LB's Rambles

Watch Your Mouth!

That's one eminently smart piece of advice to bloggers, twitterers and other social media mavens. It's part of a smart column from the Flathead Beacon of Kalispell, Montana, which lists a handful of "Social Media Mistakes Businesses Should Avoid." They're pretty much common sense rules, which makes it all the puzzling to understand why they are so commonly violated.

Hat tip: SmartBrief on Social Media via @Britopian on Twitter

Social Media in the Office

A new report from DeLoitte, via eMarketer, looks at the way companies interact with the social web. It finds the usual mix of good and bad news. Good: three out of ten executives surveyed say their company incorporates social networking into their business strategy. Nearl all of those execs say they use social networking to help build their brands.

On the other hand, more than half of the executives say their company really doesn't have an official policy dealing with the social web and how their employees should and do interact with it.

And then there are the 22% of executives in the survey who say they'd like to use social networks, but don't know how. That sounds suspiciously like an opportunity to me...

Following the Rules

Because you can never have enough good rules to live by, here are "10 Golden Rules of Social Media," as compiled and explained by Aliza Sherman of Web Worker Daily. They all strike me as being largely a matter of common sense - which means, of course, that they are too often ignored.

Jacques Brel Is...

All right, this is a bit off-topic for this blog. Maybe. But this blog is about communications, and the late Jacques Brel could communicate his French songs with an intensity and power that still amazes me. I've been a fan of Brel's songs for many years and own many of his LPs and CDs (including the amazing live recording from the Olympia in Paris, 1961) - but, as he died in the '70s, I never saw him perform.

Until now.

Jacques Brel La Valse à Mille Temps 1959 English subtitles
Uploaded by lightning49

I found this purely by accident on a video site called Dailymotion, and I certainly hope I'm not violating copyright. But if you have never heard Brel, try this. English subtitles, too. Apparently recorded in 1959. 50 years ago. Wow. That's all. Wow.

"Coffin, Scarcely Used"

The blurb on the back cover of this delightful book probably tells you all you really need to know about the little English village of Flaxborough: "a 'high-spirited town...like Gomorrah,' where anything can happen, and usuall does. It is the setting for eleven comic mysteries by Colin Watson, the first of which, "Coffin, Scarcely Used," is reviewed in full on today's "Classic Mysteries" podcast - you can listen to the review here.

The book is a classic puzzle mystery with a nice touch of satire. Murder is only one of the events - there are also a considerable number of other offenses in which the people of Flaxborough indulge quite eagerly. You can learn more, and join me in discussing some of these fine mysteries, at www.classicmysteries.net.

The End of Blogs?

I don't know if it's strictly a matter of pack journalism or if there is, perhaps, a grain or two of truth in the notion, but I seem to be seeing a very large number of articles along the theme of "Will Facebook and Twitter kill blogging?" That's certainly the approach taken by CNN Money/Fortune in its "Captain's Blog" section.

I'm not so sure. Sure, some blogs are dying. Some deserve to die. If you're only posting for your friends, then you're going to be better off on Facebook. But if you still have ideas that are worth more than Twitter's 140-characters, then you're going to need the space provided by a blog post. If you want to do more than toss off a couple of one-liners, or just maintain your personal events list, then Facebook is your place. That's pretty much what they're arguing at Baekdal.com.

But even within those limitations, it seems to me that there's plenty of room for blogging. Take a look at what Glenn Reynolds achieves every day with Instapundit. Even without comments, it's still a must-read for me daily, as are a number of other blogs. And the conversation provided on those other blogs through the comments make them far more valuable than the casual comments on Twitter or Facebook.

That's not a putdown of Twitter or Facebook - I spend a lot of time with both, as well as with other social networks. But they haven't replaced blogs - and I believe, in the long run, they won't.

Podcasting Death Reports Have Been Exaggerated...

According to the latest statistics, revealed by Edison Research in a webcast this week for the Association for Downloadable Media, podcasts are very definitely alive and well - and the number of consumers listening to audio podcasts or watching video podcasts continues to grow. Strongly. The ADM has details and the full video available for your viewing pleasure.

The Legal Side of Digital Media

Confounded by some of the legal issues created by the growth of digital media? Some ideas and solutions were exchanged at Bill Sobel’s New York Media Information Exchange Group at breakfast this morning.

On the panel:

Fred Benenson, Head of Outreach, Creative Commons;

Ian DiBernardo, Partner/Intellectual Property Specialist, Stroock & Stroock & Lavan LLP;

Melinda Lee, Co-Founder, UncensoredInterview.com;

Robert Rosenberg, SVP/Counsel, Digital Media, Showtime Networks, Inc.

Here are some of the highlights of this conversation:

A Plague on All Your Houses

Don't think things are as bad as that last entry might suggest, as far as trust in the media is concerned?

Youre right. They're worse.

A new survey from Public Policy Polling finds 5% of respondents say they have a lot of confidence in the media. 60% say they have little confidence.

But then - to paraphrase Shakespeare - the real message appears to be "A plague on [all] your houses." Let's see:

13% have a lot of confidence in banks.

8% have a lot of confidence in "corporations."

Politically, 30% say they have a lot of confidence in "Democratic leaders." Only 8% feel the same way about Republican leaders. 27% feel that way about government in general.

And maybe it's a hopeful sign that 40% have a lot of confidence in small business. And 50% say the same about churches.

But there's a lot of depressing reading in this survey. Or maybe we should think of it as a warning: a lot of people seem to be fed up in general. And I'm not at all sure that's very healthy for us as a society - even if I can share a lot of the frustrations.

Hat tip: Bulldog Reporter

Like Your Newspaper?

With all the talk about declining circulations, plummeting ad rates, and going-out-of-business signs on many of the nation's leading newspapers, maybe newspaper execs ought to pay attention to the latest American Consumer Satisfaction Index survey. The latest version of the ACSI, which has been measuring consumer satisfaction with a variety of industries quarterly since 1994, found that consumer satisfaction with newspapers was a 63, on a scale of 1 to 100.

Airlines came in at 64.

Jon Fine has all the details at Business Week.