Pandora Squared - Web and Business Architects, Consultants, Social Media Marketing, Software and Blogging hope not hype

A Comcast technician came to replace a faulty modem. After spending an hour on hold with Comcast’s central office, he fell asleep on my couch. I’ve been in my apartment for three weeks and my internet connection is still non-functional. This is my tribute to Comcast, their low quality technology and their poor customer service.

Vinny Ferrarri tries to cancel his AOL. But John (a call center rep employed by AOL’s subcontractor) decides he’ll play tuff guy. Happy ending? Vinny has no more AOL and John got fired.

I wonder how long it took to spread to high management?

They have no clue…yet

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This is a picture of the Edsa, it cuts through Metro Manila a city with 20 million residents and like most of South East Asia, BIG HUGE LOUD outdoor advertising is everywhere…

Big Media that plays by old rules finds the world evolving past them.

A lot of smart people are playing by old rules, and they are struggling to be relevant in a world evolving much faster than they are. Reminds me of “Who moved my Cheese?” and meanwhile, passionate Geeks like us can start fledgling startups and operate diverse skill sets spread out across multiple countries. It isn’t just us, a few smart companies like Mobius and DME acknowledge the power of Crowdsourcing.

Meanwhile, the staple of the IT Industry the IBM and HP’s continue to stay strangely silent in popular media and blogosphere and you can find the IBM’rs blogging about solid tangible business related efforts.

This is the same picture as above of Metro Manila but a little to the right. On one side of the river you have the developed beautiful painted villages…on the other side of the Pasig you have the parts that got left behind.

A lot of Media Companies are getting left behind.

With high costs and in cash crisis, my colleagues tell me they are chasing projects with futility and others advertise their financial restructure.

It is almost like a lot of people are waiting for the Teacher to enter the room and say ok, get out your books turn to page 33 and begin.

Hugh Mcloud

Thomas of English Cut [Savile Row tailors etc] was recently interviewed by BBC Radio 4’s “In Business” I think the key point I took away is that…

the media business is currently in a period of great transition

i.e. nobody really knows where the whole thing is going to end up.

Their are two distinct “Scenes” Old traditional media combined with “New Media” and the do’ers (Joel on software ,37 signals,and Aussies like Splatt,) They think they are speaking to each other but…they are not.

Tom Lee has 30 years marketing experience and he told me, bluntly:

This is ahead, way ahead, interactive with depth…and it isn’t just the software either it is the whole approach, really kind of like a collected unconsciousness…

It almost sounds like hyperbole, but really folks, it isn’t. Think about this: Gartner is hosting global conferences on outsourcing in Mexico City…

II Annual Gartner Outsourcing Summit

Location: Centro Banamex, Mexico City

Event Date: 28 June 2006

Theme….year’s event features new content including sessions focused on key BPO issues, best practices for managing multiple IT service providers and critical new information to help you tackle this complex decision.Get unbiased, road-tested strategies for setting sourcing objectives

He does more than writing a blog (John Battelle’s Searchblog ) and writing a book on Google (The Search ).

Now he has his own Ad Platform.

See an interview with John Battelle here. Advertising Age – A Blog Network That Gets Marketers in the Conversation

“For people who want to make a living or a partial living out of making great content, there wasn’t an alternative to using massively scaled networks like AdSense, which are good but don’t bring in high-CPM, site-specific deals.”

We’re already 70 million or 75 million page views a month.

Not bad for 50 sites.

Federated Media Publishing

Gary Reid has outlined 10 simple steps to social media marketing:

1. Who is the story for?
2. What is the story?
3. Where are the key knowledge pools/information hubs?
4. Who are the key user producers?
5. How will we reward users?
6. How will we collaborate with users?
7. How will we measure distribution?
8. How will we measure ‘actions’?
9. How will we control the message?
10. How will we measure success?

Social media marketing, to be successful, must always put the users or consumers at the the center, no matter what the channel through which an enterprise delivers the message. In the form of a piece of web real estate, users determine the success of a social network, tagging, user-generated content framework. That a company has adopted the web as a platform for delivering a service or information does not mean it has engaged in social media marketing but has only begun to provide a platform for conversations to happen among members of a target market.

Social media marketing is different from traditional point-and-shoot variety, in that it engages a more long-term conversation between the enterprise and the target market, between the marketer and the target market and most especially among members of the market. Far from saying that the days of whiz-bang hyper expensive advertising and promotions are over, social media marketing actually complements the stil-mainstream approach. And if conducted in the right way, it could prove to be more successful that what it supplements.

To put Reid’s ideas succinctly, marketers should craft a good story, allow the customers to develop its plot, and let them talk about how it progresses in channels where they feel comfortable talking about the story.

Gary Reid is the author of The Web Driven Entrepreneur.

David Kirkpatrickhttp Fortune Senior Editor, acknowledged the fact that old media has finally succumbed to the internet but insists that in the end, media companies need to do what they’ve always done—produce good content…and perhaps they will learn that as wonderful as the Internet really is, it will neither kill nor replace anything they do.

And indeed old and new media has embraced each other and produced several hybrid media like TiVo and Press Display.

Press Display allows users to get copies of their favorites newspapers right off the press as they will appear in printed form:

TiVo, on the other hand, lets users watch their favorite shows online, live and without commercials. TechCrunh also reported television’s aggresive movement to the internet: News Corp.’s Fox network has signed a six-year agreement with its affiliates that will allow it to show reruns of its television programs on the Internet.

Kirkpatrick, however, still seems not to acknowledge the force behind the internet’s strong influence when he said that he believes that the future of media, especially for print and TV companies, will continue to very much depend on strong brands.

After saying that media companies should go where the customers are?

Shel Holtz explores how social media is affecting internal communication processes within organizations and companies.

Holtz Law, which he himself coined, states that Whatever succeeds on the Internet will find its way onto intranets.

Holtz tells the communicators should lead and take the charge to get executives and employees to blog. In Lawrence Ragans Communications, Inc.’s Journal of Employee Communication Management, Holtz tells how blogs should be harnessed as a communication channel instead of a technology.

In the Journal he identified some possible examples for how blogs can be utilized:

1. Projects: project teams can set up a group blog to maintain an ongoing record of decisions and actions. Project leaders can also maintain a blog to announce to the rest of the company the current status of the project and what was accomplished today.
2. Departmental: Departments can maintain blogs to let the rest of the company know of current offerings or achievements.
3. News: Employees can contribute industry or company news to a group blog, or cover news they have learned in their own personal blogs.
4. Brainstorming: Employees in a department or on a team can brainstorm about strategy, process and other topics.
5. Customers: Employees can share the substance of customer visits or phone calls.
6. Personal blogs: Even though this sounds like a time-waster, a personal blog can prove valuable in the organization.
7. CEO blog: What a great way for the chief executive officer to get closer to employees.

If companies are sincere about knowledge management, blogs represent a startlingly good channel for it.

And blogging phonemenon has indeed penetrated the enterpise. Corporate executives have launched blogs to provide a more human voice for the organization or to position themselves as thought leaders. Managing a work force means treating them like people, not mindless drones who live to serve company’s ill-defined will. And if companies can utilize social media to their advantage, employees are engaged effectively resulting in improved productivity. He has called on communicators of companies he knew that have already incorporated social media within their organizations.

So far, feedbacks have been positive and it seems it will be for the next years.

UX Magazine has a great write up on the changes between traditional and new media. Some lovely simple diagrams to help understand how things have changed.

On the subject of UX Magaine, the new design still get me excited each time I visit (in an innovate design sense of excited. So nothing wierd going on there). I have to click through to read the real article each time I see a new article on bloglines.