My wife and I volunteer for FlourishConf, UIC’s annual conference on open source software and innovation. The fourth annual session wrapped up earlier this month.

Among the highlights for me were Robert Landley’s opener “The Prototype and the Fan Club”, Ross Boucher’s discussion of 280 North the Cappuccino developer environment, and Randi Harper’s lightning-rod “Women in Open Source” talk. (I also was amazed by Ryan Schultz’s overview of Studio Wikitecture, the community aspects of which I’ll discuss in a later post.)

Sometimes (not too often, but enough to notice) I observe folks in the PR-and-marketing-two-dot-oh space throwing around the term “open source” a bit carelessly, I suspect because they! think! it! just! makes! them! sound! sooo! hip! In any event, it’s a good bet that many in that same group have never really engaged with that community.

Truth is PR (and, specifically, PR practitioners who have a focus on community engagement) can learn plenty from the “Free, Libre, and Open-Source Software” (FLOSS) community.

Some aspects that come immediately to mind:

Believe it or not, there are some online communities — yes, even in the software and tech space — that don’t care as much about the latest Web 2.0 doodad as you do.

I keep wondering how many in our industry have ever been on IRC or could articulate its continued value. Participation in IRC and LISTSERVs (hardly things that trade orgs will sell a webconference about) is essential in terms of evangelism, technical contribution, and obtaining support in the FLOSS community.

The presence of an online argument doesn’t mean that PR has failed.

In fact, arguments among the FLOSS community (short of flamewars) contribute to better shared understanding and, ultimately, better software. To gain value from those discussions, it’s important to have a fairly thick skin. On the other hand, the very strong service-oriented mentality of many PR folks makes it more likely that any disagreement, no matter how polite, might be deemed a failure of PR. The point is that maintaining intellectual honesty about argument as a vehicle for improvement is vital. And while one cannot control a conversation, a good communicator should be able to ethically make a case and influence an outcome.

Starting small is not only okay, but encouraged.

When asked by programmers how they can best start getting involved in a FLOSS project, FLOSS veterans consistently say that proving yourself by submitting smaller contributions in the very beginning is absolutely the best way to go. Many companies considering any communications exercise, within the social media space or elsewhere, too often believe in the “go big or go home” axiom. We’re well past the era of giving a company brownie points just for showing up or making a splash. A sustainable and mutually beneficial community presence is earned bit by bit over time, not bought.

Call it the Zuckerberg Corollary:

“Communities already exist. Instead, think about how you can help that community do what it wants to do.” Many FLOSS projects start when someone tries to scratch his or her own technical itch. If others have the same itch (or, at the very least, find someone’s itch interesting) they may choose to contribute in a variety of ways, from delivering software patches to volunteering to quality-test. The lesson: Done right, companies have the opportunity to be heroes to communities they most want to influence. Caution, however: If you’re going to go in thinking you’re going to make the conversation about you, you better be prepared to give the community an opportunity to contribute to — and meaningfully see their contributions within — your product or service.

More thoughts coming as I continue to explore open source.

Jessi’s Friday Five about words that need to be removed from the social media lexicon had me thinking about one other term I think we need to press reset on: “social media” itself. It’s not that I’m against socially-constructed forms of communication – trust me, I love them – it’s that, in true Inigo Montoya fashion, “I do not think it means what you think it means.”

I don’t see the term as a cover-all phrase to describe the digital space, which I’m afraid it’s slowly become. “Social Media” too often gets used like a Kleenex to catch everything of the online media world. After nearly a decade of two-point-oh technologies, seemingly any type of written, audio or video content that is online got slapped with the “social” label, and that’s definitely not true. There is still a large amount of content in the digital space that is controlled not by organic conversation on social networks, but in the fashion of traditional media. That is to say, there is still plenty of one-way communication out there.

My bigger issue is how thinking about this media in terms of “being social” sometimes overshadows the fact that networks like Twitter, Facebook, etc. are, first and foremost, communication platforms. No matter how communal and how personal social media purports to be, it is fundamentally media. It sounds boring, and it seems like a conflict to how we perceive social networking, but those actions can be stripped of their relationship capital to be nothing more than broadcasted messages and visuals.

As I’m beginning to find out in some test research, the level of perceived relationship value seemingly has less of an impact to predict usage than other factors, mostly trailing media consumption habits. I’m currently looking into my own social grid, and there is a trend across those contacts of mine who have become the top contributors to my photo banks on Facebook or who send the most replies my way on Twitter. In the least scientific way possible, I tell you the following: there isn’t a lot of evidence to indicate that those contacts are my most “friendly,” but I can absolutely tell that they are among the most prolific media creators I know. The barrier to posting a photo on Facebook is not being around me long enough offline to get my good side: it’s having a camera and a propensity to publish.

I believe that the baseline of users sees “social media” and gets distracted by the social part. That conclusion translates into treating these types of publishing in interpersonal ways, thinking that what we create is a one-to-one or one-to-small-group manner. What is actually happening is that what we are constructing a personal broadcast based on what we choose to publish around our social contacts. We are building media by being social and not the other way around.

In this trend, there is a very cool opportunity for companies to act in the same way. They can create their own stories by acting in that social manner, becoming media on their own. It’s imperative that organizations get out there and do both sides of the social network by listening. There is a lot to learn by recognizing those publishers and hear what they may be sharing within their circles of influence or even directly with the brand. This isn’t going to change, either – as the trend of organizational engagement continues, the publishing voice will also grow.

Consumers are already out there talking across their own social grid. Whether you’re there or not, it’s going to happen. So why not make it easy for people to talk with you instead of about you? That’s truly social media: information sharing that happens through your digitally based connections.

I’m going to lose this battle, I’m well aware of that. “Social Media” is catchy, easy to remember and it’s loosely accurate enough for it to remain around. As social networking and widely-available publishing tools evolve, maybe the next description will make me more at ease. Until then, I gladly accept anyone else on board the train out of the social media station.

Image credit: fredcavazza

Earlier this month, international news agency Reuters announced new guidelines for how its reporters should behave on social networks. This sparked a great conversation about how the media, and for our value, health media, is changing its game in the digital era. This week’s edition of HDCU takes a look at a few traditional media mainstays in the health space and how they have jumped into online engagement or conversation.

Ed Silverman

Ed Silverman is the editor and author of one of the most well-known industry blogs, Pharmalot. However, Ed didn’t start as an organic blogger; his foray into the space began with the support of his employer, the Newark Star-Ledger, where he enjoyed a 13-year career as an industry journalist. When the economic stress on the print world was being felt around the Star-Ledger offices, Ed decided to take a buyout in January 2009, move to industry pub The Pink Sheet and suspend publishing of his blog. It didn’t last long: Ed reopened shop in late 2009 and still remains one of the most important voices in the online Pharma conversation.

Mike Huckman

Mike Huckman has been with CNBC for nearly ten years, and is heralded as being one of the network’s premiere business journalists. His beat became the pharmaceutical industry, and over time, he begin publishing his stories on CNBC’s site in a blog called Pharma’s Market. When it comes to breaking news related to the industry, though, your best source may be Huckman’s active Twitter account. He provides financial news vital to the industry, often as soon as it’s announced, and is a must follow for anyone tracking health news.

Health Blog

If you search for “health blog” on any type of engine, you may be surprised by the host for one of the most influential health sources online: the Wall Street Journal. First maintained by Jacob Goldstein, then with WSJ’s health editorial staff, Health Blog has become one of the central hubs of the online health conversation. It definitely looks more like a blog than traditional, top-down media, as well. Most posts have incredibly active comment sections, and each one often gets shared widely across social networks like Twitter or Facebook.

Bruce Jaspen

Every Thursday, Bruce Jaspen publishes a valuable “Health Care Notebook” for the Chicago Tribune. This past week was the perfect example to show, though, that news often is coming in much more frequently than this weekly schedule. To make sure he is providing full coverage, you will usually find Jaspen sharing links and quotes as news related to the health world is happening on his Twitter feed.

White Coat Notes

Another great example of a health blog by a major publication is the Boston Globe’s White Coat Notes. The blog has a specific focus on the Boston medical community, but that’s a fairly important one if you think about it. With a basis of bio-tech industry and some of the most renowned hospitals in the country, it’s nice to have a source dedicated to collecting that news from the many resources in the region. WCN is never afraid to link out to other local bloggers, especially high profile ones like Running a Hospital, written by Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center CEO Paul F. Levy.

The future of newspapers may well be in Colorado, once home to the late “gonzo journalism” provocateur Hunter S. Thomson and today home to no less that 12 free dailies. All of these papers are very local, and perhaps more importantly, successful. This trend is even more interesting in light of tough times at the “real” state papers like the Rocky Mountain News and the Denver Post.

This isn’t a Colorado-only phenomenon. Palo Alto, Calif., in the heart of Silicon Valley and arguably Ground Zero in the “print is dead” movement, has two free daily newspapers. A free paper in Santa Monica, Calif., may soon expand.

Online advertising, pay walls, premium subscriptions – newspapers are trying anything to find new business models. But the future of print’s survival may be in Free.

Yes, free. No subscription, purely ad-driven free newspapers; hyper-targeted to neighborhoods and towns, not cities or regions. And rather than published in the morning when the news is at its most stale and competes for attention with people’s Facebook and Twitter feeds, these papers can come out in the late afternoon (for you old-timers, afternoon papers used to be commonplace in the United States.) A free, local, afternoon paper gives you analysis, context and hometown perspective to the news of the day.

“Most revenue for newspapers comes from advertising sales that subsidize the per-paper cost,” Curtis Robinson, editor of the free Portland (Maine) Daily Sun, says on the paper’s web site. “We just work on the model — like broadcast TV and nearly all Internet sites — that people want free news and that advertisers want to reach that readership. Media gurus sometimes assert that free dailies are the “transition” from traditional print media to online-only news — which sounds okay, except that free dailies did well before the Internet.”

The Case for Free (and Local)

It’s a popular conceit that people ever paid for content via their newspaper subscriptions. What they actually paid for was the means of distribution — paper, ink, presses, gasoline, tires and so on.

Advertisers were brought along for the ride – the more subscriptions a paper had the more ads that could be sold, which meant more pages and then, you guessed it, higher distribution costs.

This worked fine until the Internet Age. Newspapers made the mistake of looking at the Internet as simply another means of distribution, figuring that people would come to their web sites and read the news, and more importantly read the ads that helped pay for the web servers.

But search trumped any vision of people reading the news only at a newspaper’s web site. Now they could read the news on Google, Yahoo!, MSN or via RSS and Twitter feeds directly on their computer desktops or mobile devices. New media companies like Google saw value in the content, not the distribution, and traditional newspapers have been trying to catch up ever since.

Free may be the answer. And by staying hyper local – or a “micro daily” as Robinson says – the old distribution costs are greatly reduced. The paper is now attractive to readers and to advertisers, who see greater value in ads targeted to their most likely customers.

The editors of the free Palo Alto Daily Post put it more bluntly on their web site (where you won’t find any news):

“Giving away news online is a dumb way to do business. News is valuable. We put our news in print. The news creates demand for our paper, and increased readership makes our ads more effective than advertising in any other medium.”

Still Much Work to Do

The latest “State of the News Media” report from the Pew Project on Excellence in Journalism offers few surprises: Big-city papers continue to have the worst of it. But small dailies and community weeklies are generally doing better. “The latter come closer to the late-20th century position of newspapers as the dominant source for local information and the place for local merchants to advertise,” the report said.

The New York Times launched regional supplements to its San Francisco and Chicago editions, and even ESPN got into the act, starting regional sites in Chicago, Boston, Dallas and Los Angeles, challenging papers there for the hearts and minds of local sports fans. Yet these new products still don’t give locals what they really want – high school sports coverage, City Hall and Neighborhood Association news, or why that helicopter was circling overhead last night.

All of this news can and should be delivered online and via mobile devices, especially when it comes to time-sensitive information or live events. And location-tagging services like Foursquare and Gowalla will make the news event more local, and therefore more relevant.

The future of newspapers is still comprised more of bits than atoms; this transition can’t be stopped, nor should it be. But local print dailies have a place and a purpose. They appeal to young and old and everyone in between.

In a world drowning in fragments of fleeting “content”, print is the king of context and narrative. And free is the way forward for print to remain relevant – and survive.

Image credit: rogue3w

Last week Edelman hosted a strategy session with our clients and partners at eBay and I had the opportunity to pull two of eBay’s social media leads aside for a quick chat. Richard Brewer-Hay has been with the company just over two years and has already brought a face to many of eBay’s social initiatives through his eBay Ink blog as well as his consistent engagement with eBay users in forums and nearly every community imaginable. Julie Haddon, a former Twitter employee who recently returned to eBay after working there from 2003-2006, has moved back to the iconic brand in a global social media strategy role.

While eBay already has a presence on social touchpoints such as Twitter, Youtube and Facebook, the day was focused on looking at how the brand can dial up engagement with buyers, sellers and employees in a meaningful and scalable way. We’re very excited to be a part of this as eBay boasts some of the most engaged users on the planet and this makes for fertile ground. Have a listen to what Julie and Richard have to say and think about how it applies to your own organization.

There are many college instructors and professors who have brought social media principles and techniques into the classroom, though few have integrated it as early or as thoroughly as Robert French of Auburn University (@rdfrench on Twitter).

I spoke with him about entry-level jobs in PR, internships, and the experience of running PROpenMic, a Ning-based social network for PR students, faculty, and practitioners.

Phil Gomes: So, give us a state-of-the-union on PROpenMic.

Robert French: Growth continues, but primarily with students. I’m happy with that.

More faculty would be great, but we have a lot of terrific practitioners that continue to contribute.

Traffic seems to be up, a bit, too. Our time spent on site and pages viewed per visit are both at about five (5 minutes & pages). That is consistent with the life of the site, too. We are, overall, at 624,076 pageviews for the network. I know these are not the best indicators, but worthwhile to consider.

Most appealing to me is the growth in use by academics in class exercises. We’ve had several faculty incorporate the running of the site, a week of adoption with posts and videos, to using groups for classroom exercises. From the United Arab Emirates to the UK and here in the US, students and their faculty are using PROpenMic as a learning lab. This, to me, is the most rewarding aspect of the network.

We’re always open to any ideas to expand opportunities. The only drawback for me? Time and resources. Whatever happens, it has been a positive experience.

PG: On PROpenMic, we had one member who said (only half-jokingly) that ads for entry-level PR jobs basically consisted of “Tweet for my client non-stop” or words to that effect. What’s your sense of the spirit in which PR companies and marketing organizations are hiring your students?

RF: I do fear that many faux internships are being offered by people that are really only interested in spamming. Seriously. The most recent internship offer, which I removed, was for a non-paid group of students to ghost post and tweet. It was yet another SEO link and keyword flood effort.

I’ve been happy with the jobs and internships our students have been finding. Actually, a lot of those jobs and opportunities found them. Our various projects, like Auburn Family and PROpenMic, seem to get the attention of potential employers. I believe it is the experiential nature that most employers find appealing.

From an alumnus that’s now incorporating social media into the mix for the Georgia Cattleman’s Association to our two interns that just built a social network for Auburn University’s Alumni Clubs, they are being given real projects with significant responsibility.

One student was just offered a job with a regional insurance business in south Florida (at $50K/yr) to slowly build a presence for them in social media spaces. I found it interesting that they emphasized the “slowly” aspect of getting involved. So, some people are taking the area seriously and do see it as a communication function important to their company.

Lastly, I believe we have six alums or students actively working in political campaigns using social media. These are Alabama state and county races. That was sort of a surprise.

Add those experiences to the people we have in everything from church and retail PR work to those in corporate and government work and I’m heartened to think that the real opportunities in broad public relations work still exists. It is even growing.

PG: You came out pretty strongly against unpaid internships, even getting into a back-and-forth on PROpenMic with one hiring manager and, eventually, banning such postings altogether. What has happened since?

RF: I still try to stay on top of these and at least challenge them, if not banning them altogether.

Aside from the instance I shared above, there have been more and more attempts (IMO) to capitalize on the economy and dire need for internships. How are they capitalizing on it? By pushing “for credit” internships. I always want to remind those pushing those opportunities that it is the university that determines an internship’s viability for credit – not the provider.

A post from examiner.com led me to the U.S. Dept. of Labor site, featuring this:

If all of the following criteria apply, the trainees or students are not employees within the meaning of the Act:

1. The training, even though it includes actual operation of the facilities of the employer, is similar to that which would be given in a vocational school;
2. The training is for the benefit of the trainees or students;
3. The trainees or students do not displace regular employees, but work under close supervision;
4. The employer that provides the training receives no immediate advantage from the activities of the trainees or students and, on occasion, his operations may even be impeded;
5. The trainees or students are not necessarily entitled to a job at the conclusion of the training period; and
6. The employer and the trainees or students understand that the trainees or students are not entitled to wages for the time spent in training.

If nothing else, this has emboldened me to even further address the cause of pay for students in their internships. Yes, you and I have both worked for free in our early days to gain experience. Today, I feel that pay for students is a must in almost all instances.

PG: In keeping up with the pace of change, how have you changed your curriculum in the past year?

RF: My curriculum seems to change every semester, let alone every year. From gaining access to Radian6 to focusing more on real world assessment of reach and potential for influence, we try to continually give the students experience that employers will relish in a new employee.

Our experiential blogging, feature writing and video production continues and seems to morph each semester. I’m always looking for new relationships in the local community where students may truly have an impact. Just a few weeks ago, The Corner News (a local print & online weekly) picked yet another student’s story for the front page of the print edition.

If there is a new tool or opportunity that will benefit the students, I want to be all over it. Our largest daily newspaper is about to launch a citizen journalism section to their site. I plan to have us in there.

PG: We have a few of your students among our ranks. What would you say to PR students who would want to join them?

RF: Yes, you have hired many of our alumni and we’re grateful.

To our current students, I say they should discover the key characteristics of those wonderful people and mimic their behavior … until they can expand upon it.

As I see it, those students all exhibited these key characteristics.

• They listened and learned before they dove in.
• They gained an understanding of, and an appreciation for, the markets and environments they wanted to work in after graduation.
• They were willing to take chances. They are unafraid to fail.
• All of them are quite terrific writers.
• And, having personalities that draw people to them, rather than pushing them away, is always a plus.

Each of those students embraced traditional and emerging practices. They had and have a balance. Develop the same knowledge and character traits within yourself. Then, employers will come to you.

Zillow Creates Android App, Adding Bells & Whistles

A previous Quick Hits cited the slow, but steady increase in applications creating for the Android operating system. Zillow followed suit with an application that includes features not available with the iPhone version. Google Street view and voice recognition allows home seekers more tools when looking for the way a flower bed looks, to reciting the name of the neighborhood they want to search.

Tracking Sales From Twitter

Dunkin’ Donuts adds analytics to their Twitter activity, enabling tracking for new customer leads and sales. Large brands continue to fold in social media activities into their data warehouses – enabling for a 360 degree of marketing ROI.

Foursquare’s Amazing Growth

Location based tool, Foursquare, received a subscription boost at this year’s SXSW festival. Large partnerships with Starbucks (client), Bravo and now MTV, continue to push the envelope with new ways to reward consumers for check-ins.

Google Adds Additional to Security to Gmail

In an effort to mitigate spam and other online security breaches, Google added a red security alert message to Gmail. Should any suspicious activity be detected by Google, Gmail users will see the red bar below the search box. From there, consumers can change their passwords or look into how their Gmail account was accessed.

A Dating Solution for the Video Gamer

Finally, a solution to help some of those introverted video gaming guys who may have a difficult time dating ‘in real life’. GameCrush’s model is simple, online gamers can set up video chat dates or even one-on-one gaming duels with video playing ladies. Why leave the house and grab a pizza when you can stay at home, continue mastering your favorite video game – then meet potential dates at the same time?

Nintendo Wii Users Will Soon Be Able to Watch Movies via Netflix

In another move to connect devices to streaming content, Nintendo announced they are closer to enabling Wii users the ability to enjoy their Netflix subscriptions – straight from their Wii console. The Wii joins other on demand streaming options including Xbox (client), Boxee, Roku and certain models of Blu-Ray players.

iPhone App Challenges Service Providers

A new $1 iPhone app aims to assist iPhone users who experience issues making phone calls. Line 2 places a second line on your iPhone, complete with second phone number. What makes this interesting: phone calls can be made via WiFi, instead of relying on the phone’s signal. Could this change the way phone calls are made? It’ll be a fun development to watch! (not currently available in the U.S.)

About a month ago, I attended a brainstorm for a client looking for some new social media tactics to promote themselves. After some dialogue, I came to realize they were looking for “cheap” marketing ideas and saw social media tactics as a “tightwad marketer’s nirvana”. Unfortunately, the concept of Social Media = Fast & Cheap is spreading, doing harm to design and creativity on the web in general.

When your client challenges you to create an online initiative the first thing you need to do is ask if the “Facebook page they need by next week” is the right solution for them. If not, tell them so!

Three years ago it was all about blogs. Suddenly everyone had to have a blog! You’d look at a client and say “why?” and hear “making a blog is cheap & easy”. Literary excellence aside, they received no comments or traffic and hopefully they finally just went away. The people who were interesting, Richard Edelman, for example (shameless suck up) had lots of traffic because the solution was appropriate for what he wanted to do.

Next year, it will be iPad apps or another shiny penny.

You can find the right solution to the problem and still keep up with the latest digital trends. Whole Foods is an example of leveraging tools well. They have over 150 company Twitter accounts targeting different audiences. They also developed a nifty iPhone application with 2,000 searchable recipes and a store locator. These are just two creative ways to push the envelope and hit an intended audience with something they can actually use. If the Internet is eventually going to be “Eaten by the Web” as my colleague Steve Rubel believes, and I think he’s sort of right, the restrictions Facebook places on being creative will need to ease. The lack of Javascript functionality on Facebook page tabs means that many complex tools typically housed on a website simply won’t work.

“Fast – Cheap – Good. Pick Two” has been a reality of working on creative projects, any project actually, since well before the web. It’s our job to take a client’s request, to teach, lead and guide them to grow their business with the proper tools. If all we offer are cheap and fast, then we are producing a generic commodity.

News within the digital space breaks in real-time — the speed of the Internet, as it were, or at least the speed of the closest broadband network. Today’s Friday Five is dedicated to five sources for the latest and greatest in news. This list is by no means exhaustive, but it’s a good start and you can find more sources as you study what these five sites read and link to in return. It’s hard to say whether a hot new smartphone app or a POV on the impact of new government regulations will be most relevant to a company at any given hour, but these five spots will make sure you’re prepared either way.

Mashable

It would be difficult to write a post relating to social media news without including Mashable. It’s been said a lot but if you’re looking for a bookmark that will get you the basics, this should be one of your first stops.

Penn Olson

Based in Singapore, writers Willis Wee and Sarah Chong do a tremendous job keeping great narrative coming throughout the day on Penn Olson. For those of you still new to social media, their “What Is” section could help answer some lingering questions.

The Next Web

The Next Web stands out in the way it shines a light on promising start-ups and innovative niche products. With staff around the globe and blogs specializing in “glocal” content in twelve languages, the site is also a great stop for region-specific news.

Social Media Insider

Social Media Insider is publication from MediaPost and can be viewed on the Web but also sent along as a daily email if that is your preference. It’s also worth recommending the MediaPost Marketing Blog sector where there are blogs defined by interest areas like Health or Travel and by Target Audience like Gen Y or Boomers.

Read Write Web

Read Write Web is a blog directed at the tightly networked world of Information Technology. They provide technical insight into the latest in digital news and not a small amount of speculative troubleshooting.

Last night I attended a birthday party for Foursquare, the popular location-based social networking service that has had 2.4 million check-ins and has added 90,000 new users in the past week.

More than 100 Foursquare members gathered at Lincoln Station to sing “Happy Birthday” to the Foursquare team via Skype. Some people had RSVPed for the event on the Facebook page or on the Yelp event but I found that a majority of the people “heard” about it through Twitter and by using the trending feature on the Foursquare mobile application. This event truly was a fun Foursquare flashmob and all the attendees left the event with one more badge on their Foursquare page – the swarm badge.

Just as tweetups became the popular and preferred method for Twitter users to meet, I think we’ll see flashmobs grow in the Foursquare community. I recently read about a flashmob event that took place at a restaurant in Milwaukee. The goal of the event was to obtain the coveted swarm badge and with 161 Foursquare users at the event they exceeded the check-in minimum. As the article points out, flashmobs bring a tremendous amount of business to event locations and create buzz both offline and online. I’m looking forward to watching this trend grow and to collecting 120 more badges.