Mobile Diner® where wireless and washington meet….

Cecilia Kang’s recent front page story in the Washington Post discussing efforts by those in the telecom / tech space to use social media to affect policy generated a lot of buzz over the weekend.  Although I’m no longer in the trenches fighting those battles, I’ve been one of the early advocates for using social media in the public policy arena (this blog started in 2006).  Accordingly, I have a few thoughts on the article.

Ms. Kang begins the article stating – “Why pay for a golf trip, dinner, or full-page ad when you can tweet for free”?  It is a good question and is core to the overall conversation.  However, citizen lobbying isn’t on equal footing yet.  Fundraisers that provide the golf and dinner opportunities provide access to policymakers that are not quite analogous to twittering.  If this was true, as highlighted in her Post Tech column, some companies wouldn’t be spending nearly $6 million (last quarter) in lobbying.  Don’t get me wrong, utilizing social media is allowing citizen lobbyists to close the gap on the traditional influence game.  However, we are not quite there yet.  Continue Reading »

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Are you a leader or a poser?  There’s a big difference.

Free Press is a leader in the interactive universe.  They cultivate and organically grow their communities.  By utilizing digital tools early and often, the Free Press team has built a machine that can deliver results.  Last year, they took on Comcast, leading an effort to urge the FCC to rebuke Comcast for its network management practices.  They won.

Early this year, Free Press began beating the drum for the FCC to stay the course and open a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on open internet regulations in the wireline and wireless spaces.  This effort mobilized thousands of letters, blogs and tweets on the topic.  Once again, they won.

Free Press has become a juggernaut in the District of Communications.  Although, I don’t always agree with all of their public policy positions – I love the strategies they use to raise public awareness and influence policymaking. Continue Reading »

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As always, apologize for the stale food in the diner.  As I have mentioned, things have been busy at Tin Can and Amplify but wanted to cook-up a quick dish on Twitter lists…  In digital circles, you can’t go anywhere these days without hearing about them.  It is all the buzz right now in social media.

What are Twitter lists?  Briefly, Twitter now has the functionality to allow its users the ability to segment people they follow on Twitter.  For instance, I follow around 400 people and, with the addition of twitter lists, I can now group people according to “policy”, “mobile”, “digital”; you name it, there is a Twitter list for it.  You can also see other Twitter users’ lists (if they’re public) by looking at their profiles and you can get a sense of how you are seen in the Twitterverse.

This is either another stroke of genius by Ev, Jack, and Biz or just another thing for the social media elite to point to as a way to measure “influence.”  Thus far, it seems to be the latter and I don’t think that’s good for Twitter in the long haul.

We’ve already seen reports that Twitter’s growth is slowing.  The strategy to get to 100 million users seems to be promoting the celebs and hoping all of us will just want to sign up so we can see what Alyssa Milano and Ashton Kutcher are doing.  Contrary to being an awesome two-way communication tool – it becomes a fire-hose of noise.

I’m working on my list now (it is private) to see if it adds additional value.  I enjoy Twitter and the community I have engaged with there for over 2 years.  However, I’m not optimistic about this move and believe it is a step in the wrong direction…

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I’ve had a bunch of folks ask me about the diner and where we’ve been cookin’ the last few weeks…

A smorgasbord of answers to that question:

(1)  Mobile Future Coalition

As some of you know, the Mobile Future Coalition launched last year to raise awareness about all of the innovations occurring in the wireless industry (much of it in the mobile-social space) and to advocate for a regulatory environment that does not look like the legacy wireline one.  In any case, we are doing more blogging and engaging consumers in other forums too (follow mobilefuture on twitter).  After a year of planting seeds, we intend to be more proactive in a number of conferences and in Washington.

(2)  Tin Can Communications®

More companies (post-election) are now interested in blending and augmenting their traditional communications with new media (especially in the tech community).  There has also been an increasing interest in integrating a mobile component to their communication efforts.  Putting our clients first is our first priority – so the food may get stale on occasion (my apologies in advance).

(3)  Folks want snacks not meals these days

One of the reasons for Twitter’s growth is “snack size” content.  Folks do not have time to read or write a bunch of long blog posts (nor do they want to).  How many times have you actually had the time to read all the articles in your RSS reader?  Or when was the last time you checked your RSS reader?

Not only do people want their content in small portions, but they want it from trusted sources – people they know.  That’s why people are flocking to Twitter and Facebook to find out what their friends are watching, reading, and doing.

On that note, much of the posts on twitter are now links to other content.  Accordingly, as a part of the Amplify team, we are creating a solution called “Clogging” that makes it easier for friends, colleagues, consumers, and students to share and discuss what they are reading on the web.  In this information revolution, I can’t think of a more socially productive tool for an organization.  Thus, I’ve been spending more time clogging not blogging (I promise to have more on this in a future post)…

I think I just killed it for everyone with this long post!

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On election night, a huge group of my friends taxied, bused, and brought our celebration of Barack Obama’s victory to the White House lawn.

The impromptu late night party was sparked by text — creating an exuberant flash mob of sorts. It is somewhat fitting that SMS should welcome our 44th President to the nation’s Capitol.

Without mobile technology, Obama would not have mustered up 53% of the popular vote that sent him to the White House.  Pivotal in this large margin was the huge youth vote turnout (ages 18-29), an estimated 21.6 – 23.9 million voters (up 2.2 million from 2004) of which  PEW Research finds 66% supported Obama.

Mobile Millennials Rocked the Vote!

Obama’s new media campaign engaged this demographic like never before.  According to PEW Research, 46% of Americans used wireless, e-mail or the Internet to engage and reach out to other voters in this election. Civic engagement, much of it youth, was harnessed by Obama’s text messaging campaign and implementation of new media technologies.

The Obama iPhone app fused mobile and social media with the “call a friend” feature encouraging wireless users to contact friends in battleground states and offering them real-time mobile access to issues.  In addition to the iPhone app, the “vote early” campaign encouraged early action at the polls.

The Politico aptly sums it up:  “never in post-war American politics have youth voted so differently than other generations as they did in 2008.”

Continue Reading »

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As you know, we covered Mobile Future’s Forum on how wireless is affecting elections. It was both fun and informative.

Once again, many thanks to Jed Alpert (Mobile Commons), Katie Harbath (Former Giuliani Campaign), Michelle Mayorga (Rock the Vote), and Casey O’Shea (DCCC) for making it a success…

In any case, we did a little Mash-up video of the event. Hope you enjoy it!

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I don’t know how folks played basketball in these shoes…

That’s where corporate organizations are with digital tools and the interactive universe. They are running in Chucks. Not necessarily a bad thing – they look good – but as CNET’s Caroline McCarthy reported this week, half of these corporate efforts in social media will flop.

There are some key differences between the basketball players of the fifties and the “digital strategists” today — the players understood all aspects of the game and didn’t throw bricks…

Dialing-up to Digital

New media is no longer niche. You are no longer from another planet if you blog. In fact, most people in the district are now on Facebook or even Twitter. Not to mention that every Public Affairs firm in town is now offering blogging and new media services. In addition to those firms, many social media experts are marketing themselves online… Okay, so that guy with 4000 followers on twitter (who is good at personal branding) is going to lead your interactive public affairs strategy or your online marketing initiatives? Scary…

If you are looking to utilize digital tools as a part of your overall communications strategy, look for folks who have been on some campaigns or led some grassroots initiatives. In addition, look to hire professionals who know your industry and can get your organization beyond the “fad” of the day… You’ll score more than fashion points…

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This morning I attended 2 great keynote speeches here in San Francisco at CTIA. The first one was Jim Balsillie (Co-CEO, Research in Motion), followed by Shantanu Narayen (President and CEO, Adobe).

With regard to RIM’s presentation, BlackBerry is putting its money on real-time use of social technologies. As we know, in the diner, these technologies flourish through wireless. Mr. Balsillie demonstrated this by showing the utility of the new BlackBerry devices and how they can fuse all of your entertainment, music and social networks.

BlackBerry already integrates Flickr and Facebook. In addition to those social spaces, Mr. Balsillie also announced a recent deal with MySpace. This offers a tremendous opportunity for the MySpace community (currently 122 million users) and I expect the results to replicate Facebook’s mobile app success (already 2.5 million downloads in 1 year). On a related note, Mr. Balsillie sited the projected growth of mobile social networking as a staggering 1000%, leaping from 80 to 800 million users.

It will be interesting to see how users implement the constant access to social networks via wireless and how the social networks themselves adapt to their usage.

Disclosure – Blackberry is a client…

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With the U.S. Open Men’s Final all set for tonight, I’m feeling a little nostalgic.

I’m remembering Andre Agassi and those Canon commercials — “Image is Everything” he would proclaim… Andre was so right!

In the district of communications, your image has a lot to do with how successful you are with your policy initiatives. One industry that has suffered from bad perception in the marketplace is the cable industry. However, the cable folks are not following the traditional playbook and trying to hire more lobbyists. They are looking to improve their image engaging bloggers and the citizenry.

In a Communications Daily story today (subscription only), Rob Stoddard (NCTA, Senior VP of communications and public affairs) stated:

“the cable industry needs to do a better job of improving its image with bloggers and customers alike. As we chip away at that image issue, I really believe that all this money we spend on messaging will go further.”

Policy and politics are all about marketing. Accordingly, in times like these, making sure you are a step ahead of the competition is critical. Companies that blend an interactive strategy with their traditional communications will be rewarded in the market and in DC.

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According to a Rasmussen report, Obama now leads McCain by one single point. The race is in a dead heat… Or is it?

Many are trying to find other ways of gauging the election, beyond reliance on traditional polls.

For instance, Tech Crunch recently did an interesting article based on research by Hitwise – comparing the number of people accessing Obama and McCain’s respective websites by state, attempting to infer which candidate is more popular via web hits.

Alternately, there are some (relatively unscientific) methods, such as this Yahoo News Poll, that states that pet owners could be the deciding factor in the election (they apparently revere McCain).

The search for alternate polling methods makes sense considering that traditional polls are completely unrepresentative – utilizing predominantly landlines to survey voters – and leaving out the increasing number of voting age adults with only cell phones. According to PEW Research, 14.5% of American adults (a majority of which are the 18-30 demographic) cannot be reached by land-line. I call this neglected group the Mobile Millennial, and I predict they will come out in droves in November. Continue Reading »

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Michael Phelps is my hero.

After cheering him on for 8 gold medals in the Beijing Olympics, I feel entitled to a little something in return - his friendship on Facebook.  AND yes, we have a mutual Facebook friend, (actually a friend of a friend) so I think I might make the cut…

Unfortunately, I am one of several thousand desiring a brush with Olympic glory, in what Valleywag has termed “Phelpsmania.”

Phelps recently told Bob Costas of NBC that he has over 7,600 pending Facebook requests and will no longer accept new friends.

As of today, Phelps’s fan page has an astounding 1,012,704 members (at least his fan club accepted me!) and is the most popular exempting Barack Obama’s page (with 1.34 million followers). Additionally, there are 465 fan driven discussion boards covering a myriad of topics from Phelps’s ipod music preference to a transcription of an AIM chat with the Olympiad.

We millennials grew up being told that the world was our oyster and we could be anything. For those of us who fall short of Olympic aspirations, connecting with Michael Phelps is a little way of vicariously sharing some of his glory. I know Phelps would probably like to maintain some semblance of a private life and keep the usefulness of his Facebook page. However, that doesn’t bode well for my pending friend request!

In the absence of my own gold medal, I for one refuse to accept defeat. I think I will try to friend Nastia Liukin next.. I’ll keep you posted…

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On Friday, I had the pleasure of having coffee in Adams Morgan with Jill Foster. Jill really need no introduction in the world of social media. She is the co-founder of DC Media Makers and her efforts in new media have been highlighted in the Washington Post… However, for folks in the telecomm policy space, Jill actively utilizes wireless to augment her contributions as a “roving” reporter and to make media.

In this interview, we discuss the mobile-social convergence and her upcoming trip to Denver to cover the DNC convention. Jill has access to many events in Denver and she will be utilizing Utterz to capture the action.

Make sure to check out her reports from Denver here…

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Senator Stevens, we love you in the diner.

For someone who has always seemed overly concerned about online social networks, I find it interesting that you are looking for “friends” online… MySpace??

Once again, maybe it’s just me, but I don’t think parents would be too excited to find their children (especially millenials) friending, sharing photos, videos, or participating in your online communities.

With your election on the horizon, I’m sure someone in your campaign thought this was a brilliant idea. You’ve seen others in the political space embrace social communications and reap the enormous benefits. However, for you sir, your efforts in this space lack passion and just ring hollow.

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I just got back from China (specifically Beijing and Hong Kong), and I’m fascinated by what’s going on worldwide in communications. It was a great trip and I wanted to share a few perspectives from my travels…

China

With the upcoming Beijing Olympics, China’s government seems to be making some crucial strides towards opening up, particularly in the arena of new media. My buddy, a writer for Sohu.com (China’s answer to Google) agreed that bloggers are blowing up China, allowing a previously unheard avenue of free speech.

An example of this in action is President Hu Jintao, who interacted with “netizens” for the first time on the internet forum Renminwang. According to many people I met in China, prior to the Sichuan earthquake, the government officials seemed completely out of touch with the public.

New media has the ability to bridge this gap and give the people of China a voice. A provincial Chinese official, the Secretary of Party Discipline, made waves when he stepped out of line and began to blog in response to government complaints by local citizens, opening up discourse towards the free flowing of information.

Granted, the Chinese government has a long way to go. Click here to watch an interesting podcast by Thomas Crampton of Danwei on the use of Twitter, and other forms new media, as vehicles for censorship. Continue Reading »

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We have discussed how the winners in the wireless revolution will be the ones that collaborate. In this new world of communications, it is a must. Rapid advances in technology and a hyper-competitive environment no longer allow companies to have monopolies on innovation.

In the consulting world, same story. An organization can no longer hold all the intellectual property under one roof.

At Tin Can Communications ™, we are co-creating with one of the best interactive companies in the market – Blue State Digital. On that note, we were delighted to see them highlighted in a recent article – Obama’s Secret Digital Weapon – in Business Week. BSD are leaders in digital communications and we add some firepower for one of their clients in the telecommunications space.

Prahalad and Krishnan (Professors at the University of Michigan’s B-school) are credited for coming up with the term co-creation in academia. For many folks, this might be a novel concept and you should pick up their latest book. However, for others, keep co-creating and increasing your contributions to consumers.

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