February 2009 Archives

There have been some interesting developments recently in the world of Media 2.0.

According to a recent article in the Huffington Post - a Media 2.0 vehicle in itself - Social Media Week (SMY) NY is a great example of this process in action. The idea, born of a group of friends in the digital media space went from concept to implementation in just 3 weeks, under the leadership of one man, Toby Daniels. Daniels, 32, had just left a high profile job at MintDigital, an online digital platform and was looking to reinvent himself as a digital strategist.

His first step was to convene an executive committee consisting of academics, business leaders, media thinkers and others he knew.

This Advisory Panel then created a mission statement everyone could buy-in to: "SMW aims to create an open and inclusive environment offering a series of free events, including workshops and panel discussions, and a platform for individuals, group and companies to organize their own activities."

Thirdly, Daniels suggested that their events would get far more press as part of a self-organized Social Media Week strategy than if done as stand alone events by the individual panel members.

Finally, he enlisted Tumblr to build the website. With all of the week's events listed in one place, a unified vision for SMW and how it might benefit the social media community began to emerge - all this in less than a month.

Along a similar vein, Tactical Marketing Inc., based out of Las Vegas announced the launch of New Media Minutes - a weblog and weekly podcast by longtime blogger, Emmy-award-winning broadcast journalist and Las Vegas News anchor Dave Courvoisier; and internet marketing veteran, Joe Perez on new media today at www.newmediaminutes.com.

New Media Minutes intends to give audience sixty second breaking reviews on new media and the newest technologies that are extremely newsworthy but not necessarily making the headlines. They run on a newly launched social networking-based direct sales platform called Vi-Net. Vi-Net is an industry first in direct selling through a seamlessly integrated proprietary social network in the health and wellness space.

They want to give you all the news you need in 60 seconds.

What impact is this type social media news having on the traditional media as they undermine traditional media business models?

Take a look at what is happening to the San Francisco Chronicle, the city's major daily. Yesterday, the Chronicle's parent company, Hearst Newspapers, announced that unless they secure major concessions from its unions (read: layoffs and salary cuts), it will have to close the paper altogether.

Google, a Media 2.0 leader, has played no small role in redefining how people read the news. And last week, one of its most prominent executives launched a side project to see if he can save local reporting from the lethal dynamics that threaten papers like the Chronicle.

When Tim Armstrong isn't busy running Google's North and South American advertising arm, he's behind the Polar Capital Group, which has just funded Patch, a new company, dedicated to providing online local reporting in small towns that newspapers can no longer afford to cover. So far, the company has set up one reporter in each of three New Jersey suburbs: South Orange, Maplewood, and Milburn. Patch is based out of New York, where former Time Out New York editor-in-chief Brian Farnham will try out the new model.

Like New Media Minutes, the site will weave short stories about city government, traffic, and local businesses with photos and video, trying to keep local officials accountable in an era when the media are retrenching and scrambling to stay alive.

These trends mark some of the new trails being blazed each day by Media 2.0 innovators.

Earlier this week, President Barack Obama showed how to get off the mark fast in the introduction of his first major announcements.

When it was discovered that former U.S. Senator Tom Daschle had "forgotten" to pay his taxes for three years. Daschle resigned but President Obama took responsibility.

He said, time and time again in his February media blitz that "I screwed up, I should have been more diligent."

This shows how well President Obama understands one of the fundamentals of communications.

When you make a mistake, acknowledge it, take responsibility, tell people what you are doing to "fix' it up ... and it goes away. I call it: "Mess Up, 'Fess Up, Dress Up."

While the Presidential team continues to use You Tube and the other New Media to communicate with Americans, they made sure every major US media outlet interviewed the President. It has been estimated that 25 -30 million Americans saw his television broadcasts (Bloomberg.com).

This is further evidence that the rules of the game have changed forever by technology. This is a good example of the melding of the roles of traditional and new media. The Obama team recognizes that you cannot focus on just traditional or new media but need to make creative use of the two.

Remember during the run up to the election sites with names like Politico and FiveThirtyEight and Eschaton and Crooks and Liars and AlterNet collectively come to rival the three television networks in influence with younger audiences.

Huffington Post's "Off the Bus" site often made headlines with on-the-scene bulletins and audio/video snippets from some 3000 contributors.

What's happening today?

The Democrats used www.change.gov as the "go-to" place to find out what was happening in the election.

As soon as President Obama was confirmed in office, the site closed, a message said: "The transition has ended and the new administration has begun. Please join President Obama at whitehouse.gov."

Now, that is effective use of the new media. By the way, President Obama got to keep his Blackberry, making him the first media-savvy President.  Stay tuned!

Photo: Barack Obama. Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 Generic