Edit: The presentation begins at about 19:30 in the video. Due to some technical issues, we weren’t picking up audio until about the 32:30 mark. Holly and Rustin are glad to fill you in on anything you missed. Give ‘em a shout @theblogfrog!

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I can see it now: Big room in the basement of a church. Lots and lots of folding chairs. Lots and lots of Styrofoam cups, the smell of badly burnt coffee in the air. No direct eye contact. Lots of shifty of feet and uncomfortable twitching of fingers that have nothing to do with themselves.

Then the first woman stands up: “Hi. My name is (fill in the blank), and I am addicted to Facebook.”

http://bit.ly/aiTfEs

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For those of you that know me, you know I have a lot of opinions. A. Lot. These opinions are usually strenuously expressed and are sometimes unwavering and set in quick-dry cement.

But, perhaps another, more positive way of looking at it is to say that I have a lot of pet peeves. Again: A. Lot. Tomatoes, toMAAAtoes, opinions, pet peeves. Whichever.

Here’s a pet peeve that brings on a fever of eye rolling and “as ifs!” from yours truly:

http://springwise.com/style_design/gc4490/

Really? Are there really men out there that WOULD iron IF the iron was all chromy, steely and macho? Are there really men out there that are saying, “You know, honey, I WOULD iron my own shirts but, frankly, this non-gender-specific iron you’ve provided me puts my sexuality in question and I JUST CAN’T DO IT!! Now…if they just made an iron that was really BUTCH, then we’d be talkin’…”

Would a pretty, sweet and soft pink one with bows and ribbons make the chore any less of one for women?

(And, as a side rant: the fact that Philips is marketing this to men based on the assumption that men want “more power, more steam, more performance” in their irons, implies that women…ummm…don’t? Yes. That’s true (insert dripping sarcasm here). I, for one, when shopping for an iron, am only concerned with the cuteness factor and not its performance features.)

I don’t think either gender is so fragile and, frankly, stupid.

It’s a little like the scene that goes on every day when I reach for my multi vitamin “designed for women” and wince at the fact that the pill is a muted shade of mauve’ish pink. (I’ve taken the non-gender specific variety made by the same company…which is a non-descript shade of beige, thank you very much…so I know the hue is a gender’ized marketing tool.) Is the men’s version blue? And, really, Centrum, just checking, but am I to assume by the addition of the girlish dye to mean that you “understand” me and my sister-friends oh, so much better? Because that’s what marketing is: niche finding, niche reaching, niche relating.

If so, I have to say that the leap is a bit big, don’t you think?

I have two children – twins, a boy and a girl – and from MINUTE ONE they have been my very own little gender experiment. I believed it before I had my darling squirrels, but I REALLY believe it now: Males and females ARE DIFFERENT (THANK GOD!! And, bless those differences, every one…okay, MOST of them, anyway!). We navigate, negotiate, manipulate and respond to the world around us as differently from each other as cake and sauerkraut. So, of course, the way one markets to men and women IS and should be different. But, the this-is-getting-silly line seems to be crossed A. LOT.

And, I suppose if Philips thinks it’s going to back a gazillion dollars cornering the male-ironing-demographic by bringing to market this “Iron Man Iron,” then more power to ‘em. I would, though, LOVE to see the numbers this time next year.

Because, really, when is an iron simply an iron?

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As we know the media landscape is changing and the traditional news outlets are grasping at straws to save ratings, advertising revenue and, well, jobs. We are seeing several daily shows and large broadcast events incorporating social media in an attempt to regain ratings and increase viewer participation.

Broadcast events such as the Super Bowl and the Grammy’s have had their biggest audiences ever and The New York Times attributes this to their engagement in social media. Brian Stelter of The New York Times sees this as an extension of the “water cooler effect”; that very natural trait that most human beings have to want to talk about, analyze and deconstruct events going on in the world – from the trivial to the significant – with their friends and family. NFL.com hosted streaming tweets and a visualization of trends on their website to stimulate online conversation and The Oscars presented an insiders view of the ceremony by featuring three of their insiders Tweeting throughout the awards on their site. With an online platform of “The water cooler effect,” people don’t have wait till the next morning – literally around the water cooler – to share information, comment, weigh in and generally feel like we’re actually a part of the big – and small – happenings of the day.

So can social media save broadcast television?

The answer is yes and no.

Yes.

For networks that are acknowledging and embracing social media, it is allowing the networks to almost double dip in their advertising.  According to The Nielsen Company, one in seven people watch a broadcast event and sit on the Internet at the same time.

And no.

The networks that are straggling behind in the new media realm are finding themselves to be the conversation and not as being part of the conversation. They are able to see the streaming rants, praises and general comments but are not contributing. The networks that once were the main source of the population’s news are now standing on the sidelines of the people’s news coming from Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites.

I recently worked on the NBC Olympic Twitter Project where I saw the kind of participation in broadcast that Brian Stelter discusses in his article. As I filtered through hundreds of thousands of Tweets a day, I realized that people will embrace a network that they feel is listening and appreciate a network that provides some kind of online vehicle for their voice – their opinions, insights, rants, questions – such as the NBC Twitter Tracker.  The Vancouver Olympics forced networks to acknowledge the power of social media because people were Tweeting the results of events before they aired. NBC realized that they couldn’t control the message and that they must simply embrace it by making they Twitter Tracker the most up-to-date news on the Olympics.

To me, social media seems to perfectly compliment broadcast television. The synergy of new and social media forces the normally one-way news to finally become an actual conversation. So what does this mean for the future of the TV industry? It means a future.

For great reads and where I got my stats check out these two articles:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/24/business/media/24cooler.html?ref=technology

http://www.briansolis.com/2010/03/the-future-of-broadcast-media-is-social/

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We all know that social media is fun…we rant, we stalk old high school flames, we post random thoughts, we boast about our kids. We let all our friends know what we had for lunch and how truly satisfying our double shot mocha frappuccino was this morning.

I’ve been known to do all the above. But, while the entertainment factor of social media is undeniable enormous, I am constantly amazed at how powerful social media is as a catalyst for change…important societal change. Change at a level that can impact the way we live, see ourselves and how we relate to each other on a real and very basic human level.

Invisablepeople.tv was started by Mark Horvath, and if you haven’t heard about it, today is the day. It’s one of the most wrenching and heart-breaking sites you’ll ever see. Take a look; it’s hard to watch but almost harder to turn away from.

The beauty of Invisiablepeople.tv is its simplicity. “All” it is is a collection of YouTube-length video profiles of homeless people. Horvath – himself a recovered addict who lived for 15 years on the streets – has posted hundreds of raw, brutally honest – and brutally compelling – interviews with homeless people from around the country. (You can donate on the site.)

What is especially interesting about Horvath, now a Hollywood producer, is the way he has used social media to draw attention to his site and to the issue of homelessness in America. A year ago he began using Twitter to document his cross-country treks; he posted his straightforward interviews where his subjects simply told their stories and people started to listen. People started following him. People wanted to help. Donations started coming in, bloggers started writing about him. Author, blogger and social media guru Chris Brogan has weighed in; Chris Pirillo, organizer of the huge annual blogger conference, Gnomedex, has as well.

And, perhaps even more powerful is the fact that large corporations – Ford Motor Company and Hertz to name a few – have aligned themselves with Horvath and invisablepeople.tv and have become sponsors of his travels.

As Brogan commented on a recent NPR story, “invisablepeople.tv marks a new way of supporting a social cause; not through some big non-profit, but directly through one person doing one good thing.”

That is possible, in my opinion, because of the unique immediacy and intimacy of social media.

Today invisablepeople.tv has nearly 7,000 Twitter followers and over 3,000 Facebook fans.

Check it out.

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Freedom of speech. Freedom of the press.  Freedom of social media…not so much…

…and, especially not so much if you’re a reporter at Reuters who happens to be even the littlest bit new and social media literate.

Check out this interesting article on Mashable that is either blood chilling, a sure sign that the slippery slope is perhaps more slippery than we thought, or, at the very least, evidence that some traditional/mainstream media just aren’t getting it.

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Dear Joe,

I just read a blog that Doyle Albee wrote about working with you, and I confess that I cannot do a better job of capturing the lessons you taught.  Yet, I must try.

I’ll always remember the day you started at Coors, hired to be a manager in one of the most catty, political, clique-ridden departments in the company.  By the time you joined the company, I had been with Coors about six or seven years, and had seen eight (8) bosses come and go – more than one a year. Some of those bosses didn’t know diddly-squat about journalism, PR or communications.  Some knew about PR, but had no idea about writing or editing.   Some knew the concept of a target audience or message objective, but had no idea how to communicate.  In truth, most were not good bosses.

Then you came along and changed everything.   You could write and edit.  You knew how to communicate.  And in your book, that included listening as well as sending a message.  You came along at a time when I was flexing my muscles and striving to be better and to make an impact.  In short, I wanted to go up the corporate ladder.

You were brilliant with me.  Your nickname for me was “Slim,” a moniker that I secretly cherished.   You refrained from micro-managing me and built up my confidence when I felt uncertain.  You supported and coached me through the land mines of producing the Annual Report.   And when the time came, you helped launch me to my next job as a manager in the department.  I went into that job with a picture of myself in my mind as “Slim,” a strong, independent, Katherine Hepburn-like woman who could handle almost anything.

One of the things I regret is never playing golf with you.  How you loved that game and took Coors’ corporate representation at all golf tournaments to a new level!

You shared many traits with another man we both loved:  Swede Johnson.  I can honestly say that you and Swede were like giant bookends of my career at that time.  Great defining and guiding forces that made me always want to do well and improve.  Joe, your guidance and the example of your own behavior helped me become a better person and employee.  Thank you so much.

Spiritual faith soothes us at these difficult times.   Keep practicing your golf swing, dear Joe, because you and I will be playing the Heavenly 18 one of these days.  And give ole Swede a hug.

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I just got word from our friend Marie Rotter at Xcel Energy that Joe Fuentes passed away last night. The Denver PR community—in fact, our community as a whole—lost a wonderful person.

Our thoughts are with his wife, Chris, and his entire family. As Jeremy Story said on the Denver PR Blog yesterday, “Life can be cruel, and that someone as good and caring as Joe has cancer is proof of that.” I’ll second that.

We miss you already, Joe.

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Well, maybe not predicted, but I noticed some great parallels while having a good time watching Hackers, the 1995 film starring a young Angelina Jolie and Jonny Lee Miller, a couple of nights ago.

While it was far from the first time I’ve seen the movie (my wife will actually complain about how many times I’ve seen the movie!), I noticed something very different this time. More than just laughing at the out-of-date technology, the hacker culture portrayed in the film acts much like today’s social networking and mobile computing cultures.

So maybe Hackers predicted at least a part of the future. Fifteen years ago, you needed special equipment and a lot of special skill to pull much of this off. Not anymore.

A few examples:

• Throughout the movie, the characters hacked in to networks from pay phones. While it was mostly to evade getting caught by using their own phone lines, it reminded me of the public WiFi community that’s sprung up with cheap (or free) and easy Internet access from anywhere and could even be a WiMax foreshadowing. Just as they used pay phones to hide, we can even make it difficult to be tracked from a Starbucks, for example, as the address will show up as a public access point.
• Remember the scene where they all watched the show with Razor and Blade called “Hack the Planet”? Again, you needed serious skills (and maybe even a little fiction help from the script) to show your program by breaking into a broadcast feed. Now, that’s nothing more than a video blog, which can be—and often is—produced by just about anyone. You can check out shows like AmateurLogic.TV anytime—no special skill or equipment needed.
• Hacker handles: names like Acid Burn, Crash Override or Phantom Phreak populate the movie. There’s even a scene where one character, Joey, says “I don’t have an identity until I have a handle.” Not really so different from Twitter handles, is it? A shout out to my friends @geekmommy, @smileyvegas, @technosailor and @queenofspain. So, which one of you wants to be Lord Nikon?
• And in the end, they needed to meet (meetup?) to take down the systems and save themselves from certain prison sentences. They sent messages online (today’s Facebook event, meetup or Tweetup) and used pagers (perhaps SMS or Foursquare?) to get people together all over the world and support their cause. Look what we’re doing now: through SMS alone, more than $20 million was raised to support relief efforts in Haiti in just a few days.

Perfect parallels? No, but it reinforces something we’ve been talking about lately at Metzger: social media is not new behavior, it’s just new tools that allow us to talk, interact and get together—which is what we’ve always wanted to do.

Put Hackers in your Netflix queue… it’s still a fun ride (I wonder what Dave Taylor thinks of the film. Dave… would you like a “retro-review?” Call me!).

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A little chuckle to brighten your day: How even a squishy, soft and sweet Muppet can get blasted on YouTube with a barrage of nasty commentary. Obviously a goof (and a hilarious one!), but just imagine what’s it’s life for the truly deserving. Check it out.

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