The 463: Inside Tech

The Social Media Olympics

(Whitney Forster) - There is no question that this has been a very gold (and silver, and bronze) Olympics for U.S. athletes, but a great article out in Wired this week talks about what a "golden" Olympics this has been for social media.  Writer Mark McClusky compares his experience reporting on the 1996 Atlanta Summer Games, where he faced delays waiting for film processing and headed to cover the Olympic Park bombing based only on the sounds of an explosion and sirens, armed with only a notebook and cell phone.

Contrast that to today's world of sharing real-time tweets from the athletes themselves, and it is amazing how far our culture and the technology that enables it have come in 14 years. 

One group that doesn't appear to be enjoying the chatter appears to be the International Olympic Committee.  In her "Molly Rants" column on CNet this week, Molly Wood outlines the actions the IOC has taken to control social media and blog mentions of athletes and sponsors, even going after one of Lindsey Vonn's sponsors for a note of congratulations to the skiier on their web site, as they weren't an official Olympic sponsor.

All this supports the importance of a good and clearly communicated social media policy, whether you are the IOC or part of any business or organization. Unfortunately many athletes were confused by the IOC's policy, as were sponsors.  There is a lot of good that comes from having constituents - from athletes to employees - engaging in social media as they are spreading your message to a broader group than you could target through traditional communications channels.  In the case of the Olympics, the athletes are helping to make the games a lot more exciting for viewers at home, and promoting the Olympic brand for a new generation of fans.

Television and the Internet: Partners or Rivals?

(Whitney Forster) - For those of you who can’t get enough of the late night battle between Conan, Jay and NBC studio executives, the buzz on Twitter today should offer plenty of new fodder.

Now with a new Twitter account, Conan O’Brien’s first tweet was, "Today I interviewed a squirrel in my backyard and then threw to commercial. Somebody help me." His account bio reads, "I had a show. Then I had a different show. Now I have a Twitter account."

It makes sense that O’Brien would turn to social media as he fulfills his contractual obligations with NBC to stay off the air through September. Today, celebrities like John Mayer and Ashton Kutcher often make more news from their presence on Twitter than they do from new albums or movies. After news of O’Brien’s departure became one of the years most chatted about Internet stories, is it any surprise that his ratings (finally) went through the roof?  

There is more evidence that the Internet, which many feared would draw viewers away from television, is having the opposite effect. Brian Stelter writes in The New York Times that TV executives have noticed increases in viewership of major events such as the Olympics, the Super Bowl and the Grammys, tracing them to the effect of social networking sites. When people learn from social media that something interesting is happening on a particular program, they quickly turn to their televisions to check it out for themselves.

The Nielsen Company, which measures television viewership and Web traffic, noticed this month that one in seven people who were watching the Super Bowl and the Olympics opening ceremony were surfing the Web at the same time.

“The Internet is our friend, not our enemy,” said Leslie Moonves, chief executive of the CBS Corporation, which broadcast both the Super Bowl and the Grammy Awards this year. “People want to be attached to each other.”

 

Could this be a sign that even if Internet and television can't be friends, at least they can be frenemies? One thing is certain, and that is that social media traffic is growing at a rapid pace.  According to Nielsen, consumers spent more than five and half hours on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter in December 2009, an 82% increase from the same time the previous year.

 

What does this mean for television? Possibly this could offer an incentive for broadcasters to offer more online programming, to make the transition easier for consumers. It could also mean that broadcasters include more "bloggable" moments into their broadcasts, a thought that conjures up exciting and frightening possibilities.

 

Where Were You 25 Years Ago?

(Tom Galvin) - Twenty-five years ago, I was a college sophomore focused on how the Mets would do in the upcoming season. Every few weeks, I’d visit the computer center to bang out a paper for a class on the shared computers. Usually, you had to wait until 1 or 2 in the morning before a computer would actually be available.

Right around that time, a group of people a lot smarter and visionary than me were creating what effectively became the on-ramp to the Internet. The domains .com, .net., .org and .edu were created. The response was underwhelming. Symbolics.com was the first .com registered, and only five more were even registered over the next year.

I bring it up because the 25th anniversary of .com is March 15th. Symbolics.com never really took off, but Yahoo.com, Amazon.com, CNN.com and millions more certainly did. Now, college sophomores expect the Internet available wherever they are whenever they want. And they get it. Two out of every three 18-29 year-olds say that if they lost the Internet for just 24 hours it would be “very disruptive” to their life and if it went down for a week it would have a “disastrous impact” on the economy, according to a Zogby/463 poll we conducted this winter.

We take .com for granted, of course, because it’s always there. But over the next few months VeriSign and other industry leaders will take a step back to look at where .com has been, and where it is going. That will essentially start on March 16 with a DC Policy Impact Forum that will include a keynote address by President Bill Clinton. It was during the Clinton Administration when another key milestone, the introduction of the web browser, that enabled regular folks to use the Internet. That was when it really took off.

If you are interested in the 25th Anniversary of .com, there is a website appropriately named 25yearsof.com that you can get information on the DC Policy Forum and a series of other activities around the anniversary.

President Clinton is but one of many high-profile speakers to attend the DC event, others include: Dr. Fareed Zakaria, author and journalist; Rob Atkinson, founder of the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation; Rod Beckstrom, head of ICANN; Aneesh Chopra, Federal CTO; and, Arianna Huffington, co-founder of the Huffington Post.

Among the invited guests will be high-school and college students, who will no doubt wonder what all the fuss is about. After all, hasn’t .com been around forever?

You May Ask Yourself: Where Does that Highway Lead to?

(Sean Garrett) I tend to have a pretty high bar for once-in-a lifetime opportunities. They don’t include things like having my then celebrity crush ask me a literature question in a quiet bookstore in the mid-90s; being able to travel to cool places all around the world or, even, dare I say, being five outs away from a Giants World Series victory in 2002.

All stacked up, none of those experiences could compare to the true once-in-a-lifetime experience of envisioning what would later become 463 Communications and then working with the amazing people that could make it a reality.

Tom Galvin, Jim Hock and I publically launched 463 in December of 2004. But it really reflects everything we had done in our collective careers leading up to that point. We wanted to be able take this experience and provide senior-level communications consulting services that we are passionate about and work with clients we truly believe in. Fortunately, this came to pass as I noted in a fifth anniversary post in December. An excerpt:

“When Tom, Jim and I started 463, we wanted to focus day-to-day on actual client work. We weren't excited about marketing, hiring a bunch of people to do the work for us or pontificating as "PR leaders." We just wanted to work with great clients at a senior level and accomplish stuff during a fascinating time. Fortunately, all of this has come to pass.”

In that same post, I tipped my cap to the folks who left us in our first five years and said, “We are of the mind that careers always need to be moving forward and opportunity should always be seized -- even if it means outside of our four walls.” I noted that “one the best validators of our success is that folks who have left 463 are currently furthering their careers in (amazing and important places).”

Little did I know that I would be taking my own advice and providing my own validation when I wrote that. For, I am face-to-face with another once-in –a-lifetime opportunity. I’ll soon be joining Twitter as their vice president of communications. (As I transition to Twitter, I'll also be wearing my 463 hat until April).

I won’t lie. Leaving 463 will be one of the hardest things that I will ever do. There just is so much emotional investment in it and so many good times with truly great people.

Fortunately, my partners, our team and Tim Dyson of Next Fifteen have all been remarkably supportive of this move — proving once again what true class acts that they are and why they are so respected by so many.

The difficultly of the move is also blunted by the fact that the 463 team is incredibly strong right now. I've never been prouder of a communications team at any point in my career. For those of you reading this post because of the Twitter implications and not because you know 463, if you ever need super smart strategic communications advice, industry thought leadership platforms, reputation management, unparalleled tech policy wisdom and/or highly efficacious communications execution, look no further.

And, then there is Twitter. Oh yes. That. Based on all the love that I have for 463, it would have to be a profoundly amazing opportunity for me to make a move. And, this is. I’m all the more confident of this because, via 463, I have been consulting for Twitter the last few months. I'm excited to build out a creative, smart and aggressive team that is an appropriate fit for the uniqueness of Twitter. I'm also eager to dust off my front-line media relations chops after spending most of the last nine years focused on the shadowy, back-room strategy thing.

It will be a great challenge, but one that I can’t wait to attack. Twitter, like 463, is comprised of good people who have created a culture and a mission that I steadfastly believe in and want to advance.

It will be an interesting ride. And, you can follow it here.

(image credit)

Say What? Only One-Third of Americans Use the Internet?

Stephanie Tackach - The Internet has become intertwined in our daily lives. Whether for work, online banking, homework, it's there and we use it. Well actually, only a third of Americans do.

Yesterday, the Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications & Information Administration released a survey, “Digital Nation: 21st Century America’s Progress Toward Universal Broadband Internet Access” that found that while broadband adoption has grown in the US, more than a third of Americans are not using the Internet. More specifically the report found that 30% of American households do not use the Internet and 35% of people do not use the Internet anywhere.

The reasons for those without broadband the survey cites are lack of availability, too expensive, or no need. This survey only makes March 17th, when the long awaited FCC’s National Broadband Plan is released, not come soon enough.

TechNet 2.0

David Mack -- On Wednesday, TechNet’s newly appointed CEO Rey Ramsey wrapped up his first official tour to Silicon Valley.

In a packed room at the Palo Alto Four Seasons that included representatives from top technology companies, including Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Ramsey laid out his vision for the future of the technology advocacy organization.

 

Redefining the policymaking process, producing empirical research and reaching out to new and diverse stakeholders top the agenda.  An op-ed in Sunday’s San Jose Mercury News provided a good backstop for the conversation.

 

Aside from planning for the future with members, Ramsey spent time with All Things Digital’s Kara Swisher in local San Francisco venue Samovar.

 

Over Schizandra Berry Herbal Infusion tea and squash dumplings, Swisher and Ramsey traded jabs on the history of TechNet, the Obama administration and the future of Silicon Valley.  The entire video exchange can be seen below.

 

Privacy Done Well

David Mack -- Online privacy could well be the buzzwords of 2010.  With ongoing FTC roundtables, impending legislation and a flurry of questions about what all this openness is doing to our society we’re guaranteed to see changes in the way we share online information this year.

But who is best equipped to provide meaningful solutions?  Can industry do it alone (and fast enough) or will the government deliver a one size fits all answer? 

Kim Hart posted a story in today’s Hillicon Valley that explores the European Commissions’ call for social networks to add privacy protections for teens.  U.S. based companies are undoubtedly watching the EC’s comments closely to see if they are followed up with teeth.   Juliana Gruenwald reported additional details on the Tech Daily Dose blog. 

Not surprisingly, the call to action is being framed as a way to protect children online.

For now, the EC is working proactively with major social networking sites to establish a series of best practices that will enable communities to grow safely.  This partnership is a good example of government and industry growing together, but it is not always the case.

In the final days of the 2009 session, under the guise of protecting children, the Maine legislature passed a bill that would have made it illegal for minors to share personal information with a company without first providing verifiable parental consent. 

While the law was created with the best of intentions, a broad variety of organizations, including NetChoice, the Maine Press Association and the Maine Independent Colleges Association immediately recognized the unintended harm such a broad law would have on free speech and services we take for granted – including notification of volunteer opportunities or college prep services.

The U.S. District Court of Maine ultimately found the law to be an unacceptable violation of first amendment rights, but the episode was a good reminder of what can go wrong when industry and policy makers fail to collaborate.  

The year ahead will present many opportunities for collaboration.  We’ll all benefit from a focus on industry and policy maker partnership and vigilance against knee jerk legislative solutions. 

O, Jobs, Where Art Thee?

Katie Hallen -- "Show me the jobs" may be the most repeated phrase in Washington.  With the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act's implementation last year, many of us have been interested in tracking the progress of the stimulus funds and how they are leading to U.S. job creation.

But tracking the stimulus jobs has not been the easiest of tasks. The website Recovery.gov, set up by the Obama administration to make the stimulus process transparent with easy public access to data, has repeatedly come under fire for inaccurate information. ABC News back in November reported on a stimulus "success story" - Arizona's 15th congressional district used $761,420 in federal stimulus spending to create or save 30 jobs.  Sounds great, if it were true.  Arizona doesn't even have a 15th district. The Obama administration quickly fixed the mistake. 

GOP leaders had a field day when blogger Matt Drudge documented millions of stimulus dollars going toward ham and cheese. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack rushed to clarify the canned and processed goods were going toward the Emergency Food Assistance Program to stock soup kitchens and food banks.  

Then, there was Vice President Biden making a push for Recovery.gov in one of his speeches when he accidently directed people to "Recovery.org," the private sector site set up to track the stimulus.  The Washington Post complimented Biden on the slip, noting that the private site had better information than the government version - whoops! 

But let's get back to the jobs question. Recovery.gov says that 599,108 U.S. jobs were reportedly created from October 1 to December 31, thanks to stimulus funds. Curious how many jobs were created in your state and city?  Use the interactive map to search for that data down to the zip code. 

Other useful tools:

Socrata breaks down stimulus jobs by congressional district and makes it easy to splice and dice the data and tailor your own views.  If your a data geek, you can even upload your own spreadsheets to this site and use their free tools to customize the look and feel of your numbers.  Here is an example of how they organize potential stimulus jobs. 

Potential Jobs Created by the Recovery and Reinvestment Act

Powered by Socrata

Recovery.org, created by software company Onvia, projects that stimulus spending will create 1.1 million jobs in 2010.  Its interactive map is perhaps the best at breaking down stimulus funding at the project level.  For instance, in Jefferson County, Col., there are 1,327 ongoing stimulus projects valued at more than $4 billion. 

FedBizOpps.gov, where the U.S. government releases publicly available contracts, also has a search engine for stimulus jobs.  

MSNBC's Stimulus Tracker helpfully maps out stimulus funding by industry. The construction and building supply industries lead the way, with more than $88 billion in total contracts. IT/telecommunications has $1.5 billion, with healthcare at around $260 million.

StimulusWatch, managed by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, allows citizens to post and rate "shovel-ready" projects that could benefit from stimulus dollars. Organizers say they want to help the government make smart choices and hold public officials accountable. 

New York City has also made strides to report stimulus activity, with the NYC Stimulus Tracker. Atheistically, their website is closer to Excel 101 than Government 2.0, but still, it's interesting to see that federal stimulus dollars saved or created more than 15,000 education jobs.  

Tracking the stimulus and the jobs it creates will be a monumental task, and it relies heavily on accurate reporting on grant and loan applications down to the state and local level.  Moreover, some remain skeptical that the stimulus job boom will last for any great length of time, particularly once we get into 2011 and the funding starts to dwindle.  

Despite its hurdles and imperfections, it's impressive to see such a vast commitment to transparency from the federal government.  So, help me follow the money and find the jobs. Which sites do you use for your sleuthing?  

Radical Chic Economics & Mau-Mauing the Bailout

Katie Hallen -- If there ever was a more hated word in the political etymology of 2009, it was "bailout."  An unfortunate word choice from the start, the Obama administration used it to describe its loan program with the banks, and then it quickly morphed into catch-all phrase to sum up the problems of corporate excess in the face of unbridled government spending. 

Everybody hated the bailout, it would seem. President Obama told us in his first State of the Union last week hatred for the bailout was the "one thing" that united the Democrats and Republicans. "I hated it. You hated it. It was about as popular as a root canal," Obama said.

Meanwhile, behind the scenes and largely out of the media glow, economists were hashing out at academic conferences - and increasingly on the blogosphere and YouTube - the merits of the administration's fiscal mascot, the man behind the bailout's reasoning, as it were: John Maynard Keynes.  

Challenging Keynes, the economist who helped us understand the cause and solutions to the Great Depression, is a pretty radical move.  A long line of presidents and plenty of modern economists have worshiped Keynesian theory and turned to it to justify government stepping in to help manage market downturns, invest in public works, stimulus programs and hire the unemployed.

But George Mason University economist Russ Roberts, it seems, thought old-man Keynes was getting a little too influential in the new administration - and even more critically, worried that the politics of the "bailout" were diluting what could be a powerful economic discussion.  In response, he and producer John Papola launched an educational video to give attention to a lesser-known Keynes peer: F.A. Hayek. Hayek, a staunch advocate of free markets, famously warned against the boom-and-bust cycle that could be spurred by inappropriate government initiatives like artificially low interest rates.

"Fear the Boom and Bust" rap debuted a couple of weeks ago, and it's already climbed to 480,000 views on YouTube.  Rivals Keynes and Hayek, in comedy troupe fashion, argue their differences during a night of partying in New York before an economic conference - or shall we say it's Keynes who partakes in the bulk of the debauchery (symbolic comedy, of course). 

Check out the video.  Who knew a funny video might make the hated "bailout" worth debating again?