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Phil's Blogservations
Wednesday, December 06, 2006
Posted by philgomes 8:43 PM
More Discussion...What started out as a comment on Mike Manuel's blog eventually turned into something a lot bigger as I was writing, so here goes.
Mike writes:
If, however, we're not all working toward this same goal, and instead get caught up with using proprietary formats and tools to posture and advance competitive agendas, then, sadly, the Social Media Press Release will die, die, die, quickly.Good point. (I find Mike is full of those.) And he also turned me on to a very thoughtful post by Brian Oberkirch.
Upon inspecting the StoryCrafter announcement, Brian wants more work at the metadata level, which is a fine point to make. And and important one.
Nevertheless, at this early stage, I feel we're working within the presentation-level standards that are being developed or, at the very least, the criteria that reasonable folks have set forward for what a social media release should have. Fine for now, and things will improve as they must, especially with regard to common machine-readable formats.
(And I will say "being" developed, since no one metadata standard has yet decisively emerged, though there's a lot of discussion about the needs for standards.)
But let's step back a little bit and discuss... How do "standards" work in business?
Listen... Coming from the tech industry, I know how important standards are. Like with any standard, companies differentiate and make money by innovating in and around the ways those standards are supported.
In other words, standards are free, though the means by which either standards-compliant products are produced, or additional value-add is applied, is often something that companies charge and market with.
For example, any two SecureDigital memory cards for a digital camera could each have very different memory chips inside of them, but the electrical and physical interfaces are necessarily the same. That said, many memory card vendors innovate and market on writing speed, owing to some magic they might have baked into their silicon. Look at the average Lexar card, for example. (They choose to market on write speed, even if "133x" comes off as arbitrary.)
Thus... Everybody wins: Interoperability is achieved and room for necessary differentiation is provided. I'm pretty amazed how many folks — the ones screaming, somewhat incredibly, that they're not getting something for free from Edelman — just aren't seeing this.
And it's not like I've been invited to participate in helping to develop these standards, though people have known about Edelman's interest in this area for some time. I take that back... I think I was invited to chat about it in some kind of dial-in podcast thing months ago. Couldn't make it. Nothing since. Oh... I went to a Social Media Club meeting in LA. Had a nice discussion. Met great people.
You get the idea.
Give me, Edelman, anyone a workable, reasonable standard and I'll do my darnedest to make sure they play within it if it's reasonable and well-iterated. Better yet, give me an opportunity to help shape that standard, and I might even be happy about it. *8-) Just don't try to set firm on fire when the tools it creates to produce standards-compliant releases (or whatever) aren't handed over.
There's opportunity for everyone here. Don't screw it up.
So, yes, I'm loudly agreeing with Brian, but there are places where I might disagree with him. Like:
If we had a critical mass of releases marked up with hRelease, then you could incent Technorati and other search engines to create tools to make releases more visible and easier to track, parse, remix.Okay... Technorati tracks blog conversations. Not even shudder big-agency Edelman (a "Super-Duper Intergalactic" agency to some) has considered that press releases should even be made a part of what Technorati indexes and references.(Put another way... If Edelman even breathed this suggestion, the weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth would be deafening.)
In other words, if there's a better way to make SMNRs less acceptable and less relevant to the communities it most seeks to communicate with, I honestly can't think of one.
Again... Everyone... This goes back to a point I keep on making:
The current SMNR discussion is 80% about attention and 20% about conversation. Reverse it, or you'll have bigger problems than a metadata standards quibble.Can I go home now?Technorati Tags: edelman, pr, public relations, social media news release, newmediarelease
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