Social Media Top 5: Spock, Caucasians and Cockroaches

Star Trek Screening Was Social Media Marketing? Well, it’s not just the Twitter reaction, which helped and becomes more and more valuable as Twitter gains steam. But the Word of Mouth value among a passionate affinity group (Trekkers!) and a jaw-dropping stunt (switch a beloved movie, Star Trek II, and replace with the untested new one, but bring the Real Mr. Spock along to introduce it!). anyone familiar with the Austin Butt-Numb-A-Thon Movie festival knows that social marketing and word-of-mouth are neither confined to online, nor new to online (see Ain’t It Cool News coverage here). Hat-tip to Mike Troiano for the post.

Journalists becoming Consultants? Jon Fine’s BusinessWeek column takes one shop to task for possibly corrupting journalistic ethics, but more interesting to me was the much less cynical leadoff bit about Kaspersky labs hiring journalists to produce content for them. This is in line with a recent post by David Meerman Scott plainly saying that paid corporate writing gigs may be a great safe haven for the growing number of displaced journalists. A related side note: I have been seeing requests on LinkedIn recently from journalists asking about the transition from journalism to PR (one I made ten years ago, so feel free to ask).

Why we need the “hyper-local” publications to blog:

So they can compare the mayoral candidates to characters in “The Big Lebowski.” Priceless (I wonder if candidate Setti “The Dude” Warren drinks White Russians aka Caucasians?).

Earned Media (PR) to Trump Paid Media (Ads)? Venture blogger Fred Wilson thinks so. PR people, are we running with this and jamming it down ad peoples’ throats? I just love to see the ad folks show their thin-skinned side and would hate to miss an opportunity. Wilson’s case may not be bullet-proof. However, the idea that earned media is less expensive is very old, and the better value has long been suspected (or suspect if that is your view). Declining return on paid media is the only thing that will really close that case once and for all. But, of course, there are never, ever any absolutes. Ever.

FriendFeed cool But Doomed? That’s what TechCrunch says. Robert Scoble disagrees, but does concede that Twitter has won the war for now among short-attention-span social media vehicles. Scoble brings up the Friendster/MySpace history as an example. Fair enough, but I see FriendFeed and Twitter, if they develop in certain ways, as complementary. I use FriendFeed as just that- an aggregation of peoples’ feeds, and while the threaded conversations are very functional, it seems the level of instant engagement and stupid ease-of-use of Twitter make it a real unkillable cockroach of social media (not the first time I have said that).

Blog readers: I am riding the Pan-Mass Challenge this summer, a 2-day bicycle trek across Massachusetts to raise money for the Jimmy Fund in support of cancer research. Will you join the generous folks who have sponsored my ride? Click any part of this message to go to my fundraising page– and thank you!