Canuckflack

It’s the return of Third Tuesday, folks. On Monday, May 5. A minority government brings uncertainty and unpredictability - even to your social calendar.

Facing off will be yours truly, Brandan Hodgson, and Ryan Anderson.

The point to be debated?

“…which social media tools are most useful and which are just code looking for a reason to be…”

Where?

Monday, May 5, 2008 at 6:00 pm

Clocktower Brew Pub
575 Bank Street (downstairs)
Ottawa , ON
613-233-7849

Now, I know Hodgson gets more belligerent the more he drinks, and Anderson is just a little fella, so the discussion should get more entertaining as the night gets older - and the more libations are quaffed.

And special thanks to Joe Thornley, the K’nex hub that keeps bringing us all together to talk all things social media.

• Couple of Brits are planning to drive a converted double-decker bus quite a long way. Slideshow and commentary on the Guardian. Choice quote: “eh, not a double decker bus, but we’ve both driven pretty big vehicles before, so we’re not really worried about that.” More in the Sunday feature article.
• Dolly and Kenny would be rolling in their graves - Feist and the Constantines redo “Islands in the Sun” AND F*CKING KILL IT. Stupid emo/indie pretension. Here’s the classic on YouTube. The BeeGees did a good cover as well.
• Douglas Adams was wrong. The number is not 42 - it’s 53. As in the average number of friends held by youth across several continents (MTV Asia slideshow, thanks Sean!)

The Kaiser’s nailed it with a 21 slide presentation: The Truth about the Age of Conversation. (Slideshare)
(full disclosure: I contributed to the first Age of Conversation, and will be writing for the second edition, now in preparation)

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Technorati Tags: social media consultants, age of conversation, social media business model

I think the statement from 10 Downing Street says it all:

“…Gordon Brown will visit the US next week, his second trip to the country as Prime Minister.

The Downing Street website will run a live microsite including images, rolling updates and a Twitter feed throughout the PM’s stay from 16 - 19 April. Log on from Wednesday to follow the PM’s activities.

Mr Brown is expected to visit Boston, the United Nations in New York and meet President Bush at the White House in Washington. His meetings will focus on the global economy and other areas of mutual bilateral interest.

Gordon Brown’s first trip to the US as PM saw him travel to Camp David in July last year.

If I was a real social media nerd, or a real politics nerd, I would ask:

• does this mean there’s a communications assistant responsible for the twitter feed?
• what sort of vetting process is there for twitter messages? On the fly?
• is the content going to concentrate on policy announcements? Any chance of side remarks about the entrees at the state dinner? Snide remarks about the little kids handing over flowers at events?
• what sort of twitter app are they going to use? Is it on a BlackBerry, Treo or other PDA?

h/t to Simon Dickson

Technorati Tags: government communications, United Kingdom, Gordon Brown, twitter, public diplomacy

Ofcom, the British media regulator, has just released hundreds of pages of qualitative and quantitative research into participation in social networks.

There’s the predictable division of social network members into cute little persona or caricatures, and then there’s a much more detailed breakdown of the impulses, activities and omissions of people participating in social networks.

I think it’s essential reading for anyone at all interested in the behaviour of youth online, as well as those interested in how regulators and ombudsmen view online activities.

Interestingly, Ofcom has also recorded a commentary on YouTube to accompany the release. Granted, it’s a one-sided commentary that evokes memories of Betacam video sent out to regional offices from corporate headquarters, but it does add a layer of interactivity and visual stimulation.

The qualitative research suggests five distinct groups of people who use social networking sites :

• Alpha Socialisers – mostly male, under 25s, who use sites in intense short bursts to flirt, meet new people and be entertained.
• Attention Seekers – mostly female, who crave attention and comments from others, often by posting photos and customising their profiles.
• Followers – males and females of all ages who join sites to keep up with what their peers are doing.
• Faithfuls – older males and females generally aged over 20, who typically use social networking sites to rekindle old friendships, often from school or university.
• Functionals – mostly older males who tend to be single-minded in using sites for a particular purpose.

The qualitative research also suggests three distinct groups of people who do not use social networking sites:

• Concerned about safety – often older people and parents concerned about safety online, in particular making personal details available online.
• Technically inexperienced – often people over 30 years old who lack confidence in using the internet and computers.
• Intellectual rejecters – often older teens and young adults who have no interest in social networking sites and see them as a waste of time.

Technorati Tags: Ofcom, Facebook, MySpace, youth online

Blog posts are like grade school book reviews. They’re often thought up at the last minute, rely on familiar reference material, don’t explore untested subjects, and have as bare a thesis as possible.

Tweets, continuing with the analogy, are capsule movie reviews.

Reading through the language, form and conventions found in twitter messages, you can see that Gene Shalit, Jeffrey Lyons, Siskel and Ebert and Peter Travers were the intellectual mentors of twitter users.

Use 140 characters to win attention quickly, pass along a germ of an idea, and maybe share an opinion.

That or we all studied under the wing of masters like Yogi Berra, H.L Mencken, Dale Carnegie, Chuck Klosterman and Hunter S. Thompson - writers who taught us the value of short, witty and highly observant phrases that are usually non-sequiturs
Well, maybe 20% of twitter users.

The other 80% are posting about their breakfasts, arranging hookups or promoting themselves.

Technorati Tags: twitter, tweets, movie reviews, book reviews

Which popular game is a stunning combination of multi-level marketing, addictive design and the worst of subscriber-based advertising on the ‘net?

That would be Roll the Brim to Win, which boldly plays off the popular Roll up the Rim to Win from Canadian coffee and donut chain Tim Hortons.

In the Tim Horton’s game, each coffee purchase gives you a chance to roll up the rim of your paper cup to win prizes like free coffee, donuts, coffee cards, boats and cars. The chain asks you for no personal information and does not sign you up for subscription services.

In the Facebook application, gullible - even stupid - users sign up for an app that rewards you with “Brimbucks,” which are used to buy the online cups needed to “roll the Brim.”

Am I being harsh? No.

In order to keep playing the game, you are provided with several options to earn Brimbucks:

• recommend the app to friends
• invite friends to install the app
• become a fan of the app
• return every 4 hours to “earn” more
• vote for Brim as the app of the day
• fill out “surveys”

What kind of surveys? What about “want to know what your future holds“? Clicking on the link takes you to a site that offers your daily horoscope by text message - all you have to do is enter your mobile phone number.

Stop and read the fine print, though, because you’ll also be signing up for your daily horoscope, delivered by text message for only $1.25 a day.

Or sign up for a book club - or a DVD club - anything that commits you to repeated payments.

Oh - and you’ve already agreed to let Facebook share your profile information and Facebook activity with the application developer - a second year college student from Fanshawe College in London, Ontario and his friends.

At its best, this game gives you several minutes of mind-numbing clicking and the false promise of gift cards “for your favorite coffee shop.”

Roll the Brim to Win player = sucka!

With 49,000 users and 17,000 fans … that’s a lot of morons.

I can’t decide if the corporate folks at Tim Hortons should be worried about this or not. A solid number of the comments on the app page refer to Timmies and Tims - common colloquial references to the chain. The fan photos are almost all images or products featuring Tim Hortons trademarks.

Still, it may not be worth the effort to shut down this app, especially given the millions of real Roll Up the Rim to Win cups distributed during each Tim Hortons campaign.

Technorati Tags: Tim Horton’s, Timmies, donuts, Brim, rim, contest, facebook, mlm

You know, I’m beginning to think we’re due for a big shakeout - and untested social media tactics will be the first things to be thrown off the boat.

The economic indicators are there. Credit crunch. Everyone running to the security of gold. Drops in same store sales. The convergence of climate change worries with $100 oil.

When consumers decide to moderate their spending, where will companies cut their expenses? Bodies.

Bodies that do not have a quantifiable impact on sales.

Have any of your pitches included “starting a conversation” as a goal lately?

Are you REALLY looking for input from your consumers and stakeholders? Or does your idea of consumer generated content really just mean getting internet geeks to design edgy YouTube videos for you?

In a recession, co-creation can be another way to hose your ad, marketing and public relations agencies.

I’m arguing that companies under the gun, facing the knife, don’t really give a f*ck about what the public has to say.

They just want you to buy jars of tomato sauce, BeDazzlers and environmentally friendly printer paper.*

Sure, they’ll play along - but only to avoid product safety claims, grief about shift firings and to avoid repaying tax concessions granted when they built the local plant.

Consumer contact will revert to market-testing, sampling and insincere gladhandling on the shop floor.

Oh - and if you’re a new hire in a PR firm, I hope you’ve been developing a diverse skill set. It would suck to be the new “social media star” that gets thrown out with the bathwater.

*if you believe that there’s any such thing as enivronmentally friendly printer paper, you’re an idiot and a sucker.

Technorati Tags: conversation, cluetrain, customer service, recession, economic downturn

Well, I’ve finished work on it. A handy little guide for exploring the world of social media and building support for social media in a large organization.

I think the advice in this 23 page guide to secretly implementing social media in organizations could be equally useful for any government employee looking to try out new technologies - I’m pretty certain on that point, since I’m a government employee in real life.

You can find the guide at this link, and please feel free to share it with your friends, colleagues and bosses.

Here’s an excerpt, from the introduction:

How do you do it? How do you bring a spirit of innovation and experimentation to the communications shop of a large organization?

I’ve worked in a large organization – the government – for the last ten years. You can find bright, creative and resourceful people around every corner, in every department.

During the course of their careers, many of these people have thought of a move that could improve their work or their environment.

From experience, we all know that small changes in process or presentation are easily won. After all, it’s just another line on an approval sheet, or a tweak on the website.

Large organizations can also be convinced to launch a large-scale overhaul of their systems – whether it’s a supply chain, assembly process or online order system.

But it’s a real pain to get them to rethink their relationship with humans outside the security fence. After all, our customer service reps seem to be doing a good job, right? That sales force really does have a handle on the needs of the community, doesn’t it?

In speaking to hundreds of workers and managers for large organizations (government and private sector), I’ve been asked the same questions, over and over:

• How do you convince your boss to even experiment with social media?
• Doesn’t it mean a lot of extra work?
• Isn’t this sort of stuff blocked by our organizational policies?

This Secret Underground Guide to Social Media for Organizations is meant to help you answer some of those questions.

Technorati Tags: guide to social media, instruction, dummies guide, introduction, organizations, government

I had a chance to speak to a passel of Canadian government communicators about social media yesterday, and I promised them I would post a number of useful links to help them work around implementing social media in their workplaces.

So here goes:

• How the Social Web Came to Be, Part 1 and Part 2 and a linear time line in pdf
• Social Media Marketing vs. Social Marketing, via the Church of the Customer blog
• Network of Public Sector Communicators - a New Zealand blog written by a govt type
• 26 free tools to monitor buzz and online conversation. This is a must read, folks!
• Blog search tools: Google, Technorati, Blogpulse, IceRocket, Bloglines,
• E-government and Web 2.0, from Cisco.
• Introduction to Twitter (via KDPaine and Jeremiah)
• Big Brands and Facebook, a Forrester presentation
• the Three Types of Government Blogger, by me
• Four Tenets of the Community Manager, by Jeremiah, and even more detail and advice from Jake McKee

I’ve obviously missed a lot of resources, and I encourage my readers to mention more in the comments, so I can pass them along to the more disadvantaged.

I think we’ve all noticed a rush to Facebook as a source for journalists, especially when someone under the age of 25 suffers an untimely death.

In Europe, sites like Bebo are providing similar information.

Which is why the British Press Complaints Commission is looking into how journos use social networks and content found online in their reporting. The essential question is: when can information and media posted online be repurposed by journalists (and others)?

More information can be found in an interview between BBC reporter Chris Vallance and the head of the PCC.

The indicators of Facebook addiction are easy to spot. The first article reporting the tragedy usually includes:

• a candid low-res photos of the victim, bylined “Facebook”
• quotes from several of the victim’s friend
• some mention of the victim’s aspirations
• a reference to a recent trip, party or getaway with friends

Subsequent updates often mention group and school affiliations, reference to rememberance sites on Facebook, and favourite bands. Oh - and speculation from “friends” about the role of substance abuse, inappropriate or ill-considered behaviour, or school group dynamics in the death.

In short, all the personal detail and reaction that reporters have always found hard to get - and mainly by doorstopping a grieving family minutes after they learned of the death.

h/t to Chris Vallance via Robin Hamman

A collection of Twitter messages you will never see in your friends’ feeds. Some business oriented, some rude, some techie, and some attempting to underline the deep rifts that are developing in how we communicate with each other.

• Just posted half-ass del.icio.us link post at tinyurl…
• This message is confidential. If it was not meant for you, please delete it
• Sitting alone in airport lounge, wondering what my kids look like
• Blue Horse Shoe Loves Anacot Steel
• I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house which I had built myself, on the shore of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts
• I don’t think we’re going to clear that brid….
• Miss Smith: please take a tweet
• If you need a friend, get a dog.
• le francais suit*
• I bill each tweet in 10 minute increments
• Twitter: the document management solution
• Am I as cool as I think I am?
• Tweet - for when you don’t care enough to cross the unconference to speak to someone
• Twitter is like IRC, but with icons
• I think I’m going to show her my “O” face. Did I just tweet that?
• Tora Tora Tora

*that one’s for the Canadian civil servants

Technorati Tags: Twitter, tweet, business messages, office communications

Hmmm. Walter Carl, of Northeastern University, seems to zero in on Twitter as a marketing tool for hacks and flacks keen on keeping up images.

“… “You want to use these tools to keep up on others, in a good way, of course, and to let them keep up on you,” said Professor [Walter] Carl, whose research focuses on social media. “But their perception is it’s surveillance.” One of the main reasons people embrace social media — Facebook, for instance — is to create identities for themselves and control other people’s perceptions of them.

“Maybe Twitter isn’t the right tool for that job,” he said. “The people who I see using it are an older demographic, people in marketing or P.R. or advertising, who use it for work, to present themselves as particular types of people. They’ll twitter, ‘I’m traveling,’ or ‘I’m going to interesting restaurants.’ They’re using it to do identity work.” (NYT)

You know what? He’s 70% right.

Technorati Tags: twitter, identity, self promotion

Cross-promotion in support of a cross-promotion campaign!

The gist of this lengthy post: take a negative, add some humour and ingenuity and make it a positive!

God bless Rax from Splendid Communications. His agency has the Marmite account, and as part of their follow-up to a cross-promotion campaign earlier in 2007, he sent me this little note:

Canuckflack, Oh Canuckflack,
How we all love Colin McKay
So we’re writing him this romantic note
Because it’s Saint Valentine’s day!

His quirky take on the marketing world
Fills our lives with daily mirth
Which is why he is without dispute
The most gorgeous blogger on Earth…

You’ll always be our classic rock
As you guide us through what’s new
The communications industry has found itself
A poster boy in you.

Colin – a man like you, who knows his stuff
And can talk all things social media
Fills our minds with many naughty thoughts
About how we want to feed ‘ya…

So we’d like you to try new Lovers’ Marmite,
Which is laced with a bit of Champagne
You should have fellow citizens wondering
About that nice smell on the O-Train…

And so when you’re chomping on your morning toast
Before you head out to Uppertown
Don’t forget to reach for the Marmite jar
But you don’t have to put the butter down

Happy Valentine’s Day from Marmite
You’re our perfect date
Thanks for showing us some love
Instead of choosing to hate!

What cross-promotion, you may ask?

The fabulous Paddington Bear preferring Marmite over Marmalade ad:

But what’s the second level of cross-promotion?

Some little thing called “Lover’s Marmite” - a special blend of Marmite and Champagne only available for a limited time, with a special label on the back. A label where you can write the name of your special darling, as you hand them a jar of yeast extract that says “I Love You” on the front.

The only thing better would be used undergarments from your solo vacation to Thailand.

If that image wasn’t disturbing enough, take a look at the advert for “Lover’s Marmite”:

Honestly, I don’t know why I obsess over Marmite (the product), but Marmite (the marketer) has bowled me over twice in six months!

Technorati Tags: marmite, blogger relations, blogger outreach, Lover’s Marmite

Mitch has nailed it. A lot of companies being slammed by online controversies - like Hasbro - just aren’t used to dealing with emotional, irrational and impetuous humans.

Their relationship with the marketplace is framed by the work of their distributors, an import/export firm, or a licence holder.

The issues involved are often complex, with plenty of lawyers involved. Corporate positions frequently cannot be distilled into blogger-friendly language without affecting corporate interests in liability, finance or intellectual property.

Any corporate public relations pro will recognize their dilemma.

As Mitch points out, it’s hard for a company built to a fifty year-old model to adapt to a new business flow chock full of eddies, breakers and dangerous rapids.

Increasingly, though, they are trying. People like Petro Canada or Ford are dipping their toes into the social media swamp - and taking the punches and expanding their influence.

The transformation of the corporation demands participation and understanding at many levels - not just in the marketing and communications department.

As Doug Walker points out in a comment to Mitch’s post, the simplest point of contact may just be the customer service representative - if finance, facilities and human resources help you expand your CSR force to deal with the pressures that can be generated by social media.

And that means finance, facilities, human resources, and the call centre manager will all have to understand the needs and challenges of playing in social media.
Oh - and Mitch’s other point, about bloggers demonstrating the same qualities they demand from corporations? I agree as well.

Anyone can build a bully pulpit, whether they’re a fascinating storyteller or simply a demagogue.

It takes a level of dedication and transparency to actually maintain relationships and effect change in a community - small or large.

I think I’ve found my blogging doppelganger, Jen Mattern.

Another datapoint to add to the discussion about how youth treat their online identity. Remember when the Smoking Gun was a revolutionary resource, opening up celebrity mugshots and notable court cases for public scrutiny? Do you remember when it was an embarrassment to be arrested and booked?

“…Finally, through the state police barracks, where Sergeant Hodsden had more than two dozen young people photographed, fingerprinted and cited for unlawful trespass, with a few also cited for unlawful mischief. He cannot shake the indifference of one youth in particular, who asked whether he could use his mug shot on his Facebook page.”

That’s from a NY Times report on a party held by Middlebury, Vermont high school students at a secluded farmhouse last owned by the poet Robert Frost. They almost trashed the place - but the mugshot is still seen as a badge of honour to be shared.

Technorati Tags: headshot, mugshot, Facebook, identity

Let me introduce you to the Sex Patels, a punk/alt band from the Leeds and Bradford area. (MySpace) They play a mix of 80s punk with a distinctively bhangra influence (yes, a sitar and drums are involved). You should really listen to their rendition of “once in a lifetime” - the old Talking Heads classic. I think the heavy regional accent really adds something.

How did I get here?* The Sex Patels were a last minute mention in the Guardian’s Northerner newsletter. You see, they’re playing a gig at the Trades Club at Hebden Bridge later this week.

Looking through the venue’s list of upcoming acts, it struck me that, for all our talk of online communities and interwoven social networks, we overlook the influence and value of local artists and entertainment.

A comment on the Sex Patels’ MySpace page is telling:

“…Top gig on Saturday. The highlight for me was Bry’s foot on the monitor and shouting ‘Hello Howarth Community Centre’. It was genius…

Granted, their MySpace page has had less than 15,000 hits, but the buzz seems to be building. 3,000 miles away, I can’t quite make out the band’s connection to Chumbawumba - except to note that Chumba is playing the Trades Club TWICE in March.

*aaaahhhhh - see that? I threw in a reference to “once in a lifetime“! Clever little Colin!

Technorati Tags: Northern England, Chumbawumba, Sex Patel, union hall, local music

I suspect that Angelo Bepp is an everyman, hiding in plain view although ostensibly disguised as a long-term resident of the state detention facility at Attica, New York.

Angelo is a regular comment contributor to the New York Times online edition. And his comments are funny. Consistently funny. I present a selection:

What have you done to make yourself more attractive on the Web?
I post a picture only showing me from the neck up. That way my prison fatigues & number can’t be seen. I thought it was my car, I really did. How many powder blue 1971 Pintos can there be in New York?

January 3rd, 2008 Link

Executive Who Moved ‘Dem Bums’ Out of Brooklyn Is Hall of Famer

Get over it Brooklyn, its been 50 years. When I lost my dog Blinky, I got over it. Man, I loved Blinky.

December 3rd, 2007 Link

What has been your most memorable culinary experience while on vacation?

Best meal I ever had was in Tibet, a yak burger. Tastes a bit like cheetah.

November 21st, 2007 Link

Where is your favorite place to stay in a national park?

Any where that doesn’t have padded cells or bars is fine by me. I didn’t do anything to that mannequin, it fell on me.

December 21st, 2007 Link

What is your favorite easy-to-make holiday starter?

When I was allowed to indulge myself, I always enjoyed a hot dog with Worcestershire sauce & cottage cheese. Then wash it down with a bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue. Man, Angelo was living the life back then, before the legal thing.

December 19th, 2007 Link

Which band would you like to see reunited?

The Archies. Still listen to their albums every night. I’m 54 years old.

December 11th, 2007 Link

Shootings Test Limits of New Self-Defense Law: What do you think of Mr. Horn’s actions?

Over reacted. My house was broken into 2 years ago. I confronted the 2 misguided young men. I told them what they were doing was wrong. They still took everything of value that I owned, but they know they did wrong.

December 13th, Link

Technorati Tags: comment policy, commenter, New York Times

Some of you may know, during the day I work with a great bunch of privacy advocates. So I’ve got some opinions about the Scroble scraping issue of the day.

Just ask yourself: let’s say large consumer product company X had created a fan group in Facebook. This morning, they decided to launch a new promotional campaign aimed at just these fans, but needed the contact information. Finding Plaxo’s cool new tool, they then simply scraped the name, addy and preferences of all their “fans.”

Would that be acceptable? No. Damien Mulley has it right. It could be considered data theft.

And we would all be justifiably outraged about it.

It’s the idea of scale. You move the information of your 20, 50, 100 or 200 close personal and business contacts, you’re only maintaining your records.

You move 1,000 or more - you’re maintaining a mailing list.

The idea of data portability is that users, consumers, geeks have control of their OWN data. In this case, users entered into a relationship with another user (Scoble) where they shared access to their mutual Facebook profiles.

Facebook, for all its weaknesses and commercial impulses, does have a limited level of privacy protection. The embedding of personal email addys in an image is one. If you want to send me an email from outside the walled garden, you have to take the time to copy the addy by hand.

It’s one protection FOR ME to avoid having my addy scraped and sold off.

So when Plaxo tells Jeremiah Owyang that their new tool is all about data portability - they’re full of crap. It’s all about data collection. Here is an excerpt from a quick interview Jeremiah conducted with Plaxo today:

“…What else should we know? In 2008, data portability thrust is where we want to head, we want to turn the model upside down, so instead of widgets going to the social graph, we would like to make the social graph very portable. This is an area where Plaxo as more depth than anyone else.” (Jeremiah)

In the comments that follow, there is a good discussion of the social contract between “friends” when exchanging access rights and personal information.

Part of this contract, in this case, involves the privacy protections and restrictions put in place by Facebook. Facebook is a wide-open app with a lot of publicly available information, but that doesn’t mean that informed users don’t expect a level of considered behaviour on the part of their “friends.”

When you decide Facebook isn’t the most appropriate tool for you, you can’t attempt to migrate your mass of friends by breaking those protections and restrictions.

Sorry that it’s inconvenient, but that’s the playground you chose to play in.

And if you’re a commercial company that develops a tool designed to rip personal information out of proprietary social networks, don’t tell me you’re doing it in the name of the freedom for information to flow freely. There’s a commercial application behind the motivation.

Technorati Tags: data portability, data protection, identity theft, Facebook, Plaxo

As a community, we’re not sitting on the fence, we’re all over the fence, tearing up the garden and throwing fenceposts at people about Facebook’s Social Ads.

The idea that Facebook will strike backroom agreements with corporate partners to associate their consumer data with your Facebook activity seems to strike people the wrong way. Clearly, there needs to be a simple opt-out mechanism to avoid your personal brand being associated with a corporate brand (at least without compensation!)

The great weakness in this scheme, however, is that Facebook and their partners depend on the Facebook Friend having a stellar reputation worth trading on. Or at least have profile pics worth reproducing.

Imagine if Facebook users started using profile pics like those long used on Livejournal? Like that animated .gif to the right?

That would drastically affect the value of the implied endorsement from a social network user.

For example, take this comment from a Wired blog post on the business:

“Fortunately I don’t look that great. If they use me in ads, they’ll be fucking themselves.

Posted by: Experimenting Techmulogical Differences | Jan 2, 2008 6:48:36 PM>

Technorati Tags: Facebook, Social Ads, social objects, beacon

A little late in the game, but here’s a guy who dressed up as a YouTube video for Halloween. And only rated himself 1.5 stars.

via this recording.

I admit it. I have spent many hours watching Jackass outtakes with my son on YouTube. So I KNOW that there is a market for the JackassWorld video and social network site being created by MTV and Viacom.

Included in the plans are blogs - but on what subject? Legal liability? Injury prevention? Physical rehabilitation? Or just stories about getting drunk at your friend’s house and trying to skateboard off the roof?

The site is being launched in conjunction with the online distribution of the latest Jackass movie, Jackass 2.5. The New York Times had a particularly accurate description of the movie and its consumers:

“There’s more vomiting, nudity and defecation,” one executive said, speaking more candidly than the companies involved had agreed to and on condition of anonymity. “The stuff that consumers really want.”

Still, the producers are leaving an element of control. The morons you can find on YouTube - the ones who suffer compound bone fractures and leave tooth fragments on the railing - will not be able to upload videos to JackassWorld. It’s only for professionals.

You know, a blog council is just like a big, fuzzy, comfortable blankie. In a moment of uncertainty and perhaps confusion, a blankie can be a touchstone, an easy gateway to a simpler and more secure time.

Especially if that blankie smells like your mommie, or good times in the park with all your friends.

Which explains the need for a blog council dedicated solely to the problems and achievements of large corporations entering the social media space. Some social media evangelists have jumped on the idea as too rigid or naiive, dismissing the idea that a large corporations could benefit from such an arrangement.

What they don’t seem to understand is that a “council” is an easy concept for senior executives to buy into. These people already belong to industry councils, economic councils and foreign policy councils. They understand the framework, they understand the cost structure and they understand the potential benefits.

And THIS is where our colleagues are right to question the impulse to create a council. Brian Solis moves around this idea in his post.

Councils are not created to convene coffee klatches and an excuse to fly into a new resort once a month.

THAT is called a seminar.

Councils are not pulled together to discuss common process challenges and develop best practices.

THAT is called a working group.

A council of senior executives, united in a common goal, is created to share influence. To increase the authority of council members in what can seem to be a fractured environment with little real leadership.

Even a Parent-Teacher Council dreams of expanded influence and increased authority, if only expressed through reams of volunteer lists and pizza orders.

I’m probably unnecessarily aggrandizing the influence that could be wielded by the Blog Council.

Still, the “benefits” a generic membership often include:

As I look at the children’s playground of competing cliques in social media, a council of Fortune 500 companies that happen to blog seems to be a good idea.

An idea that, if managed effectively, could influence how fundamental decisions are made about the role of blogs, podcasts, vidcasts and ephemeral communications like Twitter in regulated environments like:

Which might be of some concern to a social media universe currently obsessed with nodes rather than the network as a whole.

Or I might have taken too many poli.sci. courses in university.

Technorati Tags: Blog Council, corporate blogging