New Venture Marketing

The Souk & the Supermarket

A favorite client threatened to come to my site today and post a comment to the effect I haven't blogged in too long and isn't that a bit hypocritical for someone who is so enthusiastic about new Internet media.  So with the hope of doing a pre-emptive strike, I am posting today.  Okay, John, the ball is in your court.  How about that new web site?

I will be teaching a course at Stanford Continuing Studies this spring on the Internet and new digital media and I am delighted.

The course will be entitled:  The Souk & the Supermarket:  Demystifying New Internet Media.  The Souk in this instance will be a "new" model for community, chaotic, messy and ever changing, and the Supermarket, my metaphor for a conventional business, highly structured and controlled.  I've wanted a chance to explore the changes I have seen resulting from the impact of the Internet. This is a great opportunity.  So stay tuned.

Convergence Marketing

I’ve been rereading Convergence Marketing, and thinking about the impact of the Internet on business and our clients. The premise of the book is that while the Internet doesn’t change everything, it does create a major shift in how customers behave and in turn how business must operate. The Dot.com era, the authors say, taught us that successful companies don’t simply throw out the old technologies and practices in favor of new ones, but rather integrate them into their total mix.

The same applies to marketing tools and practices. Traditional techniques, such as advertising, PR, and direct mail, have not been replaced, but they sure have been impacted by a witches brew of new tools from blogs and wikis to RSS and news aggregators.

Global PR Wiki

Dan Forbush , President of ProfNet, PR Newswire, who helped to organize a Global PR Blog this July, has just announced plans to do it again via a wiki provided Ross Mayfield and SocialText. Forbush says, "If all goes well, the result will be an analysis that's of general industry interest. If it doesn't, we'll at least learn more about wikis."

I think that using a wiki to exchange ideas and "kick the tires" as the same time is a great idea.  For anyone else who wants to participate or simply read about it, you can get more information on Dan's site.

PR versus Blogs and Wikis

Ross Mayfield, founder and CEO of SocialText just wrote a very provocative post on Wikis in PR to which I responded I recommend your going to Ross' blog. He's a very able guy, and I love his company, but think him a bit myopic on the subject of PR. You decide.

eBIG Blogging & RSS SIG

For the last several months I have been attending the eBIG's (Pheedo, the SIG covers everything from "personal publishing to corporate communications tools, weblogs and RSS technonology. Last night concluded a three part series on "Jumping on the Blogwagon.  What's the Buzz on Business Blogging" with Ross Mayfield, CEO and founder of SocialText and Scott Young, President and CEO, Userland Software.

Ross's company, Socialtext, is aimed at developing and using wikis in business. Wiki which, to the uninitiated, may sound more like a Wiccan healing ritual, is short for wiki-wiki, which in Hawaiian means “quick”. Wikis allow many users to publish their comments onto a single Web page very quickly. Thus, the content is created by the group, or many to many.

"If blogs are Web-based diaries," says Neil Rubenking in an article he wrote on wikis for PC Magazine "wikis are Web-based public bulletin boards."

I was blown away by the example that Ross gave of the use of his company's technology as a tool to extend and enrich communications before, during and after an event.  I see that SocialText was recently selected by Red Herring, a client, to manage their technology conferences. Check out Ross' site  for other examples.

These are tremendously powerful tools for enriching and extending the value of a conference or even creating conference content on the fly.