We all know youth are uber multitaskers so none of these stats are shocking but it’s interesting to see that some stats showing this is true of youth globally.

This video was created mostly with Canadian statistics but when you get to the 2:30 mark there are some interesting global statistics.

My favorite stat: Teens multitask enough to squeeze 31 hours into 24

Additionally you have this release I stumbled on a few weeks ago.

According to new research that Survey Sampling International (SSI) conducted among adults in the US, UK, France, Spain and Japan:

Media multi-tasking — such as simultaneously searching Web sites, emailing and talking to someone — is prevalent in all countries, particularly among younger consumers.  For example, in the US, 60% of 18 – 34 year olds report talking to someone while texting, compared to just 24% of those 35 or older.

“Younger people consider it the norm to divide their attention among multiple media.  They don’t even think of it as multi-tasking but just as their regular way of communicating,” says Mark Hardy, SSI’s Chief Strategy Officer and Managing Director, North America.  ”At SSI, we started to see this trend a few years ago, when focus groups with panel members revealed they often surfed the Web or watched TV while taking surveys.  Our latest research shows this trend is growing, posing both complications and opportunities for market researchers.

The only determining factor I can see driving social media adoption and media consumption among youth is Internet access. In developing countries where the Internet still isn’t reliably available, the desire for connected communications is so great that they achieve much of the same functionality through SMS. While in Africa I saw SMS based services that mimicked the functionality we’ve come to expect from social networking sites and Craigslist.Similar Posts:

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I had a great time and got to meet so many great people. Jill Anderson @mockery and Angela Dunn @blogbrevity both win the prize for actually getting on a plane and traveling out to see me.

For everyone else who wasn’t able to make it out, here’s a short video clip, posted by Bryan Person, from my talk.

Recapping our inaugural LiveBar, Live! event: Blogs

I thought this was one of the coolest post event wrap ups I’ve seen. I’m totally going to steal this idea. Bryan curated tweets from the event and put them in a presentation. Top tweets from Tac Anderson’s LiveBarNYC remarks

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What will the future of social media look like? You just need to look around because “The future is already here – it is just unevenly distributed.”

In rapid order I came across three articles that help paint that picture (all emphasis are mine):

Marc Meyer rightfully points out:

So I ask you, what is next? Social Media as you know it right now, will not be recognizable in the next 3-5 years. Think long term.

Chas Edwards discusses the success of Digg ads and hints at the future of advertising filtered by (and I’ll throw in co-created with) their customers:

Digg Ads: It’s Just the Beginning

As marketers perfect their skills as web publishers and invest more aggressively in content creation content about their products and services, as well as general content that might be useful to their customers it creates an opportunity for better advertising experiences: ads we don’t feel the need to block, skip or ignore. Digg Ads, we hope, will give those marketers a real-world proving groun” a place to measure their success in making content that’s relevant to their customers.

Now combine that with the LA Times story about how Google Wave (and many of the technologies coming out that are similar) could transform reporting:

Collaborative reporting: You may notice that double bylines aren’t very common. That’s because trying to co-author a news story stinks.

The process usually [...] result in a mess of incompatible and unrelated research that gets either thrown out or somewhat-awkwardly wiggled in.

We’re not going to e-mail our co-writers with every new lead and minute detail we dig up. But if we’re sharing a virtual notebook, we can scan through …

… or search the newest findings as they’re logged, make comments and highlight our favorite bits.

Then, when it comes time to write, we can rearrange and discuss the story’s flow in the same software. Thanks to the openness of Wave, collaborative pieces between bloggers could become more common.

To be fair collaborative, real-time or (what Shel Israel calls) Braided Journalism, has already been happening but it’s primitive compared to what is to come.

• Imagine for a minute that this blogger collaboration doesn’t have to be limited to bloggers or journalist writing for the same publication.
• Imagine that the story was reported on in real time in the public as it evolved.
• Imagine if the readers were invited to participate it the reporting.
• And finally imagine that marketers were invited into the journalism process and their contribution was judged for the value it added not the value of the ad buy.

What do you see now? I see a new business model for journalism. I see relevant advertising. I see a world in 3-5 years where journalism and advertising are better than anything we’ve ever had before.

As I think about this new model I think of the idiocy behind pay walls and intrusive advertising and for the first time in a long time I’m optimistic for the future of both advertising and journalism.

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The Future has Arrived

We have reached the tipping point.

• 90% of US adults are online*
• 80% of US online adults participate in social media**

Unless you are targeting the very poor and/or the elderly, as marketers, you do not have to target those who do not participate in social media.

Everything you create has to be social.

Everything you do had better have social media at the heart of it. I am not saying it is the only thing you do. I am saying that everything you do had better be social. Your goal of all marketing communications should be to get your content into the social media conversation.

Sometimes the main stream media will accomplish that for you, but they are no longer the goal. I’ll give you a tip, the media was never the goal; the customers were, are and always will be.

“But the key decision makers I’m targeting don’t use social media that way.” Maybe not but I promise the people they get their information from – analysts, search engines, coworkers and reporters – do.

What other arguments are there? By targeting social media you will hit almost 3/4 of your users. Then how much of current news media is generated via social networks? You will still hit a significant portion of those remaining 1/4. Quit talking to the media and start talking to your customers. If the conversations are good the media will cover that. But the media, like your customers, are more interested in good conversations than your announcement.

The challenge is identifying the right social media activities to enable based on who you’re actually trying to reach.

Here’s the new process (which *shouldn’t* be that much different):

1. Create great socially enabled content. (Is it compelling, shareable and embeddable?)
2. Seed that content to key, social networks, conversation starters and influencers. (This can be anyone from reporters, bloggers or key customers.)
3. Monitor and participate in the conversation as it grows. (What’s working, what’s not. Share other people’s conversation/content with above influencers.)
4. Continue the conversation with more great content. (Story telling is non-linear and cyclical not a one time shot.)
5. Repeat.

Yes, Europe (Forrester link) and Asia are still a little behind. But by next year-ish this should be globally true.

Why are we still having this discussion? I’m over it.

*(85-95% depending on which survey’s you choose to believe)
**(According to Forrester’s latest research)

Photo credit: HI-LITE

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• Who is John Foster?
• Local News + Social Media = FTW!
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• The Interview.

If you do nothing else though, take 5 minutes and watch this video. This is John Foster at IgniteBoise 2.

It’s the Message Stupid!

Who is John Foster?

John Foster is one of the smartest people I know. His current job has one of the longest title’s I’ve seen: Senior Advisor/Director of Communications at U.S. House of Representatives. Basically he’s the Communications Director for Congressman Walt Minnick.

From John’s LinkedIn page:

I love what I do, even though I’ve done it in many different fields. I love being the go-to guy in the kinds of difficult situations most people avoid. I love being the most passionate guy in the room. I love working hard toward a difficult goal. And I love — love, love, love — to win.

I met John back in 2006 when he moved back to Boise to become the Managing Editor of the Idaho Business Review (IBR). I was a partner at the small local agency, BlueLine Marketing. BlueLine specialized in Word of Mouth and New Media. If you want the saga on BlueLine you can read this old post. Basically we were loud, kind of annoying and preached that you didn’t need traditional media to be your gate keeper. You could “Be Your Own Media!”

John loved it. Despite representing traditional media John “got it.”

Local News+ Social Media = FTW!

The IBR is a weekly business paper. At the time their website was walled off to subscribers only. Not exactly a hot bed of innovation and risk taking.

In 2006 in Boise, Idaho John did what few in the nation had done and definitely no one in Idaho had done. Tore down the pay walls, threw open the gates and started a blog, complete with comments. Sure, even in 2006 few news papers had subscription access to their websites anymore but very few had blogs. As far as I know the IBR was the first Idaho media to start a blog.

John crushed his numbers and set the bar for local news media in Idaho. Visits to the site increased 1,000% in a few days and kept climbing from there.

But John did something more important. He galvanized a local community and brought them together for real discussion. John listened. John and the IBR blog were the inspiration for the TechBoise blog I would later launch.

To say John revolutionized news media in Idaho would be like saying Idaho is a Red State.

Speaking of which…

If Social Media Can Get a Democrat Elected in Idaho…

John’s success didn’t go unnoticed and he was soon recruited to be the Executive Director for the Idaho Democratic party. Idaho is a very Republican state. In fact Idaho voted for George W Bush in higher percentages than Texas. Yet despite that I predicted, on this blog, that because of John and how aggressively he would use social media, Republicans would lose more elections that year than any year prior.

Fortunately for the Idaho GOP, my prediction would not be tested. A very wise Walt Minnick made John the Director of Communications over his campaign. I subsequently wrote a new post changing my prediction to state that Walt would pull off the unthinkable.

Walt was running for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, Idaho’s 1st congressional district. One of the most republican districts in the country. Walt was running against an incumbent and many considered it the most heated race that year.

Walt won with 50.6% of the vote. I love being right

How did John pull off the biggest political upset of the year?

For starters Walt is one of the smartest politicians in Washington right now. But, John knew something; social media translates to traditional media. And in Idaho politics traditional media still matters very much. The Idaho Statesman’s Kevin Richert gives a great breakdown of how John wisely used the blogosphere to Walt’s advantage.

What is interesting is the way the campaign’s soft release of the ads, which begin airing today (Tuesday 7/29). John Foster, spokesman for the Democratic candidate, e-mailed links to the ads Monday (7/28) to more than a dozen media bloggers and Democratic activist bloggers.

It’s one small example of the way Democratic candidates are openly courting coverage from Idaho bloggers.

While Democratic campaigns are viewing the blogosphere as a way to get the word out, some Republicans view the blogosphere with open disdain.

But Republicans dismiss this medium at their peril.

John released a fraction of the actual, formal releases of most campaigns, yet received far more press than most campaigns. It’s been the same on the Congressional side. In the few short months since taking office this junior congressman from Idaho has received well over 1,000 hits (TV, print, radio, web), in addition to their social media presence.

The Interview.

I have pleaded with John to start blogging again, but for now he sticks to Twitter. Someday he’ll pick up the megaphone again, until then I’ve decided to do the next best thing and include an interview.

Q: You took the IBR’s Web site from closed to free. What do you think of Murdoch’s plan to do the opposite?

A: I don’t know how Murdoch’s plan will work, but he is someone I would never bet against. He takes risks and is occasionally wrong, but he’s one of the smartest people in media.

Q: There seems to be a gap in journalism right now. Because of shrinking budgets news corporations aren’t able to do as much real journalism but their is still a huge consumer, business and political need. Free markets have always been able to fill gaps. Assuming you agree (if not that would be interesting) how do you see this happening? (This was a long way of asking what you think the future of Journalism is.)

A: I agree that the free market needs to fill the current gap between the current state of journalism and the needs of the public. How? You have to blow up the business model for the actual business side. Do you need a newsroom? Do you need a server? Etc. I think Politico is the best example of how you can be successful by filling a niche with online news and making it work financially by leveraging that online presence to other projects.

Q: You don’t use journalism or advertising the same way most people in your position do. Why and how do you think about it?

A: How do I look at media? Simple — If I have a story to tell, I look for the best tool to do the job. The business got stagnant — people didn’t have to think. Have a scoop? Put it on the front page of the newspaper? Want to sell beer? Buy an ad during the big game. Simple stuff — that happens to not work nearly as well as it once did. You can still achieve the same effect and impact, but you have to think about it and be strategic.

John and I have an agreement that if we’re ever out of work at the same time we’ll start a company together. Sadly we’ve both been in high demand. Follow John on Twitter. He’s not overly active but he’s worth the follow.

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I can come off pretty rough on journalism on this blog. That’s not my intent. I am *very* critical and skeptical of news corporations and the media companies that own them. And the people I hold fully at fault is the top tier management of these companies. I think they’ve been complacent and short sighted which has lead to one of the most important professions in our country to be nearly crippled.

Yes, I do think Journalism is one of the most important functions in our free society. But journalists are stuck in a restrictive business model while being forced to work with little to no resources and little hope for anything resembling a future.

I personally think that in the short term we all have to take on a small piece of the mantle of journalism. PR people need to think less like project managers and more like reporters. Bloggers need to assume a little more responsibility for what we write and all of us consumers of media need to be more watchful and skeptical looking for inaccuracies and false truths. We also need to be sure that the information we share via links is correct.

Eventually I believe the market will do it’s job and an even better model for journalism will develop but for now I think we all need to help deliver on the promise of citizen journalism

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How Murdoch’s Plan for Paid Content Could Work

A lot is being said about Rupert Murdoch‘s plan to charge for all Newscorp Web content. Every blogger I’ve read have said that Rupert’s a delusional old media dinosaur (or some variation thereof) and that his plan is doomed.

Personally I think he’s probably a pretty smart guy. The rationale behind this change is that The Wall Street Journal has seen a large increase in subscriptions.

How could Rupert’s plan work: If the content is good enough then I believe that people will pay.

I don’t believe that this new model will support the current media infrastructure. There’s just too much overhead. If Rupert is not willing to innovate the business model of his companies, then he will have to innovate the operating model of his companies.

While I do think this could work for news site like The Wall Street Journal I think that it will work for very few sites. The content has to be better that anything you could get anywhere else.

As a side note I also believe that the future of media lies in privately held companies. I don’t think journalism can give the returns the market demands. Now I said journalism, not  content/media companies.

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There was a time, supposedly, when large companies  resided in one building. When you worked your way *up* the company ladder, you literally moved up in the building. The higher you went the higher the paycheck, until you reached the top.

Information traveled in the company the same way. Information came into the company at the bottom levels, usually in the form of mail, telephone calls or information in people’s heads.

That information was turned into reports and memo’s and sent up a level. From there I imagine that someone took a series of reports and condensed those into another report for another level of management and sent it up. When the reports reached a high enough level orders were passed down the ladder again, getting broken up into smaller and smaller actionable items.

Being old enough to remember my mother typing reports up in triplicate on carbon paper and sending inter-office memo’s, I can’t imagine how long it took to get work done.

Now of course I think most of this was theoretical. It’s the version of Corporate America we still see portrayed on TV and in movies, but I doubt it ever functioned this precisely. There are obviously a million opportunities for error and deviation in this model. I’m sure this is why IT was seen as the second coming of the messiah in the eyes of CEO’s everywhere. And those who didn’t bow in humility were wiped from the face of the earth.

People, and knowledge, stayed inside the company. You learned your job from your boss and you got promoted when he moved up or retired. People rarely left the company they started with. You were loyal to the company, and in theory, they were loyal to you.

Companies competed with other local or regional companies. In rare instances, companies competed with other companies nationally. To stay on top companies only had to understand their business. Product cycles were long. Innovation was something that happened very slowly. The only global threats facing a company were political in nature. A war was the most disruptive thing that could happen to a company.

In this fairytale Corporate America, companies provided all kinds of community service. One such service was that they paid for our radio and television. They also provided valuable bit of information about the most wonderful things we’d like to know about and they conveniently placed these treasures of information in the shows we were all already watching as commercials.

People trusted the Government.
People trusted Corporate America.
People trusted the Media.

The Media was the most trusted organization in America. The News was the most trusted source of information. Media defined us (some argue that it still does). Media unified us (some argue that is does the opposite now). Media validated everything that we believed about our fairytale lives and what we believed about the rest of the world.

Like all fairytales this one also be turned out to be not true.

This is the fairytale I was told growing up. In order to be granted admittance to this mythical land all you needed to do was do well in school, go to college and when you graduated you would be able to choose from all the awaiting jobs.

That obviously isn’t the world that me and my Gen X brothers and sisters woke up to. Someone changed the rules and didn’t bother telling us what the new rules were. So we made up our own. I think this is why Gen X has been the most entrepreneurial generation to ever walk the face of the earth, and we’re only in our 30′s and 40′s.

In my next post I’ll contrast this fairytale world to the one we live and work in today. Have any thoughts (of course you do)?

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For those of you not familiar with URL shorteners; A URL shortener is a servive that takes really long URL’s and turns them into much shorter URL’s, making it easier to share a URL without it getting broken.

TinyURL is the first URL shortener I was familiar with. With the rise of microblogging services like Twitter, which limits your posts to 140 characters, URL shorteners have seen a tremendous up take in use.

bit.ly is the most recent URL shortener to hit the market and has packed some tremendous innovation into its service. For a full report check out Read/Write Web’s glowing review.

Example: When I want to share a blog post from my HP blog, which, like many corporate websites has insanely long URL’s, I can either try and send this URL

http://www.communities.hp.com/online/blogs/marketing/archive

/2008/07/22/farewell-vince-hp-s-1-blogger.aspx

Or I can use bit.ly and share this URL http://bit.ly/2I0DwA.

Among the many cool features with bit.ly is the ability fo you to see how many people are clicking the link and where they are comming from. bit.ly is also supposed to generate a thumbnail of the site but that doesn’t seem to be working at the moment.

As you can see from this photo, most people clicked on the link in Twitter, which is where I shared the link. The link was also accessed via Twiiter app betwittered and URL tracking site twitturly. The link then flowed on to my FriendFeed page where another peson accessed it and then went onto Facebook via the FriendFeed app I have on my Facebook profile where yet another person accessed it. There are also about 16 people that clicked the link that bit.ly couldn’t track.

To me this is fascinating (like I said, I’m a geek about this stuff). bit.ly is a free service and only stores the last 15 links you shortened. I would gladly pay for a premium service that stored more URL’s and gave me a time line for when people clicked.

I can’t wait to see what other features bit.ly comes out with.

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Every now and then I marvel at how different our children’s lives will be compared to ours.

The above photo is of me doing my MBA homework while my youngest son, Seth, plays games on PBSkids.org. When I was his age my father was getting his Masters and I was watching Sesame Street on PBS. It was one of 4 local channels.

Those of us wrapped up in the internet like to marvel at how much has changed in the last 10 years. I can’t even begin to wonder at what things will be like in 30 years when my son is sitting around with his 3 year old.

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