It must not have spelled it in English, though. This week, PodTech sold to ViewPartner, a company that doesn’t even seem to have a website, for under $500,000, or enough to purchase a one-bedroom condo in San Francisco.

Robert Scoble

How does that happen? you want to know. Everybody wants to know, which is why this FriendFeed thread has been highly viewed. Scoble’s been on hand giving lots of nonspecific insight as the rest await former PodTech CEO John Furrier to blog his side of things. One thing’s clear from Scoble’s posting: he definitely thinks it’s the leadership’s fault.

But that’s an easy bet, right?

There had been definite signs of trouble for PodTech over the past year. Transparency has its benefits, but sometimes that window into the company is actually a hole in a leaky boat. Besides few people being really clear about what, exactly, PodTech was about—video, it appears, long form, and technology, and Scoble’s there, making videos too long to watch right now. . .—a strange tweet in the steam of August 2007 rang alarm bells loud enough to be temporarily noticeable.

It could be, the blogosphere took it the wrong way. Chuck Olsen’s now blogospherically infamous tweet read this way:

Just got off the phone with Furrier – it’s a shitbag salad over there… Scoble’s out

For a solid weekend, bloggers dined on that, erm, shitbag salad, digesting it as Scoble’s termination or resignation, both of which he denied, before taking a small blogging hiatus. Then Furrier was forced out by the board, Scoble really did leave four months later, and so had everybody else anybody’d ever heard of.

Eventually, you just stopped hearing of PodTech altogether. That salad Olsen mentioned now appears to have had more ingredients than Furrier and Scoble. According to Scoble, there were lots of problems, including revenue, collective vision, and utilizing talent.

Scoble, from FriendFeed:

". . .almost all of the talent left. What’s left now is not much that’s worth much. The revenues came because of our social media leadership. That’s what Furrier really had in his hands. Owyang. Me. Cunningham. Jones. Gillmor. The rest of the stuff was a pipe dream that didn’t lead anywhere, which is really why the company burned through $7 million (plus several million in revenues)."

Other revealing comments suggest Scoble didn’t see eye-to-eye with (other) leadership, perhaps even with Furrier, though he refuses to give specifics and burn his bridges (probably a smart move). In a nutshell, he advised any startup-minded person watching this saga to have certain ducks in a row (paraphrased below), we’ll call them the Seven Habits of Highly Effective Startups:

1. Revenue is pretty important. (For any old-schooler, that might seem obvious, but success stories like YouTube and Facebook have belied this age-old business tenet.)
2. The ones who bring in the money, should be the ones in charge.
3. Have a vision. Make sure everybody in the company shares that vision.
4. When it comes to firing idiots, there’s no time like the present.
5. You need good metrics/measurements to improve.
6. Listen to your star players.
7. Don’t fire a CEO without having a good replacement.

Furrier weighed in on the FriendFeed thread with a promise to blog more about what exactly happened with PodTech, and also took the time to note Scoble’s assessment may not match his own.

"There are many lessons," said Furrier. "Scoble’s view is from his perspective but there is a big picture that goes way beyond Scoble’s view and that has to do with building a company from a zero stage. I’ve moved on from a year ago after I was forced out by the board. We made some mistakes but directionally correct. Sure if I had a mulligan things might be different but a business strategy, financing strategy, and team strategy are part of the story."

And now, we wait to find out more. Sometimes there are better lessons in failure than in success.

Top blogger, social media guru, and video podcaster, Scoble will join Mansuetto Ventures–the company behind Fast Company and Inc. magazines–and create a new video channel called FastCompany.tv.

Andy Plesser has most of the details…

As he builds the network, he will continue to produce daily technology videos, much along the lines of the ScobleShow. He has the assistance of a full time producer and is looking for studio facilities in San Francisco.

In his new job, he will create and supervise a number of channels with other video creators, he told me this afternoon in phone call from San Francisco. Robert expects to have at least five new channels launched this year.

Although he will continue to own and run Scobleizer blog independently from Fast Company, he is entering into agreement with the publisher to sell advertising. This would be the first time ads, besides banners for his book, have been sold on the influential blog.

FastCompany.tv will open on March 3. In the meantime, you can read Scoble’s announcement and the official Fast Company announcement.

If you’re not already following Scoble, you should. If online video content is going to become a major part of our web use, you can be sure that Scoble will be their driving the bus!

Good luck Robert!

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I’m sorry I didn’t break the news on my blog, but breaking it in front of thousands of people at a major industry conference is OK too (Arrington, who wrote the post, was in the audience) because people got to see my real, unfiltered, reaction.

UPDATE: I didn’t know that Arrington was going to post about it then. Dave Winer was sitting next to him in the audience and gives his point of view.

I told everyone that it was true that I had decided to leave PodTech, but that Fast Company hasn’t been signed yet and that I’m still considering two options, one of which is Fast Company. My last day there will be January 14th. I am working on a number of PodTech initiatives, including the CES BlogHaus as well as a Blogger Bus Tour to CES from San Francisco to Las Vegas which is sponsored by Microsoft (more on the bus, as well as how you can get a seat, next week when I get back into the office).

So, what will happen on January 15th? I told the audience at LeWeb that things haven’t been wrapped up yet. I have two options I’m considering on the table and will announce what I’m doing on January 15th.

How did it leak? Well, I needed advice between these two options and so I ask my friends to give me advice (actually, Rocky and I have been thinking a lot about this and have turned down a half dozen other options). I talk too much, which is my downfall, but also I got some world-class advice from people all over the industry.

Why didn’t I blog about it? Because I had family and other committments between the panel and now (it’s currently 2:24 a.m. and we’re packing to come home now).

Why not be transparent on the blog? Wasn’t that the lesson of Naked Conversations (our book that studied how 188 businesses used blogging)?

If you read Naked Conversations you’d know that we don’t recommend putting everything about your life on your blog. We even have a whole chapter about people who’ve gotten fired because they put inappropriate things on their blogs.

Certainly discussing career moves on a blog is inappropriate if you don’t have a clue what moves you’ll make (staying at PodTech was always on the table as one of the options until a week ago, for instance, when Rocky and I made some decisions about what would be best for our careers going forward).

Why not stay at PodTech? PodTech went through a lot of managerial chaos earlier this year and I was trying to help PodTech get to profitability and help it get some focus, business wise. You’ve seen some of those moves already as PodTech has moved away from an editorial focus and toward an corporate media development one, which is where much of PodTech’s revenues (which are in the millions per year now) are coming from. That’s a decision I helped PodTech make and I think they are good ones and will help it avoid the TechCrunch Dead Pool. Companies need a lot of help creating media, so PodTech has a pretty good future opportunity ahead of it, which is why its investors continue to support it.

When did I make this decision? In the past week. I know that back in October I said I wasn’t going to leave PodTech, but a lot has changed in that two-month period. PodTech’s new management team has been working together a lot better, and the direction it’s been going is different than it was back in October.

Now that PodTech is getting some focus I found that my show needed a new home in order for it to get to the next level, too.

Before I go on, I want to thank Seagate for sponsoring my show, which enabled me to interview more than 300 people over the past year or so. Looking back at that year it’s amazing how many people have come in front of my lens.

I’m a geek, a user advocate, and enjoy doing my show more than anything else in the world other than hanging out with Milan, Patrick, and Maryam. This week I got to do all three together in Paris thanks to Loic Le Meur, and I’ll always be in his debt for that. I’ll also, too, always be in debt to PodTech and John Furrier for hiring me and encouraging me to do a daily video show and giving me the resources to do that.

I’m also seeing significant changes to how you all interact with each other. Over the past year we’ve seen Twitter, Facebook, Kyte, Seesmic, Ustream, Justin.tv, Pownce, Jaiku, and quite a few other technologies get popular.

This interview with Mogulus’ CEO and Chris Pirillo’s pioneering efforts with his own live TV channel played a key role in getting me to see that there’s a new kind of TV channel possible — one that’s participatory instead of one-way — and one that would be very low cost and potentially have high revenue possibilities compared to the cost.

Remember, you don’t need a large audience to make a lot of money in this industry. I used to help edit a computer magazine, Visual Basic Programmer’s Journal (which later became Visual Studio Magazine) and that only had 100,000 subscribers, but millions in revenues. I also love the Demo series of conferences. There the audience (usually more than 1,000 people) pays more than $1,000 each to attend and everyone on stage pays $18,000 to present to that audience.

Another thing that opened my eyes? The Google Open Social press conference where I had the only video, thanks to Kyte.tv and my cell phone (they had asked for me to leave my professional camera in the car — funny that’s a story I’ve heard several times, including on the panel discussion yesterday where Jeff Pulver showed off video he shot on a small pocket camera of the recent Led Zepplin concert. He told the audience that Led Zepplin wants to buy his photos and videos because they were better than the professional ones).

At the Google Open Social press conference, instead of doing “professional journalism” and cranking out an article like other bloggers and journalists in the room I opened up Twitter and started telling people what I was hearing. Then I listened to them and asked questions during the press conference that they wanted answered. It changed how press conferences should be done in my eyes forever. Add streaming video, like AMD used the other day in another press conference, and things would be dramatically different.

Which gets me back to the headline I used here: it’s your business.

I’m watching how Loic Le Meur is building Seesmic by including the community into every decision he makes. His software doesn’t have the most features out there (Kyte.tv beats it by a mile, particularly on the mobile phone side of things, which is why I love Kyte so much) but Le Meur is building up a ton of love in the community for his approach.

The participants are in control there. It is your business.

I’m tired of getting used by companies who just use and use and use without giving me anything in return. I remember three years ago when I first heard the words “user generated media.” That term still pisses me off. I’m not a user, I’m a participant. I actually love it when Christopher Coulter calls it “loser generated media.”

So, whatever I do next will place that philosophy at the center. It is your business.

One other thing: I really have hated not being open and transparent the past year. Whatever I do next will have to put up with me talking with my friends, telling you openly what’s going on in the business and in my life, and we’ll build something fun together where we’re all equal participants. Our Photowalking series gets damn close to what I’m thinking of. It’s not lost on me that our videos in the photowalking series has more comments per video than the average ScobleShow videos do and those generally have more comments than other PodTech videos do. That’s media made by participation, not by some committee or some gatekeeper or some “A list blogger” somewhere. But using the newest technologies we can even bring participation in a photowalk to a whole new level. Justin.tv demonstrated that to me.

How will we make revenues? Well, there’s a variety of companies that are leading the way in participatory philosophies: You know, those that design products with their customers, or treat their customers as participants the way that Loic does with Seesmic. HP, for instance, is bringing its customers into help design its products. I saw a laptop at HP that was partially designed by a customer. A participant. HP is far from alone in leading that charge as well.

So, anyway, thanks for all the nice notes and let’s talk again about this on January 15th after I make my final decision and start my show down a new path.

Oh, and in late January I’ll be going to the World Economic Forum, where we’ll kick things off.

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Of course, another commentator by the name of Robert Scoble says he’ll be joining up with Fat Camp to set up Fat Camp TV, so take it for what it’s worth.

Though he hasn’t responded on his blog, Scoble, who’s currently in Paris, did confirm via Twitter before announcing his general lack of availability. "It’s true," he tweets, "I’m at PodTech until January 14, 2008. After that? The deal hasn’t been signed yet, so we’ll announce it on January 15th."

Scoble also denied PodTech was financial trouble, as reported at TechCrunch.

Detractors are quick to note (or, dig in) that this is a much different tune than Scoble sang both in August and late October. In response to late summer rumors that PodTech was "a shitbag salad" and that he was leaving, Scoble, rather bluntly, denied both.

In October, Scoble denied both again, this time taking direct issue with the Fake Steve Jobs (Forbes editor Daniel Lyons) reporting that "Scoble was planning to bail in January" and that PodTech was failing.

"This is total, 100% bull####," Scoble wrote. "Not even deserving of a response. I’m not leaving PodTech. When, er if, I am you’ll read it here on my blog."

Lyons, er, Fake Steve, was quick to hop on the told-you-so bandwagon, and to suggest that Scoble doesn’t follow his own advice about "radical transparency" in blogging:

"Come on, Robert. Walk the walk, baby. Be transparent. Stand naked before us. Tell us who’s offering what. Show us the term sheets. What’s that? You’re shy all of a sudden?"

Ouch. Well, I guess we’ll all find out in January.
 

This is total, 100% bull####. Not even deserving of a response. I’m not leaving PodTech. When, er if, I am you’ll read it here on my blog.

Interesting that not a single blogger called me this evening.

Interesting too that OUR COMPETITORS are the ones who are writing this crap. Thanks guys.

PodTech has suffered personnel issues in recent months. They fired well-regarded video blogger Irina Slutsky over the summer. A week ago, company founder John Furrier left his CEO position with PodTech, a move that made people wonder about the future of PodTech.

As Scoble noted in his response, his phone number is on his blog. People who reported on the story seemed accepting of the hint of PodTech’s passing, so much that no one called him. That’s not a good sign for a company, when a rumor by a parodist comes across as a likely truth.

I know I’m a bit opaque about what’s going on at PodTech. Not really very transparent of me, I know. But we’re becoming a more focused company and that leads to a whole range of things that I can’t yet share.

As with anything, if you have any questions, my phone number is 425-205-1921 and I’ll be happy to answer the questions, if I can.

Just for the record, I’m 100% committed to PodTech and the moves that John Furrier and the executive team is making and won’t reevaluate my career until Spring of 2008.

Irina is still a friend and will always be part of the PodTech family and I wish her all the best. Her humor still makes me laugh and she’s one of the most tied in people to the community I’ve ever known. If I wanted to know something about what people thought she’s the first person I’d go to for that.

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Ranging from the traditional media and how copyrights are being fought, who does content belong to nowadays? Scoble noted that he thinks Viacom will win versus Google/YouTube, and it’s a bad thing because it leads to more walled gardens.

But, there are people that are creating their own channels and creating their own distribution channels. Does this change the game, and does it make it where people are more in control? But the reality is that those individuals do not have the ability to fill movie theaters, or the numbers needed for Nielsens.

Is the distribution channel changing? You all distribute to one person, and that person distributes to others (so, it lowers cost of distribution). We can look at what happened with Sicko, and it being distributed on different torrents. The distribution model there forced the Weinsteins to change the release date, only release in one movie theater. For an indie film, you cannot expect to be in business if the distribution model includes your movie being shared for free.

P2P networks may not have value in a commercial sense (at least for Scoble) as you are not able to measure the audience. Being ad and sponsor supported, you need the traditional numbers. My sponsor is not that into numbers, so I could possibly do a P2P distribution system.

New media created properties are starting to have the same value as traditional media, such as vidcasting, but it’s about audiences. If you are reaching the right audience, you are going to be courted by big companies. There is an audience, and people will buy, if there is a reason.

Not a single company has contacted me about my new fatherhood – Scoble twittered, blogged and Jaiku’ed about it – so the companies are not getting how to reach new people.

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To summarize, the foes of live blogging don’t like its instant nature—they’d rather bloggers took notes offline then pondered those notes for a while before writing an article (instead of instantly posting their notes). They also don’t like the fact that bloggers are tapping away at their keyboards—a distraction for the speaker.

If typing is a distraction, wait’ll people start showing up with video cameras aimed at them! Sites like Stickam and UStream let anybody with a camera and a Net connection broadcast live video. Initially, these services gained attention when a San Francisco tech guy named Justin began live-broadcasting just about everything he did, including sleep.

Of course, live webcams are hardly new, but the ability to house the stream on any page, a la YouTube, is just one of the features that makes these sites more compelling than the typical webcam broadcast.

Over at PodTech Robert Scoble and Jeremiah Owyang took UStream for a spin at the recent Web 2.0 conference, using the live streaming capability to broadcast panel discussions and other activities. (Jeremiah wrote about it here.)

As if being broadcast live—every word you say—isn’t enough, you could also be recorded for posterity. It has long been one of Doug Kaye‘s goals to capture as many meetings, conferences, workshops, speeches and other activities as audio files and make them searchable and retrievable. Recently, Kaye launched , “Podcorps a corps of volunteer stringers who can show up at these events with their digital recorders, process the digital audio, and then publish it — typically at the Internet Archive,” according to Jon Udell’s report.

I suppose those who don’t like live blogging may have less of a problem with live video and recorded audio, since they present accurate accounts and cannot be spun by an author (Steve Crescenzo’s criticism of live blogging that took place during one of his talks). But again, the argument can be made that most TV reporters shoot video, then go back to the studio and edit it. Of course, that’s not the case for on-the-spot reporting, and access to services like UStream and Stickam will make just about any event on-the-spot, and the audio files uploaded to the Internet Archive will be of the “live to the hard drive” variety—recorded and uploaded without any post-production. And in terms of distraction, as Shel Israel (the target of Crescenzo’s ire) notes, “What happens when UStream gets popular and there are as many cameras in the room as there are clickers on keyboards?”

Is this a good thing or a bad thing? It doesn’t really matter; it’s here and conference organizers and other institutions will have to figure out how to make the best of it. Certainly there are opportunities to do more than ban cameras, along with laptops, from conferences.

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The original interview was aimed at CMO’s and Jennifer asked that I keep it very “high level”, so I’m happy to answer Jeremiah’s tougher follow-up questions.

Here are Jeremiah’s questions, re-posted from his excellent blog.

Question 1) Because blogs score high in Google Search results, how does this impact corporations who spend resources on SEO campaigns for their websites?

Andy says…I think companies should consider a corporate blog first and foremost for its ability to reach out to customers, clients, partners and investors in an informal, honest tone. That being said, blog content tends to do well in the search engine results for a number of reasons.

1. Blog content tends to naturally focus on a theme. For example, this post will likely rank well for search terms that include search marketing, social media and blogging related keywords.
2. Blog content is picked up by more specific channels. Your corporate blog content will appear in many more “discovery” channels, such as Technorati, making it easier for it to be found – and linked to – than your regular corporate content.
3. Bloggers link to other bloggers. A blogger is more likely to link to corporate blog posts than static content, such as a press release page.

While many suspect that blog content tends to simply rank better in Google, it’s really the fact that the content is fresh, focused, frequent and favorited (ok, “linked” but I liked the alliteration of “favorited” better).

Question 2) If Social Media is an effective way to gain in SEO (as well as engage an audience), should we increase Social Media Program budgets and reduce SEO budgets?

Andy says…Crikey, are you trying to get me lynched by my SEO peers? While it’s true we’re seeing more marketers referring to “social media marketing” (SMM), I think the lines between SMM and search engine marketing (SEM) are blurring. 90%+ of those calling themselves SMM’s are also SEM’s. I think search engine optimization (SEO) is often more valuable than SMO, so more budget should be applied to it. That said, SMM is fast become a vital component of any SEO campaign. Beyond the viral, word-of-mouth benefits from SMM, you tend to pick up a lot of incoming links – which are vital for SEO – hence the birth of “linkbaiting”. After all that, the quick answer? Increase your SMM budget, but do it at the expense of your direct mail or TV budget, not your SEM budget.

Question 3) The word of mouth network is becoming more and more efficient. Communities are forming and networks are formalizing, these networks allow users to share info about products and services without using search. (Twitter, blogs, myspace are good examples). update: If these word of mouth networks become so efficient and content is shared amongst a common group, will this reduce the need for searches?

Andy says…No. Next!

Ok, you wanted something more in depth, huh? WOM/viral marketing is becoming more important for information sharing and validation, but it’s still not a proactive channel. When I read the top stories on Digg or browse the RSS of my favorite blogs, I’m still letting the information flow to me, in no particular order, at no particular time of interest and likely without much motivation for action on my part. “Search” will always be needed for those times you need to find a resource, answer to a question, or hot new product. However, that doesn’t mean that social media content won’t show up in the search results – it will and does.

Question 4) I state that Web Marketing is not on Two (corporate and google) domains only. Some savvy companies are realizing the Web Marketing battle isn’t on the corporate domain only, as the word of mouth effect becomes more important, do companies really want visitors to come to their site? Or will the savvy company realize that the most effective web marketing is using advocate customers to turn cold and warm prospects. How does this impact the SEO industry?

Andy says…Some good points and you’re definitely on to something. Consider Digg.com, must people that use Digg, don’t ever actually click thru to the site being discussed, they simply read the summary and discuss the merits of the story, without actually engaging the linked-to site. I think SEOs are starting to realize the need to manage and influence all content that mentions a company (or client company). I do a lot of consulting in the online reputation monitoring and management space. This newly emerging market demonstrates that companies need to consider all “touch points” to their clients. An opinion about your business may be formed from a review, a blog or forum without a potential customer ever visiting your corporate web site. Social media means that, instead of the information coming down two giant pipes (the corporate site and Google), it’s actually being “torrented” via many, many smaller channels. My opinion of a business is no longer made up of how pretty their web site is, or if they’re “ranking” in the Google search results. Opinions are now formed by dozens of sources. I think SEO’s that embrace this notion – which includes social media marketing as already discussed – will flourish in the future.

Phew! I thought answering Jeremiah’s questions would take just a couple of minutes, but I guess I got carried away. So, what are your thoughts on Jeremiah’s questions (or my answers)?

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We all spend time online watching videos on YouTube, or our favorite shows with ZeFrank or 1938 Media (come on, who doesn’t love Yue and that other person).

And, it’s hit Wall Street with Wallstrip, which has a viral video on the daily hot stocks.

Podtech has taken this to a whole new level with ScobleShow, LunchMeet (yay Irina and Eddie) and all its shows, some of which are like SMTs or VNRs. And they have run into the same issues that PR has dealt with in the past.

One of the grand-daddies of the VNR and SMT world, Doug Simon, has started his own vlog. Via email, we did talk about how the future of the VNR is moving online, with companies doing videos in a smart way. With his background, Doug is well positioned to be a thought-leader on how PR and video are going all social media.

But, that’s the thing. Corporations are embracing social media – in particular video, as it is something they can grok – and some are doing it in a smart and clever way. Some of the companies are not doing it in a smart way – I think that’s when advertising messaging gets too involved – but others are.

Look at GM’s I Got Shotgun (a client). Yes, I’m a little biased, but I think it’s great. And, well, when I have a friend that IMs me that he loves the site, that it’s been a black hole of time at work (meaning he’s been watching all the videos), I know it’s hit a sweet spot. It’s the combination of bringing in people to be hosts, the videos that they upload to apply to ride shotgun (car allusion, get it?), and then watching them be fun and goofy at different events.

It’s that desire that we all have to become stars that makes something like I Got Shotgun work – here’s a chance to interview stars at different events, go to those events and get the back-stage pass that you usually would not get.

Or, look at Here’s To Beer. I got a chance to talk to Tom Shipley, senior director of global industry development for Anheuser-Busch, about what they are doing – and it’s pretty cool.

The site was first launched in February 2006 as a category / industry campaign to choose beer more often, over other alcoholic beverages. While it is an Anheuser-Busch campaign, it is not branded for them, but is more a straight forward delivery of all things beer: how it’s brewed, different types of beers, how it pairs with food. While the site had good traffic, it was not repeat traffic, so the new site is more entertainment focused with updated content, and education, such as Beer Connoisseur with the Beer School (interactive videos and classes) that’s a really deep dive into the world of beer.

Part of that has been video-heavy content, profiling up and coming artists and different content – but in a way to think about beer more often. The whole message that’s integrated into the site is that it’s like a monthly ‘zine, with fresh new content on a monthly basis, so people can come back and just go to whatever is their favorite part (new talent, beer school, etc.)

The site has also wrangled in Dave Lieberman to become a beer connoisseur. Lieberman – from the Food Network – has a video blog to showcase what he is thinking about beer. It’s his personality, and has a ton of leeway to do what he wants to do and what is on his mind – also on a bi-weekly to monthly basis. Lieberman is also the voice and talent behind the Beer School section on pairing beer with food.

Plus, they are taking the social mobile route by working with MingleNow on Clink – so you can socially drink, because drinking alone is just sad. Although, tagging a photo of drinking alone would be funny.

Or, well, look at Stefanie Perez. She’s the embed video, and I know her from my blog (yes, people randomly IM me because of my blog). Stefanie lives in LA, she’s a 23 year old Latina from Chicago who was in the military but moved there to become a star. She’s working it, though, by putting together her own videos and posting them on her MySpace page and getting the word out. Oh, and if any agents are watching, Stefanie’s a double threat – English and Spanish.

And, well, that’s part of the greatness of online video. Anyone can become a star, like Brookers or Amanda Congdon – some with talent, some without – but you get a shot at getting out to a whole new audience that might never have found you before. Or, go over and apply to win Network2′s $25,000 contest on how to watch Internet TV.

So my point? Well, that video is part of the mix now in PR. Moreso than before, and probably moreso than ever before. But, just like anything else in social media, it needs to be done well. Yes, video needs to be an integral part of communications – but have it a smart message, not manipulation or astroturf.

How should video be used? First, most importantly, it should be used when appropriate. In this social media rush, firms and corporations rush out to put everything together in one campaign. It does not make sense, though. Video is a great way to get your message across, but companies need to remember to have an honest voice, not messaging. It’s one of my lines about social media – hand it over to PR rather than advertising, because PR is used to talking TO people, not like advertising that just talks AT people.

But, only use video if it makes sense. New demo to showcase? Video it and post it in the newsroom and on YouTube. Just don’t try too hard, and it should be fine. Oh, and check out SplashCast – great service to create video channels.

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