Andrew Lark

I'm With Dwight...

This whole Dell thing is just getting rather dull. Dwight takes a good swing at the issue. I also agree that the thinking on what Dell should do when confronted by bloggers and it's little crisis are lame - these are PR tactics reframed for the blogosphere. Same old same old.

Who would have thought the echo from a blogger would be so loud? Well, me for one. The problem is that the thinking on how to deal with this as an issue is to treat the blogger like some new breed of journalist. Wrong. The way to deal with this is to fix the very problem that created a pissed off customer. Dell is listening. Like HP is listening and IBM is listening. The issue is, who is doing... One old PR pro once gave me some wise counsel... all business problems are communications problems, but you can't fix communications problems without first addressing the business issue.

Dell built an incredible business on the back of incredible customer service. I worked as a consultant to Dell for many years. It was the customer service that pulled Dell through many a battle. Growth clearly comes with challenges. And if there is one thing I am certain of, within Dell, customer service will be undergoing scrutiny like never before. They understand that it all starts with the business, not the blogger...

That's A Lot Of Posts...

Interesting little tidbit from Gavin over at Ostranenie

Technorati reported the average number of blog postings is again on the rise, having dipped briefly last winter. There were 900,000 posts created each day by the end of July, working out at 37,500 posts per hour or 10.4 per second.

Google...

Rod has a good tip on searching sites:

Say to look for some words found only in uk sites you can enter in the Google query ...

search term site:uk

The site switch restricts the search to uk domains. To look on my site for a previous posting I entered into Google ...

evaluation site:www.drury.net.nz

Which allowed me to search over just my site.

One problem with this approach is that you come to the older, cached versions of pages rather than the real version on the site... if you get my drift. Is very useful though.

Gartner Hype Cycle

Gartner has done one of those Hype Cycle things in which they look at podcasting and blogs... No time right now to analyze the analysis... here it is... Although I gotta say this is about the weirdest analysis/statement on blogging I've seen for a bit:

Corporate Blogging. This involves the use of online personal journals by corporate employees, either individually or in a group, to further company goals. It reached the peak of hype in 2004 although mainstream firms have not yet got involved. Its impact will be on projecting corporate marketing messages primarily and secondarily in competitive intelligence, customer support and recruiting.

Steve don't eat it...

Hillarious... I actually did think about trying a Beggin strip. They look like bacon (kind of), they really smell like bacon (really), and Gabby (the dog) goes wild for them. But, I'm going to listen to Steve and back off until another day when we've totally run out of food... just joking.

Video Blogs In BusinessWeek

Great piece on rocketboom... And here is the site... Why more companies aren't jumping on the Vlog bandwaggon and creating their own news shows is baffling. Get going gang... And, for all you naysayers, listen to Mitch....

As these videos flow into the living room, they will reshape what we think of as television. "TV will be transformed," says Mitchell Kapor, the founder of Lotus Development Corp. (IBM ) and now an investor in Participatory Culture, an online video startup. "People will look at it as historically quaint that you had to watch something that others chose for you."

A List Apart

A terrific site gets a new look...

Google Messaging...

Here is all you need to know to get going with Google messsaging...

Reputation Isn't In What's Written...

I'm not sure why research firms are so desperate to attach the word Reputation to their efforts when in fact the research has little to do with reputation. Despite the media's willingness to promote these desperate efforts, it does their own reputation no good at all with the final reader who I am hoping is smart enough to see straight through the nonsense.

Take the latest... drum roll... Delahaye Media Reputation Rankings... If you accept that this nothing more that flagrant self promotion then no need to read on. If you actually think this is right, I'd like to suggest you think again.

The tone and quantity of of coverage is not an indicator of reputation. Reputation - like brand - sits sqaurely in the minds of constituents. Your reputation is something your customers possess - they give it back to you in the form of loyalty, respect, trust... and much more. You can manage your reputation, much like you manage your brand. And you might choose PR as one of the tactics by which to do that.

Where reputation does not exist is in a news clipping. Some argue that media coverage reflects reputation. I have a real problem with this notion. Coverage in whatever form is nothing more than an opinion or view, right or wrong, distorted by the stark commercial realities of the media. Suggesting that coverage is a manifestation of your reputation entirely ignores the construct in which new is created and the very requirements under, and in which, journalists are expected to create stoires. Connecting news clippings to reputation in this way suggests some kind of pure nirvana in which news represents, absolutely, the truth about a company or individual. Which we know it doesn't.

Aside from just really annoying marketing, this is dilutes the importance of reputation management. Wit the headline of the Delahaye press release: Microsoft Earns Best Corporate Reputation in the Media According to Delahaye Index. What nonsense. You generate lots of coverage and by default you've got the best corporate reputation? What garbage.

Classic Quote From Linus...

Linus, creator of Linux, really gets at the value of Slashdot... not... (care of Good Morning Silicon Valley)

"Gaah. I don't tend to bother about slashdot, because quite frankly, the whole _point_ of slashdot is to have this big public wanking session with people getting together and making their own 'insightful' comment on any random topic, whether they know anything about it or not." -- Linus Torvalds, in an e-mail elaborating on his defense of a Linux trademark.