At the end of the day, all reporting must rest on fairness. I’ve asked Business Insider reporter Lara to post her full unedited video/audio interview for the sake of transparency since Kevin has now been placed on ‘Leave of Absence’ because of her interview.
Until Lara can provide us the full unedited video/audio interview to watch/listen to judge for ourselves, I can only base my critique on the written interview. I have excerpted all of Kevin’s quotes from the report and added my emphasis and brief commentaries afterwards. Read the rest of this entry »
P.S. When I find more time, I still plan to write up an in-depth article (possibly also conducting one or more interviews) to allow Canadians (and citizens in other countries) to see how social media tools have been used by police forces from around the world. And may be opportunities for police forces to learn from each others. Stay tuned.
“Average readers may not know but police services are now using social media tools to help communicate with citizens, report crimes, and, in some cases, even prevent crimes. Think for a moment, “prevent crimes” amazing right?!”
I am in the process of writing an in-depth article about how Police Services in Canada and around the world use social media tools. Average readers may not know but police services are now using social media tools to help communicate with citizens, report crimes, and, in some cases, even prevent crimes. Think for a moment, “prevent crimes” amazing right?! Watch the video and see for yourself and you will realize it is dedicated and good policing assisted by new social media tools.
I’ve started collecting research materials for the article. The following is my first video interview. The interview was actually conducted and broadcasted LIVE this morning using Google+ and YouTube technologies (two of the social media tools used in Toronto).
I want to thank Toronto Police Constable Scott Mills (@GraffitiBMXCop) for his time in sharing his insights. Have a watch of the video. Stay tuned for more interviews (I am planning a few more) and the in-depth article to be posted later.
I am going to dispense some advices (my brand of poison, borrowing a phrase from a friend) and try to turn this epic #fail into a potentially valuable teachable moment for Rogers and us all. Feel free to share your thoughts in the moderated comments.
1) Twitter promoted hashtag/bashtag
If the epic #fail #Rogers1Number and #McDStories campaigns have taught us anything, it is that these promoted hashtags can get out of control, can be risky, and can lead to destructive unintended consequences. You know what, the companies promoting the hashtag will also be paying for these bashtags!
Yes, the companies are literally paying to get bad press! The companies are paying to let the world know how dissatisfied their customers, ex-customers, potential customers feel about them.
NOTE 1: Not all hashtags are bad. I think the organically “grow” hashtag from some greatly loved companies can be possibly useful. But even then, company encouraged, sponsored, or paid hashtags can still become lightning rods for unhappy customers or people with complains. So use hashtags with extreme caution like holding a lightning rod in a stormy area.
2) Sample #Rogers1Number tweets:
I’ve spent some time to find some sample tweets and I try to check to ensure the tweets are not from troll accounts newly created just to bash Rogers.
– “The saddest part of the #Rogers1Number backlash is nothing will change, #Rogers will learn nothing and customer will still get poor service.” (via Twitter)
– “I’m really loving reading all the nasty backlash at#Rogers it’s making my night, keep it up guys they’re paying per tweet! #rogers1number” (via Twitter)
– “When I call Rogers to resolve an issue two more magically appear #rogers1number They can’t get one thing right” (via Twitter)
– “#Rogers1Number “We’re in social media to listen”. Right. Not to change. Just to listen. Hear this: Shitty PR stunts can kill a company fast” (via Twitter)
– “.@RogersKeith Rogers deems data so valuable u charge $2/GB when I go OVER. Why not get credit when I stay UNDER monthly max? #Rogers1Number” (via Twitter)
I’m amazed by the perfect social media storm created by #KONY2012 designed to spotlight Joseph Kony and the tragedy of child soldiers. I will use 28 screen-captured pix from #KONY2012 that I found illustrative to highlight the documentary’s strength, weakness, and intended / unintended consequences.
It is indisputable that Joseph Kony is now a famous/infamous man known to the world especially the youth that supported #KONY2012. Does it make it easier to capture Kony? Or will this fame actually make Kony harder to be found? I don’t know. Extending a blunt observation made by Malcolm Gladwell in his 2011 speech, even with all the military resources and technologies of the United States, it still took the CIA over 10 years to find Osama bin Laden.
Of course, putting a bright spotlight on Kony has the benefit of bringing awareness to the tragedy of child soldiers up front which is important and I will address next.
To me, one of the most important achievement of #KONY2012 is to bring the tragic problem of child soldiers up front to people’s and politicians’ minds. At the same time, the oversimplifications also fail in important ways which I will talk about later.
Sept 24, 2013 update: Kickstarter has finally launched in Canada earlier this year and you can find some Canadian projects here.
July 15, 2015 update: Since my 2013 update, I’ve used Indiegogo and like it. Worth investigate it for yourself and decide for yourself if it is a good enough crowdfunding site for your use.
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After waiting for close to three years and trying to push a little, I am giving up on the idea of waiting for Kickstarter to come to Canada! Unfortunately, no more illusion for me. Kickstarter’s inaction/inability to find an alternative payment solution for Canada or non-US countries is inexcusable and can only be put as they don’t give a beep. To them, US is a big enough market for them to serve? After three years of waiting, I’ve given up caring. Quoting Kickstarter’s FAQ (emphasis added)
“Am I eligible to start a Kickstarter project?
To be eligible to start a Kickstarter project, you need to satisfy the requirements of Amazon Payments:
Be a permanent US resident and at least 18 years of age with a Social Security Number (or EIN), a US bank account, US address, US state-issued ID (driver’s license), and major US credit or debit card.”
I am NOT paid by IndieGoGo to write this article! Judging from IndieGoGo‘s press articles and mention, they seem to be legit (I don’t know). A local friend has used IndieGoGo and I haven’t seen any complain from him.
I am sadden to write this article but then again, three years of Kickstarter inaction is inexcusable, enough is enough.
If you have used IndieGoGo to raise funds, can you please share your experiences good and bad? Both good or bad experiences are very much welcomed at this point. May be take a look of projects on IndieGoGo. And if they are worthy of your support, give them a try and let us know how things go? And if you are going to use IndieGoGo to raise funds, tell us how successful (or not) your experiences are.
P.S. To be fair, Kickstarter is doing good for permanent US resident. Even though I love my US friends, I just think Kickstarter sucks in helping projects initiated by non-US citizens around the world.
In the age of instantaneous news/media, the name of game unfortunately is to report something quickly. Writing CYA words like “according to XYZ” (in this case, according to WSJ) is as good as, if not better than, doing your own reporting and facts checking! Well, it doesn’t cost you a cent plus writing the words “according to XYZ” almost absolve yourself from responsibilities. If the report was later found to be false, well, it is XYZ that f*cked up, not you. At least it is not like you mistakenly reporting someone’s death or something!
“WSJ says the IPO could come as early as Wednesday with a valuation of $75 billion to $100 billion.“
When thousands of media outlets all are reporting the same piece of information, it must be true right?! Isn’t echo chamber fun? In case you missed it in the above quote, the echo chamber is going as far as quoting itself in Facebook IPO. Yes, WSJ is quoting WSJ. Why not?! The media outlets are stuck in a “no-win” commoditized news game and I would much rather be in games that are “win-win“.
As a business and technology geek, Facebook’s IPO will come when it comes. What I am more interested in is to read Facebook’s IPO filing prospectus if and when it is available.
P.S. Let me be clear that I don’t have a solution to our echo chamber yet but I don’t know if this reporting of news “according to …” is helping anyone.
“YouTube is shelling out $100 million to producers, according to people familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The money is an advance on advertising money the videos will bring in, and Google will recoup its portion first before splitting the proceeds. Advances are as high as $5 million per channel, said another person familiar with the arrangement, also speaking on condition of anonymity.”
“Facebook says its new server farm on the edge of the Arctic Circle — its first outside the U.S. — will improve performance for European users of the social networking site.
After reviewing potential sites across Europe, Facebook confirmed Thursday it had picked the northern Swedish city of Lulea for the data center partly because of the cold climate — crucial for keeping the servers cool — and access to renewable energy from nearby hydropower facilities.”
“Talk to any film-maker and they’ll say the same thing: Morris, who was born in 1948, is a revolutionary. His documentaries create reality as much as they capture it. He sees them as art, as essays, as anything but anthropology. Railing against cinéma vérité and its philosophy of “shaky camera equals truth”, he opts instead for dramatic reconstructions, obtrusive soundtracks, striking angles. He also invented and employs a machine called the Interrotron (its name a synthesis of “interview” and “terror”) that makes interviewees appear to be talking directly to the film viewer.
Tabloid, his new film, is as strange as any Morris has ever made. It’s the story of Joyce McKinney, a beauty queen and former Miss Wyoming who in 1977 hired a private aeroplane and with accomplices travelled to England to track down her boyfriend Kirk whom she believed had been abducted by the Mormon church. After kidnapping him, she whisked him off to a cottage in Devon where, depending on whose story you believe, she spent the next three days either raping him as he lay spread-eagled in bed or having a merry feast of “fun, food and sex”.”
“In a low-budget early effort to compete with satellite and cable TV providers, YouTube is set to announce Friday that it has partnered with several entities to roll out television-style channels with professionally produced shows that will strike a sharp contrast to the short videos of crazy cats, skateboard wipeouts and other amateur content that made the site famous. Read the rest of this entry »
My insightful friend & former co-worker Sarb recently launched Luboh (in beta) with his partners. Here is my text interview with Sarb to tell you more about the cool Luboh.
Kempton: For people who haven’t heard about Luboh yet, can you talk about how they can use Luboh? How will Luboh help people?
Sarb: The idea behind Luboh is to help users share their buying experiences. While there are many online reviews and customer feedback and opinions on many consumer products, the authors are typically strangers. Instead, we as humans place far higher importance on opinions of people we know. Our friends and family. Let me give you an example. Say you’re looking for a new TV and it just so happens that when you mention it to your friend while at the pub. He tells he just got a fantastic deal on a Sony model XYZ TV from a shop down the road. No doubt you’re interested. More so than perhaps reading an online review from an effectively anonymous individual. Luboh.com lets you easily find a product that you’re interested in and then to either ask your Facebook friends what they think of it or if you’ve already bought it, to tell your friends what a great deal you got! You can try Luboh at www.luboh.com
Kempton: Can you share a few screen captures to explain some of the Luboh features or functions?
Sarb: Here is a screen sample showing what search results look like. If you login with your facebook account, we’ll also show you what your friends have recently bought. (Click to zoom in to large image)
And here’s another one that shows how you share information with friends. (Click to zoom in to large image)
Kempton: Does the name Luboh have any special meaning?
Sarb: Well, other than “lu-boh” being a really cool name for a website, the word “lub-oh” in Punjabi (pronounced slightly differently to the website) actually means search-for.
Kempton: Future plans?
Sarb: The site is still in a beta mode and there is still some work left to iron out the wrinkles. In the future we hope to keep on increasing the number of products and services that we have access to, to make it more and more useful to our users.
This afternoon, I had the pleasure to interview Sarah Hill, KOMU-TV 5pm news and the new U_News@4 anchor. I asked Sarah to travel back in time to July to share with us her first experiences with Google+ Hangouts. I also asked Sarah to tell us what she had to do to convince the bosses at KOMU to give Google+ Hangout a try. Sarah also talked about the origin of the concept of the new show U_News@4, launching in a few days on Sept 12th 4pm CST, and the various segments of the new show.
“U_News provides a new digital forum for U to personally share your news, opinions, kudos and community events. Our viewers will essentially co-host this newscast.”
“KOMU became the 1st local television station Thursday to air a live on-air Google Plus video chat.
The group video chat is called “Hangout” and it aired live during KOMU 8 News at 5. Google viewers were able to share their experiences with this new social networking site on-air with television viewers.”
As a journalist, documentarian, … I live my online life pretty openly. At the same time, I am very conscious that we now live in unchartered territories in terms of privacy, and many other online perils. Any powerful enough tools (G+, Facebook, etc) can be used for good and bad (“evil”). It is totally up to us to monitor these tools and to ensure they are used correctly by its property rights owner.
This may sound strange to my economist friends but I believe the traditional economic definition of “property rights” is currently being massaged/redefined.
On June 30, 2011, only 2 days after the launch of Google+, my friend Garry and I were chatting about his 3D TV (I mentioned I would wait for glasses-free 3D TVs after chatting with Tom, NFB Chair). I answered yes when Garry asked me if I had heard of Google+. I told him I was wasn’t that excited about Google+ after wasting my time and was disappointed by Google Wave and Buzz. At the same time, I wasn’t totally dismissive and asked my friend to play with Google+ some more and tell me how he thinks about the tool.
Eight days later on July 8th, after reading some more positive press and my friend’s Eva’s positive experiences with it, I turned around and ask Garry and Eva for an Google+ invite. And I officially joined on July 9th cautiously. You see, Buzz gave me such a bad taste, that I told it to buzz off!
Current Google+ Impressions
I have now been using Google+ about over two weeks. I can now say I’ve been really impressed with what I see and what it can do for me as a **tool**. To me, Google+ is a powerful tool to learn and to use to achieve things. (more on the “things” in future postings)
Sure, there are still many different problems or enhancements to be made but it is a tool that I have confidently included in my toolbox.
As an aside, I never quite see Facebook as a “tool” to me, not like Google+ is a tool to me.
Predictions & Forecasts
There are people/technologists/journalists who can’t help themselves but give lots of Google+ predictions or forecasts. I can’t and won’t give you predictions or forecasts. If you can or are willing to predict & forecast how a one month old baby will grow up to be like a few years down the road, you are much “smarter” and “braver” than I am.
To end this article, let me use two of my favourite forecast-related quotes by Edgar R. Fiedler from myquotes I love collection,
“The herd instinct among forecasters makes sheep look like independent thinkers.” and;
“When it first started dabbling with social media a few years ago, REI, like most companies, set up a centralized team to handle outreach to bloggers, fans on Facebook and, later, communications on Twitter. While it won’t completely disband that team, the localized tack means the company is relying on far more staffers to participate in its social-media efforts. And it’s coordinating those efforts without the help of an agency. REI works with BBDO, Atlanta, for traditional creative duties and Prometheus Media for media duties, but has thus far handled much of its digital efforts and social media in-house.
“We are not moving away completely from a national presence,” a spokeswoman told Ad Age via email. “The local teams will be in addition to our national presence. Also, in terms of staffing, we have a handful of employees at each location participating in social media. They may play different roles within retail (customer service, outreach, product specialist, etc.).”
Inherent in the experiment is a lot of trust. The approach could be risky for REI because it’s not only a few, but now dozens or hundreds of employees that are empowered to talk about about the brand.Jordan Williams, manager of digital engagement for REI, told Ad Age that certain staff members are being identified as experts at handling customer complaints, others at communicating new product arrivals and features, and others as people who can provide local travel advice.
But Mr. Williams said it’s no different than what happens in the offline world. He noted the company has more than 9,000 employees and trusts its people every day to interface with customers in person, so why wouldn’t they trust them to do the same online?“
As I wrote, I like REI‘s Decentralized Twitter Approach. On the surface, HQ has “less control” but I believe, ultimately, it will up everyone’s game and deliver a better customer service experiences.
Of course, as a reporter, I have to wonder why not?
May be Richard has another more important and urgent file that he is working on at Edelman?? But wait, the Murdoch‘s phone hacking scandal is the talk of the whole wide world. Easily the largest “crisis” any corporations have ever seen. A multi-billion dollars deal was killed because of this. Some suspect the scandal has the potential of bringing down or severely weaken Murdoch‘s media empire (a media company without trust or respect is not much if anything). And even capable of bringing down a government (just look at David Cameron’s recent damage control and tell me he is not worried)!
So as Global Leader of Edelman Crisis and Issues Management, yes Global Leader, why is Richard NOT involved in this most important and high profile Edelman file? I hate to put Richard on the spot because I used to admire him a lot and hope I can still admire him (but, what can I say, he is a “PR man” now). Will Richard be involved in the Murdoch‘s phone hacking scandal later, just not now? Or is Richard NOT involved by choice, quoting his own words when he joined Edelman,
The creditability of a man, especially a newsman, takes a lifetime to earn. I hope Richard‘s creditability and reputation can remain intact after the Rupert Murdoch‘s phone hacking scandals have passed with whatever outcome it will result in.
“Richard Sambrook, the BBC’s Director of Global News and a member of the BBC’s Management Board for the last ten years, will be joining Edelman, the world’s largest independent PR firm, as Global Vice Chairman and Chief Content Officer in May. Read the rest of this entry »
With this video, I am checking off both my promises (1) and (2). As I wrote in my “Calgary Stampede Inhospitality Survival Guide“, my last promise is the one closest to my heart. I will try to write a “Calgary Stampede Tows Cars” business case study to share the various lessons contained in my experiences.
Sure, this “Calgary Stampede Tows Cars” case will be shorter, in terms of time, effort, and scope, compare to my 2006 iStockphoto Case Study and case study extras, but it should still be a lot of fun to share my insights.
NOTE: My horrible experiences isn’t like what Dave Carroll had experienced. But I believe there are still much for businesses to learn from my treatment and how businesses can better serve customers in the future.
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The following is a brief synopsis of the story that I put along with the music video.
1) After our exciting & oncein alifetimeexperience & memorywithWill & Kate in their Royal Tour visit to Calgary, our trouble and inhospitable experience with Calgary Stampede started.
Our car was missing ! Gone !
2) We parked our car at a Stampede parking lot as TOLD by Stampede parking attendant earlier in the afternoon, so we were shocked to find our car was missing, towed to some far away parking lot “across the river”!
Thank you Calgary Stampede! NOT!
3) Calgary Stampede employee “Faceless Andy“, his face covered to protect the rude and inhospitable, told us to walk, yes WALK, to the far away parking lot even though our car was towed due to Stampede’s mistakes. We parked as told. Faceless Andy truly set the standard of “Stampede inhospitality”.
4) We spent so much time to explain and plead, including explaining the parking instructions on the Royal Tour parking instruction card Read the rest of this entry »
“Edelman last year hired the BBC’s former director of news, Richard Sambrook, to head up its “crisis and issues practice”. It is unclear whether he will be part of the firm’s News Corp team.“
I will not be surprised if his insights have a very strong influence in the Murdoch file. This is why big bucks are paid to hire Edelman to have access to people like Mr. Sambrook.
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