In a tag team inter­view ses­sion, I inter­viewed Car­los Rodela, CEO of Allo­fUsAre­Fa­mous and co-host of “Rad on the Web.” Rodela hosts many shows on the Mevio net­work. Mevio streams its shows live through the Justin.tv net­work which has a live chat built into the page.

I talked with Rodela about the impor­tance of engag­ing with your audi­ence live dur­ing your show. It increases viewer loy­alty but view­ers can also pro­vide con­tent for your show. Watch Rodela’s inter­view with me about where my media career all started, “The Bay­watch Report.”

Tweet It! Buzz This Post Deli­cious Digg This Post Face­book Red­dit Stum­ble This Post

We’ve all had this moment. You want to talk to a friend about some great TV pro­gram you just saw. Instead of engag­ing or heed­ing your rec­om­men­da­tion they sim­ply announce, “I don’t have a TV.”

We all know where that con­ver­sa­tion leads. Either they’re con­sid­er­ate and just let it go. But more often they tell you with a wave of their hand, “All tele­vi­sion sucks” and/or that will be fol­lowed up with the declar­a­tive state­ment, “I read.” It’s impos­si­ble for this whole episode to go down with­out the non-TV owner com­ing off as incred­i­bly pompous and you being resent­ful and con­de­scended to.

There are tons of things I don’t have. I never feel com­pelled to pub­licly announce to peo­ple what I don’t have. Why do peo­ple who don’t have a tele­vi­sion feel com­pelled to pub­licly announce that they don’t have one?

Con­tinue reading »

Tweet It! Buzz This Post Deli­cious Digg This Post Face­book Red­dit Stum­ble This Post

I was think­ing about how my media con­sump­tion has changed recently. Much has been writ­ten about the sub­ject, and I’ve def­i­nitely changed my media con­sump­tion over the years. Here’s what has dras­ti­cally changed:

Pod­casts, not radio: I am a heavy pod­cast con­sumer (see my pod­cast lis­ten­ing lineup for 2010). I rarely lis­ten to the radio, even though I appear on it sometimes.

All news online and via mobile: My main news chan­nels are RSS feeds via Google Reader. Ads rarely get through and when I go to a blog, I men­tally block out all ads. I can’t recall a sin­gle ban­ner ad I’ve ever seen. I’ve never con­sciously clicked on an online ad. I can’t remem­ber the last time I pur­chased a print news­pa­per.

TiVo is my friend: I never watch TV live. I always watch pre-recorded shows and zip through com­mer­cials. The only live TV I watch is sports, but that’s start­ing to time shift as I’m watch­ing the Colts and Jets play right now but I’m about 20 min­utes behind so I can zip through most of the commercials.

I’m sure most of you read­ing this blog have sim­i­lar sto­ries of shifts in media con­sump­tion. And it got me to start think­ing, if a com­pany does want to reach me and peo­ple like me through tra­di­tional media, where can they go? What is the one area of tra­di­tional adver­tis­ing that hasn’t been affected by the Inter­net and social media? The only answer I could come up with is outdoor.

Con­tinue reading »

Tweet It! Buzz This Post Deli­cious Digg This Post Face­book Red­dit Stum­ble This Post

If you’re a blog­ger, one great way to reflect on the year’s hap­pen­ings is to just go through all the posts you wrote for that year. After a trip down mem­ory lane, I put together a col­lec­tion by cat­e­gory of the most pop­u­lar and my favorite posts (across all the sites I write for) of 2009.

Per­sonal experiences

Hey PR, blog­gers are not tools to be used — There’s a gen­tle give-and-take rela­tion­ship between jour­nal­ists and PR peo­ple. But now that blog­gers are in vogue, there’s a sense that some PR reps can use blog­gers as tools for their clients. It’s obvi­ous and obnox­ious. Here’s my per­sonal story of what one PR firm did. Make sure to watch John C. Dvo­rak lay into me about it on Cranky Geeks (hap­pens at the begin­ning of the show), and then there’s an incred­i­ble Update: Bad PR expe­ri­ence story. PR firm’s client is obtuse.

Social media “gurus” and some blog­gers are ego­tis­ti­cal jerks — A PR rep made a mis­take of ccing every­one on an email. Instead of unsub­scrib­ing, or doing noth­ing, many peo­ple on the list decided to hit Reply All and tell every­one what they thought of this woman. Insult­ing, rude, and the peo­ple on the list were well known social media people.

Pep­com: We’d like to invite you to a party that we don’t want you to attend — Pep­com has an 11-year-old pol­icy of not invit­ing journalists/consultants to their events. Must be full-time jour­nal­ists. Even though I’ve been attend­ing their events for six years they decided to send me an invite, let me accept, and then unin­vite me.

My per­sonal Twit­ter pol­icy. What’s yours? — So often I see peo­ple telling oth­ers how to behave on Twit­ter. I think the issue is do you know how you behave? Do you have a per­sonal pol­icy and do you stick to it?

Con­tinue reading »

Tweet It! Buzz This Post Deli­cious Digg This Post Face­book Red­dit Stum­ble This Post

Here’s my sec­ond and final show report from Le Web. We had been led to believe that Le Web was going to be about real-time Web. After the first day, we were won­der­ing when that dis­cus­sion would begin. But by day two we finally got some dis­cus­sion on that topic.

Watch the video for a sum­mary of day two, mostly about the real-time Web and also some of my cri­tiques about how the show was han­dled. But for a full analy­sis of the event, make sure you read my report, The cool and not-so-cool from LeWeb.

Related arti­cles by Zemanta

• Loic Le Meur — Insights from LeWeb ’09 (andreavascellari.com)
• Slides: Real Time Web Is Not Fast Enough — Three Strate­gies For Busi­ness (web-strategist.com)
• Real Time Not To Be Con­fused With Real Accu­rate (myventurepad.com)

Tweet It! Buzz This Post Deli­cious Digg This Post Face­book Red­dit Stum­ble This Post

Here’s my end of day show report for Le Web, the Web 2.0 con­fer­ence in Paris. I’ve been in Paris for the week report­ing with the Trav­el­ing Geeks (watch video of us on a train). Watch the video for a quick sum­mary of the com­pa­nies I saw, plus a quick story at the end about an out­break Robert Scoble had at the expense of the French entrepreneurs.

Com­pa­nies and links men­tioned in the video.

• Square
• How Dell han­dles cus­tomer ser­vice and sales through social media: Inter­view with Richard Bin­ham­mer (@RichardATDell)
• AllMyApps
• blueKiwi
• Tic­TacDo
• Wikeo
• eBuzzing
• DEZine­force
• Video: Dat­ing tech ser­vice Wuiper offers a fun way for peo­ple to meet
• DEZine­force
• True­Knowl­edge
• Yatedo

Tweet It! Buzz This Post Deli­cious Digg This Post Face­book Red­dit Stum­ble This Post

At the Le Web con­fer­ence in Paris, I spoke with Richard Bin­ham­mer, bet­ter known as @RichardATDell on Twit­ter. Three years ago Richard, who was and still is work­ing in pub­lic affairs, was told by his boss to start get­ting engaged in blog­ger rela­tions. It appears that Binhammer’s move into social media was one of the many responses to the 2005 Dell Hell out­burst ini­ti­ated by social media con­sul­tant Jeff Jarvis, who wrote an open let­ter to Dell com­plain­ing about Dell’s cus­tomer ser­vice. At the time, Dell’s response was, “We don’t respond to bloggers.”

Con­tinue reading »

Tweet It! Buzz This Post Deli­cious Digg This Post Face­book Red­dit Stum­ble This Post

The Trav­el­ing Geeks can’t stop record­ing their every move­ment, espe­cially on the Paris Metro

I am still highly amused by the vol­ume of pho­tog­ra­phy and video that’s going on at the Trav­el­ing Geeks event in Paris (expla­na­tion, silly video). There is an end­less num­ber of pho­tos that have been taken so far (full screen), and we haven’t yet arrived at our key event, Le Web, which starts tomorrow.

Here’s a video of us jammed into a Metro car going to see a bunch of star­tups at an incu­ba­tor. On the train and in the video are Eliane Fio­let, Tom Forem­ski, Robin Wauters, Kim-Mai Cutler, Fred­eric Lardi­nois, Matt Buck­land, Sky Schuyler, Ewan Spence, Olivier Ezratty, Renee Blod­gett, Amanda Coo­long, Beth Blecher­man, and Robert Scoble.

Con­tinue reading »

Tweet It! Buzz This Post Deli­cious Digg This Post Face­book Red­dit Stum­ble This Post

Google, Microsoft scram­ble to incor­po­rate real-time search into their results

Call it good or bad tim­ing, but I just hap­pened to fin­ish a report on real-time search on the day that Google announced its roll­out of its inte­grated real-time search results within its gen­eral search results. After some last-minute edits, the report is now done and I’m mak­ing it avail­able to every­one for free. It’s titled, “Real-Time Search and Dis­cov­ery of the Social Web.” You can down­load the PDF, or view it as a slide show on Scribd.

Given that I’m maki­ing the report avail­able free, I ask just one thing in return: feed­back. Pos­i­tive, neg­a­tive, it’s all wel­comed — just please make it con­struc­tive. I’m eagerly learn­ing as much as I can about this sub­ject. This is an area that I think is going to grow like crazy, and we’re only look­ing at a thumbnail’s worth of what is yet to come.

Here are some high­lights from the report.

• Real-time search could steal away as much as $40 bil­lion from tra­di­tional search. Google and Microsoft’s announce­ment to incor­po­rate real-time search results is a good first step to pre­vent losses.
• The def­i­n­i­tion of real-time search is far more var­ied than the def­i­n­i­tion of tra­di­tional search. You’ll see more vari­a­tions in what is con­sid­ered a real-time search engine.

Con­tinue reading »

Tweet It! Buzz This Post Deli­cious Digg This Post Face­book Red­dit Stum­ble This Post

Go to din­ner with the geeks and you’ll get lots of pho­tos taken

Let me set the scene for you. More than a dozen geeks have trav­eled to Paris for a week­long tech odyssey cul­mi­nat­ing with cov­er­age from France’s pre­mier Web 2.0 con­fer­ence, Le Web. I’m hav­ing a hard time try­ing to deter­mine what the dif­fer­ence is between “Le Web” and “The Web,” but as far as I can tell, it’s soft cheese.

Our group, the Trav­el­ing Geeks, has come from all over the world to meet, see new tech­nol­ogy, and report about it. Every­one is blog­ging from mul­ti­ple loca­tions, but if you want to catch everyone’s cov­er­age, no mat­ter where they write it, just fol­low the blog Trav­el­ing Geeks (RSS).

Here’s what I’ve learned so far:

• “Trav­el­ing Geeks” pens look a lot bet­ter than they work. I’ve wit­nessed three run out of ink within one minute of use.
• Con­nec­tiv­ity at hotel is hor­ri­ble. I’m jonesing for a fast con­nec­tion so I can upload some videos. I’ve got a video of an aging accor­dion­ist play­ing and singing “I’m Just a Gigolo.” UPDATE: I got a fast con­nec­tion and I just posted the video. Take a look.
• Geeks bring their video and image cap­tur­ing equip­ment to din­ner. Things nor­mal peo­ple wouldn’t dream to pho­to­graph will not only be pho­tographed and video­taped, but you’ll have lots and lots of it. Here’s just the begin­ning of our pho­to­stream.
• The doors on the Paris Metro will try to crush you if you don’t get in or out fast enough. Tom Forem­ski of Sil­i­con Val­ley Watcher was unfor­tu­nately our guinea pig for that dis­cov­ery. Despite all the pho­tos of everyone’s meal and the close­ups of the pores on my face last night, nobody got a shot or video of Tom vs. the Paris Metro.

Spe­cial thanks to Mobile Globe for spon­sor­ing last night’s din­ner. I was privy to a rather cool demo of its mobile appli­ca­tion that lets you make inter­na­tional calls any­where in the world for just 4 cents per minute. Installs on Black­Ber­rys, iPhones and a bunch of other Java-enabled devices. And another thanks to Mash­cast for mak­ing that silly video of all us at top.

Tweet It! Buzz This Post Deli­cious Digg This Post Face­book Red­dit Stum­ble This Post