Dan York on the intersection of PR/communication and the "social media" of blogs, podcasts, wikis, Twitter and more – and the way our conversations are changing…
The tools we have today to unleash creativity are utterly amazing. Recording a version of the classic song “The Little Drummer Boy” is not terribly remarkable… but… creating your own arrangement, playing all the instruments and singing, recording and editing a really fun video, and then getting 1.4 million hits on YouTube… and all at the age of 16… THAT is remarkable!
If you haven’t seen it yet, just watch 16-year-old Sean Quigley’s video:
As a result of the amazing interest in the video, the high school student in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, (note the red “Canada” gloves in the video) has now been on the major Canadian TV and radio networks and has been receiving attention from around the world. As articles in USA Today and on CTV News can attest, he now has an agent and is in fact selling copies of his song online.
This interview on CTV News back on December 2nd gives a bit of the background:
Of course, at that time, the number of views was still only in the thousands. Now, as I’m writing this post, the number of views is closing in on 1.4 million… and I’d expect it to probably go even higher.
What I find so cool about this all is that Sean Quigley did all of this himself with the help of a few friends.
He shot it all using a basic DSLR camera. He recorded all the instruments and vocals into a computer. He did the editing/post-production – I don’t know using what software but there are many inexpensive choices.
No fancy commercial production houses. No extra producers.
Just a talented individual able to make use of tools he had available.
He didn’t need to ask permission of anyone to upload the video.
He just did.
It’s awesome to see… and he and his family and friends certainly have a good bit to be proud of… I’m looking forward to seeing what he’ll do next!
And I’m looking forward to the continued creativity to come out of all the people in this world with the easy access to tools… and an open Internet on which to publish their work…
P.S. Those interested in following what is next for Sean Quigley can follow him on Twitter or on Facebook.
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Are you aware that on January 12, 2011, a fundamental change to the Internet’s naming infrastructure is beginning? Are you thinking about what it means to your company or organization?
1. The gTLD process may result in 10s or 100s of new top-level domains
A “top-level domain” (TLD) is the final part of a domain name. Originally there were only eight TLDs:
.com .edu .gov .int .mil .net .org .arpa
ICANN was awarded the contract to manage the DNS system in 1998 and engaged in two rounds of domain expansion in 2000 and 2004 that resulted in the addition of 15 more domains (see the ICANN agreements):
Additionally, there are 250-ish two-letter “country code top-level domains (ccTLDs)” that are handled by each nation. (And some of those ccTLDs are available commercially to anyone such as “.tv”. “.me”, “.co”, etc.)
This new round of domain name expansion happening comes after about an 18-month process by ICANN to engage many different stakeholders in the process. It will allow anyone who can meet the criteria to establish a “registry” for a new domain name. ICANN created a video that explains the program:
2. These New Domain Names Will Most Likely Not Be Out Until 2013
On January 12, 2012, the application process will start for entities that want to apply to register a new gTLD. As explained in the Applicant Guidebook, the process is quite lengthy and involves a significant amount of both technical and business due diligence. It also costs $185,000 USD just to apply, plus the additional costs of setting up the business, technical infrastructure, etc.
The application process closes on April 12, 2012, and given the lengthy process the earliest that new gTLDs would most likely become available is early 2013.
3. You Need To Watch The gTLD Applicants To Ensure No Trademark Issues
ICANN has stated that “approximately 2 weeks after the close of the application window, ICANN will post the public portions of all applications that have been received on our website. At this time, the formal objection period will begin and will last for approximately 7 months.” (See Section 4.1 of ICANN’s gTLD FAQ.)
ICANN has stated that at the current time they will NOT be notifying brand name / trademark holders of applications using their brand/trademark (see Section 1.12 of the FAQ), so you need to pay attention to what is being proposed.
4. There Is An Opportunity Here for Brands
If your company/organization has both the financial and technical capability to operate a gTLD registry, there is a great potential here for carving out your area of the Internet. For instance, Ford Motor Company could register “.ford” and then start using domains such as:
cars.ford
trucks.ford
about.ford
support.ford
…
The beautiful thing about operating your own gTLD is that:
You do NOT have to let anyone else use it!
It can be your own top-level domain name that no one else on the global Internet can use. gTLD operators set all the rules for how the domain is to be operated – and can choose to not let anyone else use it… or set specific criteria for people wanting to use the domain.
Again, it’s very definitely NOT an easy process to get started, but it is something that some larger brands certainly may want to consider. (There is also no guarantee that consumers would accept these new gTLDs and might keep trying to tack .com onto the end!)
5. Communicators Will Need To Monitor These New gTLDs for Defensive Registrations
Once these new gTLDs start appearing in 2013 or so, communicators will of course need to monitor the success (or not) of these new gTLDs and consider whether or not they want to defensively register their brand/name/etc. in the new gTLDs.
This has been the harshest critique of the new gTLD program – namely that it creates a massive problem for brand/trademark holders and will create additional cost for them to register in each of these new domains. There have even been hearings in the US House and Senate related to these concerns and numerous editorials and online articles about this. (one example – and an ICANN response)
However, all current signs are that the launch of the application process WILL go ahead as planned on January 12, 2012. The application process does require each new gTLD to have a “Sunrise” period where entities can register new domains with specific brands/trademarks in advance of the open public registration… but that again will be something communicators will need to monitor.
LEARN MORE…
ICANN has established a section of their site specifically about the generic Top-Level Domain program:
There has been a great amount of discussion about this ICANN program in various parts of the media. One site I have found extremely useful has been CircleID and their specific page tracking TLDs is here:
Now, the reality is that this entire gTLD program could completely fail. There may not be enough applicants… or consumers may simply not accept any of the new domains. Certainly some of the already-approved gTLDs have not found widespread acceptance.
Still, this new expansion of top-level domains seems pretty certain to move ahead – and as communicators we all need to stay on top of what is going on here and understand what we may or may not need to do.
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Yesterday during the marathon US House Judiciary Committee hearings on the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) (which is an insanely bad idea), there came a point where the entire hearings ground to a halt…
… because of a tweet!
I had just tuned back in to the hearing and it took me a bit to figure out the kerfuffle (via Twitter, naturally), but Iowa Congressman Steve King was bored listening to Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee and tweeted that sentiment:
As Declan McCullagh recounts over on CNET once Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee learned of the tweet she termed it “offensive” in the open conversation of the hearing… and the hearing then went into the type of parliamentary rathole that can occur in such places as the U.S. Congress.
While people can debate whether this was this was offensive and disrespectful of Rep. King or whether it is all being overblown, the more interesting aspect to me was the intersection between Twitter and hearings such as this one.
Any of us who are used to speaking publicly in 2011 are very well aware that there is inevitably a “Twitter backchannel” going on, for better or worse.
And the SOPA hearings were no different… the #SOPA hashtag had way too much traffic yesterday for any sane person to handle… and representatives who were in the hearings were participating in that stream, too. Rep. Zoe Lofgren had a couple of tweets go out during the hearings – and Rep. Darrell Issa had a constant stream going, although in his case he has made it clear that his staff is tweeting during the actual hearing.
In this case of Rep. King, though, it was a more snarky message about another committee member… made on a public stage. Which, of course, got back to people within the room.
I’m sure this won’t be the last time… we’re in this brave new world where comments and opinions people might have kept private in the past are now made in public forums. Interesting times ahead, for sure…
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I’ve already updated one of my sites and am indeed impressed by the simpler and cleaner UI. Just as one very simple example, it was always annoying in earlier versions of WordPress that you had to click on the down arrow in the left navigation admin menu to get to the menu choices. The new fly-out menus are a whole lot easier! Similarly, the simplification of the upload process to a single button is a nice step.
There are a veritable TON of other changes and fixes for those interested in the gory details:
All in all it looks like quite a solid release. I’m looking forward to seeing how it works on my other sites!
P.S. WordPress 3.3 is available for immediate download, although if you are running any recent version of WordPress you can simply “update” your site (after backing it up!) through the admin menus.
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Logging into Google+ today I was immediately drawn to the new visual look:
Quite a departure from the “black bar” that we’ve come to expect from Google+. Here’s what it looked like yesterday – and interestingly still looks like on another computer of mine (I’m guessing there is a browser refresh issue there):
You’ll note that in the old style of header, you had quick access to other Google services. This has now been moved to a drop-down menu when you hover over the “Google+” logo in the upper right:
This is all part of Google’s overall effort to bring a stronger visual identity and simpler user interface across its various products and services.
So far in brief period of using it, I like the new redesign. How about you? What do you think?
I was amused by a bit of synchronicity yesterday. I’ve been giving a lot of thought lately to how to better focus my attention. The “bright shiny objects” of our social media world have tended to pull me away from what I should be doing and suddenly I’ve found that it will be near the end of a day and I haven’t accomplished those things I’d set out to do in the morning.
“Oh, look, there’s a butterfly…”
It’s VERY easy to get distracted. Go to do research and pull up an article… only to start clicking on other headlines and photos… and then somewhere in there remember what you were researching…
The topic of “attention”, or our lack thereof, has been much on my mind.
So I was amused to find two articles yesterday that both hit this topic straight on:
Jane discusses a free ebook from Leo Babauta, “Focus: A simplicity manifesto in the Age of Distraction” and lays out her own suggestions and commentary about how to focus more. It’s a well-done post with, again, a stellar graphic. (I’ve subsequently downloaded Leo Babauta’s ebook, too.)
Don’t blame the information for your bad habits is an interview over on O’Reilly’s Radar site by Mac Slocum of author Clay Johnson about his upcoming book “The Information Diet” that hits many of the same themes. While this interview is admittedly self-promotional as Johnson’s book is an O’Reilly book, it nonetheless has some good thoughts in it. Here’s a quote I liked:
In other words, we don’t suffer from information overload — we suffer from information overconsumption and poor consumption habits. The solution is just as simple as a successful food diet. It’s about building habits and healthy choices for yourself, and sticking to it.
Tim O’Reilly also had a good comment to the post that included in part this:
Time is a precious resource. You don’t get it back. Thinking through what you want to produce as well as what you want to consume, and how much time you’ll allocate to each activity, is a good start. But there are a whole host of productive steps you can take to remove cruft from your information diet.
Both of these posts came to my attention yesterday… ironically, of course, both through social media. The first through Google+ and the second through either Facebook or Twitter (and possibly both).
Regardless, they do hit on a crucial topic – how do we manage our time and our attention? How do we focus on what is important? How do we not get distracted by all those forces around us that entice us?
I’ve been taking some steps over the past few months to increase my focus (including of note to only read email at particular times of the day)… and I need to take even a few more.
What steps are you taking to tame the distractions?
I was very pleased to see this morning an update notice for version 3.4 of MarsEdit, my favorite tool for writing blog posts on my Mac:
This 3.4 release is stated to be focused around improvements to the media management system and I can already see some changes to the UI, such as this “Section” box in the upload window (that I don’t honestly know yet why I’d use it):
I’m looking forward to learning more about the new changes and how they can help with handling media in my posts. One of the reasons why I love using MarsEdit is because it gives me a consistent editing platform across my various blogs, some of which are on WordPress and some of which (like this one) are on TypePad. One set of keyboard shortcuts (which I have enhanced and added to). One editor window. Plus, of course, the ability to edit from anywhere that I am, regardless of Internet connectivity.
If you are on a Mac and haven’t tried out MarsEdit for writing blog posts, I definitely have found it incredibly useful and would encourage you to give it a try!
P.S. And no, I do not have any affiliate relationship with MarsEdit – I’m just a very happy user.
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Want to make money from your blog hosted on WordPress.com?
In a fascinating move today the folks at Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, rolled out WordAds, directly competing with Google’s advertising offerings. As they state:
Over the years one of the most frequent requests on WordPress.com has been to allow bloggers to earn money from their blog through ads. We’ve resisted advertising so far because most of it we had seen wasn’t terribly tasteful, and it seemed like Google’s AdSense was the state-of-the-art, which was sad. You pour a lot of time and effort into your blog and you deserve better than AdSense.
Right now there isn’t much information beyond what can be found on the application form:
Only publicly visible blogs with custom domains will be considered for this program. …
Selection will be based on level of traffic and engagement, type of content, and language used on a blog. Some blogs may not be accepted. Entering the form below does not commit you to the advertising program. It just signals your interest in learning more.
Personally, I don’t have any blogs hosted on WordPress.com (outside of some experimental sites), so I won’t be applying… and I actually share the feeling that most advertising hasn’t seemed to me to be very attractive (which is why I don’t run any on my sites).
While this is limited now to blogs on WordPress.com, it will be interesting to see if it expands beyond that if the program is successful. Competition certainly is good and having even more options available for bloggers who want to use advertising is good news for all of us.
If your blog is on WordPress.com, will you apply for this program?
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It’s a wonderful story of how Om first got into blogging… providing some history and names that will be familiar to many. He also provides some rather incredible stats. Here’s just one of the sets of stats:
11,165 posts
About 3 posts a day, every day for roughly 10 years.
His “10 lessons learned” are also a great read, particularly his #4 about writing every day, and #5 and #8 which speak to the civility that has always been a hallmark of Om’s writing.
I began “blogging” back in May 2000, before the term “blogging” was really even widely used. My writing back then was largely about open source and then in 2001 increasingly about voice-over-IP (VoIP) as the startup I was with (e-smith) in Ottawa was acquired by Mitel Networks and I entered the telecom space.
At that time, there weren’t all that many of us who were regularly writing online about VoIP / telecom matters… Jeff Pulver, of course, and Andy Ambramson, Tom Keating, Alec Saunders, Aswath Rao… and probably a few more that my aging memory forgets.
And, of course, there was Om.
He was always there to write about what was happening in the overall telecommunications space and specifically in the “new” world of communications over the Internet. In those early years, we were often referencing what others wrote on their pieces… it was a smaller world and we all pretty much knew each other. (Although in truth I only met Om face-to-face once or twice at one of the various conferences like VON.)
I don’t recall now what Om originally called his site but pretty soon his “GigaOm” site became one of THE places to go to stay up on what was going on.
It was quite inspiring to watch as Om took the leap and turned his passion into a full-blown media site… and then a whole network of sites. Even as he encountered and survived health issues, his “media empire” kept growing and growing and growing…
It’s certainly been an impressive first 10 years… and I look forward to Om’s next 10 years. His “big picture” writing has always been thoughtful and I’m looking forward to seeing even more of it.
I enjoyed, too, one of Om’s reflections toward the end of his post:
” curation and sharing of content has become as important as writing. By sharing videos, photos, links, or quotes we are all essentially editors and the sharing itself is an act of editorializing.”
Curation (even while some dislike the word) is a key part of what we are doing these days, and I’ve personally enjoyed Om’s “Om Says” newsletter and sharing he’s been doing.
Thanks for 10 years of writing and sharing, Om! Congrats on the milestone!
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And so at last comes the end of one of Google’s most intriguing and useful collaboration platforms… Google Wave. Amidst the long list of services Google is killing off as part of its latest round of “spring cleaning” was this note about Wave:
Google Wave We announced that we’d stopped development on Google Wave over a year ago. But as of January 31, 2012, Wave will become read-only and you won’t be able to create new ones. On April 30 we will turn it off completely. You’ll be able to continue exporting individual waves using the existing PDF export feature until the Google Wave service is turned off. If you’d like to continue using this technology, there are a number of open-source projects, including Apache Wave and Walkaround.
I admit that from the start I was a big fan of Google Wave. I wrote about Wave a good bit here on this site and used it both personally and professionally. Wave’s ability to allow real-time collaboration was really quite incredible, as I documented in this video about collaborative note-taking at a conference. In fact, I still use it weekly as Shel and Neville use Wave to plan the outlines for each For Immediate Release podcast – as a weekly correspondent I use the wave to see what else they are going to talk about to avoid overlapping or to build on what is being discussed elsewhere. They also get to see what I am going to be talking about in advance of me submitting my recording. It also provides an easy way for them to get the links for the show notes.
Sure, Google Wave had a user interface that was very “different” and took some getting used to. It definitely had some clunky aspects to it… and the massive hype around it led to outsized expectations that clearly could never be met.
And now, two years after Wave’s launch, some of the features in Wave have migrated into other Google products. Google Docs has a real-time editing capability very similar to what worked so well in Wave. Google+ amusingly has the “play back” capability in its Ripples feature. There may be other features in other services I haven’t noticed. It’s clear that that work involved with Wave had an impact within Google.
Now it’s left to open source projects like Apache Wave and Walkaround to carry on with what Google Wave started. It will be interesting to see what can be done… I’m certainly going to be exploring both projects in the time ahead.
Goodbye, Google Wave, ’twas nice knowing you…
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