This debate stems from a shift in media, and in the way we gather information. The ideas of truth and authority have fundamentally changed from the way we used to treat them.

In the past, the mainstream media was viewed as the primary source of truth. The news, as reported by newspapers or television, was the authority on what was happening. There were a few different sources of information, but most of them stuck to a reasonable journalistic standard.

Fast forward to now; media is abundant and everywhere. Blogs are breaking news faster than traditional media, the 24/7 news cycle still isn’t enough for some, and everyone has access to their own personal soapbox.

It’s not that traditional media isn’t seen as a source of truth, or doesn’t have authority. People still trust the media giants for their news. I personally visit thestar.com and theglobeandmail.com just as frequently as I visit various other blogs and online information sources. And that’s the difference. The ideas of truth and authority have shifted from a few centralized sources of information to an unlimited amount of inputs. Truth is now a collection of information, and authority is now a relative scale.

People now draw their conclusions based upon their own personal collection of information sources. The newspapers, their favourite TV anchor, late night political shows like The Daily Show, Colbert, or The Hour, an industry blogger, a nut job blogger, company websites, facebook rumours, twitter feeds, and many more fragments of information all give their inputs. What the individual believes will be a pastiche of all the pieces they’ve collected.

Authority of one source is now relative to all the others. No one source is absolute. For example, the daily newspaper still holds authority as a trusted and reputable provider of facts. It may have a bigger say in the final belief of the individual, but it won’t have the only say. How much each input is valued is based entirely upon the individual. Some sources are trusted more than others, and this scale can vary completely from person to person.

Truth and authority have shifted from a focused stream coming from monolithic sources to a collection of fragments pieced together differently by each individual.

What does this mean for PR and for companies? I think it’s good news. Everybody can make their voice heard in the new media environment, including companies. Every company can – and should – tell their story directly to their stakeholders. It won’t be the only story the stakeholders hear, but neither will what anyone else is saying. The big mistake here is to stay silent. It’s an even bigger mistake to ignore the other stories being told.

People’s ideas or beliefs cannot be controlled. They can only be influenced, and they will be influenced. The only options for organizations are now to be a voice among the influences, or to stay out of the chorus completely.

Here are 10 great ideas on social media measurement and monitoring from Third Tuesday:

1. Ideas can move through social media, leaving a trail of digital breadcrumbs behind.
2. Transparency is a necessity.
3. Through monitoring and listening, treat social media like a customer service line,  engage customers when they are discussing your Organization/Brand.
4. Customer to customer conversations are more important than influencer to customer conversations or business to customer conversations.
5. Listen to types and tonality of conversations and change your behaviour accordingly. Indentify what people dislike and what are your mistakes, then stop doing those things.
6. Your Brand is the sum of conversations.
7. Sometimes it takes a “pain” event to bring companies to social media measurement/engagement, rather than an “opportunity.”
8. Listen at the point of need to generate sales leads. If conversations are about a need that your service provides, it’s a great opportunity to engage with that person.
9. Use the same measurement scale from the very beginning, benchmark over time.
10. Listen to not only conversations about your Organization, but also your competitors.

All of these ideas were from K.D. Paine and Marcel Lebrun. I knew K.D. Paine would be brilliant, but I was most impressed by Lebrun. Marcel Lebrun is CEO of Radian 6, and before Third Tuesday and Mesh I knew very little about him. He definitely knows his stuff when it comes to measurement and monitoring. If you have the chance to hear him speak on the topic, I definitely recommend it.

So there’s a quick look at some great ideas from Third Tuesday. I plan on writing about many of them in the future, in greater detail with my own thoughts on these ideas, plus some more great ideas from Mesh. Stay tuned and thanks for reading!

There is a LOT going on over those two days, so I was sure to take a look at the schedule to make a plan. Below are the seminars I intend to attend, and why. I won’t be live twittering or blogging during these events either,  I would rather pay attention and enjoy it. I will be sure to take notes and blog afterwards! Feel free to say hi if you see me there! 

May 21

1:30pm –  Podcasting Workshop with David Jones and Doug Walker: I don’t know if I’ll ever produce a podcast, but if this presentation is anything like Shill, it’s a must see.

2:50pm – Digital Activism with Michael Geist: This promises to be an excellent presentation. Geist’s columns are always compelling and interesting, and he definitely knows what he’s talking about.

4:10pm – It’s a toss up between  Private vs. Public or Government 2.0, from Community Participation to Co-creation. Both topics are interesting and intriguing. Any suggestions or recommendations? Let me know! Otherwise, I’ll probably make a game-time decision.

May 22

1:30pm – Measuring Social Media: I’m really looking forward to this seminar. It features, among others, Alan Chumley and KD Paine, two giants of PR and media measurement. I’m highly interested in measurement, so this seminar promises to be one of the highlights of Mesh. It was just announced that Third Tuesday will discuss “How do we measure social media” the night before Mesh, so if you don’t have your mesh tickets, you can get a preview of sorts for free. Hopefully I will be at both!

2:50pm – Building a Brand on the Web: Always a great topic for PR, especially for MarComm or agency work. Plus it has a great group of participants, including Maggie Fox of Social Media Group.

4:10pm – Reputation Monitoring and Management: Another great PR topic, one of the most important aspects of PR in my opinion.  A good finale after two days of seminars.

So there it is! My schedule for Mesh 08. If you don’t already have tickets, bad news, they’re all sold out. Is there any social media scalping going on? Hope to see you there!

The debate between Public Relations and Marketing rages on, and seems to intensify as the line between the two gets blurrier. PR is increasingly used for commercial products and improving sales, while Marketing branches out into new tactics as traditional advertising grows stale. Both PR and Marketing are quickly branching out to social media, and finding new ways to fit it into their strategies. So the question keeps arising, who is better fit for social media, PR or Marketing? Here are my two cents.

I’m not going to go into too much detail about social media; we’ve already heard it all before. It’s about two-way communication, dialogue and relationships. Whichever group understands the nature of social media best will certainly prosper, whether they are from PR or Marketing. But at their cores, which discipline is more suitable for this medium?

Public Relations is based on relationships and reputation. Though it has proven useful to the bottom line, the essence of PR is not based on commercialism. It’s as much about listening to important stakeholders as it is about telling your organization’s story to those stakeholders. PR is meant to be the bridge of an organization to the people that the organization affects.

Marketing is based on transactions. It’s about creating and selling products to consumers. There are many inventive ways to do this, but at its core, this is Marketing’s strength and limit.

In my opinion, Public Relations definitely has the advantage here. Social media is about communication and conversation, first and foremost. Engaging in conversation and creating relationships is what social media and Public Relations are founded on. Many important elements of Public Relations aren’t about increasing sales or revenue, and it is these elements specifically that can thrive through social media. Relationship and reputation building, issues management, monitoring and engaging with public opinion and maintaining legitimacy and relevance are just a few ways that PR can use social media without using a transactional model. Social media isn’t based on transactions, and purely commercial interests in this space are often met with public backlash. Especially when advertising tries to mask itself as transparent conversation.

I know this comes as a surprise. The “PR for the People” Blog says PR is suited to social media! Shocking! But here’s the issue I really wanted to get to. How do successful PR practitioners pitch these non-transactional efforts to clients or managers? I thoroughly believe that in order for PR to gain the respect it deserves it must have measurable impact, must relate specifically to fiscal goals and maintain a healthy ROI. How are relationships measured? How can one measure the impact of a PR plan designed to engage the community and build reputation? I understand the importance of using an open system approach, rather than a closed one, and how Public Relations can do just that through interacting with stakeholders. But how does one put a dollar sign on that interaction?

If you have the answers, or just have an opinion you would like to share, please leave a comment! Thanks for reading.

The Star article about the Facebook posting can be found here.

Is posting or publishing on Facebook (or other social media) a violation of the court ordered publication ban? Can we define Facebook, or a blog, as a publication?

So when thinking about social media and gag orders, what it really comes down to is the definition. How does one define “publication?” I think it is certainly possible to make a case for Facebook being a publication, and I can see a judge agreeing. I’m no lawyer though, so let’s stick to the facts.

The law in question in the recent case (mentioned in the Star article above) is the Youth Criminal Justice Act. Here are the relevant citations:

Identity of offender not to be published

110. (1) Subject to this section, no person shall publish the name of a young person, or any other information related to a young person, if it would identify the young person as a young person dealt with under this Act.

Identity of victim or witness not to be published

111. (1) Subject to this section, no person shall publish the name of a child or young person, or any other information related to a child or a young person, if it would identify the child or young person as having been a victim of, or as having appeared as a witness in connection with, an offence committed or alleged to have been committed by a young person.

Right off the bat, you can see how the individual that posts on Facebook can be held liable, if you consider posting to Facebook as publishing. But can Facebook itself be held liable?

I checked out the Facebook Terms of Service to see if they could be on the hook if someone were to break a gag order. I will confess, I signed up to Facebook with little more than a casual glance at its extensive TOS. Once reviewing it, the most applicable passage that I found is its User Content section. Here’s an excerpt:

You are solely responsible for the photos, profiles (including your name, image, and likeness), messages, notes, text, information, music, video, advertisements, listings, and other content that you upload, publish or display (hereinafter, “post”) on or through the Service or the Site, or transmit to or share with other users (collectively the “User Content”).

On the legal side, here is their Indemnity section, in its entirety:

You agree to indemnify and hold the Company, its subsidiaries and affiliates, and each of their directors, officers, agents, contractors, partners and employees, harmless from and against any loss, liability, claim, demand, damages, costs and expenses, including reasonable attorney’s fees, arising out of or in connection with any User Content, any Third Party Applications, Software or Content you post or share on or through the Site (including through the Share Service), your use of the Service or the Site, your conduct in connection with the Service or the Site or with other users of the Service or the Site, or any violation of this Agreement or of any law or the rights of any third party.

The wording from Facebook is, naturally, concrete evidence against their involvement with what you may post. I had initially believed that Facebook claimed all ownership to everything posted on their site, but upon further TOS review I have found that to be incorrect. Here’s the blurb, also contained in the User Content section:

Facebook does not assert any ownership over your User Content; rather, as between us and you, subject to the rights granted to us in these Terms, you retain full ownership of all of your User Content and any intellectual property rights or other proprietary rights associated with your User Content.

Facebook does claim essentially unlimited use of what you post as their right, as part of the conditions of using their service, but they maintain that it is your property.

So those are the black and white facts, but where it always gets interesting is in the grey area. Does Facebook constitute a “publication?” Is it considered private or public? Are the users “publishing” details of a case, or just discussing it amongst their friends? Can it, or should it, be held liable for what is said, written or posted through it? Is it liable through its complicit distribution of what is said? If such questions were brought to the court, it would certainly be a landmark case not only for Facebook, but for internet publications as a whole.

I encourage you to post your thoughts, legal evidence or precedents, or just general rants in the comments below! Check out this link to Wise Law Blog, with a post on the same topic.

Basically, to me, this is the equivalent of having a television broadcasting network in your pocket. At any point you can pull out your celly, film something, and have it broadcast to anyone who cares to view it, live. Here’s an example of what I’m talking about, filmed by the Scobleizer.

The potential seems immense. Not because it couldn’t be done before, but because of the sheer ease and mobility of the idea. Speeches or lectures could be delivered from anywhere, at any time, while maintaining some of their live impact. Amateur news broadcasts can go “live from the scene” with ease. I don’t even need to mention the massive potential for bootleggers of concerts and movies this may have.

My only critique is that it seems to be only one way. You can broadcast straight from your cell phone to the internet, but I don’t know how much you can receive on your cell phone from other users. You can probably watch completed videos, but can you watch a live stream? I can only speculate because my current cell phone isn’t compatible with Qik, and even if it was, I don’t have an unlimited data plan from my provider. Just another reason why Canadian providers need to really step up it with their mobile options, and I’m not alone when thinking so.

At the very least, it’s a great way store videos taken by your phone, effectively eliminating the storage constraints of your standard phone. If you’ve got Qik on your phone, let me know about your experiences with it in the comments section. Hopefully they’ll add some Samsung compatibility soon!

Well, it’s all over. Check out the story on the Toronto Star. Facebook users now have to opt in before their purchases hit the big time. Personally, I don’t expect a lot of people to click “allow.”

Choice quote of the day comes from Paul Janzer representing Facebook who said “We’re sorry if we spoiled some of your holiday gift-giving plans.” It sounds like Mark Zuckerberg has been playing the part of the Grinch this year.

What I really enjoy about this whole story is the strength of the people involved, and the power wielded by the community. A lot of individuals made their voices heard, on blogs and elsewhere, and it made a difference. A company valued at $15 billion completely changed its marketing plan because of these individuals. That is social media at its finest, what the internet and communication technologies are really about. Kudos to Zuckerberg and Facebook for listening to its clientele, taking action, and knowing when to admit it made a mistake.

Sounds like a great Social Media Christmas story, doesn’t it?