Goodbye Pownce, We Hardly Knew Ye – Remember when people were begging and scrambling for beta invitations to Pownce? As a hardcore Twitter user, I did appreciate the differences that the Pownce service presented: threaded conversation, the ability to share small files. But the core application was still quick, short communications- and Pownce never seemed like a complementary service, but more a would-be competitor that didn’t make it in the end. Pownce is being shut down as the people behind it move on to work for acquirer Six Apart.

“PR is Dead” – Yeah, yeah, whatever… – Blogger Dennis Howlett wrote the latest in a long series of “I hate PR” notes. A couple of observations:

1- These notes are not new to social media – they are as old as, well, the bad PR pitch (remember Buzzkiller?)

2- Dennis has a curmudgeonly style (I was fortunate enough to experience that in person this summer) that probably makes some people think his post is nastier than it was. Not only does he not say “PR is dead,” he actually says “I’ve come to the end of putting up with what most PR offers” (italics mine). Furthermore, he is not refusing pitches, he is actually very specific about how to pitch him. Use Twitter, out in the open. In fact, his Twitter bio is all any PR person needs to make sure they target pitches before sending: “Full time blogger on innovation for professional accountants.” That’s pretty specific, isn’t it? As a public relations pro, I have no problems with these rants- they make us better, and the best ones actually tell us how to be better.

Hyperlocal Social Media Update: Blogging for Mayor – With a contentious mayoral race heating up in Newton, Massachusetts (where I live), rather than waiting for candidates to set up blogs, the local newspaper set one up for the candidates. “Newton’s Next Mayor” is already up with contributions from two candidates, and invitations out to others as they announce their candidacies. One candidate has refused to participate- a symptom of the old and new divide. I m curious to see what effect the candidates’ participation has on the race.

“Twitter Surges” – a Security Problem? – Of all the fascinating live Twittering of the tragic events in Mumbai over the last couple of weeks, the issue Shel Holtz addresses in his blog really captured my interest. Will the fear that live online Twitter (text) and Qik (video) updates be a nuisance- or worse- to authorities in a war situation? If these tools grow into true mass adoption (how far off are we, really?), will people/countries/armies just have to account for the fact that it is harder to move in secret? Fascinating…

Heh – “Mapple” – I haven’t watched “The Simpsons” much since the first four or five seasons, but I stumbled upon the latest episode that started with a hilarious spoof of Apple and Steve Jobs. Some people thought it was late- I still thought it was spot on, and anyone who knows me knows I can’t resist a well-done mocking of the Apple cult (will I now be chased down the street by an angry, earbud-wielding mob?). Here are two clips from that program (and by the way– I love that Hulu.com clips are on YouTube- these are official, right?):

Technorati Tags: simpson, apple, mapple, twitter, pownce, mumbai, dennis+howlett, public+relations, social+media, politics, newton

Let’s forget about the fact that Dan Lyons is apparently retiring his personal blog, “The Real Dan Lyons.”

Let’s forget that Newsweek apparently made him take down his post about his frustration with the Yahoo! PR people and what they said about CEO Jerry Yang (not) stepping down prior to it actually happening.

Let’s forget about the catfight about who “broke” the story that Lyons and AllThingsD’s Kara Swisher got into on the blog, regrettably now deleted.

I’m in public relations: so I am interesting in Dan’s characterizing Yahoo’s PR flacks as “lying sacks of s**t.”

But, was Yahoo! PR lying? That concerns me, because, the silly caption to this photo aside, I wouldn’t want to be characterized as a liar. In PR, we often have to hang onto information and keep embargoes (yup, we still do that and so do reporters). Sometimes, we do not know some of the real heavy news until very shortly before it hits. so, a few thoughts:

PR needs to be trusted with information: If Yahoo! PR folks honestly didn’t know ahead of time about Yang stepping down, it was because management didn’t trust them with the information. It insulates them from the “lying” thing but makes them look ineffective and not trusted.

PR needs to be artful with information that cannot be released: See the above-linked post on embargoes. That’s part of the principle here. The question is: what can we tell people when we know the big news but aren’t allowed to spill it yet? We are professional communicators. We should know how to do that without insulting the intelligence of the media, and we should be trusted by executive management to do so.

The Yahoo! PR folks are lying sacks of (potatoes): I suppose that could be true, but I’m an optimist that doesn’t like to believe that stuff about people. I know that there are enough bad actors out there, but in this case? I don’t know. I don’t suppose there’s anyone from Yahoo! PR that wants to defend themselves here…

*Photo from Roadside Pictures on Flickr

Technorati Tags: danlyons, yahoo, public+relations

UPDATE, July 8, 2009:

Welcome, David Weinberger friends and fans! It seems David mistakenly linked to this post in a Tweet. Please stick around and enjoy this slightly aged but still relevant post about public relations. If you want the “United Broke My Guitar Video,” please go here.

One of the occupational realities of working in the public relations world, is that our media “targets” (yes, we use that word) often write about us, mostly when they are frustrated and want to vent about how terrible we are. I’m not complaining, as we get our rewards and kudos in other ways.

Recently, there has been a rash of posts by tech bloggers that forces PR to re-examine its role in the world of social media. Not that we haven’t been doing it anyway, but I’ll bite. Here is a roundup of the posts that came to my attention:

Marshall, Kirkpatrick, ReadWriteWeb: “Does Good Tech Need PR?“

I really like Marshall’s post, and I am not surprised as he has been very friendly to and understanding of the better Pr people out there. He is very balanced, seeing the need for startups to engage PR and pointing out some of his favorite PR pros (I can live with the snub, as I have been too full of myself to be pitching Marshall lately). Most importantly, he knows the need for companies to work with PR outside of mere media and blogger relations, to craft messaging and make sure communication preparation is solid before going out the door with it. He does acknowledge the other side, but doesn’t seem to embrace it in my view.

Robert Scoble, Scobleizer: “PR-less launch kicks off a stack overflow of praise“

Scoble goes out of his way to come up with a great example of a company that got lots of blogger attention. His source, a programmer that loved the product, Stack Overflow, and recommended it to Scoble, who in turn loved it. I don’t see how that disproves the need for other companies to engage PR professionals. This seems more a calculated post by Scoble to bear out his recent attempt to go cold-turkey on PR. Withdrawal’s a bitch. I’m not going to excuse the scads of crappy pitches any blogger gets, but saying you are getting off the PR bandwagon won;t prevent you from being pitched– in fact, now you will only get pitched by the dummies who are doing it wrong. The only practical advice is not to be popular.

Michael Arrington, TechCrunch: “The PR Roadblock on the Road to Blissful Blogging”

Despite the snarky title, I liked this post as well. We don’t want to hear our PR industry is “broken,” but Arrington is very constructive in his criticism. He ends up writing a decent blueprint for young PR people to follow: read the blogs, participate in the community, go to events. Just because it’s common sense doesn’t mean it can’t be said over and over. And over.

Mark “Rizzn” Hopkins, Mashable: “The Changing Role of Public Relations“

What has changed in public relations? For one thing, we are pitching people named “Rizzn.” You won’t get that in the New York Times. I’m not just making fun of a nickname, but pointing out the informality that now exists between bloggers (and, heck, other journalists) and PR folks. This points back to relationship-building– no, not a freakin’ rolodex; how useless. I mean, treat people like humans, and as Hopkins says, give value beyond a press release and corporate messaging. Again, more common sense (a theme here so far), but old skills newly highlighted by the need to do relations with blogs and other social media.

Steve Rubel, Micropersuasion; “Does the Thrill of the Chase Make PR Obsolete?“

Ah, fear and self-loathing in PR land? This is the post, inspired by Scoble’s post above, that in turn inspired the TechCrunch and Mashable write-ups. Unfortunately, Steve can offer no better advice to us PR pros, assembled at his feet to learn, than “stop spamming.” Thanks, Steve! But what he does give is insight into the problem of any popular blogger who has to put up with the daily multitude of misdirected pitches, with the added misery that he is a part of the industry that creates the pile of cow patties he must now navigate in his email inbox. that is actually a worthwhile perspective.

WWASD (What would Allen Stern Do?); Centernetworks
Conspicuous by his absence is Allen Stern of CenterNetworks. He is usually good for a strong opinion, and trust me I know he has strong opinions on the relationship between PR and bloggers. Come on Allen, what say you? Or are you too busy writing posts about, I don’t know, technology and social networking?

I wish for bloggers– and all journalists– I could crinkle my nose like Samantha Stevens and whoosh away all the bad pitches they get every day. Alas, I can only try to tidy up my little corner of the SHIFT Communications universe, and maybe a little more. Bloggers are learning that their popularity means they get the same uneven PR service, solicited or not, that all media gets. PR pros are learning that bad PR practices beget much swifter and more public retribution than in the past. Maybe these factors will combine to make us better.

Other related posts:

• Brian Solis nails it, as usual.
• I guess I had better link to the Boss’ post at PR-Squared. nice video from a client on why they use PR.
• Mike Volpe of HubSpot (a SHIFT client) gives his view on the topic. With video!
• Jeremy Pepper cuts through the BS in his colorful way, as usual.
• Former colleague Chuck Tanowitz weighs in with a nice analogy; do you wan the carpenter or the ER? Taking that literally, my experience is that the two equal cause and effect, but that’s not his point.

Technorati Tags: public+relations, PR, readwriteweb, scobleizer, micropersasion, techcrunch, mashable, centernetworks

For PodCamp Boston 3, I was fortunate to be invited to sit on a panel with crayon‘s Greg Verdino, Morpheus Media’s Adam Broitman (pictured below, with me, as a make-good for leaving him out of my “Bald Marketing Bloggers” post), and ooVoo’s Philip Robertson, titled “Smart Social Media Marketing. While the four of us did the bulk of the talking, the subject matter was driven by the audience.

Len Edgerly was kind enough to Live-Stream the session on Qik.com. He had to do it in two parts, which can be found:

Part 1:

Part 2.

In fact, the audience was so integral that I developed what will now be known as the “Cass pass” – calling on John Cass, who had his arm raised, when Greg asked me a question I needed to chew on before answering. That gave us all a good 5-7 minutes (I kid, John!).

For my part, I tried to hold up the PR end, coming from so-called traditional PR but having social media as part of the mix, and the conversation got me thinking about how do social media marketing agencies, and PR agencies that have social media skills along with the traditional chops, co-exist? (Part of my answer is that my employer, SHIFT Communications, works with C.C. Chapman and the Advance Guard work together on a client- and PodCamp sponsor- mDialog)

Other bits raised: Who is responsible for social media conversations (perhaps that depends on the organizations’ goals)? Who is doing social media right (I favored some smaller software builders and their quick-response habits on Twitters as great examples for all companies)? How can companies make their news stream interactive– or social (yes, we talked about the Social Media Press Release)? How do we best serve “lazy bloggers (I brought up the old “rip and read news” as an analogy)?

We didn’t solve the problems of the world, but showed a lot of people (there were about 140 ion the room) are thinking hard about these issues. Please have a look a the videos and give out your thoughts.

And also, see Greg Verdino’s own wrapup of the session.

And: my colleague Sandy Kalik has a live-blogging play-by-play here.

UPDATE: thanks to Kosso and Phreadz for making it possible to embed Len Edgerly’s qik videos.

Technorati Tags: pcb3, podcampboston, podcamp, socialmedia, marketing, pr, gregverdino, adambroitman, philiprobertson, oovoo, crayon, morpheusmedia