Posts Tagged ‘jeff jarvis’
May 20th, 2008
Reading Jeff Jarvis’ story in the Guardian yesterday shows how pivotal Twitter has become, not just in the digital media sector, we knew that, but in the media sector as a whole. He reveals that developers at the BBC and Reuters are working on applications to monitor Twitter and other social media services such as Facebook and YouTube for news catchwords such as ‘earthquake’ and ‘evacuation’ in the hope of both getting an early tip off on breaking news, and also locating content and potential interviewees on the issue.
This was illustrated perfectly by the Chinese earthquake last week, which according to Robert Scoble was broken on Twitter before the US Geological Survey posted the tremor and an hour before mainstream news sites reported it. Suddenly the BBC and Reuter’s investment makes sense.
Another example of the never ending brilliance of social applications. However, this isn’t the main point of this post…and you thought It was over…short post from Gofton - never!
The real reason for this post is to make a confession…here goes: I’m not the biggest fan of Twitter. Actually, before the great and good of the social media world beat me down with vicious reasoning, let me rephrase that: I’m not the biggest Tweeter. There I said it and for anyone that cares to check, it’s quite an obvious statement! I don’t tweet, post, write comments…that much. However, I am a fan of Twitter and I do regularly monitor and learn from the conversations that i follow, but in truth rarely dip my bill in…sorry bad joke.
I’ve often thought about the whys and wherefores of my apparent lack of willingness to get ‘involved’ and spread my own brand of commentary on Twitter. But that’s exactly the reason I don’t do it. I am put off by the life commentary from the Twitter nation, as so many others are.
Now to be fair not everyone does it, but those that feel the need to share their experience of being on a train, or a bus, or standing in the rain blah, blah, blah has never encouraged me to say: You know what, today is the day when I tell people I’m running late for a meeting.
However, although I am being facetious, in all seriousness a ray of light hit me from Jeff Jarvis’ article, or in fact from a quote he used from UK blogger Leisa Reichelt at disambiguity.com. Lisa has defined this practise as ‘Ambient intimacy’, which she explains as “being able to keep in touch with people with a level of regularity and intimacy that you wouldn’t usually have access to.” She continues: “There are a lot of us, though, who find great value in ongoing noise. It helps us to get to know people who would otherwise be just acquaintances.”
Hmmm, that kind of makes sense, it’s the most sense that anyone has made of what I thought was previously inane drivel. It does help to bring through the personality of an individual and it does help me to understand their point of view. Some of it is even amusing.
So has this taught me something? Am I going to change my ways and get involved? No - I won’t be telling you what I had for lunch, but you will be seeing a new vigour in what I classify as useful ‘Tweeting’.
April 24th, 2008
There’s a fascinating debate going on over at the Guardian’s ‘Comment is free’. It started off as a discussion between well-known blogger and journalist Jeff Jarvis and the Guardian’s America editor Michael Tomasky, but has turned into something much bigger.
The debate centers on: Should the internet’s new breed of ‘citizen journalists’ have the responsibilities of journalists or the rights of citizens?
The catalyst for the discussion was a report by Mayhill Fowler, on the Huffington Post’s politics blog, Off The Bus in which Fowler confirmed that Barack Obama had described rural, white voters as “bitter”. Obviously this caused plenty of political noise, and last week Michael Tomasky argued that Fowler’s reporting raised serious ethical questions, suggesting that blogging, like journalism, needs rules. Jeff Jarvis responded on his blog Buzzmachine that openness, not rules, was demanded in the era of the internet.
Of course the debate hasn’t stopped there - it’s still going on at ’Comment is free’ and i think it raises a wider question of reputation on the web, which Jarvis touches on.
If, as the debate mentions, a blogger, citizen journalist, call them what you will, publishes a tissue of lies, they will be found out, barracked - (excuse the pun) and lose their hard earned reputation. So, the question becomes why would a trusted source ruin their own reputation, which is something that takes time to build and is hard work to keep? And if the story isn’t coming from a trusted source, why would it be believed?
While i understand that Tomasky is trying to bring some regulation to citizen journalists, i believe the accountability is inherent and the environment radically different to that of mainstream journalists. Therefore, why would bloggers need a stifling rule book, which would just be ignored by the muck-rakers that he is trying to eradicate anyway?
I believe that in an online world of words and content, where transparency and reputation is the one thing that can’t be faked or purchased, the web is self-regulating as it’s easy to write a lie, but hard to get people to believe it.
Starbucks discovers customer conversations
March 20th, 2008
Love it or loathe it, everyone has an opinion on Starbucks. The fact is you can’t mention the word without somebody offering a tale of: ‘it used to be better when’…before being shouted down by one of Starbuck’s loyal followers. Well, now these people have a place to vent their grievances, make suggestions and then openly discuss and vote on them on My Starbucks idea, an online forum ala Dell ideastorm.
And who better to give an overview than the man who made Dell sit up and listen, Jeff Jarvis - who has written a powerful post on Starbuck’s entry into the world of social media. Jeff’s post is a beautiful early phase case study of how listening to your customers is both simple and massively rewarding for brands - or any organisation for that matter.
When put in these terms, it’s very difficult to argue with the power of social media. And you really can’t argue with the logic. Or as Jeff puts it:
“If auto companies had this five years ago, we’d all have told them to force their radio manufacturers to include a damned 39-cent plug so we could hook up our iPods. If airlines had it today, we’d tell them how to get out of their customer-service mess. Why does listening to your customers sound like a web 2.0 idea? It should be a business 1.0 necessity.”
I for one will be encouraging clients and anyone else who will listen to not only read Jeff’s post, as i think it’s one of the better social media overviews that I’ve read, but to follow the evolution of the Starbucks forum to see just how much simply listening to customer’s conversations will change the Starbucks offering.