• The social marker- the “social object” on steroids | gapingvoid.com
  More smartness from Hugh MacLeod.
  (tags: socialmedia marketing)

On the Hammock.com “Custom Media Craft Blog,” I’ve posted an item about the new Library of Congress page on Flickr. According to Librarian/Blogger Matt Raymond, “if all goes according to plan, the project will help address at least two major challenges: how to ensure better and better access to our collections, and how to ensure that we have the best possible information about those collections for the benefit of researchers and posterity.”

This is the type of smart use of new media and collaborative communities that I believe more institutions, companies and associations should be experimenting with. Here’s one little example: Does your church or synagogue have old photos gathering dust somewhere? Post them on a Flickr account and invite your members to help you identify who are on the photos. Just think about all the images in old school yearbook files that could be organized via tagging.

In a smaller way, we all have our little Library of Congress archival photos sitting in files (and shoeboxes) somewhere.

Later: Dave Winer has updated his Flickr-fed, RSS-powered screensaver-caster, FlickrFan (see my earlier post) with a feed option for photos from the LOC Flickr account.

The video embedded to the left is an amusing “angry man” rant (reminds me a bit of Loren Feldman) in which an actor playing the part of a printer (or maybe it’s a printer who should go into acting [later: see comments to learn who he is]) let’s loose on all the $#x0ons?s who are down on print these days. It’s even funnier knowing that it was produced and posted on YouTube by the Canadian printing company, Pazazz. There are lots of “bleeps” in it, and, again, you’ll want to turn down the volume.

Thanks for the link goes to one of my favorite magazine publishing gadflies, Bo Sacks, who thinks it’s “the best, the funniest, the most poignant video of the printing business that I have ever seen or thought I might see.”

As rumored, Ubber-blogger Robert Scoble is joining the Fastcompany/Inc. magazine organization to serve as managing director of a new online property called FastCompany.TV. Kudos to all involved, including my friend and frequent panel-mate, Ed Sussman, president of Mansueto Digital.

I’m a big fan of Ed’s and have enjoyed watching the Mansueto group resurrect the FastCompany brand and position the Inc. brand more precisely. Pre-Mansueto, in one of the more hapless ways I’ve ever witnessed, the previous stewards of the FastCompany brand destroyed its early lead in fostering business-oriented “online communities” of young tech-savvy professionals. I’m not sure the toothpaste can be put back in the tube by FastCompany, but if those previous stewards had not been so clueless, they today be the billion dollar company folks like LinkedIn hope to be. I remember speaking to several of those local Friends groups and they were pre-historic versions of what we’d today call “meetups.” But in one of those strange (in hindsight) decisions, some former FastCompany management types became threatened when their readers started flocking together in groups. Some where along the way, FastCompany decided the readers who participated in these groups were not worth the hassle — in essence, they turned their most passionate readers into the enemy.

I’ve always had my doubts about the ability of a big media company to “own a community” — communities don’t like to be owned. However, I do think that great video content and great people like Robert can help serve as the cornerstone for lots of great conversations — and conversations create communities. Robert will bring a great foundation on which to carry out additional experimentation with new forms of community and media distribution.

And I’m especially glad he’s going to be doing it within the context of brands and organizations that have been built using magazines.

This is a really, really good thing.

Congratulations, Robert.

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