Having said that, the admins have decided to remind the community that those rules are important – especially rule #3.

In a blog post, the reddit admins compare the site to a “busy community park” that has to occasionally be regulated. On the topic of the “park rules”:

…a small number of cases that we, the admins, reserve for stepping in and taking immediate action against posts, subreddits, and users. We don’t like to have to do it, but we’re also responsible for overseeing the park. Internally, we’ve followed the same set of guidelines for a long time, and none of these should be any surprise to anyone.

The five rules of reddit (4, really) are as follows:

• Don’t spam
• Don’t vote cheat (it doesn’t work, anyway)
• Don’t post personal information
• Don’t post sexually suggestive content featuring minors
• Don’t break the site or interfere with normal usage of the site for anyone else

That last one isn’t even a real “rule,” admits reddit.

Alongiside those rules exist a more informal set of guidlines, basically for not being a dick on the site. They’re called reddiquette:

On reddit, “being respectful” involves doing things such as upvoting good content, downvoting irrelevant content (but don’t downvote good discussions just because you disagree!), marking your submissions as NSFW if they might get someone else fired for viewing at work, and so forth. And don’t litter — that is, when you submit something, it should be because you think that it is genuinely interesting, not just because it’s something you made. Many subreddits prefer that you submit stuff that’s NOT yours, while others prefer it if you only submit items that you’ve created. You should always make it clear whether a submission is your content or someone else’s — don’t try to pass off someone else’s work as your own!

By January of this year, reddit had grown to 2.3 billion pageviews a month – which come from 35 million unique visitors. Popular subreddits can generate over 5 million impression a day. Reddit has the power to affect real change on issues like internet privacy, as well as help raise money for charity and awareness for important social issues. The site’s also been known to come through with remarkable examples of kindness and generosity.

It’s also really good for funny pictures and cats.

Because of this, we feel that it is important for reddit to take time each year to remind everyone that although open, the site works best when people are mindful of a few basic principles.

On Monday, the league announced that it had modified its social-media policy to limit Twitter and social-networking use by players, coaches, league officials, and even the media.

The NFL said that it will let players, coaches, and other team personnel engage in social networking during the season. However, they will be prohibited from using Twitter and from updating profiles on Facebook and other social-networking sites during games.

In addition, they will not be allowed to tweet or update social-networking profiles 90 minutes before a game and until post-game interviews are completed.

The rules even extend to people “representing” a player or coach on their personal accounts.

The NFL didn’t just stop with the league itself, though. The organization also said that media attending games will be prohibited from providing game updates through social networks.

It appears that the league is trying to extend the policy that has is used in the broadcast of the games which is usually read during a down time in the action by an obviously bored announcer restricting any retransmission or reproduction of the game and that it’s prohibited etc, etc. The NFL claims it is trying to prevent people from providing a play by play description during a game because it would be an unauthorized use of the product. How they intend to enforce this is another question altogether.

So will the players test the limits? Probably so, especially those who make up for on field lack of performance by over performance in the public eye via social media like Chad Johnson Ochocinco. How about the media itself? There are likely to many wannabe sports reporters out there (and actual ones as well) that will expand their coverage of these games and the ‘stories’ surrounding them via Twitter, Facebook etc. What will be interesting is just how the league metes out justice when the first violators are caught.

So why did I say that the NFL’s ‘No Fun League’ may not apply here? I think they deserve to exercise some control over how the product is presented at least around the games themselves. Imagine that a player misses a play or causes a penalty because he is busy tweeting to his adoring (bizarre) fans? Will it be a game or a media showdown? I like the games myself.

So your take? Whether you like football or not this type of situation is playing out in companies and organizations every day as the ‘rules of engagement’ in the social media world are being set on the fly. Precedents are being set and mistakes are being made all the time. Is the NFL setting a good precedent or committing the Internet’s version of a turnover?

Comments

Shortly after the last chapter ran, I had not one, but two news announcements where stories either broke ahead of their intended time and voices. In one case, it wasn’t even part of the embargo process which was just unbelievable.
To the lead bloggers whom I had brokered these launches, it appeared as if I had mislead them, instead sending the news to others, even though I had assured them that they were given first rights.
In both cases, I took credibility hits and had to do an exhaustive amount of repair work to ensure that these and other relationships weren’t damaged because of the mistake, spite, or questionable activity of other ambitious bloggers.

I did take the steps to rectify things, and ultimately the "mistakes" were corrected…but the damage was already done. Any attempts to convey that to those affected may or may not regain trust.

So, rather than just share with you the ways to be successful or constantly focus on the future of PR, it’s also important to share the experiences where things don’t work out quite like we planned as a way of learning together.

In the realm of technology, this practice is all about who can be positioned as the "lead" story and tools such as Techmeme’s Leaderboard, Technorati’s Top Blogs, Bloglines Top List, Google Reader stats, and other highly referenced lists, only encourage bloggers to do what they can to increase rankings. After all, these lists influence and determine not only PR campaigns, but also where ad dollars are spent.

But it’s not just technology. There are lists that cover every market segment therefore the lessons from this post are helpful to anyone in PR.
What happened here sends an alarming signal, not just to me, but to the entire blogosphere and PR industry.

Outside of my two recent experiences. There are grumblings about foul play across the board that we should all understand.
The business of news can be ugly. There will always be an underground rivalry between top and up-and-coming writers for authority, links, views, and ultimately ad dollars.

The rumors and stories are thick with rife, including the manipulation of "time stamps," copying and pasting from other blogs and sites without attribution, not disclosing any personal or professional interests associated with the stories they run, and running controversial or early stories with checking facts first.

However, this isn’t unlike the business of traditional news media, who have always been notorious for scooping each other.

This is business and business is never clean.

These enlightenments, however, force us to rethink the process of PR launches and news distribution, because at the end of the day, it’s our relationships that will carry us forward.

The message to us is, "be careful and do your homework."

We walk a tightrope between client/company expectations and the relationships we maintain with writers and bloggers.

On one hand, those we report to want to see coverage and they want to see it everywhere. Most have no clue what it takes to make that happen, but they don’t care either.

On the other hand, relationships are the foundation for all good PR, and risking or compromising them should never factor into the news equation.

In the last post I wrote that bloggers were willing to honor embargoes as a way of participating in the business of news distribution. Many bloggers are trying to run legitimate businesses and having the privilege, and yes it’s a privilege, to receive news early is an earned right that offers mutual benefits between the blogger/writer and the company.

As I said, top bloggers are the new "wire" service. Providing them with early access to information allows news to bubble up, gaining credibility and momentum to the point where it attracts attention from traditional journalists. Bloggers have direct relations with people, your peers, and they thrive off of their participation.

There’s a difference though between top bloggers and those who aspire to take the lead, and those differences will ultimately determine who you can trust and who you can’t.

Maximizing coverage is a risky business. And unfortunately, there are many ways things can quickly go south:

- Not communicating the embargo time clearly, complete with time zones

- Not receiving a documented acknowledgment of the embargo

- Not fully knowing the reputation of the blogger beforehand

- Being careless and trying to go for too much right out of the gate without ensuring everything was set

Unfortunately however, the reality is that some of us will learn these lessons the hard way. And many times, these lessons come at a steep price, with reputation, trust, and relationships as the currency.

The best thing we can do is keep an open dialog with our best contacts. Talk with peers. Share experiences. There’s plenty to learn from others to minimize the mistakes and the steep costs associated with them.

In the attempt to earn the respect and trust of bloggers, many PR professionals are subscribing to a "Blogger Relations" code of ethics – although this draft is in dire need of revision (which will be a later post), but it’s a start in the right direction. WOMMA also offers 10 principles for ethical contact by marketers.

Perhaps many bloggers need to think about subscribing to a Blogger Code of Ethics. Breaking embargoes, changing time stamps, editing/barring comments, pilfering content, etc., is just not going to fly for the long term. And it’s unfortunate effects are that these practices will continue take down people and relationships in the process until we all do something about it. That’s the beauty of civil enforcement. Collectively we can dictate the winners and losers.

Tim O’Reilly has an excellent series on drafting a Blogger’s Code of Conduct. Forrester’s Charlene Li also got the conversation going almost three years ago with a call for Blogging Policies.

We as PR and communications professionals don’t need to support those bloggers or writers who don’t keep their word.

I know my word is everything to me and I will make decisions that only strengthen relationships and build trust, on both sides of the tightrope.
Most importantly, sometimes less is more. And, expectation setting is everything.

Breaking news with a few trustworthy bloggers and reporters may be more than enough to effectively align PR with business and communications objectives. After the first stories break, follow up with outreach to other primary influencers, but also find something unique for them in a way that helps them find a unique angle for coverage. Some will push back for not being included in the earlier rounds, and it will be up to you to consider opting them in for the future, but do so based on the discussions and trust.

Contrary to popular belief, the business of news isn’t formulaic. It’s less of a science and more of an art.

Make decisions that benefit your stories without compromising relationships.

Comments

I thought that was a great idea and with so many smart marketers reading Online Marketing Blog, I’d like to invite you to share a few of your favorite books on the subjects of marketing online, social media and new media public relations.

I’ll start with the list I sent Rohit which includes a few books that are several years old but most are fairly new or soon to be released:

• The Long Tail - Chris Anderson
• Join the Conversation - Joseph Jaffe
• The New Influencers – Paul Gillin
• The Search – John Battelle
• The New Rules of Marketing & PR – David Meerman Scott
• Now is Gone – Geoff Livingston & Brian Solis
• Do It Wrong Quickly, How the Web Changes the Old Marketing Rules – Mike Moran
• Search Engine Marketing Inc – Bill Hunt, Mike Moran
• The Corporate Blogging Book – Debbie Weil
• Waiting for Your Cat to Bark – Jeff & Bryan Eisenberg
• The Eyes Have It – Kevin Lee & Steve Baldwin
• Lead Generation for the Complex Sale – Brian J. Carroll
• Duct Tape Marketing – John Jantsch
• Seth Godin’s “Meatball Sundae – Is Your Marketing Out of Synch?” is scheduled for release in December

You can find and order or pre-order all of these books at Amazon or BN.com.

Do you have a recommended reading list of books for better online marketing and PR? Please share in the comments.

Comments

Tag:

Google, Verizon Now Best Of Pals

Let the rampant cynicism begin about Google’s talks with Verizon and Sprint about those carriers offering a Google-powered mobile device to their customers.

First, here’s a brief timeline of how Verizon and Google have gotten along ever since Google proposed four rules of openness in July 2007 to the FCC for the auction:

September 2007: Verizon sues the FCC over the adoption of two of Google’s four suggestions, calling those rules “arbitrary and capricious.” Google criticized Verizon’s action as one that would “prevent consumers from having any choice of innovative services.”

October 2007: Google accuses Verizon of secretly and improperly lobbying the FCC behind the scenes to scrap the two rules of openness it has adopted for the wireless auction.

Now the Wall Street Journal suggests the two companies could be best pals, thanks to the uniting power of the still-unlaunched Google Phone:

Last week, however, Verizon dropped its appeal of the FCC rules. It was unclear whether Verizon’s decision was connected to discussions now under way with Google. A spokesman for Verizon said there was no link between any discussions with Google and the lawsuit.

Interesting development, to be certain. It has been suggested that Google’s hardware would allow Verizon or Sprint, or whichever partnerships they make, to offer the phones cheaper than others.

But we have to wonder how much cheaper a Google Phone can get than free. Visit any wireless company’s retail store, and there is bound to be at least one phone offered for free, in exchange for agreeing to a two-year service agreement.

It doesn’t make sense that cheaper phones would be an enticement to a carrier. They deal with powerful Southeast Asian hardware consortiums now, who deliver inexpensive hardware that Verizon, et al, can provide at no upfront cost to customers.

The only way a cheaper Google Phone could be more appealing would be if Google were paying Verizon to offer it to people.

Aha. I think we just figured out what kind of behind the scenes discussions are taking place. The mobile advertising market is expected to blossom into multi-billions of dollars. Google could be offering Verizon or other carriers a piece of the action.

Verizon would make money coming and going, from the monthly subscriber fee and from ad revenue generated by the actions of the Google Phone users.

If the Google Phone launches as another piece of hardware a carrier can offer, watch the earnings announcements from the wireless companies. We won’t be surprised if they enjoy a little bump in revenue from ad dollars.

For the crew from Redmond, following an “independent path” will mean spending from $50 million to $1 billion for an acquisition. That is a pretty broad path, one that is well marked with Microsoft’s $23 billion cash pile.

Reuters cited Ballmer’s comments at the Web 2.0 Summit, as part of his keynote conversation today.

“If at some point it makes sense, maybe then it makes sense. But that’s not where we are going. We are driving in an independent direction,” Ballmer said in the session.

Microsoft has been widely rumored to be willing to take a stake in Facebook that would value the social networking site at $10 billion to $15 billion. Also, Yahoo and Microsoft have engaged in off and on talks about a possible merger or purchase, though nothing but denials have ever come of those rumors.

• Cell colors based on your custom rules (like “text contains: …”). Just right-click any cell and pick “change format with rules…” from the context menu that appears.
• The ability to hide columns or rows. Right-click a row or column header and pick “Hide…” from the context menu.
• Printing now works based on a PDF for more precise results.
• A new function called IfError to do some error-handling for friendlier error messages. (The Google guide said IfError is explained in detail on the function overview page, but it’s not there at the time of posting.)

[Thanks Veky and Pau Tomàs!]

Comments

Search Rules Advertising As Media Diversifies

Deloitte’s 2007 State of the Media Democracy Survey revealed that 84 percent of all consumers visit a website after finding it through a search engine and 82 percent find websites via personal recommendation.

And while technophiles have been echoing Dr. Egon Spengler since at least 1984 that print is dead, almost three quarters (72 percent) of those same consumers surveyed still read magazines, and 23 percent expect to spend more time reading books this year.

Yet, if the Internet is your only source of information, you might be convinced that print publications are shutting down by the dozens and reopening online, fulfilling the prophecy that people just aren’t into paper anymore. But the reality is that people prefer choice in media, and even interpret media differently depending on the format.

Previously, I noted also the Darwinian aspect to print, the expense, the saturation of the market that has occurred over the past few decades, complete with bloated staffing, ballooning costs, high failure rates, and high barriers to entry that might account better for a seeming downward trend. But it’s more of a shift than a terminal disease. People are diversifying.

With ads, for example, the survey found that 76 percent of all consumers thought Internet ads were intrusive. Yet, if delivered via print, 64 percent actually paid more attention to them. That doesn’t mean stop advertising online, as only 28 percent said they’d rather pay for content than see the ads. But it does provide an opportunity to develop a nice cooperation between offline and online campaigns.

Or maybe Google was just fooling around when they started brokering print ad deals.

What’s happening, rather than one medium replacing or outright destroying another, is that consumers are consuming all forms of media as suits their purposes, when it suits their purposes, and from whichever angle. This could be on the train, at the coffee shop, the library, the living room, the kitchen table, their favorite chair, or the computer desk, from a monitor, a DVR, a mobile phone, a TV, a magazine, newspaper, or radio.

And not only are their choices of media and media delivery vehicles diversifying, but their creators of media are as well. Over 50 percent of consumers are watching or reading user-generated content (71 percent if you’re younger than 24), and 40 percent of consumers are creating their own content (56 percent if you’re younger than 24.)

So that means, to me anyway, that we are entering an interesting and revolutionary new world of media with unlimited choices for creation and delivery of ideas. And that has enormous positive possibilities…if we don’t blow each other up first. 

Quick Overview

Gmail has very effective spam filters that we can utilize to filter our non Gmail email. There are many ways to set up filtering with Gmail with Cpanel. One way to do this is to forward our mail to our Gmail address. Then we can respond using our shiny new Gmail account and have all our email filtered. If you want to continue to use your old email address though this doesn’t work well.

A second way to do this is to forward all email to Gmail and allow Gmail to send email as your original domain. Allowing another server to email on your domains behalf is called “relaying” and done wrong can be a source of spam. Smartly Google requires a special server setup that tells them they have permission to send email on your domains behalf. The setup is called SMTP AUTH and isn’t standard with Cpanel so it was out for me.

A third way is to set up our email to handled by Google. In order to do this you sign up for Google Apps and set up your dns records accordingly. I think this option is great for regular family sites or beginners but for my business. If you don’t have or are uncomfortable using shell access then this option might be best for you. I chose not to use this though because don’t want to be left high and dry if Gmail encounters any problems.

Lastly you can set up a series of rules at Gmail and on your server to filter your email. The first rule is set on your server and forwards your email to your Gmail account if its not been filtered yet. The second rule is setup at Gmail to forward email to your email server if its for your domain. The last rule is on your server that checks if the emails been to Gmail yet and then routes it to the appropriate mail box. This option works great but requires shell access to your server and can be tricky to setup with Cpanel. This is the option I chose to use.

How I Setup Gmail Filtering with Cpanel

I chose the series of rules option but I needed to modify it a bit to work with Cpanel. You can not add the rules using the Cpanel mail filter in the control panel because you can’t add all the necessary rules. Since thats the case you need to edit the filter file manually on the server. On a regular *Nix server with Exim as the mail server you would put a file called “.forward” in the root of your home directory. The “.forward” file would have all the rules you exim to process when it handles your mail. On a Cpanel server this doesn’t work though. There is a directory with files for filters for all the domains on a Cpanel machine. The directory is called “/etc/vfilters/” and the file name will be your domain name. With VI I opened and edited the file adding the rules noted here. Then I added the rule at Gmail to forward my mail back to my server.

Here is an example of my setup:

In the file “/etc/vfilters/web-professor.net”:

# Exim filterif not first_delivery and error_message then finish endifif $message_headers: does not contain "X-Forwarded-For: myGmailAccount@gmail.com"	then		deliver "myGmailAccount@gmail.com"	else		deliver "admin@web-professor.net"	endifendif

In my Gmail account I went to the Settings page and then to the Filters tab. I set a filter that causes Gmail to forward all email addressed to a the domain “web-professor.net”, and keep a copy in Gmail’s inbox. To do it yourself just go to the advanced filters and enter your domain in the “to” field (no need for wildcards). Then select forward for the action and fill in the email address.

The Results

For the first couple of hours Gmail let through most spam but after marking the bad stuff off and on it catches most of it.  For me that means it stopped ~2000 spam mails  and let ~5 through this morning. To contrast these results with my previous spam filtering  I was receiving ~80 spams messages a day. With some more training I am confident that those numbers will get even better.

Postscript

I hope this helps you set up Gmail filtering for yourself. I am sure there are other ways to do this this is just how I solved it. Also not that the solution I posted sends all the email back to one email address. That might not work for you if not then take a peek at the exim filter documentation. You should be able to come up with more complex filters and rules to forward email to more than one email address.

Comments