Clue Train

Today in class we discussed The Cluetrain Manifesto. The theses discussed in the book lay the groundwork for todays social media and the future of PR. According to the Manifesto the new world order of social media before us is one that will take advertising and PR back to the conversation level. Marketing has become more and more demographics motivated in its mass marketing approach. The manifesto encourages advertisers to move away from mass marketing in general and web 2.0 facilitates this unlike ever before. With all the social networking, and book marking applications and sites on the net, marketers are able to communicate to individual micro markets like never before. The manifesto warns corporations that markets are becoming more informed and demanding. If a firm wants to stay in business it must keep up with these new citizens or risk obsolescence.

Podcast

Here is a link to my PR group's podcast. Included is my segment on the previous blog.

Drudge Dread

In a recent New York Times article, "Clinton Finds Way to Play Along With Drudge" the impact of alternative media on the 2008 presidential campaign is evident. The article takes an in depth look at what extremes candidates are wiling to go to in order to get positive articles posted on this extremely popular site. According to Nielsen/NetRatings the Drudge Report has clocked 3 million visitors in the course of one month. The site was founded by conservative Matt Drudge ten years ago and gained popularity during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. I believe that national politics today are closer to professional wrestling than democracy. Large news sources such as CNN, Fox News, and the BBC are all biased in their own ways. The public has come to realize this and the popularity of alternative sources has begun to rise. The Drudge report was a good example of alternative media, or at least it was before the politicians started getting all buddy buddy with Drudge. This does not overly concern me because the great thing about today's alternative media sources is that for ever one that gets so popular it's creators become corrupted there are alwasy millions of other sources that are ready to step in its place.

Bookmarking Battle

Recently I decided to switch my social bookmarking site from del.icio.us to Stumble Upon. Both sites have their pro's and con's and i decide to compair the two and decide on one in an effort to cut down on redundancy. Delicious is a great bookmarking site and it offers a good keyword search but after signing up for it i found myself rarely bookmaking sites with the toolbar. I found myself stuck in the past; adding bookmarks to my favorites list in my browser. But stumbleupon offers me a reason to use it. Unlike other bookmarking sites the toolbar of StumbleUpon has a button that will take you to a random site that is highly rated by the other 3.5 million users. It also allows you to rate sites you like while at the same time adding them to the favorites page of the site. The big advantage of these 2 bookmarking tools is that they allow you to view your most important or favorite sites away from your home computer.

New Media Vs. Movies

In today's world of new media described in our readings and lectures the impact on such forms of traditional media cannot be overlooked. One of the most important demographics for any marketing project is the notorious 18-34 year old group. This segment of the population is of great importance for any product or service but especially to the entertainment industry. I came across an interesting article today while using stumbleupon. According to David Jenkins, film and television production companies are beginning to blame their slipping ratings on the Internet and video game usage. Mr. Jenkins linked back to the original article in Advertising Age by Claude Brodesser-Akner. The articles state that many industry executives have blamed the poor box office sales of the new Ben Stiller Comedy "The Heart Break Kid" on the release of the Xbox 360 video game Halo 3. According to film industry executives the 18-34 year old demographic is being lured away from the theaters by video games. I envision two possible outcomes of this new marketing reality; more films based on video games will be produced or this completion will force the industry to produce better films. Let's keep our fingers crossed for the latter.

More On The PRX Builder

A few weeks ago we viewed a short sales presentation about an interesting concept, an interactive company PR template called the PRX Builder by Americas best PR firm according to the American Business Awards Shift Communications. Cameron's blog covered the template in detail and he even filed out one and made a template for our class. When PRX first started a year ago it had an exclusive distribution deal with PR Newswire for the distribution of it's press releases, but now that contract is up and PRX can be distributed by other sites. In their newest email they informed their clients that Twitter followers can now link to the PRX builder. Twitter is a social networking and microblogging site that takes an interesting approach to social networking. Twitter uses instant messaging to ask people what they are up to, what sites they are visiting then logs the responses and distributes them all over the world as in the diagram above. Its pretty cool in my opinion because it is almost instantaneous. The site can track interests, keywords, and concepts through IM and SMS and has been doing so for 2 years now. The interesting stuff they find is right at your fingertips on their blog page. The tracking of these keywords and concepts over SMS and IM is brilliant because this is the closest thing to casual conversation that people participate in on the net. PRX's clients can now track the spread of their press releases through the site and it is a great marketing tool.

Web Radio 2.0

One of my favorite web 2.0 concepts has always been the idea of interactive web radio that creates customized stations tailored to your musical tastes. For two years now I have been a member at one such sites called Pandora. The site is great because it is part of something called the Music Genome Project which is a collaboration between artist and programmers to provide a great place for people and music to come together. The site has hundreds of thousands of songs that are listened to by a group of music-analysts and given one of over four hundred descriptive attributes that are used to let the customer search for a song or an artist then it plays song with similar attributes and lets you rate them to make your own radio stations. The site, like many other interactive web radio sites, offers both a free membership with advertisements (visual only) and a $36 annual membership free of advertising. Along with the great music on the site, the interactivity of Web 2.0, is firmly embraced with a behind the scenes look at this site through blogs and a podcasting section. I encourage everyone to try it out and I dare you to enter the name of a song or an artist that Pandora does not have.