All About Content

This is Part 2 of my little foray into live blogging a day of conference sessions. I’m not a “live bloggger”, but I took a lot of notes and well… here they are. See my previous post about DC Week for more background on the event.

The opening session (a panel covering media organizations talking about the how’s and why’s of social media strategy) was followed by Jeff Pulver, whose list of credentials are so long that the person introducing him doesn’t even go into them. It was simply said “After hearing Jeff talk, it was clear that we had to have him come talk about The State of Now at DC Week.”

(Interesting aside, I first met Jeff Pulver at a party he threw at SUPERCOMM 2000. I didn’t know who he was, only that he danced at the front of the stage with a lot of uninhibited enthusiasm. He’s a hard guy to miss.)

Pulver starts by saying that the archival internet used to be about people going to the internet and asking questions. The real-time internet is about people making statements.

He asks how many people consider themselves brands. He is adamant that we are all brands. (I cringed. I’m tired of people insisting they are brands.)

Individual voices now matter. Individual voices are now being listened to. The rise of mommy- and daddy bloggers is a great manifestation of that.

There’s an evolving backchannel. Individual people who are not famous are effecting change. Your passion can change the world.

Ecosystems –- media, politics – are all changing. It’s not “we the people”, it’s “me, the people”. We are all connected me’s.

He tells a story of passion changing the world: one person doing a fundraiser over Thanksgiving 2008 leads to a classroom being built in Tanzania. Over $10,000 was raised over that weekend. The fundraiser then flew to Tanzania to build the school and the day the electricity went in, these kids now also had access to the Internet. The children are now affectionately known as “The Twitter kids of Tanzania.” For them it’s a way to communicate with the world that no one in their community had the opportunity to do previously.

Speaking of Twitter now, Pulver says that [follower] numbers matter in that they give you attention, but it’s what you do with that attention that really matters. [He’s talking about passion and purpose.]

Now Media is a fusion of the best of old media and new media. Take the power of established media, use new media to spread the word, then the buzz becomes the “news” and traditional media reports on the phenomenon.

An example of a “Now Media” moment is Susan Boyle. People’s reaction to the content is what propelled her to fame. It took the TV show producers to create the content. Twitter/YouTube allowed it to spread. Then YouTube became the story and the news media covered the number of views she got.

To become a new media mogul, you need to figure out how to create these moments. If you can create/manufacture these Now Media moments, you’ll own the future. Real-time web is the catalyst.

Pulver explains the story behind how he became a connector and someone who is passionate about engaging with people. It started when he was a kid and didn’t feel like he fit in. He talks about ham radio as a way to connect. Flip a switch and you have instant friends. Jeff became obsessed with making connections as a child when he was introduced to ham radio by his uncle.

He learned everything he needed to know about social media by the time he was 13. (He got his CB radio license at 12.5); so, he has been social with media for 30+ years.

He goes on a tangent to warn that we must take preventive measures to disconnect. Too much asynchronous communication can be overwhelming. It’s not healthy to know more about random Internet people than you know about family. Some people update too much; it’s about how you connect. Don’t hesitate to defriend people who overshare and flood your Facebook feed with personal triva.

His social media mantra: “Listen. Connect. Share. Engage.”

The fact that you are the guru of ______, doesn’t matter. In a few years, that’ll be obsolete. If your job is on the threads of knowing just a little bit more than everyone else, you should be looking for a new job. It’s not about expertise. (20 years ago Jeff Pulver was the nation’s expert on spreadsheets. La-dee-da, he says)

Personal means are more effective than legal means, often.

If you have a voice that’s being muted by your company, find a new job.

Now he’s rambling. Getting increasingly difficult to take notes.

He says companies know B2C and B2B, but they need to start paying attention to  C-to-C marketing, which is going to gain in importance (Um, hello, that’s what we’ve been calling word-of-mouth and it’s not a new concept.)

When he started Vonage, he hired people with no experience in telecom, because when they didn’t know you couldn’t do something, everything was possible.

Pulver announces he is launching new platform for nonprofits, JustCoz.org, as a way to help organizations put out tweets through supporters’ accounts. The call is for ordinary people to “donate a tweet” – the system let’s people give access to their accounts to organizationst hey support and trust – it’s much more than just retweeting a message. [Seems like an interesting concept if you can convince people to hand control over their "voice" like that, but I’m a little skeptical. (As of this evening, the new site/service has 33 users.)]

A launch of a new service to help nonprofits is a good way to end the speech, especially since most of it didn’t really follow a coherent thread. It’s clear that Jeff is passionate about technology and the power of people to make the world a better place using social media. He had a lot of great one-liners and anecdotes, and I can see how his passion can be inspiring… but the whole presentation was just someone talking extemporaneously about “be authentic!”, “social media can be a force for good!”, “listen!”, “companies can’t control the spread of consumer opinion anymore”, “Twitter is great”, “don’t just collect friends on Facebook” yadda yadda.

Okay, that was kind of a sucky blog post. But I did warn you.

(The next one will be more interesting.)