MoneyMakers: Blogging in Corporate America

Many Internet users have grasped onto blogging as a trend technology. Blogs are attractive to the less savvy internet user because there are many blogging websites that have blog layouts already created and ready to use. Blogs are not a new technology, however, and they have many more functions than the diary-style uses most people use them for everyday. Blogs have been vested in the newsmaking quadrants of media since 2000.

News about politics and current events such as the Dean Campaign in 2000 and the Terrorist Attacks of 911 in 2001 have led the forefront of blogs as well as “turned the tables” on how we read and respond to news. Now corporations in the public relations and marketing industries are grabbing the coattails of blogs and riding the tide to a better image and response to their businesses by learning what the consumer has to say about them. What characterizes the changes that blogs have changed the way that news is made? The one communications skill that has literally re-created the way that newsmakers make news and consumers respond to it is listening! For years, businesses have been using mass media tools to reach their audience enabling the path of communication to go one way from business to consumer. Ads in magazines, on television, and the internet were truly the only face that businesses were showing to people and hence that was the main focus of most companies. Unanswered email and contact pages were the only outlet for consumers to respond to companies and their product and service. Gillmor has suggested in our readings that various tools have filled the ambiguous gap of communication gap. Email, weblogs, short messages, syndication via Net-based tools such as RSS build enable conversations between businesses and consumers that email and contact links do not provide.

Industries are growing wiser in their trade through the update of their communication on the internet.There are two main reasons why Gillmor finds the use of blogs and RSS be an implication of more progressive relationships among industries and people who consumer. First, blogs are creating an avenue of personality for companies that may have otherwise been seen as threatening or self-serving. Gillmor says that “blogging is an opportunity” for industries like PR and Marketing, because it provides a the actual thoughts and opinions of staff rather than just corporate jargon and “business talk” that no one really understands. This is an incredible benefit for industries because it draws the audience into the people of the organization, not just their business suits. More importantly corporations have a greater opportunity to listen to their audience. How can a company better their image, or a business better their product without the comments and feedback of actual consumers?

Gillmor’s second point about this technology is that blogs provide real time commentary on different subjects that can be implemented from the corporate side or topics that the people feel are important that corporations may have overlooked. Great perspective is gained on what the customers needs, wants and are concerned about at any given time. Customer service can be increased and be more effective if staff are able to respond immediately to consumers and issues can be alleviated quicker, preventing them from occurring to other non-biased consumers. I find this to be an unseen gem for businesses of many industries because blogs can clearly look be like an extension of their marketing and image development for products and the company at large. Seems like open strategies like this can make one company look a lot more trust worthy than other that do not choose an open strategy that allows communication to occur and for the consumer to have a voice in their business. I’m pretty sure that these are the types of businesses that most consumers would rather give money to in exchange for a more honest and personable product than anything else. The exchange here has much profound results than for companies that don’t practice open source strategies of communication.

Gillmor mentioned that focus groups or interviews and surveys which were more traditional forms of getting feedback from an audience. These tactics are not only time consuming, but they cost more money to facilitate. Since blogs are on the internet and everyone has access to them, it is clear to see why companies should definitely choose this technology as their method of communicating with their audience.

jg

Wealth of Networks by Yochai Brenkler

Yochai Brenkler’s writings in the “Wealth of Networks” work in favor of explaining the pros of free software and its direct benefit of internet users. The perks include a highly accessible code to all users, enabling the ability to create new applications or existing applications on the internet. Brenkler talks about the benefits that free software provides not only for internet users but for society as a whole. One benefit that Brenkler highlights is the boost to economy that free software provides. Free software is non-proprietary because there is no one owner. Anyone and everyone who makes changes to the software is an “owner”. Since there are many users of the internet already it is inevitable that many users will share this privilege, yielding not one but many “owners of the software who do not gain a monetary benefit from this privilege but rather the freedom to do the things they wish to do. I found this system to be slightly problematic but then I realized that I am the product of a capitalistic world where someone has to be the capital winner. Free software is a refreshing state of mind in the sense that it doesn’t have to be about money, but more about creative liberation without government larks hanging on the back of citizens who want to use the internet to their liking.

I found Brenkler’s writing to be quite liberating because he posed suggestions that free software not only allow people to do what they want, but that freedom in turn promotes human development. Now I am all for the ethnological benefits that the internet can pose on society but Brenkler fails to acknowledge the obstacles that have already inflicted more than 13% of the general US population: the digital divide. At the 7th week of classes I am starting to get annoyed with the authors of these readings because of the fact that none of them have taken three lines of their articles to mention one of the most prominent elements of controversy regarding internet communications. I mean how can one discuss the innovations of free software and its benefits for “ordinary people” when a ot of “ordinary people” don’t even know the ins and outs the internet. Is it truly democratic usuge when everyone can’t phathom the first step to write and re-write code in free software. Some who use the internet for recreational purposes alone can barely adapt to languages outside of their own familiar lingo rather than the complex language of the internet. Did Brenkler consider this? I am starting to think that many authors we have read are representing a wider population of academics and scholars who are avoiding this topic. Maybe we only want the freedom and wealth only for some, rather than for all?

jg

The WIRED Projection

The curiousities about internet and web capabilities have been on the minds of innovators for over half a century. Kevin Kelly begins his recap of history with idealist Vannevar Bush in 1945. When Ted Nelson started to build the concept of hyperlinked pages, the fantasy of search began to take its course. Nelson’s inspiring invention led him to believe that the the “grand utopian benefits of his embedded structure” would be the salvation of our stupid world. Those are seemingly harsh words coming from a fellow human being with a brain that structure the hyperlink, however, Nelson stepped on his own foot when he made that comment as hyperlinks have transformed the usage of the internet from inquiry of information to our taking the place of our own memory. Clearly, Nelson was right when he said that the hyperlink was “just the beginning”. “Transclusion” and “Interwingularity”, as Nelson, named these actions,  revamped the internet into a web of ecommerce, citizens media, customized news and information, music, and television and participatory consumers have become the spiders that continue to spin the web, threading and connecting links to each other. Kelly drops some impressive numbers, claiming that each person on earth could have 100 of their own webpages at any given time. I hate to burst this dreamy bubble but the digital divide the gap between people who do benefit from web technology and those who don’t, still exists. Kelly talks about all the economic benefits that come out of participatory usage of the internet and consumers building and flourishing their business on the internet. But everyone does not use the internet at an equal level. Yes, the freedom of speech is increasing as small, e-businesses are becoming larger and filling the shoes of big businesses, but everyone doesn’t have an e-business or knows how to blog or create video and photo journals on the web. What about all of the people who still only use the web for email only or to check the weather or get driving directions from Yahoo! or Google Maps? How will these people participate in the civilization of the web? In the 1990s, internet mavens and researchers were concerned that the government would have too much control on the way that the internet could be used by consumers, but now that barrier is broken. So who is controlling it now? Or is it just a free for all? This is a highly political matter. What I know for sure is that Nelson couldn’t have possibly predicted everything. That’s my CNN (WIRED) projection.

jg

A Hard Place: Google and the Government

Once upon a course, in Communications and Culture, I learned some interesting tidbits of information through my professor’s regular presentation of Google search on the classroom computer. The results of his habit of obtaining information on demand were quite intriguing. Using Google’s search box in order to spontaneously supplement some tidbit fact he had just given the class was frequently the cause of my learning more and more about the information that Google produced. Whether I understood it all or not, i knew that it could produce mounds of information from the insertion of one or two words into the search field. I learned so much just from the 20-30 word mash-up descriptions underneath the resulting links, that I may have been a valid contender on Jeopardy after a semester in this class.

What is seemingly valued more than anything else America (and some may refute this perspective), is the freedom and ability to have wide access to any and all information world wide (web). Americans place high value on their right to know and be informed whether they are considering the consumption of E! News and the RedEye to be actual news or scouring archives that holds the history of government records, current corporate law, or getting a specific perspective on how the 2008 President Campaign is turning into Survival of the Richest. The idea that news has just become a speculation according to an individual or group perspective is certainly not far fetched to Americans, and so much of our “news” has also become entertainment which is also vital in American culture.

Battelle raises a crucial topic that I first encountered back in Communications and Culture: The China Question. The worlds different governments are in place to control society, creating laws and taking action to protect it and keep it in order. The idea that the US government can see (or hear) our private lives is extremely unearthing but the idea that it can also change existing laws (even) the constitution to do so just seems plain evil. The term Big Brother arises as an epithet of a nasty bully, rather than a protector. This is the same light in which I thought of Google when I first witnessed the returns Google had for “Tank man” and gathered information about how the Chinese government banned sites that were relevant to a rival government or other ideas that were unacceptable in China. What is the worth of information to the Chinese people? Apparently, a value that is applied negatively to the Chinese people according to their government. Otherwise why would they ban headlines and information about events that had religious and cultural implications?

The perspective that Battelle eludes to as Google playing the “Big Brother” role is quite interesting. Aside from trying to figure out the political stance of the writer, one could also argue that Battelle posed good ol’ Google has a silent bully who pretends to do what is the “right thing” rather than fighting for the political freedoms of others outside of America and conforming to some obscene government policies in order to avoid forfeiting a profitable market. Since search has become such an immense part of the internet a technology that is abundantly used in America, would it be fair to make reference to “the right” to search? Couldn’t search provide elements of liberty, life, and the pursuit of happiness? It is interesting to draw difference of access between Americans who have a wide gap of digital and internet knowledge amongst American citizens and the access to that of the Chinese who seek the same human liberties.

jg

Battelle Chp 5-7

The most well known model of business for internet advertisements did not originate with Google!? Really? Google is everything, has everything. How could that be?

Battelle tells all about the history of how Google landed what eventually became the largest internet enterprise that we know today through the saavy business model of Bill Gross. The pay-per-click model that Gross originally founded in his idealab was a revamped idea from his nostalgic activities as a student. The advertisers paying a very low rate for clicks on their advertisements, while Gross relied mostly on volume. Seemed at first like Gross was taking the stairs to the top floor with his methods.  However, by the time the model was changed to CPM, advertisers were paying very large amounts for quality clicks, or clicks that provided the means to a sale or personal contact information.

Gross is the economic builder of Google’s current method of acquiring advertising revenue. Its not hard to understand that Google is the beast of the internet because the model is inherently cyclical: advertisers pay large sums of dollars to gather information while Google provides free portals where information can be accumulated like Gmail and iGoogle! With millions of people online all the time, it is not hard to understand why advertisers are coming straight to Google for the numbers.

In our first class discussion, the first question that popped into my head after seeing Oprah clip was “what is the big deal”? How can a company get so large and lucrative that employees get to play at work and get paid really well?! Battelle includes his discussion with Ted Meisel in chapter five alluding to the je n’ai ce quoi of Google. The reason that competitive like Overture can’t beat Google is that they “lack Google’s sex appeal and broad consumer brand. Did two nerds from Stanford set the sex appeal standard for Google or did the consumers do that? These are questions that YouTube, a site made of citizen media, helps me to grapple with. In the meantime, Battelle talks about the economic growth of Google. Duh, we know that. I’m ready for Battelle to unveil the mystery.