Social Media This Week: December 19, 2008

"Social Media This Week" will be taking a break over the Holidays. Our next week in review will be posted on January 9, 2009. Seasons greetings from all of us here at com.motion.

You Got Served – Over Facebook?

The news: The Capital Territory Supreme Court in Australia has approved the use of Facebook to serve legal documents. An Australian couple, who were unreachable via e-mail and their home address, had defaulted on their home loan. The bank used a law firm called Meyer Vanderberg to contact the couple. After several attempts to reach the unnamed couple, Attorney Mark McCormack, asked the Australian court for permission to serve the papers electronically to the couple over Facebook.

Key question: What’s next? Marriages in Second Life? Oh wait. That’s been done.

Holiday Party Excuse Generator

The news: For years, physical holiday cards were considered a standard gesture between companies during the month of December. For the past couple years, e-cards have been the trend. In a somewhat cluttered holiday card giving season, organizations may find it difficult to have their greetings stand out to their clients and potential clients. Two years ago, Enlighten created a viral marketing hit called the Holiday Party Excuse Generator to send to their network rather than the traditional holiday greeting. On the site, consumers can create tongue-and-cheek excuses about why they are unable to attend one of the holiday parties they’ve been invited to. Enlighten didn’t promote the site this year, but the excuse generator gets a spike every year.

Key learning: The best viral campaigns get timing right. They involve a sense of urgency, but many are also timeless.

JC Penny Puts Men in the Doghouse

The news: Late in November, JC Penny launched a five-minute online video where a woman takes her husband and puts him in the doghouse in the backyard after he buys her a vacuum. When the character falls into the basement of the doghouse, he is greeted by men folding laundry and drinking chai lattes while a stern woman over a loud speaker is saying things such as “express your feelings” and “help with the cooking.” The video has been viewed more than 1.7 million times and has driven a ton of conversation (positive and negative) in social media as well as traditional media. On the “Beware of the Doghouse” website, women can send their significant others gift “warnings” over e-mail or Facebook.

Key learning: The best viral campaigns involve really good creative. And that may cost a whole lot more than a TV ad supported by paid media. After all, consumers are choosing to watch this.

Are embargoes going dodo?

Twitter has replaced Techmeme as my favourite source for knowing what's hot at this very moment. That's because people tend to talk on the microblogging tool before they take actions that require more time or commitment such as blogging or starting a Facebook group.

When I checked Twitscoop this afternoon to see what was hot on Twitter today, I noticed that the most discussed term was "embargo" - something that caught my eye as an erstwhile journalist and current PR guy. The news that everyone was buzzing about is that TechCrunch, arguably the most influencial online publication has announced that it will no longer honour embargoes. In a post titled "Death to the Embargo" TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington writes:

One annoying thing for us is when an embargo is broken. That means that a news site goes early with the news despite the fact that they’ve promised not to. The benefits are clear - sites like Google News and TechMeme prioritize them first as having broken the story. Traffic and links flow in to whoever breaks an embargo first.

That means it’s a race to the bottom by new sites, who are increasingly stressed themselves with a competitive marketplace and decreasing advertising sales.

A year ago embargo breaks were rare, once-a-month things. Today, nearly every embargo is broken, sometimes by a few minutes, sometimes by half a day or more.

We can’t continue to operate under these rules.

Arrington says TechCrunch will continue to agree to embargoes, but will then break them. The problem, he writes, is that there are no real consequences for publications that break embargoes.

A year ago, when com.motion released our First Annual com.motion-Pollara Social Media Barometer, I decided to experiment with embargoes. I offered the Globe and Mail an exclusive embargo on a few questions and offered a dozen bloggers one exclusive question each. Several agreed to play, but some said embargoes and exclusives don't make sense in a blogging world.

This year, I tried a different experiment, sending out a message on Twitter that I would offer the full embargoed results to anyone who tweeted me back. Only a couple bloggers were interested. (Many more posted about our results after we formally released them).

Offering embargoes - especially on an exclusive basis - increases the chance of coverage. There are stories I wrote at the Globe because they were exclusive embargoes that I wouldn't have written if everyone had them at the same time.

But embargoes have no value when the news is sent to everybody if even one reporter breaks the embargo. Embargoes have become more common and mean far less. We need to get back to a place where they're less frequent, more exclusive and respected by both sides. And publications that break 'em need to be punished for the good of those that don't.

Social Media This Week: December 12, 2008

Ford uses Social Media to Clear the Air

The news: On Wednesday, Ford sent a fan site called The Ranger Station a letter from a lawyer about copyright violations. News spread quickly that Ford objected to the site using the name of its Ranger pickup truck line. Other Ford fan sites (which have Ford in their domain name) feared that they would be asked by the organization to change their material and domains. By the time this news hit the larger auto sites, stories were being published that Ford’s legal department was asking for thousands of dollars in compensation or the site gets automatically shut down. The head of Ford’s social media department, Scott Monty, stayed on top of the online conversation developing around the topic using sites such as Twitter. He quickly began chiming into the conversation and keeping online customers and fans aware of the situation. As it ended up, the situation needed to be clarified. The Ranger Station site was actually selling counterfeit Ford parts. Monty used different online avenues to get the word out, including The Ranger Station’s forum. The entire lifespan of this situation (that could of spiraled out of control online) lasted less than 24 hours.

Key question: News spreads more quickly than ever online. How quickly will this rapid response method spread?

Begging for a BlackBerry this Holiday Season

The news: Rogers launched an online contest this week called “Beg-for-a-BlackBerry” to promote BlackBerry smartphones over the holiday season. Canadian BlackBerry yearners enter the contest by submitting 30 seconds of audio over Facebook to explain why they deserve a BlackBerry over their current cell phones. Facebook participants can add their message to their own profile page where their personal network can hear it.

Key question: Facebook is by far the dominant social network in Canada and the most important mass market social media site for brands. Will its dominance ebb in 2009?

Social Media and the Economy

The news: This week, in partnership with Pollara, com.motion released our second annual Trust Barometer. The results were telling in terms of how marketers will approach social media in the face of an economic slowdown. We found that Canadian business leaders say it would be a mistake to cut back on social and digital spending in tough economic times, with 7 in 10 recommending increased investment.

Key question: Just how much will social media grow in 2009, and how much will traditional marketing communications disciplines suffer?

Social Media and the Economy

The 2nd Annual com.motion-Pollara Social Media Barometer is now live.

Detail and analysis coming soon, but here are the topline results:

• Despite the economic slowdown forcing marketers to modify their spending, 82 per cent of Canadian business leaders and senior marketers say they will spend as much or more on social media in 2009 than they did this year. That’s more than for any other marketing communications discipline, as seen in the table below.

• Canadian business leaders say it would be a mistake to cut back on social and digital spending in tough economic times, with 7 in 10 recommending increased investment.

• Facebook has established itself as Canada’s dominant social network. Among Canadians who use social media, 87 per cent say they have tried Facebook, compared with 33 per cent for MySpace and 13 per cent for Twitter.

• Two-thirds of Canadians (65 per cent) say social media is an important tool for developing, maintaining and nurturing friendships, up from 52 per cent a year ago.

• Two-thirds of Canadians (65 per cent) say social media tools are important for learning about products, services, organizations and brands, up from 59 per cent a year ago.

Tribune down: Will social media win or lose from economic slowdown?

Today's bankruptcy filing by Tribune Corp., which owns the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune underscores that times are tough for businesses that depend on advertising - and by extension - most businesses in the marketing communications space.

But what will the slowdown mean for social media in 2009?

There are lots of opinions. And later this week there will be some hard data to add to the debate.

In our second annual social media poll, in partnership with Pollara, com.motion asked hundreds of Canadian business leaders where they expect to cut marketing spending in 2009. One of the key questions: Is an economic slowdown the right time to cut or boost social media spending.

Click here for the results of last year's survey.

Social Media This Week: December 5, 2008

Friend Portability

The news: On Thursday, Google and Facebook separately announced their own data portability programs called Google Friends Connect and Facebook Connect. The ability to move a group of friends from one social network to another is something many users have been seeking for quite some time. Both Google and Facebook users will be able to use their identities from these sites on others that support one of the programs. The sites that will support these programs will allow their visitors to log in and use the already available information in their profiles as well as find friends already on the sites that they currently visit. The programs are intended to minimize the number of usernames and passwords that users currently use. Using the Google Friends Connect feature, for example, on a companionable site, visitors will be able to go into the site using both their AOL or Yahoo username and password.

Key question: Does friend portability lower the barrier to entry for someone to build a new and better social network?

Santa 2.0

The news: For many years, Canadian children have been sending letters to Santa in the hopes of getting exactly what they want for Christmas. Sympatico MSN has introduced Santa to the beauty of e-mail and personalized web video to help reach out to children using a site called the Portable North Pole. You simply type in a child’s name, age, location, and a few other things and that child will receive a personalized message from Santa in the North Pole. The video is available in English and French.

Key question: With letters to Santa going digital will there be anyone, anywhere sending handwritten letters anywhere?

Canadian Tweetsters and Politics

The news: Politics in Ottawa have sent Tweetsters (Twitter users) aflutter this past week. Twitter is a microblogging tool that has exploded in the past couple of months in much the same what that Facebook exploded early last year. For many hours on Thursday, “coalition” was the most common phrase on Twitter (right after “Christmas”) causing hundreds of confused Americans to wonder what the heck is going on in Canada. Click here to see what Tweetsters are saying about the coalition.

Key question: There’s lots of Canadian politics still to come. What role will Twitter play in the new year?

Social Media This Week: November 28, 2008

Social Media in a Crisis

The news: Within minutes of militants opening fire at various locations in Mumbai Wednesday night, updates were being posted through microblogging site Twitter at a rate of approximately 1,000 per minute. For example, Arun Shanbhag, was visiting his family in Mumbai and has been journaling about the militant attack on different sites including his personal blog, Twitter, and Flickr (a popular photo sharing site). Different sites were set up to help families in need and to also ask for help while many Twitter users were sending pleas for blood donors.

Key question: The social media reaction to this horrible event underscores that Twitter is to 2008 what Facebook was to 2007. Will it become as much of a must-have marketing communications tool as Facebook has become?

WordPress Direct

The news: Spam blogs (or splogs) are a nuisance on the Internet. Splogs are junk blogs created to promote websites or sell advertising by republishing someone else’s content. On Monday, a site called WordPress Direct officially launched where users can create a blog by picking a subject, typing in keywords associated with that theme and the site will pull content from a number of sites and post it on the blog the user has set up automatically. There have been discussions on the web that this is a lazy form of blogging that ignores the intellectual property of other authors on the web.

Key question: Can search engines minimize the impact of splogs by downplaying their content in search results?

Cyber Bullying Case Closed

The news: Further to my post last week, the cyber bulling trial came to an end this week. Just to recap, the defendant, Lori Drew, posed as a teenage boy over MySpace to send first friendly and then menacing messages to a teen that killed herself shortly after receiving a message in 2006. Drew was convicted of three misdemeanor counts of computer fraud on Wednesday. The terms of service on the site state that users must submit “truthful and accurate” information. Drew’s defense was that she never read the terms of service in detail before setting up the fake profile.

Key question: If this verdict stands, will every site on the Internet get to define the law?

Stripper turns car thief

I had to share this video from our Boomerang Tracking client. The Boomerang device sends out a signal so stolen cars can be found and recovered. Here's video from an actual track involving an unexpected thief.

Social Media This Week: November 21, 2008

The Motrin Migraine

The news: During International Babywearing Week, Motrin launched an advertisement targeting moms saying that “babywearing” is a pain. There was an uproar on the popular microblogging site Twitter where social-media savvy moms were proclaiming that Motrin missed the mark, that they love carrying their babies in a sling and that they were going to ban Motrin in their households. McNeil Consumer Healthcare, the maker of Motrin, responded by taking the ad off of the Motrin site. Motrin.com went silent briefly amid the Twitter banter before reappearing with an apology to those moms who were offended. See below to watch the original Motrin ad and a parody of it.

Key question: More than any previous case, the "Motrin Moms" case underscores that influencers can have a tremendous and immediate impact on your brand, organization or messages. How will brands respond?




Cyber Bullying Trial Begins

The news: In October of 2006, a 13-year old girl committed suicide after a teenage boy by the name of “Josh Evans” befriended her, flirted with her and eventually told her the world would be better off without her over the popular website MySpace. It turns out that “Josh Evans” was in fact a mother of another 13-year old girl who attended the same school as the victim. The mother’s plot was to befriend the vulnerable teen with this persona to find out if she was spreading rumours about her own daughter. This case went in front of federal prosecutors on Wednesday where they accused the mother of preying on an insecure teen. The mother has been charged with conspiracy and three counts of unauthorized access to protected computers; each charge carries a maximum five-year prison term. She has pleaded not guilty.

Key question: The case is believed to be one of the very first cyber-bullying trials. Should real-world laws govern interactions on online social networks?

Google Terminates Viral World

The news: After only five months, Google has decided to nix its virtual world, Lively. Google has stated that they are going to focus more on its "core search, ads and apps business”. Also, Google reflected on Lively's inability to stand out from the rest of the virtual reality crowd. Second Life is the most popular virtual world on the net where people create animated alter egos (avatars) and socialize with other avatars. See below for a video from Lively.

Key question: Is five months enough time to test an application online?

In defence of ghost blogging

There's nothing unethical about ghost blogging.

Before I explain, let me emphasize that I've never done it, I probably never will and we at com.motion recommend that clients not do it. But not because of ethics.

"Ghost blogging" refers to the practice of a professional writer or PR type writing a blog on behalf of an executive or celebrity. This is very much frowned on by most of the social media fishbowl. This point was underscored in a recent session on ethics at the Talk is Cheap unconference at Centennial College and a followup post by panelist Dave Fleet.

After labeling ghost blogging as unethical, the panelists were put on the hotseat by Centennial College public relations students and other participants. Why is it okay to write speeches for clients but not to write blog posts? Dave and Michael O'Connor Clarke said the difference is that when a CEO reads a speech, he takes ownership of the words, even if he didn't write them. Which makes it ethical. But this differentiator doesn't apply to quotes PR people write for executives in press releases, the president's statement in a monthly newsletter or op-eds (newspaper columns) written on their behalf.

The ethical divide isn't disclosure since ghost-writing is rarely acknowledged offline except when it comes to books. And its not expectations, since most newspaper readers probably assume that columns attributed to executives were actually written by them.

So either all this stuff - from ghost quotes to ghost messages to ghost op-eds - is ethical or none of it is. And I lean towards the latter former. (Note, I wrote latter here when I meant to write former, and yes, it does change the meaning of my post).

There is one important difference, but it's not ethical. The difference is consequences. Even if most readers aren't aware that op-eds aren't always written by the "writer," the repercussions of getting found out are almost non-existent. But ghost blogging comes with a motrinmoms-esque public relations risk.

And that's the real reason why - ethics aside - we don't recommend it.

Social Media This Week: November 14, 2008

Today com.motionblog launches a new weekly feature where we help our readers keep on top of the latest developments in the rapidly-evolving world of social media. Check back each Friday for the top headlines of the past week.

Live.com by Microsoft

The news: This week, Microsoft’s Live.com online portal has evolved from a search engine into a new social network. Site users are automatically connected with their contacts on the popular instant messaging portal Windows Live Messenger. The users’ profiles include basic personal information and can pull content from other blogging sites, microblogging sites, and photo sharing sites. Users can access other online services including e-mail, calendar, online storage and downloading services that include other Office programs such as Movie Maker. Microsoft’s goal is to ultimately increase site traffic on Live.com and they’ve leveraged what they own: instant messaging.

Key question: Can Microsoft gain enough traction with Live.com to become a real player in the mass social network market dominated by MySpace and Facebook?

Facebook Engagement Ads

The news: Using a healthy mix of both online advertising and social networking, Facebook launched a new “engagement ad” format this week. The ads appear on the main login page and prompt users to RSVP to a TV show season finale or comment on a movie trailer. That ad then gets promoted by sharing the update with the user’s friends. Facebook is charging more for the new engagement ads than it currently does for the display ads. The ads give Facebook users three unique experiences: commenting on ads for all friends to see, giving virtual gifts and becoming a fan of a certain ad.

Key question: Can Facebook turn an enormously successful social network into a successful business model?

Sponsored Videos on YouTube

The news: Although there has been buzz for some time, YouTube formally announced the launch of Sponsored Videos. The videos direct viewers to certain clips that they might be interested in after conducting a search. Marketers will be able to use this new service by seeding a campaign or to launch a new video. The product strives to help advertisers target keywords in a cost-per-click auction similar to that of Google’s AdWords service. The ads have a thumbnail image and three lines of promotional verbiage pointing to a specific page.

Key question: When will Sponsored Videos (if at all) replace AdWords on Google?

Tim Hortons rolls up the social media rim

Note: Today com.motionblog launches a regular feature where we take a close look at a brand or organization using social media for marketing communications.

How much does a cup of Tim Hortons’ coffee mean to Canadians? For years, Tim Hortons has been receiving letters through its customer service department and franchisees. They’ve already turned some of these letters into commercials. Now they’re turning the concept into a social media campaign.

Everycup.ca is Tim Horton’s first foray into social media. The website, developed by our sister MDC agency Henderson Bas, is an effort to reinforce the idea that every Tim Hortons' cup tells a story. The site encourages Canadians to share their Tim Hortons’ stories, photos and videos and it features Tim Hortons’ first commercial. Similar to other social sites, viewers have the ability to comment on and rate the stories they are reading. Readers also have the opportunity to share the stories with friends over Facebook, send through their e-mail and even make the content the wallpaper image on their desktop.

These branded social sites are useful tools for marketers because they can garner great, honest feedback from their consumers. However, it’s at least as important to monitor and measure the conversations taking place away from branded communities. And time will tell what the company’s tolerance is for negative stories or comments.

What do you think? Is this a site that will build enough engagement that people will return to time and time again?

Has Obama Twittered his last Tweet?

I've heard that if you keep a birdfeeder in the fall, you need to keep it stocked through the winter, else the birds that have come to rely on your feed will die. It reminds me of one of my favourite quotes, from St. Exupéry's Le Petit Prince: "Tu deviens responsable pour toujours de ce que tu as apprivoisé." Translation: We are forever responsible for what we have tamed.

There is perhaps a lesson here for Barack Obama who used Twitter - a popular social media tool - throughout the recent election campaign to communicate with more than 120,000 followers, but quietly exited the conversation after his historic victory. Valleywag accuses Obama of having "pumped and dumped" his supporters - Twittering them into donating time and money, then dropping them for a more "presidential" means of communication.

His last message came Nov. 4 at 2:34 p.m.:

We just made history. All of this happened because you gave your time, talent and passion. All of this happened because of you. Thanks

Then radio silence.

Like the president-elect, many brands and organizations turn to social media for one-off campaigns, but the best results come when the commitment is long-term. Barack Obama will need those followers again - perhaps much sooner than four years from now when he returns to the polls. He's not past the engagement phase; he's only begun.

The five tribes of social media

Just came across a terrific post from my friend Sean Moffitt at his Buzz Canuck blog. Sean argues that there are five basic character types swimming around the social media fish bowl - each speaking a different language and each having a fundamentally different understanding of what is social media.

He writes:

The fact that these different 5 tribes exists is a good thing - it points to the multi-faceted nature of social media's benefits. The inability for these social media tribes, particularly the more seasoned ones, to accept that they operate inescapably in the same social media bouillabaisse is a continuing issue that threatens the future financial health of the social media industry. It's just too bad we don't have some kind of United Nations of social media where people of different tribes could try to understand the other's positions with the help of translators...because right now, we're still talking different languages.

He's right, of course. I'm constantly amazed at how every social media "expert" defines social media in a different way. Even buzz words like "conversation" can mean very different things to different people.

How do public relations types come across in Sean's analysis? He gives credit to our tribe for recognizing that influencers deserve special attention, but says we don't pay enough attention to the community aspect of social media and don't spend enough time on relationship building.

I don't necessarily agree with that analysis (I think PR actually pays more attention to relationship-building than many other marketing disciplines) but Sean's overview provides some good insight as to how we're viewed.

Now tell us Sean -- which tribe do you belong to?

Scandal 2.0 Rocks Aussie Liberals

The following post will appear in this week's Touchdowns and Fumbles, Veritas' weekly newsletter which highlights the week;s biggest communications hits and misses. It's free to subscribe.

FUMBLE
Scandal 2.0 Rocks Aussie Liberals

Here’s a bad idea: Team up with one of your co-workers to create a blog which completely and utterly discredits your boss. But that’s exactly what two Liberal campaign staffers did in Australia.

John Osborn and Simon Morgan, paid employees of the Liberal Party, created the blog Ted Baillieu Most Go. The site attacked the Party leader in Victoria, the Australian province that incorporates Melbourne. Not surprisingly, the pair were fired for their lack of loyalty.

They clearly messed up and paid the price. But the real FUMBLE goes to the Liberal Party itself. As Gerry McCusker writes on the PR Disasters blog, the scandal suggests that the Liberal Party was engaged in little or no online monitoring. The blog was created late last year, but it wasn’t until last month that the party figured out who was responsible. McCusker calls it a “complete lack of Liberal e-savvy.”

We tend to agree. The conversations going on about your brand or organization can’t be ignored. Veritas provides Online Reputation Management services and we can help you listen, understand and react to the conversations that are taking place. These conversations can help you improve your products or customer service. They can also alert you to crises of brand confidence before they reach the tipping point. Blogs matter. Smart marketers ignore them at their peril.

Is authenticity in social media an infallible truth?

There's a great discussion going on over at glossblog.ca about the marketing for the film Forgetting Sarah Marshall.

The campaign includes a phony blog, in which one of the characters in the film writes about how Sarah Marshall has broken his heart.

Rayanne Langdon, who works with us here at com.motion, wrote a post on glossblog, where she gave the campaign a thumbs up because it raises awareness and gets people talking.

That post generated a comment from Mary-Margaret Jones of Thornley Fallis' PR Girls blog, who strongly disagreed. Mary-Margaret said the campaign was "inauthentic from the get go" because it wasn't clear that it was a character blog. In the realm of social media marketing, she wrote, that "hurts."

To be sure, the No. 1 rule in social media marketing is that transparency and authenticity must prevail. But once you know the rules, isn't it okay to break them once in a while?

Take this example of a completely non-transparent social media campaign that worked. Millions have watched this YouTube video of Australian party boy Corey Delaney:


After Corey became a worldwide bad-boy celeb, the Aussie blog Random Brainwave set up a MySpace page pretending to be Corey. Media called seeking interviews; the Random Brainwave guys complied; and their website got loads of attention and (presumably) loads of new readers.

No, they weren't transparent. No, they weren't authentic. But as a fringe website, they could get away with it where a big brand, like say, Wal-Mart, could not. I'm usually the guy telling my clients that authenticity is critical. And 99.9 per cent of the time, it's the absolute truth. But aren't we still too early in the evolution of social media marketing to be talking about indisputable truths?

Facebook marketing: Effective but picky

We recently administered a Facebook campaign for one of our clients with a social ad directing users to a fan page and a microsite. The results have been terrific.

But getting the thing set up was a bit of a comedy of errors.

When I first submitted the social ad copy, I was told it was awaiting approval. I was worried it might get rejected because it had the word "sucks" in the headline. It did get rejected but for an entirely different reason. This particular client spells its brand name in capital letters as a point of style. But apparently this is not allowed by Facebook.

I received the following e-mail from the Facebook Ad Team said:

The text of this ad contains excessive or incorrect capitalization. All ads must use appropriate, grammatically correct capitalization. The title of your ad, as well as the first word in each sentence, must begin with a capital letter. Lastly, all proper nouns and acronyms should be capitalized. As per section 4 of Facebook's Advertising Guidelines, all ads should include standard and proper capitalization.

I resubmitted writing our client's brand name with just a single upper case letter. But again, the social ad was rejected. This time the culprit was a period I had placed at the end of a URL.

The text of this ad contains improper or unnecessary punctuation. All ads must end with a form of punctuation. As per section 5 of Facebook's Advertising Guidelines, all ads should include logical, correct punctuation.

I removed the period and the ad was accepted.

For those of us who live and breathe social media, Facebook is viewed as, like, soooo 2007.

But the truth is that - despite its pickiness on points of capitalization and punctuation - it remains the most important social network for Canadian marketers by a massive margin.

Happy Easter all!

Does your job suck?

We've been crazy busy here at com.motion over the last few weeks. And now we can talk about why.

We're helping STAPLES Business Depot to launch Staplesville.ca, an online recruiting Web site that is totally unlike any other.

The launch is being supported by a social media release, a blogger relations campaign, a Facebook fan page and a YouTube video.

The following video features Ben Miner, a Toronto stand-up comedian who hosts a XM Satelite Radio's Laugh Attack channel:

"YouTube no place to discuss ideas"

What do you get when you take a land claims dispute, a politician, an iconic Canadian doughnut shop and mix in a little social media? An innovative if somewhat hokey YouTube video.

Here's one of a series of five videos released last week by Michael Bryant, Ontario's minister for aboriginal affairs, to mark the two-year anniversary of the Six Nations dispute in Caledonia.



And here's what NDP Leader Howard Hampton had to say about it:

YouTube is not the place to communicate either policy or to communicate government messages.

To me, Howard's comments show a complete lack of appreciation for the social media and the cultural revolution behind it.

Joseph Brean, a fine reporter at the National Post, called me up to get my thoughts on the tactic and did to me what I did to hundreds of others in my years as a reporter -- he boiled our ten minute talk into a dozen or so words.

Fortunately, I got the chance to expand on my views in the latest Inside PR podcast, which will be released tomorow. After 100 episodes, co-hosts David Jones and Terry Fallis have turned the show into a round-table format and invited me, Julie Rusciolelli and Martin Waxman to join them.

In episode 101 we discuss the thorny question of why PR people are somtimes seen as slimeballs and the Bryant YouTube video.

THIS JUST IN: Bloggers make mistakes

It was the kind of story that social media bloggers love. Lawyers at an old economy company were ordering fans to "cease and desist" from showing their love for the brand in user generated content. In this case, Ford was barring Mustang lovers from using pictures of their cars in a calendar.

Great story. Except that it wasn't true.

As Shel Holtz wrote, Ford denied the report, saying it was actually the supplier, CafePress, that wouldn't print the calendars. But after one blogger published the initial report, dozens more piled on in judgement, without ever calling Ford for comment.

Holtz writes:

If I were working for a newspaper today, I would still call Ford. If I had opted to blog about this over the past couple days, I would not have. I’m as guilty as anyone else. (And thank goodness I passed on this story.)

Another example over the weekend: Fred Wilson calls out a couple of "journabloggers" for quoting people without checking the facts, then Michael Arrington of TechCrunch goes after Wilson for saying his own post was "conflicted and wrong."

Do bloggers make more mistakes than journalists?

Is the burden of accuracy different?

Are the consequences of making mistakes in a blog any less significant than in a newspaper or TV report?

These are some of the issues I'll be discussing this weekend at Podcamp Toronto in a seminar with my former Globe and Mail colleague Mathew Ingram. Since we are both bloggers who have also worked as journalists, we may be coming at this from a particular point of view. In the meantime, I'd love to hear your thoughts on these questions.