My Latest Web Foray

I've started gathering my thoughts on content, metadata and search as well as links to the various projects with which I've been involved on a new site. It will soon be at fannick.com. I'm in the process of changing Web hosts, so for now you can find it here.

Your activity online is resulting in a personal reputation score. Scared yet?

An article in The Wall Street Journal today made me immediately go back to an event Factiva hosted a few years ago. At that Social Media Roundtable we were trying to come up with what the new metrics would be to measure influence.

In the piece Holly Finn talks about how more and more companies comping up with ways to assign reputation scores to individual people based on their actions on line. All of those drunken college posts perhaps will be codified just like your credit score is impacted by late payments. Scary, but predictable.

"Social capital" is the term now. I don't think we used that term in 2006, but we were talking about the same concepts.

Detecting Author Sentiment, Then Trading on It

The New York Times summarizes some of the services for algorithmic trading that Bloomberg, Thomson Reuters and Dow Jones have been providing for a while. The journalist, Graham Bowley, focuses quite a  bit on the cutting edge stuff, like extracting emoticons and sentiment-bearing words from news reports, press releases, Twitter and other places.

But the real gravy to date has been extracting the more predictable, such as economic indicators, and allowing trading houses to get that data in milliseconds. This allows them to make real money in a flash before humans can react.

Men still run American business

Or at least that is one conclusion you could draw from the list of most common first names of executives, as taken from Dow Jones Companies & Executives database on a scan I conducted recently. Of course we can't tell the race of a person based on a first name, though the names are certainly traditional Anglo-American in origin. So the data are more striking for what they seem to say about the gender of the executives than their heritage.
The database has global representation from millions of companies, but it is disproportionately of North American executives. Of the 13,000 unique first names in our database of millions of people, most of the top 100 are what many might be interpreted as traditional European-American male first names. (See below.) Of those that are obviously female, Mary is the top female name at No. 46, followed by Susan at 48, Karen at 71, Linda at 77 and Barbara at 90. As for the top 20 overall, it's a list most of which would not have been out of place 50, or even 500, years ago:

1. John
2. David
3. Michael
4. Robert
5. James
6. Richard
7. William
8. Peter
9. Thomas
10. Mark
11. Paul
12. Stephen
13. Charles
14. Joseph
15. Steven
16. Daniel
17. Frank
18. Mike
19. George
20. Gary

Visualizing Obama's speech --- but making it harder than it should be

Thanks to NPR for pointing out this word cloud of Obama's Oval Office speech about the oil disaster. It's "fun" to look at.

These kind of views are often as interesting for what words are missing as for what words are there. What didn't the president say? "Kick some ass" isn't there. Nor are names of BP execs. Someone pointed out that "engineers" isn't there. I also noticed that "scientists" was hardly mentioned. But it's hard to find what's NOT in a visualization.

And the other thing that struck me is that this kind of visualization is a bit of a chartoon. Once you see the biggest couple of words, it's hard to really analyze what's next in line because the arrangement on the page is meaningless. It's just how the words fit together. I think this would have been much more usefully presented as one of the most simple of visualizations, a list -- most-mentioned word first, least-mentioned word last.

Mining the media for oil drilling volume

I've posted over on TheConversationalCorporation on how the companies involed in the Gulf oil spill are not getting equal treatment in the press and from social media. BP is getting press and managing the message but Halliburton and Transocean aren't to be found on Twitter.

Why Won't AVE die?

AVE (or Ad Value Equivalency) has long been recognized as an inaccurate measure of the value of a brand's message in the mainstream media. No one likes it, except a few executives who perhaps see it as an easy way to boil it all down to a simple dollar amount. But yet, it persists.

My colleague, Matt Donanhue, has a good post today on the topic.

Inspired by a blizzard

The following isn't about text mining. But if' you're monitoring social media, Big Box Retailers, read on...

The best snow shovel I've ever used is one that's older than me. It's a steel blade pusher style which I rescued from my parents' house when my father died and replaced the handle on twice because I knew it would be hard to find another like it. No shovel I've ever used clears the ground so well.

Do they still make 'em like this? Perhaps, but it sure isn't easy to find one. You can easily find this "style" but not this quality. The aluminum and plastic ones they make don't work as well when they're new than the 40-year-old one I have.

And this isn't just about shovels. It's about faucets and screw drivers and drills and on and on.

The ones Home Depot and Lowe's stock are cheap to buy and practically disposable. I would gladly pay double or triple the price of an item if I knew it would last. But it seems retailers are convinced we want cheap, and are not willing to pay for high quality. Let's keep shipping poor-quality goods thousands of miles, toss them in land fills and buy more next year.

Nelson Mandela is not dead

If you casually glance at Google Trends every morning, you will likely be starting your day with the latest misinformation from the Internet. Hey! Nelson Mandela died. Oh, wait, no he didn't. But Chris Henry did. No, he's still alive, too. (Unfortunately, it seems that Mr. Henry has subsequently passed away, according to the AP and other reports.)

Trends is just reporting back to us what we're searching on using Google, not what really happened. It is certainly easy to believe people will miss this point when they see the words "Nelson Mandela dead" on a page published by Google.

With the power of social media in the hands of everyone, it's easy for people to game the system. Did the Mandela rumor come out of marketing efforts behind the new film "Invictus"? Seems plausible.

Just as I cringe when my daughter is encouraged by her teachers to use Wikipedia to research her homework (like last night when she insisted to me that the average temperature of a certain part of Canada is negative zero because it says it right there, Dad), I lament how much we trust everything we see on the Web.

("Papa says if you see it in Wikipedia, it's so," right Virginia?)

In this age of truthiness, Wikitruth and need to know instantly, perhaps all the information available to us is making us a little less well informed.

Analyzing Newspaper Reporting to Predict Economic Direction

Some Dow Jones colleagues are using text mining analysis across years of newspaper articles (back-tested to 1990) and have created an incredibly interesting analysis of how the media's reporting can predict the direction of the economy.

The new Dow Jones Economic Sentiment Indicator analyzes the coverage of the economy in a handful of influential newspapers to quantify economic sentiment.

According to the ESI's Web site

The ESI represents one of the most comprehensive and far-reaching examinations of media coverage as an economic indicator. [Back testing shows] the ESI clearly highlighted the risk that the U.S. economy was sliding into recession in 2001 and 2008 and suggests the indicator can help predict economic turning points as much as seven months in advance of other indicators.

Rob Passarella, the Director of Product Strategy for Algorithmic and Electronic Products at Dow Jones, blogs about this and other things.

So many ways to think about measuring social media

This wiki, Social Media Metrics, Measurement and ROI, run by Beth Kanter, who focuses on how non-profits can use social media, includes a very nice list of resources that apply to the for-profit world too.

Another Newspaper Obituary, as 146 years of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer Ends

The end of another era. (With the caveat that the P-I is going to give it a go as a Web-only publication.)

It's a case of 117,000 print customers not being enough to sustain what might soon be the archaic printed newspaper, as the Seattle P-I publishes its last edition.

It remains to be seen how these news gathers can make the switch to an all-digital future. Put differently, how easily can newspapers remove the "paper" and still be what they once were.

Look at the first line of the PI's web site's "about us" page.

"For hundreds of thousands of people in Seattle and the Pacific Northwest,
it's not morning without their P-I."

Their mission has to change now. Their readers no longer read what they write just with their morning coffee. It's hard to do so in the subway (ok, maybe not in Seattle) or at the diner counter or while waiting for an oil change or in the bathroom. Newspapers fit many scenarios where the digital medium doesn't.

So with another mighty giant now reduced to bits and bytes, the question remains will the readers follow.

zysz

The New Meaning of 'Newspaper Obituaries'

Every time I read one of these newspaper obituaries (a term with new meaning) -- Rocky Mountain News Ceases Operations -- I am saddened and shocked at what is happening to this once vibrant industry.

As the paper stated on its fairwell message, Goodbye, Colorado

"...We hope Coloradans will remember this newspaper fondly from generation to generation, a reminder of Denver’s history – the ambitions, foibles and virtues of its settlers and those who followed. We are confident that you will build on their dreams and find new ways to tell your story."

I'm not confident that we as a society know what those new ways will be.

The press has been called the fourth estate as it is a vital check on our government.

Can a democracy remain healthy without a strong press? Can "the press" be in the hands of just a few media powerhouses? We need diversity of reportage.

Who is going to fill the gap when newspapers die? The pulp news of CNN, MSNBC and Fox? I hope not. The AP? Not, if they have no member newspapers to pay for their reportage? Perhaps we need the BBC model of taxing the people to pay for journalists. Not sure Americans are willing to pay for that.

Online news publishing needs a new model and probably one that requires micro-payments of readers. Information can't be free. It costs money to produce it. And you get what you pay for.

And don't tell me "blogs". Blogs, with almost no exceptions, write commentary based on articles written by professional journalists. they are not out working beats, getting leads, interviewing public officials, and the like. Will they fill this gap? I can't see that happening any time soon. What's the business model to pay for that?

I'm reminded of a poster in my journalism class in college with a caption stating: "If the press didn't tell us, who would?"

Who indeed?

Hey are you listening to me?

This post is the first time I've seen these thoughts pulled together, summarized as:.

As a presenter, the idea of presenting while people are talking about you is
disconcerting. But to balance that, there are huge benefits to the individual
members of the audience and to the overall output of a conference or meeting.

Dealing with the "back-channel" is a fascinating challenge for presenters at conferences. Perhaps now this happens more in IT conferences than other industries, but if that's true, it will change quickly.

I'm sure professors are already dealing with this too.

Press Release Tweets Seem Logical but are Journos Plugged In?

Vocus is adding a feature to allow PR professionals to notify their followers when they've put out a new press release. It sounds like a logical thing to do and probably was pretty easy for Vocus to add, so it makes sense to offer it.

I wonder however, how many folks in PR are now embracing Twitter and perhaps, more to the point of this feature, how many journalists are expecting to hear about news releases via tweets. Certainly some journalists are already embracing Twitter but does that skew toward those covering IT?

The Ethics of PR - 'not an oxymoron'

I'm speaking today about media measurement and monitoring at the annual conference of the Maryland Chapter of the Public Relations Society of America. Here I met Jeff Julin, the outgoing national chair and CEO PRSA. He's quite a knowledgable fellow about the world of PR and is a real believer that PR is an ethical, honorable profession.

In a well-attended session, Jeff said that despite all the changes that have come to the profession because of the new flow of information on the Internet, PR is still all about relationships with your publics and being honest with them. He pointed to the groups Code of Ethics which focuses on the following values:

• advocacy (for the public, not for their companies)


• honesty


• expertise


• independenc


• loyalty (to the organization, but not a blind loyalty)


• fairness


• loyalty

A question came up: How do you stay loyal to a client and to your ethics (think Edelman and Walmarting Across America.) if they are at cross purposes? Jeff said the good thing is that major personal crisis of ethics don't come up all that often. I asked what a company like Edelman should have done if approached by Wal-Mart to create a "fake" blog.

Jeff said in these cases, like all that PR does, you have a responsibility to stand up to your client and challenge something that you feel is not ethical. Jeff admitted that the realities of "paying the mortgage" come in and walking away from accounts is not always realistic but standing up for what you believe is the first step and showing WHY you think the idea is bad is the way to go.

One of the attendees followed on that and suggested you should challenge such ideas on the basis that they are bad business ideas and show examples of others' missteps. (Oh and there are lots of them out there.)

An aside: Jeff also talked about how PRSA no longer talks about "press releases" but "news releases" in a nod to the fact that information goes out to more than just the "press" today.

Measuring the U.S. Election without Counting Votes

PRWeek posted about one of Dow Jones Insight's observations last week about how George Bush has dropped out of the news hole during the final stages of the 2008 election campaign.

It was one of the many things we wrote about on Dow Jones Insight: Election Pulse blog, which was one practical use of media measurement.

We've devoted a significant effort over the past several months to measuring McCain and Obama campaigns via the footprint they've left on the mainstream and social media.

Of late we looked at the breakdown by battleground states to see if the press was covering the candidates in step with what the polls show. (In general the color of the state does not seem to be an indicator of the volume of coverage of a candidate.)

Another thing we did was a recurring "Issue Tracker" analysis to see which issues were sticking to which candidate as the months ticked by. (September was strong for McCain as he took over coverage of most of the 25 top issues we were tracking. He then lost that lead a bit at a time to Obama in October.)

Also of note. We caught the eye of the folks at XM Radio's POTUS '08 and were a recurring guest on the Thursday afternoon show.

All in all, a fun project. But it's kinda nice it's Election Day. One more summary post coming in a week.

Practice what you preach when it comes ot social media

David Meerman Scott, a PR strategist, practicing what he preaches -- a nice YouTube video marketing himself.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0HgzS0QEY8

Reporting on the reporting of Vytorin Cancer Data

Our colleagues at The Wall Street Journal used some data from Dow Jones Insight to blog about the size of the spike of press coverage of a possible link between use of cholesterol-fighter Vytorin and increased risk of cancer.

A few of the comments were hostile toward the post. This one was from someone called "Steve Walker":

So now the WSJ is going generate and report statistics on how frenzied the press becomes over junk science flowing from questionable meta-analyses? Then try to analyze why some junk science leads to less or more press frenzy?...

I disagree with this criticism. I think reporting on the media coverage of a story such as this is valid as is the methodology used to count the media mentions.

Public Relations Metrics blog

Just came across this blog, Proving the Value of Public Relations, by Don Bartholomew of MWW. Not sure how I've missed it in the past.

Looks to be a lot of great thoughts on measuring the value of PR output. Can't wait to dig into it.