I talk too much. And I spend too much time on Twitter. So I’m not tweeting today. Since I am not a bird, I never thought I would compose that sentence.

I had dinner this evening in San Jose with some nice folks, including Florian Seroussi, CEO of Celtrek, and Pat Phelan, CEO of Cubic Telecom, in town for VON.x.

We were talking about Twitter (even offline Twitter is a popular topic), and Pat said he thinks people should talk less about themselves and more about what other people are doing. He also said if he sees someone tweet three times in a row, they’re off his follow list.

I think these are good guidelines. More than once I have found myself tweeting too often and shamelessly promoting my own agenda. So I’ve declared Twitterless Tuesday for myself. I’ll give myself and my Twitter friends a break. See you Wednesday. I think.

Social media, like most technological advances before it, has become a highly effective tool for bigots, racists, and revisionists. It is up to those of us who wish to rise above prejudice to respond and correct “misinformation” (a gentle word for lies) when we see it.

I just came across an excellent post On Reem Abeidoh’s blog on this very subject. Reem asks:

“The real people in the online world bring their prejudice to the communities they belong to. However, if there is a strong enough brigade who shuns and demotes these people, would their muscles deflate? Can the community establish an internal code to ensure that everyone feels comfortable online?”

I am not sure how enforceable a code would be. I do agree strongly that those of us who are intelligent and skilled writers and researchers (bloggers), sometimes with sizable audiences, can do much to counter the lies with a reasoned, well-researched response.

I am Jewish, and recently found myself on a Facebook group where a conspiracy theorist was explaining how the Jews control the media, the government, the banks and big business. They also incidentally helped found Nazism! In this case, one of the “sources” used to prove this was The Protocols of Zion, a book that has long been recognized by scholars as a fraud, but which is still popular with anti-Semites.

Conspiracy theorists claim that the Protocols of Zion are a master plan by “the elders of Zion.” This is patently absurd. The source material was written about Napoleon III, and was not written about Zionism, nor influenced by it. How then could it be what propagandists claim it to be? It isn’t. The Times of London exposed the hoax of the protocols in 1921, but over the years it has been convenient to ignore this, and subsequent evidence, that the protocols are bogus, because the fraud is the foundation of so many claims of a vast, global Zionist conspiracy.

When I posted this information to the Facebook group, the person I was arguing with eventually conceded this point and went on to quote other sources. I feel I made a small victory, and either embarrassed the author for his being so easily dran into this 100-year-old scam, or perhaps influenced others who might have thought his claims valid.

Based on my Facebook experience, here are my suggestions for responding to online hatred:

• Respond factually and unemotionally
• Cite reliable, unbiased sources. There are no truly unbiased sources, but don’t for example, quote a Jewish source in a Jewish argument.)
• Be logical and methodical
• Choose your cause, become an expert on it and use social media tools like RSS, Google News Alerts and Technorati blog search to track interesting conversation
• DO NOT link to racist sites and material unless you have to. This only propagates this information and improves its search engine ranking. Obviously if you are responding to someone, you have to link to that person’s blog or web site, but don’t succumb to the temptation to provide a number of links to racist content to illustrate the problem. Don’t help these people.

I’ve just started thinking about this in the past six months or so, and I would love to hear your comments on the seriousness of this problem and what bloggers can do about it.

I know it seems I’ve been hating on Facebook a bit lately, but that’s the way it is with cultural icons. I’ve been hammering away at the pre-eminent social networking app, and in the true spirit of blogging, freely criticizing its features and user interface (while keeping my Facebook home page up constantly and eagerly checking to see if anyone has sent me a message or written on my wall).

I had a technical question recently and was of course unable to contact Facebook directly, so I went to the official Facebook blog. The writing is quite good, and the topics are clearly of interest to many Facebook users, but I think Facebook is missing a real opportunity by having what is little more than a marketing blog.

I did notice a candid September 5, 2006 post by Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder, in which he discusses the Mini-Feed and News Feed and acknowledges user discontent with the implementation of these features.

However, the posts on the current blog home page are mostly self-congratulatory and completely non-controversial and non-provocative. I was also surprised to see that current blog posts do not permit commenting (though this was a feature that appears to have been previously available.)

A corporate blog ought to have a point of view (other than “Facebook kicks ass.”) It should deal with issues, not just features and subscriber stats. I imagine the Facebook party line on this would be that Facebook itself offers much more in the way of online social interaction than can be found on a decidedly old school platform like a blog. Given Facebook’s recent surge in popularity and membership, and its emergence as the latest social networking phenomenon, one would expect more interesting discussions on the company’s blog.

My piece, The Costcofication of Media, on the increasing integration of PR, social media, advertising, and web marketing, and its effect on PR clients and the industry as a whole, is posted on Strumpette as today’s Leader’s Perspective.

This post also appears on my agency blog.

The Street.com* reports: SEC to Look at Whole Foods CEOs Internet Activity

“The Securities and Exchange Commission has reportedly begun an informal inquiry into the Internet message board postings of Whole Foods Market.
The online version of The Wall Street Journal reported late Friday that regulators will likely examine whether Web comments by Mackey during an eight-year stint of posting company-cheering entries under a pseudonym had contradicted official Whole Foods statements.

The SEC also will likely look at whether Mackey selectively disclosed material corporate information in violation of securities laws, the Journal said.

In a Whole Foods blog post following the disclosure by the Federal Trade Commission of Mackey’s Web writings, the CEO said he never revealed any ‘proprietary’ information about the company.”

Wow. What an idiot.

* The original report was in the Wall Street Journal but I do not like linking to articles that are, or may become, subscription only

Earlier this year, Eric Jackson, investor activist and blogger, played a major role in fomenting a shareholder revolt that led to the resignation of former Yahoo CEO Terry Semel. Now Jackson is at again as he calls for the resignation of Motorola CEO Ed Zander after Motorola issued a warning that it would report a second-quarter loss, and lowered sales forecasts. According to Forbes:

“On Monday, Jackson posted a YouTube video message on his blog Breakout Performance to his fellow Motorola shareholders with a five-point plan on turning the company around. Replacing Zander was at the top of his list.”

Clearly, the game is changing (as one comment on YouTube notes) when shareholder revolts are carried out, and apparently with great effectiveness, through blogs and YouTube video. Apparently social media has grown up and corporate America needs to understand what it’s all about and put in place blog and video strategies of their own, particularly in executive communications.Motorola will report earnings July 19, so quiet period regulations most likely bar Zander from recording a video in response to Jackson, at least for the next seven days. It may be too late for Zander, I don’t know, and truthfully, the man shouldn’t be judged on whether he records a video, but on his performance as CEO and whether he’s fulfilled his obligations to shareholders. Arguably, though, Zander can either respond, which might serve to validate Jackson’s clout with investors, or remain mute, possibly telegraphing that he doesn’t have a strong response to the charges.

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Hugh MacLeod argues that “public relations is getting social media all wrong,” and “if your ideas have merit, bloggers will talk about them,” and therefore traditional press releases are unnecessary and irrelevant.

The idea that blogs and other social media have replaced the press release is simplistic. I won’t argue that press releases are often laden with corporate crap, and the PR profession needs to take a hard look at this, but the quality of a typical press release, and the relevance of press releases, are two separate discussions. Certainly more and more people in all fields are becoming social media-aware, but there are still plenty of journalists and editors who do not blog or read blogs, but who can be reached with a press release. Anyone who is currently advising clients to stop issuing press releases, whether that person represents a PR agency, an advertising agency, a marketing firm, or a social media consultancy, is negligent. Some day soon we may indeed be ready for the elimination of the conventional press release, but that day is not here.

The theme of MacLeod’s blog is “cartoons drawn on the back of business cards.” Many of them are enlightening and amusing. But I am completely clueless (I admit it) as to the meaning of this cartoon, included in MacLeod’s post:

First of all, I have no idea what the diagram is trying to convey. Second, it is labeled “ad agency biz model,” so I am not sure how it is connected to public relations. The themes of commodification/de-commodficiation (odd words) and “hard sell” are not dealt with in MacLeod’s post.

MacLeod paraphrases Stowe Boyd: “Please, please, please dont talk about audiences when you are theoretically promoting social media.” The idea that corporate communications and marketing people are clueless because they use the word “audience” is a popular red herring among anti-traditional communications jihadists. While the dictionary definition of audience might imply one-way communications to a captive and passive group, the concept, properly applied, is a powerful one that is highly relevant in social media strategy. In the corporate world, segmentation allows a company to enable effective communications with its various audiences. These audiences include customers, prospects, shareholders, business partners, employees, developers, journalists, bloggers, securities analysts, industry analysts and other influential groups that the company needs to reach.

Each of these groups has different interests. Securities analysts, for example, are interested almost exclusively in the company’s financial performance, and generally don’t want to hear about product features or corporate social responsibility. Developers want to know about tools, and the availability of software updates and bug fixes.

By understanding their audience(s), bloggers can engage in more interesting and effective conversations. If I visit the blog of an expert in Service Oriented Architectures and read a post on his experience trying to replace a stolen Blackberry, that might be mildly interesting (OK, it isn’t), but would have no value to me. I’d rather learn about the blogger’s views on the role of open source in SOA adoption. In this case, the first blogger is a narcissist, who has failed to consider his audience, readership, whatever. And I don’t care how articulate, funny or clever a blogger is. If he or she has nothing of interest to say to me, (a disregard for audience), then that blogger and the company are wasting their time and mine.

Finally, it’s totally unnecessary, unkind and uncivil to say that “most PR folk are still pretty clueless.” This kind of posturing trash talk is usually a smokescreen for the lack of a fully formed logical argument. I think the following diagram proves my point unequivocally: