Talker

Image by notacrime via FlickrI'm doing quite a lot of conference speaking thingies this Autumn, so apologies in advance to anyone who suffers in one of those audiences. I'm particularly looking forward to the MediaME Conference in Amman on the 8th and 9th November, I'm genuinely pumped (but retained as a consultant by, so please take a pinch of salt) about the MENA ICT Forum taking place in Amman on the 10th and 11th October and I'm speaking on a panel thingy tomorrow at the Global Arab Business Meeting in Ras Al Khaimah.

There's more, but I've forgotten them. It's not arrogance, I've just got a brain the side of a dried pea.

I think tomorrow might be interesting. I'm a panellist on the topic of The Sustainable Corporation - "How the corporate sector may embrace socially responsible strategies" and I'm planning to set a cat or two among the pigeons. You see, I think the Middle East's corporate sector must embrace socially responsible strategies or die - but I'm not talking about giving a few thousand Dinars to some centre that's backed by an influential figure. Believe me, I have seen enough of 'ana mudhir' companies doling out cash to well supported causes (which they laughingly call 'CSR') to last me a lifetime, and railed against it every time I've encountered it (often to little effect). I'm not talking about that tomorrow. I'm talking about true social responsibility.

Try this on for size:

Be transparent.
Your ability to obfuscate and dissemble is being limited day by day because of the sharing and access that the Internet is driving. We know much more about you than you think - and we share a lot more opinion about you than you'd like. That movement of opinion, that tide of consumer-driven feedback is actually becoming increasingly important.

Be truthful
If there's a leak, you can not longer go out and say "there is no leak" and depend on a mendacious PR company and a compliant media. We're sharing the video of people sloshing around as you're pretending there is no problem (Sorry, 'issue'). When you need people to believe in your integrity, you'll find that you've already undermined it.

Be honest
Companies make profits. It's what they do. We don't believe for one second that your move to expand your operations is driven by a commitment to the market or a clear response to the needs of the community. It's about profitability and that's okay. But stop trying to dress up clearly commercial decisions as community commitment. And you can stop the greenwashing stuff right there, buddy. Oh, and one more thing. I'll buy a mobile network based on price and quality of service, bess. Your "giving back to the community" lip service is not a factor for me. If you were a true and active member of my community, now that's interesting. But you're not, you're just bankrolling stuff.

Be responsible
We all make mistakes (as the hedgehog said, climbing off the toilet brush). You can actually engage with communities, your customers, and explain why you made a decision (get a spine) or why you made a mistake and how you'll put it right. We expect no less.  When you don't do this, your customers with gather together and talk about what weasels you are.

Be led by your customers
Too many companies in the Middle East splosh 'customer-centric' in their brand values and then go on to treat customers like dirt. Take a close look at the telco sector and you'll see how those organisations have been punished by customers. God knows, I've taken diabolical glee in every piece of work I've done breaking a telco monopoly and you would not believe how low that fruit lay every time. You're a monopoly? Play nicely, because winds of change are abroad and they can change things a damn sight faster than you think.

Last but by no means least - be digital.
What do I get when I Google you? Do you know? TripAdvisor makes hoteliers sweat, but many other Middle East businesses are unaware of the flow of opinion - and are not searchable, responsive or digitally competent. Which is a shame, because an increasingly large number of your customers are. You can assert what you like about your company, it's products and brand. But you are no longer in control of the process of communication - your customers are talking on a wonderful scale. Your assertions are being tested by third parties with more reach than you have.

That's all I'll have time for - and believe me, my list is a sight longer than that. But I'm looking forward  to the reaction...

Social Media Tart

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I've been doing quite a lot of speaking at 'online' conference events and workshops recently (this will surprise nobody who knows me) and consequently meeting a lot of people who are experimenting with social media within their organisations. It's something of a growing trend - typically, one person within an organisation has been using Facebook or Twitter, even blogging, and has come to realise that there is very real value to the organisation in 'being there'. A lot of these people come from the communications department, although by no means all. At a recent event where I spoke to an audience of event managers, I found quite a lot of people who had responsibility for companies' events were the drivers behind introducing social media to their organisations.

Something of a pattern has started to emerge. The enthusiast is given permission to open up a social media account because it seems harmless enough - the company's management doesn't 'get' social media and so doesn't see any danger in letting the enthusiast play with it. The enthusiast starts out and quickly finds a ready audience of people responding, interacting and demanding information, access and insight. It all becomes hard to handle precisely because it has been successful - one person can't keep up with the volume but has gained enough experience to see the potential for this new medium.

So they go back to their management and point out that the experiment has been a great success, customers are now talking to the company over this new medium and appreciating the new degrees of access it brings. Can we expend the programme now?

And many I talk to are right in the middle of that conversation, mired in 'not just yet, there's a recession on you know' and 'What's the ROI?' reactions from the management team that has allowed this thing to develop so far precisely because it has ascribed it no importance.

Because we're hearing so much of this one problem, it's going to be one of the aspects of social media in the region that we're going to try and address at the Middle East Public Relations Association (MEPRA) workshop being held at the Emirates Academy in Dubai tomorrow. Dubbed 'Get Real About Social Media', the workshop's a three-hour session intended to provide some ideas, insight, assistance and feedback of a realistic nature (not three hours of 'join the conversation' schtick). I'm going to be co-presenting along with the delightful Samantha Dancy, the corporate communications manager of Jumeirah Group, who'll be bringing the benefit of her experience exploring social media from the client side. I'll be doing the usual gibbering and speaking in tongues.

You can get more information right here. The workshop's open to non-members, so you can always just pitch up and heckle.

Service With a Snarl

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I've got into the habit of carrying a bottle of Masafi around with me, so pretty much every morning starts with a quick nip into our local ADNOC service station to buy a bottle for myself and one for Sarah.

Invariably, the lone blue-trousered cashier is stacking newspapers, crushing crisp packets or doing something else more important than actually standing next to the till and waiting to do the one thing cashiers do best: take the cash. I usually leave the money and walk out waving the two bottles. They know the code, so I don't have to wait around for them to scan the bottles, something one is now forced to do if buying anything else there, thanks to the Tyranny Of The Scanner.

I have watched people buying other stuff and the drill is always the same - the customer is studiously ignored until he or she is standing waiting to pay at the cash desk and starting to fidget, at which point, the cashier will slowly shuffle across the shop and grudgingly swipe the goods before demanding payment, usually with a grunted number.

It struck me this morning just how very wrong this scenario is. The customer is almost always made to wait upon the convenience of the shopkeeper, who has defined pretty much any task in the shop (a destination intended to be attractive to the customers it depends upon) as more important than actually serving the customer. Nobody complains, partly because this is the way things are and partly because finding anyone to complain to who has any power to effect any degree of change is just too much investment for likely no return.

I only thought about this at all because I had been in a workshop thingy the day before and one of the questions we had considered was where UAE banks' pain points were. I had made the point, not unreasonably, that one of the greatest pain points for banks in the UAE is that their customer service, without exception if anecdote is to be believed, stinks. I have found nobody who would recommend their bank to me, have never complained about my bank (which I, admittedly, do quite often) and had someone respond with a cheery, 'Try my bank, it's great!'. If anyone ever does, I think I might have to be treated for shock.

Someone else in the workshop thingy corrected me.  The abysmal customer service of banks in the UAE wasn't a pain point for them, because it doesn't actively hurt them. People still bank with these people, despite their anger. So banks don't care about it, it isn't a business issue for them, my colleague claimed. And he was right. Well, sort of. It's not a pain point for them simply because they're ignoring the issue - not because there is no issue to be addressed.

Like the awful ADNOC shop, banks treat their customers with very little consideration. The many instruments and vehicles of international finance do not include customer service, although all of the money banks play with belongs, ultimately, to customers. There is no thought of anticipating customer needs, instead the customer is forced to wait upon the banks' pleasure. Escalating the complaint is almost impossible - you get stuck in the numbing vortex of the call centre, which has been designed to take customer feedback and beat it into submission before discarding it. And so 'management' is effectively cushioned from the pain - the call centre is where pain begins and ends 99% of the time.

Because there's nobody listening to the customers, the management of both ADNOC and banks don't see that there's anything wrong - that perhaps there's a better, happier, way of doing things that likely costs less than the annual staff party but that has the potential to transform the brand experience of the people the business depends upon - it's that inability to see the customer as germane to the business that informs the appalling customer service of both. They'll spend millions on telling us we're happy, but not one penny on actually making us happy.

The easiest thing to do is craft a mission statement that puts the customer first, conjure up some brand values that include 'customer-centric', then run some nice, reassuringly expensive, ads that talk about customers and then completely ignore the customer in any business process, staff training or management objective.

Because customers aren't king any more. We're just dirt on the shoes of management teams sitting around in focus groups congratulating themselves on how much they invest in us, whose last thought would actually be finding out what we think or feel.

I'm quite enjoying watching companies start to experiment with social media. The first step any half-decent practitioner (ie: anyone who doesn't call themselves a 'social media expert' or, worse, 'guru') counsels companies to take is to start listening.

We've already seen some rather shocked reactions as a result of that advice. The first shock is frequently at the whole idea of listening to customers. ("Yew! Who wants to listen to them?"). The second one is when they hear what customers actually think about, and are saying about, them.

I wonder when ADNOC (the Abu Dhabi National Oil company, thank you for asking) will start...

(Yeah, so I'm grumpy. Bite me.)

The Devil's In The Comments

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An interesting thought (well, to me at least) to end the week. We've got this little phrase, 'the devil's in the detail', a version of 'never look a gift horse in the mouth' and many other similar wee pieces of wisdom that boil down to 'that looks like a great deal, why don't you take a good, long, hard look at it and make sure you know precisely what you're getting into here.'

When we're looking at information and opinion posted online, the devil's actually not so much lurking in the detail as in the comments - whatever you've got to say, it's how people, the 'community', reacts that's perhaps more telling. Take this example, the article that sparked my thinking about this. It's a really, really nice piece that tries to take a reasoned, moderate tone about the whole controversy revolving around the infamous South Park/Prophet Mohammed debate (and, by inference, the original Danish Cartoon Saga and the recent 'Let's All Draw The Prophet' saga). It basically asks Muslims to consider what the Prophet himself would do and counsels them to, effectively, turn the other cheek. I liked it.

But read the comments. Read how quickly that feedback descends into vituperation, unreason, hatred and bigotry.

What amazed me is how much stronger it all made the original post and how much the howling of the 'haters', directed at a moderate and well-argued voice, made that voice seem more reasoned and even more powerful.

The devil, these days, is certainly in the comments. But sometimes devilment doesn't half backfire!

Citizen Journalism. Bah.

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Another Arab Media Forum already! It hardly seems a year since the last one. It's now become traditional for me to celebrate the birth of this little bloggy thing (with this post) during the 2007 forum, as it is that very event wot was taking place as I first hit the 'Publish Post' key.

This year's forum features more social media stuff than ever before, but that's not really terribly difficult as it has previously had the token panel or two, last year there was even a blogger. I have to confess I didn't bother going this year. It didn't really seem terribly relevant - many of the discussions are taking place in an environment where change is driving a huge movement away from traditional media sources - even here in the Middle East where we are, as all agree, lagging. Broadcast is less challenged than print, but the low quality of regional printed news media will just exacerbate the speed of movement.


I was interested to see that 'a participant in a session on citizen journalism' (Gulf News didn't bother naming him/her) talked about the National Paints fire, the news of which was broken by our very own Albert Dias (@albertdias), quickly followed up by a Twitpic (Twitpic or it didn't happen is increasingly the standard).  We managed to get Albert on the 'phone for the opening of the Dubai Today Radio Show which made for a brilliant and dramatic opening to the show as Albert provided us with a cogent and intelligent commentary from the scene, 200 metres away from the holocaust that was devouring the huge paint store, his voice surprisingly calm against the background of explosions and sirens. And yes, BTW, I'm delighted we scooped GN online by at least 45 minutes.

So was this the 'citizen journalism' that the Forum was, yet again, debating? Well, not really. Albert wasn't a journalist, he was an eyewitness. It's just that he has access to much more efficient sharing networks: breaking the story on Twitter doesn't mean reporting it. It's just that we get access to the cold, hard facts that are the stuff of journalism. The journalism came when we decided to broadcast his voice, questioning him with a listenership, and principles of reporting, in mind.

That role, the role of taking the evidence and collecting it to give as rounded and objective a picture as possible, will never change. More of the responsibility for it is being put in our hands as we sift through sources of hard news and data, shared sources of fact and opinion. But we'll always need people to bring it together for us. It's just that we're going to want them to be online and, ideally, to be independent and have a sound reputation. Mendacity, in this environment, is not really an option- and trust networks, reputational networks, will become the cornerstone to popularity, and therefore revenue, into the future.

Journalism doesn't actually need huge publishing houses and hundreds of makeup artists and printing presses and all the rest of it. It doesn't even need massive recording studios, satellites and specialised receivers. The networks in place today, even with the lack of lower prices and higher bandwidth in our tragically under-served region, provide journalists all the access they need to inform and serve their audiences. But they will never again be the only source of information available to consumers.

A debate they might just get around to having next year. Or maybe not until the presses finally grind to a halt and they realise that nobody cares anymore.

Armaggedon!

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I have made the point before that the publishing industry is following a business model dependent on its inherent inefficiency. The original post is linked here, but basically my contention is that the whole industry is built on the cost of distributing a product, squid and dead trees squeezed through rollers, that is about to be overtaken by a much more efficient means of distribution - the Internet.

Of course this is a very simplistic view - there are many other aspects to the industry such as editing and marketing, but I believe these would simply move to an online model where publishers would 'worldsource' such activities. In this model, publishing houses would be significantly smaller organisations surviving on significantly smaller margins and carrying much larger lists. They would be online-centric.

Print runs would be cut back to a minimum required for retail presence in a significantly smaller number of retail outlets - online buys would be serviced by POD suppliers. The music industry gives us a clear way ahead as far as the retail/online adoption model goes. Paper books won't disappear, but they will become less important to consumers - as, for instance, CDs have today. Hardbacks will be like today's vinyl records - a quirky indulgence for connoisseurs of the medium.

The inevitable atomisation of the industry will create a wide number of individual authors going direct to reader as well as a number of 'wannabe' imprints. We'll see an increase in pay to publish scamsters as well, no doubt.

In that scenario, online marketing will be crucial to publishers - particularly community development, where a publisher would build a wide circle of relationships that are built on the respect, trust and recognition for quality that will be pretty much the core of what the imprint will offer authors - because the core of publishing today is distribution and that's, as we've just said, moved online.

Many publishers are currently pushing the responsibility of maintaining online relationships to authors. The standard industry advice to writers would appear to be 'get a blog, a Fanpage and on Twitter. Move it!' right now, which is a tad unfair as it's increasingly going to be the case that a widespread, solid presence on these very properties (as well as some others) that will be the only thing an imprint really has to offer an author.Some of the larger publishers, such as Hodder & Stoughton (tentatively) and Random House (much further down that line, with Authorsplace), are aggregating author 'social' content and even beginning to look a little like communities - is this the way forward?

Or am I just blowing hot air? Are the tectonic shifts that are devastating the music industry and music retail going to pass publishing by?

Have a read of this - I read it after I wrote the above post (it was a Zemanta suggestion. I'll tell you all about Zemanta another time. It's cool.). It's from author Max Barry and it's yet more food for thought on the winds of change.

Authors and readers alike will be talking about stuff like this at the rather wonderful Emirates Airline Literary Festival, at the Social Media Public Session, wot is being moderated by me (hence all the fuss about this stuff this week). The permalink to the information page on the session is linked here. And you can follow the Festival's rather sound Twitter feed at @EmiratesLitFest.

Social Media - The View From Rome

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Author Caroline Lawrence is best known for The Roman Mysteries series of historical novels for children. The series spans seventeen highly popular books although Caroline has now written twenty books in total.

She's coming to Dubai to attend the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature - and she's also coming along to the EAFL public session on social media on Friday at 8.00pm to join in the discussion about social media, writers and readers. If you'd like to join us there, you're more than welcome - there's a Twitvite here and Facebook event here.

 Caroline's a pretty online person (@carolinelawrenc on Twitter, for a start!), so who better to ask a few 'establishing questions' before we get down to the nitty gritty of writerly socialism on Friday?

Do you have a ‘social media strategy’?
My strategy is once I've set up my profile on Facebook & Twitter to keep active, but not flood people with tweets or other messages.

How much time do you spend socialising online every day?
 At least an hour.

Do you find social media time consuming/a distraction from writing?
Absolutely! That's why I installed FREEDOM software which stops you surfing for a specified amount of time.

What elements do you use?
Facebook (two accounts - one personal, one fanpage), Twitter (two accounts - one for my Roman Mysteries hat, one for my Western Mysteries hat) and two Blogs (Roman Mysteries & Western Mysteries). I also touch base with YouTube to see what's popular. Oh and my website, which I update myself!

Do you tend to shun social media, use it socially only, use it warily or try and make the most of it?
I try to make the most of it!

Do you feel you ‘get’ it or are you flailing about a bit? Is there one element you relate to most strongly as a writer?
I pretty much get it.

Would you ‘go E’ if you thought you wouldn’t drown in obscurity?
Yes, I would totally go E if it mean royalties of 70%! Or even if not. (In face, I think I already am E as well as in print! Here...)

What is the one thing you think publishers have to offer to a writer with, say, 10,000 social media connections already?
If you've got that many followers etc you're probably on the telly and don't need any help from publishers who are probably behind the times anyway!

Where do you see this going in less than 25 words?
Social media? It's going to explode. http://bit.ly/RTzPe

What’s the ONE question about social media you’d like to have answered.
Does Social Media really help raise our profile or is it just another way of procrastinating?

Fire Petal Books - Making A Dream Come True

One of the many side-effects of doing the authonomy thing for me has been my membership of a shadowy cabal of revolutionary, anarchist and even occasionally just normal writers from around the world who have kept in touch over the past year and more, generally swapping edits, news, information, help and assistance and quite a lot of 'there there's too.

One of us, US based editor and writer of young adult books Michelle Witte, recently announced to the group that she was going to open a bookshop. She'd had something of a road to Damascus moment and decided that this was what she wanted to do more than anything else - a community bookshop aimed at young people in Utah, a space where reading and books, teaching and community mattered more than the chain-store big business shareholder-driven push for profit.

To my absolute delight, she didn't stop at announcing what she was up to. She set about making it happen with blinding speed. She set up a Kickstarter project, a Facebook page, a Twitter feed and a website, Fire Petal Books.Oh, and a YouTube channel as well!

And then she cast around for people to help with donating items for an auction to help her fund the startup costs - coming up with a list of authors, literary agents, editors and others that is pretty impressive to say the least, including Neil Gaiman, Chris Cleave and many others. Agents and editors, including two editors from Harper Collins have offered manuscript critiques and even a 15-minute phone call! 15 minutes on the phone to a Harper Collins editor is pretty stunning - especially given that HC will only look at agented authors, let alone talk to writers who aren't signed.

Now Michelle's auction is on - you can find details and bid on stuff here. You'll currently need more than $100 to bid for Neil Gaiman's signed copy of Beowulf, but don't let that stop you. She's got stories running on her in Publisher's Weekly and book trade e-publication Shelf Awareness and there's more to come.

I have the feeling that this is one lady whose dream is going to come true. It just goes to show, doesn't it? All you need is guts, determination and the new tools of the online world!

Twitter and the Crash

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News is flooding Twitter regarding the crash of Ethiopian Airlines flight ET409 off the coast of Beirut as I write this. There are persistent tweets about survivors, but no confirmed MSM (mainstread media) reports of any survivors as yet. There were 90 people on board, 82 passengers and 8 crew - Ethiopian Airlines was very fast indeed to get a press release out, proving neatly that the BBC had flubbed and reported the wrong passenger/crew numbers as 83 pax, 9 crew. A small detail, but the devil's in details.

The 'plane itself had just been bought from Irish low cost carrier Ryan Air, apparently, and was delivered in December. Specialists in aviation were soon tweeting detail like that, which together with eyewitness reports and breaking news from websites like CNN, made for the usual compelling viewing of a news event unfolding on Twitter.

Tens of people are dead and we're using words like compelling viewing. What's happened to us?

We're involved in the story now, of course. I saw the tweets from Beirut as I settled down in the office and passed on the most pertinent of them. It was interesting that people were being more cautious than they have before in annotating tweets with 'unconfirmed'.

Having sent out the 'heads up' and given links (thanks to @SpotOn) to a couple of journalists who were covering events, I stopped passing on news. The passenger names being Tweeted out (albeit they had been read out on LBC TV, a departure from the European practice of letting civil defence notify families before names are broadcast) nagged at me, along with details like the number of bodies that had been fished out of the sea at such and such a point.

And yet this is how our news comes to us - on the second, from the event, unfolding with each new fact, supported by a community that has formed around its common interest in the event, brought together by a hashtag.

I found myself thinking of the image of Iranian student Neda Soltani, whose last sight on earth as her eyes flickered closed may well have been the cameraphone lens pointed in her face. There's something terribly comforting about being in a mob that I don't like.

UAE Sets Up Cyber Crimes Unit. Uh Oh.

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The UAE government is to set up a new department to combat cyber crimes such as financial scams, hacking, fraud, fake companies , extortion and pornography, according to today's sizzling Gulf News.

This is a good thing. The new department will be recognised by the Federal Courts and likely will be set up in Sharjah and, says GN, will be charged with drafting laws and regulations for the online world, as well as with the job of co-ordinating with law enforcement bodies. This is also, potentially, a good thing. The UAE's judiciary does not the benefit of a legal framework that recognises the online world and currently could fairly be said to rely heavily on court appointed experts when it comes to cases that have online aspects to them.

Quoted in a call-out box in GN's story that discusses 'e-police patrols', however, a major in the Abu Dhabi police says, "When there is a malicious rumour doing its rounds, or when there is a major security issue, the police can perform undercover operations online, just as in reality."

Now, when there is a 'malicious rumour' in print, its a matter for the National Media Council to regulate and is governed by media law - as far as I know, the police aren't patrolling Gulf News.

Can we consider a 'malicious rumour' online to be a different kettle of fish , then? There's certainly a grey area here - is online commentary to be regulated as media or public order?

Abuser Generated Content

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I have been following this story on Australian marketing uber-blog Mumbrella and watching it develop for some time. It has been a not unamusing saga based around a not unamusing car: the Toyota Yaris.

Basically, Toyota Australia ran a pitch for agencies to come forward with a smart social media campaign to promote the awful car. Each agency was given $15,000 to pitch with. The whole pitching exercise was something of a 'look how cool we are we get social media' exercise in itself and was much followed by a slightly aghast ad/media industry. The winners of the pitch, Saatchi and Saatchi, came up with the idea of running a 'clever video competition', donating $7,000 of its pitch money to the winning clever film, $3,000 to the second and $1,000 to the third place. Nice to see Saatchi billing $4,000 for a whole campaign, no?

And that would have been that - a typical story of client that doesn't really understand that the world is changing working together with an agency that still believes that social media is another type of megaphone to carry a one-way message - but for the film that won the competition. A competition, incidentally, that was not judged by the public (SOCIAL media, geddit?) but by a jury consisting of as yet unidentified jurors, according to Mumbrella.


The winner, 'Clean Getaways' turns out to be a clip of notably egregious sexism that even stands out in an Australian (here's ya birthday present, Sheila) environment. The gag 'she can take a good pounding' is just one high point in a film that sees a father discussing his daughter with her boyfriend in a slew of doobel orntondre references. User comment has been fast to tumble forth, including accusations that it is offensive and degrading to women and is 'vulgar objectification'. You can find an excellent writeup of the whole thing on Mumbrella, linked above. The video has now, sadly, been removed from YouTube. Because the thing to do when social media backfires is, of course, delete it all and pretend it didn't happen...

Toyota's reaction to this furore? The company's laughingly named 'manager of direct marketing and social media' told Mumbrella that he didn't see it was an issue as this was not an advertisement but was user generated content. So the users did it, see?

It is my humble opinion that the gatekeepers in the game prove that Saatchi and Toyota didn't 'get it', by the way. Jury bad, public opinion good. The trouble is that when you pick something 'social' in private, you then have to share your 'pick' in public. It would have been so much smarter to have user generated selection involved in this competition to find user generated content. But then it would have been smarter to look at social media as an ongoing investment in a process of change rather than as a tactic.

It is broadly accepted that Toyota has, as one commentator noted wittily, shot itself in the face.

UAE Facebook Libel Case Heard

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It was inevitable that we'd see such a case one day. Dubai's Misdemeanours Court yesterday heard the case of a Syrian who had posted photographs tagged with 'libellous comments' on his FaceBook page, according to Gulf News today.

The National, incidentally, didn't seem to get the story - there's a pattern emerging here where GN is stronger on the Dubai-led official stuff and The National on the Abu Dhabi/Federal beat.

No judgement has yet been passed in the case, although the defendent did say, according to GN, "I'm guilty and I did defame him because he provoked me." This could well avoid any wrinkles in the case that would test the ability of the judiciary to sit in judgement of complex cases involving online behaviours and technologies - I hope it doesn't stop the judge from exploring the legal issues the case opens up.

However, the critically important precedent in this is that the case was brought to court at all. In fact, Dubai Police's E-Crime section received a complaint from the allegedly defamed party and presumably brought the case.

The judge's summing up on this one has the potential to be important for many of us - we have already seen both cases and judgements in the UK and US that start to set precedents for how online media are being treated with regard to issues such as anonymity (the British High Court, for instance, judging that blogging is 'an activity carried out in public' and therefore a blogger does not have a right to have his or her anonymity preserved or protected) and online libel (we have now seen cases involving FaceBook, MySpace and Twitter).

The GN story is worth a read, BTW - the 'libel' that GN reports seems pretty mild as they go and appears to refer to a dispute that is itself ongoing in Dubai courts between the plaintiffs, according to the defendant and so wouldn't necessarily appear to be as clear-cut as the defendant's 'mea culpa' statement seems to make it.

Sexy Tweets

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How can you sex up your Tweets?

It can be hard sometimes getting what you want said into 140 characters – particularly when you bear in mind that you’re actually closer to 120 characters if you want to get retweeted and 110 characters if you’re tweeting a link to something (which is the purpose of a great many Tweets). So how can you not only get your point across but also get it across so that people actually take notice of what you're sharing?

Here, in no particular order, are ten sexy Tweet tips.

1) Think like a newspaper – you’re writing a headline, so write in the present tense and in the language of urgency. Take out any waffle and stick to hard fact. Don’t do ‘man assaulted his dog by biting it’ but ‘man bites dog’. Tweets are great for practising headline writing!

2) Where possible and appropriate, use action words rather than passive ones, smashes, punches, kicks, breaks, shoots and that sort of thing.

3) Cut out prepositions (at, by, with, from, etc). You can always write around needing them, usually by re-forming the sentence in a more active way. ‘The Government has signed a big deal with the traffic authority’ becomes ‘Government signs traffic deal’. And so on.

4) Cut out articles, too – the definite (the) and indefinite (a, an) alike. ‘Durban to hold an ice skating championship for the first time’ becomes ‘Durban ice skating championship first’.

5) Adjectives are evil. Even the most awful sub knows that every time you use one in a headline, God kills a kitten. And it’s the same for Tweets, so avoid describing things (broad market, blue pony, ephemeral memory – the first word in each of these describes the thing it refers to and is unnecessary in the punchy language of headline or Tweet writing) unless it’s crucial to the meaning of your Tweet (which is, incidentally, highly unlikely).

6) Think about your followers and what they’re likely to be interested in. If you’re tweeting a link, you’ve already thought ‘the guys’ll be interested in this one’ but prioritise – what’s the over-riding biggie in there? Lead with that, the most colourful and impactful aspect of the link, not with an attempt to provide a deep analysis. The link will give the facts, you’re just looking to make sure people get why the link matters. A little extrapolation can help here – what will this move, fact or conclusion mean down the line, what will it lead to? You can do this by using a question, for instance, ‘MS Signs Bing Twitter Deal: Real Time Search a Reality?’

7) Do you need a hashtag? Hashtags make subjects easy to search and flags your Tweets as part of a conversation around a topic. I’m sure there’s a statistic somewhere for this, but the vast majority of Hashtags never get used beyond a few Tweets. If you do decide you need a hashtag, make it as short and yet unique as possible. One hashtag should do it - if you’re thinking of flagging a Tweet with two or more hashtags, take the hard road and drop the extras.

8) I’ve been interested by the evolution in the way we use emoticons and after a discussion around this with the team at Spot On Towers, I’ve started using emoticons as punctuation, rather than in addition to punctuation. It does rather go against the literary grain, but it cuts down on characters and ‘clutter’ too.

9) Use a link shortener. TweetDeck and other Twitter clients have automatic link shorteners, but my favourite is TweetBurner’s Twurls because it gives you statistics regarding how many people clicked through your link, when and so on. This means you can tell which Tweets are, in fact, most relevant to your followers – and if you’re Tweeting for work, gives you metrics.

10) Last but by no means least, apply the DIGAFF filter. (Do I Give A Flying) If you care about something you’re sharing, other people will. If you’re just passing something on that might be of interest to someone, it’s probably not worth passing it on. Also take a second to make sure that you’re not the 200th person to share that same fact! If you’re consistently sharing punchy, witty and relevant Tweets that link to cool stuff I, for one, want to follow you!

The New Media Nightmare

Image via Wikipedia

This is a guest post contributed by online pal and fellow writer of books Robb Grindstaff.

Robb and I originally encountered each other on Harper Collins' authonomy peer-review writer's site thingy and we've been, along with a group of like-minded peeps, keeping in touch and bouncing stuff around ever since. By day, Robb's a newspaper editor in the US and, as he mentions in the post, we've been talking a lot about the future of writing, both in terms of fiction and daily news media. This is his take:

A conversation started recently among a group of writer friends with this article, which discusses the new distribution methods for music and books and the effects on the content producers (musicians and writers). The conversation then segued into this article about the Associated Press and News Corp telling Google and Yahoo! it’s time to pay up for the news content they aggregate and distribute.

From the news media perspective, particularly the newspapers where I’ve worked for my entire career, online distribution has become the death knell for newspapers when it should have been the saving grace that eliminated the high costs of 'traditional' printing and distribution.

In the olden days (say, the 1700s up to 1989), journalists held the power. Newspaper publishers were the kings of the hill in their cities, making or breaking politicians and business/industry tycoons with the power of the pen. They sold the newspaper for a nickel, or a quarter or a dollar, everyone read it, most cities had two or three major competing newspapers and many people read more than one newspaper. The newspaper owned/controlled the content and content producers (journalists), the publishing (printing presses), and distribution (paper boys and newsstands). To this great mass market of readers, advertisers flocked and paid lots of money to get their ads in these newspapers that were delivered and read each day by virtually everyone.

There are books that could be written (and have been written) on the in-between parts, how we got from then to now, but today it’s looking like this:

• Journalists are unemployed in the thousands.

• Aggregators of news, such as Google and Yahoo, are the new distributors.

• Aggregators don't employ or pay a single journalist. They take content from everyone else. They have virtually no overhead in comparison to media. Their overhead is primarily computers servers which reach hundreds of millions for cents. They don't have to print and deliver a newspaper to every doorstep every day, pay reporters or camera crews or videographers or producers.

• Readers are wired and the Internet provides instant news rather than waiting for tomorrow morning's newspaper. Readers can find newspaper depth to stories (as opposed to the typically thinner reporting prominent on TV), but delivered instantly 24 hrs a day (the advantage of TV). Even better as it's delivered on demand. You don't even have to make sure you turn on the TV at a certain time to catch a certain newscast or news story.

• As readers have moved online, so advertisers have migrated to Google/Yahoo/etc., because that’s where the eyeballs are also aggregated.

• In the meantime, newspapers are going broke, bankrupt, closing, and laying off thousands of journalists as they've lost advertisers to online. Even though newspapers also operate their own Websites, they are by definition mostly local (other than the New York Times and a small handful of others), and the Internet is global. Readers don't feel a need to make sure they get their news from their local newspaper or local TV news. World and national news has become a commodity, and readers expect it for free, at their fingertips.

This worldwide access to information should be a boon to freedom and democracy.

But what will the aggregators aggregate, what will the distributors distribute, and what will consumers consume when all the journalists are gone? And when the level of competent journalism has declined to a certain point, who will be the watchdog over the government and major institutions on behalf of citizens and taxpayers?

That’s the thought keeps me up at night as the new world of media figures out a business model.

Social Media and Libel

Image by Felipe Bachomo via Flickr

I’ve talked quite a bit on the radio over the past few weeks about Internet libel. It’s an interesting area and one where I think we all are guilty of being perhaps not quite as careful as we should be - particularly on Twitter!

With the ruling by a UK high court judge that blogging is essentially ‘an act carried out in public’, we not only lose the right to anonymity (not that I’ve ever done any of this stuff anonymously), but also have a precedent that social media interactions are ‘acts carried out in public’. That means we are open to charges of libel and defamation where we make assertions regarding people and also companies over social media platforms. There are already cases lodged as a result of material posted on MySpace, FaceBook and Twitter in both the US and UK. Having said that, the world's legal systems are still struggling with the whole issue - so nothing is clear.

Which means that, fine, today’s consumer has a megaphone – but today’s consumer has also to be aware that they may be held answerable for their use of a medium that has the reach (and, let’s face it, potentially way beyond the reach) of a national daily newspaper.

Similarly, any company threatening suit against people for something they have said online has to think long and hard about the consequences to the company’s reputation in the long run. While we are now seeing an increasing number of precedents being established by litigation, they are by no means concrete and supported by a body of established law – certainly not in the US and UK, let alone somewhere like here in the UAE. And companies 'picking' on bloggers, FaceBook users and other social media users are risking disastrous loss of credibility and respect from consumers - who are enjoying the new found freedoms, increased information flow and empowerment that using the Internet is bringing them.

It’s also worth bearing in mind that the removal or alteration of offensive material is often all that is required to mitigate any serious threat of legal action. So online commentary is particularly hard to legislate for in laws that depend on the presence of immutable, physical, media.

In other words, we need to perhaps take a little more care, but companies with brands to protect need to cut consumers a hell of a lot of slack and, by the way, the answer for companies feeling wronged by consumers is dialogue, not 'cease and desist'.

Billion Dollar Baby

It’s less than four years old, something like 40% of new sign-ups to it don’t last longer than a month before wandering away and it hasn’t generated a red cent in revenues. And yet last Friday, venture capitalists invested a reported $100 million into Twitter, effectively valuing the fledgeling company at $1bn – more than General Motors was worth when it went bust.

Another way of looking at it would be to value every single tweet ever tweeted at $1 - Twitter recently went past the billion tweet barrier.

With something like 54 million visitors a month and a goal, according to documents leaked to TechCrunch, of netting a billion users by 2013, Twitter certainly captures a lot of eyeballs. That billion user figure isn't ridiculous, BTW - Twitter's already smashed its own growth targets. And it’s eyeballs that make all the difference in today’s Adword world – Google's annual revenues of $21bn-odd are made up in the vast majority of clicks – each netting a few cents. Those revenues, to put them into perspective, are worth something like a sixth of global annual television advertising revenue and are also equivalent to total US print advertising spending - the latter falling as fast as Internet advertising spend is rising.

With much speculation as to how Twitter is actually going to make any money, some form of advertising is top of most pundits’ agendas. The documents leaked to TechCrunch appear to show that Twitter isn’t really quite sure what to do with the goose it has found itself holding. And despite that goose never having laid an egg, some smart money is betting that when it does, it’ll be gold.

What makes Twitter neat is that its open APIs mean that lots of smart people are dreaming up new ways to use all those eyeballs – there’s a long list of things you can do with Twitter that don’t actually involve Tweeting at all. You can share files, music, pictures, video or links, even make payments - that last link is a service called TwitPay that lets you link your PayPal account with Twitter, which means you can now buy and sell stuff with a Tweet.

So Twitter is becoming a sort of central switch for people who are talking and sharing stuff, a way of flagging up the availability of news, information and content. And, in fact, that's how many of us are now using Twitter - to share information, links and stuff we find interesting.

The stuff itself isn't on Twitter - but Twitter is how we send the signal to go get it.

And that's where Google came out of absolutely nowhere to become a world-straddling colossus. Nothing we want is on Google - it's where we go to find it.

Which is why I think Twitter could be as big as Google and why I think the smart money is being, well, smart...

PS: I know, I know. To be honest, I'm not really a rabid Twitter evangelist. I just look and sound like one. It'll pass.

US Public 'No Confidence' In Media Shock Horror

Image source: Pew Research Center

A poll carried out in the USA and published this week has shown that the US public have no faith in the credibility of media. The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press poll found that some 71% of respondents did not feel that media got the facts straight in news reports, 63% felt that information from the media was ‘often off base’. Only 26% of people surveyed believed that the press took care to avoid bias.

71% of people depended on TV as their primary news source. But, this figure really fascinated me, 42% depend on the Internet (people could pick more than one medium, so you’re not going to add up to 100). And only 33% on newspapers. That Web figure compares to the 6% that relied on the Web ten years ago, incidentally.

This all takes place in a year when Google’s Q1 revenues equated to total US print advertising spending – and where newspaper ad sales dropped by some 29% in the first half of 2009. Did the Internet drop ‘em or the recession drop ‘em? It’s academic – Internet revenues went up so, whatever you slice it, print (and, incidentally, television and radio) is being eclipsed by the Internet.

It’s been a slow erosion of confidence, not an overnight one. Back in 1985, 55% of Americans believed their media generally got things right – this year, that’s down to 29%. The report shows a general consensus emerging regardless of political belief, but also highlights an average increase of 16% in people who do not believe the press is professional.

70% of those surveyed believed that news organisations ‘try to cover up their mistakes’. 74% of people believed that the press was biased in favour of big business and powerful people.

So we have a broad and growing distrust of mainstream media that you would have to consider to be close to fundamental and a clear movement to increased reliance on online media. That’s not rocket science, but these is numbers.

It’s always nice to be able to back your beliefs with numbers.

A Load of Twits

On the eve of Dubai Twestival, Dubai 92 Radio DJ and top celebrity Twitterer Catboy decided to announce on air that we would compile a list of Dubai's 100 Most Compelling Tweeters, so that newbies to the world of Twitter here in the UAE can kickstart their tweeting with some new and informative friends.

Given the grief caused by our last joint venture, the infamous list of Dubai's top bloggers, I've moved to a secret location for the next few days. This list is posted on Catboy and GeordieBird's Facebook fan page, which I do commend you join up to (It's linked here), but I've reproduced it here purely because people seem to have been having problems linking through to the Facebook page that the list is on.

If you're not already on Twitter but fancy giving it a whirl, sign up today at http://twitter.com, then click on each link below, start following and get lost in the world of Twits.

First of all, here are our Twitter 'handles'...

http://www.twitter.com/catboy_dubai
http://www.twitter.com/geordiebird_dxb
http://www.twitter.com/alexandermcnabb

This list is in no particular order. Here we go...

http://www.twitter.com/Dubai92
http://www.twitter.com/danindxb
http://www.twitter.com/dxbbushell
http://www.twitter.com/timeoutdubai
http://www.twitter.com/WildPeeta
http://www.twitter.com/DubaiSunshine
http://www.twitter.com/MissGoogle
http://www.twitter.com/zooberry
http://www.twitter.com/mnystedt
http://www.twitter.com/laradunston

http://www.twitter.com/derrickpereira
http://www.twitter.com/tomgara
http://www.twitter.com/PKGulati
http://www.twitter.com/gerald_d
http://www.twitter.com/TMHDubai
http://www.twitter.com/SamanthaDancy
http://www.twitter.com/dxbluey
http://www.twitter.com/Bakerlicious
http://www.twitter.com/Shufflegazine
http://www.twitter.com/Nagham

http://www.twitter.com/Masarat
http://www.twitter.com/LaraABCNews
http://www.twitter.com/Njashanmal
http://www.twitter.com/adnationme
http://www.twitter.com/Esperanca
http://www.twitter.com/drbaher
http://www.twitter.com/Rupertbu
http://www.twitter.com/Hindmezaina
http://www.twitter.com/Ammouni
http://www.twitter.com/AkankshaGoel

http://www.twitter.com/mita56
http://www.twitter.com/dubaiweddings
http://www.twitter.com/dubaiwriter
http://www.twitter.com/binmugahid
http://www.twitter.com/automiddleast
http://www.twitter.com/jengerson
http://www.twitter.com/itsdgc
http://www.twitter.com/adamflinter
http://www.twitter.com/mmm
http://www.twitter.com/Daddybird

http://www.twitter.com/darkrangerN
http://www.twitter.com/Naseemfaqihi
http://www.twitter.com/Disruptiveplay
http://www.twitter.com/Dubailife
http://www.twitter.com/Sandman84
http://www.twitter.com/scdxb
http://www.twitter.com/Lhjunkie
http://www.twitter.com/Dobror
http://www.twitter.com/Mspwetty
http://www.twitter.com/Seodubai

http://www.twitter.com/Bahdobian
http://www.twitter.com/giorgiotedx
http://www.twitter.com/bhavishya
http://www.twitter.com/Ttoukan
http://www.twitter.com/acp_dxb
http://www.twitter.com/i_am_roo
http://www.twitter.com/nadvethosp
http://www.twitter.com//nikkington
http://www.twitter.com/cathe2ine
http://www.twitter.com/BilliBoysClub

http://www.twitter.com/Hellwafashion
http://www.twitter.com/absoluteleela/
http://www.twitter.com/nejomo/
http://www.twitter.com/zeashanashraf/
http://www.twitter.com/MariamUAE/
http://www.twitter.com/disruptiveplay/
http://www.twitter.com/T_in_DXB/
http://www.twitter.com/InterConDFC
http://www.twitter.com/mikepriest

http://www.twitter.com/Modhesh
http://www.twitter.com/SpotOnPR
http://www.twitter.com/fanofamd
http://www.twitter.com/Mich1Mich/
http://www.twitter.com/SabaFaghihi/
http://www.twitter.com/johndeykin/
http://www.twitter.com/felixsim/
http://www.twitter.com/CampaignME/
http://www.twitter.com/PeteDubai

http://www.twitter.com/maxindubai
http://www.twitter.com/fastidiousbabe
http://www.twitter.com/natapak
http://www.twitter.com/dorksterdave/
http://www.twitter.com/dubaiexplorer
http://www.twitter.com/cyberfruit/
http://www.twitter.com/samarowais
http://www.twitter.com/fouadm
http://www.twitter.com/hotelemarketer
http://www.twitter.com/CarringtonMalin

http://www.twitter.com/WooKim
http://www.twitter.com/jamesEd_me
http://www.twitter.com/nightlinedxb
http://www.twitter.com/ahlanlive
http://www.twitter.com/jane_roberts
http://www.twitter.com/meredithcarson/
http://www.twitter.com/youseftuqan/
http://www.twitter.com/PrincessKlara
http://www.twitter.com/Clive_Temple
http://www.twitter.com/Kshaheen

Your news is my news now...

Image via Wikipedia

An interesting piece filed by AP today on 'social netiquette', talking about the increasing problems of how we manage information in this online, socially overloaded, on demand world of ours. There are some good examples of people losing control of their news as others Tweet or Facebook it - so that other friends and family are upset to find out about important events online rather than in person. It's here.

I've posted before about the problem of journalists combing Facebook for information about you when you die (here, in fact) - just one of these new ways of behaving we're all finding out about as we all experiment with the media and its consequences. And I was talking the other day to someone whose mother found out from Facebook about his engagement being broken off - one reason he refuses to go near it now.

There are an increasing number of examples of people having reason to deeply regret something they've done on social media, with often life-changing consequences. And yet a recent Spot On Twitter poll found that many people still re-Tweet links they see on Twitter without actually checking them out. That urge to get to the story first is something most journalists will understand - and the need to stop for a second and assess what you are sharing and the potential consquences of that sharing is also something that journalists will not only appreciate, but have evolved practices to manage. Social media hasn't - yet.

It's going to take a little less haste and a little more thoughtfulness from people in general in future. I do believe we are going to see the evolution of accepted ways of using social media - that thinks like Tweeting other people's news will become unacceptable. But it's such a fast-moving environment, there are gong to be a lot of breakages on the way.

The trouble is that, even when we take care, we all make mistakes - it's just that those mistakes are now incredibly, indelibly public.

Tweet!

Just in case you didn't know, Dubai's Twestival event, one of the world-wide Twestivals being held in over 200 countries between the 10th-13th September, takes place at Jam Jar, the funky gallery space thingy in Al Qouz, this coming Saturday (the 12th September) from 8pm. There's a map to Jam Jar here, BTW.

Correcting Emirates Business 24x7's muckle-headed report yesterday citing the Abu Dhabi Twestival as being the first held in the Emirates, this will be the second Twestival event in Dubai - the first was held back on the 12th February.

Like the first Dubai Twestival, this event will have charitable fund-raising in mind, although this time the global events are being dubbed 'Twestival Local' and are raising money for local charities. In this case, funds raised from the event will go to the Dubai Autism Centre.

If your idea of fun isn't a room-full of steaming twits, I can quite sympathise. But Twestival's in a good cause, brings together a surprisingly wide and diverse audience of interesting people and is a good place to guage what's going on with this fast-growing and increasingly useful social media platform and, indeed, social media in general.

Pre-registration is a must as the event is almost certainly going to be full. Registration opens today, so I'd get in early while you can. You can get more information and register for the event on the official Twestival website here.

Tweet!