Kudos to whoever at the Red Cross came up with the approach of setting up this website (and the executive who approved it) to support their efforts to meet the massive needs resulting from the tornadoes and floods in the Midwest. Because the Red Cross, like lots of organizations, has been at least experimenting with social media, someone within the organization had the mindset to pull together the tools necessary to quickly launch a website that is rich in new-media features. In doing so, they are providing a simple model to others of how online networking and conversational community building tools can be combined almost instantly* to support large-scale communication efforts.

Here’s a run-down of how the Red Cross is using a wide array of social and conversational media tools.

1. A Website running on WordPress: They’re calling it an Online Newsroom, but you’ll recognize it as a blog. Who cares what it’s called. WordPress.com is a robust (free, fast and stable) platform for setting up a site in a situation like this. (In the days after Katrina, when they couldn’t publish a paper or bring up their regular website, the Times Picayune used a blog — I think it was running of Movable Type — to keep its readers (and the world) informed. I suggested at the time that their blog deserved a Pulitzer and fortunately, the Pulitzer judges later agreed.)

2. Flickr: The Red Cross has a Flickr account and has created a set for photos from the disaster area. (Helpful advice for those running it — use captions and comments to point back to the weblog.)

3. Google Maps Mashups: A simple “My Maps” interface for a national map showing where the Red Cross is responding to disasters.

4. RSS: The Red Cross is using FeedBurner to offer state-by-state RSS feeds of disaster-related posts. For example, here is the feed for Iowa. And here is a full-feed of posts from the entire region.The list of state feeds can be found in the right-hand column of the blog.

5. Slide.com: The Red Cross is using Slide.com to create slide shows like his one related to Indiana flood damage. (As they are using Flickr, they could have used the slide-show embed feature from that service, as well.)

6. YouTube: The Red Cross has a YouTube account and yesterday used it to host a video that it embedded in the flood blog.

7. Twitter: You can follow @RedCross on Twitter to be notified of any breaking news that has been posted on the blog. This can allow people to follow the updates via text-messaging. (The account now is being used primarily to announce things posted online — I’d be thinking of it as a means to communicate with people trying to gather news on their cell-phones who may not be able to click through to a website.)

Sidenote: Here’s something on which they need to do a better job. The Red Cross buries the location where bloggers can pick up code to add a donation banner to their blogs. And they have no banners with disaster-specific messages. If you’d like to contribute, click here.

*While these tools can be pulled together instantly, from experience with such projects at Hammock, we’ve learned it’s better if you plan ahead when integrating several different services. Things like tagging, use of APIs, and nuanced features on the services can be fully utilized if you think through how the services can be used in different scenarios.

The Important Part: In the current issue of BusinessWeek (and online), Heather Green and Stephen Baker have written a great overview of where “social media” (not just blogs, but all the conversational media and social networking tools and platforms out there) are today as it relates to business. Not, as over-reported in the technology blogosphere, about the business of social media. And not about the tools and features and investment opportunities and anything else gee-whiz that’s going on. This BusinessWeek story is about how all these activities and connections and conversations that are taking place online are changing the way business is conducted.

The Take-Away: The article may not be eye-opening to a crowd who spends all day reading tech-blogs and camping-out on Twitter, but it’s a great article to forward to a “C-Level” person at your company or organization who you think could benefit from a high level view of what is transpiring — from a “media brand” they know.

The Less Important Rambling: Over the past three years, I’ve gotten to know BusinessWeek writers (and bloggers) Stephen Baker and Heather Green pretty well. I haven’t actually met them face-to-face, but we’ve shared conversations about Heather’s wedding, Stephen’s book and a myriad of other “important” and trivial matters. We’re “friends” on all those online networking things you’ve ever heard of (and many you probably haven’t if you’re not a Web 2.0 wonk). Because of that, it may seem weird, but I actually know more about what Stephen and Heather are up to than many acquaintances — and friends — I know “off line.”

For example, because we follow each other via Twitter and Facebook, I knew they recently worked on updating a story from May, 2005 with information and insight that has emerged during the past three years. In that second link, they’ve literally annotated the first article with contemporary statistics and knowledge. That’s a brilliantly creative reporting technique that I’ve never seen before as it uses visual cues from the Word document “change tracking” feature so readers can easily see where the new information has been inserted.

If it weren’t Saturday morning of a three-day weekend, I might be tempted to keep rambling, but I have much less important things that are beckoning me at the moment.

The last person on the blogosphere needing me to echo-chamber him is Robert Scoble, but this post is a wonderful challenge to something that is so embedded as conventional wisdom, I thought of it as truth before reading what Robert wrote. The CW is this: There’s too much noise on the Internet and what we really need is something that helps us reduce the (buzz term warning) signal-to-noise-ratio. But (now that Robert has enlightened me) the fact of the matter is this: If we (and if you’re reading this on an RSS news feed or on my blog, you’re a part of the “we”) weren’t noise junkies, we would be getting our information via the telegraph.

Robert’s post is in praise of noise — for noise, says Robert, is where you discover patterns and tidbits that become news.

Ironically, it can be argued that Robert is saying he enjoys being a filter for the rest of us — serving as a hunter, gatherer of the information that the rest of us may find of interest. We know we don’t have the time, access or endurance to hang out with all the geeks Robert hangs out with — so we entrust him to put up with all of that noise and hassle so he can share with us a firehose of tidbits he picks up. In turn, the thousands of people who follow Robert serve as a filter to discover his “best-of” stuff so those who can stand even less noise, can pick it up in a more-quiet way, via Techmeme, for instance.

Some people hate noise so much, they’ll actually wait 30 minutes for news to hit CNN. And still others have such low tolerance for noise, they’ll actually wait until the Wall Street Journal and New York Times are printed and delivered in the morning to learn what happened today.

And, still others, love the “quiet” so much, they wait until next week and read about stuff in Time or Newsweek.

If you’re reading this, it’s hard for you to claim that you’re not somewhat of a noise junkie. And, despite what Robert says, if you get your news via Techmeme or Google News, you’re still more of a noise junkie than most of the people you know who get their news from CNN and USA Today.

Robert lives far out on the extreme edges of the long tail of noise. The best reporters always do.

Using the idea of “noise” as a metaphorical framework for understanding how much of a filter you want before learning something that in your world may be considered “news,” is a great way to start understanding that the Internet and all this stuff we call Web 2.0 is as much about information and data and conversational flow as it is about technology.

Bonus link: Another thought-provoking post today is from Fred Wilson, who writes about data flow.

Next-day bonus link: Jeff Jarvis on why Twitter is the canary in the news coalmine. Another day, another metaphor to explain Twitter.

Over on the Custom Media Craft blog on Hammock.com, I just posted some highlights from the annual survey conducted by the Custom Publishing Council called “Characteristics Study: A Look at the Volume and Type of Custom Publications in America”. (Note: Hammock Inc. was one of the founding members of the Custom Publishing Council). According to the survey, in 2007 a record number of marketers used custom media to promote their products and brands. Personally, I believe the numbers are still conservative as there are lots of online “content marketing” activities taking place that fall through the cracks of this research. For instance, most of the digital startups that have content creation for marketers (i.e., video distributed online) as part of their business model should probably be covered in this research — but aren’t.

One thing this survey underscores is a statistic that doesn’t click with many of my friends in the magazine and media industry who think of the magazine format as being, exclusively, a business model (i.e., consumer of B2B magazines). The magazine format is not just a business-model, it supports and serves other business models. I typically use university alumni or association magazines as examples here, but think of all the institutions and, now, companies, who use magazines and other media they create as platforms for fostering long term relationships with their constituencies (customers, alumni, members, supporters, etc.). While there are probably (and I’m guessing here) less than 20,000 magazines that have advertising and circulation-revenue as the focus of their business models, this survey indicates there are 143,173 magazines in America. Even if my number is low and their’s is high, the truth of magazine publishing is this: Most magazines in America “support” a business model — they aren’t a business model.

This is an important fact to consider when thinking about the “business model” of another media: blogging. Today — and forevermore — there will be only a small fraction of blogs that are, themselves, a business. The vast majority — as in 99% or more — of business-related blogs will support a business model (or a cause or institution or campaign), not be a business model.

Another thing: I confess: As much as I enjoy publishing — indeed everything about — magazines, I’m also very-much a new-media guy. I believe content-marketing, custom media, social media, conversational media — whatever you want to call it — should be front and center in any company or institution’s marketing effort (our company works with clients in doing just that). I see no “competition” or “conflict” or “irony” in me advocating new media while still championing the magazine format as the most compelling engagement media available.

At Hammock.com, view statistics and highlights from the Custom Publications in America survey.

Interesting article in the NY Times today about scionspeak.com, a new marketing effort by Toyota. It also provides the current state of a non-blogosphere “trend story” about where social media marketing is today. From that vantage point it’s a good story for tech bloggers and social media marketing types to gauge how those from the real world perceive what it means to be a trendy social media marketer:

1. Being a trendy social media marketer means you’re not considering setting up a “Facebook for [Your Brand or Product Category Here].” You know that your customers don’t “belong” to you, even if they are “members.” (Unless, of course, you’re Nike or Apple.)

2. Trendy social media marketers are supporting current customers, not “future” ones.

3. Trendy social media marketers work for clients whose products have tiny market shares and whose customers like being “misunderstood,” “quirky,” “hip” or “superior.”

4. Trendy social media marketers work for clients who have customers who use the word “freaking” as an adjective.

5. Trendy social media marketers recognize that mainstream reporters love Flash websites.

Quotes from the article:

“The Scion Speak campaign is aimed not at future Scion owners but at current ones. StrawberryFrog says that it wants “to reduce Scion’s investment on conquering new customers and increasing the passion for the brand among its core fan base…At least some Scion owners who have created their own coats of arms seem pleased with the results. A Scion driver, writing online as Monsterslovecandy, created a design that included a harlequin pattern, crossed wrenches and a phoenix, and wrote on a fan Web site, “I think it came out freaking sweet.”

No one asked, but here are the primary ways I’m currently expressing myself online.:

rexblog.com: Professional and business-related focus (media, technology, conversational & new media, marketing, magazines). Once each day, my blog includes a posting that aggregates all of the links I’ve bookmared on del.icio.us/rexblog that are related to those topics.

Hammock.com/rexhammock: My official Hammock Inc. “people page.”

RexHammock.com: Personal passions and random-topic tumble-log.

Twitter.com/r: Stream-of-life commentary in < 140 character posts, and where I "hang-out" online.

Flickr.com/rexblog: Where I post photos.

YouTube.com/rexhammock: Where I post videos.

Last.fm/user/rexhammock: Music I’m listening to.

Facebook, Linkedin, etc.: I don’t really “express myself” on these and other “social networking” sites, but on most of them, you can find me if you search for my name or the username “rexhammock.”

FriendFeed.com/rexhammock: A “lifestream” of everything I post anywhere.

Recently, I re-booted RexHammock.com, a URL on which I’ve been experimenting with Tumblr.com for several months. I had determined that I was under-utilizing it as merely a “lifestream” catcher — a place that collects all the different RSS feeds generated by my various online-expressions on Twitter.com/r, Flickr.com/photos/rexblog, etc. And, with services like FriendFeed.com and even MyBlogLog getting more into being pure-play lifestream platforms, I decided to go back and figure out how to better utilize the very cool features of Tumblr.

As you can see from RexHammock.com, one of the smart things they did was make it drop-dead-simple for me to use my own URL instead of some long / this-and-that account name. And, despite my design-free look on the site, the Tumblr platform has some attractive templates and is very CSS-friendly for those who want to (and can) be creative. I’m trying to master the functions and ethos of the platform and its community, before putting any time into determining what it should look like however. So, in my experiment, you can consider it now in a wire-frame state.

What I have determined is this: I’ll be writing about and pointing to mostly non-work or non-professional-related topics on RexHammock.com. For example, this week, I started off with my review of the Punch Brothers new release and have followed that up with posting quotes from the New York Times and the long piece yesterday on NPR’s All Things Considered. (I’m happy to note that if you had read my review on Tuesday, and had listened to a YouTube video I pointed to, you would have been better prepared to understand why such a “different” kind of recording is receiving such attention.)

So, to summarize: On rexblog.com, I’m gradually shifting to focused commentary and links related to magazines, new media (specifically, what I call “conversational media,”) marketing, corporate and association communication. Some of this is cross-posted on Hammock.com and elsewhere. My non-professional interests (stuff my wife & kids & pets do, the world, my hometown, travel, music, photography, books, movies, table saws, humor, tomatoes, Tennessee Titans, Vanderbilt basketball, etc.) are slowly showing up on RexHammock.com.

I’m sorry if you landed here thinking this was going to be a helpful explanation about what Twitter is. I’ve given up on attempting to explain Twitter. And chances are, if you’re someone who wants to understand something by reading about it instead of using it, then you’ll probably never understand it.

Twitter is really easy to explain: You set up an account so people can follow what you have to say via the web or instant messaging or via text-messaging on a mobile phone. Unfortunately, Twitter is apparently incredibly difficult to understand, because any time I explain it, the response is inevitably something like: “Uh, so why would you want people to do that — and why would they care?”

Unlike with some online phenomena, understanding Twitter is not a “generational” thing. Twitter is not one of those fads that caught on among kids that has worked its way up the age-chain. It’s more like Google, in that it started as a drop-dead simple solution to a problem no one knew they had — and has become an obsession with a sub-set of tech-geeks and people obsessed with the nature of online community and conversation (I confess).

My then 16-year-old son was with me last March at South by Southwest where Twitter first grabbed the attention of the geekorati. He observed the obsession’s ground-zero, but I’m sure he’d echo the quote from the daughter of this NY Times columnist, who says, “I’m looking at the site right now, and I don’t get the point.” Here’s my theory why teenagers don’t get the point: There’s a feature on Facebook called “status updates” that does everything a teenager would care to do with Twitter, so why bother? To high school and college students, Twitter is like Facebook without the dozens of other things they like about Facebook — except on Facebook, your parents can’t follow you if you don’t allow them to. (You can block someone on Twitter or opt to limit the visibility of your message to only those you follow, but the common practice is to allow anyone to become a follower — really, why not?)

I’d feel worse about my inability to convey to others any level of understanding of why Twitter is important but in comparison to some explanations I’ve seen and heard, I do a decent job. But, unfortunately, we all fail because we drift into explaining Twitter by telling how we use it. But the most amazing thing about Twitter is this: everyone uses it differently.

It’s a little like trying to explain the telephone by describing what people talk about on the phone. “Telephones are devices that teenagers use to spread gossip.” “Telephones are the devices people use to contact police when bad things happen.” “Telephones are the devices you use to call the 7-11 to ask if they have Prince Albert in a can.”

Like the Internet itself, Twitter is hard to explain because it doesn’t really have a point. And it has too many points. Here’s what I mean: All it does is provide a common-place to relay short messages to a group of people who agree to receive your messages. Here’s the second part of what i mean: When you stop thinking those short messages aren’t limited to “I’m about to get on the elevator” but can be eye-witness accounts of breaking news stories or bursts of business-critical intelligence, or warnings that a gun-man is loose on campus, or shared conversations about political debates you and your friends are watching on TV, the possibilities of what can be done using Twitter becomes amazingly confusing — I think in a good way. It’s easy to understand something when you think it’s limited to Prince Albert in a can prank calls. It’s more difficult to understand when you start imagining the ways something that’s today more toy than tool can be used to create new models of communication, conversation and community. It’s even more difficult to imagine that something called Twitter will morph into a serious business platform — or that it will one day save lives. But it will.

Technorati Tags: twitter

On a new blog at Hammock.com called “Custom Media Craft,” I’ve just posted a “think piece” called 2008: The Year of Mediacasting, along with a sidebar post called 8 Mediacasting Ideas for 2008.

Excerpt:

“The goal of most corporate and association marketers should be to use digital and online content to generate actions, not to attract eyeballs. The content doesn’t need to be on your website — the content needs to be in the hands, and ears, and eyes, and heads of your members or customers. Unless your business model is advertising, page views are not the correct metric to measure your online strategy. Action, engagement, sales, enrollment, loyalty, retention, increased contributions, advocacy and education are business goals that require you to get your message (”content”) to your audience — in any way they want to receive it. In 2008, let your content extend beyond your website. Cast it out in any way you can.”

Read the rest: here.

I was surprised to learn via an e-mail from a friend that my post yesterday about the election-night community experience of using Twitter became the basis of a story in this morning’s Nashville Tennessean. (Admittedly, I was more surprised that my ego-trackers did not catch it first.)

I’m a bit amused by the headline, “Local blogger turns on to Twitter during New Hampshire primaries” as it captures the addictive nature of using Twitter in such a context. Fact is, I’ve been turned onto Twitter for a long time as it has merely extended (and replaced) ways I’ve previously participated in conversational communities. For those who may wonder, why Twitter? I’ll say, it works for me — now. It has attracted a critical mass of early users among individuals I know online. Also, the key features of selecting how to receive and send messages (via text, IM, etc.) make it a drop-dead simple method of relaying messages if you’re a person (like me) who moves from browser to e-mail client to IM to mobile device constantly.

As I have many off-line friends who will read the print version of the Tennessean, I am already prepared for the type of comment I get whenever I show up in a story like this: “Hey, I read that story about you doing that whatch-a-ma-callit thing.”

“The Peanut Gallery” (via)

Last night’s post-primary coverage reminded me of something. Actually, it reminded me of many things. But, the first thing that came to mind was November 8, 1994. It was the mid-term election and for an association client of Hammock Inc., a group of us helped coordinate an online election-night forum on CompuServe — a quaint little online service that used to make buggy whips. A hundred or so participants from around the country — all watching TVs at home — were chatting away about the coverage they were viewing and their response to it.

That experience led me to appreciate the enjoyment individuals have in experiencing live events in a shared-way — even if it’s from the cheap seats way up in some dial-up text-only bleachers. That night, I realized that a news event — or any type of event, say a sporting contest — is no longer merely the topic of water-cooler talk the next morning, it’s a potential real-time community gathering. A giant couch filled with friends and foes who are witty or idiotic, but who all together give an additional dimension to the event.

Since 1994, I’ve participated — and hosted — many such online gatherings, primarily among a small group of friends or colleagues. Often the gathering is done via Instant Messaging or Internet Relay (IRC) if the group is comprised of tech-savvy participants. In the past, I’ve discussed on this blog how live events can be experienced in a completely new way when such “back channels” are available so that friends — or even strangers — can interact with one another about what they are both observing or participating in.

Last night, I had an I-see-the-light moment on Twitter when I realized that it has become — for a small segment of the world, at least — a giant real-time peanut gallery for experiencing events. I’ll admit, my additions to the conversation were mostly goofy or rude comments about what was taking place — sorta like watching the State of the Union Address on Comedy Central, but not funny. Others, however, were providing insightful and informative data (@patrickrufinni, for example).

While I’ve occasionally used Twitter for comments about sporting events, this is the first time I’ve jumped into the deep end of posting tweets on Twitter at a blistering pace. (Which is something I often un-follow people for doing.) My tweets were not worth reposting here as they — this can be said about Twitter in general — lose their meaning out of context.

However, I do know this. Using Twitter sure beats screaming at the TV.

Sidenotes: Twitter sure could benefit from having a feature that allows the creation of “groups” for topic-specific tweets. Also, the folks at Politweets.com are using the Twitter API to isolate and display tweets that include the names of candidates. A little bit glitchy but a very creative example of how Twitter can be used for something other than a confusing stream of unrelated chatter.

Note: I’ve also cross-posted this on my “People Page” at Hammock.com.

Marshall Kirkpatrick explains a new service called Tweeterboard that analyzes data about users of Twitter.

Quote:

“While you can look at the number of followers and friends a person has on Twitter to get some idea of how much weight they carry, that’s only good for so much. So is a black-box algorithm, but there’s a variety of data available on Tweeterboard beyond simple ranking and points.”

Currently, there are about 2,000 Twitter users being tracked on Tweeterboard (here’s mine),

Speaking of Twitter, good luck to my Twitter-friend @susanreynolds (#9 on the Twitterboard Top 100) who was recently diagnosed with breast cancer and is under-going surgery on Friday (she’s blogging her treatment journey here). Several of Susan’s Twitter friends have added “peas” to their avatars (the little photos or illustrations representing the user) in moral support of Susan. Why peas? Well, it’s a long story. Let’s just say, it’s one of those “you had to be there” things. Being Southern, I’ve added blackeyed peas to mine. Peas on earth, Susan.

Following USA Today and other newspapers owned by Gannett, the Nashville Tennessean is in the process of relaunching its website with new “social media” and personalization tools. It even has a catchy new Web 2.0ish slogan: “Powered by You and The Tennessean.

The pre-release version of the site can be seen at beta.tennessean.com. As with USA Today and other newspapers in the Gannett chain, the new site’s social media features are being run on the SiteLife platform from the Austin-based company, Pluck.

Observation: Pluck recently announced plans to develop features for SiteLife that utilize Facebook and OpenSocial APIs, leading, in theory at least, to some far and distant promised land where one can centralize and manage ones identity and online activities with a little more ease. Did I say far and distant?

Opinion: My favorite online version of the Tennessean continues to be m.tennessean.com, the stripped down mobile version.

Despite trying for the past two decades, I’ve never come close to boiling everything I believe about marketing into a statement so efficient as the following one I read in the NY Times this morning in an article about Nike and where they are spending their “advertising” dollars these days.:

“We’re not in the business of keeping the media companies alive,” (Trevor Edwards, Nike’s corporate vice president for global brand and category management) says he tells many media executives. “We’re in the business of connecting with consumers.”

Only change I would suggest: Instead of using the word consumers, use the word runners.

Tag tracking Networked Journalism Summit event I’m attending today: netj. I won’t be ‘live-blogging’ the event, but will be posting some random snips from sessions and will (I’m guessing) be tweeting some from it.

Random snips from Local Pioneers session:

BostonNow - BostonNow.com uses the incentive of getting into print as motivation for bloggers. So “fame” is an incentive. Also, driving traffic to ones blog.

“Reverse publish” is a term being used to publish content from bloggers in print.

Observation from Rex: “Reverse publish” is not a good term.

Random snips from Revenue session:

My Football Writer. Great story of a sports-writer and advertising guy who were laid off from a local newspaper. Decided to join forces, start a website and sell advertising old school — pitch local advertisers in person. Now their former employer is among the advertisers on their site. Makes no money from national ad networks. Selling ads the local way. “People want to see their local ads.” They have an auction model site for local ads in Norwich.

Stephen Smyth of Reuters says Reuters is “exploring the idea of creating an advertising network” for bloggers that will also provide bloggers (in addition to revenue) more information about demographics of their audience.

Henry Copeland of BlogAds. “We’ve written tens of millions of dollars of checks to bloggers” in the past ten years. Today is “late in the game” to get into the advertising network business.

Random snips from International session:

Robbin Hamman of the BBC says they used to invite people to email in photos of a breaking news event and they’d use only 1/2 or 1%, so now they are asking people to post on Flickr and add to a specific pool, or to blog about something and use certain tags. “These are the tools they are using…it’s more honest with people who want to share the things they create.” Also, it’s hard to go through 50,000 emails to find the photos that aren’t fluffy kittens.

Technorati Tags: netj

This article on the website MediaPost.com reports the unsurprising (at least to anyone who is not in advertising) common-sense that, “seventy-eight percent of consumers say they trust other consumers’ recommendations over all advertising/marketing avenues.” In reality, if the question were posed like this: “Who do you believe more, a friend or an ad?” the survey would reveal that 100% of people trust other people more than ads. (The word consumer is a term only marketers use to describe human beings.)

But that’s not my point.

My point is related to the headline of the story: “Nielsen: Word-of-Mouth Most Valuable Ad Platform.” My point is this: “Word-of-mouth” — is NOT an advertising platform.

It’s a long-term commitment to engaging with, collaborating with and joining in conversations with human beings.

Unlike advertising, it can’t be constrained to a single page or spread or time-slot or three-week “buy.”

Anything that works 78% (or 100%) of the time is never that easy.