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A few weeks ago, High Society, a ski/snowboard company I’ve worked with over the years suffered a hard loss: we lost one of our team riders to a cliff drop that went tragically wrong.
Out of respect for his family, I will not be mentioning his real name here because I don’t want this post to appear in the search results for his name. For the sake of the article I’m referring to him by the name ‘Tim’.
During the resulting media coverage I noticed a trend that caught my attention.
The day after his death, the opening sentence of an article from the Rocky Mountain News read:
“Aspen native and snowboarder [Tim} liked spinners, bonks and card tricks, according to one of his sponsors’ Web sites.”
That website was ours. And that line ’spinners, bonks, and card tricks’ was taken off of his profile page, which was the first page you’d find after Googling his name.
But here’s the thing. There was a lot more to Tim than ’spinners and bonks’. He was a well respected rider and someone who had accomplished great things in his short life. But you would not know this from the article.
It struck me that journalists are turning more and more to the web and social networks to dig up information about people for their stories. It’s obvious that the author simply Google’d Tim’s name and took out the first bit of information he could find, no matter how trivial.
If you recall the Elliot Spitzer scandal, you may remember the same thing happened in that instance as well. When the identity of Spitzer’s lady friend was discovered, media organizations were quoting her Myspace page and printing photos straight out of her profile.
Now, is that really fair? Or more importantly, is that really journalism? It seems that more journalists, in the effort to be the first to the press, are skipping the interviews of friends and families and turning more to finding out what they can on the web.
The reason I ask if it’s fair: How many of you would like to have your legacy defined by what’s in your Facebook profile?
Take a look at the image on the right. It’s an excerpt from my Facebook profile. Like most of my friends profiles, it’s not exactly on the serious side.
I would hate to think that if I passed away tomorrow that the world would know me by:
“Minneapolis resident and programmer, Nate Weiner liked Rickrolling himself…”
And Tim’s profile on the High Society website? It wasn’t serious. It didn’t mention the things that really defined him. None of the items that were listed there did his legacy any justice.
But why should it? Should we be worried that if we put up a joke that others will take that as our character definition? Or should we expect journalists to be more conscious of the type of content they are sourcing from?
If this is going to be the way it is, should we avoid joking around and keep our content strict?
I would certainly hope not, but it begs the question, if people were to write about you today and used to the web to research you, what would they find? And more importantly, would you want others to read it?
I’ve made some new updates to the recently launched Twitter tool Intwition.
Story Titles
The first update was the biggest request: To resolve page titles, rather than just showing urls in the popular lists. If you peek at the homepage and New Item Finder you’ll see this now in action.
Stories That Come to You
Second, you can now have items that reach ‘popular’ status sent to you via Twitter. Just follow @Intwition and whenever a new story crops up, it’ll show up in your public timeline.
Also note you can also subscribe to the RSS for popular items.
Better Spam Filtering
With anything of this nature, spam happens. I’ve been tuning the algorithm to remove this from appearing on the home page and I’ve been having some good success. There is still one big part I need to add to it, but you should not see much spam on the front page for now.
As always, your suggestions are greatly appreciated!
Are you fluent in a second language outside of English?
I’m looking for volunteers to help translate about 100 words/phrases for the upcoming Read It Later release. This is one of the most demanded features for the new version and I want offer everyone the same ease of use, no matter where they are in the world.
If you are able and would like to help out, please drop me a line via email or in the comments below.
Thanks!
I just signed up for FriendFeed to see what all the hubbub was about and figured this is a good time to mention how to connect with me outside of this site.
I’m always trying to network, so if you Add/Follow/Subscribe to me and I’ll add you back.
FriendFeed - http://friendfeed.com/ideashower
Twitter - http://twitter.com/IdeaShower
LinkedIn - http://www.linkedin.com/in/nateweiner
Digg - http://digg.com/users/Twister47
Mixx - http://www.mixx.com/users/twister47
StumbleUpon - http://twister47.stumbleupon.com/
In my first post on the Idea Shower I promised to post not only my successes, but my failures as well. This is the story of one of those failures.
I came across this post by Eric Reynolds on Problogger. It suggested using a Press Release to bring attention to your blog. After reading this I poked around and found stories of people getting thousands of views and numbers of interviews with media outlets by submitting press releases with the service PRweb. This was the same week I was releasing Tail Report, so I thought I’d give it a go.
When I was ready to submit my release, I was hung up by the first page in the submission process; I had seen a screen like this before. But it was many years ago.
Remember back in the 90’s when there were dozens of services that promised to submit your site to 9,959,942 search engines for the ‘low’ price of $99/mo even though it was something you could do entirely on your own and for free? This felt like the same game.
Needless to say I was incredibly skeptical. But there seemed to be good stories of people having a lot of success. (My optimism will eventually be the end of me.)
I decided, in the name of science and as a boon for my readers, that I would take this as an opportunity to do an experiment, posting my results for all to see. So I decided eating wasn’t important and instead dropped $80 on a press release.
Let the Great Experiment Begin!
To submit a release you need to first select your ‘visibility package’. Each step up costs more money and gives you more features like ‘SEO Wizard’ and ‘PR Tag Clouds’.
$200 will get you ‘Yahoo Site Match 3x’ which is ‘expedited placement in the search engines at three times the $80 level’). I knew this looked familiar!
I went with the ‘Standard Visibility’ package for $80 and submitted my release to post on Tuesday March 11th, 2008.
Release Day
My alarm rings. I am confused. Why did my alarm wake me up and not the non-stop ringing of the phone with news reporters trying to get an exclusive? Surely something isn’t right.
I hop onto PRweb’s site and start looking for my press release.
With the Standard package I assume I won’t make it onto their home page so I drill down into one of the categories I submitted my release to: Technology: Internet
Okay not on the front page there, so I start scrolling down and am confronted with the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen:
Those are page numbers. Not links to individual releases, but links to pages of releases. And mind you, I’m drilled down into a category.
I’ve already started laughing and given up any hope for success here. But let’s see how I did shall we?
My Traffic Stats
By logging in and viewing the traffic stats that PRweb gives me, I might feel like the press release wasn’t all that bad. According to the stats the press release was read 447 times this past week. Not terrible.
However, I’d like to point out that I find these numbers highly questionable. Take a look at my actual press release here. Scroll to the bottom.
At the bottom of the press release, you will see an iFrame to the Tail Report website. An iFrame is essentially a browser window inside of a browser window. It means that by viewing the press release, you are also viewing the Tail Report website. Therefore logging a hit in my stats program (I use Google Analytics).
Using this logic, if this press release was viewed 447 times, I should have received 447 likewise views from the iFrame.
I received 17.
I would understand if there was a 15% difference, but 447 versus 17, definitely makes me wonder where they are getting their numbers from. Honestly I’m surprised I even got 17 (please refer to photo above of 89302804 links for effect)
What to Think
Okay, let’s start with the obvious: There are a lot of factors at play when it comes to the success of a press release or story. The title has to be catchy, the content has to be good, and more importantly the subject has to be newsworthy.
And it’s completely arguable that my press release and Tail Report simply were not any of those things. Even if this is the case, with what I’ve seen, I’m willing to argue that paying to submit a press release online today is simply a waste of money.
Paying to be heard died back with Web 1.0
Let’s consider my $80 ‘Standard Visibility’ package. I chose the low-end package. What would happen if I chose a the top package and landed on the PRweb homepage? How much does that cost?
As you complete the submission process you are constantly prodded to upgrade your release. Each upgrade gets you closer to the top of the release pile. To get on the top of the PRweb homepage, I believe the top upgrade was $800.
This is where I have to stop and say I sincerely doubt the ROI of $800 on a press release in today’s world.
For $800, I am almost certain you could find a blogger with at least a few thousand subscribers who would be more than happy to write about your site. In fact, with services like PayPerPost you can find bloggers who will do it for $5.
In fact, I would bet (though I definitely don’t support this), that for $800 you could pay a whole group of people to pimp your post on Digg, which would likely bring 50,000 visitors and a whole score of blog coverage. I’ll tell you what, you give me $800, and I’ll fly to San Fransisco and personally hand your press release to Kevin Rose.
So What Are We to Do?
Go look at that list of page numbers above one more time. Then go look at the upcoming sections of social news site’s like Digg and Mixx.
There is significantly less competition on Digg and Mixx than there is on PRweb. And you don’t have to pay anything to submit there.
Have you ever tried submitting your site to StumbleUpon? I’ve found that you can get at least 200-300 visitors in one day simply by stumbling your own site. And again, it’s free.
More importantly, who do you know? In preparing this post I spoke to a friend who had great success with a press release last winter. However, he said that the greatest result came from personally emailing the release to local and industry reports that he knew. It was those people who eventually covered him.
You will have far more success with a press release by leveraging your connections than launching it blindly into the masses.
The Final Outcome
The point I’m making here is simple: Paying to be heard died back with Web 1.0.
This is an era where it takes very little effort to be seen. You can send influential bloggers like Michael Arrington or Robert Scoble a message on Twitter and they’ll see it. But if what you have to say is not interesting, they’ll pass right on by.
Don’t spend your money on trying to be seen, that’s the easy part. Instead, be creative and be interesting. If you are, people will find you. Focusing on your content and spending your money on things that make your product or site better will ultimately lead to more results than paying $80 to put your product in a pile.
I’m looking for people to beta test the next release of the Read It Later extension (0.9). It has been revamped to work with Firefox’s new bookmarking system and has several new features which need some proper testing.
Anyone is welcome to try it but I’m looking for people who:
- Have Firefox 3 Beta (If not, you can run FF2 and 3 together see below)
- Currently use Read It Later at least a few times a week
- Willing to give good feedback
Interested? Leave me a comment (and email) below or email me. I’ll be letting beta testers play in about a week.
Note: You can run Firefox 3 and Firefox 2 together on the same machine if need be. Here are some instructions on how to do so: Windows - Mac
One of the greatest things about what I’m doing is that I get to meet some really nice people along the way. Not to mention, I’m quickly discovering that the single most important part of success is ‘who you know’.
To that vein and in an effort to find more ways to give back to subscribers, I’m starting a new weekly series called ‘Who I Met This Week’.
So if you read the Idea Shower and haven’t introduced yourself yet, drop me a line!
Note: I will say this first installment will actually include some people I met earlier than this week just to catch up.
I credit Kevin with being one of the first fans of the Idea Shower. It’s hard to find an early post that he didn’t comment on and his initial interest was a great motivation when I started.
Kevin, and his partner Josh, run a site called Can the World Hear Me and it’s soul is very close to the Idea Shower. Their goal is to well, let the world hear them and their ideas.
He’s much farther ahead than when I was his age. Keep an eye on Kevin, he’s off to a good start.
Harley runs the website the World Learning Tree. He has ambitious plans to offer education through new web technologies. I like the approach he has of experimenting with tools and services and applying them in new ways.
Mark writes for the rapidly growing blog, MakeUseOf.com as well as his own. Mark and MakeUseOf have a solid collection of tips, websites, and tools daily. All good stuff.
Jeff is the force behind Buzz My Blog. Buzz My Blog is a blog about blogging. But more importantly it’s about the blogger behind it. Jeff brings a personal touch to his site and the blogging tips that he offers.
More importantly, Jeff is the inspiration for this new weekly series. He just recently launched an weekly initiative on his blog where he features a Buzz My Blog follower’s site every week. I thought it was great to see a site give back to it’s users and he got me thinking on how I could do that too.
And you?
Who’d you meet this week?
I wanted to brief everyone on what my plans are for the Read It Later extension as it’s now been two months since the last update. I’ve been ignoring you while I was working on Tail Report. Tail Report is happily cranking away so now it’s time for Read It Later again.
The next update (0.9) will only be for Firefox 3. The bookmarking service built into Firefox has been completely revamped between FF 2 and 3. It’s great because they finally have a solid bookmark API that will make the Read It Later extension much more stable. Before I literally had to pour through thousands of lines of the Firefox source code to figure out how to make it do the simplest tasks.
But this also means that Read It Later will have to be rebuilt to work on Firefox 3. This gives me the opportunity to make some decisions about which features will carry over, which won’t, and what new features will be added.
So I’m asking you dudes and dudines for two things:
1. Suggestions - If you have any suggestions on features you wish it had, now is the time to voice them. If you see a suggestion from someone in the comments and you like it, second it.
2. What You Like Now - In addition to telling me what you want, tell me what you like about it the way it is now. I want to know what features people are using.
One more thing:
I also wanted to gauge how you feel about the current method of storing/retrieving your list. Are you happy with the way it is working now? Do you prefer having the list stored locally on your computer or would you like a way to access it online? I originally tried to keep things simple without requiring you to sign up for another service but perhaps you are interested in having your list hosted with an RSS feed.
Timeline
The timeline for this new release hasn’t been decided upon yet. I’m still waiting to see how things are shaping up with the official release of Firefox 3 out of Beta. But I promise you this update is coming and hopefully soon.
I just setup a Twitter account. I’m planning on using it to connect more with Idea Shower readers.
If you’re using Twitter, drop me your username in the comments or find me at:
http://twitter.com/IdeaShower
Looking forward to finding some of you on there!
Idea 36 will launch into public alpha one week from today on Monday, February 25th at 8:00am Central.
If you have your own blog or website, this one is for you. It will be the largest scale release from the Idea Shower yet. It’s not just a tool or a plug-in, it qualifies as a full-blown start-up.
Since I’ve started blogging, there have been a number of questions about ad revenue made from blogs and websites that I’ve been unable to find answers to. And I’m not the only one. These questions are repeatedly being asked by other fellow bloggers to seemingly no reply. Idea 36 will finally answer these questions.
In order to do this, Idea 36 will need your help. Come take a look on Monday and help all of us get our questions answered.
