, according to Lark:

“The content that I’m giving them is the asset, not their translation”.

That’s *not* true. The media is there to question, to analyse and to be sceptical about the ‘asset’ that’s been given to them by Lark. It is certainly not its function to broadcast that ‘asset’ verbatim and without question. That’s what we people who turn up with a notepad and pen and ‘don’t get it’ call an advertisement.

I think we raise a couple of questions here about quite how wonderful 24-hour on-the-moment publishing and releasing to social media sources at the same time as traditional media sources is. If the statements issued by marketing directors are taken as ‘the record’, then we miss out on the opportunity to compare a company’s claims with their financial records, the research that’s been done into their brand value and customer service records, comparisons with competing propositions from rival manufacturers, and the benefits of a broader view. I have nothing against Dell – my current PC is a Dell, and it’s fine.

But, goodness, if I were head of global marketing at any brand, I’m sure that a podcast of my words on a well-trafficked website would be far preferable to an in-depth review of my products or an analysis of my financial performance somewhere else.

The function of journalism is not simply to report or transcribe what powerful figures and institutions want us to. We need to question, analyse and remain continually sceptical, while also remaining neutral. If we can’t do the latter, then declaring our interests immediately.

Taking a little longer to file a story doesn’t mean that you don’t ‘get it’ (a dreadful expression) but might mean that ‘oh yes, we get it alright, and we’re not letting you get away with it!’

One for the agency folk.

http://view.break.com/542649 – Watch more free videos

Found another copy!

Blizzard, the company behind the most successful and profitable entertainment franchise in the world*, World of Warcraft, held a mini-conference in Paris last week to announce that a second sequel to its Diablo series – Diablo III – was in development. Unlike a lot of press conferences, they invited along lots of fans, active forum members and bloggers about the game. So far, so cool, but it gets better…

As is customary at top-end press-conferences, there was a schwag-bag for all attendees containing various branded giveaways. Mouse mats, mugs and stuff – it saves having to buy Xmas presents for a lot of journos. *cough*

(As an aside – Yay! that more bloggers and vocal fans are getting their hands on this stuff.)

But the cleverest bit (for me) was that this also included an online keycode for WoW that would allow players of that game to gain a new companion for their online avatars – the characters they play in the game. Remember, they invited guild leaders and fanatical WoW bloggers along**.

The pet itself will be a miniature version of the Archangel Tyrael of Diablo 2 fame who will travel with you on all your grand adventures in Azeroth! Pictures of this amazing new pet will be available on the official website soon for everybody to check out.

Get it? The WoW pet is a viral promo-item for Diablo III! It’s limited edition, so it’s sought-after; it’s a sign of prestige in the community; and it’s constantly in the face of relevant audiences.

Pure genius. Or evil.

________________________________

*World of Warcraft – or WoW to its friends – an online roleplaying game which charges a monthly subscription – to around 10mn people.

**WoW players organise themselves into ‘guilds’ to assemble teams for online combat and for social reasons – their leaders are the most visible, longstanding and respected players.

Via. Kotaku